The Consequences of War

by Betty Burton

  ‘I think she would have got pregnant ages ago if she hadn’t thought that the Trinity were watching her in bed.’ He laughed, but Georgia guessed that he knew his sister well enough.

  She said, ‘It’s not easy to forget the Vicar’s eyes ferreting out our sins. Perhaps he really does believe that daughters of the poor are lustful and immoral.’

  His smile crinkled his temples as he bent over and kissed her soft and full on the mouth. ‘Probably hasn’t read any psychology.’

  ‘On the other hand, perhaps he was right.’ Encircling his neck, she kissed him back.

  His face, close to hers, was hot from sunburn, his lips were salt and grainy. He was a lighthearted, romantic man who knew the meaning of enjoyment. He had made her laugh and relax and had stripped her of some bits of lace and inhibitions. Lying close to him, feeling the movement of his hand, seeing his handsome, wholesome face, smelling the sea on his skin, hearing his soft rhythmic breath, she felt overwhelming affection for him. Not so much erotic, but of course it was that too, but carefree. She liked Harry Partridge.

  At that moment in that isolated cove, where the only Thou Shall Not was the Ministry of Defence warning, she wanted nothing in the world except that they make love.

  Harry Partridge, since his days with Deanna from the Post Office, had learned a great deal about women and sex and waiting. He did what Hugh never had – he waited for her so that she too achieved sustained and intense pleasure, so that it equalled and paralleled his own.

  The intensity of her response exploded upon Georgia and was amazing to Harry. He assumed that such a perfect encounter was because of her experience, rather than the reverse.

  Afterwards, when Harry said, ‘Your man’s bloody lucky,’ she smiled enigmatically. Hugh Kennedy never knew what he had lost.

  They smoked cigarettes, swam once more, dressed and went looking for a tea-house.

  Night had fallen when he dropped her at her front door.

  ‘Thank you, Harry, it was absolute pleasure. A trip to the seaside will never be the same again.’

  ‘We must do it again some time.’

  ‘Yes.’ But she guessed that they probably would not – perhaps hoped that they would not, for to do so would diminish that day.

  Later, leaning against her back porch watching the night sky and making her last measure of gin and her last cigarette last, she searched around in her conscience for the guilt that she had expected would have engulfed her by now. The story of a Woman Taken in Adultery was not read to girls until their last year at school, when they were impressionable enough for it to be tattooed upon their minds. In Markham the crowd still reached for its stones, but Georgia felt free of it all.

  1942

  ‘What a mess. What a shame… a bloody shame.’ Mont Iremonger, living at the eye of the storm of war, could not bear what was happening to his town and in particular to the houses on his round. ‘Everything decent has gone, the roses have gone to suckers, the lawns will take years to get back from what the goats and geese have done, even the railings and the gates. If it’s true and all that iron we thought was going to the war effort is being dumped at sea, then the Government ought to be…’ Mont Iremonger couldn’t think of anything bad enough for such a cynical action. ‘The Cedars used to have the finest gates round here for miles.’

  As Mont trudged up the drive with the Hardys’ mail, he thought back to those happy days a few years back, when The Cedars was still recognizably the property of Markham’s most renowned burgher: shiny windows, well-painted and clean woodwork, and gleaming brass fittings. From April to September the lawns always showed lines and never a weed in the gravel drive or between the York stone of the terrace. He recalled the time when he had carried Miss Eve her first love letter which she did not want her parents to see. And the day following her twenty-first birthday, when she had waited for him seated in that pretty little car, ‘Come and sit in and eat your birthday cake, Mr Iremonger.’ He still had the little flower-spray that had ornamented the cake. There was another day – when Miss Eve was off holidaying in Scotland. He didn’t think anybody else knew, but Mont had supposed she had gone to meet Vern Greenaway’s lad without telling her people-that day when he had met Mrs Hardy. She was as pretty as a picture outside her front door, gathering roses in a basket. He had thought she looked like one of them American Southern Belles. He had asked, ‘Miss Eve enjoying her holiday, ma’am?’

  ‘I am sure that she must be, but you would imagine that she was in Australia instead of Scotland, and that the telephone wasn’t invented.’

  ‘Ah well,’ Mont remembered saying, ‘we don’t think when we’re twenty, ma’am, do we?’

  ‘I’m afraid we don’t; we don’t give two thoughts for anything else whilst we are enjoying ourselves.’

  ‘Got to enjoy ourselves when we’re young. Especially now, as things are.’

  ‘True. Who knows when there will be holidays again?’

  ‘And that’s a fact, ma’am.’

  Now, more than three years on, as the December cold stiffened the leather of his boots, he remembered every detail of that exchange. Poland was in trouble and Mrs Hardy had been wearing a pair of heavy, silky trousers with wide legs so that they looked like a skirt till she moved, and a blouse to match printed over with pale roses, just like the ones she had been picking. Looking back, it was as though that morning there had been a kind of summit to which he had been steadily climbing since the end of the Great War: once he had reached that summit there had been nothing else, not even a pleasant route by which to descend. All you could do was to remember how it used to be.

  The only letters he now held were addressed to Councillor Hardy. Mont was not supposed to do so, but unofficially he sorted and extracted any letters addressed to Mrs Hardy and, as she had asked him to do, he readdressed them to an address that was unknown to anybody in Markham except himself and Eve. It was against the law, but the least that he could do.

  He reached the bend in the drive where in years gone by Miss Eve had often come to meet him to collect the post whilst taking her little dog for a run, and there she was, coming towards him.

  ‘Well I’m blowed, Miss, quite a time since I saw you. I was just thinking about you as a matter of fact. Hello, old feller.’ He rubbed the little dog’s ears. ‘You’re getting like me, a bit old and stiff, an’t you, old chap? He must be getting on a bit now, Miss.’

  ‘Yes, he’s ten.’

  ‘I remember when you first had him, he was called Jap then, wasn’t he?’

  ‘He was, but I changed it to Yap because people might think I liked the Japanese. Fancy you remembering that, I had quite forgotten.’ She picked up the dog, smoothed back its ears and smiled indulgently at it, then set it down again. ‘With a face like that, Jap still suits him. I’ll walk with you,’ she said. ‘Where’s your bike?’

  ‘Have to leave it at the bottom these days. Not enough puff to get me up the hill.’

  ‘Is there anything for me?’

  Mont shook his head and handed her the bundle of mail. ‘Afraid not, Miss. Was you expecting something? The post’s all to pot these days. They say there’s that much armaments and troop movements during the night these days, that Royal Mail has to come second.’

  ‘Not really. I don’t get much post these days.’ He knew that Vern’s son had been posted ‘Missing’ after his ship had been torpedoed. When Mont had heard this from Vern, he had immediately wondered how Miss Eve would get to hear of it. There was nobody in Markham to tell her, so he had decided to break the news to her himself.

  It had been one of his worst moments, plucking up courage, trying to sound casual, yet serious. ‘Have you heard about Councillor Greenaway’s son, Miss Eve?’

  Mont had seen that she already suspected bad news. She had almost whispered. ‘He isn’t dead, is he?’

  ‘No, Miss, but they have been told he’s missing.’

  ‘Missing.’

  ‘He’s not “Missing believed dead”, so that’s
hopeful.’

  At that time she had just picked up Yap and walked off into the spinney beside the drive, and Mont had let her go. Later, he had condemned himself for being the stickler for formality that he had always been. Never again: there’s times when you have got to put yourself forward for people you think is worth it – and it’s hard luck if you get snubbed for it. You just had to make sure that you didn’t overstep the mark. She didn’t have nobody now. Her father was a womanizer and nothing but a glorified spiv, her mother had run away, and now she didn’t get young Greenaway’s letters for comfort.

  They walked in silence for a minute. When they reached the gate she did not leave him but kept walking steadily beside him, tucking Yap into her coat when he began to get breathless in the chill wind. ‘Is my mother’s mail all right… I mean, do you mind? You won’t get into trouble or anything of the kind? She told me that you were sending it on. She thought it extraordinarily kind of you. You might not believe it, but if you knew my mother, you would take it as a kind of compliment that she took you into her confidence.’

  ‘Believe you me, Miss, I do know that. It was a pleasure to be able to do something.’

  ‘She is very grateful, things are quite difficult.’

  ‘She sent me a Christmas card, and some tobacco. Fancy her doing that, I never expected it. I’ve kept the card.’ Again a short silence.

  ‘Don’t mind me asking, Miss, but is she all right? She never said much on her card.’

  No, thought Eve, that’s not Connie’s style.

  ‘She is absolutely fine. And happy, and feeling very useful.’ Eve Hardy laughed, and for a moment Mont saw again the pre-war face of the young woman in the girlish frocks and sandals. ‘I went to see her just before Christmas, you would hardly recognize her… well, you would, because in many ways my mother will never change. But she wears trousers and heavy jumpers and shoes. She has had her hair off, and her fingernails – you can’t fly planes with manicured nails. I thought that she looked years younger than me. People thought that we were sisters.’ Mont remembered the baggy silk trousers with printed roses. He still had the vision, the reality was gone for ever.

  To Hell with propriety. ‘And what about you now, Miss? Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes, I’ve been staying with one of the girls I work with. She’s on her own, we were company for one another over Christmas.’

  ‘That was nice.’

  ‘You knew about me and David Greenaway. That was why you told me about him being missing, wasn’t it?’ Mont nodded. ‘Only guesswork, Miss. Because he stuck stamps on upside down, all the Greenaways do. They’re Republicans – don’t ask me why they do that with the stamps.’

  ‘If my father hadn’t always been so much at daggers-drawn against Mr Greenaway, then David and I wouldn’t have had to be so hole-in-the-corner.’

  ‘That’s politics for you, Miss.’

  ‘I don’t think so, Mr Iremonger. I think it is my father cannot bear the thought that there is a businessman in Markham who is not in his pocket.’

  Mont did not offer a comment. ‘Well, here’s my old bike, darned near as decrepit as its owner.’ He carefully wrapped his trouser-legs round his ankles, ‘Like gold these are,’ as he put on his cycle clips.

  ‘Mr Iremonger?’ Eve put a restraining hand on Mont’s handlebars. ‘I came down to meet you on purpose to ask you something.’

  Mont waited, quite anxious at the frown folds that had appeared on her brow.

  ‘I wondered if… when you are on your rounds… you might know of somebody who would take Yap for me.’

  ‘Take him?’

  ‘Look after him. I mean really care for him, be with him all the time; perhaps some lady who is at home all day and would like his company. It’s either that or I shall have to think of having him put down – I can’t bear to think of that. He’s been all right till Nanny Bryce left.’

  ‘You can’t have little Yap put down. He’s got a year or two to go yet. Lord above, he isn’t no more stiff and breathless than me, and I an’t going to let nobody put me down.’

  ‘I know. But I just don’t know what to do. I’ve asked quite a few people, but they’ve either got dogs or cats – and Yap is so quarrelsome with other animals, it wouldn’t be fair. I just can’t find a suitable home: if they haven’t got pets already, then they are either out all day or they are not the kind of people I would want to hand Yap over to. I thought you might be able to think of somebody. Father is hardly ever at home, he’s bought a place in the country. I simply have to do something more useful than delivering school dinners. I want to train as a nurse, I’ve wanted to ever since I heard about David, I’ve hung on thinking that Yap wouldn’t last another winter, but he really is quite healthy.’

  ‘He can come and live with me. No, no… he’ll be all right. I won’t leave him alone for a minute. You’ll be all right, won’t you, old chap?’ He picked up the little dog and scratched into its silky hair. ‘You always liked me, didn’t you, eh? We’ll be all right together. You won’t be too fast for me, and I shan’t be too fast for you. There look, Miss,’ he took off his scarf, wrapped it round Yap and placed him on an empty mail-bag in the deep basket on the front of the Royal Mail bike, ‘that’s how we’ll solve the time when I’m out at work. You’ll just love it, won’t you, my ole dear, getting some air in your lungs without crunching your arthritis too much? I’ve got just the little soft blanket for you at home – you’ll be snug as a bug up front of my bike. I could take him now if you like, Miss.’

  ‘Would you really? Oh, it would be a relief. I’ll bring his basket later.’

  ‘You come and visit him any time you like.’ The dog put its paws on the handlebars and looked ahead, as though it was a regular thing to take rides in a bicycle basket. ‘Don’t you worry, Miss Eve, we shall get on like a house afire.’

  ‘This family is never going to get out of your debt, Mr Iremonger.’

  ‘Don’t you say that, Miss, this has perked me up no end.’

  Which was how Mont Iremonger’s life took a strange turn that he could never have foreseen.

  That same day, Eve went to tell Georgia that she would have to find another driver for the van.

  * * *

  Freddy Hardy – whilst feeding on their firmness, and drawing pleasure from the Texan sun-tanned tip-tilted breasts and rounded arms of a new mistress more youthful even than his daughter – lamented to her the fact that no matter how many diamond clips, expensive scents, cars and finishing schools a man might shower upon a daughter, there was no guarantee that she would stand by her father in his time of trouble.

  The Texas-born WAC, newly drafted from the USA to the cold and lonely wilds of England, was comforted to find such a nice Poppa who seemed to have plenty of everything she liked most, and promised to be his own faithful little girl.

  * * *

  A couple of weeks before Eve was due to leave to take up her new career, they were all together having their usual morning break when the office phone rang. When Georgia returned from taking the call, she had lost her natural pinkness, so that the small freckles beneath her eyes looked oddly painted on.

  ‘You all right, love?’ Min, one of the cleaners, asked.

  ‘That was the police. It’s my parents… they’re dead.’ Everybody stood staring at her as though an omen had fulfilled its prophecy.

  ‘Dead? Both of them?’ said Dolly.

  ‘You was only just saying you was going to Scotland to see them,’ said Min.

  Georgia frowned. ‘And my Dad, he’s dead too. The policeman said they were both dead… killed.’

  ‘Sit down, Georgia,’ Eve ordered.

  Ursula said, ‘Dorothy will get you some brandy from the Red Cross locker.’

  ‘Was they bombed then?’ Kathy asked.

  As Georgia drank Dolly’s brandy, two red spots flared on her cheeks. ‘No,’ she looked puzzled. ‘He said a tank went out of control and drove through the hedge and…’

  She came-to hea
ring loud clanging and crashing, which gradually quietened and became the familiar sounds of the kitchen. She choked on the ammoniac salts that Ursula was waving under her nose, and then focused on Eve and Dolly who were holding her.

  ‘I’ve never done that before. How stupid.’

  ‘Shock,’ said Dolly. ‘You should be at home.’

  Which was where Eve drove her and stayed until the completion of all the complicated arrangements to have their bodies transported and buried, as they had wished, in the village whence they had come.

  1989

  During the writing of Eye of the Storm, Georgia Giacopazzi had been able to recall the six years of war and women friends vividly but with objectivity. It was only now, with the proof copies out, that she could allow herself to become involved with the people who, in the writing, had been fictional characters. A long air journey was the perfect place to let the memory drift.

  When interviewers and features editors wanted to know about the early years.

  ‘When did you first know that you wanted to be a writer, Mrs Giacopazzi?’

  ‘I have never wanted to be anything else. I guess I’ve always done it.’

  ‘Making little books like the Brontë children?’

  ‘Nothing so marvellous as theirs, of course.’

  The truth, Mrs Giacopazzi?

  The truth is that until the day of their funeral it had never occurred to me to want to write or that I could. Before that day, I had supposed that modern writers were men like Robert Crockford, educated but poverty stricken, or like Somerset Maugham, who travelled to exotic places and knew all the right people, or Jane Austen, who was special. I had supposed that modern women novelists must have been educated at Girton or at least to have been born into those circles where uncles and fathers had contacts in the publishing world. And a room of one’s own and an income of two hundred a year as Virginia Woolf said was necessary.

  The truth is that it never occurred to me until the day when I first met my own people. I scarcely knew of their existence.