Rose pictured Uncle Dyle, hale and robust with his booming laugh, a ready twinkle in his eye.

Ellen could not believe she was sitting in a café in wartime France with Lucas, her childhood friend. Now a qualified lawyer and serving in a special operation in the Canadian Expeditionary Force “I like the work,” Lucas admitted with a smile. “As for the island boys – Jed’s made it through all right so far, thank God. He took a bullet in the shoulder at Loos, but it was only a flesh wound and he was back on the Front in a couple of weeks.” He paused and gazed down at the tabletop.

“Some of the other boys didn’t do so well.” “They didn’t?” Ellen’s heart sank as she thought of the young boys she’d gone to school with.

“Andrew Parton died at Ypres. One of the Tyler twins at Vimy Ridge. I don’t know about the others. I’ve lost touch, I’m afraid.” He paused and then asked, “Have you heard from Rose about Peter?”

“Peter?” Ellen gazed at Lucas in alarm. Touslehaired, impish Peter. Why did she still think of him as seven years old even though she knew he had to be nearly 20 now?

“Peter joined up a few months ago,” Lucas said quietly. “I don’t know more than that. My father wrote and told me.”

So long

Ellen sat back in her seat, her coffee and pastry forgotten.

“I hate to think of little Peter out in the trenches. In my mind I’ve frozen the island and everyone there, but they’ve all moved on, of course. It’s just been so long.”

“It has,” Lucas agreed. “We’ve missed you, Ellen.” A faint blush touched his cheeks and he took another sip of coffee.

“How is Rose managing with Peter gone? And Uncle Dyle?”

Lucas hesitated again and fear clutched at Ellen’s heart.

“Tell me, Lucas,” she implored. “I must know.” “It isn’t much, really. Only that before I left Dyle was having a little heart trouble. Flutters, he said. Peter had left school to help him with the farm.”

“Oh, no.” Rose pictured Uncle Dyle, hale and robust with his booming laugh, a ready twinkle in his eye. “But now if Peter’s gone . . .”

“I don’t know what they’re doing,” Lucas answered. “I haven’t heard from anyone from back home for months. Plenty of people are without sons and fathers, Ellen, and they’re managing. Rose will, too, I’m sure.”

Ellen nodded. She knew what Lucas said was true. Still, she hated to think of dear Aunt Rose struggling on her own.

“Have you been back often, Lucas?” Ellen asked after a moment. “Before the war? I don’t even know what your own news is.” She tried to inject a note of brightness into her voice. “You wrote me back in 1914 that you’d met someone.”

Lucas stared at her in surprise.

“Met someone?”

“A girl, I mean,” Ellen said, and now she was blushing. “In Toronto.”

Lucas shook his head.

“There never was anyone in Toronto, Ellen.” “But I remember,” Ellen insisted. Her face was fiery now. “You said there was a young lady of interest.”

Lucas gazed at her, frowning for a moment, before his expression cleared and he laughed.

“Oh, Ellen, that was a joke. I was talking about my landlady’s dog. She’d been delivered of puppies, and I took one.”

Dimly Ellen remembered some reference to a dog in the letter, and she laughed in embarrassment.

“I must have misread it completely.” She bit her lip. “I just wanted you to be happy, I suppose.”

“Buttons was a good dog,” Lucas said. “I took her back to the island when I enlisted. Dad still has her.”

“And Jed?” Ellen asked. She kept her voice light. “How is he? And Louisa?”

“I haven’t seen much of him since the war started. After I left the battalion we met up in London a couple of times, but that’s all. And you know Jed. He’s not much of a one for letters.”

“No.” Ellen took a sip of coffee. It tasted bitter; there was no sugar to be had anywhere. “And Louisa? Have you heard any of her news?”

“She went back home to Seaton when Jed enlisted,” Lucas said quietly. “She took the death of their son very hard.”

“Yes, Aunt Rose wrote me as much. But I’d hoped they might have had more children.”

“No, they never did. And truth be told, I don’t know if Louisa will come back from Seaton, even when the war is over.”

“But she must!” Ellen exclaimed. “She couldn’t desert her husband.”

“No, she couldn’t,” Lucas agreed after a moment. “But she wasn’t the same after their boy’s death, Ellen, and neither was Jed. It was a hard thing.”

Far away

Ellen nodded slowly. She’d gathered as much from Aunt Rose’s letters, but she’d still hoped in the intervening years that things might have changed for the better for Louisa and Jed, for their own sakes.

“What about you, Ellen?” Lucas asked. “You’ve been nursing here in France since the war started, I know, and Rose told me you were set to take a teaching position at the School of Art back in Glasgow. Will you go back there when the war is finished?”

“I don’t know,” Ellen admitted. Glasgow seemed so very far away. “I can’t imagine what life is going to be like after the war. What any of us are going to do.” “Celebrate, I hope, as best as we can.”

“If there’s anything left to celebrate.”

Survivor

Lucas leaned forward and covered her hand with his.

“There will be, Ellen. I’m sure of it. It might take some time to find our happiness again, but we will. Look at how much you’ve experienced already. You’re a survivor, Ellen.” He squeezed her hand and Ellen smiled.

“I think I am a survivor,” she admitted.

She thought of the days nursing her mum in Glasgow, and then the trip to America when she’d been so full of hope, and the deep disappointment of her father’s abandonment. Then losing Jed and Henry . . . yes, she’d survived it all.

“I think I want to hope for more than survival,” she said.

“Everyone has been just existing for so long, ploughing through the days to get to the end of this wretched war. I hope happiness is in our grasp again. I hope it is for you as well, Lucas.”

“Well . . .” Lucas smiled wryly and removed his hand from hers. Ellen found she missed its comforting warmth. “I hope so, too.”

More tomorrow.

On Renfrew Street was previously a serial in The People’s Friend. For more great fiction, get The People’s Friend every week, £1.30 from newsagents and supermarkets.

Artwork: Dave Young