Chapter 2

Colin came home from the war in 1945 a lot wiser than when he left. They married in October and Edna wrote him in February that she had lost the baby they “conceived” on their one-night honeymoon.

Soon after that, he spent two days holed up in an Italian Wine Cellar under German bombardment with nothing but Edna’s letter case after case of vino. He crawled out of that cellar with three things; claustrophobia that would plague him the rest of his life, an alcohol problem, and the sure knowledge that Edna St. Clare, with his sister Kate’s help, married him to provide a name for her bastard child.

He demanded one thing out of his sham of a marriage: a child, his child. It took quite a while for Edna to conceive until Colin went to the library and figured out how she avoided pregnancy. The next month he carefully watched his wife’s personal habits and kept track on a pocket calendar. It took six months but by January of 1951, Babs was born.