WWI short story

In this Armistice week, I thought I'd share a short story that I wrote some time ago which made a final cut for a competition judged by Fay Weldon and printed in the 2012 Rhyme and Reason diary. The entry fees for this competition and resulting diary sales are given to support Iain Rennie Grove House hospice care.

With a remit of max 400 words it really is flash fiction, but will hopefully persuade the reader to think not only of the men who lost their lives in the dreadful First World War. It's an abrupt ending, but imagine what poor Olive had to cope with next.

He’ll be home soon

 

I wonder if he’s writing to me now? I only want to know that he’s thinking of me; he doesn’t have to say much. 

Olive itched the end of her nose with the back of her arm and plunged her hands into the hot water. 

His ma said she hadn’t heard from him for a while neither. She wouldn’t tell me what he’d written in the last postcard.  Doesn’t seem fair, not when she ‘xpected to see what Wilf had written to me.

“You nearly finished there, Olive?”

“Almost.”

The clouds were racing ‘cross the sky as they are today. It was warmer, especially behind the hedgerow.  The smell of the fresh cut grass, I thought it was heavenly.  Oh, Wilf, I wish you were back here now, just an arm around me so I’d know you were safe. 

Olive leant backwards and her hands, exposed to the draft from the window above, shivered in anticipation of the absent embrace. 

An afternoon off can seem like a week, yet it goes by terrible quick. That stream where he used to fish when he was a young boy; we watched the water with the sun warming our backs, his arm around me, and we forgot to eat the pork pie we were talking so much, planning how things are going to be once this is over. His jacket was rough, though he said it kept him warm.  It scratched my legs as we lay there in the sunshine, grass tickling my feet.  I wonder if he thinks of that day as I do?

He loved me, he said, silly fool; I’ve loved him forever, since I can’t remember. Was I looking forward to being Mrs Hutchinson? Funny way of proposing, but if it didn’t make me think of his ma so much, being called Mrs Hutchinson, then I s’pose it was romantic, in its way.

Olive held one soapy hand on her belly. 

We shouldn’t have had that kiss and cuddle an’ all, not really.  He said it would be all right, no one could see passing along the lane. That wasn’t what concerned me. Still he’ll be home soon, maybe by Christmas he said; then I’ll be Mrs Wilfred Hutchinson. I wonder... that dress...

She straightened her shoulders and smiled. 

“Olive!  You’d better go. Quickly!”

Olive looked down at the pile of dishes.

“There’s been a telegram at Mrs Hutchinson’s.”