Returned

                                Returned

The dock was bustling with so many people on the grey Devonport day that I could hardly recognize it. I pushed through the crowd till I was standing in a place where I could actually see. Across the waves a huge ship was making its way through the harbor, the crowd let out a cheer. I did not join in for I resented the navy for taking my father away and not bringing him home safely.

I glanced at my mother who was holding little John and staring at the ship that had now docked. We had not received father’s weekly letters for more than a month now and we were afraid - afraid that we had lost him. Out of hope we had come to see the sailors return.       

The band struck up and played a victorious tune as the gang plank was lowered. I scanned the deck of the ship for the tall, grinning man who stood proud in the photo on the mantelpiece back at home. A man in a dark green uniform with three medals pinned to his chest waved a hand for silence, and started a long speech about the brave sailors who had returned home from fighting the Japanese.  I wasn’t listening and noticed that mother was doing the same, while also stopping little John from playing with the shoelaces belonging to the lady next to us. Finally, the speech ended and the soldiers marched down the gangplank  to join the families they had not seen in years. Someone tugged my hand and mother led me and carried John through the crowd with a desperate look on her face that I had never seen her wear before.

After half an hour of searching, it was me leading mother through the crowd with a screaming baby in her arms. She did not resist or talk and I knew she had given up. There was only one place left to look unless we had just missed him by chance. I stomped up the gangplank, determined. “Maybe we shouldn’t…” Mother tried to pull me back. “We have to!” I cried. “We didn’t  receive the letter saying he’s dead, and we looked everywhere down there.” I gestured to the the still crowded port. “But he could be on the ship.” Mother still looked uneasy but hope was creeping into eyes as she let me take her onto the deck. Walking ‘round the deck, we saw a man in a dark green uniform with three medals pinned to his chest. When he saw us he gave us a stare that told us we shouldn't have been there but I said in the boldest voice I could muster “Do you know where a man called Frank Willfer is?” He looked uneasy but said “Ah, Willfer eh. He yer father?” I nodded. “I have no idea of his whereabouts.”

Mother had completely given up hope. He was dead and gone. John did everything he could think of to cheer her up but he didn’t even understand what the matter was. I was upset too. I didn’t have many memories of him, but it still felt as if something had been torn away from me.

We turned to go.  The crowd had departed.  Families leaving, whole families. Whole happy families. “Coming through, make way please!” A voice appeared behind us.

A man wrapped in bandages was lying on a small  stretcher, asleep. As soon as mother saw him she threw her arms around him, squashing John in the process. Stopping, the stretcher carriers stared at my mother. The man woke up groggily then cried “Helen?” Then looked at me and John. “Alison! Johny!” I threw my arms around my father.

By Millie Rea