The Carpenter's Children (26 page)

‘I could help out when Isabel has the baby, Dad,
seeing that she refuses to leave old Mr Storey in London. Mum doesn’t really want me here. She and I just don’t…’ She stopped speaking, and Tom Munday sighed, for he could not contradict her unfinished sentence. Lady Neville had visited Mrs Munday, and told Grace that her mother’s symptoms seemed similar to those of her own daughter Letitia.

‘She refuses to eat, and stays in her room at mealtimes; she hardly ever leaves the house, and is so dreadfully thin,’ the lady had said with a sigh. ‘Dr Stringer says it’s a form of melancholia, and that I should be firmer, and
insist
that she eats, but I’m afraid I get exasperated with her, and then of course I’m sorry.’

The longer Grace stayed in North Camp, the more depressing she found it. Her mother continued to be low-spirited, and seemed to resent Grace for not being Ernest or Isabel. The only happy people she met were Sidney and Mary Goddard and their baby daughter, now living at Yeomans’ farm, where Sidney worked long hours and Mary helped in the house as she had done before, stopping as necessary to feed little Dora who was cooed over by her grandparents as Billy’s little sister.

‘We’ll have a home of our own one day after the war,’ Mary told Grace, ‘but for the time being this arrangement suits us well. When’s Isabel’s baby due?’

‘About the middle o’ May, so the midwife
thinks. Our mother wants to come up to Bethnal Green to look after her when the time comes, but Dad thinks she’s not well enough, with this gastric ulcer. Anyway, I’ll be there to help Isabel all I can.’

‘Oh, aren’t you staying here, then?’ asked Mary in some surprise.

‘No. I can be more use at Bethnal Green,’ replied Grace, privately thinking that one more month at Pretoria Road would send her quite mad.

Grace left North Camp in April, and needed to find employment in Bethnal Green; women were taking on many jobs formerly done only by men – driving vans for milk and bread deliveries, postmen’s rounds, and as conductors on buses; when she answered an advertisement in a local butcher’s shop, she was taken on by dour Mr Clark whose son was at the front. He dealt with the cuts of meat and offal, but needed help with serving and working the till. Grace was appalled at the shabbiness and tired faces of the customers who queued up long before the shop opened, eagerly accepting the cheapest offal, but the constant contact with raw meat and Mr Clark’s striped, bloodstained apron made her feel nauseous, though she was glad of the money which paid her sister for her bed and board. And Isabel, who was happy to have her back, believed that seeing the hardships that the poor had to endure in
a slum area would do Grace no harm.

Sally Tanner jealously guarded her position as housekeeper, insisting that Mrs Storey rested undisturbed every afternoon; the parish visiting was taken over by a delighted Mrs Clements, and the Reverend Mr Storey quite enjoyed being spoilt by the ladies of the vicarage.

Isabel’s pains began on a Wednesday morning in May, and continued all day.

The midwife Mrs Prebble was summoned, and confirmed that she was in early labour, but that the birth was not imminent, so she left the vicarage, to return in the afternoon. However, it proved to be a long day and an even longer night, not only of Isabel’s seemingly endless painful contractions, but at around midnight the sinister sound of enemy aircraft was heard overhead, and the thud of bombs exploding not too far away, followed by the sirens of fire engines and ambulances hastening to the scenes of devastation. The raid did not last long, but the danger gave a bizarre extension to what was happening in St Barnabas’ vicarage, a threat of death overshadowing the birth of a new life.

Sally and Grace took turns at keeping vigil, making tea and keeping a fire going in the kitchen to heat the water. At around five o’clock the midwife told them that she could just see the top of the baby’s head, and that Isabel must push down hard
to help it to be born. Two hours of pushing were then needed before a baby boy emerged, amidst tearful sighs of relief all round. He seemed pale and silent at first, but Mrs Prebble expertly held him upside down and blew her own breath onto his little face, which made him gasp: his face puckered up and he gave a weak cry. His arms and legs jerked, and as he gave a stronger cry, his skin turned from white to pink. Baby Paul Storey had arrived, and his exhausted mother held out her arms for him and whispered, ‘Praise God, dearest Mark, we have a son!’ Sally Tanner ran downstairs to tell the Reverend Storey that he had a fine grandson, and while he fell to his knees to give heartfelt thanks, she wiped away a tear at the memory of her own loss.

‘Thank you all, every one of you dear people,’ said the new mother, and turning to her sister, she smiled and asked, ‘How does it feel to be an auntie, Grace?’

Grace managed to smile and murmur something about her ‘dear little nephew,’ but her thoughts were in turmoil. It had been a harrowing night for her, witnessing her sister’s pain and hearing the explosions of bombs being dropped on London, but that wasn’t all. During those long night hours, a suspicion that had been growing in her mind now turned into an undeniable certainty: she too was carrying a child. Three months had passed since the ordeal she had
suffered at the hands of Captain X, and although it was possible that either Derek or Sergeant Stanley might have fathered the child, it was on that third occasion that she had not inserted the vinegar sponge.

Padre Mark Storey feared that he was losing his sanity. He longed to give way to the overwhelming need for sleep, and had in fact almost dozed off while standing up, even when stumbling along in darkness while shells burst nearer and nearer, a firework display enough to confuse the most carefully contrived signals. He found himself pitying the Jerries, too; hatred of the enemy, deliberately fostered in training days, had now faded away like a vapour. Why were they fighting individuals like themselves, equally fed up and anxious to be done with it all? The presence of rats, great loathsome beasts gorged on dead flesh, inspired more revulsion in Mark than a battalion of Jerries.

And yet at dawn, after a relatively quiet night, there was a charge across No Man’s Land, a direct
frontal attack involving hand-to-hand fighting with knives and bayonets, cursing and brutality on both sides, showing the depths to which men can sink when it’s a case of
your life or mine
. It was a filthy hell of mud and stench, unattended wounds, the screams and groans of the dying.

And at the end of that dawn battle Mark Storey suffered a spiritual loss as grievous as any bodily wound, for it robbed his life of meaning. A young soldier of his own section was suddenly struck by a shell fragment square between his eyes. He fell down, calling out, ‘Lord, Lord, I’m blinded! Save me, I’m
blind
, O God!’ He shrieked the words again and again, until he choked on his own blood, and the officer in charge ordered them to leave him where he lay, for he could not possibly survive. Mark ignored the order, and knelt down beside the whimpering boy, now sinking into merciful oblivion.

‘May Almighty God, the Father, Son and Holy Ghost…’ He made the sign of the cross, and gently laid a hand on the bloodied head, the blessing unfinished; and in a momentary flash of utter dismay he denied the meaning of the words. For it now seemed to him that there was no God protecting them, no divine intervention, no tender mercies; there was no such thing, it was all meaningless, a myth shown up for what it was in this glaring hell.

So when Storey rose from the dying soldier, he was no longer a priest in the Church of England, but an unbeliever, a born-again atheist.

Having finally faced up to her suspicions, Grace Munday was gripped by panic. What was she to do? Where could she go to get help? She couldn’t tell Isabel, for she knew that the young mother would emphatically oppose what Grace was intending to do. Similarly she couldn’t confide in either Mrs Tanner or Mrs Clements, both of whom cared only for Isabel and her baby, jealously protecting her from anything that might upset her and dry up her milk. In the end Grace decided to consult Mrs Prebble who lived in a terraced house in Turin Street, about three quarters of a mile from St Barnabas’ vicarage. Leaving Mr Clark’s shop at half past five as usual, on pretext of doing a little shopping, she called at the midwife’s home and rang the bell twice. Nobody came, and Grace’s heart sank. She tried a third time, and a woman appeared at the house next door.

‘She ain’t in, she’s out on a case down Spitalfields!’ the woman yelled. ‘Dunno ’ow long she’ll be. Gimme yer name an’ I’ll tell ’er yer called. Where’d yer live?’ Grace shook her head, hoping for better luck the following afternoon.

Her luck held, for when she called again, Mrs Prebble came to the door, munching a sandwich. She raised her eyebrows on recognising Grace.

‘Ye’re from St Barnabas’, aren’t you? Is something the matter with Mrs Storey or the baby?’

‘No, they’re all right, thank you, Mrs Prebble, but I’d like to see you myself if it’s not too inconvenient,’ faltered Grace. ‘If I might come in for a moment and have a word…’

Mrs Prebble opened the door to admit her, and led her to a back parlour.

‘Sit yourself down, Miss…er…’

‘Munday, Mrs Prebble.’

‘Oh, ah, Munday. What’s brought
you
here, then?’

Grace’s trouble was soon told. A few brisk questions about the time of her last period, her last contact with her ‘young man’, and the nausea she had put down to the smell of the butcher’s shop, established that Miss Munday was indeed three months’ gone, and due to give birth in November. Mrs Prebble shook her head.

‘Hm. I did wonder that night you sat up with Mrs Storey,’ she said. ‘Have you said anything to her about it?’

‘Oh, no, Mrs Prebble,’ answered Grace wretchedly. ‘I was hoping I wouldn’t need to, not if you – if you were able to do something about it.’

‘Get rid of it, you mean?’

After a momentary hesitation, Grace nodded and replied, ‘Ye-yes, Mrs Prebble. M-my young man’s been k-killed in France.’ Her voice trembled as she uttered the words, and the midwife shook her head.

‘At three months? And your young man’s gone off and got himself killed at the front? Hm, the usual story.’ She spoke as if she doubted the truth of it, and Grace held her breath as she waited for an answer.

‘Ye’ve left it too late, girl. I never touch a woman more’n two months’ gone, so you’d better get ready to carry it through. Have you told your parents? It’d be best to go home and tell ’em before everybody can see for themselves. How old are you? Eighteen? You haven’t showed much sense, have you?’

‘I know I haven’t, but what am I to
do
, Mrs Prebble?’ asked Grace with such despair in her voice that the midwife relented a little.

‘There are various places where you can go to have the baby and get it adopted. The better they are, the more money they want. There’s a good place called the Women’s Rescue in Battersea, and the Salvation Army place in Pentonville, all
hymnsingin
’ and scrubbing brushes, though they’re decent people – and of course there are the workhouses, but most girls’d throw ’emselves into the Thames first, and I can’t see Mrs Storey letting you go to one o’ them. And you’ll need to book a doctor in case there’s complications when it comes to the birth. That’s the best I can advise, girl. Tell your sister, and then go back to where you came from, and be quick about it. Ye’ve made your bed, and now you must lie on it, you poor kid.’

‘Grace! Oh,
Grace
! Are you really
sure
? What a burden you’ve been bearing, my poor little sister!’

Isabel’s reaction was certainly one of surprise, and Grace wept as she told the half-true tale of a brief relationship with a soldier on the eve of his departure to the war, where she said he’d been reported as missing only a week later. Isabel, now a mother herself, pitied her sister for the loss of the man she had presumably loved, and for the prospect of giving up the baby she would bear.

‘You must stay here for the confinement, Grace,’ she said firmly. ‘I know Mr Storey will agree. We’ll book Mrs Prebble and Dr Whitefield. It won’t be easy to keep such a secret from Mum and Dad, but Mum isn’t well, and we must spare her the extra worry if we possibly can. I’ll help you to look the rest of the world in the face.’

Grace hid her face on her sister’s shoulder. ‘Oh, Isabel, you’re so good to me,’ she sobbed. ‘I know I don’t deserve it, but I don’t know what I’d have done if you’d turned me away. Mrs Prebble told me that girls have drowned themselves…’

And Isabel, knowing something of the despair of women who
had
thrown themselves into the unforgiving waters of the Thames, hugged her sister closer still.

For Tom Munday a succession of bright summer days only brought back poignant memories of
happier times when the family had all been together; when Ernest had been a solemn schoolboy, content to spend Sunday afternoons at Mr Woodman’s Bible class, and Isabel and Grace were the prettiest girls at Miss Daniells’ school. And Violet his wife, bustling around on Sunday mornings, getting the children ready for church and putting on her flowery hat, securing it with a long pin at the back, while telling him to get a move on and not to forget a clean handkerchief. Tom closed his eyes, remembering the years that he now saw as the happiest of his life.

Now Ernest was away and might never return; Isabel had given birth to a son who might never see his father; Grace, thank heaven, had come to her senses and was helping her sister, not ashamed to work in a butcher’s shop to pay for her board. And Violet – his pretty, dark-eyed girl, loved from the moment he first saw her at Hassett Manor – was drifting into a deep melancholy, losing interest in everything that used to give her pleasure. Dr Stringer had said that she needed company, and should visit friends and neighbours, invite them to afternoon sewing sessions or evenings of whist. It was no use; Violet would only visit Mrs Bird whose grief over her lost boys had aged her ten years, and was similarly turning in upon herself. When Tom asked Dr Stringer if Violet should see a specialist, the GP had frowned, shrugged and said it would be a waste of money; many women were reacting in this way to
the constant fear of the dreaded telegram.

Not for the first time Tom had to conceal his own fears and assume a positive attitude that he did not feel. Violet would not be cheered, and told him he had not the same care as herself for their only son. How wrong she was, he reflected sadly, for his son was seldom out of his thoughts, and he reproached himself bitterly for not showing Ernest greater understanding in the past.

At the beginning of September North Camp was agog with the news that young Philip Saville, having lost a leg, had been discharged from the army, and had come home. The congregation eagerly looked forward to seeing the boy they remembered as a golden-haired youth, and though without his left leg, he was now spared any further injury. The weeks went by, however, with no sign of Philip, either in church or out of it, and rumours began to circulate, such as that he had been hideously scarred, would never walk again, or that he had lost his reason. The tense faces of his parents neither confirmed nor denied any of these dire stories, but all enquiries were met with the reply that ‘it would take time before he was better.’

Then Tom Munday was summoned to the rectory to make a number of additions and modifications to make life easier for Philip. There were handholds to be put along corridors, convenient hooks for hanging up clothes, crutches and walking sticks; Tom was asked
to make a discreet commode chair for use in Philip’s bedroom, and outside he was asked to make a garden bench against the south wall, protected by a small gabled shelter around it to keep out rain and wind. It was while he was engaged on these additions that Tom came face to face with the returned soldier, and his heart ached within him at the sight of a boy not yet twenty, a one-legged cripple walking unsteadily on crutches, apparently unable to speak, for when he opened his mouth, only a deep, rattling cough was heard, the result of inhaling poison gas. His hair was lank and lifeless, and the blue eyes were sunken into their bony orbits; he had the haunted face of one who had looked upon unspeakable horrors.

Tom managed to smile and greet Philip briefly, though he got no reply; in answer to neighbours’ enquiries he simply repeated that the young man had lost a leg and would take some time to recover from his experiences. He said nothing to Violet, knowing that she would picture Ernest in the same state, echoing Tom’s own fears. He hoped that he would show the same courage and steadfast faith as the Savilles if that were ever the case.

‘It’s such a bloody shame, Eddie, to see a
good-looking
young chap turned into such a wreck,’ he said to his friend, to which Eddie replied that at least his life had been spared – ‘not like poor ol’ Bird over there,’ he said in a low tone, for Mr Bird had taken to dropping into the Tradesmen’s Arms
on a Friday evening to have a pint with Tom and Eddie. A dapper, somewhat formal man who found Christian names difficult to use, he confided to them that his wife had withdrawn into a shell of solitude in which she lived with her memories of Tim and Ted, kissing their photographs each night and seldom going out.

‘It’s not much of a life for Phyllis at home,’ Bird admitted. ‘And it’s hard on her to see Billy Hickory as he is now. You may know that they were unofficially engaged when he went out there, but…’ Tom and Eddie stared back at him in helpless sympathy. ‘He’s better now than he was,’ remarked Eddie, ‘I mean he just about manages to sell and deliver the orders – though it’s his mother who runs the business, and God knows what’ll happen when she’s gone.’

‘Your Phyllis is a handsome girl,’ said Tom. ‘I reckon there’ll be another young chap for her sooner or later.’

‘I’m not quite so sure about that,’ replied Mr Bird, looking into his half-empty glass. ‘There’s been such a bloodletting since this war began, and no sign of it ending. I sometimes think my daughter and her friends may not have enough young men left in their generation.’

Neither Tom nor Eddie had an answer to that, and did not try to contradict him, a man who had lost not only his sons but his wife, too, in a sense –
the woman whom he had loved and married. Tom Munday understood only too well, but could not say so.

Grace Munday had need of all her resolution, as well as her sister’s support, once her baby began to ‘show’. Suddenly it seemed as if everybody knew of her plight, and whereas old Mr Storey refrained from mentioning it – she suspected more for Isabel’s sake than her own – the women of St Barnabas’ Church could talk of nothing else. Mrs Tanner and Mrs Clements clearly blamed her, not only for ‘getting into trouble’ as they called it, but for bringing that trouble to poor Mrs Storey’s door at a time when she had just given birth to a son without the comfort of her husband’s presence, and as she was adjusting to the new routine of feeding, changing and being woken up in the night by the new arrival, though everybody agreed that Paul was a beautiful baby, and that it was a crying shame that his poor daddy was away comforting the lads who were risking their lives in this wicked war.

Overhearing these remarks as she passed by the open kitchen door, Grace could not defend herself to them, for they were not the only voices raised against her. Mr Clark, although of course he said nothing to Grace, had obviously mentioned the matter to his wife, earning Grace disapproving stares from the customers whose
whispers seemed to follow her down the street.