Amy suddenly found herself unable to speak. She reached out blindly to draw Eddie close as she stared at Sid Carter’s sleeve, drawn in above his elbow by the black armband of mourning. Her eyes met his, and he nodded slowly.
29
With an effort, Amy recovered herself.
‘Eddie, you fetch a bit of rope so you can tether Mr Carter’s horse,’ she told the little boy, who was staring at Sid Carter with frank curiosity. ‘And then I want you to go and see Uncle Dave and Aunt Beth. Ask them… ask them what sort of jam they want with the scones later,’ she said, flailing for an excuse, however feeble. ‘There’s no need to come straight back, you can stay with them for a bit. Tell Daisy about getting all your sums right.’
Eddie hesitated for a moment, still staring at Mr Carter, then appeared to decide that the visitor did not hold much promise of excitement. He slipped through the gate that Amy was now holding open, and set off at run.
Mr Carter tied the reins loosely to the fence and came through the gate, a leather satchel held under one arm.
‘That’s Milly’s boy?’ he asked, looking after the small figure.
‘Yes, that’s Eddie.’ There was a pause, just long enough to be awkward, then Amy spoke again. ‘Would you come in? I’m sure you could do with a cup of tea.’
Mr Carter followed her up the steps and into the kitchen. He took a seat at the table, placed the satchel on a chair beside him, then sat turning his hat between his hands.
Amy sent covert glances at him as she quickly tidied away the remains of Eddie’s lesson and set out tea things. Milly had said her husband was some years older than she was, but this man, Amy judged, must be at least fifty, which would make him ten years older than Amy was herself. Perhaps it was the pall of grief hanging about him that bowed his shoulders so; for he was grieving, Amy had no doubt. He had soft brown eyes that struck her as kind, but full of pain.
She set the teapot down and sat opposite Mr Carter.
‘When did Milly pass away?’ she asked.
‘Three weeks ago, it would be. The tenth of the month.’
Just a few days after the last letter she had ever sent. ‘And how did it happen?’ Amy prompted gently.
‘It was when the child came. You knew she was with child?’
‘Yes, she wrote and told me.’
‘She hadn’t been keeping well for some time. I was worried sick about her. But she wouldn’t hear of letting a doctor see her. She kept saying it was nothing to worry about, it would be over soon enough. And I’d never had anything to do with a woman in that state before, so I thought perhaps I was worrying more than I needed to.’
Amy nodded in what she hoped was an encouraging way, anxious not to interrupt Mr Carter’s flow.
‘She was taken poorly one evening not long before it happened. She still had two months before the child was due, and she told me she didn’t think it had started, but she was quite ill in the night. I nearly went for the nurse then, but it passed. She was… she was never quite right again after that. It was as if she knew what was to happen.’
He took a gulp of the hot tea that Amy had just placed before him, and stared into the distance. ‘And then a week later her pains started. I didn’t think she should be left on her own, but I had to fetch a nurse to her. There aren’t any other houses close by, but some men were working on the road not too far away, and one of them said he knew where the nurse lived, and offered to go and tell her.
‘I went back to Milly and got her to lie down. I think I made her a cup of tea. I didn’t think the nurse would be long, I thought the best thing I could do was try and keep Milly calm till then.’ He gave his head a small shake. ‘She was calmer than I was, I think. Though I don’t know if calm is the right word. It was as if she was beyond worrying. Worrying about herself, at any rate.
‘It felt like hours we waited for the nurse—it was hours, come to that. Milly’s pains eased for a time. It was happening so long before the baby was due that I thought perhaps it wasn’t that at all, perhaps it was a false alarm, but Milly said no, this was childbirth. I argued the point—I remember I almost tried to make a joke of it, asking her how she could be so sure. That’s when she told me. “Because I’ve been through it before, Sid,” she said. “I’ve got a little boy.” ’
Amy frowned, trying to make sense of his words. ‘But you knew that already. Milly had—’ She stopped in mid-sentence, awareness flooding in.
Sid Carter had noted her reaction. ‘You thought I knew about her boy. Yes, she told me she’d said that to you. We had a long talk while we waited for that nurse, in between the pains. She told me about her boy’s father dying in the war, and how she’d had to leave the child with his grandmother when she started working at the hotel. And that you thought she’d told me about Eddie, and I’d said he could come and live with us once things were more settled.’
He gave a heavy sigh. ‘Of course I would have let her have him with us—right from when we were first married—if I’d only known about him. I didn’t like to think she hadn’t felt able to tell me. But I couldn’t scold her over it.
‘She said she’d been scared to tell me before we got married—she thought I’d want nothing to do with her if I knew she’d had a child by another man. And then afterwards she was scared because she hadn’t told me before. She’d been missing him all that time, poor girl. She started crying then, for all she was being so brave over the pains. She asked me to see that her boy would be all right. I told her we’d fetch him as soon as she was well again, but she was having none of it. Things weren’t going right this time, she told me. She was too weak by then to argue over it, but she kept shaking her head when I told her she’d come through it. And she kept saying she had to know her boy would be all right. I promised her then. I promised I’d see that he was. That settled her a little, until the pains got bad again.’
‘Poor Milly,’ Amy murmured. Milly’s deception seemed a small thing in the face of her suffering.
‘I tried mopping her forehead and holding her hand, and giving her a bit of water, but there was nothing much I could do. I could see by the clock a couple of hours had gone since I’d sent off for the nurse, and I was starting to think I’d have to leave Milly and go out looking myself, but then the woman turned up.’
Amy expected to see some small sign of the relief Sid must have felt at the nurse’s arrival, but instead his face hardened.
‘I’d booked the nurse already. It was early, but I didn’t want to leave anything to chance, and I’d been told she was the best in the district. But of course she wasn’t expecting to have to attend Milly just then, and she was off with another patient, as I discovered later. The chap who’d gone to fetch her found she wasn’t home, but someone on the street told him there was another nurse living not too far away, and he went there. That was the woman who turned up. I could see she was the worse for drink the moment she walked in.’ Amy saw in his face that he had heard her sharp intake of breath.
‘She wasn’t even clean in her person. But I didn’t have a choice by then,’ he said, his mouth twisting with the effort of speech. ‘I had to trust the woman knew her business. I made her wash her hands before I’d let her touch Milly, I had enough sense for that, at any rate. Not that it did much good.’
Amy did not dare interrupt him, even with a murmur of sympathy. He had clearly come to the darkest part of his tale.
‘I had to… to help the woman. She wasn’t steady enough on her feet to manage on her own. Just fetching and carrying, but I hadn’t expected to be there during it. Though I’m glad of it, really. At least Milly had someone she knew with her.
‘The child was definitely on the way, the woman said, for all it was so much before its time. But it wasn’t sitting right. She’d have to turn it, she said.’ He shuddered. ‘I’d thought it was bad before, but the noises Milly made when that woman had her hands on her…’
He recovered himself and went on. ‘I don’t know how long it all lasted. I do kno
w the fool of a woman took her time giving Milly anything for the pain. She asked if I had whisky in the house, but I’m not one for strong drink. She might’ve wanted it for herself, for all I know. She took little enough notice of the state Milly was in.
‘It was past midnight when she said things were well enough along for her to put Milly out. She had some chipped old bottle with a few drops of something in the bottom—she put it on a dirty old rag and held it over Milly’s face, but there wasn’t enough to put her properly under. It dulled the pain, I think. She was groaning instead of screaming, anyway.
‘The child…’ His voice broke; he swallowed noisily. ‘It was stillborn. I caught a glimpse before the woman wrapped it up in a towel. Such a tiny thing, but it seemed… broken, somehow. I think she’d damaged it trying to turn it in the womb. But I was told later a child born that early would never have lived.’
‘No, it wouldn’t,’ Amy murmured in agreement. She fumbled for a handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes.
‘The woman cleaned Milly up, then she took herself off. I put the baby beside Milly, and I sat there with them both. She came to herself after an hour or so, and she cried a little, but she didn’t have strength to do much more than lie there, drifting in and out of sleep.’
He moved in his chair. Amy waited quietly for what she knew must be about to come.
‘When it got light, I could see Milly had more colour in her face. I thought it was a good sign. But when I put my hand on her cheek I felt how hot it was. She’d taken a fever.
‘I cooled her down as much as I could with wet cloths, then I ran off to the nearest house and asked them to send for the doctor. When I got back to Milly she was bad with the fever, tossing about and moaning. She was burning up worse than ever by the time the doctor arrived, and he said she was bleeding badly.
‘He did what he could to make her more comfortable, and he had a woman come in to tend her and keep her clean. There was nothing else to be done. She died the next day. I had them bury the baby with her.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ Amy said.
Sid Carter looked up, startled, at the sound of her voice, as if he had forgotten where he was. ‘She was calling out for her boy at the end. “Eddie, Eddie,” she kept saying. Calling for him and… I think your son’s name must have been Mal.’
‘Yes, it was,’ Amy admitted. ‘Milly would have been muddled in her head by then, she must have slipped back a few years.’ Sid looked unconvinced. ‘She talked about you a lot in her letters,’ Amy said. ‘She was always saying how good you were to her. You… you made her very happy.’ She felt a little awkward making such a personal comment to a man she had just met, but she was rewarded by a tiny spark of life in Sid Carter’s eyes.
‘As she did me,’ he said in a low voice. ‘Perhaps not always the most truthful of girls, but a warm-hearted one.’
Amy let the silence rest between them for several moments before she spoke again.
‘It was very kind of you to come all this way to let us know.’
He blinked at her. ‘I had to. I promised Milly I’d see her boy was all right. I told her I’d look after him myself if need be.’
‘No!’ The word escaped from Amy before she had the chance to formulate a calmer response. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to… It’s very good of you, Mr Carter, but there’s no need for that. I want to keep Eddie with me.’
‘You’re quite sure? It’s not every woman would welcome a child dropped on her like that.’
‘He’s come to feel like my own after having him all this time. I wouldn’t want to part with him. And he’s…’ He’s all that’s left of Mal. Amy left the thought unsaid, rather than remind Sid Carter that Eddie was also all that was left of Milly.
‘I’m glad of it,’ Mr Carter said, his shoulders slumping. ‘I’d have done my best by him, but I’ve no notion how to raise a child. And I’d have had to get someone to mind him during the day, and see that he ate properly, and whatever else boys need.’ He hesitated, then asked diffidently, ‘I can see the lad’s healthy, but I wonder if I might speak to him before I leave? Just a few words. It would set my mind at rest, after promising Milly.’
‘Of course,’ Amy said. ‘Would you like to stay the night? You’ve come a long way.’
‘Thank you, but I couldn’t put you out like that. No, I’ve a room at the hotel for the night, then I’ll be on the boat tomorrow.’
‘Well, stay until Eddie comes back, anyway. He’ll probably come up wanting something to eat before too long. If he doesn’t, I’ll go and fetch him.’
Mr Carter nodded absently. He lifted the satchel onto his lap and opened it, removing a neatly-wrapped brown paper parcel tied with string. He slid the parcel across the table to Amy.
‘Your letters are all in there. And the boy’s drawings. Milly told me where she’d been keeping them. The last letter arrived after she’d passed away—I haven’t opened it. You’ll find his birth certificate in with them, too. And this,’ he said, reaching into the satchel again. ‘Milly used to wear this all the time. I thought her boy might like to have it.’
‘Thank you. I’m sure he will.’ Amy took the silver bangle from his outstretched hand, recognising it as the one Milly had proudly announced Malcolm had stolen for her. No need to tell Mr Carter that. She had slipped an envelope containing enough to cover the price of the bangle under Mr Hatfield’s door one Sunday, so she could keep it for Eddie with a clear conscience.
Mr Carter removed something else from the satchel. He seemed about to pass it over, then hesitated, holding it between fingers that trembled. ‘I’ve brought the photograph, too—the one of Milly and her boy. But I wondered if… I don’t like to ask, but… I’ve no pictures of Milly.’
‘Oh, you keep that one,’ Amy urged. ‘I got the photographer to do two just the same, one for Eddie and one for Milly. It was taken the day she left.’
‘Thank you,’ Mr Carter said with evident relief. He put the photograph away carefully. ‘I’ve her wedding ring, too—I’ll get a nice frame, and put the ring in with her picture.’
Amy poured out more tea. ‘You met Milly at the hotel, didn’t you?’ she asked, wanting to turn the conversation along happier lines.
Sid Carter’s face brightened. ‘Yes, I did. I’m a bookkeeper, you see. I do the books for all sorts of little concerns that don’t have enough business to employ a bookkeeper of their own. Mainly in and around Waihi, so I was living in a boarding house there. But I found I was spending a day most weeks in Tauranga, so I decided I could treat myself to staying the night there sometimes. It made a pleasant change—boarding house fare is rather monotonous.
‘I noticed Milly straight away. The staff there are competent enough, but they’re inclined to be a bit stiff and formal. Milly had a spark about her that set her apart. I remember the very first morning I saw her—the food’s excellent at that hotel, but the portions aren’t overly generous. Milly was serving my breakfast, and she gave me a bit of a grin and slipped me an extra knob of butter.’ He smiled at the memory. ‘It became something of a game between us after that. She’d look about as if there might be spies watching, then make a great show of sliding me the extra butter under cover of her hand.
‘We’d talk away whenever she wasn’t too busy with her work, and it got so as things seemed rather dull on the days I didn’t see Milly. I soon started making sure I had enough work there to take me to Tauranga every week—in fact I found an excuse to stay two nights a week when I could. And then when I was walking about the town one day I saw a sign up for a concert, and… well, I hadn’t been in the habit of putting myself forward like that, but I found myself asking Milly if she’d like to come to it with me. And she said yes.
‘After that, I took her out every week, even if it was just for a walk along the Strand. She seemed to enjoy my company,’ he said, a touch of wonder in his voice. ‘And when I was responsible for her being dismissed, I thought I’d better do the right thing and get on and marry her at once.’
/>
‘Milly got the sack?’ Amy said, startled. ‘What, for giving you an extra knob of butter?’
Sid’s eyes slid away from hers. On his face was an expression somewhere between embarrassment and shy pride. ‘Actually, it was for being caught coming out of my room one morning,’ he admitted. Amy suddenly felt the need to fuss about with the tea things.
‘We got married straight away, as soon as all the forms were filled in. Just a simple exchange at the courthouse—Milly didn’t want a fuss, though I wouldn’t have grudged her a proper wedding. I bought her a new hat for the occasion,’ he said pensively. ‘One of the girls she’d been working with at the hotel came along to be a witness, and she ran back and got one of the boot boys when we realised we needed two of them. We didn’t bother with photographs. I wished afterwards that we had.
‘I rented a house for us, and Milly seemed happy getting it all set up the way she wanted. Then we found there was a baby on the way, and…’ He picked up his spoon and began stirring his tea. ‘I hadn’t expected to marry,’ he said, turning the spoon slowly round and round as if the task took great concentration. ‘Not at my age. I was contented enough with how things were. Well, used to how they were, at any rate. But to come home every evening and find someone pleased to see me, and wanting to talk about all the little things that had happened in the day, and then with the baby… It was…’ He trailed off and shook his head, and Amy quickly dashed her hand across her eyes to clear them.
Mr Carter looked up from stirring his tea. ‘Would you mind writing from time to time to let me know how Milly’s boy is getting on? Once a year would be enough.’
‘I’d be glad to. And when Eddie’s old enough, I’ll get him to write himself sometimes.’
‘Oh, I doubt if he’d be interested in writing to an old fellow like me.’
‘Yes, he will. He’ll want to when I tell him how good you were to Milly. But I think I’ll leave that till he’s old enough to understand.’ Amy sighed. ‘For now, it’ll be enough for him to try and understand about Milly passing away.’
A Second Chance Page 48