We've Come to Take You Home (15 page)

THIRTY-EIGHT

September 1917

‘I'
VE BEEN WAITING FOR
hours…'

They had arranged to meet at their usual place, the corner of Wakehurst Street and Northcote Avenue, at ten o'clock sharp. It was now eleven.

‘Ellie, I tried to get away but she wouldn't make up her mind about anything. Did she want potatoes, didn't she want potatoes. Did she want meat, didn't she want meat, and if she did want meat, did she want beef or pork. I wanted to tell her that she would be lucky if she got cat. And then she got onto bread. Did we need some, didn't we need some, and I just wanted to say if you don't get a move on, you silly old bag, there won't be any bread. But I didn't.'

She couldn't. If she had she would have been out of a job.

They linked arms and walked together, baskets swinging, past the old man playing the barrel organ with a monkey, dressed in a moth-holed woollen suit, spitting and gibbering on his shoulder.

A crowd had gathered outside the butcher. Men, women and children stood in a circle, laughing and jeering at two women shouting abuse at each other. The younger woman grabbed the older woman's hair. The older woman scratched her nails down the younger woman's face. The younger woman kicked. The older woman kicked back. A little boy began to cry.

‘Come on now…'

Two men walked out of the crowd. They pulled the two women apart.

‘That's enough.'

Walking towards them, down the street, was a young soldier.

‘Look at him, that's what I call a man. He's got everything a woman needs or wants…'

‘Ellie, that's an awful thing to say.'

‘Awful? What's awful about it? It's the truth. Just look at that one over there…'

A young woman was pushing a wheelchair along the pavement on the opposite side of the street. Propped up in the chair was a man. Or what was left of a man. He was hunched over, as if his spine had been snapped in two, and his head was lolling on his chest. He had just one arm and one leg.

‘Look at that poor bastard. Whatever they pay him it won't be enough. And what sort of life is she going to have?'

‘Ellie…'

‘Pushing that thing around for the rest of her–'

‘Please, Ellie…'

The tears were coming.

‘I mean just look at him. It's not right…'

She couldn't stop them.

‘I'm going to have… a baby…'

It was out.

‘A baby?'

Ellie leaned forward. She lowered her voice.

‘Are you sure?'

‘Yes, yes, of course I'm sure.'

‘But, Jess, you might have made a mistake. Got the dates wrong? What about your monthly…'

She'd crossed the days off, one by one. And then the weeks, one by one.

‘Nothing for two months.'

‘Two months? Why didn't you tell me? Why didn't you say something?'

And now Ellie was whispering.

‘Who is he?'

Ellie was like a sister, even a mother, to Jess, all rolled into one. She wouldn't have survived the first few weeks in London without her. And it would have seemed the most natural thing in the world to tell her about Tom. But she had kept her promise.

‘It's not that one, him with the earring, who delivers the coal, because, Jess, I've got to tell you now–'

‘It's Tom. Tom's the father.'

Ellie froze.

‘Tom? That Tom?'

‘Yes, that Tom.'

Ellie's eyes widened.

‘The bastard, taking advantage of you, right there in his own home, it's disgusting, an innocent girl like you…'

Ellie's hands were clamped on her hips, her head was thrust forward and her eyes were bulging.

‘You're fifteen, too young to get married, definitely too young to be pregnant and you've got no home and no parents…'

Jess started to laugh.

‘What's so funny? Because, from where I'm standing, things don't look so good.'

‘What you just said, about Tom taking advantage of me? That's what you told me to do, “Get yourself in there, get yourself in the family way and then you'll be looked after.” Remember?'

‘And that's what you did?'

‘Come on, Ellie, I'm not that stupid. I may be a maid-ofall-work but I know what's right and I know what's wrong and I've still got some pride.'

Ellie scowled.

‘And I suppose the next thing you're going to tell me is that you love him?'

‘Yes, yes, I do. And he loves me.'

Ellie's laugh was loud and harsh.

‘That's what they all say. Love? You wouldn't know, Jessica Brown, what love was if it hit you in the face. What happens if he comes home like that one over there, with no arms, no legs and slobbering like a baby? Will you still love him when he doesn't know who you are, when you have to wash him and wipe him and feed him his soup? Will you? Because, Jess, that's what love is, really is, not this silly little dream, all hearts and flowers and wedding bells and sweet little babies you're carrying around inside your head.'

The wheelchair was sitting outside a shop. The woman was nowhere to be seen but the man was still there, propped up, his head lolling.

‘And what if he doesn't come home at all? What if he gets blown to pieces on some battlefield?'

Jess had never seen Ellie cry, not ever, however long the day had been, however tired she was.

‘Did you think about that when the two of you were banging away at each other…'

And now tears were streaming down her face.

‘Ellie, what's the matter?'

Jess put her arms round her.

‘Tell me, what's the matter?'

Ellie pushed her away.

‘I didn't want you to know…'

She pulled a handkerchief out of her sleeve.

‘I was engaged, a year ago, I had a fiancé, Oliver, he wrote me a letter to say he was coming home on leave and he wanted me to get the church sorted so we could get married.'

Jess waited while Ellie snuffled into her handkerchief.

‘He was due back Wednesday. I waited and waited and then the telephone rang, in the afternoon. My mistress called me and I was so excited, I thought it was him. But it wasn't…'

Ellie blew her nose.

‘It was his father. Ollie's ship had been torpedoed, the one bringing him back home from France…'

She pushed the handkerchief up her sleeve. She picked up her shopping basket.

‘Danger and delight, Jessica Brown,' she hooked her arm inside Jess', ‘grow on one stalk.'

THIRTY-NINE

‘A
RE YOU SURE
?'

Jess sighed.

‘Ellie, I can't do anything else. If he loves me, he'll write to his parents, tell them that I'm expecting, and then they'll have to look after me.'

‘But what if–'

‘He doesn't love me? Well, then, what will happen will be what always happens when an underage girl like me, with no family and no home, gets herself pregnant. I'll be kicked out onto the streets, and I'll have nowhere to go except the workhouse. My baby, if it's born alive, and if I don't die having it, will be taken away from me. And I'll spend the rest of my life shut up behind four walls, my head shaved, dressed in nothing but a sack…'

If only half of what she was saying was true. Having to go into a workhouse was not something anyone should joke about. Jess had seen the one in Lewes. Her mother had lowered her eyes and pulled on Jess's hand, rushing her past the imposing grey-stone entranceway. She'd explained that it was a place nobody would choose to go to unless they were really desperate. It was where the poor, the old and the sick ended up if they had no one to look after them. Most of those who entered never left. They ended up dying there.

But the workhouse wasn't just for the old. It was where she would be sent, an unmarried girl expecting a baby.

‘He said he loved me. He really did…'

‘That's what they all say, just so they can get their sticky fingers inside your knickers…'

‘Tom's not like that.'

‘They're all like that, every single one of them.'

‘Even your Ollie?'

Ellie smiled.

‘Even my Ollie.'

On any other night she would have found the letter easy to write. She would just imagine Tom lying there beside her, their heads side by side on the pillow, and she would tell him everything that she had done that day. But after fifty-six letters, eight weeks of writing one letter a day, she was more than aware that she had been writing the same things over and over again.

Telling the man you loved, who was risking his life out in France, who woke up each morning never knowing whether he'd be dead or alive one hour later, that you had got up at five o'clock, swept the floors, shaken the rugs out, scrubbed the front steps, polished the doorknobs, cooked breakfast, made the beds, gone shopping and sorted out the laundry might have been good enough for people like her father and her mother, a farm labourer and his wife, but it wouldn't do for Tom. Not at all. She would have to try harder.

So she'd started to comment on the things she'd read in the papers to make her letters more interesting. And sometimes she made up stories. They were always funny and they always had happy endings. But this letter was different. The story she was about to write was true. And it didn't, as yet, have an ending. And, when it did, she wasn't convinced that it would be a happy one.

‘Your father and mother have got me digging up the back garden, the grass and all the lovely flowers, the roses, and everything, so that we can grow vegetables, carrots and onions and potatoes and swede. They will make a lovely soup…'

Ellie yawned.

‘Queues at the shops are getting longer – good job there's just the three of us to feed…'

Ellie snorted.

‘More like four.'

‘Ssh, they'll hear you.'

‘No they won't. They're two floors down and the Major snores like a pig. Get a move on, will you.'

‘Where was I?'

Ellie rolled her eyes.

‘There's talk of the government giving people cards, rationing food, I don't know if it's a good idea. But people need something to eat. There's been rioting, crowds breaking into shops, attacking the shopkeepers but there's nothing to buy. We have been reading in the papers about the fighting at…'

She nudged Ellie.

‘How do you spell it?'

Ellie smoothed out the newspaper that Jess had sneaked out from under the Major's chair that evening.

‘P …a …s …s …c …h …e …n … 'Jess wrote out the name, letter by letter, ‘d …a …e …l …e.'

She had told Ellie, two days ago, when they were out shopping, that she was expecting Tom's baby. It had been an ordinary Thursday in south London, no different from any other, with the Major complaining, as usual, about the dust she hadn't brushed off the carpet and his wife unable to make up her mind about whether they did or didn't need bread.

But on that same day, 20
^th
September, near a village called Passchendaele in Belgium, a village not unlike her own with cottages, some big, some small, clumped together round a church, 21,000 allied soldiers had been killed or wounded at the Battle of Menin Road Bridge. All those boys, all those
men; it was impossible to understand, impossible to take in. But it was all too easy, if you just thought of each one, singly; a son, a brother, a husband or a father, a Tom, standing outside his home, surrounded by his family.

‘My darling Tom, I hope you're not there but somewhere far away where you are safe. I wear your locket all the time. I never take it off. You are in my heart every minute of every day…'

Ellie jumped up on the bed.

‘I'm off. All that stupid lovey-dovey stuff…'

She pulled back the curtains and wriggled out of the window. Jess watched as her friend made her way, step by step, along the narrow ledge that ran along the front of the two houses. The two girls waved to each other and Ellie slid through the window down into her bedroom. Jess closed her own window, drew the curtains and then ran over to the fireplace. She rapped twice on the wall. Two raps came back.

She picked up the pencil.

‘I have some news. I hope that you will be pleased. I have missed two monthlies. I didn't tell you after the first one, in case it was a mistake, but now I've missed a second one so I think a baby must be on its way…'

She couldn't avoid it any longer.

‘Please don't be angry with me. I know that you asked me not to tell Ellie about us. But I had to tell her about the baby and now she is helping me. We can trust her. She had a fiancé, Oliver, a soldier who was killed, so she understands.'

The gold locket he'd given her so that they would always be together; his plea, tell me that you love me, standing there in his uniform holding her in his arms; his mother walking down the hallway, the clock striking twelve; asking her to wait for him, promising her that he would come back…

‘So please write to me but send the letter to Ellie next-door at Vanbrugh Villa. Address it to Eleanor Baxter and she will
give it to me. I will wait here until you tell me what to do. And please don't worry. We are both, mother and baby, doing well.'

She had to find out, for better or worse, one way or another. Everything he'd said, everything he'd done, was it the truth? Or was it a lie?

‘Your loving Jess.'

FORTY

October 1917

S
HE GAGGED AND GAGGED
again but nothing came up: her stomach was empty. She was twelve weeks gone and the sickness was getting worse rather than better. And it wasn't just in the morning but throughout the day. The only food she could eat was dry toast. The only liquid that stayed down was water. She was skin and bone with a bulging ball of a belly which, day by day, if not hour by hour, was getting larger and larger.

It was four weeks since she had written to Tom telling him that she was pregnant. Each morning when she got up, she hoped that this would be the day when she heard something back. When she met up with Ellie later in the morning, she would be standing there, at their usual meeting place, but this time she would be holding a letter in her hand.

Jess would tear open the envelope and read the words that both she and Ellie had been longing to hear; Tom loved her, he was delighted with their news, he was writing to his parents without delay, she shouldn't worry, everything would be fine. But there had been no such letter.

She didn't want to have to confess her pregnancy to his mother and father. They would, more than likely, just throw her out. But if it came from Tom, if he said that he loved her, and wanted them to keep her on and look after her, they would have to take notice.

Had his mother guessed what had happened between them? If she had she gave no clue even when her maid-ofall-work spilt the soup or dropped a plate at the mention of
her son's name. When they were alone, going over the daily shopping list, sorting through dirty linen or doing some sewing together, the Major's wife would repeat to her what Tom had said in his letters, where he was, what he was doing. But Tom's last letter home to his parents had arrived over four weeks ago now. Just two days before she'd written her own letter to him. There had been nothing since.

A loud knocking echoed through the house. The chimneys had to be swept every October and this year was to be no exception. Jess had sorted through all the sheets and had selected the ones that were the oldest, greyest and most darned. She would use them to cover the furniture. There would still be dust, lots of it, all over the windows, the shutters, the shelves, everywhere. It would be the grey, sticky sort that was difficult to remove, but at least it would be done for this year. And next year? Next year, where would she be?

What she asked for, when she lay in her bed just before she fell asleep, was that this time next year the war would be over. That she would be safely delivered of a healthy child and that Tom will have arrived back home, neither blind nor deaf, with two arms, two legs and a head, with his brain intact. To ask for anything more, that she should be engaged, even married to him, was just too greedy.

She straightened her cap, smoothed her apron down over the dome of her belly, and ran up the stairs and along the hall to the front door. She opened it. It wasn't the chimney sweep. It was a telegram boy, dressed in his general post office uniform, a bright red pillbox hat perched on the top of his head. She mumbled a thank you, closed the door and stood there in the hall staring down at the envelope. It was addressed to Major and Mrs Osborne. It was either from Tom or about Tom. The families of rank and file soldiers, privates like her own father, got their bad news by letter. The families of officers received their bad news by telegram.

The Major and his wife had gone to call on friends who had just recently lost their own son in the fighting. They wouldn't be back for at least half an hour. And half an hour was too long to stare at this telegram, wondering whether it said that the man she loved, the father of her child, was on his way home on leave, that he was injured or missing – or that he was dead. The envelope was sealed tight but steam would open it. And she had a copper of water boiling on the range.

Ink runs when it gets wet. There had been no rain that morning, or for two days now. If she handed over the envelope, with the names and address all smudged, she couldn't use that as an excuse. The Major and his wife would know, instantly, that someone had tampered with it. And she would be the most likely suspect.

She placed the envelope, face down, onto the back of the
Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management
. She picked up the book and, with the back of the envelope facing down over the water, held it above the steaming copper. She counted to ten and then lifted the book and the envelope out of the steam and onto the kitchen table. She pulled out a drawer, took out a knife and tried to tease the flap of the envelope open. It was still sealed.

She picked up the book and envelope and, once again, held them over the boiling water. She lifted the book and envelope out of the steam. She put them back down on the table. She picked up the knife and, once again, teased the tip of the blade underneath the flap of the envelope. The tip slid in. The flap lifted.

‘Jess, we need to talk about tonight's…'

The Major's wife was standing in the doorway. She and the Major had come home earlier than Jess had expected.

‘What are you doing?'

The envelope was lying, clearly open, on the table.

‘It came for you, while you were out. It's a—'

‘I can see what it is.'

The Major's wife came over to the table. She picked up the envelope. She turned it over, checked the address, and then looked up at Jess.

‘Have you read it?'

Her voice was as smooth and hard as ice – but also as brittle.

‘No.'

The Major's wife pulled out the telegram. She opened it and then read it. Her mouth tightened. She held it out to Jess.