by Emily Gunnis
All love, Jacob
The clay and the rain were our greatest enemies. At night she had dreamed of his face and the tracks of his tears through the thick clay on his skin, she saw him injured and cold, blood and clay sticking to his face, in his eyes and hair, trickling out of his ears from the relentless shelling she’d heard about from those who came home. Every letter was a dissolution of the hope that he would walk away from the war with any of his fun-loving, gentle soul intact.
Today is only our twentieth day in action, yet it seems like years. What has happened to me and my battalion would be viewed by most as being impossible. Sending us into battle with our best friends is torture. I’ve seen as many of them blown to pieces beside me as I can stand. I just can’t believe it is all really happening. Landing deep in enemy territory and trying to hold a position assaulted and shelled from all sides until friendly troops break through is something I would rather take my own life than have to repeat. I crawled for hours with bullets whistling past my ears, thinking each second was my last. I can’t tell you what else I saw and shall never speak of it. Suffice to say I never knew man was capable of inflicting so much pain on his fellow man. I shall never recover from what I have witnessed.
After taking Miss Clara and Miss Ethel their tea, she had asked to go into town to fetch their rations then gone up to her room to change. She had walked over to her dressing table and brushed her lank hair, staring at her haunted reflection in the mirror with a heavy heart. She had patted some rouge on to her pale cheeks then sat on the bus into town, a smile painted on her face, as everyone spoke of getting the train up to London, where thousands of people were gathering in Trafalgar Square and at Buckingham Palace to watch King George, Queen Elizabeth and Winston Churchill make their appearance.
The bus had been hot and crowded, everyone singing and dancing, just as they were on the street when she got into town and fought her way through the crowds to the entrance door of the post office. It seemed a fitting place to hide, having been a lifeline to Jacob for so many years. The first day of the war, she had made a point of sending her first letter, and now she was back, on VE Day, having come full circle. She tugged at the handle and almost fell through the door, the gentle bell ringing as she closed it behind her with a sigh of relief.
Inside, it was cool and empty of people, the counter from which she had sent all Jacob’s letters tucked away in the corner. The elderly lady who ran it always smelt of lavender and the shelves were cluttered with envelopes and parcels, notebooks and rolls of brown paper. As with everyone else the proprietor was in a state of excitement as Harriet took a deep breath and, for something to focus on, looked inside a glass cabinet next to the till.
‘Hello, Harriet, how are you? What can I help you with?’ The lady with grey hair in a bun and an abundance of freckles smiled at her warmly.
Harriet felt thrown by the question and, as she looked again in the cabinet, the thick, brick-like diary caught her eye, ‘Can I look at the diary, please?’ she asked.
The woman lifted it out and placed it on the counter. ‘Are you looking for a present for Jacob’s homecoming?’
Harriet reached out and touched the leather cover, flicking through dozens of pages taking her into the future, days stretching ahead of her expectantly. She imagined her scrawled writing recording a life without war, where she hadn’t lost their baby during the Blitz and Jacob was still himself, days filled with picnics and swimming and bike rides and adventures, the two of them and their baby; a little family that felt like an impossible dream.
She hadn’t even told Jacob she’d fallen pregnant again. And she knew she never could. To anyone. How could she be so selfish as to talk about a baby that had never existed to any one of the people who had lost a son, brother or husband on the front line?
Miss Ethel had been so kind. Calling the doctor when the pain and bleeding got too much. This time, she could see it was a girl before the doctor took her away. She had bled for ten days afterwards and the pain was like never before. But she had needed it. Needed the agony that came with it, needed to see the blood to know she hadn’t imagined her.
Yet, months later, she couldn’t forget and still didn’t know how to feel in this pit of grief over a person who had never even existed. She needed to tell someone, someone who would not chastise her for her selfishness, someone she could talk to when she couldn’t sleep.
‘Have you had word when he’s coming home, Hattie? It’s a beautiful gift, so perfect for your future together. There is so much to look forward to now.’
‘Yes, there is!’ she said, lifting the diary from the counter and smiling. ‘I’ll take it.’
That night, once all her duties had been taken care of, Harriet pulled open the top drawer of her bedside table, opened the first page of her diary and picked up her fountain pen.
Tuesday, 8 May 1945
Dear Diary,
The day everybody has dreamed of is finally here. The war has ended, but I fear it is not over. There is a sense of exhaustion overriding the street parties and victory parades.
Britain is no longer the country it was before the war. We have lived, eaten, slept and dreamed war and though it is declared over, we only have to look at our empty larders, empty store cupboards and half-empty coal cellars to know we still have a long way to go. For everyone I know, the war has brought the loss of someone they loved and for those who have survived there are blinded eyes or amputated limbs.
How then can I mention the loss of my baby girl? I still don’t know how to feel in this pit of grief over a person I never even held. Where to put all my hopes and dreams for her.
I was so close this time, nearly six months gone – I really thought we had made it, that Jacob would be coming home to two of us. Now my arms ache for the baby I will never hold and I cannot share my grief with my husband, for he has too much to bear already. How can a woman ever understand what a soldier fighting on the beaches of Normandy has experienced? How can a man returning from war comprehend what a woman has been through in the Blitz and in holding the fort at home? When Jacob was last home, I felt that there was a sea between us that we will never be able to cross.
I know caring for my husband and keeping my job are my priorities, but I can’t stop thinking about my baby girl. I don’t know where they took her. When I went to see him the doctor said he didn’t want to upset me by talking about it and that I should move on. I’m worried she is buried alive somewhere. I saw her but they took her too quickly for me to make sure she was dead. What if they made a mistake? I can’t accept why my body keeps doing this to me, why a baby who is strong and kicking and alive is suddenly dead.
I am glad that I have someone to talk to about the troubles I mustn’t bother anyone else with. I must sleep now, for I need my strength to welcome home my poor husband. I cannot bear to think what a state he must be in. Thank God, at least, the bloodshed is over, but I fear it will be some time before the full effects are spent.
Chapter Three
Iris
10 a.m. Wednesday, 19 November 2014
Iris Waterhouse watched her husband walk into the office of the solicitors in Clerkenwell she’d instructed to handle her divorce and inwardly gasped at how gaunt he had become in the two years since she had last seen him.
James had always been athletic, just over six foot, and a keen cricket player when they met at medical school. He had never had an ounce of fat on him. But today he looked different: he had gone from slender to drawn-looking and for the first time since they met, sixteen years before, he seemed world-weary.
If it weren’t for the fact that her heart, which was finally starting to heal, had been ripped open again at the prospect of losing her beloved home, his downtrodden appearance would have prompted her to jump up on to the shiny walnut conference table and perform a merry dance.
As things stood, all it did was confirm her suspicions that Lucy Brewer, the twenty-three-year-old ex-receptionist at her husband’s practice, hadn’t st
olen her husband because she wanted to look after him. Quite the opposite. She had needed a cash cow and after trying and failing to get one of the other chiropractors to leave his wife – something she and James had laughed about at the time – Lucy had moved on to James. And, to her horror, he’d fallen for it.
‘Does she know you haven’t got any money?’ Iris had said as they sat in their small sun-dappled garden on their last morning together when he had come to get his things. There was no screaming or crying from her this time, no telling him to get out, to leave, that she hated him, that she wished they’d never met – the bravado of a broken heart. She had no tears left. All she felt was an indescribable pain.
‘Iris, I know you want to hate Lucy but it’s not about her. This is about us. We’ve been broken for a long time.’
‘Oh right, thanks for telling me,’ she had said, biting down on her lip.
‘I’m just tired of everything being about us not being able to have kids,’ he had said after packing up the last box and slamming the car boot. ‘It has been like living with a black hole slowly sucking the joy out of our lives and I can’t do it any more. And before you ask, no, Lucy’s not pregnant. She doesn’t even want kids.’
That had been two years ago, two years of such uncontrollable grief she wished James were dead, rather than out in the world and happy with someone else. They had been together since she was eighteen and it was the first time she had felt the true meaning of loneliness. Her mother and her girlfriends had saved her, but she still found it hard to come home to an empty, dark house. No one to discuss her day with, to bicker with, to keep her awake with their snoring. He was such a large character, like a small child who never stopped talking and crashing about, interrupting and creating endless dramas at the practice which she had to smooth over. It had driven her mad, his energy, always on to the next thing, the investment that would make them rich, yet now she was like a sad old lady, keeping the TV on all evening just for company because of the silence that seemed follow her around everywhere.
But while she had known she would grieve for James, what she hadn’t been prepared for was the tsunami of grief she had suddenly felt for her childlessness. ‘It will happen, honey,’ he had insisted. ‘There’s nothing wrong with us, the specialists have said so, we just need to be patient.’ So she kept getting pregnant, having the shots they gave her to stop her miscarrying, going for regular scans to watch the heartbeat on the screen: thud, thud, thud. Until, at four months, five months, six months, the inevitable dreaded silence.
‘Excuse me for a moment,’ the sonographer would say before disappearing to seek a second opinion. Every time the same routine. They’d be sent home and, eventually, she would start to bleed. Then they would climb into the car, make the sad journey back to the maternity hospital where she would have to give birth, all the while listening to the agonizing wails of other women in childbirth and the piercing cries of their newborns.
She had known this day was coming, when he would come after her for more money. He was so allergic to any kind of saving or budgeting that it was inevitable that he would burn through their savings in no time. Their whole married life she had been the one on the steady pay check as a health correspondent at The Tribune, paying the mortgage, while he moved from clinic to clinic, having extended periods of leave in between jobs to work on the house. Work which never materialized while he spent all day looking into ways to invest money they didn’t have in the stock market.
But to stop him would mean officially divorcing him, something she couldn’t face – and she never thought he would go so far as to try and force her to sell her beloved cottage in Southfields.
‘Am I correct in thinking that nothing was put in writing when you made this agreement about the house and your savings?’
Iris looked over to her solicitor, Katrina Keep, a softly spoken woman with a fringe as blunt as an axe and an attitude to match.
‘That is correct, yes,’ said Miss Keep. Miss Keep now looked over at her husband’s solicitor who was leaning back in his chair with an air of arrogance which was making Iris feel very nervous. ‘Well, my client is arguing that as she has paid the mortgage most of their married life, including long periods when he was out of work, and her husband walked away with roughly £100,000 in savings, and his pension which is also worth £100,000 at a time when the house was worth roughly £250,000, they agreed between them it was a fair split.’
James’s solicitor, a balding man in an expensive-looking cobalt blue suit straining at the waist, spoke. ‘My client informs me that his ex-wife staying in the house was only a temporary arrangement, and that it was never formalized.’ He paused for effect before continuing. ‘He’s also saying that he’s under significant pressure as his partner, Miss Brewer, is pregnant.’
Iris felt her whole body tense. Her heart began to hammer in her ears. She was aware her face was burning and as she reached out for a glass of water her hands began to shake. From the day he left, she had known a young girl like Lucy would want a baby, that James was an idiot for thinking otherwise.
Now it was suddenly a reality, she couldn’t stop her heart from breaking while they sat around the shiny walnut meeting-room table discussing whether she was liable to foot the bill for their baby.
Miss Keep settled back into her black leather chair. ‘As you know,’ she began, ‘your financial statements have now been exchanged and we are meeting to discuss the situation in a bid to keep this out of court and come to an arrangement between the four of us.’
James’s solicitor leaned in, his piggy eyes sparkling. ‘As this would be classed as a long marriage, the starting point would be equality. My client feels that the house has increased in value to such a degree over the past two years it would be manifestly unfair were he not to receive an equal share of its current value.’
Iris forced her eyes up towards James. He was doodling mindlessly on a pad of paper, listening to his solicitor speak, unwilling to meet her eye.
‘Right, so,’ said Miss Keep, and Iris felt her stomach lurch, ‘we need to look at the major issues. My client has been living for two years in the house on the understanding that she would stay there and that it would be her nest egg. Mr Hennesey told my client that he would keep the savings they had accrued over the twelve years of their marriage, just shy of £100,000, and his pension, and that Miss Waterhouse would keep the house, which at the time was worth roughly that amount, just under £250,000.’
‘What happened to all the savings, James?’ Iris burst out, and Miss Keep put her hand on her arm.
James’s solicitor spoke again. ‘Unfortunately, my client invested a lot of capital in setting up a business venture and it hasn’t broken even as of yet. Given this situation, I am afraid we can no longer accept what was only ever an informal arrangement. Your client is living in a two-bedroom cottage now estimated to be worth £300,000 in one of the most desirable locations in south London, while my client is renting a one-bedroom flat in Tooting. With no deposit and his partner unable to work, his income stream is insufficient at present to change his situation and we believe that we are legally entitled to a share of money from the house, be that from remortgaging, or the sale of the property.’
‘Can I ask about your new partner’s earning capacity, Mr Hennesey?’ asked Miss Keep softly.
James still hadn’t spoken and now shook his head, not looking up. His solicitor filled the silence. ‘My client’s partner worked as a secretary for a while, but her job is not very well paid and she is about to have a baby, so let’s keep that out of the equation for now.’
‘She might be pregnant now, but she can’t expect to be a one income family if money is tight,’ said Miss Keep curtly.
‘Why is she suddenly left out of the equation when it’s all her doing?’ Iris was annoyed her voice was trembling. Katrina put her hand on her arm again.
Iris fought back tears and stood up. The room was stifling and she had to leave. On shaking legs, she made for the door,
tugging it open, hearing her solicitor’s voice, as if through a tunnel. ‘I think let’s adjourn for the day.’
Iris heard James’s solicitor address Katrina as she left the room: ‘If we can’t sign a heads of agreement today, we’re willing to go to court.’
Dizzy, Iris headed through reception, pushed the revolving doors and launched herself into the cold November morning, taking large gasps of air. As she squatted down, hugging her knees to her chest, Katrina Keep appeared beside her.
‘I don’t understand this,’ gasped Iris, sucking back tears. ‘I thought I was the wronged party, that the law was on my side.’
‘I’m afraid that’s a huge misconception. I hate to say it, Iris, but I’m afraid the law is on his side because you made the mistake of not having anything put in writing at the time.’
‘I trusted him, even after what he did. We were married for twelve years! I thought that counted for something.’
Miss Keep squatted on the pavement next to Iris. ‘I’m afraid that if you take this to court, looking at the current situation, they will certainly find in his favour. Award him money based on his needs.’
‘He’s not taking my house.’ Iris wiped away angry tears.
‘But this is a needs-based case and your ex-husband will need to be rehoused with a baby on the way. You can push this all the way to court, but even then you might be penalized and asked to pay his legal fees if the outcome is in his favour. I would advise a fifty-fifty split.’
‘I can’t agree to this now, I need to think.’
‘Of course. Can I suggest we meet again in two days? I know Mr Hennesey is prepared to go to court if we can’t sign a heads of agreement today. His partner’s due date is looming. He knows he has a strong case, but I think I can buy us a couple of days.
‘Fine,’ Iris heard herself mutter. ‘Two days.’
Katrina nodded as Iris watched a young couple walk past, gazing at each other, oblivious to the pain they were capable of inflicting on one another. Iris’s mobile started to ring.