Hannah’s wish was not entirely granted; it was November before pen was put to paper in the forest of Compiègne and the guns fell to silence. In the three preceding months the fight was as fierce as ever; young men died still, wastefully and terribly, with the prospect of peace hovering tantalizingly close. And, as if the suffering had not been enough, a new scourge appeared, killing friend and foe, decimating armies and civilian populations alike. Influenza. Throughout a debilitated Europe the disease raged, felling the old and the young with an indifferent and indiscriminate hand.
But, at least, the war was over.
And, just a month before it had been ended, the Representation of the People Act had enfranchised eight and a half million British women.
* * *
‘So – you’re off home to get started on making a country fit for heroes?’ Sally cocked a not too derisive brow at Eddie, who slouched grinning opposite her.
‘Something like that.’ He reached for the wine bottle, refilled both their glasses. ‘You see before you the official Labour candidate for Barnsley North. So – early release and off I go. God – isn’t it bloody quiet?’
Sally nodded. The almost unearthly silence that had fallen two days before as the guns all along the line had ceased their thunder was strangely unnerving. She knew herself not to be the only one who had found difficulty in sleeping in the quiet night.
‘You decided what you’re going to do yet?’
She shook her head, turning the glass in her hand, watching the light that glinted jewel-like in the blood red depths of the liquid. Watching her he was suddenly aware of a brighter gleam in her eyes, a slight trembling of the firm mouth.
‘Sal? Something up?’
It was a long time before she lifted her head. When she did the tears stood clearly in her eyes. ‘I heard from Philippe’s sister. She’s been back to Bruges.’
‘And?’ he asked, very gently.
‘They’re dead. Both of them. Anselm at the start of the war. And Alice—’ she swallowed, ‘Alice a month ago. Flu. Oh, Eddie – it’s so unfair! – To suffer it all and then to die like that.’
He nodded, the dark eyes sympathetic.
‘I had thought – that perhaps—’ she trailed off, ducked her head again. ‘Alice was the closest thing I had to a mother – it would have been somewhere to go.’ She had been surprised herself at how badly Annette’s sad news had hit her. She dashed her hand across her eyes and took a quick mouthful of wine.
‘You’ve no family?’
She looked at him in something close to surprise. So well had they come to know each other that she forgot that he knew nothing of her true background. ‘No.’ She hesitated a moment before adding, ‘Not that I know of, anyway.’
They drank their wine in a silence that held nothing of awkwardness, everything of warmth and friendship. Eddie refilled the glasses, clicked his fingers at the waiter to bring another bottle.
‘Are you trying to get us both drunk?’
He grinned. ‘I could think of worse ways to spend our last evening together.’
‘Our last—?’ she stopped, surprised at the small twist of pain the words had startled in her. ‘Why yes – I suppose it will be.’
‘You’ll miss the rissoles even if you don’t miss me.’
She laughed at that. Always he could make her laugh. The bleak wave of sadness had receded a little; they had all lived with death for too long now not to be able to face loss when it came.
‘Once upon a time,’ Eddie said, leaning back in characteristic pose, holding his glass to the light and studying it with apparent absorption, ‘—a very very long time ago – I came across this girl. Leaning against a posh car, she was, in a street in London—’
Sally smiled; wrinkled her nose.
‘“Aha!” I thought – “One of them snooty upper-class London pieces as fancy themselves in trousers, eh?”’ He had, obviously deliberately, broadened his accent.
Sally giggled. The wine sang in her tired head.
‘So – not being backward in coming forward, like – I accosted her—’
‘What happened?’
He leaned forward conspiratorially, pointing a finger. ‘I got my come uppance, that’s what. Sharp as a needle she was – and about as upper crust as I am meself. Funny thing—’ He twirled his glass idly in his fingers, his eyes upon it.
‘What?’
His glance flicked to her face and away. She saw curiosity in the bright depths. ‘D’you know I don’t know a damn’ thing more about the lass now than I did then?’
Sally flushed a little. ‘Oh – I don’t know—’
‘I know she’s a gaol bird. I know she’s got a temper on her when she’s roused that’d do well in a wildcat. I know she’s got political leanings, and a tongue in her head. I know she’s a widow who’s been—’ he caught the glimpse of danger in Sally’s eyes quickly enough to prevent the next words, acknowledged it with his most graceless grin, ’well – you know. I know she worked in an orphanage before the war.’ His suddenly sharp glance caught her. ‘What I don’t know is how she got there.’
She leaned her chin on her hands, looking at him. ‘You know what curiosity did to the cat, don’t you?’
‘I’m a lot tougher than that.’ He tilted the bottle, refilled her glass.
‘You really want to know? It’s no great story.’
‘You tell me yours,’ Eddie filled his own glass and toasted her, ‘and I’ll tell you mine. How’s that? We shouldn’t part knowing nothing about each other: Now should we?’
‘All right then. If you really want to know—’
She was amazed at how easily it came, how the memories flooded back as she talked. Josie. Toby. The soup kitchen. The tenement block with its squalor, its dangers, its easy camaraderie. Those first days at the Bear; her debt to the Pattens. She did not tell him the full reason why they had first taken her in – that after all was someone else’s secret, not her own – and she did not tell him of Ben and the complex, difficult, impassioned relationship that had developed between them, for that too was a secret not hers to tell; but all else she spoke of, and found herself smiling often. The exploits with Hannah – meeting Philippe – the magic of their love, the horror that war had made of it—
Eddie sat and listened, dark face intent, watching her face with brilliant eyes.
‘So that was how I came to be leaning on Colonel Foster’s Talbot in a London street when this cheeky lad accosted me—’
‘And bought you a cup of tea.’
She laughed.
‘Which has led on to many a bottle of wine—’
‘And many a rissole,’ she added.
‘Great oaks from little acorns grow,’ he intoned solemnly.
The wine bottle was all but empty.
‘You said you’d tell me yours,’ she pointed out.
‘So I did.’ He lifted a finger. A waiter appeared at his side. Eddie lifted the bottle. ‘Encore, s’il vous plaît.’
‘Eddie – neither of us will walk a straight line out of here!’
‘So who cares? Straight lines are for tomorrow. Now – where to begin?’
* * *
He saw her to her billet at three o’clock in the morning, in rain that teemed into the darkened streets, poured from roofs and from gutters, ran in the cobbled roads. Oddly, despite the wine she had drunk, Sally felt absolutely clear-headed; very aware of the friendship that had engendered this evening of confidences and laughter, aware too that, as Eddie had pointed out, this would be the last such evening they were likely to share. Such farewells were taking place, she supposed, up and down the long line of the Front – people who had shared danger, privation, the desperate intimacy of fear, parting to go back to a life that had been the subject of so many dreams, so many longings that now, attainable, seemed all but unreal. They walked in companionable silence, arms linked. She had liked the story he had told – of an able and enterprising lad born into an able and enterprising working-class f
amily that stood none of his nonsense but knew his worth and encouraged him to make the most of himself. Self educated, self reliant, self confident – Eddie Browne would take the world by the scruff of its neck and shake it until success fell from it to his feet, she had no doubt of that. Neither had she any doubt of his ability to achieve his ambition of becoming, sooner or later, one of the first of a generation of Socialist MPs. In that connection she had, gently but firmly, once more refused the offer of a job; a suggestion that had been promptly and shamelessly offered when she had admitted that, upon the death of Philippe’s parents, she found herself in the – for her – quite extraordinary position of being financially independent.
‘Well. Here we are.’ They had stopped walking. She turned to look at him. Water dripped from the peak of his cap, darkened the shoulders of his greatcoat. A single light from a near-by window slanted across the wet cobblestones. A child cried plaintively.
They looked at each other for an odd, sad moment in silence. ‘I can’t believe it’s over,’ she said very quietly.
‘Oh, it’s over all right.’
She nodded. ‘When are you off?’
‘Tomorrow – next day – some time soon, anyway.’
‘So – I won’t see you again?’
‘No.’ He made a fist of his hand and grazed her chin gently with the knuckles. ‘Good luck, pal. Keep in touch?’
‘I will.’ How many such promises were being made? How many would be kept?
He grinned, turned to leave.
‘Eddie!’ She took two quick steps after him, lifted her face, kissed him very hard. ‘There.’ There was the slightest wobble in her voice. ‘Something to remember me by.’
‘Oh, I won’t forget you, lass,’ he said very quietly. ‘And what’s more I don’t think you’ll forget me.’
The moment held them very still, very close, the rain running from his hat, teeming down her lifted face. Then he turned and strode away. And though she stood to watch him until he turned the corner, he did not look back.
II
Hannah and Ralph were married early in the new year of 1919, a month after the General Election, which had seen a Conservative-dominated Government returned firmly to power; but, with fifty-nine seats, the Labour Party were, as Eddie had predicted, the largest single group in opposition. By the time of the wedding both Sally and Hannah had been back in England for nearly a month. Ben too, thanks to string-pulling by the influential Sir Brian, was home in time for the celebrations, but only just.
Sally, firmly resisting all blandishments, had refused to return to the Bear, but had taken rooms in a respectable street not too far away. With her had gone Philippa, Marie-Clare and little Louise. Toby was still in France.
The wedding, at Hannah’s insistence, was a small one, held in the chapel around the corner from the Bear, the only guests family, Sally, who served her as Matron of Honour, and – to Sally’s delight – Fiona MacAdam, elegant and sardonic as ever, down from her family’s country home in the north where, she assured Sally, ‘I’m leading the most gruesome life possible, my dear – just nothing to do from morn till night but talk to the butler and arrange a few flowers. I never thought I’d actually miss bandages and hypodermics!’
Hannah wore a suit of heavy cream lace over satin, the folds of the skirt falling to between calf and ankle length, her short thick hair shining beneath a wide-brimmed rose-trimmed hat.
‘You look absolutely lovely.’ Sally, herself resplendent in glowing green that complemented her pale skin and green-flecked eyes and showed a very neat turn of ankle, fussed about Hannah in the chapel porch like a mother hen, handing her at last the prayer book with its flowerdecked ribbon that she was to carry with her to the altar.
The ceremony was short and very simple; the look on Ralph’s face as he kissed his bride, for whom he had waited so long and patiently, brought an unexpected lump to Sally’s throat.
The reception was held – the Bear still being full to overflowing with unplaced refugees – in a large upstairs room at the Queen Victoria public house in the Commercial Road. Charlotte, delicate as an angel in sugar pink and white, supervised with competent authority the conveying of her crippled brother-in-law up the steep stairs and his settling into a comfortable chair. Champagne was served; and Sally, relieved at last of her matronly duties, found herself in company with Philippa and Rachel, the latter having been allowed home from school for the weekend especially for the occasion.
‘So – school isn’t so bad after all?’ Sally asked smiling, breaking into the child’s monologue about netball and hockey and school plays and a friend called Patricia. ‘You weren’t keen to go in the first place, as I remember it?’
Rachel grinned engagingly, the brilliant eyes shining. ‘Oh it’s topping! Patricia says it’s probably the very nicest school in England and I think she’s right. The two Miss Beatties are super and we’ve got this absolute love of a PT mistress – she’s quite stunningly pretty.’ She giggled a little. ‘Patricia says that at least half the girls are in love with her!’
Sally allowed her gaze to drift around the gathering. Ben stood with Ralph, glass in hand, deep in conversation. Charlotte, on the other side of the room, gestured for a waiter to refill Peter’s champagne glass. Fiona, talking to Doctor Will, caught her eye and winked. Sally grinned back.
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake!’ her daughter said, suddenly and very ill-manneredly to her cousin, ‘Can’t you talk about anything but this silly Patricia?’
‘Philippa!’ Sally, her wandering attention brought sharply back, stared at her usually easy-going offspring in amazement. ‘Don’t talk to Rachel like that – it’s very rude!’
Rachel laughed. ‘It’s all right. She’s still a baby. She doesn’t understand.’
‘I am not! And I jolly well do!’ Poor Philippa was pink with anger. ‘You’ve talked about that horrible old school and your horrible old Patricia ever since you came home!’
‘There’s not a lot else to talk about, is there?’ Rachel’s tone was disparaging.
‘Flip! Rachel! Now stop it, the pair of you.’
‘Why don’t you be a very sensible pair of girls,’ a coolly amused voice said from behind her, ‘and sneak yourselves a glass of champagne each? And don’t speak a single word to each other until you’ve drunk it. I think you’ll find it will improve relationships no end.’
‘Fiona!’ Sally could not help but laugh. ‘You’re outrageous! Girls – you’re to do no such—’
But Rachel, eyes gleaming with mischief, had already caught Philippa’s hand. ‘Come on, Flip.’ She flashed a brilliant smile at Fiona, ‘Let’s be good girls for a change and do as we’re told—’
Sally watched them go, turned to Fiona grinning. ‘Honestly, Fiona!’
Fiona shrugged elegantly. ‘I thought it a very good idea. And quite obviously so did they. Anyway – I wanted two minutes to talk to you – when are you coming to see me?’
‘Soon.’
‘How soon?’
‘I – don’t know. But I will come. I promise. I’m only just getting settled into my new home.’
A small waitress replenished their glasses. Fiona sipped hers appreciatively. ‘I saw a friend of yours the other day.’
‘Oh?’
‘One Edward Browne, ex-sergeant. He came to ask me for a donation to Labour Party funds.’
Sally choked on a mouthful of wine. Fiona thumped her back helpfully. ‘He didn’t!’
‘Oh yes he did.’
‘How is he?’ Sally had not admitted even to herself just how disappointed she had been that Eddie had not answered the two letters she had sent to the address he had given her when he left France. She had not tried again.
‘He’s fine. He didn’t win the seat, but he did well enough to augur well for next time. Meanwhile he’s secretary or some such thing of the Yorkshire Labour Party – and my home, as you know, is in Yorkshire—’
‘And – he came—’ Sally was still coughing a little, ‘
to ask you – You! – for a donation?’
‘That’s right. And to offer me a job.’
‘Unpaid, of course.’
Fiona grinned. ‘Of course.’
‘He’s got the cheek of the devil, that one.’
‘He’s got more than that.’ Fiona lifted immaculately plucked brows. ‘Actually I was quite tempted.’
Something in her tone made Sally look at her very sharply. ‘By the opportunity to donate to Labour Party funds? By the job? Or—’ she paused, growing, disbelieving laughter in her eyes, ’by Eddie?’
Fiona shrugged.
‘Ladies and gentlemen – if you would take your seats at the table?’
‘Fiona?’
Fiona turned away, the flash of a provocative smile gleaming over her shoulder, ‘Duty calls. I do believe that I’m sitting with that lovely old man – Doctor Will, everyone seems to call him. What a charmer—’
* * *
It was ten in the evening before the last of the revelry was through. The bride and groom had been seen on their way to the station and a honeymoon trip to Devon after the reception, and family and friends alike had repaired to the Bear for light refreshments and more champagne. Both Sally and Fiona had left early – Sally on the excuse of little Philippa’s bedtime, Fiona talking vaguely of another engagement that evening, though Ben suspected that their evening would be spent together, and that Sally’s eagerness to be away had had more to do with him than with her lively daughter’s supposed fatigue. He had been home for three days, and they had had no time together. Their last meeting had been in France, the night before Sally had left, a long night during which neither had wanted to sleep for fear of wasting precious moments, a night during which neither of them could bring themselves to speak the words that both knew would have to be spoken. So she had left without saying goodbye; and now they met, unbearably, in public, smiling and exchanging casual greetings, avoiding each other’s eyes. He stretched his long legs to the fire, sighing. In the chair opposite his father’s head nodded.
Tomorrow, Jerusalem Page 53