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To The End Of Love by Glyn Pope

    Nicolas parent’s escape from persecution in Russia. Moving to England at the end of the 19th century, they live in the north of England and have a son, Nicolas. They keep themselves very much to themselves and become prosperous. Nicolas attends the local village school, as does Mary-Alice. Mary-Alice is one of a large family, the daughter of a local miner. Ultimately Mary-Alice, the Catholic, and Nicolas, the Jew, fall in love in their teens and Mary-Alice becomes pregnant. Nicolas is banished by his mother to France to live with an uncle, which is where he spends the rest of his life. Mary-Alice lives with her aunt and uncle until she meets up with Harold and marries him. He becomes as a father to June, Nicolas and Mary-Alice’s daughter and Nicolas is never spoken of again. They finally settle in Leicester where they live for the rest of their lives, dying during the 1980s.

PROLOGUE

    For a long time after Christine had died Richard rarely slept. When he did sleep his dreams were vivid. He decided it must be the local bread that was made from real ingredients brought in from the country rather than chemicals that a factory bread maker might turn out. Someone told him once that was how LSD was discovered from the flour of the country bread giving the inhabitants wild visions. One night he dreamt the plot of a novel. It was so superb that it would be an instant best seller. As he woke to the total blackness of French country life he was amazed at what the brain could produce. He thought, I must write this down. He lay in the darkness too weary to rise. It would be alright, he knew that an idea so clever would stay with him forever. He felt like he had become Petter. The ringmaster and his daughter, though who controlled the acts, the ringmaster or his daughter? He slipped back into sleep and woke again as the black turned to gloom. Alone in his bed and house he went to make a mug of tea. He sat sipping the hot liquid. As his brain cleared he remembered that he had dreamt. There was a plot, a novel. But it had gone. Just as he knew that every thought he remembered would go one day.

DYING

    She died on the 24th March 1991. That was about four years before her daughter died of a massive stroke leaving Richard alone in the world.
    She was by herself in hospital. A nurse had been to see her and then went away to see someone else. Then she felt a pain, like indigestion in her chest. But she hadn’t had anything to eat yet, not even a cup of tea. The nurse said she would get her one and went away. “Do you want sugar love?” The pain got worse, but it would pass. She closed her eyes and then she saw her father. She hadn’t seen him for many years. Nearly eighty since she’d set eyes on him in the room of their house with her mother. He’d died a young man. He’d been stabbed in Egypt in the First World War. She’d told her grandson, Richard, all about that one afternoon many years ago when Richard had been about thirteen years old. He’d listened in rapt attention like he listened to all of her stories. She told him that his great-grandfather Richard had been walking along a dusty road. She didn’t say where he was going or why, only that it was in Egypt and had been set about by a thief who had stabbed him and killed him. She’d said to Richard that she’d been in the garden playing when the telegram arrived to say that he’d been killed in action. Richard imagined it as one of those summer days when everything is perfect and still and nothing can go wrong and then suddenly your whole world collapses around you as someone you don’t know tells you that your daddy is dead. She’d been born in 1906 and Richard was alive in 1914 because he’s shown as the father on the birth certificate of her sister Elsie who was born on the eighth of November that year. Though that doesn’t mean a thing men didn’t attend births like they do now as if they have to be part of it. So even if he’d been in the country his active part had been finished with months before. And he could have been dead by then except that not a lot was happening in the war. He’d volunteered. He’d been a coal hewer. That was probably why he’d volunteered. Better on the ground than in the mine they’d all thought, better in the mine than in the trenches they’d all come to realise. War over by Christmas and return home a hero. Now he was a private in the South Lancashire Regiment. So he could have gone to Egypt but he never did. He never went any further than France, which was quite a long way for a man of his class in those days. But he’d had to go. He didn’t go to stand and gaze and wonder like tourists do now, though he probably did some wondering. He wasn’t murdered. He’d run off with another woman. Richard’s mother, June, told him that when he repeated the story verbatim to her when he was nearly forty and after the old lady had died. But June liked to destroy the myth and magic in her mother’s stories. And then as Mary-Alice lay in the hospital bed on her final morning, her father went off somewhere like he had something to do. Maybe he was going to get her tea. Standing there now was Nicolas Slach. She hadn’t seen him since that afternoon at Henry’s when he’d asked her to make love to him one more time. And she had refused. Well he could now. He could have her for eternity. She held out her arms to him and spoke for the last time, “Nicolas.”
    The hospital telephoned her husband Harold and her daughter June and the three of them (including her grandson Richard) went off to the hospital and looked down on the body that had been breathing hours earlier and full of life half a century before.
“She’s not dead,” said June as she held her hand feeling it to be warm. People often don’t know that a body warms up for a while after death before it cools. The temperature can get quite high. “Nurse! She’s alive.” A nurse looked over believing them from a fraction of a second then realising the emotional involvement went briskly over to them. She held the old lady by the wrist for a moment to give the appearance of being efficient; feeling for life and then immediately said “No, she has passed away. I’m sorry.” She looked at their faces full of the distress. The old man that she knew to be the husband not really knowing what was going on. She felt full of pity for him as the events of the day would unfold and his life would never be the same again.
    “Can I get you all a cup of tea?” It was as though that would be a cure for all. But it was kindly meant.
    “Thank you,” the daughter said. “I think we could all do with one. I’d better get a taxi to take us home as well.”
    “Come to the office and you can use the phone.” They rose as if in ceremony and followed the nurse.

FAMILY

    Mary-Alice was the second daughter of Richard Woods and Emma Leah Mountford. She’d had one brother and four sisters, Elizabeth born 1904, Jack 1909, Helen 1912 and Elsie 1914.
    Their mother Emma had fallen for their father Richard the moment she saw him. Some said he was a ‘bad un’. His family had had their own farm out at Burton Wood and so marriage to him was good from one point of view. She thought that she’d never want for anything. But the gossip said that more than one baby in the village had dark brown thick hair and a beauty spot on their cheek. And look into those deep brown eyes the women said in all of them you could see Richard and drown there. Emma had first seen Richard at the farm where she’d been sent to help now that she was big enough to earn along with most of the able bodied of the small village. Their eyes had caught and he thought here’s a beauty that I’ve missed and sat down on the ground beside her as she drank some water and chewed on a piece of bread.
“Here,” he ordered the young woman, “Have some of this. It’ll get you through till suppertime.”
    She had taken a swig from his mug not knowing what it was she was drinking only that the liquid tasted sweet like honey and barley and it filled her middle with a warmth and after a while her head became light and when it was time to work again she could hardly stand.
    “Let me take your hand.” And the feel of him went through her like a razor that she didn’t realise would hurt.

THE DIARY

    The old lady Mary-Alice had kept a diary. Maybe she had all her life Richard didn’t know. He doubted it. After his grandpa had died he went for a last look at the flat the couple had dreamt their final dreams in. He found four diaries. There may have been more but his mother had been to clear out the place and had thrown everything into black bags and ditched it, regardless. His mother June was that kind of person. If there was no financial value in the old bits of paper then it was worth nothing to nobody. What were the ramblings of an elderly woman about the weather worth? He took them back home and they sat in a drawer. He never told his mother that he had them. Richard read them once and noticed that she didn’t always say kind things about him especially if he hadn’t visited. But his mother was so demanding. After he had finally moved to France he told his French friend Christine about the diaries and after he’d read her a few entries in French she said, “They don’t tell us a lot about her, do they?     What do you know?” she quizzed.
    “Well she was born in 1906 and died in 1991.”
    “Yes, the obvious. I could look that up on the net. So I’m told.” She smiled because she disliked computers.
    “Well,” he thought for some time, “I know that she lived a lie.” Christine raised her eyebrows as if to say now for the gossip. “That, and this is sad really,” but some reason Richard couldn’t help smiling, “Well in the late seventies, between 1979 and 81 she celebrated her golden wedding anniversary. Or that is they.”
    “You went along?” She asked as if she already knew the answer.
    “No they married when my mother was around five years old. So that must have been in about 1930. I knew that grandpa wasn’t my real grandpa. Not a blood relation that is. But that didn’t make any difference to me. He always had been and always will be my grandpa. I don’t think of Nicolas as my grandfather.”
    “Nicolas?”
    “Slach. Nicolas Slach. Look, here he is.” Richard pointed to a census return on the web page.
    Richard searched the name Slach on the Births Marriages Deaths website and found the likely person and date for 1900 in Doncaster, though with the name wrongly spelt – Nicolas Aaron Richard Slack. Richard assumed it was an error on the part of the copyist. It made him wonder if his mother had called him after his real grandfather. This wasn’t very likely. It would have to be an unconscious decision. Nicolas Aaron Richard Slach born 1906 and died who knows when didn’t exist, not in his family anyway. But he was there in black and white on the screen existing as a name, nothing more. The name didn’t tell anything about the man, not in our culture anyway. Maybe our parents should choose our names when we are old enough to display an identity and we would be given a name that fits our character. Whilst Richard was staring at the screen, Christine’s son, Pablo was looking over his shoulder. This was a case in point. Pablo hated his name. He complained that it wasn’t French but was pretentious. It was as if it were the name for an author or an artist, somewhat effected. There was a case of history repeating itself.
    Pablo asked “What you doing?” He could see that it was a family tree search site and the intelligent boy was naturally inquisitive.
    Richard said, “That man,” pointing at the name on the screen, “May be my blood grandfather.” He went onto try a search for his death and none came up. “Well the family story Pablo is that he died from TB in 1924 or 1925.”
    “But he could be alive.” Richard turned to look at him with a face that said ‘I don’t think so.’
    “Unlikely I know. He’d be 100 years old. People do live that long.” He paused and looked at the screen again smiling at a thought that had amused him. “The joke in the family is that he should have stayed Slach.” He translated the joke so that it was even less funny but mother and son smiled politely also feeling slightly embarrassed. “He did a runner when he found out that Nanna was pregnant. Then he died of TB around the time my mother was born. Ironic really if they’d known he was going to die they could have married and she would have been the pitied widow, rather than the slapper people thought she was. She married grandpa later. The shame lived with her for the rest of her life, I think. You know my mother had problems getting a passport in her fifties because on her birth certificate it says father unknown or something like that.”