Oswald stood on the Southampton dockside as the troop ship slowly came into berth. He’d been waiting, shivering, for hours. Shivering, not because he was cold – it was a beautiful June morning – but because he was anxious. There was still a danger to shipping and Lucy would be on this ship; German submarines had been seen in United States waters during May just before launching yet a third offensive in France. There had been rumours of an enemy retreat, but most of those who had been in the middle of the conflict viewed that news with some scepticism. They had heard it all before.
It was a full ship; full of injured soldiers and nurses bringing them home, the nurses’ uniforms a bright shining symbol of purity against the soldiers’ khaki. He would, he thought, have difficulty in picking out Lucy in her doctor’s sombre and practical jacket and skirt of grey.
He was tempted to run and give a helping hand to those who were disembarking the gangplank, but he resisted; he didn’t want to miss Lucy in the melee.
But she saw him first; there she was halfway down in the crowd, waving one arm, the other clutching her two bags. He let out a breath and waved back. Thank heavens, he thought. At last! I hope she’s all right.
She was fine, she said, when he greeted her with a hug, but he commented on her looking tired.
‘Been up all night,’ she admitted. ‘There were a lot of serious injuries on board.’ She smiled brightly at him. ‘But now here I am back on English soil …’
She was nervous, apprehensive that he might have changed; that when he had spoken those words of love, it was because of the precarious circumstances and the threat of death and injury hanging over them; and she worried too that she had also changed. It was inevitable. She wasn’t the young girl she had been; she was a woman now who had seen terrible things. This dreadful war had scarred everyone.
‘I’ve missed you, Lucy,’ he murmured. ‘The time you’ve been away has been endless.’
She nodded. ‘It has,’ she agreed. ‘And I’ve missed you too,’ she said softly.
‘How much?’ he asked, catching hold of her by her shoulders.
She looked at him, into the soft grey eyes behind his new spectacles. ‘More than I can say,’ she whispered. ‘You’ve been in my life for ever, and when you’re not there’ – she lifted her shoulders – ‘there’s something missing. It’s taken a war for me to realize that.’
‘And now?’ He was asking the same question he had asked her after Passchendaele.
‘Can we go home?’ Her voice cracked with emotion. ‘It’s been so long.’
He picked up her bags, and with his arm draped around her shoulder they walked away from the quayside towards the rows of coaches, ambulances and cabs waiting to transport travellers to hospital or home. But he steered her away from the public vehicles and led her towards a motor car.
‘What’s this!’ she exclaimed. ‘Is this yours?’
‘No! I’ve hired it,’ he laughed. ‘I’ll drive it to London. I’ve booked a hotel for tonight and I thought we could get the train home to Hull tomorrow, when you’re rested.’
Lucy turned to look at him, a question on her lips.
‘Two rooms.’ He raised his eyebrows and gave a whimsical smile. ‘Suitable for cousins!’
There were few passengers on the morning train and he found an empty carriage so they were able to catch up on news of home without speaking in whispers. Oswald had been back to Hull several times, and he’d seen Henry and Josh and Edie too.
‘Edie’s longing to see you,’ he said. ‘She says she has things to tell you.’ He grinned. ‘I think they’ll be about Henry, who, incidentally, is training to be a physical therapist. Edie says he has wonderfully sensitive hands.’
Lucy smiled and Oswald, raising his voice over the whistle, the shriek of escaping steam and the clatter of wheels, went on, ‘Henry’s asked her to marry him and she wants to, but she doesn’t want to give up nursing.’
Lucy considered that. ‘She could go into private nursing, but maybe she doesn’t want to; she’s very experienced and will want to use her knowledge.’
She thought of the people she had said goodbye to – Dr Lawson, George Rutherford who had wanted to see her again, Major Dobson who had been kind and wise, Corporal Green, intent on doing what he could in spite of his injuries – and wondered what role they would all play once the war was over. Their lives would undoubtedly be changed.
She asked Oswald what he had been doing since he came home and he told her that he had again refused to work on poison gases or any means of destroying an enemy, but that he had been able to apply his observations after Henry’s respirator mask had slipped to his work on ways of refining them, and that he had also been involved in research into improving medications and testing new ones. He was, he said, intent on choosing a role which would enable lives to be saved and not destroyed.
It was right for him, she thought as she listened. He had always said that he would not kill another man.
‘Lucy.’ His quiet voice broke into her thoughts. ‘I wanted to tell you that Pa said they were going to write to you to tell you something, but I suggested they wait until you get home before they broached the subject.’
‘Oh, what? They’re going to move to Pearson Park, aren’t they?’ Her expression fell. ‘They haven’t gone already?’
‘No, of course not. They wouldn’t without consulting you first, but Pa says that it’s time. That when you come home you might have other plans.’
Lucy put her hands to her face. ‘I can’t bear to think that I’d be going back to an empty house,’ she whispered. ‘I have this memory of once before …’
He took her hands away from her cheeks and held them clasped within his. ‘Lucy,’ he said, ‘you don’t have to be alone. I have told you that I love you. I will never leave your side, but I don’t want to be your cousin or your brother or your companion, I want to be part of your life for ever; to be married to you, but only if you love me too.’
‘But of course I do.’ Her eyes brimmed with tears. ‘I have never loved anyone but you, Oswald. I cried once when we were children because you wouldn’t play games with me, and—’ She gave a hiccuping laugh. ‘At school a girl once commented on your lovely eyes and I was annoyed because I didn’t want anyone else thinking of you in that way.’
He laughed. ‘Really? Who was she?’
She pulled her hands away and gave him a reproving tap. Then she said softly, ‘Do you really want to marry me, Oswald? I’ll still want to be a doctor; can I be a doctor and a wife? That’s the only thing that’s holding me back from saying how much I want to be your wife and mother to our children. Is it too much to ask?’
He was silent for a moment; how hard it must be for women, he thought. They have been alongside men in the most distressing of situations and for many of them, once the war is over, they will have to go back to how things were before and find that for them, nothing has changed.
‘Not too much for me, Lucy. You should know me better than that. Who encouraged you first to speak to your headmistress? Who went with you for your first interview?’
She began to smile. Of course, it was Oswald who did those things; he was the one who had seen her potential. ‘You’ve always seen the best in me, Oswald; you’ve been influential in making me what I am. I could never doubt that you’d always be by my side.’
They were pulling into Leeds railway station and they got to their feet to catch their connection to Hull. Oswald put his arms round her and kissed her gently on the lips. ‘Next stop home, Dr Thornbury. Everyone’s waiting for you. Shall we tell them our news?’
She returned his kiss. ‘I think perhaps we should, Dr Thornbury. Will they be surprised?’
‘Not in the slightest, I shouldn’t think. They’ll guess as soon as we walk through the door.’
It seemed such a long time since she had been at home. Everything looked much the same except that the house was full of flowers brought in especially for her return, and yet there was something different that she couldn’t quite put her finger on. They were all thrilled to see her again and she felt their love enveloping her. Uncle William and Aunt Nora were both emotional and Eleanor, who was now a fashionable young lady with a shorter hair style and shorter skirts, cried when she saw her; and as for Mary, she was quite overcome. Lucy gave her a great hug and said that the house wouldn’t be the same without her.
It was whilst they were eating their supper and Lucy was looking speculatively around the room that she realized what the difference was.
‘You’ve moved the ornaments from the mantelpiece,’ she said. ‘And the mirror and paintings from the wall. Why is that?’
‘Because of the bombing, my dear,’ Nora said. ‘I was so afraid that our precious belongings would be damaged. There was another Zeppelin attack in March this year over east Hull, you know. Fortunately no one was hurt, except of course everyone was very frightened.’
‘I think we tended to forget,’ Lucy murmured, ‘that whilst we were abroad you were also suffering at home.’
Oswald nodded in agreement. ‘An enemy in the skies wasn’t something that anyone had bargained for.’
‘So where have you put everything?’ Lucy asked. ‘Where is a safe place?’
Nora looked rueful. ‘Well, heavy items like the mirror and the paintings in a cupboard under the stairs and the lighter ones in the loft with the other things, which as Pa pointed out wasn’t at all sensible because if a bomb had fallen on the house the roof would have collapsed! But after the effort of putting them up there we decided to leave them.’
Lucy smiled at the irony of it, and asked, ‘What other things in the loft?’
Eleanor and Oswald also looked questioningly at their mother.
‘Why, yours, my dear. Don’t you remember?’ Then Nora seemed taken aback. ‘Oh! No. Of course you wouldn’t.’ She flushed. ‘I was going to bring them down when you were twenty-one, but then what with the war starting – and then after you went away I thought we’d better leave it until it was ended, and before we – well,’ she said, floundering a little and looking at William for support, ‘it’s not something we’ve properly discussed yet.’
‘You mean the possibility that you might move to the house in the park?’ Lucy said quietly, helping her out. ‘Perhaps we could speak of that another day? But what things of mine? I don’t have anything in the loft, do I?’ A vague recollection came back to her of someone packing boxes.
William lifted his hands negatively. He didn’t know.
Nora gazed at Lucy and swallowed. ‘Your parents’ possessions. Silver photograph frames, candlesticks, cut glass bowls and vases. I was so afraid of breaking them; I had never possessed such beautiful things and – it was such a sad and difficult time,’ she said in a low voice. ‘I was coming to live in someone else’s home and was fearful that they’d be a constant reminder to all of us, but to you most of all, dear Lucy, so that you would never get over your parents’ loss.’
They might have been a comfort to me, Lucy thought, but I was only a child then and they were material things. Aunt Nora did right and yet she did wrong too, because I forgot that they were there. Her own childhood self now recalled saying, ‘Those are Mama’s things.’
She reached across and took Nora’s hand. ‘Don’t be upset,’ she said softly, for she could see that her aunt was distressed. ‘You did what you thought was right. Perhaps tomorrow we could get the ladder and take a look at what’s up there?’
The next morning Nora stood at the bottom of the ladder whilst Lucy and Oswald climbed up into the loft. They took a candle with them as there was no light. Huge cobwebs draped from the joists and there was a strong smell of soot, and the boxes which they easily found were covered in dust.
‘Mater!’ Oswald shouted down. ‘Can you throw up an old duster or cloth? Everything’s filthy.’
Nora sent Mary off to fetch one, not wanting to leave her post at the bottom of the ladder, and Mary was about to climb up to give it to them when William appeared and insisted that he should be the one to go. He climbed halfway up whilst Oswald reached down, and the duster changed hands.
‘I wish I’d known about this space when I was little,’ Oswald observed. ‘I’d have made a den up here.’
‘So would I,’ Lucy said. ‘I suppose we never looked up at the ceiling, and I’d completely forgotten about the packing of ornaments until your mother mentioned it.’ She hesitated, biting her lip. ‘I’m not sure how I’m going to feel about seeing them again. Or maybe I won’t remember them.’
‘You’ll be all right,’ he murmured. ‘Considering what you’ve seen in the last few years, your parents’ possessions can only bring back good memories.’
He opened one of the boxes. ‘This has silverware in it,’ he said, holding out a box of silver cutlery. ‘And this,’ he began to unwrap a picture frame, ‘and this …’ He paused as he looked at the photograph, and handed it to Lucy. ‘Is you getting married to someone else.’
She held up the candle to see it. It was indeed her very image; a dark-haired, very young woman sitting in a chair wearing a wedding gown with a white lace and gauze draped bodice, long full sleeves, and a satin skirt that hung in dark folds to her feet. On her head she wore a simple coronet of flowers and a flowing veil. At her side stood her new husband, smiling and handsome in a morning suit and cravat, and wearing a rose in his buttonhole.
Mama and Papa; she couldn’t even whisper their names. She didn’t know them then, of course, couldn’t recall them dressed in such finery, but she was undoubtedly there, hidden behind the huge bouquet of lilies and roses that her mother carried.
When she regained control of her voice she murmured, ‘What else?’
Without speaking, Oswald handed her another silver photograph frame; the photograph was of her mother and father and baby Lucy draped in a lace christening gown on her mother’s knee.
‘Will you bring them down for me, Oswald?’ she whispered. ‘I’d like to put them back on the mantelpiece.’
She climbed down the ladder and Nora viewed her anxiously. ‘Did you find them?’ Her face crumpled and she faltered. ‘I’m so sorry, Lucy, if I did wrong to put them up there.’
Lucy kissed her. ‘You didn’t do wrong, Aunt, you did what you thought was right. I do understand; you were coming to a place that wasn’t your home, although I hope that you now feel it is, and I understand too that you were expected to look after a child who wasn’t your own.’
She led her into the sitting room where William was reading the morning newspaper. He looked up as if he was going to tell them the latest news, but he saw his wife’s distressed expression and immediately got up from his chair. ‘My dear!’ he said to her, drawing her to him. Lucy hid a tearful smile; some things never change, she thought, and Pa’s beloved expression that covered all ills clearly hadn’t.
Oswald didn’t come down immediately, and just as Lucy was about to go and look for him he opened the door. ‘I’m a bit dusty,’ he said, and indeed he was, with cobwebs in his hair and soot on his face. He was carrying a long flat box that he placed on the floor.
‘Don’t open it yet until I’ve washed my hands,’ he said, and dashed away.
‘Did you know that he was called the mad boffin whilst he was abroad?’ Lucy said in an attempt to lighten Nora’s mood. ‘He was forever turning up somewhere with his X-ray machine and then disappearing to go elsewhere.’
William smiled. ‘That’s my boy.’ He nudged Nora and she gave a weepy laugh.
Oswald came in again; he’d washed his hands and face, brushed away the cobwebs and combed his hair. He knelt down on the floor by the box and carefully opened it to reveal layers of white paper. ‘I’ve looked already,’ he admitted, ‘so I know what’s inside. Will you all close your eyes for a moment please?’ They did, and heard the rustle of paper. Then Oswald gave the word and they opened their eyes.
Lucy got up from her chair. Oswald was holding up her mother’s wedding gown. The white lace and gauze were flimsy as cobwebs, and the skirt was shiny folds of indigo satin. He came towards her and held it against her; she took it from him and buried her face in it, breathing in its old aromas, images of her mother.
Tears ran down her cheeks, as they did down Nora’s and William’s too, but Oswald took the dress from her and draped it across the back of the sofa. Then he turned to her, and taking her hand he dropped to one knee.
‘Lucy. I’m asking you now, when my very dear parents are present to witness my proposal …’ He gave a deep intake of breath. ‘Will you marry me? Please,’ he added. ‘You already know that I love you and now you have the wedding dress, and inside the box is another little gown waiting for another little Thornbury, so there’s really no need for us to wait for anything except for you to say yes!’
She laughed and cried and put her arms about him, then kissed him and whispered so that only he could hear, ‘Yes.’