1. Louise
1
Louise
Henley-on-Thames, 1953
The fog is rolling in low across the Thames as I shutter the secondhand shop on Bell Street for the night, the mist weaving its way, tentacle-like, into the alley where my bicycle leans against the side of the gray brick building. The sudden gloom seems to signal a change, the start of something ominous. I draw my woolen scarf closer around my neck against the brisk September air, then climb onto the rickety shopper and begin to pedal home.
I navigate through the town center, then left on Hart Street and toward the base of Henley Bridge, welcoming the stillness. There’s no one out at this late hour to require a greeting or stare at me oddly. When I moved here seven years ago after marrying Joe, the bucolic Oxfordshire town had at first seemed like a haven, a welcome refuge from my mum’s dismal flat in South London. Only later would I realize how small the town actually was, how stifling it would become.
Ten minutes later, I reach home. Our low, two-story house on the outskirts of town at the end of Wargrave Road is iden tical to the half-dozen others in the row, gray brick with a tiny front yard just large enough for a single rosebush each. It is situated in one of the new housing developments that had been erected hastily after the war. The site had formerly been a crater where a bomb had fallen, and I sometimes breathe deeply and imagine that I can still smell the gunpowder.
Though the house appears well-kept from a distance, closer I can see the little faults, even in the near darkness, the cracks at the foundation, a bit of trim around the window that is beginning to fall. I glance at the coal bin and make a mental note to ask Joe to fill it, in the morning of course. He will be on his third brandy or perhaps fourth, so he won’t remember if I mention it now.
Inside, the house is still. Joe is asleep in his chair, reliving the battles he fought, as he does every night. His newsboy cap sits on the table and he is still wearing his white dress shirt from his long day at the accountancy firm, sleeves rolled. Joe’s auburn hair remains military-short, though his face is a bit fuller now with age. I lift the tilted glass gently from his hand and stub out the cigarette, a Player’s Medium, in the ashtray. Though I worry about him drinking too much, I don’t begrudge him the temporary escape liquor provides. At least he drinks at home, bottles purchased from the off-license, rather than getting pissed at The Old Bell or one of the other pubs like some men in town do, staying until closing or even later for a lock-in and stumbling home at all hours, embarrassing their wives.
I touch his cheek, then nudge him gently. “Go up to bed, dear.” Joe rousts himself, mumbling unintelligibly before shuffling off. I watch with a pang of sadness as he retreats.
Joe had served in the British army during the war and had spent more than four years on the ground in active combat. Lucky , some call him, because he was never captured or even wounded. I can see the scars brought on by living under that kind of strain, though, watching friend after friend killed, never knowing if each day would be his last. Neither Joe nor I had ever talked in detail about what either of us had done during the war. It lies silent and unspoken between us, a dark divide.
My mind reels back to the other day when the children had been playing hospital. They were using an old gauze bandage, wrapping it around a doll. Seeing this, Joe, usually so even-tempered, had become distraught. “You’re wasting medical supplies!” he cried. “Don’t you know that some people don’t have enough of those?” His eyes had been wide with horror as he surely remembered men bleeding out when there hadn’t been bandages to save them.
I had taken his arm. “It’s okay. That’s just an old scrap of cloth. It really can’t be used for anything else.”
His eyes seemed to clear then. “Yes, of course. Sorry.” He retreated, his old calm returning. But I could see in that moment the deep places where he hid his anger and pain.
Eight years have passed since the war ended and Joe came home, far longer than he was over there. Time to get on with it , stiff-lipped English folk seem to say. And Joe has gotten on with it, putting his bravest face on to mask the pain. He goes to work and keeps the garden neat and pays the bills, everything that a good husband and father is supposed to do. Only I’m close enough to see the scars that will never fully heal, and I wish there was more I could do to help him.
I walk to the kitchen and pick up an empty packet of crisps from the counter, left there by one of the children, no doubt. I consider being annoyed and then decide it isn’t worth the trouble. I move around, cleaning and straightening. It is late and I’m exhausted; tidying up might have waited until morning. But my own childhood had been a never-ending stream of empty beer bottles and unkempt rooms, and I don’t want that for my family. I simply cannot rest unless things are in order.
When I have set the kitchen to rights, I walk into the living room and sit down by the low table to work on the jigsaw puz zle that Joe gave me for Christmas, depicting a lovely image of the Welsh countryside in summer. I pick up a piece and study the jagged, half-done puzzle, finding a spot and trying it. The piece snaps satisfyingly into place. That is the thing I love most about puzzles. Something that moments earlier had made no sense at all now fits. I reach for another piece. I should go to sleep, I know. But these few minutes of solitude are worth more.
Five minutes later, I tear myself away from the puzzle and start upstairs. In the nursery (a fancy word for the children’s shared room, which is just large enough for two single beds), the twins, Ewen and Phaedra, are sleeping soundly. I pick up a Beano comic from the floor and place it on the nightstand. Winnie-the-Pooh lies open, spine up, and I regret not making it back to read to them before bedtime. I normally only work when the children are at school, wanting to be home for them in the afternoons and evenings. Joe doesn’t mind my helping at the shop, as long as it doesn’t interfere with taking care of the house and children. But Midge had asked a favor, something came up and she was called away suddenly. Could I stay and close up and straighten things for the night? So I’d left dinner and Joe agreed to put the children to bed. At first, I’d worried whether he could manage it. But despite his demons, Joe is good at being there when I need him to be. I stayed longer than I had planned to after closing the shop, getting lost as I so often did when sorting through the objects and imagining the stories behind them.
I adjust the children’s bedclothes to ward off the persistent cold of the second floor, then remove the hot water bottles, which have gone tepid. Downstairs is warm enough from the stove, but upstairs the electric fire does little to stave off the chill. I pause, studying their faces lovingly. Born after the war, Ewen and Phaedra sleep with the peaceful minds of ones who have never been woken and hurried to bomb shelters for nights on end. For me, doing without has always been a kind of default state, first from my poor childhood and later the Depression and then the war. But despite the shortages and rationing that carried into the postwar years and are only just now ending, my children have no memory of a time of worry or doing without, and for that I am grateful. I kiss them each on the forehead and then tiptoe from the room and down the hall.
I slip into bed beside Joe and move close to him for warmth, leaning my forehead against the wide expanse of his back as I often do for comfort. I had met Joe in a London dance hall before the war. He was a college student and a rower, tall and confident. I was never quite sure what he saw in me, a girl who worked in one of the shops with no higher education or family background. But we had a connection and made each other laugh. We went for drinks and to the movies in Leicester Square and talked of a future together after he graduated.
Then the war broke out. Before Joe deployed, he abruptly ended things with me. I was gutted. Other couples were going forward and sealing their love with hurried weddings. Why not us? “I just don’t want you to rush in with me out of some sense of obligation,” Joe explained when I asked. It was our last night together and we stood at Embankment, looking across the Thames at the blacked-out buildings on the South Bank. We were breaking curfew, but I didn’t care.
“It isn’t like that,” I protested.
“And I don’t want you to spend your whole life mourning for a bloke you knew a quick five minutes.” He was afraid of not coming back. He was afraid of hurting me.
Joe had come back, with the same affable grin, appearing unexpectedly one day on the doorstep to the shop where I was working, looking much the same except for a bit of gray at the temples. His hat was literally in his hands, the trilby filled with flowers and an engagement ring at the bottom. “I’ll never leave again,” he promised, sensing my unease. We married a few months later and moved out to Henley, close to where he had grown up. It wasn’t impetuous. Joe had seemed solid and stable, the very opposite of everything I was trying to outrun. I knew he would love and care for me. Only later did I see the scars. I had been so glad for his safe return that I had not seen all of the ways in which he was not okay.
He is not asleep, I can tell, for he does not toss fitfully from nightmares. Instead, he lies too still. I wish he might turn to me. I could reach for him, I suppose, if not for sex, then at least for a cuddle or to talk long into the night in low voices as we once had. But something stops me. Instead, I turn to my own side of the bed and drift to sleep.
The next morning when I wake, Joe has already left for work. Despite his struggles, Joe has always kept to a strict schedule, rising and setting out for the station and the commuter rail to Oxford before dawn. I sometimes wonder if it is to avoid the noise and chaos of the children in the morning.
I set out their breakfast, two bowls of Weetabix and the fresh milk from the glass jar that the children prefer to the paper cartons of long-life milk that are doled out at school. I go upstairs to wake them, pausing to inhale their sleepy scent. “Time to get up, luvs.” Then I carry on with the morning chores while they rouse and dress. I lift the laundry, wet and heavy, from the first tub and through the press into the second, the smell of bleach tickling my nose. I set out the empty glass bottles, as well as some old pots for the rag-and-bone man.
Back inside, I glance down at a copy of The Times Joe left from the previous day. The headlines are about the Soviet Union and a possible rail strike in the north. I remember the days when the paper carried only news about the Second World War and I still half expect to see those. But no one wants to talk about that anymore.
When I have done as much around the house as I can, I fix myself a cup of Yorkshire tea, savoring the last bit of quiet. The children stumble down the stairs a few minutes later, dressed but unkempt. Phed is a little fairy of a girl, all blonde and pale, wide-set eyes and a charming gap between her front teeth. Ewen is solemn, with manlike features and a somber expression that tell exactly what he will look like when he grows up.
I hurry the children through eating their breakfast and then putting on their socks and shoes, reminding myself not to be cross when they dawdle. This morning Ewen has a sniffle. “I don’t wanna go to school!” he whines. For a second, I debate whether I should keep him home. I do love when we curl up by the fire on a chilly day, with nothing to do but read and work on puzzles together.
This morning, though, I’m restless. Selfishly, I don’t want to give up my time at the shop. “How about if I put an extra chocolate biscuit in your lunch?” I offer. Ewan sniffs and nods, miraculously healed by the bribe. I’m secretly relieved when he puts on his coat and starts for the door without further complaint. I grab another biscuit for each child, pushing down my guilt. I try to feed them healthy, wholesome foods, but it is a losing battle. The children’s magazines advertise soft drinks like Tizer and the kids beg for the boiled sweets like barley sugars and licorice their friends have, even though I warn them they will get holes in their teeth.
We leave the house and start into town. It is a brisk September morning, and the leaves on the poplar trees that line the road seem crisper, signaling that they will soon begin to change. Phed runs ahead in her Mary Janes, but Ewen drags his feet, scuffing his saddle shoes. I fight the urge to scold him for dawdling. “If you hurry, you’ll have time to play hopscotch before the bell,” I say instead, exhaling silently when his pace quickens and he scurries to catch up with his sister.
Fifteen minutes later, we cross Henley Bridge, sculls and pairs gliding beneath us on their morning rows. Boathouses dot the far bank of the river. Rowing, which had dwindled when the young men were away at war, has come back with the force of fauna blooming after a forest fire. I think sadly of Joe. He rowed at uni until the war ruined his knees. Now he is forced to look on as a spectator at the sport he had once loved, and I suspect he avoids coming to town for this very reason.
When we reach the school, the children run to their friends, who are playing tag and marbles. Ewen’s legs are like sticks beneath his shorts, but Phed’s are plump, cherubic. Through the classroom window, I can see the twins’ teacher, Miss Eakley, filling the inkwells for the dipping pens.
I drop the children off without lingering, pretending to be in a hurry so that I won’t have to make small talk with the other mums. I just have so little in common with them. It is not only that I came from somewhere else while so many of them went to school together. They seem like alien beings, these women who are so content with child-raising and chores, only the occasional garden club or card game to break up the monotony. Surely, they had done other things during the war, too, but they gave it up so easily, as if it had never happened at all. Funnily, I envy them. Why can’t I be content with this life?
Leaving the school, I set out for the shops to purchase groceries for that evening’s supper before heading to work. At the butcher’s, women queue for meat, the sawdust from the floor clinging to the hems of their dresses. Once in a great while, Joe will drive me into Oxford to do a big shop at Sainsbury’s, but day-to-day here, it is still separate stores for most of what we need. I pay, grateful that I do not have to worry whether I have enough. Joe’s paycheck is adequate for what we need and a few modest treats. Joe is generous with money, giving me an allowance and a few extra quid if I need it without asking why.
As I leave, I catch a glimpse of myself in the shop window. I’ve never been able to manage the makeup and rouge and mascara and the thousand ways women were meant to mimic the Hollywood starlets. Fortunately, I’m blessed with decent bone structure and can get away with just lipstick and powder most ordinary days, some pancake makeup and eye shadow on special occasions. I don’t even try to wear the formfitting shapes that are all the rage these days with the New Look or totter around on the heeled shoes that have replaced wartime work boots for most. Though childbirth had not been onerous, I still feel the tugs of a body that will never quite be the same.
I carry the groceries home and put the cold items in the icebox. Thankfully, the cottage had come with some of the modern conveniences. And what it didn’t have, Joe had added. When we moved in, he insisted on everything fresh and bright and as far from the past as possible—as if all of the shiny metal and chrome might chase away the painful memories. I wanted to tell him that it would do no good, but he would not listen and so I let him try.
I set out once more for town, my arms lighter without the groceries. When I reach the store, Midge is already there, rifling through a box. Midge’s, as it is called per the faded sign out front, is a charity thrift shop, its slanted wooden shelves overflowing with secondhand goods. People bring in the things they don’t want anymore, household items mostly, odds and ends. I help Midge to sort through the items and display for resale what is in suitable condition. Then others can come in and buy things at a reduced price, a service on both ends. I like the neatness of it all, sorting things into piles and setting them right. Like the jigsaw puzzles, it helps give me a sense of order and calm. I often wonder, too, about the people who owned the objects and the stories behind the items I hold in my hands.
Midge turns and starts to lift a new crate from a shelf with effort, and I hurry to help her set it down on the counter. “Let me help.” Midge has to be close to eighty, a tiny slip of a woman. She moves with greater effort now among the clutter. That was how I had sold the idea of working at the shop to Joe, saying that Midge needed the help. In fact, the job is more for my own benefit. I love to get out of the house and lose myself tinkering with objects from the past.
“Sort this one, luv.” Midge gestures to the crate, which has two broken slats. “Seems mostly to be odd bits, probably nothing worth saving.”
“Probably.” I slide the crate down onto the floor.
“How are the little ones?” she asks.
“Needy,” I blurt, regretting it at once. I’m lucky, I know, to have a beautiful, healthy family. It is the very thing I wanted, growing up alone with my mum in London as a child. “It’s just a lot sometimes.”
“It’s a lot,” Midge agrees. “When my Johnny was young, some days lasted forever. And then those days were gone.” There is a note of sadness in her voice. Midge had a son, I recall then, who was killed in a car accident before the war. Her husband, unable to bear the loss, had taken his own life after. She is completely alone.
“Midge, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
She shakes her head. “It’s not the upsetting that is the problem. And Joe, how’s he?”
I hesitate before answering. Midge and I are not particularly close, and it feels strange to talk to her about such things. At the same time, I’m grateful to have someone to confide in for once. “He’s the same. He’s so sad, and I wish I could help him. It’s not just him, though. It’s me. I miss who I used to be, if that makes any sense.”
“It does. You can’t be any good for him until you’ve sorted out yourself. Have the two of you considered getting away together?”
“Not really.” Except for an annual seaside family holiday to Brighton, we never leave town. I remember fondly a moment last year when I stepped away and treated myself to a candy floss I did not have to share, watching the seagulls swoop above the promenade as I ate it. “It’s difficult with the children.”
“You should think about it.”
“I will. I promise.”
I carry the crate to the tattered cozy chair in the corner by the woodstove before sitting down. Rifling through the first few items, I consider putting the whole thing in the rubbish bin. There are some cracked glasses and a detached telephone receiver. True junk and likely nothing salvageable.
I run my fingers along the bottom of the box, checking for any coins. My hand rubs against something metallic. A chain. I pull at it, but it sticks. I clear the remaining objects from the box to get a better look. There is a gold link necklace, delicate yet sturdy, hooked around the base of the wood crate. I dislodge it and hold it up to the light. On the chain is a charm shaped like a heart with a jagged edge, as though half is missing. But the metal is intact, suggesting an entire separate piece of jewelry is out there somewhere that might make up the second half.
The shape is familiar. My breath catches.
“Look at this,” I say, carrying the necklace to Midge. She takes it and turns it over with the expert hand of one who has been sorting longer than me. There is an inscription on the front, so faded among the scratch marks it is almost impossible to read. I can just make out the words watch and me .
“What do you think this means?” I ask Midge, who shrugs.
“I’m not sure. Doesn’t look to be worth much, but I’ve never seen anything quite like it.”
“That’s the thing,” I say slowly. “I’m virtually certain I’ve seen this necklace before.”
London, 1944
The Red Cross center, a converted dance hall in Southwark, was hot and stuffy. The wooden benches that ran along rectangular tables were packed with volunteers jostling cups of ersatz coffee and trying not to spill them on the care packages they were filling. A halo of cigarette smoke lingered around the top of the room.
“Pardon me,” I said as my elbow bumped against an older woman seated beside me. The woman gave a faint harrumph and continued trying to close the too-small box she had been given. The packages were meant to contain cocoa and condensed milk, a tin of sardines and a bar of chocolate. There was also sugar and margarine and a bar of soap, which I feared would make the whole thing smell of lavender.
I’d decided to volunteer for the Red Cross after an incident a few weeks earlier. One day as I walked across the city, I saw a young girl sitting on a pile of rubble. She wasn’t crying, but rather sitting numbly, wearing one shoe and holding a scrap of a blanket. I walked up to her. “Are you hurt?” She didn’t answer and I realized that she was in shock. I found a nearby police officer and turned the girl over to him. As I walked away, I was remorseful that I had not done more. Parents killed in the bombing , I was told when I went to the police station the next day to inquire about her well-being. Sent to an orphanage. I wish that I might have taken in the girl myself, but I was barely getting by just taking care of my mum. Still, the image of the girl lingered with me for days. My own childhood had been difficult enough with a single mother. How much harder would it be with no parents in wartime?
After that, I became aware of the suffering around me more acutely. Simply trying to survive the war no longer felt like enough. I remembered a poster I had seen during one of my long nightly walks along the Thames that I took as a means of escaping the tiny flat I shared with my mum. I went back and found the notice pinned to a wall, fresh against the faded posters exhorting women to “Make Do or Mend” and keep the curtains closed for the blackout, and to send their children to the countryside to escape the Blitz. Volunteers Needed at the Red Cross Center , it read.
So I had turned up the next evening and was seated without ceremony or introduction at one of the long tables to pack boxes. I looked across the table now. The women who volunteered at the Red Cross came from all walks of life, singletons in their twenties like myself, and mums and grandmothers who wanted to do their bit. Here we sat elbow to elbow, packing boxes, the fine ladies from Kensington and Mayfair, and girls like myself, whom they wouldn’t have so much as looked at outside of wartime. We chatted among ourselves, eager for a few hours’ company to forget the dreariness and hardship. It didn’t matter if you came from a one-room flat in South London, where your mum took in laundry and men and drank her days away. Some (not me) dressed as though they were going out for a night in the city, brought wine or pastries to share among us, if they had any to bring. One of the few things I did not hate about the war was the way it served as a kind of equalizer. More was possible now, no matter where you came from.
There was a man who sat in the corner, puffing on a pipe and supervising us without speaking. Someone had mentioned that he was from the International Committee of the Red Cross. I wondered why he was here and not deployed, like most men his age. He must have been a few years older than me, though his dusty wool sports coat with leather patches at the elbow made him appear more mature, attractive in a professorial sort of way. He looked in my direction suddenly and our eyes met. I turned away hurriedly, feeling my cheeks flush. I had a boyfriend, or at least I had until Joe had left for the war. He hadn’t wanted me to worry while he was away or mourn him if he didn’t come back. So while others had been in a hurry to get married before deploying, he’d broken up with me.
Sudden rumbling caused the building to shake. “Blimey!” one of the women cried. A collective murmur rippled throughout the room as dust and bits of plaster began to fall from the ceiling. Some of the women reached for the gas masks they’d re membered to bring, but mine was back home in our flat, useless now. Should we make our way to the air raid shelters? I worried about my mum, who was undoubtedly sleeping off a day of drinking gin. More than once, I wondered if I would return to find a crater where our dismal flat had been. She would never know what hit her, which would be a blessing. I felt guilty at the thought.
When a few minutes had passed and no further explosions came, the women resumed work on the care packages.
Forty-five minutes later, when the last box was filled, the women stood to leave. I walked over to the coatrack. Behind it there was a bulletin board with the volunteer schedule and some other routine announcements. I scanned the familiar notices, seeing nothing new. Reluctantly, I put on my coat and began the long walk home.