‘More tea?’ I lifted the pot and he smiled without saying any more.

That night there was an air raid. I hurried downstairs and Father was sitting on the edge of his bed looking for his stick. Then I saw his face go grey as he tried to stand.

‘We’ll need to get to the shelter, Meryl,’ he said, trying to sound as if he wasn’t in agony.

‘Let’s stay here,’ I suggested. ‘I’ll make us tea and we’ll take our chances. Folk in shelters get hurt too.’ I told him what Kate had said about the girl in the shelter who had cried out about her ears and how the ambulance man had called her a ‘poor bugger’.

So we sat and listened to the bombs fall. We drank tea and we talked and I began to learn a little about my father. And then a bomb fell near, very near, perhaps next door. Father covered me with his body to protect me, his big hands shielding my head. I hugged his body and felt the bond between father and daughter for the first time in my life and I knew I didn’t want my father to die.

I drew him from the bed, felt him wince as his bad leg touched the floor and then I was drawing him underneath the table and we clung there together while the walls shuddered, plaster fell from the ceiling and the air raid railed around us like a thunderstorm. I looked up and touched his now-shaven face. ‘I love you, Daddy,’ I said softly, and we both knew I meant it.

Twenty-Two

Kate sat with Stephen in the garden of Victoria Park. He held her hand and she didn’t mind. Now he treated her like a lady, he made no crude remarks, he was gentle and kind and he made her feel good again.

‘Tell me what it looks like, Steve,’ she said, ‘Are the leaves turning red and fluttering to the ground? Is it pretty?’

‘Not half as pretty as you.’ Stephen kissed her hand. ‘You look lovely, Kate, the sun brings red lights out in your dark hair and your skin is so white, so delicate. You’re a true Irish beauty.’

‘And you’ve kissed the Blarney stone,’ Kate said with a smile. She knew she’d put on weight, she could feel with her finger tips that her waist was thicker. She could feel the scar along her jaw line and despaired. What she couldn’t see was the bloom she had, a softness that appealed so much to the protective instinct in Stephen as he sat looking at her.

‘Kate,’ he said softly, ‘I wanted to ask you, will you marry me?’

She felt a stab of pain. The only man she wanted as a husband was her dear Eddie but he was lost to her for ever.

‘You were my first… woman,’ he said.

‘You can’t say ‘love’ can you, Stephen?’

‘Yes I can, Kate, now I can. Back when we first met I was too young and foolish to think of love, I knew nothing about life or love or death or pain. I do now, Kate. And, Kate, I’ve fallen in love with you, your gentle ways, your beautiful face.’ He laughed. ‘I can’t deny I find you attractive—I want to lay you down and make love to you, my darling.’

She was flattered, of course she was, but then weren’t they two wounded people reaching for comfort just as Stephen had reached for comfort when he’d taken her virginity?

‘Can I think about it, Stephen?’ she asked. ‘Will you have to go back to the war? That is an important question, Stephen.’

‘I will sit at a desk for the duration of the hostilities,’ he said, ‘I’m no longer up to the very high standard required of a pilot so you see you wouldn’t be getting a hero.’

Kate knew he’d been decorated for bravery, he was modest, gentle, kind and he would look after her. ‘It’s only just eight months ago that Eddie went missing,’ she said, ‘what if he came back?’

‘I’d let you go to him if that’s what you wanted but I hope you would’ve fallen in love with me and want to stay with me, of course I do.’

She got up from the bench wondering how so much had happened to her since the first raids on Swansea in 1941. She had been with many pilots and, as the months of the war went on into years, she’d lost her reputation, her ‘good name’. Men laughed about her, talked about her and she was an object of pity and scorn.

And then she’d met Eddie, who’d loved her, against all the odds, against the taunts of his friends, who told him in graphic detail how they’d ‘had her’. She’d lost her family, found Eddie’s mother, shared her grief when Eddie was lost. She’d been blown up by her country’s own weapons of defence, lost her sight. She had settled down now to a civilian life, queuing for food, accepted now by the women for the only men around were old or war wounded and she was no threat to anyone with her blind eyes.

‘I’ll think about it, Stephen,’ she said gently but she knew she wouldn’t. Her poor stomach was scarred, her belly hung around her like a huge grotesque belt, she could feel it hard and shiny and criss-crossed with wheals and lines. She was fat, hideous, though in her loose clothing Stephen couldn’t see any of that, he saw only her face, remembered the young taut-muscled girl she’d once been.

‘Take me back home, Stephen, there’s a love.’ She slipped her arm through his, at least she could treat him as a friend, he was humbled now by his experiences, he’d become a man, more sensitive than the callow boy he’d been. The war had changed them all.

Several weeks passed and Kate still hadn’t given Stephen an answer. To his credit he didn’t press her and for that she was grateful. As she drank her cocoa with Hilda one night, she began to feel an ache in her stomach. She winced and Hilda was at her side in a moment. ‘What is it, girl?’

‘Just a twinge in my belly—as you said, things settling down inside me after the explosion.’

Kate went to bed, perhaps she would feel better if she lay down. It was chilly in the bedroom and she wished there was enough coal to light the fire. She shivered as the pain squeezed her belly. It became worse as the night hours wore on and Kate thought she was going to die.

Hilda heard her moans and came into the bedroom and put on the gas light.

‘It hurts so much, Hilda, I think I’m going to die.’ She clutched her belly and writhed as the pain curled around her; the bones in her back felt as if they were being torn apart. ‘I feel as if my insides were going to fall out so I do.’

‘Here, let me take a look for God’s sake.’ Without worrying about dignity Hilda pushed up Kate’s nightgown and felt her taut belly.

‘God almighty!’ she said, ‘you’re about to give birth, your waters have just broke.’

Kate felt sick and then happy and then—terrified. ‘A baby, how can that be? The explosion, my scars, could a baby survive all that? It can’t be a baby, Hilda.’

‘Listen, girl, I’ve had four myself and lost all of them. It will be an hour, perhaps two, but by morning there will be another addition to my family.’ She sighed. ‘Our Eddie’s baby.’

Kate was grateful to Hilda for not questioning the paternity but then Hilda knew more than most what a hermit Kate had been since Eddie had gone missing.

‘Shame poor mite will be called a bastard,’ she almost whispered, ‘and you a good Catholic girl.’

‘No!’ Kate said, ‘it will not be a bastard! Fetch Stephen, fetch the priest, we will have a father for my child even though it won’t be the man I truly love. The baby will be made legitimate even if it only be minutes before it’s born.’

Kate hardly knew what was happening after that. In a swirl of pain she told Stephen the truth. ‘Are you willing to have me now?’

He took off his signet ring. ‘This will do for now, darling,’ he said.

The priest was old and wise and swept through the ceremony with as much dignity and speed as he could muster.

‘Another push now, good girl.’ The midwife had miraculously appeared. ‘The head is coming, bear down, Kate, like the good Irish girl you are.’

Feeling as if she was going to explode, Kate put all her strength into pushing the child out of her straining body.

The midwife looked anxiously at the deep scars on Kate’s belly. ‘Pray to God they hold,’ she said, ‘it’s a miracle a babe survived all that but then I’ve learned by now mother nature will do anything to preserve humankind. Now one strong push, Kate, one more strong push and it will all be over.’

Kate pushed her chin into her chest, there was a burning sensation between her legs and then she felt the head emerge and the slide of the little body and her belly relaxed.

‘It’s a big healthy boy!’ Hilda said joyfully, ‘my Eddie’s got a son.’

The baby was put against Kate’s chest. He wriggled and cried, and a great wash of tenderness swept over her. She managed to grasp a flailing arm, felt for the fingers and they curled around hers as though her son recognized her as his mother. And it was then that Kate began to cry. Great tears rolled down her face as she held her squirming baby close to her and prayed to God that he would never have to go to war.

Stephen took her hand and she clutched at him gratefully, realizing she had become a wife just an hour before she became a mother.

Twenty-Three

Hari looked at Michael across the tea-stained tablecloth in the cheap café across the road from Swansea beach. The bay was rimed in frost on this early February day. He’d come for Meryl.

Meryl had been home for yet another visit to Father; it was good to see him and his daughter growing close, but now it was time for Meryl to go back to the farm and her schooling. Hari forced herself to break the silence that had come between her and Michael.

‘Why did you want to see me alone, Michael?’

He shrugged, ‘I borrowed a little car and managed to get some petrol. This visit I thought I’d save you the bother of driving to Carmarthen.’