A Mother's Love (46 page)

It was a relief to return to the real world when the visitors’ bell rang hollowly through the green-tiled wards and corridors of the asylum; a relief to come back to Approach Road and to sanity.

In the weak afternoon sunshine of late October, slanting in through the window of her parlour, Sarah Morris’s small shrunken figure was as stick-straight as ever as she shook her head at her great-niece’s suggestion of moving in to look after her.

‘I may be getting on in years but I’ve all my faculties. Up here,’ she tapped her temple, ‘as well as bodily. And apart from a little arthritis here and there, I can look after myself well enough.’

‘But the house is so big now. The whole of the upstairs is empty with you unable to go up there easily.’

‘I’m well looked after by Mrs Thompson and Ethel. Ethel keeps it all nice and clean and tidy up there. And I don’t think I care for lodgers – strangers, I mean. I’m not hard up for money now, and I don’t intend to be a burden to anyone. Least of all you, Sara.’

Her voice died away as she gazed around the parlour at all the treasured things belonging to her and her sister, most of them Victorian: fussy ornaments under glass domes; pictures; framed sepia photos of dead relations ranged regimentally along the sideboard among the lighter, newer snaps of her great-nephews and -nieces – Clara and Annie’s children on the beach at Southend or Margate. Her grey eyes followed the flower-patterned wallpaper; the tassled embroidered runner across the marble mantelpiece, the tassles and embroidery done with her own hands, once so skilled but now bent and deformed by arthritis; the heavy lace at the window and flowered draw curtains. Her smile revealed her quiet pleasure in it all, her acceptance of years numbered now, perhaps in just single figures.

‘Besides,’ she added slowly, meaningfully, ‘I wouldn’t want to spoil what you’ve got in mind. I’ve no intention of standing in the way of that.’

‘In the way of what?’ Her great-aunt often had a way of speaking in riddles.

Sarah Morris’s smile grew shrewd. ‘You forget, I’m very good at knowing people’s minds. My sister, Mary, your Gran, used to say I had second sight. That made me laugh. I merely manage to see what a lot of people miss because they’re too busy with themselves to see other people. When I look at you, my dear, I do see a little beyond my nose. Those blue eyes of yours are yearning for someone. Not for your stepfather. For someone else.’

‘My stepfather?’

‘He was more than that to you, wasn’t he? It wasn’t his dominance over you. No one could dominate you unless you wished it. You gave your heart willingly enough, didn’t you? And you’re still feeling you have to continue with it even now he’s gone.’

She nodded as Sara made to protest. ‘I’ve eyes in my head, Sara, and a brain sharp enough to interpret what I see.’

Sara’s face flared scarlet. ‘I’m sure you must be confused …’

‘It was made known, Sara. James in his innocence told your mother of seeing Matthew coming from your room at night. Your mother came to us quite distraught and not knowing what to believe.’

‘I didn’t know.’ Her cheeks had grown raging hot with the shame of exposure after years of thinking her secret safe, hers and Matthew’s, but her great-aunt seemed not concerned by it.

‘It’s old history now, dear. Best forgotten. There’s another now. Is it that young man on your paper who took you out once? I know, you have something you need to do but you’re afraid of asking permission – not so much of others but of yourself. You had better ask yourself if your feelings for that young man are strong enough to take you through fire and water. Strong enough for you to forget about Matthew.’

Sara stared at her. All these years of knowing Jonathan, she had never mentioned his name to anyone outside the
Graphic
, yet her great-aunt seemed to know all about it.

‘Who are you talking about?’ She tested and saw that shrewd smile again.

‘There is a young man, isn’t there? And you love him very much, but he’s gone away, hasn’t he? Did he go off to the war? And you’ve lost touch with him? And you want to find out where he is. I think you should.’

Mollified, Sara had an overwhelming need to confide, to unburden herself. Great-Aunt Sarah was the only one she could tell, and not just because there was no one else – if a hundred people were gathered around her, her great-aunt would be the one she’d choose to open her heart to.

In an instant she was pouring out her secrets, the love she’d held in for so long flooding out: Jonathan’s outwardly cynical proposal which she now realised had been the only way he’d had of expressing it, covering his own secret sense of unprotectedness; her stupid and misguided rejection, sending him away from her – it all came out.

At some point while she spoke, it seemed easier to come and lay her head in her great-aunt’s lap, maybe to obviate the chance of eye contact and thus self-awareness, and with the woman’s small crabbed, vein-laced hand smoothing her dark hair, the words came spontaneously.

Her story finally ceased, her great-aunt said quietly, ‘I think you’ve overcome your indecisions, haven’t you, dear?’

Sara knew she had. Since that first day at the quayside with the unloading of the wounded, she had teetered on the boon she’d intended to ask of Mackenzie. One assignment after the other had followed: covering the German zeppelin raids on the City that had brought the war to the very doorstep of civilians; the hard and exacting war work carried out by women in their men’s absence; the stoicism of those bereaved by the unprecedented loss of life all along the Western Front; the way women were coping with food shortages and haphazard rationing – all of that should have given her hardly time to think of anything but the job in hand. Yet still, after four months, that one unasked request nagged her. And now it nagged no longer.

‘I know what I have to do now,’ she said quietly, and felt the pressure of Great-Aunt Sarah’s clawed fingers upon her head adding their own approval and reassurance.

Forgetting to nibble on her third Bath Oliver biscuit, Clara frowned at her niece in disbelief.

‘You must be out of your mind. You’re not serious, surely? How can you even think of such a thing?’

‘Of course she’s not serious, you duffer! It’s just a silly whim.’

Annie, frowning in her turn, hadn’t touched the plate of assorted biscuits Sara had put out for her two aunts.

On occasion they would pop in after a bout of shopping, Sara’s neat little flat being convenient to Holborn and other areas of nice respectable London stores, taking the chance, of course, that she’d be at home. This Saturday afternoon had been one of those occasions.

‘What would your mother say if she knew what you’re up to?’ Annie was saying. ‘Not as she knows anything much these days, poor Harriet. It was the shock of James that sent her off her head. If she knew you wanted to go carting off to France too, she’d have a fit.’

She’d probably put her hands together
, Sara thought with momentary bitterness.
She always wanted me dead anyway.
She had said as much.

Aloud she said stubbornly, ‘I am serious, Aunt Annie. I have to go out there.’

‘But why, in heaven’s name?’ cried Clara.

‘Why not?’

She wasn’t prepared to tell them why. Only Great-Aunt Sarah knew why, and that was only from what her own sharp old brain had told her, for nothing specific had been said. Anyway, hoping to find Jonathan in that huge area of conflict, among all those men, could prove utterly futile in the end. Perhaps it was all just a silly notion, but she knew she had to try.

Sara had finally swallowed her pride, had written to his parents and found out where he was: with the Third British Army somewhere in France between Arras and Ypres. It was a logical step, as far as she was concerned, to follow him.

She would be following in the footsteps of many other women, going out there as Voluntary Aid Detachments, Mostly titled or wealthy ladies able to afford to, for they were expected to finance themselves. Anxious to do their share helping the troops, they would procure a private ambulance and take it across, driving it near to the front line to ferry the wounded from dressing stations and field hospital tents back to clearing stations behind the lines. Frowned on by General Haig, who thought this unnecessary risk to civilians should be discouraged, they went nevertheless. Brave, selfless women who in peacetime had perhaps been weak, self-centred women of wealthy husbands, or widows of means safely cossetted by servants and a paid companion, they now saw sights no gentlewoman should ever look upon, yet they didn’t shrink from what they saw as their duty.

Sara intended to do much the same, but to bring back first-hand stories from men who had fought and been wounded; stories of their courage and bravery for the benefit and morale of the loved ones left behind. Only good news, of course. Certainly nothing to undermine the fortitude of those back home. She was under strict instructions on that score.

It had taken endless argument to get Mackenzie to agree to let her go. Now, in February 1917, after four months of cajoling and entreaty, he’d finally given in. She would become a foreign correspondent of sorts for the
London Graphic
– much against his better judgment, he stated, and although she had proved herself time and again to be a competent reporter and journalist, he had added a proviso.

‘You go no further than Calais or Boulogne. I’m not having it said that I let you risk your neck being sent too near the front line. It could alter overnight and then you’d be cut off. Where will I be if I have to report that sort of thing to the directors? That I was responsible for sending a woman into danger? Get your stories from hospitals away from the front line. I can understand nurses and VADs going out. Doing a grand job for our lads. But you … I’d send a man if we had any half as good as you. We badly need stories. But a woman …’

How could she tell him the truth behind her valiant offer? How could she share her insane hope of finding Jonathan somewhere out there in that no-man’s-land? How she even imagined she’d find him among all those thousands of men was beyond her own comprehension, but she had to try. She refused to let herself think of failure.

Now she raised her chin stubbornly as Aunt Annie continued on her worthy tirade.

‘I’ll tell you why not,’ Annie was saying, bringing Sara out of her reverie to the challenge she had almost forgotten she’d issued.

‘I’ll tell you why not, Sara. It’s because two wrongs never do make a right. Your brother volunteering like he did – that was very wrong. He didn’t give a fig for how his mother felt. I heard how she was so devastated when he said he was going off, and I felt for her, I really did. Now you’re doing the selfsame thing. No one in their right mind should volunteer, knowing they could be killed out there.’

Jonathan volunteered
, Sara thought grimly,
and I drove him to it. I can only try to make amends. It’s what I have to do.

‘Neither of you has stopped to think how your family feels,’ Annie was going on. ‘Too young to care. Too caught up and full of your own wisdom, such as it is. Us older ones have lived enough years to know what wisdom is. James never did have much of that about him, but you … Your Uncle George has been taken away from his family to fight. It’s only because the business must be kept going by
someone
that your Uncle John is exempted from going. Both me and; your Aunt Clara have had our sons taken from us. They’re out there fighting in France, and Lord knows if they’ll ever come back …’

‘Annie – don’t!’ Clara stopped in the act of taking yet another Bath Oliver. She had long since given up trying to stay as slender as her sister, surrendering herself to her inherited chubbiness. If only, she often sighed, she were a few inches taller it wouldn’t be quite so horribly noticeable.

‘It’s bad enough,’ she burst out, ‘having my boys taken away from me, without you talking about them never coming back. I know they’ll come back. I have to make myself believe they’ll come back.’

‘Of course they will,’ Annie said tersely. ‘Don’t go on so.’

Dismissing her sister from her mind, she turned back to her niece, taking up her point again.

‘You need your head examined, Sara, you really do. Your duty’s to those at home, not to men you don’t even know. Going off sacrificing yourself, and for what? That paper of yours, that’s what. It’s that paper of yours has talked you into this caper. I feel almost like going and having a word with them. With your mother in that mental asylum, you’re all alone in the world. Who’s to guard over you?’

Sara almost laughed. ‘I am nearly twenty-three, Aunt Annie. I live on my own. I earn my own money. I pay my own rent. I can take care of myself.’

That was how her great-aunt had survived for years, taking care of herself, her own mistress. It was on her great-aunt that Sara modelled herself, and was proud to do so. But now she longed to belong to someone else, and to hell and damnation with pride.

Annie sniffed. ‘That’s a matter of opinion. This ridiculous mission you’re planning proves you can’t. I for one think you’re completely mad. You’ll end up like your mother if you’re not careful – in a lunatic asylum.’

Aunt Annie was right. It had been a mad idea, she realised that now. It was now high summer – she had been in France nearly six months, telegraphing report after report back to Mackenzie – and she was no nearer to finding the man she sought. Having got herself as near to the area Jonathan’s parents had given her, the chaos of war made it like looking for a needle in a haystack, as a journalist she had not realised the enormity of what lay before her.

By the end of August, a hundred thousand men had already been lost, the wounded a continuous stream passing through the hospitals and clearing stations where she made her reports. In peacetime the corn would be ripe and dusty brown by now, spattered by bright red poppies. Corn and poppies had long since been blasted away; the only red, she gathered, tucked too well back behind the lines to see for herself, would be the red of blood, all else churned to a mud brown.

All summer it hadn’t stopped raining. Fields and woods had been shell blasted to oceans of mud, the men brought into the clearing stations caked in it, proclaiming the fearful conditions in which they fought. Mud, blood, the stench of wounds, bodies unwashed from weeks in trenches – all filled her nostrils as she moved among the men interviewing those who would be interviewed, taking down messages for loved ones back home – nearly always the same message: ‘Got a Blighty one. Tell ’em I’ll be seeing them soon. Thank God!’