under the apple tree in the orchard, looking intently into her
eyes as he talked. With him, she had felt her pain begin to
ease and the scars in her mind begin to heal.
He had gone back to school in Winchester now, but he
had written to her and she had written back. It was strange
to strike up so close a friendship with a boy still at school,
yet he didn’t seem so young, and in any case there were boys
not much older serving at this moment in the Armed
Forces. If Ben got his way - and she felt sure he would - he
would soon be one of them.
Her mind drifted to another young man whose eyes had
looked into hers as he talked, who had held her for a while
with his magnetism. Chris Barrett, the Observer who spent
his time on the roof of the Royal Beach searching for enemy
aircraft, and who had sat with her on the floor of the lift, his arms around her in comfort; who had kissed her to the
sound of cheers as the lift arrived at the eighth floor. She
thought of the way she had treated him after that - hiding in
a cupboard when she saw him coming, pushing past him in
the corridors, snapping his head off when she’d met him on
the steps. I wasn’t very nice to him, she thought. And I really think all he wanted to do was say sorry. Polly said in
her letter that he’s asked after me two or three times and
wanted her to send his good wishes to me. I really ought to
send mine back, just to show no hard feelings. It wasn’t his
fault the lift arrived when it did. He was a nice chap. And it
was a lovely kiss …
She lay in bed, thinking of Chris and thinking of Ben
until, smiling a little, she fell asleep.
There was no time to read a newspaper next morning. It
was always busy then, because of the milking, but today one
of the cows was having difficulty calving and Judy was sent
down to a neighbouring farm to get help. She came back to
find that Sylvie had been sick and was back in bed, looking
pale and miserable, so she ate a hasty breakfast and went up
to look after her. The newspaper, brought from the station
by a neighbouring farmer, was tossed into a corner where
Mrs Sutton dropped a bundle of washing on top of it, and if
the wireless was on at all Judy didn’t hear it. She didn’t even wonder what the news might have been. It was always the
same anyway, she thought, sponging Sylvie’s face gently.
Bombing, and more bombing. Deaths, and more deaths.
There were believed to have been just three survivors from
the Hood.
‘Three mothers will be happy, at least,’ Alice said as Polly
switched off the wireless after listening to the one o’clock
news. ‘But I don’t think our Cis’ll be one of them. I mean, I
know one of those boys could have been our Terry - but you
know what they say. Things go in threes. First your Johnny,
then Sean and now Terry. It seems like fate, somehow.’
Polly nodded. She didn’t really believe in superstition and refused to throw spilled salt over her shoulder, or avoid the cracks in pavements, but now she had the same feeling
as her mother, that it wasn’t likely that Terry was one of the
three who had survived that terrible blast. For one thing, he
worked in the engine rooms so he would almost certainly have been below decks when it happened. Terry wouldn’t
have had a chance.
‘At least it must have been quick,’ she said, trying to find
a crumb of comfort. ‘He wouldn’t have known anything
about it. He wouldn’t have been floating about in the sea for
hours.’ Like Johnny, she thought. Like Johnny and,
probably, Sean.
Alice nodded, but the comfort wasn’t enough to stop her
face crumpling again and the tears welling up in her eyes.
‘Our Terry,’ she said, choking on his name. ‘It don’t seem
possible, Poll. He was always so full of life, so bright and
breezy all the time. I can’t believe all that’s gone. I can’t
believe we’ll never see him again.’
‘Oh Mum.’ Polly moved to put her arm round her
mother’s shoulders. She was as thin as a bird, she thought,
feeling the tiny bones beneath her hands. She’s getting
smaller, I’m sure. ‘There’s still a chance,’ she murmured.
‘He could have been one of those saved.’
‘No,’ Alice wept, shaking her head so that the grey hair,
not yet properly brushed and pinned up that morning,
straggled across her brow. ‘No, he’s not. We’d have heard, you know that. If they know there’s three saved, they must know their names and they’d have sent someone round.
He’s gone, Polly, and we’ve got to face up to it. But it’s so
hard.’ She broke down in a storm of sobs. ‘Oh Poll, it’s so hard, losing all our men like this. It’s so cruel.’
Polly could not speak. The tears were pouring down her
cheeks and she was holding her mother now as much to gain
comfort as to give it. For some time they clung to each
other, weeping as if their hearts were broken, and then at
last Alice gave a sniff and felt for a hanky. She blew her nose hard, drew a deep, shuddering breath and looked at her
daughter with wet but determined eyes.
‘Well, we can’t sit here piping our eyes all day, Poll.
We’ve still got to do our jobs, same as usual. Cis and Dick’ll
be home any minute for their dinner, and we haven’t even done the potatoes.’ She glanced at the clock. ‘Look at the
time! Wherever can they be?’
‘They were going to see Jean.’ Polly frowned anxiously. ‘I
hope Dick hasn’t had an attack. He hasn’t been looking at all
well lately, and what with the shock and upset and
everything …’
‘That would just about put the tin lid on things.’ Alice
wiped her eyes again and then looked up in relief as the
doorbell shrilled. ‘Oh, that’ll be them now. Go and let them
in, Poll.’
‘But they’d have a key.’ Her heart thumping with anxiety,
Polly hurried to the front door. Something had happened,
she was sure of it. Then a new thought occurred to her.
Judy - it must be Judy, rushing home as soon as she had
heard the news. She opened the door, a smile of welcome
battling with the grief still pulling at her face.
For a moment, she did not recognise the man who stood
there. She stared at him as if at a stranger, half-recognised,
dimly remembered. It seemed a lifetime since he had played
any part in her thoughts. Blankly, she shook her head.
‘Well, Poll,’ Joe Turner said, his crinkly face spread all
over with delight, ‘don’t you know me no more?’
Chapter Twenty-Two Joe’s first reaction, on hearing the news, was to leave
immediately. Polly had asked him in, embarrassed because
the house was in a ‘state’ - nothing yet done, breakfast
things still piled by the sink, Alice’s bed in the front room
not yet made - and he’d realised at once there was
something wrong. It had needed only a few words to tell
him what it was.
‘Blimey, that’s a facer and no mistake,’ he said, staring
from one to the other. ‘No wonder you looked at me as if I’d
just fell down from the moon. Here,’ he turned towards the
door. ‘You won’t want me around. I’ll get out of your way.’
‘No!’ Polly reached out a hand involuntarily. ‘No, don’t
rush off, not after you’ve taken the trouble to come all this
way. Stop and have a cup of tea at least.’
‘Well…’ He hesitated. ‘Maybe I could do something to
help. Not that there’s much anyone can do at a time like
this, but — you know, I could take a message somewhere, do
a bit of shopping, whatever you like. Go and get you some
fish and chips for your dinner. Anything. Just say the word.’
Polly looked at him. ‘Well, there is something you can do.
It’s Cis and Dick. They went to see Terry’s girlfriend, Jean
- she works at the Landport.’ She realised that this meant
nothing to him. ‘In a shop. Only they’ve been gone hours
and we’re getting, worried. Dick’s a bit of an invalid, you
see; he gets asthma and he’s only just got over pneumonia
and we’re afraid he might have had an attack. I was thinking
of going to look for him, but I don’t like leaving Mum.’ She
gestured at the old woman, who seemed to have lost all her
sprightliness and sunk into a small, crumpled heap of misery. ‘She’s taking it very hard,’ Polly whispered.
‘I’ll go,’ he offered. ‘Just tell me where. Only, I don’t
know Portsmouth at all, see, never been here in me life.
Where do I start looking?’ Then he grimaced. ‘Come to
that, who do I look for?’
‘Oh dear, you don’t even know what they look like, do
you? So that’s no good.’ Polly went out to the scullery and
filled the kettle. ‘You’d better have a cup of tea anyway - we
all will. And I was just going to start doing some potatoes
for dinner. You’d better stop and have a bite with us.’ He
had followed her and stood leaning against the door-jamb.
She looked at him regretfully. ‘I’m sorry you had to find us
all at sixes and sevens like this. It’s just been such a shock, you see, and now with Cis and Dick not coming home I
hardly know what I’m doing.’
‘That’s all right,’ he said quietly. His crinkly face was soft
with compassion. He hesitated for a moment, then stepped
forwards and held out his arms. Polly stared at him. Her
mouth drew itself down at the corners, her lips trembled
and her eyes filled once again with hot, stinging tears.
Without being aware that she had moved, she found herself
leaning against his chest, her face against his shoulder,
weeping as he held her close, weeping as she had not wept
since Johnny had died. ‘Oh Joe,’ she sobbed, holding him
tightly.
‘There,’ he murmured, stroking her back with a big,
warm hand. ‘There, there. You have a good cry, Poll, you
just have a good cry. Let it all out - that’s right. It’ll do you good. And now you sit yourself down by your mum and I’ll
make that tea. I’ll peel the spuds as well, and get you a bit of dinner, and then if your sis hasn’t come back we’ll think
what to do next. You need someone to look after you. You
all do.’
He led her back into the other room and pushed her
gently into Dick’s armchair. Polly sniffed, and blew her nose
and wiped her eyes, and looked at him gratefully as he placed a cup of tea beside her. ‘You don’t have to do all that, Joe.’
‘Don’t see why not,’ he said. ‘I come all this way to see
you, I ain’t going to turn round and go without making
meself a bit useful. Unless you wants me to, of course,’ he
added quickly. ‘You’ve only got to say the word, if that’s
what you’d rather.’
‘No. No, I don’t want you to go.’ She gave him a watery
smile and he grinned at her and went back to the scullery.
Polly looked at her mother. Alice had recovered a little
and was sipping her tea. She gave her daughter a quizzical
look, almost like her old self.
‘I must say, he seems a nice feller, Poll - but who is he?
You never mentioned no Joe Turner before.’
Polly blushed, aware that Joe could hear everything they
said. ‘I met him that day I went to London with the
Mayoress, Mum. His sister’s the cook at WVS Headquarters.
I said if he ever came down to Pompey he ought to
come and see us, and I suppose that’s what he’s done.’
‘Hm. Come down special, just for a cup of tea?’ Alice
gave her a sideways glance. ‘And I dare say that’s where
those letters have been coming from too, is it? The ones you
don’t say nothing about?’ Then she seemed to remember the
trouble they were in and her face crumpled again. ‘Not that
it seems to matter much now,’ she said despondently.
‘Nothing seems to matter now.’
‘Oh Mum …’ But whatever Polly had been about to say
was lost in the sound of the front door being opened, and
voices as Cissie and Dick came into the passage. The two
women looked at each other with relief, and Polly jumped to
her feet.
‘Cissie! Dick!’ she cried as they came through to the back
room. ‘Wherever have you been? We’ve been so worried.’
She caught the expression on their faces and stopped.
‘What’s happened now? What’s the matter? Is it Jean? Is she ill?’
Cissie sat down on the nearest chair, as if her legs refused
to hold her up any longer. She leaned her elbow on the table
and supported her head in her palm. She heaved a huge sigh
and Dick stood beside her, resting his hand on her shoulder,
although he too looked grey and shocked. Polly stared at
them in alarm. ‘What’s happened? Tell me what’s happened!’
‘Not
ill, as such,’ Cissie said, shaking her head. ‘We had
to take her home from the shop - she fainted when we told
her the news. But it wasn’t just that that made her faint,’ she added bitterly, as Polly gave a little exclamation of pity.
‘And I don’t reckon it was the first time she done it,
neither.’ She raised her eyes and looked at her sister. ‘The
silly girl - the silly, silly girl - she’s gone and got herself into trouble. She’s expecting, Poll. She’s expecting our Terry’s
baby - and what’s she going to do now, I ask you! What in
heaven’s name does she think she’s going to do now?’
In the first few moments after Cissie’s announcement, Polly
forgot all about Joe, still out in the scullery. It was only