Across the Mersey - Annie Groves [132]
‘You’re back.’
‘Got home half an hour ago. Wasn’t sure whether or not there’d be anyone in so I went round to the Salvage Corps’ HQ in Hatton Gardens to see if Dad was around, and luckily he was.’
Now Jean could see that Sam was standing in the hallway behind Luke, a look of fierce fatherly love and pride in his eyes. Fresh tears filled her own as she mentally said a thankful prayer for her son’s safe return home, and added another for the renewal of the father-and-son bond she had feared at one time had been destroyed for ever.
From upstairs the sound of one of the twins’ favourite records suddenly broke the silence.
Releasing Luke, Jean shook her head and exclaimed, ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake. I’ll go up and tell them to turn that off.’
‘No don’t, Mum,’ Luke urged her. There were shadows in his eyes and in the sharper lines of his face Jean could see the man he had now become. ‘There’s bin many a time these last few days when I’ve have given anything to know I’d hear them playing that gramophone of theirs again. Aye, and plenty of times when I thought I wouldn’t, an’ all.’ His voice broke, his hand shaking as he reached into his pocket for his cigarettes, turning away from her to light one. Because he did not want her to see what he was feeling?
Sam’s calm, ‘Get the kettle on, love; we’re both gasping,’ and the quick jerk of his head in Luke’s direction behind Luke’s back helped to steady her. This was a time when Luke needed his dad, perhaps even more than he needed her. There were things they could say to one another man to man, perhaps, that Luke would not want to say to her.
‘He’s had a bad time, hasn’t he?’ she asked Sam later when, after a bath and a change of clothes, Luke had insisted on going up to the hospital to try to see Grace and tell her that he was back safely.
‘I’ve got a couple of injured mates who might be up there, so I can see them as well,’ he had told them before he left.
‘Yes,’ Sam told her. ‘He’s told me a bit about it but not all of it, I reckon. That’s how it is for a man; there are some things that he can only talk about freely with them that was there with him. It’s a bit like that in the Corps sometimes, when we’ve had a bad ’un to deal with. According to what he’s told me they were given the order to retreat to Dunkirk and then told it was every man for himself. The Royal Engineers had built a bridge, which they held for them. Seemingly they only just got across it before the RAF blew it up to stop the Germans from making use of it. When they got close to Dunkirk, Luke said that all they could see was smoke from the fires because of the Germans bombing the oil depots. They were sent to a place called La Panne. Luke said if you’ve ever imagined hell then La Panne was it.’
Jean bit her lip. She knew how it would have affected Sam to think of his son exposed to such horror and danger, and him not being there with him to protect him.
‘There were men queuing everywhere: across the sand and right out into the water waiting to be taken off the beach, and all the time the queues were getting longer. Luke said he saw one captain threatening to shoot his own men when they broke ranks and tried to make for the sea instead of joining one of the lines. There was a beach master in charge of it all, but he didn’t have any control over the Germans, who were dive-bombing the men as they stood there.’
Jean had started to tremble. Even though Luke was safe, the pictures Sam was creating inside her head were sharply shocking and painful.
‘Three days it took them to reach Dunkirk, and then another two waiting to be taken off, all that time with no food and only the water they’d brought with them.’
Sam sighed. ‘Our Luke was only a lad when he left us, Jean, but he’s come back a man. They were dive-bombed by the Germans over and over again, and Luke said that you never knew when it was going to happen but when it did you didn’t dare leave the line in case you lost your place so you just had to throw yourself down in the sand where