by Maggie Ford
He’d already written about going for weeks without a proper wash or a change of clothes, picking lice out of the ones he was wearing. He couldn’t write that again. Nor would he ever write about going through each day dazed by relentless bombing, trying to carry out duties while mind and body became rigid under the scream of enemy shells and the jarring of explosions, or the almost abject gratitude at being relieved by replacements and told his company was being given a day’s rest.
All he could do was say that he was well, that he was cheerful, search for some funny little anecdote to tell her, add that he loved her dearly and missed her, longed to be back home with her, hoped she was coping and that little Helena was fine, that he admired what she was doing for the war effort and thought her a real brick to be doing such work and for sticking by him, with her letters always cheerful and full of encouragement and hope. The problem was, he’d said this or something like it in every letter he had written her so far. She must be getting bored with it. One thing he hoped she realised – his letters might be pitifully repetitious but each one contained his heart.
One thing writing to her did, it helped him forget what was going on all around him, if only for a short while. Licking the pencil again he ended, ‘Will write again soon. Can hardly wait for your next letter. Hope it’s not too long coming. Our mail is awful. I love and miss you, my dearest.’
He was about to write, ‘Your loving Albert,’ when a brief barrage of bursting shells had him ducking down into the mud, praying it wouldn’t be his turn yet. One shell exploded near enough to collapse part of the trench on top of him to cover him and George, crouching nearby, in mud.
Next thing, a blessed voice was yelling, ‘Move, yer lazy buggers! The relief’s arrived.’ Words like the singing of an angel!
She’d only been able to glance at Albert’s letter before she and Connie rushed off to catch their bus to work, but what she had read had heartened her considerably. Now in their lunch break, she could open it to read in more detail.
‘He says him and George have been at a rest camp,’ she told Connie. ‘Their company was sent there and they both made the most of it, eating, sleeping, having a bath, being given clean clothes, and getting deloused like he was some flea-ridden stray dog. I suppose that’s a joke. He says George is sitting next to him in the mess tent writing his letter to you.’
‘I’ve not had George’s letter yet,’ Connie said dismally.
‘It’ll come, Connie, don’t worry.’
She returned her gaze to her letter. ‘He says that though they’ve now been sent back, it’s to a support trench, a lot safer, out of harm’s way.’
The relief that had flooded over her at that dissolved seconds later as she read on. ‘Oh dear, he says it was only temporary and they’ve been told they’ll be sent forward very soon to relieve a battalion at the front line. Oh, Connie …’
Her hand flew to her lips, unable to help herself as the courage she’d been clinging to all these months drained away. ‘Oh, Connie, what if …’
She couldn’t finish, Connie’s face registering the same fear. ‘And George will be with him,’ Connie whispered.
Eveline didn’t reply. Slowly she folded the letter on Albert’s closing words, ‘I miss you, my darling. Keep well. Your ever loving husband, Albert.’
The next day George’s letter came. Connie didn’t read it out as she normally did, sharing the impersonal bits, but Eveline guessed from her friend’s bleak face that it bore the same news as Albert’s letter. All she could do was take Connie’s arm in a firm grip as they stood in the noisy factory that smelled of oil and metal shavings.
‘They’ll come through, I know they will. We have to take heart and carry on.’
They were being given plenty of encouragement to do so with Mrs Pankhurst calling for every woman who had been a suffragette to do her bit. She was also planning a huge peaceful July demonstration to show support for the war effort. It was to be as large as any of the peacetime marches.
They came readily to her call, working themselves to a standstill as a way to ease their fear for their men away fighting and dull the thumping of the heart whenever the mind was allowed an idle moment to turn to all that was happening in France, now being called the Western Front, and also in Gallipoli in the Dardanelles, making the Zeppelin raids on London seem trivial.
So much was happening in the world: Russia was fighting Germany on what was being called the Eastern Front. The liner Lusitania had been sunk off the Irish coast by a German submarine on her return from New York with several hundred Americans among the passengers; fourteen hundred lives were lost. People were again attacking shops owned by those with foreign names, lumping them all together as German. Zeppelin raids were killing British civilians while along the Western Front there was complete stalemate.
Through it all, like everyone else, Eveline and Connie worked on at their tedious jobs trying not to think of what their husbands might be going through, each day dreading the telegram that would turn their fear to grief.
‘A suffragette demonstration will be a welcome diversion,’ Eveline said, though this time she couldn’t bring herself to refer to it as being like old times. It wasn’t like old times. It wouldn’t be like old times ever again.
As the march moved off from the Embankment on Saturday the seventeenth of July, none would have believed it to be July – driving, squally rain fell. Some had their children with them but Gran had kindly volunteered to have the two girls.
Despite the weather, it promised to equal any of those earlier ones; this was the largest since that of 1913, the papers said, with forty thousand women waiting to march off, to be watched by one hundred thousand spectators lining the route between Westminster and Blackfriars.
The WSPU circular apparently sent to all parts of the country had said, ‘So grave is our national danger and so terrible the loss of precious lives due to the shortage of munitions, Mr Lloyd George as Minister of Munitions has been asked to receive a deputation and hear women’s demand for the right to make munitions and render other war service.’ So it was only to be expected that the response would be immense, both from those wanting to take part and those ready to give their support by coming along in rain and wind to watch the ‘Right To Serve’ procession pass.
Connie couldn’t help it – as ninety bands struck up the ‘Marseillaise’, in honour of those fighting in France and the great resistance France herself was putting up and so many of her soldiers being slaughtered, and as one the flags were raised, she burst out, ‘It is just like old times!’
Despite the weather that called for mackintoshes rather than summer clothing, making it a procession of grey and brown and the khaki of the City Territorials, there was no lack of colour from the hundred and twenty-five contingents raising a patriotic red, white and blue to replace the suffragette colours of purple, green and white.
‘I think it’s every bit as colourful,’ Connie remarked excitedly.
With Mrs Pankhurst at its head, the procession moved up through Whitehall, Trafalgar Square, Piccadilly, Park Lane, turning right into Oxford Street, down Regent Street to Piccadilly Circus, down along Northumberland Avenue and back to Victoria Embankment. Waving banners, no longer calling for votes for women, declared instead, SHELLS MADE BY A WIFE MAY SAVE A HUSBAND’S LIFE, and MEN MUST FIGHT AND WOMEN MUST WORK.
As in the past there were pageants, maybe not so colourful as once they’d been but more appropriate to the times – the pageant of the Allies was led by a woman in purple and black carrying a tattered Belgian flag to depict that country’s bereaved but unbroken spirit. There were national costumes, flags and banners of every Allied country while bands played their national airs and anthems.
‘Look, they’ve set up tables all the way along, so people can sign up for war work,’ Connie pointed out as they marched by.
At every table, shielded by tarpaulins, Eveline could see women actually queuing in atrocious rain and driving wind to add their signatures.
‘It really is amazing,’ she said. ‘Nothing like this ever happened when we marched before.’
But then this was patriotism and her heart swelled as ninety bands struck up in a thunderous National Anthem at the end of it all.
Connie was smiling as they came away. ‘I feel as though I have been given a new lease of life. I feel I could face anything now. Isn’t being a suffragette just simply wonderful?’
Despite her years living in the East End she had never quite lost the vernacular of her old life.
But she was right, of course. Eveline too felt that special lift, coming away from what had been one of a most successful, perhaps the most successful, of all the demonstrations the suffragette movement had ever produced, and this time with the government’s blessing. At that moment, it seemed to her that life was very sweet despite the war.
Had it not been for their husbands away fighting, life would have been even sweeter. Factory work was bringing in a good wage, money was no longer a problem for Eveline, and Connie still had her little nest egg, the money she’d left home with, virtually still intact. If only she would put behind her the family that had thrown her out.
‘I know, I really must stop thinking about them,’ she admitted when Eveline dropped another little hint in December as they left their suffragette meeting.
Clinging to her hat against wet and blustery gusts of wind, Eveline smiled and said no more. Her parents were never far from Connie’s mind. She’d talk about them at any given moment, dragging up the past, opening old wounds.
Eveline had learned to endure it for the most part, well aware that it helped her rid herself of some of the bitterness that lay inside her. It was obvious she would never get over the hurt she’d suffered.
‘With this war and all, and my brother Denzil now in France, you’d think they could put the past behind them,’ she said as they turned for home. ‘If I wrote to say that I was as much at fault as they over what happened, they might warm to me again.’
‘But you weren’t at fault,’ Eveline pointed out, unable to keep silent. ‘They told you to give George up, and you couldn’t do that. What girl in love could?’
‘But if I just wrote to say I was? You can’t begin to know how it feels to have your parents turn against you.’
Oh, she knew all right! If not as long drawn out as Connie’s, there’d been rejection, nastiness, trying to get her parents to see her side of it, her mother scorning an innocent baby as if it had been its fault to have been illegitimate but for Albert’s timely and selfless intervention. Yes, she knew about rejection and hostility.
‘I think I will write to them,’ Connie went on firmly as she bent her head to another vicious gust of wind.
But she hadn’t done so. As the days to Christmas crept nearer and Connie made no mention of it again, Eveline guessed that it had to do with fear – so long as she held back from sending her letter, she couldn’t be hurt by any adverse response, or lack of any response at all.
Other than that, she had to admire Connie for the way she was facing up to wartime conditions, hindered as she was by the genteel upbringing she’d had.
Factory work had come hard to her but she’d adjusted to it. They both had, coming home these days not so weary as they’d first been after the long hours expected of them.
Their five-year-old girls were now at Wilmott Street School a few hundred yards away, going alternately to Gran’s and Eveline’s mother-in-law for their dinner hour. Her mother, suddenly declaring that having them after school was too much for Gran at her age, had decided she would collect and give eye to them until they were picked up and taken home. Eveline guessed her mother harboured a bit of jealousy that Albert’s mother might take over completely, but at least Mum’s move was a step in the right direction.
Connie had found someone to look after them now and again so they could go to the pictures, the flickering screen helping them to unwind from the endless round of work. A couple of evenings a week they’d go round to each other’s flat. They always went shopping for food together after work and most Saturdays went window-shopping up West with the children.
Until the weather became too cold Sunday was spent taking the girls to Victoria Park. They took turns cooking Sunday dinner, unless they were asked to Eveline’s parents’ for a Sunday meal. All in all life wasn’t too bad.
‘What do you think of this?’ Connie asked a few days before Christmas, holding out a Christmas card to her parents for Eveline to read.
Wishing them good tidings she’d added that it could be the right time to forget old differences now that they were all in this war together and, Eveline was dismayed to read, saying that she might have been at fault for leaving home as she had done, even asking for forgiveness in the spirit of Christmas.
‘You can’t send that!’ she burst out, handing it back, her hands – all floury from rolling out pastry for a few mince pies – leaving fingerprints on the simple Christmas picture. ‘Connie, you can’t!’
‘It’s only a card. It’s not like a letter.’
‘It’s still humbling yourself.’
Connie’s lips tightened. ‘I’m going to send it,’ she said stubbornly.
‘It won’t make any difference,’ Eveline predicted.
But Connie remained obdurate. ‘It has to end some time.’
She had sent it, but no card came in reply though she had one from her sister Verity, full of good cheer and saying everyone was well. Eveline wondered if the card didn’t accentuate the lack of one from Connie’s parents but she said nothing.
She was glad to see Connie perk up, the two of them spending their second Christmas of the war with her mum and dad with most of the family, but without Len. Flossie, his fiancée, though with no ring yet, popped in for an hour or so, making his absence all the more felt. That absence left something lacking around the Christmas dinner table this year.
In early January, Connie received another letter from her sister. She came over to Eveline unexpectedly on the Tuesday morning well before they were due to leave together for work. As Eveline opened the door to her she was holding Verity’s letter in her hand as though she would crush it out of existence and the look on her face had Eveline reaching out to drag her inside.
‘What is it?’ she asked as she closed the door, throwing the lobby into winter darkness. Leading her into the gaslit kitchen, she saw Connie’s face was chalk-white. Surely anything her parents had to say to her couldn’t produce this look of devastation. ‘What is it?’ she asked again.
‘Verity wrote to me,’ came a voice so small she could hardly hear it. ‘My brother’s been killed.’
Chapter Twenty-five
With her arms about the weeping girl in an effort to comfort her, Eveline found herself thinking of her brother Len, how she would be if he were killed.
He too had been sent abroad but was somewhere in a place called Mesopotamia fighting the Turks. His infrequent letters home had spoken of the heat and dust, flies and fearful disease, the latest in December writing of winter rain turning flat ground to a clinging morass.
Eveline pulled herself up sharply. What was she doing thinking all this when Connie was weeping here in her arms?
‘It was left to Verity to tell me,’ Connie was sobbing. ‘They can’t even tell me themselves. How can they hate me so much?’ Eveline knew whom she was talking about.
‘Try not to think about it,’ was all she could say, aware how painfully inadequate that must sound.
‘I don’t know why I’m being so foolish,’ Connie hiccuped between sobs. ‘I hardly knew my brother. He was always away at public school, like Herbert. My father believed in that. He only came home during the holidays.’ She seemed compelled to talk through her tears, words tumbling out as if with a life of their own. ‘He should never have signed on. He’d just turned eighteen, ready to go on to university. He’d be alive now if he had. I hardly ever saw him, I mostly remember him as a little boy of six or seven being sent away. He shou
ldn’t have left home so young. I remember him standing with his suitcase, looking small and lost, and all I can see now is this little boy lying dead in a muddy hole … Oh, Eveline, how could they not tell me?’
‘They might do yet,’ Eveline tried to console her. ‘They must be in such grief. When they’ve gathered their thoughts together, I’m sure they’ll tell you.’
She continued cuddling her, waiting for the weeping to exhaust itself. ‘You must write a reply to your sister, and I think you should get in touch with your mum and dad too, to say how devastated you feel. It could be the turning point.’
Connie did so after she’d calmed down but when no reply came, she sank into a sort of depression. Eveline, feeling partly to blame for advising her, had trouble even making her get ready for work. She’d go there at six thirty in the morning with Helena, making Connie’s breakfast and having practically to get little Rebecca ready to take to Gran’s until it was time for her to go to school at nine. She’d drop Helena off with her own mother then go back to Connie’s flat to find her sitting exactly where she’d left her.
After a week of it sympathy turned to irritation. ‘For goodness’ sake, Connie, pull yourself together!’ Her answer was a bleak stare that made her all the more annoyed.
‘I know it’s terrible losing your brother,’ she said, more impatient than stern. ‘But there are thousands and thousands who’ve lost husbands and sons and brothers. I’m sorry, Connie, but I think this is more to do with your parents, than losing your—’
She broke off, knowing she was treading on very shaky ground. But having Connie flare up at her would be better than this bleak, blank stare.
‘I have to say it, Connie,’ she hurried on. ‘Sod ’em! George and Rebecca are far more important and you’ve got to carry on with your own life or you’ll end up going off your head. If your parents were dead you’d have to carry on.’
She hadn’t aimed for her words to do the trick, but they had Connie springing up in sudden fury. ‘You know nothing of how I feel. You’re just an unfeeling silly bitch! You don’t know how it feels. You’ve lost no one!’