Alone Beneath The Heaven

by Bradshaw, Rita

  ‘Tonight.’

  ‘All right, tonight.’

  ‘And we’d better see about sorting out some accommodation for you—’

  ‘There’s no need for that,’ she said quickly. ‘I’d feel awkward about leaving the house unattended at night, but I could always ask Peggy to come and stay for a couple of days. I know she wouldn’t mind.’

  ‘She hasn’t gone home for Christmas?’

  ‘You don’t know what her home’s like! No, she’s with the Coles, and as she knows all there is to know about Sir Geoffrey I won’t be betraying any confidences if I explain things to her. I can just say to the Coles that I’m nervous about being alone until Eileen is back.’

  ‘Right, we’ll do that then. We’ll leave here early and go there on our way back to Emery Place.’

  Silence reigned for a few minutes, and it was clear to Sarah that Rodney wanted to say something and didn’t know quite how to put it, so when he leant forward, his elbows on his knees and his hands loosely clasped, she wondered what she was going to hear.

  ‘Sarah, you’re a young woman, a very young woman, just starting out on life, and I don’t want you to think all men are like Sir Geoffrey or Rebecca’s husband,’ Rodney said slowly. ‘There are good men, decent men, out there, and in the fulness of time you will meet one who is right for you. I’ve known couples who have something which takes them all through the trials of life together, the Coles are one such pair, and my parents were another.’

  She stared at the bowed profile without speaking, her vantage point making her aware of the way his hair grew into little curls at the base of his head, and the broad line of his shoulders, and she really didn’t know if she wanted to kiss him or hit him. He was talking as if she was five years old and he was a hundred, for goodness’ sake!

  ‘You had a tough time of it at Hatfield, and that’s putting it mildly, and one of the consequences of such segregation of the sexes at an early age is that you didn’t come into contact with many members of the opposite sex during your formative years. Certainly you didn’t experience a father’s influence.’

  If he was going to suggest he could be a father to her she definitely would hit him.

  ‘Look, what I’m trying to say is this.’ He straightened, leaning back against the slatted wood and turning to look at her. ‘You must not let the men I’ve mentioned spoil things for you, do you understand me? It would be easy to assume the whole male race is a mixture of philanderers and bullies and worse, but you mustn’t disregard the millions who devote themselves to their wives and families, and who live very contented and happy lives with just one woman.’

  ‘I know.’ She did, she did.

  ‘Good.’ He smiled. ‘There is a young man out there for you, Sarah, that you’ve yet to meet, but you’ll know him when you see him and he’ll know you.’

  Right, enough was enough. She stood up abruptly, and her voice was tight when she said, ‘Perhaps we ought to get back now? The others will be wondering where we’ve got to.’

  He’d upset her, talking so familiarly. She must look on him as a member of another generation, it wasn’t like a friend of her own age chatting to her. Damn it, he’d embarrassed her, made her feel uncomfortable with him, he should have left well alone.

  Rodney remained sitting for a moment more before rising slowly, suddenly feeling every one of his thirty-eight years as her youthfulness swamped him. Well, that was his answer to the question whether she might ever see him as something more than a friend. He checked his thinking immediately. He hadn’t wondered that, had he? Had he? Perhaps he had at that. Damn it all, he was a fool. He’d been a fool where Vanessa was concerned, and it seemed he wasn’t getting any brighter with age.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  They were walking back to the house, and he hadn’t been aware her eyes were on him until she spoke.

  ‘Nothing, nothing.’ He forced a smile. ‘Well, on to the charades I suppose. That was one good thing about the war, they didn’t expect you to play charades in the camp.’ It was the first time he had been able to talk naturally about the war that he could remember, and it surprised him.

  ‘No, I don’t suppose they did,’ she said softly. ‘We heard things, awful things, back in England. It must have been hard for you, and I suppose all this, the social side of life, must seem very unimportant now.’

  ‘Unimportant?’ He considered the word as he breathed in the sweet scent of her that he had noticed before, a mixture of magnolia and musk, he thought. Vanessa had always used Chanel No. 5 from the day he had met her, and only now did he acknowledge that he had never liked the perfume on her, although his mother had worn it and it had smelt quite different. ‘No, not unimportant,’ he said quietly. ‘Surreal at times, maybe, but it’s comforting in a way to know that life goes on even when we think the world’s coming to an end. And I did think the world was coming to an end at times, even when I was back home in England. But the rain continues to fall, the sun shines, babies are born . . . and Vanessa plays charades,’ he added with a wry smile.

  Vanessa. Yes. Quite.

  She spoke quickly now to hide the sudden jealousy which she wasn’t proud of but couldn’t do a thing about. ‘Talking of babies, we had a new arrival in the children’s ward yesterday, on Christmas Eve of all days, bless him. He’s only six months old and he’d managed to fall out of his cot. His poor mother was frantic.’

  ‘Oh yes, how’s that work going? I meant to ask you about it earlier.’ And so they walked back into the house chatting away, as though the undercurrents which were beginning to bubble beneath the surface hadn’t touched either of them.

  Rodney and Sarah left the party early, much to Vanessa’s chagrin, and drove straight to the Coles’ house, where Peggy seemed to understand the situation at once, despite the fact that Sarah could only explain fully to her once the young girl was seated with them in the car on the way back to Emery Place. However, mainly due to the fact that Meg pressed them to have a mince pie and a cup of tea, and it had seemed churlish to refuse the little woman, it had turned ten before Sarah opened the front door of 19 Emery Place, and first Peggy, then Rodney, followed her into the hall just as the telephone began to ring.

  She picked it up quickly, fully expecting it to be Lady Margaret, or even her employer if she was feeling better, but after stating the number there was no response, and she repeated it, adding, ‘How may I help you?’

  ‘How may you help me?’ A pause, and then, ‘You think a vicious unbalanced little slut like you could help me?’

  She dropped the receiver as though it had bitten her, and as it clattered on to the little table, Rodney sprang forward saying, ‘Leave it, leave it, I’ll deal with it.’ He picked up the instrument quickly, barking into the receiver as he said, ‘Who is that? Who’s there?’ And then, ‘Answer me, damn it.’

  ‘Are you all right, miss? Sit down.’

  She didn’t answer Peggy, leaning against the wall with her eyes on Rodney as he slowly replaced the receiver. ‘He’s gone. It was him, wasn’t it?’

  Sarah nodded, her stomach churning, before sheer rage replaced the sick shock of the call. ‘How dare he, how dare he do that?’ she said to the other two. ‘He’s got no right to call me names.’

  ‘Oh, miss.’ Peggy’s indignant voice lightened the atmosphere somewhat when she said, ‘An’ you’re so good an’ all. He’s a swine, that’s what Michael called him when I told him about - well, you know. An’ he was right, wasn’t he, Dr Mallard? He’s nothin’ but a swine, an’ to call the miss names . . .’

  Rodney nodded at the young girl as he said, ‘Michael was spot on, Peggy. Look, why don’t you go and make Sarah and yourself a bit of supper while we phone Lady Harris, and perhaps you’d bring her a cup of hot sweet tea as soon as you can?’

  ‘Yes, I’ll do that.’ Peggy shot a look of concern at Sarah’s white face. ‘An’ I’ll put somethin’ in it.’

  ‘No, no thanks, Peggy,’ Sarah said with a weak smile. ‘T
he tea would be lovely but I drank half the brandy bottle last night after Sir Geoffrey’s visit. The man will turn me into an alcoholic if I’m not careful. Just plenty of sugar.’

  ‘All right, miss.’

  Sarah asked for Lady Margaret when she got through to Fenwick. She didn’t feel up to talking to Lady Harris about her son but Lady Margaret had become more of a friend than anything else the last few weeks, and the phone call wasn’t as difficult as she had expected it to be. It seemed nothing surprised Lady Margaret with regard to her husband. However, the older woman was angry and upset, and she insisted on returning to Emery Place within the next day or two, although Sarah assured her repeatedly it wasn’t necessary, and promised Sarah she would put Lady Harris fully in the picture the next day. Her mother-in-law had ways, Lady Margaret said meaningfully, of bringing Sir Geoffrey to heel - the handsome allowance Sir Geoffrey was designated sprang to Sarah’s mind - and the matter would be addressed immediately. Sarah needn’t worry about it any more.

  It was as Rodney was leaving that he reached inside his jacket and surprised her by bringing out a small gold-wrapped parcel, handing it to her with a smile as he said, ‘I was going to give this to you earlier, but there didn’t seem a right moment.’

  ‘Oh, thank you.’ She felt awful. She hadn’t got him anything but she hadn’t expected to see him over Christmas, and by the time she had known she would, she’d been committed to working at the hospital for most of Christmas Eve.

  She said as much, but he stopped her with a raised hand before opening the front door and saying, ‘It’s not anything I’ve bought, so don’t worry, just something I was rather fond of at your age.’

  ‘It’s yours?’

  ‘Was.’ He smiled, and then he was gone, and for a moment she felt quite bereft as she stood on the doorstep watching him walk to the car.

  She unwrapped the little package once she was in bed and alone, and it revealed a much-thumbed first copy of Rupert Brooke’s 1914 and Other Poems. The hot milk she had taken up with her grew cold by the side of the bed as she devoured poem after poem, the only sound in the room being the rustling of pages and the odd spark and splutter from the fire, which Peggy had replenished before she had retired to her own quarters.

  Sir Geoffrey’s phone call, Vanessa’s antagonism, the feeling that there was something still left between Rodney and his sister-in-law from the past, it all had faded into insignificance by the time she put the small book down on the coverlet, and sat staring ahead across the room.

  The idealistic patriotism of the wartime poetry had touched her, but more than that, she could see Rodney had been moved by it . . . once.

  Why had he given her the book now? Was it simply something he thought she would enjoy reading, or - and she felt this was more likely - was it another way of showing her a glimpse of the great divide between them, accentuating the difference in age, outlook, experience, and highlighting the change between what he had been then, at twenty, and what he was now? He couldn’t have guessed how she felt about him, could he? The thought brought her bolt upright in the bed before she relaxed back against the pillows, telling herself not to be so silly. Just because he had given her a book of poems he used to enjoy once, it didn’t mean there was a covert message in his actions. She was reading too much into things here.

  She finished the last of the now cold milk and settled down for sleep. It was her new knowledge of her love for him that was making her take two and two and reach five, she told herself firmly. She hadn’t thrown herself at him, or flirted, there had been none of that. The events of the day flashed into her mind, Vanessa’s tall slim body draped languidly across him at lunch as she had repeatedly leant over his chair on the pretext of talking to the woman on the other side of him, and her eyes narrowed. Not by her, anyway.

  She felt emotionally and physically exhausted, and suddenly trying to think at all was too much. She would go to sleep and consider everything in the morning, not that all the thinking in the world would alter anything. He didn’t love her. She loved him, and he didn’t love her.

  It only took a minute or two for her to fall asleep, but her face was wet with tears none the less.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Lady Margaret returned to Emery Place on Monday 29th December, and on the Wednesday, the eve of the year nineteen forty-eight, when the hit song ‘They Say It’s Wonderful’ was still reverberating the air waves, Sarah received her first telephone call from Maggie. It was to say that Rebecca was fighting for her life in the Sunderland infirmary, having been beaten to a state of unconsciousness by her husband, who had then apparently either walked into the sea on Hendon beach in an acute state of intoxication, or passed out on the sands. Either way, the result was the same - Willie Dalton was dead, drowned.

  ‘Willie’s dead?’ Sarah couldn’t believe her ears.

  ‘Aye, lass, an’ it looks as though Rebecca might be goin’ the same way,’ Maggie said loudly, so loudly that Sarah had to hold the telephone away from her ear, only to hear Maggie trumpet in the next moment, ‘I’m not shoutin’, Florrie, but it’s no use me whisperin’, the lass won’t be able to hear anythin’.’

  ‘He’s hurt Rebecca?’ Her stomach had come up into her throat. ‘But how did he get past you and Florrie?’

  ‘She went back to him, lass, the night afore Christmas Eve. We tried to stop her, the good Lord knows we tried, but he played her like a gypsy with a fiddle.’

  ‘Maggie’ - she had to get the facts, and fast, but at a pitch that didn’t make her head ring - ‘tell me exactly what happened, but speak a little more quietly, would you?’

  There was a pause, and then Maggie’s voice came saying, ‘Oh, lass, I shouldn’t have broken it to you like that, but it’s this infernal machine.’

  ‘I know, I know.’ She could just picture poor Maggie standing in the telephone box at the top of the street, yelling her head off, and her heart went out to the old woman. She took a deep breath, her voice as soothing as she could make it through the burning anxiety for Rebecca, and said, ‘Maggie, just speak in your normal voice and tell me how bad she is.’

  ‘Bad.’

  ‘And they are sure it was Willie?’

  ‘Oh aye. Seems the neighbours were disturbed yesterday evenin’ with a bit of carry on, but then it all went quiet. That must’ve bin when he started the drinkin’. Anyway, old Emily, you know the midwife from North Shields, well, she was attendin’ a birth up Rebecca’s way, an’ she noticed the front door was open when she passed, but didn’t think anythin’ of it at the time. Then when she was on her way home, at gone one, it was still open, an’ knowin’ Rebecca from a bairn, she went to see what was what. An’ like she said this mornin’, she near passed out. There was the lass in one of the bedrooms upstairs all trussed up’ - Sarah heard Florrie’s voice cut in in the background, and Maggie saying, ‘I wasn’t goin’ to tell her all of it, Florrie, give me some credit’ - before Maggie continued, ‘Anyway, the room was freezin’, lass, an’ she wouldn’t have lasted till mornin’, not the state she was in.’

  Sarah was vaguely aware that Lady Margaret and Eileen were both in the hall, but she didn’t look up, concentrating on Maggie’s voice at the end of the line. ‘And Willie? Where was he?’ She was feeling sick at the picture in her mind but spoke quietly, forcing herself to form the words through the rushing in her head.

  ‘Well they didn’t know at the time, no one did, an’ they was more concerned with gettin’ the lass sorted than findin’ out where he was, but then one of the fishermen found him at first light washed up on the beach. Appears he was already three parts to the wind when he started drinkin’ in Oldfellows, you know that rough pub on the seafront that’s his local, an’ he was mouthin’ then he’d given his wife a good hidin’. That old biddy across the road, Mrs Macintyre, she’s bin at her sister’s for Christmas but come back this mornin’, and she’s bin tellin’ the constable a right tale about the carryin’ on there was afore she went on Christmas Day mornin’. Willi
e’s bin drunk more than he’s bin sober from what I can make out, but the rest of ’em, even the ones next door to the lass, are keepin’ their mouths shut. Sanctimonious so-an’-sos, the lot of ’em. Rebecca could’ve died an’ they wouldn’t have lifted a finger as long as it was done quietly. If that’s respectability, give me the other thing, lass.’

  Sarah’s mind was spinning, it was all too much to take in, but then as a thought suddenly occurred to her, she said urgently, ‘The baby? Has she lost the baby, Maggie?’

  ‘Not as I know of, not yet any road, but I can’t see a bairn survivin’ what he put her through, lass, an’ she’s got nigh on three months to go yet.’

  ‘I’m getting the next train up.’ She raised her eyes to Lady Margaret at this point who nodded energetic approval.