M.J. Hollows - Goodbye for Now

M J H OLLOWSwas born in London in 1986, and moved to Liverpool in 2010 to lecture in Audio Engineering. With a keen interest in history, music, and science, he has told stories since he was little. Goodbye for Now is his first novel, which he started as part of his MA in Writing from Liverpool John Moores University, graduating in 2015. He is now researching towards a PhD in Creative Writing, and working on his next novel. Find out more about Michael at his website: www.michaelhollows.com.

HQ

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2018

Copyright © M J Hollows 2018

M J Hollows asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

E-book Edition © October 2018 ISBN: 9780008287962

Version: 2018-10-25

For everyone who fought and died in war,

and everyone who fought and died for peace.

Table of Contents

Cover

About M J Hollows

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

1923

1914

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

1915

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

1916

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

1917

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

1923

Acknowledgements

Dear Reader

Dear Reader

Keep Reading …

About the Publisher

They all stood in silence, with hats and caps doffed under arms, focusing their vision on their shoes. Meanwhile the bishop droned on in his fashion, extolling the virtues of sacrifice.

He stared with them, trying not to dredge up the memories of the past. I have lived through hell, but in that I am not alone , he thought. Bile stuck in his throat and he desperately tried to swallow it away. No one noticed, or if they did they attributed it to his grief.

Everyone had suffered and sacrificed, not just the soldiers. He wondered how his brother might be now. How much he would have been changed by the war. They had both endured their own private hells, and as the dead would keep their solace, so would the living. No one would ever truly understand their plight and those that had experienced it didn’t need the others to remind them. That was what the nightmares were for.

So he stood there, in silence, with their neighbours and people from the nearby streets, waiting for the bishop to finish his sermon, for the memorial to be revealed.

Somewhere in the distance a baby cried. No one reacted, empathising with the child, who was probably too young to know what was going on but was joining in nonetheless.

The bishop stopped and was replaced by a Major young enough to have been a junior Lieutenant at the outbreak of war. His voice broke as he began reading out the names of the lost, Morgan, Norris, Oliver, the endless torrent of the dead. They were just names now. Their legacy, the brass plaque that was being unveiled.

He patted his coat pocket, remembering the bundle of letters that he kept there. That’s where they would stay, sealed, but not forgotten.

The Major continued reading out the names of the fallen, some of whom he knew, others he had never met.

When he could bear to think of him, he had spent most of the war angry with his brother. Not angry, that wasn’t strictly the right emotion. They had never really understood each other. They were very different people, with different stories. He had had high hopes for his brother, they all had, yet he threw it all away. He chose his path. When he should have turned to his family he turned away. It was hard now to remember him as they were when they were children. Too much had happened. His name had not been spoken aloud since. They all missed him, but it was too painful a memory.

The Major had finished now and had disappeared. There was a cough from someone amongst the crowd. The only sound apart from that was the occasional sniffle of a nose or the sound of stifled weeping. Heads were still bowed and would remain that way for some time, some years perhaps.

At first he hadn’t understood his brother’s decision; they stood on opposite sides. But as the war dragged on and on, past its first Christmas and into a new year, year after year, he had started to understand his brother a lot more. He begun to understand the need to fight for something, to believe in something and to not give up. No matter what life would throw at you. That was a sentiment he could agree on, and he guessed it was something their father had managed to instil in them both, despite their differing opinions. It had been a clear dividing line at first, but things were less clear now. The world had changed for all of them. The horror of the war had left no family unaffected. They couldn’t change their decisions, but they could make sure that they counted for something. That things hadn’t just changed for the worse but would be allowed to change for the better too.

He just wished his brother was still around to say this to, but he would never have the chance now. Their paths drifted apart, on what was to be a fateful day for millions of people…

‘It’s war!’

George Abbott would never forget where he was that day, when those very words were spoken. He was sat at the family kitchen table, a roughly cut dark wooden frame, with an off-white cloth draped across it to hide its wear and tear. He leaned over a bowl of oats, playing them around with his tarnished spoon. Beside it was an enamel plate with some bread and milk.

His sisters, Catherine and Elisabeth, sat either side of him. Catherine was looking over at George to see if he would eat his bread, or if she could take it. Her hair was a deep black mess of curls, the same as their mother’s, framing a pale, chubby face, whereas little Elisabeth’s hair was a distinct copper colour, more like their father’s. At the other end of the table, across the other side was George’s brother Joe, gaunt and long like their father, although with a growth of unkempt curly black hair. He wore the deep brown suit that he always wore to work, even at the breakfast table. He was careful not to get any food on it.