Baba and Ethel returned to a loving closeness that soothed some of her distress at the death of Kate and the confusion of her feelings toward her family. In his arms she could forget everything except his need of her and her willing response. He never brought up the subject of her family, but was always willing to listen when she felt the need to talk. His comments were few, he was non-judgemental about Dai and Molly, but his support of her unwillingness to return home in the full sense, and become a part of her family once more, was balm.
She dreamed of a future far away from The Dell and all its tragedies, with Baba and, one day, their children. She would have his sisters and parents and the many cousins and aunts and uncles he had told her about who would become her family, and life would be perfect.
Rosie’s attitude was different. She was grateful for the growing respect and understanding between Nan and her mother and deliriously happy to have her mother back in her life. She wanted that same happiness for Ethel. Ethel wouldn’t be complete until she accepted her family for what they were. To accept them she would first have to understand.
‘And you’ll never understand until you go back home, stay for a while and talk about it all, including the death of Glenys,’ she told her friend often, but Ethel refused to give up on hating her father and despising her mother. Even the image of Dai sitting alone, uncared for, in that silent cell of a room failed to move her sufficiently to make her relent her decision. She tried not to think of Wesley at all.
Wesley, having lost contact with his ship, had attached himself to the canteen service close to the front line in France. Messages had been sent to inform the authorities of his present whereabouts but no word had yet come through to tell him where to report. He worked alongside the other canteen personnel but made no friends. He volunteered for anything others didn’t want to do and had become a bit of a joke. ‘Wesley’ll do it,’ became a sort of catch-phrase. If he was aware of this he did not react.
Apart from the goods which came from the Bulk Issue Stores, Naafi staff were adept at finding additions to their supplies. Orchards long abandoned and forgotten lofts in barns were raided for fresh fruit. Gardens no longer tended by the owners, who had died or fled, were useful for the fresh vegetables they occasionally still held. There were even a few chickens roaming around and these were a popular addition to the rather boring contents of a stewpot. Having been brought up in the country, Wesley was talented in hunting skills and on occasions took a gun and returned with something edible, his shots causing concern to sentries of both sides.
He was reasonably content. He concentrated on each day, each task, to the exclusion of everything else. His thoughts rarely wandered homewards. Home meant shame, guilt and the loss of Ethel’s love.
Sid wrote to Ethel regularly now contact had been made and he was unhappy about her decision to apply for overseas again. ‘What if it isn’t France?’ he asked, ‘although that would be bad enough. What if they send you to the Far East? Japan is still fighting and will be after Germany’s defeat. Think about it, please, Ethel,’ he ended. As a postscript, her mother had added her pleas for her not to go.
‘That does it, I’m going to see about it right away,’ she said, showing the letter to Rosie.
‘I’ll come too. I just hope we’ll stay together. Although it’s unlikely we’ll be lucky once again.’
They were told that they would be going to France and, as they knew their destination and date of travel, they knew also that there would be no further leave and they would be confined to camp.
Baba was told and he was shocked to think that Ethel had chosen to leave him.
‘I thought after just finding each other again you’d never leave me,’ he said, and there was unaccustomed anger in his eyes. ‘I feel you’ve let me down, Ethel.’
‘I’m sorry, Baba, but I thought you’d understand.’
‘Understand? Or accept that you always want to please yourself without discussion?’
‘It isn’t like that. Losing Kate like that, it was so unbelievable. Rosie and I were worried that she would have to face life without Vincent and then it was she who was killed. I have to continue helping with the fight. I’d feel I was letting her down if I left now. There’s still a job to do. You must understand how I feel?’
‘I know all about the job we have to do, but, be honest, that isn’t your reason. You have a letter from your mother, whom you profess to despise, she tells you not to leave and straight away you forget all about us, about me and what I want, and arrange to go. It shows me clearly how low I come on your list of priorities.’
Trying to explain her reaction to her mother failed. As she put into words her instinctive need to disobey the woman who she felt had let her down so badly, the excuse sounded utterly stupid – even to herself it made no sense.
‘I was going to tell you,’ she added lamely.
‘Tell me. That says it all, Ethel. Not discuss it, you were going to tell me. What sort of future is there for us if this is what you call sharing?’
She pleaded, apologized and coaxed and they finally made love and settled for a kind of peace, but as she went back to her billet Ethel knew she had damaged their relationship severely. The worst thing was there was no time to spend putting it right.
She was shocked by his reaction and wished she could change her mind, but there was no possibility of that. She explained to Rosie about his disappointment at her leaving but not the extent of his anger and hurt. ‘I have to go and I don’t think I’d cancel even if I could,’ she admitted. ‘I want to finish what we started. Doesn’t he know there’s a war on?’ she asked with a wan smile.
Sid received Ethel’s letter telling them of her decision to go. She was unable at that point to tell them where she was being posted. He guessed that she was going abroad to avoid coming home. He knew where Rosie’s nan lived and went there to see whether she had more news, but both families were unable to do more than hope that the girls would be safe. He bought his ration of sweets and took them back to Mrs Dreen to add to her next parcel.
Without reverting to their previous closeness, Ethel said goodbye to Baba and she and Rosie left a week later with a group of twenty girls and boarded a ship bound for France.
Having seen the devastation of their own cities and towns, and expecting to see something similar, the sight of the French countryside was a heart-rending shock. Besides being bombed, the ground had been fought over more than once and for day after dreadful day. The result was large areas that were flattened and completely devoid of buildings or habitation, except in a few places where they saw people living in the cellars of what had once been their homes. Rubble had been pressed into the ground. The earth had been churned up by tanks and hundreds of other vehicles, gunfire had battered the few walls that were still standing and it seemed impossible as they travelled across northern France to imagine that it could ever be returned to a place where people would choose to live.
The situation was confusing, as the front line varied from day to day. The soft-topped Naafi vans went around the troops handing out tea and a wad, makeshift kitchens managing to churn out the usual fare. Ethel and Rosie were told to help in a canteen that had been set up as a rest centre for men back from the front to relax and unwind from the horrors of the fighting. It was fully equipped with a bar selling teas and coffee and snacks as well as a bar selling beer and cigarettes.
The premises had been a hotel, but the once-elegant walls had been ravaged by gunfire, the contents ransacked by the armies who had passed through and used its protection for temporary relief. Chairs had been found from somewhere, an odd collection of rugs was spread on the wooden floors. There were heavy curtains at the windows, and even some billowing nets, found in a chest in the cellar, wrapped in tissue waiting for the summer that hadn’t come.
They weren’t there long. Following the progress of the Allied forces, they were sent to open a canteen in a town close by, with a few Naafi staff and some local women and men to help with the heavy work. They were given bicycles for transport to and from the rooms they had in the hotel.
While the others moved rubble and cleaned outhouses ready for the stores to arrive, Ethel and Rosie spent the first two days scrubbing the kitchen and painting its walls. They were warned that china was scarce and, searching for more cups and plates, asking in the almost empty shops without success, they eventually found a supply of jam jars – something they had resorted to once or twice before – and deciding to use these, they washed them and stacked them ready to satisfy the needs of the large number of troops who would soon pile in looking for a bit of home. They knew the unusual receptacles would cause much needed laughter.
This canteen was on two floors, the first was the snacks and tea bar, above, the drinks bar. The top, where the roof leaked into buckets and bowls and baths, was left to the mice who had been treating the place like their own grand hotel. There was also a cellar which promised useful storage, and with a couple of torches Ethel and Rosie went to explore.
It had once been used as a wine cellar but there were no bottles now apart from a few empty ones. Boxes and baskets and a few broken chairs were all it contained, and when a creature which they guessed was a rat ran across their path, they swore they would never venture there again.
They told some of the local girls about the unwelcome lodgers. In monosyllabic English, which they incorrectly thought might be better understood, they asked the girls not to report the rats. In the insanity of the killings all around them, destroying the rats was something they couldn’t cope with.
The following day they were told they had been dealt with. Fortunately, the ratcatcher had come on their day off and they saw nothing of what went on. Rats were also seen by others and, aware of the dangers of infection through contaminated food, the staff knew that something more had to be done.
One day a chicken came in and at once Rosie stood guard over it and dared anyone to kill it. Named Veronica, which Rosie insisted was what it said, it became a mascot and survived the war.
Rosie had never mastered the art of driving but Ethel felt confident to drive practically anything. ‘As long as it starts when I turn the handle, I’ll be fine,’ she told anyone who asked. ‘What goes on under the bonnet I know nothing about and I’m happy for that to remain a mystery.’ So when the man who normally drove the van around to the men nearer to the front line was ill, she volunteered to take his place, as long as Rosie could go with her.
They did this for several days, but the fighting became confused as areas were taken, lost and retaken, with pockets of resistance holding up one group while others advanced. Sometimes when they reached the place where they had been told to set up, there was no one there. They would stop, open the flap which was their counter and wait, but when no one came they would drive on until the men saw them and approached. They would stay and serve for as long as they were wanted, then return to base, fill up and prepare to go out again.
They rarely went out at night – the men refused to allow it insisting that they, battle-hardened soldiers, were better able to cope should they meet the enemy. Ethel and Rosie had both learned to shoot during their initial training in Scotland, but Rosie was thankful not to have to carry a weapon with instructions to use it. She didn’t think she could ever pull a trigger and watch those blooms of red roses appear on the jacket of a human being. Ethel insisted she could and would, but whether she would act swiftly enough, or gather the courage to do so, was something she secretly doubted.
The news was coming through of further attacks on London and other cities. This time with another flying bomb, Hitler’s V2 Rocket which carried a ton of explosives and fell to earth at a phenomenal speed. Now there was the worry of not being near home while their families faced this new terror.
‘There’s nothing I could do even if I was stationed in the same town,’ Rosie said, ‘but knowing Nan’s there on her own makes me afraid for her. There’s no logic in that but it’s how I feel.’
‘Perhaps she isn’t alone. Maybe your mother is with her.’
‘That’s a nice thought. I’ll tell myself they’re together, shall I?’ She looked at Ethel and added, ‘Like your family, all close together.’ Ethel didn’t reply.
The rats continued to be troublesome and some squaddies were instructed to blow up an unused drainage system, which succeeded in removing the rats but unfortunately made the water undrinkable. Until the engineers could put things right, the staff had to carry water from a nearby house in galvanized baths and buckets and any other container they could find, for everything they needed.
As the battles, the intermittent resistance and the inexorable push towards Germany continued, the two girls faced the day-today wearisome routine with fortitude. When they were tired, thoughts of Kate urged them to greater effort, each in her own way using the memory of their friend to help them through. Rosie still dreamed of Baba and Ethel’s thoughts were with him too, worried by the argument they’d had before she left and had failed to settle. With preparations for their posting, there had been no time to spend talking through their disagreement, reaffirm their love. They had parted after a final meeting and had passionately made love but without returning to their previous certainty that all was well.
Letters got through but there were none for either of the girls, and they were usually too tired to consider the disappointment or think about writing. Finding clean water and heating it to make hot drinks, cook food, wash dishes, and cleaning places to keep their stores safe from infestation took most of the time when they weren’t serving in the canteen or on the road with the van.
When they set out with the heavily loaded van, they were given clear instructions on where to go and were kept well clear of the front line. They were warned to stay well back from the gunfire. ‘You’ll be no use to anyone if you get in the way,’ came the chill warning. ‘Remember, both sides have guns that can kill, there’s no priority when a shell lands, no matter which side fired it. If you’re in the wrong place, you’re dead!’
One morning in October 1944, they set off as usual. It had been raining most of the previous day and through the night. Mud covered the ground and formed a slippery carpet on the roads and they wondered whether their rather smooth tyres would cope. As they drove, the sounds of dull thuds were heard, warning them that they were in a war zone, as if they needed reminding; the devastation could be clearly seen all around them. Their route had been changed due to bombing and now led them through what had once been orchards and the remains of a village. Swerving past destroyed buildings, around huge craters and across once peaceful meadows was saddening. The rain continued, reducing visibility, but following the written instructions and knowing that the point for which they were heading was not far away, they were confident, until they found that the route they should have taken was blocked.
Explosions had destroyed a bridge over a small river that had worn its way down into the earth and now flowed several feet below ground level. They stopped and studied their instructions but soon gave up trying to work out a way through from what little information they had. They turned away to find another way through. Within a short time they were lost.
They drove on, following tracks which they hoped would take them to a place from where they could be redirected. Then a heavy bombardment began and the shells were coming from behind them. They had overtaken the front line and were almost certainly in enemy-held territory.
With a swear from Ethel, they stopped and considered what to do. Rosie gave an excited squeal. ‘Ethel, we might be in Berlin before the army!’
‘We can’t stay here, but I don’t think I can turn,’ Ethel frowned, looking back at the uneven surface and the narrow track. The track was pitted with water-filled holes that Ethel had managed to avoid driving forward but would surely hit if she tried to reverse.
‘There’s a farm just ahead.’ Rosie pointed to the right where a huddle of ruined buildings stood, with a track that seemed fairly sound leading towards the main house. Ethel hesitated, wondering whether she could manage to reverse to a place where the van could be turned around. Then she saw that parked beside one of the buildings was an army lorry. A British army lorry. There was no sign of a driver and, as she brought the vehicle to a stop, no soldiers appeared to demand they identify themselves.
The rain was unceasing, drumming on to the mud, and the sound of gunfire and explosions were muted to a dull distant rumbling. Restarting the engine, she took the corner carefully and headed for the main buildings. The track was narrower than the one they had left, and she was watching the road and trying to keep an eye on the buildings, half expecting to see the nose of a rifle appear at the corner of one of the walls.
‘What’s German for do you want tea and a wad?’ she whispered nervously. When she saw a water-filled crater ahead she was unable to avoid it and the van lurched and stopped with one back wheel in the depression.
They got out and tried to place stones under the tyres to give purchase, but apart from getting covered in mud and soaking wet, they achieved nothing. They stood there, the rain a pattering, monotonous murmur. They were so wet and miserable it was tempting to climb aboard the van and sit there until someone arrived, friend or foe, at that moment they didn’t really care.
‘I’ll go and see if there’s anyone about,’ Ethel said. Rosie tried to dissuade her.
‘Perhaps we could walk back the way we came and see if we can get back to base.’
‘I think we’ll be wiser to stay with the van. At least it’s shelter.’
‘And food,’ Rosie said with an attempt at a grin.
‘I’ll just walk to the corner of the building by that lorry and look around,’ Ethel said, trying to sound casual.
‘What if it’s a trap, or a mine field?’ Rosie pleaded. ‘Stay here, we ought to stay together.’
Ethel told her to wait and, promising not to go further than the corner, she squelched her way around to the side of the van. She was no hero, she was plain terrified. The alternative, to sit and wait until someone found them was worse. Still she hesitated. She looked at the farm buildings that seemed threatening in the dull light of the gloomy day. They could hide Germans or British soldiers. Or she could find lifeless bodies of either, or both.
Thankfully the rain had finally stopped. Taking a couple of cakes and leaving Rosie to open up in case there were troops in the vicinity needing their services, a vain hope intending to cheer her friend, Ethel walked nervously towards the lorry along the narrow track.
It was empty. A copy of the tuppenny magazine Everybody’s, was on the seat, an empty Woodbine packet beside it. Taking a deep breath to calm her racing heart, she went cautiously around the corner. It wasn’t until she had walked to the furthest side of the farm that she saw another lorry, this time with two men in the cab.
The gunfire was continuing, sounding close at times then fading. The men hadn’t heard the van approach. There were no guards set and she walked closer. The men were talking and to her relief the voices were British. A Geordie lad and a Welshman, discussing their recent darts tournament. The man on the passenger side had a cigarette between his fingers and he flicked away the end of it and held out his hand, waving it about, gesturing to make some point, and Ethel slapped a cake into his palm.
The man yelled and ducked down, muttering a long list of swears.
‘Char and a wad?’ she asked cheerfully. The cake fell to the ground as the man jerked and shouted again in shock.
‘Tut tut, what a waste,’ Ethel complained, looking down at the cake. ‘Don’t you know there’s a war on?’
‘Where the bloody ’ell did you spring from?’
‘His language was what you might call flowery,’ she told Rosie a few minutes later as they finished preparing the counter ready to serve, ‘and not something I’d like to repeat into your innocent ears.’
The guns still sounded, but spasmodically and some distance away. Rosie and Ethel set up the counter having been told that the rest of the men who had become separated from their group had gone on a ‘reccy’ and would be back soon. The others came back about twenty minutes later having been back to find their lines and receive orders on how they should proceed. The officers had been killed and only sixteen men remained of the forty who had set out. The two men in the lorry had been left behind to observe and wait.
‘Some observation!’ Ethel teased.
‘All right, I won’t tell anyone how you got the van stuck in a crater that could be seen half a mile away, if you don’t tell Winston Churchill I’m a slacker. Right?’ the Welshman laughed.
As the clouds lifted and drifted away, the bombardment started up again in the distance and the air was filled with the screaming of shells and explosions and in some places fires started and added to the terrifying display. Sights, sounds and the choking smell of the fierce battles continuing around them filled their heads with fear and imaginings, and both Rosie and Ethel wondered whether they would ever be free of the nightmares that already disturbed their sleep.
For a while shells fell closer, screaming and seeming to be heading straight for them and the puny soft-top van. They left the van and hurried for the only slightly less doubtful protection of the farm buildings. They saw shrapnel hit the van and the sides were peppered with small holes but fortunately the damage was well away from the petrol tank and it survived in a road-worthy state.
An hour later, when the guns ahead of them had fallen silent, a large contingent of men came to push further on. The girls disposed of all their stock between the grateful men, the khaki-clad figures laughing and joking as though their situation was nothing to be concerned about, just a bit of a game, the pretence for a few brief moments bringing a touch of sanity into their lives. Ethel promised, somewhat foolishly, that the van would be back later that day.
They were both shaking with the shock of what they had done as they stood and watched the men freeing, then turning, the van, while others described the route back to their base. Ethel started the engine and headed back wondering how the men could stand the tensions of the fighting day after day, without going crazy. She wished they could all follow them and take advantage of the rest centres, but knew that the war was not over yet. Not by a long way.
Back at base, with the van showing honourable evidence of their closeness to danger, they stepped out to be greeted by several figures coming forward to check on their safety. The first person Ethel saw was Wesley Daniels.
He started when he recognized the dirt-streaked face with the hat at its usual rakish angle and said her name in a whisper. His arms raised up as though to embrace her and hers too jerked a little as though to do the same, but something stopped him and he stepped back to allow her to enter the canteen.
Ethel was shocked both by the suddenness of his appearance and how much he had changed. She looked away after her first glance, convinced it was not Wesley, only someone with a passing likeness. Then another look and another, until she saw in the sad eyes the man she had once known. Wesley had never been anything but slim but the flesh seemed to have fallen from him. His features had sharpened and age had come upon him, there was deep sadness in his eyes and he looked away from her steady gaze as though afraid to face her.
‘Wesley?’ she murmured hesitantly and he turned his gaze towards her, half smiled then looked away again. There was no sense of a happy reunion, no joyous relief at Wesley’s survival. It was as though he were someone from a former fantasy life, a stranger who had no part in the present reality. She wondered if they would have anything to say to each other after the years of absence.
A voice that insisted on being obeyed called them and they began to move towards its irritable insistence. Ethel pointed to Wesley and to Rosie and after brief and oddly strained introductions, the two girls went straight away to report their adventures and receive the reprimand that they knew they didn’t really deserve.
Ethel was shaking and Rosie knew that it was not because of their recent perilous journey, but the sight of a ghost from her past. She held her friend’s hand to reassure her and they went to stand in front of the man who had summoned them.
Their explanation about the bridge being down and their attempts to find another route were listened to but discarded. There was no other reason but stupidity for them wandering on to the front line. They listened wearily as they were reminded that they were a liability. ‘Men would have had to help you instead of thinking about what they were doing or their own safety. Your stupidity could have cost lives. What would you have done if the men on that farm had been Germans?’
‘Offered them char and a wad?’ Rosie whispered.
‘I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that!’
Ethel quickly handed her friend a handkerchief to hide her giggles, hoping the officer would presume them to be sobs.
Wesley was waiting for Ethel when she had showered and finished making an official report.
‘Ethel, how are you?’ he asked. ‘Everyone here has been talking about the missing Naafi van. I can’t tell you my surprise that the driver was you.’
‘Well, here I am, safe and sound. I thought you were with the NCS serving on ships?’
She was still strangely ill at ease with this man whom she had once loved and who had vanished from her life so suddenly. They went to the canteen and after insisting that Rosie stayed they slowly caught up with their last four years; but there was to be no great loving reunion. He was unable to tell her how ashamed he felt about leaving her to her father’s anger and she waited, expecting not an apology for his cowardice but an explanation of the hasty departure that had led to more than four years of silence, when her whereabouts had been unknown to him. They sat far apart, like strangers. The conversation faltered and stumbled, both wanting to say how they felt but unable to do so. Rosie tried to wriggle her hand out of Ethel’s and escape but Ethel looked at her and with her eyes pleaded with her to stay.
Mostly in silence, and through a few inadequate sentences, Ethel was looking at him. He had aged so much, and was so thin and subdued and without a spark of joy. Her mind drifted and she thought of Baba and how exciting their reunions had always been. She tried not to dwell on their last meeting, and Baba’s disappointment and anger when, at her own instigation, they had parted once more.
Unable to bear the stilted conversation any longer she made an excuse and left him. As soon as she reached her bed she lay on it and wrote to Baba, telling him how much she loved him and was longing to see him again. If she had had any doubts or guilt reguarding Wesley, a few minutes of his company had dispelled them.
She knew Rosie was keeping out of her way, meeting other girls during her time off, sensing Ethel’s need to talk to Wesley, and she was grateful for her friend’s understanding. Although he had no part in her life any more she felt some obligation to meet him and talk to him but it was far from easy and each time they met she would return to her room with relief and write a loving letter to Baba.
There weren’t many places for them to go but with Rosie’s help she smuggled Wesley into their room one cold, wet afternoon and tried to break down the invisible barriers and talk. The words wouldn’t come and they sat at separate ends of the room, speaking in bursts of conversation that quickly died, unable to break down the floodgates and return to their previous ease.
She saw Wesley drive off two days later and was left with a strong feeling of disappointment. When she told Rosie, her friend again insisted it was because of the rift in the family.
‘You can’t rebuild the bits you want and discard the rest. Go home, move in and get back to how things used to be, just for a while. Your father has mellowed and accepts his mistakes. Your mam wants you to be her daughter again. And there’s Sid who loves you like the sister you will always be. Get that lot sorted and your feelings for Wesley will slot into place.’
In her heart, Rosie had hoped that after rediscovering her childhood sweetheart, Ethel might have revived her love for him and forgotten Baba. She wrote to Baba, just a friendly letter, in case there was the slightest hope he might turn to her if Ethel finally rejected him.
‘Are you homesick? Do you wish we could go home?’ Rosie asked Ethel a few weeks after their alarming experience, when they were decorating the canteen with a bit of Christmas cheer.
‘I want to see it all again. The lights were switched back on in November. That must have been a great moment. No more falling over each other in the blackout.’
‘And the Home Guard, Dad’s Army, is no more.’
‘There’s still food rationing though and it might last for a long time yet.’
They stayed in France, following the advancing troops and, later, working for a time in a rest centre in Paris, a beautiful place where men and women could spend their leave before returning to their units. There were dances held and Rosie was more confident after the years away from home and all her experiences, and was a frequently sought partner.
News of the surrender came rather casually via a man who walked past them as they were setting up the bar, announcing, ‘It’s over. Hitler’s lot have been beaten.’
‘What did he say?’ Rosie frowned.
‘I thought he said it’s over. D’you think he means the war?’
Then a group of squaddies ran in, kissed them, pulled them on to the floor and began dancing.
‘What’s happened?’ Ethel asked, afraid to presume the words they’d heard was true.
‘It’s only over! It’s bloody well over! Unconditional surrender, that’s what’s happened.’
‘Mother, put the kettle on, your boy’s comin’ ’ome,’ shouted another. Others ran in shouting, back-slapping, singing. The place filled until there seemed no room to fit in another body. Officers came and shouted orders which went unheard.
‘Where are they all coming from?’ gasped Rosie as she and Ethel tried to serve the excited men. ‘I think the whole of the front line is in here.’
Ethel shouted, ‘Oi, you lot! You’d better be careful. With all the allied forces in our canteen, who’s back there watching Hitler’s lot?’
The celebration went on all night, then everything calmed down and the men went back to duties with the happy feeling that they would soon be counting the days before they returned to Blighty.
The war in Europe had ended but there was still the fighting in the Far East. The celebrations of victory in Europe were muted by the fact that there were still men and women on the front lines a very long way from home. Although everyone believed that the end was truly in sight.
In July 1945 Ethel and Rosie were given home leave.
‘We’ve missed most of the celebrations,’ Rosie said excitedly. ‘The street parties, and the crowds gathering in London. But I dare say we’ll have a few of our own.’
The first thing Rosie did was to go to Nan’s house where, to her surprise and delight, she found her mother and her Nan living together, taking in boarders and earning a reasonable living. She went back to the farm where she had worked and looked around, praising the land girls who had done a remarkable job keeping everything going throughout the war years.
‘Want your job back do you, Rosie?’ the farmer asked, but she shook her head.
‘The Naafi hasn’t finished with me yet and when the war’s finally over, I don’t know what I’ll do. Stay on maybe. While there’s an army there’ll be need for a Naafi.’
Ethel tried to find Baba but he was away and couldn’t be contacted. So she went to Wesley’s house. Wesley was there and they talked for a while, then he offered to go with her to see her father. He had his own demons to put to rest. Walking over the footbridge and up the front path still brought fear to her heart and she reached for Wesley’s hand, smiling reassurance at him, hiding her own terrors.
The house was neater and better furnished than on her previous visits. The windows shone and the house was pervaded with a smell of polish and a sense of comfortable wealth. There were two girls working on the land, which had been extended into two extra fields. A large greenhouse had been built along a wall and there were areas where soft fruits were grown inside protective netting. Things had certainly improved. As she went upstairs to visit her father, still holding tightly to Wesley’s hand, she expected to see similar changes there.
Her father looked the same, no extra comforts in the bare little room and still a cup of cold tea standing just out of reach on the bedside table. She guessed it would not be until Sid came home from work that he had any attention. She fed him with some chocolate she had brought, which he seemed to enjoy, then offered him the cold drink. He watched her as he drank and she saw the pain in those round blue eyes which had once frightened her so much, and wanted to weep.
They didn’t stay long: ‘No longer than a man collecting weekly insurance payments,’ she joked to Wesley. She joked a lot as they went back to his house and later on the way to the bus to start her journey back to her hotel. She felt such shame for the way her father was being treated but couldn’t stay long enough to do anything about it. It wasn’t until Wesley promised to talk to Sid and get something done that she was able to cry.