When I Was Yours

by Lizzie Page

  There was a poignancy to her tales, but her tone was not sad by any means. She was clearly in her element.

  * * *

  Perhaps I was in my element too. Small-town life suited me. I stayed in most of the day and cleaned and dusted. I liked shaking a feather duster at my bookshelf, gliding a cloth across the kitchen table. Aunt Cecily had given me a brand-new cookery book and I worked my way through the meat recipes. I was happy in my own company.

  Friday nights were ‘honeymoon nights’ and throughout the day, I worked at being as pretty and as desirable as any newly married woman. Unfortunately, Edmund often had to work very late at the bank on a Friday night and wouldn’t get back ’til the early hours, which was disappointing. He would make us wait until the next week on those occasions.

  Mrs Lowe visited, sometimes with Mr Lowe, mostly without. The first time she came, she looked around and I could feel her disappointment.

  ‘I thought it was the countryside.’

  ‘Well, it is, kind of.’

  But she soon got used to it, and to us, and brought up salmon rissoles and pork chops made by her housekeeper, which were both a help and an insult at the same time.

  I was a worshipper at the altar of routine. Predictability made me feel safe.

  And then, it happened, my period didn’t come on the day I expected it, nor the next day nor the one after that. I started to ache; my breasts felt heavy. My mouth felt metallic. I was nauseous but at the same time hungry. I was hungry but off my food. Unmistakable symptoms. The next stage of our marriage. It would involve change, yes, but it was the change I had long been waiting for.

  I told Edmund’s mother even before I saw the doctor. I thought she might have already guessed, but she hadn’t. She was far more surprised than I’d expected, shocked even, but she said she was pleased: Lord and Lady Astor would be charmed – I’d made quite the impression at my wedding, apparently.

  When I told Edmund, the smile on his handsome face made everything about our awkward, clumsy, post-war marriage worthwhile. This was how it was meant to be. We were back to the life we would have been leading if it hadn’t been for that horrible, cumbersome war. Our rightful lives had been restored.

  * * *

  When Olive eventually came back from Belgium, although I couldn’t put my finger on what exactly it was, she was different again. Her tone had grown knowing and wise. She talked in short sentences, then looked at me with a cynical raised eyebrow. She was staying with our father in London, and I spent a pleasant afternoon with them and Aunt Cecily. Olive always preferred to get me alone – without dull Edmund. I replied defensively, ‘I am often without Edmund, it’s not like we are joined at the hip, but he is my husband.’

  ‘More’s the pity,’ she said. ‘Only joking, Vi!’

  She taught me some of the Chinese words she had picked up out there, for ‘Hello,’ ‘Thank you’ and ‘You’re welcome’.

  I said, ‘What is the likelihood of my needing Chinese in Hinckley?’ and she said, ‘You never know, Vivi, do you?’

  But there was something else about her that was different, not just her increased vocabulary, nor her mannerisms; there was something like a fizz, an electricity about her. It seemed to me that she was sizzling with something. At first, I wondered if she were ill. I asked her to visit, but she said she was spending the month on the Isle of Wight. ‘With great friends,’ she said. I let her get on with it, of course, and pretended I wasn’t hurt, but then about six weeks later, she wrote saying she was back in London and she was bored, bored, bored, everybody who mattered had either died or had left, and could she please, pretty please, come and stay? I could have reminded her about dull Edmund, but I was always delighted to see her, and I was also intrigued about the source of her new euphoria, so of course I said an emphatic yes.

  Edmund was disgruntled, but now that I was with child he had softened. Besides, it meant he could stay out longer without my bothering him.

  * * *

  I was full of excitement when I met Olive at Hinckley station. I couldn’t wait to tell her my pregnancy news. It affected her too: my darling little sister would be the baby’s aunty and I couldn’t think of a better person for the role. She was carrying one large suitcase and her Gladstone bag. As we walked up to the house, she was shaking her head. ‘Could you have chosen anywhere more remote?’

  ‘It’s not as remote as the Isle of Wight!’ I responded defensively. ‘We’re only down the road from the city.’

  ‘Yes, but it’s nothing like London, is it?’

  I had lots of questions, but she kept saying, ‘Later, I’ll tell you everything later.’

  So, there was something to tell?

  She was wearing a black hat, and a dark blue dress that clung to her narrow hips. She looked quite the sophisticated woman for once. She usually hated comments on her appearance, but I found, without all the questions, I didn’t have much else to say.

  ‘I do like your hat, O!’

  ‘This ol’ thing?’ She smiled to herself. ‘A friend lent it to me.’

  ‘Must be a good friend.’

  She shrugged, still grinning.

  ‘It suits you,’ I continued.

  She didn’t approve of the house, I could feel it. It was too mundane, too ordinary for Olive. ‘A cul-de-sac, eh?’ she said mockingly. I could almost see her thinking, And that’s the only French thing about it.

  I began to feel irritated. I had been so looking forward to seeing her. I wished she could make herself more agreeable. I supposed she’d have preferred a tin hut in no-man’s-land with only Chinese labourers and English film-makers for company?

  I imagine she found it plain. I told her that the wall-to-wall carpets were Father’s wedding gift to us, and she breathed, ‘How wonderful!’

  ‘Are you being sarcastic?’ I asked, and she responded, more to herself than to me, ‘No, carpets are wonderful, aren’t they?’ And then she said, ‘I hear congratulations are in order.’

  ‘You know?!’

  Aunt Cecily had only gone and told her. I couldn’t help but be annoyed with my aunt about that – although I would never say so. It was my news to announce, wasn’t it? I had a sense that I was going to have even less control over my life now. I had already become the business of other people more than I had ever been before.

  ‘It’s what you always wanted, isn’t it, Vivi, Edmund’s children? The Lowe family offspring.’

  ‘Ye-es…’ I didn’t like the way she put it.

  ‘Very well done then.’

  She was more effusive about the carpets.

  I made her tea, taking care to make it weak and not too milky the way I remembered she liked it, and I told myself to buckle up, everything was still going to be jolly. We were going to a Benjamin Britten concert in town the next evening. I had planned a few gentle walks; the doctor had told me that light exercise was just the ticket.

  Mostly, I was really looking forward to our getting to know each other again. To spend time together again. Olive would be a brilliant aunty. Maybe not when the baby was very little, but once they were up and running, I knew Olive would be my perfect ally. She was a rock, if I’d let her be.

  I smiled at her and she smiled back at me and I took in her face – like mine, but not like mine.

  ‘Actually, Vivi, I have some news as well.’

  ‘You do?’

  So, there was something.

  ‘You’ve probably guessed it.’

  ‘I haven’t,’ I said, ‘tell me?’

  ‘Well, it just so happens, I met someone in Belgium.’

  I knew it!

  ‘I’m so pleased!’ I gushed.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘So am I.’

  But we had not reached the end of the story. Olive was standing, polishing an apple with her sleeve, but there was something else in the kitchen, a tension emanating from her. There was more to this announcement than met the eye. There was a complication, I felt it. I put my hand over my stomach. I was just thin
king, He’s not married, is he? when she jutted out her chin and the words seemed to run away from her mouth:

  ‘And I think you’ll really like her.’

  She busied herself with the apple.

  I heard myself laugh, a solitary sound in the quiet room. ‘Oh, Olive, I thought you meant you had met someone’ – I cleared my throat – ‘romantically.’

  Finally, she slid her teeth into the skin. ‘That’s exactly what I meant, Vivi.’

  Then Edmund walked in, demanding to know what was for dinner. When he saw Olive, his good manners switched on like he had flicked on a switch. ‘Oh, hello, Olive, how wonderful to see you! And how was Belgium?’

  * * *

  We couldn’t talk about it, whatever it was, while Edmund was there. I waited for him to clear off to his shed. But of course, tonight was the one evening he wouldn’t go out. He was playing the good host; manners were important to him when it came to anyone but me. I felt suddenly hot and bothered and pretended to bury myself in my Agatha Christie novel.

  Olive sketched a glass. She said it was always good to go back to still life. She had asked if she could draw me, but I felt too feverish to keep still and refused. I think she thought I was annoyed with her. I was, kind of, but I also suddenly felt so strange, I could hardly hold my head up.

  She asked me to play something on the piano, but I didn’t feel in the mood. I was sweating so much, I could see the underarms of my dress darkening. I had never perspired that much, not even when loading dead bodies into the ambulance in the midday heat in France.

  We needed background noise. I put on the wireless, but it was one of those silly shows where if you don’t listen carefully, you haven’t got a hope of knowing what’s going on. I could hear Olive telling Edmund about Belgium – a very sanitised version of what she’d told me; no tin huts or movie-makers featured – and I could hear him feigning interest, but it all felt very far away, very distant. I didn’t think they were just three feet away across the room. She offered to teach him some Chinese, and I heard him say, ‘Not much call for it in these parts, I’m happy to say!’ and it felt like everything was in slow motion.

  I saw the hurt look on her face, and her weak attempt to cover it up.

  ‘It’s a fascinating language, Edmund, it really is.’

  My cheeks were flaming, heat like an explosion. I was waiting for O and me to be alone again. It wasn’t until half past ten that I realised that Edmund didn’t intend to leave us alone – that this was quite deliberate – and I would have to take measures.

  ‘Let’s go up.’

  How could she turn our spare room into her mess so quickly? It looked like she had opened her suitcase, dropped everything onto the floor and then rummaged it around. Papers were scattered over the new carpet. Had she sharpened pencils onto the floor? I felt achy, hot and cold. And resentful. She treated everything with contempt, didn’t she? That was obvious. She’d pulled the curtains, but even that was half-hearted; she’d left a big space in the middle for the street light to get in.

  ‘Can we talk about what happened in Belgium?’

  ‘If you like,’ she said smugly. Kneeling on the floor, she picked up her papers and put them in a pile. I sat on the bed. I didn’t mean to, but I couldn’t stand up for much longer.

  ‘Olive, how do you mean, I would like “her”? I don’t understand.’

  She chuckled to herself. ‘No, I knew you wouldn’t.’

  ‘Tell me then.’

  ‘She understands me.’

  My mouth was dry. I was torn between letting rip at Olive and trying to keep a lid on my emotions in order to find out more. What – what was going on?

  ‘I understand you.’

  She laughed. A cruel laugh.

  ‘She makes me feel happy. It’s as simple as that. She makes me feel special. She lost someone she loves too, during the war.’

  ‘Everyone did,’ I said shortly.

  ‘Not all of us by choice, Vivi.’ She stared at me brutally.

  ‘How do you mean?’ I couldn’t stop shivering.

  ‘Some of us had our loved ones ripped away from us, but some merely skipped away from them and didn’t even look back.’

  Did she mean me? Did she mean me and Sam? My stomach hurt. I felt like she had been kicking me. But surely she understood that Sam and I wouldn’t have, couldn’t have, gone very far. We came from such different worlds. Everyone would have been shocked and devastated and I couldn’t do that to them. And then Edmund had been ill… Olive was still talking, but I had stopped listening. I tried to tune in once again.

  ‘And she’s a great person, once you get to know her.’

  ‘I don’t want to know her!’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  Having picked up everything on the floor, Olive began to get changed. She stood in front of me and unzipped, pulled down and removed her clothes. Somehow, the fact that she didn’t cover up, she didn’t have any shame, felt like she was making another statement. Finally, she stood in front of me, defiant in her nightdress and bare feet. Her toenails were long and unkempt. The hairs on her legs were like a soft animal down in the lamplight.

  ‘You’ll be outside of everything, Olive. Don’t you understand that?’

  The moment I said it, I felt a terrible shooting pain in my stomach and at the same time an incredible surge of both heat and chill.

  She didn’t notice. How could she? She shook her head, took a comb to her hair and did a cursory tidy-up. ‘Don’t you see? The very last thing I want is to be like you, Vivienne.’

  She gestured around her, the room that I had tried to make homely for her, the picture I had hung, which I had hoped said: I admire you.

  ‘As far as I can see, your life is really not all that wonderful.’

  I was being swept away by beating wings. I wanted to lie down there and then, to disappear.

  ‘And I don’t want to be with a man… any man.’

  I didn’t want to face it. I want to find common ground. I want to make everything okay.

  ‘But… but you were in love with Walter once, weren’t you? You mightn’t—’

  She shook her head fervently. ‘No, no, I wasn’t.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Poor, dear Walter,’ she said. She put down her comb on the windowsill. Long dark hairs were left between its teeth. ‘I was never in love with him, Vivi. I was in love with Mrs Ford,’ she said simply. ‘How could you not have known?’

  * * *

  I went to the lavatory and there was blood. So much blood. I ignored it, choosing bed and hoping for oblivion instead. Suddenly I was in so much pain, I wanted to cry out, but I didn’t want Olive or Edmund to know.

  But after about an hour, I think – difficult to tell – it got much worse; the pain and the blood were too much for me to cope with and I knocked on the door of Olive’s room. She was already up and pulling on her dressing gown. She must have heard me moaning. As she grabbed my wrists, I could see the fear in her eyes.

  ‘Vivi, what is it? What’s happening? Is it the baby?’

  I remember her leading me back to my bed.

  Her pale face peering into mine, seeking instruction. I didn’t want her then, but I needed her: I couldn’t face this alone.

  ‘I’ll get Edmund,’ she said.

  ‘No.’

  What good had Edmund ever been at anything?

  ‘I’ll call a doctor.’

  ‘NO.’

  There was a part of me that knew if a doctor came it would really be over and I wasn’t ready for that and I didn’t want that. And anyway, I trusted my sister to take care of me. I had seen her tenderly soothe the wounded, I knew she would see me through.

  * * *

  But in the morning, as the sun rose over the garden, and my thighs were stained with a netting of what looked like an absurd amount of blood, I felt weaker and weaker, and at the same time, I grew angry with her again, so when the doctor came and asked why he hadn’t been called earlier, I let her stand
there, palms raised in surrender, and I let her take the blame.

  And when he had finally left, I rallied myself and I told Olive to go away, please. I had had enough.

  She resisted. She only wanted to look after me. Let me, Vi, please. That idiot – she meant dull Edmund – wasn’t good enough, he only ever looked after himself.

  She had always hated him, and this gave me the pretext I needed to get rid of her.

  I shouted at her. I said she had done it, this was all her fault. Olive and her awful, disgusting news. I told her she was a liar. An animal. An aberration. I swore at her. Oh, the language I used makes me want to shrivel up and die when I think about it now.

  49

  1943 – Now

  One Saturday, as I’m looking out of the window wondering if Edmund is returning for lunch, I see Mr Burton arrive in a taxi. Ethel emerges from beside him. I haven’t seen her for a long time, and I want to find out how it’s going with the Land Army – Mrs Burton has little information to dispense about farm life, only that Ethel is having ‘a whale of a time’. I am about to barrel outside when I realise from her body language, from both their body language, that something isn’t right. Mr Burton’s head hangs low and his shoulders are slumped. Ethel Burton follows him in reluctantly, all big hair and scowling lipstick, folded arms in her thick wool coat.

  I hope there’s no bad news about Cyril Fellows. The North African Campaigns, horrendous fighting in the heat of the desert, have been long and painful for our boys.

  * * *

  I don’t see any of the Burtons over the weekend. I cook and prepare the house for the week and do sewing and knitting with the other WAVs at the village hall. Edmund doesn’t come home for lunch or dinner. I play the organ at the church services. Pearl doesn’t need help with letter-writing any more. She has to write an essay about meeting a famous person for afternoon tea. Have I ever met a famous person? Laughing, I tell her I nearly met the King of Belgium.