Helen’s fingers pinned the languid drapery to the lines. The pale light from the sky cast the cloth in a horrible gray; even her red headscarf seemed to lack in color. Finished, she lifted the heavy laundry basket from the ashen ground and lumbered into the house. Her back ached with each step, yet it was a small price to pay to escape the boredom of idleness.
The smell of old tobacco dug up memories too strong for her to bear, and she collapsed to her knees in tears. Her husband was off fighting in the trenches somewhere in France. She heard the names late at night while she drank from the fine crystal and the radio played in the background. Lorraine, Verdun, the Somme; they meant nothing to her, just names that could eventually be her husband’s final grave.
The tears were fewer now, though it still seemed she cried every time she entered one of the rooms of the large estate. It took her several hours of consolation from the housekeeper, Meredith, to stay her from the secluded comforts of the large featherbed upstairs. Mornings were no less lonesome, each time waking without that warm body next to her, the pillow untouched.
Sometimes Meredith helped her with the laundry, although the housekeeper’s tasks seemed to lessen each day as Helen found anything to do around the house to keep herself busy.
“It’s not good, my lady,” Meredith had whispered to her one day, “to sulk over your worries at all hours of the day. When I see myself under the weather, I find that a bit of housework always keeps the mind occupied. It is perhaps the best way to await your gentlemen’s return home.”
Helen had resisted at first, not wishing to entertain the thought of manual labor, yet she soon found herself in no better condition than before, and took the older woman’s advice.
Now Helen prided herself on a clean house. Many of the women who came by to share in her grief (many of whom also had husbands overseas) commented on how wonderfully pristine her home had become. She thanked them with but a smile and told them of her attempts to soothe the pain. They didn’t seem interested.
She stood and put away the laundry basket and clothespins in the corner. The dusty mirror in front of her showed her whole body reflecting back. It had been over year now since he had left that morning, the one morning that had taken everything from her. Helen looked down at her stomach, beginning to show, bulging out ever so slightly. She needed some fresh air.
The estate was owned by her father who had passed away before the war had started. Her home had been standing for several years, a combination of wood and stone that betrayed a look of beauty for practicality. It was beautiful in its own sense, but cold and distant like her father had been.
A slight breeze blew through the stone walkway and the chill sent shivers through her legs and up into her body. It felt good somehow, cleansing, but it was false to think it would make her pure. A hanging pot of purple azaleas swung gently, creaking as the wind nudged it forward and back, forward and back.
The gustiness of the afternoon stayed with her on her walk up until she saw the shadow of a man standing underneath one of the archways. She stopped.
It wasn’t often that Helen, or any other woman for that matter, saw a man’s shadow wander so freely in her home. She thought momentarily that it was her paramour, but he was gone to London for at least another week. Feeling another chill climb her spine, she eased
backward.
“There’s no need to be afraid, my wife. Helen, I have missed you.”
But it could not be! He was still in France, still in the trenches, still in his grave. “David?”
“Yes.”
He took a short step forward, and came into view. He still wore the bowler and the overcoat he had left her in, but carried a rifle in his hands in place of the briefcase he had been prone to carry so often.
“How… how can it be?”
“I’m going to die tonight, Helen. I’m going to die lonely and afraid just above the trenches after a ricocheted bullet hits me in the neck. I will lay in that spot for days, rotting in the cold winter weather, scavenged upon by prey and ravaged by even more gunfire. And you will grieve for me, I have no doubt. But you will do no more than that, Helen. You’ll not throw your life away for me, for my death.”
She could already feel the wetness well up within her eyes. “But I could never lose you! It would be the end of me.”
“No, my sweet wife, you have inside you the beginnings of a new life. You have the beginnings of your new life.”
“I can’t betray you, David.”
“You already have. But I do not hold it against you, my love. I will be dead tonight. There is no reason to sneak around any longer.”
She hesitated. This was all happening so quickly, yet it had been happening for so long. Helen knew the day would come eventually. “Sometimes…” she choked, “sometimes when I’m with him, I… I pretend he’s you.”
“Do what you must to grieve me, but promise me you will marry him and raise your child. Promise me you’ll be happy.”
“…I don’t know if I could.”
Her husband removed his hat and the gray light from the sky revealed something she hadn’t noticed before: a massive hole in his neck. Helen turned her head away.
“Promise me you’ll be happy or I won’t be able to die in peace. Promise me.”
“I promise.”
Helen heard the creaking of the hanging flowerpot behind her as a gust of wind pushed it momentarily into the air. When she looked back her husband‘s way, there stood only the cold stone.
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