The Girl on the Beach

by Mary Nichols

  She turned when she saw Mrs Golding coming out of her house with a shopping basket on her arm. The woman stopped and stared at her, her mouth half open.

  Julie gave her a brave smile. ‘Mrs Golding, how are you?’

  ‘Mrs Walker, it is you. I couldn’t believe my eyes. They told me you had been killed, and your little boy too. When the bomb fell.’

  ‘Dead? George is dead?’ She was already so traumatised this extra shock set her senses reeling. Nothing made sense anymore, and yet, and yet … Her brain ticked over. If it was assumed she had died too, it might explain why no one had been looking for her.

  ‘So they said.’ Mrs Golding’s voice broke in on her thoughts. ‘I came home last year, that’s when I heard. Of course, I may have got it wrong. What happened to you? You look as if you’ve been in the wars.’

  Julie looked down at herself. She had tried to clean the smuts from her jacket in the toilets at Waterloo Station, some had been hot enough to scorch it. One or two had burnt her face and hands and there were tiny red blisters on her cheeks. She had not at first felt any pain, but now they were beginning to sting. ‘You could say that. A doodlebug came down on the train I was travelling in.’

  ‘I heard about that. It was on the news. Were you hurt?’

  ‘Only a few scrapes and bruises. I was lucky I was in a rear compartment.’

  ‘Come in and I’ll make a cup of tea. You could do with one, I expect.’

  ‘Yes, that would be lovely, thank you. But you were just going out.’

  ‘It can wait, it was only a few bits of shopping. I can do that later.’ She turned and went back into the house, holding the door for Julie.

  It was the first time Julie had been in the house. It was a mirror image of her own, but the repairs to the bomb damage and the new paint had made it brighter and more modern. She was soon sitting at the kitchen table while Mrs Golding busied herself making tea. ‘We were interned on the Isle of Man,’ she told Julie. ‘My husband died there. Last year I was allowed to come home. The council made the place habitable for me and I’ve found a part-time job sewing buttons on new uniforms, which keeps the wolf from the door. The neighbours don’t speak to me, but that doesn’t bother me. It’s ignorance, that’s what it is.’

  ‘I’m sorry about your husband.’

  ‘He just pined away. He couldn’t understand why he was being treated like an enemy when he was a victim of the Nazi terror and loyal to this country.’ She put a cup of tea in front of Julie and pushed a sugar bowl towards her. Julie declined the sugar but accepted a biscuit. ‘Thank you. You are very kind.’

  ‘You were kind to me, I remember. Now, tell me what has been happening to you. I won’t breathe a word to anyone if you don’t want me to.’

  As Julie attempted to try and put her thoughts in order, things started to make more sense and she began to piece together what had happened to her as Julie Walker and what had happened as Eve Seaton. At first she had been inclined to deny her identity as Eve, but she had had time to think since that train derailment. She had walked for miles, earning some strange looks from others she passed, but no one had spoken to her, or if they had, she had not heard them; she had been in another world, a world of returning memories, all swirling about in her head. Eventually, too tired to continue, she had fallen asleep under a haystack in the corner of a field. Setting off again next morning, she had come to a railway station and boarded a train to Waterloo. From there it was only one stop on the Underground to the Elephant and Castle. She had walked from there to her old home. There was still a lot of bomb damage and open craters along the way, but an attempt had been made to clear most of the rubble away, and some repairs had been made to those houses not badly damaged. It was strangely alien and yet achingly familiar.

  She recounted all this to an astonished Mrs Golding. ‘I couldn’t understand why no one came looking for me,’ she told her. ‘Now I realise it was because everyone thought I had died. But I left George with Rosie. You remember my friend, Rosie, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I do. She was a lot like you. Do you think she could have been mistaken for you?’

  ‘But surely my husband would have known the difference. Did he come back from Canada?’

  ‘I don’t know. I wasn’t here.’

  ‘No, of course you weren’t. I’ll have to go and see his parents. They will know where he is.’ She gave a mirthless chuckle. ‘I’m afraid I’m going to be a terrible shock to them. And to Harry, if he’s still alive.’

  ‘Surely you didn’t forget everything?’

  ‘I did. I really did. Until yesterday. Now I can hardly remember what I did last week. It’s so confusing. I don’t know whether I’m coming or going, what’s real and what’s fantasy.’

  ‘I can’t begin to imagine what that must be like. But you are in uniform; surely the authorities will know all about you.’

  ‘Yes, I expect they will. The medics at the train wanted to take me to hospital, but it was more important for me to find my son.’

  ‘I understand. I’m sorry I can’t tell you any more. You could ask around.’

  Julie didn’t feel inclined to let the whole world know her troubles; they would assume she was mad. Besides, how many of the people living in the street had been there four years before? ‘If George really did die, there must be a record of it somewhere. I’ll go to the council offices when I’ve drunk this tea.’

  Mrs Golding watched Julie drain her cup. ‘Would you like a bath while you’re here? I can soon heat the water. The council put a new gas geyser in when they did the repairs. It’s so much better than lighting a fire and waiting for the water to get hot. If you’ve got a change of clothes …’

  ‘I’ve underwear and a clean shirt in my rucksack. There’s a pair of trousers too, but no jacket.’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do with that while you have your bath.’

  An hour later, feeling clean and fresh and wearing trousers, shirt and an air force pullover, and with some ointment on her burns, she thanked Mrs Golding and set off once again, her damaged clothes in her rucksack. She was still in a kind of limbo between two lives which seemed to have no connection with each other, and she could not summon the courage or energy to explain it to other people. In any case, it would make her look foolish, if not devious. Instead she asked at the council offices if she could look at the casualty records for 7th September 1940, saying she was trying to trace a friend who had disappeared. There were pages and pages of them. She scanned them all, recognising some names she had known, until at last she found what she was looking for: Julie Walker, wife of Harry Walker, aged twenty-two, and George Walker, aged one year and nine months, casualties of war. She was officially dead!

  She shut the book and stumbled from the office. Standing outside in the warm June sunshine, she wondered what to do, where to go, who to tell. George, the baby she had idolised, had died without her even knowing it. Had he been frightened? Had he been crying for her? Had Rosie been looking after him properly? Had they both still been in the garden playing with the water in the pool when the bomb dropped? He had been so happy, smacking at the water with his hands, his plump pink limbs working away, making the water slop over the edge of the bath, splashing her and laughing at her pretended outrage. Until now she had been numb, almost unfeeling, but that image of George as she had last seen him opened the floodgates. She collapsed onto a low wall and burst into tears.

  Several people paused as they passed her, some moved on without speaking, others asked, ‘Are you all right, miss?’

  She nodded, but could not answer for the sobs that racked her. They stood a moment, undecided, then moved on.

  At last the sobs faded to a watery hiccough and then stopped. She fumbled in her rucksack for another handkerchief to replace the sodden one she had been using, blew her nose and stood up, surprised to find the sun still shining, people still going about their business, traffic still moving up and down the street. Life went on around her and she must think what to
do, where to go next.

  It was important to find Harry, though what he would make of her sudden reappearance she could not begin to imagine. His parents would know where he was. She remembered Chalfont’s factory had been due to move to Letchworth, but she had no idea if her in-laws had gone, or if they had come back to Islington when the Blitz ended. If she had accepted the offer to go with them, instead of stubbornly refusing to leave her home, her life would have been very different. George would still be alive and she would never have become Eve Seaton, joined the WAAF and met Florrie and Alec. Alec. The name flew into her head, followed by a mental picture of a cheerful young man with crinkly fair hair and laughing hazel eyes, a man to whom she had willingly given herself. Memories of him jumbled with memories of Harry until she felt as if her head would burst open and spill them all on the pavement. She could not face going to Islington, not today, not until she had calmed down and sorted out her thoughts. Instead she went to Shoreditch to throw herself on the mercy of Miss Paterson.

  Grace had just finished making herself some scrambled egg with reconstituted dried egg for her lunch and was on the point of sitting down to eat it when there was a knock at the door. ‘Now who can that be?’ she asked aloud, getting up to answer it. She must be getting old, talking to herself, she really must stop doing it or everyone would call her mad. She thought she might truly be mad when she opened the door to see an apparition on the doorstep. It was enough to send her reeling against the wall.

  Julie stepped into the hall and took her elbow. ‘Don’t faint on me, Grace, please. I’ve got so much to tell you.’

  ‘Julie. God in heaven, you’re alive.’

  ‘I’m glad you think so. I have been wondering myself whether I might be in some kind of limbo, not good enough for heaven and not bad enough for hell. Can we sit down somewhere, you look as though you are about to fall down.’

  ‘Do you wonder at it?’

  Julie, who had made her home in the flat before she married Harry, knew her way around it and guided her friend to the kitchen, where the uneaten plate of scrambled egg, garishly yellow, was growing cold. ‘You were in the middle of your lunch.’

  Grace sank into a chair. ‘Never mind that. I couldn’t eat it now anyway. Tell me what happened. Where have you sprung from? Who is in that grave? There’s a stone with your name and the date and everything.’

  ‘Gravestone? There’s a stone on my grave?’ That there must be physical evidence of her death in the form of a grave and a stone was something she had not stopped to consider.

  ‘Yes. Your husband had it put there. And I take flowers. But if it wasn’t you, who was it?’

  Julie set about making tea because Grace was still shaky. ‘I think it must be my friend Rosie Summers. I left her looking after George.’

  ‘Yes, I remember. And when the siren went you insisted on going home, even though I said you should go in the shelter. I assumed you’d arrived home only to be killed by a direct hit. I remember saying, at least you were with him at the end.’

  ‘I wasn’t.’ Her hands were busy while she talked, making tea, fetching cups and saucers from the cupboard and a jug of milk which was standing on the cool floor of the larder, covered with a little cap of beaded gauze. ‘An air-raid warden insisted on taking me to the Linsey Street shelter. It was jam-packed and I was stuck beside a pillar. It got a direct hit, but all I remember is being pulled out by the ARP and being taken to hospital.’

  ‘I don’t understand. Why didn’t you come back? Why stay away? Harry was broken-hearted when he got back from Canada and found you already dead and buried. I met him once at the cemetery. He was standing looking down at the grave with a garden gnome in his hand. He didn’t seem to know what to do with it.’

  She would not allow herself to be deflected by imagining Harry’s grief or asking about the gnome. She could do that later. Now she had to concentrate on staying calm and telling her story as coherently as she could, which was difficult, considering how muddle-headed she was. ‘I couldn’t come back because I lost my memory. “Amnesia”, they call it. I didn’t know who I was or anything about myself. I was given a new identity.’

  ‘You mean you couldn’t even remember your own name?’

  She put a cup of tea in front of Grace, poured one for herself and sat down opposite her. ‘Strange as it may seem, that’s exactly what happened. I forgot everything: my name, Harry, George, the Coram. It was all gone, except little snatches like you have when you first wake up from a dream and it’s still with you. You don’t know what’s real and what’s not.’

  ‘But you do now.’

  ‘I think so. You see, the same thing happened again, being bombed and being pulled out. I didn’t know so much time had passed – I thought it was the same day and I was worried about leaving George with Rosie.’

  ‘What have you been doing all this time?’

  They sat sipping tea while Julie tried to remember enlisting and the different stations she had been on, the jobs she had had and the people she met. To start with her memory was hazy, but as she talked and corrected herself, it began to clear and with it came the realisation that her troubles were far from over.

  ‘This Alec,’ Grace said, after they had drunk three cups of tea each and consumed half a packet of digestive biscuits without even realising it. ‘You agreed to marry him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You can’t. You’re married already.’

  ‘I know.’ It was said with a heavy sigh.

  ‘You belong with your husband.’

  ‘I know that too.’

  ‘You do remember him?’

  ‘Yes. I remember he was handsome, with dark auburn hair and soft brown eyes. He was virile and caring and so loving. He made a woman of me.’ Even as she spoke she remembered another man who had had a hand in making a woman of her. She loved him too.

  ‘You must go to him and you must tell this new man in your life the truth.’

  Grace was only saying what Julie knew in her heart was right, but she knew both tasks were going to be very difficult. ‘And there are others who will have to know – the Air Force, though whether they will discharge me when they’ve been told, or whether they will simply change the name on my records, I have no idea. And then there’s Rosie’s parents. You don’t suppose they know the truth, do you?’

  ‘I doubt it. They came to see me. Poor things were searching all over London for her. I felt sorry I couldn’t tell them anything.’

  ‘But if I was dead and buried when Harry came back from Canada, who arranged the funeral?’

  ‘Mr Walker, your father-in-law.’

  ‘He would surely have been asked to identify me. How can he have made such a mistake?’

  ‘I don’t know. Perhaps the body was too badly injured to tell. It happens, you know.’

  ‘I know.’ Julie shuddered. It was all getting too complicated. ‘I could simply forget I had remembered and carry on being Eve Seaton.’

  ‘And marry your Alec?’

  ‘Well, no. That would be bigamy, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘It most certainly would.’

  ‘He’ll wonder why I’ve suddenly changed my mind. After being parachuted behind enemy lines and struggling to get back, it would be a cruel blow.’

  ‘No more cruel than going through with a bigamous marriage. Not only cruel, but illegal.’

  Julie fell silent. There was too much to think of and her head was aching abominably. She put her elbows on the table and her head in her hands, shutting her eyes.

  ‘You’re exhausted,’ Grace said. ‘I’ll make a bed up for you. We’ll talk some more tomorrow. Should you let your commanding officer know where you are?’

  ‘Not tonight. I’m on leave.’ She gave a grunt that passed for a laugh. ‘At least, Eve Seaton is. I don’t know about Julie Walker. If Eve Seaton disappeared, would anyone be able to find her, considering she never existed?’

  ‘You’re suffering from shock,’ Grace said. ‘I’m going to give yo
u one of my sleeping pills, otherwise you’ll be tossing and turning all night.’

  Sleeping pills might stop her running off, Grace decided, because denying what had happened would help no one. It had to be sorted out. It was strange that one fictitious identity should be replaced by another, equally fictitious. No one had known who Julie Monday was either. Grace considered herself the nearest thing to a relative Julie had and she felt responsible for her. She wondered whether to try and contact Harry’s parents herself while Julie slept, but decided that would be underhand, like ratting on her. All she could do was support the girl as well as she could and offer to go with her.

  * * *

  Finding someone who did not want to be found in a busy place like Southwark, right on the river with its shipping, warehouses and factories, was next to impossible, Florrie realised. She could not ask questions, simply because she did not know what questions to ask. All she had was a grainy snapshot of Eve taken on the farm on one leave. Showing that to anyone who cared to look at it produced nothing but a shaking head and a mumbled ‘Sorry’. By evening, she realised she would have to give up for the time being. She telephoned Manston and spoke to Section Officer Murray. ‘I don’t want to give up yet and there’s a day of my leave still to go, so I’ll stay here tomorrow and go on with the search. Please don’t post Sergeant Seaton AWOL. I’m sure she’s not deliberately hiding.’

  ‘Very well. An extra twenty-four hours and then you must return from your own leave and you can brief me about what’s been going on.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am. I’ll do that.’