Across the Mersey - Annie Groves [49]
‘A man? You’re a fool, that’s what you are,’ Sam told him. ‘I’d thought you’d got more about you than to listen to a lot of daft lads doing a bit of name-calling. I thought you’d got a bit of sense, but you haven’t. You’re a ruddy fool, Luke.’
‘I might be a fool but at least I can hold my head up now.’
Again that unfamiliar look crossed Sam’s face. He shook his head as though trying to shake it away, like a man coming up for air from deep water.
‘Aye, for as long as you can keep it on your shoulders.’
‘Sam!’ Now it was Jean’s turn to feel her face drain of colour and her heart start to thump uncomfortably fast.
‘What do you want me to say? That I think he’s done the right thing? Well, I don’t.’
Beneath Sam’s bitterness Jean could sense his pain, but she could also tell that Luke couldn’t see that. His face was bleak with misery and anger.
They’d both raised their voices and were facing one another like enemies, these two who were so alike and whom she loved so very much. It was almost more than she could bear.
She looked at Grace. ‘Go upstairs and sit with the twins, will you, love? They’ll be wondering what’s going on.’
As soon as the door had closed behind Grace, Jean tried to intervene.
‘Luke’s only done what he thinks is right, Sam.’ She put her hand on Sam’s arm but he shook it off. She had never seen him so angry, Jean admitted, her heart sinking. For all that Sam had an easygoing nature, he had a streak of stubbornness in him when it came to what he believed to be right. In Sam’s eyes, by defying him and enlisting, Luke had shown that he didn’t value or respect his father’s advice, and Jean knew that Sam would find that very hard to take.
‘Well, you’ve made your bed now, and you’ll just have to lie in it,’ Sam told Luke. ‘I hope you’re proud of yourself, because I’m certainly not. Like I’ve said, you’re a ruddy fool, and after all I’ve said to you, all I’ve done to try to get you into the Corps.’
‘The Salvage Corps. That’s all that matters to you, isn’t it? You never even asked me what I wanted to do, or even if I wanted to be apprenticed as an electrician. No, all you could think about was what you wanted. Well, now I’ve done what I want. I’m not a kid, Dad, I’m a man, and if you don’t like that then too bad.’
This was war, Jean recognised: this horrible cruel merciless tearing apart of family ties and loyalties. This senseless destruction and pain.
Luke was opening the back door, whilst Sam ignored him.
Alarm filled Jean. ‘Luke, what are you doing? Where are you going?’
‘I’m not staying here. Not now. I’ve got a couple of mates I can stay with. We joined up together.’
‘Luke,’ Jean protested. ‘Sam, stop him…’
‘Like he just told you, he’s a man now, so let him go and be one.’
Couldn’t Sam see the sheen of tears in Luke’s eyes? Didn’t he realise what he was doing or what was happening? Luke, their son, was about to go and fight a war. They may never see him again. How could Sam let that happen with so many cruel words still lying between them?
For the first time in the whole of their time together Jean found that she felt not love for her husband but something that felt much more like bitterness and anger.
She ran out after Luke, ignoring Sam’s command to ‘Let him go’, catching up with him at the gate and grabbing hold of his arm, her tears rolling down her face.
‘I’m sorry, Mum, but I had to do it,’ he told her gruffly.
And then he was gone, walking away from her as straight-backed as though he was already in uniform and marching.
She was shaking from head to foot when she walked back into the now empty kitchen. She could hear the girls coming downstairs. They came into the kitchen, Grace shepherding the twins in front of her. For once they were quiet, holding on to one another, their eyes round and stark with confusion and pain.
‘We heard Luke leave,’ Grace told her mother.
Jean couldn’t trust herself to speak.
‘Where’s Dad?’ Grace asked.
‘I don’t know.’ Nor did Jean feel as though she cared, she recognised. Anger and pain welled up inside