When the Bough Breaks (3 page)

‘Oh Den, how sad for you.' But she'd make it up a hundredfold all that he'd missed.

‘Now look here, this is no way to waste good daylight hours.' The last minutes were like a dream, but now reality was catching up with him. ‘If you finish cutting and boxing up the calabrese, I'll get the handcart across and we'll push off down to the village. I've got carrots and spinach boxed up ready. I say, what a team, eh?'

They were restored to their usual friendly footing.

That evening they each wrote to Millicent, neither knowing exactly what the other had told her. The days went by and there was no reply. By Kathie's next day off they didn't try to hide their disappointment. Secretly Dennis had hoped that the news would have brought about a return to the earlier closeness between mother and daughter.

‘Den, would we be able to afford to keep a pig when we're married? Mrs Hutchins, she's the cook where I work, she's been making brawn and I helped her. She's taught me so much; every week there's something different. I know how to make preserves, and bottle fruit and vegetables. It's going to be such fun. But about the pig, she said that when she was a girl her people always reared one for the table. You don't have to kill it yourself, you send it to be done and it comes back in joints, chops, and all sorts of things. We could barter in the village – a whole ham would be worth, oh I don't know, perhaps curtains for the sitting room or something. It's just that I don't know if we could afford to buy a piglet.'

‘It's all extra work, Kathie.'

‘I'd look after it. And think of all the edible bits you put on the compost heap every day when you prepare the vegetables to take to the shop. Once I'm here all the time I could cook it all up and make it appetizing for the lucky chap.'

‘You're a glutton for work, young Kathie.'

Her chuckle was a sign of the contentment she felt. ‘Work is something you get paid to do for someone else. What we do here isn't like work; the more we do, the more established Westways becomes. And Westways will be
us.
Listen, Den, there's a motor coming down the lane. If they're trying to go to the common they'll have to reverse all the way back.'

‘It's stopping, whoever it is must be going to turn by our double gate.'

But they were both wrong. A minute later they heard the click of the garden gate leading to the front door of the cottage.

‘I'd better go and see,' Den said, wiping his hands on his overalls.

Humming to herself, Kathie continued trimming the main crop carrots, letting her mind leap forward to when she would be turning the vegetable trimmings into pigswill.

‘Kathie!' At the sound she stood bolt upright.

‘Mother!' Her pretty mother! But she had never looked like this when she'd been expecting Algy or Lily. ‘Mother, how did you know I'd be here? Have you been to see the Blackwells?'

‘I wanted to see for myself what sort of a man it is you want to marry.'

Kathie's eyes filled with hot tears. Her mother still cared! Throwing down her knife, then laying the carrot on the pile, she hurried to hurl herself at Millicent.

‘Careful Kathie, don't knock me off my feet.'

‘You look as though it would take a mighty great push to do that,' Kathie laughed. ‘How long have you got to wait?'

‘If I got pregnant when I think I did, I'm due in six weeks.'

‘You look like the cat who stole the cream.' Kathie found her old irritation surfacing.

‘That's how I feel. I know I'm huge, but there's good reason. This time the doctor tells me he believes it's twins.'

‘Four children! Are you all right? You're not young.' She didn't mean it as unkindly as it sounded.

‘I wish I were. I wish I were twenty instead of forty. But years have nothing to do with anything. I feel young – and a thousand times happier and more loved than I did at twenty. Kathie, I wish you were living near us. Soon you'll be a wife and there's so much we could share. But just one thing: when your young man wrote he said you both want the wedding very soon, as soon as possible. Was he trying to tell me that you'd been doing things you shouldn't?'

‘Things we shouldn't?'

‘Shouldn't before you're married, I mean. You know I've said before that when two people are
right
together there is nothing easier or more natural than to make a baby. And in my opinion it's a gift from God whether it's before you're married or after. So you can tell me, Kathie, you mustn't be frightened.'

‘No, you're wrong – about us I mean.' Then, laughing and encompassing the five-acre field with a grand sweep of her arm, she explained, ‘With all this to look after we have too much to do on my day off to spend time “doing what we shouldn't”.'

‘Oh dear, don't be like your father. He was never interested in that sort of thing; sometimes I wonder how I conceived you at all. When he did rise to the occasion it was such a passionless performance. The only passion he knew was for the bones and treasures to be dug up of people who'd been dead for hundreds of years; the nights I've cried myself to sleep! Then after he died, I had to wait all those achingly lonely years. No wonder I fell in love with Cyril. The first time we talked I just knew that with him – well, I seemed to read his thoughts just as he read mine. I do wish you'd liked him better; you were always so scratchy to him.' Then, changing the subject, her voice alive with excitement, she continued, ‘Did you hear us arrive? We drove. We've had such an exciting summer since Cyril has bought a motor cycle and sidecar.' Like a child she giggled. ‘Not much space in a sidecar. If I get much bigger he'll have to get me in and out with a shoehorn. Let's go and find the men. I left him to have a talk with your young man. Then there's something else we want to tell you. Oh Kathie, who would have thought that life could be so . . . so thrilling?'

‘And you'll write a letter giving me your consent to marry?'

‘Oh but I've done that already. We brought it with us. Cyril has it in his pocket. If you think he's right for you then I'm sure he must be. You're a sensible girl – too sensible I sometimes think, too much of your father in you – but I'm sure you wouldn't lose your heart to someone who was no good. Wait until we are all together, then Cyril has some news for you.'

Kathie and Cyril greeted each other with cool courtesy, but on that occasion Millicent was too eager for his announcement to notice.

‘We wish you both well for your future together. And I must say –' Cyril addressed his words to Dennis – ‘Millicent will have no worries leaving Kathie with you, certain that she will be in good hands. When do you hope to be married?'

‘We haven't even talked about dates yet,' Kathie answered him. ‘I don't see there's any reason to wait, do you, Den?'

‘Today would suit me fine,' Dennis laughed, ‘but I imagine your mother would prefer we wait until after the birth.'

‘I hardly look like mother of the bride.' Millicent cradled her enormous hump in both hands, smiling at Cyril as if to acknowledge the part he'd played. ‘But you can have a wedding without me being there. I've written my consent; Cyril will leave it with you. As soon as I'm about again after shedding my load – well you tell them Cyril darling.'

He came to her and put his arm around her and just like a teenager in the throes of first love she gazed at him in open adoration.

‘We are leaving the country,' he announced. ‘As soon as Millicent is ready for the journey we are moving out to California. I have a friend with a most successful photographic studio, he is renowned for his portraits – well-known people in the world of moving pictures sit for him. He knows my work well and he has written suggesting that I take over the Californian studio as he means to open in New York. High society will flock to him; he is able to flatter even the plainest. Indeed my own work is very similar to his, but my clientele very different. I shall never reach the top of my profession where I am now. We have a buyer for the house so by the time the legal work is all completed the timing should be right. So we are off, we two, the new nursemaid is coming with us and by then the four children to keep her busy. Any more family we have will be born American. Isn't that so, my precious?'

Millicent nodded, moving his arm down and pressing his hand to the hump she carried with such pride.

Dennis said all the right things, congratulating Cyril, wishing them every happiness in their venture. But Kathie said nothing. Just for those first moments with her mother their old closeness seemed to be unchanged, but it had been an illusion. Already she was forgotten.

‘Can you stay and eat with us?' Dennis invited. ‘We always have something around teatime so that Kathie can cycle back to Exeter before it's dark.'

‘No, we'll get on our way. I have the letter here that Millie has written. She did it before we left home so that she could see you had it safely. And now my darling we'll say our farewells. We have a long drive ahead of us. We'll find somewhere for a meal when we get most of the journey behind us.'

Five minutes later, making a great thing of what a tight squeeze it was to fit her bulk into the sidecar, Millicent blew a final kiss as Cyril started the motor. Then without a backward glance they were off.

‘America's such a long way. Don't expect she'll ever come back.' Kathie heard her voice break as she blinked back the tears.

‘No. It'll be a different world for them. And so will ours be different for us.'

Kathie nodded, forcing a smile. ‘You get the cart and I'll finish the carrots or we shan't get them delivered in time for us to have tea before I have to start back. Now we've got the letters Den what is there for us to wait for?'

‘Good girl.' He didn't enlarge on exactly why she was a good girl. ‘Hey, Kathie, I reckon we ought to add something to our vows: that as we get older we won't let ourselves get . . . get . . . well, soppy, lovey-dovey.'

Kathie started to laugh. ‘I'll finish the carrots.' Five minutes later they were pushing the loaded cart along the lane towards the village street. The brief and unsettling interlude with their visitors had left no scars.

It wasn't until they sat down to the bacon and egg tea Kathie cooked for them that she opened the bulky envelope her mother had left. Even then it wasn't the letter that gave her such a look of blank amazement.

‘What's up, Kathie? Hasn't she made it clear?'

‘The consent's fine. She's written something else. Here, you read it.'

Kathie watched as Dennis took out the contents she had crammed back into the envelope, his expression one of incredulity.

‘Fifty pounds! Did she tell you what was in the envelope?'

‘Not a word.' This time she couldn't blink back the tears that welled in her eyes. ‘It had always been my home. That's what she says. Even with Cyril there, she didn't forget it was my home. I feel so mean – about them both. She's so besotted with him that if he'd told her he wanted her to keep all the money for themselves – and setting up fresh in America, I'm sure they can do with it – she would have done what he said. So he must have agreed to what she was doing. Fifty pounds! Can't believe it.'

That same night, sitting up in bed she wrote to her mother, saying things she could never have been comfortable saying to her face and, above all, begging her not to let them become forced apart by the miles.

That was in September.

Kathie and Dennis were married in the village church on the first Saturday in November. The only people present were the Blackwell siblings, who had insisted they wanted to be there and had promised to sign the register as witnesses. So instead of making the journey on her bicycle, Kathie arrived at the church in style in the Blackwells' car with her bike and two suitcases roped to the luggage grid on the back. Only after the ceremony was the rope untied and her worldly possessions stacked against the wall of the churchyard. Then the car moved off, leaving the bridal couple at the church gate.

‘I must have a guardian angel, Den. When I looked for a job it guided me to them. I shall really miss them.' She'd known the Blackwells for hardly more than seven months but their simple kindness would stay with her. Waving until the car rounded the bend at the end of the village street, she and Dennis set out for home, he carrying a suitcase in each hand while she pushed the bicycle.

‘I should have insisted we at least had a weekend away. Kathie, you deserve something better than this. You ought to be wearing white and carrying flowers, not pushing your bike back home. You deserve a honeymoon in a first-class hotel.'

‘Don't be daft,' came her spontaneous answer, ‘that would just be a waste of time. We'd be itching to get home and start a proper life. Don't you think that most couples grasp at the chance of a honeymoon just to get away by themselves; but we never have family listening and watching what we do and say. Now, Den, we shall have all day, every day.'

‘Every day and every night.'

They turned from the road into their lane that led to the common. Silently Dennis imagined the hours ahead of them, silently he begged that he would manage to do it right, right for both of them. Tonight he mustn't rush at her and bungle the whole thing. She was as much a novice as he. She wouldn't be shy, of that he was certain, but she wouldn't be any more knowledgeable than he was. Together they'd find the way.

‘Let's do that, shall we?' He'd been so lost in his own thoughts he'd not listened to what she'd been saying.

‘Sorry, Kathie. I wasn't listening, I was thinking about the sort of honeymoon I would like to have given you. Let's do what?'

‘This evening, when we've finished outside, let's get the bath in front of the fire. Not big enough for both of us at the same time unless we stand up. Can't you just imagine, you and me standing in the water, lovely and warm, the curtains closed. Now what could a honeymoon give better than that? Mr and Mrs Hawthorne taking their first dip.'