A Girl in Wartime (28 page)

He never referred to George as
our
George. It was always
your
George, directed at Mum, who herself used the word
our
all the time. Anger seethed through Connie. ‘He tried, Dad,' she said, ‘but they wouldn't have him.'

‘So 'e thought fit to not ever try again.' It was so loaded, she wanted to leap up, confront him, but she refrained, nursing her unhappiness. But he had more to say. ‘Well, don't suppose 'e'll 'ave much longer to worry about it anyway,' he sighed. ‘Says 'ere, our boys out there've pushed them Huns back three miles at Arras and took eleven thousand prisoners. Got their own back after the buggers torpedoed that 'ospital ship of ours, all them poor wounded blighters drowned. Thinking about it must've given our boys even more cause to want to show the Hun what we're made of.

‘Not only that,' he rambled on, still apparently talking to his newspaper. ‘Now the Yanks've 'ad three of their ships sunk by German subs, they'll come inter the war and it'll be all over come end of this summer, you mark my words. Then we can all go back to sleepin' easy in our beds again – your bloke too, I don't doubt, feelin' himself bin let orf lightly.'

In all this Connie had sat quietly seething. Now she shut her book with a loud bang. ‘I think I'll go out, Mum.'

‘Where to, love?'

‘Over to Doris's.'

‘She's probably out wiv 'er mates,' Dad muttered into his paper. ‘Chasin' boys, free as a kite, enjoying 'erself. No bloke messing 'er about.'

But Connie hardly heard as she left the room, seeking her warm coat, hat and scarf against a chilly evening breeze.

It was Sunday afternoon. Surely all her doubts were only in her mind, Connie thought as she and Stephen strolled beside Rotten Row, along which a few brave riders trotted their horses despite the cold, overcast afternoon, the Serpentine to their right bereft of Sunday boaters.

Yet even though they were together Stephen remained distant. Her arm threaded though his, Connie remembered last summer when, without need of a coat she'd thrilled to the touch of his free hand covering her bare arm. Today her winter coat made his touch feel distant, as he himself seemed – or was it just her overwrought imagination? If she continued feeling like this she could lose him for ever. She needed to tackle him about the worries she'd had all through last week about his odd behaviour. After all they were together now but he still seemed distant, his mind elsewhere.

‘Darling, is everything all right?'

‘What d'you mean?'

‘I mean between us.'

He didn't look at her, his attention apparently taken by a couple of riders cantering by, their horses' hoofbeats dull on the soft ground.

‘Why do you ask?'

She took a deep breath. ‘Well, I've not seen you so much lately, you away nearly every day last week and then having to go to Reading all day yesterday. You never told me why.'

He was silent for a moment, then he said in a low voice, ‘I had to go to a funeral.'

She hadn't expected that. Nor did he seem prepared to expand on the statement. She heard herself asking a little too sharply, ‘Why didn't you tell me?' After what they had been to each other for so long, he could at least confide in her.

He was silent for so long that she was starting to feel shut out again, just as she'd been all last week. Then finally he said in a quiet voice, ‘It was too close to my heart for me to say anything. I'm sorry.'

‘I don't understand,' she burst out, fearing all sorts of climax to this.

‘It was the funeral of my late wife's brother.'

Having said that much he appeared disinclined to say much else, leaving her to feel utterly excluded, yet not daring to breach it.

‘He and I were very close at one time.' His voice resuming made her jump. ‘But since … Well, we drifted apart somewhat. He was younger than my wife. But he went last week with the same thing as she had, cancer.' He seemed to be talking more to himself than her, as if attempting to comfort himself. ‘Her mother died of it too. Who knows, it might have been hereditary, come out in any children we had and I'd have been doubly grieved.'

Hearing him, Connie felt as if she didn't belong here, as if she'd been intruding. She said nothing. But then he turned his head to her. ‘So you see, I couldn't have told anyone without coming close to tears and making a fool of myself. I couldn't have stood other people commiserating. So I said nothing to anyone, not even you, my love. I couldn't.'

Suddenly her world soared, yet such sadness struck her heart that she herself wanted to cry. ‘I didn't know,' was all she said, and felt his arm tighten against her hand.

She loved him so much and felt a deep respect for him too. She realised quite suddenly, perhaps for the first time, how like her mum he was – on the surface a seemingly quiet, retiring person, keeping his thoughts and feelings to himself, others getting the wrong impression of him. But maybe, like her mother, quietly having his way.

Mum, keeping her own thoughts to herself, nevertheless ruled Dad for all his blustering. And so Connie realised that she would never be able to get anything over on Stephen, just as her father couldn't her mother, and she loved him for that quiet strength, just as she honoured her mum for hers.

Stephen suddenly lengthened his stride and she looked up at him to see he was holding his head high. ‘It's damned freezing out here. I suggest we go somewhere warm for a hot cup of tea,' he said briskly.

She expected him to say, ‘Then I'll take you home.' Instead he said quietly, ‘Then, if you like, we'll go back to my apartment – if you want to.'

If she wanted to! Oh, yes she did so want to.

It was wonderful lying in his bed again – their bed. But something else too, something she had never experienced in any of the times he'd made love to her. This afternoon, the miserable world closed out, she found for the first time how bringing love to its climax actually felt, and it was like no other feeling she'd ever imagined or would ever forget.

Knowing enough to realise he was looking after her, he would leave her at the moment of his climax. So it was that he moved away from her as always, this time much sooner, leaving her bewildered, but moments later he was holding her to him again, reawakening her senses. And this time his embrace was more urgent than she had ever remembered. As always the joy of him being part of her was wonderful, but this second time it felt somehow so different. Something was happening, something strange, almost unbearable yet utterly wonderful, her body being engulfed by it. She could hear herself gasping, crying out as it swept through her whole body, from the very top of her head to the end of her every nerve and fibre. Finally they lay together, very still, out of breath.

‘Are you all right?' He whispered the question.

She nodded, then said, ‘Yes.' Nothing more, but something had changed. Suddenly she felt herself a woman at last, knew this was what really formed babies. But he had guarded her against that, hence his moving away from her for a moment or two. Now she knew what making love was really like and it was marvellous.

He brought her home early. Mum was surprised to see them, smiling, but Connie could feel her watching her. Dad of course noticed nothing, instantly engrossing himself in his Sunday paper, purposely it seemed, after a brief nod to Stephen. But she didn't care any more. She and Stephen had been one, and would be again and again. And now she knew his nature was akin to her mother's, she felt she had never felt as comfortable with him as she did now.

Saying goodnight, he gave her a brief kiss by the open door before leaving. Her father was in the kitchen, she guessed, with his eyes on the two of them. She couldn't wait for Monday to come, when she would sit at her desk, knowing that when she looked towards Stephen's office, he, seeing her, would lift his chin, would smile, maybe lift a hand in a brief wave.

After work he'd see her home, but first they'd go to his lovely flat, make love the way they had today, and her world would feel complete yet again. And soon they would begin to set a definite date for their wedding day.

Just before she set off for work a letter arrived from Albert. It always brought mixed feelings: was he okay, was he ill, was he hurt? But he merely hoped everyone was all right; that he was; that he trusted they got his last letter; that he had got theirs and enjoyed reading it. His life out there was hardly mentioned, apart from wishing he was home, and that he was concerned as to how Ronnie was – was he getting better at all?

‘'E does seem a bit better,' Mum said as she put the letter on the mantelpiece for Dad to read when he came home, ‘though I just don't know. Dolly can read it when she comes out of their room. She'll tell me what to say.'

It was Dolly now, Dorothy such a mouthful. She was a tower of strength to Ron. Not that he was much improved: he was still a bag of nerves, twitching, still tending to gaze into nowhere, saying little, then having to fight a stutter, but the way she stuck by him was a credit to her.

He was calm only when holding little Violet. Dolly couldn't have given him a finer present in helping him towards recovery, though it never lasted long. He seldom came out of their bedroom in what had once been the front room.

Leaving for work, Connie called out to them, ‘I'm off now. Bye, Dolly,' getting a ready answer, then, ‘Bye, Ron,' waiting for a while till she heard, ‘B-b-bye, C-Con.' Ron's voice was laboured, early mornings doing nothing for his recovery. She only hoped, prayed, Albert would never be sent home like that.

May 1917

It didn't seem right being out here without Ronnie. Albert missed his brother terribly. He had mates, of course, but it wasn't the same. Mates came and went, sometimes split up by these meandering trenches, some killed, some injured and borne away to a field hospital, he never laying eyes on them again.

For all the time Ron had been with him, they'd never been split up. That was normal procedure for kin, for friends, even street neighbours. It helped morale, it was thought. Then Ron had got his blighty one, was back home on crutches, while he himself was still out here.

Stealing frequent cautious peeps over the parapet for any movement from the enemy lines as he'd been ordered, in the process inviting a bullet if he wasn't careful, was at least better than doing nothing. Doing nothing made him feel so utterly lonely – a feeling he just couldn't get over. Still, dinner soon, dolled out in the usual haphazard way but helping to take his mind off loneliness despite the constant jostle of those moving around in the confines of a trench.

It was May and had been raining all night; was still raining now with no sign of stopping; had rained yesterday and the day before. Any further back than that he couldn't remember, each day melting violently into another. Water was above the wooden duckboards. Lots of soldiers had that rotting, stinking trench foot from constant immersion in water. It came right through the boots, the trousers always wet at least just past the calf, and one had to sit on firing steps or mounds of earth where shells had blasted away part of a trench, anywhere above the waterline. His feet didn't feel so good either.

Still, it was coming up to midday, and he could look forward to the usual meal, probably bully beef in gravy and a hunk of bread. It was filling and sufficient but after months of it, it was boring to the point of making a man feel weary just to look at it.

If Ron had been here, the pair of them would have made light of it, made a joke out of it …

‘If you don't like it, give it to the cat!'

‘What cat?'

‘Lieutenant Smithers' cat. You've seen it – tucked down his trouser front. At least we hope it's a cat.'

Lieutenant Smithers, a bombastic little man, tended to scratch at his crotch from time to time whenever he spoke to anyone – a habit he probably wasn't aware of – and there'd been some who had sworn they'd heard it meow, unless it was him trying carefully to break wind.

But there was no Ron now to joke with about anything. As he waited for them to come along the lines filling mess tins and pouring draughts of water, he reached into his tunic breast pocket and drew out the letter Mum had sent him recently.

It said she'd heard from George again. He was on the Somme, further south in France, and his job often entailed going out into no-man's-land as a stretcher-bearer, collecting the wounded and taking them to a field hospital. It seemed that George, previously accused of being a coward, of being lily-livered, was now risking his life, expecting a bullet at any time, although there did exist an unwritten law between both sides that one did not fire on stretcher-bearers.

Even so … George a stretcher-bearer at the front, in direct line of fire? Who'd have credited it? He felt a new respect for his older brother. The man had come up trumps after all.

Albert's thoughts changed course – when this war was over he and Edie would rent a nice little house, settle down and start a family. They'd got married on his last leave – January – a brief affair with no wedding breakfast, no guests other than Mum and Dad, his sisters, Ron and Dorothy, Connie; they sat down to just an ordinary meal – no wedding cake though Mum, bless her, had managed to concoct something a bit special in its stead.

There was just time to scribble a note to Edie before the orderlies arrived with the usual bully beef stew, to tell her yet again that he loved her so very much and could hardly wait to be with her, for always. He'd hand it to one of the orderlies, who'd post it for him, along with dozens of letters from other men.

Holding out his tin he received his portion, hoping he'd have time to eat it. He became aware that the shelling had stopped, so used to it he was that he hardly noticed. But the sudden silence meant that in a few minutes whistles would blow, sending them over the top into that hell that never seemed to end.