Chapter 31
GRACE
Silas hadn’t moved when Grace returned to the living room. He was still slumped in the armchair, a frozen expression on his face as he contemplated what had just happened.
‘She’s right, of course,’ Grace said stoically. ‘I shall be sorry to leave you again, dearest.’ She swallowed down a lump of emotion as he looked up at her, his eyes shining with tears that could never fall. ‘Oh, Carrots! Please don’t upset yourself. It will be perfectly fine, I promise you.’
She settled in his lap and put her arms around him, holding him tightly as he sobbed.
‘There, there,’ she soothed. ‘It’s all right. It’s quite all right.’
But it really wasn’t, was it? She was trying to be brave, but she didn’t feel very brave at all.
She would love to think that she would take back the memory of her beloved husband and this beautiful village to wherever it was that she was destined for, but the fact remained that when she’d returned here, she’d had no memory whatsoever of where that was.
What if, when she went back, she had no memory of this place? Of this time? What if, in the afterlife, you had no actual memories of this life at all?
Carrots would be lost to her forever. Edmund…
No, she mustn’t give way to emotion, nor to fear. Carrots clearly needed her more than ever, and she had to be strong for him. To reassure him.
She pulled a little away from him and forced herself to smile. ‘Now, now, that’s enough of that, isn’t it?’
‘I’m so sorry, my dear,’ he spluttered. ‘I should be the one comforting you, not the other way around. But the thought of losing you all over again is just too much to bear.’
‘Silas Alexander,’ she said firmly, ‘you managed perfectly well without me all these years, and you will manage perfectly well without me after I leave.’
‘But…’ Silas shook his head, wiping his eyes on his sleeve. ‘But that’s just it, Grace. I didn’t manage perfectly well without you. I didn’t manage at all well. I was lost without you. Utterly lost.’
Grace stroked his snowy white hair as she considered this. Was that the reason Silas had transformed from a wonderful, loving, kind man to the bitter, angry prig that Polly, Millie and Bill had spoken of earlier?
She had, after all, seen signs of that stranger many years ago, after their great loss, but she’d hoped that, with their house move and settling in a new parish, as well as the strength of the bond between them, those flashes of anger would fade.
But maybe Silas hadn’t had the chance to recover enough from one loss before facing another?
Perhaps, after all, she’d been the lucky one to be spared so much heartache.
It was, she thought, time that they faced the past and spoke of that which they hadn’t spoken of since her return.
‘I had a little chat with a young soldier earlier,’ she told him gently. ‘His name is Bill. I expect you know him.’
‘Oh,’ Silas said crossly, ‘I know him all right.’
‘He was telling me about the Great War and his memories of it. Not that he had many. Do you know he died in 1915? I suppose you do, as it must have been talked about in the village a great deal, with it being such a shocking accident. If I had managed to stay alive for more than a few weeks in Rowan Vale I would probably have heard of him myself. Perhaps I had heard of him – my memories are still a little hazy, unfortunately. Anyway, he remembered some of his experiences in the war.’
‘Must we talk about Bill Fairfax, of all people?’ Silas pleaded. ‘I really don’t want to—’
‘Polly, Millie and Bill,’ she continued firmly, ‘told me that every year, people wear poppies as a mark of remembrance for our fallen soldiers, and that they lay wreaths on memorials all around the country. Around the world, in fact. I was so glad to hear that. I wondered what those paper flowers were that people were wearing in the village. What a splendid idea it is to raise money for servicemen and their families. Polly says that this Sunday is Remembrance Sunday and there will be a service at the church in honour of all those dear soldiers who never came home.’
‘I’d always hoped,’ Silas admitted, ‘that one day I would go to France and find his grave. Our boy. To lay a wreath and to tell him how much we both loved him. But he wasn’t treated like the other soldiers, Grace.
I was told that he may have been lying in an unmarked grave, so I would never have found him.
I never got the chance to find out for myself if that was so. ’
Grace gently dabbed his eyes with her handkerchief. ‘It must have been so hard for you, my love. First our son and then me. Life must have seemed very cruel and unfair.’
Lord knows, she thought desolately, it had been hard enough for her, and she had only suffered one loss.
Edmund, their beloved only child, had been just eighteen years old when he signed up.
Determined to fight for king and country, he’d been full of excitement and patriotism.
How could they have known, as they tearfully waved him and the rest of his regiment off that day, that he would not see the end of the war?
So many of those young boys had been killed in the various battles they’d been forced to fight – barely trained and often struggling with shellshock and physical injuries. They were classed as heroes.
But not Edmund…
Grace knew it was impossible for her heart to ache but it certainly seemed to as she remembered the terrible news they’d been given that fateful day in 1916.
Edmund, who had been little more than a child as far as they were concerned, had fought bravely, going over the top many times.
But he’d been repeatedly shelled over the last two years and had suffered terrible trauma.
In 1915 he had been briefly hospitalised, as he was unable to bear the sound of the guns and couldn’t stop shaking.
Yet he had been sent back to the front line, where, after struggling through the Battle of the Somme in 1916 and somehow, miraculously, surviving that hell, he had refused to go on any longer. He just wasn’t capable of doing so.
There was no sympathy for his physical and mental condition. The fact that he was in agony, that he was terrified, that he simply couldn’t cope with the noise for another moment, held no sway with those in command.
Edmund was shot as a coward in October of that year.
She and Silas had thought their hearts would break, and the attitudes of their so-called friends and parishioners had shocked them to the core. There had been no compassion, no understanding. It was as if they expected the Alexanders to feel nothing but shame towards their son.
Well, they were not ashamed of him. They were proud of him. They loved him. They grieved for him. But they could no longer bear to be in the Cambridgeshire village where they’d lived for so long.
They had sought help and guidance from the Church and from God, and had been gifted the parish of Rowan Vale, where they had settled in 1917 with hope of a fresh start and a chance to make new friends.
It wasn’t to be. Grace, as she had learned only recently, had died of a heart attack just three months after arriving in this place, leaving Silas to struggle on alone with the burden of his grief now doubled, rather than shared.
‘I was angry with God,’ Silas murmured, his arms tight around her waist. ‘I was bitter. How could He allow that to happen to my son? And then, when you died, too…’ He shook his head.
‘It was too much to bear, Grace. I had served Him all my adult life, and He had taken away the two people I loved most in the world. I found it almost impossible to carry on in my vocation, and yet I tried. I really tried. I told myself that one day I would be with you both again. But then I died and found that I was not to be reunited with you and Edmund after all. It was as if He had saved his greatest betrayal for last.’ He gave a bitter laugh.
‘If He even exists. Sometimes, I struggle to believe even that.’
‘Silas!’ Grace was shocked. ‘You must never say that. Of course He exists, and He loves you as I love you. More. And Edmund is safe with Him, I am certain of that.’
‘How can you be, when you don’t even remember where you were all this time?’ Silas pleaded. ‘Where were you, Grace? Did you see our son? Did you hold him and comfort him, tell him that we loved him, that we were never ever ashamed of him – not for a single instant?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said helplessly, her lower lip trembling with grief. ‘I just don’t know. But I have faith that I was indeed with our son, and that he is happy and contented, and knows our love for him never faltered and never will.’
‘If anyone would be ashamed it is him, of me,’ Silas said as he lovingly stroked her hand. ‘I’ve become a bitter, lonely old man, my dear. I’m not the husband and father you remember. I’m angry that I’ve been abandoned by the God I served so faithfully all those years.’
‘Did you ever confide in anyone about your grief?’ she asked him, aching at the thought of all he’d suffered. ‘Did you tell anyone about Edmund? What happened to him.’
Silas shook his head. ‘There is a man in this village – Raymond Deakin – who I believe would understand all too well what Edmund went through, but I couldn’t bring myself to talk about it, even to him.
Besides, I believe he would rather forget the consequences of his distress, for believe me, my dear, they were most severe.
I did tell one person, but I swore him to secrecy.
I’m not that sort of man, Grace. Not any more. ’
‘You have so many lovely people in this village,’ she mused.
‘Callie, for example, is so kind and helpful. I think… Yes, I shall ask her if she can find out more about Edmund’s final resting place.
Perhaps there is a grave with a headstone somewhere in France.
We can never visit it, but just knowing it’s there will be something.
A comfort to you, my darling. I will ask her to make enquiries,’ she decided. ‘Before I go.’
Silas sobbed. ‘I thought… Just for a little while, I allowed myself to dream that I had been rewarded and you were to be returned to me for good. But here we are again. Another goodbye approaches, and there is nothing I can do about it.’
Grace cupped his face in her hands and said fiercely, ‘Now listen to me, Silas Alexander. You had a good life. You had a happy childhood with loving parents—’
‘Religious parents,’ he said grouchily. ‘I never stood a chance, what with theology lessons and Sunday School and Father telling me how it would make Mother happy forever if I went into the Church. What else could I do?’
Grace ruffled his hair. ‘I know you, and I knew your parents. They loved and cherished you, and in the Church, you found a vocation that meant everything in the world to you. And then you met me, and we had a long and extremely happy marriage. We had a beautiful, beautiful son, who filled each day we had him with joy. How many people can look back on their lives and say they were so fortunate? Yes, you have suffered but so have many people. Now you have the consolation that your wife and son will be together in Heaven, because I know deep down in my heart that it will be true.’
‘And what will I do without you?’ he asked, the depth of sorrow in his eyes almost breaking her. ‘How can you ask me to remain here alone for the rest of eternity without you? To push my grief aside and continue as normal.’
‘What I ask of you is that you remember the kind and happy soul you once were and try to honour him by living the way he did. You have a wonderful community here who would welcome you if you would just let them in. I don’t expect you to forget Edmund or me, but honour our memory, too, by living your afterlife to the full.
Make friends. Have fun. Join in. Please, Silas, promise me.
Promise me that after I leave here you will allow yourself to be happy again. ’
Silas drew her closer and they held each other with a quiet desperation. ‘I will try, dear,’ he promised her. ‘I will do my very best for your sake and for Edmund’s.’
She kissed the top of his head. ‘Then we shall be content,’ she told him. ‘Never forget, Silas, you are loved. You are so loved, and you always will be.’