A Woman's Place (23 page)

Eveline said nothing, now aware that she was going to get none of the advice she’d hoped for.

‘You’ll ’ave ter speak to your Bert about this, love,’ Gran went on. ‘He’s a good man and should be given respect after what he’s done for you. You should be grateful to ’im.’

She was grateful. She left feeling frustrated but at least one thing had come out of it – Gran had said that when the time came she might give eye to the baby. ‘So long as you don’t come it too often,’ had been her parting shot, but the offer was enough to bring a spring to Eveline’s step as she wheeled Helena away down the street in the second-hand perambulator Albert had bought.

Three weeks had gone by and she still hadn’t plucked up the courage to speak to Albert about her plans to return to suffragette work.

She had no reason to fear him. He was the kindest person she’d ever known, but if he even frowned his disapproval, could she defy him, maybe hurt him?

She’d certainly not mentioned weaning Helena on to a bottle. With no help from Gran she had spoken to her neighbour, Mrs Martin, who without reservation had told her how she had done it many years ago.

‘I ’ad just abart enough of breastfeeding one kid after another,’ she said. Now in her fifties, Mrs Martin had given birth to ten children in quick succession with two miscarriages and two stillbirths; out of the ten only five had survived to adulthood and were still living.

‘Right tyke, my Arfer. Sometimes I thank Gawd ’e went when ’e did or
I’d
of been the one what would of died! Breastfeedin’ ’elps stop yer getting pregnant too often of course. But it fair pulled me ter pieces just the same, with one after another on the breast. Till I learned what ter do, that is. I ’ad me first when I was twenty-one. By the time I was thirty I’d ’ad five, and one miscarriage. But I couldn’t keep up with all that breastfeeding.’

With Mrs Martin’s help, after three weeks, weeks of secretly enduring the misery of drying up her milk, Eveline had successfully changed Helena to the bottle, telling Albert that her milk wasn’t satisfying the child.

He believed her, but it still didn’t give her licence just yet to go off to her suffragette meetings any time she wished. It was only right he should be consulted, but what if he said no?

It was horrid seeing Connie going to her meetings and rallies all with her husband’s blessing, so when Connie came over this Saturday afternoon to see if she’d be going along with her to the George Street meeting, she shook her head a little churlishly.

‘You know I can’t. I’ve got the baby, and Albert’s out.’

He’d gone with a mate to see Tottenham, his favourite football team, play so she was feeling particularly depressed. She’d thought of seeing Gran or perhaps her own parents but had lacked the incentive, so when Connie tilted her head in mild acceptance of her waspish refusal, she instantly interpreted it as not really caring whether she went or not.

‘Perhaps when your baby’s born you’ll understand,’ she said tersely, knowing she was being unfair.

But Connie’s smile was amiable. ‘I expect I shall very soon have to give up going. I can’t attend rallies and such once I really begin to show.’

Despite being seven months Connie hardly showed at all. Eveline remembered how she had been at that stage. Though her figure was now back to its former size with the aid of vicious corseting, it was a pity her freedom couldn’t be retrieved as easily. She loved Helena dearly but sometimes, seeing how much she looked like her natural father, she’d think of him and want to weep, almost to the point of regretting how things had turned out. It wasn’t the baby’s fault she was tied down – it was entirely of her own making. But at this moment she’d have given anything to be able to go along with Connie.

The thought strengthened her resolve to have a real talk with Albert. It went against the grain having to be dependent on him but until women won the right to be on a par with men, if only by being given the vote, she’d have to go cap in hand asking his permission.

She did it on the Saturday after supper, when she found herself provoked into it really, as he was sitting in his wooden armchair reading
The Times
newspaper. He didn’t normally read
The Times
but his employer did and with an idea of bettering himself he often glanced at it if it was lying around and even brought it home if discarded.

‘There’s a bit here,’ he said now, ‘about that Conciliation Bill your suffragettes have been going on about, went for its second reading in Parliament. It says here it passed its second reading by one ’undred and ten votes.’

Eveline looked up from folding a pile of baby napkins and one or two of his aired shirts together with her chemise and other undergarments ready to put in their respective drawers in the bedroom, her mind suddenly alert.

‘That’s absolutely wonderful!’ she blurted. ‘I said we’d win eventually but no one—’

‘’Old on! You didn’t let me finish.’

He began quoting aloud. ‘“Because widening amendments were unlikely to be permitted, both Churchill and Lloyd George voted against it.” It says Lloyd George saw it as undemocratic and Churchill said it was likely to provide an electoral advantage – whatever that means – to the Conservatives. It says ’ere, “a few minutes later the Commons voted by three ’undred and twenty votes to one ’undred and seventy-five to refer it to a committee of the whole House, and thereby extinguishing its chances.” I take it this means your Conciliation Bill has had its chips cashed in again.’

Looking up, he saw the disillusionment on her face. ‘I’m sorry Ev,’ he said as if it were his fault. It made her want to burst into tears.

Before she could stop herself, she blurted, ‘Albert, I’ve got to go back to our suffragette work. Everyone’s needed. We can’t let this happen to us. We’re being done down at every turn and it isn’t fair after what so many women have been through.’

‘You too,’ he said simply.

There was no need for him to say any more. The mere mention of her time in prison, short though it had been, brought back everything she had gone through: Larry’s desertion, the humiliation, the despair, her family turning against her even though they had accepted her again, that and this wonderful man’s unselfish act, all compounded to make her crumple, clapping his nicely aired shirt to her eyes and dampening it again. The next thing she knew, he was out of his chair, the newspaper falling to the floor, and his arms were about her. ‘Don’t cry, Ev. I didn’t mean to upset yer.’

‘It’s not you,’ she sobbed.

‘But I did and I shouldn’t ’ave. I don’t want ter see you all upset. I love you, Ev.’

She clung on to him. ‘Me too,’ she mumbled between her sobs. ‘Oh, Albert, how can I not love you? You’ve done so much for me. Married me.’

She felt his arms tighten about her, almost squeezing her breath from her. To extricate herself before it did, she pulled back and planted a kiss on his lips: the first time they’d ever kissed like this and it felt so good, his lips so firm against hers, that she felt its sensation ripple through her body. No word was spoken but with a shared need, as he still held her close, they stood up together, moving the few feet to the bedroom.

Together they sank on to the bed beside which Helena lay sleeping in her cot, and there Albert made love to his wife with all the need that had for so long been denied him, Eveline accepting him with gasps of pleasure while little Helena slept on.

Bert turned his head to gaze at his wife. For a while he listened to her regular breathing, studied her face, her lips relaxed, her eyelashes dark, gentle fringes against her cheeks. Contented, she was sleeping like a baby, like her baby, her baby that wasn’t his.

He turned his face to gaze up at the ceiling visible in the glow of the street lamp shining down into the basement room through the thin curtains Eveline had made from cheap material when they’d first come to live here.

She’d been so full of excitement making things for the home, going around its two rooms as if it were a mansion. He’d understood her avoiding his attempts to approach her. Give her time, he’d reasoned, it had to be a bit of a trauma marrying someone you’re not really in love with, especially after being in love with another man enough to have got pregnant by him. Bit of a comedown for her probably, any port in a storm. But he’d been in love with her for a long time, if only from afar. He should have had sense enough to leap in before that chap had and she might have chosen him. Of course in the circumstances it had been asking too much to expect that to happen in a few days or weeks. But seven months and still she’d pulled away from any tenderness he tried to show. He’d feel his needs rise up and nothing he could do about it other than take her by force, and he wouldn’t do that. Seven months of lying beside her, their marriage still unconsummated, had nearly slaughtered him.

Sometimes he’d blame himself for thinking his impetuous offer of marriage might get her to fall in love with him. He’d been mad to expect it to happen. Sometimes he’d blame her for not making an effort to love him – not feeling exactly angry with her, for what woman in her state would have said no to any proposal of marriage, but for not even trying to love him.

Now tonight everything had changed. It felt like he was floating on air. His only concern was would she want to repeat what had just consumed them both like some raging fire or would she wake up tomorrow morning regretting it?

How should he approach her tomorrow morning? Should he behave quite normally as if taking it in his stride? That could make her feel used. If he adopted a pleased expression, said how wonderful it had been, she might think he was seeing himself as having scored a great goal like some triumphant footballer. If he chatted away over breakfast, that might make him seem brash. To keep quiet, say nothing, might make her feel that his interest in her was only reserved for the bedroom. On leaving for work he could give her a more ardent kiss than his usual cheery peck, having all those other times resisted the impulse to tell her that he loved her in case he was overstepping the marks she had laid down.

But tonight she’d said she loved him. She’d let him make love to her, returning it with a passion that had startled him, he who’d been in such need himself after all this time of behaving like a lump of cement. To wonder why he’d had to wait until
she
was ready, that was unkind. How could any woman married in her circumstances be expected to accept lovemaking as part of the offer? He’d taken her off guard offering to marry her and hadn’t stopped to weigh the consequences. Maybe the offer itself had been unkind, a ring of the patronising about it. But she’d agreed, even if out of desperation because he’d been available when she had been at her most vulnerable. She’d been honest, had said she didn’t love him. But tonight she had said she did. It must mean something.

He continued to stare at the ceiling. He had to get some sleep. Night was the worst time to dwell on things; it exaggerated them, robbing them of logic. He would just have to play it by ear come the morning, that was all.

He turned over. The movement disturbed her, a restless arm was flung across his shoulder. He could feel her breath warm on the back of his neck, heard her whisper sleepily, ‘I do love you, darling.’

For a moment his heart soared, then sank. She was thinking of that bastard who’d got her pregnant and had then abandoned her. Maybe in her sleep she imagined it to be him lying beside her tonight.

He felt consumed by a hot surge of jealousy, After all he’d done for her. He turned back to face her and saw her eyes were wide open, gazing at him. ‘What was that?’ he asked stupidly.

She smiled. ‘I said I love you.’ She lifted a hand to his cheek, caressing it. ‘I’ve you to thank for everything, for being so good to me, being so patient, for being a father to Helena and not once … For everything really. I don’t deserve you, my dearest man. I don’t ever want anyone but you.’

She moved her face towards him. He knew she wanted him to kiss her, and he did, the kiss lingering, in joy and relief, his hands moving over her body in its summer cotton nightdress. He felt her respond, felt his own movements becoming strong, ready to fulfil her again. Except that Helena stirred, awoke and began whimpering for her bottle. Bert sighed and let his hand fall away from the curve of his wife’s body as she rose to attend to the baby’s wants.

There would always be another time. He knew that now.

Eveline sat beside Connie, who still lay recovering nearly three weeks after the birth of her baby. It had arrived three weeks early, September instead of October; despite that, it was a difficult birth, a breach, leaving her terribly torn and damaged inside enough for the doctor who’d struggled with her labour hour after hour, despairing as she grew ever weaker, finally to announce that if the child came out alive it could be the only one she’d ever give birth to, that was if she herself pulled through it. Much longer and it would have had to be a Caesarean. In the end the baby came out naturally. A miracle, the doctor said, that the baby was undamaged after all he’d had to do to bring it into the world, and surprisingly lusty, despite it being a girl. A small baby, six pounds four ounces, which had been in her favour, else mother and child might certainly never have survived.

With Connie still too tired to suckle her and unable to make enough milk anyway, it was Gran who came to her aid with a feeding bottle. Ironic, thought Eveline, recalling the discomfort she’d suffered to dry up her own milk for the freedom she so needed. Here was Connie dry as a bone and with no urge to be getting back to suffragette work. It was so unfair.

‘You’re lucky to still be suckling,’ Gran remarked, so far with no idea of what she’d been up to. ‘I feel so sorry for any mother who can’t feed her baby naturally. Till she’s her old self again, poor thing, I’ll keep an eye on her and make the little mite’s bottle.’

‘I can help,’ Eveline volunteered guiltily, but was frowned at.

‘You’ve got your own little ’un to see to. Besides, looking after this one will keep me sprightly, give me something to do other than think of meself.’