Liam's Story

by Ann Victoria Roberts

  ‘Oh, do be quiet, Mac,’ his wife ordered as she reached up to brush his jacket. ‘I’ve not seen you looking so smart in years.’

  She turned to Stephen, who was struggling with the top button of a new white shirt, and managed to fasten it for him, watching through the mirror as he anxiously adjusted his black tie. ‘For goodness’ sake, relax. Zoe’s not going to bite you!’

  ‘No, but her mother might,’ he declared pessimistically as Irene held out his jacket.

  She laughed. ‘You’re not marrying her mother.’

  ‘I’m pleased to know that.’

  He stood still while Irene brushed away a few clinging specks of dust, fastened his jacket and glanced in the long mirror. Hair neat, no shaving cuts, tie in a perfect Windsor knot, and the old uniform looking as good as ever. Brass buttons gleamed, gold braid shone against the near-black doeskin, and after almost eight years, it still fitted perfectly. Just as well, he reflected, since there would have been no time to have another made, and the uniform had been a specific request from Zoe.

  Irene handed him his cap with its starched white cover, and as he brushed at the gold oak leaves on the brim, he stared for a moment at the anchor of the Merchant Navy badge. Remembering that other anchor, the one that held when it was so vital, Stephen felt his tension miraculously lift. He was here and very much alive, and today, he realized with heartfelt gratitude, was the first day of the rest of his life.

  Glancing up, meeting Mac’s eyes, there was a sudden flash of understanding between them. On an impulse, they embraced, brief emotion finding release in laughter as Irene hugged them both and, with a long, happy sigh, stood back to look at Stephen.

  ‘Oh, Robert Redford, eat your heart out! You look so good, I could marry you myself!’

  ‘That’s the best offer I’ve had all day,’ he grinned, kissing her warm cheek. ‘And I must say, you look pretty tempting...’

  ‘Now just a minute,’ Mac interrupted, taking his wife’s arm, ‘I’m supposed to be the best man here!’

  They went out, laughing. About to close the door of his room, Stephen turned, on the impression that someone had called his name. It was so clear, he even went to look in the adjoining bathroom; but no one was there. A shiver touched his spine as he remembered Robert Duncannon and his Elliott forebears, and he was aware, as he had been on his first visit to this house, of links stretching back into the past. Then he glanced round, noticed that the long windows were slightly open, and he told himself that what he had heard was no more than a man’s voice, rising from the street. But it had sounded so close...

  He shrugged and went downstairs. Mrs Bilton was waiting in the hall. She kissed his cheek and wished him luck, and said that she would follow them in a few minutes: she wanted to see Zoe and congratulate them both as soon as the ceremony was over.

  They went on foot to the Registrar’s on Bootham, causing several female heads to turn during that short walk. Mac’s mutterings of discontent were echoed, as soon as they arrived, by Johnny, who was waiting for them on the steps.

  ‘Jesus, thank God you’re here – I’ve only been waiting five minutes, and already three people have stopped to ask me the time of the next bus!’

  ‘You’re a lying hound, Walker – and you look smarter than I’ve ever seen you, so stop complaining!’

  ‘Let’s get inside,’ Mac muttered, ‘we look like the three bloody musketeers, standing here.’

  ‘You’re enjoying it,’ Irene declared, linking arms with Johnny, ‘and I’m having the time of my life.’

  During the next ten minutes, the other guests assembled, Stephen effecting a few introductions while they all waited for the bride. Pamela arrived with her husband and Joan, and a moment later Zoe’s mother came in with a tall, distinguished man in a dark suit. She seemed unusually tense and flustered, and Stephen had a panic-stricken moment wondering what could have gone wrong; but hard on her heels came Polly, all smiles and vibrant colour. She shot him a beaming smile and a discreet thumbs-up sign, which enabled him to breathe again, and immediately made a bee-line for Johnny. They seemed quite taken with each other, he thought, remembering the laughter of the evening before...

  Moments later, alerted by a sudden hush, all such considerations vanished.

  Holding her father’s arm, Zoe seemed to drift towards him, layers of silk and chiffon stirring as she crossed the room. The dress was of a style and material reminiscent of the early twenties, but looking at her, Stephen was reminded of one of her own illustrations, Titania, perhaps, or the Spirit of the Rose. Her hair was as fine and flyaway as the chiffon bandeau she wore, sunlight catching a skein of tiny flowers nestling amongst the curls. He had always known she was beautiful, but in that moment she was breathtakingly so; had his life depended on it, he could not have spoken.

  With an effort, he tore his eyes away, placed his cap on the Registrar’s desk, and took hold of Zoe’s hand. She was trembling, and that surprised him. He glanced down at her and met a tentative smile that immediately restored his confidence. Squeezing her fingers, he felt a responding pressure as the Registrar cleared his throat to begin.

  The ceremony was short; within minutes it seemed all the formalities were complete and two single people had been joined as one. They stared at each other in happy amazement until a nudge from Mac reminded him that he was supposed to kiss the bride. Almost hesitantly, he bent his head, but Zoe flung her arms around his neck and hugged him, and in the joy of that embrace, Stephen swept her off her feet and swung her round, his kiss raising cheers from the gathered company.

  ‘We couldn’t have done that in church!’ she said with a giggle as he set her down.

  ‘Start off as you mean to go on,’ he replied, and kissed her again.

  The reception was a great success, the guests few enough to limit the need for constant circulation; before long, the wedding breakfast had become a party.

  Afterwards, Zoe’s mother was almost effusive in her praise, raising a dry smile from Stephen only as she intimated that she had not thought him capable of organizing things so well. But James Clifford’s compliments were unalloyed by any such qualification. And he said, succinctly, that he liked Stephen’s friends. It was tantamount to a seal of approval.

  Zoe nudged Stephen later, pointing out Marian and Joan deep in conversation, and said that his sister Pamela had seemed both friendly and sincere when they had spoken earlier.

  ‘Don’t let this go to your head,’ Stephen told her, ‘but Pam actually confessed that she likes you...’

  ‘So she might accept me, yet?’

  ‘She might indeed,’ he said warmly, squeezing her waist. He glanced at his watch. ‘I hate to break up the party when they’re all getting on so well, but it’s time we were shedding all this finery and getting on the road.’

  Zoe ran her fingers beneath the soft doeskin lapels of his jacket. ‘That’s a shame,’ she said, ‘because I must confess to rather liking you in that uniform. I think it’s incredibly sexy...’

  He chuckled. ‘Go on – get up those stairs.’

  They emerged, some twenty minutes later, in clothes that were considerably more suited to travelling, to find that their presence had scarcely been missed. For a moment they were both tempted simply to creep away, but Mac drew everyone’s attention, demanding to know, unless it was a state secret, where they were going for their honeymoon.

  ‘We’re going to France,’ Zoe said brightly, glancing up at Stephen.

  ‘To look at a few vineyards and chateaux, and sample the food,’ he added with a disarming smile.

  For some reason, no one seemed inclined to believe them. He had to produce the ferry tickets, Hull to Zeebrugge, before anyone was remotely satisfied, yet even then an air of suspicion lingered.

  ‘I know,’ Johnny declared, ‘you’re going for a dirty weekend in Amsterdam – Canal Street and naughty things by candle-light!’

  ‘No, we’d have taken the Rotterdam ferry for that,’ Stephen said, keeping his face straig
ht.

  Zoe’s father erupted into laughter, while his ex-wife looked faintly shocked.

  A few minutes later, Marian said wistfully to Stephen, ‘I thought you might have taken Zoe to the Caribbean?’

  ‘Oh, not at this time of year – the weather’s appalling. Hurricanes, you know. No, Zoe and I have a taste for something a little closer to home. France will suit us fine.’

  ‘They didn’t believe a word of it,’ she said happily as the Jaguar took them out of sight and hearing.

  Grinning, Stephen changed gear and let the car pick up a little speed. ‘Well, they wouldn’t have believed the truth, that’s for sure. Anyway, we didn’t tell any lies.’

  Her smile broadened and broke into laughter; glancing at her, Stephen was caught again by her beauty and high spirits. She looked so lovely when she laughed, all he wanted to do was kiss her. Laughing at himself, he turned his eyes back to the road. ‘Can you imagine...’ He shook his head, unable to finish the sentence.

  ‘They’d have thought us so eccentric!’

  The idea continued to amuse them all the way to Hull.

  The cabin was small but beautifully fitted out, and with its own tiny bathroom; the only drawback, as far as they were concerned, being the single, tiered bunks.

  ‘Ah, well, never mind,’ Stephen muttered, inspecting everything with an expert’s eye, ‘where there’s a will, there’s a way...’

  ‘You’ve got a one-track mind,’ Zoe observed as he reached for her.

  ‘Are you complaining? Or even surprised?’

  She laughed. ‘No.’

  ‘Good. Because,’ he informed her between kisses, ‘this is our wedding night, and despite the... somewhat... cramped conditions... I’ve always had this erotic fantasy about...’

  But he never did manage to tell her; banged heads and elbows and snatches of conversation from cabins either side, reduced them both to near-hysterical laughter. In the end they gave up in favour of drinks and dinner.

  The wine was good, the food forgivable, and the lounge bar had a resident pianist. He was charming, and played requests. Stephen and Zoe decided that perhaps ‘The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,’ ought to be their song; it was that kind of evening, with a calm sea shushing past and stars appearing in the twilight. They even took the requisite stroll along the boat deck.

  But it was chilly and they told each other that it had been a long day.

  Ensconced in that narrow lower bunk, holding each other close after making love with more urgency than finesse, it seemed to strike them both, very suddenly, that they were married.

  Raising her left hand to his lips, Stephen kissed the palm and the base of her third finger with its pair of slender rings. ‘So tell me, Miss Clifford – how does it feel to be Mrs Stephen Elliott?’

  Pushing back the short, damp curls from his forehead, Zoe’s pretty mouth curved into a smile. ‘I think the word, Captain Elliott, is loved – and amazingly secure…’

  ‘I’m glad,’ he whispered, ‘because I do love you, so very, very much.’

  ‘I know. And I love you. I always will.’

  That word, always, seemed neither strange nor impossible on her lips. It seemed to him that love in the Elliott family was like that.

  Zeebrugge at eight in the morning was a gloom of rain drizzling from a leaden sky, and streams of cars with glaring headlights, their drivers fighting through to factories and offices for a day on the treadmill.

  ‘God, I couldn’t do this every day,’ Stephen swore as he dodged traffic, searched for the right lane, and struggled with the initial strangeness of driving on the other side of the road.

  ‘Never mind, you don’t have to,’ Zoe observed equably, a map on her knee. ‘Just think, most of these people couldn’t bear to do what you do, either.’

  ‘Look, spare me the philosophy just now, darling, and tell me what road we should be on.’

  ‘Keep following the signs for Ostend.’

  It was simple enough, dual carriageway to the seaside town of Ostend, with the Jaguar nicely eating up the miles, then south on a minor road to Dixmude, towards Ypres and Armentieres. Their plans were flexible, the main idea being to follow Liam’s footsteps from Flanders down to the Somme, and back to Flanders again for 20th September.

  The 70th anniversary of Liam’s death was also the 70th anniversary of the Battle of the Menin Road. They had been warned that the town would be busy that weekend, so had booked their hotel in advance; but for the rest they were easy enough, content to take choice and chance as it came. They had Michelin guides with maps, a book of battlefield tours, and even an ancient guide, complete with photographs, that Stephen had found amongst the books in the trunk. Published in 1920, it had Robert Duncannon’s signature scrawled across the flyleaf.

  Zoe had invested in a waxed jacket and green wellies in case of mud and bad weather, while Stephen had boots and sea-boot socks, and said his old Burberry would have to do. They were both rather looking forward to tramping through woods and across ploughed fields in the rain.

  As they turned inland the weather improved, the sun struggling through a hazy autumn mist over countryside that, to their joint surprise, appeared not unlike the Vale of York.

  Bypassing Ypres, the first town they came to was Poperinghe. Parking the car off a cobbled market square, after lunch they found themselves wandering round, rather as Liam once did, and being drawn towards Talbot House. The tall, white town house, where a British chaplain called Tubby Clayton had set up a home-from-home for weary and distressed troops, was now a place of pilgrimage for battlefield travellers.

  When Stephen and Zoe called, the door was open to visitors and a friendly young man with perfect English invited them in. He explained how the Everyman’s Club had come about, and what a refuge it had been in the darkest days of the war. The garden was still there, and the chapel beneath the rafters, its chairs and the little altar ready for the next service. Below it was the study, with its instruction to ‘Abandon rank all ye who enter here.’

  There was a sense of peace and solace in that room, and, affected by the knowledge that Liam had been there, at what was probably the lowest point of his war, neither of them wanted to leave. But it was late afternoon, and both Stephen and Zoe were aware of sudden fatigue, a need for baths and rest and a quiet meal before turning in for the night. They found a comfortable hotel just off the square which provided all their requirements.

  Pouring the last of the wine as they finished their meal, Stephen said: ‘You would say, wouldn’t you, if you didn’t want to go on?’

  ‘Of course I would. Why, don’t you?’

  ‘Oh, I want to go on, no doubt about that. It’s just…’ He broke off, drank some more wine, and finally shook his head. ‘This afternoon – you were on the verge of tears a couple of times, and so was I. It made me think that – well, there’s going to be a lot more of it, and we are going to be sad, maybe even very upset at times. Is this a good idea for a honeymoon? I know it’s what we said we’d do, but there’s no shame in changing our minds – we could motor on down to the Cote d’Azur, if you’d prefer...’

  ‘And come back another time?’

  Stephen nodded, toying with his glass. He saw her eyes darken before she glanced away, watching diners at other tables, waiters passing.

  ‘I know what you’re saying,’ she said at last, ‘but no, I don’t think so. We talked about this, didn’t we, before we finally decided. And if you recall, we both had it in mind that this was what we needed to do, honeymoon or not.’ A sudden smile dispelled the shadows. ‘We just decided to get married first.’

  Relieved, he clasped her hand across the table. ‘So you want to carry on?’

  ‘Yes, I do. I think we have to.’

  ‘I’ve just remembered,’ Zoe said as they reached their room, ‘I had a letter before I left London. Can’t think how I forgot to tell you,’ she added, glancing up at him with an ironic grin, ‘unless it was that wedding we attended the other day...’ She fi
shed in her capacious shoulder-bag and produced, with a flourish, an airmail envelope bearing the Southern Cross emblem of Australia.

  ‘The farm’s gone – most of it, anyway. But the old house and the bungalows are still there, in a few acres of land, and guess what? The family still own it.’

  ‘You’re kidding.’ He took the envelope and opened it, scanning the contents quickly before settling down to read properly. The writer was a Mrs Laura Maddox, widow of David, son of Lewis Maddox’s elder brother. She was sixty-seven years old, and remembered Uncle Lew and Aunt Gina very well. In fact, since her husband’s death some six years previously, she had moved into their old bungalow, leaving the farmhouse to her son and his wife.

  Although she was not sure exactly what it was Miss Clifford wanted to know about the old lady, Mrs Maddox felt she could say without fear of contradiction that Aunt Gina had been one of the kindest people it had ever been her pleasure to know, and much missed after her death in 1973.

  ‘… Lord knows how old she was. In her eighties, I’m sure, but she always kept her age a secret. Bright as a button, though, right up to that last week or so. Then she suddenly failed, like old people do, and got a bit muddled. She took a chill that turned to pneumonia, and died at the end of September. Uncle Lew went in 1949. Nice old bloke he was, frail when I knew him, but always had a joke for you, in spite of being a sick man. She was a nurse, though, looked after him and did a lot of good for the folks round here, especially between the wars. Delivered I don’t know how many babies, people always sent for her before the doctor. Uncle Lew said if it hadn’t been for her, he would have given up years ago.

  ‘Lew and her brother were best friends in the war, and I seem to think he worked here before that. She had a lovely picture of him on the mantelpiece, a nice portrait photo taken in uniform. I still have it, couldn’t bear to throw it away, but I don’t think it would interest anybody else. If you would like it, I could send it on, you being related to the other brother...’

  Stephen looked up at Zoe, who was standing over him, and his happy smile gave way to appreciative laughter. Her luck was phenomenal, and he would have been hard pressed to say which touched him most: the fact that yet another of her shots in the dark had reached its mark, or the contents of that letter from Mrs Maddox.