Daughters of War Page 2

  George was in pier insurance, and it was thrilling to have a grown-up talk to me about their work. I nodded eagerly as he talked about the beautiful Victorian structures that he couldn’t wait to show me: ‘Don’t be fooled though, May, they’re riddled with woodworm.’ He also told me he liked women, but rather than hearing it as the warning it probably was, I was flattered – I thought, I’m a woman now!

  We married quickly, perhaps before either of us dared change our minds, and we took the ship to England.

  ‘What shall I do in London?’ I asked, drinking my first champagne as we waved goodbye to the Statue of Liberty.

  ‘Do?’

  ‘Yes.’ I had developed a tinkly little laugh that George seemed to like. I did it then. Tee hee. ‘What will I do with myself?’

  ‘Have a good time, I expect,’ he said and we kissed and I laughed in that tinkling way again. Later, I recognised this was like one of those questions that one needs to ask before the exam, and not during.

  I didn’t have a good time. The pier insurance industry was more demanding than I could have imagined. George worked away a lot, so it was just me in the house with Mrs Crawford clattering saucepans downstairs. I felt isolated and foolish and that sense of foolishness made me isolate myself further. Around the same time that I realised I had made a mistake, I found out that I was pregnant. I was well and truly stuck. Bed made.

  ‘You’ll swim next week?’ Elizabeth asked. Once I agreed, she added. ‘And come back for tea?’ I nodded gratefully. Things were on the turn.

  * * *

  I had known Elizabeth only four or five Thursdays when I confided in her about how unhappy my marriage to George had become. This was a short amount of time by anyone’s standards – particularly English people’s standards. Most wait a lifetime before disclosing anything beyond a shameful preference for peas over carrots, but I really was desperately unhappy. And Elizabeth was the first person I’d ever met who didn’t think much of the institution of marriage. She said, ‘Why would I want a husband, when I’ve got Tiggy, Winkle and Delia?’ She did astonish me. Tiggy and Winkle were darling, though. I wasn’t especially fond of Delia but our antipathy was mutual.

  So, I threw caution to the wind and exposed the reality of George and me: we may have begun as an ‘international love affair’ or ‘Atlantic romantics’ as I had once, pompously, considered us, but recently I wasn’t sure if I even liked him, let alone – here, I stuttered slightly, for these were virgin words – loved him anymore. Elizabeth didn’t squeal or gasp but just shrugged and said, ‘Mm, I see…’

  She was so unperturbed that I went on, saying that I suspected, but could not prove, that George had affairs ‘by the dozen’. I was going to say, ‘the baker’s dozen’ – the charming phrase I had learnt from Mrs Crawford that very morning – but I thought it might be inappropriate.

  ‘Why would you need to prove it?’ Elizabeth said, poking her finger into her teacup. Delia trotted over, licked the fingertip, then glared at me.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  I couldn’t help but feel Elizabeth thought I was weak, but then, I knew I was. I didn’t know why I wanted to know, but I did. I had to know for sure. I remembered the cabin from our Atlantic crossing, with its perfectly round portholes. What an adventure it was. How excited I had felt! I had adored George once and I would have liked to feel that again.

  When I told Elizabeth that he used to flirt, chronically, with Bella, a timid housemaid with poor references who had recently done a bunk in the night and thus had become the chief repository of my suspicions, she murmured, ‘It is hard to employ good staff.’

  It was nice to have a friend, and it was very nice to have a friend who didn’t judge – for who doesn’t fear that? – but a little more emotion either way might have been helpful.

  Things to do

  Swim.

  Take nice present to Elizabeth’s – Ribston Pippins?

  Read the newspaper every morning – it clearly has no discernible effect on my mood.

  Circumnavigate Tooting Common – NO SHORT-CUTS

  Get more paper from Morleys. Plain IS better for the self-esteem.

  Eat less dessert. Resist the macaroons. They only make you miserable in the long run.

  2

  I must have walked past the notice in the post office a dozen times before, one sunny morning, it caught my eye. I don’t know whether it was the cold-water swimming or my friendship with Elizabeth, probably a mixture of both, but I was feeling quite buoyed up.

  I thought Doctor Grange should have Elizabeth on prescription! I would have told her this, only I knew she would have laughed. She found the unlikeliest things to laugh at. She would say, ‘This is the twentieth century, May, and I’m a normal girl leading a normal life,’ but she wasn’t. She wanted to teach me to do handstands. She was much better at them in her living room than in the lake. She could hold herself the wrong way up for a good twenty seconds. But while she enjoyed gymnastics, swimming was her first love. One afternoon, she showed me a newspaper cutting of a handsome man with a twirling moustache (the kind that would make George green with envy), a barrel-shaped athletic man in very few clothes, showing off his muscles.

  ‘Is this your boyfriend?’ I said, reading the line, ‘Captain Matthew Webb was stung by countless jellyfish’.

  This made her fold over in laughter. ‘Don’t be daft, May! He was the first man to swim the Channel.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And I plan to be the first woman.’

  I looked hard into her face to see if this was another of her jokes.

  ‘The Channel?’ I thought it was the sea between England and France, but maybe I was wrong.

  ‘Dover to Calais, that’s it, all twenty-one miles. There is no reason I couldn’t do it,’ she added firmly.

  ‘I don’t doubt it,’ I agreed. In my mind, Elizabeth could and would do anything she wanted. I had never met a woman as ambitious as she.

  * * *

  Although not quite restored to my premarital self, I was now able to get up most mornings and passed most days without tears running down my cheeks. This was progress. Indeed, Mrs Crawford had stopped staring at me with that intense look of sympathy and disdain she had. The newspapers were allowed back in my bedroom and only rarely did they set me off.

  The notice in the post office was for an assistant to an artist. Friday Afternoons Only. Pleasant Young Woman. I had never met an artist before. George hated artists, but this only served as further incentive for me to apply. George certainly wasn’t reining himself in on my account, so why would I for him? I wasn’t sure I was young any more – I was two years shy of thirty – but Mrs Crawford had said I could pass for twenty-one – (not about this – I didn’t tell her about this. I didn’t think she would approve). As for pleasant, I felt I could act pleasant – at least for such a short duration as this.

  The artist’s name was Percy Milhouse and he asked outright if I had heard of him before. I hadn’t. He chuckled. It was unclear whether he minded or not and I considered it best not to pursue it. He had an apartment – he called it a ‘studio’ – in a converted old house only about fifty yards down the road from me, another point in favour of the visit. The studio was about fifty yards skywards. It felt like the stairs were never-ending: the six flights to the third floor meant I always arrived slightly and shamefully out of breath. (I would not be swimming the Channel any time soon.) It was a massive room with large windows overlooking the common, three easels set at curious angles and canvases resting on them and against the walls. There was also a chaise longue, a small square table with spindly legs and a couple of battered brown leather armchairs, but other than that, there was not much furniture for a room that size. It was nothing compared to Elizabeth’s beautiful house, but I liked its mismatched artiness.

  When Percy learnt in that interview that George and I lived in a whole house to ourselves, he made digs. ‘Ooh, you wealthy people!’ ‘Oh, an entire building, my, how do you sta
nd to be with the riff-raff?’ His jealousy surprised me. Percy referred to himself as a bohemian and I didn’t know bohemians cared about such trivial things.

  Percy’s artwork was popular with London’s fashionable set. When he told me the prices he asked for his pictures, I had to stop myself from looking astonished and make my expression suggest, quite right too. (Being pleasant is harder than it looks.)

  ‘For just the one?!’

  ‘You’ve got enough walls in your house to hang them all, haven’t you?’

  Percy was always on the precipice of a new style, a new school or a new wave. (I always forgot which was the right word.)

  I confess I had hoped his work would be more old-fashioned. For me, the best artists were the Pre-Raphaelites. Dreamy women with luscious hair, who looked like they had the world at their feet. But Percy dealt with blocks of colour, sharp-ended squares or elongated triangles; humans rarely featured except in rectangular form. Or in profile with only one eye. I did grow to like the pictures eventually – familiarity will do that to you – but secretly, I couldn’t help but feel that poor Percy was wasting his talents.

  * * *

  The next Thursday as we undressed in adjacent changing cubicles by Tooting Bathing Lake, I excitedly told Elizabeth about my Friday working for Percy. I hoped to impress her for once. Elizabeth loved art, she loved adventure. I had already prepared an anecdote about Percy’s paintings that involved a six-year-old being able to do them. (It may have been unoriginal, but it was true.)

  ‘You went to an artist’s studio, an artist you don’t know?’ repeated Elizabeth.

  ‘I did.’

  Her tone was a surprise. It was like talking to George or Mrs Crawford. I had rather thought Elizabeth would encourage me. This was a woman who hoped to swim across the English Channel one day! Whose motto was, ‘Cats first, marriage last, swimming in between!’

  ‘So, how did you assist?’

  ‘Well, I didn’t do much of anything, to be honest…’ I began.

  ‘Well,’ Elizabeth said haughtily, ‘how peculiar.’

  Actually, Percy had said, ‘I like to have someone here when I’m painting,’ but I didn’t think Elizabeth would find that acceptable. I felt strangely protective of the softly spoken, kind man who just wanted company.

  ‘It was perfectly safe, Elizabeth,’ I trilled. ‘You needn’t worry.’

  ‘But what if he makes a pass at you?’ She flicked a green insect away from a leaf.

  ‘He wouldn’t!’

  ‘But if he did?’

  She removed her swim-hat: it made no difference to her how wet her hair got.

  I liked Percy, but I didn’t find him attractive. To tell the truth, I didn’t find any man attractive. Constant suspicion that your husband is philandering can do that to a girl.

  I explained all this, adding daringly, ‘I would put him in his place.’

  Elizabeth smiled then. Those teeth, like shiny bathroom tiles, twinkled at me. Her slicked-back hair made her look like a silent movie star. ‘Coming back for tea?’

  * * *

  The day the poor Archduke and his wife were splattered over the newspapers, Percy did make a pass at me. The Times were giving the terrible murder the front-page treatment. The gun, the unlikely detour, the young assassin, Gavrilo Princip, his sandwich, the riot – this was the kind of news that really was news and I was fully immersed in the story when I realised Percy was looming over me.

  ‘Put down the paper, May.’

  Percy wasn’t holding his brushes, which was unusual (usually they were an extension of his hands). I stopped reading but I didn’t put the paper down. Percy had a habit of covering the floor with old newspapers, so his paint didn’t destroy the carpet. It always felt odd to be walking over ‘New Ambassador to London’ or ‘Seven dead in coach accident’ and I didn’t want to walk over the Archduke and his wife before I’d had a chance to read about them.

  ‘Darling May, would you consider a dalliance?’

  ‘A dalliance?’ I pretended I didn’t understand the word. I pointed at the newspaper: ‘Isn’t this awful?’

  Percy repeated, ‘A dalliance, May, what do you say?’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  Grim-faced, Percy went on: ‘Could we have intimate relations, do you suppose, May?’ (I think anyone would agree that, put that way, it did not sound very inviting.) ‘You’re an attractive young woman.’

  ‘I’m twenty-eight,’ I said.

  ‘Well then.’

  I looked at him. Percy had an unremarkable face. As he lacked distinction in his features, he tried to make up for it in his clothes. Today he was wearing a long cream smock, the kind that you would imagine an artist to wear. He always took a great deal of care to look like he did not take a great deal of care.

  ‘I’m flattered, Percy, but I will have to decline your kind offer. You see, I take my marriage vows seriously.’

  This was what Elizabeth had advised me to say in such a situation. She had decided that pretending that, if it were not for my being married, I would have jumped at the chance would soften the blow. Just as she had predicted, Percy took this reasoning very well. I may even have detected a little relief around the gills. I was glad that we had got it out the way because ever since Elizabeth had put it in my mind, it had been haunting my Friday afternoons. There was no need for me to leave his employment, Percy insisted. Company was company, and he liked me very much, whether I dallied or not.

  I felt pleased for Elizabeth: I knew she would be triumphant that she had read the situation right. When the next Thursday I related the incident to her, as we changed side by side in the changing rooms, she said that I had managed it brilliantly and that made me happy too.

  3

  The morning the girls finished school for summer vacation, and we were due to go to collect them, George announced that he wasn’t feeling himself.

  ‘Oh, that’s a shame, George,’ I said, wondering who he was feeling now and how I could catch them at it.

  He came on the trips up to Leamington less and less nowadays. The last time he had joined me was last Christmas, but he hadn’t taken the girls to or from school in the Easter, nor the summer term. We were at breakfast. On the rare occasions I could face going down, George would usually say something like, ‘Oh, you’re joining us today? To what do we owe the pleasure?’ but he hadn’t this morning. Mrs Crawford gave me her nervy smile and poured more coffee. Mrs Crawford did an excellent job, but as a household we disappointed her. She would have been happy with a whirl of activity, child-rearing, cake-making. Instead, she was lumbered with a master with gout, a melancholic mistress who struggled to get dressed of a morning and children who were never at home. We didn’t have parties, we didn’t have a social circle – we didn’t even have a social dot.

  George tugged at his starchy collar as though it were strangling him, then smoothed both his cheeks downwards. George’s cheeks were often puffy, but to my mind that morning, they were no puffier than usual. He was faking, I was sure of it.

  ‘Isn’t it stifling today, May? I’m unbearably hot.’

  ‘It’s not particularly warm,’ I murmured. ‘There’s a lot of cloud cover,’ I went on as though I were the expert on such things. In fact, my blinds had remained resolutely closed since I had woken at four. ‘You must be coming down with something.’

  I tapped my egg with renewed vigour and watched the shell crack.

  ‘Will you manage the journey by yourself, May?’

  ‘If I have to,’ I said mildly. ‘Perhaps you will feel better with some food inside you, George?’

  ‘Doubt it.’

  George dabbed his forehead with his handkerchief as though it were streaming with sweat. He was such a ham.

  He spread an itty-bitty spoonful of marmalade on his toast, then levelled it to his mouth. His chewing seemed to go on for ever. I peeled my eggshell, trying to appear nonchalant when in fact I was on tenterhooks, waiting for the verdict. Please let George stay home, p
lease. I had got used to taking the journey myself. There was little worse than sitting side by side with George on a train, pretending we were a normal, happy couple.

  Finally, George made his announcement. I had my wish. He couldn’t take his head any longer: he would have to return to his bed.

  Without its shell, my egg appeared a most brilliant white. I couldn’t help but admire its pale, imperfect beauty.

  ‘Poor soldier,’ I called after George’s retreating figure. ‘I will tell the girls how disappointed you are.’

  I should have liked to have done a celebratory jig right then and there on Mrs Crawford’s expertly ironed tablecloth.

  * * *

  In my excitement, I got to Paddington too early and had to wait a full forty-five minutes before my train pulled in.

  What a pleasure it was to watch the world go by without George grumbling by my side about ladies’ fashion failings. A group of elderly day-trippers were obediently following a man with a canary-yellow umbrella. They moved each time he moved, even if it were just to scratch his ankle or put his paper down: it was funny, like watching a cat and several mice. They were going to Shakespeare country to see ‘The Scottish play’, which meant they were going to Stratford-upon-Avon to see Macbeth. I enjoyed listening to their amused chatter. I wished Elizabeth were here; she would have had the best witty observations. She and her mother were spending most of the summer in Northumberland. Elizabeth wasn’t looking forward to it – her lip had trembled when we said goodbye – but we had made plans to see each other in the middle of August, if not before. We also made plenty of promises to write. Percy had been less understanding about my commitment to my girls. ‘I won’t see you for a whole six weeks! Is that absolutely necessary?’ I knew he would manage fine though.