She was finally caught a few hundred miles off the coast of
Brittany and hit, first by torpedoes from the Ark Royal, which destroyed her steering gear, and then by shells fired from the numerous ships which were closing in upon her. In
the end, defiant to the last, the German Commander
ordered that she be scuttled, and the great ship turned over
and sank, with the loss of over two thousand men.
Britain breathed a sigh of relief. The seas were a little less
dangerous now, even though there were still plenty of
enemy ships patrolling them, but it was mainly a sense of
justice that caused them to celebrate. An eye for an eye. A
tooth for a tooth. A ship for a ship …
‘It’s just like children squabbling in a playground,’ Cissie
said privately to Polly, but they didn’t repeat these
sentiments to others. April Grove was full of people stopping to congratulate each other on the victory, and you
didn’t want to be thought either a ‘conchie’ or a Fifth
Columnist. It only needed some busybody like Ethel
Glaister to hear you saying something like that, and you
could find yourself in prison!
All the same, Cissie couldn’t help feeling glad that the
men who had killed her Terry were now themselves dead,
even though she knew that in Germany there were a lot of
mothers suffering the same grief as herself. It doesn’t make
sense, she thought. How can I be glad and sorry both at the
same time? But then, nothing about war really made sense.
Jean Foster came round to see them the day after the Bismarck had been sunk. She was pale, red-eyed and nervous, obviously both grieving for Terry and in a panic
over her own situation. She looked a different girl from the
pleasant, smiling shop assistant Dick and Cissie had seen the
day before. She also looked plumper, as if her figure were
blossoming by the day, and she told them she was sure some
of the neighbours were beginning to look at her a bit funny.
‘Mum says I’ve got to go away before they notice,’ she
said, ‘but where can I go? And what shall I do for money? I
don’t know what I’m going to do, I don’t really.’ She sat on
one of the dining chairs and stared at them all fearfully. ‘I’m ever so sorry, Mrs Taylor, for bringing all this trouble on you. I never meant - me and Terry, we just - well, we never thought that just once …’
‘It only takes once,’ Dick said grimly. ‘And we brought
our Terry up to know right from wrong.’
‘Well, I know right from wrong too, Mr Taylor.’ Jean’s
cheeks flushed. ‘We both did. But he was going away the
next day, and we loved each other so much. We just
couldn’t help ourselves.’ She began to cry again. ‘I know
what you think of me - I know what everyone’ll say, that
I’m a hussy and a trollop and all the rest of it - but we
couldn’t help it, we couldn’t, and I tell you what, I’m glad we
did it. I never meant it to be like this and nor did Terry, but I’m glad all the same. At least he was happy when he went
away, and I made him happy.’ She lifted her chin and gave
Dick a challenging stare. ‘He said so. And I’m glad.’
There was a short silence. Dick flushed too but he let his
eyes drop. He glanced down sideways into the empty
fireplace and his jaw clenched. Cissie watched him, biting
her lip, afraid that he was going to give way to a burst of
temper, and Alice seemed to square her shoulders as if she
too were ready to join in the fray. Judy, unable to follow
their words, glanced anxiously at Polly, who gave her a
small smile, as if to say that she thought Jean had got the
better of the angry man.
Dick took a breath. He turned his eyes back to Jean’s
defiant face.
‘All right, young lady,’ he said stonily. ‘So you’re glad.
You’re going to look after yourself then, are you? You won’t
come looking for help from no one else?’
Jean’s defiance faded a little. ‘I’m not saying that, Mr
Taylor,’ she said. ‘I’d do that if I could. And maybe I will, if I can find a way. Maybe I can get a job somewhere, where I
can have my baby with me. I thought it was only right to
come and see you, but I’m not asking for help from anyone
who doesn’t want to give it,’ she added with a flash of spirit.
‘If you don’t want me round here, just say so and I’ll go. It
was only that Judy said you and her mum would like to see
me.’ She began to get up. ‘If you don’t, I’ll be off.’
‘No! No, don’t go.’ Cissie looked at her husband. ‘Dick’ll
be the one to go if he doesn’t want you here, won’t you,
Dick? You can take yourself out for a walk if you don’t want
anything to do with young Jean, but just remember what
Mum said - this is our Terry’s baby, come what may, and
our grandchild, and there’s never going to be another, not
from Terry. All right, they did wrong, but it’s Jean who’s
got to carry the can, and with our Terry not here to stand by
her - and he would have done, you know he would - then
we’ve got to do it in his place. So you’d better make up your mind: are you going to stop here and give the girl some
support with the rest of us, or are you going to make
yourself scarce?’
Their eyes met. The others watched them, knowing that
Cissie rarely opposed Dick like this. Partly because she held
to the view that a wife must love, honour and obey, just as it
said in the marriage service, and partly because she had
always been extra careful with Dick owing to his illness, she
always tried to steer clear of arguments. But this time she
was standing firm, and they could all see that there would be
no moving her.
Dick saw it too. A look of wary admiration came into his
eyes and he seemed to settle back in his chair. He wasn’t
giving in too readily, though.
‘All right,’ he said with a shrug. ‘Have it your own way.
You always do, anyway. Bloke doesn’t have a chance in a
house full of women.’ It was an old war cry, spoken usually
in jest, and they looked at each other a little uncertainly and then decided to ignore the touch of bitterness in his tone
and take it as one now. They smiled and Cissie leaned across
and patted his knee.
‘That’s better,’ she said, and gave him her loving smile.
‘Now we can start to think what to do next.’ She turned to
Jean and asked tentatively, ‘How about your mum, Jean?
How’s she taking it now?’
Jean lifted her shoulders hopelessly. ‘She’s either going
on and on at me or she’s not speaking to me at all, and I
don’t know which is worse. All the usual things: always
brought me up to be decent, what will the neighbours say,
never be able to hold up her head again in public … And
then she starts to cry, and she won’t let me say anything, of
even touch her, and after that she goes out to the kitchen
and won’t speak to me. She won’t even let me help get
dinner ready. It’s as if she’s pretending I’m not there - don’t even exist.’
There was a note of real pain in her last words and Polly experienced a moment of insight into the girl’s frightened
mind. Poor little mite, she thought compassionately. She’s
lost the man she loves - and Judy and me both know what that feels like - and on top of that she’s in the worst trouble a girl can be in, without any chance of her chap standing by
her, and her own mother’s trying to make out she doesn’t
exist. She doesn’t know where to turn.
She went swiftly across to Jean and put her arms around
her. ‘Well, you exist here,’ she said firmly, ‘and we’ll help
you all we can. Now, what we’ve got to do first is think what
you want to do, and then see how you can do it. That’s the
best way, isn’t it?’
‘Trust you, Polly,’ her mother said admiringly. ‘You
could always see right to the nub of things.’
‘Well, being in the WVS helps,’ Polly admitted. ‘You get
used to solving problems. Now, what do you want most,
Jean - apart from what we all know you can’t have,’ she
added hastily as Jean’s eyes filled with tears. ‘We’ve all got
to face up to not having our Terry back again.’
‘I want to keep my baby,’ the girl whispered. ‘Terry and
me were going to get married the next time he came home.
It would have been all right then, and we’d have been a
family.’ She raised anguished eyes to Polly’s face. ‘I can’t
lose our baby as well as Terry. I can’t.’
‘No, you can’t,’ Polly said. She looked around at the
others. ‘You can all see that, can’t you? She can’t give the
baby away. And we don’t want her to. It’s Terry’s.’
Nobody spoke for a moment, and then Judy said a little
plaintively, ‘I wish somebody’d tell me what you’re all
saying.’
As if it were a relief, they all began to talk at once, and
Judy shook her head helplessly. ‘It’s no use! You know I
can’t hear you. Write it down, someone - please. Oh,’ she
clapped her hands over her ears, ‘it’s awful not being able to
hear. You just get left out of everything, and I’m fed up with it!’
‘Judy, I’m sorry,’ Polly said, and found some paper.
Hastily, she wrote a brief account of what was happening,
finishing with the words, and we ‘re going to help Jean all we
can. Judy read them and nodded.
‘That’s all right, then. So what are we going to do?’
‘That’s what we’ve got to decide,’ Polly said, remembering
to look at her and speak clearly. Judy could still not
lip-read a great deal, but could usually manage to pick up
the gist, as much from the speaker’s expression as from the
carefully articulated words. Polly looked at Jean, who was
controlling her sobs and wiping her eyes on an already
sodden handkerchief. ‘Now then, Jean. You want to keep
your baby. What we’ve got to do is work out how you can
do that.’
Jean nodded. ‘But I don’t see how,’ she whispered. ‘If
Mum says I’ve got to go, and you can’t have me here, what
am I going to do? There’s nowhere else I can think of
‘Are you sure your mum won’t come round? It’s early
days yet, and it must have been a shock for her.’ Cissie
spoke kindly, but with some feeling for the other mother. It
had been a shock for her, to know that Terry had gone
against his upbringing, and it was all the worse when it was
a daughter, who would carry the evidence of her wrongdoing.
‘What about your dad?’
‘Oh, Dad’s all right. He’s upset, I know he is, but,’ she
glanced at them apologetically, ‘he’s more angry with Terry
than he is with me. He hasn’t said too much about that
because of Terry being killed, but I know he is. I’ve told
him it was just as much me as him,’ she added.
Dick cleared his throat. ‘Well, I can understand that. I
know how I’d feel if some bloke had taken advantage of one
of my girls and then left her in the lurch.’ There was an
immediate outcry from all except Judy and he raised one
hand. ‘All right, all right, I’m not saying that’s what our
Terry did, but I can understand Mr Foster thinking that way. Any father would.’
‘So you agree we’ve got to do what Terry would do if he
was here?’ Cissie challenged him. ‘You’re ready to stand by
and help Jean?’
Dick glowered for a moment, then said, ‘I’ve already said
so, haven’t I? Course I will!’ He glanced at the girl. ‘I won’t say I’m pleased about what you’ve done,’ he said heavily,
‘and if our Terry was here I’d give him the rough edge of
my tongue. But there’s no doubt he’d have stood by you and
married you if he was here, and since he isn’t nor ever will
be,’ a flicker of pain twisted his lips but he went on with
determination, ‘then we’ll look after you and the baby as
best we can. Only it’s like Polly says, we’ve got to work out
how to do it. I don’t see how we can have you here, not
without someone having to sleep out in the shed!’
The little flash of humour made them all smile and eased
the tension. Cissie went out to the scullery to make some
tea, and Polly said, ‘How are you feeling in yourself, Jean?
Have you been to a doctor yet?’
Jean shook her head. ‘I’ve felt really well. To tell you the
truth, I never even realised what had happened till I’d,’ she
glanced at Dick and blushed, ‘till I’d missed twice. Then I
started to wonder, but I still didn’t think it could.be true. I was never sick, or anything like that. I did feel a bit tired for a while, but that passed off and I felt better than ever. And
then when I missed again — well, I felt too scared to go to a
doctor. I suppose I didn’t want to know it was true.’ She
looked round at their faces. ‘It is true, though. I know it is, and soon everyone else will know as well.’
‘Well, there’s nothing we can do about that.’ Polly spoke
briskly. If there was one thing she’d learned during her
service with the WVS it was that problems were best solved
by looking at them straight in the face, without emotion. ‘If
you’re going to keep this baby, everyone’s going to know
anyway, and the sooner the better if you ask me. They won’t
have so much time to wonder and gossip, and they can start getting used to the idea. I tell you what, Jean, you’re not the first girl to be caught like this and you won’t be the last. I
reckon there’ll be plenty more in the position you’re in, with