England's Lane (53 page)

The ambulance did arrive quickly, and I helped Stan into the back of it: wrapped a large red blanket around his shoulders. He seemed to be stooped and rather thinner than he had been just a week ago—his eyes, ringed by shadows … inquiring, though still so very helplessly lost.

“So, then … what about Anthony …? Did you find him, Milly?”

“I … no, Stan. I'm afraid I didn't. But you know what little boys are. Could be anywhere. Couldn't he? He'll be so terribly sorry that he missed you, though.”

“Yes. Expect so. Oh well. There it is. Well tell him a Merry Christmas then, will you Milly? From me, sort of style.”

“I will, Stan. Of course I will.”

“And you, Milly. You as well. I wish you a Merry Christmas.”

“Thank you, Stan. Thank you so much. You too. You too.”

“And a Happy New Year …!”

“Yes. Of course. Absolutely.”

“Will it be one, do you think Milly …? Will it be one …?”

“Oh I think so, Stan. I think so.”

The party continued quite a good deal longer, but that, for me, was the end of it. Though I did cut the cake—and very good it was too: moist, crammed with fruit, and eaten enthusiastically (most especially by Sally, its creator). The carols were lovely, as always they are—all the old favorites. Mrs. Dent felt she could hardly do
justice to the piano's pedals, though Mrs. Bona happily stepped into the breach and proved to be more than up to the challenge. The men grew raucous during the Gloria choruses of “Ding Dong Merrily On High,” while all the children, bless them, were laughing their little heads off. Eventually—and at last worn out—I had concluded the day with a glass of Eno's Fruit Salts: I think it could well have been the marzipan that did it.

And now the future is looming. Well always it is, of course—though at Christmas time one seems to be most keenly aware of it: what with the contrast to the one preceding, if contrast ever there be. The reluctance to believe that twelve whole months can actually have passed. And always the awareness of a brand-new year—for the present just about content to be skulking in the shadows, though eagerly awaiting its grand and gaudy moment. 1960, then … when my life will be changed, and as never before. For I, Milly, am soon to be a mother: that little thing. Well of course I have been that, a mother, a mother to dear Eunice's Paul, for quite a good long time: but now I really am actually to give birth. All that ever I desired. This morning, I fancy I felt a little kick; and I seem to be newly addicted to Tate & Lyle Golden Syrup, a thing to which before I was quite utterly indifferent—and also Craven “A”: though the thought now of accompanying a cigarette with a Trebor's mint actively makes me queasy. And no, I cannot imagine quite how it will be … the birth, you know. Doctor McAuley, he gave me a pamphlet—a flimsy and ill-printed little thing, which has left me none the wiser. And during early February, I believe it is, I am booked in to see some sort of a woman in the Hampstead General who, according to Doctor McAuley, is going to tell me … well I don't quite know what it is she is going to tell me. I daresay I shall pick it up. As women have been doing, though men will forget it, since ever time began. I do not know if it will hurt, the actual
process … most mothers say yes, and I do rather hope that they are right: I just think that it ought to, somehow.

Other mothers of the very young … I have heard them talk of their child as almost no more than sort of a tangible consolation for the unforeseen slaughter of physical passion, or else a vanishing of the erstwhile partner. Though this, it seems plain to me, is quite utterly wrong: the baby, most surely, is the thing. The baby itself is the ultimate reward. The baby is the reason—whereas its agency, once and in whichever way it has passed, is as nothing. For within this I am sure lies the grand design: men and women must perforce come together in order to generate impact—and if such may result in not just progeny but a vast and enduring love, well then Gloria in Excelsis. Though it seldom seems to be. Those who appear to have been the happiest—Mrs. Dent, say, or old Mr. Levy—always they are split in two, and left to bleed. Mr. and Mrs. Bona remain bonded by the loss of that which still resonates as being the sole and very point of them: their son. While Mrs. Goodrich runs her husband like a member of staff, brooking no distraction from any such uncertainties as children. As to myself and Jim … well, so very hard to say: certainly no longer cut and dried, as for so terribly long it has been. I have decided to clean the window of the shop: remove everything that has lurked there, stacked in filth since pre-biblical times, and then polish the glass so brilliantly well that for the first time in eons, you will actually be able to see through it: this is quite a large thing. And the other day I kissed him, and that very much surprised me: Jim too, I imagine. Quite wholly a spontaneous gesture on my part … and the kiss … it didn't quite die upon my lips. This morning I did it again—but then I always do on Christmas Day: you have to, really. Though at present, obviously I cannot possibly think to more … and so do harbor a curious gratitude for the existence of this Daisy person, whoever
she may be: big girl, according to Stan—not necessarily, these days, the most reliable of witnesses: but still. And as for Stan … and Jonathan … well: what is there left that I could possibly say? Then there are those who appear to be thoroughly content with a different sort of union, all of their own: Mrs. Jenkins … and Miss Jenkins, her core. And those again who continue to wait and see: Edie, Gwendoline … even Sally can be the conjuror of dreams, I suppose. Doreen, of course—who never seems to wait too very long. And yes … I have ceased to pretend to have been shocked or surprised by her passing revelation: all that time ago, when Jonathan had emerged from his yard—covered in blood, and he held me … even as his most beautiful voice was assuring me of the utter innocence of so fleeting a liaison with Doreen, I knew it to be a lie. The need for no pain, though, and the continuance of bliss—they both quite willingly collaborated to stifle at once even so much as the muffled squeal of simple possibility. I don't care. About anything like that any more. Once, he was just so immense as to block out my light: now, he is barely visible to me. For I hold the prize. I have the very best of him. And I carry it within me.

Then there is England's Lane … this little island of ours: I used to think it would never change, and that nor should I. Why always in the past I have felt so very comfortable with the two us, really. But my present altered state has heightened my awareness of a gentle shifting all about me. Curios … that shop—and I have only very recently learned this—is soon to be made into a coffee bar. Well there: it had to come, as they say. And of late, Gwendoline has developed a dreadful sort of eczema, I suppose due to all the chemicals that daily she is forced to handle. Poor dear Gwendoline—sometimes she will hold her hands beneath the cold tap for up to twenty minutes on end, and still they emerge so very raw, so very terribly inflamed: she binds them at night in gauze, though still the
itching, it makes her distracted and she sobs as she tears at her bandages; Doctor McAuley has told her that it is just one of those things. So, then … for how long can Amy's continue, I wonder? Old Mr. Levy too—at the end of each and every year, he always says to me that he has had quite enough: that he has been working for the whole of his life, and that now it is time to call it a day, pack up shop, and go off to live with his one remaining sister in Broadstairs. And this year, you know, I do believe he means it: he looked that sad. Maybe he has been spurred by an offer for his premises that arrived, he told me, quite out of the blue—and according to Edie, Mr. Lawrence too is said to be considering an approach from the same mysteriously anonymous source, and that is rather something of a worry. Even more concerning is the fact that the two of them adjoin one another, you see, and this does rather strike me as ominous. And now of course there's the future of Stan's shop too to be considered. And another thing that Edie told me the day after the party is that dear old Champion the Wonder Horse is finally to be put out to grass: in the new year, the whole of the United Dairies is going over to electrified floats. And they're intending to install on the pavement outside the shop a machine which in return for sixpence will dispense a carton of chocolate-flavored milk. I am not complacent: I cannot welcome any such things, for although they come dressed as progress, does there not also cling to each of them the whiff of erosion …?

Well: I can do nothing about it. Can I? I shall, while rereading
Sense and Sensibility
for the squillionth time in my life, simply accept the winds of change—will them to amount to no more than a welcome summer breeze, and pray for no hurricane. I know that we shall be staying, whatever happens: myself, Jim, Paul … Anthony now, our little refugee, for whom grief, I fear, might patiently be waiting … and then ultimately … my baby. And I
do see that it is not just England's Lane that begins to stir—it is England's every lane and borough. Newspapers and the wireless, they will insist upon exulting in the presumption that now we are standing poised at the dawn of a “new age” … rather as if there were something wrong with this one. But we've already had that, haven't we? The new age. For our new age, it came with the end of war—and by God did we not grasp at it greedily, in exhaustion and quite tattered desperation? It is that very hard-won peace, the very heaven of unimagined contentment, that still we should be most ardently cherishing.

I, though, am not the person to run away from change. From anything. I couldn't. And I know that the most pointless and fruitless thing of all would be if ever I should attempt to run away from myself—as on occasion, if only fleetingly, has been tempting in the past—because I am so very aware that in no time at all I should so very effortlessly catch myself up. And so … along with every other living soul, I simply await the coming of another new year, and all that it brings to me. Quite undaunted, and ready to embrace it. For by now I am a more than capable woman.