Chapter 34
Chapter 34
Brighton
July 7th 1916
When she leaves Lewes Crescent she finds that she very much doesn’t want to go back to Belgrave Place. Since the wounded started to arrive Mrs Van de Berg has demonstrated a vampire-like thirst for information about the Poor Brave Boys which she is in no mood to indulge today. Not with the letter like a burning coal in her pocket.
Her heart is beating an erratic rhythm as she waits to cross Marine Parade, eventually losing patience with the late-afternoon traffic and dodging between an omnibus and a grocer’s cart. The beach is emptying now, mothers and nannies corralling children and packing up picnic baskets, and she doesn’t have to walk far to find a place that feels safe from the scrutiny of others.
She can feel the warmth of the stones through her skirts as she sits down. All day, as she has gone from bed to bed, writing postcard after postcard; as the VADs have peeled stinking, tattered uniforms away from torn flesh and the orderlies have lifted stretchers from ambulances and Sister Pinkney has cleaned wounds and administered morphine; and across the sea the guns have rumbled, on and on… All that time, it has been a dazzling high summer’s day and children have played and paddled and begged for ice creams, and Joseph— Joseph —has made the final part of his journey from the carnage of trenches, first aid posts, and casualty clearing stations, through a series of randomly assigned trains and boats and ports and stations, and arrived here. With this letter.
She stares at it for a long time. The dirty envelope tells a story of its own, one she can just begin to comprehend, having seen the men and heard them talk of where they have come from. But it’s the writing she focuses on. Although she has got used to being called Eliza Simmons, and can almost think of it as her own name sometimes, she cannot hide from the fact that this letter is not intended for her and she has no business opening it.
She never meant to assume Eliza’s identity. On the night she fled from Coldwell, as Miss Dunn helped her to bundle up her scant possessions, she had only thought to put enough distance between herself and Henderson that he wouldn’t be able to compromise and control her, or give away her whereabouts to Alec. She had scarcely been aware that the character reference from Eliza’s previous employer was amongst the papers she shoved into her writing case, much less planned to use it. But after seeing the newspaper report of Henderson’s death—his murder —what choice did she have but to reinvent herself again?
She strokes her thumb over the address on the envelope. She can still do the right thing. She can affix one of the stamps with which Mrs Van de Berg keeps her generously supplied for the Poor Brave Boys… She can get up and walk back to the street, along the seafront and drop it into the post box. It will be in the real Eliza’s hands the day after tomorrow.
But she knows very well she is not going to do that.
The envelope contains the answers to questions that have tormented her for four and a half years. It is fat with them. Here is the ending to the story, and she cannot let it go without finding out what happened to the man she fell so foolishly in love with.
And so, she shoves aside the guilt and silences the prim little voice of her better nature. Her hands are trembling as she tears a flimsy corner and slides a finger in to rip it open. The paper she pulls out is creased and marked, as if it has been carried around for a long time, though she is surprised to see that it contains only a few brief lines.
She reads them with her heart in her throat and tears in her eyes.
His writing. His words. His voice.
Dear Eliza, I am writing this quickly before we move up into the line for whatever action is coming. If anything should happen to me, I want you to know that you are the beneficiary of my possessions and effects, such as they are. Look after yourself and live well. You deserve to be happy.
With my love,
Jem.
P.S. If I don’t make it through, can I ask you to keep safe the enclosed? In the hope that one day you’ll get the chance to pass it on.
She moves the page aside and the air leaves her lungs in a rush as she sees the second envelope that it has been wrapped around.
Mrs Kate Furniss.
As she unfolds the densely written pages, she is gasping, tears already stinging in her eyes, spilling down her cheeks and splashing onto the words. Impatiently she dashes them aside and begins to read.
She doesn’t know how long she sits there. Time becomes fluid, abstract, and she tumbles back through the years to that sultry summer. Looking back, it seems it was a time suspended between two worlds: the Victorian one occupied by Sir Henry Hyde—a world of candlelight and carriages, and this modern age of motorcars and machine guns. A time of brief and shimmering happiness.
He takes her back there, and the emotions she has carefully folded away and packed into the past come tumbling out, like an old suitcase opened and upended, enveloping her in the textures and scents of that time. When she looks up finally, the families are gone, replaced by a few strolling couples and groups of soldiers on leave—some in Canadian uniforms—looking for amusement. The tide has come in and the light is different.
She is different too. It’s like a protective cloak has been wrenched off her, leaving her exposed in the teeth of a savage gale. It is impossible to separate how she feels into distinct emotions—it is everything at once: relief, joy, love… elation, and frustration. Yearning. Astonishment. Bitterness and regret.
She gets stiffly to her feet and swipes at her cheeks. She walks quickly, taking no notice of the Canadians who stare at her with interest and call out. She barely registers where she is going, only aware that it isn’t back to Belgrave Place, because Mrs Van de Berg’s house is too narrow and hushed and decorous to contain the tornado of her thoughts and the wild drum of her heart. As she walks, some of the confusion falls away and she finds that one emotion emerges, phoenix-like, from the chaos.
Anger.
She turns to go onto the pier, pushing against the tide of people flowing out of the concert hall, where a band has just finished playing. She shoulders through them, past the deckchairs and the amusement machines ( Lady Palmist—Automatic Reading of Your Hand. KNOW THYSELF) until the crowd has thinned and the gaps between the boards beneath her feet show sea instead of shingle.
How can fate be so cruel? How dare it bring her this glimmer of hope and consolation, only to keep it dangling out of her reach?
It is just a week since he finished writing the letter, hardly any time at all; but it has been a week like no other, when the world has split open and unleashed a boiling lava of chaos and destruction. She feels dizzy with panic as she thinks of the convoys and casualty lists, the mud and the blood and the stunned men at whose bedsides she has sat. Everyone’s dead , one had said, with a kind of horrified awe, describing how he had returned to his regiment’s assembly point on that first day to find only twenty men remaining of the four hundred who had left the trenches that morning. Jem had known he might not survive. That was why he’d written.
But still, it is unthinkable. Impossible.
It is… intolerable .
She walks as far as she can, to the very end of the pier, and grips the railing as the evening breeze (cooler now) tugs at her hat. Behind her, the beach and the rows of smart houses and hotels along the seafront seem far away, and she leans forward, as much as she can, every fibre of her being straining towards France.
She has got used to being unhappy. She has long since given up expecting anything different, but the letter has thawed her frozen heart. The feeling has returned to it, a thousand times more painful than the blood returning to cold fingers held up to a fire.
‘Don’t you dare be dead, Jem Arden,’ she sobs out loud to the reeling gulls. ‘Don’t you bloody dare . You’d better still be out there somewhere. You’d better still be alive. You can’t not come back to me now.’
Later, when it is going dark and she has cooked and cleared away Mrs Van de Berg’s dinner ( Rissoles again, Simmons? I know there are shortages, but I’m sure there’s no need to let standards fall quite so much ), she walks back to Lewes Crescent.
She is far from certain that she will be allowed to see Joseph at this hour. Visiting times are strictly maintained, and the nurses regard the groups of tremulous mothers, sisters, and sweethearts that shuffle into the wards, the gruff fathers who stand around stiffly, getting in the way, as something of a trial, often leaving the men more unsettled than they found them. However, just as she is trying to explain to the purse-lipped night sister sitting at the desk in the entrance hall, Corporal Maloney appears, on his way off duty.
‘If you’ve come to take me dancing, Miss Simmons, I’m afraid I’m going to have to pass,’ he says with a half-hearted wink.
‘I’ve come to see Private Jones,’ she says. ‘He was brought in earlier. I understand it’s not really allowed, but I—I know him, you see. From… before.’
Corporal Maloney’s face loses its teasing expression. ‘Young lad who was on Rodney Ward? Sister’ll be pleased to have someone to sit with him. He’s been giving out something shocking this afternoon—got an awful bee in his bonnet about going to hell because he’s killed someone, which isn’t really what the other lads want to hear. We had to move him to a room on his own in the end. The chaplain’s been in and he’s quieter now. Doped up to the eyes, but I reckon he’d benefit from the company of an old friend.’ He makes a weary attempt at a grin. ‘Not that I’m saying you’re old, of course, Miss Simmons.’
At the night sister’s nod of assent, she follows him through the inner hall and along to a small anteroom behind the old dining room, where footmen must once have waited with their dishes and tureens for the but ler’s signal. It is a box, higher than it is wide, its panelled walls painted that pale green that was fashionable when these houses were built. There are shutters at the long window, and the bottom half has been folded closed while the top half is open, showing the darkened sky.
The room contains a single iron bed with a locker beside it, on which a lamp is lit. Beside the bed there’s a canvas-seated chair.
‘He didn’t like being in the dark,’ Corporal Maloney whispers, nodding at the figure in the bed. ‘Poor kid. If he’s eighteen, I’m Lord Kitchener. Anyway, I’ll leave you to it.’
She mutters a thank-you and sits down, waiting until the orderly’s footsteps have died away before she looks properly at the figure in the bed. Her heart turns over and, for the second time that day, tears rush to her eyes, though she can’t say whether it is because Joseph looks so recognisably the same, or so very altered.
Against the white pillow, his skin is as red and fragile as poppy petals. His blond hair is darker, his brow broader, and his jaw harder; but in sleep his face has the same unguarded innocence of the boy she knew at Coldwell, the one she scrubbed clean of workhouse grime on the day he arrived, revealing the bruises on his bony back. She wanted to believe then that his worst days were behind him, that Coldwell would offer a new start and a place of safety for him, as it had for her.
Frederick Henderson had poisoned that hope for them both.
The starched sheets crackle as Joseph twitches beneath them, his head twisting on the pillow. In the lamplight she can see that his eyelids are flickering, his scabbed and crusted lips moving wordlessly. She wonders where he is, what landscapes he is moving through in his dreams. She wonders if Jem is there, and wishes she could follow.
She folds her hands to stop herself from reaching out to wake him. And settles in to wait as long as it takes.