Chapter Twenty-Nine
Every time Kate passed his room to and from the nursery she looked at the closed door. She prayed that the Philip she knew and loved would heal in mind as well as body. When the children were with her, they asked to be able to go in and see him.
‘But why can’t we?’ Simon asked.
‘Because your brother needs his rest,’ Kate replied.
‘When will he be better?’ Sophie asked. ‘Will he be able to play hide and seek with us soon? He’s so good at finding places to hide.’
‘Try to be patient, children,’ Kate said. ‘He will get better but it’s going to take a while longer yet.’
She didn’t expect them to understand, she struggled to understand herself, even with the sights she had seen at the hospital.
The bodies she had seen patched up, repaired and sent to fight again were only part of the man that lay inside, she knew that.
What she could never know was how that felt.
Philip was broken and she was helpless. Only time could help him mend.
Clara came home as soon as she heard of Philip’s arrival but she couldn’t stay long. She was needed to continue with setting up the factory. She came to find Kate before her departure and they talked of their worries for Philip.
‘We’ve seen so many men with such horrific injuries,’ Clara said. ‘But nothing prepares you for seeing your own brother in such a . . .’
Kate took her hand and said, ‘He’s home, Clara. Take comfort in that.’
Clara inhaled deeply and wiped away her tears.
‘You’ll be a sister to him for me, Kate. I know you will,’ she whispered.
Kate wanted to say that she wanted to be so much more than a sister but this was not the right time.
Over the following days and weeks, Kate snatched every moment she could to be with Philip, offering to take trays up to him and staying as long as she dared by his bedside. She told him about her volunteering work at the hospital and how pleased she was that Clara had encouraged her to go and help.
‘Sounds like my sister,’ Philip said. ‘Right in the thick of it.’ He paused then and she wondered what was occupying his thoughts.
He finally said, ‘You’re doing a good job, the two of you. An important job.’
She took that as a sign of encouragement to tell him more but when she started talking about particular patients, however, he stopped her by saying he was tired or he needed the bathroom.
Kate realized that it was too painful for him.
It was like revisiting the battlefield and she found other things to talk about, simple things like the antics of the twins and the news from her Hampshire home.
It was over a month before he was able to come downstairs for meals and spend some time with the family, but then he didn’t seem to spend very long before he went back to his room.
‘They exhaust me, Kate,’ he explained to her, ‘with their constant attentions. At least you don’t crowd me and fuss over me. Your hospital training perhaps?’
Little by little, as time progressed however, his mood swings became less frequent and he talked more.
He tolerated the excitements of the twins and asked Thomas to come and read to him from one of his nature books.
When they could snatch a few moments alone, Kate and Philip sometimes dared to embrace.
Stolen kisses were not enough but it was all that they could have.
‘Walk in the garden with me, Kate,’ he said one sunny afternoon. ‘I want to feel the fresh air on my face.’
‘I’m not sure it would be right for us to be . . .’ Kate began.
‘To be seen together?’ Philip said.
‘Won’t your parents think—’
‘I don’t care what they think,’ Philip replied. ‘I’m past caring what people think. I may not come back from this, Kate. We should spend every moment we can together, shouldn’t we?’
Kate nodded and fetched Philip’s coat and scarf and a walking cane.
They walked together in the autumn sunlight and when they were out of sight of the house, they held onto each other and kissed.
She felt the passion in his searching mouth and the urgency in his breath.
This is how it should be, Kate thought. But their closeness didn’t last for long.
When they heard voices, they pulled apart from each other and Kate felt his aching for her as she ached for him.
* * *
All too quickly Philip left to rejoin his regiment.
She had hoped that he would be medically discharged but, with rest and all the loving care he received at home, his strength had come back and the Philip they all knew so well returned.
The rages subsided and the scar on his face was healing.
As Kate said goodbye to him, the night before he left, she had to believe that he would come back.
He kissed her tenderly on the lips and promised that they would be together again.
‘But how?’ Kate asked.
‘We will think of a way,’ he replied.
For several days after he left, Mrs Winton retired to her bedroom and emerged only for meals.
She didn’t even want to see the children.
Mr Winton spent longer and longer at the bank and barked instructions to everyone when he got home.
Kate found herself losing patience with the children more easily and Mrs B was in a constant state of agitation.
As the weeks went by, after Philip’s departure, the news of British casualties in France caused more and more concern.
Every time the post arrived, Mrs Winton would ask Ida to check if any official looking envelopes had arrived.
Her relief when the answer was no, was clear.
Simon and Sophie wanted to know about the war and asked lots of questions about what it might be like to be shot.
Simon played games with his soldiers in which the British always won and took German prisoners.
Kate wished that the reality matched the game.
The first indications came when she didn’t bleed that month.
Was she pregnant? Could she be carrying Philip’s child?
If she was then she would lose her job. How could she tell her parents?
How would they bear the shame? She didn’t really want to think about it or what she would do if she was.
She told herself that it was the worry of having lost her brother and Philip’s insistence that he must return to France.
She knew the signs of pregnancy, of course.
She’d been old enough, at the age of eleven, to understand that her mother’s retching every morning for weeks was not a usual occurrence.
When her mother’s belly began expanding and she found bending difficult, when she became short-tempered with her father, and fell asleep in the afternoons, Kate knew that a baby was growing inside her mother.
Kate didn’t have to ask the questions. Her mother, sensing that her eldest daughter’s own body would soon be fertile and ready, prepared her for the arrival of her monthly bleeding.
So, when the red stain arrived in her underwear, Kate would be ready.
Kate really began to grow up during the time of her mother’s pregnancy with her third baby.
The innocence of childhood had gone forever.
When her little sister was born, she recalled the desperate shouts of her father to fetch the midwife, the panic, the door closed in her face.
She heard the screams of pain, the words of encouragement, the pleas of desperation and exhaustion and then, the awful silence.
Baby Ellen did not survive. There was no cry as breath entered her tiny body, no movement in fingers or toes, no sweet sighs of joy from her mother’s lips, so still, so quiet.
The tiny bundle, swaddled in white, was carried out of the house by her father, his head bowed as he hugged his lost daughter to his chest.
Carrying a child to full term and then losing it must be more than any mother could bear, but no one else could carry the burden of that pain. If she was carrying Philip’s child then she must face up to the facts and face the future whatever it might bring.