The white-haired old lady lying in a corner bed of the ward was certainly not Irene. Alexander felt again that familiar sense of despair that meant he was still as far from the truth as he had even been. There had been a mistake. He stood looking down at her and shook his head.
“She is not my wife,” he said turning to the nun. “There is some mistake.”
“Irene Martyn,” the nurse said pointing to a tag on the patient’s wrist, “aged thirty-three. Is that right?” The sister then consulted a file she was carrying in her hand. “She is now perfectly lucid when she is awake. She says she was born in Berlin in 1912, her parents are Alma and Reuben Schwartz. She married Alexander Martyn in London in July 1939.”
“Then it is Irene.” Alexander bent more closely to scrutinise the face of the woman on the bed whereupon her eyelids fluttered and those dark, luminous, clearly recognisable eyes stared out at him appearing at first to have difficulty focusing.
“Irene,” he whispered sitting on the side of her bed and taking her hand.
“Alexander?” She looked at him wonderingly. “Is it you?”
“It’s me all right.” He smiled, but he could not bring himself to bend and kiss her. Her cheeks were so sunken that it was almost possible to imagine that one was staring at a cadaver who had somehow been brought to life, if life it could be called. He could see how thin and emaciated her body was through the bedclothes that covered her.
“You’re in uniform.” She put out a skeletal hand and touched his arm. “The air force?”
He nodded.
“Perhaps you bombed Berlin?”
“No.” His throat was so constricted that he found it hard to speak. “I never bombed Berlin. I was in fighters.”
“That’s good.” She turned her head away. “Then you didn’t bomb me.”
“Oh, Irene!” Alexander lowered his head and the tears that he had fought so hard to control welled up behind his eyes. “You have no idea what torture we have been through not knowing how you were or where.”
“I think that is enough now Group Captain Martyn,” the nurse said gently, taking his elbow. “We shall have to go little by little, day by day. It is all very strange for her.”
And little by little, day by day it was. Because it was all very strange for Alexander too.
January 1946
Connie threw her napkin down on the table and, leaning back in her chair, gazed at the others.
“Well I’m delighted to say the house is now ready for occupation. It is looking very nice isn’t it Netta?”
Netta agreed. “Very nice, Mum. Nice but small.”
“Small if you are used to living at Pelham’s Oak or in an Italian palazzo; but don’t forget I lived in that house as a child. I am used to it and I love it.”
Carson reached over for the cheese, a frown on his face. David moved over to pour him more wine. “Is this claret pre-war, David?”
“Pre which war, sir?” David asked with a superior smile.
“Of course I meant the First World War. I get my wars mixed up.”
“1902, Sir Carson. A very rare vintage.”
“It is very good.” Carson raised the glass to his lips. “Don’t you agree, Dora?”
Dora nodded. “Excellent. You should treasure your fine wines, Carson. Good wines will be hard to come by until the French wine industry recovers.”
They were at Sunday lunch at Pelham’s Oak, the sort of family occasion Carson so enjoyed. Dora and Eliza had come over. Toby and Leonard had not yet been demobilised. Carson longed for normality to return so that he could resume the life that suited him of country squire and farmer, father of the family.
After the discussion about the wine he looked across at Connie.
“There is no need for you to live at Agnes’s house at all. Aren’t you happy here?”
“Of course I’m happy, Carson, but this is not my home. I feel that, for various reasons, I can’t yet go back to Italy. I shall be moving out next week.”
“Not Netta too, I hope?” Carson looked anxiously at his daughter.
“I’m going to London, Daddy, to try and find a job.”
“Now why do you need a job?”
“Daddy, I can’t stay here for ever, either.”
“Carson wants all his family about him.” Eliza smiled fondly at her nephew. “I think I know why. The war has made us all restless, rootless.” She put her hand on the arm of Dora sitting next to her. “Dora will soon be going back to France for good. I shall feel lost too.”
Dora had been back and forth since France had been liberated, but was too restless without Jean to stay long.
“You have to accept that things change, Carson,” Sally said. “People have their own lives to lead. They can’t all be dictated to by you.”
“I am not dictating anything to anyone.” Carson looked at her angrily. “What a stupid thing to say.”
Connie felt embarrassed. She had been here long enough to know that, as Netta had said, all was not well between Carson and his wife, and she was frequently distressed when they had their tiffs in public, as they increasingly did. It was an uncomfortable atmosphere in which to live and she was, in fact, quite anxious to be gone and had hurried on the decorators. In addition to try and ease things she had spent a lot of time in London buying new carpets, wallpaper and furniture and had scoured the countryside for antiques.
Rose Cottage was not exactly a cottage but a pretty little house and it would suit her very well for the time being.
Carson’s remark had been followed by an awkward silence. Sally had bitten her lip and had then got on with her cheese and biscuits.
“Has anyone been to see Irene lately?” Eliza broke the silence at last. “She’s looking very much better.”
“I can’t get over that white hair,” Carson said. “It makes her look about seventy.”
“But she has a young face, the colour is returning to her cheeks and she’s putting on weight at last. You can see some of her old attraction returning.”
“But what a situation!” Carson said. “It’s intolerable for Alexander.”
“And not very nice for Minnie, though she is being a brick.”
Eliza, a frequent visitor, continued to look troubled. The return of Irene, wholly unexpected had, it must be confessed, been a shock to the family. They all loved Minnie who had been so happily ensconced in the cottage with her two babies, awaiting Alexander’s demob. But always that shadow had hung over them.
And then Alexander had returned from Germany in a private ambulance with his wife who had been installed in Forest House together with a team of nurses to look after her.
Irene had been suffering from all kinds of symptoms, the root cause of which was severe malnutrition. She had to be very gradually reintroduced to food and her health carefully monitored.
“Does Irene realise who Minnie is?” Sally, who had yet to visit the invalid, asked.
“She does now,” Eliza replied. “Alexander had to tell her.”
“How did she react?”
“She didn’t seem very surprised. In fact nothing at all seems to surprise her, about anything. Sometimes she seems as though she is still in a trance. She’s still a very sick woman.”
Dora shook her head. “It is a very, very awkward situation. I haven’t a clue how they’ll resolve it.”
“Anyone for coffee?” Sally drew back her chair. “Shall we have it in the drawing room?”
Netta wound up the gramophone and Sally poured coffee. Carson filled his pipe and stood with his back to the fire.
“I don’t know why you want to go to London?” he grumbled to Netta. “There’s plenty for you to do here.”
“Like what, Daddy?”
“Riding. You enjoy that. You can help in the stables –we’re short-staffed.”
“I would really prefer to help with the refugees in Germany,” Netta replied stubbornly.
“You’d have to have some training for that.” Dora took her coffee to a chai
r by the fire. “They wouldn’t take a young girl like you without training.”
“What sort of training?”
“Nursing? Have you thought of that?”
“But that will take ages. I want to do it now.”
“Maybe some sort of secretarial work?” Eliza suggested.“I agree with Dora. You would be more of a hindrance than a help without some kind of training.”
“I wish I’d been old enough to go into the WAAF while the war was still on,” Netta said sulkily. “They’d have allowed me to go then.”
Dora jumped up and looked out of the window.
“It’s stopped raining. I’m going for a ride. Carson?”
“I have to do some paperwork. We still have to think of our quotas.”
“Connie?”
But Connie had never been keen on riding and shook her head.
“I’ll come with you.” Sally rose and stretched. “I could do with the exercise.”
“I shall go and have a snooze,” Eliza said. “Netta, are you going to go riding?”
“I’m going to look out my things for London.” Netta looked defiantly at her father. “Do you think Alexander will let me stay at Montagu Square?”
“I’m sure he will,” Carson said sighing deeply, “but I can’t think why you want to go anywhere. You could be perfectly happy here.”
“Happiness isn’t really the point is it?” Dora remarked to Sally as, having changed into riding clothes, they made their way over to the stables. “I mean Netta is a modern young woman and Carson is still living in the past. Carson had his family all during the war which is more than Connie had.”
Sally said nothing but tapped her crop against her thigh as they stood by the stables deciding which horses they would ride.
Sally was something of an enigma to Dora. She fascinated her too. Maybe it was because she was so quiet, almost secretive. One never could be sure what was going on in her mind. She was outwardly so kind, polite and cheerful, but her manner lacked sincerity and, with it, warmth. Dora always imagined that for some reason Sally still felt herself to be a stranger.
“I think I’ll take Pegasus,” Sally said opening the stable door of a fine roan. “He hasn’t been out for a while.”
“And I’ll take Caesar.” Dora undid the door of a horse who was a direct descendant of her mother’s horse, Lady, on which her mother had eloped so many years before with Dora’s father.
After they had saddled the horses and taken them over to the paddock Dora said, “It is strange to think that Caesar and his family were bred here from Lady, my mother’s horse when she was eighteen.”
“You’ve got a very strong sense of family,” Sally said, gracefully mounting Pegasus, “even among the horses.”
“Do I detect a note of bitterness?” Dora mounted Caesar and they set out at a trot across the paddock towards the fields. “Or is it sarcasm? After all you’re family too.”
“But not a Woodville.”
“I would have thought you were, very much so, by marriage at least, Lady Woodville.”
Again Sally didn’t reply but dug her heels into the flank of the horse and set off at a brisk canter across the fields towards the cottage where Ryder had lived before he and Eliza eloped. It was a pretty, white-washed, thatched cottage set in a valley about a mile away from the big house. It had quite a history. Apart from the romance of Ryder and Eliza, in more recent times Carson had brought Alexander’s mother, Nelly, there and that was where she had died.
Dora followed more slowly. Like the rest of the family she was aware of the tension between Carson and Sally. However much they tried to disguise it there were always those little eruptions in public, like the outburst at luncheon today. It worried them that when Connie returned Carson had paid her so much attention. But then that was so like Carson, always the do-gooder, always helping those in trouble, as Connie had been, as Nelly had before her. Whatever Carson’s motivation, Dora was quite sure it was not solely to do with past loves. He had given Jean a home when he had been uprooted by the First World War, and his half-sister Elizabeth, together with her husband and three children, had virtually taken over Pelham’s Oak when he found them living in poverty.
He was an intrinsically good man and now it seemed as though his mantle had fallen on Alexander with perhaps equally unfortunate, or potentially unfortunate, results. Neither of them could say ‘no’. But then Alexander was in a more invidious situation than Carson had ever been, as Irene was his lawful wife and was desperately in need of help in a way that Connie, with her wealth, had not.
While Dora was thinking these rather sombre thoughts Sally, ahead of her, had alighted from Pegasus and was standing looking up at the cottage, hands on her hips, as Dora joined her.
“This could do with a fresh coat of paint,” she said turning to Dora. “In fact I think the whole place needs doing up.” She walked along the garden path and pushed the front door which opened quite easily.
“Does no one live here now?” Dora asked.
“No, but it shouldn’t be left unlocked. Maybe it’s broken.”
Dora followed Sally inside.
It was many years since she’d visited the scene of her parents’ romance in 1880. It was strange to think that two world wars had intervened since then. It was equally strange to think of her venerable mother, now in her mid-eighties, as that wayward, headstrong girl who had caused the aristocratic Woodvilles such anguish by eloping with a handsome thatcher.
The inside of the cottage was cheerful despite the drabness of the day, though a pale wintry sun had finally emerged to inveigle them out of doors.
The furniture was charmingly rustic with chintz-covered chairs and a well-polished oak table with a brass urn in the middle. The inglenook fireplace had no glow in it, but logs were neatly piled up on one side.
“The whole place could do with a lick of paint,” Sally said. “I must tell Carson. As to your enquiry,” she gazed across at Dora, “no one lives here since Massie went to look after Minnie’s babies. I think she has found a more or less permanent home with them.”
“Will you let it?”
“I thought I might live here myself.” Sally sat down on one of the chairs, her hands thrust deep in the pockets of her jodhpurs. She looked across at Dora who had perched on the arm of the chair opposite her. “Why not?”
“I would have thought ... it would upset Carson.”
“Carson has Connie.”
“Oh, that’s very silly, Sally.”
“No it isn’t.” Sally’s mouth set in a stubborn line. “You can see for yourself how he looks at her all the time. How aware he is of her. He doesn’t want her to go and live in Agnes’s house.”
“But she does.”
“Does she? I wonder.” Sally looked thoughtfully at the ceiling.
“You can’t possibly be jealous of Connie! I mean ... that was over years ago.”
Sally got up and went and stood in front of the fireplace staring for a few seconds into the empty grate. Then she turned and gazed at Dora.
“I don’t think it was ever over. I think that Carson regretted losing Connie and has remained in love with her. He married me on the rebound and the flame didn’t burn for long.
“Since she’s came back he’s hardly ever left her side. He’s like a ridiculous puppy with a new owner. He put her in the bedroom where they slept after they were first married. He said he had forgotten it was that the room, but I don’t think he did.” Sally paused, then continued in a quiet voice, “We haven’t slept together for years. Look ... they had three children together. He and I had none. It was my fault. My own inadequacy. It must have been. He had already produced four children. He and Connie have much more in common than he and I ever had.
“I like his kids and I think they like me. I’m a good stepmother to them. But we aren’t close. Carson clucks after them like an old hen; he is continually anxious about them. I can never feel that way. Let him and Connie share their concern together. I’ve done
my bit.”
Dora stayed silent reflecting that Sally was right. She remembered how the birth of Louise, after years of sterile marriage, had made her and Jean so much closer. It was true that children formed an unbreakable bond, whether it was for good or ill. What would Alexander do about Irene, now he and Minnie were the parents of two babies?
“Look,” she said getting up and walking slowly across to Sally, “I shall be going back to France again soon. I have to. We have some new vines to plant, lots of repairs to do or else the business will collapse.”
“And you want to keep it going?”
“Of course.” Dora looked surprised. “That’s what Jean would have wanted. I want it too, in his memory.”
“You must have loved him a lot,” Sally said wistfully putting her arm round Dora’s waist as if to comfort her. The gesture surprised and touched Dora.
“I did and I do. Come and stay with me for a while. Much better than moving in here because that would cause a real rift. I can say that I need some help and you offered. It won’t seem at all strange. Then you can decide what you want to do.”
“I already know what I want to do,” Sally said slowly. “I think I want to divorce Carson. He is no longer in love with me nor I with him. We grate on each other, have done for ages. It’s sad but it is a fact. We’d both be happier apart. He loves Connie and should never have divorced her.” She smiled sadly up at Dora. “What you say makes a lot of sense. It would cause a terrible rift and embarrass Carson in front of the staff and his family. I don’t want to do that. If you really need me, want me, I think I’d like to go.”
“I’m so glad,” Dora said with a sigh and putting her arms round Sally, hugged her.
Momentarily she felt closer to her than she had to anyone, except Louise, since Jean had died.
Chapter Thirteen
February 1946
England took a long time to recover from the war. Churchill, the architect of victory, had been unceremoniously thrown out by the electorate and a Labour Government had been returned in 1945. A Welfare State was in the process of being established with the intention of looking after the populace from the cradle to the grave, but no one could doubt that the task of post-war reconstruction at home was a huge one. Ironically, the faltering business that had once been run by Bart Sadler was now riding on a crest. Rebuilding bombed-out houses and manufacturing prefabricated homes for people who had lost theirs in the war, or for soldiers returning home, was a growth industry.
In Time of War (Part Six of The People of this Parish Saga) Page 17