“I know.” Eve smiled. “She always said she’d never have had Jamie without you. And I told her that she’d probably have managed. Now, you look exhausted. Go to bed and try to get some sleep.”
His face was haggard with strain. “If…” The words seemed to be torn from him. “If anything happens to Jane…”
“It won’t,” she said quickly. She laid a hand on his arm. “You mustn’t even think about it.”
“What can I think?”
“You must just have faith. And if there’s a call in the middle of the night, you will come and tell me, won’t you?”
“Of course.”
“Goodnight then, my dear.”
* * *
She had told David to sleep, but she could not sleep herself. She lay, in the downy bed, in the darkness, watching the patch of paler darkness that was the night sky beyond the drawn curtains and the open window, and listening to the hours chime by on the grandfather clock that stood at the foot of the stairs. The telephone did not ring. Dawn was breaking before at last she dozed off, and then, almost instantly, was awake again. It was half-past seven. She got up and pulled on her dressing gown and went to find Jamie, who, too, was awake, sitting up in bed and playing with his tractor.
“Good morning.”
He said, “Do you think I can play with Charlie Cooper today? I want to show him the John Deere.”
“Won’t he be at school this morning?”
“This afternoon, then?”
“Perhaps.”
“What shall we do this morning?”
“What would you like to do?”
“We could go down to the foreshore and look at the geese. Do you know, Granny, do you know this, there are men who come and shoot them? Daddy hates it, but he says he can’t do anything to stop them, because the foreshore belongs to everybody.”
“Wildfowlers.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“I must say it seems hard on the poor geese to fly all the way from Canada and then get shot.”
“Daddy says they do make an awful mess of the fields.”
“They have to feed. And talking of feeding, what do you want for breakfast?”
“Boiled eggs?”
“Up you get, then.”
* * *
In the kitchen, they found a note from David on the kitchen table:
7 a.m. Have fed the cattle, am just going up to the hospital again. No call during the night. I’ll ring you if anything happens.
“What does he say?” asked Jamie.
“Just telling us he’s gone to see your mother.”
“Has the baby come yet?”
“Not yet.”
“It’s in her tummy. It’s got to come out.”
“I don’t expect it will be very long now.”
As they finished their breakfast, Mrs. Cooper arrived with her large rosy-cheeked baby in a perambulator, which she manoeuvred into a corner of the kitchen.
She gave the baby a rusk to chew. “Any news, Mrs. Douglas?”
“No, not yet. But David’s at the hospital now. He’ll ring us if there’s any.”
She went upstairs and made her bed, and then Jamie’s, and then, after a tiny hesitation, went into Jane and David’s room in order to make that bed as well.
It was impossible not to feel that she was trespassing. There was the smell of lily-of-the-valley, which was the only perfume Jane ever used. She saw the dressing table, with all Jane’s small, personal possessions: her grandmother’s silver hairbrushes, the snaps of David and Jamie, the strings of pretty, junky beads that she had hung from the mirror. Clothes lay about: the dungarees that she had been wearing before she was taken off in the ambulance; a pair of shoes, a scarlet sweater. She saw the childish collection of china animals, ranged along the mantelpiece, the big photograph of herself and Walter.
She turned to the bed, and saw that David had spent the night on Jane’s side, with his head buried in the huge, white, lace-frilled pillow. For some reason this was the last straw. I want her back, she said furiously, to nobody in particular. I want her back. I want her home, safely, with her family. I can’t bear this anymore. I want to know now that she’s going to be all right.
The telephone rang.
She sat on the edge of the bed and reached out and picked up the receiver.
“Yes?”
“Eve, it’s David.”
“What’s happening?”
“Nothing yet, but there seems to be a bit of a panic on and they don’t want to wait any longer. She’s being wheeled along to the labour room now. I’m going with her. I’ll call you when there’s any news.”
“Yes.” There seems to be a bit of a panic on. “I … I thought I’d take Jamie out for a walk. But we won’t be long, and Mrs. Cooper is here.”
“Good idea. Get him out of the house. Give him my love.”
“Take care, David.”
* * *
The foreshore lay beyond an old apple orchard, and then a field of stubble. They came to the hawthorn hedge and the stile, and then grass sloped down to the rushes and the water’s edge. The tide was out, the great mudflats spread to the further shore. She saw the shallow hills and the huge sky; patches of palest blue, hung with slow-moving grey clouds.
Jamie, climbing over the stile, said, “There are the wildfowlers.”
Eve looked and saw them, down by the edge of the water. There were two men, and they had built a hide of the brushwood that had been washed up by the high tides. They stood in this, silhouetted against the shining mudflats, their guns at the ready. A pair of brown and white springer spaniels sat nearby, waiting. It was very quiet, very still. From far out in the middle of the estuary, Eve could hear the chatter and gobble of the wild geese.
She helped Jamie off the stile, and hand in hand they made their way down the slope. Where this levelled off they came to a group of plaster birds which the wildfowlers had arranged to resemble a flock of feeding geese.
“They’re toy ones,” said Jamie.
“They’re decoys. The wildfowlers hope that any geese that fly over will see them and think it’s safe to come down and feed.”
“I think that’s horrid. I think that’s cheating. If any come, Granny, if any come, let’s wave our arms and chase them away.”
“I don’t think we’ll be very popular if we do.”
“Let’s tell the wildfowlers to go away.”
“We can’t do that. They’re not breaking any law.”
“They’re shooting our geese.”
“The wild geese belong to everybody.”
The wildfowlers had seen them. Their dogs had their ears pricked up and were wheeking. One of the men swore at his dog. Nonplussed, not knowing now quite which way to go, Eve and Jamie stood by the ring of decoys, hesitating, and as they did this, a movement in the sky caught Eve’s eye and she looked up, and saw, coming from the direction of the sea, a line of birds.
“Look, Jamie.”
The wildfowlers had seen them, too. There was a stir of activity as they turned to face the incoming flight.
“Don’t let them come!” Jamie sounded panic-stricken. He pulled his hand free from Eve’s, and began to run, stumbling on his short, gum-booted legs, waving his arms, trying to divert the distant birds and turn them away from the guns. “Go away, go away, don’t come!”
Eve felt that she should try to stop him, but there seemed little point. Nothing on earth could halt that relentless flight. And, as well, there was something unusual about these birds. The wild geese flew from north to south on regular flight lines, but this flock approached from the east, from the sea, and with every second they grew larger. For an instant Eve’s natural measure of distance was both dazzled and baffled, and then it all clicked into true focus, and she saw that the birds were not geese at all, but twelve white swans.
“They’re swans, Jamie. They’re swans.”
He heard her and stopped dead, standing silently, his head bent back to watch them fly
over. They came, and the air was filled with the drumming and beating of their immense wings. She saw the long white necks stretched forward, the legs tucked up and streaming behind. And then they were over and gone, flying upriver, and the sound of their wings died into the silence, and finally they disappeared, swallowed into the greyness of the morning, the distance of the hills.
* * *
“Granny.” Jamie caught her sleeve and shook it. “Granny, you’re not listening.” She looked down at him. It felt like looking down at a child she had never seen before. “Granny, the wildfowlers didn’t shoot them.”
Twelve white swans. “They’re not allowed to shoot swans. Swans belong to the Queen.”
“I’m glad. I thought they were beauti-full.”
“Yes. Yes, they were.”
“Where do you think they’re going?”
“I don’t know. Up the river. Up to the hills. Perhaps there’s a hidden loch where they feed and nest.” But she spoke absently, because she was not thinking about the swans. She was thinking about Jane, and all at once it was intensely urgent that they lose no time at all in getting home.
“Come along, Jamie.” She took his hand, and began to scramble back up the grassy slope towards the stile, dragging him behind her. “Let’s go back.”
“But we haven’t had our walk yet.”
“We’ve walked far enough. Let’s hurry. Hurry. Let’s see how quick we can be.”
They climbed the stile and ran across the stubble, Jamie’s short legs doing their valiant best to keep up with his grandmother’s. They went through the orchard, not stopping to look for windfalls or to climb the wizened old trees. Not stopping for anything.
Now, they reached the track that led to the farmhouse and Jamie was exhausted, he could run no further and stopped dead in protest at such extraordinary behaviour. But Eve could not bear to linger, and she swung him up into her arms and hurried on, not minding his weight, scarcely noticing it.
They came to the house at last, and went in through the back door, not even stopping to take off their muddy boots. Through the back porch, into the warm kitchen, where the baby still sat placidly in its perambulator and Mrs. Cooper peeled potatoes at the kitchen sink. She turned as they appeared, and as she did this, the telephone began to ring. Eve set Jamie down on his feet and darted to answer it. It had only time to ring once more before she had picked up the receiver.
“Yes.”
“Eve, it’s David. It’s all over. Everything’s all right. We’ve got another little boy. He had a pretty rough ride, but he’s strong and healthy and Jane’s fine. A bit tired, but they’ve got her back into bed, and you can come and see her this afternoon.”
“Oh, David…”
“Can I speak to Jamie?”
“Of course.”
She handed the little boy the receiver. “It’s Daddy. You’ve got a brother.” She turned to Mrs. Cooper, who was still standing with a knife in one hand and a potato in the other. “She’s all right, Mrs. Cooper. She’s all right.” She wanted to hug Mrs. Cooper, to press kisses on her rosy cheeks. “It’s a little boy, and nothing went wrong. She’s all right … and…”
It wasn’t any good. She couldn’t say any more. And she could no longer see Mrs. Cooper because her eyes had filled with tears. She never cried, and she did not want Jamie to see her crying, so she turned and left Mrs. Cooper standing there, and simply went out of the kitchen, out the way they had come in, out into the garden and the cold, fresh morning air.
It was safely over. Relief made her feel so weightless it was as though she could have taken a single leap and floated up, ten or twenty feet into the air. She was crying, but she was laughing too, which was ridiculous, so she felt in her pocket and found a handkerchief, and wiped her eyes and blew her nose.
Twelve white swans. She was glad that Jamie had been with her, otherwise, for the rest of her life, she might have suspected that that astonishing sight had been simply a figment of her own overwrought imagination. Twelve white swans. She had watched them come and watched them go. Gone forever. She knew that she would never witness such a miraculous sight again.
She looked up into the empty sky. It had clouded over, and soon it would probably start to rain. As the thought occurred to her, Eve felt the first cold wet drops upon her face. Twelve white swans. She buried her hands deep in the pockets of her coat, and turned and went indoors to telephone her husband.
The Tree
At five o’clock on a sultry, sizzling London afternoon in July, Jill Armitage, pushing the baby buggy that contained her small son Robbie, emerged through the gates of the park and started to walk the mile of pavements that led to home.
It was a small park and not a very spectacular one. The grass was trodden, the paths fouled by other people’s dogs, the flower beds filled with things like lobelia and hot red geraniums and strange plants with beetroot-coloured leaves, but at least there was a children’s corner, and a shady tree or two, and some swings and a see-saw.
She had packed a basket with some toys and a token picnic for the two of them, and this was now slung on the handles of the buggy. All that could be seen of her child was the top of his cotton sun hat and his red canvas sneakers. He wore a skimpy pair of shorts and his arms and shoulders were the colour of apricots. She hoped that he had not caught the sun. His thumb was in his mouth, he hummed to himself, meh, meh, meh, a sound he made when he was sleepy.
They came to the main road and stood, waiting to cross. Traffic, two lanes deep, poured in front of them. Sunlight flashed on windscreens, drivers were in shirt sleeves, the air was heavy with the smell of exhaust and petrol fumes.
The lights changed, brakes screeched, and traffic halted. Jill pushed the buggy across the road. On the far side was the greengrocer’s shop, and Jill thought about supper that evening, and went in to buy a lettuce and a pound of tomatoes. The man who served her was an old friend—living in this run-down corner of London was a little like living in a village—and he called Robbie “My love” and gave him, free, a peach for his supper.
Jill thanked the greengrocer and trudged on. Before long she turned into her own street, where the Georgian houses had once been quite grand, and the pavements were wide and flagged with stone. Since getting married and coming to live in the neighbourhood, she had learned to take for granted the decrepitude of everything, the dingy paint, the broken railings, the sinister basements with their grubby drawn curtains and damp stone steps sprouting ferns. But over the last two years, hopeful signs of improvement had begun to show in the street. Here, a house changed hands intact, scaffolding went up, great Council skips stood at the road’s edge and were filled with all sorts of interesting rubbish. There, a basement flat sported a new coat of white paint, and a honeysuckle was planted in a tub, and in no time at all had reached the railings, twisting and twining with branches laden with blossom. Gradually, windows were being replaced, lintels repaired, front doors painted shiny black or cornflower blue, brass handles and letter boxes polished to a shine. A new and expensive breed of car stood at the pavement’s edge and a whole new and expensive breed of mothers walked their offspring to the corner shop, or brought them home from parties, carrying balloons and wearing false noses and paper hats.
Ian said that the district was going up in the world, but really, it was just that people could no longer afford to buy property in Fulham or Kensington, and had started to try their luck further afield.
Ian and Jill had bought their house when they were married, three years ago, but still they had the dead weight of a mortgage hanging around their necks, and since Robbie was born and Jill had stopped working, their financial problems were even more acute. And now, to make matters worse, there was another baby on the way. They had wanted another baby; they had planned for another baby, but perhaps not quite so soon.
“Never mind,” Ian had said when he got over the shock. “We’ll have it all over and done with in one fell swoop, and just think what fun the children will be for each
other, only two years apart.”
“I just feel we can’t afford it.”
“It doesn’t cost anything to have a baby.”
“No, but it costs a lot to bring them up. And buy them shoes. Do you know what it costs to buy Robbie a pair of sandals?”
Ian said that he didn’t know and he didn’t want to. They would manage somehow. He was an eternal optimist and the best thing about his optimism was that it was catching. He gave his wife a kiss and went out to the off-license around the corner and bought a bottle of wine which they drank that evening, with their supper of sausage and mash.
“At least we’ve got a roof over our heads,” he told her, “even if most of it belongs to the Building Society.”
And so they had, but even their best friends had to admit that it was an odd house. For the street, at its end, turned in a sharp curve, and Number 23, where Jill and Ian lived, was tall and thin, wedge-shaped in order to accommodate the angle of the bend. It was its very oddness that had attracted them in the first place, as well as its price; for it had been allowed to reach a sad state of dilapidation and needed much done to it. Its very oddness was part of its charm, but charm didn’t help much when they had run out of the time, energy, and means to attend to the outside painting, or apply a coat of Snowcem to its narrow frontage.
Only the basement, paradoxically, sparkled. This was where Delphine, their lodger, lived. Delphine’s rent helped to pay the mortgage. She was a painter who had turned, with some success, to commercial art, and she used the basement as a London pied-à-terre, commuting between this and a cottage in Wiltshire, where a decrepit barn had been converted into a studio, and an overgrown garden sloped down to the reedy banks of a small river. Every so often, Jill and Ian and Robbie were invited to this enchanting place for a weekend, and these visits were always the greatest treat—a feast of ill-assorted guests, enormous meals, quantities of wine, and endless discussions on esoteric subjects usually quite beyond Jill’s comprehension. They made, as Ian was wont to point out when they turned to humdrum old London, a nice change.
The Blue Bedroom: & Other Stories Page 17