Chapter 23 #2
‘Like… nowt, really. There’s no time to think, about being brave or owt else. You just… do what you have to. You do what’s in front of you. Don’t see it makes me better nor worse than any other lad they didn’t bother to pin one o’ them things on. Half on ’em never come home to get it pinned on.’
‘Charlie’s said something very similar.’
‘Aye, he knows it as well as I do.’ Her dad nodded to the medal. ‘Be sure to show it to t’ bairns when they’re big enough, won’t you?’
‘I’ll be proud to. What started you thinking about it?’
‘Reckon it were what you said, about having my picture taken in uniform for the young ’uns.
’ He rubbed his neck, as he always did when he felt bashful.
‘I never cared much about the thing for my own sake, but after I’m gone it won’t matter what I felt, will it?
But it’ll matter to the next generation that they had a grandad they can feel proud of.
Happen they’ll treasure it for the sake of that old grandad who loved them, and pass it to their own bairns in their turn.
’ His brow lowered. ‘And I hope none on ’em, Annie’s generation or the ones to follow, are called on to fight another war like the two I’ve been cursed to see.
This time, let’s hope it’s truly an end. ’
‘I’ve never heard you talk this way before,’ Bobby said.
‘What way’s that?’
‘As if you’re… more at peace with yourself. More understanding of the things that happened to you. Is that Maimie Hobbes’s doing?’
He smiled. ‘Suppose it is. She’s a good woman under that mad feathered hat. Knows how to get the best out of me, same as your mam.’
‘Oh Lord, the hat,’ Bobby said, laughing. ‘Will she wear it to the wedding?’
‘I told her it’s all off if she doesn’t,’ he said with a grin.
Bobby’s gaze drifted back to the medal.
‘Thanks, Dad,’ she said softly. ‘I promise I’ll look after it for you – for all of us. I know your grandchildren will be just as proud of you as your children are.’ She gave him another hug. ‘I hope you and Mrs Ho— Maimie will be very happy together.’
‘Well that was quite a day,’ Charlie said as he and Bobby walked home, Bobby’s arm through his and her blackout torch in her other hand. ‘You might have to help me to bed. I’m feeling a little… merry.’
‘I can tell,’ Bobby said, laughing as she stopped him meandering into a ditch.
Their evening at the farmhouse had turned into quite a party.
After the men had finished the beer Tony had brought from the Hart, the captain had remembered a bottle of port he’d been given when he left his regiment and gone to fetch it.
The girls had been allowed to stay up late, and everyone present had toasted to happiness, marriage and new additions.
Bobby hadn’t got too ‘merry’, as Charlie put it, but she had enjoyed seeing her husband being sociable with the other men: cracking jokes, sharing smokes, slapping backs.
Tonight, he had seemed like the old Charlie – the carefree lad he had been before he had gone to war.
‘We had a little windfall today,’ Charlie told her. ‘Reggie gave me five pounds to buy things for the baby. That ought to be a big help, don’t you think? I can order us a cot tomorrow.’
‘That makes two windfalls then,’ Bobby said. ‘My dad gave us ten pounds as well. He’s rather flush after selling our old house in Bradford.’
Bobby had reflected on what her dad had said about the thirty-five pounds, and come to the conclusion it was good advice. She didn’t relish keeping secrets from her husband, but a little money Charlie didn’t know about could be a big help if an emergency befell them.
‘That was what your dad wanted to talk to you about?’ Charlie asked.
Bobby thought about the Military Medal, wrapped in newspaper in her handbag. She wanted to think over what her dad had said about his decoration before she talked it over with Charlie.
‘Mostly that, yes,’ she said.
‘Well, then we’re quite rich, aren’t we, Mrs Atherton?
’ Charlie said, leaning a little unsteadily to plant a kiss on her cheek.
‘Tell you what, why don’t we treat ourselves to a night out next week?
I’ll take you dancing, and when we’re tired of that we can go to the pictures.
I’ll even buy us fish and chips, just like when we were courting. ’
‘I’d like that,’ Bobby said with a smile.
‘We ought to be careful with any extra money, though, Charlie. It’ll soon go once we start buying everything the baby’s going to need.
Don’t forget the dressing-down you gave me for the sheer extravagance of spending a few bob on tinned peaches and beer for you. ’
‘Ahhhh, but that was when I was an impoverished jobless waif,’ Charlie said with a sweeping gesture, filled with gregariousness and beer. ‘I ought to be allowed to take my wife out and enjoy her once in a while. It won’t be so easy once the baby comes.’
‘True.’ Still, Bobby was glad to think of the twenty-five pounds she had hidden away. The fact that Charlie didn’t know about it would be an inducement to frugality.
‘I suppose you were talking about the magazine when you dragged Reggie off,’ Charlie said. ‘What did he say?’
She sighed. ‘Exactly what I expected. He’s determined that if I so much as lift a pen once I’ve got a baby, Marmaduke will be poking his eye out with scissors or setting fire to his cot.
I did think your brother might be willing to at least send a bit of freelance work my way.
He says to ask him again when I’m eighty-five and all our great-grandchildren are grown up. ’
Charlie slipped his arm around her waist.
‘You could bamboozle him,’ he said. ‘Become Ronald Cosmopolis: freelance writer, gentleman adventurer and all-round man of mystery. I can mail Reggie your articles from Skipton so he won’t suspect.’
‘Ronald Cosmopolis?’ Bobby said, laughing. ‘What kind of pseudonym is that?’
‘A darn good one. I wish I could be called Ronald Cosmopolis.’
Bobby smiled.
‘What are you smirking at, young lady?’ Charlie asked, grinning affectionately at her.
‘You remind me of someone I used to know, that’s all.’
‘Old boyfriend?’
‘That’s right.’
‘What was he like?’
‘Oh, trouble in trousers. Not bad-looking, I suppose, but far too fond of a pretty girl. Still, he could always make me laugh.’
‘Miss him?’
‘Sometimes. But I prefer the man I ended up with.’ She stood on tiptoes to plant a kiss on the white scar across his cheek. ‘Still, it’s nice to have the Charlie Atherton I first fell for pay a visit from time to time.’
Charlie smiled. ‘Well, what do you think? Is Ronald Cosmopolis going to be making his debut on the pages of The Tyke in the near future?’
She sighed. ‘It’s tempting, but no, I couldn’t lie to Reg. I’m just going to have to find something else to do to stop me going mad.’