Mum held the telegram between trembling fingers, her mouth gaping in shock.
Kitty rushed to her side and snatched it from her, sinking to her knees on the red tiles of the hallway floor.
Deeply regret to inform you that your son, Acting Sgt RFA 149044, has been reported missing.
Mum let out a wail loud enough to wake the dead. ‘Not my boy! Oh, dear God, not him, please!’
The world seemed to be spinning around them and they clung to each other for comfort, sobbing.
Ever since Harry had left for the front more than a year ago, they’d been living in fear of this moment. Now it had happened, nothing could prepare them for it, nothing could help them through it. They were like so many families who received one of the dreaded War Office telegrams saying that a soldier had disappeared in battle.
They were caught in the no man’s land of despair, clinging to the faint hope that their loved one could be a prisoner behind enemy lines but haunted by the reality that he may have perished on the fields of France and Flanders.
Mum was poleaxed by the news, unable to eat or speak, and she took to her bed, while the Misses Dalton tended to her. Every postal delivery over the coming days brought fresh agony: the terror that a buff-coloured envelope would bring the cold certainty of death in battle.
Kitty had to go out to work. She couldn’t afford to lose her job, and so each day she made the journey down into the city on the tram, past the long lines of women queuing for food outside the shops. A gloom seemed to hang over Newcastle after three years at war. People were hungry, tired and working all the hours that God sent in the munitions factories, with no end to the conflict in sight. Every day brought more battle-damaged ships back to the Tyne for repair, and the remaining men of Newcastle got to work, patching them up and sending them off to sea again.
At her desk at the Shipbuilder, Kitty tried to focus, to lose herself in the intricate details of her work, truly she did, but instead she found herself gazing out of the office window and drifting off up the grey waters of the Tyne until it reached the sea. She floated on, around the coast and past the White Cliffs of Dover, washing up on the beaches of France. She picked her way through the ruins of bombed-out French villages to the battlefields. Harry was leading the gun column, so smart in his uniform, astride Domino, with Top Hat trotting along beside them and the rest of the horses following. She ran alongside her brother but just couldn’t keep up. Before she knew what was happening, a shout went up – ‘Over the top, boys!’ – and khaki-clad Tommies clambered out of the trenches into no man’s land, guns at the ready. The rat-a-tat of machine guns rang out as the Germans did their worst, and the soldiers fell to their knees in the mud, which seemed to swallow them whole. Kitty called out to Harry but he couldn’t hear her, and he rode on with Domino and Top Hat, until he was consumed by the fog of war, shells exploding in his wake.
The clatter of her fingers on the typewriter keyboard brought her back to reality, her face wet with tears. Mr Philpott was standing beside her.
‘Catherine,’ he began gently. ‘Come into my office for a moment.’ He offered her his arm and she leaned on him for support, because her legs were giving way beneath her.
‘Sit down, please.’ He motioned to the chair in front of his desk and she settled herself, wiping her eyes on her sleeve for a moment, because she couldn’t remember for the life of her what she had done with her handkerchief.
He opened the ornate cigarette box on the edge of his desk. It was decorated in the Chinese style, with two fat, orange koi carp swimming in opposite directions to each other. He offered it to her and she shook her head.
‘Is it Harry?’
‘Yes,’ she cried, covering her face with her hands. ‘He’s missing. Nobody knows what’s happened to him. Forgive me . . .’
He rushed to her side and put his arm around her.
‘Don’t apologize, Kitty, please,’ he said. ‘You shouldn’t be at work today. You must go home to be with your mother.’
‘But you need me here, and I need my wages or we won’t be able to eat,’ she said, barely registering the fact that he’d called her by her pet name. She stared at the floor with shame that she’d had to talk about money so openly in front of him.
‘I won’t dock your pay, you need to have some time to . . .’ He stopped himself and they looked at each other. They both knew in that instant that the word on his lips was ‘grieve’.
The bitter wind of a Newcastle winter howled through the back alleys by the Quayside and whipped up the cobbled streets towards the city centre. As she made her way back to work, Kitty wandered along the quay, her hair billowing out behind her. She’d taken a few days off to recover her composure but the dread of waiting for the post each day with little else to occupy her but Mum’s sadness was more than she could bear. She’d always found it easier to just try to get on with life as best she could. She used to love coming down to the quay with Harry after Dad had gone, to show him sailing ships with their tall masts, so they could lose themselves in the hustle and bustle of it all. Once they were nearly knocked flying by a drift of pigs being herded along to the market and laughed themselves silly about it for days.
Wherever she went in the city, she was reminded of her brother. They’d grown up darting on and off trams together, visiting the central library, walking with Mum to the fish market. It didn’t seem possible that she’d never see him again, but she knew life had to go on, somehow.
Back in the offices of the Shipbuilder, the room fell silent as she walked in and Gerald, the chief sub-editor, was the nicest he’d ever been, even bringing her a cup of tea, which he plonked down a bit heavily, sloshing some on her neatly typed copy and prompting a flurry of apologies. After a few hours, things returned to normal – which was a relief, actually – and Mr Philpott had started calling her ‘Catherine’ again, like he always did. There were a few quiet moments when she caught him glancing over at her from his office, checking that she was all right, but other than that, it was business as usual.
Mum had bought them both a little pendant badge that so many war widows wore nowadays. It cost a shilling and was in the shape of a silver heart, with one word engraved on it: ‘sacrifice’. She’d pinned it to Kitty’s lapel before she’d left the house, but Kitty didn’t need to wear a badge to show the sacrifice that Harry had made; she felt it, deep in her own heart.
Christmas was fast approaching and after work, she made time to wander through the Central Arcade. They barely had the will to celebrate, with Harry missing, but Kitty wanted to do something to mark the day at least. The Central Arcade was one of her favourite places, with its magnificent barrel-vaulted roof and mosaic flooring, and shopkeepers had done their best to make it festive, despite the war, putting up holly, ivy and ribbons along their frontages. It was nice to see other people enjoying the festivities and Kitty took some comfort in that. People liked to gather in there, to peer at the things they couldn’t afford to buy, mostly, and to take shelter from the elements, especially on a really chilly winter’s day. Kitty had been saving hard to buy some new ribbon from the milliner so that she could smarten up Mum’s felt hat for her for Christmas. It was a small gift, a token really, and she also bought a couple of yards of lace to add some detail to one of Mum’s blouses as a special surprise.
She was still clutching her brown paper bag of Christmas treats as she came through the front door of their home in Simonside Terrace, stamping her feet to bring some life back into them after the freezing walk from the tram stop. Glancing down, she spotted a letter lying on the doormat. She picked it up, her heart pounding, and tore open the envelope.
The handwriting was not Harry’s, but his words washed over her, bringing with them a great tidal wave of relief.
My dearest darling Mum and Kitty,
I am asking the nurse to write this for me. I’m weak from a bullet wound but hope to be entrained soon to return to Newcastle where you can see for yourself that I am still your loving son and brother.
I don’t remember much about the past few weeks, as I have been so sick with sepsis, but I am now at the British Red Cross hospital in Calais and doing much better.
I was one of the few from my brigade to make it back alive. I was shot and lay in a shell hole with Domino for days before I was found. I’m sad to say, Kitty, the old boy didn’t make it but the fact he was there with me helped keep me going, so he was loyal to the last.
It was snowing hard and I froze, which stopped the bleeding, so the doctors say; that and the fact that the German bullet passed clean through me. They thought I was dead when they took me off the battlefield. I sat bolt upright in the morgue and that gave the stretcher bearers a fright. It is, as the doctor said, nothing short of a miracle that I’m here. Life has given me a second chance.
I can only imagine how worried you both must have been but please don’t fret any more because I am safe now.
I will write to you again soon and cannot wait to see you back in Blighty.
Sending you both all my love,
Harry xxx
Kitty clasped the letter to her and shouted up the stairs, ‘Mum! Come quickly! It’s a miracle – Harry’s alive!’
Her mother stood at the top of the stairs, her hair hanging loose and her eyes red from crying. She steadied herself with one hand against the wall as she made her way down towards Kitty, shaking her head in disbelief that after so much bad news, the impossible had happened. ‘Can it be true?’
Kitty ran to her, waving the letter triumphantly. ‘Yes! It’s him! Our Harry’s coming home to us!’
They hugged each other and Kitty felt the warmth of her mother’s embrace, her breath in her hair mingling with tears of joy and relief. They would be a family again.
It was like the sun had come out again in Kitty’s world and the years seemed to fall away from Mum, who was so happy she was even singing in the scullery in the mornings, like she used to when Dad was alive. Knowing that Harry was safe and would soon be on his way home was the best Christmas present they could ever have wished for.
Even the sleet and the snow of Christmas Eve couldn’t dampen Kitty’s spirits and she decided to go to a service at St Nicholas’s Cathedral, to give thanks that Harry had been spared. Mum and Dad had got married there and she and Harry had been christened in the cathedral too, so it seemed the right place to be. It was a landmark for all Geordies, with its spire visible for miles across the city.
Mr Philpott had asked if he might accompany her and she couldn’t find a reason to say no, especially after he’d been so kind to her when Harry was missing in action. After locking the office door for the Christmas holidays as all the other sub-editors trooped off to the pub, they muffled themselves up against the cold and set off together. Snow started to fall, deadening the sound of their feet on the cobbles and dusting the blackened buildings so they looked as if they’d been coated with icing sugar.
Mr Philpott wanted to go over every last detail of how Harry had survived a German bullet and come back from the dead. It wasn’t often that anyone got such good news from the front, so the story had done the rounds of the office and Mr Philpott agreed it would probably be the talk of the Bigg Market by now.
The cathedral was lit by candles and already packed to the rafters with the well-to-do folk from Jesmond, with the ladies swathed in fur. Kitty didn’t have anything as posh, of course, but she was wearing a lovely new scarf that Mum had knitted for her and a beret too, in blue wool; she’d been allowed to open her present early on account of the filthy weather, to keep her from catching cold.
Mr Philpott sat next to her in the pew and they had a whispered conversation about their plans for Christmas Day. A hush fell over the cathedral as the Bishop of Newcastle, in his golden robes and mitre, led the service. Looking around her in the candlelight, as the choirboys sang ‘Silent Night’, Kitty couldn’t help wondering how many people had lost a loved one in the conflict. She felt lucky, blessed even, for Harry to have been given a second chance, by some small miracle, which she would never understand but always be grateful for.
After the carols, just as she was preparing to say goodbye to Mr Philpott on the cathedral steps, he put his hand in his pocket and produced a little gift, beautifully wrapped with a red ribbon. She was frozen for a moment, as the wind whipped the snow into a flurry, catching in her hair and making her shiver beneath her thin woollen coat.
‘I’d like you to have this,’ he said.
Kitty was flabbergasted. ‘That’s too kind. I’m afraid I haven’t got you anything . . .’
‘Catherine, there’s no need for you to buy me a present. Just seeing you open this will be gift enough for me.’
She was blushing as scarlet as the bow around the little box, but she untied it with fumbling fingers and opened it to find a stunning emerald ring inside, nestling in a velvet case.
‘It’s beautiful!’ she gasped. ‘I couldn’t possibly accept this, Mr Philpott. It’s too expensive for a start.’ She tried to hand it back, but he covered her hands with his own and held them for a moment.
‘Please, call me Charles. I want you to have it. You see, I was hoping you might accept it, as a token of my affection,’ he said.
She gazed up at him and found genuine warmth in his eyes, which seemed to make her heart flutter.
He got down on one knee, in the freezing snow, as people around them looked on in amazement. ‘The thing is, Kitty, I’m in love with you and I want you to be my wife.’
Kitty kept the ring hidden in the drawer of her bedside table and told no one.
She was so blindsided by the proposal that she’d told him she needed time to think. She couldn’t quite believe that the editor, the man who she’d worked with day after day, wanted to marry her.
It was all too confusing. She loved her job and she liked Mr Philpott. In fact, if she were being honest with herself, she was very fond of him indeed. He was clever and handsome, in his way. Was she in love with him? She wasn’t sure of that but perhaps she could come to love him. A lot of people did that in marriages. She’d overheard Mum talking to the Misses Dalton about women who’d ‘made the best of it’ and then found they’d fallen head over heels in love once they’d set up home and had children.
But if she married, he’d be bound to ask more about her family and then the truth about her father might come out. That fear hung over her like a black cloud. It had just been the three of them – Mum, Harry and Kitty – for so long and only they understood how it felt to be part of their family, the shame they carried. Sharing that secret with someone who said he loved her just didn’t seem possible because once he knew the truth, he would surely change his mind.
And in any case, if she got married, she would have to give up work, which she enjoyed so much. Mum relied on her wage too. It wouldn’t be fair for her to go and get married and start having children to care for. Who would look after her mother?
‘Kitty, love?’ Mum’s voice carried up the hallway. ‘What on earth are you doing up there all alone? It’s Christmas Day! Come and lay the table, the Misses Dalton will be calling around later and I need to get things ready for them.’
With Harry safe, Mum wanted to have a proper celebration and she’d been steaming a beautiful pudding all morning to accompany the goose she’d managed to buy at the butcher’s. But Kitty seemed to have lost her appetite entirely.
‘I’ll be there in just a moment,’ she shouted.
She sighed to herself and put the sparkling emerald back in its box and shut the drawer.
On New Year’s Day, Mum and Kitty travelled to Armstrong College, which had been requisitioned to house the 1st Northern General Hospital, to be reunited with Harry. Nurses in starched white uniforms and caps, with black and red capelets around their shoulders, were coming and going from the red-brick building as they approached.
Mum clasped Kitty’s arm for support.
‘Do you think we will recognize him?’ she said.
‘Of course we will,’ said Kitty. ‘He’s our Harry.’
They entered a big hall which was filled with beds as far as the eye could see, so there must have been more than forty wounded soldiers recuperating in there. A couple of men with their legs missing below the knee sat at a felt-covered table in the middle of the room, playing cards. There were bandaged arms and patched eyes, and the nurses seemed to glide along, tucking in a bedsheet here and there, telling some to rest and others to try to get up and walk about.
Kitty spotted him first, propped up on a pillow at the end of one of the rows, nearest to the fireplace. Mum rushed along the highly polished floor, which reeked of disinfectant, letting out a squeal of delight – much to the annoyance of the nurses, who tutted their disapproval. Harry was thinner than they’d ever seen him, but when he smiled, his whole face lit up.
‘Two visitors at a time only, please,’ said a nurse, who appeared to have rolled silently to the bedside, as if she were on castors. ‘And please be mindful that there are some very sick men in here who need quiet and rest.’
Mum ignored her and bent down to kiss Harry’s cheek, running her hand across his forehead. Her son had come back from the dead and she wasn’t going to stand on ceremony for Florence Nightingale or anyone else for that matter.
Kitty sat on a wooden stool at his side and clasped his hand. ‘It’s so good to see you. How are you feeling?’
Harry laughed, and he was the same Harry that she’d always known and loved. ‘Well, it’s better than being in the trenches, I can tell you.’ He shifted uncomfortably and put his hand to his belly. ‘I’m still in a lot of pain. Doctors say the scar isn’t healing too well yet, so I’ll be in here for a while before I’m allowed home. But I’m doing better than some, so we must be grateful for that.’
Another soldier, who looked little more than a boy himself, was sitting on a bed clutching his knees, rocking back and forth. ‘He’s been like that for hours,’ said Harry, lowering his voice. ‘Nurses tell him to stop, but he can’t. I’ve seen it before – the war does terrible things to a man’s mind.’
Kitty felt her brother’s fingers start to tremble. ‘The dead have it easy, Kitty, the dead have it easy.’
Mum recoiled in shock. ‘Don’t upset yourself, now, Harry, what’s done is done.’ She used to say that to both of them when Dad left, to help them get through the long and lonely nights.
He looked up at his mother, anguish etched on his features.
‘I want to come home with you, because every night, when the lights go out, we’re all back there at the front, every last one of us in here,’ he said, gripping Kitty’s fingers. ‘There’s no escape.’ Fat, salty tears rolled down his face and soaked his nightshirt. ‘Please let me come home!’
The nurse reappeared and freed Kitty’s hand from her brother’s grasp. ‘Come along, Harry, I think you need to let your mam and your sister be getting on now. They can come again tomorrow, when you’re feeling better, but the doctors will need to see you soon.’ She leaned down and put his arms under the covers, tucking them in tightly as if he were a child.
Mum was struck dumb and looked over to Kitty.
‘Well, let’s do what the nurse says, Harry, because we want you to get better and then you can come home,’ Kitty said, kissing him on the cheek.
His grey eyes searched her face and she smiled at him reassuringly. ‘Don’t worry. We will certainly be back tomorrow. And the day after that, and the one after that too. We will come every day until you are well enough to come home. We won’t leave you. Ever.’
Her words seemed to make him relax and he closed his eyes. Kitty took Mum by the arm to escort her back out of the ward. The ward sister was waiting for them by the doorway and she walked with them down the long corridor. ‘It will take time, but you must understand that his wounds are mental as well as physical. It’s best not to talk about the past, but to concentrate on the future, on happy and familiar things. Do you understand?’
Mum nodded. Kitty understood perfectly. She knew what she had to do.
Kitty carefully placed the ring, still in its box, on top of a pile of papers at the front of Mr Philpott’s desk. A look of hurt flickered across his face and he leaned back in his chair.
‘Do you have something you want to say to me, Kitty?’
‘I wanted to thank you for your very kind offer, but I can’t accept it because I have my family to think about. My brother needs me now, more than ever.’
His voice fell to a whisper. ‘I can provide for all of you, if you’ll let me. Your mother and brother would be welcome to move in with us, in Jesmond. We have room—’
‘You’re very kind,’ said Kitty, ‘but we are quite set in our ways.’
‘I could wait, Kitty. If you think you could grow fond of me . . .’
Outside on the Tyne, a ship was sliding down the slipway into the murky waters below. Nothing could stop it now. It had been set free from its moorings and there was only one way forward.
‘I am fond of you, Mr Philpott,’ she said. ‘Very fond.’ She ignored the awful sinking feeling in her chest as she spoke the words. ‘But I also need this job and I’m not about to give it up for you, or any man for that matter.’
She leaned forward and pushed the ring box towards him. It sat there, in the no man’s land between the edge of his desk and his blotting pad.
‘I will always be grateful to you, especially for the kindness you have shown me, but I have to put my family first,’ she said.
‘Kitty—’ he began.
‘And do please call me Catherine. I like that at work.’
He picked up the ring box and put it in his drawer, watching her as she turned and walked out of his office.
Kitty settled herself down at her typewriter, inserted a fresh sheet of paper into the mechanism, and began to tap away, writing up the tonnage, freight and specifications of the ships in this month’s edition.
With every keystroke, she determined that things would go back to the way they had been before the war. Harry would get better, she would see to it, and then it would be just the three of them.
Kitty, Harry and Mum.