Keep the Home Fires Burning (48 page)

‘Oh, is that all?’ said Sarah, with a giggle as she kneeled down beside him and put her arms around him. ‘That’s the conventional way of doing things. Let’s be a little bit different. Now what did you want to ask me?’

Even Sam smiled. ‘You are great, Sarah. Do you know that?’

‘Yes,’ said Sarah cockily, ‘though it is nice to be told on a fairly regular basis. But I’m sure that wasn’t what you were going to say.’

‘No, it wasn’t,’ Sam said with a laugh. Then he said, ‘Sarah Whittaker, will you do me the honour of becoming my wife?’

‘Yes, yes, and a thousand times yes,’ Sarah said, and the passion of their first real kiss took them both by surprise and nearly had them both overbalancing onto the floor.

Flushed and slightly breathless, Sarah helped Sam back on to his seat and he said, ‘I’m not the same religion as yourself. Will that matter?’

‘Not to me.’

‘But your mother? The priest?’

‘Mom has always known you aren’t a Catholic, but I don’t think she sees that as a major problem.’

‘Will the priest have something to say?’

‘Undoubtedly. He has an opinion on anything and everything, and his views are usually at variance with everybody else’s, but Mom can cope with him. She did it before when Richard missed Mass when he had been out fighting the fires the night before in the Blitz, and she will do it for me. She was more worried about your blindness.’

‘Did she think you were throwing your life away, like mine did?’

‘Maybe a bit at first,’ Sarah admitted. ‘Though I think she was mainly concerned with how I’d cope and that. But then she said to me that she would much rather I marry a man of my own choosing. That’s when I told her that my life would be nothing without you in it, and then she sort of sent her blessing to both of us.’

Sam sighed. ‘That’s a big relief. But I still think that we must wait for the war to be over before we can plan our wedding.’

‘That could be ages,’ Sarah protested. ‘Why must we?’

‘It won’t be that long,’ Sam said. ‘Really, it can’t now, and we must do this right. I must have your father’s permission.’

‘We could write to him.’

‘We could, but no father worth his salt is going to give a blind serviceman he has never met permission to marry his daughter, especially when there is no reason for haste. It might be different if I were being posted somewhere, but we have all the time in the world.’

‘And you have your Captain Sensible hat on.’

Sam laughed. ‘If you like. One of us has to. And,’ he continued, adopting a mock pompous tone, ‘you still have the impetuousness of youth.’

‘Yes, and this impetuous youth might just brain you in a minute.’

‘Don’t do that,’ Sam said. ‘This is much nicer,’ and he took hold of Sarah’s hand and pulled her onto his knee, and this time when their lips met it was as if a fire had been lit inside them and they gave themselves up to the pleasure of it.

Sarah came home ecstatically happy to find that no one was a bit surprised at her news, though Peggy said, ‘Doesn’t mean we are any the less pleased just because it was semi-expected.’ And
then she kissed Sarah and added, ‘And there is no one I’d rather have as a sister.’

‘And you’ll be good for Sam, and make him happy, because you’re made for one another,’ Violet said.

‘I’m so glad that you came to live with us,’ Sarah said, catching up the hands of both girls.

‘Many times I have said that,’ Marion said. ‘And we’ll all miss you when you’re gone.’

‘We might not be gone very far, though,’ Peggy said.

‘I thought you would be going back home?’

‘There’s nothing for us there,’ Violet said. ‘Anyroad, we like it here. I mean, I know that we will have to leave the drop forge. There’s little enough to do there now, and the men coming back will likely want their old jobs back And we know too that we’ll be competing with returning servicemen and -women for anything else, but we still think we’ve a better chance of getting something here than back home.’

‘The only stumbling block was finding somewhere to stay,’ Peggy said. ‘Then last Sunday, when you were washing up in the kitchen, your dad said we could stay with him,’ Violet said. ‘He has that big attic and that would suit us down to the ground. We’d be company for him too.’

‘Oh, you’re right, that would be just perfect!’ Marion cried. She knew that the girls would look after her father as well, and as he got older she did worry about him living alone. ‘But,’ she said,
‘my father’s house is only back-to-back. It opens directly onto the street, but there’s no indoor toilet, and no bathroom at all.’

Peggy laughed. ‘And what sort of house did you think we had in the country? Lap of luxury, this was to us, when we came here. But whatever job we get we won’t be getting the money we got in the drop forge and so we’d have to find a cheaper place than this. Anyroad, you’ll want your own house back when Bill and Richard come home.’

‘Just now, though, we have a wedding to plan,’ Marion said, putting her arm around her daughter. ‘I am so happy for you.’

‘Are you really, Mom?’

‘Yes,’ Marion said emphatically. ‘That isn’t to say I won’t worry about you, or wish both for your sake and his that Sam wasn’t blind. I won’t tell you either that love conquers all, because it wouldn’t be true. Sometimes marriage has to be worked at. But I will say that neither are you happy apart from one another. You belong together and so I’m happy for both of you.’

‘I am so glad about that,’ Sarah said. ‘There is no rush to plan anything, though, because Sam says he has to ask Dad’s permission, and in person.’

Marion laughed. ‘So why the long face? It’s the way things are done. It just shows that Sam has manners.’

‘Mom, we don’t even know when the war will end, never mind when Dad will be demobbed.’

‘Well, that’s just the way things are,’ Marion said with a shrug.

‘And meanwhile you can write down Sam’s memoirs,’ said Peggy with a laugh.

‘Plenty of time to do that, though,’ Sarah said, ‘cos I can’t visit tomorrow.’

‘Oh, yes,’ Peggy said. ‘They’re doing some work on his eyes.’

‘Seeing if there’s any point in operating, is how Sam put it,’ Sarah said. ‘It’s all to do with how much of the cornea was burned off in the explosion.’

‘Nice if he could see something, however slight?’

‘It would be great,’ Sarah said. ‘I think he just doesn’t want to get his hopes up.’

‘Mind you, you haven’t got many notes written,’ Violet said, skimming through the notebook that Sarah had tossed on the settee.

‘I don’t need it really,’ Sarah said. ‘I only take the notebook in case Sam says something specific so that I would be accurate. When Sam is telling me something I become so engrossed that I would probably forget to take notes anyway, but I don’t forget what he says ‘cos it sort of becomes engrained on my mind. Like, the other day, he was telling me about liberating the French towns and that, but today he said outside of the towns the roads are often booby-trapped with land mines, or there could be snipers placed to pick them off one by one.

‘Just before the explosion he was talking to one man who was really shaken up. He was a despatch
rider. They have motor bikes and are used like scouts to check the roads and areas ahead, often working in twos. Well, this man and his mate were riding along through a German forest and, before retreating, the Germans had stretched thin wire between two trees on either side of the road and it had sliced this man’s mate’s head clean off. He managed to duck in time.’

‘Ugh, that’s horrible.’

‘It is, and not likely to be easily forgotten.’

‘So are you going to write that down?’

‘Yeah,’ Sarah said. ‘I’m going to write down everything he tells me as long as he doesn’t mind.’

When Sam told Sarah and Peggy that the doctor said there was no point in doing any operation or further treatment for his eyes, Sarah was sad for him and thought it was wise of him not to have raised his hopes up. Peggy, however, knew her brother well and guessed that wasn’t the whole story, but that he would say nothing unless she got him on her own.

He was tickled pink, however, that Sarah had written down the things he had told her about.

‘So you don’t mind at all?’ Sarah asked.

‘Mind? Why should I mind? I think it’s a jolly good idea to have some form of record. One day I hope we might have children. If my son should ask me what I did in the war I can show him what you’ve written down. No, you go ahead with it if you want to.’

Sarah was glad to hear that assurance from Sam though his reference to children embarrassed her a little in front of Peggy. But she told herself not to be so silly and the rest of the visit passed off really well. Peggy thought Sam nearly back to his old self and, despite his blindness, looked better than she had ever seen him. She left about fifteen minutes before the end of visiting time to give Sam and Sarah time alone, but she still wondered what the doctor had actually said to Sam. There had been no opportunity to ask him, and she never got much time with him on Sundays. She would have to have patience but she was determined to get the truth out of him at the first opportunity.

The doctor popped in to see Sam that day just after the women left, and he picked up the handwritten pages Sarah had left and asked what they were.

‘Sarah asked me to talk about my war experiences when my sister told her about those horrific nightmares and flashbacks I was having,’ Sam said. ‘She thought it might help because when her father was traumatised after being rescued from Dunkirk, talking his experience through with a relative eased his nightmares.’

‘Well, something has helped yours, all right,’ the doctor said, ‘because they were becoming a nightly, sometimes a twice nightly, experience and you haven’t had one at all for a few days.’

Sam grinned. ‘I know. I’ve been sleeping like the proverbial baby.’

‘I’m glad you made it up with your girl anyway,’ the doctor said. ‘You had words, didn’t you?’

‘How do you know that?’

‘Oh, no secrets here,’ the doctor said. ‘Some of the others on the ward told one of the nurses, and they told me.’

‘Well, it was me being stupid,’ Sam said. ‘And I was so miserable without her that I often wished I had died alongside my companions. It was Sarah writing to me that brought me to my senses and now I have asked her to marry me and she said yes.’

‘Oh, congratulations,’ said the doctor. ‘That’s wonderful news.’ And he remembered Sam’s sister saying that the girl that Sam had once thrown over would not care a whit that he was blind. It seemed she was absolutely right.

‘Course, we can’t make plans to marry yet,’ Sam said. ‘I want to do the job right and ask her father’s permission, and he’s in the Forces.’

‘Will he give it?’

Sam made a face. ‘I don’t know. He’s bound to have misgivings, as any father would, and that’s another reason why I want to become as independent as possible before I leave here. Being blind is a bugger, and I don’t want Sarah having to run around after me. I want a wife, not a nursemaid, and I want her father to see that too. As to the future, well, I don’t know what’s going to happen there.’

‘Then you are in the same boat as the rest of us,’ the doctor said. ‘But in the meantime your Sarah has written down your experiences very well.’

‘She said when I told her things it sort of painted pictures in her head,’ Sam said. ‘And she tried to remember exactly what I said so that it was my voice and not hers. She just said she thought things that I’d experienced shouldn’t be forgotten.’

‘She’s right,’ the doctor said. ‘And I have an idea. I have a man in here who has lost both legs and he’s very depressed.’

‘Understandable, I’d say,’ Sam said. ‘Poor sod!’

‘Of course it’s understandable,’ the doctor said, ‘but unless his depression is controlled, he will never recover totally. His wife told me, though, that he used to be a really good artist, just pen-and-ink stuff, but I haven’t been able to get him interested enough to do anything. If you don’t mind, I’ll get these typed up and give them to him to read, and see if that will stimulate him. The starkness of pen and ink will be the perfect background to the things you describe.’

‘Do what you like, Doc,’ Sam said. ‘And if it helps the poor bugger, all to the good.’

Sam said nothing to Sarah about the doctor’s proposal, thinking it might fizzle out to nothing in the end. As part of his own therapy over the following week he explained many battles to her and even told her his own account of Dunkirk. Sarah became dearer to him as each day passed and he was glad that his parents eventually realised that.

By Saturday Sarah had saved some of her sweet coupons to buy some bull’s-eyes for Sam as Peggy said they were his favourite. Not finding them in Aston, they decided to look in Sutton Coldfield before making their way to the hospital. Peggy glanced at her watch. ‘It’s nearly the start of visiting time,’ she said. ‘Shall I go up to the hospital and keep Sam company till you get there?’

Sarah knew that Sam hated her being late. It was hard for him to pass the time and he looked forward to her visits, she knew, but then Peggy got little enough time with him on her own and
so she said, ‘Yes, if you like, Peggy. Tell him I’ll be up as soon as possible.’

It was the opportunity that Peggy wanted and she hurried as fast as she could to the hospital.

‘Where’s Sarah?’ Sam asked when he realised his sister was there alone.

‘Buying sweets for you,’ Peggy said, ‘so we haven’t got long. She’ll be here in a minute, so tell me quick, what did the doctor really say about your eyes?’

‘God, Peg! Are you some sort of witch?’

‘No, I’m just a concerned sister who knows you very well.’

‘Well, the whole thing was absolutely bizarre,’ Sam said. ‘Apparently, there’s nothing wrong with my corneas at all.’

‘Then what …?’

‘I know, I’m really as confused as you,’ Sam said. He ran his fingers through his hair, a sure sign that he was puzzled. ‘The doctor said it was something they call hysterical blindness. I tell you, I wasn’t very pleased. It sounded as if I was making it up. Either that, or I had some form of madness. I mean, hysterical, I ask you?’