‘Step by step. We have the rest of our lives.’
She nodded. He was right. They did. And the next step was to kiss him again.
GOODBYES
Eliza’s work was done. One swift waft of air and the wasp hadn’t stood a chance. It had been blown towards Jules’s foot instead of her hand and Eliza’s mission was completed. After that it was up to the people themselves. She could do everything in her power to bring them together, but the final decision was theirs. She couldn’t impose her own wishes upon them. Free will was always going to be paramount.
She watched from the window as Jules and Lance walked arm in arm up the path flanked by lavender and squeezed side by side beneath the honeysuckle arch as they made their way towards the car. Jules turned as Lance closed the gate and she blew a kiss towards the cottage or perhaps it wasn’t just for the house… Perhaps their guest could see her gazing at the two of them remembering when she and Isaac had been like that, their love transcending all the struggles of life and death. She had believed that devotion would be for eternity.
Now she had the cottage to herself once more and she drifted through the rooms trailing her fingers across the mantelpiece, the deep windowsills and the uneven walls. She reached up to touch the roughly hewn beams and stooped to place her hand flat upon the slate flooring in the porch. Of course, the cottagelooked so different now to how it had been in her day when she had hung dried flowers from the large central beam in the kitchen and oil lamps had created light rather than electricity. She had cooked on a range, but nothing as beautiful and benign as the duck egg blue one which their guests used. Hers had been black and temperamental, often smoking or refusing to get up to the required heat. Her life had been hard in many ways. They hadn’t had much money, she and Isaac, that had been determined the day they decided to run away together, and her family had cut her off both emotionally and materially. But it hadn’t mattered. They’d had so much love for each other. That had got them through – until now.
She left the kitchen and walked through the garden past the willow tree. She couldn’t bear to sit beneath it anymore. Now she would rest on the bench at the end of the lawn looking out over the water. She would gaze up at the sky and the clouds and anticipate the next stage.
‘Eliza.’
Isaac stood behind her, his voice tremulous, his body language now permanently contrite, not that it made any difference.
‘You have worked a miracle,’ he said. ‘I saw our guest and her beloved arriving back at the farm. Thanks to you all shall be well with them. I’m sure of it.’
Eliza shrugged.
‘It was nothing.’
Before Carrie arrived in the spring, the prospect of welcoming guests to their home had been so exciting, so full of promise. How ironic, she thought, that against the odds she had brought two couples together only for it to cost her own relationship. Tentatively Isaac came to sit beside her.
She shuffled to the far end of the bench.
‘I hope one day, Eliza, you will be able to forgive me.’
Would she? She of all people, who had preached forgiveness all of her days, was now being put to the ultimate test and failing.
‘I am leaving, Isaac,’ she said.
He nodded.
‘The time is coming. We agreed to complete this one more mission.’
She looked at him directly.
‘I’m leaving now, Isaac. Directly. Today.’
He leaned towards her.
‘But Eliza, what about Philly? She has not been returned to us.’
Eliza tried not to think about the day those people had come to take their beloved baby away. Jules, Carrie and Guy had stood silently as her little bones were released from the soil. The vicar had said some prayers and then her daughter had been placed in a small box to be taken to a building in Ryde.
‘It could be weeks or months before that happens, Isaac. Besides, those are just her mortal remains. Her spirit is elsewhere, waiting. I’m going to her.’
‘Do her mortal remains not mean anything to you, Eliza? They do to me. Can you not wait a little longer, my love, and we can go together?’
‘No!’
Isaac steepled his fingers together and placed them to his lips.
‘I can’t come with you. I wish to see Philly laid to rest. The Major is making arrangements. He and Carrie have ascertained that she belongs to us and soon we will all be reunited in the churchyard.’
‘And then she’ll be forgotten again.’
