Jane looked at her and at her father and hated them, too. They were old. They had been married for more years than she and Rob had lived. Why weren’t they dead, like Rob? He wasn’t coming back; she knew it.
Her father put down his paper. ‘Is anything wrong, Jane?’
Wrong? Something had just kicked the breath out of her body but no, nothing was wrong.
She needed to weep, but there was a pain in her throat and it was stopping the tears, so she laughed instead. She stood there and laughed until she shook. There wasn’t anything else to do but laugh.
She heard her mother say, ‘Stop her, Richard. She’s hysterical,’ and her father shouted ‘Jane!’ and took hold of her shoulders, but she went on laughing.
His hand on her cheek hurt. He slapped her hard and it made her head jerk back. She stopped in the middle of a scream and the breath left her body with a groan. It was the first time her father had hit her and he looked upset, but suddenly she was very calm and her voice was steady as she said, ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that, but the man I’ve been going out with is missing. He was on ops last night and he hasn’t come back.’
It didn’t sound like her voice. It was as if the words were coming from inside her and someone else was speaking them.
Her mother covered her mouth with her hand and her face went pale. Jane was glad about that. She wanted her to be hurt, and her father too. If only because they were alive, she wanted it.
‘You used to pretend he didn’t exist, didn’t you?’ came the voice from inside her. ‘Well, he probably doesn’t now. Are you satisfied?’
She wouldn’t cry. Not in front of them. She closed the door behind her and walked upstairs to her room. Her face was chalk-white in the mirror and her eyes were large and wild. She said, ‘He’s dead. Overdue means missing and missing means dead. They don’t come back.’
She took his photograph from beneath the lining paper in her drawer and looked at it and tried again to cry. She would have given anything to weep until she was sick, but the pain was still there to stop her. She slumped down on to the bed. She didn’t know if she was rocking or if it was the room.
The door latch clicked and her father stood there. He looked so utterly miserable that she tried to feel sorry for him but she could not. She needed the whole world to be miserable.
‘Would it help to talk about it?’ he said.
When she was little, she always talked to him. Once, she had loved her father very much.
‘His name was Rob.’ The real Jane was speaking now and every word was a stab of pain. ‘I never told you that, did I? I don’t know a lot about him either, but it doesn’t matter now, does it? He lived in Glasgow but I’m not sure where. His father’s been dead a long time and he has – had – two brothers.’ Her father put out his hand but she pulled away. ‘I loved him very much. He was so young and it wasn’t his war. It’s your fault, yours and Mother’s. It’s your generation should be getting killed, not ours!’
Richard Kendal nodded, his eyes bright with pain. ‘Perhaps you’re right. We saw it coming and we did nothing.’ He walked over to the window. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked without looking at her. ‘Mother said she thought you haven’t been looking too good lately – a bit peaky.’
She knew what he was trying to say. They thought she might be having a baby, and if she really wanted to hurt them she could tell them she might be. But all the fight had gone out of her and she was afraid. Not of having Rob’s child, but of having it without him. But Rob had said it wouldn’t happen.
‘I’m all right, Dad. Don’t worry.’ She saw kindness in his face and compassion, and she whispered, ‘I did love him so. Don’t blame us. There was so little time.’
He held out his arms then, and because she hurt so much, because she wanted to be a little girl again, she went to him and the tears came.
It was good to weep. She wept until there was nothing inside her but low, gasping sobs and her body was limp.
Her father rocked her in his arms, just as he had done when she was little, and when her mother came in with a cup of hot milk and one of her soothing tablets, she swallowed it obediently, a child again.
‘There now. It’s going to be all right.’ Her father held her tightly until her eyes began to close and from far away she heard her mother pick up the cup and saucer.
‘I think she’s asleep now. When she wakes, don’t tell her the letter has come. Leave it for a while.’
So it was here, the OHMS envelope she had dreaded. Her call-up papers had come and she must go away.
Oh, Rob, I have to leave you …
‘Flamin’ Norah! Don’t tell me it’s gone!’
‘Sorry, lassie.’ The ticket collector picked up his coat and bag. ‘You’ve missed it by ten minutes. The next train to Garvie leaves at midnight.’
‘That’s it, then. I’m adrift.’ ETA Ardneavie 2200/22/6, her travel instructions stated precisely – which really meant that Wren Violet T. McKeown was expected to arrive at her destination by 10 P.M. on the twenty-second day of June. ‘And that train left on time!’ she flung accusingly.
‘Aye. They sometimes do. Last week one arrived on time too. But you’d better away to the Naval RTO and get your warrant seen to. You’ll no’ get into trouble, then, if you’re late arriving.’
The railway transport officer. She would find one, they had told her at the training depot, at most main-line stations. Get into difficulties, travelwise, and the RTO would sort it out.
‘Over yonder, by the pile of mailbags.’ The ticket collector had seen it many times and would see it many times more before the railways returned to normal. If they ever did.
Vi picked up her cases. She had travelled from Rosyth to Glasgow, hardly any distance at all, yet still she had missed her connection. Slamming her feet down angrily, she made for the mailbags.
Mother of God, what a place to be stranded in. But didn’t all railway stations look the same, turned by the war into dismal places? Dimly lit, permanently blacked out, they had become dirty and dingy and smelled of neglect. When the war was over, in a million years, and little Marie asked, ‘What was your war like, Auntie Vi?’ she would tell her, ‘Drab, queen. Very drab.’
But it wasn’t only the stations, she frowned. Passenger trains never ran on time now. Indeed, men and women not in uniform were asked most pointedly not to use them. Is your journey really necessary? the posters demanded accusingly, making it downright unpatriotic for a civilian to even think of occupying a seat on a passenger train.
Vi nodded and smiled at the young soldier and the palefaced young girl who stood beside him. You smiled at everyone now. You cared about other people and tried to be kind to them, even though they were strangers you would probably never meet again. It had taken a war to do that, Vi realized; though she wouldn’t mind betting that on the day peace came, all the caring would end and people would go back to minding their own business again, just as they had before it started. And it would be the same with railway stations. Once the war was over, they would be clean and bright, with everything freshly painted and flowers planted in the tubs. And people going on seaside holidays would have forgotten how stations had once been larger than life, almost; places of meeting and parting, from which dusty, crowded trains had borne servicemen and women to who knew where.
The young soldier and his girl were soon to part. Now, they smiled, standing with fingers entwined, bodies touching, and even when he left her the smile would remain and she would save her tears until his train was out