The Love of a Lifetime

by Mary Fitzgerald

  At my feet, Nell whined and scratched gently at my leg. She needed to go out.

  “I’ll take the dog for a bit of a walk,” I said, pushing my chair back and standing up.

  “All right,” said Mother, “you can have tea and Christmas cake when you come back.”

  I looked at Billy. “Fancy a walk?” I said. “Fresh air will do you good.”

  He shook his head slowly as he heaved himself upright and wandered aimlessly out of the room. In the kitchen he sank heavily into the chair beside the range.

  “How about a little drink?” I said. “Mother’s got a bottle of port here.”

  He shook his head. “No,” he said and his voice was more gentlemanly than of late. “No thank you, Dick. Not right now.”

  “Sure you won’t come with me?”

  “I’ll just sit a while.”

  Despite the unseasonable mildness of the air, I felt cold up on the hillside. The mist hadn’t lifted all day and the air was heavy with moisture and the heather wet beneath my feet. Once or twice my boot slipped on a partially buried rock and I was pitched forward onto my outstretched hands. I wanted to cry. I was without human company. I was alone and the earth smelt mouldy.

  Nell was in heaven. She ran ahead of me, sniffing out rabbit trails and following them for a while before being tempted by a different scent and changing direction. I walked along behind her, hardly caring where she led me, for my mind was too full. My problems would never be solved; I was destined to be away from Elizabeth for ever. I knew that now. This was my punishment for stealing her.

  I was angry, angrier than I had been since I was a young man and left home. The farm had dragged me back, taken my independence and promised me nothing except a form of living that I had already rejected. “No!” I shouted to the blank air ahead of me. “Oh God, no!” But only the squeals and cries of Nell answered me and hot tears spurted into my eyes. I stood, bereft of hope on the damp, heather hillside and wept.

  After a while I gave up. It was pointless, infantile and only compounded my desperate misery. Then something that I had heard, but hadn’t registered, came to my ears. It was my dog. She was yelping and the sound was muffled, high pitched and frightened.

  “Nell!” I called. “Nell, come here!” But she didn’t appear. Only the frightened barking continued and my stomach twisted in a spasm of fear. Had she fallen? Was she caught? Had she come across a fox and been bitten? All these thoughts tumbled through my head as I pushed forward up the hill towards the muffled sound of her cries.

  “Where are you, girl?” I called, looking to right and left through the mist and trying to follow the sound.

  I was by the caves now, where we used to play as children and the yelping was closer but I couldn’t see her or the old entrance to the caverns that had once frightened us so much. The rock face looked different, the arrangement of stones had changed and I was bewildered. This was where the cave should be and she was close - I could hear her - but where was that dark hole that Billy used to dare us to enter?

  “I dare you,” he would say. “Go in and shake hands with the Bogie-man.” I never dared and only my pal Fred Darlington had called my brother’s bluff, squeezing past the large sharp rock that partially closed the entrance and disappearing inside. His whistling had fooled our Billy. And now, as I looked more clearly, I could see that it was the same place. Large stones had fallen into in the gap, leaving only a little rabbit hole. Nell must have wriggled through.

  “Come on,” I called encouragingly, kneeling on the wet scrub of grass and heather beside the closed-off entrance. “I’m here. Come out.” But though I waited several minutes and kept up my urgings, even to the extent of lying down and putting my face close to the little gap and whistling, it was in vain. She didn’t appear.

  There was nothing for it, I decided eventually, I would have to pull away the rocks and get her, so I grabbed at the first big stone and heaved it towards me. To my surprise, it came away easily, tumbling out of my hands and rolling heavily down the hillside. I had imagined that these rocks were the result of some sort of fall from the roof of the cave and would be earthed in and stabilised with several years’ growth of weeds. Not so. With increasing ease, I pulled at the stones, throwing them aside and allowing them fall away behind me until soon, a large dark hole that was the entrance to the cave, was exposed.

  “Nell!” I called. A man could have got through the gap that I’d made, it was easily big enough, but she didn’t come. Her barking continued, furious and frightened, so I worked on until, peering inside, into a dark made denser by the misty afternoon, I saw her. She was held fast by one leg caught by a band of what looked like a root, a white root. Nettle, maybe, I thought.

  “All right, girl. I’ll get you.” I was calm, glad I’d found her. Found this little dog who had so quickly made a place in my heart.

  I squeezed in, putting aside my fears of years ago, crawling forward until I was lying beside her and pulled at the band round her leg until it gave way. It was when she hopped out, with a grateful lick at my hand, that I realised it was cloth I was tugging, so looked more closely at the ground.

  I cannot explain to you the horror I experienced then. I had crawled in on top of a rotting body, a body in beige jodhpurs and a green jumper.

  “God!” I screamed, flailing my hands away from what I’d previously carelessly touched and wriggled my quaking body backwards out of the cave. On that hillside, I vomited up the meagre remains of my Christmas dinner, greasy pieces of meat and cubes of vegetable spewing out onto the rocks, leaving me choking and gasping in utter revulsion. Even when nothing was left, I heaved trickles of burning yellow bile until finally I could only dry-retch and I lay face down, exhausted, in the heather.

  When I lifted my head, the mist was beginning to lift. A weak shaft of winter sunshine pierced a hole in the clouds and shone feebly on the ground around me. It warmed my back and helped with the shaking and tremors that wracked my body. In my head, I was back in the jungle, waiting for the Japs, knowing that soon one of them would burst, screaming, from behind a tangle of bamboo and liana and stick his sword into my squirming guts. I reached instinctively for my rifle, but of course it wasn’t there. Nor was the service revolver that I had taken to wearing at my belt in those last months. I was alone and exposed to all that the world might throw at me.

  Nell whined and nuzzled at my face and that brought me partially back to my senses and after a moment I got up. Had I imagined what I saw? Was this only another manifestation of those nightmares that had troubled me so much in the months since I had left India? The dog wasn’t bothered. She frisked about my feet, eager for the return journey down the hill, wondering no doubt, why I was lingering so.

  I could have done what she wanted and maybe I should have. If I had, then what happened after, could have been avoided and I would have lived my life, this long endless life, without those new pictures which would rest in that compartment in the brain, reserved for the worst things of life. More important than that, I wouldn’t have had to live with the guilt. But I didn’t walk away. I had to look again, even though every fibre of my body willed me not to. Bracing myself, I walked back into the cave.

  It was her, the land girl, Dorothy. The face wasn’t recognisable, but the hair was, baby blonde curls lying stiffly about the detritus that was now her head. I could recognise the remains of her uniform and see the tatters of her jumper where it had been ripped away from her chest. Underclothes, stained and torn were exposed and I could see that it had been a small strap lying loose on a wasted shoulder that had caught my Nell and caused me to witness this utter devastation.

  The poor young woman lay where she had been placed, after death, I guessed. She must have been killed by my brother somewhere on our farm and dragged up here to be hidden from her grieving parents and the rest of the world.

  “Oh, Jesus,” I groaned and imagined what awful viciousness she had known before she died, such terror and despair. I thought of how pretty she�
�d looked walking through the top field, with the sprig of heather in her hand and I felt the nausea rising again. What a terrible end of a young life.

  My blood was boiling with disgust and rage and I knew this time I had to confront my brother and make him confess to his dreadful crime. I turned to go but just then a ray of light from the watery sun pierced the gloom. It shone upon what I first took to be a bundle of sticks further back in the cave but then, as I narrowed my eyes and forced them to focus, I saw what it really was. Not sticks, but bones. A skeleton – maybe even two or three – lay back there, a few scraps of cloth still clinging to the bones and a jumble of shoes, kicked carelessly about the dry dusty floor of the cave.

  I don’t know how I kept my mind, on that walk down the hill. The sights I’d just seen were as horrible as any I’d witnessed in the war and I felt that I was right back in the conflict and that I should ready myself for whatever might come next. There was no peacetime for me here, no relief possible, not with how things were. I couldn’t live with it.

  The studs in my boots rang harshly against the cobbles in the yard as I marched swiftly across towards the back door and fumbled impatiently at the latch. When I strode into the kitchen, fists clenched and face set, I was ready for what I was about to do.

  “Billy,” I said, my voice cutting the gloomy silence of the afternoon, “get up!”

  But when I looked towards the chair beside the range where I had left him only an hour earlier, it was empty. The entire room was empty, so I ran into the hall and looked through the open doors of the downstairs rooms. All was silent, neat and unoccupied. In the drawing room a bright fire burned in the grate and Mother had prepared the tea trolley for her promised Christmas cake and tea. But she wasn’t there and neither was Billy.

  I began to have the most dreadful feelings of foreboding and climbed the stairs quietly, petrified that I might find something to give me even more pain. Had he guessed what I would find, knowing by some brotherly instinct that I would be coming home ready for the final confrontation and had prepared in advance. He wasn’t in his bedroom, or in any of the upstairs rooms. I even searched the attics but they were still and quiet, my presence merely disturbing the dust and causing a bundle of photographs, left piled on top of an old velvet covered piano stool to slither gently to the floor and scatter across the bare floorboards.

  I ran quickly down the stairs again and on the landing I paused outside Mother’s room. To my relief I could hear the faint sound of her breathing and that little popping snore she made. Mother was having her afternoon sleep, so she was safe and relieved but, still sickened, I went to my room and pulled my army kitbag from under the bed.

  The service revolver that I’d brought home only weeks before was there, snug in its brown leather holster. I sat on the bed and put the gun down beside me. My head was buzzing and I needed a moment of calm before what came next, so for a moment I lay back on the pillow and turned my head towards the table where my boyhood possessions were still laid out. My Chinese box with the Roman coin, the dagger with the carved handle and some of my old books, all old friends and comforters. Memories of a happy childhood, and they still gave me a measure of peace.

  I swung my legs off the bed and picked up the gun. It felt comfortably heavy in my hand, a familiar weight and something I realised that I had missed in those months since my discharge. Now it needed to be checked, so carefully I wiped away the oily dust that clung to the barrel and looked down the sight. Putting it close to my face, I could smell the oil and breathed it in slowly, trying not to get excited. How many times had I told my men that?

  And now I loaded in the bullets into the chamber one by one, remembering all the times I had done this before going into battle. Was there pleasure in the routine? Maybe.

  “Bed,” I ordered Nell, when I went down to the kitchen and like the good dog she was, she ran to her basket in the corner and curled up. I didn’t want her with me now. Whatever happened, Mother would take care of her.

  So I went out again into the afternoon of a Christmas Day that I would never forget. Out to a quiet farm, where the cattle in the enclosure methodically chewed their cud and the hens pecked for worms in the orchard. The bull watched me as I searched the buildings one by one. There was no need to bother to disturb him. I knew that would be one place Billy wouldn’t go.

  I found him. He was in the old barn, standing with his back against the far wall, almost hidden by a stack of hay bales.

  “I want you, Billy,” I said, moving towards him and pushing over the top couple of bales so that he flinched and stepped to one side. He knocked over the saw horse the men had been using the day before and the big saw and an axe clattered dully to the dusty floor. He didn’t even look down on them but kept his eyes on mine.

  “I know what you did and where you put her,” I said keeping my voice even and cold.

  At first he didn’t speak but then, in an attempt of his old bravado, he gave a wild laugh. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, our Dick.”

  “Yes you bloody do, you wicked bastard. Dorothy. I’ve found her.”

  His face was yellow, maybe it was the poor light glancing off the hay but, whatever it was, he looked evil. His lips moved as though he was talking but no noise came out and his eyes moved up in their sockets so that the whites showed up bright like a spooked nag.

  He didn’t look at me but kept gazing at the oak rafters. When he finally answered, his voice was sneering and contemptuous. “Who’s Dorothy, then? Some slut that you’ve lost?”

  This made my cold anger return to a boiling point and I stepped forward and grabbed him by the collar. “I’ll show you who she is,” I snarled and pulled him forward.

  My brother was always stronger than me when he wanted to be and this was one of those times. With a sudden heave of his thick forearm, he shook me off and bringing up his other hand, gave me punch on the jaw that sent me tumbling head over heels onto the floor.

  Blood from a split lip seeped into my mouth and I saw stars sparkling in and out as I worked desperately to clear my head. Bits of straw and hay floated in the dust which my fall had raised and as my eyes began to focus properly again, a more frightening sight lurched into view. It was Billy, holding aloft the axe that he’d knocked over earlier and was now only a couple of feet from my head.

  I suppose it was my military training combined with some sort of native self-preservation that forced me to my feet. Before he could take another step, I was upright and facing him, with my service revolver pointing at him.

  “Stay back!” I said shakily for I still felt groggy. “Or, by Christ, I’ll fucking shoot you.”

  He wasn’t that demented, he knew I meant it and he stopped still in his tracks and gave a stupid laugh. “Sergeant Wilde, is it, now. Back in the war.”

  It was a war, you know. Good against bad, decency against absolute wickedness and I wanted him to know once and for all that he was a truly evil man. I gestured with my revolver and pointed towards the door.

  “We’re going for a walk,” I said. “Move!”

  I’ll never know why he obeyed me. Was it the gun? I don’t think so. Perhaps he thought that he would have plenty of opportunity on the hillside to get away from me or even to catch me unawares and attack. Whatever it was, he shrugged and turning, headed off across the yard towards the fields.

  The winter light was fading fast now as we climbed the mountain. I never told him once where we were going. I didn’t need to, he knew better than me and he strode out, climbing steadily towards the caves on a journey that he had made many times before. I walked behind him, holding the revolver but it was only a gesture. If he’d turned and struck out at me, I’d have been caught. For my mind had slipped back to years before when we had run and climbed on this hillside, laughing with the pleasure of being young and innocent. This was the place where I found a coin. Just over there was where Elizabeth had flopped down onto the heather, her hair escaped from its ribbons and falling gloriously awry over
her shoulders. Even Billy had paused in his search for wheel tracks to admire her. Oh, we had such fun when we were children.

  Now on this winter day we were here again. Not a glorious winter day like those in our youth when we’d screamed with excitement as we clung to the sledge rope, flying on greased runners down this very hillside, but a sour, misty adult day. We were two middle-aged men now on a journey that would never have an end.

  Billy stopped a few yards away from the entrance to the cave. I hadn’t replaced the rocks and if he hadn’t guessed before, he could be in no doubt now what I had seen. A light rain had started to fall, adding further misery to the afternoon and I watched as it plastered his greying hair to the back of his neck and dripped from his reddened ears. Seagulls, blown inland on the west wind, moaned above us and little movements registering at the sides of my eyes told me that rabbits were hurrying into their burrows to be safe before nightfall. It was the beginning of twilight like any other evening, yet not like any other. We might have been the only two people in the world.

  “I’m glad it was you,” Billy said, his back still towards me and his voice though quiet and amazingly conversational, echoed bleakly off the surrounding rocks. “Not someone outside the family.”

  “How could you be glad?” I cried, sick at heart and despairing. “How could you want me to see it? Just look at what you’ve done.”

  He glanced towards the cave but made no movement towards it. “I only did what was necessary. They had to be killed.”

  “Why?” I cried. “Why?”

  He shrugged and then slowly turned round to face me. “You know, Dick, as well as I do. They were bad women, sluts. Asking for it. Talking dirty. Doing dirty things. I couldn’t let them be like that, could I? Somebody had to stop them.” He paused and, bringing a shaking hand up towards his face, slowly rubbed at an invisible mark. “They tried to make me different. Like them.” His voice was low and breaking and I saw his face screwing up in a kind of agony. “I had to be respectable. Like Father.”