would never leave him again.
From the kitchen window Kathleen saw, and her heart ached for him. ‘Oh, dear boy,’ she murmured. ‘Stay strong. The pain will surely ease, but maybe not the loneliness … ever.’ She knew all about that, since the loss of her own dear Michael.
Not wanting to intrude on Harry’s private grief, she waited a while. She had the pot of tea all ready on the tray, and a plate of biscuits for dunking. Now though, she poured the tea down the sink and slipped the biscuits back into the box.
Going to the sitting room she took out a bottle of the finest brandy from the bottom cupboard, collected two glasses from her best cabinet and, armed with her cure for all ills, she made her way to the kitchen window. Harry, she could see, had come through a very bad time, and was only now appearing to be more in control of his emotions.
‘Ah! There y’are, Harry Boy,’ she slowed her step, wisely allowing him time to recover. ‘When I couldn’t find you in the house, I thought you might be in the garden.’
‘Sorry, Kathleen, I should have told you where I’d be.’ Thankful for her timely intervention, he suspected she had seen him, and was grateful that she made no mention of it.
Falling heavily onto the bench, she gave out a cry. ‘Jaysus, Mary and Joseph! It strikes cold to the nether regions, an’ no mistake!’
Harry grinned. ‘Here – swap places. I’ve warmed my seat up.’ He spied the bottle of brandy and the glasses. ‘So, what’s all this then?’
‘A party in a bottle,’ she laughed. ‘It’s September tomorrow, me laddie. The night air is a bit thin an’ we don’t want to end up with raging pneumonia, now do we, eh?’ She brandished the bottle. ‘This little beauty will chase away the cold, while we sit and talk.’
Placing both glasses in his fist, she told him, ‘Hold the little divils still while I open this ’ere bottle.’
She twisted with all her might until suddenly the top was out and the brandy breathing. ‘Nothing better than a drop o’ the good stuff to warm the cockles,’ she promised, pouring out two good measures.
That done, she replaced the top and stood the bottle on the ground beside her. ‘Bottoms up, Harry me boy!’ Raising her glass, she toasted, ‘Here’s to you and that darlin’ boy of yours – and brighter days ahead for us all.’
Harry drank to that. ‘To all of us! And you’re right,’ he recalled her earlier remark, ‘we do need to talk … if you’re not too tired, that is?’
‘I don’t mind if we sit out here all night,’ she replied. ‘It may be a bit nippy, but the moon is lovely and we’ve got our friend the brandy.’ She settled back in her seat. ‘You and me need to clear the air … especially you, Harry Boy. A trouble shared is a trouble halved. Isn’t that what they say?’
For a time they sat together, two old friends, thrown closer together by life’s cruelties. They had always been easy in each other’s company, and though the two of them had long been separated by time and distance, right now, seated together on that familiar iron bench in that little garden, it was as though they had never been apart.
‘I missed you, Harry Boy.’ Kathleen did not look up. Instead she took a sip of her brandy. ‘For a long time I waited for you to get in touch, after the war ended, or maybe turn up at the door, but you never did. When the years passed and there was no word, I didn’t know what to think. I had no idea where you were, or what you were doing after you were demobbed.’
Harry explained, ‘I just kept going. I didn’t know or care where I would end up.’ When Sara came on the scene, he was little more than a tramp. ‘You can’t imagine how often I wanted to get in touch, but I was too ashamed.’
‘Don’t fret about it,’ she chided. ‘You’re home now, you and little Tom.’ She glanced up at him, her voice charged with emotion. ‘Judy waited for you, every day she was at the window, hoping you’d come striding down the street.’
There was a moment of quiet, before Harry answered in a choked voice, ‘I never meant to hurt her. You know that, don’t you, Kathleen?’
‘I do, yes.’
‘I did love her … so very much.’
‘I know that too.’
‘Do you think I was wrong in leaving like that?’
After carefully considering his question, Kathleen answered in her usual forthright manner. ‘Yes, if truth be told, I do think you were wrong. But who could blame you? There you were, just a lad, when all’s said and done, and it must have seemed like you’d got the world on your shoulders. You weren’t ready or equipped to deal with what Judy told you.’
Harry admitted it. ‘I was knocked for six. I had no idea how to deal with it.’
‘I’m not surprised. What Judy did was silly, plain wrong – and you were right to feel afraid and deceived. But she did it out of love for you, Harry Boy. Oh, don’t get me wrong! I’m not denying that she created a frightening situation, and that the two of youse desperately needed someone to turn to. Thankfully, I was here for Judy, but you made it impossible for me to be there for you, and to tell you the truth, it took me a long time to forgive you for running off to enlist like that.’
When he made no comment, she went on, ‘You ought never to have gone away like that, in the depth of night, without telling a soul where you were going.’
She cast her mind back, to the way he and Judy had gone into the garden to discuss their future, and how he came back into the house, pale as a sheet and without a word to say. She heard him pacing his room half the night. In the morning when she called to him, he was already gone.
‘Kathleen?’
‘Yes?’
‘Do you honestly think it might have been better if I’d stayed?’
The little woman shook her head. ‘No, I don’t think that,’ she told him. ‘In fact, to tell you the truth, taking everything into consideration, I don’t believe you had much of a choice. I dare say you did the only thing you could … in the circumstances.’
Harry recalled the moment that Judy had delivered her shocking revelation. ‘Judy lied to me. Time and again, she deliberately deceived me. If she truly loved me, how could she do that?’
Even now, he could not believe that it had gone so far. ‘Fourteen,’ he groaned. ‘She was only fourteen! Why did she let me go on believing she was sixteen! Didn’t she realise I could have been sent to prison?’
That night, when Judy had confided in her, the very same thought had entered Kathleen’s mind. ‘I can’t condone what Judy did,’ she conceded, ‘but she loved you, Harry. She was obviously carried away by her feelings for you, and then it was too late to tell you she wasn’t old enough for a full relationship.’
‘If only she’d told me earlier, we could have put it all on a different footing. I loved her enough to wait until she was older. But she led me to believe that everything was all right and I, like a damned fool, swallowed every word she said.’ He shook his head. ‘It wasn’t just that she lied about her age,’ he confided. ‘That was bad enough, but the other thing …’
