by Parks, Adele
‘Your sketches really are quite exhilarating, Bea.’
Ava’s belief that one ought not to be too sympathetic and nice was given credence when Bea immediately burst into tears, something she’d always resisted doing despite enduring years of Ava’s spiky comments. No doubt embarrassed by her lack of control, she quickly became hysterical. Some people were beautiful weepers; Bea was not. Her face looked like a world map, with purple blotches of shame drifting like continents. Snot, saliva and tears poured forth. Ava wondered whether she ought to offer her handkerchief, but she was worried that any further act of kindness might aggravate the situation. She was relieved when Bea retrieved one of her own from her bag.
‘I’m so very lonely,’ Bea gasped. Ava initially misheard her and thought she had said, ‘I’m so very lovely’. She’d wanted to giggle because, well, frankly, the girl had a face only a grandmother could love; Ava often found mirth in the most inconvenient of places. When she finally understood, she sagged. It was a stark, barren confession.
‘But, darling, how can you possibly be lonely? Since you arrived in London we’ve dined out nearly every evening and lunched twice.’
‘I don’t mean this week.’
‘Well, absolutely, the countryside is dreary. If you must live in the sticks, then a certain amount of isolation and boredom has to be endured,’ commented Ava, who thought anywhere without a London postcode was nowhere at all. ‘But you are often invited to someone or other’s for the weekend, and house parties are always heaving. One often struggles to find five moments of peaceful time. I can never keep up with reading the newspapers at the weekends.’
Bea shook her head, indicating that Ava didn’t understand.
‘Well, what do you mean, then?’
‘I think I’m just beginning to understand that I’m never going to marry.’
Ava wondered how it had possibly taken Bea so long to reach this conclusion. She was twenty-six, plain, strapped for cash and inadequately educated. The country was down almost a million marrying-age men; how could she ever have thought her chances were good? Then Ava’s quick mind made an unconscious connection. A vision flashed into her head, brutal and unwelcome. The men had tried to keep her away from Mr Oaksley’s room. Her father had insistently yelled, ‘Keep back, keep back!’ and someone had intercepted her, dragged quite roughly at her arm in an effort to lead her away from the mess. But she’d seen him, or rather the shape of him, just for an instant. He’d already been cut down from the rafters and was lying on the polished floorboards. They’d tugged a cover off the bed and pulled it over his face, but she’d seen his legs, sticking out from under the makeshift shroud. They were at an awkward angle, like a fallen fawn; in all the confusion and panic, no one had yet thought to lay him straight. His shoes were shiny, glossy like a child’s hair. Ava had wondered who polished them. Who took care of him. Before he took care of everything.
People had differing views on suicide. Some said it was selfish or sinful, others were dangerously close to understanding it too well; everyone agreed it was bitterly sorrowful.
‘I proposed to Mr Oaksley, you know,’ muttered Bea.
Ava had not known this. She paused for a moment and tried to think of how best to respond. Clearly gasping, ‘After just two days of acquaintance?’ was not that.
‘Did he give an answer?’
Bea met Ava’s eyes, her expression spitting out pain and exasperation. For possibly the first time in her life, Ava was conscious and regretful of saying a tactless thing.
‘I think his reply was loud and clear,’ Bea said flatly.
‘No, Beatrice, you can’t think that. You don’t imagine his death was somehow your fault?’
‘How else can I think of it? He clearly considered death a better alternative to living with me.’
‘No, Bea. No.’ Ava made her voice firm. She needed to be convincing.
‘Or at best he thought he would be a burden to me and didn’t want that, so you know …’ Bea couldn’t finish the sentence; a fresh tsunami of tears overwhelmed her.
Ava thought that, despite Bea believing the contrary, it was good luck that she had alighted on a maimed soldier thoughtful enough not to exploit a willing girl who so wanted to subsume her own needs; it was a narrow escape. She considered. Frankly, she thought that the timing of Arnie Oaksley’s death, coming so soon after Beatrice’s proposal, meant that the two things were probably somehow related, at least in the dead man’s head, but she could not allow Bea to believe such a thing. Not for a moment. It had irritated Ava that in the past Bea had made so much of the death of her beau at the Front. The loss of the young man – any young man – to the dreadful war business was undoubtedly lamentable, but as their relationship had amounted to one chaperoned trip to a tea shop, Ava could not allow Bea the right to grieve. She’d been impatient with what she saw as excessive parading. Now she was beginning to reappraise; to burrow more deeply into the source of the grief. What did these losses really mean to Bea?
Bea’s face was buried in her handkerchief. She was trying (and failing) to blow her nose delicately. It was a lost battle. There was nothing delicate about Bea; she was a robust woman, the sort that had shored up the corners of the Empire for generations. A respectable girl brought up to expect marriage and motherhood; without one, she could not hope for the other. Ava thought she would have made what was conventionally agreed to be a good wife. She’d have been supportive and loyal; instinctively she’d have known when to probe and when to turn a blind eye, and she’d have been a good mother, particularly to boys. She had that no-nonsense approach about her that meant she would not have been distressed by the experimental stages, such as worm-eating when they were infants or excessive drinking when they were adolescents. Bea had shared a nursery and schoolroom; she was of the bracket of women who were discouraged from having private or independent thoughts. She was bred for companionship. Her future had been smote on the French battlefields along with those of nearly a million British men, not to mention the further nine million men born on other shores.
It was futile to suggest that Beatrice ought to make more of herself. She was not that sort of girl; not a flimsy silk sort. She was a black cashmere stockings, liberty bodice, dark stockinette knickers, flannel petticoat, long-sleeved, high-necked, knitted woollen spencer sort of girl. Like many sheltered women, she’d been bred ignorant, romantic, idealistic, utterly unsophisticated.
Ava downed her cocktail and then left her chair to join Bea on the sofa. She wondered how close she ought to sit. They didn’t do physical intimacy as a rule. Ava wasn’t sure that either she or Bea would be comfortable if hugging was involved. She settled on putting her hand on Bea’s arm. ‘Listen to me, Bea darling. You had nothing to do with what happened. I’m quite sure that Mr Oaksley had planned his suicide for some time before that weekend. His situation was beastly.’ She didn’t dare risk saying the words she felt truly fitted the unfortunate man’s situation. Unbearable. Intolerable. Insufferable. She felt any one of them would be too distressing for Bea.
‘I could have helped him,’ groaned Bea.
‘Maybe, but some people don’t want to be helped. I imagine he was very tired. He’d been brave for quite a few years. He’s at peace now.’ Ava was surprised to find herself settling into the accepted platitudes that so many millions had doled out for years now. She didn’t believe the clichés about bravery or peace, but they were all they had so she coughed them up. ‘Do you know what I think?’
‘What?’
‘If your proposal had any impact at all, it was probably a comfort.’
‘Really?’ Bea looked at her with shy desire.
No, not really. Ava did not believe that the man had gone to his death thinking how marvellous it was that a desperate, chubby girl was prepared to marry him, following just the briefest of associations, but she never had any qualms about lying for expediency, and she had lied for much less worthwhile reasons than this. ‘Most definitely.’
Somewhat
comforted, Bea put down her handkerchief and picked up her cocktail. For a moment they sat in a more serene silence, each pursuing their own line of thought as they allowed the chilly cocktails to take effect. Ava felt a rare but sincere moment of sympathy for Beatrice’s predicament; she was infuriated by the enduring inequalities and tragedies that they all had to stomach. Bea was thinking about the last time she’d felt intrinsically linked to the fabric of life. The last time she was useful and needed. ‘It wasn’t as bad during the war; we were all so busy. I didn’t notice the loneliness. There were the sewing guilds and the fund-raisers, parcels to send to the soldiers.’
‘Do you remember those awful entertainment evenings for the wounded?’
‘Lydia’s singing!’ Bea smiled, despite her gloom.
‘It can’t really have aided recovery, can it?’ asked Ava, with a sly wink.
‘Quite the reverse.’ The women giggled. The tight air loosened around them. The dread of solitude slackened. Bea asked, ‘Do you remember how we celebrated Armistice night?’
‘Of course. At the Ritz.’
‘We sang patriotic songs.’
‘Cynthia Curzon wore nothing other than a Union Jack!’
‘We thought all our troubles were at an end for ever.’ Bea paused and swallowed. ‘You see, I’m not sure what I shall do if I don’t marry. It’s all I’ve ever imagined. All I’ve been brought up to. What can I do, if I don’t do that?’
‘The terribly good thing about the war is that—’
Bea gasped. ‘Ava, how can you even begin a sentence like that?’
‘Darling, every cloud has a silver lining and all that. I was just going to say that it opened doors for us.’
‘Us?’
‘Women.’
‘But they all died. The men. Our men.’
‘Well, not all of them, but that’s not my point. Think, no chaperones to scrutinise our every move. A valid excuse if one wants to avoid matrimony.’
‘But why would one want that?’
‘Because, darling Bea, being married doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be happier.’ Ava couldn’t help a hint of condescension sneaking into her voice. She was, quite simply, the more worldly-wise of the two. ‘I see countless cases that prove otherwise, every day.’
‘Oh, but you mean poor people. Drinkers. Brutes.’
‘Drinkers, brutes and unhappy marriages are not confined to one class. You know very well that the concept abounds among our sort too.’
‘Oh, don’t. It’s all too sad.’ It was clear that Beatrice wasn’t quite ready to step out of her fairy-tale, make-believe world. Ava decided to accentuate the positive instead.
‘There are plenty of things you can do with your time. You could go abroad.’
‘I can’t afford it.’
‘I find there’s always someone willing to pick up the bill.’
‘I imagine you do.’
‘No, not like that. Someone who needs a companion. Perhaps a middle-aged widow who wants to learn about the classical artists in Italy. These people advertise in The Lady, you know. You could sketch.’
‘The object of travel to the Continent is to bring home a young man.’
‘The object is to have fun. Lydia and I have gone abroad for the past two years and we’ve only ever thought about having fun.’
‘Maybe it is just about fun if you are married or simply gorgeous.’ Beatrice sounded accusing. ‘But no, not at all for me. I can imagine the humiliation. It will be like going to a dance full of expectancy and hope only to return with a relentless sense of ineptitude when one fails to click with anyone, except it will be a hundred times worse because dances are on every doorstep but abroad is such a distance.’
‘Would you think of golf lessons? Or joining the Women’s League of Health and Beauty? I hear it’s incredible fun and chummy, you know.’
‘Hobbies.’ Bea sighed, articulating that she didn’t think hobbies were enough.
‘Then you must get a career. You could teach, or join the civil service.’
‘But those are consolation prizes.’
‘I disagree.’
‘I feel like a lesser being. An unmarried woman. How low can one go?’
‘It is true that single women are underestimated and underrated, but just because others think little of our position doesn’t mean we should fail to appreciate just how wonderful an opportunity is being presented here. Singleness isn’t an illness or a state to be despised; it’s an endless opportunity,’ said Ava firmly. ‘You know there are women accountants, engineers, doctors. You could go into law or banking.’
‘No, I couldn’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘Well, how would I begin? It’s impossible. Quite hopeless. Those things are possible for women like you, maybe, I suppose. But …’ She left it hanging. The air was awash with loneliness and self-imposed limitations. Ava saw a lack of confidence, thought and ambition. It wasn’t Beatrice’s fault; they’d all been encouraged to think small and narrow.
‘Do you know what? I need to introduce you to some more people.’
‘Like who?’
‘Like my friends that I was out with today. Campaigners, suffragettes.’ Ava saw the horror on Bea’s face and couldn’t resist adding, ‘Do-gooders. Come on, there’s no time like the present. I shall cancel dinner with Lady Cooper, because really, how many times can we chat about frocks, and the exceptional view from her box at the opera? I’ll telephone my women instead. You need to meet fresh faces. Not fresh men. Fresh faces.’ She jumped up and walked towards her telephone; she instructed the operator. ‘Belgravia 214, please.’
The thought of a fresh face brought to mind a familiar one. ‘I saw Lydia today,’ commented Bea.
‘Really? Where?’
‘The V and A Museum.’
‘Lydia? In a museum? How utterly astounding.’
‘She was with that terribly handsome man.’
Ava put the phone down without speaking to Lady Cooper. She felt the earth shimmer a little. She felt askew and yet she was certain that she knew what was coming. ‘Which one?’
‘Sergeant Major Trent.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Quite sure. They talked to me. He’s a lovely person, isn’t he? So polite and sincere.’ Not for the first time Ava doubted Bea’s ability to make sensible judgements about people; she really didn’t have enough experience of the world. This suspicion was confirmed when Bea added, ‘What do you think they were doing there together? Is there a particular exhibition that everyone is seeing? I didn’t know that Sergeant Major Trent was a friend of Lawrence’s.’
Ava wondered whether it was time to shove the baby bird out of the nest. It would not do for Beatrice to blithely drift through the world in a state of naïve wonderment and innocence.
‘I don’t think he is a friend of Lawrence’s, Beatrice darling.’
Ava’s hint settled like rain on a parched field. Bea gasped. ‘No, not Lydia.’
‘I’m afraid it looks that way.’
Ava never understood the girls who accepted the rules, who didn’t baulk at them and strain at their ribbon chains. Lydia had been such a girl and Ava used to long for her to kick up her heels a little. Now that she had, it was terrifying, unsettling. It was another war; smaller, quieter. A domestic front but still real and destructive. Now Ava just wanted her friend to melt into the accepted, to blend. To fuse.
29
THEY FOUND A tea room near South Kensington tube station. It was steamy, smoky and crowded. Lydia could smell coats that had served throughout winter and bodies that didn’t have frequent access to hot water. The teapot was chipped and cracked in two places; brown veins of tea stains showered over the lip. She wanted to send it back but couldn’t bear to look fussy.
She was beginning to despair. He had not said one thing that might suggest she should hope. He had been polite and careful. He’d pointed out things of interest in the museum; they’d both been fond of Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s
painting The Day Dream. He had talked about the long winter and everyone’s dire need for spring to blossom; wasn’t it marvellous that the sun was finally out? He’d told her about a Noël Coward play he had seen recently. But he had not referenced the fact that they were lovers. He gave no indication that he too burned. It was perfectly possible that rather than meeting to cement their relationship, he was politely defining their new status as well-mannered, distant acquaintances. She had to find a way to introduce the subject of them; she had to be sure of where she stood. She took a sip of tea. It was strong and bitter, but she noticed that there was only one teaspoon in the bowl of sugar and none on her saucer; how would she stir if she added sugar? She’d have to drink it as it was. She scrambled around her brain to look for a way back into that weekend.
‘It was very kind of you to pass on your condolences to Beatrice.’
‘One of the servant boys ran to the station to tell us all the news.’
‘Yes, I know. Some of the men came back to the house.’ He had not been among the number; she’d been disappointed. ‘To see what they could do.’
‘Ghouls. What could they possibly do? How could they help?’ Lydia knew he didn’t really expect an answer. ‘Was he her fiancé?’
‘No.’
‘I saw them together quite a bit. I thought there must be something special between them.’
‘Not really. It was just that weekend, but I think she’d hoped …’ Lydia trailed off, uncomfortable with the awareness that her situation was in some ways very similar to Beatrice’s. A weekend was a short period of time if one measured it by the hands on the clock, yet it could be a lifetime.
‘I expected to see the suicide in the papers, but I didn’t find anything.’
‘Sir Peter has enough influence to keep it out.’
Edgar nodded curtly. He looked amused and yet infuriated at the same time. Power – the use and abuse of it – always exasperated those who were toothless.
‘Besides that awful thing, did you enjoy your stay at the Pondson-Callows’, Sergeant Major Trent?’ It was ridiculous to call him Sergeant Major Trent, but she felt she had to because they were in public, elbow to elbow with complete strangers; who knew who might be listening? This place looked just the sort of place servants gossiped, and besides, today he had not given her any reason to call him anything other.
