by Annie Murray
‘She’s a lovely baby,’ he said again.
Hester looked at Den and gave a chortle.
‘D’you want a hold?’ Daisy asked.
‘All right.’ He smiled faintly and held his arms out for Daisy to put Hester on his lap. He was long used to holding small children. ‘’Ello, baby,’ he said, rather awkwardly. ‘Our Ann’s a bit older than ’er,’ he said. ‘Looks poorly compared with this’un, though.’
He joggled her on his knees for a few moments, then handed her over again.
‘They’re getting ready to send me back,’ he said, as Daisy sat down again. ‘It won’t be long, I don’t think. Well, not more than a couple of months, I mean.’
‘No – not already?’ she said. ‘But are you well enough?’
He shrugged. ‘Have to be, dun’ I?’
There was another silence, and he stood up. ‘Best get off then. Ta for the tea.’
When he reached the door he turned to her.
‘I’ve gotta say this. It don’t matter to me – none of this.’ He nodded at Hester. ‘I love you, Dais. I’ve told yer before – at least I’ve tried. I’d be your man if yer’d let me. That’s all I can say.’
Daisy stood holding Hester. She was disarmed and moved by his words, by the way he seemed to be devoted to her whatever she did in anyone else’s eyes. The idea of loving him back was strange to her, would take getting used to. But she liked him, felt for him.
‘Thank you, Den,’ she said humbly.
‘I don’t s’pose you . . . ?’ He stopped himself. ‘No, I won’t ask. But Daisy – before I go, promise this time you’ll write. And I’ll write – I’ll get someone to do it if I can’t. Where I’m going, I need to know you’re ’ere – you’re the thing that keeps me going.’
Tears slid into her eyes. She longed to be able to say the thing that he could take in his heart back into the war. To pour out loving words, to tell him how grateful she was that he accepted her no matter what, but they would not come.
‘I will, Den,’ she said softly. ‘Course I will.’
This seemed to give him hope and he walked up to her quickly and kissed her cheek.
‘I don’t know when they’ll send me. I’ll try and get over before I go.’
‘Will you come to the funeral?’ she said. ‘Mr Watts?’
‘Course I will, if I’m still here.’
And he was gone.
Thirty-Two
December 1916
‘Annie? Where on earth are you off to?’
Susannah stood gaping as Annie tore along the passage and into the lavatory in the short morning break.
Inside, the door bolted, she stood for a second, her blood singing. Her hand caressed the pocket in which rested the wonderful, precious envelope she had been waiting to open all morning as she hurried about the ward. The waiting was all part of the pleasure. A letter from Fergus – the fluttering, excited, bubbling feeling of being loved, of knowing he had sat, somewhere in his posting in France, thinking of her, writing his droll, affectionate letters, perhaps smiling a little, those lips turning up under the moustache . . .
But she had waited long enough. Praying that no one else would need to come in for the next few minutes, she took the envelope out, looked at Fergus’s small, exquisite, handwriting and kissed the envelope before she tore it open.
Her eyes raced over the words. Was he all right? Was there anything to worry about? She reached the end at a gallop and, reassured, began again.
Since I last wrote, my darling, I have been posted on again. The price of my particular expertise, I suppose, is to be endlessly on the move to somewhere new. I am not allowed to divulge my exact whereabouts. However, that hardly matters since I shall soon be gone – though I am hoping to be here at least until after the Christmas season.
All I can say is, we are of course near the sea and the hospital is as rum a place as I have yet encountered. Spotless and well organized – but in the building of an old seafront casino, would you believe? I’m sure you would disapprove mightily – I can see that Puritan frown appearing on your stern brow at the very thought. But be reassured. No gambling goes on here now – it is a place of great rectitude and endeavour. Though I do find myself visiting patients in wards with the usual black iron bedsteads, but all lined up beneath the most louche-looking crystal chandeliers! The hospital was set up by a titled Lady – in fact, she herself certainly knuckles down, I’ll give her that. She goes to work with sleeves rolled like anyone else. Evidently she was an Olympic sailing contender a few years back, and she has an enormous wolf of a dog a bit like my old pal Seamus, and he’s a great favourite among the officers – it’s an officer-only hospital, by the way. She has also been known, along with several cronies (I suspect I should have my knuckles rapped for endowing such fine ladies with the title ‘cronies’) to greet the incoming casualties in the most elegant evening garments – tiaras and all!
He wrote a little more about his work, one of the patients who had affected him most – ‘a crude, distressing dismantling of an entire personality’. And she read with interest, moved. But still her gaze hurried to the end, to his loving words.
I miss you so much that it fills me with an ache. Of course, the days are busy – and nights too I am forever rushing hither and thither. But you are always with me. I keep expecting to see your busy little figure appearing along a corridor, your face looking into mine, ready to rag me for some misdemeanour. When this war is over, Miss Annie Hanson, what a powerhouse we shall be! You and I – Dr and Mrs Reid – together we can take on the world! I always thought I wanted to settle for ever in London. Now I wonder if foreign climes and unknown customs are not more to my taste. What think you? Are you ready for the adventure? The two of us, always together, my sweet darling?
I suppose I must do duty to my patients by snatching some sleep now. So, across the waves I send you my love once more – holding you in the depths of my heart, my dearest love.
Yours ever,
Fergus
Annie read his tender words of parting, her eyes awash with tears. For a moment she stood with her back to the door, the letter held sweetly to her heart. I am so blessed, she whispered. With a twist of pain, she thought of Aunt Hatt, weighed down by so much grief she could hardly bear to think of it. Her cousin Georgie’s dark-eyed, smiling face came to her mind, young and kindly, so beloved. No more. She found herself thanking God that her beloved was a doctor, not a soldier on the front line. Safer, the Lord be praised. Eyes closed, she blessed Georgie, then brought to mind the smiling face of her beloved Fergus.
‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘Oh, yes, my love – I’m ready to go with you anywhere.’
Thirty-Three
25 December 1916
Harriet Watts lay on the deep feather bed of that dark December morning, warm and happy in the deceit of a dawn dream. Her thick winceyette nightdress wrapped round her, hair in a thick plait, she pulled the bedclothes closer.
After a moment she reached out an arm. Eb? She wriggled over to snuggle up behind her husband’s broad, comforting shape, to tuck her thighs in behind his as she always did, wrap an arm about his bulky waist and hear him give a little putter of sleepy pleasure, That’s my girl, or some such. Everything was as it should be. A normal day, Eb beside her, the works humming away, Georgie in charge, Clara and the children – her happy, busy life.
The sheet beside her was cold. Her eyes opened and cold horror – the reality of each day – seized her all over again.
‘Oh, heaven, no . . .’ she moaned, trying to sink back into the dream of all that should be, all that was good.
No Eb. No Georgie. Both taken from her for ever. All was cold and dead. It was like falling endlessly into a black, freezing well. The day of Eb’s funeral came back to her, the gusting wind rocking the trees, the ranks of people dressed in black hats and coats, everyone from the firm, even Den Poole, who was about to be sent back to the Front, Jack Sidwell with his wife Bridget sobbing beside him. And she
, his wife of forty years, trying to stand upright, to drain some comfort out of the Church’s words which neither of them ever really believed in. I am the resurrection and the life. The words had fallen on her like ash. There might be resurrection, but all she needed was her Eb, plump and warm, smiling and whiskery, beside her.
‘Why couldn’t you take me with you?’ she whispered, the ache of it filling her as it did hour after hour, day after day. The forgetting had been the cruellest. That delusion of things being as they had been before.
Another realization came to her. Christmas Day. The family were coming to her house. Poor dear Clara. Those fatherless children. Somehow, under the load of her own grief, she had to go on, to make Christmas in some way cheerful for them all.
With a groan, she sat up, pushing back the heavy bedclothes. She swung her legs over the edge and sat, toes brushing the little rug beside the bed.
‘Come on, Hatt old thing,’ she said, as Eb would have said. ‘There’s work to be done. Get to it, wench.’
‘These are the last of Georgie’s potatoes,’ Clara said when she arrived later, handing her mother-in-law a heavily filled brown paper bag. ‘I’ve kept them in the dark – they’ve not sprouted.’
Clara’s naturally pale face was still white, the coppery freckles standing out even more, and the blueish half-moons under her eyes of nights with broken sleep. But she was upright, defiant and strong as she had been most of the time since Georgie’s death.
‘Thanks, love,’ Hatt said faintly. She felt as if the breath would not come into her body properly, as if she needed propping up like an old building whose foundations have suddenly given way. Looking into the bag, seeing the soil-dusted vegetables, her chest tightened all over again. Her boy had planted and planted in the back garden before he left in the spring. Though he had never said as much, he had been providing for his family in his absence in one way he could think of. The harvest which had outlasted his own short life was to give them their Christmas dinner. A mercy as the commercial crops had not done well this year and prices were sky high.
‘Let’s get the dinner together,’ Clara said, rolling up her sleeves. They had given Aunt Hatt’s cook the day off to join her family. And they both knew the busyness was good for them. ‘Come on, Ella,’ she called. ‘You can come and help now – let’s get these potatoes peeled.’
‘I’ve got a bit of beef,’ Hatt said. ‘It’s not much good, but . . .’ She looked down, feeling the wave of tears about to engulf her again. In past years they had been in a land of plenty, the prosperous firm, the days when there were no shortages. Everywhere she looked there was loss.
‘It’ll do us,’ Clara said. She was dry eyed, tight in herself and staunch. Hatt had never had anything against Clara. She had always striven to get on with her daughter-in-law for Georgie’s sake, even though she had found her rather bossy and officious at times. But now she was seeing the girl grow in stature. She was strong, brave. The two women’s eyes met and Hatt felt Clara’s strength go into her. ‘Give the kids a day, eh?’
Hatt drew in a breath, filling her lungs against death and despair – and any trouble.
‘Clara, you won’t be unkind to Daisy?’
Clara looked back at her, seeing the imploring look in her mother-in-law’s eyes.
‘No. I’ll keep my thoughts to myself – I promise.’ She sighed then. ‘What does it all matter, in the end?’
Hatt smiled faintly. ‘Let’s get to work then.’
Clara reached out and touched her arm. ‘Mother, I have something to say to you.’
Harriet Watts pulled her shoulders back. ‘I’ve got something else to say for my part as well. But I’ll say it later – when all the others are here.’
They all sat round in the Wattses’ cosy dining room, the children up at the table as well. Daisy kept Hester next to her, propped on cushions in a chair. She helped Hester eat and tried to stop her from messing too much with Georgina, who was on the other side of her. Hester was almost a year old now. She had a generous cap of dark hair and her brown-eyed face was full of life and mischief.
The meat course had passed with everyone trying to be cheerful and talk about everyday things, not dwelling on the past. They toasted Annie, who was working on the wards today but might be able to join them on New Year’s Eve.
Daisy was full of admiration for the way Margaret kept the conversation going, about people in the office, the weather and asking the children about themselves and getting them to talk. She knew her stepmother was painfully aware of being the only woman in the room who had not lost her man. And Philip had done the honours carving the joint. Now though, glancing at her pa at the end of the table as they finished off the meat and gravy, she saw how exhausted he looked, as if he might just fall asleep there and then.
Everyone looked different, Daisy thought. The most obvious thing was that they were all in black. Hatt’s house was draped in mourning, reminders of the loss in every room, in the shape of drapes over pictures and mirrors. All along the mantelpiece were photographs which Georgie had taken: of the family, of himself, happy and smiling, with Clara and the children. There was so much pain, so many things that had changed in the last year. No Eb or Georgie, no James Carson for that matter. The place was full of ghosts of their lost lives.
She thought of Den Poole with a twist of mixed feelings. Now he was back in France, which in a way was a relief. She did not know what to feel towards him except gratitude for his quiet bravery, for the way he had loved her, stuck by her through everything, even if she could not fully love him back.
She leaned over to take Hester’s plate. ‘That’s enough now – stop playing with it.’
Hester looked up at her, startled. She saw dots of light reflected in the child’s dark eyes. I should give her a father, a respectable life, she thought. No one else is going to want me, soiled goods as I am. I should be grateful. He’s a good man and I should try to love him as he loves me.
‘Now,’ Aunt Hatt said, standing at the other end of the table from Philip Tallis. A basin-shaped Christmas pudding sat gleaming on a plate. ‘Jimmy – a little job for you.’
Her eldest grandson, now thirteen, got to his feet and poured a tot of brandy over the pudding as instructed, then struck a match. A halo of blueish flame hovered and died and everyone clapped.
Portions were handed out and soon Lily removed something from her mouth, eyes shining, and announced, ‘I’ve got the sixpence!’
John, who had rather hoped he was going to get it since Jimmy had done the flame-lighting part, made to snatch it, only half joking.
‘Stop – at once!’ Margaret said sharply.
Aunt Hatt sat back, tapping a knife against her glass. Every time Daisy looked at Harriet Watts she felt a shock. The plump, contented matron of the summer was a thinner version of herself. She still had her old, sultry beauty, but she had aged and her face was haggard. However, the new, determined light in Hatt’s eyes drew everyone’s attention.
‘Right. I’ve got a few things to say.’ Daisy could feel the nervousness coming from her in the way she fiddled with her wedding ring, as if to draw strength from it.
‘Do you want to wait until the children get down?’ Margaret asked.
‘No, I don’t think so,’ Aunt Hatt said. She sat up straighter. ‘It’s nothing they shouldn’t hear.’ She cleared her throat and drew in a big breath. Daisy saw Clara’s eyes fixed on her, with intense attention.
‘These past weeks I’ve been here, in the house, most of the time.’ Aunt Hatt spoke in a rush, as if she was afraid she would not be able to get the words out if she went any more slowly. ‘I’ve been mourning my Eb and our Georgie, trying to come to terms with things . . .’
She stopped, looking down. Daisy felt so much for her, so sad, that her own chest constricted and she was close to tears. How they had all loved Eb and how much worse it all was for Aunt Hatt. She saw Harriet Watts’s throat move as she swallowed and composed herself. She spoke, her eyes fixed on
the sprig of holly at the centre of the cooling pudding.
‘I don’t suppose I ever shall.’ She spoke gruffly. ‘You can’t come to terms with losing the two people dearest to you. The war’s taken both of them, one way or another. And left our Clara a widow. Both of us are just two of the many widows in this country now, so it’s no good keeping on. But I’ve decided something in the last few days.’
She looked round at them all. Daisy saw that her pa’s sleepiness had passed and that his and Margaret’s attention, as well as Clara and the children’s – even Hester, who sensed the seriousness in the room – were fixed on Aunt Hatt.
‘I can’t stay here, mourning in this house. I don’t want to be like the old Queen, making a project of grief. Oh, I’ll mourn all right – to the end of my days. But I’ve got to do something, or I’ll lose my mind. And I know what I’ve got to do. If Eb was still here he’d say, Come on, wench – there’s a job of work to do. I know the staff are keeping the works going. And Bridget’s been a rock in all this. But Ebenezer Watts & Son is like a ship without a captain. And if there’s one person who knows that business like the back of her hand, it’s me.’
Daisy saw Margaret and her father exchange looks.
‘We’ve the war to win and a business to run,’ Hatt said. ‘And I’m going to be the one running it. I’m going to be there every day like I used to be and I’m going to do my damnedest to keep the place going at its very best in honour of my husband and my son. That’ll be my life from now on.’ She looked round fiercely, as if expecting someone to try and stop her.
‘Well, I think that’s truly wonderful, Auntie,’ Lily said, so earnestly that suddenly everyone started laughing. Lily looked round, startled, seemingly unsure what she had set off until Margaret touched her head reassuringly and gave her a smile.
‘I’m sure the business could do with having you there, Aunt,’ Margaret said. She squeezed her aunt’s shoulder. ‘I’ve been going in trying to help out but I know Bridget and the others are feeling it terribly, not having one of you there. So if that’s what you feel’s right . . .’