“What about your father?” He was thinking of kindly, tolerant Mr. Gordon.
“Father doesn’t mind as much about the baby being colored, I reckon. But he takes a dim view of it being born out of wedlock. I don’t know why that’s more important to him, but there it is.”
“What about you?” he asked.
“They’re paying for me to stay here with Mrs. Hughes, and then for the nursing home, where Mrs. Devenish works. And after that, Mother has arranged for me to take a secretarial course in London, to keep me out of Balesworth for a year or two more.”
“But is that what you want?” asked Brandon.
“Don’t be stupid. What do you think?” she asked angrily, her eyes full of tears. “Do you really think I have any choice? My parents would cut me off, and nobody wants to give a job to a girl with a baby and no education or training to speak of. I certainly would never find a good husband. I would be lucky to find a husband at all. George, I can’t believe you think it’s that easy.”
“I’m sorry,” said Brandon. “It’s just…Man, that is so unfair.”
“Well,” said Peggy, “Life is unfair, as Mrs. Devenish likes to say. She should know: She has lost her husband in the war. George, I see how life is in this house, and I can’t imagine how she manages to live with her mother. Mrs. Hughes is a kind lady in her own way, but she is disgusted by everything that’s happened to England since the death of Queen Victoria. I can only imagine what it would be like if I came back to Balesworth with a baby and tried to make a home with my parents. And how would my mother treat her grandchild? This way, at least I get to make a fresh start. And so does the baby.
“So you see,” she said, “It’s probably all for the best. I really don’t want a baby, you know. It’s Edward I want. And I can’t have him.” Her chin trembled.
Suddenly, she put her head in her hands. “Oh, everything’s a mess because of this stupid, stupid war. Everyone acts as though it’s something to be proud of, with their silly flags and songs. Nobody seems to care that half the boys who go never come back, and the ones who do, have lost arms, and legs, and eyes, and faces, and sometimes their minds. We act as though nothing is wrong, and everything’s wrong. Everything’s wrong.” And with that, she broke into sobs. Brandon was embarrassed. What had he done to deserve two weeping women in one afternoon? But then he remembered what the Professor had told him about his mission. Quietly, he got up, walked around the table, and put his arm around Peggy.
From the dining room window, Mrs. Hughes was watching. She called to her daughter, who was standing in front of the hall mirror, adjusting her nurse’s cap with bobby pins. “Elizabeth? Elizabeth! Come quickly…. I told you she was a girl of low moral character…Look at this.”
Mrs. Devenish wearily joined her mother at the window.
“There, you see?” said Mrs. Hughes triumphantly. “That’s how she got herself into trouble in the first place.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Mother,” said Mrs. Devenish. “Don’t be absurd, and come away from that window at once.”
Her mother said stiffly, “I’ll thank you not to shout at me in my own house, Elizabeth Hughes. If your father were alive…”
“Yes, Mother,” Mrs. Devenish interrupted in a bored tone, as she moved toward the door. “So you’re always telling me.”
“And I will thank you not to use that tone of voice with me, young woman!” Mrs. Hughes said loudly to her daughter’s departing back.
In the garden, Brandon returned to his seat.
“Do you know what Edward and I were going to call the baby if he’s a boy?” Peggy asked him, wiping her eyes. “Well, it’s a coincidence, but we planned to call him ‘George.’ Just like you.”
Brandon tried to wrap his head around this.
“George Braithwaite, huh? Yeah. I like that.”
“Not Braithwaite, I’m afraid,” she said. “Illegitimate children always have the name of the mother.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure of that,” said a firm voice from behind them. It was Mrs. Devenish, who had come to wish them goodbye. “It depends upon who registers the birth. And as it happens, that job at the hospital often falls to me.”
Later on that Sunday afternoon in 1940, led by Mrs. Devenish, Verity and Hannah walked well beyond the other side of town to visit Mrs. Lewis. As they walked, Hannah quietly asked her friend, “So exactly who is this lady we’re going to see?”
“Some old bat,” Verity whispered. “She and Granny knew each other in the women’s suffrage days, from when Granny was only about sixteen, I think, maybe younger. Mrs. Lewis was important in the Women’s Suffrage Association for years, practically since the Stone Age. Mummy told me once that she and Granny were close at one time. But there was some sort of falling out between them, and Granny won’t say what. Granny still pays a call on Mrs. Lewis once in a while for old time’s sake, but they really don’t get on. When I went along last year, I had the impression that Granny’s quite afraid of her.”
Hannah laughed delightedly. “This, I have to see!”
“I thought she was rather sweet, actually, but Granny says that’s because old age softens people. But, oh, Hannah, I do hate this sort of thing. Having to get dressed up, and minding my manners, it’s all such a frightful nuisance. And it’s not as though anyone will say anything to us, it’s all ‘children should be seen and not heard.’ We can only hope that the grub is decent. She had some rather nice cream cakes for us last year, but what with the war and it being Sunday, I don’t expect we’ll have anything like that.”
She was right. They soon found themselves sitting silently and awkwardly on a very upright sofa, with cups and saucers balanced on their knees, being presented with slices of crumbly seed cake.
“No, thank you,” said Verity primly, when Mrs. Lewis offered her a piece.
“Just a small slice for Verity, please,” said her grandmother, shooting Verity a warning look.
Seeing the death rays aimed at Verity, Hannah hurriedly said, “Same for me, please.” The cake turned out to have a very pleasant if rather odd flavor, vanilla lightly scented with caraway seeds. But the texture, as with all the cakes she had eaten in England, was dry as dust, and it would take Hannah two cups of tea to choke it down.
“I trust you are keeping well?” Mrs. Devenish asked Mrs. Lewis. “Mrs. Miller at the Women’s Institute often speaks of you.”
“Oh, yes,” said Mrs. Lewis, who appeared to be in her mid-eighties. “She is very kind to me. She often comes with flowers from her garden, or some of her scones.”
“I expect you enjoy her visits.”
“I certainly do enjoy having visitors,” said Mrs. Lewis. “And I would have no objections to seeing you a little more often than I do, Elizabeth.”
Mrs. Devenish looked uncomfortable, and muttered something about her pressing duties. The two girls exchanged amused glances.
“I’m quite sure that having three evacuees on your hands, not to mention Verity on the weekends, must not leave you a great deal of time,” said Mrs. Lewis. “Although these girls don’t seem to be any trouble at all, I must say. You behave quite splendidly, don’t you, my dears?”
Verity and Hannah smiled ingratiatingly.
“Yes, quite unlike the dreadful hooligans I saw breaking Mrs. Smith’s window, as I mentioned to you after church,” Mrs. Lewis added, to the immediate discomfort of her three visitors. “I told that young constable who came after I telephoned the police, one wonders about young people nowadays, doesn’t one? I never approved of the suffragettes, as you know, because I thought they lowered standards of decent and polite behavior, and now the chickens have come home to roost. Have you ever had those three window-breakers come up before you in magistrate’s court?”
“Oh, believe me, Mrs. Lewis,” said Mrs. Devenish, glancing dourly at Hannah and Verity, who were desperately trying not to catch her eye, “they really wouldn’t want to come to my attention.”
“Well, I should hope not,” Mrs.
Lewis said. “Did I mention that two of those wicked children were girls? What on earth is the world coming to? When I used to march for the vote, I never dreamed that we…”
And then she looked at the girls again.
“It was you two,” she pronounced heavily.
There was an appalled silence.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Devenish, embarrassed. “I’m sorry to say it was.”
“Well, really!” said Mrs. Lewis in a voice so shocked that it made Hannah want to curl up under the tea table and die. “Elizabeth, is there an explanation for this? You’re a magistrate, for heavens sake, and you know how hard we had to fight for women to be appointed to the bench. Can’t you control the young people in your own care?”
“Not all the time,” said Mrs. Devenish. “Nor would I want to. After all, Mrs. Lewis, surely that’s the thing we’re fighting against when we fight the Nazis? All that conformity and constant surveillance of everyone’s behavior, it’s so…Well, I fail to see how it is in accordance with our great British commitment to freedom.”
“Please don’t make speeches at me, Elizabeth,” said Mrs. Lewis quietly.
“Well….Be that as it may, I do assure you, Mrs. Lewis, that this won’t happen again. As you know, these girls and my evacuee boy were caught red-handed. I daresay they have learned their lesson. Constable Ellsworth brought the matter directly to me, and I gave all three of them a good hiding. They have all helped to polish the church brasses to pay for the cost of replacing the window, and we shall pay a visit to Mrs. Smith as soon as it proves convenient for her, for the children to make their apology.”
“I am glad to hear it,” said Mrs. Lewis sternly, with a look at the girls, who were staring at the floor, mortified by the turn the conversation had taken. “You deserved to be severely punished for such wickedness, both of you.”
Then she paused thoughtfully. “I must say, Elizabeth, that I really expected better from you than to keep this quiet because it was your children who were the culprits. You ought to have had them brought up before your court, yes, even Verity. You should never have shown favoritism like that, but made an example of them instead….”
While Mrs. Lewis told her off, Mrs. Devenish stared into space, looking extremely chastened. Hannah felt terrible, especially knowing that Mrs. Devenish had acted to protect her and the others. When Mrs. Lewis had had her say, there was a long and very awkward pause. Hannah kept trying to tell herself that it didn’t matter what this old lady thought, but it wasn’t working. She began to wish that there was a polite way to run screaming from the room.
Then suddenly, Mrs. Devenish’s eyes grew wide, and she looked slyly at Mrs. Lewis. “I seem to recall you shielding a young person who broke a window. Back in nineteen hundred and five or thereabouts. Do you remember?”
“Of course I remember,” said Mrs. Lewis, tutting. “But that was different. I acted for the greater good. Your childish behavior almost caused the Women’s Suffrage Association a great deal of embarrassment.”
Hannah opened her mouth to ask what they were talking about, but Verity grabbed her arm and shook her to silence her. When Hannah turned to look at Verity, she could see that she was fascinated by the conversation.
“Of course, if you hadn’t kept it quiet,” said Mrs. Devenish, “I might very well have acquired a taste for militancy, and I quite likely would have gone to prison with all the others. I certainly would never have become a magistrate, for better or for worse.” She had seemed to forget all about the girls, who were both now sitting open-mouthed.
“I might,” she added, “have gone on hunger strike in prison, and ended up like some of those poor women, unable to smell or taste anything because of the forcible feeding.”
“I don’t doubt you would have,” said Mrs. Lewis, gruffly. “You always did have a flair for the dramatic.”
“Jolly good thing some of us did,” shot back Mrs. Devenish. “Because someone needed to push the fight for the vote harder.”
“Perhaps,” said Mrs. Lewis, firmly, “but not you. You knew better. You knew as well as I did that all that stone-throwing and vandalism was utter foolishness. The vote would come without it, as indeed it did in time, and you were well aware of it. I thought you had momentarily taken leave of your senses. As far as I was concerned, yours was a petulant act, as I seem to remember I told your parents at the time, Elizabeth.”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Devenish, glaring at her. “Believe me, I have never forgotten what you said to my mother that day.”
There was a hostile silence. Then the two women suddenly seemed to remember Hannah and Verity’s presence in the room.
“To return to the subject of naughty children,” Mrs. Devenish said, with forced calm, “Mrs. Smith doesn’t want them to apologize to her in person, whereas I rather think they ought to.”
“As do I,” Mrs. Lewis replied carefully, again glancing with disapproval at the two girls, who were both gazing longingly at the door. “I can’t imagine why she is so reluctant. She was very upset at the time, you know. She came and spoke with me about it after the constable left….In fact, she was perhaps a little more upset than is warranted. Not that I am in any way suggesting she ought to absolve them from blame so easily, but…” and here she seemed to struggle with whether to say something. “It just seemed rather odd.”
Everyone sipped tea, then Mrs. Lewis said, “She’s my housekeeper, you know.”
“Who is?” asked Mrs. Devenish.
“Mrs. Smith,” interrupted Hannah brightly, forgetting herself. Both women looked at her angrily for speaking out of turn.
“Sorry,” Hannah said to nobody in particular. “My bad. Shutting up now.”
“As I was about to say,” said Mrs. Lewis, “Mrs. Smith does for me just once a week, which is as much as I need at my age. The rest I manage myself. Sometimes, she brings along her evacuee boy to help her. He’s…”
“Evacuee?” said Mrs. Devenish, astounded. “I’m sorry, but you must be mistaken. I have checked with Mr. Simmons, and there is no evacuee billeted with Mrs. Smith.”
“Oh, I assure you,” said Mrs. Lewis, “there is. A little boy, by the name of Thomas. She tells me he’s too delicate to go to school, but he never seems to have any trouble helping her with the work in this house. And, you know, Elizabeth, it’s very curious, but he’s colored, apparently part Negro. Imagine that!”
They were only a few yards down the road, when Mrs. Devenish stopped and turned to Hannah and Verity.
“Right, girls, what do you think we should do?”
“You want our opinions?” said Hannah in amazement.
“Obviously that’s what I’m asking of you, Hannah. I’m not in the habit of asking questions I do not mean to have answered. Now, I’m not saying I’ll follow your suggestions, but I will listen to them.”
“Let’s go apologize,” Hannah said. “It will get us in the house. Sound like a plan?”
“Alright,” said Mrs. Devenish evenly. “Verity? What do you think?”
Verity nodded emphatically.
Mrs. Devenish wagged a finger at them. “Now, I am prepared to do just that, but on certain conditions. Neither of you will do anything hasty or improper. You will follow my lead. Is that clear?”
Mrs. Smith answered the door, opening it only partway. She was a hard-faced woman in her mid-forties, wearing the usual turban over her scraped-back hair, and the same style of apron worn by most of the British housewives Hannah had seen.
“Yes?” said Mrs. Smith. She greeted them, Hannah thought, as if she suspected them of having come to her door to sell drugs.
Mrs. Devenish stepped forward. “Good afternoon, Mrs. Smith,” she said briskly. “I’m sorry to disturb you, but I’m Elizabeth Devenish. I wonder if we might step inside to discuss the matter of the broken window?”
“No,” said the woman. “I told you in my letter. No apologies. Just let me have the money, and be off with you. You only got two of the kids with you, anyway, so a fat lot of go
od that would do.”
Mrs. Devenish paused, and Hannah thought she was counting to three to avoid losing her temper.
“I must insist, nonetheless, that I have a brief word with you. May I come in?”
“Have you got the money?” demanded Mrs. Smith.
“Not at present, but…”
“Well, come back when you do,” she said, and closed the door. Mrs. Devenish pressed the doorbell, but nobody answered.
“Granny?” said Verity hesitantly. “Perhaps we ought to leave before she tells the police that we’re pestering her.”
“Oh, very well,” spluttered Mrs. Devenish, as she walked away. Not realizing how well the kids could hear her, she muttered, “That bloody woman is an absolute battleaxe.”
The two girls almost burst into giggles. “It takes one to know one,” Verity whispered to Hannah, who stifled a laugh with her hand.
On the way home, Verity lost the coin toss, and posed the question to Mrs. Devenish that the girls had been dying to ask ever since they had left Mrs. Lewis.
“Granny? Were you actually a suffragette?”
“Well, not as such,” said Mrs. Devenish, looking uncomfortable.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” asked Hannah, with a devious grin, taking her hand.
“Well…I…I wasn’t a member of the Women’s Social and Political Union, and they were the only real suffragettes. And I really didn’t subscribe to their methods…Really.”
“Really?” said Hannah, wickedly.
Don't Know Where, Don't Know When (The Snipesville Chronicles Book 1) Page 23