Home Front Girls (47 page)

Annabelle was saddened but not really surprised considering the state the poor young man had been in when he arrived. His innards had been spilling out of his stomach and although the surgeons had worked diligently to repair him, an infection had set in and everyone knew that this might be the end for him. She had sat with many other men in much the same situation; the ones suffering with gangrene were the worst. Nothing could remove the foul smell of their afflicted limbs, and one poor man had been so bad that she had been forced to sit holding a handkerchief over her nose and mouth until he died.

As she turned to go and do as she was told, the Sister warned her, ‘I’m afraid he’s delirious and keeps calling for his mother.’

‘I’ll cope,’ Annabelle replied, and seconds later she stood looking down on the wretched boy lying in the bed. He can’t be more than eighteen or nineteen, she found herself thinking as she wrung out a cloth from the bowl at the side of the bed to wipe his sweating brow. His eyes instantly sprang open and he reached out to grasp her hand. His was feverishly hot.

‘You
must
tell me mam that I love her,’ he muttered chokily and Annabelle nodded reassuringly.

‘Sh-she’s special, see? Me real mam couldn’t keep me when I was a babby an’ she took me in out o’ the kindness of her heart an’ treated me the same as her own.’

Annabelle swallowed deeply as she looked gravely down at him. His breath was laboured but even so it seemed that he wasn’t going anywhere until he had passed on his message.

‘O-one in a million, she is. Yer will tell her, won’t yer?’

‘I’ll make sure she gets your message, I promise, Johnny,’ Annabelle whispered, and a look of contentment settled across his face as his eyes fluttered shut. She sat down on the chair at the side of the bed, gently stroking his hand until at last his chest became still and the sound of his rasping breaths ceased. He was at peace now.

Annabelle sniffed and swiped a tear from her cheek with the back of her hand as her thoughts raced to the woman she had always thought of as her mother. Since the night she had learned of her true birth mother’s existence, she had held Miranda at arm’s length. She had even joined the VADs to get away from her. Yet this boy had only loved his adoptive mother all the more for bringing him up and loving him as her own. For the first time she wondered if perhaps she had been a little harsh, but this was not the time to be thinking of it now, so she folded his arms across his thin chest, then after gently drawing the crisp white sheet across his face, she quietly left the room.

It was much later that evening when she was returning from a walk along the sea wall that she spotted Joel sitting in the day room having a cigarette. One of the nurses must have pushed him down there to give him a change of scenery, so she made a detour and popped in to join him, removing her red cape from her shoulders as she entered the room.

‘Hello there,’ he greeted her. ‘Care to join me?’

‘Don’t mind if I do,’ Annabelle answered, taking a Woodbine from the packet he offered. He lit it for her with a match then asked, ‘Been for a stroll, have you?’

When she nodded, he went on, ‘Bad do about that poor young Johnny Reed, wasn’t it? I saw the porters come to take him to the morgue.’

It was just the chance that Annabelle had needed and now she told him, ‘He asked me to pass on a message to his mother – only she wasn’t his mother, not really. He said she’d taken him in when he was a baby because his real mum couldn’t keep him, and she brought him up.’

‘Then she
was
his mother, wasn’t she?’ Joel said in a matter-of-fact voice. ‘That’s the way I see it anyway. She was the one who no doubt nursed him through his childhood illnesses. She was the one who read him bedtime stories and kissed him better when he fell over, so in my eyes that makes her his mum.’

Annabelle gulped. ‘Do you
really
believe that?’

‘Absolutely. Why do you ask?’

Her lip trembled, and before she knew it she had blurted out the whole sorry tale of what had been disclosed on her birthday. Joel wisely let her get it all off her chest without interruption.

When she was done, he fished a clean handkerchief from the pocket of his dressing-gown and handed it to her, and she blew her nose noisily. ‘How the mighty are fallen, eh?’ she said shakily. ‘There was me, all airs and graces, thinking I was a cut above everyone else when all the time I was a nobody!’

‘What do you mean?’ he asked, puzzled. ‘You’re still the person you were before. Nothing’s changed, only how you think of yourself.’

‘B-but my mother was a
runaway!
Who would ever want me now?’

He shook his head. ‘That’s not the way I see it,’ he told her. ‘Look at it this way: your mother is at home in Coventry and you would still think of her as your mother if your grandmother hadn’t let slip what happened after you were born. Does she
really
deserve to lose you now after all the years she’s loved you? We all have secrets in our past,’ he went on bitterly, ‘but we have to learn to live with them and get on with our lives. And as for who would want you now . . .’ he suddenly took her hand and bowed his head. ‘
I
would, Annabelle. You must have realised how I feel about you. But I have a secret too, so much worse than yours, and it would be
you
who wouldn’t want
me
if you knew what it was, believe me.’

Despite being so upset, she was intrigued now. ‘If it’s about your mother dying in a mental asylum, Lucy already told us about that,’ she whispered.

‘Huh, but she only told you
half
the story,’ he answered, and then squeezing her hand, he asked urgently, ‘Do you think you might ever have been able to care for me, Annabelle, even a little, if I had been someone else? Someone from your own class with a bit of money?’

‘None of that matters now.’ She squeezed his hand in return. ‘That’s one thing this war has taught me. When you love someone, nothing else matters. But what’s this secret that’s so terrible?’

Shutters suddenly seemed to go down across his eyes. ‘That’s something I can never share,’ he told her. ‘Just know that while Lucy is alive, I can never leave her for anyone.’

Annabelle was shocked. ‘What? You’re telling me that you’ll
never
leave Lucy?’

He nodded, his eyes bleak, and without another word she quietly rose and left the room. It seemed that there was nothing more to say. In one breath he had told her that he had feelings for her – and in the next that he would never leave his sister. None of it made any sense.

Miranda saw a distinct change for the better when her daughter returned home for a two-day leave the following week. Annabelle didn’t seem so stand-offish any more, and within minutes of being home she had enquired if there had been any news of her father. The Red Cross had been trying to track him down for months.

‘Actually there is,’ Miranda told her, ‘although I’m not sure if it’s good news or bad, to be honest. He’s in a German prisoner-of-war camp, and we all know the horror stories we read in the papers about those places. I just pray that he’ll survive.’

‘He will,’ Annabelle told her with conviction. ‘And once the war is over he’ll be home, you’ll see.’

Miranda raised a smile, hoping her daughter was right. ‘Dotty and Lucy should be here soon,’ she told her. ‘That’ll be nice. I’m so looking forward to seeing them. How is Joel, by the way?’

‘He was transferred to a convalescent home in Watchet, in Dorset yesterday,’ Annabelle said, and there was something in her tone of voice that made her mother raise her eyebrows.

‘That’s good,’ she replied cautiously. ‘It must mean that he’s on the mend.’

Annabelle nodded and without another word, lifted her small case and went upstairs to put her things away as her mother watched her go with a bemused expression on her face.

When the other two girls arrived they were all shocked to see the change in Lucy. She had lost so much weight that her clothes hung off her, and there were dark circles under her eyes. However, they all tactfully said nothing as Dotty proudly handed them copies of her new book hot off the press.

‘I can hardly wait to read it,’ Miranda told her, thinking how well Dotty looked. She was a complete contrast to Lucy and seemed to have filled out a little. Her skin and her eyes were glowing, and it was obvious that she was happy.

‘I’ve just got to pop out to see Mum’s solicitor in a while,’ she told them apologetically within minutes of arriving there. ‘But I shouldn’t be long and then I’ll stay until the morning, if you don’t mind, Miranda.’

‘It would be a pleasure to have you,’ Miranda said sincerely. ‘But I thought you’d dealt with all the legalities now?’

‘I have,’ Dotty agreed. ‘But Mr Jenkins wrote to tell me that he needed to see me about a personal matter.’

‘Then you’d better go and find out what it is and put us all out of our misery,’ Miranda teased her.

An hour and a bus ride later, Dotty was shown into Mr Jenkins’s office. The kindly gentleman rose from his desk to greet her, and shook her hand warmly.

‘May I say how well you are looking, Mrs Brabinger?’ he smiled. ‘Married life must be suiting you.’

‘It is,’ Dotty answered. ‘But I’m very curious as to why you want to see me, Mr Jenkins.’

‘Hmm.’ He steepled his fingers as he sat back down and regarded her over the top of them. ‘I sincerely hope that you won’t think that I’m an interfering old fool,’ he said quietly. ‘But the thing is, as I’ve come to know you over the last months, I’ve realised how much it meant to you, to know who your mother was.

Dotty nodded, looking perplexed.

‘With that in mind, I felt that you might also like to know the identity of your father.’ Seeing her shock, he hurried on, ‘I happen to know who your father was, and seeing as he is now deceased, I see no harm in you knowing too – if you want to, that is?’

‘Oh I do!’

‘Very well then. I’ll begin by telling you that when your mother first started work, she was employed here, in this very office, as a receptionist. My dear, your father worked here too, as a solicitor. His name was Jeremy Matthews and he was a very nice chap. Anyway, it transpires that after a time he and your mother began an affair. Now I know you might condemn him for that, but his wife, to be perfectly honest, was a shrew of a woman. However, they did have two lovely children – which is why your father chose to stay with her. He had no idea that your mother was having you until after you were born, by which time it was too late to do anything about it. But I can tell you that he was absolutely mortified and riddled with guilt, and before he left the firm to join the RAF he entrusted to me a sum of money, with the instructions that should you ever be found, it would be passed to you on his death, which sadly occurred when he was out on patrol with his squadron recently.’ Mr Jenkins went over to a safe in the wall, opened it and returned with a large envelope.

‘He wanted you to have this,’ he told her solemnly. ‘And he also asked me to tell you how sorry he was, and that in other circumstances, he would have been proud to be your father.’

‘I see.’ Dotty stared at the envelope as if it might bite her. She had no idea how much was in it, nor did she care, for there was a feeling of pure joy racing through her veins. Now she
truly
knew who she was, and although she would never have the chance to get to know her father or enjoy spending time with Miss Timms in the knowledge that she was her mother, she felt complete.

‘Thank you, Mr Jenkins,’ she said sincerely. ‘Not just for the money but for helping me to understand. It seems that neither of my parents truly abandoned me, and you’ll never know how much it means to me to learn that. Now I can hold my head high and name both of them if asked, and I can also get on with the rest of my life.’

‘You are very welcome, my dear,’ the kind-hearted man said with genuine warmth. ‘I shall only be a phone call away, should you ever need my services, and may I say it has been a pleasure to know you. I think both of your parents would have been very proud of you indeed.’

Dotty rose and walked towards the door, clutching the envelope. She really must find a phone and ring Robert to tell him the happy news. At last she felt truly at peace and one day she hoped she would be able to tell her own children the names of their grandparents – Alice and Jeremy.

‘Can’t you tell me what’s wrong, darling?’ Miranda asked later that night. Lucy had set off for home and Dotty had gone to bed, and now she was snatching a few precious minutes with her daughter.

‘I . . . I think I’ve been rather unfair to you,’ Annabelle answered in a small voice and Miranda instantly drew her into her arms and kissed the top of her head.

‘My back is broad, I can stand it,’ she told her affectionately. ‘Let’s just try to put what’s happened behind us and go back to the way we were, eh? But are you sure there isn’t anything else bothering you?’

Annabelle didn’t answer immediately but then she said slowly, ‘Before he left the hospital, Joel told me that he could never leave Lucy. But don’t you think that’s strange? I mean, she’s only his sister, isn’t she?’

Ah, so that’s it, Miranda thought. My girl is in love and doesn’t know what to do about it.

‘Perhaps he just feels responsible for her and doesn’t want to leave her alone after what happened to Mary and her mother?’ she suggested, but Annabelle shook her head.