He did mind her asking. ‘It’s a long story.’
‘She said she was to blame but to my mind it always takes two.’
‘Aye, you’re right there.’ He had dissected his marriage over and over again since Nancy had run off, and one of the unpleasant home truths it had thrown up was that he had smothered his wife with a love that must have been stifling to someone like Nancy. He no longer asked himself the question as to whether it was possible to love someone too much – he knew the answer only too well – but at the same time it didn’t excuse Nancy for doing the dirty on him and on this point he was clear. But it was water under the bridge. When she had chosen her fancy man over him, and at a time when he had never needed her more, it had been the death knell on his love. Admittedly it had taken time to wither and die completely – you couldn’t just change your feelings overnight – but there were days when he didn’t think about her at all. Well, hardly at all. Certainly not as much as he used to.
He wondered if he was doing the right thing in going to see her but at the same time he knew it was the only thing he could do, especially if Nancy was as ill as her landlady alleged. He felt a sick churning in his stomach and immediately told himself, no, none of that, he was past all that. For weeks, months, after she’d skedaddled, he’d been unable to eat more than a few mouthfuls at a time, such had been the state of his insides. His heartache and misery had made him feel as though his stomach was full of a lead weight, and when he had tried to force himself to swallow food he had actually vomited more than once.
But he was better now. He repeated the thought to himself. Whatever transpired this night, he was better, he was his own man. Nancy had done him a favour in a way because he was far tougher mentally than he’d ever been, it was just his body that let him down now and again. In throwing off his love for her and determining to go on and make the best of life, he’d developed a resilience he would never have believed himself capable of.
By the time they approached Woodbine Street off Moor Street he felt himself fully prepared for seeing Nancy again. ‘We’ll go in the front way,’ said Mrs Duffy as they turned the corner. ‘The bairns have made the back lane treacherous with their slides.’
Halfway down the street she stopped outside the two-up two-down terrace and took out her key. The door was painted a dark blue and the brass knocker in the shape of a grinning goblin was well polished, and as soon as the door opened Gregory was greeted with the smell of furniture polish.
‘Nancy has the back bedroom,’ said Mrs Duffy, and as though on cue Gregory heard the sound of a racking cough from upstairs.
He winced, he couldn’t help it. It sounded painful. Mrs Duffy was staring at him and now he said, ‘Should – should I go up?’ He had expected her to lead the way.
‘Aye.’ Still the landlady didn’t move.
‘Do you want to go first? To make sure –’ he had been going to say to make sure she is decent but that sounded ridiculous, him being her husband, so he changed it to – ‘she wants to see me?’ Nancy had no idea he was coming, after all.
‘Whether she wants to see you or not you’re here now. Besides, like I said, the way she spoke about you she’ll want to see you.’ It was unequivocal. He was on his own.
‘Right.’ He looked at her helplessly for a moment more and then began climbing the steep stairs. He was almost at the top when Mrs Duffy said from the hallway, ‘She’s in the back, like I said. The door’s right in front of you when you step onto the landing. It won’t be locked ’cause I’ve been in and out.’
The landing was in darkness but enough light had filtered up from the hall to see clearly enough. He was about to knock on the door when another bout of coughing from the occupant inside stilled his hand. Instead he paused for a moment and then opened the door. The light was on and it showed the skeletal figure lying in the single bed under the window in stark sharpness. She had changed so much that she was almost unrecognizable.
Shocked beyond words, he stared at Nancy. He knew he ought to speak but he was unable to say anything. It wasn’t just that she was thin to the point of emaciation so that her eyes looked huge in their sunken sockets and her cheekbones stuck out like blades, but her hair, her glorious hair that he had once thought the colour of fire, was sparse and faded and she looked old, old enough to be his mother. But even more than that, it was the look in her eyes as she stared at him. There was no sparkle, no life, no dignity or hauteur, nothing that had made Nancy her, just an unearthly sadness and hopelessness that brought him across the room to kneel by the bed as he whispered, ‘Oh, love, love, what have you done to yourself?’ as he took the woman he loved, the woman he would always love, into his embrace.
It was several hours later. Outside the house the New Year had been welcomed in a little while earlier with frenzied hoots and whistles from the ships in the docks, the sound of folk shouting and laughing and calling to each other, dogs barking, along with people singing in the distance, but here, in Nancy’s room, all was quiet. Gregory was sitting in front of the small fireplace toasting his feet by the embers of the fire, a blanket round his shoulders. The little armchair the room held was more comfortable than it looked but he had no desire to sleep. Every other moment or so his gaze would fall on the woman sleeping in the bed and when it did, he’d pray another silent prayer: Let her get well. Please, God, let her get well.
Mrs Duffy had waited a full hour before she had brought a tray of tea up after he had first entered the room, but in that time Nancy had done little more than to cry in his arms, incoherently and painfully, her sobs interspersed with coughing so tortured that Gregory had found himself hunching his shoulders against it. It was only after he had persuaded her to drink the tea laced with the little tot of brandy Mrs Duffy had put on the tray for him – ‘After that walk in the snow you need something to warm you up, lad’ – that the coughing eased somewhat and she was quieter.
She had finished the tea and leaned back against the pillows he had plumped up behind her when her voice came, soft and husky: ‘She shouldn’t have fetched you.’
‘Mrs Duffy didn’t fetch me. She told me about your condition and I asked if I could see you.’
‘It’s not fair, not after what I did.’
‘Don’t talk daft, woman.’ He chose brusqueness to hide what the state of her had done to him – in reality he wanted to bawl his head off like a bairn. ‘You’re my wife, of course I should know you’re bad.’
‘Bad in more ways than one.’
‘Don’t, Nancy.’ He was sitting on the edge of the bed and he reached out and took her hand. The skin was transparent, paper thin. ‘Don’t talk like that.’
‘I must. To tell you I’m sorry doesn’t even begin to cover how I feel about what I did. I look back on that time and I think I must have been crazy, deranged.’
Another spasm of coughing brought her leaning forward, her chest heaving. He brushed the hair back from her forehead and was startled at how hot her skin was because her hands were icy cold. ‘Don’t try to talk, just lay quiet, lass. It’s all right, everything is going to be all right.’
She pointed to her medicine and he poured a little into the spoon and gave it to her. After a moment or two, she whispered, ‘He – he was not a nice man, Ken. I didn’t realize it at first or perhaps I did and wouldn’t admit it to myself, I don’t know, but he wasn’t worthy to lick your boots, Greg. I – I was infatuated with him, like a silly schoolgirl, and he was there and you were gone . . .’
‘I know, I know.’ She ought to be in hospital. He had said this earlier to Mrs Duffy on the landing when she had come to retrieve the tray, and she had told him the doctor had thought the same but Nancy had refused to go.
‘And then, even when I knew I’d made the biggest mistake of my life, I wouldn’t eat humble pie. Stubborn. You always said I was stubborn, didn’t you.’
‘Oh . . .’ He made a sound in his throat and shook his head. ‘I said a lot of things and half of them were rubbish.’
‘That wasn’t.’ She had shut her eyes at that point, he remembered now, and it was only when she’d said what followed that he realized she had needed to shut out what his face might show. ‘I paid for my stubbornness and stupidity, Greg. I want you to – to know. Ken and some of his pals, one night they – they were drunk and they –’ she drew in a deep breath – ‘they raped me, over and over, and did things, vile, degrading things.’
He had frozen. He knew he ought to say something but it was beyond him.
Her eyes still closed, she whispered, ‘The next morning, before I left, I set fire to the house and his money and clothes, everything, and – and I went to the river. The house went up like a tinderbox – I could see the smoke when I threw myself in. I came to in hospital. Some fishermen had jumped in the water and pulled me into their boat. I hated them for that. I pretended to the doctors and nurses that I couldn’t remember my name, couldn’t remember anything, and for a while I was so ill they thought I was going to die anyway. When I was well enough they sent me to the asylum. They didn’t call it that, they said it was a special hospital for people like me whose minds needed rest and healing. They were nice, kind, the doctors and nurses, but the poor people in there, the patients . . .’ She shuddered. ‘I put up with it as long as I could and then made out my memory was coming back. They counted me as one of their successes.’
He’d found his voice and it was quiet when he said, ‘I’ll find him and kill him.’
‘No.’ Her eyes had flown open at this. ‘No, please, Greg. That’s the last thing I want. You’d get into trouble. Promise me, promise me you won’t look for him.’ She had begun to cough again and through her struggling for breath had continued to plead with him until he had promised.
She had been quiet for a few minutes after this, lying with her eyes closed, and he thought she had fallen asleep. Then her lids rose and she had looked straight at him. ‘I disgust you now, don’t I,’ she stated softly. ‘I’m dirty, soiled.’
‘What?’ Lowering his voice, he said, ‘Don’t you ever, ever say that to me again.’
Her lips began to tremble and he’d leaned down, gathering her against his chest with his good arm as she began to weep again. After a while her sobs had lessened and then ceased altogether, and again he thought she had fallen asleep. He was just about to lay her back against the pillows once more when her voice came in the breath of a whisper, ‘I love you, Greg.’
He shut his eyes tightly. He had been married to her for umpteen-odd years and every day before he had gone to war he had told her he loved her, but never once in that time had she told him she loved him unless he had said it first and she’d felt obliged to reply. In a moment of acute sadness and fierce joy he knew the old Nancy had gone for ever, and for however long they had together from this point she would love him and need him in the way he had dreamed about in the past but accepted would never happen. But the cost for him to hear those words had been high. Softly, he murmured, ‘I love you, lass. I love you.’
She had slept deeply after that, the noise at midnight from the celebrations outside not causing her to even stir. Twice he had risen from his armchair to check she was still breathing, panicking that now they had found each other again Nancy would leave him once more, but in a way from which there was no coming back.
Mrs Duffy and the third occupant of the house, a tall, plain woman called Miss Franklin, had tiptoed into the room just before midnight with a glass of brandy for him, and both had wished him a happy New Year as they’d toasted 1945 to the belting out of the ships’ sirens. He had told the landlady that Nancy would be coming home with him as soon as she was well enough to be moved, at which news the good lady had beamed and said she couldn’t have wished for a better start to the New Year, and Miss Franklin had remarked that she was pleased for them but would be sorry to see Nancy go as she had become fond of her.
He didn’t know what the bairns would make of this turn of events, Gregory thought, as his eyelids began to grow heavy at last. Likely Horace and the two younger lassies would take it in their stride, but Maria, and especially Cora, were old enough to have their own opinions about such matters. He’d write and explain that he and their mam had got back together again and warn them to go steady with her, he wasn’t having Nancy upset, besides which Nancy leaving the way she had hadn’t really impacted on the bairns’ lives where they were.
Everything would be all right. He echoed the words he’d said to Nancy earlier. He would make sure it was all right. But for now his prime concern was Nancy and he intended to get her well. Everything and everyone else was secondary to that.
Chapter Seventeen
‘He’s taken her back.’ Cora flung the letter she had been reading at Maria, her voice flat but her eyes blazing. She looked at Rachel who was sitting eating her lunch at the kitchen table, along with Maud and Anna and Susan, and repeated, ‘He’s taken her back after what she did. Is he mad?’
‘I take it you mean your father?’ said Rachel calmly, continuing to eat the baked jam roll she’d cooked for their pudding.
‘She’s been living with another man.’ Cora was beside herself. ‘And now she’s got fed up with him, or he’s got fed up with her, I don’t know, she thinks she can just come back and take up where she left off as our mam?’
‘She’s first and foremost a wife.’ Rachel’s voice was quiet. ‘And what they’ve worked out and decided to do is between the two of them, don’t you think?’
‘No, I don’t.’ Cora breathed in deeply. ‘I love my da and what she’s done once she’ll do again and then where does that leave him?’
‘You don’t know that, Cora.’
Cora stared at the woman she now counted as a dear friend, her hurt evident when she said, ‘Why are you taking her side?’
‘It’s not a question of taking sides, lass.’ Rachel looked at Maud. ‘Take Anna and Susan to collect the eggs, please, before you three clean the coop out,’ she said, her tone brooking no argument although Maud hadn’t quite finished her second helping of pudding. ‘Maria, you stay here with Cora.’
When the other children had left, Rachel said, ‘May I?’ as she pointed to the letter Maria was still holding. She read it in silence but it conveyed little in the way of information:
Dear Cora,
I’m writing to you as the eldest but I want you to explain what I have to say to Maria, Horace, Anna and Susan in your own words. Your mam is back home and everything is all right between us. She realizes her leaving was a mistake and one she very much regrets, and the pair of us want nothing more than for things to return to normal now. I know you’ll be pleased we can be a family again once the war is over and you bairns are back home where you belong. Hopefully that won’t be too long now.
Your loving Da xxx
Rachel read the letter through twice before she raised her head. It seemed curiously stilted to her in the circumstances but maybe Cora’s father was no letter writer. Some folk found it hard to put pen to paper. That would explain the lack of details too, because in spite of what she had said to Cora she felt that at Cora’s age she was entitled to some sort of explanation regarding how the reconciliation between her parents had come about. But then perhaps Cora’s father saw her not as a young woman who would be eighteen years old in May, but as the bairn he had referred to in the letter, the young bairn she had been when he had left for the war. He wouldn’t be the first to make that mistake, nor the last. Families that had been separated for four or five years were going to have to make huge adjustments; it wasn’t just difficulties between husbands and wives that were already being reported in the newspapers, but problems with children who’d been evacuated and their parents, and the war wasn’t even over yet. These situations would escalate alarmingly once it was. But for now she had to try to pour oil on troubled waters if she could.
Cora and Maria were sitting facing her and their eyes were on her face. Cora said exactly what Rachel had thought: ‘He said he wants me to explain things to the
others but how can I when he hasn’t said anything except that she’s back?’
It was noticeable to Rachel that Cora didn’t refer to her mother as ‘Mam’ but as ‘she’ and it had been like that for a long time.
‘In things of this nature it’s very difficult to make anyone understand all the whys and wherefores if you’re not speaking face to face. I would imagine your da thinks it’s better to wait until you’re home and you can speak to your mother yourselves.’
There was silence for a moment, and when Cora broke it her voice held a tremor. ‘I can’t believe he expects us to be pleased about it. She doesn’t care about us, any of us. All she was bothered about was this man she went off with. She’ll hurt Da again, I know she will.’
‘No, you don’t know that and it’s clear from what he has written that he’s counting on you all giving your mother a chance to make amends. I can understand how you’re feeling, Cora, I really can, but for his sake I think you’ve got to – if not exactly appear happy about this, then agree to be open-minded.’
Again there was silence until Maria whispered, ‘I think that is the only way, Cora.’ She laid her hand on her sister’s arm. She knew their mother’s defection had hurt Cora more than any of them. Horace was so absorbed in his new life at Appletree Farm and so happy in the country that his mother was part of the old life he had no wish to go back to, and this had enabled him to shrug off her leaving them fairly easily. Anna and Susan didn’t really understand and barely remembered their mam or da anyway, and although she, herself, had been upset, she had Cora, and Cora had always been more of a mam than a big sister to her, to them all really. In a strange way, because Cora was so like their mam it had made the pair of them closer even though it had also meant they rubbed each other up the wrong way, so sparks flew. She could still remember times before the war when they had all been together and happy, and Cora and their mam had fallen about laughing about something or other while the rest of them, including her da, had looked on bemused.
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