The Uncommon Life of Alfred Warner in Six Days

by Juliet Conlin

  ‘That’s a mezuzah,’ she said, nodding at the cylinder. Her tone was slightly bored, as though she were called on to explain it often.

  ‘I know,’ Alfred replied, lowering his arm. ‘My name is Alfred Warner. I’m to report to Mr Claxton.’

  ‘This way,’ the maid said, but instead of letting him in the house, led him around the side along a paved terrace that ran the length of the house. ‘I’m Emma, by the way.’

  ‘Nice to meet you,’ Alfred said.

  When they got to the back of the house, Emma pointed towards a small outbuilding – a type of flat-roofed hut – some fifty yards ahead. ‘Mr Claxton’s just up here,’ she said.

  Alfred looked around and couldn’t help but let out a low whistle. Now he understood why Mrs Singer-Cohen had referred to her gardens in the plural, rather than the singular. Before him lay a huge verdant expanse, more a park than a garden, with several circular patches of perennials, which, though pretty, gave the garden a flat look. To his left was a line of conifers, marking the edge of the property, and to his right, what looked to be a long stone wall. He took a deep breath. It would require an incredible amount of work to turn this into the sort of garden he’d described to Mrs Singer-Cohen on the train, but rather than discourage him, the space in front of him gave him a thrill of anticipation, like an artist in front of a blank canvas.

  ‘You coming or what?’ Emma asked impatiently. She was several yards ahead of him now.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Alfred responded, and hurried to catch up with her.

  ‘And don’t worry,’ she said when he’d drawn level, ‘they have some local lads come in for the mowing in spring.’

  Claxton emerged from the hut, carrying a spade in one hand and a small shrub in the other, its roots neatly parcelled inside a hessian ball. He gave Alfred a brief nod and mumbled a hello. Over the next two hours, he exchanged barely a word with Alfred, pointing out only where the lawn needed watering, handing him a pair of pruning scissors with curt instructions to deadhead the roses, and getting him to sweep the terrace path. It was hot and thirsty work, and despite the cheerful stream of singing his voice-women kept up in his ears, Alfred found himself becoming increasingly miserable. But just as he began wondering whether the move from Mauchline to Checkley had, indeed, been such a good idea, he spotted Alice Singer-Cohen emerging through the French windows at the back of the house.

  ‘Ah, Mr Warner, already in the thick of it, I see,’ she called out, smiling.

  He gave her a strained smile in return. Claxton appeared from the shed.

  ‘I’m still showing him the ropes,’ Claxton said, ‘he’s a lot to learn.’

  ‘Good, good. Well, if you’ve a moment to spare, do come and join me on the patio and we can discuss my plans.’ She led the way across the lawn towards the patio at the back of the house, where she had laid out a bird’s-eye sketch of the gardens on a table and weighed it down with stones on each corner.

  ‘It’s not to scale, I’m afraid,’ she said, ‘but it should give you some idea of the possibilities.’

  Alfred had already begun tracing a mental image of the gardens in his mind from the moment he arrived, and he was delighted to be standing here, now, with the entire garden laid out in front of him. ‘What’s this?’ he asked, tracing a line on the south side of the gardens, which was oddly straight given the curves on the other three sides.

  ‘That’s a brick wall, the boundary to Tean Estate,’ she said. ‘All of this,’ she passed her hand across the sketch, ‘used to be part of that estate.’ She explained that the Worthingtons, owners of Tean Estate for centuries, had sold off parcels of their enormous property after the war. ‘They just couldn’t afford to run it all any more, I suppose,’ she continued. ‘So when my husband saw it on the market, we jumped right in. The house was only finished last year, and as for the gardens, well . . . ’ She sighed, and then caught Alfred’s eye and smiled. ‘I see them as a blank canvas.’

  Claxton was breathing noisily through his nose and frowning, occasionally folding and then unfolding his arms across his chest.

  Alice Singer-Cohen looked up at him. ‘Why so glum, Mr Claxton?’

  He let out a heavy breath. ‘A lot of work to be done there, though, if you don’t mind me saying.’

  ‘Indeed, Mr Claxton,’ she said, and then looked at Alfred and smiled. ‘So it’s a good thing you have such a fine help now, wouldn’t you say? Oh, and Mr Warner, please feel free to use the library.’ She nodded towards the house. ‘You’ll find I have quite an expansive gardening section.’

  And with that, she rolled up the paper, gave them a little nod and retreated inside.

  Alfred and Claxton walked back to the shed in silence. When they got there, Claxton turned back towards the house, where Alice Singer-Cohen had reappeared and was now reclining on a wooden lounger, her face turned towards the sun.

  ‘I suppose a perfect English lawn in’t good enough for them lot,’ he said, flicking his head in the direction of the house.

  Alfred wasn’t sure whether he meant ‘them lot’ as referring to the upper class, or Jews, or city-dwellers, or just nouveaux riches who had taken advantage of an increasingly impoverished landed gentry – but he didn’t ask. He decided he’d rather not know.

  Despite Alfred’s hopes, Isobel’s homesickness didn’t pass; instead, it manifested itself in a clumsiness he had never seen before in his wife. She frequently bumped into furniture, hitting her hip against the kitchen table, banging her shoulder against doors, and even on one occasion tumbled down several stairs. Apart from some bruising, she was never seriously hurt, but she complained regularly about differences in English houses, that the dimensions of the furniture were all wrong, the dresser too high, the staircase too steep; that the doors opened at queer angles, and even that the gas cooker, on which she once burned her arm, produced flames that were too hot. Alfred tried to humour her as best he could, although he knew her complaints to be unreasonable, if not physically impossible, and hoped that it would only be a matter of time before she settled in.

  But when the winter was over and spring arrived, and the gardens at March House began to yield the results of the autumn and winter labour, Isobel’s clumsiness turned into restlessness. Often, Alfred found her waiting at the doorstep when he returned from work, the house meticulously cleaned and dinner on the table.

  ‘Alfie, I’m bored,’ she said one evening after supper. They were sitting in the living room, a coal fire burning in the hearth, because despite the warm days, the evenings still brought with them a damp cold. Isobel was darning a pair of Alfred’s socks and he was reading a book from Singer-Cohen’s library, a leather-bound, crisp-paged copy of Physica by Hildegard of Bingen. He had picked out the book purely by chance, and had become intrigued by Bingen’s descriptions of the different plants’ healing powers. Alice Singer-Cohen had recently suggested expanding the kitchen garden to include more herbs, and Alfred’s mind was already wrapping itself around a range of possibilities, which seemed to please his voice-women.

  Yarrow – distinguished and subtle powers for wounds

  Parsley – generates seriousness in a person’s mind and attenuates a fever

  Dill – of a hot, dry nature that extinguishes the lust of the flesh . . .

  Isobel’s voice broke into his thoughts. ‘Alfie!’

  ‘Sorry?’ he said distractedly.

  ‘I’m bored, Alfie,’ Isobel repeated, without looking up from her sewing. ‘And I’ve been thinking. Maybe I could get a job.’

  Alfred lowered the book onto his lap. ‘A job? What sort of job?’

  She shrugged, pushing the needle into the cotton and guiding it past the wooden egg that she had placed inside the sock. ‘I don’t know. Any job. Something to get me out of the house. Maybe . . . ’ she paused and looked across at him. ‘Maybe in Mr Singer-Cohen’s factory. Belle worked there, before she had the twins.’

  Belle was a local woman, a coal miner’s wife Isobel had made friends with.
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  ‘I don’t know, Isobel,’ Alfred said slowly, feeling a little puzzled at this suggestion. She had never mentioned wanting to get a job before, and in all honesty, he wasn’t sure what to make of it. ‘A factory job, I don’t know. It’s hard work, on your feet all day, you don’t – ’

  ‘But Belle worked as a painter,’ Isobel interrupted. ‘She painted designs on china teacups. That’s not such hard work. I can do that. I’m good at painting.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know if you can just get a job like that without any training. Else all the girls would be wanting to do it.’

  ‘But can you ask him? Mr Singer-Cohen, I mean. Can you ask him, at least?’

  Alfred sighed. He leaned forward and reached out for her hand. After a brief hesitation, she laid her sewing to one side and put her hand in his.

  ‘We’re comfortable, aren’t we?’ he said softly, catching her eye and holding it. ‘I’m not earning a fortune, but it’s enough to keep us comfortable. There’s nothing you’re lacking, is there?’

  At this, Isobel lowered her eyes. There was, of course, something lacking, although neither of them would talk about it. They hadn’t been using any protection against pregnancy for some time, and yet Isobel’s bleeding came on every month like clockwork. Alfred squeezed her hand. ‘It’s probably just the time of year,’ he said gently. ‘Everyone feels restless in the spring, eh?’

  She swallowed and returned his squeeze. ‘Aye, I suppose so.’ Then she slipped her hand out of his and picked up the sewing.

  But in May, any notion of Isobel working in a factory became irrelevant. She informed Alfred one morning, somewhat shyly, that her periods were late, and a visit to the doctor in Stoke-on-Trent confirmed the pregnancy. Hearing of what happened in her previous pregnancy, the doctor prescribed as much rest as she could afford, plenty of orange juice, and told her that a caesarean section would be unavoidable.

  Isobel’s morning sickness was mild in comparison to the previous pregnancy, leading her to predict that it would be a boy. She was still in close contact with Amy Fraser – they wrote to each other almost weekly – and Amy claimed that only girls make their mothers sick. This, however, was the only reference she and Alfred made to Isobel’s pregnancy with Brynja. Indeed, it proved to be a tense time. Even when the first trimester passed – and with it, Isobel’s sheer endless exhaustion – and her hair grew thick and glossy, her skin became tinged with a rosy glow, and her belly developed into a round, perfect bump, she was anything but carefree. Alfred’s attempts to lure her out of the house with tickets to the cinema, or leisurely walks in the lush autumnal countryside were declined with a tired smile.

  ‘I really don’t think I should, Alfie,’ she would say, her hands never straying far from her stomach.

  As for Alfred, he hardly dared think about the birth. All the anticipatory joy and hopes he’d felt during Isobel’s last pregnancy he kept firmly bottled up; any notion of fatherhood, that miraculous sense of creating another human being from something as simple, as primitive, as intercourse, he ignored as best he could. Even the voice-women, who had lately taken to invading his dreams with strange, alien songs and chants, he disregarded. The fear over what might happen – to the baby, to Isobel – subdued him; even his sexual appetite, which for a healthy twenty-four-year-old should be rampant, only arose sporadically, when he woke in the mornings to the sight of Isobel’s now-swollen, white-skinned breasts peeking out from the top of her nightgown, or – more shamefully – at the neat curve of Alice Singer-Cohen’s buttocks beneath her tight-fitting pencil skirt.

  Day Five

  At lunch, I noticed a stain on Alfred’s sweater.

  ‘You’re welcome to use the washing machine,’ I told him. ‘Or just put whatever you want washed in the laundry basket.’

  His face fell, and his forkful of leftover fricassee hovered midway between plate and mouth. ‘Goodness, do I smell?’ he asked quietly. His hand began to tremble slightly.

  I watched a kernel of rice fall from his fork. ‘No. Not at all. I just thought . . . well, you’ve only brought a small suitcase, and you’ll need clean clothes sooner or later.’

  At this, he let out a long sigh, but didn’t respond.

  ‘I mean, Christmas is over tomorrow,’ I continued softly. Now seemed as good a time as ever to bring it up. ‘Things’ll be more or less back to normal. And, well. I . . . you’re welcome to stay for a little while longer. Until you sort things out. Or until Brynja . . . ’ I didn’t finish my sentence.

  Alfred put down his knife and fork. ‘You haven’t been paying attention,’ he said grimly.

  ‘What?’ I was taken aback by the sharpness of his tone.

  ‘I trusted you, Julia,’ he said, raising his voice now. ‘I trusted you. All I asked for was for you to pay attention and listen to my story. And you haven’t understood a thing!’ He got to his feet. ‘I am going to die tomorrow, and Brynja . . . Brynja . . . ’ His head was shaking very badly. ‘You’ve let me down, Julia.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’ve let me down,’ he repeated. ‘And worse than that, you’re letting Brynja down.’ His words seemed to hover in the air.

  Before I could control it, a sudden anger swept over me. ‘I’ve let you down?’ I said, rising from my chair. ‘How can you say that? After all I’ve done for you! I cook your meals and wash your clothes and clean up your mess and go out of my mind with worry while you disappear for hours on end. And you still treat me like a child. I’ve put my life on hold for you! I should be out with friends, going to concerts, and films, and parties. But oh no – nothing I ever do is good enough for you!’ I clamped my hand over my mouth, and, realising I was on the verge of tears, slumped down onto my chair.

  Outside, the snow had turned into sleet, drumming against the window pane as we sat there in silence. Finally, I spoke. ‘I’m sorry Alfred. That was out of order. I – ’

  ‘No Julia. I’m the one who should apologise.’ He got up and went into the living room. When he returned, he was holding a large manila envelope. ‘Here,’ he said, pushing it into my hands.

  ‘What’s this?’ I asked.

  ‘Everything you need to know for when I’m – well, afterwards.’

  I took the envelope.

  ‘It’s all there – my bank details, name of my solicitor, where I’d like to be buried. You know, the formalities.’

  I cleared my throat. ‘Right.’

  He reached over and brushed my cheek lightly with his fingers. ‘You’ll see, Julia.’

  1951 - 1955

  On 15th January 1951, John Karl Warner was delivered by caesarean section, plump and rosy, weighing eight pounds, two ounces. Isobel recovered remarkably quickly from the operation. So quickly, in fact, that several hours after she’d woken from the anaesthetic, Alfred found her sitting up in bed, looking a little pale but fresh, the baby chewing hungrily at her nipple. When the nurse saw Alfred coming down the ward, she quickly covered the baby’s head with a muslin cloth, but Isobel scarcely seemed to notice.

  ‘How are you?’ Alfred asked her, leaning down to kiss her forehead. Her damp hair had fallen forward across her face, and he could smell the iodine from the surgery. Then he drew back the cloth and looked at his son. The baby had a thatch of dark hair; his skin was very pink, almost reddish, and he was working furiously, breathing loudly through his nose, to extract the milk from Isobel’s ripe breast.

  ‘Is he nae the most beautiful thing ye ever saw?’ she whispered, not taking her eyes off the baby for a minute.

  ‘Aye, Isobel.’ He stroked a strand of hair back behind her ear. ‘Just . . . beautiful.’

  They watched the baby in silence for a long while, until he had exhausted himself and fallen asleep, his lips open and a thin trail of saliva running down the corner of his mouth. A trolley rattled by noisily and he twitched.

  ‘May I hold him?’ Alfred asked quietly, reaching out his arms. But Isobel tucked the blanket around him more tightly and shook her head.

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nbsp; ‘He’s sleeping so soundly,’ she said, continuing to gaze down at the baby. ‘And I want to hold him until they take him back to the nursery.’

  Alfred withdrew his arms, slightly disappointed, for his chest was bursting with joy and love and tenderness for his child, but he understood that anything he was feeling, Isobel was feeling a thousand times over. He remained at their side until a nurse called out that visiting hours were over, and kissed his wife and child goodbye.

  On his way out, the ward sister rose from her desk. ‘Mr Warner,’ she said, ‘I wonder if you might speak to your wife about the nursing.’

  ‘The nursing?’ he asked.

  She glanced down the ward and lowered her voice. ‘Giving the child her breast. Under normal circumstances, I would let her get on with it – hygiene issues aside – but taking into account the operation and all, well, it’s just not very sensible. We’ve tried talking to her, but I fear she’s being a little unreasonable. It’s not as if the war was still on!’ She gave a little shake of her head. ‘Perhaps you might have a word.’

  But when he mentioned it on his visit the following day, Isobel wouldn’t hear of it. ‘I’m perfectly capable of feeding my own child,’ she said. ‘I’m all he needs.’ And Alfred had to admit that she was probably right.

  By summer, the gardens at March House had begun to take shape and baby John was able to sit up on his own. In late autumn, what remained of the lawns was covered in yellowed leaves and John was crawling, and on Christmas Day 1951, when the world outside was covered with a thin veil of unromantic snow, the boy took his first tentative, wobbly steps.

  ‘Isn’t he clever, Alfie?!’ Isobel cried. ‘Aren’t you the cleverest little lad, Johnnie?!’ She held out her index fingers and John curled his fat, pink hands around them, and they took a walk around the Christmas tree. ‘Walking before his first birthday, that’s special.’ She picked him up and kissed his plump cheek. ‘Now,’ she said, putting him down, ‘let’s see if you can walk all the way to your dad.’