The English Wife Read online

  The English Wife

  ADRIENNE CHINN

  One More Chapter

  a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2020

  Copyright © Adrienne Chinn 2020

  Cover design by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020

  Cover images © Shutterstock.com

  Adrienne Chinn asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

  Source ISBN: 9780008314583

  Ebook Edition © June 2020 ISBN: 9780008314576

  Version: 2020-02-17

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  About This Book

  Part 1

  Chapter 1: Liverpool – 5 February 1946

  Chapter 2: New York City – 9 September 2011

  Chapter 3: Over the Atlantic Ocean – 11 September 2011

  Chapter 4: Norwich, England – 26 July 1940

  Chapter 5: En Route to New York From London – 11 September 2001

  Chapter 6: Norwich, England – 27 July 1940

  Chapter 7: Gander International Airport, Newfoundland – 12 September 2001

  Chapter 8: Norwich, England – 27 July 1940

  Chapter 9: Northern Newfoundland Coast – 12 September 2001

  Chapter 10: Norwich, England – 30 July 1940

  Chapter 11: Tippy’s Tickle, Newfoundland – 12 September 2001

  Chapter 12: Norwich, England – 7 August 1940

  Chapter 13: Tippy’s Tickle – 12 September 2001

  Chapter 14: Norwich, England – 21 December 1940

  Chapter 15: Tippy’s Tickle – 13 September 2001

  Chapter 16: Norwich, England – 14 February 1941

  Chapter 17: Tippy’s Tickle – 13 September 2001

  Chapter 18: Holkham Beach, Norfolk – 21 June 1941

  Chapter 19: Tippy’s Tickle – 13 September 2001

  Chapter 20: Norwich, England – 20 September 1941

  Chapter 21: Tippy’s Tickle – 14 September 2001

  Chapter 22: Norwich, England – 7 December 1941

  Chapter 23: Tippy’s Tickle – 15 September 2001

  Chapter 24: Norwich, England – 14 February 1942

  Chapter 25: Tippy’s Tickle – 15 September 2001

  Chapter 26: Norwich, England – 14 March 1942

  Chapter 27: Tippy’s Tickle – 15 September 2001

  Chapter 28: Norwich, England – 27 April 1942

  Chapter 29: Tippy’s Tickle – 16 September 2001

  Chapter 30: Norwich, England – 11 September 1942

  Chapter 31: Tippy’s Tickle – 16 September 2001

  Chapter 32: Norwich, England – 16 September 1942

  Chapter 33: Tippy’s Tickle – 16 September 2001

  Chapter 34: Norwich, England – 4 October 1942

  Chapter 35: Tippy’s Tickle – 16 September 2001

  Chapter 36: Norwich, England – 13 November 1942

  Chapter 37: Tippy’s Tickle – 16 September 2001

  Chapter 38: Letters – Winter 1942–1943

  Chapter 39: Tippy’s Tickle – 16 September 2001

  Chapter 40: Norwich, England – 24 December 1943

  Chapter 41: Tippy’s Tickle – 16 September 2001

  Chapter 42: London, England – 28 December 1943

  Chapter 43: Tippy’s Tickle – 16 September 2001

  Chapter 44: Monte Cassino, Italy – 19 March 1944

  Chapter 45: Tippy’s Tickle – 17 September 2001

  Chapter 46: Norwich, England – 11 August 1944

  Chapter 47: Tippy’s Tickle – 17 September 2001

  Chapter 48: Gander, Newfoundland – 17 September 2001

  Part 2

  Chapter 49: Gander, Newfoundland – 11 September 2011

  Chapter 50: Tippy’s Tickle – 12 February 1946

  Chapter 51: Tippy’s Tickle – 12 September 2011

  Chapter 52: Tippy’s Tickle – 11 August 1947

  Chapter 53: Tippy’s Tickle – 12 September 2011

  Chapter 54: Tippy’s Tickle – 24 July 1948

  Chapter 55: Tippy’s Tickle – 12 September 2011

  Chapter 56: Tippy’s Tickle – 1 April 1949

  Chapter 57: Tippy’s Tickle – 13 September 2011

  Chapter 58: Tippy’s Tickle – 24 October 1949

  Chapter 59: Tippy’s Tickle – 13 September 2011

  Chapter 60: Tippy’s Tickle – 25 September 1952

  Chapter 61: Tippy’s Tickle – 13 September 2011

  Chapter 62: Norwich, England – 21 November 1952

  Chapter 63: Tippy’s Tickle – 14 September 2011

  Chapter 64: Tippy’s Tickle – 14 June 1953

  Chapter 65: Tippy’s Tickle – 15 September 2011

  Chapter 66: Norwich – 2 August 1953

  Chapter 67: Tippy’s Tickle – 16 September 2011

  Chapter 68: Norwich – 3 September 1953

  Chapter 69: Tippy’s Tickle – 16 September 2011

  Chapter 70: Tippy’s Tickle – 19 June 1954

  Chapter 71: Tippy’s Tickle – 16 September 2011

  Chapter 72: Norwich – 1 December 1961

  Chapter 73: Tippy’s Tickle – 16 September 2011

  Chapter 74: Tippy’s Tickle – 24 June 1967

  Chapter 75: Tippy’s Tickle – 17 September 2011

  Chapter 76: Tippy’s Tickle – 10 July 1962

  Chapter 77: Tippy’s Tickle – 17 September 2011

  Chapter 78: Tippy’s Tickle – 17 September 2011

  Chapter 79: Tippy’s Tickle – 24 September 2011

  Chapter 80: Seal Point Lighthouse – 24 September 2011

  Epilogue: Wesleyville, Newfoundland – 5 October 2011

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Also by Adrienne Chinn

  About the Publisher

  For my mother, Charlotte Mary (Mae) Edwards Chinn

  Always a Newfoundlander

  ‘The huge island … stands, with its sheer, beetling cliffs, out of the ocean, a monstrous mass of rock and gravel, almost without soil, like a strange thing from the bottom of the great deep, lifted up, suddenly, into sunshine and storm, but belonging to the watery darkness out of which it has been reared; the eye, accustomed to richer and softer scenes, finds something of a strange and almost startling beauty in its bold, hard outlines, cut out on every side, against the sky.’

  – Robert Traill Spence Lowell, nineteenth-century American missionary

  About This Book

  This ebook meets all accessibility requirements and standards.

  Please be advised this book features the following content warnings: bereavement, suicide, descriptions of war.

 
; PART ONE

  Chapter 1

  Liverpool – 5 February 1946

  The grey bulk of the RMS Mauritania sits like a warehouse alongside the Liverpool dock. Black smoke belches from its two large funnels. Ellie bounces Emmett, swaddled in a thick wool blanket and the garments she’d spent the winter knitting by the fireplace, and coos into his shell-like ear. He fixes her with his impassive blue/brown gaze. Such an odd little man with his one blue eye and his one brown eye, and the fine blond eyebrows he’d taken to arching when unimpressed. The ship melds with the lowering clouds and the rumbling sea, but, at least for now, the incessant rain has let up, though Ellie’s face is damp with the humid threat of an imminent deluge.

  ‘It would take a huge iceberg to sink that thing,’ Ellie’s sister, Dottie, says, blowing into her mitts. ‘There’s lots of icebergs around Newfoundland. I read about it in the library.’

  ‘Thanks, Dottie. You’re a harbinger of doom, as always.’

  Henry Burgess lifts his glasses and squints at the ship. ‘I shouldn’t worry, Ellie Mae. I’ve been reading about the Mauritania. She’s been doing runs all over the world since the war began. She’s a tough old thing.’

  Ellie scans the pier, crowded with thousands of young women, many with infants and toddlers, with faces as blank and terrified as her own. ‘There are so many of us.’ She looks at her father. ‘What are we all doing, Poppy?’ She bites down on her lip and blinks back the tears that salt her eyes. ‘I can’t even remember what Thomas looks like.’

  Henry lifts a gloved hand as if to pet Ellie’s arm, but hesitates and shoves it into his coat pocket. ‘I don’t expect he’s changed all that much.’

  ‘I never even knew about the prisoner exchange until I received the telegram from Canada. I still can’t believe he was in hospital in London for four months and I didn’t even know. He was too sick to get a message to me.’

  ‘Quite. But he’s recovered now, I understand. Didn’t you say he’s back fishing with his father?’

  ‘That’s what he said in his letter. In a place called Tippy’s Tickle on the north coast of Newfoundland. I couldn’t find it on the map in the school library.’

  Dottie shifts Ellie’s suitcase from one hand to the other with a grunt. ‘You’ll be off feasting on bananas and white bread instead of having to eat Woolton pie and that horrible National Loaf that everyone knows they put cinema sweepings into.’ Dottie pouts, her lips reddened with what Ellie suspects to be one of her stolen lipsticks. ‘You’ll forget all about me and Poppy once you’re over in Canada, just like you forgot about George.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. You’re family, though I don’t know what happened to the lovely little girl you used to be. Hopefully, by the time I see you again, you’ll have matured.’

  ‘I’m mature. I’m sixteen. I’m not a child, Ellie. Just ask George.’

  ‘It’s not Canada, pet,’ Henry corrects Dottie. ‘It’s Newfoundland. Newfoundland is a British dominion, similar to Canada and Australia.’

  ‘What do you mean, just ask George?’

  The ship’s horn blows out an ear-splitting bellow. The crowd surges forward like a wave, knocking Ellie off balance. Henry grabs her arm. ‘You should be going, pet.’ He removes a ticket from his coat pocket and places it in her gloved hand. ‘I’ve paid a porter to take your trunk to your room. It’s first class, so you and Emmett should have some privacy.’

  Ellie’s eyes widen. ‘First class? Poppy! You didn’t have to do that. It’s far too dear.’

  ‘It’s the least I can do, pet.’ He tweaks Emmett’s chubby cheek. ‘Take care, Ellie Mae. He kisses her awkwardly on her cheek. ‘You know you can always come home if things …’ His voice catches and he clears his throat. ‘Right, Dottie, we’d best be off before it starts raining again. They’re threatening gales from Iceland and we’ve got a long journey home.’

  Dottie kisses the baby on his cheek. ‘Bye, little one.’ She holds out the suitcase. ‘Goodbye, Ellie.’

  ‘That’s no way to say goodbye, Dottie. I don’t know when I’ll see you again.’

  Dottie stares at Ellie. ‘What do you expect? You’re off to a big new country where everything will be lovely and easy. They weren’t bombed, were they? They don’t have rationing, do they? Thousands of people weren’t killed there, were they? I think you married Thomas just to get away from this horrible place. To get away from Poppy and me.’

  ‘Dottie, how can you say that? I’ve been crying every night wondering when I’ll see you and Poppy again. It’s crushing me to leave you, and Norwich, and … and everything. You have no idea. It’s my home. I’m going to miss you and Poppy awfully.’

  ‘If you really cared about us, you’d stay. You promised you’d stay. You promised! You’re a liar, Ellie!’

  ‘Now, pet, you don’t really mean that. Ellie’s your sister. Blood is thicker than water and all that.’

  Dottie tucks her hand around her father’s elbow. ‘Let’s go, Poppy. It’s cold, and I’m hungry. Let’s get some fish and chips. Just the two of us. I saw a place just around the corner.’

  ***

  Ellie stumbles into her cabin with Emmett and the suitcase. Four double bunk beds crowd the floor space and someone has deposited her trunk behind the door. A young woman in an ill-fitting suit leans up on her elbow from the top of one of the beds. ‘Bloody ’ell. A baby? It isn’t a crier, is it?’

  Ellie looks down at her ticket and back at the young woman. ‘I’m sorry. I think I’m in the wrong room. I’m meant to be in first class.’

  A whoop of laugher. ‘This is it, angel.’ The young woman rises and swings her legs over the side of the bunk, the skin stained with gravy browning to look like tights. Thank goodness for Thomas and his ‘in’ with the American GIs. She’d never been short of nylons.

  Ellie takes a deep breath and sets the suitcase down beside the bunk by the small porthole window. ‘Is there anyone here?’

  ‘Be my guest.’ The rasping of a match against grit. ‘I’m Mona. Had to haul my ass all the way up ’ere from Lewisham. Bloody nightmare.’ She holds the match against a cigarette and inhales until the tip glows red. She blows on the match and drops it on the linoleum floor. ‘Still, I’m off to Toronto. Can’t be worse than Lewisham. They bombed the shit outta that place.’ She sucks on the cigarette as she watches Ellie set Emmett on a bed and free him of the blanket and knitted cap and mitts. ‘Where you off to, luv?’

  ‘Newfoundland.’

  ‘Holy shit. I heard about that place. Dated a bloke from there before I met Dave. Better you than me.’

  ‘Boat,’ Emmett says, fixing Ellie with his serious gaze.

  ‘Yes, darling. We’re on a boat. And now you’re on a bed. You’ll sleep with me while we’re on the boat and then we’ll go live with Daddy, like I told you.’

  She leans over and gives him a kiss on his chubby cheek. Sniffing, she wrinkles her nose. Taking off her coat and her feathered fedora, Ellie lays them neatly on the bed and fishes a cloth nappy out of her suitcase.

  ‘’Old on, luv! What’re you doing?’

  ‘Changing his nappy.’

  ‘Give us a flippin’ break.’ Mona climbs down from her perch and shoves her feet into a pair of sturdy shoes.

  The cabin door swings open. A young red-haired woman in a net snood and camel-hair coat stands in the entrance, cradling an infant. She glances around the room in confusion. ‘Is this first class?’

  Mona rolls her eyes as she pushes past the new arrival. ‘Bloody Nora. Dave bloody better be worth five days of this or I’ll be straight back to Blighty on a troop ship.’

  ***

  Five days later

  Halifax harbour is drab and grey. A flurry of snow swirls over a rocky shoreline and wooden houses like upturned apple crates. Ellie edges her way past the others onto the deck, Emmett clutching her hand as he toddles along beside her.

  The crossing had been awful, the waves a seascape of mountains and valleys, the ship like a cork bouncing
and tipping its way across the Atlantic. She’d given up trying to eat after the first day, and would have stayed prone on her bed if the stench of vomit and drying nappies hadn’t driven her out to sit on the stairs to the deck where she at least could breathe in the fresh, salty air.

  As the grey bulk of the Mauritania steams into the harbour, the juddering black line on the harbour front transforms into a mass of shouting, waving people. Ellie clutches Emmett closer. Thomas is out there somewhere. Waiting to take her and the baby on the train up through Nova Scotia and onto the ferry across to Newfoundland. They’ll be a family in this new land of hers. She can make this work. It will be fine.

  She picks up Emmett. Resting his weight against her hip, she points at the wooden buildings clustered along the harbour. ‘Look, Emmy. Houses. Daddy’s there to meet us.’

  Emmett fixes his mother with a serious gaze. ‘Boat.’

  When she finally disembarks, Thomas is there waiting for them in a dark brown wool coat and a felt fedora. He leans on a crutch and holds up a bag of oranges. His face is lean and lines fan out from the corners of his eyes as he smiles. A thin scar like a sickle loops around his left eye and cheek. He leans forward and kisses her.

  ‘Ellie Mae.’

  Her eyes sweep over the pinned-up trouser leg; at the space where his lower right leg and foot should have been. Setting her jaw in a firm line, she smiles at him. At this stranger. Her husband.

  Chapter 2

  New York City – 9 September 2011

  A movement outside the window catches Sophie’s eye. The hawk turns its head, fixing her in its yellow eye as it glides past the shining glass, its orange-red tail feathers a stark contrast to the blue summer sky above the city’s skyscrapers.

  ‘Sophie? Can I have Jackie book your flight to Newfoundland? You’re clear what the consortium needs you to do?’

  Sophie looks across the vast Italian glass desk at Richard Niven, the man whose award-winning architecture practice had drawn her over from London to New York ten years before. His thinning grey hair is cropped close to his bull-like head, and round, black-rimmed glasses frame his piercing hazel eyes. You look like a buzzard. She imagines him in twenty years’ time, jowls dropping from his square jawline, his eyes drooping and watery. By then he’d look like a vulture. Turning into his spirit creature.