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Nuda Veritas – Clare Sheridan

For Leonie and me Glaslough was full of ghosts. Memories of the absent Shane still haunted the upper attic, and his spirit was in the autumn woods. There were memories of all those who had been children and had been happy there.

There were also the ghosts of Norman and Wilfred, who shadowed us everywhere.

Wilfred was particularly close to me at night.

I knew that when Margaret and Dick and I were released while our bodies slept, we joined him and Elizabeth on another plane.

One early dawn, Margaret, who slept in my room, shouted in her sleep: "Mummie, Mummie, can't Daddy come too?” by which I supposed that we were about to say good-bye for another day and she wanted him to stay with us.

Another time she said to me: "I saw Daddy last night-I had my eyes wide open in the dark and saw him. His badge (the silver cap badge of the Rifle Brigade) was bright, and my word it did glitter! I often have those 'tunelly' dreams."

I asked her what is a "tunelly dream"? and she explained simply: "When it's all dark, like a tunnel! "

Every morning she talked about him when we went hand-in-hand hunting for primroses, and looking for bulb noses pushing through the soil. Then once she said:

'We have had a happy morning-you do like flowers, don't you, Mummie? It makes you think of Daddy-he's helping God to grow them this year, that's why they're so early."

That is the way Wilfred would have wished to be remembered. Although he went out in the heat of battle, his baby remembered him in the spring flowers.