‘Humph.’ Louise’s grunt conveyed all too well her opinion of Mr Fairbanks’ habits.
Louise’s remark that she probably could not afford a hot water bottle had reminded Celia that they had to discuss money matters, and also domestic duties. And who was to care for the garden?
At the thought, she felt a little sick inside, but after she had served coffee for Edna and herself, she turned her chair so that she could see the faces of both the other women, and bravely opened up the subject, by saying, ‘I imagine, Mama, that you and Edna have discussed what she should contribute as her share of the expenses?’
Without waiting for a reply, she added to Edna, ‘When we were talking about your furniture being put in the barn, you told us that you will be receiving funds from Paul’s company, so I imagine you will be able to help Mama – at least a little bit. Especially until the house is sold and Cousin Albert has arranged for Mother to have an annuity from that.’
Up to that moment, Louise had not thought that Edna should contribute to the household; she still thought of her as the dependent young girl she had been before her marriage.
‘She’s my daughter!’ she exclaimed. ‘I don’t expect any money from her! Any more than I do from you.’
Celia’s pale face flushed. She wanted to say indignantly, ‘But I earn my food by running after you like a slave. And mighty little thanks, never mind money, I get for it. And ever since she came home, I’ve been at Edna’s beck and call, too.’ But wisdom prevailed, and she simply hung her head.
Edna stirred sugar into her coffee. ‘Of course I shall contribute a share to the housekeeping, as long as I am living here,’ she said indignantly. ‘Now we’re settled in the cottage, I would myself have brought the matter up tomorrow. I got a letter from Papa Fellowes yesterday, and he has arranged to send me a cheque each month. He has advised me to open a bank account nearby. The first cheque should arrive in a day or two.’ She glanced resentfully at her mother. ‘Up to now I have had only the money which Paul and I were carrying with us and a little which Papa Fellowes gave me – to help. He is very kind.’
She looked suddenly very forlorn. To comfort her, Celia impulsively put out her hand to cover her sister’s shrivelled yellow one. She was rewarded by a wry smile, as Edna withdrew her hand to pick up her coffee cup and sip the cooling drink.
After she had dabbed her lips with her table napkin, Edna went on, ‘There is also a thing called a letter of credit, which Paul used to transfer his savings from Salvador – but that’s part of his estate, Papa Fellowes said, and it will be some time before that money comes to me. He recommends that, when he is able to cash it for me, I should bank it for emergencies.’
Louise had listened with rapt attention. ‘It sounds as if you will be quite well off.’
‘I don’t know yet. I certainly won’t starve.’ Edna moved uneasily in her chair, as if agitated by the comment, and then added with real bitterness, ‘As yet, I have no idea what I shall be able to do.’ How could she say to this self-centred mother of hers that all she wanted to do was to be with Vital. Yet, if she went back to Brazil and married him, people would immediately begin to gossip – and they could both be ruined socially, even if they could find enough money to live on.
Louise was contrite. ‘I’m sorry, dear. I should not have asked about your affairs. It is kind of you to offer to contribute to the housekeeping – and I must say that I shall be very grateful for it, since I have to keep two people.’ She glanced towards Celia.
Celia flushed even more deeply with embarrassment. She summoned up a smile for Edna, however, and echoed Louise’s thanks.
Louise heaved herself out of her chair, leaving her coffee cup resting on the flat surface of the brass fender. ‘Well, I suppose I must go upstairs and put away my clothes,’ she said wearily. ‘It is going to be terribly cold up there. I must put on my velvet jacket.’
Celia got up, too, and mechanically went into the hall to find the velvet jacket and help her mother into it. As the cold silk lining touched her, Louise shivered dramatically, and said, ‘Really, Celia, I think you should have lit more fires.’
‘It has been a very busy day, Mama, and it is the end of April!’ Dear God, how am I ever going to cope? she asked herself, and went back into the living room.
Edna had already piled the dishes together, and she said, ‘You wash and I’ll dry.’
Celia’s spirits rose a little. She had earlier put the kettle on the fire, and when it had boiled, had set it on the hob to keep warm for washing dishes.
When she poured the water into the kitchen wash basin, set in a brand-new sink, she suddenly realised that it had two taps. She put down the kettle on the draining board, and there was an immediate hiss as its hot bottom scorched the wood. She snatched it off before it did any real damage, and with a laugh, said to Edna, ‘I’d forgotten that, when Mr Aspen put the boiler in, it would be linked to the kitchen sink as well as the bathroom! Like an idiot, I’ve been running upstairs when I wanted hot water or I’ve been boiling it. Isn’t it wonderful – we’ve got hot water upstairs and downstairs!’
‘It will be a real help,’ agreed Edna. ‘Where are the tea towels?’
‘I suppose Dorothy put them in one of the drawers.’
Though Edna was not very cheerful, she was at least company, thought Celia, and she had volunteered to help. As she inexpertly washed the dishes and handed them to Edna to dry, she ventured a question.
‘Did you have many servants in Brazil?’
‘I had six indoor ones, and two peons for the garden – and a housekeeper called Conchita.’
‘That must have been nice.’
‘It was in a way – but it could be terribly boring; they often quarrelled amongst themselves, and then I had to sort them out. And that wasn’t everybody. Paul had a Brazilian live-in male secretary, Mr Vital Oliveira; he was very helpful, particularly when I first arrived and could not speak any Portuguese. He would translate for me, and he explained about local customs.’ At the latter recollection, she smiled softly down at the saucer she was drying. ‘Then there was a chauffeur who lived over the garage – there was a car for city use – these two men were company employees, not mine.’
She put the saucer carefully down on a side table, and took another one from Celia. She continued, ‘Paul was away quite a lot of the time, up in the hills to see how the dam was going on – that’s how they were going to get electricity, though I must say I don’t understand these things. His senior works people and a translator – and the chauffeur – went with him. The chauffeur was in charge of the horses and stores that they had to take along.’
In the weeks that Edna had been at home, this was the longest response that Celia had got to a question, and she realised that it was the first time that she had been alone with Edna. Quite often, after a meal, Edna would vanish off to smoke in her bedroom or, if the weather was fine, into the narrow town garden behind the house. Conversational exchanges, when they occurred, had been between Louise and Edna; if Celia had been in the room, she had been ignored or sent away to do some errand for one of them. And, of course, she told herself, she had been away at the cottage much of the time.
‘How did you fill your time?’ she asked Edna, and Edna described a round of visits to other English women – and some Brazilians. ‘When I first arrived, I had a Portuguese lesson each morning.’
‘Can you speak it?’
‘Yes – I think reasonably well now.’
‘How clever of you!’ Celia’s admiration was genuine. ‘What else did you do?’
‘Sometimes there were festivals, like Christmas and Easter. And they were rather keen on saints’ days. The churches had processions, which we used to watch from somebody’s balcony. And there were musical evenings …’ Her voice trailed off. ‘I was ill a great deal – I seemed to catch every germ you can imagine, especially after little Rosemary died.’
‘That must have grieved you very much.’
‘It did. I re
fused to have any more children until we returned here.’
‘How could you refuse? Phyllis says they come every year, once you’re married.’
‘There are ways.’ Edna laughed a little cynically. ‘And I just said no.’
The implications of the latter remark were lost on Celia, but she said, ‘I wish you would explain that to Phyllis. She has already four little ones, and she looks so ill because the strain of it all is too much for her. I worry a lot about her – I simply must go to see her again soon.’
‘Hasn’t she ever heard of Margaret Sanger? She wrote a book at the beginning of the war on the need to limit families – and before her, there was, for years, a Malthusian League which spread information about how to do it. Really, Celia! English women should come into the twentieth century.’
Celia emptied and rinsed the washing-up basin. Then she sought a towel in the same drawer that had yielded the tea cloth, and slowly wiped her hands. She was blushing, as she admitted, ‘I’ve never heard of any such thing. And I don’t think Phyllis has.’
‘Humph. A couple of years ago, a lady called Marie Carmichael Stopes wrote a very clear book about it. I am sure it must be available in Liverpool. Poor Phyllis should read it – she doesn’t need to tell her husband!’
While Celia slowly digested this information, Edna folded the cloth she had been using, then realised that it was very wet and shook it out and draped it over the side of the sink to dry. With reference to Phyllis, Edna suggested diffidently, ‘It might be a good idea if she first talked to her husband!’
‘Him?’ Celia’s laugh was scornful. ‘He’s the most thoughtless man you can imagine.’ Then she added anxiously, ‘I’ve only seen Phyllis once since little Timothy was born. I wonder if Mother and you could manage, if I went over to Liverpool to see her tomorrow afternoon? I could tell her then. As you know, Dorothy will be here for a few hours to help you. And I should really go and see if the furniture has been put into the barn – and that it’s all there.’ Her voice was heavy with anxiety. ‘And whether Winnie and Dorothy have cleaned the house properly, so that it is ready to be shown to the nursing home lady.’
‘You had better ask Mother.’ Edna relapsed into her usual melancholy silence, and wandered out of the kitchen and went upstairs, presumably to smoke and to put away the clothes lying on her bed.
Though Celia felt relieved that she had made some headway with Edna, she was overwhelmed with the work which would have to be done on the morrow. Could she, somehow, persuade her mother to go into Hoylake to buy food? The shops would surely send anything she chose – she had seen errand boys trailing around on their delivery bikes when she had been in the village before. And then someone must at least make the living-room fire and keep it up, so that they could cook, someone would have to wipe the mud from the lobby and sweep up the kitchen, make the beds; perhaps Dorothy would do those jobs just for tomorrow.
And we must decide what to do about the garden.
Every time she mentally went through the list and considered its long-term implications, however, the jobs came back to her.
Already tired to death with the effort of the previous few weeks, she wanted to scream.
Impulsively she yanked open the back kitchen door, stiff from new paint, and stared into the wilderness of the back garden.
Fresh sea air blew in upon her, making her skirt and apron billow. It caught at tendrils of her hair and blew them out of their confining pins. She thankfully lifted her tired face to it. A full moon in a sky empty of cloud gave good illumination.
In all her visits to the cottage, she had always walked towards Hoylake, never towards the sea – she had simply been too busy. And it was not cold this evening, she thought. Spring is here.
Left on the back of a chair was a shawl, discarded by her mother in favour of her heavy velvet house jacket. She snatched it up and whipped it round her shoulders. Her outdoor shoes lay, waiting to be cleaned, on a piece of newspaper by the kitchen door. She kicked off her house slippers and slid her little feet into them. Not bothering to tie the laces, she stepped out of the house and closed the kitchen door softly behind her. There was no back gate, so she ran round the side of the house.
When she reached the front gate, she turned right and right again, so that she faced the sea. A narrower lane continued before her. Bending to the wind, she joyfully took it.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Half stumbling over her loose shoelaces, she ran down towards the sea wall.
Between the cottage and the ocean, a huge dyke guarded the common land from the inroads of the remorseless sea, and she could hear the gentle slap of the waves rippling against the other side of this concrete embankment. The tide must be nearly full, she thought with sudden happiness.
Before climbing the embankment, she paused to catch her breath.
The moon lit up the coarse grass of the common and the rough surface of the dyke. A pair of oystercatchers, disturbed by her hurrying footsteps, fluttered out of the grass, to rise and then settle a little further away, to await the turn of the tide, when they would go hunting over the bare damp sand.
Faintly she could hear young voices calling to each other. It sounded as if a party had come out to enjoy a swim in the moonlit sea.
Feeling a little envious, she hitched up her skirt and climbed the steep land side of the embankment. The tide was coming in quite fast, she noted. Further out, towards the horizon, great waves foamed over the Hoyle sandbank.
She glanced to her right, where in the near distance, the Leasowe lighthouse, long disused, stood like a ghostly monument to forgotten seamen. The old castle beyond it was invisible, as was the new clutter of makeshift shacks, bereft of water or sanitation, which had, during the past year or two, been built by poverty-stricken homeless people on what was common land. A faint glow on the horizon marked where Liverpool lay on the other side of the Mersey Estuary.
About thirty feet out, a dozen or more people were cavorting in the water and splashing each other.
Holding down her skirts with one hand against the whipping wind and clutching her shawl with the other, she glanced to her left. Far on the horizon lay the dark hump of Wales pinpricked by an occasional light. Between it and her, she knew, lay the treacherous mouth of the River Dee with its infamous shifting sands waiting to drown the unwary.
A sharp shout from the water drew her eyes back to the bathers, and she was startled to realise that they were all naked.
She was immediately shocked and disapproving. She had swum many times herself at Rhyl, but always garbed, like other bathers, in a black woollen bathing costume, which, though it showed her figure, certainly covered her from neck to knee. And in Rhyl there were always bathing machines, drawn by horses a few feet into the sea itself, where one could change one’s clothes and then slip discreetly into the water. Here, she could clearly see in the moonlight the bouncing breasts of women and the flash of male buttocks as men dived under the waves to tease the women.
‘Come on, girl! Hurry up. Take your clothes off and come in,’ said a male voice behind her, and someone gave her bottom a playful smack as if to encourage her to go down to the water.
She spun round.
A totally nude man was rocking on his heels in front of her. She was appalled, and her mouth fell open in a gasp.
She had never seen a naked man before, and his hairiness revolted her. A shock of black hair, a huge black moustache, a black doormat on the chest which tapered down over a protruding stomach to a bunch of hair out of which dangled, instead of the fig leaf on statues, the appendage which Phyllis had once tried to describe to her. Heavy hairy legs and huge ugly feet reminded her of an ape in the zoo.
As he snatched merrily at her shawl, he became, suddenly, a menace. ‘Come on, now. Don’t be shy,’ he urged, breathing the smell of beer into her face, as he danced lightly in front of her to keep himself warm. ‘All the other girls are in already.’
‘How dare you!’ she hissed frigidly, clutching h
er shawl close to her neck.
He was a little nonplussed. ‘Well, what are you here for? You don’t have to be such a prude. Come in and have some fun. Don’t be silly.’
But, in panic, she dodged round him and was gone, slipping and sliding down the concrete slope towards the cottage, regardless of torn stockings or loose shoelaces, running along the shadowed lane, panting with fear.
For a moment, he stood watching her while he shivered slightly in the wind. Then he shrieked, ‘Tally-ho! Tally-ho!’ and, with arms waving, ran sure-footed down the slope after her.
His hunter’s cry was apparently heard by other males, who answered promptly from the water side of the embankment. Two more men scrambled, dripping, to the top.
Regardless of the sudden cold of the wind on their bare skins, all three followed the fleeing figure down the lane, whooping joyfully as they went.
Celia glanced back and screamed in pure terror, her belief in the friendliness of her new neighbours gone.
O Lord! No back gate to the cottage garden. She shot round to the front, straight into the arms of another man.
In pure hysteria, she screamed again and again and struggled in a pair of strong arms, while her shocked mother, who had heard her, pushed hard in order to open her bedroom window, stiff from its new paint.
Suddenly the window gave, and Louise was nearly precipitated out of it. ‘Celia,’ she shrieked. ‘What on earth’s going on?’
Chapter Twenty-Six
Strolling up and down in front of the cottages while he enjoyed a last smoke before bedtime, Eddie Fairbanks had hardly time to stuff his pipe into his jacket pocket before he caught the fleeing young woman in his arms.
‘Jesus! What’s up, luv?’ he gasped, as three satyrs came tearing round the hedge, shrieking, ‘View halloo!’ as if they had sighted a hunted fox, to resolve themselves in seconds into three slightly shamefaced young men stopped in their tracks.
They shivered in the wind.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ Eddie demanded furiously of them over Celia’s shoulder. ‘Get out of here, you stupid bastards. Frightening a decent young woman to death!’ He glanced down at Celia. ‘It’s all right, luv. It’s all right.’ He glared again at the young men fidgeting uncertainly before him. ‘Now you get going and get yourselves covered, or I’ll call the military police, I will.’
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