Homecoming (27 page)

‘Yes, and there's no need to worry. I haven't put anything into the room, like a spare girl or two, so he has plenty of space to work in.' He looked from Jack to Martin and Lily, as he set their coffee on the table. ‘If you don't mind, I'll take this upstairs. There's a radio play on the Home Service that I want to listen to, and as tomorrow's the big day I should get an early night.'

‘There's no need to go on my account.' Jack sat opposite Lily at the table.

‘I'm not.'

‘You know what's happened?'

‘Yes, Jack.' Brian opened the door. ‘And some things are best discussed within the family.'

‘You're almost that.'

‘Thank you for the compliment, but I sense a conversation coming that this distant cousin would rather opt out of. Good night, everyone.'

Judy allowed herself a smug smile of satisfaction, as she studied her living room. Trusting that Sam had believed her lie about a non-existent product demonstration, she had spent the day giving the flat a thorough clean. It looked a little sparse with only her books on the bookshelves and her records on the rack next to the record player, but at least everything in the room was hers and after years of sharing her living space she felt independent and marvellously free – until she glanced at Sam's photograph in its silver frame on the mantelpiece.

Only another few months and she'd be back to organising her life around another person again. Eating meals when Sam wanted to eat, listening to his favourite radio programmes and music, even if she hated them, going to bed when he wanted to … suppressing the thought of her and Sam in bed together, she straightened the mirror over the mantelpiece. It was as her mother had said. She needed time to adjust, that was all.

She went to the bookcase, intending to push one of her photograph albums back in line; changing her mind, she lifted it from the bookcase, sat at the table and opened it. The first photograph had been taken with a box camera her mother had given her for her sixteenth birthday. Judy, Lily and Katie were sitting on Swansea beach, towels modestly wrapped around their swimsuits, their hair on end, sticky with seawater. She flicked through various shots she had snapped on the beaches and an Easter funfair. There was even one of the four of them together, although she had no memory of handing her precious camera over to anyone. A picnic on the hill of Cefn Bryn, various day trips to Cardiff, Porthcawl and Barry Island – then she realised the album was a visual record of the last summer the four of them had spent together before boys had entered their lives.

She turned to the last page and froze when she saw a print of her and Brian that had been taken by a professional photographer at a police ball in London. They looked happy and relaxed, Brian smiling and darkly handsome in a grey lounge suit and white shirt. As memories flooded back, she could even recall the exact shade of blue in his tie, the smell of his aftershave, the rustle of the taffeta skirt of her dress as she had danced with him.

The bell rang shrilly, shattering her recollections. Startled, she dropped the book, picking it up hastily as the bell rang a second time. Returning it to its place on the shelf, she ran down the stairs and opened the door.

‘You're back,' Sam said.

She looked at him in bewilderment.

‘The product demonstration,' he reminded.

‘I got the date wrong, it's next Sunday.'

‘And you didn't drive down to tell me.'

‘I thought you were on afternoons.' She retreated up the stairs, as he pushed past her into the tiny hallway to shelter from the rain.

‘I was, but one of the boys came round early this morning to ask if I'd swap my afternoon with his day shift. It's only for today because his brother was called in as a reserve to play football for one of the junior teams. I wondered if you fancied going for a meal. I know there's not much open. But we could go to the Italian café. I smelled fish and chips as I drove past.'

‘Fish and chips sounds wonderful,' she answered, feeling suddenly and unaccountably guilty. ‘Just let me get my coat.'

‘Judy,' he called after her, as she ran up the stairs. ‘There's nothing wrong is there?'

‘Of course not,' she shouted back. ‘Why should there be?'

‘I take it Lily has told you why Helen threw me out,' Jack said, as he, Lily and Martin sat around the kitchen table.

‘No,' Martin answered briefly.

‘I thought it would be better coming from you.' Lily picked up the spoon in the sugar bowl and started playing with it.

Jack looked his brother squarely in the eye. ‘I had a letter yesterday from a woman I met in Cyprus. She's having my baby.'

Martin's eyes rounded in shock.

‘I showed the letter to Helen. I respect her too much –'

‘Respect!' Martin's exclamation was full of contempt. ‘You –'

‘Let Jack tell us about it, Martin,' Lily interposed quietly. ‘After spending most of the day with Helen, I'd be interested to hear what he has to say.'

Jack sat in silence for a moment.

‘You must have something to say in your defence,' she prompted.

‘Nothing,' Jack replied slowly. ‘All I can do is try to explain how it happened, that's if you're prepared to hear it.'

‘We're listening,' Martin snapped.

‘You know what Cyprus is like, Martin. You've been there –'

‘Please, don't tell me you were seduced by the beautiful countryside, the beaches, the weather, the wine, the girls,' Martin mocked.

Jack refused to rise to Martin's bait. ‘The Cyprus I served in may have had all that to offer, but National Servicemen in my draft weren't free to find out about it. Whenever we left the barracks, we could never be sure we'd be coming back. Or, for that matter, after a bomb was left in a biscuit tin in the NAAFI, whether we'd survive another day in camp.'

‘So this baby is the result of you living on a knife edge,' Martin said coldly. ‘For God's sake, Jack …'

‘Please, Marty, I'm not making excuses. Just trying to explain, and very badly. So, please …' Unnerved by Lily's hostile glare, Jack struggled to collect his thoughts. ‘I don't want to use getting shot as an excuse –'

‘Then don't,' Martin interrupted, his anger escalating.

‘It's part of what happened.' Jack looked in on a world he'd failed to put behind him. ‘You know I was a driver. The sergeant I chauffeured most of the time was a decent man. I don't know what it was like when you were in the army, but it was rare to find a non-commissioned officer who was liked by everyone, superiors as well as other ranks, but he was one of them. He really cared about the men in his platoon, even National Servicemen. Anyway, we went out on patrol in the Troodos Mountains. It was routine but everyone in the column was edgy. Two Greek Cypriots had been sentenced to death for killing an RAF corporal the day before and we'd been warned to expect trouble. They told us to be vigilant, but they didn't tell us how, and it's not easy to make out what's ahead when you're driving along narrow mountain roads. We couldn't see through rock and for all we knew, every bend, every twist, every turn, every ditch could have hidden a couple of dozen terrorists.' Jack pushed his chair back from the table. Sinking his head in his hands, he looked down at the floor.

‘When the first shots were fired, it was almost a relief. The lieutenant at the front of the column gave the order to halt and take cover. The driver of the jeep directly ahead of us was shot as he tried to roll under his vehicle. I was hit in the leg when I climbed out of ours. It was weird, until then, the thought of being wounded had terrified me, but all I felt was a peculiar burning. I didn't even realise my leg was shattered until I tried to put weight on it; then I just crumpled. Bullets were flying everywhere. The sergeant risked his life to pull me under the jeep. Then he went out again to haul in the boy who was supposed to be our guard from the back of the vehicle. The kid was so petrified by what was going on he froze.' Jack pulled his cigarettes from his shirt pocket, took one from the packet, lit it and pushed the packet across the table towards Martin.

‘By that time everyone in the column had taken shelter under their vehicles. We tried to return the terrorists' fire. We'd see them coming from one direction but as soon as we fired, they attacked from another angle. I'll never forget the screams of the wounded as long as I live. They were high-pitched, unreal. At first it was almost like watching a film, I couldn't believe it was happening, then the longer it went on, the worse it got.' Jack reached for an ashtray. ‘Afterwards, they told me we'd been pinned down for twenty minutes. Between the shots, the screaming and the sheer bloody terror of thinking that I'd reached my end and I was going to die there on that mountain road and never see Helen or Swansea again, I would have been prepared to believe it had been months.

‘I don't know if the terrorists ran out of ammunition, but eventually they stopped shooting. But just as we thought we'd beaten them off, they started lobbing grenades. One rolled under our vehicle. The sergeant, the boy and me saw it coming. The boy started screaming. The sergeant and I dived towards it, only I couldn't move. My leg wouldn't move …' Jack forced himself to go on. ‘The sergeant reached it first and threw himself on top of it.'

Lily blanched and closed her eyes.

‘He was killed.' Jack drew heavily on his cigarette. ‘But not outright. The bloody thing tore a great gaping hole in his stomach, half his insides spilled out but he was still conscious. He knew he didn't stand a chance and I couldn't do a thing to help him. He'd saved my life, and I didn't have anything to give him other than water and that's not much use when a man is screaming in agony. I held his head, tried to get him to drink, listened as he whispered the names of his wife and children, then a second grenade hit us. It blasted the jeep sideways and took the head off the boy we were with. They told me afterwards the force of the blast knocked me unconscious. It was just as well because some of the shrapnel embedded itself in my chest and stomach.' He pulled on his cigarette again. ‘I came round in hospital days later. My wounds had become infected and they warned me that I wouldn't be discharged for a couple of months. My first visitor was an officer who was collecting as many accounts of the attack as he could because they were putting the sergeant up for a medal. I told him what I remembered and he suggested that I talk to the sergeant's widow. I didn't want to.' He raised his eyes to Martin's. ‘Would you be able to face the wife of a man who had saved your life at the expense of his own?'

Unable to speak, Martin shook his head.

‘I felt I'd never be able to look her or her children in the eye. When I was finally discharged from hospital ten weeks after the attack, the doctor said the sergeant's wife wanted to see me. Apparently she'd visited the hospital once or twice to talk to survivors but hadn't been able to bring herself to walk any further than the entrance to the wards. He told me she was leaving for England with her four children the following day. Even that conspired against me; she would have left the island weeks before if her children hadn't been ill with measles. The doctor gave me her address and I buttoned it into my tunic pocket although I had no intention of visiting her – not then. Later, after I'd had a few drinks in the mess, I remembered the sergeant's last words and the officer who'd come to see me telling me that she had a right to hear them.'

‘So, you went to see her,' Lily murmured.

‘Not until I'd had a few drinks to give me courage. And that was a big mistake. I was weak, I'd just spent months in hospital; the doctors had warned me that a pint of beer could put me flat on my back. I had two and I took a bottle of wine. She had another one. I'm not blaming her, simply saying that neither of us knew what we were doing.' He looked down at the table. ‘And it is no bloody consolation that all I can remember about it now is her calling out her husband's name and me whispering Helen's.'

Silence closed in on the kitchen again.

‘When I had the letter from her telling me that she was pregnant with my child, I couldn't keep it from Helen. I'd cheated on her enough without lying to her as well. I went to see the sergeant's wife this afternoon. She is in a home for unmarried mothers. Her parents are looking after her children. She doesn't want to give this one up but her husband died a hero's death. Everyone will remember the date and there's no way his child can be born more than eleven months after he was killed so she has no choice. But I do.' He lifted his head again. ‘I don't expect Helen to forgive me because what I did was unforgivable, but I can't turn my back on the baby. It's mine and because of what I did, it is going to lose the most important person in any child's life, its mother. I can't allow it to lose a father as well. I'm going back up to the home next Sunday to tell her that I want to keep it.'

‘Jack, be reasonable. How can you bring up a baby –'

‘I don't know, Marty. I only know that I can't abandon it to strangers. It's my baby. The result of my mistake and I don't want it to suffer for what I've done.'

‘Have you told Helen?' Lily asked, choking back tears.

‘About the terrorist attack and what happened when I called on the sergeant's wife the day I came out of hospital – yes, but not that I want to keep the baby.'

‘And you told her just the way you told it to us now?'

‘More or less.'

Lily went to the door. ‘You can stay here as long as you like, Jack.'

‘Thank you, but I don't want to make things awkward for you two with Helen.'

‘You won't, because I won't let you. Goodnight, I'll see you in the morning.'

‘I won't be long, love,' Martin murmured softly, as she closed the door behind her.