A Woman's Place (45 page)

Eveline bit back her tears to stare at the child. In her own misery she hadn’t truly realised that Helena felt the loss as keenly as her. Children are naturally resilient, she’d told herself so many times, they didn’t understand. But Helena
did
understand and in her own way had suffered too.

She held out her arms and, as Helena rushed into them, held her in a tight, shared embrace of mutual grief. ‘Why didn’t you say how you felt?’

‘I didn’t want to upset you, you was upset already,’ came the simple reply. ‘I didn’t want you to see how I miss Daddy and start you off crying again. I don’t like seeing you cry, Mummy.’

‘My darling, you can cry! We can all cry. You can cry all you want.’

As if some barrier had been broken, Helena gave a great sob, burying her head against her mother, ‘Oh, Mummy, I miss my dad so much!’ came the choked, muffled words, the two of them sharing their tears of grief.

‘I know, I know, darling.’

Eveline buried her face in the fair, wavy hair, suddenly realising how easily she could have lost Helena too. This terrible flu had mostly touched the young, sending them into unconsciousness, never to recover.

‘I know,’ she crooned again, closing her eyes as she gently rocked her daughter, grateful that the child had been spared to her.

When Connie let herself into the flat she found the two asleep as if thoroughly exhausted, Helena on her mother’s lap, her head against her shoulder, Eveline’s arms still clasped about her.

It was a wonder to Connie that she too hadn’t caught flu, the time she had spent nursing Eveline. February, and Eveline still hadn’t properly regained her former strength.

‘I’ll be all right soon,’ she kept saying. Connie knew it was more than just the aftermath of her illness. Eveline’s heart was in turmoil over the continuing lack of news about Albert.

She wondered which was worse, losing a husband outright or this continual lingering uncertainty. Eveline was mourning a treasured grandmother, but Connie suspected the uncertainty about Albert to be the main cause of her friend’s failure to recover completely.

Her gran’s savings hadn’t been much. She had wanted all her grandchildren to benefit, and as Eveline said, ‘If anyone needs it our Len does.’ The loan she’d been struggling to pay back was no longer a problem but that seemed to make Eveline pine after her even more. Connie felt helpless.

She missed the woman too, a wonderful woman, but she had lived a long life. George had barely begun his. Eveline’s family had come through both the war and the Spanish flu, whereas she had lost a husband and two brothers to the war, and her father to a heart attack. She hated the thought that came to her but if somehow Albert
was
found to be miraculously alive, what would her own reaction be?

Hastily she put the thought from her and thought of her sister Verity instead. She’d lost her husband. The last time she’d heard from Verity had been a letter a week after Christmas thanking her for her card and saying she said sold her home and was back living with Mother. ‘She’d been all alone in that great big house,’ she wrote, ‘And I was in mine. We’re company for each other.’

It set Connie thinking. Now she had time to herself she’d write to Verity. Even as she penned a few words to ask how she was and put in what news she could find to write about, she felt a whole lot better. Perhaps Verity’s reply would help to narrow the rift between her and Mother. She waited for her to reply but when none came she knew Verity, now with their mother, would have come under her influence and certainly been turned against her.

She wrote again, yet still nothing happened. In anger, she wrote a scathing letter to her mother instead, saying that she surely didn’t warrant this silence. What with her father dead, her husband dead and far more serious conflict having brought the world to its knees, such trivial old scores as theirs ought finally be buried. Still no reply.

‘I’m going to have it out with her, once and for all,’ she told Eveline. ‘You’ll be all right without me for a day or two?’

Eveline offered her a smile. ‘I can manage. I might take a walk, just to my mum’s and back. I can’t sit around here for ever.’ Helena was back at school, she and Rebecca going off together like little sisters.

‘Not that I’ll buy anything,’ Eveline added wryly. ‘And I’m not asking her for any handout. I just need to get out. I’m sick of staring at four walls.’

Connie knew all about that, on both counts. Neither of them was in work now and the suffragette meetings they’d once enjoyed had been disbanded, so there was little to do but gaze at the four walls of her own flat.

A war widow’s pension didn’t stretch to even the cheapest seats at the cinema or any entertainment that cost more than a walk in the park, and window-shopping only made the lack of money more keen. Nine shillings a week pension plus two shillings per child had to cover everything; rent, heating and lighting, food and clothing. She was constantly dipping into what savings she had left. Before long it would all be gone.

Eveline had even less and even though her parents ran their shop, she had too much pride to go cap in hand to them, as she’d just said. ‘After all, they’re finding it hard too with everyone frightened to spend too much.’

‘Yesterday I received notification to say that my rent is going up to seven shillings and sixpence a week.’ Connie began busying herself flicking a duster over Eveline’s sideboard while the girl looked on listlessly. ‘You must have had one as well.’ Eveline gave a miserable nod, seeming to be only half listening, but she ploughed on.

‘We’re beginning to live from hand to mouth. Anyone falling behind with the rent can be evicted and that would be awful. I was thinking, it does seem silly us both paying rent on our separate lettings. If we shared just one flat we would be paying only half rent each. It does seem sensible, don’t you think? And we do get on well together. What do you say?’

She saw Eveline look up at her and was encouraged. ‘My flat is the larger of the two and has nicer views.’ She waited but Eveline had lowered her eyes again.

‘I don’t know,’ she surprised Connie by answering. ‘If Albert suddenly came home and I didn’t have our …’

Connie couldn’t help herself. Her temper suddenly flew as she shot upright from her dusting.

‘He’s
not
coming home! The sooner you face that truth, Eveline, the easier you’ll be able to get on with your life. It’s more than five months now – you can’t go on forever hoping. It’s wrong!’

Eveline seemed too apathetic to be ruffled by the outburst. ‘Some people go on hoping all their lives,’ she said quietly, almost as if talking to herself. ‘It’s what keeps them going. I don’t think that makes them wrong.’

Connie had no answer to that. She fell to the dusting again, quite unnecessarily diligent.

She caught a train for Perivale on the Saturday morning, taking Rebecca with her. It hadn’t been easy scraping together the child’s half-fare as well as her own but she was determined to have her mother see her only grandchild. Rebecca was beautiful with her grandmother’s fair, wavy hair, and wide blue eyes set in a heart-shaped face. Who could resist being drawn to her?

Rebecca had a new dress for the occasion, cheap but a very pretty blue, with a short, flared skirt and wide collar. Connie had sacrificed a few shillings of her savings for the occasion. She had got nothing for herself – the money had to last as long as possible.

Sitting in the carriage she felt utterly shabby, recalling how well she had once dressed. What would her mother think, seeing her in this well-used coat, this hat well out of fashion, she who at one time would have thrown out a garment after a month for some newer style?

She had cut her hair some time ago to conform to the modern shorter style but it was glaringly obvious that she’d done it herself. These days she could not afford to throw away money on a professional cut. Fortunately, having wavy hair had helped soften the stark shape produced by unskilled scissors. She’d also shortened her coat herself, as well as her skirt, but it still looked well out of date. Fashions had changed so dramatically since the war that anything bought even a year ago stood out like a sore thumb.

Some women in her situation might not have worried, but she did; the life she’d once known still remained part of her in her heart. It was horrid being poor. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t tried looking for work to help swell her dwindling savings. There was no work, at least not for unskilled women. Even those mundane jobs were being given to men returning home from the war. You saw them, queues waiting for jobs that called only for a pitiful few.

Eveline, as skilled a comptometer operator as she had once been, found her sort of job filled by men. Professional women, it seemed, were only wanted in a sort of patronising way even though their high qualifications proved them equal to any man.

It was an odd new world springing up from the war with plenty of professional and skilled vacancies, mostly for men of course, yet no unskilled jobs to be had anywhere. Any vacancy got snapped up the instant it appeared, leaving long dole queues of shabbily dressed men without hope, patiently standing in humiliating line for a few days’ work while dozens of ex-servicemen with missing limbs or blinded by gas or gravely disfigured trudged the kerb-sides begging for pennies to support their families.

What chance did she and Eveline have? After all they’d done during four years of war while the men were away, the government was cleverly laying stress on
Women’s Role in the Home
and
Jobs Fit for Heroes.

‘They’re making us the scapegoats now,’ Connie had said bitterly. ‘They might as well be saying that we’re trying to take men’s jobs away from them. So much for women’s enfranchisement!’

At one time Eveline would have agreed wholeheartedly but it seemed she couldn’t care less now. Connie gave up. She had other things on her mind as she sat on the Perivale train, to find why Verity hadn’t replied to her letters.

Her mother’s face when she opened the door to her this bright, cold, March day took her aback. She had expected frigidity, hostility, but the woman’s face was like that of a ghost, white and vacant. She didn’t even ask what she was doing here, or say that she was unwelcome.

‘Hello, Mother,’ was all Connie could come up with as she gripped Rebecca’s hand.

It sounded foolish and inadequate, especially with her mother gazing down at her from the doorstep and making no response.

She made another attempt. ‘How are you, Mother? Are you well?’

Of course she wasn’t well. She looked anything but. She made no effort to invite her inside but then Connie should have known the reception she would get.

‘I really came to see Verity. She didn’t reply to my letter and …’

She broke off as her mother appeared to flinch, the faded blue eyes coming alive for a second. Her mother’s mouth twisted.

‘She’s dead, of influenza.’ The shocking words, the first ones she had uttered, were blunt and cold, as if they meant nothing to the woman. For a moment, Connie wasn’t sure she’d heard correctly.

‘What’re you saying, Mother?’ The bleak expression was already making her throat constrict as the truth began to sink in. Her flesh had gone cold. She heard herself whisper, ‘When?’

She realised that she must pull herself together. ‘Mother, let me come in. Why didn’t you write to tell me? Why didn’t you let me know?’

Even now she could hardly believe what she’d heard. At the same time other thoughts were racing through her mind, sensible, everyday thoughts – had not been time to write, it might have happened just a day or two ago, her mother felt too confused and devastated to put her mind to writing and no one else was there to do it for her. Tears began clouding her vision, but still that wraith’s face regarded her as if it possessed no life at all, the blue eyes arid.

‘Mother, I’m coming in,’ she said abruptly, pushing past into the house.

Its silence seemed to wrap itself around her the instant she stepped inside. Stunned as she was by her mother’s news, still hardly able to believe it was true, it came to her that it had been her mother, not a maid, who had opened the door. No staff were to be seen. The atmosphere was still and remote, seeming to bear down on her. She turned to her mother, who was quietly closing the main door with almost deliberate respect for this silence.

‘When did she …’ She couldn’t bring herself to say her sister’s name or the word that would follow. ‘When did it happen? How long ago?’

Her mother was gazing blankly at her. ‘Why are you here? What do you want?’

Connie ignored the question. ‘How long ago did …’ She had to say it. ‘How long since Verity was taken?’

‘Verity?’

‘My sister, your daughter – when did it happen?’

She was coming to terms with reality enough to gain control of herself though it felt as though there was a great hole in her heart. She wanted to take her mother in her arms, her mother still looking lost and blank. ‘I think I’ve been here on my own for weeks, Verity.’

‘I’m not Verity, Mother, I’m Constance, your other daughter.’

‘Yes, that’s right, Constance is dead,’ came the vague reply. Connie began slowly to realise that her mother had become slightly unhinged. Alarm gripped her as the woman went on, ‘We sent Verity away for upsetting her father.’

‘Father died, Mother. A long time ago.’

‘He said I must not mention her name. He said she was dead to him. Now Verity is dead too.’

That made more sense but Connie knew it was making none to her mother. Pity flooded through her, pity and fear. Gently she went and put an arm about her shoulders, still holding on to Rebecca with her other hand, and led her, unresisting, into the sitting room. There she eased her down on to the sofa and sat down beside her, signalling to Rebecca with her eyes to find somewhere else to sit.

‘Where are the staff, Mother?’ she queried.

‘Staff? I didn’t need them. They went away. Constance went away too. So did Verity.’

‘You said she died, Mother. Of influenza.’

‘Yes. There’s no one here now. All gone.’

Connie tried to bite back a sob, not making a very good job of it. In this her mother was right. All gone. Her two brothers, her father, and now her sister. No one was left but herself and her mother. She too was beginning to feel a little unhinged.