by Jenny Colgan
She had thrown herself into the shop, was teaching herself double-entry bookkeeping as a way of taking some of the burden from her father. Gordon had signalled that after the war – if there was ever to be such a time; Lilian doubted it – he was never coming back to Lipton; now he’d seen a bit of the world, he wanted to make his way in it, which was fair enough, Lilian supposed. Terence was so far away it made the mind boggle even to think of it, and wrote neat, tight little letters that didn’t need censoring. And her Neddy was never coming home again. So she could shoulder the burden. She would have to. She realised, even at seventeen years old, this was how it was going to be. Carefully, day by day, swallowed tear by swallowed tear, she built a carapace over her heart. When the banns went up for Ida Delia and Henry, she smiled politely at everyone gossiping about it and maintained her composure. When she heard on the grapevine that Henry had received his call-up papers, she simply nodded, even though inside she was riven. There was a bit of her that thought, that pleaded, that hoped, that everything was going to be all right. That he would realise the error of his ways at the last minute.
In her deepest, darkest moments, late at night, tossing in a damp bed, her mind in circles, she even thought the worst of thoughts: perhaps the baby was someone else’s. Perhaps the baby would not survive and he would be free.
It was this last, most unspeakably dreadful thought, to wish harm on an unborn innocent, that shocked her to the core; that made her more determined than ever to display no hysterics; to do no begging, no pleading, no complaining about her lot in life. She clearly wasn’t worthy. For her superior manners before and her evil thoughts now, she didn’t deserve Henry Carr, and however much she might long for him, it wasn’t going to change a thing. She told herself that. It was not a consolation.
And now he had his papers. It felt as if, somehow, while she could still see him there was still hope. He didn’t come into the sweetshop, of course, he avoided her as assiduously as she avoided him, but she had seen him – at church, in a high collar, standing next to his in-laws to be, who were, town gossip had it, every bit as horrified by their daughter’s farm labourer choice as Lilian had predicted. Or being tugged up and down the high street by Ida Delia, wearing a too-large dress and pretending to all and sundry that there was nothing in there and they were madly in love, that was all. Ida Delia, thought Lilian spitefully, was probably glad when his call-up papers came. It gave a little veracity to why they were getting married in such a hurry.
Glimpses, as he rushed past, head bowed … they were nothing. There wasn’t a note, nothing. It seemed that Henry, once he had given his word, was a man of it. The fact that, as far as Lilian was concerned, he had given it to the worst person she could possibly imagine didn’t detract from his commitment.
The wedding was sparsely attended; Ida Delia’s mother certainly wasn’t going to ask her Bristol cousins to watch her beautiful, eligible daughter settle for someone who could hardly pick the straw out of his hair. Henry had started basic training and was wearing an ill-fitting uniform in rough wool. Lilian stayed upstairs in her room all day, but couldn’t resist a glimpse outside to see the procession go past. Ida Delia, wearing a rose-pink suit dress, and a pink netted hat on her lavish golden curls, looked glorious: happy and radiant, rounded; her breasts full, her waist still small, her face beaming in triumph. Henry looked tall, different, with his newly shorn hair and his awkward worsted uniform. Lilian decided there and then that she hated weddings.
At around six, when the procession was long past, her dad knocked on Lilian’s door. That she wasn’t crying was the worst bit. Instead, she sat, perched on the edge of the single bed with its floral counterpane, not looking, not making a sound, but completely and utterly blank.
Not knowing what else to do, he took her in his arms and sat her on his knee as if she was a child again – she was so thin, he felt, even for his little Lily she had got so thin – and waited, till gradually her rigid body bent a little towards him, and she turned, and buried her head in his shoulder, and made small, mewling animal noises of pain. Terence senior stared out of the window and felt her heart break, and watched the sun go down over the blue hills, and wondered why on God’s earth any living creature would want to bring a child into this world.
‘She was,’ remarked Moray quietly, ‘a lot quicker with the damn dog.’
Rosie gazed at Henrietta, not understanding. Stephen had allowed his eyes to close briefly.
‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Mother.’
Rosie stared at him in consternation, then looked at Lady Lipton. Sure enough, the resemblance, though slight, was there. But this didn’t make any sense at all. She’d been over at the big house all the time? Knowing her injured son was stuck in that cold house all by himself? Why hadn’t she been looking after him? Swanning around making sarcastic remarks and worrying herself senseless about her dog? Rosie shook her head in disbelief.
‘Why …’ she began, then wasn’t sure how to go on. If she had injured herself, her mother would drop everything, would haunt her house, drive her mental and get in the way and totally wind her up until she was 100 per cent better. And it wouldn’t matter if Rosie said no thanks I don’t want your help, or please don’t visit. Her mother would have bashed in the door with a hammer. And why had she spent all this time worrying about Stephen when he had half the county at his disposal, and a hundred-room mansion for whenever he got bored with being petulant? She looked from one to the other.
Lady Lipton turned on her, ferociously.
‘This is all your fault,’ she spat at Rosie.
Rosie started in shock.
‘Up there pestering the life out of him since the day you arrived. Don’t think I didn’t spot what you were up to. Mrs Laird tells me everything, you know. He’d have come back to his family in his own time. But now … now …’ Her voice cracked.
‘Rosie,’ came a weak voice from the gurney, but they were already wheeling him away, and Rosie’s head was reeling. She took a couple of steps back and watched, as the ambulance turned on its blue lights and, with a great commotion, took off for Ashby.
Shaken to the core, Rosie tried to wash her hands in the tiny pub sink. Moray was right beside her, packing up his equipment.
‘What the hell?’ said Rosie. Moray looked at her curiously.
‘Didn’t you know?’
‘How would I have known? I’ve only been here five minutes. Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I thought he’d have told you!’
‘What happened?’ But at that moment, Gerard burst through the doors at the back of the pub.
‘Where the hell have you been?’ he said. He was clearly a bit pissed, and had crisp crumbs all round his mouth. ‘There wasn’t any food! And you just disappeared when that guy fell over. And I had to sit there by myself for ages! And everyone was talking about that guy. And you. And I had to sit there and listen to it! That scary woman reckons you’re shagging him.’
‘Of course I’m not!’
His lower lip was wobbling. Rosie genuinely feared he might cry. She moved towards him.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘He was sick. He needed help.’
She felt, uncomfortably, that it was strange to be touching your boyfriend when you had spent the last half-hour clasping another man.
‘Well, he’s a doctor, isn’t he?’ said Gerard. Moray tried to make himself scarce.
‘Yes, but I needed to help.’
‘I thought you ran a sweetshop now,’ said Gerard stubbornly. ‘You made me sit out there all by myself feeling an idiot.’
‘I have no relationship with him except he’s injured!’
Gerard harrumphed furiously, then turned to Moray and put out a pudgy hand.
‘I guess I don’t need to introduce myself?’
Moray didn’t bother to hide his bewilderment. ‘Uhm …’
Gerard looked at Rosie then.
‘You’ve told him my name?’
‘Uhm …’
‘Un
believable,’ said Gerard. ‘I’m Gerard. I’m her boyfriend. Which she hasn’t seen fit to mention, apparently. Fine. What a great trip this is turning out to be. I’m missing Formula 1 for this.’ He looked round. ‘I’d storm out, but there’s nowhere in this godforsaken backwater to actually go.’
‘We could go home,’ said Rosie quietly. After the adrenalin burst of the last hour, she suddenly found she was exhausted, emotional, and needed a quiet place to sit down and think about the events of the evening. It was very unfair to Gerard – it wasn’t his fault his weekend was getting ruined – but she didn’t really have the energy for one of his tantrums.
‘It’s only nine o’clock,’ whined Gerard.
‘We’ll get a bottle of wine,’ said Rosie. ‘And I’ll make you something in the house.’
‘Can you make scampi?’
‘Of course I can’t make scampi, Gerard.’
Moray was keeping his head down, but Rosie felt herself go pink at the thought of him overhearing this ridiculous conversation.
‘Can I call you tomorrow?’ she said as they were leaving. ‘Continue what … what we were talking about?’
‘Of course,’ said Moray.
‘What’s that?’ said Gerard as they were leaving. ‘What were you talking about? Me?’
‘No,’ said Rosie, in exasperation. She’d just helped perform a medical procedure, had clasped Stephen’s hand, been unjustifiably yelled at by his mother – she’d had enough. The last thing she needed right now was Gerard making it all about himself. Especially when she suspected there was a grain of truth in what he was saying.
OK, so she and Gerard didn’t have a massive spark in their relationship. Who did? Everyone got annoying sooner or later, right? And she was hardly the catch of the century: the wrong side of thirty, the wrong side of a size 10, the wrong side of a swiftly moving career.
‘No. About the boy … the man who was hurt. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. Just village gossip, I expect.’
Gerard took on a more conciliatory tone. ‘Well, no point in finding out then, you’ll be gone in a couple of weeks.’
‘Mmm,’ said Rosie. There was a very good chippie open halfway up the high street; she’d take him there for fish and chips.
Out in the street the crowd had dispersed; Les was having a truly fantastic night. Out of the corner of her eye, halfway up the alley that led to the back of the pub, Rosie spied something. Going closer, she confirmed her suspicions as to exactly what it was.
‘Well, I’ll be darned,’ she breathed. It had to be four miles up to Peak House. Severely injured, bleeding out, with a steep gradient down the road. Stephen might be an awkward so-and-so, with all sorts of ludicrous family shenanigans going on. But anyone that sent themselves hurtling down a road in a standard-issue military hospital wheelchair most definitely had balls.
Rosie was half expecting Lilian to be asleep already. It was past her bedtime, but she’d underestimated the old lady’s curiosity, and there she was, in her chair, in a long winceyette nightie and matching, immaculate carpet slippers, her eyes bright as a bird’s. She looked Gerard up and down. Pink and smelling of cider and fish and chips, slightly sweating from the walk up the hill, Rosie had to admit that he didn’t look the most appealing prospect. Well, maybe his charm would kick in.
But Gerard looked down in the mouth; not his usual ebullient self at all. It was as if all the bounce had gone out of him.
‘Hello, Miss Hopkins,’ he murmured, like a child forced on to an auntie at a birthday party. ‘How are you?’
Lilian gave him a long look, then glanced quickly at Rosie. This made Rosie even crosser. It was none of Lilian’s bloody business. She knew nothing about it, nothing about how hard it was to find a man these days. So you didn’t get some prince? That was life.
‘It’s nice to be here,’ mumbled Gerard, the look on his face suggesting that being in an old lady’s home in the middle of nowhere was anything but. And Rosie, too, felt sudden embarrassment, which was ridiculous. She and Gerard lived together. There was a double bed upstairs. There was nothing to be ashamed of.
‘What were the sirens for?’ demanded Lilian, as Rosie went into the kitchen to put the kettle on and forestall the awkward moment when she and Gerard had to go upstairs together. She hoped Lilian would keep up the selective deafness.
‘Uhm, it was Stephen Lakeman. His leg took a turn for the worse.’
‘Oh, Hetty’s boy. He is no end of trouble.’
Rosie marched out of the kitchen waving the sieve.
‘Why didn’t you tell me he was Hetty’s son? Why does no one tell me anything? Her name is Lipton!’
Lilian shrugged. ‘I assumed you knew. Not much of a son he’s been anyway. And she’s Lady Lipton, that’s her title. Lakeman is her name.’
‘Right,’ said Rosie. ‘This is ridiculous. Once and for all, I have to know.’
Gerard sighed. ‘I’ll just sit down over here, shall I?’
Rosie came out bearing a tray and sat next to her great-aunt.
‘How?’ she said. ‘How could Lady Lipton just abandon him like that?’
‘And how,’ said Lilian simply, ‘could you ever believe that she hadn’t tried to help?’
‘It was Felix’s fault of course,’ said Lilian, thoughtfully sinking her teeth into a ginger biscuit she’d softened carefully in the steam from the teapot. ‘Stephen’s father,’ she added. ‘He was obsessed with his regiment and everything to do with the military. He’d been quite the thing in his day. Liked to get his uniform out for weddings and parties; any celebration, there would be Felix, polishing his medals. And so when they had a boy after Jessica, he was over the moon. Had that boy drilling before he was five, little uniforms and everything.’
Jessica, it transpired, had joined the diplomatic corps – years of practice growing up – and now worked in Malaysia. Rosie tried to picture Stephen as a small boy. He would have been, she imagined, a particularly grave one.
‘So he didn’t want to join the army?’
‘He did not,’ said Lilian. ‘Of course it’s common as coppers, children who don’t want to do what you want them to do. Look at your granpa Gordon.’
Rosie smiled. ‘He didn’t even sound like you.’
‘Of course he didn’t. Couldn’t put enough space between here and London. Wanted to leave it all behind. That’s why we never saw you.’
Rosie shrugged. ‘I wish we had.’
Lilian could not entirely hide her smile.
‘Any sensible man would have waited it out, just ignored it. But have you ever met a sensible aristocrat?’
‘No,’ said Rosie, honestly.
‘So there were fights, and threats, and will rewritings and all of that. Big scandal. Stephen was such a sensitive child.’
‘He still is,’ said Rosie.
‘With a tendency to be an utter mule.’
‘And that,’ said Rosie.
‘Wanted to do English literature at university. Felix wouldn’t hear of it. No son of his doing some namby-pamby subject, not on his money, etc.’
‘No, really?’ said Rosie. ‘That’s just daft these days.’
‘Well, them lot don’t necessarily live in these days,’ pointed out Lilian. ‘There’s an inheritance, a big house to maintain. It takes hard work and duty. A lot of people rely on the estate for their livelihoods. You can’t just swan off and read poetry.’
‘Why can’t the sister do it?’
Lilian rolled her eyes. ‘Oh yes, well done, you are very modern.’
‘So, what happened?’
‘Well,’ said Lilian, ‘finally … finally they came to an agreement. He could do his college course if he did army training at the weekends. Felix thought it was the only way to learn discipline and restraint for when he inherited, rather than all the drug-taking and loose living you need to get an arts degree, apparently.’
Rosie hadn’t known a single person with enough money to go in for drugs or loose living during her nursing cours
es, but of course things were different when you were a girl from town making her own way rather than a funded kid at university. She started to feel a bit sorry for Felix.
‘So, Stephen was fine in college, then what?’
‘He took himself off to Africa without telling his dad. Caused a huge stink, I can tell you. Gave up his course to go run a village school in Namibia. He owed the army time too.’
‘He went AWOL?’
‘Not exactly, you’re allowed to defer, but Felix was utterly furious. Sent his blood pressure sky high.’
‘What happened?’
Lilian half smiled. ‘Well, it wasn’t in the least bit funny. Not at all. But I believe you might call it ironic … Stephen was hit by a blast from a land mine. A piece of shrapnel got stuck in his leg. He ended up being airlifted to a military hospital.’
Rosie took a minute to absorb it all.
‘Whereas if he’d joined the army …’
‘If he’d joined the army, he could have been part of a landmine clearing team. Yes. Could have made things better. And of course, while he was convalescing in Namibia …’
‘His dad?’ said Rosie, sadly.
Lilian nodded. ‘Heart attack. He was getting on of course. He didn’t just shout at Stephen, he shouted at everyone. He was an accident waiting to happen.’
Rosie sipped her tea. ‘But Stephen didn’t help.’