I should perhaps give some hints of what might be the true historical circumstances. You can search Dick and Alison Sheppard and The Peace Pledge Union by Google (very little detailed info there, I got something from Vera Brittain's Testament of Experience). The Japanese prison camps you can Google, too, and read Nevile Shute's A Town Like Alice. You can read of manic-depression in the 1940s or 1950s from the life stories of Vivien Leigh or Phil Graham.

Mr. Applebee Thornton's family is described in the Jennifer Worth's books.

"Good afternoon, Mrs. Musgrove."

"Hello, Doctor Turner. I have come to ask you something."

Patrick was a bit surprised. His weekly duty at the Nonnatus Prenatal Clinic was nearing its end. Trixie Musgrove had been added to the list at the last moment.

"We've already asked Shelagh to be my midwife at the birth. She has agreed to that."

"Yes?"

"Would you be the obstetrician?"

Patrick was a bit taken back. "Mrs. Musgrove...Trixie. Are you sure you need a doctor at the birth? This is after all your third child. The pregnancy has been proceeding as it should. A midwife will manage perfectly fine."

"I know. I have been silly, Tom says so, too, but I have these premonitions. Doctor Turner, I will ask this because of Timothy and Cynthia. Would you please do it as a favor to...them?"

He still made a weak effort to disengage himself. "I am sure if you have Nurse Mannion as your midwife, you will have nothing to fear. No-one is so capable...or proper...as she"

At the same moment Shelagh Mannion arrived in the Great Hall.

"Shelagh!" Trixie exclaimed. "Come here. Doctor Turner has nearly promised to be at the birth of our baby. The only reservation he seems to have is that you would perhaps steal his thunder as you're so excellent midwife. Please, persuade him."

Shelagh glanced at Doctor Turner. She made no effort in persuading him. He looked helplessly from one woman to the other. At last he sighed.

"All right, Mrs. Musgrove. I will do it."

"Thank you, Doctor Turner."

On one Sunday, Enid Musgrove was missing at the beginning of the traditional lunch. She arrived by the time they were finishing the soup.

"Enid! Finally you are here. Shelagh has been the main cook. The lunch is delicious," Fred said a bit deviously.

Enid winked at the present company. "I seem to have a rival at my hands."

"Really, Aunt Enid. I am not a patch on you."

After Enid had tucked in some lunch, Fred asked her:

"How was she today?"

"Not good, not bad. I suspect we are seeing her final year."

Doctor Mount ventured to ask: "Who have you been visiting? Surely not a patient."

"No. An old friend. An old friend's friend in need. A Mrs. Smith".

"Is that a code name, like Smith and Jones?" Patrick had heard some separate sentences on this mysterious lady, but he hadn't asked before who she was and why she was visited so regularly.

Fred , Enid and Shelagh looked at each other.

"Her name is indeed Mrs. Smith," Fred volunteered. "Mrs. Alison Smith, nee Carver, previously Mrs. Alison Sheppard."

Doctor Turner was surprised. "Canon Dick Sheppard's wife?"

"Yes," confirmed Shelagh quietly. She kept looking at the table when she spoke, but Patrick felt that she directed her words at him. "Sister Julienne's will consisted of two requests. That I would return to my medical studies with the funds provided by her, and that we would continue to look after Mrs. Sheppard. Or Mrs. Smith as she is now, she was briefly married to a man called Archie Smith, who died in 1942."

"The request was addressed to Shelagh, but in practice Fred and I, with the help of Tom and Trixie, have shared this duty," Enid said. "That way Shelagh can concentrate on her studies and yet that flame is kept alive. We owe this both to Dick and to Sister Julienne."

"Why do you think Sister Julienne made such a request?" Patrick asked, hesitantly.

"In her later years, she felt that Alison Sheppard did not deserve the treatment she got, " Enid sighed. "Sister Julienne had taken badly Alison's leaving her husband, but then Dick died so soon, and that made everything worse. It seemed more shocking because of the order of the events. Sister Julienne wasn't alone in her regrets. Many Peace Pledge Union members help Alison with what they can."

Fred looked to a distance. "After all, Alison took the responsibility over a sick man and was with him for 20 years. It was an odd marriage. She used to be his nurse."

"His nurse?"

"Yes, she took care of him since the Great War. He was always sickly."

"I think it is admirable that you take care of her and respect his legacy, too, in this way, " Doctor Mount said.

Jane's mild voice was seldom heard at lunch time. Now she seemed to make a special effort. "I always thought that it would have been better for James's parents to have lived apart. It was a terrifying household while his mother was alive. Fortunately, his father mellowed a little in his later years."

Doctor Applebee took his wife's hand and kissed it. "That is true, Jane. I know I am so blessed to have survived it with so few scars."

"After the war, there certainly have been many odd family arrangements. I knew a woman who after years in the Singapore prison camps had adopted three surviving children of her fellow prisoners. I was their doctor. She was a divorced woman with no children of her own, " Patsy told.

Then a silence fell.

Patrick broke it. "I had to take care of my mentally deranged ex-wife and my ex-mother-in-law during the war."

"Patrick, you do not need to..." Jane intervened.

"Jane, hush. I think I do. And they are both dead now." Jane patted her brother's hand which lay on the table, the fingers restless tapping the cloth.

"My wife Peggy turned out to be manic-depressive. That is why she left me, for another man, in one of her...manic phases. I gave her a divorce as she wanted that. Her liaison with that man did not last long, though. During the London Blitz, she was bombed out of her lodgings when she was living with her mother. We moved back together because she was in a pretty sad state by then and she had no-one else to turn to. This was in 1941. In practice, I was in Africa and in America, or living at the London hospital resident wing. Jane and James took care of her when I was away."

He could feel the pained gaze and the uneven breathing of Shelagh from the other side of the table. Suddenly he felt not able to carry on.

"Patrick," Doctor Applebee started. As Patrick remained silent, Doctor Applebee continued: "Jane and I tried to help where we could. Peggy died from tuberculosis in 1945, and her mother the next year. The good Lord does not always let us choose whom we love."

"Or how we love," added his wife.

"And we don't have a choice over what happens when we love," concluded Enid.

Tom and Trixie looked at each other. Trixie was near crying, she was thinking of Cynthia. Tom decided to lighten things a little:

"So, to sum it up. Around this table every man and a woman - or their family members - have been actively helping the life of a divorced, displaced or an unhappy person. In the past five years or so. One agnostic-don't take offense, Patrick, you're too wise for that," Tom added quickly, "one Methodist- that's you, Patsy, and seven Anglicans-of both high church and broad church stands.

"True Christian charity at work," Patsy said with irony.

"True ecumenism at work!" Doctor Applebee chuckled.

"The end is nigh! Keep watch!" quipped Fred.

Laughter and general hilarity followed.

"It does not make sense, I agree," Tom mused.

"We only learn the strength of the ties when they are tested. And we have to learn how to go on living after this war. That is all." Enid was starting to pile up the dishes. "And now no more of this highbrow theology. Whose turn it is to help me with the washing up?"

"My turn." This was heard simultaneously from both sides of table. One deep baritone and a silvery soprano. Patrick had already risen. He stared at Shelagh with a somber, inscrutable look in his eyes.

"All right, please follow me, one good agnostic and one good Anglican. The kitchen sink is all yours."