Уильям Николсон - Motherland

On May 3rd they’re transported in six-wheeler trucks to Landshut. The houses they pass on the way have white flags in their windows. At Landshut the former prisoners of war are billeted in empty flats, six to a room, and supplied with American K rations. Here the waiting begins again.

The snow turns to rain, and the winds are too strong for planes to take off. The American POWs who arrived earlier take precedence; also a batch of seven hundred Indians. Two hundred planes are promised, flying back from Prague, but only seventy arrive.

On the morning of May 7th, which is being celebrated at home as VE Day, Ed takes his turn at the aerodrome, and by mid-afternoon he is boarding. The Dakota lands at St Omer in northern France, where he is cleaned up and deloused. Next day RAF Lancasters fly the British contingent to Duxford air base near Cambridge. It is now twenty-five days since they were marched out of the camp; and two years, eight months and twenty days since Ed left England.

He sends two telegrams, one to his parents and one to his wife. A repatriation orderly recognises his name on the manifest and tells the base commander, a young-looking squadron leader.

‘I’m told you’re a VC,’ says the squadron leader.

‘Yes,’ says Ed. ‘I’ve been told that too.’

‘Honour to have you here. Anything I can do for you?’

‘No, thank you, sir. I’m on my way first thing in the morning.’

‘Good job,’ says the squadron leader, shaking his hand. ‘Damn good job.’

Kitty arrives early at King’s Cross station, holding very tight to Pamela’s hand. Pamela is just over two years old, and a sturdy walker, but the giant railway station overawes her. Kitty is wearing her prettiest pre-war frock beneath a dark grey wool coat. It’s a chilly spring day.

‘Daddy,’ says Pamela, pointing to a man striding across the concourse.

‘No, that’s not Daddy,’ says Kitty. ‘I’ll tell you when it’s him.’

She’s been training Pamela ever since the telegram came. She wants her to say, ‘Hello, Daddy,’ and give him a kiss.

There are other women waiting, staring anxiously down the long platforms. One holds a bunch of flowers. Kitty thinks Ed wouldn’t want flowers, though the truth is she doesn’t know. In her letters to him she’s told him all her news, mostly about Pamela, and how pretty she is, and how forward. She’s told Ed how they’ve left her parents’ house and are now living in Edenfield Place, thanks to her friend Louisa. It’s somewhere to be until he comes home, and they can set up house on their own.

Ed’s letters from Germany have been strange. He writes about the absurdity of the life he leads, and the folly of human nature, but never about his own state of mind. Nor does he ask after his daughter. The letters always end, ‘I love you.’ But they have not brought him closer.

‘You have to expect it,’ Louisa says in their late-night talks. ‘You had three weeks together, almost three years ago. It’ll be like starting all over again.’

‘I know you’re right,’ Kitty says. ‘But he’s the most important person in my life, apart from Pamela. The thought of him takes up almost all the space I have.’

‘My advice is, don’t get your hopes up.’

Kitty hardly knows what she feels as she waits at King’s Cross. All she wants is for it to be over. She has longed for this moment for so long that now it’s close, it frightens her.

‘Hello, Daddy,’ Pamela says to a young airman on the platform.

‘No!’ says Kitty a little too sharply. ‘I’ll tell you when it’s Daddy.’

Pamela feels the rebuke. Her sweet face sets in a look Kitty knows well, eyes unfocused, lips pouting.

‘Daddy,’ she says, pointing to an elderly man sitting on a bench.

She calls out to a porter wheeling a trolley, ‘Daddy! Daddy!’

A soldier appears, running, breathless.

‘Hello, Daddy!’ cries Pamela.

‘Stop it!’ says Kitty. ‘Stop it!’

She controls an overwhelming urge to smack the child.

‘Daddy,’ says Pamela, very quietly now. ‘Daddy, Daddy, Daddy.’

Only the arrival of the train silences her. The immense engine sighs slowly to a stop, thrilling her with its living breathing power. The carriage doors open and the passengers come streaming down the platform. Kitty looks without seeing, afraid he isn’t on the train after all, afraid he isn’t coming home, afraid he is coming home.

She remembers standing on the quay at Newhaven after the first aborted operation against Dieppe, and all the men filing off the boats in the night, and how she looked for him and couldn’t see him. Then all at once he was there before her. Remembering that moment, her love for him bursts within her, and she wants so much, so much, to hold him in her arms again.

Pamela senses that she’s lost her mother’s attention. She tugs at the hand that holds hers, saying, ‘Go home. Go home.’

The people from the train stream by, mostly men, mostly in uniform. There are too many, their faces hazy in the steamy air, the sound of boots tramping the platform dulling the nervous hugger-mugger of reunions.

Pamela starts to cry. She feels ignored and sorry for herself. At the same time she’s intensely excited. As she maintains a steady low-level snivelling she holds tight to her mother’s hand, knowing that she’ll feel it in her mother’s body when it happens, the mysterious and wonderful moment for which they’ve come.

Kitty catches her breath. He’s there, she knows it, though she hasn’t yet seen him. She searches the faces bobbing towards her, and finds him. He hasn’t seen her yet. He looks so thin, so sad. He’s bareheaded, wearing worn battledress, a kitbag over one shoulder. He looks like his photograph, except older, more real, wiser. There’s a nobility about him she never knew he possessed.

Oh my darling, she says to herself. You’ve come back to me.

He sees her now, and a brightness lights up his face. He hurries faster towards her, one arm half raised, half waving. She lifts a timid hand in answer.

He comes to her and at once takes her in his arms. She holds him close, letting go of Pamela’s hand to give all of herself to him. His body is so thin, she can feel all his bones. Then he kisses her, only lightly, as if he’s afraid she’s fragile, and she kisses him, nuzzling her face against his. Then he drops down onto his haunches to greet his unknown daughter.

‘Hello,’ he says.

Pamela gazes back at him in silence. Kitty strokes the top of her head.

‘Say hello to Daddy, darling.’

Pamela still says nothing.

‘Don’t you say a word,’ says Ed. ‘Why should you?’

He reaches out one hand and lightly touches her cheek. Then he stands up.

‘Let’s go,’ he says.

‘I have it all planned,’ says Kitty. ‘We’re going to take a taxi to Victoria.’

‘A taxi! We must be rich.’

‘Special occasion.’

Pamela trots along obediently by her mother’s side, from time to time peeping up at the stranger. She has no notion of him being her father, and doesn’t even know what that means. But from the very first moment she saw him take her mother in his arms, and felt her mother let go of her hand to embrace him, she surrendered to him. He has become in an instant the most powerful being in her universe. When he knelt before her, and fixed her with his grave blue eyes, she knew that all she desired in life from now on was the love and admiration of this magnificent stranger.

In the taxi Kitty stops trembling and becomes more talkative.

‘You’re so thin, my darling,’ she says. ‘I’m going to feed you and feed you.’

‘I’m all for that.’

‘I don’t know what to ask you first. There’s so much.’