Home is Where the Heart Is

Cathie felt herself start to shake, with anger now rather than nerves. Why wouldn’t he believe her, or even listen to a word she said? ‘I’m no slut! And it was you who said you were in a hurry to marry, the moment we met at the station. I didn’t at all mind waiting a little while, as it’s a job I’m most urgently in need of. You weren’t very sympathetic about that either, saying I wouldn’t even need one now we were about to marry.’

‘Well, I was wrong there. We aren’t going to be married, so it will indeed be necessary for you to find yourself employment fairly quickly, so that you can afford to feed this bastard child of yours.’

At which point Cathie stormed out of the house.

CHAPTER EIGHT (#ulink_dd6b3bd8-cc5f-57d9-ad3b-5cb4a0b1eff6)

Cathie felt utterly devastated as she poured her heart out to Brenda as they strolled around the market a week later, Davina absent for once. She’d thought of Alex as the love of her life, and believed that he felt the same way about her. Yet he was convinced she’d betrayed and lied to him. ‘All these years of waiting and praying for his safe return, and now he’s tossed me aside as if I were some sort of harlot. Why won’t he believe that little Heather is my niece? Nor has he offered sympathy for the loss of Sal, not even in any of his letters let alone in person.’

‘It sounds very much as if he’s turning his back on reality,’ her friend quietly remarked.

‘I can fully understand why Alex would have no wish to speak of his own traumas, whatever they might be, but why is he so dismissive of my own?’

Had he been a touch more sympathetic she might have shared her own horror story with him.

‘Sometimes, the only way of coping is to “forget”,’ Brenda was saying. ‘To shut the horrors from your mind, just as everyone else who has suffered in this war does.’

‘I appreciate what you’re saying, and you know that I have first hand experience of grief as a result of this war, and other traumas too. I agree that locking away painful memories does often feel like the best way of dealing with the problem. But, as you’ve told me many times in the past, Brenda, sometimes talking about these issues can help, so why won’t he do that? Or properly listen to mine?’

‘He’s rather like Davina in that respect. Who knows what happened to that husband of hers? She won’t even tell us his name. I can talk endlessly about my beloved Jack to anyone willing to listen, if not about the manner of his death. Isn’t that how it should be?’

‘Oh yes, I’m happy to speak of Sal’s love of Christmas, of movies and singing, but not her accident. I prefer to remember her in life, not the manner of her death. With all the hardships I’ve had to face, and being forced to accept the wartime attitude of “we can take it”, it was the prospect of Alex’s homecoming that has kept me going.’

Brenda nodded, her round face filled with compassion. ‘The problem is that despite the war being over, things seem to be getting worse, not better, which is hard for ex-servicemen, for all of us. Peace is not bringing the end to the misery that everyone hoped it would. There’s a feeling of anticlimax, as if the bright blue, sun-filled sky has clouded over again, leaving a feeling of uncertainty about the future. A grey chill seems to hang over everything.’

‘Oh, you’re so right,’ Cathie said, pausing to haggle over the price of a rather poor selection of fruit and vegetables on one of the stalls. She finally added two tomatoes, a small turnip and a few potatoes to her bag. ‘There are still too many shortages, queues are even longer as rationing continues and austerity beckons. We barely have enough money to buy coal to keep a paltry little fire burning in the grate, assuming we can find any to buy. We’ve burned all sorts of stuff over the years, including stools and old chairs in order to keep warm.’

Brenda chuckled. ‘I burned the clothes prop once, feeding it in an inch or two at a time.’

‘But no longer can anyone say: “Don’t you know there’s a war on?”’

Both girls were laughing now as they recalled the number of times this mantra had been repeated over the years. ‘Making ends meet is not easy, and bartering still very evident, if you have something to barter with,’ Brenda agreed. ‘I reckon only black marketeers are making any money.’

‘So what happens now? How can I convince Alex that I’m innocent of this charge of having an affair?’ Cathie asked, bleakness descending upon her once more. She valued Brenda’s friendship greatly, but when suffering traumas in the past Sal had been the one she’d turned to for comfort. Sadly, having lost her lovely sister, to now lose Alex made Cathie feel more alone than ever, and everything so much harder to deal with. Tears welled in her eyes. ‘How do I face life without him?’

‘With courage, darling, a skill you’ve never been short of, so have faith in yourself and the future you can create for this little one.’

Cathie smiled through her tears as she watched little Heather happily bobbing up and down in her pram, gazing about her with bright-eyed interest. ‘Thanks, but being a little jealous is one thing, accusing me of sleeping with another man, quite another.’

‘He is fond of you though. Steve, I mean. He always has been.’

‘Don’t talk daft. The pair of us were for ever at odds, and the number of tricks he’s played on me over the years doesn’t bear thinking of. He’d hide my favourite doll, set off bangers and crackers to scare me on bonfire night, and make me run round and round a gravestone then put my ear to it to listen to the dead talking. Which was no doubt his own voice speaking to me, which I didn’t realise, idiot that I was. There’s nothing Steve Allenby likes more than to stir up trouble, but we’ve done nothing wrong. I simply gave him a peck on the cheek to thank him for his charity work. Nothing more than that, I swear it. But yes, I should have come clean from the start about wanting to keep Sal’s baby.’

‘That would have been difficult while Alex was away fighting, and whenever you chose to tell him could easily have brought forth this same reaction. But you need to consider if he’ll also take his anger out on Steve.’

‘Oh, my goodness, I never thought of that. Alex is a bit reckless and unstable in his thinking at the moment, probably because of this dratted war, and poor Steve has enough problems to deal with.’ She’d done her best, as a friend, despite their constant disputes, to help him to deal with his traumas. Cathie really had no wish for her old friend to suffer even more as a result of some stupid assumption on Alex’s part. ‘Sorry, but I must go and warn him, right away.’

Quickly saying her goodbyes, Cathie dashed off, intending to call in upon Steve at the Co-op.

‘You’ve done the right thing, in dropping that silly girl,’ Alex’s mother assured her son, patting his cheek as if he were a five-year-old. ‘She was clearly taking advantage of your offer to get herself out of a hole of her own making. How dare she cheat on you! The chit obviously had no idea how fortunate she was to find such a fine young man as yourself. Who is this other fellow, anyway?’

‘An old friend of many years, apparently,’ Alex growled, making no mention of the fact that he’d lost count of the number of times he too had cheated on Cathie over these last few years. Leave wasn’t easy to come by out in the desert, but whenever he was granted any he would go to Cairo and spend his money on booze and brothels to offset his boredom.

He’d become so accustomed to that way of life, he’d done the same thing when he first returned home and was stationed near Salisbury. That was where he met a certain young lady. She was so beautiful that he soon become entirely besotted with her. The fact she was a ‘good-time girl’, or in reality probably a prostitute, didn’t trouble him in the slightest. Keeping servicemen happy was her role in life, and it was perfectly acceptable for them to befriend girls when on leave. However, complete fidelity was naturally expected from wives and sweethearts. Ordinary women should be loyal to their man. That was their job, so Cathie had no right to betray him. But perhaps all women were whores at heart. ‘May he rot in hell for stealing my girl,’ he growled.

‘I should think you are better off without her, darling. Having an illegitimate child is almost as bad as prostitution. Quite shameful and immoral, and would bring disgrace to our family.’

‘So what are your plans for the future?’ his father put in, in that authoritative tone of voice that always set Alex’s teeth on edge. ‘You must have acquired some skills while serving abroad, what were they exactly? Hopefully they will help you to find a new job, as you never stayed in one longer than five minutes when you were a lad.’