After the War Is Over: A Novel Read online

  Dedication

  For Kate.

  My sister, my friend, my inspiration.

  Contents

  Dedication

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Part Two

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Part Three

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  An Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  P.S. Insights, Interviews & More . . .*

  About the author

  About the book

  Read on

  Also by Jennifer Robson

  Praise

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  PART ONE

  What is our task? To make Britain a fit country for heroes to live in.

  —David Lloyd George (November 1918)

  Chapter 1

  Liverpool, England

  March 1919

  By nature she wasn’t a solitary person, and yet Charlotte couldn’t help but relish the peace and quiet that descended on the constituency office after her colleagues had gone home. Even the ward councilor herself, Miss Rathbone, had departed after extracting a promise that Charlotte not stay on too late. With nothing but the scratch of her pen and the faint thrum of traffic outside to distract her, she’d made terrific progress, first taking care of her filing, then some overdue correspondence. Now she was making a fair copy of the notes she’d taken at the Women’s Industrial Council meeting that afternoon. It was a dull task, but one that would only become less interesting the longer she let it sit.

  It had only been two months since her return to Liverpool, and already she was discouraged. As tedious and unpleasant as nursing had been at times, at least she’d been able to witness the difference her actions had made: wounds bandaged, burns salved, restless spirits comforted.

  She was good at her work here, for she’d been with Miss Rathbone for three years before the start of the war, and even after a nearly five-year break she’d fit right back in, picking up the reins of her duties as if she’d never set them down. That was the problem.

  Nothing had changed. Four years of limitless war, untold millions dead, millions more left wounded, bereaved, desolate. And for what? Britannia was blind and deaf to the suffering of her citizens—the men crippled by war wounds who were reduced to begging on street corners, the widows with no work because returning soldiers were given what few jobs there were, the children who went to bed hungry and were kept home from school so they might help their mothers with piecework. It was all so very, very discouraging.

  “Miss Brown?”

  The voice from the hall was so startling that Charlotte all but jumped out of her skin. She looked up and was relieved to see a solitary woman, her face somehow familiar, standing at the door.

  “I’m ever so sorry to bother you, miss, but there weren’t nobody out front . . .”

  “There’s no need to apologize, I assure you. I was only a bit surprised. Do come in and sit down.”

  Try as she might, Charlotte couldn’t recall the name of her guest. The woman looked poor but respectable, her coat shiny at the seams, her shoes polished though the soles were likely worn through, her face wearied by worry and need. She might have been any age from twenty-five to forty-five.

  “I feel as if we’ve met,” Charlotte began, “but I’m afraid I can’t place your name.”

  “Doris Miller. I met you the other week, when you was helping Miss Rathbone on her report.”

  “Yes, of course. I remember now. You spoke to the Pensions Committee about how hard it’s been for you. I believe you lost both your husband and your eldest son?”

  “Yes, miss. My husband was killed at Loos, and then Davey right at the end of it all, at Messines last year. He was . . . he was only just eighteen.”

  “Oh, Mrs. Miller. I am so very sorry for your loss.” The words were rote, but she meant them all the same. To the bottom of her heart she did. “I recall that you haven’t been able to find any steady work.”

  “No, ma’am. The jobs are all going to the men. Fair’s fair, I suppose.” Mrs. Miller looked down as she spoke, her eyes fixed on the sight of her toil-roughened, gloveless hands, clasped so tightly together the tips of her fingers had gone white.

  “May I ask, Mrs. Miller, if there’s any particular reason you came to see me tonight?”

  “I told myself, on the way over, that you’d understand. You was ever so nice when I talked at that meeting. You didn’t look down your nose like some others do.”

  “Thank you. I will do my utmost to help you, Mrs. Miller, if help is what you need. If that is why you’ve come to see me. But first you must tell me what is amiss.”

  “I’ve had a letter. From my uncle, my mother’s brother. He lives in Belfast. He was widowed last year. He’s asked if I might come and live with him, me and the children, and take care of him. He’s had a fall or two and he don’t want no stranger coming to help.”

  “Is he a man of means? Can he support all of you?”

  “He was a welder at the shipyards, and he and my aunt never had no children of their own. So I expect they was able to save a bit over the years.”

  “Do you think him a decent man? Will he treat you and the children well?”

  “He’s nice. Quiet. I think we’ll do well by him.”

  “Are you asking if I think you ought to go?”

  “It’s only that . . .” Mrs. Miller’s voice trailed off and she resumed her impassioned hand twisting. And then the words came out in a torrent, so softly Charlotte had to lean forward to hear them.

  “They’s said there’s summat wrong with my papers, that’s why my pension hasn’t come through, not for my husband, or for my son either. I’ve sent them everything I have, I even had a copy made of my marriage certificate, but they wrote me back and said it’s under review, or summat like that, and how am I to feed the children?

  “The steamship fare to Belfast for all of us is nigh on five pounds. I’ve tried but it’s too much. I sold all the furniture when things got bad a few months back. We’ve only the one bed left, the table and a few chairs, and they won’t bring enough, not hardly enough. They’s only fit for the rubbish. I sold my wedding ring last year. We’ve the clothes on our backs and nowt else. I daren’t ask my uncle for it, else he change his mind. Think twice, or worry we might make trouble for him. It’d only be a loan, until we’re settled and I can take in washing or summat else. And I thought . . . I hoped . . . I thought you or Miss Rathbone might know of somewhere I might go . . .”

  Charlotte knew exactly what she ought to do. By rights, she ought to send Mrs. Miller to the offices of the Personal Service Society, the charity that Miss Rathbone had recently founded for families in desperate straits. All she had to do was write down the address on a scrap of paper, pass it to the woman, and send her off.

  And yet she hesitated, for assistance from the PSS would involve a daunting amount of form filling and question asking. Mrs. Miller might end up receiving t
he aid she needed, but not without sacrificing what few scraps of self-respect she still possessed. Charlotte had seen it before, more times than she could count, and she was heartily sick of it.

  “You were right to come here,” she stated in the firmest voice she could conjure. “For I do know of a fund, a rather secret fund, you see, for war widows just like yourself, and I feel quite certain that Miss Rathbone would agree if I advance you the money to cover your fares to Belfast.”

  Mrs. Miller went pale, and for a moment Charlotte thought the woman was going to faint, but then she rallied and sat up even straighter than before.

  “God bless you, Miss Brown—”

  “Let me just fetch the ledger . . . yes, there it is.”

  Charlotte pulled a spare notebook from the shelves behind her, and opened it to a blank page. Using a pencil, she wrote down Mrs. Miller’s name, the amount of the loan, and the date; she would erase it later. Then she opened the bottommost drawer of her desk, dug into her bag, and extracted a five-pound note. It was a good thing she’d been to the bank that morning.

  “Do you have a handbag, Mrs. Miller? Or would you like an envelope?”

  “Can I have an envelope?”

  “Of course. Here is the money, and in return I shall ask for only one thing. When you are settled, please find a way to let me know how you are getting on. Your eldest daughter is still in school, is she not?”

  “Yes, miss. I’d never of took her out of school.”

  “Then she will certainly be able to write out a short letter and send it to me here. Just so I know that you are all safe and sound.”

  Charlotte tore a page from the notebook and wrote her name and the address of the constituency office upon it. “Here is my direction. I am so pleased you came to me today, Mrs. Miller. Miss Rathbone will be delighted to know we were able to help such a deserving family.”

  “God bless you, Miss Brown, and Miss Rathbone, too. I’ll never forget how good you’ve been to me and my children.”

  “You’re very kind. Now, tell me: how are you going to get home?”

  “I’ll walk, same as I did to get here. Shouldn’t take more’n an hour to get back.”

  Charlotte bent again to the open drawer and fished tuppence out of her purse. “If I give this to you, will you promise to take the tram home tonight?”

  “I couldn’t, honestly I couldn’t.”

  “I insist. Now off you go to your children, and I wish you a very happy journey to Belfast.”

  After seeing Mrs. Miller out the door, Charlotte returned to her desk and gathered her things; she’d finish her notes in the morning. As she locked up and started off down the street, she was buoyed along by a rare sense of elation, her spirits lighter and brighter than they’d been for months. She’s wasn’t fool enough to think that five pounds could solve the world’s problems, or even make a discernible dent in them, but they would ensure a decent future for Mrs. Miller and her five surviving children.

  Tomorrow she’d go to the bank and withdraw three pounds, enough to cover her room and board for the month; fortunately she had enough in reserve to tide her over until she was paid again. A few weeks without a daily newspaper or any new books wouldn’t hurt her, and it would serve as a useful reminder of how well off she was in comparison to most. She had enough to eat, she had a warm bed to sleep in, and she had useful work that paid her well.

  And if, alone in her narrow bed at night, so forlorn she could almost hear her soul shriveling away, she were to wonder and worry why there wasn’t more to life . . . well, that was human nature, wasn’t it? To want the impossible, though the sum of her experiences proved that happiness was rare, elusive, and above all, ephemeral.

  Chapter 2

  Charlotte walked north, her route taking her along the grand avenue that divided Princes Avenue from Princes Park. Swaths of snowdrops had emerged from the winter-dead grass of the boulevard, their blooms gleaming brightly in the gathering twilight. Once, the first flowers of spring had seemed like heaven-sent heralds of new seasons and new life. But that had been a lifetime ago, before the world had changed. Before she had changed.

  She hadn’t a very long commute from her lodgings to Miss Rathbone’s office at the foot of Granby Street, scarcely half a mile, and on an evening like this it made for a perfectly pleasant walk. Some of the other women at work had bicycles, which they rode fearlessly through the city traffic, but Charlotte preferred to walk. Bicycles weren’t cheap, besides, and were next to useless on rainy and cold days. All the same, she rather wished she’d learned how to ride one when she was still young. Not that being thirty-three made her ancient, but she was well past the age when she could frolic about like a schoolgirl.

  She crossed Upper Parliament Street and continued north. Night was nearly upon her, the birds gone silent, the streetlights flickering to life. Almost home, and for a change she wasn’t so late that the Misses Macleod would be worrying about her.

  Miss Rathbone had sent her to the elderly sisters when she had first arrived in Liverpool, back in the summer of 1911. They were spinsters, she’d told Charlotte, and devoted to each other. No longer able to manage on their own, they’d badly needed help, but the cost of keeping a servant was beyond their modest means. So Charlotte would board with them, keep an eye on the old ladies, and her rent would cover the wages of a live-in maid-of-all-work.

  When Charlotte had left for London in the autumn of 1914, Rosie Murdoch, a nurse at the Red Cross Hospital in Fazakerley, had taken over her room. Nearly five years later, Rosie was still in residence, and had been joined by two additional boarders, Norma and Meg. With the upstairs full, Charlotte had been installed in the dining room upon her return. It wasn’t an ideal solution, for they all had to cram around the kitchen table for supper, and the other women’s comings and goings sometimes made it difficult for her to sleep. Norma in particular was a night owl, not returning until the wee hours on the three evenings a week she went out dancing, and occasionally, rather the worse for wear, she needed to be helped up the stairs and into bed.

  Altogether the house was fairly bursting at the seams, but the other boarders were a far more lighthearted group than Charlotte’s earnest colleagues at the constituency office, their amusing and often boisterous dinner-table conversation just the sort of leavening she needed to elevate her spirits, or at least distract them, at the end of a long day. The lone exception was Meg, widowed during the war, whose sadness enveloped her like a cloud of too-strong perfume. Charlotte had tried, gently, to befriend the widow, but so far with little success.

  Quickening her pace, she reached Huskisson Street just as the clock on St. Luke’s Church rang six o’clock. She came to number 47 and let herself in, but rather than unlace her boots straightaway she lingered in the front hall and let the comforts of home seep into her bones. The house smelled of beeswax polish and Lifebuoy soap, fresh-baked bread and fried onions; standing there, she suddenly felt so tired that she wanted nothing more than to eat her supper and crawl into bed.

  Instead she unlaced her boots, took off her coat and hat and gloves, tidied everything away in her room, and went down the back stairs to the kitchen, where everyone else was in the middle of supper. She didn’t have to look at the table to know what was on the menu, for it was a Wednesday, and Wednesdays meant bubble and squeak, made from vegetables left over from Tuesday’s supper, and served with such scraps as remained from Sunday’s roast—this week it had been mutton—to round it out.

  Charlotte squeezed into her place at the table and waited for Janie, the maid-of-all-work, to dole out her portion of supper.

  “How was your day?” asked Miss Margaret.

  “Quite good, thank you. How is everyone else? How is that poor lance corporal doing, Rosie?”

  “He rallied last night. Looks like the worst of the infection is behind him. Now we only have to keep an eye on his burns, make sure none of them go septic—”

  “Rosie, dear, you know how I feel about your hospital talk at
the table,” Miss Mary interjected mildly. “You’ll give us all indigestion.”

  “Sorry. Will bend your ear later.” Although Charlotte had left nursing behind, likely for good, she never minded listening to Rosie talk about work.

  “How was your day, Meg?” Charlotte asked. “Was the shop busy?”

  “I’m afraid not. Scarcely five customers all day. But Mr. Timmins says things will pick up as Easter draws near.” Meg never once looked up from her supper, her answer delivered without inflection or any discernible emotion. It had been like this at every meal since Charlotte’s return to Liverpool, but she could hardly fault the poor woman. Sometimes the worst wounds of all were invisible to the naked eye.

  Charlotte turned to the girl sitting at her right. Not yet twenty, Norma had an abundance of youthful energy and optimism that could be grating to the nerves, especially at the end of a long day. But she was also a reliable source of entertainment at the table, especially when conversation became bogged down. “How about you, Norma? How were things at the office?”

  “Well, let me tell you—it was nifty. A brick of the dreamiest doughboys you can imagine came in. They were sending a crate of something-or-other home to America.”

  “Whatever for?” asked Rosie, not sounding especially interested.

  “They’re only allowed to take their kit bag home on the troop ships. If they have any extra keepsakes from France—”

  “Like what? A stuffed rat? A roll of barbed wire?”

  “Don’t be such a wet blanket, Rosie. Honestly.”

  “Go on,” Charlotte pressed. “The Americans came in and were shipping something home . . . ?”

  “And they said I was so nice, and such a pretty girl—such a doll, they kept saying—that they had something for me. And here it is!” With a flourish, she pulled a small paper bag from beneath her chair and emptied its contents onto the cluttered table. “Can you believe it?”

  It was a banana. One perfectly ripe banana, its skin scattered with just the right amount of freckles, its heady fragrance half forgotten yet instantly familiar. Neither Charlotte nor anyone else in the room had seen one since the summer of 1914.