Remembrance Day. Leah Fleming

solemn of mornings.

       We stand before the new war memorial in Elm Tree Square while a scuffle of film crews jockey for position. There is a chill Martinmas wind from the north but I am well wrapped with quilt and cushions in my wheelchair.

       At last after all these years justice has been done, the dead are honoured; all of them by name. These cobblestones, once heavy with old sorrows, damp with tears and bloodshed, now sparkle with hope and pride. I never thought to see this day.

       No more arguing about things that can’t be altered, no more dissention in the village about planning permissions. The names of the dead say it all, etched here on marble tablets.

      That I have made the effort to witness this moment is miracle enough at my great age. My eyes are dimming, my hands tremble and my limbs disobey commands. Old age comes not alone, they say, and my heart leaps to see such a crowd of supporters. I hope our menfolk would be proud that we’ve settled things at last.

       We wait in patience in the chill air, all the West Sharland faithful and their far-flung relatives, all the families represented where possible, prosperous in thick overcoats and stylish black hats with grandchildren, tall as saplings, and great-grandchildren on their knees, bemused by the pageantry unfolding.

       There are faces I don’t recognise but in their features are echoes of village folk long buried. There is new life and fresh growth here, and that is good.

       The clouds part as a ray of weak sun beams down for a second, haloing all the hand-held wreaths and circlets. Bloodred poppies flash on lapels like medals. The golden light glides across the green fells and stone walls above us, across the slate rooftops of familiar old buildings, and my eye turns to the forge in Prospect Row, but it is long gone.

       They have put me in the front as one of the honoured guests, alongside the great and the good of the district; just another old matriarch, an ‘ancient of days’ waiting to pay her respects. There are plans to interview me later but I have other ideas.

       In my fancy I see sepia faces hidden in the shadows, a crowd of ghosts watching, waiting with us, faces of the long dead from the war who knew only suffering, sacrifice and shame. What would they make of all this now?

       My daughter stands upright, breasted like a plump capon. I am so proud of the spirit she has shown in fighting our corner. By her side her grandson, the spit of his great-grandfather, built like a tree trunk, the wind and sun etched on his bronzed brow.

      There is no one left to recognise me, though a few may guess a little of my history. I am just one of the many visitors and want no fuss. I have been absent so many years but this place is at the heart of my being.

       Nothing has changed but everything is changed. The familiar Yorkshire air is sweet after the dryness of the Arizona desert, the rooks caw in the churchyard ash trees even into my failing ears. I had forgotten how raucous and noisy they are.

       The cars parked right through the village, the houses expanded into barns and outbuildings, speak of a prosperity and comfort we could only dream of as children.

       My mind is flooding with memories. I have completed a circle in coming back to West Sharland, fulfilling a promise, honouring those closest to me, but it is hard to contain the ache still in my heart for their undeserved sufferings. What has driven me back here one last time is a strange yearning, a sense of the wanderer returning to this now sacred space for peace before my long sleep. My days are leaching away, but no matter.

       To live long is not enough, and it is a wise soul who knows his beginning and his end and makes some answer for the life given him. Over the years I have thought it fitting to set my own story on paper, to turn over the pages in my mind and wonder where I would be if what was done long ago could be undone. This task has been a close companion in my widowhood. They would not let me fly back so, in my cabin suite on the Atlantic crossing I reread the chapters, relived those parts of my life that brought me from the West Riding to the New World and back.

      This journal will be left among the archives of West Sharland when I’m gone, but not before. Perhaps someone will turn its pages with interest and profit from what I write. For, make no mistake, there are secrets within that belong to this village alone, secrets that explain the real reason why no war memorial was ever erected in our village until now.

       But enough. The age-old ceremony begins. The silver band is marching down the hill, gathering a crowd just as it did all those years ago in the late summer of 1914. How trusting, how ignorant, how innocent we were back then. Little did any of us know what heartache lay ahead…

       1 GOLDEN SUMMERS

      Yorkshire, 1913-14

      

      Pack up your troubles in your old kitbag And smile, smile, smile…

      

      George Asaf, 1915

       1

       August 1913

      It was just another Yorkshire afternoon in high summer with nothing to mark it out as a day that would change their lives for ever. The young Bartley brood had done their Saturday chores in the morning heat, watered the horses waiting to be shod under the shade of a clump of elderberry trees in the paddock behind the forge. Newton and Frankland, their broad shoulders tanned like leather, were pumping water from the well into the slate tank at the back of the yard for Father’s wash in the zinc tub. It was time for his Bible class preparation. Asa Bartley never liked to touch the Holy Book with blacksmith’s rusty fingers.

      Selma, his young daughter, made her usual rounds of the village shops with her mother’s wicker basket: off-cuts for stew from Stan, the butcher, soda crystals for Monday’s wash tub from Mrs Marshbank at the Co-op, stopping to chat with neighbours taking advantage of the end of their shift at the cotton mill, and picking up a second-hand copy of the local Gazette. It was one of the hottest afternoons in the whole summer. Doors were wide open onto the street with strips of beaded rope pinned over the lintels, waving in the breeze to discourage the flies, windows propped up with bedding hanging out to bleach in the sunshine, stools set outside in the shade to catch passers-by for crumbs of gossip. Dogs panted in the shade and the forge cat, Jezebel, was curled up under a hedge.

      The rooks were silent for once, high up in the ash trees of St Wilfred’s, West Sharland as Selma scuttled through the ginnel short cut between Main Street and the forge, her striped cotton shirt clinging to her liberty bodice, her long skirt and petticoats sticking to her thin legs. She was boiling hot and dying for a swim.

      ‘I’m going down to the Foss,’ she announced when she brought in the paper and the change. Essie was laying down the best rug for the Sabbath, tidying away the bread, cheese and pickle dinner. It was too hot for a full meal. There was a pot jug of lemonade on the dresser, covered with a beaded cloth ready to be put back on the slate shelf under the stairs; the coolest place in the cottage.

      ‘Not on your own, you’re not,’ Essie replied. ‘You’ll wait while Frank and Newt do their chores. You know I don’t like you going down there alone. It’s private land. I don’t want her ladyship on my doorstep again and her with such a down on chapelgoers.’

      The Cantrells owned everything in Sharland. They didn’t mix in the village; they were more gentry folk than farmers. The colonel was serving in the army and his boys were away at school. They were churchers not chapellers, and lived at Waterloo House with their sons, servants and a carriage. Lady Hester was queen of the district: Father said she was above herself. Selma had never seen her sons except far down the field in the