6. A Marriage Proposal

A Chapter by Peter Rogerson

A WIDOW WOMAN Part 6

The first Christmas without George was over and done with, and nobody could have been more grateful than Jane.

It wasn’t that things had gone any worse than they might have done with her late husband if he were still alive. After all, things in the country were bad anyway. There had been that damned war, and for some reason recovery from it seemed to go on for ever. But never mind that. It was 1947 and she’d make the best of a bad job, for the sake of the kids. There had been a few fun and games on the wireless to entertain them and she’d done miracles with the food that she could afford.

And a new year was here.

Gwennie had come round. Melvin had been invited, but he’d reluctantly turned it down. Something about a reunion with his comrades from the first war … those that had survived, that is. Strange, thought Jane, how he wanted to relive the worst part of his life time and time again in smoky bars and with sad old songs whilst displaying medals and their ribbons, with pride.

Betty and Roger were in bed. New years were of no interest to them and anyway Jane wanted to have a party for two, she and her best ever friend Gwennie. And that’s how she looked on things: Roger had been her husband and father of her children and for too short a time provider of meat on the table, but he had never been a proper friend in the way Gwennie was.

He had been a man and probably that was his problem. Nobody, she often concluded, can understand a woman and her problems like another woman.

“We were friends once,” Jane told Gwennie, not meaning that they weren’t still friends, but times and situations had changed. There were two youngsters upstairs in their beds as testament to that.

“Remember some of the trips me made on our bikes?” sighed Gwennie, “the things we saw, the adventures we had when the sun was hot and the skies were blue?”

“If being chased by a herd of cows out of a field was an adventure!” laughed Jane, “who’d have thought they could so take against us. After all, they had a huge field and we only wanted a teensy corner of it!”

“Maybe they’d had a bad experience with other campers?” suggested Gwennie, “you know how rowdy some lads can get when they think there’s nobody about to put them in order?”

“But we escaped and took our tent to another field, and spent a peaceful half hour chatting away before you went to sleep on me!” laughed Jane.

“Not actually on you!” protested Gwennie, “you’d have been a darned sight too lumpy to be the kind of pillow I’d have chosen!”

“I meant, with me half way though telling you something only to be interrupted by your snoring, and I’m sure it must have been important!”

“I never snored in my life!”

“Yes you did, then. I thought one of the cows had come back!” giggled Jane, “but it was your nose!”

“They were good days, though,” sighed Gwennie, “drinking water from that stream . Do you remember? We thought it was so lovely, water from a spring, until you asked if it was where the farm animals peed!”

“But there weren’t any cows in that field…”

“And that village shop. The one we went to for bread, and the woman looked at us as if we had no right to be in her shop! We were strangers and hers was a local shop!”

“And her bread was stale.”

“What would you give to do it all again?” asked Gwennie.

“We’re getting too long in the tooth for that kind of adventure, Jane!”

Gwennie frowned, then shook her head. “I feel like I always felt,” she said, “the real joy of being with a true friend and you, my love, are a true friend. I’ve never known one truer, and that’s a fact.”

“Me too,” sighed Jane, “life’s thrown us some odd balls, so to speak, me and my George and his blasted cigarettes and you and Melvin with is gammy leg. And there are my two angels upstairs, sleeping the sleep of the innocent, not knowing what tomorrow might hold for them. There might be another war… men seem to like wars and it doesn’t seem to matter how many people get hurt as long as self-appointed colonels can play the leader and order their troops around the battlefield.”

“Another weekend under canvas… do you see that ever happening?” asked Gwennie, “I mean, just the two of us. You and me, like in the good old times.”

“It breaks my heart when you talk like this,” whispered Jane, “because that’s exactly what they were: good old times, and I hope they’re not gone for good but I’m very afraid they might be.”

“Melvin can’t,” sighed Gwennie, “but then, he never could. That leaves just you and me, Jane.”

“And Betty and Roger,” reminded Jane.

“Maybe, when they’re a little bit older?”

“You mean, with us? We’d need a second tent! And then don’t forget they’re a boy and a girl. They share a bedroom at the moment, but they won’t for much longer. What would people say?”

“Mummy…”

They hadn’t noticed the sound of footsteps on the stairs until Roger pushed the door open and stood there in his pyjamas, hair tousled, face serious.

“What is it dear? Why aren’t you asleep?” asked Jane, standing up.

“I heard talking…” said the boy quietly, “Betty’s asleep but I woke up.”

“What is it?”

“You were saying, you and Auntie Mildred, that you’re going off in a tent. What about me and Betty? Who’ll look after us?”

Jane smiled and even managed a little giggle.

“Don’t you worry your head about that!” she said, “we’d never leave you, not in a thousand years!”

“So you’re not going off in your tent, mummy?”

“Of course not! We were just remembering the olden days, before you were born, before the war, when things were different.”

“Was daddy there then?” asked Roger.

Jane shook her head. “It was before he came to our town,” she said, “before he left his old home a long way away.”

“And before he died…”

Jane nodded, not wanting to give voice to her reply.

“Before then,” she whispered after a long pause.

“Mummy, I love you,” said Roger, and then, as if plucking up courage, “mummy, do you know what I’m going to do when I grow up?”

“Be tall and strong?” suggested Jane, but he shook his head.

“Besides that, I’m going to marry you, mummy, because I love you and always want to be with you…”

“How sweet,” whispered Gwennie.

“Oh, Roger, darling,” sighed Jane, and she fought against the tears that formed in her eyes as she stared at the serious and honest face of her wonderful young son.