Coming Home

Walter looked down the street the way men did when they'd learned from bitter experience how to survive – by assessing the danger. The neighbourhood had been severely damaged while he'd been away, but it was still the same place. Like the endless destruction he'd travelled through on his journey across Europe. A place that had been victim to six years of war.

He looked at his hands as they moved with the caution of someone who'd spent too long waiting for orders that never came; they were shaking slightly. His uniform had gone, the one he'd worn night and day for what seemed like forever, and had been replaced by a demob suit and a heavy coat that still smelled of mothballs. He buried his anxious hands deep into the pockets, as if anchoring himself there. He felt strangely uneasy.

He'd practised this moment all the way back home on the train, from the moment the guard had checked his travel warrant, to stepping out onto the platform. Unannounced, he'd decided was the best way. He could be surprised by them and they could be surprised by him. It was simpler than long letters or meetings with officials. Simpler than the long months he'd spent listening for doors opening that never did. His mother had told him years ago that home wasn't something you returned to; it was a place that waited for you. And he'd believed her, because it felt true.

The house looked just as he'd remembered it, except for the curtains. They were new, or at least different from the ones he'd left behind. He put his hand on the gate and his stomach tightened. He told himself it was nothing. People change things. Life goes on. He walked down the short path to the front door and listened. He heard nothing. No voices, no radio, no movement. Just the faint murmur of a house living its life peacefully.

There was a wreath on the door, now pale and dried, the sort of wreath that tells you things if only you knew the language. He touched it gently, as if doing so would tell him something, and just as he did so the door opened with a gentleness that surprised him.

She stood before him holding a tea towel, with neat hair and a face that carried the calm of someone who'd learned not to give anything away in front of visitors. It wasn't surprise Walter recognised, but assessment. A face absorbing information before allowing emotion to show.

Then her eyes met his, and the tea towel fell from her fingers onto the floor.

'Walter?' she gasped.

The sound of her voice speaking his name thrilled through him, as if the word had given him permission to exist.

'Helen,' he responded, with a name that had been held captive inside him for too long.

Her demeanour softened at the sound of his voice and she inhaled slowly, as if she'd been holding her breath for a long, long time.

'You're back,' she finally exclaimed, with undisguised confusion. 'But you....'

From somewhere behind her, deep inside the house, a child laughed at play.

Walter took a step forward. He couldn't help himself. He'd rehearsed this moment for years and longed to hold Helen, to feel her warmth, as if to confirm his survival. But Helen didn't respond. She held her ground as her searching eyes scanned him, anxious to confirm that it was really him.

'But you came early,' she suddenly blurted.

These words hit him hard, not because they were cruel words, but because they were unexpected. He hadn't told anyone he would be here, so how could he be early? Early meant arrangements had been made and appointments agreed.

'Early?' he queried. 'You expected me?'

'But they said you wouldn't...' she stopped herself, as if to continue would be too upsetting to say aloud.

The child's voice drew closer and called out 'mummy?' And seconds later appeared behind her, lithe and alert.

Walter's heart pounded in his chest as the boy stopped in his tracks and stared straight at him.

'Who are you?' asked the child, with wide eyed innocence.

Helen stooped and picked up her tea towel, holding it against her chest defensively.

'Walter.......it's not what you think.'

Walter let out a sharp, disbelieving laugh. 'I've just arrived home Helen. I haven't had time to think anything yet.'

The boy stepped closer and peered up at his mother. 'Is he your friend mummy?'

Helen's eyes shone with moisture and Walter didn't know what sort of tears they were.

'Is he....?'

Walter looked down at the boy and saw someone that shouldn't be there. The war shouldn't have changed the shape of his family like this, and yet a child stood before him who was clearly a daily part of Helen's life.

'Walter, please. Not like this. It's not what you think.

Walter's mind spun with confusion and he blurted out the first words that came to him.

'Where's my mum?' he asked.

Helen seemed to flinch at the question and her answer tumbled out too quickly.

'She isn't here.'

'What do you mean she isn't here?'

Helen began anxiously twisting the tea towel. 'Walter, please. We can't do it like this on the doorstep. After the letter arrived we waited and we waited.'

'The letter? What letter?'

'The, we regret to inform you letter . The letter that said you were missing in action.'

'You waited?'

'Yes, we waited and we waited.'

The hallway suddenly creaked as someone new emerged and stepped forward whilst wiping baking flour from his hands on a cloth.

Walter instinctively recognised an opponent. This was no stranger to the household. This was a man who'd staked a claim.

'Helen said you'd come,' the man said quietly. 'I'm George.'

Walter stood dumbfounded, fumbling for a response.

'You were expected months ago. There were formal notifications and procedures. I stepped in to help.'

'To help?'

'When someone is declared missing, presumed dead, life becomes very complicated. People can't just stop living. Helen needed help.'

'You sound like a government official,' snapped Walter.

Helen's eyes closed and large tears began to stream down her face. 'Walter, please. George is not the enemy. Come inside and let's deal with this like sensible adults.'

 

Walter sat down in the living room, in the chair he had always sat in, and his mind went into overdrive. The past long months not being by her side: the silence and the waiting and the frustration. And then he imagined George stepping in when the world had declared him absent. Maybe from kindness or maybe from opportunity, or maybe from both. But either way, none of this changed the way he felt. He looked around the room and the photographs had changed. In one of them, George was grinning with a child on his lap and Walter didn't know whose child this was.

'You've changed the photos,' he said, and then immediately hated the way he'd said it.

'Your family did some of them, when they came to make enquiries.'

'My family,' Walter repeated. 'Where are they now?'

Helen looked away again. 'They stopped coming eventually, when the war ended and the rumours changed. They stopped expecting you to return.'

'So no one was waiting for me. Not you or my family.'

Helen gave a small nod of defeat. 'Not like we were before,' she acknowledged.

Walter sighed and looked at the boy. 'Do you know your father,' he asked gently, anxious that his anger didn't become a weapon.

The boy shrugged his shoulders. 'I've seen pictures,' he replied.

'Whose pictures?' Walter asked.

'Yours.' Helen interjected with a whisper.

The boy frowned thoughtfully. 'He looked funny.'

Walter smiled. In those old photos he'd always looked too skinny and distant, captured in moments he no longer recognised.

'What have you told him?' asked Walter.

'We've told him enough. We told him that you were supposed to come home and we didn't know how to tell him what it meant when you didn't.'

Walter stared at them for some time. He wanted to say all sorts of things. He wanted to say they should have waited longer. That they should have held their shape until he returned and above all, that they shouldn't have replaced him. He wanted to be outraged, but the war had taught him that people survived by doing what they had to, and somehow outrage seemed impotent.

'Did you ever love me?' Walter asked.

Helen's face crumpled. 'Please don't do this Walter. Please. Of course I loved you.'

'And George?'

'I love Helen as the person she is,' said George, calmly taking the initiative. 'Not in any way that was meant to erase you Walter. You were lost and so was Helen and your son, and at the time so was I. Stepping in was the right thing to do for all our sakes.'

Walter looked across at the array of photographs and for the first time he saw what he'd always missed before. Helen's smile, a smile that had always been absent, but now clearly showed she'd discovered contentment. Something heavy and painful shifted inside him. It was the realisation of what he'd always really known, but had never had the courage to face. He stared out through the window into the street, where a chill Autumn wind chased parched leaves along the pavement.

'Is my mother dead?' he asked, in as gentle a way as he could muster.

'She'd been ill for some time,' replied Helen. 'We kept her room just as it was for you.'

The room was smaller than he remembered it, but it smelled just as it always had. In the corner was his mother's old luggage trunk and he stared at it as old memories flooded his mind.

'We put all her personal things in it,' said Helen, watching him carefully. 'They're all there waiting for you.'

Walter lifted the lid and gazed at the contents through misty eyes. Everything that was his mother, packed away as if waiting to be acknowledged. The anger was still in him, but the flames were gradually dying away into embers and embers were much more manageable. Walter wiped his face with the back of his hand and turned to face Helen and George. The enormity of what had taken place in this household during his absence suddenly struck home.

'Tonight, he said, with a note of acceptance, 'we will sit down to a meal together and you can tell me everything. All of it. The waiting, the not knowing, the letters, the official notifications: everything.'

The boy appeared in the doorway and Walter knelt down to speak to him. 'What's your name, young man?'

'Geoffrey,' the boy replied, proudly.

'Well Geoffrey, do you like this house?'

'It's my house,' replied Geoffrey, defiantly.

Walter looked around the room. Once every chair, every photograph, every creaking floorboard had belonged to his life. Now they belonged to Geoffrey's childhood. Houses don't remember ownership, they remember the people that made them home.

'Well, in that case Geoffrey, I think we'd better make arrangements to ensure that it stays that way.'

Outside, in the street, the chill Autumn wind had calmed and the golden leaves lay along the pavement reflecting the afternoon sun as it slowly dipped below the horizon.

 

Image free to use by Dola