Rising Summer (30 page)

The baby arrived several hours later, the hospital recorded the birth, and the certificate was subsequently
issued
by the registrar in Brighton to Leonard and Edith Hardy. The baby was a boy and was registered as Timothy Edward. They all returned to London a week after the birth. Edith and Leonard happily took the infant to their home in Lewisham, for Edith had told friends and neighbours months ago that she was expecting. Aunt May stayed a week with them, saw the delight her brother and sister-in-law had in the baby, and then went home to her parents in New Cross, relinquishing all claim on the child. After all, it was still in the family.

She and her parents visited and she watched it grow into a healthy three-year-old boy. He was with her parents one Saturday afternoon when Leonard and Edith were braving the Christmas crowds in London’s West End, buying presents. The train carrying them to New Cross, where they were to pick up the boy, hurtled into collision with another and they were among the tragic casualties.

‘The rest you know, Tim, except for the fact that I always stuck to being eighteen at the time of your birth. I felt, she said, that if you ever did find out you were my son, I just didn’t want you to know I was a silly silly schoolgirl at the time and to think of me as young and tarty. I wanted you to think more of me than that, so I invented that soldier and a romance with him to make you think he was your father if you did find out I was your mother. Have I hurt you by telling you all this? I hope not because of all you’ve meant to me during our years together. Take care. All my love, Aunt May.’

But she wasn’t my Aunt May. She was Mum. I’d have been tickled pink if I hadn’t had the operation on my mind. The date on the letter meant it had taken place three weeks ago. I wouldn’t know whether she had come safely out of it or not until we got to France and then any letter from her or Bill would be delayed because of our move from Italy. I was sick at the thought of carrying my worry about with me for an indefinite time, sick to my eyebrows.

I should have found Kit’s letter a consolation, because it was so warm and affectionate. Absence can loosen ties and change feelings, but there was no change in Kit’s. The Allies were going to win the war, she said, there was no way they couldn’t and it will all be over by Christmas. She was making the best kind of plans for the wedding and for our future. She was due for some well-earned leave, she’d had none for months prior to D-Day and for weeks since. She was going to write to my Aunt May and arrange to call and meet her. Keep the mail coming, she said, I worry if there’s too much of a gap.

That was a bit heart-breaking, her intention to call on Aunt May – my newly-confessed mother – at this moment in our lives. She might, in any case, receive no answer to her letter. She might never receive one. The realization made it difficult to feel consolation in all that Kit wrote.

I opened the third letter. The troopship, crammed with men and their equipment, was under way. Minnie had written, young Minnie, the girl who had gone off me because I hadn’t been any real help to her when she’d
wanted
to be my girl. She wrote hoping I was well, that her mum and dad wanted to thank me for my letter and had meant to write back, but they weren’t much good at writing letters. She said they were still going strong, that some nosy person from the Ministry of Food had been round to see her dad about him registering as an egg producer, would you believe. Her dad had talked to him until the nosy parker didn’t know if he was coming or going, but he still left her dad a form to fill in. Then Mr Ford had come home on leave and Mrs Ford was going about looking very pleased with life, especially as Mr Ford had put his foot down with young Wally Ricketts and given him a thick ear. Minnie gave me other bits of news about the village, just in case I was interested, she said, although she didn’t suppose I was. Still, her mum and dad wanted to be remembered to me. She signed herself, ‘Yours truly, M. Beavers.’

M. Beavers? She really had gone off me. I felt a twinge, but it was hardly important now. Aunt May. No wonder her one mistake had taught her to rate behaviour.

We were on the move south of Falaise and in the heat of August. We halted to await further orders. The Germans were in retreat, the skies relatively clear, the fading
Luftwaffe
looking for new landing grounds. I’d had a letter from Kit. She hadn’t had her expected leave, she’d been transferred to American Headquarters in London and was working round the clock. But she’d written to my Aunt May she said and was waiting for a reply.

I was waiting myself for a letter from home. None had come.

A supply truck from Brigade arrived in the middle of the afternoon, when we were brewing up by the roadside in Eighth Army fashion. Among other things, the truck brought delayed mail. In that mail was a letter from Bill, weeks old.

‘Dear Tim,

I’m glad to write to you, old son. What a turn-up for the book as we used to say in my outfit and your Aunt May’s just beginning to see the funny side of it herself. It’s a strain on her stitches. She’s had her appendix out. That was the cause of it all, her appendix, nagging, niggling and giving her gip, but I don’t know how the devil the doctor and the hospital didn’t cotton on to it. What a lot of blind old Aunt Sallies, they need things being chucked at them.

When I received your reply, just before your aunt went into hospital, I guessed you were thinking the same as me about what was wrong with her. I asked some questions after the operation and it seems it wasn’t until the surgeon opened her up that they found the trouble. Her appendix was a mess, to put it bluntly. What luck they took her in when they did, another week would really have been serious. It was a close-run thing, Tim, believe me. But she’s sitting up now, well, near enough she is and by tomorrow I think she’ll be as lively as a cricket. But they won’t discharge her until they’ve taken the stitches out, which will be in a few days.

I let her know I’d written to you, spilling the beans about her operation and she said she’d written to tell you herself, after all. Then she said she shouldn’t have told you anything and looked upset. I said not to worry, that it was right for you to know, that you wouldn’t have liked it if you’d been kept in the dark. But she had a quiet five minutes about it and then visiting time was up.

Well, Tim, I know the news will cheer you up, it’s cheered me up a hell of a lot. Good on you, old son, keep after the Jerries, you’ve got them on the run now.

Sincerely, Bill.’

I felt Aunt May – she still came to my mind as Aunt May – hadn’t meant she shouldn’t have told me about hospitalization. She meant, I was sure, that she shouldn’t have told me her life story. But with the operation to face and suspecting the worst, she’d gone over the top for once in her adult life. She’d be fretting now because she’d told me I was the son of an unwed mother, a schoolgirl at the time. God, Minnie as a schoolgirl had frightened me.

One thing I could tell this mother of mine, one thing that was quite true, that I wasn’t in the least upset about how conventional society would see me. She was alive, she’d only had her appendix out and I had an extraordinary giddy feeling at knowing she was my mother. Who wouldn’t?

‘Bombardier Hardy!’ Captain Marsh was shouting at me. ‘What the hell are you doing?’

‘No idea, sir. What am I doing?’ I was dancing on top of a Bren carrier.

Major Moffat broke through ranks of grinning, dusty men and looked up at me. ‘Gone off your clever head at last, have you, Bombardier Hardy?’

‘Only for the moment, sir. News from home. A very close relative of mine had a baby.’

‘Get down, you clot,’ he said. I climbed down. ‘You pancake,’ he said, ‘I’ll chop your legs off next time you behave like that.’

‘Yes, sir. Still, it was good news.’

Life was worth living again. The war wasn’t over yet, not by a long shot, but Kit was right, there was no way we could lose it now.

In France, Frisby felt much nearer to Cecily than in Italy and Cecily was still faithful. Moreover, she felt she belonged really to our tight little island. Remembering her paternal grandmother’s maiden name was Martin and that she had been born in Somerset, she had been to Midsomer Norton, the birthplace, and actually discovered the graves of her grandmother’s parents, and her aunt and uncle. She was tickled to death and she told Frisby in one of her many letters that she felt this gave her a rightful stake in the buttercups and daisies of England.

‘How about that?’ asked Frisby, having related the news.

‘You realize what it means, don’t you?’ I said.

‘Don’t get funny,’ said Frisby.

‘It means Cecily’s a romantic, a genuine woman and you’re a lucky old sweatbag.’

*

A letter from Aunt May herself, at last, which I received at the beginning of September. I’d written to her after receiving the glad tidings from Bill and I’d told her at length that the only thing that mattered to me was the happy fact of knowing she was me mum. That’s it, I said, nothing else is important, nothing is a worry to me. But I suggested we should keep it to ourselves. After all these years, what was the point of turning her background upside-down? You know and I know, I said, nobody else has to know. It’s our secret and it’s one secret that’s in the happy file. I asked was it that and the suspected nature of her illness that kept her from giving Bill his answer? If so, do some more thinking.

In her reply, Aunt May poured forth her regrets for telling me her story. She felt it couldn’t possibly have made me happy. It was a selfish thing to do. Yes, she had thought her illness was going to kill her and she didn’t want to go to her death without giving herself the natural pleasure of letting me know she was my mother. So many times she’d wanted me to know that, especially as our life together had been of a kind to make her proud of me and in the end she had given in to selfishness and told me. She hoped I’d forgive her and yes, she agreed it would be our own secret. But she asked if I thought she could marry Bill with a clear conscience.

I wrote her another long letter and put her mind at rest. I might have said I knew now why she had been sympathetic about poor Edie Hawkins, but I didn’t.

COLONEL CARPENTER WAS PROMOTED
in September, when we were moving up with 30 Corps and he disappeared into Brigade HQ. Major Moffat was given command of the regiment and elevated to the rank of colonel. Sergeant-Major Baldwin became the Regimental Sergeant-Major.

Colonel Moffat immediately reorganized RHQ. He arrived at our battery bivouac one morning and was out of the Bren carrier almost before it stopped.

‘You, that man there!’ he shouted.

That was me, in my shirt sleeves. ‘Sir?’ I said, arriving in his presence and saluting him.

‘Get your kit,’ he said. ‘And where’s God’s gift to mixed-up American females?’ Frisby’s caring attachment to Cecily and her problems had never been a secret.

‘He’s writing a letter to one of them, sir. It’s the first chance he’s had for a week. I’ll fetch him.’

‘Stay where you are. Just fetch your kit. You’re moving to RHQ, where I can keep an eye on you before you start flogging the regiment’s rocket launchers to Stalin. That goes for Romeo Whatsisname as well, your hitman. You’re both promoted to sergeant, God help me.’

So Frisby and I moved to RHQ, where things should
have
been more comfortable, but weren’t. Colonel Moffat didn’t like anyone looking comfortable, not when there was still a war to fight. He was quite prepared to win it on his own, never mind that Monty had the same idea. Frisby and I, grateful for our promotion, went along with the necessity of being mucked about. In any case, we didn’t have to suffer the hazards of the infantry and the tank crews.

Mail deliveries became fairly regular and letters from home kept coming through. Aunt May was going to marry Bill. Was it possible I could get leave so that I could give her away? If so, she and Bill would arrange a date to coincide. Oh, and she’d finally met my American love, Kit. An officer, for goodness sake, but a lovely young lady and so friendly and talkative. You didn’t tell me she was an officer, Tim, you said sergeant. Still, I could see what you mean about her being efficient, you can tell she is. And so on.

In one letter, Kit asked if I still had a good supply of chits. If so, she hoped I was using them to help the Allies win the war. But I wasn’t, she said, to use them to ingratiate myself with Frenchwomen. Some hopes.

When 30 Corps advanced in Belgium, the welcome was rapturous. Subsequently, Monty’s advance took us over the border into Holland. In Eindhoven, the people showered us with flowers. Colonel Moffat, every inch a conqueror, received more than flowers. Trapped by a score of delighted Dutch ladies, he was smothered with kisses and bosoms. He was rescued by a charming Dutch war widow with smooth blonde hair. When we halted for the night just outside the town, he was prevailed
upon
by the lady to billet himself in her house. He put a smart military face on the arrangement by making the house his temporary headquarters. At ten o’clock that night, he disappeared from sight. He reappeared at eight in the morning. By arrangement, I was outside the house, having arrived in a Bren carrier to pick him up. I watched the widow saying goodbye to him, her smooth hair a morning-gold, her smile soft. She really was charming.

Colonel Moffat heaved himself in beside me. ‘Get going,’ he said.

‘Had a good night, sir?’ I enquired. The widow was looking on, her smile a little wistful now.

‘Is that your imagination getting to work, sergeant? Just get going.’

Still, he did salute her as we moved off.

I’d written to Aunt May to tell her to go ahead and get married. There was no home leave coming up. I received her reply, saying she and Bill would wait. Another few months wouldn’t matter and they both wanted me to be there.

The winter held up the Allied advance. So did the Germans. In December, the Ardennes offensive by the Nazi hordes took the Americans by surprise and their touchy generals had cross words to say when Eisenhower put cocky Monty in charge of the battle. But Monty did his stuff and the line was straightened out eventually. Our feet were freezing. After Ardennes, 30 Corps broke through, liberating Holland completely and went for the Rhine. By this time, Hitler was aiming flying bombs at
England,
but Churchill had the bit between his teeth now and so did the UK.