‘The camp was liberated last year after the atomic bombs landed,’ Scott said. ‘The guards just took off one day. Some of the guys did too, but I was too sick and was airlifted to hospital.
‘I wasn’t with it for a long time and even when they fixed my body my brain was still addled, that’s why Mom never contacted you. She didn’t know if I’d ever recover. Some days I didn’t even recognise her.’
Scott was quiet, remembering those awful, scary days when he’d hovered in a sort of foggy half-life, and Lizzie disentangled herself and, taking Scott’s hand, led him to the armchair by the fire. Then, thinking to give him a few minutes to compose himself, she gave his hand a squeeze, saying, ‘Shall I make us a nice cup of tea?’
‘No,’ Scott cried, and he clasped Lizzie’s hand tight again. ‘This is more important then tea. When I was deemed to be on the mend and I was assigned to a psychiatrist, I confessed to him as I’ve never confided in anyone before, that what made me determined to survive during the hard times was the thought of here, this room, and Georgia and you.’
‘I’m glad,’ Lizzie said, not really understanding what Scott was saying. ‘Everyone needs something to hold on to, to give you hope for the future. Johnnie coming to see me in the convent and bringing the letters did that for me.’
It wasn’t really what Scott meant, but he knew the situation was different for Lizzie. He’d held her up as the vision to come home to, but any budding feelings she might have had for him would have been snuffed out at the news of his death, for Lizzie was nothing if not practical.
So he said no more of this in case it would disturb her further, but instead went on, ‘The psychiatrist said I should come and lay the ghost. I wanted to anyway. It wasn’t hard advice to follow.’
‘Ah yes, and it’s important for Georgia to know she has other relations,’ Lizzie said. ‘Even if she never gets to see them, it’s nice for her to know. Everyone likes to know their roots.’
It wasn’t just for Georgia I wanted to come back,
Scott wanted to cry, but he didn’t and went on, ‘My mom was knocked out with the photos you sent. Me too. God, I mean, in my head I knew Georgia would now be going on for five, but in my mind I carried the image of the child when I left. She was just a toddler. And your own children look fine, Lizzie. I’m glad you brought them back.’
‘Your letter made that possible.’
‘They should have believed you anyway.’
‘If they had,’ Lizzie said, ‘is there an alternative to the Magdalene Laundries? I’ve thought a lot about it since. Is there some place in Ireland girls can go when they find themselves in the position I was in, or are the laundries the only place?’ She looked at Scott and went on, ‘I told the priest all about it, you know, the priest in Ireland when I went for the children.’
‘I’m glad. Was he shocked, surprised?’
‘I’m not sure,’ Lizzie said. ‘Oh yes, he said he was, but you know, the priests, nuns and all, they close up, protect their own. The Catholic Church is a law unto itself and can get away with atrocities. Somehow, it seems to have little to do with the Jesus I pray to.’
‘You still pray?’ Scott said. ‘You still believe in God
after the war the world is reverberating from, not counting what happened to you?’
‘What could God do about the war, Scott?’ Lizzie asked. ‘Come down with a heavy hand like some avenging parent and give the Germans and Japs a good talking-to, or maybe throw in a few curses to bring them into line?’
‘No, maybe not, but…’
‘Some of those nuns had evilness like a canker in their hearts,’ Lizzie said. ‘The same as the Japs who treated you so badly and the Germans who herded the Jews into concentration camps and then on to gas chambers so that six million of them are not alive today. D’you know, I think when Jesus looks down on the mess of it all—that human beings, given free will, can act like this, and to one another—he just might weep himself.’
Scott lifted the hand he still held and kissed Lizzie’s fingers lightly. He was so moved by her words, his voice was husky as he said, ‘You are a very special lady, Lizzie Gillespie.’
Lizzie felt a stirring of her heart, which seemed to have lain dormant for so long, and she realised and acknowledged she cared deeply for this man sitting beside her, holding her hand and looking at her in such a way. God above, he was looking at her as if he loved her.
Their faces were very close and Scott bent towards her. What might have happened was interrupted by Violet coming in, saying as she came through the door, ‘How d’you fancy taking a dander up the shops, Lizzie?’
Scott had dropped Lizzie’s hand and yet the
atmosphere was still charged. Violet stared at Scott. ‘Where the bleeding hell have you sprung from?’ she said before she took in the situation properly.
Me and my big foot and bigger mouth,
she thought, and aloud she said, ‘Sorry, Lizzie, did I interrupt something?’
Aye,
Lizzie might have said,
a tender moment, a moment of awakening to feelings I didn’t know I had, a moment when I might have kissed this man for the first time.
But how could she say this; her feelings were too new, too raw. Maybe she confused pity and sympathy for love. God knows, she’d had little experience of love between a man and woman, for she’d never felt this way about Steve, about anyone, so she said, ‘No, it’s all right, Violet.’ She got to her feet. ‘I’ll make us all some tea and then we can sit down and let Scott, who’s risen from the dead, I should say, tell us of all he’s suffered since he left us.’
What Scott went on to tell the women left them stunned. His voice was the only sound in the room except for the ticking of the clock and the settling of the coal in the grate.
They listened to Scott telling them how their company had been surrounded in Java and forced to surrender. ‘We were herded into the holds of ships,’ Scott told them. ‘Packed in like sardines, till there wasn’t room to move or breathe; too low to sit up, we had to lie like that for days.
‘Those of us who survived that were then put into tin boxes, they laughingly called railway carriages and again travelled like that for days.’
‘Where were they taking you?’
‘Thailand,’ Scott said. ‘And we were set to work on
the railway that people say runs from there to Burma. The work was back-breaking and on a starvation diet. People dropped like flies; buddies you’d just shared a word with sank to the ground. If they couldn’t get up they were dragged away and shot. There were plenty to take their place.’
He closed his eyes for a minute and then said, ‘It never leaves me, that time. Beatings were commonplace and could be for anything or nothing. Sometimes you felt so sick, so sore you could scarcely move, yet to stay in bed or even to linger would sign your death warrant and you would be in the yard, trying to stand straight, glad to be one of those marched off to the railway for another day of torture, because it was better than ending your life impaled on a Japanese bayonet, or shot through the head because you were too sick to be of any use.’
‘It’s diabolical to treat people like that,’ Violet cried. ‘Almighty God, I hope those people are brought to book for this eventually.’
‘I doubt they will be,’ Scott said glumly. ‘I’ll not hold my breath over it. The one thing they were frightened of was cholera, and that swept through the camp, quickly wiping out many who were too ill-nourished to fight any sort of disease. Every morning there were people who died in their bunks, or those who keeled over standing in the parade ground, or beside you working. Each day I marvelled that I was still alive.’
He looked at Lizzie and added, ‘You said once you’d already visited Hell, and now I know what you mean.’
All the children were intrigued by Scott, who was supposed to have died in the war, and Tom’s standing rose
in the street because he had a real-life American visiting his house.
‘It’s cos he’s our Georgia’s daddy,’ Tom told them proudly one day. ‘She hasn’t got a mammy so our mammy has been looking after her when her daddy was fighting and that.’
‘Has he come to take her home then, back to America?’ one boy asked.
Tom was suddenly very still. He’d never thought of that. He faced the fact that that was probably why the man had come, to take Georgia away with him, and he was filled with misery and sadness at the thought of Georgia leaving them.
Lizzie wondered why she hadn’t anticipated this. She’d been so thrilled to see Scott alive she hadn’t thought of anything else, but the children had accepted the lie that she had told them. She should have known this would come up sooner or later.
‘Is he going to take our Georgia back to America or not then?’ Tom asked, after recounting what the boy had said to him.
Lizzie didn’t know what to say to the child, who was so obviously upset at the thought of losing Georgia, and he was still far too young to be told the truth. She parried, playing for time. ‘It’s not as cut and dried as that, Tom.’
‘Why ain’t it?’ Tom said, scrubbing the tears from his eyes with his sleeve impatiently. ‘I can’t see any other reason for him coming here.’
‘Georgia doesn’t know Scott yet. He wants to get to know her again.’
‘And then take her?’
Over my dead body, Lizzie thought, but didn’t say this as she put her arms around her son. Normally he’d have pushed his mother away, thinking he was too old for such things, but he was grateful now for the arms around him as Lizzie said, ‘Nothing is decided yet, really it isn’t.’
She knew Tom wasn’t satisfied, and when Niamh also attacked her that evening with similar questions, she knew they had been talking, understandably, discussing it. Celia had been home from work and she said when the children had gone to bed, ‘What are you going to do?’
‘I’ll talk to Scott tomorrow. Maybe he’ll think of something.’
However, Scott had no magical solution. ‘Let me talk to them,’ he suggested to Lizzie, ‘after Georgia is in bed this evening.’
‘Aye,’ Lizzie said, and added, ‘At least that is one who is very glad you are here.’
Scott smiled, for the little girl was totally enchanted to find she had a real live daddy after all this time. She remembered being told he had died, but they’d made a mistake, her daddy told her. He’d been in a camp, not dead at all, and she was very glad about that.
‘The most important person here is Georgia,’ Scott told the children. ‘This is her home and you are her family. Oh, I know she is all over me at the moment, but that is because I am new, someone different.’
‘But she’s your little girl,’ Niamh said.
‘Yeah, I know, and one I haven’t seen for four years,’
Scott said. ‘That’s what I meant by saying that Georgia and how she feels is the only important issue here, even more important than the fact I am her father. How could I take her away from all of you, especially your mother? You would be unhappy, but she would be distraught, I imagine.’
‘So you won’t be taking her away?’
‘For a holiday maybe, when she knows me better,’ Scott said. ‘That’s all.’
‘So she can stay with us for always?’ Niamh asked.
‘It’s where she is happiest,’ Scott said simply.
It was Lizzie’s greatest desire to feed Scott good, wholesome food to build him up. Within a couple of days the lines had begun to disappear from his face and he had become much more relaxed. He was still far too thin, but with rations how they were she was at a loss to know what to do about food. Not that Scott ate much at the house, taking most of his meals at the hotel.
Scott himself could remember well the shortages of wartime, and from what he’d seen, things were no better yet. He had a surprise coming any day that would, he knew, put a smile on Lizzie’s face. He’d flown over to England, but the surprise had had to come by sea and there had been a little delay, for the only ships so far returned to civilian duties that trawled across the Atlantic were those detailed to bring the girls who’d married American servicemen back home to the States. But he was expecting news of it soon.
In the meantime he seldom came empty-handed. Hearing of the children’s delight at their first sight of
a banana, he started to bring fruit—not just bananas, but apples, oranges, pears, and even grapes. He bought them their first pomegranate and taught them how to eat the purple seeds inside.
But although Scott enjoyed spending time with the children, what he liked most was time alone with Lizzie. As one day slid into another they became easier with one another and Celia would often slip around to Violet’s to give them time alone.
They could talk for hours and never run out of things to say, and Lizzie felt her feelings for Scott deepen, but she didn’t know how she could tell him this for she didn’t know how he felt. Sometimes he would reach for her hand as they sat together, or drape an arm around her, and she would snuggle against him and give a little sigh of contentment. Scott would hold her closer and feel himself relax and begin to hope that Lizzie was warming to him.
‘And how is your lovely mother-in-law?’ he asked her one day.
‘Dead, thank God,’ Lizzie said. ‘Oh, and you remember the night I told you Steve’s brother Neil and two of his mates tried to rape me and might have succeeded if it hadn’t been for Celia?’
‘I remember,’ Scott said grimly. ‘I said I would like to meet them some day and give them all a dust-up for what they did to you.’
Lizzie shook her head. ‘They’ve had their just deserts,’ she said. ‘Roy and Stuart never came back after D-day and Neil was damaged all down his left side and has lost his left arm and left leg.’
‘And did you feel sorry for him?’
‘No, I didn’t,’ Lizzie said. ‘I don’t know what sort of person that makes me.’
‘A normal one,’ Scott replied, and kissed her lightly on the cheek, and Lizzie put her arms around Scott’s neck and held him tight.
The next day Scott turned up at the door with a large tea chest, which he helped the taxi driver carry into the living room.
‘What is it?’ Lizzie asked, intrigued.
‘You’ll see,’ Scott said, the smile nearly splitting his face in half as he anticipated Lizzie’s delight.
He wasn’t disappointed, for when the lid was prised off Lizzie was rendered speechless, for the chest contained food she hadn’t seen for years, all in tins and packages, and so much of it. There was ham and pork and spiced sausages, even tins of sliced chicken and beef and lots of dried egg powder. There were cans of fruit, pineapple, oranges and peaches, and jars of jam of every flavour and others of honey and something else, which Scott said was peanut butter, and two large jars of coffee as well as many, many packets of tea. There were bars of chocolate, a tin of toffees, and a much larger tin housing a huge fruit cake, and tucked down the side a bag containing six pairs of nylon stockings.