The Child's Child

by Barbara Vine

  The morning of Bertie’s arrival was cold, and John was afraid that if it snowed, the bus to Newton Abbot might not run. Anxiously he watched the sky for that ominous yellowish greyness in the clouds that would foretell a heavy snowfall. But none came, the clouds parted a little, and John set off absurdly early, soon after their midday dinner, to meet a train that wasn’t due till four.

  A terrible dread assailed him that when it came, Bertie wouldn’t be on it, he had had some sort of accident or his mother—the only relative he seemed to have—was taken ill. Even if Bertie had “wired” him, John had left so early he wouldn’t have been at Bury Row to receive his telegram. Again he was worrying needlessly. Bertie stepped off the train just as John had anticipated, was all smiles, and stuck out his hand for John to shake it. The touch of his fingers was such bliss that John wanted never to let go.

  The bus was half-empty. They sat in the front side by side, it was cold, and Bertie took a blanket out of his big canvas bag to cover their knees. His hands were soon busy under the thick folds, but John had to stop him, fearing an incident like that with the bedsheet. Bertie stopped but laughed so much that passengers stared. John tried to distract him by pointing out the beauties of the countryside, a pretty church, the woodland and green meadows, and, as they approached Dartcombe, crossing the river bridge, the ancient manor house where the Imber family lived.

  A visitor was only of interest to Maud as a possible new admirer of Hope, and so far every caller at the cottage, members of Mrs. Tremlett’s family, the Lillicrap daughters, neighbours in Bury Row, and the Reverend Mr. Morgan and his wife, had satisfied her expectations. Hope was a lovely baby, they all said so, and many, especially the women, wanted to hold her, lost in admiration that Hope never objected to being passed from hand to hand. Bertie, however, though charming to Maud, remarking on her beauty, which he said he hadn’t expected, took no notice of the baby. Though held up in Maud’s arms, Hope might not have been there as far as he was concerned, and John noticed the little frown that appeared on Maud’s forehead and the stiffening of her shoulders as she stepped back.

  But she had made the spare bedroom as nice for Bertie as their limited resources allowed, their new towels folded on a chair, coat hangers in the cupboard free of John’s clothes, which she had transferred to her own wardrobe, the bedcovers turned back, and pale yellow winter jasmine in a jug on the windowsill. John showed him up there; the door was closed behind them, and at last they were in each other’s arms. Again John had to restrain Bertie, repeating in a whisper what he had told him on the walk from the bus stop. It must be enough for them to be here together, sitting side by side, holding hands perhaps when Maud wasn’t there, exchanging a kiss when she was out with the baby—something which was only just beginning to happen and then not every day.

  Bertie said, “We’ll see about that,” and laughed that incredulous laugh that had made people stare on the bus. “Who’s to stop us?”

  “My sister. That’s who.”

  “Your wife, don’t you mean?” And Bertie laughed again, treating the whole thing as a joke.

  That, it appeared, was how he saw John and Maud’s subterfuge, a joke that no one could take seriously for long. That first evening John had to keep reminding Bertie that it wasn’t a joke, that in the presence of Mrs. Tremlett (who had brought in her scales to weigh Hope) and the people at the Red Cow, it was important to remember that the Goodwins were husband and wife and to speak accordingly. That only made Bertie laugh, though he promised he would try.

  But New Year’s Eve went well. Maud’s cooking was improving, and for their midday dinner they had roast pork with apple sauce and roast potatoes, which Bertie pronounced “chipper,” and in the evening he and John walked up to the Red Cow and brought back a jug of cider and another of beer. Maud refused to drink anything but tea and water because she feared the alcohol’s getting into her milk. John could tell she was offended when Bertie filled a glass with cider for her and urged her to try it. Far from staying up to see the New Year in, Maud went to bed at half past eight, making no excuses for such an early departure but taking her candle and saying only a curt good-night.

  “Alone at last,” said Bertie, moving from his chair to sit beside John on the sofa and throwing an arm round his neck.

  John removed the arm. “No, we mustn’t.”

  “Why not? She won’t come down again, will she?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so, but it’s an awful risk. Suppose she saw us even just kissing?”

  Bertie moved up to the end of the sofa, said quite seriously and rather crossly, “Suppose she did? She’s not going to run and tell the village copper, is she? Look here, Johnny, who pays the rent and buys the grub? You do, unless I’m much mistaken. She knows which side her bread is buttered. She’s not going to turn you out, is she? You never heard of killing the goose that lays the golden eggs?”

  It was true but horrible to hear in plain words, and words which showed him Bertie as John had never known him. The trouble was that none of that made John love Bertie less. “Maud’s not much more than a child,” John said. “I can’t expose her to that.”

  “A child who got herself in the family way when she was still at school.”

  Upstairs the baby began to cry. Maud may have fallen asleep for it was a full two minutes before she was able to quieten her. Bertie cast up his eyes, slowly shook his head. John had picked up a book and begun to read it, afraid that if he told Bertie something of Maud’s “fall,” he would sneer and then they would quarrel. But when Hope was quiet again, half the beer and cider had been drunk, and their silence somehow become more companionable, Bertie returned to his former place next to John and again put an arm round his neck.

  As usual at this time of a winter’s evening it was quite dark in the cottage, the only light coming from the oil lamp that was barely bright enough for John to read. He laid aside his book, said as he had the night before, “I’ll just go up and light your oilstove so that it’ll be warm for you.”

  “Don’t come down again.”

  “What do you mean?” John didn’t understand.

  “I meant, I’ll join you.”

  They didn’t see the New Year in. When All Saints’ church clock struck midnight and the bells began, they were asleep in each other’s arms.

  13

  THAT WAS the first instance of John’s breaking his promise to himself, the New Year’s resolution he couldn’t make. It was followed by several such. He had got up after the change-ringing awakened him, whispered to the still half-asleep Bertie that even if they kept him awake, the bells were lovely to listen to.

  “What’s that?”

  “The bells are lovely.”

  “Can’t hear what you say for the noise of those bleeding bells.” Bertie laughed.

  John worried that Maud might have heard them in the next room, but if she had, she gave no sign of it, though it was plain, at least to him, that she disliked Bertie and he her. In spite of this Bertie was not at all anxious to go home on January 4 and said he would like to stay a few more days. John’s school term began the seventh, and Bertie had told him he was due back at work.

  “That’s what I said.” They were out for a walk in the village. “As a matter of fact, I won’t be going back. I’ve got the sack.” Bertie laughed to take the sting out of what had been even more than usually ominous words since the general strike of a few years before. “You needn’t look like that. I’ll find work when I want to. I’ve gone back to live with my mother.”

  John had taken it for granted that Bertie had a return ticket, but apparently not. “So you can see I’m free as air.”

  “I’ll buy you a ticket to London. Of course I will.”

  “I don’t believe you’re that keen to get rid of me.”

  Bertie knew John wasn’t, but perhaps he didn’t know how great a strain having him to stay had put on John’s income. Bertie had contributed nothing to the household expenses, and now John saw that Berti
e couldn’t have afforded to. He had saved nothing from his wages, which for a short while had been more than John’s salary. John was beginning to see that his passion for Bertie was no help to his understanding of his lover, any more than Bertie’s for him gave him insight into John’s character and ways of thinking. Now, though, John could see that Bertie was indifferent to what went on in another’s mind. He simply believed that everyone was like himself or, if not like him, naïve, credulous, and ignorant of the real world. But every night they made ardent love, Bertie having a signal he made to John before he climbed the stairs to the overheated bedroom where he kept the oilstove lit day and night. Even in front of Maud, when he made for the stairs, he would turn, face John, and raise his eyebrows while giving a small smile. In the months and years to come, John would see that smile and those raised eyebrows in his dreams.

  The day before Bertie was due to leave—he had finally agreed he must return to London on the appointed day—he asked John how long he intended to live with Maud. They were walking down to the Red Cow, the usual destination of their walks, for Bertie had no interest in landscape, beautiful old houses, or the river.

  “I hadn’t thought about it,” John said, surprised. “For always, I suppose.”

  “And call yourself her hubby? Bit of a joke, isn’t it?”

  “Not to me.”

  “You could take another cottage down here and have me to live with you instead of her. How about that? I could get work. Old Lillicrap says he wants a barman now his missus is in the family way again.”

  “I can’t afford two homes, Bertie. Besides, how could I leave Maud? She’s only sixteen.”

  “She’s got all her pals. That Tremlett woman and that big, fat Gladys and the other woman, what’s she called? They’re dropping in every day. She’s never alone. And how about that Ronnie who got her up the duff? Can’t you get that sod to marry her? Or find some country yokel who’d do it for a hundred quid?”

  Bertie’s words upset John so much that he couldn’t speak. But in spite of the ugliness of the way Bertie put things, John could see the attractiveness of the idea. If only Maud could marry! If he could live with Bertie! That night on the sofa, after he had left Bertie’s bed in that hot, airless room, he indulged in waking dreams of sleeping with him all night long, of no longer being troubled by Hope’s crying, of keeping some fraction of his salary for himself. The plan to take care of Maud and at the same time become chaste and continent was proving far more difficult than he had supposed when he’d made those promises to himself and her. And not just difficult but impossible. But before he slept, he had put all this away from him. In the morning Bertie was to leave for London.

  JOHN BOUGHT a single ticket for Paddington and gave Bertie enough money to pay for food on the train. They had exchanged a passionate kiss in the cottage in Bury Row before they left, but John would have liked another, that farewell embrace, forbidden to them but which any “normal” lovers could have. The train came in and Bertie boarded it with a laconic “So long.” Watching heads emerge from windows and hands raised in a wave, John hoped for a last glimpse of his lover and a wave from him. But none came and the train moved off. John kept it in sight until it dwindled into nothingness in the far distance; the only sign of it that remained, the great plume of white smoke rising into the low, dark clouds.

  He turned away, aware that he was returning to worries and shortness of money. He and Maud were usually comfortable, but his income couldn’t stand a profligate guest. Bertie had kept his bedroom heated day and night; when they shopped, he had spent John’s money on expensive cuts of meat and a seemingly endless supply of cigarettes. The cottage stank of paraffin and tobacco. Every day jugs of beer and cider had been brought in and more drunk in the Red Cow. The first thing John was conscious of when he walked in after seeing Bertie off was the stale odour of those cigarettes and that oilstove.

  “I know” were Maud’s first words to John. “And it’s too cold to keep the windows open.”

  “I’m afraid you and Bertie didn’t get on.”

  “No, we didn’t. What’s the use of pretending?” She was silent for several minutes, sitting at her sewing machine and spreading out a hem under the needle. When she had worked the treadle for a while, stitching the seam, she took back her hands and laid them in her lap. “I didn’t say anything, I felt I couldn’t, but I know what you and Bertie were doing in the spare room. It was him you did it with before, wasn’t it? I know it was. You said you never would again, John. You promised.”

  He flushed a deep, dark red. “I know.”

  “Do you know how I felt? It was the way he looked at me and the way he spoke and never took a scrap of notice of my baby.” John was horrified to see the tears fall from her eyes and roll down her cheeks. “I felt he wanted to get rid of me, he wanted me to go so he could be alone with you. He did.”

  “Don’t cry. Please don’t. That will never happen. Never. I know I broke my promise before, but I won’t again. I promise we’ll always be together. Look at me, Maud. I promise.”

  He had promised before and she no longer trusted him. From that day she began to change, to grow colder, more shut-in and suspicious. Perhaps she was only becoming like their mother. But that was yet to come and she managed a smile. From the Moses basket came a sudden, loud yell. Hope had woken up and wanted her food. That evening John wrote to Bertie, sitting up in bed in the now cold spare room, a long, passionate letter, recalling details of their lovemaking, regretting that Maud had changed the bedsheets and therefore deprived John of the scent of his lover through the night.

  14

  JOHN WROTE to Bertie far more often than Bertie wrote to him, but John knew this was because writing never came easily to Bertie. Sometimes, his letters were plainly a third or fourth effort, copied from corrected earlier versions. Far from troubling him, John was touched. These revised letters showed how much Bertie cared for John’s opinion and wanted to impress him, surely a sign of love.

  Little correspondence came to No. 2 Bury Row, and none of it to Maud. Her Bristol friends ignored her, as did her parents and sister Ethel. There was nothing from her grandmother, and Maud supposed that she didn’t know where her granddaughter was, had perhaps been told that she had gone away to school. Only Sybil occasionally wrote, simple, unimaginative letters asking after Maud’s health and Hope’s and dwelling exhaustively on the weather. Any friends Maud now had lived in Dartcombe and had no need to write to her, but in spite of this lack of attention from the outside world, she always picked up the letters from the doormat. She seemed, in John’s view, to have an uncanny instinct for sensing exactly when the postman came or else her hearing was better than his. She would bring a letter from Bertie to the breakfast table and lay it beside his plate, saying when John appeared, always unwilling to use Bertie’s name, “Another letter from your friend.”

  They were infrequent enough, John thought, but still they came too often for Maud. One morning, about a year after Bertie had been to stay, the baby Hope on her lap, she picked up the envelope he had set aside, delaying reading its precious contents until he was alone, and said she hoped he wouldn’t be inviting “your friend” to stay with them again.

  “Certainly not,” said John with unusual sharpness. “I know and he knows he wouldn’t be welcome.”

  “You broke your promise. You promised you wouldn’t do those disgusting things but you did do them, and I can’t forget it.”

  “Evidently. You won’t let me forget it either.”

  How she had grown up since the birth of Hope, quite suddenly becoming a woman, and the kind of woman common in their family, narrow, censorious, quick to pass judgment. The sweet innocent was gone, the young girl who respected and admired him as if he really were her husband. Disgusting wasn’t a word she would have used a year ago. She had sounded like Ethel. He remembered how wistfully she had spoken that day before Christmas when she had talked about the Age of Marriage Act and about a superstition that was a means of delay
ing a birth. He was disappointed in her rather than angry. Although he had never put this feeling into words before, not even in his thoughts, he had supposed that because she herself had transgressed and been punished for it, she would more readily understand transgression in others, would have become tolerant and forgiving. He expected too, if unwillingly, that she would feel some gratitude towards him for providing her with a home and financial support and a shield of respectability.

  Knowing that going along this path would lead him to feelings he didn’t want to have, resentment, indignation, and worse, a sense of being unjustly treated, he took his letter and went upstairs to read it. There was more this time than usual. Bertie had at last succeeded in finding a job, serving behind the counter in an ironmonger’s shop in the Edgware Road. The pay was poor and it was as well he was living at his mother’s because he couldn’t afford rent. He said he wanted him and John to meet and soon. They mustn’t go on like this, just communicating on paper. If his tone wasn’t exactly cold, the terms he used made it look as if he and John were business acquaintances who needed to meet to discuss some kind of policy. John’s house wouldn’t do because Bertie knew he wasn’t accepted by John’s sister. Perhaps they could have a rendezvoo in a hotel somewhere, but it was important not to delay too long.