Eve, now well into her pregnancy, looking blooming and prettier than ever, laughed and put on a funny voice. ‘You want nice petrol? I get.’
* * *
The last Christmas Day of the war was a terrible day for Georgia. Eve had told Nick where to find her father’s stash of petrol, and he was going to cycle over from Emberley to get one of the cans. It was a long time, if she ever did, before Georgia stopped blaming herself for mentioning using the car to go to Emberley. If I had been content to borrow Eve’s cycle, none of it would have happened. It was a long time too, before she could once more shake off the notion of divine retribution.
She was already edgy when, after waiting about, ready to leave for two hours after Nick had arranged to call, he had not arrived. Then a police sergeant and a constable arrived.
‘Sorry to disturb you on Christmas Day and all that… but there’s been this accident, ma’am. Bottom of Longmile Hill by the T-junction.’
Georgia’s expression became fixed.
‘The only clue we could find as to who the victim was is this letter with your address inside. Do you know a Mister Nicholas Crockford?’
Her blood withdrew from her veins and seemed to be pumping only through the valves of her heart and going no further, the thud echoing and banging in her ears. Her insides became shrivelled and chill and her mouth dry.
‘You look a bit dicky, you’d better sit down, ma’am. Are you family?’
‘No, close friends, we grew up together. He was on his way to call on me.’
‘We haven’t been able to get in touch with the next-of-kin yet…’
‘He’s not dead?’
‘No, no, ma’am – not dead… injured bad.’
‘How did it happen?’
‘It appears he was carrying a can of petrol. We’ve only got the driver of the jeep’s word. He says the bike swerved and a can of petrol went over and caught light. One of them must have been smoking or just lighting up, or it could have been a spark from the metal dragging on the road.’
‘He didn’t smoke.’
‘Well, we shall be asking them sort of questions later.’
She looked blankly at them. ‘He can’t talk, ma’am. The hospital says his trackier, that’s his throat, and his lungs got burnt from breathing in the burning petrol. They got him under sedation.’
‘For a moment I thought you meant that he’d been killed.’
‘He’s got some burns, and his breathing is bad.’
* * *
Having established who the casualty was, the two policemen tramped back to the station to secure the use of a vehicle so that his lady friend could be taken to see to the victim’s child and the next-of-kin who was apparently pretty ill. The policemen then relaxed their respective ranks – it being Christmas morning.
‘I reckon she’s a bit more than a friend to our man, Constable.’
‘Ah, and I’ll tell you something else, Sarge – she’s got a bun in the oven or I’m a Dutchman.’
‘Can’t say that I noticed that.’
‘Five times my missis has been that way – it don’t necessarily have to show much for me to be able to tell. She was too thick on the waist for such a slim bit. And, apart from that, there was a box of raspberry-leaf, which an’t much use for anything except a woman in the family way. I’d say she was three or four months. You get a nose for it.’
The grizzled sergeant pursed his lips as he did when he was being jovial with his men. ‘Five kids? I reckon you must have a bit more than a nose for it, lad.’
1945
When, on 7 May, the Board of Trade announced that red, white and blue bunting not costing more than one and three a square yard was to be sold without coupons, Georgia had no interest in anything other than that her waters had broken and Hyacinth Jepp was awaiting the first birthing she had attended at Croud Cantle for decades.
And on 8 May, when it was announced that there were to be two days national holiday to celebrate victory, Georgia had already given birth prematurely by about three weeks. The baby was a girl named Dixie who, Hyacinth declared, was so beautiful that she hurt your eyes enough to fair make them water.
Nick, who had for a while been in and out of hospital, nursed Dixie for hours in his slowly healing arms and said that she was balm for the soul. He still had many puckered scars, his lungs were clearing, but his throat was still quite gravelly. He and John Honeycombe had taken to one another at once, and since Nick’s discharge from the Fire Service, John had taken Nick under his wing and vowed to have him back on his feet in six months.
The old farmer had taken up residence in one of the Cantle village alms-houses, but Hyacinth had stayed on, ‘Just till you’m over the birthing, Georgia’, revelling in ‘putting a bit of flesh on Pete’s little bones’ and cadging baby wool and clothing coupons for Georgia’s baby. For those months of waiting, except that Nick’s father’s health was deteriorating, life in the cottage was placid. John Honeycombe would sit on in the evening, telling Pete true and untrue tales about the old days when he was a sparky lad the same age as Pete, until Hyacinth would shoo him off home until next day when he would return to tend the animals and teach Nick the basics of running the small mixed farm.
It seemed as though as soon as Georgia had made her decision to retreat to Cantle, her condition began to be obvious. Hitherto, that state of mind in which she tried to ignore her condition had kept her flat and slim. Before she left, she had written a short note to Ursula apologizing for her sudden departure, but explaining nothing except that Nick had had an accident and that she was going to look after Pete. She felt disloyal to the women with whom she had discovered love and friendship, but she felt so desperate about her situation that she wished only to cut herself off and to start again.
She took Pete away from the Markham school, leaving his head teacher with the impression that the boy was returning to his mother in Bristol.
She arranged for the now ailing Robert Crockford to go into a residential home where he would be properly cared for. As well as making the journey back and forth to visit Nick in hospital.
And, as soon as he was released, she brought Nick to Croud Cantle Farm.
Then, having settled Pete in the village school, Nick to recuperate before the great ingle fireplace and later in the open air of the farm, Georgia began to put into action the plan about which she had told Eve. Because of all the unexpected responsibilities that had gnawed away at the substance of her plan, it was in tatters.
Her plan had been to live at the farm, employ a foreman to run it, whilst she gave herself two years in which to see whether she could write a successful book. But having admitted to herself that her aching ribs and missing Curse were not caused by lack of vitamin B but due to being pregnant, and having taken on the care of Pete and Nick, the only bit of her dream that she salvaged was to try to write the book that had been gathering like a boil on her mind. Something good came out of it though, for now that Hyacinth and Uncle John saw that the farm was safe in Honeycombe hands, they continued to tend the place as they had always done.
Within days of coming to Cantle, Georgia bought what appeared must be the only available typewriter in Hampshire, and set about writing as though time was terribly short. During odd moments of idleness in her office she had made a map of a fictional town and worked out a plot and a resolution. During her five months of waiting, that map and plan gradually became a mystery story with some love interest. A publisher’s reader reported that ‘some of the love scenes in which the detective, Miss Fern Goodlands, was involved, are perhaps somewhat “spicy” for the readership’ and that ‘an attractive woman sleuth is a somewhat avant-garde idea for such a thriller’.
The publisher, however, saw the chance of publicity in a curvaceous sleuth named Fern, and offered a contract.
The success of Georgia Kennedy’s first book led to a contract for others. By the time Dixie was ten years old, her mother was becoming famous for the sexual adventure of her female characters,
her winding plots, violated corpses and dramatic endings. Dixie was not the only one to ask, ‘Why do you always write about death, Ma?’ Indeed, it is something that Georgia Kennedy herself would have liked explained to her.
Nick had to accept the fact that she would never marry him, but was content that they live together as lovers. When Georgia became pregnant with Tessa, she was not carelessly gotten as was Pete, or accidentally as was Dixie.
When her divorce became absolute, Georgia legally took back her old name – Honeycombe.
Once having settled on the farm in that Hampshire valley, she and her family never left. As Georgia’s books brought in ever-increasing royalties, she was able to buy land that had once belonged to her family and acres that had been neglected and bring it all back to the extraordinary fertility that had once made the valley part of the foodbowl of England. She bought derelict cottages and abandoned farmhouses, and restored and extended Croud Cantle where her forebears had lived for two hundred years.
From time to time, she thought about the Town Restaurant Women, she always read the Markham Clarion, saving any bits about the families she had known. When Leonora had her first success in the theatre, Georgia subscribed to a clippings service.
* * *
In 1989, fifty years after the incident that had brought the women together, Georgia Honeycombe had returned to Markham for the first time since she had left it.
1989
17th September
Driving towards Markham on seemingly the first dull day for months, Leonora Altzheiber’s companion asked, ‘Would you ever want to go back to live in your old home town, Leonora?’
Leonora Altzheiber, as she always did, considered the question before giving a glib answer. ‘Only if I could go back to Markham some time in the summer of 1944, before Georgia became all complicated and cleared off, and if I could stop time going beyond the summer. I was still innocent, virginal and happy.’
Her companion, the artist Fenella Standing, turned to look at her. ‘If you ask me you’ve still got the hots for your precious Georgia.’
‘Jealousy doesn’t suit you, Fenny. And in any case…’
‘In any case…?’
Leonora Altzheiber yanked the lighter from the dashboard of the car and pressed it hard on the tip of her cigarette. ‘In any case… she let me down.’
‘Because she went off with her lover and had a baby? And not necessarily in that order.’
Leonora went silent for several minutes. ‘It wasn’t like that. She let me down by leaving me to find my own way out of Markham. It is true that she was pregnant when she left…’
‘And poor little Lena had her nose put out of joint.’
‘Oh Fenny! You do like to bitch it up sometimes. Her nose was not put out of joint. Quite the opposite… she was the only one in whom Georgia confided. Georgia told me she was pregnant ages before that Christmas when Nick had an accident and they went away. Nobody knew except Little-Lena, not Nick, not even Eve Hardy. I was the only one to know. And I still know the quite vital bits Georgia has chosen to leave out of her book. She has copped out. But I know.’
‘“… And everyone will know, because you told those blabbering trees…”’ Irritatingly to Leonora Altzheiber, her friend sang and hummed the old Ink Spots song.
‘Well, they won’t, Fenny dear, not from me.’
‘Frau Altzheiber! You do still have a yen for your heroine.’
‘You might not know a single one, Fenny, but there are nice people dotted around the world, and Georgia Kennedy was one of them.’
* * *
Experienced novelist though she was, Georgia Giacopazzi knew that she would be hard pressed to describe the emotion she felt when Mrs Partridge and Mrs O’Neill arrived at The Coach House. In herself, emotion manifested itself in an aching throat from trying to smile and not to cry. Dumbly shaking her head, she embraced the two old women.
‘Mrs Partridge! And Mrs Farr,’ was all that she could manage as she clung to them.
Ursula chewed her mouth and Dolly wiped her eyes. ‘Come on now, ease off or you’ll knock me off my stick.’
A round-faced woman in a smart suit and an expensive hair-do was with them.
‘You didn’t mind me bringing Bonnie? She’s a fan of yours. Read all Georgia’s books, Bonnie, haven’t you?’
‘Bonnie? All these years and I’ve still had you fixed in my mind as a rather better edition of Shirley Temple.’
‘She’s got two shops as well as the one Marie started,’ Mrs Partridge said proudly.
The waiters hovered and Georgia Giacopazzi turned to Ursula who was standing easily, legs apart and evenly balanced as she had always done.
‘Mrs Farr,’ Georgia clasped her hands again. ‘I can’t get over you, you are just the same.’
‘You must need your contact lenses then, Georgia. I’m a stringy old lady who intends to hang on as long as she can.
‘It’s a strange occasion, this one. Not one that either Dorothy or I could have expected to have lived to see when we first met. I was curious to see what you and Eve would be like.’
Mrs Partridge said, ‘Is it all true?’
* * *
Late that night, when the reunion was all over, Georgia Honeycombe sat in the ingle seat of her own room and recalled most vividly that moment facing Mrs Partridge when she had asked, Is it all true?
Other images. Leonora and her partner – whatever that term might imply. Georgia Honeycombe remembered how Leonora had made an entrance. The hotel manager had flourished open the door and ushered in Leonora Altzheiber. Sifting through the jumble of impressions Giacopazzi recalled moving forward to greet her and seeing at once that Leonora Altzheiber was the kind of woman who always made an entrance, a woman for whom doors were always opened with a flourish by some senior member of staff. It was not only her long-legged height and handsomeness, but a self-assurance that she was Somebody. Elegant and stylish, she turned the heads of both men and women.
Georgia Honeycombe sipped the smooth brandy and listened to the comfortable sounds of Pete clattering chains and calling to animals, and passed on in her thought to her reunion with Little-Lena.
‘Leonora!’
‘Mrs Kennedy, we meet at long last;’ Her voice had been throaty and sexy, a voice used to command and public speaking. She had shaken hands strongly and kissed the air at both sides of Georgia’s cheeks. ‘Strange meeting. Goodness, it is a long time since I cried, but I believe I shall not help it. I doubt if Fenella is aware that I’m even capable of it. You have no idea what influence this lady had on me, Fenny. Georgia, let me introduce my partner, Fenella Standing.’
Georgia, in shaking hands with the well-known young sculptress whose flame-red shaggy hair she wore as a kind of trade-mark, had detected signs of challenge in the young woman’s tight bottom lip, chin-up expression, but the girl had been polite. ‘I’m glad to meet Leonora’s famous friend. I’ve certainly heard so much about you from her. You really are as your book jackets show you – I had assumed they were re-touched portraits.’
At home, she recalled acknowledging the compliment with a smile. With her youth and looks, she can be generous with the odd crumb of compliment, but Desmond Morris would tag that challenge as sexual. She can’t think I’m interested in Leonora! Leonora’s use of the term ‘partner’ was intentionally ambiguous and androgynous. Leonora Altzheiber had a gossip-column reputation for taking lovers of all persuasions. Georgia Honeycombe knew well enough about gossip-column reputations – they sold whatever it was one had to sell. Leonora Altzheiber belongs to my Giacopazzi world, the one that says, Never mind what they write so long as they spell your name right.
Leonora had seemed determined to set the tone of their meeting on a light, sociable level with cocktail conversation. ‘You know Fenny’s work?’
‘Of course, and admire it.’
‘Really?’ said Leonora Altzheiber. ‘All those horses and stags in a state of rut – I can’t stand them. But Fenny’s all right
.’
Now, with only a table-lamp and the flickering fire, Georgia allowed herself to consider the phenomenon of Frau Altzheiber. It’s all put on. Somewhere inside the beautiful, hard amber is the trapped fossil of Little-Lena Wiltshire. She’s beautiful, successful, no doubt fawned upon – what a problem she would have if she still had the Wiltshires in her life. Mary and Dick would always be on to her about grandchildren. Roy! I forgot to ask her about Roy. The amber theatre director had asked about Eve Hardy.
‘Eve is coming.’
‘She’s a titled lady, isn’t she?’
‘If you count foreign titles.’
‘With a name like Altzheiber, I have to.’
‘She married a Marquis she met in London during the war – one of her “League of Nations” lovers, I believe.’
‘And she got the Hardy fortune?’
‘No, the Marquis had one. Freddy Hardy had another family in America. I was sorry when I read of Waldemar’s death.’
‘Right! One of the good guys, you know.’ For a moment the defensive shutters had opened and vulnerable Little-Lena Wiltshire had peeped out. But only for a moment.
The sculptress had wandered off into the adjoining orangery with her drink, obviously only here at The Coach House because she was, for the present, smitten by Leonora.
‘What’s this for, Georgia?’ Leonora had asked, waving her hand at the luxurious buffet and bar. ‘Is it curiosity? Or do you expect reaction to what you’ve written about us all. It’s what novelists do, isn’t it?’
‘Not I. Sentiment… curiosity too, I imagine. Once I had resurrected the past, I simply did not want to die without trying to gather together those of us who are left.’
‘You are not dying?’ Without very much concern.
Georgia, the chameleon, watched herself slipping into the language of the glitterati.
The Consequences of War Page 37