Paul fell against her with a groan. ‘Will you come to bed?’ he said humbly. ‘I can’t make love to you as I would want, but I would love to just hold you.’
‘Then you shall,’ Carmel said and stood up, pulling Paul to his feet. Hand in hand they mounted the stairs.
Jeff and Matthew reacted with anger when they first heard the news the following day, for as Paul said, no one really knew how long a person had and he thought they needed to know. Jeff was all bluster to cover his distress, talking about second opinions and treatment abroad, until it was prevailed on him that it was too late for any of that and that all the money and influence in the world would not save his son this time. He cried then in grief-stricken helplessness as he had when Lois had brought him news of the telegram.
Matthew has never seen his father cry so openly, not these gulping sobs of anguish that were causing tears to prickle behind his own eyes.
‘What’s it all about anyway?’ he asked Carmel later. ‘I mean, why was Paul’s life saved on the battlefield only for him to develop this thing eating away at him?’
Carmel shook her head helplessly. There were no answers.
Gradually the tragic news of Paul filtered through the neighbourhood and people called to offer support or extend their sympathies for them all. Ruby, George, Jeff and Matthew, often with Alison, were regular visitors. Paul and Carmel were at one with each other and Paul was working to really get to know Terry’s son and his own daughter, and possibly spend some quality time with them before he became too sick. Sam was easy, for he would love indiscriminately anyone who gave him attention. Beth had no yardstick to measure Paul by, however; she couldn’t remember a time when he had been nice, only when he had been horrid, and was much harder to win over at first, but she took the pattern from her mother and in the end she began to thaw towards him.
The day that she climbed on his knee, wound her arms around his neck and said, ‘I love you, Daddy,’ he felt as though his heart would burst from unadulterated joy and love for this child.
He had the urge to put his head in his hands and cry his eyes out that he would not live to see her grow up.
He controlled himself with effort and gave Beth a squeeze, for all it hurt his chest, and said brokenly, ‘And I love you too.’
Over a fortnight later, a Saturday, Beth asked Paul if he would push her on the swing. Carmel didn’t want him to. The March wind was fierce and his cough and breathing had got much worse, but Paul’s relationship with Beth was too fragile and tenuous to start refusing to do things with her and he said he would be fine. He would wrap up.
They hadn’t been in the garden long, however, when Beth’s screams sliced through the air. Carmel reached the garden first to see Paul in a heap on the ground, his face chalk white and scarlet blood pumping in a stream through his blue-tinged lips. She was rooted to the spot, her hands covering her mouth as Chris burst past her.
‘Almighty Christ!’ he exclaimed, running to his prone friend. He checked that he was still breathing before lifting Paul in his arms, for there was no weight to him now, and carrying him inside.
Dr Baxter wasn’t at all surprised by Paul’s collapse. ‘He refused hospital care,’ he said. ‘The tumour has burst now. I was afraid of this happening because it was so big.’
‘How long as he got, Doctor?’ Carmel said. ‘Please be honest with me.’
‘My dear, I would be surprised if he lasts twenty-four hours,’ the doctor said. ‘I have given him morphine, because he must be in pain, although he hasn’t complained.’
He complained about nothing and Carmel sat and
held his hand. She leaned over and kissed him lightly on the cheek. ‘I love you, Mr Connolly,’ she said, and saw his drugged eyes light up and then close in sleep, and she advised Chris to bring in Jeff and Matthew.
Darkness fell. Paul’s father and brother had been to see him and were now in the breakfast room waiting. Lois had put the children to bed and Carmel was glad someone else was caring for the children. Her place, she felt, was by her husband’s side. From time to time Lois, Chris, Ruby and George or Jeff came to keep her company, but she sat on in the same position hour upon hour and held Paul’s hand.
In the dark hours before dawn she felt the change in him, a slackening of the hold, and she had sat with enough dying patients to know this was it. He opened his eyes, suddenly so clear, and said in a whisper that she had to bend her head to hear, ‘It was good between us, wasn’t it, Carmel?’
‘Very good, darling.’
‘Can you put your arms around me?’
Carmel’s arms encircled him, nestling his head in the crook of her arm, and he sighed and smiled at her. Then he closed his eyes, let his head fall back. She knew he was gone and she kissed his cheek for the last time.
Paul’s funeral was huge. There were representatives from the Royal Warwickshires, and the friends he had made during the war; those who remembered being treated by him, either in a military or civilian capacity, and a sizeable contingent from both hospitals; people from Jeff’s club, Ruby and George, of course, and hundreds more
friends and neighbours, including Sylvia and her husband, Dan.
There were even photographers from the papers flashing away. Paul’s family was not only rich, but many, Jeff said, would be interested in the story behind his son’s funeral.
‘I’ll have copies made of the articles and any good photographs so that you can have a record of it to show Beth when she is older, if you like.’
Carmel felt as it she was in a daze, ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Thank you, Jeff.’
‘And look,’ Jeff suddenly said. ‘Here is your dear mother coming.’
There was Eve and all the clan, but it was Eve whom Jeff was looking all misty-eyed at, and Carmel knew she would have to buttonhole her mother at the first opportunity and ask what was going on. She was delighted, though, to see each and every one of her brothers and sisters. They gave her so much moral support through that sad time.
‘Your poor daddy has gone to Heaven,’ Eve told Beth.
‘I know,’ said Beth, ‘but it is all right because he has been before.’
Carmel choked back the laugh, knowing if she gave way to it she would never stop, for she was verging on hysteria. Jeff saw this immediately and had his arm around her in seconds. Instantly she felt calmer and he led her into church like that.
But as they reached the door a sudden movement by the gate caught his eye, and as he left Carmel in the seat, he said, ‘If you will just excuse me, my dear, there is something I must attend to. I will be back directly.’
Jeff wasn’t away long at all and Carmel was glad of his solid presence beside her, though Jeff was so overcome with sorrow himself, he wondered who was comforting who.
The Requiem Mass was over, the clods of earth dropped onto the coffin, and all retired to the Lyndhurst pub. There Carmel was able to have a quiet word with her mother.
‘I know that this is neither the time nor the place,’ she said. ‘But I have to know, is there something going on between Jeff and you?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Mammy!’
‘Carmel, we are both free agents,’ Eve said. ‘And we like one another and have done for some time, so we are going to see. If it develops, then it does, and if it doesn’t, there’s no harm done.’
No harm done of course, and Eve looked happy and relaxed, though she said the whole family had been devastated by Paul’s death. ‘It made me think that you have to grab every moment when you can,’ she told her daughter.
It was good advice but not anything Carmel seemed able to take on board straight after the funeral. She was irritated by this attitude and often told herself to count her blessings. She had two beautiful children, was surrounded by good caring friends, had a supportive family in Ireland and yet she was crushingly lonely. Everyone but her, her mother included, appeared to have someone special in their lives.
When the spring gave way to summer, it was worse. The streets seemed full of lovers walking along,
entwined or hand in hand, and there were more in the parks, and mothers and fathers playing together with their children. Inside Carmel felt dead, like a dried-up shell, who could give nothing and accept nothing.
Paul had been dead for four full months when the letter for Carmel came from Fanshawe and Bone, Solicitors in Bennett’s Hill in the city centre.
‘They want me to go and see them at two-thirty on Monday,’ Carmel said to Lois, ‘but they were Paul’s solicitors, not mine. I’ve never had any reason to have a solicitor.’
‘You’ll have to go just the same.’ Lois said. ‘Do you want me to come with you?’
‘No,’ Carmel said, ‘I’ll manage, but I’ll not want to take Sam or Beth with me. Would you see to them for me?’
‘You don’t need to ask,’ Lois told her. ‘Aren’t the two boys as thick as thieves anyway, and as it is the holidays I will have Beth here to keep them in order. What could be better?’
‘Mr Connolly left instructions that four months after his death I was to deliver a letter to you,’ Mr Fanshawe told Carmel that Monday afternoon. He withdrew an envelope from a file and handed it to her. She saw immediately that it was Paul’s writing, and she suddenly shook all over.
The solicitor was sympathetic. ‘Always upsetting, getting something from the grave, as it were,’ he said. ‘I will let you read your letter in peace and make us some tea.’
Carmel was grateful for the solicitor’s sensitivity and
she waited until the door closed behind him before she slit the envelope.
Dear Carmel,
If you are reading this then I am dead and gone and I would like to apologise for the way I behaved when I first came home. I did both you and Terry Martin a severe disservice that time, and I wish I could go back and put it right, but I know that is impossible. Sister Frances told me that you would have made a very bad nun and she was right, for you are a beautiful and sensual woman who has a heart full of love for all mankind. I have never stopped loving you from the moment I first saw you.
Do not feel bad if you find someone else to share your life. You have my blessing, for my dearest wish is for you to be happy.
Goodbye my darling.
All my love,
Paul
Carmel could barely read the last words, her eyes were so blurred with tears, and she dabbed at them with a tissue as Mr Fanshawe came in with a tray of tea and said, ‘Have you read the letter?’
‘Yes, yes, thank you,’ Carmel said. She folded it up and put it in her bag.
‘Now there was another charge your husband laid upon us,’ Mr Fanshawe said, handing Carmel a cup of tea. ‘If you will just wait here for one moment…’
Carmel sat and sipped her tea and wondered what
other shocks were in store. Then Mr Fanshawe came back in and there, framed in the doorway, was Terry.
He was the very last person that Carmel expected to see and she went into complete shock. The tea slopped in her saucer so badly as her whole body began to quiver that Mr Fanshawe took it from her and placed it on the table. Then Terry was across the room and Carmel rose to her feet, mindful that she hadn’t seen the man for months and her mind was teeming with questions.
‘How did you know to come here today?’ she asked Terry. ‘Have you been around all the time? No one has seen anything of you. This is just, well, it’s just like a miracle.’
‘It needed a little mortal intervention, I believe,’ said the solicitor. ‘Take a seat and I will tell you how it was.’
Carmel and Terry sat down, Carmel so agitated she was rolling her handbag strap over and over in her fingers.
The solicitor smiled. ‘Try to relax, Mrs Connolly,’ he urged. ‘Your late husband asked us to try and find Mr Martin, but he had successfully gone to ground. You were working in London, I believe.’
Terry nodded. ‘Plenty of work for a gas fitter in that blitzed city, and I couldn’t stay here,’ he said, turning to Carmel. ‘I might bump into you, or the children or Paul. I didn’t want to make things more difficult for you and I knew it would be worse seeing Sam and not being allowed to touch him, hold him, be a father to him, you know?’
Carmel nodded, well able to understand that. ‘So how did you get in touch?’ she asked the solicitor.
‘We didn’t,’ Mr Fanshawe said. ‘Your late husband’s father contacted us with Mr Martin’s address.’
‘Jeff? How did he get involved?’
‘Despite what I said about not wanting to see Sam regularly,’ Terry said, ‘I became desperate just to see what he looked like, see how he had grown—just from the distance only. So when I read the details of Paul’s funeral in the paper, which shocked me to the core, I must say, I took a train up.’
‘You wouldn’t see Sam. We left him, and Lois and Chris’s son, Colin, with an obliging neighbour,’ Carmel said.
‘Yeah, I gathered that after a while,’ Terry replied. ‘The funeral was no place for them anyway. I did see Beth, but she didn’t see me, but Jeff did and came out and had a word.’
‘Oh, that was it,’ Carmel said. ‘He said he had something to attend to and left the church for a while.’
‘Yeah, he came to see me outside,’ Terry said. ‘I couldn’t stay then, see. I had taken a day’s holiday to come up in the first place and had a job and digs to go back to and it wasn’t the right time to see you, anyway, at your husband’s funeral.’
‘No, I suppose not,’ Carmel said. ‘But why didn’t Jeff say something then? I could have written to you.’
‘I asked him not to,’ Terry said. ‘I honestly didn’t know whether I wanted to go through it again. I was very ill when I left that first time, and the thought of that again…I didn’t think I could stand it, Carmel. It was only the thought of Sam that stopped me knocking the whole thing on the head anyway and taking off for Australia. Anyway, when Jeff told me about this arrangement Paul had of contacting you after he had been dead a certain length of time, I said I wasn’t sure I wanted to
get involved. I suppose he didn’t say anything to you then in case you were disappointed. Anyway, here I am.’
‘Did you only come back because of Sam?’
‘Yes…I mean no. Oh, I don’t know,’ Terry said. ‘Hell, Carmel, I didn’t know how you would be feeling about me, did I?’
‘Paul changed, you know,’ Carmel said. ‘It was when he realised how ill he was, I think. He became a quieter version of the Paul I once knew.’
‘Jeff told me a little of how he was,’ Terry said.
‘He left a letter for me,’ Carmel said, extracting it from her bag. ‘You should read it, because it concerns you too.’
Terry read it and gave it back to Carmel.
‘Where do we go from here?’ Though his words were nonchalant, his eyes were full of trepidation and doubt, and Carmel knew she had never stopped loving this wonderful man and father of her son.
She stood up and pulled Terry to his feet. ‘I say we go home,’ she said. ‘Unless of course you have a better idea.’
‘There isn’t a better idea than that,’ Terry said, taking Carmel’s hand. ‘Good afternoon, Mr Fanshawe, and thank you.’
‘Oh, don’t thank me,’ the solicitor said. ‘We did very little and, to be honest, I haven’t had such an entertaining afternoon in some time. May I wish all the very best to you both?’
‘You may indeed,’ Terry said, and he swept Carmel out of the office and into the street, where they kissed soundly, but very sweetly.