Maeve began to tremble. Her face was white and her eyes, brimming with tears, looked too big for their sockets. ‘I don’t know where to start,’ she said, looking down at her lap and wringing her hands.
‘Perhaps I can start for you. Margot’s friend, the young dancer at the Albert Theatre called Goldie Trick, was your cousin and Nancy’s mother?’
Maeve shot Bess a look of hurt and surprise. ‘How did you know?’
Bess’s accusing tone became more sympathetic when she realised how difficult it must be for Maeve to talk about Goldie in the past tense. ‘Nancy told me. She found an old photograph of Margot and some of the dancers at the theatre - Goldie was in one of them. I checked the photograph against a programme from a show that I’d seen in 1939 and matched Goldie’s picture to her name. I’m so sorry, Maeve. I know from Margot that Goldie was a very special young woman.’
‘She was,’ Maeve said. ‘When she came home to Ireland, after Margot and her friends got her out of London because David Sutherland had beaten her up, I was working in England as a translator, listening to conversations between Luftwaffe pilots. I was based at Kirby Mansion and billeted at the Vicarage with Reverend and Mrs Sykes.
‘My mother wrote and told me that Goldie had come home and was in a bad way. She didn’t say more than that. She knew not to be specific in letters because all incoming and outgoing correspondence was censored. I immediately asked for leave and was given forty-eight hours. It wasn’t long enough,’ Maeve lifted her shoulders, ‘but it was all my commanding officer would give me, so I took it.
‘I spent a day with Doreen-- Goldie.’ Maeve fell silent and closed her eyes. When she opened them, she said, ‘According to my mother, by the time I got home, Goldie’s physical injuries had begun to fade. The cuts on her face were healing and the bruises on her arms and legs had grown fainter - but the mental scars hadn’t. To tell you the truth I don’t think they ever did. She was terrified that David Sutherland would find her. She had terrible nightmares. She would wake up in the night screaming. I suggested she leave the light on when she went to bed, but it didn’t help. She stopped getting undressed, and eventually she stopped getting into bed altogether. At first she laid on top of the bed fully dressed, then she sat in a chair facing the door, and dozed.’
Maeve fell silent again. She clenched her fists and closed her eyes. Then, as if she had somehow been fortified, she took a deep breath and started speaking. ‘Goldie became paranoid. She looked for Sutherland everywhere, and she saw him everywhere she looked. She said she’d seen him in the grocery shop, and walking along the street. She even said she saw him in mum’s garden.’ Maeve began to cry. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, wiping the flat of her hand across her face. She took a deep breath. ‘Mother said she went out less and less until one day she announced that she was never going out again. And she didn’t - until she became ill.’
‘What was wrong with her?’
‘She was being sick. She stopped eating because of it. My mother said her face became gaunt, and she was so thin she looked skeletal. Mother didn’t know how to help her. She begged her to see our family doctor, but Goldie refused saying she was too frightened to leave the house. Eventually mum got the doctor to visit her at home. He did some tests and said Goldie was dehydrated because she hadn’t been drinking liquids, and thin because she hadn’t been eating - and she was three months pregnant.’
‘Nancy?’ Bess said.
Maeve’s eyes lit up. ‘Yes. Mother said from the moment the doctor told her she was having a baby, Goldie changed. It was as if all the pain she had suffered, the beatings and mental torture she’d endured at the hands of Sutherland, just melted away. She had never known Goldie so happy.’ A faint smile spread slowly across Maeve’s face. ‘From the minute she learned she was having a baby, Goldie started to look after herself. She began to eat properly, she went back to sleeping in her bed, and she swore the nightmares had stopped. Although Mum said she often heard Goldie crying in her sleep.
‘For the most part, the old Goldie was back. She lived for the day she had the baby. Our next-door neighbour gave her a Moses basket and she lined it with pale pink cotton. She sewed sheets and a pillowcase to match it, and bought two pink blankets.’
‘She wanted a girl then?’ Bess said.
‘Oh yes! She wrote to me and said she was praying for a girl. A boy, she said, might remind her of him, of Sutherland.’
Smiling, Maeve shook her head. ‘My mother was happy because Goldie was happy. “Being sad is not good for the baby,” Goldie would tell her. And she would caress her tummy and say, “Mummy loves you, Nancy.”’
Maeve pressed her lips together tightly and looked up to the heavens. As if a black cloud was bearing down on her, Bess watched Maeve’s expression change from one of joy and loving memories to heartbroken and vengeful. ‘She didn’t go full term. She wasn’t much over seven months when she went into labour. Mother sent for me straight away and this time I was given two weeks’ compassionate leave.
‘From the moment I saw Goldie in the hospital, I didn’t leave her side. She did her best to bring the baby naturally, but she wasn’t able to push when they told her to, because she kept slipping in and out of consciousness.
‘The doctor
