by Annie Murray
Their eyes held each others’. It was as if a long, passionate conversation was opening out, an endless flow of exchanges, and that they could stay there for hours and talk and talk. At least, that was how it felt to her. He would ask a question that mattered and she would say something that mattered and on it would go and how rare and precious that was.
‘They’ll be sitting down for tea,’ Stephen said with a movement of his head and the moment faded. But she could hear his reluctance.
The other lads had gone and she was about to say, Let me wheel you back inside, when one of the orderlies popped his head round the door.
‘Ah, Ratcliffe, there you are!’ he said chirpily. ‘Thought you must have run off somewhere!’
For a second Daisy was taken aback by the brutal tactlessness of this, before realizing that it was said with a sympathetic irony that brought a grin to Stephen’s face and he was lit up with amusement.
‘Thank you, Miss Tallis,’ he said, still smiling as the orderly swivelled the chair round. ‘See you next week.’
She watched him disappear through the door, moved by the sight of his long body in the chair. How must he have looked while standing? she thought, finding sudden tears in her eyes.
Next week seemed a long time away.
Forty-Two
‘Aunt Hatt?’
Margaret pushed open the door of number twenty-six Chain Street and went to the front office. They had had a busy day in number twenty-four and she had been intending to pop in earlier. She guessed, though, that her aunt would still be there.
Aunt Hatt looked up from behind her desk. There was no one else in the room and for a second Margaret was shocked by the sight of her all over again. Harriet Watts was so much smaller and thinner than she had ever been – as if grief was sucking her away from the inside.
‘Still here then?’ Margaret smiled at herself for stating the obvious.
‘Hello, love.’ Aunt Hatt’s face held strain and exhaustion, but she forced a smile. ‘Come in – I was just shutting up.’ As both of them heard footsteps in the passage, Hatt added, ‘Bridget’s just on her way out.’
Bridget Sidwell appeared then in her summer coat. Margaret remembered Bridget as a plump, comfortable-looking girl with wire spectacles. Now she had grown into an older, matronly version of herself, married to Jack, who worked upstairs, and bringing up their two lads.
‘Ooh, hello, Margaret.’ Bridget’s own tired face lifted. ‘Shall I ask Lucy to make you a cup of tea?’
‘No . . .’ Margaret was saying but was overridden by Aunt Hatt’s, ‘Oh, yes, would you please, Bridget? I could do with summat I can tell you.’ She pulled out a chair. ‘Come and sit with me, Margaret.’
As Bridget was leaving the room her eyes met Margaret’s. Bridget looked briefly and meaningfully at Aunt Hatt and back at her. Margaret could see all the sorrow and concern in her eyes.
‘Of course, Aunt. Thanks, Bridget.’
Bridget disappeared out to the back. On her way through, she popped in again and said, ‘Bye, Mrs Watts. See you tomorrow.’ She nodded at Margaret as well.
They heard the front door close. There was a moment’s silence, in which the gas mantle hissed, the clock ticked, and two men passed outside, talking. Aunt Hatt sat with her hands folded one over the other on the desk, bolt upright as if she had a wall behind her. From each of her earlobes hung a gold droplet, which Margaret knew that Uncle Eb had made for her. This was a good sign, Margaret thought. Aunt was beginning to wear jewellery again. But after a moment, before Margaret could say anything, Aunt Hatt slumped forward and laid her head on her hands on the desk, her shoulders shaking.
‘Oh, Auntie!’ Margaret said, distressed. She did not know what else to do but lay a hand on her beloved aunt’s back, caressing her as she wept, making soothing noises as she would for Lily or John or Hester when they were tearful. The shock of it went down deep inside her. Aunt Hatt was not someone who cried – not in public. Blarting, she would have said. While she knew the depths of grief her aunt was carrying within her for Eb, for Georgie, usually any tears were in private.
Aunt Hatt sat up after a few moments, looking dazed, almost as if waking from sleep. She pulled a hanky from her sleeve to wipe her eyes. Margaret saw the wet spots of her tears on the blotter.
‘Sorry to do that, love,’ Aunt Hatt said. She sounded weary and defeated. ‘It’s just been that sort of day.’
‘Oh, Aunt,’ Margaret said, removing her hand. She felt the surge of guilt she often experienced that she was the one who still had her husband, that he had been too old to fight, when there were Georgie and Annie’s Fergus and Edith’s fiancé – all swept so cruelly away. Poor Edith had been very brave but she was like a little ghost.
‘Some days I can be strong,’ Aunt Hatt said. ‘Most days, in fact. I’m going to run this business that my Eb built up and my Georgie. I’m going to keep it going, make sure it’s as they would have wanted in so far as I can – even if it finishes me off. It’s just that sometimes . . .’
Margaret watched her strained face. Please, she wanted to say, be careful – look after yourself.
‘It’s what keeps me going.’ Aunt Hatt looked round at her. ‘The way Clara’s got her little nursery to keep her going.’ She was silent for a few seconds before continuing. ‘Then there are days like today when all I can see is the two of them, here. I keep expecting Georgie to walk in with that grin of his, and to go out the back and find Eb bent over someone’s peg or at his desk or breezing in, smoking that pipe and getting on my nerves.’ More tears ran down her cheeks.
The door opened and Aunt Hatt quickly wiped her face as Lucy came in with a tray.
‘Thank you,’ she managed to say huskily.
‘I’ll be off now, Mrs Watts,’ Lucy said.
Both of them thanked her and she was off and away as well.
‘I don’t know . . .’ Margaret said hesitantly, feeling that anything she said was ridiculous, ‘how you bear it.’
‘No,’ Aunt Hatt said glumly. ‘Nor do I, to tell you the honest truth. But then what choice is there?’
There was no answer to this.
‘Going home at night . . .’ She shook her head. ‘I keep putting it off. The empty house. No husband. No one . . .’ Her face creased again and she put a hand over it, fighting for control. ‘The quiet . . . I mean, Eb wasn’t the quietest of individuals.’
Margaret smiled gently. ‘No, he wasn’t, was he?’
Their eyes met and they both laughed then, even though Hatt’s cheeks were still wet.
‘It’s all right when Clara’s there – the children. It’s busy, full of life. But then . . .’ She stopped herself and turned in her chair as if to enter a different mood. ‘Look, I must stop wallowing. How’s poor Annie now?’
‘I . . .’ Margaret had been about to say, I hate to think.
‘I don’t exactly know. She’s gone back to the hospital.’
The month in which Annie had come to live with them had been one of the most disturbing she could ever remember. Annie, who had always been so full of life and stubborn confidence, had been like a broken, uncertain shadow. She had seldom gone out, even refusing to go to church. She sat for hours, silent and strange, like a wounded animal. Margaret had almost wanted to curse Fergus Reid for ever existing, for doing this to her poor little sister. But when she expressed something of this to Annie once, Annie had flared up.
‘He gave me more than you’ll ever understand!’ she snapped. ‘Even if he’s gone, if this wicked, cursed, damnable war has taken him, I had him, had his love.’ She looked wildly at Margaret. ‘And I loved him. Don’t you think that makes me more . . . more human, more of a person than I had ever been before?’
Margaret had to agree. But there was so much pain in the house.
‘Edith seems to be getting along all right.’ She poured the tea for them both. ‘The funny thing is, Muriel Allen has changed somehow. I’m not sure it’s for very noble reasons but she’s being much ni
cer to Edith, as if she sees Edith as being fated to be single all her life now like her – and she doesn’t have to feel jealous any more.’
Margaret felt rather shocked by realizing that that was what she thought. But there was a careful kindliness about the office of number twenty-four these days which had not been there before, between Edith and Muriel and even Mr Henshaw, between all of them and Daisy and of course little Hester, the one person oblivious to all the darkness and death around them, who trotted about full of joy and new life.
This thought brought a sudden idea to her mind.
‘Aunt,’ she said, passing Aunt Hatt the sugar. ‘Might it be better if you weren’t alone in that big house?’
‘How d’you mean?’ Aunt Hatt passed the sugar bowl back and Margaret took a lump. One, these days, not two. Everything was in short supply.
‘Well, there’s you rattling about in there, and Clara. How would it be if Clara and the children moved in with you, instead of just being there in the daytime?’
‘She did. She seemed very keen.’
Margaret lay curled in bed in the darkness beside Philip, her arm resting on his body as he lay on his back.
‘I s’pose it does seem a bit daft keeping two households going – if Clara’s willing,’ he said. ‘Mind you, it’d mean living with her mother-in-law.’
‘They’re both busy – Hatt’s away from home all week. And it’d save Clara traipsing back and forth. She’d have more room, they’d both have company – and the kids’d love it.’
‘Quite a hen house that’d be,’ Philip said.
Margaret laughed. ‘What with Lizzie as well and the mothers. Mind you, Clara said last week they’ve a father bringing a child to her now. Poor man – first he was wounded, then his wife died. He’s got a little boy to bring up on his own and he’s lost an arm.’
‘God,’ was all Philip said, but she could feel his anger. They all watched, helpless now things had gone on so far, so callously; it was as if nothing could be done to prevent the slaughter, the wiping out of a generation.
Margaret embraced him more tightly and felt his warm hand caress her arm. Thank heaven you’re here, she thought. That you and I are here together, now, in the midst of all this. She thought of the desolation of Aunt Hatt and Clara, lying alone in their beds. In the dark it felt as if she and Philip were together on a little island of fortune, of love, amid the churning waters of death and uncertainty.
‘My love,’ she murmured. ‘My dear, dear love.’
Forty-Three
That summer, Daisy came to look forward to Tuesdays – the afternoon she went to Hollymoor, the Second Birmingham War Hospital.
Each of the other classes – in Highbury Hall and at the hospital at Rubery – were also enjoyable and satisfying. Many of the lads really seemed to look forward to seeing her and to working with their hands and learning something new.
But it was on a Tuesday that, as the weeks went by, she would wake up and feel an immediate pulse of excitement.
It was the same throughout the morning when she sat in the office in Chain Street or worked out at the back in the workshop. The MIZPAH jewellery and trinkets were still selling well and Daisy was often designing new lockets and brooches for separated sweethearts, as well as helping with other orders that came in. When working on something with her hands she would be completely absorbed in the work while all around her went on the hammering, the thud of the stamping machine and the turning lathe up at one end. Then she would surface suddenly and remember. This afternoon, Hollymoor. And him.
After their first conversation, she had already begun looking forward to seeing Stephen Ratcliffe again. A couple of members of the class had been discharged, one of them returned to the Front, and they had been replaced by two more.
But Stephen Ratcliffe would not be returning to the Front. Though the loss of his lower legs was obvious to the eye, Daisy could see that he had suffered some other injury, though she did not like to ask. Stephen was out of the war, that was clear, and would need a long period of rehabilitation, artificial legs and who knew what else.
She became more adventurous about the objects she took with her from the Animal Room at Vittoria Street for the men to copy as models. This meant carting rather large, not to say eccentric, items about Birmingham with her on the tram. She would choose one for each week and had begun at first with simpler items. Now that it was high summer and getting about entailed fewer clothes, with less need of a heavy coat or umbrella, she grew bolder. One week it was a thrush, then a pheasant; another time a stoat.
Yesterday she had gone to the school and looked carefully round the collection of stuffed creatures, trying to work out what she could carry without damaging the creature or causing too much alarm to her fellow passengers on the tram. A gleaming little glass eye met hers; a copper-red coat. Yes, that was what she would take! She could wrap it carefully and just about manage to lug it across town.
‘You got a whole menagerie at ’ome, ’ave yer, Miss Tallis?’ one of the lads asked as they all filed in – some pushed in wheelchairs, some on crutches, others able to walk well.
‘Cor – look at that! That’s beautiful, that is! You’re not gunna make us do that, though, are yer?’
She had placed the fox, on its wooden base, on the table at the front and it did look a very fine specimen, with its reddish fur and fierce eyes, although its brush was a little moth-eaten looking.
‘Well, I thought you might like a really big challenge this week,’ Daisy said. ‘I know it’s difficult, but start with cutting away to get the basic shape, just like the other things we’ve done. You can make him look even finer than he is, if you like.’
There was dubious-sounding laughter at this.
‘How d’you know it’s a he, miss?’
At the edge of her field of vision she saw Stephen Ratcliffe give a faint smile. He was watching her, waiting for them all to get on with the main business of the class.
‘I don’t, Reg,’ she said. ‘And it doesn’t matter, I don’t think. Are you gentlemen all ready and comfortable?’
She took a lump of clay to each of them.
‘Now, I’ve also got a picture of a fox skeleton here – look carefully.’ She propped the pictures up at the front. ‘And this one shows you where the groups of muscle are – the flow of them. Look and feel – let’s get started.’
There were a few moments of quiet as the men started to cut cautiously into the rectangles of clay. She loved to see their immediate absorption in the task, their seriousness, when usually they were joking around. It brought out another side of them, which moved her.
‘It’s very warm today,’ she said, going to the door. ‘I think I’ll prop this open for a bit.’
A slight breeze came in. Daisy stood at the threshold, feeling it cooling her face. She had dressed in a frock that she loved but seldom wore because the weather was hardly ever warm enough. It was made of dusky pink muslin, light and fine, with a cotton underskirt sewn into it and little pearly pink beads around the bodice. She had taken her hair back into a loose knot and it was making her rather hot. Surreptitiously she slipped a hand under the heavy twist of hair and wiped her neck.
When she turned back to the room, she saw Stephen Ratcliffe quickly look away and down at his modelling again. Daisy blushed. He had been watching her. She could tell by the embarrassed look on his face. She wanted to go over and talk to him, but she could never be quite sure about him. Most of the time he seemed so closed in on himself.
She thought guiltily of Den. Another letter had arrived only this week, saying so little, yet always claiming her. Den. Her fate – that was how it felt. She was his fiancée as far as he was concerned, something that seemed to her both inevitable and far distant, since he was never here to make it real.
‘That’s a good start,’ she said, going over to a red-headed lad called George.
He peered at it. ‘It just looks too heavy and fat,’ he said. He never did get along well but seem
ed very keen to try.
‘You can fine it down as you go. Better than taking away too much at the beginning,’ she said encouragingly.
She knew that Stephen would never call out to her as the others often did. He was self-contained, just kept his head down, working away. Gradually she made her way along to him. He was already working the body of the fox with his strong fingers, in the same way that she had seen before, as if he had an instinct for all that lay beneath the skin and could shape it.
‘That’s a very good start,’ she said.
He looked up then, solemnly. ‘D’you think so? I’m finding it very difficult.’
‘Well, it is difficult. The hardest thing we have done so far. But you have a feel for it.’
He gave a slight nod and muttered, ‘Thank you.’
Talk to me, she thought, but he had lowered his head and was once again absorbed in the work. Weeks had passed like this and her frustration grew. After the class the men were taken away for tea and there was never very much time. He had no idea how she longed to linger there talking to him, because he was the one person in a long time who had made her feel excited by his very presence. But he seemed so shy and reluctant to force his company on her.
That day as the class ended, the men in wheelchairs waited to be wheeled back to the main building. Daisy was gathering the models together, some of which looked convincingly like foxes and others like various breeds of rather baffled-looking dog. She stood them in rows across two of the tables. Stephen’s, though not perfect, was by far the most fox like. The fox-ness of the fox, she thought.
She felt very shy about talking to Stephen while the others were there. But fortunately, that afternoon, he was left until last. Knowing that any moment an orderly would appear, Daisy steeled herself, her heart picking up speed.
Stephen Ratcliffe was seated in the wheelchair with his hands in his lap. There was, as usual, a grey blanket over his knees. She felt sorry that he always felt the need to hide himself like that when it was so warm a day. The blanket had slipped a little so that one of his legs could be seen projecting forward from the seat of the chair. His trouser leg was folded neatly and pinned over it. The sight of it, knowing that his other leg was in much the same condition, filled her with grief and anger. How must it feel, being cut down like that, knowing you would never walk naturally again? Suddenly what she was going to say seemed impossible, but now she had walked over to him and she had to speak. She was so nervous, it snatched at her breath.