Wartime Brides Read Online Free PDF Page B

union jacks were waved ferociously as Charlotte’s car pulled up with Colin aboard. It had been her suggestion to give them a lift. Polly had also been encouraged to come while David and the children waited for her shoe to be retrieved from under the railway carriage.
    ‘It will give the children and their father time to get re-acquainted,’ Charlotte had said to Polly and Edna, with all the confidence of someone who knows how to handle people.
    Colin wound down the window and waved his hand just as vigorously as the many tight fists that were waving the flags.
    ‘Mum! Dad!’
    ‘Colin!’ His mother’s voice was shrill with emotion, her eyes brimming with tears.
    His father raised one hand and wiped behind his glasses with the other.
    Neither of them allowed their gaze to linger on the iron chair securely tied to the car’s rear. In mute understanding they looked at each other, mother biting her bottom lip for a moment, father’s Adam’s Apple rising and falling as he digested the truth. Then he sprang forward.
    ‘Son!’ he said as he swung the car door open.
    A confused murmur ran through the crowd of would-be revellers. Glassy-eyed they gathered around the tables, waiting for the word to be given that Colin was home and, despite his injuries, ready to enjoy himself.
    Edna clutched at her stomach as she saw the disbelief, then the hint of pity that crossed each parent’s face before they buried their feelings beneath an avalanche of determined joviality.
    ‘Son!’ said Colin’s father again, reaching to shake his hand before diving through the car door and enveloping his child in a hug desperate enough to break bones.
    For a moment she thought she saw Colin’s shoulders quiver and was convinced he was crying. But when his face reappeared, he was looking into his father’s eyes and laughing in the same way as he always had.
    ‘Hirohito couldn’t get rid of me that easily, father, and neither can you. Here I am. Home again, home again, jiggity jig!’
    Two men manhandled the wheelchair. Colin’s father lifted his son gently and set him into it. Edna wanted to cry at the pain of it all. But Colin wasn’t crying and neither would she. No one would, until they were alone and night had fallen and no one could see.
    ‘Well, let’s eat some real food!’ shouted Colin. ‘I’ve been waiting for this. Edna?’
    ‘I’m coming. Just a minute.’
    She let them take over. Relatives and neighbours pushed his chair towards the tables, where they all fell to hiding their pity and their tarnished joy at his return in the pleasure of over-eating, a rare phenomenon during the last few years. Colin’s father, a red-faced man with sandy hair and horn-rimmed glasses, had sacrificed one of the pullets he’d been rearing out back. The bird’s plump breast gleamed like gold and, just to confirm how special the occasion was, little frills of red, white and blue paper rustled around its naked ankles.
    ‘Wonderful!’ Colin shouted as a leg was ceremoniously torn off and handed to him.
    Edna turned to Charlotte and thanked her for the lift.
    ‘My pleasure,’ said Charlotte and affectionately patted Edna’s arm. ‘We’ve stuck together in war, now we’ve got to do the same in peace.’
    Handbag swinging on her arm, she marched off, entering the throng of people and talking to them as if she’d known them all her life. She was like an iron butterfly, floating among them with ease, yet all the time influencing them with words of wisdom that weren’t always called for.
    ‘She’s very nice,’ Edna said plaintively.
    ‘She’s bloody nosy,’ Polly added with far less amiability.
    ‘Still, it was kind of her to give me and Colin a lift.’
    ‘Are you still going to marry him?’ Polly asked.
    The question took Edna unawares. Her mouth dropped open. ‘Of course! Nothing’s changed,’ she blurted.
    Polly shrugged and cockily tilted her head sideways. ‘With him do you mean, or with you?’
    Edna felt her throat