11. Remembering the Boer War

A WIDOW WOMAN Part 11

The morning after the elderly Mr Dimbleby had his tumble Jane stood by the gate and watched Betty and Roger as they set off for school, he running and she skipping, both carefree and happy. They knew the way and it was really no distance at all, but Jane worried about them until they were out of sight, round the corner at the end of Empire Road and onto Buchanan Close. Then she sighed, wiped her hands (which were dry anyway) on her apron and turned to go back into her home.

She had things to do today. Things to do with a bed promised by the Reverend Jonah Pyke, a bed that would put an end to a troublesome need for brother and sister to share the same bed, which the more she thought about it was increasingly wrong. It wouldn’t be a new bed but one donated by a generous parishioner, but it would be welcome nonetheless.

She had reached her front door when a voice from across the road gave her cause to pause.

“Excuse me, lady…”

She turned. It was the elderly Mr Dimbleby, and he was standing by his own front gate and looking anxiously at her. There was what could only be a bruise on the right side of his forehead, most probably caused when he fell flat on his face the previous evening.

“You want me?” she asked.

“I’m sorry, lady,” he said, “last night… I’m sorry.”

He had a reputation for going out every morning, regular as a pendulum swinging in a clock, and this time he was obviously still in his pyjamas, with a heavy dressing gown to ensure modesty even though the early autumn weather was balmy. He was clearly breaking a habit that had already become part of the local gossip.

“Are you all right now?” she asked.

“Couldn’t be better, lady…” His appearance belied those words, the bruise and obvious nervousness in particular hardly likely to be part of couldn’t be better.

“You don’t look so well to me,” she said, “in fact, you look dreadful!”

“I’m sorry, lady,” he repeated, clearly at a loss for words. She tried to shake a sense of sympathy for him, but failed. He looked far from well.

“Would you like a cup of tea?” she asked.

“I’ve got a kettle, lady,” he responded as though she had deliberately insulted him by implying he couldn’t make his own tea.

“I didn’t mean … people do offer cups of tea to neighbours without meaning anything more than what the words say,” she told him. “I’m going to have one now the kids have gone off to school, and I’ve got a spare cup if you fancy one. That’s all.”

“I’m sorry, lady,” he said yet again, but he unlatched his gate and started crossing the road. There was never much traffic along there, so he was safe enough to cross despite being unsteady on his slippered feet. The only car in the neighbourhood belonged to Mr Winters, father of the family next door. It was a pre-war Ford in unreliable condition, but apple of the man’s eye, as witness the enthusiasm with which he washed it every Saturday..

Jane took a few steps towards the old man and grabbed his arm in order to guide him into her kitchen, and when he was safely sitting in a chair she put the kettle on.

“Last night…” he mumbled, “I ain’t normally like that…”

“You’d obviously had a good time,” she told him, uncritically.

“It were a reunion,” he said, fairly distinctly, “me and my chums from the Boer war. There ain’t so many of us left.. we came back nearly fifty years ago! And we, you know, have a few pints on the anniversary. That were yesterday.”

“Here you are. Help yourself to sugar,” said Jane, pouring his tea. “So you’re an old soldier, are you?”

He nodded. “Yes, lady,” he replied, “from Africa, and the Boer War. I were young back then, though, and a bullet meant I was saved from the first big war, which was a blessing.”

“You were wounded?”

He nodded. “I have to be careful if I’ve drink in me, or I fall down,” he muttered, “from the Boer War,” he added in order to make things absolutely clear.

“And that’s how you tumbled last night?”

He nodded. “I reckon I were rude to you,” he said, “I get mouthy when I’ve got drink in me. I’m sorry, lady.”

Jane smiled at him. “I’m called Jane by my friends,” she said, “so you can call me that if you like. I was born around the time the Boer War ended,” she added.

“That’d make you older than you look!” he told her, unintentionally complimenting her.

“Why, kind sir, what a sweet thing to say!” she replied. Grinning at him, “and yes, I’ll be fifty soon enough.”

“Then I was twenty when you was born, and look at me now!”

She looked at him and decided the years hadn’t been kind to him. He might have been eighty if you judged from appearances.

“Were you married?” she asked.

He shook his head, sadly. “I knew a lass,” he murmured, “pretty as springtime and like a jewel, she was. And her name was April, but when I came back with a bullet in me she soon found another lad. She didn’t like where the damned bullet was lodged. It came out years later, a doctor did it, but when April saw me and I showed her where I was hurt she ran away. It was here, you see, next to my old peg,” and he indicated his thigh close to his groin.

“Nasty,” she murmured.

“It took one of my testicles with it. You know testicles? What a man has? And I never met another lady. But who would have had me, anyway, with only one ball?”

“I understand,” she said quietly, though she didn’t really. How could she? A woman not having a scrotum and its contents?

“Anyway, that was my Boer war. And every year, when we can, me and some old chums get together and have a few jars. There aren’t so many of us left and soon, if I keep going, I’ll find myself raising a glass on my own if I’m blessed. So Jane. I like that name. I’ll call you Jane and you can call me Tony.”

They had both finished their tea by then, and Jane smiled at Tony Dimbleby.

“I’ve got to pop out,” she said, “I need a bed for my lad before he gets too big to sleep with his sister.”

“They’re grand looking kids. I’d have loved to have kids of my own…”

“The dice rolled all wrong for you, then Tony…” she said quietly.

“That’s it, Jane. As you put it, the roll of the dice was wrong. I should never have gone to fight the Boers. I volunteered, you know. I wanted to go, but I came back with a vital bit of me shot away, and a lot of pain.”

“That’s sad.”

“A young lad thinks of war and glory, medals earned on the battlefield, and all that happens is he loses one of his precious balls, beg your pardon for mentioning them. And that’s his life done an’ dusted before it’s properly started. Oh, I have always worked since then, earned my way in the world, done this job or that job, escaped donating other bits of me in the big wars, never without receiving a weekly wage, and even now I make myself go out and about as if I’ve got to be some place early.”

“It’s the talk of the street, Tony.”

“I go to the library, Jane, nearly every day. I read what I can, papers and such like, and then there’s the park where they play bowls. I watch but never play myself. I watch for entertainment.”

“It’s something.”

“Anyway, you says as you’re going out. I haven’t got a spare bed or I’d give it to you. So you go and find what you want and I’ve a wireless to listen to. They’ll be missing me at the library today.”

She helped him out of the chair and walked with him to the road. “I’ve enjoyed our little chat, Tony,” she sighed, “We’ll have to talk again.”

“You don’t mind an old warrior with too many words and no sense then, Jane?”

She shook her head. “Of course not, Tony,” she said, and might have mentioned that she could get lonely herself when the children were at school, but didn’t.

Her kind of loneliness was different.

© Peter Rogerson 23.06.21

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