The Heart of the Family (9 page)

Ahead of them their parents had stopped to talk to other members of the congregation, the adults faces wreathed in smiles if they had been fortunate enough not to have lost anyone in the bombing raid, or shadowed by their pain if they had.

‘So what do you want to do?’ Sasha demanded impatiently, keeping an eye on their parents as she waited for Lou’s response.

Lou didn’t know. She only knew that she yearned for something more than working in a telephone exchange. But Sasha didn’t. Sasha wasn’t like her. Panic filled Lou. That wasn’t true. They felt exactly the same; they always had done and they always would do. They had promised one another that nothing would ever come between them now, nothing and no one. The very thought of doing something without Sasha filled Lou with misery and despair.

‘I want to do what you want to do,’ she told her twin.

‘So we’ll go tomorrow and see if they’ll take us on then,’ Sasha told her.

Sasha liked the thought of working at the telephone exchange. It was within walking distance of home, and somehow she knew she’d feel safe there. Feeling safe, both emotionally and physically, was important to Sasha. She been so afraid when she’d been trapped in the bomb site, and afraid too when she and Lou had quarrelled over which of them Kieran had liked the best. She never wanted to feel like that again, about anyone or anything.

Her head held high with pride, her best floral silk frock abloom with bright pinks, yellows, reds and greens, and her Sunday best navy-blue straw hat pushed down firmly on top of her head, Emily beamed with delight in response to the smiles of welcome she and Tommy were receiving from the other churchgoers.

Whitchurch was only a small town and already in the few days she had been here she had got to know several people, thanks to her chatty neighbour, Ivy Wilson, whose cousin owned a local farm, and who seemed to know everything about everyone.

‘What you want,’ she had told Emily when they had surveyed the large uncultivated back garden together over a welcome cup of tea, after she had come round to introduce herself and help Emily to unpack, ‘is a man to come and set this to rights for you. I’ll have a word with Linda, our Ian’s wife. Our Ian farms up at Whiteside Farm and they’ve got some of them prisoners of war sent to help out with the farm work. I dare say Ian won’t mind sparing you one to get you some veggies and that in, especially if you was to offer to feed him. Eatin’ her out of house and home, Linda says they are.’

Emily had already registered her and Tommy at the doctor’s, and at the local shops with their ration books. She’d had a visit from the vicar to welcome her to his congregation, and a lady from the WVS had been round to invite her to join their local group. Emily had taken Tommy to the library so that they could get tickets, and all in all Emily was extremely pleased with their new home. She certainly hadn’t missed Liverpool, nor her husband, Con, not one little bit.

All that fresh air and a summer spent playing out of doors would do wonders for Tommy’s thin pale face, especially once he started at school and made some friends.

Emily had no fears now that Tommy might say or do the wrong thing and accidentally let it slip that they weren’t related. Tommy never spoke about his life before Emily had found him homeless, alone and living on scraps, too afraid even to speak at all, never mind talk about how he had come to be in such a desperate situation. Emily assumed that he had been orphaned by the war. She had claimed to officialdom and her husband that Tommy’s mother had been her own late cousin, and that because of that she was duty bound to take him in. She had organised new papers for him giving him that identity. She loved him as though he was her own child and the only thing that would ever make her give him up to someone else would be Tommy’s wish that she do so. Without it having to be said between them, they simply behaved as though they belonged together. They had not discussed the issue, but somehow Emily knew that Tommy understood and wanted them to be looked on as ‘family’. What need was there for her to go asking him any questions after all, Emily thought comfortably. Poor little scrap, there was no sense in reminding him of things he’d rather not think about. Who knew what he had been through before she’d found him?

‘Hang on a minute.’

Emily turned round to see Ivy, her helpful neighbour, puffing up the slight incline in the road, after them.

Like Emily she was wearing what was obviously
her Sunday best, a navy silk dress with white spots, the fabric stretched tightly across her ample chest.

‘Well, you two look smart, I must say,’ she said approvingly when she had caught up with them, her face bright pink beneath the brim of her white straw hat. Older than Emily, and widowed, she was obviously determined to take Emily under her wing.

Emily drew herself up proudly to her full height. Tommy did look smart in the grey flannel shorts and shirt and the Bluecoat School blazer she had bought for him in Liverpool from a school uniform supplier who was closing down.

‘I was just thinking,’ Ivy told Emily, ‘I’ll have to introduce you to Hilda Jones. She’s in charge of the local school and you’ll want to get your Tommy registered with her. Teaches them all herself now, Hilda does, since all the men have been called up. A bit of a tartar she is, by all accounts, at least according to our Linda’s girls, but some discipline doesn’t do young ’uns any harm, especially boys.’

Emily could feel Tommy’s hand tightening in her own.

‘Tommy’s a good boy,’ she told Ivy firmly, ‘and clever as well.’

‘Well, I can see from his blazer that he’s bin at one of them posh schools,’ Ivy agreed immediately. ‘And he speaks lovely, an’ all,’ she added approvingly.

Tommy did speak well, Emily agreed. He had hardly any trace of a Liverpool accent.

Since the night he had rushed to her defence when she’d been attacked by thieves who had broken into her Liverpool house, hoping to empty her kitchen cupboards to sell her food on the black market, having previously been mute, he had come on by
leaps and bounds, and was turning into a regular little chatterbox.

Every afternoon whilst it had been so nice and warm, they’d gone for a walk exploring their new environment, and it had amazed Emily how much Tommy knew and how many questions he asked. Only yesterday she’d had to ask them in the library if they had any books on birds on account of him wanting to know what the birds were they could see in the garden.

‘My goodness, you can put a spurt on when you’ve a mind to it,’ Ivy puffed as they reached the church gate.

‘Oh, me and Tommy don’t like to hang around,’ Emily laughed. She felt Tommy’s hand tighten in hers again. She looked down at him and saw that he was looking up at her in query.

‘We’re going to be very happy here,’ she told him stoutly. ‘You’ll like it at school and I bet you’ll be the cleverest boy there.’

He had a good sense of humour, with a wide grin that made you want to smile yourself when you saw it. He was smiling now, and Emily smiled back. My, she was going to like it here. It was doing her the world of good to be able to talk with people without looking over her shoulder to see if they were gossiping about her behind her back on account of her gallivanting unfaithful husband. Poor Con, she almost felt sorry for him remembering how shocked and disbelieving he had been when she had told him that she was leaving. Well, it served him right.

Out of the corner of her eye she caught sight of a column of men being marched towards the church: prisoners of war, under the eye of army guards.
They came to a halt a few feet away from the gathered civilians.

He
was certainly a fine well-set-up chap, Emily reflected, her attention caught by the man at the front of the column. He wasn’t particularly tall but he was certainly well built with a good pair of shoulders on him and a look about him that said he was a man who knew his own mind. His fair hair was silver grey round his temples and his skin was tanned a nice brown. Emily sighed enviously. She thought tanned skin looked ever so nice but when she got out in the sun all she did was freckle.

The POW turned his head as though he could sense her interest in him. Blushing as hotly as any girl, Emily looked away, lifting her gloved hand to pat her dress self-consciously.

She must find out if there was someone who was good with a needle. What with all this rationing and the worry of the war, she seemed to have lost a bit of weight and last year’s dress was now hanging loosely on her.

As they stepped through the gate into the churchyard, Ivy exclaimed, ‘Oh, there’s Brenda Evans from the post office, with her mother. You wait here and I’ll go and bring them over and introduce you.

‘Here we are,’ Ivy announced, puffing and panting as she reappeared with a small apple dumpling of a woman with rosy cheeks, her iron-grey hair pulled into a bun that looked like a cottage loaf. Everything about her was round, even her sharp blue eyes.

‘This here is Emily, Brenda,’ Ivy began the introductions.

Emily smiled and shook the post mistress’s hand.

‘Well, now, and what have we here?’ she began
in a singsong Welsh accent, and looking down at Tommy, before turning to her mother to say something to her in their own language.

They were both smiling and Emily had no idea what she had said but the effect on Tommy was electric. The minute he had heard the post mistress’s singsong accent he had stiffened, but now with her speaking Welsh Tommy pulled away from Emily, a look of terror on his face as he ignored her anxious ‘Tommy!’ and bolted for the church gate.

Although she was aware of the confusion and the curious and shocked looks his behaviour was causing, it was Tommy and his safety that concerned Emily the most as she hurried after him, begging him to stop but knowing somehow that he was in such a panic that he probably couldn’t even hear her.

And then to her relief, the German prisoner of war she had noticed earlier, moving extraordinarily fast for such a heavily built man, somehow managed to step in front of Tommy, reaching for him at the same time and holding him firmly until Emily arrived.

‘Oh, thank you.’ She was out of breath now, puffing just as Ivy had been, but although she had thanked the POW her attention was all for Tommy, who was shivering and shaking so much he could hardly stand up.

She might be wearing her Sunday best frock but Tommy was her precious boy. Emily dropped to her knees and took him in her arms, cradling him close.

‘Oh, my poor little lad, what’s to do?’

Ivy and Brenda Evans had caught up with them now and immediately Tommy tensed again, pulling away from her, but the POW was still there and his hand on Tommy’s shoulder managed to stay him.

A small crowd had gathered round them. The postmistress looked anxious and concerned but it was Ivy who unwittingly gave Emily a clue to what might be wrong when she joked, ‘It’s you speaking Welsh what did it, Brenda. I reckon the poor lad must have thought the Germans had invaded.’

Everyone laughed, and then someone pointed out that they were going to be late for church, and people started to move away.

Emily reached for Tommy’s hand and squeezed it, telling him softly, ‘It’s all right, Tommy. You and me will be all right, I promise you that.’

She could feel him starting to relax. She looked up at the man still holding him.

‘Thank you.’ She felt self-conscious and awkward, conscious of how she must look in his eyes, a plain fat woman who had nothing about her to appeal to any man, never mind such a well-set-up man as he.

‘You are welcome.’ His English was stilted, the words carefully spaced.

‘He is your boy,
ja
?’ he asked.

‘Yes, he is my boy,’ Emily agreed.

‘You are a good boy to your
Mutter
? You take care of her,
ja
?’ he asked Tommy, who had calmed down enough now to nod his head.

But Emily was still astonished when Tommy asked the POW politely, ‘What is your name?’

‘It is Wilhelm,’ the man told him promptly. ‘What is yours?’

‘Tommy.’ Emily and Tommy both spoke at the same time.

The soldier guarding the POWs gave a command and the column started to march into the church.

Emily drew Tommy to one side to let them pass.
Wilhelm had ever such a lovely straight back, Emily noticed, as she hurried Tommy into the church ahead of the marching men.

Well, things could not have worked out better for him if he had planned them that way, Charlie decided smugly as he sang lustily along with the rest of the congregation at the parish church of his in-laws-to-be.

The Wrighton-Budes had their own pew right at the front of the small Norman church, with soft kneeling pads embroidered by Daphne’s mother and her late grandmother as a gift to the Church, whilst to the left of the pew the stained glass had been another family gift.

On the dark oak commemoration board on the opposite wall, the gilding of Daphne’s brother, Eustace’s, name was still bright and fresh. His was the last name to appear on the board, and the first so far from the current war.

In a month’s time, on the first Saturday in June, Charlie and Daphne would be married here in this church.

His arrival in the village, thanks to a forty-eight-hour pass and the money to replace the sports car he had claimed as ‘stolen’ but which he had in fact sold to a young officer, had been greeted with tender concern by his loving fiancée, which had quickly turned to tearful delight at the news that she would continue to live with her parents after their marriage.