Wish Me Luck (39 page)

‘My dear,’ he said softly. ‘We’ve all made mistakes. Especially me.’

Louisa held his gaze as she asked, ‘Do you regret it, Philip?’

His answer was swift and he hoped that it sounded sincere. ‘Of course I do. I wouldn’t have hurt you for the world. Louisa, I’ve always loved you and I always will. You must believe that. Meg was just – was just a stupid, stupid mistake. An aberration. Please – please say you forgive me?’

‘Oh, Philip!’ Tearfully, she threw her arms around his neck. ‘Of course I do. It’s a long time ago. And . . . and you haven’t seen her since. Have you?’

‘No, no. I swear it.’ That part, at least, was true. As for the rest, deep in his heart he couldn’t be sure. He buried his face against his wife’s neck and hugged her tightly, trying to block out the memory of that vibrant red-haired girl who had brought such passion into his life. Even though the affair had been brief, he’d never been able to put her completely out of his mind. And never a day had gone by through all the years since that he had not thought about the son she had borne him and wondered what he looked like.

And now he would never know.

‘So now you know, do you?’ Betsy asked, her mouth tight, as Fleur came back into the house. ‘Heard the whole sorry story?’

Fleur sighed and said flatly, ‘Yes. If that’s what you like to call it. Yes, I think I’ve heard it all.’

‘Well – it is a sorry tale. Your father loved her. I expect you’ve guessed that now, haven’t you? Even if he hasn’t admitted it.’

‘He did admit it, Mum,’ Fleur said simply. ‘He loved her
then.
Not now. Not since he fell in love with
you
and married
you.’

‘Oh well, if that’s what you like to think.’

‘Look, Mum. Let’s have all this out – once and for all. Just what is it that upsets you so much? Do you think Dad had an affair with her? Maybe you think it’s been going on all these years. I mean, with all your insinuations you had us – me and Robbie, I mean – thinking that we were half-brother and sister.’

‘Wha-at!’

‘Oh, you can sound surprised, but look at it from our point of view. That first day you were screaming at Dad that he was in love with her and that he’s loved her all these years. And you were so . . . so vitriolic towards Robbie’s mother. And him. It was something terrible. It was all we could think of.’

Betsy wriggled her shoulders. ‘Well, I don’t know, do I? Maybe they did have an affair. Maybe it has been going on all these years. He’s had plenty of chances. All those supposed trips to market. How do I know where he
really
went?’

Fleur shook her head. It saddened her to think that, perhaps for the whole of her married life, Betsy had lived with the torment of imagining her husband was being unfaithful to her. For the first time, Fleur pitied her mother.

‘Do you want to know what I think?’

‘Does it make any difference?’ Betsy snapped, recovering some of her spirit. ‘I’m no doubt going to hear it anyway.’

‘Dad was in love with Meg, yes, when they were kids in the workhouse.’ She saw her mother flinch at the word that obviously brought back dark, unhappy memories. ‘He owed her a lot. She had spirit. She gave him the courage to get himself out of there. To seek work here.’ She pointed down at the ground, indicating their home, the farm, everything he now owned. Fleur paused a moment, letting her words sink in. And driving her point home she added, ‘Just think, Mum, if he hadn’t done that he – and you – wouldn’t have everything you have now. Where would you have been, eh? Still in the workhouse?’

‘It closed in ’twenty-nine,’ Betsy murmured, but her protests now were without substance.

‘But you wouldn’t be here, would you? You wouldn’t have been taken in and treated like the Smallwoods’ son and daughter and left their farm because their own daughter had run away.’

A spark of sudden interest ignited in Betsy’s eyes. ‘Is it really her dad that lives with her?’

Fleur sighed inwardly. Still, her mother could not bring herself to speak Meg’s name. ‘Yes, it is. Evidently the girl he ran off with – Alice, was it?’

Betsy nodded.

‘She left him and went off with someone else. He tried to follow her, but this chap got his cronies to beat him up.’

Betsy sniffed and her mouth hardened. ‘Serves him right. And her? What happened to Alice Smallwood?’

Fleur shrugged. ‘No one knows.’

‘She was a bad ’un.’

‘As bad as Meg?’ Fleur put in slyly.

‘’Bout the same,’ Betsy answered, refusing to give any quarter. ‘Made a good pair, they did.’

There was a long silence before Fleur said softly, ‘Meg’s changed, Mum. She’s not the girl you remember any more. Not, by all accounts, since she had Robbie. Having a baby changed her. She made some mistakes, did some terrible things. I see that now and I do understand how it must have hurt you to think that Dad loved her. But he chose
you.
He married
you
and he’s stayed with
you.’

‘And that’s supposed to comfort me, is it? When all the time I think he’s been hankering after her.’

Fleur took in a deep breath. Although she knew that what Betsy said was perhaps true, she had to try to get her mother to get over it and move on. ‘I think “hankering” is perhaps the wrong word. I think he remembers her with fondness. I . . . I suppose you never forget your first love.’ Her voice broke a little, but she carried on bravely. ‘But it was a love between children, Mum. What he has with you is different. Very different.’

Betsy gave a sad smile. For once she knew her daughter was trying to help her, trying to get her to let go of the bitterness and resentment she’d held all through the years. But it was impossible. She couldn’t expect the young girl who’d only loved and known the love of one man to understand. To understand the heart-wrenching pain of knowing that the man you love and live with is, every day, thinking of someone else. Living your whole life believing yourself to be second best. It was a pain that Betsy had lived with all of her adult life – an anguish that Fleur would never understand unless she experienced it for herself. There was only one person who might understand.

She wondered if Louisa Collins had suffered the same wretchedness.

But Fleur was living her own agony. A sharp, intense pain that would never quite go away, but would, Betsy believed, lessen in time even if Fleur could not believe it now.

With a supreme effort Betsy said, ‘I’m sorry about Robbie. Truly. I can’t help how I feel about his mother, but I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. Not . . . not even on her.’

Fleur sighed deeply. It was no use. She couldn’t get through to her mother. Betsy would never change.

Fleur had to face Robbie’s mother, but she didn’t know how she was going to do it. She almost wished now that she had not bullied her father into telling her the secrets of the past. Perhaps they would, as both Jake and Betsy had tried to tell her, have been better left buried. It had changed her view of Meg; she couldn’t help but look at her differently now. It was difficult to imagine the pretty, smiling woman as a scheming temptress who had seduced two men and ignored the man who had always loved her. What puzzled her, though, was why her parents hadn’t told her the truth from the outset when she had first met Robbie. If they had maybe—? No, Fleur was honest enough to answer her own question. No. Nothing they could ever have said would have stopped her. She had fallen in love with Robbie at that very first meeting on the station platform in the blackout and from that moment she’d known – they’d both known – that they had to be together.

The next morning, Fleur packed and came downstairs, ready to leave. She had sponged and pressed her uniform and washed her underwear the previous evening. Now she was ready to go back and get on with fighting the war. The war that had taken away everything she had ever wanted and yet, if it hadn’t been for the war, it was unlikely she’d ever have met Robbie.

But she knew that to get back into the thick of it would help. It would help her to feel close to him still.

But, first, there was something else she had to do. She must go to Nottingham. She couldn’t avoid it any longer.

‘So, you’re going back are you?’ Betsy said to her as they sat at breakfast.

‘I’ll take you, love,’ Jake began, but Fleur shook her head.

‘I’m going to Nottingham first. I’m not due back at camp until tomorrow, but I don’t know when I’ll get any more leave. Ma’am has been very good, but . . . but I’m not the only one . . .’ Her voice cracked and she stopped.

Jake cleared his throat and glanced briefly at his wife before saying, ‘Then I’ll take you there.’

Betsy opened her mouth as if to protest, but then thought better of it. She got up, clattered the breakfast dishes together and moved away into the scullery, but her shoulders were tense with disapproval.

‘It’s all right, Dad,’ Fleur said gently. ‘The trains fit up quite nicely, but if you could just run me to the station in town so I can catch the Paddy to the Junction . . .’

When Meg opened the door to her, the two women stood staring at each other for a long moment. At first sight, neither looked any different. Meg was still prettily dressed, with her face cream and powder carefully applied. There was even a pale tinge of lipstick on her generous mouth. And Fleur was smartly turned out in her WAAF uniform.

It wasn’t until they each looked closely into the other’s eyes that they could see the undeniable grief they shared.

‘Oh, Fleur!’ Meg opened her arms and Fleur fell into them, hugging the older woman.

‘Oh, Ma!’ was all she could say, poignantly using Robbie’s pet name for his mother that brought tears to their eyes.

‘Now, now.’ Meg, dabbing at her eyes, tried to smile. ‘He wouldn’t want us to be doing this. Come in, come in . . .’ she urged as she drew Fleur into the warm kitchen.

‘Where’s . . . where’s Pops?’ she asked at once as she saw the empty chair by the range.

‘In bed. He’s taken it very hard and, of course, at his age . . .’

She said no more, but Fleur understood. For someone of his age grief was a strange thing. Some old folk took bad news in their stride. Not that they didn’t feel it, but life had conditioned them to deal with tragedies and, if not exactly immune to them, at least they had learnt resilience. But for others, such news was the last straw as if they had no strength left to field another blow. Fleur understood. With each morning, when she awoke, the full horror hit her afresh and she wondered how she would get through the day.

‘I suppose,’ Meg said as she handed Fleur a cup of tea and sat down in the old man’s empty chair opposite, ‘that we shouldn’t hope.’

Fleur bit her lip. How could she answer? How could she say that every moment of every day she prayed that a miracle would happen? I’ll give anything, she kept promising, if only he’s alive. ‘They – they say not,’ she said at last.

Meg sat down opposite her. ‘I’ve had such a nice letter from Wing Commander Jones already. I was surprised. I . . . I thought Robbie would have put you down as his next of kin now.’

Fleur smiled wanly. ‘I think he must have forgotten to get it changed. Besides, the CO’s like that. I think he’d have written to you anyway.’

‘And he sent me the names and addresses of the next of kin of all the other members of the crew in case I wanted to write to them. Do you think I should, Fleur?’

‘Yes, I’ve got that list too. Maybe . . . maybe we could both write in . . . in a week or so.’

Meg nodded. ‘Yes – yes, that’s what I thought too. Let a bit of time elapse. But . . . but I thought I’d like to write to Tommy’s family and Johnny’s too. All of them really. They helped to make your wedding day so special, didn’t they? Such lovely boys . . .’ Her voice trailed away.

Fleur was staring at Meg – she couldn’t help it. All the things that her father had told her about this woman were whirling around her brain. And Meg was staring back.

Softly, she said, ‘You know, don’t you? Jake’s told you.’

Fleur blinked and said quickly – too quickly. ‘Told me? Told me what?’

‘Don’t deny it, Fleur. Lying doesn’t suit you.’

Fleur felt her cheeks grow hot. How could she have been so foolish as to let her feelings show so openly on her face? It had always been her downfall and now she had let her father down. He’d never forgive her. She tried to salvage the situation by saying, ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘Dear Fleur.’ Meg shook her head, smiling gently. ‘You’ve got such an open, honest face. You really shouldn’t be trusted with secrets.’

Fleur closed her eyes and groaned. ‘Please – don’t be angry with my dad. It . . . it wasn’t his fault. I . . . I bullied him into telling me.’ She sighed. ‘And now I wish I hadn’t. He swore me to secrecy. Made me promise that I’d never say a word to anyone – especially to you. And now—’ Tears sprang into her eyes. ‘You’ve guessed and he’ll be so angry with me.’

Meg reached across and, though there was a wistful note in her voice, she said, ‘It doesn’t matter now, Fleur. Nothing matters now.’ There was a long pause before Meg added softly, ‘Do you hate me?’

Fleur’s eyes widened as she stared at her. ‘Hate you? Heavens, no!’ and was touched as she saw Meg’s tremulous, grateful smile.