The Edge of the Fall (39 page)

She went to parks in the mornings, when she knew that mothers would be there. She was careful, after the mother in Holborn, not to go to the same one too often. She sometimes went as far as Brook Green, near Miss Trammell's finishing school, where children ran around the flower beds and played catch by the trees. She stood close, pretending to take the air. Really, she listened to the other mothers complain about how tired they were, how their husbands left them alone to get on with it, and she wanted to slap them all.
Don't you know!

Once, while at a playground in Belgravia, Celia saw a little girl fall and dirty her dress. Her mother, a big blonde woman, marched forward and pulled her out of the dirt. Then she smacked her, soundly. ‘That's for ruining your dress!' she shouted. The other women nodded. ‘Fanny is a careless child,' said one.

‘I'll take her,' Celia said. The words were out before she knew it. ‘I'll take her if she's careless.'

The women stared at her. Then, almost in unison, they stood and moved, silently, staring at her all the while, towards their children. They walked towards them, scooped them up into their arms, the children protesting about being torn from their games.

One, the tallest, stepped forward. ‘I'd leave here now, if I were you. We'll call on the police.'

Celia turned and fled, stumbling, running to the Underground station. What had she been thinking? She flung herself into the carriage, her face on fire.
Idiot
. She put her head in her hands. Michael's tiny grave, the pitiful cross in the grounds of Stoneythorpe. Rudolf had promised to buy him a proper headstone. His little body in the coffin, underground, that she'd never seen
because they buried him before she awoke – had to, because the doctor said it would be better for her if she didn't see him. But she wanted to see him. Sometimes, when she couldn't sleep and the madness had taken hold of her mind, she imagined herself back at Stoneythorpe, going into the grounds, digging up his grave and taking his body from the coffin, so she could hold it tight, clasping him in her arms.

Celia had spent the first month after Michael died in bed. She had cried so much on that first night that Dr Grey had come and given her something, ‘To help her sleep,' he said. Then she had to have that every night, and in the day too. She had Verena call him, beg him to come and give her the stuff. Dr Grey told her that she needed to try to lie awake without it, but she couldn't and Verena and Emmeline agreed with her, told him so. He gave her injections of it, then they called in another doctor for the times he wouldn't come. She took the stuff all the time, wanted nothing else. Verena tried everything. She even said she'd written to Arthur, asked his advice – with no reply.

Emmeline came for her, a month or so after Michael died. ‘You have to get up! I'm going back to London and you're coming with me. You need to take your mind off all this with a job. And you're certainly not having any more of that stuff.'

‘I don't want a job.'

‘I'm not listening to this. You have to have a job.'

‘How can you be so cruel?'

‘Well, I'm going back. My husband wants me back in London, and the children need their father. You'd better come back too. Otherwise, I will leave you here and you don't want that, do you?'

‘Michael's here.'

‘But he's dead, sister. Mama and Papa will stay with him. There's no point you staying here too.'

She was right, of course, Celia knew. There was nothing for her to do at home. And Michael had gone – really gone – and wasn't coming back. So she said to herself, rationally, objectively; she knew
Emmeline was right. But she couldn't go. She really couldn't. Michael needed her. He might want to speak to her.

Emmeline went without her and Celia remained. Verena said she could have only one visit from Dr Grey a week. The first would be on the following day. Two days later, after begging Verena to bring her Dr Grey and her mother refusing, Celia decided to go to London. There, she could get her hands on the stuff she needed. A hundred soldiers were probably selling it on the streets.

She returned to London, dreaming of morphine all the way on the train and then on the bus to Emmeline's. There, her bed was as they'd left it to run to Stoneythorpe. Celia threw herself on it, weeping. Lily crawled over to her and Celia clasped her in her arms.

The next day, she woke up sick, sweating, her head heavy, mouth dry. ‘Flu,' said Emmeline, stroking her forehead. ‘Trust you to get it a year later than anybody else. You probably weakened yourself with all that fuss with Dr Grey.' She brushed her hands. ‘Try not to give it to the rest of us. Especially not the twins.'

‘I'll try.' Celia fell back, her head hot. The bed felt close, swampy, thin. Her eyes were burning.

‘No, Lily,' Emmeline called. ‘Don't come and see Aunt Celia. She's made herself ill.'

‘I'm thirsty,' Celia said.

‘Well, I will try and find you a bottle. But don't expect me to wait on you hand and foot. I've got enough on my plate.'

Celia tried to press her head into her pillow. ‘People die of Spanish flu.'

‘Not any more. That was last year. You'll be fine. Probably only withdrawal from that horrible stuff anyway. And you might lose some weight.'

It was true, Celia thought, after Emmeline had closed the door and was telling Lily loudly to play properly with her toys. She had got fatter while she'd been carrying Michael. Of course, some of it had gone – the great bosom had reduced, once all the milk had gone down, lumpy and painful under the skin (the few times she'd come out of the morphine at all, it had been her bosoms
that hurt the most). But still, even though they had no milk in them any more, they were now great swollen things. Her hips were heavy, her behind too, and her stomach was like a whale's.
Who cares?
she wanted to shout at Emmeline, loud at the door.
I don't want another man!

But it wasn't that, not really. The great parts, heavy stomach, bosom, thighs bigger than they'd ever been, they'd been made for Michael. They were all she had of him. So they had to be kept.

She had the flu for nearly five weeks, long, miserable weeks in which all she could think of was morphine. She begged Mr Janus to buy it for her. ‘You won't recover until you stop wanting that stuff,' said Emmeline. ‘I promise. Think of something else.' Celia found herself thinking of food, sweet stuff, giant cakes full of cream and chocolate, pastry horns of custard, apple pies, biscuits. She thought of the kitchen in Stoneythorpe, herself as a child, gobbling up scraps of pastry, leftover biscuit mix from the bowl. The days of preparations for their annual children's parties. Those days in which she'd thought everything would be simple.

‘That's it,' said Mr Janus, one day when she asked him to bring her a cake. ‘Feed yourself up.' As she recovered, she ate more. For breakfast, she wanted six slices of bread, then sweets in the morning, four helpings at lunch. If you ate, she found, things didn't hurt. If your mouth was always moving, then you weren't thinking.

She'd soon run through the money that Rudolf had pressed in her hand. ‘You'll have to get a job,' Emmeline said.

Celia supposed she needed an office job. She couldn't think of what else she could do.

‘Yes, but you can't type,' said Emmeline, when Celia talked of an office. ‘And Papa certainly hasn't got the money for you to do a course.'

Celia went to an employment bureau, trying to ignore the children on the way, promising herself a big cake when she'd finished. The woman there suggested a job in a small government office off Pall Mall, typing up compensation reports. She'd pursed her lips at Celia. ‘It's perfect, Miss Witt. No – er – outward-facing work.
They only need someone for a week. But perhaps after that we can find you something further.'

On her first day, Celia arrived in a small dusty office, staffed by an elderly bespectacled man called Mr Penderstall and another youngish woman, a quiet girl called Miss Jeffs. There were piles of reports in brown card, scattered across the room. ‘It's a mountain,' sighed Mr Penderstall. ‘We need help. Are you quick?'

‘Oh, very,' lied Celia. She had no idea how to type.

‘Then we're away. Let's get to the end of the first week, give it a whirl, see how it goes.'

That first morning, Mr Penderstall had gone out for a long meeting at the Home Office and Miss Jeffs had shown Celia how to use the typewriter.

‘I'm terribly slow,' said Celia, as she made another error. Every time she touched the ‘M' it hurt her heart.

‘Oh, don't worry. Mr Penderstall will never notice. We have so many piles of the things that I don't think we'll ever get through them. Once you've done ten, another load arrive. So you might as well go slow!'

By the time Mr Penderstall arrived back, Celia was typing out a list of one man's injuries, slowly but surely. ‘Excellent work, Miss Witt. Excellent.'

At lunchtime, she went out and bought five cakes from the bakery around the corner, ate them all, in one quick go.

Four months later, they were still giving it a whirl and seeing how it went. At the end of each week, Mr Penderstall professed himself quite happy. ‘I will write to Mrs Wilks's and tell her we'd like you for another week.' Celia had settled into a routine – four cakes on the way, a bag of sweets while working, lunch at Lyons's, then chocolate biscuits on the way home to Emmeline's. She had become great and round, whole rolls of flesh surrounding her belly. Her thighs rubbed together when she walked, grew sore. Emmeline laughed at her, made comments about not fitting through the door. Celia didn't care. Things didn't hurt her, not now.

Then Miss Jeffs invited her to tea with her mother, after work. ‘Mama wanted to meet you,' she said. Celia supposed she should
go, this was the sort of thing you should do to stay friendly with your workmates. Next day, she followed Miss Jeffs to the Lyons tea room, shook hands with a dowdy woman in a brown coat and hat. Celia and Miss Jeffs talked of work, she talked politely to Mrs Jeffs, who'd lost her sons in the war and her husband just after it. Miss Jeffs was all she had left. You could see, Celia thought painfully, that she wanted her daughter to have female friendship, saw it as the road to men. She saw Mrs Jeffs's eyes light up when Celia said she had one brother, still living. ‘He's overseas,' she said hastily.

Then, as Celia rose to leave, saying she was needed back home, Mrs Jeffs reached up and clasped her hand. ‘You seem sad, miss, if you don't mind me saying.'

‘I miss my brother,' said Celia, furiously ashamed of herself for the lie. She did miss Michael, of course she did, but it wasn't him she yearned for, ate four custard cakes to stop herself thinking about.

‘Of course you do. It's hard to lose a brother.'

Celia nodded, feeling wrong and fraudulent.

The woman pressed her hand. ‘I have found some people a great help to me.'

‘Mama!' Miss Jeffs drew herself up. ‘Stop it!'

But Mrs Jeffs carried on, lowering her voice, whispering about the people she saw who found the spirits for her. ‘She makes me hear them,' she said. ‘Eric is swimming in the lakes, Stanley is with him, all of them quite happy, waiting for me.'

Miss Jeffs looked at Celia in agony. ‘Please, Mama.'

But Celia was listening, watching the woman's eyes glitter as she talked.

Three days later, she took the tube to Marylebone to find the address marked out on the card Mrs Jeffs had pressed into her hand. That one was Mrs Ern. Then she went to Claudia and then Mrs Bright. With the spiritualists, she didn't need to eat cakes and sandwiches any more. The words filled her soul. She sometimes wouldn't eat at all, so no earthly thing touched her before she'd sit at the spiritualist's table, calling out for Michael.

‘Glad you're getting thinner,' said Emmeline. Celia heard her talking with Mr Janus, deciding that Celia was losing weight and staying out late because she was in love. She was, it was true. She always had been. With Michael.

Mrs Stabatsky, the specialist, was in a tiny flat in a small alley off Oxford Street. She had the same clientele as everybody else, Celia thought, similar decor too – red curtains, black velvet, golden ornaments that looked as if they'd been stolen from the circus. She was small, dark-haired, hands covered in rings, and a thick accent (Russian, from Siberia, she claimed). Same as all the others. But there was
something
different. She asked Celia questions. Not about Michael – everyone had asked those. Celia fed her the usual line about losing her husband in the war. Unlike the others, Mrs Stabatsky asked her to come early, before the sessions, and questioned her about other people: Verena, Rudolf, Emmeline. She even asked about Winterbourne. Celia supposed she should find the questions intrusive, but really, she welcomed the chance to talk – and if it helped her find Michael, what did it matter?

But then, after three goes, Mrs Stabatsky told her that she couldn't really find anything without a belonging of the child.

‘But he had nothing,' Celia told her, in front of the other women. ‘You know. I saw him, he was taken away. Then he died. I asked for the blanket. They said they'd burnt it in case it was infectious.'

‘They should have kept a lock of his hair for you.' The woman shook her head. ‘What kind of nurse would do that, take away a child and never give you his hair?'

The other women shook their heads. ‘Terrible!'

‘I'm not sure I can help you, Mrs Witt, without a belonging. I just can't hear him.'

‘But you have to,' said Celia. ‘Please. Mrs Bright said you were the one who could help me. You were a specialist.'

‘You know, Mrs Witt, I'm wondering something. This is just a possible thought. Forgive me. But are you really sure that Michael is dead?'