Patricia Burns - We'll Meet Again

Tom looked uneasy.

‘Oh, you know what mothers are like. They get these bees in their bonnets. She went on and on about me being too young.’

‘Too young?’ Annie was mystified.

‘To—er—to have a—you know—girlfriend,’ Tom said gruffly. He could not meet her eyes for embarrassment.

Girlfriend? She was his girlfriend? Like people in the pictures? Annie could feel herself going all hot.

‘That’s stupid,’ she said.

‘Yes.’ Tom looked relieved. ‘Yes, it is, isn’t it? If we want to be friends, then we can. Never mind what they say.’

‘That’s right,’ Annie agreed, though her stomach sank with disappointment. Not a girlfriend then, just a friend.

‘Not a good day, yesterday, was it?’ Tom said. ‘First my mam trying to put her oar in, then a problem up at your place. What was going on? You looked terrified. I was really worried about you.’

Years of covering up what went on in her household came into play. Part of her wanted to confide in him, but a larger part was ashamed to reveal what her family was like.

‘Oh—nothing. My dad was in a bit of a temper, that’s all.’

‘Really? It looked like it was worse than that, as if you were afraid something dreadful might happen,’ Tom said.

‘No, no … it’s just … like you said—they get bees in their bonnets, parents. If he’d seen you, he might’ve blown his top.’

‘So you’ve not—’ Tom hesitated. ‘I thought, well, you were limping when you came out to see me, and I thought your dad might’ve hurt you. He didn’t, did he?’

‘No, no—’ Annie shook her head to emphasise the point, and caught her breath as pain shot from her neck right down her bruised side.

‘He did!’ Tom’s voice was filled with concern. ‘Was it bad? Come on, show me.’

‘No, really—’

Annie tried to move away, but Tom took hold of her hand and carefully undid the cuff of her shirt. Dying of embarrassment, Annie watched his face as he drew back the sleeve. Horror was closely followed by anger as the ugly purple bruises were revealed.

‘Annie, this is terrible—you poor thing—and this was your father? How could he? Are you hurt anywhere else?’

‘No, really—it’s nothing—’

Annie tried to move away, but Tom let go of her arm and caught her foot. He pulled back the leg of her working trousers, which she had kept on today in order to be covered up. He drew in his breath sharply as more injuries came to light.

‘Annie, Annie, how can he do this to you? We’ve got to stop this. We’ve got to tell someone. The police—’

‘No!’ Annie squealed. You mustn’t—my mum’d die of shame—’

‘He hits your mum as well?’

Silently, Annie nodded.

‘The bastard—Oh, I’m sorry, Annie, swearing in front of you, but—I want to go and tear his head off—’

Tom’s hands were balled into fists. His face was contorted with anger.

‘Don’t—’ Annie cried, seized with fear. ‘Don’t—you look like him when you say that—’

Tom looked ashamed. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

‘I’m sorry—it just makes me so mad, to think of you getting hurt like this. I want to help you, Annie. What can I do to help, to stop it?’

‘Nothing,’ Annie said flatly. ‘There’s nothing. My mum says it’s just the way he is and we have to put up with it because he’s a good provider.’

‘But there must be something.’

‘No. Maybe one day I’ll be able to go away. But till then … Look, it helps just to have you as a friend.’

‘That doesn’t sound like a lot of use,’ Tom said gloomily.

‘It is, really,’ Annie assured him. She tried to put her feelings into words. ‘It’s been really … nice … coming to see you each day. It’s made everything sort of … brighter … you know? Knowing I’ll talk to you at the end of the day.’

Tom’s face was glowing now. ‘Yes! That’s just it! It’s made everything different, knowing you. Like—even very ordinary things like walking along the prom are special when I’m with you …’

He stopped abruptly, scarlet with embarrassment.

‘That sounds right daft,’ he muttered.

‘No, it doesn’t. It’s—nice. It’ll be a nice thing to remember when—well—things are bad,’ Annie told him.

A phrase from the Bible came to her. She treasured it up in her heart. She would treasure up those words of his in her heart, and warm herself with them when life was cold.

‘Look—we’re not going to let them stop us, are we?’ Tom insisted. ‘It’s like in Romeo and Juliet. They didn’t let their families stop them.’

‘Who are they? Were they in a film?’ Annie asked.

‘No, it’s Shakespeare.’

Shakespeare. He’d written things, she knew that much. Plays. They’d never done them at the elementary, but she would get them from the library and find out what Tom was on about.

‘Yes, of course it is,’ she said, to cover her ignorance.

To her relief, Tom did not pursue it any further.

‘We’ll write to each other. Would you do that? Write to me?’

Delight bubbled through her.

‘Oh, yes! That’d be wonderful. But …’

She thought through the difficulties. Her father always sorted through the post, since it was mostly bills and stuff for him. She could not explain away a personal letter to herself from Nottingham.

‘… send them to my friend, Gwen, and she’ll give them to me.’

‘All right. Where does she live?’

Annie recited Gwen’s address. Tom committed it to memory.

‘What about your mum? Is it all right to send to your house?’ Annie asked anxiously.

‘I said I’m not going to let her stop me and I’m not. You write to my address,’ Tom insisted.

Annie repeated it after him till she had fixed it in her head.

Satisfied that they had done all they could, they talked and talked until the light had drained from the sky.

‘I’ve got to go,’ Annie said reluctantly.

This was it. The last moment.

‘I suppose so.’

A whole year till they saw each other again. It was so long that she could hardly bear it. Going back to life without seeing him at the end of each day was like a prison sentence.

Awkwardly, they got up. They looked at each other in silence. Then Tom swooped forward and planted a quick kiss on her lips.

‘Remember—write to me!’ he said.

‘I will,’ Annie promised.

And as she walked home alone with his kiss still warm upon her mouth, loneliness stalked beside her, cold and dark and bleak. She refused to let it in, pushing it away by holding on to the thought that she still had Tom as a friend, even if he was far away. It wasn’t like having him at Silver Sands, but it was something. Whatever else happened, Tom thought she was special.

She began planning the first letter she would send to him.

‘THOSE poor people in London,’ Gwen said, as she and Annie snatched a few minutes’ conversation outside Sutton’s Bakelite before she went back in for the afternoon shift. ‘Do you know they’re sleeping down the underground now, because of the bombing? I seen it on the newsreel at the pictures. Hundreds of ‘em, all lying on the station platforms. Must be horrible.’

‘It must,’ Annie agreed, though she found it difficult to imagine what it must be like. Unlike Gwen, she had never ridden on the underground.

‘Still, the war’s all right for some. Sutton’s is expanding. Mr Sutton told us all this morning. We’re doing such a lot for the war effort, we’re moving to a bigger factory, out on the edge of town.’

‘I s’pose that means the Suttons’ll be richer than ever,’ Annie said.