‘Let me take him,’ Dot said, her arms waiting to hold her nephew.
‘I guess you’re a bit small to carry this,’ the kindly gentleman said to Henry holding Kate’s suitcase.
‘Thank you, sir, I’ll take it,’ Kate’s father said. ‘Welcome home, Kate.’
Kate greeted her father and they all walked the length of the platform, where Ada was sitting holding her youngest daughter. The two mothers kissed each other, whilst holding their babes. They smiled and cried at the same time. Kate put one arm around her mother and her father put his arms around the two of them. Dot and Henry completed the family group and they all held on to each other. Kate knew at that moment that she was loved and that Ronnie was loved too.
Chapter Thirty-Five
September 1917
September in Micklewell! All things bright and beautiful! Kate couldn’t believe that she was really there. Sorting through the plums with Dot to make plum jam, laying out the apples in straw in the shed, boiling up the marrows to make chutney. Baby Ronnie and little Tilly, gurgling to each other lying on a shawl on the rug, feeling the swoosh of the women’s skirts as they brushed by, moving around the kitchen with a purpose.
Kate hummed hymns to herself as she chopped and sliced, bottled and boiled, heated and cooled. Occasionally Dot would join in and they would burst into song. They knew all the words by heart. All was indeed ‘safely gathered in’.
‘Will you come to the harvest festival at the church tomorrow?’ Dot asked. ‘The children from the school will be singing “We plough the fields” and they’re doing a little tableau. I’ve been practising with them for weeks.’
‘I’m not sure,’ Kate replied. She was still cautious about facing people and imagining how they might be gossiping about her.
‘You’ll have to show your face sometime,’ their mother said, as she entered the kitchen with a basket of plums.
‘People are asking after you, Kate,’ Dot said.
‘Like who?’ Kate replied.
‘Miss Clarence, at the school, for one, and Mary White. Mary says you’re welcome to go there with Ronnie any time. She has news of her sister, Elsie, to give you. You were good friends at school, weren’t you?’
‘People are just nosey,’ Kate said. ‘I know what they’re thinking.’
‘What does it matter what people think?’ Dot said.
‘You can’t afford to shut yourself away,’ her mother added. ‘You’ll need to find work.’
‘I know,’ Kate said, picking Ronnie up. ‘I just need a bit more time, is all.’
She carried him outside into the back yard and watched her father loading his gardening tools into his box trailer that he pulled behind his bike. He called to Judy, his little black dog, and was making ready to wheel his bike out onto the lane. When he saw Ronnie in Kate’s arms, he leaned his bike against the wall and pulled back the shawl to smile at his grandson.
‘You’re looking much stronger and brighter than when you first arrived, Kate,’ he said. ‘And how’s our little Ronnie this morning?’
‘I feel stronger and Ronnie is well too. It was the right thing to bring him back to the country; we’re both so happy to be here.’
‘And we’re happy to have you,’ he replied.
‘You’re not ashamed of me then?’ Kate asked.
‘How could we be ashamed of such a bonny lad and his lovely mother?’
‘Can I ask you something, Pa?’ Kate tentatively asked.
‘Ask away.’
Kate decided to ask the question that had been on her mind since arriving home. Her mother was right; she needed to think of the future.
‘Would you have married Mum if she already had a child?’
Jim Truscott stopped loading his tools and stood upright. He had been caught off guard. He beckoned to her to come and sit down on the garden bench with him.
‘I can’t answer that question, Kate,’ he said, ‘but what I can tell you is that you were on the way before we walked down the aisle.’
