My Beloved Son

by Catherine Cookson

  She didn’t know at what time she fell asleep but she was startled awake with a hand on her shoulder and a remembered voice saying, ‘I’ve brought you a cup of tea. I thought I had better look in as it’s on nine o’clock.’

  She sat up with a start, saying, ‘Oh! I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s all right.’ Mary nodded at her, smiling. ‘You didn’t sleep well?’

  ‘No,’ Maggie replied. ‘No, I didn’t.’

  ‘Well, it’s natural; nobody does in a strange bed.’

  While Maggie sipped at the tea Mary opened the curtains, saying, ‘It’s a nice morning; sharpish.’

  ‘There’s no sign of him, I suppose?’ It was a stupid thing to say and she shook her head at herself as she turned and put the cup on the side table, and Mary answered as if the situation was normal, saying, ‘No, he hasn’t turned up.’ Then pointing to the wash-hand stand, she added, ‘There’s cold water in there for a wash, but if you like to come down to the kitchen I could give you a drop of hot. This room’s cold. All the bedrooms are cold. They’ve never had fires in them, not in my time. But we used to keep fires going downstairs, that was when there was plenty of wood chopped and you could get coal practically for the asking…What’s that!’ She turned quickly to look out of the window, then whispered, ‘Eeh! It looks like one of those military cars with the hood over.’

  Before Mary had turned from the window Maggie was out of bed and saying now, ‘It’ll likely be the special police. You’d better go down.’

  ‘Special police?’ Mary was across the room at the open door. ‘My goodness me!’

  Maggie had already stripped off her nightdress and was tumbling into her clothes, and it was but a matter of minutes later when she entered the kitchen. The two SPs were standing near the table and they turned and looked at her as Mary, pointing towards her, said, ‘This is Sir Joseph Jebeau’s friend. She can tell you he’s not here; she…she came to find him.’

  Both men looked from Mary to Maggie and back to Mary again, and one of them said, ‘What do you mean…Sir Joseph? We’re looking for Corporal Joseph Jebeau.’

  Stretching her neck out of the collar of her striped blouse, Mary said, ‘Yes, he might be that to you but, nevertheless, he’s Sir Joseph Jebeau.’

  The two policemen looked at each other for a moment, then turned towards Maggie, and they had no need to repeat the question, it was in their eyes, and she answered it, saying quietly, ‘She’s right, he is Sir Joseph Jebeau.’

  ‘But he is…’ One of them looked at a paper in his hand, then said, ‘But why?’

  ‘That’s his own business.’

  The taller of the two men now brought his head forward, his chin moving up and down against his collar as he said, ‘That might be, miss, but his whereabouts is ours. He’s wanted; you know that?’

  She paused a moment before saying, ‘Yes, I know that.’

  ‘Then may I ask you a question?’

  She didn’t answer, but waited, and he said, ‘Do you know of his whereabouts? Is he here?’ And to this she answered, ‘To both those questions I can say no, and…and I may add that you are not looking for an ordinary deserter; Corporal Jebeau is a sick man.’

  ‘Oh, well, that’s for the doctor to decide, miss, not you or me.’

  ‘Yes, it will be.’

  ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ They turned and looked at Mary now.

  ‘It would be very acceptable, miss, but we’d like to look around first so, if you don’t mind, would you give us a lead?’

  ‘Yes, I’ll do that, all except the missis’ room.’ She had moved round the table now, and when they looked at her enquiringly, she said, ‘His mother’s room.’

  ‘We’ll have to look everywhere, miss.’ The smaller of the two men pursed his lips before saying, ‘His mother’s room’s likely the place he’d make for.’

  ‘She’s not well, she’s in a bad state.’

  ‘I’m sorry, miss, but we’ve got a job to do.’

  Before leading the way out of the kitchen, Mary glanced towards Maggie.

  Maggie went towards the fire and held her cold hands out to the blaze. But only for a second, then she was at the window looking into the yard. If he had got this far, was it likely he would have come into the house? He could be in the outbuildings. And she was on the point of scrambling out of the kitchen when a thought checked her: if those men were searching the rooms, they could quite easily see her from a window, and that would bring them down at a rush; SPs were naturally of a suspicious mind …

  It was a full half-hour before the men returned to the kitchen with Mary and they passed straight through it and went outside. It was another half-hour before they had finished their searching of the outbuildings and the gardens right down, as Maggie informed her, to the greenhouses, almost scaring Bill Swann to death, coming on him like they did.

  They had a last word with her in the kitchen and it was the tall one who looked at her straight in the eye as he said, ‘It’s your duty, you know, miss, to inform the authorities if he should turn up.’

  ‘I know my duty,’ she answered, ‘you don’t have to tell me.’ The tone of her voice was that which she used when behind the counter and the man stared at her for a moment and must have thought it better not to make any retort. Then they both left.

  As the sound of the car faded away from the yard Mary sank down into a chair, saying, ‘Eeh, the things that happen here! I thought she was going to die. I had to give her some explanation. “It’s all right, ma’am,” I said. “These men are Special Police. They are after an escaped soldier.” I had to say something. She didn’t move a muscle but she looked petrified. Her eyes followed them all round the room, and when they opened the wardrobe she gasped as if she was about to die. Eeh! Why had he to do it…Master Joe? And they said they’d be back…How would they have got onto it so soon?’

  ‘They would have telephoned from Hereford.’

  ‘Oh aye; but it’s a Sunday morning.’

  ‘Every day of the week’s the same when you’re in camp.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so. Oh, this war; talk about turning things topsy-turvy. If anybody had told me that one day I’d be left here alone with just her upstairs and watching the place going to rack and ruin, I would have said they were barmy. But now I sometimes think I’m goin’ barmy meself.’ She nodded as she rose from the chair and went towards the stove, and as she put the kettle on the fire she said, ‘Nobody should be left to live alone; everybody needs somebody, even if it’s only a dog. We had two, and they died.’

  She now took the poker and raked the bottom bars of the fire, then threw the poker back onto the fender and, straightening her back, looked towards Maggie and nodding her head vigorously as she said, ‘That’s another thing; I’m still cooking on an open fire. They were getting the electric brought over from the Doltons’ place just before the war because they’d had it in for some time, being nearer the main road. But that fell through. Of course we had the generator, and that acted fine when there were men here to look after it. But old Bill can’t see to it; he’s got enough on his hands. And anyway, for the two of us it’s not worth bothering about. And I don’t mind the lamplight; I was brought up with it.’ She sat down opposite Maggie now and, her voice dropping to a sad dispirited tone, she went on, ‘But that’s it, isn’t it? being brought up with things like they were. Why, with our crowd you couldn’t breathe in our cottage. But it was company.’ She spread out her hands, and then nodding as if to herself, she ended, ‘You can put up with anything if you’ve got company.’

  Maggie wetted her lips and swallowed deeply but could express no words, yet her mind was endorsing everything that Mary said: you can put up with anything as long as you have company…special company.

  She was tired, she was depressed: she had walked the length and breadth of the estate, she had met and talked with Bill Swann, a taciturn-natured man who had said he wasn’t a bit surprised that young Mr Joe had scarpered, because he wasn’t cut out for it;
too dreamy, wandered the hills with his eyes shut half the time. Then, of course, the missis was to blame; she had tried to tie him to her apron strings. As quiet as he was, he had a will of his own and she didn’t get off with everything. By what Mary said, he had stood up to her. High jinks there used to be in the house between them, but of course his type, sensitive, almost womanly, you could say, couldn’t take knocks like other folks. Everybody had been affected by the killings but it had seemed to turn young Mr Joe’s head. One thing he couldn’t understand and that was why he had never come to see the missis. As hard as she had been on him, she didn’t deserve the life she was leading in that house there. Never saw a soul. Not that people hadn’t come, at first, that is; Mr Dolton and the family were never off the doorstep. It was their cousin Miss Crosbie that Master Martin was about to marry just afore he died. But then the missis wouldn’t see anybody; and then she had that stroke and that put the finish to her. ‘And,’ he had ended, ‘I wouldn’t have Mary’s job for all the tea in China, not that she hasn’t been well paid for it, and likely feathering her nest on the side, and I don’t blame her for that, because who’s going to see to her if the missis dies and the young master doesn’t come back, and the place’ll likely be sold? Oh, I don’t blame her.’ …

  Maggie didn’t care for Mr Swann. He was very like many others she had met who fitted nicely under her Aunt Lizzie’s heading of ‘bitter pills’ …

  The light was closing in when she entered the kitchen again, to be greeted by Mary with, ‘You’ve never been off your legs; you’ll wear them down to the stumps tramping the place,’ only then to look her up and down as if she were recognising something tactless in her comment …

  During the day Mary had been thinking a lot about the visitor. It was beyond her how a fellow like Mr Joe, because he was a good-looking, strapping young fellow, could have taken up with anyone like this one. Seemingly, she had a nice nature and she spoke well, very like the master and the others had done, and much better than the missis upstairs, because she had a thin peevish voice. But the voice didn’t make up for how this one looked: her being fat wouldn’t have been so noticeable if she’d had height with it, but she didn’t look to be five feet. You couldn’t say she was as broad as she was long, but she was much too fat for her height. Added to which she was plain looking. Nice eyes, yes, and a lovely set of teeth, and when she smiled it changed her face, although she didn’t smile much.

  At first she had thought there was a foreign look about her, but from bits she had spoken about herself, she had been born in Manchester and her parents were English.

  ‘I’ve made a stew,’ she said. ‘I hope you like it; you picked over your lunch.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I…I didn’t feel hungry, although it was a most tasty meal. You’re a very good cook.’

  ‘I don’t know so much about that, but I suppose I’ve had enough training.’ Mary smiled now and, aiming to make the visitor feel at home, she said, ‘You can set the table for me if you like. The cloth’s in the first drawer of the rack there.’

  ‘Yes. Yes,’ Maggie said, and it was as she turned towards the delph rack that the distant sound of a scream halted her, and she jerked her head round and looked at Mary, who now had her eyes raised to the ceiling.

  When the scream came again, louder this time, Mary exclaimed, ‘Oh my God!’ and ran from the room, and instinctively Maggie followed her.

  As they reached the gallery, the screams came at them in a crescendo, and when Maggie, on Mary’s heels, reached the bedroom she saw that the door was already open and there, in a bed opposite them lay what looked like the skeleton of a woman, one hand in her hair and her mouth agape, and, standing to the right of the bed towards the foot, was Joe.

  Instinctively both Maggie and Mary made for the one each aimed to protect: Mary rushed to the bed and put her arms around the screaming woman, shouting, ‘There now! There now! It’s only Master Joe. It’s only Master Joe.’

  Of a sudden the screaming stopped, the mouth opened wider for a moment, then sagged closed; the eyes too closed, and the body went limp in Mary’s arms. And she, looking to where Maggie had hold of Joe, said, ‘She’s passed out. Oh, Master Joe, you’ve frightened the wits out of her. Why…why did you do it?’

  Joe said nothing; he had said nothing for a long time. He knew he couldn’t say anything; all the words were locked in a dungeon deep down in him, although he knew he was home. And he knew why he had come home: he had to look at her once more; he thought that if he looked at her, just stood looking at her, she would turn into a woman, a mother, an ordinary mother, and love him just because she was a mother. And because she loved him she would let him go. But she had screamed, screamed and screamed, and he knew she wasn’t a mother but a murderess. Domineering, vitriolic, dangerous, mad. He was looking at an old woman, an old, old woman, her head on one side, her mouth wide open, her eyes filled with terror.

  He had wanted to say something to her; not to say, ‘It’s all right; I know how you feel,’ because he would never know how she felt. It eluded him for a moment what he wanted to say. And then he knew: he wanted to say, ‘Look what you’ve brought me to. I’m as dead as Martin and the rest.’ And he would say to her, ‘If you had let me have Carrie I wouldn’t be like this.’ But then Carrie hadn’t wanted him, had she? But he must see her. He would go over to the cottage; if she saw him she might change her mind.

  His mother had stopped screaming; her eyes were closed now and she was moaning. He made to go towards the head of the bed but felt himself being turned about.

  Oh, it was Maggie. Maggie was nice, Maggie was a comfort, like Lizzie. They were both nice. He wanted to say to her, ‘Why have you come here?’ She should be behind the counter serving tea and giving as much as was sent. She was quick-witted, was Maggie. He also wanted to say to her, ‘Leave go of me. Where are you taking me?’

  Her voice came to him as from a distance, saying, ‘That’s it. That’s it. You’ll be all right.’

  He knew he was walking downstairs but his feet felt heavy; he had to lift each foot carefully as if he were sucking it out of mud. It was a long way to the kitchen and he was glad to sit down. The kitchen seemed small; it was taken up by Maggie’s face. Why did she keep saying, ‘You’re all right. You’re all right’? He knew he was all right. He was free. Nothing could touch him now for he didn’t feel anything: pain, remorse, bitterness; there was nothing there. He felt comfortable. If only he could get rid of Maggie’s face, he would go to sleep. Yes, that’s what he wanted to do; sleep, sleep, forever.

  As Maggie watched him drop his head onto his folded arms on the kitchen table she bit tightly on her lip in order to suppress her tears. She knew she would never get him back to the camp on her own; she also knew there were certain things to be done and that she would have to do them.

  When Mary came rushing into the room she said to her, ‘Will you call the doctor?’

  ‘Eeh yes; yes’—Mary tossed her head from side to side—‘for both of them, I should say. My God! Did you ever?’ She looked towards where Joe was slumped over the table and she said in a whisper, ‘He’s gone barmy, right barmy, and the shock’ll likely finish her. Eeh, yes.’ And she pressed her hand tightly against her cheek and closed her eyes for a moment, before saying, ‘The doctor. Yes, the doctor. We’ll have to get Bill to go to the Doltons’ to phone for him.’ And she ran from the kitchen intent on finding Bill, while Maggie pulled a chair close to Joe’s side and sat down beside him and, putting her arm gently about his shoulders, she said, ‘Oh, Joe. Joe.’

  Fourteen

  The doctor had aroused Joe from the table but had been unable to get any sense out of him, even to get him to speak at all. And he hadn’t bothered to lower his voice when he said to Maggie, ‘This doesn’t surprise me: it began the night of the murders; it finished them both.’ His chin jerked upwards. ‘The military will have to be informed, of course. But it’s late, and as they’ve already been here once today they won’t relish coming back at
this time of night. Anyway, it wouldn’t do him any good to be hauled off as he is now. I should suggest you get him to bed and I’ll come over in the morning and we’ll take it from there.’ Then shaking his head he added, ‘By, woman, you’ve got your hands full!’ And turning to Maggie he said, ‘You’ll be staying to see what transpires, I suppose?’

  Maggie looked at him for a moment before answering simply, ‘Yes.’

  What did he think she’d be doing? Why did he think she was there? She felt excluded, somehow, from this strange set-up: Joe, Mary and this doctor, they appeared like one, they knew all about each other; she was certainly the stranger within the gates.

  She now watched him leave, accompanied by Mary; and outside, in the yard, they stood talking, the doctor’s head the while moving in little bobs.

  When Mary re-entered the kitchen she said, ‘He’s very bad. Doctor says he’s very bad; they’ll likely send him to a…well, sort of special hospital.’

  At this Maggie felt inclined to shout, ‘Shut up, will you! Shut up!’ Instead, she said, ‘We’d better get him upstairs.’

  ‘I’ll have to make a bed up; there’s no sheets on the others.’

  ‘Oh, put him in my room; the bed’ll be aired.’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘Oh, I’m not likely to sleep tonight anyway. I…I think I’ll sit up with him.’

  ‘I can make another bed up.’

  ‘No, no, don’t bother. Come on, let’s get him up.’

  Coaxingly she said now, ‘Come on, Joe. Come on.’ And surprisingly, he got to his feet without protest, but when, one each side of him, they went to mount the stairs he became stiff, until Maggie said softly, ‘It’s all right. It’s all right. Nothing’s going to happen to you, dear. I’ll be with you. I’ll stay with you,’ when he relaxed as a child might and, practically unaided, he went up the stairs. In the bedroom he went straight towards the bed and made to lie down, but it was Mary now who said, ‘Oh, not in your clothes, Mr Joe. Come on, let’s make you comfortable, eh?’ Then nodding towards Maggie, she indicated that they should undress him. And the pity of it to Maggie was that he stood docilely and let them take off his clothes, down to his underpants.