‘I was there, God damn it!’ he shouted and then turned his head away and pushed himself back further into his chair as though by doing so he could get away from the sharpness of her stare.
‘You were with him?’ She was still standing very straight, her head up and her eyes fixed on him and he could not keep his own gaze away and he looked back at her. Her eyes looked as dark as the darkest amber, and as hard, and he blinked as she said again more loudly, ‘You were with him?’
‘What if I was?’ He tried to bluster, knowing how important it was that he should not talk more to her about Basil than he had to. He knew perfectly well that he was bad at lying; he could tell a well-embroidered story when it suited him, but that wasn’t lying, it was just talking, and he knew that if she pressed him he’d end up telling her how her brother had behaved there in that battlefield, of his tears and his terror and his total uselessness as a soldier let alone as an officer, and he didn’t want to do that. The man was dead and clearly she was sad about that. Let her just stay sad, and not be sickened as surely she would be if he told her how it had really been.
‘I have a right to know,’ she said in a low voice. ‘We had a letter from his commanding officer saying that he died under fire. That was all. It – my stepmother has been prostrate ever since and my – Wilfred, my brother Wilfred, has gone to South Africa. After Basil died he said he had to. It has caused so much – I need to know what happened. To say he died under fire – it is so little. What do you know? How is it you tried to save his life? What does that mean?’
‘Nothing,’ he mumbled again, but this time he saw the look of contempt on her face and it made him redden. ‘Dammit, nothing you need to know!’ he snapped, and again cursed his own loose tongue.
‘And what does that mean?’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, Millie! I came here to talk about us, not the damned war. I want to see my child. Jessie tells me she’s a wonderful child, clever and pretty and all – clever we are, you and me, always was, but no one could call us beauties, eh? Interesting and that – but us, with a pretty kid? What do you say to that, eh? Can I see her? I got such plans, Millie. We’re going to have a great time, a really great time –’
‘What happened to Basil? I am not interested in speaking of anything else.’
‘You don’t want to go on about things like that, Millie. Bad enough the poor devil got his chips, isn’t it? Let him rest easy. Just say he did his best, like I did. We was altogether, trying to help each other get through – soldiers and officers together.’ He was doing his best, trying to mend the harm his own stupid loquacity had caused. ‘Listen, the thing of it is, it’s morbid going on about what happened. Let’s talk of better things – like us getting married. Eh? I was wrong, Millie, I was dead wrong and I’m here to say it. We should have got married as soon as you got in the club – I know that now. I’ve thought a lot about us, all this time, a lot. We ought to be together, us and our kid, have more maybe. I’ve got it all worked out, the whole thing. I got Truman’s to agree I should be licensee of this lovely little pub they’ve got in Hoxton, a nice part, not rough at all, and when I’ve learned the business properly, they say they’ll send me to a better place and I can do really well. There’s a nice little flat over and plenty of room for the kid as well and there’s plenty of trade for us. Jessie tells me you’re a great cook now, that you made a nice thing out of baking, so we can do food at the pub, eh? A little restaurant in the back – we could be sitting pretty, you and me. Really pretty. So let’s let bygones be bygones and start again, Millie. What do you say? You don’t want to live here in this apology for a cemetery! It’s like walking into misery to come into this house. You feel it as you walk up the steps – what do you say, Millie, eh? I took you away from here once before, remember. Now let me take you away again –’
‘You took me away?’ She was blazing with anger and had it barely under her control. He could feel it coming at him like waves of heat from a banked down fire. ‘I left here of my own free will – and I’ve come back here in the same way. You dare to come here and speak so to me? You want me now because you’re crippled and for no better reason! You want to be looked after and coddled and – and – well, find someone else! Ask your sister to take care of you, ask your mother – leave me alone and –’
‘My mother’s dead and Jessie’s getting married again.’ He meant to sound dignified but he sounded merely sulky, even in his own ears. ‘She’s going to live in America.’
‘I’m delighted to hear it!’ Mildred flared. ‘It’s time she had her own life. I wish her joy. But you – you can get out of this house and never come near it or me again! What do you think I am? A street drab that will sit willingly waiting for you to pick her up and set her down again as it pleases you? I am a woman of better worth than that! I am well able to care for myself and for my child, and need no part of you, and never will! Find someone else to look after you and cater to your selfishness and high opinion of yourself. I have no opinion of you and do not care whether you live or die. You understand me? Whether you live or die!’
He stared at her and blinked and then shook his head. ‘What’s happened to you?’ he said wonderingly. ‘You used to be – I mean, you was always spirited. It was the first thing about you I ever saw, that spirit in you, but you weren’t hard like this. Now you’ve turned into a – whatever did I ever do to you to get such a tongue-lashing as that?’
‘What did you do to me?’ She threw both hands up in the air in an oddly quaint little gesture. ‘What did you do to me? You ruined my life! You seduced me, you left me to do as best I could when my baby was born, and you ask me that?’
‘The life I was supposed to have ruined wasn’t all that wonderful as I recall. And as for seducing you – you were as eager as I was. I remember that too,’ he said, and again tried to be dignified, and this time almost succeeded. ‘It was your idea to leave this house, sure it was – because you hated it so much. Have you forgotten? I haven’t. That was why I never thought to look for you here, though Ruby did.
I couldn’t believe you’d ever willingly come back to your father, you hated him so much.’
‘He’s dead,’ she said, and turned her back on him. ‘Just as my brother is, and for all I know my other brother too. I have to look after my stepmother and my younger brothers. Someone has to be responsible. That is why I am here. And I wish to stay here unmolested. Go away. Just leave me alone and go away. All I want to hear from you is news of what happened to my brother Basil. If you have anything to tell me of him, then say it. If not, go away. I never want to see you again. I never want to see any man again – ever –’ And she stood there beside the fire with her head down staring into the flames.
He got to his feet and stood very still, watching her, and there was a long silence as he tried to untangle the confusion in his head.
Tell her he had lost his arm trying to save the life of her coward of a brother? What good would that do? Would it make her lose all her anger, make her hatred of him melt away? Would she even believe him? He had a dim picture in his mind of how it would be, how she would sneer at him and accuse him of speaking ill of the dead to make himself look good, and he closed his eyes, trying to see a way out of the trap into which he had fallen. And could not.
‘I never meant you any harm, Millie,’ he managed at last. But she ignored him, not moving from her place beside the fire. ‘I loved you, you know that? I still do. You’ve got class, Millie, you always did have, and you still have it. I thought, the past is the past. I didn’t behave all that well, I dare say, but then neither did you. And it’s no fault in us. We do what we have to do, and when we have to do it, don’t we? You do the best with what you are and what you’ve got. You had to live in this house with money and a father you hated who made your life a misery and you got out. I lived in the East End with good people but no money and no hope of getting any except with my own fists, and I did the best I could to get out. And together I thought we could make an ev
en better best – and we still could, if you’d just try.’
She shook her head. ‘You’re mad to think it, just as I was once. It’s over. The past is indeed the past, and I have no intention of repeating any of the mistakes I made. I want no part of it.’
‘But you’ve got your kid,’ he said. ‘Jessie says she’s quite a kid –’
For the first time her face softened. ‘Yes. I have my daughter. And I’m going to see to it she has a good life, a better life than I did. She’ll have the best I can get for her. That’s the reason why I’m back here. I don’t pretend this is a happy house for me. It never was, and I doubt it ever will be. But it’s good for Poppy and it will be happy for her. Here she can be cared for and educated and become the sort of woman she should be. Not one who can be bullied and put upon and – and used as I was, but one who has her own life in her own hands and is free of men like my father, and like – you – Go away, please. There is nothing more for us to discuss. Go away.’
‘She is my daughter too –’ he began but now she turned a look of such fury on him that he actually took a step back.
‘Don’t you ever dare to come near her, do you hear me? You are – you have no rights at all. She is my daughter, mine, mine, mine. What do you know of her? What care have you ever had of her? She nearly died because of you – if you had not gone running off to South Africa and made Jessie so fearful I would never have taken the child to – oh, go away!’ And she stamped her foot and then almost ran across the room to the door to fling it open. ‘Get out! I never want to see you ever again, and if you ever come near this house again I shall fetch the police to you. And they will look at you and at me, and who will they believe? Be warned. I have no wish to talk to you ever again. If you have anything now to tell me of my brother Basil, then say it. Otherwise, go!’
* * *
Poppy had been sitting all afternoon at the nursery window, peering down into the street. It had worked out very well, after all, pretending to be sick. She had been fetched back to the house by Miss Peach and put to bed by Mama, who always put her to bed at the least hint of any illness, for she worried about it so, and the boys had all been out for they were at school and she could lie there and read and be as happy as if she were a real princess, all on her own. But it got a little boring after a while so she crept out of bed and listened at the door. Mama was in the drawing room; the door was shut and she had heard someone go in there a while ago. Visitors, she thought, and was glad she wasn’t there. Visitors were always so tedious; old ladies from the other houses in the Terrace who sat and spoke in long sad voices about the war and people dying and being ill; Poppy didn’t like them at all. But there might be something to look at in the street below so she went and curled up on the window seat and stared out through the bars.
It had been raining and the paving stones which she could see through the green leaves of the plane tree just below her were shiny and bright; and she could see the reflection of the people in them as they walked by and she giggled inside her head as she thought what fun it would be to open the window and lean out and spit on them. Spitting was a dreadful thing to do but great fun, and she pushed on the window to see if it would open. It did and she could lean out and it was lovely. She pulled her wrapper closer and leaned over the sill, staring down below at the wet leaves and the pavement and the people and began to collect spit in her mouth, wondering if she would dare to do it when the time came. This was the best game she had thought of for a long time, for it made her chest feel tight and excited and that was a lovely feeling.
Somewhere far below the front door opened and she leaned out even further, a little precariously, to see who it was. No one she knew. A man in a brown suit but no hat and with an empty sleeve pinned across his chest. She had seen other such men in the streets lately, and when she’d asked about them, been told they were brave soldiers. So this was a brave soldier, and she decided that perhaps it would be better not to spit on him, but to wait for someone else. Besides, he looked, as far as she could see, quite nice. He had dark curly hair and she wondered what sort of face he had to go with it, and almost as though he had heard her thinking it, he lifted his head to look up and she pulled back, scared she would be seen, and the spit she had collected in her mouth disappeared as she swallowed without thinking.
It was a very nice face, she decided, with big eyes and a lot of lines on the forehead, just like the lines she had seen when she had looked out of the train window when they had all gone to see the ships in Southampton before she got ill, only there were more of them, and she stared at the man as the leaves below her shifted and murmured in the breeze that had sharpened now as a little rush of rain swept across the street.
* * *
In the drawing room Millie heard the front door slam shut and lifted her head and listened as silence filled the house again. The tears rose in her chest like a tide and she hated herself for her own weakness. There is no reason to weep, she told herself fiercely, none at all. He is as he has always been, a disaster for her. His chatter, his charm, his ridiculous plans – what good had they ever brought her? Nothing but trouble, nothing but pain.
And Poppy, her treacherous inner voice whispered. And Poppy? Is she a disaster, is she pain and trouble? He gave you Poppy – and now you are robbing him of her. And she of him. Perhaps Poppy would like to live with her father as well as her mother in a flat over a little public house and help her mother cook for the customers and –
And now she had no trouble in suppressing the tide of tears. Poppy deserved better than that. If all he could offer his child was that sort of slum life, then he wasn’t fit to be her father. Poppy was to be a lady, an educated lady, a person who could earn her own living if the need arose, and not be dependent on any man. Poppy was to be a Twentieth Century woman of the best kind, not a weak and useless creature like her mother. She may be pretty and therefore in less need of the equipment that would make her independent, Millie told herself, still fiercely, but that made no matter. She is to be a strong woman who owns herself. She won’t ever suffer as I do, eaten with a need that is so shameful, so – so – and now the tears did come as she stood beside the handsome fireplace in the big drawing room of her stepmother’s house in Leinster Terrace, literally holding on to the edge of the mantel to prevent herself from doing what her body so desperately wanted her to do. Which was to run after the man now walking away from her down the rainy street outside.
* * *
Why he stopped and looked up he didn’t know. The flood of hate and anger Millie had hurled at him had almost literally taken his breath away, and there had been only one answer in him – to turn and go and leave her there with her glittering eyes and her bitter stare and never think about her again. He could do it. Whatever he had felt for her before, he could do it. No man could go on caring about a bitch like that. Why should he? He had done all he could for her, had never tried to pretend to be anything other than he was, yet she treated him so villainously – and he had whipped up his thoughts like horses, making himself boil with enough anger to fuel his escape.
And then had found himself stopping and turning and looking upwards, without knowing why. Until he saw her. A small white face peering over the edge of a window sill, high up behind the leaves of a tall plane tree, and he knew at once who it was. And it wasn’t just the way she looked, the dark curly hair that was so like his own, and the wide dark eyes. There was more to it than that, a sort of shock of recognition. Even though he had never seen her before, he knew at once who she was.
And he lifted his chin even higher and smiled, and half lifted his right hand and for a moment she stared back at him, her face quite blank, and even at this distance he could see that clearly, and then she disappeared. He stood there and waited for a long time, just standing and waiting for her to appear at the door of the house, there at the top of the steps just behind him.
But the seconds became minutes and there was no sign of her and the rain increased, soaking his thin su
it and making the stump of his left arm ache abominably and at last he knew he was being ridiculous, making a damned fool of himself, waiting here in the windswept street for a child who was just such a one as her mother. She wasn’t coming down, had never had any intention of coming down. She had just stared and sneered and gone away, and he sniffed hard to clear his nose and upper lip of the rain and turned to go, hunching his cold shoulders against the chill.
* * *
It took so long to get dressed again, that was the trouble. Usually there were people there to help with the buttons on the back of her dresses and with the even worse buttons on her boots, so she wasn’t very good at it, and all the time as she struggled she knew he was down there waiting and that made her fingers even more awkward and slow. But she managed it at last and opened the nursery door and slipped out on to the landing and down the back stairs.
The servants were in the kitchen; she could hear their voices murmuring and the occasional crack of laughter from behind the closed door, and she crept through the passageway to the back door and managed somehow to open it, even though the handle stuck as it always did. It didn’t rattle too much though, and, with a scared glance over her shoulder, she slipped through as quickly as she could and ran across the area and up the steps and out into the street.
He wasn’t there and for a moment she stood still, wanting to cry and not knowing why. She didn’t know who the man was, didn’t even know why she was running after him. All she knew was that he had looked up at her through the wet leaves of the plane tree and waved and his face had been a face she liked, with its crinkled forehead and its dark eyes and she wanted – no, had to talk to him. And now he was gone.
But then she lifted her head and stood on tiptoe so that she could see further down the street and at once her chest seemed to burst with excitement again, because he wasn’t gone at all. He was walking along the street, with a funny sort of walk, as though he were bouncing from one foot to the other, and she could see the way his shoulder on one side was the wrong shape, because of the empty sleeve in front.
Jubilee (Book 1 of The Poppy Chronicles) Page 44