THE FLAPPER'S FAN

Chapter 9 - Your Destiny is Here

I spent the next day in the city. It was my first chance to look for the little bookstore since I had arrived, but it was no surprise to me that it was nowhere to be found. I ate in a small cafe, enjoying the sight of the world of this age passing by me. Everything was slower and quieter and a lot smellier but altogether fascinating. I was walking past St George's Hospital when I saw a familiar face.

"Charlie!" I called, and she turned, giving me a big smile when she recognised me.

"Eddie!" she ran and hugged me as if I was her long lost sister. It brought a smile to my face. "What are you doing here?"

"Just walking around. I didn't realise this was where you worked."

"Worked, indeed. I've finished for the day and I'm heading home. What say we stop for a cup of tea and a chat?" She slipped her arm in mine and we walked together to a small tea shop that seemed to be well frequented by staff from the hospital and they greeted Charlie as "Nurse Baker" and ushered us to a nice table in the window. The tea arrived shortly after we had made ourselves comfortable.

"So, Harry tells me you are working for Nick?" Her sparkling eyes indicated this was quite a piece of juicy gossip. I laughed and shook my head.

"No?" she asked, her face showing her disappointment.

"Well yes, I suppose I am." I agreed. It was as good a story as any, just as it was for Nick.

"And living in his house."

"Yes."

"Well!" We both giggled. "I knew when I first met you that were a wicked girl!" she said with melodramatic relish.

"Well I'm not exactly an innocent," I said. "I was married."

"Really?" Her big brown eyes were like saucers. "So does that mean you're divorced?"

"Yes, I am divorced."

She clapped her hands. "Ooooh, how delicious! Does Nick know?"

"Yes." I said.

"Well!" she exclaimed again. She stirred her tea and looked at me with a speculative eye. "I was engaged you know."

"Were you? What happened?"

"We were both very young, we had pretty much known each other since we were children. Then he signed up and off he went to war, before we could even, you know, declare our love."

"Oh no!" I had already heard many stories from Mrs Brewer's family and friends of men who never returned home.

"Oh, he came home!" she assured me. "But he was never the same."

I had seen what war did to men, changed them, and never for the better.

"Was he injured? Or was it psychological?"

She cocked her head and frowned. "No, he wasn't seriously injured. Maybe a little shellshock I suppose, but it wasn't that sort of change. He came to see me a few weeks after he came home to tell me the wedding was off. He'd met someone else and he could never marry me. He gave me that old spiel about how much he loved and respected me and he couldn't marry me, he just couldn't, it wouldn't be fair. You know the sort of thing." I nodded. "I heard the rumours of course, but I had ignored them. I think deep down I knew the truth. He wouldn't return to his parents' house, he lived in a small flat close to where he worked. I dropped in to see him one day, I had heard he had been harassed by the local lads. He was in his room with his friend Ian."

She stopped and I waited. It took me a few moments to realise what she was trying to tell me. In this time, homosexuality was not accepted, although it wasn't a lot better in my own time. The poor man, and poor Charlotte.  Her strange energy when she had told me the rumours about Grace Howard now made sense.