Poppy Day (42 page)

‘Well I saw it, sort of. I just know it was a fox!’

‘And they could tell it was out here?’

‘Oh yes. Smell it a mile off – and it was trying to get in, I s’pect.’

Jess thought, I want to say I love you, and I’m going on about chickens. She knew she was chattering out of nervousness, and told herself to shut up. In the silence that followed, she gradually turned and looked up at Peter, standing like a tall shadow beside her, waiting quietly, she thought, the way he does. She was intensely aware of his body close to her, and of her own, the feel of her dress against her bare skin. Peter leaned down, closer to her. Seeing the way she looked back at him, he held his arms out and drew her into them with a cry of joy that was close to a sob. She pulled him to her and they kissed, holding, caressing each other. She felt his hand in her hair, on her back, pressing her close in his desire for her. Her body responded to his excitement with strong, fiery movements until Peter abruptly pulled away.

‘We must stop. I’m sorry, Jess . . . I shouldn’t’ve behaved like that. I don’t even know if you . . .’

‘Peter?’ She touched him, making him turn to her again, and wrapped her arms round him. ‘Don’t say you’re sorry. You’re the best, kindest man I’ve ever met. I love yer – I loved yer touching me.’

‘Do you? Love me?’ He stood stiffly in her arms.

She nodded. ‘Sorry it’s taken me such a long time to know it. Please – put your arms round me again.’

He did, laughing with happiness. ‘I can’t believe this is true. Oh my lovely Jess. Can you really love a funny old stick like me?’

‘That’s why I love yer. Because you’re a funny old stick with a great big heart inside him and I’d trust my life to yer. Oh – and you’re quite handsome really an’ all!’

He tickled her so that she shrieked with laughter and they both stopped, looking back nervously at the house.

‘That was your fault,’ she whispered. Serious again she stroked his face with her fingertips. ‘I feel so much for you. As if it was all buried somewhere in me and I’ve found it suddenly. I’ve so much love in me I want to give yer.’

‘Oh Jess.’ Moved, he kissed the top of her head, then stroked his hands lightly down the front of her dress, resting them for a moment on her breasts, free and warm under the light cotton. ‘I could do with some love

I can tell you. These’ve been terrible, lonely years. And I’ve plenty to give you in return. More than you might realize.’

Jess laid her hands over his. ‘Oh, I think I do,’ she said.

The next afternoon, when they sailed back to England, was one of cloudless sky, the sea a deep, glassy blue. They said their farewells to Isobel, Jess hugging her, to Isobel’s evident surprise and pleasure.

‘You’ve been marvellous to us,’ Jess said, truly sorry to be parting with her. ‘You take care of yourself, won’t yer?’

‘Oh I will – don’t you worry.’ She turned back to them with a fond expression as she left and waved a last time. ‘God bless you – all of you.’

John and Polly spent the journey up on deck, where Jess and Peter left them sitting together contentedly in the fresh breeze, John well wrapped in a blanket, Polly with a scarf over her hair. Jess and Peter strolled back and forth, stopping to lean over the side for long spells, at all times holding on to one another, arm in arm.

‘I should feel tired,’ Jess said as they strolled the deck. ‘But I don’t.’ They had stayed up all night, sitting wrapped in each other’s arms in Mme Fournier’s garden, oblivious of the dew, the time, or anything but each other. They talked, caressed, kissed, until the sun tinged the roof and the leaves of the cherry trees with pink and they looked up, overjoyed by the sight.

‘We can soon catch up on a bit of sleep,’ Peter said. He looked at her, couldn’t stop looking at her, full of wonder. ‘You’re so lovely. I just hope I’m not asleep now.’

‘You’re not.’ She kissed his cheek, then leaned her head on his shoulder. ‘There, you can feel I’m really ’ere.’

When Dover with its chalky cliffs was still just a haze in the distance, they were still standing, gazing out over the sea, Peter with his arm round Jess’s shoulders, each too happy for words. But as the land drew nearer and nearer, Peter spoke at last. He removed his arm from her shoulder and turned to her, taking her hands in his.

‘I’ve got to say this now – I just don’t want it to wait any longer. I never want to be with anyone except you, Jess. Would you agree to be my wife?’

There was no hesitation. ‘Yes!’ Jess cried into the wind. ‘Oh yes, yes!’

Laughing, he held her close. ‘Aren’t you s’posed to be a bit more reluctant when someone asks you? You know – think it over a bit?’

Jess grinned up at him. ‘Why waste time?’

They found Polly and John on the sunny, port side of the ship, cups of tea on the table beside them, steam whisking away in the wind. Both of them were smiling, their hands clasped in each other’s.

‘Come on over ’ere, we’ve got summat to tell yer!’ Polly waved at them as soon as they appeared.

Jess tightened her hold on Peter’s arm, her joyful eyes meeting first his, then Polly’s. ‘Yes – so’ve we.’

‘Come on, Mom – we’ll be late else!’

Jess looked up smiling as Davey’s face, pink with exertion, appeared round thef bedroom door.

‘Nearly done, pet. Just getting ’er into a nice clean napkin.’

‘Will it last long enough while we’re out?’

Jess laughed. David, now seven years old, was growing up into a quaint little fellow. He had little memory of his own mother, and Jess was flattered and relieved by the way he had taken her so affectionately to his heart. She had grown very fond of him.

‘Oh yes. Don’t you worry.’

‘Our dad’s waiting . . .’

‘Awright. You go and tell him I’m coming. I’ll be down in a minute or two.’

His scurrying footsteps receded along the landing and downstairs.

Jess turned back to her baby daughter whose arms and legs were waving about with the sheer pleasure of movement. She stuffed a fist into her mouth, clamping her gums over it.

‘You’re cutting some teeth, madam,’ Jess said. She bent and kissed the child’s soft tummy. ‘Come on, Alice. Yer Dad’s waiting for us. Time we was going.’ ‘It’s a pretty name,’ she told Olive, who had come to see her, dewy-eyed with happiness, after the little girl was born. She kissed her aunt as Olive held the baby in her plump arms, her face softened by the sight of an infant. ‘And between us we’ll make Alice into a lucky name.’

Olive smiled, eyes still on the child. ‘I s’pect you will, bab. Knowing you.’

She had been overjoyed when the four of them came back from the Somme, first of all to see Polly looking so relaxed and cheerful, and then to hear from them all that there was to be a double wedding. Jess could tell how highly she thought of Peter. He seemed to be the one to replace Ned in her affections.

‘Louisa would’ve been so proud of yer,’ she said to Jess.

‘Well you’re the one that’s done me proud, Auntie. Taking me in and looking after me the way yer have. You’ve been a mom to me. You always will be.’

Before the wedding, which they fixed for the September, Jess said to Peter that there was one thing she felt she must do.

‘I left my dad swearing I’d never go back there again,’ she told him sadly. ‘I regret it now, even though he daint seem pleased to see me. He is my father though. I ought to tell him I’m getting married, let him meet my intended and that.’

The day she and Peter sat on the train out to Leamington reminded her acutely of the same journey with Ned. The same smoky, grimy smell of the compartment, the city folding away, fields spreading golden around them. This time it was August, blue sky with piles of puffy clouds. She sat close to Peter, drowsy in the heat. Every so often she turned, found him watching her tenderly and reached up to kiss him.

She delighted in showing him some of the village, but when they reached Forge Cottage it looked very run down. The windows were filthy and the front garden had been allowed to run riot. Jess was filled with misgiving as she approached it.

‘Oh dear,’ she said to Peter. ‘Oh look – this is where I grew up, but what a mess! My mom kept it lovely, and my stepmother. There must be summat wrong. Sarah must be ill – she’d never let the place get in such a state. She was a worker, whatever else you might say about her.’

‘It’s very nice,’ Peter said looking down the farm track, clumps of nettles blowing about on the verge. ‘I bet you ran wild here.’ For a second she expected him to add ‘my country wench’. But it was Ned who would have said that.

She smiled, though still looking anxious. ‘I did a bit.’

The door was opened by a woman in her mid-thirties with a wide mouth and wide hips encased in blue and white gingham.

‘Is—’ Jess hesitated. ‘Is Sarah Hart in please?’ She felt as she spoke that they were not there, that everything had changed beyond her imagining.

‘Ooh no. Sarah’s been gone from ’ere a while now. Living back over the shop, ’er is, if yer want ’er. Who’re you then?’

Jess’s thoughts began to race. Had Sarah given up waiting for William to learn to love her and left him? What other reason could there be – what had happened?

‘I’m Jess – Hart. Is my father still ’ere then?’

‘Your father? William Hart?’ The woman looked deeply shocked. ‘Don’t you know?’ She looked back over her shoulder as if hoping there was someone else there who could impart the news. ‘’E was killed in Flanders, duck. Back in the war. ’Ow is it you daint know that then? Your own father?’

‘In
Flanders
? But ’e was . . .’ She was going to say ‘too old’. But she knew suddenly that he was not, though he had always seemed so to her. He would have been in his fifties, a fine strong man. Probably told them he was ten years younger and got away with it. The very young, the older men, they had needed them all by the end. But she could scarcely take it in.

‘Sorry to give yer such bad news,’ the woman said importantly. ‘Only I’d’ve expected ’is daughter to know. Listen – my ’usband knew ’im well. Worked together for years, they did. I’ll call ’im for yer, shall I? Philip! Phi—’

‘NO!’ Jess interrupted abruptly, starting to back away. ‘No – thank you. There’s no need for that. You’ve been very kind. Thank you for telling me. We’ll be going now.’

Mrs Gill shrugged as if to say ‘please yourself’ and stood in her doorway as they disappeared down the road.

‘Well,’ Jess said numbly. ‘That settles that. I’ve no one ’ere now.’

He took her hand as they walked. ‘Aren’t you going to see your stepmother?’

‘Oh no. She won’t want me turning up. We never got on. I’d like to see my mom’s grave again, make sure it’s tidy. And then we’ll go. I know the place where I really belong now, and that’s with you.’

That November morning the four of them hurried from their little house, Alice cuddled up in Jess’s arms, and took a tram through the misty streets into town to join all the others gathering round the Town Hall. Polly had said she and John and Grace would try and meet them at the top of New Street, and as they drew closer, Jess saw them waiting in the spot where they said they’d be. Polly was heavily pregnant, and needed help with John’s chair, so John’s brother Lol had come along and taken over pushing it. Olive was there in a black hat, holding Grace’s hand. She raised her arm straight up, swirling it around, the way she always waved.

‘You look nice, Auntie,’ Jess greeted her. ‘Ever so smart. Awright, Poll? ’Ow yer feeling?’

‘Oh, I’m awright,’ Polly smiled. ‘Considering.’

Dotted about the square, a number of collectors stood with trays on strings round their necks, a little sign on the front saying, ‘Field Marshal Haig’s Appeal’. The trays contained poppies made out of delicate red cloth and wired paper stalks.

‘Poppies in the corn,’ John said, when he saw them.

‘They make these ones in France apparently,’ Polly said. ‘To keep the memory of the lads who died and ’elp the ones who make ’em to ’ave a living – injured blokes they are. P’raps they’ll do it next year an’ all.’

They bought a poppy each, helping each other to pin them on their lapels.

It was almost eleven o’clock, three years to the hour since the war was declared finished, and a large crowd was gathering in Victoria Square under the thick clouds. Along the imposing grey flank of the Town Hall was a platform draped with tapestries of red, gold and purple on which people had begun to lay their tributes of flowers and wreaths, and over to one side of the square, the Police Band were assembled, waiting.

A few minutes before eleven, as they all stood in the now tightly packed crowd, there came a loud, booming explosion as a maroon was fired off, then another and another, and the crowd fell absolutely silent. People began removing their hats and others followed until every head was bare and bowed, waiting. Jess handed her hat to Peter. It was so quiet that she became aware of the faint sound of pigeons scuffling and murmuring high on ledges of the buildings and they heard a train let off a head of steam. Alice moved restlessly in Jess’s arms and she rocked gently from side to side to pacify her, not wanting her to disturb the tense, emotional silence. None of them looked at each other, each standing lost in their own thoughts.

After two minutes the Last Post sounded mournfully across the square, and then the Police Band began to play ‘Oh God our Help in Ages Past’ and gradually people began to sing, the sound of voices swelling around them. Many were in tears, women sobbing uncontrollably. Polly wept quietly, a handkerchief pressed to her face, and as the slow, emotional hymn went on, the raw feelings, still so recent, the overwhelming, immense sadness of it all welled up in Jess. She held Alice clasped tight to her, kissing her cheek, wetting the child’s face with her tears as they sang the final verse. There was Alice’s new, innocent existence, set against the memory of slaughter of so many young lives, and even greater than that, an overwhelming sense of the nature of humankind, of the way we are, good and bad, so closely woven together. She felt Peter’s hand rest for a moment on her back, and looking up at him, saw that he was also wiping his eyes.

The crowd slowly began to disperse, and they were moving towards the platform to look at the tributes when Jess caught sight of him. She saw Mary first, a little ahead of them in the stream of people, holding a baby in her arms and guiding little Ruth in front of her. Jess found herself seeking desperately to see Ned, like a bad habit she still couldn’t break. She stood on tip-toe and found him moving along just in front of Mary. When he reached the platform he leaned over and laid something on it, then turned and spoke into Mary’s ear, his head close to hers. Seeing him with Mary touched an old nerve, just for an instant. He looked pale, less tall than she remembered, still much the same, yet somehow he had faded into ordinariness. The sight of him affected her, made her stomach flutter with nerves, just for those few seconds. But then she felt within herself a deep calm. They had not spoken to each other in three years and she had not missed him. He was nothing to her now, except a memory which could be folded away. Her heart had moved on. In a moment it was their turn to look at the floral tributes. The British Legion had contributed a plain wooden cross surrounded by poppies and framed with laurel leaves. On it were the words,

‘To those who fought and fell, from those who are fighting on.’

There were offerings from public departments and societies, and from individuals. Moved, Jess’s eyes swept over them. She found herself looking at the spot where she was sure Ned had laid his tribute. It was his handwriting that made it stand out for her. Instead of a bunch of flowers she saw a single sprig of heather, and a little note attached to it, ‘Jem – Rest in Peace’.

She stood looking for a few moments, then turned, and Peter said, ‘Ready to go?’

Jess nodded. She knew Ned would be moving away through the crowd, that she might not see him again, might never, but she did not look back. She was filled with a great surge of joy in the present. What she had now was truly built upon rock. She smiled up at Peter over Alice’s head and he was moved at the sudden radiance of her face. You are my love, her eyes said. Love is what I always wanted, and it is you I have given my heart to. She knew that he, in turn, had given his.

He put his arm round her shoulders, holding David’s hand the other side, and they edged through the remaining crowd who were all decked out in the poppies, a flowering of remembrance pinned close to the hearts of the living.

In the middle of the throng of people, David pulled on Peter’s hand to get his attention. Peter stopped and bent down close to him.

‘Will I have to fight in a war, Daddy?’ He looked up, steadily, into Peter’s eyes.

‘I hope not, son.’ Peter smiled and ruffled his hair. ‘I hope not.’