Spilt Milk Page 11

  ‘And you’re happy now, I suppose?’

  ‘With Henry? Yes. He is a kind man.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear that.’

  They sat at the kitchen table. Vivian fetched her sewing box and mended Nellie’s coat while her sister made tea. She sewed a last stitch and broke the cotton with her teeth.

  ‘That’s better. Try it now. Good as new.’

  ‘Thank you. I always knew you were meant for a life like this. You were never a farm girl.’

  ‘Only because you and Rose wanted me to keep house. I might have been good working in the fields.’ She could have thrown her arms around Nellie, but she didn’t move. ‘I thought you might like to live with me here, now that I am alone. I have plenty of room. I thought that if you and Henry have children one day …’

  ‘Children?’ Nellie shook her head. ‘I don’t want children. Babies are too fragile. I’d be so afraid … After what happened to Josephine. And the thing is, Henry can’t—’

  ‘Josephine?’

  They turned to see Henry in the doorway looking restless, his raked shoulders slumped as he leaned on his cane.

  ‘A friend of ours,’ said Vivian smoothly. ‘I was just mending Nellie’s coat.’

  ‘But did I hear you discussing children? Can’t stand them. Nellie doesn’t like ’em either.’

  Vivian had been sure there would be children in Nellie’s marriage. She had already imagined them, their soft faces around this table.

  ‘But you’re married. And the Empire?’ she said, Dr Harding’s words coming back to her. ‘The continuation of the British Empire depends upon us all. It’s your patriotic duty to have children. Dr Harding says—’

  Nellie reached across the table and took her hand, stopping her outburst. ‘The Empire? What’s that to do with me?’

  ‘Nell, we should be getting along,’ said Henry. ‘I do apologize, Vivian, but we have a train to catch.’

  Nellie stood up. ‘Yes. We really should go now. The train takes an age and then we have to walk back to the cottage.’

  ‘What she means is she has to dawdle alongside me.’ Henry waved his cane at Nellie. ‘An old cripple like me takes a bloody age to get anywhere. Luckily your sister has the patience of a stone. I’m a lucky man to have her.’

  To have her? But of course he did. Nellie was his wife.

  ‘So you are,’ said Vivian. ‘Very lucky.’

  ‘Are you ready to go home, Mrs Farr?’ asked Henry cheerfully.

  Nellie stepped forwards and hugged Vivian.

  ‘Look after yourself. You’ve got everything you need now. Money. A house. I’m glad,’ she said, and pushed something into Vivian’s hand, whispering into her ear. ‘You keep it safe now.’

  Vivian felt something cool and hard in her palm. The hagstone.

  ‘Goodbye, my sweet sister,’ Nellie whispered.

  Vivian slipped the stone into her skirt pocket.

  She saw them to the door and watched them walk away down the cobblestone road. She waved, but neither looked back. They were already thinking of other things, she supposed. The journey back home to the cottage. Their life together there.

  After Mrs Dunn had washed up and gone home, Dr Harding settled in Frank’s worn old armchair by the fire and Vivian stood by the window, studying the marks sticky tape had made on the glass where she’d had taken down the blackout paper Frank insisted they put up. She could feel the stone, a small weight in her skirt pocket. Her daughter would be five years old now, had she lived. Nellie had loved her too, so how could she suggest she did not want any children? Was it the memory of that night by the frozen river, or simply her soldier husband’s wish that she remain barren? Vivian rubbed at the glass with her finger and looked out. Perhaps Henry thought the world too awful a place to bring children into.

  The street lamps glowed, and rain sparkled in their light. Even now, months after the war had ended, there were still soldiers making their way home. Joe Ferier might be among them, walking somewhere, or sitting in a railway carriage, pencils and paintbrushes in his kit bag. Perhaps he was thinking of her. Of that summer by the river. ‘I love you,’ he had said.

  She closed the curtains, busying herself, lighting the lamps in the room. She topped up the doctor’s glass, listening to him talk about Frank, imagining Nellie and her soldier husband riding the train home, the dark walk back to the cottage, the sound of the poplar trees by the river. Perhaps it was the long day, the people, the sadness of missing Frank, but she felt tears coming. Or perhaps, she thought, it was homesickness that gripped her. The desire to be back with Nellie, living together in the riverside cottage, when that was now impossible and they both had their own lives to lead.

  Nellie sold her furniture and donated what cutlery and china she didn’t need to the paupers’ fund in the village. In her old bedroom, Henry stored his trunk with his uniform and ceremonial sword and black boots. A pleasing smell of tobacco, mothballs and boot polish filled the room. Sometimes she went in there just to stand and look at his belongings. Now she helped Henry carry them all downstairs to the waiting cart. There was nothing much left in the room afterwards. Just memories of Vivian. She piled the toys they had had as children into a box. The oak apples and the marbles, the shells and pencils, little patchwork silks, whistles and odds and ends, scraps of wool and cotton reels. A headless porcelain doll bore testament to a particularly fiery row, though what the argument between her and Vivian had been about she could not remember, only the rage with which she had flung the doll against the bedroom wall. Nellie threw the valueless items into the orange flames of the bonfire that Henry was tending in the garden. It could all go, all of it.

  ‘It’s the local housing authority’s fault,’ Mr Westfield had explained when Nellie first received the letter stating the cottage was unfit for human habitation. ‘I’ve said I’ll make good the repair work, but they won’t budge.’

  ‘We’ll go to my brother’s public house,’ Henry said when they discussed what to do. Nellie suggested they live with Vivian, but Henry didn’t think it a good idea. He didn’t want to share a home with a stranger. It was a shock to hear Vivian described as a stranger, but perhaps he was right. She and Vivian were not close any more.

  At Liverpool Street Station, Nellie was startled by the crowds. She had never seen so many people. She felt stupid, standing on the sooty platform with no idea which way to go. She wanted to go straight back home again. She wasn’t sure what she had expected from the city. Women in fancy clothes and big motor cars, she supposed. There were plenty of smartly dressed people. And plenty dressed in filthy rags. What she noticed most were the pigeons. Clouds of them descending onto the smoke-filled platform like they were landing in ripe bean fields, and no scarecrows to put them off. More than anything, she thought, London was full of pigeons.

  ‘Bloody creatures. Worse than rats,’ Henry said, waving his cane at them. ‘Filthy things.’

  Nellie liked them. They landed around her and she felt they were gathering in welcome. As they left the station she saw a flower seller. A woman with a hand cart crammed solid with rich-petalled blooms. Orange and red hothouse flowers, white lilies and exotic plants she didn’t recognize, boxes of violets and bright little spring posies. Colours that shone in the grimy station entrance. For a moment she wished Vivian was beside her, so they could point and stare together.

  The car jumped over every pothole, and Vivian twice hit her head on the roof.

  ‘All right?’ asked Dr Harding as she rubbed her forehead. He was bent forwards, obviously delighted to be driving Frank’s car. She thought of her late husband and imagined the horror he’d feel, knowing she had let Bernard Harding loose behind the wheel. She really should have been brave enough to drive herself. Frank had given her plenty of lessons.

  The hagstone was in her pocket and she touched it. She was sure she had only love for Nellie in her heart. That and a desire to undo certain things, to smooth out the knot of family ties that bound them so awkwardly. Husband or
not, it made no sense that Nellie had not responded to her letter.

  Dear Nellie, Vivian had written. I have been thinking and I would like to offer you and Henry a home with me … It had taken many attempts to get the tone right. She had already suggested to Nellie at the funeral that they could live together. In her letter she had repeated the offer, stating clearly that Nellie and Henry would have their own rooms and would in no way need to spend their time with her. She’d put the letter in an envelope, addressed it, got her hat, coat and handbag and went to catch the last post. When she received no return letter, she decided to go and see her sister in person.

  ‘Turn right here,’ she told Dr Harding as they spun through the village, frightening the ducks around the pond. ‘And then take the next left after the church. It’s a few miles along the road.

  Vivian stared at the rows of houses, the well-tended vegetable gardens. Gypsies were camped in painted wooden wagons just outside the village, their horses tethered beside them. When finally she caught a glimpse of the river, her heart quickened and she realized she still thought of this as home.

  ‘That’s it,’ she said. ‘Right ahead. Careful of potholes. Turn right here.’

  They came to a stop by an overgrown hedgerow. Vivian got out of the car and looked up at the ruins of the cottage. A honeysuckle clambered into a broken window and came out on the roof. The thatch had slipped under the weight of green moss, leaving gaping holes. Several other windows hung open, their panes covered in what looked like thrown white paint but was, Vivian could see as she stepped closer, bird droppings.

  ‘Surely they don’t live here?’ said Bernard. ‘It’s a hovel.’

  Vivian pulled the garden gate open, yanking the bindweed and sticky goosegrass from its handle, the feel of lichen rough under her glove. Finches rose up out of the hedgerow, chattering loudly at having their peace disturbed. A pheasant called in the overgrown orchard.

  ‘Shall we go?’ said Bernard, getting out of the car and lighting a cigarette. Vivian shook her head. It annoyed her to have to share this moment with Bernard. It would have been better to have come alone. She left him smoking, playing with the iron water pump, splashing water at his feet, and took the track down to the river.

  Here, nothing had changed. The black poplar trees swayed and the willow branches dangled in the water. She had loved Joe Ferier under those willows. There was the quick movement of fish as they darted back and forth in the river weeds. What was it Nellie had said? That they would be able to come here and know little Josephine was resting in peace. That they would come here for the rest of their lives.

  She took the stone from her pocket. Nellie had promised that as long as they had the stone, the secret of the baby would remain with them. But that had been when they were together. She held the stone out over the water. It was over. All of it. Her baby and Nellie were lost to her.

  And yet.

  Vivian put the stone back in her pocket. The sisters might be together again one day. The stone might keep her daughter’s grave safe and undisturbed. That’s what she told herself as she walked back to the motor car.

  ‘I’ll drive back,’ she told Bernard, lighting up a cigarette. She blew a smoke ring and was pleased to see the scandalized look on Bernard’s face. ‘It’s my car, after all,’ she said, and realized something had hardened inside her. She was no longer afraid of being alone.

  When she returned home, there was post waiting for her. Bills and her own letter to Nellie, which had been returned by the post office. Among them was a small pale blue envelope, the address written in her sister’s careful handwriting. She ripped it open. Inside was a short note. Nellie apologized for not having written sooner. She’d had so much to do. She had moved to London and was living and working in Henry’s brother’s public house.

  Vivian could not imagine Nellie in a city. They had a biscuit tin once with a picture of the Changing of the Guard on it, the only image of London she knew. She imagined Nellie standing there in the crowds, wearing the farmer’s smock that acted as a bathing suit, her old straw hat perched on the back of her head, her bare feet planted apart. Nellie looking beautiful and straight-backed, chewing on a bit of hay. It was enough to make her smile.

  Weeks later Vivian sat in Frank’s button-back velvet chair. Life was easier without Frank fussing over things, but still she missed him. She hadn’t realized she had grown so fond of him. Frank had sat in this chair for so many hours at a time, slumped here with his hands clasped in his lap, turning one thumb over the other, smiling that soft, grateful smile of his as she brought him tea and cake. His mother would have approved of her, he liked to say.

  The door swung open and Bernard came into the room with a tray of tea things.

  ‘You sit there and rest your feet,’ he said, putting the tray down and pouring her a cup of tea. ‘A date and walnut slice?’

  Vivian shook her head.

  ‘The thing is,’ he said, taking a slice of cake and seating himself on the little footstool beside Vivian, ‘I have something very personal I want to ask you.’

  Bernard smiled. He was clean-shaven, his cheeks raw-looking. Vivian had an image of him standing in front of a shaving mirror with a razor in his hand, like Frank used to. The careful movements he would make. The towel on his shoulder, his braces loose around his trouser belt. She imagined sitting in the bedroom brushing her hair and having a view of him in the bathroom. Dr and Mrs Harding. She had a certain standing in the town now. People greeted her cordially. The baker gave her the freshest loaves when she shopped, and the butcher always sold her a decent cut of meat. Her status gave her privacy and respectability, she had learned. People accepted her readily as a widow. A doctor’s wife, though, would be another step up. A doctor’s wife would be served first in the butcher’s queue, all the other women – lowering their eyes, looking into their wicker baskets – accepting this fact in good grace.

  ‘We’ve been friends for a long time now,’ he said.

  Was this going to be a marriage proposal? Could she forgive him his dainty size and bald pate covered in tiny freckles and moles? Bernard balanced the cake on his knee and took her hand in his.

  ‘This is difficult to say, but well, here goes. There is a girl, a poor young thing – and she has got herself into trouble.’

  ‘A girl?’ She looked down at the sight of her slim fingers encased in his hands. ‘What are you talking about? What have you done, Bernard?’

  ‘Me? No, no! I’ve done nothing, Vivian. It’s not what you think. Good Lord, no.’

  The girl was not even known to him. Her parents were set on her making a good marriage in the coming year and, naturally, no man would dream of marrying her if he knew she had already had a child. A girl’s virginity might be of slightly less importance today, in these modern times, than in years before, but there were some standards that hadn’t changed, thank God. He hoped the young woman, who came from a good family, a civil servant’s daughter, in fact, could stay with Vivian for her confinement so that she could hide her predicament from her social set.

  ‘It would be an act of kindness that would be very well remunerated. I only ask because I believe you to be so full of good heart. I know you could help this young woman.’

  ‘And afterwards?’

  ‘The baby will be adopted and two lives will have been saved. You’ll be paid well for having her here. Think of it as giving a woman and a baby a new start in life. I know you are not made of stone, Vivian. I know your days might be lonely without Frank and that you regret never having had children. I know your sister has lost contact with you. Speaking as your doctor, I feel this kind of work would suit you. This poor girl will be in need of motherly care. You could be so much help to her.’

  ‘And I could adopt the baby? I could bring it up?’

  Bernard shook his head. He let go of her hand and finished the slice of cake, dusting away the crumbs on his trouser leg with a napkin. Of course Vivian couldn’t adopt it. A woman on her own bringing up a child?
No, no. He fully expected Vivian would remarry, given a little time to let the passing of Frank settle. Then she could adopt a small tribe if she wanted. A married woman without children was of course a great tragedy. As was the shame of an unmarried woman who had borne children. Personally he liked a house full of merry little infants. He gave Vivian’s hand a squeeze, and she took it as a sign of encouragement. Was he suggesting they might marry? Surely that was what he meant?

  ‘I would be delighted to see you as a mother,’ said Bernard Harding. ‘And already you can be a mother to this poor girl from a good family who needs your help.’

  When he left, Vivian thought things through. If she married Bernard, she could have children. That was surely what he was offering in his indirect, muddled way. She would help the girl. Of course she would. Her heart went out to her. Vivian had been a mother herself. Nobody could take that away from her. If Joe ever came back, and she knew it was a fantasy she should not entertain, then she would tell him how she had helped this girl and he would think her not just the mother of his child but a mother to others too.

  Ten

  The pub was a two-storey building beside soot-blackened railway arches. Its glass-panelled front doors were engraved with swirling white letters amid flowers and intertwining vines: Superior Porter Stout and Ales. Old Irish Whiskey. The place was dusty-looking; its brown windows needed a good wash. Only the brass door handles had been made bright by the many hands that took hold of them every day. Inside was a world of dark wood, sawdust on the floor, brass and gleaming mirrors behind the bar. Nellie turned around, looking at the sepia photographs on the walls. Boxing rings and whiskered men in leotards, crowds gathered around them.

  ‘That’s George twenty-five years ago,’ said Henry. ‘He was a middleweight boxer in his youth.’

  ‘In my youth, indeed!’ George bustled into the bar, his arms stretched wide in welcome. ‘Plenty of life still in me!’

  He grasped Nellie’s hand in his, and she gripped his hand right back. He had brown eyes that had a sparkle to them, raised-looking knuckles on his square hands, a scar above one eye and a cauliflower ear gone purple years ago.