A Better Man
Chapter Five
Duty Again
Autumn 1915
Eliza sat across from Mrs. Higgins in the parlour, which had been packed to full capacity with various chairs, and women sitting in them. All of the women, Eliza included, were knitting. She found this to be a bit of a bore, and also very difficult, as she had never been formally coached in the intricacies of feminine hobbies. She very much doubted that Professor Higgins had even considered a course in sock and muffler making when he had been her tutor.
Another dropped stitch nearly made her throw the work across the room in a huff, but such a display would have surely shocked most of the ladies in the room into an early grave. Well, not so very early, Eliza had to be the youngest person in the room by at least four decades. Most of the women her own age were either working in the munitions factories, or training to be nurses; both professions her jailers deemed to dangerous for Eliza, especially when Pickering arrived home with stories of women dying of TNT exposure in the former.
Professor Higgins was often at the factory with Pickering, and Eliza often mused if it had more to do with the house being overrun by women, and less to do with die-hard patriotism, and a need to do what one must for one's country. Strangely, Eliza felt his absense keenly. They had been getting on well, for the most part, and his razor-tongued banter was preferable to being subjected to hours and hours of banal gossip, complaints about how modern young people were becoming, or even worse; speculation on the battle in Loos, where Freddy had been stationed.
Eliza's spirits soared when she spied Professor Higgins and Colonel Pickering walked past the open parlour door, and loudly cleared her throat in an effort to attract their attention.
"I thought I heard the click-clack of patriotism - good afternoon, ladies!" Pickering greeted in his usual, jovial way. Henry nodded at the gathering, and caught Eliza's wide-eyed, desperate stare. Save me! Her look cried. He smiled, and turned to his mother.
"I say, Mother - Pickering and I would like to borrow Eliza for a while. It's a beautiful day out, and I believe a stroll is in order."
"Oh, Henry - can't you see she is quite occupied and having a fine time with us?"
Eliza shook her head almost imperceptibly, pressing her lips into a thin line.
"Her needlework is a disaster, Mother, I wouldn't give those socks to a Hun. She will be of much better use to Pick and I this afternoon - be reasonable." He nearly chuckled at Eliza's fleetingly insulted look at his dig at her needlework. It really was atrocious, and he doubted that she was even really trying anymore.
Eleanor scrutinised Eliza's work, seeing it for the first time. She tutted in disapproval. "Yes, I see what you mean; very well, Eliza you may go with my son and Colonel Pickering, if that is what you want to do. If you like, I will go over the fundamentals of knitting with you another time."
"Ha! Well, that's not bloody likely, is it?" A collective gasp filled the room, and Eliza exchanged an mischevious smirk with Henry. She did not know why she said it; perhaps just to show that she still could - just because she had to sit in their cage for Freddy's sake did not mean she had to sing sweetly.
With that, Eliza was escorted out into the autumn air, with Professor Higgins on one side of her, and Colonel Pickering on the other. It was a scenario that was very comfortable to Eliza, and for a moment, she forgot about the troubles that constantly plagued her every waking moment, and was transported back to a simpler time in her life. The feeling lasted mere moments, before the conversation turned to the inevitable.
"They say Kipling's son is missing," Professor Higgins commented, as the trio passed a newstand. Eliza sighed. She had devoured the man's work after being introduced to it over the past summer. She admired him, and like everyone suffering the numerous losses on each front, felt a pang for the agony he must be going through. Kipling's son was only a boy, and according to Professor Higgins and Colonel Pickering, a boy with eyesight far too terrible for service.
"The man ought not to have pulled strings for such a foolish endeavour," Pickering replied, referring to Kipling's sway contributing to his son being accepted for military service. Eliza found the comment to be uncharacteristically ungenerous, coming from Colonel Pickering, and gently told him as much. Pickering merely patted her hand, and apologised for his frankness.
Eliza was eternally grateful that her husband remained faithful with his correspondence, and was apparently safe. His letters were becoming more and more brief, though, a fact that disturbed her greatly. It seemed to her that Freddy absolutely refused to let any unpleasantness seep into his letters, but was finding it increasingly more difficult to find anything that was not unpleasant to report. She tried to ignore the unsaid words, and focus on the ones that appeared on the page like 'uninjured' and 'safe'. Her mind carressed these welcome, lovely words, and stored them away in her heart, bringing them up to her mind when the news of others not as fortunate were constantly discussed.
"I wish they would grant Freddy leave," Eliza said, suddenly. She thought she felt the muscles in Professor Higgins' arm tense briefly at her wish, but ignored it.
"Perhaps very soon, my dear - you miss him terribly, I am sure."
Eliza nodded mechanically at Colonel Pickering. The truth was, while she fretted and worried about Freddy's well-being constantly, she did not yearn for him in the sense that a wife does for a husband during an extended seperation. It was the strangest thing, for she knew she would be thrilled if he were to come home, and yet she found herself able to cope ever so easily without his devotion, and love.
"So, what do you think Mother will allow you to do now that she's discovered you are an utter domestic disaster?" Henry teased, desperate to take the subject away from Eliza's aching need for her husband.
Eliza smiled, and pondered. "Oh, I suppose I will be collecting silk gowns and stockings to send to the front, as I am sure you old maids would be too scandalised to do it for her - provided I am allowed to venture out of doors with any regularity."
"I am my mother's son, Eliza; I doubt she will let you give up on your knitting endeavours all that easily."
Eliza let out a dramatic sigh. "It is all terribly dull. I would much rather be binding up wounds, and being really useful, like Clara." Clara Eynsford-Hill was currently working in various hospitals as a VAD nurse, and loving every 'thrilling' minute of it. She regaled Eliza with hours of details of her duties, positively glowing with a newfound sense of purpose. Eliza envied her greatly. In a way, she was beginning to understand how Freddy felt when she had initially refused to allow him to serve his country.
"I, for one, cannot see any harm in it," Pickering admitted. Eliza and Professor Higgins gave their friend an astonished look. "Provided, of course, that your husband approves." Eliza's face fell into a disappointed expression, before she narrowed her eyes defiantly.
"I do not think Freddy really wants me to ignore the needs of my countrymen, and all the women my age are doing the very same thing."
"Surely not all of them," retorted Professor Higgins.
Eliza glared at him. "A great deal of them are - yes- and some of a much higher station than me!"
The two men both knew that Eliza had a point. Some VAD girls were even members of the aristocracy, although what use they could possibly be was beyond Pickering and Henry. For all Eliza's fine speech, and increasingly well-rounded education, she still had years of hardening experience and street smarts. She appeared delicate and everything an English Rose should be, but in reality she had literally spent night sleeping on the street, and had been involved in various physical altercations throughout her life, having held her own very admirably in some of them. Pickering was on the verge of relenting, but something stopped Henry from validating her outright - a nagging fear of losing her.
Rather than concede to her point, Pickering awkwardly transitioned the conversation to weather. Rather chilly, and all that. Eliza felt her tower of resentment at the situation begin to teeter a bit precariously towards outright hostility that day, but held it in. She was a guest in Mrs. Higgins' home, after all, and it behooved her to obey the rules set out before her. Still, the thought of disappearing into the night and donning a white cap was deliciously irresistable. It did not help that Clara - emboldened by her own flight from her mothers' home - encouraged her to do that very thing everytime she happened to visit.
"I cannot believe that you left your mother." Eliza had commented breathlessly, on Clara's visit immediately after the incident.
"Oh, can't you? Especially after that dreadful business with Freddy! I do not think that I will speak to that nasty woman ever again, as long as I live!" Clara had exclaimed, wringing her own white cap between her hands. "I'm rooming with a few girls that work at the hospitals with me, and it is delightfully liberating."
"Freddy would not like it."
"Oh, he can be such an old woman about that sort of thing! He ought to let you be useful, just as you relented about him serving."
"He is just being sweetly concerned."
"And isn't it such a bother? You poor, sheltered darling!"
A few more visits went on in a similiar fashion, before Eliza was positively galvanised into action. She snuck out to 27 St. John's Lane, under the pretense of collecting silk for the front, and trained clandestinely. The day she returned to the Higgins' household in full uniform, Eleanor had nearly fainted from shock. Pickering took the news silently, unwilling to cause any sort of unpleasantness, and Henry gave her the understanding look of co-conspirator. It was he, who had finally relented, and had aided Eliza in her deception, escorting her to and from her training area.
I would have never thought that the person who had freed me from the bonds of ignorance, would trap me with words given to a man he despised, Eliza had pointed out, during a particularly heated discussion over her lack of involvement in the cause. She knew that although Henry tried to like Freddy - the boy was fighting for the country and all that - he simply could not bring himself to it, and that while her words may have been a bit blunt, they were very true. Henry would not - could not- confess to her, or himself, the real reason he had gone along with the sheltering and coddling of Eliza.
So it went, Eliza worked alongside her sister-in-law, and her invitation to Eleanor's home had not been rescinded because of it.
It was nearing Christmas when Eliza discovered that Freddy was coming home on leave.