A Girl in Wartime

by Maggie Ford

  Was this what her poor brother Ronnie was still suffering from despite Dolly’s every effort to help him? How long then would these awful visitations go on for her? She only hoped it was just a single reaction from what she’d seen and would fade in a day or two.

  The next morning she felt fit for nothing. Her mum looked at her with a bewildered expression though she didn’t ask what the matter was. She was glad to leave for work. It was a help seeing Stephen. He’d not yet moved to the upper office and for that she was grateful.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he asked when he came over to speak to her. ‘You look positively worn out. You’re not worrying about the wedding?’ He smiled. ‘Nothing for you to do. I’ll be doing all the arranging.’

  ‘The thing is I’d rather not be asked to go out on any more assignments for the time being. I don’t think I could face any more of it, at least not for a while.’

  He smiled again, tenderly. ‘You won’t have to. I’ve already had a word with them up there. I’ve told them you need to get yourself ready to marry me. They appreciate very much that you’ve brought back some amazing work, all of which they intend to use, but they do understand it must have been traumatic for you and think you might need a rest for a month or two. By that time you’ll be Mrs Stephen Clayton.’

  She said nothing, unable to bring herself to speak in case her voice trembled, prompting him to ask what was wrong. Nor could she bring herself to tell him.

  Maybe she should have told him. Her sleep continued to be disturbed. She continued to be haunted by eyes hollow with despair above bandages concealing hideous injuries. Those eyes had etched themselves against her closed lids, and she saw them each time she tried to sleep. When had they become filled with condemnation, blaming her?

  The dream when it did come was always the same: Stephen fleeing across no-man’s-land, she trying to reach him, to rescue him. She’d wake up hearing herself calling out, crying his name.

  That first time, the bedroom door had burst open, jerking her awake. Mum hurried in. ‘Connie, love, what in Gawd’s name is it? We ’eard you callin’ out like you was being murdered. It must of been a nightmare you was having, love? What was it?’

  Finding herself being rocked gently back and forth in her mother’s arms, Connie had managed to pull away. ‘It was just a dream – a silly dream.’

  ‘Well, you try and go back to sleep, love, and if you want anything, just call me, all right?’

  ‘All right,’ she echoed in a small voice.

  There were no more dreams that night but only because she now refused to sleep. The faces of those she had sketched were ever accusing her the moment she closed her eyes. Taking the chair from the little dressing table, she spent the rest of the night sitting by the window, dressing gown wrapped around her, the gaslight turned on just a glimmer, to be turned off at the first light of dawn so no one would know she had not slept. But she could see by her mother’s face that she was becoming a little concerned about her drained looks.

  ‘You mustn’t start worrying so much about the wedding, love,’ she’d say. ‘You need to look lovely when you walk down that aisle.’ She would nod and promise not to worry. But her disturbed sleep was taking its toll.

  Slumped in that chair, she’d still find herself having drifted off without knowing it, waking with a start to realise by the clock on the wall that she’d been asleep for an hour or so. At least this way there were no nightmares. But still, when consciously closing her eyes, those stricken ones of the poor disfigured victims would assail her. She would often try reading a book to take her mind off other things until a jerk of her head falling forward pulled her awake to realise she’d nodded off.

  Almost a week with hardly any sleep was beginning to leave a big impact, and sitting upright on the old dressing-table chair pulled up to the window was not the best place for proper rest. She’d drag herself to work only half-awake at times.

  Stephen was becoming concerned. ‘You look all in, my love,’ he said as they lunched together the Thursday after her return. ‘Are you sleeping properly?’

  Connie couldn’t help a smile. Sleeping properly? If only he knew.

  ‘You’re not worrying about the wedding, though, are you, darling? You mustn’t. Leave it all to me.’

  Of course she was worrying about the wedding, worrying about their marriage, worrying about awakening him in the night by crying out. Would she find a way to explain those dreams? Could she even bring herself to talk about their content? Would he understand or would he become cross? She felt as if she was falling to pieces. And where would their marriage be then?

  She had no fear of sharing their bed the evenings they came back to his flat because after they’d made wonderful love, lying naked in each other’s arms, feeling married already, she would say she must go home, and he understood that she didn’t want her parents frowning upon her.

  This way she limped through another month, saying nothing to anyone, just that she wasn’t feeling well, might be going down with a cold.

  Stephen was naturally worried. ‘You’ve got to look your best for the wedding,’ he’d remarked as they sat at the restaurant dinner table one evening. It had sounded like an order.

  ‘I know!’ she’d shot back at him. If this was how he was going to behave whenever she was out of sorts, she almost felt she didn’t want to marry him. It was an unreasonable thought, born from the trauma she’d experienced. Then came another unreasonable thought: had he shown his first wife the sympathy he should have? A moment later she hated herself for such thoughts, blaming it on her sleepless nights.

  Chapter Thirty

  September 1917

  ‘Stephen, I want to postpone our wedding,’ Connie said.

  They were in his flat. He looked at her, half amazed, half angry. ‘But we’ve booked the church. And the reception. And the honeymoon.’ He’d planned to take her to Wales. ‘And then there’s the guest list … ’

  It wasn’t much of a guest list. In wartime, wedding receptions were frugal affairs, what with the food shortages growing tighter by the week. And as she intended to leave work very soon in preparation for her wedding, she wouldn’t be inviting anyone from the paper either. Stephen had no one on his side, at least not anyone he cared to invite, and it came to her that she knew nothing of what family he had. In all their time together he’d never taken her to visit any of his kin – if he had any – he had never spoken of them and she had never asked. So there was really only her family, a few friends of hers and a couple of people he wanted to be there.

  ‘You can’t expect to postpone it at such short notice,’ he added.

  She was going to have to tell him, but prevaricated instead. ‘Why can’t we have it sometime in late November, nearer my birthday? Stephen, darling, I’m not well.’

  ‘Then you must see a doctor,’ he said firmly. She suddenly hated him for his firmness. But it was the state she was in doing that.

  ‘I don’t want to see a doctor,’ she snapped.

  It would mean divulging what was wrong with her and that would be an admission of cowardice, a lack of grit, such as the ordinary traumatised soldier was often accused of, such as Ronnie himself might have been, for what little treatment he was getting.

  She felt an affinity with her brother. What if she were to speak to him? But that might undo all the hard work that his wife had put into making him better, could even make him worse, and Dolly didn’t deserve that. She had been a tower of strength – something no one would have ever credited her with when she first came to live with his family. Dolly, who was holding him together, she and his little daughter Violet, who was now eighteen months and toddling, even saying a few words: ‘Dada’, ‘Mumma’, ‘ball’, ‘door’, ‘me’. The word Dada always made Ronnie straighten with pride and cease twitching for a moment.

  Even so, she needed to speak to him, ask his advice: should she go ahead with the present arrangements or be brave and postpone it?

  Ronnie seldom came out of hi
s and Dolly’s room. Connie knew that their mum and dad were relieved that he didn’t as his presence made them feel awkward, being forced to watch him struggling with his crutches, hearing his stammer, trying to ignore his inability to keep his hands from shaking. But he was the only person Connie felt she could talk to, being more or less in the same boat.

  Waiting until Dolly had taken little Violet out shopping with Mum, she tapped on his door.

  ‘Who – who is it?’ came the halting voice.

  ‘It’s Connie,’ she whispered. ‘Can I come in?’

  ‘Oh …’ There was a moment’s hesitation, then, ‘Y-yes, c-c-come in.’

  It seemed to her that it was said reluctantly and she suddenly felt like an intruder. She nearly replied that it didn’t matter, but she was beginning to feel desperate. She wondered how deeply desperation must have gripped him at times. What must he have gone through to end up as he was? And here she was looking to bother him with her own petty affliction, with not spine enough to cast her own devils aside. Yet as she told him of her problems, of the line of disfigured men she saw each time she closed her eyes, he sat quietly, nodding from time to time with understanding, and she noticed that he had stopped twitching as he listened, his hands becoming unexpectedly still.

  ‘Bite the bullet,’ he said in an amazingly even voice as hers died away, not a trace of a stutter. ‘Put your cards on the table, Sis, say you want to postpone it cos you ain’t feeling up to it, ain’t feeling well. Don’t ’ave to tell him why, cos he won’t understand. He ain’t never bin in the thick of it all, ain’t seen the slaughter, felt what it’s like seeing dead bodies, comrades drowning in mud and … well, it don’t matter. But the way you are, Sis, you can’t go through with any wedding in your state. Don’t try to explain. Just say no.’

  ‘But I could lose him that way,’ she said.

  ‘No you won’t,’ Ronnie said firmly, his voice so steady it was unbelievable. But a few hours later he could be seen shaking and twitching again. Connie felt that it might have been her fault for burdening him with her own problems.

  Today, she tried again to tell Stephen how she felt, saying she was sure she’d collapse at the very altar if he insisted on keeping it as it was, but it wasn’t so easy putting it as Ronnie had told her to.

  In his flat she found herself fighting not to cry and this time it must have been the sheer desperation on her face, her halting words pleading for more time, that finally he conceded, her beseeching expression seeming to alarm and confuse him at the same time.

  ‘I do love you,’ she whispered as he held her to him. ‘I love you more than anything in this world. But—’

  ‘But?’ He cut through her words, his voice flat, alarming her such that she expected him to add, ‘It isn’t working, is it?’

  ‘I do love you, darling,’ she burst out. ‘So very, very much. It’s just this wedding. I’ve not been well and it’s too close. I shall never get better in that short time.’ She looked up at him as he continued to hold her close. ‘Darling, all I’m asking is can we put it off for a little while longer – give me time to get better.’

  How could she tell him about those torn faces, those phantom eyes that appeared each time she closed hers? Would he understand? As Ronnie had said, he’d never had to face the war, never knew what it could do to some people. She could imagine Stephen telling her that she must pull herself together and put it all behind her – as if it was as easy as that! And if she couldn’t …

  It had even started to affect their love making. The moment she closed her eyes as he fondled her, those faces would flash across her brain, making her unable to respond, leaving her to draw away and say she still wasn’t feeling well enough. He’d ask what was wrong and had become annoyed as she made feeble excuses for her actions. He even asked if she still loved him. She’d say of course she did, with all her heart, just that not having felt all that well she still wasn’t quite herself just now.

  She was ruining everything they had. She felt as if she was going mad. Perhaps she was?

  That night as he drew her to him, clasping her tightly, he whispered, ‘We can’t go on like this,’ and for a moment she was horrified; her worst fears, it seemed, were being realised. But seconds later, his arms had tightened about her and he asked, ‘Would it make you feel better, darling, if we did postpone the wedding to November – nearer your birthday, or maybe leave it until spring when the weather is better, whatever you feel more comfortable with.’

  It was such a kind thought. Why then did she in her sensitive state feel that it more resembled a wish not to get married at all – maybe a wish to be free of her, this unbalanced woman?

  Fighting a second of panic, she clung to him. ‘Oh, darling, let it be November. Let it be November! I’ll feel so much better then and everything will be so different.’

  She was on the verge of telling Stephen about her visions but would he understand? She needed to talk to Ronnie again. Going through it himself, he understood, could even help her in a way. She fervently hoped so as Stephen passionately kissed her, saying, ‘November, then, darling,’ between kisses.

  She could have clung to him so tightly that all her breath was gone out of her, knowing how lucky she was to have such a wonderful man.

  So it was arranged. The wedding would be held in November, just before her birthday in December, when she’d be twenty. And it would give him more time to find another really nice house for them instead of this rush that he’d seemed to have been in with nothing completed. A house was still to be found, but it had shown how eager he was to marry her. She was more than a little surprised he’d given in so easily. But by November perhaps her strange visitations would have subsided, with Ronnie’s help.

  Ronnie had spoken words of wisdom, had said of himself when she spoke to him a week later, ‘You feel you can’t move forward and it makes you depressed as if you’ve got nothink to live for. At least that’s how I felt.’

  He’d said ‘felt’, speaking of it in past tense, and if he could move on, though still a long way from total recovery, then there was hope for her. He had even endorsed it by saying only the other day, ‘You know, Sis, I’m beginning to feel a lot better since I’ve bin talking to you.’

  Yes, she had seen how one could let the sense of depression take hold. Ronnie had shown her by his own example that she wasn’t to let it do that. And yes, she would go through with her wedding in November, become Stephen’s wife, and live a happy and contented life.

  Meantime she would go on having chats with Ronnie, taking courage from him enough to face her own demons, spending whatever few moments they could find, which wasn’t often in a house full of people and she having to go to work. But few as their moments together were, it was helping both of them. He’d improved amazingly and Connie felt she was more a help to her brother and he to her than any doctor could have been, and that made her feel good.

  This Saturday morning while Dolly and their mother were out shopping, Dad on his Saturday coal round, Ronnie had leaned forward, taken both her hands in his, and, in a remarkably steady voice, had said, ‘I know ’ow it is with you, Sis. It takes one miserable sod to know another, as they say. We can be miserable sods together and maybe in time we’ll cure each other.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Dolly’s done a lot fer me – knows ’ow things are – but I need something more, and doctors ain’t the answer, not fer me anyway. Me ’elping you is helping me. Bit selfish, eh?’

  All that long speech without one stammer. Ronnie had a cheeky grin she hadn’t seen since before he’d volunteered when war broke out.

  That Monday she went into work after having had two good nights of sleep, amazingly, and only once assaulted by flashes of those anguished eyes, after which, while considering the need to get up, sit by the window, she’d fallen into a dreamless sleep without knowing it. She couldn’t bless Ronnie enough.

  Everything seemed to be speeding up, Connie and Stephen’s wedding day seeming to be racing towards them. Connie felt re
ady for it this time and could hardly wait. Stephen had found a house for them in Victoria Park Road, a wonderful large house, he told her – though he didn’t want her to see it until they were married – with a lovely, low-walled front garden and flowering trees, though bare this time of year, the rear of the house overlooking the park itself. The two of them would have lots of room to spare, it being all theirs, with no one tripping over each other’s feet as in her parents’ home.

  As October passed she was beginning to feel that the devils in her head had begun spiriting themselves away; only now and again one would plant itself on her eyelids as she closed them but it was nothing like it had been and she was beginning to feel she could deal with them as any normal person might. In fact, she felt she could look forward to a normal life again.

  There was only one fly in the ointment: air raids had begun to be stepped up and Connie prayed that nothing would drop on their new home or any of her families’ homes for that matter. Squadrons of German aeroplanes now flew overhead and London was being bombed indiscriminately, especially in the East End, leaving Connie to add to her prayers that there’d be no raid on the day of her wedding. She couldn’t begin to say how relieved she was to have left work – no more of those traumatic visits to sketch the faces of devastated victims. She didn’t think the paper missed her. The idea finally was dropped; the paper’s readers had lost interest in her sketches of distraught people. Nor did she care any more. In a month’s time she’d be married and the paper would have lost her anyway.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  November 1917

  It was now the day before Connie’s wedding and where had the time gone? Preparations were stepping up, excitement was mounting; Connie had no time to think of the past. All she wanted was to lie in Stephen’s arms, be made love to and not have to worry about rules.