SEPPE SLEPT UNEASILY THAT night, tossing and turning to the sounds of his campmates’ snores and grunts. Alessa’s dying cries dripped from the rosary, mingled with Connie’s moans, turned into the roar of soldiers in the desert, parched and desperate, crescendoed into his father, a beating for each fresh rumour that reached his ears. Seppe tasted blood in his sleep, woke up hollow, shaken, reached for his carving to steady the pulse pounding in his temples. Connie. How was Connie?
The oatmeal made him gag this morning; he pushed the tin bowl across to Gianni, left the mess hall and set out into the forest.
Seppe jabbed his way through the throng of local men lined up for their orders, ignoring the complaints and shoves.
But as he strode into the clearing, Frank was leaning in the doorway of his hut, looking out for him.
Waiting.
She’s gone.
I failed her.
He had no breath to ask the only thing that mattered. Frank met his gaze with a questioning one of his own. Had Amos really not said anything to Frank?
‘Amos dropped this off for you.’ ‘This’ was a thin white envelope, neatly addressed in a careful copperplate.
Seppe tore it open and reached for the flimsy sheet of notepaper inside. Why wouldn’t it unfold? He wrestled with it, grabbed the edge as it took flight.
One line.
Relief unfurled like a leaf in spring.
‘Boy!’ He thrust the paper at Frank. ‘Connie – the baby. It’s a boy!’ Connie’s alive.
‘Baby?’ Frank retreated as if the paper itself was a squalling newborn.
‘Well, I’ll be –’
He glared at Seppe.
‘Tell me it’s not yours, lad. That’d be a right mess we’ve got ourselves into.’
Seppe watched the cogs turning, the calculations almost visible in the air between them.
‘No – no, can’t be yours. Well, that’s a blessing, at least.’
This seemed to decide it for Frank. A smile spread.
‘A baby! I’ll be damned. That girl – never a dull moment, eh?’ Frank limped across to the door of the hut, pulled it shut behind them to mutters of outrage from the waiting men.
‘Why isn’t she with her family? Or her husband?’
Seppe remembered Connie’s phrase. ‘Dead and gone. One or the other.’
‘It’s up to us, then. She’s a damn good worker, for all her chopsiness.’
Up to us. Frank saw an ‘us’ which included himself and also Connie. The acceptance, the simple sense of belonging, sideswiped him. Seppe leaned against the edge of the table, his legs unable to hold him. The table teetered, and the top layer of papers wafted to the ground.
‘Watch it, Seppe lad. Bad as blimming Connie you’re getting now.’ But Frank was smiling. ‘A baby! And she did bring it here to the Forest to be born. Least we can do is help out a bit. I’ll talk to my Joyce, see what the best thing would be.’
Amos poked at the stew on the range. The blessed thing was taking forever to heat up, and the stink from the napkins in the pot beside it was stronger than you’d give a newborn credit for creating. By the time this stew was ready, all he’d be able to taste would be napkins and Borax.
There was a rap on the panes of the kitchen window and Frank saw himself in. His nose wrinkled and he came forward to peer into the pan. ‘Crikey Moses! What are you brewing up there, old butt?’
‘Shh!’ Amos used the stew fork to point at the ceiling. Globs of fat dolloped down into the bubbling napkins. ‘They’re sleeping up there.’
‘Those napkins don’t go on the range next to your vittals. Saves them for wash day, you do.’
As if Amos needed Frank to tell him that. Frank and Joyce who’d never been blessed with kids. Brought his Billy up on his own, hadn’t he? Knew more about napkins than most men round here. He’d wash them when and how he pleased. First Billy had told him he didn’t know how the war worked, now Frank was barging into his kitchen to lay down the law about childrearing. Amos stabbed the fork right into the napkins’ water. Drops of something hot and brown splashed out.
Frank took a pace back, a look of revulsion on his face. ‘How is she?’
‘Aye, all right.’ Amos bent over the stew, close enough to block out the napkin stench, and sniffed hard. The food still smelt of nothing like tea.
‘What a turn up, eh?’ Frank picked up the stew fork, poked it into the pot. ‘Our Joyce reckoned she’d had a notion. Slow to catch on, I was. Joyce had got into the habit of giving me extra dinner for the girl, to feed her up, like. I thought she was simply looking out for her. You know Joyce. Wish she’d have told me.’
‘Aye, well, wouldn’t want to be caught gossiping, would she? Your Joyce keeps her nose out of other people’s business, and you should be glad.’
‘Don’t go telling me you knew and all? Right dozy sod I must be.’
‘Didn’t know nothing for sure, like. And she ent never mentioned a fellow, nor a family come to that. Get the sense she’s on her own down here. But that time I told you about, when she and the POW were out there sawing? There was something off about the way she was bent over. I put it down mostly to cack-handedness, tell you the truth. But when I came across her yesterday, I had half an idea what I was looking at, put it that way.’ Amos had told his suspicions to May’s picture, and all, but he wasn’t going to tell Frank that.
Frank took off his cap and twisted the brim through his fingers. Amos waited. Let him spit it out.
‘She’s a solid little worker. The way her and Seppe get down them oaks – hard to teach that, it is.’
Amos nodded, sniffed again. That was better; you could smell the carrot and onion now, blocking out the napkins.
‘I’m not going to kick her out, if that’s what you’re wondering. What do you take me for, Frank Watkins?’
The relief shook off Frank like dew off a ewe’s fleece. ‘Cheers, Amos. Appreciate that.’ He rocked back on his heels. ‘What’s your Billy going to make of this, then? Always one for the newborn lambs, weren’t him? This is even better’n that!’
‘Aye, well, he’d have to know about the girl first.’
‘You mean you haven’t told him about Connie being here? You still haven’t written to your Billy?’ Frank came closer and Amos moved to the other side of the pot. ‘Cripes, Amos, the lad’s not out there on his holidays. How long you going to keep this up?’
‘I do know it’s not a holiday.’ Fragments of Billy’s letters floated into Amos’s head, gritted any sense of contentment with guilt. ‘What goes on between me and our Billy is up to me and him, nowt to do with anyone else.’
Amos speared a likely looking chunk of meat. Nice and hot it was now. Bit gristly, but that wasn’t to be helped.
‘Was that it? Girl’s got a bed here as long as her do want it, and that babby too.’
He waved the fork at Frank and plunged it again into the stew pan. ‘Tea’s ready. This baby, he’s Forest-born. And Foresters stay here in the Forest, you know that.’