‘Of course I did. She should suffer for what she did!’
Roland accepted a cup of tea and listened as his mother told him what had happened, the story coming out in a disjointed and disordered manner so that it was an hour before he had most of the facts.
* * *
Two days later, days during which he had given vent to his grief in the privacy of his room, he felt ready to face Patricia. He went to her home.
He knew from Patricia’s letters that her father had married and that a baby had been born in August, which had died. Like his mother’s letters, hers had followed him from place to place, but had been successful in eventually catching up with him. She hadn’t mentioned Vanessa’s death and he was puzzled as to why. He walked away from the empty house wondering where next to look for her, Auntie Sally Drew’s shop was closed. Perhaps she had found herself somewhere different to live.
He didn’t want to go back to the house so he wandered up the lanes towards the farm. Patricia might be there, helping on her day off. She had always liked the farm.
He called at Caradoc’s house and was told, with some embarrassment, that she was going over the fields with ‘muck’.
‘Insisted she did, even though I told her it was no work for a girl. Can’t stop her these days I can’t. Any spare time she has, she works. Sad she is, see, after the break up with Matthew and your mother accusing her of – sorry Roland, but your Mam’s been terrible unkind, you must know it.’
It was only then that Roland learned that Patricia’s wedding had been cancelled.
‘I didn’t know about Vanessa until I walked into the house. None of Mam’s letters have reached me because of this,’ he pointed to his arm which was bandaged and fastened in a sling. ‘Travelling from one hospital to another only Patricia managed to get them through although I don’t know how. Mam’s didn’t catch up with me you see.’
‘Go and see her and tell her to finish for the day. She’s done more than enough. Perhaps she’ll listen to you.’
He found her in the field where the potatoes had been grown, sitting on the tractor drinking from a bottle of fizzy pop. He waved and called to her.
She jumped down and ran towards him, then slowed. Was he also coming to tell her she was guilty? No need, his mother and many others had already convinced her of that. She was nervous when she stood watching him approach. The clinical whiteness of the sling startled her and she thought at once that it was his left arm, and being right-handed, the injury might not affect his ambition to become a succesful artist.
Roland slowed too as they drew near, her hesitation puzzled him, until he realised what she must be thinking. Quickly, he said, ‘Patricia, I’ve just heard about Vanessa. How you must be suffering.’
She cried then, relief at his understanding causing her to collapse into his arms. ‘They all blame me you see,’ she said, when she was able to speak. ‘Even Matthew.’ She rubbed her eyes inelegantly on her sleeve, adding to the dirt already there and asked, ‘But what about you? What happened to your arm. Oh, Roland, thank goodness it’s your left and won’t affect your drawing.’
‘It’s going to be all right. But the injury was the reason I didn’t know about Vanessa. I didn’t know until I saw Mam.’
‘I tried to write and tell you all about it but I couldn’t. I thought you’d blame me like the rest. But your mother wrote, surely?’
‘I was sent to a field hospital, then another and another, and then I was on my way home for a blessed leave to convalesce. Her letters didn’t catch up with me, only yours found their way to me.’
They sat and shared Patricia’s sandwiches, leaning on an oak to escape the bitterly cold wind, and talked. For Patricia it was a relief for someone to allow her to talk about that awful day and what followed. For Roland it was also a release of pent-up emotions, the realisation of knowing she hadn’t married Matthew was the best news he’d had in years. He knew in that moment that Patricia was the most important person in his life. He remembered clearly that she was his first thought when he was given this unexpected leave.
He wandered around, talked to Mr Caradoc, drank tea and relaxed as he waited for Patricia to clean up after her day’s work. At three o’clock they walked towards Deepcut Lane.
As they passed the end of the lane leading to the cottage that was still owned by Matthew, Roland stopped.
‘Would you mind if we called in?’ he asked. ‘If it would be too painful I’ll quite understand, but I want to see if the portrait of Vanessa is still there. I’ll ask Matthew to return it, I think my mother would like it.’
‘I’ve been here several times since – since she died. It doesn’t hold any fears, in fact I had thought of making it my home when Nelda and my father married. I’ve written dozens of times to ask Matthew but there’s been no reply. Perhaps, like you, he’s moving around too fast for the mail to find him.’
The key was in the usual place under a stone statue of a frog, near the boggy area which, during the winter months was a shallow pond. Patricia found it and handed it to Roland.
The house was stale and smelled of dampness. They entered by the kitchen which was furnished as it had been for Matthew and Patricia’s intended occupation. The portrait was on the wall in the sitting room and Roland took it down and stared into the face of his sister for a long time. Patricia stood between the kitchen and the living room, silently watching him, his face, shadowed by the drawn curtains, his fair hair falling over his eyes, shrouding his expression from her intense gaze.
A sound from above startled them and Roland carefully replaced the picture and, gesturing for her to remain, went slowly up the stairs. Afraid of what he might find and suddenly afraid of the ghostly memory of Vanessa lying near where she was standing, she followed.
‘What are you doing here!’ Roland’s voice startled her and she ran up to stand close behind him. On the bed in which she and Matthew had planned to begin their married life, was Nelda.
‘Go away, I’m not doing any harm! I was out for a walk and I felt weak, I think I have ’flu. I came in for a rest.’ Aggressive in her embarrassment, Nelda added, ‘If you don’t want people to come in you should have kept the door locked!’
‘I think you should get out, Mrs Lloyd, you’re trespassing.’ Roland said politely, then he stepped forward and took a cup from the woman’s hand. ‘What’s this?’ He smelt it and frowned. ‘What concoction are you drinking? Why are you really here?’ He was alarmed, afraid that, like his sister, the woman had come there to die. ‘Tell me, what is it. Tell me or we go straight to the police!’
Patricia curled up against the door frame and watched as Roland stood glaring at Nelda. ‘Patrica, go at once to Caradoc’s and call the police. Tell them we’ve disturbed an intruder who has some suspect substance they should know about.’
‘It’s for my stomach,’ Nelda said. ‘Don’t call the police. It’s only for my stomach.’
‘Off you go, Patricia,’ Roland said grimly.
As Patricia went down the stairs Nelda called for her to stop. ‘All right. I’m going to have another baby and I’m taking something to get rid of it!’ she said bitterly.
‘What is it about this house?’ Patricia shivered, when, an hour later they had persuaded Nelda not to take the brew, and instead go to the doctors and explain her situation. ‘First Vanessa killing herself and now Nelda trying to kill a baby. My sister she’d be, or my brother. Think of that, Roland, she was killing my sister or brother!’
‘We’ll make sure she doesn’t. I’ll tell your father she’s pregnant if she doesn’t. She knows that now. If she tells him she needn’t mention all this, if I tell him he’ll know everything.’
‘I won’t keep the child,’ Nelda told Leonard. ‘I’ll bring it into the world but I won’t look after it. Adoption is a solution, unless you want to forget me and bring up the baby instead. Whatever you decide I won’t bring up a child.’
‘If Matthew agrees to rent me the cottage, I’ll look after him,’
Patricia said. ‘I’ll arrange for someone to mind him during the day while I work, or I’ll find a job where I can take him along. Somehow I’ll manage.’
‘If you’re trying to make me feel guilty you’re wasting your time,’ Nelda said. ‘I don’t want to ‘manage’. I want to be free of him.’
‘You can’t, love,’ Leonard told his daughter. ‘Be reasonable. How could you cope?’
‘I’ll cope! Isn’t that what I do best? Cope with other people’s problems?’
When she told Julia what had happened, her friend looked serious. ‘Doormats,’ she said firmly, ‘are self made. Is that what you want to be? A doormat?’
‘There doesn’t seem to be any other role for me,’ Patricia smiled. ‘But having a child thrust upon me and learning to love and look after him, that has to be a good way of spending the next ten or so years.’
* * *
Roland tried to dissuade her from her offer. ‘You can’t give up the next ten years! You’re eighteen and these are the best years. Don’t lose them being used by Nelda.’
‘Would you go back to being eighteen?’ she asked. ‘I hate the here and now. I don’t know what I want to do with my life. I thought I’d marry and have a family like most people seem to do. There wasn’t anything else I ever wanted.’
‘I agree with Julia that it won’t be enough for you. I think you’ll find marriage to Matthew stifling.’
He watched her face, trying to read her thoughts, and sighed inwardly with relief as she said, ‘I doubt if I’ll see Matthew again. He has no family here, nothing to bring him back, only memories of his real love, Vanessa.’
They were walking aimlessly towards the farm, where Elizabeth was decorating a bedroom with which they had promised to help. The day was dreary and a heavy rain storm had kept them awake for much of the night. Trees dripped moisture from their bare branches and the sky seemed to rest, grey and sponge-like on the nearest hills.
‘Don’t let’s go,’ Roland said, as they reached the turning to Matthew’s cottage. ‘Let’s walk on the hill instead.’
‘Hardly a day to enjoy the fresh air,’ Patricia said, but she followed him as he took the path that passed the cottage and up through the trees onto the hill beyond the farm house.
It was already dark, although barely three o’clock and they trudged in silence through the wet fields and over the craggy top from where they could look down over the next village with its dark roof tops and silent streets.
‘I have some drawings, sketches really, that I’d like you to see,’ Roland said. ‘Come back to the house later and I’ll explain what I want to do with them.’
‘I’d rather not go to the house,’ Patricia said.
‘All right, we’ll wait until six, when Mam will be at church,’ Roland smiled. ‘I’d rather she didn’t pass any comments on my work anyway.’
‘What will we do until then?’
‘Julia,’ they said in unison.
But Julia was absent from Rose Cottage although the fire glowed and the place smelled deliciously of cooking, as if she had just slipped out. They waited an hour but she didn’t return. It was almost six o’clock when they left, propping up a note to tell her they had called.
At the Drew’s house Roland looked around for his sketches. His briefcase was there, but empty. ‘Where can they be?’ he frowned. ‘I asked Mam to take good care of them. They were a record of my war, drawings of men going about their duties, nothing that would help the enemy, just men standing talking, brewing up, cleaning their equipment.’
Patricia felt uneasy in the house where Vanessa had lived. Her harp still stood in a corner and her music was still on the piano, which was open, all seemingly waiting for her to return. Patricia had a sick feeling that Mrs Drew might have thrown Roland’s sketches out, not placing any importance on the work of her son. She stood near the fire, while Roland looked in every room and came back gesturing with widespread hands his failure to find them.
‘They’re not here. Perhaps she took them with her to show someone.’
Patricia frowned too, wondering how she could put into words what she was thinking. ‘Roland, why not glance into the ash bin and wastepaper box. They might have been thrown out by mistake.’
‘They could hardly be mistaken for rubbish.’
‘Of course not, but if they’d been put on some newspapers – you know how conscientious your mother is about collecting everything for scrap.’
He found them near the coal skuttle and handed them to her.
Without comment she took them to the table and looked through them. Each one told a small part of the men’s day to day life. Queuing for food, marching, singing to the accompaniment of a mouth organ, lying about talking, laughing, looking up at the sky. When she had examined each one several times she said hesitantly, ‘Would you like me to look after them for you, until the war’s over. I think you’ll be making an exhibition of them then, won’t you?’
‘I’d thought so. But perhaps no one will be interested, my mother obviously isn’t.’
‘Come on, Roland, she didn’t put them there on purpose.’
‘You’ll keep them safe for me?’
‘Guard them with my life,’ she teased, wanting to chase away the look of hurt disappointment from his face.
‘I think of you a lot,’ he said suddenly, ‘When I’m out there. It makes me feel good to know you’re here, living a life so different from mine. A touch of sanity you are.’ She stepped forward to hug him and his arm went around her, the injured one pressing painfully against her ribs. She didn’t complain, she just lifted her head as his lips searched for hers, the movement, the kiss, the most natural thing in the world. She was still lost in it when the sound of the door opening startled her and she pulled away. Roland’s eyes were still half closed, as if she had dragged him from sleep.
‘I have to go.’ She picked up the pile of drawings and left by the back door as Mrs Drew entered by the front. Roland followed her.
‘Patricia? I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you.’
She turned and looked at him, her dark eyes crinkled with a smile. ‘You didn’t.’
They met again the following day and she discovered the kiss had taken something away. She wished it had never happened. If Roland regretted it and became less of a friend because of it she would be utterly alone. She needed him in her life, and was surprised to realise just how much.
He waited for her as she and Sally closed up the flower shop and walked back home with her. For the first time, there was a lack of ease between them. Patricia thought he regretted his impulsive action, and Roland was convinced she had been embarrassed by the attention of a much older man.
Roland went back earlier than intended from his convalescence. At home he was worn down with stories about his sister. Much as he loved her, he was wearied by the eulogising and the sad reminders that his mother cared so little for him.
‘She can’t help it,’ he excused her to Patricia on the evening before he left. ‘I was so much older, I’d outgrown my enchanting baby years and changed into an energetic boy, always off getting myself muddy and no longer of a mood to be nursed and spoilt. Vanessa was so beautiful and talented that she put me in the shadow. A man gets on with things, a fragile beauty has to be protected.’
‘Poor you,’ Paricia teased. ‘And there’s me thinking you were too strong to need looking after.’
‘Everyone has to know there’s someone who cares. Even big, strong me!’ He smiled and she saw that the strain of his sister’s death had added to the fatigue that had been on his face when he arrived.
‘This hasn’t been a good time for you to recover from your wounds, has it?’
‘What wounds?’ He patted his arm, newly dressed by the local doctor. ‘My mother didn’t ask me once if it was healing satisfactorily.’
Patricia’s jeering, ‘Poor you,’ was stifled as he covered her mouth with his hand in a mock fight. Arm in arm they walked on, both sensing with relief tha
t the temporary tension between them had eased.
‘You’ll write?’ he said, as he walked with his bags to where two bicycles stood against the garden wall.
‘I’ll write,’ she agreed. ‘Unless I end up with my arm in a sling after riding two bikes back home!’
* * *
A letter from Roland two weeks later gave news that his arm was healing well and no lasting damage had occurred. In case his mother had not yet heard, aware of how difficult it sometimes was for letters to get through, Patricia took it around for her to read, believing she would be glad to know all was well.
She was tense as she knocked at the familiar door. Waiting to hear someone approaching, she turned her head sideways and saw the curtains move. Minutes passed and no one answered her knock. Opening the letter box, she called in, ‘It’s only me, Mrs Drew, I’ve heard from Roland. His arm is better, I thought you’d like to know and to read his letter.’
The door opened a crack and Mrs Drew said, ‘Stay away from us, from me and my son. You’ve done enough damage to this family without starting on Roland!’
‘He’s had good news about his arm, I thought you’d want to know.’
‘He’s quite capable of writing to me, his mother! He only writes to you out of misplaced sympathy. Sorry for you he is, although I can’t understand why. He just wishes you wouldn’t keep bothering him. Passing on messages from my son indeed. What makes you think you’re so important? Important you are not, Patricia Lloyd!’
Patricia tore up the letter she had written to Roland and threw it in the gutter. That kiss. It had ruined everything. He didn’t care at all and was afraid she’d embarrass him by thinking he did! It was plain that however kind he had been to her, she was better off managing alone.
She knew also that she had to get away from home. Nelda was well again and was giving out unsubtle hints about being in charge of her own house.
* * *
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