Bombers' Moon (35 page)

Seventy-Eight

I saw Hari coming towards the farmhouse and prepared myself for – well I didn’t know what, but I realized the meeting would be difficult, perhaps even hostile. She didn’t knock, but opened the door and came straight to where I was sitting near the window, Michael’s hastily scribbled note, reread a hundred times, on my knee.

‘You know,’ I said, and heard the challenge in my voice. She stood over me, Hari, my sister, her cheeks flushed, her red hair tossed around her face. She looked beautiful. How could I compete with her?

‘Jessie had the kindness to tell me.’ She shook back her hair. ‘How could you tell Jessie and not me, Meryl, how could you?’

I stood up to face her, determined not to get angry. ‘My husband is coming back from Germany, he’s coming home and if I chose to tell his mother that’s my business.’

‘Michael would expect you to tell me.’ She sounded sure and my heart nearly failed me.

‘Why didn’t he write to you then, and not just me?’

‘He had your contacts to help him, didn’t he? They would hardly expect him to write to anyone but his wife, would they? They probably stood over him to make sure he wasn’t going to betray them.’

It sounded sense to me and the sense of euphoria that swept over me whenever I held the paper Michael had written on vanished.

‘Yes, they would expect him to write to his
wife
and not his “one-nighter”.’

‘He told you we only had one night?’

‘Of course he told me, one night when we lay half asleep after making love; he told me it was the biggest mistake of his life.’ So he had but not in the way I said it. Michael regretted taking Hari’s virginity with so little thought for her future, he felt he’d taken advantage of her innocence. I hammered the nails home. ‘He wished he’d never done it.’

Hari’s cheeks were suddenly pale and I felt sorry for her. I nearly took her in my arms but then she spoke.

‘At least I had him first.’ It wasn’t the first time she’d told me and it hurt like hell.

I retaliated like a child. ‘Aye, and he made all his mistakes with you, experimented with sex as boys do. He came to me a man full grown, knowing his own mind and his own body.’

‘I could have had his child.’ Hari was losing now, her lips trembled and like a tiger I went for my weakened enemy.

‘But you didn’t have his child! I did, his lawful wife, I had his son, carried him in my womb, brought him safely back home – a legitimate child of a true marriage.’

Hari retreated to the door. ‘I won’t give up, Meryl, Michael is mine, he’ll want to be with me. We can have children too, lots of them, you don’t have the monopoly on motherhood you know.’

She slammed out of the house and I sank back into my chair near the window, hating myself, hating Hari, and unwilling to feed my now-crying child until all the pain and venom had drained from my trembling body.

A week later I stood on the platform at Swansea Station and waited for the train to puff into sight. It would poke its sparking, shooting nose round the curve of the land and pull up beside me, and Michael, my beloved Michael, would step out. And then what?

I’d left the baby with Jessie, who had a few cryptic words to say to me before I left, words that did not reassure me. ‘He’ll decide where his future lies,’ she said sagely, ‘Michael is a man now and only he knows where his heart is.’

I heard the clip-clop of heels and saw Hari coming along the platform. She was wearing a red coat and new, shiny red shoes identical to those Kate had worn that day, so far away now when I’d sat under the table and stared out at the world in fear of dying under a bombers’ moon. My sister and I didn’t look at each other but she stood resolutely at my side as though asserting her rights.

The gush of steam alerted us both and the train steamed round the bend spitting sparks into the grass at the side of the rails and setting up little fires. I felt one of the sparks had ignited in me too. I longed for Michael to be in my arms, safe and well and mine. But would that happen?

People gushed out of the train, disgorged on to the platform and then drifted away to disappear like the smoke from the train. And there he was.

Michael stood for a moment, staring along the stretch of platform between us. I thought of a film I’d seen: sand, blue seas, lovers running to each other, arms wide. But it was Hari doing the running.

I was unable to move, still watching a film unwinding as Michael’s arms closed around my sister. His head bent and he was kissing her. I noticed he looked bedraggled, his hair was too long, too thick, his jacket was threadbare, his feet were shod in shabby shoes. One of the soles flapped like a tongue as he came towards me.

He was coming towards me. Hari, I saw, was standing with her head sagging on her chest and she was crying.

He held me close. His lips were warm and searching on mine. ‘My darling wife,’ he said, ‘I’m going to spend the rest of my life telling you how much I love you and I do love you, you funny little thing, so efficient, so straight, so brave. I’ve loved you since that night in the barn when I cuddled you and you slept in my arms. Then you were only a child and I didn’t acknowledge my feelings, I was afraid to confront them. I fear I made Hari a substitute for you and I’ll always regret that.’

We clung together for a long time and a great glow of happiness filled me. And then I remembered my sister. I looked at her; she was so smart in her red coat and red shoes and the thought flitted through my mind that red shoes never were lucky.

Hari came towards us, bravely forcing a smile, and I loved her so much in that moment. ‘Thank you, sis,’ I said, my eyes full.

‘Come on then you love birds.’ Hari spoke cheerfully. ‘Michael, aren’t you going to offer your sister-in-law a cup of tea before you take your wife home?’

She squeezed my arm and together we left the platform – me, my beautiful sister, and the man I loved more than life itself. My war was truly over.