Patricia Roy was doing what she thought any good grandmother should do—giving her daughter written updates on her baby girl—but, the excitement of each discovery, every new word and amusing anecdote increased Eleanor’s doubt over remaining in London.
‘Listen to this,’ she said, reading the letter aloud to Cecily. ‘“Abigail said ‘cat’ and now follows Cocoa everywhere. Yesterday she crawled along to the end of the hallway and terrified us all until we found her hiding behind the curtains.”’ Eleanor smiled at the thought of Abigail chasing the family cat, until she grew worried that she might have fallen down the stairs or plunged off the balcony.
‘What else does she say?’ Cecily asked, reclining on the sofa while glancing at the day’s edition of The London Gazette.
‘Mother says that Abigail now likes playing peekaboo as much as exploring the garden, and there’s a list here of foods she’s tried, and the bedtime stories Mother has read her, including Peter Pan…’ And then Eleanor burst into tears.
‘Oh, come on, Ellie,’ Cecily said as she put an arm around her. ‘You’ve got to cheer up. You’ve been back three months. You can’t carry on being so miserable. I’ve got half-dead patients who are happier than you!’
‘I’m sorry, it’s just…’
‘What?’
‘I miss her so much.’
‘Of course you do, just the same as other mothers, wives, sisters, all miss their loved ones.’
Cecily was right, but Eleanor didn’t feel any better. There was still no word from the War Office about Jack, and it was the not knowing where he was and how he was that made things so unbearable for her—the grief of missing him and now Abigail too.
She brushed tears from her eyes and sniffed. ‘Cecily,’ she said, ‘will you be honest with me?’
‘About what?’
‘You promise to tell me what you really think?’
‘Of course I will. Haven’t I always…?’
‘Do you think I should stop looking for Jack and go home?’
Cecily sat down on the sofa opposite. ‘Look…I think you should do what is best for Abigail. And if that’s having you here to look for her father, then no.’
That wasn’t what Eleanor had expected to hear: was Cecily suggesting that their mother was doing as good a job as she, Eleanor, could?
‘But that isn’t what you told me before…’
‘I know but Mother is doing a good job of taking care of Abigail.’
‘So you don’t think that a child needs their mother?’
‘Ordinarily speaking…but, as you know, these aren’t ordinary times. You’re needed by lots of people, Ellie—by the Ministry, by the committee, and, I expect, by the kids who painted these pictures.’ She glanced at the orphans’ paintings that Eleanor still displayed on their living-room wall.
There was Isaac’s picture of his dad’s green motorcycle with its large wonky wheels, right beside a painting of a large black-and-white dog. Then, underneath, Daisy’s family garden bloomed as it had before they dug the shelter, blue skies studded with plump white clouds.
‘And what about you,’ Eleanor said, ‘do you still need me?’
‘No,’ Cecily replied. ‘I’m okay now. But I did.’
‘So you’re not going to tell me what to do?’
‘No, I’m not. Why don’t you sleep on it?’
‘Because the situation won’t be any different tomorrow,’ Eleanor snapped. ‘I’ll still be here, Abigail will still be without her mother, and Jack will still be missing.’
Cecily stood up and arched her back. ‘You know what this calls for,’ she said matter-of-factly, ‘a cup of tea and some custard creams!’
Eleanor looked at her, speechless. Cecily obviously decided she needed to try harder: she started to sing ‘Don’t Sit Under The Apple Tree’ as she ran the tap and put the kettle on.
As she delivered the last line, Cecily sat on the back of the sofa, spun her legs over and onto the seat, and offered the open tin of biscuits to her sister. Eleanor couldn’t help but laugh; Cecily had a truly terrible voice but she supposed the patients didn’t mind it, and she appreciated the fact that her sister was trying to cheer her up.
‘You’ve been watching too many musicals!’ she said, taking a biscuit. ‘And where have you been getting custard creams from, anyway? When you’re not entertaining the troops,’ she added with a smile.
‘Mother’s contraband: she wouldn’t ever let Father know but she’s had rather a good scheme going. She’s been sending these down for months.’
‘Really?’
‘Of course not!’ Cecily said, relenting. ‘Can you really imagine Mother doing that?’
‘No, not really.’
‘They’re from Mrs Rowley at the WVS—now, there’s a group of women who can get anything done if they set their minds to it…maybe we should get them to find Jack?’
‘Yes, that’s an idea,’ Eleanor said, warming a little. ‘Or we could ask Mother. Black market no, but I do believe that she would make rather a good spy: she’s discreet, and she knows an awful lot about not very much, and she knows a lot of people.’
‘And what about you then, Ellie,’ said Cecily, ‘with all your travelling and painting—how do we know it’s not a cover for something much more sinister?’
‘It’s not—I just want to help.’
Her mood had turned serious again, and she got up from the table and walked over to the window, looking out at the encroaching night. She felt less certain of herself than at any time in her life: she had abandoned her precious baby, had let her parents down, and had deceived the institution that she had been so proud to represent.
She thought of a passage by Dame Laura Knight that she had read in the introduction to Women:
After what she has done in this titanic struggle, will she not guard what she has gained, and to Man’s effort add her own? If she can do what she has done in war, what may she not do in peace?
She had understood more than most how important the war artist’s role was. Becoming one had been all that she had hoped for over the past three years, but that had changed.
Her figure was a silhouette against the fading sun, her voice cracking.
‘I can’t help Jack, but I can help Abigail.’