War Baby (10 page)

The two sisters looked significantly at each other behind his back as he hung up his hat and coat.

Mary sighed, her eyes locked with those of her sister. ‘I think he deserves to be invited.'

‘As long as you don't mind.'

‘Of course I don't mind. If you remember rightly, I suggested it the other day and you said you didn't want him to come.'

‘I know, but I've changed my mind. It was good of him to take me to Gloucester to collect Frances.'

‘I think so too.'

And so it was that, at the sound of the car pulling up to take her to the talk in Warmley a few days later, she had the wedding invitation in her hand when she opened the door. Only it wasn't John Smith.

‘I'm Brenda Manning, your new driver,' said the freckle-faced redhead standing there. ‘I hear we're off to a cooking demonstration. Is there likely to be any free food going at the end of it? Don't mind telling you, I'm starving.'

‘Where's Corporal Smith?'

The redhead was one of those fidgety types who swayed when she spoke, as though fearing she'd be struck dumb if she didn't keep moving.

‘I understand he asked to be transferred for personal reasons.'

 

 

STAN SWEET CLENCHED
his jaw so hard, his teeth ached. His eyes were fixed on the spumes of earth erupting beneath the onslaught of his garden spade. The furrow for the onions would be much deeper than was strictly necessary. The vigorous way in which he attacked the soil wasn't strictly necessary either. His muscles ached with the effort, but still he proceeded to slice, hack and stab at the soil.

Only those who knew him understood that gardening was the only way he could cope. The more gardening he had to do the better, and venting his anger and despair with a spade, a garden fork or a hoe was the only reason he still applied himself to his garden and to that of Bettina Hicks. He wouldn't come near the place otherwise. Life was utterly grey, the only brightness the vivid redness of his anger.

He used to be good company for Bettina. He'd enjoyed chatting with her over a cup of tea or something stronger. That was before Charlie had died, before his world was torn apart. After that he'd found it hard to take up where they'd left off.

Every so often she asked him in for tea. In the past he would have accepted her invitation. But not now. Sometimes he merely turned her down flat. Sometimes he pretended he hadn't heard her calling – like now. She'd go inside once it was clear that he wouldn't answer.

‘Stan! Stan!'

He glanced beneath his arm. She was still there, looking prim and pretty in a pale grey dress, her hair a slightly lighter colour and in what they'd used to call pompadour
style.

She kept calling! Couldn't the woman take no for an answer?

He peered beneath his arm on the upward stroke of his spade. She was hanging by one arm from the back door, her other hand resting on her walking stick.

It struck him that she was being unusually persistent today, calling and calling despite him ignoring her. He chose to believe she was just being obstinate, determined to have him in for a cup of tea and biscuit.

Leaving the spade standing proud in the earth, he went round the back of the early runner beans. Half hidden behind the seven-foot-high sticks, he thought that would be that. She would go back inside and leave him alone.

Squeezing a handful of green leaves in his hand, he peered around the bean sticks and saw she was still there, still calling him and waving, beckoning him as though she had something important to say. He thought he saw her handkerchief in one hand, or what looked like a handkerchief. Something white anyway.

There couldn't be anything important to say between us now, he thought. There's nothing much I want to hear – from anybody, not from anybody.

The dull ache in the small of his back reminded him that he'd done enough on his own garden today. Although he hadn't done much here, he judged it was time to go home. Especially now Bettina Hicks had come out to bother him.

‘Stan. Stan.'

She was breathless and her cheeks were pink. He might have thought she was having a heart attack or something, but for the fact that she was so animated. With the help of her walking stick, she closed on him fast. It was then that he saw her expression; she was crying. Still sobbing his name too. All the same, he couldn't quite bring himself to acknowledge her.

‘Stan.' In her free hand she held a flimsy white piece of paper, not a handkerchief at all. ‘I can't believe this! I can't believe it! Dead! Dead!'

His blood froze in his veins. Mike! It had to be Mike.

‘Such a tragedy! Such a terrible tragedy!' Her shoulders heaved with sobs, tears squeezing from the corners of her eyes.

‘No! No.' He shook his head forlornly as if that alone would make the statement untrue. It had to be Mike.

‘But there's more, Stan. There's more …'

‘Let's get you back into the house.'

Troubled as he was, afraid of hearing the details of the death of her nephew – Mary's fiancé – he had to be strong for her. He knew – or thought he knew – how she was feeling.

He took hold of her arm, but even she tottered a bit, her unsuitable shoes slipping in the soft earth, mud gathering around her heels. She leaned on him heavily, her shoulders quaking all the way back up the garden path to the back door.

‘Better take them shoes off before you go inside,' Stan said. ‘I'll make the tea. You need it strong and sweet.'

‘Never mind that. A little dirt never hurt anybody. What does a bit of dirt matter when such things like these can happen, terrible things …'

Stan felt an overwhelming desire to be doing any small thing in an effort to hold off the moment when she would tell him the full details. ‘I'll put the kettle on.'

‘No. Don't bother. I need something stronger than tea.' She eased herself into a chair, the letter still clutched in her hand. Her tears appeared to be drying. ‘I'm amazed, Stan. Truly amazed.'

Stan frowned and briefly wondered whether she'd read things right. She'd gone from devastated to something else in a matter of minutes.

He looked at her, remembering the girl she'd once been before she'd married Alf Hicks and gone away. In a way she hadn't changed that much, just older – like all of us, he thought wryly. But today …?

Sadness clouded her eyes.

‘Do you want me to call the doctor?'

She shook her head, sniffed then lifted her chin defiantly. ‘Gilda! It's Gilda!'

‘What happened?'

She handed him the letter. ‘An air raid. Gilda's been killed in an air raid. I told her not to go back to London!'

Her shoulders began to quake anew. She sucked in her lips and hung her head.

Stan headed for the kitchen dresser where Bettina kept her store of sherry, port and spirits and put the letter down. ‘Let's have that drink first.'

He thought about the children. Please God, not them too! He didn't want to ask. His courage failed him.

Steadying his hand, he reached for two glasses. ‘Brandy?'

‘Yes.'

He poured a glass for each of them, turned round and handed her a glass. ‘Drink it,' he said.

‘You too.'

He did as ordered while all the while his stomach tightened and churned at the prospect of hearing further details of yet more bad news. She still hadn't said anything about the children. That was why he hadn't read the letter yet, why it was there on the dresser wedged between a blue-striped butter dish and a sugar basin.

He swigged the drink down in one gulp. Bettina did the same.

She handed him her glass. ‘Another. I need another.'

He poured again.

‘Read it. You must read it, Stan.'

Stan took a deep breath. ‘I take it the children were with her?'

‘Not quite. That's why I want you to read it. There's something in it that concerns you.'

Stan frowned as he walked back to the dresser. What did she mean?

The paper was thin and crisp between his fingers. He raised his eyes to meet hers before dropping his gaze back to the flimsy sheet of paper. First he read the heading. The address was that of an adoption society in London.

He looked at Bettina, wanting to ask what an adoption society could possibly want with him, and secondly why the letter had been sent to Bettina.

Bettina read his expression. ‘Read on, Stan. You need to read on. This letter is really for you, not me. It's for you Stan!'

He didn't fail to notice that she'd stressed the fact twice. Still he questioned it in his mind. The letter was for him? He turned his eyes to the page.

Dear Mrs Hicks,

Your name has been passed to us by a Mr and Mrs Jacobsen whose daughter-in-law, Mrs Gilda Jacobsen, recently died in an air raid.

Fortunately, her two eldest children were staying with their grandparents so were unhurt.

However, we have been told by Mr and Mrs Jacobsen that the third child, a boy of about nine months, was with his mother.

It appears from eyewitnesses that the mother protected the baby with her body …

Not knowing anyone in London, Gilda had stayed with Bettina when she'd first arrived in England but had gone back to London when Charlie had been killed. She had thought that her dead husband's parents had also died, but they'd managed to escape from Europe, finding their way over the Baltic Sea to Sweden and from there to England. Gilda, it seemed, had ended up staying with them, but only until they'd found out about her pregnancy.

Stan looked up from the letter. ‘A third child?'

Bettina nodded. ‘Read on.'

…
We have been informed by Mr and Mrs Jacobsen that they are unwilling to take the child in as he was not fathered by their son, who, I understand, died at the hands of the Nazis. As he is not their son's child, nor of their religion, they feel they cannot accept him into the family. However, they wish him no ill and have instructed us to trace whatever other family he might have.

In this regard, they were given to understand by Gilda Jacobsen that the baby is the son of one Charles Sweet.

The Jacobsens have asked us to contact you, Mrs Hicks, as a dear friend of their daughter-in-law and her parents, who we believe are also dead, to act on their behalf in arranging that Mr Charles Sweet is told of his responsibility and makes arrangements to collect the child, whose name is also Charles, from the orphanage in which he presently resides …

By the time he'd finished reading, Stan Sweet felt as though every bone in his body had been ground to dust.

‘Dear God!'

With his elbows resting on the table, he covered his face with his hands.

‘I had known Gilda as a child before her parents moved to the Netherlands. I don't know where they are now. Her husband's family managed to escape to London. They contacted me because Charlie and Gilda used this address when they wrote to each other. They thought you didn't approve that they were lovers,' she said in response to his questioning look. ‘And they
were
lovers. There's no question about that.'

‘I shouldn't think there was any doubt!' said Stan brusquely. ‘There's a baby!'

Once again he hid his eyes behind his hands as a whole regiment of thoughts marched around his brain, so much so that his head ached with the pressure of them. One after another they tumbled over as he tried – and failed – to analyse his feelings.

‘You know, Betty, I've walked in darkness ever since our Charlie died. Nothing, not even the prospect of our Mary's wedding, helped soothe the hurt. Terrible to admit, but even going to the churchyard and telling my Sarah about it didn't help. It used to, but of late …'

‘I know,' Bettina said quietly, reaching across and patting his hand. ‘You didn't bother to come to see me either. I did miss you. Friends get fewer the older you get. And I appreciated our little chats. You must know that, Stan Sweet.'

He came out from behind his hand to see her smiling through her tears.

‘Anyway,' she added briskly. ‘Did Sarah say anything back to you?'

He eyed her thoughtfully. ‘I'm not sure. It might just 'ave bin my imagination, but … I could hear what she might have said, or thought I did.'

He looked down at what remained of the brandy, pushing the base of the glass round with his index finger so that the liquid quivered in the glass.

‘Gave me a right telling off, I don't mind saying. But it was no use. I couldn't snap out of it, but …'

‘But now you have to.'

Bettina waited for him to tell her what he thought Sarah was saying to him, but when nothing seemed forthcoming she filled in the gap herself.

‘One life ends, another begins. Your son Charlie presented you with a grandson. “Look after him, Stan,” she would have said to you. “Look after our grandson just as you did his father and the girls. Frances too.”'

‘A baby! I can't believe it!' His hand fell away to hang limply between his knees.

‘A grandson, Stan. He's your grandson.'

When he looked at her, she was smiling. For the first time in ages, he smiled too. It felt as if the weight of the world had been lifted off his shoulders.

He studied the high cheekbones, the coif of cotton wool hair, the way her eyes were studying him, searching for his reaction to what she'd said.

Bettina smiled. ‘And his name's Charles. Charlie.'

‘Charlie!' He said it with wonder, his eyes moist.

Bettina covered his hand with hers. She smiled into his face. ‘You're not just his grandfather, Stan. The adoption society are asking about Charlie, but it's you who is now his legal guardian. They're asking Charlie to have him, but it's you who is next in line for the legal responsibility. Are you willing to have the baby live with you?' She paused.