A Fall from Grace

by Maggie Ford

  As always, she forced herself to shut out that vision knowing it would only start her off condemning James yet again over his obvious reluctance to trace the child for her. She’d tell herself time and time again that she could understand his reluctance – his age, not his child, born out of wedlock – and tried not to think ill of him.

  James was not a selfish man. He saw to it that she had everything she wanted except that one thing she had hoped for which was the reason why she had consented to marry him. She would often hate herself for having done so and would find herself thinking, quite irrationally, that had she been married to Anthony, he’d have moved heaven and earth to get the child back.

  But it didn’t do to think of him too much. It only brought heartache visualizing him somewhere in the trenches facing enemy fire day after day. Other than the wound he’d referred to so lightly, there’d been no notification that he’d been wounded again, or worse – yet for how much longer? A batch of letters from him in June, coming all at once, brought blessed relief, before ceasing yet again. This time Madeleine compelled herself to stop worrying so much, though it was a miracle any man could live through the relentless slaughter going on over there.

  A few weeks later that thought seemed to her to have been the parent of a premonition or even an actual courting of disaster as Mabel, assisted by her maid, collapsed weeping into her brother-in-law’s arms. All Madeleine could do was look on helplessly, hardly able to breathe, as Mabel’s words came tumbling out.

  ‘They’ve told me my Anthony’s missing. They say they’ve no details. Oh, James, I don’t know what to do. What do I do?’

  Gently holding her to him, James eased her into an armchair where she promptly sank back as if she were an empty sack and broke out into a fresh smother of tears, her hands covering her face.

  He stood up to look bleakly towards Madeleine who could only turn away to hide her own tears. She heard him address Mabel’s maid.

  ‘Alice, go down to the kitchen, ask Cook to make some strong tea. And Merton, would you pour us all a stiff whisky for the time being.’

  He turned to his sister-in-law, pulling a chair up to sit beside her. ‘Did they tell you anything else?’

  ‘Nothing,’ was the muffled reply, ‘except their deep regrets in having to convey distressing news… Distressing! That’s all they care! They’ve no idea how a mother feels to… to…’

  Sobs engulfed the rest of her words and James having moved back from her to listen, now leaned nearer to her again.

  ‘They must have given you more details than that. Surely someone must have witnessed something, seen what happened. He couldn’t have been completely alone.’

  ‘They said he was seen going somewhere in the back of a truck but there was a mustard gas attack and no one saw him again. Anything could have happened. I don’t know what to do, who to ask.’

  Once more James gathered her to him as she broke down again in a limp heap, leaning forward almost on the point of falling out of the armchair.

  Madeleine stayed where she was, herself in need of someone’s arms about her. She wanted to run to James, have him hold her close, but all she could do was to stand there watching him soothe his sister-in-law as though she was more important to him than his own wife.

  If only he would look across to her, call to her, ‘come over here, my dear,’ and as she came, hold her tightly as well. If she had broken down, wailing like Mabel, he might have noticed her. But all she could do was to stand there, feeling empty and alone and crying silently inside.

  Thirteen

  Over the next few weeks, news of those over there being pushed back and back; Amiens destroyed, Germans taking Soissons, and Rheims threatened, thousands killed by mustard gas leaving countless families weeping for the loss of loved ones. Madeleine was conscious only of her own heartache.

  She had no right to be. Anthony wasn’t hers. But even as she prayed for his mother, she prayed for her own relief that somewhere he was alive, even a prisoner of war – anything but dead.

  James looked on her sadness as wholesome and purely sympathetic towards his sister-in-law’s distress.

  ‘She lost her poor husband, my brother. Were she to lose her only child as well…’ He let the rest die away, too dreadful to give voice to.

  Madeleine said nothing.

  Then in September came tremendously heartening news for the whole nation. Under the combined weight of the Canadians, French, American and British, the enemy was at last beginning to be steadily pushed back. The population suddenly perked up, hungrily scanned the newspapers for ever more heartening news as avidly as a sport enthusiast might follow his favourite cricket or football team. Yet still no news of Anthony.

  Useless, telling herself not to fret but sometimes she’d break down and weep silently in the privacy of her little sitting room, delaying coming downstairs too soon in case James noticed her bloodshot eyes and asked awkward questions. He was obviously as worried as she, but in a different way of course. He never spoke about it for which she was grateful. They went about their normal routine: he to his brokering business in the City most days, she to visit friends or attend one or two of the women’s meetings she’d joined over the years. Madeleine and James still went to the theatre or out to dinner with friends, though with the worsening food shortage some meals were served without meat even in the best of restaurants.

  These past few weeks James had taken to occasionally attending a Sunday morning church service, no doubt to pray for his nephew’s safe return. Otherwise they seemed to be merely marking time until news – any news – of Anthony came.

  On one occasion she persuaded James to take her to a picture palace, a pastime he found no interest in, to see a much lauded, spectacular motion picture, Intolerance which everyone here and in America was raving about. She had been overwhelmed by the grandeur of it but he hadn’t enjoyed it.

  ‘What pleasure is there,’ he’d said testily when they’d left, ‘in a story being continually interrupted so the audience can read what the actors are saying? And the noise, people constantly talking all round us.’

  But he had enjoyed the antics of Charlie Chaplin on the one other occasion he’d taken her – just to please her – admitting that it had been very entertaining. But she had been upset by the accompanying picture; an actor named Carlyle Blackwell had taken her by surprise, to her mind he had borne such a resemblance to Anthony that her heart seemed to collapse. All she could see was him, the thought of him no longer being in this world. She’d felt tears trickling down her cheeks, frightened James might notice, thankful that the film being a poignant one, she could use it as an excuse.

  It took weeks for the feeling of heartache to fade, yet whenever she thought of it, the face of the film actor, not that of Anthony, hovered in her mind, the two becoming confused though the ache in her heart hadn’t changed. She realized then that Anthony’s features were beginning to blur but all that did was to intensify her personal grief even more.

  This morning came a frantic ringing of the doorbell, the sound of a woman’s cries as their housemaid answered it. Seconds later Mabel burst in through the door to the morning room where Madeleine and James now stood, having leapt up at the sound of her frantic calling.

  Seeing her standing there, face streaked with tears, her driver having followed her in and now trying gently to stop her from collapsing altogether, Madeleine knew the worst had happened, fought to stem her own immediate grief, her knees feeling weak.

  James hurried forward, drawing his sister-in-law from the chauffeur’s hold, exclaiming, ‘My dear Mabel, what is it?’ although surely he must have guessed, came the silent, bitter reprimand in Madeleine’s head.

  ‘It’s Anthony! My dear, dear Anthony!’ She was babbling, her words hardly intelligible. ‘He was found… Oh, my God, James, they found him!’

  The words struck Madeleine’s half-paralysed mind with a terrifying image. Dead – buried by mud in some shell hole? What sort of state would a body be in
after being so long buried in mud?

  Mabel was still babbling on, her words disjointed: ‘… wounded they said, taken prisoner… not knowing who he was. His identification thing, missing… his uniform jacket…’

  Madeleine’s legs began to give way beneath her. Wounded! How bad? Limbs lost? She sank to her knees as if in prayer but no one noticed. James had his attention on helping his sister-in-law to a chair, Mabel’s driver trying to assist, the maid standing as if paralysed by the door staring at the trio.

  James was saying, ‘My dear, wonderful news! I’m so happy for you, so relieved. We all are. Have they told you any more? Are they sending him home? But it’s absolutely wonderful news, Madeleine, don’t you think?’

  Already back on her on her feet as he looked towards her for her response, Madeleine realized he had not even noticed her partial collapse. She smiled, her eyes still filled with tears but that was to be expected.

  ‘Absolutely wonderful,’ she managed to echo.

  What she wanted was to run to her bedroom, throw herself on her bed and cry her heart out in gratitude. Instead she just gazed at her sister-in-law still weeping with relief. No one must ever guess how deep was her own relief.

  * * *

  Anthony was home ‘to convalesce’ they were told, pointing to the fact that as soon as he was well enough he’d be sent back; this time maybe never to return. Madeleine wondered which was worse, her earlier fear of his having been killed or that he might yet be. What did they care, so long as even one could be returned to the front line in a bid to defeat the enemy?

  He looked thin. He’d always been lean but was now even leaner, withdrawn, remote. She and James went frequently to see him, she for her part needing to see him as often as she could while she could.

  ‘He needs to see as much of his family as he can while he’s still at home,’ she told him when he expressed the opinion that his nephew might not want them popping in and out so much.

  ‘He needs to spend his time quietly, with his mother,’ James said. But she’d had a ready reply.

  ‘Seeing others might help him to stop thinking about what he’s been through,’ she argued, relieved as James conceded that she might be right.

  It was hard to talk to him. His old vivacity had gone. He spoke very little of his experience, saying he hadn’t known much about it other than a vague memory of being flung from a truck by an explosion and coming to in a makeshift hospital, his leg in a splint.

  Any more than that he wouldn’t say and they tactfully didn’t push him. He did mention being treated well enough in the German field hospital before finding himself suddenly freed, their front line overrun, the Germans falling back and not prepared to take wounded POWs with them. Dumped along with the rest, the Germans taking only their own wounded, they were left to themselves under a few shreds of canvas in pouring rain. Two days later the Americans came and within days he was being sent home to England.

  ‘So here I am, back safe and sound,’ he ended lightly with a faint trace of his old self, though to Madeleine it sounded slightly forced.

  She wanted to go and fold her arms around him, hold him close to her, but of course she couldn’t. As he sat in his chair, his-half healed leg still in plaster stuck out in front of him, one hand on the stick he still needed to use, he hardly ever seemed to look at her. But his gaze was usually trained on the floor anyway as if to avoid having to look directly at anyone.

  She just hoped this evasion of eye contact wouldn’t last too long. It wasn’t like him, not as she first recalled him. Nor did it last, although she felt the meeting of eyes was being achieved with an enormous effort.

  Over the next ten days in his mother’s loving care and the healing comfort of home he did in fact begin to perk up faster than she’d anticipated, so that by the end of that second week he was virtually back to his old self. If anything, so it seemed to her, far livelier than before he’d been sent away, yet it made her feel that much of it was being put on. How did he really feel inside?

  The next few days, with James at his office, she took to visiting on her own, sitting talking to him and his mother for an hour or two before saying goodbye and returning home. She said nothing of it to James and he was too busy to ask how her day had gone, usually going upstairs to do a little more work in his office at home. By the time he joined her for their evening meal it had slipped his mind to ask. If he had, she would probably have told him the truth, recalling the time she’d lied when she’d gone to seek out her father.

  Even so, when she and James went on the Sunday, her insides had clenched up the whole afternoon lest Anthony or his mother happened to refer to her solitary visits. But Anthony seemed to have drawn into himself again, his mother more interested in the progress of the war with its ever more heartening news coming daily from the Western Front, increasing hopes of it being over within months. Her worry of course was her Anthony being sent back when he recovered enough.

  ‘Next time it could be for good,’ she said now, tears beginning to flood her eyes as she looked towards him in her misery. ‘Next time he may never come back to us.’

  It lay heavy on all their hearts even though he chided her in that newly acquired light but cynical, mirthless tone of his.

  ‘For God’s sake, mother! We’ve got Fritz on the run. In a month or two he’ll be sneaking back to the fatherland, tail between his legs. So what’s the point sending me back out there? Or is that what you want so you can tear your clothes in grief and have another bloody good lament?’

  For reply, Mabel leapt up and fled the room, wailing that he was being deliberately cruel to her just to make himself feel better.

  Madeleine ran after her, found her in the hall, and put her arms about her. ‘He didn’t mean it,’ she soothed, as Mabel sobbed on her shoulder. ‘It isn’t only his leg that was wounded. It’ll probably take a long time for him to forget what he has been through – a long time for many of them I should imagine – if ever. You must forgive him – try not to take to heart the things he says. He doesn’t mean them.’

  He must have made quite a few insensitive remarks when they’d not been there and her heart went out more to him than his mother even though she was obliged to stifle the hurt in her breast when he made remarks like that. For in all truth it was the one who found the need to resort to such uncharacteristic remarks who suffered most, deep inside, unable to escape the visions that haunted them.

  She said as much as she helped his mother dry her tears and led her gently back into the room – and it seemed to do some good. Even so, she was almost glad to get away, for the first time feeling ill at ease in his company.

  ‘I think we may be outstaying our welcome,’ James said as they came away. ‘Best to leave him to his mother next weekend, don’t you think, my dear.’

  She voiced her agreement but resolved to keep visiting on her own during the week. Anthony seemed a different person when she visited alone, almost like his old cheerful self, at least on the surface. It was Thursday, her third visit this week. Today, ignoring the leaden November skies, she found him even more cheery and talkative than she had dared hope.

  ‘You know, Maddie, I look forward so much to your visiting,’ he said as his mother left the room to have a word with their cook, his openness taking her by surprise.

  ‘Without you coming here to see me, I honestly don’t know what I’d do cooped up all day looking out at that bloody miserable November weather and having to listen to Mother constantly lamenting. Promise me, Maddie, you won’t stop coming?’

  ‘Of course I promise,’ she said with all her heart.

  Having him shorten her name sent a thrill surging through her. But it was the slow, quiet, almost deliberate way he had said it that increased the feeling even more though she merely smiled, lightly adding, ‘And I enjoy coming here too. I really do.’

  To which he had given a slow smile, one she was at a loss to interpret, leaving her wondering as his mother returned, what else he might have said had the
y been left alone for any further length of time.

  The following afternoon, she wasn’t sure why, but after giving Mabel the usual peck on the cheek as she made to leave, she went over to him still seated in the armchair and, bending, planted a swift kiss on his cheek as well.

  He looked up at her, a mischievous twinkle in his eyes, something she hadn’t seen since his homecoming. ‘Now then,’ he quipped lightly, ‘what’s all this sudden flirting?’

  But his hand had caught her arm and just for a moment the grip tightened, delaying her from drawing back.

  She gave a stupid giggle, instantly annoyed at hearing herself, and pulling her arm away, quickly moved back. But even as she did she saw what seemed to her like a message in his gaze that to her mind betrayed much more than mere banter. Confused she drew away.

  ‘I’d best be off,’ she said unnecessarily, gathering up her gloves and following Mabel out of the room. As she looked back she saw his gaze was following her and she knew her own had responded with a lingering look.

  In the hall, as Mabel’s maid held her coat for her to ease into, her mind still pondered his last look.

  Quickly she donned her hat, staring at her reflection in the hall mirror. It looked strained. Suddenly she drew in a sharp breath. ‘My handbag, I forgot it! I left it by the chair where I was sitting.’

  Without waiting for the maid to offer to get it for her, she hurried back leaving Mabel and the maid standing in the hall.

  ‘I forgot my handbag,’ she said to Anthony who looked startled at her sudden return.