Daughters of War

by Lizzie Page

Genres: Historical Fiction; Sagas; War & Military; 20th Century Romance; Military Romance

Synopsis

As a teenager in Chicago, May always dreamed of travelling the world. So when she falls in love with George Turner, she can’t wait to return to London as his wife. Two beautiful daughters follow, but George isn’t the husband he promised to be. Ten years on, May is wondering if she’s made a terrible mistake. The Great War has been declared in Europe, and all around, brave young men are being called up to serve. George, banned from conscription himself, has taken to the bottle, and May suspects he’s seeing other women too. He even sends her beloved daughters away to school. She misses them terribly every day. Then May meets veteran nurse Elsie, who persuades May to join the war effort. May knows nothing of nursing – it will be difficult, dangerous work, but her heart is telling her it’s the right thing to do and the only way to carve out a life for herself and her daughters away from George. But when George does the unthinkable, May’s children are put at risk. Miles away on the frontline and unable to reach them, will May be reunited with her little girls before it’s too late?

Release date: November 12, 2018

Publisher: Bookouture

Print pages: 366

Sample

That term, when the girls were away at school, I was scared I would lose my mind. I had always been prone to melancholy, but by spring of 1914, it was worse than ever. I dreamt of escaping. If I could have run away to do high kicks at the Moulin Rouge or even become a lady librarian, I would have, but both required an energy that had completely deserted me. I wanted only to lie in bed all day long. Was that so wrong? After all – as my mother frequently liked to write in her poisonous letters – I had made my bed and now I had to lie in it.

My life was so far from how I had imagined ‘London life’ that the slightest unexpected thing – a bee in the bathroom, a seam in my stocking – could reduce me to fat tears. As for bigger, expected things – my marriage, for example – I felt trapped and utterly useless.

It was Mrs Crawford, the housekeeper, who called Doctor Grange, and it was Doctor Grange who said I must avoid reading the newspapers. It was true that the news did sometimes send me into a downward spiral: the sinking of the Titanic had. So many people had died, yet here I was: the unfairness of that was enormous. I wished I could have swapped places with any of them. At least then my existence might have had a purpose. It wasn’t just the people I mourned either, it was the ship itself. Unsinkable, they had said. And then it had sunk, just like that.

It just showed you.

And yet, I felt bad to be so distressed by it. ‘Were you affected personally?’ Doctor Grange asked kindly. When I explained, ‘Not personally, no, but…’ he gave me a severe look. ‘Stop reading. You have too many books,’ he advised, looking around my room, ‘and you don’t take enough activity.’ He snapped his case shut.

George wasn’t interested in helping me. To be fair, I wasn’t interested in being helped by George. His attentions were firmly elsewhere. How did I know this? Not just because of the petticoat I discovered in the outhouse – who did it belong to? – or the sudden fascination he had for oiling his moustache (and the strange scents it gave off); it was his jaunty demeanour. George did not usually do jaunty. He was up to something and there was nothing I could do about that either.

Mrs Crawford refused to bring up the newspapers. Just five minutes in attendance with Doctor Grange and her loyalties had been transferred. This wasn’t a great problem though. As soon as George had done with them (he merely glanced at the horse-racing), I slipped to the dining room and stole them back to my room, where I could peruse in peace. I had always been a reader and I wouldn’t stop. There was a whole world out there, a world I was never going to see or experience, but I would be a witness. It was my duty. It might make me damn miserable, but in another way, it kept me going.

I also wrote poems – oh, nothing serious, just whimsical snippets about my London life. The silver birch by the front door. The lines in the lawn after Mrs Crawford’s son, James, had mowed. Misery wasn’t good for much but it was good for poetry.

I did take on board one of Doctor Grange’s recommendations: I started taking a daily constitutional around Tooting Common. When I first came to England I hadn’t known what a common was. Now I understood it was shared parkland, owned by no one, loved by everyone. Well, not everyone, obviously.

Within two days I had discovered a short-cut that involved covering only half the distance but allowed me to cross ‘walk’ off my list of things I ought to do. One morning, slyly taking my short-cut, I noticed several women of mixed ages moving en masse towards some bramble-covered iron gates. The women didn’t have the shiny look of churchgoers, nor the focussed demeanour of suffragettes: what could they be up to? Curiosity piqued, I followed only to discover a sign for a bathing lake. Interesting. I used to like a swim: for my height (small), I have large feet. George used to say I was an L-shaped woman and while these flippers were not much use on dry land, they were a bonus in water.

Women were allowed to swim on Thursday mornings from March to October. It was Thursday and it was March. This was a small window of opportunity but nevertheless it was a window I could realistically fit through. So, the next Thursday, I went. Even though I liked swimming, it remained a challenge to get myself up and my bag packed, but I did it. I didn’t want to be sad all the time. That’s what people didn’t understand. Mrs Crawford waved me away overexcitedly, prematurely imagining I was cured, no doubt.

I arrived before the gates had opened, and we all waited outside. The queuing women were enjoying themselves and it was infectious. There was a great deal of laughing anticipation about how shrivelled up we were all going to get.

‘First time?’ someone asked me. I nodded wordlessly – I never like to look the novice – but she patted my arm. ‘Don’t be nervous, duckie, we’re not going to eat you.’

I had been anxious about many things, but this was one fate that had not occurred to me.

Once the gates were swung open, everyone did elbows out and fast (but not to the point of rudeness) walking to the chocolate-box-sized cubicles on the edge of the pool. I changed, came out gingerly, afraid I was wearing the wrong kind of suit, then was relieved to find I was perfectly in keeping.

It was a long shimmering rectangle of blue.

I got in.

Feet to knees, knees to thighs, thighs to belly, belly to rib… then the hardest bit of all, the shoulders. Aieee! Within a moment, I could tell it was doing me the world of good. It was cold, yes, but invigorating. My body felt free and unencumbered. The sun made dapples in the surface and on my face. I became light-headed with delight at my surroundings and myself. I found myself saying ‘hello’, ‘good morning’ and ‘isn’t it marvellous?’ to the other floating women.

I had been bobbing around for a good ten minutes or so when I saw feet – ghostly white feet, pointing skywards, feet where they shouldn’t be. Others may have been avoiding them, but I didn’t hesitate at the sight of those feet. I swam over with my fiercest strokes: ten, twelve, fourteen, until I was there, and I yanked at the heels, hard. The feet kicked, a body manoeuvred itself around. Whatever it was, it was still living. Helpfully, I hauled up the body, finding it belonged to a woman. Her hair was covered by a bizarre flowery swim-hat and her face scrunched up. She spluttered. I was about to slap her in a kindly manner when she hissed:

‘What is the matter with you?’

I realised, belatedly, she wasn’t pleased.

‘I’m…’ I swallowed. I was still breathless myself. It had been years since I had swum with such commitment. ‘Aren’t you drowning?’

‘No, I’m not.’ It seemed I had given her quite the fright. ‘I’m trying to do a handstand. Obviously!’

I stared at her. ‘Why?’

She scowled. ‘Kindly give me some space, please.’

I did back off then, apologising. We trod water, both of us, panting at each other, droplets streaming down our faces. A handstand hadn’t occurred to me. What an appalling person I was.

I met her eyes and she suddenly laughed. The sound was loud and playful and rippled across the pool.

‘Where are you from?’ she asked.

‘London,’ I said, deliberately misunderstanding her.

‘Before that?’

I told her, reluctantly, but fortunately, she didn’t ask all the usual boring questions but instead gave me a wide smile. This time we both laughed. What a relief! Her teeth were tiny and neat. She was pale-skinned, not as brilliant white as her feet were, but not far off. ‘You must come back to mine for tea.’

Although this level of social interaction was what I had been yearning for, oh, for at least the last twelve years, I found myself shaking my head. I couldn’t. I shouldn’t. I wouldn’t. Spontaneity was beyond me now. I was underprepared, underdressed, under-everything.

‘Oh no, it’s too much bother.’

I almost wanted to cry. I wanted nothing more than to make a friend, but my mouth was refusing.

Fortunately, Miss Pale-foot wouldn’t take no for an answer. I saw she was the kind of person for whom no was simply a minor inconvenience, not to be taken seriously.

‘I insist.’ She winked at me, drawing attention to her barely-there eyelashes. ‘After all, you saved my life.’

Her name was Elizabeth and she drove a motorcar when very few women did. What’s more, she was utterly blasé about it. It did judder under her control and she did curse the other drivers (when I believe it may have been her that was in the wrong), but I was impressed. Her hair was bright red-gold and, now braided, it dripped onto the steering wheel. Mine, in an untidy bun, dampened my blouse. To be out in public with wet hair was a thing my mother abhorred: I felt quite cheered.

Elizabeth looked so different without the arrangement of cap and bathing suit that I almost hadn’t recognised her at the gate, where we had arranged to meet. Her striped dress would have drowned me – pardon the pun – but it made her look like a very graceful deckchair.

Elizabeth explained that although she lived with her mother, her mother wouldn’t be at home. Her mother was never at home in the mornings. She was an active committee member. Elizabeth was too. You wouldn’t believe the number of groups there were in London then: committees, leagues, reformers, branches, meetings about everything and nothing. From Elizabeth’s description, I gathered her mother was wealthy, but the liberal, open-minded type of wealthy, not like the churchgoing conservatives who populated mine and George’s families. Elizabeth added that her mother was a widow and she herself a spinster. There was no shame attached to the word ‘spinster’ the way there was when George said it. Elizabeth made it sound like a prize.

Elizabeth clearly didn’t feel her motorcar needed to be on intimate terms with the sidewalk either, for she came to a sudden halt right in the middle of the road.

‘Here we are then!’

We were outside a tall, handsome, white-brick townhouse. Elizabeth bounded out the car and I followed, a mix of nerves, curiosity and discomfort from the damp. Inside, there were cats, cats and more cats. At first I thought there must be ten, at least, but Elizabeth, laughing, explained there were only three – they just managed to get about a bit. She introduced me to each of them seriously, holding up their paws in turn: this was Tiggy and this was Winkle – like the rabbit in Beatrix Potter (Elizabeth’s mother was a big fan) and the third was Delia. (Elizabeth didn’t say how she acquired her name). Tiggy climbed onto my lap, purred and let me stroke her. Winkle leapt onto the back of my chair. Delia leapt to the windowsill, then sulkily left the room.

‘She doesn’t like guests.’ Elizabeth shrugged.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

‘No, she just doesn’t like anyone,’ Elizabeth explained, matter-of-factly.

It was a man-free zone. A child-free zone. The room smelled of perfume, candles and something sweet. What a change it made from my dusty home, packed to the rafters with George’s gloomy family heirlooms, so cold to the touch. Everything here, including the cats, was elegant. I wondered what Elizabeth and her mother did with anything that wasn’t.

It was the most enjoyable morning I had passed for a long time. Drinking tea, then strong coffee and crunching macaroons in this graceful room with its pretty cats transported me from my ennui. The cookies outdid Mrs Crawford’s (and she was no slacker in that department). I imagined shopkeepers went out of their way to serve Elizabeth’s mother the best of everything.

Elizabeth wasted no time in finding out about me.

‘How did you meet your husband, May? You are married, aren’t you? I can always tell.’

‘It’s a long story.’ I sighed, hoping to be enigmatic. Actually, it was a short story, short and brutal. George fell down the steps outside my church in Chicago. I can still remember the sound he made and the upturned-beetle look of him as he landed. Everyone else walked on – no doubt suspecting the part alcohol had played in his downfall – but I stopped. My Grandma Leonora was a nurse in the Civil War. She knew Walt Whitman (just to say hello to) and I suppose I had fancies of being a nurse too. I was sixteen and in a rush to help everybody. I let George use my knees for a pillow, my cardigan for a blanket. I tended to that gash on his head. I told him, ‘It’s the shock, that’s all,’ which is what Grandma Leonora used to say to me. It always made me feel less of a baby.

He called me ‘Angel’. ‘Thank you, Angel’ and ‘Sorry, Angel’. I had read the great English books – Shakespeare, Chaucer, Dickens – but I had never met a real-life Englishman before so I didn’t realise that ‘sorry’ and ‘thank you’ is almost the national sport. He was handsome and, more importantly, he seemed captivated by me. By the time the ambulance crawled towards us, we were practically engaged.

George was in pier insurance, and it was thrilling to have a grown-up talk to me about their work. I nodded eagerly as he talked about the beautiful Victorian structures that he couldn’t wait to show me: ‘Don’t be fooled though, May, they’re riddled with woodworm.’ He also told me he liked women, but rather than hearing it as the warning it probably was, I was flattered – I thought, I’m a woman now!

We married quickly, perhaps before either of us dared change our minds, and we took the ship to England.

‘What shall I do in London?’ I asked, drinking my first champagne as we waved goodbye to the Statue of Liberty.

‘Do?’

‘Yes.’ I had developed a tinkly little laugh that George seemed to like. I did it then. Tee hee. ‘What will I do with myself?’

‘Have a good time, I expect,’ he said and we kissed and I laughed in that tinkling way again. Later, I recognised this was like one of those questions that one needs to ask before the exam, and not during.

I didn’t have a good time. The pier insurance industry was more demanding than I could have imagined. George worked away a lot, so it was just me in the house with Mrs Crawford clattering saucepans downstairs. I felt isolated and foolish and that sense of foolishness made me isolate myself further. Around the same time that I realised I had made a mistake, I found out that I was pregnant. I was well and truly stuck. Bed made.

‘You’ll swim next week?’ Elizabeth asked. Once I agreed, she added. ‘And come back for tea?’ I nodded gratefully. Things were on the turn.

I had known Elizabeth only four or five Thursdays when I confided in her about how unhappy my marriage to George had become. This was a short amount of time by anyone’s standards – particularly English people’s standards. Most wait a lifetime before disclosing anything beyond a shameful preference for peas over carrots, but I really was desperately unhappy. And Elizabeth was the first person I’d ever met who didn’t think much of the institution of marriage. She said, ‘Why would I want a husband, when I’ve got Tiggy, Winkle and Delia?’ She did astonish me. Tiggy and Winkle were darling, though. I wasn’t especially fond of Delia but our antipathy was mutual.

So, I threw caution to the wind and exposed the reality of George and me: we may have begun as an ‘international love affair’ or ‘Atlantic romantics’ as I had once, pompously, considered us, but recently I wasn’t sure if I even liked him, let alone – here, I stuttered slightly, for these were virgin words – loved him anymore. Elizabeth didn’t squeal or gasp but just shrugged and said, ‘Mm, I see…’

She was so unperturbed that I went on, saying that I suspected, but could not prove, that George had affairs ‘by the dozen’. I was going to say, ‘the baker’s dozen’ – the charming phrase I had learnt from Mrs Crawford that very morning – but I thought it might be inappropriate.

‘Why would you need to prove it?’ Elizabeth said, poking her finger into her teacup. Delia trotted over, licked the fingertip, then glared at me.

‘I don’t know.’

I couldn’t help but feel Elizabeth thought I was weak, but then, I knew I was. I didn’t know why I wanted to know, but I did. I had to know for sure. I remembered the cabin from our Atlantic crossing, with its perfectly round portholes. What an adventure it was. How excited I had felt! I had adored George once and I would have liked to feel that again.

When I told Elizabeth that he used to flirt, chronically, with Bella, a timid housemaid with poor references who had recently done a bunk in the night and thus had become the chief repository of my suspicions, she murmured, ‘It is hard to employ good staff.’

It was nice to have a friend, and it was very nice to have a friend who didn’t judge – for who doesn’t fear that? – but a little more emotion either way might have been helpful.

I must have walked past the notice in the post office a dozen times before, one sunny morning, it caught my eye. I don’t know whether it was the cold-water swimming or my friendship with Elizabeth, probably a mixture of both, but I was feeling quite buoyed up.

I thought Doctor Grange should have Elizabeth on prescription! I would have told her this, only I knew she would have laughed. She found the unlikeliest things to laugh at. She would say, ‘This is the twentieth century, May, and I’m a normal girl leading a normal life,’ but she wasn’t. She wanted to teach me to do handstands. She was much better at them in her living room than in the lake. She could hold herself the wrong way up for a good twenty seconds. But while she enjoyed gymnastics, swimming was her first love. One afternoon, she showed me a newspaper cutting of a handsome man with a twirling moustache (the kind that would make George green with envy), a barrel-shaped athletic man in very few clothes, showing off his muscles.

‘Is this your boyfriend?’ I said, reading the line, ‘Captain Matthew Webb was stung by countless jellyfish’.

This made her fold over in laughter. ‘Don’t be daft, May! He was the first man to swim the Channel.’

‘And?’

‘And I plan to be the first woman.’

I looked hard into her face to see if this was another of her jokes.

‘The Channel?’ I thought it was the sea between England and France, but maybe I was wrong.

‘Dover to Calais, that’s it, all twenty-one miles. There is no reason I couldn’t do it,’ she added firmly.

‘I don’t doubt it,’ I agreed. In my mind, Elizabeth could and would do anything she wanted. I had never met a woman as ambitious as she.

Although not quite restored to my premarital self, I was now able to get up most mornings and passed most days without tears running down my cheeks. This was progress. Indeed, Mrs Crawford had stopped staring at me with that intense look of sympathy and disdain she had. The newspapers were allowed back in my bedroom and only rarely did they set me off.

The notice in the post office was for an assistant to an artist. Friday Afternoons Only. Pleasant Young Woman. I had never met an artist before. George hated artists, but this only served as further incentive for me to apply. George certainly wasn’t reining himself in on my account, so why would I for him? I wasn’t sure I was young any more – I was two years shy of thirty – but Mrs Crawford had said I could pass for twenty-one – (not about this – I didn’t tell her about this. I didn’t think she would approve). As for pleasant, I felt I could act pleasant – at least for such a short duration as this.

The artist’s name was Percy Milhouse and he asked outright if I had heard of him before. I hadn’t. He chuckled. It was unclear whether he minded or not and I considered it best not to pursue it. He had an apartment – he called it a ‘studio’ – in a converted old house only about fifty yards down the road from me, another point in favour of the visit. The studio was about fifty yards skywards. It felt like the stairs were never-ending: the six flights to the third floor meant I always arrived slightly and shamefully out of breath. (I would not be swimming the Channel any time soon.) It was a massive room with large windows overlooking the common, three easels set at curious angles and canvases resting on them and against the walls. There was also a chaise longue, a small square table with spindly legs and a couple of battered brown leather armchairs, but other than that, there was not much furniture for a room that size. It was nothing compared to Elizabeth’s beautiful house, but I liked its mismatched artiness.

When Percy learnt in that interview that George and I lived in a whole house to ourselves, he made digs. ‘Ooh, you wealthy people!’ ‘Oh, an entire building, my, how do you stand to be with the riff-raff?’ His jealousy surprised me. Percy referred to himself as a bohemian and I didn’t know bohemians cared about such trivial things.

Percy’s artwork was popular with London’s fashionable set. When he told me the prices he asked for his pictures, I had to stop myself from looking astonished and make my expression suggest, quite right too. (Being pleasant is harder than it looks.)

‘For just the one?!’

‘You’ve got enough walls in your house to hang them all, haven’t you?’

Percy was always on the precipice of a new style, a new school or a new wave. (I always forgot which was the right word.)

I confess I had hoped his work would be more old-fashioned. For me, the best artists were the Pre-Raphaelites. Dreamy women with luscious hair, who looked like they had the world at their feet. But Percy dealt with blocks of colour, sharp-ended squares or elongated triangles; humans rarely featured except in rectangular form. Or in profile with only one eye. I did grow to like the pictures eventually – familiarity will do that to you – but secretly, I couldn’t help but feel that poor Percy was wasting his talents.

The next Thursday as we undressed in adjacent changing cubicles by Tooting Bathing Lake, I excitedly told Elizabeth about my Friday working for Percy. I hoped to impress her for once. Elizabeth loved art, she loved adventure. I had already prepared an anecdote about Percy’s paintings that involved a six-year-old being able to do them. (It may have been unoriginal, but it was true.)

‘You went to an artist’s studio, an artist you don’t know?’ repeated Elizabeth.

‘I did.’

Her tone was a surprise. It was like talking to George or Mrs Crawford. I had rather thought Elizabeth would encourage me. This was a woman who hoped to swim across the English Channel one day! Whose motto was, ‘Cats first, marriage last, swimming in between!’

‘So, how did you assist?’

‘Well, I didn’t do much of anything, to be honest…’ I began.

‘Well,’ Elizabeth said haughtily, ‘how peculiar.’

Actually, Percy had said, ‘I like to have someone here when I’m painting,’ but I didn’t think Elizabeth would find that acceptable. I felt strangely protective of the softly spoken, kind man who just wanted company.

‘It was perfectly safe, Elizabeth,’ I trilled. ‘You needn’t worry.’

‘But what if he makes a pass at you?’ She flicked a green insect away from a leaf.

‘He wouldn’t!’

‘But if he did?’

She removed her swim-hat: it made no difference to her how wet her hair got.

I liked Percy, but I didn’t find him attractive. To tell the truth, I didn’t find any man attractive. Constant suspicion that your husband is philandering can do that to a girl.

I explained all this, adding daringly, ‘I would put him in his place.’

Elizabeth smiled then. Those teeth, like shiny bathroom tiles, twinkled at me. Her slicked-back hair made her look like a silent movie star. ‘Coming back for tea?’

The day the poor Archduke and his wife were splattered over the newspapers, Percy did make a pass at me. The Times were giving the terrible murder the front-page treatment. The gun, the unlikely detour, the young assassin, Gavrilo Princip, his sandwich, the riot – this was the kind of news that really was news and I was fully immersed in the story when I realised Percy was looming over me.

‘Put down the paper, May.’

Percy wasn’t holding his brushes, which was unusual (usually they were an extension of his hands). I stopped reading but I didn’t put the paper down. Percy had a habit of covering the floor with old newspapers, so his paint didn’t destroy the carpet. It always felt odd to be walking over ‘New Ambassador to London’ or ‘Seven dead in coach accident’ and I didn’t want to walk over the Archduke and his wife before I’d had a chance to read about them.

‘Darling May, would you consider a dalliance?’

‘A dalliance?’ I pretended I didn’t understand the word. I pointed at the newspaper: ‘Isn’t this awful?’

Percy repeated, ‘A dalliance, May, what do you say?’

‘How do you mean?’

Grim-faced, Percy went on: ‘Could we have intimate relations, do you suppose, May?’ (I think anyone would agree that, put that way, it did not sound very inviting.) ‘You’re an attractive young woman.’

‘I’m twenty-eight,’ I said.

‘Well then.’

I looked at him. Percy had an unremarkable face. As he lacked distinction in his features, he tried to make up for it in his clothes. Today he was wearing a long cream smock, the kind that you would imagine an artist to wear. He always took a great deal of care to look like he did not take a great deal of care.

‘I’m flattered, Percy, but I will have to decline your kind offer. You see, I take my marriage vows seriously.’

This was what Elizabeth had advised me to say in such a situation. She had decided that pretending that, if it were not for my being married, I would have jum. . .