Maddie

by Claire Rayner

  18

  November 1950

  ‘As long as we’re all right, I can handle anything,’ Maddie said. ‘Jay? Believe me, we’ll be all right. Only stick with me, back me up. If you start taking sides against me, I don’t know what I’ll do.’

  ‘You can’t call it taking sides when I listen to my own folks, for God’s sake,’ Jay said, and turned over in bed irritably, thumping his pillow to get it comfortable. ‘You pull me all over the place, Maddie, you know that? I told you we’d have to take things easy, give it time, let Pa and Mother get used to what’s happened. Then it’ll be okay –’

  ‘It won’t,’ she said, and slid into bed beside him, stretching her bare body against his back, and reached over his shoulder to play with the lobe of his ear, which always pleased him. ‘Because they’re nervous about me. They’re not sure they can trust me. Well, of course they can – why can’t they see that? Things won’t get any easier till they do. They have to understand … When you love someone as much as I love you, it’s obvious I can be trusted – and if you tell them that, if you show them by backing me up all the time, it’ll all be fine and they’ll feel good with me.’

  He turned over at last, and she slid under his arm so that she could push her head into the soft part of his shoulder, just above his armpit, and his hand slid down to hold her left breast. At last she felt comfortable again, the way she ought to feel. It was dreadful when he turned his back on her.

  ‘The trouble is, they think it’s all money. They don’t understand you – they think you’re like Rosalie.’

  ‘Me like that silly – huh!’ and she snorted. ‘She’s as wet as they come. I’d be ashamed to be such a whiner as she is –’

  ‘Don’t misunderstand that one,’ Jay said. ‘She’s crawling round Mother the way she is because she wants to stay in this family a hell of a lot more than Timothy and we now want her to be here. If he had his way he’d pay her off once and for all and she’d go away and never come back. He doesn’t care that much about being married and there’re plenty of girls who’d enjoy being around him once she’d gone. But the way she hangs around here – it cramps the guy’s style.’

  ‘Not as much as he cramps yours,’ she said softly. ‘It’s not just Declan who’s getting your share of what there is, you know. I’ve been listening and watching. Timothy’s not exactly your best pal, you know.’

  His arm tightened around her and she winced as his fingers bit into her breast. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, I keep my ears open when I’m with your father –’

  ‘And you’re with him a hell of a lot, one way and another,’ he said. ‘I’ve never seen the old man so taken with anyone.’

  She grinned in the darkness. ‘I made sure he would be. Like I said, I listen, and I know that it’s Timothy you need to watch as much as Declan. He’s not the brightest, Jay. You’re much cleverer than Declan is, and he thinks you’re the best of the lot. He’d do anything for you. If you got Timothy out of the way and ran the business with your Pa, then Declan’d do things to please you and you’d really be laughing.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ He was very interested now, and she slid out of his grasp and turned on her belly to peer down at him in the dimness.

  ‘Look, that whisky deal from Scotland – isn’t it funny how it’s always whisky when it’s you and me, hmm? Well, I heard your Pa on the phone and then I heard Timothy telling your mother something and – well, Timothy left his briefcase in the dining room last night.’ She chuckled softly. ‘Silly thing to do, wasn’t it?’

  He was silent for a moment. ‘So?’ he said at length.

  ‘So, half the profit went to Kincaid and Sons Inc., but the rest went to a building set-up in Cincinnati. Where’s Cincinnati, Jay?’

  ‘It sure as hell isn’t in Boston,’ Jay said wrathfully. ‘The bastard! Just let me get my hands on him – and when Pa finds out –’

  ‘Hush.’ She set her fingers over his lips. ‘Don’t be silly, my darling Jay. Listen to your Maddie. The last thing you do is say a word to your father.’

  ‘What? When he’s been skinning me the way he has? It’s as much my money that goes to Kincaid’s – I’m one of the sons, too, remember. Timothy isn’t the only one. And I thought it was Declan doing the dirty on me – the bastard –’

  ‘Tell your father and where do you end up? No better off. All he’d do is scream and rant and fight with Timothy – and take the money in his own hands. You’ve got little enough access as it is. If your Pa thinks one of his sons is cheating him, he’ll get suspicious of all of you, and then where’d you be?’ Maddie said softly. ‘Better to get the deals away from Timothy, hmm? Stop it at source the way we did in London. I can’t do as well here in Boston as I did in London for you, my darling, but if you back me up here in the house, and let me do things my way, you’ll be amazed at what I get out for you in the way of information.’ She stopped then and laughed, rolling over on her back. ‘Rosalie. That’s the answer, Rosalie.’

  It was his turn to roll over now and he did, covering her and setting his elbows on each side of her and crushing her breasts under his body.

  ‘How?’

  ‘She wants to get Timothy back. She won’t, of course – he’s had enough of her, and I don’t blame him. Those drippy blondes – they’re all the same. Do nothing but whine and then wonder why people can’t stand ‘em. Well, I’ll stand her. I’ll make a fuss of her, and you know something? She’ll do anything I want after that. She’s scared and she’s lonely. That’s why she comes here so often even though they’re supposed to be separated and don’t get on. She says it’s to see your mother, but I’m not so easily fooled as your mother is –’

  ‘My mother easily fooled? You must be crazy.’

  ‘Believe me, she is. She’s so full of herself and her own good works and her own virtue it never occurs to her she might be wrong. And that means that anyone who sucks up to her looks to her to be sensible and anyone who thinks for themselves is out in the cold. That’s why she doesn’t like me. But never mind, Rosalie will like me, and I’ll get what I want out of her, and that means you will and then – oh, Jay, it’ll all be lovely, you’ll see. Wasn’t I right before? Haven’t I always made it work for you before? Well, I will again. Only for God’s sake, back me up. Do what I want you to do, follow my lead and it’ll all be fine –’

  ‘You are one crazy kid, Maddie,’ he said and at the sound of the familiar words she smiled, softly and slowly in the darkness and lifted her arms and linked them round his neck. He always said that before they made love now; it had become part of their loveplay, so much so that when he said it in the dining room or the sitting room when they were all there she knew it was an invitation and would produce gargantuan yawns and would say her goodnights demurely and wander up to bed, knowing he would follow as soon as he could.

  Now he wasn’t willing to waste time in more loveplay than those few words and as he pushed himself into her and pulled her knees up on each side of him she let her thoughts slide away, letting her body respond to him and not bothering to think about her own sensations much.

  It was still good to make love, of course it was, but not so much because of the directly physical way it made her feel, as it had been at the beginning. Now it was an affirmation of her possession of him, a reminder to him as much as to her that he was now hers and only hers, and that was gratification enough. So, as he rose and fell rhythmically above her now, grunting a little with pleasure, she didn’t need to think about what he was doing. She could think and plan things.

  It hadn’t been an easy four weeks at all. She had felt like a cat in a room full of broken glass, treading deliberately here and there, going round in wide circles to get to where she wanted without injury, but it had been worth it. She had them pretty well in her eye now, knew how they operated, understood the rhythms and currents of life in the big luxurious house which was in reality far less comfortable to be in than it seemed.

  Pa, the aut
ocrat who wasn’t, seemed to run everyone according to his own whims but was himself so much under his wife’s baleful eye that he had been forced to become devious and sly. He spent as much time evading her control and criticism as he did on business. She hadn’t lived with as sharp a businessman as Alfred Braham all her life without learning to recognise a sharp operator when she met one – or a sloppy one. And there was no doubt in her mind that old Timothy Kincaid was sloppy in his dealings. There was major profit to be made from the fact, and she had soon found ways to do so.

  Building and booze, they were his main concerns, the ones that brought in much more cash than all his other interests, which ranged from South Boston taverns to North End restaurants via dairies, fruit warehouses, liquor stores, car dealers and shoe stores. It was an odd mixture of interests, she had thought at first, until, while listening and chatting artlessly to the old man to unbutton his own gossip, she had discovered the link between them. He had an odd and uneasy partnership with a group of Italian businessmen as well as with the obvious Irish cronies a man such as he would be expected to have. Dubious Italians too, she thought shrewdly, and far from the simple honest small businessmen they seemed, for when their names came into their conversation the old man became uneasy, and sheered of.

  ‘Why do I deal in fruit and shoes?’ he would say, twinkling down at her over his cigar. ‘Why, you chatterbox, because people need shoes and fruits. Why else? Now tell me, did your Daddy ever tell you of the time we got hold of thirty-seven geese at Christmas 1917 and then sold them as Christmas dinners for Douglas Haig’s staff and after that sold them three times over to the French army staff and to a bunch of French civilians? They all paid up and we sent them all to the same place to collect their geese – oh, it must have been rich! I wish I’d been there to see their faces –’

  ‘No, he didn’t tell me that. But he told me about the cellar full of wine you found near Château Thierry still there after the offensive –’

  He had slapped his leg with enormous satisfaction. ‘Jesus, yes! I’d forgotten that! Now what did he tell you? And I’ll put the record straight.’

  And so it had gone on all through the weeks since they had arrived and been installed in Jay’s room, into which Mary Margaret, with some muttering and complaining, had shifted a double bed. It was she and only she who had made any effort towards their comfort; certainly his mother hadn’t and Maddie had not been at all surprised by that fact.

  From the moment she had first seen her, when she had come out of the dining room behind her husband the afternoon they had arrived, Maddie had known she was a formidable adversary. Tall and thin, with fair hair, so faded it was the colour of old straw pulled back into tight waves across the top of her head, she dressed in clothes as muted and as understated as could be found. Beside her husband, who exuded colour and vigour and life she seemed to disappear, to become little more than a rosary-clutching shadow (for she never seemed to be seen without one, as far as Maddie could tell; she wondered if she took one with her into the bath but knew that to ask such a question would cause great offence so she said nothing). But that she was powerful was undoubted. She had looked at Maddie through her gold-rimmed glasses as round as buttons, and said quietly, ‘How do you do,’ when Jay made his nervous introductions and then had reached up and hugged Jay with an eager hunger that was almost embarrassing to see, and Maddie had thought – take care. This won’t be easy.

  It wasn’t. That Blossom Bryan Kincaid was implacably opposed to Maddie’s presence in her house was soon clear, even though she never said a word against her, and always addressed her with meticulous politeness. But she never invited Maddie to come with her to church as she always did everyone else in the house (including Mary Margaret who always gave the same retort, ‘Ah, the Good Lord knows there’s as much virtue in sweepin’ a room as in runnin’ to church. I’ve work to be done. I’ll be there Sunday for mass and he’ll settle for that much of a view of me. You be on your way.’). Nor did she invite Maddie to sit with her when she read her day’s portion of religious tracts, as again she always asked her daughters and her other daughter-in-law.

  But that did not worry Maddie. She knew better than to waste efforts on people who would not respond. That had never been her way. She cut her losses and got on to the next thing – and in this case, the next thing was Rosalie. She was the key to dealing with Timothy Two and Declan and it was a key she would use.

  Timothy Two and Declan, she thought now as Jay, his head stretched back and sweating heavily, began to move more rapidly so that her head was banged rhythmically against the head of the bed. I need more time to get to know about them. Aloof, that was the word for them. They had been introduced to her that first evening when they had returned home for family dinner, and had shaken hands politely, showing little surprise at the fact that she was now their sister-in-law, and had from then on kept their distance. They would need a little more effort, she told herself, if I’m to get everything right for us, the way it ought to be. Right for all of us, and as Jay at last finished and rolled off her she smiled sideways at him in the darkness, and said softly, ‘Jay, my darling, I have to tell you something.’

  ‘Mmm?’ he said sleepily and turned away, ready to fall asleep, but she pulled him back so that he had to look at her.

  ‘Jay, darling, I have to tell you I wasn’t quite as clever as I thought I was. I should have had a period last week, and I haven’t. And I’ve been regular as long as I can remember. I think, maybe, there’s going to be a new generation of Kincaids in this house. Unless we get one of our own soon.’

  19

  January 1951

  She couldn’t risk being sick, Maddie decided, so she wasn’t. She felt sick enough, heaven knew, hardly daring to get out of bed in the morning for fear of throwing up, but she was well aware with a deep certainty that if Jay were to see that happening he would be so alarmed that he’d back away from her. And right now that was the last thing she wanted. So a strong effort of will was essential.

  Actually, it wasn’t as hard to control the way she felt as she had feared it might be. As long as she took plenty of time over getting up in the mornings, and took no more for breakfast than clear tea and a little dry toast, the waves of nausea would recede until she felt well enough to cope. She would slide into the pattern of the days without leaving a ripple to disturb anyone and certainly not Jay.

  He seemed to have returned to the life he had lived before he had been sent to England without any difficulty at all, sinking into the mud of his home waters with even less of a ripple. He went to the State Street office of Kincaid and Sons each day with his brothers Timothy and Declan, leaving his father to follow later when he had spent the morning reading the papers and listening to his favourite radio commentators and then taking lunch with his wife and daughters – and now Maddie – after which all three men came home to the big house together to sit over the vast dinner that Mary Margaret and her staff of two thrust in front of them.

  The house ran like an oiled turbine under the big noisy woman’s care; Maddie hardly ever saw the other two servants though she knew they were there, for she heard Mary Margaret swearing raucously at them often enough. There was certainly nothing for her to do, any more than there was for the daughters of the house. Their daily pattern was similar to their father’s; late rising, mornings spent about their own affairs, mostly getting dressed, and then disappearing after lunch to, as far as Maddie could tell, spend the whole of the afternoon shopping in Newbury Street. Even though she could be a dedicated spender of money herself, Maddie couldn’t imagine doing that. Not every afternoon, every week.

  She had, during her first days in the house, tried to talk to Jay about the provision of a home of their own. It had never occurred to her that he would not set about making such arrangements as soon as they had reached Boston and greeted his family. They did not have a great deal of money behind them, of course, but he had his salary from Kincaid and Sons, and she had ideas about improving that.
So there was no reason they shouldn’t have their own home, in which she could be the supreme person, as Blossom Bryan Kincaid was in this house. But Jay had just listened and said nothing when she had broached the subject, and then had talked deliberately of other things, so she had said no more. It was clear that he would settle for no home smaller than this family one, and since they could not afford such a house for themselves, then the only thing to do was to live with his parents. He saw no loss of dignity in that, so why should she?

  But she did. Perhaps, she would think sometimes, later on, perhaps if I had had something to do, a place to call my own, I wouldn’t have let it all happen. I wouldn’t have had the time to do it, apart from anything else …

  But she did have the time and her pregnancy, rather than making her somnolent and willing to loaf through the winter days – and they were bitingly cold in a way she had never met cold before – made her edgy and eager, as though she were filled with a sense of urgency she could not control. Things had to happen, and if they did not happen of their own volition, then she, Maddie, had the responsibility to make them happen.

  So, she set to work. It would be a waste of time, she knew, to try to get anywhere with Blossom. It would be equally pointless to try to influence her sisters-in-law, Maureen and Betty-Jane. They were little more than ornaments, seeing themselves as having only one function in life, which was to find themselves suitable husbands. Maddie had a hazy notion that they were getting anxious about their advancing ages since they were twenty-six and twenty-five, but at the same time were very pernickety in their tastes and that between them they had turned down half the eligible men in Boston, seeking partners who were as romantic and exciting as they wanted them to be, as rich as their father expected them to be, and as pious as their mother insisted they be. There were, Maddie gathered, sadly few left who came up to the required standard. But that was their problem and Maddie could not have been less interested in it.