Ralph swung round, surprise and displeasure in his face, brows drawn close; then his face changed, muscles reworking into sharp concern. He came towards her, curving his way around a marble-topped washstand, a display of blue-and-gold china, a dining table of honey-coloured wood, its legs twisted like barley sugar. How restful it would be to dust those legs, to wipe the cloth round and round, round and round.
Ralph was moving quickly and agonisingly slowly at the same time. Carrie had the sensation of being underwater. Sounds were hollow and misshapen. The air swelled around her. Her mouth went rubbery. She could feel it working, or trying to, but she couldn’t follow her own babbling.
Ralph seized Joey. Her hands snaked after her baby, scrabbling against empty air. She was cold all over – freezing cold and clammy. A distant buzzing built inside her head. Her knees buckled—
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Carrie opened her eyes. She was stretched out on the bed. The candlewick bedspread was smooth-tufty-smooth-tufty beneath her fingertips. With a gasp, she sat up and would have scrambled off the bed, but firm hands stopped her – Ralph.
‘Where’s Joey?’ she cried.
‘He’s not here.’
Shock lurched in her stomach.
‘You’ve taken him, haven’t you? You always take him … when I … when I—but I haven’t done anything. Where is he? I want him.’
She dived off the bed and went streaming along the landing, throwing doors open. Joey needed her. Something was wrong. He was ill. He needed her. He needed his mummy. She was the one who loved him more than anyone else in the whole wide world and Ralph had no right – he had no right—
A hand clamped round her arm and swung her about-face. Ralph. Always Ralph. What sort of father separated a baby from his mother?
‘The undertaker has him.’
Cold and sickness swooped through her. Her fingers carved through her hair.
The undertaker, the undertaker. She knew what it meant, but it couldn’t mean that, because that would mean … and it couldn’t mean that. It was impossible. There was some terrible mistake.
She steadied. A mistake. That was it, a mistake. She could cope with that. Joey was all right. She could cope with a mistake.
But Ralph’s face – Ralph’s face, white and fixed, eyes so dark. No mistake, no mistake.
He had taken Joey away, he must have. He had removed Joey before, taken her baby from her. It was what he did. He was a bully. She had married a bully. A bully who took her baby from her when he thought she deserved it, but she didn’t deserve it; she never deserved it. No mother deserved it.
And this, today, now, this was the next step. Not just taking Joey from her and plonking him with Mrs Porter, but putting him somewhere where she didn’t know where he was, hiding him away, and telling her – saying—
‘Listen to me, Carrie. Joey’s not here. The undertaker has taken him. He’s gone to the Chapel of Rest.’
Jesus, Mary and Joseph, they thought he was dead. They were going to bury her baby, her precious baby boy. They were going to bury him alive – because he was alive, he definitely was alive, he couldn’t not be, and she had to stop them. She had to get him back.
Deliberately she relaxed, letting her gaze fall away. She felt cunning and shrewd. The moment Ralph’s grip loosened, she tore free and dashed pell-mell down the stairs to their front door. She spilt out onto the pavement, spinning round to look in all directions. The world swooped around her, buildings, road, the sky an astonishing blue. No one could die on a day like today, under a sky that blue.
‘Come back, Carrie. He’s gone.’
With hands that brooked no argument, Ralph propelled her indoors and up the stairs. She resisted, but he was adamant. She knew what was up there. The flat, the place where they lived, well-appointed and comfortably furnished, smartly furnished. Ralph and his father had seen to that. But not their home, not her home, not now, not any more, never again. How could it be a home without … without—
With Ralph’s hand on the small of her back, she popped out of the enclosed staircase onto the landing, where there were doors to rooms, rooms where she lived, rooms she couldn’t enter ever again, because how could she, how could she, when they were so hideously and permanently empty?
My fault, my fault.
My fault, my fault.
Joey had been sleeping on her chest, his body snuggled trustingly on hers. The one place where he should have been safe – the one person who should have done anything to protect him.
And she hadn’t even woken up.
My fault, my fault.
Had he wriggled? Suffered? Felt any pain? Did he – oh, God in heaven – did he cry out, a cry cut short, a cry unheard by her, his mother, his so-called protector? For all she knew, she had been snoring like a pig. She had let him down, her beautiful baby boy, she had let him down. All she had needed to do was be awake. Nothing more. Just be awake.
My fault, my fault.
‘It should have been your mother,’ said Ralph. ‘It should have been her, not Joey. I’ll send her to hospital. You don’t want to be looking after her at a time like this.’
She stared at him, struggling to focus. ‘No, don’t,’ she managed at last, forcing out the words through the fog in her head. Her mouth was rubbery, as if it was unused to speaking. Her mind was crammed with words, with blame, with remorse, but it was hard to speak. As if losing Joey wasn’t bad enough, now she had to protect Mam as well. She wanted to scream at Ralph, scream at him for being so bloody stupid, so bloody wrong, but what was the point? It wouldn’t bring Joey back.
My fault, my fault.
She sat. She stood. She walked round the flat, unable to settle. She sat again. She couldn’t think. She was thinking all the time.
My fault, my fault.
Dimly, she heard voices. Letty charged in, white-faced, then Mrs Hardacre and their Joanie.
‘Oh, Carrie, we’ve just heard,’ Letty cried. ‘You poor love. Your poor little boy.’
‘Carrie, I’m that sorry,’ Mrs Hardacre said. She looked like she might try to take her in her arms, but Carrie didn’t move, couldn’t, and Mrs Hardacre drew back. ‘I felt sick when I were told.’
‘Ralph said you were doing the dinner,’ Letty said, ‘and when you looked in on Joey …’
Tears poured down Letty’s face; her mother clutched Letty’s hands and kissed her knuckles. Joanie was weeping too. The three of them perched on the sofa, huddled together. Carrie imagined going over to them, kneeling on the floor in front of them, their arms drawing her close, making her part of their knot. All she had to do was get up and move. Go on. Do it. Get up and move. Shift yourself.
She stayed put.
My fault, my fault.
‘Sweetheart, you should cry,’ Mrs Hardacre said. ‘Let it out.’
They thought she should be weeping. She thought so too. She didn’t know why she wasn’t. It wasn’t that she didn’t need to. Her throat was clogged with gigantic unspent sobs. It felt like a wodge of food had got stuck in her gullet. She struck her chest to make the sensation go down, but it didn’t budge.
‘Did it help, seeing Letty?’ Ralph asked later. Stupid question. As if anything would help. ‘I needn’t have let her come, let alone bring those other females trailing after her.’
Those other females. Couldn’t he set his scorn aside for one moment? But so what if he didn’t? What did it matter?
My fault, my fault.
Ralph organised the funeral without telling her. ‘You’re in no fit state,’ he said when she realised. She slumped. After the enormity of letting her beloved baby die, helping to organise a funeral was such a piffling thing. She ought to have done it. Yet, if she had, wouldn’t her involvement have sullied it – the neglectful mother making a show of her grief?
The ceremony was held at St Clement’s. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, he was having a Protestant burial. Was that her fault too, for not paying attention when arrangements were made? Ralph carried the coff
in himself. A tiny white box in those strong hands. Ralph was a big man. A blokey bloke, Pa would have said. It was a good thing she didn’t love him or the sight would have shredded her heart. Joey was laid to rest with the grandfather after whom he had been named. Funny how that was meant to bring comfort, putting the dead from the same family into the same hole in the ground. Except that Joey and Joseph Armstrong weren’t the same family.
Adam was at the funeral. Carrie barely spared him a glance. She turned away, rejecting him, rejecting the feeling she had wasted on him when she should have been concentrating on the child who depended on her for everything.
Evadne was there too. Carrie had received a letter from her, short and awkward but oddly poignant.
I am sorry I didn’t spend more time with you and Joey. I never held him and I wish I had.
Carrie had never known she wanted to. She glimpsed a cord of loss and anguish that tied her to her sister, then she shut her eyes to it. She couldn’t face anyone else’s grief. On top of her own, it was too much to bear. It would crush her.
Evadne squeezed her hand, or tried to. Carrie pulled away.
Adam had written a letter too, but she couldn’t bring herself to read it.
The day after the funeral, she wandered round the flat. She felt stunned. It was over. Joey was gone. What was she supposed to do? Joey had died and he had gone. She had died too, but she was still here.
The door opened. Mrs Porter shuffled awkwardly, then Father Kelly walked in, black rosary beads dangling from his fingers, click-click-click. He wasn’t going to pray, was he? Joey’s little knitted jumper, white with a blue line around the neck and cuffs, was her rosary now. She clung to it, folding it, stroking it, spreading it out on her lap and smoothing it, pressing it to her face and breathing it in, breathing in Joey, baby and milk and powder, Joey’s smell, for as long as it lasted. How long would it last?
‘A Protestant burial, is it? What were you thinking, Carrie Jenkins-as-was? A Protestant burial on top of not being baptised.’
Pain swelled in her chest. Her little lad hadn’t even lived long enough to be baptised.
‘A decent Catholic burial, and at least you’d have had the comfort of knowing your babby was in limbo.’
‘How cruel, leaving unbaptised babies in limbo. How can God want to do that to innocent babies? Punish me by all means, but don’t punish my baby.’
‘God moves in mysterious ways.’
‘God can take a running jump.’
It hurt to lie in the bath. Her backbone was knobbly, sticking out because so much flesh had dropped off her.
‘You must eat,’ said Doctor Todd, but she was eating; Ralph wouldn’t let her leave the table until she had emptied her plate. Yet the plumpness she had carried following Joey’s birth had vanished, and more flesh besides. She was thin as a stick and her clothes hung off her.
Ralph dragged her into the bedroom and stood her in front of the mirror.
‘Look at yourself. You have to take better care.’
The anguished gash where her mouth used to be, the despair in her eyes. She wasn’t complete any more. Joey had made her complete when she hadn’t even known she lacked anything. He had filled her life and her heart to the point where it had been impossible to imagine her life, her very self, without him.
Here she was – without him.
Except at night. In her dreams, Joey was fine and bonny and they were together. In her dreams, his little toes scrunched up when she touched them and she could feel her face shining with love. She would wake and curl herself into a tight ball, her eyes dry and sore and unbelieving, as she clutched his jumper between desperate fingers. She kept it under her pillow at night and drew it out while Ralph slept, squeezing and smoothing and inhaling, trying to absorb it into herself.
Then one day, in the middle of peeling the potatoes, she started to cry. She nicked her thumb with the peeler and drew blood. It was nothing, certainly not enough to cause tears, and yet here she was, tears streaming out. She was appalled to find herself howling over this when she hadn’t shed a tear for Joey; then she realised that she wasn’t crying over a cut thumb; she was crying for Joey, she really was crying for Joey. A great shudder knocked her knees from under her and she sank to the floor. The sobs that had been locked inside gave a great lurch and began to heave themselves with agonising slowness, one by one, out of her throat, like Mrs Clancy’s cat bringing up a furball. Her torso convulsed and her ribs ached. She was drowning.
Arms slipped around her, thin and strong. ‘There now,’ came Mrs Porter’s voice. ‘There now.’ She made big circles on Carrie’s back with the flat of her hand, pressing her withered cheek into Carrie’s hair.
When Carrie was exhausted, Mrs Porter drew back, a slow movement that allowed Carrie time to gather her balance and sit up. She brushed a hand across her swollen face and blinked, trying to ease the soreness around her eyes. She fished for her handkerchief, only to have it twitched from her fingers by Mrs Porter, who got up stiffly, dampened it and plumped herself down again, her lined features concerned as she gently dabbed at Carrie’s tender flesh.
‘The trick is to keep busy. Otherwise you’ll fetch up barmy. Too much thinking time never helped no one.’
Fear grasped Carrie’s heart. ‘Have you …?’
‘Aye, chuck. Three, all told.’
She could feel herself about to collapse beneath this fresh horror, then something inside her threw up a wall, protecting her from this other person’s pain.
‘I would say to get thee a job, only himself would throw forty fits. But that’s how I managed.’
Carrie sat silently while Mrs Porter rattled on about, not her lost children, but the jobs she had held down.
At last she said, ‘Best get up now, eh? Himself will go spare if he comes in and catches us sat on’t kitchen floor.’
Carrie thought about Mrs Porter’s words. Keep busy. It made sense. Wasn’t that how she had come to terms with her marriage in the early days? Just get on with it. And it had worked. But how could she compare this situation to that one? She had had everything to look forward to in those days, but now she must keep herself busy and occupied as never before. Like Mrs Porter said, it was that or go barmy.
‘I need something to do,’ she told Ralph. ‘A job, a proper job. Looking after the flat and doing the shopping and cooking isn’t enough. I’ve got to keep busy. Mam’s arms and legs will drop off if I do any more exercises on her. And don’t say there’s the dusting in the shop, because that’s not enough.’
‘I’m not having my wife working.’
‘Then you’ll have your wife going mad.’
Ralph raised an eyebrow. ‘Are you answering back?’
‘Oh, Ralph. I need summat to do. Please. I’m trying so hard, but I need more. I know I can’t get a job outside the home, because that would reflect on you. The only other thing I can think of is … well, I know about Mam’s exercises, so perhaps I could be useful at Brookburn. Even if they didn’t want me for that, I could … well, I wouldn’t mind what I did.’
‘No!’ He huffed an exasperated breath. ‘You could do the auction work. It would keep you respectably occupied and it wouldn’t interfere with your domestic duties.’
‘You mean Evadne’s job?’
‘Why not? She’s off gadding with Larter half the time; and she annoys the hell out of me when she is there. Besides, it will keep you close to me. I like the thought of that.’
So, with a strong sense of unreality, she found herself installed in the office over the road, learning the ins and outs of the auction process.
Evadne took the change surprisingly well.
‘It’s served its purpose,’ she said cryptically. ‘Here’s my set of keys. I’ll just keep this one.’ She slipped it from the ring. ‘It’s to that cupboard in the corner. You needn’t worry about what’s in there. I’ll sort it out.’
Carrie pored over auction lists and struggled with the typewriter, spent ages adding up lists of f
igures on paper that Ralph would then glance at and work out in his head. He was a ruthless boss, making her do her work again and again until she got it right, but she didn’t care. It filled the time, even if it didn’t fill her mind the way she had hoped. But nothing could do that.
Her first auction day was approaching. She ought to feel nervous, but she didn’t have any feelings left except those concerned with Joey. It was Doctor Todd’s day for visiting Mam, but Adam came.
‘Todd’s away. Family illness. How’s Mrs Jenkins getting on?’
She remembered loving him. Was Joey’s death her punishment? Adam’s presence was just another bloody thing to cope with. Ralph would be livid when he heard and she would have to appease him.
Adam went through the usual rigmarole, then asked softly, ‘And you, Carrie, how are you?’
‘What are you doing here?’ Ralph bullied his way into the room. ‘I told you to keep away. Get out,’ he ordered, cutting across Adam’s explanation. ‘And you,’ Ralph added, jabbing a finger at Carrie, ‘you let him in. You – let – him – in.’
‘Don’t take it out on Carrie,’ said Adam.
‘Don’t tell me how to treat my wife. Get out!’
With a final glance, Adam left the bedroom. Ralph kicked the door shut after him.
‘I’m sorry,’ Carrie whispered.
Ralph glared at her, then wrenched open the door and marched out, leaving her to sink onto the bed. She caught Mam’s hand and held it to her cheek, her eyes filling.
‘I’m sorry, Mam.’ Her body rocked to and fro of its own accord. ‘I’m so sorry.’
She thought Ralph might keep her at home instead of letting her attend the auction, but he didn’t. Afterwards, he told her she had acquitted herself well enough.
The following day, as she came downstairs with her shopping basket, the second post was sitting on the mat. She picked up the letters and popped into the shop. Ralph liked to have his mail immediately.
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