Chapter 14
Bobby could see at once that things hadn’t gone well at the bank. Charlie’s face was grey and strained as he hung up his hat and coat.
He didn’t have his walking stick, Bobby noticed.
It was still in the umbrella stand. Surely he hadn’t gone all the way to Skipton without it?
Charlie could walk unsupported over increasingly longer distances as his injured leg grew stronger, but it still hurt him to put weight on it for extended periods.
She went to put her arms around him. He hid his face on her shoulder, and Bobby felt his body convulse.
‘Darling, what happened?’ she asked softly. ‘Why didn’t you take your stick?’
‘I didn’t want them to see,’ he whispered. ‘Thought if I could hide how broken I was, I might have a sliver of a damned chance.’ He laughed. ‘What an ass.’
‘Come and sit down.’
Bobby led him to his chair by the hearth, cursing herself for lingering at Georgia’s gravestone instead of hurrying home to get the fire lit. After Charlie’s difficult day, all she could offer him as comfort was a cold, dismal house. Some wife she was.
‘Let me make you a cup of tea, then I’ll light the fire and get some soup on,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry there’s nothing ready for your dinner. I got held up at the Parrys’ place.’
‘No. Don’t go.’ Charlie caught her hand. ‘I’m not hungry. I just want to feel you, that’s all.’
Since this was what Bobby wanted as well, she didn’t object when he guided her to his knee. She held him, burying her lips in his hair.
‘Do you want to tell me about it?’ she asked gently.
He flinched. ‘I’ll try.’
‘Surely it couldn’t have been very awful? You were more than qualified.’
‘Oh God.’ Charlie hid his face on her shoulder, as if it would be less humiliating to tell his tale if he didn’t have to look at her.
‘I thought it might be all right. I’d been gossiping with the manager’s secretary while I was waiting to be called in.
She told me not to worry about disguising my limp, because Miller – the bank manager – had one of his own from the last war.
He’d been decorated after Verdun. The staff were very proud of having a war hero for a boss, she said.
I thought, well, if he’s a veteran too then…
’ He laughed hoarsely. ‘Then at least he’ll be on my side. ’
‘Wasn’t he?’
‘I don’t think he was on anyone’s side, except his bank’s. One of those snooty-looking fellows with pince-nez on the end of their nose, who regard you as if you’re some form of insect life. Within a few minutes, I was shaking so much I could barely keep in my chair.’
‘What did he ask you?’
‘About my schooling. How my arithmetic was, and if I could provide a reference from my commanding officer. And then he asked…’ Charlie closed his eyes. ‘Why I’d left the RAF.’
‘Did you tell him?’
‘I gave him the official reason. That the nerves in my arm had been damaged, which prevented me flying. He seemed sceptical. Wanted to know why they hadn’t moved me into an instructor post or some desk job.
I told him I could provide my discharge certificate if he wanted – probably sounded pretty defensive.
Anyhow, he said that wouldn’t be necessary.
He was only interested in whether there was anything that would stop me doing the job. ’
‘What did you say?’
‘I said my penmanship wasn’t as neat as it once was, but it was legible as long as I took care.
’ Charlie swallowed another sob. ‘But I couldn’t stop shaking, Bob.
Couldn’t stop. This man Miller stared at me for what felt like an hour, and the shakes were getting worse all the while.
Then he reached into his desk and took out this bag of coins. ’
Bobby frowned. ‘Coins? Whatever for?’
‘He wanted me to count them.’
‘That’s a funny sort of test, isn’t it?’ Bobby lifted his chin to look into his eyes. ‘I’d have thought he’d give you credit for at least being able to add up.’
‘He didn’t want to know if I could add up,’ Charlie said quietly.
‘The coins went everywhere, Bobby. I couldn’t grip them.
I fumbled so much that I could barely get them out of the bag.
Mr Miller just watched calmly as it rained pennies, told me not to bother picking them up and said they’d be in touch. Didn’t even shake my hand.’
‘Oh, Charlie.’ Bobby held him tight. ‘I’m so sorry, sweetheart. But perhaps something will come of it.’
‘I can delude myself about a lot of things, but I know a complete disaster when I see one.’ He gave a depressed little laugh. ‘All for a four-pounds-ten-a-week job that any kid with his School Certificate could do. It’s hopeless. I’m unemployable, Bob.’
‘You can’t be. You’re clever and presentable and… and likeable. There must be dozens of jobs you could do well.’
Charlie snorted. ‘No one’s going to pay me enough to support a wife and child for being professionally likeable, are they?’ He rested his forehead against her chest. ‘I’ve let you down, darling,’ he whispered. ‘I’m sorry. I did try, honestly.’
‘You haven’t done any such thing.’ She planted a firm kiss on his forehead. ‘You did your best and I’m proud of you. The shaking is outside your control.’
‘I don’t know how we’re going to make ends meet, Bob,’ he muttered in a hollow voice.
‘You can’t work much longer. You shouldn’t be working now.
Even if we’re careful, our savings will have dried up by the time the baby arrives.
If I have to beg Reggie for a loan, I will, but he and Mary are hardly swimming in cash either. ’
Bobby shivered as she thought about what had popped into her head at work: that there was a possibility she was carrying not one but two babies. She was glad no such idea had occurred to her husband. In this sort of mood, a worry like that might push him over the edge.
Her thoughts turned to the postal order in her pocket.
She hated to see Charlie this way: looking so utterly defeated.
For a moment, Bobby considered telling him of her windfall in the hope it might cheer him up, but then she thought better of it.
Telling him now, when he was tortured by his own inability to provide for his family, wouldn’t do his spirits any good.
Another thought occurred to her, however. It was a subject she hadn’t liked to bring up before, but it felt like the right time now.
‘Charlie?’
‘What?’
‘I just wondered… did you write back to the Air Ministry? About the DFC, I mean.’
Charlie’s brow lowered. ‘Do we have to talk about that now?’
‘I’m sorry. I only thought that… well, it might help, mightn’t it? You said the staff at the bank were proud their manager had been decorated. I know it’s complicated, but people do care about that sort of thing. If potential employers knew you’d been awarded the DFC…’
She trailed off in the face of his black expression.
‘I won’t masquerade as a hero to get some damn bank job,’ he said, his tone grim.
‘You wouldn’t be masquerading. You deserve that award. I only thought, since you’re struggling so much—’
‘No, Bobby. Absolutely not. It would be an insult to every airman killed in this war to exploit something like that for personal gain. I’m surprised you’d even ask.’
Bobby flushed. ‘I’m sorry. I… hadn’t thought of it like that.’
‘Never mind. Forget it.’
‘I didn’t mean to upset you. It was just an idea.’
‘All right. Let’s put it behind us.’
‘Yes. Sorry.’
Bobby pressed a kiss to his forehead. Charlie’s expression had turned blank, however, and he merely gazed into the distance.
She stood up, mumbling something about needing to get the dinner on, and went to hide in the kitchen. There, Bobby rested her overheated forehead against the wall and stifled a sob.
Oh Lord, what a stupid thing to say! She ought to have guessed Charlie would react that way. Now he was hurt, and worse, he was disappointed in her.
It was his pride she had been thinking of – the feeling he was failing in his duty as head of the family.
But in thinking of his pride, Bobby had neglected to consider his grief.
What a fool she had been! How callous, how calculating she must have sounded, to suggest using a decoration to improve his employment prospects.
Charlie would never stomach that, after all the friends he had lost. Would he ever be able to forgive her?
Charlie had turned on the wireless. Bobby was glad of it. It meant he couldn’t hear her cry. She put a pan of soup on the hob, seasoning it with salty tears.
It couldn’t have been more than five minutes later that she felt a pair of gentle arms slip around her waist, and soft lips on her neck.
‘I’m sorry,’ Charlie whispered.
Bobby wiped her wet cheeks with the heels of her hands. ‘You don’t need to apologise. I’m the one who—’
‘No you’re not.’ He turned her around and kissed away the tears. ‘I was being selfish. Thinking only about my own feelings, as if I was a single man with no one but myself to consider. It was perfectly good advice.’
‘I ought to have thought before I spoke. Of course you’d never do anything so cynical. It was insensitive.’
‘And I ought to have remembered that it’s about you as much as me. Ethical quandaries are bachelor luxuries.’ He kissed her again. ‘You were absolutely right, sweetheart, and I’m sorry I made you cry.’
Bobby flashed him a shaky smile. ‘You aren’t going to divorce me yet then? Because Jess was keen to matchmake for me with the captain earlier.’
‘What with him and Ernie King, there seems to be quite a queue forming.’ Charlie hugged her fiercely. ‘For all the good it’ll do them, because I’m not planning on letting you go.’
‘So what have you decided to do about the DFC?’
Charlie didn’t answer right away. His face was against her neck, and Bobby wasn’t sure whether it was his tears or the remnants of her own that caused the dampness there.
‘I read that letter from Willis you left on the table,’ he said after a while.
‘What did he have to say?’
‘Nothing good. A friend from the Twelves, Hynes, is in a bad way in a London hospital. Burnt head to toe. They’re not expecting him to linger.’
‘Oh Charlie, I’m sorry.’
‘Willis and some of the lads are making a trip down to see him. He wants to know if I’ll join them. I know we can’t afford to make frivolous journeys but I would like to go.’
‘When is it to be?’
‘The boys have arranged leave for next Friday, if Hynesy’s still with us. I’d have to stay overnight. Would you be all right by yourself?’
‘Don’t worry about that. Of course you should say goodbye to your friend.’
Charlie massaged his cheek. ‘Poor kid. Not even twenty-one. They can pin gongs on those boys all they like but it doesn’t keep them alive, does it?
Doesn’t bring them back when they’re gone, or take away their pain when they’ve been half burnt alive.
’ He sighed, and rested his forehead against hers.
‘But you’re right. I can’t allow myself the indulgence of righteous anger, with a baby coming.
If you think the DFC could help… well, I’ll think it over. ’
‘You do deserve it, Charlie.’
‘Please let’s not have that conversation again. It’s not really about what I deserve. I don’t know how to explain it to you.’
‘Can you try?’
‘If I had to stand in front of the king while he pinned the thing on, I’d feel like such a…
a phoney,’ he said quietly. ‘Like it ought to be Hynesy or Bram or one of the others standing there, instead of lying in graves they were too young to fill. Not me. Not the man who was invalided out with “shot nerves” as if he was some highly strung Victorian dowager. The man who refused to fly and left others to die in his place. Can’t you understand that? ’
‘I understand you feel guilty about having to give up flying, but that doesn’t mean you did anything wrong,’ Bobby said. ‘It’s grief that makes you feel that way. The guilt goes with knowing you survived when others didn’t, but it isn’t a sin to survive, Charlie.’
‘But I feel it all the same.’
‘They want to give you the DFC for climbing out of that plane to save your crew. That was an act of bravery and self-sacrifice by any measure. You wouldn’t be insulting your friends by accepting it, and I’m sure if Bram and the others were alive, they’d say the same. They’d be proud of you.’
‘It’s what I didn’t do that haunts me,’ Charlie murmured. ‘When I joined up I made a promise to see this thing through, but I soon folded when the going got tough, didn’t I?’
‘You were right to refuse to fly with your nerves in the state they were. You said yourself that you could have got your crew killed if you’d had one of your attacks in the air.’
‘Other men don’t have attacks.’ He turned away from her. ‘Other men don’t think and think and think and think until their brains ache. They don’t cry in the night like bairns – or if they do, they don’t let it stop them doing their jobs. They keep on until we’ve won this thing, like I vowed to do.’
‘Not everyone is the same, Charlie. You’re you. You can only be you. I wish you wouldn’t keep comparing yourself to others.’
Charlie only sighed, and Bobby realised her words were useless. He would never accept that this award was something he deserved, no matter how she tried to persuade him.