A Distant Dream (39 page)

May became unemployed when the parachute factory closed its doors to war workers and prepared to return to its former purpose. Her mother’s job at the Co-op would no longer be available to her when single servicewomen were demobbed and wanting their jobs back.

‘We’ll get the Pavilion rebuilt as soon as the compensation comes through,’ Flo said to May. ‘Then we’ll both have a job.’

‘It might be a while before we’ll be able to do it, Mum,’ warned May. She knew how much her mother wanted it, but they had to be realistic. Getting the country back to normal was going to be a huge and lengthy task. ‘They might not lift the restrictions just yet and materials will probably be short for a while.’

‘I know all that,’ Flo sighed. ‘But we’ll get it up and running as soon as we can.’

‘And meanwhile I’ll keep looking for a job,’ said May chirpily. ‘Nothing will defeat us now that we have peace.’

‘Nothing at all,’ agreed her mother.

As the victory flags went down, so the WELCOME HOME banners went up. All over London the dusty, damaged streets were warmed and brightened by them.

WELCOME HOME GEORGE appeared outside the Bailey home one day in the late autumn. Dot and May didn’t know what time he would arrive but they did know the day. It was a Friday. Now working on the switchboard at a canning factory, May went straight to the Baileys’ after work, because it seemed right that she should be there when he arrived.

She was inwardly quaking with a mixture of excitement and nerves, Dot was shaky and emotional too. Joe, who wasn’t old enough to understand the huge significance of the occasion but had been told that it was going to happen and he could stay up late, was looking out of the window, bored with waiting.

Then, just after they had come in for a break from their welcoming positions at the front door, there was the sound of the key being pulled through the letter box and a voice said, ‘I’m home. Anyone in?’ And there he was grinning and handsome as ever.

May stood aside while his mother greeted him by flinging her arms around him and sobbing for joy.

‘Is that him?’ asked Joe.

‘Yes, that’s him,’ said May. ‘Your daddy is home.’

‘Hello, son,’ said George, smiling and putting his arms out to the boy.

There was a silence while Joe stared at his father. Then he burst into tears and rushed from the room.

‘He’s overwhelmed, I expect,’ suggested May, almost physically hurting from the look of disappointment on George’s face. ‘I’ll go and see to him.’

‘No, I’ll go, May,’ said Dot thickly. ‘You stay here and look after George.’

May felt quite shy as she went over to him. ‘Welcome home, George,’ she said, slipping her arms around him.

‘It’s good to see you, May,’ he said, kissing her, but she sensed that his heart wasn’t in it.

‘And you,’ she said.

Dot re-entered the room looking worried. ‘He doesn’t want to come down and it’s very naughty of him. I’ve given him a telling-off,’ she explained. ‘I think he’s a bit tired. It’s been a long wait. He probably worked himself up over your coming home and got overexcited.’

‘Don’t worry about it, Mum,’ said George, putting on a brave face. ‘He’ll come round when he’s ready.’

‘It isn’t like Joe to be awkward.’

Feeling unusually distanced from what was essentially a family occasion and deciding that she probably shouldn’t have been at the Baileys’ house for George’s homecoming, May said, ‘Well, I’ll leave you to it then.’

‘Don’t go, May,’ said George, but he didn’t sound overly insistent.

‘No, please don’t,’ added Dot.

‘I think you need to concentrate on Joe,’ May insisted. ‘I’ll see you later on or tomorrow.’

Convinced that she was doing the right thing, she slipped quietly from the house. The relationship between George and his son was a vital and delicate thing and George needed to deal with it himself, without the distraction of having her around.

The rift between them that she had sensed during his last leave now seemed like a reality, especially as she had felt a holding back when they had embraced. She hoped desperately that it was all in her imagination, because after all the years of loving him, rejection now would be too much to bear.

George was aware that he had ruined his homecoming for them all but felt unable to rectify it because he had been travelling for two days and was mentally and physically exhausted. The men had had to wait ages to get transported to the port, then queued for hours to get on the boat. The crossing had been choppy and a lot of the men, including George, had been seasick throughout the journey. They had gone to the barracks this side of the Channel to be officially sent on leave, and only then had been free to go. A few had decided to stay overnight before travelling home because they were tired, but George couldn’t wait another night after so long.

He had been so excited about coming home for good at last. It was what he had lived for and what had kept him going for the past six years. He knew the expectation here at home would be high, and he’d let them down. His son didn’t want to know him and May had been so disappointed in him she’d left.

The truth was, he wasn’t some sort of a super-soldier; he was just an ordinary bloke who was subject to the same human frailties as everyone else, and at this moment he didn’t have the energy to put things right.

‘I’ll put the kettle on for a cuppa, son,’ said his mother as he sank gratefully into an armchair.

‘Thanks, Mum,’ he said.

When she brought the tea to him, he was fast asleep.

‘Didn’t George make it back, then?’ asked Flo when May came home alone.

‘Yeah, he arrived,’ she said.

‘Oh. Is he all right?’

‘Yes, he seemed to be fine,’ she said distantly.

‘I thought he’d have come back with you to see us,’ said Flo, obviously disappointed.

‘He wants to be with his own family at the moment,’ she said sharply.

‘I was only asking,’ said Flo.

‘And I was only answering your question,’ retorted May, still bitterly upset by the let-down of George’s homecoming. ‘I’m not his keeper. I can’t tell him what to do. He’ll come and see you when he’s ready, I suppose.’

‘Now then, May,’ admonished her father. ‘There’s no need to bite your mother’s head off.’

‘Sorry, Mum,’ she said, desperately needing to be on her own. ‘I’m tired. I think I’ll go to bed.’

‘All right, dear.’

After she had left the room, Flo said to her husband in a low voice, ‘Trouble by the sound of it. I do hope it isn’t going to go wrong for them again, after all this time.’

‘So do I,’ said Dick. ‘But there’s nothing we can do about it if it does.’

‘That’s the difficult bit,’ she agreed worriedly.

In her room, May sat on her bed feeling miserable and frustrated. As well as being upset by George’s disappointing homecoming, she was also beginning to feel very restricted by living at home. She adored her parents but she had outgrown their constant nurturing and felt as though she was living under a microscope. Having to explain your every move and knowing that when you were hurt they felt it too was a strain. She was twenty-four. It was time she was out from under their feet. But as the usual way of achieving this for a girl like her was marriage, there didn’t seem to be any sort of a solution at the moment.

George dominated her thoughts. What was going to happen between them? she wondered. She knew he would come to see her when he was ready and felt she must wait until the time was right for him. But what would he have to say to her? His attitude towards her definitely seemed to have changed, which probably meant he was going to tell her that it was over as a romance and he wanted to revert to being friends. But that wasn’t enough for her now. She would rather not see him at all than endure that.

She smiled bitterly. Over before it had even started, she thought. He had proposed to her on the station on his way back off leave and had been oddly remote the next time she had seen him. Theirs had been the courtship that had never happened.

Oh well, whatever the outcome of that situation, she had another matter to deal with; she must go downstairs and make amends to her mother for being so rude. It wasn’t her parents’ fault she had such a disastrous love life.

George woke up to see that it was daylight and two bright eyes were studying him at an unnervingly close range.

‘You woke up then,’ said Joe.

‘Seems like it,’ said George sleepily, realising that he was in his own bed at home. He could only vaguely remember moving from the armchair downstairs. He must have slept all evening and all night and felt much rested.

‘Can you play football?’ asked Joe.

‘Yeah,’ muttered George, struggling to gather his wits after sleeping so soundly. ‘I can do that. I played a few times in the army.’

‘Are you any good?’ he asked.

‘I can handle a football, yeah.’

The boy thought about this for a while, then said, ‘My friend at school; his dad used to be very good at it.’

‘Did he?’ said George, feeling slightly out of his depth with this child who seemed like a stranger whilst being achingly dear to him. Gone were the days when he could please him just by lifting him up in the air.

Joe nodded. ‘He’s dead now, though,’ he said in a matter-of-fact manner. ‘He was a sailor and his boat got bombed.’

‘Oh,’ said George, shocked to hear news of such a tragedy delivered so calmly by one so young. ‘That’s sad. I hope that you’re kind to your friend.’

The child looked thoughtful. ‘Do you mean I shouldn’t fight with him?’ he asked.

‘I hope you don’t fight with anyone,’ said George.

‘I do if they hit me first,’ he explained. ‘You have to stick up for yourself or they think you’re a sissy and steal your marbles.’

George felt about a hundred years old and hopelessly out of touch with how little boys behaved. ‘Mm, there is that, but you should never look for a fight.’

‘All right.’

‘Good boy.’

‘I’ve got to go now,’ Joe announced.

‘Are you going to school?’

‘It’s Saturday,’ he said. ‘I don’t have to go today. I’m going to play with my friends in the street. It isn’t raining so Gran says I can go out.’

‘I’ll see you later, then.’

‘Yeah,’ said Joe and walked out of the room, leaving George feeling warmed but worried.

He felt as though he was back to square one as regarded being a father. He’d lost a lot of years. He had been very involved with Joe when he was a baby. But being a parent to a seven year old who didn’t know you was a different thing altogether. It was going to take time and patience and he would give it his utmost.

But right now there was something else he had to attend to, as a matter of urgency.

‘I’ll do the shopping today to give you a break, Mum,’ offered May that morning, seeing the weekend stretching out emptily ahead of her and needing to get out of the house.

‘All right, dear,’ said her mother, tactfully avoiding the subject of George. ‘Here’s the list, and don’t forget to take the ration books.’

‘Won’t be long,’ said May, and set off down the street with her mother’s shopping bag.

It was a glorious autumn day in late October. There was a chill in the air but a hazy sun had broken through, emphasising the shabbiness of everything but pleasurable even so. May was beginning to feel a slight worm of anger towards George. It wasn’t right to propose to a girl and then behave as though you hadn’t. Yes, he did have more pressing matters to attend to, but surely he could have popped round to see her last night, even if only for a few minutes.

Passing the Pavilion and playground bomb site, she paused, looking beyond the overgrown grass, the nettles and the rosebay willow herb to how it used to be and would be again. There would be laughter and conversation, a buzz in the air and community spirit. Together she and her mother would make it happen, May was absolutely determined.

To remember the Pavilion and the playground was to think about George because he’d been at the very heart of it. She thought of him now, and of Betty, just kids hanging out together with no thought of money or war or responsibility. Innocent times long gone.

She was so absorbed in her thoughts that she was startled when she heard a step behind her.

‘George,’ she said, swinging round. ‘Well, you certainly took your time.’

‘Sorry I didn’t come round last night, May,’ he said, looking very contrite. ‘I fell asleep and didn’t wake up until this morning. I was so shattered when I got back, I couldn’t function properly and messed up the whole thing for all of you.’

‘Oh, I see.’ It was that simple. Exhaustion. She should have realised, and hated herself for not doing so. ‘Of course, you would have been tired.’

‘Anyway, that was yesterday. Now I’m recovered, and I have something to say to you.’

‘Oh, go on then.’

‘I know that you said yes when I proposed to you, but it was all in the future then,’ he began. ‘Now that the war is over, we can make plans. But I need to point out the facts to you, some you already know, others you don’t. I didn’t know about them myself until recently.’

‘I’m waiting.’

‘Right, first up, I don’t have a job to go to yet,’ he said.

‘I realise that.’

‘Secondly, I have to start from scratch learning to be a dad to my seven-year-old son who doesn’t know me from Adam, so I will need to commit myself to that.’

‘Of course.’

‘I don’t have a home of my own to offer you.’

‘Mm.’

‘And if all of that isn’t bad enough, my father, who was my idol, I now know was an adulterer, and I almost deliberately killed a man in my platoon.’ He paused for breath. ‘It’s taken me a while to come to terms with these last things and I think I was probably a bit offhand on my last leave because of it.’

‘I knew there was something bothering you,’ she said. ‘I thought perhaps you had fallen out of love with me.’

‘Oh May, that’s the last thing,’ he said emotionally. ‘I’m sorry if I upset you. Later on I’ll tell you the whole story, but for now I want to ask you if, knowing all these things about me, you would still consider taking me on. I love you, May, so much, and I want to share my life with you.’