Goodbyes
Eliza’s work was done. One swift waft of air and the wasp hadn’t stood a chance.
It had been blown towards Jules’s foot instead of her hand and Eliza’s mission was completed.
After that it was up to the people themselves.
She could do everything in her power to bring them together, but the final decision was theirs.
She couldn’t impose her own wishes upon them.
Free will was always going to be paramount.
She watched from the window as Jules and Lance walked arm in arm up the path flanked by lavender and squeezed side by side beneath the honeysuckle arch as they made their way towards the car.
Jules turned as Lance closed the gate and she blew a kiss towards the cottage or perhaps it wasn’t just for the house…
Perhaps their guest could see her gazing at the two of them remembering when she and Isaac had been like that, their love transcending all the struggles of life and death.
She had believed that devotion would be for eternity.
Now she had the cottage to herself once more and she drifted through the rooms trailing her fingers across the mantelpiece, the deep windowsills and the uneven walls.
She reached up to touch the roughly hewn beams and stooped to place her hand flat upon the slate flooring in the porch.
Of course, the cottage looked so different now to how it had been in her day when she had hung dried flowers from the large central beam in the kitchen and oil lamps had created light rather than electricity.
She had cooked on a range, but nothing as beautiful and benign as the duck egg blue one which their guests used.
Hers had been black and temperamental, often smoking or refusing to get up to the required heat.
Her life had been hard in many ways. They hadn’t had much money, she and Isaac, that had been determined the day they decided to run away together, and her family had cut her off both emotionally and materially.
But it hadn’t mattered. They’d had so much love for each other. That had got them through – until now.
She left the kitchen and walked through the garden past the willow tree. She couldn’t bear to sit beneath it anymore. Now she would rest on the bench at the end of the lawn looking out over the water. She would gaze up at the sky and the clouds and anticipate the next stage.
‘Eliza.’
Isaac stood behind her, his voice tremulous, his body language now permanently contrite, not that it made any difference.
‘You have worked a miracle,’ he said. ‘I saw our guest and her beloved arriving back at the farm. Thanks to you all shall be well with them. I’m sure of it.’
Eliza shrugged.
‘It was nothing.’
Before Carrie arrived in the spring, the prospect of welcoming guests to their home had been so exciting, so full of promise. How ironic, she thought, that against the odds she had brought two couples together only for it to cost her own relationship. Tentatively Isaac came to sit beside her.
She shuffled to the far end of the bench.
‘I hope one day, Eliza, you will be able to forgive me.’
Would she? She of all people, who had preached forgiveness all of her days, was now being put to the ultimate test and failing.
‘I am leaving, Isaac,’ she said.
He nodded.
‘The time is coming. We agreed to complete this one more mission.’
She looked at him directly.
‘I’m leaving now, Isaac. Directly. Today.’
He leaned towards her.
‘But Eliza, what about Philly? She has not been returned to us.’
Eliza tried not to think about the day those people had come to take their beloved baby away.
Jules, Carrie and Guy had stood silently as her little bones were released from the soil.
The vicar had said some prayers and then her daughter had been placed in a small box to be taken to a building in Ryde.
‘It could be weeks or months before that happens, Isaac. Besides, those are just her mortal remains. Her spirit is elsewhere, waiting. I’m going to her.’
‘Do her mortal remains not mean anything to you, Eliza? They do to me. Can you not wait a little longer, my love, and we can go together?’
‘No!’
Isaac steepled his fingers together and placed them to his lips.
‘I can’t come with you. I wish to see Philly laid to rest. The Major is making arrangements. He and Carrie have ascertained that she belongs to us and soon we will all be reunited in the churchyard.’
‘And then she’ll be forgotten again.’
‘She has never been forgotten, Eliza. I think of her every day, and your heartstrings have always been connected to hers. Look at all the flowers that people have brought to lay beneath our tree. Her short life is being honoured by people who never knew her. That gives me comfort and hope. Carrie and Guy are in the process of persuading The Major to hold a garden party to raise funds for a headstone for her. I wish to stay and see these plans come to fruition and I wish you to stay with me.’
She shook her head.
‘I’m sorry, Isaac. That is not possible.’
He was silent, looking out far into the distance.
‘Then we must go our separate ways for now,’ he said, at last. ‘I couldn’t protect our child in life, but I’m determined to watch over her final journey on this earth.
This is one of the last things I can do here.
It is my duty as her father. I won’t shirk it.
Perhaps it is for the best, you with her spirit and I with her mortal remains.
Always remember, Eliza, that I love you.
I have from the first moment I saw you on the beach and I always will, just as I have always loved Philly from that moment you first told me that you were carrying her. ’
Eliza shivered despite the warmth of the late afternoon sun.
It used to be her favourite time of the day.
She would stroll around the garden dead-heading flowers, doing some gentle weeding or watering, picking vegetables to be cooked for their supper.
And for a few short months Isaac would be there with Philly, walking beside her, their precious child wrapped in a shawl, the apricot bonnet covering her fine hair.
Isaac would point out the birds and the bees and his favourite blooms. When she got fractious, he would produce the silver rattle and tinkle its little bells to soothe her.
He had been the best of fathers, the best of husbands.
She turned to look at the cottage. This had been the best of homes.
Isaac stood up before leaning to kiss Eliza on the forehead.
‘When I’m ready to leave this world, I’ll come to find you, Eliza,’ he said, looking down at her with that gentle, but strong face which she had loved for so long. ‘It will be up to you to decide whether we’re to be permanently reunited. The choice will be entirely yours.’
And he walked away without her even able to say that she loved him.
Those words that had come so easily for all of these years had withered like the fallen leaves beneath the willow tree.
Isaac would take his evening stroll around the farmyard, checking on the animals, no doubt inspecting the yield from the harvest, finding a safe place for Scattihen if she hadn’t been shut away, looking in on Rita and sending goodwill for her convalescence.
He was a good man, a good man who had made a mistake, for reasons she could acknowledge, but not understand, nor condone.
One day maybe she would be able to. But not now. Now they must go their separate ways.
She sat waiting for the sun to go down, listening to the sounds of her garden; the grasses blowing in the breeze, the creaking from the barn on the other side of the hedge, the scurrying of small creatures in the undergrowth.
Behind her Hideaway Cottage stood firm, giving her strength as it always had.
The love she had bestowed upon it seemed inadequate compared to the blessings it had imparted to her.
Leaving it would be one of the hardest things she had to do, almost as hard as saying goodbye to Isaac.
But the perfect moment would be here soon.
And when it came, she would leave Hideaway Cottage and her beloved Isle of Wight, never to return.