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Mysteria

Member Laureate

since 2001-03-07

Posts 18328
British Columbia, Canada

0 posted 2003-06-03 02:36 PM

British troops on their way to the front. June, 1916.
The citizen armies raised in Britain from 1914 to 1916 were confident of victory.
They were all volunteers, and made up in solidarity what they lacked in military experience.

~* Boy In Khaki *~
© Mysteria 06/2003
1,650 words

It was sometime last year I found myself in that particular part of England.

The business I had in London was complete and we both felt that we should relax for a couple of weeks before returning to Canada.  As my dear wife wanted to stay with her sister for a few days I saw her comfortably settled, I decided to take a jaunt around on my own to the places here and there that I remembered.  Both of the women seemed agreeable as they had much to talk and so I set off on my wanderings

Firstly, I sought out a training camp, or rather a place where there had been one, how long ago?  Surely it was not on to be half a century?  Yet it must be so as I was then only a little boy going through strenuous training in the middle stages of the First World War so proud of my khakis.

Naturally I did not find a camp but I did feel enraptured at finding the pretty village of Toggle ford which looked almost the same and was still living up to its picture-postcard fame, instead of keeping us with modern (so called) improvements.

I remember arriving there and to my delight being billeted with private people, probably because of the last of regular barracks and to the then extension being made to the campsite a little distance away.

There was a cobblestone market place, lined with small shops, a few cottages and of course several pubs.  I got to know that square very well.  I also remember hearing it said, although I never tried to verify the information, that altogether in the village and nearby surroundings there were thirty two pubs in all.

Now the train had sped me here in no time, or so it seemed, and now it was electric I noticed.  Quite an improvement this was after once knowing the rumbling and exceeding slow stopping train I had been on in training.

Walking from the local station to the market square I found the traffic very dense.  I t really amazed me, also the square itself.  There were so department stores and more than a few inviting coffee shops and tea spots.  Large silver-looking cake stands filled with decorative and creamy luxuries, and boxes of sweets and variable exhibits of luscious chocolates sparkled from various windows.  No shortage of sweet things today that was definite.

There was a large blacktopped bus depot talking up almost one full side of the square, this of course included their various offices and waiting rooms I suppose.  Well, here was modernization though strolling through the village it lived up to its old reputation for scenic beauty.

I remember a small river, or maybe just a large stream that ran along behind a side street, which would lead me to the next village providing the pathway was still in use, which fortunately it was.

Easing my leisurely way onwards, I wondered what had happened to Deborah?  It all rushed back to me as I followed the familiar stream flowing as peacefully as ever.  We used to rent a boat and drift idly along as far as an old mill, which damned the water a half a mile or so away.

Those summer evenings in Deborah’s company had been wonderful, though always cut short because I had to check in at camp by ten o’clock.  We often swore undying devotion to each other, how peculiar that she had been so rarely in my mind over the passing years.  She must have been troubling my sub-conscious mind (if it can be troubled at all), to being her so forcibly to the surface.  It must have been some thought or picture of her that had led me to Toggleford before returning over the wide Atlantic t what has been my home for so many years now.

There used to be a large cornfield just beyond the mill, and it was here among the sheaves of golden corn and on a brilliant moonlit night, so brilliant that any patch out of the moon’s light results in almost pitch darkness.  Neither one of us objected to that, I now recalled with such sweet nostalgia.

Retracing my steps along the stream’s bank, I wondered if it would be unfaithful on my part if I enquired the whereabouts of my erstwhile sweetheart?  I dearly loved my wife and our family of two girls and one boy, who were all now grown and settled in their own various ways.

Life, or rather the paths of life, appears to take strange turns.  Perhaps all this is preordained, the while we act knowingly or unknowingly, like puppets pulled by mysterious strings.  Having made our decisions, we cannot for all the world undo them, and mercifully never retrace our steps.  However, to a certain degree I had now retraced my steps, and so for my own satisfaction, wanted to find out what had happened to another part of some previous action of mine.

Once billeted with me in a private home there was a postman, whom I thought at that time had the most interesting job.  Probably the fact was that his day was a humdrum as my own, and until the evening came when he fulfilled his duties by laying a bag of mail on the signal arm posted along the railway lines, and set for the evening express train for London, to be picked up as it sped through Toggleford non-stop, he only then came fully alive and happy.  Who knows, anyhow?

I now found the house where Deborah had lived all right and my finger rang the bell.  I almost and quite foolishly of course expected to see my old sweetheart answering the door, so vividly can the incidence of time and locality prey upon the mind.

“No, I don’t recall anyone of that name,” said the stout woman answering me.  “We’ve lived here twenty years and if I’d even heard that name I would have forgotten it long ago.”

I wandered back to the square of Toggleford and still feeling intrigued when seeing a postman delivering letters, I stopped him and mentioned the name and the house I had just called at.

“Well, sir, I don’t know myself, but if you go to the general post office and ask for old Bill Hutton, he might be able to remember.  He’s lived in this neck of the woods his entire lifetime, and has a small job indoors being too old now for delivery work, but he hates retirement so keeps at it, in a way.  He knows everyone, living or dead in or around Toggleford.”

I shook his hand and thanked him, then continued on my search for old Bill.

“Well, now,” he said, friendly like.  “I do remember the Howards.  That Miss Deborah was a lovely, young thing wasn’t she?  She grew up and married Doc Morgan.  Then, after some years that is, he died and she’s been a widow ever since.  Getting on a bit now, but still active and so she spends much of her time in the good weather taking out her grandchildren.  She’s got three married children and they all live in the vicinity so they keep that Grandma busy.”

Then he offered to show me where she lived and came to the outside door where he could almost point out her house.  “See, it’s not far,” he added, “If you want to walk out that way, I bet she is in and she loves her visitors.”

Thanking old Bill I set off to the house, but suddenly I realized that the person I was looking for had long ago marched down the road of life without me and so would continue that way to the end.  How foolish could I get?

By this time I found that I had turned around and was plodding steadily on my way back t the station, back to my everyday reality back to …?

“Oh, my balloon!” piped a tremulous childish tone.  I looked up and caught the floating flimsy object sailing above my head.  I was on the gravel walk near the turn into the station yard, when I saw an elderly woman with three children grouped in a corner.  I almost bumped into the woman as I handed over the balloon to the smallest child.

“There you are Debbie, and don’t let it go again, that way you’re bound to lose it.  And thank you, sir,” she said, turning a smiling face to me.  We exchanged locked gazes for about a minute and it seemed a lifetime before I rushed by.

“How funny his face looks,” as I glanced round curiously meeting the woman’s eyes and hearing a small boy’s remark.

“That’s rude dear,” began the woman.  “But why does he look at us that way?” came the persistent voice.  “He’s puzzled I would imagine somehow,” I heard her say as she flashed me a dazzling smile as if making it an apology for the young boy’s questioning.  “He’s probably remembered something he’d forgotten to do,” she added, “that’s what his face says to me anyhow dear.  Come along now children.”

“And something far too late to remember to do.” I said to her smilingly, turning then and almost running to catch the train ready to leave Toggleford’s platform.  I thought, she was still as beautiful as ever even with the years passing, and wondered why life takes the turns it does.  I pulled out my wallet to see my wife and children’s smiling faces and somehow I knew.  As the train moved on out of Toggleford, I saw Deborah standing on the platform waving me a fond goodbye just as she did so many years ago when I was a young lad in Khaki, then she turned holding two children’s hands, while the third walked along beside her.

~* The End *~

This story is for Messrs. Brighton, Wallace, and Carter all of whom reside in Lions Gate Hospital's Extended Care Unit in thanks for the many stories they have shared with the residents there of their days in Europe during World War I.