A Fall from Grace, Maggie Ford [best english novels to read txt] 📗

lines to say he was still safe and well while describing life on the Western Front merely as being pretty awful at times. James would read them aloud to her but there was never any mention of her.

The last one had been some time ago, in October. Since then there had been her Christmas Eve party and the one seeing out nineteen seventeen in a fervent hope that nineteen eighteen might eventually see better news. She had finally heeded James’s advice to tone down her parties out of respect for a general bleakness at the continuing stalemate along the entire Western Front coupled with news of the Italian army’s collapse before a fierce German onslaught. The only news to lighten the heart had been the Canadians recapturing Passchendaele in November and a hope that America having entered the war last April might help even the odds eventually.

Anthony’s last letter to his mother had been three months ago and she had become worried sick by it. This morning she arrived out of the blue, to be announced into the morning room and startling Madeleine and James who were taking their ease over a cup of after-breakfast tea.

Her narrow features were drawn and wan. ‘I’m so worried. I can’t help it,’ she mewed yet again in her wavering voice as she gazed into the blazing fire that had been stoked up against the January chill.

The tea Madeleine had poured for her from a fresh pot their maid had brought in over ten minutes ago still lay untouched and was now lukewarm. She looked old. She’d always looked older than her brother-in-law despite being a few years younger, her sallow skin far more lined than his somewhat smooth skin, but this morning she looked positively haggard.

‘If anything has happened to him, I would have received a telegram by now wouldn’t I?’ she asked pitifully.

‘My dear Mabel, of course you would,’ James told her sternly, looking vaguely uncomfortable as he leaned forward in his armchair. ‘You must try not to worry. So long as there’s been no telegram, nothing official, no dire news telling you… well, you know what… you have to believe he is fine, merely not at liberty to write at the moment, far too much going on over there. You must have a little faith, my dear.’

It was obviously no comfort to her nor did it help Madeleine’s own fears for his safety. She had to admit that to some extent her own concern for him had taken her mind off that still lingering memory of her traumatic meeting with her father and for that she felt, maybe selfishly, almost grateful.

Even so it was with profound relief two weeks later that Mabel came to say she’d at last received a letter from Anthony saying he was OK but had sustained a shrapnel wound in the soft tissue of the upper part of his right arm; nothing serious, but he had landed up in a field hospital to have the shrapnel removed and had been unable to use the arm for a while. He’d not had the heart to ask any of the overworked nurses dealing with so many terribly injured men to write a letter for him.

His letters were arriving again if infrequently and few and far between. Then around late April they again ceased. News from the Western Front was as depressing as ever, terrifying at times. Madeleine found herself praying almost desperately for his safety, often conscious of tears of premature grief filling her eyes should she let herself imagine something awful happening to him. It felt almost as if she was becoming part of him; far more than was healthy for a woman married to someone else.

She was keeping in as close a contact with his mother as she dared without appearing as if she were harassing her for news of him. She would call on her, usually to take afternoon tea with her hoping she would feel glad to have someone visiting, but she knew that sooner or later she could be in danger of becoming less welcome by visiting too often.

‘What do you think must be preventing him writing?’ she queried of her as casually as she could while they sat drinking tea, these days without the accompaniment of rich cake.

‘I’m sure I don’t know!’ bleated Mabel, the reply sounding a little testy to Madeleine’s ears. ‘I daren’t think. Maybe it’s that he is being troubled by that injured arm of his again.’

‘Maybe,’ Madeleine agreed, quickly changing the conversation to more trivial matters. But her heart ached with thinking about his safety as Mabel rang the bell for the tea things to be taken away.

In May, with the war well into its fourth year and still grinding on, she had finally yielded to James’s requests to curb her extensive social entertaining because there was little to warrant any such indulgence with no promise of peace on the horizon. But she did vow to give the biggest party ever seen the moment the war was over, although that prospect looked as distressingly bleak as ever, kiddies growing up having never known what it was like with this ever deepening food rationing to see a well-laden table. The thought of children inevitably reminded her of her own baby. Where was she? Was she going hungry, those who’d adopted her, uncaring as to how she fared so long as they ate?

As always, she forced herself to shut out that vision knowing it would only start her off condemning James yet again over his obvious reluctance to trace the child for her. She’d tell herself time and time again that she could understand his reluctance – his age, not his child, born out of wedlock – and tried not to think ill of him.

James was not a selfish man. He saw to it that she had everything she wanted except that one thing she had hoped for which was the reason why she had consented to marry him. She