Evie, page 12
With the stitches removed from her scalp and the headaches gone, Georgina was physically fully recovered from the accident. It was probably delayed shock, she decided, that had left her feeling oddly unlike herself. She had initially decided that she would not confess to Christopher how she had come to be pregnant or whose child it was that had been lost. Her night with Neil Fitzsimmonds had been, as both he and she had described it, no more than ‘unfinished business’, their meeting in Wellington merely a freak coincidence which had caught Georgina at a moment when her confidence in her marriage had undergone its first serious knock, a situation in which Christopher had disappointed her and which reminded her sharply of the difficulties there had been in their earlier relationship. This had left her off balance and alone with her homesickness. Her brief encounter with Fitzie had, if anything and not for the first time, clarified and intensified her feelings for Christopher. Perhaps she should have felt some sense of guilt about the ‘tiny fragment of tissue’ that had left her body while she lay in the hospital at Dunedin but she did not. It was the doctor who had used the phrase, as he explained that a foetus, at that extremely early stage, had no feeling and no identity. She clung to this while her body adjusted to the hormonal changes the miscarriage had triggered. She longed to confide her thoughts, not to Christopher, or to her mother, but to Alice, on whom, for almost three years, she had depended, not for advice – Alice never gave advice – but for the effect her steadying influence and her sense of logic had on those who sought her help. Almost all the land girls had, on one occasion or another during their time at the hostel, confided in Alice. Annie, Hester, Gwennan, Marion, Winnie and Georgina herself had tapped on Alice’s bedsitting-room door, been invited in and listened to. Often it was simply the act of putting their problem into words that suggested the solution they sought. Sometimes Alice drew attention to one fact or another that clarified things and made easier the girl’s decision, or simplified her adjustment to a new and unfamiliar situation.
Georgina walked the beach below the bungalow, her sandals swinging from her hand, the sand firm and cold under the soles of her feet. The tide was low. A big surf was breaking almost a quarter of a mile away. Each wave surging in towards the beach, losing momentum, spreading, shallow and indecisive, amongst the cast-up shells, driftwood and spume. Georgina found herself visualising Alice. Conjuring her grey eyes and finding them fixed on hers, she felt suddenly calmed by the thought, almost the sensation, of Alice’s mature mind infusing her own, confused consciousness. She remembered a conversation she had when, two years ago, she became certain about her feelings for Christopher and had decided to marry him. She had asked Alice whether she should tell him about her brief and at that time unconsummated relationship with Neil Fitzsimmonds.
‘Confess, you mean?’ Alice had asked. She was in the hostel kitchen, ironing Edward John’s school shirts.
‘One needs to be careful about confessions,’ she added and when Georgina asked why, thoughtfully explained herself. ‘They can be a bit of a cop-out, don’t you think? It’s like admitting you can’t cope with something. So you want someone else to help you deal with it. You feel bad about it, so they must feel bad about it too. Or possibly worse than you do. D’you see?’ Georgina had said she thought she did and Alice had elaborated. ‘You need to ask yourself whether you want to confess in order to make yourself feel better, when you should be concerned that there is a possibility that it might make the other person feel worse. In other words, if the problem is yours, who will benefit if you foist it onto a second party?’
‘You mean, a trouble shared can be a trouble doubled’? Georgina asked and they had laughed.
Georgina’s initial decision had been not to tell her husband about her recent liaison with Fitzsimmonds, which, she was now certain, had no relevance to her real feelings for Christopher or to her determination to make her marriage to him succeed. However, the unexpected revelation which had come to light after her accident had complicated things, introducing to her a sense of responsibility she was too young to have experienced before and leaving her with a sensitised conscience, in which her doubts had multiplied. Although neither she, Christopher or Fitzsimmonds had known of it, a spark of life had been created and then inadvertently extinguished by a slither of icy shale and a rolling boulder. Now, twelve thousand miles from Alice’s grey eyes and sharp sensitivity, Georgina focused her mind on what she knew Alice would say to her today, as she walked this remote New Zealand beach, with seagulls wheeling and mewing overhead and the sun glittering on the snow-capped peaks of the Southern Alps.
Over the succeeding days Georgina grew stronger and was increasingly more able to rationalise her situation in a less emotional way. Neither she nor Christopher wanted a baby at this very early stage in their marriage. Christopher’s look of relief when the consultant told them the foetus was lost had been palpable and had not escaped her. If the child had survived it would have been the offspring of a charming, irresponsible philanderer, forever unaware of his parenthood, while she would have been committed to maintaining the lie that the child was a Bayliss, Christopher’s son, Roger’s grandson. Why, she wondered, did she assume it would have been a boy?
As she spent each day, walking the beach, turning over and over in her mind the difficulties and deceptions which would be involved whichever decision she took, she began to understand that the decision was already made. If there was any discomfort involved in what she had decided to do, any pangs of guilt, any future regrets, she alone would have to face them, because it was she who had caused them.
By the morning of the fifth day, with Christopher working in a nearby plantation and their temporary home cleaned and tidied, Georgina had begun to regain her confidence, her sense of well-being and of optimism.
She was comfortable, now that the decision making was over. The news of the miscarriage, which she had survived without any adverse, ongoing consequences, would, she decided, be conveyed to both sets of parents. The rest, including Neil Fitzsimmonds’ involvement in it, would remain, securely, harmlessly and even comfortably, contained within Georgina’s conscience.
The tide was high, the surf breaking closer to the shore. She would swim. The beach was deserted. She stepped out of her clothes, dropping them onto the powdery sand above the tideline. The water was colder than she expected as she waded in and dived under an approaching wave. She was surprised by the surge and energy of the surf and then slightly alarmed to find herself out of her depth and being drawn sideways, parallel to the shore but increasingly further from it. She realised that her strong strokes were powerless against the movement of the water and a sudden fear of drowning overwhelmed her. Then she remembered the advice one of her neighbours had given her. ‘If you’se get caught in a rip, luv, don’t try to swim against it. Swim at right angles to it and don’t panic. Take your time and you’ll be fine!’ A quarter of a mile along the beach the surge delivered Georgina into shallow water. She felt her foot touch the sand, waded ashore and walked, shivering, breathless, dripping and naked, back to the place where she had left her clothes.
In the land girls’ digs above the public saloon bar in Ledburton village, Winnie, fresh from the luxury of a hot bath and wrapped in her dressing gown, sat with one foot on her bed, applying a vivid-pink varnish to her toenails.
‘You should of seen the state of her,’ she said to Gwennan, not for the first time. The news of the safe return to the known world of Evie and Giorgio was circulating the neighbourhood, accumulating interesting and possibly fanciful details as it went. ‘Filthy, she were!’ Winnie continued, turning her attention to the touching up of the chipped polish on her fingertips ‘When they brung ’er to Mrs Crocker’s place she stuck her in the bath tub straight off and scrubbed her, top to toe. Washed her hair and all. Said she’d never seen a girl in such a state and you’d think she would of done, all those years with us lot getting back to the hostel up to our necks in mud!’
‘And worse,’ Gwennan added, briefly removing her attention from the latest copy of The Funeral Directors’ Monthly. ‘Remember the time I had to help the vet get that still-born calf out of Mr Bayliss’s favourite milkin’ cow? Blood from arsehole to breakfast time there was! Had to hose me down, they did!’
‘These days we don’t seem to get as mucky as we used,’ Winnie mused.
‘That’s ’cos, with the blokes back from the forces, we gets ’em to do the dirty work!’
‘And quite right too, I reckon!’ They giggled, congratulating themselves on their crafty manipulation of the male sex. ‘Better get movin’ if we’re going down for a drink before closing time,’ Winnie said, screwing the top onto the bottle of varnish and admiring her restored nails.
It was Constable Twentyman who came up with a scheme designed to protect Giorgio and Evie from an unexpected attack by Norman Clark. The idea, which had to be approved, not only by the station sergeant at Ledburton police station, but by his superior in Exeter, consisted of equipping both Evie and Giorgio with high-decibel police whistles. These, threaded onto leather thongs, were to be worn round the necks of the threatened couple at all times, enabling them to attract help should Norman Clark be sighted in the neighbourhood. There was a certain amount of scoffing amongst those who always knew best but, in fact, the precaution was a sound one – a blast from the whistles carried a long way across the valley in which Giorgio would be working, and up and down the village street that passed the door of Rose Crocker’s tea shop. As a result, Evie felt better about Giorgio and Giorgio felt better because she was reassured.
The couple met as frequently as their work obligations permitted. On borrowed bicycles, weather permitting, they cycled towards each other and met at several preselected rural rendezvous. When it rained there was the tea shop, where Rose would have a left-over pasty or two for Giorgio. Sometimes they met in Giorgio’s cottage at the Lucas farm, where, provided the visit was not overlong, Clarissa and Edwin cast collectively blind eyes and ignored any suggestion of impropriety.
Meanwhile, when Alice was spending a week working in London, Roger applied himself with great effect to a long-term solution to the Evie-Giorgio problem. He too travelled to London, took Alice to lunch and afterwards spent a useful afternoon at New Zealand House discussing, with the appropriate official, the prospects of emigration to that country.
Roger discovered that if Giorgio allowed himself to be repatriated to his native Italy, he could apply there for an assisted passage to New Zealand, where qualified carpenters were in great demand. All he would require would be the equivalent of ten pounds sterling towards his fare and someone in New Zealand to act as a sponsor. The same principle applied to Evie, whose recent service in the Land Army, together with the Ministry of Agriculture exams she had passed during her time at the hostel, made her, too, a desirable immigrant, as did the fact that she was a white female of marriageable age. She would have to be interviewed, pass a medical examination, produce evidence of the registration of her birth and of a reasonable standard of general education. She too would require someone in New Zealand to vouch for her. Further enquiries confirmed the fact that Christopher, currently employed by the New Zealand government, could provide sponsorship for Giorgio, while Evie’s record with the WLA, plus personal references from Georgina, who would undertake to establish her in work and appropriate accommodation, would ensure her acceptance as an immigrant.
All these facts and possibilities were duly conveyed to Evie and Giorgio.
With the settlement of the legalities concerning Evie’s inheritance of the house in Coventry, she would soon be free to sell it. She would also inherit the money that had been deposited in her mother’s post office savings account, and these funds, together with the money due to Giorgio in lieu of earnings during his long internment as a POW, would enable the couple to establish themselves comfortably in New Zealand.
Christopher, using his new contacts in the timber trade, approached a thriving building firm in Christchurch and discovered that Lucca Angelica, the owner of the company and himself an Italian immigrant, was keen to employ experienced carpenters. Giorgio’s origins, plus his pre-war work for the Catholic church in Naples, made his employment almost guaranteed and he was invited to contact Lucca as soon as possible after his arrival in New Zealand.
‘But are you sure it’s what you both want?’ Alice asked. The five of them, Evie, Giorgio, Alice, Roger and Edward John, were seated round the large table in the Bayliss kitchen, discussing in detail the pros and cons of the proposed emigration. ‘Immigrants taking advantage of the Assisted Passage scheme must stay in New Zealand for at least two years or pay back their passage money. You do understand that, don’t you? It’s a serious commitment. Are you certain it’s what you want?’
‘What we most want is that we are together, Mrs Alice,’ Giorgio told her, groping his way through the English words. ‘We no care where, so long as we together. I would like, one day, to take Evie to my home. To Napoli. To live there with my family. And maybe, after the two year, that is what we do. We shall see.’
‘And you, Evie?’ Roger asked the girl, who was sitting, mute, her solemn eyes on Giorgio’s. ‘What do you think about all this? It’s a big decision. Twelve thousand miles from your homeland and your family.’ Evie shook her head.
‘I don’t have no family, Mr Bayliss. If there was cousins and uncles and aunts, I never saw ’em after me Dad died and I can’t hardly even remember him, let alone any of them. It were just Mum and me ’til Norman come. And you know the rest. Giorgio is my family now. He’s all I ever want.’ She became conscious of the fact that all of them were looking at her, their expressions ranging from sympathy and concern, to speculation and even doubt. She lowered her head as she felt her face redden.
‘There’s another thing you need to consider,’ Roger began, attempting to use the simplest terms in order to make it as easy as possible for Giorgio to understand him, ‘and that is that Evie is still married to her husband. In most cases, these days, when a marriage breaks down the couple are able to get divorced so that they can marry a new partner if they want to … But Evie is not free to do that. Do you understand me, Giorgio?’
‘Yes, he does, Mr Bayliss,’ Evie said, adding her voice to Giorgio’s emphatic nodding. ‘We have talked about it all. And how Norman wouldn’t never let me go. And then there’s me not being able to have no more babies. We’ve talked and talked about that too. All of it, truly.’
‘An’ we no care, see?’ Giorgio confirmed. ‘We will hope that one day we might marry but if we cannot … Well … No one cannot ever have everything you want for in your life! Of course I would like for Evie to have babies … but most I would like for me to have Evie … To have Evie like she is my wife! To take care of and love. My church does not allow divorce, but maybe, if one day we explain why we do what we have done and confess our sins to the priest, we will be forgiven and receive blessing, no?’ He paused briefly and nodded, as though he wished to remove from his listeners the responsibility of having to reply. Then he continued. ‘We go to New Zealand and we work hard for the two years we have promised and after that time, who know?’ He shrugged, smiling endearingly. ‘We come back to Napoli? Or we not come back. We see how things are.’ He paused again before turning to Roger. ‘And please to thank you son, Mr Bayliss, for being the sponsor for me!’ And then to Alice, ‘And you son, Mrs Alice, for how he kept his word and brought food to the byre. He most excellent boy, Mrs Alice! Most excellent boy!’ It was Edward John’s turn to blush.
One Sunday morning Zeke arrived at the Crocker cottage at Lower Post Stone Farm. He was driving a van which, though rusted and noisy, was proving better than towing, behind his bicycle, the wicker basket in which he had previously transported produce from the Tucker smallholding to the shopkeepers of Bideford and where, after he had disposed of it, he was in the habit of meeting Polly for a cup of tea or an ice cream.
‘What I come about,’ he told his sister and brother-in-law when the van had been duly inspected and approved of, ‘is our mother. She’s behavin’ that funny, Hes. She sits with Father all day an’ all night and don’t go to bed no more! Just fetches soup and bread and milk for ’im and tries to clean ’im and that. An’ all the time she’s talking a load of stuff about God forsakin’ her and Father. Half the time she don’t seem to know me no more! Just stares at me like I’m a stranger. Proper scary it be! I reckon Father bein’ so sick all this time and gettin’ worse an’ worse each day is doin’ ’er head in! I do! I think she’m goin’ balmy! An’ I dunno what to do!’
They took him into their cottage, sat him at the kitchen table and gave him a cup of tea and a slice of lardy cake. This settled him down and brought the colour back to his weather-beaten, young cheeks. But it did not address the problem. It was decided that Hester would return with him to the smallholding, taking Thurza with her and staying for a few days to give what practical help she could to their mother. She would clean the place and do some washing and cooking for Zeke. Thurza’s high chair and cot were loaded into the back of Zeke’s van. Dave was to fend for himself and go to his mother for his dinner each evening. The afternoon was grey and a damp wind was heavy with coming rain as he watched the van lurch across the yard and vanish into the entrance to the lane.
Daylight was fading by the time the van had toiled up and over the moor. Except for the glow from the paraffin lamp in Jonas Tucker’s sickroom, the cottage on the smallholding was in darkness.
It was decided that Thurza’s cot would be assembled in the parlour where Hester would also sleep on a truckle bed, carried down from the attic.
Hester had brought food with her and made a meal for all of them, but when she went upstairs with a plate of boiled ham and mashed swede, her mother simply stared at her. Hester was shocked by how thin and exhausted she had become, even in the short time since she had last seen her. ‘Eat some supper, Mother,’ she had urged her. ‘Please eat some supper.’
