Chapter 74: Tragedy

Gwyn had grown tall and straight. She was full of energy and as healthy as any of her lively friends. Like Michael, she was a bright child and enjoyed every minute of her life, working or playing at school and at home. She had a more placid nature than her brother and hardly ever cried about anything. She never put on her parts and Mike had never seen her in a tantrum. She was not moody like Michael.

During Gordon's Christmas leave, Michael went visiting relatives with his Dad. They went back to Edward Street. Nothing had changed – but it all seemed different to Michael. The houses seemed to be smaller and the street narrower. Aunt Elsie was just the same in her dark clothing and in her ocking chair.

They stayed long enough to see Joan. She was a super-looking teenager and going to leave school soon. Michael felt shy with her but watched her every movement appreciatively. The didn't say much to each other. Michael stayed close to his Dad where he felt safe.

One afternoon, Michael and his Dad set the model train-lines out together and played with the train set. Michael explained to Gordon what train-spotting and collecting engine names and numbers was all about. He told him how John and he had visited the engine sheds behind Cable Street, and how a friendly engine-driver had let them ride on the footplate up to Castle Station and back again. John was always hanging around the engines and had got to know some of the drivers.

Michael told Gordon about them paying a penny for a platform ticket out of the ticket machine. How they liked sitting on a bench at Castle Station collecting the numbers of the express trains and the ones which stopped at Lancaster. Michael asked his father, "What does RTO stand for Dad? There's a room on the station with a notice like that on it."

"It stands for Railway Transport Officer. It's a place where Forces people can go for help, if they have problems with late trains or if they lose their tickets and stuff like that." Gordon told Michael about busy Crewe railway station where he changed trains coming on leave.

"There's a big junction there and a railway works. You'd be able to collect dozens of names and numbers," he told him.

Michael had had a wristwatch for Christmas and F. Maurice Speed's Film Review 1944. He was film mad and it had been an expensive purchase, agreed on only because of his obvious obsession with films.

"Well," said his Mam, "I can see it's more than a fad with you so I'll see what I can do." He read parts of it to Gordon and showed him photos of some of the films which he had been to with Wilf.

Gordon enjoyed looking at the glamour photos and noticed Michael did too. "I've missed a lot because of the war," he mused. "The children are growing up so fast, I hardly know them!"

Michael spent many hours with Gordon during his Christmas leave but whenever he could he escaped outdoors to be with his friends. He went next door nearly every evening for an hour to see John. John had had a fantastic, expensive game of table-football for Christmas and the two boys played with it at every opportunity.

Gwyn spent every minute possible with her Dad. Every spare moment that he had she was with him, making up for lost time. She loved to sit on his knee and cuddle up to him with her special cat, Jesse, purring away and hugged close to her.

"Do cats live a long time, Dad?"
"Quite a long time love. Why?"
"Doreen says my cats will all die before I'm grown up. Is it true?"
"Well love, you never can tell. You may be lucky. They could live to be twenty or more but not often."
"I don't want them to die before me Dad. I want them to be with me always." Her cat rolled over and she tickled its stomach.

The cat purred and she went on stroking it.

"Will you be coming home soon Dad?" she asked. "Why can't you stay? I don't like it when you're not here. I want to be with you forever and ever."
"I hope it won't be long now love. I only wish I was back with you. They say the war will be over soon."
"I've just remembered Dad, you haven't measured us yet."

Every leave, Gordon stood his two children up against the dining-room wall, near the kitchen door.

"Stand up straight!" he'd say. Then he'd take a ruler, place it flat on their heads and write their initials where the ruler touched the wall. He wrote very lightly with the pencil so that it did not show much and spoil the wallpaper. The evidence of their steady growth, from infants to where they were now, could be seen there.

"You're right!" Gordon said to Gwyn. "Remind me, when Michael comes in. We'll do it right away!"

Gwyn liked to do things for and with her Dad. She loved having his attention and being close to him. Gordon enjoyed her being like that. He thought, what a fool he'd been, in 1939. Why had he joined up? He should have stayed with her and the rest of the family. Gwyn needed him. All three needed him to be with them at home. Had he got his priorities right? But what if everyone had stayed at home? Hitler had to be stopped. Where would they be now if men like him hadn't made the decision to go and fight?

Gwyn was always asking him things like, "Shall I put the sugar in your tea Dad?"
"Do you want me to fetch your slippers Dad?"
"Can I undo your tie Dad?"
"Can I help you polish your cap badge Dad?"
"Can I go with you to see Nan Dad?"
"Shall we go and see Uncle Brian Dad?"

She was always round him. He loved it. "My Little Maid," he called her and "Twinkle Toes." He was always making fancy names up for her. "Princess Gwyn"! "My Precious Treasure"!

He lifted her and held her high above his head. She nearly banged her head on the ceiling. "I think I'll put you in my pocket and take you back to camp with me. How about that?"
"Will you really Dad? Would you like to? I'll come with you Dad! I could go with you everywhere all the time then."

Michael smiled when he heard them going on like that and carried on with his homework. It wasn't like when Gwyn had been with Wilf and he'd felt jealous. Michael loved to hear his Dad and Gwyn talk together and do things. He knew that his Dad would always find room for him when he was needed. He never felt excluded.

Margaret felt a bit shut out at times. She was the one who had to be forever disciplining Michael and seeing to all the day-to-day business of looking after them both. Michael thought his Dad was the Lord of Creation and Gwyn was always clinging round her father. Gordon was having all the cream.

However, there was one big compensation when he came home. Their sticky patch was over and she and her husband were at ease with each other again. It wasn't exactly a second honeymoon. Peace had been declared. It was not unconditional surrender but it was more than an armistice.

Gordon's leave ended, school started, Michael had his twefth birthday and winter receded. Spring was on the way. Michael was feeling better about school. He was settling in during his second term and becoming used to what had seemed, at first, to be stupid rules and boring lessons.

When he did well in the Lower School set run which started outside the side school gate, with everybody, hundreds of them, made to participate, he had a real sense of achievement. They had to struggle all the way up the steep hill, trot past the park and then run down the hill past the Moor Hospital. They then started cutting back round the outside of the park.

There was a painful, uphill struggle again, legs leaden, fighting for breath. At last, with the help of gravity, they raced to a fast finish, all the way down Wyresdale Road and into school. It was about two miles. After he'd run off a painful stitch in his side near the hospital, Michael enjoyed it. He'd come in the first twenty and helped his house do well. Perhaps 'Sudge's' urgings and promotings of team-spirit were working.

When he arrived home, he opened the door and shouted, "Mam! Gwyn! I'm home. I did it all right and I came eighteenth."

There was no reply, and when he was hanging his coat up in the hall, his mother appeared at the top of the stairs. She had a worried expression on her face and put her fingers to her lips.

"Shh!" she said in a whisper, "Gwyn's not well again. I've just got her off to sleep."
That evening, Margaret wrote a long letter to Gordon.

My Dearest Gordon,

I know it's not easy but is there any chance of you taking some leave in the next few days? I don't want to worry you but Gwyn has not been at all well recently. It all started with that sty in her eye, which I told you about a fortnight ago. I had some Golden Eye Ointment from Cuthbert's the Chemist but when I went again last week he said if it did not clear up she should really see the doctor. She didn't look well and was always weary. When she started with a bad headache, I decided to take her to see the doctor. He gave her a good examination and looked a bit worried. He said she needed a lot of rest and to take her home to bed.

He called to see her this afternoon and gave her some tablets for her headache and to help her to sleep. You know how she's always so cheerful and chirpy, she's not been like that really since you were last at home and she looks a lot thinner and really peaky. I can't make her eat a thing. She hasn't got a cough or a wheezy sound on her chest like she used to have as a baby but I am worried Gordon.

I wish you were here. I know I can always have a chat with May Howson, Sheila and Mrs Martin and depend on them for help but I feel lonely without you and don't know what to do for the best. The doctor's coming again in two days time. He says she might have to go into hospital. How can we afford that?

We had such a lovely Christmas. Everything seemed to be coming right again. And now this! I can't believe it. For years, I thought that we were out of the woods with Gwyn but she looks so poorly Gordon, I'm at my wits end.

I'm keeping my worry as best I can from Michael. He seems happy enough. He's settled a lot better at school and always has plenty to tell me about his cross-country running and about some new friends he's made in his class.

I know you don't like using the phone but if your officer will let you, do you think you could telephone the Martins so that I can speak to you. She's told me any time. They're always willing to help.

You know I wouldn't be worrying you with this but I have such a funny feeling about how she is.

 All my love,
 Margaret xxxx
Michael might not have been showing it but he was worried sick about his sister. He kept it to himself. He didn't say anything to his friends about it until after the doctor came and Margaret agreed that Gwyn should go into hospital. That was really serious! The Uglies were back!

Michael had retained some of his old sleeplessness and occasional nightmares as he grew older but nothing was as bad as it used to be. Now, it was his waking life that became a day-long nightmare. It was like being on a different planet. He was awake but living a different existence. Somebody else's mind, filled with dread and hopelessness, seemed to be occupying his body.

It got worse.

Gwyn was in hospital for two weeks. Visiting was only allowed on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons. Every non-visiting day, after school, Michael went willingly for his Mam, on his bike, to the Lancaster Royal Infirmary. He propped his bicycle, against the wall of the hospital. In the reception area, behind a desk, was a hospital porter. The first time he went there, the man asked him what he wanted.

"Hello my lad, what brings you here?"
"Please, Mister, I've come to ask how my sister is."
"And what may her name be?"
"Gwyn Watson."
"Just a moment young fellah." The porter stood up from his chair and consulted a book, on a side desk. He came back to Michael.
"It says she's satisfactory today."
"Thank-you, Mister."

Michael rode his bike back home and told his mother what the man had said. As he rode he pondered 'satisfactory'? Huh! What did that mean? Non-committal, just like his school report that had that word written on it!

The second day, when he went there, the kindly porter remembered him. "Hello lad! You'll have come about your sister. Gwyn Watson isn't she?"
"Yes, Mister," said Michael.

The man looked in the book and returned to Michael. He looked over the top of his spectacles at Michael and then spoke in a gentle voice, "I'm sorry lad but it says here she's on the danger list."

Michael's heart sank into his boots. He fumed to himself as he cycled, "But she was satisfactory yesterday! What's going on? Why aren't they doing something to make her better?" He pedalled home furiously to give his mother the bad news.

And so it went on: one day she would be satisfactory and another day she would be on the danger list. After a fortnight, there was no firm diagnosis, and there was no improvement.

An ambulance brought her back home. She was thinner and always had a headache. Gordon came on leave but had to go away again after a few precious days.

Margaret sat up all night with Gwyn who was always in a lot of pain. She had terrible headaches. May and Sheila persuaded Margaret to let them take a turn at the vigil over the sick child's bed. "If you go on like this, you'll be no good to her, or yourself. You have to have a rest."

Mr Martin offered a loan and a specialist was called in. His diagnosis was tuberculosis. He was hopeful that, if Gwyn went to a sanatorium, she might be well again within two or three years. If that were to happen, they would have to sell the house and go into cheap accommodation. Michael would have to leave the Grammar School and every means possible would have to be devised to find the money for her treatment.

Gordon's Commanding Officer gave him indefinite, compassionate leave. The crew completed the last mission safely without him. He came home to help nurse his child and make crucial decisions. Yes, Gwyn had to be given every chance, every possible treatment. It didn't need thinking about twice. Again, Mr Martin offered a loan and was accepted when he said they could borrow more money from him. Pride did not come into it, if it was a matter of life or death.

It got worse.

Gwyn was a marvellous patient, lying in bed day-after-day. Her trusting, loving eyes were almost unnaturally bright and contrasted with her pale, translucent skin.

"It's hurting again, Mam," she'd say, with pathetic resignation, "The pain's come back again." Margaret would give her more of the 'special' medicine, which the doctor left in a bottle for her.

Then one afternoon, it seemed that a miracle had happened.

Gwyn rallied. It was a warm April day and the bedroom window was open. She could hear her friend, Doreen, and some other girls playing in the garden.

"Mam," she asked, "Can I get up for a bit? I want to play out with Doreen."

Margaret could not believe it. Did it mean the illness had relented? She hesitated, then asked Sheila to help her take Gwyn downstairs into the garden. She was wrapped in a blanket and sat on a chair. The girls came round to see her. When Michael arrived home from school, the girls were playing at being teacher and pupils. Gwyn sat by the blackboard and pretended to be the teacher. He rushed indoors to his mother.

"Is she better, Mam?"
"I hope so son."

The back door was open and while Michael sat in the kitchen eating a biscuit, watching his Mam prepare a meal, he could hear the chattering girls, outside in the spring sunshine.

Then Doreen came in and said, "You'd better come Mrs Watson. Gwyn wants you."

It had been a brief respite. Gwyn had had one last opportunity to be with her best friends.

Michael was not sleeping. The Uglies were in charge again! He was awake that night, after midnight, when Sheila Matthews came into his bedroom, wrapped a blanket around him and told him to go downstairs with her.

Gwyn was worse.

Gordon had gone for the doctor. Then the screaming started. The sort of scream you can hear in Munch's painting, the screaming you can hear in the music of Gustav Mahler, the screaming Jack had heard when civilians had been bombed in Barcelona, the screaming of the dog that had been knocked down in Lancaster when Michael was a little boy, the scream that Michael had let out when his hand was burned by the poker. But that pain had not lasted long. Gwyn's did!

When the doctor arrived, he went straight upstairs. After a little while the screaming stopped but it stayed in Michael's head for ever and never ever went away.

The doctor came down. Michael sat there, wrapped in the blanket, shivering, although a night fire had been lit and was burning brightly. Michael had been chewing on a corner of his blanket and it was all wet.

The doctor stayed talking to Michael for a while. Then he went upstairs again. When he came down he said, "You can go up to bed now. Your sister's asleep. She's peaceful now."

The doctor whispered something to Sheila Matthews and then he departed.
Sheila took Michael up to bed. "You'll have to be a very brave boy Michael. Your Mam and Dad need you to be brave. Good night, Michael. I'll leave the light on for you."

"Yes Mrs Matthews. Thank you Mrs Matthews."
Then his Dad came in. "You all right son?"
"Yes Dad."
"Well goodnight then. Try to sleep!"
"Yes Dad. I'll try." But he couldn't. He was listening for Gwyn. But the doctor had managed to help her. She didn't scream again. Not that night!

Word had gone out. The Watsons had a very sick child! Relatives, friends, neighbours, the curate, the lady who took the Brownies, the milk-lady, all sorts of people visited, every day.

They brought gifts of sweets, chocolate; girlish feminine items; little fluffy toys; get-well cards; even a quarter of a pound of green grapes which were worth a fortune. People brought themselves and their grave concern. It was overwhelming and frightening. Michael knew that it all meant one thing: his little sister was going to die.

Beth Farrell, Gwyn's teacher came. She brought a bar of chocolate with her. Gordon answered the door. He saw her standing there, looking very concerned. He was too far gone in sorrow to be worried about or aware of his deep feelings for her anymore. The reality of the love he was losing had banished his romantic feelings. She was just another visitor. He went upstairs to be with Gwyn and sent Margaret down.

Beth greeted Margaret and said, "I'm so sorry Mrs Watson."
"Yes."
"She's a lovely child. I really enjoy teaching her." She was still using the present tense.
"Thank you."
"I hope you don't mind me calling."
"Not at all. It's very kind of you."
"Do you think that she would like to see me?"
"I'm sorry Miss Farrell, but she's too far gone for that. She's sleeping most of the time and doesn't recognise anyone when she does come round a bit."

A junior school teacher has pupils in her class, sitting with her for many hours a day, for at least a year. It's usually a close, loving relationship. In loco parentis!

Any committed teacher feels a pang when she has to pass HER class on to another teacher, at the end of each summer. But one of her pupils dying? Surely, that didn't happen any more! Only in war! And in the bad old days! Beth bit her lip. She felt like crying. But she wasn't there for that. She was there to be supportive.

"Oh, I see. Well, I'd best be going. I did not mean to trouble you."
"It was very kind of you to call Miss Farrell. I'll try and let Gwyn know you've been. She may be able to understand more than we think."

Beth went.

Aunt Elsie came from Edward Street. She and Margaret clung to each other and wept buckets. Joan came with her. "Hello Michael," she said. Michael was almost too shy to speak, likw when his dad had taken him visiting at Christmas. Joan was such a beautiful young teenager. He could say nothing. He still felt what he'd always felt for her. She gave Michael a bag of sweets.

"They're for Gwyn but you can have one. Go on, take one. They won't bite you!"
Michael raised his eyes and looked straight at her. He felt that he could have drowned in her lovely eyes. He took the sweets. "Thank you Joan."

Joyce visited. She came by taxi with her little girl. She was dressed in black. It suited her. She and Margaret spoke together for a short while. The real purpose of Joyce's visit had been to tell Margaret that she'd heard her husband was dead and so was Margaret's friend from Room Seven. When she saw for herself the desperation of the Watsons, she kept her own bad news to herself. It could wait.

Joyce could not believe how ill Margaret looked. Her own appearance had hardly been affected by her husband's death. Yet another bar of chocolate was left behind when she departed.

Gwyn had eaten practically nothing for many days. Michael had come up with the idea that she might like some ice-cream. His Mam agreed.

"She might love. But where on earth would we find ice-cream these days?"
"I know a place Mam. A boy at school told me about it."

It was lunchtime. Michael always came home for his lunch, as the school break was two hours, from noon until two in the afternoon. He had plenty of time.
"I could go on my bike Mam. It wouldn't take me long. I'll be there and back in no time. She might like an ice-cream Mam. Our Gwyn's always loved an ice-cream Mam."

Margaret took sixpence out of her purse and gave it to him. "Where are you going for it?"
"It's in Bare Lane, a house just three away from the station. They make it themselves. Rix at school says it's good stuff. He lives near there."

His mother gave Michael a glass jar with a screw-top, to put the ice-cream in. He had a saddle bag on his bike. He'd had that for his birthday. He fetched his bike from the shed and wheeled it out onto the road. As he cycled, a funny idea came into his head. "I'll make a bargain with you, God. If I can get the ice-cream back in five minutes and less time than that every day for a week, you'll have to let her live. Right?"

It was like the games his Dad had always played, setting himself targets. But, Michael knew that this was no game. It was a matter of life or death. It was up to him to save his sister. God would listen. God would reward him if he succeeded.

It was a lovely, late April day. The sky was azure blue, with a few cotton-wool clouds floating way-up on high. Michael was sweating by the time he'd cycled to the top of Cross Hill.

When he reached the end of Bare Lane, where the ice-cream house was, the signal-man had just left his high box next to the station and was swinging the level-crossing gates closed because there was a train coming from Euston Road Station. No time for train numbers today!

He went up a front garden path. There were daffodils and tulips on either side and shrubs with green tips and hints of colour, all about to burst into life, as the warm sun urged them to their annual resurrection.

It was the right house. Rix had been telling the truth. There was a tub of ice-cream in the porch. Michael rang the bell. A motherly, grey-haired, elderly lady came.

"Hello love! What would you like?"
"May I have sixpenneth of ice-cream in this jar please?"
"You certainly may!" The lady took a scoop and plopped two generous helpings into the jar. She took his money and handed the container back to him.
"Mind you don't drop it!" she said.

Michael went back to his bike, which he'd leaned up against her garden wall, placed the ice-cream in his saddle bag, looked at his watch, mounted his bike and cycled furiously all the way home. When he arrived there, his watch told him that he'd done it! In just under five minutes. "Right God," he said to himself, "now it's up to you!"

He still had some time to spare before he went for his bus back to school. He took a teaspoon out of the kitchen drawer and went upstairs. "I've got it mam," he said. "Can I give it to her?"

His mother smiled. "You weren't long! Just a minute, I'll prop her up. Perhaps you can coax a bit down her."

Michael went and knelt by the bed.
"Come on Gwyn. Look what I've brought you. It's your favourite. It's lovely ice-cream."

The faintest of smiles flitted across Gwyn's face. She didn't say anything but she hadn't dissented. Michael dipped the spoon in the jar.
"Just a little Michael. Not too much!" his mother entreated.

Michael put a morsel of the ice-cream onto the end of the spoon and placed it between Gwyn's lips. Her mouth opened slightly and he managed to push some, gently, inside. She did not swallow any. It dribbled out again.

Michael's heart sank.
His mother took the container and spoon from him.
"You'd best be off. You don't want to be late for school.
I'll give her some, after you've gone."
"Right Mam." Michael stood up. He bent over Gwyn and said, "I'll see you later Gwyn. I have to go now."

She smiled faintly again, when he waved to her from the bedroom door. It was the last time she knew who he was. Jesse her cat was on the bed but it wasn't purring.

It got worse.

He hadn't been sleeping for weeks and he could not concentrate. He'd been neglecting his lessons, and that afternoon, there was going to be a test. When the lesson started, the teacher said he was going to ask questions round the class, instead of asking them to write the answers down.

He'd asked six questions and most of the boys had put their hands up each time. The chosen ones had all answered correctly. Michael's hand had stayed down because he hadn't known any of the answers. The seventh question came. Again, Michael did not know the answer. The teacher was on to him!

"Watson, stand up!"
Michael stood up.
"Is there something wrong with your arm Watson? Have you lost the use of it?"
"No sir!"
"Then why Watson are you not putting it up to answer the questions like all the others?"
"I don't know sir."
"Don't know? Do you mean you don't know the answers to any of my questions?"
"Don't know sir!"

A ripple of laughter went round the class and the teacher decided to play to his audience. "Well, Mr 'Don't Know,' let's try you. Let's see if you know anything. What day is it Watson?"
"Thursday sir!"

"Ah so, Mr 'Don't Know ' does know which day of the week it is."

The boys laughed appreciatively at the teacher's heavy sarcasm. Michael felt his lip trembling. He must not cry. Big boys didn't cry. Especially at that school. He would be an object of derision if he did. If he said to himself, "It's not fair!" he knew self-pity would well up inside him and he'd start blubbing. Instead, he tried concentrating on hating his tormentor. For a while, it worked.

Then the teacher asked him an easy question. He didn't know the answer. "Tell him!" bade the teacher. Most of the kids called out the answer.


"Perhaps he can't hear, tell him louder." All of the class shouted the answer again. It felt like they were shouting at him. They were all against him. All the world was against him. Everybody was against him. Nobody understood. He hated them all.

The teacher told the boys to shout the answer again. They all did, except for Trevor Rix. The rest were really enjoying what was going on. It was finally too much for Michael and he started to blub.

"Stand on your chair, Watson!" ordered the teacher.

Michael climbed onto his chair. He stood there, a pathetic figure, a dejected object. He'd taken his handkerchief out and kept on wiping his eyes and blowing his nose, while the teacher went on and on with his sarcasm. "What a spectacle!" he sneered. "What a pathetic object you are Watson!" Michael could not hear him any more. He stood there enduring the derisive remarks, the mockery, the betrayal by the other pupils.

"The poor little thing hasn't done his homework and now he feels sorry for himself. Oh look, how sorry he feels for himself." Michael's shoulders were heaving uncontrollably now as the fir ot sobbing took him over. The teacher had no mercy. He carried on, "Perhaps one of you will go and fetch a bucket to catch his tears. Maybe he'll fill it for us."

Michael began to think that was quite possible. The more the man spoke, the more Michael cried. Soon he was convulsed with crying, uncontrollable grief pouring out of him.

At last, the teacher restrained himself. "Sit down!" he said to Michael. "Let it be a lesson to you. Do your homework in future!"

Michael sat down and the lesson continued.

Many years later, there was an obituary in the Lancaster Guardian. The teacher, the one who had tormented Michael, had just died. The newspaper's list of his good deeds seemed endless. He left behind a loving wife and five children. He was Jewish, a refugee, from Nazi oppression in Germany. He had fled to England in 1937. He had lost most of his family and many friends in the Holocaust.

Michael wondered, "Was that the reason he gave me such a bad time that afternoon, just a week before the war ended. Had he just discovered the awful truth about what had happened to his people? Did the sight of me, crying over a failure to do my homework, bring out the latent sadist in him, at a time when he was consumed with grief because of the horrors in his life?

"Maybe he was as ignorant of my sorrowing for my sister as I was of his for his dead beloved relatives," he considered. "Both in our sealed compartments, hating each other, when we should have been consoling each other and embracing like brothers! My torture had been inflicted by an apparently uncaring God and his by the evil of Mankind. It came to the same thing."

Friday lunch-time, Michael went for more ice-cream. He looked at his watch and raced for home.

It got worse.

Mindful of the bargain he had made with God, he was making every effort to be home well inside five minutes, when his progress was halted. He had just passed the entrance to Powder House Lane and he got a puncture! He dismounted and ran the rest of the way pushing the bike, trying desperately to keep his side of the bargain.

He failed, by two minutes. That was it then. He'd lost. It was hopeless.

He took the ice-cream upstairs. Mam took it from him, at the bedroom door. "You can go in, but she won't know you."

Michael went into the bedroom. Gwyn looked terrible. The skin was taut and stretched, transparent, across the bones of her face. Her eyes were open but unseeing.

"Hello Gwyn," he whispered. There was no response. No flicker of recognition in her eyes. Her breathing was loud, more like snoring. Michael fled from the room.

He buried his face in his Mam's dress for a minute. Then he ran downstairs, picked up his books for afternoon school and raced off down the road, along Morecambe Road, over Carlisle Bridge, across town, and still running, went all the way up East Road and into the cloakroom at school. He sat half-hidden by the coats hanging there.

He stayed for a while until the bell went. "You all right?" whispered Trevor Rix as they stood outside their classroom.

"Yes," said Michael. "I'll survive!"
"You what?" asked Trevor.
"Nothing! You wouldn't understand if I told you! And be quiet; the prefect's watching!

When Michael came home from morning school on Saturday, he went in through the back door. Sheila Matthews was in the kitchen, waiting for him. "Don't take your coat off," she said, "I've left you some lunch at our house. Rob is waiting for you. You can play with him and the girls. I'll be there in a little while." Michael wondered why she was speaking in a whisper.

After he'd been at Rob's about an hour, Mrs Matthews came. Michael could see that she'd been crying. "You'd better go home now Michael. Your mother will be expecting you." She patted the top of his head as he went and said, "We'll see you again soon."

Michael walked home slowly and turned the corner into Sefton Drive. It was drizzling and everything looked drab. The daffodils in the gardens had their heads bowed and rainwater was dripping off the trees. There were no birds singing, just a few black crows, circling over the woods and cawing. It was a miserable afternoon.

All of the curtains in the house were drawn.

It was over.

It could not get any worse!

The hymn at assembly that morning had been:

"God's in his heaven
All's right with the world"

Gordon had to go back to the RAF after the funeral. It was Victory in Europe Day. All over Lancaster, there was rejoicing. Flags were everywhere in windows and strung across the streets. Bonfires were lit and blackout material burned. He went, all on his own, for a late-evening train. At the top of Vicarage Lane, he paused and looked around.

There were lights on all over Lancaster. For the first night in over five years the blackout was over and the lights were on again. There was a terrible blackness inside Gordon. The irony of it all! His world was at an end and everyone else was contemplating future happiness. They were alive. They'd survived. The war was over. All he could think of was his dead daughter Gwyn!

He had a compartment to himself. People didn't want to be on a train when they could be celebrating at home or elsewhere. He lay full-length on the seats and tried to make sense of it all. He could make none. But he realised there was still Michael to think of. Michael would have to be to looked after and helped through this ordeal. He made a vow there and then to redouble his efforts to care and provide for his son, in every way possible.

Poor Gordon! The world was happy in 1918, when a war ended but he mourned his father. It was the same in 1945 and this time it was his daughter.

Margaret made a bed up on the floor in Michael's bedroom and slept there. She could not face being on her own at night. She felt as though a knife had been inserted into her stomach and all her innards removed.

Michael's insomnia continued. He would lie awake in the middle of the night. He became familiar with all the sounds of after-midnight. There was the wind and its various noises: its sighs, its roarings and whisperings. The tapping of twigs on the window.

Clankings were heard clearly from over the river where the shunting of railway goods wagons went on at Williamson's. A night bird screeched. No traffic, the road was quiet. A hunted animal cried from the wood. An express train's whistle from afar then its rumbling over Carlisle Bridge. Wooden beams in the house creaked. His mother's alarm clock tick-tocked on the dressing-table. A door was slammed by a late-night reveller returning home. His mother's deep breathing stopped and was replaced by the sound of her quiet sobbing. It went on for a long time. He did not let her know that he was awake.

Inside his head, Gwyn screamed. The Uglies rejoiced and laughed!

Margaret had kept Michael away from the funeral, where she collapsed and had to be supported by Gordon and two of her brothers. There were hundreds of people there.

Fumigators came and sealed the room where Gwyn had died. The cause of death had been established as tubercular meningitis. There was a slight risk of infection. They removed the bedclothes and Gwyn's clothing and sprayed everywhere in the room. They took away thirty bars of chocolate and ten bags of sweets, nearly a year's ration.

Mrs Martin and Sheila Matthews removed every trace of Gwyn from the house. It was Margaret's wish. She wanted to forget. No photographs would be displayed. Later, the time would come when she tried desperately to remember the good times, when her daughter laughed and smiled.

The memories became elusive and the few photographs that had been retained, hidden, were scanned anxiously for proof that once there had been happiness in her life. Much, much later, there would be a desperate striving, within, to regain memories of the good times and an attempt to forget the horror.

The grave would not be visited. It was not the certainty of death which she sought.

Within three months, Margaret's hair turned white.

Michael felt that life was meaningless. All of Gwyn's clothes had gone, and her toys. Michael went upstairs when they were sorting things. Sheila handed Michael Gwyn's ration book. "Your mam says to burn this."

Michael took the book. Before throwing it on the fire, he extracted the sweet coupons. He didn't care if God was watching. God wouldn't be bothered about anything he did or didn't do! He was going to have those sweets. He folded the sheet of coupons up and put it in the inside pocket of his school blazer.

Before he said his prayers that night, a little voice told him he was doing wrong. "It won't make any difference to her will it? She's dead. You let her die! Don't you, of all people, try to tell me what's right and what's wrong!" he'd aways had a personal thing, an all-powerful man.

Next day, he took a message by bus to his Aunty Belle. His mother had said he could stay awhile and play with Peter. They went to the park and sat and watched people playing tennis. After a while, Michael asked Peter, "Have you any pocket-money?"

"I've got a bob.Why?"
"I've some spare sweet coupons. Swap you for some dough?"
"All right!"

Michael felt inside the pocket of his blazer and took out the pink sheet of coupons.
"Why, you've a load there!" exclaimed Peter. "Let's go to Smith's sweet shop and buy something."

They stood outside the shop, undecided what to buy. While they were looking in the window, the little voice came again. "They're not yours. They're Gwyn's. It's not right." This time, Michael listened and obeyed the voice. Right in front of Peter's wondering eyes, he held up the sheet of coupons. He paused. He tore it in half, and tore it again, and again, and again, until it was all in shreds. He then pushed the bits down a drain at the side of the road.

He knew he could explain to his cousin Peter why he'd done it. Peter had always understood when he had problems. He told him what the business with the sweet coupons was all about. Peter put his arm round Michael's shoulders. "Come along Michael! Don't be upset! You'll be all right." He walked Michael back to Aunty Belle's.

Weeks, months, years passed but the traumatised family never came to terms with what had happened. It would have been better if they had talked to each other. Outwardly, it seemed as though Gwyn had never existed. Internally, it was like a bleeding wound that never healed.

When Gordon died, in 1983, Michael opened his father's leather wallet. There was a little money in it, a 'lucky' threepenny bit and two photographs of Gwyn. He'd hardly ever spoken of her but every day of his life, for the next thirty-eight years, he must have looked at her photographs and mourned, thinking his secret thoughts. His grief had been beyond words and too deep for anything other than secret tears when he was alone.

Michael never said, "It's not fair!" about anything that happened to him ever again. He matured early and realised he lived in a world containing many unlucky people: a world with much poverty, many tragedies and numerous sorrows. After the death of his luckless sister, he knew he was fortunate, one of the extremely lucky ones. He had his health and he prospered. Nothing to do with his cleverness! He never felt that he had earned his luck. He just tried to make the best of it.

Ultimately, in some ways, Gwyn's death strengthened Michael. He hated it when people moaned about little things. He agreed with Nan when she said, "We should all count our blessings." It also made him fatalistic, a gambler and reckless.

He had had the good fortune to have been born at a particular time in history and in a country which after the war prospered and distributed some of its prosperity more evenly than it had ever done in the past. The newspapers branded them as years of austerity. That depended on who you were and where you were coming from. And how deceptive your rose-coloured spectacles were!

Gwyn had been desperately unlucky with her fatal disease. Just a few years later, there was a National Health Service and there were cures for tuberculosis.
Jack Matthews was proved to have been right. After 1945, many things did change for the better. But human nature didn't change. It wasn't only the rich of the past who were corrupted by materialism. The future was to prove that greed was not exclusive to any class or group.

One of Gordon's cliches summed it up, "Money is the root of all evil." High paid workers were as acquisitive, greedy and uncaring for the less-fortunate in the world as the bosses had always been. With notable exceptions of course!

Jack visited Lancaster, just before he died, in the early sixties. He rang Gordon up and arranged to see him at a meeting he'd been asked to address, on world poverty.

Gordon was still working at Williamson's and very much involved in local politics. Jack was well-known nationally as a rebel Labour MP.

 At the gathering of the comrades, Jack asserted, "We're all James Williamsons now in the eyes of the Third World. Are we as generous with our new wealth as he was with his? Are we even worse than he was in our neglect of the world's underprivileged? When we contemplate the plight of our fellow-human beings, in other parts of the globe, are we sufficiently moved to brush a few crumbs from our table of plenty, into their eager, needy hands?"

After the meeting, Jack and Gordon went for a drink together in Moor Lane. They still drank pints of bitter. Jack surveyed the interior of the pub with approval.

"Not changed much has it, since we first came in here?"
"Neither have you!" Gordon smiled. "Still spouting your head off! Cheers!"
Jack responded, "Cheers! Bottoms up!"

"Here's to the future!" said Gordon.

"Yes - but don't forget the past!" answered Jack.