When I Was Yours

by Lizzie Page

  I must have missed half the service thinking about those days in France. When I next looked up, Father’s coffin was being carried up and then out, out to the grounds. I felt a strange relief. I had seen the deaths of too many people to be heartbroken now: I loved my father very, very much but there were worse things than a mostly peaceful passing.

  In the churchyard, out of nowhere, I thought of Mrs Ford and Walter, taken prematurely, and how Olive had broken down in my arms.

  I still couldn’t believe it wasn’t Walter she had loved all those years.

  * * *

  It was just Olive, Edmund and me who went back to Father’s house. Father’s business friends slipped away after more sorrowful handshakes. The two men who had bought his company kindly told me all was going well – a credit to my father. Aunt Cecily had to hasten back to Uncle Toby and Edmund’s parents decided to go home. The weather, you see.

  ‘They’re taking over the country,’ was Edmund’s mother’s parting shot.

  This piqued Olive’s interest. ‘What did she mean?’

  I covered for Edmund’s mother. I don’t know why; maybe because she was my family now. Plus, she had been so awfully good with the lilies and the doctor.

  ‘Grey squirrels?’ I suggested.

  * * *

  Molly had prepared enough food for ten. It made a sorry sight: that beautifully displayed stand with its delicious-looking cake at the centre, and our best napkins in their shiny silver rings. That morning, Aunt Cecily had bizarrely sent round dominoes and some playing cards to entertain us. Perhaps she had forgotten that two of ‘the children’ – Richard and Christopher – were dead, and of those of us who remained – Edmund, Olive and me – none of us were keen on board games. They were stacked haphazardly on my father’s display cabinet.

  Even Edmund didn’t want to stay. He slipped away, minutes after we got back. When I asked where he was going, he looked sheepish. He said, in a low voice, he had an appointment with the estate agents about putting Father’s house on the market. ‘Don’t look like that, Vivienne, there’s absolutely no point waiting.’

  * * *

  The tower of cake made me feel small. I was glad Olive had come, but I couldn’t help but feel resentment gnawing at me.

  ‘So, why is it over?’ I pressed.

  She shrugged, helping herself to the seedy cake. She was the only person I knew who would eat plain seedy cake voluntarily. Everyone else hated it.

  ‘She decided to get married instead.’

  ‘Married?’ I repeated. ‘Really?’ This most mundane of reasons was beyond my wildest imaginings somehow. Out there, somewhere in the universe, was a married woman who had been in a romantic relationship with my sister. I couldn’t make head nor tail of it.

  ‘Is that something you’d consider as well then?’ I asked throatily. ‘In the future?’

  She stared at me, balancing her tiny silver cake fork in one hand, a large china plate in the other. Her face was pale, the shadows under her eyes darker than ever. I hadn’t realised it before, but she really appeared quite out of sorts.

  ‘Why would I?’

  ‘Look, Olive, it’s just… can’t you be normal? Think about it. You could move nearby and our children could grow up together and they’d be cousins. Don’t you think that would be wonderful? We could be a proper family.’

  She sneered at me. ‘When will you ever learn?’ She took one bite of cake, chewed it furiously, then slammed the plate down and left the room.

  I sat staring into nothing for a while, then I got up to empty my father’s wardrobes by myself. It was true: there was no point in waiting.

  51

  1943 – Now

  Sam suggests coming to Leicester. Not Hinckley itself, obviously, but somewhere nearby. I say no. But London isn’t safe to meet either, for very different reasons. We decide on Peterborough. As the train pulls in, I think, this is a terrible mistake. Not just Peterborough, not just Sam. Everything. But I lean on Pearl, who, oblivious to my burgeoning fears, is simply thrilled at seeing her favourite uncle again. She has drawings to show him, and a poem to recite.

  There are soldiers everywhere, even here. Some of them are Americans. We can hear their accents and we can see their jaws move rhythmically, and Pearl asks, ‘What is that they’re doing?’

  I explain that they are chewing gum, and she says, ‘Can I have some?’ and one man overhears and says, ‘Sure, kid.’

  He is a good-looking soul with shiny white teeth and a square jaw. Mesmerised, Pearl asks, ‘Are you a movie star?’, which makes him laugh loudly, and say, ‘You’ve made my day, kid.’

  My day is not made. I am petrified, and my heart is racing. And then here he is, Sam Isaac, standing in front of us, a massive hug for Pearl and a formal shake of the hand for me.

  We go to the railway café as arranged. I have brought books, pens and papers for Pearl, tools to keep her occupied. Sam goes to the counter to order and I can’t keep my eyes off him. Please don’t think I look old, I think. But I know I do. My once extraordinary skin is less than ordinary now. I’ve kept my figure, just, rationing hasn’t harmed it, but my body looks very different under my clothes. What am I thinking? At least I look better than the last time he saw me, chasing dogs.

  ‘Tea, is it, Vivi?’

  ‘Please.’

  I remind myself not to stare at him. On the table opposite, I can read the front page of the paper: Rome is being bombed by the Allies. I think of Mrs Fraser, the dress shop owner’s daughter, telling everyone the ‘truth’ about Italy. I try not to think of Olive saying ‘bellissimo!’ to everything.

  We don’t speak for a while; I am just breathing in the peculiar strangeness of our being there. The relief that I felt that he had come to meet us was quickly replaced with anxiety again. Pearl is offering him her drawing: her latest thing is to draw houses being bombed, and aeroplanes. Little stick men lie injured on the ground. Apparently the ‘townies’ or evacuees are always producing work like this. To divert her, I taught Pearl how to do Spitfires instead. They look a bit like flying whales but they are better than they were.

  Sam says, ‘Here, hand it over, Pearlie.’ That’s what he calls her: Pearlie, or Pearlie Girl. He draws a biplane in the sky.

  ‘That’s brilliant, Uncle Sam!’

  ‘I used to fly them.’ Sam raises his eyes to me but I can’t trust myself to speak. ‘And crash them, occasionally.’

  Pearl is still chewing her gum madly. When her squash arrives, she carefully takes out the gum and puts it in the ashtray ‘for later’. I wrinkle up my nose at her. Manners! She starts another picture obliviously.

  ‘So?’

  Was this a stupid idea? What was it actually for? Why am I here? I could have just let him pick her up, take her on a day out like last time. There was no need to involve me. And yet…

  Sam is very gentle with Pearl. They chat, chat and chat. He tells me about the rest of their family and Pearl’s brothers who are growing up so fast. He says he flew reconnaissance planes until the war ended and then he came back to live in London. Over the years, he built up a clothing factory. Now – at this he grimaces slightly – the only dresses they make are battledress. He says as soon as war broke out, he volunteered for the Air Force, the Navy, even the Army, but not one of them would take him on.

  I can see how much this hurts him.

  All they will let him be is an ARP warden.

  ‘That’s tough work though, isn’t it?’ I say, thinking of Mr Burton covered in the ashes of Coventry and how Mrs Burton, making me promise never to tell a soul, said he cries about it every night.

  ‘Yes,’ he says grimly. ‘But I’d do anything to do active service again.’

  ‘And… and do you have any children of your own?’ I ask, aware of how strangled my voice sounds.

  He shakes his head. Licks his lips, then sips his tea. I’ve got to stop watching him like this. I’m like a scavenger haunting a carcass.

  ‘And… and… are you married,
Sam?’ Heart beating. Banging. Waiting. Oh God. Why would it matter if he’s married or not? How dare I ask!

  He is weighing out his words in that steady way he has. Pearl is now writing postcards. Thoughtfully, she chews the pen. ‘How do you spell Peterborough?’

  ‘No,’ says Sam. ‘No, I’m not.’

  ‘P-E-T-E-R-B-O-R-O-U-G-H,’ I spell out in a new, high-pitched tone. ‘Ooh, it’s a difficult one!’ I am full of lightness. I could spell anything now!

  ‘What about your poem, Pearl? Are you going to recite it for Sa— your uncle?’

  Pearl has been practising her old favourite, ‘The Owl and the Pussy-Cat’, for days.

  ‘I’ve got another one now.’

  Okay…

  She begins. ‘How do I love thee—’ It is one of my favourites. She must have taken it from my bookshelf.

  ‘No,’ I blurt out. ‘Not that one!’

  She looks up, disappointment and confusion in her eyes. She takes Sam’s tea and slurps it noisily. Sam looks between us.

  ‘What’s wrong with the other one, Pearl, the one you practised with Aunty Vivi?’

  ‘It’s too babyish.’

  Sam gets up, crouches down by her seat. ‘Babyish? Never! That owl and that pussy-cat are my old friends. I’ve been waiting to hear it all year.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘For a very long time.’

  And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood,

  With a ring at the end of his nose,

  His nose,

  His nose,

  With a ring at the end of his nose.

  We laugh, Sam and I, and he looks at me.

  ‘She’s brilliant,’ I say.

  ‘I think she’s got a brilliant host mother, haven’t you, Pearlie Girl?’ Sam blushes and so do I.

  * * *

  Sam takes out a Lucky Strike. He has a lighter – a Zippo, the ones the Americans love. We must remember at the same time.

  ‘Thank you for returning the picture,’ I say.

  He nods. ‘Olive was very talented.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Sam puts out his hand across the café table. It is there for the taking. I take it.

  * * *

  It’s time for our walk through the woods. This is what we said we came for. Pearl swings off our arms between us. These trees have been here since the beginning of time. We’re inconsequential nothings compared to them. Every time we see a squirrel, Pearl squeals with delight. We watch them run up trees and along the fallen leaves. We see them clinging to their winter stores.

  ‘Have you been happy?’ he asks me.

  Such a big question. Far too big a question for one answer, and far too big for one conversation, in one day. There have been moments of happiness, I suppose. There have been glimpses of it, there have been times when most things felt right, yes. Not most of the time, no.

  How can I tell him this?

  That I have made wrong choices at every fork in the road, that I have made choices to please other people, choices through the eyes of other people, never my own; and, even worse than that, that all those other people I had made choices for… it didn’t make a difference to their lives – only mine.

  He is talking more about his life after the war, the places he went.

  I am not listening to him as much as I should. I am staring at his face. Staring into his eyes. I can’t stop myself. I am falling in love with him all over again.

  52

  1924 – Then

  A few weeks after my father’s funeral, I had my second miscarriage. This time, it was more sadness than shock, mixed with the grief; there was more fear too. Perhaps this wasn’t ever going to work for me. Perhaps I couldn’t do this, perhaps there was something wrong with me. I rested and hated my body and hated Edmund and his body and I put the little things I had been collecting: a rattle, a bib, oh, silly things for a tiny one, out of sight.

  Aunt Cecily visited. Tears came to her eyes as she advised me. ‘Don’t put yourself through it again. There’s only so much a person can endure,’ she said, but I felt she was talking about herself more than me.

  Because we would try again, of course we would. Something had revealed itself to me over the last year. My marriage to Edmund was increasingly a joke but I would get something from it, I would, I would.

  Edmund and I only made love for the purposes of making a baby. I felt about intercourse, I imagine, like soldiers in the trenches thought about going into battle. I was all right until those moments just before: Eh up, time to go over the top.

  And I don’t think Edmund relished it any more than I did.

  ‘Do you have another woman?’ I once asked him afterwards, as he scrubbed himself down, in case there was a part of me left on him. ‘Or man?’

  He gave me a look of such disgust that I felt like shrinking under the covers.

  ‘It would explain a few things,’ I persisted. ‘It’s not unheard of.’

  ‘Maybe in the Mudie-Cooke family it isn’t,’ he hissed. The expression on his face! I think if I’d been a stranger in the street, he might have spat at me. ‘But not for the Lowes.’

  He left for his own room.

  * * *

  Once again, the person I leaned on most at that difficult time was Edmund’s mother: she had become surprisingly tender towards me. Whenever we went to London, she would insist I sit in the window seat with a crocheted blanket over me. She would ask Edmund questions about my health, my piano playing. He would shrug and prevaricate, but she would be interested. She lent me her Agatha Christie books and enjoyed talking about them. Oddly, given her position on foreigners, she had no qualms about Inspector Poirot.

  It felt so good to have someone on my side. Poor Aunt Cecily was increasingly entrenched in looking after Uncle Toby, and although I felt uncomfortable with some of Edmund’s mother’s opinions, to her surprise as well as mine she proved as good a mother-in-law as I had ever hoped for.

  * * *

  The next time it happened, the third time, I was six months gone. Further than I’d ever managed to get before. It made it better, it made it so much worse. I lay in the bath in a red so violent it reminded me of the worst nights in France, and I wondered if I mightn’t just die there right now. I couldn’t go on. I couldn’t see a way forward. I was drenched in despair.

  And then I got up, briskly towelled myself down, put on my dressing gown and shuffled to my bed.

  This time, they admitted me to hospital because the bleeding was so heavy. Later, Edmund stood at my bedside like a schoolboy summoned to the headmaster’s office who thinks he might get the cane but definitely doesn’t think he deserved it.

  He asked after my health and then in a low voice said, ‘It wasn’t meant to be, perhaps?’ and I nodded, hating him. What did he know how it was to carry a child, to love that child, to live, hope and dream for months, to then have it dashed upon the rocks?

  He knew nothing, that’s what.

  ‘I’ve got something to cheer you up, Vivienne.’

  He thinks anything is going to cheer me up now?

  ‘An automobile,’ he said proudly.

  ‘What? How?’

  ‘Father helped. We picked it up yesterday.’

  I wondered if he had waited for this to tell me, to ambush me with this when I was unable to get angry. I was too tired, too broken-hearted and too vulnerable to react.

  But no, surely he simply thought a car for the baby? That’s all. Don’t always look on the bad side, Vivienne, as Aunt Cecily might say. Edmund believes in the teachings of the Church. I don’t think you’ve got a lot to worry about, Vivienne.

  ‘I thought you’d be pleased,’ he said irritably. I heard: Your reactions are never correct, you can’t do anything right.

  And I found I couldn’t say, ‘I’ve just lost our baby, for goodness’ sake!’ It was impossible for me: I wasn’t built like that, I wasn’t in the habit. Years of not speaking up made it impossible to speak now. Instead, I pulled myself up on my hospital pillow
, so I could be upright, more wifely and less unattractive. I hoped to say it with my eyes, my best feature, as wide as anything, and I leaned in to pat him on the wrist: ‘I am pleased, darling, I’m just surprised too.’

  * * *

  I was on a ward with new mothers. Not as bad as it might sound – the babies were all in another room elsewhere, so I didn’t have to see the other women’s pink bundles of success. Small mercies. Occasionally, the new mothers were allowed to pad into the nursery, but sometimes they were kept away. The nurses were strict about visiting time.

  ‘We need appointments to see our own babies!’ one woman said to me. ‘I feel like a cow.’

  My breasts were engorged, great beached turtles lying on me. It felt like something stone hard was in one of them too and I didn’t know whether to mention it or not. The mothers – I was not a mother, not yet, not yet – were neither kind nor unkind. They were indifferent to me, they were weary and absorbed in their own journeys. I’d been on that same journey, but my destination had been so very different.

  Everything felt hopeless. My past and my future full of darkness. I realised I was in danger of sinking very low, but I couldn’t pull myself out.

  There will be a next time. I will not lose faith, I told myself.

  But I did.

  * * *

  Every afternoon, the matron brought me a jug of cold water and a glass.

  ‘You will get thirsty,’ she advised. ‘Drink.’

  I sipped obediently. I remembered holding water bottles towards shocked faces in the back of the ambulance. I thought about Olive and her painting of me and Sam, and suddenly I couldn’t stand to think of her. It seemed to me that there was nothing I could think about her that wasn’t painful, nothing that wouldn’t make my heart ache. And perhaps I had brought this agony on myself by my general inability to get anything right. This explanation seemed to fit. My being so bold as to go to France, living and working among all that disease, plus my inability to love Edmund the way a good wife should, explained why this was happening to me, why I couldn’t have a baby. It was punishment.