There were no letters from Dai. Every time the postman came, Audrey rushed to the door, but there was nothing for her.
“Don’t worry, love,” Mum kept saying. “You know how it is. There’ll be a big batch arriving soon, I’m sure.”
Audrey fretted. She kept in close touch with Dai’s parents, but they’d heard no news either.
Joan, Ross and Derek still pushed the handcart occasionally on Saturday mornings, mostly out of habit. It was good to be out doors now, in the last days of April, when the spring sunshine danced over the estuary and even the local ladies, queuing grimly outside the shops, had dispensed with their headscarves and shapeless overcoats and were attempting a more summery appearance.
One morning Ross turned up with a grin on his face. “My dad’s been promoted!” he told them proudly. “Made a sergeant! Mum’s ever so chuffed! It means better pay and all! And he’s due to come home on leave soon.”
“That’s great,” said Joan.
“He’s being sent down to Dorset on a training course. Then, well, we don’t know where he’ll be posted. Abroad, maybe. But we’ll see him before that.”
As Joan walked home for her dinner, she found herself thinking a lot about her own dad and how much she still missed him. She kept a clear picture of him in her mind, helped by his photograph on the front-room mantelpiece. And she could remember all sorts of precious shared moments − like when he played with her, and took them all on picnics (though never to go swimming, because he said he saw enough water at sea to last him a lifetime), and how he could always make everybody laugh.
There weren’t too many laughs to be had at home these days. The comedians on the radio worked hard to keep people cheerful. They toured the country, did shows for the workers in munitions factories, getting everyone to sing along. But the effect wore off pretty quickly. She couldn’t help envying kids of her age who still had a dad, even an absent one or someone who couldn’t live up to the huge standards you set for them when you were little.
Somehow she had felt so much older since that day, only last autumn, when she had heard Lukasz whistling to her in the dark. Such a lot seemed to have happened since then. Now, with Doreen gone and Mum always trying to put on a brave face, and Audrey waiting anxiously for a letter from Dai, Brian was about the only person she could rely on to be consistently cheerful. Nothing seemed to get him down for long, and he was good at really silly jokes.
When Joan arrived home, she was met by a delicious smell of onions frying, so she knew Mum was getting the dinner ready. Perhaps there might even be some lamb chops, as it was Saturday. Audrey was laying the table when the telephone rang and she ran to answer it. It was a brief call.
“That was Dai’s dad,” she called out to Mum when she rang off. “He’s coming round.”
“Hugh Davies? Coming now? It’ll be lovely to see him, of course. Is Gwyneth coming too?”
“No, he’s coming on his own.”
“Perhaps he’d like to stay for dinner,” said Mum. And Joan knew that her mind had immediately leapt to wondering if she could make the chops stretch to another person.
“He said he won’t be staying long,” Audrey told her.
Mum answered the door. When Hugh Davies walked into the back room, they could see from his expression that this was no ordinary social call. He looked shocked, as though somebody had just hit him in the face.
“Come and sit down, Hugh,” said Mum. “Is anything wrong?”
Hugh remained standing. “I came to see Audrey especially,” he said. “Didn’t want to tell her on the phone, see. It’s that … well … we’ve had a telegram.”
“It’s about Dai, isn’t it?” Audrey said.
“Yes. I’ve brought it with me for you to read. It’s from the shipping company. We wanted you to be the first to know. It says Dai’s ship was sunk in the mid-Atlantic. They were on their way home. Direct torpedo hit from a U-boat. No survivors. They send their deepest regrets.”
Audrey sat down abruptly, still clutching the tablecloth, and looked down mutely at the floor. Her face was very pale. Mum quickly went over and tried to put an arm around her, but Audrey shrugged her off. At last, Mum turned to Hugh.
“This is terrible news for you and Gwyneth. I’m so, so, sorry,” she said in a low voice. Hugh said nothing, only nodded. There was an agonized silence.
“I can’t stay,” he said at last. “Got to get back to Gwyneth.”
“Of course.”
After Mum had seen him out, she came back into the room. Audrey was still sitting there motionless, as though she had been turned to stone.
“Do you think you could give Judy her dinner and take her over to the Hemmings’?” Mum said quietly to Joan. “Brian’s out. I’ll stay with Audrey.”
Joan was too stunned to reply, but she did as she was told. It was only much later, when she got back home, that the news really hit her. Dai was dead.
She could hear Audrey up in her room, crying and crying, great heaving sobs reaching a crescendo, and Mum’s voice rising and falling as she tried unsuccessfully to comfort her.