Keep the Home Fires Burning (42 page)

Bill nodded. ‘More than likely.’

‘Fellows I was with say that you usually get embarkation leave beforehand.’

‘I think they were trying to keep it all hush hush,’ Bill said. ‘Couldn’t risk anything getting out if every man were to have leave. Anyroad, how
could
they give embarkation leave to this lot?’ Have you ever seen so many men in one place before?’

‘No, nowhere near,’ he said. ‘People say whole villages have been commandeered and the villagers have had to live elsewhere. Do you think that’s true?’

Bill gazed around and imagined how the lives
of the people who lived there must have been before the army moved in. The ploughed fields that might have been full of new crops had been reduced to a muddy slurry and the lush green meadows that probably once housed placid cows were churned up by so many military vehicles and equipment, packed in wherever they could find space. Once, fishermen would be out on the sea, sparkling before him in the sunshine, but the war had put paid to that.

They had marched through sleepy villages with cobbled streets, old and interesting churches and quaint houses, many with roofs of thatch and ringed around the village green. Places where one generation would follow another and life wouldn’t have changed that much in a hundred years or more. He owned that their lives might have been changed somewhat in the carnage of the Great War, they had quite possibly lost sons, brothers and fathers but that war had been finished over twenty five years before and he imagined in this simple community, life would have eventually settled back into an even keel again. Until now that was.

What disruptions it would be to the villager’s lives to leave their homes and their livelihood. It would break up their communities and Bill felt suddenly saddened by the thought that life for them would never be the same again.

He sighed before turning to his son. ‘I suppose it’s true, because I heard the same thing.’

‘Yeah, but, Dad, you talk about it all being hush hush and that, but we’ll never get all these men and all the equipment over the Channel and into France without being spotted,’ Richard said. ‘Isn’t it madness to even think of it?’

‘All war is madness,’ Bill said, ‘and it was you spoke about the risks people have to take in wartime. I suppose leaders have to take those sorts of risks as well. One thing I’m sure of, though, the Germans will be holding reception committees for us on the beaches. How we respond to that will determine the outcome of the war, I reckon, because there’ll be no second chances.’

‘It’s make or break then?’

‘Yes, son, I think it is,’ Bill said. He clapped Richard on the back. ‘And now I’m away to write my letters because God knows when I’ll have the time again.

‘Yeah, you have to grab any time you can in the army,’ Richard said. ‘I’ve learned that much.’

‘Then you’ve learned a valuable lesson,’ Bill said. Then he asked, ‘Have you ever regretted joining up?’

‘No,’ Richard said. ‘I know that I’m in the right place. This is a job worth doing.’

‘A job worth doing,’ Bill said to himself as he returned to his tent. His daughter, who had thought the same thing, now lay injured and quite possibly scarred for life in hospital. God Almighty! He thought that was a high price to pay.

By the end of May, Pat was out of hospital, with crutches, bound ribs and orders to rest. Sarah was recovering well from the operations on her pelvis.

Marion had received letters from Bill and Richard addressed to Sarah. She popped them in her bag to take in that day.

However she had only just entered the hospital building when she met Dr Lancaster, who told her that as the swelling had gone down on Sarah’s face, and the lacerations had healed better than they thought they would at this stage, they would be starting the skin grafts on her face the following week.

‘Where will you take the skin from?’ Marion asked.

‘From the back of the ear, for the facial burns.’

‘Does she know?’

‘Yes,’ said the doctor. ‘I popped in to tell her today. When I went into the room ten red roses had just been delivered for her. She has an admirer, I believe?’

Marion smiled. ‘A young man called Sam has been writing to her for nearly three years. He’s really the only one who would send her flowers. He’s a soldier, like most young men these days, and we know him a little because he’s the brother of one of my lodgers. Sarah swears he just thinks of her as a friend, but I’m not absolutely sure.’

‘I wish I had friends who would send me ten red roses,’ the doctor said with a smile.

‘Yes,’ Marion said. ‘His sister Peggy says he’s
driving her wild with questions about Sarah that she can’t really answer, never having seen her.’

‘And that situation can’t be remedied yet,’ Dr Lancaster said. ‘Especially as we are starting the skin grafting. The risk of bringing infection in is a real one, and that’s why Sarah will be allowed only a few visitors.’

‘But surely you’re not banning me too?’

‘Oh, no, not at all,’ the doctor said. ‘Sarah would really go into the doldrums if she were to see nobody. You will probably be instrumental in her recovery. I think we can safely say you and one other.’

Marion thought for a moment and said, ‘Oh, well, then, I suppose it must be my sister, Polly, for the others are at work all day.’

Dr Lancaster nodded. ‘I’m sure the two of you will do your best to cheer Sarah up.’

‘Yes.’ Marion pulled two envelopes out of her bag. ‘I have something else to please Sarah today: both her father and brother have written to her. I’d better go in now and give them to her, or she’ll think I’m not coming at all today.’

Sam had been totally shocked when he heard of Sarah’s accident, and it was brought home to him exactly how much he thought of her. If he couldn’t have Sarah in his life, he realised, then it wouldn’t really be worth living. He had been so distressed that he’d gone to his commanding officer and asked for a few days’ compassionate leave so that he could go and see her, but he’d been told all leave had been cancelled.

So the letter he wrote to Sarah to explain this was the most ardent that he’d ever sent her. He said that she was very dear and special to him, and she’d blushed when she had read it.

‘What lovely roses!’ Marion exclaimed when she went in the room.

‘Aren’t they?’ Sarah said. ‘I had a letter from Sam this morning as well. It was a lovely letter.’

She felt the heat flood her face as she remembered Sam’s words, and she was glad of the concealing bandages that hid her crimson cheeks.

‘The roses came afterwards,’ she said. ‘Wasn’t he lovely to think of sending them?’

Marion saw the dreamy looks in Sarah’s expressive eyes, and heard her soft voice, and she knew that whether Sarah was aware of it or not, she was in love with Sam Wagstaffe.

‘The nurses were impressed as well,’ Sarah said. ‘They said they’ll have to take them out at night because they use up the oxygen or something. But I don’t mind about that. I can hardly enjoy flowers at night, can I?’

‘No,’ Marion agreed, ‘and meanwhile the smell in the room is gorgeous. She bent to sniff the petals. ‘How are you feeling?’

Sarah shrugged. ‘Not bad. But they’re starting skin grafts soon, the doctor told me today.’

‘I know,’ Marion said and as Sarah’s eyes looked suddenly apprehensive she went on gently, ‘they can do wonderful things today with all the techniques they’ve learned. The doctor told me herself.’

‘Yeah,’ Sarah said with a sigh. ‘But I bet that she never said that they can work miracles.’

The twins were very upset when they heard that they were still not allowed to visit Sarah. ‘I don’t see how we would bring that much infection in,’ Magda said mulishly.

‘It really doesn’t matter what you think, Magda,’ Marion said. ‘It isn’t my decision, but the Hospital’s, and we have to believe that they know best. Sarah isn’t happy about it either because she’s missing you just as much, and she will probably be sick of the sight of me and Polly before long.’

‘We could write to her,’ Magda said. ‘I’m going to write tonight.’

‘Course we could,’ Peggy said. ‘As long as it’s cheerful, positive stuff.’

The result of this was that Marion had a bundle of letters to deliver from the twins and Peggy and Violet when she and Polly went to the hospital the following day.

‘Everyone all right?’ Marion asked as the two of them boarded the tram.

‘Never better,’ Polly said. ‘The hospital doctor thinks Pat may always walk with a limp, but that won’t kill him, will it? Anyroad, he isn’t going into munitions again, and the girls have no desire to go back either. They were proper shook up, and they lost friends too, and that takes some getting over. Most of the building is still unusable, in any case.’

‘And do the girls like the new jobs Orla got them? GEC, isn’t it?’

‘Yeah, in Electric Avenue in Witton,’ Polly said. ‘As you know, Orla’s been there since she left school and she was just waiting, she said, till she was sixteen to follow her sisters into the munitions, though she’s gone right off that now. Anyroad, luckily they got taken on together and all three are now working in the winding shop.’

‘Do they miss the money?

‘I suppose they do, but money ain’t everything, is it?’ Polly said. ‘Anyroad, the pay ain’t bad, and it’s a damned sight safer place to work. Added to that, these are jobs they can probably hold on to even when this bloody war is over and the men come back. Pat’s going to look for a job there, or somewhere similar, he says, as soon as they sign him off. Tell you the truth, I’ll be glad when they do. I’m used to him going to work now and it gets right on my nerves him being in the house all day.’

‘I bet,’ said Marion. ‘You can get nothing done with men lounging about the place. Come on, this is our stop. Let’s go and see if we can cheer Sarah up.’

Sarah first skin graft operation was scheduled for Tuesday 6 June, and Marion and Polly visited her the evening before. They wouldn’t be able to see her on the day of the operation. Her head was no longer bandaged – although her face still had dressings over it – and the long vivid scar right across
her head was red and angry-looking. The stubble on her head did nothing to hide it.

‘Does it look awful?’ Sarah asked anxiously. ‘The doctor wouldn’t let me see yet.’

Marion’s heart ached for her daughter and she fought to answer her without showing her own distress. ‘Well, whatever it was that hit you did a good job of it. It was a wonder your skull wasn’t fractured.’

‘I can feel the ridge all the way along,’ Sarah said, feeling gingerly with her fingertips.

‘It’s probably a bit swollen now,’ Polly said. ‘You know, after they messed with it taking the stitches out and that. Anyroad, your hair will cover any scar that’s left when it all settles down. You’ll probably have to have your hair cut in a shorter style to sort of match the hair that grows over the gash on your head.’

‘I’ve always had long hair,’ Sarah said. ‘It’s hard to think of it short.’

‘Oh, it might make a new woman of you,’ Polly said airily. ‘Sam will fall in love with you all over again.’

‘Aunt Polly, what are you saying? Sam Wagstaffe has never fallen in love with me, and I don’t think he would care whether my hair was long or short.’

‘Oh, I think he would care very much about anything that concerns you,’ Polly said.

Sarah stared at her aunt and her heart began hammering against her rib cage. She wondered if Polly meant what she had said or if she was joking.

But it appeared that she was only having a bit of fun because Marion, seeing her daughter’s slight agitation, said, ‘Show me a man that hasn’t got a viewpoint about anything and everything, because he would be a fairly rare specimen. So rare, in fact, that I have never actually met one myself.’

They laughed together and Sarah was able to relax because no one mentioned Sam again, though they talked of all and sundry, which Sarah knew was in an effort to cheer her up and keep her mind off what she had to face in the morning. She was grateful, because whenever she thought of the ordeal ahead, panic threatened to engulf her.

It was late when Marion got home, and she was having a drink before bed and telling the family how Sarah was when there was the distinct sound of planes in the air and she was thrown into panic.

‘Dear God,’ she cried. ‘After all this time. I have nothing prepared, and there’s not even water in the kettle. Peggy, will you carry the blankets down to the cellar? God, it’s bound to be damp after not being used for so long, and I doubt I have any paraffin for the stove, and—‘

‘Marion, they’re not German planes,’ Violet said, crossing to the window.

‘Not German …’

‘She’s right,’ Peggy said. ‘German planes have a distinctive sort of intermittent sound. God, we should know. We’ve heard enough of them.’

‘And there have been no explosions,’ Violet said,
easing the blackout curtain from the window slightly. ‘But there are hundreds of planes, all right.’

‘And you are sure they’re not German?’

‘Come and see for yourself,’ Violet said.

‘I will,’ Marion said. ‘But I’m going into the garden to see properly.’

‘We’ll come with you,’ said Peggy.

They were not the only ones outside. Many of the neighbours were standing watching as squadron after squadron flew over them, the drone reverberating in the night air. Deidre Whitehead’s father, who’d lived with his daughter since he had been bombed out the previous year, called over the fence, ‘This is it, I reckon. They’re emptying the airfields and the only reason for doing that is so they can protect the invasion fleet.’

Marion felt tendrils of fear trickle down her spine because she knew the old man was right. There could be no other reason for all the Allied planes to be filling the skies.

When the last planes were away in the distance, they returned to the house, but Marion took a long time to sleep. She knew this was it, the make-or-break that everyone was talking about, and she was mortally afraid for all of them.

The following morning Marion still had the wireless on when Polly came in. Marion was not surprised to see her sister.

‘Thought there might be an announcement or summat,’ she said to Polly, ‘though there was nowt on the news.’