Lessons in Heartbreak

by Cathy Kelly

  Her hands clung to him, one curved tightly around his neck, the other cradling his skull. They kissed with their eyes closed so they’d never forget.

  ‘I have to go. I love you.’

  She couldn’t speak in case she cried again.

  ‘Goodbye.’

  He didn’t look back as he left and she wondered if that was the difference between men and women. Men looked forward, warriors focusing on the future. Women’s eyes darted everywhere. Searching, wondering, praying to some god to keep the people they loved safe.

  She lay back in the bed still warm with the imprint of his body, and wondered if she would ever see him again.

  Lily had slept little of the night; instead, she’d lain there and thought about how it would never work out for them. Jamie loved her, she knew that. But there were too many obstacles to their love.

  Her God wouldn’t forgive her for being with him. Neither would her family. Could she give up everything and everyone for him? Could they really make each other happy, or were they fooling themselves, were they just two more star-crossed lovers caught up in a wartime passion with no hope of making a life in the real world?

  Their worlds were too different, anyway. He could cross into hers easily enough, but she would never cross into his. The barriers were too high. Breaching them would destroy him. He was a man of duty and he had a duty to his family, his parents, his world.

  No, it had to end. And she was the one who had to be strong enough to let him go.

  ‘Darling, you’re going to make us late this time,’ said Diana cheerfully, snapping Lily out of her reverie. ‘That’d be a first! Can you see everyone’s faces if I’m late for my engagement party and it’s your fault!’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Lily. She wished she weren’t going. She didn’t have the heart for a party tonight, not even for her beloved Diana. She wanted to be at home with her thoughts: she wanted to mourn for her relationship with Jamie.

  He wouldn’t be there tonight, she knew that. But she longed to see him, longed to tell him it was over between them. Perhaps then she would be able to carry on with her life.

  She wished she could write, but you couldn’t say any of this in a letter. Yet she needed to say it, to tell him it was over, now, before she lost her courage and changed her mind. There could be no future for them. One of them had to be brave enough to end it and it would have to be her.

  She and Diana were late getting to Claridges.

  ‘Sorry, my fault,’ yelled Diana apologetically as they arrived.

  Everyone crowded round her, drinks were proffered and Diana laughed and said she’d have a cocktail, just one, to celebrate.

  ‘Lily,’ said a voice.

  It was Philip, Sybil’s husband.

  Lily never felt as if she knew him very well, despite having been at many family events with him. She was normally so busy trying to avoid Sybil that she ended up avoiding Philip too, but he was Jamie’s best friend and for that, she loved him.

  ‘Hello, Philip,’ she said, lifting her cheek for a kiss, one eye warily looking for his wife. She was not going to lower herself to even speak to Sybil, not tonight. Sybil had brought her nothing but pain when it came to Jamie.

  ‘Lily, I’ve got to tell you something,’ said Philip, his voice low.

  Lily knew what it was. She felt her legs weaken.

  Philip was shielding her from everyone else at the party with his body. Lily looked down at her shoes, she couldn’t bear to meet his eyes: she knew what he was going to tell her.

  She remembered sobbing to Jamie that, if something happened to him, she’d be the last to know.

  ‘They’d all know you were dead, she’d know, but I wouldn’t. I couldn’t grieve because I’d be waiting for you! Waiting for you to never come back!’ she’d wept, hitting him on the chest with her fists, so full of pain and hurt that she could only hurt him for all that she loved him so much.

  ‘My love,’ he’d said and pulled her close so her beating fists were crushed against their bodies. They were sitting on her bed in the mews; the bed was in disarray after their lovemaking and now it was time for them both to go back to their everyday lives.

  Wearing only the little satin slip that Jamie had peeled off her just hours before, Lily sank against him and buried her face in his chest.

  ‘I can’t do this any more, Jamie,’ she cried. ‘I can’t lie to everyone and pretend I’m happy, that I haven’t got a sweetheart, that I don’t ache every time the radio reports the casualties. There’s no hope for us. I’m going slowly mad worrying about you and trying to hide it.’

  ‘Somebody does know, I promise you, and if anything happens to me, he’ll come and tell you.’

  ‘Who?’ she said.

  ‘You don’t know him, but he knows who you are and if – if something happens to me, he’ll come. I promise.’ He’d kissed her then, through all her tears, but he’d had to leave. And when he was gone, she lay curled on the bed and cried hot, hopeless tears.

  Now that day was here. Jamie was dead and it was Philip who’d come to tell her: solid, dependable Philip, whom she’d never have suspected of knowing.

  ‘Lily, please look at me,’ Philip said softly.

  Lily wouldn’t look up at him. She kept her head low and bit her lip. If he didn’t tell her, it wasn’t true, was it? But then she began to shake. She couldn’t control it, it was as if her limbs no longer belonged to her. Her legs gave out and she half-fell forward.

  Philip grabbed her and she smelled that familiar scent of a sailor’s uniform, the same scent that surrounded Jamie. She thought of how many times she’d lain close to Jamie’s chest, fingers starfished as she touched him, felt the warmth of him, loving the sense of his strong heart beating beneath the heavy woollen uniform. But his heart wasn’t beating any longer.

  Somewhere he was lying dead, maybe on a deserted beach, maybe in the cold coffin of his submarine, with nobody to cradle his beautiful head in their arms and kiss him, close his eyes, stroke him one last time. Why hadn’t she been there with him, to tell him it would be all right, like she’d done for so many other men? Why couldn’t she have been allowed to do the same for her man?

  All around them were people laughing and cheering. Lily could only think of Jamie, cold in the sea, unloved at the end when she’d had so much love for him and it was all spent. Where was God now? What was God doing when Jamie had died? She’d been willing to give him up for God, so why hadn’t God paid her back by taking care of him?

  The train from Euston to Holyhead was jammed. There weren’t enough seats and people were left standing outside in the corridors. Lily had been lucky because she got there early and she had a seat at the window, where she was squashed with a man in a corporal’s uniform next to her, dozing on her shoulder. It felt slightly surreal to be going home. She’d only been back to Ireland once during the war and it had been a totally crammed ten days of leave.

  Mam had done her best both to feed Lily up and find clothes for her. There was no clothes rationing in Ireland and Mam had saved some of Lady Irene’s beautiful cast-offs, although the combination of rationing and hard work meant that Lily was too thin for them.

  ‘Lord bless us, look at you! You’re skin and bone, there’s not a pick on you,’ her mother had said worriedly.

  It had been a lovely visit, a little refuge in the middle of the war. Lily remembered it as if it were a dream, almost as if it had happened to another person altogether.

  Now, there was no sense of refuge in going home. The whole world seemed so happy and the atmosphere of sheer joy after VE Day permeated everywhere. But as much as Lily had longed for the conflict to end, now that it had, she couldn’t share in the joy. None of it mattered. Jamie was dead. Her world was in darkness. How could she ever be happy again? The hospital hadn’t wanted her to go.

  ‘Just because the war is over doesn’t mean that the hospital has no need of nurses,’ Matron had said sternly. ‘I’m not sure why you want to go home, Nurse Kennedy, but we
’d like you to stay.’

  Lily thought of the past three months when she had struggled to get out of bed every morning, working until tiredness finally engulfed her at night. Every time she looked out the hospital windows at the streets of London, all she’d seen in her mind’s eye were places she had been with Jamie.

  There was no relief from the pain. Even in bed, she lay there and thought of him, crying herself into fitful sleep most nights.

  In the end, she decided that she had to get out of London – there were too many memories for her there. She thought back to the time she’d blithely told Maisie that she didn’t know if she wanted to go back to Tamarin after the war. She’d been wrong: she did want to go back to Tamarin. She’d feel safe there and maybe one day she could feel a little bit happier. Or at least, if she was miserable, she’d be miserable somewhere she hadn’t been with Jamie.

  The mail boat from Holyhead was no longer blacked out as it had been in her previous wartime crossings, but it was still packed and she felt sick, sitting on the top deck in a too-big life jacket. When the boat sailed into Dun Laoghaire, it felt strange to see the beautiful town all lit up, elegant, and untouched by bombs. She was so used to London, where so many beautiful buildings had been destroyed. She could sympathise with shattered walls and crumbling roofs: she felt the same herself, shattered and crumbling.

  Here, many of the people looked healthy, well fed. They weren’t wearing patched, tattered clothes, they looked happy and prosperous. Somehow Lily felt irritated and resentful that some of her countrymen and women had remained untouched by the war. But then, she felt angry with the whole human race, because she had lost the man she loved.

  It wasn’t their fault they hadn’t been ripped apart by this war, she decided. They weren’t guilty. No, that honour went to God. Her rage against Him was fierce and powerful, and because of that, there had been no refuge in prayers for her. She’d found it so hard to pray when she was with Jamie because each prayer reminded her she was breaking God’s laws. Now, when the reason for breaking those laws was gone, she still couldn’t pray. Losing Jamie had made her lose herself.

  The train to Waterford was half empty. She had the whole seat to herself and watched the countryside changing as she got closer to home. It was a beautiful August day and she had to stop herself thinking Wouldn’t Jamie love this?

  He’d talked of their visiting her home, when the war was over, when he’d told Miranda, when he was free.

  In Waterford, she learned that the next bus to Tamarin wouldn’t leave until seven that evening, so she left her suitcase with the station porter and walked down to the quay to sit on a bench and look out to sea.

  The sun glinting off the water made her think of Torquay and how she’d decided that she had to let Jamie go. That was one mercy: that she hadn’t told him and he’d died not knowing.

  But now she had to live out the rest of her life without having let him go. For her, there was no sense of closing that chapter of her life.

  The bus rattled out of Waterford, rolling past beautiful countryside that Lily barely saw. In her head, she was still in London, hurrying through tired grey streets, looking up at the shimmering sun bursting through the clouds, thinking of Jamie…

  ‘Will I let you off here?’ the bus driver said loudly, jerking Lily back to the present. The bus had stopped as close to the Old Forge as it could and she stared out at familiar countryside.

  ‘Yes, thank you,’ she said.

  When the bus had driven off again, Lily looked at the suitcase she’d hauled from London and thought that she really didn’t give a damn if she left it on the side of the road; she didn’t have the energy to drag it half a mile up the lane to the house. She shoved it into a hedge and stood facing in the direction of her home.

  Rathnaree was hidden behind the trees to the left and Lily felt a surge of hatred for it and all it represented. Those class barriers had driven a wedge between her and Jamie, even without Sybil and her venom.

  The Lochravens, the Beltons and the Hamiltons were from another world, and it made no sense that people couldn’t cross between the two. Well, Lily wasn’t stepping foot near Rathnaree or its like ever again. That world had hurt her too much: she would stay in her own from here on.

  She wiped away a tear and, for the first time, allowed herself to breathe in the clear country scent of fields and trees and wild garlic. There was another scent: lavender. She stood close to the dry-stone wall and peered over it. There, in one corner of the field, were around twenty lavender bushes. She half-remembered there having been a single bush there, but now the lavender had spread until there was an entire copse of it, richly scenting the air with that evocative smell. Lily climbed the wall, hopped down the other side and walked towards the lavender. On impulse, she took off her shoes and stockings and felt the softness of the grass under her feet. Then she sat down, drew her knees up to her chest and closed her eyes. She could remember Granny Sive talking about lavender being a very old herb, and there was some connection to the fairies, or the little people, as Granny Sive referred to them.

  Here, in the protective copse of the little people, Lily sent a silent prayer: ‘Help me,’ she said and began to cry.

  She didn’t hear him until he’d scaled the wall and was striding towards her: a giant of a man with a tanned face, hair the colour of copper, and the kindest blue eyes she’d ever seen.

  ‘I saw you from the road,’ he said, concern in his voice. ‘I had to see if you were all right. Are you?’

  Lily just stared silently at him.

  ‘Don’t be frightened, miss,’ he said. ‘I’m not going to hurt you, I was only worried. My name’s Robby Shanahan. Can I see you home or anything?’

  Surrounded by her fairy lavender, with this kind giant looking at her with a gentleness Lily hadn’t experienced in so long, she felt a warmth flood through her body. It was a lightness, a feeling that, if she closed her eyes now, she’d sleep soundly and the pain and sorrow would go away for a little while. Thank you. She wasn’t sure who she was thanking, but some deity had brought a little peace into her heart for the first time since Jamie died.

  She smiled at the gentle giant. ‘I’m Lily Kennedy,’ she said. ‘You could carry my suitcase home.’

  At midday, Rhona came in with a cup of tea for Izzie. She could smell dinners being served in the rooms along the hall, but she didn’t feel hungry. She felt strangely as if she was waiting for something that was just about to happen.

  ‘Sometimes people need to be told they can go,’ Rhona said.

  Izzie stared at her. Rhona had the look of a woman who wasn’t prone to flights of fancy. It seemed such a strange thing to say; but then, hadn’t Anneliese said much the same thing?

  ‘You have to tell her she can go,’ Rhona went on. ‘She’s been waiting for someone, for you, so she could go.’

  ‘How can you tell?’ Izzie asked.

  ‘You learn things during twenty years of working with dying people,’ Rhona said.

  Izzie winced at the word ‘dying’.

  ‘It’s all right to say it,’ Rhona went on. ‘She knows she’s going. She’s at peace. Some people fight so hard. It makes me think of that Dylan Thomas poem I learned in school: “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night”. Some people don’t go gently, they really do fight. Your grandmother is happy to go, she’s not fighting it now, but she has been holding on for dear life until now, until you came.’

  Izzie didn’t realise she was crying until she felt the tears drip on to her shirt. She reached up to find her cheeks were wet. Rhona fished in her pocket, found a tissue and handed it to her.

  ‘I’ll leave you.’

  Izzie nodded.

  She sat on the edge of the bed and smelled the lavender again.

  ‘Gran, I love you,’ she said, ‘but you can go now.’ Suddenly, she thought of the words in the diary, written over sixty years ago: I know I have to let him go. I don’t want to but it’s the right thing to do. We’d end up hating each
other and I love him too much for that.

  ‘You can let go, Gran. Thank you for sharing it with me – your life. I love you, Gran. I will miss you so much.’

  She felt tears sliding down her face and she mopped at them with the tissue. ‘It’s OK, we’re all OK. Me, Dad, Anneliese, Beth – all of us. Even Mitzi. You’d love her – she’s such a little pet. So you can go. We all love you, you know. And thank you for everything, Be happy wherever you’re going, be happy, you deserve that – I love you.’

  Unable to go on, she laid down beside her grandmother’s frail body, hugging her one last time.

  Lily found she was wearing an old dress she’d had in London when she, Diana and Maisie lived in Diana’s godmother’s house. It was green chiffon, with flaring panels in the skirt, and it brought out the chestnut of her hair. ‘Where have you been, dress?’ she said to it.

  She was young again too; how strange. Her bones didn’t ache and her skin wasn’t wrinkled around her elbows.

  Now where was she? In a field, that’s where. Close to the Old Forge, the field with the lavender in it, where she’d met Robby for the first time. There were deckchairs arranged among the lavender bushes with people relaxing happily in them. Diana and dear Maisie were there.

  Lily smiled at them, pleased to see them. It seemed like only yesterday they’d been writing to each other, bridging the miles and the years with their letters.

  There was Lady Evangeline, Philip, Matron, Isabelle Lochraven too, so many people from her past lined up.

  There was Mam, sitting smiling, and Dad beside her: there was her darling brother, Tommy, with Moira, his wife. How wonderful to see them.

  Lily ran past them all, waving, motioning that she’d be back, but first she had something to do.

  Then she saw him: Jamie, in his uniform and looking as handsome as ever. Behind him, in the distance, coming running to her, were two people: one a tall man with copper hair and the other a slim woman with dark hair and her father’s kind expression. Robby and Alice.