by P. G. Glynn
‘My dear,
Yes, I’m still here despite the Jerries doing their worst. Fancy you being in Monmouthshire! Not that I should be too surprised. You’re never where I expect you to be and never were, as I remember. I now run this house single-handed, but for Maggie, as mother died a few years back. Other than that and the air raids things with me haven’t changed.
It isn’t like you to wait for an invitation! Only a fool would come to London just now if they didn’t have to but I reckon you’re fool enough. When you come you can have the den for as long as you want it. Don’t know about being as we were. No doubt you’re still a beauty, but be warned that I’m just a little old lady!
Whatever we are, we’re friends as ever …and I see another of your old friends daily.
Best love, Nell’
Marie stared, transfixed, at Nell’s last sentence. It seemed to be written bigger than the rest and to hit her physically as she read and re-read it. Which ‘old friend’ could Nell mean? She couldn’t possibly mean Charles … could she? No, of course she couldn’t. Why would Nell be seeing him daily? She was always in awe of him, besides which if she meant him she would have given his name.
On the other hand, perhaps his was the one name she would not have given! Anyone else’s she could surely give freely, whereas …
“Who’s your letter from, then?” Mam’s question, over breakfast, broke the spell.
Marie answered absently: “Nell.”
“And who’s she, when she’s at home?”
Lucy, seeing Marie’s faraway expression, said: “I expect she’s the Nell who came to tea, back in 1919.”
“Good grief!” exclaimed Janet. “I haven’t heard a word about her from that day to this. It can’t be that Nell – can it?”
“It can,” Marie said, still adrift, “and she’s asking me to go and stay with her.”
“In London?” Janet queried disbelievingly, having seen the letter’s postmark. “Nobody in their right mind would go there, with bombs dropping left, right and centre.”
“I might.”
“Talk sense, girl!”
“When was I ever sensible?”
“Never, that I can remember. So now’s a good time to start … and perhaps while starting you can set your son an example. I never heard anything so daft as him marrying Helena Gwyn. Hugo needs to find someone of his own kind.”
“Which kind is that?” Marie asked.
“He’s heir to a castle. Tom Gwyn is just a farmer. Besides which,” Janet added quickly when she saw the scorn in her daughter’s eyes, “she’s non-conformist and he’s been brought up as a Catholic.”
“So history’s repeating itself,” Marie said, “although not in every sense.”
Janet gaped. “My, you’re brazen! Fancy having the front to bring that up again!”
“Mam, ever since you first heard that Helena had agreed to marry Hugo, you’ve been probing as to whether there’s an underlying reason for their seeming haste. So I’m telling you that there isn’t. They are marrying next month simply because they love each other deeply and there’s no reason to wait.” She added, smiling across the table at her sister: “Thanks to Lucy and her length of parachute silk, we haven’t even needed to save clothing coupons for Helena’s wedding dress!”
“I’d been hoarding it especially,” Lucy said, “for this very event.”
Determined to have the last word, Janet observed: “Of course they’ll marry in chapel.”
“No,” Marie said with satisfaction, “not in chapel. My son and his beloved will become husband and wife in the little church on Llanelly Hill.”
+++++
On the eve of his marriage, as they strolled together along the canal-bank, Hugo asked his mother: “Do you think Papa would approve of my marrying Helena?”
Marie, linking her arm through his, responded: “If he disapproved, would you still marry her?”
“I’d have to, Mama. I’ve no choice in the matter. Helena and I are two halves of a whole. I … I must have been meant to come to Monmouthshire to find her.”
“So I am forgiven for insisting on leaving Czechoslovakia?”
He grinned. “Yes, you are … though I still think you were hard on Papa.”
“Perhaps I was. At least I was honest. And it had come as quite a shock to know he had gone back on all he had said.”
“He hadn’t so much gone back on it as … as adapted to circumstances.”
“It’s the same thing.”
“I don’t think it is … and don’t believe that at heart you think so, either – or not in respect of that decision of Papa’s.”
“Oh?”
“No, because if you did think so you could never have put so much feeling into that poem.”
“Which poem?”
Hugo quoted: “Let us begin, dear love, where we left off; tie up the broken threads of that old dream … ”
“Oh … I see!” She had been speaking to Charles and he thought she had been speaking to his father. This was no time to disillusion him. “Well, yes, love does colour our vision. Hold on, Hugo, to the love you’re feeling now for Helena. There’ll be mountains ahead for you to climb together, and valleys that can trick the unwary into false imaginings, but if you are true to yourself as well as to her you need never lose the magic.”
“Did you lose it, Mama?”
“If I did, there’s no saying I won’t find it again.”
Puzzled by her demeanour, he asked: “With Papa?”
Marie just smiled, as if lost in a dream.
+++++
The sun shone on the lovely bride as, in a buggy drawn by a white horse, her father transported her through the leafy countryside. All who saw her agreed that Helena looked prettier than a picture in the dress clever Miss Jenkins had made for her. She also wore the lace veil that had been in her family for three generations and carried a bouquet of roses, marguerites and carnations.
She felt the sun’s warmth, saw the church’s steeple above the hedgerows and believed her happiness to be complete. There could surely be no greater joy than to know Hugo was waiting for her on the hilltop … waiting to make her his wife. Such a man could have married virtually anyone on earth, but he had chosen to marry her. His choice was extraordinary for she was nobody special: just Helena, a farmer’s daughter. Hugo made her feel special, though. Because of him she felt capable even of greatness. It would not be easy to leave these familiar hills and go off to live in another country, far from her family and friends, but as long as she was with him she could do difficult things. With Hugo beside her she could do absolutely anything. Today marked a new beginning … and the end of life as she had known it. Helena Berger was about to emerge from Helena Gwyn.
+++++
Watching her son and his bride become husband and wife, Marie was reminded of her own very different wedding and of the love she had had to sacrifice. She had seen Hugo’s expression as he turned to witness Helena’s arrival at his side … seen that this marriage was right. And they had come to the altar unencumbered with emotional clutter or with doubts of any kind. Unlike Marie and Charles, these two had found each other before life had had a chance to create complications. Love ideally should not be complex. It should be simple: as simple as this and as innocent. God bless them!
Tears misting her eyes, Marie acknowledged that she had a letter to write. Now that her son was off her hands she was free to do as she pleased … and she could think of little more pleasing than to see Nell again. She wouldn’t be averse, either, to discovering the identity of the mysterious ‘old friend’ …
47
Last night she had dreamed again of Bill and the dream had seemed so real that several hours later Marie was still in shock from her awakening. Aboard a Paddington-bound train, she reflected on the strange world one entered during sleep. Where was that world and how was it that the past was preserved there so perfectly? Perhaps there existed a parallel universe for lovers, who could re-visit events almost at
will, if only in dreams.
Or was this too fanciful? Marie supposed it might be, but wished she could have back as reality the magic of 1919. To be the girl again that she was then, with London and Charles entranced by her – oh, how happy she would be! But the clock’s busy hands had decreed that she was no longer a girl. Nor would London be the city she remembered. Today – 3rd September – was the third anniversary of the outbreak of war and she must brace herself for changes. At least she knew that Nell’s house was still standing, so something was the same – if little else, according to the newspapers. It troubled her that the girl Charles once loved had gone forever, leaving in her stead a woman he had never met. The years had taken their toll and altered more than her features. As her train reached its destination, she rather hoped Charles was not the old friend Nell had mentioned. Better that he remember the Marie of 1919 than see the mature woman of 1942 …
Paddington had been bombed beyond recognition. Whole streets had vanished in badly blitzed areas and there were now makeshift car parks where there had once been buildings. Marie saw all the damage – interspersed with milling military personnel - from the taxi transporting her to Nell’s. She also heard a running commentary from her cabbie, who chatted as only London cabbies can, and observed that parks and squares looked bare without their railings, which she knew had been removed to provide metal for the manufacture of guns and tanks. It was a relief to see that despite Westminster Abbey and Big Ben both having suffered hits the clock was still functioning. At least Hitler had not succeeded in damaging that! It was one of all too few causes for thanks.
Approaching Camden Town, Marie’s heart started pounding. She was about to see Nell – twenty-one years on, by the calendar’s reckoning, from when she last saw her friend. Their lives had led them in such opposite directions yet now they were converging again. How thrilling … how awesome!
“This is it, missus. Number twenty-eight, you said? That’ll be three and sixpence.”
In a daze she paid the affable driver, giving him a generous tip. He then carried both her suitcases up Nell’s gateless front path, enabling Marie to gaze at the tall house with its peeling paint and air of fading grandeur. In essence it was still the same. So would Nell, for all her protests that these days she was ‘just a little old lady’, not really have changed?
Marie had her answer before she had a chance to lift the heavy knocker on the front door. She had hardly reached the front step and drawn breath before the door was thrown open by her friend who, beaming, said: “Marie … at last!”
Then Marie was clasping Nell in her arms and being clasped. It was as if in the warmth of their hug time hung suspended, for when they gazed at each other eventually they could see the girls they had been more clearly than the women whose skins they now inhabited. Certainly, Nell was essentially the same as she had always been. Oh, happy, happy homecoming!
Ushered through the long, dark hall to the big kitchen, Marie was pleased to see that Maggie - who had a kettle of welcome on - was still going strong. Slim and nimble, with freckles like Nell and an unruly crop of reddish curls, she had hardly changed at all from the old days. She was soon shooing a cat from a chair with handclaps and urgent gestures.
“I might have guessed,” Marie commented, “that in twenty years the cat population would not have decreased.”
“Grab that chair vacated by Samson and take the weight off your feet,” Nell suggested, hugging her again. “Then tell me you’re really here. I’ve dreamed so often of our reunion that I can hardly believe I’m not dreaming.”
Smiling from a chair that she hoped was not covered in cat-hair, and accepting a cup of tea from Maggie, Marie responded: “I think this is real, though sometimes it’s hard to tell, isn’t it? So much that happened has the quality of a dream. But if I am actually here, it’s wonderful to be back … and if I’m not, well I hope the dream runs long enough for us to catch up properly.”
Nell grinned. “You’re just the same. I was afraid you might have changed.”
“And I was afraid you might have. Thank God you haven’t! I’m amazed, though, that your name’s still Sedgwick. I’d expected you to have been carted off to the altar long since.”
“There’s been nobody to match Billy – and certainly nobody interested in taking on my whole family.” Nell gesticulated to embrace Maggie, the cats and the people populating the upper storeys. She looked a little wistful as she added: “I always had too much baggage, Marie, especially after mother died, leaving me to run this whole household. Even if the right man had chanced along, I couldn’t have abandoned my old-timers, could I?”
“I suppose not. How many lodgers have you got?”
“Nine, at the last count – non-feline lodgers, that is. Counting the cats, I think …” Laughing at Marie’s expression she said: “Not that you’d want me to count them, especially if any have strayed into your den and had kittens!”
“They’d better not have!”
“Don’t worry. Everyone has been under strict orders to keep your door shut.”
“Gott sei Dank! Giddy godfathers – I can’t believe I just said that.”
“I’m glad they’re still alive and kicking. Was it German – what you said?”
“Yes, it was,” Marie said reflectively. “Which is odd, given how resistant I was to Otto’s language, even when I lived where it’s spoken.”
“Which brings me to my next question. How is Otto? He isn’t … dead, is he?”
“If he is, nobody has told me.”
“How do you mean?”
“It’s a very long story.”
“I thought it might be! Tell me, dear, over another cup of tea … ”
+++++
Much later, up in the den, when Marie had acquainted Nell with the main events of her recent and less recent history, she said: “I’ve talked myself hoarse, without letting you tell me anything. What’s your story, Nell?”
“Compared to yours, what with murder, madness and mayhem, I don’t have a story.” Nell looked hard at her friend before adding: “There’s a question, though, that I’m surprised you haven’t asked me yet. Or, with all my many questions, have I not given you the chance?”
“You know me better than that,” answered Marie. They were sitting side-by-side on the bed they had once lain on to read her ‘notices’ and she found she was trembling as she said: “I wouldn’t wait to be given the chance; I’d just take it, if …”
“If?” Nell prompted, when Marie didn’t finish.
“If your answer meant less than it does. I’m finding that it means rather too much.”
“I can see that,” Nell said, reaching for both Marie’s hands and holding them. “Oh, my dear, even after all these years … ?”
“They’ve made no difference, especially now that I’m back in London. It’s suddenly as if I never went away … as if time’s totally meaningless. Talk to me, Nell. Tell me … whatever needs the telling.”
A seemingly lengthy silence and then: “Remember Guy Brodie? Oh, silly me, how would you not remember him? Well, back before the war, when I was walking along Regent Street I bumped headlong into him and we’ve been in touch ever since. He didn’t stay in the theatre – or not as an actor. He became a drama-teacher – and now has sons of his own.”
“So Charles is a grandfather!” Marie breathed, her chest constricting. “Tell me he is, Nell. Tell me Charles is … unharmed.”
Squeezing her friend’s hands reassuringly, Nell told her: “Yes, he’s alive. He’s also a … widower. Madeleine died a few years ago, in France.”
“In France?”
“Yes, she had left him for a Frenchman and gone back to Paris when it happened.”
“When what happened?”
“She fell to her death from a boat on the Seine. Guy says it was probably a blessing. She had cancer, you see, and it was inoperable. Better a quick death by drowning than a slow one, rotting.”
“My giddy aunt! And Charles hasn’t … ha
sn’t remarried?”
“Not a chance! You’re a hard act to follow, Marie, both on-stage and off. I reckon Guy’s chief reason for keeping in touch with me was that he hoped for news of you. In different circumstances I’m sure that, if you’d wanted to, you could have become Mrs Brodie twice over. You have the strangest effect on men, captivating them and then … keeping them captive, wherever in the world you happen to be. If you could bottle your formula, you’d make a fortune!”
“I could certainly do with one. From being a wealthy woman in Bohemia, I’ve become somewhat impoverished over here. Though I was able to bring some funds with me, and jewellery, I couldn’t bring enough to support Hugo and me indefinitely. It’s an odd feeling, to have had so much materially and now to have so little.”
“It must be, although never having been rich it’s hard to imagine riches.”
“They’re irrelevant,” said Marie, “compared to people, and feelings, except in the sense that we all need money to live on.” She thought back to the end of Nell’s letter and said: “Surely it can’t be that you see Guy daily?”
“No, it can’t,” Nell agreed. “I wasn’t referring to Guy, you see.”
For a moment Marie was bewildered. Then, her eyes widening, she whispered: “Who, then? You can’t mean … ”
“I can,” Nell said gently. “Charles lives here, with me. Oh, not – obviously – in the way that sounded!”
Marie, feeling slow-witted, could hardly breathe. “Are you saying that he’s one of your nine … ?”
“ … lodgers. Yes, he is. Charles fell on hard times and Guy brought him here.”
“Christ!” Closing her eyes, she forced herself to take a deep breath before querying involuntarily: “Can I see him?”
“You can, dear, but before you do I ought to warn you … ”
