Prologue

I awake in the night, it must be night as it is still dark. And it is quiet, very quiet, but then my hearing comes and goes more and more lately. Old age is both a blessing and a curse, I feel. Anyway, I can hear a soft but incessant beeping coming through though. What is it? It seems a familiar sound but I can’t quite place it.

I do feel a little bit hazy, like my head is fuzzy and full of cotton wool, yet I’m not completely out of it. I do need to concentrate by calming down the panic that I feel and act like the grown adult I know I am, and not act like a frightened child in the dark.

It was at times like this that Johnnie used to say to me whenever I was overawed by something that was part of his life and now becoming part of mine, in his clear, commanding, beautifully cultured voice, “Come on Gertie, old girl, snap out of it!”

Yes, in those early days, there was a lot of that.

And as for “Old girl”, well indeed!

I can’t help smiling at my memories of my dear, dear Johnnie. “Old thing”, too I regard with affection, he called me that sometimes as well. It both annoyed and comforted me back then and very often at difficult times ever since then whenever my mind turns to Johnnie. Gosh, it must be over seventy years, but yes, hearing Johnnie inside my head has forever been a comfort all this long life that I have lived.

Well, not all of my life. Not nearly all and not really nearly enough.

He came into it to court me like a completely honourable gentleman when I was just 17 year old and, after only five wonderful, fully lived but far, far too short years, my dear, sweet Johnnie was gone. Gone from existence in this world, except forever in my head and heart. He is there still, he will be for eternity.

So, I knew Johnnie, my first and best husband of the three men I married, all too briefly, for those five short years that simply flew giddily by, from my being 17 to 22, while Johnnie was twelve years older than me and far more experienced in life, but still he always affectionately called me “Old Girl” whenever I had to face something I had never done before or just whenever he wanted to engage with me.

And, during our brief time together, of course, everything we did was new and some things were were more than a little daunting that first time, like meeting the King or even worse than that, the very thought of the ordeal of meeting Johnnie’s mother for the first time. I remember which one was more nerve-racking in the anticipation of, but “once you’ve seen one palace you’ve seen them all, old girl,” I remember Johnnie saying.

Yes, his quiet, “Old Girl” and gentle, supporting, loving smile just made me think to myself, “Yes, Gertie, you can do this,” and realising soon after that I found, yes I really could do whatever it was.

And even though he has been gone now, oh, for nearly 70 years, he is still my prop. He has always been near, ever-present in my heart, a force that sits within me, supporting me, even though I married twice more after he was gone, and even though I’ve been without either husband or lover for more than 40 years, I have always felt the strength of Johnnie’s love within me. And I feel it even closer now while my own health is failing and perhaps feeling some relief that Heaven and Johnnie are drawing near.

Mmm, I can still hear that infernal beeping. Perhaps that is what woke me? It doesn’t sound much like Heaven ... and it’s chilly, which is a relief, in hope that Heaven is not as hot as the “other place”.

My left ear has inexplicably been filling with wax for the last couple of years and Chloe, the nurse down at the glorified dispensing chemists near my London flat, sorts that out for me with some horrid, infernal suction machine, after loosening the wax with hot pumped water or oil. My right ear gave up the ghost long ago and I do have a discrete hearing aid for it, which works well but it’s damned uncomfortable, so I only wear it when going out somewhere special, like my 90th birthday a couple of years or so ago. Only that happened in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic and we couldn’t go anywhere to celebrate, not until my 91st, when my favourite people in the world, dear grandson Jake and Gill his lady, took me to a delightful riverside pub in Henley for lunch. I insisted that my great granddaughters, April and May, accompanied us. They were identical twins only two years old and adorable babies.

The “terrible twos” I remember telling Jake, is just a state of mind for the parents, “just remember that only in exceptional circumstances do the terrible twos continue to become the ‘terrifying teens’, embrace and enjoy every moment of your babies and smile through it all, because however long it lasts it’s not forever and long afterwards you will always feel that your time with them at any age was never quite long enough.”

Of course I remember my own twins, a girl and a boy, Mary and Jonty. They were not identical, they were chalk and cheese and like their father they weren’t around as long as I would’ve loved them to be.

Mary had the “terrible twos” all the way through to her terrifying teens and beyond but she was into everything and she had so much energy, determination and drive. I suppose that she took after me, so how in all conscience could I possibly stop her? And poor Jonty, he was the quiet one, never any trouble, never wanted attention, it was as if he missed his father even though he never knew him. Perhaps he sensed and felt my loss and took some of the pain upon himself to lessen my burden.