by Maggie Ford
The man had come to his senses, was holding her cardigan’d arms with his hands. His hands were large and wet. She could feel the wetness soaking through to her flesh. They were cold too. So very cold.
‘It’s all right,’ he was saying. ‘Probably gone up the beach a way.’
But the way he spoke held no comfort, his voice a little too high, a little too fast. She pulled away from him, ran into the receding water, uncovered mud squeezing between her toes. Her voice came shrill against the stiffening wind. ‘Ben! Ben, for God’s sake, where are you? Come out. Stop being silly!’
The man had hold of her again. The group by the promenade wall had got up and there were people coming towards her.
‘What’s ’appened?’
‘’Er bloke – ’e went in swimmin’ … ’ow long ago?’
‘Twenty … twenty-five minutes ago. I don’t … I don’t know.’ She was stammering with fear.
‘She can’t find ’im,’ – the man supplied to the listeners now crowding round, their faces striken by suspicion of what could have happened.
‘He must be somewhere …’ Connie’s voice trailed off, had become a useless thing, her throat seizing up, there were tears coursing down her cold cheeks. She felt herself turning to each of the people around her, trying to gain some hope, some defence against what her heart was telling her had happened, the final word itself refusing recognition.
All her senses told her to stay at the water’s edge, as if her presence in some way would compel him to reappear, but she felt herself being led up the beach by friendly, concerned hands, with no willpower of her own.
‘Looks bad,’ someone said. ‘Someone best go and get a policeman.’
She was being sat down in one of the deck chairs she had seen the group sitting in. But she didn’t want to sit down. She wanted to go back to the water’s edge, wade in, search for Ben until she found him.
‘’Ow’d it ’appen?’ someone was saying.
‘Could’ve got cramp. I got it a bit meself. That’s why I come out. But the water was goin’ out and by then it weren’t deep.’
‘Cramp?’ echoed someone.
‘If it gets yer when yer way out, it’s a killer. People can drown.’
Connie found her voice. It issued from her in a cry that didn’t seem to be her voice at all. ‘My Ben’s a strong swimmer. He’s got medals. He’s got … He can’t be … He can’t …’ Still the word refused to be uttered.
She was being patted on the shoulder, cuddled to a strange woman’s breast. ‘There, there, luv. It’s probably orright. Look, ‘ere’s the policeman. ‘E’ll deal wiv it.’
How the hours went, Connie had no idea. The beach was suddenly filled with men: policemen, men poling about under the Gas Corporation loading pier further along, ambulance men, an ambulance drawn up on the prom above her. She was taken up there to sit inside the vehicle in the warm. A cup of sugary tea was brought her, a tablet given to her to take, a woman from the nearby first-aid hut beside her on the bunk patting her hand, looking after her. She could hear the roar of the lifeboat’s motor as it searched the area where Ben was supposed to have been last seen, though no one had taken any note at the time. And all the time she had the feeling he would turn up, his handsome brow creased, his eyebrows raised, and ask what all the fuss was about.
Later, having been asked if she had any family nearby who could come to her, hearing her own toneless reply supplying her address to whoever had asked for it, she sat in a hospital room with a feeling that she was floating. Her mother, her own face creased with grief and anxiety, came to sit with her.
It was ten o’clock at night when a doctor came into the room and stood looking down at the little family group, the bereaved girl, her mother, and her brother, so he gathered. It was the brother who stood up and came over to face him as be said the words in a low, respectful voice.
‘A body has been found. I’m afraid the police need Miss Bowmaker to identify it if she will. I think someone should be with her.’
‘I’ll be with her,’ the brother whispered, half turning to look back at his sister. ‘We’ll both be with her.’
Chapter Thirteen
One hand holding open the wardrobe door that always persisted in swinging shut again if not held, Josie surveyed the two dresses hanging within, both swathed in tissue paper.
That in itself was sad. There should have been four dresses. It had always been expected there would be four when the first of them married: a bridal gown and three bridesmaids’ dresses. Always. But Annie was living in India, her connection with the family now only by letter. Pam, disgraced, did not even communicate. Any letter she tried to send was thrown into the fire unopened – Dad’s orders. Dad remained bitter beyond belief.
Josie gazed at the two sad, lonely dresses, and her eyes filled with tears as they had done continuously since yesterday. Only one bridesmaid dress left and now there wouldn’t even be a wedding.
The knuckles of her hand holding open the wardrobe door whitened. Her pretty face crumpled and she let herself weep – for Connie and a little for herself. Yesterday she’d been so happy, thinking of Saturday when a really wealthy young man had brought her all the way home from London. He had hoped to get something out of it of course. But she had been strong and refused him and he had said … what was it? He liked her a hell of a lot. All yesterday she’d re-enacted that scene, full of a wonderful sense of elation, of being in control, of walking away from temptation with his words ringing in her ears: ‘I’d love to see you again. How about tomorrow?’ and her own haughty ‘No thank you.’ She kept on repeating it all day. ‘No thank you.’ Wonderful.
They had tried to make a fool of her, those rich young socialites, she realised that now, but she’d risen above it, had even put her hopeful escort in his place. Of course she had cried, but he hadn’t seen that. Dignified, that’s what she had been. He had been defeated by it. The power of it had stayed with her all through Sunday.
She had still suffered some regret about Arthur, leaving him in the lurch like that. But he was still just a casual boyfriend. She would drop him a note of apology for her behaviour and see how he’d take it. She’d do that some time in the week, she had told herself, trying to ignore the whisper at the back of her mind that it seemed important she did.
Yes, she’d been so happy yesterday. Then had come the awful news. Perhaps the most awful news ever. A policeman knocking on their door. Mum and Dad stricken dumb, Mum putting on her hat, her hands trembling, Dad looking helpless, still unable to put his injured ankle to the floor much less stand on it even with a crutch. Danny had gone in his place, but when Josie had asked to go, Mum had said to stay here and be with Dad. Left with him, she had made tea for them both, her thoughts, like his, following Mum and Danny to the hospital as she automatically laid the table, cut bread, put out the cheese and jam and the cake Mum always made for Sunday tea, nothing of which either of them ate, sitting mostly in silence, waiting. She had paced the house, gazed again and again from its upstairs windows, had shed tears until her throat ached, had tried to kill time by reading magazines – the same sentences over and over, unable to concentrate. From a happy, happy morning, Sunday had become wretched.
A police car had kindly brought them back later that night. Josie remembered the dull feeling of uselessness as they came in, holding Connie between them, followed by a policeman who had asked if there was anything else he could do as they sat Connie in an armchair. Dr Freeman had come to give Connie some pills to make her sleep. Mum had refused the ones he’d offered her, saying she needed to keep her wits about her should Connie wake up and need her.
‘She won’t,’ Dr Freeman had said, his middle-aged heavily jowled face wise. He had been their family doctor as long as Josie could remember. ‘She’ll sleep through the night.’
‘Maybe so,’ Mum had said stubbornly. ‘But tomorrow she’ll need me and I can’t be all muzzy when she does.’
Connie had slept, drugged. This morning s
he had awoken looking ghastly, glazed eyes staring at nothing, her face pale and expressionless as though all her feelings and sensations and emotions had been drained out of her like blood drained from a vein.
The worst part was, she still hadn’t cried. Josie, biting back tears, had said without thinking: ‘I was going to be Connie’s bridesmaid,’ and her sister’s blank stare had momentarily switched towards her – the most awful look. Hating herself, Josie had fled to the kitchen, Mum hurrying after her to cuddle her and say Connie knew she’d not meant it as it had sounded, and everyone said silly things in the midst of sorrow. But unable to bear even Mum’s comfort, she had fled up to her bedroom where she now stood unable to go back and face Connie after what she had said.
Gnawing at her lips, Peggy stood alone in the kitchen. Josie never thought before she spoke. She knew what Josie had meant, but it could never be explained in words. There were no words to explain grief. Even scholars with all their learning were never quite able to describe what it was that clutched the heart with such claws as to drain all feeling from the body, leaving only empty yearning, that too indescribable. It took another bereaved to know how it felt: her heart, still carrying that other grief of five years back, had never completely healed.
The day they had come to her with the news of Tony’s accident, the slow dawning of reality while still clutching a belief that it had not happened, the shapeless, primeval sense of loss that all animals feel – it still assailed her whenever she thought about it. She only hoped Connie’s grief would not last as long as hers had. But now she must push it all aside, go back to Connie and give what comfort she could, even if it only meant sitting nearby watching the pale expressionless face of her eldest daughter.
Connie felt stiff and withdrawn. It didn’t seem like her sitting in this chair, but someone else. As if she watched herself from afar. Time had long since lost all meaning. All day people had been coming in – she vaguely recognised them as relatives, neighbours, friends – leaning over her, making awkward attempts to cuddle her and managing only to make a travesty of it. If only they would just keep away, stay on the other side of the room and say nothing. She didn’t want to be cuddled and cried over. Why couldn’t she cry? People were supposed to cry. Everyone else was crying but she couldn’t feel anything. She should be feeling something, but there was a void inside her around which floated this outer frame which people came to clasp to them in an inane fruitless effort to comfort.
‘Want a cup of tea, dear?’ Her mother’s voice came wafting towards her. She had thought she shook her head. What could tea do for her? But the cup appeared before her and she took it automatically because it was there. She sipped it automatically because it was there, tasted nothing, but its heat made her wince.
‘Blow on it, dear.’
She blew on it.
‘That’s a good girl. Drink it down. It’ll do you good.’
Sipping, she drank most of it, and the cup was taken away.
For a few moments at some time during the day the room emptied of people. In that pause, Connie stood up to look at her reflection in the mirror over the fireplace. The person it mirrored stared back, unrecognisable, yet familiar. Was it her? It felt it shouldn’t be her at all, that someone else should be gazing back at her.
Disembodied thoughts had begun to wander in and out of her mind: Ben’s parents who would never now be her in-laws – someone would have told them by now. Consumed by their own shock and grief, they would be in London with their own family comforting them, too bereft to come here.
She‘d have to go and see them – sometime. Her mind shrank from the thought. Ben’s body would be taken there, to their flat, to lie in one of the bedrooms until the funeral. They, not she or hers, would make all the arrangements, register the death with the Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages, see the undertakers, choose the coffin, the funeral cars, the hymns to be sung, the food for those attending the funeral. She would be told, perhaps consulted, would be expected to view the body. Who’d come and fetch her? Was she supposed to go under her own steam? And the flat they had rented, would that have to be let go? She could go and live in it all by herself …
Thoughts which had begun to run on wildly broke off suddenly and she fell back into the chair, her mind shutting down mercifully to shield her from reality as people again filled the room. It still seemed hard to think of Ben as no longer here. She kept half-expecting him to appear and hold her hand protectively. And when one of her aunts came offering a neatly cut crustless sandwich on a plate to say that she should try to eat something, she took the unwanted plate with a blank nod of appreciation, and she really did think Ben would he there to take it away for her.
A night and a day had passed, another night with the aid of sleeping pills. Someone said it was Wednesday. Connie had eaten, sitting at the table with the others putting food into her mouth to order, masticating it by force of will. She’d dressed to order, washed, combed her hair, cleaned her teeth to order, incapable as yet of thinking for herself.
Today Danny was taking her to London to Ben’s people. Danny had asked her if she was up to it and she had nodded, feeling strong enough so long as he was with her. Even now very little of it had sunk in, everything, all that needed to he done, seeming to close in on her, crowding out the unreality of Ben no longer being here.
On the train up to London – she now wore black, having been taken out that morning by Mum to a local shop to buy it – she and Danny sat saying little other than a few words.
‘Are you all right?’ he had asked, and she had nodded.
‘Glad it’s not raining,’ he’d said on another occasion and again she had nodded, then surprised herself by asking, quite out of the blue: ‘How’s Lily?’
He had looked stattled but gathered himself. ‘She’s fine.’
‘You don’t bring her home to see Mum and Dad any more.’
‘No. Well, the business of Pam, the house so upset. I didn’t want to subject her to all that. Maybe later.’
‘Yes. I’m glad you’re seeing a girl.’
They lapsed into silence, Connie’s head suddenly emptying of all thoughts, as it had on the day of Ben’s accident.
Peggy stood ironing one of her husband’s shirts left over from last week. It could have waited but it was something to do. She should have started on this week’s washing but that was something too much to do. ‘I wrote to Annie yesterday,’ she said absently. ‘She’ll be upset not being here.’
Seated by the kitchen range, Daniel winced as he moved his painful, bandaged foot to a more comfortable position on a wooden stool with a cushion under it ‘She’ll want to come home for the funeral I expect.’
Peggy stopped ironing to look at him. ‘Why should she want to do that? I know this is all terrible and poor Connie. But Ben means nothing to Annie. Not really. Not enough for her to come all this way home for. It’s just that I thought she should know.’
Dan grunted and Peggy resumed her ironing, spitting delicately on the smooth surface to see if it was still hot enough for the moisture to hiss. It still was, and her elbow moved back and forth with it across the grey twill working shirt tail before the heat went and the iron had to he put back before the low fire in the grate to heat up again.
She wasn’t thinking when she said, ‘We ought to tell Pam too.’
Dan stiffened, sucked in a painful breath and swore as his injured ankle twinged in response. ‘Who the bloody hell’s that? No one I know of that name.’
With a clatter that betokened irritation, Peggy banged the iron down on its stand. ‘For heaven’s sake, Dan. Not at a time like this.
Of course she understood how he felt. Knew how deep his hurt went. Sympathised with him. Wouldn’t have gone against him to save her life. But all hurt put aside, Connie was Pam’s sister. She should at least know what had happened.
Until this had all come about she hadn’t even been able to bring herself to find out where Pam was living. Connie had tried to tell her,
some weeks ago, but she, God forgive her, had closed her ears, said she didn’t want to know, and when Connie, giving up, had written it on a scrap of paper and pressed it into her hand, she had lifted the round iron lid of the kitchen range where she had been cooking the evening meal and had dropped the piece of paper in among the coals, turning away so that she wouldn’t have to see it flame up and shrivel into blackness.
It was Josie who went. The morning after the news of Ben’s death, when all those who’d crowded in to announce their dismay had left, she had plucked up enough courage to come down to face Connie again. Connie had smiled faintly at her and, encouraged, she had come and crouched in front of Connie, had taken her hand and looked up into her face, trying to hook on to something that might he practical instead of inane or foolish.
‘Someone needs to let Pam know,’ she had said, and Connie had come partially to life, making her feel she was at last doing some good.
‘You know her address, Connie?’ she had prompted.
‘It’s in my bag,’ Connie had murmured, and finding the bag, Josie had stood aside while Connie fished in it, seeming for the moment to be herself again, though it had all gone once more into reverse once the job had been done and the energy fled.
Armed with the piece of paper, Josie found herself welcomed with open arms into Pam’s poky little top-floor flat.
She had never been here before. The climb up the bare stairs to the very top of the house, past two floors utilised as private flats by the look of them, had been depressing enough. Connie’s glowing description of the flat she and Ben had rented, built for that purpose with its own knocker and letter-box, had made it seem a real home, but this sharing of what had once been a complete house had a dejected air about it as if one trespassed by merely entering the building. All was silent as she ascended, adding to the sensation, as if people lurked rather than lived behind those doors.
Reaching the top floor, no more than an attic space, Josie had looked at the scuffed door with 89D inscribed on it. There was no knocker on this door. No letter-box. Tapping on the wood itself with her knuckles, she had heard movement on the other side. A voice asked, ‘Who is it?’ Pam’s voice.
