Bia's War (3 page)

“Then one day, when Simon was
about a year old, I went to the butcher’s to buy some pork for our
tea.” Nana continued. “Simon liked to eat pork and I even
remembered that William liked pork crackling, so I would go to the
best pork butcher in the town, Dennison’s on Normanby Road. I’d
left Simon at home with his father because William was on night
shift that night and I only expected to be about ten minutes. There
was no one else in the shop when I got there and Dennison’s eyes
lit up when he saw me. He had the false impression that I thought
he was attractive in some way, but he couldn’t have been further
from the truth. He looked like one of the pigs that he sold; fat
and greasy and smarmy. He chose that day to ask me to kiss him and
when I refused, he said some terrible things to me while he was
serving me and I was furious with him. I probably over-reacted, but
I found him so repulsive that I was almost physically sick at the
thought of him touching me. I grabbed my meat, threw the money at
him and ran out of the shop, sobbing because I was so angry. When I
got home, William wanted to know what had upset me so, stupidly, I
told him.

“On his way to work that night,
William called in at the shop and threatened to call the police if
Dennison ever came near me again. Dennison wasn’t happy with that
because he’d been in trouble with the police the year before for
fighting in one of the public houses. If he’d been caught again, he
could have gone down for both things and that made him hate William
so much.”

“But why didn’t William just
thump him for trying it on.” Victoria asked. “Why threaten to go to
the police about it?”

Nana smiled. “Cos William wasn’t
a big man and Dennison was built like a barn door – as broad as he
was high. William was a physical coward and I think that made the
pig butcher so angry with him. He could have dealt with a man
threatening to hit him, but not one who threatened the police.
William didn’t tell me what he had done, but a busybody who lived
in one of the houses near the shop made a point of telling me a
couple of days later. Of course, I told William it was a stupid
thing to have done and I warned him that Dennison would get his own
back on William, but he didn’t believe me. He thought he’d acted
like a man and that I was belittling him by arguing. Anyway, it
didn’t matter what I said to William, it was too late, the damage
had been done.”

“Why?” Victoria asked. “Perhaps
Dennison would have thought twice about it if he thought the police
might arrest him.”

Nana Lymer sighed. “That wasn’t
the way his mind worked.” She said. “He was a bully and had
frightened people all his life with his size and his aggression. He
could cope with the threat of physical violence because his size
and manner normally frightened others off, but he couldn’t cope
with a threat hanging over him which wouldn’t be alleviated by
aggression. He despised William from that day onwards. Things might
have turned out very differently if William hadn’t acted as he did,
but we’ll never know what would have happened. The damage was done
and all three of us paid for that one deed, in different ways.”

“What ways, Nana? What happened
after that?” Victoria asked, desperate to hear the rest of the
tale, but fully aware that Nana Lymer was looking very tired
now.

“Take these breakfast pots away,
pet and would you get me another cup of tea?” Nana asked. “This
story-telling is thirsty work, you know!”

“I’ll go and make your tea and
then I think you should have a rest, Nana.” Victoria said. “I can
wait a while for the rest of the story, until you’ve had a little
sleep, anyway.”

“You’re a good girl, Victoria.
I’ll just rest for a while and then we’ll go on with the tale. I
reckon it’s doing me good to get it out of my system and I want to
get it finished before I die.”

“You won’t be doing that for a
long time, Nana. I won’t let you!”

Nana Lymer smiled at her
granddaughter’s retreating back, fully aware of just how long it
was going to take to get through all that had happened to her
during the Great War. But she did feel a lot more settled in her
mind now that she was facing what had happened rather than trying
to shove it to the back of her mind and pretend it had happened to
someone else.

Chapter Two

Nana Lymer slept after her cup
of tea and Victoria’s parents were home from the funeral and back
working in the shop before she awoke, hungry for her lunch and keen
to get on with the tale. When Bia brought her lunch to her, she
asked her if Victoria wanted to sit with her again, nervous that
the girl might not be interested in what had happened to her
Grandmother over fifty years before. She needn’t to have worried,
however, because Victoria was as keen to hear the story as Nana was
to tell it and she arrived at 1.30pm, armed with another cup of tea
and eager to move on.

After she had reassured herself
that her Nana was rested enough to carry on with the tale, Victoria
made herself comfortable on the little chair next to Nana’s bed and
turned enquiring eyes on her grandmother. Nana Lymer screwed up her
face in concentration and then began.

“It was just before Christmas
1913, when William threatened the pig butcher with the police. I
remember it particularly because I didn’t set foot in his shop ever
again, so we had poorer quality meat for our Christmas dinner that
year. I swore I would find a better butcher, even if I had to walk
to Normanby or Eston to find one, so that we would have a decent
dinner for Christmas 1914, but that was a promise I wasn’t able to
carry out. The Great War intervened and life changed so
dramatically, the quality of meat wasn’t high on anyone’s list of
priorities.”

“William and I settled into a
new phase of our relationship. I concentrated on Simon, talking to
him, playing with him and showing him what wonders our world has to
offer, while still keeping house dutifully for William. He played
with Simon and took him for long walks,

but William and I rarely spoke
to each other. Simon was too young to understand that there was a
huge gulf between his parents, but I worried about what would
happen when he was old enough to understand. What would I tell him?
How would I explain the strained atmosphere in our home? Would he
compare his home life with a child who had two loving parents?”

“But then that Grand Duke
somebody or other got himself shot in some foreign city and
suddenly we were at war and it was so different from any other war
which Britain had fought in before. It wasn’t happening thousands
of miles away in a foreign country which nobody had ever heard of,
it was happening just across the English Channel and people said
that was only about twenty miles away. That made it so much closer
and so much more frightening. I can’t explain properly, but people
worried that the Hun might invade England and we hadn’t been
invaded for centuries. Simon was just under two years of age and
had no idea what was happening, but he could sense the tension that
everyone in Britain was feeling at the time and he was often
fractious and bad tempered.”

“At first, when war was
declared, our lives didn’t really change, but then men in uniform
began appearing on the streets and newspapers and advertising
hoardings began asking for volunteers for the army, and so many men
went off to war. I was sickened by the jingoism and I couldn’t help
but wonder how many of those young men were going to come home
again. The way the papers had it, our heroes were just going to
land in France and the Low Countries and the Hun were going to give
up and run home and so our lads would soon come back. But fighting
meant men being wounded or killed, whole families being deprived of
their loved ones and it wasn’t long before we saw some of the
results of that fighting.”

“I don’t recall when the first
wave of the wounded landed back in Blighty or how long that was
from when war had been declared, but it happened pretty quickly. I
remember being glad that William wouldn’t have to go. He was a
married man with a child and at first, they were only asking for
single men and it was still volunteers they were asking for, but,
as time passed and the war wasn’t won quickly (as the media had
told us it would be), there began to be talk of introducing
conscription. I was worried, but I told myself he was married, he
was in a job that produced iron and steel for the war effort and he
was older than so many of the ones who were volunteering. I was
trying to convince myself that he wouldn’t be called up and that,
somehow, we would get through it together. Then, one night, he came
home late from work and dropped his bombshell on me. He had
volunteered!”

“Volunteered? But why? He didn’t
have to go, did he?” Victoria was taken aback by this
revelation.

“No, he didn’t have to go to
war, but he wanted to.” Nana Lymer continued. “He wouldn’t explain
to me why he had done what he did; he wouldn’t talk about it at
all. We had lost the knack of communicating with each other the
year before and even this didn’t bring it back to us. It didn’t
matter how much I pleaded with him not to go, how much I begged him
not to and, in the end, threatened him. He was determined he was
going to go and ‘do his bit’ for King and country and I just had to
accept it. I railed against it, asking him what were Simon and I
supposed to do while he was away, what were we supposed to live on?
How were we going to pay the rent and buy food? Did he want us to
die, starving on the streets? He said he would send his army pay
home and that we would manage without him. After all, hadn’t I
managed everything about our lives for years? Why would this be any
different?”

“He was very bitter then, Nana.
He thought you wouldn’t miss him at all.” Victoria said, showing an
understanding far beyond her age.

“Oh yes, he was a bitter man,
there was no denying that and he was also a very stubborn man. I’ve
noticed that trait in other people who are basically weak. They
acquiesce to everything for years and then dig their heels in over
one point, even when they know that they are wrong, and they won’t
let go of it. William was like that over this enlisting. He made
the most important decision of our married lives without me and
that decision changed the course of all our lives. Every terrible
thing that happened after he enlisted happened because he decided
he was going to go to war and he wouldn’t listen to me.”

Nana paused while she drank some
of her tea, giving Victoria the chance to say something, but
Victoria was silent. She was trying to imagine how helpless Nana
must have felt when William announced his decision and she couldn’t
change his mind. How did Nana survive those four years until
William came back at the end of the war? Then she realised that she
didn’t know if William did come back. Had he died on a battlefield
somewhere and Nana had married Granddad Sam? Had Sam accepted Simon
as his own and, if so, what had happened to Simon? Victoria
realised there was a lot more still to be told.

Nana finished her tea and took a
deep breath to begin again.

“So he left Simon and I and went
and enlisted in the Yorkshire Battalion, along with the other
thousands of husbands, brothers and sons enlisting in other
battalions, across the whole country. There were thousands of
women, children and old men who lined the streets of the town and
waved and cheered and sang the National Anthem as their menfolk
marched past in their cobbled-together uniforms, some of them
carrying weapons, but most without, cheering as they marched away
to war. I wasn’t there. I wasn’t going to be part of the frenzy
which was whipping up patriotism to such an extent that children
were trying to enlist. Boys, some as young as twelve, were flocking
to the Enlisting Stations, swearing that they were old enough to
fight for King and country and, sometimes, they were accepted and
the lies ignored. Some of those young boys fought on the
battlefields of France and Belgium and died before they reached the
age they had claimed to be when they enlisted.”

“They marched off to war, my
husband among them, all declaring they would teach the Hun a lesson
or two and still be home in time for Christmas. I didn’t believe a
word of it. I knew the war wouldn’t end that quickly. I didn’t
waste my time thinking about it, because I had a child to support
and I wasn’t going to sit at home waiting for William’s
non-existent Army pay to arrive. For goodness sake, there was a war
on, was it likely that the army in the field would get paid
regularly like they did at home? It was a different world and so I
had started making plans as soon as I realised that William was
going to leave us and I wasted no time in setting those plans in
motion.”

“But what did you do with
Simon?” Victoria asked. “You couldn’t go out to work and leave him,
he wasn’t old enough. Did your mother look after him?”

Nana smiled at Victoria’s
concern for the child.

“No, I had no intentions of
leaving Simon with a babysitter. He was my child and I loved him to
distraction and I wasn’t going to miss any of his childhood by
farming him out to various relatives while I went out to work. My
plan was to keep Simon and me together.”

“First of all, I went to see Mr
Vine in his office on Station Road. He was a local solicitor, but
he was also my landlord and I needed his permission before I could
put my plans into action. I knew he had a soft spot for me, from
when I had seen him when I first rented the house and I intended
using his liking for me to get my own way.”

“The day William marched off to
war I presented myself at Mr Vine’s office, wearing my best black
skirt and a hand-embroidered white blouse. I hoped I looked
business-like, because that was the impression I wanted to give
him.”