Forgive and Forget (48 page)

If it hadn’t been for Stevie and Micky Fowler – Micky, of all people, she couldn’t help thinking – Polly didn’t know what she’d have done. William failed to prise Roland out of his chair to go to the pub, though he did visit regularly and did his best to chat normally and draw the morose man out of himself.

‘I can’t get through to him,’ William told Polly after one such visit. ‘I reckon he’s still back in them trenches, seeing all the dreadful sights in his mind’s eye.’

‘I know, Dad, but thanks for trying.’ She patted his arm and tried to smile.

Strangely, it was Stevie and Micky who had the greatest effect. They got him to talk to them and even got him out to the pub once.

‘You’d have thought he wouldn’t want to talk to them, being soldiers,’ Polly had confided in Nancy during one lunch break. Nancy’s brother had come back too, though he was badly wounded and still in hospital down south. Nancy had visited him once, taking two days off school. She’d come back sober-faced and anxious but with the reassurance that he would live. ‘But he’ll be crippled for life. They’ve – they’ve amputated his left leg.’

‘Oh, Nancy.’ Polly had hugged her swiftly. ‘I’m so sorry, but at least your parents – and you – will have him home.’

Tears had filled Nancy’s eyes and Polly knew she was thinking of Bob. Bob was one of the many, many thousands who would not be coming home.

‘But Micky bounced into the room and slapped him on the back as if the last four years hadn’t happened,’ Polly told her now. ‘And then Stevie was nearly as bad.’ She smiled ‘Or good, according to how you look at it.’

‘And what did Roland do?’

‘Nothing really. He frowned a bit, but he didn’t snap at them like he does at me.’

‘He can’t really, can he? They’ve been through exactly what he has and yet they’re dealing with it.’ She hesitated before saying gently, ‘Do you think you might be pandering to him a bit too much? You know, treating him with kid gloves when perhaps all he needs is to be treated normally? Just like they’re doing.’

Polly was thoughtful. ‘Perhaps you’re right. I suppose I have been treating him differently, but –
he’s
different, Nancy.’

Nancy touched her arm. ‘I know, I know,’ she said softly. ‘But why not give it a try, eh? It can’t make matters worse.’

But it did. When Polly went home that night, she breezed into the house and greeted Roland cheerfully.

‘What have you got to be so happy about? Ah, but I’m forgetting. You haven’t existed in freezing mud for four years, living with the thought of getting your head blown off any second. You haven’t slept with rats as big as cats sleeping under your armpits or with lice crawling all over you.’

Polly stopped and stood very still. Then slowly she came towards him and sat down in the chair opposite him. She stared at him. He avoided her gaze, but still he groused. ‘You’ve no idea what hell it was out there. You, with your comfy, safe little job and your family all around you. Even your
friend
has come back.’

She didn’t insult him by pretending she didn’t know who he meant. Instead she said sorrowfully, ‘But my brother didn’t.’

For a moment, there was a brief flash of apology in Roland’s eyes, but it was not voiced and it was gone in an instant.

Polly pulled in a deep breath. ‘Tell me what you want me to do, Roland. How you want me to be, to act, and I’ll do it.’

‘Just leave me alone. That’s all I want. I don’t want you or Jacob or your blasted family coming round here. And most of all you can keep
him
away.’

‘Leo? Has he been here again?’ The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them.

Roland’s lip curled. ‘So you do know who I mean. Been coming here regularly, has he? Been
comforting
him have you?’

Polly sprang to her feet, her green eyes blazing. ‘There’s nothing between me and Leo.’

‘But he’s been coming here, hasn’t he? Before I came back. Bert Fowler was here yesterday and he told me, so don’t deny it.’

‘I’m not trying to. Yes, he’s been here as a
friend
and nothing more, Roland. I told you that when you first came home. And if you can’t or won’t believe me, then there’s nowt I can do.’ In her anger, Polly slipped back into the dialect of her childhood. ‘I was always honest with you, Roland, and I’ll be truthful now. I’ve always been fond of you. You’re a good, kind man and, since we married, I’ve come to love you. Oh, mebbe in a different way to the way I loved him, I’ll not lie to you, but I do love you and I admire the way you volunteered when it was totally against your gentle nature to go killing others. I didn’t agree with you – I didn’t agree with anyone going – but I could see that you all felt you had to do your duty.’

There it was again, that principle that had brought so much pain into her young life.

‘And while you were away, Roland, I was a good and faithful wife to you. Perhaps the only thing I’ve done that you don’t like is to find myself a job – the one I’ve always wanted and one that I do not intend to give up as long as they still want me. So there you have it. And you can choose who you want to believe. Me – your wife – or the gossips like Bert Fowler. It’s up to you.’

She made as if to turn away, but he sprang up suddenly, with an agility he’d not shown he still possessed. He grabbed her arm and swung her round to face him. ‘Don’t you turn your back on me, woman,’ he yelled. ‘And don’t tell me what I can or can’t do. I
will
be master in my own house. You will leave that job and do as I say.’

Polly stood very still, his fingers biting into her flesh. Her heart was beating fast and her knees were trembling. She was frightened of him. Sweet, kind, gentle Roland had come back from the trenches a different being. Beaten and cowed, weakened and withdrawn, she could have understood and treated him with gentleness, but this roaring stranger she had not expected. Whilst she quaked inside, she jutted out her chin and faced him with an outward show of strength and fearlessness.

‘I will not,’ she said quietly, ‘give up my job at the school. I love being with the children and besides – ’ she thrust her face closer to his – ‘we need the money.’

Roland still held her with his left hand and now he raised his right arm and slapped her hard across the face.

‘How did you get that bruise on your face?’ Leo demanded as he met her one afternoon outside the school. All around them children laughed and shrieked as they chased each other, released from the confines of the classroom.

‘You shouldn’t be here. If we’re seen together . . .’

‘What?’ He frowned. ‘You don’t mean – ’ he pointed to the purple mark on her left cheek – ‘he did that to you because of me?’

She bowed her head, afraid to look at him, afraid to meet the tender concern in his eyes, terrified that she would lose control completely and throw herself into his arms. ‘Not – not really.’

‘Then it did have something to do with me. Be honest with me, Poll.’

She sighed. ‘We were arguing – about all sorts of things. Yes, you came into it a bit. Bert Fowler had been to see him and he’d said something about you visiting me, and knowing Bert he would only have had to insinuate something by the tone of his voice for Roland to be suspicious.’

‘But there’s nothing to suspect – more’s the pity.’ He paused and when she didn’t speak he went on, ‘So, didn’t you tell him we’re just friends and no more?’

‘Of course, though I don’t think he believed me. But it wasn’t that – ’ she touched her cheek – ‘that caused this. It was when I refused to give up my job here. He wants to be master in his own house, he said. I mean, he never wanted me to work after we married and I didn’t, but now . . . Leo, I need this job. I need to get out each day and, like I told him, we can do with the money. He’s not working – not even making any effort to find work.’

‘But it’ll still be hurting his pride, Poll, that you’re now the breadwinner.’

‘Then why won’t he try to find something? Micky’s gone back to the market, Stevie’s working for Mr Wilmott again and even you, who’ve been wounded, have found work.’

Leo had not been able to go back into the police force, his injury prevented that, but his superiors at the station had found employment for him in a civilian post. ‘You’ll be useful to us because of your background knowledge,’ his inspector had told him. ‘It’s all been approved. You’re to work in the records office.’

It wasn’t what Leo had joined the force to do, but it was better than nothing and certainly better than being thrown on the streets as had happened to so many returning ‘heroes’. In time, he came to enjoy the work; it kept him in touch with all the arrests made, the problems solved and life out there on the city streets in general, even though he was forced to experience it vicariously.

But now it was Polly who concerned him.

‘Leave him, Poll. Come to me. I don’t care about the gossips, about the scandal.’

Polly smiled sadly. ‘But I do, Leo. Besides, it’s my duty to stay with my husband and care for him – no matter what. And we have a child together. I have a duty to Jacob too.’

And now the tables were turned; it was Polly who saw the long, lonely road ahead of duty and loyalty to the vows she’d made before God.

Wordlessly, Leo stared at her and then he turned and walked away. She watched him go. His shoulders were hunched with disappointment and anxiety, his limp more pronounced. She watched him disappear into the gloom of the winter’s afternoon, but Leo did not look round. Not once.

By the middle of March the national newspapers were reporting that the number of deaths in England and Wales was exceeding the number of births, due to the influenza epidemic.

On the last Friday in March Polly staggered home in the late afternoon carrying two heavy shopping bags, shivering and with a violent headache. She knew at once what was afflicting her.

She opened the door and leant wearily against the doorframe, but she did not step inside. ‘Roland,’ she called weakly. ‘Roland!’

After a few moments he appeared but at once she held up her hand, palm outwards. ‘Don’t come near me. I have the flu. Tell Jacob to put some of his clothes into a bag and go straight round to Selina’s. She’ll have him. And you too. You go too. She’ll take you, I know.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, Polly. Don’t stand there getting chilled, come on in.’

‘Not until you’ve both left,’ Polly said stubbornly.

‘Jacob can go, but I’m going nowhere.’ He turned and shouted to his son. Jacob came running in from the backyard and Polly heard Roland telling him what he’d to do.

‘But what about Mam?’

‘I’ll look after your mam. Now go, hurry. She’s standing outside and won’t come into the house until you’ve gone.’

Within minutes Jacob had thrown a few clothes and belongings into a bag and was scuttling out of the door. He paused briefly to say, ‘Mam?’ but she waved him away. ‘Be a good boy for Selina,’ she gasped. ‘As long as I know you’re safe . . .’

Only when she’d seen him run up to the top of the street, turn and wave to her and then disappear round the corner, did she step into the house. She sank into a chair by the range, shivering uncontrollably and almost crying with the pain in her head and her limbs. ‘Oh, Roland, please, go too. You’ll catch it and you’re not strong . . .’

‘I’m going nowhere,’ he repeated.

She leant back and closed her eyes; she no longer had the strength to argue.

For three days Polly lay in bed, delirious, sweating and shivering and with the worst headache she’d every known in her life. Her breathing was rasping and painful, every muscle in her body seemed to ache.

‘Don’t lift me feet, Roland,’ she moaned. It was the weirdest feeling.

‘I’m not touching your feet.’ She heard his voice as if from a long way off. Once she fancied she saw Dr Fenwick at the side of the bed. But that was foolish. It was only flu she had, there was no need for the doctor.

She felt a cooling flannel on her forehead that brought momentary relief, but she’d no idea who it was sitting beside her. In her delirium, she called out for her mother. ‘Mam, oh, Mam,’ and Eddie, believing him to be still alive and lastly, Leo. In her delirium, she called for Leo and, though he knew that she was unaware of him sitting beside the bed and didn’t even realize what she was saying, it was a shaft through Roland’s heart.

On the morning of the fourth day, she woke up and stared up at the familiar face standing beside the bed. ‘Mrs Halliday.’

‘Aye, lass, it’s me and glad I am to see you recognize me today.’ Bertha put her cool hand on Polly’s forehead and, even though she’d not known at the time, she recognized the touch and knew who had been sponging her burning forehead at the height of her illness. ‘You’re on the mend now, but there was a time we thought we were losing you.’ Bertha leant closer and lowered her voice. ‘And I’ve two of ’em to deal with worrying theirsens silly about you, not to mention your dad and the bairns. Been trooping up here every day they have.’ She sniffed her disapproval and said, ‘Mind you, done ’em all a power of good to realize just what they’d be missing if they lost you. Anyway,’ she said brightly, ‘you’re back with us now and I’ve strict instructions from Dr Fenwick on how to look after you, so you’ll be seeing my ugly face around here for a few more days yet.’