by Nina Jon
“It’s you keeping yours on, I’m worried about,” she said.
“Charity! Please! It’s not that type of catalogue, and I’m not that type of boy!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Stan the Man
I
Jane and Stan met outside the Thai restaurant, where they were going to eat that night. It had started to rain only moments after Jane had set out for Southstoft, and it was still raining when she parked her car in a nearby car park. She walked to the restaurant protected by an umbrella. Stan was waiting for her.
“I hope you haven’t been waiting long?” she said.
“No, no,” he said, holding the door open for her. “Just arrived.”
As the two were shown to their table, Jane thanked Stan for the poem. “I’ve pinned it to the summerhouse wall. He’ll either get the message and leave, or stay and open a rodent poetry corner.”
They were seated at a small corner table.
“May I compliment you on your outfit, Jane,” Stan said of the black knee length cocktail dress Jane wore, over which she had swirled a deep red pashmina.
“Why thank you, Stan. It’s so nice when a man actually notices when a woman makes an effort.”
“My Elsie always used to hate it when I didn’t say how nice she looked. ‘I’ve taken hours over my appearance and you haven’t even noticed,’ she’d say. The rows we used to have about it.” Suddenly he stopped talking and looked crestfallen, as he remembered the woman Elsie had once been.
“How are things at home, Stan?”
“She’s deteriorating Jane. Without doubt. Sometimes she doesn’t even recognise me any more,” he said, fighting the tears back. “Take last night. I asked her to lay the table, like I always do. It’s something for her to do – keeps things as normal as possible, even though it now takes her an hour when it used to take her ten minutes. Everything takes her so long nowadays. When I think how organised she used to be,” he shook his head sadly. “I leave everything out. All she has to do is carry it from the sideboard to the table. Sometimes we have some fun and games – like the other day when I caught her putting a full glass of squash in the cabinet and asked her why. She said she was worried someone might knock it over if she left it on the table. It made me laugh. It was crazy, yet it sort of made sense. I just had to kiss her. It reminded me so much of the silly, kooky things she used to do all the time, but that’s when she meant to,” he said, lapsing into silence for a few moments. Jane knew he needed to talk about this. She said nothing, allowing him to recover. “Usually she can manage to lay a table. But yesterday I found her standing by the table with a plate in her hand. She didn’t know what to do with it. She was completely lost. ‘Nearly done?’ I asked her. She stared straight through me. She didn’t know who I was. I said, ‘Elsie, it’s me, Stan.’ We’ve been married for more than forty years, but she didn’t recognise me, Jane. We were both as terrified as each other. I took the plate from her and sat her down. Slowly she returned to me. What’s left of her. Is this to be my life, Jane? Looking after someone who doesn’t know who I am? I never thought this would happen.”
“Nobody ever does. We all live our lives hoping the worst doesn’t happen and when it does we just have to deal with it. Does Elsie sleep?”
“She doesn’t get through a whole night.”
“Stan, you need help.”
“I’ve told you,” he said, crossly. “I won’t put her in a home. She’s looked after me for the last forty years. I won’t turn my back on her now.”
Jane allowed him to calm down before she continued.
“I meant maybe some respite care. If only for a few days. Maybe someone could come round in the afternoons to give you a break. It’s too much for you to do on your own, Stan,” she said, hoping she didn’t sound like an awful nag. “You have the money, you know you do. You worked hard for it and that’s what it’s there for. Enough said.”
Their meal arrived: a vegetable curry for her, duck for him.
“How’s the detective agency?” he asked.
She told him about the search for Johnny’s father – although she pretended it was for a client who lived elsewhere – the credit card case (“I’m due to start investigating that one in a day or two”) and Lucy Erpingham, although again she changed the names and locations.
“I’m not surprised the girl’s sister is worried about her. I wouldn’t be able to sleep if Adele changed like that,” she said.
“Why only one child, Jane?” Stan suddenly asked her. This wasn’t a question he’d asked her before. “I remember you saying you wanted a brood.”
“I did. Another one of life’s setbacks, I’m afraid.”
II
Jane hadn’t needed to wait for the results of a pregnancy test to know she was pregnant. She’d known it from the moment she woke at four thirty a.m. and barely made it to the bathroom before she was sick.
The sickness continued throughout the morning. She called her mother, who turned up with a pregnancy test.
“It’s positive,” she yelled.
“I know,” Jane replied from the floor, where she was kneeling in front of the toilet basin, preparing herself for another bout of retching.
“Morning sickness usually only lasts for twelve weeks dear,” her mother said, sympathetically.
Jane was about to say: “Only?” when she was sick again.
“I’ll make you a hot ginger toddy.”
The brief respite she was granted when the morning sickness passed was quickly filled with sciatica.
“The baby is lying on a nerve, Mrs Hetherington,” her midwife said. “You’ll have to try and get him to move.”
“I do and she just moves back again. When do I start blooming?”
“I hope I carry the next baby a lot easier than I’m carrying this one,” she said to Hugh in bed that night.
“Let’s see how we cope with this one before we start planning a second, eh?” Hugh muttered, trying to concentrate on the book in his hands – Spinsters Become Suspicious – the most recent of the Spinster Sister Sleuth Series. He’d met Jane when returning one of the series to the library for his mother. Back then, he’d thought the series asinine, but that was before he’d read one. Now he was an ardent fan.
“Three is a nice number,” she said, ignoring her husband’s comment and turning off her bedside lamp. “If this one is a boy, we can have a girl next, and vice versa; and then? …Well, it won’t matter what we have, if we already have one of each, will it? Maybe a little boy? Or another girl?” she mused.
Adele Julie Ann Hetherington was born at seven minutes past four on a Tuesday afternoon, weighing nine pounds. Her parents had been married for just under three years when she made her appearance.
Twenty-four hours after Adele’s birth, Jane held the newborn infant in her arms, while her husband and parents sat by her hospital bed.
“She was born on a Tuesday,” Jane said, cupping her baby’s head in her hand. “She’ll have far to go.”
The consultant arrived. He was a kindly man, who understood the pain and disappointment his patients felt when trying to come to terms with the fact that their much-loved child would be the only biological one they would have. He understood this was a loss which could sometimes spill into an anger or a malaise, which could fester and grow over the years.
“You have a beautiful healthy daughter Jane, try focusing on that,” he said. “All things being equal, you should be able to go home in a few days time. May I have a word with you Mr Hetherington and Mrs Preston?”
Jane didn’t need to ask what the consultant wanted to speak to her husband and mother about, and said nothing as the three disappeared down the corridor towards the consultant’s office. When finally alone with her father, and with Adele still cradled
in her arms, she could no longer hold herself together and the tears came. He moved to sit on the bed beside her and put his arm around her.
“Let it out, love.”
“It’s not fair,” she sai
d, through her tears.
“Life’s not fair, love.”
“I wanted three children. I’ve always wanted three children.”
“I know you did, love.”
“Adele’s going to be an only child.”
“Your old dad’s an only child, don’t forget,” he reminded her. “It’s not the end of the world. If she’s got your way with people, she’ll be fine.” “It’s not fair,” Jane repeated, still in floods of tears.
“Jane, love, if you continue to dwell on what should have been, you’ll waste your life away, pining for something you can’t change. You must look to the future and plan your life around what you’ve got. You’re not being fair to Hugh or Adele otherwise.”
As he spoke, Jane sobbed softly.
“Don’t allow yourself to wallow in self-pity. What’s happened, has happened. Dwelling on it won’t help anyone. So don’t. Promise me, love,” he said.
She looked up at her father and down at her daughter in her arms, who was beginning to stir.
“I’ll try, Dad,” she said, as bravely as she could manage.
In his office, the consultant spoke plainly to Jane’s mother and husband. “In our experience, some women are able to cope better in the situation that Jane finds herself in, than others. You should not underestimate the profound disappointment that Jane has undergone, as of course have you. I should warn you that she may be unable to prevent herself from dwelling on this. Also, we must not forget, she’s undergone major and unexpected surgery, and all this combined with the normal hormonal changes women experience after childbirth…”
At that point, Jane’s mother interrupted him. “Are you saying my daughter’s likely to have a nervous breakdown?”
“No, Mrs Preston, I’m not, but I want you to remember that she may need more help than either of you are able to offer her. There is no shame in that. It won’t do Adele any good to have a mother who is severely depressed. Just keep an eye on her. If things don’t get better, or if they appear to be getting worse. If she can’t cope, or she isn’t enjoying the baby, come back and see us and we’ll arrange for her to be referred to a psychiatrist, if we feel it necessary.”
Edith Preston was quite annoyed at the consultant’s suggestion that her daughter might need psychiatric help.
“She’ll cope. She’s a coper,” she said angrily to Hugh on their way back to the ward.
Hugh himself was relieved to hear the doctor’s words. He wasn’t sure he could cope alone. He’d been in severe shock since a nurse had taken him to one side and said, “Your wife is haemorrhaging Mr Hetherington. We can’t stop the bleeding. We’re going to have to carry out a hysterectomy.”
“But she’s only twenty-six.”
“I’m sorry.”
Jane would have been the first to admit that the months which followed Adele’s birth were some of the hardest of her life. Long after her physical wounds had healed, her emotions still see-sawed from the ecstasy of new motherhood, to mourning for the loss of her further children. Gradually though, she learned to cope with her mental scars as well as she ever would; and she and Adele slipped into an easy routine.
One day Jane took the baby out into the back garden. It was a warm day and there were swarms of tiny flies everywhere. She covered Adele’s cot with a piece of lace, and sat beside her reading. Adele began to cough and Jane lifted the lace up off the cot and shook it. She looked down on her baby, who sneezed. Jane gently picked the baby up and returned to her seat with her in her arms. Adele looked as though she couldn’t decide whether to cry or not. Jane supported the baby in her left arm and began to rock her to and fro.
“Daddy and I would have liked to have had more children, darling,” she said to the child. “We wanted you to have brothers and sisters to play with. Someone who’d always be there for you, when Daddy and I are no longer around. But it wasn’t to be. Your granddad said I wasn’t to dwell on what can’t be and I’m not going to. But I’m going to let you into a secret, darling, something even Daddy doesn’t know. I’m going to tell you what your brother and sister would have been called. I would have called your brother Lachlan. I’m sure he would have taken after Daddy. He might have grown up to be an accountant too, or done something way out and rebellious like form his own band, and be famous – you never know. Your sister would have been called Pippa. I like to think she’d have been a cross between you and Lachlan; but mummy can’t allow herself to think about it too much, because it makes her sad.”
III
“I’m sorry Jane,” Stan said, after she had shared this with him.
“I’ve long since made my peace with it,” she said. “Dad was right. Brooding on what might have been would have been pointless and soul-destroying. I have my beautiful daughter and granddaughter, and another one on its way, not to mention all those years I had with Hugh. We must count our blessings in this life, Stan.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The Mouse Catcher General!
I
Jane woke early. After her nice evening out with Stanley, she’d slept surprisingly well. Although still only seven a.m. she didn’t allow herself a lie-in. She’d returned home from the restaurant the night before to discover a note from Johnny pushed through her letterbox. The humane mouse trap had arrived, the note informed her. He’d set it up in her summerhouse, but she was to wait until the following morning before checking to see if it had an occupant.
She crossed a garden bathed in the first sun of the morning. A garden burgeoning into spring colour – the egg-yolk primroses, and the purple and pink Lenten roses, joining the snowdrops, narcissi and crocuses. She stopped to admire it – it was a joy to behold.
Johnny had left the humane mouse trap – a grey plastic rectangular box – in the middle of the floor. Jane picked it up. It didn’t seem very heavy, but then mice didn’t weigh very much. She gave it a little shake. She could tell immediately that there was something inside it. She could hear scampering and squeaking. “Ha! Got you!” she said out loud. She left the trap outside the back door. She’d have her breakfast, then walk to the other side of town and release whatever was inside.
Breakfast over, Jane left her house. Instead of walking into Failsham as she would normally, she walked across the common, and from there took one of the many country lanes which lead out of the town, where Johnny sometimes stood with his sandwich board looking for work.
She walked along the lane until she reached some meadow land. The walk had taken her about a quarter of an hour. The meadow was surrounded by a stone wall to keep in the grey horse which grazed there. To get over the wall and into the meadow, Jane realised she was going to have to climb a stile. At my age, she thought, as she lumbered over it with some difficulty. From the top of the stile she could see the broiler units Johnny had helped to clean, looming large in the distance. The horse cantered over to her. It gave a little nay and sniffed the box in her hand.
“It’s not an apple, I’m afraid,” Jane said, stroking the horse’s head, and climbing down from the stile.
The two crossed the meadow together. At its far end, she held the trap over a hedge, with the trap door facing downwards, and opened it. She gave it a shake, and after few minutes, the mouse fell out. The bewildered creature chased its tail a few times before darting away to freedom. Jane peered inside the trap. It was empty. Hopefully that’s the end of that, she thought.
As she walked along the lane in the direction of home, she noticed a row of horseshoes nailed into the stone wall, one the wrong way up. Although not unduly superstitious, she always righted upside down horseshoes, and this one would be no different. She leaned forward and took hold of one of its forks, but the horseshoe was quite stiff. She stepped up onto the grass verge to get closer and heard a twig snap beneath her foot, and felt her right shoe sink into something soft. Oh no, she thought removing her shoe. On closer examination she didn’t find what she’d expected to, but play-dough.
Hmm, she said aloud, peeling the lump of multicolou
red dough from the sole of her shoe. She put her shoe back on, still holding the dough. She looked down on the grass verge and saw a couple of play-dough stick people, holding hands. Very imaginative, she thought. She looked at the lump of play-dough in her hand. It could very well have been a stick person, before she’d stepped on it. With Felix’s rant – Doesn’t anyone know how to use a litter bin, these days! – clearly in her mind, she removed some tissues from her handbag, dropped the play-dough into it, and used the same tissues to pick up the stick people from the grass verge. She spotted a wheelie bin outside a nearby house, and deciding the children of the household had most likely made the play-dough shapes left by the roadside, she dropped the dough inside it before walking back into town.
II
From a table in a supermarket cafe, Jane studied Monty. He was much younger than Jane thought he’d be. She wouldn’t have put him at more than twenty-five. She also thought she recognised him. Was he someone she’d met at the rally? The man at the ticket kiosk? One of the men they’d thought might be Pete Lambert? One of the baying mob?
“The more I think about it, the certainer I am that my Pete and yours is the same,” Monty said. “I spoke to someone from the depot yesterday, and he thought it was as well. He backed up the Hull story. I could go and check it out for you?”
“I should really do that myself.”
“You don’t know no one there, like I do.”
“What do you remember about Pete Lambert?”
“Not much, like I said. He kept himself to himself mostly. Just said he’d been married and had a kid, but he hadn’t seen him for years.”
“Did he say how many years?”
“May have done. Can’t remember.”
“Did he mention his son’s name?”
“Yeah, but I couldn’t tell you what it was.”
Jane studied him. Whilst he was light on detail, nothing he’d said so far was wrong.
“Would you like to see the photo?” he asked.
Jane nodded. Monty pulled out a small photograph. In it, a group of men stood in two rows in front of a bus. Some waved to the camera, others gave a thumb’s up, one a two-finger salute. “That’s me,” Monty said, pointing to the young man at the end of the first row. “And that’s your man,” he added, his finger resting just above a man in the middle of the second row.