Norman sifted the rich, fruity mass with his spoon, hoping for one of those coveted silver sixpenny pieces. But Frank was the first to find one.
“You can have a wish. Whatever you like, lucky man,” said Polly in a husky, suggestive tone.
Frank’s thoughts were in another direction. “I wish,” he said sadly, holding the small coin between finger and thumb, “I wish God’s peace to my brother Ted, rest his soul. And I wish a Happy Christmas to all the blokes who fought with us and survived. And God rot all our enemies. And the bloody Yanks, come to that.”
“That’s about four wishes,” Polly said, “ and it won’t come true if you tell everyone.”
Wendy felt the sharp edge of a sixpence in her mouth, and removed it unnoticed by the others. She wished him out of her life, with all her heart.
Norman finally found his piece of the pudding’s buried treasure. He spat the coin onto his plate and then examined it closely. “Look at this!” he said in surprise. “It isn’t a sixpence. It doesn’t have the King’s head.”
“Give it here.” Frank picked up the silver coin. “Jesus Christ! He’s right. It’s a dime. An American dime. How the hell did that get in the pudding?”
All eyes turned to Polly for an explanation. She stared wide-eyed at Frank. She was speechless.
Frank was not. He had reached his own conclusion. “I’ll tell you exactly how it got in there,” he said, thrusting it under Polly’s nose. “You’ve been stirring it up with a Yank. There was a GI base down the road, wasn’t there? When did you say you made the pudding? 1944?”
He rose from the table, spittle flying as he ranted. Norman slid from his chair and hid under the table, clinging in fear to his mother’s legs. He saw his father’s heavy boots turned towards Polly, whose legs braced. The hem of her dress was quivering.
Frank’s voice boomed around the small room. “Ted and I were fighting like bloody heroes while you were having it off with Americans. Whore!”
Norman saw a flash of his father’s hand as it reached into the fireplace and picked up a poker. He heard the women scream, then a sickening thump.
The poker fell to the floor. Polly’s legs jerked once and then appeared to relax. One of her arms flopped down and remained quite still. A drop of blood fell from the table edge. Presently there was another. Then it became a trickle. A crimson pool formed on the wooden floor.
Norman ran out of the room. Out of the house. Out into the cold afternoon, leaving the screams behind. He ran across the street and beat on a neighbour’s door with his fists. His frantic cries of “Help, murder!” filled the street. Within a short time an interested crowd in party hats had surrounded him. He pointed in horror to his own front door as his blood-stained father charged out and lurched towards him.
It took three men to hold Frank Morris down, and five policemen to take him away.
The last of the policemen didn’t leave the house until long after Norman should have gone to bed. His mother and his grandmother sat silent for some time in the kitchen, unable to stay in the front room, even though Polly’s body had been taken away.
“He’s not going to come back, is he, Mum?”
Wendy shook her head. She was only beginning to think about what happened next. There would be a trial, of course, and she would try to shield Norman from the publicity. He was so impressionable.
“Will they hang him?”
“I think it’s time for your bed, young man,” Maud said. “You’ve got to be strong. Your Mum will need your support more than ever now.”
The boy asked, “How did the dime get in the pudding, Grandma Morris?”
Wendy snapped out of her thoughts of what was to come and stared at her mother-in-law.
Maud went to the door, and for a moment it appeared as if she was reaching to put on her coat prior to leaving, but she had already promised to stay the night. Actually she was taking something from one of the pockets.
It was a Christmas card, a little bent at the edges now. Maud handed it to Wendy. “It was marked ‘private and confidential’ but it had my name, you see. I opened it thinking it was for me. It came last week. The address was wrong. They made a mistake over the house number. The postman delivered it to the wrong Mrs Morris.”
Wendy took the card and opened it.
“The saddest thing is,” Maud continued to speak as Wendy read the message inside, “he is the only son I have left, but I really can’t say I’m sorry it turned out this way. I know what he did to you, Wendy. His father did the same to me for nearly forty years. I had to break the cycle. I read the card, love. I had no idea. I couldn’t let this chance pass by. For your sake, and the boy’s.”
A tear rolled down Wendy’s cheek. Norman watched as the two women hugged. The card drifted from Wendy’s lap and he pounced on it immediately. His eager eyes scanned every word.
My Darling Wendy,
Since returning home, my thoughts are filled with you, and the brief time we shared together. It’s kind of strange to admit, but I sometimes catch myself wishing the Germans made you a widow. I can’t stand to think of you with any other guy.
My heart aches for news of you. Not a day goes by when I don’t dream of being back in your arms. My home, and my heart, will always be open for you.
Take care and keep safe,
Nick
Nick Saint (Ex-33rd US Reserve),
221C Plover Avenue,
Mountain Home,
Idaho
P.S. The dime is a tiny Christmas present for Norman to remember me by.
Norman looked up at his Grandmother and understood what she had done, and why. He didn’t speak. He could keep a secret as well as a grown-up. He was the man of the house now, at least until they got to America.
The Pushover
During the singing of the Twenty-Third Psalm, the man next to me gave me a nudge and said, “What do you think of the wooden overcoat?”
Uncertain what he meant, I lifted an eyebrow.
“The coffin,” he said.
I swayed to my left for a view along the aisle. I could see nothing worth interrupting the service for. Danny Fox’s coffin stood on trestles in front of the altar looking no different from others I had seen. On the top was the wreath from his widow, Merle, in the shape of a large heart of red roses with Danny’s name picked out in white. Not to my taste, but I wasn’t so churlish as to mention this to anyone else.
“No handles,” my informant explained.
So what? I thought. Who needs handles? Coffins are hardly ever carried by the handles. I gave a nod and continued singing.
“That isn’t oak,” the man persisted. “That’s a veneer. Underneath, it’s chipboard.”
I pretended not to have heard, and joined in the singing of the third verse — the one beginning “Perverse and foolish oft I strayed” — with such commitment that I drew shocked glances from the people in front.
“She’s going to bury Danny in the cheapest box she could buy.”
This baboon was ruining the service. I sat for the sermon in a twisted position presenting most of my back to him.
But the damage had been done. My response to what was said was blighted. If John Wesley in his prime had been giving the Address I would still have found concentration difficult. Actually it was spoken by a callow curate with a nervous grin who revealed a lamentable ignorance about the Danny I had known. “A decent man” was a questionable epithet in Danny’s case; “a loyal husband” extremely doubtful; “generous to a fault” a gross misrepresentation. I couldn’t remember a time when the departed one had bought a round of drinks. If the curate felt obliged to say something positive, he might reasonably have told us that the man in the coffin had been funny and a charmer capable of selling sand to a sheik. I cared a lot about Danny, or I wouldn’t be here, but just because he was dead we didn’t have to award him a halo.