Wartime Family (31 page)

Mary Anne almost curtsied. She may not be royalty, but this woman certainly wasn’t from Bedminster.

At first the woman’s eyes settled on the baby. ‘She’s lovely. What’s her name?’

‘Mathilda. She’s my granddaughter.’

The woman gave her a long, enquiring stare. Mary Anne squirmed. Who was she? What did she want?

Turning away from Mary Anne and the baby, she cast her glance sideways at the other two. ‘I’m sorry to be such a bore, but do you think we could have some privacy?’ Her voice was commanding, but disarming. She had the air of someone who knew how to give orders without people taking offence. She knew how to get the best out of people.

She hasn’t come across Gertrude Palmer before
, thought Mary Anne, and almost said so out loud.

To her great surprise, Gertrude locked the front door. ‘You stay here and have your little chat,’ she said in the most ingratiating tone Mary Anne had ever heard her use. ‘Edith and I will trot out to the kitchen and make ourselves a cup of tea. Would you like one?’

‘Not for the moment,’ said the elegant woman. ‘Perhaps later.’ The confident expression and the air of self-assurance melted like snow. The true colour of the woman’s complexion seemed to seep through the expensive make-up. She tilted her head back so she was looking up into Mary Anne’s face. For a while she seemed to study her features, almost as if she were seeking something familiar. ‘Perhaps you should sit down,’ she said, indicating the old stool to the side of the counter.

Perplexed as to her visitor’s identity, Mary Anne dragged the stool across the floor, scratching the linoleum as she went. But she wasn’t looking at the floor; she was studying the woman’s features just as intently as the woman had studied hers. Inside she trembled. One look at the woman and she knew – she just knew.

But Mary Anne showed no outward sign of guessing her visitor’s identity. She stayed calm as she made herself comfortable. ‘What did you want to see me about?’

The woman stubbed out her cigarette in a glass ashtray. Even that was a sign that Gertrude had been impressed. She usually only handed out tin ones for everyday use.

The woman hesitated. ‘My name is Elizabeth Ford. I’m George Ford’s wife.’

Setting aside her initial guess at the woman’s identity, Mary Anne sat deadly still. Had she heard right? That wasn’t at all what she’d expected the woman to say.

‘You’re George Ford’s wife?’

‘Yes, I am. The police came to call and told me what had happened. We’ve been searching for George for some time now. He had a breakdown after Dunkirk. He hasn’t been the same since. It’s almost as though what was positive before his ordeal has now become negative, and vice versa. Poor George.’ She said it softly, her eyes gazing down at the floor.

‘I don’t quite understand what you mean,’ said Mary Anne, jiggling the pram as Mathilda started to stir. ‘Have you come here to apologize, or say he didn’t do the things he did?’

‘No. I just wanted to explain …’

Mary Anne jumped to her feet. She recalled the relief she’d felt when George Ford had been apprehended. She’d been surprised that she’d felt no anger, no need for revenge. But now this woman had come here and everything she’d held down was bubbling to the surface.

‘If you’re asking me to forgive him, don’t bother. He burned down my business. He caused problems with my husband. He even stole my granddaughter! What do you mean about negative and positive?’

Mrs Ford hung her head. Her earrings blinked with diamonds. ‘I think you need to know a little about me, Mrs Randall. I had a very happy childhood. I had everything money could buy except for one important thing: I was an only child. I was surrounded by wealth and privilege, but no family. I had always fretted about it. George had promised me that one day he would find my real family – or at least, my real mother. You see, Mrs Randall, like a lot of babies born after the Great War, I was adopted. I told George that it didn’t matter and he understood that. My adoptive parents had loved me in their own way. But George was never the same after Dunkirk. Everything seemed to go topsy-turvy. He was put in a military mental institution but he got out. I’d previously told him the basics of my true parentage. He made enquiries. Those enquiries led him to you.’

Through all this Mary Anne had remained silent. She’d known it the moment she’d set eyes on the woman; she knew who she looked like.

This was not how she’d expected things to turn out. Years ago she’d dreamed of meeting up again with the child she’d given away, but knew it would be impossible in reality. Henry would never have allowed it. Was this perhaps a dream?

‘Well!’ she said, looking away, pretending that jiggling the pram and the sleeping Mathilda demanded her full attention. ‘Well …’

‘I suppose it’s a bit of a shock.’

Mary Anne squeezed her eyes shut and fought to control her feelings. The pain of giving her child away had clawed at her heart for years after the event. Even before and after her marriage to Henry, her parents had forbidden her to mention it. ‘Best forgotten, soonest mended,’ they’d said. What a stupid statement. Her heart had never been mended simply because she had never forgotten.

Her eyes met those of Elizabeth Ford and she knew immediately that this was her daughter – Edward’s daughter. She had the same eyes Mary Anne had fallen in love with all those years ago.

‘George was an intelligence officer,’ Elizabeth continued.

‘That explains a lot.’

‘He knows how to get information.’

‘You look like your father.’

Elizabeth beamed. ‘Do I?’ She got up and picked up the small mirror that women used when they tried on second-hand hats. ‘It’s nice to know that I’m looking at some resemblance of him each time I look into the mirror.’

Mary Anne made a concerted effort to understand and get control of her feelings. In her dreams she’d thrown her arms around her long-lost daughter, perhaps even rescued her from a cruel orphanage. But this woman had not suffered deprivation of any kind. Well groomed, confident and at ease with her lot, there was nothing she lacked as far as Mary Anne could see.

‘I’m sorry for what happened, Mrs Randall, but George is not himself. He’s back in hospital now and receiving more treatment. Such a shame. He had such good prospects and we had made wonderful plans for our future. Such is the nature of war. It has been the biggest blot on my life.’ She held out her hand. ‘Well, goodbye. It’s been quite a pleasant experience to meet you face to face after all these years. But let’s face it, we both have our own lives, our own family connections and our own circle of friends. We move in different worlds. I won’t trouble you again.’

Silently Mary Anne took the hand that was offered. She remembered the tiny fingers she’d held before Elizabeth was given away. This hand was so different to the one she remembered and the woman was so different to the one she’d imagined, the one who would fall into her arms and cry with her over all the lost years.

‘Goodbye,’ she said, forcing some firmness into her voice.

‘Goodbye, and yet again, my sincere apologies.’

The shutter rattled and the blackout curtain fell over the door as it would at the end of a play. Mary Anne blinked away tears and covered her eyes. If only she’d had the courage to hug that woman, but how could she? She was totally self contained, totally in control and she most definitely belonged to another world, one in which the likes of Mary Anne had no part to play. If her heart had been only partially broken when she’d given her baby away, it was now totally shattered.

East Street was busy with women queuing up for whatever goods were available in the shops. The rule was that if you saw a queue you joined it. Elizabeth Ford did not join queues; she had a housekeeper who did that. She also had a maid and a gardener. The latter grew fresh vegetables in a handsome walled garden behind Lechley Manor, her husband’s home.

Looking straight ahead of her, she made her way to the taxi she’d paid to wait and drive her back to the railway station. Recognizing gentry when he saw it, the driver got out quickly when he saw her coming and saluted as he opened the taxi door.

‘Back to Temple Meads, madam?’

‘Yes.’

She sat back against the smooth leather upholstery and stared out at the blackness. There was nothing to see, but in her mind she was imagining how her visit had affected the woman who had given birth to her. She had told her most of the truth, but she had not told her how bitter she had been towards the woman who had given her away. All her life, from the moment a spiteful cousin had told her the truth, she had felt a bitter resentment. Only George had known her true feelings. He’d never acted upon them, telling her that it was best to forget and get on with her life. ‘She must have had her reasons,’ he’d said. ‘And now we have each other, and there’s no way I’m ever going to desert you.’

George had meant what he’d said, and yet he
had
deserted her, though in a way she could never have anticipated.

At Dunkirk he’d been trapped in a bomb crater beneath a layer of bloodied corpses. He’d had to hide there for three days, the enemy only yards away. The French Resistance had found him, got him in some sort of shape and back to a hospital in England. That was when they’d found out that he’d been affected mentally.

And now, through his illness, she’d found her mother and she was still shaking from the experience. She’d never expected her natural responses to be so strong. Perhaps she would have come away unaffected by the meeting if her mother – her true mother – hadn’t mentioned that she looked like her father, Edward, who’d been killed in the trenches. That’s when it came to her how much they’d both suffered, and how much suffering she was likely to go through in future. It would take years for George to recover.

The cold self-assurance she’d presented to Mary Anne Randall began to crack. She took out a powder compact from her handbag, dabbing at the smears of mascara staining her perfect cheeks. There was no saving the exquisitely applied paint and powder. The facade finally cracked. With slow, stiff movements, she wiped the make-up from her eyes and the lipstick from her mouth.

The taxi driver glanced at his passenger in the rear-view mirror. ‘Are you all right, madam?’

Elizabeth sniffed. She thought about the two pieces of crocodile-skin luggage she’d brought with her. They were driving up the incline towards the entrance to the railway station when she made her decision.

‘Driver!’ She tapped on the glass partition. He stopped the car before sliding it open.

‘Yes, madam?’

‘Take me back to the Royal.’

‘Yes, madam.’

She had made up her mind. She would stay a few days. First she would collect her muddled emotions. It was like having a deep well inside, and her emotions kept surfacing – sometimes muddied, sometimes clear. She needed time to think things through, time to decide whether she really could walk away and forget her real mother existed or whether they could make amends.

Hospital sounds echoed off the arched ceilings and bare walls. The ward reminded Lizzie of Cheddar Caves, except that caves didn’t have electric lights suspended on the end of impossibly long wires.

During the night she’d woken to the sound of rain pitter-pattering against the window. If she hadn’t opened her eyes she could almost have believed she was back on the boat, lying against Guy’s warm chest and wishing the rain would fall harder.

On opening her eyes, the cosy memory was replaced by the stark reality of being left in the lurch. The nursing sisters were pleasant enough, but the ward sister – a woman with cast-iron curls and a square chin – eyed her with disdain. ‘You young women,’ she said. Inconsequential words, but what wasn’t said had more meaning. The scorn was there for her to see, like grey ash misting the warmth in her eyes.

Breakfast was bread and margarine with a teaspoonful of marmalade, plus a cup of weak tea. Pretty poor fare, not that Lizzie was very hungry. The empty feeling encompassed her heart as well as her stomach.

As she lay there she planned for the months ahead. Somehow she would keep the secret from her family. She trusted Patrick not to say anything. When the time came she would sign the necessary documents and once that was done and dusted, Guy and the memento he’d left her with would vanish from her mind. She would wipe the stain from her memory too and make a vow that she would never fall for that kind of man ever again. What had she been thinking? Why hadn’t she seen he was a slightly older mirror image of Peter Selwyn Kendall – braver, of course, but from a similar background all the same?

Yes, she thought, closing her eyes and snuggling back beneath the bedclothes. Wing Commander Guy Hunter would be consigned to history. Afterwards she would join the Wrens, just as she’d always promised she would. The problem was how she would manage up until the birth. She couldn’t stay here and she couldn’t go home. Accommodation was expensive, but she had to survive somehow until going to the nursing home. It was Margot who solved her problem.

Visiting time was from seven until eight o’clock in the evening. So far only Patrick had visited. Now a nurse took the screens from around her bed.

‘There’s no need,’ Lizzie protested. ‘I’m not expecting anyone.’

‘Sister’s orders,’ said the nurse. ‘She likes everything to be uniform. Either screens around everyone, or screens around no one. Other people are expecting visitors, so I’m afraid you have to fall in with the plan.’

Lizzie sighed and purposely turned her head away, preferring to stare at the vast expanse of evening sky rather than the trickle of visitors padding nervously across the ward.

The shuffling and muffled voices were rudely interrupted by the sound of high heels smartly striking the floor. Who dared breeze into the ward with such determined steps? Lizzie’s spirits soared.

Margot made a uniform look elegant despite the coarse fabric, the abundance of buttons and lack of style. Out of uniform she resembled the models in a glossy magazine. She was wearing a fitted navy-blue jacket over a slimline skirt. The jacket had a white collar. Her handbag and shoes were navy blue and white and she wore pearls around her neck and in her ears. Heads turned from all around the ward. French perfume titillated the air like the wings of a scented butterfly.