Spilt Milk (17 page)

Birdie got out of bed carefully. She lifted the needle from the gramophone record, letting the room fall silent. She felt homesick. She put her hand on her belly. Took it off again. Her body was a mystery to her. It went on, without her consent, growing larger and heavier. Birdie found she knew herself a little less every day.

By December, Birdie felt huge. Her breasts ached and her skin stretched like a dress two sizes too small for her. She was restless,
and late one night she got out of bed. She could not stay still any longer. She walked down the back stairs, treading lightly, trying not to wake anybody. She could feel the weight of the baby pressing down between her legs, and she walked with a stumbling, wide gait that made her feel helpless and clumsy.

In the kitchen she turned the lights on and carefully shut the door. She felt driven by a need to clean the already spotless kitchen. She scrubbed the table and swept the floor, glad to find dust in a corner behind the door. From the cupboard under the stairs she pulled out the carpet cleaner and attacked the front parlour rugs. After that she unlocked the back door in the kitchen. Nobody would see her in the dark, but even so, she was afraid when she stepped outside.

The wind was cold but it felt good on her skin. She breathed in deeply. She felt everything sharply, the wind, the shiver in the trees, the damp ground under her bare feet. She put her hand on her belly and realized she longed for this all to be over. To give up the child and be free to go back to London and try to be a singer. And if that didn’t work she would join the Wrens. She would be part of this war. She was tired and lonely and afraid of giving birth.

Vivian, wearing dressing gown and slippers, was in the kitchen when Birdie went back inside. Her face was pinched with tiredness. Her hair under her hairnet was flattened to her skull, her eyes blinking like a newborn creature. Her voice, though, was brisk and sure.

‘Your cousin Roger has been killed in action. I’m so sorry to give you such bad news. Nellie sent a telegram yesterday. I really am so sorry, my dear.’

Birdie sat down wearily.

‘I’d say you’re nesting,’ her aunt said, putting the kettle on for tea. ‘I’ve seen it before, Birdie. Perfectly normal. It won’t be long now. That baby wants to be born.’

The baby was born in the chime hours, at four in the morning, on 29 December 1939, in Dr Harding’s surgery. The doctor had come to the guest house just before 10 p.m., and Aunt Vivian had hurried Birdie out into the street. Dr Harding stood holding the car door open, urging them to make haste. The sky was black and there was a smell of snow in the air, yet Birdie felt so hot she wanted to throw off her clothes. ‘You said there was a month to go,’ she insisted as another pain shot through her, making her gasp. ‘This can’t be right, Auntie. I can’t be having the baby yet.’

Birdie stopped on the pavement and began to cry, while Vivian begged her to be quiet so as not to alert the neighbours.

‘Up you get,’ said Dr Harding when Vivian brought Birdie into his rooms.

There was a hospital bed with rubber sheets laid across it. Birdie climbed onto the bed and lay down. A lamp shone over her.

‘Let’s have no silly crying,’ Dr Harding said. He tied her wrists to the bed and told her to put her feet into two slings that hung either side of the bed on metal posts.

‘Aunt Vivian?’

‘I’m here,’ said Vivian. ‘I’m right here. Be brave. The doctor knows what he’s doing. You’re very lucky. He is going to give you something to stop the pain. You just relax, dear, and you won’t remember a thing, I promise.’

Did her aunt sound scared? The doctor pressed a cloth to Birdie’s face and she breathed in a sweet, cloying smell. ‘What if I’m sick,’ she tried to say as he lifted the cloth off her face, but the words wouldn’t form properly. Birdie wanted to say the room was too warm, but the cloth was on her face again and a wave of sleep dragged her down, pressing on her body. Her mother appeared in her dreams, her hands reaching out to her.

‘It’s a girl,’ said her aunt, and her voice sounded very far away.

Birdie opened her eyes. She was a girl? Who was a girl? She slept again.

‘A girl,’ said Aunt Vivian, stroking Birdie’s cheek. ‘A little girl, Birdie. You had a girl.’

So this was her baby? Of course. She remembered nothing of the birth, but yes, this little girl with feathery blonde hair and a creased frown on her face must be her baby. Aunt Vivian opened the curtains and the crystal light of sun on thick snow filled the room. Her aunt leaned over her, and Birdie felt the woman’s wet cheek press against her. Why was her aunt crying? Her face was pale. As if she had been the one who had given birth.

‘You should name her,’ her aunt whispered. ‘Give her a name.’

Birdie sat up, leaned over and lifted the child into her arms. She would call her Kay, after the singer. She had thought she would not look at the baby when it came. She hadn’t even wanted to know whether it was a boy or a girl. As her pregnancy had gone on, she had been more and more sure she was doing the right thing, giving the child up. She had yearned to get back to her old life. But now everything changed. When she had imagined a baby, she hadn’t realized it would be
this
baby. This baby she loved on sight.

Spring brought lilacs flowering. Iris and dogwood, hyacinth and cherry blossom, and a great list of flowers Vivian named for Birdie, walking with her in the guest-house gardens, trying to encourage her to take an interest in the details of the world about her. As the sun grew stronger and higher in the sky each day, the lilac blooms turned brown and roses bloomed, the lawn was thick with dandelions. Birdie preferred the dandelions: they reminded her of the pub’s backyard. She had liked sitting by the outhouse as a child, cross-legged on the cobbles, gathering bunches of the raggedy yellow flowers for her father, who, if she was very quiet, would come and sit on a beer barrel, watching her, telling her about his life as a soldier.

Birdie had been relieved when her aunt said she could stay on with her. She didn’t have the energy these days to think of going anywhere. All her plans for the future meant nothing to her now. Her aunt said she could take all the time she liked. She fussed over her, worrying if she did too much housework, suggesting she go off with Matilda to the cinema and enjoy herself.

She left the garden and wandered through the streets. She supposed she had been given a chance of a new life. That was what her mother had said when they spoke on the telephone recently. Her mother was not very good with modern appliances. She preferred telegrams. ‘Are you all right, Birdie?’ she shouted down the line. ‘I said, are you all right? Do you need anything?’

Birdie supposed she needed her child. That was what the feeling that weighed down on her was. A sense she had made a terrible mistake.

‘No, Ma, I’m fine here,’ she said.

It was market day, and she stopped to watch a brown-eyed calf suckling from its mother. She heard the clattering of hooves behind her and turned to see a black and white horse galloping down the cobbled road. Its nostrils flared pink, its black mane flew out in the wind, sparks flying from its metal shoes as they struck the paved road. A boy was riding the horse, arms flying, legs banging against its sides, yelling at all to clear the road.

Birdie jumped out of its path. As she did so, her beret slipped off her head. She bent to retrieve it, and two hands grabbed her around the waist. She struggled as they lifted her up and swung her to one side, just as the horse charged past, a steaming, snorting creature, a smell of sweat rising off it. The crowds were yelling furious insults at the boy, pushing this way and that to escape the horse’s path. Birdie tried to see who it was that held her so tightly. As her feet touched the ground, the hands let go.

‘I hope I didn’t scare you.’

It was Charles Bell, Matilda’s farmer.

‘Mr Bell?’ said Birdie. ‘No. Well, a little. How are you?’

Charles Bell said he was not given to grabbing young women. He corrected himself. He had not
grabbed
her. God, what was he saying. What a word! She must think him a chump. He was sorry. What he meant was he had been attempting to save her.

‘Like a knight in shining armour?’ she asked, putting her hat back on. ‘Like Clark Gable?’

‘Sort of,’ he said, grinning.

When he asked her if she might like to walk with him – he was about to look over some Irish cattle with a mind to buy them for fattening over the summer – she said yes, why not, and fell into step with him. He was a quiet man, but when he talked about his farm and discussed the animals they looked at, he became chatty and confiding with her. It was late morning when they strolled up
the cobbled road. Birdie realized she had just spent the last hour without thinking of her own sadnesses. She was aware of them both slowing their walk, dawdling, as if they wanted to put off the moment of parting. They reached the guest house sooner than Birdie wanted.

‘Hello?’ said Matilda when Birdie and Charles walked into the guest-house kitchen. Her eyes looked them over carefully. ‘What are you two doing?’

‘I was nearly knocked down by a horse. Mr Bell saved me.’

‘I just moved her out of its path. I was coming here in any case,’ said Charles mildly. ‘I wanted to ask you, Matilda, if you’d like to visit my farm.’

‘Come and see where you live, you mean?’

‘Matilda would love to,’ said Aunt Vivian. She looked pleased.

‘You could come, Mrs Stewart,’ said Charles. ‘Come at harvest time.’

He smiled, and for a moment Birdie imagined that his smile lingered on her. She blushed. It was ridiculous to think that. There he was now, talking to Matilda as friendly as anything, accepting a cup of tea, discussing her visit to the farm. She had imagined he looked longer at her, that was all. Like she imagined she still felt her baby move inside her some nights when she lay very still in bed. She left the room, and when she looked back through the open door she saw that nobody had even noticed her go.

A group of soldiers were billeted in the guest house for the month of June. They were working on a new airfield the other side of the town, digging up a farmer’s land and laying acres of concrete for the RAF. Matilda and Birdie were suddenly busy, serving breakfasts and cleaning rooms.

‘This place hasn’t had paying guests for years,’ said Matilda. She had on a clean apron and her shoes were polished. Her face glowed with exertion. ‘They’re a great bunch of blokes, aren’t they?’

‘Thanks for breakfast,’ said one of the soldiers. He was a ginger-haired man with pink sunburn across his freckled nose. He was the last to leave, pulling on his khaki jacket in a hurry, holding a slice of toast in his mouth. The other men were calling for him in the truck outside, waiting to leave for their day’s labouring. He gave Matilda a wink and she giggled.

‘That’s Colin,’ said Matilda, leaning against the door frame as the truck pulled away. ‘He’s had me in stitches with his daft jokes this morning. You should listen to some of them, Birdie. He’d cheer you up a bit.’

The men returned each evening around 6 p.m., covered in dust and dirt. There were eight of them, loud and cocky and full of chat-up lines. They had pin-ups of blonde Hollywood starlets and scantily dressed girls in their rooms and talked about vamps and good-time girls. Some of them came from London. City lads who made jokes about country bumpkins and left chewing gum stuck under the tables in the dining room. They traipsed around, filling the guest house with their presence, their rapid-fire filthy jokes and banter. Aunt Vivian’s cats had slunk off to live in the garages at the end of the garden, hiding under her little Austin 7 car. Birdie understood their cautious ways. She had become wary too, silent and shadowy as the cats. She had not sung for ages. Not even to herself. Sitting in bed she tried the first few bars of a song, but it died in her throat.

The soldiers left the guest house and Aunt Vivian closed the tea room. She was going to spent her annual summer holiday with Dr Harding this year. A house party at his sister’s seafront home in Cromer.

Matilda’s invitation to see Charles Bell’s farm had been extended to a suggestion she bring a tent and help out with the harvest for a few days.

Birdie and Matilda stood on the front step and watched Vivian climb into her car.

‘Well, that’s it,’ said Matilda as the car bounced away down the street. ‘You’ve got the place to yourself, Birdie. Look.’ She pulled a postcard from her pocket. The soldier she had liked, the red-headed man called Colin, had been writing to her.

‘He wants me to send him a photo of myself. In a bathing costume, the cheeky so-and-so.’

‘And are you going to?’

‘Of course I am. It’s for his morale. A girl I know is writing to three different soldiers. She does it to cheer them up. It’s patriotic. You should do it too. It’s fun.’

‘Maybe I will,’ Birdie said. She thought of her postcard reaching the hands of Peter. She imagined him, a vague shadowy man in uniform, holding a picture of her in a bathing costume. Would he recognize her, or had he forgotten all about her by now? Their daughter would be seven months old. What did babies do at that age? Would she be crawling? She put her hand on her belly, a gesture she found herself doing whenever she thought of her daughter.

That afternoon Charles Bell telephoned. His truck had broken down and he asked Matilda to take her bicycle. She could catch the train and cycle out to the farm. Birdie heard Matilda discussing the change of plan.

‘I’ll ask her,’ she said, and put her hand over the mouthpiece. ‘Birdie, he says would you like to come with me? Please say yes. I shall get lost cycling by myself. Please?’

Birdie shrugged. She supposed it wouldn’t do any harm to go to the farm for a couple of days. Better than drifting around here on her own, thinking too much.

‘It’s no good confusing the enemy if you get all the locals lost too,’ complained Matilda. All the road signs had been taken down, and they were not sure which way to go.

Birdie looked again at the map. ‘It’s that way,’ she said.

They walked their bicycles along a rutted track, through
woodland where the trees gave them shade until the land opened out again and a small farmhouse could be seen.

It was surrounded by acres of flowers. A river rolled through its fields, and on the other side of it were more flowers. Birdie hadn’t expected all this. Her aunt had suggested the place would be dusty and dirty. Sitting in the middle of a patchwork of colourful flowers, the house with its black corrugated-iron roof looked sturdy and true. She felt her heart shift a little, and wondered if this wasn’t the loveliest place she had ever seen. And this was where her mother and her aunt had grown up. Maybe that was why she felt at home here?

‘There’s a shortage of flower seeds for nurseries,’ said Charles, coming across the yard with a couple of black and white dogs following behind him. ‘They used to come from abroad, but since the war the supply has stopped because of trade embargoes and shipping routes being diverted. We’re growing sunflowers and millet for bird food too.’

He walked briskly away and waded into the field, grabbing armfuls of flowers, coming back, offering them to the women.

‘Welcome to the farm,’ he said.

The harvest started that afternoon, and Birdie watched the barley grain pouring from the threshing machine as the men held sacks to be filled and tied off. She narrowed her eyes against the sun, squinting as dust blew in the air, milky and sweet-smelling.

The day was heat-soaked. Dust rose in small spirals. It clung to the farm workers’ faces. Birdie thought they looked like a regiment of desert soldiers, not labourers threshing the fields. In the farmhouse kitchen Birdie got herself a glass of water. Charles was proud that he had mains water on his farm. The people who lived in Ark Farm, the neighbouring farmhouse, had got their place on the mains and he’d been able to get his farm connected too. It was dark in the kitchen, and it took a moment to see clearly. There was a polished oak table and four chairs around it.
A jam jar full of large white daisies stood on the table. Birdie knew her mother would have said they were unlucky. She never had white flowers in the house. Aunt Vivian, though, had cut flowers everywhere. She favoured blue irises. Birdie liked the white daisies with their yellow centres and dusty pollen dropping on the table.

Against the far wall were piles of newspapers, almanacs and journals. The linoleum floor had recently been mopped, and a soft tideline of dirt bordered the boots and the newspapers. On the sink was a bottle of Rinso floor cleaner with its lid off. Charles had cleaned the place, perhaps for their arrival. She replaced the lid on the Rinso bottle and took a glass from a shelf. It was dusty inside and she rinsed it.

Birdie let the water run for a while and put her wrists under the tap, small rivers of dirt running down her arms. When she filled the glass and drank, the water tasted cold and earthy. She helped herself to another glassful and tried to imagine her mother and aunt here as young women. The cottage and how it must have been.

Birdie walked out into the orchard and admired the plum trees heavy with fruit. She made her way to the railway wagon at the end of the orchard. Charles had told her he’d lived in it when he first bought the farmland, before he knocked down the remaining walls of the old cottage and built his farmhouse. It was almost completely covered in a climbing vine and honeysuckle. Bees buzzed in and out of the flowers.

She sat on its step and leaned her head against the door, fanning her face with her straw hat. Poor or not, her mother and her aunt must have had a happy life out here. She stood up and walked down to the river, imagining her mother swimming in it as a child. A tall, lanky girl with long plaits, wading into the river, arms outstretched, welcoming the water. Aunt Vivian would have been small and doll-like, standing on the bank, watching her fearless sister, her skirts billowing in the breeze. Birdie envied the
sisters their simple, old-fashioned childhoods. This place must have been a kind of paradise for them, far from the pressures of modern life.

Matilda was chasing chickens around the yard the next morning. Charles caught two in the shade of the elder tree by the farmhouse front door, and Christopher, one of the farm workers, was helping Birdie catch a hen too. Christopher Thomas was a tall, healthy-looking man. He had five brothers and sisters. He was the youngest.

The rest of the family still lived locally, he said. He caught a red chicken and picked it up. ‘The Thomases don’t move far,’ he went on. ‘How about you?’

Birdie told him how her mother had grown up here, in a cottage on the site of the new farmhouse.

‘Ah,’ Christopher said, handing her the chicken. ‘So then you’re already a local.’

Charles watched them together. He could see why Birdie liked Christopher. He was one of those men who made everything look easy. The sort women fell in love with.

At least like this, with Birdie so deep in conversation, Charles could watch her without her noticing. She was suntanned and freckles covered her face and her arms too, where her shirtsleeves were rolled back. When she smiled, he found he was smiling too.

He wondered what had happened to him. Where had this kind of softness come from? This weakness in him that had him checking his hair was lying flat, his collar straight? But he knew full well where it came from. Since he first saw her last summer, he hadn’t been able to stop thinking of Birdie. He wanted to show her things that he had never shown anybody. The dawn rising over the river. Grey mists on a beet field in winter. He supposed this was love, finally come to him. Though what he could do about it, he didn’t know. He was courting Matilda, and though the subject
had not been raised by him, it was clear she thought he would be asking her to marry him at some time or other in the near future. He had believed it himself until he met Birdie.