-
Get Published on Female First
"Robert's twenty-five years old, for goodness sake, and you've been engaged to him for five years," said her best friend Lizzie, when Julie confessed how unhappy she'd been feeling. "If he's not ready for the responsibility of marriage by now, do you really think he will ever be?"
Julie's hand lifted to her mouth and she stared at her friend.
Lizzie looked closely at Julie's face, and then continued, speaking slowly. "Robert's a nice chap, such a good-looker, and everybody likes him....but look at it this way...is he really the right father for your babies, if you ever do get married?"
"But I love him," Julie retorted, running her fingers through her auburn hair.
"Head over heart?" Or heart over head?"
"I know he'll settle down when we get married."
"Famous last words. Look, Julie, I'm so sorry. Robert's a darling, but he's more boy than man. And do you know what that would make you? More mother than wife!"
*
"I want to talk about...us." Julie's lips quivered as she looked across at Robert. He turned away.
It was a late afternoon in early spring, 1936. They were sitting beside an oak tree in the park. An elderly lady smiled at them as she dawdled by with a walking stick, a fat corgi waddling behind her.
"I want you to tell me - truthfully - how you feel about us, and getting married," Julie continued, resolutely. Robert turned quickly to look at her and she was shocked at the startled expression that crossed his face.
"Do you still want to marry me?" she said, a lump rising in her throat. "Honestly, can you say that you do?"
There was a lengthy silence. Robert's eyes fell on a bearded man in a tattered khaki coat, scattering breadcrumbs to squabbling pigeons.
The sun was low in the sky, casting long shadows. A heavy cloud raced across its face. The shadows merged and the spring green grass turned a drab olive.
Robert took Julie's hand and said: "Honestly? I want to live a little before we settle down. I think there're things I need to get out of my system." There was a pause and then he added, in a hollow voice. "But I love you and can't bear the thought of losing you."
Julie said: "I don't want to lose you either, but I've been dreadfully unhappy with the way things are between us."
Excruciating weeks followed, with tears and raised voices and growing awkwardness between them.
One Saturday evening, Robert visited Julie and handed back the eternity ring she'd given him two years earlier.
Standing in the doorway of the little house where she lived with her parents, Robert muttered: "I know I'm not right for you, though I do love you and know I always will. But I just can't be the man you need me to be. It's best for both of us that we break off our engagement. I'm so very, very sorry."
He turned on his heels and walked away, leaving Julie numb with shock. She watched him until he reached the turn of the path and disappeared from view.
That night she lay awake until four in the morning, then fell into a fitful sleep, awaking heavy and dull at seven.
*
"You can't just suddenly unlove a man!" Julie sniffed, taking a handkerchief from the pile of washing her mother was ironing in the kitchen. "It's not as if he's been horrible to me or anything."
"Will that make it harder for you to get over him, then?" asked her mother, uneasily, putting the iron down.
"Of course it will. If he had been nasty or unfaithful or something, I could let myself be angry and get him out of my system," Julie replied, dabbing her eyes. "It was just that...Robert and I are similar ages but we're at different stages. I was wanting to settle down, set up a home and start a family." She fell silent and then continued, shaking her head. "Robert wanted to keep on with his boys' things, his motor-bikes and cars."
"Maybe you're better off without him, dear." Julie's mother glanced quickly at her husband, sitting at the table. "Perhaps Robert just wasn't good enough for you," she said.
Julie felt a flush of anger. She met her mother's eyes. "Please don't say unkind things about Robert," she answered quietly.
"I'm so sorry," said Mother, hugging her daughter to her. "We only want the best for you, darling. Your father and I can't bear to see you upset like this."
"I know," said Julie, bursting into tears.
Her father stood up from his chair and put an arm around her shaking shoulders.
*
"In a funny way, it shows Robert really loved you," Grandma explained, when Julie arrived at her cottage that afternoon and broke the news. "He was man enough to break off the engagement when he thought it was the right thing to do, despite the way he felt about you. And that shows a lot of courage."
She gave Julie a hug. "Don't give up on him, dear. "Sometimes they need to mature a little more, before they can settle down. It's often the way with men. Like your Grandpop for instance."
Julie had been only eight when her Grandpop died. She still treasured the little wooden puppet he'd made for her, with its crimson nose and white dots for nostrils.
She thought often about the times long ago when Grandpop would take her by the hand and skip with her through the clematis bowered gateway into the enchanted world of his cottage garden. Then they would stroll along cobbled pathways fragrant with the scent of phlox, hyacinth and thyme, past pink and red hollyhocks that swayed to touch her in the breeze, and pansies in a thousand colours with their funny, smiling faces.
Sitting side by side in the ivy-covered arbour, they would listen to the song of larks and thrushes, laughing as they turned the rabbit-like heads of snapdragons into finger puppets.
"Your Grandpop and I were very much in love and became engaged two days before the Great War broke out." Grandma took a deep breath. "Within a week, he told me he was going to volunteer for the army. I cried and cried and pleaded, but he went to the nearest recruiting office with a couple of his friends and they all joined up together. It's just something I have to do, he told me or I won't be able to live with myself. Don't worry, dearest. We'll beat the Hun and I'll be home by Christmas. He was home two years later with his arm blown off. I remember his words, like it was yesterday. I was lying in No Man's Land, he said, half buried in mud, looking up at the clouds. I couldn't move. It was night before the stretcher party got to me. All that time, I was thinking about you and wanting to be home, to settle down and raise a family.
Grandma wiped her eyes. "He turned out to be a wonderful husband and father," she whispered, rubbing Julie's hand.
*
"Robert's gone away, love," his mother said a week later, finding Julie on her doorstep after biking miles across town. I'm so sorry. He made me promise not to say where he was going."
*
Months passed.
"I can't enjoy anything now, not even my nursing," Julie confided to Lizzie. "My life's like eating a chocolate without being able to taste it. I just can't feel anymore. It's like I've cried myself empty. As if I've gone numb."
"You need to start seeing other men," Lizzie replied, adding with a smile: "You're so pretty, you know. I've seen the way men look at you."
"I can't. I can't. I still love Robert. And I won't give up on him!"
Sometimes she would catch a glimpse of a man on the street in a similar jacket, or a family visitor coming into the hospital at dusk, the same height and way of walking as Robert, and her heart would jump to her throat, but it was never him.
Gradually these tricks of the mind lessened until, nearly two years later, she sat bolt upright clutching her heart, staring at the newspaper on the table. A lump was so high in her throat that she could barely swallow.
An Empire Gallantry Medal had been awarded to Corporal Robert Wilson, serving with the 11th Hussars in Palestine, who, despite being seriously wounded, persisted in his efforts to relieve a village under attack by insurgents, after the Rolls Royce armoured car he was driving had been struck and partly disabled by enemy fire.
She made a long distance telephone call to the War Office in London.
"Certainly, Madam," said the voice, "Let me check our records..."
*
A few weeks later, towards the end of 1938, Julie was at the station to greet him, a bunch of red roses trembling in her hand.
Would he remember her after two years? Would he...could he...possibly still love her? He'd be a different man...could even have married somebody else!
She watched from behind a barrier as stretcher bearers carried the wounded troops from the train.
Which one was Robert? They all looked the same wrapped in grey army blankets.
"Robert Wilson! Robert Wilson!" Julie called, over and over as each stretcher passed, until she saw a man turn his head. Could it be Robert? She stepped over the barrier and began to run towards him.
"Just a minute, ma'am!" A soldier grabbed her by the arm.
"I've got to see my fiancé! He's one of the wounded!"
An officer turned from his clipboard.
"Please calm yourself ma'am. We can't allow anybody to disturb these troops until they've been processed at the army hospital."
Julie pleaded with him.
"Please, I just want to see my fiancé. He thinks I don't love him!" she cried, tears streaming down her face.
The officer cleared his throat.
He handed the clipboard to the soldier and motioned him to carry on.
"What's the man's name and rank?" he asked Julie.
"Robert. Robert Wilson. Corporal."
"Wait here."
The officer approached the line of stretchers, speaking briefly to each man, until one raised himself on an elbow and looked over to where Julie was standing, waving above the crowd.
"Julie!" he roared.
The officer beckoned Julie over, grinning broadly.
"I think your man needs you," he said.
*
"I thought I'd lost you forever and wanted to give up wanting you, but I couldn't, no matter how hard I tried. I still love you." Robert looked up into Julie's eyes from the hospital bed. "All I want now is to be with you and for us to raise a family together. Loving you was the one thing I couldn't get out of my system."
"No more than I could get you out of mine," whispered Julie. She squeezed his hand, a look of concern crossing her face. "Grandma is worried about Hitler and the Nazis and she thinks we'll be at war with Germany soon."
"Everybody is saying that. Reckon I've done my bit for King and Empire, by jove!" said Robert. He beamed at her. "If there's another war, I'll be on desk duty, coming home every night to you. I've often thought that I'd like to set up a cottage garden like your Grandpop did, with snapdragons for our children to play with." He laughed, pointing to his stump. "They wouldn't let me fight on one leg!"
Julie bent down and kissed him.
"Every cloud has a silver lining," she murmured.
Tagged in Bruce Costello