CONNIE LIT A FAG and smoked three in a row, lighting one off the other, her hands less jittery each time, despite the cold. The tobacco did its thing and she relaxed into the twilight, head tilted back.
‘Here you are; been looking for you, I have.’ A beam of light shone into the garden as Joyce stepped through the kitchen door, then all was murky again as the door clicked shut.
Connie offered her the fag packet. ‘Want one?’
‘You’re all right, love; I want to hang on to the taste of cider. We’ll get back inside when you’re done with that. It’s about time to open the presents.’
‘Dunno if I can cope with any more presents, not after this.’ She tilted her hand in Joyce’s direction, the ring heavier than the axe ever was.
‘Oh cripes, Connie.’ Joyce had her hand now, was holding it up to inspect the ring in the gloom. ‘And you’re not over the moon?’ The little stones glittered for a second then disappeared as the moon went behind a cloud.
‘It’s a beautiful ring. And to think of him, working on this all alone up there in that camp. He must really want this, Con.’
‘I know. You should have seen his face, Joyce. So hopeful. A normal girl would be happy, wouldn’t she?’
Joyce took a cigarette and didn’t say anything for the length of the smoke. She must think Connie was being a selfish baggage, too.
The wind changed direction and Connie got an eyeful of Joyce’s ash.
‘Ow!’ Her eyes streamed and she blinked hard, the moisture cold on her cheeks.
‘Oh, Connie, love.’ Joyce pulled her in and hugged her, warm and firm, and the shock of it brought the tears for real. When was the last time anyone had hugged her? Seppe didn’t count. She was properly bawling now, as if she were the baby. Poor Joe! She was such a terrible mother and it wasn’t getting any better, and now she’d be trapped here forever, living in that dismal hut and burning dinner every night.
The tears came and came without end.
‘It’s all hopeless. I can’t do any of it, Joyce, I really can’t.’ Connie daubed at her face with a hanky Joyce pulled from her apron.
It would have been quicker if she’d been had by that bomb after all. She was worse than anyone she’d ever mocked back in Coventry, trapped out here with a baby by a one-night stand and a prisoner who wanted a home so badly he’d mistaken her for it.
The hanky Joyce had given her was sopping wet. She looked at it and cried harder.
‘Here, use this.’ Joyce pulled the apron over her neck and gave it to Connie. Connie scrunched it to her face, scrubbing away the tears. The apron smelt of all those meals Joyce had cooked in it, all the cupboards she’d scrubbed and the jumpers she’d knitted, and now it was covered in snot and rouge where Connie’s face had run all over it.
‘Oh Joyce, I’ve ruined your pinny.’
‘What it’s there for, isn’t it? More concerned about what we’re going to do about you, to be honest.’
‘What kind of monster hides and blubs when her feller brings her a ring, Joyce?’
‘Ah now, Connie, you stop that, all right? We’ve been over this before. We both know you’re no monster.’ It was dark out here now, the twist of smoke from the cigarette the only tang of inside. What she wouldn’t do for another one, but the carton was empty.
Joyce put a hand on her shoulder. ‘You feeling a bit better now?’ Connie nodded. Joyce always made her feel better.
‘That’s my girl. Ready to come on in, then? They’ll start to miss you if you stay out here much longer. I know it’s a shock, but it’s the nice kind of shock.’
‘You’re right, Joyce.’
She was. That’s what made it all so much worse.
Connie risked a smile in Joyce’s direction. Joyce wouldn’t notice her faking it in this dark. ‘You go on in, fill up those glasses. I’ll be right behind you.’
But when Joyce closed the kitchen door, Connie headed in the other direction, out over the stones and into the wood. She didn’t have to go far, just far enough away so that Seppe’s hut wasn’t looming over her. It was pitch black out here, the noises filling in for lack of sight. Six months ago the rustling and shifting of the leaves would have put the frighteners on her but these days they brought her comfort. It’s where she’d had Joe, after all: if nothing bad could come of her in that situation, nothing ever could. The woods wanted nothing of her, just her company.
She sobbed into the gaps between the trees, filling the lacunae with misery. How had her life come so off track? There was nobody here who knew who she’d been for most of her life, who could give her advice based on who she’d always be. She missed them so much, was sick of pretending that everything was OK. Connie yelled out, the anger and pain hitting an echo against a trunk and refracting the solid wall of her despair. Almost a year – a whole year – and her family were still dead. They’d never feel the weight of Joe wriggling in their arms, hadn’t even known he was on the way, couldn’t shine him a copper or spin him a top or give him a Vimto-soaked finger to suck on. They’d stay dead forever, however much she wished it to change. There was nothing, nothing she could do.
All the tears came now. There was no stopping them. The months of heartache, of uncertainty, of having to look after herself. She cried and cried until there was nothing left, then leaned back, panting, against the nearest tree. She cried for the child she’d been, for her sisters who would never grow older; for Mam, cut off before life had had a chance to get easier. She cried for her younger, more optimistic self and for the future she might have had but now never could. This war, this endless war that had stolen her youth, her family, had driven her to reckless mistakes she’d be paying for now for the rest of her life. No proper mother would think of her baby as a mistake, but let’s be honest, there was no better word for it. She’d cocked up everything.
She laid a hand against the trunk of the tree. The bark was mosaicked and lichen-covered – oak. Connie smiled ruefully in the dark at herself. The things she knew now!
Her family was gone and there was no getting them back; but she had a new family in front of her. Now there was nothing to do but move forward, even if the view didn’t look as she’d hoped. She could do worse than Seppe. And anyway, the war might never end and they’d never be able to get wed. She eased her way through the whispering forest, her heart in her mouth and her will in her steps. Her future lay inside that cottage, and now it was time to go and face it.