Winter of the World

by Ken Follett

"Thank you!"

  "You're welcome." Daisy went to the door. "Go back to your studies."

  Going down the back stairs she hoped she had not flirted. She probably should not have gone to see him at all. She had succumbed to a generous impulse. Heaven forbid that he should misinterpret it.

  She felt a sharp pain in her tummy, and stopped on the half landing. She had had a slight backache all day--which she attributed to the cheap mattress she was sleeping on--but this was different. She thought back over what she had eaten today, but could not identify anything that might have made her ill: no undercooked chicken, no unripe fruit. She had not eaten oysters--no such luck! The pain went as quickly as it had come and she told herself to forget about it.

  She returned to her quarters in the basement. She was living in what had been the housekeeper's flat: a tiny bedroom, a sitting room, a small kitchen, and an adequate bathroom with a tub. An old footman called Morrison was acting as caretaker to the house, and a young woman from Aberowen was her maid. The girl was called Little Maisie Owen, although she was quite big. "My mother's Maisie too, so I've always been Little Maisie, even though I'm taller than her now," she had explained.

  The phone rang as Daisy entered. She picked it up and heard her husband's voice. "How are you?" he said.

  "I'm fine. What time will you be here?" He had flown to RAF St. Athan, a large air base outside Cardiff, on some mission, and he had promised to visit her and spend the night.

  "I'm not going to make it, I'm sorry."

  "Oh, how disappointing!"

  "There's a ceremonial dinner at the base that I'm required to attend."

  He did not sound particularly dispirited that he would not see her, and she felt spurned. "How nice for you," she said.

  "It will be boring, but I can't get out of it."

  "Not half as boring as living here on my own."

  "It must be dull. But you're better off there, in your condition."

  Thousands of people had left London after war was declared, but most of them had drifted back when the expected bombing raids and gas attacks did not materialize. However, Bea and May and even Eva were agreed that Daisy's pregnancy meant she should live at Ty Gwyn. Many women gave birth safely every day in London, Daisy had pointed out, but of course the heir to the earldom was different.

  In truth she did not mind as much as she had expected. Perhaps pregnancy had made her uncharacteristically passive. But there was a halfhearted quality about London social life since the declaration of war, as if people felt they did not have the right to enjoy themselves. They were like vicars in a pub, knowing it was supposed to be fun but unable to enter into the spirit.

  "I wish I had my motorcycle here, though," she said. "Then at least I could explore Wales." Petrol was rationed, but not severely.

  "Really, Daisy!" he said censoriously. "You can't ride a motorcycle--the doctor absolutely forbade it."

  "Anyway, I've discovered literature," she said. "The library here is wonderful. A few rare and valuable editions have been packed away, but nearly all the books are still on the shelves. I'm getting the education I worked so hard to avoid at school."

  "Excellent," he said. "Well, curl up with a good murder mystery and enjoy your evening."

  "I had a slight tummy pain earlier."

  "Probably indigestion."

  "I expect you're right."

  "Give my regards to that slob Lowthie."

  "Don't drink too much port at your dinner."

  Just as Daisy hung up she got the tummy cramp again. This time it lasted longer. Maisie came in, saw her face, and said: "Are you all right, my lady?"

  "Just a twinge."

  "I have came to ask if you are ready for your supper."

  "I don't feel hungry. I think I'll skip supper tonight."

  "I done you a lovely cottage pie," Maisie said reproachfully.

  "Cover it and put it in the larder. I'll eat it tomorrow."

  "Shall I make you a nice cup of tea?"

  Just to get rid of her Daisy said: "Yes, please." Even after four years she had not grown to like strong British tea with milk and sugar in it.

  The pain went away, and she sat down and opened The Mill on the Floss. She forced herself to drink Maisie's tea and felt a little better. When she had finished the drink, and Maisie had washed the cup and saucer, she sent Maisie home. The girl had to walk a mile in the dark, but she carried a flashlight, and said she did not mind.

  An hour later the pain returned, and this time it did not go away. Daisy went to the toilet, vaguely hoping to relieve pressure in her abdomen. She was surprised and worried to see spots of dark red blood in her underwear.

  She put on clean panties, and, seriously worried now, she went to the phone. She got the number of RAF St. Athan and called the base. "I need to speak to Flight Lieutenant the Viscount Aberowen," she said.

  "We can't connect personal calls to officers," said a pedantic Welshman.

  "This is an emergency. I must speak to my husband."

  "There are no phones in the rooms, this isn't the Dorchester Hotel." Perhaps it was her imagination, but he sounded quite pleased that he could not help her.

  "My husband will be at the ceremonial banquet. Please send an orderly to bring him to the phone."

  "I haven't got any orderlies, and anyway there's no banquet."

  "No banquet?" Daisy was momentarily at a loss.

  "Just the usual dinner in the mess," the operator said. "And that was finished an hour ago."

  Daisy slammed the phone down. No banquet? Boy had distinctly said he had to attend a ceremonial dinner at the base. He must have lied. She wanted to cry. He had chosen not to see her, preferring to go drinking with his comrades, or perhaps to visit some woman. The reason did not matter. Daisy was not his priority.

  She took a deep breath. She needed help. She did not know the phone number of the Aberowen doctor, if there was one. What was she to do?

  Last time Boy had left he had said: "You'll have a hundred or more army officers to look after you if necessary." But she could not tell the Marquis of Lowther that she was bleeding from her vagina.

  The pain was getting worse, and she could feel something warm and sticky between her legs. She went to the bathroom again and washed herself. There were clots in the blood, she saw. She did not have any sanitary towels--pregnant women did not need them, she had thought. She cut a length off a hand towel and stuffed it in her panties.

  Then she thought of Lloyd Williams.

  He was kind. He had been brought up by a strong-minded feminist woman. He adored Daisy. He would help her.

  She went up to the hall. Where was he? The trainees would have finished their dinner by now. He might be upstairs. Her stomach hurt so much that she did not think she could make it all the way to the attic.

  Perhaps he was in the library. The trainees used the room for quiet study. She went in. A sergeant was poring over an atlas. "Would you be very kind," she said to him, "and find Lieutenant Lloyd Williams for me?"

  "Of course, my lady," said the man, closing the book. "What's the message?"

  "Ask him if he would come down to the basement for a moment."

  "Are you all right, ma'am? You look a bit pale."

  "I'll be fine. Just fetch Williams as quickly as you can."

  "Right away."

  Daisy returned to her rooms. The effort of seeming normal had exhausted her, and she lay on the bed. Before long she felt the blood soaking through her dress, but she hurt too much to care. She looked at her watch. Why had Lloyd not come? Perhaps the sergeant could not find him. It was such a big house. Perhaps she would just die here.

  There was a tap at the door, and then to her immense relief she heard his voice. "It's Lloyd Williams."

  "Come in," she called. He was going to see her in a dreadful state. Perhaps it would put him off her for good.

  She heard him enter the next room. "It took me a while to find your quarters," he said. "Where are you?"

  "Through here.
"

  He stepped into the bedroom. "Good God!" he exclaimed. "What on earth has happened?"

  "Get help," she said. "Is there a doctor in this town?"

  "Of course. Dr. Mortimer. He's been here for centuries. But there may not be time. Let me . . ." He hesitated. "You may be hemorrhaging, but I can't tell unless I look."

  She closed her eyes. "Go ahead." She was almost too scared to be embarrassed.

  She felt him raise the skirt of her dress. "Oh, dear," he said. "Poor you." Then he ripped her underpants. "I'm sorry," he said. "Is there some water . . . ?"

  "Bathroom," she said, pointing.

  He stepped into the bathroom and ran a tap. A moment later she felt a warm, damp cloth being used to clean her.

  Then he said: "It's just a trickle. I've seen men bleed to death, and you're not in that danger." She opened her eyes to see him pulling her skirt back down. "Where's the phone?" he said.

  "Sitting room."

  She heard him say: "Put me through to Dr. Mortimer, quick as you can." There was a pause. "This is Lloyd Williams. I'm at Ty Gwyn. May I speak to the doctor? . . . Oh, hello, Mrs. Mortimer, when do you expect him back? . . . It's a woman with abdominal pain and vaginal bleeding . . . Yes, I do realize most women suffer that every month, but this is clearly abnormal . . . she's twenty-four . . . yes, married . . . no children . . . I'll ask." He raised his voice. "Could you be pregnant?"

  "Yes," Daisy replied. "Three months."

  He repeated her answer, then there was a long silence. Eventually he hung up the phone and returned to her.

  He sat on the edge of the bed. "The doctor will come as soon as he can, but he's operating on a miner crushed by a runaway dram. However, his wife is quite sure that you've suffered a miscarriage." He took her hand. "I'm sorry, Daisy."

  "Thank you," she whispered. The pain seemed less, but she felt terribly sad. The heir to the earldom was no more. Boy would be so upset.

  Lloyd said: "Mrs. Mortimer says it's quite common, and most women suffer one or two miscarriages between pregnancies. There's no danger, provided the bleeding isn't copious."

  "What if it gets worse?"

  "Then I must drive you to Merthyr Hospital. But going ten miles in an army lorry would be quite bad for you, so it's to be avoided unless your life is in danger."

  She was not frightened anymore. "I'm so glad you were here."

  "May I make a suggestion?"

  "Of course."

  "Do you think you can walk a few steps?"

  "I don't know."

  "Let me run you a bath. If you can manage it, you'll feel so much better when you're clean."

  "Yes."

  "Then perhaps you can improvise a bandage of some kind."

  "Yes."

  He returned to the bathroom, and she heard water running. She sat upright. She felt dizzy, and rested for a minute, then her head cleared. She swung her feet to the floor. She was sitting in congealing blood, and felt disgusted with herself.

  The taps were turned off. He came back in and took her arm. "If you feel faint, just tell me," he said. "I won't let you fall." He was surprisingly strong, and half-carried her as he walked her into the bathroom. At some point her ripped underwear fell to the floor. She stood beside the bath and let him undo the buttons at the back of her dress. "Can you manage the rest?" he said.

  She nodded, and he went out.

  Leaning on the linen basket, she took off her clothes slowly, leaving them on the floor in a bloodstained heap. Gingerly, she got into the bath. The water was just hot enough. The pain eased as she lay back and relaxed. She felt overwhelmed with gratitude to Lloyd. He was so kind that it made her want to cry.

  After a few minutes, the door opened a crack and his hand appeared holding some clothes. "A nightdress, and so on," he said. He placed them on top of the linen basket and closed the door.

  When the water began to cool she stood up. She felt dizzy again, but only for a moment. She dried herself with a towel, then put on the nightdress and underwear he had brought. She placed a hand towel inside her panties to soak up the blood that continued to seep.

  When she returned to the bedroom, her bed was made up with clean sheets and blankets. She climbed in and sat upright, pulling the covers to her neck.

  He came in from the sitting room. "You must be feeling better," he said. "You look embarrassed."

  "Embarrassed isn't the word," she said. "Mortified, perhaps, though even that seems understated." The truth was not so simple. She winced when she thought of how he had seen her--but, on the other hand, he had not seemed disgusted.

  He went into the bathroom and picked up her discarded clothes. Apparently he was not squeamish about menstrual blood.

  She said: "Where have you put the sheets?"

  "I found a big sink in the flower room. I left them to soak in cold water. I'll do the same with your clothes, shall I?"

  She nodded.

  He disappeared again. Where had he learned to be so competent and self-sufficient? In the Spanish Civil War, she supposed.

  She heard him moving around the kitchen. He reappeared with two cups of tea. "You probably hate this stuff, but it will make you feel better." She took the tea. He showed her two white pills in the palm of his hand. "Aspirin? May ease the stomach cramps a bit."

  She took them and swallowed them with hot tea. He had always struck her as being mature beyond his years. She remembered how confidently he had gone off to find the drunken Boy at the Gaiety Theatre. "You've always been like this," she said. "A real grown-up, when the rest of us were just pretending."

  She finished the tea and felt sleepy. He took the cups away. "I may just close my eyes for a moment," she said. "Will you stay here, if I go to sleep?"

  "I'll stay as long as you like," he said. Then he said something else, but his voice seemed to fade away, and she slept.

  iii

  After that Lloyd began to spend his evenings in the little housekeeper's flat.

  He looked forward to it all day.

  He would go downstairs a few minutes after eight, when dinner in the mess was over and Daisy's maid had left for the night. They would sit opposite one another in the two old armchairs. Lloyd would bring a book to study--there was always "homework," with tests in the morning--and Daisy would read a novel, but mostly they talked. They related what had happened during the day, discussed whatever they were reading, and told each other the story of their lives.

  He recounted his experiences at the Battle of Cable Street. "Standing there in a peaceful crowd, we were charged by mounted policemen screaming about dirty Jews," he told her. "They beat us with their truncheons and pushed us through the plate-glass windows."

  She had been quarantined with the Fascists in Tower Gardens, and had seen none of the fighting. "That wasn't the way it was reported," she said. She had believed the newspapers that said it had been a street riot organized by hooligans.

  Lloyd was not surprised. "My mother watched the newsreel at the Aldgate Essoldo a week later," he recalled. "That plummy-voiced commentator said: 'From impartial observers the police received nothing but praise.' Mam said the entire audience burst out laughing."

  Daisy was shocked by his skepticism about the news. He told her that most British papers had suppressed stories of atrocities by Franco's army in Spain, and exaggerated any report of bad behavior by government forces. She admitted she had swallowed Earl Fitzherbert's view that the rebels were high-minded Christians liberating Spain from the threat of Communism. She knew nothing of mass executions, rape, and looting by Franco's men.

  It seemed never to have occurred to her that newspapers owned by capitalists might play down news that reflected badly on the Conservative government, the military, or businessmen, and would seize upon any incident of bad behavior by trade unionists or left-wing parties.

  Lloyd and Daisy talked about the war. There was action at last. British and French troops had landed in Norway, and were contending for control with the Germans who had done the sam
e. The newspapers could not quite conceal the fact that it was going badly for the Allies.

  Her attitude to him had changed. She no longer flirted. She was always pleased to see him, and complained if he was late arriving in the evening, and she teased him sometimes, but she was never coquettish. She told him how disappointed everyone was about the baby she had lost: Boy, Fitz, Bea, her mother in Buffalo, even her father, Lev. She could not shake the irrational feeling that she had done something shameful, and she asked if he thought that was foolish. He did not. Nothing she did was foolish to him.

  Their conversation was personal but they kept their distance from one another physically. He would not exploit the extraordinary intimacy of the night she miscarried. Of course the scene would live in his heart forever. Wiping the blood from her thighs and her belly had not been sexy--not in the least--but it had been unbearably tender. However, it had been a medical emergency, and it did not give him permission to take liberties later. He was so afraid of giving the wrong impression about this that he was careful never to touch her.

  At ten o'clock she would make them cocoa, which he loved and she said she liked, though he wondered if she was just being nice. Then he would say good night and go upstairs to his attic bedroom.

  They were like old friends. It was not what he wanted, but she was a married woman, and this was the best he was going to get.

  He tended to forget Daisy's status. He was startled, one evening, when she announced that she was going to pay a visit to the earl's retired butler, Peel, who was living in a cottage just outside the grounds. "He's eighty!" she told Lloyd. "I'm sure Fitz has forgotten all about him. I should check on him."

  Lloyd raised his eyebrows in surprise, and she added: "I need to make sure he's all right. It's my duty as a member of the Fitzherbert clan. Taking care of your old retainers is an obligation of wealthy families--didn't you know that?"

  "It had slipped my mind."

  "Will you come with me?"

  "Of course."

  The next day was a Sunday, and they went in the morning, when Lloyd had no lectures. They were both shocked by the state of the little house. The paint was flaking, the wallpaper was peeling, and the curtains were gray with coal dust. The only decoration was a row of photographs cut from magazines and tacked to the wall: the king and queen, Fitz and Bea, and other assorted members of the nobility. The place had not been properly cleaned for years, and there was a smell of urine and ash and decay. But Lloyd guessed it was not unusual for an old man on a small pension.