The Queen Victoria Hospital in Welby was the largest building Violet had ever approached. Built around a courtyard along the lines of a medieval castle, with arched windows and castellated ramparts, it stood back from a busy thoroughfare criss-crossed by tramlines and blocked by buses that lurched out from pavements to join the ranks of slow-moving black cars. Horns hooted, draymen in charge of wooden carts drove heavy-footed horses down narrow side streets and ambulances fought through traffic to deliver patients to the wide hospital door.
Bracing herself to enter, she found a large, well-lit hallway leading to a daunting maze of corridors peopled by porters pushing trolleys and what looked like groups of bewildered relatives trying to follow signs to wards identified only by letters – Ward A, Ward B, and so on, through to the letter H. She walked uncertainly past an empty office furnished with metal filing cabinets and banks of black typewriters towards the open window of a booth where a dour-looking woman sat at a high desk.
‘Please could you help me?’ she began. ‘I’m looking for a patient here by the name of Donald Wheeler.’
‘Ward?’ the woman barked without looking up from the ledger she was scribbling in.
‘I don’t know. He was brought in with pneumonia.’
The clerk sighed and began to flick through the pages of her ledger. ‘Date of admission?’
‘I don’t know that either.’
‘Address? Date of birth? Next of kin?’
‘Me – I’m his niece.’ Violet pounced on the one question she could readily answer.
‘W-H-E-E-L-E-R.’ Spelling out the name, the woman searched then finally stabbed her pencil onto the page. ‘Admitted on the twenty-ninth of September. Ward C.’
Thanking her, Violet hurried down the corridor, its green walls and russet-coloured linoleum floor stretching on before her, the hushed atmosphere and disinfected smell designed to cow even the boldest of visitors. She kept her head down to avoid exchanging glances with the people she met along the way – an old lady in a wheelchair with wispy white hair trailing over her shoulders, a young lad with a bandaged head and sallow complexion – until she came to the ward she was looking for.
‘Yes?’ The nurse stationed at a desk inside the swing-doors at least looked up when Violet entered.
‘I’ve come to visit Donald Wheeler.’
‘Are you a relative?’
‘He’s my uncle.’
The nurse pointed to a chair. ‘Wait there.’
She disappeared through another set of doors and didn’t return. Violet was kept in suspense, watching the hands of the clock above the nurse’s desk jerk forward. Visitors came and went, and occasionally a nurse in starched cap and apron, but not the one she’d first spoken to.
At last she stood up and approached a porter – a heavily built man in a brown cotton coat with a receding hairline and an old scar stretching from his eye to the corner of his mouth. ‘Excuse me. I’m waiting to see my uncle. I asked a nurse about him but she hasn’t got back to me.’
The porter tutted. ‘Was she tall with a snooty air? That’s Edith. You’ll wait forever for her if you’re not careful. What’s your uncle’s name, love?’
Listening to Violet’s answer, he went behind the desk and was calling out that her Uncle Donald was in bed number eleven when the tardy nurse returned and caught sight of Violet sitting where she’d left her.
‘Are you still here?’ she said sharply. ‘I told your uncle you were here. His answer was that he didn’t want to see anybody.’
Violet heaved a sigh. The long wait had deflated her and she was stung afresh by this latest rejection. Ah well, she’d made the last-ditch attempt at putting right the wrongs of the past, but she’d failed and that was that, it seemed.
Then out of the blue came a mental picture of Aunty Winnie in a shaft of sunlight in the corridor, standing full-square with arms folded, an unshakeable presence. Don’t take no for an answer was the clear message in the loving, down-to-earth voice that Violet remembered so well.
‘The poor lass came all this way,’ the porter pointed out to the sharp-tongued nurse. ‘Why not try again – see if he’s changed his mind?’
Edith frowned but then relented. She disappeared again. There was another, shorter wait until she came back. ‘Your uncle says you can go in after all,’ she reported. ‘But if I were you, I wouldn’t get my hopes up.’
Duly prepared, Violet thanked the porter for his help and entered the ward with mixed feelings. The last time she’d seen Uncle Donald, on the doorstep of Jubilee, she’d felt sure their paths would never cross again. Looking back to that moment, she realized she hadn’t even been sorry. Part of the reason was that she now had people who cared for her – Ida, Muriel, Evie, Stan, to name but a few, and, of course, Eddie above all. She didn’t have to rely on Donald any more. But if the vicar was to be believed, he was nearing the end here in this hospital bed.
Once more Violet imagined what Aunty Winnie would have said – that it would be cruel to leave Donald all on his own and that their little family had stuck together through thick and thin.
So Violet walked between rows of iron bedsteads, eyes straight ahead out of respect for the sick people lying there, until she came to the bay marked 11. The shape under the green blanket was skeletal, the head on the pillow skull-like. Only the dark, sunken eyes moved – glittering in the pale face, papery skin drawn tight over the cheekbones, lips dry, breath loud and rasping. Pity and sadness drew her close to his bedside.
‘Well?’ Donald said when he saw her.
Violet swallowed her distress and tried to speak normally. ‘Well, how are you?’
His eyes flickered shut. ‘How do I look? I told them to let me get on with it – to leave me there and let me die, but they carted me in here instead.’
‘Who’s “they”, Uncle Donald?’
‘The Public Assistance busybodies. They found me collapsed on their doorstep.’ Talking seemed hard. Words came in short snatches, in between painful attempts to drag air into his rattling lungs. ‘Who told you I was here, anyway?’
‘The vicar in Hadley. I came as soon as I heard. I’m sorry to see you in this fix, Uncle Donald, I really am.’
‘I’m not – I’m glad. I’m on my way out and it’s a blessing.’
Gradually, as she pulled a chair close to the bed, Violet once more mastered her feelings and came to terms with what she saw. ‘But is there anything you need?’ she asked gently.
‘Like what?’
‘The prayer book that I kept for you, for a start?’
‘If you want,’ he conceded after a long silence. ‘It belonged to Joe. But fetch it anyway.’
‘Tomorrow,’ she promised. As if she could still hear the clock above the nurse’s desk ticking and measuring out the short time that her uncle had left, she went to the heart of the matter. ‘Uncle Donald … I’ve worked things out at last.’
‘What things?’ A flash of the old suspicion appeared in his glittering eyes.
‘Why you were so dead set against me and Stan. It was because his father was my father too.’
‘Douglas Tankard.’ The dying man filled two simple words with a lifetime of bitterness. ‘He was a married man, but that didn’t stop him.’
‘It’s true, then?’
For a long time Donald struggled for air but he held Violet’s gaze. ‘Florence Shaw had got hitched to my brother but that didn’t stop her either. The two of them were as bad as one another.’
‘From what I can gather, Joe had already gone off to the Front?’
‘He answered the call straight off, in late 1914. I went to the town hall and signed up with him.’ There was pride in this and it set the memories flowing more freely. ‘It’s true Joe wasn’t as steady as me when we were growing up, but he had a decent heart, not like Tankard. No one had a good word to say about him, not once they got wind of the way he treated Gladys Sowden and their little lad.’
Violet leaned forward. ‘Mightn’t there have been two sides to the story – especially if Joe wasn’t a good husband either?’
‘No. Right is right and wrong is wrong. Your mother broke a holy commandment when she went with him. Winnie suspected it and by promising not to tell a living soul she managed to winkle the truth out of her. Florence admitted that Tankard had got his feet under the table by Christmas and nine months later you were the result.’
So then, there was no room for doubt. The jigsaw of Violet’s life, first broken apart by her discovery of the bracelet, was pieced together again to form a new picture, a new identity. ‘What about Gladys and Stan?’ she asked shakily.
‘Winnie kept her word so they never found out. Anyhow, with another baby on the way, and out of wedlock this time, Tankard saw he was in a tight spot so in the spring of 1915 he upped and enlisted as well. He was never seen or heard of again.’
Listening to the halting words, Violet began truly to see what it must have cost Donald to agree to adopt her after he’d returned from the trenches. His brother and Florence – betrayed and betrayer – were both dead. There was an illegitimate child and every reason in the world to have nothing to do with her. Yet, out of love for Winnie, Donald had given in to her desire to nurture the baby. ‘I see,’ she said slowly, laying a hand on the cool bed cover.
‘You see some of it …’ A raw cough rattled in Donald’s throat and panicked Violet into calling for the tall nurse who came with more pillows to prop him up.
‘He needs to rest.’ Edith spoke to Violet more kindly than before, waiting at the bedside for her to leave.
‘… but not all,’ Donald carried on with difficulty, as if he hadn’t been cut off.
Violet felt a shudder of apprehension. ‘What else should I know?’
There was a grim silence while he dredged through ancient events. ‘No last letter home, no personal effects – nothing. And there was never any telegram.’
‘To say Tankard had been killed?’
‘He didn’t come home to Gladys and Stan – that’s plain. But no – Gladys didn’t get proper word of what happened to him in France.’ Donald coughed again but as the nurse moved in to help, he pushed her away, seized Violet’s hand and pulled her close. ‘No telegram,’ he repeated with an urgency that shocked her.
‘Please,’ the nurse murmured to Violet as she came between them. ‘It’s time to leave.’
‘I have to go now, Uncle Donald.’
‘Joe’s prayer book,’ he reminded her amidst a fit of violent coughing, falling back against the pillows.
‘I’ll bring it tomorrow,’ Violet promised. She was glad that she’d come, if ‘glad’ was the right word. It showed Uncle Donald that she cared and that she’d won the chance to do this one last thing for him.
‘Aye, do,’ he gasped, letting his outstretched hand fall onto his chest.
‘Goodnight, then,’ she said softly.
‘Aye and God bless,’ he sighed, as if begging and not bestowing.
Shaken to her core, Violet backed away from the bed and turned to walk out of the ward, down the long green corridor, with Uncle Donald’s pitiable gaze etched in her memory.
A sober mood hung over Violet during a visit from Eddie later that evening. They sat together over a cup of tea in Jubilee’s small kitchen, Violet glad of Eddie’s company while she thought out her next move.
‘In my heart I can’t help but believe that Douglas Tankard loved my mother, despite what Uncle Donald said.’
‘Because of the bracelet?’ Eddie quickly picked up her train of thought and saw how this might help Violet to feel better.
‘Yes. In the note he calls her his dearest Flo. He asks her to keep the bracelet for his sake. That shows he did love her, doesn’t it?’
‘Let’s hope so.’ There was a note of caution mixed in with gentleness in Eddie’s voice. ‘We’ll probably never know for certain.’
Weary from the day’s events, Violet gripped his hands more tightly across the table. She felt comforted by everyday things – the brown teapot and mismatched cups and saucers on the deal table, the flecks of white paint on Eddie’s cheek. ‘What if we could?’ she ventured.
‘Could what?’
‘Find out for certain that what Douglas wrote in the note came from the heart. “Lifelong affection” – that says something about him, surely?’ Shaking off her weariness, Violet’s mind raced on. ‘He never came back from France – we already knew that. But Uncle Donald told me there was a mystery about what actually happened to him out there.’
‘That went on a lot,’ Eddie cautioned. ‘Sometimes a whole regiment was blown to smithereens and afterwards they couldn’t put names to them.’ Every schoolchild learned about the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Westminster Abbey and though men who had survived the trenches rarely talked about their experiences in the Great War, it was an accepted fact that they’d been offered up as cannon fodder, foot soldiers following orders to go over the top and slog it out over a few yards of muddy ground – lions led by donkeys.
‘So what happened afterwards?’ Violet wondered. ‘If Gladys didn’t learn for certain that Douglas had been killed and there was never any death certificate, what would she do next?’
‘I expect she’d have to wait a certain while and see. After that they’d decide he’d been killed in action and sort out a widow’s pension for her – that kind of thing.’
Violet freed her hands and stood up in sudden agitation. ‘And there’d be a record of that, surely?’
‘Somewhere.’ Eddie was deliberately vague. ‘But do you really want to go down that path? What if you end up banging your head against another brick wall?’
‘I’m not saying I will try to find out for definite.’ Violet reined herself back and reminded herself of the more pressing situation. ‘For the time being I have to concentrate on Uncle Donald. I’ll go upstairs this minute and dig out Joe’s prayer book. I promised to take it in tomorrow and I can’t let him down.’
A male customer was a rarity in Jubilee, so Violet and Ida were surprised next morning to see Frank Bielby, the chapel preacher, come in through the door.
‘Good morning, how can I help you?’ Ida’s greeting was wary as she took in the sturdy brogues, tweed suit and bald head.
The minister averted his gaze from the feminine frippery on display. ‘Good morning, Miss Thomson. And Violet, how are you?’
‘I’m all right, thank you.’
Pleasantries exchanged, there was an awkward pause during which Bielby shuffled and cleared his throat, Ida sorted through the morning’s post and Violet waited for him to state his business.
‘I suppose you’re wondering why I’m here,’ he said at last, his eyes fixed on Violet in a way that made her nervous. ‘I’m afraid it’s because I’ve been the recipient of bad news.’
‘About Uncle Donald.’ Violet responded quickly in a quiet, flat voice that held no surprise.
Frank Bielby nodded then went on in measured tones. ‘Donald succumbed to pneumonia during the night. The hospital chaplain, who, as you know, is also the Church of England vicar in Hadley, saw fit to inform me since he knows your uncle’s past connection with Chapel Street. I promised I would pass on the bad tidings to you, his next of kin, at the first opportunity. I’m sorry, my dear – it’s a sad end.’
Violet’s first, irrational reaction was to regret that she had failed to take in Joe’s prayer book in time. ‘I broke my promise,’ she murmured tearfully.
Seeing her sway and turn pale, Ida rushed to fetch a chair from the kitchen. ‘Here, love – sit down. Are you all right?’
As a man who prided himself on his self-control, Bielby continued to concentrate on practical matters. ‘Of course, if you’d like to hold the funeral here on Chapel Street, I’d be more than happy to lead the service. Mr Turner will be able to put the necessary arrangements in place.’
‘Thank you, Mr Bielby.’ Speaking over him, Ida shook his hand and led him to the door. ‘We’re very much obliged. Once Violet has had a little time to get over the shock, we’ll be in touch.’
Violet was only dimly aware that the bell had rung and the door had closed. First Aunty Winnie, now Uncle Donald. I’m adrift, she thought. Lost at sea.
‘Don’t bother your head with the funeral details.’ Ida crouched at Violet’s side. ‘There’ll be time for that later.’
‘I think he had regrets,’ Violet said faintly.
‘Who – Bielby?’
‘No, Uncle Donald. About the way he treated me.’
‘There, there,’ said Ida, stroking Violet’s arm.
‘He didn’t come right out and say sorry, but I know he was.’
‘Hush, Violet. Don’t cry.’
‘He told me “God bless”. Those were his last words, just like Aunty Winnie’s. You should have seen him, Ida, he was skin and bone.’
‘Hush.’
‘He was lying there and he gave me the story, chapter and verse – how Douglas Tankard was Stan’s father and mine too, which is what we suspected. But I learned something new.’
Violet’s distress brought tears to Ida’s eyes. She held her hand tight.
‘They couldn’t say for sure that Douglas … my father … died in France. That’s what Uncle Donald said – that there was no death certificate.’
‘Hush. Don’t go on.’ Wanting to stem the flow of Violet’s distress, Ida helped her to her feet. ‘Can you manage? Come upstairs and tell Muriel all about it,’ she murmured. ‘We’ll sort out the rest later.’