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A wave surged through Emily’s stomach every time a man in khaki strode past. She waited by the Telegraph Office entrance with a beating heart, louder than the station clock on the tower outside. She couldn’t shift Mother’s voice from her mind. She’d be confined to knitting for a month if Mother learnt that Emily had met a man, a stranger no less, unchaperoned, in London. Then her mind flitted to what Theo would be like in the flesh. Would he think she was fast because she’d come without a chaperone?
It was ten past two and her concerns might be for nothing if she’d already missed him.
‘Emily?’ A voice came, just as she crossed the concourse. She jumped clean into the air, her stomach still twisting and turning as she turned and gasped at him. He was a good-looking young man, as his photo had suggested, better perhaps in the flesh. His sandy hair was parted to one side, and he had warm brown eyes. Nothing within her stirred though. Her knees didn’t go weak; butterflies didn’t hatch and flap their wings in her stomach. She’d had a silly hope that she’d fall in love and they’d get married and he would take her away from her worries.
She gasped as he lifted her up from the ground and spun her around, her cheek pressed against his, the sandalwood scent of his cologne wafting by. People stopped to admire the soldier and what they probably thought was his sweetheart. She smiled as if she held some secret knowledge.
He set her back down and now it was her turn to admire him. He was a vision in khaki; stiff cap, brown belt. His shoulders broad, capable and safe.
‘I’m glad you could come,’ he said. ‘Your letters have been a real tonic.’
‘I’m glad too,’ she said. ‘It’s been a sad day, and I’m glad of the chance to brighten it up. Now, how long do you have until your train?’
He checked the clock. ‘A couple of hours. I was wondering if we might take a stroll beside the Thames, see the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben.’
Together they walked out of the station into the driving rain and joined the taxi rank, the people waiting in front moving aside to let the returning soldier go ahead of them.
The taxi was soon held up in the traffic.
‘It’s the women’s march,’ the taxi driver told them. Emily couldn’t believe her luck. She’d read in the newspaper about the march for women’s right to serve their country, to work in the munitions factories and on the land.
‘Gosh, we might see Emmeline Pankhurst,’ she said. She suggested they hop out and walk the rest of the way. Theo had on his trench coat to protect him from the rain, and sheltered her with an umbrella, inviting her to steady herself on his outstretched arm.
‘I was going to suggest that we change our plans and avoid this part of town,’ he said, ‘but I can see you’re excited by the march.’
‘I am,’ she said. ‘Do you mind?’
He said that he didn’t, of course not. She’d never walked out with a man before. She found she couldn’t quite keep up with him. His strides were longer than hers and she found herself scurrying to keep under the comfort of his umbrella.
The crowds were thickening up and a brass band moved closer. As they approached Westminster Bridge the spectators were four or five deep, the view obscured by top hats and umbrellas. Emily left Theo’s side to thread her way through the crowds, pushed her way to the front. Theo joined her.
‘Would you look at them,’ she said, pointing at a group of women marching with purpose down the centre of the road, undeterred by a little thing like rain.
‘Three cheers for our gallant soldiers,’ she read aloud and smiled at Theo. ‘Oh, I like that one: mobilise the brains and energy of women,’ Emily said, reading the next banner. The word brain was underlined. Quite right.
‘There’s a shortage of ammo,’ said Theo. ‘That’s what’s triggered this march, and it’s not the lack of women volunteers that’s the problem but the unions standing in their way, and the idea of women doing a man’s work, I suppose.’
‘Do you think women can make shells?’ she asked, and then waved at the women who marched by. She was being pulled by an invisible force to burst out of the crowd and walk alongside them.
‘I honestly don’t know,’ Theo said. ‘But why not? We won’t win this war without shells and with empty stomachs, that much I do know.’
‘I still want to work on my farm,’ she said.
‘Good for you,’ he said.
‘What do you do for a living?’ she asked. ‘You’ve never said.’
‘Sorry?’ he said. The crowd had cheered and drowned out her voice.
‘Your living, what do you do?’
A shadow passed over his face. ‘That’s all a long time ago now …’ He focused on the passing crowds. ‘It’s as if I’ve only ever been Corporal Williams.’
‘But you must have a trade, or a family business?’
He tutted, but he was smiling at her, amused by her persistence. He took her arm and led her back through the crowds to a Lyons’ Corner House. Once they were sitting down and had ordered afternoon tea he asked her about her farm.
She told him all about Lily, and how she’d rescued the village women from being trampled. She told him about the cherry harvest, how kind Mr and Mrs Tipton were to her, and how they let her help out on the farm and kept it a secret from Mother.
‘And your family own the estate and the farm. Just the one, is it?’
‘That’s right, my father owned a cement works but my brother John sold that when Father died.’
‘So, your Mother has enough to go around then, should you ever need it?’
She smiled and drank her tea. Their predicament was family business. John had trusted her enough to tell her that Uncle Wilfred had come to their rescue and she wouldn’t betray that trust with a loose tongue. Besides, Theo had chosen not to tell her about his past, which meant she could opt not to talk about money and spoil a really lovely end to what had promised to be a rotten day.
‘Those women were quite a sight today, weren’t they?’ he said.
She remembered the large float, garlanded with plants and flowers; behind it followed women in white smocks holding their hoes aloft. ‘It’s clear the country needs educated girls, girls just like you,’ he said. ‘I feel rather proud to have a girl like you writing to me at the Front.’
‘There’s nothing I would like more than to be a land girl,’ she confessed. She waited for him to snort, or say something to belittle her, but he didn’t. He leant in, interested. He beckoned her closer. Her mind raced with the things she could tell him about her ideas and plans for the future.
‘There’s something I would like more.’ His hot, damp breath blew into her eyes. He held her gaze for a moment longer than was decent. She tried to stare him down, but his eyes were so brimming with desire that it was she who had to break away. And she wasn’t comfortable with the way her stomach betrayed her by curling at the edges and threatening to flip right over.
Thankfully the waiter appeared at her shoulder with a tray of tea things. Her cheeks were burning so much that she excused herself and hid in the lavatory until the heat had subsided and her skin had settled back to its normal colour.
He missed his next train, and the next. When the tea rooms were closing and the streets were too wet for walking he suggested they rent a room, spend some time alone together. Her speechlessness was enough for him to promptly come up with another idea.
‘What about if I travel back early at the end of my leave? We could have the day together in London,’ he said.
She nodded. She’d like that, but she wouldn’t be able to come to London without a chaperone. Mother might never let her out again if she caught wind of what she’d been up to today. And that animalistic look in his eyes had made her want to run for the door. He’d been a gentleman in the end, but he might expect more from her next time.
Back at the station he handed his ticket to the guard. He opened the train door and, then, leant in and without warning or reaching out to hold her, he kissed her. His lips pressed against hers while she steadied herself by gripping his arms, sinking into his embrace. His cologne, his skin soft, his shoulders broad and strong. Her eyes were pinned open, close up to his eyelids and the bridge of his nose, until he opened his eyes and his pupils contracted.
‘You were watching me?’ he said.
Two men whistled and laughed to one another, breaking the spell. Emily gave the soldier looking over his shoulder at them a stern shake of the head that made him turn away, and then trained her gaze fully back to Theo.
‘You could marry me,’ he said, a huge grin on his face. ‘Don’t look like that.’ He searched her face. ‘I’m not that bad, am I?’
‘No, of course not,’ she said. What was the right thing to say? She didn’t want to hurt him or send him away with a bad memory. He had been so sweet and kind to her today, and hadn’t complained once about watching the women’s march. ‘It’s just … we have only just met.’ Train doors slammed shut on the platform. The atmosphere shifted to one where time was speeding up, running out.
‘What about our letters?’ he asked. ‘I feel I knew you before I’d even met you.’
He was a romantic. It was sweet but one of them had to be sensible.
‘Why rush?’ she said.
‘The war, that’s why. I might not get the chance to ask you again.’
‘You said I’d see you at the end of your leave,’ she said with a wry nod.
‘And if you don’t become Mrs Williams then, it might be months before we get another chance.’
Goodness. He was right; as with John this morning once they went back to the Front she was left with no idea of when or if she would ever see him again.
She waved as he leant out of the window, his face serious, receding from view as the train glided away from the platform.
‘Think about it,’ he called. ‘I’ll write.’
For the second time that day, she waved as a young soldier disappeared from view.
*
HopBine was dark and silent when she returned that night. There was no thin light shining beneath Mother’s bedroom door. The tales of her last sight of John would have to wait until the morning.
When the sun came up, Emily raced down to find Mother at breakfast, but Daisy reported that the mistress was sleeping in. Emily assumed it was John’s return to the Front that had stirred up her anxiety, but in a hushed voice she told her that Mother had taken a pill from the doctor.
‘She slept all day,’ she said.
When Mother did eventually surface after lunch, she made slow, careful movements. Her skin was as pale as milk and the skin beneath her eyes purple and bruised. Emily steeled herself for a telling-off for coming home so late. They’d agreed she’d say farewell to John and catch the very next train home. It was the most freedom she’d ever been granted, and she’d violated it terribly. She had prepared her excuses; she was going to say that she’d joined Cecil and his friends for their debate, and would hint at a young officer friend of Cecil’s to test the waters, so that Mother couldn’t accuse her of becoming unduly politicised.
But she needn’t have gone to the trouble of being so creative with the truth. Mother shuffled through to the sitting room, eyes glazed, and sat in an armchair that faced out onto the terrace, and the Victory Garden she and John had begun.
She didn’t say another word to Emily; she didn’t even notice her, for the rest of the day.
Emily imagined conversations with Theo. She didn’t have his address in Yorkshire, so she pictured him rapt when she whispered to his photograph the tale of Mrs Tipton’s chickens following her all the way home or when Lily had escaped from the paddock and left a pat on their lawn.
*
August 1915
She’d thought of little else, since she’d decided that she would meet with Theo on his return to the Front and arranged to visit Grandmother in London to coincide with the end of his leave.
‘I’ve asked Norah Peters to come and sit with you. Grandmother says it’s urgent,’ she lied. She would have to pray that Grandmother didn’t call or write to Mother and tell her that the visit had been Emily’s idea.
She allowed an hour between her arrival in London and when she would be at Grandmother’s to meet with Theo on his way back to the Front. She should perhaps have brought a chaperone; it was clear that he was a passionate man, but she reasoned they were meeting in daylight, and she’d make sure he understood that just because she was deceiving her Mother, it didn’t mean she was fast.
She sat on the edge of her seat at the tea rooms, bolt upright. She would raise a hand this time if he tried to kiss her, but despite her anxiety she couldn’t keep the smile from her face. She toyed with a stray lock of hair, twirling it around her finger, and laughing at just about everything Theo said, even when it wasn’t that funny. She couldn’t control it.
He didn’t say anything about the proposal this time. His eyes were soft and warm; his gaze wasn’t probing. She had rejected him, but it was for the best, and the time at home would have given him the chance to think it through and see that it was madness. It had been romantic, and why shouldn’t he want to go back to war with a sweetheart waiting for him at home?
Since she’d been at the women’s march, she was resolved to do some war work, and just as soon as Mother was stronger she would tackle the subject again, but this time she would have the backing of John and Mr Tipton.
‘Grab the opportunity, girl,’ he said.
When the hour was up, he walked her to the corner of her Grandmother’s mews. He kept a respectable distance this time.
‘Don’t look so worried,’ he said. ‘I’m on my best behaviour today. I won’t be getting carried away. I got a bit overexcited last time, didn’t I? The company of a beautiful, clever girl, well, I was flattered. Can you blame me?’ She held out her palm and waved away his concerns. ‘But I haven’t given up on the idea of marrying you. I admire your spirit,’ he said. ‘I think it’s just the tonic I need.’
He cupped her elbow with his palm, and said, ‘May I?’
She nodded, and he pecked her on the cheek, one warm kiss, his breath caressing her skin.
‘Don’t forget to write,’ he said.
She waved, holding her other palm to her cheek.
When she returned in the evening she trod the hallway floorboards quietly, gauging the atmosphere in the house as to whether Grandmother had telephoned to tell Mother that Emily had arrived for her visit flushed and late. Grandmother had made her views on Emily travelling about London alone very clear, but with more and more young women working now, and so many men away, they couldn’t possibly be expected to be accompanied everywhere. The older ones would always cling on to the old way of doing things. It was a sign their ideas were close to being replaced.
The sitting room was empty. The muted fire was dying down without anyone there to tend it. All was quiet and still. She was about to quit while ahead and go straight to bed, when her mother came to life in the chair that faced out towards the window.
Even in the dim light, Mother was paler than usual. Despite the fire she looked frozen. Then Mother blinked, but that was the only movement. ‘Where were you?’ she asked, her voice thin and choked.
‘Some silly cows found their way onto the line near Sidcup,’ Emily said. She clenched her fists and waited. She was about to excuse herself, but something stopped her from speaking. Resting on her mother’s lap, loosely in her grasp, was a yellow slip of paper.
‘What’s that?’ Emily said.
Her legs were jittery, too weak to move her. Her mother didn’t speak. She had to cross that vast space of floorboards to reach her. One. Two. Three. Four. Her boots clipped on the floorboards. Unable to catch her own breath. She slid the piece of paper out of Mother’s flimsy grasp.
Her eyes scanned the typed words …
regret to inform …
… report has been received from the War Office …
… Name:Cotham J …
Her hands shook. The East Kent buffs had been under siege at the Battle of the Hooge near Ypres. Her brother was missing in action. She concentrated on the typed words: was posted as ‘missing’ on the … 30th July 1915.
‘He’s only been back there a week,’ she said. ‘It says that missing doesn’t necessarily mean …’ She couldn’t say the last word. She had read about that battle in the newspaper; it was the first time the enemy had used a flamethrower. She read on. ‘It says that he may be a prisoner of war, or have become temporarily separated from his regiment.’
The village doctor had received a telegram like this about his eldest son. The son had turned up several months later, in a German prisoner of war camp.
‘Yes, all is not lost,’ Mother said. A lightning strike of a smile, pained and twisted, flashed onto her face.
‘They say if he’s been captured that unofficial news is likely to reach us first, and we should notify them at once.’
Emily paused for a moment, tried to imagine John in a prisoner of war camp, or in a front-line hospital unaccounted for; perhaps a nasty blow to the head had caused him to forget who he was.
The letter seemed to be encouraging them to think he’d been captured, and they surely wouldn’t give them hope without good reason.
But still, however would they cope with the wait? Mother’s knitting needles and wool were discarded by her feet, her lips tinged blue. Hands trembling, pupils dilated, she wheezed.
‘Mother, can you breathe?’ Emily asked, her own throat constricting so much she could hardly catch her own breath. After a few moments Mother inhaled, panted, and slumped forwards.
‘It’s been a terrible shock,’ Mother said. ‘The letter came in the first post.’
