After the War Is Over: A Novel

by Jennifer Robson

  It wasn’t quite the cut direct of a hundred years before, for that was reserved for social equals; rather, it was an acknowledgment of Charlotte’s innate invisibility and, ultimately, her complete unimportance.

  It shouldn’t have hurt her—she had vowed she would never let them hurt her again—but it did. Oh, God, how it did.

  ROBBIE, PREDICTABLY, WAS horrified when he returned with their tea. “I ought to have known something like that would happen.”

  “I’ll survive. It wasn’t that bad, to be honest.” Her hands were trembling, her mouth was as dry as dust, but she hadn’t faltered. She had stood her ground. “How do you stand it? Stand them?”

  “We hardly ever see them, to be honest. They’ve never quite forgiven Lilly for leaving home and joining the WAAC. Certainly they’ll never forgive me for having the effrontery to imagine I’m good enough to marry her.”

  “You really ought to elope,” she suggested. “I’m serious.”

  “I’ve considered it, believe you me. But it wouldn’t be fair to my mam, nor to our friends.”

  “I suppose you’re right. I’d forgive you, though.”

  “See?” he said, smiling down at her. “I knew there was a reason Lilly likes you so much.”

  “Who is the woman standing with Lilly? I know most of her other friends, but she isn’t at all familiar.”

  “The woman . . . ? Ah. That’s Helena, Edward’s fiancée.”

  That girl? That young, smiling cipher—she was Edward’s fiancée? It seemed impossible to credit. She was terribly pretty, of course, with fair hair and large, expressive eyes.

  “What do you think of her?”

  If Robbie thought her sudden interest strange, he showed no sign of it. “I scarcely know her. I’d say she’s a nice enough girl. Seems devoted to him, but . . .” He hesitated, frowning at his teacup.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m certain she bores him to tears. I’ve tried to ask him about her—ask about his intentions. But he always finds a way to wriggle out of the conversation.”

  “They haven’t set a date?”

  “No, and thank God for that. Is this the first time you’ve set eyes on her?”

  “Yes. I saw Edward once during the war, when he was home on leave, but Lady Helena wasn’t with him. I hadn’t expected her to be so young.”

  “She is that. Though she seems to be a bright girl, and can talk quite knowledgeably on a number of subjects.”

  “Would you say she’s attached to Edward?”

  “She seems affectionate enough. As far as I can tell, she’s unfazed by his injuries. Though I doubt she realizes that a missing leg is the least of his problems.”

  “How is he?” Charlotte asked. Although she would love to know more about Lady Helena, she was far more interested in Robbie’s opinion of Edward’s condition. “Today is the first I’ve seen of him since the day you returned from France.”

  “I don’t know. I honestly don’t know. Physically, he’s improving. I strong-armed him into visiting a prosthetics clinic, so he has a leg that fits him now.”

  “He scarcely even limps.”

  “They do wonderful work there. Perhaps too good. He seems to think his recovery is complete.”

  “And you . . . ?”

  “I think it’s barely begun. A man doesn’t recover from such injuries, from such horrors, in a few months. He drinks too much, for a start, and I know he doesn’t sleep well.”

  “Before the war, he was troubled—”

  Robbie shook his head. “No, this is worse. It’s like . . . like a weight he can’t shed. Dragging at him, pulling him—”

  He looked over her shoulder, his attention caught by something on the far side of the room.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “Lilly’s asking for me.”

  Charlotte turned to follow his gaze, and saw that Lilly, now trapped in conversation with a clutch of elderly ladies, was tugging on her earlobe.

  “That’s my cue. Will you be fine on your own? I promise not to go far.”

  “I’ll be perfectly fine. Lady Cumberland did her worst, and I survived.”

  She set down her cup and saucer on a nearby occasional table, not willing to draw attention to herself by summoning a footman, and retreated to one of the lushly padded window seats. She would look out the window, though the formal gardens below had little to recommend them at this time of year, and when she had fully recovered her composure, she would join Lilly and Robbie.

  Not bothering to look at her wristwatch, she couldn’t be certain of how much time was passing. Only when the sound of approaching footsteps, careful and measured, intruded on her silent meditation did she turn her attention back to the drawing room.

  It was Edward.

  When he’d returned from Belgium, from the enemy hospital where he’d been held for nearly the last year of the war, he’d been achingly thin, with distressingly dark shadows beneath his eyes. Less than a season later, he was better groomed, with his fair hair combed neatly off his forehead, and his fine suit expertly tailored to conceal the full extent of his frailty. But the shadows remained, lingering in his voice, his manner, and his weary gaze.

  It shamed her, but in all that time she hadn’t sent him a single letter. He had been suffering—she could see it now, as clearly as the lines on his face—but had she even once bothered to let him know she was glad he’d survived? To let him know she had missed him? She had asked after him in her letters to Lilly, and once or twice had asked to be remembered to him; but that wasn’t enough, and she knew it.

  Embarrassment had stilled her hand: a pathetic excuse, really, but it was the truth. The night of his return, she had all but fainted at his feet when he walked through the door of her and Lilly’s boardinghouse. She’d known that Robbie was expected home, but the reappearance of Edward, their Lazarus risen from the dead, had been a shock she couldn’t ever have foreseen.

  She had recovered her composure before long, and somehow made it through the strange, rather awkward hour that followed. They had gathered in Mrs. Collins’s shabby little sitting room and had, all four of them, spoken of carefully neutral items: the recent weather, the men’s journey home, the peace negotiations in Paris.

  So much had been left unsaid. How had he survived? Why had there been no news of him for nearly a year? Instead he had bid her good evening, thanked her solemnly for her good wishes, and had returned to Ashford House, no doubt to give his parents the shock of their lives when he walked through the door.

  Consumed by the details of her coming move to Liverpool, Charlotte had left London a fortnight later without once seeking him out. She thought of him often, but she really had been so terribly busy, and of course he was occupied with his family and the many bureaucratic complications of having been declared dead and without issue.

  She had meant to write to him, but the days had crept by, days that turned into weeks, and the longer she waited the heavier her pen had become.

  Yet his eyes now held no trace of reproach.

  “I owe you an apology,” he said as he sat beside her. “Robbie has informed me that once again my mother and other sisters have behaved abominably.”

  “Then why are you apologizing?”

  “I ought to have prevented their being rude to you. I assumed, wrongly, that they would be civil.”

  “Never mind. I’ve a thick skin. They weren’t particularly rude, besides. Simply . . . disapproving.”

  “I am sorry, though. Especially since you took the trouble to come so far.”

  “You shouldn’t worry about me, not when you have so many other concerns. How are you bearing up?”

  “Well enough. Despite his faults I was fond of the old fellow. The rest of it I could do without. The solicitors, the estate managers, the hangers-on . . . most of all my mother and sisters, Lilly excepted. Moaning and complaining and clinging at me endlessly. It’s almost enough to make me wish I were back in Belgium.”

  “Don’t say tha
t,” she whispered. “Don’t ever say that.”

  “Why not? It’s true enough.”

  “They weren’t unkind to you there, were they?” she asked, and immediately regretted her presumption. To ask him about such a thing when he was mourning his father, and when they were surrounded by a roomful of people, was the very height of insensitivity. Yet he didn’t seem to mind, or even notice.

  “Not at all. They cared for me very well indeed.”

  “Then why didn’t they repatriate you sooner, or at least send word?”

  “Because I refused to tell them my name. I had lost my identity disks and my uniform had been cut off and discarded. They had no way of knowing who I was.”

  It wasn’t . . . how could it be possible that he had done such a thing? For months she had grieved for him, had agonized over his brutal end, and all the while he had been alive and perfectly able to relieve her suffering, and that of everyone else who loved him.

  “How could you? Have you any idea what it did to Lilly? To all of us?”

  He met her gaze steadily, unflinchingly. “I know. But I was certain I would die, sooner rather than later, and I didn’t want anyone to know the whole of it.”

  “She didn’t care. None of us cared about that. We only wanted you back.”

  “And here I am,” he said, his mouth twisting into a fine imitation of a smile.

  “Edward, I—”

  “No more, please. Not today. I haven’t slept for days, and I may just collapse in a heap if I’m forced to talk about this much more.”

  “Will you at least talk to Robbie?” she pressed.

  “He’s been grumbling to you, hasn’t he?”

  “I think he’s right to be worried.”

  He sat up straight and looked down his fine, proud, aristocratic nose at her. “You think he’s right? Whatever can you know of it?”

  “I was a nurse. I took care of men like you. I saw how they suffered.”

  “Men like me? You mean the crackpots, shaking and stammering, covering their ears whenever a door slams shut? You think I’m like them?”

  “There’s no shame in it—”

  “Of course there is. Everything about it is shameful, beginning with the way people like you talk about it. As if you know. As if anyone who wasn’t there can possibly understand.”

  “I didn’t say I understand.”

  “Don’t. Don’t even think it. Your problem, Charlotte Brown, is that you believe you can fix everything. But you can’t fix me. Nothing can, save oblivion. The same oblivion I was desperate for, but was denied by well-meaning doctors and nurses like you. So save me your concern and your pity. They’re wasted on me, and we both know it.”

  “Edward,” she whispered.

  He heaved himself to his feet and walked away, his limp achingly pronounced, and though his mother caught at his arm, he shrugged free of her grasp and continued on, leaving the reception behind, it seemed, for good.

  If she had thought herself uncomfortable before, it was as nothing compared to now, when every last pair of eyes in the room was focused accusingly on her. She knew what they were thinking. Who was that drab little nobody in the corner? And what had she said to upset Lord Cumberland so thoroughly?

  Lilly came to her then, took her arm, and, with Robbie, led her away. Soon they were in a carriage and en route to Mrs. Collins’s boardinghouse in Camden Town.

  Her friend tried to be reassuring. “Don’t look so upset. Edward has been like this for months. I’ve lost track of the number of times we’ve been speaking about something and he takes offense and stalks off.”

  “I did upset him. That’s the problem. I pressed at him about the war—it was so crass of me, so unfeeling. I ought not to have said anything.”

  “If none of us says a thing, though, how will we get to the bottom of what’s troubling him?” asked Robbie. “If we care about him at all we have to press on.”

  “I suppose you’re right. Although I won’t be here to help. Perhaps if I were to write to him . . . ?”

  “Let him stew,” Lilly insisted. “In the meantime, we have ever so much to talk about. I want to hear all about your new friends at the Misses Macleods’, and all about work, and your parents, too. And especially I want to hear what it was like when you cast your vote. I’m terribly envious, you know.”

  Robbie had to return to work, so it was just Lilly and Charlotte and Mrs. Collins at table that evening. Though it was heavenly to be with her friend again, and to hear of her wedding plans and her hopes for university and her happiness with Robbie, Charlotte’s thoughts were never far from Edward. The brother and friend they loved, the man who had been returned to them, but whose soul, she feared, still walked among the dead, the millions of dead, who haunted the battlefields and charnel houses of Flanders and France.

  Chapter 6

  Somerville College, Oxford

  May 1907

  At first, Charlotte didn’t notice the advertisement that had been pinned to the message board in the porter’s lodge. The afternoon post had just arrived, and so she was preoccupied by the disappointing contents of her pigeonhole.

  “Any good news?” asked her friend Celia, who was engaged to be married and daily expressed her relief at having her future settled.

  “Nothing so far,” Charlotte answered, tearing open the last of the four envelopes waiting for her. “‘Thank you for your interest, but at present we have no suitable vacancies, although we would happily welcome you in a volunteer capacity,’ et cetera, et cetera. There’s also a letter from my mother, keen as ever to have me return home. So I’ve that to look forward to, I suppose.”

  “Sorry ’bout that. Makes me ever so glad that Rupert and I are getting married in July.”

  Charlotte longed to ask Celia why on earth she had spent three years at university if her highest aim was to become someone’s wife, though she knew it was unfair. Her friend had done well, had learned for learning’s sake, and who was she to criticize Celia’s decision to marry? All the same, it wasn’t the path she had chosen, or intended to choose for a number of years to come. Marriage meant the end of work, and she had plans. She was going to make a difference in the world, and she couldn’t do it by sitting at home and arranging her life to suit the ambitions and desires of a man.

  If ever she were to marry, her husband would have to be an exceptional man. Right-minded, interested in the sort of things that really mattered, and supportive of her views and ambitions. The sort of man who would consider her his equal.

  Charlotte was fairly certain that no such man existed, not anywhere on the face of the earth.

  She saw it then. A smallish piece of paper, tacked in the exact middle of the notice board, and typewritten in the blackest ink.

  Governess Required

  Gentleman requires a governess

  for the education of his sister.

  Applicant must have or shortly expect

  to obtain a diploma in Modern Languages,

  English, or History as well as

  first- or upper-second-class results

  in Final Honors Schools. Liberal salary.

  One month paid vacation p.a.

  Apply to E. Ashford, Merton College.

  It wasn’t what she wanted; wasn’t even remotely close to what she dreamed of doing with her life. And yet it might serve, might do as a stopgap of sorts, if only until she found something else.

  Celia had wandered off, likely in search of a quiet spot where she might read the latest letter from her fiancé, who was at St. John’s College only a stone’s throw away. Why he wrote to her every day was a mystery Charlotte couldn’t begin to fathom. Somerville students were allowed to socialize with male undergraduates, so wouldn’t it have been simpler to meet at a tea shop?

  She returned to her room on the top floor of Walton House and, by shifting several armfuls of books and papers to her bed, was able to clear a space on her desk. With her best pen in hand, she wrote out a reply to Mr. Ashford that outlined he
r qualifications and expectations, and found an envelope.

  She wasn’t likely to meet him, not today, but it wouldn’t do to enter one of the men’s colleges looking anything but polished. So she took down her hair, brushed it smooth, secured it in the same low chignon she always wore, and pinned her best hat, her Sunday hat, to her head. Then she put on her smartest coat, the one she had hoped to wear when being interviewed by dozens of prospective employers, and set out for Merton College.

  Crossing Woodstock Road, she headed south along St. Giles, veering east at Broad Street and turning onto the Turl to avoid the crowds along Cornmarket, then across the High Street and down Magpie Lane to Merton, which she’d always thought the prettiest of the Oxford colleges. Not that she’d seen much of it; women weren’t welcome inside its hallowed walls, charladies and cooks excepted.

  She presented herself at the porter’s window, just inside the college gate, and waited for him to look up from his newspaper. He’d seen her coming, so she resigned herself to waiting until he could be moved to acknowledge her presence. It was always this way at the older colleges.

  “Yes, miss?” he asked after she’d silently counted to a hundred. He didn’t even look up from his paper.

  “Good afternoon. My name is Charlotte Brown, and I should like to leave this for Mr. Ashford.”

  “Lord Ashford to you.”

  “I beg your pardon? The notice he posted gave his name as E. Ashford. I had assumed he was a don at the—”

  “Lord Edward Ashford. Undergraduate here.”

  “Ah,” she said, thoroughly flustered. “Well, then, may I leave this letter for Lord Ashford?”

  “You may. Good day to you, miss.”

  “Good afternoon.” With that, she turned on her heel and retreated, back through the gate, into the late-afternoon sun and away from the surly porter with his red face and too-tight collar and silly bowler hat. Away from yet another man who made no effort to hide his disapproval of women at his university. Never mind that she wasn’t even a true member of the university, having been barred—like all women—from matriculating, and wouldn’t receive a degree for the work she had done. Never mind that she sat the same examinations as the male students and had worked every bit as hard. Never mind—