by Lizzie Page
I was going to do my best. That was all I could do.
Christopher was still hanging on. His parents were there. Edmund noticed me first and gave a watery smile and a kind of hopeless shrug. I nodded, went back to the corridor and waited. Again, I wasn’t sure what I was doing there. I didn’t want Edmund to feel alone, but maybe I should have stayed in France.
About two hours later, Edmund came out, shaking his head, and I understood. His shoulders had turned in, his cheeks had hollowed. My heart went out to him.
Edmund couldn’t meet my eyes. ‘Thank you so much for being here, Vivienne. I don’t know what I’d do without you.’
‘You shouldn’t have to go through this,’ I said.
Suddenly he crumpled and threw himself towards me. ‘Oh God, Vi, it’s so awful, I can’t bear it.’
His shoulders were wracked with grief; he heaved up and down. And I comforted him and I thought it was for this – the travelling, the uncertainty – that I had come, so I could do this for him.
When he pulled away, he said quietly, ‘I saw six men die last week, six men! And now I have to bury my own brother. For God’s sake, Vivienne, it’s agony.’
‘I know,’ I said, ‘I know.’
* * *
Blinking, we went out into the bright sunlight. The mobile tea van was still there but with a different person at the counter.
The hospital grounds made an unexpectedly pretty scene. Drooping leaves and branches and blossom on the ground. I remembered how it was when Richard died and the shock that the world went on without him. There was a bust of a person I didn’t know in the garden; there were bird droppings on its shoulders and I couldn’t stop thinking of Christopher lying there in his hospital blues, with his sad, sad face.
‘Something good should come out of all this,’ said Edmund and I clutched his hand and said, ‘It will, it will.’
‘So… what do you say, Vivienne?’
Was this it? The marriage question? I turned, confused. Behind us, someone was arguing with the tea person because their tea was too strong, and how come he couldn’t have his money back?
‘Shall we get married then?’ he continued.
‘You mean…’ I asked tentatively, ‘After all this is over?’
He nodded. He looked suddenly relieved. ‘We could do it sooner, if you wanted?’
I was trying to catch my breath. This is what I’d wanted but the wait. And the picture. That picture.
‘Thank you, Edmund. When the war is over will be fine.’
‘Do you want me to ask your father?’
‘I… no. It’s fine.’
‘Good,’ he said.
His parents came out, grey and shattered. Everything had been wrung out of them. Edmund’s mother, usually so beautiful, looked like a damp, grey dishcloth.
‘We’ve decided to get engaged,’ Edmund told them. ‘We’re engaged to marry.’ Afterwards, I thought, engaged to marry? What else would one be engaged to do?
They nodded meekly, distractedly.
‘Well,’ said Edmund’s mother. I think Edmund and I realised, very quickly, that perhaps this wasn’t the best time for an announcement.
I walked back home to Father’s, and every step was filled with sadness. I couldn’t help wondering if Edmund and I had somehow sealed a terrible mistake.
23
1940 – Now
After Pearl has left for school, and if it’s not a day for queuing at the post office, the butchers or the grocers, and if Charles is the right way up, and if I’m not playing the organ for a church service, I go to Mrs Burton’s. We are proud to call ourselves the home front. The Women’s Voluntary Service: we do whatever is needed. Toys for the poor children who’ve lost everything in Hull. Jumpers for our boys in the mountains of Italy. Brushed wool from the dogs packaged up and sent to be processed.
We reminisce about the foods we can’t get any more – ‘I haven’t seen a banana for months’; ‘Cheeky!’ – and save up those which we know the others particularly like. ‘A cauliflower for you, Mrs Dean, sent from family in Warwickshire!’
We worry about recipes and give each other tips on how to make a stew go further. Our cooking is no longer about taste, but eking it out. It suits me; I never made anything particularly tasty anyway. And Mrs Burton is generous to a fault, and people are generous to her because they know she is. They give her the fatty bit, the bit extra, the baker’s dozen, the oops, now, I’ve overfilled it.
We keep the home fires burning.
Some of us, the ones whose husbands are away or perhaps the ones who like our husbands less, meet in the evenings and carry on with our making and mending. They heat the village hall for us, which saves heating our houses. Sometimes, I bring Pearl and she sits poring over her homework. (She is not a silly sausage.) If we’re at home, we listen to the wireless while I sew or knit, but sometimes she says, ‘Play with my hair,’ and I do that instead. I contort her unruly mane into funny styles to make us laugh.
Pearl is doing well at school. She has friends there, she says, but seems disinclined to see them out of school, which suits me.
‘They are all the same, all the townies,’ Mrs Bankhead, the teacher, explains one day.
‘Townies?’ I ask, mystified.
‘That’s what we call the children from London. It’s townies versus locals.’
‘Versus?’
Mrs Bankhead looks shifty. ‘I didn’t mean versus… there’s no malice. Some of the London children are quite different, that’s all. Especially the…’ Her voice trails away.
‘Especially the?’ I repeat.
‘Different ones,’ she says and turns her back on me.
* * *
In October, we WAVs organise a dance and everyone says we do the town proud. The church hall looks sparkling and anyone who can brings cakes. I watch the Burtons whirl around the room together alongside the Deans, the Shaws and the Pilkingtons and wish Edmund had come. There are more women on their own now though, more than ever – the younger ones whose husbands have joined up or the ones with husbands doing the ARP – so I don’t feel as lonely as I used to, and the deputy mayor is away in Bournemouth, so I don’t have to worry about swerving his octopus hands.
Mr and Mrs Fellows and their grown son Cyril are there. He is trying not to be awkward in his unfamiliar uniform, all starchy and solid. He is going away the next day and everyone is shaking his hand and saying, ‘Good lad,’ or slapping his back. I did notice Mrs Burton’s Ethel slip outside with him and the huge smile she had on her face when they came back in, but I am still surprised the next morning when, as we’re clearing up, Mrs Burton tells me Cyril and Ethel got engaged. Sweet Cyril called round and asked for Ethel’s hand before the dance yesterday. They are madly in love. Pearl slides her finger along the plates for left-over icing. I sweep the floor. Mrs Dean is looking for a missing tablecloth that, of course, is her favourite.
‘The man in the green uniform? With the red hair?’
‘That’s him. What do you think – romantic, huh?’
‘I don’t think so,’ says Pearl. She says she is not interested in love. Mrs Burton and I chuckle.
Mrs Burton has not given up on Pearl yet though.
‘What would you say though, if Ethel said she wanted you to be her bridesmaid?’
I think, Woah, that’s a commitment, but Mrs Burton eyes me reassuringly. This has evidently been the subject of an earlier discussion.
Wrinkling her nose, Pearl says she would have to think about it, but she might say yes if there is a promise of a nice dress?
We laugh.
I’m under the impression that Mrs Burton is walking on air about the engagement, until Pearl takes the plates to the kitchen and we’re alone. Then she makes a pained expression at me, her hand pressed over her heart.
‘He’s a lovely boy, that Cyril. I just hope he gets through it.’
24
1916 – Then
Just as I had suspected, Olive couldn’t look a
fter herself. In the six short days I was away in England, she had only gone and shattered her ankle.
I had just arrived back in Lamarck when Enid called out to me, ‘You heard, did you?’
I was full of the story of Christopher and my engagement. On the boat over, I had already practised my lines on some officer intent on making lady friends: ‘Edmund is backward at coming forward, he will be heartbroken at his brother’s passing, but together we will get through it.’ (The officer had quickly realised that I was a lost cause and had moved on to a couple of Belgian nurses.)
‘Heard what?’
‘Olive’s had an accident.’
‘Oh, gosh!’
I ran to our hut, dragging my suitcase through the mud. There, I found a strange sight: Olive sitting in a deckchair – I didn’t know where that had appeared from – pencil and sketchbook in hand, a glass of strange-coloured liquid and a newspaper at her side and one bandaged leg stretched out in front of her on a table.
‘It’s not as bad as it looks. Don’t fret, Vivi,’ Olive said immediately on seeing my expression. She explained: it was the consequence of a foolish dismount from the back of an ambulance – she would insist on jumping rather than using the steps – followed by an agonising wait on the ground.
Relief filled me. Thank God it was nothing worse. Dear Olive; I had had quite the fright. I began to unpack my things. I wanted to give her a right telling-off, but I knew that wasn’t fair, or reasonable.
‘How is our dear friend Christopher?’ Olive asked presently.
‘Dead,’ I said. She had the grace to look sorry.
‘Oh, Vi, how terrible!’ She waited a while, and then when a decent amount of time had passed, she raised an eyebrow. ‘So how is Edmund coping?’
I suddenly felt deflated. I couldn’t tell her the whole story because I wasn’t sure what the whole story was. I thought of Pigeon and the photo I had discovered in Edmund’s pocket. Everything was moving so fast, and I was so slow to catch up.
‘Yes, he’s fine.’ I took a breath. ‘Stout fellow.’ A pause. It was now or never. ‘We’re actually engaged.’
Her expression was unreadable. ‘I supposed that would happen. So, are you happy?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I couldn’t be happier.’
She held out her arms for me to give her a hug, and I went over to her, awkwardly, for although we were close, we were not great huggers and neither is a deckchair conducive for one. I found it easier to return to the subject of her leg.
‘So, what does this mean?’ I asked, pointing to the bandage.
‘Three weeks out of action,’ she explained.
‘Oh no!’
‘Tedious, isn’t it? To tell the truth, I’m just so relieved it’s only my leg and not my sketching hand.’
I would have thought a leg would be much worse, but you never knew with Olive.
‘I’m so glad you’re back, darling. Could you get me some apples?’
‘You’re hungry?’ I felt a sudden fury at our colleagues: they weren’t feeding her? I should have been here. I would have taken care of her.
Pointing at her notebook, she laughed.
‘I need something scrumptious to draw.’
25
1940 – Now
Pearl’s mother is to visit. She and some other parents are coming up from London on the train. I don’t like to tell Pearl until it is definite because we have had false alarms before, but Pearl hears everything at school anyway. She is so talkative the Friday before. She can’t wait to show her mum around. She doesn’t know whether to wear her newer clothes or her London clothes. I can see the dilemma.
The plan is that the mothers, and some fathers, will spend the afternoon in the village hall. There will be a light lunch there – all lunches are light nowadays, and made by us WAVs, of course. I’m off the hook for the piano, thank goodness, because the vicar will bring in his gramophone. We’ve all gone crazy for Glenn Miller’s ‘In the Mood’. We listen to it five, six times in a row.
* * *
Saturday morning arrives and it’s bucketing down. What a day for a trip, I think as the rain batters at the window. Pearl springs awake next to me, big grin on her face. She doesn’t care a jot about the weather, she is going to see her mother.
Don’t be jealous, I tell myself.
‘Today is the day!’ she chirrups.
‘Let’s get you ready, darling.’
* * *
We’re doing cheese sandwiches and egg this time. The eggs are powdered so we add curry powder to them. Mrs Dean is too heavy-handed, though, and the ones she does end up so spicy, they’ll blast you off to Mars. Last year, Mrs Burton – with great foresight – dehydrated lots of apple rings which we have turned into a large and tasty apple cake.
At the village hall, Farmer Jones’s wife looks happier than ever with her Nathan, bronzed from his outdoor life, in a crisp white shirt, on her arm. Mrs Dean has her boy, who is best friends with Keith, the butcher’s boy. Mrs Cope is not here. Mrs Burton told me that whenever the poor boy she took in complained, he was put in the understairs cupboard. Poor mite. They sent him elsewhere.
We wait and wait, and then, just after twelve, the Londoners pour in, no doubt glad to be out of the rain. Pearl is one of the first to shout out: ‘Mummy, Mummy!’ Pearl’s mother has dark hair, dark, wary eyes, rosy cheeks and the plumpest lips I have ever seen: she looks like she’s been punched in the mouth, yet the effect is awfully pretty. She is carrying a large baby and holding the hand of a little boy. At first, I don’t see much resemblance to Pearl but, perhaps, there is something in the sloping shoulders, in the slender legs in black tights when everyone else is wearing tan. I think, She sings in a public house, and then tell myself to put it right out of my snobby head.
Pearl charges over so fast, I fear she might bowl her mother over.
I walk to them both slowly, aware of each step. Pearl’s mother wrinkles her nose at the babies and says apologetically: ‘I had to bring them, sorry.’
Pearl clings tightly to her. This woman has three children, I think to myself, three! And she is so young and attractive. She makes me feel… elderly.
We smile at each other. So, I think, so. I feel like someone has joined up all the dots. I want to be a person who is good with children, so I squat down beside the older child. ‘How do you do?’ I ask. A pumpkin-shaped thing with dark eyes and dark hair, he has two streaks of grime under his nose.
‘Want toilet,’ he says.
Pearl’s mother says: ‘This is Max, this is Leo, and I’m Mrs Posner. Please call me Eleanor.’ We shake hands. Her palms are surprisingly cool.
‘Eleanor? That’s not a Jewish name,’ I say.
She stares at me. I realise belatedly this isn’t a great thing to begin with.
She squints at me. ‘It is my name. Pearl, stop squeezing Max.’
I want to tell her, I have several Jewish friends, but I have heard Mr Pilkington say that before, and I fear this will make it worse.
Anyway, it’s not true. I don’t have a single Jewish friend.
The new baby is cute, except for a peculiar bald patch at the back of his head that reminds me of medieval monks.
She is still staring at me, weighing me up, judging me, analysing me, and eventually she remarks, ‘Pearl told me you were beautiful.’
‘Pearl is very kind,’ I say. Pearl gives me her shut-up face.
‘Is your husband here?’
Pearl answers for me. ‘He’s never here, Mummy. He lives in the bottom of the garden. In a shed.’
Eleanor gives me a quizzical look. I give a hearty laugh. Aren’t children hilarious? ‘How funny, Pearl. No, he doesn’t live in the shed or the garden. He’s not –’ I look around, hoping no one is listening – ‘a gnome.’
Eleanor is unaffected by this information anyway. She is still studying my face. She puts her hand up as though she wants to make a point in class, then lowers it, embarrassed.
‘You know, I’m sure I kno
w you.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Your face is familiar. Have you ever been to the East End? Whitechapel? Stepney?’
The Dog and Duck?
‘Never in my life,’ I say firmly. She recoils slightly, as though sensing my revulsion.
‘I need to change him,’ she says curtly, and I hasten to tell Pearl to show them to the bathroom. I expect Pearl to stay with her there, but she doesn’t. She comes back and stands next to me; her face is unreadable. I think suddenly, She is torn, poor girl; she feels like King Solomon having to choose between mother and host mother, and I say, ‘Go and help Mummy, there’s a dear.’
Keith’s London mother is just as lively as he is. She throws a ball to him and he heads it back to her to do again and again.
‘Sorry, I can’t help myself!’ Keith’s mother calls out. She is wearing trousers, an energetic woman who is full of beans. The ball goes flying towards the table but with some excellent footwork, she gets it back.
‘Control, Keith! Have you forgotten everything I taught you?’
Mrs Beedle, the butcher’s wife, draws her lips into a tense smile. I can’t help thinking it probably mirrors my own.
* * *
We all sit down at the trestle tables that we covered earlier with long white tablecloths. There is more bunting, more even than before. I count a hundred Union Jacks in ten rows across the beams. It looks a treat but the hall smells damper than usual.
Pearl sits between Eleanor and me. The baby sits on Eleanor’s knee, the older boy on the other side of her. He kicks the table legs, making the table and its cloth shake. I think Eleanor knows this but has decided to ignore it, so I shall too. It’s hard to know my place, especially when I know how Mrs Dean slaved over the decoration. Across from us, Nathan’s mother and father are hugging him. Both his parents are short and rounded and it amuses me to see Nathan have to stoop to cuddle them. He looks very happy.