Mourning Doves (12 page)

They became the best of friends, and later, secret, desperate lovers. A scandal would have finished Vital and ruined Edna. Both realised that they were financially dependent upon Paul. And it was a miracle that they were not found out, Edna thought. There must have been suspicions, but intrigue was part of the society, and there were other love affairs which were politely overlooked. And, anyway, Paul and I were English Protestants; there was little understanding of us.

But old Conchita, the housekeeper already installed in
the house when she arrived, had known. She had seen Paul strike his wife on one or two occasions, and slowly she had been moved to protect the young mother.

Edna smiled grimly. To protect her, Conchita could lie with incredibly fast ingenuity. Small and modest in her black dresses, she looked the epitome of integrity – but she resented Paul’s high-handed manner with his Portuguese staff – and Vital, who also suffered from this, was the son of a friend of hers. She had been a great help to the lovers.

The answer to Edna’s passionate prayers had come in Paul’s death on the way home. She had had no option but to come home with him. A single word out of place and Vital would have lost his job with the company and his excellent reputation as a reliable and gifted employee.

Be careful what you pray for – prayers are not always answered in the way you imagine they will be, her nanny had always cautioned her.

How right Nanny had been. She was free, but it was unlikely that she and Vital would ever meet again.

Unaware of the turmoil in the mind of her sister, Celia had expected to deal with tears and hopelessness, and anxious questions about her mother’s mourning. She had no idea what to say to this wizened shell of a woman. As they edged their way up the hill towards West Derby, however, she felt she should say something about Paul.

‘Both Mother and I were so sorry to hear about Paul’s sudden passing. We both feel dreadful that you should have lost him. Mother sends her fond love to you.’ She paused, and then added, ‘And you have my love and sympathy, too.’ The last words seemed stiff and formal to her, but she did not know what else to say.

Edna’s barely visible lips tightened. ‘Thank you,’ she said equally formally. ‘It was sudden – quite a shock.’ She stared woodenly ahead of her. She had managed to contain her feelings in Southampton while the Port Authorities, all
male, had discussed over her head her isolation as an influenza contact. She had, later, done her best to comfort Paul’s parents.

At Lime Street, she had hoped to be met and comforted by her own mother, even if Louise did not know the exact reason for her grief. Instead, she was face to face with her younger sister, and pride would not permit her to give way in front of her.

‘Was it really Spanish flu?’ asked Celia.

‘The ship’s doctor said it was. All the passengers on the liner were terrified that they would get it. I was quarantined in my cabin, and none of them would come near me. The Health Authorities in Southampton would not let us dock until all the passengers had been examined. They wanted to send me to an isolation hospital for a few days.’

‘How awful! Did anyone get it?’ Celia began to relax.

‘Not to my knowledge. I suppose most of the world has already been exposed to it. I told them that. Finally, I asked them to send for my father-in-law – and he came in his car to fetch me. He promised that he would call the family physician before allowing me to mix with anyone – so they let me go.’ Edna’s voice expressed considerable satisfaction at her winning of the battle with the Health Authorities, and Celia was suitably impressed.

‘Why Paul, I wonder?’

‘Oh, Paul? He met all kinds of people in his work and socially. He could have caught it anywhere. In Salvador people get a fever and die and nobody knows what it was that took them. Only something like cholera is quickly identified.’

It seemed a step forward to Celia that she was managing to get Edna to talk to her. ‘Why didn’t you come home from such an unhealthy place?’ she inquired.

Edna considered her answer to this query, before slowly replying, ‘Well, I did not want to come home alone. Paul was general manager of the whole project, as you know –
and my father-in-law is a party in the consortium that did the development. Paul felt he must see the work to an end; and he did finish it to schedule.’ Edna absently twiddled her rings round her finger. ‘If we had come home before the war ended, he would probably have been conscripted, in spite of his age. And then he would have lost his life, anyway.’ She bit her lips, as she condemned herself as a great liar.

‘He might have done,’ agreed Celia soberly, and then she added, ‘Dozens of people died, too, in Liverpool from the flu – and they were often the remaining young people in a family. It was tragic.’

‘No doubt.’ Edna sounded remote, uninterested.

Celia felt shocked at such an indifferent reply, and then reminded herself, more charitably, that Edna would be as wrapped up in her own grief as their mother was.

It seems that only I don’t have that privilege, she considered with pain; I mustn’t weep for Tom or George or express the terror I feel at Father’s death; I have to keep on going – but going where?

It’s like walking into a fog.

She felt her sister sigh, and she glanced at her. On the yellowed cheek lay a solitary tear. Poor Edna! Celia took one of her hands in her own, and was surprised when Edna clasped her hand tightly for the rest of the journey.

For most of the taxi ride through the crowded streets of Liverpool, they sat silently side by side. The thin yellow hand clutching Celia’s told her clearly that Edna was more upset than she appeared, but, as they approached West Derby, Celia felt that she must warn her sister that she was not alone in suffering grief.

‘Mama is still dreadfully upset,’ she began. ‘It is barely a week since Papa passed away, you know.’ She wanted to cry out, be gentle with both of us – please. We are suffering like you are. But she was nonplussed by her sister’s lack of any kindly demonstration of feeling towards herself, so she said no more.

Did Edna care twopence about her father’s death, she puzzled? She had, after all, been separated from her family for seven years, and had been in boarding school before that. Had she, perhaps, forgotten that it was her sister who was sitting beside her, someone to whom she should feel free to express her sorrow for the loss of both father and husband?

In response to Celia’s warning, Edna said impatiently, ‘Yes, I know. Papa Fellowes told me. And Mother wrote to me at Southampton.’ Edna stared out of the taxi window. ‘It is difficult for both of us.’ That it might be difficult for Celia still did not seem to occur to her, for her next remark was, ‘Papa was a very trying man.’

Celia was shaken that her father’s favourite daughter should make such a shocking remark, especially when he
was dead; it was certainly not the thing to criticise the dead. From Celia’s point of view, Papa had provided everything for Edna, good clothes, education, a fine wedding and a dowry – had even introduced her husband to her. What more could he have done? She felt resentfully that she herself would have been grateful if he had done any one of these things for her. ‘Whatever do you mean?’ she asked.

Edna’s answer shocked Celia even more. Her sister said, ‘I wondered if she was thankful to be widowed. A lot of women are. And Mother had to manage Father very carefully.’

‘Oh, no, Edna! Mama is quite broken-hearted. And even more so because she is going to lose her home.’

‘What?’ Edna turned so quickly towards Celia that she hit her knees on the trunk which had been heaved into the back of the taxi.

With her right hand, Celia was steadying on her lap Edna’s hat box and jewel case, as well as her own heavy handbag. At the explosive query, she shot a startled glance over the pile at her sister. ‘Didn’t Mama tell you?’ she quavered.

‘No.’

In a trembling voice, as if her late father’s financial position were her fault, Celia explained as best she could.

Edna sniffed. ‘Nonsense. I don’t believe it. Cousin Albert has made a mistake.’

Not wishing to quarrel in front of a taxi driver, Celia muttered, ‘We will talk about it when we get in. I am sure Mama will explain it to you.’

‘Indeed, we must talk about it. I have come up here in the expectation of being welcomed home!’

‘Well, of course you are welcome. Where else would you go?’ Celia responded indignantly. At the same time she wondered what Edna would think of the cottage, and she shuddered.

At the thought that she might have to share the cottage with Edna, as well as with her very critical mother, she felt suddenly sick.

During her long day, she had begun to think of the little house as being the beginning of a more open life for herself, despite the work it represented. She felt that everybody she had met that day had been very nice to her and had treated her as a person in her own right. Putting the cottage in order was proving to be a refreshing experience.

As the taxi drew up, Dorothy opened the front door. Her mother, looking exactly like Queen Victoria in her widowhood, came out on to the top step, and looked down at them, with the same woebegone expression as Queen Victoria exhibited in some of her photographs.

Edna left Celia to deal with the taxi driver and the luggage and ran across the pavement and up the wide, gracious steps. Her mother held out her arms to her and she was embraced. They turned and went inside.

By the time Dorothy, Winnie and Ethel had helped the taxi driver to get the heavy trunks up the steps and into the hall, Celia had taken the boxes that had been on her lap upstairs to Edna’s bedroom. She then came down to pay the driver and tip him. She knew from her father that a man who tipped the proper amount received service from the lower classes – woe betide him if he tipped too little. The driver seemed pleased by the amount she gave him, touched his cap to her and went slowly down the steps. She shut the door after him, and, with the other women, surveyed the luggage.

‘We’ll never get them up the stairs, Miss,’ said Winnie, already resentful that she and the other maids had been totally ignored by Edna as, with Louise, she had gone straight into the sitting room to be warmed by the fire and divested of her hat and jacket. Winnie had been the cook in the house when Miss Edna was a girl; unlike Dorothy and Ethel, she knew her. She even knew her favourite
desserts, and had, that afternoon, made a magnificent apple pie with egg custard for her.

Celia noticed Winnie’s forlorn look and guessed the reason for it. She realised suddenly that Edna had treated her, too, exactly like a bad employer would treat a servant. She was reminded of Edna, as a young woman, ordering her to fetch and carry for her, without thought or thanks – exactly as her mother did.

She took off her own hat and coat, and said wearily, ‘Leave the trunks where they are, for the moment, Winnie. If we can’t get them up the stairs, they could be unpacked down here. The empty trunks won’t be too difficult to move.’

‘Thank you, Miss. Shall I send up the tea tray?’

Celia was so demoralised that she felt that she must first ask her mother, so she peeped round the sitting-room door to inquire.

The two women were already deep in conversation, and Louise barely turned her head when she answered, ‘Yes, bring the tea.’

The three servants were bunched by the door leading to the basement steps. Older than the other two, Winnie was still panting from her exertions with the trunks, and Dorothy was sullenly silent. Only Ethel’s eyes sparkled with interest at the arrival.

Celia passed on her mother’s instructions, and then said gently to Dorothy, ‘I’ll come down later on and hear how you got on in Meols.’

‘Yes, Miss.’ Dorothy sounded exhausted, and Celia had a sudden desire to hug her and tell her everything would eventually turn out all right. But one did not hug maids, so she turned and went slowly into the sitting room. She shut the door, and then took a seat a little away from the fireplace which was blocked to her by the other two women.

Her mother was weeping softly into her black handkerchief, while Edna lay back in her armchair and listened,
with her eyes closed, to the story of the house and how awful the cottage was.

Celia thought of the warm comfort of Eddie Fairbanks’ back room, and, when her mother paused to wipe her eyes, she interjected with some determination, ‘I think the cottage can be made very pretty – and this morning I learned that piped water is probably available – you know, Mama, we never went into Mr Fairbanks’ kitchen – he may already have had his pump replaced by taps.’

‘Really?’ Her mother looked up from her hanky in surprise.

‘I should hope there is at least clean water there.’ There was scorn in Edna’s voice. ‘I’ve had enough of bad water these past seven years.’ She slowly heaved herself upright in her chair as Dorothy knocked on the door, and then brought in a tea tray heavy with scones and homemade cake. ‘How many bedrooms has it?’

Edna’s question confirmed to Celia that she probably expected to live with them, and the tiny hopes and dreams which had begun to grow while she was in Hoylake fell to ashes. She had a strong suspicion that Edna would never tolerate closeness with humble people like Mr Fairbanks or Betty or Ben Aspen who had been so civil to her; in Celia’s mind had been planted a timid hope that these people could become her own kind and helpful friends. She knew her mother would never approve – but she was used to Mama; and her father was no longer there to insist on filial obedience. She feared, however, that Mama, backed up by an imperious elder daughter, would decide with whom they made friends in Meols and Hoylake and with whom they did not. She would again find friends and acquaintances, if any, picked out for her.

With an effort, she answered Edna. ‘Three double bedrooms and a little hall bedroom.’

A tired Dorothy had set the tea tray on a small table by
Louise’s chair. She poured three cups of tea and handed them to the ladies with an embroidered table napkin under each, and then asked, ‘Will that be all, Ma’am?’

Louise nodded, and Celia turned to ask the maid eagerly, ‘Dorothy, when you were getting water from Mr Fairbanks this morning, you must have seen whether he had a tap or a pump?’

‘Oh, aye, Miss. He’s got hot and cold taps in the back kitchen. And he’s got a water closet what flushes, by the back door.’

Louise forgot her tears immediately, and expressed great delight. She tucked her black hanky back into her sleeve, and said quite briskly to Celia, ‘That will solve so many problems.’

‘Yes, it will.’ Though a good water supply could in future save her a great deal of work, there was doubt in her voice. She feared that there would now be two women leaning on her. As a girl, Edna had always found ways of pushing unpleasant tasks on to Celia, by saying, ‘You are at home. It’s your job to help Mother.’

Up to now, there had always been servants to do the physically dirty daily tasks, like emptying the slops from the bedrooms and washing out the chamber pots, the latter still used at night despite the advent of water closets. Celia knew that her mother would never do such jobs; she would bully Celia into doing them. She would, very likely, find herself, in addition, washing the dishes, doing the washing, scrubbing the floors and front steps, and Heaven only knew what else.

How much would Louise and Edna do for themselves, she wondered.

She wanted to walk out, run away. In her perturbation, she wished that she never had to face either woman ever again. And then she told herself that she was wicked, sinful, to even contemplate such ideas.

In any case, to whom could she go? She could think of
no one who would not simply scold her for being a fool and ship her back to her mother. Only her godmother, Great-aunt Blodwyn in Wales, who had not come to her nephew’s funeral on the excuse that it was lambing time, but, in truth, had not come because she cordially detested Louise, a dislike which was heartily reciprocated. Great-aunt Blodwyn’s reputation in the family as a battle-axe of the first water had scared Celia as a child, and she did not seem to be the right person to take in a runaway. Anyway, the farm she had inherited from her husband was far away in Pembrokeshire – and how would a penniless woman get there?

Penniless women could become like the harridan who had directed her to Lime Street Station, disgusting untouchables who slowly rotted to death. The idea, strongly held by her elders and whispered amongst the few girls she had known, was terrifying to her.

Louise was saying, ‘That will be all, Dorothy,’ and Edna announced that she would like to go to her bedroom to wash and change.

Edna asked if the gardener would take her trunks upstairs, to which Celia replied shortly, ‘He comes only twice a week.’ It took all her patience to persuade her sister that the trunks could be safely unpacked in the hall and the contents carried upstairs.

Louise said, ‘Celia, get Ethel to help Edna carry the stuff up. Dorothy will be laying the table for dinner.’

While Edna fumed and fretted in the hall and looked in her handbag for the right keys and demanded a knife to cut the ropes, Celia ran downstairs to the basement kitchen. She was informed that Ethel had gone for an interview for a job as a nursery maid.

‘Miss Phyllis’s Lily heard about it and told her,’ said Winnie, as she basted a capon in the oven.

Celia went slowly back up the stairs to tell her mother this. It immediately sparked an altercation. Edna said
sharply that Louise should not allow the servants to go for interviews before she was ready to dismiss them – and, anyway, why wasn’t she taking them to Meols? ‘Good servants are never easy to find. In Salvador, I turned mine off on the day I was leaving.’

Bewildered, Louise told Celia to help her sister, and turned back into the sitting room, to pour herself another cup of tea and to weep.

The two of them cut the ropes and Edna unlocked the trunks. She then instructed Celia which trunk she should empty first, and went upstairs to her room.

As Celia appeared in the bedroom with a load of clothes and personal possessions, Edna told her which drawers to put them in. She herself took off her dress and went to the bathroom to wash.

Celia plodded wearily up and down stairs with long gowns swathed in tissue paper, with linen walking suits and straw hats, cotton petticoats, boots and shoes, tea gowns and dressing gowns, all finely made and embroidered – but all rather old-fashioned, thought Celia, with surprise. Edna would need to shorten all the skirts; even Celia who was used to looking frumpy had turned up her skirts, despite her mother’s protests; they had, for a couple of years now, hung discreetly just above her ankles.

By the time the trunks stood yawning emptily in the hall, the dinner gong was being struck by Dorothy, for dressing, and most of Edna’s dresses were still laid across her bed.