Primrose Square (20 page)

‘Had to happen.' He discarded his cigarette and kissed her cheek. ‘The Kaiser's wanted it all along, eh?'

‘Why, though? Who would want a war?'

‘For power, maybe.' Barry shrugged. ‘Plenty are pleased about it, anyway. Sort of – clears the air.'

‘Clears the air? I should think it'd do the opposite.'

‘Means we know where we stand.' Barry slipped her arm into his. ‘Come on, let's get to the café. I've something to tell you.'

Something to tell her? Afterwards, she'd wondered why she hadn't been more afraid. But he'd been so much his usual self, his eyes bright on hers, his smile easy. Why should she have been afraid?

In the café, they sat opposite each other at a corner table that gave them privacy and ordered their usual – ham and salad for Elinor, sausages and mash for Barry.

‘Oh, dear,' Elinor sighed, pointing at the sausages. ‘Barry, you should be having salad like me.'

‘Rabbit food? No' me. I'm stocking up on ma favourites. They say you only get bully beef in the army.'

‘In the army?' Her eyes were wide. ‘What's that got to do with you?'

‘I've enlisted,' he said calmly. ‘I've joined the Royal Scots.'

The silence that followed was not really a silence at all. True, she wasn't saying anything, but in her head were beating all kinds of noises, jangling, terrible noises, as though guns were already firing, and she wondered if she would ever be able to speak again through the mesh of sounds.

‘Don't look like that,' Barry was saying, cutting up a sausage. ‘It'll no' be for long. All going to be over by Christmas, then I'll be back.'

‘Why?' she asked at last, her lips so dry she could scarcely speak. ‘Why volunteer?'

‘Show willing, eh? For King and country. Got to do your bit.'

‘They're no' calling men up. You may never be needed.'

‘Och, I want to go! I want to tackle the Kaiser, show him what's what. It'll be better than house-painting any day of the week, I can tell you.'

‘You don't mind leaving your football?'

‘I'll probably get some football in the army, and besides it'll be there when I get back. And so will you, sweetheart. I tell you, I'll no' be gone long. Now you eat up that green stuff, eh? No waste allowed.'

But she couldn't eat anything and didn't even try. Putting her knife and fork together, she leaned forward to look at Barry, her lips parted, her eyes enormous.

‘Barry,' she said softly, ‘can we be married before you go?'

Another silence fell, but this time there were no noises in Elinor's head, no fear that she might not speak again, for she was waiting for Barry. He had finished his meal and was looking down at his plate, finally pushing it away and raising his eyes, their look on her as bright as ever.

‘Phew!' he said lightly. ‘That took me by surprise.'

‘Because I shouldn't be asking?'

‘No, no. It's just – well, out of the blue. I'd no idea it was in your mind.'

‘No idea it was in my mind?' Elinor's face was flushed, her eyes flashing. ‘Wasn't it in yours?'

‘Ah, look  . . .' He reached over the table for her hand but she held it back. ‘Look, you know me. You must know I'm no' the marrying kind. I thought you understood.'

‘Understood what?'

‘Well, that I live for the day. I've said so, eh? I live for the day; I don't plan for the future. I'm no' ready for that and neither are you. Look at the way you didn't want a future with your Stephen.'

‘I never said I didn't want a future with you.'

‘Never came up, did it? We were enjoying ourselves, weren't we? Just going out together, that's what we had. I'm no' saying I wouldn't want more, but I wouldn't expect it from a girl like you, and I wouldn't want to be married to get it, either, so what we had suited me and I thought suited you and all.'

‘It was  . . . just temporary?' she asked, after a pause.

‘Why are we talking as if it's over?'

‘Just temporary?' she repeated.

‘Well, wouldn't have lasted, nothing does, but it was grand, eh? I was much happier with you than any of the others.'

‘Were you?' Elinor turned her head, looking for their waitress. ‘Shall we go?'

‘Hey, what about some tea? And treacle tart? They've got nice cakes here.'

‘Well, you order some tea and treacle tart, then. I have to go.'

‘Go where?' For the first time, she saw his sunny expression fade, his eyes sharpen. ‘Elinor, you're never leaving me? Come on, I've explained how things are. We can still meet when I come home.'

She was beginning to feel ill, her face tightening with the effort to keep back tears. She knew she must get away, away from Barry, out of the café, and prayed he would not follow. People were staring as she pushed aside her chair and rose from the table. Perhaps she was looking odd – perhaps they were expecting her to faint. She would not faint. No, she would not.

‘Goodbye, Barry,' she whispered. ‘No, don't come. Pay the girl, eh?'

‘Wait!' he cried, as she reached the door. Heard the bell jangle. Was out in the fresh air, taking deep gulps of it. Knew he was behind her, saw the tram. And ran.

Her last sight of him was his strangely puzzled face as she was borne away, tears slowly moving down her face at last, aware that she might never see him again but still unable to wish him luck. As she had put a dagger into Stephen's heart, so had Barry put one into hers; she owed him nothing. All the same, she should have wished him luck. He was going to risk his life; he might never come back.

But she couldn't think of that. Couldn't think now of anything at all. Not even the war, and what it would mean. Soon, she would begin to feel again, she knew it, but as the tram rattled on down the Mound, she felt only numb. Slightly unreal. A single cardboard figure sitting alone, when so often there had been someone with her, holding her hand, looking into her eyes.

But this was how it was going to be. This was her future. It was lucky she still couldn't feel anything about it, and let her drenched eyes rest on her city, looking so beautiful in the dusk of the summer evening, until the tram reached her stop and she had to get down. Brace herself to face the people at the club. Needn't tell them anything yet. Oh, not yet.

Walking slowly, she passed the gardens of the square and paused to look at the green of the grass and the leaves of the trees and shrubs, all so lovely in the soft light of dusk. They had always given her solace. Still did, but she knew she must wait – wait for time to do its work before she could fully take delight again in the gardens. Or anything, for that matter.

Here was the gate to the area, the worn steps down to the back door, and she could hear voices, probably from the girls making cocoa. Faces would be turned to hers. Someone would notice her tears. They would be wondering  . . .

Ah, maybe she would just tell them. She and Barry had parted. He was going to the war, but they had parted anyway. Yes, she would tell them, let herself begin to feel, come alive, however bad it was.

The back door opened, Mattie was on the step, shaking a cloth.

‘Why, hello, Elinor!' she cried. ‘Want some cocoa?'

Thirty-Eight

Over by Christmas? The war? That was a joke. Though nobody was laughing.

In fact, barely three weeks after war had been declared people had discovered that there was nothing to laugh about in this war, nothing to make it an adventure, or a great lark, or better than going to work. They discovered it the hard way, when news came of the retreat by the British in France after the Battle of Mons, defeated by the Germans at the cost of 1600 men. A further defeat followed, at Le Cateau, where the casualty list was huge. No more euphoria, then, even though recruitment still continued, but at least the volunteers knew now what really lay ahead; they no longer carried false hopes of a speedy victory.

Meanwhile, strange things were happening at home, as people gradually became used to the idea that they were now at war. At first, there had been the problem of panic buying of food, but when that had been resolved, real shortages began to show up, as manufacturers began to switch from goods for the home to equipment for war. Worse for some, even than the shortages, was the sudden disappearance of servants, as women took the places of men, making munitions, working in factories, and saying goodbye with a light heart to domestic work.

‘Can't get staff now,' the older lady members at the Primrose complained to Miss Ainslie. ‘The girls just don't seem to exist any more.'

Just like some of my staff and our younger members, Miss Ainslie would have commented to Miss Denny, except that Miss Denny had gone to learn to drive an ambulance and would soon be leaving for France. And the younger club members? They, too, had vanished to take up voluntary work, leaving the club an echoing shadow of its former self, while Vera had deserted Mrs Petrie for the munitions factory, along with Gerda.

And when Mrs Petrie demanded how she was going to manage with only wee Sal to help, Miss Ainslie had to tell her gently that only a handful of ladies were requiring meals now, and with no country members staying overnight, the time might soon be coming when even the number of maids that remained might have to be reduced.

‘I really don't know what is going to happen,' Miss Ainslie admitted later to Elinor. ‘This whole thing is becoming a nightmare.'

‘It is,' Elinor agreed, as the manageress gave her a sympathetic glance.

Everyone, of course, knew of Elinor's own private nightmare, though she never spoke of it after her first announcement, and showed little of her inner turmoil in her strong, lovely face. For, of course, her numbness hadn't lasted long. She'd had to suffer, and was still suffering, not only from loss of love, but also a certain humiliation that she should have offered herself as a wife to Barry and been turned down. In a way, she rather hoped that that feeling would crush out her heartache, but it hadn't happened yet.

Nor did she know what had happened to Barry. He had turned up at the club with another note, offering to meet, but she had thrown away the note and had not contacted him. It was lucky, anyway, that he was departing, for her father was all set to seek him out and give him ‘what for', which would have been disastrous – for Walter, rather than Barry. Yes, she thanked God that he was away, out of her life, and also that Stephen Muirhead would never know how her affair with him had ended. But what had happened to Stephen himself? She just hoped, wherever he was, that he was safe.

‘To tell you the truth,' Miss Ainslie was saying, ‘I'm afraid now that the club will have to close. It's what the owners believe.'

‘The Primrose? To close?' Elinor's eyes were filled with horror. ‘Oh, no, that couldn't happen, Miss Ainslie, it couldn't!'

‘I know how you feel. I feel the same. But there's a war on, places are closing all around us. It will only be until things get back to normal.'

The two women exchanged long, sorrowful looks. Back to normal? When would that be? They knew now that trench warfare was becoming established and that battles could rage for weeks on end before being won in no decisive way and with enormous loss of life. There was no point in even talking about peace at this stage.

‘When d'you think there might be a decision?' Elinor asked a little huskily. ‘On closing?'

‘Fairly soon.'

‘Suppose I should be thinking about some war work, anyway,' Elinor murmured after a pause. ‘Mattie'd like to go for the munitions, but I'd rather do some sort of nursing. I've done a bit at the Red Cross centre and enjoyed it.'

This was true. Working at the centre on her free Thursday evenings had been the best thing Elinor had found for taking her mind off the man who'd spent other Thursdays with her. In nursing, there simply was no time to think of anything but the work in hand.

‘Why, that's excellent, Elinor. If you'd like to have extra hours there, I could give you some time off.' Miss Ainslie gave a tired smile. ‘As you know, we're not so busy these days.'

Barely a week later, the blow fell. Miss Ainslie called everyone together to her office for an important announcement.

‘No' about the suffragettes this time, eh?' Mattie whispered, and even Elinor smiled.

Everyone knew that the women's suffrage movement had temporarily ceased its activities, with most of its members busy with war work. When things returned to normal, they would resume their quest for the vote, but for the time being, there were other needs to be met.

‘What I have to tell you will come as a surprise,' Miss Ainslie was saying now, at which Elinor heaved a deep sigh, believing that she knew what to expect. In fact, she didn't, for she was as surprised as everyone else when the manageress announced in her cool, clear tones that the club had been taken over by the government.

‘Requisitioned, as they call it. The Primrose, as we know it, is to close, but will reopen, when conversion is complete, as a small convalescent hospital for soldiers. Some will be recovering from wounds, some from neurasthenia – what's known as shell shock. This will be its role until the end of hostilities.'

Those listening exchanged glances. Requisitioned? That was a long word with an unwelcome meaning. For them, at least, as it was certain they would all be losing their jobs.

‘So we'll all be given the sack, Miss Ainslie?' Ada asked, to make matters clear.

‘I'm afraid so, but it's quite possible that when the conversion is finished, there'll be jobs going here. For domestic workers, or assistants to the Queen Alexandra's nurses who will be looking after the patients.'

Again, glances were exchanged.

‘It's munitions for me,' Mattie said firmly. ‘Vera and Gerda say the wages are no' bad and you can do overtime.'