very afternoon, in Izzy’s room, a room Izzy would never return to, and let Sam know what I had done, how I had tried to steal her love, so she could decide where to go next. I didn’t care anymore.
I took one last look at the field where Izzy’s ashes were now part of the landscape. I wouldn’t be coming back.
I led the way back to the gate and then let Sam go first.
She stepped into the angle but then blocked my way by holding the gate firm.
“Those are beech trees over there, right?”
I nodded.
“Is that where the badgers live, where the bluebells grow in spring?”
I nodded. “And the foxes.”
“Is this the time of year for the Severn Bore?”
“You remember that?” I was surprised. “I don’t know.”
“I remember everything,” she said, reaching out and stroking the lapel of my blazer. She leaned forward and laid her head on my shoulder. “And I remember telling you, back on the platform of the station in Middle Hill, just after you had been promoted to the war ministry, that I didn’t love you. I said I didn’t love you but that I might learn to love you.”
She kissed my shoulder. “I didn’t believe myself when I said those things and I’ve always felt guilty about saying them. Everyone I’ve ever liked—you know, in that way—I’ve liked right off, right from the start.” She raised my hand to her lips and kissed it. “Well… I was wrong.” She lifted her head from my shoulder and looked up at me. “I have learned to love you, Hal.”
She took a deep breath.
“So much has happened to us. Because of the war I’ve fallen out with all of my sisters, one by one. Two of them have lost their men. You’ve lost a sister.” She took another breath. “I didn’t hate the Germans, not to begin with—and I know you felt the same way.”
She licked her lips with her tongue.
“But now, after all the pain, all the blood, all the turmoil… it’s hard not to let some … bitterness creep into your heart.”
I nodded. She was right. Isobel had never harmed anyone.
“And I’ve been thinking about Will. Does he really have to know who his father is? There’s so much hate now, everywhere… it will always be hard for him, once he knows the truth. He thinks you’re his father. He adores you. Why can’t it stay that way?”
She climbed onto one of the iron rungs of the gate, so that her face was level with mine. “I know that when I mention Wilhelm, Hal, it hurts you, so I’m going to mention him one more time—and then never again. He asked me to marry him at a gate just like this. The one by the river at Stratford, where you and I once walked. He loved these kissing gates—they don’t have them in Germany—I think I told you that. He said he had me trapped, just like I have you trapped now. He said he wouldn’t let me go until I gave him an answer. I never hid Wilhelm from you, Hal, but maybe I hid the depths of my feelings, when we first met. In a way you came into my life too soon after Wilhelm. There were times, early in the war, when… when I hoped our side would collapse, just so I could have Wilhelm back. How terrible is that?”
She brushed wisps of hair from her face. “But he’s been gone years now. You’ve been wonderful to me, and to Will, and to my sisters. We can’t go on living in this halfway world, not being married, holding back at least some of the time, waiting … Waiting’s not living.”
She smiled. “We’ve been here before, you know.”
“We have? I don’t— What do you mean?”
“Remember that day on the platform in Middle Hill station, amid all the steam and clanking signals? I told you that if I was going with you, to London, I had to say so before the school board met, before I found out what their verdict was; I had to choose to be with you…”
I remembered but I didn’t say anything.
“It’s the same now. What I’m going to say, I need to say before the war is over, before I find out, one way or the other… whether Wilhelm’s alive, whether … what his feelings are … I need to choose, to decide, all by myself.”
She took off her Alice band, threw it away, and let her hair hang loose.