Twisted Strands (36 page)

‘How could you be so cruel, Eveleen? But, then, I should have known. You and Jimmy never got on, did you?’

Having driven Josh and Mary down the lane back to Pear Tree Farm, Eveleen was obliged to listen to her mother’s tirade. They had almost had to drag Mary away from Jimmy.

‘I’ll make you a cup of tea, mi duck, before you go back,’ Josh said to Eveleen and disappeared into the scullery, whilst mother and daughter faced each other across the
hearth. Eveleen sighed inwardly, but decided that honesty was the best policy.

‘Mam, I’ve always loved my brother, but he was never the easiest person to deal with. You spoilt him.’

‘Well, your dad spoilt you,’ Mary countered. ‘Jimmy couldn’t do anything right for him and you couldn’t do anything wrong.’

Eveleen felt the familiar stab of loss as she thought of her kindly, easy-going father.

‘If you hadn’t been deceiving us in meeting Stephen Dunsmore, your father might still be with us. And all our troubles that followed his death can be laid at your door,
Eveleen.’

The old feelings of guilt she thought long buried came flooding back. Whilst she would never quite forgive herself, it came as a shock that her mother still harboured bitterness against her. She
had thought, when her mother had found new happiness with Josh, that Mary had forgiven her. Now, it seemed, she had not.

‘Mind you . . .’ Mary glanced at her. ‘You’ve got your revenge on Master Dunsmore now, haven’t you? Good and proper.’

Eveleen swallowed. ‘I only bought his house—’

‘Oh, you did more than that,’ Mary rounded on her. ‘You disgraced him in his parents’ eyes. He couldn’t face them, so he went to enlist. And now he’s
dead.’

Eveleen felt as if her heart stopped and then began to thud loudly and painfully. Her voice was a strangled whisper. ‘What?’

‘Oh, aye. Word came last week.’

Eveleen closed her eyes. More guilt was being heaped upon her head. And this was a burden she would carry for ever.

But now Mary was dragging her back to think of Jimmy. ‘We had to go to Flawford when your precious Stephen Dunsmore turned us out of our home, didn’t we? We had nowhere else to
go.’

That Eveleen could not deny. She sighed and sank into a chair beside the table. Heavily she said, ‘So it’s my fault that Jimmy got Rebecca pregnant and then refused to marry
her?’

‘They’d never even have met if it hadn’t been for you.’

‘But they did and he seduced a young and innocent girl. That was hardly my doing. And he had no need to run away. I couldn’t have
made
him marry her.’

‘Huh! You always got your own way, Eveleen.’ Her mother glared at her and Eveleen realized Mary was now referring to the day’s events. ‘You still do. Jimmy should be at
home here. With me.’

Eveleen was thoughtful and then she played her trump card. ‘He’s safer there, Mam. If he leaves the home, the authorities will come looking for him. They wouldn’t believe his
amnesia story. He’d be back aboard ship in a trice.’

Josh, carrying a tea tray into the room, caught Eve-leen’s remarks.

‘She’s right, mi duck. He’s best where he is.’ He glanced at Eveleen and murmured in a low voice so that only she could hear, ‘For several reasons.’

Eveleen understood. The last thing Josh would want would be Jimmy living at Pear Tree Farm.

Mary began to weep, sobbing into her handkerchief. ‘You’re all against me. I want my Jimmy home. Nobody knows how I’ve missed him all these years. You don’t want me to be
happy.’

Josh hurried to her side and put his arms around her. ‘Mary, love, that’s not true and you know it. But Eveleen’s right, Jimmy is safer there. And you can visit him every
day.’

Mary looked up, her tears drying. ‘Can I?’

‘Of course you can. Every afternoon between two and three. I asked the matron.’

‘An hour? Is that all? One hour a day? Well, she can forget that. I’ll go whenever I want to and stay as long as I want. So there.’

Eveleen and Josh glanced helplessly at each other, but said no more.

‘What do you think you’re staring at?’ Jimmy challenged Bridie as she stood in front of him.

‘You,’ she said simply. ‘I’ve dreamed about meeting my father all my life. Imagined how it would be . . .’ There was a catch in her voice, for her dream had been
nothing like the disappointing reality. ‘And now I have.’

‘Huh! You don’t want to believe everything Evie tells you.’

Bridie regarded him, her head on one side. ‘How is it you can remember your sister, but not your mother?’

His eyes were suddenly wary. ‘Dunno. I suppose me memory’s coming back a bit patchy.’

‘Do you remember my mother, Rebecca?’

Jimmy glanced away and shook his head, then he laughed. ‘But I’ve had so many girls from here to Timbuktu. Mebbe I’ve got bastards all round the world.’

Bridie bit her lip, but raised her head defiantly. ‘Well, I expect you’ll soon be getting to know your mother all over again.’

He eyed her suspiciously. ‘What do you mean?’

Bridie grinned. ‘If I know my gran, she’ll be here every minute of the day visiting you.’

He frowned and stared out of the window. ‘Reckon I’d be better off back at sea,’ he murmured.

He was not the sort of father Bridie had longed for. However, as the days passed she could began to understand how a young, impressionable girl, starved of affection as she now
guessed her mother had been in the strict regime of Harry Singleton’s home, could have succumbed to Jimmy Hardcastle’s saucy charm. He still flirted with the younger nurses, though now
never with her. He avoided his mother’s daily visits as often as he could, pleading headaches, sickness – anything to evade her. All the staff had been briefed by the matron that Mary
was not allowed to go upstairs to his room.

‘We have to afford our patients the right of privacy. If there is someone they don’t wish to see, then we must respect that. Whilst I have every sympathy with Mrs Carpenter,’
Dulcie went on, speaking now in confidence to her trusted staff, ‘I have to admit that she is visiting a little too often. One can also see his side.’

When just the two of them remained in the office, Bridie asked Dulcie, ‘Do you believe that he really has lost his memory?’

Dulcie considered before answering. ‘I think he did, initially, yes. But how much it’s coming back now, I don’t think he’s telling us. I think he’s playing a very
clever game.’ Then she smiled. ‘I’m glad I don’t have to be responsible for deciding whether he’s fit to return to active service. That’s Dr Roper’s job,
thank goodness.’

‘Supposing you were, would you say he was fit?’

‘Not yet, no. But I do think he’s recovering much quicker than he’s letting us know. But there’s one thing, Bridie. At least we can be pretty sure now that he’s not
a spy.’

They laughed together, but then the merriment left the girl’s face as sadness clouded her eyes. ‘No, I’m sure he isn’t. But he’s not quite what I dreamed my father
would be, either.’

The weeks passed towards another Christmas and still there was no word from Richard. Eveleen veered between crippling fear that he was dead and determined optimism that,
because she had heard nothing from the War Office, he must be still alive.

‘It’ll just be that his letters aren’t getting through.’ Bridie tried to comfort her aunt. ‘You’ll see. There’ll be some simple explanation.’

Their news of the war now came only from newspaper reports. In October the Italian army had suffered a crushing defeat, the enemy gaining many miles of ground. The Allies feared that Russia,
with its own terrible internal problems, would pull out of the war when talks began in December between the Bolshevik government and Germany. By March 1918 an uneasy peace existed between the two
and, as the Allies had predicted, a great number of the enemy troops that had been deployed in the east were now released to join the war on the Western Front. By the end of that month these
reinforcements had helped to deliver a catastrophic blow to the Allied lines in France.

‘It must be chaos out there,’ Bridie said, scanning the newspaper that Eveleen had brought on her weekly visit to Fairfield House. ‘No wonder letters aren’t getting
through. Let’s just hope that he’s getting ours.’

They both still wrote each week, but had no way of knowing whether their letters ever reached their destination.

‘How’s Jimmy?’ Eveleen asked, bravely trying to change the subject.

Bridie pulled a comical expression. ‘Much the same. He’s not giving much away.’ She shrugged. ‘I can’t guess what he remembers and what he doesn’t.
You’re still the only person he’ll admit to recognizing.’

‘Not Mam?’

Bridie shook her head. ‘Much to Gran’s disappointment.’

‘What about him going home? To Pear Tree Farm?’

‘The doctor thought that it might be a good idea. He thinks that the familiar surroundings might help his memory, but my father flatly refused to go. Gran’s tried everything.
Wheedling, crying – everything, but the more she pleads, the more he resists.’

Normally what Bridie was telling her would have made Eveleen chuckle, but laughter was difficult when her heart was so heavy with dread. But she tried to hide her fears and summoned a weak
smile. ‘Poor Mam,’ she murmured.

In April Sir Douglas Haig, the British Commander-in-Chief, sent a personal message to the army:
‘Every position must be held to the last man: there must be no retirement. With our backs
to the wall and believing in the justice of our cause each one of us must fight on to the end.’

Reading this, Eveleen gave way to tears. It was her darkest time, for now all hope seemed lost for both the war and her beloved husband. Her feeling of hopelessness was reflected by everyone
around her. The veterans at Fairfield House were sombre, their cheerful banter silenced. Some of the nurses with relatives at the Front were red-eyed and even Josh shook his head in sadness at the
futility of almost four years of carnage, which now threatened to end in defeat. In the city more and more wounded flooded into the hospitals and Brinsley was once more grey-faced and anxious.

Only Bridie, the youngest amongst them, held onto her faith. ‘They’ll come home. Both of them,’ she said, confidently. ‘You’ll see.’

‘Oh, Bridie,’ Eveleen mourned, ‘if only I could believe you.’

It wasn’t until July that news came that the tide of war had begun to turn in favour of the Allies. Suddenly there was cause for renewed hope.

Then came the day when Eveleen received news. She drove recklessly to Fairfield House and ran up the steps. ‘Bridie, Bridie, where are you? He’s coming home. He’s safe.
Richard’s coming home.’

He had been wounded in the leg and the injury was too severe for him to recover in a field hospital. It was a ‘Blighty’ wound.

Bridie hugged Eveleen, tears streaming down both their faces. ‘Oh, Auntie Evie. He’s safe. With a bit of luck, he’ll never have to go back. When will he be home?’

Eveleen wiped her eyes, laughing and crying at the same time. ‘Next week.’

They both met the train that brought him to Nottingham station and watched as he was carried off on a stretcher, along with other wounded, and put straight into an ambulance. Eveleen and Bridie
were not even allowed near enough to him to say ‘Hello’.

Bridie grasped the arm of one of the attendants. ‘Where are you taking him?’

‘The hospital. He’s still in the army, you know. He can’t just come home when he decides. Besides . . .’ The man glanced over his shoulder towards where Richard lay,
silently staring up at nothing in particular. He had not even raised his head to look around for them, though surely he must have known they would come to meet him, Bridie thought.

The attendant was speaking again. ‘Poor feller’s shell-shocked, I reckon, as well as his injury.’

‘Shell-shocked?’ Eveleen frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Putting it bluntly, ma’am, he’s not sure whether he’s on this earth or the next. I’ve got to go now, but go to the hospital later. They’ll tell you
more.’

‘Can’t he come to Fairfield House?’ Bridie asked. ‘We’re as good as a hospital.’

‘Dunno about that, miss. We’ve got our orders.’

The man turned away, leaving a mesmerized Eveleen staring after him with Bridie standing beside her. Young though she was, she knew better than Eveleen what being shell-shocked really meant. She
had seen so many cases of it already at Fairfield House.

Much later they were allowed to see him. They sat on either side of the bed, speaking to him but getting no response. Eveleen kissed his forehead, but he did not look at her,
did not even seem to notice.

‘Be careful what you say in front of him,’ Bridie had warned her earlier. ‘Matron at the home says we can’t be sure they don’t understand everything that’s
going on around them even though they can’t, or don’t want to, take part.’

Eveleen had nodded, biting her lip to hold back the tears. ‘What are we going to do?’

Bridie considered. ‘If they’ll let us, I think he should go home or at least to Fairfield House.’

‘Oh no, if he’s going anywhere, then it’s home with me.’

‘Will you be able to manage?’ Bridie asked her candidly.

‘Of course,’ Eveleen almost snapped and stood up. Now she kissed her husband’s forehead tenderly and turned away.

Bridie too kissed his cheek and whispered, ‘You’ll soon be well again, Uncle Richard. You’re home now. You’re safe.’

His eyes flickered and he turned his head to look at her, a ghost of a smile on his mouth, but he did not speak.

Watching, Eveleen was surprised at the shaft of jealousy that seared through her. Richard had responded to Bridie, but not to her, his own wife.

Two weeks later Richard was brought home. Eveleen had everything ready and had even engaged a girl to sit with him during the day whilst she had to be at the factory. Brinsley
visited his son daily, though Richard’s mother’s visits were spasmodic.

‘I can’t bear to see him like that.’ Sophia shuddered. ‘When will he be better?’

‘We don’t know,’ Eveleen said and added harshly, ‘but his family can all help by being with him and talking to him.’