His name was Robbie, and Constance went to see him, the journey to St Catherine’s passing in a fog of detachment from the world around her. The young man reached out and squeezed her hand trying to convey how grateful and how sorry he was for her loss in that simple, human gesture. She’d hoped that going to see him would help. Perhaps she would feel Henry’s death had not been in vain. He had, after all, died a hero’s death, but Constance could find no comfort in the visit—death was death. It meant she would never set her eyes on him again. She would never feel his gentle touch on her or laugh so hard she couldn’t breathe at something he’d said ever again. She’d never more hear him say I love you. She was a widow who’d never been wed.
Her heart shattered into pieces knowing all this. It was broken into a mosaic so tiny that she knew it would never be put back together again.
The weeks passed in wave after wave of grief, her exhaustion was all-encompassing, and the nausea had only grown stronger. She blamed having all that sorrow tucked away inside her for her sickness; it had to come out somehow. It was only when her waistband grew tight, despite her lack of appetite, that it dawned on her with an understanding as terrifying as any bomb that could fall that she was pregnant.
Chapter 21
Constance waited as she’d been instructed to in the hallway and pulled her cardigan tightly around herself as she listened to poor Ginny’s howls emanating from her room. The guttural agony in her screams was plain to hear. It was like nothing she’d heard before, and she was terrified both for Ginny and herself. She hadn’t come on in three months and had taken to rising before anybody else in the house to hide away in the bathroom each morning. The sickness arrived like clockwork as soon as she swung her legs over the side of her bed and sat up although it had eased a little these last few mornings. It was a reminder of what was happening inside her and listening now to Ginny’s distress it was as though the fug that had clouded her thoughts since Henry’s death cleared. She knew she had to take action and soon.
Her mum was helping the midwife, and her dad unaware of the drama unfolding in his home, was out on patrol. Ginny’s pains had begun in earnest with no gradual build-up or warning as the three women had tidied away the dinner things earlier that evening. She’d dropped the plate she’d been drying, and as it smashed to the ground, she bent double. Constance’s mother at the sink, her hands emerged in hot water, had remained calm, galvanising Constance, who was frozen to the spot, to go and fetch the midwife while she settled Ginny upstairs.
Ginny’s panic at the sudden onset of the pain was evident, and Constance was grateful to escape it into the fresh air outside. That the air raid siren remained silent was a blessing, she thought, as she ran through the empty streets, her breath coming in short puffs of white, to the cottage where Bessie Parker lived. Bessie had grabbed the bag she kept at the ready, and called out to her oldest that she was in charge of getting the littlies to bed before setting off. The pace the midwife set was a swift clip, and Constance tired from her run, struggled to keep up. It was a relief when they arrived back at Pier View House, and Bessie disappeared up the stairs, a calm and efficient arrival in a house that felt anything but. Ginny was in safe hands.
Now as the seconds, minutes and hours ticked by at a slower pace than any had ever passed in the Anderson Shelter, Constance began to pace the hallway. She was like an expectant father, useless and unable to do anything except wear the hall runner with the constant retracing of her steps. She could see Ginny in her mind's eye writhing, and pausing in her pacing she clasped her hands in prayer. She raised her eyes to the ceiling willing, God, to let Ginny’s misery to be over, and for the baby’s safe arrival.
The night was interminable. Her father arrived home and sat next to her on the floor outside the bedroom where she was slumped with her back against the wall, worn out from worry. By the time her mother opened the door, the sun was beginning to peep through the cracks in the curtains at the top of the stairwell. Constance frowned suddenly alert, unaware her father was gripping her hand; she hadn’t heard any lusty cry. Her mum’s face in the dim light of the hallway was ashen. She shook her head, and as she got to her feet, she heard her father’s breath catch and felt him stagger beside her, ignoring the wave of nausea that washed over her she fell into her mother’s arms. Ginny’s baby, a boy whom she’d have called Edward in his father’s memory, was born with the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck; he never drew breath. Tragedy had again come knocking at the Downers door.
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A malaise settled over the family at Pier View House; it was such a heavy veil that not even the news of D–Day’s success could lift it. Ginny, once a wife, now a widow, and a woman who should have been diving headfirst into motherhood, no longer knew who or what she was supposed to be. All the while Constance’s secret kept growing stronger and stronger. The days rolled over on top of one another and morale on Wight grew scratchy. The war effort was wearing thin like the elbows of an old jumper, the end always just out of sight, just out of reach. For Constance,
