put her mother’s wedding ring in the tin along with the bills and coins. ‘We’ll go to America or Australia and say you’re a war widow. And then we’ll come back and say you got married there, and he ran off, or widowed you. Your father be damned. You promise me, now. I can’t lose another of you.’
We promised, all three of us. I handed over the five shillings for my poem, to add to her cache.
When news of the Hundred Days Offensive began, I worried myself sick, especially when letters from Finbarr ceased with no warming. ‘There might not be any post coming from the front,’ my mother tried to soothe. ‘Let’s not fret till there’s cause.’
There was plenty of cause. Bad news arrived for girl after girl, mother after mother, father after father. By now I was nineteen but I think in my heart I may have been much younger. The world quaked around us. One minute my mother would be her old self, brisk and loving. Then she would fade away, pale and still, staring out the window.
‘What are you watching for, Mum?’
‘Nothing,’ she’d say, and go back to some busy work. But I knew what she was watching for. Colleen, heading towards home,a small child’s hand in hers. Love and reason have never been well acquainted.
On Armistice Day I had never seen so many people in one place as there were on the streets of London. With Megs, Louisa and our friend Emily Hastings, I went out into the celebrating throng. What noise and joy. We couldn’t stand shoulder to shoulder, everybody moved sideways.
Megs, Louisa, Emily and I tried to hold hands as we made our way through the streets but it was impossible. It should have been frightening, being trapped in the midst of so thick a crowd, but the happiness was even thicker. You can’t imagine the joy and goodwill. If you tripped, a hundred hands reached out to catch you. If you sneezed, a thousand people said ‘God Bless You’. A soldier caught Megs’s arm as she tripped over the curb, then tipped his hat and revelled on with his mates. I searched the crowd, as if there were any reason for Finbarr to be held within it, as if – being lucky enough that he loved me – I could be lucky enough to summon him before my eyes.
Somewhere out in the masses, Agatha Christie was walking too. During this stretch of time, a lonely married lady with her husband off to war, she’d occupied herself by taking a course in shorthand. When Armistice was announced right in the middle of class, everyone stumbled out into the celebrations, marvelling at the crowd just as we did. Englishwomen – Englishwomen! – dancing in the street. For all I knew, Agatha and I were shoulder to shoulder, either once or many times during that heady day.
I’m not sure when Megs and I were jostled apart, but somewhere I lost hold of her fingers, a laughing matter and not a frightening one. We’d all catch up eventually. I made it as far asTrafalgar Square. A delivery truck rumbled up Northumberland Avenue with soldiers draped over every inch of it, so I couldn’t make out the advertisements written on its side. Just as the truck came to a halt, not able to go a single bit further because of the crowds, a soldier jumped off the bonnet and landed up ahead of me, his peaked army cap covering cropped black hair.
It was such a swift and light-hearted movement. Seconds earlier the world had been only the throng, no individuals, just one great mass of human life. I had barely existed myself except as a part of it. Now, though, even though a good fifty bodies jammed into the space between us, there were only two people in all of London. Finbarr and me. Facing each other with joyful eyes. Oh, as if I’d conjured him up. Make a wish, Nan. The sort of miracle that convinces us life on earth has meaning. His black hair shone blue in the London grey as it had on his own emerald island.
‘Is it you?’ he shouted. He held a bottle of champagne in one hand. ‘Am I drunk? Am I dreaming?’
‘It’s
We promised, all three of us. I handed over the five shillings for my poem, to add to her cache.
When news of the Hundred Days Offensive began, I worried myself sick, especially when letters from Finbarr ceased with no warming. ‘There might not be any post coming from the front,’ my mother tried to soothe. ‘Let’s not fret till there’s cause.’
There was plenty of cause. Bad news arrived for girl after girl, mother after mother, father after father. By now I was nineteen but I think in my heart I may have been much younger. The world quaked around us. One minute my mother would be her old self, brisk and loving. Then she would fade away, pale and still, staring out the window.
‘What are you watching for, Mum?’
‘Nothing,’ she’d say, and go back to some busy work. But I knew what she was watching for. Colleen, heading towards home,a small child’s hand in hers. Love and reason have never been well acquainted.
On Armistice Day I had never seen so many people in one place as there were on the streets of London. With Megs, Louisa and our friend Emily Hastings, I went out into the celebrating throng. What noise and joy. We couldn’t stand shoulder to shoulder, everybody moved sideways.
Megs, Louisa, Emily and I tried to hold hands as we made our way through the streets but it was impossible. It should have been frightening, being trapped in the midst of so thick a crowd, but the happiness was even thicker. You can’t imagine the joy and goodwill. If you tripped, a hundred hands reached out to catch you. If you sneezed, a thousand people said ‘God Bless You’. A soldier caught Megs’s arm as she tripped over the curb, then tipped his hat and revelled on with his mates. I searched the crowd, as if there were any reason for Finbarr to be held within it, as if – being lucky enough that he loved me – I could be lucky enough to summon him before my eyes.
Somewhere out in the masses, Agatha Christie was walking too. During this stretch of time, a lonely married lady with her husband off to war, she’d occupied herself by taking a course in shorthand. When Armistice was announced right in the middle of class, everyone stumbled out into the celebrations, marvelling at the crowd just as we did. Englishwomen – Englishwomen! – dancing in the street. For all I knew, Agatha and I were shoulder to shoulder, either once or many times during that heady day.
I’m not sure when Megs and I were jostled apart, but somewhere I lost hold of her fingers, a laughing matter and not a frightening one. We’d all catch up eventually. I made it as far asTrafalgar Square. A delivery truck rumbled up Northumberland Avenue with soldiers draped over every inch of it, so I couldn’t make out the advertisements written on its side. Just as the truck came to a halt, not able to go a single bit further because of the crowds, a soldier jumped off the bonnet and landed up ahead of me, his peaked army cap covering cropped black hair.
It was such a swift and light-hearted movement. Seconds earlier the world had been only the throng, no individuals, just one great mass of human life. I had barely existed myself except as a part of it. Now, though, even though a good fifty bodies jammed into the space between us, there were only two people in all of London. Finbarr and me. Facing each other with joyful eyes. Oh, as if I’d conjured him up. Make a wish, Nan. The sort of miracle that convinces us life on earth has meaning. His black hair shone blue in the London grey as it had on his own emerald island.
‘Is it you?’ he shouted. He held a bottle of champagne in one hand. ‘Am I drunk? Am I dreaming?’
‘It’s
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