by Lane, Lizzie
The chair legs scraped the floor as he got to his feet.
She sensed his embarrassment and it hurt. They weren’t exactly unhappily married, but Mary Anne was aware of the barrier between them, the one she put down to her own act of dishonesty.
It was always possible Henry might hear the truth about her darling Edward and her first child. News travelled fast nowadays. No matter how careful her parents had been, there was always that chance.
Suddenly the terrible strain of carrying the secret overwhelmed her. The truth was that at this moment her heart was so full of love for him, she burst into tears.
‘Don’t you like it? I would have got a card with them yellow flowers that you grow outside on it, but they didn’t have any. Do you like it?’
‘I do! I do!’
‘Are you ill? Is the baby coming early?’
She shook her head. ‘No. It’s just that … I don’t deserve it. That’s just it. I don’t deserve it.’
She sank down onto a chair, burying her face in her hands.
‘I don’t deserve you. It’s not fair. You know nothing about me. Nothing about Edward.’
Henry stiffened. ‘Edward?’ Who’s Edward?’
She peered at him through the gaps in her fingers, aware the moment had come to unburden the heavy load she carried. There was no going back.
She told it as it was – her engagement to Edward, him getting killed and her being forced to give her baby away.
She was only vaguely aware of the sudden rigidity of Henry’s body.
‘You say his name was Edward and we were in the same regiment?’
His tone was chill and cut her to the bone. But there was no going back.
‘Yes. Edward Ross. Lieutenant Edward Ross. He was in the same regiment as you. He died, just like your friend Lewis died.’ She spoke carefully and honestly, feeling lighter as she unburdened her greatest guilt.
Suddenly, Henry headed for the door.
‘What is it? Where are you going?’
‘To work of course. I have to get to work.’
‘Henry. He was one of yours. Edward. He was one of your compatriots.’
He stopped by the door, looked at her sidelong and nodded. ‘Yes. He was.’
‘It won’t make any difference to us, will it, Henry? I love you and I’m still your wife.’
‘Of course you are, Mary Anne. Of course you are.’
The sound of the door slamming shut reverberated around the house.
Mary Anne sank into a chair regretting what she had done. She fingered the beautiful card. She knew her husband well enough to realise it must have taken a great deal of courage for a man like him to buy such a thing. He was a man’s man, not given over to doing anything overly romantic or silly. He had all day to get over what she’d told him, and if he loved her enough he would. She was sure of it. The card alone told her that.
Only the fact that young Harry began crying brought her back from dark thoughts. Before going to him, she put the card up on the mantelpiece.
Her son had been teething for a few days, but the bright red rash he’d broken out in worried her. She needed for him to see a doctor. There was no point in going to see Doctor Belman in Old Market without checking she could afford to pay for his services. Luckily, her parents had left her with a few pounds for emergencies.
She kept the money in a tea caddy in the larder. The tin was blue and white with pictures of handsome Indians waiting on favoured white people in fine clothes sitting around bamboo tables.
Mary Anne took out the money and began counting it. There didn’t seem to be as much money as there had been. She frowned. She hadn’t spent that much of late except for material with which to make her growing son some new clothes.
Another thought came to her; Henry had found her secret store of cash and borrowed some. She decided to ask him later, then thought better of it. Having burdened him with such heavy news about Edward and the baby, perhaps it was best leaving it for another time.
Young Harry began crying more lustily and was red in the face. After bundling him up in a blanket, she dashed out, heading for the taxi stand where she hoped to find her husband.
‘Ain’t seen ’im,’ said one driver.
The others looked sheepish as though they knew but weren’t telling.
‘If you could tell him I’ve taken Harry to the doctor’s. Tell him he has a fever.’
Doctor Belman examined Harry carefully. ‘Get some teething powders from the chemist, give him half of one three times a day and keep him warm until the fever breaks. It is only teething, but wise to keep him indoors.’
With that in mind, she waited in the rest of the day for Henry to come home. She’d purchased the teething powders and given them to her baby, but she did need to do some shopping for their evening meal. After the weekend, there was nothing much left in the larder to make a meal from.
By six o’clock there was still no sign of her husband so she took Harry into Mrs Oliver next door.
‘The doctor said to keep him indoors. I’d be grateful if you could have him until I get back. I just need to pop out and get a few things.’
Mrs Oliver was a ruddy-faced widow who had given birth to twelve children and would have had more if she’d been able to.
‘Bless you, I’d love to have him. I’d have him for keeps if you’d let me. Now come here, my babby. Let’s see if your Auntie Reenie can get you to sleep.’
Harry went willingly into Mrs Oliver’s arms. She turned to Mary Anne advising her to wrap up warm. ‘Soon be spring though. I see your crocuses are in flower. Lovely they are.’
‘Yes. They are.’
Despite the cold weather, Mary Anne rushed off with her coat half undone, wanting to get the shopping over with as quickly as possible so she could get back to her house, her husband and her son.
The shops would be open as usual until ten o’clock or so. She dashed from one to another, buying vegetables, but more especially a decent piece of steak for Henry’s supper. It wasn’t often they could afford steak, but tonight was special. At least she wanted it to be special, but her stomach churned with nerves even though she assured herself that Henry loved her. First as last, they were husband and wife. There were also the words of the marriage service – for better or for worse.
CHAPTER NINE
Henry Randall finally got thrown out of the Red Lion when his language and his aggression had gone beyond what the landlord would tolerate.
The moment he saw the bright yellow of the flowers she loved, he wanted to destroy them.
‘Slut! Cow!’
He kicked out at the pot, but the sight and sound of it breaking was not enough to assuage the anger he felt. Not just anger though, he’d gone out of his way to marry her, thinking by doing so he’d outgrow his past. If she’d never told him about Edward Ross – Lieutenant Edward Ross – he could have made the marriage work. As it was the silly mare had only compounded the great wrong he’d done and the wrongs that he and Lewis had done together.
But was it wrong? Was it wrong to love someone despite their gender? It didn’t feel as though it was.
The fact was that soldiers did get to be brothers in arms; they looked out for each other and, in the absence of females, things sometimes went further than that.
He’d now committed himself to marriage. He had become just an ordinary respectable man, no longer the proud warrior he had once been. He could have just about coped with her having been engaged to a fellow soldier and having had a child by him. The worse thing was that Lieutenant Edward Ross had been that soldier, the officer who had shot his beloved Lewis.
The yellow crocus glowed in the gathering twilight even though they were scattered over the flagstones. He let out an angry roar. Soon they were crushed and broken beneath his boots.
He flung open the back door and bellowed her name. There was no response. The kitchen was empty though the smell of something cooking – mutton stew he thought she’d said this morning.
/> This morning, St Valentine’s Day, he’d given her a card, which was now sitting on the mantelpiece.
Like the crocus, it seemed to mock him. Fancy writing those soppy words for her, citing how pure of heart she was, pure in every way in fact. But she wasn’t pure and not being pure had aroused a terrible demon in him.
He tore the card from the shelf, glancing at it briefly before flinging it into the fire. How could he have been such a fool? He’d convinced himself that Mary Anne would be a fitting and respectable replacement for Lewis, the love of his life. Damn them all. Damn the society that dictated what love should be. He had to buckle down. He knew that and at least a family – having children – might go some way to replacing his loss.
Although most of the thoughts in his mind were befuddled by drink, one truth stood out: Edward Ross, Mary Anne’s sweetheart, had killed the love of his life. Edward was not around to hate and heap revenge on, but Mary Anne was and by God she’d pay. She would most certainly pay.
CHAPTER TEN
The first thing she noticed was the pot of crocuses she loved so much. The pot was broken in two, the earth and the bright yellow flowers trampled underfoot. At first she thought Henry had fallen over it on his return from the pub. On reflection, the devastation was too thorough, too purposeful. He’d done it deliberately.
She picked up the odd one or two that had survived the onslaught, crushing them to her face, breathing in their perfume for the last time.
After picking up the broken pieces and sweeping up the mess, she went back into the house.
The moment she entered the scullery, she saw what he’d done. The Valentine card had been hurled onto the fire where the birds, the roses, the words of love, curled into blackness.
‘No!’
She reached for the poker, threw it down and then reached for the tongs. It was no good, the paper, now black and indistinguishable from the coals, fell to pieces.
She cursed the man who she knew now lay drunk in bed, cursed herself too that she’d believed this marriage could work, thinking he loved her enough to know the truth. Henry, she now realised, was a jealous man. He would have things his way and would not tolerate being taken for a fool, because that’s how he would view this. She’d had a child. He should have been told and that, she decided, was why she had to stick by him. It was her sin, her failure to own up to what she had done.
Mary Anne patted her stomach, feeling the slight bulge of the child now growing within. Whatever happened, she would not abandon this child or any others that she bore Henry. This marriage would be for better or for worse – for the sake of her children and in memory of the child born on St Valentine’s Day, her last link with Edward and the love they’d shared.
Mary Anne’s story continues…
Read on for an excerpt from
A WARTIME WIFE
by Lizzie Lane
Coming soon from Ebury Press
CHAPTER ONE
It was two weeks following Prime Minister Chamberlain declaring war on Germany that Mary Anne Randall knew for certain she had a little problem.
Her neighbour Biddy Young crossed one knee over the other, puffing and wheezing in an attempt to straighten a stocking seam. ‘Done the hot baths?’
They were sitting in Mary Anne’s washhouse, a brick-built lean-to tacked onto the back wall. The house nestled in a squat terrace built in the nineteenth century and typical of many in the city of Bristol and way beyond. It had a door and a window and a hole in the pan tiles where the stack puffed steam from the boiling washing.
Mary Anne grimaced as Biddy tugged the grimy toe of her stocking through the hole of her peep-toed shoe. Biddy had a tinsel bright glamour, face powder and lipstick applied after the briefest of washes and stockings worn until the toes were black or the legs laddered beyond repair.
Normally, Mary Anne wouldn’t have taken much notice. Biddy was entertaining and usually made her laugh, but not today; her body was telling her things weren’t quite the same and it worried her.
Fixing her mind on the subject of conversation helped overcome her queasy stomach. So did looking at the top of Biddy’s peroxide blonde head rather than her feet.
‘I’ve tried Penny Royal and senna pods, plus half a bottle of gin; I even rode our Lizzie’s bike over the cobbles, but that didn’t work either.’ Wincing at the memory, she rubbed her backside. ‘And I’ve still got the bruises.’
Biddy chortled, her face reddening with the effort of laughing and still trying to straighten her seams.
Even now in the midst of her trouble, Mary Anne touched the moss-covered brickwork with something akin to reverence. The washhouse was far more than somewhere to boil the bed sheets. It was a sign of defiance, of independence. Its damp bricks made her fingers tingle like the high note of a chilly tune.
Biddy pursed her bright red lips. Even when she wasn’t going anywhere, she never forgot her lipstick.
‘Not a good time to get in the pudding club – not with a bloody war looming.’
‘And not at my age,’ added Mary Anne, trying hard not to stare at the bristles lining Biddy’s upper lip. She shook her head in exasperation. ‘It’s just so … so … embarrassing.’
Biddy looked at her as though she could well understand why her old man, Henry Randall, had found her hard to resist. Mary Anne hadn’t run to fat like a lot of forty-plus women around, certainly not like Biddy whose belly sat like a blubbery doughnut on her equally flabby thighs. ‘You’re good fer yer age, Mary Anne.’
Mary Anne barely stopped herself turning bright red. The years had been kind. The reflection she saw every day in the mirror had wide-set greyish-green eyes, a neat chin and shoulder-length hair a few shades duskier than the gold of her youth, and a glorious complement to her smooth complexion. Her legs were long, her waist trim and she walked as though the best years were still ahead of her and ripe for the taking.
Reading the look in Biddy’s eyes, Mary Anne touched the pinpoints of crimson erupting on her cheeks despite her attempts to control them. ‘I didn’t entice him, Biddy. I believe in acting my age, and so should he.’
Biddy mumbled as she placed her pudding of a foot back on the ground. ‘Fat chance you got of getting him to do that. My Alf certainly don’t act ’is age. He’s just a bloody, big kid who thinks he’s Kent Street’s answer to Rudolf Valentino.’
Mary Anne smiled though her thoughts tapped like nervous fingers in her head. Snatches of conversation she’d had when counting out coins into a desperate hand in exchange for a pledged item – a nice piece of china, a clock, even a wedding ring; everyone was desperate at some time or another, some for the same reason as she.
‘I hear there’s a woman in Old Market …’
‘Mrs Riley! Oh, yeah, she’ll get rid of it for you all right, but mind,’ said Biddy, one well-bitten finger held up in warning, ‘she do know how to charge, by Christ if she don’t!’
‘I can pay.’
Biddy sniffed as her gaze wandered around their shabby surroundings. The bare bricks of the washhouse wall were green with moss and mould, natural in a place continually absorbing the steam from a wash load of boiling sheets. Her eyes finally came to rest on the set of cupboard doors set into one wall. They were big and bare of paint, but Biddy knew what was behind them. Mary Anne ran a thriving business – thanks in part to her.
Married to a bloke who put a third of his wages over the bar of the Red Cow didn’t make for an easy life. For years, Mary Anne had scouted round for ways in which to make ends meet. At first she’d bought clothes at jumble sales, washed, pressed and sold them to needy neighbours in the area. From there it was a skip and a hop to pawnbroking.
The business had started three years ago. Biddy had been in need of money. The pawnbroker – a proper shop complete with the three balls hanging above the door – was shut.
‘I need a shilling for Fred’s tea and “uncle’s” is shut,’ she’d wailed, brandishing a pair of children’s boots. ‘The Sally Army gave ’em
to me. They’re almost new.’
Mary Anne had eyed the boots enviously, wishing the Salvation Army had given them to her. Not much chance of that, she thought with a mix of regret and pride. She wasn’t as poor – or as careless – as Biddy, thank God.
Stanley, her youngest, had been without a pair at the time. Her thoughts had turned to the little bit of money inherited from a penny policy her mother had paid into all her life. So far she’d managed to keep the windfall secret from Henry, but had not quite decided what to do with it for the best. Biddy had given her an idea.
‘I’ll give you a shilling against them,’ she’d said after a closer inspection. ‘Your Cyril grown out of them already?’
Biddy had shrugged and held out her hand. ‘He’s used to going without boots.’
Biddy’s youngest was eight years old, smoked butts he picked up from the gutter, and swore almost as much as his father. Alf Young worked on the docks when he could, weighing-on like a lot of men, sometimes working and most days not, depending on whether his face fitted with the foreman. In Mary Anne’s opinion, quite understandable in a way: he had an ugly face. God knows what Biddy had ever seen in him. And he drank too much!
Her own thoughts pulled her up short suddenly.
Well, that’s the pot calling the kettle black!
She’d laughed at the thought and called herself a fool. Who was she to speak? Look at Henry. Look what he’d turned into, not that he’d always been that way. Their marriage might have been different if she’d kept her mouth shut and the truth to herself, but at the time he’d been overjoyed to have her. The First World War had taken the life of her sweetheart, Edward. Henry had been her parents’ choice and she’d been happy to go along with it at the time, but she’d misjudged him badly. His character had changed after she’d told him she’d given birth to Edward’s child before they were married. The child had been adopted, and she’d explained that Edward had been killed. It was then that he’d seen through her parents’ collusion and felt duped, his pride hurt and his affection for her vanishing overnight.
