The Girl from Cobb Street

by Merryn Allingham

  When she said nothing, his exasperation seemed to build in the silence and then spill over. ‘I’m your husband, Daisy, which means you’ll do as I wish.’

  ‘Why is it so important to you that I go?’

  The question had come to her out of the blue but it left him looking discomfited. She could see he was struggling with the situation and wondered why. He moved even closer and took the hairbrush from her grasp, then captured both her hands in his. His voice had a note of tenderness she hadn’t heard before.

  ‘If you won’t do this for me, then do it for the baby. Simla is perfect. You must have heard that from everybody. And there couldn’t be a better place while you’re in this condition. You’ll love the gardens. You’ll love the walking. There are dozens of gentle strolls to take. And when you get too tired, you can call a rickshaw. At night—think of it—you’ll be able to sleep soundly in cool air. How can you not want to go? How can you deny our child the very best start in life?’

  His tone had grown more coaxing with every word and she felt herself warm against his body. She wanted his arms around her, wanted to hold him so tightly he would never escape. Instead she eased her hands from out of his clasp. This was not the way she’d wanted to tell him, but she had no choice now.

  ‘There is no child, Gerald. There is no baby.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ‘What!’

  ‘There was an accident …’ Daisy faltered.

  His face had turned ugly, contorted. ‘So suddenly there’s no baby. There was a baby when you needed to get married, though, wasn’t there?’ His normally slim figure seemed to grow bulkier, to fill the room with threat. He raised his hands as if to shake her, then let them fall slackly by his side. ‘There never was a baby, was there,’ he said bitterly. ‘It was a tale you spun. A downright lie.’

  No understanding then, no sympathy, no kind words. She tried to protest but her voice was weak, drained of conviction in the face of such hurtful injustice. ‘How can you think that?’

  He turned abruptly and strode to the door, then turned again and marched back to her. ‘You’ve played me for a fool, that’s how. You thought you’d catch yourself a husband and what better way to do it than pretend a pregnancy. And I thought you naïve! You’re a professional, Daisy, I underestimated you.’

  ‘Don’t, Gerald, please don’t. You are wrong, very wrong. I was having a baby, I swear it, but there was an incident on the ship. There were prisoners, they were agitators—and they escaped from the ship’s gaol and ran amok. They cannoned into me and I fell down a flight of stairs. The next thing I knew …’

  Her voice broke. The whole dreadful scene was there before her. Flailing limbs, the sickening thump as she crunched onto the hard deck, pounding feet, loud voices and then a softer one in her ear—Grayson—and then the wetness between her legs and the dreadful realisation. Her eyes brimmed with tears at the memory.

  Gerald was still smouldering but her obvious distress silenced him for a moment. But only for a moment. ‘If you really did have this accident,’ he said roughly, ‘then why not tell me about it in Bombay. Why not tell me before we married?’

  ‘I planned to. I wanted to, but there was no chance.’

  ‘What complete rubbish!’ His scorn bit into her. ‘You could have stopped the marriage at any time.’

  ‘I was going to tell you what had happened when you met me at the port, but you weren’t there. You didn’t come as you promised. You sent Anish instead. And then when I arrived at the church, you were in no condition to talk.’

  His face clenched. He did not deny the charge but he seemed so overwhelmed with anger at the turn his life had taken, it was making him deaf to the truth. ‘You could have found a way, if you’d wanted to. And if you hadn’t sent that telegram—’

  For a moment this new line of attack fazed her. ‘But that was weeks ago.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter how long ago it was,’ he said harshly, ‘that did it for me. I was pushed into marrying, and you must have known I would be.’ And when she stood looking blankly at him, he burst out, ‘Don’t pretend you don’t know what you did. Sending a telegram to the regiment so every senior officer would read it and pass it to my Colonel. What chance did I have after that? I was summoned to account for myself—can you imagine what that felt like? Told the honour of the regiment depended on my doing the decent thing!’

  ‘I had no idea that would happen.’

  ‘Of course you hadn’t. It’s not an idea that would suit you. And it wouldn’t suit you, would it, to know that junior officers need the Colonel’s permission to marry. Though not this time, oh no. The baby saw to that. No questions asked, a wedding essential. Forester wasn’t at all happy. The army pays no marriage allowance until I’m twenty-six and that’s not until next year, but in the circumstances he had to agree.’

  So that was what her companion at dinner had meant by a difficult business. She bowed her head, a small part of her appalled at the mayhem she’d set in motion. But the rest of her fought back. There had been a baby and it had been Gerald’s, she insisted to herself, and as much his responsibility as hers.

  ‘I wrote to you. The letters were addressed to you personally. I’m sorry if they never reached you.’

  ‘They reached me,’ he said grimly.

  ‘Then why didn’t you answer? It was only out of desperation that I sent the telegram.’

  ‘I was thinking what best to do.’ He looked down at the floor, refusing to look at her. ‘You gave me no time to consider—and then you did this stupid thing.’

  She walked up to him, forcing him to look at her. ‘That’s not true, Gerald. I wrote every week for a month. You know I did.’

  But he was intent on his own injury and it was as though she had not spoken. ‘Everyone on the station thinks I’m too young to be married. Did you know that? But I was forced into it. You forced me into it—and what was it all for? Nothing, absolutely nothing. No, I’m wrong. It’s been for something.’ His face glowered over her. ‘It has been to make me look a complete fool. Word will get around, you can be sure, and when no child appears, I’ll be the regimental patsy. How glorious that will be!’

  In his agitation, he began again to pace up and down the room, his hands harrowing so fiercely through his hair she wondered that whole handfuls didn’t come loose. She sank down onto the bed and her heart did a curious little plummet. Curious because she felt nothing. She should be distraught, weeping, wailing. His brutal words should have shredded her. Instead she was completely numb. The man she had thought her rock in life was nothing more than shifting sand; the man who had sworn to love her for ever was swearing now that he had been misled, manipulated by her, driven to actions he found repugnant. Had she pushed for marriage when it was something he hadn’t wanted? No, he’d made the promise freely when there was no other reason to do so but love for her. She hadn’t pushed him, he’d been the one doing the pushing. He’d been urgent in his wooing, drowning her in sweet words and sweet deeds.

  She wanted nothing more than to hide away, pull the bedsheet over her face and forget the world existed. It was a struggle to speak but she had to know for sure.

  ‘Does that mean that you never loved me? That without your Colonel’s order, you would never have married?’

  Her voice was barely above a whisper and for the first time Gerald’s face showed a fleeting guilt. ‘It wasn’t like that.’ His voice dropped to a mumble. ‘It’s too soon. This was the last thing I needed.’

  ‘But our time in London?’

  ‘That was fun, Daisy, fun. That’s all.’

  He had come to a halt just feet away and she looked at him, a long and careful look. His face was mottled scarlet and the palest of whites.

  ‘Was it fun to persuade me into giving myself to you, fun to promise marriage and not mean it?’

  He had no answer and said sulkily, ‘I had other plans.’

  ‘What other plans?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. They’re dead in t
he water, destroyed, and all for nothing.’ His anger was spent and he slumped wearily down on the fraying wicker chair. ‘Do you know I came top of my class at Hanbury, top of my class at Sandhurst,’ he said in a tight, high voice. ‘That’s how I got here against all the competition. I was going places and now I’m not.’ Then as an afterthought, he muttered, ‘Every sacrifice made worthless.’

  What was he talking about? Who had made sacrifices? Not his family surely, if he’d told her their true story. But if he hadn’t … the letter from Spitalfields swam clearly into sight. To find the money for a boy to attend a top public school would be hard for an East End tailor, she thought, and then to equip that boy to become a cavalry officer in the Indian Army, even more so. Is that what had happened? Was that the sacrifice? Had Spitalfields not Somerset been Gerald’s childhood playground and the Indian Army as far away from it as he could get? It seemed more than ever likely that he had lied to her about his past, just as he’d fed her fantasies during their weeks together in London.

  If her suspicions were right, he had deceived her absolutely, yet a minute ago he’d dared to accuse her of deception. Her fault had been unintended but his was squalid. He’d lied and then seduced her for ‘fun’. She had been raised under a strict moral code and with her mother’s dishonour ringing in her ears. So many times she had burned with shame when Lily Driscoll had been held up as a dreadful warning. The orphanage had made her pay for her mother’s mistake. And she’d vowed that she would never repeat it. But when she’d drunk alcohol for the first time that night, it had had all the effect Gerald could have wished. She’d known what was happening to her in that small room in Paddington but she’d pushed away the knowledge, wanting so much to please him, wanting to show him the depth of her love. Like a simpleton, she’d accepted what he told her—that they were simply anticipating the event, that they would marry very soon—and that was because they were words she’d wanted to hear.

  They were both guilty of bad faith, she thought, but they were also man and wife and, whatever evils had passed between them, they must try to make some kind of life together. It was their only hope.

  ‘Gerald,’ she said gently, ‘we’ve both been guilty of deception.’ She felt his sharp glance but said nothing of what she suspected. There was little point in unearthing what should stay buried. ‘Perhaps we’ve been foolish in rushing into marriage but—’

  ‘There’s no perhaps about it.’ His anger was back.

  She tried again, keeping her voice as level as she could. ‘Nevertheless, we are married and must make the best of it. So can we not try to put this behind us?’

  It was no use. Her appeal vanished into the thick air that crowded in on them. His armour remained undented. When he rose from the chair, it was to stand looking down at her, his face a study of cynicism.

  ‘You are naïve aren’t you? My judgement was right the first time. As you helpfully point out, we’re shackled together, and there’s precious little we can do about it. But to ask me to put it behind me—how can you even think it? Don’t you understand, you’ve ruined my life. Now tell me, how am I to forget that?’

  He turned on his heels and marched towards the spare bedroom. His bedroom now, she realised with a shock. The door slammed behind him while she sat motionless, anchored to the one spot. In a few minutes, though, he reemerged, this time fully dressed.

  Seeing her startled face, he said brusquely, ‘I can’t stay here. I’m going out.’

  ‘But it’s eleven o’clock at night.’

  He gave an irritated flick of his head and turned for the front door without another word. She heard his footsteps on the veranda, then the sound of the shabby bicycle being jumped down the steps. The image of Jocelyn Forester came to mind. It was difficult to imagine Gerald storming his Colonel’s house at this late hour but perhaps the lovers had their own arrangement. And they were lovers, she was sure of that now. She had not been wrong about the perfume. Gerald had spoken of ruined plans and Jocelyn was part of them, while she was not.

  She remained where she was for a very long while, trying to think her way through the morass. Whatever hopes he’d nursed, Gerald had married her and not Jocelyn. Married her but not wanted her. Was she to be a wife in name only then, to smile and simper to the world, pretending that all was well? She could not bear to think it. A wave of weariness hit and she pulled back the sheet and climbed into bed. Her head found the pillow and she closed her eyes, listening hard for the song of the cicadas and hoping they might soothe her to sleep. But tonight there was no chance of that. Their scratchy chorus was soon overpowered, lost to the sound of the jackals that called in the dark.

  When she woke to bright sunlight, she was heavy eyed. It had been hours before she’d managed finally to sleep. After years of fiercely guarding her heart, she had opened it to Gerald. But even as she’d bathed in that happiness, she’d feared it was too good to be true. And she’d been right. From the moment they’d met again in Bombay, she’d felt him another man to the one she’d known, but she’d refused to think that he did not love her. Now it was out in the open. He had married her not from love but because the honour of the regiment demanded it. Last night she had barely been able to understand, but today the truth was scarred onto her mind.

  It seemed she knew nothing of the man she had married, had not understood at all the passions that drove him. Passions that were strong enough to make him adopt another man’s name. She guessed it was from shame, shame for his origins. It was an impulse she recognised: to adopt a new identity, to shrug off an earlier hated life. Hadn’t she felt a similar desire every time the girls at Bridges had derided her for having been a servant, every time the servants at Miss Maddox’s had taunted her for having come from Eden House? But that was where the similarities ended. His mortification had led him to cut every tie and that was something she couldn’t understand. To belong to a family, to know the man and woman who had given you life, had been her dearest wish for as long as she could remember.

  She was consumed with anger, not for Gerald but for herself. Anger at her own stupidity. He had called her naïve but she was beyond naïve. In the weeks before she’d left England, she had written constantly and when she’d received no answer, had thought her letters could not have reached him. She wondered now if they were hidden in the depths of his desk or had been straight away torn into fragments. In desperation, she’d sent the telegram but had no idea it would be read by anyone other than Gerald, no idea that it would lead to a passage on The Viceroy of India and a wedding at St John’s. It was all so unbearably stupid. How could she ever have thought that he truly loved her, let alone wanted to marry, a girl who worked behind a shop counter? And if it was impossible to imagine that Gerald could ever have loved her, charming, successful, well-connected Gerald, how much less possible was it to imagine the same of Jack Minns. If this were indeed her husband, then he was as burdened as she by the past. Jack Minns should have married for advantage; he should have made his family’s sacrifice count.

  Sounds of shuffling reached her from outside. She staggered to her feet and slipped a wrapper over the flimsy nightdress. Peering through the plaited blind, she saw an elderly Indian sitting cross-legged on a small rug, which he’d spread across the width of the veranda. Half a dozen needles were stuck in his turban, each a different size and sporting a different colour thread. Head bent, he was busy looping a spool of cotton through an ancient sewing machine. Jocelyn had been as good as her word and this was the durzi she’d spoken of.

  Daisy did not want to think of her, the English rose, the Colonel’s daughter, an ample reward for any sacrifice. Jocelyn Forester had been Gerald’s intended bride, it was clear, and everyone on the station knew it. No wonder the women at the Club had expressed surprise at the marriage he’d made so unexpectedly.

  Still in her dressing gown, she drifted into the sitting room and sat herself down at the breakfast table. She poured herself a cup of tea from the pot Rajiv had left, but had managed only a
few sips before there was a loud crash from the veranda immediately outside. A bicycle had been sent sprawling across its wooden planks.

  ‘Hallo there!’

  It was the girl herself, bright and shining, her head craned around the door and a wide smile on her face. Surely no one could be that deceptive, but Gerald’s bed had not been slept in and if he hadn’t spent the night with her, where had he spent it? There was no time to think poisonous thoughts, though, for Jocelyn was already bouncing into the room.

  ‘I’m sorry, Daisy. Did I get you out of bed?’

  She murmured something about having had a bad night, and the girl nodded sympathetically. ‘I can come back another time if you prefer. The durzi too. I’ll leave these catalogues with you.’

  ‘No, please stay.’ The words came out before Daisy could stop them. Strangely she found she wanted the girl’s company this morning but had no idea why. Perhaps it was a perverse wish to pick at a sore place or perhaps it was just that she was lonely and Jocelyn’s was a friendly face. ‘Rajiv has laid out some breakfast.’

  ‘Wonderful! I can always eat a second chota hazri. And while we’re eating, we can look through these.’ She spilled the contents of a large canvas bag onto the table. ‘I’ve brought the Army and Navy catalogue and the Whiteaway and Laidlaw. There’s even a couple of Vogues—they belonged to my cousin who stayed with us over the winter. Julia is a walking fashion plate!’

  In between mouthfuls of mango, they flicked through the pages of glossy images, immersing themselves in the serious business of choosing two or three styles suitable to give to the durzi. They shared a few grimaces for the more out-dated fashions, and a few chuckles at the most ludicrous of the outfits, and despite Daisy’s best efforts to remain distant, she found herself warming to her visitor. Eventually several dresses were agreed upon and given mutual approval.