Together, again
January 28th 2011 00:34
What a difference a lifetime makes.
When Leslie Harper and Elsie Dunn married in Hull, northern England, in 1941, World War II was raging and hope for a better future was one of the few luxuries they had.
They didn’t get it. The war ended, but it seemed to have taken romance with it. They had a daughter, Pauline, but the relationship struggled. Elsie said the war had changed Leslie. Things got increasingly hostile, and they divorced in 1954.
So bitter was the separation that Elsie burned her wedding photos and vowed that she never wanted to see Leslie, or have any contact, again.
Leslie and Elsie both married again in the 1960s, and both marriages lasted a long time. Elsie’s second husband died in 2002; Leslie’s second wife died in 2004.
Alone again, Leslie looked back over his life, including the photos from his first wedding which he had always kept. He had kept everything that reminded him of Elsie. Leslie felt there was something he had to do.
Elsie had so thoroughly cut him off all those years ago that he didn’t have any contact details for her. But their daughter, Pauline, now 65, did. Leslie asked Pauline for a phone number.
Leslie, now 93, rang Elsie, now 90, and they agreed to meet. They got on, Elsie said, like they had never been apart. It was the old Leslie, the lad she had met and loved before the war changed him. They laughed again. They rediscovered the romance. They loved again.
So they got married again.
Pauline gave her mother away, to her father. “Everybody was really happy for them,” said Pauline. “They're meant to be together.”
mirror.co.uk
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