Wartime Wife (43 page)

Stanley pouted and rubbed at his ear. ‘My mates do.’

‘That doesn’t mean you can.’

‘And they smoke.’

‘You’re not to do that either.’

Lizzie glanced at her watch. She prided herself on running the house and looking after Stanley, but she did need to work and she had been enjoying Patrick’s letter and also enjoyed writing back to him. Her patience was coming to an end.

‘Come on, Stanley. I have to go to work.’

‘That’s right. Come on, Stanley. Get out of bed.’

She jerked her head round to face her father. His voice had come as a complete surprise and so did his presence. It had never been his policy to get involved in household matters, and she couldn’t ever remember him visiting Stanley when he’d been lying ill with the chest infection he’d taken so long to get over.

‘Go on,’ he said, mistakenly thinking she hadn’t heard. ‘You go on to work. I’ll get our Stanley off to school.’ He looked tellingly back at his youngest son. ‘I’ll get him there if I’ve got to drag him there myself.’

‘Right,’ said Lizzie, telling herself not to look the proverbial gift horse in the mouth and hoping that it might be a permanent arrangement. ‘I’ll get off to work.’

Daw was coming in from outside, wiping her mouth.

‘Sick again?’

Daw nodded.

Lizzie indicated the official-looking envelope on the table.

‘You’ve got a letter from John. Patrick’s coming home in a few days. I expect John is too.’

A hint of colour came suddenly to her sister’s wan cheeks.

‘I’ll see you this evening. Put the potatoes on if you’re home before me. And don’t worry about getting our Stanley off to school. Dad’s dealing with it.’

Daw gave no indication that she either heard or cared. Her fingers were busily ripping at the letter. She didn’t even hear or answer Lizzie’s shouted goodbye.

Henry couldn’t remember the last time he’d taken hold of his son’s hand, if ever. He frowned at the guilty feeling it gave him and also the sadness.

At first it seemed the experience was as strange to Stanley as it was to him. Every now and again he felt Stanley’s eyes on him. Once or twice he’d looked down at him, surprised to see how blue they were. When had he stopped noticing the precious things of life? He liked to think it was when Mary Anne had torn his heart out telling him there’d not only been another man before him, but also a child. He could see now why her parents had been so keen for him to marry her, him with little education but a steady job and an upright character. In his heart of hearts he knew he’d been damaged before then, but what was one more damaged man among thousands of damaged men returning from the Great War?

‘Are you going to get my ma to come home?’

His big hands clasped and unclasped over his knees. ‘That’s up to her.’

‘Will you make her come?’

‘I can’t make her.’

‘You can punch her and make her come. That’s what you always used to do.’

Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings
…Where had he heard that … the Bible … yes … of course. Another one was
The truth always hurts.
Both of them were true. He felt as though he’d been stung by a thousand bees.

Some folk confessed to a priest, but he wasn’t of that religious persuasion. Perversely, he began to confess to his son.

First, he cleared his throat. ‘Son? I have a confession to make.’

Whether Stanley even understood the word, he didn’t know, but the blue eyes flashed and he looked as if he were concentrating.

Henry continued. ‘I didn’t treat your ma right. That’s why she ran off.’

Stanley aped his father, clearing his throat and adopting the same sober expression. ‘Did it surprise you, Dad?’

Henry sighed. ‘Looking back on it, the only thing that surprised me is what took her so long, but then I know the answer to that anyway. It was you, son. You, and your brother and your sisters. She wouldn’t leave you and I’m grateful for that. She’s a good woman, a good mother and a good wife if I’d given her half a chance.’

Outside Rollos, a posh dress shop in West Street, a woman laden with bags flounced out of the shop, aiming for a taxi from Henry’s own company waiting for her at the kerb. The fur coat she wore would have looked better on a leaner frame, and although the matching hat looked expensive and was decorated with curly brown feathers, its resemblance to a tea cosy was unmistakable.

‘Mr Randall?’ Her voice was as cutting as a nail scratching glass.

Henry frowned, trying to place where he’d seen the woman before. Seeing his consternation, she explained.

‘I’m Mrs Selwyn. You brought your daughter Elizabeth to me in your cab sometimes. She left my employ recently. I
must say I thought her method of leaving was quite impolite. It is not done to merely leave a letter on the table. She should have given me formal notice and told me to my face in order that we could consider any problems and have time to find a replacement. She did neither of those things. I must state my dissatisfaction, Mr Randall, indeed I must—’

‘I’m sorry Mrs Selwyn, but I have an appointment …’

‘It cannot be as important as hearing my grievances, Mr Randall—’

‘Yes it is!’ cried Stanley, his earnest expression matching the passion in his voice. ‘My ma’s living with a German pawnbroker in East Street, so get out of our way!’

Henry raised his hat to her horror-stricken face as he passed her and followed his son.

The tree in the backyard was breaking into bright buds, tiny leaves bursting out like flower petals or elliptical wings of lime-green butterflies.

Mary Anne saw them, and although she usually felt a great burst of hope when eyeing the tree’s resilience in such drab surroundings, today she had other things on her mind. Yesterday, Michael had almost strangled a man. The occurrence had left a profound impression on both of them. She’d already learned from him that some very terrible things were happening in Germany. Last night he had told her one last thing, one happening that he had sworn he would never repeat to anyone.

‘It was the day before I was due to leave. They were storm troopers, just as those that are marching all over Europe. Hide, my stepfather said, and I did. My mother had a very ornate piece of furniture, a credenza I think it is called. It was French and very ornate. The doors were emblazoned with porcelain panels decorated with nymphs and trees and flowers. It was huge … used for the storage of linens. Somehow, I hardly believe it now, but
they squeezed me into this. I could only see out of it through a keyhole. I found myself looking at black breeches and boots. I could only surmise what was happening from what I heard. They asked where I was, that I was a deserter and traitor to my country. My stepfather said I was with the army, but that he did not know where. I heard the slap of his gloved hand on my stepfather’s face. He did not cry out. They asked more questions, beat him some more, but he still answered them in the same voice he used for a church service. Eventually, seeing as they would get nowhere with him, they started on my mother …’

His voice had broken. She’d cupped his face in her hands.

‘You don’t need to go on.’

‘I must.’

He’d taken a deep breath and she’d realised just what a great strain this was.

‘They started on my mother. I heard her cry out. My first instinct was to rush out and help her, but I knew I could not do this, that it would do no good. We would all be punished, but also the memories of the bloodlust I had seen in the eyes of men I had once regarded as friends were still with me. I was afraid. I admit it, I was
very
afraid.’

Her stomach had churned as the horror unfolded.

‘There were six of them. Some were little more than boys – perhaps nineteen or so. On the command of the officer, they took their turn, and still I could not show myself.’ His eyes had filled with tears. ‘I was a fool. Blinded by my own fear, I led them there and still terrified, I did not help her. I am a coward.’

‘What happened next?’ Her voice was low and gentle.

His throat pulsed in a hard swallow.

‘They went away. I came out of my hiding place full of shame and apologising to them both for not helping. But at least we are alive, said my stepfather, my mother crying in his arms. He told me to go, to reach England and to prepare
for their arrival for he felt sure that they would not be long in following me because he knew someone who could get him the proper papers.

‘I must have looked dumbfounded because for some reason he explained further. “They are church members, committed Christians willing to help those unable to help themselves.” He gave me an address in Hamburg. “We have been referring people to them … mostly Jews,” he added, his stricken look switching between a hasty concern for me and a more intense one for my mother.

‘I did not know what to say to her, to either of them. I remember I kept apologising. It was all my fault; I had been blinded by a childhood obsession with uniforms and of fitting in with my peers and, because of that, I had brought great pain to them. I had betrayed their love, blinded myself to understanding.

‘I told them I could not leave them. My stepfather shouted at me to go. He would take care of my mother. He would take care of everything.

‘There seemed no choice. For me to stay there was as dangerous for them as it was for me. I took the address they gave me and fled, came here and I wait, hoping they are still alive, hoping that they really do know someone who can get them the necessary papers so they can follow the route to Hamburg.’

It was only then that she knew the full extent of the guilt he was carrying, now because she was sharing it with him. ‘We must hope they will come.’

She looked at the tree and its sturdy new growth.

Hope springs eternal.

She certainly hoped it did. The war had seemed a faraway thing and there were plenty of people still saying that it was nothing to do with them. It had affected Michael very deeply and personally. Hope was indeed what they were
all
going to need in the years to come.

Her other concern was Stanley. Although Lizzie had stressed that there was nothing to worry about, that given time he’d accept Michael fully, she couldn’t help being anxious.

For the second time in little under a fortnight, Michael came in from the shop to tell her that someone was here to see her.

‘Harry?’ she asked, her spirits lifting at the prospect of seeing her handsome, successful son yet again.

He shook his head. ‘No. It is Stanley.’

She ran from the yard and into the living quarters where Stanley was waiting for her. Michael had given him a slice of some apple cake that he’d made; ‘strudel’ he’d called it and took great pride in baking it purely for Mary Anne, complaining the whole time that he couldn’t get quite the same ingredients that his mother had used. He’d always referred to his mother in respectful, subdued tones. Now she knew just how much respect he had for her.

‘Stanley!’

To her great disappointment, his exuberance did not match her own, his enthusiasm for the strudel outweighing his joy at seeing her.

Mary Anne swallowed her emotion almost as quickly as Stanley was swallowing the spicy mix of apple and pastry. ‘Are you well, Stanley?’

He looked at her as though only just realising she was there and gave her a crumb-filled kiss before returning his full attention to his cake. ‘I wasn’t going to come here, but Dad said it would be all right. He said you wouldn’t go off with anyone who wasn’t a decent sort of bloke and that besides, I had to be brave, just like he did.’

Mary Anne’s mouth dropped open. Oblivious to the surprise he’d caused by mentioning his father
knew
her whereabouts, Stanley continued. ‘That pawnbroker do seem a nice bloke, Ma. If I’d known he could make cakes I wouldn’t have run
away the other day. It was Ollie Young who said he was Hitler and boxed people up to send back to Germany. He was lying, Ma, weren’t he? He was lying.’

Mary Anne nodded. ‘Of course he was lying.’

She hugged him again.

‘Dad wants to see you,’ he said after swallowing the last bite.

Mary Anne looked over her shoulder, knowing Michael was standing there, and ready to support her in whatever way she needed.

Their eyes met in mutual understanding before she turned back to face her youngest son.

‘Why does your father want to see me?’

Stanley shrugged. ‘He just does. He let me take the day off school to come here and he took the day off work. He said it was important.’

The thought of seeing him again resurrected the same old fears. It had only been a few months since she’d left, and yet in those months she had lived a lifetime, learned more about herself, about the world, her children and her husband. She
had
to be able to do this.

‘I must do this,’ she said and, even though she didn’t look at him, Michael knew she was saying it for his benefit.

‘Do you want me to come with you?’

She shook her head and her eyes met his. ‘Will you pass me my coat?’

He opened the closet door and handed it to her. ‘Wrap up warm, won’t you.’

She nodded. ‘I will.’

There was a bandstand in the park, a brick-built three-sided construction looking out over the city. Immediately between it and the view were two artillery pieces from the Great War, said to have been captured from the Germans, but might just as
well have belonged to the British Army: the truth had become obscure with the years.

Henry was sitting there waiting for her, his face raw from the cold wind that swooped up from the vale, pinching at nostrils and the first of the daffodils.

He blinked when he first saw her, looked away and then took a second look. Any other wife would have welcomed the obvious admiration that he desperately tried to hide, but not Mary Anne. No matter how he looked at her, she could only feel a deep-seated, loathsome fear. She had declared forgiveness would never come and that was an end to the matter.

‘You wanted to see me?’

The firmness of her voice surprised her, and she could see from Henry’s face that it did him too.

Stanley went off to play on the guns.