Evie (12 page)

‘Yes, much better!’ Roger agreed. ‘So the situation is this,’ he began, going on to explain to Edward John that if Giorgio opted to stay in England and resume his work for Edwin Lucas, he could do so but would, of course, be vulnerable, should Norman come back onto the scene. ‘And then there’s Evie,’ he continued. ‘Presumably she and Giorgio intend to marry. But she is still married to Norman and I imagine that even if we could locate him, he would resist the formalities of a divorce he didn’t want and without which it could take years for Evie to get free of him.’

‘They’ll just have to live in sin, then,’ Edward John announced, as though this should be a perfectly acceptable solution. Roger’s opinion was that the first objective had to be to get the couple safely down off The Tops and into more practical accommodation before the winter weather set in.

‘Giorgio has a job and a cottage to live in up at the Lucas farm but I doubt whether Edwin and Clarissa would be happy about the pair of them cohabiting there.’

‘Why not?’ Edward John wanted to know. ‘It’s not their fault they can’t get married!’

‘Couldn’t we find somewhere for Evie here?’ Alice suggested, realising, almost before Roger spoke, that there was, realistically, nowhere suitable at the higher farm now that she was using one of the main bedrooms as a design studio.

‘What about the lower farm, then?’ Edward John suggested. ‘Couldn’t she live in the hostel? Hester could keep an eye on her and she could be a sort of caretaker!’

‘And where would be the first place her husband would look for Evie if he did come after her again?’

‘Mmm … Yes. Hadn’t thought of that.’ Edward John felt suddenly frustrated and defeated by the whole situation. He yawned. He had played rugby that afternoon and was bruised and tired. His mother suggested he ran a hot bath and that the family could continue the discussion the following day.

The next morning brought disturbing news from New Zealand. Georgina’s parents had received a telephone call. It was Christopher, speaking from a hospital in Dunedin. On the previous weekend he and Georgina had borrowed wet-weather gear and mountain boots and gone trekking on the lower slopes of the Southern Alps. Just above the snowline and with the spring melt at its height, the pair of them had been caught in a minor landslip. Georgina had been knocked senseless, regaining consciousness after half an hour. She was not otherwise damaged but because of the head injury, had been flown to hospital in Dunedin.

‘She’s perfectly okay now,’ Christopher assured her shocked parents. ‘The head injury was not serious but there was an unexpected complication. I’ll give you the details later but all’s well now and we’ll be flying back to base in a day or so.’ He told them he would call them from the Forestry Commission’s offices as soon as he could.

Both sets of parents were deeply concerned. John Webster
tried to telephone the Forestry Commission but the time difference meant that their offices were closed.

‘What do they mean by “complications”?’ Isabel repeatedly asked Alice, during several long, anxious telephone calls. ‘What does Christopher mean? One minute he says everything is alright and then talks about “complications”! What complications?’

Days passed and the only news both sets of parents received was that everything was absolutely fine and no one needed to worry about a thing. Then word came that they were safely back at their home, Christopher had returned to work and the stitches had been removed from Georgina’s head wound.

It was several weeks later and in a letter to Alice that Georgina eventually gave the details of the complication that had kept her in hospital.

During her months in the Land Army, Georgina had confided in Alice rather than in her own mother and father, sharing with Alice the differences that emerged between her and her parents when she told them of her rejection of pacifism. She had also told Alice about her problems with Christopher’s reaction to her joining the ATA and flying in conjunction with the RAF when he himself was, at that precise moment, veering strongly towards conscientious objection. She had also, later, sought Alice’s opinion of her decision to end, in favour of Christopher, her brief and, at that time, unconsummated affair with Neil Fitzsimmonds.

Dazed by the fall, Georgina had been only half aware of the descent from the mountain, the sliding of the stretcher into
the light aircraft, the brief and bumpy flight to Dunedin and the initial ministerings and examinations in the emergency unit of the hospital there. By that time her head ached dully and she was getting cramps in her lower abdomen. As the night passed she had been vaguely conscious of bloodstained sheets being removed from her bed and of Christopher, half asleep in a chair beside her.

Next morning she had felt surprisingly better and the pair of them were discussing how soon they would be able to return to the beach house when the young consultant in charge of Georgina’s case came into the room and sat down on the end of her bed. In his hand was a clipboard with a sheaf of notes clamped to it.

‘I have some difficult news,’ he told them, and seeing their expressions tighten with anxiety, went quickly on. ‘It’s nothing too serious,’ he said, picking his words carefully, ‘but it may come as something of a shock. Did you know, Mrs Bayliss, that you were in the very early stages of pregnancy at the time of your accident?’ Georgina’s astonishment at not only the news itself but at the ramifications that immediately flooded her mind, was obvious. Her love-making with Christopher, apart from a few careless occasions before their marriage, had always been preceded by the ritual insertion of the ‘Dutch cap’ supplied by her parents’ family doctor during her engagement. The only occasion when she had not used this device was on the night she had spent in Fitzie’s hotel room. ‘Although the foetus has been lost,’ the consultant continued, ‘the good news is that there has been absolutely no internal damage. Everything has settled down and this little
mishap will not have any ill effects on future pregnancies. It might have been going to happen anyway – the miscarriage I mean. Women quite often lose babies at this very early stage and many probably don’t even know it’s happened. So …’ he was smiling now, ‘my advice is don’t dwell on it. Your head is fine. Just the small cut and a light concussion. You may get a few headaches. These will help with that.’ He put the bottle of tablets beside her bed. ‘And the stitches can come out in a day or two. So … lucky you, basically!’

After Christopher had thanked him copiously, the consultant left them. Christopher looked at Georgina and pulled a surprised, shocked and perhaps relieved, face.

‘My God!’ he said. ‘How did that happen? We’ve been so incredibly careful, haven’t we!’ She nodded and he looked solemnly into her eyes, unsure of her feelings. ‘But are you really alright, my darling? Does anything hurt?’ She shook her head and managed a shaky smile.

‘No.’ she said. ‘Nothing hurts except my head. I’ll have one of those pills, please, and then perhaps a bit of a snooze.’ She watched him pour water into a tumbler, open the bottle of pills and shake one out for her.

‘Dear Alice,’ Georgina had written as soon as they returned to what they referred to as ‘base’. ‘Apparently it
is
possible to be “a little bit pregnant”!! And I was, weeks only, it seems, when I had my fall. No harm has been done so we are not going to tell my folks, who would only fuss. But I had to tell
you
.’ This incomplete account of things was as far as she felt inclined to go.

Despite the distraction of the news from New Zealand the Bayliss family continued to try to devise a practical plan for the immediate future of Evie and Giorgio. It was decided that Edward John would convey to them the facts which his stepfather had established during the preceding week and while maintaining the promised secrecy regarding their hiding place, would make it clear to them that Roger Bayliss insisted that they be moved into decent, safe accommodation.

‘It’s not as if it was summer,’ Edward John told them, quoting both his mother and his stepfather as he pressed his case for them to agree to come out of hiding. ‘If it was, you could camp here to your heart’s content! But it isn’t. It’s getting colder and darker.’ Evie and Giorgio sat side by side on the makeshift bench, a low fire smouldering at their feet, her left hand gripped in his right one and stared, silently, at Edward John. ‘It’s dangerous up here! You could die!’ he said, startling them by suddenly raising his voice. Evie began to cry, wiping her eyes on the back of a grimy hand. Edward John paused and then added more gently, ‘Giorgio could go back to the Lucas farm. You’re still on Edwin’s payroll, Giorgio. You see? Everyone wants to help! And we’ll find somewhere safe for Evie. We can work this out, you know! Between us all, we can work it out! I promise!’

Edward John stayed with them for more than an hour making certain that they both understood the implications of the news Roger Bayliss had gleaned from the police, the Italian military repatriation department, and of the promise of continuing employment for Giorgio at the Lucas farm as well as a safe hiding place for Evie. He even left them with
the idea that emigration might provide a long-term escape from any future threat from Norman Clark. When he was certain that they had absorbed all this information, he rode back to the higher farm.

‘Just the two of us for lunch, old man,’ Roger Bayliss told him. ‘Your ma has driven over to the Websters. It seems poor old Isabel is still pretty upset about Georgina’s accident. How did you manage with our runaways?’

Edward John had succeeded in making them promise not to leave their hiding place but to spend the next twenty-four hours thinking over their new options. On Sunday morning he would drive a cart up to the byre and, hopefully, bring the pair back with him to the higher farm.

‘D’you think they’ll keep that promise?’ Roger asked. Edward John shrugged. He dreaded arriving at the byre the next day to find it abandoned, but their promise had been the best he could achieve. That afternoon he rode down to the lower farm in order to bring Hester and Dave Crocker up to date with the news. To his consternation Rose was at the cottage and he had stood in the doorway, awkwardly trying to think of an alternative reason for his visit.

‘S’okay, Edward John,’ Dave told him, a touch guiltily. ‘Mum knows everything but she won’t tell no one nothun’.’ Rose, as usual, way ahead of everyone, was sitting knitting a small, pink garment destined for Thurza who was playing at her feet.

‘If Giorgio goes back to the Lucas place, Evie can come to me,’ she announced, her needles clicking excitedly, when the details had been explained to her. ‘I got me spare room. She
can earn ’er keep, ’elpin’ out with the bakin’ and in the shop. Just while they gets things sorted, mind.’ She added, glancing at Edward John, ‘Well! That’s made you smile, my lover! You like sortin’ things out almost as much as I does!’ Rose was fond of Edward John and had endeared herself to him on many occasions during the years at the hostel, in which he had grown from a bewildered nine-year-old, watching his mother deal with the breakdown of her marriage, to an increasingly masterful twelve-year-old.

‘Us shan’t be around much tomorrow,’ Hester warned Edward John. ‘We gotta go see my father, see, ’cos ’e be very poorly now.’

‘I’ll be at my place, Edward John,’ Rose announced, ‘so you can drop Evie in to me any time after mornin’ service.’

It was agreed that Edward John would see that Giorgio was safely moved to the Lucas farm.

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.