by Marie Joseph
This was the man she loved, she told herself, and later that night, at Southport, when he took her gently in the big bedroom at the hotel overlooking tree-lined Lord Street, Libby clung to Harry fiercely with a passion that delighted and touched him.
‘Oh, Harry . . . Harry . . . I do love you so much, so very much.’
Over and over again she whispered the words, lying in his arms, with the pale blue nightdress lying in a heap at the foot of the bed, and the pink crêpe-de-Chine camiknickers lying across a chair where Harry had dropped them as he undressed her, his brown eyes shining with adoration.
Then, when he was sleeping deeply with his head against her shoulders, Libby stared up into the darkness, vowing that she would be a good wife to this man.
‘I was a good teacher, and now I’m going to be a good doctor’s wife,’ she told him when they came back to the red-brick house on the other side of the park to Westerley. ‘You’ll wonder how you ever managed without me.’
Harry, bursting with pride and love, took her face in his hands and gazed deep into her eyes as he left on his rounds that first morning after the honeymoon. ‘I’ll make short shrift of this morning’s patients,’ he promised. ‘All the time I’ll be longing to be back here with you. Around one o’clock, darling. Will that be all right?’
Waving him off from the porch, Libby told herself how lucky she was to be married to such a man. To walk straight into a house like this, furnished with the antiques his parents had left behind, saying they were too big and too dark for their new bungalow at the seaside. To be mistress of her own house, to arrange things exactly as she wanted them arranged, to go into the kitchen and tell the cook-general – another legacy from Harry’s parents – what they would like for lunch, and to leave the daily help, a pleasant woman, to her brushes, dusters and mops.
And to have nothing to do . . .
Slowly she walked back into the house, into the lounge where a coal fire glowed, with the brass fire irons and the brass fender giving off sparks of reflected light. Glancing at the Westminster-chime clock on the mantlepiece she saw the time. Eleven o’clock. At school the children would be in from their mid-morning break, sitting at their desks, hands on heads, waiting for permission to open their desks and get out their English grammar exercise books. She wrinkled her nose at the rembered smell of urine emanating from boys and girls who slept three, four and sometimes five to a bed. Sleeping in rooms where the sickly stench of bugs came from the walls, and where fathers lolled unshaven in front of empty grates. A side of the coin that even Harry, for all his goodness, refused to recognize.
She had loved those children. In spite of their nit-infested heads and the dirt ingrained underneath their fingernails, she had loved them. And now here she was, an idle woman with nothing to do.
When the telephone rang she ran to answer it. Perhaps it was Carrie? Oh, yes, please, let it be Carrie! She would invite her over that afternoon, and together they would go through the house and decide what changes were to be made. The curtains in this room, for instance. Libby thought they were hideous, absolutely revolting.
‘Yes?’ She frowned as a high-pitched voice crackled in her ear.
‘Is the doctor there? I would like to speak to the doctor. It is urgent, very urgent.’
Libby sat down, holding the receiver against her ear, picking up the pencil lying at the side of the notepad on the polished mahogany table.
‘If you will give me a message I will let the doctor know as soon as he comes in. He is out on his rounds at the moment, I’m afraid.’
The voice at the other end of the wires was high with indignation. ‘But surely you are able to get in touch with him? I have to see him right away. Now! I am in such pain . . . such pain.’
‘Who is that speaking, please?’ For someone in agony the voice was very strong and peevish, Libby thought. She licked the point of the pencil and waited.
‘This is Mrs Morgan. Mrs Morgan of Bramwell House. Who is that? You don’t sound like Dr Brandwood’s girl. What has happened to Phyllis?’
‘Phyllis went when Dr Brandwood retired. I am Doctor Harry’s wife.’ Unconsciously Libby was adopting her school-marmish voice. ‘If you will tell me your symptoms I will see that my husband gets your message when he comes in at one o’clock.’
‘My symptoms?’ The loud voice rose an octave. ‘Since when was it necessary to describe one’s symptoms over the telephone? Dr Brandwood knew all about my migraines, and he always came round straight away. To give me an injection. I can’t possibly wait until one o’clock. Surely your husband left you a list of the people he was visiting? All you have to do is ring round until you find him. That’s what Phyllis always did.’
‘I am not Phyllis.’ Libby gripped the telephone hard, raising her eyes ceilingwards. ‘And I suggest you go and lie down and wait until the doctor returns. If you are a sufferer from migraine, then surely you know that is the best thing to do anyway.’
‘How dare you!’ The voice crackled with such ferocity that Libby held the receiver away from her ear. ‘I have been a patient of Dr Brandwood’s for over ten years and never, never have I been spoken to like this! You can tell your husband when he comes in not to bother coming to see me. I will find a doctor who knows how to get his priorities right. Someone with a little more sympathy. Goodbye!’
When the line went dead, Libby sat quite still for a moment before hooking the telephone back on to its stand. It was silly, she told herself, but the exchange of words had left her quite shattered.’
When Harry came in at half past one for a lunch already drying in the oven Libby told him about the call. ‘Mrs Morgan from Bramwell House?’ Harry frowned. ‘I’ll have to go round there straight away.’ He shrugged his shoulders when Libby reminded him that he hadn’t eaten since half past seven that morning. ‘Look, love, Mrs Morgan and her husband are two of my best patients. They pay promptly, and migraine isn’t exactly what you would class as an imaginative illness. It can be completely demoralizing when it strikes.’
‘Well, it hadn’t struck this morning!’ Libby followed him to the door, still protesting. ‘You should have heard the way she shouted at me. A person with migraine can hardly lift a head from the pillow. She was rude, Harry, rude and arrogant!’
He turned and drew her to him for a moment. ‘Well, real or imaginary, love, Mrs Morgan is my patient and besides, she exerts quite an influence in this town. Insult Mrs Morgan and you insult half the country. I must go and at least try to pour oil on troubled waters. I can’t afford to lose that account. It’s a bad start, Libby, a bad start.’
‘And I’m to blame?’ Libby drew away from him to glare into his anxious face. ‘Oh, Harry. Women like that aren’t worth bothering about. You’ll most likely, find she is finishing a good lunch when you get there.’
She went back into the house, closing the door none too gently behind her. But within the hour Harry was back, obviously fighting hard to keep his normally controlled temper.
‘Mrs Morgan had left orders not to let me into the house.’ He threw down his bag. ‘And there was a car I thought I recognized outside in the drive. So that’s one account closed.’ He shot her a guarded glance. ‘School-marm tactics don’t work when you are talking to patients, Libby. I must ask you to be more tolerant in future, even if you feel in your mind that the caller could be malingering.’
‘I know children,’ Libby said, with a calmness belied by the anger sparking from her brown eyes, ‘children who come to school with a fever or worse because their mothers realize they can be kept warmer at school than in an unheated house. Mothers who turn mangles with their insides dropping out. I’ve seen them, Harry, and yet you expect me to have patience with a pampered woman who imagines she has a headache? A spoilt woman who only needs to crook her little finger for you to go running? Is that smarmy bedside manner of yours what you trained seven years for?’ She waved a hand at the telephone. ‘And am I expected to kowtow and jump to attention when a woman like Mrs Morgan call
s the tune? Well, I can’t do it! It’s degrading.’
She looked very beautiful in her anger, but this time Harry was not impressed. This time he ignored her.
‘I see you have a lot to learn, Libby. If you will have a sandwich sent through into the surgery, I’ll eat there. I have some paperwork to do before I go out again.
‘He was as bad as Mrs Morgan.’
Libby sat opposite Carrie in the lounge at Westerley the same afternoon. ‘Oh, Carrie, we’ve quarrelled already, and I thought when we got married the bickering between us would stop. I thought we disagreed so much because the wedding and everything was getting on my nerves, but I was wrong. I looked at him this morning, Carrie, and I didn’t like him, let alone love him. What am I going to do?’
Carrie hid a smile as she listened. Her twin was talking quickly, waving a hand to emphasize a point, eyes flashing, cheeks flushed. And, oh, it was good to have Libby in the house again, even for a short time. With Libby around the whole world seemed different. Even her more outrageous statements had a touch of comic drama about them. Privately she was glad Harry had stood up to his wife. He was learning already, and the time would come when Libby would settle down in her role as doctor’s wife, playing it with as much dedicated intensity as she played every other part. At least it made a change from politics. Carrie sighed. Only yesterday Mr Crankshaw had been up from the mill, explaining to her mother that the cotton trade was so seriously hampered by heavy rates and taxations that the coming year was going to be a testing time.
‘It’s all on account of the tremendous cost to the state of the coal strike,’ he had said. ‘Did you read in the paper that the miners’ secretary on a visit to Moscow has prophesied a revolution in England? Inevitable, he says. He believes that the government and the mine owners between them beat the working man down in his demand for a living wage. But he says their victory will be the dearest victory that British capitalism ever won.’
Oh yes, it was a good job Libby wasn’t on that hobbyhorse. At least her marriage to Harry seemed to have dampened her ardour for the Labour movement. Now it only remained to be seen which soapbox she was about to leap on.
Carrie had not long to wait.
A month later, when the February snow lay dirty and trodden in the streets of the town, Libby announced that she was giving a small dinner party for the express purpose of introducing Carrie to a Burnley friend of Harry’s, a divorced man by the name of Roger Fish, son of a mine owner. Since his wife’s desertion he had been fending for himself, leaving his small girl in the charge of a series of unsuitable housekeepers.
‘He’s looking for a wife.’ Libby, making no attempt to be circumspect, filled Carrie in with the details. ‘There’s a house, neglected of course, but you could soon set that to rights. Not good-looking, but then, what do looks matter? I don’t mean repulsive,’ she added, ‘just a bit bald, and with a laugh that grates, but once you get past that he’s nice. You’ll take to each other at once. I’m sure of it.’
‘What shall I wear?’ Carrie asked the question with pretended innocence, and wasn’t in the least surprised when Libby took her quite seriously.
‘Your rose-coloured overblouse with the black velvet tie, and your velvet skirt. I’ll wear my black velvet. You should stand out nicely against that.’
‘Libby!’ Carrie’s eyes brimmed with ready laughter, but her sister failed to see anything remotely amusing. So Carrie sat back, in the way she had always sat back when Libby started on her ‘steam-roller tactics’, and allowed herself to be taken over. Conditioned by closeness, Carrie nodded and agreed.
To tell the truth she was glad of the opportunity to get out of the big house for a while. Ettie, actively fearing Sarah Batt’s imminent departure now that her mother was becoming too frail too look after her grandson, had already lost some of the euphoria which had sustained her since Oliver’s death. She was in danger of sinking into semi-invalidism again, and when she did so Carrie knew her role would be that of the unmarried daughter, a slave to the house and her mother’s whims.
This Roger Fish – well, he didn’t come into it. She wasn’t a slab of meat to be sold to the highest bidder and besides, a bald head and a laugh that grated . . . oh Lordy! The corners of Carrie’s mouth twitched with laughter again, but with great effort she managed to keep her face straight as Libby went on planning the dinner party.
‘A week next Friday, then?’ Having arranged everything to her satisfaction Libby rose to her feet and started upstairs to say goodbye to her mother.
‘I’ll be there,’ Carrie promised. ‘Bois-de-rose, overblouse and all.’
‘Harry will fetch you,’ said Libby, over a disappearing shoulder. ‘At seven o’clock sharp. And if he’s called out to a patient, then I won’t be responsible. I just won’t!’
‘How can a man be so stupid as to keep mixing us up when we’re dressed in completely different frocks?’
Libby beckoned Carrie out of the room as the two men settled down with their afterdinner cigars and the decanter of port.
‘Roger Fish isn’t even trying to get us right, in my opinion. Something tells me he thinks we’re funny. A couple of freaks in a circus tent. The next time he calls me Carrie, then apologizes, I shall say something very rude.’
Carrie followed her down the hall and into the drawing room. ‘So you don’t think he fancies me as the next Mrs Fish, do you?’
‘Or me,’ Libby said promptly, and as their laughter exploded they clapped hands to their mouths and sank down together on the overstuffed sofa, leaning on each other, rocking together in shared merriment.
‘He’s not all that bald.’ Carrie sat up, wiping her eyes. ‘And his laugh isn’t that bad, either. A bit squeaky, but you could get used to it if you were hard pressed enough.’
Libby, with one of her abrupt and bewildering changes of mood, suddenly gripped her sister’s hand. ‘You’re not still pining for that awful Mungo man?’
‘No, I’m not.’ Carrie tucked her handkerchief back up her sleeve. ‘I never think about him. Mr Eccles took him back, apparently, and I’m glad. Mungo was the breadwinner. He needed his job more than I did. I wouldn’t be surprised if he hadn’t convinced the headmaster that I was the one who did the grabbing that day down in the cloakroom.’ She shuddered. ‘Not that it matters now. It’s all water under the bridge.’
Then at the mention of water they both stared at each other, their dark eyes wide.
‘And yet he was the one directly responsible for Father drowning.’ Carrie sighed. ‘I wake in the night sometimes and wonder how I could ever have imagined that I was in love with him.’ She shuddered. ‘I must have been out of my mind.’
‘Have you seen Tom Silver since that day?
Libby turned her face away, trying to keep her voice light.
‘No, never,’ Carrie said, the sudden blush warming her cheeks surprising her. Then, as the two men came in from the dining room, they were confronted by two identical faces, wearing two identically guilty expressions.
Now what’s been cooking, Harry thought, coming forward with a smile on his ruddy face, and taking care to leave the place next to Carrie free for Roger Fish.
‘I will drive you home, if I may.’ The bald head inclined itself towards Carrie solicitously. ‘And I must thank you, Libby, for a most enjoyable evening.’ The high-pitched laugh wobbled nervously. ‘Perhaps before too long you will all come and have dinner with me? My present housekeeper is a splendid cook. She’ll be glad of the opportunity to display her skills.’
‘That would be lovely.’ Libby’s brown eyes were wide and innocent as she exchanged a glance with her twin. ‘Wouldn’t that be lovely, Carrie?’
‘Delightful.’ Carrie narrowed her eyes at her sister’s treachery, but outside in the drive she allowed herself to be helped into the passenger seat of the car.
‘You must show me the way.’ The nervous laugh twittered again. Carrie explained that it was only five minutes’ drive to Westerjey, her conscience p
ricking slightly. It had been unforgivable of Libby to throw them together like this so obviously, but Roger Fish was, she felt, a lonely man, covering up his loneliness by a too-ready laugh, and the heavy-handed joke of not being able to tell them apart.
‘It must be difficult bringing up a little girl without her mother.’ Carrie’s voice was gentle with sympathy, filled with a genuine remorse at her off-hand manner all the evening.
The man by her side shot her a quick glance from beneath surprisingly bushy eyebrows. She was very beautiful, this girl who was the image of her sister. More beautiful than the other one in an indefinable way. Following her instructions, he drove the car round the drive and up to the steps leading to Westerley. Then thoughtfully he turned off the engine. She was tender-hearted, too. The wine with the meal and Harry’s generous pouring of the port afterwards had blurred his vision as he looked at Carrie’s oval face above the high collar of her velvet coat. She drooped her head and fiddled with the clasp of her silk purse.
‘I hope I haven’t offended you. Libby told me that your . . . that your wife . . .’ The gentle voice faltered.
‘My wife went off with someone else.’ Roger Fish felt his own voice deepen dramatically. ‘She never wanted the child, and when Claire was born it seemed to take Elaine farther away from me.’ He sighed, his face so close that his breath made the marabou trimming flutter enticingly. I will never understand how a woman can leave her baby, but there it was, and now, well, I just do the best I can.’
‘Oh, I’m so sorry.’ Carrie put out a hand and touched his sleeve. ‘Would you have her back, your wife, if she came?’ The brown eyes were filled with compassion, causing him to draw in his breath sharply. ‘It could be that she was depressed after the baby came. It happens sometimes, and maybe this – this other man – maybe she was just infatuated. There can’t have been much about him to take a wife away from her husband and child, but women sometimes fall in love with the most unlikely men.’