A Girl in Wartime (32 page)

‘About us getting married in September,' Connie said.

Her mother gasped. ‘Oh, my goodness, that's … you're not …?'

Connie smiled. ‘No, Mum. I just can't wait to leave work, that's all. I've had enough.'

She
had
had enough. The moment Stephen got his promotion she'd hand in her notice, leaving herself free to deal with the wedding preparations.

After all she had been through it would be lovely to spend the rest of their evening lying together in his bed,
their bed
, being made love to. Feeling his naked body against hers, thrilling to their climax, knowing if they did make a mistake, in five weeks' time they'd be married. But for now she had to think of Mum and Dad's feelings, of Stephen getting her back home again by eleven.

‘Stephen's taxi is waiting,' she said. ‘We'll be going out for a few hours. Won't be late.' But her glowing cheeks had surely revealed to her mother that it would be more than a quiet nightcap. But her mother kissed her goodnight and said she was off upstairs now, the look in her ageing hazel eyes telling her daughter that she knew more than she let on. But Connie didn't care. Soon she would leave the paper and become Stephen's wife.

Lying with him this evening, his hands on her naked skin, she in turn lovingly exploring his nakedness, it had been easy to blot from her mind all the terrible sights she'd witnessed in France. One week of it and she'd had enough. Now that could all be put behind her and she be his again.

She undressed slowly as she reflected on her evening, knowing that in a month's time there'd be a lovely new bedroom of their own, a lovely house to wander around in the morning, naked if she wanted. She could see herself making Stephen's breakfast, just the two of them eating in a lovely large breakfast room. What bliss that would be.

Slipping into bed, she gazed up at the darkened ceiling of the back bedroom and listened to someone from next door visiting their outside toilet. Sighing contentedly, she turned over on to her side and let her eyelids droop, lovingly conjuring up Stephen's face.

Almost immediately there came other faces. Quickly she opened her eyes and stared into the darkness in an effort to sweep them away. For a few minutes she remained still, chiding her overactive imagination, finally letting the lids again drop gently, cosily tired, ready for sleep.

Seconds later she was sitting bolt upright, her breath escaping her in short gasps as she stared into the darkness, needing to see light – any light that would shoo away the sights that had appeared behind her closed lids: eyes filled with fear, panic, staring, haunted by what their owners had seen, and other eyes belonging to faces, no, half faces above bandages that covered a jaw shot away, a cheek torn to the bare bone, bone gone to reveal a gaping hole instead of a mouth, instead of a nose.

She had glimpsed it all as the VAD nurses came to change bandages, too busy with their helpless patients to hardly notice her sitting silently a small distance away. She fought to concentrate on the eyes of those ravaged soldiers rather than their injuries. Those that hadn't been blinded, stared above the bandages with despair and the silent wish to die rather than be sent home to face the world, grotesquely mutilated for life. She had been filled with horror for the pain they had experienced, and with pity for the lives that they would have to reconstruct when they were sent home.

As she lay in her bed, a retinue of maimed soldiers marched before her eyes each time she closed them. Unable to bear it, she finally leapt from her bed to turn the gaslight on and remained staring out of the window at the moonlit night – anything not to have those harrowing sights repeated each time she attempted to sleep.

Was this what her poor brother Ronnie was still suffering from despite Dolly's every effort to help him? How long then would these awful visitations go on for her? She only hoped it was just a single reaction from what she'd seen and would fade in a day or two.

The next morning she felt fit for nothing. Her mum looked at her with a bewildered expression though she didn't ask what the matter was. She was glad to leave for work. It was a help seeing Stephen. He'd not yet moved to the upper office and for that she was grateful.

‘Are you all right?' he asked when he came over to speak to her. ‘You look positively worn out. You're not worrying about the wedding?' He smiled. ‘Nothing for you to do. I'll be doing all the arranging.'

‘The thing is I'd rather not be asked to go out on any more assignments for the time being. I don't think I could face any more of it, at least not for a while.'

He smiled again, tenderly. ‘You won't have to. I've already had a word with them up there. I've told them you need to get yourself ready to marry me. They appreciate very much that you've brought back some amazing work, all of which they intend to use, but they do understand it must have been traumatic for you and think you might need a rest for a month or two. By that time you'll be Mrs Stephen Clayton.'

She said nothing, unable to bring herself to speak in case her voice trembled, prompting him to ask what was wrong. Nor could she bring herself to tell him.

Maybe she should have told him. Her sleep continued to be disturbed. She continued to be haunted by eyes hollow with despair above bandages concealing hideous injuries. Those eyes had etched themselves against her closed lids, and she saw them each time she tried to sleep. When had they become filled with condemnation, blaming her?

The dream when it did come was always the same: Stephen fleeing across no-man's-land, she trying to reach him, to rescue him. She'd wake up hearing herself calling out, crying his name.

That first time, the bedroom door had burst open, jerking her awake. Mum hurried in. ‘Connie, love, what in Gawd's name is it? We 'eard you callin' out like you was being murdered. It must of been a nightmare you was having, love? What was it?'

Finding herself being rocked gently back and forth in her mother's arms, Connie had managed to pull away. ‘It was just a dream – a silly dream.'

‘Well, you try and go back to sleep, love, and if you want anything, just call me, all right?'

‘All right,' she echoed in a small voice.

There were no more dreams that night but only because she now refused to sleep. The faces of those she had sketched were ever accusing her the moment she closed her eyes. Taking the chair from the little dressing table, she spent the rest of the night sitting by the window, dressing gown wrapped around her, the gaslight turned on just a glimmer, to be turned off at the first light of dawn so no one would know she had not slept. But she could see by her mother's face that she was becoming a little concerned about her drained looks.

‘You mustn't start worrying so much about the wedding, love,' she'd say. ‘You need to look lovely when you walk down that aisle.' She would nod and promise not to worry. But her disturbed sleep was taking its toll.

Slumped in that chair, she'd still find herself having drifted off without knowing it, waking with a start to realise by the clock on the wall that she'd been asleep for an hour or so. At least this way there were no nightmares. But still, when consciously closing her eyes, those stricken ones of the poor disfigured victims would assail her. She would often try reading a book to take her mind off other things until a jerk of her head falling forward pulled her awake to realise she'd nodded off.

Almost a week with hardly any sleep was beginning to leave a big impact, and sitting upright on the old dressing-table chair pulled up to the window was not the best place for proper rest. She'd drag herself to work only half-awake at times.

Stephen was becoming concerned. ‘You look all in, my love,' he said as they lunched together the Thursday after her return. ‘Are you sleeping properly?'

Connie couldn't help a smile. Sleeping properly? If only he knew.

‘You're not worrying about the wedding, though, are you, darling? You mustn't. Leave it all to me.'

Of course she was worrying about the wedding, worrying about their marriage, worrying about awakening him in the night by crying out. Would she find a way to explain those dreams? Could she even bring herself to talk about their content? Would he understand or would he become cross? She felt as if she was falling to pieces. And where would their marriage be then?

She had no fear of sharing their bed the evenings they came back to his flat because after they'd made wonderful love, lying naked in each other's arms, feeling married already, she would say she must go home, and he understood that she didn't want her parents frowning upon her.

This way she limped through another month, saying nothing to anyone, just that she wasn't feeling well, might be going down with a cold.

Stephen was naturally worried. ‘You've got to look your best for the wedding,' he'd remarked as they sat at the restaurant dinner table one evening. It had sounded like an order.

‘I know!' she'd shot back at him. If this was how he was going to behave whenever she was out of sorts, she almost felt she didn't
want
to marry him. It was an unreasonable thought, born from the trauma she'd experienced. Then came another unreasonable thought: had he shown his first wife the sympathy he should have? A moment later she hated herself for such thoughts, blaming it on her sleepless nights.

September 1917

‘Stephen, I want to postpone our wedding,' Connie said.

They were in his flat. He looked at her, half amazed, half angry. ‘But we've booked the church. And the reception. And the honeymoon.' He'd planned to take her to Wales. ‘And then there's the guest list … '

It wasn't much of a guest list. In wartime, wedding receptions were frugal affairs, what with the food shortages growing tighter by the week. And as she intended to leave work very soon in preparation for her wedding, she wouldn't be inviting anyone from the paper either. Stephen had no one on his side, at least not anyone he cared to invite, and it came to her that she knew nothing of what family he had. In all their time together he'd never taken her to visit any of his kin – if he had any – he had never spoken of them and she had never asked. So there was really only her family, a few friends of hers and a couple of people he wanted to be there.

‘You can't expect to postpone it at such short notice,' he added.

She was going to have to tell him, but prevaricated instead. ‘Why can't we have it sometime in late November, nearer my birthday? Stephen, darling, I'm not well.'

‘Then you must see a doctor,' he said firmly. She suddenly hated him for his firmness. But it was the state she was in doing that.

‘I don't want to see a doctor,' she snapped.

It would mean divulging what was wrong with her and that would be an admission of cowardice, a lack of grit, such as the ordinary traumatised soldier was often accused of, such as Ronnie himself might have been, for what little treatment he was getting.

She felt an affinity with her brother. What if she were to speak to him? But that might undo all the hard work that his wife had put into making him better, could even make him worse, and Dolly didn't deserve that. She had been a tower of strength – something no one would have ever credited her with when she first came to live with his family. Dolly, who was holding him together, she and his little daughter Violet, who was now eighteen months and toddling, even saying a few words: ‘Dada', ‘Mumma', ‘ball', ‘door', ‘me'. The word Dada always made Ronnie straighten with pride and cease twitching for a moment.

Even so, she needed to speak to him, ask his advice: should she go ahead with the present arrangements or be brave and postpone it?

Ronnie seldom came out of his and Dolly's room. Connie knew that their mum and dad were relieved that he didn't as his presence made them feel awkward, being forced to watch him struggling with his crutches, hearing his stammer, trying to ignore his inability to keep his hands from shaking. But he was the only person Connie felt she could talk to, being more or less in the same boat.

Waiting until Dolly had taken little Violet out shopping with Mum, she tapped on his door.

‘Who – who is it?' came the halting voice.

‘It's Connie,' she whispered. ‘Can I come in?'

‘Oh …' There was a moment's hesitation, then, ‘Y-yes, c-c-come in.'

It seemed to her that it was said reluctantly and she suddenly felt like an intruder. She nearly replied that it didn't matter, but she was beginning to feel desperate. She wondered how deeply desperation must have gripped him at times. What must he have gone through to end up as he was? And here she was looking to bother him with her own petty affliction, with not spine enough to cast her own devils aside. Yet as she told him of her problems, of the line of disfigured men she saw each time she closed her eyes, he sat quietly, nodding from time to time with understanding, and she noticed that he had stopped twitching as he listened, his hands becoming unexpectedly still.

‘Bite the bullet,' he said in an amazingly even voice as hers died away, not a trace of a stutter. ‘Put your cards on the table, Sis, say you want to postpone it cos you ain't feeling up to it, ain't feeling well. Don't 'ave to tell him why, cos he won't understand. He ain't never bin in the thick of it all, ain't seen the slaughter, felt what it's like seeing dead bodies, comrades drowning in mud and … well, it don't matter. But the way you are, Sis, you can't go through with any wedding in your state. Don't try to explain. Just say no.'

‘But I could lose him that way,' she said.

‘No you won't,' Ronnie said firmly, his voice so steady it was unbelievable. But a few hours later he could be seen shaking and twitching again. Connie felt that it might have been her fault for burdening him with her own problems.