The Consequences of War

by Betty Burton

‘Perhaps he still thinks David Greenaway wasn’t good enough for me. Perhaps he thinks I’d go running to Mr Greenaway and give the game away.’

  Picking up a raffia bag of trinkets that she wanted to take with her, she quickly left the room. ‘Come on, Monty, let’s go and have a look at her.’

  The white tourer had been jacked up in an outbuilding at the back of the house. As they crunched their way along the gravel drive, a two-tone horn sounded.

  ‘That’s my car horn.’

  The double doors were wide open and a wide ray of sun like a spotlight picked out an apparently naked woman sitting at the wheel of Eve’s car.

  ‘Say, Fred, can I have this? It sure is neat.’ She turned and saw the two silhouettes against the sun. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing creeping in here like this?’

  Eve did not move, but stood looking at the girl. She was probably a year or so younger than Eve, suntanned, groomed and very pretty.

  ‘More to the point – what are you doing. Now get out of my car.’

  The young woman was obviously used to doing as she was told. As she jumped down from Eve’s car she revealed that her only garment was a skimpy sunsuit of such colourful good quality that Eve knew it could not have been bought in England.

  Eve turned on her heel and went towards the house with Mont.

  By now, Eve and Mont were ahead and inside the kitchen door, which Eve bolted against the young woman.

  In the echoing breakfast-room, Eve said, ‘I suppose that’s his latest. I needn’t have behaved like that. The drawingroom windows are open if she wants to get back in.’

  ‘I thought you behaved very ladylike. She’s a common bit of goods if you ask me.’

  ‘What am I going to do now?’

  ‘What we were going to do anyhow, pile your boxes in the hall ready for the van to collect.’

  ‘I don’t want to see him.’

  The sound of a motor car crunching gravel, voices and the rattle of keys.

  Eve went into the hall where her father and the girl had just come in.

  ‘Evie! Sweetheart.’ Effusively, he came towards her, but she moved so that his kiss only brushed the air beside her car. Eve smiled at the girl over his shoulder.

  ‘You obviously didn’t tell her you had a big grown-up daughter.’

  ‘Hell, Fred, you didn’t. Nor about that little automobile being hers.’

  ‘Go and get dressed, Suzi.’

  She went. Mont backed into the kitchen, leaving Eve and her father standing in the echoing entrance hall.

  ‘It looks as though you’re leaving.’

  ‘I would have been in touch.’

  ‘After you had gone?’

  ‘I was going to arrange for your things…’

  ‘And Connie’s?’

  He shrugged.

  ‘You needn’t have done it without telling me, Pa.’

  ‘I have to go quietly, Evie… you understand?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’m leaving Markham.’

  ‘I can see that.’

  She wanted him to tell her. The rumours about a conspiracy investigation had become the talk of Markham. Gossip had it that there were a group of businessmen involved in everything from fraud to embezzlement.

  ‘I would have got in touch.’

  ‘I’m your daughter. A father doesn’t just pack up house, go away and then just get in touch with his daughter… not a normal father. He says goodbye, exchanges addresses.’

  ‘I’ve had a lot on my mind.’

  Eve looked towards the ceiling from where sounds of Suzi came. ‘I can see.’

  ‘Don’t judge, Eve.’

  ‘Who’s judging? Is she going with you?’

  ‘Well, actually, I am going with her.’ He smiled wryly. ‘Of all places, Las Vegas: it’s where she’s from. Her family’s pretty well-heeled. Casinos. It’s all fixed.’

  ‘And the house?’

  ‘When the dust has died down, I shall arrange for it to be sold.’

  ‘And the factory?’

  He avoided her eyes, ‘I’ve been bought out. Part of a deal with Carnutzi Brothers – Suzi’s family.’

  ‘Suzi Carnutzi.’ She raised her eyebrows slightly. ‘Sorry, that was cheap.’

  ‘At least Suzi doesn’t think that I’m cheap, as your mother did.’

  ‘I really don’t want to know.’

  ‘I’m sorry about the house.’

  ‘And Connie?’

  His voice hardened. ‘Look, Eve, no matter how it might have appeared to you, it wasn’t all that bad.’

  ‘It never looked at all bad to me. To be honest, it came as a shock to me when Connie went.’

  ‘Once the physical thing had finally gone out, there wasn’t anything left. Now maybe that’s a difficult thing to swallow about your parents. But I can’t let you go off thinking Connie was a saint and I was the sinner. I like women, always have, and I never thought a bit of extra-marital fun was too serious. When the house is sold, I shall make a settlement on her.’

  ‘I don’t think she’ll divorce you.’

  Tm not short of money, Eve. And there’s a will in case…’

  ‘I don’t want to know any of it.’

  ‘Listen.’ His voice was low and insistent. ‘For a goddam minute stop putting on airs and listen.’

  Eve heard the word ‘goddam’ and knew that her father no longer existed. Goddam. Her mind hung on to the word… a strange and embarrassing Americanism that Freddy Hardy would have ridiculed. He would become as brown and hard as Suzi Carnutzi. She would buy him jackets with large checks and he would wear strange, unEnglish shoes.

  She scarcely heard the rest of his attempt at reconciliation. ‘When I get to America and the deal is settled, you will find your bank account quite full. Suzi will never want for a brass farthing, the Carnutzis are rolling in it. When I gave you a present, I always did the wrong thing in Connie’s eyes. Tasteless, no style – like the diamond clips and the car… Con would have bought a dark green car, wouldn’t she? But I am me, and I never did have the advantage of an upper-class upbringing like hers. But then she never had the advantage of knowing how to get rich like me. She might have despised me, but she never looked down on my cheque book. So don’t you, Evie.’

  ‘I’ve always loved the car. You wouldn’t have given it to her?’

  ‘Give Suzi your car? Evie baby! I have already arranged for old Thornton at the garage to keep it until you want it again.’

  ‘Thanks. I have to go, Monty’s waiting, and I’m due at a wedding later this morning.’

  ‘Are you still at the same Nurses’ Home in London?’

  She shook her head. ‘I’ve been in Markham since June – at the hospital at Oaklands.’

  ‘You might have told me.’

  ‘I… You can always get hold of me through Georgia Kennedy. You know…?’

  ‘Yes, I know Georgia Kennedy.’ He smiled too enigmatically for Eve.

  Not Georgia…

  ‘I shall see you again, shan’t I?’

  ‘Oh yes. Once the dust has settled… the war’s nearly over. You must come to Vegas.’

  * * *

  Ursula Farr and Niall O’Neill were married at Markham’s Civic Offices in July and held a lunch-time reception at the Town Restaurant.

  The Press, who would have loved to get wind of such a gathering, were not told that O’Neill who was now one of the foremost makers of Government documentary films, was to marry the woman who, as a militant girl, had caused such uproar in the House of Commons gallery.

  There were no name-cards at the long tables: people sat with whoever they happened to find themselves at the time. Two men with very cut-glass accents, who had been boys at the ‘experimental’ school where Ursula as a very young woman was cook, sat either side of Georgia. One of them was Sir Henry somebody who said, Hello, my name’s Henry, Ursula tells me you’re the brains behind all this. The other one, whose name was Perry, told scurrilous and hilarious behind-the-scen
es stories about Clark Gable’s false teeth and Jean Harlow’s lack of underwear.

  Marie found herself sitting beside a friend of Ursula’s, a woman called Dora who talked sense about peace and throwing away life and about the way to stop the war.

  Dorothy discovered that the friend of Niall’s by whom she was seated was quite a famous poet – though you’d never guess. He wrote the words for some of Niall’s films.

  Eve, who immediately recognized George Lansbury, charmed and was charmed by him.

  Poor old Sam, said Dolly when she knew: he would have given anything to see George Lansbury.

  Most of Niall’s friends were male and getting on in years, whilst most of Ursula’s were female and young: Eve, Georgia, Marie, Pammy, who was now a pregnant GI bride, Trix in WAAF uniform, Cynth. And Hildegard, a stumpy young woman – where she had come from no one knew, except the bride and groom, and possibly Mont Iremonger for whom she had been keeping house since he had developed leg ulcers. It was to have been a temporary arrangement, but she had stayed on after his leg healed. They rubbed along very well because neither interfered with the other.

  It was quite late in the evening when Ursula and Niall walked with some of their guests to the railway station. Now, instead of black-out restrictions, there was a ‘dim-out’, so that windows need be covered only by normal curtains; pubs had taken down door shutters so that here and there orange pools of light shone out; and in streets where lamps could be shut off in an emergency there were, here and there, glimmering lights after five years of complete blackness at night.

  ‘Markham looks alive again,’ Ursula said, as they stood waiting on the gas-lit platform.

  Henry, who had been seated next to Georgia, said, ‘The Germans can’t hold out much longer.’

  Perry, the other one, said, ‘They’re still not entirely out of the game. Those bloody V2s scare the hell out of me.’

  ‘It seems to me,’ said Niall, ‘that everybody’s jittery in London. With good reason. I’ve heard that they are coming over at the rate of six or eight a day.’

  * * *

  Silently, until the huge blast, one fell two streets away from where Connie Hardy was walking, blowing down a garden wall which fell across her back.

  * * *

  After the wedding reception, Eve went back to Oaklands and Georgia to her home. As Georgia rounded the corner she saw Harry Partridge outside her house just propping up the great Vincent motor bike on which she had ridden pillion to the coast. Her pulse-rate rose. Harry Partridge’s company was just what she needed. Nothing heavy, nothing serious.

  Her relationship with Nick had become a bit of a mess.

  Earlier in the year, they had decided to take a few days holiday together, perhaps each thinking that something might happen to clear the air between them. Although it would be the first time they had slept together, Georgia had not intended that either of them take the step too seriously. They went to the Isle of Wight, staying as a couple at a down-at-heel Ventnor hotel which had been splendid before the war. From the time they met on the quayside at Southampton and went aboard the paddle-steamer, each of them was over-aware that they were heading for bed together at last.

  Georgia’s awareness made her nervous. She had known for ages – for ever perhaps – that there would come a time when she and Nick would be lovers. But there was something unspontaneous and calculated about the way they were doing it. Bookings, coupons, time-tables – preparations that took the romance out of it. Yet, since she and Harry had rolled together on the beach, she had felt released enough from her marriage to make love with Nick – almost duty-bound to make love with him having done so with Harry.

  It was early in the season, so that there were not enough other guests for them to go unnoticed. The proprietor was an army officer on leave and he was about everywhere, enjoying his old role as mine host. His wife, who had run the place for six years, was trying to come up to her usual scratch now that she was back under his eye. So that what with those two hovering to make their guests welcome, and the curiosity of the few elderly guests and long-term residents, Georgia felt awkward and very aware of the double room booked in Nick’s name and Liverpool address.

  The proprietor’s, ‘Let me take that bag, Mrs Crockford,’ had made Georgia cringe with embarrassment at the ridiculous deception. It was the stereotypic film situation for illicit love. The woman always forgets her name and blushes confusedly at some blunder. In their room, Georgia found the sight of the double bed even worse. Two white pillows propped against its varnished headboard, two precisely flanking night tables and lamps, two bath towels, two hand towels, two upturned glasses. The only shared things were a mirror and the high bed itself. This Georgia tried to ignore, it seemed so… so arranged.

  She wondered whatever it was that had made her believe that she could make love with Nick for the first time in such a commercial set-up?

  Blessedly, the dinner gong sounded, obviously pleasing the proprietor. ‘You arrived just in time. Time to wash your hands. We have only one serving… shortage of staff, of course.’

  After a very good dinner of unexpected guinea-fowl with purple sprouting and baked potatoes, and rarely seen home-made ice-cream, they went out. As yet, the Island had not adopted the ‘dim-out’, so that the town was lit only by the rising full moon. They strolled down the steep road from the hotel, hand in hand like young sweethearts, then up again to the cliff-top where there were neglected antiinvasion obstacles and. barbed-wire protecting the high mast on the grassy downlands that overlooked the sea. There Nick spread his greatcoat, and they sat down and looked out to sea.

  ‘Nick?’

  ‘Ah… peace, and the sea, and the woman I love.’

  ‘Nick. I’ve got to be honest with you – I felt very awkward and stupid at the hotel.’

  ‘You don’t need to tell me, I’m not surprised. It all seemed such a set piece. I saw the ludicrousness of it. Two adults wanting only to sleep together and make love, yet they have to flaff around like we did at dinner.’

  ‘It’s not only that. I think from that time you came to the house with the dahlias I knew that there would come a day when we would do something like this, and then when it comes to it… oh, that hotel… that bedroom. I just suddenly went off it, I don’t know why. I’m sorry.’

  He squeezed her hand and fingered her wedding ring until he had removed it. ‘Perhaps it is to do with this.’ This was the first time that she had been without the ring since Hugh had put it there.

  He sucked her empty finger. ‘There, now he’s gone. You must have known that I wanted you then… badly, you don’t know how badly. But then I’d wanted you for ages before that.’

  ‘And I’ve wanted you. Time and time again I’ve imagined how it would be, and it was always in one of the places where we used to mess about when we were kids. That’s probably why that awful bedroom seems such an anticlimax.’

  He combed back her hair with his fingers and grinned, ‘No such inhibitions, I’m afraid: I’d have had you anywhere, anytime. I came that night aching for you… you kept me waiting nearly five years – and I’m still waiting.’

  ‘Don’t tell me you haven’t had girls in Liverpool.’

  ‘Celibacy for me is not having Georgia Honeycombe, which means that I’ve lived in life-long celibacy. Georgia, Georgia, how did we get like this?’

  ‘Like… ?’

  ‘Talking about it, afraid of it. That’s not us. What happened to us between those old days in Emberley and now?’ He kissed her and she relaxed into the warmth of him.

  ‘We got older… grew up… became adults.’

  ‘Something else happened, you stopped being Georgia Honeycombe… at least you tried to.’

  ‘You still call me that.’

  ‘So that you won’t forget who you are.’

  ‘The country girl… the innkeeper’s daughter? And what about Nicky Crockford who used to quote poetry at the drop of a hat?’

  He laughed warmly.

&nb
sp; ‘All through that summer at ease we lay.

  And daily from the turret wall

  We watched the mowers in the hay

  And the enemy half a mile away,

  They seemed no threat to us at all.

  ‘There. Crockford still showing off his ability to memorize.’

  ‘I remember thinking of that bit the day when we saw the bombers and the dog-fight and the farm caught fire… then suddenly they were a threat.’ She gently fingered the puckered area of his brow that was a burn-scar caused that day.

  ‘I feel that I’m still pretty much Crockford, the country lad. I remember when you were still Georgia Honeycombe, and we were all so physical and full of ourselves, and I was oh so hungry for you and too shy and proud to tell you because of what you might say.’

  ‘Physical… yes, we were, weren’t we? You used to lift my plait and kiss the back of my neck and I was too gauche to tell you how much I loved it.’

  He lifted her heavy, golden hair, pale as his own white head in the moonlight and moved his lips in the hollow of her neck.

  ‘Yes… like that. Now that I’m all grown up, I can tell you I love that… ask you not to stop.’

  ‘How easily we used to throw off our clothes and jump into the lake without a second thought, and yet this evening we both tiptoed around that bedroom as though the bed was enemy territory.’

  Inevitably she thought of Harry and the isolated cove, of lying uninhibited and naked with Harry Partridge. Now the spring tide was coming in roughly, hitting the shore far below, moving a bar of shingle that shushed-shushed as each wave came and receded.

  Why was there this barrier between her and Nick, the man she had wanted since before she knew why she wanted him?

  When Nick had first suggested they go to Ventnor, she had fantasized them in the scene that one never actually saw in films – the scene that is behind the door when it shuts upon the camera. Rhett Butler sees Scarlett undoing her own dress, Scarlett O’Hara sees that the bed is a low divan spread with coloured shawls and cushions; only Rhett sees her expression when they make love once quickly and then more slowly. With Nick in her fantasy it would be perfect.