by Jane Bailey
‘Please, Pippa. Calm down. Let’s have a bit of calm here. What’s all this about? Tell Arthur what?’ I looked at Dora now for an explanation. She had stayed calm, but she was the one who’d spoken the words. She’d challenged Pippa to tell me something, so there was something important that I didn’t know, and both of them knew what it was. Pippa was blubbing. Dora was the only one likely to tell me.
‘Pippa told you I had hallucinated.’ So that was it. She’d heard the radio broadcast or read the book. No wonder she was angry – angry enough to charge down here and confront Pippa. Call it artistic license, call it exaggeration, call it what you will – I didn’t think Dora had said all that stuff about the killing, and I knew no good would come of putting it in the book. I wasn’t expecting the next bit, though. ‘What she didn’t tell you was who I saw.’ Her face filled with apology, but she held a steady gaze. ‘It was Philip.’ Her clear blue eyes were glinting with tears. ‘And I didn’t hallucinate.’
I didn’t know what this meant at first. There was Pippa screaming that Dora was ‘just trying to wreck our marriage’ (which gave me an odd little thrill) and Dora saying, ‘Oh, Pippa! Please!’ as if she were dressing down a naughty child. I couldn’t take it all in. ‘Tell the truth for once. Arthur deserves to hear it from you, not me.’ What on earth did it mean?
Then she was gone, brushing past me with a waft of familiar scent. Oh God! I would recognize her from an ocean of women by the smell of her. This couldn’t be happening – she was leaving, she had opened the door, she had gone. I ran to open the door and called after her, but I was still holding Fliss, and Dora was striding away out of our gate without looking back. Fliss was still sobbing. I held her close and went back to find Pippa. The ship in a bottle lay beside my wife on the sofa, its masts down and its booms snapped off. It looked irreparable. Pippa and I looked at each other warily. We both knew we had to wait until Beryl came home at six o’clock before we could talk this through without our child’s presence. I was deeply frustrated.
‘We’ll talk this evening,’ I said firmly.
Of course, that gave her plenty of time to prepare her side of the story.
As I said, I vainly hoped that Dora and my wife were having some sort of fight over me. That sounds pathetic now, but it was so strange seeing the two of them in confrontation so unexpectedly. And that vanity was significant, because it served Pippa well. I was deeply affected by the mention of my brother, but I couldn’t really work out the significance of it. I knew Dora couldn’t be suggesting that she had seen Pippa killing him. What possible motive could she have had for hurting Philip? I thought about the word ‘fake’ that I’d heard mentioned so emphatically, and it troubled me. Had Pippa’s feelings towards me been fake? Was she having an affair? How would Dora know this? I remembered the note all those years ago: ‘I know what you did.’ Was she having an affair way back then?
‘What was that about Philip?’ I asked Pippa, as soon as we were alone in the living room that evening. Her mood was strange. I had never seen her quite so downcast.
‘Look, Arthur, there’s something I didn’t tell you.’
I waited, holding my breath, watching her red-painted nails running along the arm of the sofa.
‘When we were on the boat . . . there was a child trying to get on. The one Mr Dent jumped in to save – you remember?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, I offered him my oar, and there was a bit of a struggle, because he couldn’t get hold of it. And then he, or she – I think it was a boy actually – just sort of . . .’ She started to whimper.
‘What?’
‘Just . . . drifted off.’ She screwed her features up in pain at the memory. I put my hand on her shoulder, expecting her to shrug it off, but she didn’t.
‘But I thought Mr Dent jumped out on the other side of the boat?’
‘No, the boy – the child – drifted. To be honest I thought he, she – whatever – was dead already. They just seemed to let go and’ – more catching of breath – ‘give up. I think that’s what Dora saw. And she thought it was Philip.’
‘Are you sure it wasn’t?’
‘Yes. Certain. I’d have known Philip, wouldn’t I?’
‘But you said you couldn’t tell if it was a boy or a girl.’
She buried her face in her hands for a moment, and the voice that emerged was plaintive and anguished. ‘Whose side are you on?’
‘I’m not on anyone’s side.’ I rubbed her shoulder for reassurance. ‘I’m just trying to establish whether or not it could have been Philip. Can’t you see why that’s important to me? You may have tried to save my brother. That would give me some . . . It would help Mum a lot, I think, just to have some information. We just never heard anything.’
She took her hands away and folded her lips together. ‘You need to understand what Dora is trying to do. Because she thought I lied about her hallucinating – and I was just trying to be kind, honestly, I could’ve said she wrongly accused me of killing someone when I was helping them – because she thought I’d lied, she’s come up with this cock-and-bull story about it being Philip.’
‘Why would she think you’d killed Philip? I mean, why would you want to do that?’
‘Exactly!’ She rolled her eyes in exasperation, as if I’d just cottoned on to something blindingly obvious. It didn’t answer the question, though. It only made Dora look unreasonable.
‘Pippa, look at me. Why would she come all the way to see you to accuse you of killing my brother?’
She sighed dramatically. ‘Do I have to spell it out?’
She always did this, managed to make me feel foolish, even when I had a legitimate point to make. ‘Well, yes. I think you do need to spell it out.’
She took in a deep breath, assumed an air of anguish and began, measuring her words as if she were talking to a slightly dumb child.
‘Dora has never forgiven me for marrying you. Ever since we got together, she has been looking for ways to malign me in your eyes. I . . . possibly slipped up a little with the hallucinating reference, but that was all the ammunition she needed. She’s round here like a shot, accusing me of lying about her, telling me she did see me beating someone with an oar – just as she did the day we met up again in the cloakroom at the reunion – only saying this time it was Philip. And she said – you heard her – that if I didn’t tell you then she would. What am I supposed to say?’ She turned a tearful, pleading face to look at me. ‘I didn’t kill your brother, Arthur. I didn’t kill your dear little brother. Why on earth would I? Tell me that! Why in heaven’s name would I?’
‘So—’
‘She just wants to break us up. Why can’t you see that? She wants you for herself.’
‘I thought she was married.’
Pippa looked flustered. ‘Oh, I don’t know. How am I supposed to know?’
‘I thought you knew the man she was going to marry – in France.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Well, she’s not in France now. And she wasn’t in France when she heard it on the radio.’
‘Why do you care?’ She started sobbing again. ‘God! Oh God, Arthur! My husband’s ex-fiancée accuses me of murder and all he cares about is whether she’s still single or not!’
I put my arms around her, and she buried her face in my shoulder, her own shoulders shaking. She hadn’t let me hold her like this since before we were married. I stroked her hair, feeling I had been unfair to doubt her. Then she raised her head a little and asked with red-rimmed eyes: ‘You do still love me, don’t you?’
That was it. I melted. She had been severely shaken up and she was frightened, and it was me she turned to for reassurance. At last she gave me a purpose. For the first time in a very long while, she needed me. She clung to me, and I kissed her head. She nuzzled into me, and I kissed her again. I held her face between my hands and kissed her softly. She moaned a little. Then she moaned a little more. Beryl was upstairs putting Fliss to bed, and in the shadows
of our living room, where just hours earlier Dora’s eyes had met mine, I made love to my wife, but it was Dora I thought about. It was wonderful.
52
DORA
‘You’re drenched!’ said a voice. I was numb, but I looked towards the sound, and a balding man emerged from behind the bar wiping his hands on a tea towel. ‘What can I get you?’
I had walked for miles to the nearest village in a bitter, easterly wind, and my legs were giving way. I explained that I had no money and that I was stuck. I needed to get back to Bristol Temple Meads and didn’t know what to do. I must’ve sounded desperate, because he said, ‘All right my lover, you sit yourself down there by the fire, and I’ll go and fetch Gerry, our delivery man. He’s heading back to Bristol soon.’
He brought me a cup of tea, and his kindness made me want to weep.
When I got home I was ready to flop, but Our Mam was waiting for me at the foot of the stairs, a wild, frightened look in her eyes. I thought for a moment she may have been worried about me, but I wasn’t late – in fact, I had expected to be home far later.
It wasn’t until I saw past her into the parlour that her terror became clear. Standing in front of the range, with his back to it and facing me, was Ralph.
‘I told him about your miscarriage,’ Our Mam said – far too emphatically, I thought.
‘What are you doing here?’ I ventured.
He smiled and said nothing, taking me in from head to toe. I stood my ground. Where was Helen? I could only guess that she was still having her nap, but surely she would be awake soon. I tried to make out the face of the clock on the mantelpiece behind him: gone three o’clock – nearly twenty past. She would be awake soon.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘aren’t you going to take your coat off, invite me for a cup of tea?’
‘How long have you been here?’
‘About ten minutes. Your mother seemed to think you weren’t coming back today.’ He looked slyly at her when he said this, and I felt her sense of foolishness.
‘Change of plan,’ I said briskly, taking off the still-damp coat and slinging it over the chair by the fire to stop him sitting in it. ‘And no, we shan’t be offering you a cup of tea.’ I said this loudly, as I could tell from the way she straddled the kitchen doorway that Our Mam was about to put the kettle on.
‘I’ve come a long way – to see my child.’
‘Then it’s been a wasted trip. I’m sorry.’
‘A miscarriage? Do you always dry nappies by the fire?’ He nodded to a clothes horse with two pieces of white towelling, threaded through with the unmistakable black line of a nappy.
‘They’re not . . . we use them for . . . women’s things.’
He looked thoughtful, as though he were weighing up the chances of this being true. ‘And the pram in the hall?’ He was so smug now that it sent a shiver down me.
I thought about saying Our Mam used it for coal or shopping, but if he saw it on the way back up he would see the clean sheet and soft blanket inside. ‘We got it out yesterday for my cousin. She’s just had a baby girl. It’s no use to us any more.’
‘So, I might as well be on my way.’ He smiled – too benignly. He was up to something.
‘Let me show you out the back way – it’s quicker.’ This was simply not true. The back door led down to the yard and the tip. He would have to walk all along the backs of the yards before he came to an alleyway leading back up to the road.
He ignored me and made his way up the stairs; I followed close behind. Our joint footsteps sounded like thunder on the lino, and I knew it would wake Helen. I had to get him out as quickly as possible.
‘What was that?’ he said in the hallway.
‘What?’
There was no escaping it: Helen had woken and was crying from upstairs.
He was up there before I could stop him, taking the stairs two at a time.
‘No!’ I shouted. ‘NO!’
He came to a halt inside her room and stood beside her cot, staring at her. She was standing up holding on to the wooden slats, silenced by the intrusion.
‘It’s all right, Helen! It’s all right!’ I tried to sound calm, but she could hear my panic and started to cry again. I went over to her to pick her up but he stuck his arm out to bar my way. I think my heart must’ve stopped. I don’t think I’ve ever been so frightened.
We both stood there as Helen cried louder and louder. I was only glad that it made her face redder and less attractive, hoping for anything to stop him taking her. Cry, my baby, cry! Drive him away!
‘Helen?’ he said at last. ‘Helen?’ He pronounced it as if it were a dirty word.
‘Yes.’
He looked at me with such disbelief and contempt that I was completely confused for a moment as to his meaning.
‘A girl?’
Yes. Yes! ‘Yes. A girl.’
‘But I need an heir. A girl’s no good.’
‘No.’
His expression darkened. I had seen that look before. He grabbed me by the throat and flung me against the wall. ‘Are you making a fool of me? Huh? Are you making a fool of me?’ He pushed me hard into the wall, and I had no breath at all. I thought this time he would kill me.
Then he did something worse. He grabbed Helen.
‘No!’ I was screaming, and I knew Our Mam would come running, and I knew it would do no good. He would hit her too. I willed her to stay downstairs.
He dangled the baby in front of him clumsily. ‘Take her clothes off!’
‘What?’
‘Do it!’
I held Helen close, and he hit me across the side of the face. ‘Do it – now!’
I put her back down in the cot and began to unbutton her outfit. I gently lifted out her jelly soft arms and tried not to look at the big tear-filled eyes full of incomprehension. Soon she was down to her nappy, and he snapped at me to take it off. When I did so, he shouted.
‘Useless! You’re useless!’
I let go of Helen before he took a swipe at me, but as I fell down, something odd happened. He fell backwards against the other wall. Looking up, I saw Big Bryn from two doors up. Our Mam stood behind him and came pushing past now, bending down to help me and wiping blood from my face with her housecoat.
Meanwhile, Bryn had Ralph on his feet and clocked him one again. He supported him and held an arm behind his back. ‘That’s no way to treat a woman, mun! You need to learn a few manners!’
I heard him bundle Ralph downstairs with him and throw him out. ‘That’s not how we treat our women in the Valleys, see, posh boy! Now bugger off!’ We heard the front door slam, and he called up as I was stroking Helen’s hair and holding her close: ‘I wouldn’t say no to a bit of cake, girls, if there’s any going, like?’
53
ARTHUR
In the weeks that followed Dora’s visit, Pippa became uncharacteristically warm towards me. She turned to me for reassurance because she felt particularly vulnerable, and I responded in full measure. In fact, ironically, that January and February of 1955 were probably the best months of my married life. I say ‘ironically’ because seeing Dora again, for the first time since Daphne’s wedding, fuelled something deep within me that I couldn’t quite relinquish.
Work was going well again; I had been moved to new offices and had been given a significant promotion. We bought a car and went for rides on Sundays; Pippa got to host dinner parties in our more elegant house; I took her out to the cinema every Friday or Saturday; she even played with Fliss and me in the garden for short periods. We shared a marital bed again at last, in the true sense of the word. She rarely initiated anything as exciting as that evening in early January, but she no longer pushed me away, and we got to know each other’s skin again.
I was drugged with the new physical contact. The confusion I had had about Pippa’s story compared to Dora’s was as far from my mind as it could possibly be. However, as the weeks passed, things began to change – subtly at first. She might say she was too ho
t to be cuddled (when there was snow outside) or that she was bored. She would reject my suggestions for something interesting to do at the weekend, or she would desperately need to see a friend in London. She began to mention the luxuries other women had, as if I was somehow not up to scratch, and occasionally, by the end of February, the ‘useless’ word crept in again. At one point, there was even a phone call from a man asking if he could speak to ‘Flippy’. If I took issue with her or became at all exasperated, she would look hurt and raise a tear or two until I held her in my arms for consolation, and then she would inevitably allow a little love-making. It wasn’t until the beginning of March that there was the beginning of a sea-change for me, and it was something she said. Just two words used together.
We had gone to Cheltenham for the day together, with the express intention of buying Pippa an ‘eternity ring’. This, apparently, was an absolute must for a woman if her husband wanted to show the world that he still loved her after a couple of years of marriage. Her friends in London had ‘all’ been given them, and if I was to prove myself to her, it was clear that I had to do likewise.
We had been into every jeweller’s in the elegant Promenade, and she had brought me back to the most expensive shop. The blandiloquent man behind the counter put his head to one side as she tried on a ruby ring again, followed by another with an emerald. She kept holding her hand out and looking at it. She seemed unable to make up her mind.
‘What about this one?’ the jeweller said, holding up an aquamarine with a larger stone and set with two little diamonds.
I tried not to sigh. ‘How much is it?’
‘Oh, Arthur!’ Pippa gave a pretty laugh whilst shooting me a glimpse of disdain. She tried it on and admired her own hand wearing it.
‘Actually,’ said the jeweller, ‘that one is a little cheaper, as the little stones are diamond simulants.’