The Pearl Locket (23 page)

‘Mrs Simmons, I apologise. Ahem. As I was saying, we’re sorry for your loss. Now, if you’ll excuse us, as you can see we had a small accident in here earlier, which we must clear up. And I’m sure you have much you need to do.’ Father was standing stiffly to attention beside the open breakfast room door. Through it, Joan could see Mags sitting on the turn of the stairs. She wanted to run to her. She wanted Mags to make everything better, the way she had when they were children and Joan’s teddy’s arm came off—Joan had thought the world was ending but Mags had fixed the toy. If only she could fix this, too.

Mrs Simmons got stiffly to her feet. She stroked Joan’s hair as she still knelt on the floor. ‘Joan, dear, you know where I am. Come and talk to me, whenever you need a friend, or if you just want to remember Jack. Our poor boy. Our poor, darling boy.’ She stifled a sob, and followed Father out.

The front door closed, and Father came back into the breakfast room. ‘Well, that makes our decisions a little easier now, doesn’t it? There’s no question of you keeping the baby now that your chap is dead. You’ll go to my sister as I suggested, and come back after the child has been adopted. We’ll tell no one here of your trouble. I’ll write to my sister at once, and you can be on the train to Shropshire within a few days. Until then, you are to stay in the house. No running off to the WVS or to that Simmons woman. I don’t want you blabbing to anyone about your predicament.’

Chapter Twenty-One

July 1944—May 1945

Joan lay in the narrow bed at her Aunt Doris’s house and stared at a brown stain on the ceiling. It was a humid night, so she kicked off the worn cotton bedspread and lay under only the sheet, a hand on her lower abdomen, over her growing baby. She’d been living in this room for three weeks, but already it felt like for ever. True to his word, her father had packed her off to Shropshire at the earliest opportunity.

Aunt Doris, tall and thin-faced with an expression of permanent disappointment, had not exactly welcomed her with open arms. ‘You poor love,’ she’d said, when she met Joan off the train. ‘How terrible to have lost the boy you loved. Well, I promised your father you could stay until you’re…well…until you’re back to normal, as it were. I hope you’ll be no trouble.’

At least she had shown a touch more sympathy for her regarding Jack’s death than her family had. Except Mags, of course. Mags had been the one person who had got her through those first horrendous days after Marion Simmons had called with that horrible telegram. Father and Betty had seemed irritated by the inconvenience of her grief. And Mother, after a brief ‘there, there, dear,’ had resorted to her usual behaviour of doing and saying the same as her husband.

Joan had become numb. It was a survival instinct. If she thought about Jack, what had happened to him, and the devastation of their plans, she found herself crumpling with pain, able to do nothing but curl up into a ball in her bed and sob. The same happened if she thought about their baby, growing inside her, and wondered what its future might hold. So she had closed herself off, shut her mind down, and was going through life in a kind of daze, doing whatever she was bid, thinking about nothing, just getting herself from one end of the day to the other.

Aunt Doris had recognised she needed to be kept busy, and had set her to work cleaning rooms, baking, preserving. She kept chickens in a coop in the garden, and it was now Joan’s responsibility to feed the hens and collect the eggs each day, and clean the coop each week. The company of the chickens was surprisingly therapeutic. They had quickly begun to recognise Joan and associate her with feeding time, and she liked the way they clucked and fussed around her feet when she let them out of the coop. She enjoyed, too, the endless supply of fresh eggs. So much better than the powdered rations she’d had at home.

But it was at night, when she had nothing to do but lie in bed and stare at the ceiling, when sleep would not come, that she could not stop herself from endlessly replaying every moment she’d ever had with Jack. From that first dance when he’d taken on that pushy Canadian airman, to their one and only night together in the air-raid shelter. She would take out Jack’s letters and reread every one of them, and spend hours poring over his photo. She inevitably ended up sobbing, wiping her eyes on the edge of her sheet, and eventually falling asleep exhausted once again with grief.

Why Jack? Why did it have to be Jack? Couldn’t some other poor boy have been killed instead? That was a terrible wish to have, she knew, and she was disgusted at herself for thinking it, but she couldn’t help herself. Jack had been such a good man, with his life ahead of him, and he’d have been a wonderful husband and father. Not only had his death ended all that, it had also destroyed her chances of happiness, and left their baby without a father.

When she thought of the baby she was gripped with yet more anguish. What would become of it? In her brighter moments she thought perhaps she would somehow keep it, bring the child up on her own as Mrs Atkins had done, pass herself off as a widow somewhere new. Perhaps once the child was born she could run away from Aunt Doris and Shropshire, find some other place and make a new life for herself and the child. But then, a more rational, depressed part of her brain would ask how she could possibly manage that, in wartime, at her age, with no skills and no money. In those moments she would acknowledge that her father was right—the best choice for the child would be adoption. All she could do was to pray that a good and kind couple would take the child.

The weeks and months passed slowly at Aunt Doris’s. When the baby began to move around inside her, every twitch, every kick, every hiccup was a reminder of what might have been. Every letter from home made her think of the letters she’d loved to receive from Jack, when he was away training for the war that would kill him. When the dark cold nights of autumn arrived, they reminded her of the winter when she’d met Jack, and he’d loaned her his coat as they walked home along the promenade. When Christmas came, a quiet affair with just herself and Aunt Doris sitting down to a meal of roast chicken—one of the hens that had stopped laying—the meagre present-giving put her in mind of the gifts she’d had from Jack. New Year’s Eve and then her birthday passed, almost unmarked except for a card and present of a paperback book from Mags. She fingered the locket Jack had given her and which she always wore, no matter what she was doing. If only she could go back to that moment and tell him not to join up, persuade him to take up the college place to study engineering and let others go to war, not him. If only they could go back in time and change things. If only they could be together again.

At last her time came. It was mid-January, a cold and blustery day, and just over a year since Joan first met Jack, that she felt the first twinges while she was outside feeding the chickens. She straightened up and groaned, then shooed the chickens back into their coop and went indoors. A few hours later, in the nearby cottage hospital, her daughter was born. The tiny, angry little bundle was placed in her arms, swaddled in a blanket, and she felt a surge of love for the helpless creature, and sorrow that she’d been born into such a mess. ‘I would have been a good mother, and he’d have been the best father, little one,’ she whispered. ‘I am so sorry. So very sorry. Be well, be happy, be good.’ The midwife gently took the baby from her, and at once a wailing noise started up, a sound so anguished it was as though someone’s heart was being ripped from their body. It was a sound she’d last heard when Marion Simmons came with the telegram. It was a moment before Joan realised the wailing was coming from herself.

Four days later, her breasts still producing unwanted milk, she travelled back home by train. ‘You’ll be better off amongst your family,’ Aunt Doris had said. ‘Thank you for your help with the chickens. Now off you go, and forget all about this little period of your life. Move on, find new ways to be happy.’ She’d hugged Joan. ‘I’ll miss you.’

Father met her off the train. ‘We said you went away to be part of the land army,’ he told her. ‘We told people you stayed with Doris, worked on a farm, then after the harvest you decided to stay over Christmas to keep your aunt company. All right? Don’t forget, that’s the story.’ He coughed. ‘Your sister Margaret will be pleased to have you back, at any rate.’

Joan nodded. The numbness had returned, doubled. She’d lost both Jack and her baby.

At home, Margaret enfolded her in a huge hug, squealing with joy. ‘So good to see you, Joanie! I have so much to tell you. There’s a dance, this weekend, and Father said I could take you along. Do you want to go?’

Joan smiled feebly. ‘Well, I’m not sure. I think I would rather stay quietly at home. At least for a week or two. Can you help me carry my suitcase upstairs?’ She wanted nothing more than to sit down, drink a cup of tea, and then get herself to bed. She sighed. It wasn’t Mags’s fault. She had no idea what it was like to give birth. Standing for more than a few minutes was uncomfortable, and the thought of going to a dance was intolerable. Mags had no idea either what it was to lose the love of your life, and then be forced into giving up your baby. With a jolt, Joan realised that never again would she feel she was in the same bracket as her sister. Too many experiences divided them. Mags may be the elder, by a couple of years, but Joan was the one who’d experienced so much more of the highs and lows of life. She felt as though she was eighty, not eighteen.

‘Of course I will,’ Mags said, picking up the case and skipping upstairs with it. Joan followed slowly, leaning heavily on the banisters. In her room, she lay down on the bed.

Mags looked at her sadly. ‘Oh, Joanie. I’m so sorry. I was so looking forward to you coming home I forgot you’d be feeling sad, still. I’m sorry I was so pushy when you came in.’

Joan stood up again and hugged her sister. ‘It’s all right. I’d have been the same if it was the other way around. You can tell me all the news, tomorrow perhaps, when I’m a bit more rested. But I don’t think I’ll be going to any dances in the near future.’

Mags smiled. Joan looked around. Her old room seemed so much smaller than she remembered. She sighed, took out the photo of Jack and placed it on her bedside cabinet.

The weeks dragged by. News from the front was more and more positive—the tide had indeed turned and it seemed only a matter of time before Hitler accepted the inevitable and surrendered. But even as the prospect of peace became more and more likely, Joan found herself unable to feel any sense of hope for the future. There was no future. It had died with Jack. Joan’s days consisted of helping her mother around the house, doing the shopping, and taking a weekend stroll with her father, who would lecture her as they walked on the importance of learning all the skills of homemaking so that she could eventually make someone a good wife, if a man could be found who would overlook the fact she was not a virgin. Joan kept her head bowed throughout these walks, and let his words wash over her. There was only one man whose wife she could have been. Only one, and he lay buried somewhere in a French battlefield.

For the first few weeks she had watched the post eagerly, expecting to hear from whoever had adopted her baby. Surely they would write and tell her how big she was growing and how she was progressing. But no letter came, and eventually she realised that none ever would.

Mrs Atkins had called round several times since Joan’s return. She’d pleaded with her to return to the WVS, but Joan had shaken her head. The thought of looking after those little children, all the while wondering what her own baby was doing, was intolerable. Mrs Atkins offered her other duties, such as sorting the donated clothing or manning the tea urn, but Joan had said no. ‘Ah, well, love, when you’re ready, come back to us,’ Mrs Atkins had said. ‘And in the meantime, if ever you need someone to talk to, someone who really understands what you’ve been through, you know where I am. Eh, love?’

But Mrs Atkins had kept her child, brought him up alone, and made a success of things. Joan knew she could no longer talk to her old friend, who would surely judge her for having not been strong enough to fight to keep her baby. After a few visits, during which Joan did not say much, Mrs Atkins stayed away.

Marion Simmons came once, too. But Joan found it so upsetting to be with the one other person who’d loved Jack, without even being able to mention their baby, that Father asked Mrs Simmons not to call again.

Her mother and Betty seemed not to know what to do with her. Mother sighed loudly every time she looked at Joan, and then spoke to her in an overly jolly tone as though she was a toddler who needed cheering up. Betty was more blunt. ‘Why can’t you just snap out of it?’ she’d asked Joan one day, after finding her lying motionless on the sofa, staring at the ceiling. ‘We’re all very sorry for your loss, of course we are, but it was months ago! When are you going to get over it?’

Never. The only thing Joan was certain about was that she would never, ever get over losing Jack and their baby.

Even Mags wasn’t able to get through. She tried, and Joan was grateful for that. Mags had sat quietly with her, just holding her hand or reading to her. She’d taken her out for walks, or to Lyons corner house for a cup of tea. She’d talked about Jack, and the few times she’d seen him, and tried to draw Joan out. She’d tried to encourage Joan to go out to dances again, and meet someone new.

‘Jack wouldn’t want you to spend the rest of your life alone, would he? He’d want you to be happy,’ Mags had said, and Joan had agreed. Jack would always have wanted nothing but her happiness, just as Joan knew, if the situation was reversed, she would want Jack to find someone else and live a happy life. But she couldn’t lift herself out of the deep chasm of gloom in which she lay paralysed. Not even for Mags. She would smile weakly, and thank Mags for spending time with her, but all the while all she wanted was to be left alone.

At the beginning of May, Joan was despairing, wondering how she could get through the anniversary of Jack’s death the following month. She was sitting on her bed, fingering her pearl locket and remembering how hopeful she’d felt just a year before, when Mags burst into the room.