Two Silver Crosses, page 39
‘Good lord, no,’ the doctor said, and laughed. ‘Common to womankind. Oh, dear me, yes, very common. Very, very common. Of course it’s worse with the nervy types. Does she suffer with her nerves at all?’
‘Not that I’ve noticed. Well, not till now.’
‘Thought as much,’ the doctor said, as if his point had been proved. ‘I’ll give her a tonic. That’ll pick her up. And if you’ll take my advice, Mr Hopkirk, you’ll keep her busy. Doesn’t do to give ’em too much time to sit around. They only start pitying themselves. Brisk walk every day. Plenty of housework. That’s the ticket.’
‘Yes,’ Ken said. ‘Thank you, Doctor. I will.’
The doctor gave his avuncular smile. ‘You tell her she ought to think herself lucky she hasn’t got typhoid fever,’ he said. ‘It’s terrible in Croydon, so I’m told.’
‘There,’ Ken said, as he drove his darling home again. ‘Nothing serious, you see. You’ll be as fit as a flea in no time at all.’
But her face was withdrawn, as though she was hiding in her blindness. ‘I’m ill,’ she said.
‘And you’ll soon be well,’ he told her, negotiating a corner. ‘You heard what the doctor said.’
‘He didn’t like me,’ she said, and there was a stubborn expression on her face that he’d never seen before.
‘That was just his way,’ Ken said, feeling he had to make excuses for the man. ‘He’s like that with everybody.’ But he was wondering. Is she nervy? Is that what’s the matter with her? And it occurred to him that he really didn’t know her at all. ‘Cheer up,’ he said. ‘We’ll soon have you well.’
She tried to agree with him. ‘Yes, I suppose so.’
But it was nearly a week before she would stir out of the house.
‘I daren’t be far away from a toilet,’ she said, whenever he suggested an outing. ‘I never know when I’m going to need it.’
Making love became more and more difficult. The first time she refused him he was so angry he took himself off without a word to sleep in the spare room. The second time provoked a long miserable argument which only ended when she agreed that she was being selfish. The lovemaking that followed was almost as miserable as the argument because, although she allowed him to do whatever he wanted, she didn’t respond. She just lay in his arms and endured. Afterwards, when she thought he was asleep, she crept out of the bed and felt her way to the bathroom, where she stayed for a very long time and where he was sure she was crying.
If this is a honeymoon, he thought resentfully, I don’t think much of it. It seemed horribly unfair that they should be so unhappy in their love when they’d obeyed the rules and stayed virgins, coming to their wedding pure in every sense of the word. We should be enjoying this, he thought. We’ve got a right to enjoy it, whenever we feel like it. It should be wonderful.
Poor Emily, weeping in the bathroom, was a long way from resentment. She was simply and terribly afraid. If Maman was right — and it looked as though she was, despite what that callous doctor had said — she would get worse and worse with this illness and in the end, she would die of it, like Daddy had, losing control of her legs, stumbling and falling, being carried away to a clinic. And heaven knows what would happen to her there except that she would die. She was cold with fear, palms clammy, throat full, stomach dragged down, because whatever she did, she knew she couldn’t escape. Her mind was stuck fast in the horror of it, like a fly in resin. I am ill. I shall die. Maman was right.
‘Our Father,’ she prayed, ‘who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name; Thy Kingdom come; Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven…’ The words offered a grain of comfort. Her future would happen, whatever she said or did. There was no good kicking against the pricks. Somehow or other, she had to accept it and get on with her life as well as she could ‘…deliver us from evil. Amen.’
In the weeks that followed she did try to accept her fate. At first it was terribly difficult because the fear was always there, just under the surface, but gradually the cystitis eased and cleared, and although she was worried in case it returned, she found a pattern of living and praying that managed to contain her fear. But there was a distance between her and her dear Kenneth, and she was never more miserably aware of it than when they were in bed and he was urging her to love him. It was at this time that the fear returned with sense-numbing force.
For his part, Ken Hopkirk was glad to get back to the factory where he was successful and knew it. He told his friends he’d had a first-rate honeymoon, then closed the subject and got on with his work. If he wasn’t as rapturously happy as he’d expected to be, he had the sense to enjoy the good things in their life together and not to worry unduly about the bad ones. When Emily wept for no apparent reason, he put his arms round her and tried to comfort her. When she muttered in her sleep (always in French) he listened with sympathy, even though he couldn’t understand her. When she said she would like to try another letter to France, he wrote it at her dictation and tried to convince them both that this time they would get an answer.
But her sadness disturbed him, no matter how hard he tried to be sensible. Sometimes it roused him to pity and then he would pet her and spoil her and feed her titbits, as if she were a child. At other times, he was aware that there were things she was keeping hidden from him and that provoked such bad temper that the least little thing would trigger a fury. He roared that he couldn’t find the shirt he wanted, that he’d lost his toothbrush, that he’d be late for work. At that, Emily rushed to attend to him, and her activity shielded them both from her sadness until he’d left the house.
But it wasn’t what either of them had hoped for. And when the first fog of the winter seeped into the bungalow one dank December afternoon, as Emily was preparing the dinner, it felt like a judgement.
Chapter 27
It wasn’t a particularly bad fog, but the newspapers made the most of it.
‘Chaos at Channel ports,’ the Star said dramatically. ‘Fog and confusion. London at a standstill.’
‘Only wish it was,’ Jack Bond said, looking up from the paper to peer gloomily out of the office window. A sulphur-yellow mist had been choking the Strand since early morning, but they’d all got in to work more or less on time. ‘It wouldn’t hurt the old man to let us off till it’s over. D’you think he will? I could do with a couple of days at home.’
‘Speak for yourself,’ Charlie said with some feeling. The less he saw of home at the moment the better. ‘I’d rather be at work.’
‘It’s the way it closes in on you that I don’t like,’ Mr Grossman confessed, ‘as if everything’s stopped and you’ll never get going again. It’s like being suspended in limbo.’
That was something Charlie could understand just a little too well. Hadn’t his own life stopped in the last two weeks, with Aunty Grace being so ill, and his mother so harassed, and no letter from Jeannie in all that time?
Mr Crabbit’s secretary appeared in the doorway to the inner office. ‘Mr Commoner,’ she said. ‘You’re wanted on the telephone.’
For a lurching second Charlie was afraid it would be his mother with bad news of Aunty Grace. But it wasn’t. It was Mrs Everdale, faint and rather apologetic on the other end of a crackling line.
‘I’ve just called to enquire about our advertisements,’ she said. ‘I’ve been listening to the wireless. They say the Channel ports are closed. Is that right?’
‘So I believe, Mrs Everdale,’ Charlie said. ‘But you needn’t worry about the advertisements. I phoned them in last week. They’re to run for a month, according to your instructions. It’s all settled.’
‘Oh. You’re not going across then?’
‘No. There isn’t any need.’
‘But if anyone turns up… You’ll be able to go then? To see them.’
‘Of course. You have my word.’
‘Forgive me for saying this,’ Agnes said delicately, ‘but I was under the impression that you went to France quite frequently.’
‘I did. Yes,’ Charlie said, and the tone of his voice gave away more than he intended.
‘But not now,’ Agnes said, understanding him. ‘How sad.’
‘These things happen,’ Charlie said, trying to sound worldly wise. ‘But I’ll go straight across if we hear anything, I promise you.’
‘Did you include the newspapers in Amiens?’
‘Yes. Of course.’ They were the most important of all and he’d phoned them in first, feeling that he was dicing with fate. If one of the heiresses turned up in Amiens, he would have to go there, wouldn’t he? He couldn’t avoid it. And that would give him the chance to go and visit Jeannie. After being spurned for so long he couldn’t just turn up on her doorstep without some other reason for being in the district. If she’d decided not to see him again — and after all the letters she’d ignored it was pretty obvious that was what she had decided — it would be demoralising to chase after her. But a chance meeting would be different.
‘You’ll keep me informed,’ Mrs Everdale was saying.
‘Of course.’
‘I hope this fog doesn’t go on too long.’
‘So do I,’ Charlie said with feeling. And it wasn’t just the London fog he had in mind.
‘How is your aunt?’ Mrs Everdale asked. ‘Mr Crabbit tells me she’s been very ill.’
‘No better, I’m afraid.’
‘I am sorry.’
‘Yes,’ Charlie said. ‘So am I.’
Grace Allicott had been ill for ten days and although the tell-tale rash of typhoid fever hadn’t appeared, she’d made such a fuss that Ruby had called the doctor in to her three times, despite the cost. She complained endlessly. Her headache was so bad it was all she could do to lift her head from the pillow, her stomach was too tender to touch, she was sure she was going to get diarrhoea.
‘I’m at death’s door,’ she said to Ruby. ‘That’s the truth of it. They’ll ’ave ter send me to ’ospital come the finish.’
However, on that foggy Monday morning (at the very moment when Charlie was on the telephone to Wolverhampton), Dr Groizard told her there was nothing the matter with her.
‘Simple food poisoning,’ he said, when he’d sounded her chest, ‘that’s all. For a woman of your age, you’re fighting fit. You can get up, if you like.’
Grace was furious.
‘Fat lot he knows!’ she said, when the doctor had gone. ‘I’m terribly ill. Any fool can see that.’
‘Be nice to get up, though, won’t it,’ Ruby said placatingly. ‘I’ve got a good fire going in the kitchen.’
‘If I get up, it’ll be the death of me,’ Grace said, pulling the covers over her chest. ‘In this fog! The very idea!’
‘You can’t go on staying in bed,’ Ruby pointed out, keeping her temper with difficulty. ‘Not now there’s nothing the matter with you.’
‘I’m ill,’ Grace said stubbornly. ‘These pillows are sticking in the back a me neck, sommink chronic. Plump ’em up fer me, there’s a dear.’
Ruby was glad to escape from her and get to work.
You try so hard to do the best for your family, she thought, covering her nose and mouth with her scarf, and you end up doing the worst. She’s a horrid old thing. She’s been putting it on all this time and my poor Charlie’s been stuck here looking after her when there wasn’t any need. Poor boy. And that girl of his not writing. I do hope they haven’t quarrelled. Not that she’d said a word about there being no letters. Bad enough that there wasn’t, without rubbing his nose in it. Well, she reflected, as she walked out into the fog, there’s nothing to keep him in London now. At least that’s one consolation.
It was puzzling that the poor boy didn’t seem to realise that he’d been released.
‘No,’ he said flatly, when she suggested he could go to France now. ‘I shan’t go. There’s no point.’
‘But I thought…’
‘We’ve done all the work over the phone.’
‘What, all the way to France?’
‘Yes. Weeks ago. Just after Aunty Grace was taken bad.’
‘Best thing,’ Grandpa Jones said, trying to find something to say to comfort his grandson, because he’d noticed the lack of letters, too, and could see how miserable the poor little beggar was. ‘I wouldn’t go crossing the Channel in this weather, not fer all the tea in China. Not with all this fog. Reg’lar peasouper this is. An’ you imagine what it’ll be like in France.’
In fact, it was cold and clear in Amiens that afternoon, and Ginny was in a blazing temper.
It had been a dreadful day, the sort when everything goes wrong, and Monsieur Guerin had been in the foulest mood she’d ever seen. First two looms had broken down and he’d screeched and screamed until they were mended, then his second van driver hadn’t turned up and he’d screeched and screamed down the phone until the agency sent him a replacement, and then, horror of horrors, he received a call from one of his Paris fashion houses to say that their last consignment of velvet had arrived, but it wasn’t what they’d ordered.
He was conciliation itself on the phone, profuse with apologies and promising instant redress, but the minute he put the receiver back in its cradle, he turned on Ginny and Veronique and roared that it was all their fault.
‘Incompetence!’ he yelled. ‘That’s what it is. Incompetence. You must have sent down the wrong invoice.’
The unfairness of it stung Ginny to defend herself. ‘Oh no!’ she said. ‘The invoices are all double-checked. I would never make such a mistake.’
‘Then how did it happen?’ Monsieur Guerin roared. ‘Explain that to me.’
‘I expect your packers used the wrong invoice,’ Ginny said. ‘It wouldn’t surprise me. They’re usually rushed off their feet. It’s a wonder they get anything right.’
Monsieur Guerin was not pleased at being stood up to like that. ‘My packers do as they’re told,’ he shouted. ‘It’s got nothing to do with my packers. My packers are under my personal supervision. And I hope you’re not suggesting I make mistakes. Oh no, I’ll tell you how this happened, Mam’selle. There’s no organisation. That’s the trouble. And where is there no organisation? In this office. That’s where. How can I send out correct orders from a disorganised office? You must mend your ways, Mam’selle Lisieux. You’re costing me money.’
Ginny’s miseries gathered into a towering anger, the bleakness of her room, lack of sleep, homesickness, loneliness, and the awful triple grief of being abandoned. ‘No,’ she said coldly. ‘That’s not true, Monsieur. My invoices are always correct. It is a point of honour with me.’
‘You grow conceited, Mam’selle.’
‘Not at all, Monsieur. I know my own worth.’
‘Worth! Worth!’ her employer shrieked, jumping up and down in fury. ‘You lose an order and you talk to me of worth! How dare you do such a thing. The presumption of it. You ought to be…’
Ginny interrupted him in mid bounce. ‘That’s it!’ she said. ‘I quit. I’m not staying here to be insulted.’ She was gathering her belongings as she spoke, taking her hat, coat and scarf down from the peg, checking her handbag. ‘Find someone else to be abused, Monsieur. I’ve had enough.’ And with a wonderful sense that she was striking a blow for freedom, she walked out of the office, down the spiral staircase, through an admiring chirrup of catcalls and whistles in the workshop and out into the December air.
She was walking quickly, her heels clicking on the cobbles and there was such a noise in her head that, at first, it didn’t register that someone was running after her, calling her name. ‘Ginny! Ginny! Wait for me. Oh please, wait for me.’
It was Veronique, flushed and hatless and in tears.
‘Vron! What are you doing?’
‘I’ve given in my notice, too,’ Veronique said, breathlessly. ‘I can’t stay there without you. It isn’t possible.’
‘Well, serve him right!’ Ginny said, with great satisfaction. ‘He doesn’t deserve us. He’s never deserved us. Bad-tempered thing. He’s pushed us around just a bit too long, so serve him right.’
‘What are we going to do now?’ Veronique said, blinking away her tears.
Ginny was warm with righteous anger. ‘We’re going to celebrate, that’s what,’ she said. ‘We’re going to a posh restaurant and we’re going to treat ourselves to the best dinner we’ve ever had. Defeat to all capitalists, that’s what I say!’
And that was what they did. They strode into the finest restaurant in the town with splendid aplomb, as though they belonged there, and then ordered recklessly. Actually, when the main course was served, they both began to feel a bit anxious in case they couldn’t rustle up enough cash to pay the bill. But despite their anxieties, or maybe because of them, they were raucously jolly and drank toasts to ‘freedom’ and ‘fraternity’ and ‘success to socialism’ while they did complicated arithmetic in their heads. By dint of pretending that they were too full for coffee, they managed to pay the bill and even to leave a modest tip.
‘Now what?’ Veronique said, when they were out on the pavements again and walking among the evening throng.
Their money was gone, it was cold and getting late. Now and too late, Ginny realised that she would have to live off her precious savings until she found herself another job. There would be no hope of going to England and finding Em. Oh Em! she thought, feeling angry with herself, shall we ever see one another again?
‘Now what?’ Veronique repeated.
‘Home, I suppose,’ Ginny said.
Veronique’s plump face dropped perceptibly, as Ginny was quick to notice. ‘Oh not yet, Ginny,’ she begged. ‘It’s early yet.’
She’s afraid, Ginny thought. She’s afraid of telling them at home. ‘I’ll come back with you, if you like,’ she offered.
‘Would you?’ Veronique said gratefully. ‘It’s not that I’m worried, it’s just — well — it’s a bit hard sometimes to get Maman to — well — understand things. You’d be able to explain it to her, wouldn’t you? You could get her to see sense.’
