Chapter 29
Bobby couldn’t leave her brother in the doghouse for long.
He looked so dejected and tired, she didn’t have the heart to stay angry.
It stirred everything that was motherly in her to see the lad in distress.
There was still so much in him of the little boy he’d been when, as girls of fourteen, Bobby and Lilian had found themselves responsible for his care.
She ruffled his hair when she served him his rarebit supper, to let him know he was forgiven.
Kathleen, too, seemed to have forgiven him – at least, so Bobby assumed when she noticed the young lovers holding hands under the kitchen table.
They were a sweet pair. Bobby felt sure her dad would like this new addition to the family, even if he didn’t approve of the way she had been brought into the Bancroft fold.
After they had eaten, Bobby commissioned Charlie to escort Kathleen to Lilian’s. She gave him whispered instructions to find out if Lil had seen their dad, and what his reaction had been to the news.
‘Well, what did she say?’ Bobby demanded when Charlie arrived home. He had sought her out in the kitchen, where she was elbow-deep in the washing-up. Jake had gone to buy a packet of smokes from the Hart, so they could talk freely.
‘She couldn’t say much in front of Kathleen but it sounds all right,’ Charlie told her. ‘At any rate, the kids are invited to dinner tomorrow.’
‘Jake said they were going back as soon as the ceremony was over.’
‘He can stay for dinner, surely, and introduce Kathleen to your dad. The army won’t declare him a deserter for the sake of a few hours.’
‘I suppose not.’ Bobby wiped her hands on her pinny and turned to him. ‘I hope he’ll agree to come. He hasn’t met Maimie yet.’
‘Why wouldn’t he agree?’
‘It’s like I said – he and our dad have had a difficult relationship ever since Jake got to an age where he could understand why Dad was the way he was.’
Charlie put his arms around her waist.
‘Meaning the way your dad used to drink, I suppose,’ he said quietly.
‘His drinking, the screaming nightmares, the way he shakes…’ Bobby sighed.
‘A hundred times I’ve tried to make Jake see that Dad can’t help being that way, but it was no good talking to him about combat fatigue or shell-shock or any of those terms. Jake was growing into a young man and all he understood was that his dad, who ought to be someone to admire, was screaming in the night because of things that happened to him twenty years before.
In the eyes of a boy who got his ideas about what made a man from thriller comics, his dad was a coward.
It hurt me to see him so ashamed, for both their sakes. ’
‘I hadn’t realised it was as serious as that,’ Charlie said, frowning.
Bobby ran a hand over her forehead, beaded with sweat from the steaming washing-up water. ‘They’re not estranged, exactly. Our Jake loves his dad in his own way; I’m sure he does. But he can’t admire him, and I wish there was some way to fix that.’
‘Does he know what your dad went through?’
‘He knows Dad was in the trenches but that doesn’t mean he understands.
He never saw Dad’s nightmares first hand as Lil and I did, or heard him raving about the horrors he’d seen.
He was the baby, so we did everything we could to shield him from it.
I wonder sometimes if that only made things worse. ’
Charlie looked rather thoughtful. He seemed about to say more, but Jake arrived back with his cigarettes and the conversation came to an end.
Bobby was hoping Marmaduke would settle that night and let her have some uninterrupted rest. With Charlie back at her side, there was no reason for the baby to make a fuss about the absence of his father.
Unfortunately Marmaduke, while quiet enough, seemed to have decided to make a mattress of Bobby’s bladder.
It must have been around midnight when she admitted defeat and slid noiselessly from under the covers to use the privy.
Charlie was sleeping soundly for once, and she didn’t want to risk waking him by making use of the jerry under the bed.
In the parlour, the embers of the fire were still in the grate, lending the room a mellow illumination.
Bobby believed her brother to be asleep on the settee when she tiptoed to the kitchen so she could let herself out of the back door, but once she had visited the outhouse and crept back in, she realised this wasn’t the case.
The red glow of his cigarette rather gave him away as awake.
‘Hiya, Bob,’ he said in a toneless voice. ‘Want to sit down? I wouldn’t mind some company.’
She put a finger to her lips.
‘Don’t wake Charlie,’ she whispered. ‘It isn’t often he gets a proper night’s rest. Here, shift your bottom.’
Jake sat up and Bobby took a seat beside him.
‘You ought to be asleep,’ she said sternly. ‘Big day for you tomorrow.’
‘Aye, I guess. Why doesn’t Charlie get a proper night’s rest? He doesn’t work nights, does he?’
‘No. No, he…’ Bobby looked at her brother in the dim fire glow, taking in his haggard appearance. ‘He sometimes struggles to sleep, that’s all.’
‘Why?’
‘He just does.’
Jake was silent, staring into the fire as he smoked.
‘Do you want me to make you some warm milk?’ Bobby asked gently.
Jake smiled. ‘You going to sing me a lullaby as well?’
‘If you like.’
‘I’m not eight any more, Bob.’
‘You know that to me and Lil, you’ll always be the baby no matter how big you get. To Dad too.’
‘Huh.’
‘You are staying to dinner before you go, aren’t you? Dad ought to meet Kathleen, and we can introduce you to Maimie.’
‘Who’s Maimie?’
‘Dad’s new wife.’
‘Oh. Right.’ His gaze was still fixed on the fire. ‘I forgot. What’s she like then?’
‘Not much like Mam,’ Bobby said with a smile. ‘But she’s good for Dad. She’s a brisk, sensible, kindly sort, in spite of some odd ways. You’ll like her.’
Jake rubbed his hair, no more long and slicked as it had been in civilian life but trimmed to the harsh army-regulation short back and sides.
‘I can hardly remember Mam now,’ he said. ‘I can’t remember her reading to me or owt. Can barely remember how she looked when she was well, except from photos. I just remember her being in bed all the time, dying, and you and Lil looking after me. That’s bad, isn’t it?’
‘It isn’t bad,’ Bobby said softly. ‘You were a little boy.’
‘I keep thinking, will he remember me if I don’t make it? The baby, I mean. Kath’d find herself another feller, I suppose. I hope she would, and not stay on her own. But then the baby probably wouldn’t ever think about the dad he’d had before.’
‘We wouldn’t let him forget. We’d still be his family.’
Jake swallowed a sob. ‘I’ve seen some stuff, Bob.’
Bobby put an arm round his broad shoulders. ‘I know, love.’
‘I had this mate. Terry. We were working on this UXB in Tottenham Court Road: a five-hundred-pounder from a tip and run the night before. Chatting about football and joking about each other’s girls, sharing fags and that.
Weren’t supposed to be a high-risk job but summat must’ve gone wrong because…
well, he sent me to fetch a couple of teas from the WVS wagon round the corner.
’ Jake closed his eyes. ‘There were a bang, and… when I went back he was in bits, Bob. Actual bits, lying all round. Hands and feet and… and guts. That used to be Terry, and he was my mate. He didn’t deserve that, did he? ’
‘No, sweetheart. No one deserves that.’
‘I always swore I’d never be like Dad when I grew up.
But when I thought about Terry, and imagined the bits of him might’ve been bits of me…
’ He turned wide, damp eyes on her. ‘I really thought about not going back,’ he whispered.
‘Just taking Kath and running and running, hoping the war wouldn’t catch up with me. Bet you’re ashamed of me now, are you?’
‘Come here.’ Bobby gave him a hug. ‘Stop talking daft. I’m proud of you and I always will be.’
He gave in to sobs as he hid his face on her shoulder.
‘Suppose I’m more like Dad than I realised,’ he muttered. ‘Cowardice must run in the family.’
‘You mustn’t say that. You’re not a coward, and neither is Dad.’
Jake continued as if he hadn’t heard her.
‘If it hadn’t been for the baby, I honestly might have deserted,’ he murmured.
‘Only I couldn’t stand thinking that then he’d grow up knowing his dad was a coward, the way I had to.
I wanted him to have a father he could respect, even if it meant lying the rest of my life about how frightened I was every time they sent us out to another damn bomb. ’
Bobby let him go. ‘Do you really think that being afraid and being a coward are the same thing?’
‘Well, what’s the difference?’
‘The difference is… I honestly don’t know, because I’m not sure I really believe in cowards.
That is to say, I’ve met a lot of men since this war started – and women too – who have done things the world would call brave, but I’ve never met one who hasn’t been afraid.
’ She shook her head. ‘It’s my fault for reading you all those Bulldog Drummond stories when you were little.
They’ve given you the idea that heroes are men who don’t know the meaning of fear, when in real life there’s no such thing.
If there are men who feel no fear, they’re probably in the funny farm where they belong. ’
‘What are you on about, funny farm?’
‘Everyone feels fear in the face of death, Jake. Everyone. It doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you. If you didn’t feel fear when you were defusing a bomb, then there’d be something wrong with you. Anyone who says they’re not afraid in that situation is either lying or touched in the head.’
‘Running away makes you a coward though, doesn’t it?’
‘Perhaps, in some circumstances. But you didn’t run away.’ Bobby dipped her head to catch his gaze. ‘You didn’t, did you? You are going back?’