Only a Mother Knows (32 page)

‘Did you never feel the need to come and find me before now?’ Agnes did not know where she found the courage to ask such a thing as she watched him shake his head.

‘I was punished for loving your mother when my first wife was dying,’ he said simply.

‘You can’t be punished for truly loving someone,’ Agnes said. ‘Her death was not your fault.’

‘It is a comfort to hear you say that, Angela.’ He paused, almost causing Agnes to correct him, but then she understood for the last twenty years he’d agonised about the child called Angela whom he had given away – a child who was now a grown woman called Agnes and whose forgiveness he desperately sought before his final hour. ‘I adored your mother, she was the light of my life and when she died I felt I’d killed her.’ He looked up when he heard Agnes gasp.

‘I couldn’t bear to watch you grow up, possibly resembling her and finding fault with me for not having the skill to save her.’ His eyes were glassy now with unshed tears. ‘You see, before I married my first wife, whose father owned this farm, I was the village doctor … Can you believe that?’ He gave a short, scornful laugh. ‘Yet I could do nothing for the women I loved.’

Agnes was shocked to the very core of her being. All her life she had been belittled, treated like an unpaid skivvy, brought up in an orphanage and wanted by nobody and taught never to question or condemn, but she didn’t blame him any more for abandoning her; instead she had an overwhelming urge to hug him. It was pure instinct that made her go over and put her arms around him, feeling his tears upon her face. She had to let him know she had forgiven him, believing now it would have been difficult beyond endurance to see her every day and be reminded of the woman he so dearly loved.

‘He summoned a woman from the village to take care of me,’ Agnes told Olive when she came out of the farmhouse a short while later. ‘When he didn’t come for me weeks later she took me to the orphanage near her sister’s house in London … Times were hard, he said.’ Agnes was surprisingly unemotional about the whole experience, Olive thought.

‘The woman from the village didn’t leave my name when she left me on the orphanage step. She told him where I was only a couple of years ago when he knew he was dying, he got in touch with solicitors to find me and by that time I had moved from the orphanage and come to live with you,’ Agnes said, then a little way into her explanation the brittle veneer began to crack and Olive was relieved to see the young woman’s natural caring nature come to the fore.

‘He’s had people looking for me ever since.’ Her voice was full of anguish. ‘He didn’t know where I was or what had become of me. And now he is dying!’ The stinging tears at the back of her eyes could be restrained no longer and she sobbed until she thought her heart would break.

‘Shh,’ was all that Olive could manage as she held Agnes close in the cold, wintry half-light that barely illuminated the farmyard. They were quiet for a while until Olive could summon up the courage to speak without the threat of her own tears. Finally she asked, ‘Will you ever go back again?’

‘I don’t know,’ Agnes answered. ‘He’s not long for this world and I’m not sure I have the courage to get to know him …’ There was a sob in her voice as fresh tears flowed down her face.

‘I think you know him already,’ Olive said softly, ‘but, you’ve got what you came for.’

‘Yes,’ said Agnes, holding on tightly to her birth certificate without revealing to Olive the name her mother had given her, ‘I got what I came for.’

Agnes accepted a clean cotton handkerchief from Olive to dry her eyes as the sound of Archie’s motor-car engine could be clearly heard starting up and she realised they had been standing there for quite some time.

‘We’d better be going,’ she said as bittersweet feelings raged inside her, then turning she took one last look at the farmhouse, thrilled and saddened that she had met her father at last, yet knowing now her parents loved each other just as much as she and Ted.

As she made her way to Archie’s car the old man, Darnley, came scurrying out of the farmhouse on bowed, arthritic legs and in his gnarled and weathered hands he was carrying an unfamiliar object. As he drew near she could see he was holding out an enormous, dead goose by its legs, its head dangling in the frosty air.

‘He said to give you this,’ said the cantankerous old man with a hint of puzzled resignation, ‘and he said to make sure to tell you: have a happy Christmas.’

‘Wish him all the joys of the season,’ said Agnes, grimacing as she took the dead goose, ‘and your family too.’

But the old man was already heading in the opposite direction and gave a bah-humbug wave of his hand as he shuffled back to the house without another word.

Agnes hadn’t told her father about Ted, nor did she tell Olive that she had her own name, which had been given to her by her mother, whose name was Peg Weybridge. And she was Angela Weybridge, doctor-turned-farmer’s daughter. As she watched the fields and meadows pass by through the car window, she wondered if, like a million times before, she was dreaming again? And then, grasping her birth certificate more tightly, she knew for certain that this was a dream. A dream come true.

Only a Mother Knows

‘After all I’ve done for you, Ted Jackson!’

Mrs Jackson bashed and banged the plates in the tiny kitchenette, although she didn’t bash and bang them enough to break them, Ted noticed, just enough to make a racket. ‘You are so ungrateful,’ she continued. ‘I’ve been on my hands and knees scrubbing this flat already and I’m feeling bone weary. What thanks do I get for slaving for you lot? None, that’s what thanks I get!’

Ted, hands in pocket, had his back to his mother as he looked out of the little window to the street below where a few children were knocking on doors and singing Christmas carols. Fat lot of good it would do them, he thought sardonically, knowing some of them had come back from evacuation for Christmas as there hadn’t been many raids in London over the past few months and many mothers considered that the worst was nearly over now.

‘I give you nice nutritional meals after trawling the streets looking for good food to eat when you get in from work, I make sure you have a nice clean bed to come home to of a morning, and this is how you pay me back. Don’t you know I have enough to do!’

‘Mum, I only asked Agnes to come for tea, I didn’t ask her to move in with us,’ he said, thinking that if his mother’s face turned any redder it would explode.

Ted hadn’t seen much of Agnes since her trip to Surrey with Olive last week as they were on different shifts. It had been such a pity that she’d got back too late to come to tea as they had arranged, and because of that he thought it might be nice for her to come instead on Christmas Eve.

‘Move in! Move in, you say? How dare you speak like that in this house! Your sainted father would turn in his grave. I have never heard anything so disgusting in all my born days.’

‘Then you’ve never lived,’ Ted wanted to say, but of course he didn’t. He would never dare! His mother would have burst into a thousand apoplectic smithereens right where she stood. ‘Look, Mum, I know you are finding it hard, what with rationing and all that, but everybody is in the same boat and I’ve given you extra housekeeping money to cover tea and Agnes doesn’t eat all that much. It would do the girls the world of good to get to know her a bit better.’

‘Why on earth would they want to get to know a … a foundling, tell me that!’

‘Don’t you say that again, Ma.’ Ted could not hold his tongue and knew how to enrage his mother by calling her something as common as ‘Ma’, even though he thought it sounded just as endearing as ‘Mum’. But, if he was honest with himself, he was almost past caring what she liked and didn’t like any more. He was having a right time of it trying to keep up with her likes and dislikes – why couldn’t she be as easy-going as his Agnes?

His mind went back to the debacle the other week, when he could have had a cosy night in with Agnes in front of the fire, relaxing with the wireless on and, best of all, they would have been alone – just the two of them in Mrs Robbins’ lovely front room, bright with electric lighting, unlike his own home that was lit by dull gas mantles that gave off hardly any cheer at all. The thought of it made him shake his head, remembering that when it was too late for him to go to see Agnes, his mother refused to go out after all – and it wasn’t the first time either. Oh no, she’d stopped him seeing Agnes on a few occasions with one excuse or another of late. As he opened his mouth to tell her she was going too far he was stopped by his mother’s look of self-righteous indignation.

‘Well,’ said Mrs Jackson, blowing out her cheeks and then pursing her lips, ‘that a son of mine would dare speak to me in such a manner, at this time of year as well! I cannot believe my only loving son would say such a thing. After all I’ve done for this family, you go and stick up for a girl who’s not fit to …’

‘Ma …’ Ted’s voice held a warning note. ‘I’ve already told you that I will not listen if you carry on talking about Agnes like that.’ He watched his mother give an innocent shrug.

‘Never a thought for my own deprivation,’ Mrs Jackson said, ignoring her son’s raised eyebrows. ‘I scrimp and save to give my offspring a loving, comfortable home and this is what I get!’ She was quiet for a moment knowing Ted’s flinty expression meant she had gone too far and she had to change her approach. ‘Well, son,’ she said with a sigh, ‘you know I only want the best for my family.’

‘Maybe so,’ Ted sighed, only too aware he was the one who did all the providing now, whilst his mother stayed at home and polished the heavy, faded furniture that hadn’t changed since she married his father. Hands in pockets, he moved from the window.

He was torn between his duty to his family and his great affection for Agnes. He didn’t like the way his mother carped on about her being a ‘foundling’, it wasn’t right, especially when Mum hadn’t had such a salubrious childhood either. But now they lived in the tiny two-roomed flat owned by the Guinness Trust, his mother thought she was on nodding terms with the king.

‘There isn’t room for the four of us to sit down together at the table all at the same time, never mind five!’ she exclaimed.

Ted wondered if his mother felt embarrassed about inviting Agnes to their small home and realised her haughty demeanour might just be a front. But the way she carried on sometimes, anyone would think she was brought up in the mews of Buckingham Palace instead of being part of one of the poor but decent families down by the East End docks.

Not that he had anything against such families, Ted silently reasoned, he thought they were the salt of the earth. But his mother soon forgot herself when she moved out of there. No, what he didn’t like was his mother’s hypocrisy, her total lack of tolerance for anything or anyone she considered wasn’t ‘respectable’ when his Agnes was the most decent person he knew.

‘Well, don’t think I’m going to fall over myself to be nice to her,’ Mrs Jackson continued, causing Ted to close his eyes and shake his head in exasperation. ‘She’s just out for what she can get from you, that’s what I think. I’ve met her kind before.’

‘But, Mum,’ Ted sighed, patiently now, ‘Agnes isn’t like other girls; she’s quiet and lovely.’

‘She can see you’ve got a good job and come from a nice home and she wants it.’ Mrs Jackson patted the turban covering her steel curlers, which she’d secreted from the salvage man. ‘You mark my words, once she’s got you she’ll bleed you dry, so think about that!’

It seemed to Ted that it didn’t matter how much he pleaded, she was determined to make life unbearable if Agnes came to tea.

His mother had her little routines, like putting the small presents she managed to get for his two sisters into their stockings and putting them on the sofa for Christmas morning, not trusting them to refrain from eating the contents if their stockings were left on the end of the bed. She also liked to have the vegetables peeled and put into pans of cold water in readiness, so they could all open their presents together. These were the rituals that made her life bearable, he supposed, but he hadn’t supposed that Agnes would not be part of them this year.

‘Would you rather I send someone around with a note and tell her not to come today?’ Ted asked, knowing that if Agnes did come to visit there would be a strained atmosphere – and quite rightly, Agnes would get upset, then the girls would get upset, and his mother in turn would get upset, suggesting it was all their visitor’s fault.

‘You do what you think’s best, son, it’s not for me to say.’ Mrs Jackson patted his arm and gave a tortured smile. ‘You know that as the man of the house you have the final say …’ Then, calling over her shoulder as she hurried to the front room she added more brightly, ‘I managed to get a lovely bit of liver from the butcher, would you like me to cook it with that nice gravy you like? And I’ve made your favourite steamed pudding with some currants I had left over from last week.’

‘Lovely, Mum,’ Ted said in a dull voice, his appetite suddenly disappearing.

‘Not every mother can say she’s got such a loving son who looks after his family like you do, Ted,’ Mrs Jackson said after he had summoned a lad from down the street and gave him a penny to take the note around to Article Row. ‘Your sainted father would be so proud of you.’

‘I’m sure.’ Sorely disappointed, Ted could have kicked himself for wanting a quiet life.

Yet, on reflection, what else could he do? A quiet life was his biggest wish, what with a war on and such a forceful mother. But he knew she was a woman who was not naturally strong and being left a widow had made her more dependent upon him than he would have liked. Also he knew that some would like to think she was made of the same stuff as the air-raid shelters, but he knew different; inside, his mother was as scared as everybody else.

Agnes read the note, brought by a boy of about twelve whose grey socks were concertinaed around skinny, grubby legs. The note told her Ted was very sorry but his mother was not feeling too well and was not up to having visitors today. Agnes felt deeply disappointed at being called a ‘visitor’; she’d thought she was much more than that to Ted’s family.