The Love of a Lifetime

by Mary Fitzgerald

Billy snorted and stood up. His fists were curling and uncurling and I saw him look across to his jacket hanging on the peg by the scullery door, as if longing to get out of the kitchen.

  “Wait,” I growled and he sat back down and stared at the table.

  The doctor got to his feet and picked up his hat and medical bag. “Well?” he asked, looking at me. “Are you sure?”

  “I’ll stay until he’s better.”

  Why did I behave so stupidly? If I’d had the guts then to send him away then maybe my life would have changed and I could have spent all the years after with Elizabeth. But I didn’t. I had to act in our set way.

  It was only later that I wondered. There were days when I longed to go to the doctor’s surgery and say that Billy must go into hospital. That way I would be free to go to Elizabeth, but then… all the doubts set in again. Who would manage the farm? How would Mother hold her head up in the village?

  And there it was. Either I remained here and made sure that my brother behaved himself or I could chuck it all, turn my back on the family and return to Ireland.

  Oh God help me, I prayed. Me who had long since given up believing and was now, to all intents and purposes, an atheist. This was one burden too much and it wasn’t fair. I wanted a life of my own. I deserved it.

  Once again I’d been forced to make the choice between home and Elizabeth and I’d chosen stay at home. I was such a coward. All those medals for bravery were nothing but a joke. When it came to the really important decision, about going away and living the rest of my life with Elizabeth, I ducked it.

  So I stayed. I fed the pills into Billy morning and evening, watched him trail around the place like a zombie, not caring about the stock, or the land. He spent a lot of time in his bed or sitting in his chair by the range, unshaved and smelling, waiting for Mother to put a mug of tea in his hands.

  The farm was no problem. I could run it as well as he could. After my years in the army, organising men and difficult situations, the problems that I faced at home were as nothing. Labourers came back, once they knew I was running things, good men who knew their jobs and even an ex-land girl who had become an expert in the dairy. Mother was allowed, at last, to retire from farm work. Not without a struggle though.

  “She’s no idea,” said Mother walking through the dairy one evening and examining the cheeses put up to dry on the shelves above the sinks. It was spotlessly clean in there and the muslins wrapped the round cheeses almost glowed, they were so white.

  “What’s wrong with them?” I asked, disappointed that this new employee whom I tried so hard to convince to come to us, might turn out to be useless.

  “Too wet. No flavour.”

  Well, if Mother was right, the people in the market didn’t agree. Our cheese and butter sold as well as ever and after a few weeks Mother stopped complaining. I don’t think she really meant it. It was a last effort at keeping control of one of her little empires. I kept the girl on for years, Thelma, she was called. She married one of the Rafferty boys.

  Elizabeth was angry with me and that was the worse thing about the whole situation. I explained in a letter how things were and then after she had the telephone connected, I tried again to convince her that my absence was temporary.

  “How can it possibly be?” she asked.

  I despaired as I recognised that old, cold sound of rejection that had crept into her voice. The distance between us couldn’t only be reckoned in miles. She had been rebuffed again and that was my fault. I knew she thought that if I had any guts, I would turn my back on the family who had been nothing but trouble to me and go to her. The rest of my life could then be spent in the shelter of her love. And God, I needed that. It had to be my turn, sometime.

  “Once he’s back on his feet, I’ll be on that ferry,” I said, meaning it and trying to convey how much I wanted to be with her and not at the farm. “You’ll see. Nothing will stop me.”

  “No,” she said, bleakly. “You’ll find another excuse. You’ve never been able to untie the apron strings.”

  It wasn’t fair, of course. I’d been away for years, made the break as a boy. If it hadn’t been for my injuries, I would have stayed on in the army after the war. But this was different and she didn’t understand. Father had worked so hard to get Manor Farm and I can remember his words now on that day when he came back from the bank having signed the papers.

  “Listen to me, William and you too, Richard. Manor Farm is now Wilde land and that’s the way it’s going to stay. When I’m dead and gone, you must keep the place always.”

  Father’s words mattered to me, probably more than to our Billy even though he loved the land as any good farmer would. I could never imagine it going out of our hands and in those cold miserable days just after the war, I couldn’t leave. I had my responsibilities.

  “Wait,” I begged her, “just a few weeks. Once he’s settled down again, I’ll come to you.”

  I don’t think she believed me right from the start and as it turned out she was right. I never left the place after that. Not for good, that is. I went on holidays, all right. I’d got a taste for travel after my years abroad and then I always spent six or eight weeks a year in Ireland. But all those years in between that Christmas after the war and that last time when she was dying, she didn’t seem to want me as a permanent fixture.

  Did it suit me? I think it must have. Perhaps I was better being alone. I’ve been a selfish man, loving my own company and the freedom solitariness gave me to live in my own way. And I’ve never been short of money either. I turned out to be a good farmer. Not one like our Billy who had such a feel for the land and who could go out in the early morning and tell you just from the smell of the air what the weather would be like for the rest of the day.

  “It’ll clear up before midday,” he’d say on mornings when rain was driving in from the west and the hill behind the house would be just a shadow in the mist. “We’ll be able to get some tractor work done this afternoon, so don’t think you buggers are going muck about in the barns all day.”

  This last would be directed towards our farm hands, sheltering under the corrugated roof of the tractor shed, vainly hoping that he might send them home for the day. “A day’s work for a day’s pay,” Billy would add with his customary rough tongue, “so get that machinery oiled down instead of arseing about!”

  No, I wasn’t the farmer he was, but I was able to bring in innovations and find different markets. I set myself up as a contractor and then branched out into building work so that by the time I retired I barely did any actual farming. Geoff Rafferty, Thelma’s brother-in-law, someone I’d known since infant school, managed the place for me and a right good job he made of it too. He didn’t live here but came every morning before seven from his house in the village. I kept him on for years. He died on holiday one August. Keeled over on the prom at Eastbourne. A real shock that was. That was when I leased the land to the Hydes.

  That all came later, of course, after Billy had died because, while he was still alive, we did things his way, exactly as if he was on the spot, directing us. The only difference was that with him indoors and not glowering around the yard and fields, the men were more cheerful. They would josh amongst themselves and make sure that I was included when they told men’s jokes. I liked that. It was almost as good as being back in the army.

  Mother loved me being at home. “Sit down, Richard,” she’d say every morning after milking and set before me a gigantic breakfast. Rationing never seemed to affect us, except for coal and getting enough points for clothes. Those winters were cold after the war. They seemed colder than they’d been before but perhaps that was because I’d been away in the East for so many years.

  The doctor came for a call about ten days before Christmas. He was a different one this time, who explained at the door that young Doctor Trevor was ill and that he was a locum, taking over for a few weeks. He was an older man, past retirement age, I thought and judging by the state of his hands and the mud on his
boots, something of a countryman as well as a doctor. Indeed, as we walked through the hall, he talked about his herd of beef cattle and how he was breeding for muscle.

  “Mark my words,” he said, “lean tasty beef is what the customer wants and must have.”

  I listened politely, but at the time I didn’t believe him. The customers I knew simply wanted enough to eat during the long years of rationing.

  I took him up to the bedroom where my brother spent most of his time. Billy looked terrible, pasty-faced and unshaven. His hair was wild, greyer now and needed cutting. The smell of his sour unwashed body made me wrinkle my nose even on the landing outside his room.

  “How are you today, Farmer Wilde?” the doctor asked, putting down his bag and sitting gingerly on the edge of the bed.

  “I’ll do.” Billy’s words were muffled and accompanied by gaping yawns and much scratching.

  “Getting up and about, are you?”

  “I get up for me dinner.”

  “But otherwise, here. Is that it?”

  Billy nodded and turned away. He wasn’t interested in the doctor. He wasn’t interested in anything these days. The pills saw to that.

  “Mm.” The doctor looked up at me. “I think we might change the treatment now. He can’t spend his time up here, it’s not a proper life for a farmer. Let’s see if we can make sure he has a jolly Christmas. I’m sure it would be more pleasant for you and your mother.”

  He brought out his prescription pad and I watched as he wrote a couple of lines. His handwriting was beautiful, nothing like doctors were supposed to have and when he handed it to me I could read every word although I didn’t know what the medicines were that had been prescribed.

  “No more sedatives,” said the doctor. “I want him built up now, so I’ve prescribed a tonic and some penicillin for those cuts on his arms. They’re going septic, hadn’t you noticed?”

  Of course I’d noticed. Billy’s new habit of picking bits of skin off his hands and arms had irritated me and Mother for the past few weeks.

  “Stop that, William!” Mother would say sharply at dinner time as Billy dug the tines of his fork into his arm. He’d take no notice and scrape away at an imaginary itch until a hole had been made in his skin and blood would start to flow.

  I couldn’t bear to watch and turned away to try and savour my own food as Billy would take his fork from the septic cuts on his arm straight into his plate of food. Everything on the plate would be shovelled into his mouth and then he would then look at me, waiting for me to give him his pills. I found it quite disgusting so, despite my concerns about his possible behaviour, I was glad when the doctor decided to try and bring our Billy back to normal. In a way, we could cope with his unstable personality better than that of this unkempt stranger that we had in our midst.

  I withheld the sedatives that evening and again the next morning so by midday our Billy was out of bed and in the kitchen.

  “Go and have a wash and a shave,” I told him when I came in for my dinner, “and then you can help me with the pigs.”

  “All right,” he said. Tears were in his eyes, which I didn’t like to see and I got up to help myself to more potatoes from the pan on the stove. Mother had gone to Marian’s for the day and had left me in charge of the dinner. I looked at his plate, cleared of food but with the knife and fork thrown untidily on the table beside it. That was all against the way we’d been brought up. Mother and Father had been most concerned about our table manners. He watched me as I piled the spuds on and I felt suddenly guilty that I wasn’t being kind enough.

  “Have you had enough?” I asked.

  “Yes. Very good.” He looked stupid and confused. “What did you say I must do?”

  “Have a wash!”

  Three days later he was almost back to his old self, striding about the farm and grumbling at the way he said I’d let it go. I didn’t mind, I was simply glad to see him looking clean and composed and beginning to regain his strength.

  “Just like the old days, eh, our Dick?” he said as we got up together in the morning to take the cattle into the milking parlour. “D’you remember when we were little lads and sent the dog across the meadow to collect them in?”

  He shook his head, smiling at the memory. “Those were the best times, I reckon,” he said.

  Were they? Maybe for him, but not for me. Not the best times. I could think of many better times, in India, for example, riding through the high passes where the air was bright and cold and the hawks circled above us, mewing a warning. And what about those stolen, breath-taking moments with Elizabeth when we were first able to express our love? I thought of the afternoon sun chinking through the thin curtains of the bedroom at the Gate House lighting up Elizabeth’s naked body so that her skin glowed warm and creamy and made me ache with desire. Those were the sort of good times that I remembered.

  “Maybe,” was all I said. I wasn’t going to upset him by pointing out that I’d had more of a life than he had. Besides, when you looked at it coldly, neither of us now had much to boast about.

  So in the few days before Christmas, my brother came back to life and the atmosphere at Manor Farm improved no end. Mother was happy again, humming little tunes as she bustled about the kitchen, baking mincepies and taking trips into the town with Marian, to make sure that all the preparations for Christmas Day were well in hand. We were going to have the day at home as usual, just the three of us, and quietly because Billy had been ill and it was thought reckless to expose him to all the family and friends who might drop in.

  On Boxing Day we had been invited to Marian’s. I didn’t know if we were going, that was still on hold, depending on Billy. Albert had been round to see him, checking him out, I supposed. It was difficult for my brother-in-law, seeing as he was such an important person in town and having a suspected murderer in the family but, fair play to him, he remained faithful to us.

  “How are you doing, Richard, old man,” he said, shaking my hand warmly as I met him at the back door and brought him into the kitchen. Billy was walking the fields and Mother had taken Marian into the drawing room to look at the Christmas tree I’d brought in from Cleeton’s wood.

  “I’m all right,” I said.

  “Injuries healing up?”

  I nodded. My shoulder was still stiff and sometimes I would get a piercing pain deep within the flesh. I wondered if I had a bit of shrapnel still in there, lurking about but I did nothing about it. I’d had enough of doctors and hospitals. The nightmares that had bothered me in the first few months after my discharge were beginning to lessen. Elizabeth had helped with that, so those horrible nights when I would wake up screaming and terrified, waiting for the bastard Jap officer to plunge his sword in my squirming guts, now only came occasionally.

  “How’s Elizabeth?”

  I was startled. No-one in the family ever mentioned her these days, even Mother and she had been very fond of her. But Albert brought her name up as though it was the most normal thing to do. I decided to respond in kind.

  “She’s fine,” I said. “I’m going back to Ireland as soon as Billy’s better.”

  “Good,” he said, lighting up one of his large cigars and blowing a gale of blue smoke into the room. “She’s a lovely girl and you’re best out of here. Do what makes you happy.”

  We said no more because Mother and Marian joined us but I was glad to have Albert’s blessing, at least.

  In the days leading up to Christmas, work on the farm continued as normal. On the actual day, the men would get a holiday and Billy and I would have to manage on our own as well as take extra time out for sitting down to our Christmas goose. If we went to Marian’s on Boxing Day, Ernie would be left in charge, but only for a few hours. It didn’t bother me, but Billy was already grumbling.

  “He’s bloody useless at the best of times,” he said to me one morning as we stood together in the yard. “Look at him, leaning on that shovel. Lazy bugger!”

  This was the old Billy and despite this
sign of his returning temper, I was glad to see him interested and involved. It meant he was recovering and I would soon be able to get away to Ireland.

  “Move your bloody arse a bit quicker,” he yelled to Ernie and I watched as my brother strode angrily across the yard. The poor simple fellow was struggling to clean out the bull pen while keeping an eye on Conqueror, our Friesian bull. Ernie was scared of him and rightly in my opinion. He was a wicked devil, best pedigree or not. But our Billy didn’t fear any animal so climbed over the gate into the pen and snatched the pitch-fork from Ernie’s hand and shoved him against the wall.

  “Put your back into it, like this,” Billy demanded and demonstrated how to clean away the foul straw into the corner before gathering it into the barrow. Conqueror watched him with a nasty gleam in his eye and even though he was tethered by a chain attached to the ring through his nose and to another ring mortared into the wall, he was pawing at the ground and the bunched muscles beneath his fine black and white hide shivered in anticipation.

  “Boss,” muttered Ernie urgently as both he and I saw the bull strain on his chain and bits of mortar start to flake away from the stone as the ring began to move.

  “Billy!” I called, “watch out, he’s getting loose!”

  In the old days, my brother would have sized up the situation in a flash and either give the bull a warning poke with the pitchfork or vault easily over the gate to get out of danger, but today he wasn’t so quick.

  He looked up slowly, his mind still apparently occupied with the tongue lashing he was meting out to Ernie and turned his head just in time to see the ring burst out of the stone wall. I watched, horrified, as the length of chain whipped an arc through the air and landed heavily with a sickening crack on our Billy’s broad shoulders.

  “Ahg!” he cried and fell gasping to his knees in the muck before rolling heavily on to his side. He was winded as well as thrashed by the chain. The bull swung his head dangerously from side to side and snorted. I saw the red hot gleam in his eyes and my heart lurched.

  “Get out!” I yelled, “he’ll have you.” But Billy was dazed and only slowly started to climb to his feet. There was nothing for it; I had to get in there to save him. I dashed to the gate, grabbing a hay rake as I went, but to my astonishment, I was beaten to the task. Ernie, who had been standing by the back wall where Billy had pushed him, ran forward and with great presence of mind grabbed the end of the chain. He yanked on it, using all his poor strength so that it pulled at the ring that was through the bull’s nose. That brought Conqueror’s pawing and head-shaking to an abrupt halt and he bellowed in pain as Ernie’s chilblained fingers wound the chain around his wrist to make sure that it didn’t slip away.