The Wind Off the Sea

by Charlotte Bingham

  When she saw the pram was empty Rusty screamed. She couldn’t help it. She screamed as loudly as she could, she screamed at the top of her voice. Someone had stolen her baby.

  Chapter Two

  ‘If we’d had a winter like this during the war, Jerry could have marched across the bloomin’ Channel, and no mistake,’ Gwen announced as she began to clear away her mistress’s breakfast things. ‘And look at you leaving those perfectly good crusts. You shouldn’t leave good bread like that, Mrs Tate. The way things are, you shouldn’t be leaving good bread. Not a crumb.’

  ‘OK – so you take it, Gwen. Why don’t you? See what you can get for it on the black market.’ Judy’s mother-in-law laughed, pushing her chair back from the table and getting up. ‘And while you’re at it, see if you can beg, steal or pay through the nose for some more fresh eggs, will you? I would die for some freshly scrambled eggs.’

  ‘At two and six a dozen? It’s enough to make anyone drop dead, Mrs Tate. Don’t know how they dare as to ask that sort of money, I really don’t. Not only that – who’s to say they’re fresh? I’d like to know where they find chickens laying in this dreadful weather. You ask me them’s foreign eggs they’re selling on the quay. You won’t find those to be British fresh farm.’

  ‘I don’t care if they come from Timbuktu, Gwen,’ replied Loretta Tate – Loopy to her friends – pulling her second cardigan around her tightly against the wind that was whistling through the gaps in the window frames. ‘I just have this simply awful desire for just one plate of soft scrambled eggs and bacon, or some thick French toast dripping with butter. Oh, for crying out loud, what did I have to go and say that for? Now I shall go completely out of my mind.’

  ‘You’d need to send to your folks in America if you want bacon, Mrs Tate,’ Gwen muttered, flicking the crumbs off the table and straight onto the floor with her mistress’s discarded napkin. ‘You’ve as much chance of getting your hands on rashers of bacon here as I have of marrying Errol Flynn.’

  ‘My, I quite forgot to tell you,’ Loopy called, pulling a face of mock innocence behind her maid’s back. ‘Mr Flynn called again last night, Gwen.’

  To the sound of further grumbles and protestations Loopy ambled out of her dining room and into the small sitting room where she had already taken the precaution of lighting a wood fire. She was due to have lunch with her daughter-in-law, but since more heavy snow had been promised she thought perhaps it might be wiser to telephone to Judy, and cancel the engagement now.

  ‘The roads haven’t been cleared, darling,’ she told Judy on the telephone. ‘Not even half. I’m perfectly prepared to walk, but even that’s mighty hazardous – and if it snows as they say it’s going to …’ She stopped, disappointed suddenly at the idea of not going out to lunch, and perhaps Judy sensed this because she changed tack at once.

  ‘Tell you what, Loopy. If it doesn’t snow any more, and given that it’s too much to walk all the way over here, why don’t we meet at the Three Tuns? I know we won’t get much of a lunch, but at least we’ll be able to see each other.’

  ‘OK, darling. If it doesn’t snow any more, that’s a date. I can’t bear all this enforced isolation. It’s like living in Alaska.’

  To pass the time, Loopy sat by the fire putting the fine detail to her latest painting. Unsurprisingly really, considering they were enduring the coldest winter weather on record, it was a snowscape, but she was rather pleased with the way she had managed to capture the over-bright light as well as the blues and yellows in the snowdrifts.

  When she had finished she removed the canvas from her work easel and propped it on the top of her little desk, wondering if anyone would comment on it, or whether it would go unremarked the way most of her paintings did, ignored by her family as if they found them embarrassing, which, for all she knew, they quite probably did. That would appear to be the case since, except for Gwen of all people, everyone else in the household seemed to pretend that Loopy didn’t paint, that what she was doing was merely keeping herself busy, as if her increasingly good artwork was nothing more interesting than someone’s darning or yet another shapeless knitted garment, a hobby which they could happily ignore, which was in fact what indeed they did. Sometimes Loopy thought that if she filled the drawing room with every single canvas she had painted, her family would still come into the room at drinks time and fail to pass a single comment. The fact that Gwen noticed her work became a source of strength and inspiration for Loopy. If Gwen was prepared to comment, actually to talk about her painting, it meant that it existed, even though the maid’s remarks were invariably accompanied by what Loopy mentally called Gwenisms.

  ‘I don’t know nothing about art, not a single stitch,’ she once said seriously, as she stood regarding a self-portrait Loopy had just finished. ‘But what I do know is I know what I don’t like.’

  ‘Naturally,’ Loopy had replied, as if conversations like this were the norm. ‘So do you not like this?’

  ‘The colour’s nice. I like the way you paint colour. That red rug, for an instance. I can sort of feel its texture, and that’s clever. Then there’s the sea beyond, out of the window there. I love all that light you got on the sea. I really do like that.’

  ‘I’m glad you like that, because that’s my favourite bit – and it was a perfect swine to get right.’

  ‘I can imagine, Mrs T. I don’t know how you get light like that on water. That I really do like.’

  ‘So if you like it, that’s good, Gwennie.’

  ‘I can’t see as to why, Mrs T. I can’t see what jot of a difference whether I likes it or not will make.’

  ‘On the contrary, Gwen. If you like it, then that means there’s a strong possibility that someone else might, too. Although possibly no-one that we know.’

  ‘I like this one, Mrs T.,’ she said on this particular morning, the day Loopy finished the snowscape. ‘Really wintry that is. Makes you want to stoke up the fire. Course, it’ll be even nicer when the trees come out, won’t it?’

  Happily this particular morning seemed determined to stay cloudless and sunny, although still bitterly cold, with the result that at midday Loopy wrapped herself up in her long fur coat and matching hat, and set off to make her way to the quay that ran by the side of the estuary, and the historic old inn that stood at the head of it.

  As soon as she swung through the double doors into the main bar, Loopy could see Judy ahead of her, already there waiting, two gin and tonics at the ready, a most welcome sight. The saloon bar was surprisingly full, the number of people gathered helping to add warmth to a room heated by only the smallest of coke fires.

  ‘Cheers.’ Loopy raised her glass. ‘To the day when we can drink unwatered gin.’ She raised her eyes to heaven. ‘And may it please come real soon.’

  ‘I heard they’re selling this place,’ Judy said. ‘Walter heard it on the grapevine when he was down last weekend.’

  ‘I’m not surprised, honey. It must be the very devil to try to make money at times like these. Someone said to me it should be called the Three Millstones, not the Three Tuns.’

  ‘It’s always full, Loopy. Granted it is the only pub in Bexham, but they always seem to do good business.’

  ‘So why sell it if it’s so completely perfect?’

  ‘Walter said – although apparently it’s not meant to go any further – that poor Valerie isn’t too well.’

  ‘That is sad. I’m fond of Valerie, a lot fonder than I am of that over-cheerful husband of hers. Too busy playing Mine Host to general applause and leaving her to do all the work. So how’s my favourite daughter-in-law been, despite the weather, the weather – and the weather.’

  Judy and Loopy chatted for the next ten minutes or so, both of them careful to keep the conversation commonplace, despite their genuine affection for each other. In fact it was their mutual respect which prevented Loopy from confiding in her daughter-in-law that she thought she could sense a vague feeling of discontent in her husband Hugh when he came hom
e from London at the weekend, and Judy from discussing with her mother-in-law the fact that, despite every possible effort, she did not seem to be able to conceive. Instead they talked about the weather and the general shortage of most of life’s necessities, before being interrupted by a loud exchange aimed, it seemed to Loopy, in their particular direction. The conversation, if it could be called such, was between two red-faced local gentlemen seated at the bar, and it was about the fact that all the real troubles in the country were being caused by the demands of the womenfolk.

  ‘Who if you want my opinion have had it all to themselves for far too long during the war. It’s them what’s demanding to get everything their own way, that’s what’s the matter with this country – it’s the women.’

  ‘Excuse me?’ Loopy called suddenly, from her seat.

  ‘Loopy …’

  But Loopy merely flapped one hand at Judy, looking, for her, purposefully determined, her mouth set in disapproval. ‘Excuse me, sir?’

  One of the men at the bar looked round in mock astonishment.

  ‘You addressing me, madam?’

  ‘I am sir, certainly, because I am most interested in how you have become such an authority not only on this poor country’s problems, but on its women, if you please.’

  The man in the tweed cap looked round at his colleague as if he was being addressed by a lunatic before turning back and staring at Loopy, while breathing deeply in and out.

  ‘Madam,’ he said, carefully doing up the top button of his tweed sports coat. ‘You may not find this palatable, you being a member yourself of the fair sex, but I have to tell you none the less that the general consensus of opinion is that a certain number of you ladies nowadays, now that the war is over, are finding it very difficult to remember that your place is in the home. That home is where you belong, where you should return and where you should stay.’

  ‘You’ve gathered this, I imagine, from pieces in the newspapers, from opinions expressed mainly by – let me guess – by members of the unfair sex. By men.’

  ‘That is quite beside the point, madam.’

  ‘I don’t see why. Men seem to write opinions for other men to talk about in their local hostelry, while all that is supplied for us ladies to read is recipes or how to make an evening dress out of an old sofa cover. Let me tell you something, sir. We women do not have a place any more than you men do. Why should we? If we didn’t have a place when the war was on, which we most certainly did not when you remember what a lot of us women did during the war, then why should we be expected to have a place now, may I ask? You men were only too happy to have us women working in your factories, driving your buses, nursing your injured – doing all the things in fact that up to that time only men had been allowed to do.’

  ‘Naturally. Because we were at war. But we’re at peace now.’

  ‘Of course. And because of that we women are expected to drop everything, put our pinnies and aprons back on again, and spend the rest of our lives tied to hearth and home and stove looking after you lot.’

  ‘That is what the sacred articles of marriarge are all about.’

  ‘And for those of us who aren’t marriard?’ Loopy wondered, echoing his mocking pronunciation. ‘What are they meant to do?’

  ‘Things might be different across the Atlantic, madam – and what isn’t, pray? But here single unmarried women stay at home and look after their parents. That is what single unmarried women do, what they are for. That is what is expected of them: to do their duty by their parents.’

  ‘Oh, come along, sir. Really. The same thing goes in some places across the other side of the Atlantic, you know. American men are just like you – they expect young women to sacrifice their lives and become unpaid drudges in family households, and believe you me it’s no more attractive over there than it is over here. So, no, no, we’re not so very different as you imagine,’ Loopy retorted. ‘On both sides of the water I’d say you guys are in for a bit of a shock one of these days. You just wait and see.’

  Most of the men listening had laughed at her, but now more and more people joined in the public debate, and having got them all well and truly stirred up Loopy gave a slow smile and sat back to light the cigarette she had just pushed into her long, ebony holder.

  ‘Nothing like a well lobbed hand grenade to liven things up,’ she murmured to Judy, inhaling smoke. ‘I like that. The nerve of them. Keep women in their place indeed.’

  ‘You don’t think that’s right, Loopy?’ Judy said hesitantly. ‘You don’t think a woman’s place is in the home?’

  ‘Not necessarily. Should she choose it – well, that’s fine, and if it brings her fulfilment, absolutely right, but if she’d rather be out there climbing Mount Everest or flying around the world in a Tiger Moth – why in hell not? Are you quite happy to be tied to the stove by your apron strings, Judy? I doubt it – not after all you did in the war, surely?’

  ‘You surprise me, Loopy. But then you usually do. I know you value your free will and all that, but I always thought you stood rather strictly by what our friend at the bar referred to as the articles of marriarge.’

  ‘You bet I do – at least by the sanctity of marriage. That’s how I see it and I won’t hear a word against it. But I wouldn’t sacrifice my life for it – for love maybe, but not for marriarge.’

  Feeling vaguely embarrassed by the conversation because it happened to concern the doubts in her own mind, Judy diverted her mother-in-law away from further argument by ordering lunch from George, their over-convivial host who, with an exaggerated wink of his rheumy eye, promised them a good slice of chicken each in their Spam sandwiches, provided, of course, that they didn’t tell everyone.

  Over another watered down gin and tonic Judy and Loopy seemed to forget all about their earlier discussion and gossiped instead about what had, or was rumoured to have, happened in Bexham since they last met. Then the skies suddenly clouded over and the threat of yet another blizzard sent them hurrying off home in opposite directions.

  As Judy passed the end of the lane that led up to the church she saw a pair of car headlights coming slowly towards her in the snow which was now falling thick and fast. A moment later the car began to slide across the road as in spite of the chains on the tyres the driver lost control on the compacted and frozen surface. Suddenly aware of the danger she was in, Judy jumped sideways into the lane, falling into a deep drift as she did so, then rolling over just in time to avoid being crushed by the car that had come to a standstill only a couple of feet from where she lay.

  ‘My God!’ she heard through the snow as the driver wrenched his door open and tumbled out into the snowdrift. ‘My God – are you OK wherever you are?’

  It was, oddly enough, another American voice, and it was accented so much like Loopy’s Southern tones that Judy thought hazily that the owner might even prove to be some sort of relative of her mother-in-law.

  ‘Yes, I’m fine!’ she called back. ‘I’m over here – in front of the car!’

  The driver was by her side in a moment, half stumbling and half falling through the snow.

  ‘Dear God, I thought I might have killed you,’ he said, falling to his knees where Judy was now slowly sitting up. ‘I am so – so sorry.’

  Judy looked up and, finding herself staring into a pair of intense dark eyes, she started to laugh.

  ‘Don’t be silly, I’m fine, really, I’m fine. It was just an accident, no more and no less,’ she assured him.

  ‘No, I really am so very, very sorry.’

  Taking the arm held out to her, Judy looked round for Hamish and bent to retrieve his lead.

  ‘Don’t be silly, worse things happen at sea, and all the time.’ She started brushing the snow off her coat. ‘I’m Judy Tate, by the way, and you are?’

  ‘A great deal better now that I see you’re unhurt. I’m Waldo Astley.’

  Waldo took Judy’s gloved hand and shook it. It was only as she found herself staring into a pair of large, dark eyes tha
t Judy started to realise that the drama that had just taken place was as nothing compared to the one that might be just about to happen if she continued to hold the hand that was shaking hers.

  ‘What a wonderfully absurd name,’ Meggie exclaimed, lighting a cigarette expertly with one hand, at the same time cradling the telephone receiver between her face and her shoulder. ‘Does he look as absurd as his name?’

  ‘No.’ Judy cleared her throat. ‘No, absurd is not the word I personally would use about Mr Waldo Astley. He dresses beautifully, by the way. Cashmere camel coat, hat at just the right angle – pure Long Island, I would imagine.’

  ‘What else did you discover? Anything interesting?’

  ‘You don’t think the fact that he nearly killed me is remotely interesting?’

  ‘Of course he didn’t nearly kill you, Judy. He merely gave you a bit of a nudge with his car.’

  ‘It was an American car. A rather large Buick motor car.’

  ‘All American cars are large, Judy darling.’ Meggie sighed and blew a smoke ring into the air, watching it without much interest. ‘So, tall dark stranger nearly knocks local woman over but doesn’t – talk about no news is no news, Mrs Tate. I want a bit more colour than that.’