CHAPTER 38
The pistol kicked back in my hand, hurting the web between my thumb and index finger, and the muzzle jerked up and to the left as the man in battledress flew backwards off his feet, so much blood coming from him in a great splash, gaudy on the snow, and someone was on my bed, holding me as I felt half a shout leave me.

“Gerald? Gerald?”

Who? Oh.

“Sorry, lass, must have been bad dream”

I took a couple of deep breaths, sweat cold on my back as I sat upright in our bed, Tricia’s and mine. Susie was in an old pair of pyjamas I had given her for the night; we really had to sort out something of her own.

“Cuppa, Gerald?”

“What time is it?”

“Little after five”

“Might as well be stirring. What I thought were going down to yard and letting you see what needs doing. Get day off to start on right foot”

“You’re avoiding questions, Gerald. How often do you get nights like that, wake up shouting?”

I thought about that one, and it had really only been my lost love and Rodney’s old housekeeper Beattie who had seen. Mam and Dad had never said anything, but I did wonder.

“Oh, lass, I suspect far too many times, but, well, I don’t remember them all, especially if it’s small hours like, and I drop off again”

She just shook her head, and I wondered what she was thinking. Probably something about that little swimming trip we had done. She stood up abruptly, taking my lack of an answer as a yes to tea, and a few minutes later I was sat in one of our armchairs as she handed me a cup and a couple of slices of toast and marmalade. I started to laugh at that one.

“What’s tickling you?”

“Oh, I were just thinking back to war, not just bad stuff, you know. Rationing. Young people today, they hear about rationing and think it all went as soon as shooting stopped, but… and here we are with marmalade and butter and white bread. We had…”

I looked up at Tricia, and she was as happy now as she had been then, smiling from our wedding portrait and the other one I had got with that camera I had liberated from the jerries, that photograph of her on the deck chair at Filey, in the costume I had bought her that she had assured me was ‘indecent’ but had nevertheless worn as often as possible.

“Tricia, my wife like, her mam and dad had bakery, so when we had wedding they made cake, and all families and friends saved up sugar rations and owt else they could spare, and we put it all together for do, and Cyril, that were her dad, like, happen he made a real job of it, and every day after, for snap like, my Tricia would bring me a piece of it, till it went”

I sat for a while with my tea. “Then, it were in Belgium. We had this goose, and there were potatoes in field, so Wilf, he makes this oven, right out of Boy Scouts, and we roast bird, and spuds, and he saves the fat and mixes it with oatcakes and…”

I sat for a little longer, and she reached over to take my hand. “I remember you talking about him, or at least the name. He’s one of…”

“The lads who didn’t come home? Aye. Look. I want to go down yard, give you look at books and stuff, see if you feel you can take job, but, well, thought we could take a bit of a detour beforehand. Something I’d like to show you”

It was still dark at that time of year, and the roads were a little slippery, but my days of playing at being a racing driver had never really existed. I drove the Allegro down to the cemetery, handing Susie a torch as we parked.

“Just to see stones, like. I know way”

We started down the path, the faint glow of dawn barely competing with the orange of the street lights, until we were next to my little group of graves. I nodded hello to both sets of parents before handing Susie the torch as I set about a little tidy-up of the faded flowers and wind-blown litter.

“That’s Bob. He were a right good mate, our tank commander right through. Kept us safe, most of us, almost all of us. He were a very deep man, Bob were. I sort of think of him keeping an eye out, like, for…”

I was having difficulty getting the words out, it seemed. I just waved at the other stone, and she pointed the torch and simply said “Oh” before turning to me;

“That is… that is one hell of a coincidence, Gerald. I hope, you know, I’m not into that mumbo-jumbo stuff, meaningful coincidence, must be fate thingy. It’s a common name”

I shook my head. “No, lass. It were just summat that helped me make up mind. I weren’t in a good way---“

“Hell’s teeth, mate, I pulled you out of Ouse! That’s not just ‘not in a good way’, is it?”

She softened her voice again. “What happened, Gerald? I mean, if you want to tell me? Honest, I’m not as scary as I sound”

She muttered something under her breath, and I am sure it was ‘Or look’, but I left it alone, and started to tell her about that night, but it got harder, and when I got to the bit about her weight against the front door, Tricia’s weight, Tricia’s dying body, I lost a lot of control and couldn’t stop the tears from getting out. She just came over and wrapped both arms around me, whispering how it was no shame for a man to feel such things. She was just like Bob had been, that time when Wilf went, but at the same time so, so different, and that was the moment I finally realised what she was, and that it wasn’t any man holding me but in truth a woman. I knew I had to tell her about Bob as well, for suddenly I felt that it was time to let old ghosts see the light of day, even though the sun hadn’t quite managed to crest the horizon yet. I took a few minutes to find the right words, and Susie just waited patiently, her body warm against mine.

“It were Bob, too, lass. You have to understand, it were a bloody long war. Bob were a regular. He didn’t go through mess in France—“

“Dunkirk?”

“Aye, and Arras and all the rest. Nobody remembers those. No, he were with desert army, 8th Army as was, aye? Desert Rats?”

“I heard of them. El Alamein, wasn’t it?”

“Aye, but that were only a part of it. There were all the fights with the Italians, then backwards and forwards with Rommel, and then it were Tunisia with Von Arnim, and that were nasty, and bloody Sicily and Salerno, then they brought him back home just to pack him off to bloody France. No rest, aye? Not like us, we just trained and trained, waited and waited, and then war’s over, and we’re home, what’s left of us, and he’s off to bloody Korea!”

“What aren’t you saying, Gerald?”

“Oh. Lass, it’s so different now, isn’t it? Look, I had my lass, my Tricia, and that were fine and wonderful, and…”

I took another minute, as she simply waited.

“Look, Bob weren’t into lasses. Simple as that. He were discharged when… when he was a bit too lonely one night”

“Another soldier?”

“Oh, aye. That lad got away, but not Bob, and… Look. I never saw it, but Rodney, Matthew, our officers, aye? Our bloody mates, in the end, comrades, friends, brothers in bloody arms, they saw it”

“Ah. I see”

“Aye. I didn’t, and that were thing, Susie. I couldn’t see it, I couldn’t even imagine it, and no way on Earth I could ever return it, aye? But that were education, Bob and all that stuff. It weren’t like you think, all queer and slaver, all fairy walk and broken wrist handshakes. He were just man, an ordinary man, aye? Just a man…”

I couldn’t say it, not even after so many years, but she could, and I repeated what she’d said, aye, a man in love, and she asked the obvious question, had I loved him? The sun was just looking over the roofline now, and I turned to its orange glow, eyes closed as I found the right things to say.

“Aye, Susie. Aye, I loved him, but not like that. He were just Bob, and no, not ‘just’, he were more than that. I would have died for him, aye? I think, really, all of us in crew would have? That were dream this morning, bad dream. In Belgium. Just say there were someone I thought was about to kill him, and I had this great big pistol, revolver, 45, and so I shot man, looked him in eyes and shot him and it went through his neck and there were all snow everywhere, and blood, red, so much…”

Again, her presence, her warmth, calm and steady. I drew a few breaths, slower each time.

“So, when I had to find somewhere for Tricia and… and my, our little girl, I knew there’d be someone who loved them right by them, someone who could keep them safe. Look…”

Deep, slow breaths. “Enough for now, lass. Let’s get down to yard, let dog see rabbit, like. Co-op’ll be open now, pick up milk and breakfast bits on way. Sausage and egg do?”

As we walked back to my car, she quietly took my hand. The one that had shot the German.