“You don’t understand,” Mother said quietly.
“Yes I do.”
“No,” she said and looked at me in a strange way. “Elizabeth must stay here. She’s William’s best chance. She’ll keep him safe.”
She was right, I didn’t understand. Our Billy was the strongest, bravest man in the district and didn’t need anyone to keep him safe. This was only a silly excuse that Mother had thought up, so she could have her own way. I knew she had made up her mind and then worked on Billy so that he believed that it was all his idea. And she’d done the same to Elizabeth. I bet she’d told her that Billy would be wealthy. He was already the richest farmer in the district despite his youth and Elizabeth would never have to worry about the next meal. That would have played well. She had come to us gaunt and in rags. I doubt that she would want to go back to that.
These thoughts drove a spike of iron into my heart and I gazed across at the mother I had once loved and admired so uncritically, as one properly seeing her for the first time. I didn’t know what to do. The spoilt boy I was only minutes ago would have flung himself out of the kitchen in tears, hurt to destruction by the cruel action of his beloved family. But suddenly I’d changed. Once I’d seen through Mother’s tricks, then I didn’t need to be her child any more. I had grown up.
Her chair creaked and her hand came out towards me. I could hear her breath shuddering as though she was fighting to hold back tears, but I remained unmoved. “I’m sorry Mother,” I said coldly, lowering my eyes back onto my book, “I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”
“But, Richard,” she started, pleading now, “you must…” her voice faded away as I put a finger in my place in the book and raised my face to look at her.
“Yes?” I said and I can remember now the dangerous edge my voice had taken. “What must I do?”
For the first time in my life, I was in charge and she knew it. No further words came from her and after a while she got up and made some supper. Billy and Elizabeth came in; their behaviour entirely normal like it had been before and chatted about the stock and the fields as though nothing different had occurred. We sat around the table in the yellow pool of lamplight in the same way as we had for years, eating bread and cheese and home-made pickle and of the four of us, only Billy didn’t realise that our lives had changed forever.
Did I sleep that night? Not much, as I remember. I went to my room well after everyone else, having stayed up late with my book. When I crept up the stairs, the house was quiet and Billy, who always slept soundly, didn’t stir as I came into our room. The clouds of early evening had cleared and the bright moonlight, shining through the open curtains, fell upon my bed and the chest that I used as a table. It was on this chest that I kept all my treasures. The coin I’d found on the hillside, some of my favourite books and the carved dagger that my uncle had given me all those Christmases ago. A ritual I’d started years before made me touch all these precious things before getting into bed. It was a comfort route to sleep and even tonight, in my newly found adulthood I was compelled to perform it, but this time, the moonlight worked some sort of magic. I knew, when I stroked my hand along the sharp raised pattern of the dagger, what I was going to do. The answer was obvious and welcome and I couldn’t wait.
The next morning I was up early, but still not before our Billy. He had already gone down to the beasts and I had a good half hour to sort out all my things. My new-found determination suffered a momentary lapse when Elizabeth came down to put the kettle on and we found ourselves together, alone in the kitchen. She looked as lovely as ever, fresh and smelling of soap and talcum with her curls held back in a blue ribbon and her fine body warm and glowing in the cornflower dress.
“Hello, Dick,” she said quietly and for the first time since yesterday teatime looked me straight in the face. Her eyes were large, sick with worry, I thought, and I could have taken her in my arms even then, despite all that had happened.
“Oh, Elizabeth,” I said, still eager to forgive her, “what have you done?”
She stared at me for a long moment and then turned her head to see to the boiling kettle. “What I had to do,” she replied with a finality that begged me not to argue.
That was an end to it as far as I was concerned. Later that morning I went into the yard to find Billy.
“I’m not going to university,” I said.
“Oh, aye?” He was feeding the weaners and they ran about his feet in the pig pen, squealing and creating like they’d never seen a meal before. “Why’s that then?”
“I’ve got other plans.”
“And what would they be?”
“I’m going in the army.”
Before speaking again, he emptied the last scraps out of the bucket and came back into the yard, closing the gate of the pig-pen behind him. “Why?”
“Because I want to travel. I need to see other places than here.” I waved my arm around indicating the farm, the house and all the area around. Everywhere in fact under this Marcher sky, that Elizabeth had walked in. “Anyway,” I added, “I’ll be earning my own living. You won’t have to pay for me.”
“I never said I minded that,” he said gruffly and when I looked at him closely I could see that his eyes were swimming. He didn’t want me to go.
Why did I have to make it better for him? He was the older one, he had always looked after me, the weakling, the silly little brother, but now I felt that I had to comfort him, promise to come home regularly and persuade him that what I was proposing to do was the best thing for us all.
“I shall miss you,” he said, clumsily wiping his face with his mud-spattered sleeve.
“You’ll have Elizabeth.” And that was the truth of it. He would have it all. The farm, the home, Mother and my Elizabeth.
I left later that afternoon, walking across the fields to the station. I had packed a small suitcase with a change of clothes and a couple of books, leaving everything else of a lifetime in the care of those who had rejected me.
My farewells were brief. Marian had been telephoned and rushed over to admonish me and try to change my mind, but Mother and Elizabeth seemed dumbstruck. We parted by the field gate on a lovely summer afternoon. Swallows dived for insects in the clear sky above us and the cattle watched us curiously from the long grass in the meadow. I was dry eyed, that iron now well lodged in my heart, but Billy held me so long in a warm clasp that I thought we would have to be torn apart. Eventually Mother and Elizabeth took hold of him and with a brief kiss from Marian, I walked away. It was eight years before I saw them all again.
Chapter 12
September has come in cold this year and my pleasant mornings of sitting in the Lloyd Loom chair under the laburnum tree have finished. Anyway, that damn nurse that Sharon has arranged to look after me, won’t let me go out. She prefers me to stay in my room, in case I fall I suppose, and become even more of a nuisance. In a way, I can’t blame her. As far as she is concerned I’m an old, very sick man and I play along, letting her fuss and fiddle because it allows me a vestige of privacy. The bits of me that still do work, my brain and my willpower, I’ve kept hidden from her. It stops her from interfering with what I’m doing.
I laughed to myself when I realised from the first day of her being in charge that she thinks I’m listening to a story on this tape and not telling one. I suppose she thinks I’m just mumbling along with an invisible narrator.
Sharon and Thomas have gone on holiday and I hate them being away. They have become so precious to me that it took all of that willpower not to show my despair when they were leaving.
“Ten days will go in a flash, Richard,” said Sharon as she put their suitcases into the back of the taxi.
“I know, and I’m glad you’re going. God knows, you need a break from me and this house.”
“I can call it off right now,” she said coming back to the front door and giving me one of her searching looks. “You only have to say the word.”
I would have loved to say the w
ord. I would have loved to be able to tell her that she is as dear to me as my mother when I was a little boy and that I am frightened when she is out of my sight for any length of time. Why shouldn’t I break down and say that she mustn’t go. Tell her that I am scared of dying when she isn’t here to hold my hand.
What an old fool I’ve become and cowardly too. I’ve lived well past my allotted threescore and ten and should be ready to give up. A few months ago it wouldn’t have mattered, I’d nothing left to live for; I hadn’t met Sharon or Thomas and found the comfort and friendship that has been so lacking in my life for these many years. And now there is this account. It must be finished. My story deserves to be told.
So there it is. I can’t voice my fears, nor would I. The girl needs time away and this offer of a holiday was so generously given that she would have been a fool to refuse it. She has gone with Andrew Jones and his mother to their house in Spain where Thomas will have a jolly time splashing in the swimming pool and I dare say Andrew will give the girl a few dinners out in a restaurant.
We’ve seen quite a lot of him lately and his visits haven’t always been on my account. I know that I’ve been tinkering with my will and that requires him to act for me, but that bit of business was over weeks ago, so his continuous presence must have another cause. What with him and young Hyde and the interest shown by Dr Clewes, Sharon has her hands full. It beats me why she wasn’t able to find a decent man earlier. She’s a good looking girl and well lettered. It’s my opinion that previously, she was fishing in the wrong waters.
This holiday house is in Southern Spain, near Gibraltar. Thomas and I looked at the atlas and found the name of the town and the airport. He was so excited about it all especially when I traced my finger across the countries to show him the way that the plane will go.
“Have you been there, Mr Richard?” he asked, jabbing his index finger on the flimsy paper of the old map book.
“No, lad,” I said, carefully pulling his grubby little hand away. The atlas belonged to the Major and it is old and fragile. “Not to that town, but I went to Gibraltar many years ago and lots of other places.”
“Was it a holiday like we’re going on?”
I shook my head and leaned back in my chair remembering the excitement I had felt when our ship put into port and we were allowed to disembark and go into the town. Me and my pals, young men in rough army uniform and ready for every new experience that was going to come our way.
I loved the army. From the very first day when I joined up at the headquarters camp and surrendered my civilian clothes in exchange for badly fitting khakis, I felt at home. That was strange really, for I’d come from a good place and was used to much better than the bare barracks room where we slept and the terrible food that was slopped onto our tin plates three times a day. I was an exception. Most of my companions were simply grateful for the warmth and regular rations, such had been the scarcity of comfort they’d previously experienced.
“Bloody hell, Wilde,” my pal, Lewis Wilton, said, when I spoke about our farmhouse and the butter and cheeses Mother used to make, “you must be mad to be here.”
I only laughed. Within two days of joining up, I was an Army man and my civilian life something that I’d pushed into the back of my mind. Only at night, when the lights were out and the last few shouted remarks between the bunks had died away, did I think about home. I counted the passing days and weeks in what might be happening on the farm, thinking that now they would be ploughing and now the stock cattle would be going to market. As for the family, well, I preferred not to think of them. The bitterness still overwhelmed me.
But slowly, I began to forget. Well, not forget, exactly, but not to dwell on it and not to have my previous life to the front of my brain. So much was new every day and I found that my companions became my interest and started friendships that were to last for many years.
We were a proud bunch of a fine company. I had deliberately joined the same regiment as my uncle and hoped that I would be sent to join the main body of its force in India.
“Steady on, private,” said the Colonel, when I put in my request, after taking the King’s shilling, “you’re jumping the gun, a bit. There’s basic training to be done and I understand that you’ve had some education. We might find that you are more use to us in the offices.”
This was a setback because being as yet ignorant in the ways of army life, I had imagined that my desire to be in India would be accommodated as soon as I requested it. I wanted action, travel and what youngsters desire above all else, adventure. I must have shown my disappointment, for the Colonel grinned and looked at his adjutant who was standing beside his desk. “These lads are so eager aren’t they, Parker? Can’t wait to get abroad, to the cushy life.”
The adjutant turned up his mouth in a semblance of a smile. I already didn’t like him. The Colonel was gentleman, but you couldn’t say that of Parker.
“They’re a man short in the admin block,” he said. “I expect Wilde could make himself useful there, once he’s completed basic training.”
He was a bastard and later on, when we did get some action, he was shown to be a coward too.
I completed my training and did right fine. Growing up on a farm fitted me well for an active life. The early risings were no bother and as for learning to handle a rifle, well that was easy. I’d been using a shotgun on the farm since I was a lad. I came out top in my section on the rifle range and later on when I went into competitions, won a few cups. It was these sorts of things, I think that made me popular, for I never experienced any bullying although I knew that it did go on in some other barracks. The corporal in charge of ours was a tough old Irishman and wouldn’t stand any nonsense. He wasn’t above belting a squaddy who transgressed his given rules. And that included bullying.
My friend Lewis had been made into a steward in the Officer’s Mess after training and he would bring us titbits from their kitchen. By God, they ate better than us and no mistake. Many’s the night when the old corporal was snoring that we picnicked in the dark on roast beef scraps and shank ends of lamb. In return, I taught him to read and write. I taught quite a few of the fellows to read, starting first with their letters from home and then getting onto some of the picture papers that were quite popular then.
Lewis came from near Durham where he’d been brought up in an orphanage and had no family. He always said that the army was his family but that he was the black sheep. He was too, always in scrapes but never mean. Simply wild. If there was trouble to be got into, you could bet your last pound that once all the dust had cleared, there would be Lewis’s black curly head and humorous black eyes surveying the mayhem he’d wrought. I can’t tell you how many times I had to drag him home from drunken brawls in pubs or away from angry prostitutes he’d propositioned without the money to pay for them. Later on he married and settled down. It was just before the war and I was the Best Man.
I went to see Sarah, his wife after I’d been invalided out, to tell her what had happened. She was living back with her parents then, her and the little girl that Lewis had only seen once.
I lied. “It was quick,” I said, “he never even saw the bullet that hit him.”
“Thank you, Richard,” she said. Then, after she’d dabbed at her eyes, she said something that surprised me. “I’m glad that you were with him at the end. Lewis always said that the men felt safe when you were around.”
I was thankful then that I hadn’t told her how I’d had to leave him in the jungle, with his guts hanging out of a terrible wound and only a rifle between him and the approaching Japs.
“Go,” he’d said, fixing his terrified eyes on mine, “take the others and get out. I’m finished anyway.” He was, we all knew that and we couldn’t have carried him, but I nearly broke down as I shook his hand. I told my platoon to go on while I stayed for a last farewell. I dare say it wasn’t very manly, but I kissed him on the cheek before I left. We heard the shot a few minutes later. It wasn’t a Jap gun.
We had been good friends, growing into manhood together, egging each other on as regards entertainment in the town. I was a virgin and I suspect that he was too, but he always swore he’d had all the girls in that Durham orphanage. So when we made our first visit to the brothel, I relied on him to tell me what was expected. Hah! He disappeared when we went in and left me to pay the Madam and get seen to by a scraggy old witch nearly as old as Mother. I nearly couldn’t perform but she was kind enough to help me along and that hurdle was over.
There were other girls during the two years we spent in that garrison town. And not all of them had to be paid for. They were a common lot, though. Hanging around in the pubs and ready to do anything for a drink and a Woodbine. After the first few months of wenching, even Lewis got bored with it and we and some of our other pals found gambling and drinking held almost as much attraction.
I was a great drinker, I had been before I left home, much to Mother’s chagrin and I tell you now, I could drink anyone else in my company under the table. It must have been something to do with my size. Lewis was hopeless. He got drunk on four pints and would go looking for a fight. Civilians were his favourite meat and a wrong look or an accidental push at the bar would set him in a fighting mood. He could only have been about five foot five but I’ve seen him take on three big meat packers from the abattoir. Many’s the time I had to carry him back to the barracks. But sober, he was the nicest lad you’d want to meet.
We got our orders to sail for India after two years. I’d almost lost hope and thought that my entire army career would be spent in the administration office of our regiment.
The Love of a Lifetime Page 14