Leah Fleming - Remembrance Day

‘Mrs Bartley,’ he whispered.

‘Aye, it’s our turn then,’ was all she could manage as she turned her back on him and made for the safety of her kitchen. Her hands were shaking and wouldn’t open the door properly. The envelope lay burning a hole in the table for hours until Asa came in. She nodded in its direction, unable to speak. He wiped his hands and tore the envelope, read the page, looked up at her shaking his head as if all the sorrows of the world were contained in those sad eyes.

‘He’s gone missing. Our Newton’s missing, presumed killed.’ He sat down, his head in his hands. ‘I don’t understand. We had a letter only the other day. My son…’

Asa walked back to his workshop, his shoulders bowed. Essie walked down the path to the open gate and out onto the lane and stared up at the green hills. How could her son be lost and her not know it? How could her lovely lad be so far away from her and she not sense he’d gone from her? While she was sitting, chattering away, he was lying somewhere, unseeing. They got things wrong sometimes, she thought. She would not close the front room curtains yet a while…not until the others knew. How on earth was she going to tell Selma?

Selma couldn’t believe she’d never see her brother again. He was only missing in action, Mam said. There was hope, however small. So at first she refused to go into black clothes. Frank was not even allowed home from France on compassionate leave. Perhaps he knew more than he was letting on, but he was in the north somewhere far away from Newt’s regiment. She managed to go to school in a dream, trying not to show her true feelings. Children didn’t want to see suffering faces. Her brother, said the pastor, was in a better place now. Dad nodded but said nothing as neighbours called with their little gifts of kindness: buns, pastries and vegetables. As if any of them wanted to eat at such a time. Everything stuck like pebbles in her throat. Mam just stared at Newton’s portrait and insisted the gate be kept open at the back just in case.‘You never know…he might be trying to find his way home,’ she kept whispering.

But it was Archie Spensley’s letter a week later that shattered all their illusions.

Dear family,

I am sad to have to write to you that your son and my dear friend, Newton, is no more. We chummed up straight away in Halifax and he was highly regarded as a conscientious worker and a good Christian. I shall miss his cheery company. We are greatly troubled by enemy fire in this district, which damaged our guns with shells and fragments. Your son was going forward to do a repair. There was another bombardment and I never saw him again. Be assured he would not have suffered and would want you to know you were ever in his thoughts.

May God bless all of you in your darkest hour, may He show you every mercy.

Yours sincerely,

Private Archibald Spensley

Suddenly, Selma’s parents looked old, weary and bent with sorrow. If only there was something she could do to lighten their load. Without the boys’ help Dad was sinking under a pile of unfinished orders. If only Frank could be made to come home like Angus Cantrell, who was hanging about the Hart’s Head like a knotless thread. She knew Guy was anxious to hear if she’d seen him but she was no tale-teller and said nothing to worry him.

Angus looked able-bodied enough to give a helping hand if he had a mind to it but such an impertinent request was out of the question. Lady Hester would never condone such lowly employment.

They held a simple memorial service and sang Newton’s favourite hymn, ‘Who would true valour see, Let him come hither’. She tried to sing but the words collapsed in her throat. She didn’t hear the pastor’s oration. She was living in a sort of dream. It wasn’t real because they had no body to bury, just a flag draped around the portrait he’d had taken in his uniform when he first volunteered. There were only old men and Angus Cantrell and his mother. He looked so like his brother and her heart ached at the sight of his tall frame and broad shoulders. Those who had already lost sons shielded her parents with loving concern. They had been admitted to a club whose entrance fee was young blood; a club no one wanted to join.

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