England, My England

The short story, Wintry Peacock tells the story of an Englishwoman who has been left with her husband’s parents for the duration of the war. Shortly before her husband’s return, there is a letter addressed to her husband written in French. She asks a man she sees in passing to translate it, and though the letter details that her husband had an affair with a young woman while away at war, and that this woman had recently delivered a baby by him and plans to come to England, the man translating tells the woman instead that the baby is the young girl’s newborn brother and that her parents named the child after the soldier for having protected their family during the war.