Angels at War (22 page)

‘God help us that Jack isn’t one of them,’ Mercy said, unable to stop her sudden gush of tears.

Livia took the girl in her arms. ‘I’m sure he
won’t be. Your devoted and difficult honorary brother will be back home with us, safe and sound, in no time at all. You can count on it.’

‘That’s what he says,’ Mercy sniffed, bridling slightly at the description of Jack as her ‘honorary brother’. She’d stopped thinking of him in those terms a long time ago.

‘Then it must be right. When is Jack ever wrong about anything?’ And they both managed a laugh, of sorts.

For all her bravado, Livia’s spirits were low. She would have liked to have accompanied Jack to the station and seen him off, exactly as the other wives and girlfriends were doing. She was still his wife, after all, still fond of him, despite everything. But she hid her disappointment beneath a brave façade of smiles, and was grateful that he’d have Mercy there. She understood that Jack Flint was his own man, an individual who rarely ran with the crowd. He liked to do things in his own way, and they had already made their farewells in a very private, special manner. It was a great consolation to Livia that they would part as friends, even lovers again.

‘You go with him, Mercy dear, with my blessing.’

They had to be a bit circumspect at the station as there were so many people on the platform
at Oxenholme who knew them. The train was already packed, the entire station thronged with weeping women and gaunt-faced young soldiers. Jack had been given a railway pass, a parcel of food, and instructed to report to the Manchester depot for training.

‘I’ll write to you every day,’ Mercy promised, wishing she could kiss him and be swept up in his arms as a girl in a pretty blue dress was by her young man, her hat flying off in the process. But Mercy could see Stella with her boyfriend further along the platform, so daren’t take the risk.

Jack squeezed her hand, understanding her painful dilemma. ‘Me too. I shall think of you every night before I go to sleep, and first thing every morning when I wake up. You won’t forget me, will you, Mercy? You won’t go off with some other chap, not now that I’ve found you, that we’ve found each other properly, that is?’

Mercy’s gaze burnt into his. ‘Never. I am yours for all time, Jack Flint. For ever. Always have been.’

Someone had started to sing ‘Rule Britannia’, which quickly changed to ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’, and all the recruits, packed into the train like sardines, joined in. Morale was so high anyone would think these boys were off on a Sunday school jaunt, and not to fight a war.

Jack laughed, then hugged her hard to his chest. ‘I’m entitled to do this at least, as your alleged honorary brother. I shall do my duty bravely, Fear God and Honour the King, as Kitchener has asked. You must be brave too, little one.’

‘I will do my best. Oh, but I shall miss you.’

‘Don’t cry, my love. I had enough tears from me mam when I went to Staveley to say goodbye to the family at the weekend. I can’t take any more from you. Just as well Livia isn’t here as well, or I’d have been drowned in women’s tears.’ Yet he looked over her head towards the station entrance, as if checking his wife wasn’t going to come running at the last minute.

Mercy felt suddenly awkward, a sense of guilt for the lies she’d told creeping over her for the first time. She was relieved when the train whistle blew and Jack brushed a light kiss on her cheek. Hoping no one was watching at that precise moment, Mercy returned the kiss full on his lips. Then Jack swung his kit bag onto his shoulder and jumped onto the train, and Mercy waved to him, tears rolling down her cheeks. Doors banged, steam billowed and the train started moving, shunting slowly at first before picking up speed. Mercy ran along the platform beside it, as everyone else was doing.

‘Take care,’ Jack called to her through the
open window, but then spoilt it by adding, ‘And look after Livia for me.’

Mercy only stopped running when she reached the end of the platform, still waving frantically as the train curved around the bend, disappearing into the unknown. But his words echoed in her head as she walked soberly back to the bus stop. If only his last thoughts hadn’t been for Livia.

In the weeks after Jack left, Livia was often to be found sitting in her kitchen, feeling at a complete loss. She would do her chores and her paperwork for the WSPU. She’d organise parcels for the troops, packed with useful things like socks or mufflers, handkerchiefs or fingerless gloves, plus a few Oxo cubes or malted milk tablets. But she needed to do more. She felt filled with frustration, as well as a creeping sense of loneliness. Jack’s first letter spoke of a crowded ship crossing the Channel to France, of digging trenches and first shots being fired, some of them by mistake at Allies, which didn’t sound too reassuring.

‘Now we’re in the thick of it good and proper and got the enemy in our sights. Losing our own men too. At least the French seem to understand
the English word for beer, so not all bad news.’

Still the same old Jack, although she doubted he’d have quite as many opportunities for carousing as he did at home.

She felt so proud of him. His bravery shone off the page, but Livia’s own efforts at war work appeared less successful. She was finding a complete indifference to their efforts. Women were volunteering by the score, since they were not to be conscripted as were the men. But politicians, the war office, employers, unions, even their own husbands, either disapproved of their being involved or laughed at the very idea.

Livia believed it to be pride on their part, the sensitive male ego that Mrs Dee had once talked to her about. Men were for some reason ashamed of the fact that their wives wanted to work, as if it reflected in some way upon their own ability to protect and provide. What nonsense, Livia thought. Women were not the stay-at-home Victorian housewives they had once been. Many of them were learning to drive the new automobiles, had turned up their skirts to ankle-length, and were dancing the Turkey Trot, let alone trying out new careers.

She’d heard there were even women doctors now, although they too were fighting prejudice in order to get accepted.

And there was a war on! Men believed they
could win it in just a few months, and wouldn’t need any help from women, save to entertain them as Marie Lloyd and Vesta Tilley were doing. Those two were a recruitment campaign all on their own. But amusing as those naughty ladies might be with their ‘I’m willing if you’ll only take the shilling, to make a man of any one of you’, Livia believed women to be capable of much more than singing and dancing, and being outrageous.

To prove they were serious, the local WSPU ladies of Westmorland took part in a demonstration of solidarity on behalf of all working women wanting to do their bit in the war. It was the first event of its kind Livia had attended since the day she’d been thrown into prison. The intention was to persuade the unions to drop their objections to women taking over men’s jobs, albeit temporarily. Fortunately it passed off without incident, and Livia was glad she’d been a part of it and helped to make their mark. Similar demonstrations were held right across the country, sadly to very little effect. Sighing, she went back to her kitchen table and her paperwork.

Ella was busier than ever, working to produce as much food as she and Amos possibly could on their small farm. Mercy was fully engaged with her job
at the store but Livia continued to question her own role. She couldn’t help regretting having given up her position at the store. What purpose did she have in life now? Was this all she was capable of doing: paperwork, sending out letters, booking appointments, finding work for other women to do? Worthy as this might be, was it what she was best qualified for? Should she ask Matthew for a job at the store? Dare she risk being close to him every day, still feeling for him as she did? Or was there some other task she could take up?

She certainly couldn’t go on like this. Livia felt bored out of her mind sitting alone at home in her own kitchen.

Livia read in the newspaper about the Battle of Mons and the thought of all those boys in France, some of them dreadfully young and many severely injured, haunted her for the rest of that day. The first aid course she’d recently completed had been most thorough and challenging. And although she could not in any way be described as a qualified nurse, Livia wondered if there might be some way in which she could use those skills. How dare she not use them, or the time she now had on her hands, when their boys in khaki were dying in such numbers?

On a sudden whim she grabbed her coat and went that very minute back to the Red Cross to ask for their advice on the matter. By the time
she returned home two hours later, Livia had volunteered for the Voluntary Aid Detachment, more familiarly known as the VAD.

The woman who had signed her up had promised her sore feet, an aching back, hard work, and precious little time off.

‘You’ll be put upon by the proper nurses. Some like to look down on us, but the soldier boys will love you, lovely girl like you. That too can present problems, of course. Are you married?’

‘My husband is in France.’

The woman nodded, grim-faced. ‘Then you’ll need to match him for courage. You’ll also need boundless energy, patience and humility, an ability to put others before yourself, plus a determination to overcome all difficulties. Can you do that? Can you face seeing horrific injuries, and keep going when you’re dropping on your feet?’

‘I believe so.’

‘The honour of the VAD will be reflected in your behaviour. We are looking for women of discipline and steadiness of character, women who do not flinch when the going gets tough.’

Livia smiled even as she pulled herself up to her full regal height. ‘I have never flinched to do my duty yet, and I’ve suffered more than my fair share of difficulties.’ She spoke with
some modesty of her work with the suffrage movement, her time in prison and enduring the force-feeding. Livia made no mention of losing her child as a result.

The woman had listened rapt, nodding from time to time. ‘Sign here,’ she’d said, when Livia’s tale was told. ‘We need women like you.’

Livia had returned home in a buoyant mood and began at once to make the necessary preparations.

It would mean dipping into her small savings as the uniform – comprising a navy blue coat and skirt, white blouses, gloves, a navy blue tie and hat – cost two pounds. Livia didn’t begrudge a penny of it. There were also three blue linen dresses, stiff collars, cuffs and belt, starched white aprons and caps, black shoes, and half a dozen pairs of stockings to buy, not to mention various other essentials. But there was a job to be done, and she meant to do it to the best of her abilities. What was there for her here in Kendal? She clearly wasn’t destined for children, or a happy marriage.

The next morning there came a knock on the door. When Livia answered it, she found a small boy carrying a letter, and her heart almost stopped with fear. Was this a telegram? Was there bad news of Jack already? Dear God, she hoped not, although she’d heard that Stella’s young man
had been killed within the first twenty-four hours of arriving in France; a result of the blood bath at Mons, and the British were already in retreat.

Thankfully it wasn’t a telegram, merely a letter in a small blue envelope across which was sprawled large spiky letters in black ink; handwriting she could not fail to recognise. Livia’s heart turned over for a different reason now. She gave the boy a penny, thanked him for his trouble, and went back inside.

When she slit it open she saw that it was indeed from Matthew, as she’d rightly guessed. Livia quickly scanned the few short lines. He was asking her to call at the store, at her earliest convenience, as he had a matter of great importance he wished to discuss with her.

Livia was dismayed. The last thing she wanted right now was to be obliged to face the man she truly loved, the memory of whom she kept locked away in a box in her mind, never to be opened. Seeing him again at the fashion show had been bad enough. What could he want with her this time?

Livia stood in the office, the location of so many of their fierce debates and close encounters, and trembled just to look at him. This was the man she might have spent the rest of her life with, had things turned out differently. She had given him
up because of her foolish pride, her loyalty to a man she no longer loved, and a child she’d later lost.

But she saw at once that Matthew was far from his usual relaxed self, his movements seeming somehow awkward as he paced the floor, not quite looking at her. His cravat hung loose about his neck and he kept running his fingers through his tousled hair in that way he had when he was distressed. She refused his offer of refreshment, wanting this meeting to be over and done with as speedily as possible.

He wasted no time in small talk, or enquiring after her health. Nor did he ask how she was coping now that her husband had been at war for several weeks. Livia took the chair he offered and he blurted it all out in a rush, as if he could hardly bear to have the words on his lips longer than absolutely necessary.

‘I wanted to tell you personally that, like Jack, I too have volunteered to take the King’s shilling.’

She felt instantly numb, quite unable to speak or even draw breath.

‘I leave on Friday.’

‘So soon?’

Grayson shrugged. ‘There’s no choice in the matter. You go when and where you’re told. As a matter of fact, I’m looking forward to getting out
there and doing my bit. It’s not easy being idle and the object of suspicion.’

‘Suspicion?’

‘I see people looking at me as I cross the shop floor, or when I walk down the street. “Why isn’t he in France?” they are thinking. You can see the speculation in their eyes.’

Livia was startled by this confession. ‘You surely haven’t been given a white feather?’ These had been adopted as emblems of cowardice, sometimes thoughtlessly handed out to men who had already been sent home from France wounded, which was particularly cruel.

‘Thankfully not, but it is only a matter of time. I’m no coward, Livvy.’ He set his clenched fists on the desk that separated them and leant towards her, his expression earnest. ‘I only put off the decision because I was concerned about this business, Angel’s Department Store, which seems to have taken over my life, along with its former proprietress. That’s partly why I wanted to see you, to ask if you would mind it for me.’

The breath seemed to leave her body. ‘Mind it?’

‘I mean, would you run it for me while I’m away?’

The man’s arrogance never failed to astonish her. Did he think she’d been sitting at home twiddling her thumbs simply waiting for him
to call? Livia might desire him, love him even, but no one could inflame her wrath quite so effectively as he. She was outraged.

‘You want me to take back the business you bought, practically stole from me?’

‘That isn’t quite fair, Livvy.’

She’d barely sat down for more than a few seconds, now she was on her feet as if anxious to flee. ‘You were angling for it from the moment you took the position of manager, constantly warning me that the business might not survive, that you could take it over whenever you pleased. Well, you got it in the end, didn’t you?’

Matthew sighed, knowing her temper was all smoke and mirrors. He knew well enough how Livia used an argument almost as a means of defence to shield herself against emotion, determined not to let him see how his news had devastated her. ‘I seem to remember that you offered it to me willingly after that last episode in prison. The choice was entirely yours.’

Livia felt compelled to turn away, knowing he spoke nothing but the truth. She’d wanted to erase him from her life, be rid of all sight and sound of him, the constant reminder of what she had lost. She could hardly bear even now to witness the sadness in his gaze as he looked at her. Oh, how she longed to turn back the clock and put everything right.

‘So you asked me here today to ask a favour of me, not simply to say goodbye.’

He saw at once his error and his face became a picture of complete horror. ‘Of course I wanted to say goodbye, Livvy. I can’t bear the thought of never seeing you again. Surely you know that?’

‘Do I? How would I know such a thing?’

‘Because of how I feel about you.’

‘And how would I know what you feel?’

‘You can surely tell?’

She should stop this now, Livia told herself, yet she persisted. ‘You mean that I should guess. I’ve been speculating for some long time, but what good did it ever do me? Had you spoken and informed me of these so-called feelings of yours, everything might have been very different.’

He looked at her aghast. ‘Don’t say that, Livvy. You were the one who was constantly pushing me away, claiming to be the “modern” woman, not wanting to commit to marriage. Didn’t you once explain it all to my mother at some length? Even your involvement with the suffragettes was a symptom of that need in you to be independent and free, a person no man could control. I understood, and you never changed your opinion on the subject so far as I was aware, not until the day you told me you were only marrying Jack because of your unexpected pregnancy.’

She pressed cool hands to the hectic flush of her cheeks. He was right, of course. Every word he spoke was the truth. She had vehemently resisted commitment, strident almost in her battle to hang on to her so-called freedom. She’d been afraid of loving, of giving herself to someone, of relinquishing her hard-won independence in case they destroyed her as her father had done. Joshua Angel had much to answer for. But could she blame him entirely? She should have been capable of shutting out the memories of the past, the guilt she still carried over Maggie’s suicide. She should have moved on and made a fresh start, as Ella had done.

Instead, she’d badly hurt Jack by refusing to go through with their wedding the first time around, and when she’d felt driven to marry him for the sake of the baby, she’d destroyed him.

And in the process she’d rejected the one man with whom she could have found true happiness.

The desk was no longer between them, though when he’d moved closer she couldn’t quite recall. Livia’s heart was racing and she had to remind herself, most firmly, that she was not at all the kind of woman who fainted.