by Anne Baker
Rex came round as usual and Chloe was surprised to find him discussing everything from the service to the flowers with Mum and Aunt Goldie. The earliest date they could get for the funeral was seven days hence. It was to be at half past eleven in the morning, and Mum decided to follow it with a light buffet lunch at her house for the mourners.
‘What about Auntie Joan? Have you told her?’ Chloe asked. ‘She’ll be upset, Gran was her aunt.’
‘Oh heavens, no! How could I forget Joan?’ Helen rushed to the phone.
‘Tell her about me too,’ Chloe called after her. She wanted them to know of her problem before they saw her.
Mum was on the phone for ages. Chloe heard her say her name several times and she knew they were discussing her. But when they came round later that day she was swept up into comforting hugs.
‘You mustn’t worry about it love,’ Auntie Joan told her. Chloe thought they were particularly kind to her. It was Auntie Joan who took over organising the funeral lunch.
Chloe rang Adam later that day. ‘I’m missing you,’ he told her. ‘When are you coming back?’
She told him about the funeral arrangements and suggested he came. ‘You could take me back with you after the lunch. I’ll have everything packed ready.’
‘I don’t like funerals,’ he said. ‘They give me the creeps. Tell your mother I’m sorry but I have to go to an auction on that day. An important one I can’t afford to miss.’
‘Oh!’
‘She won’t care whether I’m there or not.’
‘I care.’ Chloe thought he should come. ‘You must if you’re ever to be considered one of the family.’
He said, ‘You could catch the train back and I’ll meet you at the station.’
To Chloe, the days of waiting seemed interminable. Aunt Goldie came to stay with them in the third bedroom, but she complained that it was poky and the bed uncomfortable. Rex encouraged Chloe to take her mother out for walks and on trips to the shops to buy their daily provisions. They cooked together, and Rex usually joined them for their evening meal.
Adam rang her every day. ‘I do love you and wish you were here,’ he told her. ‘It’s lonely without you.’
But on the day before the funeral he said, ‘If you come back tomorrow afternoon, I won’t be able to meet your train, because the sale I told you about is in Edinburgh.’
‘I thought that was just an excuse for you to avoid the funeral.’
‘Of course not.’ He sounded disconcerted. ‘The sale is at Hampton’s in Edinburgh, I told you that.’
‘I don’t remember.’
‘Why don’t you stay over till the next morning? There’s a train you could catch that gets in about twelve. I could meet you and take you to lunch in Manchester before we go home. That would be nice, wouldn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘All right, that’s what I’ll do.’
When the day of the funeral came, it was pleasantly warm and sunny. Rex drove them to the church in Mum’s car and was very attentive to them all. Gran had been in her eighty-sixth year and had outlived or lost touch with most of the friends she’d had, but she and Aunt Goldie had been regular churchgoers all their lives, so the church was not empty, as many of the congregation attended the ceremony.
As Helen’s house was some distance from the church, only the vicar and two or three of the congregation came for refreshments, and they didn’t stay long. That left the family party, which included Auntie Joan and Uncle Walter. Soon Mum and Rex were showing them round the lovely garden. Chloe made afternoon tea in the summerhouse for those who stayed on, and spent quite a long time talking to Auntie Joan.
Helen was relieved when she could take Marigold home and have the funeral over. She missed Chloe when she went back to Manchester, but was pleased she was maintaining contact with her. The following week, Chloe rang several times to ask how she was, and then invited her to come for afternoon tea and see where she was living.
‘I’d love to,’ Helen said. ‘How do I find you?’
‘I could draw a street map and post it to you. Or you could come by train and Adam will pick you up from the station.’
‘Easier to drive, provided I can find you.’
‘What about Rex? He’s almost one of the family, isn’t he? Would he like to come too? Then you’d have him to map-read.’
‘Yes, I’ll ask him.’
Helen found Rex was quite keen. ‘I’d like to see where Chloe’s living now, and it would be a day out for us.’
After much deliberation, they decided on a Wednesday afternoon. ‘Come here around half twelve,’ Helen told him. ‘I’ll make us a light lunch, salad or something, and we’ll get on our way as soon as we can.’
They had no difficulty finding the house, and Helen was impressed when they drew up outside. It was a stately Georgian-style building of smoke-blackened stone, with the sun glinting on the tall windows.
‘Is it a flat they have here?’ Rex asked.
‘Chloe said it was a house.’ It was a substantial one.
She’d been watching for them and came out to greet them. She seemed more relaxed and happier now she’d made her move.
The hall took Helen’s breath away. It was vast, with white walls and a chandelier; the furniture was of the period. Chloe showed them round. It was all beautifully and expensively furnished. The kitchen and bathrooms were ultra-modern and there was central heating, though now it was summer it had been switched off. The sitting room was sumptuous.
‘Adam says he had to have modern sofas and easy chairs,’ Chloe told them. ‘Antique soft furnishings are hard to find and they aren’t very comfortable.’
‘It’s luxurious,’ Helen said. ‘Is it his family home?’
‘No, he was brought up in Bournemouth and his mother still lives there. She’s a widow now.’
‘So Adam lived here alone before you came?’ Rex asked.
‘Yes.’
‘This really impresses me, when I think of my own comfortless two-bedroom flat. He could be an interior designer, he has very good taste.’
‘Antiques are an obsession with him.’ Chloe smiled. ‘They’re his hobby as well as his means of earning a living.’
‘He’s a perfectionist,’ Rex said.
‘It’s all lovely.’ Helen had not thought Chloe would improve her living standard by moving in with Adam, but she had to accept that she had.
Chloe chatted away about her coming baby and showed them the Georgian mahogany cot Adam had found and the layette she was putting together. Helen immediately offered to knit a matinee jacket for the baby.
It pleased her very much that Chloe was showing nothing of Marigold’s attitude of shame. Rather she seemed to be looking forward to the birth and to be content with her lot.
She’d made them a chocolate cake and little savoury sandwiches of prawns and cucumber. She served the tea in a Georgian silver tea service on a silver tray and they used exquisite china.
Adam returned and greeted Chloe in a way that showed how much in love with her he was. He too seemed more relaxed now that their position was accepted by Chloe’s family. He chatted pleasantly about his day and offered them sherry.
On the way home, Helen said, ‘I didn’t realise Adam had money.’
Rex sighed. ‘We needn’t worry about Chloe after all. She’ll be all right with him.’
‘All they need to do is get married,’ Helen said.
CHAPTER EIGHT
HELEN FELT SHE COULDN’T neglect Marigold now she was alone, and called round to see her. It was almost lunchtime but Marigold was just lighting her living room fire. She looked as though she’d neither washed nor combed her hair this morning.
‘I had a wakeful night,’ she said, ‘and then I fell into a deep sleep when it was time to get up.’
‘Have you had any breakfast?’
‘All I want is a cup of tea.’
Helen went to the kitchen to put the kettle on. She knew Marigold must be feeling her loss becaus
e her life had always been so tied up with Gran’s. She moved the remains of her last three meals from the table and started washing the dishes. It shocked her to see Marigold neglecting herself.
‘Gran was old, Marigold,’ she said. ‘It’s not as though her life was cut short by illness. She was old and often in pain. She probably didn’t want to live longer.’
‘You don’t understand.’ Marigold’s face showed signs of long-dried tears.
‘We all have to go in the end,’ Helen added.
‘I know that.’ She sounded impatient. ‘What I don’t know is how I’m going to manage without her.’
Helen had given little thought to that. She felt her relationship with Marigold had been permanently distorted because she’d been brought up to believe that she was her older sister. Even now, that was how she saw her.
Certainly she thought Marigold had had a sad life. Having an illegitimate daughter when she was sixteen had never been spoken about, but had provided all sorts of undercurrents in the family. Helen had been unable to understand this until she was fully adult. While Gran had had her health, she’d been a real matriarch and made all their decisions for them. Marigold had been her subservient daughter, and had never had another man in her life.
Last year, when she’d turned sixty, she’d retired from her job as a sewing machine operator and her time had been filled looking after her ailing mother. Now suddenly her days were empty. She could go to church on Sundays and chat to the vicar and others in the congregation, but she had no real friends.
Helen made her some tea and toast, poured a cup for herself and led the way back to the fire, which was now drawing up. She felt tea and sympathy would fill the bill.
‘I’ve nothing but my old age pension to live on,’ Marigold told her. ‘Mother worked in the council offices for most of her life and she earned a pension from them, so with that and both our old age pensions, we survived.’
‘You lived in modest comfort,’ Helen corrected. ‘Gran said you had all you needed.’
‘Yes, but her pensions have died with her.’ Marigold made it sound as though she’d been singled out to suffer like this.
Helen looked round the shabby room. She’d been brought up in this house and nothing had changed in all the years. She’d thought it draughty and comfortless then. It was a Victorian bay-windowed terrace house, one of the many thousands in the outer districts of Liverpool.
‘They keep putting the rent up,’ Marigold complained. ‘It’s too much, I can’t afford it.’
‘Won’t social security help?’
‘I don’t want to live on social security.’ She was indignant. ‘It’s not what our family do.’
‘There’s no harm in claiming help with your rent if you need it,’ Helen said sharply. ‘That’s false pride in this day and age.’ She could sense what was coming.
‘You’ve had a much better life than I have, Helen.’ Marigold sounded envious.
‘That was due to John’s greater earning power.’ Helen didn’t find it easy to forgive their hostility towards him.
Marigold pulled herself up on the sofa cushions. ‘Wouldn’t it be a good idea if I came to live with you?’
Helen froze. It was the last thing she wanted. If Marigold was always in the house, Rex wouldn’t come. Her presence would be off-putting even if he did. She very much missed having Chloe about the house, but it did mean that if she invited Rex to stay the night, nobody else need know. She wanted to go on having her house to herself.
‘We’d be company for each other, wouldn’t we?’ Marigold said. ‘You’ll be lonely too, now Chloe has left you.’
Helen went home feeling depressed. She felt she’d been pummelled by the events of recent weeks, and now it seemed she had a new problem. She’d given little thought to how Marigold would manage on her own.
Today had promised to be a pleasant one. Rex had said he’d come in the late afternoon and spend an hour or so working in her garden.
‘I’ll get some steak and make dinner for us,’ she’d told him, and then, feeling greatly daring, she’d added, ‘And not just dinner, bring your overnight bag.’
Rex had given her his shy smile, kissed her cheek and said, ‘Thank you.’
Helen felt her love for him was growing. She’d relied on him and he’d provided the support she’d needed for years. But everything had changed the night Chloe had told them she was pregnant and left with Adam. Helen felt she’d be less than honest if she didn’t admit to herself that she’d encouraged Rex into her bed. He was a diffident man and would never push himself on anybody, but since then, he’d been showing her real love.
This deepened relationship was still so new to them that they were both a bit shy of talking about it. He’d told her that it had brought a new dimension to his life. Helen wanted it to develop naturally. She wanted him to say the words ‘I love you’. Even more, she wanted him to suggest marriage. She felt sure that in time he would.
She set about preparing their evening meal, but when she looked up, she saw him through the kitchen window trundling a wheelbarrow across the grass. She went running out after him. ‘Rex!’
He turned, smiling, and opened his arms to her. She felt them tighten round her in a hug and his lips came down on hers. She stifled a sob.
‘I’m glad you’re here.’ Marigold’s difficulties were clouding everything for her.
He held her away from him. ‘What’s the matter? Has something happened?’
‘It’s Marigold,’ she told him. ‘She wants to come and live here with me.’
Rex was smiling at her, not taking her seriously. ‘She can’t. It would be too embarrassing.’
‘I know.’ Helen couldn’t help a wail of distress. ‘I feel awful about it. And if I let her move into Chloe’s bedroom, where will Chloe sleep when she comes to stay?’
‘But you have three bedrooms, haven’t you?’
‘The third one is very small. I do have a single bed there, but Marigold complained it was cramped when she slept there recently, and I tend to use it as a box room and dump things there.’
‘Why does she want to come here when she has a place of her own?’
‘She says she can’t afford it. She reckons that without her mother, she’s living on the edge of poverty.’
‘Is she?’
‘She has only her old age pension and she’s too proud to ask social services for help with her rent. I’m afraid she’ll not be satisfied until she’s in Chloe’s room. But how can I have you in my bed if she’s in the next room? She’d be angry and never stop telling me it was wrong.’
‘She’d probably blame me,’ Rex said. ‘She’d think I’d talked you into it.’
‘I don’t want us to stop.’ Helen smiled at him.
‘Neither do I.’
‘I think we’re entitled to our pleasures, don’t you? We aren’t hurting anybody, and if we enjoy it, why shouldn’t we?’
‘No reason at all.’ Rex gave her another hug.
‘Oh dear, what am I going to tell Marigold?’
‘Helen love, only you can decide that.’
‘I know,’ she sighed. ‘But what if she won’t take no for an answer?’
‘We must find a way to keep her in her own home. I could make her an allowance.’
‘No way, I can’t let you do that. I’m pretty sure social security will pay her rent. She was quite uppity when I told her that, but I’m going to get the forms she’ll need to apply, and offer to help her fill them in.’
Rex gave her another hug. ‘That does make us look a little selfish, doesn’t it?’
‘All her life Gran coddled her, did everything for her. It would have been better if she’d made her stand on her own feet.’
He smiled. ‘You can’t say that. These last few years, Marigold has had to look after her mother, had to do almost everything for her. Anyway, it makes you sound very hard-hearted.’
‘That’s what I am.’
‘No, Helen, you’re not.’
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Later that May evening, Helen was dishing up the sherry trifle she’d made for dessert when the phone rang. ‘Who can that be?’ she said as she went to answer it. She recognised Adam’s voice immediately.
‘I took Chloe to hospital at two o’clock and she had a baby girl at six this evening.’ He sounded ecstatic.
‘A girl!’
‘She weighed seven pounds and we’re going to call her Lucy.’
‘That’s wonderful! How’s Chloe?’
‘She’s fine. They both are. An easy birth, so they say, no problems.’
‘Excellent, I can’t wait to see the baby.’
‘They’ll be home in a few days. I’ll let you know.’
Helen rushed back to tell Rex. A wide smile lit up his face. ‘I’m glad Chloe’s well. A baby girl, eh? What time is visiting? We could run up to the hospital to see them both.’
Helen dished out two large helpings of trifle. ‘Adam more or less put me off doing that. He said they’d be home in a few days.’
Chloe had thought that once Helen had accepted her pregnancy and she was living with Adam, her troubles would be over. But Adam liked to be out and about, while Chloe needed a quieter life.
She’d been dreading the birth, and though it wasn’t as bad as she’d expected, she was very glad to have that and the whole business of pregnancy behind her. Hospital had not been much to her taste either, though Lucy had been the most beautiful baby on the ward. To hold her in her arms almost made it seem worth while.
She was pleased when the time came for her to return to the comfort and elegance of Adam’s home. They’d both enjoyed introducing Lucy to the new nursery they’d fitted out for her in the bedroom next to their own.
Chloe had thought that having a child would bring her and Adam closer, but nothing could have been further from the truth. A baby did not fit into Adam’s lifestyle. They could not go out together on the spur of the moment; it needed planning, and they were too far away from Helen to have a babysitter on call. Chloe had neither the time nor the energy to serve and prepare fancy meals for when Adam came home, and the smart house lost some of its sparkle.