An official letter reached Ethel via Rosie’s Nan, telling her she was not to return to France but report to a camp in Bedfordshire which was closing down. She was bitterly disappointed that she and Rosie wouldn’t end the war together but a few days later she learned that Rosie’s letter had given the same news. They were going on what might be their last posting, against all the odds, still together.
Another letter arrived for Ethel, this time from Baba, and he named a time and place for them to meet. Rosie squealed in delight at Ethel’s good news and no one guessed the heartbreak she felt. If only Baba had fallen for me, she whispered into her pillow at night, daring to imagine how perfect life would have been. When Wesley had reappeared in Ethel’s life so unexpectedly, she had prayed for their abandoned love to be revived but it was not to be. Baba was the one promising Ethel a happy future and she, Rosie, was promised nothing but emptiness. She silently reprimanded herself for wishing her friend anything but joy and forced her expression into one of delight.
‘Don’t forget that when you and Baba marry, I’m to be chief bridesmaid,’ she reminded Ethel.
Ethel smiled but said nothing. That Baba loved her she didn’t doubt and her love for him was a certainty but it was not wise to be too confident, that was tempting the fates to torment and play games with you.
Ethel was still upset about Dai, the man she continued to think of as her father, when she went to see Baba. They met for an hour only between his visits to a suppliers to order and later to collect paint and turps and sundry other requirements. They found a café where they were offered a sandwich of bloater paste with a leaf of lettuce, which neither was able to eat.
‘I saw Wesley,’ she told him.
‘Any reason for me to be jealous?’ he teased.
She went on to explain the circumstances that had led to their first unlikely meeting in France and the recent occasion when he had gone with her to visit her father. Baba was upset when he learned of the danger she had faced. ‘Darling girl, I’ve been such a fool. I quarrelled with you as you were leaving, and tried to stop you doing your duty. I let you face danger without the peace of mind that would have helped you to cope. My last words to you should have been words of love and reassurance, not petty anger at not having my own way. I’m sorry.’
‘Meet me tonight and show me how sorry,’ she said as his lips met hers in a long-awaited kiss.
For Ethel, that leave was spent either with Baba or in waiting for him, hoping he could wangle a few hours off to spend with her. She had savings, having spent very little of her money while in the service, and she found a small place to stay where Baba could join her whenever he was free. She went to see Rosie’s Nan and stayed for two nights but refused all Rosie’s entreaties to return to see Wesley or her family again. She was still in touch with Sid, but she refused to write to her mother directly and tried not to think about her father in his cold, lonely room.
‘Baba is my family and I don’t need anyone else,’ she told Rosie, unaware of how much this still hurt her friend.
There was one thing stopping Ethel from being truly happy. Although Baba had often talked about his sisters, he had never issued a firm invitation for Ethel to go home with him and meet them. Unlike poor Kate, whose American prospective in-laws had welcomed her lovingly, with long letters and many photographs, she had never had any contact with Baba’s family. So when he announced that he was going home for the weekend, she suggested going with him.
‘Not yet, lovely girl,’ he replied. ‘There’s a few things that need sorting before I take you to meet my family.’
‘What things? We don’t have secrets, do we?’
‘Not between you and me, love, no. But these are other people’s secrets, personal things, not my story to tell. But once everything’s sorted, then I’ll take you and introduce you to all the Morgan family and the neighbours and friends and we’ll have a fabulous celebration.’
Ethel smiled and swallowed her doubts. How secrets belonging to other people could affect her being introduced to his family she couldn’t imagine, but if she loved Baba then she had to trust him. He would explain one day, there couldn’t be anything in the world he couldn’t tell her.
Her leave ended and she called to see Rosie to discuss their travel arrangements. Unintentionally she told her friend about Baba’s apparent reluctance to invite her to meet the Morgan family and Rosie hastily reassured her.
‘Perhaps his home isn’t as grand as he would like, people can be very silly about such things. Or maybe he has a few girlfriends around who might tell you things he’d rather you didn’t know! Or perhaps he still sleeps with a teddy bear or has Mickey Mouse pictures on his bedroom wall, or keeps spiders as pets, or sucks his thumb when he sleeps or—’
‘All right, I’m convinced!’ Ethel laughed at her friend’s ridiculous suggestions. ‘I’ll give him time to say goodbye to childhood and ex-girlfriends.’
They reported to their new posting and found that their job consisted mostly of packing unwanted stores for return to the Bulk Issue Stores for redirecting. There was still a canteen, and cooking meals and snacks, and making tea and coffee for the men who were dismantling the prefabricated buildings took a lot of their time.
There were also lists. Dozens of lists stating the number and description of what went into each packing case. The noise of the work of demolition was deafening at times, and as a contrast there was the peaceful scene of sheep once more allowed to graze in the fields, where tents had blossomed like mushrooms and vehicles had rent the silence with their roaring engines.
Sometimes they thought they heard the sound of laughter and distant singing, the ghosts of all those young men and women who hadn’t returned, still there but fading with every blow of the hammers.
Baba came and was instructed to sort out the transport, repairing to sell where possible, the rest to be discarded and sold as scrap. To the girls’ surprise Walter turned up, having been given the unpleasant job of knocking down the brick buildings as the site was cleared.
He had put on weight and his face was puffy with excess drinking. Rosie saw him first and came running to tell Ethel: ‘His face looks like a jelly taken too soon out of its mould.’
They shared memories and he explained that although he could leave the Naafi at any time, he had nowhere to go. His family were no longer where he had left them, having moved away with the evacuees and not returned. ‘I didn’t bother to keep in touch,’ he admitted sadly. ‘I was away from home and I wanted to shrug off my boring past and start again. But now I’m left with nowhere to go.’
Rosie felt sympathy for him. ‘Find them,’ she told him. ‘It can’t be that difficult. Talk to someone and get things started. The Citizens’ Advice Bureau and the Salvation Army are experts at putting people in touch.’
‘You won’t be the only one looking for your family,’ Ethel added. ‘And they are probably searching for you. I’m sure they’ll welcome you back with relief.’
‘And you’ll be a war hero, Walter, think of that!’ Rosie said. ‘Poor man,’ she sighed as Walter ambled slowly back to the office to do what she had suggested. ‘I hope he finds them.’
‘So do I.’ Being so utterly happy herself, Ethel found it easy to wish the same for others.
Baba was full of loving talk and plans for their future whenever they met. Their lovemaking was as exciting as before they had parted so miserably when Ethel had left for France. There seemed to be no problems, they behaved naturally with each other without the slightest inhibition. Ethel knew that one day soon he would make their position official by proposing to her. Then he went home for a week, and again Ethel was not invited.
She turned to Rosie for reassurance and pretended to find comfort in the kindly meant lies and fanciful excuses. ‘I don’t understand it. Why is he so unwilling for me to meet his family? We’re as close as two people can be and he knows I’m longing to meet them, to be accepted, yet he makes excuses and vague promises about next time. But next time, like tomorrow, never comes. He must be either ashamed of me or ashamed of them.’
‘That’s rubbish, Ethel. He can’t be ashamed of you. He hasn’t kept you a secret here. Everyone knows you and he are… well… seeing each other.’
‘Then he must have some guilt about his relations. They might be criminals. Or so poor he can’t cope with my seeing just how they have to live.’
‘On a more cheerful note, perhaps he’s planning a big surprise for you,’ Rosie suggested. ‘You know how full of fun he is. I bet he’s making plans for a huge party to welcome you, getting everyone making cakes and raiding their store cupboards. Getting out all the decorations. Now this minute they’ll be beavering away getting everything perfect for when you arrive. Imagine it, Ethel, just imagine the big welcome you’ll get.’
For a while Ethel believed her.
When Baba returned after his week’s leave he looked serious. Ethel had never seen him so serious. His was a face meant for smiling and to see the frowns creasing his brow didn’t augur well for his explanation. She wondered if there had been a tragedy in his family but he only shrugged when she asked what was wrong. After a couple of days she knew he was avoiding her. She and Rosie had planned to go to a dance in the nearby village on the following Saturday and, as they left the canteen on their way to the lorry that was to take them, she saw him walking into a store room. She stopped and looked at the door through which he had disappeared. It was no good, she couldn’t go to the dance, it was time to find out what had gone wrong. Something had happened and she would insist on being told.
Waving the lorry to go on without her, and giving a hasty apology to Rosie, she went to the store room and called to him. The place was empty. She looked around and saw him heading for one of the partly demolished hangars, where the sound of metal being hammered into submission echoed around them.
‘Baba, please tell me why you’re avoiding me. What’s wrong?’
‘I’m getting married, Ethel.’
She stared at him, a half smile on her face, waiting for the joke to continue. Was this his hesitant way of broaching the subject of their engagement?
‘I’m getting married, to the girl I left behind. There. So now you know.’ He stared at her as she watched his face, waiting for the joke to be explained, the half smile still masking her fears, until it slowly changed into a look of such grief that he almost denied his words and turned them into the joke she wanted them to be. But he did not.
‘The wedding is all planned, see, been planned for ages. The whole village is involved, everyone doing something towards the big day. It’s that sort of place, see, everyone sharing and helping one another. Wonderful place. I just can’t let them all down.’
‘But you can let me down without a thought?’
He seemed not to hear her or perhaps simply refused to reply. ‘The families on both sides have come together to buy us a cottage on the edge of the town. Cheap, mind, but sound and with a good garden. All this was a surprise, see, planned by them all for ages.’
‘You must have led them on. Lying to them and not telling them about us.’
‘No, lovely girl, it’s you I’ve been lying to.’
‘What?’
‘I honestly thought you were what I wanted, but going home this time and seeing Janice so happy and everyone presuming we’ll marry, and everything arranged—’
‘Go!’
‘But, Ethel, love, we could still see each other and—’
‘Just go!’
She watched as he walked away from her into a future in which she had no part. Was this really happening? Was she going to end this war alone, and return to emptiness? After Duggie, and Baba, and even the dull Albert offering an end to her loneliness, was she to end the war more lonely than when it had begun?
Rosie hadn’t joined the others on their way to the dance and she stood in the shadows watching. From the movements and the way Baba had walked, almost run away from Ethel she knew something was wrong. She called softly and walked over to her friend.
In their room she sat with Ethel and encouraged her to talk until the whole sorry mess was out in the open. When Ethel finished explaining with great bitterness how she felt, Rosie said, ‘Ethel, love, go home.’
‘Why? There’s nothing there for me except a violent man who stopped his violent behaviour not from choice but because his body won’t let him continue. How can I go? If I walk into that house it will be interpreted as forgiveness and how can I ever forgive him? If he’d made the effort and learned to control his temper I might have been at least able to talk to him, feel some sympathy, but not now, not ever.’
Rosie looked thoughtful for a while then asked, ‘Are you a hero if you walk into danger without fear? Aren’t you more of a hero if you’re scared silly and still go? Then what about a man who has a bad temper and struggles not to lose it? Isn’t he more to be admired than someone like you and me who keep our anger under control not through real effort but because we were lucky enough to have been born even-tempered?’
‘Nice try, Rosie. Fine words. But Dad never tried.’
‘How d’you know that? His whole life might have been a constant battle to keep his anger in check. The times he succeeded you wouldn’t have known about, would you?’
Ethel’s shoulders drooped and she said, ‘Rosie, you’re very wise.’
‘Me? Wise? No, I just want everyone to get on, like each other. It can’t be that difficult.’
Ethel attempted a smile. ‘Pity Adolf Hitler hadn’t had a daughter like you.’
‘There you are! There’s someone worse than your dad!’
‘Will you come with me?’
Rosie shook her fair head. ‘No, Ethel. I think this is one thing you have to do on your own.’
Now they were in touch again, Wesley wrote to Ethel more and more frequently. At first the letters were short, with vague reports on some of the places he had been during his war. It was a surprise to realize that on more than one occasion they had served close enough to meet although they never had until that most unlikely of meetings in France.
As he gradually opened up and told her of his thoughts, he talked about people and places they had known as children, and these made her homesick for those innocent days when problems were for other people to solve and their days had been filled with simple pleasures. Those days were gone for ever and there was no going back.
Although Ethel couldn’t understand how, those letters slowly dissolved the barriers built on the day Dai had attacked Wesley and he, as that young and foolish man, had run away in shame. Much more slowly, from Wesley’s letters and Rosie’s words, an understanding of Dai’s behaviour dawned. She would never understand or forgive his cruel treatment of her mother, or the incessant need for violence that had sent him to prison so many times; but his worries for her became just slightly more clear. For the first time she could see that, although misdirected and badly handled, his concern was based on love. He was a man who dealt with things in the only way he could: with fists and heavily clad feet rather than debate. Words would never have come easily to him. She was aware of the beginnings of pity.
Ethel and Baba continued to work on the same airfield but their excessive politeness made it clear that there would be no grand reunion. The affair had ended and sorrow weighed heavily on both of them. Rosie supported Ethel by being as casual about Baba as she could, allowing Ethel to talk out her disappointment and humiliation. Discussing Baba’s betrayal helped Rosie to accept the end of her love for him as well as her friend’s. When they heard that Baba had moved on to another disused airfield Ethel only shrugged. There was nothing more to say.
The celebrations on the final end of hostilities when Japan surrendered were an excuse for more parties, but for Ethel and Rosie the end of the war was connected with the end of much more and neither seemed able to get into the spirit of joy and relief felt by so many. It was over, no more men and women would have to die, loved ones would be coming home, all these things were a huge relief tinged with happiness, and they cheered with the rest, but for themselves there was no wonderful future beckoning.
They were going home to the mundane existence they thought they had left behind them. Ethel couldn’t imagine living with Wesley, not after the excitement of loving Baba. Rosie knew that if she went back she couldn’t expect anything more than a return to a life in which Nan treated her like a little girl and expected her to wear knitted hats. Even the arrival of her mother after so many years of hoping brought little comfort. They both tried to make plans to escape their miserable destinies, discussing endlessly the grand schemes they thought up and soon abandoned.
Wesley’s letters began to hint at love and early in September, as thoughts that there might be a future for them one day began to grow, Ethel realized she was again expecting a child. A confidential visit to a doctor told her the child would be born in March. After the initial shock, dismay and downright panic, trying to decide on the best thing to do, hope sprang into life and she wrote to Baba. Now he would have to marry her.
As she waited for his reply, unable to sleep or forget for a moment her predicament which might turn out to be such good fortune, her thoughts were like a switchback ride. She wavered from the thought of a reluctant Baba Morgan as her husband, to the quiet uneventful peace of returning home and becoming Mrs Wesley Daniels. Days passed as the letter worked its way through the system to find him at his new posting. When it came, Baba’s letter was brief.
‘I’ll always love you, but I am marrying Janice.’ There wasn’t even a signature.
Wesley became ill. Since his war experiences he had lost so much weight that he was prone to every ailment, and influenza, a painful cough and suspected TB kept him in hospital for two weeks, after which he was sent home to convalesce. He wrote to Ethel, begging her to come home. ‘What shall I do?’ Ethel asked Rosie.
‘You don’t need me to tell you.’
‘I’ll stay with his mother, I’m not going back to The Dell.’
Wesley was waiting at the railway station and this time the embrace didn’t falter and fade. She held him close, frightened by his thinness, feeling his heart beating against her own, drinking in the familiar clean smell of his hair and the unique scent of his soapy perfumed skin, and felt the comfort of a homecoming: peaceful, unexciting, but pleasant.
Arm in arm they walked along familiar lanes, visiting everyone they knew, including the Baileys at the farm, where they reminisced about past summers and dreamed of those to come. Apart from visits to Rosie’s Nan, every moment of every leave was spent with Wesley. In October, when Wesley was strong again, he proposed and she accepted, and with their long delayed engagement revived, their marriage was planned for the following spring.
‘There’s only one hurdle still to clear,’ she told Rosie when she returned to camp. ‘I’m going to have a baby and I can’t keep it.’
‘A baby? But that’s wonderful.’ Rosie presumed, wrongly, that the child was Wesley’s, a result of their long talks in the room above the canteen in France, and she wondered if those private moments and the news of the baby had been the real reason Baba had left her. ‘Wesley will accept it, won’t he? He wouldn’t turn away his child.’
‘I don’t think so,’ was all she said. How could she tell Rosie the child was Baba’s?
They discussed the problem over the next few days, during which time Rosie wanted to confess her love for Baba and her belief that she would never hold a child of her own in her arms. Ethel was so wrapped in her own misery she either ignored Rosie’s attempts or didn’t hear them. When Rosie pleaded with her to tell Wesley she shook her head and insisted that adoption was the only way.
‘I have no desire for a child. It’s the wrong time. I’m not ready for the responsibility.’
‘And Wesley? Won’t you give him the chance to decide?’
‘This is my problem and the decision on how I deal with it is mine too.’
Rosie pleaded and argued with Ethel, telling her she should keep the child or she would carry the guilt all her life. ‘I was fond of Baba and now I doubt whether I’ll ever marry.’ Realizing that Ethel was at last listening to her, she went on, ‘I mean really fond of him. I seem to fall for men who don’t fall for me. Duggie, then Baba, who both wanted someone like you and had no interest in me. I know I’ll never marry. I’d be so thrilled to have a child of my own and now I never will.’
Ethel was unmoved. There was so much to sort out in her life. This child had the wrong father, she thought bitterly, but she didn’t express that thought to her friend. When she told Rosie she had an appointment to see an adoption society, Rosie surprised her by saying, ‘If you really can’t keep this baby then I will! I’ll write to Nan and tell her I’ve got myself in the family way and I know she’ll help me. My mother will too.’
‘But, Rosie, a child is such a commitment and you’ll want a husband and children of your own one day. You’ll forget Baba Morgan. I know it sounds impossible but you will, believe me.’ She almost added that Baba wasn’t worthy of her love but she didn’t want to spoil her friend’s dream.
‘I want a child and I know I’ll never marry. We don’t live that far apart and you can see him as often as you want. Ethel, it’s the perfect solution.’
The only other person Ethel told was Sid, who promised to help and to keep her secret. With a burst of honesty heavily laden with guilt, Rosie told her Nan and mother the truth. They took a lot of convincing, but when Rosie threatened to leave and find a way to cope alone they gave in. They tried at first to persuade Ethel and Rosie to make it a legal adoption but that was something neither girl wanted. It was extremely unlikely that as a single woman Rosie would be allowed to adopt, and besides, Rosie didn’t want to be the legal parent in case Ethel should change her mind. Ethel wanted to avoid the long drawn-out legalities with the accompanying risk of Wesley and their families finding out.
Ethel and Rosie excitedly made their preparations. If Ethel was less enthusiastic she hid it well. She pretended to share Rosie’s joy but all the time she harboured the secret hope that Baba would relent and come to find her and tell her he had changed his mind. She was ashamed of her thoughts, aware that, for her, Wesley was a poor second.
Sid promised financial assistance and with their combined savings and generous help from Rosie’s Nan and her now thoroughly involved mother, Ethel left the Naafi. Rosie gave notice that she too was leaving the service.
During the weeks before her condition was apparent, Ethel and Wesley spent a lot of time together. Every opportunity for a few days’ leave and occasionally during a few hours off, they met and walked and talked, restoring their damaged relationship. Wesley tried again to explain the reason for his disappearance, even though Ethel with slight irritation begged him not to.
‘I was so ashamed at the way I let you down,’ he told her one autumn day when they walked across the field on their way back from the Baileys’ farm. ‘I ran away and left you at the mercy of your father in one of his worst rages. How could I face you after that?’
‘If you hadn’t run off and called the police, it’s possible my mother would have died.’
‘I should have stayed to protect you. That scene haunted me throughout the war. It seemed far worse than the bombs, torpedoes and guns, leaving you to face your father.’
‘Thank goodness you did. It might have meant another funeral, and losing Glenys was bad enough.’ She looked at him, at the way his head was bent low in shame, hiding his face from her. She pulled on his arm, waited until he looked at her and then kissed him. Not in the rather formal way they had kissed since their reunion, but deeply, and holding nothing back.
They continued on their way saying very little, just smiling at each other from time to time as though sharing a wonderful secret. Ethel was aware of a feeling of perfect peace. It was like the end of a trying and difficult journey, back in the safety of her true love. From that day she could even remember Duggie without being engulfed in the terrible pain of grief. Duggie and Baba were the dream, a part of the experience of war. Wesley was the reality.
She looked at him; older, wiser but so comfortable and familiar, and she realized that after all that had happened they belonged together. It wouldn’t be the wild passionate love she had known with Duggie and Baba, where their emotions were heightened by danger, but a more gentle, trusting and long-lasting love.
It was a discovery that was as surprising as it was exciting. Her happiness made her more and more tearful as her revived love for Wesley grew. She was more weepy these days and wondered whether it was the baby making her so, or whether that was one of Rosie’s Nan’s fanciful stories. Perhaps she was crying for the loss of the friends she had briefly found through the years of the war. There would never be enough tears for the young men she had known, liked and lost.
With Rosie’s help she found a job in a shop with accommodation above. Helped by an understanding boss, she stayed on even when she was no longer able to work the usual hours, and it was there that the child was born.
The story she told Wesley was that she was away on Naafi business, travelling a great deal and could be contacted only through Rosie. With their letters passed on by Rosie, Ethel and Wesley made their plans. For a while, until they had both decided what they wanted to do with their lives, they would work alongside Molly and Sid Twomey, helping to run the now thriving market garden. Ethel could also make sure the man she still called father was not treated too unkindly.
‘Will you tell Wesley about his child, one day?’ Rosie asked as she admired Ethel’s newly born son.
‘No. Confession might be good for the soul, but in this case, as in many others, it’s nothing more than self-indulgence,’ she said emphatically. ‘It might make you feel better, but it’s simply burdening someone else with your troubles.’
‘There’s only one thing I would change to make life perfect,’ Rosie said as she held the child in her arms three weeks later and prepared to board the train that would take them home. She blushed as she said, ‘I wish the baby were Baba’s child.’
‘He is,’ Ethel told her softly.
Rosie squealed in delight.
Going home after giving birth, Ethel was again tearful. She felt bereft. Her arms ached to hold the child she had given up and there were moments when she wanted to rush to Rosie and tell her it had been a terrible mistake. But determination to set her feet on the future path she had chosen overcame the momentary regrets, and she went back to The Dell and Wesley.
In the nearby town men were returning after years of absence. For some the homecomings were blissfully happy, others found their loved ones had become strangers. There were a few who returned to find wives with children they knew they couldn’t have fathered. Ethel thought it ironic that she was one of the returning ones who, instead of coming back to find problems, had brought the trouble with her.
She watched Wesley and wondered how he would have reacted to her news and she wondered, even then, whether he should be told. But she settled back into the routine of her mother’s house and said nothing. She visited Rosie often and sometimes Wesley went with her. Showing affection for the baby was understandable and nothing was said to arouse Wesley’s suspicions. That the baby was loved and cared for was clear. He was surrounded with love and would want for nothing. If Ethel grieved for the loss of him and the life with Baba she had once expected, she hid it well.
Sid was regularly meeting a woman who had helped the Twomeys in the house and on the market garden. Wendy was a war widow and she and Sid were planning to marry. He and Wendy visited Rosie and admired the baby, whom they had called Colin, after Ethel’s true father. It was Rosie who was the first to hear about their plans to marry.
‘The trouble is,’ Sid told her, ‘if Wendy and I stay at home and run the market garden, there would be enough to keep us occupied, but with Ethel and Wesley working there too, there wouldn’t be enough to support us. We’d have to leave, find something else to do, somewhere else to live, and the garden is what we both want to do.’
‘If gardening is what Ethel and Wesley really want, we’ll go,’ Wendy explained. ‘But if they’re only doing it because they think they should, then it will be a pity for us to leave when we really want to stay.’
‘You wouldn’t mind helping to look after Sid’s father?’ Rosie asked.
‘I’m prepared to take on his family and do whatever is necessary. That’s what marriage is, accepting the whole package.’ She touched Sid’s arm and smiled at him.
‘Both Wesley and Ethel worked in catering before the war; perhaps they would prefer to go back but can’t admit it,’ Sid added. ‘The haven’t had much experience of growing things. It can be very tedious at times.’
Wendy groaned. ‘Pricking out a couple of hundred lettuce plants for example.’
When Sid and Wendy had left, Rosie gave a big sigh and said, ‘Oh, Nan, why don’t people talk to each other? Half the world’s problems could be forgotten if only people would talk.’
She was unaware that that was what Ethel was trying to do at that moment.
Wesley and she were hoeing between rows of winter cabbages, newly emerged broad beans and leeks. They stopped frequently and looked back along the cleared ground then ahead at the weed-covered area still to be done.
‘Are you enjoying this, Wesley?’ Ethel asked, throwing down the hoe and leaning on the wheelbarrow.
‘I can cope,’ he replied.
‘That wasn’t the question. Can you see yourself doing this sort of thing, year after year?’
‘What are you saying, Ethel?’
‘What do you really want to do with your life? I don’t really know what I want but I know it isn’t this.’
‘I always dreamed of being the owner of a grand restaurant, but those dreams have gone. Now I’m not sure. So for the present this will do.’
‘I think we should talk to Sid. I think it’s time for some honesty, don’t you?’ She was thinking only of the work they had agreed to do and had no intention of making any confessions about Duggie and Baba or baby Colin.
They used a horse and cart to collect and deliver their requirements and when they had finished the weeding, they piled the tools on to the flat cart and began to ride home.
‘Talking about honesty…’ Wesley began and Ethel stared at him in surprise. Surely he didn’t have terrible secrets too?
‘Did you ever wonder what happened to the engagement ring I bought for you?’
‘You still have it?’
They heard a car approaching and from the sound of the engine it was travelling fast. Wesley pulled the horse to the side of the lane and glanced back. ‘I gave it to another woman,’ he said, but before he could say anything more, a low sports car came around the corner, touched the cart and careered off. The driver managed to regain control and the car came to a stop in a gateway further down the lane.
The horse panicked and pulled them further along the lane but without Wesley’s guiding hands on the reins the cart caught against a tree and spilt them both out.
The driver of the car got out and looked at them: Ethel holding her face which was bleeding from cuts from branches, and the utterly still figure of Wesley.
‘I’ll go for help,’ he said and reversing the car out of the field he sped away.
Wesley stirred and assured Ethel that he was unharmed. ‘For a moment there I was imagining myself back on active service,’ he said. ‘Come on, let’s make sure Dolly is all right.’ They released Dolly from the cart and walked back home, one each side of the horse, which seemed unaffected by the incident.
Ethel was thinking, not of the narrow escape they’d had, but of the woman to whom Wesley had given her engagement ring. Nothing more was said and throughout the night, between uneasy dozing, Ethel thought about the mysterious woman and wondered how much Wesley had been about to confess. Had he made this woman promises – he hadn’t kept? Baba was certainly not the only man to do that. Had they fallen in love? Had they slept together? Had he succumbed to loneliness as desperately as she had? If so, could she tell him about the baby?
The following day they worked together in the field and he didn’t add to what he had begun to tell her. ‘Perhaps I should help him?’ she said to Rosie that evening, when she went to the house where she felt so much at home. ‘If his war was similar to mine, perhaps I would make him feel less unhappy if I told him about Duggie and even Baba. Then whatever it is he’s trying to tell me won’t seem as terrible.’
Rosie said nothing.
‘I must have been crazy to imagine he didn’t meet women and share moments of comfort. Most men did when they thought death was waiting for them. I didn’t think about it for a moment, but now, I think his guilty memories have been bothering him ever since we met in France. He’s so sensitive and it would explain why he’s so subdued.’
Rosie didn’t agree or disagree. This was beyond her. All she hoped was that if the truth about the baby emerged, it wouldn’t mean she would lose him. Baby Colin was her life. How would she cope without him?
Her mind made up, Ethel went back and called to see Wesley. It was a cold November night but she insisted they went for a walk. Wrapping up warmly, they went through the fields towards where the lights of the town glittered on the frosty air.
‘Tell me about this woman you gave my ring to, Wesley. I’ll understand. Loneliness and fear had to be dealt with, we all learned that. We all have secrets, specially after being away for years. I know you want to tell me, but you’re afraid I’ll be upset. Well, my secrets are likely to be worse, so tell me. Please.’
Wesley stopped and in the darkness she couldn’t read his expression. There was no clue in his voice as he said, ‘You first. Nothing held back, mind.’
‘All right, I had an affair with a man called Duggie. He… he was killed. His was one of the planes which didn’t return.’
‘Serious was it, you and this Duggie?’
‘Yes, I thought so. You were gone from my life and I had no family; danger was a constant companion and I needed someone. Then, some time later, there was George Morgan, everyone called him Baba.’
‘Baba Morgan? I heard about him. He was carrying on with a woman, and left her with a baby and went home… to… Ethel, please don’t tell me that was you?’
She hadn’t intended to mention the baby, but now it seemed pointless to deny it. She had forgotten how much gossip was passed between stations, and Wesley had worked on the demolition of obsolete airfields too.
He took her arm and walked at a fast pace back to her home where he left her without a word. The following day there was a note through the door, explaining about finding the ring in the box of a man who had stolen it while on board a ship. Not bothering to claim it, he had allowed it to be sent to the man’s widow. Such a trivial confession compared with her own.
Wesley’s mother told her he had gone away and she had no idea where. Ethel was imbued with a calmness that surprised her. Although disappointed at the outcome, she had no regrets about the truth being exposed. If they were to have a future it was better there were no secrets. Rosie would have agreed with that. Secrets never remained hidden for ever. They had a habit of popping up unexpectedly, long after the event, like a time bomb quietly waiting until it could do the most damage.
As always she went to talk to Rosie.
‘What will you do?’ Rosie asked.
‘Give him a month, then I’ll go away too. Somewhere I’m not known where I can make a fresh start.’
‘Sid will be pleased, I think.’
‘Pleased if I go away?’
‘Pleased if you don’t want to live at home and work on the gardens. He and Wendy can get married if the place doesn’t have to support you and Wesley.’ She looked at Ethel’s surprised expression and burst out laughing. ‘Why don’t families talk to each other, eh?’
‘Because too much talking can destroy them.’
A month passed, and Ethel made sure that Dai was being looked after properly. Molly’s attitude towards Dai had softened, and the sick man had better care. Ethel felt able to leave. She began to look at advertisements for live-in jobs at hotels. In January, when baby Colin was ten months old she called to see him.
He was pulling himself up and standing strongly, banging anything he might use as a drum and exploring his world in ever widening circles, to his delight, and to the anxiety of Rosie, her mother and her Nan.
‘He’s so strong and busy,’ Rosie told her proudly. ‘And we’re enjoying every moment.’ Ethel was happy to know he was in safe hands. She was leaving but would always stay in touch.
She was packing when Wesley came to see her. She looked at him coldly, about to say the words she had rehearsed: ‘Running away is your way of dealing with things, isn’t it?’ But the words didn’t come, she was relieved to see him.
She turned away and said instead, ‘I was just going to tuck Dad up for the night.’
‘I’ll come with you,’ he replied.
He helped her tidy the bedcovers and watched as she gave Dai a drink. Then he sat on a chair and gestured for her to sit opposite him.
‘I needed to get away to make a few decisions, Ethel. I’m sorry I walked out on you again, but since I came home my mind has been a constant jangle. Now I have everything clear.’
‘Good,’ she said, sarcastically. ‘How nice for you.’
‘I’m going to train to become a nurse.’ His words surprised her and she stared at him. ‘Working in the sick bay on board ship made me aware of how much more I could have done with proper training.’
‘You’ve never mentioned it,’ she said accusingly.
‘I wasn’t sure I could do it, but now I know I can, and should. I have a place in a hospital near London and, if you’re interested, there’s a job in the canteen which could probably be yours. You have to go next week for an interview.’
‘You disappear for years, then again vanish for weeks without a word, then casually arrange for me to go to London with you and work in a hospital canteen?’
‘We can marry before you go if you wish, or come back later.’
‘I think I want to see Rosie.’
‘I’ll come with you. It’s time I was properly introduced to your son,’ he said.
Two weeks later, Sid and Wendy had arranged their wedding and Ethel, still bemused by the strength of Wesley’s decision making, agreed to make it a double ceremony.
‘Rosie, what if I’m making a mistake?’ Ethel said to her friend a few days after the announcement. ‘What if I meet someone like Baba and fall for them? What if life with Wesley isn’t enough for me?’
‘This isn’t wartime. Everything was topsy-turvy then. Would you have fallen for anyone else if you and Wesley had been married and living around here?’
Shamefaced, Ethel looked away and said softly, ‘I might have. How do I know?’
‘The war threw everything in the air and it landed in a muddle that will take years to sort out. If you love Wesley, marry him, but you have to be sure.’
‘That’s the problem, I’m not.’
She went to see Wesley that evening and sat looking at him, aware of love for him, but it was a love that was tinged with pity. Rosie had been right when she said they would have been happy if they had married and there hadn’t been a war, but too much had happened for them to return to how they were then.
Over the days that followed she evaded the plans for the double wedding, telling Sid and Wendy she hadn’t made up her mind whenever they asked for a decision or an opinion. Her thoughts wavered between ‘I’ll take a chance’ and ‘This isn’t for me’, until she was exhausted. While she continued to work on the land, Wesley left to begin his training and she was offered the job in the hospital canteen. The work was what she knew best, but something held her back from accepting.
On impulse she wrote to the Naafi asking to return. She couldn’t settle for marriage to Wesley. A loving affection just wasn’t enough, either for herself or Wesley. When everything was arranged and she told Wesley her decision, to her relief and with some disappointment, Wesley didn’t argue or try very hard to dissuade her.
‘I’ve never felt confident that we’d go back to how we were,’ he told her. ‘When we met in France I saw a stranger. You had changed but I hadn’t.’
She thought that was fair. Duggie, Baba, baby Colin, there was no way he could compete with all that had happened to her.
As she stood on the railway station to go to her new posting, she looked around her at the neatly dressed passengers. All civilians, several with a morning paper which they were trying to read. No lively girls with which to share the journey, no parcel of food from Rosie’s Nan to enjoy. She would miss Rosie, and Rosie’s Nan’s parcels, she thought, and smiled a sad smile.
Then a voice called and she turned to see Rosie, with a struggling Colin in her arms and a carrier bag in her other hand.
‘Ethel, wait, Nan sent this.’ Puffing with the exertion of her hasty arrival, Rosie handed her the bag. ‘Cake, biscuits, a bar of Cadbury’s and a pot of Nan’s home-made jam. Nan says a parcel of luxuries is a good way to start making friends.’
‘But she’s using her rations,’ Ethel protested.
‘Loves you she does and wishes you nothing but happiness.’
Tearfully, Ethel hugged them both and when the train came she leaned out of the window and waved until the station was out of sight.