All the Way to the Sea by Stuart Blackburn

Author:Stuart Blackburn [Blackburn, Stuart]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Historical Fiction
Published: 2023-02-27T00:00:00+00:00

Fourteen

‘Looks like a nice kid,’ Oliver said, and handed the photograph back to Caroline.

‘Unlike you, I’m sure,’ she said, with a smirk.

The photograph had brought them close together, and he thrust his hands into his trouser pockets.

‘I’ll leave now,’ he said, ‘but only if you promise me one thing.’

She held her smile in place and waited.

‘That you’ll telephone Mrs Wilbur if you feel unwell again. I mean it.’

‘OK, I promise.’

When they went out through the kitchen door and stepped onto the porch, he turned and took both her hands. She felt a slight tug and laid her head on his shoulder. He whispered goodbye into her hair, and she watched him cross the darkening lawn and disappear down the path.

Upstairs, she lay on her bed and thought back over the long weekend. Mr Shaw said he would take care of everything, she would have enough money and could live in the house as long as she wanted. How long was that? And what about Robert being different after the war? He’d said he was ‘distant and moody’. Maybe she hadn’t noticed in all the excitement of his unexpected return and the sudden wedding. It was the same when she came to America. Everything had been in flux, meeting his parents, beginning married life, living on a farm. She’d probably been too preoccupied with herself to notice any change in him.

Now that she was alone, though, she began to remember things in that early period, when they’d set up house in Little Haven. An unfamiliar tremor in his voice and his often-unsteady hands. Sometimes, she had listened to his screams in the other bedroom and found his sheets soaked with sweat in the morning. Maybe that was connected to what Mr Shaw had described. But Robert hadn’t ‘clammed up’ when speaking about the war. He hadn’t spoken about it at all. His sexual desire had also slackened, conveniently, but she hadn’t mentioned that to Mr Shaw.

A breeze brought in warm air, rousing and drawing her to the window overlooking the lawn. The summer had begun and everything was changing again. She’d thought about it many times, but now it seemed more realistic. She could go back to England, to Devon. She was only forty and could start a new life there, a second new life, possibly with another man. No one would question that.

Climbing back into bed, she tried to imagine herself in Torquay, not in the family shop but in her own house. A modest home, on a cliff overlooking the bay. Try as she may, though, she saw only Horseshoe Beach with its surf, sand and high dunes. It was all so familiar now, the farm and the roses, the Commons and the flower show, the stone walls and the Atlantic shoreline. No, she would not go back, but something of Devon would come to her.

*

She slept for twelve hours and ate a late breakfast, with her parents’ telegram on the table in front of her. She tried to calculate how long it would take.

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