Time Goes By Read Online Free

post-war austerity. The years of darkness and depression were over, exemplified by the return of the ‘Lights’. Blackpool had become the envy of many of its rivals. It was well and truly back in business, catering for a full cross section of the public, from the working classes to those who considered themselves to be the ‘elite’.
    The hotel had become – almost – Winifred’s whole life, the focus of her existence and her ambition. She was proud of what they had achieved since the end of the war. They were coming to be known as one of the best of the small private hotels in Blackpool, with the same visitors returning yearafter year. She had never done any work outside of the boarding house. It had been taken for granted when she left school at the age of fourteen that she should work in the family business. That was in the year of 1914; the start of the Great War had coincided with the end of Winifred’s schooling.
    It had been the height of the holiday season in Blackpool, but the initial disruption – when visitors trying to return home found that the trains had been commandeered for the fighting forces – proved to be of short duration. By mid August it was ‘business as usual’ in the resort. The holiday industry carried on and thrived throughout the First World War as, twenty years later, it was to do the same in the second conflict. It was an emotive issue, as to whether seaside holidays and leisure times, such as professional sport, should continue when the country was at war. The lists in the daily newspapers of deaths in action were becoming longer and more disturbing. But the ‘powers that be’ in Blackpool felt that it was good for morale that people should be encouraged to take holidays, as before. It was decided, however, that to continue with the Illuminations would be going too far, and so, despite their initial success, plans to make the Illuminations an annual event had to be cancelled, due to the outbreak of war.
    And so the accommodation industry benefited, not only through the holidaymakers, but with thearrival of Belgian refugees, and then by the billeting of British troops. During the winter of 1914 to 1915 there were ten thousand servicemen billeted in the town, along with two thousand refugees.
    The Leighs’ boarding house played its part in accommodating both the troops and the refugees. Winifred was fascinated and, at first, a little shy of these men who teased her good-humouredly. But as the war went on – with, regrettably, the loss of many of the soldiers they had known – she began to grow in confidence.
    It was not until 1917, though, when she was seventeen years old, that she fell in love for the first – and what she believed was to be the last – time. Arthur Makepeace was a Blackpool boy; he was, in fact, almost the ‘boy next door’, living only a few doors away from the Leigh family. He was three years older than Winifred and had joined up, as soon as he was old enough, in 1915. After a few outings together, when he came home on leave, they had realised that there was a good deal more than friendship between them. They had vowed that, after the war was over, they would get married. Despite their age neither of their families had raised any objections. Many young couples were ‘plighting their troth’ in those uncertain days.
    Arthur was granted leave in the early summer of 1918, then he returned to the battlefields of France. It was universally believed that the warwas in its last stages and the young couple were looking forward to the time when they would be together for always.
    Then, in the August of that year came the news that Winifred, deep down, had always been dreading. Arthur had been killed in one of the last offensives on the Western Front. It was his parents, of course, who had received the dreaded telegram, and they wept along with the girl who was to have become one of their family.
    It was said that time was a great healer, and gradually Winifred