The Actuary's Wife

by K T Bowes

  Freda stopped and rubbed her hand over her face, smooshing grey filth from the photograph under her eyes and across her forehead. Emma bit her lip and waited as the elderly lady peered through the glass at the small, serious faces beneath her fingers. She opened her mouth to speak and then looked up at Emma. “Yes dear?”

  Emma cleared her throat, figuring she could clean Freda up in the adjacent toilets before morning tea time. “How do you know the details? I didn’t think that generation talked about sex and conception, especially not affairs.”

  Freda nodded. “No, they didn’t. Mother had dementia in her later years. My husband John, paid for me to fly home periodically to look after her and take the strain off my siblings. She rambled so much, we knew pretty much everything by the end. She was graphic to the point of embarrassment and my siblings were horrified. Whenever she was alone with me she became animated, convinced I was Lady Celia. My brothers and sisters resented it. I always knew who my father was, but they didn’t. My stepfather’s redheaded sons made it increasingly difficult for me to visit out of spite and stopped communicating. I only knew Mother died because I had a spy in the camp.” Freda’s face saddened and Emma watched with horror as a wet tear slipped through the dust on the crinkled face, leaving behind a sludge trail. She swiped it away, beginning to resemble a war painted army commando.

  Emma struggled not to interrupt a moment of obvious grief and bit her lip. She stood welded to the spot of broken quarry tile, her hand reaching towards the box. Freda’s eyes roved the photograph, pushing away more dust with the side of her hand. When she found what she wanted, she smiled. She sighed in satisfaction and to Emma’s horror, leaned forward and placed her lips on the cracked glass.

  Freda’s face shone with pleasure as she looked up at Emma. “My sister,” she said, turning the frame with care so Emma could see. A tiny girl sat in the front row of a class of unsmiling children, her tousled hair blowing around her head. The colour was indistinguishable in the sepia but the face was a less lined, carbon copy of Freda’s.

  Emma smiled. “How gorgeous. What’s her name?”

  “Charlotte,” Freda said and stroked the glass. “Her hair was mousey blonde like mine and as fly away as a ball of dandelion seed. I loved her the most.”

  “Not a redhead then? Not like your other step-siblings?”

  “No.” Freda drew herself up to her full height in the caretaker’s battered chair, resembling a princess in her bearing. “Charlotte was my full sister, dear. She was the daughter of my mother and Geoffrey Ayers.”

  “But you said...” Emma screwed her pretty face up, contorting her features in confusion. “You definitely said your mother married your step-dad and had red-haired babies.”

  “I did. And she did,” Freda said smugly. “But I didn’t say she ever stopped her infatuation with my father, nor his with her. Mother was forced to marry to disguise the shame of my birth but she never stopped loving Geoffrey. I always suspected little Charlotte was his, but in Mother’s ramblings she admitted it. Charlotte was born just after war was declared in 1939. My stepfather returned so changed from his war experiences he didn’t care for his own children, let alone the cuckoos. I raised Charlotte from a baby and took her with me to the Philippines after John and I married. There was nineteen years between us and she was like my own child. She died in her seventieth year and I miss her every day.” Freda caressed the glass with fondness. “I don’t have this photograph. May I have a copy?”

  “Yes,” Emma reassured her. “I’ll make one for you.”

  The women worked in relative silence until morning tea time, cleaning the glass on the photographs and removing the worst ones from their frames. They wore white cotton gloves which quickly grew covered in grey dust and the tiny thunder bugs which crept beneath the glass over the years. Freda sat with a pen and paper and painstakingly named the children she remembered, idling over the image of her sister in the 1944 school photograph. Emma copied it and pushed the paper into a plastic wallet, touched when Freda kissed her on the cheek for her pains. “Was she your spy in the camp?” Emma asked and Freda nodded.

  “Yes, dear. She flew back and forth when Mother was sick and it was the one secret Mother managed to keep from the others. I was ostracised but she was not.”

  Emma watched Freda hug the plastic wallet to her breast and ran her hand over her stomach, hoping her children would bond just as tightly.

  Chapter 5

  Freda slept in Nicky’s bed for the first few nights while the painters finished the guest bedroom along the hall. The rewiring made the walls a mess and the plaster took weeks to dry, but the finished effect was stunning. The men moved the furniture back into the bedroom; the heavy oak double bed and its paired cupboards. They sweated and complained in equal measure. “This furniture’s solid!” the younger painter grunted, closing the double doors with his heel.

  “Watch that paintwork!” the older man yelled and Nicky bit his lip and hid behind his mother, jumpy around angry males.

  Emma stood on a ladder to hang the new curtains and Freda supervised from below. “Left a bit, no, right a bit,” she called from the other side of the room.

  Nicky held the bottom step, mindful of Emma’s pregnancy. “Wow, Mum, it looks amazing,” he said, clutching the back of Emma’s trousers as she descended. “I bet Uncle Anton would’ve loved this.”

  Emma smiled and ruffled her son’s hair, tearful emotions rising into her chest at the compliment. She gulped them down, hoping her brother-in-law knew how grateful she felt for him bequeathing the huge estate to her. “I hope so,” she said softly. “I did a lot of research before deciding on the colour.”

  “It’s perfect.” Freda clapped her hands and executed a graceful pirouette, admirable for a woman in her nineties. “I love the pale eggshell colour. What’s it called?”

  “Edwardian white. It’s a heritage colour and I’ve leaned towards that period rather than earlier. I know the house dates back to William the Conqueror but I’m not sure rugs on the walls and stripped timber would suit it anymore. I’m glad you like it though.” Emma smiled and hid a yawn.

  “We’re off now!” the tradesmen called and Emma went into the wide hallway to speak to them.

  “Are you ok Mrs Freda?” Nicky asked, concerned as Freda stood in the centre of the room with her eyes closed. He touched a pleat of her tweed skirt, his brow furrowed in fear.

  “Yes, dear. Thank you, I’m fine.” Freda looked down at him, her face a mask of every lost emotion in the spectrum. Emma heard the small exchange from the doorway and glanced back, only half listening to the overall clad man in front of her.

  “Call me when you’re ready to do the next room,” the painter said and Emma nodded, her mind elsewhere.

  “Nicky, please could you show the gentlemen out and lock up for me?” she asked, her eyes straying to Freda. Nicky exchanged a wide-eyed look with her and nodded.

  “Ok.” Relieved of his duty in a feminine world, the six-year-old skipped along the hallway, going ahead of the tradesmen and sliding down the bannister.

  Emma heard his palms squeak on the polished wood and cringed, waiting for the cry as he fell off. When it didn’t come, she returned to Freda. “What’s the matter?” she asked, her tone gentle. “Just memories?”

  “Yes.” Freda bobbed her head up and down and her white hair moved in delicate waves. “This room was Lady Celia’s. She loved being away from her parents and shared the bathroom with her other sister. Her room is so near the laundry, I would sneak out and peek in here while Mother was working. You’ve got it exactly right, dear, even the pale cream of the drapes.”

  “I’m glad you like it,” Emma sighed with relief. “It proved helpful writing down everything you said, so I’m pleased if it’s a good likeness. The men painted the cornice board while I work out if I want curtain fabric over it.”

  “You’ve done well. I’ll help you make up the bed.”

  “I’ll do it later,” Emma yawned. “It’s a
new mattress but the bedding’s still in packets.”

  “Let me help?” Freda begged, her blue eyes wide. “I want to see it finished.”

  Emma relented and smiled. “You want to sleep here, don’t you?”

  Freda bit her lip and her face lit up with an inner glow. “Could I? I’d love to.”

  “Sure, it can be your room until Ro gets back.” Emma knitted her brow and tried not to worry about her husband. Nicky bounced into the room, all blonde curls and enthusiasm. “Is the door locked baby?” Emma asked.

  “Yep,” he said smugly. “And I let the dog back in. He’s lookin’ at his food bowl like he wants feeding.”

  “I already fed him when we came back from our walk, baby. He’s teasing you.”

  Nicky winced. “I gave him some more by accident.”

  “Nicky!” Emma chastised him. “You’ll make him overweight and he’ll get sick.”

  “Sorry.” The child didn’t look sorry. “Want me to get the new sheets? Is Mrs Freda sleeping in here?”

  “Yes please, she is. But seeing as it’s Lady Celia’s room, we should call her Lady Freda. What do you think?”

  “Awesome!” Nicky laughed. “I’ll just get Lady Freda’s covers from the airing cupboard. Will you help me change my sheets too then? I wanna go back to my own bed tonight.”

  Emma disguised her dismay by nodding and turning away. While Freda slept in Nicky’s room, he shared with his mother and Emma felt a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach at being alone in the enormous four poster bed. She tried to stop herself suppressing her child’s independence for her own selfish reasons. “Ok,” she said lightly. “That’s fine.”

  Emma changed Nicky’s sheets first, reasoning he had to go to bed sooner. She left Freda stuffing pillowcases and bolsters. Nicky tried to help Emma, losing himself inside the duvet cover in his attempts to fit it together. “Where’ve you gone?” Emma asked, poking the lump in the material and making her son squeak. “What are you doing in there?”

  “Makin’ the bed.” Nicky’s muffled voice came from a different lump. “Stop poking Farrell.”

  “Get the dog out of there!” Emma said, horrified. “He’s not allowed upstairs!”

  Farrell slunk out of the cover and skittered to the door. Emma heard his claws clicking along the hallway towards the stairs. Nicky’s voice rose from the remaining lump. “Mummy? Will you be ok in the big bed by yourself?”

  “Yeah, course.” Emma made her voice sound convincing. “I’ll be fine.”

  “But Mummy, when I was downstairs seeing the men out, the phone did ringing and I spoke into it.”

  “Who was it, baby?” Emma winced as she stuffed the pillow into its case and braced herself for trouble.

  “Harley Man,” Nicky said, crawling out with a look of consternation. “I messed the covers up, Mummy. Look, I put it in upside down.”

  Emma ran a hand over her son’s static blonde curls, settling them on his head and feeling them crackle under her fingers. Nicky pressed his face into her stomach. “I know you’re gonna tell me Harley Man’s not real and I shouldn’t be thinking about him like you always say. But it was him.”

  Emma pursed her lips. After years convinced her son invented the motorbike rider who protected him throughout his young life, she was forced to concede his reality last year. Christopher Dolan watched over the little family on the orders of her stepbrother, Anton Andreyev, revealing himself to the child but not to her. Emma sighed. “Ok, baby. What did he say? How did he get our phone number?”

  Nicky moved his face across Emma’s stomach and pulled back with a grin, leaving a wet stain from his nose. Emma groaned and he smirked. “Harley Man said you won’t answer your mobile phone, so he wanted me to give you a message. He said the countess is loosened.”

  “He said what?”

  “The constant is loose.”

  “No, you said countess.”

  “I dunno. It was crackly. Can he come round for tea?”

  Emma ran a hand over her face. “What? No?”

  “But he is real!” Nicky persisted. “You believe me, don’t you?”

  “Yes, I believe you, Nicky. But he’s not coming round for tea.”

  Nicky pulled a grumpy face and crawled back into the duvet cover. Emma saw his shape moving around as he tried to marry up the four corners. “I’ll button you in,” she threatened, nudging the child’s outline with her toe and he squeaked.

  “Ok then. Do it,” he giggled. “But you have to lift me onto the bed and flatten me out.”

  “Don’t tempt me,” she laughed, biting her lip and tapping her fingers on the bed post in anxiety.

  Rohan and Christopher’s fight had severed their working relationship forever, after the latter’s stupidity put the whole family at risk. “What are you up to now, Christopher Dolan?” Emma whispered to herself. “Did he say he’d call back?” she asked, forcing a lightness into her voice.

  “Na. He just said to warn you that the controls was open.”

  “Oh, Nicky!” Emma’s patience hung by a very thin thread. “You keep changing the message! Next time, just bring the phone please?”

  “You was busy!” he grumbled. “And I was detecting you.” He re-emerged from the duvet cover again looking cross.

  “Protecting,” Emma corrected him. “It’s fine. But next time either write it down or bring the phone. Yeah?”

  Nicky nodded and turned his attention to putting his bed back together and Emma worried at the inside of her cheek with her teeth. “Bloody hell!” she hissed and shook her head.

  “Swearing!” Nicky chastised. “You won’t let me!”

  “Sorry,” Emma apologised, hauling the duvet onto the bed. At least she knew where the anonymous texts came from.

  Chapter 6

  “Oh, no!” Emma’s colour drained from her face and she reached for the wobbly table behind her with shaking hands.

  “Emma?” Sam stopped changing the plug on the staff room toaster, his screw driver poised mid-air.

  “What’s wrong dear?” Freda stopped itching her shin and pulled her pop sock back up to her knee with a snap. “Is it the baby?”

  “Baby?” Sam’s eyes bulged in his head. “What baby? Who’s having a baby? Are you having a baby?” He glanced at the floor as a screw tinkled across the tiles and shot underneath the desk. “Oh, bloody hell!”

  “Young man!” Freda struggled to her feet. “Swearing in front of ladies is so gauche!” There was a hideous twang as part of her whale bone corset settled and the old lady farted. Pursing her lips and smiling with admirable nobility, she sat back in her seat, which emitted a painful creak.

  “Stop! Please just stop!” Emma held one hand in the air and covered her face with the other. She squeezed the bridge of her nose between thumb and forefinger and kept her eyes closed against the awful discovery. “I need to think!”

  “Are you pregnant then?” Sam asked, banging his head on the underside of the table as he emerged, screw in hand. He jerked his head over his shoulder towards the elderly woman. “I’m guessing it’s not her who’s expecting.” The thought gave him considerable amusement and he laughed like lunatic, sitting cross legged on the floor.

  “I think I’m gonna be sick.” Emma clapped a hand over her mouth. Freda bent forward and held up a dirty mop bucket and Sam pulled his head back under the table as Emma fled the office and disappeared into the toilets next door. She stood over the sink unit taking deep breaths and peering at her ashen face in the mirror. A few sips of water helped restore her equilibrium and after wiping her lips, Emma went back to the office.

  A miserable darkness hung over the school and the high windows offered a view of grey sky. As Emma pushed the door open, Freda and Sam whipped around with guilty looks and Freda turned, pushing something metal along the table with her left hand. Emma’s pretty face hardened and she put her hands on her hips. “Stop right there!” she demanded. “Don’t you dare.”

  “But it’s a disaster!” Sam exclai
med. “Get rid of it. Nobody will know. I’ll take it outside and...”

  “No!” Emma slammed the door behind her and stared at the conspirators. “I’m an archivist! My role is to guard history, not destroy it because it doesn’t suit me.” Emma turned her dark eyes on Freda. “And I’m surprised at you, Freda Ayers! You can’t say you’re a historian and then pick and choose!”

  “Yes, but what will you do?” Freda’s crinkled face drooped in misery.

  “I don’t know!” Emma pushed through and seized the brass plaque from the table. Its pitted surface was distressed by verdigris and Emma’s wrist bent backwards with the weight of it. “It’s staying!” She cradled the plaque to her breast, smelling the old metal scent as she contemplated her concerned colleagues.

  “Let’s have another look?” Sam asked, holding out his hand.

  “No, I don’t trust you.”

  He huffed and rolled his eyes. “She wanted to get rid of it, not me!” He jerked his head at Freda and the old lady glared at him. “Please, give us another quick peek. It’s kinda funny really.”

  Freda slapped him hard on the top of his head. “It’s catastrophic, you foolish little man! It’s certainly not funny!”