by Maggie Ford
With a feeling of guilt at having delayed the closing of the church doors, she got to her feet, gave him a smile of apology and gathered up her bag and her what.
‘I’m sorry,’ she mumbled self-consciously.
He came towards her. ‘Are you so unhappy?’
Connie stared at him, a tall slim figure compelling her to lift her head to look up at him, tall as she was. She’d seen him more or less every time she came here but had never bothered to find out his name or consider him closely.
‘Unhappy?’ She was offended. ‘Why should you think I’m unhappy?’
‘You look unhappy.’ His voice was deep, the timbre of it echoing in the now-empty church. ‘I hope I don’t intrude, but if there is anything I can do, if you need anyone to talk to …’
How often had he been watching her to so divine her private feelings? Connie felt slightly invaded. Something inside her automatically stepped back from the intrusion into her soul. Yet an impulse to unburden a weight inside her made itself felt, and a strange surge of gratitude. It was the need to recoil that triumphed and her voice felt harsh in her throat. She didn’t want anyone sorry for her.
‘Thank you. I’m fine. But nice of you to take the trouble.’ Probably part of his duties as a curate but all she wanted was to get out of here. ‘I must go …’
He moved in front of her, virtually barring her way.
‘Please. Would you stay and talk to me awhile?’
‘Why?’ Now she was irritated. Confused too, by the nearness of him, by the maleness of that proximity for all the cassock he wore. His nearness disturbed her. ‘There’s nothing I need to say about myself.’
‘There’s something I’d like to say,’ he broke in. ‘About myself. I hope you don’t mind, but I need to talk to you. I see you every Sunday morning. You never miss.’
It was about her, but he was ploughing on, his hand lightly beneath her elbow now, gently persuading her back down the aisle to one of the front pews.
‘I know of the loss of your fiancé, of the wedding having to be cancelled. I thought I’d never set eyes on you after that, but I was glad to see you. I have come to look out for you every Sunday since.’
Connie found herself sitting down without having realised that she had. He sat beside her.
‘One thing I do know.’ His voice was low, no longer echoing around the church, so it must be a whisper, she thought abstractly. ‘I’d be upset … can I say devastated, if you stopped coming now? That’s why I have never approached you before now, in case I drove you away. I look forward with eagerness to every Sunday, sure you will be here. I am so overjoyed when I see you arrive and for the rest of the week I seem merely to be waiting for the next Sunday when you will attend again. But I am terrified that you will one day cease to attend, your grief healed enough for you not to. And that day to me is unthinkable. So … please forgive me for saying all this to you, but I had to take this chance.’
In all this he had not looked at her, sitting very still with his head bent, his eyes regarding his hands which were clasped unmoving in the lap of his robe. He still did not look at her. ‘You think me too presumptuous.’
She wasn’t sure what he meant by that. ‘Presumptuous?’ she echoed.
‘Declaring … no, I mean speaking to you in this manner.’
What manner? But some sixth sense was already telling her in what manner he had spoken to her. Her heart leapt then grew angry. He couldn’t be trying to usurp Ben’s place in her heart.
She almost shot off the seat. ‘I’m sorry. But if it’s in your mind to say what I think you’re trying to say, then please, I’d rather not hear.’
He was on his feet too, both hands on her arms in a desperate grip. ‘No, don’t run off. I don’t mean to offend you, but there is no circumspect way to say this. I know your Christian name and I need to say it. Constance. I have watched you throughout the summer and autumn and all that time I have become conscious of a growing affection for you.’
‘I … oh …’ All her reserve could not combat this statement pouring out in a torrent. She knew she should have drawn away and said haughtily, ‘I beg your pardon, please allow me to leave.’
But all she could do was stutter, ‘I … oh …’ as his hands gripped her arms, his voice continuing.
‘I know you don’t have the same feelings for me. You couldn’t have. You still long for the one you lost so tragically. I understand that. But I can’t bear to see you continue so unhappy. I want to ease your pain and I know I can’t – not unless you allow me to. And you won’t do that, I know. So I had to tell you how I feel, and now I’ve said it and you can forget about it. All I say to you, Constance, is that if you ever need someone to help ease your pain, I will be here.’
How she got out of the church, blinking in the light of a pale sun that had at last broken through the layer of fog, she wasn’t sure. Her hat was still in her hand, her handbag on her arm. She felt he had kissed her, but she knew he hadn’t. What was his name? She felt she’d been told it sometime in the past but she couldn’t remember. At the church gate she turned round, expecting to see him there, but he wasn’t.
Dan Bowmaker was home. As he had been a bad patient in hospital, so he was at home; his spirit had gone out of him and all that was left was a complaining, irritable, irascible man, seeing nothing ahead of him but a life of being cared for, told what to do. He was filled with recriminations against one who years ago had begun all this by setting fire to his boat, his livelihood, and all over a small punch on the nose, and who had finished it by goading him into the accident that had robbed him of his legs, his very masculinity; finished him.
‘Your husband must begin to learn to accept his disability, for his own sake,’ the doctor had told Peggy as if such a thing need only be learned by rote. ‘He has his bladder under some sort of control now. His bowel movements too. But I am afraid, Mrs Bowmaker, you will have your work cut out in helping him to regain his old self.’ He made it sound the easiest thing in the world to do, like boiling an egg. Then he was discharged, to return at ever lengthening intervals to be ‘seen’ and dismissed until the next appointment was due. The rest she must shoulder as best she could.
A wheelchair had been provided, a heavy, rattling old thing a ninety-eight-year-old -wouldn’t have felt any self-respect in, but they had said it would have to do unless she could afford something grander and more suited to her husband’s requirements.
But she couldn’t afford anything grander, not with just Danny to bring in money (the girls’ small offerings she could dismiss) and with him hoping eventually to get married to Lily. Dan refused to be seen outside the house in it, though she suspected that if she could afford the Rolls-Royce of wheelchairs he would have refused just as vehemently.
Christmas was a dismal affair. ‘I don’t want no one spendin’ it here,’ he told her. ‘Sittin’ there gloatin’ on me.’
‘They won’t gloat. Every single one of the family is sorry on what’s happened. They’re all sympathetic. They all want to help.’
‘I don’t want none o’ their sympathy. An’ I don’t want no one here.’
She explained to them how it was, hoped they understood. But for all their nodding and chewing of lips, she was sure the extended family condemned her for not inviting them for Christmas, it being her turn this year to have them to her house. To her it looked as if she were trying to wriggle out of her responsibility and she felt bad on that score alone. It wasn’t even as though it was easy to sneak off and pop down the road to see one of them.
‘Where you goin’?’ he asked when she attempted to on Thursday, Christmas Eve, around three o’clock. Connie had come home early from work.
‘Just popping up to see my sister Anne.’ Anne and Bill lived just up the hill off the Broadway, a five-minute walk. ‘I’ll only be gone an hour.’
‘Without me?’
‘But you won’t go out. And I couldn’t push you uphill.’
‘What’m I supposed to do st
uck here on me own?’
‘Connie’s here.’ Connie would go to church later, to its Christmas Eve service. She bore a worried look lately, said she might not go, though in the end she would. Peggy hoped she was getting over Ben and all that religion she had acquired. Unhealthy, too much religion. Too much of anything could become unhealthy.
‘Connie!’ came the snorting response.
‘I’ll only be a tick.’ Peggy could hear the pleading in her voice, and felt the humiliation of it deep inside her. She had never been one to plead with anyone – stated a fact and to blazes with what people thought.
‘Just to have a few words just to say Merry Christmas to Anne and Bill and give them a card. I can’t ignore them completely.’
‘Merry bloody Christmas! Some merry bloody Christmas this is goin’ to be – me stuck here and you gallivantin’ off.’
She should have said, ‘What’re you going to do about it then?’ But she didn’t. She loved him. For all his irritability, his irrational attitude that after only a few weeks was driving her up the wall, she loved him; the strong and handsome young man she had once known still in her mind’s eye.
So she said instead, a little huffily, ‘All right – I won’t go out then.’
But when he was asleep the following afternoon, helped out of the chair by Danny and into his bed in the downstairs back room where street noises would not disturb him after the quiet Christmas dinner of which he ate hardly anything, she crept out and hurried off to her brother Harry and his family who lived just off the London Road. It meant a bit of a walk but she had to see them. Pam and George and the baby were at his parents’, so she had no need to see them.
With her she had a little bag of presents, nothing much, just a little something for Harry and Daphne and their two children who were now in their early teens and awkward to buy for: a boy’s annual for Jimmy which she guessed he might already have grown out of at fourteen, and a pretty box of two embroidered hankies for young Joan, bought, as she always had done, ages ago in readiness for Christmas, well before Dan’s accident.
She would also express regrets for not having them at her home for Christmas Day. Her sister Anne, and Bill and their children, would be there with Harry’s family, so her apologies would encompass them as well. As she made her way there, thinking of them all together, she already felt excluded, isolated, lonely. They welcomed her heartily enough, brought her into the overheated living room, but the sight of everyone together without her and her family accentuated the feeling and she was glad to come away after an hour, making her excuses after exchanging presents that she couldn’t leave Dan for too long.
Huddled against the damp breeze she almost wished she hadn’t gone. Over a cup of tea, a glass of sherry and a piece of Anne’s Christmas cake, they’d asked after Dan, had tutted when she told them how he was, had made much of waving aside her apologies for not having them to her house, saying they understood.
Now she hurried back through the quiet streets, eager to see how Dan was, wondering what temper he would be in if he had woken up to find her not there. The house would have an empty feel to it after the over-bright, over-hot, busy Christmas cheer of Harry’s.
If Dan was still asleep when she got in, all well and good. He’d never need know she’d even gone out. If he felt hungry she’d reheat some of the Christmas chicken and pork for him while she, Connie and Josie ate their tea of cold pork and sweet pickle sandwiches, pickled onions, mince pies and cake. Then Danny would go out to Lily’s parents, spend the rest of the evening with them. Only right he should, now they were engaged.
There had been trouble between him and Lily, she thought as she hurried along the cold deserted streets. Everyone was staying indoors digesting their Christmas dinners around a blazing fire, maybe listening to the wireless, maybe snoring in armchairs and settees. Danny, feeling he was needed to help cope with Dad, had told Lily last week that he’d be staying at home for dinner. He had wanted her to be there, but not only had his father got upset about having ‘some bloody stranger’ round the table gawping at him, but Lily had declined anyway. They had sat at opposite ends of the settee, hardly speaking a word to each other. Lily’s face had looked downcast, her eyes sulky, Danny’s troubled, his lips compressed. They had left early and at the door Peggy heard her say, ‘I’ll see myself home,’ and him ask, ‘What’s the matter with you?’
‘I just don’t want to spend the whole of Christmas Day looking at you pulling your Dad around.’ There had been a sharpness in her voice. ‘Some Christmas that’ll be for me. At least at home we’ll be having a good laugh and a bit of fun, all the family round for dinner.’
‘I’ll come round in the evening,’ he’d said, but she hadn’t sounded at all mollified.
‘Late evening I expect.’
‘As early as I can make it.’
‘They’ll be asking where you are and I’ll have to make some excuse.’
‘Just say I was needed here to help Mum with Dad.’ His voice had sounded hard.
‘I can just see what’s going to happen when we’re married – you stuck round here looking after your dad. What about me?’
Feeling like an eavesdropper, Peggy had moved quickly back to washing up as noisily as she could so she wouldn’t have to overhear any more in the house where every voice carried.
The last thing she wanted was to see strife between these two. She had enough on her plate already. Dan, Connie haunting her church still moping over Ben whose memory by now she should be starting to lay to rest. Josie was no bother, a typical young girl with her ups and downs, but there was Pam. It was getting harder to creep off and see her as she’d been doing once or twice a week while Dan was in hospital, but now he timed her when she went shopping, looking only for her to get back. She’d begun to feel like a trapped animal. Rushing round the shops making herself out of breath, she tried to fit in perhaps twenty minutes to look in on Pam, telling her how things were and seeing her nod and shrug. Peggy thought of Annie too as she bashed the cooking pans in the sud-filled sink. Pam at least had George’s family to go to this Christmas, and might even be enjoying herself. But what of Annie? What sort of Christmas was she having thousands of miles away in an alien land? Peggy’s heart wept for the girl.
Chapter Twenty-One
‘Alex, I want to go home on a visit.’
She knew the best time to go would be in the hot season, but she was pining for her family ever more acutely. Nearly a year had gone by since she left, and so much had happened at home since. Connie’s trouble, Pam’s, Dad’s, Danny courting, Josie growing up and travelling to London to see what Mum said appeared to have become a steady boyfriend.
Annie thought of London, of Southend, of Leigh, and instantly an ache for it all made her heart feel heavy within her. It would be snowing there now. Maybe heavily inland, but spasmodically on the coast, melting quickly in the salty air.
Here it was dry as a bone, the plain with its dotting of scrubby trees dun-coloured, its low distant hills made blue by the hazy air. The sun came up without splendour, always a disappointment after the almost thunderous crimson of dawn, with nothing of the quiet vibrancy of an English winter morning, and set in the briefest blaze of glory, night descending even as one took a breath.
The weather at the moment was like nectar during the day, warm, mild as any English summer. But this was January and the night temperature dropped to near freezing, for all the daytime warmth, the moment that brief twilight faded. Annie derived at least some comfort sitting by a good fire, the wooden shutters of the overstuffed living room of their Jalapur residence closed to the night air, she and Alex reclining in deep cushioned armchairs, the wicker ones they used in the hot season put away. But she did so want to go home, just for a few weeks.
‘I wish I could have gone sometime in July, or in August,’ she said, her book idle on her lap, the soft crackling of the wood fire the only other sound in the room apart from her voice and the rustle of Alex’s Times of India. She could
have escaped the heat of summer and the clammy misery of the monsoon had she gone then.
‘It was too near coming out here,’ came his soft voice, his face hidden by the newspaper. ‘Couldn’t afford to send you, darling. Cost enough to get us out here and set ourselves up.’
‘But your father paid for your passage.’
He did not look up. ‘Not yours. I had to pay that.’
Annie fell silent. She hated being reminded what he had paid for her to come out here, almost as if he blamed her for the problems this marriage had raised regarding his parents, yet she knew that was bunkum.
But would it have cost so much to go? She wouldn’t have asked again. Instead he’d insisted she go stay in Simla; the hill station to which most of the wives from here went to escape the heat of the Northern Plains and the debilitating monsoon.
Between July and September the Club – that haven of gentility set amid the seething mass of the Indian population, the villas, bungalows and administrative buildings reached by wide roads that allowed very few of the Indian community to enter unless authorised – was virtually deserted but for those menfolk who needed to remain, and a sprinkling of diehard older women who couldn’t or wouldn’t leave, declaring that they had weathered a quarter of a lifetime of Indian summers and saw no reason for being packed off to some hill town with all the resultant upheaval to their ordered lives.
But Annie, in her first year of marriage and so in love with Alex, had not wanted to leave him until the heat finally made her ill and she had seen the wisdom of going up to a hill station out of it all.
Simla had been beautiful and miserable. She had missed Alex dreadfully, because he too was compelled to stay behind for his work. When he came up at odd weekends by train, which took hours, she had begged that, with the monsoon letting up a little, she be allowed to go back with him, that the wives were even more awful to her here without him to act as a buffer. All he had done was tell her she was being silly again.
‘You’ve been almost a year in this country, Annie. I’d have thought you’d have got used to everyone by now.’