The Moon Field. Judith Allnatt

of sessile oaks and a lonely church that stood encircled by a dry-stone wall, a quiet grey against the surrounding green.

      She walked towards the church. Despite the heat of the day, a stiff breeze blew from the lake, carrying the sound of sheep bleating from further fields and of the water lapping fast against the shore. She felt exposed as she walked across the empty parkland, aware of the house in the distance, angled to take in this vista. She imagined her mother at the window watching her solitary progress and wondering where she was going with her camera slung across her shoulder, when she had taken photographs a-plenty of this view in every season. She hurried across the field to the church and let herself into the churchyard. Tall blond grasses and thin purple thistles grew among gravestones with their memorial verses obliterated by the scourings of the weather.

      She went into the church and pushed the heavy wooden door shut behind her. Despite the fact that the leaded window was clear rather than stained glass, it took a moment for her eyes to become accustomed to the dimness. Ahead of her, the sandstone font, at which she and generations of Walters before her had been christened, sat squat and solid. Above the arch opposite the door, a wooden plaque, muddied dark brown with age, bore the images of a lion and a unicorn facing each other in regal poses. The painted banner above them read ‘Dieu et mon Droit’.

      She sat down in a pew at the back, so that the light from the window would fall over her shoulder, and slowly unfolded Edmund’s letter again. It had been softened by the moistness of her hand. She spread it out on the dark material of her skirt and read once more:

       My dearest Violet,

       I am so sorry, my love, to have to tell you that I have received my orders. We are to be dispatched today for further training in mapping and signalling then on to a different camp to meet up with our draft of men, and to embark for active service. My dear, I know that this is a setback to our plans, but believe me it is only that and I hope and trust that I’ll be back soon and we will be able to be together at last. Before we met, I was never done badgering my uncle to get me a commission so that I would be ready, if called upon, to serve, so I must remember now that it’s an honour to fight for my country, put aside my own desires and do my best to step up to the mark and make my family proud.

       You must not worry . I am fit and well thanks to the Officer Training Corps and the boxing (not to mention all that tennis we played!). Although one shouldn’t swank, I’ve been told at rifle practice that I’m something of a crack shot too. Sam Huggins and Lofty are in the same battalion so I shall be in the best company and we will give Old Fritz something to think about.

       I wish that I could have come to you to say goodbye in person – it has all been so fast. I’m writing this in a corner of the mess, which, despite the clatter of plates and knives and forks, is the least chaotic place in camp. I wonder where you are at this moment. I always somehow imagine you in a garden. Perhaps it’s because of my memory of how I came upon you once at home, with the honeysuckle spilling over the pergola and your head bent over your book and the sun painting copper lights in your hair.

       In my mind’s eye, I see you reading in a garden. Your long, slender fingers reach to turn the page and I bend towards you and cover your hand with my own. How I wish that I could pluck a flower to mark your place, take your hand in mine and lead you away. I must not do this. It is hard enough already .

       I have your letters, which I will keep by me at all times so that I can always hear your sweet voice in my head. I will write again as soon as I can and let you know how to address your letters so that they will find me. Please do write as often as you can. You know that you have my heart in your safekeeping.

       Ever yours,

       Edmund

      Violet put her forearm down on the ledge of the pew, amongst the hymn books, and rested her forehead on it, breathing in the musty smell of old, damp paper. ‘Please, keep him safe; I’ll do anything; I’ll be a better person,’ she prayed. ‘I won’t be irritable with Mother when she asks me to read the interminable household articles in her women’s paper, nor leave the planning of dinner so often to Mrs Burbidge. I won’t pester Mother to let me visit Elizabeth, or long for company, or feel sorry for myself, stuck here, where there is no one younger than forty. Only let Edmund be all right and I’ll be a model daughter and a better housekeeper and I won’t even be angry at Father any more for going away and leaving us here …’

      In tears all over again, Violet stopped praying as the old hurt overcame her. The hollow, empty feeling that thoughts of her father brought on began to bear down on her, black as the darkness under her eyelids where her face pressed into the crook of her arm. Why did he not write? Why did he never come home? He hadn’t been near the place since before she went away to finishing school and then he had been cold to her mother and horribly formal with her, as if she had done something terribly wrong. The litany of questions ran through her mind as it always did. If he had loved her even a little, he would have visited her at school. No, it was not merely his estrangement from her mother that kept him away; it was something about her. It was somehow her fault.

      If only Edmund could be here. His smiles, his small kindnesses and consideration somehow made her real, as though she was only brought into being when someone looked, really looked at her: as if his attention were an artist’s pencil sketching her lightly on a page. She thought of him holding her and how nothing else beyond them had existed, the hurt all blotted out, his eyes on her face conjuring her from drawing to sculpture, willing her into three dimensions so that she was solid and firm and glowing like bronze under the spotlight of his gaze while, all around them, everything that was other just fell away.

      She sat up and stared again at the letter. How could she stand it? How was she to bear it? Soon she would have to go back to the house. She would have to swallow all this down into herself and keep it there, carrying on as though nothing was wrong, exchanging meaningless conversation, arranging the unremitting round of domestic life: the repetitive menus, the cycle of cleaning and gardening and maintaining the grounds, forever preparing for the visit from Father that never came, moving through days whose friction was slowly, inexorably, rubbing her out.

       4

       MEASURING UP

      George was woken by the noise of a milk-cart in the street outside. The milkman’s whistled rendition of ‘Hearts of Oak’ went through his head like the shriek of an engine with a full head of steam. He lay very still, gritting his teeth until the clink of bottles into crates was over and the clop of hooves on cobbles faded into the distance. He found that he was lying on top of a bed rather than in it and was still in his clothes, although his jacket and his boots had been removed. Gingerly, trying not to groan at the tenderness of his rib cage, he rolled over to face into the room and found Turland, sprawled asleep in an armchair with a pillow under his head and a washed-out green quilt over him, from which his legs protruded, showing a large hole in the heel of one of his grey socks.

      Recognising Turland, everything about the night before came back to him in one huge wave of misery. How was he to explain that he had lost his wages and had no board money to give to his mother? He knew how much they needed every penny and that it was all accounted for as soon as it came into the house. He remembered the lessons at chapel on ‘the demon drink’, and how his mother had always said in her milder way that it ‘led to errors of judgement’. As a child, he had thought of God’s Judgement and wondered how God could possibly make a mistake. Now, as though he could hear his mother’s voice in his head, the true implication of human frailty sank in and he recognised his own weakness.