by Lizzie Page
Fumbling with her bag, Elsie muttered, ‘The truth is, I don’t know the first thing about what Kenneth likes.’ She couldn’t undo the clasp of her purse. It was like she had lost the ability to function. Tears filled her eyes, and I had to hold her hand to steady her. Kenneth was seven now, nearly eight. I tried to think of Uilleam at the same age. What kind of things had he liked? According to Mother, we had mostly spent our time punching each other or destroying her furniture. I remembered he didn’t like learning his scales. We used to play ‘Ring-a-Ring-a-Roses’, ‘Duck, Duck, Goose’ and ‘What’s the Time, Mr Wolf?’ I remembered a rare occasion when we played that with my father in the garden, Uilleam and me creeping up to him: ‘Two o’clock,’ ‘Four o’clock…’ And then his wonderful anticipated roar – ‘Dinner time!’ –causing us to scatter across to the rose bushes. How could it be that I once adored being frightened?
We came across a stall selling tops, horses, cars, dolls, soldiers and guns made from tin. I told Elsie the little soldiers would be just the thing.
‘Really?’ she looked doubtful.
‘Yes!’ I thought of Dr Munro lining up his coins for battle on the Ypres Salient – ‘The living conditions for our men will be far worse…’
‘I don’t want Kenneth to think—’
‘Think what?’
‘Nothing.’
She counted the soldiers into a tin box and they made a clitter-clatter noise as they fell in. Clitter clatter. The sound stayed in my head.
How strange it was to be out and about, in the open, wearing bonnets on our heads instead of helmets. I was alert, still looking for the sniper, still listening out for the shell. Working out the best exit through the crowds, feeling around for my emergency kit. But the cries were the market traders calling out their wares, and the holes in the ground were made by rain and wagon wheels. That sudden boom was the slamming of a front door. That rat-a-tat was an old man’s cough.
Further along, there was a stall displaying board games and Elsie became animated as she looked at the chess sets. The old stallholder had an ear trumpet, and Elsie was soon shouting into it, ‘Which is best for a starter? Is seven a good age to learn?’ Without even asking, she got the price knocked down too.
The stallholder carefully wrapped a set in crisp brown paper, wishing Elsie the best of times. ‘Chess will help your young man learn war strategies!’ he added encouragingly as we walked away.
Elsie looked tearful again.
‘You’ve got two lovely presents there, Elsie,’ I reassured her. ‘Kenneth will be thrilled.’
Ducking shells, driving through the blackness, she never looked so worried as she did now. She was almost quaking with fear. I squeezed her fingers. They had grown thinner over the last year, and they must have been a lot thinner otherwise I wouldn’t have noticed. Kenneth would be delighted with his mother, I was sure. Who wouldn’t be dazzled by this extraordinary woman blowing in from the east?
We had tried to arrange to journey back to Pervyse together, but marrying our train and boat timetables proved too convoluted, so we agreed to travel separately. I said I might be back in three days. She might be there in four or five. ‘It depends,’ she said vaguely. She didn’t say what it depended on.
I knew I’d miss her. She was my right hand; she said I was her left foot. We didn’t have to speak to know what the other was thinking. It was only after she’d got on her train to Exeter via Birmingham, after she’d tearfully waved her grubby handkerchief at me, only once I was outside of the bubble that surrounded me whenever I was with her, that I grew annoyed at her again about the meeting the day before. Hoisting me up onto the stage! Laughing at my principles! ‘Gilbert the Filbert’ testimonies indeed!
I didn’t go to Dorset. I had sent a telegram to my mother asking if she wanted to meet me in the city. I didn’t particularly want her to accept, but unfortunately she did. She had medicines, a tailored coat and new shoes to collect in Knightsbridge (Dorset was too provincial for her shopping tastes).
We arranged to meet by the Eros fountain at Piccadilly Circus. I had heard people talk of the statue – even some of the Belgian boys had asked me if it was as fine as people said. Gazing skyward, I saw the chubby naked cherub, his arrow pointing towards me. I tried to feel a rapport with this great work of art, but couldn’t. In any case, it was rapidly becoming apparent that meeting here wasn’t my brightest idea. The area was jammed with horses, carriages and swerving buses. There were dozens of women, who I think may have been prostitutes, milling about, perhaps attracted by Eros and the promise of love. The women were wearing lots of make-up – which only served to enhance their unhappy expressions – and they were calling out ‘Special offers for our boys!’ and other such indelicate things. Sometimes I would see servicemen who looked, from behind, like Harold. Each time they turned around it was a disappointment. Plenty of soldiers appeared half-cut: one man, a lanky streak in naval uniform, put his face close to mine and yelled ‘Raaaa!’
I thought, here he is, ‘The pride of Piccadilly, the blasé roue’, and suddenly I laughed… I probably looked as nutty as the ‘Knut with a K’!
I wondered if Mother and I would even recognise each other in the crowds. But then I saw her, waving, from across the way, and I could breathe again. My mother was wearing a wonderful black fur and shiny high heels, still more polished, more groomed, than most women half her age. I crossed over to her, carefully dodging the buses and the horse manure, and as I did, one of the made-up women hissed at me, ‘Ooh, Miss Hoity Toity…’ and another said, ‘You’ll get yours!’
‘Mairi, look at your hat!’
Mother seemed relieved at my appearance. I think she was expecting worse. Putting her arm through mine, she brushed my cheek with her lips. ‘Let’s get away from here.’ She confidently led me down a crowded side alley, which was a relief because, in truth, I could never find my way around London.
‘We’d hoped you’d bring her.’
‘Who?’ And who was ‘we’?
‘Mrs Knocker, of course.’
‘I didn’t say that I would.’
‘Oh well,’ she said. ‘I suppose she was occupied. Come and meet Mrs Godfrey.’
My mother had brought a friend along to meet the daughter she hadn’t seen for a year! I was hurt, but also relieved. Had we been alone, I’m not sure that – apart from dissecting Uilleam’s life – we would have found a great deal to talk about. Perhaps Mrs Godfrey might make a pleasant diversion.
* * *
Mrs Godfrey was large and imposing. She said she was a member of my mother’s discussion circle. I didn’t know how much discussion would have happened with her in the group. She was as dominant in conversation as she was physically. My hopes of a pleasant afternoon began to fade.
‘I’m taking you to The Ritz, child,’ she said, looking me up and down as though I might have scurvy. ‘Aren’t they feeding you over in France?’
‘Belgium.’
She and my mother marched off and I trailed after them.
I heard my mother say, ‘I don’t know what she’s done with her hair underneath that dreadful bonnet… Whatever possessed her to wear green?!’
Mrs Godfrey replied, ‘There, dear, she doesn’t look half as bad as she did in the newspaper.’
* * *
The Palm Court at The Ritz was like nowhere I had ever been. Opulent and ostentatious, with panelled mirrors and glamorous pictures in glamorous frames. Chandeliers dripped half the height of the room. The dining tables had shapely carved legs and were covered by tablecloths so dazzling white you almost wanted to shade your eyes. There were people milling everywhere, although much to the chagrin of my mother and Mrs Godfrey, they looked neither opulent nor ostentatious. On one table, two soldiers, one with a dirty bandage around his head, were talking excitedly. They had Australian accents, I think. Their mouths and forks were full of food. They couldn’t eat quickly enough. I knew that feeling.
‘It wasn’t like this last time we were her
e!’
‘It seems the whole world dines here now!’ said Mrs Godfrey disapprovingly.
My mother whispered her greatest insult: ‘They have gone too cheap.’
On the next table, there were six girls. I would guess they were celebrating a birthday or an engagement, for they were making a big fuss of one of their number. Three of them had yellow skin, which meant they were munitionettes. Their red lipstick clashed terribly with the colour of their cheeks. I could hardly take my eyes off them. I had read about these so-called ‘canary girls’, but it was the first time I’d seen them. The celebrated girl was the most yellow of them all: as she opened her present, I saw even her fingers and her fingernails were discoloured. If you didn’t know about the war and the factories, you would think they were a different race. You might think she was from space, just visiting Planet Earth.
‘I’m glad you’re not doing that work, Mairi,’ my mother said loudly.
‘How do they bear it?’ agreed Mrs Godfrey.
‘It’s not flattering,’ my mother added.
I don’t think the girls heard. Even so, I smiled apologetically at them. They didn’t smile back, not even after I took off my expansive bonnet so they could see my utilitarian hair. Hopefully they understood that I wasn’t a privileged loudmouth like my mother and her friend. I too knew about dangerous, rough work.
Mrs Godfrey leaned forwards. She was wearing a white lace top with a high collar and tiny delicate buttons that didn’t suit her. She was an affront to tiny, delicate buttons.
‘So, Mairi, won’t you tell us all about the indefatigable Mrs Knocker?’
Our barn-storming speech at the Glasgow Assembly Rooms was already in the London papers. I found it incredible the speed words could fly – if only action were half so quick.
‘What do you want to know?’
‘Well, for a start—’ they looked conspiratorially at each other as though they had planned this, ‘whatever happened to Mr Knocker?’
I told them what Elsie had told me, about his death in Java. I guessed it was from a tropical disease, very painful. I even borrowed her phrase, ‘Slow, slow, quick,’ as my mother wiped tears of compassion from her eyes.
‘Such a love story. Such a tragedy.’
‘Elsie’s strong,’ I reminded them. ‘She has channelled her loss into the war effort.’
‘Oh yes,’ they agreed but they were nearly inconsolable.
I added, as Elsie had told me, that it was only thanks to the incredible efforts of everyone back home that we could carry on. My mother and Mrs Godfrey loved this – they preened and puffed up so much that I thought Mrs Godfrey’s buttons would burst off her blouse.
Even The Ritz was not exempt from rations on food. There was corned-beef pie or corned-beef pasty on the menu. If Elsie were here, she would have said, ‘Hmm, do you have any corned beef?’ And I would have been in fits of giggles. My mother explained it was a job to get meat now. They were meat-free most days. Cheese was a poor substitute.
‘Have you started eating vegetables, Mother?’
She didn’t like that. She blinked at me. ‘I always have, Mairi.’
When Mrs Godfrey went to use the facilities, my mother leaned in and patted my hand. My instinct was to draw back my fingers but I let them stay. This felt unfamiliar but perhaps it was progress. I thought briefly of how Jack might have felt when I grabbed his hand. I wanted to ask about Uilleam then, but Mother got in first with another pressing question –
‘Any amour on the Continent?’ My mother refused to say ‘Pervyse’ and Belgium did not sound nearly glamorous enough for her.
I quickly dispelled thoughts of Harold from my mind. I had tried to convince myself that the entire episode was a childish error: not unlike the daft rumours that kept circulating that the war was over. Only an inexperienced idiot would fall for those.
My mother was staring at me.
‘Amour? Not really, no.’
She wasn’t the type to throw random French words into a conversation. ‘It means “love”—’ she added, looking annoyed.
‘I know what it means,’ I cut in. ‘The answer is still no.’
I felt exasperated by her. It was true that of that kind of love – the romantic kind – I had nothing to report… but what love I had seen! I’d seen men cradle their friends in their arms the way mothers caress their newborn babies. I’d seen people risk their lives for the wounded of the ‘other side’. I’d seen men run through gunfire to pull a trapped comrade free. I’d seen men write last letters for other men too weak to sit up and form the words themselves. I’d seen what Elsie did in our tiny cellar and I knew how the Belgians suffered and fought for their country. Plenty of acts of love every hour of every day that I knew my mother wouldn’t be interested in because they wouldn’t result in an impressive society marriage.
‘There must be some suitable… officers?’
‘No.’ Not regular soldiers of course. My mother. The snob.
‘Or doctors?’
‘I’m not interested, Mother.’
‘I always thought Dr Munro was quite the gentleman.’
‘He is.’
‘Then, wouldn’t it—’
‘Wouldn’t it what?’
Mrs Godfrey came back, also scowling. ‘Frightful lavs,’ she said. ‘Appalling lighting. Could hardly see beyond the end of my nose.’
Yet another thing that had gone downhill. Those poor visitors to The Ritz!
However, the thought of Mrs Godfrey enduring our commode, or even squatting in the woods, cheered me up and got me through my corned-beef pasty.
I stopped at Furnes on the way back from England.
Helen and Arthur were leaving Belgium. If they had hoped to go out on a high, they were to be disappointed. Helen’s round glasses were now held together with sticky tape in the middle and on both sides. It gave her the look of a lunatic. They made me think not of Charlotte Brontë and Mr Héger but of Mr Rochester’s wife in the attic. Arthur had visibly shaky hands. They had been in a car accident just the day before. Arthur had come off that damn slippery road from Menin and partly wrapped the Daimler around a tree. Untypically of him, he seemed determined to make light of it.
‘It just jumped out at me!’
But when Arthur left the room, Helen whispered that it had been pitch-dark, and an explosion had gone off right in front of them. They had careened off the road, smack, and it wasn’t Arthur’s fault… The two soldiers they were transporting in the back were killed, one instantly, the other lingering on for a desperate hour. Helen said despondently, ‘They were half-dead anyway.’ She continued, ‘Before he… went, the boy called out for his grandad.’ She looked at me incredulously through those wonky lenses as if it were an amazing thing. ‘I never heard anyone do that before.’
We played pontoon, then Newmarket. We used some nuts I’d bought at Ostend as gambling chips. I won three games in a row. They all seemed so downhearted that I grew fearful I’d win the fourth. I didn’t want to be the one who was lucky in cards.
‘Shall we play snap instead?’ I suggested.
‘For God’s sake, Mairi, not snap!’ Arthur said so fiercely that we looked up in surprise.
Later, when he left the room again, Helen whispered, ‘It’s not you, Mairi, he just can’t stand a sudden noise.’
* * *
Dr Munro said he wanted to speak to me. As we walked into the kitchen, I noticed his limp was more pronounced than before. He said he’d had a brush with a bullet the other day. In the candlelight, he looked like a goblin or a wizard about to perform magical spells.
He said the collapse of the cellar house last week was ‘the final straw’. It made me remember the three little piggies and I thought, no, the final straw will be if the Germans blow our house down.
‘It’s no longer secure.’
‘The cellar itself is fine. We won’t build upwards again, that’s all.’
‘Why don’t you come back here? Our work is invaluable too.’
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I knew it was, and I felt bad that Dr Munro could think that I would ever look down on him. I fully understood that his contribution at Furnes was as important as any.
‘You could achieve as much here as you do in Pervyse,’ he continued.
Did he really think I could leave our first-aid post behind? I felt like I was being tempted. Is this how Moses felt?
‘Elsie would never agree to it,’ I said.
‘Then come alone. She might have to follow then.’ I didn’t say anything. Dr Munro must have known Elsie did not follow anyone.
‘What if the Germans breach the line?’ he said, voicing my greatest fear.
I thought of Elsie’s love for the boys, her love for me. We were still sisters after all. ‘That won’t happen.’
‘You’d only have minutes to get out.’
‘I know,’ I said weakly.
He didn’t press me further.
I decided to stay two nights in Furnes – It would be my last time in a comfortable bed for a long time and, for once, I wanted to savour it. The meeting with my mother was still much on my mind. I had tried not to have high hopes about seeing her, but I must have had, otherwise I wouldn’t feel this downhearted. I wondered if that was because of the war and her failing to understand, or if there were something else too. While my grandmother – her mother – was alive, they had never been close, so maybe the emotional distance between us was normal for her? I reminded myself what Elsie had said –the best thing to do was to make your own beloved family. Maybe that’s what growing up is – realising your family can’t always be what you want them to be.
Before I left I tried to persuade Mother to explain clearly what was going on with Uilleam. I explained that I learned so little about the situation from their letters. She usually loved to discuss how misunderstood Uilleam was, but instead she mouthed, ‘Not in front of Mrs Godfrey!’, and there wasn’t another moment during the rest of our meeting when we weren’t in front of Mrs Godfrey; my mother made sure of that.