The Beach Hut Next Door (16 page)

‘Everdene. The nearest train’s at Bamford. You’ll have to get a cab.’ Mary was curt, still trying to process Fran’s letter.

‘Right.’ He clapped his hand to his pocket to make sure his wallet was still there. ‘Well – it was very nice to meet you. Despite the circumstances. And I apologize again …’

He held out his hand. Mary looked at his gentle brown eyes that turned down at the corners, his shy smile, his rumpled curls, and felt her heart give a thump. What if Fran, bloody freak that she was,
was
right?

Because really what Mary hadn’t forgiven Fran for was being right about Sven. For being able to see through him in a split second, while Mary had floundered about in his thrall, making a fool of herself, unable to see that she was being used. Of course she hated her sister for her perspicacity. Yet she loved her for it too. It was just that the wounds were taking a long time to heal. Being made to feel a fool is never comfortable.

This was Fran’s way of saying please forgive me. This was Fran’s way of saying I love you and I will protect you for ever even though you hate me for it.

She didn’t have time to think about it. In two moments he would be gone. She needed to employ her sister’s impulsivity. And she needed to trust her.

‘Listen,’ she managed. ‘Stay and have some breakfast at least. I can do you coffee and eggs and toast.’

‘Oh no – I couldn’t put you to any trouble.’ Fran’s gift to her was putting on his jacket, eager to get away.

‘It’s not any trouble.’ Mary began unpacking the bag of groceries she’d brought with her and held out a box of eggs. ‘Please. You can’t go off on an empty stomach.’

‘Well, that’s very kind.’ Pip looked hesitant.

‘Honestly. You won’t be able to get anything at the station and it’s a long way back to London.’

Their eyes met, and he smiled. ‘OK.’

He began to help her unpack and carry stuff over to the fridge. ‘Where’s your sister gone, do you think?’

He looked mystified. Mary wasn’t quite sure how she was supposed to explain. How did you tell someone that they had been picked out as some sort of blind date, as atonement for a wrong that had been done with good intent? He’d run a mile, probably.

In the end, she decided not to even go there. She just gave a rueful ’who knows’ shrug.

‘I’m Pip, by the way,’ he said.

She smiled. ‘Pip – from
Great Expectations
?’

‘Exactly that.’

Then Mary noticed the leather patches on his corduroy jacket. Funny, she thought, she didn’t think anyone ever wore those in real life, but somehow, they made her warm to him even more.

‘Scrambled or poached?’ she asked.

‘Scrambled. Please.’

‘Right answer,’ she said. ‘Saturdays are made for scrambled eggs.’

They smiled at each other, their first agreement on something, and it felt right. And somewhere, who knew where, Mary felt Fran give a little air punch, and she forgave her sister; her crazy sister, who saw the world in a different way from everyone else, but who always saw the important things.

ELODIE

‘Light, airy room available in return for light housekeeping duties. Lady Bellnapp, Kensington 453’

T
here was something about the succinctness of the advert that appealed to Elodie. It was straightforward with no euphemisms, and sounded just what she needed. A roof over her head while she took stock.

Lady Bellnap was direct on the telephone. ‘I don’t want a fuss or anyone getting under my feet. But I want everything done without having to ask twice. Come and see me and I’ll see if I like the cut of your jib. I’ll know immediately.’

‘So will I,’ said Elodie, with spirit, and the old girl chuckled.

Lady Bellnap lived in a garden flat off Kensington High Street. She’d spent her married life in the Far East, with her husband, a military doctor. They’d had no children.

‘Darling Bill was bitten by a tsetse fly and that was the end of it,’ Lady Bellnap told her. She had tiny, spindly legs and arms, a stout bosom, a hooked nose and piercing eyes. ‘No role for me out there so I had to come back. Heartbroken, of course. Now I just rattle about playing bridge. Do you like dusting?’

The flat was crammed with mementoes of the Bellnaps’ life together: enormous stone vases, carved wooden chests, a tiger’s head on a rug, china dragons. There wasn’t a square inch of free space, and the room smelled of sandalwood. Elodie loved it the moment she saw it.

‘Not particularly,’ Elodie told her.

‘Good. I wouldn’t want to spend any more time than necessary with someone who cared for dusting. I’d be very suspicious. But it needs doing, as you can see. So if you can see your way to taking care of this lot—’ she waved a hand around her artefacts – ‘and perhaps push the Ewbank around, and make sure we don’t run out of milk, then the spare room is a very nice one. You’ll be looking for a proper job, I suppose?’

‘Well, yes. Although I’m not sure quite what yet.’

‘Well, a girl must do something. There’s more to life than bloody flower arranging.’

She pulled a face, as if to equate the pastime with something far more nefarious. An image of Lillie tweaking a vase of flowers in the drawing room popped into Elodie’s head. She felt uneasy. As if herein lay a clue. She wasn’t going to dwell on it. That had been her promise to herself.

Forwards, not backwards.

She moved in the next day.

The arrangement was perfect. Elodie quickly became fond of Lady Bellnap. Despite her forthright manner, and her occasional querulousness if she became tired, she was a source of inspiration, dauntless and full of energy despite her age. They spent a great deal of their time laughing, which was healing for Elodie.

She didn’t want to rush into gainful employment; she wanted to be sure of finding the right job, now she had a roof over her head. Luckily she had plenty of savings. That was one of the benefits of working for your father and living at home: there’d not been much to spend her wages on, as unlike Lillie she wasn’t much of a clothes person. She didn’t tell Lady Bellnap the truth about why she was there. She just said she’d had a disagreement with her parents and wanted a change. She sensed the old lady suspected there was more to it, but she wasn’t one to pry. And if she told her what had happened, then she would have to discuss it. All she wanted to do was bury the memory.

The one thing Elodie did find was the shock of everything – the upheaval, the new surroundings and getting used to London when she was used to either the country or the seaside – made her very tired. She couldn’t stop sleeping. And then one lunchtime, when she looked at the tinned peaches and evaporated milk she had prepared for their pudding, she had an overwhelming desire to be sick.

‘I’m sorry,’ she gasped, and ran from the room.

When she came back, pale-faced, she apologized again and sat down at the table. Lady Bellnap leaned forward.

‘My dear,’ she said. ‘I think you might be having a baby.’

Elodie saw the kindly wisdom in the old woman’s eyes and felt her heart lurch. Her mind was racing as she thought back to the memories she had tried to suppress as they were too painful, those clandestine encounters between her and Jolyon in the beach hut, their secret hideaway. Once or twice, as the wedding loomed, she thought they might not have been as careful as they should. She hadn’t panicked at the time, because she had thought ‘honeymoon baby. Nobody minds a honeymoon baby’.

But, of course, there hadn’t been a honeymoon.

And a baby, when you were on your own, with no husband, no job, no roof of your own, in a strange city, was a very different kettle of fish indeed.

‘Oh hell,’ she said.

Lady Bellnap put a freckled hand over hers. ‘There are far worse things in life to cope with,’ she said, ‘than an unexpected baby.’

Elodie felt nausea rise up again, but this time it was fear. ‘What am I going to do?’

‘Well,’ said Lady Bellnap. ‘You’re a bright girl. You’ve got a roof over your head. And I won’t see you starve.’

Elodie met the old lady’s perspicacious gaze. She saw nothing but kindly concern in her eyes.

‘I would have thought you’d be horrified.’ She had a vision of being thrown out into the street. But Lady Bellnap didn’t turn a hair.

‘My dear, not at all.’ She put down her spoon. ‘Now, we need to make an appointment for you. My doctor is excellent. Once we’ve got it confirmed, then we can decide what to do.’

Elodie wondered how on earth she could have got so far away from herself in such a short space of time. If it hadn’t been for coming back to The Grey House early that afternoon, she would be safely married to Jolyon, and this news would be mildly alarming, but not disastrous. She would have had Jolyon to share it with. They would be starting to make plans, deciding where to raise their family.

She remembered her mother’s prophetic words to Jolyon that afternoon: ‘Elodie will have a baby. She will be as happy as can be.’

It was then the grief finally hit her. This should be momentous, the revelation that she was going to bring another life into the world. She should be sharing the joy with her husband. Her mother should be her greatest support. Instead, the realization brought home her plight. Pregnant and unmarried at twenty? It was a scandal. She put her hands to her face and began to weep, shoulders juddering, as all the pent-up tears finally fell.

‘I think,’ said Lady Bellnap, ‘that it’s time to tell me what’s been going on.’

Time and again Elodie thanked her lucky stars for her guardian angel, whose kindness and practicality never ceased to amaze her. But as Lady Bellnap pointed out, when you’d been out in the Far East, dealing with the victims of tropical disease, drought, famine – whatever the elements chose to throw at them – the arrival of a baby in leafy Kensington really didn’t constitute a crisis.

Although the flat itself wasn’t huge, thanks to the ephemera packed inside, Elodie’s room was light and bright and there would be plenty of room for a cot once the baby arrived. She worked out that she had enough money to stay lodging with Lady Bellnap until the baby was six months. Then she would have to think about gainful employment.

In the meantime, she walked every morning to the greengrocer and the butcher to buy their daily food. Lady Bellnap was disinterested in cooking, so Elodie tried to make their meals as interesting as their combined budget would allow. She carried on doing the housework, as she wanted to keep as active as possible throughout her pregnancy.

In the afternoons, she worked her way through Lady Bellnap’s library. One entire wall of the drawing room was taken up with shelves, which were crammed with books. It was sheer bliss, curled up reading, then having a little snooze. Tolstoy, Dickens, Agatha Christie, Sherlock Holmes – her literary diet was varied and nourishing and a constant source of delight. Her mind was expanding as fast as her middle. She felt as content as she possibly could be.

It was the middle of March when the baby was born. A little boy, weighing seven pounds.

‘I think,’ said Elodie, ‘I will call him Otto.’

The name pleased her, because it had no connotations and reminded her of no one.

Lady Bellnap was the most wonderful guide. Although she’d had no children of her own, she had been a very hands-on doctor’s wife. She was practical, strict and no-nonsense.

‘The important thing is for a baby to be adaptable,’ she would tell Elodie. ‘You don’t want to make a rod for your own back by having too much of a routine. Lug it with you wherever you’re going. Don’t pander to it. Makes sure he’s adaptable and biddable. No one likes a spoilt little beast.’

As Otto got plumper and more jolly and more interesting, Elodie realized with a sinking heart that the day was getting closer for her to find a job. Her savings were dwindling. And while she knew Lady Bellnap wouldn’t see her want for anything, she couldn’t rely on her generosity for ever. She needed to be independent, and to find a home for Otto and herself.

In the post office up the road, she saw an advert for a childminder who lived a few streets away. She contacted her to make a visit. In her mind’s eye, she built up an image of some sort of Dickensian baby farm, little bodies all swaddled and left to fend for themselves while the childminder drank gin and counted her money. The reality was a pleasant surprise. Bernie had a light and airy room leading out into a sunny garden where she supervised a maximum of four little ones, and she had space.

‘It will do Otto good,’ said Lady Bellnap, ‘to mix with other children. And it will do you good to use your brain. You’re far too bright to do nothing, and the longer you leave it the harder it will be to get back to work.’

Half of Elodie agreed; the other half absolutely dreaded leaving Otto, but the truth was she desperately needed money, and she knew she would find no nicer person than Bernie to look after him, so she snapped the place up straight away and resolved to use the time while Otto was with Bernie to look for work.

When Elodie told Lady Bellnap she was applying for a job in the Millinery Department at Harrods, she was furious.

‘A shop girl? Don’t be ludicrous. Try the BBC.’

It was why Elodie adored Lady Bellnap. Everything was so simple and straightforward for her. She spoke as if Elodie should just get the BBC on the phone and demand a job on the spot. At first, Elodie ignored her advice. What experience did she have of broadcasting, or anything to do with it? But then she decided to employ some of Lady Bellnap’s gumption, so she phoned the Personnel Department and spoke to a very nice woman who asked her about herself, and then suggested she pop in for an interview the very next day.

‘I have a radio drama producer who is looking for a production secretary. You sound very much up his street. I presume you can type?’

‘Absolutely,’ Elodie assured her. She hadn’t touched a typewriter for ages. She’d had a girl to do all that for her at the jam factory. If she got the job, she’d worry about the typing afterwards. And radio drama sounded far more interesting than selling hats in Harrods.

Elodie hadn’t really any time to prepare for the interview, apart from Lady Bellnap grilling her over breakfast, firing questions at her while she tried to shovel mashed banana into a disinterested Otto.

In at the deep end, thought Elodie, who was wearing her going-away outfit, the smartest thing she had: a turquoise linen suit from Jaeger her mother had chosen for her. It felt odd, putting it on now, over a year after she should have worn it. She looked in the mirror and didn’t really recognize herself. She looked older, and thinner, rather surprisingly – well, her face certainly was – and her hair was past her shoulders so she’d tied it up in a low bun.

She looked, she realized, like a grown-up.

She made her way from Kensington into the West End on the bus, to Broadcasting House. As the bus made its way up Regent Street, she tried not to think about all the times she and her mother had gone up there, weaving in and out of the shops, buying whatever they wanted, knowing that Desmond would pick up the bill. Not that Elodie had ever been that interested. She had always shopped under sufferance, dragged along in Lillie’s wake. It seemed a million years ago. Now she was just another girl swallowed up by the big city. A girl trying to make her way in the world with more than her fair share of encumbrances. How did life do that: turn your world upside down in a trice and take away your anchors?

She was surviving, though. She had found new anchors. And a new side to her: her love for Otto was the most profound and perfect thing she had ever felt. Motherhood made her feel complete. Now she was just going to have to find a way to protect and keep her tiny little family – her family of two. She couldn’t rely on Lady Bellnap’s benevolence indefinitely. She had to be independent. It was terrifying, but Elodie had discovered of late that she was stronger than she ever thought she’d need to be.

In Broadcasting House, she found herself led down endless dingy corridors, then was left to sit in a plastic chair outside a door alongside two other women obviously being interviewed for the same role. They were both older than she, quietly confident, and looked her up and down. They were both in drab skirts and cardigans without a trace of lipstick. Her mother’s grooming habits had been drilled into her, so by contrast Elodie felt overdressed and over made-up. She felt her mouth go dry and her mind go blank. What on earth was she going to say at the interview? She knew nothing about radio, or drama, let alone the two together. She hadn’t an earthly how a programme was put together or what her role in that might be. She held tight onto her handbag until she was finally called in, the last candidate.