Eddie had joined them just before that. Rocco insisted still on remaining. Eddie seemed more frightened even than Maria, sweaty with apprehension. For once he didn’t mention his evening’s work, or his broadcast.
And all the while Sybil, sobbing, crying over and over:
‘I want him back, where’s my husband? What’s happened to him? I want to know …’
She would not have wanted to know. Most of the following days were spent making sure she learned only what could not be kept from her. That he was dead.
New York City Police records told a different tale. A tale of finding ‘at about 4 a.m. on 20th November 1935, in a garbage can, near Grand Central Building in 46th Street and Park Avenue, the body of Peter Grainger, male, white, British citizen, of Yorkshire England. Cause of death: gunshot wounds of left chest and neck. Body subsequently mutilated. Genitalia removed and placed in mouth.’
Part Two
1939–1961
1
‘Extraordinary,’ Eleanor said, sitting in the dining-room of Park Villa, a dish of grouse surrounded by game chips and watercress before her, waiting to be carved, ‘I was at the dentist’s yesterday, leafing through this magazine. There must have been every trivial topic – excitement about Paris collections, even suggestions, believe it or not, for 1940 holidays abroad. But not one mention of the world crisis. Nero and fiddling, really … 1914 of course was different. We hadn’t had it hanging over us for months on end.’
Eleanor, and her dinner guests, Dick, Gwen – and Maria. On a warm Thursday evening in the second half of August.
‘Oh people know it’s coming, all right,’ Dick said. ‘It’s not been much of a Peace anyway. And God knows what’s to come. Remember Lloyd George after the last do? “If this war is not the last war, the next war will leave Europe in ashes …”’
Gwen said, ‘Dick’s had his war. It’s when I see these youngsters …’
Guy, Eleanor thought. As she thought every day now, and had done for nearly a year. Every day since Munich. (Guy, safe now, walking in France and Spain with an Oxford friend. Planning to visit his great school chum, Andrew, now in the Navy and stationed in Gibraltar.)
Be calm.
‘Dick dear, perhaps you would pour out the claret?’
‘As the only man present, of course, Eleanor.’
Gwen said, ‘Jenny, her eldest. Her Jim. If it goes on any length of time, she’ll have worries.’
Eleanor asked, ‘Have you thought any more about sending Betty or Jan to Canada?’
‘Betty’s sixteen,’ Gwen said, ‘you’d never get her to go. Even if we’d want it. And Jan – she’d not want to be away from us. No, we reckon to stay on in Middlesbrough as a family. Face the worst together.’
Dick said, ‘But young Peter’s off. That’s certain. Sybil’s taking him and maybe staying on herself. Which should work quite well. A lad needs his mother. Dad even approved, which surprised me … Although there’ve been times since the tragedy when it’s seemed young Peter’s more of a Carstairs than a Grainger. This way he’d be with our family. After all, he is the heir.’
No, Eleanor thought. Guy is. And Eric knows it. Dick knows it too, of course. It is Maria’s presence at the dinner table makes the awkwardness. Peter’s firstborn, she said to herself. And put away the thought of dead Peter.
But all this talk of sons and heirs, apart from Maria’s feelings, couldn’t be good for Gwen. Losing her last like that. A six-months still-birth. He would have been nine by now. Too late perhaps to have tried again, if they’d had the heart?
Maria was talking. Her low, warm voice: ‘You were saying about the Paris collections – but in their own way some of the dressmakers have entered into the spirit. At the risk of sounding like Eleanor’s magazine – there are some really quite witty and apt names for the colour shades this season. Envy green, rage red, blackout … It’s one way of coping, I suppose.’
‘What style of clothes are they, Maria?’
Oh Gwen, who cares nothing for fashion, wearing tonight her serviceable dark red satin, four years old at least. Maria in a dinner dress of black silk crêpe, with black patent leather belt.
To have Maria here at all is strange. The last time she was in Thackton was that dreadful day she turned up, suddenly, asking to see Guy. Thirteen years ago, and how many changes since. Not least, Eddie Sabrini. Maria, sadly marrying outside the Church. (But back again now, with the death of Eddie’s first wife in a car crash.) I should have been shocked by it all but was only saddened. I had so wished her married. I had so wished a child for her.
And now here she sits, at my table, with my guests, Dick and Gwen. We have not asked any one else to make up the numbers. We prefer just to be ourselves. Family (for that is how I think of us.)
And as a family we have seen too many deaths this last decade. Maimie Grainger three years ago. A liver complaint. Dulcie a devoted nurse. I wondered afterwards what the position would be vis à vis Eric. But she has taken the Rowland inheritance – she came into Maimie’s share – and begun at last to enjoy herself. Although she hasn’t visited Canada. (‘I wouldn’t trust myself, dearest.’) Now she is away on a P & O cruise to the Azores. We shan’t see her till early September. Her third cruise this year. Perhaps she will meet a husband. Who knows? Although it’s too late for me (perhaps it always was?), for someone like Dulcie it is never too late.
Mother. How sad that I was glad when she went. Eighty-five and unpleasant to the last. I waited for twinges of conscience. But none came. I searched my heart for one good thing she had done or said for or to me. None.
But oh, the worst of all, the year before Maimie went (and was her illness precipitated by it?), the terrible death of Peter. Even now I don’t trust myself to think about it … Dick rushing over there on the Queen Mary. The fear that Sybil, in a state of shock for so long, would lose the child – all she had left of Peter. The details that we never learned (and that I did not wish to know). A savage death. Peter obviously mistaken for some other person, in a gangland killing – gone wrong. Everything shrouded in a veil not only of horror but of mystery. Eric made enough fuss both sides of the Atlantic, but to no avail. All investigations came to a dead end. The police, swearing they had done all they could. (No one ever traced that mysterious telephone call.) Didn’t he perhaps step out for fresh air – and get mistaken for someone else? (And yet, how very un-American he must have looked.)
She had felt safe to invite Maria tonight. For Maria to be in Thackton at all was a great step forward. It had been, as ever, Dick’s idea. Dick and Gwen with whom she so often stayed in Middlesbrough. Now they had brought her over with them. Eddie was in Holland, at the Kurhaus in Scheveningen, after six weeks at Butlin’s in Filey. Maria for some reason had not wanted to join him abroad and had proposed herself to Gwen and Dick. No Uncle Eric at Thackton, he was fishing in Scotland, Guy safely abroad – it was all right.
The grouse were finished. Summer pudding now, from home grown raspberries, served on the gold lustre dish bought for her by Guy, as a thank-you for the Grand Tour of 1937.
And what an adventure that had been. Eleanor, Basil, Guy. An odd trio. Eight weeks abroad. She had worried in Florence that he might want to make investigations about his origins, imagining him disappearing off on his own, perhaps visiting orphanages. But ‘Which orphanage?’ he had asked only, and that quite casually. ‘It’s gone now,’ she said, pointing in the direction of some new buildings. She wondered if she should say it had been burned down, records destroyed … Eight weeks abroad: France, Switzerland, down through Italy – the Naples area for a fortnight – but stopping short of Sicily. Basil’s decision. But she had gone along with it, and Guy had not commented.
Greta, his little black lurcher, had died while they were touring. She had not been sorry to see her go – badly disciplined as she was, stealing food, leaping on to visitors’ laps. Yet so much loved, his cherished companion in holidays from St Boniface’s. Homesick, unhappy little boy: if it hadn’t b
een for Basil’s firmness and, she supposed, Eric’s (the Graingers after all were paying), she would have removed him – to where?
Maria was saying, ‘I see there’ve been changes at the sweet shop. I know it’s a long time but –’
Eleanor said, ‘Old Mrs Armthwaite? She decided to go and live with her son in Goathland – after all, she’s over eighty … Some townees as they call them have bought the place. They’re from the Midlands and wanted to be safe from the bombing. They seem kind enough. But of course it isn’t the same.’
‘The old order changeth,’ Dick said.
Eleanor said, ‘I shall be taking evacuees. A mother and child. There’s room here. The villages around will all turn up trumps, as they did with the Belgians in the last war.’
Summer pudding was succeeded by a savoury, Dick’s favourite, Scotch woodcock. Mounds of scrambled egg topped with anchovies. Dick attacked his.
Outside, two sharp rings of the bell.
‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘Mrs Brown will see to it.’
‘A fine time to call,’ Dick said. ‘Ten o’clock. You’ve maybe got wardens seeing about light-proofed windows already. There’s some can’t wait to be in charge over lesser mortals.’
Then the door opened. Oh happiness, (oh complications). There, travel-stained, tweed jacket rubbed at elbows, flannels muddy – but smiling, was Guy.
‘What a surprise! What are you doing here?’
‘Just being a sensible chap. Hurrying back to England. I should have wired but I got on a boat in a rush, and then raced over to King’s Cross to get the afternoon train. But it’s rather nice surprising you all … Hallo, Gwen, hallo, Dick. And – Maria, is it? Mrs Sabrini. Maria. Everyone’s always talking about you, and yet we’ve never met. A fellow Italian … Anyway, how do you do? You’re very charming …’
Eleanor, asking him hurriedly now, if everything had gone all right. And Guy shaking his head: ‘Aunt Eleanor, it wasn’t a patch on our Grand Tour, or last year’s trip. To begin with I couldn’t get on with my fellow hiker –’
‘But Andy – you managed to see him?’
‘Oh, that was a great success. He almost fired me to join the Wavy Navy. I shall have to join something, soon enough.’
‘Come and join us,’ Dick said. ‘We’re eating well.’
‘Oh, look, Scotch woodcock. Any for me? Just let me have a quick wash and brush up and I’ll scoff all the leftovers. Grouse? I’m game …’
Sacru miu Gesù, that this should happen. The one thing they all of them wished to avoid. (And yet so obvious, with a war scare. He’s not the only one to cut short a holiday.)
So this is Guy. So this is my son. Of course I’ve seen photographs – by accident and by design. It would have been impossible to hide them from me totally. Groups of family and friends, in Dick and Gwen’s album. Guy at every age (at the age when, trembling, I stood here in Park Villa and begged for a glimpse of him). But none of that prepares me, has prepared me, for Guy in the flesh. My son in the flesh.
He is not so very tall, but not small either. And his hair grows thick but is already receding a little – that is Uncle Eric. He has something of a Verzotto face. Large brown heavy-lidded eyes – there is no doubt he looks more Italian than English. Yet his manner – Ah, this is terrible, that we should meet like this, that he doesn’t know. Soon we shall be making small talk about the world of dance music. ‘What’s it like being married to a famous crooner?’ he will ask. And I will say …
I don’t want to think about all that life. Eddie and his infidelities. And his love for me, in spite of all. Eddie, whose career has never been right since he left America. Upset, running scared, when none of it had anything to do with him. He should have stayed where he was doing well. Over here, things have never really picked up again.
But just to think of Eddie and me in New York is to bring it all back. Those terrible, terrible days. Sitting with Syb in the hospital, willing her not to lose the child. Hearing the details from the police and keeping them to myself. Waiting for Dick, dear Dick, to arrive.
I didn’t want to see Rocco, to have anything to do with him.
I did not want to know what I knew. But we had still to see each other. I could say nothing. He said nothing. His only comment – I remember we were going up in the elevator together. He wasn’t looking at me. He said in Sicilian, ‘Listen, Maria, I don’t know anything about a baby, no one tells Rocco about a baby, eh?’ Then was silent. Yet he could not have been more generous, more helpful. It was he who paid for everything – Sybil’s hospital stay, the room a bower of flowers – it was he who organized the funeral as discreetly as possible. But I knew what I knew … And wished I did not.
My terrible guilt. Guilt that I shall always carry (yet another secret I must keep to myself). Guilt that came over me that day when I went to see about Sybil’s passage back to England. Altering her steamship ticket, arranging for her to return with Dick.
The Cunard building in Broadway. That great hall with its domed ceiling, its maps of their sea routes for decoration: and in the centre, sea gods in clouds of foam, dolphins, cherubs. (Myself, in the dining-room of the Lusy. I gaze up at the cherubs on the ceiling, while the band plays The Blue Danube. Soon, very soon the Lusy will sink. Mamma will die. And all the Ricciardis. Uncle Eric will save me.)
Standing there, amidst reminders of Cunard liners, reminders of the Lusy, I was overcome with terror – and certain of my guilt. How I hated Peter. Had I not hated and hated him, with a slow burning rage? I knew I was guilty, as surely as Rocco. That saying of my childhood – ‘Revenge is a dish best eaten cold.’ Without my hate, could it ever have happened?
And now, Guy, Peter’s son, sitting opposite me. Glass of claret, plate of summer pudding. Raspberries, their juice running dark red like blood.
A war to come. Guy in it, and perhaps lost. How can I lose what I never had? Has he not been lost to me since Florence? And yet, sacru miu Gesù, a war. He may go to his grave and never know he was mine.
‘… Anyway, how do you do? You’re very charming …’
2
The train stopped. A porter called out, Thackton-le-Moors, Thackton-le-Moors.’ Three women in green uniform were standing on the platform. Miss Fairlie, the teacher, came by with her list, ‘It’s out here for you two,’ she said to Helen and Billy.
The label pinned to Helen’s coat was in indelible ink, in case it rained and her name was washed away. Helen Connors – as if she didn’t know her own name. Like a parcel being posted. But it was because she might be hurt by bombs and not be able to speak. Bombs were the reason too, why they’d had to rehearse every morning this week, behaving just like the real thing (kissing Mam goodbye five times – oh, it had been terrible), so that the Germans wouldn’t know which day they were moving.
There was a coach outside. One of the women said to Helen kindly, ‘Not far, dear. Just up the hill to the school hall.’ It seemed the train had run late and everything was now behind. The hall was full of people besides the ladies in green, who were the WVS, the Women’s Voluntary Service.
They were handed round mugs of tea and there were trays of buns with currants sticking out. When a woman carrying one came by, Helen stood on tip toe and whispered, ‘Our Billy’s dirtied hisself,’ but the lady only said, ‘The toilet’s are over there, dear.’
She couldn’t take him in the girls’, and she couldn’t go in the boys’. In the end she went in the girls’ and stood with her foot against the door which didn’t lock. Billy was crying. She cleaned him up as best she could, stuffing his pants down behind the pipe together with his trousers. She made him put on his spare pair.
When she got back, a WVS lady was calling out names.
‘Mr and Mrs Phillips would like a nice little boy, who’d like to go with Mr and Mrs Phillips? Over here – a nice little boy …’
A tall grey-haired lady with a long, heavy but kindly face stood not far from Helen and Billy. The WVS lady said, ‘Miss Dennison is a Ro
man Catholic. And she would like –’
Dear Our Lady, Helen prayed, Please let her like us.
‘… a mother and child. Is there a Catholic mother and child to live with Miss Dennison, at Park Villa?’
Yes, there was: a woman Helen had seen smoking on the train, whose small boy kept rubbing his chocolate-covered face against his mother’s dress.
Gradually more and more children were collected and taken away. The hall grew emptier and emptier. Helen knew that often they were being turned down simply because there were two of them. Then the dreadful moment came when no one was left, just one lady in green – and Helen and Billy. She could smell Billy. He had started to snivel. She smacked his hand, ‘Our Billy, don’t.’
Then she wished she hadn’t. How could she? When she’d promised Mam she’d love and look after him, whatever. She wanted to cry herself too now. This last week had been the most terrible she’d known. There was going to be a war, and she might never see Mam again. It felt now like the whole of her life, not just a week, since she’d sat on the bench at St Aidan’s, and listened to Father Casey.
Father Casey, with his long black cassock and his shiny bald head, standing in the middle of the classroom:
‘Your mammies and daddies will have told you why you’re at school on a Saturday. The President of Poland and Mr Roosevelt have appealed to Herr Hitler to find some way of avoiding this dreadful war. Meantime we must be prepared, so I’ve come together with your teachers to tell you about the rehearsal on Monday for Evacuation. You will be told what to bring, what to wear… Then after that, we shall with Almighty God’s blessing, do a normal day’s lessons.’
It was hot and stuffy in the classroom even though two of the windows at the back had been opened. Smelly too. Dried ink and chalk and the brown paper that covered their exercise books. And people: Ronnie Tibbs on the same bench, was always blowing off. The silent ones were worst. If she said anything, ‘It’s you,’ he’d tell her. Then he’d whisper to the row behind, ‘Helen Connors farted again.’
The Golden Lion Page 25