by Lizzie Page
‘We must not leave it so long,’ she insisted, and I agreed, although when I counted the days on my fingers, it had only been five weeks.
Our conversation swiftly turned to the outbreak of war.
‘What does it all mean?’ I grabbed a restorative macaroon. ‘What’s going to happen? I’m so worried about my girls.’
‘I do understand, May,’ said Elizabeth sympathetically. ‘I’m the same – awfully worried about the cats.’
I sighed. ‘How is Winkle?’
‘If you mean Tiggy, she’s recovered from her fall, thank you.’
All the committees, leagues, reformers and branches were now working towards the war effort. Similarly, when she was not doing cartwheels, or swimming, Elizabeth was now knitting for soldiers. I was too but I was not so adept at it as her, probably because I tried to read at the same time and whenever I turned a page, it went awry.
Elizabeth said, ‘The good thing is that with the men going away we should be able to swim more.’
This felt sacrilegious to me. I think she caught that because she added defensively: ‘I must practise – I still propose to be the first woman to swim the Channel, May.’
‘Of course, but what about the war?’
‘It would boost the morale, don’t you think? Imagine the headlines: “Englishwoman succeeds where all others fail!” Can you think of anything more patriotic?’
Patriotic wasn’t the word I was thinking.
‘Anyway, the war will be over soon. We’ll win, we always do.’ She lit another cigarette.
‘Do we?’ I asked. Recently I had been wondering whether I was included in the ‘we’ or not.
‘We may be small, but we are a very mighty nation,’ Elizabeth said so stirringly that Winkle jumped. ‘It will be over in no time, you’ll see.’
I realised suddenly that I didn’t know Elizabeth as well as I had thought.
How to contribute to the war effort
Knit faster.
Walk more – soldiers have to walk a great deal.
Eat less – not nice to eat loads when our soldiers are suffering. ‘An army marches on its stomach,’ said Napoleon. I am NOT an army.
Applaud soldiers when one sees them, if appropriate, of course.
Keep reading the newspapers.
Send letters of condolence to families who lose boys.
Support George, Percy and Elizabeth in all their endeavours. Maybe this is my destiny – to be a cheerleader of others?
Hmm… what else?!?!?!
6
Elizabeth, like George, was wrong about the war being over quickly, although Elizabeth, like George, would never admit she was wrong about anything. Our troops were ill-prepared against the Germans. We had taken bayonets and swords, knives for hand-to-hand combat, but instead we faced industrial war, war on a huge scale. We had to catch up, improve, wake up, and fast. There were many losses in the early days; even the proud newspaper editorials couldn’t cover up the lists of the fallen soldiers. They were longer than your arm.
I didn’t know that many people in England but still I scanned the names assiduously: it felt important to honour the dead or at least to acknowledge their contribution. But other than that, my life had not changed. I saw Percy every Friday afternoon. I met with Elizabeth regularly. I wrote my diary and I tried to write poems. I also, ridiculously, humiliatingly, tried to get George to notice me again but his heart could not have been further away. I went to the hair salon, where all the talk was of husbands, sons and brothers leaving for the front, and for the first time, I experienced that hollow feeling of shame when someone asked what my husband was doing for the war effort.
Back home with the latest look, I asked George coyly, ‘Do I look different?’
‘Do you?’ George looked me up and down as though checking for structural faults. ‘I’m off, pier business tonight.’ He put on his coat, then squashed his hat onto his ungainly head.
‘Do you have to go out?’ I said under my eyelashes, in a way some might call flirtatious and others – Elizabeth – might call desperate.
‘I do.’
‘It’s no life for me here, alone, day and night…’ I began. But I think George realised I was about to launch into a tirade because he dismissed me.
‘Go and read a book or something, May,’ he said, striding to the door.
And read a book was all I could do, because in every other way, I was a bystander. I was bored and I was ashamed of being bored, especially at a time like this. I realised I was useless, a pointless, meaningless person. The sort of person who plumped herself merrily into a life-raft and waved up at the people on the sinking Titanic.
History was passing me by.
* * *
At the end of August, when we had been at war for just over three weeks, I was sitting in Percy’s studio, half-heartedly knitting, wholeheartedly despairing at the newspapers. On this occasion, however, instead of painting, Percy was whipping around like a fellow possessed piling paints to one side, rearranging easels and canvases; I had never seen anything like it.
‘Am I tidy enough for you?’ I joked.
‘Good-good,’ he said absently. I raised my ankles as he swept underneath my feet and then emptied the dustpan out the window. ‘A friend is coming.’
‘Oh?’
Percy had smoothed down his moustache and pushed back the rebel lock of hair that dangled over his pale forehead. He had put on a colourful cravat. A peacock would have been subtler.
‘Should I head off?’
‘Oh n-no,’ he said, but his cheeks had gone pinketty-pink and not from the exertion of dusting. He should have tried painting the sky this shade of mortification, so dramatic it was.
‘You’ll l-l… like her…’
‘Her?’ I echoed. Percy’s friend was a ‘she’? This was interesting. How had I never noticed Percy’s stutter before?
‘Will I?’ I looked at him. I didn’t feel jealous. I felt a faint pity for him, I suppose. I felt intrigued. ‘Are you courting this friend?’
‘I wish,’ he said brightly, then laughed.
* * *
At three o’clock, Percy’s friend whirled in like a dervish. I heard the downstairs door slam, then someone swept up the flights of stairs with more verve and energy than all those men marching across Battersea Common put together. This someone was wearing a great overcoat, quite masculine in style, with large shiny buttons, but underneath that was a beautiful green dress. Her boots were faded black and their tips were muddy. She gave me a broad, uncensored smile. Her eyebrows were dark and determined and I was instantly charmed. She was one of those real English eccentrics. It seemed to me that no other country produced women like this – self-assured, capable, but beautiful too. She seemed perfectly at home here in Percy’s studio, although she said she had never visited before. She would seem at home anywhere, I thought. She stalked around the apartment, taking in Percy’s pictures. I noticed that he didn’t ask her what she thought, and she didn’t offer an opinion but rather stared at each with a slightly mocking expression on her face. I got the feeling that, like me, she thought Percy could do better. I hoped she didn’t think Percy could do better than me, though.
Percy was all at sea. ‘Have I introduced you?’ he said. He couldn’t remember his right hand from his left.
‘I am,’ she said, shaking my hand vigorously, ‘Elsie Knocker.’
We talked about the weather. She said there was far too much of it; it was abominable. Percy roared even louder at her jokes than he did mine.
‘And what do you do, May?’
I cringed at the dreaded question. Here I was, pointlessly hanging around a studio – a geisha in a tea-house for a tormented male artist. ‘Not much at present,’ I said as though my malaise was a temporary thing and not the situation I had been in for the last twelve years.
‘And what did you do before “not much”?’
I smiled at her, shaking my head. ‘I have two daughters,’ I said, as though they were: a. very you
ng and b. took up all my time.
‘May was a child bride, weren’t you?’ Percy was trying to be helpful.
‘I married young, yes.’
Elsie Knocker said that she had recently joined Doctor Hector Munro’s flying ambulances. She seemed to think everyone must have heard of them, so I pretended Oh, yes, of course. Fortunately, Percy was more honest about his ignorance than I was, so she explained it to him: they were a group of doctors, nurses and volunteers who would drive to the front to pick up injured British or Belgian soldiers and either treat them or transport them to the nearest hospitals.
She would be away to the continent by the weekend.
‘Tomorrow?’ I asked breathlessly. Already I admired her greatly. Percy’s taste in women had come as a pleasant surprise.
‘To Harwich, yes, then onwards.’
How wonderful to speed off on an adventure! Men and women racing to do their bit, not like me, mooching around the tennis club with a bunch of people who hated the very deckchairs I sat on.
I could feel myself becoming tearful again.
‘Why don’t you volunteer, May? We are desperate for nurses,’ Elsie suggested, in the same easy way others might say, ‘Why not have a slice of Dundee cake?’
I thought of sitting on Grandma Leonora’s knee as she told me her stories about bandaging men in a field hospital – Broken men, desperate for a kind word.
The dreams I had. The dreams I had lost sight of a long time ago…
My heart was beating faster when I said, ‘Unfortunately, I don’t know the first thing about nursing.’
Elsie shrugged. ‘You brought up two girls.’
‘Hardly,’ I admitted. ‘I had plenty of help.’
Elsie had a throaty, sexy laugh. I could see why Percy adored her.
‘Nor can I…’ I listed on my fingers, ‘drive – I’ve never even been on a motorcycle… as for horses, they petrify me.’ I was going to go on about their pounding and unpredictable hooves, but I stopped. Few people seemed to feel about horses as I did: my rants usually succeeded only in making them dislike me further.
I looked up smiling, as though proud of my non-accomplishments. ‘I’d be more of a hindrance than a help.’
‘All those things can be overcome,’ Elsie said lightly.
‘I don’t think I could learn anything now.’ I did my tinkly little laugh. ‘I’m useless.’
‘‘Course you could.’ She eyed me suspiciously. ‘You’re younger than I am. Plus, there are more important qualities.’
‘Like what?’
‘Are you kind?’ She answered herself: ‘Clearly you are, otherwise you wouldn’t be hanging around this odd specimen.’ She poked Percy in the chest and he dissolved into helpless giggles. ‘Are you cooperative? I’ll wager yes. Are you willing? Are you able? That’s what we need. We desperately need women like you on the continent, May.’
This ‘we’ again. She clearly didn’t know the half of it. Half of me.
‘I really don’t think they do… Most people don’t like me.’ I choked back an entirely inappropriate tear. ‘I’m not a very pleasant person,’ I couldn’t help adding, ‘I have dark thoughts sometimes.’
‘I like you,’ she said. A warmth spread over me. This remarkable woman liked me. I couldn’t be all bad.
‘Why don’t you join us in Belgium, May? You’ll never be bored again.’
‘I’m not bored,’ I lied. ‘My life is fulfilling.’
She looked around at the tubes of oils and the stained cloths. Piles of colourful testers squeezed onto boards. A collapsed easel against a paint-splattered wall. This was Percy’s world, not mine.
Leaning towards me, Elsie whispered, ‘This isn’t the answer, you know.’
She squeezed my fingers. I was going to make a joke: ‘It suits me,’ but deep down I knew she was right. Percy wasn’t the answer; even Elizabeth wasn’t the answer… swimming wasn’t the answer, constitutional walks weren’t the answer, not to all my questions anyway.
* * *
Percy stayed upstairs while Elsie showed me her shiny motorbike in the street. I couldn’t believe it was all hers. Elizabeth was enough of a rarity with her car, I had never even heard of female motorcyclists. There was a sidecar with a broken door and Elsie asked if I wanted to go for a spin. Wordlessly, I got in. I was petrified but I didn’t want her to know it.
She looked at me. ‘You’re shaking like a leaf.’
‘Just go,’ I muttered, and we did. A clatter of noise and then a tug and we were away, and I was laughing like a lunatic in my vibrating tin box.
Hadn’t I wanted to pep up my life a bit?
‘How about a go on the back instead?’ Elsie shouted.
‘M-Me?’ Funny how I had acquired a stutter too.
‘Get on,’ she said, patting the seat behind her.
I clambered up, gripped her tightly and with a vroom and a whoosh, we were off. It was as alien to me as flying on a broom. Elsie was considerate; we didn’t go too fast – in fact, someone on a penny farthing zipped past us – but gradually we built up some speed. It was wonderful: if I hadn’t stopped believing when Grandma Leonora died, I would have thought we were being propelled along by the hand of God.
I was still trembling when we stopped outside Percy’s place. I didn’t want it to end though.
‘So that’s one down, two to go.’
‘What?’
‘Those things you said you can’t do – you can almost ride now. If I had an afternoon with you, I’d see to it you could drive and ride horses too.’
I could only laugh.
Back in the studio, while I drank a measure of gin to steady myself, Elsie put an arm around Percy’s shoulders. She was the same height as him.
‘Won’t you release this poor woman?’
Looking embarrassed, Percy squeaked: ‘Release her? May is free to do as she wishes!’
‘My husband wouldn’t want me to go,’ I said, flushing red. Elsie didn’t blanch though; she just said, ‘Hmm, then maybe he’s not the right husband for you…’
At the door she said, ‘You’re your own woman, May, don’t ever forget that.’
I couldn’t bring myself to speak. It was something I had longed to hear all my life. It turned out to be one of the few things that got me through until Christmas.
7
The autumn term of 1914 was not half so bad as the autumn term the year before had been, nor the one before that, yet I was at constant battle with myself. It was as though I had had a taste of freedom, only to have it snatched from my jaws.
Elizabeth had found herself a swimming coach and most of our conversations were now peppered with what this Mr Albert thought on the perennial questions such as: France to England or England to France? And spring, summer or autumn? There were up and downsides to all, apparently. At first, I thought Elizabeth might fall in love with Mr Albert, but she protested robustly, ‘Heavens! Mr Albert is expedient, that’s all.’ Elizabeth scrupulously followed Mr Albert’s exercise programme, which consisted of diagrams of little stick people. And when she wasn’t exercising, she was teaching English at the Belgian refugee centre. About half a million Belgian refugees had rolled up to Britain and about thirty of those were learning English phrases with Elizabeth. ‘How do you do?’ ‘It’s a nice day for it.’ I had no doubt that soon they would be wrestling with the issues of summer/winter France/England as well.
When she wasn’t doing any of those things, Elizabeth spent time with me. We knitted for our soldiers together. Imagining the delight on a soldier’s face when he unwrapped my socks helped keep me focussed. I also played with Tiggy and Winkle, who would have dearly loved to get their paws into our handiwork (one time, Delia somehow did).
Hypothermia was the swimmer’s great enemy, so in order for Elizabeth to acclimatise to the cold of the Channel, Mr Albert insisted that she did not wear a coat or cardigans any more. She should only have a single sheet at night and lighting the drawing room fire was strictly forbidden.
My visits were less comfortable than before, but I was allowed to pull a blanket across my knees and there were still plenty of cakes. Every so often Elizabeth would rise, stretch her legs and touch her toes, which I supposed was to warm herself up.
George was out of the house more than usual, which was a good thing. He was snappy when he saw me and asked for information only about the running of the house. He never looked at me – it felt as though he looked through me. In another last-ditch attempt at affection, I wrote him a sweet poem called ‘husband of mine’, but if he read it he never said and it disappeared from the bedside table where I had positioned it. By contrast, Percy continued to be more touchy-feely than ever, and although I could talk about most anything with Elizabeth, I couldn’t confide this. She thought she had solved the Percy problem, while I was realising we had merely postponed it. She already thought he was a shirker and a loafer. (I did think of saying, Well, what about your Mr Albert? But I didn’t.)
I didn’t like to admit it, even to myself, but the fact that Percy found me desirable did warm me, especially in the light of George’s lack of interest. I felt guilty about it though. Not only because I was married, but because I was taking from Percy and offering very little in return. I told myself that, until the issue came to a head, Percy would prefer that I continued my visits to his studio, which after all were a highlight of my week too.
As for the war, well, that was defying all predictions – it had taken on a whole life of its own. Or perhaps the reverse of that – it was as if the Grim Reaper was walking among us. My mother wrote that it was godlessness that allowed the war to happen; we had opened the door to the Devil and invited him in. She didn’t say it was my godlessness, but I knew that was what she meant.
* * *
In mid-December George had ‘pier business’ in Hull, so I travelled up to get the girls alone. My favourite tea boy from the train station had joined up – I wouldn’t have thought he was old enough – and was replaced by a grumpy elderly man who spilled almost as much tea on the counter as he put in the cup. There were fewer people in the station. I thought back to July when the platform had been teeming with life. There were no tourists, nor tour guides, now. There were still plays in Stratford but only in the side theatre. Most of the young players were fighting in Flanders or the Dardanelles, apparently.