Women on the Home Front (56 page)

Connie nodded and pushed a stray crumb back into her mouth with her finger.

‘It was because of Arthur,' Cissy sighed. ‘He was the love of my life, but he was with Olive to begin with.'

Connie raised an eyebrow. ‘So that's why she has his picture on her dressing table,' she blurted out. A hurt look flicked across Cissy's face and Connie immediately regretted what she'd said. ‘Oh, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have told you that. Please forgive me.'

‘There's nothing to forgive,' said Cissy. ‘When Arthur came back from the Boer War, he only had one leg. It never bothered me, after all, he was the same person. She tried to make a go of it but Olive couldn't bear him to touch her. We were all friends together. We grew up together and when he turned to me for comfort, I fell in love with him.'

‘I see,' said Connie.

Cissy shrugged deeply. ‘I don't regret what I did and I did my best to make him happy. We had a good life together.'

‘He always loved you, Mum,' said Vi.

Connie was still struggling to understand. ‘Is that why Olive, I mean Ga, is still upset with you, because you married Arthur?'

Cissy nodded. ‘But there was something between our families long before then. She and I went against the grain by being friends.'

‘A bit like Eva and me, then,' said Connie.

‘Exactly like you and Eva,' smiled Cissy.

‘So what was it that tore the families apart in the first place?' said Connie, intrigued.

Cissy shrugged. ‘I never knew what it was but it went all the way back to the last century. Something to do with Little Mac.'

Eva frowned. ‘Little Mac? Who was that?'

Cissy pouted her bottom lip and shook her head. ‘Some long-dead relative or other.'

*

‘I've got nowhere to go, Mum.'

Stan was standing on the doorstep in the pouring rain with only the clothes he stood up in.

Her heart was already racing but how could she refuse? He was her son. She knew the rumours, she'd heard the gossip and she'd read the newspapers but she couldn't turn him away, could she?

‘I did everything properly, just like you wanted. I looked after her, Mum. She was happy, I swear it.'

‘If she was happy,' she snapped, ‘how come she did what she did?'

‘We can't talk on the doorstep, Mum,' he said looking around. ‘Let me in and we'll talk about it.'

She hesitated. A woman walking her dog peered in at the gate.

He glanced behind him and then leaned towards his mother and whispered, ‘You don't want all the neighbours hearing our business do you?'

She stepped back and let him through. He made his way to the only warm room in the house and flopped into a chair. ‘Make us a cup of tea, Mum?'

Reluctantly she filled the kettle and put it onto the New World gas stove.

‘If you could let me have my old room,' he was saying, ‘just for a while. I'll keep out of your way.'

She kept her back to him. ‘I can't go through all that again,' she said cautiously.

‘You won't have to, Mum,' he said rising to his feet and putting his arm around her shoulder. ‘I've changed. Doesn't the fact that I got married prove that I have changed?'

She said nothing.

‘I'm sorry I hurt you, Mum.' He had both arms around her now. ‘It won't happen again, I promise.'

She found herself relaxing. He wasn't a bad boy. That first time he didn't realise what he was doing. That stupid girl was just as much to blame. Mud sticks, that's all. And he'd kept out of trouble since, hadn't he?

The kettle whistled and he let go of her so that she could make the tea.

‘I've got to start all over again, Mum. These past few weeks have been awful.'

Her heart constricted. She turned towards him. He was sitting back at the table with his head in his hands. His shoulders were shaking. She sat opposite him and took his hands in hers. ‘Oh! What happened to your hands?'

‘Burnt.' He looked up at her, his face streaked with tears. ‘Someone set fire to my house, Mum. I've only just come out of hospital. I've been in there for nearly two weeks. What did I do to deserve all this?'

She was so moved she almost cried with him. Her boy. Her poor boy.

‘Help me, Mum,' he said brokenly. ‘Please.'

‘Promise me,' she began, ‘promise me that what your wife did had nothing to do with you.'

‘Absolutely not, Mum. How can you even think …' he broke off and reached in his pocket for a handkerchief. He blew his nose noisily. ‘What can I say to make you believe me?'

‘I want to, son,' she earnestly. ‘I really want to.'

‘We were happy,' he said. ‘We were trying for a baby. I have no idea why she ran out in front of that bus but I swear if I could have stopped her I would have done. They torched the house because they don't want me to have Rosemary.'

She looked up sharply. ‘You really think someone burned your house deliberately? But who? Who would do such a thing?'

‘Her family of course. I know Rosemary is not my child but I'm the only father she has ever known. She loved me, Mum,' and seeing her expression added quickly, ‘like a father. Her grandparents don't want me to have custody, so they set fire to the place, hoping to get rid of me too.'

She'd put her hand to her mouth. ‘What do the police say? Surely …'

‘They're investigating,' he said with a shrug. ‘But there's no doubt, Mum. Someone poured petrol through the letterbox and if I had been asleep, I would have been a goner.'

‘What will you do now?' She was putting a knitted cosy over the teapot.

‘Claim on the insurance and then fight them through the courts to get Rosemary,' he said.

She handed him a cup and saucer. ‘Do you think it's wise, considering your past history …?'

‘I've changed, Mum,' he snapped. ‘I keep telling you that. Dear God, when your own mother …'

‘I'm sorry,' she cried, reaching out for him. ‘You're right. This is not your fault. You're not a bad boy.'

‘So I can stay?'

‘You can stay as long as you like.'

He sighed. ‘Thanks, Mum.'

When he'd finished his tea, he yawned. ‘I'm dog-tired, Mum.'

‘Your bed is all made up,' she said.

He went upstairs. As she watched his receding back, all the old nerves came flooding back. Had he really changed? She'd have to keep a close eye on him until she was absolutely sure. But then he turned at the top of the stairs and smiled and her heart was lifted. He was such a good looking boy, just like his father had been. It wasn't his fault girls threw themselves at him. She made her way back to the kitchen to wash up the cups. Stan was back. Her precious boy was home at last.

Connie stared out of the window of the train. Her only travelling companion, a middle-aged woman was engrossed in a book. It was a week since she had had a reply from William Garfield and she was already on the way to the hospital. It was a shame Eva still hadn't fully recovered from that very nasty bout of flu. Much to Sister Abbott's disgust, Mrs Maxwell told her that Eva was still under the weather because she had a bad chest and wouldn't be back at work until next week at the earliest.

Connie hadn't told the family what she was doing. Ga would have forbidden her to go and her mother would have wanted to go with her. Connie wanted to see her brother first. She had no idea how badly injured he had been and she couldn't let her mother go unprepared.

Connie had dressed carefully. Under her winter coat, she wore a grey pinstriped dress with a white peter pan collar. Her dress had maroon piping down the side seam and so she had matched it with maroon shoes and a maroon bag. The bag, which had come from a jumble sale, was a bit ancient but it made an attractive ensemble. Her hair was caught up in curls and she wore a grey beret on the side of her head.

The English countryside looked beautiful at this time of year. After the terrible winter, the signs of spring were on their way. The snow had been followed by severe floods in some areas, but along the south coast, the weather was much milder than up country. The fields were newly ploughed and the spring lambs frolicked on the downs. The sun glistened on the rivers and already the birds were beginning to nest. Whenever they went through a village or hamlet, Connie saw children playing, ramblers in country lanes and mothers pushing their well wrapped up babies in their coach-built prams. At one railway crossing, three boys on bicycles waited for the train to pass and at another, two children leaned over the crossing gates and waved to the train. Every now and then she would catch sight of something which would bring back a stark reminder that the country had just come through five years of war and misery. It may have been a man with only one leg getting about on crutches, or someone in a wheelchair or a bombed-out building. The scars were ever present.

She leaned against the headrest and closed her eyes. It was a miracle the letter had reached her. Connie could only suppose that Ga must have intercepted all the others. She had always been adamant that they should have nothing more to do with Kenneth.

Connie relaxed and let her mind drift back to that day, the day Kenneth left home. She didn't mind thinking about the stiffness of clean white sheets and the smell of the lavender talc Ga had put on her body afterwards. What she didn't want to remember was the fact that her arms hurt and that for a time she had been held against her will. Not that she'd had much sympathy.

‘Don't you ever,' Ga had said angrily and through gritted teeth, ‘ever let a man get you drunk again.'

Connie's eyes flew open. At the time, she'd been too scared to say anything but now she realised that it wasn't her fault. She'd hardly had anything to drink. There must have been something in that cider he'd given her. It made her feel funny almost as soon as she'd tasted it. Kenneth had had some too. In fact he'd had so much he'd passed out but he wasn't drunk like everyone said.

She became aware that the woman sitting opposite was giving her a concerned look. ‘You all right, dear?'

Connie took a deep breath and smiled. ‘Yes, thank you,' she said.

‘You look as if you've had a bit of a shock.'

‘Really,' said Connie shaking her head. ‘I'm fine.'

The woman went back to her book and Connie looked out of the window. She'd never really bothered to analyse what happened that day but Ga had been so wrong, hadn't she? And because of what she thought had happened, she had hated Kenneth.

Her mother was different. Kenneth had always been her blue-eyed boy. She didn't talk about him but Connie knew her heart was broken. She never gave up hope that he would come sailing back into her life again. Every Remembrance Sunday her mother would put a red poppy next to his photograph in her bedroom. Kenneth had always wanted to join the RAF and Connie supposed that when the war came he had done just that. Nobody was too fussy about age back then and she liked to think of him over the skies, protecting the country. It was a bit scary when the Battle of Britain was raging but seeing as how they had never been informed that he had been shot down or anything like that, Connie had always supposed he had survived the war intact.

The journey took less than an hour. From the station she had to find her way to Holtye Road and the Queen Victoria Hospital. East Grinstead was famed for two things, one which was horrific and the other brought a ray of hope to the victims of war. On a Friday evening in July 1943, a German bomber had targeted the Whitehall Cinema. It was early evening and schoolchildren were enjoying a Hopalong Cassidy film when the bombs fell. As well as the cinema, several shops were hit and then the plane returned to machine gun survivors. In total, 108 were killed and 235 people were injured, a large number of them being the children in the cinema. The whole town, indeed the whole country was devastated by the pictures of helpless fathers searching the rubble for their lost boys and girls. Everyone in East Grinstead knew someone who had been affected by the terrible loss of life.

The other reason why East Grinstead was on the map was because of the pioneering work being done at the East Grinstead burns unit, the place where Connie was heading. After the Battle of Britain, hospital wards were littered with young men in their early twenties who, in their heroic efforts to save the country, had suffered horrific burns. Modern medicine meant that they survived their ordeal but the consequences were unimaginable.

The building itself turned out to be two storeys and long. It had a round tower at one end and was set in green lawns. Roger was waiting by the double doors and shook her hand warmly as they met. His hair was slicked back and he looked smart in a dark blue suit, white shirt and grey tie. She'd noticed his eyes before but today they looked particularly kind and friendly making her feel much more relaxed now that he was here. Connie was shown into a small visitors' room and after a short wait, a well-dressed man with an open face and enigmatic smile entered the room. He introduced himself as Mr Archibald McIndoe. He had a clean shaven face and wore round glasses. He was tall with thinning hair and looked for all the world like a college lecturer.

He shook her hand. ‘Have you seen your brother since his accident?' He had the faintest trace of an accent but Connie couldn't quite place it. Australian or South African? She shook her head.

‘Then I think you must brace yourself for a shock, Miss Dixon,' he said indicating that they should all sit down. ‘We are keen that our boys come to terms with what's happened to them but until they do, we do our best to help them feel as comfortable as possible. Do you understand?'