One last look

The war had changed her deeply, and it had changed the man she used to love, too

Katherine never gave any man a second glance, not for the four long years Frank was at war. “You made a promise,” her mother would remind her. “I won’t have my daughter betray a man who’s risking his life for God and country.”

“You don’t need to say so, Mum. I love Frank and I’ll wait for him.”

Frank sent letters from the trenches. Sometimes Katherine would visit his mother and read them to her. All three of Mrs Chilton’s boys were doing their bit, and she was easier to talk to than Katherine’s mum.

Katherine had held Mrs Chilton as she wept when her youngest son, Malcolm, was killed at Gallipoli, and then again when her son Michael died at the Battle of Arras. The two women prayed together for Frank’s safe return.

Now Katherine hated seeing Mrs Chilton in town. It was worse than running into Frank, who always smiled sadly and tipped his hat with the one good arm he had left. His mother wasted no time with sentiment or cordiality.

She would lift her chin, frown and turn in the other direction. No “how do you do”. No inquiries after Stephen, or the baby they were expecting.

Mrs Chilton would know about the baby, because Katherine had seen Frank walk by Stephen’s flower shop the other day.

She’d been arranging peonies, her cardigan unbuttoned, the tiny swell of her belly more visible than she had realised. Because there through the pane, stopped dead in his tracks on the pavement, stood Frank.

Dear old Frank. Handsome, but that wasn’t why Katherine had loved him. There was a kindness to him so few men possessed. Almost a woman’s kindness, like he really saw who you were and how you felt. While he stood there, stricken at the sight of her carrying another man’s child, she wanted to rush out of the shop and throw her arms around him. Not to rekindle things. Just to comfort him. Wars ended. Lives ended. But love never did. Not entirely.

Katherine turned her eyes back to the flowers. She reminded herself that Stephen was a good man, too. Frank would never again be the man she fell in love with. There was something hollowed out about him now, and she couldn’t bear trying to search through that for the man he used to be.

“I’m so sorry,” Katherine whispered into the peonies, refusing to turn her eyes back to the window.

Frank didn’t blame Katherine. She’d waited out the war, and let him down as gently as possible. He didn’t blame Stephen either, though they’d been mates, and hardly a year had passed since the war ended.

The blindness in Stephen’s left eye had kept him from the trenches, but it hadn’t stopped him seeing Katherine. He must have prepared the ground for that romance while Frank was away. Frank worried Stephen only loved Katherine for her beauty, but even that didn’t bother him too much. In time her other qualities – her kindness, her intelligence, the sadness that masked a smile always ready to bloom – would make themselves apparent, and Stephen would love her all the more for them.

Still. That moment she’d caught his eye through the pane glass at Stephen’s flower shop. Her condition apparent, at least to someone who knew her as well as Frank did. He knew he couldn’t stay in Brixham any longer, no matter how much good the sea air did, or how his mother would miss him. A man couldn’t live every day in the shadow of all he’d lost.

Katherine was in the back room clipping thorns off rose stalks, but somehow she knew it was Frank the moment she heard the bell jingle. Stephen stood at the counter, and she laid down the flowers, trying to make out the polite, apologetic exchange between them.

“Katherine,” Stephen called. “Someone’s here to see you.”

She pulled on her cardigan and buttoned it all the way down. Stephen kindly changed places with her, patting her shoulder as they passed each other in the doorway.

“Hullo, Kath,” Frank said. “You’re looking well.”

“Thank you,” she said. “So are you.” At first she thought it a lie but, as she looked closer, he did look well. A sort of purpose about him she hadn’t seen in a long while.

“I’ve taken a job in Leeds,” he said.

“I’ll be moving to Yorkshire tomorrow. I couldn’t leave without saying goodbye.”

“But your mother!” Katherine couldn’t help but burst out.

“She’ll be fine,” he said firmly.

Tears filled her eyes. She couldn’t bear it, Mrs Chilton all alone on account of her. She had to stop herself placing her hand on her belly.

Frank reached out his good arm and clasped her hand. And there was something about him – his eyes had come back to life. She saw she’d given him purpose, made him face his sadness and take action. Maybe there was a new and better road ahead of him. He could become something like his old self, all because her own happiness had chased him out of Brixham.

“I just want you to know,” he said, loud enough for Stephen to hear, “I’ll always love you.”

She couldn’t say it back to him. Not in words. But she did hold her free hand to her lips for a moment, then pressed it against his own lips, long enough to feel that familiar smile form beneath her fingers. Frank released her hand. Then he turned, shoulders only slightly hunched, and walked out the door.

“Be happy,” she said, once he wasn’t there to hear her.

Stephen came out from the back and put his arm around her shoulders.

“I love you,” he said, a little too fiercely, as if he could erase the words Frank had spoken.

Grateful for the chance to say it, Katherine looked up at him, flattened her palm against his chest, and said,

“I love you, too.”

There was something hollowed out about him now