Roses of Winter (49 page)

The first official news came just after half-past nine when Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Force, usually called SHAEF from its initials, issued communiqué number one. This said, under the command of General Eisenhower, Allied naval forces supported by air forces began landing allied armies this morning on the northern coast of France.

So Charlie had been right
, she thought. They
were
landing early enough in the summer to gain a foothold in Europe before the winter arrived. Mary experienced a great wave of elation and fear at the same time.
The Allies have committed everything they have to this,
she thought
. What if it resulted in another Dunkirk? How could Britain ever recover from that?

But then she remembered the Americans and the tanks, planes and men they had brought with them. Britain was no longer alone as she had been at the start of the war. As tough opponents as the Germans had been, surely they could not endure against this onslaught.

The news spread quickly and was no secret to Charlie when he showed up later. They were eager to hear any scrap of new information and sat close by the radio all evening waiting impatiently for the nine-o-clock news. Alastair and Elspeth came into the kitchen, arguing about some slight until a roar from Charlie shut them up. The family gathered around and fell silent.

Here is the news read by Joseph MacLeod. All still goes well on the coast of Normandy.

 
They smiled at each other, the tension broken. Alastair gave the thumbs-up sign.

Mr. Churchill, in a second statement to the Commons this evening, reported that in some places we had driven several miles into France. Fighting is going on in the town of Caen between the Cherbourg peninsula and Havre. Six-hundred-and-forty guns of the Allied Navies bombarded the German coast defenses in support of our troops.

 
“Ah hope they are killing a lot o’ those bastards,” Charlie said.

“Charlie!” Mary said, shocked.

“Ach well, they deserve everything that’s coming tae them,” he said, unrepentant. “Ah saw what they did tae Dunkirk. The more hell we gie them the sooner they’ll give up.”

The war has changed all of us, Mary thought. But Charlie’s wrong if he thinks that killing Germans will make that fanatic Hitler give up easily. She doubted if he was much concerned about the thousands who had died already let alone the many more that would be cut down trying to defend Germany.

The initial excitement over the landings in France was tempered over the following few months by news of stubborn German resistance. The British army remained stalled at Caen for many weeks and didn’t enter the ruined city until July. Throughout August the British and American armies pushed slowly forward through northern France against enemy troops that only grudgingly gave ground. But, by the end of the month the Allies had landed troops along the Mediterranean coast and American forces were just 35 miles from Paris.

Mary’s enthusiasm for following the progress of the war had rubbed off on Ida. Over their afternoon tea, they discussed events in Europe like two generals planning strategy. The black stain of German occupation was finally retreating. By the end of October, Aachen became the first German city to fall to the Allies. Late in November, Patton’s Third Army crossed the German border. Mary took this as a sign that the war would soon be over.

“Dae ye think it could all be over by Christmas?” Mary asked Ida.

“No, ah don’t,” Ida replied. “Ah don’t trust those damn Germans. It wouldnae surprise me if they didnae have more dirty tricks up their sleeve. We’re just lucky tae be oot o’ the reach of their rockets. But what else dae they have that they havnae used yet?”

Mary could see Ida’s point. People had been talking about the end of the war in the summer and then the strange but deadly buzz bombs had started coming across the English Channel. In the last few months the V-2 rockets had started showing up. At least you could see the V-1s coming and sometimes bring them down.
 
The V-2s arrived with no warning and a city block would disappear. There was no way to defend against them.

“The only way we’ll stop them,” Ida said, “is to find out where they’re shooting them off from.” They both knew that that would only come as fast as the Allied advance.

Christmas was little more than a week away. Mary awoke early and crept around the kitchen to avoid waking Charlie, whose snoring had serenaded her sleeplessness. She snatched the kettle off the hob the minute it started to whistle and swirled the leaves in the pot. Mary stood by the window looking down at a silent Maryhill Road while the tea infused. She remembered her wish last year for no more wartime Christmases and sighed. Defeating Germany was proving to be as long and hard as Ida had predicted. Surely it couldn’t drag on much longer.
 

Mary was weary, exhausted in the way that drives off sleep. She was near the end of her tether, she knew, and finding it hard to conceal it from others. It wasn’t her mood alone. She could see it in the faces of her family, the people she met in the street. The thrilled expectation of the summer landings had faded into a deep frustration born of a wish to have it all over and done with. The thought of the coming holidays, once a source of joy and contentment, left her depressed. Mary was spent. The core of her being felt forged in lead.
 

When Charlie woke later she pretended not to see the worried look on his face. For months now they had moved through the well-worn rituals of their mornings, the preservation of the familiar shielding them from deeper emotional investigations. On his way out, Mary handed Charlie the lunch box she had prepared and went back to sit by the fire. He stopped to look at her. Sensing his presence, she looked up.

“What’s the matter, did ah forget something?” she asked.

Charlie came to her and knelt beside her chair. “It’s you ah’m worried about,” he replied, taking up her hand in his own.

“What is there tae worry you about me?” she asked. She turned to look at the fire, wishing he would go to work and leave her to herself.

Charlie tried to turn her face towards his but she shrugged off his calloused fingers. “Will you no’ tell me whit’s bothering ye,” Charlie persisted.

“It’s nothing Charlie, you’ll be late for your work.” She looked directly at him. “Ah didnae sleep well, that’s all. It’s nothing tae bother yer heid about.”

Charlie sighed and got up. He looked at her for a moment. “Aye, well, ah’ll see ye the night then,” he said and went out the door.
      

“What’s the matter wi’ Charlie?” Ida asked a few moments later. “Ah was coming oot o’ Cochrane’s and he went right past me without a word. Ah don’t think he even knew ah was there.”

Mary said nothing.

“Ye didnae have a row, the two of you, did you?”

Mary shook her head. “Naw but ah wisnae very nice tae him.”

“No’ nice tae Charlie?” Ida said. “What has he done tae upset you?”

“That’s just it,” Mary replied. “He hasnae done a thing tae upset me. Ah just cannae shake masel’ out o’ this mood ah’ve gotten masel’ intae.”

Ida nodded her head. “Aye, ah’ve been worried aboot you masel’,” she said.

“Ah couldnae sleep again last night again,” Mary told her. “It’s most o’ the time now. Ida, ah’m that tired that ah swear mah bones ache, and ah still cannae sleep.”
 

The weekend brought more to worry them. “Ah telt you no’ to count the Germans out,” Ida told Mary, holding up the morning newspaper.

The Germans had attacked in force through the Ardennes, driving a wedge in the American lines. Mary felt her stomach fall away. Ida spread the newspaper out on the table. They read it carefully but found few details beyond the bare news.

“You know they’re no’ going tae tell ye exactly how bad it is,” Ida said. “But there’s nae doubt that it’s a setback.”
 
The week leading up to Christmas brought no improvement. The Germans had encircled the Americans at a place called Bastogne.

Mary looked in Alastair’s school atlas to discover where it was. “It’s in Belgium,” she told Ida, pointing it out.

“Ah thought it would be in France, by the sound o’ it,” Ida replied.

“It took a war for us tae learn about Geography,” Mary said.
 

It was a subdued Christmas.
 
Mary’s mind was preoccupied with more than the situation in Europe. Charlie’s schedule was irregular and she had begun to suspect that he took advantage of that to go to the pub on the way home. She had tolerated his occasional visits in the past. But lately he would arrive a little unsteady, his breath sweetened by strong peppermint.

She confronted him one evening. “Have you been drinking?” Mary asked him.

Charlie sat down by the fire and unrolled his paper.

“Ah asked you a question,” Mary insisted.

Charlie sighed and put down his paper. “Ah had a beer on the way home. It’s no’ a crime is it?”

Mary came and sat opposite him. “But it wisnae just one beer, was it? And it wisnae just the night.”

Charlie didn’t reply.
 

      
“Charlie, why are you doing this?” Mary asked. “You know it’ll only make your stomach worse.”

      
She expected evasion but Charlie surprised her by agreeing. “Ah know, ah know. It was harmless enough at the start. A beer wi’ the lads after work.” He stopped talking and looked at the fire for several long moments before resuming in a different tone. “Ye know, ah’m just fed up wi’ this bloody war, Mary. Sick tae mah stomach o’ it.”

      
“I can understand that Charlie,” Mary said. “Ah feel the same way masel’. But it’s nae reason tae kill yersel’ wi’ drink. Ah wis worried aboot losing you tae the Germans but ah didnae think ah wid lose ye tae yersel’.” Mary put her arms around him and pressed her face to his.

      
In the weeks that followed, Mary was pleased to see that her words had had an affect on Charlie. He came home earlier and seemed more like his old self.

      
By late January the Allies had stopped the German counterattack and were moving forward again. In February the news was even better. Mary found her spirits improve with each Allied gain. By the end of March the days were noticeably longer and the Allies were across the Rhine.

      
“It cannae be long now until the Germans give up,” Mary told Ida one morning in the first week of April.

      
“Ah think you’re right,” Ida agreed, her previous pessimism forgotten in the face of the daily news of British and American advances into Germany.

      
“Ah’m glad we don’t have men in the army,” Mary said. “Can ye imagine what it would be like tae lose someone this close tae the end?”
 

❅❅❅❅❅

      
Now that her son was old enough to be left with her mother, Pearl had come back to McLellan’s. She had named him Patrick. When Peggy heard this she had given Pearl a strange look but said nothing. Pearl marveled at the changes she had seen in her mother since they were reunited. The worn down woman in Mary’s kitchen now looked years younger. While freedom from Patrick’s tyrannical personality had worked wonders, it was his namesake grandson who had brought true joy to Peggy’s life. From the time he had learned to walk he had kept Pearl on her toes. She worried that his restless energy might be too much for her mother.
 
But Peggy had surprised her with the girlish energy she brought to play with her grandson.
 

      
Pearl found Ellen changed in ways she did not like.
There had always been a mean streak in her
, Pearl thought. Now that sullen quality was well to the fore in her personality. The married Pearl found she had little in common with Ellen. She had been civil but guarded with her old pal on her return.
 
Pearl sensed resentment from Ellen that she thought centered on her happiness with Jimmie and Patrick. Pearl was no longer the single girl ready to go to the pictures or to a dance. There was no sign that Ellen did either, Pearl thought. Ellen had lost that vitality that had once drawn Pearl and others to her. Now the other women avoided her and Pearl found herself trying to do the same.
 

      
There were times when Pearl missed her single life. That she loved Jimmy and didn’t regret marrying him was not enough to prevent her feeling trapped by her new responsibilities. She had never enjoyed working but had always had the evenings to look forward to. Now she had a seemingly endless list of tasks that left no time for her. As a result, Pearl paid little attention to the course of the war, picking up snippets of news from conversations at lunch breaks or from the newspaper posters.
 

Jimmie had not wanted Pearl to return to work. “Ah make good wages at Yarrow’s,” he told her. “There’s nae need for you tae be working.”

He was right
, Pearl thought.
We could get by on his pay; many were having to make do on less
.
 
But Pearl was thinking of life after the war. She didn’t want to spend the rest of her days in a tenement in Maryhill. And even if that were to be her future, Pearl felt that hard times were likely. Every penny she made at McLellan’s was going into the bank as insurance against an uncertain future.