When the Lights Go on Again (22 page)

‘Go for a walk?’ Emily looked reluctantly at the grey sky beyond the window, but Tommy was insistent, and Beauty was rushing to and fro, having heard that magic word ‘walk’, whilst Wilhelm was smiling at her and telling her that some fresh air would probably do them all good before they sat down to their Boxing Day tea.

‘Go on then.’ She gave in. ‘But not too far.’

‘We could walk as far as the Llangollen canal,’ Tommy suggested eagerly. The canal, with its flight of staircase locks at Grindley Brook, was about a mile from the town and slightly less from Emily’s house on the outskirts. The locks fascinated Tommy.

‘All right then,’ Emily agreed.

‘Happy?’ Marcus asked Fran as they walked hand in hand through the winter landscape of bare turned earth and leafless trees. They’d both agreed on how much they liked the small market town.

Marcus had been particularly interested in the history of J. B. Joyce & Co., a firm of tower
clockmakers said to be oldest in the world, whilst both Fran and Grace had agreed that knowing that the heart of Sir John Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, had been buried under the porch of St Alkmund’s church gave them goosebumps.

‘Very happy,’ Fran smiled in response to Marcus’s question. ‘Do you think it was just coincidence that our landlady decided to spend Christmas with her sister, or do you think she was being tactful in leaving us alone in the house?’

‘I don’t know, but whatever the cause I very much enjoyed its effect,’ Marcus teased her, referring to the long leisurely lovemaking session they had enjoyed before finally getting up. After a very late breakfast-cum-early lunch they were now on their way to Grace and Seb’s to spend the afternoon with the family.

Up above them the sky was a clear shade of winter blue, and in an adjacent field were sheep with coats so similar in colour to the frost-rimed grass that it was only possible to see them because of the black markings on their faces. The sight of a robin hopping from twig to twig in a nearby hedge made Fran pull on Marcus’s arm to draw his attention to it, leaning her head against his shoulder as they paused to watch the robin’s busyness, before continuing on their walk.

‘Being here, it’s almost possible to forget that there’s a war on,’ Fran told Marcus.

‘If you disregard the work that the Y Section are doing, and the fact that there’s an American hospital and an American base not all that far away,’ Marcus agreed, ‘although I do know what
you mean. This is the England that we’re fighting this war for, the England we all carry in our hearts when we’re away from it.’

Fran shivered. She didn’t want the reality of the war to intrude on their happiness – not today, not for a few precious hours, when Marcus was safe here with her, and everything was so peaceful.

‘I really didn’t want to come here once I knew you’d got leave, but I really enjoyed spending Christmas Day with the family.’

‘And is that all you enjoyed?’

‘Marcus,’ Francine objected, but she was laughing when he stopped walking and turned her towards him, taking her in his arms.

With Tommy and Beauty running on ahead of them, Emily and Wilhelm were walking companionably together along the country lane that led eventually to the path to the canal, all three of them wrapped up warmly against the chill of the fresh winter’s day, its thin sunshine doing more to make the frost sparkle and glitter than it did to give off any warmth. To the west of them the Welsh Marches and the hills lay against the horizon in blue-grey smudges topped with white, a pair of reconnaissance planes leaving white vapour trails across the sky.

She had never felt happier, Emily reflected. This morning in church, after joining in the public prayers for the fallen and for those who were still fighting, she had added a special prayer of thanks of her own for the happiness Tommy and Wilhelm had brought into her life. She gulped
in some of the fresh cold air, sniffing back her own silly tears.

A sudden bend in the lane hid Tommy and Beauty from them, and automatically Emily started to walk a little faster to catch up with them, but when they too turned the corner, instead of still racing on ahead of them Emily could see Tommy standing stock-still in the middle of the path, looking at a couple who were walking towards him. Since his hand was on Beauty’s collar, Emily supposed at first that he was simply holding on to his dog so that she wouldn’t run up to them, but then suddenly the woman pulled away from her companion and started to run towards Tommy, crying out, ‘Jack!’ and immediately Tommy turned and ran, not towards Emily, but across the field, fleeing as though for his life, his dog at his heels.

It was even worse than her worst nightmare, Emily recognised. The woman was standing white-faced, and in shock, staring, the man with her trying to comfort her, whilst Wilhelm had gone after Tommy, leaving Emily standing alone to confront what she had always dreaded.

‘That boy,’ the woman begged Emily. ‘Who is he? Only he looks so like…’

In the distance across the field Emily could see that Wilhelm had caught up with Tommy. She had had a chance to look properly at the woman now. She was very pretty and somehow familiar, her expression, a mix of shock, disbelief and hope, turning a knife in Emily’s heart.

The man was speaking, his voice calm and firm
as he explained, ‘My wife lost her…a close relative in tragic circumstances. He’d been evacuated to Wales and the farm where he was staying was bombed, and the boy—’

‘I should never have let Vi send him away again. I should have stopped her.’

Francine’s eyes were huge with shock, her heart still pounding from the moment when the boy had come running towards them, running exactly as Jack had run, and looking so like her dead child that her heart had immediately reached out to him, just as her arms had wanted to do. Then he had seen her and he had looked at her and in that second, when their gazes had locked, Francine had known that, incredible though it was, the boy was Jack.

‘It is him. I know it is. He recognised me, Marcus. He looked at me and…’

The woman looked close to collapsing, Emily recognised. She, on the other hand, felt as though she had been turned to stone, as though she was incapable of doing anything other than just standing there.

‘His name’s Tommy. Not Jack,’ Emily told the woman. She could see Wilhelm and Tommy making their way back towards the cottage, but keeping well away from the lane. ‘I’m sorry you’ve had such a shock. It can’t be easy – losing a child.’ Emily turned round, not wanting to prolong things; not wanting to give the woman the opportunity to tell her any more. She didn’t want to know any more. She didn’t want to know about her heartache, her heartbreak over the loss of her son,
she didn’t want to hear anything that might tell her that that son was her Tommy.

She didn’t want to hear, but she had to ask, for Tommy’s sake, Emily acknowledged later that night, sitting beside Tommy’s bed whilst he slept, Beauty for once allowed to sleep on the floor beside him.

He hadn’t said a word when they had all got back to the cottage, but his face had been white and his eyes filled with dread.

Emily had tried to behave as normally as possible, not asking him anything, just going about their normal routine, and gradually the stiffness and the fear that had him constantly looking towards the door had eased out of him.

They had talked about what happened, her and Wilhelm, after Tommy had gone to bed.

‘What shall I do if Tommy is hers, and she tries to take him from me?’ she had asked, but Wilhelm had not been able to answer her.

Now, though, looking down at Tommy’s sleeping face in the faint light from his nightlight, Emily understood that she already knew what she must do. Tommy’s happiness was far more important to her than anything else, far more important than her own. She tried to think how she might feel were she a child who had thought its true mother lost and who had gone through all that Tommy had gone through. Surely such a child would be overjoyed to be reunited with its mother, and not run away from her? If the woman tried to take Tommy away, she would not let him go
until and unless she was sure he wanted to be with her, Emily decided fiercely. If she was his mother and he wanted to be with her then she would have to let him go, but even if she was his mother and he didn’t – then she wouldn’t. But how would she know what he really wanted? Tommy was a loyal little soul who knew how much he meant to her.

She was going to have to talk to him properly Emily realised, no matter how painful that was for both of them.

‘Mum?’ The sound of Tommy’s voice brought Emily from her light sleep in the chair beside his bed. His hand was clutching hers, his voice anxious.

‘Yes, I’m here, love,’ she reassured him.

‘You won’t let anyone take me away from you, will you, and go and live with them?’

‘I won’t let anyone make you do anything you don’t want to do, Tommy. Not anyone,’ Emily stressed.

Tommy exhaled and went silent.

‘Why don’t you tell me all about what happened before you and me met, Tommy?’ Emily suggested gently.

‘You won’t send me back to them, my mum and dad?’

‘I won’t do anything ever that you don’t want me to do, Tommy,’ Emily told him truthfully. ‘But that lady we saw today – your mum was she—’

‘No. Not my mum, she’s my auntie. I liked her. She was kind to me, but she promised…They never wanted me, my mum and dad, they were always saying what a nuisance I was. When the
war started they sent me away to this farm. The farmer made us work hard and there was never enough food. I ran away, but they made me go back. They said I had to be evacuated and that I was making a fuss over nothing. They said that because the farmer had told them that I’d caused him a lot of trouble I’d be going to another farm. They said it would be best for me on account of the war, but really it was because they didn’t like me and because I was a nuisance. My mother said that she wasn’t surprised that the farmer got angry with me and my father said that I deserved a good hiding.’

Emily’s hand tightened around Tommy’s, maternal fury burning inside her chest at the thought of such inhuman cruelty to her precious boy.

‘So you ran away, did you, after you’d been evacuated again, and came back to Liverpool?’

Tommy nodded. ‘There was a bomb. It hit the farm. I was frightened that they’d send me to another farm if I stayed, so I left.’

Emily had always known that he must have a family somewhere but she’d assumed that he had either become separated from them or they had been killed, never dreaming that he had been treated with such unkindness that he had preferred to live rough rather than go home. The story Tommy had given her, though, was a child’s story told from a child’s perspective. His parents might in reality be desperately grieving for him. That woman today had looked at him with so much yearning in her eyes, and according
to Tommy she was only his aunt. She would be back, Emily knew, and when she came she would try to take Tommy from her.

‘Your mum and dad—’ she began.

But Tommy stopped her, insisting emotionally, ‘You’re my mum now, not her. I won’t go back to them, I won’t.’ His voice rose and filled with a panic that caused the dog to get up off the floor and move protectively towards him.

She felt so much happier now that things were back to normal between her and Sasha, Lou acknowledged as she sat down on the edge of her bed back at her base at Thame, to read her mail.

The sun coming in through the narrow leaded window of her room threw small oblongs of light across the oak floor, the now familiar smell of old house and dust making her nose itch. As her room was at the end of the corridor the comings and goings of the other girls who shared the accommodation were muted to her, the sounds of footsteps on the bare wooden stairs, the opening and closing of doors, the voices of her fellow ATA pilots only just audible on the still air.

Her room felt cold after her absence. They weren’t allowed to light fires in the huge fireplaces in their rooms because of the risk of the old wing of the house catching fire, but it was tempting to imagine just how cosy the room would have been with a fire burning in the grate. In your dreams, Lou mocked herself. Even if having a fire wasn’t banned, coal itself was
rationed. She looked back at the post she was holding, frowning slightly at the unfamiliar writing on one of the envelopes. Curiously, she opened the letter.

I need to see you a.s.a.p. I’ve got a pass for 20 Jan, and I think I can borrow a car from a pal so I’ll drive over and pick you up, hopefully just before lunch.

It was signed ‘Kieran’.

What did Kieran mean, he ‘needed’ to see her? Lou felt both irritated and anxious. Why hadn’t he explained why he ‘needed’ to see her?

‘Have you decided what you’re going to wear on New Year’s Eve yet?’ The sound of June’s voice had Lou stuffing Kieran’s letter into her pocket out of sight, guiltily reminded of the way she had deceived her friend.

‘I don’t think Jean really approves of what I’m doing,’ Francine told Marcus as they walked towards the pretty row of cottages where Emily – and Jack – lived.

It hadn’t taken long for Francine to find out Emily’s address. Whitchurch was only a small place, and when she’d telephoned this morning to say that she wanted to talk to her, Francine had got the impression that the other woman hadn’t been surprised.

Of course, she’d told the others what had happened the minute they’d arrived at Grace and Seb’s, and Grace herself had then admitted that she
had thought that she’d seen a boy in Whitchurch who looked uncannily like Jack.

‘I wouldn’t get your hopes up, Fran,’ Jean had cautioned her. ‘This boy probably just has a look of Jack, that’s all.’

‘No, it was Jack. I could tell from the way he looked at me before he ran away that he recognised me.’

‘She just doesn’t want you to be disappointed, or hurt,’ Marcus told her.

‘Hurt?’ Fran looked at him.

‘The boy ran away when he saw you, Fran,’ he reminded her gently. ‘You’ve said yourself that he had a rotten life with your sister and her husband. He’s old enough to have been able to say who his family are and where they are, but obviously he has chosen not to do so.’