This story is best described as a romance, and it is set before and during the Second World War. Some tragedy also happens. It is the nature of the story that some unpleasant events are described.
I have attempted to be as historically accurate as possible, and I have tried to use language appropriate to the time, but I apologise in advance for any anachronistic mistakes that I may have made.
. Although I have tried to ensure the historical background to this story is accurate, none of the characters depicted are real and any similarity to real people living or dead is purely coincidental.
As always, any errors, factual or grammatical, are mine alone. They are inevitable. I do not aspire to write for a living, only for fun.
I make the usual plea. Please score and comment. Constructive comments are valuable and encouraging and help authors to both write better and write more.
I have included endnotes to clarify some of the background to the story. If you do not care to read them..... don't. Some folks like them and some hate them but criticising their inclusion is a pointless exercise.
The Jinx
Helen
Helen sat at the wooden table in the corner of her room. On the table were several sheets of paper and a bottle of ink, and in her right hand was her fountain pen. She had been writing for hours and was tired, but she continued to fill sheet after sheet of writing paper with her bold cursive script. Her fatigue didn't bother her. She planned to sleep when she had finished. On the bedside table in the corner sat a full bottle of scotch and a small brown bottle of barbiturates. Between them, they would ensure that she never woke up again.
Helen had started work early the previous evening and she had worked through the night. Although it was still half-dark when she finished writing, the rain lashing against the window had now stopped, and the birds had started to sing to one another in the predawn light.
She placed the cap on the pen and put it down, then carefully made sure the lid to the ink bottle was screwed tightly on before shuffling the papers of her manuscript together and putting them in a neat pile in the centre of the table.
Only then, did she turn to her rickety metal-framed bed where she lay on her back and looked at the ceiling. For some time, she lay motionless then she turned and took a long look out of the window before turning once more and reaching for the bottle of whisky and her pills.
On the table, her story, yet unread, waited.
***
September 5
th
, 1942
When you read this please do not think badly of me. I know it is considered poor form to speak ill of the dead so thinking it must be just as bad, mustn't it? And let's face it, there has been so much death in the last few years what difference will mine make? I am now alone in the world and will pass unnoticed and unmourned by everyone except Beth.
It wasn't always like this. It isn't easy to believe that my life was so different a mere three years ago. That was before this damn war when I still had a mother and father, a brother, and a future. Now I have none of these and there seems little point in carrying on. Tomorrow is my twenty-third birthday, but I will not live to see it. I am so very tired....
I leave all my worldly goods to my landlady Mrs Elizabeth Farrow. This is my story. This is why I am now dead.
Helen Morgan
***
I was born in Coventry in 1919, the year after my father returned from the war. He was a doctor and held the rank of captain. Apart from that, I knew nothing of his experiences in the trenches since he refused to talk about any of it. I was raised in the shadow of the "Great War" or "The war to end all wars." How false that turned out to be.
I had a happy childhood. On his return to England, my father set up practice as a family doctor in Coventry. He worked hard, was skilled and popular, and soon had a thriving practice. A few years after my birth he could purchase a large house on the city's outskirts. In the spring of 1922, my brother David was born. My earliest memories are of playing in the garden on a warm summer afternoon or my mother pushing me on a swing while my brother slept in his pram. The swing was a simple thing made of a short plank of wood attached to the bough of an old oak tree by four lengths of rope.... and I loved it.
My mother doted on me and David. She was a pretty, blond Irish woman whose father had moved to Coventry from Cork. She was a wonderful homekeeper and cook, and our family was her universe. She was a devout Catholic, ensuring that my brother and I attended Sunday School and church weekly. Despite her deep belief, my father did not regularly attend church with us. I now realise that he must have lost his faith somewhere in the carnage of the trenches.
The only time I recollect him coming to church was for my first communion, and I remember how handsome he looked as he sat with my mother and watched me take a step in my path toward adulthood and independence.
Before she met my father, my mother was a schoolteacher but gave this up to look after her family. It was my mother who taught me to read and write, and who introduced me to the classics. She also taught me my sums and multiplication tables. I was an excellent student, and it was natural that I did not leave school until I was eighteen years old with a Higher School Certificate with distinction in all eight of my subjects. The subject in which I truly excelled was mathematics and my teacher, Dr Simms, went so far as to suggest that I should consider studying for a university degree in this. My parents would not countenance it because they did not see what use this would be to me later in life and saw it as an expensive folly.
I still remember wishing I were a boy. David had been sent to a private school at considerable expense and I was sure he could have gone to university if he weren't planning to attend Sandhurst and become an officer in the army. Only later did I discover many young boys would soon be dead in the meat grinder of war. I was better off being a girl.
So, instead of attending university, on leaving school I went to work in the local library. It was a job to which I was well suited. My mother had instilled a love of books in me.- both their contents and the look and feel of the paper as I turned the pages. I enjoyed the cataloguing of each work and had an unlimited supply of reading material at my fingertips.
***
It was around this time I discovered boys. I had attended an all-girls school, and the only contact I had with the opposite sex was with my brother and his friends. He was born two years after me, and they, being teenage boys, were still children while I was a serious young woman. What this meant was that my knowledge of the male sex was negligible.
What I did know was gleaned from conversations with my girlfriends and from a book I found in the restricted library section called, "The Way Life Begins
1
."
There was a girl in class at school, who suddenly disappeared during my final year at school. The rumour was that she had gone away to have a baby although our class teacher did her best to stop any gossip. My best friend Jean told me it happened because she had let a boy put his "thing inside her." When I mentioned it to my mother she muttered something about the pregnant girl being a shameless slut and told me not to speak of her again. I recollect how surprised I was at my mother's vitriol, since she was normally so kind and gentle.
This episode had one lasting effect on me. I was determined I would not become pregnant outside of wedlock.
Unsurprisingly, my catholic mother provided me with no sex education other than to warn me before my "monthlies" started when I was twelve, and much later instructed me not to let a man put his hands on me before my wedding night.
It was against this background that I met George. In December 1938, I was still living at home with my parents when Mr James, the bank manager, came to dinner accompanied by his wife and son. I cannot remember the occasion but expected my father was trying to butter him up for a loan. I do remember meeting George that first time, and I was smitten. He was several years older than me and tall with fair hair, blue eyes, and chiselled good looks. I learned he was in his final year of a language degree at Oxford University and was home for the Christmas Holidays.
It was obvious that George liked what he saw since he spent the entire evening trying to impress me - and he succeeded. He was not just good-looking, he was charming, educated, and intelligent. He told me of his life at Oxford and his hope to join the Foreign Office and become a diplomat. He had visited Germany the previous summer and travelled to Munich and Berlin by train. He spoke admiringly of the hard-working and organised nature of the people and the economic miracle that Hitler had worked. Nonetheless, he was not blinded by what he had seen.
"I fear that Hitler will start a war," he said. "That might get in the way of my plans."
