by Dominic Luke
As she walked towards the familiar square where Letitia lived, she wondered what had become of the cigarette lighter. Lost in the Flanders mud, she supposed; and Jack with it.
Her life after that had dwindled to a drab existence of ceaseless toil until even that had failed her and, two years later, she had gone to meet Eleanor Lambton on the Strand jobless, almost homeless, with nothing to wear but what she stood up in. Little had she known how things had been about to change.
Eleanor had never exactly become a friend, but had encouraged Megan in her new career – living vicariously, Megan had sensed: for whatever ambitions Eleanor might have cherished as a little girl had been crushed by her upbringing and education – or lack of it – and by what Megan called Eleanor’s secret sorrow. The secret sorrow Megan could only guess at. In all the years they had known one another, Eleanor had never confided in her; probably thought Megan, had never confided in anyone. She remembered how, in that restaurant on the Strand, Eleanor had suddenly turned aside, blinking back tears that weren’t there. She remembered thinking what a waste it was, Eleanor crushed and desiccated when, with her advantages, she ought to have had the world at her feet. She wished now that she’d had the courage to question Eleanor, to make her speak, break the icy hold of her misery; but she had felt at a disadvantage in her shabby clothes, with Eleanor so sure of herself, so at home, so elegant. That Megan – the Megan of 1919 – could never have got close to Eleanor Lambton.
And now it is too late, she thought, crossing the road, passing the place where the bombed house had been. Our long acquaintance has taken a different path, fallen into a well-worn groove. I will never now discover Eleanor’s secret. But what about my secret? Is it too late for me, too?
Megan thrust her memories aside as, swinging her basket, she descended the area steps towards Letitia’s basement, the smell of cooking rising to meet her. What would Mrs Mansell have for them this Sunday? Woolton Pie, was it?
The kitchen was a brighter place than of late. Clive had been persuaded to take the boards down from the windows now that the doodlebug menace appeared to be over. Everyone was gathered – all the inmates, as Letitia called them – plus someone else: a stranger, Megan thought at first, a young man sitting at the table. Only when he got up to greet her did Megan recognize him: Hugh’s son Ian, whom she had not seen for three years. Most definitely Hugh’s son, Megan thought, looking at his battle-hardened features. There was something familiar about the curve of his nose, the cut of his jaw. It was how Hugh must have looked in his twenties. Megan experienced a twinge of regret that she had not known Hugh in his twenties. All those wasted years. And still we waste time, she said to herself: I waste time; I hesitate. I am being slowly smothered by my secret just as Eleanor was by hers.
She pulled up a chair, joining the throng. As well as Letitia and Ian and Mrs Mansell, there was Mr Mansell sitting morose in a corner, never more than monosyllabic; Clive listening in awe to Ian’s stories of Italy and Normandy, and Susie helping her mother with the cooking.
‘I’ve bought some orangeade and some beer.’ Megan unpacked her basket. ‘And a cake.’
‘That will do for tea.’ Mrs Mansell appropriated the cake with practised dispatch and shut it in the larder. ‘You will be staying for tea, I hope, Doctor Kramer?’
Megan said yes, laughing, and Letitia caught her eye and winked.
Ian set about the beer. He was telling them now about his journey home, how he’d been seasick crossing the Channel before squashing into a train that had crawled towards London like a snail. He had arrived only that morning. Mrs Mansell, Megan noted, was decidedly frosty towards him. The upset over the Immaculate Conception had obviously not been forgotten. Presumably the real test would come when Peggy’s husband came home. That could not be far off now, the way the war was going.
Megan poured herself orangeade, offered the bottle to Clive.
‘Clive’ll have beer,’ said Ian, slapping Clive on the shoulder.
‘Clive will not,’ said Mrs Mansell darkly.
Clive had orangeade, but eyed the bottles of beer with regret and Megan smiled, relaxing into her chair, easing her shoes off, thinking that all-in-all there was nowhere else she would rather spend her Sunday than in Letitia’s basement kitchen – with the old lady herself sitting there, presiding over it all, frail but determined. There was a kind of ethereal beauty about her: shrunken, wizened, her hands knobbed and twisted and spotted with age, her skin translucent, like silk, blue veins showing. Her clothes hung off her as she was terribly thin; but there was a fierce, vital spirit within that seemed almost to shine out of her. A blue fire burned in her eyes. She was a marvel, all-in-all. Indomitable. And the best of friends. One could tell her anything.
Anything….
On Tuesday a rumour spread that the Germans had capitulated and the war was over.
‘I was nearly run down by some American soldiers in a taxi,’ Mrs Mansell complained on returning from work. ‘Drunk as lords, they were, and telling everyone the war was won, the daft beggars.’
‘You don’t think it’s true, I presume?’ said Letitia.
‘Of course it’s not true!’ Mrs Mansell snorted. ‘Old Adolf won’t give up that easily. Even his own people couldn’t blow him up, though if you gave me a rolling pin and locked me in a room with him, I think I might have more luck.’ She sighed. ‘Well then. Let’s see what I can get us for dinner.’
After dinner, reading in her room, Letitia heard a furtive step on the stairs. She struggled to her feet and crossed to her door which was slightly ajar. Peering through the narrow gap, she saw Ian descending and behind him Clive. From the sound of it, they let themselves out of the little-used front door, thereby avoiding the kitchen where Mrs Mansell would be washing dishes and mopping the floor.
It was gone ten when Ian and Clive returned. Clive had not been missed. He often stayed in his room all evening after dinner. Everyone was in bed except for Letitia, who had ventured down to the kitchen to have a nightcap now that Mr Mansell was out of the way. She heard the front door open above her. There followed a lot of muffled noise, dragging footsteps and whispered curses. At length the noises receded.
A little later she heard footsteps again, coming down. It was Ian, permanently hungry, looking for something to eat. If he was surprised to see Letitia sitting at the kitchen table, he took it in his stride. He raided the larder then sat down opposite her. She could smell the beer on his breath.
‘Oughtn’t you to be tucked up in bed, Aunty?’ he asked with his mouth full.
‘I don’t need much sleep at my age.’
‘We’ve been to the pub.’
‘We?’
‘Clive and me. As I expect you already know. Nothing gets past you, Aunt. Clive is rat arsed. I had a devil of a job getting him to bed.’
‘Are you absolutely determined to make an enemy of Mrs Mansell?’
‘Oh, come on, Aunt. She mollycoddles him, stifles him. The lad’s sixteen years old. He needs taking out of himself. He wants to have a bit of fun.’
‘You call getting blind drunk “having a bit of fun”?’
‘It’s a rite of passage.’
‘If you say so.’ Letitia pushed her glass towards him. ‘Pour me another, please. I will tell you where to find it. You may help yourself, too, as long as you solemnly swear never to reveal the hiding place to Mr Mansell.’
‘Talking of hiding places,’ said Ian, as he fetched the whisky and poured, ‘you know, I suppose, that old Ma Mansell won’t tell me where she’s hidden Peggy.’
‘Peggy was evacuated when the flying bombs started.’
‘She has my kid with her, apparently.’
‘I’d leave well alone, if I was you. With any luck, the POW husband will take the child on as his own. But he will probably want to punch you, all the same.’
Ian put the bottle back in its hiding place, straddled his chair. ‘Perhaps I’ll be the one doing the punching. I might want to take his child on – and his
wife, too.’
‘Oh, Ian….’
‘I know, I know. I’m a bad boy and all that. Doctor Kramer said as much on Sunday. Never mind what you want, she said; what about Peggy? Has anyone thought to consult her in all this? From the way she was talking, you’d think I was going to grab Peggy by the hair and drag her back to my cave. All I want is to do what’s right. If the kid is mine …’
‘And what about Clive? What do you want with him?’
‘I suppose you think I am leading him astray.’ Ian looked wistful – younger – for a moment in the glow of the electric light. ‘I suppose I…. Well, I always wanted a little brother. Or a sister, I’m not fussy. And these Mansells: they seem to be our surrogate family now. You seem to have adopted them, Aunt. So I am just doing my brotherly duty.’
‘You used to disapprove of the Mansells.’
‘You have taught me to see things differently.’ He took a large gulp of whisky, downing it without flinching. ‘Why is it, Aunt, that we are so miserly when it comes to offspring in our family? I’m an only child, Dad is an only child, as was my drowned grandpa.’
Letitia chose not to answer, said instead, ‘You, my boy, are not as tough as you make out.’
‘Oh yes I am, Aunt. I’ve had to be.’
This time when he swallowed his whisky he grimaced and Letitia, watching him, felt a sudden intense desire to live – to go on living. Nothing was settled, there was still so much to do; and here was Ian, not ready to talk yet, but who might be ready one day – might need to let it all out, the fear, the pain, the madness and cruelty; the comradeship, too, and all the little moments of unexpected beauty. He had crammed a lifetime’s experiences in five short years. Who would be there to listen to him when the time came?
‘Another thing, Aunt.’ Ian had recovered his equilibrium, was never thrown off his stride for long. ‘What’s going on with Dad and Doctor Kramer?’
‘That,’ said Letitia, ‘is a very good question.’
‘She can be a bit waspish, Doctor Kramer, and she’s getting on a bit, but I think she’d suit Dad right down to the ground.’
‘Let us hope your father realizes that before it is too late.’
Ian yawned, got to his feet, having polished off his whisky and a piled plate of leftovers. ‘I’m about ready to turn in. Will you be all right getting up the stairs, Aunt?’
‘Oh yes, don’t worry about me.’
‘Then I’ll say goodnight. And I promise not to get Clive drunk anymore.’
‘Just be careful around Mrs Mansell, is all I ask. Mothers are overprotective. It’s their job to be.’
‘Not all mothers. Oh, I suppose you’ve not heard. Mine has upped sticks, moved to America. She says Britain is washed up, finished. America is the place to be now – just so long as the Jews are kept out of power. She tells me there are one or two very nice neighbourhoods over there where one need never see a Negro.’
He went without further comment. She listened to him climbing the stairs a little unsteadily and felt again the sense of responsibility, the desire to go on living.
He needs taking out of himself…. Had Ian needed that too? What had it been like for him, growing up with Cynthia as a mother, pushed from pillar to post: from school to Cynthia’s parents to Hugh? Ian had become a mess of contradictions, his personality in the balance: that was how it had always seemed to her, watching him grow up. She had never been sure of him.
Was it the army which had taken Ian out of himself? Life in the ranks had certainly given him a veneer of coarseness which promotion to sergeant had not erased – but it was not necessarily a bad thing. Indeed, he reminded her at times of someone else she’d known – a young man, rough-and-ready, plain-spoken – ill-bred, churlish, a bumpkin, a peasant, an animal: those were the words they had used; they had never uttered his name – but also, like Ian, he had been somehow pure and honest-to-goodness – tender-hearted, too….
But that was long ago. Here and now, she knew one thing for certain: she could be sure of Ian at last.
As he’d said, there were so few of them in their family – just Hugh, really, and latterly Ian: so few, and they needed each other. She might have a part to play yet. But of course Ian didn’t know about all the children who had died, Arnold’s children: the one who had died with Cecily in childbirth, and the one Daffodil had been carrying when she drowned. If they had lived, things might have been very different. And the other child, the child that had been taken away—
She blinked, dismissing that thought, turning instead to her brother Jocelyn who had found it impossible to father even one child – and no wonder … no wonder….
She closed her eyes, hearing in her head the terrible angry voice of her father which, as an inquisitive child, she had heard as she crouched by the keyhole of the study door.
‘… and don’t lie – don’t lie to me, Jocelyn. You were seen. The maid saw you. You are a disgusting boy, a filthy boy, a wicked sinner. You will go blind, you will burn in hell….’
But Jocelyn had been locked in a cupboard first, before the advent of the hellfire – locked in a cupboard with no supper, alone in the dark, and she’d not been permitted to go near him.
It had been years before she understood what it was he’d done.
Jocelyn had never been quite the same afterwards. It was as if he’d been crippled inside – that was how she thought of it, years later, reading his journal.
She seemed to hear, echoing faintly as from a deep well, a voice: her voice. Of course, one knew nothing of Freud in those days. Some snippet of a forgotten conversation, lost in the shadows of the past.
She opened her eyes, smoothing away the memories, cleansing her mind, preparing herself for the climb up to her room.
Friday morning was bright and sunny, an optimistic morning. The newspapers were optimistic too. Except possibly for a few last shots the Battle of London is over, they quoted. The threat of the doodlebugs was officially ended. They were consigned to history, like Dunkirk and the blitz and bananas.
‘Why should anyone want to make war on a morning like this?’ Letitia leant on her stick as she looked out of the door at the patch of sky above the area.
The last to leave, Mrs Mansell was gulping back a final mug of tea. ‘I don’t know about that. I reckon we should frizzle and frazzle ’em, those Germans. Sort ’em out good and proper. No good going soft now, just when victory is in sight. Look where that got us last time. My Ned done in, and hundreds others too, and all for nothing. We’ve had to fight the whole bleeding war over again. Well, I don’t want to be here in twenty years time seeing my grandkids being bombed and gassed and lord knows what else. We should put paid to the Germans once and for all. That’s what I say. Anyway, I’ll be off now, Mrs Warner. I’ll see you later.’
Megan popped in after lunch as she sometimes did, on her way from one house call to another, staying sometimes just a minute or two, at other times lingering long enough for a quick cup of tea. Today she showed no signs of hurrying away, seemed troubled, pacing the kitchen, looking out into the area, letting her tea go cold. Letitia sat patiently, waiting.
At last Megan turned, faced her. ‘There is something I have to tell Hugh. There is something I have to tell him before we can go forward. I have to tell him – but it might mean the end for us, too.’
‘What is it, my dear? You can tell me.’
Letitia’s mind went back a few weeks to her conversation with Hugh: how he had been perturbed by long-held suspicions about Megan’s past. Were those suspicions about to be confirmed?
But Letitia was unprepared for what Megan had to say.
‘It’s this. It’s this. Thirty years ago I conceived Hugh’s child. I conceived Hugh’s child and I murdered it.’
Megan let out her breath, closed her eyes, the words she had never thought she would say resonating in the basement kitchen.
She had found herself pregnant in the summer of 1912 and had not known what to do. Hugh had vanished, didn’t seem to
want to know her, certainly wouldn’t now that this had happened. Jack had been in prison, beyond reach. She’d had no one to turn to. She’d had to make her own decisions.
There was no choice to be made, she’d thought. She couldn’t have a baby. She couldn’t possibly have a baby – not at her age, unmarried, living hand-to-mouth, teetering on the edge, always on the edge. She had to get rid of it.
Easier said than done. Hot baths had not worked, nor some revolting potion called hickery-pickery which the girls in the sweatshop swore by. She had tried drinking gin, gulping it down in her lodgings in Limehouse until the squalid little room span around her, until the tears were running down her cheeks, until she was sick over and over again into her chipped chamber pot, kneeling on the wooden boards and demanding, beseeching, begging for the unborn child to set her free, to go, go, go….
In the end, she had been given an address by one of her colleagues on the suffrage action committee. She had scraped together a few shillings, clutched them in her trembling hand as she made her way to the man who was her last hope. He had been discreet, reassuring, businesslike – and a complete charlatan. He had made a dreadful mess, nearly killed her. Afterwards, the baby had gone, there was no question about that: the baby had gone, and so also, she was told later when seeking proper medical advice during her time with Julian: so also was any chance of ever having another. She would never be a mother.
At the time she had felt a pang of regret which she had thought would slowly fade over the years but which, mingled with her long-delayed mourning for the child she had lost, had grown and grown, making her feel bereft, making her feel – as she stood in Letitia’s kitchen in September 1944 – that there was a hole inside her, a gaping black hole which would always be there, which would never be filled.
This was the last piece of the puzzle, thought Letitia. Now she knew everything. Now she was aware of all the forces bringing Hugh and Megan together yet keeping them apart.