Summer's Out at Hope Hall

by Pam Rhodes

  “Isn’t there anyone you’re fond of? Anyone you miss who’s been dear to you in the past?”

  “That’s not relevant. I have nothing. I am nothing.”

  “That’s really not true, Michael. And if you don’t believe me, just take a look over there at the seat around the corner from the main door. There is someone there who has never, for one minute, stopped loving you. Someone who’s longing to put her arms around you and show you how much you are loved.”

  Michael raised his eyes to search the playground for the bench on which his wife was sitting. Aware of his gaze, Anne got to her feet, looking anxiously at him as if uncertain she’d be welcome if she moved nearer. Then he too slowly got to his feet, not giving the impression that he would turn and run, but more as if he were drawn to move towards her. Encouraged by his expression and body language, Anne slowly walked towards him as Sheelagh quietly rose from her seat on the wall and moved back towards the main door of the hall.

  From there she kept a watchful eye on the couple as they sat together on the wall for more than quarter of an hour, before she finally saw Michael get to his feet once again. What was happening? Was he leaving? But then Anne got up too and put her arms lovingly around his neck. His head lowered on to her shoulder, and Sheelagh could see that his whole body was shaking with emotion. Together they stood as Anne quietly whispered to him, stroking his face and hair, reaching for his hands.

  By this time the Food Bank had closed, their clients had come and gone, and just a few members of the team were left clearing up and stacking away whatever remained. Where there had been activity and chatter, a new silence fell on Hope Hall. At this point, Sheelagh ventured to approach the couple, hoping her presence wouldn’t be seen as an intrusion.

  Anne turned to her immediately. “Michael’s coming home.”

  “That’s good to hear.”

  “It’s not going to be easy. He doesn’t want to go back to Basingstoke and I agree with him on that. Our children are both away at university now, so he and I must find a new place where the two of us can make a home. And together we’ll work to bring my beloved husband back to health again. He needs good food, the right medical care, and he needs love. Most of all he needs love, and I think he knows now that he has that in me. My darling Michael, I love you more now than at any other time in our marriage, and we have many years of married life ahead of us, during which I’ll make sure you never doubt my love and devotion for you.”

  “And we’ll help you both in any way we can as you plan your future,” said Sheelagh.

  “Thank you.” Michael’s voice was gruff as he spoke, his eyes on Sheelagh. “You’re an interfering busybody, and one of those awful do-gooders I hate. But what you did for me was…” He stopped, plainly overwhelmed by what he was feeling. It was a while before he could speak again. “It was good. Thank you.”

  And once again his eyes filled with tears, but he was smiling. And for the rest of her life, Sheelagh would never forget that smile.

  Chapter 12

  By the first week in August, the town had a completely different air to it. Schools had broken up and suddenly there was high-pitched chatter everywhere from pupils young and older, in the parks, on their bikes, hanging around the High Street, and in the gardens on either side of Maggie’s apartment in Linden Avenue. She loved it. It reminded her of her own children growing up, with their squeals of laughter and their occasional outbursts of “he said, she said”.

  But then, rather than the town changing, perhaps it was Maggie herself who was feeling, after a long time of darkness, the rays of sunshine not just on her face but in her heart too. She threw back the bedclothes every morning, keen to discover what the day would bring her way. And the first discovery she wanted to make within minutes of getting up, or coming back to the apartment later in the day, was to see what was waiting in her inbox.

  Would there be another message from Phil? There nearly always was. As soon as Maggie had replied to his email explaining that he was now divorced from his wife Sandra, their conversation had continued at first daily, then gradually within a couple of weeks twice or more each day. She had started by giving a very brief description of her break-up with Dave and their subsequent divorce, which had led to her having to move out of their family home and into the apartment that had come to mean so much to her. It was Phil who had probed with gentle questions; not just about the logistics of that whole process but, more importantly, how she felt about it along the way. Maggie had been surprised at how healing it had been to share her reactions and thoughts with someone who was able to take a caring yet detached point of view. In the past, as each revelation and stage in that awful period of upheaval had unfolded, she had really only spoken without reserve to Steph or Darren, not wanting to air the family’s dirty washing in public, or the depth of her hurt to others who really didn’t need to know.

  She found herself thinking about why it seemed so much easier to share the whole painful business with a man who really was a stranger to her. They may have had a passing acquaintance all those years ago when they were both still young enough to be at school, but she was forty-seven years old now, and Phil forty-nine, so there was a stretch of more than three decades since they’d last seen each other.

  She soon realized, though, that what gave her the freedom simply to be herself in her responses was the fact that they were physically miles apart and never actually in each other’s company. They weren’t speaking face to face. They had not exchanged photos. He had suggested they should, but she had come up with excuses not to. He must have noticed and been curious, but he hadn’t brought the matter up again, for which she was deeply grateful. So he was probably under a rosy illusion of what she looked like based on how he remembered her all those years ago. The moment he realized she was almost as broad as she was high, and that she had completely lost control of her eating habits throughout the divorce, he would be off like a shot. Of course he would! What man wouldn’t? He’d run for the hills, and she wouldn’t blame him one bit.

  However, until that awful and probably inevitable time when he would want more and become disappointed and disillusioned with the barriers she had built up around herself, she was enjoying every moment of their absorbing, supportive, entertaining and often hilarious email conversations. They made her day. They put a spring in her step. Life had become not just bearable but joyful again.

  So with a plate of toast and marmalade in one hand and a cup of tea in the other, Maggie sat down at the computer with a smile on her face, anticipating the pleasure of another email exchange to set her up for the day ahead.

  When Michael Sayward and his Historical Society friend Beryl rang Mrs Jessop’s bell, it was her son Derek who opened the front door.

  “Hi Michael. It’s great to see you without your handlebar moustache! It was a good rehearsal the other night, wasn’t it?”

  After exchanging some brief chat about the barbershop choir to which they both belonged, Michael introduced Derek to Beryl.

  “Mum’s waiting for you in the lounge,” said Derek. “She’s very excited to hear about all this. Go in and say hello, and I’ll put the kettle on. Tea okay for you both?”

  Joyce Jessop was sitting in a comfy, well-worn armchair beside the window, from where she had a view up and down this street of terraced houses in which net curtains had probably been twitched by neighbours keeping an eye on each other since the estate was first built back in Victorian times. She was a slightly built woman with a shock of white hair that had been permed into neat regulation curls. Her striking blue eyes looked enormous behind the lenses of her tortoiseshell spectacles, which sparkled with shiny studs and jewels along each of the arms that hung over her ears. Her feet were enclosed in pink fluffy slippers that were resting on a leather pouffe, and she wore a flowery apron over her blue skirt, which was topped by what looked like a hand-knitted pink jumper.

  Once the introductions had been made and everyone was settled and organized with a cup of tea and b
iscuits, Michael delved into his briefcase to draw out the letters that had been found behind the Hope Hall foundation stone. Pushing her glasses safely up her nose, Joyce began to read, her huge blue eyes filling with tears as she got to the end. It took her a minute or two to recover before she felt able to speak.

  “How I wish my granny Edith were here to see this. She spoke of these letters, of course. She knew they’d been placed in the wall, and she had very mixed feelings about it. In those days, you couldn’t copy any letters you had. There was just this one sheet that Gerry had written to her from the trenches, and of course she treasured it. It broke her heart to part with it in this way, but she knew it meant so much to Leonard and Rose. It felt like a public recognition of what their son and their family had sacrificed in that dreadful war.”

  “Like so many others,” agreed Beryl. “That’s what’s especially moving about these letters. They represent the dreadful pain that was shared by countless mothers, fathers, wives and children in families just like yours.”

  “That’s why Leonard did it. He built Hope Hall because he agreed that a memorial hall was a good and fitting tribute, but he just didn’t feel that a sparkling new building alone reflected the depth of the pain and suffering they and all their neighbours had gone through. The words of those letters are able to convey that in a way bricks and mortar never could.”

  “I suppose he hoped they would be rediscovered one day in the future,” commented Michael. “And a hundred years on, here they are. Leonard could never have imagined how much the world would change in that time, or all the other wars we’ve seen around the world since Gerry died.”

  “But these letters still speak out loud and clear, don’t they?” stated Joyce. “The pain in them is as moving today as it must have been back then. I’m glad for him. Glad for my granny Edith too, who never ever recovered from the death of her husband. She had a sadness about her for as long as I can remember.”

  “When did you lose her?”

  “She was ninety-five when she died, so she reached a grand old age in spite of everything. That was in 2003. It was no dramatic illness; she just died because she was very old. She was a wonderful lady, really.”

  “Did she ever think about remarrying?”

  Joyce smiled. “I remember asking her about that once, and she just said that she’d married the man she loved and that she could never love that way again.”

  “How tragic,” mused Beryl, glancing down at her notes. “When did she and Gerry marry? Oh, here it is. They married in April 1916, and that was within weeks of national conscription being brought in for all men over the age of eighteen. Gerry was twenty-two by then, and Edith was only nineteen years old. They must have decided to tie the knot as quickly as possible so they could have some time together before he was called up. In the end, they had just three weeks before he was shipped off to Europe along with thousands of other young men. He never made it home again and never saw his baby son Walter. Just over a year later he died in the Battle of Passchendaele.”

  “And Granny Edith never recovered from the shock of it.” Joyce’s voice was flat as she spoke. “She devoted her life to her little boy, my father, because he was the only living reminder she had of her beloved husband. And when Dad grew up and married Mum, Granny devoted her life to us and then to our children. She was always there with a lap to cuddle up on and a pocket full of fruit sweets to make everything better.”

  “Well, Joyce, we’re very much hoping you might come and share some of that with all of us during our Centenary Celebration Day. We’re having a service in the church, but then we’ll be moving across to Hope Hall to lay our own centenary plaque with modern-day thoughts and items stored behind it, just as your great-grandad Leonard did with the original foundation stone all those years ago. Would you consider coming along as our guest of honour on that day, and perhaps saying a few words about your grandparents, and about Leonard too, who was thoughtful enough to enclose these letters?”

  Joyce’s face lit up as a slow smile crossed her face. “I would really love to.”

  “And are you happy to decide for yourself what you’d like to say?” asked Michael. “Do let us know if we can help you with any details you might need.”

  “I know exactly what to say. I’m going to borrow Granny Edith’s words, because she put a great deal of thought into what the ceremony should include, even though she knew she wouldn’t be there herself. I’m going to make sure she’s there in spirit.”

  Michael smiled as he realized that during their ceremony, as they all marked the history of a hundred years ago in the presence of Joyce, with her links to the past, along with a new young generation of schoolchildren making their contribution for the future, they would all be creating a moment in history that would speak to everyone who visited Hope Hall in the years to come.

  Much to the disappointment of the Grown-ups’ Lunch Club members that week, Maggie and her team held back on providing too many cakes and puddings for their lunch, in honour of their guest speaker that day. The local Health Service dietician was going to give them all a talk on eating healthily, with advice on what foods to avoid and what should be encouraged.

  “I bet she’ll say we shouldn’t be eating bread,” wailed Betty. “I love bread. I love bread almost as much as I love potatoes, especially when they’re made into nice hot crispy chips. But I don’t love bread or chips as much as I love Maggie’s cakes, and we’re going to be starved of those today. This talk is really going to upset me.”

  “I never eat fried food,” stated Ida.

  “My mum used to say that bread is like the sun,” said Doris, joining in with the conversation. “It rises in the yeast and sets in the waist!”

  “Well, if this dietician has a thing for lettuce leaves,” grumbled Percy, “I’m going off down the chip shop for my lunch. Apart from mushy peas, I don’t get on with eating anything green. I haven’t eaten salad for eighty years and I don’t plan to start now.”

  “I’ve been trying to diet,” moaned Flora, “and I must be doing okay. I just dug out something I used to wear five years ago and it actually still fitted! I felt so proud.”

  “Really?” gasped Betty. “That’s impressive.”

  “Actually, it was only a scarf, but I’ve got to start somewhere!”

  And the group around her all joined in as Betty threw back her head and laughed.

  “Well,” said Robert, “when it comes to my body, I am losing something, but it’s not my weight. I filled up with petrol the other day and saw someone had dropped their glasses on the ground by the pump. So I did the right thing and took them in to the cashier, because I thought a driver would probably come back looking for them. But when I got back in the car, I couldn’t find my driving glasses. It was really embarrassing having to go and ask the same lady if I could have my own glasses back!”

  Robert’s story went down as well as Betty’s had done with the delighted group members.

  “So you’re losing your marbles then, Robert!” hooted Percy. “Join the club, mate. Join the club.”

  “Right, pin your ears back because I’m only going to say this once!”

  Everyone jumped with a start as Shirley’s voice bellowed across the foyer.

  “We’ve got some lovely photos from our summer outing to Southsea. We’ve put them up on the display board over in the corner. If you want a copy of any of them, there will be no charge because we can print them off here. Just let me know the numbers on the photos you’d like, and we’ll make sure you get your order as soon as possible.”

  Eyes strained to see where exactly the photos were, with stiff necks turning and fingers pointing in the right direction to indicate the location of the board for all who weren’t sure.

  “And…” continued Shirley, her voice louder than ever, “on the twenty-eighth of this month – that’s about two weeks away – you’re all invited to be guests of honour at the Hope Hall centenary celebrations.”

  A buzz of excited c
hatter broke out around the room.

  “There’s a church service over at St Mark’s in the morning where, if you put your name down on the list, there will be a reserved seat for you in the front few rows. Afterwards, we’ll all be making our way back here to Hope Hall for the laying of our new centenary plaque.”

  The level of chatter grew even louder, but so did Shirley’s voice as she carried on speaking.

  “Once the ceremony to lay the new stone is over, you’re all invited inside the hall for a celebration buffet. There’ll be some entertainment laid on too, so it should be fun. If you need transport to get here that day, put your name and address on the transport request list. Is that clear? Any questions?”

  “I’ve never been a VIP guest before,” gasped Betty. “Do I have to wear a hat?”

  “I like hats,” agreed Flora. “Would my wedding hat do? I’ve only got one!”

  Shirley shook her head with exasperation. “Ladies, you don’t need to wear hats.”

  “I could wear my trilby at a jaunty angle,” quipped Percy. “I’d look like Frank Sinatra then.”

  “No hats,” explained Shirley with exaggerated patience. “Not for you, Percy. Not for anyone. Any more questions?”

  “Is there likely to be a minute’s silence during the ceremony in honour of the men who died during the First World War?” asked Ida. “After all, this hall is dedicated to their memory.”

  Shirley’s expression softened. “The ceremony is being very carefully planned for just that reason, Ida. This is all about those young men who died, and the other young men and women who have lost their lives or health in subsequent conflicts. Thank you for asking.”

  Ida nodded gravely.

  “Right, our guest speaker is ready to start now and she suggests you all move into the main hall, because she has quite a lot of demonstration items set up in there. Take your time, but could you start moving into the hall now, please?”

  There was general bustle as chairs were pushed back, creaking knees straightened and walking sticks grabbed as the Grown-ups’ Lunch Club members started their exodus from the foyer into the main hall.