The House by Princes Park (2 page)

She followed him outside and he stowed the case in the boot of the little Ford Eight car that was the only thing she’d known him show fondness for. He would pat it lovingly when it had completed a journey and murmur, ‘Clever little thing!’

‘Where’s Mother?’ Olivia asked as they drove out of the station.

‘Home,’ he said brusquely.

There was a long silence. The gaslit streets of Bristol were mainly deserted at such a late hour. They passed a few pubs that had recently emptied and where customers still hung noisily around outside.

‘Where are we going?’ Olivia asked when the silence began to grate. She wondered if she was being taken to a home for fallen women. It would be horrid, but she’d put herself in a position where she had no choice.

‘A Mrs Cookson, who lives near the docks, will look after you until... until your time comes.’ His voice was grudging. ‘It’s most unlikely anyone we know will visit the area, but I would be obliged if you would stay indoors during daylight hours in case you’re recognised. Mrs Cookson has been given money to buy you the appropriate garments. You’ll be comfortable there. When everything is over, you will leave. I’ll make arrangements for the
child to be taken care of, if that is your wish. If you decide to keep it, don’t expect your mother and me to help. We never want to see you again.’

Although she’d had no wish to see them, either, the bluntness of his words upset her. They made her feel dirty. She opened her mouth to tell him about Tom, but before she could say a word, her father said tonelessly, ‘You’re disgusting.’

She didn’t speak to him again, nor he to her. Shortly afterwards, he turned into a little street of terraced houses, and stopped outside the end one. He got out, leaving the engine running, and knocked on the door.

It was opened by a gaunt woman in her fifties with hennaed hair and a vivid crimson mouth. She had on a scarlet satin dress and a black stole. Long jet earrings dangled on to her shoulders and she wore a three-strand necklace to match. Her long fingers were full of rings – if the stones were real, she must be worth a fortune, Olivia thought.

Her father grunted an introduction, almost threw his daughter’s suitcase into the hall, and left. The Ford was already in motion by the time Mrs Cookson closed the door. She folded her arms and looked Olivia up and down.

‘Well, who’s been a naughty girl?’ she said archly.

Olivia couldn’t remember the last time she’d smiled. She’d been expecting to be treated like a wanton woman over the next few months and, although Mrs Cookson wasn’t quite her cup of tea, it was a pleasant surprise to be greeted with a joke.

‘Come along, dearie,’ the woman seized her arm, winking lewdly. ‘Come and tell us all about it. Would you like a cuppa? Or something stronger? I’ve got some nice cherry wine. I’m about to have a bottle of milk stout, myself. Oh, and by the way, call me Madge.’

Madge Cookson was the unofficial midwife in the area of
Bristol known as Little Italy because of the street names. Her own house was in Capri Street, and there were other similar streets of tiny houses: Naples, Turin and Venice, as well as a small cul-de-sac called Milan Way, all off Florence Road. She had a weakness for milk stout and a rather brittle manner that hid a soft, generous heart. Olivia was to grow quite fond of her over the next few months.

‘How did my father know about you?’ she enquired after she’d been living in Madge’s house for a week.

‘He must have asked around. You’re not the first well-bred young lady I’ve had under similar circumstances to your own.’

As a young woman, Madge had been a singer on the music halls and there was a poster in her bedroom listing Magda Starr fourth on the bill at the London Hippodrome.

‘That was the highest I ever got,’ she told Olivia sadly. ‘I always wanted to be top, but it wasn’t to be. I got married soon afterwards and had our Des.’ Her husband had died years ago, but Desmond had followed in his mother’s footsteps and was a ventriloquist on the halls, although he had never reached such an exalted position as fourth on the bill. Desmond Starr’s name was usually in small print at the bottom.

‘Was your name really Starr?’ Olivia asked. She would never cease to be intrigued by Madge’s fascinating and varied life.

‘No, my maiden name was Bailey, but Magda Starr looked better on posters than Madge Bailey.’

‘How did you become a midwife?’

‘I’m not a proper midwife, am I, dearie? I worked in a hospital for a while after my husband died and saw how it was done. I helped deliver a couple of babies and word got round, that’s all.’

The house was comfortable, as her father had promised. Madge’s exotic taste in clothes was reflected in the furnishings. Instead of a conventional runner, a garish
shawl covered the sideboard on which stood a vase of enormous paper flowers. A bead curtain separated the kitchen from the living room, and there were numerous satin cushions embroidered with silver and gold thread scattered around. The covers had come from India, said Madge, as had the big tapestry over the mantelpiece in the parlour and the black and gold tea service with fluted rims that was brought out for best.

A fire crackled in the living room from early morning till late at night. On Sundays, a fire was also lit in the parlour for Madge’s visitors; women about her own age, who came in the afternoon to play whist and drink milk stout.

Olivia stayed in the other room on these occasions reading one of Madge’s collection of well-thumbed romantic novels. Sometimes she went upstairs for a nap in her room at the back with its lovely springy double bed.

She was as happy as anyone could be in her position. It would have been nice to have gone for a walk in the bright winter sunshine, or even the winter fog, wearing the new, warm coat, bought by Madge with money provided by her father but Madge, usually very easygoing, was strict about her staying indoors while it remained light outside.

‘I promised your father you wouldn’t go out until it was dark. It’s what he’s paying me for. I can’t force you to stay in, but I’d feel obliged to let him know if you didn’t.’

‘I’m not likely to meet anyone I know round here,’ Olivia said sulkily.

‘The world is made up of coincidences,’ Madge said. ‘You could walk out and come face to face with the sister of your mother’s best friend.’

‘My mother doesn’t have friends.’

‘Well, her next-door neighbour, then.’

‘Has my father given you his address?’

‘’Course. I’m to send him a telegram when the baby’s
born, aren’t I? “Package Delivered” I’ve to put, case anyone reads it. Unless you decide to keep the baby, that is, in which case he doesn’t want to know.’

‘I wouldn’t dream of keeping it.’ Olivia shuddered. Once it arrived, she intended putting the whole episode behind her and finishing her training, to become a State Registered Nurse.

Madge looked at her thoughtfully. ‘You might feel different when it’s born.’

‘If I do,’ Olivia said harshly. ‘I want you to tear it out of my arms and let my father have it.’

‘Your father can do the tearing, dearie. Not me.’

The baby seemed even less real than Tom. It might well be in her womb, but it had nothing to do with her. She didn’t care what happened to it as long as it didn’t come to any harm.

Christmas came and went, and soon it was 1919, the first New Year in half a decade with Europe at peace with itself, celebrated with a joy and enthusiasm that was infectious. Madge and Olivia watched fireworks on the River Avon and sang ‘Auld Lang Syne’ at midnight in Victoria Park.

January became February, and February turned into March. The baby was due at the beginning of April.

Desmond Starr, Madge’s ventriloquist son, came home for Easter, a cheerful, outgoing young man, just like his mother. He was booked to appear all summer at a theatre in Felixstowe and invited Madge and her guest. He could get free tickets.

‘Well, I’ll try,’ Olivia lied. By summer, she would have started afresh. She was fond of Madge, but never wanted to see her or her son again.

She knew she had become very hard, very selfish. In days gone by, she’d been regarded as a soft old thing, too sympathetic for her own good. But now, there seemed to
be a barrier in her brain, stopping all thoughts from entering that weren’t concerned solely with herself.

The baby signalled it was on its way one lovely sunny Sunday afternoon in April, dead on time. Olivia was reading one of Madge’s torrid romances when she had the first contraction, a strong one. It wasn’t long before she had another, stronger and more painful. She’d spent time on a maternity ward during her training and recognised it was going to be a quick birth.

Madge was playing whist with her friends in the parlour. Olivia calmly made a cup of tea and waited for the friends to leave. She boiled two large pans of water and laid a rubber sheet on the bed. The worn sheets Madge had boiled to use as rags she put ready on a chair.

She gritted her teeth when another contraction came, worse than the others, but was reluctant to disturb Madge while her friends were there. Not that Madge could do anything, but she wouldn’t have minded the company. The contractions were coming every ten minutes by the time the visitors were shown out.

‘By, God! You’re a cool customer,’ Madge gasped when Olivia called her upstairs where she was lying on the bed, already in her nightdress.

‘I’ve got a couple of hours to go yet.’

‘You’re too cool, d’you know that?’ She sat on the bed and took Olivia’s hand. ‘My other young ladies have cried themselves silly during the entire confinement, but there hasn’t been a peep out of you.’

‘I haven’t felt much like crying,’ Olivia confessed, wincing when another contraction gripped her stomach like a wrench.

‘It’s time you did. Didn’t you cry when your young man was killed? What was his name? Tom! You hardly ever talk about him.’

Olivia permitted herself a wry smile. ‘I slept in a
dormitory with the other nurses. There was no place where I could cry in private. And I don’t talk about Tom because he doesn’t seem real. I can’t even remember what he looked like.’

Madge sniggered. ‘Well, the baby’s real enough. You can have a good old yell, you know,’ she said when Olivia winced again. ‘Let yourself go. Next door’s deaf as a post and the street won’t mind.’

‘I’d sooner not. And I don’t feel all that bad. Most of the births that I remember were much worse than this.’

The time passed slowly. Children could be heard playing in the street outside. Someone knocked on the door but Madge ignored it. A woman in a house behind was singing, her voice carrying clearly in the still, evening air. ‘Keep the home fires burning...’

It was the song the men used to sing in France, Olivia remembered. It could be heard late at night, from miles away across the fields, when the fighting had finished for the day. Some nights, the nurses and the patients joined in. They’d been singing it the night when she and Tom had made love...

... the sky had been spectacular, she recalled; deep, sapphire blue, as lustrous as the jewel, and powdered with a myriad glittering stars. The waning moon was a delicate lemon curve.

Although not yet completely dark, it was dark enough to disguise the fact that the French landscape was a battlefield on which more than a million men had died. In daylight, the flat ground was a sea of dried mud, a jigsaw of trenches, empty now that the fighting had moved on.

Spurts of white smoke could be seen on the horizon, where the battle now was, where shells were landing, killing yet more men. The smoke occasionally turned to flames, indicating a building had been hit. On such a night, the flames even added something to the splendour of the
view, flickering as they did like giant candles at the furthest edge of the world. A few broken trees were silhouetted like crazy dancing figures against the lucid blueness of the sky.

People had come outside the hospital to marvel at the magnificent sight amidst so much mayhem; staff, a few of the walking wounded. There was the faint murmur of voices, the occasional glimmer of a cigarette.

‘Olivia! I’ve been looking everywhere for you.’

‘Tom!’ Olivia turned and instinctively lifted her arms to embrace the man limping towards her. She dropped them as he came nearer and hoped he hadn’t noticed. He was her patient. He mustn’t know how she felt, though she sensed he had already guessed. After all, she had a strong suspicion he felt the same, something of a miracle when he was so attractive and she so plain.

‘Great night,’ he said, panting slightly. The walk had been an effort.

‘Beautiful,’ she breathed. She nodded towards the smoke and the flames in the distance. ‘That spoils it rather. And there’s something sinister about not being able to hear the explosions.’

‘Or the screams,’ Tom said drily. He took her hand, his fingers curling warmly inside her own. She made no attempt to pull away. ‘So, this is it! Our last night together.’ He gave the glimmer of a smile. ‘Or should I say, our last night in the near vicinity of each other. I’m sorry my leg is better. I feel tempted to take off my clothes, wander into the darkness, and pray I catch pneumonia again.’

‘Not if I have anything to do with it!’ She pretended to be outraged. He was joking. He was American, and the Americans joked all the time. They seemed exceptionally good-humoured. ‘I’m a nurse. I want my patients to get better, not worse.’

‘Don’t be so practical.’

‘Nurses are always practical, they have to be.’ She didn’t feel practical, not now, with her hand held so tightly in his.

He gave another tiny smile. ‘Couldn’t you be impractical just for tonight?’

‘Not if it means you catching pneumonia, no. Anyway, it’s exceptionally warm. You’re not likely to catch anything except a few insect bites. Mind you, they can be nasty.’

‘In that case,’ he said lightly, ‘Maybe we could forget about war, explosions in the distance, illnesses, hospitals, doctors and nurses, and just talk about each other?’

She should really say no, that’s impractical too. Instead, she murmured, ‘There’s nothing much to say.’ She already knew quite a lot about him. He came from Boston. His parents – he called them ‘folks’ – were Irish. He was twenty-three, worked in a bookshop owned by his father, and had volunteered to fight when America joined the war in 1917. His full name was Thomas Gerald O’Hagan and he had two sisters and five brothers of which he was the youngest. She also knew she wasn’t the only nurse attracted to the tall, thin Irish–American with the laughing face, black curly hair, and peat-brown eyes. She was, however, the only one in love. He occupied her mind every waking minute of every day.