Bobby shook her head. ‘You’re not taking his side? He could get into serious trouble for this, Charlie. So could Lil and I, since we lied ourselves blue for him to those Redcaps.’
‘I’m sure the army won’t punish him too harshly once they know why he did it,’ Charlie said. ‘A few weeks confined to barracks, perhaps, as long as he goes straight back after.’
‘You are going straight back, aren’t you?’ Lilian demanded of Jake.
‘Said I was, didn’t I?’ he said. ‘We’ll go soon as we’ve got the certificate.’
Chapter 29
Bobby couldn’t leave her brother in the doghouse for long. He looked so dejected and tired, she didn’t have the heart to stay angry. It stirred everything that was motherly in her to see the lad in distress. There was still so much in him of the little boy he’d been when, as girls of fourteen, Bobby and Lilian had found themselves responsible for his care. She ruffled his hair when she served him his rarebit supper, to let him know he was forgiven.
Kathleen, too, seemed to have forgiven him – at least, so Bobby assumed when she noticed the young lovers holding hands under the kitchen table. They were a sweet pair. Bobby felt sure her dad would like this new addition to the family, even if he didn’t approve of the way she had been brought into the Bancroft fold.
After they had eaten, Bobby commissioned Charlie to escort Kathleen to Lilian’s. She gave him whispered instructions to find out if Lil had seen their dad, and what his reaction had been to the news.
‘Well, what did she say?’ Bobby demanded when Charlie arrived home. He had sought her out in the kitchen, where she was elbow-deep in the washing-up. Jake had gone to buy a packet of smokes from the Hart, so they could talk freely.
‘She couldn’t say much in front of Kathleen but it sounds all right,’ Charlie told her. ‘At any rate, the kids are invited to dinner tomorrow.’
‘Jake said they were going back as soon as the ceremony was over.’
‘He can stay for dinner, surely, and introduce Kathleen to your dad. The army won’t declare him a deserter for the sake of a few hours.’
‘I suppose not.’ Bobby wiped her hands on her pinny and turned to him. ‘I hope he’ll agree to come. He hasn’t met Maimie yet.’
‘Why wouldn’t he agree?’
‘It’s like I said – he and our dad have had a difficult relationship ever since Jake got to an age where he could understand why Dad was the way he was.’
Charlie put his arms around her waist.
‘Meaning the way your dad used to drink, I suppose,’ he said quietly.
‘His drinking, the screaming nightmares, the way he shakes…’ Bobby sighed. ‘A hundred times I’ve tried to make Jake see that Dad can’t help being that way, but it was no good talking to him about combat fatigue or shell-shock or any of those terms. Jake was growing into a young man and all he understood was that his dad, who ought to be someone to admire, was screaming in the night because of things that happened to him twenty years before. In the eyes of a boy who got his ideas about what made a man from thriller comics, his dad was a coward. It hurt me to see him so ashamed, for both their sakes.’
‘I hadn’t realised it was as serious as that,’ Charlie said, frowning.
Bobby ran a hand over her forehead, beaded with sweat from the steaming washing-up water. ‘They’re not estranged, exactly. Our Jake loves his dad in his own way; I’m sure he does. But he can’t admire him, and I wish there was some way to fix that.’
‘Does he know what your dad went through?’
‘He knows Dad was in the trenches but that doesn’t mean he understands. He never saw Dad’s nightmares first hand as Lil and I did, or heard him raving about the horrors he’d seen. He was the baby, so we did everything we could to shield him from it. I wonder sometimes if that only made things worse.’
Charlie looked rather thoughtful. He seemed about to say more, but Jake arrived back with his cigarettes and the conversation came to an end.
Bobby was hoping Marmaduke would settle that night and let her have some uninterrupted rest. With Charlie back at her side, there was no reason for the baby to make a fuss about the absence of his father.
Unfortunately Marmaduke, while quiet enough, seemed to have decided to make a mattress of Bobby’s bladder. It must have been around midnight when she admitted defeat and slid noiselessly from under the covers to use the privy. Charlie was sleeping soundly for once, and she didn’t want to risk waking him by making use of the jerry under the bed.
In the parlour, the embers of the fire were still in the grate, lending the room a mellow illumination. Bobby believed her brother to be asleep on the settee when she tiptoed to the kitchen so she could let herself out of the back door, but once she had visited the outhouse and crept back in, she realised this wasn’t the case. The red glow of his cigarette rather gave him away as awake.
‘Hiya, Bob,’ he said in a toneless voice. ‘Want to sit down? I wouldn’t mind some company.’
She put a finger to her lips.
‘Don’t wake Charlie,’ she whispered. ‘It isn’t often he gets a proper night’s rest. Here, shift your bottom.’
Jake sat up and Bobby took a seat beside him.
