Chapter 28
‘Are you and Frank all right?’ asked Jane. Her light was off but Grace’s was on because she was reading, although Jane hadn’t seen her turn a page yet.
‘As right as we ever are these days,’ replied Grace, her eyes still on the words of her book.
Then she let loose a long, long breath. ‘I think that we are probably at the end of the road of our marriage, Jane. I think we have been there for quite some time, if I’m honest. This trip we took was a…
an attempt to turn things back but it’s been a disaster. ’
‘Frank seems like a lovely man.’
Jane might as well have thrown a match onto a three-foot-high pile of dried straw.
‘Because he laughs and jokes and smiles.’ Grace’s face contorted as she spoke. ‘We should have been on the same page where my son was concerned and we weren’t and look at the result.’
‘How did he die, your son?’ The question pulled no punches but Jane asked it all the same.
‘He joined the army. We couldn’t stop him and believe me, I tried,’ Grace began.
‘Do you mind me asking about your son, Frank?’ said Vincent, after he had finished brushing his teeth.
‘I don’t mind at all. He was a lovely boy,’ Frank said, his face breaking into a smile.
‘Grace had such a rough time being pregnant and then giving birth, it buggered her up, she couldn’t have any more so he was extra precious.
And I know that mothers and sons are supposed to be the thing, but Billy was a real little daddy’s boy.
Followed me everywhere, always wanting to do what I did.
He had a tool kit like mine and a toy lawn mower, baby boxing gloves so I could take him on the pads.
I bought him a little army uniform one Christmas and if he wasn’t in his school uniform, he was in that – for about a year.
’ He smiled anew at the memory. He couldn’t remember how many times Grace had to mend it, from all Billy’s ‘manoeuvres’ in the garden, climbing over logs and grass to shoot the enemy with the wooden rifle Frank had made him.
‘He’d always had an addictive personality, they’d probably stick a label on him these days, but whatever that kid did, he threw himself into it.
And from the moment his brain clicked into the army, it never left it.
He was a junior soldier at sixteen and set.
Grace was terrified, of course. I was torn because I wanted him to be safe, but we give our kids lives to lead and we can guide but we shouldn’t dictate.
My dad told me that. He used to worry himself stupid when I climbed in a boxing ring, but he never let me know until after I hung me gloves up. ’
‘My eldest boy always wanted to go in the army too,’ said Jane.
‘I couldn’t bring myself to encourage my child to be willing to die for his country.’
‘I wouldn’t have stood in my son’s way if that had been his decision,’ Jane said, her voice soft, telling her own truth without wanting to sound judgemental. ‘I gave him his life and with that the freedom to make his own choices. What happened to Billy, Grace?’
‘He had a heart attack on exercise. He’d completed a marathon carrying a thirty-kilogram weighted backpack and he kept on running and he collapsed and there was nothing anyone could do, though they tried to bring him back. For a long time.’
It was not what Jane had expected to hear. She had presumed he had been killed in action, which would have been a death more brutal – because some deaths were easier to accept.
‘He was a proper soldier and he’d have made a damned fine officer,’ said Frank.
‘He wouldn’t have told anyone to do what he couldn’t do standing on his head.
He pushed himself, for himself. He wanted to be better than the best and he was.
But his heart let him down. He had a weakness in it no one could have known about.
A time bomb, they told us after. It could have gone off when he was sitting adding sums up in an office.
If he’d put his dreams on hold to please his mother, and she really put some pressure on him not to do what he knew he was born for, he’d have still probably died young, but unfulfilled, living half a life.
In a mad way, that made me feel better, if anything could: that he stuck to his guns. ’
‘Frank can’t possibly feel the same as I do. He might be able to move on but I can’t. I don’t even want to try.’
‘He was Frank’s son too, Grace,’ said Jane, gently.
‘With respect, Jane,’ Grace replied, her politeness vying with her anger, ‘as I said, unless you have lost a child, you cannot know what a mother who has carried that baby can feel. You think you can imagine it, and it will be a very pale imitation of reality, trust me.’
The time had come.
‘Grace, I have carried three sons and I have raised three sons. And I have lost them all,’ said Jane.