She thought of it as she worked in the garden planting onions, chives. Summer spinach. She found a sheltered spot to lay out some tomato plants. If the weather would warm up, spring really come. If I could only tell Guy.
She blamed the chill weather for the heavy cold and cough he had caught. (How to tell him while he snuffled?) The next night he coughed without ceasing. She herself hardly slept at all. In the morning he was having difficulty with his breathing. A rasping sound. She told him he must stay in bed, and lit a fire in his room.
‘I’m getting Dr McIntosh,’ she said.
‘It’ll pass,’ he said, ‘don’t make a fuss. Right as rain tomorrow. And I’ve to go back anyway.’
‘I’ll call him,’ she insisted, thinking already of the reassurance he would provide: young earnest Scot, freckle-faced, endlessly patient with Malcolm’s recurrent ear infections, Kevin’s summer diarrhoea.
It was just after one when she opened the door to a large bulky man with a shock of white hair, and carrying a worn medical bag.
‘Miss Dennison? Well now, and where’s the invalid? Armed forces, I hear-’
‘Yes, yes. My nephew.’
He was some time upstairs. When he came out of the bedroom she was waiting on the landing.
He said, ‘No question of the laddie going back to camp. It’ll be a wee while. I’ll write a note – It’s a nasty chest infection. He mustn’t leave the house at all.’
They went downstairs, he puffing heavily. At the bottom he turned.
‘Now,’ he said, ‘perhaps you’ll tell me why when you opened the door just now, you looked as if you’d seen a ghost?’
‘I didn’t –’
‘Och, yes.’
‘Well, it was only … The receptionist said Dr McIntosh would come –’ She heard her voice, pedantic, fussy.
‘But I am Dr McIntosh.’ He smiled, putting out a hand, covering hers. ‘Dr McIntosh, senior.’
‘You might have said.’ But she had not meant to be rude. She added hurriedly, ‘I’ll get you some coffee, such as it is – Or tea?’
‘Tea, please. Strong, if you can spare it –’ There was a clattering suddenly from the kitchen.
‘What’s that noise now? Your patient needs quiet.’
‘Evacuees. I took in a mother and small child. They were amongst the few who didn’t go back during the Phoney War. She had another last year.’ She lowered her voice. ‘A different father, I’m afraid –’
‘Is it a tin drum the wee one’s banging?’
‘Two tin drums. I thought seriously of giving them to salvage.’
‘Well, they’ll not do the laddie upstairs any good. Could you not ask for quiet just now?’
In the drawing-room he sat down heavily, still out of breath. She feared for a moment that he needed help. Physician, heal thyself. He was an alarming colour. She asked:
‘Are you all right?’
‘Never better. Nothing like getting back into harness.’ While he drank his tea, ‘I’m here for the duration,’ he explained, ‘Young Alistair joined up a week ago – on the understanding I’d come down from Stirling and take over.’
It appeared he’d been out of medicine only a few years. ‘The Lord smote me a mighty blow, in the shape of a heart attack. Too bad to ignore. It was my own lassie, she’s a nurse, talked me into retirement. At only fifty-eight. There never was a more reluctant one … But here I am back – one of that happy breed who in spite of the worry and the heartbreak, are managing to enjoy their war.’
It was his third visit. Guy was improving fast. She said, from the foot of the stairs, waiting for him to come down, ‘He’s not really my nephew, you know. Guy – he’s no relation. No relation at all.’
‘Is that so?’
She made tea for them both. Rosie was in the kitchen with Malcolm, who was rolling tins of food down a chute made from one of Eleanor’s trays. She said with concealed impatience, ‘If the tins get dented, they don’t keep.’
‘Let him be,’ Rosie said, ‘he’s not troubling you, and any road, there’s not much keeping anything these days, is there?’
Back in the drawing-room, the fire had hardly begun to draw. She put down the tray and rubbed her chapped hands.
Dr McIntosh said: ‘The laddie’s maybe no relation, but he certainly thinks of you as his aunt.’
‘Oh, he knows I’m not. But it makes an easy fiction … He’s been given some sort of story – that he’s adopted and of Italian origin. And that I brought him back from Tuscany in 1920, as a baby. He thinks he has no parents.’
‘Thinks?’ Dr McIntosh wiped his moustache. ‘Does he have some, then?’
She said impetuously, almost at the same moment as she had the idea:
‘I’d like you to tell him. It’s the most tremendous cheek, to ask you. But I thought, as a doctor … You see, I think he should know the truth.’
‘Och, of course,’ he said. ‘Of course I will. There’s just one wee problem.’
‘Yes?’ Her voice shook. She was trembling. What have I done? Asking a stranger … She imagined Guy leaving his bed, coming down. Hearing her betray him.
‘The truth. I don’t know it myself.’
Relief made her speak lightly. ‘Oh, stupid. How stupid of me!’
‘Don’t apologize. It’s understandable.’ He was looking closely at her. He said, ‘When you spoke just then, you seemed so young. A lass again – ready to break hearts. You must have been very fine-looking.’
She reacted badly to the flattery, sensing a wrong note where there was none. She suddenly had no idea where to put her hands: strong, capable, would-be artistic hands, fluttering now around her face. ‘Oh, I don’t think –’
‘Well, I do … And –’ he took up his teacup ‘– the fact is now, I’m still waiting. For the truth. If I’m to talk to the lad –’
She took a deep breath, and began.
(What am I doing? What have I done?) Telling him haltingly, going back and back. Maria. Florence. Eric. How she had wanted to help the family in their trouble. What Maria had suffered.
‘Poor wee lassie … But it was a lot to do,’ he said, ‘what you took on. A lifetime’s work.’
She had told him everything – except her love for Eric (how could she speak of that?) He asked now, ‘The killing. The murder. Did anyone hang – go to the chair?’
‘No. The police, they weren’t able to find anything. It was thought … He was mistaken for someone else, they were sure. A gangland killing …’
‘But the laddie knows what happened?’
‘Yes. But no details. I myself only know what I was told.’
She looked across at his kindly face. Impossible to know if this was the right thing. And yet insist as Maria might, she could not have done it herself. Could not.
I am my mother’s son. The words, meaningless. Each one like a banging of a drum. I am my mother’s son. Furious drumming, part of his rage. He walked fast, away from the village. When he stopped to cough, bent over at the roadside, he noticed for the first time that the sun was shining.
I am my mother’s son. He had no idea of what he would do or say, and had known only that he must get out of the house at once. Go and confront her. My mother. He felt a great rush of sickness, coming up in waves then to where his head raged. Heat of the April sun. Heat of his rage. Rage, rage, rage.
The gate of Moorgarth was open. Coming round into the yard, he could see Maria at the window. She was peeling potatoes. He banged on the door. When she came to answer, drying her hands on her overall, he said,
‘I want to speak to you. Now.’
She looked at him. She knows, he thought. She knows that I know. He pushed past her rudely. As if someone else acted. She must have been a little afraid of him perhaps, for she went back immediately to the sink. She picked up the knife. Not looking at him, her head bent.
More breathless, tireder than he’d realized – it was his first day up – he sat down at the table.
‘Well, right
, look – are we alone?’
‘Yes, we’re alone,’ she said. ‘Helen’s with Eric – they’ve gone after bluebells and then to tea with the Vicar.’ She recited the news almost. Impersonal information.
‘Look,’ he began again. He thumped the inside of his wrists on the table. Painfully. He wanted to say, ‘Help me, help me.’ But the anger boiled, bubbled. Grew more desperate. ‘Well. Bloody hell – well…’
‘She’s told you?’
‘No –’
Maria appeared puzzled. ‘Then – what?’
He stood up. He felt stronger suddenly. Seeing her leaning over the sink, he thought she looked for all the world like a peasant woman. She was a peasant woman. He could hardly bear to look at her. Instead he said:
‘I couldn’t, can’t bear to speak to Aunt Eleanor. Can’t look her in the face … Bloody hell. Does it matter? Does it really matter?’
‘Yes. Because I couldn’t do it. Couldn’t tell you. And Dick –’ At the far side of the room, the telephone went. ‘I’ll get it,’ he said irritably – shouting down the receiver, ‘Yes, yes. Who is it?’ He told her: ‘For you.’
He heard her, warm, polite, efficient.
‘… tell them I’ve arranged a collection … It’d be best to use mine – either here or take it down to the depot …’
This woman whom he didn’t want to acknowledge, who had begun life in poverty (Sicily, America, Yorkshire, London, fashionable dress shop, wife of a famous crooner), she is a peasant peeling vegetables.
Coming away from the ‘phone, she lifted a lid of the Aga and put on the kettle.
‘I don’t want anything,’ he said. ‘Don’t make me cups of tea or other nonsense.’
‘It’s for me,’ she said.
‘You’ll need something stronger than tea when I’ve said what I want to say –’
‘Sacru miu Gesù,’ she said under her breath. He wished she would speak to him, answer him, fight. He could sense her unease, as if she’d gone right within herself. She had her back to him again, she was protected.
A stab in the back. She needs a stab in the back.
‘I’ll tell you who told me. No, not Aunt Eleanor … An elderly Scotch doctor. Can you imagine? I’ll never get over this … The whole bloody lot of you. And you the worst… This doctor, she asked him to tell me. A stranger by my bedside – breaking my world into pieces. “Och,” he says, “it’ll take you a wee while to settle this in your mind -” A wee while … If I could’ve crowned him –’
‘I wanted you to know,’ she said slowly. ‘If you don’t come back from the war, I didn’t want you to die, deceived.’
‘Isn’t that rich? “Dead! And never called me Mother!” Cheap melodrama.’ He laughed, dry, bitter. ‘“Dead, and never called me Mother!’”
‘You’re very English,’ she said.
‘My father was English, so what’s the surprise? And of course that’s my grandfather, gone picking bluebells with orphan Annie. They’re very good, very good, the Graingers, at taking in waifs and strays. Look what they did for you. Look what you did for them –’
‘How much did they tell you, Guy?’
‘More than I wanted to hear.’ He paced the kitchen. Kicked against a tin pail filled with eggs in waterglass. ‘I don’t want any of the disgusting details … Listening, are you? That effing doctor said, “Two young folk, an accident, we’re all human.” OK. But why was I deceived?’
‘You were always going to be told. You would have been, before you married.’ Her voice was harsh, dry.
‘I should hope so, I should bloody well hope so.’
‘I’m sorry –’
‘What – for having me, or for not telling me?’ He banged the pail again. ‘ “Give it time to sink in,” the medico said … I don’t want it to sink in. I want to throw it up, vomit it away. Sick, I’m sick with this news. Can’t you get that into your thick peasant head?’ He was terrified by his anger. Burning him. Burning her.
‘You’d better go,’ she said. ‘You’ve said all you need to say.’
He banged his fist again on the table, sending the cups rattling. On the Aga the kettle sent out clouds of steam. She crossed over and removed it.
‘Get your tea. Get your bloody tea.’ Even as he said it, he wanted suddenly to throw his arms about her. I am my mother’s son.
And as soon the moment was gone. ‘I need a walk, I’m going to walk. That’s the English in me. Walk it off. Walk as far as the pub. Wait till they’re open, see if it’s their day for beer.’
His heart thumped painfully. The storm still raged in his head. ‘I hope I die. I hope I’m killed – soon.’
‘I never meant –’ she began. ‘I did, like all the other times, what I thought was best. I –’
‘Well, you did wrong. Then. Now. All the bloody time.’
He turned to go. As he neared the door, lifted the latch, she said:
‘I suffered. I suffered too.’
‘I don’t want to hear.’
He heard instead – his banging of the door, the latch not fastening. Outside the farmhouse, he crossed to the grassy hollow, nettle-covered, near to the gate. There, coughing, half crying, he was violently sick.
Avoiding Eleanor, that evening in his room he wrote to his schoolfriend Andy, in the Navy still. They had not met since the summer of 1939.
… When this reaches you on the high seas, I’ll be back in camp. Have had to overstay leave because of lung trouble. If you’re surprised to get such a screed from me when I’ve been such a rotten correspondent lately, the truth is I’ve received the most terrible body blow. All of this in utmost confidence – (Just you, me and the Censor) but I have discovered who my real parents are. And they were not a couple of impoverished Tuscans. I don’t want to say very much here except that my father was English, and was killed in America seven or eight years ago. My mother’s of Sicilian origin, English by adoption. And they got the family doctor to tell me.
In the past when I quizzed my aunt (aunt indeed!) she always said she only knew what she’d been told. ‘The nuns said very little.’
I’ve been round to the house where my mother – yes, I’ve got to keep writing the word – is living here in the village, and had a blazing row. Blistering. Row mostly on my side. I felt pretty ropey after and still do. There’s no one about I can unburden myself on to, so that’s why you’re getting this Epistle to the Mariner. Unburden – that’s about it. I’ve got to be fair, that’s the English bit of me (and that’s something I’m trying to take in, when all these years I thought myself English by adoption, education, traits acquired by rubbing themselves off on me), I know they didn’t tell me, but would I really have wanted to know earlier? Did I really want the priests telling me? Did it really matter who told me? The medico was a decent cove, making the best of a bad job. My aunt could never have done it. She shies from intimacy like a well-bred, nervous horse. She has always been at all times quite wonderful, and I love her, and get exasperated by her.
I feel sick with shock, the most horrible fantasies. Every few minutes another wild idea. Example – if my real mother had had a daughter (she’s married but without children) and I’d met the daughter and we’d fallen in love – then what? Greek tragedy, Andy, simple Greek tragedy.
Hang it, lots has been lost and nothing as far as I can see has been gained. Just someone I knew a little already and rather liked, I now hate. And I can’t help it.
I feel I could use a woman just now. Punish one, Andy. Remember that stage you and I went through at school, of a truly fierce purity. We thought St Aloysius (that creep) rather fine. And we were going to remain pure always. Not monks, but holy in the world – Hardest thing of all, they used to tell us. And then remember how we went the other way. I don’t think we thought about anything else but girls and IT for that whole term. But the one thing we never felt then with all our extremes, I feel now – and that’s disgust. It’s as if when they told about these things, then underneath, what they were really tr
ying to tell us was – oh God, brute beasts, disgusting acts, women – tainted vessels. I’m terrain that’s been ploughed up. Earth turned over, broken up, and the worms all underneath.
And what do worms and earth (and freshly turned soil) tell you? Men have died and worms have eaten them, but not for love. Nor because they’ve learned the truth about their parents. It’s terrible to say this but I feel now the best thing that could happen to me is that I should go out soon, and be killed.
This letter’s awfully morbid. (Too morbid for the Censor – have you read this far, sir?) But I feel better for talking to you. As ever. How innocent we were when we tired the sun with talking. I hope we haven’t sent him down the sky for ever.
Yours,
Guy
5
Helen brought in the teatray and set it down. She put two logs on the fire. Outside the sky was grey, darkening already. A north-east wind blew icily – more like March than early April. It was the third day of her holidays.
‘Shall I pour your tea, Uncle Eric?’ She placed a table napkin on his knees.
‘They’ve made a real little homemaker of you, have the convent. Is it yours, the chocolate cake?’
‘Yes, and there aren’t any cocoa lumps … But you have to have bread and marge first. Do you want honey on it?’ She treated him like a child sometimes.
He asked, ‘Still top of the class in arithmetic?’
She nodded proudly. ‘We do problems now. About trains and bath water –’
She was happy at the convent in Harrogate, though she’d have preferred to be a weekly boarder. But petrol was rationed and the train journey too awkward. Billy was happy too, with Cousin Fred and his wife Auntie Janet. Cousin Fred was stationed still in Dundee, but might be sent overseas. He was someone she couldn’t remember at all, though when he came over to Thackton to collect Billy, he promised her that they’d met when she was four. Seeing him there at Moorgarth, Helen’s only thought had been, what a good thing it was Billy didn’t wet and mess any more.
The Golden Lion Page 30