When I Was Yours

by Lizzie Page

* * *

  I potter quietly around the kitchen, scared that any noises I make will wake her. I check she is asleep. Dear God, what if she should die in the night? I check on her at eleven and twelve. Slightly after one in the morning, I hear Edmund come in and I freeze in bed. What if he checks her room, goes mad? But he doesn’t. I hear the lavatory flush and the taps run but then he goes to his own room.

  At two o’clock Pearl is still asleep when I check, but I must have dropped off because at three o’clock I wake to the sound of my bedroom door opening. I snap upwards. ‘Who’s there?’ A small silhouette of a girl and her flannel can just be made out in the door-frame. I take her back to bed and then clamber up to the box on the wardrobe where I know there is a teddy bear. She grasps it greedily, but still wakes me every fifteen minutes or so until around five o’clock, when I give in. ‘Come on, you may as well sleep in mine, just for tonight though.’

  I don’t sleep. I watch her, her tiny perfect features.

  At seven, I wake her. She stretches and groans and looks very much at home. When I ask if she is hungry for breakfast, she nods several times, very fast.

  * * *

  Toast and marmalade, two slices, cut into triangles because everyone knows that triangles are more fun. Pearl, munching, crunching, tells me that her mother sings. Lovely, I think, to the baby and the new baby.

  ‘What does she sing?’

  ‘She sings what they tell her.’

  I laugh. ‘Who?’

  ‘The customers in the Dog and Duck.’

  This doesn’t quite fit the image I had formed of Pearl’s mother, and for a moment, I think Pearl must have it wrong. A pub singer? Really? Pearl continues obliviously. ‘Daddy is overseas.’

  She explains she has two grandmas, one grandpa and three uncles; one is a favourite who calls her Pearly Girl. They look after her when ‘Mummy is doing the songs’.

  ‘A big family then.’

  She nods with satisfaction.

  That’s what I had wanted. That’s what I dreamed of.

  As we are eating, Edmund walks in. Double-takes at the sight of us. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘This is Pearl Posner – from London,’ I add unnecessarily. I have already realised that Pearl can be a girl of few words – when she wants to be – but I still expect her to say hello. Instead, she ignores Edmund completely, her finger on her toast. I will have to talk to her about manners (I can’t imagine how that conversation will go).

  ‘You haven’t—’ he says thunderously.

  I hiss, ‘It’ll just be for a few weeks, Edmund.’

  ‘Mummy said just a few days,’ pipes up Pearl helpfully.

  He shakes his head at me and leaves the room. Within seconds, he returns. ‘Can I have a word, Vivienne?’ His eyes are bulging. Oh Lord.

  Pearl puts her toast triangle into her mouth all at once. I go out, wiping my hands on my apron, staring at my slippers. I don’t want Pearl to hear. I don’t want Pearl to think she isn’t wanted. She is wanted. Maybe not by him, but by me.

  ‘What could I do, Edmund? It’s compulsory. They insisted!’

  ‘If they thought the rooms were in use they wouldn’t have allocated—’

  ‘I couldn’t lie to them. Anyway, we’ll get money for her.’

  ‘It’s not about the money.’ Edmund runs his hands through his hair; he still has hair. People still call him handsome.

  ‘No, I know.’ I say the one thing that might move him. ‘But it’s about doing our bit, Edmund, you know that.’

  * * *

  After breakfast, I take Pearl beyond the churchyard to the small, scrubby patch of land there, with four crooked swings. I am expecting to see several evacuees playing there, but we are the only ones. I don’t know what the others can be doing and I am worried I have missed an instruction.

  ‘Have you been on a swing before, Pearl?’

  She narrows her eyes at me. ‘Um, yes?’

  Hup, hup she goes and I push her, but she doesn’t need me; she kicks out to make herself go higher, and it is painful to watch: why does it hurt to see her soar like a bird, her head thrown back? Is it because I used to imagine coming to this place, these swings, before?

  ‘Who was that man?’ Pearl asks, interrupting my reverie. ‘In the kitchen.’

  It is as though the swinging has loosened something, emboldened her.

  ‘Oh, that was Mr Lowe…’ I pause. ‘My husband.’

  She crinkles her nose. ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes!’ I say. I feel this is an insult, but I’m not quite sure who she’s insulting: him or me.

  She nods slowly. She brings the swing to a wobbly still, then surveys me. ‘He has a very nice car.’

  I laugh. ‘You noticed it then?’

  She does the fast nodding again. ‘Can I go in it?’

  My heart sinks. Edmund’s Ford Prefect is his pride and joy. He won’t even let me drive it and I know exactly what he’ll think about Pearl’s fingers smearing his clean leather seats.

  ‘We’ll see,’ I say.

  Walking back to the house, she tells me she was expecting us to keep chickens. Surprised, I apologise for their absence. I had got it into my head that the London children wouldn’t know their chickens from their herons or their geese. But Pearl is very knowledgeable about a lot of things. At home, they call her ‘clever clogs’, she says. She tells me about a neighbour’s dog. She imitates the noises he makes: a varied symphony. Charmed, I tell her, ‘What a coincidence, our neighbour here has dogs.’

  I know, we will go and meet Mrs Burton’s dogs!

  I have never called on Mrs Burton before, she usually comes to invite me, but she always tells me to drop by whenever. Now is the time to test it. We knock and Mrs Burton greets us with surprise but also with warmth. She has cake, she has stories, she has all the right maternal instincts.

  And of course, Pearl is a natural with Laurel and Hardy. They lick her face and roll over and she tickles their tummies while Mrs Burton makes us a brew. Mrs Burton teaches us to say ‘sit’ to them, then ‘lie down’, and they do, they really do! Pearl and Mrs Burton are laughing, and when Laurel comes to sit at my feet, I feel that maybe, just maybe, I am part of something again.

  4

  1914 – Then

  Those first lazy August days at war, Olive and I often went out walking in the sunshine and although we didn’t say it, we were trying to spot what was changing. We were sniffing out the war on the ground. Olive said some men had already left Goldsmiths to fight. The engineering students were joining up at quite a pace. She said a professor of fine art with a German name had ‘disappeared’. She also asked if I’d heard that the suffragettes had ceased their operations for the time being. I thought this was a relief. Some of Olive’s suffragette friends were a rum gang and I didn’t want her locked up and force-fed for slashing paintings in the National Gallery. Instead, it seemed to me that everyone was working together, putting their backs into the war effort. It gave you a nice feeling.

  There were only two other girls doing the fine art degree like Olive. In the mornings, they had assembly and prayers like at school. There were no women’s lavatories in the art school building so she spent most of her lunchtimes over at the trainee teachers’ block and that’s where she found out that a lot of boyfriends and brothers were joining up too.

  I was working in Father’s office, not far from our house. Some two years earlier, Father had employed a Mrs Webster to assist me. Unfortunately, Mrs Webster proved highly capable and, rather than helping me out, she took over. The filing system she created was so competent, and her note-taking so efficient, that I was left with very little to do. Father used to say Mrs Webster was a short-term measure, and when we were all ready, she would move elsewhere and I would take over, but secretly I doubted any of us thought that was likely any more.

  Very little had changed in the office since war broke out, although my father kept talking about disruption to the ‘supply chains’. Mrs Webster, who inclined towards
morose at the best of times, was inclining further that way now. She had a nineteen-year-old son, Harry, and was worried he’d be called up. My suggestion that the war would be over before the winter solstice did nothing to allay her concerns.

  * * *

  Olive loved posters, any posters. Before college, she had gone through a huge Toulouse-Lautrec phase. Naturally, she was thrilled with the recruitment posters. The sign men must have been working overtime for they seemed to be everywhere and there were different posters every few days. You couldn’t walk down a street without passing three or four pasted on the walls.

  Britons need you. There he was: Lord Kitchener depicted bold as brass, with that moustache you could sweep the fireplace with, the piercing eyes, like the strictest headmaster, the most merciless grandfather shouting, ‘Go to your room without dinner!’

  ‘Just look at those hands,’ Olive said admiringly. Olive had always struggled with hands and disproportionately admired those who could manage them. I always told her to cover up the hands she did with a cup or a handbag, but she wouldn’t. She had to see a thing through. She didn’t cut corners, not artistically anyway.

  She was right though: these hands were impressive. Clearly, Reginald Leete, the artist, had no fear of hands – Lord Kitchener was the owner of an enviably perfect and pointy index finger.

  Soon we saw a new one: Britons want you. Join your country’s army. God save the King.

  ‘They needed us last week, they want us today,’ I pointed out.

  Olive stared at it, drinking it in: she obviously revelled in its forcefulness and admired everything about it. ‘Be hard to say no to that,’ she said. I agreed. That was the point. There was something almost hypnotising about it. Olive told me about a lecture she’d attended where they’d learned about the ‘infinite spark’ – the ‘God-light’. ‘An inexpressible something in a picture that makes it hard to look away.’ That was what she chased. That was what all artists chased, apparently.

  Someone stopped behind us, breathing heavily, too close to our backs.

  ‘I don’t think they want you, girls, they want big strapping lads!’ he jeered. I turned round, smiling nervously, but Olive wouldn’t take that lying down. Olive wouldn’t take cheek from anyone.

  ‘You joining up then? Big lad like you…’

  He blushed into his collar.

  Olive linked her arm with mine and as we marched away, she imitated our Uncle Toby: ‘Now we know, now we know…’

  * * *

  A few days later, Olive said that some injured soldiers would be coming in to King’s Cross station. This threw me. Soldiers were injured? Already? We’d only been at war for a matter of days! It made me worry for our cousin Richard. For the first time, I wondered if we were getting the full picture from the newspapers.

  ‘We ought to go then,’ I said stoutly. ‘Show our respect.’

  Olive agreed. She was always looking for ideas for new things to paint.

  We bought flags off a street seller who cheerfully admitted the war had given him a roaring trade. We joined the crowds of people waving flags and clapping; a happy bunch we were. Then the men – or patients, I suppose – started coming out. At first, I felt embarrassed to be looking, but then I leaned over to Olive and said, ‘They don’t look too bad.’

  Some waved right back at us; one man with a bandage wrapped right round his head did a jolly little jig. Other men looked down and seemed to be pretending we weren’t there.

  ‘In fact, they look rather relieved,’ I whispered to Olive.

  ‘They’ll be patched up and sent right back again!’ she said, then shouted heartily like we were at a rugby tournament, ‘Go on, boys!’

  One woman pushed through the crowds and gave a soldier a red rose. I don’t think she knew him, she just wanted to do something.

  ‘Thank you, boys, for all you’ve done,’ she called after him. I admired her spirit.

  In the background were starched nurses, concerned and facilitating, checking that the men could walk. Olive nudged me.

  ‘Wish we could do something like that, Vivi.’

  ‘Wha-at?’

  ‘Don’t the nurses look wonderful?’

  I laughed. Olive could be such a dreamer sometimes.

  Then came the worse ones. Some on crutches with actual missing legs. Several men in wheelchairs. One man was pushed through with his head lolling uselessly over his chest. As he went past us, I heard him babbling like a baby. It reminded me of Richard performing Lady Macbeth. What on earth was the matter with him?

  I thought, it’s possible he was always like that. Surely, no one could descend into that state in a mere two weeks? He must have had something wrong to start with.

  * * *

  Every night at supper, we raised a toast, ‘To Richard’ and ‘For God, King and Country’, before we tucked in. But that evening, I don’t know why, we forgot our new routine and it wasn’t until we had all taken a bite of beef and ale casserole that I remembered. I just burst into tears – I couldn’t get the image of that poor creature in the chair out of my mind.

  Father and Olive stared at me.

  Stuttering, I explained, ‘We forgot our toast! What if something terrible happens to Richard?’

  I looked up just quickly enough to see Olive rolling her eyes and Father continuing to put his fork to his mouth.

  ‘I’m just being superstitious,’ I added apologetically.

  Uncharacteristically, Father shouted back at me across the table, food still in his mouth, ‘You don’t think anything would happen to that boy, do you?’ He chewed angrily. ‘He’s only nineteen – damn nonsense!’

  ‘Sorry, Father.’

  Father backed down immediately. I saw he had tears in his eyes. ‘He’ll be fine, Vi, you know Richard.’

  Olive put her hand on mine. Sometimes she could read my mind. ‘Don’t worry, Vivi, Richard won’t be coming back in that state, I promise you.’

  * * *

  The next day, Olive showed me a sketch she had done of the flag-waving crowds. She was very pleased with it. She had drawn a cheering little girl with curly hair and a shouting boy with a plaster on one cheek (hands in his pockets). It wasn’t Olive’s usual style; in fact, you could say it was quite twee, but I thought: War brings out different sides of a person. And I knew Olive wanted to do something good with her patriotism. She wanted to use her passion for the better. I could see these images embroidered on handkerchiefs or drawn onto china plates one day and I told her that.

  ‘What are you going to call it?’ I asked.

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘How about Before the Victory?’

  She pondered for a moment and then said: ‘War Spirit.’

  She never used my suggestions, however good they were.

  ‘And what will you do with it?’

  ‘Show it to the Fords, of course,’ she said. She grabbed her coat. ‘Actually, I’ll take it there right now.’

  ‘Olive?!’

  ‘War effort.’ She smirked. ‘Just doing my bit.’

  5

  1939 – Now

  Her first Sunday in Hinckley and Pearl seems to think she is coming with me to church. I don’t like to say no to her, not yet. I wonder if she is perhaps scared of being in the house on her own. Or with Edmund. That’s understandable. But Edmund is out most of the time anyway. Our house does creak and sigh sometimes, like it’s elderly and trying to get back on to its feet. I remember Olive used to hate an empty house too. I tell Pearl that I am playing the large organ at the front of the church, so she’ll have to sit on her own in the pews.

  She stares at me with her saucer eyes. ‘Orangutan?’

  Laughing, I correct her. ‘Organ – it’s like a piano with pipes.’

  ‘And what’s a pew?’ she asks. I love that she is curious and such a quick learner. Because she is so tiny and hesitant, you might think she is feeble, but she isn’t.

  I know what it’s like to be underestimated.

 
As we walk there, I feel proud to hold her little hand in mine. People wouldn’t know she was an evacuee; they might well think she is my daughter.

  I wonder where Edmund is again. It’s awkward when Pearl asks and I have to admit I don’t know. She sees some friends – other evacuees – in the churchyard. They are clambering over headstones. I don’t know whether I should tell them off. Children don’t usually listen to me. I say, ‘Why not play round the back, where the swings are?’ and I am surprised when they head off.

  Pearl stares longingly after them. I nod, and whisper, ‘You can go and play too, if you like.’

  Should I be letting her go off alone? I don’t know what I’m doing. I should know what I’m doing. I’m forty-four. They’ve let me in charge of a small child. Without even an interview or an exam.

  * * *

  Today I play ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’; the vicar likes to keep things jolly. As I thump the keys, I think of Pearl, falling out of a tree and screaming. I think of her skipping into the woods, picking poisonous mushrooms, eating them; of her little tongue furring up. I think of her finding the brook. I don’t even know if she can swim. How could I not know this?

  Each little flower that opens,

  Each little bird that sings,

  He made their glowing colours,

  He made their tiny wings.

  When we get back home, Edmund is there, grim-faced and drinking whisky. It’s been on the wireless: war has been declared. This is it. Now we know. There’s no getting out of it.

  ‘Oh God,’ I say. We knew it was coming but still it is a shock. I flop into an armchair, sniffing back tears. Edmund pours himself more whisky. Pearl surveys us both, terrified.

  ‘I want to go home!’ she cries out. Her eyes are wider than ever. I jump up.