The Winds Of Heaven

by Monica Dickens

  It was very lonely at night, and very cold. Louise went to bed with two sweaters over a pair of boy's pyjamas, thankful that she had no mirror to see herself in the ludicrous outfit. Oil for the stove was expensive, and she did not like to burn it all the time when she was alone. Frank wanted to buy oil for her, but

  she refused. After paying the small rent for the caravan, she could just manage to keep herself, without taking help from anyone,

  Frank came to see her when he could spare the time, but Anne came seldom. What she called 'the ghastly date' was drawing near, and she sulked in bed most of the day, defeated by the inevitable progression of pregnancy and birth. The last time Frank's mother came, she had filled Anne up with alarming stories of what was going to happen to her, which Anne chose to believe, rather than the reassurances of her mother and doctor.

  Louise wanted to come over and help in the house, which Anne was neglecting, but she knew that Anne would not like it. Frank had to do most of the work himself, wondering why Anne was so different from other women, who, he knew, were impelled to sweep their homes from top to bottom when their time was' approaching. He bore with his wife patiently. He was in a quiet fever of excitement about his baby. He had taken to calling it 'his baby/ since Anne persistently referred to it as 'the thing/ and seemed to .take no interest in its possession.

  Frank gave Louise a cat, a thin, striped female, which roamed back often to its old stamping ground among the corn-bins, but was quite a comfort to her when it stayed in the caravan, biting its claws on Ellen's bunk. Louise wondered what had happened to Mr. Disher's cat and whether Mrs. Dill had taken it in. If he was really dead, she would have liked to have it.

  Dick Bennett came down one day from the village with a mongrel on a piece of string. "Frank told me you were wanting a dog/' he said. "My Susie had this one some time ago when she shouldn't have, and we don't really want him about the place. He isn't much, I know. Looks to me as if his father was a fox, but he'd be company for you. It's lonely out here, isn't it? Couldn't stand it myself, but it takes all tastes,"

  It was a charming dog. Louise called it Gordon, in memory

  of Mr. Disher, who, dead or not, she did not think she would ever see again. The dog was red and harsh-coated, with a sharp nose, triangular ears, short legs on a barrel body, and an enormous bushy tail, wildly out of proportion to the rest of him. He had been pushed around at the Bennetts', and took to Louise like an orphan needing a mother,

  Louise loved him, and talked to him a lot. Now I really am getting to be a crazy old woman, she thought. They always talk to their dogs as if they understood everything, and have a cat that seems to be a witch. She looked at the tiger cat, inscrutable on the top bunk, its yellow slit eyes brooding over the edge in the eccentric shadows of the oil lamp.

  One afternoon Louise took Gordon out for a walk. She seldom let him run outside by himself, because of Anne's rough, enormous dogs. She stepped carefully down the rickety wooden steps, and turned back to look at her home, standing in the field like a stranded hulk under the black winter arms of the old elm tree. It was not a modern caravan, like a holiday trailer with smart cream paint and wheels that turned smoothly. The tractor that pulled it here had had a rough passage with it, Frank said. He had painted it green outside, but it still had a derelict air, like a cross between an abandoned railway car and the home of a third-rate circus troop. Harry's rusted chimney poked up from its weatherbeaten roof as drunkenly as Harry himself on a Saturday night.

  Louise found the old man in the yard, crabbily scraping the walls of a hen house. "Where's Frank?" she asked.

  Harry jerked his head. "Gone to Bedford," he said. "Left me to do all the work, as usual." He worked on, jabbing with his shovel, and muttering under his breath at the hens huddled in murmurous resentment in a corner. "By the by," he said, as Louise turned to go, "she wants you. She called to me a while back when I was up to the house after the mallet."

  Louise put Gordon in the woodshed behind the house, so that the barking dogs in the kitchen should not set upon him, and went in at the back door. She pushed away the dogs, which

  barked at her skirts. She was not afraid of them now, but it upset Gordon to find the smell of them on her clothes,

  "Anne?" she called.

  "Upstairs." Anne's voice sounded strained and odd. In apprehension, Louise ran up the stairs, and found that she was right. Anne was sprawled on the bed, in pain.

  "It's starting!" Anne cried out, as soon as she heard her mother's footsteps in the passage. "The beastly thing's starting. I'm terrified. Why didn't you come before, Mother? You might have come."

  "Harry's only just told me."

  "God damn him. How would he like to have a baby? I told him to get you ages ago. I've been in agony here for hours.

  It's—oh, here it is again! I can't—it's " Her voice trailed off

  into a moan, as the pain gripped her, and drove away all other sense but feeling.

  "Hold my hand, darling. Dig your nails in, that's right, if it helps. Don't be afraid. This is what happens. No worse than this, I promise you, and then it all goes, and you won't remember it."

  When Anne relaxed, Louise ran downstairs and telephoned for the ambulance. Between the pains, Louise packed a case for Anne, who had not got a thing ready, and went back to the bed each time that Anne cried out, to hold her hand and suffer with her.

  "You promised it wouldn't get any worse," Anne gasped. "It does. You think it can't, and then it does. It isn't fair." She turned her sweating face wildly from side to side on the pillow. "Oh, God, it isn't fair on women. Who invented this thing?" she asked more lucidly, as the pain receded once more. "Where are you going, Mother?"

  "Just to the bathroom to get your toothbrush."

  "Don't go. Damn the toothbrush. I never want to clean my teeth again. Don't leave me. Stay here. It's creeping up on me again, and I "

  Louise stayed by the bed until the ambulance came. She had

  never been so close to her daughter, even when Anne was a baby and completely dependent. This was no longer a mother and daughter relationship. It was the closeness of any two women caught in the eternal crisis that is all their own, man's part in it forgotten, the world entirely female. It was the same relationship that Anne would have with the midwife at the hospital, but for the moment it was Louise's to share, and she lived it intensely..

  When the ambulance had taken Anne away— "As quick as you can," the nurse told the driver, after one look at Anne— Louise sat dizzily down in the kitchen, and suffered the largest dog to put its head on her knee and whimper. She felt pleased with herself. She had done her part. She had managed all right this time.

  When Frank came home, she told him, proudly how she had called the ambulance and got Anne safely off to the hospital. Frank's immediate reaction was one of disappointment. Fie had thought it would happen, at night, and had seen himself dramatically rushing Anne through the darkness to the hospital, and pacing the floors there while the dawn came up, as other fathers did.

  He put on his coat again to go to Anne, but Louise said: "Better telephone first. The way things were going, the baby may be there already, and that will save you worrying on the way/'

  Frank nodded and mumbled over the telephone, then dropped it down clumsily, and turned to Louise with a face so white and desperate that her heart jumped in fear.

  "What is it, Frank? What's happened?"

  "It's a girl," he said, sitting down weakly and managing a sickly grin. "A whopping great big girl, my Anny's had. Fm to go and see her."

  Louise stayed at the house while Frank was at the hospital. She felt too excited to go back to the isolation of the caravan, and she wanted to prepare supper for him and to be there when he came home, because he would need someone to talk to.

  It was late by the time Frank had talked out his delight and pride. Anne had said the baby looked repulsive, which shocked the nurse; but Frank did not mind. He knew that the baby was perfect, and he was convinced that it
would make all the difference to Anne's happiness. "Give her something worth while to do. She's talked about it so funny all along, but you'll see; shell love it as much as she does the dogs. They're making her nurse the baby herself. She doesn't want to, but it'll do her good. Nothing like it for a woman's figure. Oh—excuse me. I shouldn't talk that way."

  "That's all right, Frank." Louise got up and patted his shoulder. "I'm so happy for you. But I'll have to go now. I want to get up early and cook your breakfast."

  "You mustn't bother. I've been used to doing for myself before I was married—and after, if it comes to that. Perhaps you should stay the night though, as it's so late."

  "I'd better not. Anne mightn't—I mean, she seems to have the spare room all covered up with dust sheets."

  Frank walked back with her to the caravan under a cold, black sky, with the stars like sparkling chips of ice. He raised his voice in song, and Gordon scuttled about with his great plumed tail on high, barking at bushes, crazy with the delight of a night walk. Louise was very happy. She stood in the narrow doorway of the caravan, calling good night to Frank as he walked jauntily away cross the field. Smiling, she turned to go inside. The cat crouched on the table, finishing off the remains of a mouse. In the beam of her flashlight, it met her smile with cynical eyes, unblinking, devoid of emotion.

  Louise went often to the house while Anne was away. She cooked meals for Frank, and made his bed, and tried to clean up some of the dirt and muddle that Anne had left, although she knew that Anne would not thank her for it, even if she noticed the difference.

  One evening, Louise found the chestnut-haired girl, Freda, perched on a kitchen chair with her slim legs crossed high up,

  talking animatedly to Frank, who jumped up in embarrassment when Louise came in.

  Freda did not get up. She waved towards a chair, as Louise stood nonplussed. "Make yourself at home," she said, looking perfectly at home herself.

  Frank looked at Louise pleadingly. "I know," his eyes said. "I'm sorry. I can't do anything with her."

  "How nice of you," Louise said brightly to Freda, "to come and keep Frank company. But it's rather late. Shouldn't you be getting home?"

  "I been out on my own before," the girl said cheekily. She had no intention of going, and Louise did not know how to get rid of her.

  They talked stiltedly for a while, with Freda laughing on a high note about things that were not funny. She was evidently determined to stay until Louise went away. Louise was equally determined not to leave her alone with Frank. Why couldn't he turn the girl out himself? He was so weak and hopeless about it. He should have rid himself of her long ago, when he married Anne.

  The conversation exhausted itself. Freda began to hum and waggle her foot. Frank mumbled something about the chickens, and escaped from the room, stumbling over the doorsill.

  Freda laughed. "Old Frank," she said.

  "I thought you told me last time we met that you had a job in London," Louise said, trying to be polite.

  "Did I? Well, I turned it down. I'm still here, you see."

  "Freda," Louise said bravely, "I don't think you should come down here in the evening like this when Frank's alone. It isn't right."

  "He's not alqne. You're here, aren't you?"

  "But you didn't think I would be, and you wish I'd go. Why can't you leave Frank alone?" If the girl was going to be so bold, she would try to be bold, too. "He's a married man, and it's wrong of you to run after him."

  "I don't have to run. Frank's not backward, as they say.

  Listen, Mrs. What-is-it, Frank and I were friends, if you get my meaning, long before he took up with your daughter. He'd have married me, if she hadn't come along and given him big ideas about bettering himself. Bettering himself!" She looked scornfully round the shabby, untidy kitchen. "How wrong he was/'

  "Freda!" Louise stood up, enraged. "You can't sit there and talk to me like that. You—you just can't. I won't have it."

  "Go back to your old caravan then," Freda said serenely, "if you don't like the company here."

  "I won't go until you do. You've no right to be here, and you're not wanted here," Louise said, gaining courage. "Frank doesn't want you, or any other woman. Can't you understand that?"

  "You don't know our Frankie," the girl said in a purring voice, leaning back and running a hand slowly through her glorious hair.

  "Get out of this house!" Louise ordered, stamping her small foot, which was still shod in the rubber boot she wore to come through the mud of the yard. "If you come back again, I'll tell your mother."

  "She wouldn't care." Freda shrugged her shoulders. "She always wanted me to marry Frank."

  "Well then, I'll go to the police."

  Freda laughed. "What for? A person has a right to go visiting."

  "You're not visiting. You're molesting. How can you be so hateful, sneaking in and making up to a man the minute his wife is gone?"

  "Don't you think little Frankie can look after himself?"

  "He's too polite to tell you what you deserve to be told. And he's foolish. He doesn't realize the sort of talk this could start in the village."

  "Yes, that's right." Freda nodded. "They'll talk."

  "Is that what you want them to do?" Louise asked incredulously.

  not? You don't think I want Frank, do you, now that he's gone so respectable? I can do a lot better for myself, let me tell you that. Don't forget, there's Americans at the airfield now."

  "Then why have you come? Just to make trouble—out of spite because Frank married someone else?"

  "Got it in one, lady." Freda smiled complacently. "To make a little trouble."

  "I don't understand you," Louise said slowly. "You're like a girl in a film, or a magazine story/' Freda took this as a compliment. "Haven't you any shame? What do you think people will say about you if you carry on like this?"

  "Oh, I don't care. They say bad enough about me already. Always have. I had a baby, you know, during the war. That gave them something to talk about. Mum sent it away, but they don't forget. Oh, well," she got up and collected a bright-red plastic purse, "I might as well be getting along, now that we understand each other, and since Frank seems too scared to come back. Good night, Mrs. What-is-it See you again/'

  "Has she gone?" Frank poked his head round the back door a few minutes later.

  "Yes," Louise said disgustedly, "and I think you've behaved abominably."

  "I couldn't stop her coming here." He .spread his hands helplessly.

  "You know I don't mean that. Freda told me she had a baby. It's terrible. And to think I've liked you, and been pleased about the marriage "

  'What on earth are you talking about, Mother? Do you think it was my baby?" Frank laughed and slapped his knee. "That's a good one. It was black,"

  Louise could not help feeling a little sorry for Freda after this, but she was determined that she should not come down again looking for trouble. Although she knew that Anne would not like it/ she removed the spare-room dust sheets,

  which turned out to be the good bed sheets that Louise had given her when she married, and stayed in the house to chap-erone Frank until Anne came home with the baby.

  After living for several days in a proper house, even such an uncomfortable house as the Stone Farm, it was hard to return to the caravan when Anne came back. It looked smaller and poorer and less like a home than ever. Frank had been easy, congenial company, and Louise missed .having someone to talk to and someone to cook for. The cat, which had returned to the corn-bins when Louise went to stay with Frank, had gone wild, and could not be persuaded to come back to the caravan,

  Louise felt more lonely than before. Up at the house, there were the noises and smells of a baby, and strings of wet washing hanging across the kitchen ceiling. There was homeliness there, chaotic though it was, but Louise was not invited to share it. Anne did not mind her coming to see the baby, but she would mot let her help with it. It was hard for Louise to keep quiet when she saw Anne doing things all
wrong, and heard the baby crying, and longed to pick it up. Anne treated her daughter as if she were about six years old, and should be expected to have some sense. She spoke to her in a matter-of-fact tone of voice, and made disgusted faces at her when she was wet. The baby throve, surprisingly, although it cried a lot. Sometimes, at night, its piercing protests carried right across the fields to the caravan.

  When Anne could stand the noise no longer, she would pick the baby up and feed it, at any time of the day or night, She would nurse it wherever she happened to be, sitting in the kitchen with her dress unbuttoned, a magazine on one hand and a cigarette in her mouth, blowing smoke into the sparse black hair of the suckling baby,

  Miriam found her like this when she came the first time to see the baby and to visit her mother,

  "Really, Mother," she said, stepping cautiously into the caravan in her fur coat, as if she were slumming, "Anne is too crude. She's like a peasant woman. Tm sure even Frank doesn't

  like it, but he's too silly with her to tell her anything. I told her though."

  "I'm sure you did, dear, I don't suppose she minded."

  "She didn t" Miriam looked round the caravan. "Mother, is this where you live?"

  "Certainly. It's cosy, isn't it? Gordon and I are very happy here."

  She and Gordon had stuck it out all through the winds and rain of a tempestuous March. Louise was beginning to long for comfort and for company, and a hot bath whenever she liked, instead of once a week, if Anne's hot water heater was working.

  "It will be better in the summer," she told Gordon, when they came in cold and wet from a walk, and there was nowhere to get dry. But what about next winter? Could she stand another winter here? Louise began to feel that she was getting old.