Mourning Doves (2 page)

She would have been glad to have Edna with her now, but the girl was married and far away in Brazil.

When, before setting out for the cottage, cold dread of a future without a father or brother or son to care for her had consumed her soul, Louise had at breakfast wept openly in front of fat, elderly Cousin Albert.

Harassed Celia, at twenty-four far too old for marriage, had pressed a glass of sherry on her. Mother was so set in her ways, so difficult to deal with if her normal routine was upset, that Celia knew that if any action had to be taken, it would be she who must, somehow, take it.

She felt despairingly that she had no idea of business matters; Papa had always kept such information in his own hands. In consequence, she had become numb with fear as Cousin Albert explained to her her late father’s financial circumstances.

The loss of her father, however unloving, had reopened her grief over the loss of her brothers, Tom and George, during the war, and her stomach muscles were clenched as she did her best to keep calm.

The more she considered her mother’s and her own circumstances, the more terrified of the future she became. With no male to protect them or earn a living for them, what would happen to them? And still worse, what would happen to her when her mother died? She had nothing of her own; she had been her mother’s obedient companion-help ever since she was fourteen. She was totally dependent upon her.

She also felt a profound unease about Cousin Albert himself. Was he altogether trustworthy? She did not know him well, but he struck her as a manipulative man, a man with little idea of kindness or humanity – though her father must have had some faith in him to make him his executor.

Immediately after the funeral was over, Albert had had a private discussion with Timothy’s solicitor and old friend, Mr Barnett of Barnett and Sons.

Elderly Mr Barnett was himself trembling with fatigue and grief, because the
AND SONS
of his practice no longer existed; one had died while a prisoner of war and the other had succumbed to trench fever in the horrors of 1916. With difficulty, the old man had single-handedly kept the
practice going for his sons while they were at war. Now, he knew he would never enjoy a peaceful retirement; to keep himself, his wife and three daughters, he must continue his practice until he dropped. It was no wonder that he found it hard to concentrate on what the pompous Mr Albert Gilmore was saying, and that he agreed to everything suggested in connection with Mrs Louise Gilmore’s affairs.

After lunch, Albert took out his gold hunter watch and announced that he would go again to Timothy’s office to do some more work, would stay one more night and then, the next morning, catch an early train back to his Nottingham home. ‘Mr Barnett will have the will probated and will do a further check in case there are any, as yet, undiscovered assets,’ he told Celia.

‘My dear Louise,’ he continued paternalistically to the tear-soaked widow, ‘I shall be in constant touch with Mr Barnett – fortunately, I have a telephone – and, in a few days’ time, I’ll be in touch with you again by mail. In the meantime, you should go out to Meols – that is the nearest railway station – to look at your cottage there.’ He tucked his watch back into his waistcoat pocket. ‘Mr Barnett will oversee the paperwork regarding the house for you. An estate agent may come tomorrow to evaluate it.’

He carefully did not mention to her that, since her present home and its contents already belonged to her, she had the right to refuse to sell it. Nor did he tell her that that afternoon he would pay a quick visit to the cottage to check that it looked repairable. She must face reality herself, he felt defensively.

Albert did not want any argument about the sale either. He dreaded dealing with women – they were so volatile and so lacking in common sense, and physically they revolted him. Better by far to persuade Louise to sign a quick agreement with Mr Barnett that he should arrange paperwork of the sale.

That evening, after Cousin Albert and Mr Barnett had dined with her, she had signed the agreement to sell without even reading it.

It never occurred to her that she was signing away her own property, that she was free to make her own decisions. She was certain that men always knew best.

Terrified, white-faced Celia’s instinct that something was wrong was, therefore, correct. Albert Gilmore’s intentions were, however, of the best. He was simply convinced that women were totally incapable of running their own lives, a belief certainly shared by his late cousin, Timothy. With money coming in every month from an annuity and with Celia to care for her, he could comfortably forget Louise.

Now, buffeted by a brisk sea breeze, Celia and her mother stood in front of a dwelling which looked as shabby as a house could look without actually falling down.

‘Built in 1821,’ Celia said without hope. ‘See! There’s the date above the front door. No wonder it’s shabby – it will be a hundred years old next year.’

A wave of pure panic began to envelop the younger woman, as her mother sniffed into her handkerchief, and wailed, ‘What are we going to do, Celia? We can’t possibly live here. What is Albert thinking about, suggesting such a thing? Couldn’t we buy another house?’

Her daughter shivered, and tried to muster some common sense. She replied, ‘Well, probably this is the cheapest roof we’ll ever find, Mama, even if we have to have it repaired. Mostly, I suspect that Cousin Albert wants us resettled quickly, because he doesn’t want us to live with him.’

Her mother turned back towards her, and with a sigh, inquired, ‘What did you say, dear?’

Celia had bent down to pick up two hairpins which had fallen out of her untidy ash-blonde bun. Her voice was muffled, as she replied, ‘I think he may wish us to begin a
new life together without delay. He may fear that we expect him to invite us to live with him – he has a big house – I remember our going to visit him once, when I was little.’ She straightened up and pushed the pins into her handbag. ‘But he hasn’t offered us a home, Mother – and I don’t think he should have to. It is not as if he were your brother – then he’d have a duty towards us.’

Her mother responded with unexpected acerbity. ‘Well, he is your father’s trustee until the estate is settled. He might at least have stayed long enough to help us, instead of leaving us in the hands of a solicitor – and an estate agent who has had the insensitivity to come in the day after the funeral, and run around our home – with a tape measure!’

‘The estate agent is concerned only with selling our house, Mother. He came to see it this morning only because Cousin Albert wants it sold quickly. He did apologise for intruding on us, remember. And the house is enormous, Mother, with seven bedrooms and three servants’ rooms. Too much for just two of us.’

Her mother’s puffed eyelids made her eyes look like slits in her plump face, as she replied pitifully, ‘I don’t want to sell it, Celia. It’s our home. And, what’s more, I don’t like the agent – so officious and totally lacking in delicacy or compassion.’

Celia wanted badly to cry herself, but she put her arm round her mother’s waist, and said gently, ‘Try not to grieve, Mama. This little house is yours, too, remember – you can do anything you like with it. We can probably make it very pretty.’

Celia gestured towards the shabby front door facing them. ‘I suppose Cousin Albert imagines we can arrange for the renovations ourselves?’ She paused, as she tried to think clearly.

Louise continued to cry. At Celia’s remarks, however, her petulant little mouth dropped open. She could do anything
she liked with this miserable cottage? What rubbish! Men always looked after property.

‘How can I get it done up? I have no idea how to proceed, and where would we get the money to do it?’ she wailed.

Celia had to admit that she did not know either. She responded firmly, however, by saying, ‘Perhaps we can find someone in the village, a builder, who could at least advise us about what it would cost.’

Then another frightening thought struck her, and she asked, ‘Did Cousin Albert say what we were to do about money until the house is sold? We would have to pay workmen, wouldn’t we?’

Albert had not mentioned immediate financial needs, except to say that he had himself advanced the money for dear Timothy’s funeral.

Her mother closed her eyes. She had no idea what, if any, money she had to draw on for the time being. It was all too much. She was trembling with fatigue and bewilderment at the sudden upheaval in her life. She wished heartily that she could follow Timothy – and simply die.

It really was most inconvenient that Timothy should have a heart attack before he had even reached his fiftieth birthday – and die in his office. What a fuss that had caused!

As if she could bear anything more, when they had already lost both their sons, George – her baby – in the dreadful sinking of the
Hampshire
in 1916. Drowned with Lord Kitchener, she had been told; as if that made it any the less painful to her. And big, strong Tom, her eldest and the pride of her soul, killed on the Somme.

Her terrible frustration at their youthful deaths still haunted her. There was nothing she could do to express her love of them. She could not give them beautiful funerals to mark the family’s grief at their passing. They had left no wives or children to be comforted. They did not even
have graves which she could tend in memory of them. All she could do was weep for them.

And her own two brothers, who could have been so much help to her in the present crisis? Both long dead, Peter from yellow fever while serving as an administrator on the Gold Coast, and Donald, a major in the 43rd, killed in a skirmish in the Khyber Pass just before the war broke out. The Empire had cost an awful lot of men, she thought, with sudden resentment against governments as well as against poor Timothy.

Celia patiently repeated her question about money, and her mother mopped her eyes and responded mechanically, ‘I suppose he thinks I’ll find it out of my own small income – my dot. There may be a little money in the bank which is mine, and I still have most of my March housekeeping.’

‘Do you have any idea how much is in your banking account?’ Celia knew that her grandfather had settled on her mother a dowry – a dot, as such a settlement was popularly called – of rental housing in Birkenhead. It was doubtful whether the income from their small rents would be enough to tide them over, never mind pay for extensive repairs to this dismal house.

‘I don’t know how much. I will have to ask the bank manager – and Mr Billings.’

‘The agent who collected the rent for this cottage and manages your Birkenhead property?’

‘Yes, dear. Cousin Albert says I am lucky that, when I married, your grandfather made quite sure that that property always remained mine.’

At the mention of Mr Billings, some of Celia’s fear receded. Mr Billings would surely know how to deal with house repairs. He might know how they could obtain credit so that they did not have to pay immediately.

As she searched in her leather handbag for the key to the house, handed to her by Cousin Albert, who had found it, neatly labelled, in Timothy’s key cupboard in his office,
she said with false cheerfulness to her mother, ‘Let’s go inside. It may not be so dreadful as we think. Then, instead of going directly back home to Liverpool, we could pause long enough in Birkenhead to see Mr Billings; he’ll know something about house repairs, I’m sure. We can take a later train back to Liverpool.’

‘Well, I suppose,’ Louise whispered wearily, ‘since we are here, we might as well look at the inside.’

As Celia slowly turned the big iron key in the rusty lock, Louise paused to look round what had been the front garden, and sighed deeply at the sight of the foot-high weeds. She sobbed again into her large, black mourning handkerchief, one of the same set of handkerchiefs she had used when crying for her lost boys.

Celia’s hand was trembling as she put the big key back into her handbag, before pushing hard on the stiff door to open it. What will become of us? she fretted. What shall we do?

Nineteen twenty was supposed to be a year when, two years after the war, things would settle down and life return to normal. Mourning was supposed to be over, your black dresses put away. But you can’t bury grief as quickly as you can bury men, she thought bitterly.

At best, life was proving to be totally different from that of 1914, when during a gloriously hot August, Europe was plunged into war, and life’s main preoccupation became the casualty lists.

Added to the death of her sons, her poor mother now had this burden of comparatively early widowhood, a penurious one, and the loss of her superbly furnished home.

As she pushed hard at the reluctant door, she thought for a moment of herself, and she saw no hope of a decent future anywhere.

As the door swung open to reveal a tiny vestibule, decayed autumn leaves rustled across a dusty tiled floor. Facing them was an inner door, its upper panels consisting of a stained-glass window with an elaborate pattern of morning glory flowers.

In an effort to cheer her mother up a little, Celia exclaimed, ‘Wouldn’t that be pretty if it were cleaned?’

‘Mother loved it,’ Louise said abruptly. Because her nose was so swollen from weeping, she sounded as if she had a heavy cold.

Using the same key, Celia unlocked the pretty door and hesitantly opened it. She had never been in the cottage before, and did not know exactly what to expect.

A very narrow, gloomy hall was revealed. It was poorly lit by a window at the top of a steep staircase to her right. To the left of her, two doors led off the hall. At the back was a third door. The lower half of all the walls was painted brown; the upper half looked as if it had once been cream. It was, however, very dirty; every corner was hung with cobwebs, and dust clung to them. Dust lay thickly on the wooden banister of the stairs, on the bare wooden treads, and on the ridges of the door panels. Under their feet fine sand, blown in from the dunes at the back of the house, crunched faintly on reddish tiles.

Celia quickly flung open the two doors and they glanced in at tiny rooms which looked equally dirty and depressing, their fireplaces choked with ashes, the bare wooden floors
grimy and littered with bits of yellowed newspaper. The light from the windows, filtering through gaps in the boards hammered over their exterior, did little to lift the general air of dinginess.

Determined to be brave, Celia said to her mother, again steeped in melancholy, ‘They’ve both got fireplaces – and quite big windows.’

Louise did not reply. She was past caring.

She did, however, follow Celia, as the younger woman approached the door at the end of the hallway, which she presumed correctly would lead into some sort of a kitchen.

A very rusty range had been built into one wall. With a long-handled water pump at one end, a sandstone sink was set below a filthy casement window positioned high in the house’s end wall. Through the window Celia caught a glimpse of the straggling tops of hedges which she supposed marked the edge of the property.

Cautiously she pressed down the pump handle. It gave a fearsome squeak, but no water came out.

Her mother stared at it, and then said heavily, ‘It has to be primed and it’s probably rusted inside.’ After a pause while she dabbed at her reddened nose, she added, ‘There’s a well at the bottom of the garden.’

Celia was appalled. The kitchen was awful, filthy beyond anything she had ever seen before. How on earth could one ever get such a neglected house clean – without a couple of skilled charwomen? But Cousin Albert had said no servants.

She realised with real shock that, if they did come to live in it, she herself would have to clean it. Her mother would not dream of doing an unpleasant job while she had a daughter to push it on to, and Celia had no idea even how to start.

She swallowed, and opened another door. ‘This must be the pantry,’ she said. ‘Phew! How it smells!’

Because there was a sudden scuffle of tiny feet in its
confined space, she hastily slammed the door shut again. ‘Ugh!’

‘Mice!’ her mother burst out. ‘Oh, Celia!’ She hastily gathered her skirts up to her knees, as if expecting an immediate invasion of her petticoats by the tiny intruders. Tears ran down her face.

‘It’s all right, Mother. It’s all right! I don’t think any came out.’ Celia turned back to the hallway, and suggested heavily, ‘We’d better have a look upstairs.’

There were three small bedrooms, and, in addition, a very tiny room at the front, over the hallway, which Louise said, with an effort, had been her elder sister’s bedroom when they were children. It was in the latter that the window had been broken. Rain had got in and damaged the plaster. Under their feet brown linoleum squelched as they trod on it, indicating that there was water under it.

‘Pooh!’ exclaimed Celia. ‘This room reeks of damp.’

Her mother blew her nose, and said very wearily, ‘The floorboards have probably rotted.’

Celia nodded. She wondered, with a shiver, if they would ever have enough money, never mind enough strength, to put this tiny house into some sort of order. Cousin Albert must believe that it was possible, she decided.

In fact, Albert Gilmore had not thought the matter through very well. His main goal was to avoid having to take the two bereaved women into his own home in Nottingham, where he dwelled very happily with an obliging manservant. He did not want them there even temporarily – they might be hard to dislodge.

He hoped that they would agree to settle in the cottage, or, alternatively, go to live with Louise’s elder, married daughter, Edna, and her husband, Paul Fellowes, something he had not yet suggested to either lady – he felt that the latter idea must come from Paul and Edna, and was, in his opinion, a decision of last resort. In the meantime,
he had pressed on Louise the idea of the cottage as a suitable home.

Paul was an electrical engineer, a director in his family firm which had grown hugely during the war, because of the international reputation of its engineers and their innovative approach to new problems. He had just completed managing a lucrative seven-year contract for the wiring of an entire city in Brazil. He and Edna would, according to Louise, sail for home this month. Once he was resettled in England, considered Cousin Albert, Paul Fellowes would certainly be able to afford to take in a couple of women, who would probably make themselves useful in his house, as such women always did.

On the other hand, he pondered, if they would agree to live in the cottage and were very careful, they should be able to manage on the rents from Louise’s six houses in Birkenhead. The rents, in addition to the annuity which he proposed to buy for them from the proceeds of the sale of the West Derby house, should be enough for two women to live on.

He knew from his talks with Mr Barnett and with Timothy’s chief clerk that there would, almost certainly, be nothing left of Timothy’s estate. The man owed money everywhere, probably because much of his basic income had come from investment in railways, which, now that the war was over, were not doing very well. Had he lived, he might have been able to pull through a difficult period, but now there was no hope. His few assets must be liquidated to meet his debts.

He trusted that Paul Fellowes would, when he returned to England, help him with the paperwork necessary to wind everything up. Paul should soon receive his letter, sent to Salvador, Brazil, informing him of his father-in-law’s death and asking him to break the news to his wife.

It was possible that the couple had already sailed for England before the letter’s arrival. In that case they would
receive the news from a telegram, which he had dispatched to Paul’s father at their company head office in Southampton. Edna’s last letter to her mother had mentioned that they expected to dock in Southampton and spend a few days with Paul’s parents before coming north to visit her own parents.

As Louise and Celia struggled round the overgrown garden of the cottage by the sand dunes, Louise mentioned how relieved she would be to see Paul and Edna.

Celia agreed. She had almost forgotten what the couple looked like. She had never had a great deal to do with her elder sister, and she had met Paul only three times, so she was not particularly hopeful of being comforted. Their presence would, however, add a sense of stability to Louise in her shattered state, for which she would be grateful.

If Paul returned quickly enough, thought Celia, he would, at least, be someone to consult about the cottage – if he had any time; she had always understood from her father that businessmen never did have much time to spare for the affairs of women.

Standing in the cottage garden after the stuffiness of the house, it was a relief to Celia to breathe clean, salt-laden air, and, despite its total neglect, there was a healthy smell of damp earth and growing things.

At the bottom of the garden, they inspected an earth lavatory.

‘It’s utterly disgusting!’ Celia exclaimed. ‘Did you really use it?’

‘Yes,’ Louise admitted. ‘It wasn’t something we looked forward to. It was your father’s main objection to continuing to come here for holidays.’ She began to whimper, as she recalled with anguish the handsome water closet which Timothy had had installed in their West Derby home.

‘Perhaps we could get a proper bathroom put in here,’ Celia suggested doubtfully, as she shut the door firmly on
the obnoxious little hut. Though she had long since learned that, to survive, she must bow her head and do whatever her parents decided, even her broken spirit had, on inspecting such primitive sanitary arrangements, begun to feel a sense of revolt.

After several days of being confined indoors, the fresh air was reviving Louise, and she looked around her, and sighed. She replied quite coherently, ‘I don’t think we could put in a water closet, without piped water and drains.’ Then she exclaimed with something of her normal impatience, ‘What a mess! I can’t imagine what kind of a tenant must’ve been living here. Mr Billings must have been very careless about his selection of one.’

Celia contemplated the jungle of weeds and sprawling bushes round her. ‘Did he pay the rent? The tenant, I mean,’ she asked practically.

Her mother shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Your father took care of these things.’

Celia turned to stare at the back of the house. The roof looked all right, no slate tiles missing and the chimneys were all intact, as far as she could judge. Her eyes followed the ridge of the roof, and she remembered suddenly that there was another house attached to theirs.

‘Do you own the house next door, Mother? I can see that the other side of the hedge has been trimmed, and there are curtains in the bedroom windows – and smoke is coming from the chimney. Someone must live there.’

Her mother looked up. ‘No, I don’t own it. My father bought this house simply as a summer cottage, rather than as an investment, and when he died he left it to your Aunt Felicity.’

Anxious to encourage her mother to take an interest in anything, Celia asked, ‘Who does own it?’

‘A Mr and Mrs Lytham bought the other side. I used to play with their children.’ Louise’s expression softened, and she added wistfully, ‘We had some lovely times, playing in
the sand dunes and paddling in the sea. I wonder what happened to them?’

Celia forced a smile. ‘How nice that must have been.’ Then she looked at her brooch watch. ‘Perhaps we had better lock up, Mother, and go to have a talk with Mr Billings. He could advise us about repairs.’

Her mother nodded and they retraced their steps to the house, ruefully brushing down their long skirts. Even Celia’s ankle-length, tailored skirt had caught in the undergrowth and had burrs and bits of leaves and seeds clinging to it.

Celia locked the back door and they walked slowly and dismally through the house, leaving muddy tracks behind them.

While Celia turned to secure the inner front door, Louise proceeded slowly down the front steps. She suddenly let out a frightened little cry, ‘Oh!’

Celia spun round.

Standing in the middle of the red-tiled path was a tall thin man. As the women stared at him, he raised his cap and bowed. ‘Good afternoon,’ he greeted them politely.