The Hero

by Paul Almond

  C H A P T E R T H I R T Y

  Two days later, Rene sat with Father John in his church office. The Archdeacon had never seen her so distraught.

  “I wasn’t at church, Father John, because Paul had a cold, which made Tuesday’s attack... so risky. Anyway, before that, during Eric’s sermon — well, Annie phoned first, she’s our Warden’s wife, but Ida reported the same thing: ‘We’ll get you now, you sons of bitches!’ He was looking out over the congregation, and that’s what he said.” Rene repeated it. “‘...Sons of bitches!’ In the pulpit! I heard it from a third parishioner, too: The enemy, the Hun, they’re always on his mind.

  “His congregation, they just sat quietly, but shocked, oh yes. They knew why, though: I’ve often heard them say, ‘What war does to a man!’ They tried to soften the blow for me, saying, not a problem, just the war; he’d been through so much. They thought by telling me, I could do something to help.”

  “But explain about Tuesday,” the Archdeacon prompted.

  “Father John, it was the stove, smoking. He thought it was a gas attack. So he ran out with our son, and nothing on! Well, to be fair, in a gas attack, you don’t sit around getting dressed, you get out as fast as you can.

  “You see, gas it can be such a danger.” She looked over at Father John, much wiser and older than she. “But earlier in January, Paul, he got badly scalded – not Eric’s fault, of course, but he took it that way. He does mean well. He tries so hard, Father John. He keeps saying, ‘I have to be like Christ.’ But he isn’t like Christ.” She was stifling tears; she had to get her full story told.

  “When I came back from shopping, he and the baby were gone. I was frantic. Then Belle phoned and told me the whole thing. She and Bob brought them back, and Eric was calmer. I put Paul to bed. But then, Father John,” she heaved a sigh, “then, the next day... he realized what he’d done. He went into his room and wouldn’t talk to anyone; I couldn’t even get him to eat. He lay there like a dead person. I’m no good, he’d say. I’m just not any good. I can’t do it... What was he staring at in front of him? Nothing. My own husband. He’s such a good man. I love him so much. But I love my baby, too.

  “I told him I’d decided that Paul’s cold, well, it might be pneumonia, so I was taking him here to Montreal, to Dr. Goldbloom, that’s our pediatrician, you know. I think Eric knew that I’d come and talk to you. Apparently Paul will be fine, no after effects, just a bad cold, but that’s curable. I left Jean’s phone number, and yours, with Selwyn and Annie. He’s our warden, you know.”

  She shook her head. What a struggle not to cry! “I’m torn. I don’t know what to do... I just don’t know what ... I ... can ... do any more. I’ve tried, Father John, God knows I’ve tried so hard. But I just don’t know.” The tears she had been holding back could be held back no longer.

  Father John reached out and touched her. “Quite all right, Rene, quite all right to cry. You’ve been through so very much.” His voice sounded kind and affectionate.

  The church secretary heard the crying and came knocking at the door, “Shall I make a nice cup of tea, Father? Might make Mrs. Alford feel better. Would you like that, Rene?”

  In a little voice she replied, “Yes, please.” And she went on crying, twisting her handkerchief, daubing her eyes, trying to hold back all the anguish building for months, in fact, probably for years.

  Just then the phone rang. Jack picked it up, and listened. “I see,” he said. “Would you mind telling this to Rene?” He motioned and she took the phone.

  “My son Jackson seen him, Mrs. Alford,” she heard Emma Hadlock say. “He called me to the window. We all saw it. The Reverend Eric, he was leaving the Parsonage! Had his staff with him, haversack slung over his shoulder. He set off walking in the direction of West Shefford. We reckon he’s going to take the train.”

  “Thank you, thank you, Emma,” Rene whispered and put down the phone.

  Jack watched her pull herself together. “Father John, he’s coming in by train. I must go, I’ll have to meet him.” She hurriedly put on her coat.

  “Rene,” the Archdeacon said, “listen. I know why he’s coming. Can you guess?”

  Rene looked at him and paused, thinking. “To find me?” Then she looked up. “Oh. To go back to hospital?”

  The Archdeacon nodded sadly. “We mustn’t be downhearted. They may cure him.” A forlorn hope, they both knew.

  “Rene, when he arrives, even though St. Anne’s Military Hospital is close by, he’ll still want to go home to Shigawake — to say goodbye. He did that last time. He was adamant. He will insist again. So go with him on the train. Take Paul. He’ll only stay a day or two.”

  ***

  Sunday, February 13, 1933

  The sun is blazing off the gleaming iron rails, though the wind is cold. But the icy winter chill is not why the couple are huddled together on a bench outside this Port Daniel station. Even to a casual observer, their pain would be obvious, and so strong that it’s almost visible: in the way they hunch over, the way the man clasps the woman’s hands; intensity burns from both their features. Though bundled up, the man’s lapel can be clearly seen — the veteran’s badge: a crown surrounded by the words For Honourable Service. Six years ago, he wore that while waiting for another train on this very station. Across the country he went then, to find his love, his Rene. Now, before he leaves, she sits beside him, listening. He is speaking in low tones, but firm and clear.

  “You’ll wait in Shigawake for Bert and Jean, or perhaps Gerald, to find you a nice apartment, and then you’ll both go back.” She nods. “This disability...” He pauses. “It... It will get you a bit more of a pension, but it won’t be much.”

  She seems not to care. Her eyes search his features.

  “Stay here as long as you can, but then you’ll want to get on with life. You might even start a school again. I’ll pray for you every day, probably many times a day. You will never be out of my mind.” She blinks back tears. “Rene, there’s just no other way. I’ve tried, I’ve thought, but every option...

  “Sometimes I thought I had it beat. College, that first time: I was raring to go.” He breathed out a long sigh. “But it came back.” He shakes his head. “Put me in hospital for eighteen months. But I beat it. I got out. I went on. I got my degree, I came across this great country, I got to Sydney, and when I saw you — the light broke through, like out of a bank of dark clouds. So I’ve been happy, oh, I sure have. That first time I saw you up on that stage, giving your dance lecture, and then...” the frown disappears for a few moments, “after we married, those paradises of love... and when we prayed together in those churches round the world, that sun kept breaking through. And all because of you, my Rene, my own Joy. Your presence. So you see,” back come the frown and anguish “the worst thing in my whole life ... is leaving you now...”

  He lapses into silence, and their hands grip even more tightly. “That’s why we came early to the station. I had to explain. I want my son to know, it’s not just the big events, no, Rene, all along, it’s the every day battle. I had the forces of light on my side. I spent so much time in prayer, or I’d have been lost long ago.” Words dredged from his deepest being. “No man knows what I’ve been through, day after day. I never told you, because I couldn’t let you worry.”

  Rene is about to speak, but he lifts his hand. “No, that wasn’t a question. These last months at Iron Hill, I’ve turned it over and over. When I get real challenges, I love that, I love hard work, I love doing my best, and even more when it gets piled on. But it’s just that... it finishes me.” He shakes his head. “When I’m most happy, working the hardest, that damn war, it comes back. No man knows...” He breathes hard.

  “The war, that did it. I was just like any other young fella — no different. From a farm, and a good life ahead o’me. But then, that howitzer. My friends blown up, torn to pieces, right... beside me. All the time.

  “I’m only telling you all this, Rene, to tell my son, to tell anyone, wh
at war done to me so that someone, somewhere, can stop it. Stop any thought of war ever crossing them politicians’ minds.” He straightens and his jaw tenses. “One thing, promise me, if our son ever gets caught up, like me, by patriotism, stop him. If I’m back home when he gets old enough, I’ll explain it myself. But I may... I may not. Last time in hospital: eighteen months. This time, who knows, eighteen more? Or years? We don’t know. We’re counting on those doctors and nurses to get me cured, once and for all. I need to get out and to do the Lord’s work again. I know He wants me to. So the sooner I get there and get back out, the better. It’s Valentine’s Day tomorrow. Could be our lucky day.” He tries to smile.

  Tears fall from Rene’s eyes.

  “I feel as if I’ve lived a lifetime just in these five years since we met. A lifetime is good enough for any man. How many lifetimes do we need? And with God’s help, and the nurses and doctors, I may even start a second lifetime, clear, like any normal man. Wouldn’t that be fine?”

  Rene nods. She keeps wiping her eyes with a mittened hand.

  “Jack’ll be meeting me with a car and he’ll get me to St. Anne’s Military Hospital. He’ll keep you posted. Try to write. Don’t be downhearted. It will be hard. But harder if I stayed, worrying you every five minutes.” Rene shakes her head but he goes on, relentlessly, driven. “No, we were always... waiting for the next explosion. Well, if I can do anything, I can put our minds at rest. By leaving.

  “Maybe Hilda can come. It’s the worst of times. No man knows how I hate to leave you with this here economic depression. But I’ve seen how resourceful you are and that’s what gives me hope.”

  He is about to go on, but they both hear, in the distance, a train whistle. He gets up. She does too. Their arms go around each other and they hug in a desperate display of affection.

  So perhaps — before we have to watch their unbearable agony as he gets on this one last train — it would be more discreet to leave them now, wrapped in each other’s arms.

  P O S T S C R I P T U M

  In fact, Eric Alford never did come out of Ste. Anne de Bellevue Military Hospital. His shell shock was apparently interspersed with periods of great clarity when he preached to and comforted inmates at the mediaeval-looking jail of St. Vincent de Paul, or chatted with young MacDonald College students fishing in the dull canal. But often he fell into periods of depression, silences that even caring nurses could not break into. He died in 1953.

  A D D E N D U M

  Excerpts from Lieut Eric Almond’s handwritten letters from Ste. Anne’s Military Hospital, in the two months before he died, to his wife Rene, and to his son Paul, who was still in England.

  From a letter dated June 9, 1953.

  For twenty years I have watched and shared in the sufferings of thirteen hundred slowly dying men in this hospital as their priest and their friend.

  I have been separated from my work of service in the outside world.

  I have been separated from my wife.

  I had been separated from my son.

  I had been separated from my relatives.

  I had been separated from my old gang of friends.

  I have been separated from beauty.

  I have been separated from humour, etc.

  But I may have been placed by Christ in some key position. The chalice I carry in my hands is brim full of suffering.

  I have walked through the wards and seen the helpless masses of suffering. Later on I will remember them in intercession. They have won their victory.

  It is all placed in God’s treasury to be used for sacrificial love, humility and purity on this dying planet.

  You will be glad to hear that once again, I have taken up work as an assistant priest. Last Sunday, I assisted in a celebration of the Holy Eucharist in the chapel here. I read the Epistle and served the Holy Bread. Again, I repeated those words which I have said so often before: “Preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life.” I wish you could have been with me. You would have found it strange to see me in clerical collar and robes again.

  Well Paul, if you ever get to Florence go to the Pitti Gallery and see Raphael’s Madonna — the dead image of your mother.

  Now, my lad, Mother and I are with you all the time spiritually, no matter where you go or whatever you do. Carry on. A closed mouth catches no flies.

  Keep a stiff upper lip. Get as much fun as you can. Don’t worry about your mistakes or failures. That’s how you learn.

  Well darling ones, I send you all my love. Keep smiling. Sometimes there is a humour and laughter of God.

  From a letter two days later dated June 11, 1953

  Dear Paul,

  This is my last letter to you for some time.

  In the third saying from the cross, Jesus made his last will and testament to John, his beloved disciple:

  “Woman, behold thy son; son, behold thy mother.”

  And from that the disciple took her to his own home.

  Always take care of Mummy for me.

  Dad.

  From a letter dated July 23, 1953

  I would give the world to see you, so I could jump into you. As I have not seen you for twenty years, you are sort of a fairytale to me. But personalities have a happy faculty of indwelling other personalities so we carry our friends inside of us, but we have to see them and get to know them to do this. We are only one half of ourselves. Our friends are the other half.

  The physical does not count an awful lot. It is really only the mental and spiritual that matters. So in a mystic way, I may be in you and we may recognise each other in some other life. (See John 17) Anyhow, our souls, personalities and spiritual bodies may indwell and go into another, as we are all one in the mystical body of Christ.

  This planet earth is a training school to prepare us for another life. As we learn service, joy, friendship, love, and humility, we get ready in the beauty of holiness to go into another mansion in the trillions of others in God’s universe. The spiritual world is all around.

  Here, I send my soul and spiritual body into you at a distance.

  I have had four years of war, two years land survey, five years university, two years teaching, four years an active priest, twenty years a sick priest. A pal, friend, companion and sharer of the sufferings of thirteen hundred slowly dying soldier patients.

  I have seen much of beauty and friendship in Canada, USA, Australia, Asia and Europe. I have worshipped in many of the great cathedrals. I have seen much of nature and something of art. I have experienced joy with my pal, partner, playmate, sweetheart, lover, and soulmate.

  There has been the humour and laughter of God, at times.

  Once in awhile, I saw humility.

  There has been an upward look to the stars.

  I have drained a chalice of suffering to the bitter dregs. Now, I am tired.

  Always take care of Mummy for me. She is my Joy, Angel Saint, and Dove.

  Your Dad.

  From his last two letters, dated July 28

  To Paul Almond, BA Oxon.

  Always take care of Mummy for me, this is my last will and testament.

  Lieutenant, teacher, priest, Rover Scout, Eric Almond.

  To Rene:

  This is my second letter to you today. I am so lonesome for you all the time. You know, I love you with my whole heart and soul. The only real joy in this life you have given me.

  Please forgive me for all the unhappiness, pain, and sorrow I have caused you. I am full of regret and remorse for that. Again I thank you from the bottom of my heart for all the countless blessings you brought to me in our five years of married life together, physically, mentally, and spiritually.

  You brought me joy, beauty, and loving kindness, and God only knows what you had to put up with all the time. Even building log cabins in the dead of winter.

  Now in this last twenty years, we have been completely separated but my love and intercessions have gone out to you constantly, night and day in my sane moments.

  I am
tremendously proud of your success in your work and in your son Paul.

  My life here has been one long hell for twenty years, with sickness night and day of the worst kind, and never a break: no wife, no child, no friends, no beauty, no humour etc. Now I am fifty-eight and tired of the game.

  Then there is the thought of the next life. Will we be together then?

  Eric Almond, Priest, C. of E.

  Ten days later, his life ended.

  A C K N O W L E D G E M E N T S

  First I must acknowledge my mother, whose writings still exist, and my father, Lieut. (later Major) Rev. Eric Almond, on whose story this is based. Such a strange feeling it was, reading his words some ninety years after they were written and forty years after they came into my possession upon the death of my mother, having lain in a safety deposit box, unopened and unread. I have quoted from them with almost no amendments. He wrote himself, “They are rough and ready like the scenes I have depicted for I have made no attempt to polish them.” I also opened, twenty five years after her death, the notebooks of my mother, Irene Gray. Every word she spoke that first evening Eric attended her lecture came from these, verbatim — so modern that I should emphasize she wrote them in 1927. Their letters to each other were never kept, so all of them herein were imagined, as were Rene’s dairies in the Holy Land.

  Some parts of this book come from documents, but still others from oral tradition: such as Rene carrying a bundle of shingles on her back, and the way the couple arrived at church Christmas Eve. The sayings: A man is hampered by his possessions and It’s a poor farm that can’t afford one gentleman, were both told by my aunts over and over again. As was the tale of my Uncle Earle, with a boost from his adrenaline, killing the lynx. He went on to become mayor of Shigawake from 1941 to 1945 before his early death in 1953, the same year as his brother, Eric.

  I owe much to Douglas Hall, the “antique baker” of Iron Hill, with his prodigious memory and care for the now shuttered Holy Trinity Church, and the genealogy of the village inhabitants. My Iron Hill section is due to his help. He brought me to Stanley Mount, who passed away only a fortnight after my visit, and his wife Ida, who both gave me vivid accounts of their rector. Jackson Hadlock (89 in March 2009) told Douglas about seeing Rev. Eric leaving his parsonage for the last time. Through Doug, this spring I met Wayne Mason, my playmate when we were two. Leslie Ann Ross, Psy.D., an old family friend and senior director of a Child Trauma Centre in Los Angeles, works with combat veterans at the Veteran’s Administration there. She gave me a thorough analysis of Post Traumatic Stress Disease, helping me with my father’s “shellshock”.