After the War Is Over (23 page)

“All this year, watching my sister and Robbie together, I’ve been so envious of them,”
he admitted wretchedly. “Only now do I understand. Now I know what it’s like to love
someone so fully that my heart is closed to anyone else. How shall I bear it?”

One day she would be able to think of this moment, of his
profession of love, without her heart shriveling within her chest, but not today.
Not yet.

“You will find happiness. I promise you will. You’ll find a jolly, friendly American
girl who will fall madly in love with you. And you
will
be happy with her. Swear you will, Edward. You must swear it.”

“I can’t.”

“Does it help you to know that I love you, too? Likely since the day I answered your
advertisement for a governess.”

“As long as that?”

“I will be happy. I will continue in Miss Rathbone’s footsteps. I will be married
to my work, and I will be an aunt to Lilly’s children, and yours, too, if you’ll let
me.” Her voice broke at this admission, but she struggled on. “And we will both live
worthwhile lives. No, don’t look away. Our lives will be full of peace and good deeds
and joy. I don’t doubt it, my darling. Not for a moment do I doubt it.”

It was her turn to weep, so she cried until her eyes were dry and aching, until there
were no tears left to shed. He held her and kissed her tenderly and teased her, just
a little, when she began to hiccup, and he was so sweetly comforting that she feared
she would die from the pain of it.

“We ought to get up. John Pringle will be by anytime now.”

“Will you be all right?” he asked.

“Yes. Will you?”

“I will.”

She went into her room and got dressed, brushed her hair and pinned it back with shaking
hands. In the kitchen, she pumped some cold water into a basin and bathed her eyes
until they didn’t feel quite so hot and tight, and then she set about making their
breakfast.

Edward came into the kitchen not long after. He sat at the table and watched her,
his expression wistful, as she set the tea to brewing and fried some eggs and sliced
up the heel of yesterday’s bread. They ate in silence, but companionably so, and though
she came close to tears once or twice, she somehow held on to her composure.

“I told Miss Rathbone I would return by the thirtieth,” she said.

“I think you must. I’ll get on all right here.”

“On your own? How will you feed yourself?”

“Poorly, I’m sure. Perhaps I can ask Andrews to come up from London. He can cook,
after a fashion.”

“Between that and Mrs. Pringle’s soups you won’t starve.”

“See? That’s all managed nicely.”

“Shall I write to Lilly and let her know?”

“Not just yet. Otherwise she and Robbie will drive through the night to get here.
I promise I will be fine. I won’t take to drink and I won’t start smoking again. I
swear I won’t.”

She nodded, relieved that he seemed so confident, but deflated all the same. Only
four more days and she would be gone.

“I had better clear up the dishes,” she said, and turned away so he wouldn’t see that
she had succumbed to tears yet again.

She would survive, of course she would, and she would always have the consolation
of knowing that he had loved her. It was less than she deserved, but more than she
had ever expected.

It would have to be enough.

Have you forgotten yet? . . .

For the world’s events have rumbled on since those gagged days,

Like traffic checked while at the crossing of city-ways:

And the haunted gap in your mind has filled with thoughts that flow

Like clouds in the lit heaven of life; and you’re a man reprieved to go,

Taking your peaceful share of Time, with joy to spare.

But the past is just the same—and War’s a bloody game . . .

Have you forgotten yet? . . .

Look down, and swear by the slain of the War

that you’ll never forget.

—Siegfried Sassoon, “Aftermath” (1917)

Liverpool, England

November 1919

A
s Charlotte took her place at the breakfast table, she was relieved to see the other
women had chosen similarly somber clothes for Armistice Day. All of them, except for
Rosie in her nurse’s uniform, were dressed in unrelieved black.

“Aren’t you a cheery lot,” Rosie commented.

Charlotte accepted her bowl of porridge from Janie and began to eat. “I wish I had
a better idea of what we’re to do. The notice in the newspapers only said there would
be two minutes of silence at eleven o’clock this morning. Apart from that it all seems
rather vague.”

“I don’t think anyone knows what to do. I imagine we’ll simply stop what we’re doing
for the two minutes. It’s not as if there’s any place we might gather,” said Rosie.

“True enough. At least not until the war memorial is built. Have they even chosen
a site?”

“Not as I know. Miss Margaret and Miss Mary, what are you going to do?”

“We thought we’d go to church. Seems the best place for such a moment.”

Charlotte finished off her porridge, downed the rest of her tea, and took her dishes
to the sink in the scullery. “I’d best be off. Good day, everyone.”

She ought to have said something to Meg, who hadn’t spoken at all during breakfast.
The poor woman was likely beset by thoughts of her late husband; occasions such as
this had a way of bringing the past crashing down on one’s shoulders. When there was
time, after work, she would make a point of seeking Meg out, just to let her know
that she was concerned. Was thinking of her.

Dressed in her warmest coat, her muffler wrapped high around her face, Charlotte set
off for work. It was positively arctic outside, the temperature not far north of freezing,
and a misty rain was falling. Too light to warrant an umbrella, it was persistent
enough to soak deeply into her coat and hat, and set her shivering after only a few
minutes. Even worse, one of her galoshes had sprung a leak, and was slowly but inexorably
becoming sodden with water.

Miss Rathbone, quite properly, was disinclined to waste money on the heating of her
constituency office, not when such money could be better spent on her constituents.
Charlotte’s office was so chilly that her breath rose in ghostly plumes before her,
and even after putting on her warmest cardigan, and drinking a cup of near-boiling
tea, she couldn’t shake the chill that had crept into her bones.

The clerk typists were gathered around the fire in the reception area, merrily neglecting
their work as they warmed themselves, and as she listened to their easy banter it
was hard not to feel just a little envious of them. Her little office, with
its desk and bookcases and two chairs for guests, was normally something that filled
her with pride. How many women had an office all to themselves? A room of their own
in which to work? Today, though, its appeal was rather diminished.

The morning wore on, leavened by nothing more heartening than the occasional mug of
warming tea, until the clock at All Saints chimed the quarter hour before eleven o’clock.
The Great Silence, as the government had mandated the two minutes of silence be called,
would be signaled by ships’ guns in the Mersey, and, for those farther away, whichever
church bells were closest.

Charlotte went into the hall and saw that the others, Miss Rathbone included, were
putting on their coats.

“Where is everyone going?”

“Ah, Miss Brown. I was just going to call you. I thought we’d stand outside. Better
to mark the silence in the open air.”

“Yes. Yes, of course. I’ll fetch my coat.”

It did make a strange sort of sense. There was nowhere, as yet, for everyone to gather
at such a moment, yet it seemed somehow wrong to be isolated from one’s fellow citizens.

They stood outside and waited. Up and down the street, in front of houses and shops
and even the mechanic’s across the way, people set aside their work and stood, heads
bowed, waiting for the chime of bells. Even the tram that ran up and down Princes
Avenue had stopped, and its driver and passengers had alighted to stand at the curb.
A motorcar turned the corner, continued on for a few yards, and then stopped. Its
driver climbed out, looking a trifle abashed, pulled his hat from his head, and waited.
They all waited.

The chime that marked the hour rang out, its bells faintly discordant, and then a
single bell sounded, slow and ponderous,
counting down the hours. It rang eleven times, its peals echoed by the distant boom
of a warship’s guns.

Where were one’s thoughts meant to go at such a time? Should she silently recite a
prayer? Or would it be fitting to let herself dwell on the faces of the lost, the
maimed, the broken?

Charlotte thought of a young Scots captain, left mute by the horrors he had seen,
his eyes so full of agony and inexpressible torment that she’d had to steel herself
each time she tended to him. His wife had come to visit, only the once, for she’d
been unable to recognize the changed man she found. He had once been so merry, she
told Charlotte and the other nurses. Once, long ago, he had never stopped smiling.

She thought of the lieutenant colonel, an Australian, whose battalion had been annihilated
at the Somme. He’d been able to converse normally enough, though his hands shook so
badly he needed help to feed himself, and for a while she’d hoped he would recover.
He had, but a week after his release, she later learned, he had hanged himself. There
had been no note. The events of July 1916 had been explanation enough.

If she tried, she could recall almost all their faces, if not their names, the hundreds
of men she had nursed and soothed and even, before she had lost the habit entirely,
prayed for on her knees before bed each night.

On either side, in every direction, people began to cry, and not the polite sort of
tears one shed at a funeral, but rather the great, racking sobs of acute, disbelieving
grief. The end of the Great Silence must have passed, had certainly passed, but still
they stood in the street, the motorcars and trams stopped in their tracks, as men
and women alike wept out their sorrow for all that had been lost.

And then, although she hadn’t cried since the end of September,
since the morning she had wept out her despair and grief in Edward’s arms, tears welled
up in Charlotte’s eyes. Whether they were propelled by thoughts of the war and all
that had been lost, or of her own, more recent sorrows, she couldn’t tell.

When she had said farewell to Edward, she had been dry-eyed, determined not to upset
him any further. On the train home, she’d been surrounded by other passengers, so
she had again stanched her tears. And then, alone in her bedroom at home, it had seemed
wrong to cry. Self-indulgent, somehow. She had done what she knew was right. She had
let him go, as she knew she must, and her life would go on. What was the point in
crying about it?

It had been so very civil. They had spoken of it freely, as if they were business
associates who had agreed to go their separate ways. She had asked him not to write,
not at first, because it would be needlessly upsetting to both of them. If he needed
to convey any information to her, she asked him to do so through Lilly.

They had also agreed to say nothing to his sister, or to Robbie, for it would only
tarnish their newlywed happiness. One day, perhaps, they might share the truth, when
Edward was settled and married and she, Charlotte, had gone from strength to strength
in her career and had put all thoughts of marriage and motherhood behind her. Then,
perhaps, they might confess the truth to their oldest and dearest friends.

She still found herself listening for him at night. A passing motorcar, or too-loud
voices in the street, and she would rouse herself just enough to pray that Edward
had not been awoken, too. In those moments, when she could sense him so close by,
almost hear him sighing in his sleep, she was happy.

The acute pain of his loss did seem to be lessening, and after a while it didn’t hurt
to breathe when she thought of him, and she
was able to read Lilly’s letters without worrying that she might be sick. Yet a chronic
sort of ache lingered on, and Charlotte couldn’t decide whether she welcomed or abhorred
it.

Her colleagues had begun to whisper among themselves, and Miss Rathbone had turned
to go up the steps to their offices. The passengers were returning to their seats
on the tram, and the motorcars on the street had driven away. The Great Silence was
over, at least for another year.

In a year, where would she be? It was difficult to see how her life might change in
any appreciable way. She would continue to work for Miss Rathbone, live on in her
dining-room-cum-bedroom at the misses’, and continue to write her column for John.
There were many thousands in Liverpool who would have been grateful for such certainty
in their lives.

A year from now, surely, Edward would be married. He would have repaired his family’s
fortunes and met his obligations to his relatives, tenants, and servants. He might
even be awaiting the birth of a child. He would be happy.

She went to her desk, not bothering to remove her coat, and pulled an envelope from
her handbag. It was from Lilly and had arrived the day before. Charlotte had already
read it a half-dozen times.

           
8 November 1919

           
My dearest Charlotte,

                
I hope this letter finds you well and not suffering unduly from the early arrival
of winter. Here it has been nothing but rain, rain, rain and, the other day, even
a dusting of snow. I had thought myself hardened by my experiences in France, but
apparently I have grown
soft over the past year, and like being warm and dry too well to happily accept any
other state.

                
As I’m sure you already know, Edward returned to London a fortnight ago, having declared
that he and Andrews could no longer keep themselves warm in the cottage. “Frozen to
the marrow,” was the expression he used. Despite his grumbling about the weather,
it seems to me that he was very happy there—thanks entirely to you and your expert
care. I know you have decreed that I must stop thanking you, but I really cannot help
myself. Robbie may have brought my brother back from France, but you restored Edward
to the people who love him, and for that I will always be grateful. More grateful
than you can ever know.

                
In my estimation he is very nearly the old Edward again, if not quite so merry and
jolly as he once was. Robbie and I did see him, briefly, at the beginning of October
when we went up to Cumbermere Hall for a long weekend, but it’s only since his return
to London that I’ve been able to make a proper study of your patient. I do believe
he is happier and healthier in every possible respect.

                
He is much given to long walks through Hyde Park, no matter the weather, and he told
Robbie the other day that he would like to get a dog. He is rarely out in the evenings,
and to my knowledge has only accepted one invitation thus far. I have not seen him
drink wine or spirits of any kind, which is a great relief.

                
A few nights ago we were all at a dinner party at the Finlaysons’—do you remember
them from my wedding?—and he spent a good deal of time with a lovely American girl,
Miss Edith Hale, who is a friend of Violet’s. I gather her father made a fortune in
soap and she is having an overdue Season in London. Edward was maddeningly closemouthed
on the subject when I asked him about it afterward, and in any event I doubt he has
much time for romance these days. Much of his day is spent with lawyers and estate
managers and
other bureaucratic types, for Papa left the estate in rather a shambles and it now
falls to Edward to sort everything out.

                
I meant to tell you in my last letter, but I have taken a subscription to the Herald
so I might read your columns without delay. The paper comes only a day late and I
do enjoy it; you must tell your Mr. Ellis that he has an admirer in London. Your recent
columns have been particularly good and I thought the one on the shortcomings of the
Sex Disqualification Act was brilliant in every respect.

                
I must go, as dear Mr. Pebbles is coming soon and he will certainly insist on putting
my nose to the proverbial grindstone. Last week he had me do a test series of examinations
and I only just scraped through. I shall have to redouble my efforts if I am to gain
a place at the LSE next year. Wish me luck!

With much love from

Your devoted friend

Lilly

A soap heiress. It made Charlotte wonder: flakes or bar? A choking sort of laugh rose
in her throat, but she willed it away. Lilly had said the woman was friendly, and
as long as Edward found her amusing that might be enough. She was sorry to hear that
the Cumberland estate was in such a state, although it didn’t surprise her in the
least. Miss Hale’s millions would certainly help to erase any lingering difficulties,
at least in the short term.

Enough. She had spent enough time fretting about the past, about decisions that had
been made, paths that had been chosen. Tonight, if she weren’t too sad, or too tired,
she would think of Edward and their month together, and she would remember how happy
she had been.

Until then, however, she had work to do.