by Lizzie Page
Telescope. Telegram. Circumference. Circumstance.
Then I make her write them without looking at the words. Pearl’s spelling is abysmal but she’s good with the meaning of words, so I think we needn’t worry too much.
At eleven o’clock, I hear footsteps – a rustling, a giggling beyond the front door. The bookish daughter is back. She is with someone. A man? Yes. He is wearing a heavy coat – he is a foot taller than her, maybe – and he wraps her in it.
I shouldn’t be looking, but it is quite charming.
They smooch for a long time under the porch light.
It’s not until he has turned to wave, a final yearning wave, that I can see who it is.
* * *
I avoid Mrs Burton the next day. I queue for food, then play the piano and dominoes at the old people’s home and do a big wash and iron. But on Thursday, there is no evading her. We’re taking the tea van out to the train station, to meet the people off the trains. As I start the engine, I think, Would Mrs Burton tell me? Yes, she probably would.
In my most casual voice, I squeak, ‘I didn’t know Sally had a boyfriend?’
‘She doesn’t,’ replies Mrs Burton.
Sally had come in that evening all friendly and oblivious. Her lipstick was smeared, her previously orderly hair was all over the place and she was all giggles and teeth.
‘Oh, I see.’
Mrs Burton and I park up. We rinse the teapot with hot water to warm it, no skimping. The state-of-the-art urn is making all the right noises. We put the cups out and put a touch of milk in the bottom of each one. Saves time later. We brew the tea for five minutes, although if it’s busy, we might end up cutting corners with just four.
‘I think she might have a boyfriend,’ I say eventually.
‘She’s too young.’
Just be factual, I tell myself. It’s the only way.
Here comes the train. The first batch of tea-drinkers will soon be out. I wipe the counter again.
‘I may have… I did, I think… I saw her kissing someone last night.’
‘Who?’
‘Nathan.’
‘Who’s Nathan?’
‘Farmer Jones’s evacuee boy?’
Mrs Burton drops her cup and saucer and they shatter on the floor.
42
1920 – Then
Olive kept looking backwards; I wanted to look forwards. Plus, I didn’t think looking backwards all the time was good for her. You end up tripping over things.
‘Why won’t you talk about the war?’ she would ask. Sometimes angrily, sometimes with an indecipherable expression on her face.
‘Because it’s over now.’ Or, ‘What else is there to say?’
A veil had been drawn across 1914 to 1918. Those were our amputated years. You don’t go up to a man without a leg and ask how his leg is, do you? But an Armistice Day party was being held at the club Edmund’s parents went to and they, and our father and Aunt Cecily and Uncle Toby, were looking forward to it. It seemed only some looking backwards was frowned upon, some was danced at.
There were frills and flounces and the November air smelled of perfume, cologne, smoke and whisky. We were all dressed to the nines, even Olive, who’d reluctantly accepted my offer of a red dress and a black fur cape. She looked like a poppy. A shivering poppy.
‘It’s good for you to let your hair down,’ said Aunt Cecily, who was worried that Olive was both too thin and too serious about her work at the recuperation centre. Olive made a face but said nothing.
‘I regret getting her involved there,’ Aunt Cecily confided in me. ‘Mulling over it all the time can’t be good for her.’
* * *
If there was one thing Edmund could do quite brilliantly, both before and after the war, it was dance. He was unexpectedly light on his feet, while being exceptionally mobile in his hips. Although he would avoid meeting my eyes like an errant schoolboy, his legs and arms worked so gaily and brightly together it was impossible not to enjoy dancing with him. I laughed through the first few dances, knowing that our families – and not just our families – were watching us approvingly. Here we were, the bright generation, the survivors, the newly-weds. Things couldn’t be too bad. Glorious to be so close to Edmund, to be the gay, bright couple everyone imagined we were. I didn’t want it to stop.
Maybe tonight will be the night that Edmund and I will make love and something extraordinary will happen, I thought. We had been married nearly six months and my menses had disappointingly come every month without fail. I could barely bring myself to check my underwear any more.
I stole a look at him. He was one of the most handsome men there. King to my queen (Olive playing the jester).
After a few dances, Edmund said he needed a drink, and I had to admit I did too. Still, it was with reluctance that I went back to our table. I loved being on the dancefloor with Edmund. Seeing Olive slumped in her chair, sulking, made me feel uncomfortable. I thought she had been drinking too much, but I wasn’t sure if I should point it out. I turned my attention to Aunt Cecily and Edmund’s mother.
‘We were just talking about you,’ Aunt Cecily said brightly, although Edmund’s mother scowled, twisting her fingers agitatedly.
All eyes were on Edmund and me. I could feel their neediness as clearly as the fox stole on my shoulders.
‘Oh yes?’
‘When you have a son, you will call him Christopher Richard – Christopher Richard Lowe – won’t you?’ Aunt Cecily said. Was it me being paranoid or was Edmund’s mother grimacing? Was she annoyed with Olive? Probably.
I nodded, non-committal. ‘We’ll see.’
Olive inhaled. ‘But what if you have a daughter?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Maybe I’ll name her after our mother?’
‘How about the name Lena?’ Olive asked. I shrugged. She persisted. ‘What’s wrong with it?’
‘Nothing!’ I said, surprised. Were we really talking about this? I wasn’t even pregnant.
‘Is Lena an English name?’ asked Edmund’s mother, while Aunt Cecily said, rather more charitably, ‘Oh, I remember your poor friend Mrs Ford, Olive. Lena was her name, isn’t that so? What a terrible shame.’
Olive leaned in to my ear. ‘What about Sam? I always liked that name. Or is that too Jewishy for you?’
I bristled and moved away from her. What had got into her tonight?
* * *
After a few more dances, I returned to find Olive still sitting in the same place, in the same unladylike position.
She looked up at me, bleary-eyed.
‘Do you remember that time you were attacked in the ambulance, when that soldier leapt on you, shouting—’
‘Why are you mentioning this now?’
‘No one else will. Why shouldn’t I?’
‘Because we’re at a dance, darling. We’re supposed to be having a good time.’
She dug into her handbag and took out her pipe.
‘Not here, O,’ I warned her. ‘It’s not… right.’
‘Just winding you up,’ she said. ‘God, Vivi, when did you become so conservative?’ She produced a neat silver hip-flask. I’d seen men drink from them before, but never a woman and never my sister. She twisted off the cap and drank lustily.
‘What’s in it?’ I asked.
She sniffed the bottle: ‘Ahh… It’s a very fine liquor called Ways to Forget.’
Edmund wanted to dance again. I looked back at Olive but it seemed she was determined to indulge her melancholy. I took Edmund’s hand and we circled the room. My skirt flipped around my legs, and I knew my ankles looked shapely. We made an attractive couple. It was rare that I got to feel like this, like we were the married couple that everyone thought we were, the one they envied.
When I came back, I felt my patience with Olive running thin.
‘Dance with someone or you’ll look like a gooseberry.’
I meant it as a joke, but soon as I saw the hurt shock on Olive’s face, I regretted it.
I tried to pat her shoulder, but she wouldn’t let me. Her cheeks were aflame.
Olive rose unsteadily from her chair. She pulled another face at me, like Is this really what you want? Then she circled the room, glaring at each table. It was quite unfriendly. People stared back at her – they didn’t like her attitude. I saw one woman remonstrate with her husband, telling him to let her be. She tapped her head: ‘Cuckoo.’
My sister.
Olive had circled nearly the entire room when at last she found what she was looking for. A man in uniform with stumps for legs, in a wheelchair. Red, alcohol-flushed face, trembling hands. He looked up at her and, unlike the other guests, he seemed glad of the attention.
I watched them talk. He crushed his cigarette in the plate next to him and she took the handles of his chair. She whirled around with him. He must have felt dizzy, poor soul, but he didn’t look like he minded. I shook my head at her, but at that, she actually climbed on his lap and sat there. He was half-cut too. I shook my head again. For goodness’ sake, what would people think? To add to the indecency, directly above them was a picture of the King and the British flag. Edmund gripped my arm.
‘Get your sister under control!’ he said sharply. I went over to her. I didn’t want to be noticed but I was. People were staring. I tugged at the back of her dress.
‘You can’t behave like this, Olive,’ I hissed.
She giggled, slid off the man’s lap.
‘Where are you going?’ he called, disgruntled.
‘I’ll get us some more drinks.’ She smiled brightly at him and he relented.
‘You had better come back!’ he called. His words had an undercurrent of aggression that I didn’t like.
‘I’m taking you home,’ I said. Olive let me guide her out the hall and I thought she had acquiesced, but at the ornate doors, she grinned impishly at me and said, ‘See you, Vivi,’ and skipped off into the misty night.
43
1942 – Now
So, it’s official. Mrs Burton’s youngest daughter, Sally, is walking out with Farmer Jones’s Nathan.
‘And why not?’ says Mrs Burton, once she’s over the shock. ‘She’s seventeen now.’ She grimaces. ‘God knows, I was only sixteen when I met her father.’
And about the other thing? The fact that he is… you know?
No, Mrs Burton doesn’t care that Sally’s boyfriend is Jewish. Well, she does care, she just doesn’t object.
‘Relationships are hard,’ she announces. ‘You know that.’
I nod imperceptibly. Yes, I know that.
‘And probably, maybe, it helps if you’ve got a lot in common – faith, background, type, I don’t know – but…’ she continues ferociously, ‘there’s no guarantee of anything. If he can love my daughter, and be loved by my daughter, then that’s good enough for me. I don’t care if he’s from Timbuktu wearing a sombrero on his head.’
‘I feel that’s unlikely…’
‘A fez then.’
I sit in her kitchen, sipping my tea thoughtfully.
Twenty-five years has made a difference, I thought. ‘Times change’ – isn’t that what people say? No, ‘times’ don’t change… well, they do, but they don’t change by themselves. People have to change, it’s people who change the times.
I hadn’t had the strength in 1916 to put all my own prejudice and stupidity behind me. And now it was too late. But maybe for the next generation, for Sally and for Pearl, things could be better.
44
1921 – Then
Edmund and I moved to the house in Hinckley in August, 1921. We had been married for one year and three months. In a rare moment of synchronicity, we both wanted out of London. I had my reasons. I’m not entirely sure what his were but he was offered a job in the Leicester branch of the bank. Apparently, he could go far.
I remember waving off the removal truck, fizzing with excitement. We took the train, promising to meet the truck at the new house. We were still trying to have children at that stage. At least, I was trying. And that day, it finally felt like Edmund and I were a team, or at least on the same side, going into our new life together. I was very excited.
The house was a new-build in a cul-de-sac. I had explained several times to different family members that the French word simply meant ‘bottom of the bag’. Edmund’s mother was quite disapproving of the ‘French influence’.
‘Is it because of the war?’ she asked, nonsensically.
Edmund called our street a ‘dead end’ and we had an ongoing joke about it between us. He did make me smile sometimes.
‘A new start!’ Edmund kept repeating. He actually patted my hand affectionately in the carriage. ‘It’ll be good to get away from the temptations of the city.’
I stared out at the uniform trees as they flashed by. There was something familiar about the landscape, even though it was new to me.
‘Temptations?’
‘You know what I mean,’ he said shortly, withdrawing his touch. He always punished me if I didn’t stay in line.
‘Leicester is better for raising a family,’ he said. And I smiled. A family. It was the one thing that we were on the same page about.
‘Especially in a cul-de-sac.’ I smiled.
‘Dead end.’ He smirked.
‘I wonder what our neighbours are like?’
‘Don’t get too involved,’ he warned me. ‘I know what you’re like.’
‘What am I like?’ I asked coquettishly. This has been a nice trip.
‘Easily swayed,’ he said, looking out of the window. He got up and pushed the glass down. ‘So hot in here, isn’t it?’
We were both quite absorbed in our future plans. Children! The hope was that children would be the glue that held us together.
* * *
Olive was living in Newlyn in Cornwall. A pretty fisherman’s cottage with stained-glass windows of dolphins. I’m not sure how she came to be there. I remembered Daisy’s tales of the sea, the light and the clotted cream and how we all chorused that we’d love to go there some day. Olive must have been being serious when she said it.
I visited her once. It wasn’t a successful trip and at the time I wasn’t sure why. Things should have been on the up for both of us. The terrible war years were well and truly over. I had the husband I wanted. She was doing the art she loved.
The rain poured down every day, and I was affronted because the rest of the country was reportedly sunny and dry. ‘Cornwall has a mind of its own,’ Olive said. She liked that about it.
She was courting someone, she said. You’ll be pleased. She didn’t seem to be.
We went to meet him. He was a picture framer, Laurie, a bearded fellow with a black cat called Lucy. I’d been quite taken with the cat. Olive pretended he didn’t stay over, but I think he might have. Small clues: cologne in the bathroom. Men’s muddy boots by the back door. I thought there was something a little strange about him, but I didn’t think much of it. A lot of people were strange. A gunner at Neuve Chapelle, he’d been captured and kept prisoner of war for over a year. When Olive told me, I thought, Ah, maybe that explains it.
I remember there was a moment when the rain stopped, and we tore off to play badminton on the beach. Playing badminton always reminded me of Sam although I tried not to let it. I was a married woman now with a home in a cul-de-sac.
We were eating buttered rolls when Olive said, quite out of the blue, ‘Did I tell you, Laurie? Vivi once saved a man from a burning plane.’
Laurie stared at me. His eyes were very blue. I could not think of a single reason Olive should have mentioned it now.
‘I wouldn’t have expected her to have done anything else,’ he said. He was good with words.
When Olive walked ahead of us back to the cottage, he put his arm round my shoulders and squeezed for just a little too long. I didn’t know whether to tell her about it, but when he did it again later, when she was in the kitchen, and again, when she was looking in a shop for new pencils, I knew I had to.
>
She said, ‘I thought so,’ and, ‘It’s not just you, darling, don’t worry.’
‘You aren’t that keen on him anyway, are you?’
She laughed, a tight sound. ‘I’m not keen on him at all.’ She paused. ‘He is an awfully good framer though.’
* * *
Olive was invited to hold an exhibition in South Africa. I could understand why she was tempted: I imagine it was well-timed. It made the split from the picture framer more decisive, more real. I still felt wrong-footed when she actually left though. I hoped she had put the travel bug behind her, but she said she had nothing to keep her here. I felt quite hurt, but tried not to let her know.
And it was in a big place, a big museum, and she would be the key artist; they called her a ‘war artist’ – they didn’t even call her a ‘female artist’, just ‘artist’. She would be the big name, the main attraction. Fancy that.
She said she couldn’t believe her luck.
Even cynical Edmund was galvanised by this news. International fame! A successful sister-in-law! This, he liked. He had connections in South Africa, he told us; it was a place he’d always hoped to go. He told Olive about places she should visit and things she might want to read. He gave her addresses for the people she must call on, and even though I realised they were probably as far from the gallery as we were, it still struck me as generous. See, I told myself, Edmund can be so thoughtful when he chooses to be.
The trip was a great success. Olive made friends on the way out: on the ship, there were accordion players and comedians, singers and actors, the kind of people she liked best, and once she arrived, she was taken care of, courted and even feted. The South Africans are fascinated by the war. And what’s more, they are fascinated by me!
She was having such a brilliant time that I began to wonder if she would stay out there forever, but when I suggested it, she wrote back.
