The War Widows

‘I thought he’d come home to surprise us…I was so sure…I never thought it was bad news. The war’s over…’ she repeated.

‘Not in Palestine, it’s not. That’s why he was sent over there to quell the terrorists. You know what happened when they blew up the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. Things have got worse since then,’ said Levi, not looking at her.

‘Have they got the right name? It could be all a mistake. They get things wrong, don’t they, Levi? Look how they thought Arthur Mangall was dead and he turned up as right as ninepence.’ Lily turned to her brother for comfort but he just stood there stunned, silent, shuffling while Ivy fussed over them, trying to be the ministering angel, putting a cup of tea in Lily’s hand.

‘I’ve put you some extra sugar in it,’ she smiled.

‘I hate sugar,’ Lily brushed it aside. ‘He never said it was dangerous, or am I the last to find out?’

‘You don’t tell your nearest and dearest you’re living on a minefield that could blow up any minute. I’m sure there’s a number to ring for more news and there might be something on the six o’clock Home Service.’ Levi turned to his mother for support but she could only shake her head. The news had not yet sunk in.

‘They don’t tell you anything on the news. We found that out in the war,’ Lil snapped. Her face was ashen. ‘It’s not fair.’

Whoever said life was fair? thought Esme, but she bit her tongue. The girl was not up to listening to home truths and she hadn’t the energy to move from the chair and reach over to her. It was as if someone had kicked all the stuffing out of her.

‘Another cup of tea, Mother?’ whispered Ivy, hovering like a wasp about to strike.

Esme shook her head, wiping her glasses on her apron, trying to suck the last ounce of information from the telegram itself.

A patrol of 3 vehicles moving west along the Tel Aviv-Wilhelma was mined going over a small wadi. The charges were detonated to catch the rear vehicle of the convoy that caught fire. There were 3 stretcher cases, one of which was Sergeant Winstanley who sustained serious injuries. He died of his wounds in the 12th British General Hospital.

Not much to go on but enough to flood her imagination with dreadful pictures. She peered around the sitting room for comfort, but all the familiar objects were drained of colour: the patterned Axminster carpet square faded by the sunlight in patches, the holes burned by Redvers and his cronies smoking cigarettes; the grease stain that 1001 wouldn’t shift; the one when Freddie sneaked engine parts in to repair and didn’t put down newspaper.

How she’d shrieked at him! ‘Take that dirty thing out of my best room!’ He was always getting into mischief. But never to see her handsome son again…Now she could look Polly Isherwood in the face, a mother who had lost both her sons on the Atlantic convoys. There were no words for what she must have gone through.

Never to hear him shouting through the door, ‘What’s for tea? I’m starving!’ Not to see his size elevens dirtying her sofa covers as he lounged over the armrests, listening to the wind-up gramophone, driving them mad with his jazz records. Never to ruffle her hand through his curls and clip his ear in jest. He knew just how to wind her up into an elastic ball.

She turned her face to the fireside but it was only lunchtime and no fire was lit. Rations were strict and they needed to save supplies for the winter. She glanced at the ghosts smiling from the row of silver frames lining the top of the pianoforte: baby Travis, her firstborn in his broderie anglaise christening gown, who never made it to his first birthday; Levi and Lily sitting on the piano stool in sailor collars, trying not to wriggle and squirm.

Lily had a face on her like a wet weekend and Redvers said that portrait had gone all through the war in his breast pocket waiting to scare off any Hun who dared get too close. She was always the serious one of the three, too tall and lanky for a girl, with her donkey-brown hair, straight as a die which was a dickens to tie in rags to make ringlets. It was the boys who got the looks in their family.

She stared at Freddie’s picture in a tortoiseshell frame. Her son would smile forever, as young as the day they waved him off from the station; their precious Victory child born after the Great War, now sacrificed in biblical lands.

You shouldn’t have favourites, she scolded herself, but he had stolen her heart the moment he’d snuggled into her breast.

None of this, Constance Esme. Bestir yourself! There’s a lot to do. They must think about a burial service, speak to the minister, inform the newspaper of their sad loss. Happen it was better to be busy after a loss. Less time to think.

Curtains closed on to the street meant only one thing, and soon the neighbours would come knocking. She must make sure they got her name right for the obituary notice. She hated her first name and had dumped it as soon as she left school in favour of Esme. Constance had always felt like a tight corset, while Esme was a softer free-flowing garment like the white gown she wore on the Votes for Women marches, before marriage and the Great War put paid to all that gadding about. A lifetime ago.

She stared at her wedding portrait. She was so pinched and laced up tight there was a look of agony and apprehension on her face. She needn’t have bothered, for Redvers Winstanley had been a thoughtful husband and a good lover.

Freddie had had those same blue eyes and thick lashes, wasted on a lad, but Lily had got her own pale face and brows, and identical scowl when under threat.

There in her son was Redvers’ cheeky grin, which had wooed her across a football pitch. There’d been such an uproar about her wearing a short divided skirt in public but Richard Crompton’s daughter was not one to be put off in those days by a bit of derring-do. Pity Lily, with her long legs, hadn’t got her own get-up-and-go…

Both her lads had that mop of curls. A wide grin and curls were a fatal combination with the ladies, she reckoned. Even little Neville was going to sprout a fine crop of dark curls.

It was a pity poor Lil’s fiancé, with his jug ears, had nothing to recommend him but height. They were both stay-at-home birds, not fly-by-nights. Perhaps they were well suited; neither would set the world on fire. He would run her ragged with that mother of his, and she would be like a lost sock in the Acme, going round and round after them. From where Esme was sitting he looked a lazy lummock, but she could be wrong.

Redvers took life at thirty miles an hour round the bend, lived fast and died early. His loss was such a blow and left a gap no other man would fill in her life, but to lose a child went against nature; to lose two was more than she could bear.

She could see Lil and Levi were too stunned to take it all in. Ivy would do her best for her husband. That one knew where her bread was buttered. Sometimes Esme caught her eyeing up her china cabinet as if she was making an inventory of all her best pieces.

Ivy was a jumped-up factory girl who was put in Crompton’s office to help out and began to call herself a secretary. She had collared Levi almost off the troopship home. Now she did nothing but moan and groan how hard it was to rear a baby on starvation rations. The doctor said her insides were all mangled up and she must have no more babies. Neville was to be an only child.

What a sissy they made out of him, in his silk romper suits and smocked blouses! His hair was still in ringlets and needed a good cut, and Levi never put his foot down enough. It would all end in tears.

I don’t know what’s happened to this new world, Esme sighed. In her day the Almighty just dished out kids and that was that. He then took a fair few of them back again one way or another. She would have words with Him about that. With family planning they could pick and choose the size of their families but the country was crying out for more babies now. Everything was topsy-turvy.

Lily was right. It wasn’t fair to go through all that bombing and shortages, worry and uncertainty, sacrifice and service. What a relief it had been when it was all over-and now this…

Crompton’s Biscuits had turned production into special orders. She had helped in their nursery and on the market stall, joined the WVS and Welfare Clinic. ‘Family First’ was the Winstanley motto.

The town had pulled together like a family: rich and poor, old and young, in one valiant effort against the enemy. Now the threat was over it was as if everyone was scuttling back into their burrows. Neighbours were becoming strangers again, scurrying away behind their net curtains, and the pews of Zion Chapel were emptying fast now the threat was over.

You shouldn’t deal with the Almighty like that, picking and choosing your moment when to worship or mow the lawn. It was a matter of trust. She didn’t understand what He was playing at, robbing her of half her family, ripping her heart with such pain, but He must have a grand plan, like those Turkish carpets the Reverend was on about last week.

Every carpet had a deliberate flaw in the pattern somewhere to prove that men were mortal and no match for Allah. Well, now it seemed as if the Almighty would have to explain Himself in due course. She wanted to shout in His face, ‘What do you think you’re playing at, taking my children? Have we been that wicked that we need bringing down a peg or two?’

No, she prayed. Forgive me. You gave us Your only son to show us the way…Help me bear this pain.

Solace would not be coming from the usual treats: a glass of Wincarnis Tonic Wine, the latest Mazo de la Roche novel by her bedside, afternoon tea with the old Suffrage Society members in the Kardomah Coffee House. This was a time when a family closed in on itself and drew strength from memories of happier times. She wanted her children wrapped tightly around her for company. Family First…

In the days that followed there was a constant stream of visitors to their door and it was Lily’s job to sit them down and give them tea, explain that they knew little more than what had appeared in the local paper. Freddie was buried in some far-off military cemetery with full honours. There were letters from his commanding officers and the padre, from his friends in the Military Police, cards of sympathy from neighbours and school friends.

Even the Grasshoppers sent a deputation to ask about the funeral: Barry Wagstaff and Pete Walsh stepped into the parlour, caps in hand, and sat while Lily rehashed the same story over and over again, trying not to cry.

‘If there’s anything we can do, Lily, you’ve only to ask. Freddie was always one of our gang,’ smiled Barry.

‘Just get promotion in the league, that would make him proud.’ It seemed a silly thing to say but she wasn’t thinking straight or sleeping. Dr Unsworth, their local doctor, brought Esme a sleeping draught, which made her groggy, but Lily had refused pills. Someone had to keep alert when there were so many details to arrange. Levi had drowned his sorrows once too often and now had a bad cold, so Ivy was fussing over him.

Walter kept Lily company when he could but all their plans to talk weddings seemed out of order now. It was ‘Family First’ time.

‘The Winstanleys’ve always been good to the club. We’d like to send a wreath from the lads,’ offered Peter Walsh, the star centre forward and on stand-by for the England Reserves.

It was strange to see the boys with scabby knees, who had kicked balls between pullovers in the playground, now smartly dressed in navy blazers and grey flannels, full-time professionals earning five pounds a week.

Lily always had a soft spot for Barry when they were kids. He had once rescued her from a fierce dog on the walk home from school. He had lost his right back friend, Stewart Higgins, on D-Day The team was still struggling to get back some form and grow some good players from the youth sides.

Pete was a surprise find amongst the boys, who had come into form just at the right time. He looked very dashing, not a bit like the skinny mallinky long legs who used to tear round on his go-cart with Freddie hanging on for dear life.

Suddenly the days were racing on from that terrible Monday morning. Enid Greenalgh, ever the faithful friend to the family, stepped in to open the stall while Lily saw to the answering of letters and trying to coax Esme to eat.

There was still a pile of unopened mail on the mahogany hallstand waiting for attention, but Lily had neither the time nor the energy to see to everything.

Reverend Atkinson suggested a memorial service. ‘It will give you all a chance to say goodbye,’ he advised. ‘Freddie should be honoured in his own town and his friends given a chance to attend.’

‘Whatever you say,’ Lily replied, only half listening. She was too angry to pray. Then practicalities began to distract her flittering brain. How would they provide tea for hordes of guests? Where would they get the extra rations? Who should do the readings? What hymns would be suitable for a fallen soldier? Would Mother hold up under the strain? Would Levi stay sober enough to be of use?