Spilt Milk (12 page)

The car jumped over every pothole, and Vivian twice hit her head on the roof.

‘All right?’ asked Dr Harding as she rubbed her forehead. He was bent forwards, obviously delighted to be driving Frank’s car. She thought of her late husband and imagined the horror he’d feel, knowing she had let Bernard Harding loose behind the wheel. She really should have been brave enough to drive herself. Frank had given her plenty of lessons.

The hagstone was in her pocket and she touched it. She was sure she had only love for Nellie in her heart. That and a desire to undo certain things, to smooth out the knot of family ties that bound them so awkwardly. Husband or not, it made no sense that Nellie had not responded to her letter.

Dear Nellie
, Vivian had written.
I have been thinking and I would like to offer you and Henry a home with me …
It had taken many attempts to get the tone right. She had already suggested to Nellie at the funeral that they could live together. In her letter she had repeated the offer, stating clearly that Nellie and Henry would have their own rooms and would in no way need to spend their time with her. She’d put the letter in an envelope, addressed it, got her hat, coat and handbag and went to catch the last post. When she received no return letter, she decided to go and see her sister in person.

‘Turn right here,’ she told Dr Harding as they spun through the village, frightening the ducks around the pond. ‘And then take the next left after the church. It’s a few miles along the road.

Vivian stared at the rows of houses, the well-tended vegetable gardens. Gypsies were camped in painted wooden wagons just outside the village, their horses tethered beside them. When finally she caught a glimpse of the river, her heart quickened and she realized she still thought of this as home.

‘That’s it,’ she said. ‘Right ahead. Careful of potholes. Turn right here.’

They came to a stop by an overgrown hedgerow. Vivian got out of the car and looked up at the ruins of the cottage. A honeysuckle clambered into a broken window and came out on the roof. The thatch had slipped under the weight of green moss, leaving gaping holes. Several other windows hung open, their panes covered in what looked like thrown white paint but was, Vivian could see as she stepped closer, bird droppings.

‘Surely they don’t live here?’ said Bernard. ‘It’s a hovel.’

Vivian pulled the garden gate open, yanking the bindweed and
sticky goosegrass from its handle, the feel of lichen rough under her glove. Finches rose up out of the hedgerow, chattering loudly at having their peace disturbed. A pheasant called in the overgrown orchard.

‘Shall we go?’ said Bernard, getting out of the car and lighting a cigarette. Vivian shook her head. It annoyed her to have to share this moment with Bernard. It would have been better to have come alone. She left him smoking, playing with the iron water pump, splashing water at his feet, and took the track down to the river.

Here, nothing had changed. The black poplar trees swayed and the willow branches dangled in the water. She had loved Joe Ferier under those willows. There was the quick movement of fish as they darted back and forth in the river weeds. What was it Nellie had said? That they would be able to come here and know little Josephine was resting in peace. That they would come here for the rest of their lives.

She took the stone from her pocket. Nellie had promised that as long as they had the stone, the secret of the baby would remain with them. But that had been when they were together. She held the stone out over the water. It was over. All of it. Her baby and Nellie were lost to her.

And yet.

Vivian put the stone back in her pocket. The sisters might be together again one day. The stone might keep her daughter’s grave safe and undisturbed. That’s what she told herself as she walked back to the motor car.

‘I’ll drive back,’ she told Bernard, lighting up a cigarette. She blew a smoke ring and was pleased to see the scandalized look on Bernard’s face. ‘It’s my car, after all,’ she said, and realized something had hardened inside her. She was no longer afraid of being alone.

When she returned home, there was post waiting for her. Bills and her own letter to Nellie, which had been returned by the post office. Among them was a small pale blue envelope, the address
written in her sister’s careful handwriting. She ripped it open. Inside was a short note. Nellie apologized for not having written sooner. She’d had so much to do. She had moved to London and was living and working in Henry’s brother’s public house.

Vivian could not imagine Nellie in a city. They had a biscuit tin once with a picture of the Changing of the Guard on it, the only image of London she knew. She imagined Nellie standing there in the crowds, wearing the farmer’s smock that acted as a bathing suit, her old straw hat perched on the back of her head, her bare feet planted apart. Nellie looking beautiful and straight-backed, chewing on a bit of hay. It was enough to make her smile.

Weeks later Vivian sat in Frank’s button-back velvet chair. Life was easier without Frank fussing over things, but still she missed him. She hadn’t realized she had grown so fond of him. Frank had sat in this chair for so many hours at a time, slumped here with his hands clasped in his lap, turning one thumb over the other, smiling that soft, grateful smile of his as she brought him tea and cake. His mother would have approved of her, he liked to say.

The door swung open and Bernard came into the room with a tray of tea things.

‘You sit there and rest your feet,’ he said, putting the tray down and pouring her a cup of tea. ‘A date and walnut slice?’

Vivian shook her head.

‘The thing is,’ he said, taking a slice of cake and seating himself on the little footstool beside Vivian, ‘I have something very personal I want to ask you.’

Bernard smiled. He was clean-shaven, his cheeks raw-looking. Vivian had an image of him standing in front of a shaving mirror with a razor in his hand, like Frank used to. The careful movements he would make. The towel on his shoulder, his braces loose around his trouser belt. She imagined sitting in the bedroom brushing her hair and having a view of him in the
bathroom. Dr and Mrs Harding. She had a certain standing in the town now. People greeted her cordially. The baker gave her the freshest loaves when she shopped, and the butcher always sold her a decent cut of meat. Her status gave her privacy and respectability, she had learned. People accepted her readily as a widow. A doctor’s wife, though, would be another step up. A doctor’s wife would be served first in the butcher’s queue, all the other women – lowering their eyes, looking into their wicker baskets – accepting this fact in good grace.

‘We’ve been friends for a long time now,’ he said.

Was this going to be a marriage proposal? Could she forgive him his dainty size and bald pate covered in tiny freckles and moles? Bernard balanced the cake on his knee and took her hand in his.

‘This is difficult to say, but well, here goes. There is a girl, a poor young thing – and she has got herself into trouble.’

‘A girl?’ She looked down at the sight of her slim fingers encased in his hands. ‘What are you talking about? What have you done, Bernard?’

‘Me? No, no! I’ve done nothing, Vivian. It’s not what you think. Good Lord, no.’

The girl was not even known to him. Her parents were set on her making a good marriage in the coming year and, naturally, no man would dream of marrying her if he knew she had already had a child. A girl’s virginity might be of slightly less importance today, in these modern times, than in years before, but there were some standards that hadn’t changed, thank God. He hoped the young woman, who came from a good family, a civil servant’s daughter, in fact, could stay with Vivian for her confinement so that she could hide her predicament from her social set.

‘It would be an act of kindness that would be very well remunerated. I only ask because I believe you to be so full of good heart. I know you could help this young woman.’

‘And afterwards?’

‘The baby will be adopted and two lives will have been saved. You’ll be paid well for having her here. Think of it as giving a woman and a baby a new start in life. I know you are not made of stone, Vivian. I know your days might be lonely without Frank and that you regret never having had children. I know your sister has lost contact with you. Speaking as your doctor, I feel this kind of work would suit you. This poor girl will be in need of motherly care. You could be so much help to her.’

‘And I could adopt the baby? I could bring it up?’

Bernard shook his head. He let go of her hand and finished the slice of cake, dusting away the crumbs on his trouser leg with a napkin. Of course Vivian couldn’t adopt it. A woman on her own bringing up a child? No, no. He fully expected Vivian would remarry, given a little time to let the passing of Frank settle. Then she could adopt a small tribe if she wanted. A married woman without children was of course a great tragedy. As was the shame of an unmarried woman who had borne children. Personally he liked a house full of merry little infants. He gave Vivian’s hand a squeeze, and she took it as a sign of encouragement. Was he suggesting they might marry? Surely that was what he meant?

‘I would be delighted to see you as a mother,’ said Bernard Harding. ‘And already you can be a mother to this poor girl from a good family who needs your help.’

When he left, Vivian thought things through. If she married Bernard, she could have children. That was surely what he was offering in his indirect, muddled way. She would help the girl. Of course she would. Her heart went out to her. Vivian had been a mother herself. Nobody could take that away from her. If Joe ever came back, and she knew it was a fantasy she should not entertain, then she would tell him how she had helped this girl and he would think her not just the mother of his child but a mother to others too.

The pub was a two-storey building beside soot-blackened railway arches. Its glass-panelled front doors were engraved with swirling white letters amid flowers and intertwining vines:
Superior Porter Stout and Ales. Old Irish Whiskey.
The place was dusty-looking; its brown windows needed a good wash. Only the brass door handles had been made bright by the many hands that took hold of them every day. Inside was a world of dark wood, sawdust on the floor, brass and gleaming mirrors behind the bar. Nellie turned around, looking at the sepia photographs on the walls. Boxing rings and whiskered men in leotards, crowds gathered around them.

‘That’s George twenty-five years ago,’ said Henry. ‘He was a middleweight boxer in his youth.’

‘In my youth, indeed!’ George bustled into the bar, his arms stretched wide in welcome. ‘Plenty of life still in me!’

He grasped Nellie’s hand in his, and she gripped his hand right back. He had brown eyes that had a sparkle to them, raised-looking knuckles on his square hands, a scar above one eye and a cauliflower ear gone purple years ago.

‘She’s got a grip!’ he yelled, pretending Nellie had hurt his hand. He wore a signet ring on his little finger. He showed it to Nellie. A slab of silver and gold with a B engraved upon it. ‘Bertha,’ he said, waving his little finger at her. ‘Our dear mother, God rest her. Got to look after family, haven’t you? I’m heartily glad to see you both.’ He patted Henry on the back. ‘Who’d have thought an army man like you would marry? Let’s get you a drink, both of you. I’ll show you where you’re going to be living. It’s not much, Nellie, Henry will tell you, but I call it home.’

There was a kitchen at the back of the pub. That’s where they would eat their meals. It smelled of mice, Nellie thought. Up a flight of dark wooden stairs, thirteen in all, were three bedrooms and a bathroom with a bath on claw feet that wasn’t plumbed in. ‘There is a box room too,’ George said, opening a door to reveal a narrow staircase and a soft blade of light coming from a window above.

In the kitchen a long table was covered in newspapers and pots and pans. The cooking range was thick with grease. ‘The cleaning lady doesn’t like cleaning,’ said George apologetically. ‘Our sister, Lydia – oh, I told her you were coming, Henry, so beware of visits from her – says I should sack the woman.’

Henry laughed. He told Nellie his dreadful, overbearing sister might just be right for once in her life.

The big square sink under a dirty-paned window faced a yard out back. In the backyard was an elder tree. A tree of luck. In the country, every house had one in the garden. Its branches were black as coal, its leaves grimy and limp. It was as soot-covered as the railway arches outside. Nellie thought she might like to wash its leaves clean so she could see its greenery.

‘I’m busiest on Fridays and Saturdays,’ George said. ‘I lost a lot of our customers to the King’s shilling, but they’re coming back now, poor beggars. I’ve got their wives as customers too. The war brought them out on their own, and I say it’s all to the good. Women should be allowed to get out once in a while, hey? And don’t they love a sing-song. I play a bit of piano and do some of the old songs. Weekdays when it’s quiet, I offer a pinch of snuff and a look at the
Sporting Life
with every drink. That’s for the gents. But you’ll see. You’ll get used to the work. And having our very own Mrs Farr behind the bar will bring a touch of class. Oh yes, you’ll be very good for business, Nellie. I do hope you’ll like it here, both of you.’

There was a loud rumbling sound and the dresser against the wall began to shake. Henry grabbed the edge of the table with
both hands. Nellie moved towards him as he threw his arms over his head, dropping to the floor.

‘That’s a train going past,’ said George, pretending to hold a wall up with his hand. ‘You’ll get used to it.’

The noise died away and the china on the dresser ceased its rattling. Nellie breathed in and then out slowly, as if testing the air. Henry was rocking quietly beside her. Sunlight broke through the clouds outside, and light filled the windows. A look passed between Nellie and George as they helped Henry into a chair. She could see George hadn’t expected his brother to be in such poor shape.

‘My dear brother, it seems you’ve got yourself an angel here,’ George said, his brown eyes bright with conviction.

Her first night in London, Nellie hardly slept. She lay in her new bedroom, staring at the window. In the bedroom next door, her husband’s brother lay in bed. She could hear him snoring. In the room across the hall, Henry was stretched out. She hoped his sleep was dreamless. She heard a group of men and women walking loudly under her window, their voices rising in laughter. They sounded carefree. That’s how she would be from now on. No more back-breaking farm work to wear her down. She had moved to the city.

She rose early the next morning, as was her habit, and at dawn in the backyard watched the city make itself solid, coming out of the darkness, its skyline firm against the spreading grey light. Henry limped outside and sat on a stack of beer barrels, his walking stick across his knees. Sunlight fell across dirty cobblestones. Dandelions flowered hopefully in dark corners. It wasn’t quite the Garden of Eden, Henry said, picking one of the small flowers and handing it to Nellie. But it was going to be home for them from now on.

Nellie put the flower in her hair. Vivian would have laughed to see her. ‘Wet-the-beds’ they used to call the ragged yellow weeds.
She was glad to be far away from her sister. She loved her but the weight of the past pulled at that love, making it awkward and complicated. The river burial still haunted Nellie, and she wanted to forget. Every time she saw Vivian it brought back thoughts of the baby. Joe Ferier’s baby. A creature born out of a betrayal; a secret to be hidden. Rose had brought Vivian and Nellie up as spinsters, not as potential wives and mothers. No wonder poor Josephine had died. They did not have the right maternal instincts, she suspected, either of them. She picked a dandelion, shook the soot from its petals and put it in Henry’s lapel. She bent again and picked one for George.

Right off, Nellie loved the pub. The first few weeks serving drinks the customers laughed at her country accent and made her feel shy and stupid, but George told her to ignore them. His clientele were all a rum lot of foreigners and cockneys anyway. Her country accent was just one more to add to the mix. ‘You be yourself, Nellie,’ he said as he closed up for the night. He bolted the door and lifted his fists, dancing across the room towards her. ‘And if anybody gives you trouble, give me the nod and I’ll sort them out for you.’

George poured them both a drink. A tot of rum for him; a glass of milk stout for her. ‘A respectable lady’s drink,’ he said. ‘Yes, you just be yourself,’ he said again, and she smiled at him, feeling a blush come to her cheeks.
A lady
. That’s just how he made her feel. He held her gaze for a moment before she looked away. The gas lights had been dimmed, and in the flickering golden light the mirrors behind the bar sparkled. She watched George shake a bucket of sawdust out on the floor. Its smell reminded Nellie of the pine trees back home. She breathed in the scent.

‘We wandered in the shadow of the pines, my love and I,’ sang George, and they both began laughing as he threw the sawdust up in the air and tap-danced through the falling dust.

Henry insisted George take Nellie sightseeing. Just because his nerves meant he couldn’t go riding on buses and trams didn’t mean she had to stay home. George took her to music halls and theatres, fairgrounds and boxing matches. Big department stores, with mirrors everywhere and shining marble floors, delighted her. She thought of her childhood and her youth spent in the cottage, the quietness of her life. All that time, there had existed this city, utterly unknown to her.

On George’s urgings she bought a pot of face powder, a lipstick and a white ostrich-feather scarf that she draped around her shoulders. And still, wearing all her new clothes, she walked, as Henry said fondly one night, like a farm worker coming over rough ground, hoping to get home before dusk.

George took Nellie to cafés and market-stall vendors. She tasted foods she had never tried before. Jellied eels, hot salt beef, Dutch herrings and penny bagels, faggots and mash, doughnuts and cream cakes. Bright orange salmon eggs.

‘Our little country peasant,’ said George fondly. ‘I like a woman who eats well. Let’s go and have an Italian ice cream. I bet you’ve never tried pistachio before.’

In bed at night, Nellie closed her eyes, a hand on her full belly, indigestion and wind making her draw her knees up. She dreamed vividly. There were people everywhere, swarming shapes of crowds, fast and fluid as grain pouring from a torn sack. She and Henry and George were pushing their way through city streets, the three of them linking arms. Then they were in the pub kitchen and she was preparing a mutton stew, explaining how her sister Rose had taught her to cook. Vivian appeared with a child in her arms and said it was Nellie’s. Henry said it couldn’t be. George laughed at the thought of it, his hand stroking Nellie’s cheek, offering her salmon eggs on a small silver spoon. The others disappeared and there were just her and George. He fed her and stroked her hair. He poured the eggs into her mouth on the tip of a spoon and they popped on her tongue, silky, watery,
and full of the memories of wide rivers. When she woke before dawn, she opened her eyes and lay in a sleepy state, trying to recapture her dreams.

By Christmas they had become a tight little unit. No need for words a lot of the time. In the empty hours when the pub was closed up, Nellie cooked meals, conjuring up good things from scraps and leftovers. Henry poured gin. George tinkered on the piano and sang old music-hall numbers.

When Henry was ill and his melancholic moods kept him in bed, hallucinating and ranting, Nellie and George cared for him together. They were resolute that no doctors should be called. There would be no hospitals or mental wards for Henry. That, Nellie had promised him long ago.

‘George is a good man,’ Henry said when he went down with bronchitis again, his lungs forever weakened by the wartime gas. ‘He’ll look after you, Nell. I can’t. George’s got a soft spot for you. Fallen for your country charms, like I did. If I die I don’t mind because I’ll have ended my days here with you.’

‘Get along with you,’ she scolded. ‘You should be on the stage.’

‘I am serious. You must marry George when I’m gone.’

‘Now that is ridiculous!’ she said, pulling his bedcovers straight. ‘What melodramatic nonsense you come out with, Henry Farr.’

More and more, Henry had become self-pitying, and she wasn’t sure how to treat him so she was brisk with him, hoping that was right. She wiped his brow and bent to kiss his cheek. There were tears at the corners of his tight-closed eyes.

On Sundays when the pub was closed, George and Nellie went to the cinema. Afterwards they acted out the films for Henry. Charlie Chaplin’s film
The Immigrant
had them all in stitches.

‘You’re the best tramp I’ve ever seen,’ said Henry from his chair by the fireplace. He was in good spirits again. Robust in
his humour. Quick-witted, as she liked him to be. He adjusted the blanket over his knee. ‘George, show me the penny trick again.’

George put some music on the gramophone. A new American tune he loved, ‘Shine on, Harvest Moon’. He grabbed a bowler hat from the hat stand and explained he was the little tramp in the story, finding a penny, giving it away, getting it back again. He shook his trouser leg and opened his eyes wide, dropping a coin on the tiled floor. He picked the coin up and dropped it again and lost it to Nellie, who was playing both the waiter and the girl in the film. She laughed too much and forgot which character she was.

‘And does he get the girl?’ Henry asked.

‘Of
course
he gets the girl,’ said George. He swung his arms around Nellie and spun her towards Henry. ‘It’s a hard job getting to kiss the leading lady,’ he laughed, letting go of her.

‘That’s my job,’ said Henry. Nellie leaned over him and pressed her lips to his forehead. The music rolled over them and when the record ended they played it again, none of them wanting the moment to end. ‘Shine on,’ George sang in a deep, bass voice, taking Nellie in his arms and dancing her around the room. The three of them sang lustily together. ‘Shine on, harvest moon, for me and my gal
.
’

One night in the spring, Nellie woke with a start. She got up, tiptoeing downstairs in her nightdress, her long hair in plaits. It was pleasant to go out into the backyard and stand barefoot on the cobbles, watching the city sky. She liked the smog and the pale yellow bowl of light that hung over the buildings. It made her feel she was part of something vast and constantly changing. Fog licked around her ankles, and her flannel nightie clung to her body. Noise moved differently in the night. A girl’s high-pitched laughter might come from the house next door or from far over the dirty Thames river. The creak and groan of machinery could
be near or miles away. How her life had changed. She could hardly remember the woman she had been when she first arrived in London, a silent creature, shocked by the dense stirrings of a city. She still remembered nights by the river, so empty and silent the papery flutter of a bat’s wing had made her flinch; the click of her boots on a country lane when she walked in moonlight, the loneliest sound she knew.

Candlelight flickered in the kitchen window. The kitchen door opened. In the rim of a beer barrel, the reflection of a gold signet ring caught her eye, the flash of it like a winking star.

‘Can’t sleep?’

‘I hope I didn’t wake you.’

‘I heard you pass by my door. We’re a nice little family, you, me and Henry. But, well, I confess I don’t know what to do. You’ve got me thinking things I oughtn’t be thinking, Nellie. I’m an honest man and Henry is too. Me and him have had a talk.’

‘You’ve talked about me?’

‘Nellie, I won’t lie to you. I’ve had my share of romances. I’m not going to pretend I haven’t. But I’ve come a cropper with you. So, yes, me and my brother have had a chat.’