The Soldier's Return

by Rose Meddon

  Heaving another long sigh, she stared down at the cake crumbs on her plate. In truth, it wasn’t the mystery she pretended. Deep inside, and cold-hearted though it might be, she knew precisely what she was going to need: she was going to need a new husband. And, preferably, in due course, children, too.

  Realizing that she had slumped down in her chair – and that she felt to have a scowl on her face – she got to her feet and went to put her plate on one of the side tables. Behind her, Mr Lawrence was talking.

  ‘Officers and men alike,’ she heard him saying, ‘are told by their commanding officers to repress their feelings. They are told that their suffering is not unique, and that to cope in silence, and without complaint, is every soldier’s patriotic duty. But I can tell you now, that few men at the front see war as patriotic. Nor do they see it as manly – certainly not after all of this time, they don’t. Any illusions in that regard have long since been ground out of them. By now, that they survive at all is only through getting by each day one stint at a time, and by shutting out the most gruesome of memories.’

  ‘And that is what they helped you to realize,’ Kate heard Ned remark.

  Turning slowly about, she saw how, seated in his wheelchair, he was leaning towards Mr Lawrence, his expression keen.

  ‘It was part of the treatment, yes. But each man is different – each man arrives there with his own particular history. And that’s the beauty of the place – there’s no misconception that one size fits all men. Each individual gets to speak of his experiences – as often and as much as he needs – gets to confess to his fears and his guilt without the worry that he will be judged, or tarred as a coward. It is from that start point of honesty and respect, that the doctor determines a regimen of suitable treatments and activities to set him on his way to recovery.’

  ‘And clearly, it works,’ Naomi commented. To her tone there was once again a brightness, and to her demeanour a new fluidity.

  ‘Clearly it’s working,’ Lawrence cautioned his wife. ‘I’m not out of the woods yet. But I have come away from there with the means by which to control and cope with certain of my feelings, yes.’

  ‘And for that I shall forever be deeply grateful,’ Naomi replied, moving to place her hand on his arm. Seemingly not even aware that he was doing it, Lawrence took hold of it and held it between his own.

  Grateful not to be part of the contented little huddle, Kate swung away and blinked back tears. How much longer before she could take her leave of the little gathering? She had welcomed Mr Lawrence back, she had enquired after his well-being, and she had agreed with Naomi that yes, he did indeed seem to be a changed man. But, with her face now aching from all the smiling, and a lump once again back in her throat, she longed to be alone or, at the very least, away from all the unrelenting jollity and unwitting displays of affection.

  Perhaps she would slip away now; no one could chide her for it. Down in the scullery there would be a pile of washing up that needed doing, and the mindlessness of the task might be just the thing to dull the envy gnawing away at her insides.

  Sadly, distracting herself from her more chronic pain – the pain brought on by the dashing to pieces of her future – was going to require something more than a mountain of washing up. To dull that pain was going to require renewed hope. Not to mention some sort of plan to get her through the rest of her life.

  * * *

  ‘I forget you haven’t been down here before.’

  It was early evening the following day and, with Esme put to bed and Lawrence retiring exhausted, Kate was doing as she had once promised Rowley and was accompanying him down to the cove. Given that, to date, they hadn’t ventured from walking upon relatively even ground, she wasn’t surprised to find their progress over the tricky path slow and halting. Not that it mattered; Rowley had been saying for ages that he wanted to see the beach, and she had no intention of nannying him by questioning his readiness to tackle the rugged conditions.

  ‘Actually,’ he began, causing her to look over her shoulder and witness on his face a look of discomfort, ‘I have been down here.’

  ‘You have? When was that?’ With their path then becoming partly obstructed by the whippy growth of a willow, she reached to hold aside its branches. ‘Have a care here. Beneath this moss are boulders just a-waiting to catch your toe.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, glancing down. ‘I see them. It was that day you came down here alone.’

  Coming to a halt, she looked back at him and frowned. ‘When?’

  With no choice in the matter, he too came to a halt. ‘On the day it was raining.’

  Feeling her cheeks colouring up, she turned back. ‘Ah. Then.’

  ‘I told myself that I would never mention it unless you did. But—’

  ‘But I did ask.’

  ‘Yes.’

  She shrugged her shoulders. Already, that day seemed so long ago. ‘It’s all right,’ she said as lightly as she could. ‘But I’m surprised you felt sure enough of your leg that day to venture down over this sort of ground. Especially on your own, and not knowing the way.’

  ‘I didn’t feel at all sure of it,’ she heard him reply. ‘But, mortified though I am to admit to it now, seeing you heading down here, I followed, for some reason sensing that you might come to harm.’

  Blushing even more fiercely, she fixed her eyes on the way ahead and kept going, unable to risk letting him see the depth of her embarrassment. ‘Then, I thank you again,’ she said. ‘For risking your own well-being.’

  For some time after that, their concentration was given over to watching their step, their progress reaching a stretch of path where the ground fell away more steeply. In any other year, the vegetation at this point would have been less vigorous and the path more clearly visible but, with no one venturing down there for some time, Mother Nature had been busily recolonizing even the most inhospitable of sections.

  Further on, hearing a sudden scuffling behind her, and feeling loose gravel striking the hem of her skirt, she turned swiftly, holding out her hands in the expectation that he was about to slip.

  ‘Whoa!’ he exclaimed, skidding to a halt, one hand reaching to the trunk of a nearby tree, the other clutching at her arm.

  Under his weight, she braced herself. ‘Are you all right?’

  Regaining his balance, he released his hold on her. ‘Nothing more than damage to my pride,’ he said, his expression nevertheless one of relief. ‘But that was close.’

  Turning to face forwards again, she continued on, the path descending less steeply now and the vegetation around it thinning. Behind her, his footsteps sounded more assured. ‘Nearly there,’ she called over her shoulder. ‘Look, you can just make out the boulders at the top of the beach.’

  ‘Yes, I see them.’

  ‘Once we reach them, it’s best to squeeze between them rather than try to clamber over.’

  ‘Duly noted.’

  Without further incident, they arrived on the sand.

  ‘There,’ she said, gesturing broadly. ‘Woodicombe Cove.’

  Having bent to dust off the front of his trousers, he straightened up and looked about. ‘My word. Just look how far out the tide has gone.’

  ‘It goes down for almost a half mile – even more just after the full moon.’

  When he went ahead of her, making towards the water line, she turned away and bent to take off her shoes. Then, with a quick glance to check that he wasn’t looking, she reached under her skirt, pulled off her stockings and stuffed them in her shoes. The trouble with the new fashion for shorter skirts, she had recently come to discover, was that you couldn’t get away with going about bare-legged, as she had once been able to – not that it was something she would countenance doing in London anyway. But, down here, on a beach in the height of summer, well, anything other than bare feet felt faintly ridiculous.

  ‘It’s heavenly,’ he called back towards her, his arms raised above his head as he turned full circle and looked all about. ‘That day in
the rain it was all terribly dramatic but now, in this soft evening light, well, I can’t imagine why anyone in their right mind would ever want to be anywhere else.’

  ‘Everyone says that,’ she replied, catching up to him but mindful to maintain a respectable distance to his side. ‘To which I always say that you should see it in the worst of the gales come January-time. Then, for all of its supposed spectacle, the wind is so strong that you can’t stand up, the salt from the spray stings your eyes, and the swirling sands blast at the least patch of exposed skin.’

  ‘That may well be,’ he said, staring back up the hillside. ‘But I find its benevolence this evening utterly bewitching.’

  Amid the silence while he took in their surroundings, she saw her chance to broach the matter of his return to duty. Since their brief discussion about his letter the other morning, he had volunteered nothing further – and she hadn’t felt able to ask. But now, with no one to overhear them, she said, ‘Have you decided what you’re going to do yet?’

  Very slowly – at least, that was how it seemed to her – he brought his attention back from the far horizon. Then, as though considering how best to reply, he slid his hands down into the pockets of his trousers.

  ‘Not… entirely, no.’

  This close, she could see that his eyes had as many patches of moss green as they did chestnut brown. It was an intimate thing to discover. ‘No?’

  ‘No. You see…’ She wanted to tell him that it was all right – that he needn’t tell her if he didn’t want to. But she knew that if she did, he might take her at her word, and she would never be any the wiser. And over the last few days she had found herself increasingly desperate to learn of his intentions. ‘As decisions go,’ he picked up. ‘Well, let’s just say that my situation has become rather more complicated.’ With no idea why that should be, she pressed her lips together and waited; left unprompted, he might go on to explain. But, if she gave the appearance of prying, then he might clam up. ‘Other considerations have come to the fore – considerations that I am wary of addressing.’

  When he turned to stare back out to sea, she did likewise. Over the years, she had learned that if you refrained from meeting the other person’s eyes, they were often inclined to be more forthcoming.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, hoping to sound only lightly interested. ‘Do you not even lean more in one direction than the other?’

  The speed with which he responded to that took her by surprise. ‘I do. That said, I would willingly settle for the alternative, should the situation require – given the overall picture, I mean.’

  Now he just seemed to be talking in riddles. What on earth was this other consideration that it could hold such sway over his decision?

  ‘So—’

  Without warning, and before she knew what was happening, he had turned towards her, reached for her hands, and taken them in his own. Despite flinching from the shock, she didn’t pull them away.

  ‘Please, Kate, don’t be alarmed. I mean you no harm – quite the contrary. But I do wish to say something to you, and I should like very much that rather than yield to your first instinct, you at least give a moment’s thought to what I have to say.’

  ‘Rowley—’

  ‘Kate, you are the loveliest person I have ever met. Your patience and kindness know no bounds. You are honest. And warm. And not at all shallow or vain even though you must know how pretty you are—’

  What on earth was he doing? She was married – well, no, she wasn’t any more, but she was a widow.

  ‘And yes, I know that it is only a few weeks since I was first introduced to you. But, in those weeks, I have spent sufficient time in your company to feel that I have come to know you. And no, it does not escape me that you are newly widowed, nor that by surprising you like this I am being unbelievably gauche – wrong, even. But you see, very soon now I must decide where I am to be posted. And, once I do, then in no time at all I shall be gone from here. So, I hope you understand that although I am being utterly reprehensible, I have to do this.’ In that moment, she felt a surge of terror so deep that she started to pull away from him. ‘Kate, please would you do me the honour of becoming my wife?’

  Was she going to faint? Things around her had certainly taken on a peculiar appearance. And in her ears was that funny rushing sound that usually came just before everything went dark. Breathing far too rapidly for comfort, she resisted her previous inclination to get away from him and grasped his hands as tightly as she could.

  ‘I can’t—’

  ‘You’ve no need to give me your answer this moment,’ he hastened to add. Despite her confusion, the earnestness of his tone was unmissable. ‘But I have to ask. Before it is too late. You do see that, don’t you?’

  When she tried to swallow, it felt as though her tongue had become stuck to the roof of her mouth. And yet it was vital that she say what was on her mind. ‘I do see it, yes. But… but you must surely see that for something of this… this… enormity, well, I can’t just decide upon it, not just like that, not so sudden.’

  Keeping hold of her hands, he took a small step backwards. ‘No. I realize that. I expected that was how you would feel. Which is why I say that you need not answer me now. All I ask is that you think about it – perhaps think about what you would like to ask me – what you would like to know before you can reach your decision. Please know that I shall happily tell you anything. Anything at all.’

  The sensation in her head was a disconcerting one: while a good part of her mind felt completely beyond making sense of anything at all, a small corner of it seemed to have a clarity like never before. And that was the part that felt to be connected to her tongue.

  ‘You can’t fail to have seen,’ she began, wishing that her hands hadn’t grown so sticky, ‘that I have discarded my widow’s weeds, even though by most folks’ standards I shouldn’t have. But I shouldn’t want you to think that just because I have—’

  ‘I don’t,’ he interrupted her. ‘I respect that you are still in mourning. Which is all the more reason why blindsiding you like this makes me a cad—’

  Unable to disagree more, she shook her head. ‘You’re not.’

  ‘Well, thank you for saying so. But tell me that you at least see my dilemma.’ Not entirely sure that she did, she simply stood looking back at him. ‘Well, then permit me to explain. If there is any chance whatsoever, no matter how small, that you might accept me, then I shouldn’t want to decide the path of my future employment without reference to you first. For instance, would you be happy to live in Gloucestershire, or would you only ever want to return to London?’

  Suddenly, she understood what he meant about complications, and felt moved to at least help him on that score. ‘I know not a single thing of Gloucestershire,’ she said.

  ‘But, if I decided against London, you wouldn’t mind that?’

  In the full knowledge that she was getting ahead of herself, she shook her head. ‘I shouldn’t mind somewhere that wasn’t London.’

  ‘Then tomorrow, I shall write a letter stating that I wish to accept the promotion into the new intelligence unit.’ Finally lowering her hands, he gently let them go. ‘And then, without mentioning the matter to you again unless you first raise it with me, I shall await your response – be that weeks from now… or months. Or even years. Yes, I shall wait years, if that’s what it takes for you to be certain.’

  Fearing that her eyes were about to fill with tears, and biting down on the side of her tongue in a bid to stem them, she watched him take several steps backwards.

  ‘I give you my word that I shall think on this carefully,’ she said. ‘And I thank you for understanding my situation… for not pressing me to answer, for in all conscience, I couldn’t.’

  His response was to give her a single nod. ‘If I leave you alone now with your thoughts, will you be all right making your way back up by yourself? Or would you prefer that I wait – back up on the path, I mean – until you are ready to return?’


  Knowing how close she was to crying – and that once she started, she might not easily stop – she shook her head. ‘No, please, you go on. I know the way back up better than anyone.’

  ‘You will be quite all right? Only, if I should have to come to your rescue twice in the space of a few short weeks, people might talk…’

  To her own surprise, she laughed. ‘Go on with you,’ she urged. ‘I give you my word, I’ll be back up dreckly.’

  And anyway, she thought as he turned away and she watched his progress back across the sand, unlike that last time she was here, it wasn’t pouring with rain; at least this time when she sank to her knees and started to cry, she was unlikely to catch her death of cold: death from heartbreak, yes, that might be her fate. After all, no matter the life he was offering her, and no matter how much she might want to accept him, she knew in her heart that she could do no such thing.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Dilemmas

  She couldn’t do it. By rights, she shouldn’t even be considering it. And yet, she found that she was. Indeed, it was the only thing on her mind from the moment she opened her eyes in the morning until she closed them again at night – the only thing.

  It was now several days since Rowley’s proposal and, every time Kate recalled what had happened down in the cove, she was engulfed by a wave of guilt powerful enough to make her feel sick. Indeed, immediately after the incident, she had gone straight to bed, feigning a severe headache and refusing all remedies, insisting instead that all she needed was a good night’s sleep. Not surprisingly, she hadn’t got it; once in her room, with daylight still showing through the curtains, she’d got up again and paced about. Even when she had felt weary beyond all belief and had finally climbed back into bed, all she had done was toss and turn until, eventually, the light of the new morning had started to brighten the room. But, reluctant to face anyone for fear she would be unable to conceal the scale of her guilt, she had remained in bed, accepting only tea and toast from a concerned Naomi.