A Woman's Place (49 page)

‘Yes,’ she said again, her heart beginning to thump at the mention of Albert’s name.

‘I think you should sit down, Mrs Adams.’

What now? What more terrible news? ‘Who are you?’ she demanded.

‘Please, sit down.’

What strength she had summoned up fled and she sank down on the armchair opposite him. With Connie coming to stand supportively beside her the man began.

‘I’m Captain Fairbrother, taken prisoner in Turkey in nineteen eighteen interned in a Turkish prison camp in Aleppo. When Turkey surrendered to Arabian troops in October of that year, I was in a Turkish hospital where I met your husband.’

Eveline’s sharp intake of breath almost choked her, but the man took little notice as he continued.

‘Conditions there, if you’ll forgive me, were pretty ghastly …’

‘You saw my husband?’ Eveline broke in, her heart pounding and her head beginning to reel. But before she could ask whether Albert was dead or still alive, he hurried on.

‘In the hospital, if you could call it that, we were crammed in together with Turkish wounded. We’d lost our uniforms, couldn’t speak the language and when the hospital became threatened by Arab forces it was abandoned by the fleeing Turkish doctors and staff. Conditions had become appalling by the time they arrived. None of them seemed able to speak English, and they assumed we too were Turkish.’

‘What about my husband?’ Eveline burst out, feeling Connie’s hand touch her shoulder. ‘You said you saw him.’

‘Yes. Your husband had sustained a throat wound and was unable to talk clearly. He was also badly wounded in the right foot. It had apparently gone untreated in the prison camp. The doctors were an incompetent lot and didn’t attend to him properly. Gangrene set in and they amputated the foot but he had a blood infection. He was delirious for most of the time.’

So Albert had died of his wounds. Eveline bit her lips to control the tears threatening to engulf her. She couldn’t break down in front of this stranger. In front of Connie, yes, but not this man.

‘What are you trying to tell me?’ she blurted, suddenly angered. She had already been informed that Albert was killed, so why did this man want to come and rub salt into the wound? ‘If you’ve come to tell me my husband’s dead, I’ve already been informed.’

‘That’s why I’m here. I came as soon as I could to tell you that the last time I saw him, he was alive. I got your husband out of that hospital when there was talk of killing the patients. I found an abandoned truck and got him into it and tried to make for the British lines I hoped would be to the west. We ran out of petrol and I carried him on my back as far as I could. We ended up in some Turkish village where they fed us and looked after us and for weeks he drifted in and out of consciousness and delirium. I too was in a rather sorry state, suffering from dysentery, virtually a bag of bones, so I could go nowhere either. There was no way to get us to a British unit. He was so ill that I dared not try with him. Finally I recovered enough to leave so that I could get in touch with our allies and let them know where I’d left him. That was when I learned that the war was over.’

‘And he was alive when you left him?’ Connie questioned, Eveline too choked by tears to speak.

He nodded. ‘Would you ladies mind if I were to smoke? This has been rather an ordeal for me.’

‘Of course,’ Connie said boldly. ‘Would you mind if I had one?’

He offered the packet and, flicking his lighter, held the flame to her cigarette before lighting his own. Eveline found her voice.

‘How can you both be so casual? Is my Albert still alive or not?’

‘Yes,’ Fairbrother replied slowly. ‘His throat had healed enough for him to talk and tell me his name before I left. But by the time I reached help I was all in and couldn’t think of the name of the village though I knew the general direction I’d taken. I was hospitalised and left my home address with the commanding officer with a promise to inform me as soon as, and if, your husband was found. Yesterday I received a telephone call to say that he had been found and was able to give his name, rank and serial number, though by then I guessed you had probably already been informed that he must be presumed dead. I came straight here to tell you what I knew. I was too late?’

‘She was notified two days ago,’ Connie told him.

At those words, something snapped inside Eveline. She bent forward, hands covering her face, and broke down in near hysterics, Connie holding her tight until the weeping eventually subsided enough for her to sit up.

She dimly remembered Fairbrother saying he’d been told that Albert was in an Istanbul hospital, from which he would be taken by hospital ship to Gibraltar to rest there, as was usual, prior to sailing through the possibly rough Bay of Biscay on his way home to England. All of this could take a month or two yet, and she would eventually be told he was alive, but he, Fairbrother, hadn’t wanted her to go through the hell of days not knowing until then. She vaguely remembered him taking his leave, saying that he wished her well. She remembered nodding her thanks, her mind only on Albert. Alive, but what if he had a relapse before they could get him home?

She looked up suddenly to find Connie on her own, making a pot of tea.

‘I’ve got to go to him!’ Her raised voice so startled Connie that she nearly spilled the boiling water she was pouring into the teapot.

‘I’ve got to go to him,’ she repeated. ‘I need to be with him.’

Connie put the kettle back on the hob. ‘How can you think of sailing all that way alone? He’ll be home soon. Then you can be with him.’

‘I can’t wait that long. That captain said he was still very ill. How must he be feeling? A prison camp and then some vile hospital, his foot amputated, I dread to think what he must be going through. He’s all alone out there. We’ve been parted for so long and I mean to go and be with him there, help him feel better, help him come back home. I have to go, and I intend to.’

‘Eveline, dear.’ Connie’s voice seemed to float towards her. ‘You are not making sense. You are too upset by what you’ve heard to think straight.’

She glared up at Connie. ‘I know what I have to do. You’ll look after Helena for me while I’m gone?’

‘Don’t be silly, Eveline. It’s a sea voyage. Everyone says the Bay of Biscay can be treacherous. You could be so seasick. You can’t put yourself through that. Wait for him to come home.’

Eveline leapt up. ‘I can’t do that. I know he needs me. If I’m with him he’ll get well quicker. I have to be there. You of all people should know how I feel. We’ve been close friends, you and me, and we both know what it’s like to have our husbands taken from us. You’ve a new husband to look forward to. I thought I had no one. But now mine is alive. He’ll be coming home and I’m going out there to make sure he gets my help to do just that.’

Connie looked at her long and hard, further argument on the edge of her tongue. But then she closed her mouth and nodded sombrely.

‘You have to do what you feel is right,’ she said in a low voice. ‘But it is such a long way for a woman to go.’

‘A woman?’ Eveline echoed. ‘Women have been through worse. There were nurses who went out to the front line itself to find and take care of the wounded. There were women volunteers driving ambulances through all that shellfire to get the stricken to hospital tents. There were women who learned to drive buses and, like you and me, who dealt with heavy machinery and handled dangerous explosives. Some lost their lives. Before the war we were suffragettes. I went to prison and defied those who tried to force-feed me. And my ordeal wasn’t half that of some. We marched and we fought for the right for women like me to have a say in what we do. And no one can stop me going off to be with my husband to help keep his spirits up and bring him back home. Once I have him home I shall spend every moment of my time nursing him back to health. With what you’ve offered to do for me he can set up in business. We will begin to live again.’

She finally paused, her tirade exhausted while Connie stood silent, at last convinced that nothing was going to shake her friend from her purpose.

‘I’ll have Helena while you’re away,’ she said slowly. ‘I’ll explain to her what her mother is doing and that she is going to get her daddy back.’

Eveline lifted her chin, tears already drying. ‘I must write immediately to say I’ll be there waiting for him.’

She looked searchingly at Connie. ‘I could never have done this but for your help, insisting on giving me a portion of what you’ll inherit. I’m so deeply grateful, Connie.’

It was Connie’s turn to look Eveline in the eye. ‘How could you ever have thought I wouldn’t after all we’ve been through together? You’d have done the same for me.’

Eveline dropped her gaze and gave a small laugh. ‘It’s still all due to you that I can afford to do this, and I’m grateful.’ Again she lifted her chin. ‘I’ll have to start packing straight away. I don’t want to get to Gibraltar to find I’ve missed him and he’s already on his way home. Talk about ships that pass!’ She gave another laugh. ‘That mustn’t happen, must it?’ She suddenly looked so confident and resolute that to Connie it was like seeing a different woman from a few minutes ago and she made towards her, arms outstretched.

Eveline met her halfway, the two standing in the centre of the tiny kitchen in a tight embrace; friends, one soon to be married, one soon to be reunited with the man she’d thought she had lost.

Finally breaking away, Connie glanced at the clock on the wall. ‘Good Lord! The girls will be home from school soon, looking for something to eat. We’d better get started on their lunch.’

‘Yes, we’d better,’ agreed Eveline, straightening her rumpled skirt and searching for an apron to wear.

There was a lot to do – a lot of things to do.

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First published as
Give Me Tomorrow
in 2006 by

Piatkus Books

This edition published in 2014 by Ebury Press, an imprint of Ebury Publishing

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Copyright © 2006 Maggie Ford

Maggie Ford has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

This novel is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental

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