The Unforgiving Self

 

The Unforgiving Self

On the bedpost the poppy clung to the old man’s beret like a newborn baby at its mother’s breast. The old soldier stirred. Stretching out his hand he fumbled the sheets. “It was a dream,” he choked out the death rattle in his throat making his voice hoarse and feeble. The sheets felt cold and clammy to his touch; like the people in his dreams. “The dead are coming for me,” he gasped out. He lay back in the bed to wait. He wanted to be awake and ready when his enemies came for his soul.

It had been in this bed that he and Margaret had first made love. She, a shy virgin bride, he a soldier ready for war. He glanced into the familiar shadows of the room. Their children had been born in this room. Each one of them wanted and loved despite the poverty of the terrible thirties.
A guttural sigh escaped him. It was in this room that Margaret had died giving birth to their last child. He remembered as if it was yesterday the words of kind neighbours and the cheerless expressions on their faces as they watch the other small children gather round the corpse of their mother on the bed cradling her dead baby.
“It’s the Lord’s kindness if it dies,” the old midwife’s, a local woman, had lamented. And indeed without its mother’s milk to sustain him, his only son had died; his weak pitiful cries of hunger echoing around the open rafters of the house that was nothing more than a shack.
He moved fretfully in the tangled sheets. How he could remember all the happening of his past life all those years ago but couldn’t remember who had fed him yesterday?

A fit of coughing caught him. Hands wiped his spittle away. He struggled upright on his elbows trying to catch his breath; his sunken eyes staring at his wooden leg. Squinting, his gaze took in its familiar hue and shape; it’s curved handle worn smooth to the touch now. Was it friend or foe? Wearily he sunk back on his pillows and closed his eyes against the sight of it languishing against the post of the bed. He wondered what would happen to it after he’d gone. It had been his companion for sixty years. A poor substitute for what the war had robbed him of in 1916;

The clock on the mantelpiece claimed the hour and as often happened he was transported back in time to the crackling of the old dry battery wireless and the voice of BBC announcing the news about World War One. Through dry lips he offered up a mumbled prayer. He doubted if anybody up there was listening to the likes of him but he offered it up defiantly for kith and kin.

Both of his mother’s brothers had died in 1916.Their time honoured pictures a testament they had not been forgotten. He wondered how many more homes had a shrine to their dead in their kitchens and front rooms.
The breath caught in his throat and made a gurgling sound. You were responsible for that too, his conscious reminded him again. The disjointed words of a song came to him. “Willy Mc Bride…forever sixteen in some mother’s heart.”

“The war to end all wars” isn’t that what they said,” he muttered agonisingly. “Liars! Liars! He choked out. “It happened again and again.”

Like a thunderstorm gathering force rumours of another war was rumbling when he married Margaret in 1938. Proud to fight for his country against Hitler, he enlisted. He visualised himself returning victorious to a country that would be proud of him.

Savagely, he beat at the bedclothes with the stump of his right arm. There had been no glory in war only terror and brutality. Tears ran unheeded down his face remembering, remembering, pictures flashed through his tortured mind of trenches and mangled.faceless.limbless bodies with no names and no burial ground.

His cracked lips hoarsely repeated the words “Survive, Survive,” until exhausted he fell silent willing death to release him and let him go to Margaret.
The room was silent now except for the crackling of the fire that cast dark shadows on the walls. And the clicking of tongues as silent prayers was offered to God for his release.
“Be silent,” he commanded the praying tongues. “What is done is done.”

In the darkened room the flames of the fire spread like a golden arc highlighting the knots in the wood of the artificial limb. It trembled and of its own accord shivered onto the floor beside the bed. It bore silent testimony to the savagery of the night terrors followed by the recriminations and the powerlessness of the old soldier to change the things he’d done to survive and come home to Margaret.

The wooden leg lay horizontal in the heat of the fire; its curved handle trapped around the leg of the bed. Trapped. Like the terrors trapped in the mind of the old man

Sometimes a simple thing would start them off. Like the sound of a screaming ambulance or news reports of new wars, or old veteran soldiers sleeping rough in the street
.Not for the first time had the leg been wrenched off and threatened with burning in the black grate. As the old man, crazy with guilty memories of how he survived the war, became bereft of his senses. “What Glory or Pride is there in one arm and one leg,” his demented voice shrieked.
“Homes for heroes, “he would shout, spreading out his arms to his cold, bare existence
Later, some semblance of sanity would return. The wooden leg would find itself retrieved from the teeth of the grate and the old army beret with its poppy intact would regain its rightful place on the bedpost

As the first rays of dawn heralded a new day and crept behind the window blind the old soldier fancied he heard the faint strains of an army band striking up.
He fixed his eyes on the foot of the bed and saw the face of Margaret holding his son. She shifted the smiling baby and held out her hand to him.

He gasped for breath as the candles beside the figure of the crucified Christ flickered and burnt low.

It was time to meet his avenging enemies

His sorrowful praying children gathered around. Reaching out to each of his five daughters in turn, he drew them close
“Life, not death makes us a proud nation, “he gasped as he drew his last breath.