A Woman's Place

by Maggie Ford

  She had cut her hair some time ago to conform to the modern shorter style but it was glaringly obvious that she’d done it herself. These days she could not afford to throw away money on a professional cut. Fortunately, having wavy hair had helped soften the stark shape produced by unskilled scissors. She’d also shortened her coat herself, as well as her skirt, but it still looked well out of date. Fashions had changed so dramatically since the war that anything bought even a year ago stood out like a sore thumb.

  Some women in her situation might not have worried, but she did; the life she’d once known still remained part of her in her heart. It was horrid being poor. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t tried looking for work to help swell her dwindling savings. There was no work, at least not for unskilled women. Even those mundane jobs were being given to men returning home from the war. You saw them, queues waiting for jobs that called only for a pitiful few.

  Eveline, as skilled a comptometer operator as she had once been, found her sort of job filled by men. Professional women, it seemed, were only wanted in a sort of patronising way even though their high qualifications proved them equal to any man.

  It was an odd new world springing up from the war with plenty of professional and skilled vacancies, mostly for men of course, yet no unskilled jobs to be had anywhere. Any vacancy got snapped up the instant it appeared, leaving long dole queues of shabbily dressed men without hope, patiently standing in humiliating line for a few days’ work while dozens of ex-servicemen with missing limbs or blinded by gas or gravely disfigured trudged the kerb-sides begging for pennies to support their families.

  What chance did she and Eveline have? After all they’d done during four years of war while the men were away, the government was cleverly laying stress on Women’s Role in the Home and Jobs Fit for Heroes.

  ‘They’re making us the scapegoats now,’ Connie had said bitterly. ‘They might as well be saying that we’re trying to take men’s jobs away from them. So much for women’s enfranchisement!’

  At one time Eveline would have agreed wholeheartedly but it seemed she couldn’t care less now. Connie gave up. She had other things on her mind as she sat on the Perivale train, to find why Verity hadn’t replied to her letters.

  Her mother’s face when she opened the door to her this bright, cold, March day took her aback. She had expected frigidity, hostility, but the woman’s face was like that of a ghost, white and vacant. She didn’t even ask what she was doing here, or say that she was unwelcome.

  ‘Hello, Mother,’ was all Connie could come up with as she gripped Rebecca’s hand.

  It sounded foolish and inadequate, especially with her mother gazing down at her from the doorstep and making no response.

  She made another attempt. ‘How are you, Mother? Are you well?’

  Of course she wasn’t well. She looked anything but. She made no effort to invite her inside but then Connie should have known the reception she would get.

  ‘I really came to see Verity. She didn’t reply to my letter and …’

  She broke off as her mother appeared to flinch, the faded blue eyes coming alive for a second. Her mother’s mouth twisted.

  ‘She’s dead, of influenza.’ The shocking words, the first ones she had uttered, were blunt and cold, as if they meant nothing to the woman. For a moment, Connie wasn’t sure she’d heard correctly.

  ‘What’re you saying, Mother?’ The bleak expression was already making her throat constrict as the truth began to sink in. Her flesh had gone cold. She heard herself whisper, ‘When?’

  She realised that she must pull herself together. ‘Mother, let me come in. Why didn’t you write to tell me? Why didn’t you let me know?’

  Even now she could hardly believe what she’d heard. At the same time other thoughts were racing through her mind, sensible, everyday thoughts – had not been time to write, it might have happened just a day or two ago, her mother felt too confused and devastated to put her mind to writing and no one else was there to do it for her. Tears began clouding her vision, but still that wraith’s face regarded her as if it possessed no life at all, the blue eyes arid.

  ‘Mother, I’m coming in,’ she said abruptly, pushing past into the house.

  Its silence seemed to wrap itself around her the instant she stepped inside. Stunned as she was by her mother’s news, still hardly able to believe it was true, it came to her that it had been her mother, not a maid, who had opened the door. No staff were to be seen. The atmosphere was still and remote, seeming to bear down on her. She turned to her mother, who was quietly closing the main door with almost deliberate respect for this silence.

  ‘When did she …’ She couldn’t bring herself to say her sister’s name or the word that would follow. ‘When did it happen? How long ago?’

  Her mother was gazing blankly at her. ‘Why are you here? What do you want?’

  Connie ignored the question. ‘How long ago did …’ She had to say it. ‘How long since Verity was taken?’

  ‘Verity?’

  ‘My sister, your daughter – when did it happen?’

  She was coming to terms with reality enough to gain control of herself though it felt as though there was a great hole in her heart. She wanted to take her mother in her arms, her mother still looking lost and blank. ‘I think I’ve been here on my own for weeks, Verity.’

  ‘I’m not Verity, Mother, I’m Constance, your other daughter.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right, Constance is dead,’ came the vague reply. Connie began slowly to realise that her mother had become slightly unhinged. Alarm gripped her as the woman went on, ‘We sent Verity away for upsetting her father.’

  ‘Father died, Mother. A long time ago.’

  ‘He said I must not mention her name. He said she was dead to him. Now Verity is dead too.’

  That made more sense but Connie knew it was making none to her mother. Pity flooded through her, pity and fear. Gently she went and put an arm about her shoulders, still holding on to Rebecca with her other hand, and led her, unresisting, into the sitting room. There she eased her down on to the sofa and sat down beside her, signalling to Rebecca with her eyes to find somewhere else to sit.

  ‘Where are the staff, Mother?’ she queried.

  ‘Staff? I didn’t need them. They went away. Constance went away too. So did Verity.’

  ‘You said she died, Mother. Of influenza.’

  ‘Yes. There’s no one here now. All gone.’

  Connie tried to bite back a sob, not making a very good job of it. In this her mother was right. All gone. Her two brothers, her father, and now her sister. No one was left but herself and her mother. She too was beginning to feel a little unhinged.

  ‘Verity!’ She raised her voice, shaking her mother’s shoulders with both hands to bring her mind back. ‘When did she die? When?’

  Her mother seemed to rally. She turned to look her in the eye. Her breathing had become fast.

  ‘Not today. Last month … It rained. They took her to the cemetery. I went there too. The servants left but a nice lady lives with me.’

  ‘I had no idea. Mother, why didn’t you write?’

  She felt as if she were panting for breath, her voice rising, filled with misery and anger. ‘You should have let me know. This lady, why couldn’t she have written to tell me?’

  Her mother looked at her as if bemused. ‘She doesn’t know you.’ The tone had grown soft again, with no sign of distress now, as if all that had happened had passed completely over her head.

  The sound of a key being turned in the lock of the main door stopped any reply Connie might have made. The door opened then closed. A woman came into the room. She was middle-aged, wearing a nursing uniform of old-fashioned length and a nurse’s cap. Obviously this was the person Connie’s mother had spoken of so distractedly.

  She stood gazing at Connie in surprise. ‘I beg your pardon, I didn’t realise Mrs Mornington had a visitor.’

  Connie stood up. ‘I am Mrs Mornington’s daughte
r.’

  ‘Her daughter? I didn’t know she had another daughter.’

  Of course she wouldn’t. Giving Connie a dismissive nod, she laid her bulky black bag and a small package on the sideboard and came over to her charge who was beginning to wring her hands and mutter to herself. Protectively taking charge, she bent over her.

  ‘I think you should have your rest now, Mrs Mornington. I’ll help you upstairs to your bedroom and then make you some lunch.’

  She turned to Connie. ‘She does get like this when agitated. I expect it is seeing you. Stay if you want, but I doubt it will help. Your mother is far from well in the head. She is due to go into a nursing home shortly.’ Connie stared at her.

  ‘A nursing home? You mean an asylum?’

  ‘No, my dear, a nursing home for the mentally sick. She has signed a consent form and is financially able to afford the best of attention and she will be well cared for.’

  Connie bit back the grief of having lost her sister to glare at her. ‘If my mother is sick in the head as you say, she could not have been in any condition to sign any consent. As her next of kin I should have been consulted.’

  The woman inclined her head. ‘Yes, but no one had been informed that she had another daughter. She was probably too confused to mention you.’

  Connie smothered the blow that statement brought. She tightened her lips to temper it. ‘Well, you know now,’ she said sharply. ‘And I do not agree to it.’

  Resentment was bubbling up inside her against her mother who, sick or not, still refused to recognise her existence. It felt as if it was choking her. The woman was looking levelly at her.

  ‘You mean you wish to care for her and nurse her yourself?’

  The assumption stopped Connie in her tracks. What did she owe her mother, who’d virtually disowned her, who’d put up no opposition when her daughter was told by her father to leave, who had refused to answer any of her letters except to tell her that she would never be welcome?

  She owed Eveline more loyalty than ever she owed her mother. Eveline had befriended her, had stood by her when at her lowest ebb, had remained staunch through thick and thin. To nurse her mother she would have to leave the best friend she’d ever known and come and live here. No, she could never do that.

  Interpreting her change of expression, the woman became kind and understanding.

  ‘Your mother could worsen. She is also very frail physically. Even if you came here to care for her, you would need a trained nurse in constant attendance, and that will cost almost as much as her living in a nursing home with every care and attention available. It would be very hard on you.’

  She turned and looked at Rebecca still sitting, silent and frightened, on her chair in the far corner of the room.

  ‘And your daughter would be uprooted from her school and her friends and put into an unnatural environment.’ She gave a motherly smile as if everything had been settled. ‘I think it best your mother receives professional care, don’t you?’

  Connie became aware that her mother was muttering to herself again. ‘All gone, all gone,’ she was saying over and over. ‘My family all gone.’

  Including me, came the bitter thought as Connie nodded consent to the woman’s suggestion, a sense of helplessness and isolation beginning slowly to overwhelm her.

  She hardly remembered getting home, clinging tightly to a bewildered Rebecca. Unable to face the loneliness of her own flat, she went straight to Eveline and there, pouring out all that had happened, all but collapsed into her arms to be held tightly as she gave in to the pent-up misery she’d been holding back all through her journey.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  ‘Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps we should think about what you said.’

  As Eveline gazed down at the very few coins Connie had tipped out of her purse after buying the few groceries needed to tide her over the weekend, Connie looked up hopefully.

  ‘So you agree it would be the best thing if we did share just one flat?’

  ‘I suppose so.’ Eveline didn’t seem at all enthusiastic, but then she had lost her enthusiasm for most things these days.

  Connie surveyed the few bits she’d bought, a loaf, a quarter-pound of tea, half a pound of margarine, a bottle of milk and a pound of sausages. ‘At least you can get help from your parents now and again.’

  Eveline hated asking her parents for help. When visiting she’d say she was coping. They too were experiencing hard times, what with most customers buying only the barest essentials and in smaller and smaller quantities. Moreover they needed to help out the rest of their family whenever possible.

  Her sister Tilly’s husband had never had his old job back after coming out of the forces. His chest persistently played him up after years of cold damp trenches, so he now did odd jobs when he could get them. Len was out of work too. Few cared to employ a man missing a leg when thousands were queuing for the available vacancies. His parents were left to help him and Flossie make ends meet, she with a baby on the way.

  Eveline’s brother Jimmy was working. May was no longer going with the boyfriend she had found. She helped in the shop and with housework, virtually as a glorified, unpaid assistant, and was rapidly turning into a true spinster.

  Of Eveline’s other three brothers, Alfred was still at school, while Bobby at seventeen was merely selling newspapers. Only nineteen-year-old Jimmy, who’d been conscripted, but with the war over not sent to fight, had been lucky to get back his old job behind the counter of a small hardware store in Bethnal Green Road. The proprietor saw him as a polite, likeable young man.

  At Connie’s remark, Eveline pursed her lips. ‘I don’t want them to think they’ve got to keep helping me out. The last thing I want is them feeling sorry for me.’ She meant to make Gran’s bit of money last as long as possible.

  By mid-March, she was well recovered from the flu. The epidemic had begun to give way, at least in Britain. Many fewer new cases were being reported; even so, British deaths from influenza were said to have outnumbered births.

  Connie knew she should count herself and Rebecca lucky not to have got it, but she was still pining over the loss of her sister and the fact that her mother hadn’t even contacted her about it, still considering her banished.

  A few days ago she’d gone to the nursing home where her mother had been admitted last week. But the woman’s mind was fast leaving her, and she alternately called Connie Verity and accused her of causing her father’s death. She’d not bothered to argue; her mother’s physical condition too was rapidly deteriorating.

  Connie vowed not to visit again. It cost money to travel all that way and nothing could be gained from doing so. She would be insulted or spurned by a vindictive and feeble-brained woman. Money was too precious to waste.

  Eveline counted the coins on the table. ‘Two shillings and seven pence ha’penny. All we’ve got towards next week’s rent. God knows what we’re going to do in the end.’

  ‘We’re not the only ones in difficulties,’ Connie tried to console her as she gathered up the precious money and put it back into the purse.

  Eveline had given up her flat this week to come here, which had helped the finances to some extent – heaven knows how they’d have fared if they hadn’t done so – but it was a drop in the ocean. Rapid price increases, stagnating wage levels and the threat by employers of wage cuts had begun to lead to strikes, bringing the country down even more.

  ‘There are a lot worse off than us. Families are being evicted and left homeless, we’ve escaped that by doing what we did.’

  ‘I don’t care about other people!’ Eveline said waspishly. ‘We can hardly afford the food we need. Anyway, I don’t want to talk about it!’

  Connie was worried too. She knew there was no point asking Eveline to appeal to her parents. The last time she asked, she was pounced on by Eveline, who said it was below her dignity to beg for handouts and she’d rather die.

  Only ten days had passed since she’d moved in, and al
ready Connie was seeing a side of her she hadn’t observed before, sharp-tempered and moody. It had never been noticeable when they’d both had their own place.

  Perhaps it was being thrown together with one living room between them, a shared kitchen and just the two bedrooms, with nowhere to escape the other’s presence; maybe it hadn’t been such a brilliant idea after all. She had to admit that her own irritation could show at times, no matter how hard she tried to keep control of herself. The only redeeming feature seemed to be that they were saving money.

  She fell silent as Eveline bustled about getting a meal ready for their daughters coming home from school. It was best to remain calm when Eveline turned sharp. The worst thing would be to retaliate and have their long friendship break down over a few thoughtless words.

  She couldn’t blame Eveline. Despite no word of Albert she was still clinging to the thought that he might still be found alive somewhere, her only explanation for his failure to contact her being that he must be suffering from amnesia. She was driving herself silly.

  Eveline knocked on the door of her mother-in-law’s flat, telling herself she should visit more often than she did; but these days it was a duty she didn’t much look forward to.

  One reason was that Mrs Adams appeared to have come to terms with the fact that Albert wouldn’t be coming home ever again and would shed a tear at the mere mention of his name.

  ‘Him without a grave I can even visit,’ she would mutter tearfully. It was no good trying to tell her Albert had to be alive and lost somewhere and one day would come home.

  ‘Not after all this time, Eveline, and it ain’t no good me going on tormenting meself. At my age I need to come to terms.’ After several bouts of dissension, Eveline had learned to keep her beliefs to herself.

  The other reason was her husband’s brother Jim, who seemed to be a little too attentive towards her lately. It often felt that he and his mother were in some sort of conspiracy together concerning her.

  ‘He’s been ever so lucky,’ Mrs Adams said this Wednesday, cutting a slice of cake to go with the tea she’d poured for her daughter-in-law. ‘He’s a bus driver now, for the London General Omnibus Company, and bringing in a regular wage.’