The Soldier's Return

by Rose Meddon

  ‘Sure to,’ she repeated, nodding in supposed agreement as she bent to lift the tray and then carry it away.

  Reaching the front door, and dispensing with the use of the trolley, she continued straight on across the hall and down the stairs. But, walking the length of the corridor towards the scullery, she had to fight to hold back tears. She must not engage in pitiful weeping. She must not feel sorry for herself. Mr Lawrence had been given some leave and she should be happy for him – for him and Naomi both. It was as Ned had said, Luke’s turn would come, and then it would be Naomi envying her good fortune.

  Depositing the tray on the side, she sniffed loudly and then reached into the sleeve of her dress for a handkerchief to blow her nose. There. Better.

  Passing Mabel’s parlour on the way back, she came to a halt, retraced her last steps, and stuck her head around the door. ‘Mr Lawrence is here,’ she said, surprised by how pleased she managed to sound. Even so, preferring not to get drawn into conversation, she quickly ducked back out again.

  ‘Lord, then I’d best see about stretching supper a bit further…’ she heard Edith remark, followed by the sound of chairs scraping back across the floor.

  ‘And I daresay they’ll be a-wanting the dining room tonight,’ Mabel went on to observe.

  Already several paces back along the corridor, Kate slowed her pace. The dining room was still covered in dust sheets and would be in a terrible state. ‘I’ll be there in a minute to lend a hand,’ she called back towards them. Opening up the dining room was just the sort of job to keep her thoughts from Luke. ‘I’ll go an’ fetch in the rest of the tea things and then I’ll go in and open up the windows – get the place aired.’

  Arriving back up in the hallway, though, she was surprised to see Naomi standing alone in the porch, shielding her eyes against the light and staring out across the lawn. Behind her, just inside the door, was Lawrence’s kitbag. At the very least, she would have expected them to be unpacking his things…

  ‘Oh, Kate. There you are.’

  The thing that struck her first was the paleness of Naomi’s face.

  ‘Everything all right?’ Kate asked, continuing towards her.

  ‘You need to come through to the drawing room a moment. Only… well, no, just come through, would you.’

  ‘For supper tonight,’ she said, dutifully turning about, ‘we’re going to open up the dining room. And Edith is going to magic up another helping.’

  But from Naomi there came no response, and, when she trailed behind her into the drawing room, it was to see Mr Lawrence standing stiffly in front of the fireplace, his only concession to having arrived home seeming to be the removal of his cap, now lying on one of the side tables. Her immediate impression was that from his collar down he looked immaculate, whereas, above it, his face looked grey with exhaustion and shockingly thin, his nose prominent and his eyes sunken. It was as much as she could do not to gasp.

  ‘Captain Colborne,’ she said, concentrating upon swallowing down her unease at his appearance. ‘Good afternoon to you. Welcome back.’

  ‘Kate.’

  His manner, she noticed, was twitchy. She supposed it stemmed from the constant need to be on alert. And there was something about his eyes, too. They seemed darker than she remembered them – nearly black, and with a glassiness that almost certainly hadn’t been there before.

  Feeling a hand on her arm, she turned to see Naomi gesturing to one of the sofas. ‘Kate, come and sit down for a moment.’

  With a perplexed shrug and a light shake of her head, she did so, Naomi immediately sitting closely beside her. ‘W-What is it?’ she asked, looking from Naomi back to Mr Lawrence. ‘What can I do for you?’

  Having not moved from the empty fireplace, Lawrence cleared his throat. ‘Kate, though I’ve searched my mind all the way home for a better way to do this, I have been unable to find one. I’m afraid I’ve come to tell you that Luke has been killed.’

  When she tried so many times later to recall that moment, she was sure she remembered there being a thud, though she was also sure that it had come from within her body rather than from without. All she ever seemed able to remember with any clarity was finding herself on the sofa, her feet raised up on a couple of cushions, Naomi fanning at her face, and voices that sounded as though they were coming from under water. Incredibly, it was only when she had raised her head and had seen Mr Lawrence standing stiffly over her, that she understood what he had just said. And then she had felt as though something inside of her had broken: a deep and unbearable ache seemed to have spread throughout every inch of her, from the tight dryness in the back of her throat all the way down through her chest to her abdomen. Luke was dead. Mr Lawrence had said that Luke was dead. He had promised her he would look after him but, instead, he had let him be killed and then he had come home to tell her about it. Not wanting to look at him, she turned away, drew up her legs, and buried her face.

  Through the fabric of her dress, she felt a hand press lightly upon her back and then start to move in circles as though in consolation. But, for her, there could be none. Luke had been killed. Her dearest husband was dead.

  * * *

  ‘Oh, my dear, I am so sorry. So very sorry.’

  To Kate, it seemed to be all that anyone could say to her. Several hours later, and with dusk falling, all anyone seemed able to do was keep saying those same few words, over and over. Already fed up with hearing them, she begged them, in turn, to leave her alone. But would they do that? No, even once she had taken to her bed, people kept coming and going, offering their sympathy; Naomi in particular stubbornly choosing to keep vigil at her bedside.

  Raising her eyes to stare up at the ceiling, she wished that her limbs didn’t feel so leaden and useless, a state presumably brought on by the sizeable measure of brandy Mr Lawrence had encouraged her to drink. “For the shock,” he had said, pouring some from the decanter into one of the crystal balloons and handing it to her before pouring an even larger measure for himself. Brandy, she knew, was what you gave people so they wouldn’t feel pain. But what if she wanted to feel pain? Who was anyone else to deny her that right? Her husband was dead. She was a widow. And here she was, “three sheets to the wind”, as dear Nell, back at St. Ursula’s, was so fond of saying about the men who staggered along the towpath considerably the worse for drink. Picturing Nell made her giggle – presumably another effect of the brandy. But then, abruptly, she stopped; Luke would wonder what had come over her – would urge her to behave with some dignity. “For heaven’s sake, Kate,” he would whisper, “someone has just died.”

  Luke. Poor, poor Luke. Never again would he have to despair of her wilful ways.

  * * *

  ‘I wasn’t sure what you would feel like eating.’

  Raising her head an inch or two from the pillow, Kate struggled to focus her eyes and work out where she was. She recognized the voice as belonging to Edith but, all around her, the room was in darkness. With difficulty, she turned her head. Edith was setting a tray on the occasional table, which, for some reason was now standing alongside her bed. Hearing the chink of the china, she strained to see what was going on. From what she could just make out, the tray bore a bowl, the contents of which were steaming, a basket wrapped in a napkin, and an egg cup in which stood a boiled egg. Breakfast? Then whatever time was it? Turning to look at the window, she could see that beyond the curtain was daylight. Then why on earth had no one woken her until now?

  Opening her mouth, and feeling how dry it was, she flexed her jaw a couple of times. It felt oddly stiff, and the inside of her mouth horribly parched.

  Evidently seeing what she was doing, Edith went around to the other side of the bed and, putting a hand under her shoulders, helped her to sit up. Plumping the pillows behind her, she then eased her back against them and handed her the glass of water from the nightstand.

  Raising the glass to her lips, she took a mouthful and swallowed it. ‘Ugh.’

  ‘Sip it,’ Edith inst
ructed, refusing to accept the glass back from her. ‘You needs water inside you to counter the effects of the brandy. Leaves you dry, that stuff does.’ Dutifully, Kate took several more sips, but the water tasted as though it had been laced with brass polish. And, although she could feel it trickling down her throat, it seemed to be doing nothing to alleviate the dryness of her mouth. ‘Go on, keep going.’

  The glass eventually empty, she reached to replace it on the nightstand. ‘What time is it?’ she wanted to know, turning again towards the curtained window.

  ‘Never you mind the time,’ Edith replied, refilling the glass from the jug. ‘You’ve nowhere to be.’

  And then she remembered: Luke was dead. Mr Lawrence had come to tell her. And in which case Edith was right: she had nowhere to be; nowhere to go. No one to wait for any more.

  ‘How long did I sleep?’ she asked. Inside her head, it felt as though someone was refusing to stop hammering. And in one of her ears there seemed to be an angry bluebottle.

  ‘You went through the night. Shall I draw back the curtains a little?’

  She nodded, the effect upon her head dizzying. ‘Please,’ she mumbled, pressing the tips of her fingers to her temples. ‘Draw them wide. I want the light in.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  As the room brightened, Kate screwed up her eyes. Edith was in her mourning uniform; the last time that had seen light of day must have been when Mrs Latimer died. Against her pale skin such utter blackness made her look ill. She supposed they would expect her to adopt mourning as well. Widows weeds. Oh, dear God, this was awful. Luke was dead. And she was a widow. How could that possibly be?

  Once Edith had sat and watched her try to swallow a few mouthfuls of porridge – the toast looking too dry for her throat and the thought of the egg turning her stomach – she agreed that she might drink some tea, and Edith had gone to make her some. In the moments of quiet that followed, she lay, propped up like an invalid, trying to make sense of her feelings, only to discover that she didn’t seem to have any. Worse still, having been desperate for Edith to stop fussing, she now found that she couldn’t wait for her to come back. Left alone, it was impossible to distract her thoughts from the fact that, if she felt anything at all, it was guilt – guilt at feeling nothing.

  The person who subsequently returned with her tea, though, was Naomi.

  ‘Here you are,’ she said, her tone neither overly gloomy nor artificially bright. ‘It’s been brewing a while, so I’ll pour it.’ That done, she re-positioned the chair and sat down. ‘At least you managed to sleep.’

  ‘From the feel of my head, I’d say that was down to the brandy. Never was no good with spirits – with drink of any sort, for that matter.’

  ‘Me neither,’ Naomi replied, and then, after a moment, went on. ‘Look, Kate, I just want you to know—’

  ‘Please, Naomi,’ she begged, ‘don’t say how sorry you are – not again. I know you are sorry, truly I do. But it don’t do me no good to keep hearing it from everyone.’

  ‘No, I don’t suppose it does.’

  ‘Makes me feel bad that folk feel the need to keep apologizing… especially when it won’t bring him back.’

  ‘No, I know. But what I was going to say – and I know this probably isn’t the time, given all the things that must be going through your head right now – is that you’re not to worry about anything. Not money, nor about having a roof over your head, nor anything else for that matter. You have a home and a family. And, between us, we will take care of you.’

  Kate summoned a watery smile. Despite what she had just urged about repeated apologies, it was a reassuring thing to hear. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I want you to know that however long it is before you feel able to… well, before… you know, before you feel able to pick up the threads of your life again, I will be here to help you. Lawrence too.’

  ‘Can you help me know how to feel?’ she asked, her voice beginning to tremble as she did so. ‘Only, though I would have thought to know, I find that I don’t. All the times I feared something would happen to him, all the times I pictured my grief were he to be lost, and all the times I’ve seen this happen to other women, you’d think that come the day, I’d know what to feel – that I’d feel sadness or loss. Or even anger. But I don’t feel none of them. I just feel… numb.’

  ‘I think,’ Naomi said, reaching to clasp her hand, ‘that the numbness is part of your grief. When my uncle died – quite suddenly – I remember Mamma being the same – overcome by a sort of numbness. Her physician said it was normal. He said that grief and mourning take on a pattern and that the numbness – caused by the shock – would eventually be overtaken by disbelief, denial, anger even. All of those, he told her, are perfectly normal things to feel. Of no comfort to you, I know,’ Naomi went on, and squeezed her hand. ‘But I do think that once the news sinks in, and the shock wears off, sadness and grief will follow.’

  Although having no reason to doubt what Naomi said, Kate shook her head. ‘Do Mr Lawrence know what happened to him?’ she asked. ‘I should like to know.’

  Naomi nodded. ‘Yes. And he said that as soon as you want him to, he will come up and talk to you.’

  ‘No,’ she said, beginning to pull herself more upright. ‘I think I should like to get up and be dressed for that. I don’t think this bed is the proper place to hear of Luke’s final moments on this earth.’

  Gently, Naomi let go of her hand. ‘I understand. Then I’ll go along and run you a bath. And we’ll wash your hair and make you feel fresher. By the time you’re dry, Mabel will have finished your dress. When I came up just now, she was just seeing to the hem.’

  ‘My dress?’ Why did she know nothing of a dress?

  ‘For your mourning.’ Her mourning. Yes, of course. ‘Last night,’ Naomi went on, ‘Mabel asked me whether I thought you had anything suitable with you – to wear that is – and I said I thought not. I suggested – solely for ease – that we buy you one, but she didn’t like the thought of you wearing something ready-made – not for Luke. She insisted upon making you one. By the look of it, she’s been up all night sewing.’

  Yes, she thought, that would be Mabel – always there in times of trouble. And thoughtful, too.

  ‘Fortunate you always make me pack yours,’ she said, wondering why it had taken her until now to notice Naomi’s plain black shift. ‘“Queen Mary never travels anywhere without a mourning outfit, and so neither do I”, that’s what you always said.’

  She sighed heavily. Mourning. Widowhood. What dreadful things to be thinking about. Dare she even wonder how long she would be expected to swathe herself in black and grieve? Dare she contemplate how long she was to be confined to that state of limbo? Edith had once told her that when Thomas had died, Mabel had observed two years – and then six months of half mourning after that. These days, with so many young men dying on the battlefield, such strict observance seemed to have fallen by the wayside, a slightly more practical approach seeming to have come to prevail – in London, at least. At St. Ursula’s, Marjorie had once told her that with so many women left needing to remarry, among the labouring classes a period of six months was now deemed more than enough. By her account, some of those same women never even wore black to start with – there being no money spare to buy the cloth. Instead, for the service of remembrance at the church, they fashioned a black veil for their hat, or borrowed a black blouse or skirt to receive callers who came to offer their condolences. But where did any of that leave her? She might have been brought up in service, but she had become part of a family who were most definitely middle-class – had adopted most of their ways and observed their social niceties.

  Perhaps, she thought numbly, swinging her legs down over the side of the bed and sliding her feet into her slippers, those were considerations for another day. Her most pressing desire at that moment was to get up and do something – anything that would allow her to move about and be rid of the feeling of numbness. Better still, she hoped
to find something to occupy her mind, at least until – as Naomi had put it – the shock wore off and the grief set in.

  * * *

  ‘He was a terrific chap.’

  Seated on the sofa in the drawing room, across the table from Mr Lawrence, Kate tried not to stare. He looked so different from when he had last come home on leave, the flesh on his face seeming to have shrunk so much that it now clung to his skull like little more than a covering of gossamer. On his left temple was a purple vein, prominent and knotted, and in his left eye was a tic.

  ‘There weren’t nothing much he feared, even as a lad,’ she said, directing her thoughts away from Mr Lawrence and back to Luke. ‘Bowl headlong into anything, he would. ’Specially if someone were in danger.’

  ‘I’m not surprised to learn that about him,’ Lawrence replied.

  ‘No.’

  ‘No matter the peril, he was always the same – concerned only for others – right to the very end. And I trust that when I tell you what happened, you will be able to draw comfort from that thought.’

  In her lap, Kate clasped her hands together. This might be something she needed to know but that wasn’t going to make it any easier to hear. ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘You see, we’d been camped in the same village since the spring, and so he knew the roads and routes around us well. On the day in question, a call came to say that a new attack was to be launched and that there were urgent documents to be collected from field HQ. Of our two other drivers, one was already out, the other laid up with dysentery. So, despite being on a rest break, your husband volunteered to make the run. Under reasonable conditions, the journey should have taken him about two hours each way. But when, by dusk, he hadn’t returned, I imagined only that he had needed to take cover against an attack, or that his route had been blocked, necessitating that he find another way back.

  ‘Many hours later, word reached us that there had been heavy shelling on the road to… well, let us just say on the road, and that there had been casualties. It wasn’t until the following morning, when further details came in, that I felt certain Luke was safe. You see, when I saw the report of the attack, specifically its time and location, I thought it unlikely that Corporal Channer would have been caught up in it—’ Corporal Channer. Goodness, it made him sound so important. ‘—since I didn’t think he could have made it so far back in the time. However, when word reached me that he was one of the casualties, his vehicle hit by an enemy shell, I realized otherwise. Sadly, by making good progress on that day, your husband had ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time.’