34. A Sorrowful Young Man

A Chapter by Peter Rogerson

THE POETESS part 34

I recognised the house that I was told was the one where Roy lay languishing in his bed. It was Roy’s Aunt Mildred’s, the house with a caravan parked behind it where I had stayed for a short while years earlier.

“I know this house,” Rosie said as the car pulled to a gentle stop, “it’s Roy’s Aunt Mildred’s!”

“She died quite a few years ago, and so did her husband,” Archie replied, “within weeks of each other. He went first, and then Mildred followed. They said she died of a broken heart.”

“That’s sad. I liked her,” murmured Rosie, “she always seemed so happy and even tempered.”

“I’ll go in and see if dad’s still in bed,” Archie said, “I reckon he’d be upset if you came in and found him really under the weather and maybe underdressed!”

“I’ll wait,” agreed Rosie.

And I did wait. I remember now how all sorts of things were going through my mind. When he heard I was here, would he want to see me or was the fact that I hadn’t been at home when he called with my birthday card have been the last straw? Might that be how he saw it? A life-time of longing, and then when he plucked up the courage, nothing… an empty house, a rebuff. Not that’s what I meant at all.

It didn’t take Archie long to return to me with a sheet of paper in his hand.

“He’s gone,” he told me, almost nervously, “he left this note for me. It’s very brief. Here, you read it.”

It certainly did look to be a very brief note. All it said was ‘sorry, I’m off to see the world before I die. The lady who owns my heart wasn’t at home. Back when I’ve sorted myself out, dad.”

“Oh dear,” whispered Rosie, “I was only out with a few of the ladies from work celebrating my sixtieth.”

“Well, thanks for the lift home and I’m sorry it was a wasted journey,” he said, and I could tell from the tone of his voice that the sentiment was genuine. Rather forlornly, she thought, he made his way back into the house.

When he was out of sight she made her way slowly towards her home. When she arrived there it was to find a bouquet on her doorstep and another brief note.

‘I’d have liked things to turn out differently, Roy,’ was all it said.

Why had he suddenly turned his attention to the girl he’d kissed when they had been in their teens, the better part of a lifetime earlier? Rosie was puzzled.

She let herself into her home and put the kettle on, then turned it off again. “I need something stronger than a nice cup of tea,” she thought to herself, and poured herself a modest gin with a generous tonic. Then she sat down and found herself crying.

At sixty, and crying like a love-lorn teenager, I thought as I sat there, blind to the arrogant ginger Tom that had I been looking I would probably have seen stalking this or that prey across my lawn. He was, of course, Bastet, though what number would have followed that name I had no idea. Bastet the Third? Bastet the Fourth? Probably one of those, yet they all looked identical over the years, and still do.

I did dry my eyes eventually and made my way into the garden and stood by Harry’s flower bed, remembering the collection of bones that had once been a brave warrior whose life had been ruined by the unnecessary and criminal First World War. I stood there, head bowed, when…

‘Scuse me, misses,” came a male voice.

Rosie swiftly wiped her eyes in case there were still tears showing. It was a young man, probably not long out of his teens. He was smartly dressed, in shorts, the long sort that might easily be confused with trousers that had shrunk in the wash, and a bright tee shirt that proclaimed his love of a long defunct pop group.

“Can I help you?” she asked, forcing a smile onto her lips.

“My mum told me,” he said, “and I was interested and she said you probably wouldn’t mind…”

“Your mum?” she asked.

”Yes. You work with her, she said, if you’re Miss Pinkerton. Rosie Pinkerton. Her name is Donna Smithson.”

“I know,” she nodded, “and you’re, let me see, Harry Smithson’s great great grand-son?”

He nodded. “Mum told me all about him and I asked if you’d mind if I came to see where he’s buried,” he said, seriously, “it was rotten what men had to go through back then.”

She nodded. “What do you know about him?” she asked.

“Not much. Hardly anything at all. Neither does mum. But she said you know where he was buried and I wondered if you would let me see?”

She nodded. “Under these flowers,” she said quietly, “in a special little coffin that I made myself. I tell you what: I know it’s early, but I’m going to have another drink. Do you fancy a beer while we talk about it? When you’ve looked, of course, take your time, without his life you wouldn’t be here yourself.”

“I wouldn’t would I?”

Then he stood there in personal silence for a good two minutes, before he looked up.

“A beer?” he said, “yes, I’d like that. I’d like it very much indeed.”

“Come on, then,” she tried to smile, and succeeded.

Once in the kitchen and sitting at the table she looked at the young man. How old was he? What was his name? What did he know of the history of the land that had cherished him since birth?

“You never told me you name,” she began.

“Oh, me? Jamie. Jamie Smithson.”

“And what do you know of the old times, though by old they’re only a century and a bit, that’s all. When I was your age there were people around who could remember them. Not so many, but some.”

“We did the war when I was at school,” he told her, “and the next one, though the teacher said they might be looked on as two parts of the same war and he didn’t rightly know why it had to happen at all. A man was shot in a foreign city, he said, and everything came tumbling down because of it.”

“Millions were killed and some, like your ancestor Harry, were so damaged by it that they didn’t last for long. It was stupid, arranged by a class of people who would themselves be kept safe from bullets and bombs but didn’t mind sending handsome young blokes like you out to fight on their behalf. Fight and be killed, I mean. Fight and die.”

“It makes you angry misses, doesn’t it?

“Rosie. My name’s Rosie, and yes, it does.”

He shook his head. “And me,” he whispered, “I’m bloody furious!”

As he uttered those words and with the two people discussing a past atrocity, neither of them noticed the weathered face of Roy Taylor as he peeped briefly through one of the door quarter-windows, then sadly moved away as if what he’d witnessed might be the end of his world.

He next wrote to me when he was in France.