Wilf, who had been like a jack in the box up and down the stairs from the bakery since Mary had gone into labour at nine that morning, had held his daughter and cuddled his wife and was now organising things in the restaurant so he could have a night off with Mary. Ellen had gone home to tell her husband he was a grandfather again and to spread the news amongst the family, and the midwife had left. Connie and Mary were alone with the tiny arrival, and Connie was sitting by Mary’s bed, having just made a cup of tea for them both, holding little Martha Ellen in her arms.
‘Thank you, lass.’
‘Thank you?’ Connie glanced up from her rapt contemplation of the miracle of new life. ‘What for?’
‘Everythin’. I don’t know what I’d have done all those years ago if I hadn’t met you.’ And then, as Connie shook her head and opened her mouth to object, Mary said, ‘No, let me say it, lass. I need to say it just the once. I was all locked up in meself over what had happened when I was a bairn, you know that as well as I do. Oh I put on a good front, acted the part – I can’t abide them as wear their hearts on their sleeves – but that’s all it was, a front. Good old Mary, always game for a laugh, nothin’ ever gets her down – that’s what they all used to say. But inside I was hurtin’, lass, an’ talkin’ to you, an’ you listenin’ over and over again, it sort of released somethin’. An’ I’ve you to thank for Wilf an’ all, I needed a push there, didn’t I?’
‘You’d have got there yourself in time.’
‘No, no I wouldn’t, lass,’ Mary said soberly. ‘An’ now we’ve this place an’ a good job goin’ on an’ I’m right with me mam an’ da again. Life’s good, lass, right good, an’ I want to say thank you.’
‘Oh, Mary.’ They held each other close, the baby sandwiched between them, and both their faces were wet when they drew away.
Dan had found there were many different kinds of fear. There was the gut-wrenching sort when you were given an order to go over the top into the midst of bursting shells that blew men either side of you into smithereens, so that the tortured ground the officer had been told to take was a mass of broken bodies and mutilated limbs and blood. Rivers and rivers of blood.
Then there was the flesh-crawling, sickly kind – the fear that came when you were walking through a town or village of ruined houses and factories and you never knew when the next sniper with a machine-gun was going to fire. You could feel the dread of those bullets peppering your back mounting up until it was almost a relief when someone got hit, even if it was a comrade in arms.
There were the trenches, thick with choking mud and flooded with water that – with every shell that exploded – could so easily become a tomb for those who still lived. He’d seen the look on the faces of some they had pulled out too late – the horror, the stark terror as they realised how they were going to die.
Then there was the dread of falling asleep; that was yet another kind of bogey-man. The things he saw in his nightmares . . .
They had first come in the prisoner-of-war camp in Germany, the dreams about his dead compatriots. Sergeant Forester, Micky Thompson, Geoff Cole, Jock – by, he didn’t like to think of how Jock had died – but they had all come, burnt, limbless, covered in blood and mud, and they had pointed accusing fingers at him and demanded to know why he was still alive. There had been times when he had wondered if he
would
live through the hell of that camp, mind. He’d been a bloodthirsty psychopath, their camp Commandant. He’d since heard from other released prisoners from different camps that the international agreements covering the care and treatment of prisoners of war had been mostly adhered to, but not in his camp, not by Commandant Moltke. Each day had become a macabre game of Russian roulette, and then, when they had gleaned that the war was drawing to a close, had come the harrowing craven fear that now, right at the last hurdle with the end in sight, he would be the next one to be tortured or executed for some trumped-up misdemeanour.
Aye, he knew all about fear. He’d lived with it and slept with it, ate and drank it for years. It had infested his bones and it crawled in his stomach until he barely recognised himself any more. He had seen men who behaved lower than the animals and others who – confronted by horrors unspeakable – rose nobly to whatever the occasion demanded. He had watched men give their lives for their friends, and others betray their own brothers and become Commandant Moltke’s spies to preserve their own lives.
Dan sat back in his seat in the train and wiped his hand across his sweating face, forcing his thoughts back to the present. A young man, no more than eighteen or nineteen, sitting opposite him in the carriage caught his eye and smiled sympathetically, and Dan inclined his head as he thought, Aye, you’ve been to hell and back an’ all. It was in the eyes.
But now he was facing a new fear, and he was finding this one was the worst of all. It had been four years since he’d been gone and for most of that time Connie hadn’t heard anything. It had been eighteen months before they had discovered that Moltke had destroyed every letter written for outside, although, with the lack of incoming mail, they’d suspected it long before then. Four years. She must have thought he’d died.
He found he was grinding his teeth together and stopped abruptly when the little old lady sitting next to the young man eyed him disapprovingly from under her felt hat.
And she was beautiful. Connie was so, so beautiful. The fear gripped his bowels and he had to steel himself not to twist in the seat. He wouldn’t blame her if she’d found someone else. And then, in the next instant, yes he damn well would. He’d want to tear the man limb from limb, he admitted harshly. He turned to the train window against which he was sitting and shut his eyes for a moment at the reflection that stared back at him through the murky twilight. Walking scarecrow he looked; fifty if a day and his hair almost completely grey now. He had weighed nearly twelve stone when he was captured, but was less than nine now, but he was lucky compared to some of the poor devils. Aye, he was, he was lucky all right. He had his arms and his legs and his sight. What would he have done if he’d been blinded?
The train was approaching Sunderland central station now and the fear became so thick as to be paralysing. He knew the authorities had contacted Art and Gladys – they were down as his official next of kin – but he had purposely spoken to no one. He had wanted to come home quietly, without anyone knowing the day or time of arrival. He needed to see her first, alone. Once he had done that . . . He breathed deeply, his heart racing. It could start then. Feelings, emotions, learning to live again – it could all start. Whatever he found.
‘Home for the New Year then, are you, lad?’
It was the little old lady who had spoken, and Dan nodded and smiled as he reflected, wryly, that only a wrinkled and ancient little body like this one would ever call him lad again. He had stopped being a lad after he had killed his first German.
‘Aye, well it’ll be a better year than the ones afore it, that’s for certain,’ the gnarled little woman with cheeks like rosy-red apples said busily. ‘Ten million dead in this war, an’ they call it the “Great War”. Nothin’ great about it if you ask me. Four grandsons an’ one son gone; by, they talk about a lost generation an’ they’re right an’ all. You got any bairns, lad?’
‘No. No, I haven’t.’
‘Aye, well there’s still time, eh? Now you’re home.’
Pray God there was. Aye, pray God. Dan nodded again but he didn’t speak as the train shuddered to a halt.
It was New Year’s Eve – that was portentous, wasn’t it? He hadn’t planned to arrive home on this particular day but it was the way it had worked out. Surely that meant something?
Stop clutching at straws. The words in his head were caustic, but then the young man opened the carriage door and passengers began to alight. He was home. He was here. His head swam for a moment and he breathed deeply, aiming to get a grip on the dizziness that still assailed him at odd moments. But it was getting better; he’d put on nearly half a stone in the last weeks in the hospital. By, that hospital. Half of them with their minds gone and the other half with their bodies shattered and maimed. What was Britain going to be left with after this lot? Lost generation didn’t even begin to cover it.
Dan reached for his kitbag and stood to his feet. This was it. In a few more minutes he’d know. His face was as grey as his shock of hair as he stepped on to the platform and began walking.
He couldn’t get over the fact that nothing seemed to have changed at first and yet . . . yes, things were different. It was a woman in the ticket office at the south end for a start.
After leaving the station he walked briskly along Union Street and Waterloo Place before turning into Holmeside, and there he stood for a moment gazing down the busy street. Most of the shop awnings were up – the day had been a stormy one – and a tram was laboriously making its way towards him, passing a horse and cart as it came. There were one or two gentlemen on bicycles, a whole bevy of busy shoppers and the inevitable bairn wailing its head off as it was hauled along the pavement by an irate mother. A woman with a perambulator passed him, one of the huge wheels rolling over his toes, and at her harassed apology Dan smiled and said it didn’t matter but he didn’t move. He was feeling strange, very strange. All these people and they knew exactly where they were going and what they were about. And it was normal. It was so, so normal. But he didn’t feel normal inside; in fact he didn’t think he would ever feel rational and well adjusted again.
But he was rushing things once more; he wasn’t giving himself time. It was the one thing the nuns in the hospital had tried to drum into him – he had to give himself time.
He began to walk along the street but his step wasn’t as brisk now and he was sweating again. He noticed the glances of one or two passers-by and he thought, I must look terrible. Well, he knew he looked terrible, didn’t he, but that was something else the nuns had said time would rectify. And he had to count his blessings; Sister Bernadette had drummed that into all of them. But his future, his life, hinged on one blessing and one alone – if Connie had waited for him, if she still wore his ring and intended to be his wife – he stopped suddenly, leaning against a shop window as he took great draughts of the bitter northern air-then all the rest would fall into place.
When he came to the shop he stood looking at the sign above the new smart entrance and his eyes questioned what they were seeing for a moment. ‘Bell’s Restaurant, first floor; Tea-rooms and Bakery, ground floor’.
He felt a sharp surge of pleasure that was separate to what the next few minutes might hold. She had done well for herself, more than well by the look of it. She had extended the property; it looked a right bonny place now and a restaurant no less. He found he was smiling and it came as a surprise – he hadn’t felt like smiling in a long, long time.
He stood a moment more, gathering his frayed nerves, or what was left of them after the last four years had taken their toll, and then he opened the door of the shop.
It had been a hectic day. Connie glanced over the crowded tea-rooms and flexed her shoulder blades wearily. The whole world and his wife had wanted to eat out today, or so it had seemed, and the restaurant was booked to capacity tonight. Not that she should complain, she chided herself in the next instant, and she wasn’t, not really. It was just that she was feeling a touch blue, she told herself silently. It was New Year’s Eve – the old year with all its heartaches and unfulfilled dreams was nearly gone and a bright untouched year stretched before old and young alike. It was a time of new beginnings, new promises, hope, faith and love . . . She
ached
to see Dan. She couldn’t think of anything else now the furore surrounding little Martha Ellen had settled.
Why hadn’t he written? A letter, a postcard even? Her heart began to thud as it had done every morning since the day after Boxing Day when she had searched the post frantically for that special writing. He was ill, was that it? Or badly injured? Disfigured even? She wouldn’t care; surely he knew she wouldn’t care? Or perhaps his feelings had changed. It was a thought that had come to haunt her over the last day or two when there had been no news, and now she brushed it aside angrily. No, she trusted him. She hadn’t trusted him once before and it had driven them apart; she wouldn’t make the same mistake again. But
why
hadn’t he written?
And then she turned and saw him.
She stared at this person who was Dan and yet not Dan, and then she shut her eyes and opened them again and he was still there. He was real.
The length of the shop was between them but she seemed to reach him in one ecstatic moment as she breathed his name into the air, and as his arms opened and he enfolded her into him she knew what heaven was like.
‘Dan, oh, Dan. Dan . . .’ She wasn’t aware she was whispering his name as he covered her face in little frantic kisses, she wasn’t aware of anything but him, his smell, the feel of him, his arms holding her close. He was here, he was alive. He was alive and whole. He had come back to her.
He had come back.