The grandsons were a consolation to Alec and Celia, as well as to Margaret. Alec had done his best to be a helpful grandfather to them, though he had not lived to see them grow into adulthood.
They were a cheery pair of young scamps, not in any way scholarly, and, in a country where jobs had become difficult to find, they had, after they left school, both joined the Navy.
To mitigate her loneliness after their departure, their mother continued to share Celia’s house. Celia, desperately lonely after her own widowhood, was very glad to have her continued company. It was the merest chance that both lads happened to be on the same ship when, while serving in the Falklands, it was hit by a missile and sank.
Although they were not the only family to suffer losses in all three wars, Celia had, at first, thought that both she and their mother would go mad with the remorseless grief which seemed to stalk the family. ‘It’s so often the same families who serve,’ she cried out in her sorrow.
Though friends were kind, and Margaret’s mother left the hotel she owned in Devon and came north to comfort her daughter, the two women could find no relief.
Celia felt suddenly very old and weak. She said to Margaret one day, ‘My dear, you are still fairly young. On the other hand, I won’t last long. You could make a new life. What about going to help your mother with her hotel? You would meet people. Begin a new life.’
So Margaret found Rosemary, an unemployed Trinidadian, to come to live with Celia, and then went down to Devon.
Unable to move around very much or go out without help, Celia thought she would die of boredom, never mind grief, though Rosemary became devoted to her and was happy in the small, private domain she had in the basement.
Then Timothy George was widowed. After his Royal Air Force service in the Second World War, he had run a small engineering firm in Birkenhead, and he and his wife used periodically to come out to Hoylake to visit his godmother. After his wife’s death, he turned to Celia for comfort, the one person who had consistently shown him affection since the day he was born in her mother’s house.
She persuaded him to move into the upstairs apartment.
‘I shall leave the house to you, anyway,’ she told him. ‘I haven’t anyone else to leave it to.
‘Rosemary could look after both of us – she’s a cheerful person to live with. And here, in Hoylake, you would have one of the best golf courses nearby – lots of male company.’ She had chuckled mischievously, as she added, ‘And I wouldn’t complain if you found a nice lady to share the flat.’
Though Timothy George doubted he would ever find another female companion, even if he wanted one, he felt that the arrangement would, at least, relieve him of the bother of housekeeping. He had, also, a great affection for Celia; he had, since boyhood, frankly shared his troubles with her, because she had often had more time for him than his own frail, harassed mother. She was not nosy, either – she wouldn’t want to know every detail of where he had been or what he had been doing.
So he agreed.
Rosemary was consulted, and for a much bigger wage, she was willing to look after them both. It was a strange little household, but it worked extremely well.
This afternoon, the three of them were to share a cold lunch in Celia’s apartment, and Timothy, with the familiarity of a son, knocked and then entered her room.
Before going to attend to the lunch, Rosemary had helped Celia into an easy chair. She was napping, and her new white wig was a little awry on her head. He went over to a side table, and poured himself a whisky and soda. The clink of glasses woke Celia and, as she straightened her wig, she demanded one, too.
As she watched him pour the whisky, she remembered the baby put into her arms so many years ago. It seemed fitting that, in lieu of her own darlings, this child should be her final consolation, and she smiled faintly.
Her hand was surprisingly steady as she took the glass from him, and he sat down beside her. She held the glass so that a stray ray of sunlight lit up its rich amber colour.
She was silent for a little while, twiddling the glass between her fingers. Then she said, ‘You know, Timmy, what with an Empire and two World Wars plus the Korean War – and the Falklands – this old country of ours has been drained of male brains for a couple of hundred years.’
Timothy snorted. After all, he thought, he himself was still here.
To humour her, however, he agreed. ‘Administering an Empire must have been pretty draining,’ he said lightly. ‘All the hundreds of bright young sparks serving from India to the Caribbean who got killed off by yellow fever, malaria, cholera – and the Khyber Pass.’ He grinned, as he mentioned the famous Pass. ‘When I was a lad, if you didn’t have a great-uncle killed at Rorke’s Drift, you almost certainly lost one defending the Khyber Pass.’
‘True,’ agreed Celia. ‘My mother’s brother was killed in India.’ She sipped her whisky, letting it slide around her mouth to savour it. ‘At the service this morning, I was thinking what a different place Britain would be, today, if we hadn’t lost those men – and then two consecutive generations in the wars. So many of them were well educated or highly skilled. Just think, we might even have had a government of men and women who knew what they were doing!’
This was so close to what he himself had been thinking after the service that he burst into sardonic laughter.
‘Well, we did produce Margaret Thatcher,’ he reminded her.
‘She came too late, and she wasn’t clever enough to keep us out of the Falklands,’ Celia replied, her eyes suddenly full of tears for the third generation. ‘Poor Mike and Dave.’ She held out her glass to him. ‘Would you get me another glass of whisky please, dear? I feel a little low today.’
He was immediately contrite, and poured another drink for her.
She took the glass from him and stared absently into it, as if she saw in its golden depths the long procession of lost legions, taking away with them their own, unused, individual brilliance, their skills and their seed. Then she sighed; she knew that she would soon join them.
As she lifted her glass, she suggested, with forced cheerfulness, ‘To all our beloved absent friends. May they rest in peace.’
He turned to look down at her. So tiny, so old, he thought, yet so indomitable. He touched her glass with his.
‘Amen to that, my dear,’ he said very gently. ‘Amen.’
Acknowledgment
This is a novel and its characters are products of my imagination, its situations likewise. Whatever similarity there may be of name, no reference is intended to any person living or dead.
I gratefully acknowledge information and advice regarding the Hoylake and District War Memorial from Mr J.T. O’Neil of Hoylake, Mr R. Jones of West Kirby, and Mr K. Burnley of Irby; help regarding costume from Mr Richard Brown, Victoria Public Library, Westminster, London; and information regarding flora of the area from Mr J.T. O’Neil of Hoylake and Miss Jemma Samuels of Wallasey. The background information which they supplied was invaluable, and I thank them all.
About the Author
MOURNING DOVES
Helen Forrester was born in Hoylake, Cheshire, the eldest of seven children. For many years, until she married, her home was Liverpool – a city that features prominently in her work. For the past forty years she has lived in Alberta, Canada.
Helen Forrester is the author of four best-selling volumes of autobiography and a number of equally successful novels, including The Liverpool Basque. In 1988 she was awarded an honorary D.Litt. by the University of Liverpool in recognition of her achievements as an author. The University of Alberta conferred on her the same honour in 1993.
By the Same Author
Fiction
THURSDAY’S CHILD
THE LATCHKEY KID
LIVERPOOL DAISY
THREE WOMEN OF LIVERPOOL
THE MONEYLENDERS OF SHAHPUR
YES, MAMA
THE LEMON TREE
THE LIVERPOOL BASQUE
Non-fiction
TWOPENCE TO CROSS THE MERSEY
LIVERPOOL MISS
BY THE WATERS OF LIVERPOOL
LIME STREET AT TWO
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