Winter on the Mersey(108)
She looked at him intently.
‘All those boffins down there, they came from all sorts of backgrounds, had all manner of connections. I happened to mention why I’d ended up in my line of work, you know, not being able to join up for the other services, and why. One of them had a brother who was a doctor based at a big hospital down that way. He got me sent there on a day off, for tests.’ His hand began to shake a little as she held it. ‘He said I’m not as bad as they first thought. My heart will never be normal, but there’s new medicine being developed all the time. Basically, unless I’m really unlucky, it’s actually not very likely I’ll pop my clogs any time soon, after all.’
‘Danny, that’s wonderful.’ Sarah could feel her eyes were brimming with tears. No matter what she said, the fear of suddenly losing Danny at a moment’s notice had been there since she’d first found out about him, almost at the beginning of the war. She knew she’d love him, no matter what – but to have the unexpected gift of a proper future with him, not one curtailed by the threat of illness or untimely death, was more than she had ever hoped for.
‘Well, I think so.’ He grinned widely, the tension broken, and then they were standing and rushing into one another’s arms, kissing as if they were making up for lost time and celebrating the time they now could look forward to together.
A noise from the hallway upstairs startled them and they pulled apart, just as Tommy came sleepily into the room. ‘Hello, Sarah,’ he said, taking her familiar presence for granted. ‘Oh, good, you’ve made toast. Don’t you want all of yours?’ he asked, noticing the pieces they’d left forgotten when the conversation became too important. ‘I’ll have it then.’ He swept the remaining pieces on to one plate and began to munch them eagerly, completely oblivious to the scene he’d just interrupted.
Nancy held the letter and stared at it, unable to fully comprehend its contents. She sank into a chair and read it again. The message was still the same. As the Allies had advanced through France and the might of Germany had crumbled, prisoners of war had been rescued and freed. Some were already in Britain, in reception depots. Private Sidney Kerrigan was one of them, at present in a depot in Amersham near London, but soon to be on his way back home, once he was in better health.
Sid was coming back. It didn’t seem real. Sometimes she struggled to remember what he looked like, it had been so long. She had photos of them on their wedding day, when he had stood there in his suit and made those promises to her, and yet her brothers had found him the evening before, out with Harry Calendar’s sister, so those words were just so much hot air. He must have changed though. She knew she had – she looked different and she’d grown up as well. What would he be like now, having spent so many years in a prison camp? Would he even want to see her? Would he be at death’s door, like the men in some of the pictures that had begun to appear in the papers? The Red Cross had passed along his letters, but they had never given much away, just asking after his mother and Georgie. He’d never been one for letters, even before the war. She had written equally basic ones back to him. Heaven only knew what his mother had said to him in hers.
Nancy got up from her seat by the window in the parlour she rented from her detested mother-in-law, and began to pace around the room. Things were coming to a head, there was no doubt. Sid’s arrival home would force the issue one way or the other.
She was pregnant again. Just like before, she’d tried to persuade herself it wasn’t true, but there was no getting away from it. She and Gary had been careful, but apparently not careful enough. It might have been that time at New Year, or more likely just before he had dumped her. Whenever it was, he’d left her with more than a broken heart. She couldn’t bank on having another miscarriage this time. She had to think, and think fast.
There was no Gloria to confess to this time either. Her best friend was entertaining the increasingly victorious troops and establishing herself ever more firmly as a household name. That was all very well, but right at this moment Nancy could have done with her back home. There was nobody else she could tell. Her mother and Rita were very strict on the subject of morals and she suspected that Kitty, Violet and Sarah would be the same. As for any of her WVS colleagues, they were out of the question. She’d just have to deal with this herself.
She couldn’t rely on Mrs Kerrigan for any help, that was for sure. She found it hard to forgive the old woman for blaming her when Georgie was taken. It was beyond belief that the woman’s first inclination was to badmouth Nancy, and only after she’d done that for some while to wonder if she could be of any help finding the little boy. That said it all – she didn’t really love her grandson.
Nancy knew now without a shadow of a doubt that she herself loved Georgie with every fibre of her being, and that love had nothing to do with who his father was. So she reasoned she would probably also love this new baby, despite Gary being a feckless two-timing louse. It wasn’t the baby’s fault that its father had disappeared into the bright blue yonder. Nancy took a deep breath. If it came to it, she’d just have to be mother and father to this child. Before the war, that would have been a terrible prospect. In all honesty, it still was – but not perhaps quite as bad. She wouldn’t be the only one. Plenty of children had lost a father, or a mother, or both parents, to the war in one way or another. She had raised Georgie with no help from Sid and precious little from his mother. Perhaps her own family would come round to the idea of the new baby eventually. If not, she’d have to manage somehow.