by Marie Joseph
‘I thought you had no time for undernourished women,’ Libby said sweetly, seeing in her mind’s eye Tom Silver holding Carrie’s hand. ‘I thought that women who couldn’t pay your fees didn’t even exist for you, Harry.’
He left the room angrily, hurt and bewildered. Libby pushed her own tray from her and turning her head into the lace-edged pillows, wept like a child.
When, all unsuspecting, Carrie called that afternoon, still wearing the becoming costume with her hair curling over the brim of the tiny hat and her eyes shining as if a candle had been lit behind them, Libby, without preamble, said what she was bursting to say.
‘Harry told me you were with Tom Silver this morning.’
Carrie blushed a deep rosy red. ‘Yes. I told him about the baby, Libby, and he sent his kind regards.’ She was so full of a strange sweet feeling that in her innocence she said entirely the wrong thing. ‘He wants to see me again, Libby, and I think he means it. He’s such a strange man, isn’t he? He doesn’t seem to have a thought in his head for himself. He’s the sort of man who will kill himself worrying about other people. And he’s had such a sad life. Did you know his wife was killed during the war, when he was in France at the front.’
Libby’s breasts were throbbing, making her want to tear off the tight binder. She could feel the wetness as the milk soaked through the layers of material, and she could still see Nurse Tomkin’s look of disgust as the baby had refused to suck at the rubber teat of the bottle.
‘Did he tell you he once asked me to go away with him?’ Libby’s voice was high through her physical discomfort. ‘Did he tell you how he asked me to go into the house and. pack my things? “I’ll wait ten minutes,” he said. Has he asked you to do the same?’
Carrie’s head drooped low as all the bright promise of the morning disappeared. ‘I didn’t realize you had known him that well,’ she said slowly. ‘You never told me. Why didn’t you, Libby?’
‘I did try to warn you.’ Libby winced and slid farther down in the bed. ‘Tom Silver is an ambitious man, Carrie. He has proved that by getting himself on to the council so quickly. And that’s only the first step. Westminster is where Mr Silver has set his sights, and if to get there means climbing on the shoulders of one of the town’s most prominent families, then he will do just that.’
‘But he – he didn’t strike me as . . . I thought he . . .’ Carrie’s voice was a whisper.
‘You or me. What does it matter?’ Libby reached for a grape from the bunch at the side of her bed. To a man with his sights set high, one twin is as good as the other. He even mistook you for me the first time you met.’
Carrie’s head drooped even farther, and Libby saw a single tear drop on to the folded gloves on her sister’s lap.
‘It’s funny really, if you think about it,’ she said spitting a grape pip neatly into a cupped hand. ‘I thought after your Mungo episode you’d be more worldly-wise.’ Then, the damage done, her dark eyes softened as she looked with genuine fondness at her twin’s bowed head. ‘Have some grapes, love,’ she said. ‘And don’t look so distressed; there are plenty more fish in the sea.’
‘Like Roger Fish?’ Carrie’s expression was hard and un-Carrie-like as she made the feeble joke.
And as they laughed together, as they had always laughed together, Libby refused to see that her sister’s eyes were now as bleak as moorland stones.
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE MIDDLE CLASSES, Tom remembered wryly, as he rang the door bell set high in the big front door at Westerley, did not call uninvited. They telephoned or wrote a letter first to make sure it was convenient. He smoothed his wet hair away from his forehead and waited, surprised to find that his heartbeats had quickened. All he needed was a nosegay in one hand and a box of chocolates in the other, and the poem he had been struggling to write in his pocket.
It was a dark November evening, with the fields surrounding Westerley wreathed in damp, clinging mist. His jacket was beaded with droplets as if he had walked through a shower of rain. He must be mad, he told himself. He rang the bell again, then wished he hadn’t as the door opened. Carrie was standing there, dressed in something long, blue and flowing, looking even more beautiful than he remembered.
‘Mr Silver! Tom!’ Her voice was high as she stared at him in amazement. ‘Come in! Oh, what a dreadful night! You look so cold.’
Leading the way into the big lounge, she told him to sit down in a wing chair at right angles to the fire roaring up the wide chimney and throwing out a heat that made his face burn. ‘Mother is upstairs, and Mrs Edwards has gone to the pictures, but I’ll get you a hot drink. Or would you perhaps like something stronger?’
‘A cup of tea would be very welcome.’ Tom’s eyes took in the large room, the thick carpet, the heavy mahogany furniture, the chintz-covered chesterfield and the long velvet curtains shutting out the winter.
‘You were going to bed.’ He nodded at Carrie’s housecoat and beaded slippers. ‘I’ve come at an inconvenient time. You haven’t been ill, have you?’
‘I often wear this thing after dinner,’ Carrie explained gently, realizing with a pang of tenderness that he thought she was wearing her dressing gown. ‘You just sit there and get warm. I won’t be a minute.’
Then, with flushed face and hands that surprised her by their trembling, she stood in the kitchen willing the kettle to boil.
When Tom was balancing a fluted cup and saucer on a bony knee, he suddenly said, ‘My late wife’s mother died last week?’
Carrie, confused, mumbled regrets and wondered what he was leading up to.
He took a sip of the tea, then put the cup carefully back in its saucer. ‘No, don’t say anything. She was old and tired and her time had come. But one of the last things she did was to ask the owner of her house if I might be allowed to take it on. The rent is five shillings a week, but it has two up and two down, and an outside lavatory in a tiny yard. A palace compared to the place I’ve been living in.’ He grinned. ‘So you see sitting before you a man with his own house. Would you say that makes me into a man worth knowing, Carrie?’
‘Where is it?’ Carrie looked away from the unspoken message in his dark eyes.
He told her and she saw, in her mind’s eye, the district with its warren of short streets, and endless rows of chimney pots, the doors opening straight on to the pavement. She nodded. ‘It’s up by the infirmary, isn’t it?’
‘It’s nearly a hundred years old.’ Tom sat forward in his chair, the cup and saucer tilting so precariously that she got up and brought a small table and placed it in front of him.
‘There. I should have done that before. Won’t you mind living alone?’
She thought he was going to take her hand so she moved quickly back to her own chair, picked up her cup and then set it down again when she saw that it trembled in her grasp. The dark eyes never left her face.
‘I’ve lived alone for many years and never minded till now.’
There was no mistaking the expression in his eyes, and even as her body responded Carrie was filled with resentment and anger. She felt like weeping, and if she wept this would be the third time she had met this man and felt her insides dissolve into tears.
‘I think I have fallen in love with you,’ he said slowly. ‘It’s unbelievable, and yet it’s true. I think I loved you from the time I found you walking down the road on the afternoon of your father’s funeral.’ His voice was so low she could barely catch what he was saying. ‘You need a man to take care of you, Carrie. You’re so lonely it makes me want to put my arms round you and hold you safe.’ His glance swept the room. ‘You have all this, and yet you need so much more. Am I right?’
He made no move towards her, and yet when she shrank back on to the cushions it was as if she were warding off a physical attack. When she spoke her voice startled him with its harshness.
‘Are you asking me to go away with you, Tom Silver? Are you saying that you’ll give me ten minutes to go upstairs and pack my things?’
She lifted her chin. ‘Like you asked my sister? Only, according to Libby, you waited outside in the cold for her. Now you’ve moved on a step and can wait by the fire.’ She gave a short laugh. ‘You made a mistake when you decided that one sister was as good as the other. Libby and I are twins, Mr Silver, and twins tell each other everything. Libby warned me what to expect, but even so I’m surprised at your temerity and your haste.’
Her heart was knocking wildly against her ribs. It wasn’t really in her to hurt and to shock, but her feelings were no longer her own. She had thought he had just come to see her – that would have been enough – but now, by his impetuous talk of love, he had brought Libby’s words to mind as clearly as if she were there in the room laughing at him.
‘We’re two people, though, Libby and I. You can’t just take up with one where you left off with the other. You’ll have to find some other way to further your political ambitions.’
Tom stared at her and then with a sudden movement he jumped to his feet, knocking over the little table and crashing the delicate cup and saucer on to the tiled hearth so that they smashed into smithereens. He came over to her quickly and knelt beside her.
‘I’m not a gentleman, Carrie, so there’s nothing to stop me from telling you the truth. I won’t imitate Douglas Fairbanks and rush from the house in a welter of misunderstandings. J want you, and I’m going to fight for you, and you must listen to me. Carrie! Look at me!’
But she found she could not lift her head. She could only stare down at the carpet, until she felt his fingers wrenching her chin round so that she was forced to look up into his face.
‘What I did to Libby was cruel and despicable, I admit it. But I didn’t do it because of her money or connections. In fact, I don’t really know why I did it, except that when I saw this house and remembered my own wretched room – when I thought of her doctor friend waiting for her and remembered how alone I was – I wanted to hurt her. I saw she had a thing about me, and just then I wanted to put her into an impossible position. And later I was too ashamed to get in touch with her and apologise – I was afraid of making things worse.’ He paused for a moment, then went on urgently. ‘Carrie, I like Libby a lot, but you must believe me when I say I never loved her, and I never seriously wanted her to come away with me – for ambition or any other reason. Please believe me, Carrie!’
He sat down beside Carrie and drew her stiff, resisting body into his arms. He could feel her gradually relaxing as he held her close. Then his hand was on her neck beneath the soft weight of her hair, and his mouth, delicate at first, trailed its sweetness down her cheeks lingering at the corners of her mouth until with a groan he pulled her close, into a kiss which deepened as her lips parted and they clung together, their bodies fusing as if they were one person.
When at last he raised his head he was seeing, not the cosy overfurnished room with its heavy drapings, the high-banked fire striking sparks off the brasses, and the silver photograph frames on the side tables, but the little back living room of the house he had just left. A room with a black fireplace with a cut steel fender, a slopstone beneath the window, in a street where women gossiped on doorsteps and children played their chanting games with a rope stretched across the cobbles.
He could never . . . he must never . . . he had so little to give, and yet as he bent his head to kiss her again and felt her response, he whispered, ‘Carrie . . . oh, Carrie, my love. I love you so much. I can’t let you go.’
‘You must never let me go.’ The wide sleeves of the silken wrap fell away from her bare arms as they crept round his neck, holding him even closer. ‘I won’t let you let me go.’ She was half smiling, half weeping. ‘I don’t know you, and yet I think I’m in love too. How can that be?’ Her voice came muffled from his shoulder. ‘But don’t put me on a pedestal, Tom. I – oh, what would you say if I told you I lost my teaching job because I was found in the arms of a fellow teacher? That he’s married, and for the whole of last summer I used to meet him. In a deserted summer house.’ She raised her head and he saw that her face was scarlet. ‘But we didn’t – that is, we never –’
‘Made love properly?’ He was smiling a teasing smile. ‘Oh, Carrie, love. I’m not one of those men who think they have always the right to be the first. What will happen between you and me isn’t written yet, but when it is it’ll be on a blank page with no ghosts to look over our shoulders.’
Then he closed his eyes. What was he doing? What was he promising when he had nothing to promise? He had wanted to see her, that was all. The urgency of his need to see her had wiped out any practicalities; he had never intended to touch her. But holding her close he knew that he was committed to loving this lovely, lovely girl for ever.
He was so thin that Carrie could feel his bones through the tweed jacket. His lips when he kissed her were firm, not soft and fleshy as Mungo’s had been. She was filled with such tenderness, such compassion for his need of her that she thought she would die of it. Carrie stirred in his arms, wanting nothing more than that the clock on the mantelpiece would stop its ticking, that time would stand still, with nothing of the outside world intruding. She was not Libby, working out ways and means. Her waiting time was over, and somehow they would find a way to be together.
Neither of them heard the door click open. At Ettie’s voice Carrie looked up, staring at her mother with dream-dazed eyes.
‘Mother!’ Moving from the circle of Tom’s arms but still holding on to his hand, Carrie looked neither guilty nor surprised. ‘This is Tom Silver.’
As Tom got to his feet Ettie came forward into the room, ignoring his outstretched hand. ‘I thought I heard voices . . .’ She walked unsteadily to the winged chair and lowered herself into it, pulling the folds of her wrap round her knees, her face a study of disbelief and dismay. ‘I don’t think we have met before Mr – Mr Silver?’
His face, Carrie saw, looked younger, more vulnerable. Gone was the teasing mockery. It was as though the past half hour had transformed him, leaving a dignity she had never seen before.
‘I wish we hadn’t met like this, Mrs Peel.’ Gently he disengaged Carrie’s clinging hand. ‘I wanted to court your daughter properly, to meet her with your approval. It must seem – it must be a shock –’ He broke off as the small woman watching him clutched her heart, starting to breathe quickly so that he saw the rise and fall of the lace cascading in frills down her bodice.
‘Will you please go, Mr Silver?’ Ettie leaned back and closed her eyes. ‘And Carrie. My tablets. They are on my bedside table. Will you fetch them, please?’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said again, but Ettie’s face wore its shut-in waxen look, the ploy she always used when anything unpleasant occurred, the defence she had always put up when Oliver had made one of his scenes.
Carrie shook her head at Tom, moving towards the door, her eyes pleading with him to follow her.
In the hall he reached for her again. ‘Is she ill?’ He jerked his head towards the closed door. ‘What is it? Her heart?’
Carrie put a hand to his cheek and answered him sadly. ‘Mother will not face up to things.’ Her voice hardened. ‘My father made her like this. When she is scared she moves into illness. Oh, why did she have to come downstairs just now?’
‘Will it make any difference?’
‘To us? I don’t know,’ she said dully.
‘Carrie?’ Ettie’s voice floated through the closed door in a long, plaintive wail. ‘Are you there?’
‘Coming, Mother.’
Resolutely she put him from her. ‘You must go now. I have to see to her.’
Fiercely he pulled her close for a last embrace, so close that she could feel his ribs pressing against her. ‘When will I see you again?’
‘Soon.’
‘Tomorrow? Can I come again tomorrow?’
Then, even as he let himself out of the house, she was running upstairs. And when Tom stepped outside into the cold seeping fog of the November evening it felt as if the heavy clang of the b
ig front door had shut out all that was warm and comfortable in his life.
Pulling up the collar of his jacket and shoving his hands deep in his pockets, Tom walked back down the winding lane with the trees on either side pointing winter-bare branches to the dark sky. He would catch the tram into town, and maybe even another tram out to the street where he now lived. Back to a house that had seemed like a palace but was now only a place to live. And he had thought . . . he had even dared to dream . . . but in that long, disquieting stare, Oliver Peel’s widow had crumbled his dreams to dust.
He started to run, swinging himself aboard the tram with a recklessness that brought a shouted warning to the conductor’s lips.
The tablets were washed down with a tumbler of water held in Ettie’s shaking hand. Her lips had a strange blue tinge to them, and Carrie watched her anxiously.
Was she genuinely ill? She certainly looked dreadful, with her nose all pinched, and a hectic spot of scarlet burning on her cheeks. Or was that the fire? Carrie glanced at the leaping flames suspiciously. Before she left the room the fire had been deadened to a red glow, and yet now it was as though someone had put the poker to it, loosening the banked slack and the huge slab of coal, so that the flames roared upward again. Could her mother, in the middle of what appeared to be a genuine attack, have leaned forward, picked up the heavy brass-handled poker and tended the fire?
‘Mother?’ She took the tumbler from Ettie’s hand. ‘Don’t you think you ought to go back upstairs? I’ll follow you when I’ve done this.’ Kneeling down she swept the shattered cup and saucer on to the brass fire shovel.
‘He did that.’ It was more of a statement than a question. The pupils of Ettie’s eyes seemed to have grown, almost obliterating the blue, as she stared with pointed emphasis at Carrie’s housecoat. ‘Did you know he was coming? Was that why you helped me upstairs to my room straight after dinner, Carrie?’