‘Oh, Clara.’ Abby hugged her sister to her.
‘She was smiling when she said it. She doesn’t want him to come back. She was all long-faced in front of Mrs Riley and Mrs Longhurst when they were talking about it when I came in from school, but the minute they’d gone she started laughing. Horrible laughing. And then she said the rides in James’s car were over and . . . and I shouted at her. James
is
coming back, isn’t he?’
‘I don’t know, hinny,’ said Abby dully, lifting her feet onto the bed and settling back, still with her sister cradled in her arms. ‘We’ll just have to wait and see.’
They said nothing more after that, Clara’s sobs reducing to sniffs and splutters before dying away completely. Abby heard Wilbert come in from work and the sound of voices from the kitchen but she didn’t rouse herself; a leaden heaviness blanketed her mind and body.
Somewhere outside in the distance a dog was barking, and the shouts of bairns playing some game or other drifted into the room through the partly open window. After a few minutes she heard Wilbert in the hall saying, ‘I don’t care what you say, Mam, I’m just going to check the pair of them are all right,’ but as his footsteps sounded on the bare treads of the stairs, Abby shut her eyes and feigned sleep. She didn’t want to talk, not even to Wilbert, kind as he was.
When the bedroom door was shut ever so quietly and she heard her brother go downstairs again, Abby didn’t open her eyes. Clara was asleep now, twitching once or twice as she lay snuggled into her side. She must have slept herself because when she next opened her eyes the light had all but faded and the June evening was quiet. She lifted her hand slowly, careful not to disturb Clara, and gazed at her ring which still glittered in the shadowed room. She
had
to hear soon. She stared straight ahead, her eyes dry and burning. Whatever had happened, however bad it was, she needed to
know
.
Chapter Nine
O
ver the next days all road signs were removed as the threat of invasion became more and more likely, and in the middle of June the ringing of church bells was banned except as a signal the Germans had landed. Shortly after this the
Echo
reported ARP manpower shortages in Sunderland and Wilbert immediately volunteered his services as a warden. Men in Ivor’s position felt the comfort of vindication as public opinion did a radical turnabout and proclaimed the wardens to be heroic after the first bombs were dropped on the town in the latter half of the month. But as Ivor pointed out to Audrey, the acclaim was bitter-sweet.
Dr Benson used all his influence and badgered the authorities daily for news of his son, and at the beginning of July came the news Abby had dreaded. James’s father was waiting for her when she left the office one sunny evening, and immediately she looked into his face she knew, even before he took her gently into his arms and said, ‘I’m sorry, Abby. I’m so, so sorry. I had hoped to bring you better news one day.’
They went to a little cafe close to the engineering works and sat over two cups of weak tea which neither of them touched.
‘I had a call this morning,’ Dr Benson said painfully, his face white and strained. ‘The telegram came shortly after. Killed in action. It was that carnage at Dunkirk.’ He stopped abruptly, unable to continue, and Abby put her hand over his. Strangely, she found she couldn’t cry; the dead weight of her heart seemed to be anchoring all her feelings under it.
‘How is Mrs Benson?’ she asked after a moment or two in which James’s father struggled to pull himself together.
‘I’ve had to sedate her. She collapsed and went hysterical. ’ He rubbed a hand over his face. ‘My nurse from the surgery is sitting with her and I’ve called her sister. The way she is, I dare not leave her alone.’
Abby nodded. James’s mother had had two miscarriages before she’d carried James full term and he was the apple of her eye. Abby had never really got on with her, certainly not like she did with James’s father anyway, and she’d always known Mrs Benson didn’t consider her good enough for her son, but now her heart went out to her. She swallowed hard, gazing into the face which was an older version of James’s. ‘Give her my condolences, won’t you.’
Even in the midst of his own grief, James’s father was still very much a doctor and he recognised shock when he saw it. He reached out and took the hands of the girl he had hoped would be his daughter-in-law, shaking them slightly as he said, ‘I’m going to give you some pills and I want you to take two tonight, however you think you feel. Is that clear? And don’t forget you can call me at any time, Abby. Any time at all, day or night, if you need to.’
Even as she thanked him Abby knew she wouldn’t call James’s father. He was going to have his work cut out dealing with Mrs Benson as well as handling his own loss; she wouldn’t add to that. If things had been different between herself and James’s mother, she might have called to see them in a few days. As it was, she felt this was goodbye.
‘I’ll run you home in the car.’ As they left the cafe James’s father took her arm, but she shook her head at him. She and James had had some wonderful times driving in the country in that car, and even more wonderful times parked in the seclusion of leafy lanes on the way home. She couldn’t bear to sit in it now.
‘I’d rather walk, if you don’t mind. It’s just a short way and I need to be by myself for a while.’
‘As you like, dear.’ They stood together on the pavement and as Abby looked into his face she thought James’s father had aged twenty years.
Impulsively she reached up and kissed him on the cheek, her voice shaking as she said, ‘If James had had the chance to grow older I’m sure he would have aged just like you, and I would have been very proud to be at his side. I shall miss you.’
‘And I you, my dear.’
Tears were running down his cheeks now but still Abby couldn’t cry, even though the sight of his grief seemed to be working at the knot around her heart.
Abby couldn’t face going straight home to her mother. Instead she made her way through the warm streets lit with sunshine and full of bairns playing their games to the sanctuary of Mowbray Park, walking briskly with her face set and not looking to left or right. Everything was paining her - the sight of little tots sitting in the gutter playing marbles or nursing their rag dolls, two housewives chatting on their doorsteps, a woman cradling a baby in her arms as she chivvied two older bairns in for their tea. It was all so normal, so ordinary. The world was going on about its business and all the time James had fought and died and they hadn’t even known. Even the sunshine and the blue sky mocked her. It ought to be raining and cold and miserable, that’s how she felt.
She sat for a long time on a park bench, feeling a sense of panic at some point when she couldn’t picture James’s face. She hadn’t even got a photograph. How stupid that she hadn’t thought to ask for a photograph before he’d left. But she could ask his father for one. The thought brought a measure of calm. She would do that, she thought numbly, but not for a little while. She shut her eyes tightly, trying to block out the images the newspapers had created with their graphic reports of the horror of waves of German bombs and machine-gun fire raking the Dunkirk beaches and harbour.
Please don’t let him have suffered, she prayed silently, and then wondered why she was praying about something after the event. But God didn’t look at time like they did, according to the Bible. Past, present and future, it was all the same to God so He could take this prayer and make it work. She opened her eyes abruptly. But why should He listen to this prayer when He hadn’t bothered with the other ones, when she’d pleaded with Him for James’s safety? she asked herself bitterly. Maybe some of those women at the pickle factory had been right and there was no God, or if there was He displayed little interest in the beings He had created. Perhaps Betsy McCabe’s view of life - that it was a kind of giant lottery where you got good and bad tickets and when you died that was the end of everything - wasn’t far wrong. Oh James, James . . . She felt her head would explode.
She stood up abruptly, smoothing her light summer coat with trembling hands and taking a deep breath of the evening air. She couldn’t think of all this now. She had to remain strong while she told her mother and she needed to stay in this strange sort of vacuum that had taken her over since she’d first set eyes on Dr Benson. She didn’t know why she wasn’t crying and collapsing like James’s mother but she was grateful nonetheless.
It was nearly seven o’clock by the time she reached Rose Street and she knew she was going to get it in the neck from her mother but this didn’t touch her in the slightest.
When she opened the front door she was met in the hall by her aunt, and Clara ran to her and wrapped her arms round her hips in the next instant. ‘What is it?’ She looked down at Clara’s blonde head before raising her eyes to Audrey again. ‘Where’s Mam?’
‘At the hospital.’ Audrey swallowed. ‘It’s your da, pet. He was leaving the docks after his boat had docked and there was an accident. He’s all right,’ she added quickly as Abby leaned against the wall, one hand going out to steady herself. ‘I mean he’s not all right, he’s injured, but he’s not . . . It’s his legs. Some crates fell on him and crushed his legs.’
Her da. Her da and James. She felt hot and sick, and as she stared at her aunt the plump face receded and she went into the blackness, murmuring both their names.
When it became clear Raymond was never going to sea again the effect of this on the members of the family varied. For Raymond himself, relief that he wasn’t going to lose his legs as he had feared overrode any other feeling. True, the doctors had told him he would only walk with a stick for the rest of his life, but with his limbs still whole and the dock foreman promising him a sitdown job checking invoices and advice notes, at least he would be out of the house all day, which was all that mattered.
Nora, on the other hand, was beside herself. After demanding to see her husband’s doctors some days before he was discharged from the hospital, she returned home and wouldn’t speak to anyone for forty-eight hours, taking to her bed and declining food and drink. Even when she eventually came downstairs she refused to visit the infirmary, and consequently it was Wilbert and Abby who fetched their father home.
Wilbert, working all day at the shipyard and occupied with his warden duties at night - August had seen an escalation in air raids and casualties - was too tired to think much at all, but little Clara was utterly delighted to have her father home every evening. Raymond had had even less to do with Clara’s upbringing than he had with his eldest two children, mainly because by the time Clara was born things had worsened between him and Nora to the point where he was barely home at all. Now the child monopolised him whenever she could and he did not discourage this, finding solace in the little girl’s unconditional affection.
But Raymond’s sudden change of circumstances influenced Abby’s immediate future most of all. Once her father was home, and a few weeks after he had taken up office work, she went to see Winnie one night. ‘I’m going to join the Land Army,’ she stated flatly.
‘The Land Army?’ Winnie stared at her as though she had said she was going to join the man in the moon.
‘I need to
do
something, Winnie, something specific, and now Clara has Da with her every night I can leave home knowing she’ll be . . .’ she had been about to say ‘safe’ but changed it to, ‘looked after. You know when Winston Churchill made that speech after Dunkirk, when he said we’ll fight the Germans on the beaches, on the landing grounds, in the fields and the streets and the hills? Well, it’s never left me. And now James . . .’ She shook her head, unable to continue for a moment.
‘Oh, lass.’ Winnie put her hand over Abby’s. She wished her friend would let go and break down or something; this iron control she’d shown ever since James had been killed and her da injured was unnatural somehow.
Abby raised her head almost immediately, continuing, ‘It’s not just the war effort. I need to get away from my mam before I do something I’ll regret, that’s the long and short of it.’
Winnie nodded. She could understand that. She had met Abby’s mother just once and had reported to her own mother that Mrs Vickers only needed a broomstick to complete the picture. ‘You’ve made up your mind then?’ she asked quietly.
‘Aye, I have.’
‘Then I’m coming with you. I’ve been thinking of a change from that typing pool for months. What do you say?’
‘I’d love that, you know I would, but are you sure? The pay’s not brilliant, about twenty-three shillings after deductions for board and lodging, according to one of the neighbours whose daughter joined at the beginning of the war. And they work you from dawn to dusk for that, added to which we could be sent somewhere where there’s no town for miles.’