Keep the Home Fires Burning (47 page)

The nurse began tentatively and then grew in confidence. The love that that girl had for Sam Wagstaffe could be lifted off the pages. The words tore into Sam’s heart and even the nurse began to cry. When she finished, she crushed the letter to her heart as she said brokenly, ‘If I was you, Mr Wagstaffe, I wouldn’t let that girl go, because a love like that only comes once in a lifetime.’

For a moment Sam couldn’t speak. He struggled to control his shuddering sobs and was aware of tears seeping from his eyes and soaking the dressings covering them. In the end, the nurse, against all regulations, put her arms around him, and when he was calmer and able to speak he said, ‘I need to send a telegram.’

‘I’ll see to it,’ the nurse promised.

Later that day a telegraph boy knocked on the Whittakers’ door. Only Marion and Sarah were at home, and Marion gave a cry of distress and her hand flew to her mouth when she opened the door and saw the boy there. Sarah, alerted by her mother’s cry, had followed her into the hall, her face blanched with fear as her mother took the telegram with trembling fingers.

‘It’s for you, Sarah,’ she said, and Sarah, greatly puzzled, ripped it open. There were only four words: ‘PLEASE COME. LOVE SAM.’

Sarah’s face was a beam of happiness as the telegraph boy said, ‘Is there any reply?’

‘No, no reply,’ Sarah said, and she shut the door and leaned against it with a sigh of happiness.

‘I must go to him,’ she said to her mother as she led the way to the living room. ‘You must see that?’

‘Of course I see,’ Marion said. ‘I’m not a monster, Sarah. The only reservation I had was because I didn’t want you to saddle yourself with a blind man, but I would rather you be with someone of your choosing, whatever his disability, than someone you didn’t care for.’

‘I would never marry a man I didn’t care for,’ Sarah said. ‘And without Sam my life is meaningless.’

‘Then your place is with him.’

‘But I won’t be able to see him until tomorrow because visiting will be over for today,’ Sarah said. ‘Oh, Mom, how will I manage waiting until then?’

‘I don’t know,’ Marion said. ‘Except by reminding yourself that you have the rest of your lives in front of you.’

‘Maybe,’ Sarah said. ‘I wrote to him, you know?’

‘Did you?’

‘Peggy sort of asked me to after she went to see Sam last Saturday,’ Sarah said. ‘She said that he has begun having nightmares and flashbacks and even started sleepwalking. Peggy suggested that I write and tell him how I really feel about him.’

‘Ah, these men sometimes suffer far too much,’
Marion said with sympathy. ‘I remember your father when he came home to convalesce.’

‘So do I,’ Sarah said. ‘Anyroad, I’ll go and see how things are between us, but until then I’d like to keep this telegram a secret, just till tomorrow.’

Marion looked at her anxious daughter, biting her bottom lip in consternation, and with a smile she said, ‘What telegram was that, then?’

Sarah was full of trepidation as she made her way to the hospital the next day. She had told no one and so Peggy had not been able to prepare her for what Sam looked like now that all the poking about in his body for shrapnel had been done. His face in particular was pitted and scarred, and his unseeing eyes, now uncovered, were a little unnerving.

When Sarah went through the gates of the hospital she saw that some of the inmates had taken advantage of the good weather and were in the grounds, and she tried to hide her shock at the terrible injuries many men were sporting. There were plenty dis figured in some way, and others with missing limbs walking with crutches, or in wheelchairs, being wheeled in the sunshine by nurses. She also saw a blind servicemen being led outside by a less damaged companion, but there was no sign of Sam.

Peggy had told her how to get to Sam’s room and she saw he was aware of her as soon as she stepped inside and he turned his head.

‘Sarah?’

She looked at him sitting on the chair beside
his bed and saw the number of red, angry-looking pockmarks and blemishes marring his lovely face.

‘What are you doing?’ he asked into the silence.

‘Studying your face,’ Sarah said truthfully, as she crossed the room to sit in the chair placed ready beside him.

‘Is it hideous?’ Sam asked almost fearfully.

Sarah heard the tone and understood it and so she answered nonchalantly. ‘No, it’s not bad at all. Looks sore, though.’

‘It is a bit, though it’s better that they’re all out,’ Sam said. ‘They say I’ll look better than this when the scars are all fully healed and start to weather in.’

‘Hospitals love those words “weather in”, ‘ Sarah said, and let her eyes meet Sam’s. It was hard to believe that he could see nothing, for those dark brown eyes looked just as she remembered them. She felt so sorry for him that never again would he see the world around him, nor would his eyes sparkle as they used when he laughed or smiled. But she kept those sad remembrances to herself. What she said instead was, ‘Mind you, they sometimes get it right. My face definitely looks better than it did.’

Sam fumbled for Sarah’s hand and, when she grasped it, he said hoarsely, ‘I prayed you would come.’

‘Of course I would come when you asked me to,’ she said with a smile. ‘Even if your manner of summons did almost send my mother into an apoplectic fit.’

Sam gave a rueful smile because he could well understand why the sight of the telegraph boy would strike fear into a person’s heart. ‘I’m sorry, I couldn’t think of any other way of contacting you quickly. I needed to know if you meant all those things you wrote in that letter.’

‘Every word.’

‘I don’t know what the future holds for me.’

‘None of us knows what the future holds,’ Sarah said. ‘And maybe it’s as well. But whatever the future, isn’t it better to face it together?’

‘Are you sure? Absolutely sure?’

‘Yes I am. Of course I am.’

Sam’s voice was still full of doubt. ‘You’re very young. My parents pointed that out to me as well.’

‘Does that mean that I feel any less?’

‘No,’ Sam said. ‘I don’t mean that, but I am many years older than you. I’m twenty-seven.’

‘Well, neither of us can help that.’

‘No, I know.’

‘Sam, will you stop fretting?’ Sarah said. She leaned forward and gently touched his lips with hers before saying, ‘Old or young, blind or not, none of this matters. What does matter is the love I have for you that is unshakeable. You talk of the future – well, mine is meaningless without you in it. If I lost you, as I thought I had, I didn’t really care what happened to me then. I didn’t really want to go on.’

‘Neither did I,’ Sam admitted. ‘I felt that I was doing the right thing for you. But when you were
gone from me my life seemed futile and I began to wonder why I’d been spared in that explosion. I was the only one, you know.’

‘Were you?’ Sarah’s voice was sympathetic. ‘That must have been hard to take.’

‘It was hard to cope with the fact that they were dead at all,’ Sam said. ‘I know that all soldiers are at risk, but we had been through so much and we were a tight group, just six of us and such good mates. Do you remember the roses I sent you?’

‘Of course.’

‘Well, they came from one of those men. See, all my mates felt sorry for me when I explained what had happened to you. One of them was having a pleasant little dalliance with a florist in Dover, and when he told her about us and what had happened to you he asked her if she could help and she donated ten red roses from her private stock.’

‘How kind of her,’ Sarah said. ‘They were the most beautiful roses. And how lovely of him to think to ask her.’

‘That’s the kind of men they were – kind and generous, every one of them – and we were laughing and joking just minutes before and then, bang, and five men lay dead.’

‘What happened to you?’

‘I was a little to the side and that probably saved my life,’ Sam said. ‘I was knocked unconscious, though, and fell into a pit. It was assumed I was dead and might have been if I had lain on the frozen ground much longer. It was the soldier
detailed to remove the dog tags from the others that noticed I was breathing. I knew none of this, of course. First I knew, I was in some field hospital wrapped up like a mummy and shouting like a lunatic.’

‘Was that because you couldn’t see?’

‘I didn’t know I couldn’t see then,’ Sam said. ‘The shrapnel hit my eyes, but there was a lot of blood in and around the eyes and so they had pads on them. No, it was because of the memories pulsating through my brain. It was when they were changing the pads that I realised I couldn’t see either.’

‘That must have been a shock.’

‘It was. But in a way I felt almost guilty that I had survived. Because I’m blind I can do nothing to fill my time, to try and forget, even for a short time, what has happened. And I’m afraid to go to sleep because of those horrific nightmares. I mean, D-Day, the invasion, was hailed as a success and I know it had to be done, but the cost in human life was colossal.’

‘Was it very bad?’

‘Bad enough.’

‘Tell me?’

Sam shook his head. ‘No. You don’t want to know.’

‘I want to know anything that involves you,’ Sarah said. ‘Don’t you know that?’ And then she grasped his hand tighter and urged gently, ‘Tell me, please?’

When Sam began to talk about nearing France that morning in the landing craft with the bombers circling overhead and the machine battery pounding them from the beaches, Sarah remembered how her aunt Polly said once he must be an Irishman underneath because he was a born storyteller, and he was doing it again, painting pictures in Sarah’s head.

She saw in her mind’s eye Allies blown out of the water before they had even reached the beaches their bodies, or sometimes only parts of bodies, floating in the water, one a man that Sam had shared a cigarette with before they had set out. She heard the mournful tone in Sam’s voice as he told her of the planes wheeling and diving, flak flying everywhere as the RAF sought to protect the hundreds of men trying to make their way through the water to the beaches with their guns raised about their heads. They were facing the clatter of machine guns, the booming guns on the ships, the whine of bullets and the crump and crash of the exploding bombs.

‘It sounds like hell on earth,’ Sarah said. ‘It must have been dreadful.’

‘Maybe I shouldn’t have told you so much.’

‘Oh, no. I think that you did exactly the right thing and I feel privileged that you did.’

‘I’ve been having those terrible nightmares again recently,’ Sam said. ‘That’s why I’m in a private room, but I suppose Peggy told you this?’

‘She did, and I’m not surprised. But now I’m
here and you can unburden yourself.’ And she heard Sam sigh as he put his arms around her.

‘Your father would never tell me things like that,’ Marion said to Sarah later that evening as they sat around the table and she had told the family where she had been and some of the things Sam had shared with her that afternoon about his impression of D-Day.

‘Sam hasn’t got anyone else,’ Sarah said. ‘There is no handy Uncle Pat to take him for a drink.’

‘And he would never burden Mom and Dad,’ Peggy said. ‘Nor me either when I only really get to see him on Saturday, and sometimes Sunday when I share him with everyone else.’

‘Don’t you mind hearing it all, Sarah?’ Magda asked.

‘It is harrowing listening to it,’ she admitted, ‘but then I tell myself that Sam actually experienced it, and that has to be far worse. I am going to write down what he tells me while the memories are still fresh in my mind because he tells them in such a vivid way I could see all he was describing in my head almost like snapshots. I shall try to recapture that style when I write his accounts down because what he has seen and experienced should never be forgotten.’

The following day, Sarah took a notebook to hospital. Sam was more than pleased to have her visit.

‘Ah, Sarah,’ he said with a sigh, and he kissed her lips. ‘You are good for me. I slept like a top last night.’

‘That’s maybe because you talked about the things getting between you and sleep.’

‘You could be right.’

‘Well, it’s just that sharing his troubles helped my father. Uncle Pat took him for a drink and got him to talk about the things haunting him because he wouldn’t discuss them with Mom.’

‘And I worry about telling you.’

‘Don’t,’ Sarah said reassuringly. ‘I have broad shoulders. Anyway, it was different for Mom because when Dad was better, he had to go back into the fray. You won’t have to. For you, the war is over.’

‘I should think it will soon be over for everyone.’ Sam said. ‘We were in Germany by January and it’s the fifth of April today. Anyone but Hitler would have surrendered by now.’

‘He’ll never surrender, not him.’

‘In a way I hope he doesn’t. Then I’ll take great pleasure in hearing that he has been hanged by the neck from a very long rope.’

‘That will please a lot of people,’ Sarah said with a laugh. ‘But how did the ordinary German people treat you when you reached their country?’

‘They were very subdued,’ Sam said. ‘Can’t blame them, I suppose. They knew they were on a losing wicket; totally different to the attitude in France …’ And he was off again and Sarah felt
as if she were one of the French, lining the streets, cheering a welcome to the advancing Allies freeing them at last.

‘There was so much relief,’ Sam said. ‘Some of them were nearly starving. The military handed out chocolates and sweets to the children.’ He smiled. ‘You should have seen their faces. And we had tins of meat for the adults. Those were the good experiences, the ones you keep in your head to remind yourself what you’re fighting for.’

‘I can see that.’

‘Now, enough of this war talk,’ Sam said. ‘You and I need to talk about things.’

‘What sort of things?’

‘Well, the first thing is this,’ Sam said, and he slipped off his chair and onto his knees on the floor.

‘Sam!’ Sarah cried, alarmed. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Damn this blindness,’ Sam said. ‘I’m trying to get on one knee to propose to you and I’m not sure that I’ll be able to balance.’