‘Blimey! Weren’t you angry she hadn’t told you?’
‘Happen I were grieved at first, but I soon saw sense. She’d kept it safe for nigh on three year. If I’d known about it, can’t say as I wouldn’t have ended up dipping in for one thing or another until there were nowt left when we needed it. Women are better at saving, I reckon. They’ve got that instinct, feathering nests.’ He patted her hand. ‘Like I said, up to you, but your Charlie will be happy enough if it gets him out of a spot.’
‘I suppose so,’ Bobby said vaguely, thinking of her plan to keep a little pot of earnings from her writing work. Perhaps that was what had been in her mind: holding back a few feathers in case her little nest were ever to need them. ‘Shall we go and join the celebrations?’
‘Got summat else for thee first. Had to hunt around a bit for it, mind.’
From his pocket, Rob took the thing he’d been polishing. Bobby had thought it was a coin, but now he put it in her hands, she could see it was a silver medal on a faded red, white and blue ribbon. It bore the image of the old king, George V, and when she turned it over, she found the king’s crest above the wordsFor bravery in the field.
‘Dad, this isn’t…’
‘Aye,’ he said, blushing deeply. ‘Long time since I last looked at that old thing. Thought it’d be half rust, but it’s polished up all right.’
‘Your Military Medal,’ Bobby said wonderingly. ‘Mam told me you’d been awarded one. I’d started to think she must’ve dreamt it. Why did you never show us before?’
‘I wasn’t ready,’ her dad said simply. ‘Wasn’t ready to think about what I got it for.’ He shuddered. ‘Hellish time that were: the Somme. Like world’s end or worse. I’ve not had it out in nigh on quarter of a century. But now… I think I’m ready to make my peace with it.’
‘Why are you giving it to me?’ Bobby said, rubbing her thumb over the laurel wreath on the back.
‘I aren’t; I’m giving it into your care. It’s as much your brothers’ and sister’s as yours, but happen it might bring thee luck with a babby on t’ way.’ He smiled. ‘Besides, I don’t trust Tony not to pawn the thing if I leave it with our Lil.’
‘I’ll take care of it, I promise.’ She looked up at him. ‘Mam told me what you did. Those men whose lives you saved. That was incredibly brave of you, Dad.’
‘Brave.’ He cast a blank look at the medal. ‘Aye, folk use words like that. Don’t feel much like that when you’re in t’ thick of it though.’
‘How does it feel?’
‘Like… nowt, really. There’s no time to think, about being brave or owt else. You just… do what you have to. You do what’s in front of you. Don’t see it makes me better nor worse than any other lad they didn’t bother to pin one o’ them things on. Half on ’em never come home to get it pinned on.’
‘Charlie’s said something very similar.’
‘Aye, he knows it as well as I do.’ Her dad nodded to the medal. ‘Be sure to show it to t’ bairns when they’re big enough, won’t you?’
‘I’ll be proud to. What started you thinking about it?’
‘Reckon it were what you said, about having my picture taken in uniform for the young ’uns.’ He rubbed his neck, as he always did when he felt bashful. ‘I never cared much about the thing for my own sake, but after I’m gone it won’t matter what I felt, will it? But it’ll matter to the next generation that they had a grandadthey can feel proud of. Happen they’ll treasure it for the sake of that old grandad who loved them, and pass it to their own bairns in their turn.’ His brow lowered. ‘And I hope none on ’em, Annie’s generation or the ones to follow, are called on to fight another war like the two I’ve been cursed to see. This time, let’s hope it’s truly an end.’
‘I’ve never heard you talk this way before,’ Bobby said.
‘What way’s that?’
‘As if you’re… more at peace with yourself. More understanding of the things that happened to you. Is that Maimie Hobbes’s doing?’
He smiled. ‘Suppose it is. She’s a good woman under that mad feathered hat. Knows how to get the best out of me, same as your mam.’
‘Oh Lord, the hat,’ Bobby said, laughing. ‘Will she wear it to the wedding?’
‘I told her it’s all off if she doesn’t,’ he said with a grin.
Bobby’s gaze drifted back to the medal.
‘Thanks, Dad,’ she said softly. ‘I promise I’ll look after it for you – for all of us. I know your grandchildren will be just as proud of you as your children are.’ She gave him another hug. ‘I hope you and Mrs Ho— Maimie will be very happy together.’
‘Well that was quite a day,’ Charlie said as he and Bobby walked home, Bobby’s arm through his and her blackout torch in her other hand. ‘You might have to help me to bed. I’m feeling a little… merry.’
‘I can tell,’ Bobby said, laughing as she stopped him meandering into a ditch.
Their evening at the farmhouse had turned into quite a party. After the men had finished the beer Tony had brought from the Hart, the captain had remembered a bottle of port he’d been given when he left his regiment and gone to fetch it. The girls had been allowed to stay up late, and everyone present had toasted to happiness, marriage and new additions. Bobby hadn’t got too ‘merry’, as Charlie put it, but she had enjoyed seeing her husband being sociable with the other men: cracking jokes, sharing smokes, slapping backs. Tonight, he had seemed like the old Charlie – the carefree lad he had been before he had gone to war.
