by Maggie Ford
Eveline smiled, said she was happy for them and meant it, but it was hard trying to ignore the heavy weight inside her while Connie, happy as a lark, dragged her from the taxi as they alighted outside Harrods, her first port of call on this shopping trip.
‘You try something on too,’ she urged as they stood in the splendid dress department surveying the gorgeous new styles draped upon elegant mannequins. ‘Have whatever you want. Don’t look at the price. I’ll pay.’
Even as she obliged, Eveline’s heart wasn’t in it. In the first place she didn’t want to have a dress or anything else bought for her.
In the second place, though they would be related through marriage before long, she had visions of them drifting further and further from the close friendship they’d known. Married to Jim, Connie would go off with her new wealth, probably moving out to her old family home. Connie would live a charmed life from now on while she would spend hers having eventually to face the fact that her own husband would never ever come home.
Once, she and Connie had been united in a common aim and later by the loss of their menfolk. Now they’d begin to see less and less of each other except for the odd visit, the previous Christmas spent with Jim’s mother. It proved the old adage – friends usually stick together, families often drift apart.
‘I don’t want a dress,’ she said, trying not to sound petulant.
‘Oh, you must! I shall feel so guilty if you don’t. What about that one there?’
Despite herself the outfit had already caught Eveline’s eye though she had tried not to be drawn by it. Draped on a graceful mannequin, it was in a soft beige with flowing lines, the skirt short enough to reveal nearly half the calf; the dress also featured a deep ‘V’ neckline and a loose waist caught by a pretty brown belt. A flowing, full-length jacket of the same colour as the belt completed the outfit, which was topped by a neat, deep-crowned hat that also matched the belt. Feeling that she shouldn’t, Eveline approached and fingered the price tag. The cost made her gasp.
‘Heavens, Connie! I can’t take that.’ For a moment the thought of Connie miles away, with only the occasional, ever more infrequent visit, fled. Seconds later realisation returned that whether Connie visited or not, she’d be alone, with Helena, and no man in her life, no husband for her or father for her daughter.
‘I don’t want it!’ she burst out resolutely, almost savagely.
In the end, if only to take the bewildered look off Connie’s face, she was forced to relent. So much for resolution! But it hadn’t made her feel any easier in her heart.
Nor did she feel any easier when in the taxi Connie started to talk about sharing a portion of her inheritance with her, refusing to listen to Eveline’s profound protests as her voice became quite emotional.
‘Did you really believe that after all we’ve been through together that I’d leave you to struggle along on nothing? After what you did for me when I was desperate? You took me in, Eveline, and gave me a place to live, a new life, new hope when my parents turned me out like a—’
She had broken off, and the rest of the way was spent in silence. The only thing she said during that time was, ‘I mean what I say, Eveline.’ Then, as if embarrassed, ‘I hope we’re home in time for the girls to come out of school.’
As the taxicab reached their end of Bethnal Green Road, abuzz with the usual Saturday-afternoon market stalls and jostle of shoppers, Connie, now recovered, leaped up from her seat to stare out of the window.
‘Look! There are some of those campaigners for the women’s age limit for voting to be lowered. The demand is for it to be twenty-one.’
Eveline could see a line of eight women, keeping to the kerb except to skirt an ex-serviceman begging for his livelihood from a wheeled board; both his legs were missing.
Two of the women held placards proclaiming VOTES FOR WOMEN OF 21. Two other placards said, ON THE SAME TERMS AS MEN.
‘Stop, please, driver!’ Connie cried to the cabbie. ‘We need to get out a moment. Can we leave our packages here?’
A grunt from the man indicated that he would and that they could.
‘Not too long,’ he growled. ‘I got other fares ter pick up.’
‘We’ll just be a tick, I’ll give you extra,’ she said, already out of the cab. Eveline was obliged to follow as she ran over to the approaching line. The leader, a woman of about twenty-seven wearing thick-lensed glasses, came to a temporary halt.
‘We’ve a new organisation now,’ she replied to Connie’s questions. ‘The old WSPU is dead but we’re members of the newly formed NUSEC. The National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship.’
Eveline thought of the day she’d fallen into step beside Connie.
Such a long time ago it seemed. Soon Connie would marry and go away.
‘We’re in company with the Six Point League,’ continued the woman. ‘Under Lady Rhondda. Called the Six Point League because it fights for six things – equal guardianship, widows’ pensions, equal moral standards, divorce law reform, equal pay, and provision for birth control information for married women, as well as for the right to vote at twenty-one. Many of us feel let down by this enfranchisement being only for women thirty and over. But there are still too few of us ready to fight on.’
‘That’s how it started,’ Connie said, busily negotiating Friday morning shoppers who were getting in her way as she walked alongside the woman. ‘Over fifty years ago, I believe, with just a few women, and now we have one in Parliament, Nancy Astor, our first woman to sit in the House of Commons. My friend and I were once suffragettes,’ she added with pride.
‘Then maybe you might like to come along to one of our meetings in Holborn.’
Connie tilted her head. ‘It may be difficult. We’re widows. My friend’s daughter is nine, nearly ten, and mine will not be ten until September.’
The woman laughed. ‘Bring them with you. Young ladies soon grow up ready to be recruited.’
A sudden memory of when young girls often in white dresses walked beside their mothers in the great rallies of the past was interrupted by the cab driver calling impatiently, ‘You ladies getting back in or what?’
Connie called back, ‘We’re coming, driver.’
In the taxi completing the last of their ride, Eveline said, ‘I don’t see it’s really worth you joining them. Before long you’ll be married and leaving here, you and Jim, to live in that house you inherited. I’ll be on my own.’
She saw Connie frown. ‘Is that what you think? Oh, Eveline, we’ll soon be related and we’ll always be friends.’
Eveline fell silent. Connie might have said more, but the taxi was already pulling up outside their destination. She went on ahead while Connie paid the fare, no doubt with a sizeable tip. Her inheritance would soon return her to her former extravagant life, where money was no object.
She said she intended to share some of that inheritance with her. To Eveline it felt like accepting a handout even though Connie was insisting. But it wasn’t money she wanted. It was Albert. If he were here she’d want nothing more no matter how poor they were.
Even now after all this time she clung to the possibility of his being found. Even though she knew by now that it was futile, it was all she had to cling to for the rest of her life. Almost defiantly she come to a decision. She would take up Connie’s offer. She had to survive, and money meant survival even if everything else was lent.
Mounting the stone stairs to their flat, she thought she had never felt so lonely as she did at this moment.
On opening the door she saw the envelope lying face up on the mat. Her heart seemed to stop as she read the bold, black printed initials across the top. OHMS. It was addressed to her. Albert! It had to be news of Albert. Feverishly she picked it up and tore open the flap, fingers trembling as she unfolded the single sheet, her eyes refusing to focus on its contents for a moment or two. When they did her whole body went as cold as ice.
As Connie reached her, Eveline swung round on her as if ex
pecting a blow. Connie must have seen her expression for she instantly dropped the parcels she’d been carrying into the tiny hallway and gently but firmly took the page from the palsied fingers, guiding her into the living room.
‘Sit down, Eveline,’ she said quietly. ‘Can I read it?’
‘He’s dead.’ It was all Eveline could say, her voice tiny. ‘Albert’s dead.’ She stared sightlessly into space for a moment or two then with a spasmodic gesture caught hold of Connie’s hand. ‘Oh, Connie …’
All she knew was darkness as Connie put her arms about her and held her close, stifling her, so that the breath seemed to be being squeezed from her limp body while she fought with the gulping sobs that were tearing themselves from her.
Chapter Thirty-three
For two days she lay in bed. Nothing Connie could do would get her up. This was not at all the Eveline she once knew. Normally a fighter, if she did sometimes fall a little by the wayside, it was never long before she’d bound up ready to challenge whatever had got her down. Left to take charge of Helena, Connie took her into her own room to share Rebecca’s bed, got her up for school in the mornings, made her breakfast and saw her off. She told her that her mother was merely a little under the weather and would be well again soon.
‘She hasn’t got flu again, has she?’ Helena asked anxiously, remembering how ill she had been and how it had killed so many.
Connie forced a smile as she buttered the breakfast toast that second day.
‘No, that’s gone. It won’t come back again. She’s a little rundown, that’s all. She’ll be up in a day or two.’
But Helena wasn’t satisfied. ‘She won’t die, will she?’
‘Good Lord, no!’ replied Connie, shocked.
‘My father died though. Mum keeps saying he’ll come home one day. But I think that’s just wishful thinking.’
She sounded suddenly so wise that Connie wanted to cry for her. ‘She’s not going to die. She simply needs to be left alone for a while, so you won’t go in there, worrying her, will you?’
‘Of course not,’ Helena said haughtily, her old self again. ‘I’ve got some sense!’ she added, sounding like someone twice her age.
So it was left for another day. After the girls had gone off to school on the third morning, Connie went in with a small bowl of porridge. For the most part every item of food she had tried to tempt Eveline with had had to be removed, barely touched.
‘You’ve got to eat something sometime,’ she said as Eveline turned her head away at the sight of the food. ‘For Helena’s sake. She is beginning to get worried and ask questions.’
That stirred her enough to half turn her head towards Connie. ‘You mustn’t tell her about her father.’
‘She already believes him dead,’ Connie said calmly, knowing that the very word would cause Eveline to cringe. It did, visibly, but she continued.
‘She said yesterday that you were deluding yourself in thinking her father was coming home, so there is nothing to explain to her. Eveline, you must start pulling yourself together. This is not doing you or Helena any good.’
It was hard to say, cruel perhaps, but true. To her relief Eveline nodded. ‘I’ll try,’ she said. She was still the strong-minded Eveline Connie had always known. She would be all right.
Connie was tidying the kitchen, her ear attuned to sounds of Eveline getting up, when the knock came at the door. She smiled to herself. The rent man was early this morning.
Laying aside the damp dishcloth, she went to answer it. Seconds later she was in Eveline’s bedroom. Eveline was already dressed, sitting on the edge of her bed, trying to summon up the will to come out of the room.
‘There’s a young man at the door, asking for you,’ Connie said in a strange voice. ‘He says he has something urgent to tell you. I asked him in. He’s in the living room. Eveline …’
She broke off, unable to bring herself to say any more. Eveline was looking at her, her hitherto dull expression taking on a questioning aspect.
‘What does he want? Did he say who he was?’
Why had Connie asked him in? He could be anybody. She was about to tell her to order the man, whoever he was and whatever he wanted, to leave and stop bothering people. But the look on Connie’s face stopped her.
‘I think you should see him, Eveline.’
Connie went to the door to stand waiting for her, so Eveline got up with a deep sigh and followed her.
At their entrance the man stood up from the settee where he had been sitting, trilby hat in hand. Tall and slim, he wore a mackintosh against the morning rain, open to reveal a good-quality lounge suit. He was fair, grey-eyed and quite handsome but haggard, a man who’d been through a great deal and seen things that would remain with him for the rest of his life. But what did he want here? By the look on Connie’s face, he must have told her what this was all about. Why hadn’t she said what it was? Why so secretive?
‘Yes,’ she said, somewhat abruptly.
‘You are Mrs Eveline Adams, your husband is Albert Adams?’
‘Yes,’ she said again, her heart beginning to thump at the mention of Albert’s name.
‘I think you should sit down, Mrs Adams.’
What now? What more terrible news? ‘Who are you?’ she demanded.
‘Please, sit down.’
What strength she had summoned up fled and she sank down on the armchair opposite him. With Connie coming to stand supportively beside her the man began.
‘I’m Captain Fairbrother, taken prisoner in Turkey in nineteen eighteen interned in a Turkish prison camp in Aleppo. When Turkey surrendered to Arabian troops in October of that year, I was in a Turkish hospital where I met your husband.’
Eveline’s sharp intake of breath almost choked her, but the man took little notice as he continued.
‘Conditions there, if you’ll forgive me, were pretty ghastly …’
‘You saw my husband?’ Eveline broke in, her heart pounding and her head beginning to reel. But before she could ask whether Albert was dead or still alive, he hurried on.
‘In the hospital, if you could call it that, we were crammed in together with Turkish wounded. We’d lost our uniforms, couldn’t speak the language and when the hospital became threatened by Arab forces it was abandoned by the fleeing Turkish doctors and staff. Conditions had become appalling by the time they arrived. None of them seemed able to speak English, and they assumed we too were Turkish.’
‘What about my husband?’ Eveline burst out, feeling Connie’s hand touch her shoulder. ‘You said you saw him.’
‘Yes. Your husband had sustained a throat wound and was unable to talk clearly. He was also badly wounded in the right foot. It had apparently gone untreated in the prison camp. The doctors were an incompetent lot and didn’t attend to him properly. Gangrene set in and they amputated the foot but he had a blood infection. He was delirious for most of the time.’
So Albert had died of his wounds. Eveline bit her lips to control the tears threatening to engulf her. She couldn’t break down in front of this stranger. In front of Connie, yes, but not this man.
‘What are you trying to tell me?’ she blurted, suddenly angered. She had already been informed that Albert was killed, so why did this man want to come and rub salt into the wound? ‘If you’ve come to tell me my husband’s dead, I’ve already been informed.’
‘That’s why I’m here. I came as soon as I could to tell you that the last time I saw him, he was alive. I got your husband out of that hospital when there was talk of killing the patients. I found an abandoned truck and got him into it and tried to make for the British lines I hoped would be to the west. We ran out of petrol and I carried him on my back as far as I could. We ended up in some Turkish village where they fed us and looked after us and for weeks he drifted in and out of consciousness and delirium. I too was in a rather sorry state, suffering from dysentery, virtually a bag of bones, so I could go nowhere either. There was no way to get us to a British unit. He was so ill
that I dared not try with him. Finally I recovered enough to leave so that I could get in touch with our allies and let them know where I’d left him. That was when I learned that the war was over.’
‘And he was alive when you left him?’ Connie questioned, Eveline too choked by tears to speak.
He nodded. ‘Would you ladies mind if I were to smoke? This has been rather an ordeal for me.’
‘Of course,’ Connie said boldly. ‘Would you mind if I had one?’
He offered the packet and, flicking his lighter, held the flame to her cigarette before lighting his own. Eveline found her voice.
‘How can you both be so casual? Is my Albert still alive or not?’
‘Yes,’ Fairbrother replied slowly. ‘His throat had healed enough for him to talk and tell me his name before I left. But by the time I reached help I was all in and couldn’t think of the name of the village though I knew the general direction I’d taken. I was hospitalised and left my home address with the commanding officer with a promise to inform me as soon as, and if, your husband was found. Yesterday I received a telephone call to say that he had been found and was able to give his name, rank and serial number, though by then I guessed you had probably already been informed that he must be presumed dead. I came straight here to tell you what I knew. I was too late?’
‘She was notified two days ago,’ Connie told him.
At those words, something snapped inside Eveline. She bent forward, hands covering her face, and broke down in near hysterics, Connie holding her tight until the weeping eventually subsided enough for her to sit up.
She dimly remembered Fairbrother saying he’d been told that Albert was in an Istanbul hospital, from which he would be taken by hospital ship to Gibraltar to rest there, as was usual, prior to sailing through the possibly rough Bay of Biscay on his way home to England. All of this could take a month or two yet, and she would eventually be told he was alive, but he, Fairbrother, hadn’t wanted her to go through the hell of days not knowing until then. She vaguely remembered him taking his leave, saying that he wished her well. She remembered nodding her thanks, her mind only on Albert. Alive, but what if he had a relapse before they could get him home?
