Chapter 7
The next morning, Bobby prepared to make the journey to Bradford for her medical. Reg had given her the day off – he hadn’t had any choice, of course – with her lost wages and travel expenses to be reimbursed by the War Office.
Her medical wasn’t until four, but she wanted to leave early.
She had told Reg this was to avoid being late if there were delays on the railway, as there so often were these days due to air-raid warnings, troop movements and bomb damage on the line.
In reality, she was determined to see her sister as soon as she could.
Mary had instructed her to call in for breakfast before setting off, so once she was dressed, Bobby headed to the farmhouse.
She frowned when she entered the kitchen. Mary was alone – at least, alone apart from Hetty the hen, who was once again cough-clucking away at the fireside. Mary was at the hob boiling eggs for their breakfast, but her shoulders were shaking with soft sobs.
‘Mary! What on earth is wrong?’ Bobby went to embrace her.
Mary gave a damp laugh, taking out a lavender-scented hanky to dab her eyes. ‘I’m a silly old fool, that’s all that’s wrong. Now you mustn’t say a word to the bairns. Florrie’s so happy, I’d hate her to think I was miserable for my own selfish sake.’
‘What do you mean?’
They were interrupted by Florrie herself, who came bouncing into the kitchen in a somewhat dishevelled state. She had only one sock on, and her pinafore frock hung unbuttoned over one shoulder. Jessie followed more sedately and went quietly to the fire to sit by Hetty.
Florrie beamed when she saw Bobby and rocked gleefully on her heels.
‘I knew I heard you,’ she said. ‘Did Mary tell you our news, Bobby?’
Bobby cast a puzzled look at Mary, who had turned away while she composed herself.
‘I don’t think so,’ she said, bending to button the child’s dress for her. ‘What news should Mary have told me?’
‘It’s Dad! He’s to be… oh, I can’t remember the word. Dematerialised, that’s it. Mary got a letter this morning.’
Bobby blinked, thoughts of little green men with ray guns popping into her head. ‘Dematerialised? Like in that Flash Gordon serial I took you to?’
Mary turned around, smiling like her usual self again, although her eyes remained rather red.
‘I think she means demobilised, the daft apeth,’ she said, coming forward to kiss the top of Florrie’s ginger curls.
‘And I hope that when your father returns, Florence Parry, he comes back to hair that’s been better brushed than this mop top.
Now go finish getting ready for school, the pair of ye. ’
Jessie, who looked a little pale, blinked at her from the fireside where she had taken the poorly Hetty on to her lap. ‘Mary, are you sad?’
‘Don’t be foolish, child. Why on earth should I be sad?’
‘Your eyes look like after crying.’
Mary mopped up an escaped tear with her handkerchief. ‘Oh, pay that no mind. I’ve been chopping leeks for dinner, that’s all. They’re as bad as onions for bringing on the waterworks.’
‘I’m going to get Dad’s room ready,’ Florrie announced. ‘It ain’t half so big as the one he had in our old house but we can soon make it nice, can’t we, Jess?’
‘I think so,’ Jessie said uncertainly.
‘You’re going to do no such thing.’ Mary tapped Florrie’s head with a wooden spoon. ‘You’re going to make yourself smart for school. You pair, me and Reg will have a little talk later about arrangements for when your dad gets home. He won’t be leaving the Army until April at the earliest.’
‘All right. But I’m going to draw him a picture if there’s wet playtime, and we can put it on the wall for when he gets here. Jess, come on.’
Florrie ran out of the room again, a little ginger whirlwind, and her sister followed more soberly in her wake. Mary gave the smaller child’s shoulder an affectionate press as she went by.
‘Poor love,’ she said quietly to Bobby. ‘Florrie’s all excited, but Jess has seen so little of her dad these past few years that he must seem more like a fond uncle than a father – someone who shows up every once in a while to give her a hug and press a florin into her hand before disappearing.
She looked so worried when I said she was to live with him again, bless her heart.
But the captain’s a fine man, and she’ll soon remember how to love him. ’
‘I had no idea he might be getting his ticket.’ Bobby put an arm around Mary’s waist. ‘That must have been a shock.’
‘Yes, right out of the blue. It’s that wound in his shoulder.
It gives him so much pain that he applied for medical discharge.
Never said a word about it in case it should be refused, so it came as a big surprise when I opened his letter this morning.
’ She swallowed a sob. ‘I knew they were never really mine to keep,’ she said in a choked whisper.
‘But I had hoped God would grant us a while longer.’
‘Oh, Mary. I am sorry.’ Bobby gave her a hug.
‘I’m a soft old baggage,’ Mary murmured. Bobby patted the older woman’s shoulder while she got a fresh batch of tears out of her system.
‘Florrie seems convinced the captain’s going to live here with you,’ she said.
Mary gave a damp laugh. ‘Aye, the foolish child. I’ll set her right gently this evening. It doesn’t occur to her for a minute that this isn’t their real home, but only temporary for the war.’
‘Why would it? They’ve been made so welcome, and been so loved. When you and Reg told them they’d always have a home here, I suppose it seemed only natural in the minds of children that that extended to their father as well.’
‘I’d offer, if we’d only the space – at least until they got on their feet with a home of their own.
But we’ve only Charlie’s little box room, and George isn’t going to want to live under another man’s roof for long, I suppose.
’ Mary let out another sob as she took his letter from her pocket.
‘He says… says that now the blitzes are less frequent, he’s aiming to take them back to London. ’
Bobby took the letter from her.
‘Well, perhaps not,’ she said, skimming it.
‘He only says maybe. I’m sure he’d talk to the girls first. Once he knows how strongly they feel this is their home now, he’ll surely reconsider.
He was a tailor as a civilian, wasn’t he?
There must be as much work here in textile country as there is down in London – more, even. ’
‘Perhaps. But he’s relatives there, and friends – folk who can help him get on his feet. George Parry is a proud man. He’ll not want to be dependent on the charity of a pair of strangers.’
‘You and Reg aren’t strangers. Not to the girls. You’re family.’
She sighed. ‘But will he see it that way? He barely knows us from Adam, for all that the childer have grown fond of us. Besides, he won’t like the idea that anyone else has been filling his place in their lives.’
‘He surely wouldn’t be so petty. I’m certain he’ll just be glad his girls have been well cared for while he’s been gone.’
‘I don’t know, Bobby. It’s natural to get a little jealous when it comes to those we love.
Already Jessie feels afraid of going back to a life she only half remembers.
It’s three year since she last lived with her dad; that’s a long time in the life of an eight-year-old.
How would you feel, if she were yours and you came home to find her clinging to strangers instead of running to her mam? ’
‘The captain’s an upright man. He’ll do the right thing.’
‘I’m being daft, I suppose. Crying my silly old eyes out when Florrie’s thrilled to pieces, and quite right she should be.
Too many bairns don’t have daddies to come home to them at all these days.
’ Mary wiped her eyes and summoned a smile.
‘I’m all right now. Sit down while I bring your egg, and tell me all the news of that young scapegrace Charlie. ’
Bobby sat down and poured herself a cup of tea from the pot on the trivet.
‘He isn’t the same scapegrace we used to know, Mary,’ she said quietly. ‘He isn’t so young any more either. At least, his mind seems far older, even if his body is still twenty-seven.’
Mary frowned. ‘This is funny talk. The two of you haven’t had a falling out?’
‘Nothing like that.’ Bobby stirred her tea thoughtfully, watching the thick evaporated milk they were forced to rely on when fresh was in short supply curl through the weak brown liquid.
‘I love him,’ she said simply. ‘He loves me. It feels like he loves me more than he ever has, when he holds on so tightly it almost feels like pain for him to let me go again. And I’ve never admired him more than I do now. But… he isn’t our Charlie.’
‘How so?’
Bobby smiled wistfully. ‘When I met him, it felt like Charlie Atherton was everything I wasn’t – carefree, fun, full of jokes and laughter.
Exactly what I needed to help me find the joy in life instead of working all the time.
He was good for me, and I felt I was good for him. Things are different now.’
‘He’s still the same old Charlie, isn’t he?’ Mary asked. ‘A little sober sometimes perhaps, as you’d expect given the work he’ll be doing shortly, but he was all games and merriment over Christmas.’
‘In company, maybe, and when he’d the bairns to entertain. But it feels less real than it used to. As if he’s putting on a mask for us all.’ She sighed. ‘If you could hear the way he was talking last night, Mary. Feel how he trembled…’
‘Trembled? Our Charlie?’ Mary came over with Bobby’s egg and sat in the chair beside her, looking worried. ‘Is he sickening for something?’
‘Not anything medicine could cure. It’s his nerves.
’ Bobby cracked the shell on her egg absently.
‘I used to worry Charlie would never take life seriously. That no matter how much he loved me, our marriage would be a constant battle to get him to accept adult responsibilities. He seemed such a Jack the Lad, always gadding. These days…’ She bowed her head.
‘I love him so much,’ she whispered. ‘When I look into his eyes and see that brave, frightened, noble soul looking out at me, I feel like it’s physical pain how much I love him; that I can hardly bear it.
But I don’t know him – not like I used to.
And it scares me to death to think that by the time this war ends, I might find myself married to a stranger. ’
‘Oh, Bobby.’ Now it was Mary’s turn to embrace her while Bobby shed tears. ‘I had no idea things had got that way.’
Bobby frowned at something in her tone. ‘You know, don’t you?’
Mary smiled sadly. ‘Aye, I know. Reg and Charlie aren’t so different as they like to think, for all that there’s twenty years separating them.
My Reg was never quite as frivolous as his little brother, but he laughed a lot, once.
He wasn’t the man you know now. The war did that to him – that and losing our little Nancy. ’
‘Was it hard for you?’
‘Oh aye, very hard for a time. I felt much as you do. I loved him, still. Respected him with my whole heart, after what he’d been through. But he felt half a stranger when he came back to me, like you say. It’ll surprise you how many war wives will tell the same story.’
‘How did you get through it?’ Bobby asked wonderingly. Reg and Mary were such a devoted couple, it was hard to imagine a time when there hadn’t been perfect understanding between them.
‘I’m not rightly sure,’ Mary said. ‘There was a long time, after we lost Nancy, when I worried I wouldn’t.
That we’d spend our lives sharing a home and never saying a word to each other.
’ She smiled. ‘But Reg found his way back to me. I just kept still and quiet, kept on loving him and kept on showing him I loved him the best way I could, and eventually we grew closer for it than we ever had been as giddy young newlyweds. It’ll be the same for you and Charlie. ’
‘Do you think it’s the right thing to do, going ahead with the wedding? Last night I asked Charlie if he wanted to wait, he was talking so strangely, but he’s still determined to do it as soon as we can.’
‘I do,’ Mary said firmly. ‘Atherton men don’t love by halves, Bobby, and no amount of war’s going to change that. Charlie will always be our own Charlie in his heart, never you fear.’
‘I do hope you’re right,’ Bobby whispered.
‘Of course I’m right. I generally am, you know.’ Mary tapped Bobby’s egg in businesslike fashion. ‘Now eat up. You’ll need your strength for this medical. And for Pete’s sake, don’t forget that form.’