Wives at War by Jessica Stirling Page B

and the kids; Coney Island, 1928. Girls, three of them, in summer dresses, with a young boy in short trousers sitting cross-legged on a pavement at their feet. Another girl with a shawl over her head, raindrops beaded on the fringe of the shawl, a tear, or a raindrop, clinging to her cheek.
    Two kids, boy and girl, posed informally with a tall guy in navy uniform.
    Two kids whom she recognised.
    Stuart and Ishbel: Polly’s children.
    Babs held the picture to the light, scanning it for clues as to where and when it had been taken. Nothing in the background but a white picket fence and a wall of shrubs. A bright day, the children squinting into the light. Older than she remembered them, more casually dressed: Americanised. She wondered about the naval officer, who might, she thought, be Christy’s brother. She riffled through the rest of the photographs, found a shot of men and women laughing in the doorway of a tall building; three men in baggy suits leaning on the rail of a ferryboat; another girl, white-blonde and leggy in a torn dress, standing at a field gate with a dog lying at her feet; then one of six or eight people at a table in a nightclub; then a solitary shot of Christy in the reefer jacket and familiar sweater seated on a bollard against a background of misty skyscrapers. There were no more pictures of Polly’s children, though.
    Tucked into a corner of the envelope was a letter pencilled on a page torn from a notebook in a language Babs could not decipher. It wasn’t French or Italian but it might, she thought, be German.
    It was signed by someone called ‘Ewa’.
    Christy Cameron was not what Babs had imagined him to be. What she had mistaken for charm was in fact character, far too much character for her to cope with. The snapshots and the letter, to say nothing of six dozen French letters, gave him substance, a shape that she could not define. She wondered what he was doing here; not his purpose, which might be explained in due course, but his proximity. How could she possibly be attracted to a man who had so much more substance than she had?
    She put all the stuff back into the bag, returned the bags to the top of the wardrobe then went into the living room and poured herself a drink.
    Seated in Jackie’s armchair before the embers of the fire, her plump, competent fingers trembled slightly as she brought the glass to her lips. At that moment she was afraid of her Yankee lodger and the wealth of suffering and experience that he had brought into her life, a wealth of suffering and experience that she had no wish to share.
    At midnight she went to bed.
    *   *   *
    It was after midnight before Kenny got home. One of the ‘businessmen’ under lock and key in Greenock Prison had shown signs of cracking under interrogation and he had stayed on to press his advantage.
    Mr McVicar was waiting for him at the close mouth to tell him that Rosie had collapsed at work and had been taken to Redlands Hospital. Panic and annoyance took possession of Kenny’s reason. How could he possibly juggle a sick wife and the demands of the job? If Fiona had been home there wouldn’t have been a problem, but Fiona was far away. He would have to rely on his mother-in-law. He ran out into the street and flagged down a taxi.
    He reached Redlands at one o’clock in the morning.
    Two soon-to-be fathers, one of them a soldier, were pacing up and down the corridor, smoking furiously. There was a commotion outside the delivery room where some sort of crisis demanded the full attention of midwives and doctors. He heard a woman scream, shrill as a copper’s whistle, as he climbed the staircase to Rosie’s ward.
    The ward sister was manifestly reluctant to let him enter but, in view of his occupation, granted him five minutes at his wife’s bedside.
    Rosie was asleep.
    He spoke to her very softly.
    He touched her hand. He brushed hair from her damp brow. He straightened