The Lazarus Secrets Read Online Free PDF Page A

killed and Mary, from whom strength had seemed to visibly ebb away, took her children and went to live with her mother. Totally unequipped to deal with a life of poverty on her own, Clarissa had found herself alone and living in a tiny basement slum.
    Even sitting on the park bench in the sunshine so many years later, the memory of that dank and dark little room sent a cold shudder through Clarissa’s body and she glanced at Alexander who was still staring at the house, but for him she would have surely died in that awful place.
    Alexander too was thinking of that time. On leave at Christmas 1917 he had stopped off in London to visit Clarissa, his brother’s wife, and was horrified by her living conditions, she looked ill and forlorn but he was unable to find her anywhere better to live. He was on his way to Durham to visit his mother but decided he must stay with Clarissa. He was with her on New Year’s Eve when she received notification that Michael had been killed and, hysterical with grief, went into premature labour. He had managed to get her to a hospital and when told she and the baby might die had sent a note to the house at which he now stared at, asking Charles to come to the hospital.
    The two men had disliked each other on sight and came to blows when they got into a fierce argument in the corridor of the hospital. Alexander smiled when he thought of their stupidity and the dragon of a midwife, Sister Nicholls, who had threatened them with expulsion from the hospital if they didn’t behave themselves. The child, a boy, was eventually born, but both he and his mother were still in danger. As the two men left the hospital at midnight and 1918 dawned, they had shaken hands and declared a truce putting aside all previous antagonism in order to be there for Clarissa and her baby. Neither of them could know that they would become as close as brothers for the rest of their lives.
    Alexander recalled how over-awed he had been the first time he set foot in the Petersen house that night, it had seemed like a palace. He and Charles got drunk and talked for hours about the war and its futility, they cried about Clarissa and her desperately ill son and the next day, having regained their composure, made plans to join forces for the future.
    How young they had all been, but Alexander still remembered it vividly. What a night it was! A night filled with fear, hate and violence and yet from it had come peace, comfort, love and a lifetime of friendship for himself, for his mother and for Clarissa and Charles when they had willingly bound themselves together with a promise to care for one another and for Clarissa and Michael’s son, Max.
    Charles suddenly turned and looked at him, he had a half smile on his face and Alexander wondered if he too was mulling over the happenings of that very night.
    Knowing that shortly they would both have to return to France, Alexander went north and brought his mother Eloise to London to care for Clarissa and her baby while they were gone. They were all grieving and weakened emotionally by the loss of Michael. Clarissa and her baby were still not out of danger but together they felt stronger and before Charles and Alexander went back to war the four of them, sitting around Clarrisa’s sickbed, held hands and made a pact that whatever happened they would remain together forever and care for Michael’s son.
    At the war’s end the men returned, Charles had a leg wound and would walk with a limp for the rest of his life, and although Alexander’s deeply invasive wounds were not visible it would be many years before he recovered. Life did begin again for them all, but it was a life built around each other and their duty to their young charge. Clarissa had named him after the four most important men in the family, his father first then she had drawn the other three names from a hat, Alexander, his brave uncle, Xavier, his grandfather and Charles, his gentle uncle, and