Chapter 21
Cora was sitting on the sofa unravelling an old red cardigan and listening to the radio: Sincerely Yours with Vera Lynn. She jumped as Gladdie burst in.
‘There’s a letter come for me,’ Gladdie said, waving it at her.
Cora put the cardigan down. ‘Who’s it from?’
‘US Military Hospital, Bridgend. Do me a favour, open it and tell me what’s in it, will you?’
Cora looked at the envelope curiously. She fetched the letter opener, slit the envelope and unfolded the letter. She scanned it quickly. ‘It’s from Charles! Or at least, it’s written on his behalf.’
When the GIs left Island Farm Camp, it was a chapter closed, brief as a daydream. For the sake of their sanity, that’s how they’d seen it.
Cora knew that Gladdie hadn’t heard a word from Charles since he left, and although D-Day was a triumphant success according to the news, Charles’s long silence had spoken of a different truth.
Gladdie bit her lip anxiously. ‘How is he? He’s back then, is he, all in one piece?’
Cora let out a deep, quivering breath. Please visit me if you can spare the time. If you come, be prepared, he said. I’m different from how you remember me. ‘Not quite all in one piece, by the sound of it,’ she said. ‘Here. You’d better look at it yourself.’
Gladdie read it, taking her time, reading the implications as well as the words, biting the edge of her nail.
‘I should be glad he’s alive when I thought he was dead,’ she said.
‘Maybe “thought” is the wrong word. I’d assumed I would never see him again and I’d tried not to think about him so he was as good as dead to me.
It wasn’t that hard. I cut him out of my mind so firmly that I haven’t even dreamt about him, not once.
’ She skim-read the letter again. ‘I wish he’d said what was wrong with him in plain English.
I’m different? What is that supposed to mean?
He could at least have given me a clue, it’s only polite. ’
‘Good-looking boy with his freckles and red hair,’ Cora said. She looked at Gladdie and smiled. ‘“Deep in the Heart of Texas”!’
‘Yes.’ Gladdie smiled too.
Charles had made a good impression on them.
Heavens knows how he managed it, Cora thought, but when Gladdie’s mother had invited him for Sunday tea not out of hospitality but more to get the measure of him, Gladdie said he had got her singing ‘Deep in the Heart of Texas’ with gusto, and the four accompanying claps had been thrilling and perked them up over the sparse fare of tinned salmon and sliced cucumber in vinegar.
‘Deep in the Heart of Texas’! They knew all the words. In the factory it was banned from Music While You Work because there was a danger that the clapping of the workers might set off the detonators but they had sung it all the time when walking home.
‘What are you going to do? Are you going to visit him?’ Cora asked her.
Gladdie sighed and flopped down limply on the sofa, as if all the strength had gone out of her.
‘I don’t know, truth be told. What bothers me is that it’s not his handwriting so—’ She shuddered and finished the sentence, ‘I don’t know what to expect, Cora.
I’m squeamish at the best of times, always have been, I don’t know why. ’
It was true. It drove her mother mad the way she checked the lettuce for earwigs before eating it, and wouldn’t eat a raspberry without first examining it for grubs, or bite into a windfall apple in case there was a worm.
Be grateful, girl!
‘There could be all sorts of reasons that he couldn’t write it himself,’ Cora said.
‘Such as?’
‘He might be too weak to hold a pen.’
‘Too weak?’ Gladdie brightened for a moment and then thought about it. ‘He wouldn’t say he looked different if that’s all it was.’
‘No, you’re right. But you’re only going to find out if you go and see him.’
‘And then what, Cora?’ Gladdie shook her head.
‘What if he expects me to stand by him and look after him? That’s what it will look like if I go there, as if I’ve gone to see him because I care about him.
I did, I loved him a little bit, back then.
It was fun, having them around. It was glamorous, wasn’t it?
But we knew they wouldn’t be here for long.
It was a snatch of happiness; we knew that and we didn’t mind, see?
Like catching a dandelion seed from the air and making a wish. ’
‘He was a charmer, though,’ Cora said.
‘Aye, he was that.’ She sighed. ‘What should I do?’
‘Don’t go, if that’s how you feel. Anything could have happened, the letter could have got lost or for all he knows you could have moved away or got married. Just because he’s written to you it doesn’t mean you have to reply, does it?’
‘But it’s a coward’s way out, don’t you think?’
Cora grinned. ‘Yes, but you are a coward, Gladdie. You’re scared of sheep.’
‘That’s true.’ Gladdie laughed and grabbed her hand, crushing it in hers. ‘Thanks, Cora. You’re right. I don’t have to see him, do I?’
‘Of course not. And it’s not as if he’s on his own in there, he’ll be with his pals, and he’s got nurses to look after him. It was probably a nurse who wrote the letter.’
‘Yes. A nice nurse, who has taken pity on him and who doesn’t mind – that he looks different.’ Gladdie took a deep breath and let it out slowly, the tears silvering her eyes. ‘I don’t want to be a coward.’
‘Go and see him, then. But you don’t owe him anything.’
‘No.’ Gladdie sat forward and warmed her hands at the shifting fire. The ashes were turning grey. She was silent for a few minutes and then she covered her face with her hands and said through the gaps in her fingers, ‘I did it with him, you know.’
Cora was confused. Then: ‘Oh!’
Gladdie opened her hands like blinkers. ‘Only once.’
‘You never said!’ And then curiosity about the details got the better of her. ‘Where?’
‘In the Capital Cinema air raid shelter.’
Cora let out a laugh. She grabbed a cushion and hugged it. ‘Boring film, was it?’
‘Beau Geste.’ Gladdie was smiling too. ‘Gary Cooper and Ray Milland. We were having a cwtch in the back row. Beau Geste was fighting tribesmen when the message Air Raid Sirens Have Sounded flashed up on the screen and we all piled into the shelter and Charles put his arms around me and said, casual like in my ear, “Shall we take up where we left off?”’
‘No!’ Cora was looking at her curiously and asked the only thing she’d ever wanted to know. ‘What was it like?’
‘Quick. The funny thing was, with the sirens going off it felt urgent at the time, the most important thing in the world, and even though there were people all around I didn’t care, I just wanted to do it with him there and then in case it was the last thing we did.
We weren’t the only ones at it,’ she added defensively.
The war had made some people more fearful and made others more reckless, and maybe the recklessness was just another form of fear.
‘I know. I know what goes on,’ Cora said.
‘What am I going to do?’ Gladdie asked her as she clutched Charles’s letter. ‘I’m torn between doing the right thing and not doing anything at all.’
A couple of weeks later, Cora went with Gladdie to the American Military Hospital so Gladdie could visit Charles.
Cora sat on the wall outside the hospital to wait for her in the sunshine, and it was no time at all before Gladdie came back out, her face oddly misshapen, lips pressed together.
They walked back to the Old Bridge in silence.
Gladdie stopped in the middle of the bridge and rested back against the stone balustrade, tilting her head to look up at the sky. The tears hung balanced in her eyelashes.
Cora kept quiet, waiting, listening to the loud, protesting roar of the river as if it was raging at the unfairness of life.
After a while, Gladdie blinked hard and turned to Cora, shaking her head. ‘He’s being repatriated.’
Cora tucked her arm in Gladdie’s and they walked slowly home.
That’s all Gladdie ever said. Never told Cora about the difference in Charles, and Cora never asked.
Deep in the Heart of Texas, clap clap clap clap.