For a matter of seconds she stood perfectly still, her head turned, watching him; then she looked down on her daughter. Even as she did this her hands were gently lifting the side of the cot out of its sockets and, as if her body were floating, she glided round to the other side of the cot and, putting her hands through the rails, gripped the mattress…Then she put her hands to her head to shut out the sound of the soft thud as the child’s body hit the floor…
As if in a dream she found herself back in her room again and standing near the bedroom window. Nellie was still under the elm tree, clasped in the man’s arms. She stood and watched them for almost two minutes before she turned from the window. She felt no sense of guilt; in fact, at this moment she assured herself she had done a very good and brave thing, she had done what the doctor or Joe or someone should have done before the child had had time to breathe.
But what about Martin? Well, no-one would ever blame a child for wanting to play with his sister. She had heard Nellie telling Jane that Betty had had them on the rug together again today. No-one would hold the ‘accident’ against Martin.
Once more she turned to the window. There was now no sign of the girl and the man. She walked into the sitting room again and stood looking towards the door. When she heard that girl come on to the landing she would open it and confront her.
She was amazed at her own coolness. Then her coolness vanished and she put her hands to her throat as she heard an ear-splitting scream, and she knew it hadn’t come from the girl but from her son.
In response to Joe’s frantic telephone call Betty arrived back in the house at ten o’clock the next morning. Lady Ambers, true to her word, had bought a car and engaged a chauffeur; and after Betty had directed him towards the kitchen, saying, ‘Make yourself known; I’ll come and see you in a moment or two,’ she ran up the steps and into the hall.
Ella was coming down the stairs and, on the sight of Betty, she exclaimed, ‘Oh! miss. Eeh! it’s been awful.’ Doubtless she would have enjoyed giving Betty first-hand details, but at that moment Joe emerged from the dining room. He didn’t speak but moved hastily towards Betty and, taking her by the arm, led her into the drawing room.
‘How did it happen?’ she asked, as she took off her hat and threw it onto a chair and turned to let him help her off with her coat.
‘Martin,’ he said. ‘He must have dropped the side of the cot down. How he managed it, the Lord only knows; he couldn’t have stood on the cracket, for that was still in Nellie’s room. We’ve always kept it out of his way, you know.’
‘Where was Nellie?’
‘Having her supper. She said Martin was fast asleep when she left him. Apparently she was on her way back when she heard his screams from the landing, and when she got into the room there he was on the floor, the child in his arms, and screaming as you’ve never heard a child scream. He was still screaming when I got home. He must have been trying to lift her from the cot, and when that wasn’t possible he tugged at the mattress and, of course, she rolled on to the floor. There was a big bruise on the side of her face.’
‘How long did she live?’ Betty sat down now on the edge of the couch, staring at her hands, which were gripped together on her knees.
‘She went at half-past three.’
‘What did you tell the doctor?’
‘What could I tell him? There was Nellie’s version. She would have talked anyway. And Elaine had seen the whole thing. She had rushed in with Nellie and picked up the boy, but she couldn’t pacify him. It was as if he were in a nightmare: he fought and struggled and screamed until the doctor gave him a sedative.’
‘How is he now?’
‘Strangely, he’s all right this morning. As I said, it was just like a nightmare. When I told him the little girl had gone to heaven—that’s the only thing I could think of to say—he didn’t seem at all perturbed, but he asked for you. “I want Aunty Bett,” he said.’
‘And Elaine?’
‘I’m worried in that quarter. She’s quiet; I think she’s blaming herself now for her attitude to the child. Last night she seemed to take it calmly, too calmly for normality.’
‘It’s likely the shock.’
‘Yes, I suppose so. Dr Pearce said it’s the best thing that could have happened. And perhaps I might have agreed with him, but it’s the way it’s happened, because even if the picture is obliterated from Martin’s mind, which it appears to be now, some ignorant biddy is bound to bring it up in later life: Nellie will tell her mother, and her mother will tell the neighbours, and a child will hear it, and that could be it.’
‘Oh, you’re exaggerating, Joe. Anyway, it was an accident; it could have happened with any two children.’
There was silence between them for a moment; then Betty got to her feet, saying, ‘I’ll go up and see her.’
Without another word, he opened the door for her, and she went up the stairs to Elaine’s room.
She was surprised to find Elaine dressed. They stared at each other across the width of the room, and it was Elaine who spoke first. ‘I’m not going to say I’m sorry it’s gone,’ she said.
‘I wouldn’t expect you to.’ Betty looked from her sister’s white face to her twitching fingers and she felt a moment of deep compassion for her. She might say that she wasn’t sorry her child had gone, but nevertheless she was deeply affected, so she went and put her arms around her, and immediately she was amazed at the result, for Elaine, her body trembling from head to foot, burst into a torrent of weeping and lay against her like a child searching for comfort from its mother.
‘There, there. It’s all over. Come on, now; don’t cry like that.’ And yet even as she said the words she was thinking that the outburst was the best thing that could happen to Elaine, it would release the tension in her. ‘Come along, dear, and sit down,’ she said, leading her to a chair.
But when she was seated Elaine still clung to Betty, who now pressed her sister’s head into her waist and stroked her hair and was murmuring gently to her when Elaine burst out, ‘Everybody hates me.’
‘Don’t be silly.’
‘You do at times.’
‘No, I don’t. I have never hated you. Get vexed with you, yes, but I’ve never hated you.’
‘Joe does.’
‘Oh, Elaine, what’s the matter with you? Joe loves you. Not many men would put up with what Joe’s had to go through.’
‘There you go.’ Elaine pulled herself away from Betty’s embrace and, pressing herself back into the chair, she whimpered, ‘Nobody sees my side of it; nobody. Do you know something? I loathe everybody in this house, apart from Martin…and you.’
Betty now stared down at her sister and she thought with not a little pain that the ‘and you’ had been added more by way of diplomacy than truth. Her voice was low when she answered, ‘That’s a pity, then.’
Now Elaine turned on her, crying, ‘Oh, the way you talk. You’re so smug; you would never think any wrong thoughts or do anything bad, would you? Good old Betty. Everybody says, good old Betty. You inveigle yourself into people’s good books. You’re two-faced.’
‘Be quiet, Elaine!’
‘I’ll not be quiet; this is my house. I’ll speak when I want to speak. I’ll shout if I like; I’ll scream; I’ll scream at old Mike, and the second master, Master Joe, Master Joe, Master Joe, and that dirty filthy black man and his loose-living wife. Oh, I know what I know…’
‘Elaine! I’ve told you to be quiet.’
‘What is it? What’s the matter?’ Joe suddenly burst into the room, and Elaine screamed at him now, ‘I’m telling your dear Betty that she’s smug, two-faced, like you, like you all.’
When Joe stepped forward her screaming rose to an ear-splitting pitch: ‘Don’t you touch me! Don’t you dare touch me!’
He stopped in his stride, glanced at Betty, then was about to speak when Elaine put her hands to her breasts, gasped and fell forward over the arm of the chair.
A few minutes later, when they
had laid her on the bed, Betty whispered hastily, ‘I’ll phone the doctor.’
‘What is it?’
‘It looks like a heart attack.’
An hour later, when the doctor had examined Joe’s wife thoroughly he reported that there was nothing physically wrong with her. His diagnosis was nervous hysteria.
Nervous hysteria. Joe had never heard of it. What was it?
And so the doctor explained it as merely a nervous symptom which made it appear that the patient had had a heart attack. It was often the forerunner of a nervous breakdown, and in this case it wasn’t surprising, for she’d had two severe shocks in the past year. He had sedated her for the time being, he said, and he’d call again in the morning. In the meantime rest and freedom from worry and irritations were the best medicine for her.
Joe accompanied the doctor downstairs and as he opened the front door for him he asked tentatively, ‘How long will this state last, do you think, doctor; I mean, the hysteria?’
The doctor rubbed his chin, then glanced back over his shoulder and up the stairs as he said, ‘Oh, the hysteria will only occur at intervals, and it all depends if the state she’s in now develops into a breakdown. Then…well, six months, a year’—he now looked straight into Joe’s eyes—‘two, three, who can say? It all depends on the severity and how far the patient is able to help herself to work out of it. But anyway, it’s early days yet. But I’ll know more tomorrow after I have had a talk with her.’
He was on the top step when he turned to Joe again and said, ‘She’s inclined to be pampered, isn’t she?’ and without waiting for any reply to this he ended, ‘Well, if she’s in for a breakdown I’d cut down on that; a little astringency might be more beneficial for her. See you tomorrow.’
Joe watched him get into his car before he closed the front door, and then he kept his hand on the knob and stared at the grained wood as he said the words to himself: Nervous hysteria. Breakdown. He had heard of people having breakdowns but had never come into contact with them, and people connected with them didn’t talk about them. It seemed to be a kind of disgrace: people didn’t treat it as an ordinary illness but more as a stigma. Poor Elaine.
He turned slowly from the door and made his way towards the stairs. And he had to be astringent with her. Well, he would have thought that was the last thing a doctor would advise for anyone in her condition.
Was he at fault? Yes, yes, he supposed he was: if she had never been made to bear the children she would never have been like this. Of course he was at fault. Well, he’d have to make it up to her. But certainly not with any astringent treatment; what she needed now was to be loved, cared for; and that’s the treatment she would get. Between them he and Betty would bring her back to health again, and it wouldn’t take years; no, not if he had anything to do with it.
He bounded up the stairs now as if, with his love for her, he was about to create a miracle.
Eight
Joe achieved what he had set out to do in a surprisingly short time. Within six months of her attack Elaine appeared to be back to normal. As his father unfeelingly put it: if soft-soaping and coddling had done the trick then she couldn’t have been all that bad in the first place.
Joe had been more than a little annoyed by his father’s attitude to Elaine’s condition from the very beginning: women didn’t have breakdowns in his day. They hadn’t time to have breakdowns in his day; in his day women had to work for their keep. Just look at the life his own mother had endured without resorting to a breakdown.
At one point Joe retaliated by saying, ‘Then why didn’t you choose a packhorse for your wife? From what I remember, my mother didn’t even know what a tea towel was used for. And looking back, I can’t recall hearing you telling her to knuckle under, or to get off her lazy backside, or other such colloquial terms to remind her of her duties.’
To this Mike had bawled, ‘Get the hell out of it afore I knock you down the stairs!’ and from his expression he had looked both capable of and intent upon carrying out his threat.
Yet such had been Elaine’s condition at the beginning of her illness that almost four months passed before Betty was able to have a break and spend a weekend with Lady Ambers. But now it had been arranged that she should take a long weekend once a month, and during the time she was away Joe would make it his business to stay almost continually by Elaine’s side.
Even before the beginning of her breakdown he had for some time slept in the dressing room. The fact that she could not bear to be left alone for any length of time during the day, but rejected firmly—even up to the present time—his presence in the bed puzzled him somewhat and irritated him more than he cared to admit.
Only last night he had played it gently with her. ‘Let me lie with you,’ he had said. Then the look on her face had made him reassure her immediately and he added, ‘Nothing will happen, I promise you; I just want to lie near you and hold you like this,’ and he had demonstrated by putting his arms around her where she lay deep among pink frilled pillows, which were her latest fad, for the bedlinen now all had to be coloured. But his pleading had been in vain. Moreover, it had tended to upset her, so again he had retired to the dressing room and lay, as he often did, with his hands behind his head, staring into the pale blur of light that came from the shaded lamp in the bedroom.
However, in this sleepless state he was finding it more and more difficult to quell his irritation by coating it with the sympathy and compassion he still doled out to her as the remedial medicine. He had been patient, God knew he had been patient, but he had needs. How long was it since they had been together, really been together; two years? He couldn’t go on like this much longer, but of course he mustn’t upset her. He must have release of some sort, though. Well, he could go into town; not Fellburn, though; that was too near. Newcastle, perhaps? Oh God Almighty! he didn’t want to start that game. What if he picked up something? Look at Harry Codshaw. But there were other types of women. They said Alec Benbow had one in Gateshead; her husband went to sea. But Alec Benbow was a swine, because he had a decent wife and four children.
No; it would have to be Newcastle and a whore. But he still couldn’t see himself going there; and yet to start the other line of business you had to know someone who would be compatible and, of course, available, and all the women he knew were married, and apparently happily so. The only unmarried woman he came in contact with was Betty.
Betty! Betty!
For the next few minutes his thoughts raced through untrodden channels of his mind, leaping back into scenes that had held no significance at the time, but which now brought a warmth into his being that turned into a heat that intensified until, as if they had suddenly been doused by a wave of ice-cold water, he sat bolt upright in the bed and gripped his head with his hands.
My God! What next? After all she had done for them, wearing herself out looking after the little girl. Not only had she nursed Elaine for months now, but had silently put up with abuse from her in the early days of her illness; and now he would repay her by saying, ‘How about you and me getting together, Betty?’
He rose from the bed and put on his dressing gown, and now went quietly out through the dressing-room door on to the landing, down the stairs and into the kitchen, where he brewed himself some coffee. By the time he returned upstairs he had come to a decision; he would go into Newcastle at the first opportunity.
It was just on three o’clock when Miss May Pringle, who acted as Joe’s secretary and who had been with the business since his grandfather had started the venture in Fellburn, came into his office with the afternoon cup of tea, and after placing the tray to his hand and saying in a no-nonsense manner, ‘Drink it up before it turns to dishwater,’ she paused, looked down at his bent head and said, ‘Have you heard the latest?’
‘What’s that?’ It was a second before he lifted his eyes towards her. ‘Everything I hear is the latest.’
‘Yes, it’s funny that, isn’t it, but I can understand your not having an
y knowledge of this first-hand, ’cos I only heard Big Wolsey and Cunningham yapping away behind a partition in the store not a minute ago. It appears there’s a new firm starting up.’
‘New firm? What kind of a new firm?’
‘Same line as this.’
‘Same line as this? Nonsense!’
‘All right, it’s nonsense.’
‘I would have heard something about that if there were any truth in it.’
‘Well, you’ve heard of Baxter’s Boxes of Peterborough, Tilbury, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.’
‘Baxter’s coming here?’
‘Yes, so they say. They were saying there were some men looking over the spare ground that lies between the railway bridge and that row of houses. There’s quite a bit of land there, you know. And they said it was Baxter’s men who were thinking of buying it. Of course, it’s going muck-cheap now, and if they start building they’ll have the labour muck-cheap an’ all.’
Joe put his pen down and stared up at Miss Pringle, then said slowly, ‘It’s likely just a rumour: those two men are reds; they want to unsettle the rest of them.’
‘Yes, you may be right, but on the other hand there might be something in it; there’s never smoke without fire.’
‘Their stuff’s shoddy: our people wouldn’t go to them; I mean, our customers.’
They stared at each other, and Joe, nodding his head, said, ‘Don’t say it, I know, for a penny a box cheaper they’d barter their souls.’
‘Drink your tea.’ She was pushing the cup towards him when the wail of the siren passed over the town. It was a sound like no other: the hooters in the dockyard, the hooters in the factories, large and small, had their own particular sound, but when the pit siren sounded its wail spelt disaster.
For a matter of seconds neither Joe nor Miss Pringle moved, nor was there any sound of saws or hammers or grinding lathes coming from the shops.
Justice is a Woman Page 18
