A Time for Courage (52 page)

She turned back into the house, her coat drawn about her and found that Harry was ready and she held him, drawing him to her, holding his face in her hands and told him to look after the men, but she meant look after yourself and he understood.

At the station she gripped his arm as they pushed through the khaki throng and sheltered him from a woman who shouted, ‘You should be ashamed of yourself.’ But she could tell from his face that he had heard.

Frances wheeled the man with no feet and Harry lifted him into the train, helping the others, holding the smallest child, and as the whistle blew he turned to Hannah. It was all going too fast for her and somewhere Joe would be wearing khaki like all these men and she wanted to hold on to Harry, on to someone she loved who was alive and whom she could feel, here, next to her.

‘Thank you, Hannah, for all you’ve done.’ He bent to kiss her and she took his other hand. Veins were raised on the still tanned skin. She kissed his palm. It was cold.

‘I love you, Harry,’ she murmured and he pulled her to him again.

‘And I love you, my dear,’ he said and turned, stepping up into the train, not looking back as he stepped over the legs of those already sitting. She wanted to pull him back, keep him with her, hear his footsteps throughout the night but she slammed the door, feeling the milling and pushing around her, hearing the whistles, the feet.

‘Come back,’ she called, running now along the platform, tearing from Frances’s grasp. ‘Come back.’ He was at the window now but she could not see his face. He was too far away and the train was too fast, people were in the way and her breath was rasping in her throat. The train was grunting and gasping past her and now he was gone and she had not been brave enough to tell him that this morning she had heard from Uncle Thomas, that Esther and Arthur had been married last week.

The crocuses and snowdrops had forced themselves through the grass beneath the lime tree and the sky was blue. 1915 was proving to be an expensive year for Arthur’s bit of excitement, she thought ironically. There had been another zeppelin raid last night; twenty killed. She had taken the children to the cellars and left them with Frances and had returned to sit with the women who were too sick to be moved from their beds. They had heard the growling of the engines and then the thud of the bombs which had not been close enough this time to knock the plaster from the walls or the shouts from their mouths. The fear had surged though, and she had gripped the sheet of the woman in labour and tears had run as the ground shook and the woman screamed. Was there no end to the war?

Maureen’s husband had been killed at a place called Ypres but Maureen hadn’t cried yet and she must, Hannah knew that she must, for she had been through it with so many of them. As the sun warmed the morning she took the children out into the fresh air and walked them in a crocodile past lamp-posts which had the glass painted to dim the glow.

The children bet with one another a farthing that on this walk they would see a policeman riding with a placard on his back warning them all to take cover and Hannah smiled as they laughed when one did pass on his bicycle with his helmet strap above his chin whistling and wobbling but not warning them of an air raid. Scarborough and Whitley Bay had been bombarded by the German Navy and on a fine day it was said that the guns of France could be heard on the south coast. Would that be from the Somme where Matthew’s father had been killed?

She looked down at the boy who held her hand. He was smiling and she was glad that he could now do so. They walked back to the house, into the room which was hung with children’s paintings. Some were of flowers; the purple, white and yellow crocuses, the blue cornflowers which had bloomed in the meadows last summer. Some were of families and one included the father. Some were of sausage-shaped zeppelins.

Hannah gave them milk and biscuits which Cook and the women had made but they were not sweet for sugar was scarce again. They sat on two layers of carpet; the top one was an Indian rug with an irregular pattern and she ran her finger round its edge. The children were quiet while they ate and drank and she sat with them, wondering whether Joe would ever write, and if he did, would he say he loved her?

Why hadn’t he written? It was six months now. He couldn’t be dead because there had been no knock and no buff telegram. Perhaps, after all, he did not love her but then she remembered his arm about her as they flew the kite, his face as he had said over the gate, ‘Stay with me.’ His face as he had said the same words all those years ago in the storm on the moor. But why hasn’t he written, she asked herself again.

Milk lay on the children’s upper lips and she wiped each mouth and one child, Naomi, put her arm up, drew her head down and kissed her. Hannah stroked her hair. It was soft, short and fine and there were no nits any more.

She settled back on the carpet in front of the children, leaning her arm on a chair because her back ached these days and listened as they took it in turns to tell a story. It had been a successful idea because fear and anger and loneliness was put into words and Hannah wished that she could have a similar outlet. Amy told of a rabbit who lived in a hole but a big growling fox came and stamped on the warren and the plaster fell in and so the rabbit took the baby rabbits down into the cellar and they were all safe.

Matthew told of a day by the river when the sun was hot and his daddy picked him up and hugged him and hugged him.

David sat up and said that he had once been to the sea and the waves had knocked him over and when he had laughed the water had run into his mouth and it was sharp and salty and his mummy had told him he would be sick. But he hadn’t been, he told them proudly.

Naomi told of the little doll who got lost in the woods and couldn’t find her mummy or her daddy and so a nice lady had come down from her house on the hill and taken her hand and said that she could come and live in her house, because she liked dolls.

While the children’s voices ran on Hannah looked at Naomi and knew that if she did not keep this girl she would go to an orphanage because both her parents were dead. She looked out again at the trees, at the sky and missed Joe. She picked at the raffia seat of the chair she leant against. It was always warm, she thought, running her fingers down its smooth strands and as the children ceased to talk she turned to them, seeing their faces not looking at her but away, over to the door and there was a draught which was not there before and so she too turned and looked.

He was standing there, in khaki. Solid and strong with his red-gold hair and she did not feel herself rise or run to him but only saw his face, his eyes and then his arms around her and she was safe at last. His uniform was rough against her cheek and his hands hard as he lifted her face.

‘I’ve only just received your letter,’ he whispered. ‘I love you more than any man loved any woman.’

His lips were soft as they kissed hers, soft as they covered her face and her hands. His skin was rough as hers touched him, again and again and then he held her away and nodded to the children.

‘I’ll just sit until you have finished. This is their time.’

He turned her round and walked over to the chair which leant against the wall by the door, putting his cap on the floor, undoing his buttons as he sat. God almighty, he was tired, so bloody tired.

He watched as she walked back, turning to look at him as she did so, smiling, and he felt again her mouth on his and wanted to pull her back and hold her, love her as he had longed to do since the first moment he had met her. And she was the only one who could wipe the war from him, for a moment at least.

She joined the children on the floor. They were giggling now and he liked the sound. It seemed a long time since he had heard it and seen small faces, clean and round. He listened as one by one they continued with their stories but could hear beyond them the noise of the war and still found it hard to believe how quickly death and chaos could become the same as breathing; that the clear Cornish air could be the same that swept over the choked battlefield, the dangerous sky.

He looked at Hannah, her face which was lined now and tired, but still so beautiful. The wide mouth, the brown eyes and at last they had looked at him with love. He watched as she leant on the chair, her body curving. How he loved her, dreamt of her, thought of her each minute of every day. How he had longed to feel her in his arms as he had just done, her lips on his, her eyes full of love. He wanted to sweep her away, hold her again, breathe in her scent but part of him was still with the war and he wanted to come to her free of its contamination. He shook his head but still it hung upon him and so he listened as the small dark boy spoke of teddy bears and picnics and wondered at the quietness of it all. It should be so normal but it was not any more.

He pushed his shoulders back against the wall, fighting to stay with this woman and these children. He made himself remember how good it had been to be back in England where he had been given Hannah’s letter. How he had travelled from the aerodrome in Oxford through rich countryside full of shades of green and had felt that he was coming home after the unhedged empty chalk landscape of France. How he had looked out on winding roads which now took the place of the straight poplar-edged thoroughfares of France along which solid-tyred lorries had bumped and rattled round pot-holes.

He looked at Hannah again, drinking in the sight of her, of the children. There were children in France and Belgium too but not amongst the grinding of gears, the rattle of equipment and the shouted orders and snatches of songs as transport was moved under cover of darkness away from the prying eyes of the German observation balloons 6000 feet high.

He looked from the children to the window and did not see the lime tree, it was not strong enough to hold him, but saw instead the baskets which hung beneath the balloons and held observers using telescopes and wirelesses to convey information direct to the gunpits while low-flying two-seater aircraft equipped also with radio and protected by fighters flew in lazy figures of eight filling in gaps left by the balloons.

He had never been able to get close enough to take them out and he knew that the men on the ground could not forgive the airmen for that, and who could blame them?

He looked back from the window to the children who were singing
Oranges and Lemons
and ducking beneath the arms of two who waited to chop off their heads. He looked at Hannah as she clapped and laughed. He leant his head back against the wall watching the children again, watching her, seeing the young men he had enlisted and trained with at Oxford. They were dead now, though he, the old man, was still alive. Harry was right. It was senseless. He was tired but he did not want to shut his eyes because he saw too much then and so he looked at the children again, fighting to stay with them. He listened to Hannah laughing and wondered how long he would enjoy her love, how long he would live.

When would it be his turn to see the enemy too late, to feel the thud of bullets fired between the turning propellers, hear the silence as his engine died and the struts became unpinned in the spin and the wings collapsed? When would it be his turn to feel the air as it rushed past him as he dived helpless, like his kite without a tail?

Would he feel the pain? Would he hear the sound of wood breaking into a thousand fragments; the spruce ash and linen becoming one mass of flame or was the sound just reserved for those who were onlookers as he had been, too often?

He felt a hand on his knee and looked down from the window. The girl had short fine hair and a solemn smile.

‘Naomi wondered if you would like to come and join us?’ Hannah called.

Joe took the small hand in his and stood looking first at her small face, then at Hannah and behind her to the other children. The war had no place in this room and he finally managed to push it aside and was glad of the respite as he walked towards his love and held her hand and sang
Old MacDonald had a Farm.

They ate with Frances that night and then took an underground train into the centre of a darkened London. They walked to the Haymarket and he made her laugh when he told her that the War Office preferred to recruit gentlemen to fly their planes for ‘the powers that be’ felt that flying was much like riding a horse, only more comfortable because you had a proper seat. Joe added that they were having to take other ranks now and they were excellent airmen but he did not say that this recruitment was because the life expectancy was only five weeks. He told her instead how he had to pick out strands of different coloured wools before he was pronounced medically fit to fly.

They went to a show at the Haymarket and there was too much khaki walking along the streets, too many women laughing up into strained faces but there was no light coming from windows, no lamps from the cars or carriages to guide in the zeppelins. They passed a hot-chestnut man, his brazier hidden beneath a canopy and they bought some, and they were hot in their hands and the smell was nutty and sweet.

As they walked they saw a Royal Flying Corps NCO being pushed out of a theatre entrance by four officer cadets who insisted, as Joe intervened, that all NCOs should use the side door because they were not gentlemen. It did not matter that this was a fellow pilot. They had young faces, clipped voices, and Hannah watched along with others as Joe grabbed one by the collar.

‘You will call me Major,’ he drawled. ‘And leave this theatre at once. I will be seeing your Commanding Officer tomorrow.’

She felt proud as he apologised to the NCO and accompanied him into the theatre. They sat with Sergeant Thomas and sang along with Gilbert and Sullivan though the words were too fast for Joe’s drawl and Hannah laughed until she cried and then she could not stop the tears.

Later, over cocoa in front of the fire when Frances had left for bed, he explained to Hannah how NCOs could not claim their kills for themselves as the gentlemen did, but must attribute them to the squadrons. How they were despised but were frequently the best because they were there on merit, not class.