‘Not with me you won’t. It’s gloomy, Matthew. And if it wasn’t, I’d still hate it, stuck up there far from the village and the shops.’
‘All right, if you say so, not with you!’
‘Matthew!’
‘Sorry, but I don’t like you going there. So, if you’d hand me the key?’
‘Who put the flowers there, Mrs Drew I suppose? Why don’t you ask her for her key?’
Matthew ignored the questions and, taking the key she offered, put it onto his keyring and fastened it to his belt.
* * *
Marion’s initial feeling of anger faded quickly, leaving behind a sense of unease. Surely Matthew wasn’t still in love with the dead Vanessa? That would explain the fact that their life together was a farce, but surely she was being fanciful? It couldn’t be this that had left her still a virgin after all these months of marriage? Without another word, Matthew went out, and she saw him cross the road and enter the house of Mrs Drew.
She stared out of the window, watching as Mrs Drew opened the door and invited him inside. She had been told that Vanessa’s room was still as she left it, and she wondered if the two of them would sit there talking about the dead girl, reliving memories of her and wishing she were alive. Living directly opposite, Marion often saw Mrs Drew sitting looking out of the window as if waiting for her daughter to return. She’d had many chances, and even poor Norman Knowles would have given her a better life than this. Her mind was made up. She had to investigate ways of extracting herself from this mess. She needed to confide in someone. But who?
* * *
Roland had received several commissions since the exhibition of his work and he began to realise he needed somewhere better to work than the cramped back bedroom. He also needed to get away from his mother’s determination to prove that he lacked talent. She genuinely belived she was helping when she discouraged him from his art and tried to persuade him to return to teaching. He had given up trying to make her understand and rarely spoke about his work. She never asked to see it.
The painting of Patricia was a project Roland both longed to start and feared to attempt. He knew he had Patricia’s colour right, her black hair showed a hint of blue and reflections in her dark eyes were also basically blue. And it was a colour she frequently wore now she no longer had to dress in overalls, heavy jacket and corduroys. He knew she would make a good sitter. She was a lively character, expressions danced across her face in a clear indication of her love of life. But, being interested and anxious to please him, she would be calm. But what if he should fail?
It was December before he began it. Sitting in Julia’s room with the clear blue winter sky seen through the windows, frost making the fire very bright, he was cocooned in a situation from which there was no excuse for further delay. Yet he hesitated time and again before marking the pristine canvas with the first streak.
Patricia’s hair was so black, her eyes so dark, he saw the Italianate beauty she had inherited from Julia’s family more clearly than ever before.
Blue was filling his mind but black was the colour with which he began. Black hair, black eyes, black shadows coming in from the edges of the picture. Then the blues, dark at first but lightened with more and more white, bringing her out of shadow, until her face stood out almost like a sculpture from the blues and black of the background.
Her skin tones were pale and there was a look of such love in her dark eyes that, when Julia was allowed to look, it made her see clearly how much in love with his subject Roland was. She wondered if he were aware of it or whether the portrait had given away a secret he had not yet learned.
Predictably, Patricia took one look and cried.
* * *
As Roland had painted a portrait of their son, Nelda and Leonard did take an interest in what he was doing. They always looked at and admired the work he completed, but it was with some trepidation that Roland showed them the portrait of Patricia. It was so important that people liked it and although untrained, their favourable comments were badly needed.
‘It’s Patricia, all right,’ Leonard said in wonder. ‘But it’s more than a likeness. I can see what she is as well as who she is.’
‘She’s lovely,’ Nelda said. ‘But you don’t have to be told that, do you?’ she said shewdly. Like Julia, she had guessed from the portrait that the artist was in love with the sitter.
* * *
Richard was with them when they called at Julia’s cottage to see the portrait. Since she had revealed who she was, the anger had died down and Leonard had accepted her presence in his daughter’s life with some degree of tolerance. He was still curt when he spoke to Julia, but for Patricia’s sake he hid feelings of anger that he still harboured.
‘When I think of how she came back and tried to steal my daughter’s affections, after throwing her own daughter aside all those years ago,’ Leonard said, on the way home, ‘I want to shake her complacent, smiling face until she cries, like Donna cried for her night after night.’
‘She lost touch. It happens,’ Nelda soothed.
‘They moved but we didn’t. There wasn’t a moment when she didn’t know where we were. See how easily she found us when she realised she was alone and needed a family?’
‘We’re happy aren’t we? The girls had a happy childhood thanks to you, my darling. We can afford to be kind to an elderly woman who must be eaten up with regrets, can’t we? Why not invite her to share our Christmas dinner? There’ll be plenty of food, thanks to Mr Caradoc and your vegetable garden and Patricia’s preserving.’
‘Invite that woman to my home? Never.’
‘It’s Christmas and that means more than a full belly, surely?’
‘I’ll think about it. Patricia seems fond of her,’ he said grudgingly.
Nelda hugged his arm. ‘I’m sure it would be for the best, love.’
‘She isn’t having a leg of the chicken, mind. She can have the parson’s nose,’ he added with a grin.
He began to talk again about how she had treated him and his family but she changed the subject. She didn’t want to get involved in discussions about his first wife. She had problems of her own. She wanted to discuss this new baby which the doctor had just pronounced fit, but looking at his angry face, she knew this was not the time.
There never was a suitable time. She would have this baby but she would not keep it. Adoption was not difficult to arrange, in fact, she had already made initital enquiries, something else she hadn’t yet discussed with Leonard.
* * *
Unable to stay away from the cottage, and harbouring a morbid curiosity about the flowers, Marion went again several times. There was a window that wouldn’t close. It looked all right from the outside but she had noticed that the window latch was missing. It was easy to lever it open and she crawled inside, nervous, but wanting to see if the flowers had been replaced. They had.
She went on three occasions, squelching through the mud up the narrow lane and squeezing through the window. Each time she found fresh flowers near the portrait. She decided to tell Matthew of her visits and ask him to tell Mrs Drew not to go there any more.
‘If I’m not allowed to hold a key, what right has Mrs Drew to wander in as she pleases?’ she told Patricia a few days before Christmas.
‘You are sure the flowers are fresh? Not dried or paper?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Patricia. I know real flowers from paper ones! I handled them and they were different flowers. Chrysanthemums one week, and geraniums today.’
‘Geraniums?’ Patricia frowned. ‘They aren’t cut flowers and they’d have to be grown indoors at this time of the year. He isn’t buying them that’s for sure.’
‘He?’ Marion said. ‘You said he. You mean she, don’t you?’
‘I don’t think Mrs Drew would put flowers there and, the display we saw wasn’t done very well. I’ve seen Mrs Drew’s way with flowers. I think it’s Matthew putting the flowers there, Marion.’
* * *
Julia knew sh
e was ill. Being a doctor she needed no one to tell her that the pains she was experiencing were serious. She wasn’t sad, there was a lot to look back on and few regrets: her daughter Donna, and Patricia.
Although Patricia was not her responsibility, she wanted so much to set her on the right path. Intelligent and capable, so good with people, especially the young, she was drifting through life looking for people to help and refusing to help herself. If she married Roland, it would simply be another helping role. She would support him in his career and if he made it as an artist she would live happily in his shadow. That would be fine, she decided, if she had first found a success of her own. It was worrying that, helping others, often in a very lowly way, was all Patricia believed she was capable of doing.
For a while the idea of an ice cream parlour had appealed. Making a place for young people to meet would suit her so well. If only they could make a start, that was one way for Patricia to succeed at something. If only she could find a suitable premises. There was still the problem of rationing, and there were restrictions tying you in knots whatever you tried. Beginning a new business seemed to be out of the question for the immediate future and the immediate future might be all she had.
* * *
The December weather was bitterly cold and frost blanketed the grass and didn’t melt apart from where the weak sun touched it. The day before Chrismas Eve, Leonard and Nelda went to the funeral of a retired teacher. Wrapped in the warmest clothes they could find, Nelda walked with Leonard to the graveside. Few women were present, most preferring to keep to the old tradition of staying at home to prepare food while the men went to the solemn ceremony.
Standing at the graveside, Nelda noticed a man slipping through the trees, crouched, hurrying, as if not wanting to be recognised.
‘Who was that?’ She pointed and Leonard looked to where the figure was disappearing, swallowed up by the mist rising from the cold, hard ground.
‘Not sure, love, but it looked like Matthew. He didn’t know Old Walters, did he?’
‘If he did he’d be standing here with the rest of us. He was avoiding being seen. I wonder what he’s up to?’
‘Don’t be daft, Nelda. Why shouldn’t he want us to see him? He’d hardly be doing anything wrong up here in the cemetary, would he?’
Nelda persuaded Leonard to walk past the grave of Vanessa as they returned to the cars and they saw that the frost rimed grass had been flattened as if someone had lain there, leaving a clear body shape.
‘Couldn’t have been Matthew. I bet it was some tramp settling down to eat a spot of lunch, poor dab.’ Leonard spoke confidently but he wasn’t convinced by his own words.
‘Were you up at the cemetary last Friday?’ Leonard asked Matthew when he came to visit with Marion, on Christmas Eve.
‘Me? What would I be doing up there in this weather?’
‘You were, Matthew! Don’t pretend! I saw you coming from there myself. You denied it but I saw you.’ Marion sounded unreasonably angry and Leonard thought it was a contentious issue between them and hurriedly changed the subject.
‘Well, tomorrow’s Christmas Day and we’ll all be together for the best dinner we’ve eaten in ages,’ he said brightly. ‘Mr Caradoc will be here with Elizabeth and Will. Patricia too, of course. I’ve even developed enough Christmas spirit to allow her to bring Julia along.’ He caught his wife’s eye and added, ‘Well, I was persuaded by Nelda, to tell the truth, good kind lady that she is. We’ll have a marvellous day.’
‘Not so marvellous once you’ve heard my news,’ Nelda said. ‘I’m expecting another baby and this time I don’t intend to keep it.’
* * *
Roland was busy preparing his work for the exhibition in March, and Christmas was an interference. He knew it would not be a very exciting few days, with his mother afraid to celebrate in case people thought she had stopped grieving for Vanessa.
‘I’ll try to think of it as just another Sunday,’ he told Patricia.
‘Aw, poor you and there’s me thinking you were a grown up!’ she teased. ‘Why don’t you come and share our Christmas,’ she said more seriously. ‘I’ll be doing the cooking so Nelda can’t complain. I don’t think she will, mind,’ she added. ‘She’s even invited Julia would you believe! The more people there are to help the better she’s pleased and young Richard would love having an extra person to amuse him.’
‘I couldn’t upset my mother by eating somewhere other than home on Christmas Day.’
‘Then come on Boxing Day for bubble and squeak, scrappy bits of cold chicken and left over pudding.’
‘You make it sound irresistible,’ he laughed.
Boxing Day dinner was always the same, the remains of the previous day warmed and, with a bowl of soup to begin, an easy meal to prepare. When Roland arrived at ten o’clock Patricia had been there for an hour and had everything prepared.
‘Let’s go for a walk,’ she suggested.
Accepting the offer to borrow a pair of Leonard’s boots, Roland agreed and they set out into a drizzle which looked set in for the day.
‘D’you mind if we have a quick look at the cottage? There’s a bit of a mystery you see.’ She explained about the flowers and her suspicion that it was Matthew who was tending a sort of shrine for Vanessa.
The rain hadn’t eased and muddy footprints around the boggy area at the front of the cottage showed several trails of footprints. Patricia went to the window and peered in. Raindrops splattered the pane. Condensation partly concealed her view, but she could see the figure of a man, sitting near a slow-burning fire. She looked at Roland.
‘He does seem obsessed with your dead sister, doesn’t he?’ she whispered as they regained the path.
‘I wonder where Marion can be? It isn’t usual for a newly married couple to be apart on a day like today.’
Marion was at the Lloyd’s house, unwillingly attending the oven with its roasting tin filled with assorted vegetables. A pan of newly boiled potatoes had been transferred to a second tin and were sizzling on the top shelf.
‘Where have you been,’ Marion pouted. ‘You promised to see to all this.’
‘Sorry, we walked further than we attended,’ Roland apologized. ‘Is everyone here?’
‘All except Matthew. He had to see to the milk deliveries. He’ll be back in time for the one o’clock dinner.’
Matthew didn’t arrive until almost two. ‘I fell asleep,’ he said, and, looking at the dinner which had been kept warm on top of a pan of boiling water, began to eat hungrily.
‘We thought we saw you in Deepcut Lane,’ Patricia lied.
‘Yes, on our way back from our walk,’ Roland supported.
‘I looked in on the cottage, just to make sure it was safe.’
‘I wish you’d make up your mind to sell it!’ Marion said with a sigh.
‘I can’t. Not while Vanessa’s there.’
‘Matthew, don’t talk like that!’
‘You know what I mean,’ Matthew said more calmly. ‘I haven’t gone off my head! I can’t sell until her presence is no longer there and I still feel her around me when I walk through that door. Every time. I still love her you see.’
‘That seems to me like a very good reason to sell,’ Roland said, with a glance at Marion’s striken face.
Chapter Eleven
For Marion, the first months of 1948 were utterly miserable. Besides the dark days with snow making every task doubly difficult and the rain beating down whenever frost weakened its grip, her thoughts were dismal too. Looking out of the window of the flat above the bank as she opened the curtains each morning, her first sight was the Drew’s house, to where her husband’s thoughts flew every waking hour. Mrs Drew sometimes stood at the window and Marion thought she saw her give a half smile, as if she knew the mess her life was in.
There seemed no hope of her ever finding happiness with Matthew. He seemed determined that she should not. For him, happiness was locking himself in his cottage, gazing into the phot
ograph of Vanessa and daydreaming about an imaginary life spent loving her.
Several times she was on the point of telling Patricia about her bizarre marriage, in which they never even touched hands and had never shared an intimate loving moment since the kiss that sealed the marriage vows. She still saw Jacky Davies on occasions and it was to him she eventually talked.
They had met, far from accidentally, one morning in January. She had walked past the garage and was told by his apprentice that he had gone to deliver a car to a customer in Mountain Crescent. Walking slowly toward the houses set on a steep hill just past Rose Cottage, she met him walking back, whistling cheerfully, and suggested they went to a café for a cup of tea.
‘What is it Marion?’ he asked, when they had found a place near the window, away from most of the occupied tables. ‘You look as if you’ve been shot and can’t decide where to lie down.’
‘Jacky, what would you say if someone you knew told you they had been married to a man but had never been treated like a wife.’
‘You mean kept short of housekeeping money? Not been treated to birthday treats?’ he smiled.
‘I mean never being a partner in love. Sleeping side by side month after month without even a touch to show he knows you’re there.’ She fought back tears and scrabbled around in her handbag searching for something to wipe them away. When Jacky handed her an apology for a handkerchief, discoloured with grease and rust marks, she took it gratefully. Unaware that some of the stains were transferring themselves to her rosy cheeks, she rubbed vigorously then hid her face from him pretending to search in her handbag some more.
‘You don’t mean you and Matthew, do you?’
Silently, hiding her dirt-streaked face, she nodded.
‘I thought you were happy. You’ve always said he was a wonderful husband.’
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