We’ll Meet Again - Chapter 12
It’s been a long time coming I know, but I’m feeling Collins again even though I’m working 60+ hours a week (soooooo tired).
For this chapter we have a reunion between husband and wife, a new friend made and a cute moment.
There are mentions of Holocaust themes such as camps and ghettos as well as missing families and the idea of impending extermination.
The book she is reading is The Time Machine by H. G. Wells.
MASTERLIST
WE’LL MEET AGAIN 12
HOW DEEP IS THE OCEAN?
Christmas came and went, spent in a bomb shelter even though the bombs didn’t fall that day by some miracle. Jack was able to spend a few hours with you at the boarding house before returning to duty, all puffed up and chuffed at his impending fatherhood. You couldn’t have loved him more than in the moment you told him you were pregnant and his face had lit up. You’d been afraid to tell him, deep down you had thought he would run, he wouldn’t be the first. London was rife with young women, expecting, waiting for a lover who wasn’t coming back. Not every young soldier was a good man.
But yours was.
There were more letters than usual, often several arriving at once due to the mail delays. As the new year began and the conflict was no closer to finishing almost every one of Jack’s letters were imploring you to leave the city and go to his parents. You were tempted, London wasn’t safe you knew it, but it was close to Jack and you felt as though you couldn’t just leave the other girls. In the end you agreed to wait until the baby came and then you would go to Scotland. What little time you could spend with him until then you would make the most of, knowing that it could be some time before he got enough leave to go North.
There was no end in sight to the war, it was 1941, the second full year of conflict and it seemed like there was a new casualty list daily, the list of names endless. You remembered the talk about the Great War, how whole villages had their men wiped out and you could suddenly see how that had been possible. But even the old timers were spooked by this one, the rumors and stories coming out of Germany and Poland were terrifying. The last conflict had been war, this was something more, something else, something sinister and evil.
You sat on the corner eating your lunch after working for the Red Cross all morning. Another bombing, more injured, more dead. While not immune to the sight of it you were at least acclimated enough that you didn’t cry or vomit each time you carried off someone’s mangled body. Although you wanted to. There was a pile of rubble in the middle of the street, a group of young children who hadn’t been evacuated yet were playing on it while some older folk watched. It still amazed you how there were still pockets of hope and laughter in the city, normality in the face of so much destruction and death.
“This seat taken?”
You looked up into the face of an elderly man, one of the Jews who populated the East Side. His black jacket was worn in places and very old fashioned, but his smile was wide and his eyes kindly. You gestured for him to join you, offering him half your sandwich with a smile.
“Nice to see em playing about.” he remarked, declining the food politely.
“We see a pile of bricks, they see a castle.” you laughed softly. “You have to love the imaginations of children.”
“And the hope of them.”
For a moment you sat in silence, watching them, your mind wandering to your own child. In your thoughts you saw a blonde head of hair ducking in and out of the rubble, heard a higher pitched version of Jack’s laughter. The fact that you could picture your child in this place, in this condition terrified you. Would the war even be over by the time they were old enough to run around with other kids? Would there even be children left in London after all was said and done? So many had been evacuated into the countryside, their parents many times sadly victims that you and the others pulled out of the wreckage. You wondered if their children even knew they were dead. It broke your heart to think of it.
“They take the children in Germany too, don’t they?” you whispered, almost not wanting to hear the answer.
The old man nodded sadly, never taking his eyes off the kids in the street.
“My family is in Poland, the last I heard they were all rounded up and put into ghettos. It didn’t matter if they were babes or 100 years old. Jews are illegal to the Nazis.” he spat the last word in loathing.
“You’ve not heard anything since?”
“Not since November, no. I don’t expect to. I fear it will only get worse. Today its ghettos, yesterday it was encouraged emigration. My son thought it would pass, so they stayed. I am only here because I married an Englishwoman after my Sarah passed. We had talked about going to Poland before all this started.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to upset you. It’s just the rumors coming from over there…” you trailed off.
“Are all true, I’m afraid. We should talk about it, we all should so that the world knows what is happening to us. They have started putting us in camps, they call them work camps but I fear…” he swallowed hard. “What is left to do with people who are, in their words, not people but animals?”
The answer was left unspoken, the reality of what could happen to these people was too horrible to even contemplate. Others had talked about it, you had overheard some soldiers talking about how the Nazis were gearing up to “put them down”. Like animals. They had laughed, like it wasn’t anything big to think of but the idea had stuck in your head. These were people, human beings that were being treated like animals, worse than animals, because Hitler deemed them to be “illegal”. You couldn’t comprehend the kind of mindset it took to consider humans that way. And you also wondered what the rest of the world was going to do about it.
“I think it’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better.” You admitted sadly, not knowing what else to say.
“I fought in the last war, 37 years old and I was straight off to enlist, we fought for the Russians back then. Thought we were on a grand quest to make the world a better place. Took two bullets over four years and watched seven of my friends from home die in the trenches. I always believed we were doing it because we had to, because when we were done the world would see and not make the same mistakes again.”
“The war to end all wars.” you murmured. “My dad went on his 17th birthday, lied about his age to enlist. He and my mother were sweethearts since childhood. She said he was never the same.”
“No one came back the same, and no one will this time. Even you, you are changed by what you are experiencing here. You have lost people, yes?”
“Margot, she was my friend. A bomb landed right on her in the middle of the day, I saw the whole thing. And she had lost her fiance in France.”
“And your husband?” He looked at the ring on your finger. “Where is he?”
“He’s RAF, a fighter pilot. He was at Dunkirk.”
“This kind of evil, it touches everything, leaves nothing unstained. Your man, he kills and he does it because he has to. You try to save, because you have to but you would kill, for the same reason, yes?”
“Yes.”
“And I killed, many young men, many mother’s sons, because I had to and I never can forget it. I ask for forgiveness every day of my life. I was never a violent man, I am a botanist, but if you put a man in a German uniform in front of me now and gave me a gun, I would kill him. I wouldn’t hesitate. I wouldn’t ask for forgiveness. That is how it has changed me, this time.”
“I don’t think many would fault you for that, considering.”
“Except those many people the world over who also agree that Jews are not humans. The world sits and waits, watching to see what will happen, trust me they will not intervene until what happens to us affects their interests.”
“Even if they start killing?”
“Start? Young lady they have already begun killing us, for years they have. All that is happening now is that they are speeding up the process.”
Tears welled in your eyes at the thought of it. In the grand scheme of things you had it easy. This man’s whole family’s fate was unknown, a whole race of people were being imprisoned for their blood and for no other reason. Children too, locked in ghettos and cages, their whole lives stolen from them.
For what? What was it all for?
“I’m so sorry.”
“It is not your fault.”
His lined hand patted yours, squeezing your fingers.
“I had meant to simply say hello and sit for a minute, I did not mean to upset you.”
“Please,” you implored, wiping your eyes. “Don’t say that, you are entitled to be angry. I’m glad you sat down, no one else talks about it. Everyone wants to pretend it isn’t happening, that nothing exists outside this island. I don’t want to be that person.”
“What is your name?”
You told him your name, told him Jack’s and for a while you told him the story of how you met and fell in love. He laughed at stories from the boarding house, especially your landlady’s ability to turn any moment into a party. He told you in turn of his Sarah, their only son Samuel and his wife Elsa and their children. Samuel was or at least had been an attorney and the cantor at their temple, he was a good, kind man according to his father, but naive in his belief of the inherent goodness of man. It was something they had debated many times. It was that belief that had led him to stay in Poland long after they should have tried to escape.
You learned how, after Sarah’s death some ten years ago, your new friend Jacob had come to England for work and met Mary, a widow who became his close friend. Over the years the friendship had grown until they married finally three years previously, allowing him to stay in England. It was Mary who had procured visas for the rest of the family and her sadness at what had happened was acute.
As the sun went down and the chill sharpened in the air you walked Jacob to his street, promising to go straight home after and to come visit as soon as you were able. Your heart was heavy as you walked away, your mind in turmoil. The whole story made it onto the page as you wrote to Jack that night, including your soul wrenching sadness at what was happening on the Continent. For once you held nothing back, pouring onto the paper your conflicting hopelessness at the state of the world and your unrelenting joy with him and your unborn child. You felt so guilty stealing even a moment of happiness when Jacob’s whole family, and so many countless others were suffering so greatly.
Oddly it was Mary rather than Jack who was able to make you feel less so. Jack’s letters, while admitting that the stories were seemingly true and worsening, were full of love and hope, talk of your future, of a life after the war. You loved it, loved reading and imagining it, dreaming of the days when you would finally be together. The way he described his home you could see it so clearly, the mountains and the mist, the valleys, the stone houses. He was so ready for it to begin and so were you, but you couldn’t escape the black cloud that hung over you, the knowledge that you had the possibility of a future that so many people were being robbed of.
What you never told Jack in your letters was how that guilt and horror at what was happening made you cry yourself to sleep at night as much as his absence did.
As winter drew on, edging toward spring you found yourself at Jacob and Mary’s often, especially once she started brewing you her special tea for morning sickness. Mary swore up and down that it was the tea that had gotten her through five pregnancies without even a day in bed being sick. You weren’t one hundred percent sure of it, but it actually seemed to work and she did love fussing over you like a mother hen. It was Mary who had sternly told you one day, as you all sat in their basement, that it was right and proper to grieve the situation on the Continent, that to be horrified and aching for the Jewish people was the mark of a good and caring human. But she also said that the suffering of others shouldn’t make you lose hope and joy, because otherwise what was the point of fighting? What was the point of living if you couldn’t be happy, that each person on the earth was put there to live and that the ability to do so amidst so much suffering meant that humanity was worth fighting for. You saw her point and the guilt at least eased, if not the sadness.
As the months dragged on you saw the sadness in Jacob’s eyes too, each day without word from his family hurt him more and the moments of laughter that you had experienced when you first met were fewer now as the hope for their survival dimmed. Still, he told endless stories of them, and Mary of her children, two of whom hadn’t survived the Depression. Her three remaining daughters were all married with families of their own and each of them had asked for their mother to go to them. But Jacob wouldn’t leave the last place his son knew to look for him, and Mary wouldn’t leave Jacob.
In March Jack was transferred to RAF Feltwell, a newer Air Force base located in Norfolk almost two hours away. He was given three days leave before he was to report for his new duties and to say that you were devastated was an understatement.
“I wish you weren’t going.” you sighed as he hung his jacket in your wardrobe the first day.
“Aye love, me too, but I haf tae go where I’m ordered. They need me there.”
“Doing what?”
You saw the look on his face, even though he tried to hide it. Whatever it was he didn’t want to tell you. A wave of panic wafted over you leaving you dizzy and gasping for air.
“Ye need tae lay down love, come on now there’s naught tae be getting upset about.” Jack helped you to your bed, kicking off his shoes to lay beside you. “They need trained pilots fer the bombers, that’s all.”
He had mentioned this in his letters, or the prospect of one day bombers being sent over the channel. Nothing specific of course, but now it looked like that prospect was a reality. “So you are a bomber pilot now? No more Spitfires?” In your mind the fact that he wouldn’t be a fighter pilot anymore wasn’t exactly soothing.
“Aye, I’ll fly wi a crew o six an all we’ll do is fly over, drop the bombs and leave. Nothin tae it.”
“Nothing to flying over enemy airspace and being under attack constantly, it sounds unbelievably dangerous.”
He pulled you closer so you could rest your head on his shoulder, his hand rubbing your arm gently.
“I’ll no lie tae ye, it’s war lass, anythin I do is goin tae be dangerous, this is no exception.”
Pushing yourself up to sit facing him you looked down at your husband. Trying your hardest not to cry you took him in, from his soft, bright hair to the straight length of his nose every inch of him as precious to you as your own life.
“Promise me…” you sucked in a deep breath before continuing sternly. “Jack Andrew Collins you promise me that you will come back to us.”
Sitting up, Jack wrapped you up in his arms, holding you as the tears fell.
“I mean it Jack, you come back, don’t leave us alone. Don’t be a hero, please, just do your job and come home. Don’t make me live without you.”
He buried his face in your neck, his arms so tight that you almost couldn’t breathe.
“I’m comin back tae ye, love. I promise. I swear I’m comin home.”
Jack held you like that until after the sun went down, until you were forced downstairs to eat, him holding your hand and gently lecturing you about taking it easy with the baby on the way. He knew you well enough by now not to tell you to stop your Red Cross work, only to tell you to be extra careful. You had already scaled back your duties as you started showing so you were one step ahead of him there. Later he admitted that he felt a little useless, all things considered, you already had so much under control and you didn’t really need him.
“You’re right Jack.” you said from the bed as you watched him change. “I don’t need you, I’ve always been able to take care of myself. But I don’t want to. I want you and I want us, that’s a big difference.”
Jack chuckled, climbing under the covers to spoon you against him, rubbing his stubbly chin against your shoulder.
“Ye think ye will see tha way in twenty years? When I’m no the handsome, fit man I am today?”
Giggling, you snuggled closer to him, lacing your fingers with his.
“You’ll always be handsome to me, Jack. I’m the one who’s going to get all fat and out of shape.”
“Nay, lass yer pregnant no fat and besides well be goin walkin every day so as we donna let ourselves go.”
You could feel him snickering.
“What about in the winter? Are going to go walking in the snow?”
“I’m sure we can think o summan tae do tae stay active during all those long,” his mouth pressed against your shoulder, “dark,” your neck, “nights.” his teeth grazed your ear sending a familiar, warm tingle down your spine.
Turning in his arms you pushed Jack until he was on his back and you straddled him, leaning down to kiss him hungrily.
“I say we start going through ideas right now.” you murmured against his skin.
Three days wasn’t nearly enough time, but you and Collins made the most of it. Most of the time you spent alone, everyone understood why and you weren’t interrupted. You walked over to see Jacob and Mary, eager to have them meet the man you had told them so much about. Jack and Jacob were instant friends, the camaraderie between them apparent from the get go. You didn’t even mind that the two men spent the whole day chatting while you and Mary made dinner and looked at each of them fondly from across the room. When you left, Jack was full of admiration for the elderly man, expressing his hope of seeing a lot more of the couple in the future.
“I feel awful about his son,” he admitted.”I canna imagine knowin what’s happenin there and bein helpless to save them. Not knowin is the hardest part.”
You knew, from the sombre look on his face that he was thinking of Farrier, his friend who’s fate after Dunkirk had never been determined. You couldn’t imagine not knowing what had happened to someone and imagining the very worst.
The last day, he had to leave that night for Norfolk so that he could report the next morning, you spent in bed. Neither of you felt hungry enough to go get breakfast, even though Jack scolded you saying you needed to feed the baby at least. You managed to distract him from that train of thought. Later, after a bath and a sandwich or two you sat against the pillows on the bed, Jack’s head in your lap as he gazed up at you, his ear pressed against the small swell of your stomach.
“…The air was free from gnats, the earth from weeds or fungi; everywhere were fruits and sweet and delightful flowers; brilliant butterflies flew hither and thither. The ideal of preventive medicine was attained. Diseases had been stamped out…even the processes of putrefaction and decay had been profoundly affected by these changes.”
Your fingers threaded absentmindedly through his hair as you read, his fingers reaching up from time to time to brush your arm, or your face before returning to rest on his stomach.
“Social triumphs, too, had been effected. I saw mankind housed in splendid shelters, gloriously clothed, and as yet I had found them engaged in no toil. There were no signs of struggle, neither social nor economic struggle. The shop, the advertisement, traffic, all that commerce which constitutes the body of our world, was gone. It was natural on that golden evening that I should jump at the idea of a social paradise. The difficulty of increasing population had been met, I guessed, and population had ceased to increase.”
You read him the entire book, taking delight in his almost childlike enjoyment of such a simple pleasure. Time ceased to exist for those few hours and you saw your future clearly, a child lying between the two of you as you read until they both fell asleep. It was a future you wanted so badly that it almost hurt to think about it.
Before he left, you made love one last time, savoring the slow, gentle slide of his skin against yours, the feeling of his mouth against your lips and the overwhelming feeling of being held tightly in his arms. Jack kissed your tears away when you cried, let you help him dress when it was time and didn’t even try to tell you to buck up.
“I’ll be back as soon as I can. And I’ll write every day, I promise.” he punctuated his words with kisses as he hugged you goodbye. “Jus stay safe an take care o yerself and our girl.”
“You’re sure the baby is a girl then?”
“Aye, an she’ll look like ye and I’ll be the most envied man in Ballachulish wi ma two princesses on ma arms.”
“What if it’s a boy?”
‘Same goes.” Jack shrugged, grinning down at you. “As long as I have ye, I’ll be the luckiest man in Scotland, and our bairn will be the luckiest kid tae haf ye as a mum.”
“And you as a Dad, Jack. It’s us who are lucky.”
Jack’s hands cradled the back of your head as he kissed you again and your arms wrapped around his waist, locking so that you wouldn’t have to let him go.
“Let’s say we are both lucky, shall we?”
“I love you Jack Collins.”
“And I love ye Y/N Collins.”
You had to watch him walk away, as much as it hurt you had to watch, waiting until he got to the corner and lifted his hand to wave goodbye. With tears streaming down your cheeks you waved back, even when he turned the corner and vanished out of sight. For the longest time you stood there, staring at the spot where you had last seen him, willing him to reappear.
When would you see him again?
