Barbara Erskine - Distant Voices

I hardly know to this day what made me do it, drag a comb through my hair, collect my purse, and take the bus into Minster. The old people’s home was near the bus station, set in a lovely garden.

Aunt Irene was sitting on the porch, gazing out at the rose beds when I arrived. She smiled at me when she saw me and gestured at the chair near her. Her poor hand was still paralysed but she looked much better than when Steve and I had last seen her.

I felt her looking at me closely as I sat there not knowing what to say. I didn’t want to tell her anything; I just wanted the comfort of being near her, I think because she was Steve’s aunt.

‘It’s good of you to come, my dear,’ she commented at last. ‘I’ve been thinking a lot about you and Steve.’

I felt myself blushing and I looked at my hands. Me and Steve. It seemed strange that she could still refer to us together like that, as if nothing had happened.

I looked up and smiled wanly, and I was quite embarrassed to find her looking at me so shrewdly. I felt it was almost as if she knew exactly why I was there. I suppose it can’t have been difficult to guess that we had had a row.

‘You know, Linda, I often think of my life in that cottage when I was young. I’m so happy to think that you two live there now, to fill it with happiness and laughter. I never told Steve this, but when I was a girl,’ she paused and there was such a long silence I thought she had forgotten what she was talking about, the way old people do, but then she went on, ‘I was engaged once, you know. To such a nice boy.’ Her faded blue eyes twinkled at the memory. ‘We nearly got married, then I found out that he’d done something very bad – he’d stolen some money. I told him I couldn’t marry him. He went away to the war of course, in 1914, and he was killed in the first month.’ There was a long silence. I could see that even now, after so many years, it still hurt her to think about it. At last she went on, ‘If I’d stood by him, in spite of what he’d done, I often think perhaps he might not have been killed. I might have had children of my own …’ Her voice tailed away again, and I felt my eyes fill with tears.

She smiled suddenly. ‘You won’t wait too long, will you Linda, you and Steve? I would so like to see your babies before I die, my dear.’ Then she became suddenly brisk. ‘Why not go and find the housekeeper and ask her if you can stay and have lunch with me. I’d like that. Don’t look so sad, dear. Take no notice of an old woman’s ramblings. After all, you do have Steve; and I know you love each other so much, that nothing could come between you the way it did between Robert and me. Nothing, however bad, should come between lovers. They must forgive.’

I got up and dropped a kiss on her head. ‘I’ll go and see about lunch,’ I said, my voice catching in my throat.

Of course it was very hard to forgive and I could never forget, but somehow we managed to get through that summer, Steve and I. When Graham came for me that afternoon I told him I couldn’t go to London after all and he shrugged philosophically. ‘I’m sorry, honey; if you change your mind you know where to find me …’ I think he was secretly rather relieved. After all, he was happily married in Wisconsin.

And I didn’t change my mind. I loved Steve and I realised that whatever he had done I was prepared to give him another chance. I knew I had been lucky too. Graham understood and he had not taken advantage of me when I had, I now realised, been playing with fire. I might so easily have found myself in the same situation as Lauren.

And now, the leaves are blowing from the trees and I’ve lit a fire in the grate and the room is filled with the scent of burning apple logs. I’ve given up my job; somehow we’ll get by on the money we’ve saved already, and by the time spring comes I shall have a baby and if it’s a girl I shall call her Irene. Steve doesn’t know the real reason I chose the name, but of course he’s pleased, and he’s thrilled about the baby. And I love him so very much.

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