A Woman's Place

by Maggie Ford

  ‘What is it?’ she asked.

  The doctor looked up from a brief examination. ‘She has influenza.’ He studied Eveline’s flushed face. ‘And so have you.’

  ‘So long as I can take care of her.’

  ‘I don’t think you’ll be able to. By this evening you’ll be in bed as well and in need of someone to take care of you! Your husband …’

  ‘My husband was reported missing,’ she said abruptly. ‘In the war.’

  ‘Hmm.’ He made no other comment, his expression inscrutable. ‘Is there anyone who can come in and take care of you?’

  ‘There’s my mother.’ She wasn’t sure she wanted to ask her. With the shop to look after she’d probably make her feel it was grudgingly done. Gran would come but had lately lost much of her vitality. She couldn’t impose on her either.

  She’d have to ask Albert’s mother. She was taking the loss of her son badly, and though she still had his brother Jim due to come home from the army soon, Eveline guessed that her firstborn would always be dear to her; she would remember not the man but the little boy, a life wasted. But if she was given something to do it might take her mind off things for a while.

  If only her own mind could be taken off things for a while. Her voice shook as she said that her mother-in-law lived in the next block to this one.

  ‘If you give me the number of her flat,’ the man said, his tone kind, ‘I’ll call in and inform her.’

  An elderly man, he had probably seen many like her whose sons and husbands would not be coming back, women whose faces looked tight and grief-stricken, who were holding their loss inside themselves. His tone remained gentle.

  ‘You need to take plenty of liquids, keep warm and take two aspirin three times a day. That’s the best I can do for you. I shall not charge you for this visit,’ he added kindly, seeing her so near to tears. ‘I am seeing others on my rounds who will probably demand more of my time, so they can pay for this one.’

  He gave a brief chuckle at his joke, waving away her thanks. ‘I’ll see myself out.’

  There was a knock on the front door. ‘I’ll get that,’ he said. ‘You look after yourself and your daughter.’

  It was Connie. Eveline could hear her talking to the doctor, but she was more concerned by Helena’s whimpering to be given comfort. Connie came in to find her cuddling the child to her.

  ‘How is she?’ were her first words.

  ‘He said it’s flu. She has to be kept warm and given aspirin.’

  ‘Didn’t he give you any other medicine?’

  ‘What can he give us? There’s no real cure. It just has to run its course. He didn’t charge me.’

  ‘I should think not!’ Connie stopped to regard her friend. ‘You look dreadful. He said you’ve got it as well.’

  ‘Don’t come too close, it’s terrible catching,’ Eveline warned as Connie came forward to put a hand on her forehead.

  Connie took no heed. ‘Get undressed and into bed beside Helena. I can better deal with the two of you in one room rather than going from one room to the other to see to you both.’

  She turned to her own daughter standing by the bedroom door. ‘Go home, Becky. Here’s the door key.’ She threw it across to her, Rebecca catching it expertly. ‘There’s food in the larder. Find something for your tea. I shall come home as soon as I can.’

  ‘You can’t let her go alone,’ Eveline protested.

  Connie turned back, her chin up. ‘She’ll be nine years old come this autumn and can look after herself. With her father no longer here, we must do the best we can. Once she understands that, the better she will be.’

  She sounded quite suddenly so efficient that had Eveline not felt so ill she’d have been shocked. The loss of her husband had slowly endowed her with a strength Eveline would never have expected of her last year while it was she who felt weakened by her own stupid hope of Albert’s return.

  Letting her take charge, Eveline got meekly into bed, wondering at this change in Connie that had happened so gradually she’d hardly noticed it until now. Connie had lost so much in her life – two brothers, a father, her husband, and had suffered the refusal of her mother to forgive her over what to Eveline seemed the trivial matter of wanting to marry the man she loved. She’d had to be strong to bear up under all that. But at least she knew there was no bringing George back to life.

  For herself, not knowing if Albert was dead or still alive was tearing her apart. As if in limbo she walked alternately on the edge of hope and resignation. But whereas she had a supportive family, Connie had virtually no one now.

  Compared to some families, her own had been relatively fortunate. Apart from her loss of Albert no one in the family had been killed in the war – the only casualty, her brother Len, had lost his leg. Of Connie’s family there was only herself, the childless Verity, whose own husband had been killed, and their mother left. Mrs Mornington had no relatives either of her own or her late husband’s to turn to.

  She did have Rebecca, the only one to continue the family line if not its name, but only three remained of the original family of six, or seven counting Verity’s husband, eight if only they’d had the good grace to include George. And if her mother still rejected Connie, she’d be virtually reducing that family to two.

  Chapter Thirty

  Aches and fever took three days to run its course but had left her weak and listless. Connie had proved a real brick. Without hesitation, she’d stayed with Eveline and Helena. Eveline wondered what she’d have done without her. Connie seemed to be there constantly, going home for a few hours to see how Rebecca was, then back she’d come, staying up for two nights, saying that a neighbour was keeping an eye on Rebecca. Whether it was true or not, Eveline was too ill to ask as her own daughter tossed and coughed and moaned beside her.

  Helena, perhaps because she was young, was up two days after the fever had gone, though not ready to go back to school for another couple of weeks. Eveline knew it could take the rest of February for her to regain her own strength. While she stayed in bed Connie did the shopping, coming over to prepare light meals. Her own mother hadn’t once come to see her.

  ‘I might as well not have a mum,’ she complained feebly as she made herself drink the broth Connie had prepared. Her appetite was still poor.

  Connie gave her an odd, sad look. ‘She couldn’t, Eveline.’

  ‘Of course she could! Or has she got flu too?’

  ‘She had to nurse your gran, Eveline.’

  The way she said it made Eveline look up sharply. ‘Is Gran ill?’

  ‘She went down with it as well.’

  Something in Connie’s tone arrested her. She studied her friend’s face. ‘I didn’t know. Why didn’t you say?’

  ‘I couldn’t while you were so ill.’

  ‘And how is she now? Has she been very bad?’

  Connie nodded, then as though finding it an effort, said slowly, ‘Yes, Eveline, very bad. She was getting on in years, and …’

  ‘Was?’ Eveline broke in, jumping on the past tense.

  ‘Eveline … it was too much for her. Your gran, she died from it.’

  ‘Died?’ Eveline echoed, then came to, blurting, ‘No! She can’t have!’

  It wasn’t sinking in. Gran, who always declared nothing got her down not even at her age, who’d looked after Helena all those years, who had stood by Eveline when her own mother had wanted nothing to do with her. ‘No, not my gran,’ she continued in disbelief.

  ‘It happened so quickly,’ Connie went on. ‘It took her after only two days. Eveline, I’m so sorry. You were too ill to be told.’

  Connie’s voice was droning as if trying to redeem the situation, but Eveline wasn’t listening, In her weakened state, she buried her face in her pillow and gave herself up to weeping as Connie gently removed the empty bowl from her trembling hand.

  First her wonderful and loving Albert; hopes of his being still alive had faded after these three months of nothing. Now her loving and underst
anding gran. She felt suddenly alone as she wept into her pillow. Connie, standing by, allowed her to give way to her distress.

  Gran’s funeral took place several days later, a small gathering on a cold and windy winter morning. Eveline wasn’t yet fully enough recovered to attend. Len and Flossie too were down with it. So was her sister Tilly’s little one as well as her brother Fred’s two kids. So many in this area alone had been stricken; people were dying of it every day. The papers were calling it an epidemic, saying that worldwide as many had died from it so far as had been killed in the war, which was frightening when in Britain alone there’d been three million war casualties with one million killed. Eveline could only pray that Len and his wife, and her brother and sister’s children, would recover.

  Unable to find strength enough to pay her last respects to the woman who had helped her through so many crises, she felt it keenly. She spent the time crying so much that her eyes swelled and her nose got so blocked up that she could hardly swallow the soup, much less the sandwiches, Connie had with left her.

  ‘I should be there,’ Eveline told her, sinking back exhausted into her chair after trying to pull herself together.

  ‘You definitely can’t go,’ Connie said, arranging a blanket around her knees. ‘You can’t risk a relapse. You’ve Helena to consider. I’ll be there to represent you. I shall be back as soon as I can. I’ve left Rebecca with a neighbour, so she’ll be all right.’

  To Eveline’s protests she said, ‘I’ve as much to thank your gran for as you. They will understand you not being there. I shall make sure they do.’

  In a way, Connie attending in her stead made Eveline cry all the more.

  ‘Don’t cry, Mummy,’ Helena said, near to tears herself. ‘I loved poor Granny Ansell too. I wish they could find Daddy.’

  Eveline had finally found courage enough to explain it all to her after Christmas when she had again wished her daddy were there. Helena had taken the explanation in silence and hadn’t spoken of him again until she fell ill, in her fever telling him she wanted him here. It had nearly broken Eveline’s heart, since she herself had been in no condition to comfort her daughter.

  ‘I can’t help crying,’ she wept, but Helena’s young face was solemn.

  ‘If you keep crying, you’ll be ill again like Auntie Connie said. And I don’t want you to have to be buried, because then I’d have no one to love me at all without Daddy here with us any more.’

  Eveline bit back her tears to stare at the child. In her own misery she hadn’t truly realised that Helena felt the loss as keenly as her. Children are naturally resilient, she’d told herself so many times, they didn’t understand. But Helena did understand and in her own way had suffered too.

  She held out her arms and, as Helena rushed into them, held her in a tight, shared embrace of mutual grief. ‘Why didn’t you say how you felt?’

  ‘I didn’t want to upset you, you was upset already,’ came the simple reply. ‘I didn’t want you to see how I miss Daddy and start you off crying again. I don’t like seeing you cry, Mummy.’

  ‘My darling, you can cry! We can all cry. You can cry all you want.’

  As if some barrier had been broken, Helena gave a great sob, burying her head against her mother, ‘Oh, Mummy, I miss my dad so much!’ came the choked, muffled words, the two of them sharing their tears of grief.

  ‘I know, I know, darling.’

  Eveline buried her face in the fair, wavy hair, suddenly realising how easily she could have lost Helena too. This terrible flu had mostly touched the young, sending them into unconsciousness, never to recover.

  ‘I know,’ she crooned again, closing her eyes as she gently rocked her daughter, grateful that the child had been spared to her.

  When Connie let herself into the flat she found the two asleep as if thoroughly exhausted, Helena on her mother’s lap, her head against her shoulder, Eveline’s arms still clasped about her.

  It was a wonder to Connie that she too hadn’t caught flu, the time she had spent nursing Eveline. February, and Eveline still hadn’t properly regained her former strength.

  ‘I’ll be all right soon,’ she kept saying. Connie knew it was more than just the aftermath of her illness. Eveline’s heart was in turmoil over the continuing lack of news about Albert.

  She wondered which was worse, losing a husband outright or this continual lingering uncertainty. Eveline was mourning a treasured grandmother, but Connie suspected the uncertainty about Albert to be the main cause of her friend’s failure to recover completely.

  Her gran’s savings hadn’t been much. She had wanted all her grandchildren to benefit, and as Eveline said, ‘If anyone needs it our Len does.’ The loan she’d been struggling to pay back was no longer a problem but that seemed to make Eveline pine after her even more. Connie felt helpless.

  She missed the woman too, a wonderful woman, but she had lived a long life. George had barely begun his. Eveline’s family had come through both the war and the Spanish flu, whereas she had lost a husband and two brothers to the war, and her father to a heart attack. She hated the thought that came to her but if somehow Albert was found to be miraculously alive, what would her own reaction be?

  Hastily she put the thought from her and thought of her sister Verity instead. She’d lost her husband. The last time she’d heard from Verity had been a letter a week after Christmas thanking her for her card and saying she said sold her home and was back living with Mother. ‘She’d been all alone in that great big house,’ she wrote, ‘And I was in mine. We’re company for each other.’

  It set Connie thinking. Now she had time to herself she’d write to Verity. Even as she penned a few words to ask how she was and put in what news she could find to write about, she felt a whole lot better. Perhaps Verity’s reply would help to narrow the rift between her and Mother. She waited for her to reply but when none came she knew Verity, now with their mother, would have come under her influence and certainly been turned against her.

  She wrote again, yet still nothing happened. In anger, she wrote a scathing letter to her mother instead, saying that she surely didn’t warrant this silence. What with her father dead, her husband dead and far more serious conflict having brought the world to its knees, such trivial old scores as theirs ought finally be buried. Still no reply.

  ‘I’m going to have it out with her, once and for all,’ she told Eveline. ‘You’ll be all right without me for a day or two?’

  Eveline offered her a smile. ‘I can manage. I might take a walk, just to my mum’s and back. I can’t sit around here for ever.’ Helena was back at school, she and Rebecca going off together like little sisters.

  ‘Not that I’ll buy anything,’ Eveline added wryly. ‘And I’m not asking her for any handout. I just need to get out. I’m sick of staring at four walls.’

  Connie knew all about that, on both counts. Neither of them was in work now and the suffragette meetings they’d once enjoyed had been disbanded, so there was little to do but gaze at the four walls of her own flat.

  A war widow’s pension didn’t stretch to even the cheapest seats at the cinema or any entertainment that cost more than a walk in the park, and window-shopping only made the lack of money more keen. Nine shillings a week pension plus two shillings per child had to cover everything; rent, heating and lighting, food and clothing. She was constantly dipping into what savings she had left. Before long it would all be gone.

  Eveline had even less and even though her parents ran their shop, she had too much pride to go cap in hand to them, as she’d just said. ‘After all, they’re finding it hard too with everyone frightened to spend too much.’

  ‘Yesterday I received notification to say that my rent is going up to seven shillings and sixpence a week.’ Connie began busying herself flicking a duster over Eveline’s sideboard while the girl looked on listlessly. ‘You must have had one as well.’ Eveline gave a miserable nod, seeming to be only half listening, but she ploughed on.

  ‘We�
�re beginning to live from hand to mouth. Anyone falling behind with the rent can be evicted and that would be awful. I was thinking, it does seem silly us both paying rent on our separate lettings. If we shared just one flat we would be paying only half rent each. It does seem sensible, don’t you think? And we do get on well together. What do you say?’

  She saw Eveline look up at her and was encouraged. ‘My flat is the larger of the two and has nicer views.’ She waited but Eveline had lowered her eyes again.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she surprised Connie by answering. ‘If Albert suddenly came home and I didn’t have our …’

  Connie couldn’t help herself. Her temper suddenly flew as she shot upright from her dusting.

  ‘He’s not coming home! The sooner you face that truth, Eveline, the easier you’ll be able to get on with your life. It’s more than five months now – you can’t go on forever hoping. It’s wrong!’

  Eveline seemed too apathetic to be ruffled by the outburst. ‘Some people go on hoping all their lives,’ she said quietly, almost as if talking to herself. ‘It’s what keeps them going. I don’t think that makes them wrong.’

  Connie had no answer to that. She fell to the dusting again, quite unnecessarily diligent.

  She caught a train for Perivale on the Saturday morning, taking Rebecca with her. It hadn’t been easy scraping together the child’s half-fare as well as her own but she was determined to have her mother see her only grandchild. Rebecca was beautiful with her grandmother’s fair, wavy hair, and wide blue eyes set in a heart-shaped face. Who could resist being drawn to her?

  Rebecca had a new dress for the occasion, cheap but a very pretty blue, with a short, flared skirt and wide collar. Connie had sacrificed a few shillings of her savings for the occasion. She had got nothing for herself – the money had to last as long as possible.

  Sitting in the carriage she felt utterly shabby, recalling how well she had once dressed. What would her mother think, seeing her in this well-used coat, this hat well out of fashion, she who at one time would have thrown out a garment after a month for some newer style?