Evie’s Choice

But if the day had shown me a new Will Davies, it had also shown me a new Evie Creswell, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about her. On the train, sitting close to him, I broached the question that had been bothering me. ‘Will, am I different?’

‘Different?’

‘To what I was. To the way you saw me.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘It’s just, today…’ I hesitated, wondering if I was courting trouble even putting the thought in his head. ‘I mean, all this time you’ve told me you admired me for my beliefs, and principles, and the way I could make you believe things too. Lizzy was the same. But now, after what happened, I feel as if…how could I let something like this shake those beliefs? But it has.’

He twisted in his seat and took my hands. ‘Evie, listen to me. We’re still growing into what we will eventually become. If everyone waited until they believed they were fully formed before deciding they loved someone, the human race would die out. We’re never “finished”, so of course our ideals will change, we’ll change.’

‘But do you think we’ll change too much?’

‘Do you mean will I stop loving you? Tell me this, will you stop loving me if I change?’

‘No!’

‘And nothing will ever make me think you’re not worth my whole life, Evie. I will never, ever give up on you, and I want you to promise the same.’

I looked at him, I saw the earnest truth in his face, and I spoke from the heart, not suspecting how the weight of the words would return one day to reshape our lives. ‘I pledge my life on it.’

Chapter Six

Breckenhall Quarry, July 1914.

‘Will you go?’

‘Yes, if they call us.’

I shivered, despite the warmth of the day. The news from Europe was increasingly disturbing, and I could tell Mother was becoming more and more concerned about Uncle Jack. His letters had been scarce, and very short, but if it hadn’t been for those brief notes it would have been more worrying still. Now, though, my attention was fixed closer to home, and I looked sideways at Will, who sat with his knees raised and his hands drooped between them.

‘It may not come to it,’ he said, feeling the weight of my gaze, and turning to me. His eyes held mine and we both knew he didn’t believe that any more than I did.

‘If you go, I’m going to find a way to volunteer, too,’ I said. The words were out of my mouth before I’d realised I was going to say them, but the determination took hold nevertheless. ‘If all the boys join up, the girls will have to pitch in and take up the slack.’

He grinned. ‘I can just see you up to your elbows in pig entrails,’ he said, and threw a handful of grass at me.

‘Well, maybe not your job,’ I conceded, and returned the favour, hitting him squarely in the mouth with a lucky throw. While he spluttered and spat out the grass, I lay back and stared up at the sky, wondering how something as perfect and clear, and such a beautiful, rich blue could be looking down on a world so full of uncertainty and fear.

‘I’ve been thinking,’ he said, and something in his voice made me raise myself onto my elbows again.

‘What? You sound nervous.’

‘Not nervous exactly. It’s just…with what’s probably coming and all, don’t you think –’

‘Yes.’

‘You don’t know what I was going to say!’

‘Yes I do.’ I smiled and sat up all the way, slipping my hand beneath his knee to link my fingers with his, and said it again, slowly. ‘Yes. I do.’

He returned my smile, and the tension left him. ‘Well then, now you’ll have to tell your mother.’

‘No. I mean, yes, I will, but I’m going to tell her afterwards. I can’t give her the slightest opportunity to put a stop to it.’

‘How on earth will you keep it from her? The vicar at Breckenhall is bound to say something.’

‘Then we won’t marry in Breckenhall. We’ll find somewhere further away. I hope Uncle Jack comes home in time, he’d be pleased to give me away.’

‘Even to me?’

‘Especially to you,’ I said. Jack Carlisle would take one look at Will and me together, and not a single question would pass his lips about suitability or income. And if I asked him to leave it to me to tell Mother, he would do it. ‘I’ll find somewhere with a discreet minister, and we can set a date for sometime before Christmas. That’s bound to give us time, and maybe the Kaiser will call off the show and leave Russia alone, and it will all come to nothing.’

But just two days later, on the first day of August, Germany declared war on Russia. The news came over the radio that, in order for them to remove France as a hindrance, they had asked for permission to move their army through Belgium, and, while the world listened with bated breath, Belgium held her ground and refused.

‘But what does that mean?’ Mother fretted. ‘For us?’

‘It means that, if the Kaiser doesn’t withdraw his army, we’re going to have to go in and make him,’ I said. I felt quite sick and, despite my calm words, I was having a great deal of trouble straightening my thoughts to really understand what it all meant.

‘Why do we have to do it?’ She glanced over at Lawrence, and I could see the worry on her face. ‘It’s got nothing to do with us, surely?’

‘Evidently it’s to do with a treaty made back in the 1830s,’ I said, not adding that it was Will who’d told me about it. ‘Perhaps the Germans will withdraw when they realise what they’ve done, and that they can’t win.’

But of course, they hadn’t. Our government sent an ultimatum that was ignored, and by eleven o’clock on the night of the fourth of August, we too were at war.

To begin with, nothing seemed different. The sun still shone; night and day still came and went; people still went to work, only now their expressions slipped too easily from cheerfulness to shadowed fear. But gradually the little changes that were happening all over the country began to make themselves felt in everyday life. Shops closed as their owners answered the call to arms; the government put out a further call, for one hundred thousand volunteers, and Will joined the reserves. I tried to hold on to the common belief that the war would be short-lived, maybe even over before Christmas, but it seemed more and more evident now that this would be a protracted struggle, and that our men were being sent into a special kind of hell; the thought of Will joining them made me break into a cool sweat and pray constantly for the war to end before it was too late.

One afternoon in late August, Will met me at the quarry with an unusually sombre expression, and his face was pale. I saw immediately what he held, and my breathing sharpened into something painful.

‘When?’

‘Tenth of September.’

‘Oh, God. Oh, God, Will…’

He seized me roughly and pulled me to him with a strange, sighing sob. All the enthusiasm when he’d spoken of joining up, of doing his duty, of protecting the innocent, had fled as we held each other, and I felt him shuddering under my fiercely gripping hands. It made the way he finally squared his shoulders and stood straight all the more courageous in my eyes; he was not naïve enough to think he was riding into glory, the shining hero of the tale. He understood some of what he was going into, and he was terrified, but he would still do it.

‘I must marry you before I leave,’ he said, and touched my face. ‘I must.’

I thought quickly. ‘We’ll go to Gretna. Mary will be a witness, and you must find one too.’ I spoke fast, hoping the trembling in my voice wasn’t as obvious to him as it was to me. My mind was not on weddings, though, it was on the letter I’d been mulling over for a week or more, applying for a post with the Red Cross, and I hesitated no longer; if Will was going overseas in defence of another country, I could do no less in defence of his own.

Gretna, Scotland, September 1914.

‘This is Martin Barrow,’ Will said as he drew me into the little sitting room. ‘He’s taking my place as Markham’s apprentice, once … well, once I’ve left.’

‘Very nice to meet you, Martin,’ I said.

He shook my hand, a tall, earnest-looking young man with a friendly face. ‘Miss,’ he said. He glanced at Will, and then back at me, and to my surprise he looked a little shamefaced. ‘I’d have joined up too, if I could,’ he said, and it was only when he limped over to close the sitting room door that I realised why he hadn’t. I wished he didn’t look so guilty over it, but it wasn’t my place to presume how he felt, I might have read him wrong.

I gestured to my own companion. ‘This is Mary Deegan, ,’ I said. ‘I understand you’ll be travelling back to Breckenhall together on the same train.’

The two nodded to each other, and as Mary went over to introduce herself properly, Will slipped his arm around my waist. ‘I can’t believe we’re doing this,’ he said, nuzzling my ear.

‘And I can’t believe I haven’t told Mother,’ I said, and sighed. ‘I know she’ll take it badly but it’s not you, it’s…’

‘It’s what I’m not,’ Will said, but he didn’t sound resentful. ‘Darling, I know all that, let’s not go over the same old ground. Not today.’

‘Come upstairs, Evie,’ Mary said, coming over. She was smiling and I glanced past her at Martin, who was trying to pretend he hadn’t been staring after her. ‘Let’s get you changed.’

I kissed Will lightly, our very last chaste kiss as single people, and followed Mary up the winding hotel staircase to the little room above. I looked at the bed nervously and felt my insides do a slow roll, but there was excitement there too, heightened by the memory of his breath on my skin.

My dress was quite simply cut, but when I’d first tried it on I knew that, of all the glorious and expensive gowns I’d worn in the past, this one was the one I would keep forever. Mary had made it from some ivory lace I had found in Breckenhall market, and since she was the only person, other than Uncle Jack, who I’d told about the marriage, I knew it had been made with pleasure and secrecy, which gave it a feel of something very personal. And tonight I would remove it in front of my husband. That nervous roll came again and I took a deep breath to calm the shaking that had suddenly seized my fingers and knees; would I please him, after all this time of waiting and anticipation?

Mary helped me dress and I wished, with a familiar sweep of sorrow, that Lizzy could be here too. In my mind I could hear her amused voice teasing me about how excited I was, and I could see her long dark hair tumbling out from beneath her hat as she tried, yet again in vain, to tidy her appearance before Mother saw her. It was too painful to think of what she might be doing now, and although I hated myself for doing so I tried to put her to the back of my mind and concentrate, instead, on this perfect day.

‘Promise me you won’t tell anyone,’ I said to Mary, for the hundredth time.

She nodded. ‘I do promise, Evie, you know that.’

‘Not even Lizzy.’ It seemed my friend would not stay in the back of my mind after all.

‘Of course, if you say so, but why haven’t you told her yourself? She’d be so happy for you both.’

‘I wanted to, but I can’t. If someone reads the letter before it reaches her, and passes the news back to Oaklands, it will hurt Mother all the more.’

Mary finished off the simple garland I wore around my head, and straightened the short veil. ‘I won’t say anything, not until you’re able to. It’s not my place anyway.’

‘Thank you.’ I touched her arm gratefully. I’d made up my mind to tell Lizzy as soon as Mother knew, but the trouble was I had no idea when that would be. That I had been lying to her was the worst part, but it had seemed necessary at the beginning, and the longer it went on the harder it had become to stop. Now she would be devastated, not only at my deceit, but also at the fact that she had been excluded from her only daughter’s wedding.

‘Please give me a moment alone,’ I said to Mary when we were satisfied with my appearance, or in my case, almost satisfied. Mary stepped outside and I went to my suitcase and withdrew a small black box. Carefully I opened the lid and took out a battered, black and white paper flower, which I lifted to my lips and kissed before twisting the stem around the belt of my dress. It lay against the beautifully cut lace, incongruous and grubby-looking, and I knew I’d been right to wait until Mary had left the room; she would have tried strenuously to convince me not to wear it, and I would have resisted, and we would have wasted a good deal of time – time neither Will nor I could spare now.

I stepped out through the door, holding my small bouquet against my waist to hide the rose, and only moved it aside when I drew level with Will. The movement drew his eye downward, and then he looked back at me and there was deep and complicated emotion in every line of his face. He kissed his own finger and touched it to the half-uncurled petals, unknowingly mimicking my own gesture, and then he smiled into my eyes and I felt my heart turn over.

The service was quick and simple; those who conducted it were well used to situations like ours, and not an eyebrow was raised even though Mary and Martin were our only witnesses. I remembered standing on the rock above the quarry and yelling to the world that I was going to marry this man, and here we were. Within ten minutes we were legally wed, and back out in the autumn sunshine, hardly able to believe we had actually done it.

After the glorious summer, the weather remained warm. It seemed impossible to think that tomorrow Will would board a train for the coast, and a day later he would be on foreign soil. A shadow seemed to cross the blameless blue sky and I shivered; yes, it did seem impossible, but with every minute that passed we drew closer to the moment when it would become a dark and terrifying reality. What had seemed a wildly romantic notion might have also had the uncomfortable taste of something we had been using to keep the fear at bay, but looking at my new husband and his slightly bemused air of giddy happiness, I knew it was more than that; planning the wedding had provided a welcome distraction, but that did not lessen its importance, or the joy we felt that we were finally together. I also allowed myself the pleasure of having seen Martin steal more than one fascinated glance Mary’s way, although I was sure she herself had not noticed.

They left after tea, and by then Mary had begun returning Martin’s attentions; it seemed they shared an interest in travel, and Martin had grown up in India with his family, so they had much to discuss. She also seemed to be flushing and laughing a good deal more than I was used to seeing. Will noticed too, and after we had waved them off on their return home, he smiled. ‘Do you suppose they even still remember who we are?’

I smiled. ‘Does it matter?’

‘No,’ he admitted, and took my hand. ‘It’s still early, Mrs Davies. Shall we walk up the lane before supper?’

The sun was just beginning its slow descent on this, the happiest day I had ever known, and as we reached the top of the hill, Will pulled me to a halt. I turned to see the orange-gold light setting his eyes on fire and burnishing his skin, and an intensity in his expression that I knew would be mirrored in my own. Without a word passing between us, we turned to go back to the hotel, a new urgency in our steps and all thoughts of the earliness of the hour banished.

In our room he took me by the shoulders and brushed his lips against my forehead with the most gentle of touches that, nevertheless, shot straight through me, leaving a trail of heat in its wake. He stepped back and removed his jacket and shirt, and, unable suddenly to look at his face, and instead keeping my eyes on his surprisingly compact, muscular body, I eased my gown over my shoulders. When we moved close together again I had only my petticoats on, and the friction of the fine silk sliding between us ignited that heat and made us both gasp.

But we were not yet close enough, and when he raised my arms and slipped the last remaining barrier away my hands went to his chest, as if by the touch of my fingers on his skin I would finally realise he was mine. He pulled me closer, and I let my hands drift down his sides, over the strong swell of his ribcage, feeling him tremble with the lightness of my touch. I wondered if he was as drawn to my body as I was to his or whether, now he saw me without the mystery and flattery of my clothing, he might be disappointed.

The question must have shown in my face because his hand came up to touch my jaw. ‘Evie Davies, you are, without doubt, the most beautiful creature on this good earth,’ he breathed, and then his mouth came down on mine.

Eventually he broke the kiss and led me to the bed. I lay down and he looked at me for a long, delicious moment before stretching out beside me and, easing one hand beneath me, he lifted me closer. He raised his free hand to my breast and I arched towards him, longing for the complete possession that seemed to hover so close, yet still danced out of reach. All the while he was kissing wherever he could reach, along my cheekbones and down to my jaw, his lips blazing across my face to my eyes as if he couldn’t taste enough of me all at once. Thrilled at the thought that I excited him so much, I let my hands choose their path across his broad back and down to his hips, and my teeth nipped gently at his shoulder, my lips moving hungrily over the smooth skin.

Nervousness almost stole my pleasure as he moved across me, and I tensed as he positioned himself so that his entry was as smooth and painless as it could be, his eyes on mine in silent apology. But after a brief flash of pain my hips rose of their own volition to meet him and I didn’t even have to think about matching his rhythm; all thought seemed to be happening on another level of my consciousness and there was only sensation now. Our movements grew more urgent and I tried to pull him deeper inside me, knowing that, as wonderful as it was, there was something more and I had to either have it or die.

All at once the warmth I had always felt in his presence – in my heart, on my skin, in my stomach – was now concentrated in one place and growing. Just as I thought I could bear it no longer, that elusive feeling I had sensed before rushed through me to meet that warmth, and the collision was everything. It was glorious. With every beat of my heart the sensation pulsed more heavily in every part of me, only fading away as Will, spent and exhausted, sank down to lie beside me.

After a moment he rolled towards me again, supporting himself on one elbow. I opened my eyes and smiled, and he looked relieved and brushed away a curl that had stuck to my cheek. His fingers were trembling. ‘It didn’t hurt too much?’

I could feel his thundering heart as his chest pressed against my arm. ‘It was awful,’ I said, ‘I never want to go through anything like that ever again.’

Will laughed, a shaky, breathless sound, and dropped his hand to my hip. ‘Never?’ he asked in a low voice.

I scratched my short nails lightly across his stomach. ‘Never,’ I breathed, and kissed his shoulder, moving down across his chest, tasting the light, salt sweat of him and loving it. ‘Not for at least ten minutes.’

It turned out ten minutes was a lot shorter than I’d thought.

In the morning we left that magical place behind forever, and to my embarrassment Will showed me he had taken some of the paper from the little supply in our room. ‘I’ll write to you on this, so we can remember,’ he said. ‘Whenever you see this hotel crest,’ he traced it with one finger, ‘you will know it’s you I’m thinking of. I’m going to kiss every single page,’ he grinned, warming to his promise as I rolled my eyes in disbelief, ‘and whenever you get a letter from me on this paper, you will think of our wedding night.’

Despite my teasing look, I was unbelievably touched; Will was not what I would have thought of as a particularly romantic young man, but I had no doubt that he would do exactly as he’d said. And when he left later that same day to join his unit, I thought of the ridiculous little stack of paper tucked into his shirt, and wished I could have taken its place.

Waiting with him at the station was a strange, hollow affair. He wore his uniform now – an oddly plain, muddy-green, ill-fitting affair of rough wool – and carried a hessian kit-bag; it was as if he were going to stay with a friend for a week, nothing more. That we were surrounded by people in the same clothes, and that some of them openly wept, only served to heighten the sense of unreality.

As the train pulled into the platform, the mood changed. It became charged with a brittle air of patriotic fervour, men straightening their backs and declaring it time to “get over there and sort the Bosche out”. Someone slapped Will’s shoulder, and he gave them a mechanical grin and slapped back. They had never met before, yet now they were quite likely to be living side by side and entrusting their lives to one another. Someone, somewhere down the platform began to sing “It’s a long way to Tipperary”, and a few disjointed voices joined in.

My heart suddenly, and finally, accepted that he was going, and it stopped beating for a breathless, terrifying moment. The thought flashed into my head: what if it doesn’t start again? But of course it did, and the racing, sickening feeling made me dizzy. I looked up into Will’s face and he seemed more dear to me then, more precious and more fragile than I had ever seen him. These people didn’t know him. How could he go off with them when they didn’t understand him? Didn’t realise that, beyond the cheerful smile and the clear, friendly blue eyes, he was a man of warmth and wit, and a quiet, fierce intelligence? Would they ever have the chance to realise how lucky they were to be with him?

His voice, when he spoke, wasn’t raised to shout over the cries of others. Instead it was pitched low, easily cutting beneath it and straight into my aching heart.

‘Evie, my impossible, exasperating wife, I love you so very, very much.’ He faltered, searching for words when we both knew there were none. At last he sighed. ‘Promise me you’ll be careful.’

‘I will if you will.’ I was trying hard not to cry in front of him; there would be time for weeping, so much time, but this was not it. So I smiled, but the movement loosened the tears that had gathered in my eyes, and they spilled anyway.

‘I promise.’ He bent to kiss my forehead and the warm press of his lips almost sent me spinning into hysterical pleading…don’t go! But he drew himself upright and away from me. He stood tall and straight, somehow making that awful uniform look like a thing of honour, touched my cheek once, and then he was gone, heading for the coast, and God alone knew what awaited him there. I stood with countless others, long after the train had pulled out of sight around the bend and, as the chuffing faded and voices started to filter back in, I blinked, swallowed, and let out a shaky breath. Soon I would be leaving too, to begin my Red Cross training; each of us had answered the call to arms in our own way, and I could only pray that, when I saw him again, it was not as a shattered, broken echo of the man he was now.

Back at Breckenhall I made my way to the fruit shop above which Will had taken his rooms. He would have to surrender them, or be faced with a dreadful debt when he returned…I emphasised the when, which kept trying to change itself to if. It would help no one to think of that. In the meantime all his things would stay at Oaklands, and I needed to know how much there was to bring across.

I knocked on the landlady’s door and introduced myself; she knew me only as one of the Creswells from the manor, and I told her I had come on behalf of Will’s family, to pay rent in advance and remove his belongings so she could let the room out again. In all the time we had been together I had never come here, it had been too much of a risk. The stairs were narrow and dark, and I pictured him climbing them at night, exhausted from his work, looking forward to a wash and a quick meal before bed – where perhaps he might have lain and thought of me, as I did of him. Through the pain of missing him, the thought made me smile, just a little. Even the smile hurt, made me feel disloyal.