I copied all the last recording even though I thought my heart might break. Poor, poor Richard, all those people that he loved dying before him and he has lived on for so many years.
He is so tired now and thin. I can barely get any food into him even though I prepare the things he likes, little squares of cheese on toast, egg sandwiches and soup. The other day he said he could fancy a junket. For a moment I thought he meant a trip out and I must have looked at him with a look of astonishment, for his face cracked into a smile and his shoulders started to shake.
“Not that sort of junket, you soft thing,” he growled but he was laughing really. “The milk pudding sort. You must know how to make that. God knows, it’s easy enough. Mother made them all the time.”
I looked in one of the old recipe books on the shelf beside the Aga. It has a well-thumbed blue cover and a symbol of the Women’s Institute on the front, and the name Mary C. Wilde in small neat writing on the frontispiece. I found a junket recipe and it seemed simple enough, if I could get the rennet. I’d never heard of it before but they had some at the health food shop. When I came home I put it all together and let the pudding set. I’m sure I did it as per recipe, but he didn’t want it.
“Sorry, my dear,” he said, “I’m too tired just now. Maybe later.”
Thomas tried some after tea but made a terrible face after one spoonful. “This pudding is absolutely yucky,” he announced in disgust.
Funny thing is that I quite liked it. It slips down easily and I liked the coffee flavouring that the recipe called for. I’ll try him with it again later when he’s in a better mood but God knows when that will be. All this last week he has been sitting in his chair looking at the garden and not wanting to continue his story. I know there’s more because he told me yesterday that he was thinking about it. “My mind is so full,” he said. “Everything is swirling around and getting mixed up.”
“Talking about losing Elizabeth is bound to have an effect,” I said sympathetically, but he shook his head.
“It’s not that,” he called after me as I went out of his room. His old voice shook with anger. “It’s what I haven’t said yet, you silly girl. I have to make sure I tell it right. It matters.”
He sounded a bit like Thomas does when he’s upset and I don’t like it. It reminds me too much of my old life at home. Shouting and bawling was regular there. But at least, Richard does have the excuse of age and infirmity, so I’m prepared to forgive him and carry on writing his story.
Actually, I’m beginning to enjoy it. At college, one of our tutors said we all should keep a diary, because even random thoughts were worth recording. “It will improve your reasoning skills,” she said. And I do find a certain relaxation in a meandering account of day-to-day events. The only time I kept a diary Mum took it out of my bedside table one day and read it. She even showed it to Dad and Mrs Lane next door when they were all out at the pub. I swore then that I would never allow anyone to know me that well again. And they haven’t. Even James didn’t know me.
I hardly knew him either and if he walked into this house tomorrow, I’d have a job recognising him. He was a useless piece of humanity. His contribution to the world was Thomas and he didn’t even know it. And never will.
Richard only asked about Thomas once, in a roundabout way and I didn’t tell him much and probably lied.
I have been in to Richard’s room to help the nurse, although reluctantly. I hate those nursing jobs but I wouldn’t tell him. That would be too cruel.
“Mr Wilde is getting weaker,” she said, “and can’t hold himself up when I want to change his pyjamas. Do you mind coming in?”
These days, she’s nicer. Not so bossy. Even Thomas will run a message for her if she asks and he’s very choosy about his friends. He can’t bear Donald Clewes and makes a face whenever he calls to see Richard. Donald has Donasked me out twice, both times to a meal at the new Italian restaurant. I couldn’t go out with him; he has fat hands and clean polished nails. It makes me shiver, just imagining those hands touching me. Stupid of me, I know, for the man is quite harmless.
Jason has dirty hands most of the time but he does try to get them clean. He’s forever got them plunged in that special cleaning jelly when I go round to his house for a meal. As though I cared. I love him as he is.
God! I’ve said it. I love him.
Richard was sitting up in bed when I went in with the nurse. He looks a bit brighter today and gave me one of our special looks when nurse started speaking.
“Just going to get you all tidy,” she sang in her most irritating nursery voice. “All shipshape and Bristol fashion.”
“God give me strength,” muttered Richard.
“What’s that, dearie?”
He looked over her shoulder at me and grimaced and when I moved forward at her beckon, his eyes followed mine. He was trying to tell me something, I know, but I couldn’t pick up what it was.
“Jim-jams off,” nurse said and slipped his wasted arms out of the baggy sleeves. I haven’t seen him undressed before so that the livid puckered scars on his right shoulder and the crescent shaped one along his rib-cage came as a shock.
“Oh!” I said before I could stop myself and the nurse looked round from where she was rearranging the pillows.
“War wounds,” she stage-whispered as though Richard was deaf and couldn’t hear or see what we were looking at.
“Courtesy of a couple of bastard Japs,” he said with a grin and lifted his arm painfully to point at the scars. “Soldier with machine gun here,” he touched his shoulder and then let his hand trail down to his ribs, “officer with sword, there.”
“Is that when you got your medals?”
He nodded. “Bring me a drink when this bloody woman has finished because I’m ready to tell you about it.
“Cup of tea?”
“Whisky!” He looked defiantly at the nurse waiting for her to object, but she said nothing. All three of us know that it makes no difference.
“Is the microphone in place?” he asked after I’d put the glass in his hand and arranged the tape recorder beside him. I pinned the mike to his collar because sometimes he gets breathless and his voice drops to a whisper so I can’t understand what he’s saying. When I stay with him, I can remember what he says, but he doesn’t always want me about. It’s as though he thinks that some of the stories are too private for my ears, even though he knows I’m listening to the recording and writing it all down. Maybe it’s a pretence he’s keeping up. He was like that today. First he said he was going to tell me how he won his medals and then he wanted me to leave him alone.
“Just leave me a while,” he said, “let me collect my thoughts.”
“O.K.” I said and I left him, wondering what he would remember. These memories are getting so mixed up because he jumps around in time. But he is desperate to tell them so I went into the kitchen then and got Thomas. He has grown out of his school clothes and as nurse is here, I had the chance to go to into town. Besides, I need to get out of the house for a few hours. The waiting is getting me down.
I don’t want to talk about the war or how I won my medals. It was a long time ago when I was young and full of life and although the Japs and the jungle did their combined best to rob me of it, I managed to survive. Shot and knifed, I was, but I managed to walk out of the jungle. Being shot isn’t immediately that painful, it’s like someone punched you and it comes as a surprise, even though you are in the midst of bullets and grenades and people screaming.
Poor Jack Barnes got caught in crossfire one early evening when we walked into a Jap patrol.
“Scatter!” came the order and, as we ran into the sparse shelter, they started up firing and we responded. Jack got it from both sides and when I reached him, he had a groove of flesh taken out of his left cheek and several bullet wounds in his left leg.
“Christ!” I said as I made a tourniquet out of piece of webbing and tightened it around his thigh. “You should have been more bloody careful.”
He grinned, but his face was suddenly white and his eyes were beginning to roll back. “Take charge,” he muttered, “leave me.”
“No!”
This was the first time I’d disobeyed orders, but I couldn’t leave him, I had too many fond memories of his parents. So, as soon as it was safe to do so, I hoisted him on my shoulder and with him hanging limply across my back, led my patrol back to base.
We were two days away when we were caught by another Jap patrol. That’s when I was shot, standing up after lowering Jack Barnes to the ground when a bullet exploded into my shoulder and sent me spinning round to fall over the prostrate form of my officer.
I gasped and reached out to grab my rifle. It was then that the Jap officer burst out of the trees and slashed down at my chest with his sword.
It was his last effort on this earth, for with a contemptuous “Fuck off,” Lewis shot him in the face and he toppled over into the scrubby undergrowth and died.
“Thanks,” I panted, grabbing my chest. When I looked down I could see a dark stain spreading over my breast pocket and beginning to travel in every direction. I struggled to my feet. Lying down wouldn’t do me any good.
“You saved my life,” I said.
“My pleasure,” Lewis laughed. These encounters with Japs made him manic sometimes. It was just like the old days when he would fight all the civilians in the pubs. He was a cocky little bugger and I loved him.
He got his the next day. I was leading the patrol now while two men carried Lieutenant Barnes on a makeshift stretcher. My wounds, although not serious, kept breaking down and bleeding, so Potter and McLean were managing him. In truth, we shouldn’t have carried him; it was against general orders and was slowing us up, but nobody was prepared to abandon him to the jungle and the enemy that was even now on our trail. We all thought the world of him; even the lads who were new to soldiering and hadn’t known him like I had.
Fever had set in on him too and he was getting delirious. I think that it was his shouting that gave us away. That bloody jungle was crawling with Japs and out of the blue, a burst of gunfire raked through us, as we walked, Indian file, through the trees.
It didn’t take long to finish off the two snipers but we lost three men and two wounded, including Lewis.
I had lost him in the melee and had to call his name.
“Here,” he replied in a halting voice and I turned towards the sound. “What’s it look like?” he grunted, raising his hand weakly and indicating his wound.
It looked terrible. He lay, splayed out with his belly open, his guts scrambling out over his shaking body. The mixture of blood and shit dribbling over his trousers and shirt gave off a terrible stench.
“Not too good,” I said, as I grabbed the morphine shot out of my kit-bag and stuck it in his arm.
“Lift me up, for God’s sake; put me against that tree,” he whispered. He had tears in his eyes and a thin stream of blood trickled from the side of his mouth.
It was a struggle to lift him, for my left arm and shoulder were very painful but I dragged him to the tree and propped him upright. He looked down at the mess that protruded out of his uniform.
“Oh Jesus!” he gasped.
What could I say? His face was already going grey and I knew that he would die within the hour but I kept up the pretence.
“Chin up, mate,” I said and got out the first aid pack to stick a dressing over the worst explosion of guts. I reached into his kitbag and took his morphine syringe. “What the hell,” I said, “a double dose – can’t do that much harm.”
“Get going,” he gasped, “there’ll be more of them coming. Leave me.”
“I can’t.”
“Fuck off. I’m finished, you know it.”
He was my friend, you see. My mate. The person I grew to manhood with. Leaving him was hardest thing I ever did. And I mean that, even considering the things that came after.
“Give me my gun.” He wouldn’t look at me, didn’t want to see what was obviously showing in my face. “And, Richard,” he coughed and the flecks of blood that were bubbling into his mouth, spewed into the air and smeared onto his face.
“Yes. What?”
“You’ll see Sarah?”
That was when I bent and kissed him goodbye. My friend. My best mate.
We were back at our base camp within twelve hours and even though I worried about it for weeks afterwards, I know that Lewis wouldn’t have lived that long. Besides, there weren’t enough men left to carry him. Not him as well as Jack Barnes. McLean had been killed so I shouldered Jack again, determined now that at least one of my friends would get out alive, but it did me no good. My wounds tore open and by the time I got to the field hospital, I was delirious with infection too.
And that was the end of my army career. I was sent back to India on the Red Cross plane and spent many months regaining my strength. In the end I was invalided out and came home.
It was September nineteen forty-five when I got back to the farm. The war in Europe had been over for five months but the country was depressed. I was still in uniform then, although I was discharged from the army. My civilian clothes had been sent on home so I travelled all those miles still as a sergeant and proud of my service, but the uniform didn’t seem to carry the same cachet that it had three years previously. I think people were sick of soldiers and anything to do with the war. All their excitement and sympathy had been used up on V.E. Day so none was left for us coming back from the Far East.
I took the train out of London and settled into a damp and sour-smelling compartment where my only companion was a slumbering clergyman. It was a rotten day with heavy rain which trickled down the windows. For a while, I amused myself by tracing circles and squares in the steamy glass but then my eye was increasing drawn to the scenes outside. Bomb damage was rife, factories, docks and residential housing all blackened and desolate with lost roofs and disconnected walls of crumbling brick. How would it ever be repaired, I wondered, all that destruction and hopelessness because it looked to me just like a world from another planet or from something out of an H.G. Wells book. But when the train slowed down, my mood changed. I could see lads playing in the ruined buildings, shouting and laughing as though this was the most natural thing possible and in a way that cheered me. Life did go on, after all.
I stood up at our stop and painfully reached up to the luggage rack for my bag. Raising my left arm was still a struggle after my injury and an involuntary groan came to my lips. The clergyman who had woken and had chatted to me on the journey, offered to help.
“Let me reach that for you, Sergeant,” he said kindly, but he was old and stooped and barely looked capable of getting his own small attaché case from the netting above the seats.
“No thank you, sir,” I said. “I can manage.”
I put it on the floor beneath my feet and waited for the train to get into the station.
“Home is it, son?”
I nodded.
“Well, I’m sure it’s a blessing for your wife and young ones that you’ve come safely through. And not only them. The country needs brave men like you to build it up again.”
It would have been the right thing to say, I suppose for anyone other than me. I had no family, my son was dead and Elizabeth was far away in Ireland, refusing to come home. In her last letter, which I received just before leaving Calcutta, she talked about her little holding and the cattle she’d bought and how she was selling produce to the local hotel.
‘The place is popular with the anglers,’ she wrote. ‘We get all sorts, Americans mostly. My butter and cream has become quite a hit.’ Her last sentence was the most telling and gave me much pause for thought. ‘I feel very peaceful here,’ she had written.
How could I spoil that, for her? It would be too selfish. But, nevertheless, I had made up my mind that as soon as I’d seen Mother and Billy, I would take myself off for a holiday at that hotel and see if I could do anything that would get us together again.
I got out at our little country station and noted with dismay that even that had been affected by the war. The waiting room and the railings were shabby and the wood showed through for want of painting. Weeds were growing up between flagstones at the far end of the platform and the Station Master’s little garden, which I remembered being a gem of colour and careful manicure, was neglected and overgrown. I wondered where he had gone for he was nowhere in sight and no replacement obvious. Only a feeble youth was on the platform, dressed as a porter and all I got from him was a brief uninterested glance before he turned back to his newspaper where I could see that he was studying the football pages.
For a moment, I was angry. I thought of all the lads I’d known, some even younger than he was, who had suffered and died in the past conflict. They hadn’t balked at doing their duty; they’d been driven by an ideal that this young man patently knew nothing about. I felt like saying something, challenging his indifference, but then I turned away. Why should I care? Life had changed for everyone. The war had made different people of us.
“Oh, Richard, love,” said Mother, flustered from baking, when I walked into the kitchen, “I’ve been sorely worried about you, but thank God, you’re back with us, now.”
My arm and shoulder hurt as she gave me a hug. But I didn’t let on. I wouldn’t have upset her for anything. She seemed to have shrunk and her hair had gone entirely white in the years that I’d been away, but she still bustled about the kitchen with her old vigour, chatting as she laid the tea things in front of me on the smooth old table.
“Where’s everyone?” I asked. The kitchen was gloomy from the rain outside and the house seemed quiet. I could hear the grandfather clock ticking steadily in the hall but the normal sounds of hens and cattle were muffled.
“About the place, working,” she replied. “We’ve got a new land girl. Ida left; got into trouble by some German prisoner of war who was working on Felstead’s farm. She’s gone home to her family to have the child, and the fellow says he’ll stand by her when he gets his release. The family isn’t happy though. It’s bad enough him being a German, but they blame us for letting her out.” She shook her head and brought out a seed cake from the tin. “What could I do? She’s a grown woman. Here,” she placed a large slice of cake on a plate and pushed it across the table to me. “The new girl is called Dorothy. Quite a nice type but dreamy like.”
“I’m surprised you’re still getting the girls,” I said, pouring another cup of tea into the familiar blue and white cup. “I would have thought the men would be coming out of uniform and want their old jobs back.”
She raised her arms in a gesture of despair. “Richard, believe me, we’ve tried. It was difficult enough getting them to work here before the war, but they’ve gone into the factories in the town. Better pay, they said.”
I watched as she quickly cleared the table and put the plates into the sink ready for another round of washing up. Everything that Mother did was efficient and without fuss. She’d been looking after the house for so many years that her tasks were done so automatically that she barely noticed them.
“You know what the real trouble is,” she added when her back was towards me and he hands plunged into the sink.
I did. “How is he?”
Her sigh was audible. “The same.”
I went out then to find my brother and greet him. The rain was clearing away to the east and bright shafts of late afternoon sun brightened up the yard. I was pleased to see how clean and tidy it was and looking round, noticed with approval that the barns and sheds all in good repair. I put my head round the door of the milking parlour and found it scrubbed and sweet smelling. Those land army girls had worked well. When I went back into the yard, I met one of them opening the field gate and driving in the cattle.
“Can I help you?” she said, giving at me a look which hinted that I was an interloper on this farm. She wore a broad-brimmed hat pulled well down over her face and a brown belted mackintosh over jodhpurs and rubber boots.
“I’m looking for Farmer Wilde,” I said and then, looking at her closely, I recognised her as the girl called Gloria whom I’d brought out from the town that day, three years previously.
“I’m his brother, Richard. Don’t you remember me?”
“Yes,” she said, fixing a probing stare on me through her bottle top glasses, “I remember you now, but you’ve changed. Been out East, I heard.”
“That’s right.”
“Well, I have to say, you do look bad,” she said. “Thin as a yard of pump water. I expect that foreign food wasn’t to your taste.”
I smiled. Folks back home were ignorant of how we’d had to live and how some of us had had to die. And it was no good getting angry with them. It did no good.
“Mr Wilde is in the top field,” she said and pointed back the way she’d come, as though I wouldn’t know where it was.
I found Billy standing against the gate, rubbing some ears of wheat between his fingers. He didn’t hear me approach, so intent he was on something in the field and when I came up behind him and touched his shoulder, he jumped in fright.
“What? Who?” He turned with a terrifying expression on his face and his fists came up, ready to strike.
“It’s me,” I said, “home from the war.”
For the longest moment, I swear he didn’t know me. His eyes narrowed and then opened and a puzzled expression was quickly followed by one of distaste. I was taken aback and gave a nervous laugh.
“Billy, it’s me. Dick.” I put out my hand to him.
Recognition dawned then and his face cleared. “Our Dick!” he said joyfully. “For a moment I could have sworn it was the Maj…” He stopped in mid-sentence and shook his head as though to come to his senses. “Where have you been all this time? I have missed you so.”
His arms wrapped themselves around me in a loving but most painful grasp. I could feel his shoulders beginning to shake as the tears started and soon he was sobbing like a huge baby.
“Come on, brother,” I said. “No need for all that.”
“Every need,” he cried. “You’re the one person in the whole world I’ve been longing to see.”
I can tell you, it was most touching and I was extremely moved. My emotions, normally quite stable, had been battered by months of injury and illness and I was unable to keep the tears from springing to my eyes. At that moment, I loved him as much as I had ever done. All the bad things that had happened were nothing; they could be put down to petty disturbances, expressions of individuality, or mere high spirits. Whatever other people thought about him didn’t matter. Nothing compared to this deep family friendship which we shared.
Of course, once I thought about Elizabeth, then the doubts crept in. I loved her more than life itself and I had believed her when she told me about my brother’s brutality. But there, in the wheat field on a late September afternoon, I was prepared to take my brother’s love and affection for the wonderfully comforting thing that it was.
“It looks ready for harvest,” I said, breaking away from the embrace and nodding towards the field.
Billy stepped back and took a deep shuddering breath. “Yes, it does,” he said, “and I’m starting tomorrow. Forecast’s better,” he added cocking an eye towards the sky and sniffing the air.
I caught a movement in the field behind him so I looked over his shoulder to see what it was. Billy saw my eyes and turned his head, straightening up as he did so and giving his tearful face a quick wipe with the sleeve of his thorn-proof jacket.
At first I couldn’t see what had rustled the wheat or caused the bullfinches to fly suddenly out of the blackthorn bushes which hedged the top field. Then I made it out.
A girl was walking alongside the hedge, carefully keeping away from the growing crop. She walked with an easy gait, a short slight figure in beige breeches and a green jumper. Blonde curly hair bounced carelessly on her shoulders. In her hand was a sprig of new heather and I knew instantly that she had been walking on the hill.
“Who’s that? I asked.
“Dorothy.” The name came out throatily and when I looked at him, my heart sank. That old glitter was in his eye and his tongue had flicked out to lick at a dribble of saliva at the corner of his mouth. “She’s a tart,” he added, his voice cold and contemptuous.
“Oh God,” I groaned, “don’t start all that again.”
Before he could answer, the girl had come right up to the gate and was standing beside us. She was pretty, not common looking in any way and modest, too, judging by the way she blushed when we looked at her.
I waited for Billy to introduce me, but he said nothing. Now he was turning to go, his eyes fixed on the ground and his breath heavy and disjointed. I felt angry and anxious at the same time. If he thought I was going to let him get away with this display of bad manners and if he had it in mind to start abusing the girl, then I reckoned I’d better knock that idea on the head straight away.
“Hold up, our Billy,” I said, grabbing his arm and pulling him round. “Aren’t you going to introduce me to this young lady?”
I could feel the muscles in his forearm bunching up as he prepared himself to pull away or, God forbid, turn round and clock me one for my cheek. But then they subsided. Maybe he remembered the way I’d grabbed him by the front of his shirt that time before and threatened him. I don’t know. Perhaps I was making too much of his disregard for someone who, after all, was only one of his farm workers. Whatever it was he changed his mind and stayed beside us.
“This is my brother, Richard Wilde, home from overseas,” he muttered. “She’s Dorothy Painter, come to help.”
We walked back to the house together, the three of us, her and me chatting pleasantly and Billy silent but not as brooding as I’d feared. By supper time, he became quite animated, talking about the farm and the village then asked me questions about the war.
“Do your injuries hurt much, Richard?” asked Mother.
“Just now and then.”
“My brother, Percy, was wounded in North Africa,” said Dorothy. “His leg was blown off.”
That shut Billy up. He always hated the thought of people being physically impaired. But Mother persisted in questioning the girl. “That’s awful,” she said. “Has he managed to get a job since he came home?”
“Oh no,” Dorothy shook her head, “he didn’t come home. He died later out there. Gangrene, they said. His mate that came to see us said that it was a blessing he’d been taken. The smell in the hospital tent was dreadful.”
Crash! Billy’s fist came down with a thump on the table. “Shut up!” he roared. “We’re trying to eat our meal here. We don’t want that sort of disgusting talk.”
Tears came into Dorothy’s eyes. “Sorry,” she muttered and silence reigned in the kitchen.
Gloria had munched steadily through her meat and vegetables without speaking. She was as plain and uncommunicative as ever and I think these attributes, if you could call them that, suited Billy. I did see her give a sly look towards the tearful girl and her mouth curled up in a little sneer. Rotten cow, I thought.
Dorothy ventured to speak again; this time to Mother. “Mrs Wilde,” she said, “do you mind if I go out tonight? They’re doing a play at the church hall for Christmas and I’m going to have a part. Rehearsals every Tuesday and Thursday. I’ll do the dishes first.”
“No, love, I don’t mind. And don’t bother with the plates. I’ll do those. I want a good chat with our Richard anyway, so I wouldn’t be any company for you this evening.”
It was like the old days: Mother and me by the kitchen range talking together on our own. Dorothy had gone out and Gloria had disappeared up to her room. I don’t know where Billy went but he’d been quiet and huffy again since supper, so I was glad that his glowering presence was elsewhere. I mentioned my fears for Dorothy’s safety to Mother. “He’s taken against her,” I said, “have you noticed?”
“Yes.” She sighed and shook her head. “She should never have come here and I am keeping a close eye on her and on Billy. Fred Darlington’s been round a couple of times too. He says it’s a social call, but I know better and I’m grateful.” A fox barked somewhere in the fields and I could hear the wind in the chimney. “Billy doesn’t like him, you know. He says that Fred minds everyone else’s business and doesn’t care what Miranda gets up to,” she added.
“What does she get up to?” I asked, intrigued and saddened that some scandal should be attached to Miranda Darlington. I liked her.
“Nothing, of course,” said Mother wearily. “She’s got herself a part-time job in the village shop. Our William doesn’t approve of married women working outside the house.”
We left it at that and then Mother asked me about Elizabeth and I told her of my plans to visit her in Ireland.
“You can’t bring her back,” she said. “It wouldn’t do now. Too many years have passed.”
“I’m not planning to.”
She was quiet for a moment and then said, “You won’t stay there with her, will you?”
Her voice was low and plaintive. She’d had a hard life and things hadn’t turned out the way she’d hoped for so it was unkind of me to answer the way I did.
“I don’t know, Mother,” I said. “But if she wants me there, with her, then I’ll stay in Ireland for the rest of my life.”