by Allie Burns
He remained quiet, his hands buried in his pockets, his eyes on the horizon and the rails at the edge of the park as if he were waiting for his enemy to arrive. He never judged her or told her what to do, or inflicted his opinion on her, but he always listened and paid attention.
‘I have a lot to learn about that myself,’ he said. ‘But on the subject of saving mankind, your grandmother might yet rescue us all.’
‘Really?’ Did he know that she had no money of her own, that her home was paid for by a son to whom she didn’t speak, and that her charity work was all funded by the wealthy people she brought together?
‘Well. All right, not exactly – I’m to supervise a trip to Brighton that the charity is funding. The men are to breathe in the clean sea air, back to the Victorian way of doing things. She’s organised the whole thing.’
‘Well, it might just work.’
‘I fear it’s going to take more than a walk on the pier,’ he said. ‘For all concerned.’ He unfolded his long legs, tipped his hat, raised his collar. The earlier apology forgotten.
She let him go this time without insisting he stay. His figure receded across the park. He left her alone again, but it didn’t matter – those five minutes had been the brightest of the entire day.
Chapter Twenty-Five
February 1919
Dear Mrs Williams,
I am a secretary here at the War Office, and I am writing to you in response to your inquiry about your husband, Theodore Williams.
The above-named officer was demobilised in France, on 20th December 1918 after a short stay in hospital for shell shock. We don’t have an onward address on record.
I trust this information is of some use to you.
Yours sincerely
Ruth Farthinglow (Miss)
She’d found the letter in the evening when Uncle Wilfred was in his room, singing to himself as he got ready for dinner guests. She’d crumpled onto the stairs, and scoured it again. He’d been home for over a month, and could have been with her for Christmas, only he’d not tried to find her. It wasn’t a shock, and even worse she had no desire to cry or wish he was there, but there were practicalities: a baby to provide for, a need to wrench her mother away from London and to face up to her responsibilities, and now Emily knew that she would have to tackle it all on her own. To think, she’d been deserted by a man who was once her saviour.
She had so many unanswered questions. Had he gone barmy? Was he a drunk? Wasn’t he drinking on his last leave in August? He must regret marrying her. He might never have loved her at all. The war, his mother’s illness, Patch’s injury – might all have been part of a madness that had driven him to beat up Cecil and abandon her.
Mother let her into her room. Her latest migraine had improved, but she still held a hand out to steady herself when she walked. Her complexion was sickly. Before Emily could tell her about the War Office letter, Wilfred knocked and barged straight in. Her silent exchange with Mother was like that of two oppressed internees in a camp.
‘Our guests will be here in five minutes.’ He regularly used Mother’s good looks to his advantage when entertaining business guests. ‘Perhaps you could stay out of things,’ Wilfred said to Emily, a pointed glance at her bump. ‘Your predicament might cause a fuss, and distract from the purpose of the evening.’
That was fine with her. She could hide away, abandoned and pregnant. She didn’t even have an appetite.
‘Why don’t you say you have a headache?’ she said to her mother, when he left the room. She was applying powder to the tops of her arms to conceal the fingerprint marks his grip had left behind.
‘I don’t mind. It makes me feel as though I’m earning my keep.’
Emily resisted the urge to point out that she was already doing more than that.
*
Back upstairs in the pink room, she unthreaded her boots and climbed into bed with her clothes on, bathing in the room’s overpowering rosy infusion, her mind racing. There was more than just Mother to contend with; a letter had arrived from Cecil that morning. The conscientious objectors were being released in batches. He would be free soon, and Wilfred had made it clear his nephew wasn’t welcome.
They’d all be much safer at home.
Closing her eyes, she imagined pushing the baby down the cedar avenue, New Lane. He’d learn to crawl in the paddock, paddle in the stream, chase the rooks off the lawn. Would Theo be with her? She sensed a shadow by her side, but Theo’s face didn’t emerge. But it didn’t mean anything. He could be anywhere. He could be wending his way to her right that moment. What would she say to him if he walked through that door now? Would she be so relieved that she’d simply run into his arms, or would she tell him to leave?
She crept down the stairs to the study, the muffled whisperings of Wilfred holding court coming from the dining room. She tried the door to his study, and then moved to the desk.
The pen in her hand hovered over the page. If she spoke to Mother first she’d simply talk her out of it. An insidious puddle of ink stained the clean page of the blotter. If Wilfred found out, he’d exert his authority and tell them they had to stay.
She put the nib to the page, and the ink flowed freely.
Daisy,
I am writing to ask if you could open up HopBine, air the house and lay the fires. I will write again when I have an exact date, but expect us all very soon.
Yours truly
Emily
The next morning she posted the letter and then whipped down the road to catch Captain Ellery at the Hyde Park bench.
But as the seat came into focus, the shape of Ellery morphed into an elderly man in a top hat. Emily walked on by. Ellery wasn’t at the next one either. By the time she’d crossed the Serpentine Bridge, the lightness in her stride had deserted her. She ventured into Kensington Gardens, and checked the Round Pond, but he was nowhere to be found.
Why would Ellery be there? What interest would he have in an abandoned, pregnant fool who’d rushed down the aisle to marry a man she’d never really loved?
Dearest Emily,
I have left HopBine Farm! I am filled with sadness, not just for the work that has been such a surprising joy to me – something you understand yourself – but for the dear people too. Mr Tipton continues to groan and gripe, but Mrs Tipton says his heart isn’t strong and it makes him tetchy.
As you’ll see from the address, I’m in London, staying with my mother again. I’ve become one of the country’s six hundred thousand registered unemployed women. I suppose that if they counted girls like you, who wouldn’t register for benefit, then there must be many more.
I’ve been offered my old service job back. Mother says I should take it, but the wages and conditions on offer are the same as before the war, and I have to provide my own uniform too. My war work has shown me how badly they treated me, how little freedom I had, or how little worth they placed in me. I’m sure there’s something better out there for me. I’ve not had so much as an interview and Mother says she can’t support me much longer and that I’ll have to pay my way again.
My unemployment benefit had already gone down. If I refuse my old post in service they’ll stop it altogether. So, I suppose before long I’ll have to do as they say and take something, simply because it’s better than nothing.
That’s enough of my troubles. Have you any news? Is the baby sickness improving? Is your Theo home yet?
Best wishes
Martha
*
April 1919
Mother’s thin but defiant voice penetrated the walls. Emily froze, holding the nightdress she’d been folding for the suitcase she’d been steadily packing and hiding beneath her bed. Mother shouted again. Wilfred was entertaining, and she’d been asked to stay in her room, but she dashed out of her door to the top of the stairs. The bruises on Mother’s arms were occurring more frequently. He yelled at her almost every day, and yet she still refused to leave.
Emily put her hand to her mouth, bu
t the gasp had already escaped.
‘Please won’t you stop it. How can you be so cruel?’ Mother shrieked. ‘Look at him. My poor boy – what have they done to you? Please, Wilfred. You must let him in.’
Emily took the stairs two at a time, gripping the handrail in case she should trip. Cecil stood in the hallway. The guests, curious about the commotion, had filed out, but when confronted with the scene that was unfolding, they all did the honourable thing and retreated into the dining room, leaving Cecil, her mother, Wilfred and the awkward footman, Henderson.
‘Cecil!’ Emily ran to her brother and threw her arms around him. The flesh had fallen away leaving him leaner and more lightweight than ever.
‘You’re a hypocrite to say that Cecil did nothing for the war. Your war effort involved buying your Eau de Cologne from Boots the Chemist.’ Her mother had readied herself for a fight. She stood tall and her hands made delicate fists beside her as she spoke.
Emily couldn’t help but gawp at her mother speaking out finally. But Wilfred was unruffled.
‘The thing is, my dear, I am a businessman.’ His tone was perfectly reasonable, and hard to disagree with. ‘People will stop dealing with me if it gets out that I’m harbouring a shirker.’
Cecil’s thick, dark hair had grown longer and more unkempt. His face was drawn; his dark eyes bigger, hungrier.
‘I don’t want to cause you any trouble,’ Cecil said.
‘I know you don’t, son,’ Wilfred replied.
‘I’m not your son,’ Cecil said. ‘And I’m not a shirker either.’
Wilfred shrugged. ‘That might not be how you see it, but others will, and I rely on trading with those people to put a roof over our heads. It’s not a question of throwing you out.’ He reached for his inside pocket and pulled out his wallet.
Emily waited for Cecil to rise to the bait and charge at his uncle as he would have done once, but instead he buried his hands deeper into his pockets.
‘I don’t want your money.’
‘Suit yourself. I’ll put this outburst down to hysterics if you control yourself immediately,’ Wilfred said to Mother who was no longer standing tall and ready for battle, but was crumpled and cowering.
‘Take the money, Cecil,’ Emily said. ‘We’ll talk in the morning.’
With the notes folded and pocketed, Wilfred turned on his heels and steered Mother back to their guests.
Emily grabbed a cloak and joined Cecil out on the top step so that they could talk out of the earshot of Henderson.
‘Why are you both still staying here for goodness’ sake?’ Cecil said. ‘Father would be so mad if he were here to see this.’
‘You knew about him buying us out. Well this is the consequence of that and I’m now trying to find a way to move back to HopBine.’ She glanced at the pavement. Bassett’s lodgings were in the basement, hopefully she wasn’t in there listening but Emily didn’t want to take any chances. ‘I’ll explain everything tomorrow. Where will you sleep tonight? Grandmother likes a good charity case.’
‘I can stay with friends nearby. Alice, a suffragette who supported us conchies during the war, offered me a place to stay if ever I was desperate.’
She left him to slip back inside for paper and pencil in the drawing room so that she could take down the address.
‘We need to pull together now, Cecil. This isn’t the time to try to save the world. Your family needs you,’ she told him as he jotted down the address.
He rolled his eyes. ‘Always so dramatic, Emily.’
She told him that she was pregnant with Theo’s child, but that her husband had been demobilised and hadn’t come home to her.
‘He did apologise though, for what he did to you.’ Cecil chuckled. ‘But I’m not sure it counts for much.’
*
Once Wilfred had left for work, they took a cab over to the address that Cecil had handed her the night before.
The door sprung open, and the frame was filled by a handsome girl whose face was flawed only by two oversized front teeth that drifted away from one another to leave a gap.
‘Alice Turner-Wood, delighted to meet you – are you here for the meeting?’
‘Erm, no.’ Mother pulled her hand away. ‘I’m here to visit my son, Cecil. I believe …’
‘There is a resemblance. Yes, by all means, do come in.’
Alice bustled down the hallway. Raised voices filled the first room they came to. She craned her neck. It was full of women, not the black-clad, moribund older women who called on Grandmother; these were all much younger, far more animated and vying to make their voices heard.
‘Cecil is avoiding the women,’ Alice explained, as she led them down to the back of the house, where a humid solarium was attached to a music room, overlooking a lusciously green back garden.
‘We’re quite a force to be reckoned with, as you can imagine. Men who aren’t used to it can feel intimidated with all of the ideas. Not that that’s the case with Cecil …’
They paused on the threshold of the music room. The white-framed glass doors to the solarium were shut and Cecil, unaware of their arrival, was hunched over a desk, intently writing.
‘He has so many ideas, doesn’t he?’ Alice said.
The gaps in the chair’s spindles exposed Cecil’s untucked shirt and crumpled tails. He wore a cravat around his neck.
‘Whatever do you find to discuss?’ her Mother asked with a hint of incredulity.
‘There is so much, Mrs Cotham, so much that we wish to change that I fear we will only ever achieve a fraction of it.’
Mother widened her eyes discreetly at Emily. An expression that said, ‘Oh dear, they’re that sort.’ Her mother had had little time for the women’s movement before the war, claimed they were raising trouble in her name and she hadn’t asked for it.
‘But now you’ve won the vote, haven’t you blue stockings done enough?’
Alice laughed at that idea, a big hearty guffaw that exposed her wayward teeth and set her bust in motion.
‘We don’t stop until we get our way.’ As if she’d let herself into Emily’s mind and read her very dreams she said: ‘I understand you were a land girl?’
Emily told her that she had worked on the farm, but the heat of Mother’s frown stopped her from sharing with Alice her unmistakable calling to return to it all.
‘And I’m betting you don’t want to give that up now, do you?’
Emily smiled. She hadn’t needed to explain to Alice – she understood perfectly.
‘She’s married now,’ Mother said. ‘A baby on the way, and other … family commitments.’
‘Well,’ Alice said, her gaze flicking between them as she tried to fathom what battleground she’d strayed onto. ‘Wonderful.’ She rubbed her hands together. ‘Life is full of surprises. And who’s to say a woman can’t have a career, and a family, eh Emily?’
Mother broke away to call Cecil. He started at his desk.
In the solarium, the floor beside Cecil was littered with scrunched balls of paper. A sheaf of notepaper, thickened with his ink, piled beside him.
Cecil quickly covered up his writing with a blotter, but he hadn’t hidden the title in capital letters, or the word, ‘Bolsheviks’.
His night’s sleep, and its obvious discomfort, made his eyes bleary and crumpled his brow. He’d grown an untidy beard that stuck to his face in tufts, but it wasn’t high or dense enough to hide the dents beneath his cheekbones.
Her words the night before hadn’t got through to him. He would be quite happy to live on Alice’s goodwill while he wrote and indulged his interests. He wouldn’t help them at all.
Mother lifted a pile of books to free up the cushions of a wicker seat. ‘Cecil,’ Mother said. ‘I mean really, how have you ended up in the midst of this rowdy mob of troublemakers?’
Cecil showed Mother his discharge letter, shaking his head as he read aloud the red notice informing him he’d be imprisoned for two years if he tried to enlist with the army, as
if he’d been a disobedient soldier this whole time. She left the two of them to talk and caught up with Alice.
Cecil said she’d been a great help to him while he’d been in prison. She’d apprised herself of his legal rights and ensured he was represented fairly. Things might have been worse for him without Alice by his side. And if she knew about the rights of conscientious objectors, she might have advice about the rights of the families left behind.
Chapter Twenty-Six
April 1919
Fresh from another visit to Alice’s house, Emily passed Uncle Wilfred in the library, bent over his accounts and lit by a small pool of lamplight. She crept up to Mother and cleared her throat.
‘May I have a word?’ she asked.
Mother was lying down in her nightgown on top of the bedcovers. She exhaled and lifted a corner of the mask from her eyes.
‘Mother.’ She swallowed. ‘I need your help.’
Mother lifted the mask clean from her face and checked it was Emily before her.
‘The baby is due in a matter of weeks. It can’t possibly be born here.’ Wilfred would never stand for a screaming newborn in the house. Neither would Bassett.
‘We can’t afford to go back to Kent.’
‘That’s where I have news. Wilfred has given me permission to reopen HopBine,’ she said. Mother’s eyes widened, and rightly so.
He’d called Emily in because Bassett had complained about the petals dropping from all of the flowers she brought into the house, and she took the opportunity to confront him with the information Alice had given her: Mother should have been receiving a pension for John. He’d flinched, enough to tell her that Alice had been right and he’d been keeping their self-sufficiency from them. Unlocking his bottom desk drawer, he produced a folder and said, ‘Please don’t tell your mother.’
It turned out that they had the means to support themselves until HopBine was sold, and they had Alice to thank for the revelation. In return for Emily’s silence he was letting them go back to Kent, for now at least.
