by Angela Huth
‘But he’s a good colour, isn’t he?’
The nurse glanced at her. ‘He is,’ she said.
Prue put two fingers to her lips, eased her hand into the incubator. With a butterfly touch she transferred the kiss to the baby’s forehead. ‘Night, little one,’ she said, and went back to bed.
Each morning in hospital Prue woke very early. The thinness of the ugly curtains meant the dawn sky turned the blue walls to a cloudy silver before the arrival of denser November daylight. On the morning she was to go home – Barry had been in a dither about whether to fetch her in the Daimler or the Humber – Prue looked at her clock and saw it was four thirty. She shut her eyes, but knew there was no hope of further sleep.
She was woken by someone opening the door. It was the nurse who had rushed to help when Prue arrived. She crept in.
Prue sat up. Alert. ‘So?’ she said. ‘You on night duty?’
The nurse nodded and sat on the bed. A small pulse twitched under one eye. ‘I wanted to be the one to tell you,’ she said. ‘Your son passed away in the night.’
Prue wished she could have said ‘died’. ‘Oh? Why?’ Her own voice was so tight she thought it might snap.
‘These premature babies . . . it’s always touch and go. His lungs – in Alfred it was his lungs. Under-developed. There’s not much to be done when that’s the case. Some hang on, and the lungs gradually mature. Others . . . don’t make it.’
‘No.’ Prue sighed. There was a long silence.
‘Are you all right?’ the nurse asked. ‘Is there anything I can get you?’ Prue shook her head. ‘I’m so sorry. So very sorry. But still, you’re very young. Plenty of chance for . . .’
Prue gave her an incredulous look. The nurse tried to take her hand, but she snatched it away.
‘You musn’t try to be brave,’ she went on. ‘Cry, scream, yell, let it all out. Don’t bottle it up. Everyone understands.’
Prue stretched her dry mouth into an approximate smile. ‘I’m not bottling anything up,’ she snapped. ‘I’m fine. My son was never real. Barry was never real. None of it. None of it’s been real. So I’m fine. On, on . . . I’ll just get on with the unreal life till one day, perhaps . . .’
‘Of course.’ The nurse was frowning.
‘It must be very difficult, your job,’ Prue’s voice was unusually high, but steady. ‘I mean, breaking the news to parents that their baby has died.’
‘It’s not easy.’
‘No.’ Prue slid further down into the bed. ‘Can’t be. Could someone ring my husband at six? He’s always awake by then.’
‘Of course.’
At last the nurse stood up. Automatically she tweaked the bedclothes, ran a hand over a crumpled area of blanket.
‘Thank you for all your help when I arrived,’ Prue said. Her longing to be left alone pulsed through her.
‘You’d had a bad time. You were very courageous. Now, if you want anything just ring the bell.’
‘Thanks.’
At last the nurse and all her kindness were gone.
Barry arrived just after seven. His grey unshaven cheeks sagged. His tie was askew. In one hand he held his cigar case. He stood at the end of the bed. ‘Sweetheart,’ he said, ‘I’ve brought the Daimler.’
‘Right.’
‘I’ve come to take you home.’
‘I know.’
‘This is the worst day of my life. My son. Alfred. Come and gone. Just like that. Two days on earth. Two days.’ He held up two shaking fingers.
Prue nodded.
Barry gripped the iron bed end with his free hand. ‘I need to see him, last time. Then we’ll go. Are you coming with me?’
Prue shook her head.
‘Don’t you want to say goodbye?’
‘No. I want to remember him alive.’
‘Very well.’ Barry shuffled out of the room. Prue got out of bed. Somehow there was a pile of clean clothes on the chair. She put them on, imagining Barry staring at his dead son.
Some time later he returned. He did not seem to know what to do next. Prue took his arm. ‘Where’s the car?’ she asked.
They moved in awkward tandem down long, chipped passages of gloomy beige, rank with the smell of disinfectant and tinned soup. At last, in wonderfully cold air, they came to the parked car. Barry’s trauma was momentarily obliterated by surprise. ‘I don’t understand,’ he said. ‘It’s the Humber . . . I thought I’d brought the Daimler.’
‘Never mind. Get in – go on. Let’s go home.’ Prue opened the door for her bemused husband and they began the journey through the city. Barry, who knew the streets so well, drove like a man who had lost his way.
Chapter 8
After the funeral Barry began to leave the house even earlier than usual each morning, and came back only in time for one cigar before supper. Eating was now always in near silence. Once Prue said, ‘I do wish the baby’s coffin hadn’t looked so like a shoebox,’ and Barry did not reply. Another time it was he who broke the silence, with the news that he was going to move into a different bedroom.
‘Now it’s all over, sweetheart, there’s no point in trying any more. I know you don’t like it. So I won’t bother you again.’ He gave her an expectant look, perhaps hoping she would disagree and ask him to stay.
She nodded. ‘Very well,’ she said.
She wrote a long letter of apology and explanation to Steve Gander and said she would not be going back to the job. She had neither the heart nor the energy to spend further time on a non-job, and she never wanted to see a mob of pigs again. She telephoned Ag and Stella, both of whom asked her to come and stay. She said she would, once she had made sure Barry was resettled. On several occasions she had heard terrible sobs coming from the small room he called his office. Previously he had scarcely ever used it. Now he often shut himself in there after supper to deal with his devastation undisturbed.
For some reason that was not clear to her, she was nervous of telling Johnny. But one morning he appeared at her chicken run with a basket of eggs he had gathered but failed to deliver. ‘I heard,’ he said. ‘Barry rang and told me when you were in hospital. Asked me to look after your birds. Then he rang me again once you were home.’
‘Really?’ Prue frowned at this unexpected news.
‘I’m so sorry.’ Johnny turned away from her, fiddled with the eggs.
‘Well. It happens.’ Prue shrugged.
Johnny turned back to her, his face clenched. A pulse was wildly beating in his cheek. ‘Barry said the boy – Alfred, he said – looked just like him, except for the colour of his hair.’ There was a long pause.
‘He did think that, yes.’ Prue moved a little away from him, stared at the grovelling birds through the wire netting. ‘Thing is, Johnny, I’m going to go away for a while. Both Stella and Ag have asked me to stay, have a break. After that, I don’t know . . . I haven’t made any plans but I think I might. . .’
‘Of course I’ll look after the hens. You know I enjoy it.’
Prue suddenly smiled at him. ‘What I’d really like is for you to have them. I want to give them to you.’
‘I don’t know about that.’ Johnny looked touched, but uncertain.
‘Please. You’ve done so much for me.’ She stopped, feeling the break in her voice. ‘The least I can do is give you my chickens.’
‘Well, if you’re sure.’ Johnny ruffled his hair, reflecting. ‘I won’t move them in with mine till I’ve extended the run. If it’s OK with you I’ll keep them here for a while.’
‘That’s absolutely fine.’
‘And thank you.’ He moved over to Prue, touched her cheek with the back of his hand. ‘You look pale. I’m glad you’re going away. Let me know as soon as you’re back and we’ll go off for the day in the Sunbeam. Bakewell, perhaps. Take care of yourself.’
For the first time in weeks he gave her a light kiss on the cheek, then walked quickly away, the basket of eggs over his arm, still undelivered.
That evening, si
tting by the gas fire in a haze of cigar smoke, Barry looked particularly wretched. He had not touched the sliver of cod at supper, or even his favourite junket. Prue sat on the other side of the fire, worried. She wondered how and when this period of his abject misery would end.
Barry stubbed out his barely smoked cigar, stood up. ‘I’ve things so crushing on my mind, sweetheart, that I have to tell you. I’m sorry . . . but I have to.’ He flapped his arms up and down against his sides, reminding Prue so strongly of an anxious penguin that she felt a surge of untoward laughter. She could see that, without a cigar between his fingers, he felt at a loss, yet for her sake he resisted lighting another.
‘What I have to tell you is this. I’ve made a big mistake. You’ve made a big mistake. We, together, have made a big mistake. We married.’ He spoke slowly and quietly. He sighed, long and deep. Then he began to waddle about the room, in and out of the chairs and tables. Prue had to keep turning her head to follow his random progress.
‘Thing is, sweetheart, and perhaps I wasn’t so sure of this then as I am now, I married you without care or real thought of proper love. I married you for the wrong reasons. And it wasn’t long before I could see you married me for the wrong reasons, too. You wanted security, a roof over your head, a child, company, above all the safety of money. No?’ He waited for Prue to nod very slightly. ‘I wanted a wife. I most definitely wanted a wife. I found you by chance, waiting at a bus stop one rainy night. Chance meetings so often end in mistakes, don’t they? They bring a special kind of hope, a feeling that Fate itself has made them happen. But marriage, like anything else, should be researched before entering. Rather like buying a new car . . .’ His sad mouth rose briefly into a smile. ‘And we didn’t research each other, did we? We just plunged in, hoping but not convincing even ourselves, didn’t we? I’d found this very pretty land girl with lots of life and spark and spirit. But very soon here at The Larches the gaiety began to go out of you, even when you got the chickens and that daft job . . . I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to ask you what to do. Money’s only a temporary balm, I’ve always believed. I knew the presents would soon lose their novelty and I felt I was losing my way. And then came the news of the baby – happiest day of my life.’
He stopped by the fireplace, put a hand on it, moved it over the grain of the stone. ‘But that wasn’t to be, was it? Alfred came and went so fast it was scarcely believable. Worst time of my life – but probably the same for you, too, sweetheart.’ Their eyes met but Prue made no sign of acknowledgement.
Barry launched himself back across the room, arms flapping more strongly, the sound of flesh against baggy clothes ruffling the quiet. He reached a large mirror on the wall, glanced at it. Prue was able to see his reflection: a tightening in his face muscles as he braced himself to go on.
‘Don’t suppose I’ve ever spoken for so long outside a board meeting in my whole life . . . Anyway, now I’ve started, I must go on. There’s another confession I have to make.’ Clumsily he spun round to face Prue. ‘No man could hope for a prettier, sweeter girl,’ he said, ‘but the fact is . . . I’m not interested in smooth youth. What appeals to me – and I understand if you think this is peculiar, or even perverted – is the older woman. The well-worn skin, the friendly wrinkles, the comforting sense of someone who has seen much more of life . . . I don’t know. I don’t understand it myself. But I feel at a loss with the young. I’m not sure how to behave. I’m sure if ever young girls deigned to show an interest in me, it would be only for my money. You, sweetheart, were very interested in money, but you put up a good show of being kind, easy. I appreciate that. But I know I’m not the husband for you, any more than you’re the wife for me.’
Prue looked down at her clasped hands. Barry gave a small laugh.
‘When I picked you up that night, you know what? I looked at your mother, who jumped quickly in beside me, you remember, and I thought, Here’s an attractive older woman. Good deal older than me, she must be. I thought a lot about what to do before I sent those flowers. But I convinced myself the answer was to marry you, the young one, have children. Win you over, best as I could. Very quickly I knew I’d snared you, and that you were strong enough to say no if you didn’t want me. But you didn’t do that. You went along with it. We both went along with the mistake.’
With an air of exhaustion Barry took to his chair again and at last allowed himself to light a new cigar. Once he had drawn on it, he exhaled deeply. He had managed his long, pent-up speech without breaking down, and that had brought relief and strength.
‘There’s just one more confession, sweetheart, though I suppose by now you’ve worked it out. The Bertha business. I didn’t tell you at the time, but I suppose it’s my funny liking of older women, particularly indigent older women, that led me into all that foolish nonsense. I’ll never forget how understanding you were about all that.’
Prue, who did not like to ask the meaning of ‘indigent’, nodded. ‘I didn’t mind,’ she said.
‘I know you didn’t. And the reason you didn’t was because you were never in love with me.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘So, sweetheart – and this is almost over, I promise – let me tell you my plan. When a mistake is made the best thing is to find a remedy as soon as possible. Now there’s no Alfred, there isn’t anything to keep us together. It wouldn’t matter how much we tried, we’d never have more in common. Pulling in different directions would lead to terrible resentment, unhappiness. So what I thought was this: we should go our separate ways.’
Prue’s eyebrows flicked up, then down. ‘How could I—’
‘You’d have nothing in the world to worry about. When you’ve made up your mind where you’d like to go, what you’d like to do, I will take care of everything. Buy you a house, a flat, whatever you want. Give you an allowance for the rest of your life – give you whatever you need. You’ll always be able to count on me, always.’ He stopped, his voice breaking. ‘I think we should set sail towards the next era as soon as possible.’
Prue nodded, unable to speak. This was a Barry she had never known existed, and for whom she had never thought of looking. Life unprotected by the claustrophobia of The Larches was an alarming prospect. But Barry was right: it was what she wanted, and he was keen to replace her with some wrinkled old woman. ‘I don’t know what to think.’
Barry moved over to the window. His back to the light, his expression was unclear. ‘You’ve been so brave about Alfred,’ he said quietly. ‘Much stronger than me. No weeping. No collapsing. And yet you must be feeling . . .?
Prue shrugged. ‘Oh, I’ve been feeling. What mother wouldn’t, when her baby dies? But I don’t see there’s any point in trying to describe those feelings. I couldn’t find the right words. I could say I’m traumatized, devastated, but what would that mean to anyone? It wouldn’t give a picture of what’s going on in my heart and of course’ – she gave a faint smile – ‘it isn’t really my heart that’s hurting, is it? It’s just battering away, while it’s my stomach, my innards, that are churning about. . . There, you see. No good. Can’t do it. Difficult feelings need a poet, like Johnny, to explain. I’m sorry. But I tell you this.’ She paused, made an effort to control her voice. ‘I’ll never forget Alfred. I don’t suppose a day will go by when I don’t think of him.’
Barry, a fist damming the tear that came from one eye, went back to his favourite chair. ‘You’re a strong girl, Prue,’ he said at last. ‘God knows, I wish things hadn’t turned out like this. But you must go away now, to your friends. Make plans. Take their advice, sweetheart. Come back and tell me what to do.’
Prue felt herself hurrying to his side. She knelt down, put her head on one of his knees. ‘You’re so generous,’ she said. ‘I’d never have guessed you could be so wise.’ She felt his fingers weaving through the strands of her hair.
‘There you go, then,’ he said. ‘I’ve surprised you. I’ve surprised myself.’ He managed a smile. ‘Time for bed. Off
you go.’
‘Thank you for everything, really.’ From the door Prue blew him a kiss. But Barry’s eyes were shut against more threatening tears. A tremulous cigar made its way towards his mouth.
Prue’s first visit was to Ag and Desmond. As soon as she arrived she observed that they moved very slowly, which perhaps accounted for the peaceful air of their cottage. They filtered round the huge kitchen table one after the other: Ag collected plates to be washed, Desmond collected knives and forks that had not been used. Ag sauntered to the sink at the window, Desmond moved as if on wheels to the drawer in the dresser. Within a couple of days of staying in their cottage Prue found herself in awe of their unspoken marital harmony. They did not seem to need to communicate about mundane matters: one simply observed the other and got down to whatever was the next job that needed to be done. This, she thought, was a proper marriage.
Ag was almost as tall as Desmond. Both of them, standing upright, came within an inch or two of the low ceiling. Ag had lost none of her somewhat fierce beauty – which, when they had first met, had intimidated Prue. Her own flirtatious instinct did not exist in Ag’s being. She was serious – how they had teased her for her brains – and strong and kind. And patient. She’d waited so long for Desmond. She’d almost given up hope of ever seeing him again when they had met by chance in the National Gallery. Desmond himself, Prue reckoned, with her critical eye for looks, was almost good-looking, but not quite. His nose was lopsided and his eyebrows too wild. But when he smiled his whole body reverberated with pleasure, and the person on whom he smiled felt the strength of that delight.
When Ag and Desmond had re-met after the long absence, Ag had just finished her degree in law and was planning to practise at the Bar. But given the choice of working in London or a country life in Devon, there was no hesitation in her decision. They had found a run-down cottage on the edge of a village not far from Exeter: with it came an apple orchard and some decaying milking sheds. Within weeks of moving in they had bought two Jersey cows and a dozen hens, and Ag was attending to the hedges even before she had begun on the interior of the cottage. Desmond worked for a firm of long-established solicitors in Exeter. The plan, when they had managed to save some money, was to buy more land, extend the cottage, find a herd of Hereford cattle and settle down to serious farming.