Bia's War Read online

  “You do know the name.” Victoria said, gently. “Who is he and why would you be searching for him in the middle of the night? If you talk about it, it may help you.”

  Nana Lymer was silent for so long that Victoria was worried that she had retreated back into the half-world that she sometimes inhabited, the times when she wasn’t living in the real world. She was regretting mentioning Simon now, because Nana Lymer was frowning and there were tears forming in her eyes.

  “He was important to you, this Simon, wasn’t he?” Victoria said, lowering her head so that she could look into Nana’s eyes. “I don’t want to upset you, but don’t you agree that it might help if you talked about him? I won’t tell anyone else, if you don’t want me to, I promise.”

  Nana was silent for a couple of minutes, but then she raised her head and looked Victoria straight in the eye.

  “It’s not a nice story, what happened to Simon, and it goes back a long time. I thought I’d got over it years and years ago, but obviously I haven’t, otherwise I wouldn’t be wandering the streets looking for him now, when, in my right mind, I know I’ll never see him again. But I don’t know if you are strong enough or old enough to hear a story the like of this.”

  “I’m fifteen, Nana; I’ll be sixteen next month. I’m not a child and if it helps you it would be worth it wouldn’t it?”

  “Yes, I suppose you’re right, but I don’t want you to tell anyone else what I’m going to tell you.” Nana said. “And, I’m only telling you so that I can lay this ghost to rest and make it easier for your mother to care for me. Promise me you won’t tell a soul what I tell you? Please, Victoria, this is very important to me.”

  “I promise, Nana. I’ll never tell another living soul. Cross my heart and hope to die.” Victoria was very concerned over just how agitated her Nana was getting. Whatever the story was, it was troubling her deeply and it probably would do her a great deal of good to get it out in the open.

  “Don’t use that phrase lightly, Victoria. We none of us know when we’re likely to die and there’s no point putting a jinx on yourself.” Nana was very stern, which was highly unusual for her.

  “I promise I won’t breathe a word of what you tell me, Nana.” Victoria agreed. “Is that good enough?”

  “Your word is good enough for me.” Nana hesitated, composing her mind and deciding where exactly she should start with the terrible tale with which she was about to burden her granddaughter. “Your Granddad Sam was my second husband,” she began, realising that she had to start right back at the beginning of the whole episode. “My first husband was a man called William Drinkwater whom I married in 1910, a long, long time ago. He was three years younger than me, but I thought he was the best of the bunch I had to choose from and I was twenty five years old. I didn’t want to wait for marriage for any longer, because I was desperate to have a child and I was worried that, if I didn’t get married soon, I might get too old to have one. Looking back on it now, I can see how silly that was but, at the time, I thought my time was running out. It was a stupid thing to do, to marry someone just because he was the best of the bunch, but that’s what I did.”

  “So you didn’t love him, Nana? Not at all?”

  “No, child.” Nana smiled at her granddaughter. “No, I didn’t love him, but I know that he loved me, in his own way, and I thought that would be enough. He had a decent job in the iron works and he wasn’t a drinker, so I knew he wouldn’t squander his wages in a public house or become a wife-beater like some of them did. So I agreed to marry him and we had a very quiet and very cheap wedding in May 1910. After the wedding, we moved in with his parents and his two sisters, because we couldn’t afford to rent a house of our own, but by the summer of 1912, four months before our baby was due, we moved into a house on Albion Street and I thought we were set for life. I had a husband, a house and a baby on the way, what more could I wish for?”

  “Were you happy? Isn’t that important?” Victoria wanted to know.

  “I thought I was at the time.” Her grandmother continued. “I had everything that I had wished for from being a young girl. What more could I possibly want? Then, just before my baby was born, I realised that I had achieved what I had been aiming for and that it wasn’t enough. William was a pleasant, hard-working young man, but he was beginning to bore me. I organised everything in our lives and he went along with everything I said or did. I was in charge of the family finances because William gave me his pay-packet, unopened, the day he received it. There weren’t many who did that in those days. I had chosen the house we were living in because I was the one who had discovered it was up for rent, I was the one who had viewed it and put a deposit on it; I was the one who had chosen the furniture, whether second-hand or new and I was the one who was carrying the child I had craved for. William didn’t seem to be doing anything; we didn’t even have conversations anymore. But there was nothing I could do about it. I had made my bed and I had to lie in it. What else could I do?”

  “Couldn’t you have left him, or got divorced?” Victoria asked. “Then you could have lived on your own and you might have met a man who didn’t bore you.”

  Nana Lymer smiled sadly at her granddaughter’s innocence.

  “I had no reason to divorce him.” She said. “He wasn’t a philanderer or a drunk. I and my unborn child weren’t in any danger from him and, anyway, divorce wasn’t an option in those days. I just had to get on with it and hope that he could acquire a character and a personality change somewhere along the line. And, of course, he was the breadwinner. In those days men went out to work and most women stayed at home and cooked and washed and cleaned for their family. If a girl had a job, like being a teacher for example, she would have to give it up when she got married.”

  “I didn’t realise that life was like that then.” Victoria was amazed at the distance society had travelled in just over fifty years. She had ambitions to become a teacher and thought she probably wouldn’t have got married if it had meant that she would have had to have stopped teaching.

  “It was the War that changed everything, not the war that finished nearly thirty years ago, but the Great War, the War to end all wars as they called it when it began. But I’m getting ahead of myself. I was talking about 1912, when I was a young wife with a baby on the way and everything to live for. None of us knew then that the whole world was going to change for ever.”

  “Nana, was the baby Simon? Was that who you were looking for last night? And if it was, what happened to him? Have I got an Uncle Simon somewhere?” Victoria asked.

  “You’re moving the story on too quickly, pet, but yes, my baby was a boy and I named him Simon.” Nana said. “He was born on October 8th 1912. Of course, once he was born, I was too busy to worry about being bored because babies take such a lot of caring for and he was the most adorable baby I had ever laid eyes on. His hair was blond with a wave in it and his eyes were huge and the blue of the sky on a summer day. I loved him so much it hurt. He was the be-all and end-all of my life and I’m afraid I ignored his father because I was so tied up in the adoration of my child. I think I even forgot about William being his father, although I continued to keep the house clean and put food on the table, organise our finances and make decisions about trivial matters and always, always I cared for my child.”

  “Did William notice what you were doing? Was he jealous of the baby?” Victoria asked.

  “Oh yes, he noticed, more than I could have given him credit for, if the truth be known. William didn’t say anything to me, that wasn’t his way, but he became even quieter when we were together, until I stopped telling him what Simon and I had done every day. I didn’t consult him on anything, I just went my own sweet way and he became more and more withdrawn from me. He was always good with Simon, though, and played with him and talked to him when I was busy cooking or when I went out shopping. I should have seen what was happening, but I didn’t because I was so wrapped-up in being a mother, I forgot about being a wife.”

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bsp; “Then one day, when Simon was about a year old, I went to the butcher’s to buy some pork for our tea.” Nana continued. “Simon liked to eat pork and I even remembered that William liked pork crackling, so I would go to the best pork butcher in the town, Dennison’s on Normanby Road. I’d left Simon at home with his father because William was on night shift that night and I only expected to be about ten minutes. There was no one else in the shop when I got there and Dennison’s eyes lit up when he saw me. He had the false impression that I thought he was attractive in some way, but he couldn’t have been further from the truth. He looked like one of the pigs that he sold; fat and greasy and smarmy. He chose that day to ask me to kiss him and when I refused, he said some terrible things to me while he was serving me and I was furious with him. I probably over-reacted, but I found him so repulsive that I was almost physically sick at the thought of him touching me. I grabbed my meat, threw the money at him and ran out of the shop, sobbing because I was so angry. When I got home, William wanted to know what had upset me so, stupidly, I told him.

  “On his way to work that night, William called in at the shop and threatened to call the police if Dennison ever came near me again. Dennison wasn’t happy with that because he’d been in trouble with the police the year before for fighting in one of the public houses. If he’d been caught again, he could have gone down for both things and that made him hate William so much.”

  “But why didn’t William just thump him for trying it on.” Victoria asked. “Why threaten to go to the police about it?”

  Nana smiled. “Cos William wasn’t a big man and Dennison was built like a barn door – as broad as he was high. William was a physical coward and I think that made the pig butcher so angry with him. He could have dealt with a man threatening to hit him, but not one who threatened the police. William didn’t tell me what he had done, but a busybody who lived in one of the houses near the shop made a point of telling me a couple of days later. Of course, I told William it was a stupid thing to have done and I warned him that Dennison would get his own back on William, but he didn’t believe me. He thought he’d acted like a man and that I was belittling him by arguing. Anyway, it didn’t matter what I said to William, it was too late, the damage had been done.”

  “Why?” Victoria asked. “Perhaps Dennison would have thought twice about it if he thought the police might arrest him.”

  Nana Lymer sighed. “That wasn’t the way his mind worked.” She said. “He was a bully and had frightened people all his life with his size and his aggression. He could cope with the threat of physical violence because his size and manner normally frightened others off, but he couldn’t cope with a threat hanging over him which wouldn’t be alleviated by aggression. He despised William from that day onwards. Things might have turned out very differently if William hadn’t acted as he did, but we’ll never know what would have happened. The damage was done and all three of us paid for that one deed, in different ways.”

  “What ways, Nana? What happened after that?” Victoria asked, desperate to hear the rest of the tale, but fully aware that Nana Lymer was looking very tired now.

  “Take these breakfast pots away, pet and would you get me another cup of tea?” Nana asked. “This story-telling is thirsty work, you know!”

  “I’ll go and make your tea and then I think you should have a rest, Nana.” Victoria said. “I can wait a while for the rest of the story, until you’ve had a little sleep, anyway.”

  “You’re a good girl, Victoria. I’ll just rest for a while and then we’ll go on with the tale. I reckon it’s doing me good to get it out of my system and I want to get it finished before I die.”

  “You won’t be doing that for a long time, Nana. I won’t let you!”

  Nana Lymer smiled at her granddaughter’s retreating back, fully aware of just how long it was going to take to get through all that had happened to her during the Great War. But she did feel a lot more settled in her mind now that she was facing what had happened rather than trying to shove it to the back of her mind and pretend it had happened to someone else.

  Chapter Two

  Nana Lymer slept after her cup of tea and Victoria’s parents were home from the funeral and back working in the shop before she awoke, hungry for her lunch and keen to get on with the tale. When Bia brought her lunch to her, she asked her if Victoria wanted to sit with her again, nervous that the girl might not be interested in what had happened to her Grandmother over fifty years before. She needn’t to have worried, however, because Victoria was as keen to hear the story as Nana was to tell it and she arrived at 1.30pm, armed with another cup of tea and eager to move on.

  After she had reassured herself that her Nana was rested enough to carry on with the tale, Victoria made herself comfortable on the little chair next to Nana’s bed and turned enquiring eyes on her grandmother. Nana Lymer screwed up her face in concentration and then began.

  “It was just before Christmas 1913, when William threatened the pig butcher with the police. I remember it particularly because I didn’t set foot in his shop ever again, so we had poorer quality meat for our Christmas dinner that year. I swore I would find a better butcher, even if I had to walk to Normanby or Eston to find one, so that we would have a decent dinner for Christmas 1914, but that was a promise I wasn’t able to carry out. The Great War intervened and life changed so dramatically, the quality of meat wasn’t high on anyone’s list of priorities.”

  “William and I settled into a new phase of our relationship. I concentrated on Simon, talking to him, playing with him and showing him what wonders our world has to offer, while still keeping house dutifully for William. He played with Simon and took him for long walks,

  but William and I rarely spoke to each other. Simon was too young to understand that there was a huge gulf between his parents, but I worried about what would happen when he was old enough to understand. What would I tell him? How would I explain the strained atmosphere in our home? Would he compare his home life with a child who had two loving parents?”

  “But then that Grand Duke somebody or other got himself shot in some foreign city and suddenly we were at war and it was so different from any other war which Britain had fought in before. It wasn’t happening thousands of miles away in a foreign country which nobody had ever heard of, it was happening just across the English Channel and people said that was only about twenty miles away. That made it so much closer and so much more frightening. I can’t explain properly, but people worried that the Hun might invade England and we hadn’t been invaded for centuries. Simon was just under two years of age and had no idea what was happening, but he could sense the tension that everyone in Britain was feeling at the time and he was often fractious and bad tempered.”

  “At first, when war was declared, our lives didn’t really change, but then men in uniform began appearing on the streets and newspapers and advertising hoardings began asking for volunteers for the army, and so many men went off to war. I was sickened by the jingoism and I couldn’t help but wonder how many of those young men were going to come home again. The way the papers had it, our heroes were just going to land in France and the Low Countries and the Hun were going to give up and run home and so our lads would soon come back. But fighting meant men being wounded or killed, whole families being deprived of their loved ones and it wasn’t long before we saw some of the results of that fighting.”

  “I don’t recall when the first wave of the wounded landed back in Blighty or how long that was from when war had been declared, but it happened pretty quickly. I remember being glad that William wouldn’t have to go. He was a married man with a child and at first, they were only asking for single men and it was still volunteers they were asking for, but, as time passed and the war wasn’t won quickly (as the media had told us it would be), there began to be talk of introducing conscription. I was worried, but I told myself he was married, he was in a job that produced iron and steel for the war effort and he was older than so many of the ones who
were volunteering. I was trying to convince myself that he wouldn’t be called up and that, somehow, we would get through it together. Then, one night, he came home late from work and dropped his bombshell on me. He had volunteered!”

  “Volunteered? But why? He didn’t have to go, did he?” Victoria was taken aback by this revelation.

  “No, he didn’t have to go to war, but he wanted to.” Nana Lymer continued. “He wouldn’t explain to me why he had done what he did; he wouldn’t talk about it at all. We had lost the knack of communicating with each other the year before and even this didn’t bring it back to us. It didn’t matter how much I pleaded with him not to go, how much I begged him not to and, in the end, threatened him. He was determined he was going to go and ‘do his bit’ for King and country and I just had to accept it. I railed against it, asking him what were Simon and I supposed to do while he was away, what were we supposed to live on? How were we going to pay the rent and buy food? Did he want us to die, starving on the streets? He said he would send his army pay home and that we would manage without him. After all, hadn’t I managed everything about our lives for years? Why would this be any different?”

  “He was very bitter then, Nana. He thought you wouldn’t miss him at all.” Victoria said, showing an understanding far beyond her age.

  “Oh yes, he was a bitter man, there was no denying that and he was also a very stubborn man. I’ve noticed that trait in other people who are basically weak. They acquiesce to everything for years and then dig their heels in over one point, even when they know that they are wrong, and they won’t let go of it. William was like that over this enlisting. He made the most important decision of our married lives without me and that decision changed the course of all our lives. Every terrible thing that happened after he enlisted happened because he decided he was going to go to war and he wouldn’t listen to me.”