Keep the Home Fires Burning (21 page)

‘Then you shall have it,’ Marion said, getting to her feet. ‘And after that I should go to bed for an hour or so, if I were you. Today the schools break up for the long summer break. The children will be excited about that, and having you home as well is like the icing on the cake for them. They might kill you with their exuberance. And I shouldn’t try to manage the stairs just yet either. I have the boys’ bed made up in the parlour, which you can use for now.’

Bill knew what Marion said made sense and so after he had eaten, he heaved himself to his feet, and using his crutch to balance on waved away her offer of help. ‘You’re not to treat me as an invalid,’ he warned. ‘Mollycoddling me is no way to help me get better.’

Bill knew that Marion worried about him so he was heartily glad she hadn’t come down to see him in Ramsgate as she’d threatened to do before he’d been moved, because for a lot of the time there he had been raving. He did wonder at times if he was losing his mind, though the doctors had assured him that it was one of the effects of trauma or shock. And he had calmed down in the end and was able to keep his feelings in check through the day, though they continued to invade his mind at night and he would wake with a shriek or a yell and find the bedclothes tangled around him.

He wasn’t the only serviceman to be afflicted this way, but the nurses were always there to reassure and soothe. He hadn’t had one of these terrifying nightmares for over a week, though, and was fairly certain that in the confines of his own house, and with his family around him, he would soon be back to his old self.

The younger children were just as excited as Marion had said they would be when they came home from school and virtually launched themselves at Bill as he sat on the settee, with Marion warning them to mind his leg. The twins settled on either side of him, while Tony and Jack, who had come to see his uncle, were very impressed with Bill’s crutch. They took turns trying to use it, though it was far too big for them.

‘It’s not to play with, you two,’ Marion chided
when she saw them. ‘It isn’t a toy, and your father would rather not have to use it.’

‘That’s right enough,’ Bill said. ‘Nothing will give me greater pleasure than handing it back to the hospital when I no longer need it.’

‘Hope it’s not all that soon,’ Tony said quietly, lying the crutch down beside his father, ‘cos then you’ll have to go back, won’t you?’

‘Fraid so,’ Bill said. ‘So isn’t it a great thing that I’m home for now and in time to help you enjoy your holidays. I might even be able to keep you and Jack out of mischief.’

‘I’m not going to get into mischief, Uncle Bill,’ Jack said. ‘I won’t have time. I’m going to be a messenger when the bombs come. A kid at school was telling me his brother is training for it and they’ve given him a bike.’

‘They won’t have people of your age, Jack,’ Marion said. ‘You’re far too young.’

‘I’m eleven next month.’

‘That’s what I mean,’ Marion said. ‘And you can get that look off your face, Tony,’ she said, concerned with the awestruck way Tony was gazing at his cousin. ‘If the bombs fall you’re going to go down the cellar with the rest of us and there will be no argument about it. Anyway, why are we discussing something that hasn’t happened yet?’

‘Yes,’ Bill said. ‘Let’s just be glad that Hitler has left us alone so far. I was in Ramsgate when they started the bombardment there and it was terrifying for the ordinary people. The devastation
I glimpsed from the ambulance on the way to Brum was dreadful. You have no idea. Bombs hurtling down is not exciting, believe me.’

Marion believed him totally. She felt a
frisson
of apprehension trickle down her spine, and she fought to get a grip on herself. No one had any control over the future.

When Bill was introduced to Peggy and Violet that evening he saw straight away from their firm handshakes, open faces and clear eyes that they were respectable girls, as Marion had told him they were. And they were also firm favourites with the children, if the banter between them was anything to go by, and he had felt his tense shoulders relax.

The rabbit casserole was delicious and everyone tucked into it with obvious enjoyment as they discussed the events of the day. Then, towards the end of the meal, Marion’s composure was shaken a little when Richard announced his intention to join the Local Defence Volunteers now that he was sixteen.

‘Anthony Eden asked for volunteers over the wireless,’ he told his mother. ‘It was a few months ago. Remember I told you about it at the time?’

Marion nodded. ‘I do remember something about it, yes.’

‘Well, I sort of decided then, but talking to Sam and hearing what he had to go through sort of put the tin hat on it, as it were.’

Marion looked across the table at her elder son. He was tall for his age and, though fairly thin, he was well muscled due to his work in the brass foundry. There was nothing of the child left in either Richard’s body or his face, and his voice resembled Bill’s. Marion knew that soon he would tip right over into adulthood. Part of her felt proud that he wanted to join this force to try to protect civilians who might find themselves caught up in this awful war, and part of her was frightened for him.

However, she knew this had to be Richard’s decision and Bill, she could see, was all for it as he clapped his son on his back. ‘I’m proud of you,’ he said. ‘It’s important that we have people trained here at home as well.’

‘Will you have a gun and that?’ Tony asked.

‘I should say so. They’ll hardly issue us with catapults now, will they?’ Richard said sarcastically.

‘Golly,’ Tony said, ignoring his brother’s sarcasm. ‘A real live gun. I’d love to see one of them.’

‘It’s not the kind of thing I’m ever likely to bring home,’ Richard said. ‘One of the first things they will have to teach me is how to fire it.’

‘You’ll soon pick it up,’ Peggy said. ‘Where Violet and I came from, every farmer’s son over the age of twelve or so could shoot, and well, to be able to kill rabbits for the pot.’

‘If that rabbit casserole was anything to go by, I should say that you lived very well,’ said Bill.

‘We didn’t do bad,’ Peggy said.

‘Yeah,’ Violet said. ‘People in the country probably do much better than them in the cities now that rationing is beginning to bite, but I think we’ve all got to agree that Marion makes the best of anything she can get hold off. She’s a wonderful cook.’

‘Hear, hear,’ the others said.

Marion flushed with embarrassment at the unaccustomed praise. ‘Don’t say that until you’ve tasted the cake,’ she laughed.

Marion had made the cake to celebrate both Bill’s homecoming and Richard’s sixteenth birthday, which had been the previous day. She had been saving her sugar and fat rations for weeks. Pat had got some eggs from an old man who kept hens on his strip of allotment down by the munitions factory, Polly had loaned out her biggest cake tin, and Marion had made a large jam sponge. She had even made mock cream, using dried milk, margarine and sugar blended together, which had been a tip from
The Kitchen Front
recipe programme. She used it to cover the top of the cake and she’d even found one of the candles she used to put on birthday cakes when the children had been small, for Richard to blow out.

When she carried it out to the table that evening there were roars of approval. Bill declared it a culinary masterpiece and there wasn’t a crumb of it left by the time everyone rose from the table.

That night, Bill climbed awkwardly up the stairs
and got into bed beside Marion, delighted that the bed was bolster free, as it had been when he was home on embarkation leave. He remembered his rage when Marion had first installed it on the advice of her mother after the birth of the twins. In his opinion, putting a bolster in the bed was like saying he had no control over his carnal desires, but he had swallowed his anger lest he upset Marion further. In fact, he had asked the doctor if there was something he could use to prevent pregnancy, and had been told there was and that he could buy them in any barber shop. He really needed to discuss what the doctor had recommended, and bugger the Catholic Church in its stance on contraception, but Marion was always too embarrassed to discuss sexual matters.

That night, though, after climbing the stairs, his leg was throbbing. Going any further than cuddling together was beyond his capabilities, but just to enjoy each other’s closeness was wonderful.

He was unaware of the dream he had a few hours later, which woke Marion. She saw her husband writhing on the bed, his lips moving as if he was speaking to someone, though there was no sound, and her heart contracted in pity for what Bill had gone through.

Even the visit from her parents the following day went better than Marion could have envisaged. They both shook hands with Bill and even Clara was civil. Eddie said sincerely that he was really
pleased to seeing Bill looking so well. For a change he had news of his own: he had taken on an allotment.

‘Daddy, you dark horse,’ Marion said in surprise. ‘You never said a word.’

‘Well, I only decided yesterday after I heard this bloke on the wireless talking about saving our ships, and I thought about how nice it would be to have home-grown vegetables and that. I went to enquire about putting my name down for one, but the upshot was they had one going and so I took it on.’

‘Good for you,’ Bill said. ‘What’s it like?’

‘Overgrown,’ Eddie said. ‘Fellow that had it died last year and his family didn’t tell the allotment people until his subscription came up for renewal. Forgot, I suppose. Anyroad, it looks as if he wasn’t able to do much before that either. Be all right, though, when I’ve licked it into shape.’

‘I told him that it’s madness,’ Clara snapped. Turning to her husband she continued, ‘You work full time, for God’s sake, and you’ll do your back in with all that heavy digging, not to mention what you might be doing to your heart. Who d’you think you are? Superman? You ain’t no spring chicken.’

‘Don’t mean I have to be put out to grass,’ Eddie said, bristling in annoyance.

For once, though, Marion thought her mother had a point. ‘Come on, Daddy,’ she said. ‘There ain’t no need for you to kill yourself either. The
kids finished school yesterday for seven weeks. Jack and Tony can give you a hand to do the digging through the week and any really heavy stuff the bigger ones can do next weekend.’

‘Sure they’ll not mind doing that?’

‘Course they won’t,’ Marion said confidently. ‘None of them will mind. Anyroad, as far as Jack and Tony go, you would be doing me a favour. Both of them have too much energy than is good for them and that, together with too much time on their hands, is a recipe for disaster.’

‘Yeah,’ Bill said. ‘You keep them hard at it, Eddie, and it might turn Jack off his latest harebrained idea of putting himself forward as a messenger if the bombs come.’

‘A messenger!’ Clara exclaimed. ‘But he’s only …’

‘Eleven next month, as he pointed out to me,’ Bill said with a grin. ‘He said it like it was some great age, you know.’

‘But what put such an idea in his head?’

‘I would guess the bike that he said messengers are given is the real lure.’

Clara gave a snort of disapproval.

‘Of course, he won’t be let do it; he’s too young,’ Bill said, ‘but knowing Jack, he would lie about his age. He is half a head taller than our Tony, and if they weren’t that bothered about checking … Well, let’s say I would feel happier if he had something else to do instead.’

‘Yes,’ agreed Marion, ‘because where he goes
our Tony usually follows. If they think that working on the allotment is helping the war effort in some way, then they’ll be even keener.’

‘And of course it is,’ Eddie said. ‘“Dig for Victory” is what everyone is saying now.’

‘Ah, said Marion wistfully, ‘if only victory was that easily won.’

Jack was stunned when even his father forbade him to think of being a messenger. Polly and Pat were such easy-going parents that until now Jack had got away with most things he’d wanted to do. It was a shock to him that on this issue his parents stood firm. He saw the dream he had of cycling around the roads in the teeth of a gale would have to stay a dream.

‘I can’t believe that you’re so unpatriotic,’ he said to his father.

‘You can level many things at this family but not that,’ Pat said, angered at Jack’s words.

‘If you want to do something for the war effort,’ Polly put in, before Jack had time to answer his father, ‘do what Auntie Marion suggested and help your granddad on the allotment.’

‘How can growing a few potatoes help the war effort?’ Jack said disparagingly.

‘I’ll tell you how, my lad,’ Pat said unusually firmly. ‘Merchant ships are being sunk every day. You know that as well as me. These unarmed ships are doing the dangerous job of bringing food into Britain, and when ships are sunk that food, which
the merchant sailors have lost their lives for, is lying at the bottom of the ocean. So it’s important, if we are not to be starved to death altogether, that we grow as much food as possible. Be in no doubt about it, Jack, helping your granddad is definitely also helping the war effort.’

Jack understood every word his father had said and, being Jack, threw himself wholeheartedly in growing as much as he possibly could. Tony, being Tony, tried to match his cousin in the effort he put in.

It was Bill’s greatest desire to get better as soon as he could and so he worked hard at his daily physio sessions. The doctors were delighted with him, so much so that on Wednesday of that same week he came home from his session with a stick rather than a crutch. His mental state, however, was a different matter. The images he had seen at Dunkirk continued to haunt him and he had many disturbing nightmares. He had no recollection of these in the morning and when Marion tried to talk to him about them he was less than enthusiastic.

‘Look, Marion,’ he said at last. ‘I did go through it, and there’s no good me telling you anything else, and I suppose the memories do disturb my sleep, but there’s nothing you or anyone else can do to help me cope with that.’