On Monday evening, both of her sisters were out and her father had popped out for a pint when there was a knock at the door. She ran to answer it, expecting Matthew, but Nelda stood there.
‘Dad’s out,’ Patricia explained, but Nelda pushed her way past her and entered the room to stand and stare uneasily at her.
‘You were a fool to cancel your wedding,’ she said, ‘but don’t think I will cancel mine. Your father and I will want this house in a few weeks time and you will have to find yourself somewhere else to live. Elizabeth has agreed to live at the farm with Mr Caradoc until she marries Will, and Marion has a room with her friend Joanne. What will you do now?’
‘I haven’t given it a thought!’ Patricia gasped. ‘Two days ago Matthew and I were to marry! Two days ago my best friend died!’
‘She killed herself,’ Nelda corrected. ‘Sorry I am, really, but that isn’t my problem. My interest is making a good home for your father and me. Twenty-sixth of April we’re marrying, mind, and I want you out.’
Patricia laughed then, a sad little laugh. ‘When I first saw you and Dad together I confided in Jacky Davies. He said I should make friends with you, show you I’m on your side, then you might not throw me out of my home. He was wrong, wasn’t he?’
Nelda relaxed then and when she spoke her voice was softer. ‘I’m sorry Patricia, but I really couldn’t take on a family of young women. I’d find the prospect terrifying. I’d be an outsider for the rest of my life, you see that, don’t you? I want to care for your father and I’ll do that well, I promise you that, but I can’t cope with a house full of people all expecting me to be a second mother.’
‘In this house I’ve been the second mother. At least since I became tall enough to reach the sink. You’d have probably been one of those I looked after. It seems to be what I do best, look after people.’
‘Make a life for yourself. If you and Matthew find that this – mishap – separates you, use the opportunity for a second start. Decide what you want and reach for it.’
‘Of course he’ll still want to marry me! The house is all ready for us, it just seemed wrong to marry only hours after Vanessa’s death, that’s all.’ She sounded more confident than she felt.
‘Perhaps. On the other hand, it could be a good thing for both of you to think for a while. It’s something not everyone has, a second chance.’
A letter came from Roland on the following morning. It was a small photocopy and besides the words, some of which were blue-pencilled out, there were drawings; a bride on horseback wearing jodhpurs under her flowing dress, a clock face on which was written, LATE, and a caricature of Matthew wearing a top hat and tails, running towards a church. Patricia’s laughter verged on tears. At the end of the letter was an echo of her own words about the end of childhood:
Mam to sooth, Dad to scold
Food and warmth when we come in cold
Walks in the rain when the sun wouldn’t shine
Sandalled feet when the day was fine
Childhood memories we shared together
The love and laughter will linger for ever.
He couldn’t know about Vanessa. She hugged the letter against her. Once he knew, he wouldn’t write a friendly letter to her ever again.
Matthew called briefly on Tuesday evening, the day before the funeral. Her father was there with Nelda and they were huddled over sketches of the house discussing their plans to change it once they were married. They whispered to each other and laughed at private, lovers’ jokes, wrapped up in their own plans and unaware of hers.
‘Have you thought about when we’ll rearrange our wedding?’ she asked Matthew.
He looked at her in surprise. ‘How can we even think about it, before Vanessa is even buried? How can you suggest it, Patricia? It was wrong of us to rush into it, we should have given her time to consider and forgive you.’
‘Forgive us, you mean, surely?’
She made them some tea and offered cake, which he refused. Several times she began a conversation only for it to falter and hang in the air. The look on his face worried her. He was locked behind an expression that was strange. All animation faded, he sat like a stranger until the clock striking nine seemed to startle him out of a trance and he left without even a goodnight kiss.
* * *
The funeral was quite large by village standards, with many of Vanessa’s school friends coming to the house with their parents. Distant relatives of the dead girl added to the sombre crowd and Patricia saw many half-remembered faces who came to grieve for the loss of such a young life.
Mrs Drew didn’t speak to her when she went to the house, but she stayed until the men returned from the burial and walked home in silence with her father. Jacky came, escorting Marion, and Mr Caradoc walked with Elizabeth. Matthew was there but he didn’t stay with Patricia but stood among the relatives.
Matthew kept away from Woodman’s Row and Patricia felt herself curling up with a guilt almost as destructive as at the death of her mother. She kept busy, helping at the Youth Club with Nelda, who still ran the sewing and cookery classes, and did more hours than necessary at Sally Drew’s shop. She had learnt to drive the van and began delivering flowers; tense and upset when the order was for a funeral. On her days off she helped Mr Caradoc and any spare time she spent with Julia.
Julia was the only one who didn’t dissect her cancelled wedding and discuss prospects for a rearranged date. Everyone else asked and showed an interest and some sympathy, but Julia never mentioned Matthew.
‘Have you thought any more about college, dear?’ she asked, a week after the funeral, ‘The year begins in September so there’s time to decide what you want to do.’
‘I don’t want to do anything,’ Patricia replied. ‘Matthew will want me home making everything ready for when the war ends. I like working for Sally, but I don’t want to go to college.’
‘If you could really choose, irrespective of study or exams, what do you dream of doing? There must be some secret dream? Something you’ve always imagined yourself achieving?’
‘I like the Youth Club. I often think it would be nice to have a sort of café, where young people could come and buy a snack and sit and talk to their friends.’
‘A catering course then?’ Julia stood up and put the kettle on for tea. She hadn’t really expected a reply. Patricia was stuck in a groove and she didn’t know how to lift her free of it. ‘You’re worse than Sally Drew’s car!’ she said with a laugh. ‘Stuck in a ditch and unaware that there’s a good straight road leading to greater delights, if you’d only turn your head just a little.’
Four weeks passed, and the wedding of her father and Nelda took place with very little fuss.
‘Sorry I am that I’m still living here, Nelda,’ she said when the short ceremony was over. ‘I will get out but I just haven’t been able to think clearly, waiting to see what Matthew wants to do.’
‘Don’t wait too long,’ Nelda warned. ‘Your father and I want to redecorate that bedroom soon, mind.’
She returned to work, and still Matthew didn’t call. Three times she went to where he lodged and only once he was there but even then he didn’t offer to walk her home. Three weeks after their aborted wedding, he walked to the station carrying one small bag, to join the army. He left without even saying goodbye. Feeling acutely embarrassed, Patricia went to see his landlady and asked for his address.
* * *
In July, Marion had a letter from Paul Symons to tell her he had heard about her ‘carryings on’ and wanted to end their engagement. Crying, she went to tell Patricia, adding that she was unhappy living with Joanne.
‘Her mam’s a real nag. She’d give me the Jinny if she was my mam so she tells me. Cane me indeed. Fat chance she’d have! D’you know she’s still got one, hanging behind the bedroom door? Joanne says she’s still threatened with it if she’s late home. There’s a thing! If she tried that on me I’d give her Jinny. Snap it on her I would!’
‘You do ge
t in earlier than when you lived here, I hope?’ Patricia asked, intending to warn her sister to be more considerate. Then she smiled. ‘Remember when that man climbed up and got in through the bedroom window?’ They were soon convulsed with laughter.
* * *
On August the thirtieth, a month before it was expected, Nelda went into hospital to have her baby. She had begun to depend on Patricia to help keep the house running smoothly and although she didn’t ask, she hoped the girl would stay at least until the baby was over a few weeks old and she could find someone to look after it while she went back to her job. Before the war she wouldn’t have been allowed to return, but thankfully, with the shortage of teachers, she was promised that unless the war ended suddenly and all the men returned, there would be a vacancy for which she could apply.
Baby Gregory was born just after midnight on August the thirty-first. It was a long time before he took a breath and cried but Nelda knew nothing of this as he had been rushed away for the nurses to deal with, while others attended to her. When they brought him back, she smiled at his tiny, wrinkled face and the hair so thick with blood it looked as black as coal. The nurses promised it would gradually lighten as the blood was washed away.
She wasn’t allowed to change his napkins, partly because she was advised to rest while she had the chance and partly because a new mother, seeing the black, sticky muconium, sometimes became frightened.
He didn’t take to feeding and Nelda was exhausted with trying to make him ‘latch on’, only to hand him back to the nurses in dispair.
‘Don’t worry, it’s early days,’ she was smilingly assured. She was worried, seeing all the other new mothers coping so well with their eager little feeders. But she was happily ignorant of the discussions and concern shown behind the doors of the ward.
It wasn’t until the third day that Nelda became aware that there was something seriously wrong with the little boy. He wasn’t feeding, he didn’t cry, his face was shrunken, like that of an old man, huge eyes and pinched mouth. His breathing had become laboured and shallow. Although the nurses and doctors tried everything they knew, he became worse.
‘Come on, little Gregory,’ Nelda pleaded, hugging him close to the breast he had no strength to take. Patricia was with her when Gregory gave up the struggle and died in his sobbing mother’s arms.
Leonard was distressed and could do nothing to console Nelda and it was Patricia she wanted to stay with her.
Patricia sat with her step-mother and encouraged her to talk.
* * *
At first Nelda cried, hugging a pillow against her breasts as if her arms ached to hold her baby. Patricia chattered, about anything that came into her head and Nelda went on crying; loudly at first, then softly, pitifully, breaking Patricia’s heart. She had looked forward to the baby, knowing she would have been involved a great deal in its care.
Nelda stayed in hospital for a week while they helped dry up the milk and gave her the chance to recover. Whenever she was allowed, rushing between home, the shop and her various responsibilities, Patricia sat with her.
On the day her father brought her home, Nelda started throwing out the knitted coats and hats, the little vests and gowns embroidered so beautifully by Elizabeth. The cradle and the second-hand pram were put outside for the ash men to take. Leonard pleaded with her to wait, to at least find a home for it all, somewhere there was a family who would be grateful to have them.
‘Grateful? I don’t want anyone to be grateful. I just want them out of my sight!’ Nelda wailed.
Patricia suggested tentatively that there might be another baby in a while, a strong, healthy child to love and enjoy.
‘That’s one thing I’ve learnt from all this,’ Nelda said, her eyes still red with exhausting tears. ‘I don’t want the worry of a child. Sorry I am he died, but it’s made me certain about one thing. I do not want a child.’ On this she would not be moved.
* * *
In November, Nelda realised to her utter dismay that she was again expecting a child. She told no one. This time she would end it before anyone guessed. Already, even before she’d had confirmation with the absence of the monthly curse, she was finding morning sickness a problem. Patricia would know if she once saw her retching at the thought of breakfast, and it was only luck that on recent mornings, Patricia had been out early to go and collect flowers from the market for Sally. She had cancelled two trips to the pictures with Leonard, afraid of the bus journey. She had discovered to her horror on a recent shopping trip, that she was unable to travel even a short distance on a bus without suffering travel sickness. She would have to do something soon.
She was hardly in a difficult position. Twenty-eight wasn’t desperately old to have a child. There was nothing she could say to convince a doctor to dispose of an unwanted child. The prospect of an illegal abortion was frightening but not as frightening as having to care for a child.
Having lived in the village all her life, she’d heard the rumours about girls ‘losing’ their unwanted babies and the stories all centred around Milly Morgan. Milly didn’t perform abortions but she was a herbalist, often seen out at first light, gathering wild plants and flowers to add to her store. Many of the older people still went to Milly rather than queue at the doctors surgery. Few were dissatisfied with her treatment. Telling the school she was ill with a touch of ’flu, Nelda went to see her.
Milly Morgan was not elderly, it was difficult to guess her age as she had looked much the same for many years. She wore a wrapover apron around her thin body, wellingtons on her feet, an ancient felt hat which she said had belonged to her mother, and, when the weather made it impossible to avoid a coat, a rubber mackintosh in a muted shade of green. When she stood against the hedgerow and watched the small animals who seemed unafraid of her presence, she was almost invisible. The herbs she offered looked grubby and very unsavoury but Nelda was assured by the smiling woman that they would serve her purpose well.
‘Give ’em a few hours, girlie and they’ll leave you as innicent of childer as your maiden aunt, and after a little sleep you’ll be as fit as one of my dog’s fleas,’ she chuckled. ‘Do not fear, you’ll be safe with Milly’s ministerings. Milly won’t do you wrong.’
Nelda was afraid to stay at home in case Leonard or Patricia came home. Reassured by the woman’s confidence that a few hours would see it all done and finished with, she decided to go to the cottage owned by Matthew. It was a long way from another house so even if she moaned as the pains bit into her – as Milly had warned they might – no one would hear her. She could swallow the filthy stuff, rest for a few hours then go home and stay in bed until she had recovered.
* * *
It was likely that Roland would have stayed in North Africa for many more months but an injury sent him firstly to a field hospital then back home for convalescence. He arrived at his mother’s home, white faced and exhausted, early one Sunday morning, having travelled by train over night and thumbed a lift on a milk lorry for the rest of the way. He had not received any letters since Patricia’s nostalgic one in July and a second telling him about her father’s wedding and the birth and death of baby Gregory.
He walked into the home which had curtains half drawn against the morning sun, and called his mother. She appeared from her bedroom, in a dressing gown, her hair still captured in a grey hairnet, her face thinner and older than he remembered.
‘Mam? Are you ill? What’s the matter?’
‘How can you ask! Why didn’t you write?’
‘What d’you mean? I’ve written every week.’
‘And not a word about your sister?’
‘Mam,’ he said wearily. ‘I’m not long out of hospital, I was shot in the shoulder, I almost lost my arm, I wrote to tell you all this and I haven’t heard from you for months, so why are you telling me off?’
He carefully placed a briefcase filled with drawings onto the table. ‘Take great care of these, Mam, I think they’ll be valuable once the war is over. I start
ed recording the scenes behind the front line and—’
‘You don’t know?’ she interrupted. ‘You haven’t heard about Vanessa? Isn’t that why you’ve come?’
‘Know what?’ he began to be exasperated. So Vanessa had a cold, or was feeling unwell and that was, as always, far more important than the fact that he had been in hospital.
‘Vanessa is dead.’
He asked her to repeat it, he couldn’t accept what he had heard. He was halucinating. His sister dead?
‘What happened?’ he asked, after staring for long seconds, willing her to say she was lying. ‘Why wasn’t I told?’
‘I wrote. I’ve written time and time again, begging you to get in touch, but you didn’t answer my letters.’
‘You should have got in touch with the…’ He abandoned explanations about proceedures and asked, ‘When did it happen?’
‘Two days before Matthew was to marry that wicked Patricia. It was her fault. She killed your sister. My beautiful Vanessa would still be here, laughing, singing and making every one who knew her happy, if it hadn’t been for Patricia.’
Even in his grief, Roland managed to say, ‘I hope you didn’t tell Patricia that, Mam.’
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