The Seamstress & The Sailor - Chapter Twenty Four
Tom Bennett x OFC
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Warnings (this chapter in bold): Strong Language, Angst, Smut, Violence, Depictions of War, Mentions of Death, Depictions of PTSD, Injury Detail, Era typical Sexism, Era typical Homophobia, Mentions of Sexual Assault, Mentions of Domestic Abuse (very brief), Depictions of Reproductive Health, Suicidal Thoughts, World on Fire Spoilers.
Words: 5.9K
Notes: Have I been writing this since May and avoiding it? Maybe. Thanks to those who've stuck with me, 2024 has been tough and it means so much.
This chapter contains depictions of reproductive health, including miscarriage and post-natal depression, and allusions to suicide that are mentioned in the canon. Please read with care.
And @arcielee? Robina's in this one...
The crying had stopped.
Bess checked the watch attached to her apron. Ten thirty. By midnight she’d be back at the flat, listening to the wireless in bed with Tom. For now, she listened.
The ward was quiet. Long after the groans of pain and bawdy jokes died, it was always the quiet sobs of war-shattered men that remained. Now, the green-tiled halls of the infirmary were silent but for the clack of heels in a distant corridor and the soft snores of the patients around her.
She was stationed at the bedside of a soldier from St Helen’s. He was 22, the same age as Albie, were he alive. That might have been the reason she was sat beside him at the late hour. Bess could have been folding linens for the next rotation, or having a cup of hot cocoa and a cigarette with Helen and Joan while gossiping about the matron or the boarding mistress. But no, she was sat in the silent ward, the coppery smell of blood and stringent antiseptic filling her nostrils as she fixed the edge of the poor soldier’s handkerchief.
She’d washed the bloodstains out as best she could, and darned the hole that the bullet went through, but it was a tatty old thing. Still, the moment the soldier heard she could sew, he insisted that Bess fix it.
In the low light of the paraffin lamp, Bess tied off her thread and admired her handiwork. Good as new. Sort of. She ran her hands of the darning and along the hem, checking her needlework, then traced the red initials embroidered in one corner. F.E.
“Florence,” his soft voice didn’t make Bess jump. With the city being bombed all around them it would take more to make any Mancunian jump these days.
Bess looked up from the cotton to the man’s face. He was gazing at the letters she traced. “She your sweetheart?” She placed the handkerchief in his lap, and he too ran a finger over the initials.
“Yeah,” he said bashfully. “Went to school together. Only got the courage to ask her when I got my papers.” Bess thought of her and Tom, the boyish looks he used to give her in the school corridor when he thought no-one was watching. “What about you, miss? Got a sweetheart?”
Bess smiled wryly. “I do, though I wouldn’t call him a sweetheart. More of a heartbreaker.”
“Jack the lad, is he?”
“Ay,” Bess inadvertently touched her apron pocket. The pocket wherein a photograph of Tom lay. “But he’s a good man, deep down.”
The solider smiled and the two sat in silence for a while. When Bess checked her watch and saw her shift was ending, she stood and beckoned the soldier lean forward so that she may lay down his pillows.
“Get some rest, now. Sleep’s the best healer.”
“If I get home,” the soldier spoke as though he hadn’t heard her. “I’m gonna ask her to marry me. I’ll not be sent back like this.” He gestured to the sling that wrapped about the remainder of his arm.
“When you get home.” Bess corrected him. He smiled and settled in his cot as Bess turned down the lamp and wished him goodnight.
Were it the old days, before the war, the clock on the infirmary tower would have chimed eleven. Now, the outside world was muffled by the dark blackouts. It could have been dawn, for all she knew.
Bess walked the lonely corridors, only occasionally passing a fellow nurse or doctor; taking odd hours at the factory meant that very few others worked the same hours at the hospital as she and, knowing that she wouldn’t likely see them for the next few days, Bess made her way towards the nurse’s lounge, and Helen and Joan.
Joan, constantly at loggerheads with Sister Stern, asked for a rotation on the convalescence ward two weeks ago. Now she spent her time welcoming soldiers to the hospital and treating them as soon as they came through the infirmary doors. With her dark hair always neatly set and lips rouged, the soldiers loved her. She looked like one of the girls from their cigarette cards. Helen, on the other hand, was now working on what remained of the labour ward. The oldest of nine siblings, Sister Stern saw her expertise fit best with the soon-to-be mothers. The ward had decreased drastically since the war began, its east wing turned into a ward for the returning wounded, but they still had their fare share of pregnancies. It seemed to come in bouts. Bess, Helen and Joan liked to guess which boat the lady’s husbands belonged to. Tracing back nine months, the three nurses could pinpoint the exact ship that had fathered the entire labour unit.
When Bess found Helen, she was sat by the cot of a small babe, knitting some blue socks.
“He was a little early, poor dear,” Helen said, looking at the small baby. “Told his mam I’d make him some woollens. So tiny, it’ll only take me the best part of an hour to make a whole set.” She held up the little mittens she’d already completed and Bess smiled.
“I’m off,” she whispered. “Got time to see Joan?”
“Always,” Helen placed her knitting in her apron pocket and indicated to another nurse that she was leaving. Looping her arm through Bess’ and leading her from the ward, she whispered slyly in her ear; “Joan’s got a Yank in her wing. Gorgeous, he is. Wouldn’t mind a quick peak, you know, for morale.”
The convalescence wing was quiet when they arrived, just like the rest of the hospital. A doctor was moving between the beds, checking the notes of each patient and speaking to a matron and nurse. It was when he moved out of the way that Bess saw it was Joan and Sister Stern. When Helen caught Joan’s eye, she rolled them and excused herself from the others.
“Moved wards to get away from the old bat, and she’s been put on the same rotation.” All three girls looked at the matron. She was looking at the young doctor with disdain, her hooked nose raised as if avoiding a bad smell.
“Bess is off and I’m almost finished,” Helen said. “Where’s the Yank?”
Joan tutted. “Robert,” she corrected. “He’s by the window-” Helen rushed over before Joan could finish. Bess giggled as Joan rolled her eyes once more, and the pair followed quietly behind their friend. She was gazing down at the sleeping man, fiddling with the knitted socks in her pocket.
“See? Isn’t he beautiful?” Helen whispered to Bess. She looked down at him, and supposed beautiful was the right word. A curl of brown hair fell across his brow, his thick eyelashes fluttering slightly in his sleep. His mouth moved too, dark pink lips pouting as he set his broad jaw.
“He’s been having a nightmares,” Joan whispered. “They all have.” The three girls were silent a while, watching the man sadly. “Now come way, stop being a creep.”
“I wonder if he has a sweetheart?” Helen said hopefully.
“A man like that is sure to have hundreds,” Joan nudged her light-heartedly. Helen took the socks from her pocket and gazed at them.
“And if he doesn’t,” Bess teased. “You can knit some baby clothes of your ow-”
She stopped with a gasp.
Pain, unlike any she had known, ripped through her stomach like lightning. Doubled over, Bess cried out, hurriedly stifling the sound with her mouth. The American stirred in his bed as she sank to her knees, gripping the metal bedframe. Joan was beside her in an instant.
“Bess?”
“What is it, Bess?”
She couldn’t speak. Someone had taken a hot poker and twisted it through her. Over and over, the searing pain exploded. White lights burst in front of Bess’ eyes and she screwed them shut.
“What on earth is going on here?” Sister Stern hissed, storming across the ward to where Helen and Joan were crouched on the ground. She looked down at Bess struggling on the floor, her hands clutching digging into her stomach. Bess was a good girl, quiet and stoic. If something reduced her to writhing like a wounded beast, it was serious.
“Girls, fetch a bed.” Stern ordered, and Joan and Helen hurried away. “Doctor,” the young man approached. “She needs to be seen at once.”
Bess curled onto her side, knees pulled up to her chest and reached out for Sister Stern. “I can’t see,” she whispered weakly, staring ahead, wide-eyed. The pain was blinding, creeping up her back and turning her spine rigid. Sister Stern watched with horror as the uniform by Bess’ bottom turned dark. Scooping her into her arms, the matron attempted to right Bess, but it was as if a film had jammed in the reel. She wouldn’t move. “I can’t,” Bess said again.
“Yes you can,” Sister Stern said firmly. It was at this moment that Joan and Helen burst through the doors with an empty trolley. Soldiers were beginning to wake at the commotion, nurses bustling about trying to settle them back into bed. With great effort, Joan, Helen, Sister Stern and the doctor dragged Bess onto the trolley and raced from the ward.
Everything stilled. The soldiers went back to sleep. Beyond the ward doors, the squeak of the trolley and Bess’ faint groans faded in the corridor. The nurses retreated. One made her way towards the American soldier’s bed with a mop and began clearing the small puddle of blood that remained on the green-tiled floor.
It was the kind of morning Tom loved as a child. The kind of day when his parents would send him out the front door with a spam sandwich wrapped in brown paper, an apple in his pocket and the promise that he would be back by teatime. A light wind futtered through the yew tree and somewhere, Tom could hear the scrape, scrape, scrape of Father Michael’s rake. It couldn’t be more starkly different to the day before.
He'd left Bess in bed the previous morning and gone to the victualling office to collect his papers smelling of tobacco and sex. After their argument about Queenie, his display at the dance and everything in between, Tom had been determined to put into practice Lois’ advice: “actions, not words.”
His lack of sleep that night had not been due to nightmares, or the threat of torpedoes. It was the sound of Bess’ rapturous moans and mewling that had kept him awake. Once he’d dragged himself down the length of her body and seen the slick of anticipation between her plush legs, not even Hitler himself could have torn him away.
Stubborn, arrogant and never one to do anything by halves, Tom didn’t stop until Bess was a quivering mess beneath him. He’d lapped at her sex, feasting on her swollen lips until she shook. Worked his fingers within her deftly and attentively until she pushed him away. He’d taken her on the bed, watching from below as he forced her hips down onto him with violent abandon. Tom even took her in the kitchen, legs braced against the counter as he brought hers about his shoulders. When at last he released her, watching the way he spilled out of her as she slumped against the bedroom floor, he’d lit a cigarette, picked her up by the waist in a one-armed lift and deposited her on the bed. He could see the lust light in her eyes once more as she looked at him stood before her; naked, cock still stood proud, cigarette dangling roguishly from his lips.
“You want more, my girl?” he flashed her a wicked smile and watched as she swooned.
“Yes,” Bess laughed breathily. “But I think I’ll break.”
Tom all but skipped towards the port master when he arrived at the dockyard. If there was a ship ready for him to board, and his luck finally ran out, it would be with images of Bess fucking him that saw him into whatever world awaited beyond the war.
A day later, having not seen Bess since he left her in bed, Tom was hunched in front of his mother’s grave, placing the remaining belongings of his father to rest. Something stirred behind him. The turning of wheels on the gravel and sad sniffle gave away who it was. Lois. Vera in the pram.
Tom sighed. In his hands, he held a picture frame. Through the shattered glass, his father looked back up at him. His eyes, so like his own. His quiet sadness, so like Lois’. Tenderly, Tom wrapped the photograph with his father’s glasses, pocket watch and wedding ring within a handkerchief. The sight of the wedding ring made a lump form in his throat and he swallowed thickly.
“Next leave I get,” he began, knowing Lois was listening behind him. “We’ll get a stonemason to put dad’s name under mum’s.” He waited for his sister to speak, but she said nothing. “‘Marie Bennett and Douglas Bennet’. Second billing.”
“‘S’what he would have wanted,” Lois said at last and he smiled sadly.
Tom placed his last offering, a bottle of sherry, next to the grave alongside the flowers left for their mother and the bundle of broken belongings. “They you are dad. Happy now? Pacifist proves his point by getting killed by Hitler. Beauty.” He kissed his teeth sarcastically and stood, wiping dirt from the knees of his uniform. Lois watched him but still she barely moved. The bandage from her adventures with ambulances was still wrapped about her head, and still, Tom tried not to laugh at it.
“I’ve got to go,” Lois said, looking at neither him nor her daughter.
“Me too. Got a date with a battleship,” Tom shouldered his kit bag wearily. “Bess is meeting me at the dock-”
“I mean I’ve got to get away. From here,” Lois shuffled on her feet agitatedly and Tom looked down at her.
“You- you can’t do that, Lois.” Panic was creeping up his spine. Like Bess when he arrived home, and Douglas when he left, Lois’s prematurely aged face wore a look of despondence. “You’re all I’ve got. We’re all we’ve got now-” Tom’s voice trembled and at once his fierce older sister returned.
“That’s not true,” she continued quickly before he could interrupt. “You’ve got Bess, the rest of the Vaughns. Vera, Jan-”
“You know what I mean, Lois.” Tom said hotly. You’re the only family I’ve got. What if I come back and you’re gone too. Who will I be without you?
“I wanted to die in that house.” The bluntness with which she said these words stopped Tom dead. He stared at her and sensing his fear, Lois carried on. “When it started coming down, I didn’t run. I waited. I just wanted it to kill me.”
As his sister spoke, Tom looked back at his parents’ graves. What if he came back needing to bury Lois too? He’d have to carve the names into the stone himself.
“I need to get out of Longsight, Tom. Just like you.” And with that, she flung her arms around his shoulders, whispered that she would write to Bess in the case she needed to relay any messages, and marched the pram from the graveyard.
“I’m sorry I’m late, Mrs Chase,” Bess hurried through the large door of the country house, shedding her raincoat and umbrella.
Robina eyed her appraisingly. “Not on your bike today, Ms Vaughn?” She watched as Bess tidied her frizzy hair and, deciding Bess’ appearance would do, trotted towards the drawing room.
Bess hurried after her, tailoring kit tucked under one arm. “Not today.” She pulled self-consciously at her wide slacks and followed Mrs Chase into the cosy room. In truth, she was still store from the previous night and could have done with the day off but, having skipped her morning shift at the factory and needing the money, Bess had raced to Mrs Chase’s house with Kasia’s freshly made trousers and an old coat of Albie’s for Jan.
The overhead lights of the hospital blurred into one. Someone was talking frantically, issuing orders to somebody she couldn’t see. A faint squeak echoed off the tiled walls. In between fevered consciousness, Bess recognised the sound as the wheels of the hospital trolleys.
Without knowing she had done so, Bess found herself already kneeling on the carpeted floor, eye level with Kasia’s feet as she took her place on the platform. Somewhere between arriving and setting up, she must have given Kasia the slacks she promised to make her, for here she was looking down expectantly, waiting for Bess to check them.
Bess coughed awkwardly. “Sorry, Kasia,” Her voice trailed away, and she set about measuring the trouser legs and assessing their fit.
Mrs Chase’s shouting to Jan somewhere in the house did just enough to keep memories of last night at bay, but when Kasia’s hand stroked Bess’ hair and she whispered “Your mind is somewhere else,” Bess was transported to a sterile room, the smell of bleach and turpentine stinging her nose.
Helen’s beautiful face looked down on her and stroked her forehead. Her blonde hair was illuminated by the ceiling lights, and for a moment Bess thought she had died and was being greeted by an angel.
A cold hand grasping her shin told her this was real. It moved to spread her legs and the cold pinch of metal shot through the soles of her feet. Looking down, Bess saw the worried face of Joan putting her feet into stirrups.
“Long shift,” Bess replied, not looking up. Instead, she focused on the movement of her tape measure along Kasia’s thigh. “How do they feel?”
From behind them, Mrs Chase clucked like a fussing hen, but the girls ignored her. “Good,” Kasia said, admiring herself in the mirror. “Comfortable.”
Mrs Chase huffed again. “Trousers,” she muttered with indignation as she left the drawing room, the heels of her Mary Janes carrying through the house as she went to find Jan.
Bess knew it was Sister Stern before she spoke; her hard gait gave her away as she walked across the tiles.
“Miss Bates, has Miss Vaughn been ill at all today?” From the little Bess could make out over the throbbing pain in her abdomen, the matron was making her away around the room gathering equipment.
“No, sister,” Helen’s voice shook a little, and again Bess tried to glance down. Helen caressed her face once more and turned Bess’ face back to her own.
“Helen?”
“It’s ok.” She stroked Bess’ hair soothingly. “Looks worse than it is-” Bess felt the room spin. If it weren’t for Helen remaining in one place, she’d have thought someone had knocked into the trolley she was on. “-Stern and Joan are tidying you up, then all you’ll need is a bit of rest.”
“‘Miss’?”
The voice was male. The doctor who had been doing rounds with Joan. Only he wasn’t addressing her, but one of the others.
“That’s right,” Joan’s voice was defiant when she replied, and Bess felt her gently stroke her calf as a soothing warmth spread across her thigh. A warm towel, in held in Joan’s other hand, was attending to whatever Helen had said needed ‘tidying up’.
“I take it, then, she isn’t married?” The doctor, again.
Silence.
Turning her head to one side, Bess caught the doctor and Sister Stern exchanging a glance. While the man’s face was turned away from her, Sister Stern’s was visible over his shoulder. Almost imperceptibly, the matron glared at the doctor, who sighed deeply and straddled a small stool at the foot of the trolley.
“Now then, Miss Vaughn,” he said, adopting a sombre bedside manner. “I’m just going to have a look at you now the bleeding has subsided.” Bess tried to sit up, a flush of terror rising to the top of her cheeks, but Helen held her shoulders. “Tell me, when was your last monthly?”
“What’s the matter, really?” Kasia whispered.
Bess looked up at her lovely face, blonde hair glowing in the afternoon light. An angel, just like Helen had been. Kasia had already been through so much, little did she need a burden of Bess’.
“Nothing, really,” Bess smiled as she copied Kasia. “I’m just tired.”
Kasia hopped off the tailor’s podium, watching astutely as Bess tidied away. She hummed in a devil-may-care sort of way. “So, this is to be our first secret.” It was a statement, not a question, and Bess felt a pang of guilt. Exhaustion flooded through her and, as if working in cahoots with gravity, caused her to slump forward where she stood.
“I will tell you, Kasia. I promise.” She sighed. “Just not now.”
There was silence a few moments, but for the tick of the grandfather clock, and Mrs Chase and Jan somewhere in the house. Then, Kasia took a few steps forward and wrapped her arms around Bess’ shoulders. “Ok,” was all she said.
She could feel Kasia’s heart beating against her back and she closed her eyes. A swell of emotion rose up in her and she swayed a little. When was the last time someone offered her this much of themselves, without expecting anything in return? As the war continued, Cora and Dot had begun their work for the war effort. On the occasion Bess saw them now, they were too busy, too tired and too terrified to focus all their love on their sister. Albie was gone, and while Fergal remained, his mind was far away with his son, or else imagining evenings in the pub with Douglas, Marie and Etta.
Then there was Tom. Each time he returned from the war, Bess could see that another piece of him had chipped away, left behind somewhere on the battlelines. And each time he returned from war, his Mancunian home shrank. First his best friend, then his father and his childhood home. As war changed him from a reckless boy to a tenacious young man, he grew beyond the small world they shared together. And with the events of last night, it was only a matter of time before he left Bess behind too.
“You have, I suspect, what we call a sepate uterus-”
It was just the doctor now. Joan and Helen had long since gone home, swearing to Bess that they’d feed and care for her once she too made it back to Carver Mills boarding house. Sister Stern, seeing that Bess’ pain had subsided, resumed her rounds on the ward.
“Of course, we’ll need to double check. Are you on shift tomorrow?”
“Yes, sir,”
“Pop in for an x-ray before you begin. We’ve only the one machine now but I’m sure we can get you in. At that time of night we won’t need it, not unless another raid begins.” He spoke so matter of factly that Bess found it hard to concentrate. He could just as well have been reading his shopping lost.
She hastily wiped a tear from her eyes and turned to face Kasia. “I’m glad you’re happy with the slacks,” she said through a forced smile.
“How much do you charge?”
Bess shook her head. “I offered, I insist.” Kasia open her mouth to protest, but just as she did, Mrs Chase appeared in the doorway.
“All done girls?” Before either could reply, she continued. “Perhaps you could make Kasia a nice tea dress next time? Speaking of tea-” Mrs Chase said, grabbing Jan by the arm as he ran past. He waved at Bess and she winked, mouthing “it suits you,” at seeing him in Albie’s old coat.
“-are you staying for supper, Bess? Lois will be over with the baby in a little while.”
“Erm,” Bess floundered. Robina raised her eyebrows in expectation. The baby. “No, I’m, er, I’m actually back on shift this evening so I need to be getting back.” She coughed awkwardly. “Thank you, though.” Without another word, she packed away her things and hurried from the room, promising to visit Kasia again soon and ruffling Jan’s hair on her way out.
Reaching the hallway, she made to place her tailor’s stand in the large basket she carried but stopped at seeing a small envelope tucked in its handle. Upon opening it, Bess found a cheque for fifty pounds, written in elegant writing and signed Mrs. R Chase.
The station lights were just coming on when Bess arrived. A cold mizzle had descended on the city and, caught in the light of the station lamps, it glowed like lustrous confetti against the blue October night.
It was just as busy as it would have been before the war. Only now, the families heading for trips to the beach and the young couples adventuring to London for a long weekend were replaced by small groups of soldiers and sailors, or else labourers carting supplies between wagons.
Bess weaved across the platforms, peering over heads and between luggage. She’d raced from Robina’s, only just managing to catch the last bus from the small town she lived in. Had it been Douglas, he’d have told the driver to stop, or held his hand out for assistance as she jumped onto the back of the moving vehicle. A constant presence in her life as a child and woman, a surrogate father when Fergal was deep in his grief or drink, Bess could just imagine Douglas’ hand reaching out for her. The callouses from his work on the buses, or paper cuts from his rounds handing out his pacifist papers. Were they like Tom’s? She’d never noticed.
As though called to her, as if he’d heard his name on her mind, a loud guffaw sounded from somewhere along the platform. A call to his whereabouts. Tom and a few sailors Bess didn’t know were stood beside the engine, sharing a cigarette with the driver. Sensing someone approach, Tom turned his head ever so slightly to his right, the muscles of his long neck stretching.
Bess swallowed. The boatneck of his uniform so elegantly accentuated the column of pale skin and muscle, and Bess remembered all the nights she ran her tongue and teeth there. The moans the action elicited from him…
Watching her eyes falter, Tom raked his own over her. The sway of her hips, the tight fabric of her slacks across her hips. The way drops of mist adorned her frizzy hair, like pearls. The way her eyes were still rapt by him, lip tucked between her teeth, walk faltering as she admired him.
Without a word to his friends he made his way toward her, eyes never leaving hers. Bess blushed as he sauntered through the meandering crowd, glancing away when his eyes continued boring into hers.
“Stop,” Bess whispered when he came to a stop scandalously close to her. Tom reached out to her, tucking one hand beneath her coat and caressing her side.
“I missed you last night,” he whispered into the shell of her ear. “Stopped by the flat.” His voice was low, breath warm as it fanned her hair.
Bess shuddered.
“Here,” Without looking at her, the doctor kicked the cabinet drawer closed and handed Bess two pamphlets. ‘The Dangers of Sex in Wartime’ and ‘Modern Methods of Birth Control’.
“Night shift.” She replied simply.
Tom looked down his nose at her and huffed. “Have to get myself into some mischief. Come home with a broken arm, cracked rib or something. Nothing serious, like, but can’t have any old Tommy that wanders into the infirmary spending more time with you than I do.” He gripped Bess’ coat lapels and pulled her flush against his chest.
“Stupid boy,” she whispered. “Besides, you’re the only Tommy for me.”
He kissed her head. “I should hope so. You heard these rumours about the Yanks coming over?”
“There’s already one in the hospital-”
“Walter Watson was down the pub saying they’ve sent people over, covert, to suss the situation out. Says Sarah Wallace next door to him was down the church on Sunday for a quick ‘I do,’ with one of them. There’ll be a baby by summer.”
Bess scoffed. “He’s just jealous it wasn’t him getting his end in,”
Tom guffawed again and a few passersby looked at the pair of them pressed together on the platform. “As long as you don’t go getting ideas, Miss Vaughn.” He smirked. “I’ve heard you like a man in uniform.”
“While we can’t be absolutely certain that it was the cause, I can say with little doubt that this kind of,” the doctor looked at the ceiling as if the words he needed were up there. “-congenital abnormality is the likeliest reason for the miscarriage.”
The closeness of Tom was suffocating. The scent of his cologne and stale Marlboro smoke. The standard issue detergent clinging to his newly pressed uniform. The thumb stroking the side of her hip felt like sandpaper through her blouse, his hand a hot and heavy weight against her waist. Bess took a sudden step back and Tom’s hand paused comically in mid-air where she had been, frozen like a wind-up doll.
He watched her a moment, brow furrowed and lips pursed. Ever since their argument on the beach, he’d been wary of upsetting her. Startling her. Just like her permanent state as a young girl, Bess was unsettled. Tom took a cigarette from his pocket, the click of his lighter the only sound passing between them.
Between puffs and clouds of smoke he stared at her, a strange look overcoming his handsome face. She fidgeted in front of him, eyes never holding his own. Rather, they flitted across his form, across the train station, meeting only occasionally to blush and look away.
“Did you see Lois and the baby at Mrs Chase’s?” He tried to coax her out of her shell with small talk. Something neither of them had ever been good at. It had the reverse effect. Her eyes blew wide and she shuffled uncomfortably.
“Miss Vaughn, I must tell you. If the x-ray confirms my suspicions, you should prepare yourself for the possibility that your future may not hold hope for children-”
“Bess?” He laughed, a quick flash of his boyish grin disguising his nerves. “Did you see Lois and the baby?”
“No,” Bess took out her own cigarettes and fumbled with her matches. “No, left before they arrived. Damn,” the match slipped from her fingers and went out under a raindrop.
“Here,” Tom stepped forward and clicked his lighter.
“Thanks,”
Tom made to grab her coat again only this time, rather than bring her near, he placed the lighter in her pocket. “Keep it.”
She looked up at him then. His grey eyes soft, brows pinched at the centre with worry. Altogether world-weary. The urge to pull him close, stroke his hair and keep him safe overwhelmed her. Gripping the navy cotton of his uniformed shoulders, Bess leant up and pressed a hard kiss to his cheek. She had never been good with words, famously so, but perhaps this one kiss would convey all the fear and all the love she had for him.
Warmth swelled in her chest when he winked at her, gripping her waist and steering her towards the train. Men were boarding, porters closing the carriage doors as steam billowed around them.
“Keep an eye on Lois for me, won’t you?” Tom said over the puff of the engine as it was stoked into life.
“Lois? She’s can take care of hers-”
“And Vera. She’s not well. Lois, I mean.” Tom added when Bess’ face turned white with alarm. “Everyone always said that Lois and I were more like mam than dad. But since-” the sentence petered out. He shook his head and carried on. “I don’t think that’s true. Now he’s gone, I see how similar we all were. And Lois pretends she’s tough. Is tough, like dad. But it comes from somewhere deeper.” He signalled to the area around his heart. Bess fought not to smile as she watched Tom grapple with words to express his feelings. Who’d have thought it all those years ago? Tom Bennett, emotionally perceptive.
“My problems I’ve brought on myself, or had them thrust on me. But dad and Lois,” he came to a stop and looked down at Bess. “And you, were born with it. This sadness. Weren’t you.”
She didn’t’ move nor speak. She didn’t need to.
“Just keep an eye out.”
“Yes, sailor.” She whispered.
A whistle blew on the station, and Bess’ stomach fell to that place between her naval and knee that it always seemed to live when Tom was away. He hauled his kit bag onto the train and jumped elegantly off the platform and into the carriage. Pulling down the sash window of the compartment door, Tom leant out with his arms outstretched. With the help of a railway porter, Bess stood on the carriage step and felt herself lifted up by Tom’s arms.
With one quick glance into her dark eyes, Tom held her by the neck and kissed her. “Write to me,” he said against her lips.
“I will if you do first.” Bess said back, planting fervent kisses to any part of his face she could reach. Slowly, the train began to leave and she felt herself carried along on the step. Somewhere behind her, the station guard began to shout. They pair feigned ignorance, shrouded by engine steam.
Cigarettes, childhood, cologne, gun smoke and engine oil. Birthday cakes, piano keys, ale, and first love. Everything Tom Bennett tasted of Bess committed to memory as he slipped from her arms and the train sped from the station.
Tom’s face became a blur on the horizon and, as he dipped back inside the carriage window, Bess whispered a prayer to the sky, to a God she wasn’t sure she believed in anymore. “Keep him safe. Please.”
Notes: We will be with Tom for the WHOLE of the next chapter, and a lot of the one after that! Plus! The letters will be back 😊
Wildly, those are real pamphlets on women’s sexual health from the late 30s and 40s.
Been listening to this paylist while I write, and it really helps get me in the mindset. It’s 40s music interspersed with radio broadcasts of the time. You could really be listening to the wireless in front of the fire at the Vaughns’ house.
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