by Pam Rhodes
“It’s a box!” squealed Mary. “It looks like it’s made of tin.”
“You’re right,” agreed Michael as he laid it on the trestle table that had been brought out so they could examine any contents immediately.
“Will it open?” asked Brenda. “Does it need a key?”
Michael ran his fingers around the rim of the box before giving the lid a sharp tug. At first, it didn’t move, but then as he worked his way round each of the corners, the old tin lid finally creaked open. Everyone immediately moved forward to take a look inside.
Laid across whatever was inside was a piece of black satin material, which Michael gently peeled back to reveal a pile of dusty papers. With great care, he used both hands to pick up the top sheet of paper, which clearly had writing on it. Blowing away a layer of dust, he laid it down on the table and started to read.
This box has been compiled by the Hope Hall Memorial Committee and placed here on 28th August 1920 on the occasion of the laying of the foundation stone. We have included some pieces that represent ourselves, our town and the times we live in, which have been both difficult and painful for us as a country and as a community. For four years between 1914 and 1918, the Great War claimed the lives and health of local men who went off to fight. Many never returned. Our families and our town mourn their loss.
To this end, we are now starting to build this hall in their memory, so that neither we, nor any generations that follow in the future, will ever forget the futility of war. It must never happen again. We will call this building HOPE HALL, because that is our hope; a hope we share with the whole of humanity.
May God bless all who enter Hope Hall, and may this building provide shelter, comfort, interest and pleasure to this community for many years to come.
Signed
Reginald Ainsworth
Chairman
Hope Hall Memorial Committee
“Was that Celia’s grandfather?” asked Trevor.
“No, Reginald was her great-grandfather,” said Michael. “Reginald and his wife Beatrice married soon after the turn of the century, when Beatrice was still quite young. What followed was about seventeen years without any children at all because poor Beatrice went through one miscarriage after another. They’d almost given up hope when, in 1919, just a year or so before this stone was laid, she managed to carry a baby to full term. So Reginald was in his forties before he became a father to the only child Beatrice and he ever had, their son Neville, the little boy who grew up to become Douglas and Celia’s grandfather.”
“I don’t recall ever meeting him, but I’ve certainly known Celia and Douglas’s parents very well over the years,” said Beryl, Michael’s colleague from the Historical Society. “James, Celia’s father, was Neville’s only son, so he inherited the mill and cereal business.”
“And made a very good job of it too,” agreed Michael. “Celia was the oldest of James’s children, but she suffered from being a girl, because even though from a young age she’d loved learning about the business of the mill from her father, tradition was more important. As tradition dictated, the mill was passed down to Douglas, the eldest son in the family. Hence, Douglas is now the chief executive, and in time his son Matthew will take over the reins.”
Roger, who had only volunteered to become Chairman of the local Rotary Club once he’d retired as a teacher in the town, huffed a little. “Let’s hope Matthew matures a great deal more than his recent behaviour suggests he might.”
“How old is he?” asked Beryl.
Roger thought for a few seconds. “Probably about sixteen now.”
“So, there’s time for improvement.”
“Time, yes,” agreed Roger. “Inclination? Well, I’m not so sure about that…”
“Look at this next sheet of paper,” said Michael, once again blowing off a layer of dust before spreading the document out on the table. “This shows the accounts for the planning of the hall. Here, look, it explains that Reginald Ainsworth donated the land on which it was built and that he committed to paying half of whatever costs were involved. The local community was charged with raising the other half themselves.”
As Michael spoke, Beryl reached out to pick up the next item in the box, which she held out for all to see. “My goodness, how about this! It looks like the whole committee got together to line up just where we’re standing now so they could include a picture of themselves in this tin. It must have been a real family affair. The men are here, and their wives and children are included, too.”
“Are there any names?” asked Derek, the other historian. “On the back, perhaps?”
Sure enough, in neat handwriting in blue ink, was a chart giving the names of everyone in the picture.
“There are lots of Jessops, a couple of Wainwrights, and the group over on this side of the picture mostly seem to be Brownlows. Well, I certainly recognize those surnames as still being here in the town,” concluded Beryl.
While they chatted, Michael had continued sifting through the rest of the contents of the box, carefully drawing out one piece after another.
“Here are some other photos,” he said, staring at the top one in detail. ‘My goodness, I think this is the road running alongside the hall here, and all you can see in this picture are fields and trees. It’s a bit different now!”
As that photo was passed around, others followed, showing scenes of the High Street and the old pub, several featuring men with farming implements or standing alongside huge horses, and then a photo of what was clearly Ainsworth Mill, as it had looked in 1920.
“I bet Douglas would like that,” commented Trevor as he studied the picture. “They could display this at the mill. It’s living history really, isn’t it?”
“Oh, and the children have contributed too,” exclaimed Brenda. “They’ve written about their school, their town and what goes on here. You know, that’s more or less what the children at the school here are planning to put into our time capsule at the ceremony next month. History is repeating itself, a century later.”
“That’s our old school, which is now part of the hall,” added Kath, studying the photo closely. “Of course, they built Hope Hall right next door to the local school so that all the activities and amenities could be shared. And we’re still putting both buildings into constant use today. We’re using it in exactly the way the pioneers in that group photo envisaged a century ago. That’s a very heartening thought.”
“What’s this?” Michael pulled out a thick, faded envelope from the bottom of the tin. Turning the envelope over, he once again brushed off a layer of dust as he pulled out a single sheet of paper that had been folded in half, and half again. Stretching it out on the table in front of him, Michael began to read the message out loud:
Mrs Carmichael and I would like these letters to be placed in the wall of our memorial hall. Our eldest son Gerald Carmichael was conscripted into the army in 1916. He was twenty-two years old. Three weeks before he left, he married his sweetheart, Edith. They had been engaged for a year, and could wait no longer.
Edith wrote to him often and treasured the few letters he managed to write in return. I enclose his last letter written in the trenches at Passchendaele in October 1917, in what they called the Third Battle of Ypres.
Edith heard no news at all of Gerry for many months. Then just before Christmas she received this letter and a photograph of herself, which had been forwarded to her by the Soldiers’ Christian Association. It read, “Dear Madam, I am sending you this letter and photo found in a wood here in the battlefield. I am very sorry to say that I could not find the owner of the photo. I cannot say whether he has been wounded or killed.” That photo was the one of Edith that Gerry loved best, taken on their wedding day. He must have carried it with him right to the end.
I am the chief builder of this new memorial hall. This will be a labour of love because it is dedicated to the memory of our boys who didn’t come back; to my boy who didn’t come back. I have no idea if anyone in the
future will discover the box we are burying today in the foundations of this new building. If they do, I hope they will get some measure of the pain, fear and despair we parents feel as we lose our sons. There wasn’t even a body to bring home to his mother so she could bury our beloved boy.
Signed
Leonard Carmichael
Senior Builder
No one said a word as Michael slipped his fingers into the package and pulled out a smaller envelope addressed to Mrs Edith Carmichael.
Michael cleared his throat as he started to read:
“Dearest, if this should ever reach you it will be a sure sign that I am gone under. I will have died with your name on my lips. I love you deeply – how much, you will never know.
I am heartened that I am leaving you with a son. I have not met him but already I love our boy with all my heart. In the future, when your grief has worn a bit, speak to him sometimes of me.
Please tell Mother and Father that I think of them often, and brother George. I pray that this war will end before he too is called up. How could Mother bear that?
So, dear heart, I will bid you farewell, hoping to meet you in a time to come if there is a hereafter. Know that my last thoughts were of you in the dugout or on the fire step. My thoughts are always for you, the only one I ever loved.
Gerry”
A stunned silence descended on them all, broken at last when Michael spoke.
“Gerry Carmichael. My goodness, the grief is raw in this letter – as it must have been for so many families here at that time. I don’t know about you, but I’m longing to know more about what happened to the Carmichael family. Is it okay with everyone if I delve into the records to see if happier times lay ahead for them?”
And as everyone mumbled their agreement, Kath realized that after today she would never be able to think of Hope Hall in the same way again – not now she fully understood how it was born out of pain and sorrow as a symbol of community, strength and fellowship. Whatever her role in Hope Hall, she must never lose sight of what it meant to the families who toiled to build it. As its present-day custodian, she must strive to cherish the vision of a better future, of peaceful family life and of opportunity that had inspired Mr Carmichael and his team to lay the foundation stone of the building a hundred years ago.
And there it was! As soon as she’d opened her laptop that afternoon and gone to check her emails, his name jumped out at her from the list. Phil Coleman. The name that had thrilled her when she was a teenager caused a shiver down her spine as she saw it now.
Maggie sat back in her seat staring at the screen. Well, she had a clear choice. She could open up his email, read its contents and then decide whether to reply, or she could pretend it had never actually arrived. She could just ignore it. She didn’t want to be in touch with him. She didn’t want to be reminded of her unrequited love for someone who never really gave her a second thought. And she certainly didn’t want him, of all people, seeing her as she looked now: overweight and overwrought. She had that much pride at least.
So she shut the laptop with a snap and went off to do other things. She got out the sewing box to reattach a couple of buttons that had come adrift. She opened up the A4-sized notepad she liked to use for work, and spent half an hour happily planning menus for the coming month. She rang Steph and caught up on the family news. She even considered ringing her old friend Sylvie, to let her know that Phil had actually sent her an email. But given that it was Sylvie who had put her in this awkward spot in the first place, she realized her old friend might try to badger her into responding, and she really wasn’t in the mood for that. So she ran a bath and listened to a chapter of her audiobook while luxuriating with her shoulders under the bubbles. She dried her flyaway, biscuit-coloured hair, which never did what it was told, no matter what she tried. She watered her pot plants and rearranged the bits and pieces on her dressing table.
It was nearly eleven by then. Surely, she must be tired enough now to drop off to sleep immediately! So she made a cup of Horlicks, grabbed a packet of her favourite biscuits and headed for the bedroom. Except she never got there. Instead, without knowing quite how it happened, she found herself sitting in front of her laptop again, clicking to open his email until it filled the screen.
“Dear Megs,” it started.
Maggie couldn’t stop a small smile from creeping across her face at his greeting. She had almost forgotten that he used to call her that. Everyone else had called her Mags, but for some reason Phil had misheard the pronunciation of her name. When Sylvie and her brother Joe had tried to correct him, Phil had grinned across at her with a warm twinkle in his eye, and said that he thought Megs sounded prettier, and the name suited her. He was wrong, of course. No one else at school had ever described her as pretty, so she had always hugged the memory of how he’d looked at her in that moment as her very own private treasure. He would never have guessed, of course, because she was too shy to speak to him. Occasionally, as they all walked to school, she’d steal a glance in his direction when she was sure no one was looking. She would have been mortified if anyone had realized how she felt – the gauche, rotund girl dreaming about the older, good-looking, popular boy! Everyone at school would have laughed their socks off if they’d known.
I do hope you don’t mind me dropping you this email, but Sylvie was kind enough to pass your email address on to me through Joe. I’m not even sure if you’ll remember me after all this time. It’s more than thirty years since I left school, and there’s been a lot of water under the bridge for both of us since then. In case you’ve forgotten, I lived just a bit further away from school than you did, and you used to join the group when we walked past the end of your road. I wonder if you remember…
I didn’t manage to get to that school reunion the other week. Did you? I’m living in Chichester now, and it was a bit too far to come. Actually, that’s really just an excuse because of course I could have come. I enjoyed my schooldays, but I really wasn’t sure about meeting up again after such a long time. Was that mixed feelings or just cold feet? Anyway, in the end, I decided to give it a miss. Joe filled me in afterwards, and it seems that a great time was had by everyone. Perhaps I didn’t make the right choice after all!
Anyway, chatting to Joe, I was pleased to hear that you and Sylvie are still in touch. That’s nice. You two were always great friends. It made me wonder how life has treated you over all those years since we last saw each other. It would be lovely to catch up a bit. If you are able to drop me a line, I’d be pleased to hear from you.
No pressure. I’ll understand if you’d rather not; in which case, I wish you and your family all the very best.
Regards
Phil Coleman
Maggie must have read the words half a dozen times before she finally slumped back in the chair staring at the screen. He didn’t go to the reunion because he had cold feet and wondered if it was wise to try and meet up again after all these years! She had felt exactly the same way. After all this time, nothing had changed. Her feet weren’t just cold, they were blocks of ice!
She sighed. Even if Phil’s words did suggest he shared some of the same feelings, he’d still be the same person. He would still be good-looking and popular. That was just the way he was. And she was still too small, too round and, frankly, too battered by recent events to be of interest to anyone. He would be disappointed if he could see her now, and his disappointment would be more than she could bear.
So of course she wouldn’t answer. She would pretend his email had never reached her. Oh dear, what a shame. Ah well, never mind.
She shut the lid of the laptop with a determined thump so that his words were no longer on the screen challenging her. Then she did what she always did when she had something unpleasant on her mind. Even though it was gone eleven o’clock, she went out to the kitchen, turned on the oven and started baking.
Kath had trouble deciding what to wear to Celia’s garden party. She wanted to look summery and fashionable, but h
er practical nature also made her check the weather forecast in case what she really needed was a sou’wester and galoshes. As it happened, that Saturday dawned with blue skies and warm July sunshine. Apparently even the weather obeyed Celia Ainsworth, Kath thought wryly.
Finally, she stepped out of the apartment and into Trevor and Mary’s waiting car wearing a pale yellow dress topped by a flowing chiffon jacket in a range of golden shades which she hoped looked well with her trim figure and smartly cut dark hair.
“You’ve worn a dress!” accused Mary. “I told you I should have worn a dress, Trevor. Why did you persuade me to wear this trouser suit instead?”
“Because, my dear Mary, if you’re going to be standing on grass for much of the afternoon, I thought you would prefer flat shoes, and you said you couldn’t wear flat shoes with a dress!”
“But Kath’s wearing pretty sandals with a high wedge heel and she looks great. I could have done that. Why didn’t I do that?”
Kath smiled from the back seat. “You sound worried about this event today, Mary. Should I be too?”
“Oh, you always get things just right, Kath. But apparently there will be lots of celebrities there, and some very well-heeled people from high-class families. And there I’ll be in a trouser suit, probably the only person to get the dress code completely wrong!”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Mary, do you want me to turn around and go home so you can change for the umpteenth time today?” snapped Trevor.
“It didn’t mention a dress code on the invitation,” soothed Kath. “And that is a lovely summer outfit you’re wearing, with those soft trousers and the colour that looks so pretty on you. I think you’ve chosen well.”