This is no longer Richard, this is Sharon. I came into his room first thing this morning and found him sitting in his chair very upset and when I asked, “What’s up?” he just shook his head. Somehow, he’d got himself out of bed and into that chair beside the window and was very cold and stiff and as white as the snow outside. I called the nurse. Luckily, she stayed last night and she came down, half dressed and looking oddly normal, like someone’s mum. Usually, each morning, when she appears ready for work, she is plastered in God awful orange make-up, for all the world like some old slapper. It’s cruel of me, I know, thinking about her like this, but Christ, she is a horrible sight on a cold winter morning. Jason reckons she spends her days off, plying for trade on the road up to the factories.
“Oh yes,” I said, “you’d know all about that, would you?”
All he does is laugh. I like that about him. He knows when I’m joking. Andrew takes life so seriously, if I’d said that to him, he would have considered the implications of my remark for ages. He likes to pretend he’s relaxed, but he isn’t really.
Anyway, back to the nurse and Richard. Normally I’ve little respect for her, but this morning, I was grateful when she immediately took charge.
“Good heavens!” She took one look at him and started clucking like one of the Hyde’s chickens.
“Mr Wilde,” she squawked, “getting out by yourself is absolutely against doctor’s orders.”
I knew he didn’t feel well, because he let it go and didn’t tell her to bugger off, like he usually does. She puts up with a lot from him without taking offence, which is pretty impressive, but at the same time she can be a pain in the neck and her voice doesn’t help either. It’s so high and screechy; she sounds like a bloody parrot. I guess I should be grateful and I am. I can do her job when I have to, but I don’t like it much and he doesn’t like me doing it. He is conscious of his dignity.
I went to make him a cup of tea while she gave him his bottle and saw to him below. By the time I came back, she had gone upstairs to get dressed.
“Drink this,” I said leaning over him to put the cup to his lips. He sipped weakly, all the time gazing up at me with an expression of such sadness that I felt like gathering his old body in my arms and kissing him better. I noticed dry crusts of tears on his cheeks. Poor Richard, some memory had really upset him.
Nurse saw me dabbing at his face when she came back and pushed me away. “Move over, Sharon,” she said, “I’ll give him a top and tail and then its bed for you, my lad.”
I looked at him and grinned to show him what I thought of her, but for once he didn’t smile back. His old blue eyes just stared back at me for a moment before he turned away, back to gazing out of the window.
Later after we’d got him into bed and settled him comfortably, he slept for a couple of hours and it gave me time to listen to the tape and start to get it onto the computer. Now I know why he was so sad. It took me all my time not to cry too, when I listened to his voice describing how his son had died. At times, it was almost impossible to hear it, because he must have been choking back tears, but I think I’ve got it down.
Thomas came in when I was typing and asked why I looked so unhappy. I didn’t want to tell him, so I laughed.
“I’m not unhappy,” I said, “It’s just my face.”
“Well you’ve got a very funny face, then.”
“Not as funny as yours, cheeky.”
After we’d stopped laughing I told him that we mustn’t make much noise today because Richard wasn’t very well.
His face fell. “Is he going to die?” he asked.
I nodded. “He’s very old, love, and has a bad illness. I don’t think he’ll live much longer.”
He started kicking that damn football round the kitchen, even though I’ve told him a hundred times not to do it. “It’s not fair,” he said when I told him to take it outside.
“I don’t care. You’re not to kick that ball indoors. Do you hear me?”
“I’m not talking about that, silly” he shouted picking up the ball and going to the hall door, “Mr Richard going to die. That’s not fair!”
He’s right, it isn’t fair. Richard doesn’t want to die and I don’t want to lose him, or leave here. This is the first time in my life that I’ve had a secure home and I’m going to hate to leave it. I love this house, I love the space and the light and more than that, I love the fact that Thomas is safe and happy.
I know I’m clutching at straws. We can’t stay here and I’ll have to make a decision soon.
When he woke up I went to sit with him and we watched the snow swirling around the garden. It won’t lie, at least that’s what the forecast on the tele said. It’ll all be gone by morning. But it was pretty.
“Yes.”
He was quiet for a bit and then said. “It hurt me getting all that out. I’ve never liked to think about that time.”
“It must have been terrible,” I said, “I think you’re very brave talking about it.”
“War is terrible. All of it. There’s nothing good in it for anyone.”
“Oh well,” I said, “don’t think about it again. Have a rest from your story for a few days.”
You’d have thought I’d told him to stop breathing, the way he looked at me. “Don’t be so stupid,” he snapped and his voice was nasty. “I’ll be dead in a few days.”
I hate him talking like that. Even though he’s so ill, I almost gave him a earful back, the old bastard, yelling at me. But just as I was taking a breath he stopped me. With surprising strength, considering how feeble he’d been this morning, he put out his hand and touched my arm.
“I’m sorry, my dear. I didn’t mean to lose my temper. Not with you, of all people.”
I swallowed my sudden anger. “Its OK, I don’t mind.” I took his hand in mine and we sat in silence then.
“Is your story finished now?” I asked eventually.” I am stupid, because after what he’d said just before, it’s obvious that it isn’t.
“No,” he said, sitting forward on his pillows and his chest heaving. “I must get down some more. I have to tell it. It’s got to be straight. The record has to be put straight.” His cheeks were burning hot now and the hand in mine was shaking quite badly
I got worried and wondered about getting the nurse down again, but then I remembered that she had gone into town for some shopping.
“OK,” I said, “Calm down. I only wondered. We can do some more whenever you’re ready.” What the hell, I thought. What difference can it make? I want him to be happy and if this is what makes him, then so be it. Never mind what the nurse or even that creepy Donald Clewes thinks. Richard is the person who matters most.
He lay back on the pillows and for a moment, I thought he was dropping off again but he turned his head and looked at me. “Get the microphone,” he said, “I’ll tell you about the jungle.”
I fastened the mike to his collar and sat beside him again with my note book. I’m so glad now that I did that shorthand course. But he waved me away.
“Leave me now, Sharon. I want to be alone for this.”
I left and went into the kitchen to make some soup. When I walked by his room later I could hear him still talking and had to persuade the nurse not to go in. “He’s busy,” I said, and she gave me one of her looks but left him undisturbed for another hour.
It was when he was sleeping that I listened to the tape. His voice is getting weaker, but I know what he’s saying, so when he started with ‘I hated it,’ and then took a deep breath followed by a short silence, I waited and listened for the rest.
“I hated it. Hated the dripping undergrowth that slowed us down so much that our patrols were often late reaching the rendezvous and the officer waiting for us would be nervously pointing to his watch and giving forth with a stream of curses. It steamed and stank. Horrible, sour, rotting smells of dead animals and people, but then sometimes it was disgustingly sweetened by the exotic ripening fruits growing around the edges of the dense wet forest. You could feel sick merely taking in a breath, but that could have been fear as well.
We were all frightened and any man who says he wasn’t, is a liar, or mad. Nobody admitted it at the time of course, banter was the order of the day, banter, filthy jokes and foul language. How else do men keep their courage up? Not the Bible, I can tell you. Even the Padre, who was part of our company, kept his religion to himself, even turning away, pretending to adjust his pack whenever we had a prisoner to dispatch. God was on our side, you see. The Japs were heathens.
Seeing Japs burst out of the jungle in front of us, yelling and screaming, firing wildly, with their little officers waving swords and the sun glinting off their glasses, was a sight that made my guts turn to water. It took all my training and nerve to stay calm and keep my finger on the trigger of my Lee Enfield.
“Wait!” I would hiss to my squad, “and keep your fucking heads down.”
I wonder if I could have been so steady if I had been just an ordinary squaddy. Being in charge makes you think more clearly and having to care for young men who are so frightened, is a great boost towards behaving well. They liked me, I think, and trusted my judgement. Lewis’s cheerfulness and good sense in battle helped too. Before he was killed, I managed to get him his stripes back. He deserved them.
That bastard, Captain Parker came with us on one mission. Why? Well I don’t think it was his idea, all his career he had stayed out of direct trouble, hiding in an office and criticising those who did the real soldiering. I couldn’t stomach him. Trying to play the ‘big I am’ when he barely knew what the hell he was doing. Jack Barnes, took him aside and gave him a mouthful, which we weren’t supposed to hear, but we did.
“You’ll answer to a court martial for that, Lieutenant Barnes,” says Parker.
“Do what you fucking like, when we get back to base, but here, keep your mouth shut. You haven’t a clue what’s going on and will get us all killed if you carry on.”
We fell into an ambush on the last night of our patrol. Our objective was to cut the railway line between Rangoon and Mandalay and cause havoc to the Jap supply system. We’d done it and were on our way out when we came upon a nest of Japs. Walked straight into them, surprising them eating their supper. Normally we would have smelled them first before stumbling into their clearing, you always could. It was their food you could pick out above the smell of the jungle, but that night the monsoon rains were teeming down, deadening everything for miles around and we strolled into their camp.
“Surrender,” screamed Parker, before anyone had moved.
“Fuck that,” I lifted the Bren I’d been carrying that day, a useless weapon most of the time, and sprayed a round into the group sitting round the camp fire. The rest of the squad followed my lead and Jack Barnes threw a couple of grenades into the clearing but Parker ran around, hands up, begging the Jap to take him prisoner. To my alarm, more of them suddenly appeared out of the trees, firing like crazy and screaming like they always did.
I’m not sure who killed Parker, but one of us did. He suddenly tipped over sideways, hands still in the air and lunatic eyes wide open. I know that I fired a volley of shots in his direction and out of the side of my eye, I saw Jack Barnes raise his pistol and carefully site a shot. But then, the Japs were after him too. Maybe they got him.
After it was over, we looked down at him, the only one of us killed, though a couple of men had wounds and one died of his later in the hospital after we got back.
“What about him?” asked Jack.
“We’ll bury him here. Killed in action. Very honourable,” I said. I never looked at him in the eye and he the same. Nothing more was said but I was secretly so glad. All those years of snide remarks, ignorant comments and put downs. Captain Parker was one man who needed killing, in my book.
Oh it makes me tired even thinking about those years of fighting. It wasn’t only the combat, it was the waiting. If I close my eyes, I’m in a little clearing, back against a tree, eyes peeled wide open for the slightest movement in the green dripping mass in front of me. And Lewis, beside me, sucking his teeth as he always did when all the world was still, and I can see the knuckles of his hand whitening as he gripped the barrel of his Lee Enfield.
At night he would hum very softly, always the same tune, ‘Bobbie Shaftoe’ I learned that as a child and didn’t realise that it was a Geordie song until I heard him. Lewis didn’t even know the words, only the tune, over and over again. It didn’t matter how many times I told him to shut up, after a quick ‘sorry’ he would start up again
“I been told that the little yellow bastards are probably deaf, man,” he would whisper and then grin at me with brown teeth.
Bloody nuisance he was and I swear he once gave our position away with that damn song but nonetheless, I always felt safe when he was around. He would watch my back, see.
It was hard staying awake sometimes, especially when you’d been tracking through the jungle all day and crossing rivers onto higher ground. My legs would be like jelly when we stopped and I was almost afraid to sit down for fear of never getting up. And then when I did, I could feel my eyes closing, sitting on the ground knowing that the forest around us and the rocks above could be swarming with the enemy, ready and eager to kill me.”
This is Sharon again. Richard drifted off when I went into him so I changed the tape and brought it back here in the kitchen to listen to while I made supper. Jason came round to join us. I told him about Richard’s army service and how horrible he had made it sound.
“I knew about that,” he said. “Everyone in the village does. He was in the thick of the action in the Far East until he was invalided out. I think he was what they called a Chindit, sort of Special Forces. They went behind enemy lines to blow up bridges and railways. You should see his medals. He pins them on for Poppy Day and my Dad says that they would outdo every man in the district. He won the Military Cross, amongst other things.”
The medals are in the drawer of his desk. He got them out once to show Thomas, holding the double row out in his old shaking hand so that my little boy could take them.
“When did you get this one, Mr Richard?” he asked, pointing to a medal with a red white and blue ribbon.
Richard touched the metal cross. “I can’t remember,” he said and stared at the silver medal and ribbon as though it would tell him the story he had forgotten. “I can’t remember,” he said again and he looked so distressed that I took the medals out of Thomas’s hands and put them on the table.
“Enough now, love,” I said, “it’s time for bed.”
He went up and I stayed with Richard who was looking at the row of medals as though they were something he had never seen before.
“This is the Military Cross,” he said, pointing to the one that Thomas had been waving about. “And do you know, I can’t remember what I did to get it.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said, “whatever you got it for, it means that you were a very brave man.”
“Maybe,” he said, sitting back in his chair to stare again out of the window. He is getting vague now and almost far away.
I came back to him this evening after nurse had finished and he was more awake.
“I want to talk some more,” he said. “I have to get it recorded.”
“O.K,” I said. “I’m all yours.”
For some reason that tickled him and he started to laugh; so much that it brought on a bout of coughing and he had to have a few whiffs from the oxygen machine before he was ready to speak again.
“I used to say that to Elizabeth, when she telephoned to ask me about a problem on the farm in Ireland. It was a joke between us, don’t you see? I was always ‘all hers’ in every way. She wasn’t the same. She didn’t want me as a permanent fixture after John was killed. “I can’t be hurt again,” she’d say. “You could be killed too.” But I didn’t give up.
“That’s what I spent the money on, the money that Billy had given me and the extra that I’d saved. I bought her a farm in west of Ireland. It was nothing much when we took it, a hundred acres or so, which sounds a lot but land was dirt cheap then and that particular lot wasn’t best grazing. Later on she added to it, bit by bit. She was a good businesswoman and I helped her with money, so by the end she had bought up the whole estate. Estate, ha! Six farms that brought in a few quid and a big grey stone house set in five acres of overgrown parkland that needed all of that few quid and more, spending on it. It must have been wonderful once, but the last owner lived in it like a pig. Fair play, the old boy was well into his nineties when he passed on and had been taken for a ride by all his tenants, save Elizabeth.
“‘My God,’ I said when I went over in the sixties and she had moved into the big house, ‘you’re quite the lady of the manor, all this parkland and a lake, for Christ’s sake.’
“All she did was laugh. ‘Nice, isn’t it, or at least, it will be,’ she said and rang the bell for the maid to bring us tea.
“From the drawing room, you could see across the park to the village church and the cemetery where my son was buried. As I stood looking out on the view Elizabeth brought me a cup of tea and lingered beside me.
“‘We’re altogether, now,’ she said. ‘That’s what I always wanted’.”
That night in her grand bedroom, she asked me to leave home and come and live with her in Ireland.
“‘D’you mean that? Do you mean marriage?’ I was flabbergasted. For all those long years after John died, she had kept me at arm’s length, welcoming my regular visits, but never wanting our old closeness to be resurrected. We’d been together often, I went to see her four or five times a year and we were as loving as ever. There was never a problem about our loving each other; that side of us never faded, but she wouldn’t make the commitment and I had to be grateful for the part of our lives that we did have. It wasn’t so bad, you know, not many people are lucky enough to have a love affair that lasts for nearly forty years.
I lay on that huge four poster bed beside her and gazed at the Chinese patterned wallpaper that she had left on the walls. It was torn in places and faded in others but most of it was fine. It was lovely, turquoise blue, with peacocks and pagodas and little bridges perched over running streams. You could stare at it for ever.
“‘You want to marry me after all this time?’ I said again, turning to face her and uncertain that I had heard her correctly.
“‘Yes, I do.’
“Oh, what a facer. I had wanted this for all of my adult life and now she was finally offering us the chance to live out the rest of our lives together. My Elizabeth, still beautiful at sixty with her white hair and brilliant blue eyes. She turned heads even then, when we went for a meal or now and then to races, which I had grown to enjoy. My family had never gone racing. It was a bit too rich for our plain Protestant blood but when I was with her in Ireland, all that nonsense was put aside. A day on a muddy race-course, with a roll of notes in one mackintosh pocket and a flask of whisky in the other and I was a happy man. It didn’t matter that I was getting on in years. I was grizzled now, my red hair so peppered with grey that I looked like an old dog fox, who would be better off put out of his misery. But Elizabeth still liked me, still thought I was smart and linked my arm when we were out, as though she was proud to be seen with me.
“‘Will you, Richard?’ She sat up in bed and pushed her hair out of her eyes. She was wearing a white cotton nightdress with a lace pattern on the front. It looked too big for her and I noticed how thin her wrists were as they poked through the frilled cuffs. ‘Will you marry me and come to live here with me?’
“Do you know what I did then? I burst into tears just like that stupid lad I’d been all those many years ago when I couldn’t have the thing I wanted. Now I had it and it was almost too much.
“She held me, soothing my face and whispering most loving words in my ear until I had got over my tears and was able to kiss her and whisper my reply.
“‘Yes, Elizabeth. Of course I’ll marry you and gladly.’
“That night I didn’t sleep, but lay awake thinking about practicalities. I would have to sell Manor Farm and give up all my other bits of business. In the years after the war I did quite well in business, first in the contracting business then building and finally buying a garage and selling motor cars. It was being on my own that made it possible. Men with families don’t have the time but after Mother died, I was completely alone at the farm. In the daytime, of course, there were men about, one of the old farm workers from Billy’s time who had come home safe from the war and Ernie, who would stay with me until the day he died. I had another two men as well. I needed them because I was spending more and more time away in business and on my frequent trips to Ireland.
“I made money, a lot really, but apart from presents for Elizabeth and a succession of newer and bigger cars, I spent very little. The house was nicely furnished and well maintained and I would take myself off for a holiday in the mountains every year. Because of my war injuries, climbing was no longer possible, but I could walk and I’ve explored the lower slopes of many of the great mountain ranges. I even went back to the Northwest Frontier one springtime.
“That market place in Peshawar hadn’t changed one jot since my last posting there in the thirties and as I walked through the busy dusty streets, breathing in the cold clean air scented with spice from the roadside cook-shops, I could almost believe that I’d never been away. But it was different, when you took a longer look. The British army had gone and although a few Europeans had stayed on, they were strangers now in a land in which they had no standing and little respect. I felt sorry for them and glad for the Pakistanis at the same time.
“Oh, I’m wandering again and there’s so little time to tell you the whole story. Give me drink of that tea and I’ll carry on. No, don’t fuss girl, I’m all right. Put that microphone closer to my mouth.”
“I came home a couple of days later, to set in motion the sale of Manor Farm.
“What the hell has got into you?” said Fred Darlington when I went to tell him about putting the house and land on the market. He was retired from the police now but still living in the village, in one of the new houses.
“You know,” I said, “I’ve always wanted to be with her and this is my chance.”
“But you can’t sell the farm. The Wildes have been there all this century.” He snorted. “You know what will happen. Another housing estate will go up.”
I thought that was rich coming from him, living in the estate that had laid waste to the beautiful grounds of Cleeton Hall. “You’re a fine one to talk,” I growled, “and anyway, the place will have to be sold sometime. I’ve no-one to carry on.”
That was the truth. I had no-one and I did so want to spend my last years with Elizabeth, so I went ahead with my plans.
I bought a diamond and sapphire engagement ring and a gold and diamond watch for her and put them in the top drawer of my dressing table. Every night while I was waiting for the sale to go through, I would telephone her and we would plan what we were going to do with the money. Doing up that ruin of a house was the priority and then improving the land. Drainage was necessary and clearing the scrub. Oh I had great plans. And all the time I would look at the ring and the watch and imagine her face when I gave them to her. Did I remember the watch that Johnny Lowe had given her and was trying after all these many years to match it? I don’t know. I expect somewhere deep in my heart I was, but I didn’t recognise my foolishness. When had I ever? All I knew was that I was happy. Happier than I had been for years with so much to look forward to.
One night when I phoned, she sounded strange. “What’s up?” I said, nervous.
“Nothing, really, I’ve just got a bit of indigestion. Stop fussing.”
After that we carried on with our conversation as normal, but I could hear that she was breathless every now and then and I went to bed worried. I couldn’t sleep and several times nearly picked up the telephone and dialled her number. But I never did. I knew that I would be doing it more for my peace of mind than hers.
The next morning I was tired and bad-tempered with the men when they came to work, shouting that the farm might be for sale, but it still had to be worked properly.
“OK, boss,” said one of the youngsters, “keep your hair on.”
That remark sent me into such a rage that I sacked him on the spot and turned to others offering to do the same for them. Sensibly, they kept their heads down and for the rest of the day, only Ernie, who hadn’t the brains to stay quiet, spoke to me.
“Two of the calves is scouring, master,” he said. “Will you drench them?”
I was ready to go for him, boiling up again because something had gone wrong and my control of events was slipping away. I could feel my fist curling up and if he’d said another word, I’d have hit him and enjoyed the satisfaction of taking out my frustration on him. But then I saw the fear in his face and sickeningly remembered that that was how he often looked in Billy’s time. That brought me to my senses and I calmed down.
I went inside and telephoned the airport. There was a flight from Liverpool to Dublin that evening and I could hire a car and be with her before ten. That was the best thing to do and before the men went, I organised them to cover the farm.
A doctor was at the great house when I got there, his hat and overcoat lying across a chair in the bare and echoing hall.
“’Tis the doctor,” said the little maid, “the mistress has taken a turn,” and she showed me up to Elizabeth’s room.
My heart was pounding as we climbed the stairs. How would I find her? What did ‘taken a turn’ mean? Was it only a silly little faint or something worse and if worse, why hadn’t she told me? I was frightened and angry at the same time. It was so typical of her, always getting me in a state of confusion. I was ready to have a row with her and entered her room with a scowl on my face.
She was sitting up in the bed, supported by numerous pillows and a folded up eiderdown. Her white hair flowed around her head in its usual wild way and from where I was standing, she looked no different from how she had when I’d left her only two weeks before.
“Is it himself?” asked the doctor, who was standing beside the bed.
“Yes,” she said, and grinned. “See, I told you he would come.”
I hurried across the big room and slipping past the short, pixie-faced medical man, sat down on the bed beside Elizabeth. “What is it? What has happened?”
“I told you not to fuss,” she said, but I knew she was glad I’d come. Her hands held mine in a surprisingly strong grip and she leaned forward to give me a kiss.
“It’s the heart, this time,” said the doctor. “Haven’t I been telling her these last months not to do so much. But will she listen? Not a chance.”
“Away with you, you’re nothing but an old woman,” Elizabeth whispered, resting her head on my shoulder. I took her in my arms then and held her, glad that she seemed to be her usual self.
“She should go to the hospital in Galway town.” The doctor gently pulled me away. “I’m going to get the ambulance.”
“No!” She was determined and when I looked up at the doctor he shrugged.
“I’ve been trying all afternoon to send her away. She said she was waiting for you.”
I turned back to Elizabeth. “You must do what he says.” I spoke gently and sat down beside her again. “He knows what he’s talking about.”
But she shook her head. “There’s no point,” she said. “And he knows that fine. It isn’t only my heart. I’ve got cancer in my stomach. Haven’t I?” She stared fiercely at the man who was even now unwinding his stethoscope to listen again to her chest.
“You have,” he said, “and didn’t you refuse an operation last month?”
“Right. So I’m staying here and Richard will stay with me. He promised,” she put her hand onto my face and weakly stroked my cheek. “You will, my love, won’t you?” Her voice dropped then and she leaned wearily against my chest. “I don’t want to die alone,” she whispered, “stay with me.”
I stayed. For only the three weeks that it took, for her decline was rapid. I got a couple of nurses in for her and the doctor called every day. He was a good man and never allowed her to be in pain, so that in those three weeks, we were able to talk and laugh over the good memories from our childhood and remember our happy times in the years after.
“I wanted you here after I’d gone,” she whispered one afternoon. We were in the great drawing room, she, wrapped in a tartan rug, sitting in one of the leather armchairs and me beside her, in another. She had been quieter today and I could see that the pain medicine wasn’t having its usual effect. In a minute, I thought, I’ll go and telephone the doctor, but she was looking at me and compelling me to stay. Speaking had been an effort for her all day but she was still her determined self and forced the words out. “So that we’d still all be together. That’s why I didn’t tell you.”
“I know,” I said.
“Will you forgive me?”
I nodded. I would always forgive her, whatever she did.
“Good.” Her head drooped back against the buttoned back of the chair and she closed her eyes. This was my opportunity to telephone the doctor and I started to get up.
“Richard!” Her voice was as clear and sweet as it had been all those years ago when we’d raced across the hill above the farm and thrown ourselves breathless onto the heather. I leant over her and she opened her eyes so that I once again saw that brilliant blue that matched the blue of the glass beads in the silver necklace. It glinted now above the collar of her nightdress, silver and blue lying heavy on her wasted neck.
“I love you,” she said.
“And me you.”
She closed her eyes again and lay back against the chair and when I came back from the telephone, she had gone. I hope she hadn’t known that I’d left the room and I hope that her last words and mine were echoing in her brain as she passed away. I think they were.
Of course, I let her down by not staying at her great house and being close to her and John. But I couldn’t. It wasn’t the same with her not there and I needed to be at home for my own comfort. It was at the farm that I could feel her presence. I could walk across the fields and remember her laughing as she drove the cattle in and I could lie in the little bedroom above the front door and imagine that she was beside me and that we were young again.
After the first couple of years I didn’t even go back to tend the graves. It was too painful. But I’m going there soon and we’ll be together, like she wanted.