When the Bough Breaks (16 page)

It was the week following Kathie's visit to the lodge, in the early hours of Wednesday morning when Kathie half woke. She'd gone to sleep indulging the same picture in her mind as she so often did: the sound of familiar footsteps and she would look out of the window and see Den. So, half stirring, she knew she must have been dreaming when she heard someone coming up the garden path. But hark, what was that click? No, it must have been imagination; there was no other sound. Lying perfectly still, she strained her ears to listen She climbed out of bed and switched on the light, only then remembering to close the heavy blackout curtains.

That's when, almost frightened to death, she heard the bedroom door open.

This was no dream. Den was home. Wordlessly they moved to each other. His arms were strong, his mouth on hers banishing everything from her mind except pure joy. Neither the scratchy material of his uniform nor its unpleasantly disinfectant smell could mar the moment.

‘Fourteen days,' he whispered, ‘fourteen whole days.'

‘I would have waited up. Oh Den, you're real. I've dreamt it so often; but this isn't a dream. We'll creep downstairs and I'll find you some food.'

‘No, we'll just stay here. Is Jess OK?'

She nodded, unbuttoning his battledress top.

‘Just wait till she sees you! And Beth. Beth's a dear.'

His only answer to that was a grunt that spoke as clearly as any words.

‘Let's get to bed. I want to hear about everything,' he said, speaking in a whisper and starting to take off his uniform. ‘Hell of a journey. Crowded like sardines on the train; I sat on my kitbag in the corridor right from Paddington to Exeter. Blinds down, only that dim blue light lost in a fog of cigarette smoke. They've cut the evening country route bus or I would have been home hours ago. Got the local train to Deremouth. I thought, hang the expense, I'll get the station cab. But there wasn't one.'

‘Who brought you?'

‘Shank's pony. Walked the whole ruddy way. Damned war!' Then, his tone changing as with his hands on her shoulders he held her at arm's-length, looking at her, ‘Kathie, oh Kathie, you don't know what it's like to come home. Everything I want is here.' He looked remarkably manly despite being stripped to his army issue vest and underpants which defied any man other than one with a perfect physique to appear attractive and which smelt of the same disinfectant as his battledress.

Surprising herself as much as she surprised him, she tore off her nightgown as he divested himself of the offending undergarments. How often she'd dreamed of this; now he was here, he was real. She raised her hand to his naked shoulder. For four months while he'd gone through initial training he'd had no leave, they had come no nearer than voices on the telephone; surely he was as hungry for love as she was herself.

‘Kathie, oh God, Kathie, you don't know how much I've missed you – you, Jess, everything here. I'll turn the light out while you pull those beastly curtains back.'

A minute later, despite it being mid-January, he pushed the bottom window up and leant far out taking in great gulps of the crisp, night air.

‘Sniff the air, Kathie. Home. Tomorrow you'll know what it's like to have a man out there working.'

She came to stand behind him, holding her arms around him.

‘Tonight I want to know what it's like to have that man in here with me.'

Laughing softly he turned back into the room and drew her into his arms.

‘Fourteen whole days – and fourteen whole nights.' Then, after a brief pause and speaking softly, he added. ‘Kathie, the waiting's over. This is embarkation leave.'

‘No,' she whispered in disbelief, ‘not so soon. This is the first leave you've had. They can't send you abroad—'

His mouth covered hers, then still clinging to each other and she walking backwards, they moved towards the bed. That night their emotions were heightened by the thought of a separation so much more final than a posting to a camp somewhere in the same country. The future loomed before them, unknown and unimaginable. Only the present was real, familiar and precious.

Jess was beside herself with excitement when it was Dennis who woke her next morning. Standing up in bed she hurled herself into his open arms.

‘Dad's come home. Look Beth, this is Dad.'

‘Let's look at you, kiddo. My word, but you've grown. It must be because you're six.'

Jess giggled, nuzzling her face against his neck.

‘Silly Dad. Dad, this is Beth. She's never had a dad of her own, so she's going to share with me. Stand up Beth; come and let's all have a squeeze together.' Said with such certainty that the other two would be as pleased as she was with the situation, that she was at a loss to understand why neither of them made a move.

‘Hello, Beth.' Den forced a note of heartiness into his voice. ‘You're settling in, are you? I expect you're like me, looking forward to the day this bl—' He quickly substituted a different adjective from the one that came naturally to his lips. ‘Blessed war is over and we can all get back home.'

Beth shook her head. ‘I like being here with Auntie Kathie and Jess.'

‘And Fudge,' Jess threw in for good measure. ‘Did Fudge bark when you got here, Dad?'

‘I remembered in time and left my boots in the porch. He seems a nice enough puppy.'

Jess and Beth exchanged a look of satisfaction. At the back of their minds and never put into words had been the fear that he might say there was too much to do at Westways to keep a dog.

The breakfast fare was the same as any other morning: a bowl of porridge, a boiled egg, then toast and either jam or marmalade from the jar of preserves made before there was any thought of shortages. Yet, it struck Kathie that there was an underlying feeling of festivity. Only three weeks ago it had been Christmas, a time when she had been determined the house would be filled with that elusive spirit of joy; but being determined was a far cry from letting it happen naturally as it did that morning.

‘You know what, Dad?' Jess held her stubby first finger up in the way that told them she had had a bright idea. ‘Beth can't call you Dad if she calls Mum, Auntie Kathie. So, tell you what, Beth – you call him Uncle Den. OK? OK Dad?'

Looking uncertain Beth nodded. Kathie had come to know her well and she recognized just how much the little girl wanted a sign of approval.

‘That's a good idea, Jess love,' she spoke before Dennis even had a chance to make a grunt of acceptance. He knew he was being unfair, but it was beyond him to stamp out his niggling resentment that a fourth person at their table spoilt the image he cherished.

The morning ritual got back on track. The children were sent to rinse their hands after their meal, and then put on their coats, berets and scarves. Then, as every other day, at exactly twenty-five to nine they promised Fudge a walked as soon as they got home and were off to school. From the window of the kitchen extension Den and Kathie watched them scurrying along the lane, their pace never slackening despite the fact they were obviously deep in conversation.

‘She's a great kid,' Den mused. ‘The other one seems a bit slow.'

‘Slow she most certainly isn't. In four months she has come on in leaps and bounds. She didn't even know her letters—'

‘There you are then! It must be hard for teachers to have backward kids put in their classes. But Jess will help her.'

‘She reads as well as Jess does now and writes well too. She'd had no chance, poor mite. She and Jess are such – such
mates
.'

‘While you wash these dishes I'll take this tripe-hound up to the common. Then, just think, Kathie, a whole day out there getting my hands dirty in God's good earth.'

A whole day, then there would be another and another, but so soon they would all melt away. To shake off the devil of gloom and fear that threatened, she planted a quick kiss on his cheek and started to stack the plates. No shadow must be allowed to fall over the gift of a fourteen-day leave – not yet, not until the dreaded day when he had to put on that smelly uniform, not until all this was no more than a memory they must cling to until he came home from this nameless ‘overseas', home not just for leave but to slip back into the life he loved.

By the time Sally and Sarah leant their bikes against the shed just as the clock on the stable at the hall struck nine, Fudge had answered the call of nature and immediately been made to retrace his steps. Den was tinkering with the motorized digger and an oil can, and Kathie was pulling on her wellington boots. The working day at Westways had started.

On their way to school the girls had had to pass the greengrocer's shop where Jack Hopkins was bringing his boxes of vegetables to prop against a frame he had made for the purpose outside the front window.

‘D'you know what, Mr Hopkins? No, course you can't do. My dad has come home. He's home for a whole two weeks. I bet he'll bring the veg himself today.'

‘Well, Jessie m'dear, that's a bit of good news if ever I heard one.'

Jess nodded her head in a way that was almost regal, believing it conveyed to him how grown up she was. Then tugging at Beth's hand she started to run. ‘Come on, Beth, or we'll be late. Don't 'spect we'd be grumbled at, though, not when we told them about Dad.'

Jack Hopkins had been established at the greengrocery shop before Dennis turned his first sod of earth at Westways, and after twenty years he still thought of him as the young man he had been, just home from that other war. So, an hour or so later he called up the stairs to his wife, ‘Any chance you can hold the fort here for half an hour or so, Mabs, I hear young Dennis Hawthorne has got some leave. I'd like just to have the chance to shake him by the hand and ask him how he's been doing.'

‘Bet you he'll be here with the veg this afternoon. Can't see him making a holiday of a bit of leave.'

‘Ah, I dare say he'll bring the stuff. But there are usually people to be served at that time of day; there would be no chance for a chat. He's got nothing but women for company at his garden. That little lass of his ought to have been a boy, darned if she didn't. Got the makings of a real little tomboy if ever a child had.'

‘I'll see to the customers. Off you go.'

‘I'll go on my grid, so I shan't be above half an hour or so.'

If Dennis had been living at home when Fudge had joined the family, he would have been more careful. For the first few days when the children set off for school Kathie had reminded them to be sure the gate was properly fastened, just as she always reminded Nanny Giles. But all of them were careful and Fudge spent most of his time with his nose in the mesh of the netting that kept him shut away from the growing area.

‘There's Mr Hopkins from the veg shop coming up the path,' Sarah called to Dennis. ‘I bet word has got round already that you're home. Shall I let him through?'

So a minute or two later, sitting on a plank held between two upturned empty oil drums, the two men were soon lost in conversation. As Dennis listened to the familiar voice he thought as he had a hundred times in these last few hours just how much all this meant to him – the cottage, the smell of the earth, the challenge that had become part of his life, Kathie, Jess, all of it. If he felt that these things were the reason for his fighting, then there was no dragon he wouldn't have challenged. But what had the way he had spent the last months got to do with the things that really mattered? He held his packet of Gold Flake for Jack Hopkins to take one, then put one between his own lips and felt for his matches.

‘Your young Jess stopped on her way to school and told me you were here. Growing up fast is Jess. That skinny little evacuee kid hangs on her every word; I've watched them together. Your little lassie is a real leader.'

‘Being an only one, I dare say she's grown up faster than some. I hope always being with Beth won't hold her back.' The words were out before he could stop himself.

‘Likely it'll work the other way round. No sharper knife in the drawer than your Jessie. I shouldn't be smoking your fags. They're getting as hard to find as gold dust, and here we are only four months into the war. What do you reckon? Do you think we're going to beat bloody Adolf in quick time? Me, I'm frightened to look to the future.'

‘God knows how long it'll take. But rest assured we'll not give up till we've got him grovelling. I'm just thankful I'm being sent overseas at the end of my fourteen days, at last I'm going to have a chance to do what I've been training for.'

‘One war is enough for any man and you did your bit last time round.'

‘It was the silly sods who carved up the peace that caused much of the trouble.'

Puffing peacefully at their cigarettes the two men believed theirs was the wisdom. So the minutes passed until Jack Hopkins' conscience reminded him he had a business to run. Dennis walked with him to the gate and even then they seemed loath to put an end to the visit, but at last the greengrocer pedalled off down the lane while Den came back to pick up the thread of his morning's work.

‘Where's Fudge?' Kathie asked as she ladled the lunchtime soup from the saucepan.

‘What does he usually do when you're working?' Den asked. ‘The last I saw of him he walked off in a huff because I wouldn't let him follow me through that gate you put up in that “Charlie Harvey” net fence you ladies erected. And, by the way, that gate needs stronger hinges than those little things you put on it. I'll get some when I take the stuff into Hopkins later on.' He was looking forward to the afternoon trip to the village; often enough he'd imagined it. New to the task of keeping an eye on the puppy, he didn't consider it any cause for concern that the little creature wasn't watching Kathie's every movement as she passed soup bowls to Sally and Sarah. In truth he was put out by the fact that the midday break he and Kathie had always shared by themselves were invaded, as he thought of it, by a couple of girls from the village.