The Memory Tree by Linda Gillard

Author:Linda Gillard [Gillard, Linda]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9781542009539
Published: 2019-08-14T19:30:00+00:00

HESTER

July 13th, 1916

A distressing and difficult day. If I can set it all down, perhaps I shall feel better able to cope. There are times – and today was one of them – when I long to lie down, go to sleep and never wake up. I used to think Mother had lost her reason. Now I wonder if hers was a sane response to a world gone mad.

Violet came to see me this morning. She had two pieces of news, both of them very bad. I regret to say she has received a telegram informing her that her brother is reported missing in action on the Somme. She delivered the customary platitudes one employs under these sad circumstances. She assured me William might still be alive, that he is missing, not dead, then repeated the now-familiar anecdotes about men who turn up on their own doorsteps long after their families have abandoned hope. I do not believe either of us was convinced. It requires energy to hope, energy and faith, both of which are in short supply these days. But we both owe it to William to continue to hope and so I shall.

Violet’s second piece of news was just as disturbing and she suffered wretchedly in the telling of it. Some minutes passed before I realised what, in her euphemistic way, she was struggling to say. It concerned yet another death in action: George Flynn’s, a name unknown to me, though when Violet referred to ‘Georgie’, I recalled she had mentioned him before in connection with William’s leave. The nature of their relationship was unclear, but I assumed Violet was grieving over the death of a sweetheart. In a somewhat confused account, she mentioned marriage several times, though it appeared Flynn had not actually married her.

This, it transpired, was the source of her anxiety. Incoherent with grief and shame, Violet described to me her gradual realisation that ‘a few moments of madness’, as she put it, were to have lasting consequences. By the time she had recited her litany of sickness and discomfort, I was convinced the poor girl had cause to be concerned for her future – and the future of another. There were moments during this painful and embarrassing dialogue, in which Violet referred repeatedly to her ‘predicament’, when I feared I might laugh or burst into tears. By dint of concentrating on my interrogation, I did neither.

I had already concluded that, if William should fail to return, I must employ Violet at Beechgrave. This morning’s conversation confirmed that I have arrived at a crossroads in my life where there are no signposts, so I have taken inventory of my life. I find I no longer wish to receive visitors, nor do I want to venture farther than Beechgrave’s beloved gardens, filled as they are now with potatoes, leeks and marrows, like a market garden. I am too exhausted to manage Beechgrave with the few staff who remain and they are insufficient in number to keep the house in good order.

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