This Much is True: How far will a mother go to protect her shocking secret?

by Jane Sanderson

  She took herself upstairs to Doreen, who was sitting in bed nursing the baby. The room had a curdled smell and her sister’s face had the pale and plump appearance of an unbaked bap, her dark eyes like raisins embedded in the dough. She blinked them in surprise to see Lillian.

  ‘I’ve been thinking,’ Lillian said.

  ‘Where are the children?’ Doreen asked.

  ‘Oh they’re all right. I was just saying, I’ve been thinking I’d like to visit the West End. Seems silly not to, now I’m here.’

  ‘Yes, but where are they?’

  ‘Heavens, Doreen, do I need to watch their every move?’

  ‘Susan’s only fifteen months,’ Doreen said.

  ‘So, anyway, I’m going up to the West End.’

  ‘Yes, you said. You’ll need the number twelve bus, but I don’t know why you’d want the bother.’ She pulled the baby off her breast and hoiked him upright, patting his back briskly with her free hand.

  ‘Can’t you give him a bottle?’ Lillian said. ‘I couldn’t bear to be sucked at like a cow in a milking parlour.’

  ‘No, I dare say,’ Doreen said.

  ‘It’s just so dreary,’ Lillian said, returning to her original theme. ‘Nothing ever happens.’ The baby’s face, turned towards her and pressed against his mother’s shoulder, looked like a squashed peach, and milk streamed onto Doreen’s yellow nylon nightie from one corner of his mouth. Lillian looked away in distaste and wandered over to the window. She lifted the net and accidentally met the malevolent eyes of the Marshalls’ ginger cat, staring up at her from the garden wall.

  ‘Nothing going on?’ Doreen said. ‘You came to lend a hand, didn’t you? There’s three kiddies wanting their middle-mornings downstairs I should think.’ Baby Edward belched wetly and Doreen said, ‘Well done my little Teddy bear, other side?’

  Lillian dropped the net curtain and turned back to her sister. ‘He’s already leaking milk,’ she said. ‘I’m certain he’s had enough.’

  ‘What?’ Doreen dragged her gaze from the baby’s face and looked at Lillian.

  ‘Never mind. So, I’ll go tomorrow afternoon.’

  Doreen sighed, and said again, ‘I don’t know why you want the bother.’

  ‘As I said …’ Lillian waved a listless arm towards the window. ‘It’s drab here.’

  ‘Well pardon me,’ said Doreen. She had a second soft chin beneath the original one and Lillian didn’t know how her sister could bear it.

  ‘I thought you and Bill lived more of a London life.’

  ‘Yes, Lillian, we do, and it’s not that much different from anywhere else. You always did think the grass was greener.’

  ‘He should let you hire a char. I have a char. It frees you up for other things.’

  ‘Not likely,’ Doreen said. She busied herself attaching the baby’s mouth to her other ample breast. ‘Bill saves his money for a rainy day. He’d cut a currant in half, would Bill.’

  ‘Do you ever think of running away?’

  Doreen laughed.

  ‘No, I mean it, Doreen. Can’t you picture yourself somewhere else?’

  There was a fanciful note in Lillian’s voice that Doreen found irritating.

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ she said. ‘There’s some Rich Tea biscuits in a jar in the pantry. They can all have one to dip in their milk, and I’ll have a couple with a coffee, if you’re making one.’

  Lillian stalked out of the bedroom, although she paused first at the wall mirror to look at her reflection and confirm that she bore no resemblance whatsoever to her sister.

  There was a cold snap the next day, colder than was usual in the city, cold enough to create a pleasant camaraderie among the shoppers at Oxford Circus. There were Christmas decorations strung between the lampposts of Regent Street, and on the corner of Argyll Street an old man was selling sweet blackened roast chestnuts, straight from the brazier.

  ‘Warm yer cockles, darlin’?’ he said to Lillian, and when she glanced at him he winked and they shared a complicit laugh, even though he was whiskery and almost toothless, while lovely Lillian was dressed to kill in her red shoes and fur coat. She dropped a few careless coins into his outstretched hand and took a bag of chestnuts, then ate them – nibbling delicately so as not to spoil her crimson lipstick – outside the London Palladium while she gazed at the posters for Dick Whittington and suffered a tiny pang of guilt about Annie and her birthday panto tickets. It passed, though, because she felt free and glamorous and charmingly impulsive, and she knew almost without looking that gentlemen in the street turned their heads as they passed, letting their eyes linger, taking her in.

  On Great Marlborough Street she was drawn like a moth to the bright festive windows of Liberty, and as she stood there, bathed in golden light, a man in a grey trench coat and black Homburg stopped and said something to her in a warm, confidential tone. Lillian wasn’t sure what he said, but it was meant to flatter, that much was clear, and he wasn’t English, she could tell that too: Italian, perhaps, or French – continental, anyway. He had a bit of a cheek, she thought, sidling up to her like that, but on the other hand he had a look of Cary Grant and a sweet lopsided smile and his teeth, she noticed, were perfectly white. She looked up into his dark brown eyes, and ten minutes later they were side by side on a banquette in the grillroom of the Café Royal, sharing a bottle of Pol Roger. He was from Milan and his name was Arturo; whenever he said ‘Lillian’ he lingered over the syllables; when he wanted a waiter, he raised a hand and clicked, just once; when a dozen oysters arrived at their table, he fed them to her and licked his own lips as she swallowed.

  This was living a London life, thought Lillian. This was what she meant.

  They emerged, three hours later, into a dense and hostile freezing fog, and even under the weight of her fur Lillian shivered convulsively with cold. The Regent Street that had earlier been a-bustle with life now seemed treacle-slow and silent as the seabed, altogether eerie. Lillian, hanging squiffily onto the arm of her new beau, had no idea how to get back to Peckham; the stop at which she’d disembarked from the number twelve bus was a world away in these conditions, and anyway that journey and the lumbering vehicle that had brought her here already seemed to belong to another lifetime. Wordlessly she placed herself in Arturo’s care, allowing him to lead her to a discreet hotel in Golden Square where she spent a night the like of which she had never known: Signore e Signora Arturo Bertolli, he wrote in the book. Lillian lay back and thought of Italy.

  She left early the following morning, pleasurably bruised by passion, meaning only to pack her suitcase in Peckham Rye before returning for good to her Italian lover. Arturo’s own plans were a little less definite than Lillian’s, a little more nebulous. Would he be there, she asked, when she came back this afternoon? He smiled his disarming crooked smile, and she chose to take this as assent. If it was ungallant of him to let her creep unaccompanied from the hotel, then Lillian was oblivious. And even though last night’s fog had mingled with the smoke of a million household chimneys so that the city was now shrouded in thick and toxic yellow smog, her spirits remained high, her happiness unassailable, as she inched her way down Regent Street, clinging blindly to the shop fronts, helpless as a lamb.

  In Coventry, Harold read aloud snippets from the newspaper at the breakfast table.

  ‘The capital is being choked by a smog so dense that the police are using flares to direct the traffic at Marble Arch,’ he said, as if broadcasting to the nation. ‘Eleven people have drowned in the Thames by falling accidentally into the water. The Sadler’s Wells theatre was forced to abandon a production of La Traviata because the auditorium filled with fog and the audience could not see the stage.’

  ‘Dearie me, fog indoors as well as out? What a carry on.’

  This was Mrs Binley, whom Harold now called Agnes. She not only prepared breakfast for Harold and Annie these days, but also joined them at the table. Today, she’d placed herself in Lillian’s chair and, unusually for this time of day, sh
e wore make-up: two bright circles of rouge and a vibrant pink lipstick that only emphasised the thinness of her lips. Annie was only eleven years old, but it was perfectly plain to her what the charlady was up to. The child sat in tongue-tied discomfort, chewing and chewing on a piece of toast that simply wouldn’t go down, longing for her mother to walk into the room and catch Mrs Binley red handed. She yearned to hear her mother’s voice – a laughing, languorous drawl – send Mrs Binley packing.

  ‘Yes, it’s creeping in through doors and windows, by all accounts,’ Harold said. ‘A proper pea souper.’ He read on, but silently now. Mrs Binley, unasked, helped him to more tea and he said, ‘Thank you, Agnes,’ without looking out from behind the newspaper. How had things become so comfortable between them? Annie wondered. She swallowed hard, and the wad of toast at last disappeared, scraping the tender sides of her throat as it went.

  ‘Father?’ she said in a small voice.

  He looked at her as if he’d forgotten she was at the table.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘When is Mother coming home?’

  Harold and Mrs Binley exchanged a brief, adult glance, full of meaning, and Annie felt a bloom of chilly anxiety on her skin. She surreptitiously wiped the palms of her hands on her grey school skirt. Harold cleared his throat.

  ‘You might as well know. We’re not precisely sure where your mother is, in fact.’

  ‘She’s with Aunt Doreen, Father.’

  Harold silenced Mrs Binley’s spurt of laughter with a curt shake of the head.

  ‘Your mother went to see the sights two days ago and hasn’t yet returned to Peckham Rye,’ he said. ‘The fog, you see.’

  Annie didn’t see.

  ‘Do you mean Mother’s got lost?’

  ‘I mean just what I said. She hasn’t yet returned.’ He stared at his daughter without compassion. He believed Annie to be at the very heart of Lillian’s restlessness. It was motherhood that had altered her, not marriage. Now Lillian’s behaviour was making him look foolish, but it was Annie he blamed. According to Doreen, who had telephoned the night before with news of his wife’s disappearance, Lillian was in a ‘funny mood’ when she left for the West End: skittish and excitable, and she’d worn her best fur.

  ‘She said she wanted a bit of fun,’ Doreen had said. ‘I’m sorry Harold, but I think she might have got a bit more than she bargained for. The fog’s that bad now you can’t see your nose in front of your face. Bill crawled home from work on his hands and knees today, he felt that unsteady.’

  Doreen wanted to know if she should let the police know. Yes, Harold had said, certainly she should; but still, he wasn’t so much worried as annoyed.

  He folded his newspaper with grim precision and placed it on the table, then stood up and left for the bank. Annie looked at Mrs Binley and wondered what she knew about her mother, what grown-up secrets she was harbouring. Mrs Binley caught the child’s eye.

  ‘She won’t be back, m’duck, if that’s what you’re wondering.’

  Annie, confused by the juxtaposition of friendly tone and hostile words, only stared.

  ‘She’s trouble, your mother is. It’s written all over her face.’

  Annie slid quietly off her chair and brushed the crumbs from her skirt.

  ‘And what do you think you’re doing?’ Mrs Binley asked, sharply now.

  ‘I have to go to school,’ Annie said.

  ‘Not without asking, madam. Sit down and mind your manners.’

  Annie sat.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Please may I get down from the table, Mrs Binley?’

  ‘Yes you may.’

  The child slipped from the room. Mrs Binley, alone in the polished comfort of the Platts’ panelled dining room, contemplated a future that was increasingly full of interest, full of promise. She’d leave her grown-up sons where they were in the council house, she thought, but she’d bring a few things of her own here; that nice picture of the saucy-looking gipsy girl for the chimney breast, oh and her pet parrot too. He’d be a welcome splash of colour, and a talking point when she received visitors.

  8

  House keys, car keys, purse, clean handkerchief, Gaviscon in case there were pickled onions. Annie snapped shut the clasp on her best handbag, checked her teeth in the mirror and finally, with a knot of anxiety in her stomach, set off for Josie’s house, already fifteen minutes later than the appointed hour. Finn had been waiting in the car for twenty minutes because at the last moment she’d changed her mind about her outfit and had to trot back into the house to reconsider. Three times she got dressed and undressed before settling on a royal blue woollen dress she’d bought for one of Michael’s concerts. Then she had had to hang up the blouses and skirts and slacks that she’d tried and rejected. It all took time. She apologised to the dog through the rear-view mirror: explained that she had no idea what people wore when they were invited out for lunch. How could she? In all her life it had never happened before.

  What a day, she thought; what a day, and it was only quarter to one. She’d managed to telephone Andrew as well, timing it carefully this time so that after only two rings Bailey’s lazy drawl answered with that odd inflection that made everything sound like a question, even her name; ‘Bailey Doyle?’ she said, as if even she wasn’t sure who she was. Annie had said, ‘Hello Bailey, this is Annie,’ and then, because the habitual delay on the line extended into a longer silence, she added, ‘Andrew’s mother,’ and, after another pause, Bailey had laughed. ‘Oh Jiminy, that Annie? Hey there! You’ll be after Andy? Hang on, I’ll get him?’ Just like that. No ‘How are you?’ or ‘Nice to hear from you,’ just that swift greeting in her laughing voice and then she was off, her voice diminishing in the far-away house, calling for Andrew but calling him Andy.

  Still, hearing Andrew had been comforting, and when she told him that his father was extremely poorly and he should think about a visit, he said, ‘Ah Mum, what a shame – are you okay?’ which was typical of her younger boy, who’d always been considerate, always been kind. Annie had assured him she was fine, but that the matron at Glebe Hall thought Vince didn’t have long.

  ‘Right, well, sure I can come,’ Andrew had said. ‘Should I bring Bailey and the kids? It’s high time.’

  Annie, tangling her meaning with negatives, said, ‘Only if it isn’t inconvenient,’ so that Andrew hadn’t understood, and she’d had to say that yes, they should all come if it suited them.

  ‘Right, good,’ Andrew said. ‘We’re a bit strapped for cash though so we’ll have to stay with you again. Better prepare big bro.’

  Annie had had a brief premonition of Michael’s sour expression when she told him; a glimpse of his inevitable distaste at the boys’ paraphernalia – little shoes at the foot of the stairs, colouring books and crayons on the coffee table, plastic animals piled in the shower cubicle.

  ‘I wouldn’t want you staying anywhere else,’ she said. ‘Lovely. But will Bailey actually want to come?’

  Andrew had laughed. ‘Sure she will.’

  ‘It’s just, she didn’t know who I was on the phone just now.’

  ‘Jeez, Mum, chill,’ Andrew said. ‘Sure she knows you, it’s just she’s been flat out with work, and the boys. Her brain’s fried.’

  Annie knitted her brow, trying to decipher her son’s words. Safer, she decided, to not bother.

  ‘How are the kiddies?’ she said instead.

  ‘Great, great, brilliant, yeah. Look, sorry to cut you short but I’d better run. I’ll Google some flights and get back to you.’

  ‘When do you think you’ll call? Only I’m on my way out for lunch.’

  Annie had liked the way this sounded, but Andrew only laughed. ‘Okay, tell you what, I’ll ring you tomorrow with a plan. Same time? Cool. Talk soon, Mum.’

  And then he was gone. Google some flights, Annie thought, replacing the receiver; whatever had he meant by that?

  Josie lived in a windmill. It stood proudly on a small hill, its sails long gone and r
eplaced by a castellated roof, so that it looked like a stocky Saxon tower standing guard over the village. Before she met Josie, Annie had driven past it many a time, wondering how you’d go about fitting a kitchen in such a place, and now here she was about to find out. There was a curved door, painted the same racing green as all the neighbouring houses, and when Annie knocked, she heard Josie’s voice telling her to come on in. She adjusted her dress, checked the shine of her shoes, patted her white curls and pushed open the door, and she knew at once that she’d misjudged everything.

  The scene was one of merry chaos. A round wooden table was piled with bric-a-brac, heaps of it, and the floor was cluttered with cardboard cartons. A metal clothes rail was heavily draped with bolts of fabric in bold, earthy colours and on another there were garments, though nothing Annie would call wearable: costumes, rather than clothes; outfits for the stage, for conjurers and fortune tellers. Sandra was there, looking at home on a cracked leather sofa, her feet tucked under her bottom, holding out a glass for a refill from an elderly man in a well-worn flannel shirt and baggy olive-green corduroys held up with black braces, wielding a glass jug of red wine. They all looked at her, clad like the Queen Mother in regal blue wool.