How best to make the days of monotony and pain mean something? I asked myself this question day and night. If every human life had value, and I believed that to my core, how could I make those days matter? I couldn’t connect, or help, or create.
All I could do was wait. All I could do was to tell myself that there was dignity in surviving and power in holding onto hope, especially because the enemy wanted nothing more than to leave me hopeless.
C H A P T E R 21
CHARLOTTE
Liverpool, 1970
“I can’t tell if you’ve been avoiding spending time with me or if I’ve been avoiding spending time with you,” Aunt Kathleen says as she hands me a cup of coffee the next morning. She glances across her dining room, to the chair where Mum always sat—the one near the big bay windows. “But either way, we need to get better at catching up. She would want us to do better.”
“I know, Aunt Kathleen,” I say. We’ve spoken on the phone, but this spontaneous visit I’ve made to her home today is the first time we’ve been in the same room for months.
It’s hard for me to sit here with her now, to sip coffee alone, just the two of us, when almost every other time in my life Mum would have been seated at this table too. They’d talk in that unique way they shared, talking so fast they almost spoke over the top of one another. And I’d sit here, the third wheel to their duo, nursing my coffee while I waited for one of them to ask me a question so I had my chance to join into the conversation.
“It’s not the same, is it?” Kathleen asks, still looking at that empty chair. “Nothing is the same since she died. I’ve been divorced twice and both times were very bloody hard, but neither hit me like your mother’s death has.” She offers a wan smile. “Husbands come and go, but sisters are for life. I really thought she’d outlive your dad and we’d end up in side-by-side beds in a nursing home.” I smile sadly at that. I can easily picture the future Aunt Kathleen had imagined for them, though knowing the way those two could talk all night and day, some long-suffering nurse would probably have had them separated before long. “This isn’t just a catch-up, is it? I can see something in your face.”
“You knew my dad before the war.”
Aunt Kathleen picks up her coffee and straightens her spine. She flicks me an irritated glance, then sighs.
“We’re talking about this then, are we?”
“Please. I really need to understand.”
“I’m guessing you didn’t manage to convince your father to forget about his trip down memory lane.”
“He needs to do this, Aunt Kathleen,” I say emphatically. “And to help him, I need to understand what it all means.”
“Gerrie had been besotted with him from the first moment they met. She didn’t want him to enlist in the first place, not even as a flight mechanic. She thought it was too dangerous, but he just would not listen. Do you know he was missing in action in France for over a year?” I nod, as Aunt Kathleen’s gaze hardens a little. “We all told her he was probably dead, but she waited for him. He returned and then his whole family was gone and of course that was terribly sad, but you know how hard she loved him, Charlotte? Day and night, she was there for him when he felt like he had lost everything. And how does he repay her? They’d been talking about marriage. He sat her down and she was convinced he was going to propose then and there and do you know what he does instead?” Her nostrils flare. “He broke up with her. He didn’t really explain at the time. Just said he wasn’t ready to settle down and she should move on with her life.”
“Ouch,” I say, wincing.
“Of course, we later learned about the SOE secrecy rules, but you’ll never convince me he couldn’t give her some clue about what was really going on. He disappeared for years after that. Your mother and I graduated and we started our first jobs and she mourned that relationship for such a long time. In early 1944 she finally started seeing a lovely young man and bam, your dad reappears to throw it all into chaos. Again.”
“You’ve never liked Dad much, have you?” I say.
Aunt Kathleen sniffs before she says, “I grew to love him in time especially after he blessed your mother with you beautiful children. But no. For too many years, I was too angry with him to like him.”
“I found letters from a university professor who wanted to interview my dad about his wartime service. Dad had never seen them. Mum hid them in her sanitary napkin basket.”
“Ah,” Kathleen says and I know immediately that this is not news to her.
“She told you?”
“I knew some archivist had been trying to reach your father regarding his service, and Geraldine thought an interview was a horrible idea,” Kathleen says. She pauses, carefully sips her coffee, then admits, “I didn’t know she’d gone as far as to hide letters from him, but it doesn’t surprise me much. She was ruthless in her love for your father right from the minute he resurfaced in 1944, even though he was an absolute mess when he came back.”
“Because of his head injury?” I ask hesitantly. She raises one slim shoulder.
“Partly that. Partly the trauma of the war, I suppose you’d say. And of course, at the time, he was grieving another woman.”
“Another woman?” I repeat, eyes wide.
“Oh yes, darling,” Kathleen says, pursing her lips. “Your lovely father broke my sister’s heart to go off to fight that noble battle for freedom, and while he was in France, found the time somehow to fall in love with someone else.”
“Mum wasn’t put off by this when he returned?” I say, stunned.
“My God, she was so hurt. But he was in desperate need of help and she still loved him. She rearranged her whole life for him—broke up with the new beau, convinced Mum and Dad to let him move into the spare room. I’m not sure how he’d have managed if she hadn’t, to be honest. The SOE just dumped him back in London and left him to his own devices.”
“That’s so unfair!” I exclaim.
“You don’t know the half of it, love. His memory was shot, he couldn’t concentrate to so much as read a newspaper headline, and all he ever talked about was the war.” Kathleen murmurs, “In those first few weeks, he was like a broken parrot—just weeping all the time about his ‘guilt.’” There’s that word again. My heart sinks. “Oh, yes, darling. Whenever we asked him what he’d done, he’d just weep—he couldn’t tell us. Well, he wouldn’t. Perhaps part of the memory loss was the head injury, but I’m convinced a big part of it was that he did not want to remember. Your mum always discouraged him from looking back at the war years not just because she was worried it would set him back, but because we were all terrified of what he’d find if he did.”
“And despite all of this, he and Mum still somehow ended up married?” I say, rubbing my forehead. “At the start of 1946, no less?”
“In late 1945 Gerrie told me they were dating again. The war had just ended and the whole world was celebrating, so I figured they’d just gotten a little carried away and I begged her to take some time to reconsider. I wasn’t just concerned for her, believe it or not. I was still angry with Noah for everything he’d put her through over the war years, but he was obviously vulnerable. You probably don’t want to hear this about your own parents, but they rushed into that second courtship, racing toward the altar like marriage was a competitive sport. It was not a good combination of desires. Noah just wanted to settle down, to have a family quick smart because he was all alone in the world. And Gerrie just wanted to tie him down, probably before he could fall in love with someone else and leave her heartbroken. Again.”