by Marie Joseph
‘I waited until it was over.’ Harry’s voice, ringing with triumph, came passionately alive over the wires. ‘Libby went into labour last night, and it’s a girl, a beautiful girl, weighing six pounds four ounces, with ten toes and ten fingers.’ There was the break of emotion in his voice as he went on, ‘A straightforward birth with no complications. Libby sends her love.’
‘A girl,’ Ettie said, coming into the hall and leaning against the wall as if for support. ‘That is so strange. I was sure it would be a boy.’
‘But aren’t you glad?’ Carrie, guiding her mother back to her chair by the fire, felt as deflated as a pricked balloon. ‘Aren’t you pleased you have a granddaughter, and that Libby’s all right.’ Going over to the sidetable she lifted the sherry decanter. ‘We must celebrate, Mother! You are a grandmother, and I’m an aunt. Surely a little drink won’t upset you? Oh, Mother, please! Please be glad. For Libby’s sake let’s be happy together. Please?’
‘You know sherry always upsets my liver.’ Ettie smoothed her skirt down over her knees. ‘But you have one, dear.’ She saw the expression in Carrie’s eyes and added, ‘Well, of course I’m glad that Libby has had her baby safely, especially after her being so ill with scarlet fever. But they can’t very well call a girl Willie, can they?’
Carrie closed her eyes for a moment. ‘I have to be more forceful. I have to be more firm. I have to get out of the house for at least part of the day.’ She was muttering to herself as she poured a far larger sherry than the time of day warranted, tilting her head back and half draining the glass before she took it back to her chair. Her needlework waited for her, its soft colours as muted as the atmosphere in the large, chilly room.
Nurse Tomkin was in her element with a new-born baby to care for, especially one that resembled a skinned rabbit with twig-thin legs and a mauve tint to its mottled skin. Bustling round the bedroom with her flat-footed walk, she felt a sensation of gloating power as she nurtured the secret beneath the white starched bib of her apron – the secret that could, at a word from her, throw the Peel family into a proper flummox.
The week after Sarah Batt had slid in a faint at her feet, Nurse Tomkin had answered a knock at the door of her cottage to find the red-haired young woman standing there, her face reflecting a terrible anxiety.
‘It’s about that photograph, Nurse Tomkin.’ Sarah had blurted out the words, then followed her into the cottage, refusing to sit down, just standing there red and troubled, so troubled that even Nurse Tomkin’s spiteful curiosity had taken second place to her genuine concern.
‘You knew that photograph wasn’t my Patrick. You knew that when you stopped me that day coming home from Mass.’ Sarah’s hands, chapped and swollen by a lifetime of service, twisted together as if she was working up an invisible lather. ‘So what are you going to do about it, Nurse Tomkin? Are you going to tell them that I have a boy who is his father born again?’ Sarah’s voice rang with passionate pleading. ‘Because if you do, then they’ll come for him. And when they see him they’ll try to make me realize how much they can do for him They’ll tell me they can send him to a good school. Then they’ll give him their name.’ The round eyes swam with tears. ‘Mrs Peel has never believed that her son was dead. Never, not to this day. And when she realizes that Patrick was born on the very day that Willie died . . .’ Sarah took a step forward and for a moment Nurse Tomkin thought she was going to go down on her knees.
It was the Irish Catholic in her, she decided. That red hair and her mother’s maiden name of Mary O’Leary – no wonder this sturdy daughter of hers had let a man have his way with her, with all that superstitious passion smouldering behind those blue eyes.
‘If you give me away then I will kill myself.’ Sarah repeated this in a harsh whisper. ‘If you tell the Peels what you have found out then I’ll do away with meself. I swear by our Lady. I will cut me throat with the bread knife. I will! I mean it!’
‘Then who would bring your Patrick up?’ Nurse Tomkin’s voice was brisk. She didn’t hold with histrionics. ‘Don’t get so worked up, Sarah. See here now. Come and sit down. I’ll make us a pot of tea, then we can talk about this in a sensible fashion.’
‘I don’t want your tea, an’ I don’t feel like being sensible!’ Sarah Batt had gone as white as on the day she fainted. ‘I just want your promise that you won’t say nothing. I want you to swear it on the Bible, Nurse Tomkin.’ She lowered her voice a fraction. ‘Me mother won’t live all that much longer. I know what ails her as well as you do, and when she’s gone then there will be just me and Patrick. For the first time just the two of us.’ Sarah’s blue eyes glared defiance. I’ll work me fingers to the bone to keep him. I’ll get up afore it’s light and go and scrub out the shippens over at the farm, then work in the sculleries or the fields, if they will take me on.’ Her body was shaking as violently as if she had St Vitus’s Dance. ‘I will catch the train into Preston and go on the streets if need be. But they will never have him, the Peels won’t. Never! Never! Never!’
And now, as she faced Libby sitting up in bed. Nurse Tomkin felt the sensation of gloating power again. With a few words she could set ripples widening that would have repercussions far more exciting than any of the little hoohas she had managed to stir up in the whole of her long and industrious life.
Libby spoke fretfully. ‘But you don’t understand, Nurse! I don’t want to feed my baby. My husband agrees with me that she will come on just as well on Cow and Gate. The very idea of breast-feeding disgusts me.’
Nurse Tomkin could scarcely believe it. Mentally she compared the lovely face with Sarah Batt’s homely features suffused with anguish on the day she had come to the cottage. That had been real mother-love, a word this little madam didn’t know the meaning of.
One who had, and one who had not.
In that moment of revelation, Nurse Tomkin made up her mind. Sarah Batt’s secret would be safe with her. Not for anything was she going to hand the Peel family their grandson on a plate. They had enough. They didn’t deserve that little lad with his corn yellow hair and his bright eyes that charmed one even when he was at his most impossible.
‘Then if you won’t give the baby her ten o’clock feed, you’d be better off without your cup of coffee, Mrs Brandwood. Your liquid intake will have to be curtailed for the next few days at least.’
Nurse Tomkin nodded decisively, then with her starched apron crackling as if it had a life of its own she stalked out of the bedroom and down the stairs in search of her own morning cuppa and two or three Marie biscuits.
Carrie politely nibbled the sugar-coated biscuit held out for her approval by the dignified elderly assistant in the shop in the town’s main shopping street.
‘Yes, you can include a tin of those in our order,’ she agreed, handing over the neatly written list. ‘They are rather nice.’
Then, with a wicker basket over her arm containing nothing more than four library books, she walked down the street and turned the corner, making her way to the offices of the evening newspaper to hand in the announcement of the birth of Libby’s and Harry’s daughter.
It was a golden day, an autumn day with the trees in the cathedral grounds scattering brown and yellow leaves and the wind for once no more than a soft sigh. She was wearing a beige costume with a little Peter Pan fur collar and a small cloche hat to match pulled down over her forehead, hiding her fringe and leaving the side pieces of her dark hair framing her face.
The little outer office was crowded, and the young man behind the counter seemed to be taking a long time to pacify a flat-capped Irishman who was arguing loudly. Carrie heard the glass-fronted door open, then felt an embarrassing blush stain her cheeks as a delighted voice hailed her.
‘Miss Peel! Carrie! Yes, definitely Carrie! How are you? You remember me?’
It had been a long time but, oh yes, she remembered Tom Silver. She had followed his career in the papers, smiling at some of his more outrageous remarks in the reports of council meetings, and now
that he was actually there, standing by her side, smiling, she realized that she had never forgotten him for a single moment.
There was a genuine note of pleasure in his voice as, after waiting for her to hand in the notice, he took her by the elbow and walked with her down the steps and into the sun-warmed street. Then, with the trams and the buses streaming out from the Boulevard, he told her that he could well be spared for half an hour at least and that she must come and have a drink with him in the big hotel on the corner.
When they were seated in an alcove with their drinks on the little round table in front of them, he turned towards her so that he could look full into her face. ‘Now, Carrie Peel! Hello!’
She looked down at her hands, only shakily composed. There was something so intimately gentle in his look and his voice that for a wild uncontrolled moment she thought she was going to cry. She had been crying the last time they had met, the only time they had met, she remembered, and with an effort she pulled herself together.
‘Libby has had a baby. I was putting the announcement in your paper.’ She busied herself taking off her gloves and then stroked them into position on her lap. ‘A girl. They are going to call her Isobel.’
So that’s Libby settled.’ Tom smiled at her. ‘And you? What are you doing with your life now, Carrie?’
There were shadows on her face, and he felt an illogical desire to stretch out a finger and smooth them away. When he had thought about Libby it had been with a sort of compassionate affection that filled him with remorse for treating her so cruelly that September evening in the lane outside the big house. Now this one – this one with Libby’s face but with that difference in the eyes – had been put from his mind with conscious deliberation.
‘There’s nothing to tell about me,’ she was saying softly. ‘But you? You are a celebrity. I read about you in the paper. You’re still fighting battles, aren’t you, Mr Silver?’
‘Tom,’ he said, then nodded towards the group of men shaking hands as they met at the bar, pot-bellied men with florid complexions, drinking their beers before moving through into the dining room for expense-account lunches. ‘I haven’t joined their ranks, if that’s what you mean. Carrie.’
‘But the strike is over and forgotten,’ she said guilelessly. ‘The miners are back at work and my father’s mill is flourishing, even in spite of foreign competition. What does a man like you do when the town is sliding back into prosperity?’
To her surprise he threw back his head and laughed out loud. ‘Carrie! What have you been doing with yourself? Oh, aye, things might have been looking up for the likes of them.’ He jerked his head towards the bar. ‘Masons, Rotarians, pit and factory owners. They never need to worry where their next meal’s coming from. Everything they do is put down to expenses, like those drinks they’re enjoying now.’ He shook his head at Carrie, then flicked the fur collar on her coat with an impatient finger. ‘No, the hope for the future doesn’t lie with the likes of them. The only hope for better working conditions is through the Labour movement, though I’ve been disappointed in the way some of the Labour councillors seem to lose contact with the very people they are put there to serve. We’ve a long way to go yet before we reach an ideal society. And if you do say too much in defence of the needy you’re accused of having Bolshie leanings.’
‘I do hope you don’t lose your job again.’ Carrie noticed how the green pullover underneath his dark jacket had been badly washed so that the wool had erupted into little bobbles. Hardly knowing what she was doing, she put out a hand and touched his sleeve. ‘You’ve been victimised once. I know that because Libby told me. So isn’t once enough? You can’t fight the way things are, Tom.’ She said his name shyly. ‘There will always be those who have and those who have not.’ She paused. ‘Libby went through a stage of not wanting to accept that; she wanted everyone to have the same advantages she had, but she seems reconciled to the idea that a system like that could never be.’
‘And you?’
‘I have thought about it.’ She was very serious as she tried hard to be honest. ‘It’s just that I can’t see how it would help for me to become poor overnight. My father and grandfather worked hard, you know. So – I get on with what I have to do, and what I have to do at this moment is take care of Mother and Westerley. And I feel the same resentment as if we sat by an empty grate all day and I went out to the corner shop to get things on tick. Oh, I know I must be shocking you, because you’ll be thinking one can’t compare, but that’s the way I am, I would never have chained myself to railings for the vote. I could never stand on a platform shouting the odds. I’m not one of the intellectual elite. I wasn’t even a very good teacher, nowhere as good as Libby.’ She smiled. ‘I go to church to evensong, and half the time I can’t believe what I’m praying about. My ideas are half formed; they must be. All I want is to be happy, and to make the people I love happy too.’ Her hand shook as she lifted the tall sherry glass and drained it. ‘And now I must go, or Mother will work herself into a state wondering where I am.’
Tom stood with her on the pavement outside the newspaper office, and when she raised her face to the sun he thought her dark-fringed eyes had a bruised look about them, as though she had not been sleeping well. He realized he did not want to let her go.
He shuffled his feet. ‘I’d like to see you again. Soon.’ To his surprise his thinking was too confused to mention a definite date. ‘May I telephone you?’ Suddenly he took her hand in his ‘Oh, Carrie. I’m putting myself across badly, but there’s so much I’d like to show you.’ He was looking deep into her eyes as the tooting of a car horn made him turn quickly.
And afterwards Harry Brandwood was to tell Libby that Carrie had stared at him as if he were a complete and utter stranger.
‘I took Carrie home,’ he told Libby, eating his lunch with her in the overheated bedroom from a tray on his lap. ‘It saved her catching the tram, but I don’t think she was glad of the lift.’ He chuckled. ‘The way she was holding hands with that man – a man I don’t recollect ever meeting, by the way – I got the feeling she would have preferred to ride on the tram just to be alone. She certainly hadn’t much to say to me.’
‘What was he like?’ Libby put her knife and fork down, her face suddenly peaky above the pale blue bedjacket ‘Did she tell you’ his name?’
‘No.’ Harry went on eating, oblivious of the tension in the air. ‘But he worked in the compositors’ room of the evening paper. She told me that.’ He chewed happily. ‘A tall, thin chap with long hair. No hat. Not a man your father would have approved of, I can tell you that much.’
‘Not a gentleman?’ Libby’s voice dripped ice.
‘Well, hardly. Not at first glance.’ Harry speared a piece of sliced carrot on his fork. ‘I wasn’t holding up the traffic, nothing like that, but Carrie didn’t bring him over to introduce us. If you ask me, she was sorry I appeared like that.’ Innocently he rubbed salt in the wound. ‘She was looking very pretty. More animated than I’ve seen her for a long time. I’ve been worried about Carrie lately. She allows herself to be manipulated, and with all due respect, love, your mother can be a bit overpowering. In a helpless way, if you know what I mean.’
Libby, taking a tight hold on herself, controlled the urge to lean over and tip what was left of her husband’s lunch on to his lap. The thought of Carrie holding hands with Tom Silver was making her feel sick. The binder round her swollen breasts was suddenly like a tourniquet, cutting off her life’s blood, so that she found it hard to breathe. And there was nothing she could say. She was stuck here in bed for another ten days at least, with that bossy woman glaring at her through her thick spectacles, with the baby crying in that high plaintive wail. And now her sister was betraying her by meeting Tom Silver on the sly and being intimate enough with him to hold hands in the street.
The euphoria she had felt just after the birth had drained away, and now her immediate desire was to strike out at whoever was nearest – Harry, munching stolidly thro
ugh his lunch, his face ruddy and contented.
‘I’ve told Nurse Tomkin that you agree with me about stopping breast-feeding,’ she said casually.
Harry, forgetting his natural good manners, spoke with his mouth full of food. ‘You have what?’
‘I sent her out for bottles and a tin of Cow and Gate. She’s downstairs now mixing it up, or whatever you do with it.’ She picked up her own fork and began to eat.
‘But why?’ Harry stared at her in amazement. ‘Why did you tell her that? It isn’t true, damn it. You have enough milk there to feed half a dozen babies.’ Bewildered and angry he pointed to the corner where the baby whimpered in her frilly cot, making smacking noises with her tiny mouth. ‘She needs your milk, Libby. Breast-feeding is your duty, it gives the baby an immunity to certain diseases, besides being easy and natural.’ He touched the bolster case pinned round his wife’s swollen breasts. ‘Besides, your stomach will go flatter quicker if you breast-feed. It’s your duty!’ he said again. ‘As a doctor I forbid you to send all that good milk back.’
‘I’m not a cow, Harry.’ Libby, assuaging the hurt he had inflicted on her by telling her about Carrie and Tom Silver, set her face into lines of determination. ‘Besides, I refuse to be tied to feeding times. I refuse to be cajoled into the barbarity of it.’
‘The barbarity of it?’ Harry rose to his feet, holding the tray in front of him and looking round wildly for somewhere to put it. ‘Good God, woman! What kind of talk is that? I look at you sometimes, Libby Brandwood, and I wonder what I see. There are women in this town who are having to feed their babies on pobs, bread soaked in milk, half diluted with water; women who have no milk in their breasts because they are undernourished. And you, fed on nothing but the best . . .’ He jerked his head towards the beefsteak on his wife’s plate. ‘You deny your child what is hers by right!’