Bia's War (15 page)

“‘I’m back, Bia and back for
good this time,’ he shouted, as he gazed round at my customers.
‘Come and give your war hero the cuddle and kiss he deserves and
I’ll tell you tales of the war that you won’t believe.’”

“I came out from behind the
counter and made my way through the customers towards him. They
were all watching us very closely, to see how I would take his very
obvious disability, so I didn’t disappoint them, flinging my arms
around his neck and weeping copiously into his shirt collar, as
though I’d been longing for his return since the moment he had set
off for France.

“‘What happened to you?’ I
asked, when he finally let go of me and used his one remaining arm
to steer me towards the door through into the kitchen and
privacy.

“‘I’ll tell you later,’ he
replied, turning and winking at the women who were all hanging on
his every word. ‘We’ve got some catching up to do, if you get my
meaning.’”

“A roar of laughter met this
remark and I smiled sunnily up at him, all the while cringing
inside at him saying something so crass to me. I was a very private
person and that sort of comment didn’t suit me at all. We passed
into the kitchen where Annie and Hannah were working alongside each
other, making pies at the large kitchen table. Simon was sitting on
a stool at the end of the table, vainly trying to steal some of the
brambles they were putting in the pies. He stared in surprise at
the one-armed man in uniform but, once again, he didn’t recognise
his father, although William didn’t seem to be aware of that this
time. He busily ushered Annie and Hannah out into the shop.”

“‘Take the little scrap with you
and treat him to one of those sugar mice I saw in a bottle on the
shelf,’ he said, ‘And remind him that his daddy has come home for
good this time.’”

“He closed the kitchen door
against the stares of the customers and immediately dropped the
bonhomie, glaring at me where I stood next to the kitchen
range.”

“‘You’ve moved up in the world
then, Bia?’ he sneered. ‘Got your own property and a nice little
business now, eh? Hoped I’d never make it home again, did you? Did
you think the Hun would do for me and that you’d never have to see
me again?’”

“He was closer to the mark than
he realised. I had rarely given him a thought since the last time
he had come home, but when I had thought about him, I had hoped
that he would never come back from the war. My mind had always
baulked at the idea of him being killed, I wasn’t that insensitive,
but I had hoped that he would never come home. I hadn’t put this
hope into words, refusing to think about what could happen to him,
but I didn’t want him back and it now looked as though that hope
had been dashed. He was back for the long term, because even our
man-starved army wouldn’t take him with only one arm and obvious
damage to his legs. I wasn’t sure how many of these thoughts were
showing on my face, so I busied myself opening the oven door to
check on the pies inside and to hide my eyes. His next words pulled
me up sharp.”

“‘You could have written to me,
to let me know that you had moved house. I told Pinkney’s lad to
take me home, only to find that someone else was living in my house
and I had to ask where my wife had moved to. Can you imagine how
stupid that made me feel? I’m a returning war hero and I don’t even
know where my wife has gone. You didn’t want me to know that you’d
moved house, because you hoped that I wouldn’t be able to find you
when I came back. Admit it.’”

“I was furious with him, firstly
because of his attitude but mostly because he was too close to the
truth for comfort. I hadn’t wanted him to come back and I didn’t
know how I was going to cope with having him around all the time.
It was obvious from the minute he got off the station cart that he
wasn’t going to be able to go back to work in the iron works and
the thought of having him getting in my way all the time was
anathema to me. But I was going to start how I meant to go on with
William; I was my own woman and he needn’t think that he was going
to rule the roost in this house.”

“If I’d intended that you would
never find me again, do you think it likely that I would only have
moved a few streets away from where I was living before? Don’t you
think I would have left the town and moved miles away so that you
would never be able to find me? I could have changed my name, moved
to another town and you wouldn’t have known who or where I was, so
you can stop using that tone of voice with me.”

“‘I don’t like having to be told
where I live by a snotty little boy!’ he whined. ‘In future, you
will discuss all your plans with me before I decide what we are
going to do. Is that clear?’”

“I wasn’t having any of this and
he needed to be told pretty sharpish.”

“I told you last time you came
home that this is my house and my business. I’ve worked for them,
I’ve earned them and you don’t have anything to do with them at
all. If you think you can come home and start shouting the odds
about what I can and cannot do, then you’ve got another think
coming. I make my own decisions and that’s the way it’s going to
stay. Do you understand me? Or do I have to make it clearer for
you?”

“I couldn’t stop myself from
shouting at him. I knew he’d come home wounded and plenty of people
would say he was a war hero, but he wasn’t going to have any
control over me or my businesses, a lesson he was going to have to
learn pretty quickly. I wasn’t the delicate little wife who
depended on her strong husband for every little thing. I was an
independent woman with a head for commerce and I wasn’t prepared to
give that up. But I wasn’t too sure where I stood legally and if
William got it into his head to hire a lawyer and fight to control
my life, I had a terrible feeling that I was going to come off the
worse.”

“He drew himself up to his full
height, ready to start laying down the law to me, but the effect on
his weedy frame, which hadn’t thickened out any, was just to make
him look like a bantam cock and I couldn’t help laughing at his
ruddy-tempered face. This infuriated him and he started to pull off
his jacket, struggling with the buttons, hampered by the loss of
his arm.”

“‘Look, look what I’ve lost,
fighting for King and country in that hell hole in Flanders. I’ve
fought like a lion for freedom for all; I’m not fighting you at
home as well. You’ll do as I say or, God help me, I’ll beat you to
within an inch of your life. Do you understand me?’”

“He was screaming by the time he
got to those last words and spittle flecked across his cheek and
onto his uniform jacket. I knew he was very close to losing any
self-control he had left, but I wasn’t frightened of him. I had
faced down Butcher Dennison, who was as big as a barn door, this
little, weedy bantam cock wasn’t going to get the better of me.
Something else I had learnt in my battle with the pig butcher was
never to give any ground to a bully so I took the initiative
immediately. I snatched up the large knife which Annie had been
using to cut up the meat for the pies which were in the oven at
that moment and shook it under William’s nose. I was as coldly
calculating as I had been when I had pushed Dennison into the tin
bath and my voice was barely above a whisper when I spoke.

“‘Don’t you dare threaten me,
William. I didn’t make you enlist in the army that was your own
idea, so it’s not my fault that you’ve been injured. You left us to
sink or swim without you and now you are complaining because we
didn’t sink. Would you have preferred it if you had come home and
Simon and I had starved to death while you were away? Would that
have made you feel better or more manly?”

“I think he actually raised his
remaining hand to strike me, but I shook the knife under his nose
again and he suddenly slumped into the fireside chair, all the
brashness draining away from him. The tears started to course down
his cheeks and he fumbled with a handkerchief to wipe them
away.”

“‘Of course I wouldn’t have
wanted you to starve to death,’ he said as he rubbed his face with
his hand, ‘but I didn’t expect that you would have made such a
success out of running a shop. I thought you would have been
desperate for me to come home and provide for you and Simon, not
managing so well without me. I feel as though you don’t need me
anymore and I don’t like it. I’m the man in this family and I
should be the one who runs the business, not you. You should be
waiting for me to come home every night, with a good meal ready for
me and wanting to know what I’ve done during the day.’”

“‘That little scenario is all in
your head, William.’ I told him. ‘I’ve never played the helpless
little woman role and well you know it. I’ll be dammed if I’m going
to start playing it now. I was the one who started this shop. I was
the one who worked bloody hard to make it successful and, if you
can’t cope with that idea, then it’s just hard luck. I have no
intentions of giving up what I’m doing. Lucky for you that I can
provide for Simon now that you’ve lost your arm, otherwise we’d be
in a big hole again, wouldn’t we? You should be able to do some
work in the shop, even with only one arm, so you should still have
your self-respect, but don’t you ever threaten me again. Do you
hear me?’”

“‘I won’t,’ he murmured, still
struggling to keep the tears from falling. ‘I’ve had a terrible
time over there, Bia. You’ve no idea how dreadful it is to be up to
your thighs in mud and dead bodies, waiting for a sniper to find
your position and shoot you when you least expect it, listening to
the cries of the wounded laid out in No Man’s Land, screaming for
their mothers to come and save them. I was so afraid all the time
that sometimes I couldn’t move when the orders to advance were
given. I couldn’t make my legs support me, let alone make them run
into a deathly barrage of gunfire.’”

“‘Why did you do it, William?’ I
asked him. ‘Why, if you were so frightened of being a soldier, why
did you go and enlist when you didn’t have to? You could have
stayed at home and then none of this would have happened.’”

“As I said this, I realised that
I wouldn’t have wanted him to stay at home. If he hadn’t enlisted,
I wouldn’t have started the shop or started buying houses with Sam
Lymer, everything would have been the same as it had been before
the war and I would have been bored with it. The thought of going
back to that kind of life filled me with dread and I realised how
long my own journey had been. William’s reply took me by surprise,
not only because I had forgotten what I had asked him when the wave
of realisation had flooded over me, but also because of what he
said.”

“‘You were always the strong one
in our relationship, Bia, and I always thought you despised me for
my weaknesses. I thought that if you saw me as a soldier and knew
that I was brave, then I could live up to you and not feel
inadequate any more. But, when I came home last time, you had
started a business and were doing very well without me and it just
made me feel even more inadequate than ever. And I wasn’t even a
brave soldier, because I was so scared all the time. I wanted to
lash out and it was you I chose to turn on, like the stupid idiot I
am. This whole mess is all my fault, you’re right, and now I’ve
spoilt everything.’”

“The tears started to course
down his cheeks again and he was lost in a morass of self-pity and
self-loathing, which I found stomach-turning and pathetic. I
couldn’t stop myself from giving him a shake and telling him to
pull himself together, even though I knew that that probably wasn’t
the best way to deal with him. I couldn’t pretend that I felt sorry
for him because he was a grown man, he should have realised that
war wasn’t going to be easy and pleasant. He was reaping what he
had sown and now he had to get on and make the best of what life
had to offer him.”

“I was thunderstruck by his
revelation that he had only enlisted to prove himself to me and
that he had known that I was the stronger of the two of us. I had
never analysed our different strengths and weaknesses and hadn’t
realised that he had, coming up with conclusions which I would
never have drawn. An inferiority complex seemed a very strange
reason for enlisting as a soldier, but it was what he had done and
now we both had to live with the consequences.”

“So we started the next stage of
our lives together, but it was a very uneasy truce that we had
called between us. William was often in great pain from the wounds
to his legs and his missing arm and was very difficult to live
with, although he was lucky that the shop produced enough income
for us to be able to afford pain relief for him. I found him plenty
of work he was capable of doing in the shop, while trying to keep
him away from the financial side of the business, but he was
regularly uncivil to Annie and Hannah and sometimes downright rude
to customers. He had very restless nights when his legs pained him
and the missing arm seemed to cause him equal pain and I spent many
a night making up the doctor’s painkilling draughts and providing
hot drinks. When he wasn’t in pain, he often woke screaming in the
night having had nightmares about his times in the trenches and,
again, I would provide hot drinks and try to settle him back down
again.”

“Those were the nights when he
often woke Simon and Annie, although Peter and Hannah both managed
to sleep through all but the worst of them. If Simon was awoken,
then he had to be soothed back to sleep, because his father’s cries
frightened him badly and I often wondered how I managed to stay on
my feet, never mind work a full day in the shop, the lack of sleep
was so draining. If it hadn’t been for Annie and Hannah, I think I
could have gone under at that time, but they both helped me so
much, even to the point of ignoring William’s rudeness when he
snapped at them.”