Eve Hardy entered her nursing career in London. She was obliged to live in nurses’ quarters, but had a room in Connie’s small flat where she kept some of her things and to which she could flee to sleep like a log on her days off. When nothing had been heard of David for almost two years, she became convinced that he was not only missing, but was dead.
There were moments when she wanted desperately to go to talk to the Greenaways, but thought that they would not like to hear about their son’s involvement with one of the Hardy family or, even if they did not mind, would probably not have much to say to her. She started entertaining young men in Connie’s flat, cooking for them, sewing on buttons, and then wrapping them around with her arms and legs.
Connie would come home and be unsurprised to find a Canadian greatcoat on the hallstand, or a young man with frizzy hair and a black torso washing at the handbasin, or a supply of luxuries from the American PX or the whiff of Gauloise or Camels about.
Once, she had said, intending lightheartedness, ‘God’s buns, Eve! You’re as dissolute as your father was.’
And Eve, stiff and tense, her eyes blazing, had gone white and said fiercely, ‘Don’t you ever, ever, say that I am like him. He’s a cruel, self-centred and dishonest bastard.’
Connie was taken aback by the passion in the attack: she had never supposed that Freddy’s behaviour had so affected Eve. When she had broken it to her daughter that she was leaving home, Eve had appeared quite sanguine: ‘Oh Ma, I’m so sorry for you, because I know how you hate messiness,’ although she never called her Ma or Mother from then on. Apart from her tendency to be secretive, it had seemed to Connie that Eve sailed through life untroubled and unperturbed, never hankering, but content with what she had. Nanny Bryce’s little pet.
Whenever Connie thought of her daughter, she had a sketchy mental picture of a pink, plump eighteen-year-old in a dirndl skirt and a straw hat on pale curls, walking at the slow pace of her pekinese dog. Suddenly she was confronted by this stranger, a strong, blonde woman in grey and red uniform with her hair scooped into a large knot, wreathed in tobacco smoke, knowingness and confidence.
‘I… My dear child… I meant nothing. Take no notice, I’m not with it half the time. My work, you know… but that’s no excuse. I really am frightfully sorry about how you feel. I had no idea – none.’
‘It doesn’t matter now. Forget it, forget it, forget it.’
As far as Eve could tell, Connie herself seemed to be content with complete celibacy, for in the flat there was never any sign of men except for those Eve brought there. Connie seemed to be fulfilled, living only to receive her instructions to collect or deliver an aircraft.
Sometimes she was away for days, returning pale-faced, burning-eyed and exhilarated. When Eve saw her like this, she was reminded of some of the ever increasing number of outpatients she encountered who were brought in in a drugged stupor after a ship from the Far East had docked. But Connie did not take even gin these days – she did not need it. Nothing could surpass the sensations she achieved from her secret and dangerous missions which often took her to the other side of the English Channel.
Late in 1943, when she was nearing the end of the first part of her training, Eve was called into Matron’s office and told that if she would like to volunteer, then she could have the rare opportunity of training as an auxiliary in the nursing of psychiatric patients. Several small hospitals were being opened in suitable locations away from large centres of population. These training hospitals were looking for girls of a certain intelligence and calm disposition.
‘Only suitable candidates are being selected, Hardy, level-headedness and attitude being of prime importance. Psychotherapeutics!’ She fired the word at Eve, who waited for her superior to continue. ‘Have you heard of it?’
‘Treatment of madness?’
‘Of psychiatric illness, yes. It is a fairly new and special branch of medicine. Many have ill-informed knowledge of its value. I value it highly. There will be a great need for trained personnel when men are released from captivity. In the last war, many men were shot as traitors or cowards for presenting psychiatric symptoms. We have come far since then.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘You are the right type. I have put your name forward as a volunteer for training. I’m sure that you will not let me down.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘Good. There are three new training centres. I have volunteered you for one intending to specialize in the effects of long-term incarceration and the effects of extreme physical abuse.’
Eve pulled her brows together questioningly.
‘Torture, and solitary confinement, Hardy. Our enemies are evil in the extreme. The personal rewards in terms of promotion will come swiftly to those willing to put a year’s training into a month. The wards must be fully ready to receive patients within six months.’
‘Ma’am?’
‘Ask ahead.’
‘Does that mean that they are expecting to be bringing back POWs in six months?’
‘I have no idea, but you may draw as many conclusions as I.’
‘May I ask where and when I begin training?’
‘As soon as your transfer and travel documents arrive. As for where… the Oaklands Centre – I’m told that Lord Palmerston once owned it – located in a place called Markham.’ She smiled a rare and lovely smile. ‘I believe you know it.’
Oh Lord! She thinks she’s done me a favour.
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘Always nice to have a spell close to home.’
Connie said, ‘Turning Oaklands into a nuthouse, Eve? I am sure that it must be quite unsuitable. Of course you will refuse the posting.’
‘Of course I shall not refuse. Have you ever refused an order? And it’s not a nuthouse. And for goodness sake, Connie, you aren’t to mention what sort of nursing home it is because you aren’t supposed to know.’
‘Oh don’t worry on that score. I know no one who is likely to be the slightest bit interested in an insane asylum in the wilds of Hampshire. Poor Oaklands, though. What a shame, they’ll probably destroy all the lovely friezes and use the orangery for something dreadful.’
‘Depressed patients aren’t likely to destroy friezes.’
‘But Oaklands! It does seem so… inappropriate.’
‘Inappropriate! For God’s sake, Connie. To what better use can an uninhabited country house be put? It’s not as though they won’t have a roof over their poor heads – they have at least three mansions, a sea-front house in Southsea and a London flat.’
‘It is still their home, even though it has been visited by kings and princes.’
‘And Nazis – Ribbentrop visited in thirty-six. No worse psychotic illness than Fascism. Oaklands is very appropriate, if you ask me.’
But Connie was not really seriously perturbed about the fate of Markham’s great estate; she was preparing to travel to an isolated aerodrome from where she guessed she would be flying a small plane which she would land in a field the other side of the Channel. In any case, Markham was in her past. She had cleansed herself of Freddy and, as far as she was concerned, he could bang himself to death. But she had made up her mind that she would never divorce him.
‘Once the war is over it won’t matter, Connie. All the estates will come under common ownership.’
‘Not you too, Eve? Everybody you meet these days is a damned Red. I can’t stand them, they’re all so damned fair.’
‘Good. And I should have thought you’d had enough of the other sort to last you a lifetime.’
Connie shrugged. ‘He is opportunist, not capitalist.’
‘Is there a difference?’
‘Eve! I suppose the next thing you will do is to join some union.’
‘I already have.’
‘Don’t tell me, I don’t want to hear. It’s everywhere, like some damn disease. It is one thing I agreed with your father about; he would allow none of that in his factory. Can you imagine that great Welsh Bevan and his wife running this country? Too ridiculous for words. The country would never be the same again.’
‘Well good for it!’
Connie, uncharacteristically ramming her change of clothes into a grip, altered her tone. ‘Who cares anyway? Live for the day. Listen, darling, I’m off… shan’t be back for a few days. Take care.’ She brushed Eve’s cheek with her lips. ‘I dare say you sometimes wonder… well… I did want you, you know… you’re the one thing that’s been worth while.’ She zipped the bag. ‘And look, it’s your affair, but these men… they aren’t going to take the place of the man who has gone, you know. Nobody can. You really do have to put it behind you and start again.’
She kept flicking short, shy looks at Eve, then suddenly she took her daughter’s hands and drew her to her slim, girlish embrace. ‘Darling girl, I’m not much to go on, except as a lesson on not wasting the best part of your life hanging on to something in the past long after it is dead.’ And then she was briskly gone.
Until then, nothing, even David Greenaway being posted Missing, had pierced Eve’s placid armour quite so much as that unique moment of real contact with her mother.