Park Lane

by Frances Osborne

  Still, they wouldn’t let her alone on Sunday. ‘You can’t be worrying,’ said Mrs Wainwright, ‘I’ll take you with me.’ And they’d gone to church where Grace prayed so hard that she forgot to breathe, and had to steady herself on the pew in front, though she wasn’t thinking of them as angels, wouldn’t let herself do that. Afterwards, she walked around the park with Sarah. When they came back, Grace pulled out the case from under her bed to go on with her sewing, a dress for Peggy, the eldest of her younger sisters, because if she goes on with the sewing for her then she must still be alive. Grace is making herself feel sure that they are, that Michael will find them, for Michael can do anything.

  Next day Grace went to find Michael, to catch him before he came to her. There he was, eyes black like he’d not seen a wink of sleep. It was the train back down, he said, all night, and he’d given up his corner seat, the only one where you have a chance of sleeping, head leaning against the window. For a lady, he told Grace. Though, don’t she dare call him a gentleman, he said, just because they do things like that. His chambers gave him an hour to see Grace; after three days off, he’d catching up to do.

  Michael told her he had started in the hospitals in Carlisle, that’s where they’d all been taken. He’d searched the beds for a woman, or a man without scraps of uniform, or a figure small enough. When he asked about those people he was told to go up the railway to Quintinshill; there was a farm building there and a village hall up the road at Gretna. Grace asked him whether they’d put together hospitals there like those field hospitals out in France. And Michael had looked away, the edge of his lip that she could still see curled in. When he turned back his eyes were like he’d caught flecks of dust, and he told her that everyone had been taken away by then. All the soldiers, they went to Edinburgh. There had been a woman and child, just one child, but a man had come to claim them. ‘And they went with him?’ Grace asked. Michael shook his head. They weren’t going anywhere of their own accord any more.

  The fire burnt for two days. The cries stopped, Michael’s been told, not so long after the crash. Michael had been to the house, had to settle it, he said, before the month was up and the next rent was due. He asked the neighbours, just in case they’d all gone somewhere else. It was the early train, they all said, so as they’d be back by tea. The early train, and wasn’t it a shame. Shame, too, that you need a body for a funeral.

  Michael brought back for Grace Ma’s silver-backed hairbrush that she’d been given as a wedding present and her glass bead necklaces, and the photographs for the two of them. The silver spoon too. He hadn’t seen the point of anything else, no place to put the furniture. Besides, it was all he could carry on the train. She walked back to chambers with him and waited while he went in and came out again. Then Grace took the bus back to Park Lane, with all she had left of her ma and da and three baby sisters in a small brown paper bag.

  And Grace’s mind is again in the park with Michael the next Sunday after that.

  They couldn’t talk about anything that’s not Them. But they couldn’t talk about Them either, not without her eyes swimming. Her mind was off, drifting, wishing they had something practical to do, plans to make, a funeral, possessions not yet sorted. But it’s all done, or will never be. She reached out her hand to find her brother’s and rested it on his. It clenched into a fist below hers.

  ‘I’ll … I’ll write,’ she heard him say.

  ‘Yes,’ said Grace. Then she swallowed. She hadn’t heard Michael stumble on his words since he came to London. But it wasn’t that which was making her search for air, it was the realisation that she hadn’t heard something he’d said. ‘Best if I send what I can to you,’ he continued. ‘Leave you in charge, Office Girl.’

  His fist still clenched, he turned to her stiffly and kissed a part of her cheek not shielded by her hat. Grace couldn’t speak as it settled in her mind what he was doing. People kept passing; Michael didn’t speak either. Then at last she found the breath to try. It felt as if she were reaching out to grab him and pull him back.

  ‘What about all those things you’ve said, Michael? About the war?’

  But her fingers caught only air.

  He shook his head. ‘I have to do something, after—’

  ‘It wasn’t the Germans that did it.’

  ‘As good as. Anyways, what’s the point in staying here now?’

  Grace looked down. So what did she count for to Michael?

  A year ago, it was, that Michael went, and now Joseph is coming to visit. Joseph who writes at least a dozen times as much as Michael, even though Grace sends so many letters to her brother.

  Joseph’s train goes in the morning, and he’ll come by early this evening. Susan, bless her now only half-hard heart, told Mrs Wainwright that he’d been in such a hurry when he came last week that he hadn’t had time to wait for Grace to return. So Mrs Wainwright has given Grace this evening off.

  Let’s hope he’s not in a hurry for everything, Grace, Mrs Wainwright tells her. And Grace is a little taken aback. But it’s with the best will that Mrs Wainwright’s mothering her. Anyways, she’s the only mother Grace has now.

  Yes, Mrs Wainwright.

  Thank heavens for Number Thirty-Five, for it’s Grace’s family now, even if the house is part dead, most of it dust-sheeted over. Miss Beatrice has been gone three months and Master Edward out there, too. Lady Masters comes up less and less, as though she doesn’t want to see the house empty as it is. When she does, though, there’s a dinner Of Great Importance, they are told, and the guests’ names are only whispered around the servants’ hall. It’s us women, says Susan, she’s trying to have more of us in the war, so that afterwards they can’t say we didn’t fight too.

  As for the refugees, they’ve nearly all left; it was too far from the munitions’, though Mussyur Durot, he’s still here with his family, and well brought up they are. He was the one who could speak English and now the others have gone he doesn’t look half so pale as he did when every word had to be turned by him. He was a businessman, he said, breweries, and more than one. You could tell that if you watched Madame Durot when she arrived, don’t think she’d lifted a duster before. Now she’s brandishing a broom in her fraying fine lady’s clothes. Confusing the visitors, said Susan when she started. Makes it look like we can’t do it ourselves. Her lady-ship’ll start moving us down to the country, and having us clean out the hospital as that strange house is now, and it’s overflowing.

  It’s the telegrams that do the telling. Grace shouldn’t have a kind thought towards Susan, not after all that business when she first arrived. But that’s two years ago, more even, and though Susan still has the tongue of a snake, she has her own suffering now. The telegram didn’t come to Susan; her sweetheart’s mother was sent that. Then his sister came around to see Susan and she took to her bed for days, Grace sitting her up, making her eat, persuading her that it’ll do her no good hiding away when there’s all that life to distract her downstairs, Grace knows that. Though it’s not as if Grace is much better. Sometimes she wakes up to sheets as though a river’s run through her bed.

  Then there’s Summers; the boot boy found him out the back, curled over the piece of paper with James’s name on it, which had come straight to him and it was only then that they realised James was his son. Explains why Summers was so mindful of him. Susan claimed that surely they all knew; it was obvious, just not worth mentioning. Grace doesn’t believe that Susan didn’t think it worth mentioning, not with James’s mother not being married. Why Susan would’ve had it out in an instant, Grace tells Sarah. But perhaps, Sarah replied, Susan’s sweet on him, don’t you think? Was sweet, corrects Grace. No, says Sarah, sweet on Summers, I mean. Grace thinks about that, about an older man. Maybe they’ll all be sweet on older men. There might not be any young ones left any more.

  Whenever the doorbell goes and it’s not the butcher’s or the grocer’s usual time, Grace stops and holds her breath. If it was about Joseph she knows she won’t hear
it straight. It’s Mr Bellows, even Lady Masters, who’ll get the news from his parents. It’ll be a new hand on an envelope, thinks Grace. The post can make your stomach turn now.

  *

  Even Mrs Wainwright is to worry about at times. With Susan’s sweetheart and James, Mrs W.’s face was so still, you’d’ve thought the news was for her. After James went she called Grace in, sat her down, and told her that Joseph was a good man, and gentle too. ‘Not someone to turn your nose up at, Grace.’ Grace puffed a bit at this. Turning her nose up? It was as though she should be grateful for anyone who showed a bit of interest. Mrs Wainwright watched her for a moment, then looked across the room at her sideboard and the picture-frame on it. ‘I didn’t,’ she said, ‘marry a man I should have once. And then it was too late.’

  Whenever Grace is up in her room, she looks at the postcard Joseph sent her: the one of his troop ready to go. There he is, third row up, two in from the left, behind the ones sitting down.

  Grace smooths down her dress. She’s ironed it sheet-flat then shaken it into folds so as he won’t be able to see the hand stitches she’s had to put in up the side – for there’s only so long you can have less worth eating without shrinking. He’s seen the dress before, of course, but how’s he to remember with all he sees? In his letters he says it’s a fine thing to be playing a part, doing something for King and Country. And that’s the doorbell – it’s him and Grace feels a flutter of panic. She would have heard if he’d been wounded, but she still has a fear. She knows all about how different a man can look when he comes back to England, although she tells herself she’s not one of those girls that might mind.

  Susan and Sarah pull her up by the arms. Careful now, my dress, she says to them. They’re not listening, they’re bundling her into the hall and there he is. She looks up and sees that there’s not a mark on him, thank the Lord, but there’s something different about him all the same, and she’s got a clenching in her chest.

  He’s as still as one of those statues down near Buckingham Palace, and looking at her as though tears are pushing to come out of his eyes with sadness so’s you’d drown in it. No, thinks Grace. No, I can’t have that. So she steps over to him, and touches his cheek. The skin is rough, and she flinches. He takes her hand in his.

  ‘Grace?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Am I really so different?’

  There’s a darkness behind his eyes, as though underneath that blue, the pupils just spread and spread.

  ‘No,’ she lies.

  Then it’s into the servants’ hall for a cup of tea and news, and all the exclamations that go with it. After half an hour or so, the two of them are bundled out of the house with winks and nods. When they’re standing on the street he says there’s a tea room, near Victoria Station. And they walk along Park Lane, but with their eyes down, searching for the kerb. With no lights, says Grace, in case of the Zeppelins, you can’t see whether you’re in the road, and the motors can’t see you in it. Not that there are many motors, streets are death quiet at night. As they walk Joseph keeps beside her and a foot away, like he’s shy of touching her, and Grace wonders whether he won’t put his arm around her, give her a squeeze that makes her feel a woman, and he should do that, especially as it’s the first time he’s seen her since Mrs Wainwright wrote to him about Grace’s family. He wrote back to Grace time after time, saying as how the thought of it for her was near bringing him to tears, what with the sort of family they looked in their photograph, and how Grace spoke about them. Maybe it was all just words, thinks Grace, and she sinks a little. It can’t be, though, she tells herself, it must be what’s happened to him. Something’s happened to him, for there’s a silence between them makes the gap grow until, when they are by Buckingham Palace garden wall, Grace speaks into it. She wants to make a joke, but it’s not there, so she asks a question, one that can cause no offence.

  ‘Do you think it bothers him?’

  ‘What bothering who?’

  ‘Him. The war. The King.’ Grace almost feels she should bob with the word, as they are so close to the palace.

  ‘Yes,’ replies Joseph. ‘That’s the point, isn’t it, we’re fighting for King and Country. Can’t be any other reason to it.’

  There’s something harder, flatter, about the way he is speaking. Grace doesn’t know what to reply.

  He takes her to Pimlico. Just a place I’ve been once or twice before, he says, in the old days. He stops outside the tea room, and Grace’s heart sinks a little for the paint is peeling off the sign hanging at the front, and there’s a crack in the corner of a front pane. But she’s with Joseph, she tells herself, what does it matter where they are? Only he isn’t quite Joseph. Where Joseph’s all soft, all boy, this man’s like leather flapping in the wind. Grace isn’t sure what she feels about this strange person beside her.

  When he opens the door for her there’s a rush of a smell that makes her hesitate. She’s too used to Mussyur Fouray’s cooking, even with all the potato flour he has to mix in with the wheat these days. They sit in a corner at the far end of the window. At least she and Joseph are facing each other now, and Grace stretches her feet out under the table so that they rest against his. Joseph doesn’t move away. Then he talks to her about her family, that it’s too terrible, but she’s not to worry, she’s a good future ahead of her, he’ll make sure of that. Still this isn’t quite what she’d hoped for, there’s something that’s missing from him, but when she turns a bit teary Joseph thinks it is for her family. Anyway, he starts to hold her hand, then he tells her that his elder brother has died, so the farm is his for going back to, and he hadn’t written because he hadn’t known how to tell her this terrible thing in the same letter as he told her about how different things would be. And he wasn’t sure what she’d make of it, farming not being service and all that.

  Grace sits there and thinks how sad Joseph must be, how she would be if it were news of Michael, but her mind can’t go that far. At the same time she is thinking of sheep and cows and milk still warm without having to put it on the stove. That’s all her hope in front of her now, and she tells him she is proud of him, which is true. A half-smile comes back to his face, then vanishes.

  ‘Not much to be proud of.’

  ‘One compliment, Joseph Salter, and you’re asking for more.’

  ‘There are a lot of’ – he pauses – ‘things I am not proud of at all.’

  ‘Well, it’s a fool can see his own virtues. You’ll just have to take my word.’

  ‘Your word, Grace?’ He perks up.

  ‘And what’s wrong with my word, then?’

  ‘Nothing, Grace. Nothing at all.’

  It’s like he’s speaking a different language. But that’s the war; when it’s all over, the real Joseph’ll come back to her. She can’t hope for that baby face again, mind, there’s part of him looks as old as Noah, and it’s not just the moustache. But that’s not going to stop her liking him. What’s a little change to take away what she’s been believing in, and what his mind must be full of, with that long journey to France tomorrow. So she tells him she’s even proud of where he’s taken her with its little tables, all wood, salt and pepper even, and just the two of them. Michael brought her here once before but she doesn’t tell Joseph. Joseph knows about Michael, of course, but he’s not met him. The war has given her that excuse.

  ‘Can you afford this?’ she asks, looking at the creased card in front of them.

  ‘All three courses, Grace. There’s no point being a rich man in Heaven.’

  She turns her eyes down to the table. Just in case they fill at the thought of Heaven, who’s in it, and who might be next. Joseph goes on talking.

  ‘Thank you for wearing that dress, Grace. That’s how I think of you when I’m out there. In that dress.’

  After they scrape their plates, Joseph leans across the table and covers her hand in his again. It makes her feel safe. She’s got him back, the Joseph she knows.

  ‘Grace?’
/>
  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Let’s go for a walk.’

  ‘Where would we go at this time of night?’

  ‘The park.’

  ‘We’ll barely see our noses, let alone where we’re putting our feet.’

  ‘What a lark, then. Better not knock into a tree.’

  Lord knows what she thinks, and what Joseph’s thinking. But it can’t be anything bad, for she knows Joseph, and she’s to cheer him up, that’s her bit now; that’s what they’re all supposed to do, make sure the men have a good time before they go back to fight for us. So if he wants a walk, then a walk it is, and she agrees it’s a lark. They walk back up past the Buckingham Palace garden and into Hyde Park. There’s enough of a moon to make it not totally dark.

  He puts his arm around her waist. Nothing strange in that, he knows she likes him guiding her along by the waist, especially dressed as he is, all shiny belt and buttons. His arm is a little tighter than usual, though. Think nothing of it, Grace Campbell, she tells herself, but she starts to chatter as though she’s putting the nerves out of her. She tells him about the kitchen maid with a nose like a potato marrying a man who came back without an inch of sight in his eyes. Now she’s in Croydon, nursing him, though he can find his way round with a cane right enough. The two of them joined the servants for Christmas, her with a smile near broke her face.

  But Joseph’s read this all before in her letters, and her voice fades as she remembers. He’s walking steadily and they’re alongside bushes now. Grace doesn’t look too close to the side, she doesn’t want to see the branches move and people come out like she’s heard they do. It’s less bad here, though, than it was with them all on the streets, where they were before the patrols came. Then Joseph suddenly swings her round until she’s facing him, and kisses her.