Between the barrage balloons the wisp of candy floss floating in a cobalt sky showed no hint of war. Could it even be real? Only the lopsided population and Arthur Strong, gallous with his authoritative Home-Guard whistle gave it away. The East end stood intact, a million miles from the cruel destruction and sucking mud of the front. It was easier to believe it was all lies; the papers, the rations, the air-raid practices and gas-masks. The hardship. All some elaborate humourless farce. On a day like today when Doris could hang out her washing in the postage stamp of cobbled yard behind the terrace she could wish it all away, someone else’s nightmare. But she would say nothing lest she jinxed her domestic peace, she knew too many ashen faces hiding grief behind a public patriotism.
She stood in the yard alternately sucking on a cigarette and a clothes peg and diligently pairing the socks with pride as she hung them on the line in size order; little Millie, Ernest, Alfie, John and Tilly. Her Arthur would be home at the weekend she smiled a secret smile as she thought how his socks would tangle with her last pair of stockings in front of the fire before they were washed and darned again. How glad she was that his work with the ministry gave him enough respectability to keep away the white feather mob and yet still kept him relatively safe. There had been bombing at the bases but nothing devastating so far.
The door squeaked and banged shut next door and Madge came out identifiable by the knot in her head scarf. Doris called out a greeting
“Alright chuck?” but received no reply. Pulling the soap box to the adjoining wall Doris gained a few inches, enough to lean her chin on the warm brick and caught the new wave in Madge’s hair from the back.
“Ooh, new do! Is it Dutch? she cooed admiringly” but then Madge turned and Doris caught the ashen pallor beneath the powder, the distant guard in her eye. The mirth usually writ large in the lines of her face and the cheeky glint has drained away.
“Madge, what is it? Tell me quickly.”
Madge smiled a thin vacant smile as a chaste tear contained within a transparent film escaped unchecked from her eye.
“Oh, darling Madge. Robert?” and just like that the dream of a day without pain and grief and senseless destruction evaporated into reality. Madge could not hold the pain quiet under this sensorship. She put down her basket and walked stiffly back inside.
Doris finished her own laundry then went through the back gate and hung Madge's before knocking softly at the back door and letting herself in. Madge sat by the range, a basket of darning on her lap, motionless, lost in a sea of rib and pearl, as Doris filled the kettle, warmed the pot and set the tea to brew. She pulled up a chair and sat waiting with tenderness for the first words to bubble to the surface as the Little Match Girl of her childhood school production melted away in front of her.
“I loved my fiddler on the roof” Madge whispered, struggling to bear witness to her loss. “ We wanted our twenty-five years. We thought we could sing through it all until we were old and stooped. We belonged together. They cannot tell me where his body is. Lost in action. How can all these men be lost?” Then the tears came and Doris rocked with her as the sobs threatened to drown them both. Later she shared the telegram; brief, succinct, Bald of the emotion it would elicit and Doris’ thoughts went out to the men who had lived through the battle only to share the news of incalculable loss with the loved ones who left behind. They had no words to explain the chaos, the donner und blitzen, the mud, the senseless loss on both sides. As the tidal wave of emotion broke upon the shore between two old friends and began to recede once more Madge went to the dresser and plucked the telegram from the toast rack.
“It came this morning. It says everything and nothing all at the same time.” She habded it to Doris, as if holding it might somehow make it real but Madge could feel herself holding onto that last glimmer of hope: what is lost can be found. ‘ Without him I am an odd sock in the washing machine of life, in a world where being the odd sock is normal, honourable even, but it does not change the fact that I am alone.”
“Here my duck, match your wing with mine and I will be your splint. Let me be heal your broken wing. There will always be a scar but you will be strong again. You need a salve for your soul and time will be the answer, the bitterest grief can turn to joyful memory and you are not alone.”
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