MISS

It was her name that jarred me. Miss Josephine Paxton. Miss.

A large boardroom table with a dozen seats. Dark mahogany, shelves of worn books, the air filled with dust motes, musty and stale. I wondered if all lawyers had a room like this, or just the ones that served rich clients and read wills to greedy families gathered in the half light. The busy London traffic was humming behind the heavy dark curtains and in that afternoon heat, my mind drifted back through time. Back to the war years, back to my youth, back to a time when I was deeply in love.

I’d been a trained confectioner, creating candies and crafting chocolate. The rationing brought an end to my youthful aspirations. No sugar meant no sweets and so the little shop that I’d taken over was forced to close. I wasn’t alone in this time of desperation, there were many of us who’d had to change career and I decided it wouldn’t do me any good to brood over the subject. I was lucky, my family had money, a large house in Surrey and I’d been allowed this exciting foray into business until my mother could find a suitable bachelor to marry me. Now that most of them had departed to fight the Germans, I was granted a temporary reprieve from the matchmakers that congregated at my parent’s parties. It wasn’t considered a tasteful subject to bring up the lack of eligible men in the neighbourhood, not when they were fighting for King and country. In the run up to Christmas in 1941, the National Service Act had passed to include women. Childless spinsters between the ages of twenty and thirty, should join the forces and ‘do their bit’ for England. I fell into that category, having celebrated my twenty-first birthday over the summer.

The Land Army wasn’t an easy option for me, but I’d decided it was better to be outdoors than working in the munitions factories. I was assigned to work on a farm in a tiny village on the outskirts of Dorchester, deep in the heart of Dorset. Those first days were hard, cold and dark but by the time spring had arrived I was used to the muck and dirt, early morning milking and hands that were calloused and sore. I shared a cottage with two other girls, and we fought over bathwater and overalls in equal measure. The longer days of sunshine warmed our spirits and before long we were enjoying our days off with trips down to the seaside in Weymouth. We made friends and when the locals held a village dance, we were invited. The local lads were harmless and mostly farm workers, too old or damaged to fight in the war. Then the American GIs arrived.

The first time we attended a dance with the yanks, the whole place was filled with Glen Miller music and laughter. The atmosphere was lively and the chatter of accents distinctly different to our own was enough to excite us. Glances were exchanged across the dance floor and it wasn’t long before we were all being twirled and hurled through the air by dashing servicemen. I noticed him sitting in the corner, taking in the scene with every drag of his cigarette. He was handsome in the smart, clean cut way that men used to be, but his demeanour made him seem unapproachable and stand-offish. I was caught mid stare and given a firm prod and a push towards him. I braced myself and accepted the challenge to engage in conversation with the only man in the room who seemed disinclined to make small talk.

I took out a cigarette and sat down at his empty table, avoiding his stare. Like all men, he responded with a source of light and I resisted the urge to look into his eyes until he held the flame in front of them. He smiled warmly and we both laughed at the significance of the gesture. Steve was a New Yorker, his words took time for me to process but he spoke about his life back home, his parents’ store, the newspaper where he worked and the places he loved to visit. There was a sadness behind his chatter, I thought it was a dose of homesickness. The real cause of his melancholy didn’t emerge until we’d been courting for a few weeks.

We’d taken a walk down to the riveron a Sunday afternoon, I’d packed a meagre picnic lunch that was bolstered by his contributions of cheese, two hard boiled eggs and a bottle of cider and we sat lounging in the afternoon sun. It was then that he told me about his ex-wife. My heart sank at his confession, but I was falling in love for the first time and the fact that he wanted to be honest made my heart thump with gladness. He loved me too. The weeks rolled past and the more time we spent together, the more in sync we became. He wanted to marry me and insisted that he ask my family for permission.

The weekend pass came, and we headed to Surrey to meet my parents and extended members of the clan. Impressed by the family home, rolling countryside and lush green lawns, Steve looked nervously at me as we rang the doorbell. My father was a docile man, bowled over by Steve’s winning smile and now exuberant nature. My mother was easily won over by a pair of silk stockings and his New York drawl. Then my Grandmother, Seffy, joined us. The inquisition began in a harmless way, talk of his working-class roots, Scottish American heritage and ambitions as a journalist. Then I left the room to make another pot of tea. I knew that this was the point when his imminent proposal would be discussed, and permission would be granted. But when I reappeared with a tray in the drawing room, the atmosphere had shifted, my head began to swim in panic. Divorced. His honesty had been his downfall and my Grandmother left the room, brushing past me with a look of dismay. Steve stood and looked crestfallen; his smile was replaced with a tight grimace of acceptance. He held my shoulders firmly and whispered in my ear, “I’m sorry, your Grandmother is right, I’m not good enough” and then he left me. Standing with tears rolling down my cheeks, he didn’t look back as he drove away. After a weekend of crying and arguing with Seffy, I returned to Dorset by train, a wholly dishevelled mess. Despite my efforts, messages and phone calls to his base, I never saw him again.

Here I was in a stuffy room fifteen years later and the name MISS Josephine Paxton, rang in my ears. “I’m sorry, you said Miss Paxton, you must be mistaken, my grandmother was Josephine Lake, Mrs Seffy Lake”. The solicitor cleared his throat uncomfortably and looked at me over the rim of his glasses, “I’m afraid your Grandmother was never legally married to your Grandfather my dear, if you’ll allow me to explain.”

The explanation was long. A previous wife had existed, marred by insanity and a spell in an institution, there was no easy divorce back then, just more secrets and more lies. Thank goodness my father had never lived to discover his illegitimate birth and my mother was not well enough to attend. I left that room in disbelief, a rich woman. A rich single woman. I had never married and the past fifteen years had been lost. The sun shone outside, I stopped and breathed in the dull city air. As I walked toward the train station, a poster made me stop in my tracks. The heavy door needed a push to enter the office and a young girl smiled politely as she asked, “How can I help you Madam?” I looked around at the travel brochures and signalled to the window, “New York, I’d like to buy a ticket to New York.”