by Maggie Ford
Josie stood in the centre of the room not knowing what to do while Connie ran to her father.
‘Dad, calm down. You’ll give yourself heart attack.’
‘And you can blame him for that too.’ One strong arm thrust her aside with such force that she staggered and nearly fell. ‘Still getting at me through my own wife and family now. But I’ll see him dead before I am. An’ I’ll be there to laugh. On me own two feet I’ll be there. I won’t have him put me in a wheelchair for the rest of me life. I’ve got him to thank for that too. Well, we’ll bloody see about that.’
Before they could get to him, those strong arms had hoisted him up out of the seat, supporting him as though suspended in mid-air. One furious movement of those arms flung him forward, but their strength was not matched by the useless legs. His heavy body tumbled headlong to the floor, sending two kitchen chairs flying against the wall, the table jolted enough to send clattering cups and saucers and plates and cutlery set out ready for the morning.
His head struck the brass fender around the kitchen range; he lay gasping, blood beginning to ooze from a cut on his forehead. Both girls ran to him and between them managed to drag him back to the wheelchair if not into it, for the brake was not on and it kept moving away, leaving them both grunting and sighing under their father’s awkward bulk. Their mother ran to the sink for a wet flannel and came back to place it over the wound on his forehead, blood flowing freely enough to make his cheek look as if it had been sliced in two.
‘It always looks worse than it is,’ Connie said at her cry of alarm. ‘Just his head. I don’t think it’s that bad.’ Her father seemed dazed. Connie spoke to her sister. ‘Put the brake on, we’ll all have to heave him back in.’ But it was virtually impossible.
‘Why couldn’t Danny have been here?’ Josie complained as they struggled.
‘He’s working down the sheds.’
‘Your dad’ll have to stay where he is till Danny comes,’ Peggy told them. ‘Josie, run and get him.’
Josie must have gone like the wind for within ten minutes she was back. ‘I told him all about it. He’s coming. He’s left Uncle Pete and Uncle Reg getting on with things.’
Moments later he was there, lifting his father bodily to the man’s utter indignation, Danny saying, ‘I’m getting you into bed, Dad. It’s safer.’
Installed in bed, all but Danny barred from the room, Dan gripped his son’s forearm hard. ‘Enough of this. I’m goin’ to walk, son. If it kills me, I’m goin’ to walk. That’ll show the lot on ’em. And I want you to help me. Hear me?’
‘Yes, Dad.’ Danny’s eyes met those of his father. Stopping the others coming into the room, it was as if he had known what his father was going to say. ‘I hear you.’ The look that passed between them said it all.
The following day, Danny was down at the hospital demanding proper splints, crutches and anything else that would be needed. If his father would never walk again, as he was repeatedly told by an irritated doctor, he would be upright enough to propel himself along in his own fashion. That at least, Danny swore to himself, would come about.
‘Letter for you, Connie.’ Her mother held it out to her with a knowing smile. Connie took it from her with cheeks blushing rosy not only from the August weather, already hot in the early morning.
It had been a stuffy, breathless Sunday night, making people hot and restless in their beds; windows stood open all along the street, holidaymakers – those who could still afford holidays – strolled the High Street until late into the night talking and laughing to the annoyance of locals trying to sleep, who uttered many a prayer that autumn would soon come round and the visitors go home to leave them in peace.
Connie had slept as fitfully as anyone. Josie tossing and turning next to her, getting up for drinks of water, had kept her awake, her head full of thoughts night time always managed to magnify. She’d written to Ian last week and was already wondering if he would reply in the same vein as ever.
Her fourth letter to him, his third to her, had all so far been friendly and cautious. She suspected he, like herself, felt unsure who should be the first to broaden the scope of this relationship a little. Many times she had been tempted to start with a daring Dearest Ian, or even, tempering it a little, My Dear Ian. But it wasn’t her place to assume, and so far all she had put was, Dear Ian. She liked to hope he might also be resisting that same temptation while all the time longing to be bolder. There was no way of telling.
Connie opened the letter her mother handed her and unfolded it with the usual hopeful anticipation. The Market Harborough postmark had told her it was from him. The first words she read sent her spirits soaring: My Dearest Constance. Avidly she skimmed the usual news of his management of his parish: he’d had a summer cold which had hindered his work somewhat but he was well now; he was being kept very busy, with his parish in a largish and fast-growing village whose only places of worship other than St Michael’s were the Methodist hall just off the high street, and the small Roman Catholic church at the other end of the village; he seldom had time to go visiting his parents in Cheshunt, but – here Connie’s spirits soared way out of bounds – he had a short vacation coming up and would she care to meet him there – eleven o’clock by the bus station at Cheshunt, on Saturday the fifteenth of August?
Thrown into a panic, Connie saw the notepaper shake beneath her fingers. Vaguely she heard her mother asking, ‘Anything wrong, love?’ and came to herself sufficiently to shake her head.
‘Ian Lindsay is asking me to meet him in two Saturdays’ time.’
Her eyes had detected the next few lines of the letter as she looked up at her mother: ‘I would very much like you to meet my parents, if you feel you would care to …’ and something about them being very kind and warm people, but she had got no further as her mother’s voice penetrated her panic.
‘Oh, that is nice, Connie.’ There was relief and excitement in her mother’s tone, then anxiety. ‘You will be going, won’t you?’
‘I’ve only just read it, Mum. I don’t know.’
‘Oh, but you must. Connie, don’t dwell in the …’
‘I’m not, Mum,’ she cut in, anticipating the end of the advice.
‘All I’m trying to say is that the past is past, all over and done with. I know you won’t ever forget …’
‘I don’t want to talk about that, Mum. As you say, it is past.
She saw the small, plump features broaden into a beaming smile. ‘Will you go?’
Connie made up her mind. She had been missing Ian since he’d left, more than she dared admit to herself, still harking back to Ben whose slowly dimming image she had hung on to out of a warped sense of loyalty, always with a feeling that he was looking down at her, his face sad and lost. She didn’t even feel that he expected her to get on with her life, just that she felt she should hold fast to him. But the half-acknowledged sense that she had missed Ian’s presence had begun to erase Ben’s image. It had promoted guilt that it had, but that too no longer seemed of any consequence. Her heart raced.
Meeting his parents held only one connotation – that Ian was thinking of her as his future partner in life. As an honest man of the cloth he would not dream of messing about with a girl’s emotions. And as she read on, so she saw that she was right.
I have been cautious because you might not have the same feelings for me as those I have been very conscious of growing for you. But if we meet, and please say we may, these will be the things we can speak of without the barrier of notepaper. Am looking forward with such excitement to seeing you. My very fondest love, Ian.
‘Yes, Mum I think I will go and meet him,’ she said, suddenly aware of thumping of her heart against her ribs.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
What a wonderful summer it was turning out to be. Not at all as she had anticipated, having at first viewed it with dread after last year. Now Annie didn’t want it to end.
Alex, as usual, preoccupied by the gem business, didn’t vis
it her for two weeks after installing her in the cool hill station along with all the other wives, who were already planning activities to take them round to September. Then she had been at her most miserable. He had shaken his head when it was time for him to leave after their happy weekend together getting her sorted out in the sweet little residence, her home for the next three months.
‘I know you’ll miss me, darling. I shall miss you. But I can’t just stop work.’
‘I know,’ she had told him miserably, perched on a coffee table in the elegant sitting room whose wide window gave a panoramic view of distant snowy Himalayan peaks. ‘But once you’re back in Jalapur you’ll get carried away with your business and it’ll be weeks before you think of coming up here.’
‘I’ll be writing to you, darling. You know, you wouldn’t be so. lonely if we had a family.’
‘I’ve told you, Alex, I don’t want to bring up children in this country.’
‘And I’ve told you, Annie …’ Growing annoyed, his tone sharp. ‘It’ll be a long time before we go back to England’.
But the tone moderated immediately. ‘Darling, it isn’t as if this is the first hot weather you’ve spent up here. Once you mingle with everyone else and start taking part in things, you’ll enjoy yourself.’ He gave a small chuckle. ‘Like the rest of them, you’ll forget me until I appear on the scene again. You’ve come to know a lot of the wives and you said yourself a couple of months back, they’re not all ogres. I said you’d get used to them, and you have made several friends.’
‘It’s not that. I just miss you.’
‘All the wives miss their husbands. They make the best of it, that’s all.’ He had kissed her, and she had seen him off, his departing words: ‘I’ll see you next week. I promise.’
But he didn’t visit the next week; a letter said he had been kept by work but that he would be up the following weekend. Then another letter arrived saying he couldn’t make it that week either. His mother had written to say his father was ill. Not seriously. He was having a slight heart problem and his doctor had said all he needed was to take things a little easier. His mother asked if he could sort out some extra accountancy work from his end to save his father worrying about it. So another week was to go by for Annie before she would see Alex.
Who she did see was Ansley Burrington. She was sitting on the veranda of the British Club that Sunday with some others, most of the women older than she except for one young person not long arrived from England making Annie feel at last quite an old hand, watching a game of cricket being played when the Burringtons came in to join them.
Mrs Burrington immediately fell into conversation with Mrs Christobel Chauncey whose husband was in the medical profession, a surgeon or a consultant of some sort – Annie had never bothered to find out.
Ansley beamed around the small company of ladies, said how-do-you-do to them, and settled his eye upon her. ‘Ah, Mrs Willoughby – Anne.’ He persisted in calling her Anne rather an Annie. It sounded nice. ‘How cool and handsome you are looking. And may I say extremely well? The last time I saw you, you appeared just a tiny bit under the weather.’
‘It was the heat,’ she excused herself, hoping she hadn’t blushed.
‘Yes, the heat. Moved up here just in time. It’s unnaturally hot down there this summer. Everywhere becoming already scorched and brown. Let us only hope that the monsoon will arrive at its usual time, else we will have a drought on our hands again as we had a few years back. But of course, you wouldn’t remember that. You and your husband came out only a couple of years ago. It is only a couple of years, isn’t it?’
Annie nodded. ‘Yes, it is.’ It was less than that but it didn’t matter.
‘Time does go by. It seems only yesterday when you arrived all fresh from England with your new husband.’
Tiring of the one-sided conversation, one by one the group turned to each other and then as the cricket finished drifted off in twos and threes to take up some other recreation. Mrs Chauncey and Mrs Burrington got up too. ‘We’ll be in the card room,’ she told him briskly and he indicated that he’d heard, his eyes still appraising Annie, but he didn’t speak until his wife was out of hearing.
‘I take it your husband didn’t come up this weekend?’
She shook her head very slightly. ‘No.’
‘So what are you doing with yourself today?’
‘Well, I’m here at the moment, as you see,’ she answered.
‘And this evening?’
Annie shrugged and saw him smile understandingly.
‘It is so awkward for a young woman alone. Is there no little gathering here on this Sunday night of young women in a similar plight?’
‘I’m not sure.’ She fiddled with the catch on her small cream handbag. ‘I haven’t bothered to find out. I’ll probably have an early night.’
‘As far as I know, my wife and I will be here. There is a bit of a social dance this evening, if you’d care to be our guest. Can’t see you all alone in your room while we’re having good fun. Would you join us?’
‘I’d – like to.’ The prospect of people having fun while she went early to bed brought a weight to lie in her chest. ‘It’s very good of you.’
‘Nonsense, my dear. It would be my greatest desire to be your host. We will call for you around eight. We know your address.’ He got up quickly as his wife came back out on to the veranda alone. His voice became jovially loud. ‘No cards, then?’
‘All the tables were taken. I left Mrs Chauncey talking to a boring woman whose sole delight appears to be home affairs and the state of the government at home. I need to go and write some letters. Are you coming, dear?’
She had seemed a little put out, huffy, and perhaps that was why he hadn’t immediately mentioned his invitation to her. So Annie was a little taken aback when he presented himself at her door earlier than she had expected, and on his own.
‘I’m afraid my wife has developed a headache,’ he explained as she invited him in. ‘So I thought it only polite to come and apologise that we will not be going to the club. I didn’t want you to sit here worrying yourself that we hadn’t turned up.’
It seemed only polite to offer him a drink. He had whisky and soda. To be sociable she had a vermouth, Ranji, her servant here, pouring them and then withdrawing with a small salaam.
‘Please convey my sympathies to Mrs Burrington,’ she said as she sat opposite Ansley on the settee to sip her drink.
It was disappointing not to be going out; she had dressed for the evening in a long sleek gown of midnight blue crêpe de chine that Alex had bought her. She had clipped a sapphire brooch to its narrow straps. Her hair, much longer now than fashion dictated, curled softly about her ears and the sapphire earrings touched her bare neck with soft brushing sensations when she moved her head. Her face had been made up but she had not yet put on her perfume and somehow that made it seem to her as though she’d been caught still in her dressing gown. A woman should meet her visitors fully ready when called on.
‘I’m sorry, I should have been ready,’ she apologised inadequately, mainly for something to say. He smiled at her.
‘I was early. It should be me apologising. Unforgivable, calling on a lady before she is ready.’
It sounded almost as though he were her date. They fell quiet, sipping their drinks. Annie began to fidget. He immediately interpreted it.
‘I should go, I suppose.’ But he sat, gazing at his glass, still with a dram of whisky in it. She hadn’t answered either way. I was nice him being here, someone taking away the sense of loneliness. When he spoke again his voice was low. ‘I don’t want to go.’
He looked up, and she, caught out staring at him, lowered her eyes. ‘It’s nice here,’ she heard him say. ‘Very quiet. Very … relaxing.’
Still she didn’t reply, unable to find anything to say. She didn’t want him to go either.
‘I don’t have to leave immediately, Anne, if you don’t want me to.’
Now
she found her voice, looked across at him. ‘Won’t your wife be wondering where you are, why you’re so long?’
It held a note of inverted invitation if ever there was one. I should not have sounded that way, she reproached herself, but it was too late to amend it. One shouldn’t be caught blustering, trying to dig one’s way out of a hole. So she fell silent.
The trouble was, there was a racing deep inside her; she felt certain that he’d read something into those words, taken them to heart. And sure enough, he got up slowly from his chair and, placing his glass down on the coffee table between them, came to sit beside her. Before she could find the presence of mind to move away or do anything, he had put his arm about her shoulders and had drawn her gently towards him, bending his face towards hers in order to kiss her softly. The worst of it was that she let him. His lips, tender against hers, the thin moustache harsh against her cheek, raised a whole host of sensations and she found herself wanting that kiss, at the same time panicking a little as to where this might lead.
In her mind came visions of his hand slipping the narrow straps of her dress down over her shoulders, of his lifting her up in his arms and bearing her to the bedroom, laying her down on the soft yielding surface … He did none of those things.
He broke away slowly and his arm left her shoulders. ‘That was despicable of me. I should apologise.’ He paused, then looking into her face said, ‘But I don’t think I will. I think you need a friend to talk to. I shall be your friend, Anne. Talk to me.’
Suddenly she was lying against him, his arm once more around her shoulders, his hand warm against the skin. She was whispering all the small unhappinesses that surrounded her here.
‘Coming out here seemed so promising, a new life, a new husband. But none of it was as I expected. I know this must sound trivial, but it’s important to me. Do you understand what I mean?’