Of all Bert and Beattie’s children, Maggie was the one who missed them the most. When she wasn’t at school or helping Amy with the chores, she spent long hours reading or gazing intently into space. Amy let her grieve, and whenever Maggie wanted to talk about her parents, she was happy to listen. However, she grieved in private for the sister she thought she had failed. In the dark hours, she railed against Bessie for having made Beattie the unhappy woman she had always been, but this still didn’t prevent her from feeling she should have been the one to rectify the wrongs.
Amy’s mind often dwelt on the secrets and lies that were the root of all this suffering. Yet, as time went by, her generous heart would not allow her to wholly blame Bessie and Raffy; her mother had been a desperate young girl when she fell pregnant with Beattie and duped Hadley into marrying her. Sadly, she had then spent years hiding her secret, afraid of all she had to lose if she were found out, and taking out her misery on her innocent daughter. As for Raffy, he hadn’t even known of Beattie’s existence until it was too late. Time and again Amy tried to console herself that the past could not be undone, but sometimes it had a habit of catching up on her.
*
Amy wasn’t the only one haunted by the past. Bessie also, couldn’t let it go.
Today, as she looked at Jack and Fred shovelling a hearty breakfast into their hungry mouths, she felt a sudden, deep urge to acknowledge the misery she had caused. She set down the teapot and looked over at the two bent heads, one dirty fair, the other a tawny brown. She couldn’t tell the boys how she felt; they were too young to be burdened with her sins, and she wouldn’t tell Raffy. He would only say she was reaping what she had sown.
Twisting her hands in her apron, Bessie recalled how often those same hands had slapped little Beattie for no reason other than to assuage her own guilt. The cruel words that she had spoken then now stung her tongue as though she had just delivered them. Was this to be the pattern of the rest of her days, she wondered, crying deep inside over wrongs that she had committed and now could never put right? She let her apron fall, brushing at the creases and wishing she could smooth her life as easily.
The boys pushed back their chairs, ready to go and join Raffy in the fields. Before they left the kitchen, Bessie caught each of them by the hand. She plopped a fond kiss on Jack’s cheek and then on Fred’s. ‘Have a good day, lads,’ she said, ‘don’t be late back for your lunch.’
‘As if we would,’ Jack said, laughing as he and Fred went out into the yard.
Listlessly, Bessie did her chores, her thoughts crawling round like cockroaches inside her head and making it ache with remorse. She felt faint with relief by the time Amy arrived to collect some eggs. Now, at least, a diversion might dispel the awful memories.
Bessie bustled about the kitchen, brewing a fresh pot of tea and laying out cups and saucers, but her movements were clumsy, her hands unsure. ‘Are you feeling all right, Mam?’ Amy asked, concerned by her mother’s distracted manner.
All at once, the doors inside Bessie’s heart and mind, the ones she had struggled to keep shut fast, burst open. ‘No, I’m not,’ she said, a hot sweat making her body feel clammy as she slopped tea into two cups. She sat down heavily in a chair at the table. Amy also sat, a worried frown creasing her brow.
‘Are you ill?’
‘Not in me body,’ Bessie said, ‘but I’m not right inside my head.’
Amy’s frown deepened. ‘Whatever do you mean?’
Bessie took a sip of her tea then grimaced as though it was too bitter. The cup clattered against the saucer. ‘I can’t get Beattie out of my mind,’ she cried. ‘I keep thinking of her when she was a little girl.’ She placed her fleshy arms on the table in front of her, her chin almost touching the freckled skin. Then she took a deep breath.
‘I ruined that child’s life,’ she said, her voice low and thick with emotion. She closed her eyes as if to blot out the memory, and when she opened them, she stared bleakly into space. ‘I was cruel beyond words,’ she continued brokenly, her voice barely above a whisper, ‘but the very sight of her made me do things that I’ll never forgive meself for to my dying day.’
Amy didn’t deny it; she couldn’t.
‘And I did it for my own selfish greed.’ Bessie spat out the words. Then, cloaked in shame, she fixed her eyes on something above Amy’s head and said, ‘Do you know what I used to do when I was in bed with your dad? I pretended he was Raffy.’ She twisted her lips distastefully. ‘What sort of a woman does that make me?’ She lowered her gaze, her eyes begging for her daughter to understand. ‘I never felt for your dad what I felt for Raffy but I was a good wife to him in deed, if not always in thought, and I foolishly told myself that if I didn’t show any love for Raffy’s daughter then I’d somehow be making it up to your dad for having duped him. I hid my guilt so deep that it no longer bothered me, but now when it’s too late to put things right it’s eating away at me and I can’t take much more.’ Bessie was sobbing now, great gulping sobs that tore at Amy’s heart.
Amy had, at the start, flinched at the intimate details, but the more she listened the more she realised what inner courage it must have taken for her mother to make her confession. Now, filled with the utmost compassion, she reached across the table for Bessie’s hands. She squeezed them comfortingly. She couldn’t undo the past, but she could ease her mother’s suffering. ‘It’s never too late to admit you’re sorry,’ she said, ‘and I know you can’t make your peace with Beattie on earth, but maybe she’s looking down and seeing what a wonderful job you’re doing with her boys. She’d thank you for that.’
Bessie raised her sodden cheeks and blinked. ‘Do you think so?’
‘I know so,’ Amy said firmly. ‘I like to believe the dead know everything. She’ll rest peacefully now she knows how you feel.’
‘So help me God, I’ll make it up to her,’ Bessie said on her breath. ‘Them lads’ll want for nothing.’
‘I know they won’t,’ Amy said sincerely.
Bessie wiped her face with the palms of her hands. ‘I feel like I’ve been given a second chance,’ she said, sounding more like her old self, and managing a wan smile.
‘Like they say, Mam. God works in mysterious ways.’
*
There was a knock on Amy’s door and Maggie answered it. ‘It’s me Uncle Ben and Auntie Dora,’ Maggie called out to Amy in the parlour. She sounded surprised. Amy was equally surprised, for although they had attended his funeral, they didn’t make a habit of visiting Bert’s sister-in-law. They’d fallen out with Beattie shortly after she had married Bert. Had they come because 1916 was drawing to a close? Were they bringing Christmas gifts for their bereft nieces and nephews?
Amy made them welcome, and over a cup of tea Ben divulged the reason for their visit. ‘It’s like this,’ he said, sounding frightfully nervous. ‘Me an’ Dora have been talking. What with our bairns all teenagers, we thought we should rear little Mary and Henry.’ He looked anxiously from Amy to Maggie, their shocked faces making him hastily add, ‘We’d give ’em a good home, an’ it’s what our Bert wanted.’
‘You mean take ’em away from us?’ Maggie turned her ashen face to Amy.
‘We’d bring ’em to see you often enough, an’ you could visit us,’ Dora blurted out, ‘an’ Ben here wants to do summat right by Bert. Afore your dad went off to France he came to see us. He said if owt happened to him he’d like me an’ Ben to take ’em because what with your mam being like she was…’ Dora clamped her hand to her mouth as Maggie visibly bristled.
Ben tried to rescue the situation. ‘Your dad said it ’ud interfere wi’ your schooling and…’ he paused, looking at Amy. ‘He told us he knew you’d see to Maggie an’ the lads but he thought t’young ’uns would be better off wi’ us. Sharing the load, he said. He couldn’t trust Beattie to…’ He pressed his lips together, afraid to say more.
Amy made a fresh pot of tea, and leaving Ben and Dora in the kitchen she took Maggie into the parlour. She had often heard Bert singing Dora’s praises, particularly when he wanted to annoy Beattie. She also knew Ben and Dora had a comfortable home and that Ben was a Pit Deputy earning good money. Gently, she pointed out these attributes, at the same time feeling guilty at offloading Bert’s children when she had promised him to take care of them. But a loving home with his brother offered far more advantages than she herself thought she could give.
Maggie listened thoughtfully, agreeing or protesting and eventually seeing reason. ‘I suppose you’re right, Auntie Amy, an’ if it’s what me dad wanted it’s only right we should let ’em go… but I’ll miss ’em somethin’ awful.’ Her eyes filled with tears as she added, ‘An’ what wi’ me mam not being here anymore it does make sense. Me Aunt Dora’ll be a good mam to them.’
‘She will, Maggie,’ said Amy, struggling with the thought that she wasn’t exactly breaking her promise to Bert. Besides, when Jude came home, she had promised him the chance to go to college, a promise that would be easier to keep if they had fewer mouths to feed.
Dora and Ben crowed with delight when Maggie told them of her decision, and hurrying into the parlour, they began telling Mary and Henry what a wonderful time they would have once they were living with them. At first, the children looked warily from Amy to Maggie, not understanding, but as Dora cuddled little Henry and Ben told Mary about the dogs and the pony waiting for them at their new home, their anxiety turned to excited anticipation. ‘Can I come as well?’ said Kezia.
After tearful goodbyes on Maggie’s part, and a deep sense of having made a wise decision on Amy’s, the little family in the house in Wentworth Street settled into a new pattern, one that saw them living contentedly throughout the rest of that awful year and into the next.
*
On a warm, sunny morning in June 1917, Amy was down on her knees washing the flags outside her front door. As she lifted the donkey stone to draw the obligatory patterns on the clean step, she felt a tap on her shoulder.
‘Letter from your old man,’ the postman said gently. Jack Spivey knew how much these missives meant to the women who waited daily to hear from their husbands and sons and he hoped this one contained good news. Amy dried her hands on her apron and tore open the envelope. Skimming the letter she cried, ‘Jude’s been granted leave.’ Whistling cheerily, Jack went on his way.
‘Jude’s coming home!’ Amy’s excited cry rang through the house, Kezia and Maggie rushing headlong from the kitchen into the parlour.
‘When?’ Maggie urged, her copper curls bouncing.
‘The first week in July…’ Amy paused, and tapping her fingertips lightly on her chin she calculated, ‘That’s a week and two days from now.’ Half-laughing and half-crying, she took hold of the girls’ hands and together they jigged about the room.
*
Amy rarely left the house that first week in July but today, Tuesday, she had taken Maggie and Kezia up to the vegetable plot after Maggie came home from school. ‘I’ve neglected it these past few days and the marrows will spoil if we don’t pick them now,’ she said, handing Maggie a large trug and a sharp knife. You cut them off and Kezia can put them in the basket.’
‘Ah, there you are, Amy.’ Mrs Hargreaves swooped across the lawn, beaming. ‘I was anxious you had forgotten about us,’ she said.
Amy assured her she hadn’t. ‘It’s just that my husband’s coming home on leave and I don’t want to be out of the house when he arrives,’ she explained, ‘so is it all right if I leave the girls here for the time being to gather the marrows?’
Mrs Hargreaves beamed again. ‘How splendid,’ she gushed. ‘Now you pop off back home and I’ll take charge here. We’ll have a lovely time, won’t we girls?’ She gave Amy’s arm an affectionate squeeze. ‘I do so love having children about the place, and you’ve done such a wonderful job here I can hardly refuse.’
*
Amy was upstairs putting freshly ironed clothes into drawers when she heard footsteps outside her back door. It could be anyone of her neighbours, she thought, but what if… Leaving a pile of clothes on Kezia’s bed, she ran downstairs.
Jude lounged in the kitchen doorway, a slow, sweet smile lighting his face as his eyes roved the familiar little room. A strange choking sound escaped his throat, and on hearing it Amy hurried towards him her hands reaching out, drawing him into the room. Then, as though wakened from a trance Jude clasped her to his chest, his lips seeking hers.
Breathless, they broke apart to gaze once again at each other, as though they could not believe what they were seeing. Amy reached up, her fingers caressing the taut, greyish skin on his stubbly cheek. How gaunt he is, she thought, but still the most wonderful sight in life. Jude rested his head against her hair and breathed in deeply. She smelt like meadow flowers, and he closed his eyes, holding the scent in his nose. As Amy’s senses recovered, she wrinkled hers as the rank smell of the battlefield filled her nostrils but she didn’t care. Words tumbling from her mouth, she spoke of love and longing, and the thrill of having him by her side.
Jude, still somewhat dazed, stood before her wearing his greatcoat and peaked cap. His rifle, mess tin and water bottle were strapped to his back and his putees and boots caked in mud. Amy giggled.
‘I can’t get my arms round you and give you a proper hug,’ she chuckled, patting the conglomeration of equipment. This simple remark made Jude come alive and he laughed out loud. Still laughing, he stripped down to his shirt and trousers and then took her in his arms and kissed her again and again. Beneath his shirt she felt the steady beat of his heart and her own beating in tandem. Jude glanced about him. ‘Where’s Kezia?’
Amy told him. ‘Let’s go and get her,’ he said, and slipped on his tunic.
*
On his first night at home, after tucking an over-excited, sleepy Kezia into bed, Jude followed Amy into their bedroom. He had been longing for this moment like a thirsty man in a desert craves for an oasis, but suddenly all thoughts of lovemaking fled his mind.
‘Where did you get all these?’ he asked, stooping to read the titles of the books on the shelves. Amy smiled fondly. Here they were, coming together with their love of books. It was like starting over again but better.
‘It’s good to tell where your true love lies,’ said Amy mockingly. ‘Here am I waiting to be made love to, and you’ve got your nose in a book.’
Chuckling, Jude dived into bed and together they proved their love in the best way they knew how. Later, Jude rolled onto his back and gazed up at the ceiling, his lean, hard body pressed against Amy’s arm and thigh. ‘It’s a grand collection; I can’t believe it’s ours. I’ll read ’em all when I get home for good,’ he said dreamily, ‘and in the meantime I’ll keep doling out my books to the lads. Do you know, some of ’em had never read a book before and now they’re queuing up to borrow ’em? They can’t get enough of Kipling’s Plain Tales from the Hills. Mind you, I don’t blame them, he can’t half tell a good tale. He makes you laugh and, God knows, we don’t have a lot to laugh about over there.’ He shuddered.
Amy thought she could almost feel his spirits sinking, and putting her hand on his cheek, she gently turned his face to hers. ‘Don’t think about it, love. Let it go.’
Jude shook his head and then, as though he had emptied it of horrible thoughts, he grinned and rolled over, covering Amy’s body with his own. ‘Aye, there’s much better things to think about right now,’ he said, as she warmed to his urgent caresses.
*
The next morning, as Jude lingered over his breakfast with a look of sheer contentment on his face, Amy broached the subject of letting Ben and Dora take Henry and Mary to live with them. ‘Do you think I’ve let Bert down?’ she asked, this thought having troubled her ever since the children’s departure.
‘You’d never let anyone down; you’ve a heart as big as China,’ Jude replied, the words full of love and admiration. ‘You did your best for Bert’s children and for poor Beattie – God rest her – and look how you coped with all that trouble your Samuel caused, not to mention Bessie and Raffy and all that carry-on. You’ve nothing to feel guilty about – you’re a wonderful woman. And anyway, it makes perfect sense to let Mary and Henry go to a couple who can give them so much more than we can because,’ he shrugged his shoulders, ‘I’ve no idea what I’ll do when this war’s over. I don’t want to go back down the pit but I will do if it means I can give you everything you deserve. I’d give you the world if I could.’ He looked earnestly into Amy’s face.
‘You’ll go to college and get your qualifications, young man,’ Amy said severely. Jude stood and pulled her into his arms. Pressed against him, Amy silently promised that when he came home for good, she would move mountains to make sure that, in one way or another, his future involved working with books.
Two weeks later, Jude returned to France.
*
In the months following his return to France Jude marched, or shuffled, and fought wherever and whenever he was ordered. Now, having travelled north in a cattle truck he arrived at Neuve Chapele, a damp, smoky region between cotton mill towns in the Lys Valley to the south and the French coalfields to the north. Years of warfare had destroyed the region, the towns and villages reduced to rubble. Unlike the chalky soil of Picardy, the trenches here were in marshy ground and Jude spent his days caked in the ooze of his surroundings. He was used to eating with fingers slimed with mud and resting his weary body on rotting sandbags. This was the pattern of his life.
*
On a night in July 1918 Jude was on revetting duty, packing sandbags into the top of the trench. Stars speckled the violet sky, Jude tilting his head to gaze up at them. These same stars were shining down on Amy and Kezia, he thought, feeling a moment of violent loneliness: God, how he missed them. Would he ever see them or hold them again?
A line from Shakespeare came into his mind, and although he didn’t always understand old William’s strange use of language, he liked the bit where Juliet said, ‘And when he shall die take him and cut him out in little stars’. Was that what Amy would do with him, he wondered?
‘Nearly done,’ said Billy Cooper, breaking Jude’s reverie as he rammed a sandbag into place. ‘Maybe we can get us heads down for an hour or two.’
He had no sooner spoken than the sky lit up, red and yellow flashes accompanied by a dreaded shrieking. Jude and Billy dived to the bottom of the trench as an eleven-inch shell hit the ground above their heads.
‘Bloody hell, that were close,’ Jude said, as a minenwerfer tore into the sandbags they had so recently replaced. Shells rained down, Jude remarking, ‘We’ll be buried alive if this keeps up.’
Worming their way back along the trench to the fire step and their comrades they were stopped in their tracks by an almighty explosion, the sound reverberating above their heads and Jude wondering if the stars were about to fall. Turning the corner to approach the main trench, he staggered back as his eyes took in what lay before him.
‘Bloody hell,’ he whispered, his voice rising to a scream as he shouted, ‘God almighty, what have they done?’
The main trench and the fire step were one gaping hole, the dismembered bodies of lads he had worked with only an hour before lying like butchered meat. Jude stumbled forward into the body of a young lad, one eye begging for help in what was left of his face, the other side blown completely away. Jude fell to his knees and gripped the boy’s hand. ‘You’ll be all right in a minute, lad,’ he mumbled.
The eye fluttered and closed, the lad’s head rolling to expose the massive injury. Jude shuddered. ‘See,’ he whispered, ‘I told you you’d be all right in a minute, an’ now you are.’ With gentle fingers he removed the young soldier’s identification tag.
Billy had gone ahead and Jude now followed him, crawling amongst the debris to tend their wounded and dying friends. The few who had survived without injury joined them and the following day, after burying their dead comrades and waving farewell to those who were carted away to the field hospital, the battalion reformed.
But that horrific scene would not leave Jude’s head.
*
On the last day of July 1918 on the frontline at Warnerton on the River Lys, Jude tramped along a trench in the footsteps of his compatriots, the rank, raw stink of human excrement commingling with the ever-present mud. Jude lifted his sodden boots, suction protesting with every step as he ploughed on. Was this the way it would end? A perpetual trench to heaven or hell, littered with the detritus of all that man had to offer for king and country.
The smell grew stronger and his stomach heaved. Memories of the pit bottom in Barnborough flittered through his mind, the stink reminding him of the piles of shit left behind by colliers on the previous shift. Maybe Amy had been right; he should have stayed working down the pit. At least he had known why he was there, which was more than he could say for this place.
The line halted, a sharp blast of a whistle the signal to ‘go over the top.’ Jude scrabbled to the top of the ridge, rolling over into open ground and then up onto his feet. As he moved forward a dim uneasiness flitted across his mind like something you see but don’t see out of the corner of your eye. The ground beneath his feet trembled and then exploded as an almighty roaring was thrown back from the sky.
In the following days Jude struggled with the fact that he was still alive and his physical injuries minor. However, his guts had turned to water and the left side of his face had developed an irritating tic. His body trembled at the slightest sound and his hands shook so badly he couldn’t hold his rifle. When he could no longer walk in a straight line the orders came to ‘get that man on the next shipment back to Blighty.’
Jude’s war was over; he was going home.
*
Amy didn’t usually have premonitions, but from the moment she lifted the small, brown envelope with its typewritten address she knew to expect bad news. Inside was a single sheet of paper explaining that Sgt. Jude Field was suffering from war neurosis and had been transferred from the frontline to a hospital in East Suffolk from where he would shortly be transferred to a hospital in Leeds, it being nearer to his home address.
Over the past four years, Amy’s ears had grown attuned to the postman’s arrival in Wentworth Street. From whichever part of the house she was in she listened for the squeak of his bicycle’s wheels or the rattle of the letterbox and the plop of a letter on the mat behind the front door. Waiting to hear the familiar sounds had become part of her daily routine, her feelings fluctuating between intense hope and impending sorrow. So far, each one of Jude’s letters had filled her with pleasant relief, but for the past seven days she had waited for another letter with a typewritten address on its envelope, a letter from a stranger. And although she dearly wanted to hear that Jude was closer to home, each day of waiting left her with a feeling of cold dread.
Now, with her ears pricked, Amy waited in the silence of her kitchen for the flat iron to heat on the stove. She glanced at the clock – not long to wait if Jack was keeping to his usual time. Please God, let him bring it today. Amy lifted the iron and spat, her spit sizzling on its plate as she crossed from the stove to the table. The letterbox rattled. She thumped the iron face down on the blanket padding.
The same kind of brown envelope with the same typeface lay tantalisingly on the mat. At last, she thought, breath whooshing from her lungs.
The letter said much the same as the one before. Jude was now resident in the military hospital at Beckett’s Park and would remain there until he was considered well enough to return to duty. A list of visiting times and a map showing directions to the hospital was included.
Dazed, Amy wandered back into the kitchen, her senses instantly alerted as the acrid smell of burned wool nipped at her nose. She lifted the iron from the blanket padding and gazed forlornly at the scorched imprint. She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. She read the letter again, and five minutes later, she was on the road to Intake Farm.