The dead silence that followed this made even Trixie aware that something was amiss. Grace continued to sit still and speechless, and ignoring Trixie, Captain Neville spoke quietly to Grace.
‘Please accept my apology, Miss Munday, if I’ve spoken out of turn. I seem to have touched on matters that are no concern of mine. I’m sorry if I’ve offended you.’
Grace still sat motionless, her eyes downcast. She did not see Cedric’s quick glance in Garth’s direction, finger on mouth to indicate that he should draw Trixie’s attention away from Grace. Garth replied with an understanding wink.
‘My mother much admires your father as a first-rate carpenter,’ Cedric continued. ‘She’s always taken an interest in your family, as you know, and she was sorry when you had to leave Hassett Manor. She thinks you have great talent.’
Grace gave a choking sob, and covered her face with her hands.
‘Are you not well, Miss Munday?’ he asked in consternation. ‘Would you like me to take you ho… to where you live?’
When she nodded silently, he rose from the table, excusing himself and Grace, saying that she was unwell and he was taking her away.
‘I say, that’s too bad!’ exclaimed Garth, but Trixie hid a little smile, for she wasn’t sorry to be rid of two such wet blankets; she now had the field to herself, and had her own plans for Captain Garth before the night was over.
When Neville and Grace had collected their cloaks, he hailed a taxicab and helped her into it. She whispered that she lived at 17 Lamp Street, and as the taxi started, she burst into uncontrollable sobs.
‘My parents don’t know, nor does my sister,’ she confessed, her shoulders heaving.
‘I’d rather gathered that, Miss Munday – Grace,’ he replied. ‘It’s not my place to pass judgement, but I recommend that you visit your parents as soon as possible to put their minds at rest. Since the death of the second Bird brother, and with Ernest and Isabel’s husband facing constant danger, your father and mother have enough worries, without you adding to them.’
‘I’ll write to them, and I’ll go to see Isabel, I really will!’ she sobbed. ‘I’ll go tomorrow – I didn’t know she was having a…oh, how selfish I’ve been!’
Cedric spoke more gently. ‘Would you like me to call on Mrs Storey to prepare her, Grace? Our ship doesn’t leave till Friday afternoon, and if it would ease the way for you, I’d be glad to call on her in the morning with my mother’s good wishes, and say that I’ve met you and that you want to see her. Shall I do that?’
‘Oh, yes, please, I’d be glad if you would, Mr…I mean Captain Neville,’ said Grace thankfully, making an effort to calm herself, and when they reached Lamp Street she shook his hand in gratitude and wished him luck on his return to the war.
At least he doesn’t know about – the other, she reminded herself, and shivered at the thought.
‘Somebody at the door, Mrs Storey – d’ye want me to answer it? If it’s that man come round beggin’ again…’
‘No, it’s all right, Sally, I’ll go. It might be Mrs Plumm.’
Rising from her desk where she was sorting through church accounts for the diocesan bishop, Isabel put on a welcoming smile as she opened the door. An army officer stood on the step, and her hand flew to her throat in dread.
‘No,’ she whispered, turning deathly pale. ‘Oh, no, no, no…’
She swayed where she stood, and he stepped over the threshold in time to catch her as she fainted. Holding her in his arms, he called for help, hoping there was somebody else in the house, and Sally Tanner dashed out from the kitchen to behold Mrs Storey chalk-white and lifeless in a stranger’s arms.
‘Omigawd! What’s up? Quick, bring ’er in ’ere and put ’er on the sofa! Oh, Isabel, me poor sweet, wake up!’ She turned to the officer. ‘What’ve yer been tellin’ ’er? Is it ’er ’usband or ’er bruvver?’
‘No, I’ve come with good news,’ he told her while she chafed Isabel’s hands and implored her to wake up. ‘It’s about her sister, and—’
‘Look, she’s comin’ round,’ interrupted Sally as Isabel’s eyelids fluttered, and she opened them to see the officer.
‘What’s happened?’ she moaned weakly. ‘Is it about Mark?’
‘No, no, Mrs Storey, I’ve come with a message from your sister, and I’m terribly sorry for upsetting you,’ Neville apologised.
‘I should damn well think so, frightenin’ ’er like that!’ muttered Sally, smoothing the hair back from Isabel’s forehead. ‘All right, me duck, nothin’ to worry about, just somethin’ to do with that blinkin’ sister o’ yours.’
‘Grace?’ said Isabel, sitting up and looking intently at their visitor. ‘I-I seem to know you, don’t I?’
‘Yes, Mrs Storey, my name’s Neville, and I live at Hassett Manor. I’m the younger son of—’
‘Yes, yes, of course, Mr Neville. Have you seen Mark, or had any word from him? Or my brother Ernest Munday?’ she asked eagerly.
‘No, but silence is usually good news, Mrs Storey. My news is of your sister Grace, who wants to come and see you.’
‘You mean she’s been found? Oh, praise God for that, Mr Neville!’ cried Isabel, not knowing his army rank. ‘And coming to see me? Oh…’ A cloud passed over her face. ‘Is she…is she in any trouble?’
‘I don’t think so, Mrs Storey,’ he answered, smiling and thinking to himself that whatever Grace had done, it couldn’t be worse than what this poor young wife had feared. ‘I offered to come and prepare you, seeing that…’ He glanced briefly down at her loose-fitting smock. ‘The fact is, a friend and I went to a music hall just off Leicester Square, and he took a fancy to one of the girls in the chorus. When he asked if he might take this girl out to supper, the manager said the girls were only allowed out in pairs – hence our second visit when he got his choice, and I found myself partnered with your sister, poor girl, she was clearly horrified at seeing me, for fear that I should tell her family.’
‘How good of you, Mr Neville,’ said Isabel Storey. ‘It must have been meant that you should meet her – to give me a chance to hear her story first, before our poor parents find out. Yes, you can be sure that I’ll send her back to North Camp, and forewarn them, as you have forewarned me.’ Isabel’s colour was returning, and she gave a wry little smile. ‘Performing on the stage of a music hall – poor Grace, I can see why she kept it quiet. Meanwhile I can’t thank you enough, Mr Neville. Will you be returning to Hassett Manor?’
‘No, Mrs Storey, the troopship sails on Friday – and if I should meet your husband or brother out there, I’ll remember you to them, and send your love.’
‘God bless you, Mr Neville, may He watch over you, and keep you safe for your loved ones,’ said Isabel, her voice breaking as she stood up and shook his hand.
Grace arrived at the vicarage that same afternoon, and wept afresh at the sight of her sister, heavily pregnant and looking tired. Isabel held out her arms to the prodigal daughter, and for the next hour there was no talk of blame, only joy and relief.
‘Mr Neville told me about you performing on a music hall stage, Grace, and I don’t think that sounds very terrible – but you were wrong in disappearing from us all, sending an occasional postcard with no information about where you were.’
‘I knew that Mum and Dad would worry if they knew I was on the stage,’ said Grace, shaking her head and turning down the corners of her mouth.
‘Not as much as they worried through not knowing where you were,’ her sister reproached her. ‘Think of their embarrassment when neighbours asked about you – and the sort of suspicions that some of them might have had, the whispering in North Camp that Mum and Dad have had to endure. Didn’t you ever think about this, Grace? Didn’t you realise how cruel you were, cutting yourself off from us all?’
Grace hung her head, unable to meet her sister’s eyes.
‘Anyway, Grace, you’ve been restored to us, thanks to Cedric Neville, and we won’t waste time looking back. Mum and Dad w
ill be overjoyed to see you, and you’ll find there’s plenty of work to be done by women, with so many men away. I’ll pray that you’ll be led to the work the Lord wants you to do.’
Her sister’s kindness was like a sword thrust to Grace, making her all the more conscious of the deception she must practise on her family for the rest of her life, for she could never confess the awful truth about what she called the other. It was a burden that she must always bear, because it could never be shared.
Tom Munday was waiting for her at Everham Station, and held out his arms.
‘Thank God ye’ve come to your senses, girl, and don’t ever do this to us again,’ he said, hugging her. ‘Whatever you do, wherever you go, keep in touch with us.’
Grace knew that he meant what he said, but doubted that he would be this tolerant if he knew that she had actually worked as a prostitute on three occasions.
Her mother’s welcome was less warm. ‘Well, my girl, you’ve certainly shown us up for a pair of fools, I must say! Your father ran out of excuses about you “doing your bit for the war effort” in London, which everybody knows is full of soldiers on leave. Of course there’s been gossip about you, and we’ve had to bear the brunt of it, because we didn’t know ourselves what you were up to!’
‘I’m so sorry, Mum, I’ve been selfish and thoughtless, and I…please forgive me,’ Grace pleaded, horrified that her mother’s suspicions had been so near the mark.
‘That’s all very fine, but if young Neville hadn’t found you in that…that music hall, we’d have gone on not knowing,’ said Violet Munday bitterly. ‘What with my son at the front, a daughter in London having a baby, looked after by a known drunkard, and in fear o’ bombs night and day, it’s no wonder neither of us are well!’
And to Grace’s dismay, her mother burst into angry tears, and turned away from her daughter’s attempt to hug her. Tom tried to make peace between them, and admitted privately to Grace that her mother was troubled by chronic indigestion, for which Dr Stringer had prescribed milk of magnesia and a diet of milk puddings and steamed fish; but she had no appetite.
‘It’s due to the constant worry, y’see, it’s given her an ulcer, like old Mr Goddard had, only he’s much better since Sidney married Mary Cooper and now they’ve got the baby,’ he said.
Grace was having serious doubts about staying at her parents’ home. She’d be better employed at Bethnal Green, she told her father.
‘I could help out when Isabel has the baby, Dad, seeing that she refuses to leave old Mr Storey in London. Mum doesn’t really want me here. She and I just don’t…’ She stopped speaking, and Tom Munday sighed, for he could not contradict her unfinished sentence. Lady Neville had visited Mrs Munday, and told Grace that her mother’s symptoms seemed similar to those of her own daughter Letitia.
‘She refuses to eat, and stays in her room at mealtimes; she hardly ever leaves the house, and is so dreadfully thin,’ the lady had said with a sigh. ‘Dr Stringer says it’s a form of melancholia, and that I should be firmer, and insist that she eats, but I’m afraid I get exasperated with her, and then of course I’m sorry.’
The longer Grace stayed in North Camp, the more depressing she found it. Her mother continued to be low-spirited, and seemed to resent Grace for not being Ernest or Isabel. The only happy people she met were Sidney and Mary Goddard and their baby daughter, now living at Yeomans’ farm, where Sidney worked long hours and Mary helped in the house as she had done before, stopping as necessary to feed little Dora who was cooed over by her grandparents as Billy’s little sister.
‘We’ll have a home of our own one day after the war,’ Mary told Grace, ‘but for the time being this arrangement suits us well. When’s Isabel’s baby due?’
‘About the middle o’ May, so the midwife thinks. Our mother wants to come up to Bethnal Green to look after her when the time comes, but Dad thinks she’s not well enough, with this gastric ulcer. Anyway, I’ll be there to help Isabel all I can.’
‘Oh, aren’t you staying here, then?’ asked Mary in some surprise.
‘No. I can be more use at Bethnal Green,’ replied Grace, privately thinking that one more month at Pretoria Road would send her quite mad.
Grace left North Camp in April, and needed to find employment in Bethnal Green; women were taking on many jobs formerly done only by men – driving vans for milk and bread deliveries, postmen’s rounds, and as conductors on buses; when she answered an advertisement in a local butcher’s shop, she was taken on by dour Mr Clark whose son was at the front. He dealt with the cuts of meat and offal, but needed help with serving and working the till. Grace was appalled at the shabbiness and tired faces of the customers who queued up long before the shop opened, eagerly accepting the cheapest offal, but the constant contact with raw meat and Mr Clark’s striped, bloodstained apron made her feel nauseous, though she was glad of the money which paid her sister for her bed and board. And Isabel, who was happy to have her back, believed that seeing the hardships that the poor had to endure in a slum area would do Grace no harm.
Sally Tanner jealously guarded her position as housekeeper, insisting that Mrs Storey rested undisturbed every afternoon; the parish visiting was taken over by a delighted Mrs Clements, and the Reverend Mr Storey quite enjoyed being spoilt by the ladies of the vicarage.
Isabel’s pains began on a Wednesday morning in May, and continued all day.
The midwife Mrs Prebble was summoned, and confirmed that she was in early labour, but that the birth was not imminent, so she left the vicarage, to return in the afternoon. However, it proved to be a long day and an even longer night, not only of Isabel’s seemingly endless painful contractions, but at around midnight the sinister sound of enemy aircraft was heard overhead, and the thud of bombs exploding not too far away, followed by the sirens of fire engines and ambulances hastening to the scenes of devastation. The raid did not last long, but the danger gave a bizarre extension to what was happening in St Barnabas’ vicarage, a threat of death overshadowing the birth of a new life.
Sally and Grace took turns at keeping vigil, making tea and keeping a fire going in the kitchen to heat the water. At around five o’clock the midwife told them that she could just see the top of the baby’s head, and that Isabel must push down hard to help it to be born. Two hours of pushing were then needed before a baby boy emerged, amidst tearful sighs of relief all round. He seemed pale and silent at first, but Mrs Prebble expertly held him upside down and blew her own breath onto his little face, which made him gasp: his face puckered up and he gave a weak cry. His arms and legs jerked, and as he gave a stronger cry, his skin turned from white to pink. Baby Paul Storey had arrived, and his exhausted mother held out her arms for him and whispered, ‘Praise God, dearest Mark, we have a son!’ Sally Tanner ran downstairs to tell the Reverend Storey that he had a fine grandson, and while he fell to his knees to give heartfelt thanks, she wiped away a tear at the memory of her own loss.
‘Thank you all, every one of you dear people,’ said the new mother, and turning to her sister, she smiled and asked, ‘How does it feel to be an auntie, Grace?’
Grace managed to smile and murmur something about her ‘dear little nephew,’ but her thoughts were in turmoil. It had been a harrowing night for her, witnessing her sister’s pain and hearing the explosions of bombs being dropped on London, but that wasn’t all. During those long night hours, a suspicion that had been growing in her mind now turned into an undeniable certainty: she too was carrying a child. Three months had passed since the ordeal she had suffered at the hands of Captain X, and although it was possible that either Derek or Sergeant Stanley might have fathered the child, it was on that third occasion that she had not inserted the vinegar sponge.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
1917
Padre Mark Storey feared that he was losing his sanity. He longed to give way to the overwhelming need for sleep, and had in fact almost dozed off while standing up, even when stumbling along in darkness while shells burst nearer
and nearer, a firework display enough to confuse the most carefully contrived signals. He found himself pitying the Jerries, too; hatred of the enemy, deliberately fostered in training days, had now faded away like a vapour. Why were they fighting individuals like themselves, equally fed up and anxious to be done with it all? The presence of rats, great loathsome beasts gorged on dead flesh, inspired more revulsion in Mark than a battalion of Jerries.
And yet at dawn, after a relatively quiet night, there was a charge across No Man’s Land, a direct frontal attack involving hand-to-hand fighting with knives and bayonets, cursing and brutality on both sides, showing the depths to which men can sink when it’s a case of your life or mine. It was a filthy hell of mud and stench, unattended wounds, the screams and groans of the dying.
And at the end of that dawn battle Mark Storey suffered a spiritual loss as grievous as any bodily wound, for it robbed his life of meaning. A young soldier of his own section was suddenly struck by a shell fragment square between his eyes. He fell down, calling out, ‘Lord, Lord, I’m blinded! Save me, I’m blind, O God!’ He shrieked the words again and again, until he choked on his own blood, and the officer in charge ordered them to leave him where he lay, for he could not possibly survive. Mark ignored the order, and knelt down beside the whimpering boy, now sinking into merciful oblivion.
‘May Almighty God, the Father, Son and Holy Ghost…’ He made the sign of the cross, and gently laid a hand on the bloodied head, the blessing unfinished; and in a momentary flash of utter dismay he denied the meaning of the words. For it now seemed to him that there was no God protecting them, no divine intervention, no tender mercies; there was no such thing, it was all meaningless, a myth shown up for what it was in this glaring hell.
So when Storey rose from the dying soldier, he was no longer a priest in the Church of England, but an unbeliever, a born-again atheist.
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