A Family's Duty (13 page)

‘Came down in the Thames estuary, and the Messerschmitt who shot ’em got away. The pilot and the other man were killed straight away when it burst into flames, but our Jack by some miracle got clear of the plane and floated on the water; he doesn’t remember much about how he was hauled onto a Thames barge and ended up in a hospital in Margate.’

Tom paused, and his hearers listened.

‘As soon as they heard, of course, Rob and Grace went off to visit him. What they must have felt when they saw him … well, they
didn’t
see him, not his face, it was covered over with wet cloths, and his hands were covered in wet bandages.’

He paused, and Eddie said softly. ‘Poor boy. Poor Rob and Grace. Did they speak to a doctor at all?’

‘The ward sister told them that he’d been visited by a surgeon who specialises in burns, and treats them in a new way that he’s worked out. Only it means that Jack will have to be transferred to this man’s hospital at East Grinstead, so it’s not going to be quick or easy.’

‘And – how did his mother react?’

‘Well, needless to say, they both had to agree, and they’re going down to the Queen Victoria hospital, as it’s called, on Friday. Me and Rob, we say to Grace that at least the boy’s still in the land of the living, and if this man’s half as good as he’s made out to be, then our Jack’s in with a chance. And there’ll be no more dicing with death in the RAF.’

The next family member to visit the Nuttalls was Isabel Neville, having heard of Jack’s condition from her father. She went alone, taking early fruit and vegetables, and pots of her own home-grown and home-made blackcurrant jam. She met with even more hostility than her brother Ernest, for scarcely had Tom showed her into the parlour than Grace Nuttall stormed in after her.

‘You can come round here with your garden produce, but don’t imagine I’ll ever forget what you did, my Lady Isabel! There’s
your
son sound in body and mind, while
mine’s
lost half his face burnt away, and a crazy old doctor carrying out experiments on him!’

‘That’s why I’ve come today, my poor sister, to try to give you a little comfort,’ Isabel said steadily, having steeled herself for a rough rejection of her sympathy. ‘Jack’s injuries are not of my making, you know. He lives and therefore there’s hope, Grace. Look, let me sit down here beside you, and—’

‘No!
Never!
You took my little girl – you took her away, and never let me have her back – and now that she’s grown into a beautiful woman, you take all the credit for her!’

Isabel turned to her father in near despair.

‘That’s not true, Grace, and you know it – and you know it, too, don’t you, Dad?’

‘I guessed it when Grace came home looking so poorly after having Becky,’ said Tom sorrowfully. ‘And when you married Cedric—’

‘Yes, when she married Cedric!’ Grace almost shrieked.
‘That’s
when you should’ve given me back my Becky! After all, you’d got a son and a rich husband, plus a manor house to live in,
Lady bloody Neville
! You never offered her back to her own mother, so don’t come round
here weeping crocodile tears over my poor Jack, when you stole my daughter!’ She spat, her face contorted with rage, and Isabel drew back, very pale. There was clearly no point in trying to reason with her sister. She picked up her bag and crossed the room to take her father’s hand.

‘Very well, Grace, if that’s what you think of me, I’ll leave now, and won’t come back until I’m invited. Dad, you know you can come and visit me at the Manor whenever you like, and so can Doreen and Rob. And give my love and best wishes to Jack, tell him I look forward to seeing him again when he’s out of hospital.’

‘What do
you
care about my poor Jack?’ barked Grace in fury. ‘You’ve got Paul – oh, go away, go away!’

Isabel left the house she had been brought up in, and got into the pony-trap. Her thoughts were of Rebecca as a tiny baby, and what kind of a scene might erupt if Grace and Rebecca were to meet in North Camp. I shall have to tell my poor girl and warn her, she realised, though she shrank from the very idea.

Reaching home, she led the little pony to the stables, and then sought out Sally Tanner, her loyal friend and confidante.

‘I was afraid something like this would happen one day, Isabel, and always hoped it wouldn’t. It’s going to be much more difficult now,’ Sally sighed. ‘I’ll stay while you tell her, and comfort her as well as I can.’ (
And you too, Isabel
, she thought to herself.)

‘We won’t bring her back from the farm – we’ll wait until she next comes home, and then tell her together,’ said Isabel, dreading the inevitable moment when she would have to ask her daughter to sit down and listen to something very important.

Sure enough, Rebecca was mystified, and felt suddenly
alarmed, as if she was being asked to hear unwelcome news. Paul? No, it was not about Paul. Then what?

‘I’ve always told you that I adopted you from a desperate single girl whose fiancé had gone back to the fighting and been killed there, Becky, in that terrible war,’ said her mother.

‘Yes, Mother, I’ve always known that. And I’m very glad that you adopted me.’

‘Well, now, Becky dear, certain things have happened that make it necessary for me to give you more information,’ said Isabel, trying to speak steadily.

‘What things, Mother? Tell me, for heaven’s sake!’

Rebecca’s voice rose, and Sally Tanner took hold of her hand. Isabel forced herself to continue. ‘Your mother was – is – my sister Grace. Now don’t upset yourself, please—’

For Rebecca had given a long, low moan, a cry from the heart, and buried her face in her hands. Sally put her arms around the girl, and made gentle shushing sounds.

‘
No
, Mother, it’s not true, it
can’t
be true! Tell me it’s a mistake!’

‘I’m so sorry, Becky, but it is true. Listen. You were conceived shortly before your father had to leave Grace and go back to that war, that dreadful war, that carnage, that blood-bath – I lost my own husband because of it—’ Isabel paused and put her hands to her face.

‘Be brave, Isabel,’ whispered Sally, and so she continued with the account of what had happened on that fatal, faraway day.

‘Your father was a captain in a Hampshire regiment, and it must have been so terrible for Grace when she learnt that he was killed in battle, decorated posthumously for his courage and care for the men in his charge. And then to find
herself expecting his baby—’ Isabel’s voice shook, but she composed herself and continued.

‘It was all arranged that you were to be adopted at six weeks old, but on the very day that a woman official came to collect you, Grace – your mother – was in such a state of grief that I couldn’t bear it, I feared she might harm herself, and I told the woman that
I
would take you and bring you up as my own, a sister for Paul. And that’s what happened.’

‘Yes, Becky, that’s exactly what happened. I know, because I was there,’ said Sally.

‘Oh, Mother!’ said Rebecca, weeping. ‘I just can’t take this in. I knew I was adopted, but you always said you took me from a desperate single girl who couldn’t keep me.’

‘And that was true, Becky, she couldn’t. But I could, and I did.’

‘Your mother’s an angel, Becky,’ said Sally.

‘Oh, Sally!’ Rebecca turned to this woman she had known all her life. ‘Dear Sally Tanner, even
you’ve
been more of a mother to me than – than Mrs Nuttall is. I don’t even
like
her, and I can
never
call her Mother. Not ever.’

‘Hush, dear. She’ll go on being your Aunt Grace,’ said Isabel, ‘and I’ll go on being known as your Mother, though in fact I’m your Aunt Isabel.’

‘Never,’ said Rebecca. ‘I’ll
never
call you aunt. And why have you decided to tell me all this now?’

‘My poor sister Grace is in a turmoil over her son Jack who has been severely injured when his plane came down. I believe that it has unhinged her, and I’m telling you not to go near her, dear. Keep away from Rectory Road. She’s got this idea in her head that I should have handed you back to her when I married Cedric – your Dad – and she
might completely lose her reason if she saw you now. Oh, Rebecca, my own dear, precious daughter!’

Tears were shed by all three of them, and then Sally bustled off to make tea. Rebecca was due back at the farm that evening, and she was thankful for the hard work that filled her busy days and gave her little time to ponder over what she had learnt. It explained her strong family resemblance to both her mother and aunt, and it also accounted for Grace Nuttall’s cool, unsisterly behaviour over the years towards Lady Neville. Rebecca felt that she never wanted to set eyes on her again.

Grim news continued that autumn of relentless bombing of London. Thirty miles from London, the wailing of the air raid siren situated in Everham became a familiar, almost daily, sound, warning that enemy aircraft had crossed the Channel and could be anywhere overhead. Every morning people switched on their wireless sets to hear of the devastation that had taken place in the night: first the East End, the docks, power stations and gasworks were hit, and the homes close to them, then the terror spread to other parts of the capital, and they heard of air raid shelters that had suffered direct hits, so the people chose to sleep on the platforms of the Underground railway network while explosions took place above them.

‘Just imagine it,’ said Joan Kennard at a Wednesday gathering of the Knitting Circle. ‘Imagine sleeping on that hard, cold platform amongst complete strangers – and what do they do about needing the lavatory?’

Isabel Neville shook her head. ‘It puts all our troubles into perspective when we think of the courage of those Londoners.’

‘And there’s nothing we can do to help them, is there?’ said one of the ladies.

But it turned out that there
was
vital help to be given by families in North Camp. Before the heavy air raids began, many evacuated children were brought back to London by their parents; now there was urgent need to re-evacuate them. Sir Cedric and Lady Neville opened Hassett Manor to a girl of seven and a boy of five from the East End. At the Rectory space was found for two little motherless boys, terrified of what they had seen and heard; Roland Allingham insisted to his wife that they should do this act of Christian charity, and Joan Kennard put the boys into Josie’s room, returning her cot to the bedroom she shared with Alan. Billy Yeomans refused to take in any evacuees, as did the Nuttalls and Mrs Pearson, but after conferring with her nephew Philip, Miss Enid Temple agreed to take in a silent, underweight boy of ten called Nick Grant who seemed to have no relatives and at first shrank back warily from Philip, though when he realised that the quiet man was friendly and showed him how to play simple tunes on the piano, his fears were replaced by trust and a growing attachment which became mutual.

From Everham came news that the Mundays had opened their home to two young Jewish children from Whitechapel, Ruth and Sarah. ‘We’ve got a full house, but Devora manages to keep us all usefully occupied,’ reported Ernest.

The whole of North Camp tuned in to their wireless sets at teatime on an October day to hear a broadcast message from fourteen-year-old Princess Elizabeth, a message directed towards all the children who had been sent away from their parents to places of greater safety.

Miss Temple wiped her eyes when the princess, seated beside her younger sister, ended her speech with a heartfelt, ‘Goodnight, and good luck to you all.’

‘Excuse me, I’m sorry,’ she apologised to Nick, who had listened with her, and his shy reply, ‘Don’t worry, Auntie Enid,’ brought more embarrassing tears to her eyes.

More tears were shed at the news of the death of Mr Neville Chamberlain, aged seventy-one, remembered now for his ‘peace in our time’ speech after visiting Hitler.

‘After all that good man did to try to save us from war,’ wept Mrs Pearson, ‘and then to die a broken man.’ Tributes were paid to him from all levels, from his colleagues in government down to the patrons of the Tradesmen’s Arms, where Tom Munday and Eddie Cooper agreed that ‘Chamberlain was a gentleman, which made him no match for that lying old bugger Adolf Hitler.’

Soon after this the fury of the Luftwaffe turned from London to the centres of British industry: Birmingham, Sheffield, Manchester and Glasgow became the targets of the enemy’s bombs, and on one dreadful night of destruction the beautiful medieval city of Coventry was virtually razed to the ground, over a thousand of its citizens killed, and its ancient cathedral left a blackened ruin. At 47 Rectory Road Tom Munday and his son-in-law reminded Grace Nuttall that her son was well out of the ongoing action, and could look ahead to recovery from his injuries, horrendous as they were.

‘Things are going badly, Tom,’ said Eddie from his chair by the small fire in the public bar. Tom nodded.

‘Yes, they are,’ he said. ‘And the funny thing is that when we sat here a couple of years ago, and couldn’t believe that there’d be another war, in fact we hardly dared think about it – but now that we’re right in the thick of it, I don’t dread the future any more – it’s as if we’re determined to
see it through – take everything old Hitler can throw at us, because we know we’re going to win in the end.’

‘Yeah.’ Eddie took a deep swig of bitter from his glass. ‘Yeah, like old Churchill said, no surrender. Not us.’

In Ward Three of the Queen Victoria Hospital at East Grinstead, a historic market town in Sussex, young Jack Nuttall was experiencing the darkest night of his life. He lay in his bed, unable to help himself even to reach out for a glass of water with his burnt and bandaged hands. The skin graft to his face had sloughed off, and would have to be attempted again. It smelt unpleasant, and in the silence of the night Jack felt utter despair, for at twenty years of age his life and future had been taken away from him. He had to be fed and helped to use a urinal bottle; he dreaded a bowel movement when he had to be lifted onto a bed-pan, and found it easier to be led to the lavatory during the day. His one change of scene came when he was led to the tepid saline bath in which he could soak without bandages, and every few minutes he took a deep breath and lowered his head right under the water, easing the pain of his face. One day a week he was visited by his parents, which gave him no comfort, for his mother could not contain her distress at seeing him lying there unrecognisable, his face hidden by saline dressings that covered his lidless eyes. She always burst into tears and had to be led away by his apologetic father.