by Josa Young
Leaving Hari safely strapped into the pushchair, they went up and searched the attics above what had been the old nurseries. In the dusty space under the roof they found an old-fashioned playpen in the form of a folding wooden cage that collapsed inwards if you lifted the solid wooden floor. It was heavy, so Margaret brought it up to the Lodge in her car. She commented that she’d used something similar for the twins, because they were complete monkeys, plotting together to wreak havoc.
Once it was delivered, Damson invited Margaret to stay for coffee, but she declined, just saying that she was always there if Damson needed anything and it would be lovely to catch up.
Damson took her hand, ‘Margaret, there is nothing to regret. You helped me to do what I had already decided to do. Honestly.’
Her stepmother looked surprised, and squeezed Damson’s hand. ‘Thank you for that,’ she said. ‘I’ll leave you to it, but let’s talk soon.’
She bent to kiss Hari again and then left.
Now Damson could move freely around their new home without worrying about him. He would peer out through the bars at her and make meeping noises to attract her attention, and she scattered a selection of rattles for his amusement. After an hour of unpacking Damson heard a car draw up outside and, looking out of the window, she saw Munty with Sarah in the passenger seat. They were both smiling, which gave Damson joy. Previously, she had always noticed a reserve in her grandmother’s manner with Munty.
There was a knock on the door, and Damson went to answer it.
‘Granny.’
Munty waved from the car and drove off.
They hugged each other, Damson losing herself in the sweet-scented softness of her grandmother’s bosom.
‘Now then,’ said Sarah. ‘Where’s Hari?’
‘He’s over there.’ They turned to see Hari lying on his back in the playpen strumming his toes.
Sarah went over to the playpen to pick Hari up. She held his face against her cheek and kissed him. Then she put him back.
Damson went to put the kettle on, saying over her shoulder, ‘I’ll give Hari a bottle and then put him down for his rest.’
Sarah poured the tea. Damson picked up Hari, and settled him comfortably on her knee for his bottle.
‘There are a few more things I want to talk about.’
Sarah nodded.
‘Do you mind if we talk about my mother?’
Sarah turned her face away, and was quiet for a minute.
‘Don’t worry if it’s too painful. But I know you were ill around the time I was born or just after, so you weren’t with her when she died?’
‘No, I wasn’t well enough to come over and help. And everything went wrong very quickly after the monthly nurse left.’
‘Went wrong?’ Damson was alert to her grandmother’s tone.
‘Yes. I felt terrible that I hadn’t been there.’
‘So did they get her to hospital? Is that where she died?’
Sarah took a deep breath.
‘No, she died here. Pauline found her.’
‘Pauline found her? It must have been very sudden. Septicaemia? Or was it her heart?’
Sarah’s pale downcast face alarmed Damson but now she had to know the details. She dreaded digging up painful memories, and her grandmother was looking so sad and agitated. Hari continued to drink his milk peacefully.
‘Munty and Arthur decided that no one should know what happened. Most of all they didn’t want you to know. I’m so sorry, Damson.’
Thirty-nine
Pauline
November 1968
Pauline sloshed up the drive in cut-down wellingtons, unable to see much under her tightly clutched umbrella as the wind threatened to turn it inside out. It was her first day helping out up at the Castle, and she assumed she should cross the scruffy yard and go in through the kitchen door. Something made her glance to the right, towards the lake at the bottom of the sloping lawn.
She thought she could see through the driving rain what looked like a pram in the lake, and beside it something very pale, floating. A noise escaped from her mouth, and she began to stumble across the grass, calling ‘Help, help’ – screaming now, the words whipped from her mouth by the wind, the umbrella dropped, forgotten and bouncing across the ground behind her.
As she drew closer she could hear a baby crying. Thank God. Crashing and splashing into the water, her attention was on that white and blue thing. She could see something rounded and something else washing gently around it. Then her mind, reluctant, made sense of the shapes. Long white legs, heels and buttocks, pale blue material floating like ectoplasm. She reached out but her boot gave way in the mud and she sat down hard, up to her waist in the freezing water, all the while screaming and screaming for help.
‘Oh God, oh God, oh God.’ She recognised Lord Mount-Hey splashing past her, pushing his arms under the woman’s stomach and trying to lift her sodden weight. She floated away from him, now face upwards but under the water. He tried again, clutching at her, half pulling half lifting her out of the lake. On the bank he fell to his knees, and his wife’s body rolled from his arms. Her eyes stared up at the weeping sky. Her hair, dark with water, streamed across her face. White arms, palms upwards, flopped on to the grass. Lord Mount-Hey immediately started artificial respiration.
Pauline struggled to her feet, kicking off her boots and wading across to move the pram out of the water, glancing at the screaming baby and hastily covering it up in the blankets that lay inside. Then she went to the woman and with both hands pulled the wet blue nylon gently down over her thighs to restore her dignity.
It stuck and was completely transparent. She was wearing nothing else at all, and Pauline shied away from seeing through the clinging fabric the blue veins marbling her breasts, the dark nipples. She turned, feeling vomit rising in her throat and, lifting the baby out of the pram, started to trot on her stockinged feet up to the house, gasping over her shoulder: ‘Going to call ambulance and police. Where’s the phone?’
He looked up at her.
‘In the sedan chair. Like a little hut, by the front door on the right.’ Then he bent again to try and blow air into his wife’s lungs.
She knew Lady Mount-Hey was dead. Still as stone, white and cold. How long had she been in the water?
In the hall, she opened the door of the antique chair and grabbed at the receiver, dialling 999 with a numb, wet forefinger and dripping water all over the floor. The baby wailed in her ear and she couldn’t hear the response. She was worried by how cold the baby must be but could do nothing but put her down on a sofa and go back to the phone.
‘What service do you need?’
‘Ambulance. And police. A woman has drowned. I think she must have died. She’s very pale and her eyes are open.’
‘Are you OK?’
‘Yes, it’s Lady Mount-Hey. She was in the lake.’
‘Where are you?’
‘At Castle Hey. Just outside the village of Hey, up the hill. The police will know it. Army had it during the war.’
‘On their way. Now, can anyone there do first aid?’
‘Her husband’s trying.’
She dropped the receiver, checked the baby, who was crying but seemed unharmed and relatively dry, and ran back out of the house, down the lawn to try and help Lord Mount-Hey.
When she got there, she saw he was kneeling by the body, staring at it. He stood up heavily when he saw her coming and went over to the pram. He took one of the blankets and carefully laid it over his wife’s face.
‘She’s gone.’
She could see he didn’t know what else to say, but the ambulance arrived at that moment, its bell ringing and the blue lights flashing.
Lord Mount-Hey turned his stricken face towards Pauline: ‘Can you look after the baby?’
She nodded and ran back to the house. She looked back once to see the ambulance men race to the body, check for a pulse and heartbeat. The police arrived.
She peeled off her soaking c
oat before picking up the baby. Unwrapping her, she noticed that she was not wearing a nappy. Then she remembered seeing the missing nappy, still inside its rubber pants, lying on the hall floor. It had better stay there for the police. She couldn’t imagine what had happened to Lady Mount-Hey, or why she was in the lake, but she must do all she could now to make sure her baby was warm and fed.
The baby was scarlet in the face from screaming, her tiny hands and feet purple with cold, and Pauline hurried her upstairs as fast as she could. Lord Mount-Hey had pointed out his wife’s room the day before, without introducing her, so she knew where to go. She hastily switched on the electric heater and shut the top of the window. In the little room next to the bedroom, she found chaos. There were nappies and baby clothes all over the floor. The enamel buckets were so full that the lids had fallen off, and the room smelt awful.
She took the screaming baby’s nightie off, and noticed she was not wearing a vest or any other clothes. There were a couple of clean, dry nappies on top of the chest of drawers. She quickly folded one, looking round for a pin. There they were, sticking out of a large bar of Wright’s Coal Tar soap. She pulled the nappy as tight as she could and pinned it round the baby’s tiny behind. A rubber nappy cover lay discarded on the floor. She smelt it gingerly, but the priority was warmth rather than cleanliness so on it went. Then she found a clean nightie in a drawer, and a cardigan, booties and a shawl, and tried to dress the little girl who was red and rigid with furious protest.
She laid her in a Moses basket. She realised she was sopping wet and cold herself. She pulled off all her clothes, leaving them in a heap on the floor. There was no one to mind. Lady Mount-Hey’s stained blue quilted dressing gown hung on the back of the door. It smelt stale, but Pauline slipped it on, looking round for slippers. She couldn’t allow herself to think about the person who had last worn these garments. She shuddered as she did up the buttons.
The next pressing need was to feed the baby. She remembered seeing bottles and Cow and Gate in the scullery, when she had looked around the day before. She thought about the poor lady in the lake, and began to cry as she carried the Moses basket with the screaming baby inside down the stairs. In the kitchen, which was at least warm from the Aga, she pushed two Windsor chairs together and put the basket down on them. She hurried into the scullery to find the means of making up a bottle. The angry sounds of hunger and distress pierced her ears and made her fumble with the kettle, powdered milk and measuring spoon.
While the kettle boiled, she peeped inside a huge chest freezer, thinking to pop the bottle in there when made up to cool it down quickly. It was full of plastic bags of vegetables, prepared and labelled, presumably by Lady Mount-Hey. There were plastic tubs of stews and other meals she must have made before the baby came. The shelves above were full of jam in neat rows of pots, also labelled – the most recent said Damson Cheese, October 1968. When she remembered the mess upstairs, the crumpled sheets, overflowing nappy buckets and the terrible smell, it didn’t seem like the same person.
Forty
Melissa
November 1968
Early, and the chill mist that crept from the lake had muffled the trees from view. Melissa got up and padded barefoot into the dressing room. Once there she couldn’t remember why. Something moved in the shadows. There was nothing she could do for it now.
She pulled off her knickers and the tangle of elastic that held her maternity pad in place. Yanking them down her legs she kicked the whole lot under the cot. It was time she got away from this ridiculous pathetic fake nonsense. The sodden smeared nappies. The stinking buckets. Her weeping body.
She went over to the cot and rolled what was in there from back to front, picking it up and holding it under her arm. Opening her bedroom door she stepped out, carrying it along the passage and down the stairs, shawl dropping away. Small mottled legs bicycled in the chilly air as Melissa’s hands had rucked up the Chilprufe nightie. The heavy wet terry nappy with its rubber cover followed the shawl, slipping from minimal hips and landing with a damp soft sound on the cold stone flags.
The big carriage-built pram stood in the hall. She pushed a tangle of blankets out of the way and put what she was carrying inside. Best to take it with her. Who would look after it in the big empty house, with its dusty deserted rooms? There was a man there at night, but Melissa couldn’t remember what he was for. The warm repulsiveness began to seep between her legs again, reminding her to hurry. She felt a dull delight that she was going to wash it all away.
Twisting the iron ring, she found the front door wouldn’t open. The big key was in the lock. Her need to get outside lending her strength, she managed to turn it with both hands. She bumped the pram down the steps. The thing inside began to make the noises that were so irritating, but then it stopped as she pushed the pram over weedy gravel towards the grass.
As Melissa felt the sloping remains of the lawn begin to take the weight of the pram, she considered simply letting go. Then she noticed the thing had shifted until its head was at a funny angle against the end. She leant over and pulled it with one hand by its small purple feet to straighten it out. As her fingers touched the cold toes, she hesitated. The grass was wet and chilling under her own feet, but she didn’t mind. It felt refreshing after the stinking hot sheets of her bed. She was burning up in there. She walked on, letting the pram’s weight pull her towards the lake.
At the bottom of the slope the land began to flatten out again and she needed to push once more as she came closer to the water. In front of the house the reeds had been cleared and there was a muddy shore. A rotting boathouse stood to one side, with a half-sunk punt tied to the pontoon. She had a vague memory of the pontoon, of being frightened. She wouldn’t walk on it this time.
She stopped. The mist had thickened into drizzle. Glancing down she could see that the little thing was getting wet, so she pulled up the navy blue waterproof pram hood and fastened the mackintosh cover with big poppers on either side. As the motion ceased, it began to grumble again. Melissa remembered vaguely what this meant. She’d managed to feed it at some point in the night, but that had to be the last time.
It was so terribly painful, her nipples angry with the contact. They itched and looked strange to her, crusty and rough. One of her breasts was agonisingly hot and hard. When it had been sick, there were streaks of red in the posset. She wasn’t able to give it pure milk, even that was adulterated with her dirty blood. Between her legs and from her breasts. She was a filthy creature. But it was OK, the lake would wash it all away. That man had rescued her before, hadn’t he? Images fled through her mind, not stopping – sunlight, then a splintering as wood gave way beneath her. A horrible cold shock and something holding her down under the water. But that was long ago.
She kept pushing. The rank grass had given way to wet clay and stones. The lake had not yet filled to its full winter depth, but she shoved the pram through the shallows until the water was up to the axles. She looked down and could make out the shapes of huge freshwater mussel shells, broken and just visible through the swirling mud.
The dawn wind strengthened and blew rain into her face. The pram didn’t want to go any further so she left it where it was and waded past it, looking down at the cold water around her knees. She glanced up as movement caught the edge of her vision. Trees jostled on the other side, their trunks black and slick. A deer stepped out from between them and looked around before bending its neck to drink.
Melissa felt a dart of enchantment shoot through her. There was a jerk as if she woke up from a dream of falling. Her heart raced. She looked back to see the pram in the water behind her. She could hear her baby mewing inside. Sobs choked her as fear and love swelled and broke through her body. Crows cawed and flapped through the wet wild air.
The rain fell properly now in cold fat drops on her parting as she turned and tried to get back to the pram. The lake bottom was slimy, sucking at her feet. She was in too deep, moving too fast. Clumsy and stricken like some p
oor heifer sliding in a bloody shambles, trying to reach her calf. A broken mussel shell stabbed deep into her foot and she slipped, her legs shooting out from under her. She felt herself falling and gasped to scream as her face hit the water.
Forty-one
Sarah
November 1968
Sarah was in bed in the morning, still feeling shaky from the flu, when she heard the surgery bell ring. People nearly always telephoned these days to make appointments to see the doctor, and then walked in during surgery hours. She went back to her book and relaxed, knowing that Eileen the receptionist would be dealing with whoever it was. Her duty now was to recover from the beastly flu as soon as possible, and that took rest. Melissa would need her, and she had to be in good health to help look after the new baby.
After a while, she heard Arthur’s footsteps coming up the stairs, coming to check up on his favourite patient, as he always said. She detected something in his hurrying tread that made her uneasy.
The door opened. She saw his face and knew instantly that something terrible had happened. He moved across to the bed, his mouth slightly open, eyes bewildered and red, skin blanched.
She pushed her hands into the mattress to sit upright, saying, ‘What is it, darling?’