The War Widows. Leah Fleming

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СКАЧАТЬ mind that half the crowd might be gathered today just to ogle. Esme covered her black hat with net veiling to hide her grief and her confusion. She was very quiet, too quiet, and Lily wondered how they would get through the service without someone breaking down. There was nothing to do but brazen it out.

      ‘You’ve heard about our big surprise then?’ Lily smiled up at neighbours, trying to look casual, hoping they wouldn’t notice how her voice was quaking.

      ‘It’s all round the Coach and Horses that young Freddie left his mark in Burma,’ whispered Doris Pickvance.

      ‘Then they were wrong as usual!’ Lily whispered back.

      Bar-stool gossip could be so crude. Lily’s heart began to thud. What if everyone thought Su was Freddie’s wife? How could they pass Anastasia off as his bride instead? Perhaps they should change them round again. All this lying was hard work, so many pitfalls and tracks to cover over. Perhaps it was better to tell the plain truth.

      All eyes were on the two strangers as they were led down a side aisle into a series of boxed cupboard pews. The mourners were put at the front in full view, waiting in silence until Reverend Atkinson, wearing his black gown, stood before the assembled family to welcome them and began the special service with the hymn ‘I vow to thee my country’.

      Lily felt herself choking up. The tune brought back memories of schooldays. Why did she suddenly think of Pamela Pickvance and the ice slide?

      It wasn’t that Pam was always horrid to her, it was just that she couldn’t rely on her as a friend. One minute she was all over her like a rash and then she ran off and ganged up with girls in the playground, pulling faces and calling her names.

      Pam across the road was in the top class and ‘bonny’, which was a polite way of saying ‘fat’, round as a barrel with a nip on her like pincers. Her brother was even bigger and when the two of them stopped her on the way home to snatch her bus money, it made for a long walk on a wet night.

      Funny how she would hand it over without a fight until Freddie started in the infants’ and she had to drag him along into the infants’ playground. Pam and Alf would wait until she had shoved him in the yard, then pounce. If she’d spent her pennies, they pulled off her ribbons and that meant bother at home. Mother thought she was careless and made her pay for some more. There was no point in telling tales when they lived across the road. She just put up with it hoping their bullying would go away.

      Then came the bad snow and a chance to make an ice slide on the pavement, sliding down until it shone like glass. Pam and Alf started shoving her off, making her legs go sideways out onto the road. That was scary and she cried in front of them.

      Freddie was watching, open-mouthed, seeing his sister sobbing, and suddenly he rushed at Pam and knocked her over. He pulled her by her pigtails until she screamed and when her big brother came to the rescue, he kicked him in the shins.

      The scrap that followed was like Goliath beating the hell out of David until he had a busted lip and a bloody nose and his new winter coat was torn.

      ‘You lay off my sister or I’ll shove you down!’ Freddie snorted.

      ‘You and whose army?’ sneered Alf Pickvance.

      ‘I’ll get my big brother on you and he’s got boxing gloves and we’ll come and get you.’

      ‘Oh, yes,’ snivelled Pam, a hole in her lisle stockings. ‘I’m telling on you!’

      Doris was round next morning complaining that her darling Pam had been set upon by Winstanley ruffians, and what was Esme going to do about it?

      Esme rose to her full height with an icy smile. ‘What happens in the street between children is not our affair. My children don’t fight unless provoked…Thank you and good day!’ She slammed the door in Doris’s face and turned her fury on her own.

      Lily was sent to her room. Freddie got his bottom paddled, but neither broke their vow of silence, their omertà: All for one and one for all.

      Funny thing was, Pam was as nice as pie after that, and Alf gave them a wide berth. It was then that Lily realised that having two brothers had its advantages. There was nothing she wouldn’t do for them then.

      Lily buried her nose in her handkerchief. She could still see Freddie as a little lad, not a grown man. In six years all she had of him were a bunch of letters full of jokes and pleasantries, she sighed. They knew nothing of his real life, his war, his lovers, nothing about the real Freddie. He was a stranger.

      Both her brothers were strangers and that was what war had done to this family: torn them apart. In truth she’d lost Freddie years ago.

      This can’t be a real church, thought Ana as she stared around the bare walls as they were escorted down a side aisle into a series of boxed cupboard pews. The mourners sat in silence until a man in a suit and teacher’s gown stood before the Winstanley family and began the service.

      To her a church was the very soul of a place, set high on a hill or in the market square, painted white, shining in the sunlight, not tucked up in some grimy street like a factory, she mused. Where was the rainbow of colours: ochre, crimson, azure wall paintings? Where were the bells, candlelight and smell of incense?

      The walls of Zion Chapel were painted white, the woodwork was dark oak polished to a mirror finish. There were no flowers, no silken robes and vestments, shimmering purples and crimson velvets, embroidered with silver and gold threads, no wall hangings and frescoes, nothing on which to rest her sad eyes for comfort. Where were the scenes from the Gospels, painted between the windows and the walls, by monks centuries ago, some depicting the miracles wrought by St Andreas, Archbishop of Crete? Did Grimbleton not have its own patron saint to adorn with jewels and gold leaf?

      She looked up to the wooden rafters holding the ceiling. Where was the risen Christ in glory arching over the cupola in mosaic tiles glistening gold and silver and sapphire in the heavens?

      There was nowhere to light a sacred candle of intercession for Freddie. She could not hate him for his weakness. He was a man and men had needs. He brought her back to life after years of darkness. He was her candle of light and she wept that their time together had been so short.

      There were no jewelled icons to pray before, hanging with silver tamata, those precious votive offerings, flowers, silver templates with eyes and legs and bodies, offered for a cure. There was no cure for death, only the resurrection in the fullness of time.

      She did not understand this English plainness. How could anyone find comfort in such stark surroundings? It felt an insult to all that was holy in her heart. Freddie would not rest in peace until she had found a proper church and lit candles and all the rituals were performed.

      She was weeping not for her loss now but for herself and memories of the little white chapel of St Dionysius, the patron saint of her village, weeping for the comfort of familiar faces processing to the great Easter ceremonies and Christmas festival, weeping an exile’s tears. There was no going back now.

      There was such a silence, no weeping and wailing of death songs, no mother and black-clad widows keening. The sounds of grief could purge away suffering. Her family had kneeled prostrate over her sister’s grave, wailing in agony, only to rise and prepare a meal for the living family as if that beautiful girl was not in the graveyard.

      Eleni was the first of many deaths in their village, the year the Germans came from the sky, floating down into their СКАЧАТЬ