‘It’ll be in a fit state to hand on,’ the Earl went on aggressively, ‘to whomsoever there is to inherit.’ He added, ‘Thank God little Digby is so healthy. I expect you’ll be following him up with another one soon, Lily?’
Since Lionel and Annabel were still childless, Henry East was deliberately making trouble. Lionel looked even more annoyed. Annabel’s face froze. Gordon looked down at his plate.
Lily smiled at the irritable old man. ‘I’m afraid that’s up to God,’ she said. But the topic chilled her, for she feared the idea of more children, and the topic brought unwelcome thoughts of Rose and Jack’s coming child.
‘God and man,’ said the Earl. He stood up and said, ‘Well, I’ll walk down to the club, I think, look up some people. I’m not in London for long, after all.’ He paused. ‘Perhaps I’ll move up here for a while towards the end of the year. Spend the winter here.’
There were muttered good evenings after he had dropped his bombshell. Those at the table heard him in the hall, calling out for his hat, coat and stick.
After the front door banged Lionel said, ‘My God. He’s on form today.’
‘He only does it to annoy,’ Gordon told him.
‘I know,’ said Lionel indignantly. ‘But why?’
At this point, Annabel, very pale, stood up and led the ladies upstairs into the drawing room. Once they were seated, no one said anything. They could hear Lionel shouting downstairs. In an attempt to mask the noise, Caroline said, ‘You read everything, Annabel. Do tell me about H. G. Wells. What would you recommend one to read of his work?’
‘I’m not quite sure, really,’ Annabel said distractedly. ‘I’m not certain I’d recommend anything.’
‘You must forgive Henry,’ Caroline told her. ‘I think he may be in pain. He’s come to London to see his doctor.’
‘What’s the matter with him?’ Annabel asked, alarmed.
‘He hasn’t told me,’ replied Caroline. ‘You know he hates talking about health, his own or anyone else’s. I heard it over tea at Lady Berry’s. Very embarrassing. Sir Virgil’s wife was there. She mentioned it because she thought I must know Henry was consulting her husband. Of course, I didn’t. He hadn’t told me. We must all pretend we know nothing about it.’
Annabel nodded sombrely. ‘Let’s hope it’s nothing serious. Do you think he plans to move to London so as to be close to medical treatment?’
‘No,’ said Caroline. ‘I think he said it, as Gordon remarked, purely to annoy.’ Another silence fell. The clock ticked. Soon the men would come upstairs; they would talk, then go to bed.
Lily was quite fond of the Earl, though she had never seen much of him. He had been cold to her during the early months of her marriage to Gordon, warming only after Digby’s birth. His new tolerance of her made life easier, but there was a catch – he was putting pressure on her to have another child. One son might die. It was considered safer to have at least two, as an insurance policy. But further pregnancies would bury her that much deeper in this life she did not want to lead, with Gordon, who found it all too satisfactory. She thought, I don’t want the Earl to die, but if he does, it will be easier to do what I want.
And what do you want to do, Lily Strugnell? asked a voice inside her head. Lily, as if answering it, shook her head. Then she yawned.
Chapter Thirty–Five
The war that Lord East had feared was declared in August 1914. Gordon Stillwell immediately volunteered for the army, but was rejected as he had a heart murmur caused by rheumatic fever as a child. He was deeply distressed, especially as both his brothers had been accepted and were now serving officers.
At Chivering, over breakfast, Gordon said, ‘I’ll do what I can in other ways. How would you feel if I got a desk job up in London – all I’m fit for – and left you to run things down here a lot of the time? I know it will be a burden, but everyone will have to make sacrifices. With any luck it won’t last long.’ Then he burst out, ‘Oh – it will be difficult to see other men going off to fight whilst I’m stuck here at home.’
‘Poor Gordon,’ said Lily. ‘But you’ll be playing your part, that’s the main thing. And your father may be pleased he’ll have at least one son left at home.’
She spoke almost automatically. She had just read a letter from Queenie, telling her that her own brothers, Lennie and Dan, had joined up.
Rose and Jack had not gone to Canada but Australia, where Jack was managing an ironmongery store. But Queenie’s letter told her that Jack was returning to London as soon as he could, to join the army. He and Rose, with their baby, Dora, were making arrangements to leave Sydney.
Lily looked down at the letter from Queenie, across at Gordon, and suddenly she was horrified. ‘They could all be killed,’ she cried.
‘Steady, darling,’ Gordon said. ‘They say it may not last much longer than a year.’
A year later, both Lionel and Thomas Stillwell were dead, two of the three hundred thousand British men already claimed by a war which, on the Western Front, had settled into two lines of trenches four hundred miles across Belgium and France, between which the British and German armies fought deadly battles to win, or lose, only a few yards of territory.
Lily’s brothers, also in France, were both alive.
Lord East, pronounced by Sir Virgil to be suffering from angina, seemed to give up hope after his sons’ deaths. He had not gone ahead with his threat to live semi-permanently at Brook Street, but now returned to London with Caroline and took to his bed there in the sad house presided over by the widowed Annabel. Thomas’s wife had returned to Ireland to live with her parents. And the unhappy Gordon was now heir to the earldom and its estates.
The deaths of both brothers filled Gordon with guilt. He had not been able to serve and was now not only safe, but would profit from his brothers’ deaths. He suggested to his father that they give to his brothers’ widows what they would have had if their husbands had lived. The Earl flatly refused. He would make provision for his sons’ widows. The property was entailed and would stay in Stillwell hands, first Gordon’s then his son’s. And so Gordon brooded on at Chivering.
Gordon’s physical passion for Lily had diminished after the birth of Digby – something of a relief, at first, for Lily wanted no more children. But the absence of passion, or simple affection, soon began to distress her. Now, with the deaths of Lionel and Thomas, Gordon had ceased to take any interest, it seemed to Lily, in her, the marriage, or anything else but his son. She tried to comfort him, to help Gordon back into the normal world – if this world of long casualty lists and mourning families could be called normal – but her efforts made no difference. It was plain to her that each day was a nightmare, an intolerable burden for Gordon. She even asked her old enemy, Sir Virgil, down to Chivering for a visit, but at the end of the weekend, as they rode in the carriage to the station, Sir Virgil only told her, ‘Dear lady, your husband grieves for his brothers. It is a natural process, and will end when it ends. There is nothing you can do but accept it, and offer all the sympathy and help you can. Believe me, you are not alone. Many, many families are enduring such things.’ Sir Virgil was now faced himself with the realities of serious injuries, the deaths of young men, and the nerve-shattered soldiers back from the horrors of the trenches, men who might have no physical injuries but were, in greater and greater numbers, simply going mad. Sir Virgil was a more sober, kinder man than he had been before. He turned to Lily and looked at her. ‘Be thankful he is still alive. Help him, rear your son, and involve yourself in war work.’
‘Knitting socks for soldiers,’ Lily said.
He nodded. ‘We must all do what we can.’
Lily was indeed doing war work, and twice a week she opened the house to women volunteers, who rolled bandages and brought in socks and gloves knitted during the previous weeks to be sent to the army. Lily provided lunch and tea. Meanwhile, the deaths and casualties mounted. Information about conditions in the lines seeped back, though there was still no general p
ublic recognition of how terrible this static trench warfare actually was. Many still saw this war as a patriotic exercise, the fighting men as heroes going into battle at dawn, with pennants flying. The majority of Lily’s knitting, bandage-rolling ladies thought like this. But Lily, a realist, had a notion that theirs was a glamorised version of what was taking place. She was sceptical about the usefulness of the tea-drinking, socialising group which met at Chivering. She thought she could do more. She asked Gordon if it would not be more useful to open up Chivering as a military hospital or convalescent home. This was a mistake, she knew, as soon as she spoke. Gordon could not face the thought. His only security, now, was maintaining the dull pattern of his days in a familiar place. He’s like a man who’s been to war, Lily thought to herself. She wondered if some change or exertion might help him to recover.
The marriage became more and more lifeless, though their son, Digby, thrived. He was, in fact, the only part of Gordon’s landscape which held any brightness. Lily knew, as one miserable day followed another, that she should not complain, not when there were men in France fighting and dying for her sake. Gordon, sunk in apathy, did not try for the desk job in London he had said he wanted. Each morning, she got up and thought, the soldiers are out there fighting and dying so I can stay here doing nothing with Gordon Stillwell. I ought to do more. I ought to do better. What can I do?
The next morning a note came from Sam Stackpoole, enclosing a letter to her from Jack, no stranger to intrigue and covering his tracks. It read: ‘Lily dear, I know what I did to you and I’ll never forgive myself. But I’m leaving for France in ten days and I’m wondering like all the rest if I’ll be coming back. Will you see me, alone, before I go, just the once? I must talk to you. Please come. With all my love, Jack.’
Lily knew quite well what this was about. But she asked herself if she could refuse to see him. If she did, if he was killed, how would she ever forgive herself?
She sent a note to Sam, asking him to tell Jack she’d meet him. He responded promptly, naming his own office as the rendezvous. Sam knew he should not be doing this; so did Vera Dickinson. Neither of them mentioned it to the other.
Lily promptly told Gordon that she had toothache, was going to London to see the dentist. Two days after Jack’s first letter, she was at Sam’s office. Miss Dickinson was knitting a khaki sweater. She greeted Lily, who was dressed in a blue coat with a fur collar, and a fur hat.
Sam came out of his office. His first statement was, ‘Lily – if there wasn’t a war on, I’d never have got involved.’
‘I don’t suppose I would have either, Sam,’ Lily told him. Then the door banged open and Jack came in, tanned and in uniform. The reality of khaki serge shocked Lily. She burst out, ‘Christ, Jack! Why did you come all the way back from Australia to do this?’
He gave a wry smile. ‘For King and country,’ he said.
‘And what did they ever do for you?’ demanded Lily. ‘Did they feed you, house you, put shoes on your feet?’
‘Traitor,’ he said, and grasped her arm. ‘How about a spot of lunch?’
In the restaurant, a good, dignified hotel near the Strand, Lily could scarcely eat. Nor could Jack. They drank champagne. He put his hand on her knee under the table and said, ‘I’ve booked a room upstairs. Do it for me, Lily. You want me. I want you. There’s never been anyone like you for me, never will be. And what’s the point of waiting for tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, when we don’t know if there’s going to be one? Please, Lily. Please.’
She nodded and stood up. They walked out of the restaurant and up the stairs to the room Jack had booked.
They made love all afternoon in the hotel room, Lily’s clothes mingled with Jack’s uniform on the floor.
In his arms, Lily said, ‘What are we going to do? What are we going to do?’
‘Don’t know. Doesn’t matter,’ said Jack Finlay, kissing her. ‘Come on, darling, kiss me. We haven’t got much time.’
Lily went back to Chivering. The casualty lists grew, the neighbourhood slowly went into black mourning clothes, as family after family suffered losses. At church on Sundays, more and more men and women arrived in black for the services, as if gradually a shadow was falling over all of them.
Lily sent parcels to Dan and Lennie, hardly dared open Queenie’s letters in case they contained news of a death. And they did, of course, but not her brothers’. James Barrington, her childhood playmate, one of Martha and Henry’s twins, died. Charlie’s employer, Carr, lost a son. Tommy Cunningham from the Rose and Crown had come back from the Front minus a leg.
In September a telegram came from Queenie: Jack Finlay had been killed at Loos. During a charge on the German lines the officer in charge of the company had been killed, as had the sergeant. Jack, a corporal, had assumed command, reached the German lines and knocked out the machine-gun which had been spraying his own men with bullets. But the group was cut off and in the ensuing struggle Jack was killed. ‘He died a hero,’ Queenie said when Lily came to visit her and the widowed Rose.
‘A fat lot of good that is,’ the black-clad, red-eyed Rose said, dandling her toddler on her knee. ‘God knows what we’re going to do. I’ve had a rotten life, Lily.’
Queenie, standing at the window in the parlour, looked over at Lily, an expression of despair on her face. Rose had sunk under the weight of Jack’s death. Queenie was looking after the house, her granddaughter and Rose herself. She was desperately anxious about Lennie and Dan.
‘You’re all right, Lily,’ Rose went on remorselessly. ‘Down in the country, no hardships, Gordon exempted from service, and when the old man pops off you’ll be a countess. It’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good, I suppose. And I’ve lost my husband in the service of his country.’
‘Don’t mind her,’ Queenie said. ‘She’s upset. It’s natural.’
Lily had cried bitterly when Jack died, concealing this from Gordon, who noticed her very little anyway. She wondered of whom Jack’s last thoughts had been, if he’d had any. Of Rose, his child, his brother Gerry, herself? She would never know. The final cruelty of this war was that a man died far from home, was buried far away, and it could seem sometimes to the survivors as if he had never lived, or worse, perhaps, as if he had not died, but just gone away somewhere.
Rose’s remarks stung, too. It was true that Lily was sheltered, by money and her husband’s heart condition, from the full suffering the war was bringing to so many others. It could not go on. She left the sad house and went to see Sam Stackpoole. She said, ‘It’s no good me rolling bandages and getting Cook to lay on a nice lunch for ladies in big hats. I might as well serve the country by doing what I’m good at, cheering people up.’ She laughed, rather bitterly. ‘Serve the country – what am I talking about? That’s all out of story books. From what I hear, this is a miserable bloody war, halfway to a massacre. I want to go out there to the Front and show my legs and sing a song and get the poor bloody Tommies to join in the choruses.’
Sam hesitated. ‘You’re a married woman with a child, Lily.’
‘Gordon doesn’t care if I’m there or not,’ Lily said bluntly. ‘In fact, I think he’d be happier if I was away. And the boy’ll be all right.’
‘Is this anything to do with Jack’s death?’ Sam asked.
‘That’s right,’ Lily said.
It was strange that good-for-nothing Jack Finlay had been responsible, in some sense, for Lily’s marriage to Gordon. Now, by his death, he would be responsible for ending it.
Chapter Thirty–Six
1915
At the outbreak of war, Constance Albury took Elizabeth back into the company. Even if Constance had cared, and with the country at war she would not have, Elizabeth would never be imprisoned again, for the Prime Minister had announced his intention to give women the vote, and there would be no more suffrage activity. Now, women were needed to back up the troops – soon they would be needed to do men’s work. Everything could change.
In January
1915, Elizabeth was playing juliet to Harry Hislop’s Romeo. She was living with him, too, in a small cottagey house they had taken in Chelsea. Lovers and friends, they were very happy now; so happy that Elizabeth could scarcely believe it. But as the months of war went on, she began to fear.
Meanwhile, Robert Warren was making his fortune. The business of soldiers’ uniforms thrived, of course. He had abandoned Cork Street and the glove factory and had a hundred women working for him now at Greenford. What infuriated him, though, was that as women began to get more and more work in factories, he was forced to pay higher wages. What infuriated Harriet was that the put-upon orphan maid gave notice and left for a much better-paid job as a tram conductor. Other maids demanded higher pay and would not put up with the amount of work demanded of them at Linden Grove. Harriet was forced, grumbling, to help, as part of the war effort. However, with Frannie married and Cora, rather surprisingly, having become a secretary and taken a flat in Pimlico with a fellow worker, there was less to do at Linden Grove.
Elizabeth met Cora by accident in the Strand, where she was having tea with a good-looking man in his forties. Cora glanced up and looked embarrassed. Elizabeth could not tactfully pretend she had not seen them. Cora introduced the man as her boss, head of a department in the War Office.
‘How’s Frannie?’ Elizabeth asked.
‘Her husband’s joined up. He’s in England, training, at present, but she’s afraid he’ll be posted. Mama wants her to go and live at home, but she says she prefers not to.’
‘How strange,’ smiled Elizabeth. ‘Look – shall I send you some tickets for the play? Perhaps she’d like to go.’
‘That would be wonderful… Well, I think we must go,’ Cora said, and rather hustled her companion out.
When Elizabeth got home she found Harry very silent. In the end she crossed the little sitting room, put her arms round him and said, ‘Oh Harry. I dread what you’re going to say.’
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