My Beloved Son

by Catherine Cookson

  Slowly she crossed the drive and mounted the steps. And now she was standing opposite the dark weather-stained front door. There were two bells: the one to the side was the old-fashioned, long iron-pole type with a rusty ring on the end of it; the other was a modern button attached to the door itself. It was this she tried first. She pressed it three times, and each time there was no response; in fact she did not hear a bell ring, and so she tentatively pulled on the handle to the side of her. When again nothing happened she moved back over the narrow terrace and looked along each side of the house. Slowly now she turned and went down the steps again, and from the drive she once more looked at the façade of the house. The windows looked empty, blind. She was trembling a little as she entered the yard, thinking that if there was only this Mary Smith here, she would be in the kitchen.

  And she was.

  Mary was at the table setting the breakfast tray for the missis when the knock came on the back door. When she opened it, her mouth fell into a slight gape as she looked down on the small and plump young person looking at her. She was about to say, ‘What do you want?’ when Maggie spoke.

  ‘Miss Mary Smith?’ she asked; and Mary recognised something in the voice which told her that no matter what this one looked like, she wasn’t common, not like those three mothers they sent with their bairns last year. She answered quietly, ‘Yes, I’m Mary Smith.’

  ‘May I come in?’

  Mary hesitated a moment, then said, ‘Well, yes,’ and stood aside to allow Maggie to pass.

  Maggie stood for a moment looking round the big kitchen. Unlike the outside of the house, at least this part of the inside looked as if it was well cared for.

  Turning quickly to Mary, she asked in an undertone, ‘Has…has he come?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Er…Joe, I mean Mr Jebeau.’

  ‘Mr Jebeau?’ Mary screwed up her face. ‘You mean Sir Joseph. He’s in the RAF. Well, last time we heard, he was.’

  Maggie nodded at Mary, saying, ‘He…he’s still in the RAF, but…but I’m afraid he’s not well and yesterday he—’ She gulped and paused. How could she put it? Absconded? Deserted? What she said was, ‘He left without leave; he…he wasn’t quite himself.’

  Mary stared at Maggie for a moment; then nodded her head as she said, ‘I’m not surprised at that; he wasn’t himself when he left here. And he’s never shown his face since, not to see his mother or anything. Everything’s done through the solicitors, everything’s changed.’ Poking her head forward now, she added, ‘Have they sent you after him?’

  ‘No, no.’ Maggie shook her head, then said, ‘Would you mind if I sat down? I’ve been travelling all night.’

  ‘Oh aye, yes.’ Mary now pulled the chair quickly forward, then said, ‘I’ve just made a cup of tea; you’d like one, I suppose?’

  ‘If you please?’

  ‘And something to eat? You can have a meal, bacon an’ that; we’re not short, we’ve got hens and pigs. The cows have gone because there’s only Bill Swann left to look after things and he’s getting on. But you were sayin’ about Master Joe: has he been up to something?’

  ‘He…he got into a bit of a fight, and he should have reported and he didn’t. But…but I’m afraid he hasn’t been well for some time and something must have just…well’—she clicked her fingers—‘snapped.’

  ‘Oh.’ Mary now went to the fireplace and, lifting up a big brown teapot from the hob, she brought it to the table, saying, ‘That doesn’t surprise me either. He was odd afore he left. After the do he went to pieces, like her’—she thumbed upstairs—‘his mother.’ Then her head nodding in small jerks, she said, ‘She’s in a bad way. Her mind is still clear but she can hardly move; rarely gets out of bed now. The doctor comes every week and he says he wouldn’t be surprised if she goes out like a flash one of these days. There’—she pushed a cup of tea towards Maggie—‘let me take her breakfast up and I’ll get you something as soon as I come back. I would take your coat off too.’

  Maggie stood up and took her coat and hat off, and as Mary left the room with the tray Maggie looked about her. It was a fine kitchen. The stove was old-fashioned, being an open grate with the ovens to the side, which seemed to suit the place. The floor was made of great slabs of stone. There was a mat in front of the fireplace, but the rest of the floor was bare. Along one wall was a great wooden rack holding what looked like a full dinner, breakfast and tea service. By! Her Aunt Lizzie would love to see such china. And to think this place was all Joe’s, and he had left it, not wanting to own it; except that now he was sick, sick in the head.

  She sat down and joined her hands on the table. What if he didn’t come here? Yet that’s what he had said, that’s what he had meant. ‘I’m going home.’ There was time enough. She would have to wait, and she would have to tell this Mary that she must wait. But she knew if he didn’t come soon it would be too late, for they were bound to have put the SPs onto him. Who knew but they had already phoned Newcastle, because that city would likely be the headquarters for around here. And although she imagined a deserter, especially a single man, wouldn’t make straight for home, she knew that the SPs would eventually leave no avenue unexplored.

  She felt for a moment she was in a foreign land. The terrain outside was wild and strange; this house was strange. And the woman upstairs, his mother, what was she like? Would she ask to see her? Or would the woman herself want to see her?

  The question was answered by Mary re-entering the room and saying, ‘That’s that for the next half-hour, then I’ll have to see to her. I didn’t tell her that you were here; I mean that anybody connected with Master Joe had come. She’s never mentioned his name since the day he left. Went off like a shot of a gun, he did, after telling me I had to take me orders from them in Newcastle, the solicitors. Not a bit like himself. He was always pleasant, was Master Joe, kindly like, but from the accident—’ She stopped talking and went to the oven and took out a plate on which there were two slices of bacon and, bringing it to the table, she said, ‘There’s enough for two here; would you like an egg with it?’

  ‘No, thank you. If you don’t mind, I…I won’t have anything to eat; I had sandwiches on the train. My…my aunt put me up more than I needed; but I wouldn’t mind another cup of tea. And please continue with your breakfast.’

  Mary poured out two cups of tea, then sat down opposite Maggie and began to eat the bacon. She got through one slice before she spoke again, picking up the words referring to the accident as if there had been nothing between: ‘He was altered from that time, Master Joe. It shook us all. Do you know about it?’

  Maggie hesitated before replying, ‘I heard something.’

  ‘Master Martin and me dad were shot at the same time. They were out waiting for the poachers and they were shot.’

  ‘Did they ever find their assail…the culprit?’

  ‘No, never. But the general opinion is it was one of them from the black market in Newcastle. They’re always after the hill cattle and sheep. If there hadn’t been the war on, Mrs Swann says, the police would have gone about it more thoroughly and nabbed somebody by now. Well—’ She swallowed on a mouthful of the bacon; then lifting up the corner of her apron, she wiped her mouth on it before going on, ‘It certainly broke up the house. If a bomb had dropped on it, it couldn’t have caused more trouble, or left it like it is now. I sometimes think it’s a pity a bomb didn’t drop on it and wipe us all out, ’cos it broke our family up. Me mother couldn’t stand any more of it and she went to live with our Charlie and his wife in Middlesbrough. Our Helen went and joined up; she’s in the ATS. As for our Florrie, I don’t know where she is, but my mother’s got the bairn.’ She nodded towards Maggie now. ‘She had a bairn, you know, before she was married…well, she never got married. And then our Janet…well, she’s…she lives in Hereford. I just heard that from our Mick afore Christmas. She never writes; I’ve had nothing to do with her for years, but our Mick said she had fallen on her feet all right. Well, she woul
d do, our Janet, she’s like that. Mick’s me brother. Then I have a younger sister called Carrie. She’s in the forces an’ all. But you see, we’re split up and it was through me dad being killed. And then look what it did to the missis.’ She again wiped her mouth before adding, ‘But I’m not surprised at Master Joe going funny. As I said, he was funny the day he left, must have got on his mind. Well, it would, wouldn’t it? It was like him jumping into dead men’s shoes, his uncle dying in the car crash. Yes’—she nodded now—‘he died in a car crash a few years back. Then his other cousin Harry, he took bad and died suddenly the first year of the war. And then Master Martin, and just afore he was going to get married an’ all. That was the funny thing, that he, like his father, should die just afore he was going to get married. His father, you see, was going to marry for the second time.’

  Like a twisted film reel, the picture was unfolding before Maggie’s eyes. Yet somehow it wasn’t complete. From what she herself knew about Joe, she couldn’t fathom the reason why he would turn against his mother and this place simply because he had come into a title even, as Mary said, through stepping into dead men’s shoes. There must be something else.

  ‘Will he get court-martialled? I mean, Master Joe?’

  ‘Well, not if he turns up soon and I can take him back to the camp.’

  ‘Are you a WAAF?’

  ‘No, I work in the NAAFI.’

  ‘And’—Mary’s head was on one side now, a puzzled expression on her face as she asked tentatively, ‘and you’re a friend of his?’

  ‘Yes.’ Her reply was flat sounding. ‘He used to come and have a meal with my aunt when he was off duty; he didn’t seem to have any place to go.’

  ‘Well, it’s a wonder he didn’t know about our Janet living in Hereford. But it’s likely a big place. Is it, this Hereford?’

  ‘Yes. And the camp too is fairly big. It’s about seven miles outside the town.’

  ‘I’ve never been that way; in fact, I’ve never really been anywhere further than Newcastle.’ Mary leant her elbow on the table now and rested her chin in her hand and, as if she were recalling the past to herself, she said, ‘I seem to have spent me whole life in this place. Well, I have, haven’t I? This kitchen has been me home since I was ten. You see we all worked on the estate. The master was very good to us, although our cottage wasn’t very much to speak of. We were crowded, like, and me mam was always going on. But me dad was always grateful to the master. I was very fond of me dad, an’ I suppose that’s why I stay on here. Anyway, I couldn’t leave her in the way she was. Master Joe saw to it that I was left a decent wage, an’ there’s always plenty to eat, an’ if I wasn’t doing this I’d likely be doing war work. But they’ve never called me up. Well, you see, I don’t suppose they would, me being over thirty-five, but I must admit there’s times when I wish I had been called up and I had been made to go; you know what I mean, because it gets lonely here.’

  Maggie felt a swift wave of pity for the woman as she watched her lower lip tremble, and she said softly, ‘I think you’re best off here; it’s not too much fun being in the forces.’ And after a pause she said, ‘It’s a wonder they haven’t commandeered the house for evacuees or the military.’

  ‘Oh, they did.’ Mary was nodding at her vigorously now. ‘Three women and their bairns they sent here, and they were awful; the lot of them; I had a job to keep them in their place. They were set up in the cottages but they wouldn’t stay there; said they weren’t fit for pigs. And—’ She closed her eyes for a moment and nodded her head as she added, ‘And they were right there, really. And then when they got in here, eeh my! Anyway, they didn’t stay long, for as one of them put it, it wasn’t just dead’n alive, it was dead’n buried. And they up one day and went back somewhere to the billeting office.’

  She sighed now and gave a bit of a laugh as she looked at Maggie and went on, ‘By, you get some eye-openers in this life; you would imagine officers to be superior types wouldn’t you? Well, some of them billeted here, an’ two of them must have been brought up in the slums of Newcastle, or Liverpool, or London, or somewhere low, because their habits…well, you wouldn’t believe it. One used to smoke and throw all his matchsticks behind the head of the bed. An’ as for hygiene, well, you wouldn’t credit it, too blooming lazy to go to the closet. And you should have heard what their batmen said about them. They were better class than the officers; at least, the two I’m meaning. They were here four months and it was like four years. They found it a bit dull an’ all, too far out, no communication, they said. But we haven’t been troubled by anybody for the last year…How long do you think you’ll stay?’

  Maggie was surprised at the question. She had been on the point of asking if she could stay to see if Joe came home, but now she answered gratefully, ‘I have a week’s leave, but…but as soon as Joe turns up, that’s if he does turn up, I’ll try to get him back to camp immediately.’

  ‘Well—’ Mary rose to her feet saying, ‘you can stay as long as you like for my part. I can put you in what used to be Mr Harry’s room. That’s away from the main corridor, so she won’t hear you, because it might upset her if she heard there was somebody strange in the house, or any unfamiliar voice. I had to disconnect the doorbells. She used to get upset when she heard them, thinking somebody strange was coming. And she got terribly agitated when the others were here. She could walk a bit then but she wouldn’t come out of the room…Would you like to see round?’

  ‘Yes, I would like that very much.’ …

  So Maggie saw around the house in which Joe had lived since he was five years old, and as she went from room to room she was forced to wonder yet again what it was that could have driven him away from this lovely place. Although the windows needed cleaning and most of the furniture lacked polish, she saw that the place was kept in good order and dust free.

  A short while later, when Mary left her in what had been Harry’s room, she went and stood at the window and looked over the wide tangle of gardens, over a disused tennis court and to a stretch of woodland beyond. The sun was still shining and in her mind’s eye she could see what the place had looked like when it had been kept in order.

  She had been standing at the window for a matter of minutes, when suddenly she muttered aloud, ‘Come on, Joe; come back, and let’s get away. Come on. Come on.’ It was as if he were in the garden and she were talking to him. Then of a sudden she was again overwhelmed by the odd fear; she became stiff with it. Whereas before it had been something distant, which she couldn’t explain, now it was here, right here. It had, in a way, materialised and swung her round to face it. Her eyes wide, they moved from the single bed to the chest of drawers, on to a large, impressive, mahogany wardrobe and a matching dressing table, then to an easy chair and a small table with a standard lamp on it. She had never been given to fanciful imaginings, she hadn’t even as a child been addicted to nightmares from reading fairy tales, such as Grimms’; there hadn’t been any time for such nonsense in her young life. Her reading had been books of instruction to prepare her for the battle of life that was forced upon plain, undersized individuals like herself. But this feeling wasn’t any figment of fancy of the imagination, it was a real fear. And there was, she felt sure, a presence here, a malevolent presence, and for a moment she felt sure she must put her hand out to press something away. She stopped herself and clenched her hands tightly in front of her. She must get out of this room and down into the kitchen to Mary, the ordinary, sensible, level-headed woman.

  Almost at a run now, she left the room, and when she reached the gallery she heard a voice calling, ‘Mary! Mary!’ It was a high thin wail of a voice and when she neared the top of the stairs she saw Mary hurrying up them, and as she passed her she said, ‘She rang, but what’s she calling as well for? She rarely does that.’

  Maggie watched Mary scurry along a broad corridor and disappear into a doorway. Then drawing in a deep breath, she continued slowly down the stairs, and stood for a moment in the hall looking abo
ut her, before making her way to the kitchen.

  Ten minutes later Mary entered the kitchen, saying, ‘Well, what do you make of that? She knew there was somebody strange in the house. She couldn’t have heard us going up there. But I had to say something, so I said it was me aunt from Howdon.’ She nodded now, adding by way of explanation, ‘She’s the one that brought our Carrie up, my youngest sister, you know, that I told you was in the forces…Eeh! I don’t know how she knew. Do you?’

  Maggie could have answered, ‘Yes’, but instead she just shook her head, at the same time sitting down, for she was feeling slightly sick.

  Thirteen

  Maggie had had a restless night. For hours, so it seemed, she had lain staring into the darkness. Although she no longer felt there was an actual presence in the room, nevertheless she was experiencing a normal fear, not so much for herself now, but for Joe. And she knew that whatever had happened, other than the tragedies of his cousins, to turn his mind, had taken place in this house.

  Being somewhat of the nature of her Aunt Lizzie she had up to now pooh-poohed anything in the form of ghostly phenomena or spiritualism. It was tommyrot. But now she was faced with the fact that she wasn’t as level-headed as she imagined, that there must be a sensitivity in her and that it had, in some way, prepared her for the experience she’d had in this room. She’d known this fear before entering here; in fact, since leaving the cottage. It had entered her as a mist which, by the end of her journey, had turned into a dense fog, and she was now deeply afraid of it.

  She had lain thinking about the house in the hills, those gentle hills, so different from those surrounding this place; and, too, of that marvellous woman who lived there and without whose companionship she dreaded to think what her life might have been like up till now.