BAND OF GOLD & OTHER SHORT STORIES
by
Terence Gibbons
Contents:
Band of Gold
The Stowaway
A Chunk of Nothing
A Grave Error
After the Storm
Agatha’s Story
Just Desserts
Let Sleeping Dogs Lie
Monday Morning
Sister Catharine
Snow White
The Falklands Invasion
The Green Door
The Night of the Grey
Lady
The Pendle Cup
The Prowler
The Round Mirror
Band of Gold
The
Second World War had finally ended. Sam had returned, after spending several
painful months in a military hospital in France, to a so-called land fit for
heroes. Not that Sam had done anything brave, or of great distinction, during
the war years. He had donated four prime years of his life, and his healthy
body, fighting to maintain the freedom the Nazis had threatened. He had gained
very little in those years and lost a great deal more.
He
shuffled painfully through the snow, along streets which had formerly been
associated with happy times. Those same streets were now depressing with great
gaps in them where German bombs had ruined the geometry of the neat straight
rows of sham-fours. When he reached the remains of one terrace he paused with a
lump forming in his throat. He had to find this place. Something inside him had
driven him here to where he and his wife Eileen had set up home at the outbreak
of the war, the humble beginnings for their married life together. Now it was
difficult to make out the once prim houses with their small gardens at the
front. Only two remained upright, and both were burned out carcasses.
A
solitary workman was busy among the rubble clearing hazards to allow the main
builders to get in. Sam approached him slowly, his artificial leg leaving an
unnatural trail in the powdery snow. The workman looked up.
“Howd’y’do?”
“Howd’y’do?”
Sam returned, not for the first time thinking what a strange word it was. It
was a question that folk always answered with the same question. The workman
slowly looked around him, his lips pursed.
“Right
mess ain’t it?”
“Yeah,”
Sam whispered as he too looked around at the real destruction to his life,
recognising the plots of those neighbours he’d had little time to get to know
before he left to fight.
“Are you
from round here?”
Sam
nodded, fighting the hard lump that swelled to choke him. “Once I was. That was
my house where you’re standing now.”
“Oh. Er.
Sorry mate.” The workman looked around him again but this time his eyes were
seeing things how they had been that fateful night. “It were a real bad night
that one. Terrible. The whole terrace was gutted. Everyone on that side bought
it. And here a young woman... Oh... That’d be...”
“My wife.”
Both men
fell into an awkward silence that embarrassed each for his own reasons: Sam
because he found it hard to talk about his loss; the other because he felt too
much sympathy and sometimes it didn’t do to show it. Folk were funny about
people feeling sorry for them. He had been a part of the team that had fought
the fire that night and had recovered the charred bodies from the rubble. It
had been bad that night. They all hated the incendiaries, probably more than
the doodle-bugs, certainly more than the ordinary bombs. They should all have
been confined to military or industrial targets not the homes of civilians.
Sam had
been informed while he was in the French hospital. It had been tough enough
losing his leg but the news of his wife’s death had almost finished him; only
the skills of the nurses had given him the will to live on.
The
workman cast sidelong glances at Sam’s back as the crippled soldier picked his
way back to the street. Sam had long since abandoned his longing to bridge the
gap left by the war. His only brother had been killed at Dunkirk serving with
the East Yorkshire Regiment. Now he had no one. Totally alone in the world he
shrugged his greatcoat against the cold biting wind feeling somehow akin to the
buildings on each side of the street - broken and war-torn.
Walking
aimlessly on, his head bowed against the elements, his eyes were attracted by
something that glittered in the thin covering of snow on the pavement. Stooping
awkwardly he retrieved the wedding ring and wiped it clean on his sleeve. He
blew the small plug of snow from its centre before carefully turning it round,
searching for an inscription. There was nothing.
It was a
simple, plain band of gold with nothing to distinguish it from millions of
others that had been sold during those turbulent years. He had never been
dishonest in his life but then he had never been in the dire straits he now
found himself in. He knew he should hand it in at the police station on Gordon
Street but the rumble in his stomach made him continue in the direction of the
Boulevard then on to Hessle Road. It was his intention to pawn it thereby
providing himself with a few pounds to tide him over for a while.
Hessle
Road was busy with people getting on with life. It suddenly filled him with
pride in his community and some shame at himself; that they could laugh as
though the war had never happened was a tribute to their tenacity. Or was he
just bitter in himself? Was that why there was such a marked contrast between
them and him? He found himself looking intently into the faces of passers-by,
trying to make out if any of them had suffered anything like the losses he had.
Nothing showed on their faces but the determination to get on with life, to
keep personal grief hidden from the common eye.
Slowly a
change came over him after months of brooding and self-pity. His heart had
ached at the thought of Eileen’s funeral. In the mix up of administration he
had not learned of it until weeks afterwards and he wondered if their
neighbours had attended. She also had no living relatives and Sam had been
tortured by the thought of her not getting a good send off. Now, as he looked
at the people around him, that fear was dispelled. They were a community; people
bound to each other by a common suffering; they would always look out for each
other. He smiled within himself, content that his wife had not gone to the
grave like a pauper.
As he
trudged along his cold fingers toyed with the small change in his pocket;
perhaps now he could afford the luxury of a packet of cigarettes. As a light
sprinkling of snow began to fall he turned into a small shop but the doorway
was blocked by a stout woman and a tribe of kids making their noisy exit.
Stepping back he allowed them to pass. It was only then that the postcard, in a
rack in the window, caught his eye:
Wedding Ring
Lost in the Gordon Street area
Reward offered for its return
He felt a
pang of conscience as he read it, then beamed when he realised that the crime
of theft had only as yet been committed in his mind. He went into the shop and
still made his purchase then, once outside again, made a mental note of the
address on the card. As he inhaled on the cigarette he felt peeved that the
card bore no name.
When you go
to the house of someone you’ve never met it never seems so bad if you at least
know their name. With a marked spring in his step he set off in the direction
of Wassand Street. This took him past the pawn shop where he smiled to himself;
at least he found himself in a position to do something to bring a little
sunshine into somebody’s life.
Wassand
Street had also taken a hammering from the bombers but it made itself evident
only in the ragged buildings; the people, typical of their kind, had returned
to a kind of normality. Boys kicked an old ball; girls gathered in groups
skipping with an old length of rope.
Finding
the house he hesitated before knocking. He had a feeling of isolation similar
to the sensation he had experienced in France when he had regained
consciousness among the rubble of that farmhouse. He was alone with the rest of
the patrol killed. He knew they were all dead because, despite his horrific
injuries, he had dragged each one out, one by one, into the yard.
In the
foot of his artificial leg he felt the pain all over again as he recalled
dragging himself out on to the road where he could be found. When he was found
they all said he’d been lucky; he wasn’t so sure. Death might have been better
than this. He grimaced at the trick his mind and memory played on him, stamping
the leg to drive the phantom pain away.
He
rattled the letterbox. After a few moments the door was opened by an old woman
wearing a worn grey dress covered by a flowered apron. Her swollen feet were
thrust into a pair of hand-knitted slippers.
"Yes?"
"I’ve
come about the lost ring."
The old
woman’s face lit up causing Sam to glow inside. "Eh lad, you’d better come
in. You look nithered." She moved aside allowing him to pass her in the
narrow passage. Closing the door she squeezed her bulk by him and waddled
towards a door leading to the back of the house.
Sam
followed, conscious that he had not wiped his feet, afraid that he might be
leaving a trail of slushy snow on the scrubbed floor. The strong smell of lilac
polish was evidence enough that it was freshly cleaned. The aroma of food
cooking tormented his empty stomach until it growled louder.
In the
small kitchen a young woman stood working at the sink with her back to them.
“Lad here
has found your ring,” the old woman said in a voice that bubbled. The young
woman turned, her gasp muffled by her hand which shot to her mouth.
“Sam!”
“Eilie?”
“I
thought you was...”
The old
woman looked from one to the other then back again, her face mimicking her
confused thoughts.
“Is this
your Sam?”
Eileen
staggered to a chair, shaking and fighting the sobs that choked her. Sam almost
leapt across the room while through the shock came the old woman’s voice. “You were
reported missing, believed dead, Sam. Eileen still has the telegram.”
Sam allowed
this to penetrate his confusion.
“Then
who...who was the woman they found in our house?”
“Oh Sam,”
Eileen wept, “that was Ada from where I worked. Her house was bombed so she
came to live with me. I was on the night shift when our house got hit. At first
they thought it was me.”
Sam
thought of how he had searched in vain for her grave. He had looked so hard,
trudging every cemetery in town. Now he knew why he couldn’t find it.
“But they
thought it was you. They told me it was you,” Sam gasped.
“I didn’t
know you was alive Sam. When the mix-up was sorted out...I didn’t know. There
was the telegram...Oh Sam. What you must have been through.”
He took
her shaking hands in his and smiled the first real smile for many months. “Maybe
it was worth it for this moment.” He reached into his pocket and withdrew the
ring. Slowly he slipped it on to her finger which he noticed was much thinner
than when he had first placed it there.
“My God,
Sam. What if you hadn’t found it? What if somebody else had found it? How far
can coincidence go?”
“The day
I gave you this ring we made a promise, remember? ‘Till death us do part. And
we ain’t dead yet.”
As they held each other close, both lost in their
reunion, the old woman wept silently into her immaculate apron.This book can be downloaded here
