Friendship's Bond Read Online Free PDF Page B

men, whose faces reflected the pride they took in the uniform they wore, in answering their country’s call.
    Three years on this day, since her world had crashed about her.
    ‘ But y’be scarce growed .’
    Leah pressed the photograph to her breast as she relived the past.
    ‘ I be growed enough .’
    Tall and strong, the image in body and mind of the father lost to a collapse of the coalface deep beneath the surface of Brunswick colliery, Daniel smiled back at her sharp reply.
    ‘ No, no you ain’t . . . you ain’t growed enough! ’
    The pain of that moment struck Leah as deeply as on that morning. Daniel, her youngest son, had taken her in those strong arms.
    ‘ Mother . . . ’
    In her mind that beloved voice spoke again.
    ‘ I don’t be no child; there be lads wi’ less years than me already gone to the front .’
    ‘ Less years! ’ she had cried. ‘ Y’be nobbut a lad .’
    A deep and carefree laugh sounded from the vale of yesterday, Daniel’s reply ringing after it.
    ‘ A lad y’ says, I be near enough eighteen .’
    ‘ Six months short is what you be, six months short of that eighteen y’ boasts of; no Daniel, y’be too young, I won’t ’ave you follow in the wake of your brother, one son be too much to give to the Army. I refuses to give another .’
    As she clasped the photograph Leah heard the quietly spoken reply.
    ‘ You might think me no more than a lad, Mother, but don’t prevent my being a man .’
    And so as he had done from his first days of walking Daniel had followed in the footsteps of his brother, followed nineteen-year-old Joshua into the army. And three months later he had followed him into heaven.
    On this day in nineteen fifteen had come the notification: ‘Killed in Action’. The three words had torn her world apart.
    Leah heard again the voices of her sons, saw their smiles, felt their kiss on her cheek then in her mind’s eye watched two straight figures march proudly from her sight.
    ‘ We won’t be gone long .’
    Leah touched the photograph with her lips.
    You don’t be gone my dear ones, you don’t never be gone; you be in the air I breathe, you be the blood that flows in my veins, your names be the beat of my heart and your sweet faces the light of my soul. You live where you ’ave ever lived, in the love of your mother’s heart.
    Leah returned the photograph to its place, her glance going to one set beside it. Housed in a matching oval mahogany frame, lovingly polished, a ringleted young girl demure in ribboned lace rested her hand on an ornate jardinière and smiled from gentle doe-like eyes. Her heart felt this time it must break; Leah snatched the frame to her, holding it so tightly she could hardly breathe.
    ‘Deborah . . .’
    Tears she could not hold spilled silently over her lined cheeks.
    ‘Deborah child, my dear love, why . . . why?’
    Sounds from the scullery pulled her back to the moment. she replaced the photograph then looking to another placed opposite murmured quietly, ‘Watch over our children, Joseph, watch over them until I come.’
     
    ‘ I add to your burden Ann . . . ’
    Alec’s quiet words spoken as they had walked together beside the small cart with its several empty milk churns reverberated in Ann’s mind.
    ‘ I have taken advantage of your friendship, of your kind generosity for too long, it is time I leave and give you back your freedom .’
    ‘ Leave! ’ She had stopped so abruptly the horse drawing the cart had whinnied disapproval at the drag of the bit against its mouth.
    Alec had smiled that shy smile she had seen so often but today it had not reached those blue-grey eyes, nor added any sign of pleasure to those chiselled delicate features.
    ‘ Yes ,’ he had nodded, ‘ I have known almost from that day in the Ploschad Morskoy Slavy, the great square in Petrograd . . . ’
    There had been pain in his voice, a deep sense of hurt as he had spoken the new name for the city of St Petersburg.
    ‘ . . . known