by Lizzie Lane
She nodded. ‘So am I.’
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Once her bicycle was safely stored in the coal shed behind the house she worked in, Lizzie went gladly into the kitchen, where she took off her coat and gave it a good shake before hanging it up.
She’d been queuing for hours both on Mrs Selwyn’s and her own behalf, causing grumbling at the grocer’s because it took twice as long to sort out two ration books as it did one.
As she’d waited, she’d read the latest letter from Patrick, smiling at his description of one of the officers, which brought to mind their last conversation before going back to base just after Christmas.
‘I think you should keep an eye on yer dad.’
‘He can look after himself,’ she’d said begrudgingly. ‘It was his fault that Mum ran off, him down the pub all the time getting drunk.’
‘And he knows it,’ Patrick had said softly. ‘He’s still drunk, only not with beer. He’s drunk with regret.’
They’d fallen to silence, Lizzie a little huffy because she didn’t want to even think about her father, let alone talk to him.
‘Does he ever talk about the war?’ Patrick asked.
‘Oh, yes,’ said Lizzie with undisguised impatience. ‘How he won it single-handed.’
Patrick shook his head. ‘I don’t mean the bits he glorifies; I mean the bits he doesn’t tell you. How long was it before he met your mother?’
Lizzie shrugged. ‘I’m not sure. A year, I think. She didn’t know him too well at all before that, only in passing. He never said anything. I think she said he was literally the strong and silent type; never said a word to anyone before they stepped out together.’
‘Ah!’
‘What’s “ah!” supposed to mean?’
Patrick had clasped his hands together and gazed into the fire. ‘That’s what happened after the Great War. Men came home but hardly spoke for years. They were in a state of shock, you see. They’d seen too many horrors, terrible things that affected their minds more than they let on.’
Lizzie eyed him sceptically. ‘And how come you know so much, Patrick Kelly?’
He’d smiled at her. ‘Because I take the trouble to find out. I read a lot.’
Patrick had started to make an impression on her. He made her feel warm. Wish he was with me today, she’d thought, her face stung by snowflakes.
By the time she’d got back to Ashton, it was snowing hard. Mrs Selwyn was nowhere to be found. She usually had her afternoon nap on the settee in the front parlour, but not always. Upstairs snoozing, she thought, and went on unpacking and putting away the things she’d fetched for her employer.
There was a wireless in the kitchen and, after putting the kettle on, she turned it on meaning to listen to the music while waiting for the kettle to boil. Mrs Selwyn was bound to be down before long.
The kettle had boiled, the tea was in the pot and brewing nicely, and still there was no sign of her.
Lizzie sighed impatiently. As if she didn’t have enough to do. There was nothing for it but to make up a tray and take it up to her.
Tapping lightly, her ear close to the door, she waited for the command to enter. There was no reply and, although the tray wasn’t that heavy, she didn’t want to take it back downstairs. After one more knock, she opened the bedroom door, fully expecting to see Mrs Selwyn fast asleep on the bed. If she had done she would have left the tray there and asked her if she was all right, but Mrs Selwyn wasn’t there. The bed was as smooth and unruffled as when she’d made it that morning.
Back down in the kitchen, she poured herself a cup of tea from the pot she’d placed on the tray and took two of the biscuits. She pulled a chair up in front of the fire and slipped off her shoes, wriggling her toes in front of the old-fashioned range.
As she sipped the hot tea, it occurred to her that Mrs Selwyn didn’t usually go out in the afternoon, but she presumed something had gone wrong at the store and someone had called round in a taxi to take her there. It was the only explanation, she decided, dunking the first biscuit into the tea.
Sultry music, something introduced as ‘Hawaiian Romance’, made her think of warm places, blue skies, golden beaches and waving palms. Toasting her toes, listening to the music and drinking tea while snuggled in a comfortable chair before the fire had a soporific effect. It was just too comfortable. She hadn’t been sleeping well lately what with the extra responsibilities she’d inherited since her mother had gone missing, that and the extra responsibilities of looking after the house.
She began to doze and dream in that funny halfway place between sleeping and waking: a beach, a soft breeze … and someone calling her name.
‘Elizabeth! Elizabeth!’
Lizzie jerked awake, turning in her chair and just catching the teacup before it crashed to the floor.
Mrs Selwyn was smoothing her hair back from her face and patting her cheeks as if she had only just woke up.
‘Have you made tea?’
Lizzie slid her feet into her shoes and stood up. ‘Yes. I couldn’t find you in the living room …’
‘I wasn’t in there. I had a bit of a headache and had a lie down on my bed.’
‘Oh, but I did take the tray up to your room.’
‘That must have been while I was in the bathroom,’ she snapped, her expression almost daring Lizzie to question her further.
Lizzie didn’t recall hearing the pulling of the lavatory chain from the bathroom, but didn’t say so. Mrs Selwyn was adamant, her whole attitude conveying that she would tolerate no more questions.
In Lizzie’s opinion, it seemed a strange thing to be secretive about. She was in no doubt that Mrs Selwyn had been in the house, but didn’t want her to know where, and she wondered why.
There was no point in pursuing the matter. She had more important things to deal with.
‘I got you sausages, tea and sugar. You should have enough to last.’
Mrs Selwyn nodded. Her manner was stiffly formal. ‘Good. Now perhaps you could bring me in a pot rather than drinking it all yourself!’
‘Bitch,’ muttered Lizzie once the kitchen door was safely closed between them. She put the kettle back on the gas.
Shopping, worrying and work had taken their toll. She was tired out and full of glum concerns. Thinking of Patrick Kelly, his poems and his company at Christmas were the only things that brought a smile to her face. She’d found herself missing him immediately after he’d gone. ‘Write me if anything happens,’ he’d said, and then added with a kindly smile, ‘and if anything doesn’t. Pretend I’m listening.’
Once the tea was delivered, drank, and the crockery washed, she carried out the last tasks of the day, one eye on the clock and another on the weather outside.
‘Thank God for that,’ she muttered once the clock had struck six. She went in to say goodbye before leaving as she always did. Mrs Selwyn was in the front parlour, looking with pursed lips out at the darkness.
‘You may have to walk,’ she said, just as stiffly as she’d spoken earlier. ‘The snow is very deep indeed.’
‘I’ll manage.’ She’d prefer to take her bike, but if the snow was too deep, she’d walk if she had to.
Mrs Selwyn gave a curt nod by way of agreement.
Well wrapped up against the cold, Lizzie closed the back door behind her, groaning on seeing just how bad the weather had become.
Hidden by darkness, the snow was deeper than she’d thought, coming halfway up her shins and up to her knees where it had drifted. The door to the coal shed faced the windblown blizzard causing a drift to form reaching halfway up the door, and her legs were aching by the time she got there.
‘I want my bike,’ she muttered to herself, digging at the snow with her bare hands, her woollen gloves growing soggier by the minute. ‘I will have my bike!’
After a few minutes’ hard work, she rested, her breath turning to steam on the icy air. She considered the matter carefully. If she had a spade, or even a garden rake, she could
dig the snow away from the door and get her bike out. Unfortunately, they were kept in the coal shed in which everything was stored that wasn’t for immediate use, and there was just too much snow piled against the door. There was no point in trying to get the bicycle. It made sense to walk.
By feeling the garden fence with her right hand and balancing with the other, she found her way to the back gate. It had occurred to her to go through the house to save time and energy, but that would leave a wet mess through the house. Mrs Selwyn would not approve!
On opening the garden gate she stepped out into the back lane and into a deep drift, the coldness of which took her breath away. She looked back at the house, to get her bearing before she tramped off through the drifts and darkness. The large square villa looked more intensely black than the night because no lights glowed behind curtains and threw patches of amber onto the snow. The blackout was total and the snow was making things worse.
Taking a step forwards consisted of hauling one foot up and over deep snow. By the time she reached the end of the lane, her legs were aching and her lungs straining to cope both with the effort and the cold air.
What if it was like this all the way home? It could be midnight by the time she got there – if she got there.
She struggled on. Getting from the back lane to the main road seemed to take ages. She tried to judge how long she’d been outside. Judging by the wetness of her clothes and the coldness of her face, at least thirty minutes had passed.
The darkness deepened. What was familiar by day had disappeared. Bare twigs of trees and bushes snagged her hat and hair: seeking support, her hands sank into soft snow that hid sharp stones upended on garden walls.
Slipping and sinking into a sea of freezing whiteness, she finally reached the end of the lane, where she stopped and caught her breath. The main road was not quite as bad as the back lane because some traffic had passed over it, but that was earlier in the day. It still came up to her shins. Stopping and pausing for breath, she thought carefully about what she was doing. A lot of effort would be needed if she were to find her way home in the blackout and this terrible weather and, what was more, she’d have to walk. It was quite possible she’d lose her way before collapsing from exhaustion.
She looked back through the blackness to the lane and along to where she thought was the front of the house. It was hard to detect its exact location; the drifts ahead of her were bound to be thick and it was desperately difficult to gauge distance. At least if she went back the way she’d come there were indentations left in the snow by her feet. If she followed them, feeling her way back along the same walls and fences, recognising the same trees and bushes that had scratched at her coming out, she would find the back of the Selwyn house. There was nothing for it but to stay the night.
The journey back was just as bad as the journey out; she was wearier now, the cold air paining her chest and snowflakes stinging her face.
Her woollen hat and gloves were clogged with snow; her stockings were like a crusting of ice against her legs, and more snow, melted by the heat of her body, seeped into her boots.
Struggling against the biting wind, she turned into the familiar gateway, groping her way back up the garden path. Where possible she placed her feet in the indentations she’d made on the way out. All the same, it was quite a struggle getting up the garden path.
The back of the house looked ominous, dark and unwelcoming. There was every chance the back door was unlocked. Mrs Selwyn never locked it before nine, though after that there was no chance of being heard. Once settled in the front parlour or the dining room, it was not possible to hear anything coming from the back of the house.
Lizzie prayed it was still unlocked so that she wouldn’t have to go all the way back round the front, though she would if she had to.
The handle turned! Sighing with relief, she almost fell through the door, lying against it for a while once it was closed, her mouth closing and opening like a goldfish in a bowl as she fought to get her breathing back to normal.
A few minutes and she pushed herself forwards, heading for the kitchen and the warm fire she’d left in the range, the embers ready to be turned over in the morning.
Her clothes began to steam in response to the warmth, and she began to shiver as the snow stuck to her coat, hat, face and legs turned to water.
Hastily, she pulled off her woollen gloves and hat, folding them over the bar running round the front of the range. Her coat was sodden; she hung it over the back of a chair, pulling it forwards to get the benefit of the heat.
Her stockings were next. There wasn’t much chance of Mrs Selwyn coming in once she’d eaten her supper, which Lizzie had left for her set out on a tray. She always ate her main meal at lunchtime unless Peter was home, mostly at weekends before he’d gone away.
Placing one foot on the chair that held her coat, she hitched up her skirt, shivering as she unfastened a suspender, began peeling it down her leg.
Suddenly, she felt a cold draught, looked up and … froze, though not from cold.
A door had opened. Someone had entered the room and was watching her.
She stared. She had expected Mrs Selwyn, but it wasn’t.
Fingers still on her stocking top, foot balanced on the seat of the chair, her mouth dropped open.
‘Peter!’ Her voice was little above a whisper.
He stared back, gulping down his surprise like a glass of water to a thirsty man. He looked more surprised to see her than she was to see him.
His eyes travelled from her face to her leg, coming to rest on the bare flesh between stocking top and underwear.
Lizzie found her voice. ‘I didn’t know you were on leave.’ Flushing slightly, she rearranged her clothes and dropped her foot back to the floor.
‘Ah!’ he said. ‘Yes.’
There was something in his expression that didn’t ring true. He didn’t go into immediate explanation as to why she wouldn’t have known, but merely confirmed what she’d suggested.
‘It was a last minute thing,’ he blurted.
To her ears it sounded more like an excuse than a bona fide reason, the sort of excuse that grows from a lie.
His mother appeared behind him, her face turning pale when she saw Lizzie, as surprised as her son, though not merely at finding Lizzie still in her kitchen – not even indignation. There was fear in her eyes and Lizzie wondered why.
Chapter Thirty
If the snow were not so deep, you wouldn’t be so worried about Stanley. That’s what Mary Anne told herself as she surveyed the backyard behind the pawnshop, its grave lines softened by a blanket of blinding whiteness.
Enclosed by brick walls, an ugly square amongst more of the same all along the rank, nothing grew except weeds and a single sapling right in the centre. She judged it to be no more than thirty years old, its brave little seed originally dropped there by some migrating swallow: at least, she hoped it was a swallow. They were her favourite bird, nesting every year in the washhouse in Kent Street, their elegant tails poking out from a recess between the top of the wall and the tiles. She liked the way they swooped and soared, envying their freedom of movement. Every year they nested in the same place, just like her, the difference being that she never got to swoop and soar.
She’d been telling herself that soon she would visit Kent Street and inform her family that she would not be coming back and that Stanley could come and live with her and Michael if he wished. The attic bedroom was free. Michael had been agreeable when she’d suggested it.
‘There is plenty of room here. You have a room, I have a room, and there is the attic room.’
They did indeed both have a room. Sometimes, lying awake at night, she heard him walking around, finally falling into bed after midnight. She imagined him lying there, still awake, alone with his thoughts. Flattening her hand against the wall, she imagined him doing the same the other side; their hands together, divided by only the thinnest of walls.
Last night another chap
ter of the book that had fallen open so propitiously had come to an inconclusive ending.
‘Goodnight,’ she’d said, loud enough for him to hear.
At first there’d been silence, as though he hadn’t heard.
‘Goodnight,’ he answered. He sounded surprised.
She’d turned over, snuggling against the pillow and closer to the wall. It was good to know he was there with just a thin wall between them, almost as if they were lying together, but not quite yet, not quite yet.
That evening they sat together on the old chaise longue. The room had turned chill so he’d pulled it closer to the fire, making toast and cooking jacket potatoes in the ashes.
Michael was the biggest surprise in her life. Since knowing him she had become more aware of herself and of an awakening in her own body. Telling herself that she feared it to be bloated by the miscarriage, she had eyed her naked body in the mirror and saw the sort of figure seen in the myriad paintings of grand masters.
I want him to see it, she thought to herself. I want him to know me.
Sometimes, when reading or even washing dishes, she felt his eyes on her.
‘I feel I have always been here,’ she said to him on one such instance.
‘I feel this was planned,’ he replied.
She understood. ‘As though our meeting was prearranged.’
He didn’t answer, but she could tell by the look in his eyes that he was feeling exactly the same unfathomable tingling beneath his heart.
She found him easy to talk to. There was an openness to his look, as if saying, ‘Come on in. Tell me all.’
He was a good listener, patient as she tried to explain, seeming to share her emotions whether it was pain, fear, love or hope.
‘I’ve made some big mistakes in my life,’ she said. ‘The biggest one was burying me beneath other people’s lives. I pawned my identity in life, telling myself I was content to live for my children, to live through them.’
‘Would you do things differently if you lived your life again?’ he asked, his features a patchwork of light and dark made golden by the glow of the fire. ‘I do not think you would.’ He lowered his eyes. ‘We all have obsessions in life. For you it was – and perhaps still is – your children.’