The Heart of the Family. Annie Groves

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СКАЧАТЬ the bombing raids are over I don’t want to let Mum and Dad down by not going.’

      ‘But you don’t mind letting me down?’ Luke’s voice was bitter.

      Katie suppressed an unhappy sigh. It upset her so much when Luke was like this, although she was trying hard not to show it. Katie hated scenes. They made her feel physically sick with misery and so anxious to get things ‘back to normal’ that she was ready to say anything that would appease him. Sometimes, though, no matter what she did say or how much she tried to agree with him, it just seemed to make matters worse.

      Today this mood of Luke’s when he started accusing her of not loving him because in his eyes she was not putting him first, had caught her off guard, making her feel vulnerable and spoiling things between them on what should have been a happy occasion, with the relief of the blitz having so miraculously ceased.

      ‘If you really loved me you’d wait until I can come with you,’ Luke insisted.

      He had no idea what drove him to be like this with Katie, whom he loved so very very much, he only knew that somehow the more he tried to make her be open and straight with him, the more she seemed to withdraw from him to a place where he wasn’t allowed; and the more he wanted to secure her to him, the more elusive she seemed to become, and that hurt and scared him. Not that he could ever admit to that. He was a man, after all, and men had to be strong and in control of their emotions.

      Katie looked away from Luke. She couldn’t bear this, she really couldn’t. It reminded her of the awful quarrels her parents had had when she had been growing up and brought back her old feelings of fear and misery.

      ‘Very well then,’ she gave in, ‘I’ll write and tell my parents that we’ll both go and see them when you’ve got some leave, if that’s what you want.’

      Luke frowned. He knew her agreement should have made him feel happy but somehow it didn’t. And as for what he wanted – Luke didn’t know what it was that he actually wanted, he only knew that whatever it was it would make him feel far happier than he did right now. What he wanted ultimately was for him and Katie to be so close to one another that he didn’t have to worry about what she was thinking, or if she really did love him, or was just saying the words because he had pressed her to say them. His mum showed all the time how much she loved his dad. At home his dad’s word was law, not that his dad ever had to raise his voice or make demands for anyone to know that. His mother was the one who made sure that everyone knew that Dad was the boss.

      Luke admired his father more than any other man he knew, and now that he was a man himself the two of them were every bit as close as a father and son should be. But Luke had grown up seeing his father always being more openly affectionate and loving with Luke’s sisters than he had been with him, and somehow that had made him feel left out.

      He’d seen how, when all three of his sisters over the years had gone up to their father, put their arms round him, leaned their heads on his shoulder, and sat on his lap when they were small, Sam had always laughed and responded. But when he had gone to his father for the same comfort, say with a cut leg or on those occasions when for one reason or another he was hurting inside in a way that he couldn’t explain and had needed his father’s reassurance, Sam had always been brusque and offhand with him, pushing him away.

      Sam might say that he loved him and that he was proud of him, but sometimes when he felt the way he was doing now, deep down inside Luke couldn’t help comparing the difference between the way his father had treated him when he was growing up and the open affection he had shown Luke’s sisters.

      What did words mean after all? What if the truth was that he just wasn’t someone that could be loved? Words were easy enough to say, but how did you know what was really inside someone’s heart. How could he give his trust and his own heart to another person when he wasn’t sure how she really felt?

      Surely if Katie loved him as much as she said she did then she would understand all of this, even though he couldn’t understand it or talk about it himself. Women were, after all, the guardians and protectors of their men’s emotions, or so it seemed to Luke from witnessing the relationship between his own parents. It was always his mother who did the bending and the coaxing and who was at pains to make sure that her husband and her children were happy. She did that because she loved them, but Katie didn’t seem to want to make sure that he was happy.

      Luke hated it when these dark moods came down over him. This one had started coming on after the lorry driver had been killed. The sight of the man’s crushed body had shocked and nauseated him so much that he had had trouble controlling his reactions, and had been afraid of showing himself up in front of his own men and the Americans.

      That had made him angry with himself. If he was close to crying like a baby because he’d seen one body, what would he be like when the time came for him to go into action? How could he be a proper corporal to his men if deep down inside himself he was worrying that he might be a coward? He had gone through Dunkirk, Luke reminded himself now. But that had been different. They had been running from the enemy then, not fighting them.

      How was it possible for him to feel so alone when he was surrounded by his family and when he had Katie at his side?

      Luke didn’t know. He just knew that he did. He couldn’t explain why quarrelling with Katie gave him that sore scratchy feeling inside, nor could he explain why he found it so hard to trust her and believe her when she told him that she loved him.

      ‘It just doesn’t seem right to me that you’d want to go without me in the first place,’ he told her now, returning to the argument like a child worrying at a scabbed knee, even though it knew that the end result of its messing was going to be pain. ‘Unless there’s something you aren’t telling me?’

      ‘Oh, Luke,’ Katie sighed, pulling her hand from his as the misery inside her grew into despair.

      She hated the thought that she and Luke might end up like her own mother and father. What Katie longed for was a marriage like Jean and Sam’s; a contented and placid marriage based on trust. She didn’t want excitement and drama. She wanted the security of knowing that her husband and her marriage would always be solid, dependable and unchanging. She could never for one minute imagine Sam saying the things to Jean that Luke had just said to her, or provoking a quarrel in the way Luke did between them. She knew that Luke had been treated badly by a previous girlfriend, but he had promised her that he would stop being so unnecessarily jealous, and she had thought he meant it. But now …

      ‘Do you want to try for those jobs at the telephone exchange then?’ Sasha asked Lou.

      Lou dragged her foot, scuffing the side of her shoe, a childhood habit to which she still sometimes reverted, especially when she was feeling on edge.

      ‘I suppose so, only it isn’t very exciting, is it?’ Lou answered as they followed their parents towards the modest church they had attended every Sunday for as long as they could remember.

      Ahead of them their parents had stopped to talk to other members of the congregation, the adults faces wreathed in smiles if they had been fortunate enough not to have lost anyone in the bombing raid, or shadowed by their pain if they had.

      ‘So what do you want to do?’ Sasha demanded impatiently, keeping an eye on their parents as she waited for Lou’s response.

      Lou didn’t know. She only knew that she yearned for something more than working in a telephone exchange. But Sasha didn’t. Sasha wasn’t like her. Panic filled Lou. That wasn’t true. They felt exactly the same; they always had done and they always would do. They had promised one another СКАЧАТЬ