Spare Brides (52 page)

‘What’s that?’ asked Ava dutifully, but without much optimism in her voice; she didn’t expect to be enlightened.

Bea kept her eyes trained on Lydia and answered as though she had asked the question although she hadn’t given any indication that Bea had her attention. ‘If I ever met a man who lit me up in the way that Edgar Trent has illuminated you this past year, I would stop at nothing.
Nothing
. Do you hear me?’ Her voice almost tore with the effort of being so exposed. ‘We deserve it all. We do. Every one of us. Lydia, you deserve your man.’

Lydia looked shyly at her friend from under her lashes. She was listening.

‘He’s brave and marvellous, but damaged and out of his depth. It’s my opinion that
you
need to save
him
this time, Lydia. Isn’t there an expression? Once more unto the breach, dear friend?’

‘You think I should go to him, again?’ Lydia sounded incredulous. Beatrice nodded, she didn’t have any more words, she’d given her all. Her chins and bosoms wobbled. It was regretful that even at moments of great sincerity such as this, she could not be anything other than lumpy. ‘What do you think, Ava?’ Of course it was natural that Lydia would turn to the oracle on such matters.

Ava shrugged. Beatrice understood. This level of intensity was beyond even Ava’s experience; it was beyond almost everyone’s. A huge seagull fell out of the sky, flapping and squawking; it landed on the bonnet of the car. Ava wound down the window and yelled, ‘Shoo, shoo. Ghastly thing.’

The three women stared at the ugly bird. No one moved.

I
T WAS ALL
fucking pointless, he told himself as he stormed up the gangplank. War, love, death, life. They all brought nothing other than heartbreak. How had he ever thought it might work between them? After all, what did she know about his way of life? A life with budgets and restrictions, a life that teetered on poverty. Real budgeting had nothing to do with ‘Shall I buy three dresses today or be a good stick and just buy two?’ Real budgeting was having to decide between food or heating. Your food or the baby’s.

The baby. There was a baby.

A fleeting hint of wishful thinking, something that could be mistaken for hope, fluttered over his consciousness. He roughly pushed it aside. But no. He would manage. He’d go to Brisbane. Alone. And he’d never, ever mix himself up with a woman again. Even as he made the vow, part of his brain acknowledged that he couldn’t if he wanted to. There wasn’t another woman like Lid. Not for him.

He imagined her sitting in one of the many enormous drawing rooms in Clarendale. He’d never visited the place but he didn’t doubt for a moment that it was an undeniably impressive old pile. In his head he could see it clearly. She was bedecked in jewels and wearing the most elegant and fashionable clothes. His baby was in a crib beside her. There was a doting nanny on hand and an endless line of helpful staff preparing food, warming beds, shuttling coal. Then he tried to imagine her expression; it would be one of serenity. He could not. The fantasy was overpowered by a memory. All he could visualise was her impish and gleeful smile, her long neck, her small pert breasts and her magenta nipples. She was sitting up on his bed, watching him make breakfast.
‘Why don’t I stay here with you?’ she offered.

‘Oh, that wouldn’t work.’

‘Why not?’

‘You wouldn’t like it.’

‘I think I would.’

‘You’d get sick of me.’

‘Never. I never would.’

The memory punched him in the gut. Left him breathless as every memory did.

The gangplank was heaving; people jostled against one another, clinging to their families and their belongings. Boots slammed down on the steel; shoulder to shoulder they marched forward. There was a palpable sense of apprehension all around. Some were excited, others anxious. Everybody just wanted to get on board and set sail. Everyone wanted to move on. ‘Oh, God!’ Edgar yelled out the words not as a curse but as they were said in the old days; as a prayer. The crowds, surging and insistent, the noise, blaring and clattering. Boots. Up and down. Thud, thud, thud. Relentless. Suddenly they were all upon him again. The men who’d died, who’d stabbed and shot and bled. The ones he’d massacred. The ones who’d wanted to kill him. They were clambering and clinging. He couldn’t see hopeful emigrants marching towards a new future, he was swamped by the bloody and the dead. They’re not real. Not real, he told himself. But what were these visions doing visiting him in day time? These horrors could usually be contained to the night. He could not breathe. There was mud in his mouth, up his nostrils. He was going to drown. He needed air and space. He needed Lydia.

Only Lydia could help him. Only she would soothe and restore.

He understood what he needed. What he wanted. If he made her his wife, he might be able to justify it all. Or understand it. Or at least accept it. She, and no other woman, could do that. He turned around again and started to violently push his way through the crowds that were trying to board, heading back to the shore. Terrified, in a way that he’d never been before, he understood at last what was at risk. He took deep breaths and forced his brain to accept these were not dead and dying soldiers, they were just passengers. Ordinary people. Living people. He had to get through them. He scanned the dockside. He had to find her.

‘Lydia! Lydia!’

He thought of that day in Pondson-Callow’s grounds when the snow had settled. He’d gone off alone. Grumpy. Defiant. ‘Edgar! Edgar!’ He remembered turning, and there she’d been, tramping through the snow towards him. Searching him out. Ill-advised, hardly dressed for the occasion, but glorious and free-spirited. ‘Edgar! Edgar!’ He did not remember her calling to him then.

But he could hear her now. Lydia was coming.

He could see her pushing through the throng, coming up the gangplank towards him, following his footsteps once again. He knew it was her for certain, even at a distance. This wasn’t one of his visions fuelled by wishful thinking. He felt her gaze, heavy but not a weight; she was an anchor. A huge sense of elation and peace washed over him. He’d never experienced anything with such certainty before. There would be no more doubts or dissuasion. He’d pull her aboard and they’d set sail. Here she was. The ending of dearth. The beginning of overabundance. His hero.

He held out his hand through the throng and she clasped it tightly. He drew her close to him as stewards, intent on doing their jobs, ushered them back up towards the boat.

‘You came back,’ he whispered into her hair.

‘Absolutely. Even though you were terribly rude and never asked me to.’

‘You were waiting for me to ask?’

‘I was, but Beatrice convinced me I was being passive.’

‘Beatrice did?’ He raised the corner of his mouth and his eyebrows in amusement and gratitude.

Then he kissed her. Kissed her again. Kissed her until his lips were sore, until his throat was dry and the skin on her chin was raw. He remembered his room, and the times when they’d been outside in the open air too. She had quaked, shivered, called out, swallowed him whole, but they never became tired of one another and they never would. He anticipated their cabin, their eventual home. More was needed. She burned for him. He for her.

‘There’s no going back.’

‘I don’t want to go back.’

‘Not now, no. But one day you might, and—’

‘Never. I won’t. No more looking back. We’re going forward, my darling,’ she said with absolute clarity and certainty.

They were enough for each other, but they could not get enough. It couldn’t end. There was too much more to be had. The sun glinted on the water, sparkling. They held one another tightly. They held their futures.

Brittain, Vera,
Testament of Youth
,
Virago, London, 1978

Horn, Pamela,
Women in the 1920s
,
Amberley Publishing, London, 1995

McDonald, Fiona
Britain in the 1920s
, Pen and Sword Books, South Yorkshire, 2012

Nicholson, Virginia,
Singled Out
,
Penguin, London, 2007

Nicolson, Juliet,
The Great Silence: 1918-1920 Living in the Shadow of the Great War
, John Murray, London, 2009

Pugh, Martin,
We Danced All Night: A Social History of Britain Between the Wars
, Vintage, London, 2009

Shepherd, Janet and John,
1920s Britain
, Shire Living Histories, Oxford, 2010

Enormous thanks to Sarah Gordon for her wonderfully generous support of the Helen Feather Memorial Trust. The aims of the Trust are to support people with cancer and raise money for carefully selected Cancer Research Projects.

To learn more about the Helen Feather Memorial Trust visit
www.helenfeathertrust.co.uk