We've Come to Take You Home (5 page)

ELEVEN

‘Y
ES, ON THE CORNER
of Stanley Road and Mortimer Street. Yes, the keys are in the usual place. Yes, that's right. No problem. Tomorrow will be fine. Cheers.'

Her father clicked off his phone.

‘They'll collect the car today, fix the seatbelt and then bring it back over here, to the house, tomorrow, probably in the morning.'

Everything was going to be all right.

‘Your head looks awful. Does it hurt?'

They were almost home.

‘Bit of a bruise. That's all.'

And her mother and father were talking to each other.

‘Are you sure they said no flying for two weeks?'

‘At least two weeks. You were there when they said it…'

Her mother swerved right into a side street. A car travelling towards them, down the main road, slammed on its brakes.

‘Rachel…'

Her mother slowed.

‘You didn't even indicate…'

The car stopped.

‘You don't just–'

Sam slid down into her seat. She closed her eyes.

‘Get out.'

Her father laughed.

‘Rachel…'

He was sitting in his cockpit.

‘I said get out.'

Her mother was standing on her platform.

‘Because if you don't like the way I drive then do me a favour and get out of my car.'

They sat there, in silence, the three of them going nowhere, her mother tapping her fingers against the steering wheel.

‘I'm sorry.'

The tapping stopped.

‘Apology accepted.'

The car moved forward. Sam opened her eyes. This time her mother indicated.

‘So will you be OK, the two of you, if I go and get the shopping? Because we could send out for a delivery this evening…'

Her mother was holding her car keys but there was no sign of her moving out of the kitchen, along the hall, out of the front door and into her car. She was stuck.

‘We could have a pizza or we could try out the new Indian place in Portland Street. They both do home–'

‘I'll go and get the shopping.'

Her father grabbed the keys out of her hand.

‘You can't.'

He was at the door.

‘You mustn't drive. I was there when they told you.'

Her mother snatched the keys back from him.

‘Not for at least three days.'

The front door slammed. Her father sank down onto a chair. He sat there, silent, head in his hands, slumped down over the table.

‘Dad, everything's going to be all right, isn't it?'

Her father lifted his head.

‘Please, Sam…'

‘With you and Mum…'

Her father closed his eyes. He shook his head, slowly, from side to side.

‘Not now, please.'

‘You won't have to leave, will you?'

He stood up.

‘I'm going upstairs to change. Get out of this uniform…'

He walked out of the kitchen, slamming the door shut behind him.

She would make his favourite sandwich: cheddar cheese and oak-smoked ham on granary with honey mustard. She would take it upstairs and he would laugh and give her a hug. Her mother would come back from the supermarket. They would unpack the shopping and there would be chicken casserole in tomato sauce, with anchovies, garlic and capers, for supper.

She sliced and buttered the bread. She added a slice of cheese, some mustard, another slice of ham, some more mustard and then another slice of cheese. Her father liked his sandwiches big, very big. But he also liked them very neat and very orderly.

There was a thump of feet down the stairs and along the hallway. The door opened and her father stumbled into the kitchen – or rather the ghost of her father. In less than ten minutes, in the time it had taken for her to prepare the sandwich, he had turned into a stooped and frail old man.

‘Sam…'

He clutched at her hand.

‘Please…'

‘Dad? What's happened? What's the matter?'

His mouth twisted, contorted, but no words came, only a trail of spittle.

‘Dad…'

He sank down onto the kitchen floor and, twisting himself up tight into a ball, began to whimper.

‘Si…'

His body juddered and juddered again, uncontrollably. He started to retch.

She jumped up and grabbed the plastic washing up bowl from the cupboard underneath the sink. She crouched back down beside her father.

‘Dad?'

It was stupid but she held out the bowl. Her father pushed it away. He slid down to one side, his head and upper body propped up against a kitchen cupboard. He coughed, then retched and coughed again. His mouth opened and he vomited, helplessly, all over everything and everywhere, including himself.

She scrambled, gagging from the smell, up on to her feet. She snatched up her mobile and punched in her mother's number. It rang. And rang. And rang. There was silence, followed by a click, and then her mother's laughing voice told her to leave a message.

‘Mum. It's me, Sam. It's Dad, he's really ill, he's been sick and everything. I don't know what to do, come home, please, come home…'

Her father was still lying there, slumped down against the cupboard, but his eyes were now closed. Her mother had left twenty minutes ago. It was a ten-minute drive to the supermarket. She wouldn't be back for at least half an hour.

Sam punched in the three digit number she had always assumed, in her previous life, the one she had been living just fifteen minutes ago, she would never have to dial.

‘Ambulance, please. Yes. Number seven, Seaview Road. Yes. Seaview Road. That's right. It's my father. My name? My name is Sam, Sam Foster.'

How long would the ambulance take to get there? Ten minutes? Fifteen? She put the phone down. She was trembling, not just her hand, but her whole body.

TWELVE

T
HE TROLLEY CRASHED THROUGH
the double doors into a brilliantly lit, white room. Figures, wearing gloves, face masks and green overalls, stood round what looked like an operating table.

‘Sam? It is Sam, isn't it? You came in this morning. With your mother…'

An arm was placed around her shoulder and she was led away, down a corridor, round a corner and into a room. The nurse called Kelly asked if she would like something to drink, a tea or a coffee. Sam replied. A door closed. And there was silence.

She sat there, her body clenched tight, her eyes unseeing, her mind blank, conscious of each and every beat of her heart, each short, sharp gasp for air. If she allowed herself just for a second to let go, everything, her mind, body, the room in which she was sitting, would spiral out of control.

A door opened. A cup and saucer was put down on the table in front of her. Kelly asked if she was all right and then said that her mother was on her way to the hospital. The door closed. Silence.

She lifted her head and looked around. The walls of the room were white. To her right, where she would have expected to see a window, there was a blank wall. She looked down. The carpet under her feet was a dull grey and she was sitting on a dull grey sofa. There were two armchairs, the same dull grey, one on either side of the sofa. Hanging on the wall to the
left of the door, was a picture of a blue vase containing pink flowers. The flowers were roses and the vase was standing on a shelf in front of an open window. Beyond the window was a sun-filled garden.

Directly in front of her was a low table. On the table was a large box of paper tissues and the cup and saucer. She picked up the cup and took a sip. It was coffee and it was cold. What had seemed like seconds had, in fact, been minutes.

Voices and footsteps, the tip, tap of heels, getting nearer. Her body tensed. The door opened.

‘I got your message and went straight home and you weren't there.'

It was her mother.

‘Then my mobile rang and it was the hospital and–'

‘Would you like something to drink, Mrs Foster?'

‘Coffee would be lovely, thank you,' said her mother.

The nurse, called Kelly, turned to go. Sam wanted to go with her, to run away from this room without a view, but the door closed and she and her mother were left alone.

‘What happened? When I went out Dad was fine…'

Sam didn't know what to do: whether she should sit, whether she should stand, say something or stay silent. Everything she did, or didn't do, would be wrong.

‘And he was talking and walking, not being sick, and he didn't have a headache…'

Sam searched for words but with the words came pictures, and neither the words nor the pictures contained a single scrap of comfort. She was back crouched down beside her father, where he lay, barely breathing and unconscious, on the kitchen floor. She could hear the tick, tock, tick, tock of the clock, getting louder and louder, hammering its way inside her head. And she was praying and she was crying for the ambulance to come.

‘Hello. I'm Dr. Brownlow.'

He looked no older than some of the boys at her school. But he was smiling.

‘Please do sit down, Mrs Foster.'

Her mother took a half step towards the other empty chair, hesitated and then sank down next to Sam on the sofa.

‘Mrs Foster, we suspect that your husband has had a subdural haematoma, a form of intracranial mass lesion. It's likely to be acute rather than sub acute, or chronic, but until we do a scan we won't know for certain. The scan will take place, here, at the hospital, as a matter of urgency, as soon as your husband's been stabilised.'

He paused to re-load.

‘Your husband has been transferred to the intensive care unit on the top floor. You'll be able to go up to see him soon…'

‘But how, why, did this happen? Was it because of this morning, the car accident, the knock he received on his head?'

‘Mrs Foster, the answer to your question is almost certainly yes, but we won't be able to confirm that until we've had the results of the scan. We would have liked to have kept your husband in, under observation, just in case, but as you know he refused…'

There was a tap on the door. The doctor jumped to his feet.

‘Kelly, here, will look after you.'

The door closed, and he was gone.

‘Two coffees?'

Kelly placed the two cups and saucers down on the table. The door opened. The door closed. And, once again, Sam and her mother were alone, sitting side by side on the dull grey sofa, both staring, fixedly, at cups of dull grey coffee.

‘If I'd known I would never have gone out. Maybe if I'd been there…'

Her mother being there, at home, wouldn't have stopped
any of this happening. The ‘just in case', which everyone had been so worried about, had happened. Sam stood up.

‘Sam, are you all right? Where are you going?'

‘I need the toilet.'

It was a lie but she had to get out of that room.

‘“I have some bad news and some very bad news.”'

Two men, one tall, one short, were sauntering down the corridor towards her. The tall one had long hair. The short one had none. Both were wearing identical security guard uniforms. It was the tall one who was doing the talking.

‘And the patient said, “Well, you might as well give me the bad news first.” And the doctor said, “The lab called with your test results. They said you have twenty-four hours to live.”'

The short man snorted. The tall man continued.

‘“Twenty-four hours! That's terrible! What could be worse? What's the very bad news?” The doctor said, “I've been trying to reach you since yesterday.”'

A door down the corridor, to her right, had a ‘Ladies' sign on it. Only one of the three cubicles was occupied. Sam turned on the tap. She leant over and splashed cold water onto her face. There was a rustle from inside the cubicle and then a click. The door opened. A girl dressed in black walked out of the cubicle. She was crying. Sam turned round.

‘Are you…'

There was a flash of red, blue and silver, and the girl was gone.

THIRTEEN

May 1917

G
AUNT - FACED, SUNKEN - EYED
women and children stared out of cottage doorways as the horse and cart creaked down the hill towards the church. Her mother sat in the front, dressed in the frayed black mourning dress that had been passed down through the family, from mother to daughter, for as long as anyone could remember. And now it was her mother's turn to wear it.

She had put on the dress the morning after the post boy had delivered the letter telling them that Jess' father had been killed in action. On her lap she cradled a tiny white coffin. A funeral was nothing new. So many children had died and so many children, young and not so young, some the same age as Jess, had been buried. Her brother was just one more.

He had taken over a month to die. Day after day, night after night, he lay there in the bed, disappearing into himself. His breath, at first loud and harsh, gradually became quieter and softer. Then one day, when she woke up, she was aware that the shrunken little body lying in the bed beside her was no longer warm. It was cold, stone cold. Her brother had passed away in the night when she and her mother were sleeping. The cause of his death was starvation. That was two days ago.

A man, his body bent and twisted from polio, bowed his head as the horse and cart creaked past his cottage. Two children, one girl, one boy, stood on either side of him. His wife, their mother, had died in childbirth the year before. After her death, he'd sent his son and daughter to the local
children's home thinking, now they had no mother, it would be the best place for them to go; they would be better looked after there than at home. Jess remembered the hugs and kisses, the tearful goodbyes, at the end of their last day at school.

A month later and Harry and Clare were back. They'd run away from the home. But the two children who walked into the playground were very different from the two children who had walked out. They'd always been stick thin, and that hadn't changed, but now their bodies, including their faces, were covered in sores and bruises.

Hunched down at the far end of the playground, Clare and Harry sitting in the centre of the circle, Jess and the rest of the class had listened, wide-eyed, as the brother and sister described how they'd had to scrub floors, mop steps and prepare the food (oatmeal boiled up in lukewarm water with the occasional bit of bone or lump of turnip). They weren't allowed to talk, run or laugh. They were beaten for not sleeping with their legs straight and beaten again for demanding to be called by their own names, Harry and Clare, rather than just numbers sixty-two and sixty-three. Their father let them stay at home. To die of starvation, loved, was better than dying of starvation, unloved.

The first drops of rain fell as the horse and cart drew to a halt outside the church's lychgate. It had seen many a wedding and christening. Now it was seeing the funerals. The driver didn't move, just sat there wrapped up in his greatcoat, slapping the reins impatiently against the quivering flanks of his scrawny horse. Anything reasonably fit, whether horse, mule or pony, had long ago been loaded onto a ship and sent across the Channel to serve with the army in France. The few that remained to plough the fields, pull the carts, or heave coal down the pits were either too old, too sick or too small.

Jess jumped down, drawing her shawl up over her head, and ran round, feet splashing through puddles, to where
her mother was sitting. Her mother slid the coffin towards her. For something so small it seemed surprisingly heavy, far heavier than when they first left the cottage half an hour ago. She supported the coffin against her stomach, leaning it up against the side of the cart, while her mother clambered down. Together, one at either end, they carried it through the lychgate and across the churchyard to where a single, black-robed figure stood, umbrella up and bible in hand, by a newly dug grave.

‘“I am the resurrection and the life,” saith the Lord. “He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live…”'

The men and boys from the village, the ones who had been so loudly clapped and cheered as they marched off to war, would never be laid to rest in this churchyard. Her father was buried somewhere in France, possibly in a military cemetery or just in a hole dug in the side of a trench. They didn't know, and might never know, where.

‘“And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die…”'

At least with her brother they had something to say goodbye to. Her mother had insisted on doing it properly however much it cost. She now received a widow's pension, and had used up most of that month's allowance, even smaller than the one she'd had before, to buy the coffin, the grave and the hasty words of prayer that were now being said over it.

‘We therefore commit his body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust in the sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life.'

Rain ripped through the graveyard sending the vicar, his black gown billowing out behind him, running back to the shelter of his church.

They stood there, mother and daughter, shivering with cold, their threadbare clothes soaked through, the wind and rain gusting and swirling around them, staring down at the
mud-splattered white coffin. Her mother pulled a posy of primroses out of her pocket. She threw the flowers down into the waterlogged grave.

A woman dressed in a tightly buttoned grey coat, a black mourning band on her right arm, was kneeling beside a grave on the opposite side of the churchyard. The woman stood. She brushed clods of mud off her coat, picked up her basket and walked, between the rows of gravestones, over to where Jess and her mother were standing.

It was the woman from the market, the one she'd stolen the bread from, would she say something? The woman glanced down at the coffin and then looked up. She stared at Jess, hesitated and then turned to her mother.

‘I'm sorry for your loss.'

Her mother nodded.

‘And we for yours.'

The woman bowed her head and walked on, past Jess and her mother, down the path and out through the lychgate.