A Woman's Place (34 page)

‘Not yet,’ came the whispered reply.

Mr Arnold Grossman was the bank manager, a man looking earnestly for promotion to manager of a much larger branch and making sure his staff helped by behaving soberly and sensibly at all times and seeing that no mistakes occurred or that any slightest error was put right before it reached the ears of Head Office.

‘I’m plucking up courage to tell him,’ Bertram went on, still in a whisper, which made George smile – a man willing to fight for his country yet scared out of his wits by his boss.

At the same time he felt a sudden sense of loneliness. He and Bertram Miller had become good colleagues over the years, sharing a beer or two in a nearby pub and something stronger prior to bank holidays. The rest of the staff, including the assistant manager, consisted of four older men, an office boy, a young lady on the switchboard and several in the typing room. It didn’t bear thinking about being the only young man to be left here.

At lunchtime, instead of eating his sandwich, he hurried down to a hastily set-up recruiting place he remembered passing the day before and added his name to a lengthy list, returning to bide his time before conveying his actions to his manager.

When he told Bertram what he’d done, the man leaped up, suddenly a soldier and afraid of no one, to shake his hand, congratulating him and nodding at Grossman who’d poked his face around his open office door at this interruption to the calm of his branch. Obviously Bertram Miller had told him of his deed. And now another of his staff was off. In a way George felt utter relief at not having had to break the news himself.

Eveline opened her door to a distraught Connie who almost fell into her arms.

‘Eveline, what am I to do? George is going off to war!’ She whimpered as Eveline held her, unsure how to cope with this sudden need for comfort. ‘He told me last night and we had the most awful row. He’d gone to the recruiting office yesterday afternoon and signed up. He’s been doing so well at the bank. He’ll never get promotion now, leaving to go off to fight. And he could be killed. He gave no thought whatsoever that he’ll be leaving behind a wife and child. Not even consulting me. How could he?’

Eveline, with her arms round her, patted the heaving shoulders. ‘My Albert’s signed on too,’ she said quietly.

The words brought home all that had been bottled up inside her since Albert’s news, something she’d not dared to confront until this moment – fear for his life, how she and Helena would fare without him and the sudden transition from the certainty of a cosy future to no future at all should he die in battle.

Came the realisation that tomorrow he’d be off – no more coming home at midday for his dinner, no more sitting in his armchair opposite hers of an evening, reading his paper. No more making him cups of tea or evening cocoa, agreeing it was time for bed, kissing goodnight, lying next to him and feeling his body warm against hers, the comfort of his arms about her when they made love. No more waking up and shaking him, getting his breakfast, seeing him off to work. No more …

Seconds later she too was sobbing her heart out, her head resting heavily against Connie’s.

The British Expeditionary Force had been the first to be sent into Belgium and to stop the enemy reaching France. Everyone felt they would soon turn the Kaiser back from his intent and avidly followed newspaper reports of the bitter struggle being waged for the Belgian town of Mons.

The BEF were mostly seasoned soldiers, and raw recruits like Albert would be trained at home before being sent out, for which Eveline breathed a sigh of relief.

Her relief soon turned, like everyone else’s, to disbelief as the news came of heavy British losses, the British Expeditionary Force compelled to pull back before overwhelming enemy numbers. It seemed the German forces had been halted only temporarily. It was disheartening but people at home were convinced the BEF retreat too would be only temporary.

‘Consolidating their position afore their big push,’ said the seventy-nine-year-old husband of one of Eveline’s neighbours, and he should know, as an old soldier and all, a veteran of the Crimean War. ‘Wounded in the Battle of Inkerman, y’know. No, that’s what they’s doin’, consolidating their position.’

By the end of August Belgium had been practically overrun, the Germans crossing the Meuse, the French forced to retreat to the Somme, the last barrier before Paris. Alarm spread through England as well as France as bloody battles raged along an ever-shifting line all the way to Alsace in the south. Thoughts of teaching this enemy a lesson dissipating, bleak faces took on resolute looks, determined not to let this unbelievable defeat get them down.

After her first outburst of weakness Connie had rallied amazingly, and Eveline assumed it had been the shock of George enlisting without even telling her. While she had suppressed her own shock, Connie’s had come out in a gush. She wondered who’d been the better served.

‘The WSPU have set up a canteen in Cheshire Street for the Belgian refugees coming here, and the poorer families of men who’ve gone to fight,’ Connie told her a few days later. ‘I’ve volunteered to help. I really do need to do something to keep my mind occupied with George gone.’

‘What about Rebecca?’ Eveline asked immediately.

Connie had set her mind working. The suffragettes, no longer at odds with the government, had already begun to turn their energy to helping it. In fact Mrs Pankhurst had suddenly become a political champion of the very people she’d once opposed, speaking of ‘the common scourge!’, the WSPU committed to mobilising women to making recruitment speeches, handing out white feathers to young men not yet in uniform, manning canteens, organising jumble sales for the poor left to shift for themselves, and sewing centres where women could knit mittens, scarves and balaclavas for their fighting men – in case the war did go into winter rather than the few months being predicted.

The George Street branch had now closed, many of its members ready to turn their hands to whatever was required of them elsewhere. She could do that too, and like Connie help combat her own fears for Albert’s safety if he were sent to the front. But the idea of her and Connie taking turns again to look after each other’s daughters didn’t appeal that much and she didn’t want to start imposing on Gran again.

‘I asked them about Rebecca,’ Connie said. ‘They didn’t mind my bringing her so long as she’s no bother. I shall give her plenty of things to play with to keep her occupied. She’s well behaved.’ That was true. ‘All that matters is that we do our bit. It’s ironic really – a month or so ago we were reaping the government’s condemnation, now we have its blessing.’

Connie’s laugh as she said it was a deal more brighter than it had been for days. Eveline smiled but her mind was more on the reaction to another child being toted along, the place turned into some sort of nursery. One might be all right, but more than one? ‘Couldn’t it be dangerous,’ she said, ‘if there were children running about with hot food being served?’

‘It isn’t only a canteen,’ Connie said brightly. ‘The workroom is in the back for us to knit or sew. That’s what I’m going to do. I’d be no good pouring soup into bowls and cutting up mounds of bread and margarine, and I couldn’t bear handling other people’s slops and uneaten food.’

Despite her years in the East End, much of the fastidiousness of her upbringing still clung to her.

‘It will be so nice just chatting about ordinary things rather than about processions and protests,’ she went on enthusiastically. ‘I’m going along this afternoon. Perhaps we could go together.’

Eveline nodded readily and just hoped they wouldn’t object to another little four-year-old being there.

A few evenings later, not long after Prime Minister Asquith had called for another 500,000 men to sign up for the army, which would put at least a million men in the field, Eveline opened her door to a firm knock to find Albert standing there.

For a moment she couldn’t speak. Seeing him in uniform, grinning, looking self-assured and different, sent her hands to her lips. Then finding her voice in a squeal of delirious joy, she threw herself into his arms.

Managing to get himself into the flat and calming her ecstatic tears, he was able to tell her that some recruits were being allowed to live at home if they were within a certain travelling distance of their unit and that he had managed to wangle himself on the list. I’ll be getting two shillings a day board and lodging,’ he said proudly, ‘on top of me one shilling a day.’

Eveline knew how little his army pay was, but hearing it spoken was humiliating after the financially glowing future that had been promised for them. She’d refrained from asking how on earth she and Helena were going to survive on an army wife’s allowance when he’d first told her what he had done, and she didn’t mention it now, only too glad to have him here.

The last thing she wanted was for him to worry about her. Hard enough avoiding him seeing how she felt about the situation in which his eagerness to sign up had left her. While she hated feeling that the blame lay at his feet, it nagged at her.

There was only one thing for it, she’d have to look for a job. She had a skill with figures and could probably get a job easily enough, but what about Helena? She could ask Gran, but Gran wasn’t getting any younger even if she still seemed as sprightly as ever. Albert should never have put this burden on her. And yes, she did blame him, but she loved him and having him home, if only for a few hours at night, if only for a short while, was all she could ask at this moment.

Making love that night felt like one of the best things that had ever happened to her, except that come morning it was marred by one thought: what if she conceived now? Albert would not be here – being boarded at home was only a temporary thing – so she would have to manage all alone and with little money to feed her and Helena, much less another mouth. Wouldn’t it be just ironic if after all these years not conceiving, when it had been so easy that first time, she should do so now? Sometimes she felt fortune never turned its face to her for long.

As she predicted, Albert’s presence at home didn’t last long, just three weeks, with part of that time spent round his Mum’s.

Saying goodbye again was far worse the second time round. She had counted her blessings when Connie’s George hadn’t yet got leave but she now wondered if Connie hadn’t been the more fortunate in not having to go through the intensified pain of saying goodbye a second time.

When he left this time, the loneliness was almost more than she could bear and she sank herself into her canteen work, dishing out the bowls of soup and pieces of bread, mugs of tea and, something the fastidious Connie cringed at doing, gathering up empty bowls and mugs to wash in quickly-greying, often lukewarm water that fast developed an oily yellow scum despite all the soda she put in to combat it.

‘I’m sorry,’ Connie said time after time, ‘I just can’t face it. I don’t mind what else I do, sweeping, cleaning, ladling out food and helping in any other way in between knitting, but after a while the sight of that awful washing-up water makes me want to heave.’

She could understand that, and made allowances. No one could say Connie didn’t pull her weight. She’d go home exhausted at times, running about doing this, doing that, taking on any other chore but washing up. For a gently brought up girl, it was remarkable how she knuckled down to all the hard work as well as keeping an eye on Rebecca at the same time.

Eveline didn’t have that trouble. Most of the time Gran looked after Helena. ‘I wouldn’t hear of ’er being made to sit in a pushchair all that time.’

‘She’d be all right there, Gran,’ Eveline said. ‘It’s only for a morning, or an afternoon.’

‘Morning or afternoon, nearly five hours is too long to expect a child of four to be cooped up in one place. She needs to run about. She can run about ’ere, love. I can cope. So long as I only ’ave the one to deal with.’

So that was it. Gran wasn’t prepared to look after two children any more, and that was only to be expected now Gran was in her mid-seventies. She only hoped Connie wouldn’t feel she was being pushed aside, but she was sure she’d understand.

Obviously Connie did. She seemed content enough to have Rebecca by her side. What did upset her was the way this war was going. It upset Eveline too – the whole nation, come to that. But she kept her fears to herself. It wasn’t good to go around lamenting.

The Sunday she’d seen Albert off had brought news that the British Expeditionary Force of seventy thousand men, intended to show the Kaiser what was what, had met huge enemy resistance and had been forced to retreat, with civilians in the Belgian town of Mons attending church service caught in crossfire.

A week later the BEF was reported to be suffering heavy casualties but for the moment the enemy, having swept over most of Belgium and across the River Meuse, forcing a French retreat, had been halted, for which the nation gave silent thanks.

Eveline herself gave thanks that Albert and George were still in this country, both having been put in the same regiment, a government decision to keep brothers, friends, even men of the same neighbourhood or workplace together for the sake of morale.

It was little consolation to Connie. ‘I’m so frightened,’ she said to Eveline. ‘What if they decide to send them to France? From what we hear, our lads there are being slaughtered by the Boche. I’ve had no letter from George this week. I couldn’t bear to think he could already be out there.’

Eveline felt her impatience flare. Albert was in the same danger as George. Connie wasn’t the only one to fear for her man’s safety – there were thousands of women in the same plight with the same anxieties.

‘They won’t send them yet,’ she said a little irritably, adding with a ring of hope in her tone, ‘They have to be trained before they go into battle – all soldiers have to have that. By that time the war could be over.’

But Connie wasn’t at all comforted. ‘What if our forces are still being beaten back and the war doesn’t end soon? I’m so frightened for George.’