The Soldier's Return

by Rose Meddon

  Distractedly, she went to the window and stared up the drive towards the lane, her eyes roving the myriad greens of the trees and the lawns. The tranquillity of the scene in the soft evening light gave her a thought. Uncertainly, she glanced over her shoulder towards the door: surely, no one could take issue with her going for a walk?

  Wrapping about her shoulders the black woollen shawl loaned to her by Edith, she crept down the stairs, let herself out through the front door, and headed away. At the far corner of the lawn, a little-used path led through the rhododendrons to the lane, emerging near the lodge houses at the entrance to the old manor. Reaching the start of it, and without looking back, she plunged through the shrubbery, the leathery leaves, still wet from the rain, drenching the front of her skirt. She would go and see her mother-in-law; she was bound to have something helpful to say.

  Arriving under the porch to the lodge house, she raised a hand to knock on the door. But, before she’d even had the chance to announce her presence, the door opened back.

  ‘Come on in, girl,’ Loveday Channer said, her expression devoid of surprise. ‘I been expecting you.’

  Lowering her hand, Kate stepped inside. ‘Hello, Ma Channer.’

  ‘Been expecting that dreadful news of the boy, too, truth to tell. Come on, sit down with you. I’ll make us a brew.’

  ‘If you’re sure it’s no trouble.’

  ‘Trouble? Pah. Stuff and nonsense. Make yourself at home.’

  Pulling a chair from under the table and lowering herself onto it, Kate was unsurprised to feel the tightness to her head beginning to ease. She should have come sooner – for so many reasons. But at least she was there now.

  Glancing about the kitchen, her eyes came to rest upon the door to the parlour – closed, as always. In fact, the only time she had ever seen it open – and had actually stepped inside – was the day she had married Luke.

  ‘Pa Channer not about?’ she asked.

  ‘Gone up The Fox.’

  Goodness, she really had lost track of time – had overlooked that it was Wednesday and therefore Pa Channer’s night for dominoes with the Braund brothers. ‘’Course, yes.’

  ‘So, what in particular brings you up here this late on? Not that you need reason to call, you know that.’

  Catching the heady scent of the June roses arranged in the vase on the table in front of her, Kate shrugged her shoulders. ‘Oh, you know.’

  ‘Aye, love. I do,’ Loveday Channer replied, setting the kettle on the stove. ‘I suppose that poor Captain Colborne has gone back now?’

  Slowly, Kate nodded her head. ‘He has, yes.’

  ‘Nice feller. Handsome, I shouldn’t wonder – before this blessed war drained all the life from him. Said some lovely things about young Luke. Good of him to come up here, what with him having so little leave. An’ I made a point of saying so. “Thank you”, I said to him, “for taking the time.”’

  ‘Yes,’ Kate agreed. ‘He is nice. He an’ Luke got along well together.’

  ‘Aye. But then that boy got along with just about everyone.’

  She smiled. It was true; he’d had that way about him. ‘He did.’

  Sitting at the Channers’ table, Kate felt calmer than she had in a while. Clearly, being able to talk to someone who had known Luke for who he really was – without the conversation being heavy with sadness and regret about his passing – was what she had needed. Here was someone who would help keep the memory of him alive – with whom she could make sure that he never came to be forgotten – and yet who didn’t feel the need to keep apologizing.

  ‘Happen you’ll find it hard, you know – what with there being no remains.’

  Looking swiftly up from her lap, Kate watched as Loveday Channer took a teaspoon to her aged teapot and gave it a stir.

  ‘There’s… there’s no remains?’

  ‘Didn’t no one tell you, love?’

  With her heart beginning to thud in her chest, and a wave of heat engulfing her body, she responded with a shake of her head. ‘No…’

  ‘That infernal thing he was driving was hit square on. Boom! Went straight up in flames.’

  She cast her mind back, trying to remember precisely what Mr Lawrence had told her of the incident. Seemingly, in his bid to spare her the grislier details, he had been economical with the truth, something she was only now realizing. Ma Channer, on the other hand, had clearly been possessed of the wherewithal to press for the whole story. And then there had been those whispers in the doorway to her bedroom; pound to a penny, concealing the matter of Luke’s remains was what Mabel and Naomi had been discussing that day. Gripping the edge of the table, she stared down at her fingernails, watching as, before her eyes, they blurred into a flesh-coloured mass. ‘No,’ she said softly. ‘No one told me.’

  ‘Aye,’ Loveday Channer continued, lifting the pot and filling two cups with dark tea. ‘Like the time your Mabel lost her boy when he set out with the lifeboat to rescue that pleasure yacht. The poor lad’s body never did wash up. Aye, she’ll know what you’re feeling. I remember distinctly her clinging to hope, long after all was proper gone.’

  Clinging to hope? Was that what she would find herself doing – holding out for her husband to still be alive just because there were no remains? She didn’t think so. It was true that she couldn’t believe he was gone, but not because she thought him still alive.

  ‘I—’

  ‘You know, he wrote often that the thing keeping him going through all the madness and the waste over there was the thought of getting home to you.’

  Feeling tears welling, Kate bowed her head. If Ma Channer thought that telling her such things would make her feel better, she was wrong. Things like that just made her feel worse. ‘But it’s my fault he’s gone.’

  When Loveday Channer reached across the table to take hold of her hand, Kate let her. ‘Your fault, girl? How so do you reckon that then?’

  Slowly, she looked back up. ‘I dallied,’ she said, noticing that although Ma Channer was dry-eyed, she had clearly been weeping at some point recently because her eyelids were rimmed with pink. ‘He asked me to wed him, over and over – so many times I couldn’t tell you. But I dithered, and I dallied…’

  ‘No harm in wanting to be certain of your own mind, girl. This cursed war aside, till death us do part is a long time. Fearful long time. No sense anyone ever rushing headlong into a thing like marriage.’

  ‘…but had I took him first time around, had I not let myself get distracted by… other ideas then, well, happen we wouldn’t have got caught up with the Russells and the Colbornes and the whole business of going up to London in the first place. Happen Luke wouldn’t have gone off with Mr Lawrence to join the Wiltshires… and been in the wrong place at the wrong time…’

  ‘Or happen he might have been took all the sooner, girl,’ Loveday Channer remarked. ‘In one of them big slaughters a few years back. Can’t none of us know for sure. That said, one thing I do know is that the boy was common-sensical. More than anything, he’d want you to get on with your life. Grieve for him by all means. Wear your widow’s weeds. But don’t spend the rest of your life mouldering away in them. It’s not what he would have wanted for you. He’d think it a waste. An’ so would I.’

  ‘But if I were to just carry on as normal,’ Kate said, ‘just get on with my life… well, I couldn’t do it. I’d feel terrible.’ It was, she realized, the truth. ‘I’d feel deceitful and disrespectful and… and just plain wrong.’

  ‘I’m not saying go out and find yourself a new feller tomorrow,’ Loveday Channer replied. ‘’Course I’m not.’ When she then tightened her hold on her hand and chuckled, Kate noticed that her laugh had a chesty rasp to it. ‘But don’t spend the rest of your days a widow, neither,’ she finished up. ‘Do you understand me?’

  While not what she had been expecting her mother-in-law to espouse, Kate nevertheless nodded. ‘I’ll think on what you’ve said.’

  When the two women then fell to quiet r
eflection, Kate finished her tea. Then, noticing with a start that dusk was falling, she moved to get up from the table.

  ‘For as long as I draw breath,’ Loveday Channer remarked, getting to her feet and reaching to catch hold of her arm. ‘I shall forever lament that things didn’t work out as they should have for the pair of you. But I stand by my advice. Grieve for as long as it takes, but then find a way to start over – while you’re still young enough to make another life for yourself. It’s what the boy would have wanted.’

  Grieve? Yes, she would do that – was doing that now. But start over? She didn’t think so. It felt wrong to be even considering it.

  Thanking her mother-in-law for the tea, Kate let herself out through the front door and started back along the lane. It was when she reached the rhododendron wood, and was carefully picking her way through the gnarly growth, that she realized she hadn’t come away from her mother-in-law’s feeling as settled as she would have liked: for certain she felt no less guilty for the way she had treated Luke that summer the Russells had arrived to stay. Yes, it had all worked out all right in the end. But she still felt guilty for taunting him for not wanting more from life – for craving nothing more than to be wed and to raise a family. Looking back now, she could see that he had simply been a couple of years ahead of her – a couple of years more mature – it being only in the last year or so that she, too, had come to crave those same things. As fate would have it, now that Luke was gone, she would give anything to be back in that summer, with the chance to be less evasive – to be quicker to accept him and choose the right path.

  Arriving at the edge of the lawn to see lights showing from several of the downstairs windows of the house, she realized with a jolt that she had broken her promise to Naomi; she had gone out without telling anyone where she was going. Well, there was nothing she could do about that now other than hope to creep back in unnoticed and avoid upsetting everyone. Besides, she had only been to see her own mother-in-law. Surely, no one could reasonably take issue with that.

  * * *

  ‘Whatever are you up to, love?’

  In response to Mabel’s enquiry, Kate sighed. Already, she had been awake for several hours. But, reluctant to go downstairs and face the usual well-intentioned enquiries from everyone about how she had slept, and how she felt “this fine morning”, she had been struck by the idea to find the box of belongings Luke had brought there after their wedding. Thus, when Mabel had arrived, she had been kneeling on the floor, the box in question fetched from the attic, its contents already sorted into piles on the rug.

  ‘Just going through a few things,’ she said, a quick glance in Mabel’s direction revealing that she was bearing a tray containing a pot of tea and a rack of toast.

  ‘Been up long, have you?’

  Deciding to be truthful but nevertheless refraining from looking up, she sat back on her heels. ‘Quite a while, yes.’

  ‘Good job I brought you this, then,’ Mabel said, moving to set down her tray on the side table. ‘If you’ve been about a while, you’ll likely be in need of something to eat.’

  Kate stifled a yawn. ‘Believe it or not,’ she said, eager to stave off disapproval of the fact that she hadn’t stayed in bed and tried to get back to sleep. ‘I had a reasonably restful night. Best for a while, actually.’

  ‘And what is it you’ve got there, then?’

  Thinking it obvious, she nevertheless fought back her frustration to explain. ‘I went to fetch the box Luke brought for safekeeping before he went off to join up. I thought I should see what was in it. As you see before you, it’s mostly his old clothes, which I was thinking I shall give to the church.’

  From the corner of her eye, she saw the bottom of Mabel’s skirt drawing nearer. Still she refrained from looking up. ‘There’s no rush, you know, love.’

  She shrugged her shoulders. ‘There’s a couple of things I thought his Ma might like – his prayer book, for instance. And one or two things I might keep myself. But these clothes ought to be passed on to the needy, do someone else a good turn.’

  ‘If you think so, love.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘All right, well, I’ll leave you to it then. Just don’t let your toast get cold.’

  ‘No. Thank you. I won’t.’

  Only when Mabel’s skirt had disappeared from her sight, and she had heard the door click shut, did Kate get to her feet and cross to the table. She hadn’t realized how hungry she was – nor, until Mabel had arrived, that it was after half-past seven. Lifting the cosy from the teapot, she removed the lid, stirred the contents, and then poured herself a cup. Settling into the easy chair, she buttered some toast and, eschewing the marmalade, bit into it. To her surprise, and for the first time in a while, she could taste the nuttiness of the bread and the creaminess of the butter. She helped herself to a second slice.

  Chewing thoughtfully, she stared down at the collection of belongings on the rug; not much to show for a man in the prime of his life. But then, to be fair, Luke wasn’t one for possessions. If he’d come into a fortune, the only thing he would have gone out and bought was a motorcar. And, probably, to make him feel the part, a new tweed cap and a pair of driving gloves. The rest of his fortune he would have squirrelled away. A nest egg, he would have said of it. For our old age and our children’s weddings.

  Wiping her fingers on the napkin, she dabbed it at the corner of her eyes. She’d been going along all right until that point, so why, now, was she tormenting herself with such thoughts? What was she doing, making herself feel all teary again over something that, in any event, was the mere product of her imagination? In dismay at her own foolishness, she shook her head. Then, staring down at the pile of Luke’s clothing, she decided that later this morning she would ask Naomi to drive her to the church so that she might donate all of it to the poor.

  To that end, and crouching back down on the floor, she picked up an old wool jacket and, recognizing it as the one Luke had worn almost every day, offered it to her nose. If she had been hoping to detect some trace of him, she had been hoping in vain; the garment yielded nothing, smelling only of the cardboard box in which it had been languishing these last years. She ran her hand through the pockets, checking for anything that might have been left there: nothing in either of the flapped ones on the front. In the breast pocket inside though, her fingers met with something that felt like a small square of card. Opening back the front of the jacket, she carefully pulled it out. What she saw caught her breath. Soft with damp, its corners rubbed to fuzziness, it was a valentine’s card. Immediately, she recognized it – the illustration that of a cherubic cupid aiming his arrow at a heart-shaped cloud, the tiny image set inside a wreath of entwined forget-me-nots. She swallowed hard, recalling so clearly the words she had written on the back but reluctant now, after all that had happened, to turn it over and read them. Doing so anyway, she felt her throat tighten.

  Won’t You be Mine, Sweet Valentine?

  The February of 1914, that would have been. She knew it for certain because, later that same year, once they had wed, they had agreed that valentine cards were daft. Instead, failing at the time to spot the equivalent soppiness of their idea, they had decided that from then on, on February the fourteenth each year, they would simply promise one another to remain true. After all, by the exchanging of their wedding vows, they had both secured their valentine for the rest of their lives. And, in the few short years that had followed, they had kept to their promises to swear their ongoing fidelity, even if Luke’s subsequent going to war had required that their proclamations be committed to paper and entrusted to the post office.

  Exhaling a long and shaky sigh, she turned the card back and studied the picture. Four years ago, before anyone had known that war was coming, Luke must have put it in his pocket so as to carry around with him, only to then leave the jacket behind. Well, she would keep it. She would put it with his letters.

  Getting to her feet and crossing to the dressing table, she opened
the lid of the walnut box where she had taken to keeping them. It was something he had brought back for her on one of his spells of leave that first year he had been in France. She remembered him telling her that he’d been given it by an old lady in a village, who had been grateful for something he had done for her. She could no longer recall the precise deed, and it didn’t matter; the patterns on the wood were beautiful and she had loved it at first sight.

  On the point of placing the valentine’s card on top of the uppermost envelope, she stopped, moved to pull one of them from the bundle. Smiling at the wayward nature of his handwriting on the front, she tugged out the sheet of paper from inside.

  My Darling Wife. She glanced to the date. January 1915; the war would barely have got going.

  I can’t put into words how much I enjoyed being on leave with you. Tearing myself away to return to this place was the hardest thing I ever had to do. I felt so proud to be walking around London with you on my arm, seeing the sights. It made all of this business over here seem unreal. How I wish that it was.

  I know every husband swears he has the best wife in the world, but I truly do. There isn’t a moment in the day when I don’t think of you, and it keeps me going to know that you think of me, too. Not long, I am sure, and I will be back with you, making a new life with you and raising our family. Every night I pray that if there is to be no ending to this war just yet, then I shall at least have more leave again soon. Keep me in your prayers, as I will you, Your loving husband, Luke.

  Spotting that a tear had fallen from her cheek and landed, directly upon the spot where he had written his name, smudging the ink and spreading it out across the bottom of the page, she let out a low moan. Then, clutching his letter to her chest, she doubled over, the pain searing through her insides too much to bear. She had thought she was getting over it. She had thought she had made peace with the fact that he was gone. But it was clear now that she hadn’t. At that precise moment, she couldn’t see how she would ever get over it. Without Luke, life would never be the same again.