Wives at War (31 page)

‘How are Angus an' the girls?' said Babs.

‘On the mend. She had Gus up an' dressed. She thought I'd show up today,' Jackie said. ‘She let me take him out on the bike. If I'd had more bloody petrol I'd have taken him for a proper spin but he was happy enough with goin' round the farmyard a few times.'

‘Do they know you're leavin' tonight?'

‘I'm pretty sure they do.'

‘Didn't you tell them?'

‘I told the boy.'

‘Did he cry?'

‘Nah.'

‘I don't know what to do about Christmas,' Babs said.

‘Uh?'

‘Go over to Blackstone or bring them back here. What do you think?'

‘Go over to Blackstone,' said Jackie.

‘Will they be well enough?'

‘Aye, I'm sure they will.'

It was a small thing, petty and personal, yet Babs would always feel grateful that she had asked her husband's opinion about Christmas. It was the last conversation she could remember with any clarity, though they talked over dinner, talked quietly in the living room with April drowsing on Jackie's knee, talked again while he shaved and dressed himself in his uniform.

He said nothing about Dennis or Billy, nothing about Polly, nothing about Christy Cameron. It was as if at last he had learned to trust her or as if, she thought, he knew he wasn't coming back.

She accompanied him down the steps on to the pavement.

He was strapped into his webbing, the kitbag on his shoulder and looked strong now, not like her weedy Jackie at all, not like the flash Harry from the backstreets of the Gorbals whom she'd married only because he was a heck of a good dancer and had money in his pocket.

When he kissed her she burst into tears.

‘Aw, Jesus, Babs,' he said. ‘Aw, Jesus!' and, turning, marched off into the darkness, swaying under the weight of the kitbag.

That was the last Babs ever saw of him.

At dawn on 21 January, backing an Australian attack on Tobruk, the tank that he was repairing was blown sky high and Corporal Jackie Hallop was killed outright.

March

13

After the snows of January and February the weather in March was glorious. The rooks built early in the tall trees, crocuses gave way to daffodils, and drifting from the hill pastures you could hear the crying of the first lambs.

Double summer time meant longer light in the evenings but monkeying with the clock upset the hens' laying pattern and Dougie was at his wits' end trying to persuade the bloody birds to roost at a reasonable hour. Margaret Dawlish's suggestion that Ron – well over thirty weeks old and weighing in at a remarkable twenty-one stones – was ready to meet the slaughter man had filled him with trepidation. The tragic news from North Africa and the fact that the children needed pampering had saved old Ron from being reduced to faggots and chitterlings. You might even say that the shell that took poor Jackie Hallop's life saved Ron's bacon, but that was an irony too grim to contemplate and not one Dougie was inclined to share with Angus.

Seeking relief, he fished out his spade and set about a programme of digging that left him so exhausted that he fell asleep by the fire as soon as he'd eaten supper, thus avoiding bedtime tears and questions he could not answer.

‘I know he's dead, our daddy, but where's he
gone?
'

‘He's gone to heaven, dear.'

‘Where
is
heaven? Is heaven up
there?
'

‘Yes, my love, heaven's up there, above the sky.'

‘How can you be
above
the sky?'

‘I don't know. You just can.'

‘Did God take him there?'

‘Yes, God and Jesus took him to their bosom.'

‘What does bosom
mean?
'

‘Didn't they teach you that at Sunday School?'

‘No, but Miss White says we'll meet Daddy in heaven when we die. Will we have to die soon to meet Daddy?'

‘No, dear, you won't have to die soon.'

‘What if Daddy forgets who we are?'

‘Daddy won't forget.'

‘Doesn't he want us to die soon?'

‘No, he wants you to live until you're very old ladies.'

‘Older'n you, Miss Dawlish?'

‘Much, much older than me.'

Angus seemed less curious than his sisters. The boy's silence troubled Dougie. He recalled the pain that the deaths of his wife and children had caused him but he'd been a grown man, an adult, and couldn't for the life of him imagine how a child coped with loss. Tactfully, he allowed Margaret, Babs and Polly to deal with May and June but, for better or worse, he was the man in Angus's life now and regretted that the poor wee guy had no better example to follow than a middle-aged ex-counterfeiter who had drunk himself out of a job.

He wielded the spade mainly to impress the boy, to pretend that he was still vigorous. He repaired fences, mortared walls, dug long evenly spaced trenches, spread the quantities of manure that Ron thoughtfully provided, and on the walk to and from school answered the questions that popped up out of nowhere, like thistles in the grass.

‘Was it a bullet?' Angus asked.

‘Naw,' Dougie answered. ‘We're told it was a shell.'

‘Blew Dad up?'

‘Aye.'

‘Was he really fightin' the Eyeties at Tobruk?'

‘Repairin' a tank, I think.'

‘The Australians took Tobruk.'

‘They did.'

‘Captured thousands of Eyetie prisoners.'

‘Thousands.'

‘Dad's not a prisoner of war, Dougie, is he?'

‘No, son, he's not a prisoner of war.'

‘I didn't think so, really,' Angus said.

And they walked on, not touching, behind the little girls.

So Dougie dug, his trousers tucked into his stockings, his shirt, soaked with sweat, sticking out at the tail, and when he simply had to rest he trudged over to the farm at Drumry and spoke to the land girls about seeding and planting. Until the children arrived, he had only been playing at gardening. What was required of him now was effort, concentration and a certain mysterious affinity with the seeds and shoots and leafy green things that struggled out of the earth. While he dug and planted, a peculiar feeling stole over him, a feeling too vague to be defined, that if he made himself a better gardener he might become a better father too.

The moment he'd seen Polly's motorcar slithering up the track through the January snow he'd known that something terrible had happened.

Miss Dawlish had been making pancakes. The yard had been filled with the smell of the griddle. He had been out in the barn with Angus and the girls checking stocks of pig feed and chicken meal.

He would never forget the look on Angus's face when his mother had emerged from Aunt Polly's motorcar, how all the energy, all the spirit had drained out of the boy. Polly had shepherded Angus and the girls indoors while he, like the coward he was, had stayed helplessly in the shelter of the barn, smoking a cigarette and listening to the little wails that floated out from the house. Then he had gone upstairs in the barn, up to the floor where the printing press had been, and had found Frobe asleep on the straw and had held Frobe in his arms, petting and patting the fat old cat, until Polly had come looking for him to tell him that which he already knew.

He had followed Polly across the yard, the cat still in his arms, and had entered the farmhouse and had looked at Babs with the girls on her lap, all three of them crying, then at the boy squatting alone in a corner, knees drawn up, white as a sheet. He had slipped the cat to the floor and hunkered down in the corner facing the boy, expecting Angus to crack, for truth to dawn, but there was no truth, no experience of loss to move the wee lad, only the blameless selfishness that is the prerogative and protection of the young.

‘Will we have to go back to Glasgow now?' Angus had asked.

‘I don't know,' Dougie had said. ‘Do you want to go back to Glasgow?'

‘Somebody'll have to look after April.'

‘That's true.'

‘We couldn't take Ron with us, though, could we?'

‘Ron wouldn't be happy in Glasgow.'

‘I wouldn't want anythin' to happen to Ron.'

Dougie had rolled forward on the balls of his feet and whispered. ‘I don't think anybody knows what's goin' to happen, son. It's too early to make plans. Why don't we just wait an' see what your mama wants to do.'

‘Uh-huh,' Angus had agreed. ‘Too early to make plans.'

Saturday had been filled with tears, muttered conversations between the sisters, vague attempts to plot the future and do the right thing for the children's sake. Eventually Babs had gone off with Polly to locate Bernard at the council offices, then they had driven across town to Lavender Court to inform the Hallops. Lizzie had already been told and was looking after April. Bernard was familiar with ‘the drill' for war widows. Bernard, bless him, would tell Rosie and tomorrow, Sunday, they would all meet up at Mammy's house to decide what to do for the best.

In the end Angus and the girls had stayed on at Blackstone and went on doing what they'd been doing as if nothing had changed.

In a sense, nothing had changed, for as far as the children were concerned their circumstances had been altered not one jot by Jackie's demise.

What had been taken from them was the promise of a settled future and a return to normalcy when the war ended but that sort of future, with its roots so firmly embedded in the past, was not something that children could possibly understand, which, Dougie reckoned, was probably just as well.

*   *   *

Archie had enough sense not to try to comfort her. He really wanted to take her in his arms and offer her a shoulder to cry on but Babs was bristling with all sorts of conflicting emotions and he contented himself with polite enquiries as to how things were faring at home.

By March enquiry and response had been reduced to code.

‘All right, Babs?'

‘Yeah, all right.'

So far Babs hadn't sought his advice, though now and then she had let off steam. He'd gathered that matters on the domestic front had been fraught with difficulties and frustrations. Her stepfather had been a tower of strength, of course, and had steered her through the depressing business of registering for widow's benefit and child support, and her mother had stayed with her for a week, a kindness that according to Babs had almost driven her nuts.

February had been difficult. The husband's family had tried to siphon off a portion of Babs's entitlement by claiming that they had been financially dependent on Jackie. A lawyer friend of her sister Polly's had put paid to that sleazy little scheme and the Hallops had taken the huff.

There was a will, a decent insurance policy and no outstanding mortgage on the bungalow. All in all, Babs was not hard up. If she had been Archie would have found a means of helping her out. He worried about her, though, for she'd lost weight and he suspected that she wasn't eating enough.

Only once did Archie's tact desert him and he received an earful of abuse, and a good deal of interesting information, by way of reprimand.

‘What about your lodger, the American chap? Is he still with you?'

‘That bastard, that conniving bastard! Not that that's any of your business, Archie, but he's living with my sister now.'

‘Oh!' softly.

‘Take that look off your face, Archie Harding. I know what you're thinkin'. What can I offer him that Polly can't? Four kids an' a bungalow in Raines Drive? It's not as if she needs the money, though I doubt if he's paying her a penny.'

‘Perhaps you're mistaken.'

‘I am not mistaken. That terrible Saturday, just after I got the telegram, I went round to Manor Park and more or less found them in bed together. Christy Cameron lyin' there like butter wouldn't melt in his mouth. The minute he moved in with Polly, I said to myself, “That's that. I've lost him,” and by God I was right.'

Archie arranged his features into an expression of non-judgemental blandness as Babs went on, ‘He's supposed to be helpin' my sister liquidate her husband's assets so he can take the money back to America. All very hush-hush. I was right in the first place, Archie. He is a spy.'

‘I assume,' said Archie, cautiously, ‘that he hasn't asked you for money?'

‘We're not talkin' pennies here, Archie. We're talkin' thousands and thousands of pounds. He's using her and I'm amazed that Polly doesn't see it.'

Archie had only a dim perception of what the American really wanted with the sisters and why a photographer had been sent to Scotland on official government business.

Stranger things were happening in this war, however, and according to all the books the secret service was a law unto itself. If he met the sister, if he met the American perhaps everything would become clear. As it was he simply couldn't imagine Barbara Hallop being involved in the fate of nations.

Heartache, he thought, or resentment? What's really troubling my Girl Friday?

He had no way of knowing and no means of finding out.

*   *   *

Bernard was on his way down the hall, heading for the door, when the town clerk's assistant came scuttling after him and informed him that there was a telephone call on the line in the surveyor's office. Bernard strode back to the office in question and picked the receiver off the counter.

‘Peabody here.'

‘Why is it you have been ignoring me?'

Bernard glanced surreptitiously over his shoulder and closed the office door with the toe of his shoe. ‘Evelyn?'

‘Did you not promise to come on Saturday?'

‘Evelyn—'

‘I cooked for you.'

‘Evelyn—'

‘Are you afraid to see me? Is it over?'