What Was Rescued

by Jane Bailey

  ‘Father!’

  I felt sorry for Ralph, and even more sorry for him as I found myself shamefully nodding in his father’s direction.

  ‘Ralph here thinks he’s a Marxist! What poppycock! I hope you’re not a Marxist, Dora. What does your father do?’

  I swallowed hard. ‘He’s a coal miner.’

  ‘A miner! A miner!’

  I felt myself colour. I surprised myself at how brazenly I wanted to please this man. I was the shallowest of independent women. I wanted to be able to tell him how I competed in point-to-point, had been ‘finished’ in Switzerland and generally enjoyed a good game of croquet on a summer’s evening.

  ‘That’s a noble profession. Though I suppose he’s a red, is he?’

  ‘Oh no. I don’t think he has any strong political views.’ Did I tell him how my father had drummed into me Labour’s five ‘giant evils’ of Want, Squalor, Disease, Ignorance and Unemployment? Did I explain how much my father hated the ruling classes? How he campaigned tirelessly to get our tip moved to a safer location? How, when one hundred and forty-six boys and men died in the 1860 Risca Black Vein mine explosion, it was reported as ‘A severe financial loss to the owner’, a fact I was never allowed to forget? Oh, shame of shames! My father, the passionate Labour voter, was being denied, Judas-like, as the cock crowed.

  ‘Is he in good health, your father?’

  ‘Oh yes. Very good health.’ Important to have a healthy family, I thought, and I added, ‘And my mother.’

  ‘And do you have any brothers and sisters?’

  This was the fertility question. I wanted to say I had a string of siblings called Lettice and Lavinia and Tertius and Claude. ‘I had a sister, Siân.’

  ‘Oh?’

  Ralph stepped in for me. ‘She passed away.’

  ‘I see. What did she die of?’

  This was the healthy stock question again. ‘Diphtheria. It went through our village.’

  There was a pause. Richard chewed on a piece of steak and took a sip of wine. ‘But you survived.’ Did I ask why he hadn’t expressed his sorrow? No. I felt quietly triumphant. I could survive plagues. ‘Jolly good! Aha! Here comes dessert! Apple Charlotte. I hope you’ll have some, Dora. You look like you could do with feeding up.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear about your sister,’ said Lady Rowanwood. ‘Were you very young when it happened?’

  ‘Thank you. I was six.’

  ‘How dreadful for you – and your poor parents.’

  ‘Eat up!’ said Richard. ‘Eat it while it’s still warm!’

  Virginia – as Lady Rowanwood asked me to address her – took me to a modest room with a coal fire that overlooked the walled garden. Ralph’s father had taken him off for an after-dinner chat, and I felt like someone from a Jane Austen novel, banished to female company while the men did manly things like smoke cigars or gamble or take snuff.

  ‘You did very well, Dora. He can be frightfully blunt at times.’

  I smiled, not quite sure that any agreement would be appropriate. ‘I hope . . . I hope I . . . I’m not very used to this sort of thing.’

  ‘Don’t worry. He’s very keen on you for Ralph, I can tell.’ She paused a little, to observe my reaction – which was another smile. I hated myself for my passive smiles, but I was out of my depth. ‘He’s very anxious for Ralph to be married and produce an heir.’ She offered me some tea that she had poured by herself from a tray brought in by a woman. She observed me again.

  ‘Oh. I thought he disapproved of Ralph’s political beliefs and was going to disinherit him, or something.’

  Now she smiled. ‘Ah. Well, I’m not sure it’s as easy as that. Ralph is his eldest son and he inherits. But he is worried about Ralph dying without any offspring.’

  ‘I thought Ralph had a brother?’

  ‘Oh yes, he does. But, you see, Richard doesn’t want the estate left to Peregrine, because then there would definitely be no heirs and it would be left to some distant third cousin or something.’

  ‘Can’t Peregrine have children?’

  ‘I expect he can, but he’s determined not to.’

  I had heard very little about Ralph’s brother, but it seemed they both dug their heels in when it came to their father. ‘That’s a shame. I can’t imagine not wanting children – at some point.’

  She put her cup down carefully in her saucer. ‘Between you and me, Peregrine is what Richard so tastefully terms “a Nancy Boy”.’

  ‘Oh, I see!’ I felt a little shiver of pride that Virginia had entrusted me with this information. ‘So he can’t have children. Poor man.’

  ‘Oh no. That’s not the problem. Richard would be perfectly happy for him to get married to some poor unsuspecting woman and produce offspring. That’s not a problem at all. No, the problem is that Peregrine won’t. He refuses point blank to get married. And so you see, the weight of responsibility lies even more heavily on Ralph’s shoulders. And if he refuses to marry a deb or someone considered suitable, then Richard really isn’t too concerned any more. Money isn’t a problem.’

  My eye caught the coals in the fire, and I couldn’t help thinking that my father had hewn those coals out of deep seams with nothing but a pickaxe and eighteen-inch wooden pit props, lying on his belly in the dark.

  ‘And what about . . . well . . . class?’

  ‘Class? Well . . . a healthy young woman with a few manners who knows her place is more important than the odd title.’ She shot me a look that was unmistakably mischievous. I smiled again.

  ‘What was Ralph like as a little boy?’

  ‘As a little boy? Well, I’m not too sure what he was like as a very small boy. You know I’m his stepmother? His mother left when he was four or five.’

  ‘Oh dear! No, I didn’t know. Oh . . .’ I wanted to know why she had left but didn’t dare ask.

  ‘I know, it’s a terrible shame. The boys were about eight and six when I married Richard. Ralph was already off at boarding school. I think it hurt them very much.’

  ‘Poor Ralph.’ I couldn’t imagine how any mother could leave her children.

  ‘The really dreadful thing, though . . .’ Virginia gazed out of the window and looked suddenly very pained. ‘The dreadful thing is that he told them she had abandoned them. They were brought up believing that.’

  ‘Didn’t she leave, then?’

  ‘Yes. Oh yes, she left, but she tried to take them with her. He took legal action against her, so that he could keep them. They know the truth now. She turned up at their school when Ralph was eighteen and told them.’

  ‘So why did she leave? Surely . . . couldn’t she have stayed for them? For her own children?’ I stared out of the window with her, as if the answer might be found in the feathery wisps of dead clematis.

  ‘I can’t say,’ she said, turning to meet my eyes again. ‘But between you and me – strictly between you and me’ – she waited until I nodded – ‘I think he was . . . I think he may have . . . treated her rather badly.’

  Even so, I thought. You wouldn’t catch me abandoning my children for a bit of bad behaviour.

  ‘He can be very . . . difficult,’ she added, with feeling.

  He was blundering and opinionated and arrogant. I could quite believe he could be cruel. But to leave your children . . . Poor Ralph. I warmed to him then more than I ever had done. Suddenly the controlling man on the Montélimar station became a man with a terrible fear of abandonment. Once more abandoned by a woman he loved. Who could blame him for wanting to cling on so tight?

  37

  ARTHUR

  When I got home I was surprised to find that there were no lights on in the house at all. I looked in the living room, and there was no sign of Pippa. In the kitchen there was a saucepan on the hob with dried food hardened on to the sides and a wooden spoon propped inside it. Next to the sink was a crumb-laden plate with a buttery knife. I went upstairs and turned the landing light on. I had dreaded facing Pippa, but now this silence bothered me. I was pri
med for casual sarcasm, not an empty house.

  On the bed was a scrawled note:

  Darling, Frightful bore being here alone in my condition. Gone to Mater’s for rest of weekend. X

  I scuttled back downstairs to our new telephone, which sat on a pretentious ‘phone table’ she had bought and which you had to ease yourself around as you went down the hallway. I hoped she – and not her mother – would answer my call.

  I was disappointed.

  ‘Philippa! Come and speak to that useless mechanic of yours . . .’

  Pippa sounded tired when she reached the phone, as if she might have been snoozing by the fire. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Pippa, are you okay?’

  ‘Well, as okay as any woman can be, left all alone in the house and five months pregnant with absolutely nothing to do.’

  ‘I wish you’d said something. I don’t like the idea of you catching buses or trains in your condition. Not on your own.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t.’

  ‘How did you get over to your mother’s?’

  ‘By taxi.’

  ‘Taxi? That must’ve cost a for— I see. Were you that bored?’

  ‘For God’s sake, Arthur. If we had a car like other people, I could have simply driven. But no, even on your salary – and you claim to be doing so well – we can’t afford the basics.’

  ‘What do you mean, “like other people”?’

  She sighed heavily. ‘Your colleague Andrew has a car, and he’s younger than you.’

  ‘He’s also single. No expensive wife and no child on the way.’

  ‘Expensive! I’m hardly an expense! You expect me to stay cooped up in that little house. We don’t even have a television! I don’t know how much longer I can bear this! Life is so dull!’

  It occurred to me momentarily that Pippa might have left me. I was surprised to find that this made me panic.

  ‘I’m sorry, Pippa. We do have to live within our means. But I will look into getting a television. Perhaps we could afford to rent one.’

  I heard her blow air out of her mouth.

  ‘I promise. It’s too late for me to catch a train now. But I’ll come over tomorrow.’ There was a silence. I found that I was afraid of it. ‘I’ll get us a television next week. You get some sleep now.’

  She said goodbye without too much fuss but still sounded petulant. There had been times over the previous few weeks when I had fantasized about my wife leaving me. I had actually imagined her going to live with her mother and leaving me free to be with Dora. I even took this fantasy forward to dealing with the practical details of having a baby. Pippa would feel overwhelmed by motherhood and leave the baby outside the door in a basket, and somehow Dora would be happy to bring it up as our own. Dora would live modestly, without the need for a car or a television, and we would soon be able to afford a larger house to accommodate our own children too. She wouldn’t run me down in front of people or say she had me ‘well-trained’, and she would never say she was bored.

  In this fantasy, Pippa just drifted out of my life with ease, and I gave her no more thought. Now, faced with the possibility that Pippa might indeed go to live with her mother, I was panicky. I was exhausted by her constant challenges but determined to step up to the mark. I needed her back home with me. I wanted to provide for her myself, like a man, and to provide for the child that was on its way.

  Early the following morning, I caught a train to Stroud and waited an hour for a Sunday bus to Hickleton. From the village pub where the bus stopped, I made my way down the lane to the Barrington-Hobbs’ home. It was a damp morning, and the leaves of overhanging branches stroked my face wetly as I walked the rough stone road. I could hear voices up ahead, and a car door slammed. A maroon-coloured car nosed out of the bushes at the entrance to the driveway, then turned towards me and drove by. I stepped back against some brambles to let it pass. It made no effort to slow down, although the driver must have seen me. I saw him turn his head after he’d driven past, but I didn’t get a good look at him. Arrogant, jumped-up bastard. A jumped-up bastard who had visited – or at any rate was leaving – my wife before noon on a Sunday morning.

  ‘How was the wedding?’

  Pippa looked radiant. She was wearing a sapphire-blue velvet maternity dress with pearls at her neck. Her thick eyebrows had been plucked into such an arch that her glance was formidable. Her movements, though, were less graceful than they had been, giving her an air of vulnerability. I hadn’t imagined a pregnant woman could look so breathtaking, and I wanted to rip her clothes off and make love to her there and then, in front of the family fireplace. However, I thought I detected a familiar reproach in her eyes, despite the smiling lips. I couldn’t be sure.

  ‘Did you have a good time with your old friends?’

  She knew.

  ‘What do you mean?’ There was a silence as she turned her back to me. She didn’t see me swallow hard. I rallied quickly. ‘I might ask you the same question.’

  She turned around. ‘What? You’re asking me if I had a good time? Why do you think I came here? It hasn’t been a night on the town for me here, I can tell you. Although Mother dearest seems to have a night on the tiles every night. The kitchen tiles, at any rate.’

  She was doing well at deflecting me, but I wasn’t going to let this slip. ‘Were you alone? Was it just the two of you?’

  ‘None of her fancy men turned up, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘Any of yours turn up?’

  ‘What on earth do you mean?’ There was indignation and a hint of panic in her tone. She traced her finger along the edge of the mantelpiece. I could feel my pulse in my head.

  ‘Who was the man who visited you?’

  She put her head on one side, and without turning round, she said breezily, ‘Oh, that was just an old friend of mine whose father lives nearby. He called by this morning.’ Then she turned and challenged me with her penetrating green eyes, but I held firm.

  ‘This morning? That’s a strange time to visit.’

  She laughed. ‘Oh, Arthur! Oh, my darling, you didn’t think he arrived last night, did you?’ She smiled benignly at this. Then she opened her eyes very wide, courting the thrill of danger. ‘What would you have done if he had?’

  ‘What was he doing here?’

  She lowered herself into an armchair and blinked slowly. ‘He came to ask about . . . he came to tell me – as he is just in the country for a few days – that he’s going to settle down with someone, at long last.’

  ‘And how did he know you were here?’

  ‘Because he didn’t know I’d got married. He came here because this is where I’ve always lived.’

  ‘So you told him – that you were married?’

  She looked down at her bump. ‘I should think so!’

  ‘I see.’ It sounded plausible. It was difficult recalibrating my emotions. She chose the moment to pounce.

  ‘And as it happens, the person he’s chosen is a friend of yours. Well, ours, I suppose. That was his interest. In fact, he was almost pumping me for information about her. He’d heard that I knew her from the City of India disaster. It’s not every day you meet one of the thirteen surviving children, is it? So quite a coincidence.’ I remained silent. ‘Reason enough to come and see me, don’t you think? Before he whisks her back to France permanently?’

  I thought she pronounced the last word with some relish, but I may have been wrong. She knew. She knew I’d seen her. My pulse was booming so loudly I could barely hear my own thoughts.

  ‘That explains it, then. That explains why she turned up to the wedding.’

  Pippa smiled slyly at me. ‘You weren’t going to tell me, were you?’

  ‘I was going to tell you. I barely spoke to her. She left early.’ It was the best I could do, handicapped as I was by a heart rate that shook my ribcage.

  So that was it. Marriage. France. It really was all over.

  OCEANS APART

  38

  DORA

&n
bsp; The crossing was rough. I was sick in the toilets, but worse, it didn’t put an end to my feeling of nausea, and I found myself shaking the whole time. Ralph was wonderful, holding me throughout the journey, reassuring me. It takes very little – even now – to bring it all back. No need for a choppy sea or a floor that rocks you erratically like an unloving mother. Back then, after the rescue, I would often wake suddenly and find myself trying to scream, but nothing would be coming from my mouth except a little squeak. The sea towered above me. Towered. It was way up high, an impossibly high wall, blocking out all hope. The next minute it was buoying me up, cradling me high in the air, giving me a view of our forlorn ship and the frantic lifeboats. But then it would be sucking me down again, beating me crossly, enticing me, rejecting me: a savage, unpredictable parent, spinning everything I thought I could rely on into a whorl of terror. I had grown up loved – so very loved – by my mother and father. Whatever hardships we faced, there were always arms to hold me at the end of the day, there was always the floury smell of my mother’s work-coat and the delicious oily scent of her hair as she tucked me in and kissed me goodnight. And Our Dad too, if he was off his shift, would come up and sing to me sometimes (a hymn or a music-hall song), and his ancient, earthy smell of coal dust would take me deep underground to a safe, dark, sleepy place. Just a song at twilight, when the lights are low . . .

  When my sister died, the arms were still there, but they clung too tightly, or too limply, and their owners were far away. ‘Love’ was not a word we used in our house, but I had always felt it, and I knew when there was a different feeling, a feeling of absence. Suddenly, I wasn’t enough to make them happy. Their sadness was so huge and overwhelming that I knew I must have always been less than half of their happiness, otherwise there would still have been half of it left when Siân died.

  Then I was sent away. For my own good, of course. I wonder how many children still grapple with that one. We care about you so much that we’re sending you away. To another country, even. You’ll be safe, you’ll be well looked after, there’ll be things we can’t give you. But most of all, you’ll be safe.