Aunt Letitia

by Dominic Luke

  ‘This one’s chasing us!’ Clive burst out, as if he couldn’t stay quiet a moment longer. There was fear in his voice. He would have liked, Letitia felt, to run for cover as fast as his legs would carry him; but he went on pushing the chair with a dogged persistence that came from experience – from the neurotic’s dour battle with the daily grind.

  He reminds me of Jocelyn, thought Letitia suddenly. It seemed obvious, hearing his voice but not being able to see him as he pushed her. They were alike: not so much in looks or build, but Jocelyn, like Clive, had been a dogged character, quiet and sensitive underneath a veneer of boyish enthusiasm. Jocelyn had gritted his teeth and got on with life – until the day when it finally got too much for him.

  It seemed incongruous to be thinking of Jocelyn with the flying bomb droning and stuttering towards them, but she couldn’t blot out the growing feeling of dread. She was aware, though, that her fear was of a different timbre to Clive’s. The doodlebug would land where it landed; it would be pure chance whether it landed on her or not. But Clive had said, this one’s chasing us, as if he was being singled out, persecuted. Jocelyn had felt the same: that he’d been singled out; which in a sense he had. He’d been the son and heir, the chosen one: entrusted with the family name, the family honour, and all of their father’s hopes for the future. It had been a heavy burden for such slender shoulders; and in the end Jocelyn had proved as big a disappointment to the bishop as Angelica.

  They were close to home at last, just turning into the square. Looking up, Letitia caught a glimpse between rows of chimneys of the sinister winged tube passing them by: pure chance speeding it on its way to north-west London.

  ‘I’ve heard all about your adventure the other day,’ said Megan when she called round.

  ‘Clive told you, I suppose. He has told everyone. To me the risk was worth it, being outside, but he has been traumatized by the whole experience.’

  Letitia spoke lightly as she heaved herself out of her chair to put the kettle on, but in truth it was not just Clive who’d been affected. She had been given pause for thought. The blitz was a distant memory, the war in its last chapter, but death still lurked round every corner. She might have less time left than she imagined. And yet still this shilly-shallying went on between Hugh and Megan.

  ‘There is something particularly terrifying about the doodlebugs,’ said Megan. ‘Lots of people feel it. They are impersonal, inanimate, yet also somehow alive.’

  Letitia, making tea, was only giving half her attention to the conversation. She had prided herself on not interfering, she had always taken a step back when Hugh seemed settled, content. She had been at pains not to make a nuisance of herself, but there seemed to be a barrier between Hugh and Megan that they were incapable of surmounting themselves. Perhaps only a third party could remove it. One would need to tread carefully, however. One did not want to turn into a second Connie Lambton. Connie had never shied away from interfering: on the contrary, she had thought it her duty. Indefatigable, condescending, she had been something of a Victorian relic. There were no women like her now. Her species was extinct.

  They went into the area to drink their tea where they could get some fresh air and proper daylight. As she lowered herself onto the steps, Letitia was still thinking of Connie Lambton, remembering the particular inflexion in Connie’s voice when she said of Megan, Oh, that girl. I’m afraid, Letty, we were most dreadfully deceived in that whole business…. Poor Connie! How she had hated being bamboozled in that way! Little had she known that the villagers, resenting her high-handed and meddlesome ways – they had called her Lady Muck amongst themselves – had gone out of their way to thwart, block and scupper her plans at every opportunity whilst, to her face, curtsying and doffing their hats.

  ‘Why are you smiling?’ Megan, holding her mug in both hands, was standing looking at Letitia curiously.

  ‘I was thinking of Connie Lambton and how the village liked to hoodwink her. Your mother, of course, was eminently successful in that sphere.’ It was such a roundabout way of approaching the subject of Hugh, that no one would ever suspect her of meddling, thought Letitia.

  ‘You are referring to my visit to the Manor in 1902, I presume.’

  ‘I never knew your mother, of course, but I always admired her for pulling that off. She must have been a very resourceful woman.’

  ‘She was. She had learned to be.’

  ‘Tell me about her, my dear.’

  One had never known much about Megan. Perhaps she preferred it that way. She came from humble origins: that much was clear. One might have suspected her of being ashamed of that fact – deliberately obscuring it – but somehow one could not see her as the type of person who was embarrassed by poverty. At any rate, she seemed perfectly willing today to talk about her past – or some parts of her past, at least.

  Perhaps I have passed some sort of test, said Letitia to herself: perhaps after all these years she finally trusts me.

  Sitting on the steps whilst people passed on the pavement above, Letitia listened as Megan spoke about her mother. The early details of her mother’s life were unclear. She had come to England from County Mayo as a child or young woman with her parents, but was soon orphaned. She had married – it must have seemed the only option, said Megan – but the marriage had been unhappy and childless. Before long Bridget O’Connor had found herself abandoned and alone. She had lived on her wits. She had taught herself to be bold and enterprising. She had hustled, she had beguiled, she had foisted herself on prospective employers; she had inveigled them into promoting her and raising her wages; she had forged signatures where necessary and invented impeccable references; she had helped herself to whatever was going.

  ‘She was obviously a formidable woman,’ said Letitia.

  ‘Few dared pick a fight with her,’ said Megan. ‘Fewer picked a fight and won. But she avoided confrontation where possible. Never approach a problem head on, she always said. She was clever. She used people’s fear of emotion to manipulate them, and at the same time she made herself indispensable. It was all in the cause of bettering herself and providing for her children. Don’t get me wrong. She was very good at her job. She would not have been half as successful otherwise. But she always made sure that people knew just how good she was.’

  ‘And did she ever remarry?’ asked Letitia, thinking of Connie Lambton’s words nearly thirty years before: This maid had a daughter. What happened to the father I don’t know. He was never mentioned, so we must draw our own conclusions.

  ‘No, she never married again. I was in fact born on the wrong side of the blanket, if that makes any difference.’

  ‘No, of course not, my dear. In any case, even if one takes the view that illegitimacy is wrong, I could never understand why the sins of the parents should be visited on their children. My father …’ She trailed off, remembering the bishop’s polemics. What a hypocrite he had been, concerned only with appearances, the superficial. In his eyes, it did not matter what crimes one concealed, as long as one observed the proprieties; as long as one maintained a righteous and respectable façade.

  Letitia stirred, found that Megan was watching her closely.

  ‘Your father, you were saying?’

  Letitia thrust the bishop aside. ‘It is your father we are talking of.’

  ‘Just who my father was remains a mystery. I never knew for certain, although I had some suspicions. There was an old gentleman in Wiltshire whom my mother worked for in the 1890s. She always spoke fondly of him. I got the impression she would never have left that situation, had she not fallen pregnant. Pregnant housemaids were frowned upon, swept under the carpet. My mother handed in her notice before she could be sacked. But afterwards the old gentleman kept in touch. He used to send money, which is how I first came to know about him. I used to see the envelopes arrive, the address written in the same neat hand. My mother was a proud woman and although never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, she was adamant about not accepting charity. That is
what made me wonder if the old gentleman was in debt to her in some way. Mother would never discuss it. She would not say if he was my father or not. She always told me, I am your mother and that is all you need to know. We rowed about it – which I came to regret later.’

  ‘You never thought of going to see the old gentleman yourself, confronting him?’

  ‘By the time I was old enough to be suspicious, he was dead. It was only when I was fifteen, sixteen that I finally put two and two together.’ Megan looked at her watch. ‘How time flies. I must go, I’m afraid.’

  She helped Letitia to her feet, lent her an arm as they went back into the kitchen with their mugs.

  ‘You are a wicked woman, Letitia! I have spent all this time talking about myself, and have learned nothing about you!’

  ‘My life has been terribly dull. I have nothing to confess.’ Letitia was barely conscious of lying as she settled in her old carver. ‘Before you go, you must tell me one last thing. How did you come to be staying at the Lambtons’? I heard Connie’s explanation many years ago, but Connie tended to embellish the truth.’

  Megan sat down at the table, her coat draped over her lap. She looked unseeingly at Letitia as her mind reached back into the past. At the time in question, she said, her mother had been working for Lady Mereton, the latest in a long line of jobs. Put bluntly, Bridget O’Connor had been poached: Lady Mereton had been notorious for it, appropriating other people’s cooks and housekeepers and lady’s-maids. Bridget had built up quite a reputation by then, and Lady Mereton had been determined to acquire her services. The salary on offer was generous, but there had been one drawback: Lady Mereton detested children.

  ‘Lady Mereton,’ said Letitia looking back. ‘I had very little to do with her. She was an invalid, or imagined she was. I suppose that would account for her dislike of children and the noise they make. All I remember is that she used to lie on her chaise-longue wrapped in carriage rugs and send for patent medicines through the post.’

  Megan laughed. ‘Ghastly potions, they were! I saw them once, all lined up in a cupboard. That was on one of the occasions when I stayed a night in between visits elsewhere. Lady Mereton swore by her medicines. And sal volatile! I hated the smell of it ever after!’

  ‘But carry on, my dear. You mother was working for Lady Mereton….’

  ‘And we went with her, my brother and I – to start with, anyway. Mother impressed on us that we had to be on our best behaviour, quiet as mice. But of course, being children, we carried on as children do. We were excited about our new home; there was so much to see and do, so many rooms to explore. We ran hither and thither, chased down the corridors, made a nuisance of ourselves.’

  Lady Mereton had objected, Megan went on: she had objected strongly and at great length. Bridget O’Connor, loath to give up such a highly remunerative situation, had had no choice but to send her children away. Her children, she reasoned, would benefit far more from the money she made, than they would from a mother sinking in poverty.

  ‘So we were sent to Aunty Eileen in London. Aunty Eileen was none too pleased. She had a houseful already, eight kids of her own and just two rooms. Jack she could just about cope with - he was a placid child, quite unlike the tearaway he later became. But I was a handful already, and Aunty Eileen was at the end of her tether. So she packed me back to Warwickshire and I became Mother’s problem again. And that is when the duplicitous visits began. It was the only solution Mother could come up with, and typically ingenious. Thus it was that I came to be staying with the Lambtons in 1902.’ Megan stood up and put on her coat. ‘And this time I really must go.’

  ‘But you have not tied up all the loose ends. For instance, what happened to your brother?’

  ‘That,’ said Megan firmly, ‘is quite another story. Goodbye, Letitia.’ She kissed Letitia on the cheek.

  ‘Goodbye, my dear.’ Letitia gripped Megan’s hand then released it.

  With Megan gone, the kitchen lapsed into silence. Letitia settled in her chair, closed her eyes, snoozing as she waited for the Mansells to foregather.

  Hugh was miserable. Walking along a leafy lane in Buckinghamshire, he coughed and sneezed, his nose ran and his head ached. It was typical, he thought, that he should get a cold at the height of the summer. It might even be flu. It certainly felt bad enough for it to be flu. He usually enjoyed his solitary walks. Not today.

  Sunshine was slanting down through the foliage in isolated beams. The branches of the trees entirely overhung the narrow lane. The hedges were tangled with flowers: wild roses, black bryony, blackberry blossom. In a few weeks the blackberries themselves would appear, heralding the approach of autumn. Once upon a time, he had enjoyed blackberry picking in the fields near The Firs, although it had been an activity tinged with sadness, for it marked the end of the holidays, the imminent start of a new school term. Hugh felt nostalgia for those holidays long ago, before the wars, and for those wonderful apple and blackberry pies made by the indispensable Annie. Illness and nostalgia together made him lachrymose, but he shook his head and would not cry, for he had been told long ago that crying made one a sissy.

  His mind reached further back, to the days of Raggety Peg, the unlucky doll. He had been able to tell her all his secrets: his homesickness for India, his resentment towards his deceased mother, his alienation from his father. Raggety Peg had listened and never let on. And how had he repaid her? Treacherously, that’s how, dropping her into a swollen stream in Shropshire. The image of her cloth face with its lopsided eyes floating off into oblivion still had the power to move him in the way such seemingly unimportant memories often do.

  Throwing away Raggety Peg had been his first betrayal of Megan. He was betraying her still. Try as he might to block out the picture of Megan as a prostitute, it kept reappearing and reappearing. What business was it of his how she had lived her life? Who was he to judge? And what did it matter now? But it did matter, and it was an insurmountable barrier. It kept him apart from Megan and made him angry and frustrated.

  Later that day, Hugh’s superior called on him at his lodgings.

  ‘You’re doing no good to anyone sitting here and festering. Take the week off. Get away from it all. Have a complete break.’

  ‘It would be nice….’ Hugh admitted.

  ‘I think we can manage without you for one week. After all, we can hardly lose the war now, can we?’

  Hugh packed and got on a train for London. People looked at him oddly as he sat in a corner wrapped in coat and scarf and woolly hat as if it was the middle of winter rather than a hot August afternoon. Hugh was oblivious to their stares and was soon asleep, not to wake until hours later when a guard roused him at Euston.

  ‘How is Hugh?’ asked Letitia, as Mrs Mansell came into the kitchen.

  ‘I have told him to stay in bed. He will feel a lot better tomorrow after a good rest and some of my cabbage soup.’

  Letitia wrinkled her nose at the thought of Mrs Mansell’s infamous cabbage soup. She had a sneaking suspicion that Mrs Mansell was enjoying bossing Hugh around.

  ‘I think it is the war more than anything,’ said Letitia. ‘Hugh is suffering from the war. It chips away at you, wears you out.’

  ‘I expect you are right.’ Mrs Mansell was peeling potatoes, didn’t look round.

  ‘You are the exception. You do not seem ever to get worn out.’

  ‘I’m as tough as old boots.’ Mrs Mansell was concentrating on making the potato peelings as thin as possible. Watching her, Letitia experienced a pang of jealousy. Was it not enough that Mrs Mansell had taken over her kitchen, without taking over Hugh as well?

  Mrs Mansell glanced at the clock on the wall. ‘How long does it take to fetch a pint of milk?’ she said; and Letitia immediately felt guilty about her unreasonable jealousy. She recognized the anxiety behind Mrs Mansell’s tetchy manner. Clive had been despatched to the shops three-quarters of an hour ago and since then an alert had come into force. There was no tell-tale buzzing in the sky, no
sound of explosions; but Letitia suspected that Clive would be lying low somewhere, in a shelter or down the tube. He had developed an all-consuming fear of the flying bombs – or so she guessed. He would never have said as much. He gave very little away, did Clive.

  Hugh was the same. There was obviously something weighing on his mind. She knew the signs by now, had become adept over the years at reading his little mannerisms, just as she’d learned to read between the lines of his letters, so that she had known without having it spelled out that he was unhappy at his prep school, or afraid in the trenches, or disillusioned with Cynthia. But knowing something was wrong was one thing; getting him to talk was quite another. A certain amount of ingenuity would be required. In the meantime, let Mrs Mansell do her worst. It was not, Letitia admitted, as if she was in any position to nurse Hugh herself.

  Letitia laid her plans as Mrs Mansell prepared the dinner.

  Luxuriating in a tepid puddle of a bath in Eleanor Lambton’s Paddington house, Megan found herself lamenting her rash revisiting of the past during her recent visit to Letitia. A multitude of other memories and half-buried emotions had been stirred up which she felt ill-equipped to deal with after a day run ragged at work, on top of the stress of five years of war.

  She relived that last argument she’d had with her mother in 1910, standing on the back stairs of Lady Mereton’s house, her mother on the way to the drawing-room with a tray in her hand. (Afternoon tea, had it been? Lady Mereton had been partial to egg-and-cress sandwiches, no crusts.) Her mother had been sending her away again, another of those visits under false pretences.