The rain fell steadily from a leaden sky, the sort of dark November day that dashes any hope the sun will ever rise again. A young man, wearing a knee length raincoat and carrying a black leather briefcase, ran onto the platform of Eastbridge station. Only a few moments earlier the platform was full with passengers waiting for the eastbound train, but the young man now found it quiet and empty, he had missed his train home. Fate had played its hand and decided a new direction to his life. Many lives had changed on less, a chance remark, an action unobserved, but missing this train meant he was now to meet Albert Hughes. He often looked back and wondered where his life would have taken him if he had been two minutes earlier, boarded the train, and the meeting had never taken place. How many other lives had been at a crossroads at that precise moment? He was the signalman changing the points on the railway track; the fate of so many strangers was now on a different route heading for a different final destination.
The young man in the overcoat looked at the station notice board. The next train stopping at his hometown station departed in an hour’s time. Neville Conrad was an advertising salesman working for the Eastbridge Gazette. Eastbridge and the surrounding towns was his sales area and normally he would spend his days visiting the local businesses scattered across the county. This day his car was undergoing repairs and he had travelled by train to the newspaper office, located in the centre of Eastbridge, taking the opportunity to complete his sales reports and forecasts. He did not enjoy the paperwork, he much preferred being on the road and the personal contact with his clients. His calm relaxed style served him well and without too much effort the sales came easy. Neville, unused to working normal office hours, and being unfamiliar with the railway timetable, misjudged the departure time of his train and found the platform empty as he arrived at the station to travel home. The station did not have the benefit of a waiting room and rather than stand on the cold and wet platform, he decided to enjoy a drink in the warmth of the Station Inn, which was located on a corner the other side of the road.
Eastbridge, a bustling south of England coastal town, famous for its pier and gardens dating back to its Edwardian heyday, also boasts a large commercial sector and out of town trading estates with small industrial facilities. The nearby towns and villages are mainly rural with traditional country market days and sufficient specialist shops to attract those Eastbridge visitors seeking refuge from the plastic buckets and spades and candyfloss stalls. The summer holiday season had ended and there were few day trippers visiting the town, the passengers, who had bordered the eastbound train that evening, were mainly shop and office workers making their way home only to return the following morning to continue the commuting cycle.
Commuters used the Station Inn as the station's informal waiting room. They entered the lounge, ordered a drink, stood at the bar constantly checking their watches, and then left, sometimes without finishing their drink. Neville had an hour to wait for the next train so decided standing was not an option. He took off his wet coat; ordered a drink and sat on a stool at the bar. Moving a drinks mat to one side, he made space for some papers he placed on the bar. The papers were part of the material for a business studies course he attended in the evenings. The missed train meant he was also to miss that evening's class and he decided reading was the best use of the enforced idle time.
Neville was tall, slim framed, the sort of person that could wear cheap clothes and make them look good. However, his clothes were usually of the best quality, not the latest fashion but classically styled and suggested a man of success, an image he deliberately presented to his clients. The message he projected was, if you put your trust in me you too will be successful, and successful he was. His hair the colour of jet, brown eyes, and swarthy good looks suggested someone from the southern part of Europe but he was not aware of any recent family links with that part of the world. His surname Conrad, meaning brave counsel, could originate from Germany, but he had found an Italian variation, Corradi, so he liked to think there was perhaps a Latin connection.
"This is not a library reading room you know!"
Neville looked up unsure who had said it. The barman was standing in front of him drying some glasses, he nodded at the pile of papers on the bar, the upturned corners of his mouth and a smile in his eyes suggested he had said it as a joke.
"They don't serve beer in the library", Neville replied, hoping to continue the joke.
Neville was about to say something else when there was a muffled shout from somewhere behind the bar area.
"Bert can you give me a hand, there was a delivery this morning, I need help to move some crates".
Bert placed a half-dried glass and his cloth on the bar and disappeared through a doorway in the direction of the shouted request.
A few minutes later two men appeared in the open doorway behind the bar, Bert the barman and a second man John Turner the owner of the Station Inn. Bert had rolled up the sleeves of his clean white shirt revealing brown muscular forearms that showed evidence of exposure to the weather over a number of years. Bert, a man in his late fifties, stood above average height, a body clearly toned by physical labour, a warm kindhearted face weathered like his arms.
"We had old Ted in again this lunchtime, going on and on about the war this, the war that." John was talking to Bert; his voice suggested annoyance rather than anger. "How it was better then and the youth of today, you know the stuff".
Bert nodded knowingly.
"He trapped one young lad in the corner over there,” continued John. “He wouldn't let him escape, giving him the bit about being ungrateful, the sacrifices people made. I had to rescue the poor lad in the end and told Ted to shut it or I would throw him out".
John was a retired footballer and his facial features, badly repaired broken nose, scares above the eyes, looked more like a retired boxer than a footballer. Anyone causing a nuisance in the Inn would take seriously John Turner’s threat to throw them out. His physical presence probably stopped most fights before they started. He had played for many of the local sides, but despite showing early promise never reached the highest level. Regular customers of the Station Inn often recalled his feisty tackles and winced at the thought of the injuries he might have caused. His own injuries threatened to end his career on a number of occasions. Doctors finally advised him to stop playing or the next injury would leave him walking with a stick. Like so many ex-footballers at that time, he was next position was the owner of a public house.
John returned to the storeroom, leaving Bert drying glasses behind the bar.
"I don't mind people telling their stories about the war", Neville said to Bert. "It's interesting to hear people's experiences, first hand, you know, what really happened".
"I know what you mean", Bert agreed. "It's just that Ted when he's had too many goes over the top. It's like he defeated Hitler on his own and the whole country owes him."
"Were you in the war?” Neville enquired.
Bert nodded, but strangely without too much conviction.
"I bet you've got plenty of stories to tell".
Bert hesitated, he was about to answer but stopped. He looked towards Neville but his eyes were focused somewhere in the distance. He mechanically continued to dry the glass, a glass that had been dry for some minutes. His head bowed and in little more than a whisper he said,
"I don't have any war stories. I don't remember what happened".
Neville felt uncomfortable. Maybe Bert did not remember because it was such a long time ago, but his reaction to the question suggested Neville had opened an old wound. He did not know if it was better to change the subject or encourage him to say more. Neville's friends and colleagues suggested he was a good listener, an attribute that served him well in his sales job, was this someone who wanted to talk, to speak to a stranger, to find some relief by telling something that had remained untold for many years.
Bert raised his head and in a calm clear voice told the one story he did remember. "It all started in France in 1944..........."
France - 1944
The horrors of the D-Day landings were largely over. The German troops had already started to retreat from the western areas of France. Some German troops were reportedly hiding in a wood and a patrol of British army soldiers dispatched to investigate.
The patrol consisted of thirteen men, including three friends, George Waterson, James Richards and Albert Hughes. The three friends had grown up together in a small town in the south west of England. Until each left school, in their early teens, they were inseparable. Even when they started work they still saw each other regularly and finally, called up to serve in the British army, they died together; except one.
This area of France was largely flat and the patrol to reach the wood had to cross some open fields. They zig zagged their way across the fields, using the shallow ditches that separated the fields as cover. However, the Germans detected the movements of the British patrol and they were the target of an artillery bombardment coming from the direction of the woods. The only substantial cover was a small concrete and brick bridge that crossed over one of the ditches and connected two of the fields. By crawling along the bottom of the ditch, they managed to reach the bridge without anyone receiving serious injury. Sheltering under the bridge, they thought the worst was over, until the bridge received a direct hit. The concrete shattered and the resulting shrapnel killed most of the men instantly; the collapsing bridge trapped and killed the remainder. Only one person survived, Albert Hughes.
A search party discovered Albert two days later. He had not moved from the remains of the bridge or the bodies of his friends. He was covered in dried blood and at first the rescuers thought he was seriously injured, or still trapped under part of the bridge, but there were no obvious signs of physical injury; the blood was that of his comrades. He was frozen with fright and suffering from complete retrograde amnesia. He had no memory of people, places or events prior to the attack. He could not remember his name.
After receiving treatment at a local field hospital, the army transported Albert Hughes back to a hospital in the south of England. The hospital, which specialized in cases of shell shock, was a requisitioned Edwardian country house with about twenty beds. During the conversion of the house, the able-bodied patients dug up part of the ornamental garden to create a sizeable vegetable area. The patients in the hospital were encouraged to spend time working in the garden. It was here that Albert developed his love and passion for gardening. His mother visited him on several occasions and slowly, with her help, he recovered most of his memory. He was able to recall his early days with the family, the holidays and birthday parties, when he started school, the school sports days, organized picnics in the local meadows, and his name. He still had very little recollection of his military time in France. The doctors said this was understandable, given the circumstances and traumatic experience of the attack on the bridge, but even these memories were likely to recover over time.
After nearly three months, Albert had recovered sufficiently. The hospital discharged him and he rejoined his regiment, however, he spent the remainder of the war in England.
The original name of the Station Inn was the Station Hotel. It had three guest bedrooms and a shared bathroom and toilet located at the end of a corridor on the first floor. A number of larger and more modern hotels built in the area meant the Station Hotel attracted fewer and fewer guests. John Turner decided to convert the bedrooms to living accommodation for his family and changed the name to the Station Inn. John and his wife were soon divorced. She saw herself as the wife of a famous local footballer, not a pub landlady.
The entrance to the Inn was on a corner of two streets and double half-glazed doors gave access to a large cheerful room with a horseshoe shaped bar in the centre. It was likely the Inn once had a public bar and a lounge as two separate rooms. The furniture still had this split character with one side of the room occupied by small wrought iron framed tables and low wooden stools, whilst the other had more comfortable leather upholstered Chesterfield styled seats, separated by low dark wood partitions forming semi private booths. Albert and Neville sat in one of these booths as Albert related the incident in France. He told his story with a calmness and clarity suggesting he had told it many times before, however Neville later discovered this was the first time he had told anyone. Even John, Albert’s employer and closest friend, did not know of Albert’s previous loss of memory. Neville found it odd that Albert did not show any sign of emotion when describing the death of his boyhood friends and he wondered how many of these experiences he really remembered, or was he relating events he imagined or been told.
The bar had been quiet while Neville sat with Albert until a group of young people arrived, dripping rainwater on the floor from their coats and umbrellas. They were probably colleagues from one of the local offices having a drink after work. Albert excused himself as he was required to rejoin John and help behind the bar. Neville's papers were still on the bar. He packed them into his briefcase, picked up his coat and finishing the remains of the glass of beer prepared to leave to catch his train. He tried to attract Albert’s attention to say goodbye. Albert saw the gesture and came over to where Neville was standing. Before he could say his goodbyes Albert said,
“It’s my sister’s birthday next week,” nodding in the direction of the calendar hanging next to the bottles of spirit suspended upside down behind the bar.
“That’s nice, are you planning to meet her, or have a family party?”
“I don’t know where she lives, I don’t even know if she is still alive. I haven’t seen her for over thirty five years."
Neville was shocked; he struggled for something to say. He assumed he had just heard the most dramatic events in Albert's life, and now he was confiding in the intimate details of his personal family life. Neville felt he had to say something but his mind was blank and racing at the same time.
“You see I didn’t go home after the war. When I was demobbed, I went back to Deerson House, that’s the hospital where I stayed when I was ill. They were closing down the hospital and sending the last few chaps to real hospitals. The owners of the house were moving back in and they set me on as odd job man. I worked in the gardens mainly, trying to get them back as they were before the war. I was there about two years; they gave me board and lodgings until they decided to give up the house. They found they couldn’t live there anymore, not after it had been a hospital, and spent most of the time in their other place near London. I practically had the house to myself."
“But didn’t you contact your family, tell them that you were OK and where you were staying?"
“No I didn't."
Bert's response sounded final, it suggested Neville should not ask any more questions. He had not realized that this man had said more about the events of his life in the past thirty minutes than he had in the past thirty years, but now Bert had closed the door. He felt honored and humbled that he should have shared this with him. Neville did not know why he asked the next question, he thought later it sounded so stupid, but the words just came out.
“Why don’t you send a birthday card to your sister?"
“I don’t know where she lives," replied Albert shrugging his shoulders and looking puzzled.
“Well just send it to the last address you have, who knows it might find its way to her. No harm in trying."
The young man in the overcoat looked at the station notice board. The next train stopping at his hometown station departed in an hour’s time. Neville Conrad was an advertising salesman working for the Eastbridge Gazette. Eastbridge and the surrounding towns was his sales area and normally he would spend his days visiting the local businesses scattered across the county. This day his car was undergoing repairs and he had travelled by train to the newspaper office, located in the centre of Eastbridge, taking the opportunity to complete his sales reports and forecasts. He did not enjoy the paperwork, he much preferred being on the road and the personal contact with his clients. His calm relaxed style served him well and without too much effort the sales came easy. Neville, unused to working normal office hours, and being unfamiliar with the railway timetable, misjudged the departure time of his train and found the platform empty as he arrived at the station to travel home. The station did not have the benefit of a waiting room and rather than stand on the cold and wet platform, he decided to enjoy a drink in the warmth of the Station Inn, which was located on a corner the other side of the road.
Eastbridge, a bustling south of England coastal town, famous for its pier and gardens dating back to its Edwardian heyday, also boasts a large commercial sector and out of town trading estates with small industrial facilities. The nearby towns and villages are mainly rural with traditional country market days and sufficient specialist shops to attract those Eastbridge visitors seeking refuge from the plastic buckets and spades and candyfloss stalls. The summer holiday season had ended and there were few day trippers visiting the town, the passengers, who had bordered the eastbound train that evening, were mainly shop and office workers making their way home only to return the following morning to continue the commuting cycle.
Commuters used the Station Inn as the station's informal waiting room. They entered the lounge, ordered a drink, stood at the bar constantly checking their watches, and then left, sometimes without finishing their drink. Neville had an hour to wait for the next train so decided standing was not an option. He took off his wet coat; ordered a drink and sat on a stool at the bar. Moving a drinks mat to one side, he made space for some papers he placed on the bar. The papers were part of the material for a business studies course he attended in the evenings. The missed train meant he was also to miss that evening's class and he decided reading was the best use of the enforced idle time.
Neville was tall, slim framed, the sort of person that could wear cheap clothes and make them look good. However, his clothes were usually of the best quality, not the latest fashion but classically styled and suggested a man of success, an image he deliberately presented to his clients. The message he projected was, if you put your trust in me you too will be successful, and successful he was. His hair the colour of jet, brown eyes, and swarthy good looks suggested someone from the southern part of Europe but he was not aware of any recent family links with that part of the world. His surname Conrad, meaning brave counsel, could originate from Germany, but he had found an Italian variation, Corradi, so he liked to think there was perhaps a Latin connection.
"This is not a library reading room you know!"
Neville looked up unsure who had said it. The barman was standing in front of him drying some glasses, he nodded at the pile of papers on the bar, the upturned corners of his mouth and a smile in his eyes suggested he had said it as a joke.
"They don't serve beer in the library", Neville replied, hoping to continue the joke.
Neville was about to say something else when there was a muffled shout from somewhere behind the bar area.
"Bert can you give me a hand, there was a delivery this morning, I need help to move some crates".
Bert placed a half-dried glass and his cloth on the bar and disappeared through a doorway in the direction of the shouted request.
A few minutes later two men appeared in the open doorway behind the bar, Bert the barman and a second man John Turner the owner of the Station Inn. Bert had rolled up the sleeves of his clean white shirt revealing brown muscular forearms that showed evidence of exposure to the weather over a number of years. Bert, a man in his late fifties, stood above average height, a body clearly toned by physical labour, a warm kindhearted face weathered like his arms.
"We had old Ted in again this lunchtime, going on and on about the war this, the war that." John was talking to Bert; his voice suggested annoyance rather than anger. "How it was better then and the youth of today, you know the stuff".
Bert nodded knowingly.
"He trapped one young lad in the corner over there,” continued John. “He wouldn't let him escape, giving him the bit about being ungrateful, the sacrifices people made. I had to rescue the poor lad in the end and told Ted to shut it or I would throw him out".
John was a retired footballer and his facial features, badly repaired broken nose, scares above the eyes, looked more like a retired boxer than a footballer. Anyone causing a nuisance in the Inn would take seriously John Turner’s threat to throw them out. His physical presence probably stopped most fights before they started. He had played for many of the local sides, but despite showing early promise never reached the highest level. Regular customers of the Station Inn often recalled his feisty tackles and winced at the thought of the injuries he might have caused. His own injuries threatened to end his career on a number of occasions. Doctors finally advised him to stop playing or the next injury would leave him walking with a stick. Like so many ex-footballers at that time, he was next position was the owner of a public house.
John returned to the storeroom, leaving Bert drying glasses behind the bar.
"I don't mind people telling their stories about the war", Neville said to Bert. "It's interesting to hear people's experiences, first hand, you know, what really happened".
"I know what you mean", Bert agreed. "It's just that Ted when he's had too many goes over the top. It's like he defeated Hitler on his own and the whole country owes him."
"Were you in the war?” Neville enquired.
Bert nodded, but strangely without too much conviction.
"I bet you've got plenty of stories to tell".
Bert hesitated, he was about to answer but stopped. He looked towards Neville but his eyes were focused somewhere in the distance. He mechanically continued to dry the glass, a glass that had been dry for some minutes. His head bowed and in little more than a whisper he said,
"I don't have any war stories. I don't remember what happened".
Neville felt uncomfortable. Maybe Bert did not remember because it was such a long time ago, but his reaction to the question suggested Neville had opened an old wound. He did not know if it was better to change the subject or encourage him to say more. Neville's friends and colleagues suggested he was a good listener, an attribute that served him well in his sales job, was this someone who wanted to talk, to speak to a stranger, to find some relief by telling something that had remained untold for many years.
Bert raised his head and in a calm clear voice told the one story he did remember. "It all started in France in 1944..........."
France - 1944
The horrors of the D-Day landings were largely over. The German troops had already started to retreat from the western areas of France. Some German troops were reportedly hiding in a wood and a patrol of British army soldiers dispatched to investigate.
The patrol consisted of thirteen men, including three friends, George Waterson, James Richards and Albert Hughes. The three friends had grown up together in a small town in the south west of England. Until each left school, in their early teens, they were inseparable. Even when they started work they still saw each other regularly and finally, called up to serve in the British army, they died together; except one.
This area of France was largely flat and the patrol to reach the wood had to cross some open fields. They zig zagged their way across the fields, using the shallow ditches that separated the fields as cover. However, the Germans detected the movements of the British patrol and they were the target of an artillery bombardment coming from the direction of the woods. The only substantial cover was a small concrete and brick bridge that crossed over one of the ditches and connected two of the fields. By crawling along the bottom of the ditch, they managed to reach the bridge without anyone receiving serious injury. Sheltering under the bridge, they thought the worst was over, until the bridge received a direct hit. The concrete shattered and the resulting shrapnel killed most of the men instantly; the collapsing bridge trapped and killed the remainder. Only one person survived, Albert Hughes.
A search party discovered Albert two days later. He had not moved from the remains of the bridge or the bodies of his friends. He was covered in dried blood and at first the rescuers thought he was seriously injured, or still trapped under part of the bridge, but there were no obvious signs of physical injury; the blood was that of his comrades. He was frozen with fright and suffering from complete retrograde amnesia. He had no memory of people, places or events prior to the attack. He could not remember his name.
After receiving treatment at a local field hospital, the army transported Albert Hughes back to a hospital in the south of England. The hospital, which specialized in cases of shell shock, was a requisitioned Edwardian country house with about twenty beds. During the conversion of the house, the able-bodied patients dug up part of the ornamental garden to create a sizeable vegetable area. The patients in the hospital were encouraged to spend time working in the garden. It was here that Albert developed his love and passion for gardening. His mother visited him on several occasions and slowly, with her help, he recovered most of his memory. He was able to recall his early days with the family, the holidays and birthday parties, when he started school, the school sports days, organized picnics in the local meadows, and his name. He still had very little recollection of his military time in France. The doctors said this was understandable, given the circumstances and traumatic experience of the attack on the bridge, but even these memories were likely to recover over time.
After nearly three months, Albert had recovered sufficiently. The hospital discharged him and he rejoined his regiment, however, he spent the remainder of the war in England.
The original name of the Station Inn was the Station Hotel. It had three guest bedrooms and a shared bathroom and toilet located at the end of a corridor on the first floor. A number of larger and more modern hotels built in the area meant the Station Hotel attracted fewer and fewer guests. John Turner decided to convert the bedrooms to living accommodation for his family and changed the name to the Station Inn. John and his wife were soon divorced. She saw herself as the wife of a famous local footballer, not a pub landlady.
The entrance to the Inn was on a corner of two streets and double half-glazed doors gave access to a large cheerful room with a horseshoe shaped bar in the centre. It was likely the Inn once had a public bar and a lounge as two separate rooms. The furniture still had this split character with one side of the room occupied by small wrought iron framed tables and low wooden stools, whilst the other had more comfortable leather upholstered Chesterfield styled seats, separated by low dark wood partitions forming semi private booths. Albert and Neville sat in one of these booths as Albert related the incident in France. He told his story with a calmness and clarity suggesting he had told it many times before, however Neville later discovered this was the first time he had told anyone. Even John, Albert’s employer and closest friend, did not know of Albert’s previous loss of memory. Neville found it odd that Albert did not show any sign of emotion when describing the death of his boyhood friends and he wondered how many of these experiences he really remembered, or was he relating events he imagined or been told.
The bar had been quiet while Neville sat with Albert until a group of young people arrived, dripping rainwater on the floor from their coats and umbrellas. They were probably colleagues from one of the local offices having a drink after work. Albert excused himself as he was required to rejoin John and help behind the bar. Neville's papers were still on the bar. He packed them into his briefcase, picked up his coat and finishing the remains of the glass of beer prepared to leave to catch his train. He tried to attract Albert’s attention to say goodbye. Albert saw the gesture and came over to where Neville was standing. Before he could say his goodbyes Albert said,
“It’s my sister’s birthday next week,” nodding in the direction of the calendar hanging next to the bottles of spirit suspended upside down behind the bar.
“That’s nice, are you planning to meet her, or have a family party?”
“I don’t know where she lives, I don’t even know if she is still alive. I haven’t seen her for over thirty five years."
Neville was shocked; he struggled for something to say. He assumed he had just heard the most dramatic events in Albert's life, and now he was confiding in the intimate details of his personal family life. Neville felt he had to say something but his mind was blank and racing at the same time.
“You see I didn’t go home after the war. When I was demobbed, I went back to Deerson House, that’s the hospital where I stayed when I was ill. They were closing down the hospital and sending the last few chaps to real hospitals. The owners of the house were moving back in and they set me on as odd job man. I worked in the gardens mainly, trying to get them back as they were before the war. I was there about two years; they gave me board and lodgings until they decided to give up the house. They found they couldn’t live there anymore, not after it had been a hospital, and spent most of the time in their other place near London. I practically had the house to myself."
“But didn’t you contact your family, tell them that you were OK and where you were staying?"
“No I didn't."
Bert's response sounded final, it suggested Neville should not ask any more questions. He had not realized that this man had said more about the events of his life in the past thirty minutes than he had in the past thirty years, but now Bert had closed the door. He felt honored and humbled that he should have shared this with him. Neville did not know why he asked the next question, he thought later it sounded so stupid, but the words just came out.
“Why don’t you send a birthday card to your sister?"
“I don’t know where she lives," replied Albert shrugging his shoulders and looking puzzled.
“Well just send it to the last address you have, who knows it might find its way to her. No harm in trying."