Starlight (The Four Lights Quartet Book 1)

by Fergus O'Connell

  ‘So you really have left him?’

  ‘Yes. I’ve rented a place a few miles away. I still go over there every day —’

  His voice rose slightly.

  ‘So you haven’t really?’

  ‘No. I have,’ she said quietly. ‘We’re in the process of making alternative arrangements. Then, I won’t go so often and eventually it’ll probably become just a couple of times a year. Holidays, birthdays, that sort of thing. I’ve already met with a solicitor and the divorce proceedings have been started now. I suppose that’s all less complicated now, she said, since … Robert can’t … well, we’re not really married, not like that, any more.’

  ‘So what are you going to do now?’

  ‘Decide where I want to live.’ she said, ‘Go back to teaching the piano. Get an income is the first priority. Independence. That’s one of the things I learned from you, Lewis.’

  They were silent again.

  ‘And you – you stayed in the Army.’

  Lewis told her what he had been doing.

  ‘At the time it felt like everything good in my life had died, so being amongst the dead seemed like the only place to be.’

  ‘And will you keep doing that?’ she asked.

  He shook his head.

  ‘We’re going to be disbanded in a few weeks. My enlistment is up in July. I don’t know what I’ll do. I don’t know where I’ll go.’

  They had come to the river, smooth as glass, and turned right along its bank. After a long time, he said, ‘Why did you get in touch with me?’

  ‘To apologise. To close a circle. There was a lot between us that had been left unsaid.’

  ‘And now you’ve said it?’ he asked.

  ‘Some of it.’

  ‘What else is there?’

  ‘Have you met anybody – a woman, I mean?’

  He told her about Sandrine.

  ‘She sounds like she would be good for you,’ said Helen. ‘A nice quiet life in a small city like this. It could be good for you after everything you’ve been through.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Lewis. ‘I can’t really picture myself as an hotelier.’

  ‘No,’ she said, and there was a smile in her voice, ‘neither can I.’

  Then, after a pause, he said ‘And you – have you met anybody?’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ she said. ‘That would be the last thing on earth I would want right now.’

  The way she said ‘silly’ reminded him of the way she used to call him ‘silly’ – ‘What are you doing down here, silly?’

  ‘So what do you want now Helen?’ he said, stopping and turning to her.

  ‘I just want to be happy,’ she said and then, as he was about to interrupt she added, ‘I was happy when I was with you.’

  She smiled.

  ‘It was so unlikely. We were so unlikely. But I was happy.’

  ‘And what about all that about our age difference?’

  ‘Do you know, Lewis, maybe there was a time when that would have mattered. But one of the things I realised is that you can’t worry about the future. We only have today. Now.’

  ‘I learned that in the War,’ he said. ‘I think it was how I got through it.’

  ‘We’ve both had to learn it the hard way,’ she said, ‘although I think yours was a lot harder than mine.’

  ‘So what are you saying?’ he said. ‘Why have you really come here?’

  She took a deep breath. It sounded more like a sigh.

  ‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘When you get out of the Army, we could try again.’

  Whatever he had been expecting, it hadn’t been this.

  ‘How do you know you’re not just afraid of ending up on your own?’

  ‘Lewis,’ she said. ‘I’ve been alone most of my life. When I was a child, when I was married. Being alone holds no fears for me.’

  ‘If we did start again, it would only be a few weeks and you’d be wanting to go back to him.’

  ‘That’s not what would happen, Lewis.’

  ‘Of course it is,’ he said. ‘Isn’t that what was happening all the time we were together? You were physically with me but in your head you were with him.’

  ‘Things change, Lewis. People can change. I’ve changed.’

  ‘How can I know that? How could I ever be sure of it?’

  ‘You want some kind of guarantee?’

  His silence was a yes. She shook her head slowly.

  ‘I can’t give you that. Life’s not like that. I’m saying that this is the way I feel and this is what I would like to do. I love you, Lewis. It’s taken me all this time – all this wasted time, all this heartache I’ve caused you, to realise this.’

  She had said the words. They were the first time he had heard them from her lips.

  ‘Maybe it sounds stupid to you. There’s this bloody age difference. Maybe you now think of me as a sad old woman, and that’s alright if you do. But I don’t think I’ll ever find anybody who’s as good as you – who’s as good for me and to me as you were. I’m just so sorry it’s taken all this to make me realise that.’

  They had nearly reached a bridge with three arches. Dusk was descending slowly onto the river bank and the sky had become a very deep blue. Across the river, along the partially rebuilt far bank, lights were being lit in the houses. He could see the tables and tablecloths of a restaurant through its plate glass window. The lights threw splashes of yellow like paint onto the inky blue of the Somme. That terrible name.

  ‘And if the age difference worried you,’ she said, ‘we could go and live in a place where nobody cared. It doesn’t have to be England. France maybe. Greece. It would be an adventure …’

  She tailed off and then she said, ‘But now you have to say, Lewis. You have to say what you want.’

  ‘I just want things to be as they were,’ he said.

  ‘And they could be,’ she said, and for the first time, he thought he heard some of her old passion.

  ‘They couldn’t,’ he said, with great sadness. ‘It’s too late for that now.’

  ‘How can you know?’ she said. ‘If this is what you want, surely you should try.’

  ‘You know,’ he said. ‘Maybe that actually isn’t what I want.’

  ‘So what then?’

  ‘I don’t want to be alone any more. I’m tired of it.’

  ‘We’re all alone, Lewis. The only person who’s with you your whole life is yourself. It’s just that sometimes, on the journey, if we’re lucky, we meet other people. We team up with them. I was lucky enough to meet you. I was lucky and I was stupid because I didn’t realise how lucky I was.’

  He heard what she said but another feeling was dawning on him.

  ‘It’s not being alone either. It’s not that. I know what it is now. I just want a woman to love me and I want to love her back.’

  ‘Like you did with your Mum, before all that was taken from you?’

  He could feel tears smarting in his eyes. He nodded, unable to speak. She looked into his eyes.

  ‘What we had … what we did in Fowey? Is that what you mean? For you … was that love?’

  Lewis didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know what he was feeling. It was all hopelessly complicated. Mum, Helen, the War, Sandrine, Helen again. Life as he knew it would be ending in a few weeks. What would he do? Where would he go? And no matter what he did or where he went, what was the point of it all? Before the War it had all seemed so clear. Since it ended nothing was clear.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said.

  They continued on in silence. It was dark now and cold. There would probably be a mist on the Somme tonight. If not here in Amiens then certainly upstream where it joined the Ancre and on up to dismal Albert where so many had suffered and died. The silence lengthened until eventually, she broke it by saying, ‘I suppose I should be getting back.’

  He said nothing. She turned and began to walk back the way they had come. With just a few steps she had almost disappeared into the darkness.
A star had become visible. The spire of the Cathedral rose into the blackness on the left, a diffuse black needle against the backdrop of the night sky. Lewis walked after her and caught up with her.

  ‘When are you going back to England?’

  ‘Tomorrow. There’s a train about ten in the morning.’

  They were walking more briskly now – whether from the cold or because they were people whose business had been concluded. A horse clip clopped across the bridge ahead, the cart it pulled trundling behind it. On the far bank, somebody – maybe the cook in the restaurant before his shift started – smoked a cigarette, the red tip the only thing visible in the darkness.

  ‘It’s been really good —’ she said.

  ‘Could I take you to —’ he said.

  They spoke together and then both stopped.

  ‘I was going to ask if I could take you to dinner,’ said Lewis. ‘That’s if you wanted to eat.’

  ‘I haven’t eaten since breakfast – and that was only coffee. I’ve been sick about meeting you.’

  ‘We could go across there,’ he said, indicating the restaurant on far bank.

  ‘That would be nice,’ she said.

  He took her hand – it was cold – and together they walked up towards the bridge that would take them across the Somme towards the light.

  Acknowledgements

  I am deeply grateful to Andy Robertshaw for the meticulous care he took in reading the manuscript and pointing out a number of inaccuracies. Any errors that remain are my responsibility alone.