My first glimpse of Alicia was as she waited in the office reception while her husband dealt with some paperwork. The first thing I noticed was the hat, it was exceptional, but underneath its wide brim she seemed very young and vulnerable. Her clothes were, to my provincial eye, stylish and fashionable though she was sitting awkwardly and obviously pregnant. She was sitting completely still, her long shapely legs tucked under the chair, her hands resting lightly on an ivory handled walking stick.
Arnold was re-writing his will following his unanticipated marriage. Under normal circumstances everything would be left to the wife and any issue of the marriage, but Arnold made his will specifically to exclude Alicia. In the event of his death she was to have only a small allowance, any capital he may have was to be used in a trust fund for the benefit of any of his children, legitimate or illegitimate. “Isn’t it a bit of an unusual arrangement?” I dared to ask but probably deserved his uncompromising reply. “None of your damned business.”
He was frequently rude to me. He had, after all, been my superior, an Associate Partner, before the war.
As they were leaving I heard Major Fischer asking Alicia if she was looking forward to setting up her new home and asking her if she had found a house yet. She had had no chance to answer before her husband interrupted, saying that she would live with his parents, at least while the war was on. She would need the company and his mother would be a support during the pregnancy.
In the following weeks I visited the Donaldson household several times, accompanying Major Fischer, who was attending to George Donaldson’s personal affairs, and there I saw more of Alicia. It was obvious, even on just a few minutes’ acquaintance, that she was not happy. She would come into the room that served as the study with the tea tray and pour three small cups, just as if she were the maid, and leave without catching anyone’s eye and without saying a word.
She and Arnold had evidently anticipated the wedding ceremony – a circumstance that Ellen Donaldson seemed to take great delight in pointing out on a number of occasions.
“So large it must be twins. Them only five months wed.” she would confide in a stage whisper – ensuring that Alicia would hear.
“I kept my figure for much longer when I was carrying my dear Arnold. Why, at five months you hardly could tell I was carrying!”
But even to my bachelor eyes it was obvious she was further gone than that.
She must have been very unhappy and very lonely as well as being in pain and, no doubt, frightened by all her mother-in-law’s tales of the birth process. How much pain she felt as a result of the accident I can only guess. The increasing weight of the child must have caused great problems for a damaged back and she still had to use a stick for anything but the shortest of journeys. Unsurprisingly there was not much love lost between the women in that house as they, for differing reasons, awaited the birth of the child.
I asked Major Fischer to raise the subject of the “young Captain” having his own household. This he did, reluctantly, on one of our visits, “George you may wish to invest in another property, that could, perhaps, suit Arnold and his beautiful young bride and the growing family. What do you think eh?”
“No, lad.” George had never lost his straightforward Lancashire way of speaking, even when addressing a man in his middle 30s, “No. They’ll stop here until we’re gone.”
Two thoughts occurred to me upon hearing this; one was that it was a mighty small house to have four grown ups and any children living in it and second that George and Ellen being ‘gone’ was going to be some way in the future as they were both only just 60.
“What about one of your other properties? Could you evict a tenant and let the young couple live in one of them?”
“No. It’ll be as I said. They’ll wait till we’re gone.”
And that was the end of the matter.
There was nothing more I could do to try to help her.
Through these early years of the war I would take my mother on a Sunday outing. We would take the bus, which still ran from Birkenhead to West Kirby – the next town along the coast from Hoylake, and spend the afternoon walking along the promenade. Looking at the view across the Dee estuary to the Hilbre Islands and, beyond them, the hills of Wales, it was possible to forget the war and the unhappiness of so many people.
On the last Sunday of May 1942, as we walked past one of the shelters that were set at regular intervals along the promenade I noticed two people sitting close, deep in conversation, their heads close together. One figure was Arnold Donaldson, not in uniform; the other was a woman I also recognised. She was the daughter of one of George Donaldson’s ‘ladies’, Kathleen McNamara. I had thought her doing war work in the south of England. As I failed to catch any of their conversation I was unsure what to think. Everyone had known they were friendly before the war but it had been assumed the friendship had terminated with his marriage.
In the office the next day I was told that Alicia had given birth the previous Thursday to a healthy full term son they had called Charles. The gossips, of whom my mother was one, were also pleased to report that the six month long marriage was, to all intents and purposes, over. They had not shared a bed since their honeymoon.
All this information, and more, had come from the other women in the local cottage hospital who had shared the ward with Alicia as she recovered from the birth. Although it was only gossip I was saddened as I was sure there was more than an element of truth in it.
Over the next few years there were frequent mentions of the Donaldsons in the local newspapers so I was not dependent upon their infrequent visits to the office to pick up titbits of the happenings in their lives.
I knew that George Donaldson was donating larger and larger sums to charities and that he was still very active in the local community – no new fire engine or lifeboat could be brought into service without George Donaldson being photographed with it for the newspapers. He really wanted that knighthood or an MBE at the very least.
I knew that Arnold was elected to the county council and was beginning to cultivate local political parties. A long speech he had made to the League of Nations was printed verbatim, taking up a whole page of the local newspaper in closely printed text.
There were increasingly frequent photographs of him with Alicia, always described as ‘his young, beautiful, crippled wife’. He was laying down the groundwork for his post-war political career. Even though she did not appear always to be enjoying it, Alicia was playing her part. She never looked well, she was far too thin and she never seemed relaxed in any photograph – other than the ones connected with her dramatics.
I knew that Alicia had taken up amateur dramatics eventually directing various plays given by the women’s organisations in the area. There were pictures of her in the papers, sometimes, though not often, with a growing Charles and frequently her collaborator, Maureen Shelton.
I considered that very interesting as Maureen Shelton’s maiden name was McNamara, she was Kathleen McNamara’s elder sister who had been married briefly early in the war. I didn’t think I was the only one who knew of her mother’s relationship with Arnold’s father but I wondered whether Alicia knew of the close connection between the families. Maureen certainly did.
Every week I scoured the newspapers for mentions and photographs of Alicia and the Donaldsons because, even if Arnold Donaldson had never fallen in love with his wife, I had.