Gallipoli Street (57 page)

‘Love?'

‘
Lust.
Maybe I was always kidding myself…wanting a normal life with a respectable man. No one wanted me for anything like that until I met him. Just…sex. The boys in the country; the boys in the city. Maybe he will change his mind again, away from war. In real life. The priests and nuns always said that the sins of the flesh lead to damnation, so maybe I'm damned now. Maybe he…doesn't want that woman. Not really.'

‘Seems pretty keen to me – three years of trying to win ya back. How much proof do ya want?'

‘I tell you what I
don't
want: I don't want to go back to him only for him to…to resent me. To think that I'm just like her. Rose's daughter.'

Ben shook his head, his smile filled with affection. ‘Can't think of no better compliment than that.'

Calais, France

The day was clear but bitterly cold, the sky cornflower blue, as the woman bent down and placed the poppies on his grave. Theresa watched her curiously as she approached, the tall figure vaguely familiar.

She froze as Pattie turned and they met, face to face at last.

‘Found a few out of season. They're strange little flowers, aren't they? More like paper than petals. Appropriate somehow, with the red.' Pattie shrugged, turning towards the sun. ‘Why the chess piece?' she asked, nodding at the small queen standing guard, mounted between the two headstones.

‘He…gave it to her. I don't know why.' Theresa found her voice. ‘She had it in her pocket when she died.'

Pattie frowned then shrugged against it. ‘That sounds like something he would do.'

The wind whipped at their coats and Theresa bent to place the flowers she had brought with her as Pattie watched.

‘I didn't expect you would ever want to come here,' Theresa said, arranging the blooms.

‘No. Neither did I.' She shook her hair from her face, taking a deep breath. ‘Veronica got it in her head I needed to come, kept going on about forgiveness and Pete needing me to talk to you. Wore me down in the end with her badgering. She's annoyingly good, you know.'

‘Yes.' Theresa smiled a little. ‘She is that.'

Pattie touched the headstone gently. ‘She likes you. Believes you are meant to be in our lives. Destiny and all that nonsense.'

‘A wartime dalliance is hardly fulfilling some grand vision of destiny.'

Pattie knelt down and traced the inscription on Clarkson's grave. ‘So one would think.'

Theresa bit her lip, unsure what to say, but Pattie continued, pushing aside the tears that had gathered at the corners of her eyes. ‘Did Pete ever mention he was born the day we buried Clarkson? Well, buried…we had a ceremony. There's no closure, you see. Not until you see a grave, then it feels…final.' She braced herself against the wind. ‘I…I still hadn't quite let go and seeing you there, in his house…it was a painful way to find out and unfortunately you couldn't have been standing in a worse possible place at a worse possible time. I suppose I was seeing her, not you.'

Theresa stood still looking at the grave. ‘And you hated me too.'

‘No. No, I never hated you. I hated her, yes, I can't deny that.'

‘So you've decided to come and stand here at my mother's graveside, all the way from Australia, just to tell me you hated her?'

‘No.' Pattie shook her head. ‘Hasn't it occurred to you that perhaps I have other reasons for standing here?'

Theresa looked at Clarkson's grave, feeling a little ashamed.

‘I've come here to ask you to forgive.'

‘You want me to forgive you?'

‘No.' Pattie lifted her face and looked Theresa in the eye. ‘Not me. I've come to ask you to forgive Pete. It's time.'

Theresa gaped at her. ‘Of all the arrogant, self-important –'

‘Please, hear me out.'

‘Oh I hear you. Order the poor orphan to count herself lucky and take him back!'

‘No, not order, I'm begging you. Please. Pete is…like my own son and the very best of men, Theresa, surely you know that. I can't live with the fact that I destroyed his chance at happiness because I was jealous and angry. I can't.' Pattie shook her head.

‘He messed it up, not you. He destroyed it.'

‘No, he just reacted badly. I destroyed it. I think I was ready to tear you down from the start and I succeeded, much to my regret. But he loves you, so much. I thought he might go mad when they sent him back to war and he couldn't find you and now, the first chance he gets, here he is and Mildred says you won't see him.' She held up her hand. ‘I know, I know. You think he doesn't deserve forgiveness.' Pattie held her arms out, sweeping them at the white graves that spread out in a sea before them. ‘But for God's sake, girl, look around you. Don't you think any one of them would give anything for this chance? To live? To feel happiness?'

Theresa fought the emotions that threatened to make her give a little and turned to leave.

Pattie sighed, making one final attempt to get through. ‘I had a long time alone, Theresa, before my Mick came along and I found love again. Loneliness might protect you from getting hurt, but what about love? You can't tell me you're happy alone. I wouldn't believe you. I know a woman with a broken heart when I see one. I recognise that pain. Swallow your pride and choose love, Theresa.' She looked towards Clarkson's grave. ‘Forgiveness is freeing.'

As she watched the young woman walk away, hunched against the cold and her own pride, Pattie shook her head. Stubborn as a mule that one.

A gust of wind made the flowers flutter against his name
. Reminds me of someone else I know.
She felt she could almost hear him say it.

Pattie stared at Clarkson's grave one last time, saying goodbye to the long-familiar place where he lived inside of her. Reaching into her handbag, she squished an old furry hat on her head and allowed him one last smile.

‘Farewell, Mr C.'

Theresa walked up the hill to the cliff, past the crumbling skeletons of buildings that marked the crush of war, inevitably to rise again but still for now, solemn in their wait. She breathed deeply of the ocean, finding solace in the monthly ritual she'd performed across the channel since she'd been in London. First Calais, to honour their deaths, then Boulogne to feel their lives.

It was cold and there were a few other people around as she watched a man approach, tall in his Australian uniform. Not uncommon here, they were usually tall, these Australians, so honoured for their courage around these parts where the graves of their fallen were meticulously tended by a grateful French people. He was headed this way and she felt her body tense.

She decided not to turn her back, not to run this time. She couldn't run forever, but as she faced every living, breathing detail of him before her she felt trapped, despite the space surrounding her.

‘Hello Theresa,' he said simply. She didn't speak, finding herself without adequate words, eventually swinging her gaze towards the safety of the horizon.

‘Missy sends her love. Told me to give you these.' He handed her a velvet box and she opened it, finding a string of pearls inside. ‘Said to tell you some things are too precious to give away.'

She stared at them shaking her head. Typical of Missy to refuse to sell them all these years and even more typical to wait for the perfect dramatic moment to return them. She closed the box slowly.

‘Theresa…'

‘How's the law career going? You certainly have a way with getting people onside, don't you? Charming my friend and importing your aunt all the way from Sydney. Who else have you got tucked away? Is there a marching band around the corner?' She pretended to look for one over his shoulder.

‘What do you mean, my aunt? When did you see Pattie?'

‘About two hours ago at my mother's grave.'

‘She…she went to the graveside? What did she say to you? Oh God help me…if she said anything to make things worse–'

‘Well first of all that would be impossible and secondly she was actually there for…other reasons.'

‘Such as?'

She began walking down the hill and he followed. ‘None of your goddamn business.'

‘Aren't you going to let me explain?'

‘What's to explain? I didn't suit your world.
C'est la
vie
.'

‘No, no it wasn't that. Look, I behaved badly. For God's sake, Theresa, I've played it a million ways in my mind and it comes back to the same thing. I let you down and I'm sorrier than you could ever know.'

She turned and looked up at him. ‘Behaved badly? Is that what you call it? I could come up with some stronger words than that for calling me a slut and a whore and…and letting me be cast out of your family's home.'

‘I…I never really thought those things. I was just shocked,' he said, exasperated, beginning to recount the facts on his fingers. ‘I mean for God's sake…one, I'd just found out you worked in the Cross and you'd slept with someone else, two, your mother jilted my father because she was pregnant with you and then, three, she had an affair with my uncle! That's a lot to take lying down!'

Theresa frowned. ‘Still on trial, am I?'

‘No, I'm just trying to explain–'

‘How none of it is your fault.'

‘No,' he said firmly. ‘Mine is the greatest fault. I didn't just betray you…I betrayed
us
. Bloody hell, I was such a fool and, you were right, a hypocrite as well. I was jealous and stupid and…and upset, but Theresa don't harden your heart against me forever. Please,' his eyes begged her, ‘I've longed for you every day, writing letters between battles, never giving up, not once, just waiting for this opportunity to tell you. Theresa, I'm
sorry
.' He reached and clasped her hand. ‘I wouldn't care if you'd slept with a hundred men. I'd just count myself lucky to be the last.'

There they were. The words she really wanted. She shook herself, turning and walking down the hill once more, confused and fighting for every resolve she had now, her head and heart at war.

‘You know something?' he called after her. ‘You're a bloody pain in the arse.'

She stopped still as he stomped down after her. ‘What did you say to me?'

‘You're a bloody pain in the arse!'

‘This is your apology.'

‘No, you've run out of those. Now you're going to hear a few home truths. You're a bloody hypocrite too.'

‘How the hell do you figure that?'

‘Because at least I apologised for misjudging you. You can't even admit that you misjudged me!'

‘In what possible way?'

‘The Golden Digger, remember? The whole reason you're being a pain in the arse right now is because you're mad at yourself for not choosing a perfect man. Well I'm
not
perfect, Theresa. I never was.' He reached her side then and held her face with both palms. ‘But I'm bloody well perfect for you.'

‘I…I've worked so hard to get over you.'

‘Then you've had more success than me.'

The truth was there at last, just as she'd feared it would be. He pulled her close and kissed her, every emotion and feeling transferring into her and she lost herself to the reality of him.

Pete.

The reasons she'd had to never take him back faded into that shared, incomparable place, the place where only they existed, a place inexplicable to anyone else.

Yes, he'd fallen down once when she needed him, but he wasn't just that one fall, he was hundreds of other moments. Moments that now flooded her senses: his face when they carried him out of the jungle, the moment he caught her as she threw herself off that table and into his arms, the tenderness in his eyes when he looked across at her in the plane coming home.

The longing. The letters. The regret.

Never a perfect man after all, but he was a good man. And she loved him.

It was time, Pattie was right. This was Pete, her Pete, and she wanted him back. She did want happiness. She did want to be free. And she did want to forgive. It was her turn.

Pete stroked her cheek, so very softly now. ‘So will you marry me or do I have to call for the marching band?'

‘I don't know. You're kind of a pain in the arse.'

His handsome face returned in full force as it lit up with that old, familiar grin. ‘Told you we were meant to be.'

Theresa felt her own smile twitch, then she threw back her head and laughed, really laughed, and he joined her, catching her lips then eventually her hand, kissing it in promise.

He didn't let go as they walked down the hill to his car and drove away from Boulogne, leaving the high stone walls behind them.