The Love of a Lifetime

by Mary Fitzgerald

  Our Billy would have been amazed if he could have seen me then, yelling and screaming at young fellows in an attempt to teach them the proper army way. “He’s a right bastard,” I heard one man say to his mate as I took them through the physical exercises that we had set up. And I suppose I was, but it was necessary. I think being able to run fast is equally worthwhile in a battle situation as is having the guts to stand and fight. I came to know that even more when I was fighting through Burma later on. By God, I made a good many hasty retreats.

  One late autumn afternoon I was on the parade ground with my latest batch of recruits when a corporal came to tell me that I was wanted in the office. New orders from the War Office, was my first thought. We were always getting conflicting instructions, because two points of view were abroad in the land. One lot said that war was imminent and that we should be ready for action at any minute. The other thought that peace would last for ever. Diplomacy was the key.

  “Sir!” I said, arriving in the office and saluting to the young Captain who was sitting at a desk reading a newspaper.

  He put his head round the paper and I saw that a cigarette was hanging from the corner of his mouth. My God, if he’d been one of mine, I’d have seen to it that he was less of a shambles. He wasn’t a bad officer, later on when it mattered, but he was wounded in our first foray into enemy territory and invalided out. He was glad to go, but then, we all were.

  But now he couldn’t be bothered to put his paper down. “I believe there’s a visitor for you, Mr Wilde. The corporal let them in when I was in the mess arranging the Colonel’s little dinner.” Our Colonel was entertaining the city dignitaries this evening. Fortunately, I was off duty and wouldn’t have to attend the welcome party in any capacity. He nodded towards the inner office. “In there.”

  I was perplexed. Who could come to see me? The family knew I was home; I’d written to Mother and promised to visit when duties allowed, but no-one had ever come to see me before. My first thought was illness or, God forbid, a death, in the family. My heart lurched. ‘Please God,’ I whispered to myself, ‘not her.’

  So it was a reluctant hand that turned the door handle and entered the room. This was the office that the Colonel used when he was on the camp. But as I said, he was busy today, getting ready for his party.

  At first I couldn’t see anyone. It was a large room with windows all along one wall and the afternoon sun was shining straight in, casting a brilliant glow that made objects difficult to make out. Then I noticed movement on the far wall beside the stack of filing cabinets and figure that I knew almost better than myself, swam into my view.

  “Elizabeth?” I asked, my breath short and difficult to produce from what felt like collapsing lungs

  “Hello, Richard.”

  She was there, in the flesh and as lovely as ever. I should have run over to her and taken her in my arms but I couldn’t. She wasn’t mine now. All I did was to walk to her side and drop a brotherly kiss on her cheek.

  “This is a surprise,” I said coolly, regaining my composure and behaving as though I’d seen her only a few days ago and five years hadn’t passed. “There’s nothing wrong at home, I hope?”

  If she was disappointed by my lack of enthusiasm for seeing her, she didn’t show it. She had changed again in the intervening years and now looked more mature, even matronly. Not that she had put on weight, Elizabeth was slim till the day she died, but she seemed less girlish. Her clothes were smart, a maroon coat with a fur collar and a fur hat that bore a gold brooch in the shape of a panther. And for the first time, I saw her in make-up. It suited her, for it was skilfully applied but somehow it made her even more remote from the girl I had loved.

  “No,” she smiled and the room became even more brilliant. My Elizabeth had grown into a beautiful woman. “No nothing like that.” She leaned against the Colonel’s desk. “It’s just that you haven’t been to see us since your return and,” here for the first time her voice faltered slightly and a glimpse of the old Elizabeth peeped out from this newly sophisticated person. “And I couldn’t wait any longer.”

  Couldn’t wait any longer? This was the woman I had loved to distraction, who the moment my back was turned had gone back to her husband in the most intimate way possible. I swallowed, confused and wondering what to say. Surely she wasn’t expecting us to re-kindle the old relationship.

  I struggled for the correct words and then settled on the obvious question. “What couldn’t you wait for?”

  “Why, to introduce you to my son,” and she gave me a long steady look. I stood there gaping in that sunny uncomfortably furnished office, as she turned her head and putting out her hand, gently withdrew a small boy from where he had been hiding, behind a wooden filing cabinet.

  “Say hello to John,” she smiled and I looked down to see a bright little face topped with a thick tumble of carroty red hair, grinning up at me. There could be no doubt. He was mine.

  Chapter 20

  Sharon has insisted that I stay in bed and I’m not sorry. These last days I’ve been feeling very rough, coughing a lot when I’m eating and breathless most of the time. It is a shame because it’s my birthday tomorrow and should I live through the night, I will have achieved the great age of ninety-five. What an age. How long I’ve lived. Born right at the beginning of the century when it was a different world. And a kinder one, like I’ve heard said? Well, maybe. People prefer to think that, but I’m not sure, being poor was cruel when I was a child. We had plenty of folk in our village who had to live worse than animals, if they weren’t prepared to accept charity. The government did very little for them after the Great War. It was women like Mother and men like Mr Kendrick, the vicar, who kept some of our villagers from starvation.

  But that was a long time ago and I’m meandering. That’s what happens to you when you get old. Mind you, I’m not as old as the Queen Mother. She’s made the hundred. A real lady, she is. I met her once and she kindly shook my hand. She and the King entertained some of our company after the war and seemed interested in what we had done in Burma. Of course, I didn’t tell them much. You didn’t speak of those things in front of royalty, it would have been too distressing for them and anyway, in those days, I couldn’t speak of them to anyone. Man’s inhumanity to man, is not something that you want spread abroad.

  It is cold today and dark with it. Its only about eleven o’clock in the morning, but the light is poor and through my window, I can see low cloud over the hill and the beginnings of rain. What a year. Non-stop rain and flooded fields. Flooded towns too, judging by the pictures on the television. Thomas told me he has been having lessons about something called global warming in his school and what did I think about it.

  “Very little, son,” I replied and maybe I was a little abrupt with him and I’m sorry for that. But the truth is that I’m not really sure what it’s all about. It’s too late for me to start learning new things but it still makes me angry not knowing. So, selfishly, I’ve chosen to ignore it.

  Fancy teaching a ten-year-old about global warming. In my day, we had a nature studies lesson once a week, where we learnt how to identify different trees and wild flowers. We brought in catkins and frog spawn in the spring and beech nuts and mushrooms in the autumn. Mr Cutts knew the names of everything and woe betide you if he told you and you forgot. By God it stuck in your head, if you knew what was good for you and even today, I bet I could tell the names of every wild flower in a summer meadow.

  I remember once, Mr Cutts giving us a lesson about beetles and telling us to keep an eye out for the different ones that lived in our area. Well, when we got home, our Billy said we had to look for some and find as many as possible. I got loads, especially around the old tree stumps in the home field, all types, including those big ones with the crab claws at the front. Stag beetles.

  “What d’you want them for?” I asked when I took my tin can full of crawlers into the machinery shed where Billy was waiting. He was busy punching holes into the lid of one of t
he big jars that Mother used for pickling onions.

  “Just wait and see,” he said and poured the beetles into the jar. The next day Billy put them in his satchel and took them to school.

  I knew he was going to let them go but I didn’t know when. Who would have guessed that it was to be in the middle of morning prayers? Right after ‘Our Father’ and before “All Things Bright and Beautiful,” he took the lid off the jar and shook the beetles out into the lap of the boy sitting next to him. It was Jackie Tyler, a fat little lad whose mother ran the village shop, being a widow after the first war.

  “Bloody hell!” shouted Jackie as the freed stag beetles and their smaller mates ran over his bare knees and down his legs. All the children craned their necks to see what was happening and when the girls on the other side of the aisle caught sight of about a hundred beetles crawling towards them, pandemonium broke loose.

  “Silence! Silence!” howled Mr Cutts, but the girls were screaming and hopping from foot to foot and the boys all shrieking with laughter. I laughed fit to burst and catching our Billy’s eye, saw him give a little grin of evil satisfaction. I think he was the only one in the school who remained in control. Of course he got a beating later on, when Mr Cutts had got to the bottom of it. I was going to get one too, but our Billy told Cutts that it was nothing to do with me. I was grateful at the time, but afterwards in the school yard when Billy was being congratulated for the prank, and surrounded by admiring girls, I almost wished I’d had a beating too.

  Oh, but it was funny and even now I can laugh about it, though it makes my chest ache and my head spin.

  I’ve been ill for four days since I recorded that last piece. Sharon came in, saw me gasping for breath and had to sit me up to pat my back. She sent for Dr Clewes straight away. He was all for hospital, but I told him to go to hell, so I’m still here but with that damn nurse, back full time.

  “You’ve got pneumonia,” said the doctor after listening to my chest and seeing what I was coughing up.

  “The old man’s friend,” I gasped, but I think he’s too young to know about that. Anyway, I’ve been dosed with antibiotics and some other pills for my heart and I now have an oxygen bottle beside my bed for use in emergency. Thomas is fascinated with it, so I let him have a go with the mask. The nurse told us off.

  Today I feel a lot better. Sad that I missed my birthday but Sharon has said that she will make an occasion of it on Sunday, which is Christmas Eve, with a cake and some alcohol. I told her not to bother, but she wants to and Thomas will enjoy it.

  “You’ll have to give up the recordings,” said Sharon, last night when she came down to see how I was. The arrangement is that the nurse stays on duty until eight o’clock and then is free until half eight in the morning. She has the use of the back bedroom where Mother used to sleep, but often she goes back to her modern house in town. I know she much prefers her place to this; once she said she couldn’t imagine living permanently in such an ancient house.

  “Old houses encourage ghosts,” she said, changing the bed while I sat in my chair beside the window.

  That gave me pause for thought. Was she simply prattling, her usual aimless nonsense, or had she seen something? Was that why she didn’t like sleeping here?

  I didn’t ask her, I don’t want to know because if the stories of troubled souls coming back to haunt the living are true, then this house would be crowded to overflowing. Generations of them, I bet, from long before I was born but I’ve never seen or felt anything strange. I have wondered about it when I’m at my lowest and thought that a sight of Mother or Elizabeth could be a comfort. But then if I could see those two dear people, then I would have to see Father who might be critical of me and even our Billy. Perhaps nurse has come across Billy in one of his moods. Oh dear, that would be funny sight to see. I’m not sure who would come off best.

  Sharon says she can manage me on her own at night and although I don’t care for her attending to me, I have got over my embarrassment of the bottle. Those first two days I was reluctant about using it and handing it back to her all warm and dribbled over the edge.

  “For God’s sake stop making things so bloody difficult,” she said when I tried to refuse the bottle, even though I was dying for a pee. “Lie back and think of England. Women have to, all the time,” she added and that made me laugh, so I don’t mind now.

  But last night, she was more serious after she came in when I was coughing again. “You can’t keep talking into the tape recorder,” she said. “It makes you too breathless.”

  I shook my head. “I must,” I said. “I haven’t finished.”

  She helped me with my cup of tea and wiped my mouth afterwards. Why don’t I mind that? I’ve always been so independent and it is so unlike me not to rail against the loss. Perhaps I’m just too tired now.

  “But is it so important?” she asked. “There are plenty of people who knew you and you won’t be forgotten.”

  How strange. She thinks I’m writing this memoir in order to keep my name alive. As though I was someone of note whose life was one of heroic deeds and good works that deserved a written biography and not what I really am. Someone making a last confession.

  “It’s important to me,” I muttered. “I have to tell what happened.”

  She didn’t understand and why would she. She doesn’t know more than anyone else. Only two people knew and they are both dead. But she is right about talking into the tape, it does make me breathless and I can no longer hold the microphone. Today, I have it pinned to my pyjama jacket, but when I move my head, I think the sound is muffled and added to that, I can’t lean over to look at the machine and I don’t know when the tapes are running out. So I came to a decision.

  “Sharon,” I said, after we’d sat in silence for a few minutes. “Will you do something for me? It’s a lot to ask and I know you are busy with Thomas and your course. But it would make me a lot easier.” Why did I feel like I was blackmailing her? I knew she wouldn’t refuse, she’s too decent.

  “You know I’ll do whatever you want,” she said.

  “I want you to read what I’ve written and listen to the tapes. And then type it all onto your computer so that I have a properly written record.”

  “Yes,” she said, “of course I will, but I thought you didn’t want anyone to see it.”

  “I didn’t. Now I do. I haven’t got much longer to live.”

  She put her head down and looked miserably at the empty cup in her hands. I was suddenly exasperated. This girl and I have already come to an understanding about my demise. We both know it’s imminent. I gave her a fierce look and was ready to shout at her with all the breath I could muster, but then I held back. She is too close to my heart.

  “Oh, Sharon love, don’t look like that,” was all I said. “If I can lie back and think of England, so can you. We haven’t time for stupid pretence.”

  She nodded her head and gave me a small strained smile. “Sorry, Richard.”

  “Right. Well, read my story and I’ll carry on as long as I can. I have to finish it some way.”

  “You could speak it to me and I can type it straight onto the computer, if you like.” That was her idea and it’s not a bad one. When I get too weak, that’s what I’ll do.

  It was late, after midnight, when she left me and I could see that she was tired. She works hard, that girl and I’m piling more and more on her shoulders. “Sharon,” I said as she put her hand on the doorknob, “you mustn’t worry about how to manage after I’m gone. I’ve seen to it that you and Thomas will be all right.”

  When she turned back to me, I was astonished by the anger in her face and the very sparks that seemed to fly off her bright hair.

  “I don’t want to hear about anything of that, Richard. I don’t care about money and that isn’t why I stay on here. Haven’t you realised yet that Thomas and I love you!”

  What a girl. I smiled to myself in the silent room after she had gone upstairs to the big bedroom. We are so alike. Same
blood, you see, a family trait that we share, handed down from the Cleetons. It goes with the red hair. We start quiet and then begin to want our own way. I expect Thomas will be the same. I think John would have been too, if he’d been allowed to live. My son, John Edward Wilde, who I only saw a few times in my life and could never acknowledge. To all the world, we were uncle and nephew and for Elizabeth’s sake, I never wavered from that arrangement, but she and I knew and held that knowledge and love for him between us like a precious jewel. The boy felt it too, I think, for he treated me with the same trusting affection as he gave to his mother. I loved him from the very first, on that autumn day in the Colonel’s office.

  I can feel that swelling in my chest now as I did then, looking down at the child who had just been presented to me. Happiness it was, I suppose and pride that I had been instrumental in giving life to this bright little spark. I dare say I was nervous too. I wanted him to like me.

  “Hello, John,” I stammered, holding out my hand to the boy who stood beside his mother.

  “You’re my Uncle Richard,” he said and his face broke into a cheeky grin. “Mummy said you’d get a surprise. That’s why I hid behind the cupboard.”

  I cleared my throat and swallowed the lump that had suddenly formed. The sun had made my eyes prickle and when I looked up at Elizabeth I could only see her through a mist. She smiled and looked down towards her son and then back up at me. Her deliberate nod was all I needed. She confirmed my belief.

  “Every one at home is dying to see you,” Elizabeth said, helping me out, for I was too emotional to speak and could only stand stupidly and gaze down at the little chap who was now looking out of the window at my recruits who were being led through marching drill by two corporals.

  “Look at the soldiers, Mummy,” John piped and marched around the office trying to match the beat.