Despite her worries, Bobby couldn’t help laughing.
‘You’re worried about your father, I suppose,’ Mary said as she put a plate of food in front of her.
Bobby nodded. ‘He needs someone to keep house for him. He couldn’t do for himself. He isn’t used to it, and the cow house is hardly replete with modern conveniences.’
‘You’ve no need to worry about that. Plenty of old girls round here missing sons and husbands who’d snap up a man to mother, and you needn’t fear I’d let any family of mine go wanting.’
Bobby smiled to hear Mary refer to them as family. She knew that had nothing to do with her impending marriage to Charlie. It was just what they’d become, somehow. A little patchwork family: Reg and Mary, Charlie, her and her father, and the two Parry girls from London. Funny how the war had pushed them all together.
And now, perhaps, the war was about to pull them all apart. She would have to leave her family and the Dales, for who knew how long. And there was Lilian, and the baby, and her dad…
‘It isn’t only about my dad getting his tea on the table,’ Bobby told Mary, choosing her words carefully. ‘He… he might be lonely.’
‘He knows he’s always welcome here.’ Mary refilled Bobby’s teacup from the pot. ‘We won’t let him sit on his own by an unlit fire, dwelling on the dark times.’
‘You don’t understand. When he lived alone in Bradford, he…’
Bobby hesitated, not knowing how to get out what she wanted to say. Reg and Mary knew something of her father’s demons– his struggles with shell shock and liquor – but neither knew what had really happened that night nearly a year ago. About the suicide attempt that had left her dad in hospital and almost cost him his life. Bobby had vowed, then, that she would never again leave her father to battle his devils alone, no matter what she decided to do with her life.
But now King and Country had come to call, and it seemed the course of her life was no longer hers to decide.
‘When he lived alone, he really struggled,’ she finished lamely, poking at her bacon for Mary’s benefit, although she hardly felt as though she could eat. ‘He had a lot of nightmares. He was drinking too much. I know you’d look after him for my sake, but it needs to be family.’
‘Aye, I know what you mean. There’s some things as only kin ought to see.’ Reg, who had been poring over the letter, put it down beside her and pointed to a paragraph near the bottom. ‘But there’s provision made for that, look. Hardship cases.’
Mary bent to read it too. ‘You’re right, Reg. Clever old stick to spot it. Bobby, see what it says: after your medical you can tell the clerk you want to apply for a postponement certificate on the grounds of exceptional hardship and she’ll give you a form.’
Bobby frowned. ‘What does that mean though – exceptional hardship?’
‘Any situation where you’ve others relying on you, I suppose.’
‘But if it’s talking about money… my dad relies on me to keep house for him and, you know, for company, but he doesn’t need my wages. Topsy pays him a decent salary as gamekeeper – double what I earn.’
‘His house is courtesy of your job with me,’ Reg said. ‘Not that we’d throw the old man into the streets, but I’m happy to tell them we would. I don’t mind being the baddie if it’ll help you get out of it.’
‘Besides, you and our Charlie will be wed before long,’ Mary said. ‘It’s only unmarried women eligible for the call-up. Tell them you’ve got a wedding arranged and they’ll surely let you off.’
‘We’re hoping we can do it soon, but it isn’t arranged yet, Mary,’ Bobby reminded her. ‘Charlie will need official permission from his commanding officer at RAF Binbrook once he’s posted. He’s just had a week’s home leave for Christmas so they’d be entitled to tell him he has to wait while some of the other lads take their turn.’
‘Still. You’ve a ring on your finger, haven’t you? I’d have thought that’d be good enough.’
‘I doubt that would make a difference, now wheels are in motion. Marriage wouldn’t bring any change to my domestic responsibilities, with no children and Charlie away. It seems the war effort needs every man and woman it can get nowadays.’
‘Huh,’ Reg muttered. ‘They’ll have called up the whole ruddy country by the time we get to the end of this thing. They’ll even have my old bones hobbling out to face the Hun.’
Bobby was silent, passing stringy pieces of bacon rind to Ace under the table.
It was so much to take in. Only an hour ago, she had been just a country reporter: writing articles on their little rural affairs, keeping house for her dad, doing her small bit for the war effort by making up Red Cross parcels and acting as one of Silverdale’s air-raid wardens. She had known call-up was a possibility, yet she hadn’t thought it would happen so quickly. She had hoped it wouldn’t need to happen at all. But now the war had come for her, she couldn’t just hide under the bedclothes and wait for it to go away.
Her dad needed her, Lilian needed her, but so, apparently, did her country. Did she have any right to shirk, now the summons had come to join the fight? If Charlie and her brothers were outthere risking their lives, why should she stay cocooned in the Dales, where war had never felt truly real? Britain needed every man, which meant it needed every woman. That was how men were to be freed up so they could win this thing.
But then Bobby thought of her father as he had been a year ago: white and feeble in a hospital bed, his will to live sapped. Of poor Lilian: unmarried with a baby coming, needing her sister more than ever.
Never had the conflict between her duty to her family and her duty to her country been laid out more starkly before her.
Chapter 3
By the time Bobby had finished breakfast, the numb dread she had been feeling had transformed into something else: a sort of strained, feverish excitement that played perpetually on the edges of her jangling nerves.
