The Love of a Lifetime

by Mary Fitzgerald

  Walking carefully now, so as not to wake them, I made my way across the landing to our old room but was stopped for a moment by a low growl that came from the little bedroom above the front door. Elizabeth’s dog was in there.

  My room looked as though I had left it only the night before. The two beds were made up and all my treasures there on my table, placed as I had left them and dusted clean. The curtains were drawn back and pale moonlight lay in a strip across my bed. I smiled. Mother had remembered how I liked to see the night and I stood for a while looking out onto the yard and dark fields beyond. A breeze blew in through the slightly opened sash, bringing with it a fresh sweet smell of the hillside. How different from the cold, sterile wind that howled out of the Hindu Kush or the heavy spice-laden air that used to blanket my cot in Meerut.

  When I slipped into bed, I was immediately back in childhood. I exulted in the feel of the heavy Irish linen sheets and my feet rubbed familiarly against the little slubs of cotton woven into the fabric. It was a pleasant change from the army where we slept under blankets, although in Meerut, it was so hot that a pair of shorts was all that was necessary. But now I stretched out in pleasure as I closed my tired eyes and slept. Once, in the middle of the night I woke, hearing the owl hooting in the oak tree and readied myself for action. My arm reached out to lift up the mosquito netting before I realised where I was and, comforted, settled back into sleep.

  I’ve been talking into this machine for hours and I must remember to ask Sharon to get new batteries in the morning. It is early morning, now, still dark and the birds haven’t moved from their nests and neither have I. My bed is most comfortable since that special mattress has been delivered and set up. It works on an electric button and I can press it to sit me up or lie me down. Cost a few bob, but what of it. The money’s there and should be spent. I’ve bought a new car for Sharon too. She played hell with me, saying that she didn’t need it, but that old thing she’d been driving is a death trap and I’m concerned for Thomas. Anyway, he loves it.

  I’ve only slept for an hour or so, even though Sharon is home and I take comfort from the knowledge of her presence. She has been busy since her return from holiday, but hasn’t neglected me. It was she who organised this bed and after discussing it with me and Dr Clewes, arranged for the nurse to come in every day to help me bathe. And she’s started new studies.

  “I’m going to the College in town to do a degree,” she told me a few days after she came home from her holiday. “Do you think I’m mad?”

  “No.”

  “It’s English and History,” she explained. “Then I could do a teaching course. It would make me secure, money wise, when,” she paused and swallowed before continuing, “and I could give Thomas all the things that I never had.”

  “What things?” I ignored the ‘when’ and wondered what it was that her parents had denied her. She rarely mentioned them and certainly never visited her mother, who I knew was living on one of the estates in town. Her father had disappeared years ago. Maybe even dead, by now.

  “Books, trips to other towns, holidays even. Better friends.” She looked at me, taking off her spectacles to polish the lens on a corner of her T-shirt. “Do you think that I’m being stuck-up?”

  I shook my head. What could possibly be wrong with trying to better yourself? That’s what most of us in the village had tried to do, years ago. I was going to be the first one in the family to go to university and Mother and Billy had been proud of me. Of course, I threw all that over when I joined up and I did regret it, later.

  “I think you’ll find it most satisfying, my dear,” I told her.

  She grinned and stood up. “Andrew thinks it will be a waste of time. He can’t understand why I want to do it.”

  Exactly, I thought, that man is no good for her.

  And even as I thought it, she added, “He doesn’t understand me at all, really. Not like Jason.”

  So it was Jason Hyde whom she preferred. I felt satisfaction at that and was about to tell her so, out loud, but then scolded myself. God knows, I should be the last one to offer advice. I got it wrong throughout my whole life. I loved one woman so much that it all but destroyed any other relationship that I embarked upon.

  I thought of something else to take my mind off love. “What will your mother think about it?” I asked. “You going to college.”

  She shrugged. “I might not tell her. It’s none of her business.”

  It was stupid of me to bring up her parent. I knew she hated talking about her old life and now she was picking up our teacups and taking them out to the kitchen. I watched her as she went through the door and thought again how recognisable that tall thin figure was and how evocative that cap of hair which bobbed animatedly, as she left.

  Was it her mother or her father who was supposed to be related to the Major? I’d never found that out, but truly it didn’t matter. The more I looked at her, the more I knew that she was indeed a great granddaughter. She is so like him and Thomas has that same red hair like he had, and I did, once.

  “Your hair has darkened,” said Mother the next morning when I came down to breakfast.

  “Has it?” I mumbled, my mouth full of delicious bacon and softly fried eggs. “I wouldn’t know.”

  I had slept deeply and come down when the day was well on. Outside, the weather was fine, still coolish for it was only early April, but bright and sunny and I could see Mother’s little garden through the window, alive with bobbing tulips and the last of the daffodils. I stole a look at her in the harsh daylight and confirmed what I had suspected the night before. She had grown old, and yet was still only in her early sixties. All the gold had gone from her hair and her face was lined and tired. Or perhaps the expression couldn’t be described as tired, but something else that I couldn’t exactly put my finger on.

  “Billy and Elizabeth have no children,” I said, “I’m surprised.”

  The expression on her face deepened and I now saw what it was. Disappointment. “No,” she said, shortly. “They haven’t been blessed.”

  I left it at that; it was obviously a sore subject. If she had hoped for grandchildren then she was unlucky. No chance from Marian, Billy and Elizabeth childless - and me? Well I wasn’t married and had no plans to be so.

  I strolled out into the yard after breakfast and went to join Billy in the milking parlour. The last of the cattle had just been milked and he was whistling cheerfully as he slapped the bony haunches of the black and white cow to send her on her way. Changes had been made in the years I’d been away. The milking parlour had been extended and the walls replastered and distempered. Even the floor had been improved. I could see that the flagstones had been lifted and repositioned so that they were flat and properly cemented in. Much easier to keep clean.

  I’d noticed other changes too. A new Dutch barn and an implement shed where a tractor held pride of place. I wondered if the heavy horses still pulled the plough or if they were now only kept as a hobby. If they were, then Billy had gone completely soft. He’d never been one for pets.

  Somehow I fell into the old tasks without even realising it and found myself opening the gate into the field and urging the cows into the pasture. It felt good and I opened up my lungs and took a great gulp of air, so much indeed, that my head swam for a moment and I wobbled on my feet.

  Billy came out then and put an arm on my shoulder. He was quiet today, brooding I think, over my return and the implications that it might bring. He had become older, and his face was our father’s face, as I recalled it from my earliest memories. He was heavier too with no sign left of the athletic boy he’d once been. He had a sense of great strength about him, and rock-like immovability. But oddly, his eyes seemed to have shrunk and were now like two chips of coal in his square weather beaten face.

  “It’s right good to see you,” he said and I knew his words were sincere. “I dread you going away again.”

  “It won’t be for a few months.” My reassurance seemed to help for
he laughed when I added, “and you’ll be that bloody sick of me, by then, you’ll be setting the dogs on me.”

  “Never,” he said.

  We walked the farm that day and every day after that, as I became unpaid labour once more and glad of it. I learned all I knew about farming from our Billy. He had a knack of making money without stinting on the feed or on the welfare of the stock although he hated waste and was still careful with every penny. When I went with him to market, the following Monday, I was almost embarrassed at the firmness of his dealings with the other farmers and the way he browbeat them into giving him the best deals. The cattle at our farm were the finest in the district and any one of our heifers was guaranteed a good price. Our Billy made sure he got it.

  The only trouble was that it made him unpopular and I could see that he had no friends in or out of the sale ring. I, on the other hand was greeted most kindly by men I’d known as boys, and many offers of hospitality came my way. I promised to meet some of them in the Golden Lion that evening and even though I assured Billy that he would be welcome too, he declined the offer. I think he knew that I was wrong in my assurances.

  “I’ve better things to do than sup pints,” he said, “but you go along. You can catch up on all your old pals.”

  I had a great surprise when I went into the pub. The first person to stand up and greet me was my old friend, Fred Darlington. What joy and pleasure we had pumping each other’s hands and, falling back into old ways, we sat round the table and talked for hours.

  Oh, God, I was always glad to see Fred; he was a true friend to me. That night we talked and talked and after the others drifted away home to wives and children, we stayed and caught up on the years we’d lost.

  He was still in the police but had transferred up to our town a couple of years ago. “I was sick of London,” he said, “and after my dad died, it was difficult for my mother. Now we all live together.”

  He had married a girl he’d met in London, but who was originally from Cornwall. A country girl at heart who had settled back into village life happily.

  “She never liked London, either,” he said. “But her people are poor and she needed to make a living. Her father was a tin miner. He was killed a few years ago and Miranda had to go into service. Just round the corner from where I was stationed.”

  I listened with interest, thinking about what an exotic name Fred’s wife had. Was she as fascinating as her name implied? I met her and a pretty lass she was with curly black hair like a gypsy but very housewifely and sensible and not a bit exotic in character. She was kind to me in later years when I particularly needed it.

  “What about you?” he asked, “got a wife, somewhere?”

  I shook my head. “Too busy soldiering and where I’ve been, well, not many English girls would like to go.”

  “Besides which,” he said in a lowered voice and giving me a knowing smile, “none of them is Elizabeth Nugent.”

  I must have looked at him with amazement, because he laughed and got up to get us more drinks. When he came back I said, urgently, “What d’you mean? There’s nothing between me and Elizabeth.”

  “I know that. But you did want her, didn’t you?”

  What could I say? He remembered me telling him about her on that weekend in Snowdonia. I nodded. “I did once, but she’s married to my brother now.”

  “More’s the pity.” Fred’s normally pleasant face darkened. “There’s a marriage made in hell if ever there was one.”

  Those words cut through the warm cheery atmosphere as though they had been chipped out of ice. I stared at him, scarcely believing what I was hearing. My best friend describing my brother’s marriage as ‘made in hell.’ It was shocking.

  “What?” I said, nearly choking on the last of my beer. I could feel my face getting hot and my fists clenching, but I was still not sure that I’d heard him right. “What did you say about Billy and Elizabeth?”

  We were almost the last people in the pub and I could see that the landlord was hanging the bar cloth across the taps, getting ready to ring the bell, but I had to know what Fred meant. I reached over and not too gently, grabbed his coat lapel. “What are you bloody talking about?”

  He made an effort to shake me off. He’d grown stronger after his years in the police and was used to handling rowdies but he still couldn’t match me in strength. He had to put his hands down.

  “Oh, look, Dick,” he sighed, “I have to tell you something. There’s been a lot of talk in the village about them. She’s not happy, you must have noticed that and early on, everyone said that he was knocking her about. God! I saw her once with awful bruises on her neck.”

  My jaw dropped in horrified amazement. This was something I’d never imagined and I could hardly believe it. My brother hitting his wife? Our Billy smacking my Elizabeth? It was impossible. Anyone would be mad to believe it.

  But even as I was ready to spring to my brother’s defence, something stopped me. I thought about the quiet sad atmosphere at home and the almost forced jollity. I knew that something was wrong. Mother was strangely anxious and Billy seemed detached and vague. Then there was the business of the separate bedrooms. And the dog. Did Elizabeth keep it by her for protection?

  I kept my face down and stared into my empty glass. “I know that Elizabeth is unhappy,” I muttered, “but I can’t believe that Billy hits her. He wouldn’t.”

  The landlord called time so we got up and made our way out into the damp night. The village was quiet; it was late and raining and most people had gone to bed. We should have parted company and each hurried home but now a genie’s bottle had been opened and too much had burst out for me to let the discussion end.

  Fred lived in the Police house next to the school and it was on my home anyway, so I walked along beside him, mulling over what I’d just learned.

  “You must have got it wrong,” I said, finally, breaking the silence. “Neither Mother nor Elizabeth has said a word to me.”

  He stopped at his gate. “You need to keep your eyes open a bit more. I don’t think I’m wrong, Dick, and I think you should see what you can do.”

  That wasn’t fair. What the hell could I do about something I didn’t really believe and as I muttered a ‘goodnight’ and walked on my way, I had a heavy heart.

  Chapter 15

  I still think about that first time I was told my brother was a wife beater and my feelings of disgust and dismay. As far as I knew, people like us didn’t take out our frustrations on those who were weaker.

  Of course, I’d known about men in the village who knocked about their wives and children and, although we had regarded them with a certain contempt, it was accepted. These were the poor people who lived in the houses by the abattoir and who, according to popular opinion, could do nothing right. The men were brutes, the women, sluts and the children, who I knew at school, had nitty heads and scabs of impetigo.

  I wonder if Sharon suffered in that way. Perhaps her father had been a beater and that is why she is so wary about Thomas having anything to do with his own father. I tried to question Sharon again, the other day but she didn’t say much. Only that Thomas’ father was a student she’d met at a bar in the town.

  “I went out with him for a few months,” she said. “He met someone else and left. It was good riddance as far as I was concerned.”

  I was taken aback by the casual cruelty of it all but then who am I to be shocked by indifference. I’ve practised it for a lot of my life.

  I’ve taken to sitting in the kitchen every morning now after breakfast. The dog and I hog the Aga and let the nurse and the new cleaner work around us. Sharon is at the college most mornings and Thomas is at school so I like to take my place as the one in charge. I’ve been feeling quite well lately, only another remission, I suppose, but welcome nevertheless.

  The cleaner is a woman from the village, who comes in three days a week and scours the house with great energy.

  “These books could do with a wipe,” she said one
day, coming into my parlour and looking at my library.

  “Not with water and bleach,” I said sternly. “A soft cloth only!”

  All she did was laugh. These young women have little respect for their elders, but she did use a cloth and spent a whole morning pulling out the books and piling them on the carpet. I sat and watched her polish the shelves and then made sure they all went back in the right places.

  “Pass me that one, please,” I asked as she applied her cloth to the worn cover of a book I knew well.

  This was a favourite, bought at an open air stall in Meerut where I used to go regularly to buy second hand books. Plain Tales From The Hills by Kipling, fine stories of India that I’d carried with me in my saddle bags when I was on patrol on the Frontier. I was holding it on my knee when Sharon came home at lunchtime.

  She came into my room carrying a tray with sandwiches and coffee for both of us, and glasses of sherry as a treat.

  “What’s that you’re reading?” She picked up the book I’d put aside while I sipped at my drink.

  “Kipling,” I said. “A book of short stories. It’s a wonderful read.”

  I thought back to that sultry day and the dusty market stall where I bought it. I could hear the noise of people and animals, smell the spice and dung in the air and for a moment, felt a longing for India. I was young there, strong and capable and unafraid. Everything that I’m not now.

  “That book travelled all over India with me,” I said, “and came home when I did. It was one of my favourites.”

  She flicked through the pages stopping now and then to examine the line drawings. “I knew you were in India,” she said, reaching for a sandwich, “did you like it?”

  Like it? Like is such a pathetic word to describe my feeling for that glorious place.