The English Wife

by Adrienne Chinn

  Dottie looks over at George. She wipes her eyes, leaving a streak of black mascara across her cheek. ‘She left me, George. Ellie was only seven years older than me, but she became like a mother to me. I loved Ellie. You were always around too. You were part of the family. Everything was perfect.’ Her jaw tightens. ‘Until he came. He was another car accident, don’t you see, George? He took Ellie from me, just like that car took Mummy.’

  ‘Oh, Dottie. What can I do? What do you want me to do to make you happy?’

  I did everything right, George. The only mistake I made was to sleep with you and fall pregnant. That was the end of everything for me. You owe me for taking my career away from me, George. For stealing the life I was supposed to have.’

  Chapter 73

  Tippy’s Tickle – 16 September 2011

  Sophie watches Sam, Becca, and Toby, lit yellow by a street light out by the road, through the shop’s bay window. Their hands fly at each other like birds attacking. Silent angry words.

  Emmett joins her at the window, his tall, lean figure looming above her. Behind them the party is in full swing, with Thor thumping the Ugly Stick as Rod Fizzard’s grandson squeezes out a folky tune on an accordion. Emmett brushes back his untidy grey fringe with his fingers. ‘Might be he’ll listen to her now.’

  Sophie looks up at him. His face is a craggy profile against the white venetian blind that’s been pulled closed over the bay’s side window. ‘What do you mean?’

  Emmett shrugs, his shoulders rising and falling under his inside-out plaid shirt. He stares down at Sophie, his two-coloured eyes hard and cold as marbles. ‘Seems like he’s been distracted.’

  ‘What? By me?’

  ‘Sooner you’re gone, the better for us all. Better yet—’ he nods towards Sam ‘—take him with you. We don’t needs his type here. Things was better before.’

  Sophie stares at him. ‘What have we done?’

  ‘What hasn’t you done? You almost sold the place to the devil. That fella—’ his eyebrows draw together as he nods at Sam ‘—that fella is the devil.’

  She frowns out the window. ‘You’re talking rubbish.’

  ‘I’ll pays you to go.’

  She jerks her head around. ‘You’ll what?’

  He shrugs again. ‘It’s your money, anyway.’

  ‘My money? What are you talking about?’

  ‘The money your fadder gave me mam after Da’ died. Blood money. I saved up to pay it back. Now he’s dead, I’ll gives it to you and you can gets back to wherever you came from.’

  Ellie places a hand on Emmett’s arm. ‘That’s enough, Emmy.’

  Emmett looks at his mother, his face softening. ‘I has to give her the money, Mam. I saved up to pay it back. I has to do it to save your immortal soul. You shouldn’ta taken it, Mam.’

  Sophie stares at Emmett. Saving Ellie’s soul? Blood money? Was he mad?

  ‘My soul is for God to judge, Emmy. The money—’

  The front door slams against a counter. Becca runs into the shop and through the crowd towards the kitchen, her face flushed as red as the ribbons she’s threaded through her dress.

  The door swings open. ‘Becca, wait!’ Toby flies into the store after her, his Dr Martens thumping on the floorboards. ‘He didn’t mean it!’

  Florie emerges from the kitchen, a large chocolate cake ablaze with candles in her hands. ‘Jaysus, kids!’ she says, looking over her shoulder while the kitchen door swings to a stop. She proceeds into the room singing ‘Happy Birthday’. The crowd joins in, filling the room with robust song as Florie makes her way towards Ellie.

  Sophie feels Ellie’s fingers clutch her arm. She looks over at her aunt in time to see Ellie’s knees buckle as she slides to the floor like a wilting flower.

  ‘Aunt Ellie!’ Sophie drops to her knees. Ellie’s face is as white as a winter sky, and the lines that were a thin tracery just the day before are etched deeply into her cheeks. Sophie looks around the room. ‘Sam! Somebody! Call a doctor!’

  The cake crashes to the floor.

  Chapter 74

  Tippy’s Tickle – 24 June 1967

  Ellie raises the sash on the attic window and leans her elbows on the sill. The breeze off the ocean brushes against her face, and the sun sits high in the pale blue sky, throbbing with the promise of another warm day. Unseasonable, the weather man has been saying on the new television. One of the coldest springs on record across Canada, fog sitting over Nova Scotia like a soggy blanket, but the sun shining up here on The Rock.

  The rhythmic swoosh of the waves against the rocks below the cliff is broken by the scrape of furniture across the floor in the bedroom below. Ellie winces. She’d been on her hands and knees for days sanding and waxing the wooden floor until it gleamed a warm golden brown. Polished Agnes and Ephraim’s Victorian four-poster mahogany bed until the dull white foxing of the years of built-up wax had burnished to a high sheen. It had been her bed after Agnes had followed Ephraim – dead from cirrhosis of the liver back in ’55 – to a plot beside him in St Stephen’s Cemetery four years ago. Ephraim on one side and Thomas on the other. Her mother-in-law’s stubborn, intransigent spirit finally squashed by the cancer that had slowly eaten a hole through her colon as she’d refused to see a doctor in favour of hot mustard plasters and juniper tonic. Until she’d died crying out to Jaysus, God and all the apostles in the back seat of Emmett’s pickup truck on the way to the hospital down in Gander.

  The new lodger had arrived the day before. Hitching her way around the island, she’d said. Up from Placentia originally where she’d taught elementary school for a few years, then via a Master’s degree in Education from Memorial in St John’s. She’d turned down a teaching place at Sacred Heart in Halifax to hitchhike her way across Canada ‘for the Centennial’, she’d said. This Florie was a free spirit if ever she’d met one. Ellie smiles. Like she’d once been herself, as an art student all those years ago in Norwich. Before the war. Before Thomas.

  Ellie pads across the round rug she braided from clothing scraps, past the brass bed, and over to her easel. She frowns at the painted landscape of the shore, squinting at the sharp yellow dots of the buttercups and the purple crowns of the Blue Flag irises prising their way through the long grass on the cliff, the white bulk of an iceberg in the distance in the blue-green water. The lighthouse is in the distance, the lines of its white tower and red beacon hazy in the incoming fog.

  Tucking the painting under her arm, she picks up a folder stuffed with drawings from the top of the old Art Deco walnut bureau. With any luck, the weather will have enticed people up to the north coast from St John’s and Grand Falls for the holiday weekend. She and Bertha Perkins had managed to get an ad at half price into the local papers and one in the St John’s Telegram for a third off, advertising the Tippy’s Tickle Centennial Jamboree. Hopefully, she’d sell some of her artwork. George’s money was long gone. If it weren’t for Emmy’s boat-building … No, she wasn’t going to think about money today. Today was a holiday.

  She shakes her head. She’d hated herself for writing the letter to George after Thomas died. But she’d had no choice. Thomas’s war pension had barely covered the essentials, let alone gone anywhere near to paying off all the debt he’d left behind. If it weren’t for the monthly baby-bonus cheque from the federal government, Agnes would have had them all out on their ears after Ephraim’s death.

  Sometimes, on the worst of the days just after Thomas’s drowning, when she’d lain in bed stuffing her hands against her ears to muffle the roar of the wind and the crashing of the ocean against the cliff, when the worry of debt collectors, and the constant battle with Agnes over every household expense had dropped her into a well of despair, George’s face would materialise behind her eyes, and she’d wonder what her life would have been life if she’d married him instead. But then, that would never have happened. Not after she’d met Thomas. The man who brought her to this lonely place away from all the people she loved. The man who’d caused the
rift with her sister. The man who, when he died, she knew was the only man she would ever truly love. For better or for worse.

  George had come good, as she’d hoped – no, she’d known he would – the cheque arriving four times a year. Slowly, month by month, year by year, she’d paid off Thomas’s debt and the interest the scrounging banks and loan sharks had demanded. She’d managed to clear everything except the mortgage. Then, one day, the cheques stopped coming. Just dried up, like a plant she’d forgotten to water. When three months passed with no money, and the mortgage falling behind, she’d written to George. But she didn’t hear from him again, until …

  No, it was best not to think of that. She’d go mad if she thought about that.

  Taking in lodgers and giving art lessons at the high school down in Wesleyville, with the amount of money Emmy gave her when he could, had helped keep her and Winny afloat after that. Someday she’d pay that final mortgage payment, and the house would be theirs. No one would ever take it away from her. It would be her legacy to her children.

  The bedroom door moans on its hinges as it opens. A blonde head, the wheat-gold hair tied into a long braid, pops around the door.

  ‘Are you ready, Mom? Emmy’s worried we’re going to be late.’

  ‘Just coming now, honey. What on earth is that on your face?’

  Winny lopes across the room with the uneven grace of a colt and gazes into the mirror on the wall above the bureau. She twists her mouth to get a better view of the peace sign painted in bright blue on her cheek. ‘Florie did it. She’s got one too.’ Winny spins around and raises her right fingers in a V. ‘Peace, Mom.’

  Ellie rolls her eyes. ‘I’m going to have to have a word with her. I can’t have her turning you into a flower child just because she’s one.’

  ‘Oh, Mom. She’s groovy. She’s got a guitar – did you know that? She’s bringing it to the jamboree.’

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Winny. Everyone in Tippy’s Tickle is going to think I’ve turned this place into a hippy commune. I’ll get called up in front of the town council, just you watch.’

  ***

  ‘Hey, there, m’dear!’

  Ellie glances up from the table where she’s laid out her artwork to the athletic woman of about thirty striding across the field towards the craft tent. She wears a long-sleeved pink T-shirt and dungarees decorated with psychedelic flowers and peace signs. One of the straps on the dungarees is undone, and it flaps across her belly as she approaches.

  ‘Hi, Florie. You found me.’

  ‘I certainly did. Winny told me where to find you.’ She holds out a hot dog dripping with mustard. ‘She sent you this. She’s doin’ a grand job over there on the barbecue.’

  Ellie leaps up from her stool to catch a drip of mustard leaking from the hot dog. ‘Don’t let it drip on the drawings. Wait a minute, I’ll come around the table.’

  ‘How’re the sales goin’?’ Florie asks as she watches Ellie bite into the hot dog.

  Ellie shrugs. ‘Sold one to Bertha Perkins, but I think she felt sorry for me. The day trippers don’t seem to be much into art.’ She nods towards the cliff where a cluster of about twenty people hover like gulls, their cameras pointed out towards the ocean. ‘It’s all about the whales and icebergs. Someone up from Toronto asked me if the berg out at the mouth of the tickle is the same one that sank the Titanic.’

  Florie chuckles and wrinkles her nose. A scattering of faint freckles sits across her nose like flecks of dust. ‘Bless them CFAs. You gots to laugh. What did you tells them?’

  ‘I said yes, of course.’

  ‘Ha! Good goin’.’ Florie tosses her long brown hair over her shoulder and picks up a drawing, blowing at her overgrown fringe as she scrutinises the charcoal view of Tippy’s Tickle. Setting it down, she picks up another, a view of the lighthouse down the coast. She looks at Ellie, squinting as she cocks her head. ‘You did these? Seriously?’

  ‘Yes. Why are you so surprised?’

  ‘Oh, don’t mine me, duck. Sometimes I talks outta my arse. These are great. You definitely knows what you’re doin’.’ She sets the drawing down and steps back, frowning at the display. ‘But you wouldn’t know how to sell a flea to a dog, m’dear. Not a one can see what you gots on the table. You gots to hang them up. Your paintin’ has to be right smack in the middle for all to see.’

  Ellie purses her lips. ‘That’s all very well and good, but if you notice, I don’t have a wall to hang anything on. I’m under a tent.’

  ‘Oh, m’dear. You might be an artist, but you lacks imagination. I’ll be back before you knows it.’

  Florie returns fifteen minutes later with a roll of string and a bag of wooden clothes pegs. Ellie watches as she ties the string between two tent poles and clips the drawings to the line with the pegs. She ducks behind the tent and returns with two small orange buoys, which she uses to prop the painting against on the table.

  Standing back from the display, she nods. ‘There you goes, m’dear. That’s better, don’t you thinks?’

  Ellie nods. ‘You’re right. It is better.’

  ‘It’s better, but we needs one more thing.’ Florie pulls the stool out from behind the table and plops down on it. ‘Now, draw my picture.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t you likes my face? Draw my picture.’ She nods to the tourists on the hill and the queue over by the barbecue. ‘Mark my words, once they see you drawin’, they’ll all be clamourin’ for one. How much you gonna charge?’

  Chapter 75

  Tippy’s Tickle – 17 September 2011

  Propping herself up against the pillows, Ellie reaches for the plastic cup of water on the bedside table, her body shaking with the effort.

  ‘Wait, Aunt Ellie.’ Sophie takes the cup and holds it to Ellie’s parched white lips. She watches her aunt, who had only two days before buzzed with vigour, but who was now as pale and frail as an aged swan in her white nest of hospital sheets and pillows.

  Ellie lies back against the pillows with a sigh. ‘Thank you, Sophie.’ She looks at Sophie, at the pale, heart-shaped face, so like her mother’s, now clouded with confusion. She reaches out a hand and takes hold of Sophie’s. ‘There’s something I need to tell you.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Ellie runs her tongue over her parched lips. ‘Your father … George was Emmy’s father.’

  Sophie stares at her aunt. ‘Emmett’s my brother?’

  The old woman nods. ‘Thomas always suspected it, but I told him Emmy was born a month early. The war was a different time, Sophie. Thomas had been away for over a year, and I’d barely heard from him. I thought …’ She shakes her head, the fine strands of grey hair clinging to her damp face. ‘I don’t know what I thought. I was young. I was lonely and frightened. People were being killed in the bombing raids every day. My best friend Ruthie was killed—’

  Sophie raises a hand. ‘Stop. Please. I get the picture.’

  ‘Your father was a good man. He asked me to marry him. But I was already engaged to Thomas. No one knew. He’d proposed to me just before he was shipped out to North Africa. George didn’t even know I was pregnant when he proposed. I didn’t either. It had only been the one time. I never thought …’ She drops Sophie’s hand and rubs her thin fingers along her forehead. ‘Then Thomas showed up on leave at Christmas and we … we eloped. We married in London.’

  She sighs, her breath shallow and ragged. ‘Thomas left for Italy a few days later on a hospital ship, and I went back to Norwich and told everyone we’d married. My father was furious. Thomas wasn’t Catholic, you see. And Dottie … Dottie wouldn’t speak to me at all. Poor George, I think he was in shock. It was an awful time, Sophie. I felt very alone.’

  Ellie closes her eyes, and for a moment Sophie thinks she’s fallen asleep from the effort. Her aunt coughs delicately and opens her eyes, the deep stormy blue undiluted by age. ‘I found out I was pregnant. I only realised that the baby was George’s when the doctor said I was a month fu
rther along than I should have been.’

  Sophie flops into the blue vinyl chair, her heart jolting in her chest. ‘Does Emmett know?’

  Propping herself on a thin arm, Ellie reaches across the sheets and grasps hold of Sophie’s hand. ‘Don’t tell him, Sophie. It would break his heart. He adored Thomas.’

  ‘I’m meant to keep your secret now?’

  ‘What does it matter? Emmy has no children. It won’t make any difference to anyone. You needed to know, but no one else does.’

  Whipping her hand from Ellie’s hold, Sophie rises and stands at the window. ‘It makes a difference to me. I’m his half-sister and I can’t even tell him?’ She turns and faces her aunt, her arms folded across her chest. ‘Emmett hates me. I’ve no idea why. If I tell him I’m his sister, it might change things.’

  Ellie sinks back into the pillows. She sighs heavily, her breath rattling.

  Sophie picks up the plastic cup and offers it to Ellie. ‘Are you okay? Should I get the nurse?’

  Ellie shakes her head wearily across the pillow and waves away the cup. ‘There’s something else.’

  ‘There’s more?’

  ‘Sit down, Sophie. I need to tell you a story.’

  Chapter 76

  Tippy’s Tickle – 10 July 1962

  The visitor locks the door on the rental car and pockets the keys. He looks up at the big house on the cliff, which sits sturdy and proud against the breezy blue July sky, though the yellow paint has fought a losing battle against the salt and wind coming off the North Atlantic. The grass has been left to grow long beside the grey wooden steps up to the house, but clumps of wild lupins in all their tints and shades of pink, mauve and deep purple crowd over the simple banister rail. Sighing heavily, he adjusts his brown felt fedora and heads up the steps.

  Ellie moves away from the window and stands in the middle of the room, waiting for the knock on the front door. For her name to be called out. Emmy is down at Rod Fizzard’s working on the boats, and Winny is out in the fields with Jim Boyd’s granddaughter, Nancy, foraging in the marsh for early bakeapples for the jam they were hoping to sell in Jim’s shop to scrape a few extra pennies together.