Lacey's House

by Joanne Graham

  It’s strange what hindsight does. If only she had known then that there would come a time when she envied his mother the time she had shared with his father, even though it was all too short.

  She hated the weekends more than anything else. These were the times that she would sit in the darkness of her room and pray and hope that he would come back to her, that all would be well. At weekends he’d get on his bike and ride the eight miles to Exeter to spend some time with his mother and take his turn on fire watch. There’d been a few bombs dropped on the city, and the community left behind were taking it in turns to watch out for incendiary bombs, to put them out before they could spread.

  During the week they would see each other for as long as they were able to without drawing suspicion. On the occasions when it was pouring with rain they would meet beneath the sagging roof of the old stable in the field near her house. She could still remember, even now, the feeling of her hand in his. The roughness of his skin against her palm, his hand folded around hers like a big paw. She loved hearing him talk but she loved the silence too, it was comfortable and simple. She found it so easy being together, so hard being apart. She would gather up her basket and head back across the field as Charlie jumped across the stream and headed out the other way, so no-one would see them leaving from the same place. He knew what her father was like, a dour, proud man who believed women had their place and it was where he told them to be.

  Charlie was protecting her from that, in his way. He wanted to be able to approach her father and ask for her hand. She knew that it would never be accepted. No matter how many hours Charlie would spend wracking his brains trying to think how he could impress her father, Lacey knew there would never be a chance of success. She doubted that even a Prince would have been acceptable.

  One day by the stream, when the day was cold but clear, they sat and talked about nothing and everything. He had woven a little ring out of grass, a messy thing that started coming loose immediately. He had taken his time over it, a little frown on his face as he concentrated to get it perfect. When he was satisfied, he had solemnly got down on one knee, taken her hand in his and asked her to spend the rest of her life with him.

  She had cried and felt foolish. It was what she wanted more than anything, for Charlie to be hers and for everyone to know it. No more sneaking around, no more pretending. He slipped the woven grass onto her finger and she told him that yes, she would marry him.

  He had stood then, a smile lighting his whole face. He took both of her hands in his, pulling her to him and kissed her, deeply. It felt as though there was nobody in the world but the two of them. In that moment she forgot about her father, the war, everything but him. They stood in a little bubble and nothing else existed beyond that.

  He lead her to the little stable and pulled her into his arms again, kissing her long and deep. She was lost in him completely; it was magical and perfect, just how it was always meant to be. She had felt invincible then, as though nothing could ever stand in their way. The love she felt for him was so strong that surely her father would see it when he looked at her, and realise that this was meant to be, he would give them his blessing, perhaps even be happy for them.

  She did not remember how they went from standing to lying on the floor, wrapped up in each other. At that point everything went cloudy. There was a vague memory of noise that made her wince, of hasty movement, of a twisting and turning and a sharp stab of fear. But she couldn’t remember any sense of wrongdoing.

  Looking back, those moments seemed surreal and indistinct. When Charlie moved over her it felt like the most natural thing in the world. They were together, how they were always meant to be. Afterwards they had cried, kissing each other’s tears away and tasting the salt. They were silent and she didn’t want to speak because she was so afraid that if she did, it would burst that bubble and the outside world would be allowed back in. She wanted to stay in that moment forever, to grasp it tight and hold it safe. But slowly the realisation came that she couldn’t, she had to get up and go home and the thought crushed her, squeezing the air from her lungs.

  Charlie reached up, gently pulling twigs and leaves from her hair, brushing at her clothes until she was presentable, though she wondered at the point of it all. She was a woman now and surely all the world would see it, whether she wanted them to or not.

  He held her in his arms, as tender as could be and told her that he would see her on Monday. She had forgotten that it was Friday and he was riding to Exeter. For the first time she had begged him not to go, she worried about his heart as he rode; she worried about the bombs, about everything. The bombings had increased in the city towards the end of April and she was so afraid for him, even though it had been quiet for days and the worst seemed to be over. Maybe it was just that every time he went away from her she felt a little part of her paused, until he returned safely.

  “I’ll be back on Monday and I will come and see your father and ask him for your hand in marriage. I love you, Lacey Carmichael, I have loved you from the moment I first saw you and I will love you till the end of time and that’s a promise.” He kissed her then and he left. She stood in the stable and heard his footsteps as he jumped the stream and walked away.

  How many times had she lived that day over and over in her mind? That one moment of perfection that she locked away inside to keep her company in the hundreds, thousands of nights that would follow.

  The weekend disappeared, passing by at a horribly slow pace. She thought of him constantly, alternating between fear and excitement at the thought of him approaching her father. She had prayed and prayed that her father would accept them, all the while believing, knowing, deep down that he never would. She had vowed then that if he refused to accept them, then they would run away, go somewhere, anywhere, just as long as they would be together. She even went so far as to imagine their escape, imagining how she would get outside without notice and where they would go. At least she had some semblance of a plan and it comforted her in some small way, she would never have to be without him again.

  That Sunday afternoon she could feel the butterflies taking flight in her stomach. Wondering what time he would set off from Exeter, wondering when he would be safe back on the farm, and what time he would come calling the following day.

  She didn’t know then, that early that morning there had been air raids in Exeter. She had slept soundly the night before, deeper than usual and she had heard nothing in the skies. She always wondered afterwards whether those were the reasons he stayed an extra night. Did he decide to return the following morning in case he was needed? She was sure the unsettling noises from the sky would have frightened his sensitive grieving mother, so perhaps he had stayed for her. These were the things she would never know the answers to, though she did find out later that Charlie had been on fire duty on that Sunday night.

  She didn’t know what woke her that same night, just that she was thrust from dreams to waking instantly with her heart hammering in her chest. She went to her window and looked out, it was a beautiful, clear night, the moon looked to be just beyond full, but there was something strange about the colour of the sky. She raced as silently as she could down the stairs, trying not to wake her parents as she went.

  She ran into the garden and stood in the chilly night air in just her nightclothes. Looking northwards she could see in the distance that the sky was glowing orange with dense clouds hanging above it all. She was mesmerised, not even aware at first that her parents had come to stand behind her and that they were also staring into the night sky. Exeter was burning. They stood helplessly watching as the smoke rose miles away, filling the sky until it looked like the worst kind of storm coming.

  “God help them.” Her mother’s voice small and filled with emotion, broke the silence and she looked at her with tears on her face.

  “What God?” she said and turned and ran into the house leaving them looking after her in the strange light. She ran to her room praying over and over again that
Charlie was safe and that he was back at the farm, that he had left Exeter when he was supposed to. He would turn up the next day and ask her father for her hand in marriage and her father would say yes and she would get her happy ever after just the way she was supposed to, the way she had dreamt it.

  She had sat up in her bed for hours, arms clutched around her knees, rocking slowly backwards and forwards. The night seemed everlasting and sometime, in the darkest hours, she had felt him leave her. She never could explain it, not now and not then but she felt it happen over and over even though so many years had passed. It was an absence. She felt it and she just knew. Charlie was gone.

  She didn’t sleep that night, the sun came up and her eyes felt full of sand. She rose and began her chores, moving like a zombie through the hours. And all the time there was part of her that was waiting and hoping. Perhaps she had been wrong the night before; perhaps it was fear that had made her feel his absence so sharply.

  She waited and waited, making excuses not to venture too far from the house. She spent time out in the garden tending to the vegetable beds and the hens, her eyes constantly looking to the gate, willing it to open. When she went into the house she looked to the windows as often as she could without raising suspicion and the minutes passed like hours as she hoped and prayed and waited. Her parents said nothing to her about her strange behaviour and she was glad of it. Perhaps they had blamed her strange behaviour on the events of the night before; they saw her as a tender girl who would have been shocked by what they had seen. And of course she was, though not for the reasons they thought.

  Slowly the time passed and the hour got later and later. If Charlie didn’t come then it could only mean one thing, that he never made it out of the city. She didn’t imagine that he was in a hospital getting better somewhere.

  She felt cold and empty, her heart a lead weight in her chest. She couldn’t feel his presence anymore; he was dead and she knew it and couldn’t even cry. She had crawled upstairs to her room and lay down on the bed. She stayed there for days and days, not crying, not feeling, not sleeping, just a shell with nothing left inside. Her parents came and went like ghosts in the shadows. She was barely even aware of them, even when mother tried to coerce her into eating. She wanted them to leave her alone. Perhaps if she lay there long enough she would die too.

  It was a long time later that she learned what had happened. Twenty Luftwaffe bombers had flown up the river and dropped incendiaries on the city. Charlie had been on fire watch with several others near the street where his mother lived. The fires had burned out of control and Charlie and several others were trapped by the blaze. Only one of them made it out. The others all died along with Charlie’s mother.

  If only he had listened to her and not gone that weekend. It was his sense of duty that killed him, he couldn’t fight in the war so he had done what he could. It seemed such a small thing to him, so trivial, nowhere near enough. But it was too much. He died for it and left her alone to face life without him. His death would be lost among hundreds of others, just one more casualty of a hateful war.

  There was a memorial service for him in the local church. The local girls all sniffed into their hankies as though they had a right to. She had sat on the fringes next to her parents with dry eyes and a broken heart, now never able to say that he had been hers. They glanced at her throughout the service and saw her blank expression and lack of emotion. She saw the raised eyebrows, the questions in their eyes. She knew they thought of her as cold but then it wouldn’t have come as any surprise to them. After all Charlie and Lacey had never really spoken to each other and she was the one girl who didn’t get to receive his attention and his laughter. If only they had known the truth, if only they had seen for themselves the way he looked at her when nobody else was around. Now they would never know what she knew and she would grieve forever in silence as they, in their ignorance, believed their tears to be just and their feelings more important than hers.

  She kept the grass ring he had given her, pressed between a folded piece of linen. It grew dry and brittle over the course of time until she was scared to look at it anymore, in case it broke apart and crumbled into dust.

  She had thought that apart from the little ring, all she had were memories. But after a while she realised she was wrong. She had been so ill with grief that she hadn’t been eating and had lost a lot of weight, her curves vanishing and her face becoming pinched and drawn. Her mother treated her like the most fragile thing imaginable and she wondered if on some level her mother sensed what she was going through. Maybe she had her suspicions about the loss of her lover because her mother was certainly more gentle and kind with her for quite a while afterwards. Her father thought she had some strange ailment and would get her to swallow mouthfuls of some foul tonic he had concocted. Her stomach rebelled against it and would gripe and clench afterwards, though she was never actually sick.

  Through the perpetual fog she lived in, Lacey started to realise that she was feeling stranger even than her poor diet should allow for. She was exhausted all the time and her shrinking breasts felt sore and tender. It was only when she counted back over the previous two months that she realised she had missed a couple of periods. Lost as she was in her feelings and desolation she hadn’t even noticed. She was horrified, scared, exhilarated when she realised what it meant. Some part of Charlie had stayed with her after all and the moment when she realised she was carrying his baby, she clawed back a little of her former happiness. Suddenly she had a little hope for the future. He hadn’t left her entirely alone.

  Chapter 29 ~ Rachel

  The wall clock ticking gently against a background of silence pulled me away from the images conjured up by her words and I realised that Lacey had stopped speaking. I glanced up and met Jane’s eyes across the table and saw reflected in them the poignancy of the story Lacey had shared. I understood. I too was moved to the verge of tears by the tragedy that Lacey had gone through sixty years before.

  She stared down at the table, her eyes half closed as though unaware of what was in front of her. She looked sad, yet strong and proud and I didn’t know what to say, what words would fit into the silence around us. Jane’s hand reached across the table to take Lacey’s and I saw the older woman start, before glancing around her and shaking her head a little as though to displace the memories that had risen to the surface. For a moment no-one said anything. Slowly, as if being woken from a trance, Lacey’s expression lifted and she looked from one of us to the other, her face solemn and still.

  “Thank you, both of you, for listening to me. You know I’ve never told anyone that before. It’s lived inside me all this time. I wasn’t even sure I would get the words out but now I feel so much better, so much lighter. It’s as if I’ve just lost fifty pounds.” She began to giggle. A light, girlish sound that was surprising and contagious enough to break through my reverie and curl my own lips into an answering smile. I felt my own laughter bubble through my chest and catch in my throat before spilling out to join Lacey’s. How easy it was to laugh with her.

  Before long Jane had joined in too and the three of us sat there laughing and holding hands until tears ran down our faces and I no longer knew – could no longer tell – if they were tears for the tragedy of Lacey’s story or simply a welcome escape from it.

  When the tears had been wiped, the glasses had been replenished and the dessert placed on the table, Jane looked at Lacey with curiosity.

  “How come you’ve never told anyone about Charlie before?”

  Lacey scooped up a big spoonful of pavlova and chewed on it with obvious delight before she answered. “I’ve always been something of a social outcast as far as the others in the village were concerned. My father was as far removed from the stereotype of a friendly village doctor as he could be.” Lacey chewed at the corner of her mouth, as though the question had puzzled her, had caused her to think more deeply than she wanted to about this. “Back then people thought that a doctor’s word was second only
to the word of God, they all looked up to him. What he said went, and I suppose I was touched by that too. I think people thought I was set apart from them because of who my father was, so I never developed any close friendships like the other girls did. He was also possessive. He didn’t really like me associating with what he called the riffraff. My relationship with Charlie only drove the wedge between them and me even deeper.”

  “A lot of years have passed since then though. Has it never even come up in conversation?” I saw the shy young girl reappear in Lacey’s expression and she began to fidget, tugging at the hem of her tunic as her eyes sought inspiration in the grain of the table.

  “That’s the funny thing about small village life, reputations often last longer than the person themselves. In the eyes of people who knew me, and even those who never knew me – those who weren’t even born – I’m the same person I was back then. They are part of the community and I’m not. I’m just a strange old lady. Some of the children think I’m a witch.” She gave a funny little half smile and there was a world of loneliness in it, a shadow of acceptance that this was just the way things were and nothing could change that.

  “What about Charlie, your son I mean, did no-one ask you about his father?”

  A shadow crossed Lacey’s eyes, fleeting and dark and she turned away from us, her lashes sweeping down and hiding her eyes. Her voice was little more than a whisper as she answered, “That one is another long story Jane, definitely one for another time. I don’t think I could cope with digging up those memories right now.” She lifted her head and smiled up into Jane’s eyes but the shadow cast a grey wash over the laughter of moments before, “All I can say is that people only ask if they want to know, and nobody asked.”

  “There must be someone surely, friends or other members of your family?”