Charlie massaged his cheek. ‘Poor kid. Not even twenty-one. They can pin gongs on those boys all they like but it doesn’t keep them alive, does it? Doesn’t bring them back when they’re gone, or take away their pain when they’ve been half burnt alive.’ He sighed, and rested his forehead against hers. ‘But you’re right. I can’t allow myself the indulgence of righteous anger, with a baby coming. If you think the DFC could help… well, I’ll think it over.’
‘You do deserve it, Charlie.’
‘Please let’s not have that conversation again. It’s not really about what I deserve. I don’t know how to explain it to you.’
‘Can you try?’
‘If I had to stand in front of the king while he pinned the thing on, I’d feel like such a… a phoney,’ he said quietly. ‘Like it ought to be Hynesy or Bram or one of the others standing there, instead of lying in graves they were too young to fill. Not me. Not the man who was invalided out with “shot nerves” as if he was some highly strung Victorian dowager. The man who refused to fly and left others to die in his place. Can’t you understand that?’
‘I understand you feel guilty about having to give up flying, but that doesn’t mean you did anything wrong,’ Bobby said. ‘It’s grief that makes you feel that way. The guilt goes with knowing you survived when others didn’t, but it isn’t a sin to survive, Charlie.’
‘But I feel it all the same.’
‘They want to give you the DFC for climbing out of that plane to save your crew. That was an act of bravery and self-sacrifice by any measure. You wouldn’t be insulting your friends by accepting it, and I’m sure if Bram and the others were alive, they’d say the same. They’d be proud of you.’
‘It’s what I didn’t do that haunts me,’ Charlie murmured. ‘When I joined up I made a promise to see this thing through, but I soon folded when the going got tough, didn’t I?’
‘You were right to refuse to fly with your nerves in the state they were. You said yourself that you could have got your crew killed if you’d had one of your attacks in the air.’
‘Other men don’t have attacks.’ He turned away from her. ‘Other men don’t think and think and think and think until their brains ache. They don’t cry in the night like bairns – or if they do, they don’t let it stop them doing their jobs. They keep on until we’ve won this thing, like I vowed to do.’
‘Not everyone is the same, Charlie. You’re you. You can onlybeyou. I wish you wouldn’t keep comparing yourself to others.’
Charlie only sighed, and Bobby realised her words were useless. He would never accept that this award was something he deserved, no matter how she tried to persuade him.
Chapter 15
The following Friday, Bobby was woken as usual by Marmaduke squirming in her womb. He could deliver some hefty kicks now she was approaching the six-month point in her pregnancy.
She lay with one hand on her belly, feeling the baby’s movements. She slid her palm over the swell, trying to work out how many little feet were kicking up a storm against her insides. But they were just tiny thumps, hard to pin down. The baby might have one leg or eight for all Bobby could tell.
A thought popped up: of the famous Dionne quintuplets who had been born in Canada ten years ago.
Lord, five babies in one labour! Poor Mrs Dionne. Surely Dr Minchin would know if there were that many babies in residence in her womb, wouldn’t he?
Bobby reached for her husband, but Charlie’s side of the bed was unoccupied. She turned on the lamp.
‘Charlie?’ she called out. She wasn’t used to him not being there when she woke up.
‘I’m here, love.’
He came into the bedroom, wearing his best suit. For a moment, Bobby’s sleep-addled mind wondered if he had another job interview. Then she remembered the rather grimmer reason he had to be up early and dressed in his best.
‘Oh. Sorry.’ She rubbed her hair. ‘I forgot about your trip. I ought to have been up to make breakfast for you.’
‘You need your sleep, and so does Marmaduke.’ He sat by her on the bed and kissed her hair. ‘I’m quite capable of making my own breakfast.’
‘I know, but I like to do it.’ She pressed a hand to her belly again, wincing. ‘Anyhow, Marmaduke seems to have had enoughsleep. Right now he’s practising his football skills with my internal organs.’
‘Then I ought to administer some paternal discipline.’ Charlie rested his head against her belly. ‘You behave for your mother while I’m away, young man, or it’ll be no pudding for you for a week.’
Bobby smiled. ‘But that means it’ll be no pudding for me either.’
‘True. It’s difficult doing your fatherly duty with your child hiding from you.’
Charlie started to sit up, but Bobby rested a hand on his head.
‘Stay like that a minute,’ she said softly. ‘Marmaduke’s still when you rest your head there. He knows when his dad’s nearby.’
