Today we made sure the door was shut and locked thoroughly so that no customer who chanced to pop in would see us in the backroom. That was unimaginable, for the sight would have been embarrassing for all involved. Our clothes lay piled in the corner and we danced naked around the large, wooden table in the centre of the room where stock was sorted and costs were counted.
I had in recent weeks begun to notice little things about my new partner. When she was worried, she would scratch her ears. When she was tired, only one eyelid would droop while the other resolutely held on to wakeful life. When she was happy, she would laugh at nothing and would do the most bizarre things like kissing kettles and stroking sardines. Her hair was in a different style every day, though only subtly different so that my trained eye was the exclusive perceiver of such differences. Her teeth were immaculately white all the time with no hint of stains from sugar or caffeine consumption. She had a birth mark on her left buttock in the shape of a hippopotamus’ head.
She noticed things about me, too, that I had never noticed. The way my nose crinkled when I was annoyed. The way my eyes bulged when I was confused. The way I would try to look intelligent by stroking my chin when actually I hadn’t the foggiest idea what was going on. She said she liked the way the hair on my chest was shaped like a tree; the way I walked as if I were constantly on a trampoline; the way I would get excited over fruit when I was hungry.
We were in love. It had always struck me as a peculiar phrase, “in love”, but it makes sense. The word ‘in’ makes it sound like you are within a bubble, or like you’ve lost your free will and you’re under its control. Really, both of those descriptions are true. We forgot the world around us and were entirely ruled by our passions, our desires, our emotions. Our rational minds were temporarily silenced and even if they could be reawakened, they would not have been able to do anything. They could have screamed and shouted at us, but still our actions would have been ruled solely by our hearts.
“I could do this forever,” she said out of the blue, in mid coitus.
Her wish would soon be granted.
Chapter 6: June 21st, 1940
“I love you,” she said.
The words came out heartfelt, full of meaning. It was our wedding night and, although we had done this before, this had been the first occasion when we had slept together as man and wife. It was a good feeling.
Her words were not just the result of lustful romps and high sexual ecstasy. Audible within them was a deepeer meaning, a hope and joy as she looked to the future, our future, that we would be spending together. She smiled at the happiness coarsing through her veins as she thought upon the children we would have, the places we would go, the home we would share, the love we would cherish.
The ceremony had been glorious. By now the war had started, so a glamourous wedding abroad like the young folk do these days would have been unthinkable. Our meagre salaries could not afford to take us far from Birmingham, either, so we had done the deed in St. Michael’s Church, Boldmere. We did not need exotic locations to make this day special, however. The mere presence of friends and family as we declared our undying love for each other was enough.
Love. There’s that word again. Before a crowd of over one hundred people, we had promised to love one another forever, until death do us part. We were so naïve back then. We barely understood what the word meant. For us, ‘love’ continued to be characterised by the sensual joys of nightly passion. We had not yet been forced to experience the bitter times when we would feel rejected by the other but still stick by them, or become more of a carer than a lover when the other became sick or ill. We had no idea the responsibilities we were taking on when we made our vows on that glorious day in June 1940.
Marriage was just something we did. It’s something everyone did. It was just a rite of passage: you grow up, find a girl and marry her. So neither of us had ever thought through the implications. If we had, it had merely been in an idealistic, unrealistic manner befitting our youth. Love. What did that become? We would soon find out.
As it was, the word described the joy, the excitement, of what we had just done; the life we now had together. Our commitment to one another had been sealed in stone, in a gold band on one another’s finger. I knew that I would not abandon her, nor she me. I knew that I now had a constant companion who would stick by me thick and thin, look after me in the dark and celebrate with me in the light. I liked that.
“I love you too,” I replied, just as heartfelt. We looked into each other’s eyes and kissed passionately against the backdrop of a fading sun, illuminating the world in dim red light as it descended below the horizon to its slumber.
Chapter 7: September 2nd, 1942
“I love you.”
The words came out despairingly, as if they were our last goodbye. They easily could have been. The war had intensified by 1942 and at the tender age of 22, despite being married, I had been called out to fight in France and do my duty. The boat to Normandy would be leaving within the month, I was told, and it would be a long time before I ever saw my wife again.
The obvious subtext which nobody said was that I may never see her again. We were engaged in one of the bloodiest wars in history. Already thousands, if not millions, of British soldiers had died on the battlefield. There was no reason I wouldn’t become one of them.
Love. In this situation right now, it was the binding thread holding us together, a symbol of commitment between two people who lived for each other. It was hope for the future which would keep both of us sane: her, back home in Britain; me, fighting a war abroad.
We embraced passionately. Neither of us wanted to let go of the other. We felt just as we had that first night together when we could have spent the rest of our days in that bed, bathing in eternal bliss. Yet now the situation was desperately different. Then, we had been enjoying the relative comfort of my bedroom in the relative safety of youth and peacetime; now, we stood in the street outside our terraced house with evidence of war all around us. Several houses in our street had become no more than piles of brick and rubble. Archibald’s Emporium had been bombed out weeks ago, leaving us both out of a job. Gracie had managed to find work at a munitions factory, while I had been called up to serve on the front.
It is strange how people are most beautiful when you are about to leave. The great irony of this bittersweet scene is that just the night before we had had the most terrible row. It seemed such a petty thing in that moment: we had disagreed over bills or washing or something equally inconsequential.Yet we had taken it so seriously the night before that we had even fallen asleep in separate bedrooms to keep away from one another.
Then the post came. As soon as the letter had been opened telling me it was time to go to war, all the hostility had vanished as we both realised what we were going to lose. The little insecurities and imperfections fade away to nothing when you are confronted with the possibility of never seeing the one you love again, and you can once more gaze into the essence of their soul at the beautiful person they are; the beautiful person you always knew they were, but had temporarily forgotten in the passion of the moment.
Ah, Gracie. How I would miss those lips, that laugh, that loving, caring smile of hers. How I would miss her generosity and kindness and the fun we had playing something as simple as scrabble. I smiled longingly, sadly, at her beautiful, beautiful face to get one last look at it before it would be shorn away from me perhaps for ever.
We embraced once more before we could do it no more. I really had to go: the troop transport vehicle was waiting. With hand on heart and heart on sleeve, I gave her my love and bade her farewell.
Tears welled up in both our eys as we parted. It would be six months at least before I could see her again, during which time the only communication she would receive about me, if any, would be a letter telling her I was dead or missing in action. If I survived, if I was fine, she would receive nothing, for the army postal service was notoriously unreliable and censorship meant t
hat I couldn’t tell her anything of meaning, anyway.
The troop transport was beckoning. I hopped in the back of the vehicle with my satchel packed by her so lovingly with all my essentials and waved a long, sad goodbye to the woman I loved.
Chapter 8: March 15th, 1943
“I love you.”
The words were the same as always, but something had changed.
“But what does that word even mean?” I screamed at her. She stood before me, small and helpless, her petite face looking frightened like a little animal. It was just an act, though; my rage was justified. “You use that word all the time, but it’s just a word to you. You don’t mean it. You don’t even know what it means.”
“Do you know what it means?”
“I know precisely what I mean when I say it, thank you very much. I don’t just say it. I act it. Do you know what I’ve been doing for the past six months? I’ve been fighting for King and Country in France against the Nazis. I’ve been risking my life out there for you- for you, so I can protect you from being enslaved or killed by the enemy. And do you know what has been keeping me going all this time? The only thing that’s been keeping me going? The thought of coming home to you, to be with you once more. To simply be with you.”
I paused for a second, allowing the rage to flow within me. For a second it had stopped; then my eyes alighted upon the offending article once more, and it reignited.
“And then I find this!” I yelled, grabbing a sheet of stained, tattered paper from the table beside me.
“Dear Gracie,” I read out loud, “I love you so much. I cherish every moment we spend together. I must go away now to do my duty, but rest assured that every moment I shall be thinking of you. Love, Tony.”
“Tony!” I shriek. “Who is Tony?”
“He’s… just a friend,” she said quickly. “It’s a misunderstanding.”
I gazed at the paper in front of me incredulously. “Just a friend?” I asked. “What kind of friends do you have, who write to you so dearly?”
She bit her lip thoughtfully. Her ears were itching, as they do when she has worries on her mind. Her eyes glanced about guiltily until finally she could take it no more and admitted,
“We met up. Once or twice. We had coffee and scones.”
“Coffee and scones? Once or twice?” I could take no more of this and decided to leave.
“It was nothing!” she shouted, following me to the door. “We didn’t even kiss!”
I turned to her. “Somehow, I don’t believe you,” I said darkly, showing her exhibit A, the letter in my hand. Before she could reply, I slammed the door shut and marched off to the only place I knew to go: the pub.
“Your problem, Pat,” said my friend Jimmy when I had sat myself down, “is that word. Love.”
I looked at him, seething. My anger was not directed at him specifically; rather, it was a bubbling cauldron of fury within me spitting out at anything and everything around me. I did not want to be with him right now, but neither did I want to be alone. It was a difficult emotion.
“What do you mean?” I demanded.
“Well, love. It’s a fiction, isn’t it? An amalgamation of different concepts under one umbrella: that word ‘love’.”
I waved him off, thinking his words to be nonsense. Nevertheless he continued: “The Greeks had four different words for what we call ‘love’. We do, too. ‘Passion’ and ‘Compassion’ are two of them, but I forget the other two. Anyway, if you think about them, they are two completely different concepts. Passion describes the carnal lust and desire found in steamy bedroom scenes, while compassion describes feeling for one’s common man, whoever he may be.”
“People think of love as being something specific between husband and wife, but if you consider those two solitary definitions it doesn’t really work. Take compassion, for instance. If someone only exhibited that towards one other human being, this world would be a very dark place indeed. Or passion: the heights of ecstasy reached during intercourse are not permanent, so if we call that ‘love’, then most of the time there is no love even between couples.”
I glared at him silently. His philosophising was not what I needed right now.
“Okay, I’ll demonstrate. Tell me: how do you feel about Gracie?”
“I love her,” I said simply.
“No, no, no, without using that word. Use others. Describe your feelings to me. Let me feel them too; let me fully understand all the whats, the whys, the hows, the whens. ‘Love’ is never as simple as a four letter word.”
I thought carefully for a moment, searching for the right words. Then, carefully, I let loose a stream of disorganised thought:
“Passion. Pure, burning, fiery passion. Passionate love, right now passionate hate, passionate anger… how could she do this to me, Jimmy?”
“Calm down, calm down,” he waved at me. “I’m trying to make a point here. Keep going, but think about how you felt about her before the Tony incident. We’ve seen passion. But why?”
“Why passion?”
“Yes.”
“You mean, why do I love her?”
“Yes, in a way. But without using that word.”
I thought back to our short life together, everything she was and everything she had been, and could think of no specific thing or date which defined my feelings towards her.
“Because I do. There’s no logical reason, really. It’s just a feeling inside me, an attachment to her that has taken years to build into what it is today.”
“Okay, we’re getting there,” said Jimmy thoughtfully. “But keep going. Keep describing. Tell me how you felt without using the word ‘love’.”
“I wanted to spend my life with her, every day with her. I would miss her when she wasn’t there. She was the most important thing in my life.”
“And there you go!” he exclaimed. “Now that’s a feeling!”
“The problem many couples have,” he continued, “is that they both tell each other they love one another without first defining what that word means. They say “I love you” and the other replies “I love you too”, and they get all gittery and excited that the other person feels the same way, when really, maybe, they both mean completely different things by that word.”
“So what’s this got to do with me?” I asked.
“You have to go back to her,” he answered, “and confront her. Ask her what she means when she uses that word. If she cannot answer, it is meaningless to her. If she can and does, then you will know for the first time ever the true layout of her heart.”
Jimmy’s idea seemed a strange one. My inner bubbling cauldron had not yet calmed, so I was in no mood to see the woman who had been cheating on me. Yet a few pints later he suggested the idea once more, and now it seemed good.
“I will do that!” I declared drunkenly. “I will go home at once!”
With that, without even saying goodbye, I unseated myself awkwardly and stumbled two hundred yards down the road back home.
It was difficult to unlock the door to get in. I managed it though, eventually, and opened the door to hear quiet sobs emanating from the front room.
I dashed in and pointed a finger.
“You!” I yelled. “What do you mean?”
She blinked at me blankly before turning away. Used tissues were piled high by the side of her chair.
“What do you mean when you say you love me?”
She stood up wordlessly and left me without an answer, instead preferring to go into the kitchen, alone.
I followed, repeating my demand.
She turned her head and forced herself to look at me. It was hard, for the mere sight of me brought up guilt in her heart so terrible she could scarcely deal with it.
“Do you know what it’s like,” she began, “to sit here, day in, day out, not knowing whether your husband is going to come home or not?”
I stood in silence, simply listening to her.
“It’s terrible. It’s terrifying. I want to
receive a letter from you, but at the same time I don’t because any letter might be from the Ministry of Defence telling me you’re dead. Do you know what that’s like?” she shrieked.
“I got lonely,” she admitted, her voice changed. It was more sullen now, more difficult for the words to come out, admitting her terrible secret. “I met him at the market. His wife had been killed in a bomb blast. She had thought she was safe in the air raid shelter. Apparently not. It had been put up shoddily and couldn’t withstand the full force of a direct hit from a German bomb. She died instantly.”
“We were a comfort to each other. We understood each other. He would console me about you, and I would comfort him about his wife. Honestly that’s all we did: meet up once or twice for tea and scones at Kathy’s place down the road.”
“So why did he say he loved you?” I challenged her. The letter was still in my pocket and I brandished it like a double edged sword, hurting both me and her at the same time.
“Love doesn’t need to be sexual! Do you honestly think I would have an affair?” she exclaimed, before quietening down. “He got the wrong end of the stick. Apparently I hadn’t been clear with him about your fate. I was speaking about my fear that my husband may turn up dead, while he thought you were actually, already dead. He thought we would be a perfect match for each other: two widows in the midst of a terrible war.”
“Didn’t you reject him?”
“We kissed. Once,” she admitted. This last admittance was the hardest for both of us: it hit me like a cold arrow of betrayal; it tore her like a sword from behind. “But he kissed me, not the other way round! I pushed him away straight afterwards and fled.”
“So what about the letter?” I asked darkly. “Why did he write it for you?”
“He… he must have wanted a second chance, wanted to try again with me. It didn’t work, I swear.”