Hanging On The Moon

Even after all these years, Beth knew he’d always come home to her in the end

- Jane Jago

Beth and Peter had been best friends as children and sweethearts as teenagers, so it was no surprise to anyone that they married before his call up took him away to war.

On the night before he went, they sat late in the orchard under a full moon. If Beth cried a little that was nobody’s business but their own, and neither was the expression of their love in the gentle silver light. In the end, though, her abiding memory of that night was the sight of him swinging across the face of the moon on the old rope swing as she lay in the grass, looking up at the night sky.

‘I’ll make you a promise, love,’ he had whispered. ‘When this is all over we’ll come back here and swing in the moonlight together.’

But then morning came and he had to go, leaving her to manage as best she could.

Work helped. The physical labour of keeping the farm going left her too tired to cry. And just as she had started to think she’d got used to him being gone, she discovered he hadn’t left her alone after all. She was pregnant. For a while she told nobody, save her silent giant of a father, Tom, who smiled the smile that wrinkled his lined face. It was winter when she started to show and on a bright Sunday morning she walked the three miles to where Peter’s mother lived bearing the good news.

Seeing his mother was difficult at the best of times, because she had never cared for Beth. After receiving a less than thrilled response to her momentous news, an exhausted Beth started the long walk home and found her father waiting at the crossroads with a tidy cob harnessed to a gig.