Shadow Baby (46 page)

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pondered this long and hard. The thing to do was to present the case to him as one in which he had his best interests at heart. He would say how talented he was and he would tell him that these talents deserved more scope than he could give them and that he had heard Bulloughs were looking for people like him and that they paid a better wage. Then he would flourish the references he had already written and give him a month’s pay. All very well, so far, but the smoothness of the operation in Henry’s head stopped when he envisaged Evie’s one-word reaction: why? There would inevitably be a ‘why’ Even Jimmy, not half as bright as Evie, would think himself entitled to a ‘why’. Henry felt ill thinking of this moment. Good God, he felt like swearing, do you not think I ask myself that and never know the answer? ‘Because’, that is the answer to your ‘why’, and I wish it were not. Or he could answer their one word with one word of his own: Leah. Leah is your answer. Leah, the woman I love, my wife, that is your answer, and if I understood her I would be a genius.

When Rose and Polly came home, late that afternoon, Leah was still in her bedroom with the blinds drawn and their father still sitting in his armchair as though in a trance. Polly was desperate to show off how she had mastered the latest dance steps and by her very enthusiasm roused Henry from his torpor. Rose, standing by the window so as deliberately to turn her back on her boisterous sister’s showing off, said, ‘Father, such an odd thing. Look, come and look do, there is a bride in our street.’ Polly stopped dancing immediately and rushed to join her sister at the window where the two of them began an unseemly jostling for position and the lace curtain was almost dragged apart.

‘Stop it!’ snapped Henry. ‘Come away from the window. It is rude to stare, come away at once.’

‘But father,’ Polly squeaked, ‘she is coming here, she is!’

‘I’m sure I’ve seen her before,’ Rose was saying. ‘I’m sure I have, I’m sure, but I can’t think …’

Henry had seized both of them by the arm and wrenched them away from the window with such violence that they both cried out at the same time as there was a knock on the door. ‘Quiet!’ he hissed, and went on holding their arms with both of them whimpering at the hurt of it. Another, louder knock came, but Henry shook his head and made them keep quite still. Their terror by this time was so great that both were near to tears and neither had any inclination

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to disobey a father who had suddenly changed character entirely. There was a third knock and then a different sound, a muffled, soft sound, and then footsteps retreating, and silence.

Henry let go of the girls and went to the window himself, where he stood behind the thick side curtain and peered out. He saw Evie, retreating down the street, alone. She was still in her wedding-dress, as Rose had reported. As he watched her, his eye was caught by something bright in the very corner of his line of vision. A ribbon, a yellow ribbon, trailing from his doorstep. Something had been left on his doorstep, left by Evie. ‘Stay here,’ he ordered the girls, both now huddled in a chair rubbing their arms where he had gripped them. Quietly, dreading that Leah would choose this moment of all moments to come down, he opened the door. Evie’s bouquet lay on the doorstep. A bunch of yellow roses tied with a rather faded and shabby-looking length of yellow ribbon. He bent to pick it up and heard as he did so the girls tip-toeing into the hall. ‘I told you to stay still!’ he shouted at them, but not before both had seen the bouquet. Rose burst into tears and Polly promptly ran upstairs screaming for her mother.

It was the end of their happy life, but then Leah had plenty of time to reflect that their happiness had ended some time ago, though they had both been reluctant to acknowledge this. Henry had been the more reluctant but now he, rather than she, was the more unhappy. She was fatalistic. She had always expected to pay and now she was paying, whereas Henry, who had done nothing wrong except in his own opinion, had always thought what he called commonsense would prevail. Evie had them both caught. Every day she walked down their street at least twice, every day she stood and looked at their house from the other side of the street. Only for a few moments, and never at the same time, but it was enough. Leah kept her blinds drawn at the front as well as her door locked. Clara had given notice, alarmed by the change in the household and not willing to clean in half-darkness, and no one else had been taken on. Leah said she would manage on her own, without a maid, and that she preferred the work to having to provide explanations for her odd habits.

Henry had talked of consulting the police and getting them to give Evie some kind of warning, but Leah had begged him not to. What could the police do? Evie was within her rights as a citizen, there was no reason on earth why she should not walk along their

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street whenever she chose, nor was there anything wrong in looking at their house. She offered no threat except in their own minds and even knocking at their door did not constitute a crime. She always went away when her knocks were unanswered, and who knew what she would say if asked by some policeman why she knocked at all? ‘I am come to call upon my mother,’ she would say, and what was wrong with that? No, it was no case for the police, surely Henry could see that. And he could. He saw it too clearly. Not only was Evie doing no harm, not only was she not disturbing any peace except theirs, but she had behaved well upon Jimmy’s dismissal and Henry felt, yet again, in her debt. There had been no scenes, no complaints, not even a ‘why?’ Jimmy had taken his money and gone, not to Bulloughs, but to a new firm just setting up, a branch of a Newcastle firm that Henry could tell would soon rival his own.

All that was left for them to do was to give in or run away. Leah would not give in. Henry had exhausted that option and now no longer considered it. Leah was as obdurate as ever and he had wasted enough time and energy trying to change her. So they would run away. There was no time to wait for a house to be built, which is what he would have liked. Instead, they looked all round the city, everywhere except Stanwix. Finally they lit upon a house on tl Dalston Road, but still within the city boundary. It was a doubl fronted affair, built of local stone, and had some pleasant features conservatory, a spacious hall and a south-facing walled garden. The countryside was very near - once past the nearby cemetery open fields began and stretched all the way to Dalston itself-but the city centre was only a twenty-minute brisk walk away. The area was not smart, however, and that was a drawback. Coming from Stanwix, so high above the river Eden and therefore salubrious as well as green, Dalston Road was lowlying and too near the industrial suburb of Denton Holme with its many factories.

Rose and Polly were appalled when told that they would be moving house. They wept at the stigma of living near to Bucks factory and within sight of Dixon’s chimney belching out its filthy smoke. It was useless to point out how much larger and prettier the garden was compared to the tiny one they would be leaving, or to list the merits of the conservatory about which they cared not one jot. They asked again and again the reason for leaving the home they loved and were told it was not their business to inquire into their parents’ decision. But they could see for themselves that neither

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parent seemed any happier about moving than they did. Their father was more irritable than he had ever been and their mother quiet and withdrawn. It was all a mystery and an unpleasant one.

But Rose and Polly knew it was something to do with that bride who had placed her bouquet on their doorstep and thrown their father into such an uncharacteristic rage by doing so. No explanations as to why the flowers had to be thrown into the dustbin (though they were perfectly fresh) was ever forthcoming. The girls vied with each other in imagining who the bride had been and, though their interpretations of her gesture differed wildly, they both agreed it was all something to do with Father and that was why Mother was so upset. Neither of them knew about Evie walking down the street or standing outside the house or knocking on the door, and Henry privately thanked God for it. He could not face dragging his daughters into this mess and dreaded more than anything the possibility of Evie switching her unwanted attentions to them. But Leah said she only came when the girls were sure to be at school and as for them meeting her walking down their street, this would mean nothing to them since they were unlikely to identify her. One glimpse, so long ago, in the hall of their house and another as she retreated from their doorstep, her face partially concealed by her veil, was not sufficient for them to recognise her again.

In any case, Evie had changed. She was no longer so very thin. She had filled out to such an extent Henry thought she might be expecting, but as the months went by and she grew no fatter and no baby appeared in her arms, he had deduced he was mistaken. It was married life that had changed Evie’s shape. It must suit her. Not only was she pleasantly rounded after six months but her complexion was quite rosy (unless she was using rouge). She walked with a bounce in her step which had been entirely lacking before and she was always well dressed. Henry heard that Jimmy flourished, as did the new firm for which he had risked working when he could so easily have played safe and gone to an established rival. Henry never had occasion to go down Etterby Terrace, which led nowhere, but, drawn to the street, he saw how the young couple’s house was coming on by leaps and bounds and would soon, once painted, be as good as any in the humble little row.

It was this, Evie’s prosperity, which made it so much harder to work out why the battle to win her mother over still mattered to her. ‘I cannot think why she persists,’ Henry said, when just before the

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move to Dalston Road Evie came and did one of her knocking turns, leaving Leah as usual depressed and nervous. ‘She has a husband now and her own home and every reason to be content.’

‘It has nothing to do with contentment,’ Leah sighed. ‘It is stronger than that. She cannot help herself.’

‘Well, Leah, if you think that, then you should pity her and want to aid her.’

‘Pity her? Oh, I pity her, I always have, but I hate her more. And as for coming to her aid, I could only do that by harming myself, it would be my undoing.’

‘We are not far from being undone in any case,’ said Henry, ‘moving from a home where we are happy all on account of your unreasonableness.’

‘Her unreasonableness.’

‘No, you are equally unreasoning, you are in no healthier frame of mind than she is, frankly. When will it stop is the point? Moving may solve very little. Have you thought …’

‘Of course I have thought.’

‘You realise she may …’

‘Yes, I realise. I expect it.’

‘You expect it? Then why in God’s name are we moving if you expect it?’ exploded Henry.

‘She will not be able to come so often,’ Leah said, ‘and I will not meet her in the street. Dalston Road is too far away for her to wander there every day. And she will not have been in the new house as she has been in this one. It is not tainted by her.’ Henry made a small sound of disgust. ‘Little things to you, Henry, but not to me. Even the distance of the front door from the street will help. Here, I am so vulnerable, opening as we do on to the street. In Dalston Road we will be set back comfortably and we have a porch and she cannot stand and look at that house as she can at this one. And there is a fence and a gate at the front and the gate can be locked, and it will be impossible for her to get near.’

‘A fortress,’ Henry said. ‘You wish us to live in a fortress.’

‘I wish to be safe.’

‘And will the girls tolerate this? Is it not hard enough for them to be moved without locking them up?’

‘They will not be locked up. I will not lock the gate when you and they are at home. She will not come then, she never does. You may

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shake your head, Henry, but I know her movements. She will only come when she can be certain I am alone.’

‘Then one day, however careful you are with your locking of gates and however much you cower within this new house, she will catch you. You will be forced to speak with her and it may achieve in a few minutes more than all these years of hiding have done, and if I had had my way …’

‘Yes, Henry, I know.’

Those were their last words on the subject before the move to Dalston Road, which proved every bit as painful as had been anticipated. The new house seemed vast and cold, and their furniture lost in it, and in spite of the many new attractive wallpapers and carpets it was not cheerful. Left alone there all day while Henry was at work and the girls at school, Leah felt thoroughly displaced, though she forced herself to be active and set herself daily tasks in an effort to settle in quickly. She was always busy arranging and organising the house and had taken on two girls, Amy and Dora, who came in the morning to help her. While they were with her she made a supreme effort and left both gate and doors unlocked, though closed, but the moment they departed she made herself secure. It puzzled her neighbours, some of whom came to call and were astonished to find their way barred by locks. The vicar of St James, the nearby parish church, was perturbed enough to send a note by post expressing his concern and asking if perhaps he had merely been unfortunate enough to call on a day when for some particular reason the front gate had a padlock on it. Leah replied, saying that the gate had to be secured for a short time in the afternoons without offering any explanation as to why. She knew this would fuel local gossip but she did not care.

In arranging the rooms in the new house she took pains to make sure her life was lived at the back. Her bedroom overlooked the garden now, whereas in Stanwix their best bedroom had overlooked the street, and she chose two rooms at the back to be both the morning-room and the drawing-room. The rooms at the front became the dining-room, rarely used and almost never during the day, and a smoking-room which was also Henry’s workroom where sometimes he did some cutting. It was delightful the way she never needed to look out of any of the windows facing the road and even more delightful that she had discovered a side entry into an adjacent unmade-up new road which she could use when she went out. She