2. THE THREE WORDS

Tragedy strikes a family during the second world war

Wallace Pratchett had managed his first two words and repeated them so often that it might almost be assumed they were devoid of meaning and merely sounds that he enjoyed creating. “Mama!” he would squawk, and reply to himself with a resonant “dada!” when the worst possible news arrived at the Vicarage.

A telegram had been delivered to the Rosebush residence. A dreaded telegram that simply advised them that the man of the house, Maureen’s father and their battling hero somewhere in Europe, where exactly had been a secret kept even from himself, had been slaughtered in the name of freedom.

“Some freedom when you’re not alive to enjoy it,” spluttered Amy to her sister Helen, clutching six year-old Maureen by the hand as if she was afraid that letting go would lose her for ever as well.

“The Lord moves in mysterious ways,” intoned a sombre Reverend Jack Pratchett.

Both Helen and Amy wanted to shout that’s gobbledegook at him, but there was already too much anger in the world for them to want to add to it, so they remained mute.

“Can I go and play with Wallace?” asked Maureen.

“He’s in his playpen in the front room,” Helen told the girl, “and of course you can, but don’t upset him and make him cry.”

“I love him,” averred Maureen, “I wouldn’t make him cry, not ever.”

So the girl wandered into that front room, and when Wallace saw her his eyes lit up. This was his cousin, he sort of knew that fact, and she always cheered him up. So he smiled and she laughed at him and knew, deeper in her heart than anyone dare penetrate, that Wallace was the most perfect of all babies, and she loved him.

“I’ll climb in, Wally,” she said.

Of course she would! It wouldn’t be the first time she’d climbed over the slatted side of that playpen and joined her cousin. And it wouldn’t be the last.

Meanwhile, in the other room, what the vicar liked to call the Reception Room, Helen held Amy by one arm, gently so as to show her sympathy and love for her sister, and asked the one question that really needed an answer.

“What are you going to do now?” she asked, “and where will you live?”

This was an important question because William and family lived in a tied cottage belonging to Squire Penarly and available to the family at a modest rent because William laboured on his land. Ever since William had joined the forces Penarly had grumbled about a good cottage being rented by someone who wasn’t pulling his weight on the land, and he really needed it as shelter for a couple of land girls that were doing the work of that one good man.

“We’ll have to move,” wept Amy, “Penarly never wanted us to stay on in the cottage once dear William was called up. He made that much clear.”

“Poor Maureen,” sighed Helen.

“My own father perished in the Great War,” put in the Reverend Jack Pratchett, “he was killed on the Somme before I was born and was on his way to Heaven the same week that I found myself crawling into the world. I can’t remember anything about it, of course, but nevertheless I know what it’s like. The number of times I heard my own mother grumbling about the hardships she had to go through!”

“Has the squire said anything yet?” asked Helen.

Amy shook her head. “I haven’t told him, but I’ll have to. Then I guess I’ll have to find me and our Maureen a shelter somewhere.”

“You’re my sister, and you can stay here until you find somewhere permanent, can’t she Jack?” said Helen, almost defiantly.

Feeling cornered, Jack nodded. He would have suggested it anyway. As he’d said, he knew only too well the kind of troubles that erupted on the home front as a consequence of wartime fatalities. His own childhood may well have been immeasurably better had his mother been made a similar offer.

“It’s a big enough place,” he conceded, “and you’re welcome, Amy. You and Maureen. Our Wallace seems to think the world of your lass anyway. She’s certainly got a way with him! I’ll inform the Bishop. He’ll have to be told, but he won’t object. We all have to make sacrifices because of this damned war.”

Jack didn’t say words like damned very often. He was notorious for his clean living, clean speech and holy countenance. It was even mooted in the village that he must have required holy guidance when it came to the conception of Wallace. How, folk said, had he known what to do? Was there a hitherto unread chapter in the good book that dealt with fornication in an educational way so that he could read about where to put what? There was many a snigger in the Knight’s Arms when the news of a birth in the vicarage was publicised.

“Only until I find a place of my own,” said a grateful Amy, “I think I’ll tell our Maureen. She’ll want to know.”

“Go ahead,” advised Jack, “I’ve got a few words to say at the Pugh wedding tomorrow. Steve Pugh is getting married before he gets shipped out to wherever the young men are currently getting slaughtered by the score, and I hope and pray that his Audrey doesn’t lose her own young man before they have a chance to learn to love each other properly.”

He wandered into his office, grateful for the boyhood injury that meant he, himself, was deemed medically unfit for active service. He’d volunteered, of course, but been turned down flat because of that permanently twisted ankle of his that was evidenced by a pronounced limp and inability to walk or run any distance. Colin Beesall had tackled him during a game of football when he’d been ten, and Colin was big and strong whilst he had been physically quite feeble for his age, like many sons of the poorer classes. He rather suspected that it had been no accident but that the Beesall boy had deliberately gone in hard on one of the rare occasions when the ball was anywhere near him, and ruined his ankle as well as any chance for him of glory on the battlefield.

He felt no sense of glory when he learned that Colin Beesall had returned to England, minus one leg and both testicles.

Anyway, he had those few words to say and he wanted them to be of comfort to the newly-weds as well as offering hidden advice when he suggested that there’s enough danger in the world without brave men going out to seek for more. He knew what he meant even though they might not, but then his father had been killed during a volunteer excursion into no-man’s land in a lull between futile rushes over the top at the Somme.

Amy made her way into the front room where she could hear Maureen’s voice coo-cooing at Wallace, and she paused when she caught what she was sure was the baby’s reply as he shouted “Maury, maury, maury” in a voice filled with laughter and joy.

“That’s three words, then,” she thought, and smiled rather secretively to herself.

© Peter Rogerson 28.05.19