Chapter Text
Edinburgh, 1965
The truth is always there, even if it is a hidden truth. Everyone you will ever pass on a busy street carries a secret. Some are small, insignificant, a little white lie. Some are bigger, darker. These secrets should always be kept close. For twenty-five years I have kept my heart closed, smiled sweetly and embraced the life I chose.
Reminders of the war years are all around us still. I pray this new generation never suffer war like the generations before. Tomorrow I will watch my son marry, I hope he is never called to duty the way his father was. I hope his young wife is never left behind as I once was.
I only commit these words to paper now as a confession, to lift a burden from my shoulders. When the story is complete, I will hide it. Bury it perhaps, or burn it. But this confession must be made; even it is only a whisper in the dark with no one to hear it.
Twenty-five years ago I was newly married and living in the city for the first time. I had grown up in a rural village with my parents until my wedding day. The year before Prime Minister Chamberlain had declared war on Germany and the country’s limited resources meant the army was recruiting. The young men who did not immediately volunteer to abandon their families to fight in France and Belgium were called up. Refusal was not a consideration. No man wanted to be labelled a coward.
Those years were hard on the men. Many of them were so young, with no experience of battle, indeed no experience of life. Those who survived the fighting (and too many did not) were damaged, in body, or mind, or both. The husbands and sweethearts who returned were changed, remoulded.
Similarly the women who held the fort, raised the children, kept homes running, and filled the gaps left by the men, were altered. With newly gained independence, women emerged from the war years as if from a chrysalis. Five years of rations, making do and mending, squaring our shoulders and soldiering on, we had done it alone.
When the men returned I do not doubt there were many secrets kept on both sides. Some soldiers never spoke about what they had seen or done. Some of them talked in their sleep. A few never spoke at all.
Every day after my husband returned as a veteran I lied to him; and I lied to myself.