Love & Sorrow (21 page)

Isabel flew forward, dropping
Penny’s hand, her handbag and the Evening News bought at the station.

 
‘Oh, my God!’ she shrieked. Her cheeks glowed and
she felt as if her heart would explode. At last!

‘Darling.’ The man stood
up grinning, stretching out his arms, wide and alive.

‘Bill, oh, Bill!’ she cried
as they kissed and hugged and laughed. Isabel’s hat veered to a silly angle on her
head, threatening to fall.

'My God, you look beautiful,’
he breathed between embraces. ‘How I’ve longed for this moment.’

 
Penny loitered, shocked and bemused on the doormat,
overcome by embarrassment.

 
Isabel released the man and turned towards her.

 
‘Penny - this is your Daddy.’ At last Isabel had
remembered her. Still breathless from Bill’s welcome, she pulled Penny forward and
crouched down to where Bill sat once more on the bottom step. She introduced her
gently to the father she was really meeting for the first time. Penny couldn't be
expected to remember him, as she had only been a baby when he had last seen her.
He was as strange to her as a passer-by in the street. Penny approached him doubtfully,
not sure how to react to this male phenomenon. She glanced over her shoulder at
Isabel and registered the reassuring smile on her mother’s face as she pushed her
forward.

‘Penny! What a big girl!
Come here, darling.’

 
He leaned forward and swept her up into his arms
and kissed her, but his chin bristled and she didn’t like the way he smelled. She
pushed him away without a word; dropped to the floor and rushed past him. Ran up
to her room. Horrid man, she thought.

Penny’s prime position
in her mother’s time and affection was abruptly usurped. During the air raids she
and Isabel slept in a nest of eiderdowns and pillows in the sturdy steel cage built
under the oak dining table, the Morrison shelter, until eventually, bored with the
discomfort of that, they recklessly snuggled together in the big bed upstairs. Now
he
slept in that bed - every night. Penny
could hear them in there late, before she fell asleep. They talked a lot and often
they giggled. She could hear the old bedsprings creaking. They seemed to be having
fun. Penny felt left out and jealous.

‘When’s
That Man
going away, Mummy?’ she asked indignantly.
A question greeted with much mirth by the grown-ups and repeated to anyone who would
listen. Only Nanny, Isabel’s mother, understood.

‘She’s only four - of course
the poor little blighter’s going to ‘ave her nose put out of joint. She’s always
‘ad your undivided attention. She don’t know the man,’ she said. Nanny had her reasons
for sounding bitter; she didn’t much like her daughter’s choice of husband.

‘Thinks ‘e’s too good for
us. No good’ll come of it, mark my words,’ she’d prophesied. ‘He won’t like that
poxy little house after what he’s used too. Servants, too I wouldn’t wonder.’ She
illustrated her disapproval with a dramatic sniff.

Isabel admitted that sometimes
Bill’s presence was irksome. It was lovely to have him back, of course. But she
had got so used to being alone with Penny, their routines; doing just what she wanted.
Bill’s presence frequently intruded and he seemed to have changed. He was no longer
as relaxed and assured as before and unaccustomed to taking other people into consideration,
especially when one of them was only four. Sometimes he spoke to them sharply, as
if he were giving orders.

As Doris said when Isabel
complained to her about his encroaching presence, ‘Men do clutter up the place so.’

Isabel often found it necessary
to chide him.

‘For goodness sake sit
down and relax, Bill. Your pacing is giving me the pip! You’ll wear a groove in
the carpet – it’s thin enough as it is!’

‘Sorry, love – can’t help
it. This place seems so small,’ He stretched his arms out, ‘I feel as if I want
to push the walls out with my hands. It’s all that pacing in the Italian palazzos
– interrogating prisoners of war.’

In the last months of the
war Bill’s duties took him to Milan to question prisoners about their part in the
War before the fall of Mussolini. The work proved stressful as he constantly asked
the same questions of hostile captives.

‘Were you a member of the
Fascisti? Who were your officers? Where are your leaders now?’

 
Searching out the worst Fascists proved a thankless
and remorseless task. Every morsel of information was stored and utilised and, occasionally,
led to the capture of a war criminal.

It seemed a long time to
Penny, but the reunion anticipated with such joy, ended quickly. After two weeks
Bill’s leave finished. His orders were to take up a new posting in Berlin, as a
member of the Allied Control Commission set up to govern the defeated Germans. His
job would again be to interview prisoners of war, and civilians, to try to root
out those people who had been members of the Nazi party during the War as well as
to help administer the resettlement of the displaced populations of Europe. An enormous
amount of work waited. Huge migrations of people surged around Europe, from the
East, to escape the Russians, and from the West, those people displaced by the War
and Nazi occupation of so many countries; many of them released from slave labour
camps in Germany and other occupied territories.

During his leave Bill struggled
to make friends with Penny but the child displayed a stubborn streak, she refused
to accept ‘
That Man
’ into her life. She
adamantly spurned his embraces and only took his gifts – delightful little trinkets
and toys from Italy – with reluctance. But she stashed them away in her room in
secret places and studied them covertly. Bill and Isabel took the little to the
cinema and out for meals; they tried to make it fun.

‘I wish she liked me,’
he said to Isabel, ‘I need more time with her.’

‘Don’t worry, darling,
she’s confused. Later, when we’re living together again she’ll have a chance to
get to know you better.’

 
Soon the leave ended and Bill dressed in his uniform
again and waved farewell as they watched from the newly painted step. How smart
he looks with his khaki tunic and those belts and buckles all gleaming and his cap
under his arm, thought Isabel.

Earlier Bill had taken
Isabel into his arms. She tried hard not to cry but the treacherous tears burned
her eyelids; bereft at the thought of him going away again.

‘Don’t worry, darling,
we’ll be together again soon. They’ll be letting families come out. Soon, I promise.
Please – don’t cry.’

Kissing her tenderly he
soothed her fears.

She endured his leaving
with a leaden heart. She stood on the step with Penny as he hopped into the taxi
patiently ticking at the kerb. Isabel didn't think twice about the expense, even
if it was taking him all the way up to town; it would cost a small fortune. She
couldn’t imagine him using the train. Isabel shivered as they turned back into the
house. How cold and empty it seemed.