A Strong Hand to Hold. Anne Bennett
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a stupid, inane remark, she thought instantly, but Linda appeared not to have heard her. Jenny’s eyes flitted around the room and came to light on a worn-looking teddy bear propped on the bedside cabinet. She’d seen it once before, by the light of a torch, and knew it was Tolly, the bear Linda had come back to the house to fetch. It had been that bear that had saved her life. She remembered Linda saying that George would be so pleased she’d found him, and a lump rose in Jenny’s throat.
This would never do, she told herself fiercely. She put out her hand and gently stroked the bear with one finger and Linda’s head moved to watch.
‘Talk to me, pet,’ Jenny said softly.
Linda’s eyes met Jenny’s and she snapped out in hurt anger, ‘What about? The weather?’ Her voice was little more than a whisper and she closed her eyes with a sigh, as if the mere effort of speaking had exhausted her. Then Jenny saw tears seep from the corners of her closed lids, slide down her cheeks and soak the pillow. She wondered if these were the first tears Linda had shed. They said she went mad, screaming and shouting and had to be sedated, but had she cried at all, like Jenny had that terrible morning when she’d sobbed in Beattie’s arms at the loss of Anthony and the terrible things she’d witnessed the previous night?
Risking rejection, she held Linda’s hand tight and looking into the child’s eyes she said, ‘I’m so sorry about your mother and little brothers.’
Linda’s eyes opened wider. No one in the hospital had spoken of the tragedy since she’d come out of her drugged sleep. She’d lain in bed and the doctor’s words had vibrated in her head, but the nurses tried to jolly her along and talk to her as if she was two years old. And no one said anything about her family; in fact they carefully avoided the subject, as if it was better to pretend they’d never existed at all.
It mattered much more to her than her crushed legs, but that was all anyone would talk about. They told her of the operations on them and that she’d be as right as rain in time, not that she believed them and the nurses said she was a lucky girl. Linda thought wryly she’d hate to meet an unlucky one, and many many times she regretted returning to the house that evening.
Her Uncle Sid had sent a letter to her from Australia. He said how sorry he was, and how he regretted being so far away, and said once the war was over she should come and live with him and his family and be welcome. Linda supposed it was nice of him, but ‘when the war’s over’, was like saying ‘when the world ends’, or ‘when the clouds fall out of the sky’. Any road she didn’t want to go and live in Australia. She didn’t even want to live in Basingstoke with her Aunt Lily, though she liked the plump motherly woman who’d bought her a small basket of fruit.
She felt completely alone in the world, and that was the hardest thing of all to cope with. If only she had a photo of her mother, of the boys and her father, but all the family snaps had been in the shoebox in the house, and were destroyed along with everything else. Beattie had searched the ruins for her, but there was nothing left. Her sense of desolation was total. ‘I expect I’ll forget what they look like eventually,’ Linda said to Jenny.
‘You won’t. You’ll carry them in your heart always.’
‘Huh,’ Linda said. ‘I ain’t got nothing to remember them by, not one thing ’cept our George’s teddy bear. Dr Sanders said he’ll take me to see their graves when I’m better and out of here for good. I’d like that. I’ll take some flowers and that and make it nice.’
Her voice ended on a slight sob and Jenny squeezed her hand tightly and said, ‘I’ll go with you if you want.’
Linda shrugged. ‘I don’t care. Do what you like.’ She brushed the trailing tears away from her eyes impatiently and said, ‘You knew they was dead all the time, dain’t yer?’
Jenny hesitated for a brief second. ‘Yes,’ she said, her voice so low it was almost a whisper.
‘Why dain’t you tell me? All the time we was together and you never said a word,’ Linda demanded angrily.
‘What could I say?’ Jenny cried. ‘You’d lain for hours alone, cold, in pitch dark and in pain. How could I add to that?’
‘You mean, I might just have given up,’ Linda said, reading her mind. ‘And you’d have been bloody right, too. In fact, I wish you hadn’t bothered to get me out at all.’
‘Don’t say that!’
‘Why shouldn’t I?’ the younger girl said harshly. ‘You told me you wanted me to talk – well, this is what I want to talk about.’
Watching Linda, Jenny saw her face full of self-pity and though her heart ached in sympathy, she knew that Linda feeling sorry for herself would destroy her. Her own mother had done just that for years – and because of it, she’d taken no interest in anyone else besides herself. It had soured her life. And she wasn’t going to let it sour Linda’s. So she said quite sharply, ‘OK, let’s talk about it. Let’s talk about the people who laboured for hours to release you. Let’s talk about the men, and some women, who worked all through the bitterly cold night with the rain lashing down, and then went straight on to work the next day.’
‘Well,’ said Linda mutinously. ‘They needn’t have bothered.’
‘They bothered because they thought you were brave and plucky,’ Jenny retorted. ‘They might not have been so keen to get you out if they’d thought you were just going to give up.’
‘What d’you know about it, any road?’ Linda cried. ‘What have I got to look forward to now, anyway?’
‘Oh Linda, I know how you feel,’ Jenny said. ‘At the moment it hurts like hell and you can’t really believe it, but it does get better with time. My gran says you never forget your loved ones, a piece of your heart goes with them, but you have to learn to live without them.’
‘How the hell do you bloody know?’
‘I know, because it happened to me too,’ Jenny said sharply. ‘The day of that massive raid we had a telegram saying the youngest and favourite of all my brothers had been shot down. He’d just turned eighteen in June.’
There was a short silence while Linda thought about what Jenny had said. She knew she was being unfair taking it out on her. Eventually, she said in a very quiet voice, ‘I’m sorry, Jenny, I know I’m being an ungrateful sod, but I’m as scared as hell. Where am I going to live when I get out?’
Jenny forced herself to speak brightly, ‘You’ll be looked after, don’t you worry.’
‘Where? In a home?’
Jenny couldn’t deny that and didn’t try. Instead she said, ‘The children’s homes are lovely today, and there will be plenty of others for company.’
‘I want to stay here,’ Linda said obstinately. ‘I want to stay with my friends and at my old school.’
‘Maybe they’ll find you a city orphanage,’ Jenny said. ‘Tell them how you feel when the time comes,’ but even as she spoke, she wasn’t at all sure that children’s feelings were considered that much.
Linda was obviously of the same mind. ‘I’ll tell them,’ she said, ‘but d’you think they’ll listen, or care?’
And Jenny couldn’t face her and say that they would. Instead she said, ‘It will only be for a couple of years. You’ll be at work then and have more choice in what you do and where you live.’
‘Yeah, I know,’ Linda said. Again there was a small silence between them and then Linda said, ‘I thought shelters were bloody safe?’ and Jenny saw the tears beginning to trickle down the girl’s face.
‘Not for a direct hit,’ Jenny said gently. ‘Nothing could stand up to that.’
‘But they didn’t suffer?’
‘Not for a moment,’ Jenny assured her. ‘They wouldn’t have known a thing about it.’