The Other Child

by Charlotte Link

  I could hear real pain in his voice. The loss of his son had affected him deeply. It had shaken him to his depths. He was a different Harold to the one I had known: hurt, helpless, but at the same time strong enough not to abandon himself to his woe. I had expected him to collapse in a corner and drink without any limits. Instead he was so concerned for my mother that he had got on a train for Scarborough, found me, and now was trying to encourage me to go back with him. I did not harbour any illusion that he would not soon be the same old drinker as before. But there was obviously another side to him, and I was able to see this side for a short time. For the first time I felt some respect for him.

  ‘How do you think it would work here?’ he asked. He had heard about the deep changes to life on the Beckett farm over dinner. ‘I mean, you and Arvid here on your own … that’s not good!’

  ‘Brian is here too!’

  ‘A little boy! God, Fiona! Do you think your mum would allow this set-up for a single day?’

  I crumpled. They were all against me: Mum, Harold, Arvid. I did not have a chance.

  Arvid came into the kitchen. ‘Can you brew me a cuppa tea?’

  I was happy to turn around and work the pump handle, to fill the kettle with water. The two men could not see the tears filling my eyes.

  ‘She has to come back to London with me tomorrow,’ said Harold.

  ‘Aye, I think so too,’ said Arvid.

  I put the kettle on the hob. My hands were shaking.

  ‘My wife … Fiona’s mum … is in a bad way,’ said Harold, who for some reason seemed to trust taciturn Arvid. ‘She’s just lost a child. Our son. He was going to be born this summer.’

  ‘Sorry t’ ‘ear,’ said Arvid awkwardly.

  ‘Yes. It was bad, very bad.’ Harold wiped his handkerchief over his forehead once more. I was surprised. The kitchen was warm, but not overly so. It was only later that I realised what Harold was struggling with that evening: he was going dry. At this time of day he was normally tanking up with bottle after bottle. His body was reacting to his unusual abstinence by sweating.

  ‘Here’s a little lad for you,’ said Arvid. He pointed to the kitchen door, where Nobody was idling around in his somewhat grubby striped pyjamas. ‘T’ other child over there. Don’t know what t’ do with ’im!’

  ‘Not your son?’ asked Harold.

  Arvid shook his head. ‘Came from London too. Back then with Fiona. But ’e don’t ’ave anyone in t’ world.’

  ‘His whole family was killed by a bomb,’ I said. ‘The house was hit by a bomb.’

  ‘Relatives?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Poor lad,’ said Harold. He tapped at his forehead. ‘A bit gaga, is he?’

  ‘Right retarded,’ confirmed Arvid.

  Silence. It was clear that Harold was also not that keen on Nobody.

  ‘He should go in a home,’ he said in the end.

  ‘Aye, that ’e should. Should ’ave long ago,’ agreed Arvid.

  ‘Listen. I would take him to London for you, but I’ve got too much on my plate right now,’ said Harold. His face was already shining again with thick beads of sweat. ‘My boss was pretty annoyed about the two days’ holiday, my wife will ask me all sorts of questions and she can’t find out that Fiona ran off. I’m … I can’t …’

  ‘Understand,’ said Arvid. He sounded disappointed. He would have liked to dispose of Nobody in as uncomplicated a way as possible.

  ‘Up here there are bound to be orphanages,’ suggested Harold.

  Arvid gave the impression of being at a loss. Young as I was, I understood his dilemma instinctively. He had always been in favour of sending the other child away, as he had always said, and now that Emma was dead there was no one to stop him doing just that. Yet it was Emma’s death that stopped him. Emma had loved Brian like her own child. She had stood before him like the angel with the flaming sword and protected him. As rough and insensitive as he was, the thought of doing something she would not have ever agreed to, and doing it so soon after her funeral, caused a conflict in Arvid. He would have been able to give Brian to us and to convince himself that we would do the right thing. But to take the child by the hand and march him to the nearest orphanage himself was quite something else. The resulting situation was of course the worst possible one for little Nobody: Arvid did not want him but nor could he bring himself to give him away. It was clear things would stagnate in dissatisfaction, annoyance, passivity and frustration. Nobody would be completely exposed to the coldness and bitterness of a lonely Arvid.

  When I set off very early the next morning with Harold, to catch the bus into Scarborough, the little boy clung to me, his heart as heavy as lead. Tears ran down his pale face.

  ‘Fiona,’ he cried. ‘Fiona! Boby!’

  I stroked his hair. I even managed to be gentle to him as I left. ‘Fiona’s coming back,’ I promised. ‘Fiona’s coming to fetch Boby. Promise.’

  His light-blue eyes looked at me full of hope and trust. For a brief moment my conscience stirred. I was sure I would come back. To fetch him? No. I assumed that after a few weeks or months of mourning Arvid would no longer feel duty bound to his dead wife and would put the boy in an orphanage.

  I was convinced I would never see Nobody again, and this conviction proved true. I never saw him again. The last image I have of him is the following. The gate of the Beckett farm on a snowy, very cold February morning in 1943. Low, grey clouds in the sky, whipped along by a biting wind. Desolate loneliness, spring still unimaginable. A little boy standing at the gate, with not nearly enough on, shivering with cold. He is looking at us. He cries, and tries to cover his tears with laughter. He waves.

  I had managed to give him hope. That made the moment bearable for him: that I would come back.

  He really believed it.

  Wednesday, 15th October

  1

  She was walking along the harbour front, feeling angry and disturbed. Her head down and her arms wrapped around her body, she warded off the dampness which her thin windcheater did not fully protect her from. It was early morning and fog was wafting over the bay and the land. The weather had not improved since the day before. Seagulls seemed to appear out of nowhere and disappear again into nowhere. Sometimes a ship’s foghorn sounded out over the invisible water. Although it was a normal working day, there were not yet many people out and about. Or at least you could not see them.

  She had needed to get out, to walk, to distract herself, after having tossed and turned in the early hours in her bed – actually, in Fiona’s bed. She had given Stephen the guest room.

  Stephen.

  They had eaten and drunk wine, wordlessly agreeing not to mention the anonymous caller again. Then Stephen had tidied up the kitchen, Leslie had sat in the living room and read her grandmother’s emails to Chad. It was a peaceful, cosy atmosphere. It was nice not to be in the flat on her own. She had forgotten how nice it felt.

  Her reading brought her closer to Fiona, no doubt about it. She heard about things she had not known, beginning to understand certain characteristics and peculiarities of the dead woman. Gradually, however, a feeling of menace, of impending ill, took hold of her. Fiona had talked of guilt. It was still not clear to Leslie how the events were to end, but she had started to feel increasingly ill at ease, and to have a nagging suspicion that something terrible was coming, without knowing exactly what that was. She would probably have carried on reading all night if Stephen had not suddenly entered the room, nervously, his cheeks a little red.

  ‘I have to talk to you, Leslie. Do you have time?’

  She had looked up from her reading. ‘What is it?’

  ‘I’ve wanted to say something … for quite a while … but you never gave me the opportunity for a proper chat …’

  The hairs on her arms stood up. I don’t want to know!

  Yet she said, ‘Yes? What?’

  He had sat down. After a few moments’ hesitation, obviously considering how best to start, he said:
>
  ‘Back then, when we separated, when you decided I should move out … I started therapy. I did it for about a year.’

  ‘Therapy?’

  ‘The therapist was a specialist in relationship difficulties. I … wanted to know why all that happened.’

  She remembered that her mouth had gone dry in a second. That always happened when she was reminded of that evening. Why could she not get over it, not finally deal with it in a relaxed way?

  ‘Yes, and so?’

  ‘You know what her first question was? She asked: What are the weaknesses of your marriage, Dr Cramer? And I said immediately that there weren’t any.’

  She had brushed her hands over the papers. The gesture was less to smooth the paper than to soothe her nerves. Suddenly the situation felt like an attack. She had been reading, sunk in another world, another time. She had come closer to Fiona and in so doing had come closer to the roots of her own and her mother’s story. Reality had not existed for her for one or two hours. And now Stephen appeared, confronting her without the hint of a gentle transition, with one of the most traumatic situations of their lives up until then.

  I should just have thrown him out. I should have refused to speak to him. Why should I listen to the crap he has conjured up in a hundred hours of therapy?

  Somehow she had known immediately the direction the conversation would take. She had looked at him, outwardly cool, inwardly shaking.

  ‘And then you two, you and your therapist, found out after all these long conversations that there were weaknesses after all?’

  ‘That’s what you always said. Whenever I tried to make it clear to you that it was a … mistake, a slip-up, a mix of not thinking enough and too much alcohol, you kept on asking. Saying there must be more to it, that I must be dissatisfied, that it wouldn’t happen just out of the blue. And so on.’

  ‘Stephen, I—’

  ‘And I just wanted you to know that you’re right,’ he interrupted her quickly. ‘That’s what happened. I mean, there was a reason why it happened to me.’

  I don’t want to know the reason. Not any more.

  Why had she only thought that, and not said it? Not managed to open her mouth? Felt like blurting it out but did not articulate it?

  Because the shock of what happened back then still hasn’t melted away, she suddenly realised as she walked through the fog as if through the billowing humidity of a washhouse. Because I’m still suffering from shock.

  ‘I think I often felt you were very cold, but I didn’t want to admit that to myself. I felt inferior, because I was the one who loved more strongly. I always feared that you would leave me, if some great, interesting, exciting man came along. I—’

  Finally she was able to say something. ‘And so you very kindly made the first move? You did something to provoke the separation, to sort things out nicely, did you?’

  He had flinched, hearing the harsh tone of her voice. ‘I was looking for some recognition. This woman … it could have been anyone. She worshipped me. She gave me the feeling of being a damn desirable bloke. It was … a good feeling.’

  ‘Screwing her?’

  ‘Being desired by her.’

  She had got up and noticed to her astonishment that she felt unsteady on her feet.

  ‘What’s this all about, Stephen? What are you trying to say? That I should have worshipped you? Seen you as a demigod? Reassured you every day that you impress me no end, that you are so masculine and cool that I flip out when I see you?’

  ‘Of course not. I only wanted …’

  ‘But that’s just what you’ve said. You went into a bar and some young thing thought you were the greatest, and that was so good for you, after suffering your wife’s coldness all those years and the feelings of inferiority she caused in you, that you immediately started flirting and not much later took the girl home and got it on with her, as your spouse was, handily, off on a trip. Afterwards you felt guilty, but no doubt you’re cured of that now your know-it-all therapist has convincingly shown you that your wife was to blame, after all. Cold. Unapproachable. A career woman! Yes, no need for her to be surprised if she gets cheated on!’

  ‘You’ve got the wrong end of the stick,’ Stephen had said, and it was easy to see that he bitterly regretted having brought up the topic.

  Why had his words upset her so much? She had not been able to carry on reading. To calm down, she had made herself a cup of tea, but had still only slept fitfully, and not at all from the early hours of morning. And now she was pacing through the fog because she could no longer bear to stay in the flat.

  She came past the red-brick building with the blue-painted roof where the lifeboat was kept. There was a row of small shops that sold sandwiches and drinks but they were all closed at this early hour. She saw fishing boats and the big signs where fishing trips were advertised, and the white lighthouse at the harbour mouth. The Luna Park funfair’s big wheel, rides and stalls lay silent and abandoned in the mist, as if lights had never flashed, music never blared out and people never screamed or laughed here. She reached the tidal harbour, stepping onto one of the elevated wooden walkways which criss-crossed it. Below her the ships were bobbing up and down. Soon they would be lying in the mud. The tide was on the way out.

  She stopped. If the fog had not been so thick, she would have been able to see her grandmother’s house from here. You could see it from almost everywhere in the South Bay. It was a large, shiny white building up on South Cliff.

  Stephen was in the flat right now. He was probably still asleep.

  She saw him in her mind’s eye – him and her, in those years they had spent together. He was right, she was the more ambitious one, the more single-minded one. She had got better marks during their studies. She had become a doctor first. She had been the first to become a consultant. She had often registered for further training courses, while Stephen had been happy with what he had achieved and had kept to his usual daily rhythms.

  Significantly, it was one of her courses which had allowed Stephen the infidelity.

  Was it really still a problem, now in the twenty-first century? Could a man – an educated, intelligent man – still not bear for the woman at his side to be more successful than him?

  And there was something which bugged her even more. What about the accusation itself, that she was cold? Had Stephen imagined that, convinced himself of it, so he could close his eyes to the fact that he could not deal with her success and her career ambitions? Or was she really cold?

  Last night more than ever she had realised how cold her childhood and youth with Fiona had been. Fiona had many good and admirable qualities, but one thing could not be denied: warmheartedness and empathy were not among them. She had always felt a need when she was near Fiona, a constant hunger which was never sated. As a child she had suffered much more from this than she had realised. But how much had it marked her? To what extent was she today unable to give warmth, love and affection?

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said out loud. ‘I just don’t know!’

  ‘What don’t you know?’ asked a voice behind her, and she spun around. Dave Tanner was standing there. He had appeared from nowhere out of the fog. He was dressed in a black anorak, and had pulled the hood up over his head. He looked like he was freezing.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t want to surprise you. I saw you from the quay, and I thought I …’ He did not say what he had thought.

  ‘Oh, it’s you,’ said Leslie and tried to shake off the thoughts which were crowding in on her. ‘I wasn’t expecting to find anyone else out as early as me in this awful weather.’

  He smiled. ‘Sometimes you just have to get out. Whatever the weather.’

  Perhaps he was also running away from something, perhaps only from his wretched room. What would a day in that accommodation be like when the fog was rolling by outside and you had nothing to do, were alone, and had nothing to look forward to? Then she remembered something. ‘Was Gwen at your place, by the way? Colin
and Jennifer wondered where she was yesterday.’

  He nodded. ‘She was at my place. All of yesterday. And the night. For the first time.’

  ‘She hadn’t slept at yours before?’ asked Leslie, surprised. She thought of the black tights in Dave’s room. Perhaps there had been afternoon encounters, and Gwen had always returned to the farm like a good girl in the evening. It was time for her to change things in her life, it really was time.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Never before.’

  He looked unhappy. Depressed. Worried.

  Suddenly Leslie understood: he was running away from her! That’s why he’s out walking so early this morning.

  As if he had read her thoughts, he asked, ‘And you? What brings you down to the harbour at this time?’

  ‘My ex. We had a little run-in.’

  He looked confused. She added, ‘He suddenly turned up here. He wanted to be there for me, what with my grandmother’s death. He meant well. But the two of us under one roof … it just doesn’t work.’

  He did not say anything, but Leslie had the impression that he understood. In the end he asked, ‘Have you had breakfast yet?’

  And when she shook her head, he took her arm without further hesitation and started to lead her somewhere.

  ‘Come on. I don’t know how you’re doing, but I’m wet and freezing. I desperately need a strong coffee.’

  She followed him with grateful relief.

  2

  ‘Bingo!’ said Valerie. ‘I knew it!’

  She put the phone down. Sergeant Reek had interrupted her breakfast. Normally she did not like this at all, as it was the only meal she could eat in relative calm – her toast, a fried egg and coffee, accompanied by the news on the radio. The rest of the day she usually only had time to grab a sandwich that tasted more of its plastic packaging than its filling, and she would arrive home so late and tired in the evening that she had no desire or energy to cook.

  But Reek had given her a good bit of news, raising her mood considerably.