bay and I could see the twin rise of Kilvey and Townhill like a mother’s breasts protectively leaning over the untidy rows of houses in the town itself.
Father was hearty in the way most older folk are when they’re not used to young people but I saw at once he didn’t even think of me as a
I wanted to protest and then I paused. It would suit me to be a child I decided, that way I’d have no responsibilities. I realized I was a selfish bitch but I needed to look out for myself, I’d learned that in my fight with George all those months ago.
I dutifully kissed his cheek, which was sharp with bristles. ‘You haven’t shaved.’ It came out like an accusation. My father apologized.
‘I’m sorry, I was waiting for the kettle to boil. I need hot water, you see.’
I did feel awful then and hastily I pushed the kettle on the gas stove. ‘I’ll do what little I can to help you, Father.’ I was repentant and looked at his pale face and shadowed eyes, wondering what horrors he’d seen at the place they called ‘the front’.
‘Does it hurt much?’ I pointed to his bandaged stump without really looking. He replied with the bravery of the officer and gentleman.
‘Hardly at all, er…’
‘Meryl,’ I supplied helpfully.
‘Yes… Meryl.’ He leaned back in his chair and stared at me and I sort of slumped, not wanting him to see I was budding under my jumper, growing up.
‘It’s a pity your mother isn’t here to, well, to tell you things about, well… life.’
‘Hari’s here,’ I said at once, ‘she’s a good sister, she sees I’m safe down in Carmarthen away from the bombs.’ It didn’t hurt to emphasize the point that it wasn’t safe for me in Swansea, not when the bombers came.
In the afternoon, Hari called at the house briefly. ‘I’ve got to work tonight,’ she said casually, ‘but it’s a one- off, don’t worry, and Meryl is here if you need anything.’
I was alarmed and must have looked it. Hari frowned at me and her look told me to pull myself together. ‘It’s only this once.’ Her tone was brisk. ‘It won’t hurt you to help for one night, Meryl. You’ve got it easy the rest of the time.’
I’d never seen her so cross and I hugged her tight. ‘We’ll manage, don’t worry, we’ll be all right, won’t we, Father?’
‘Of course we will. You go, Angharad.’ I was to find that Father always called my sister by her full name. ‘You have your war work to do like the rest of us.’
I found myself making my father’s supper for him. I wasn’t a cook by any stretch of the imagination but I’d watched Aunt Jessie countless times whisk an egg with a little milk and scramble it in a pan. So I did that for my father and made a pile of toast with the bread and butter I’d brought from the farm.
He ate hungrily and for the first time I felt the satisfaction of feeding someone and watching their enjoyment of the food I’d prepared. I could hear Aunt Jessie’s voice in my head.
‘You’ll make someone a good wife yet, my girl.’ I thought lovingly of Michael and as always hugged to me the thought of us together that night, it seemed long ago now, that we’d huddled together for warmth and I’d slept with my cheek against his chest.
‘You’re dreaming, Meryl. Some boy is it?’
I looked sharply at my father—he was a clever man, I’d do well to remember that.
‘More tea?’ I lifted the pot and he smiled without saying any more.
That night there was an air raid. I hurried downstairs and Father was sitting on the edge of his bed looking for his stick. Then I saw his face go grey as he tried to stand.
‘We’ll need to get to the shelter, Meryl,’ he said, trying to sound as if he wasn’t in agony.
‘Let’s stay here,’ I suggested. ‘I’ll make us tea and we’ll take our chances. Folk in shelters get hurt too.’ I told him what Kate had said about the girl in the shelter who had cried out about her ears and how the ambulance man had called her a ‘poor bugger’.
So we sat and listened to the bombs fall. We drank tea and we talked and I began to learn a little about my father. And then a bomb fell near, very near, perhaps next door. Father covered me with his body to protect me, his big hands shielding my head. I hugged his body and felt the bond between father and daughter for the first time in my life and I knew I didn’t want my father to die.
I drew him from the bed, felt him wince as his bad leg touched the floor and then I was drawing him underneath the table and we clung there together while the walls shuddered, plaster fell from the ceiling and the air raid railed around us like a thunderstorm. I looked up and touched his now-shaven face. ‘I love you, Daddy,’ I said softly, and we both knew I meant it.
Twenty-Two
Kate sat with Stephen in the garden of Victoria Park. He held her hand and she didn’t mind. Now he treated her like a lady, he made no crude remarks, he was gentle and kind and he made her feel good again.
‘Tell me what it looks like, Steve,’ she said, ‘Are the leaves turning red and fluttering to the ground? Is it pretty?’
‘Not half as pretty as you.’ Stephen kissed her hand. ‘You look lovely, Kate, the sun brings red lights out in your dark hair and your skin is so white, so delicate. You’re a true Irish beauty.’
‘And you’ve kissed the Blarney stone,’ Kate said with a smile. She knew she’d put on weight, she could feel with her finger tips that her waist was thicker. She could feel the scar along her jaw line and despaired. What she couldn’t see was the bloom she had, a softness that appealed so much to the protective instinct in Stephen as he sat looking at her.
‘Kate,’ he said softly, ‘I wanted to ask you, will you marry me?’
She felt a stab of pain. The only man she wanted as a husband was her dear Eddie but he was lost to her for ever.
‘You were my first… woman,’ he said.
‘You can’t say ‘love’ can you, Stephen?’
‘Yes I can, Kate, now I can. Back when we first met I was too young and foolish to think of love, I knew nothing about life or love or death or pain. I do now, Kate. And, Kate, I’ve fallen in love with you, your gentle ways, your beautiful face.’ He laughed. ‘I can’t deny I find you attractive—I want to lay you down and make love to you, my darling.’
She was flattered, of course she was, but then weren’t they two wounded people reaching for comfort just as Stephen had reached for comfort when he’d taken her virginity?
‘Can I think about it, Stephen?’ she asked. ‘Will you have to go back to the war? That is an important question, Stephen.’
‘I will sit at a desk for the duration of the hostilities,’ he said, ‘I’m no longer up to the very high standard required of a pilot so you see you wouldn’t be getting a hero.’
Kate knew he’d been decorated for bravery, he was modest, gentle, kind and he would look after her. ‘It’s only just eight months ago that Eddie went missing,’ she said, ‘what if he came back?’
‘I’d let you go to him if that’s what you wanted but I hope you would’ve fallen in love with me and want to stay with me, of course I do.’
She got up from the bench wondering how so much had happened to her since the first raids on Swansea in 1941. She had been with many pilots and, as the months of the war went on into years, she’d lost her reputation, her ‘good name’. Men laughed about her, talked about her and she was an object of pity and scorn.
And then she’d met Eddie, who’d loved her, against all the odds, against the taunts of his friends, who told him in graphic detail how they’d ‘had her’. She’d lost her family, found Eddie’s mother, shared her grief when Eddie was lost. She’d been blown up by her country’s own weapons of defence, lost her sight. She had settled down now to a civilian life, queuing for food, accepted now by the women for the only men around were old or war wounded and she was no threat to anyone with her blind eyes.
