Page 28 of Tamed By a Passionate Lady
The blackness returned for a moment, swirling around him, before another memory reared up, flickering to life. He could still hear the woman’s voice, all around him, but he could not make out a word that she was saying.
***
This time, he was older. Much older. A young man of two and twenty.
He was sitting down in a large church, gazing up at the tall, arched roof. The organ was playing, its clanging cords filling the space. He recognised the hymn. It wasThe Lord is My Shepherd.
His eyes veered downwards, to the large, wooden coffin that seemed to overtake the aisle. His heart was filled with sorrow as he sang the familiar, comforting words.
He knew who was in that box. The man that he had worshipped his entire life.
His father.
He still could not believe that the tall, powerful man was no longer breathing. That he had stood up, at the breakfast table, only a week ago, turning puce before crashing across the table, upending cutlery and silverware in the process.
He had collapsed, like a felled tree, and he had never opened his eyes again.
The doctors had said it was his heart. A sudden attack, and the great man’s heart had stopped beating. One moment he was there, vibrant, very much alive, and the next he was gone, in the blink of an eye.
The service was over now. The pallbearers walked solemnly to the coffin, picking it up, before slowly walking down the aisle.
He could not take his eyes away from it as it passed him by. He could not take his eyes away from the vision of the man, laid out within it, in his best clothes, his hands crossed over his chest for eternity.
He was an orphan, now. All alone in the world.
He did not remember his mother’s funeral, when he had been young. The day was gone, wiped from his head. He had known it was his fault that she had drowned that day at the docks. If he had not been reaching into the river, trying to get that toy boat, she would still be alive.
His father had been heartbroken. He had never recovered. He had poured himself into his work, building a mighty empire. The wealth had grown. He had never remarried.
His brother, Harold, had only been a baby at the time, when their mother died. He had not accompanied them that day to the docks. He had stayed at home, with his nursemaid, oblivious to the fact that his mother was taking her last breath in the cold river Mersey.
A hand reached out. He turned, looking into the face of a man standing next to him. A man who he knew was his friend, but whose name he could not remember now.
“My deepest condolences,” the man said, his brow furrowed. He had small hazel eyes, and sandy hair. “What are your plans now? Will you stay in Liverpool, and take over your father’s empire?”
He kept gazing into the man’s face. He knew that face like the back of his hand. Why couldn’t he remember his name?
He didn’t answer. He kept watching the coffin, until it was gone. He knew that the next trip would be to the graveyard, to see his father enter the earth. He did not know if he could bear it.
The memory wavered, changing again. Now he was at the cemetery, standing there, staring down into a large, gaping brown hole.
They lowered the coffin, gently, pulling on the ropes to steady it. His father’s final resting place. There was no gravestone yet. The only marker to show that his father was here, for the moment, was this mound of earth.
He looked up, into the sky, as a single raindrop fell on his face. It was starting to rain, coming in a steadier stream, pooling into the grave. The pastor’s voice droned on, dry and crabbed, as he rushed to finish the service.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust…
The mourners shifted uncomfortably, huddling together as the rain fell. Umbrellas were raised. But he did not seek relief from it. He let the rain stream over his face, plastering his hair to his head, soaking him to the skin.
His eyes drifted over to the gravestone next to the mound. His mother’s gravestone. His parents were going to lie side by side, for eternity.
Elizabeth Rose Townshend. Beloved wife and mother.
He knew that he would never come back here, to this churchyard.
Liverpool was done for him. He could not live here anymore. There were too many ghosts, drifting down its streets. And there was nothing left for him here, now, anyway. All was lost.
Suddenly, he saw a wild, windswept coastline. A place in Lancashire that his father had sometimes taken his boys to when they had been little. He remembered walking those beaches, just after his mother died, staring into the sea. Somehow, she seemed closer to him there than in their hometown.
