The War Widows

‘Judas!’ Ivy spat in her direction.

‘Come on, ladies, Lil will show you to the top floor. You can freshen up before we have some supper. There’s enough hot water for the kiddies to have a bath with Neville. They smell as if they need changing,’ Esme replied.

‘Mother!’ yelled Ivy up the stairs. ‘Neville must go first. I don’t hold with girls and boys together. You never know what ideas they might get. Our Lily is right out of order.’

Lily followed behind, reluctant to leave them alone.

How terrible to have to share a room with someone who’s shared a bed with your fiancé. How would she feel if Walter produced another girlfriend out of the blue? What disappointment and grief were bottled up inside these two lasses and no one to understand them now? Each one wishing, perhaps, that the other was dead instead of Freddie. How could she leave them in this state?

Su climbed the stairs with a heavy heart, up three flights and turns to a large attic room with windows in the roof. Levi brought up the cot piece by piece, huffing and puffing, eyeing them both as they unpacked their cases.

‘Here we go, ladies, one cot and some spare nappies from the airing cupboard. There’s warm milk in the kitchen when you are ready.’

‘Joy needs no nappies. She’s a clean girl now,’ Su said.

‘My child is still at the breast,’ said Ana.

Levi blushed and fled downstairs.

Alone for the first time since they both stood up together in the aerodrome, they turned their backs on each other, trying not to cry. Su wondered how she could share a room with someone who had shared a bed with her Stan. The disappointment and grief was hanging over her back like some heavy blanket. If only they had married in secret. If only he had stayed in Burma and set up home with her, but no, he got aboard a ship and forgot all about her.

For Joy Liat, no Daddy with a pipe and medals. All her dreams were crumbling to dust.

‘I do not understand. Stan is my man, not yours,’ Su said, pulling out one of her precious heavy silk longyis, a sarong of dark blue embroidered material, brought as a token of her heritage. Now it would serve as a curtain to hide her modesty. She would make a screen of it.

‘He say you dead, his foreign girl in Far East. No letters come from you.’

‘How could I write when he did not write to me?…This screen will help us sleep,’ she said to Ana, who nodded. Su could see she too had been crying.

There was a knock on the door and Lily hovered in the doorway, drowned in a baggy man’s cardigan. ‘If you would like, I can bath your little ones. I’d love to have a play with them. Neville is done now. The water is still warm. You must be so tired. It is such dreadful news. We still can’t believe it. Mother is taking it badly. None of us has seen Freddie for six years, and now this. We’ve so much to ask you about him…but now is not the time.’

She smiled as if she meant every word, such a bright smile and kind grey eyes in such a pale face, not a bit like Stan at all, Su thought. The little ones seemed to sense she loved children and did not protest when she lifted them.

Su stood on the landing, listening to them splashing and laughing as Lily sang with a rich voice, ‘Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey…’

Stan had a rich voice too. They had played in a concert party together. She fell onto the bed exhausted, curling up into a ball, dreaming of the veranda at home and Auntie Betty fixing jasmine around her coiled hair. She shivered. This England-it was so chilly and dark.

When she woke, Lily had given Joy a cup of warm milk and tucked her in one end of the cot. Ana had opened her blouse to her child and Su saw her magnificent white breasts. She herself was like a child in that department. Anglo-Burmese did not have breasts like melons. Perhaps Freddie was disappointed by her tiny frame and that was why he abandoned her?

It was time to change into her one remaining clean blouse and go down to supper.

They sat in the chilly dining room with a paraffin heater belching out fumes, choking the air with its acrid smell. The wind was rattling at the windowpanes.

‘Wind from the north means snow,’ said Levi, making polite conversation. ‘I don’t suppose you two have ever seen snow.’

‘I was a guest of the Germans for many years. I have seen terrible snow,’ snapped Ana. ‘And you?’ She turned to Su.

‘Just on a Christmas card,’ she answered.

‘Oh, you have Christmas in your country then?’ sniffed Ivy, picking at her tinned salmon for bones.

Su put down her fork. The fish was tasteless and she could barely swallow for anger at this bitter pickle. ‘My father was a British soldier. We have Christmas carols and a tree and “Away in a Manger” and Jesus in His cradle. I am baptised Church of England, like my father. I’m not a heathen,’ she answered with cold politeness. That would shut up the snake woman.

Ivy turned her venom to Ana instead. ‘What religion are you then? Catholic?’

‘No understand,’ she said, and refused to say another word.

‘We are going to hold a service in church in Freddie’s memory,’ said Esme. ‘You are welcome to attend but I don’t know how I’m going to explain you both. One, yes, but two of you…?’

‘Number one wife and Number two wife,’ chuckled Levi until someone kicked him under the table and he howled. ‘What was that in aid of?’

‘That is not funny,’ snapped Ivy with her mouth full. ‘We could say one of them was his widow but the other one…’ She was looking at them with disapproval.

‘Pity there isn’t another one of us to go round,’ sneered Levi, fingering his moustache, licking his lips and giving Su the onceover.

‘Don’t be silly. This is serious. People will want to know who these foreigners are. They should stay at home,’ said Ivy.

‘Levi has a point,’ said Lily. ‘You don’t suppose if we said that one of them was his widow, we could then say the other was one of his comrade’s friends, come to pay last respects?’

‘One look at those ginger curls and they would soon guess the score,’ Esme chipped in.

‘Stop this. This is no time for careless talk…Shame on you! You talk as if we weren’t here. I have come a long way. I am very disappointed. Now I don’t know what to think, and I have no home to go to either.’ Su found herself so angry she was spitting out the words.

‘Steady on, lass, we meant no harm,’ said Lily, reaching out to tap her hand. ‘What if we were to claim one of you as Freddie’s widow and the other the widow of his…cousin, say?’ she offered.

‘What cousin?’ snapped Ivy. ‘Levi has no cousin.’

‘Who’s to know but us? A cousin from down south who was killed in the war. That would explain two Mrs Winstanleys at the funeral and their offspring, and no questions asked,’ she added. ‘I don’t know why I’m concocting all this but it’s better than the truth.’

There was a hush as everyone digested Lily’s plan.

‘I don’t like the idea. They should not be coming to chapel,’ said Ivy.

‘Have a heart,’ said Lily. ‘They’ve every right, and their kiddies too.’

‘Lily’s right. For the sake of those little blighters upstairs we can bend the truth so no one gets hurt.’

‘It’s a downright lie. They haven’t got a wedding ring between them,’ Ivy insisted.

‘Hah!’ laughed the honourable Esme. ‘They’d not be the first women in Grimbleton to go down to Woolworths to buy a brass ring and hope nobody asked for their marriage lines. It’s for appearance’s sake we’re doing this. No one need know but us. Then we can all hold our heads up high. What do you think, ladies?’ she asked.

There was a pebble in Su’s throat, choking any response. Opposite sat her rival, who said nothing, only half understanding the conversation.

‘Ana, we are going to draw lots and choose who is to be number one wife Winstanley-wife of Freddie-and who is number two wife of…’ Su paused to think of a suitable name, ‘of Cedric.’ She bowed her head.

‘Who is Cedric when he’s at home?’ asked Levi, puzzled.

‘I met Cedric on the trek to India, a very nice American boy. He gave us a tin of cocoa from rations. It saved our lives. I like the name Cedric.’