Ebenezer Street might not have been much, but it was home. A short cobbled street of little terraced houses that trickled away into waste ground rather than a dead end of factory wall. But Ebenezer Street itself was a dead end now, all right.

What hadn’t been flattened by that single stray bomb in 1942 had been damaged beyond repair, derelict and boarded up. It was a miracle no-one had been killed.

Everyone said so! But that was because everyone was out of their homes that night - at the harvest supper.

The Miracle of Delphcote, they called it. But to me, it seemed as if my whole life had been ripped away. For I had been born in Ebenezer Street, grew up there. And would have happily stayed if I hadn’t had to leave it to go to war.

Seven years away. The world, my world, had changed so much. And so had I……“I thought I’d find you here, George Colton! What are you doing up here, looking sad?”

 Adele’s words might have been bright and breezy, but I could tell she knew how I felt, because she slipped her hand through mine, stood close to me.

 “I had to come and see…..” I said. “Just to make sure there was nothing to be done to  repair the old place….”

 I turned then and smiled at her, and saw she was smiling at me. Just a little, sad smile that spoke volumes about times gone by. About how little we had seen each other in the seven years we had been married. About how we would make up for lost time.

 About how wonderful it was to be home again - home for good. I had just been demobbed - no more army, no more desert, no more uniform. At last! I arrived home yesterday. Not to Ebenezer Street, but to Chandler Road, where Adele lodged with Mam and Dad, where they had all been billeted after the bomb wiped out Ebenezer Street.

 “No, there’s nothing to be done to repair the old place - or we would have done it! It’s a fresh start for us all, now!” Adele encouraged, gave my hand a little shake. “Come on home, George. There’s cold apple pie for dinner!”

 She knew that would cheer me up, make me laugh and hug her, my lovely wife! Just as lovely as I remembered her, a sweetheart shaped face with laughing hazel eyes and tight chestnut curls, a trim, tiny figure, an enchanting girl who could make a dragon smile, I was sure of it! Because she always made me smile, and think - every single day - how lucky I was that she had married me!

As for the mention of apple pie…..well, that had been a joke between us since the very first day we met. I was a gangly fifteen, Adele a winsome fourteen.

 She had come to help her friend, the minister’s daughter, hand out plates at the parish harvest supper.

 “More apple pie?” a voice asked from behind me.

 I turned round to say something, and saw a girl in a floral wrap round pinny holding a huge plate pie, serving knife poised. Best of all, I saw that wonderful smile, those curls and those green-brown eyes, and I was lost. For I fell in love, there and then, and will stay in love with my Adele forever.

 Not even the war parted us - not really. Those rare leaves back home between postings were wonderful, and we wrote letters to bridge the miles, always wrote.

 “Save some apple pie for me!” was how we always finished our letters. It was our special code for saying how much we loved and missed each other, how much joy we had to remember about being together, how much we looked forward to normal life again.

 How the very idea of being home in Delphcote keep me sane and cheerful, kept me going when times were bad.

 Because I had a long and eventful war. I was in it from beginning to end, saw the world in a mad sort of Cook’s Tour I wouldn’t recommend to anyone. And there were times, I have to admit, I didn’t think I would make it home. But I’m not talking about all that stuff! Not now! Not now I’m home, and looking to a new start for Adele and me. 

 And now there’s cold apple pie for dinner! The remains of the pie Mam had made (from long hoarded bottled apples, saved specially for the occasion) to go with a hotpot as a celebratory meal, my first meal home again, home now and for ever.

Growing up in Ebenezer Street. Playing marbles over the drain covers, pirates and cowboys and Indians on the scrubland at the end of the street - the Waste, as it was known. Picking blackberries from the bramble patches, hard, tart crabapples from the gnarled old fruit trees, proper apples from Farmer Murchison’s orchard, which backed onto the Waste and grew shining, sweet cookers and eaters, apples my mates and I dared each other to scrump - to steal - and take home to Mam. Because, after all, who would miss an apple or two, we always reckoned? When he had so many?

And I had stood reminiscing, smiling to myself at the memory of those golden, innocent days long gone, when Adele had found me, hunting for me during her dinner hour. And had promised me cold apple pie for dinner!

 Apple pie had always been a special joke between us, because it held so many memories. Of meeting that first day. Of being one of my favourite foods. Of being the thing Adele had first tried to cook when we were married, trying to master the old fire oven in the tiny two room cottage at the top of the row where we had begun our married life.

 “I can’t do this, George!” she had exploded, vexed beyond measure, as yet another pie brought to the table showed soggy pastry and a grey sponginess.

 “Doesn’t matter a bit!” I’d laughed, sweeping her onto my lap and kissing her. “It’ll just come with practice one day, you’ll see!” I soothed comfortingly. “And if I had to choose between apple pie and you….” I paused to kiss her. “Then it’s no contest!”

 She laughed too, then, and kissed me back. And we didn’t worry about her apple pie problems for some time…..

That all seemed years and lifetimes ago, now! Adele had mastered the baking of apple pies. And I had to get back to normal, persist as she had, I told myself firmly! Be the George Colton I used to be. Instead of feeling like this stranger who looked the same, talked the same… but felt totally different. Except for one thing. My love for Adele!

 “Just stick with it, lad,” Dad advised. “I felt the same when I came back from the last lot. And don’t forget you were away twice as long as me! The old life will click back into place, one day.”

 He meant well, I knew. And I was sure he was right. But I still felt…..odd. As if I wasn’t really back home at all. As if there was a glass barrier between me and everything, everyone, I knew and loved. As if the old happy-go-lucky me had gone, replaced by the brusque, tough soldier. And no-one needed me as a soldier any more.

 My mate Jack Tanner said he had felt the same.“Stands to reason, George. You’ve been living a different life. In the military, always on the move. Doing the sort of things you wouldn’t tell the family about. But you’ll settle down, soon. Honest!”

 So I tried to settle down. I soon got a job - my old job, back on the milling machines at Heatherley Engineering. But the smell of engine oil in my nose, the sound of machinery, the dark, enclosed space…..all reminded me too much of the tanks and the artillery pieces I had been handling for the past seven years.

I wanted, I realised slowly, to be out in the fresh air. To hear the birds, feel the wind on my face. When I was a kid I used to help out in Farmer Murchison’s fields in return for pennies, or a few vegetables for Mam. But that was just me harking back to days that were past, I told myself firmly, I would adjust, soon. I had done it before!

 

That wasn’t the only thing that was taking time! However hard we tried, Adele and me didn’t seem to be able to find a home of our own. Living with Mam and Dad was good, and we were grateful for their help…. But it wasn’t the same as being on our own. Not the same as sitting and chatting comfortably by our own fire, cooking our own meals, being able to invite Mam and Dad in - not wishing they would go out and give us precious time on our own!

 That bomb in Ebenezer Street had robbed Delphcote of  about thirty houses, houses a little pit and quarry town could ill afford to lose as young men - like me - came home and tried to pick up the threads of a normal life. There were pre-fabs being thrown up as fast as the council could build them on Meadow Fields, but they were for special cases, and all spoken for already. Not ordinary young couples like Adele and me.

But there was one good thing that did happen in those first five months back home!  Adele found that she was having a baby!

 Oh, yes, it was wonderful news, all right! Mam and Dad were thrilled, and so were we! I wanted a little girl, with sparkling greeny brown eyes like her lovely Mum. But

 Adele said she wanted a boy, to be tall and brave like his Dad! Did she really mean me?

Of course, wonderful as the news was, it put even more pressure on me to do something! Pull myself together, look to the future, find a direction. For working hard was just - but not quite - enough to make  the difference…..

 Adele didn’t have much morning sickness. Some people don’t, I was told. But she did start having some unusual tastes in food. Pickled onions on toast - for breakfast! Ugh!

Then it was porridge with marmalade in it. (Not quite so bad!) And yeast extract on carrots.

But what she really yearned for was apple pie! Even though it was August by now, with all the store apples gone, the new apples not yet mature. And Mam having used her last jar of bottled apple slices for my welcome home meal!

 I don’t know what took me down onto The Waste early one Saturday morning. I had gone out to fetch the local weekly newspaper, hoping there would be some accommodation available we could look at, raise our hopes over. But instead I wandered across the Waste.

 Blackberries were filling out, and I might get a handful on the way back to make crumble for Sunday dinner, I thought. The crab apples - I picked one, bit it, and flinched - were too hard for anything yet!

And without thinking consciously about it, I found myself standing in front of the ditch and wall that protected Farmer Murchison’s apple orchard!

 I looked over, just casually, and there they were! Big, fat, glossy green apples!

 Cookers! Not in the shops yet, because I’d looked. But these were as near to ready as made little difference - just a bit more sugar, five minutes more cooking, perhaps!

 And it was for Adele, not for me, I determined!

 I took a look about me. No-one in sight at this time of the morning.And I was down that ditch, over that wall before I had even thought about it! Just like

 I used to when I was nine, or ten, or eleven: except that I was taller and stronger now, and the obstacles much less of an obstacle.

 I reached up to the nearest branch, held it with one hand and had plucked three apples before I heard it - the chugging roar of a little tractor! Coming my way!

 I let go of the branch, which twanged and bounced up and down as I threw myself flat to the ground, heart pounding, breathing so hard with fear I was sure everyone in Delphcote could hear me!

 My face pressed into the grass, I heard - with growing horror - the tractor approach the point where I had crossed the ditch and wall. Then stop.

 “Come out, you little horror! I know you’re there - scrumping my apples! You’ve left your tracks in the morning dew! And I can see that branch shaking! The game’s up!

 Come on out!”

 It was the voice of Farmer Murchison - Harold Murchison, I remembered his name  was.

I stood up slowly.

 He looked just as I remembered him, too. A broad shouldered man of about fifty with sparse blond hair swept back under a tattered brown milking cap. Brown boiler suit and battered old boots with gaiters. Sharp pale blue eyes that peered grimly at me.

 “OK, lad, you’re caught fair and square….” he began. Then saw that I wasn’t a little boy any longer.

 “You’re no lad!” he accused me.

“No,” I agreed. “Sorry Mr Murchison. It was just a mad impulse…….”

 He switched off the engine of the tractor, and it was suddenly very quiet as we faced each other. 

“You’ve got apples?” he demanded.

“Only three….” I said, and held them out to him.

“I know you!” he accused. I saw him thinking as I came back over the wall, across the ditch, and held the apples out in my hands. He watched me all the time.

“You’re George Colton,” he said, more quietly now.

“From Ebenenzer Street: Ebenezer Street as was,” he said. “And you’re back from the war.”

“Yes,” I said. Not knowing what else to say, pushing the apples towards him.

He made a dismissive gesture with one hand.

“I hear you had a bad time. Wounded twice. Africa, wasn’t it?”

“Most of the time,” I agreed, wondering where this was leading.

“Ah,” he said noncommittally. “Got a wife haven’t you?”

“Adele,” I said, “Adele Leeson, as was.” I couldn’t help smiling at the thought of her, and he saw it. “The apples were for her….” I began. And explained about Adele having a baby soon, and having a craving for a sweet, fresh, home-made apple pie.

 

...   I could read nothing from his expression.

 

 

“You used to scrump apples when you were a kid,” he said, as if he hadn’t heard me. “And you used to come and glean in the fields, sometimes. Hoe and weed the vegetables, turn out the dairy cows. Help at harvest. But I’ve not seen you for years,”

 

“I was in the war from beginning to end,” I explained. “And before that, worked in engineering. Work there now.

“A good trade,” Harold Murchison nodded his head. “If you like that sort of thing.”

I agreed, but didn’t tell him how unhappy I was. Well, you don’t, do you?    

 “Your house must have been flattened by that bomb! Or did you and your young lady move elsewhere?”

“No,” I explained. “We had one of the little cottages, opposite my parents. They and Adele were moved to a house in Chandler Road. We’re still there. Can’t find a place  of our own.”

“Hard times,” said Harold Murchison.

Well, yes. I’m sorry about the apples. Don’t know what got into me,” I said, putting the apples on the sackcloth covered ledge behind the driver’s seat.

“No, George, you take them. For young Adele, mind. And wish her well, from me,” he said.

I smiled, nodded my thanks, and began to walk away. But he called me back.

“George! I was wondering…..as I know you…..even if you do steal apples from me…might you and Adele consider coming to live at the farm? As tenants?”

“What?” I spluttered.

 “My cowman, Arnie Rhodes - remember him? - he says he’s sick of the country. That he missed all the excitement in life being in a reserved occupation and having the war pass him by! So he’s going to the big city. I think he’s mad, but…..” Harold Murchison shrugged. “What do you think?”

I knew the cottage he meant. A square, stone house with tiny windows and huge garden. Where Adele could settle, I thought, where I could grow her an apple tree!

“Bring her to have a look! Come to Halifax Farm this evening, pay us a visit.”

“But won’t you need the cottage for a new cowman?” I asked.

He looked at me.

“I might,” he said. “If someone I know wants the job. If he wants to learn a new skill, work with animals in the fresh air. Learn to breathe deep again.”

And we looked at each other. Harold Murchison had known me as a small boy, I thought. And he knew me now.

“Are you sure?” I asked.

 “Are you?” he countered. “Ask your wife. Come and visit. Have a look round. One step at a time, young George.”

He started up the tractor again, said goodbye with a nod. 

“See you later, then,” I said, stunned. “And thank you!” I called after him as he drove off. A waved hand was the only reply I had.

     

I put the three cooking apples in my pockets and turned for Chandler Street. I had so much to tell Adele! So much to tell Mam and Dad! So much to think about and to decide!

The future beckoned, and would be good and glorious! I knew it! And there was something else I knew!

That I had been just as frightened ten minutes ago - when I hit the ground, hoping Farmer Murchison would not see me - as I had been all those years ago, when I was a small boy! No matter that almost twenty years had passed - I had been just as scared now as I had been then! Just as scared as when I faced the enemy so consistently, so determinedly, when wearing khaki uniform.

And somehow that was reassuring. That the boy still lived in the man, and that fear and feeling had not been burnt from my soul by experience, by the horrors I had seen.

That I really could go back, and be me, pick up my old life again from where I had left it.

That however horrible the past seven years had been, normal life - ordinary family life - would heal me. I would be me again, the old George Colton who had been waiting to reappear as soon as Sergeant George Colton had done what he had to do out in the big wide world

I laughed out loud. Would I have realised all that if I hadn’t gone scrumping apples?

Would I have been given a chance for a new home, a new job? And a wonderful new life for Adele and me? And our baby?

Adele! The most wonderful thing in my life, my love and my guiding star. Adele - and apples! I patted the three apples, to make sure they were still in my pockets, and that I hadn’t dreamt everything about my meeting with Harold Murchison!

And, as well as everything else, Adele would have the apple pie she craved! I rehearsed the words I would use to give my news, imagined the joy and wonder on her face…. And felt more excited, more relaxed, even happier, than I had when I came home. When I learnt about the baby.

“Comfort me with apples……” those words from the bible came unbidden to my mind. I could think of nothing more apt, at that moment.

I hurried back to Chandler Street. Bearing apples -  so much news - and our future!

‘Save me a slice of apple pie’ indeed! It had been our catchphrase for so long, Adele’s  and mine …. Yet now I had the entire pie. On a plate! In apple pie order! I laughed again to myself,

 

… and tried not to run all the way home…..