The River Road -- by Zephirine

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“Ellen, Ellen! Come here, look!”

Ellen looked round from cleaning the stove. Her mother-in-law’s tone and tension made her move quickly across the room, her long skirt catching the little stool and nearly knocking it over.

The clock struck four as they stood together and looked out of the kitchen window towards the dusty road which ran alongside the river and past the back of the house.

They watched the figure walking slowly up the road towards them.

“It is him.”

“It must be.”

“He must have got leave.”

But although as the figure got closer it was unmistakably her husband, Ellen didn’t run out to meet him. Something was wrong with him, the walk was different, the brisk farmer’s vigour gone from his movements. She watched.

Albert walked slowly, steadily, up to the open back door, paused on the threshold. Brown-haired, solidly built, his khaki uniform discoloured with dust from the road.

His face was blank.

“Well, we didn’t expect to see you,” said his mother, trying in vain to keep the fear from her voice as both women looked at him with the same thought: he was back, but he was mad. Or at any rate, absent in mind.

Ellen went over to him, put her arms round him. He was reassuringly solid, his cheek rough with stubble, but he stood still in her embrace without responding. She stepped back.

“Sit down, have a cup of tea,” she said, for lack of anything else to say. “You must be worn out.”

Mrs Martin thought as she poured the tea that perhaps this was what they called shell-shock. He must have seen terrible things, it had affected his mind; he would heal, now, in the country.

Still he had not spoken, or kissed either of them, and now he went, not to a chair, but over to the wall and sat down on the floor, forearms propped on his knees in the ancient pose of the soldier resting on a march.

Ellen took his tea, but he made no movement to take it. She bent down and put it on the floor between his feet.

His mother said: “You just sit there, then. We’ll get on.”

She went back to the dishes and Ellen started cleaning the stove again, but neither of them had any idea of what they were doing. Their whole awareness was concentrated on the still shape sitting there, leaning back against the wall, the untouched mug of tea growing cold on the floor.

The dishes clattered as Mrs Martin finished washing and began to dry them. Ellen finished the stove and began, unnecessarily, to polish the kettle.

After what seemed like a long time but was actually about ten minutes, Albert got up, carefully, as though he ached.

Then, as he walked past her without expression, Ellen saw the bullet hole in the back of his tunic, surrounded by a little cloud of blood. About where his heart would be.

And then he walked slowly out of the door and disappeared.

Mrs Martin had seen it too.

She was in time to catch Ellen as she fainted, and help her onto the big chair by the stove.

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Both women cried for most of the rest of the day. He had been Mrs Martin’s only surviving child, the man of the house since his father died when he was thirteen. Ellen had known him since they went to school together at six years old.

“What will we do without him?” she asked. Meaning not: how will we run the farm and make money? but : how will we get up in the morning and put one foot in front of the other?

“I don’t know, love. I don’t know.”

Eventually, exhausted, they went to bed early. They were tired enough to sleep. They did get up in the morning and put one foot in front of the other, sustained by the routine of work which had worn them both down since he went off to the war. Cows to milk, chickens to feed, horse to muck out, house to clean.

Ellen felt weak and confused, Mrs Martin felt disconnected from her own body carrying out the daily tasks. By the afternoon they had both run out of strength and had to stop.

They sat in the big kitchen and had some tea, and a biscuit. For the first time they spoke about Albert’s appearance yesterday. He must have been shot, then, at about the time they saw him. Mrs Martin had heard of such things before, the bereaved having a vision of their loved one coming to tell of his or her death. But how had he been shot in the back? Perhaps the Army would tell them, though Mrs Martin doubted it. He would not have been running away. Albert would never have run away.

The clock struck four as Mrs Martin took the cups and plates to the sink. Out of habit she glanced out of the window, and Ellen, who was by the always-open back door, heard her gasp as she dropped the crockery into the sink. She looked where her mother-in-law was looking, out along the river road.

They watched the figure walking slowly up the road towards them.

This time they did nothing.

They stood still, together, clutching hands tightly, and watched Albert walk up to the door, pause on the threshold, come in, sit down by the wall and rest his forearms on his raised knees.

They waited. He sat, for about ten minutes, and then got up carefully, painfully, and walked to the door, his bullet-hole still there red on his back, out of the door and disappeared.

After a long time Ellen whispered: “Why did he come back? We know, now. Why?”

Mrs Martin shook her head, uncomprehending.

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That evening they were silent, beyond tears and filled with a new fear that neither of them expressed.

Neither slept, and the next day they avoided each other’s eyes, working harder even than usual, trying to get tired so they would stop thinking, but making clumsy mistakes and dropping things, bumping into furniture.

As the afternoon progressed, they were in the big kitchen as always, and both trying not to look at the clock.

As four o’clock struck, there was a long moment of stillness between them, and then it was Ellen who walked decisively to the sink and looked out of the window. She stood very still for a moment, and the blood had drained from her face when she turned back into the room to Mrs Martin.

“Yes.”

The older woman stared back at her, the fear realised. Now both of them somehow knew that, for some reason, they - the three of them - had been sentenced.

“It’s going to be every day, isn’t it?”

Ellen nodded mechanically. “Yes. Every day.”

Every day.

Mrs Martin saw her own emotions reflected on her daughter-in-law's face. She went to join Ellen by the sink, putting an arm round her but feeling her own lack of strength or reassurance.

And could not prevent her gaze from moving out of the window to where the dusty soldier trudged lonely up the river road towards the house.

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