Before she returned to England, she sought out Harry’s friend, Lieutenant Wilkins.
It was a cold night, mercifully silent because the big stretch of hardened earth between the German and British emplacements was too dark for gunners to see into the enemy trenches. But that darkness seemed to make the smell of the trenches, and the dreadful stretch of land between them so full of the dead from both sides, seem worse. Elizabeth was accustomed to that smell, which clung to the men as they were brought, in lorries, ambulances and sometimes even farm carts, from the dressing stations at the Front. Now she almost vomited when she met it in full strength. She and Lieutenant Wilkins sat on a high mound of earth thrown up by the entrenchment. Below them were the duckboards of the path leading past the trenches, then the trenches themselves, mostly quiet now as the men slept, though some ten yards away they could hear a few voices as a card game went on.
Wilkins described Harry’s death. The order to attack had come two days before; the line of men strung out over a quarter of a mile had advanced through the muddy waste of no-man’s-land towards the German trenches. Then came the order to fire, then to move forward, running and firing. But only a hundred yards from intimidatingly silent enemy lines, machine-gun fire broke out. Every other running man dropped, dead or wounded. The machine-gun fire stopped as abruptly as it had started. A force of Germans bigger than their own came over the top of their trenches, and the hand-to-hand fighting with bayonets began. Outnumbered, with so many dead, the order to retreat was given. But Harry and Wilkins found themselves sandwiched between two forces of Germans. He and half of the others had been killed. ‘A bullet through the head,’ Wilkins repeated. ‘I’m so sorry, Miss Armitage.’
A bullet through the head was what they always said, Elizabeth knew, to spare friends and relatives the truth. She had seen too many of this war’s casualties, heard too many stories to believe Wilkins. Abandoned in retreats, you could take a long time to die. Tears came to her eyes at last. She knew she might never know exactly how Harry had died.
‘I shall miss him too,’ said Wilkins.
‘I think he’d reached the point where he knew his luck wouldn’t hold any longer,’ she said flatly.
‘He was an experienced officer,’ Wilkins said. ‘It isn’t entirely luck, you know, Miss Armitage.’
She could not challenge him. If he wanted to believe that experience and skill could help a man live, then she would not do anything to erode his belief. It was true that Harry had been careful of his men and himself. But she knew that probably no experience, and no judgement, could have saved him.
Wilkins touched her hand. ‘Go back now,’ he said. ‘This place isn’t healthy, not at all the spot for a holiday.’ He saw her to the army truck which would take her all the miles back to Amiens, the result of a series of complicated, illicit arrangements.
‘Goodbye,’ he said, looking up at her as she sat in the cab. ‘Good luck.’
She nodded. She could hardly bear to wish him luck too. What luck could there be in this place?
Chapter Forty–One
Elizabeth Armitage returned to Britain overnight on a ship full of wounded soldiers. She had been sitting in a slow and overcrowded train from Dover for five hours. She was still in VAD uniform, the black hat with a badge at the front feeling tight on her head, her body heavy under the thick dark overcoat, her feet, in heavy boots, like lead. Although she was sitting down, her legs ached. She was the only woman in a carriage of exhausted soldiers in uniform, two swapping stories, two asleep, one, opposite her, slumped staring into space. The corridors were crowded with standing men and their kit.
The slumped soldier looked at her. ‘Been out there long, miss?’ he asked.
‘Two years,’ she’d replied. ‘How about you?’
‘Three years,’ he said.
‘In France all the time?’
‘That’s right.’
He must have been in his early twenties. He had a long, sharp-boned Cockney face, grey with fatigue and with two deeply etched lines beside his nose. If he’d spent three years in mud in that four-hundred-mile-long line of trenches which stretched across Belgium and northern France, half the regiment with which he’d travelled from England in 1914 would now be dead. The officers would have been replaced three or four times.
‘You’ve done your bit, then,’ she said.
‘I think so; but the army doesn’t. They want me back in two weeks. Can’t get along without me, they say. Will you be going back?’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Elizabeth.
‘Don’t blame you,’ he said. ‘Two years is enough for a woman. None of us knows how you keep it up.’
‘In the same way you do, I suppose,’ said Elizabeth. She hoped he wouldn’t return from leave. She hoped he’d desert. She hoped the whole trainload of soldiers would desert. Otherwise, so many of them would be killed, like Harry. Like Gerry Fitzgerald. Like Lily’s Jack. Like all the others. She closed her eyes, pretending to sleep. There was nothing she could say to these soldiers. They knew, and she knew, that this leave might be their last. Nearly a million men had already died. There was nothing a woman could say to them. War and death were men’s business. Men had begun the war, men would fight it, men would end it. Women picked up the pieces, nursed what could be nursed back to health, and bore the next generation of soldiers. Though perhaps, she thought, now that women had the vote, this would stop.
Elizabeth, who had fought so hard, was past rejoicing about the final granting of the franchise to women. She was nearly thirty-one now. She had spent two and a half years nursing in France. She had little energy, spiritual or physical, to care about anything. As she looked from the train window at a man driving a cart along a narrow country road, a woman hanging out washing in a garden, two children on a swing, she still saw only dead men, shattered buildings, trees blasted to stumps, mud, more dead men. But she had decided to go on living. She had to. She was pregnant. She desperately needed money and somewhere to go.
When Elizabeth got off the train in London, she took a taxi through cold streets, where people wore much black and looked in the main pinched and tired. She knew in Britain there were shortages, hardships, long queues for food. Women were driving buses, directing the traffic, delivering the post.
She walked up the stairs of her agent’s office in Shaftesbury Avenue and approached his door, on which was painted ‘Vincent Jones, Theatrical Agent’. It was locked. To her increasing horror she observed that the brown blind was drawn down over the window in the door. Worse, the handle of the door had a coating of dust. It had not been opened for weeks, or months. She had last called on Vincent Jones during the summer while on leave, to collect money owing to her for productions of Daughters of the Storm, which was still being performed. She had not been in touch with him since. Vincent must have moved offices, she told herself. The letter informing her of this had probably got lost between Britain and France. But there was no notice on the door redirecting his clients.
Elizabeth had five pounds in her bag, and had counted on finding between fifty and a hundred pounds due to her from Vincent. She decided she must go to his home, a commodious villa in Norwood, which she had visited once and thought she could find again. Her real desire was to find a hotel, go to bed, get up next morning, bathe, wash her hair and go out to find somewhere permanent to live. But for that she needed money. First she must find Vincent.
A boy came loitering down the hall with a bundle of envelopes under his arm. ‘I’m looking for Vincent Jones,’ she said. ‘Do you know where his new office is?’
‘Ain’t got one,’ responded the boy.
‘What? Has he given up the agency?’ she asked.
‘Took off,’ said the boy. ‘Police after him. Wife here wringing her hands and weeping…’
‘What?’ cried Elizabeth. ‘He owes me money!’
‘You’re not the only one,’ he said. He took pity on her. ‘You a VAD?’
‘Yes,’ she said numbly.
> ‘Been overseas?’
‘France,’ she told him, thinking desperately that if Vincent had absconded with her royalties, then the five pounds in her bag was all the money she had in the world. What on earth could she do? She was pregnant, homeless and without money. It was impossible, she thought desperately – he could not have done this. He couldn’t have.
‘You’d better go and talk to my boss – Mr Pettifer, of Pettifer and Pettifer – along there. Name’s on the door.’ He went past her with his envelopes.
Mr Pettifer was a pale young man, with a badly wheezing chest – asthmatic, she realised. But he was wearing a brand-new khaki uniform with pride. There was a big pile of files on his desk. ‘Just taken the shilling,’ he said, self-consciously casual. ‘I’m putting things in order for my substitute.’
Elizabeth, in spite of her own concerns, winced internally. The army had relied on volunteers until 1916, then brought in conscription. As the carnage continued they had lowered the height and health requirements. Pettifer was weak-chested. Goodness knew how he would fare in the trenches. But he was enthusiastic about doing his bit.
“Where are you nursing?’ he asked her. ‘Are you on leave?’
She ignored the questions. ‘I’m looking urgently for Vincent Jones, my agent. He’s holding certain sums of money for me.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Pettifer said. ‘He disappeared last month. Since then a lot of people have come here looking for him, his poor wife among the first.’ He shook his head. ‘I think there may have been another woman involved. His typist. It doesn’t make one feel confident about ladies going into business, I’m afraid.’
‘He’s not been found, then?’ asked Elizabeth.
‘His whereabouts are known now, I gather.’
Elizabeth’s hopes surged, but were dashed again when Pettifer added, ‘In New York.’
She sighed, wondering what she should do next.
‘You have my sympathy,’ Pettifer said.
Elizabeth, tiring now, went to the Imperial. The doorman told her where to find Lilah Zakarova; she had two rooms at the top of a house near Covent Garden. Lilah made tea, and they toasted crumpets in front of the fire. Elizabeth’s head began to swim. She sat back from the fire to recover.
‘You don’t look well,’ Lilah told her. She looked unwell herself, Elizabeth thought. Once Constance Albury had put the company in suspension, Lilah, without a steady engagement, had been forced to find parts here and there, had toured military camps in the depths of winter, and now had a walk-on part in a revue. ‘I dream of butter,’ she now said, spreading a dubious-smelling margarine on a crumpet. ‘Still,’ she went on, ‘you must be shocked about Jones – that affair astonished everybody. After twenty years as a respectable family man, only six months after he had to employ a girl as an assistant – because his clerk had joined the army – he goes and runs away with her and all the clients’ money. Try some of this horrible jam on that crumpet to take away the taste of the marge. It’s not fair,’ she continued, ‘you go away to do your bit, and this is what happens. If you’d been here you’d have been checking your cash as it came in.’
Elizabeth bit into the crumpet. ‘You’re a sport, Lilah,’ she said. But she felt very gloomy.
‘I’m a good sort, all right,’ Lilah said ruefully. ‘But it hasn’t got me far, has it? Two rooms and a small appearance in a silly sketch.’ She put a crumpet on the plate in the hearth. ‘Still, work’s work, I suppose. You can stay here for a night or two, if you’re stuck. I’d make it longer but I have a friend…’ She sounded hesitant.
‘I couldn’t, Lilah. I must find something permanent,’ Elizabeth told her. ‘In any case, I don’t suppose your friend wants me hanging about.’ She thought Lilah looked relieved.
‘He’s in the Government, you see,’ she explained. She did not need to add that her ‘friend’ was married.
‘I’ll have to go home for a bit,’ Elizabeth said, defeated. She felt so tired. The thought that she would probably have to argue with her uncle before they took her in, and that this would upset her mother, made her feel quite exhausted. But she’d have to do it. She’d have to stay at Linden Grove, though not for long. She was pregnant and soon it would begin to show. She would have to go into hiding from her family.
In the event she did not spend even a night at Linden Grove. Deadly weary, she climbed the steps of the house and rang the bell. A harassed girl who looked about twelve years old in a cap and apron too big for her answered the door.
‘Please tell Mrs Armitage her daughter is here,’ she said.
Her heart sank when the girl replied, ‘She’s ill.’
‘I’ll go and see her,’ declared Elizabeth, starting up the stairs.
‘She’s downstairs,’ said the girl, looking apprehensive.
Bella was in the sitting room by the fire, swathed in shawls. Her face was wan, her cheekbones very sharp. Her eyes burned with fever. As Elizabeth came in, Harriet Warren, writing out Christmas cards at the desk, was saying, ‘Try to control your cough, Bella.’
She jumped to her feet when Elizabeth came in and ran over to her mother. ‘You’re not well. What’s the matter? Surely you should be in bed?’
‘Oh dear, Elizabeth. What a whirlwind,’ cried Harriet. ‘What a fuss. Bella has a little cold, that’s all. Are you on leave? Where are you staying?’
Elizabeth ignored her. She felt Bella’s brow. ‘You’re burning up,’ she said. ‘Has the doctor been?’
‘It’s only a cold,’ Bella said, with difficulty. ‘Elizabeth – I’m so happy to see you. Are you back for long?’
‘Perhaps permanently.’
Harriet was at her side, saying insistently, ‘There’s nothing wrong with Bella. Where are you staying?’
‘Surely she should be in bed?’
‘There is no coal for a fire upstairs and no one but one girl to wait on her. The war is causing us all a great deal of hardship,’ Harriet said.
‘Never mind, Aunt,’ Elizabeth said. ‘You have a nurse in the house now.’
Harriet, shocked, said, ‘I really don’t know about that,’ and left the room.
‘I’m back for good,’ said Elizabeth to Bella. ‘I’ll look after you.’ She had no idea how she could manage this in the long term. She had no money, was pregnant and had to conceal her condition, particularly from Bella.
She went down into the kitchen to see if she could find a lemon, some honey, anything to relieve some of Bella’s symptoms. On the way she passed Harriet in the hall, telephone in hand. The kitchen was in disorder. The girl was washing up the plates and saucepans from lunch, even though it was six in the evening. A miserable-smelling stew was cooking on the stove. The floor was filthy, the table littered. The grate in front of the kitchen range was covered in ashes. The girl turned round and looked at her with a mixture of defiance and fear. ‘I can’t manage since Mrs Armitage got ill,’ she said. ‘There’s too much to do.’
There was no lemon or honey, but Elizabeth made some tea and carried it upstairs. When she re-entered the drawing room with the tray, Bella’s face was fearful and Harriet was planted in front of the fireplace in unconscious imitation of her husband at his most domineering. Elizabeth knew instinctively that a blow was about to fall, but at first could not imagine what sort of blow it would be. Then it began to dawn on her.
‘I’ve spoken to Robert on the telephone,’ Harriet said, ‘and I’m afraid we can’t offer you a room here at present. It simply isn’t convenient.’
In spite of her suspicion that this would happen, Elizabeth was still shocked. If she couldn’t stay here, where could she go? She argued, ‘Aunt Harriet – you have domestic difficulties, Mother’s ill. I’ve been nursing for over two years. And I can help run the house. There’s room here for me. Why are you turning me out?’
‘There’s no question of turning you out, as you put it,’ said Harriet. ‘You’ve always had a very unfortunate way of expressing yourself. Unfortunate to the point of sheer rudeness,
’ she added. ‘However, I’ll overlook that. Frannie is coming here to stay shortly. My widowed daughter,’ she said, with heavy emphasis. ‘There simply isn’t room for you,’ she concluded.
‘I don’t believe you,’ Elizabeth said. ‘I know how many rooms there are in the house. You just don’t want me here. You must loathe me if, rather than let me nurse Mother and help with the house, you’d turn me out. Why is it you can’t bear to have me under this roof for an instant?’
Bella gasped, then coughed.
‘Please don’t accuse me of telling you untruths,’ Harriet said. ‘I repeat, there simply is no room.’
‘Room could be made for me,’ stated Elizabeth. It was all bravado. She was speaking to her aunt as if she had a choice of where to go herself, as if she were not desperate for a place to stay, even if only for a few weeks. Don’t hector, she urged herself, beg, beg on your knees, if necessary. You need a room and your mother needs help. Don’t let pride stand in your way.
Whereupon Harriet said angrily, ‘You appear to be accusing me of lying. You will not accept that there is no room for you. I tell you there is not. Please leave, Elizabeth. This is worrying your mother. She will become more ill. I’ve said all I have to say.’
Suddenly very tired, Elizabeth said, ‘Very well, Aunt Harriet. I’ll go, for the time being anyway. But you must call a doctor.’
‘Very well,’ Harriet agreed. She would, Elizabeth knew – but only if Elizabeth left now. That was the contract. So she embraced her mother, shocked at the thinness of Bella’s shoulders under her shawl, and left the house rapidly.
Outside in the dark and cold she cursed herself for her stupidity. Why could she not have asked for a room in such a way that Harriet would not have been able to refuse her? Now she was out here in the dark on a cold pavement, with only five pounds between herself and destitution. Oh God, she thought, what shall I do now?
She glanced over the road at Mrs Macfarlane’s ground-floor window. There she had found comfort and support in the past. But all was in darkness. When she rang the bell a maid in a dressing gown told her that Mrs Macfarlane was in Scotland. Her father was ill. Elizabeth left a message that she was back and would come to see her soon, and turned away from the house with a sinking heart. Suddenly she recalled the friendship and the warm rooms and comfort of Lily Strugnell at Chivering House. In France Lily had asked her to stay when she got back to England. And she so desperately needed shelter. She would go to Chivering and use that as a base from which to reorganise her life and do something for her mother.
Elizabeth and Lily Page 41
