Free Born Bad by Josephine Cox Page A

earlier remark, ‘we do need to talk … if you’re not too tired, that is?’
    ‘I don’t mind if we sit out here all night,’ she replied. ‘It may bea bit nippy, but the moon is lovely and we’ve got our friend the brandy.’ She settled back in her seat. ‘You and me need to clear the air … especially you, Harry Boy. A trouble shared is a trouble halved. Isn’t that what they say?’
    For a time they sat together, two old friends, thrown closer together by life’s cruelties. They had always been easy in each other’s company, and though the two ofthem had long been separated by time and distance, right now, seated together on thatfamiliar iron bench in that little garden, it was as though they had never been apart.
    ‘I missed you, Harry Boy.’ Kathleen did not look up. Instead she took a sip of her brandy. ‘For a long time I waited for you to get in touch, after the war ended, or maybe turn up at the door, but you never did. When the yearspassed and there was no word, I didn’t know what to think. I had no idea where you were, or what you were doing after you were demobbed.’
    Harry explained, ‘I just kept going. I didn’t know or care where I would end up.’ When Sara came on the scene, he was little more than a tramp. ‘You can’t imagine how often I wanted to get in touch, but I was too ashamed.’
    ‘Don’t fret about it,’ she chided.‘You’re home now, you and little Tom.’ She glanced up at him, her voice charged with emotion. ‘Judy waited for you, every day she was at the window, hoping you’d come striding down the street.’
    There was a moment of quiet, before Harry answered in a choked voice, ‘I never meant to hurt her. You know that, don’t you, Kathleen?’
    ‘I do, yes.’
    ‘I did love her … so very much.’
    ‘I know that too.’
    ‘Do you think I was wrong in leaving like that?’
    After carefully considering his question, Kathleen answered in her usual forthright manner. ‘Yes, if truth be told, I do think you were wrong. But who could blame you? There you were, just a lad, when all’s said and done, and it must have seemed like you’d got the world on your shoulders. You weren’t ready or equipped to deal with what Judy toldyou.’
    Harry admitted it. ‘I was knocked for six. I had no idea how to deal with it.’
    ‘I’m not surprised. What Judy did was silly, plain wrong – and you were right to feel afraid and deceived. But she did it out of love for you, Harry Boy. Oh, don’t get me wrong! I’m not denying that she created a frightening situation, and that the two of youse desperately needed someone to turn to. Thankfully,I was here for Judy, but you made it impossible for me to be there for you, and to tell you the truth, it took me a long time to forgive you for running off to enlist like that.’
    When he made no comment, she went on, ‘You ought never to have gone away like that, in the depth of night, without telling a soul where you were going.’
    She cast her mind back, to the way he and Judy had gone into thegarden to discuss their future, and how he came back into the house, pale as a sheet and without a word to say. She heard him pacing his room half the night. In the morning when she called to him, he was already gone.
    ‘Kathleen?’
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘Do you honestly think it might have been better if I’d stayed?’
    The little woman shook her head. ‘No, I don’t think that,’ she told him. ‘In fact, to tellyou the truth, taking everything into consideration, I don’t believe you had much of a choice. I dare say you did the only thing you could … in the circumstances.’
    Harry recalled the moment that Judy had delivered her shocking revelation. ‘Judy lied to me. Time and again, she deliberately deceived me. If she truly loved me, how could she do that?’
    Even now, he could not believe that it had goneso far. ‘Fourteen,’ he groaned. ‘ She was only fourteen! Why did she let me go on believing she was sixteen!