Summer House

by Nichols, Mary

  ‘I can’t ask for time off when there’s so much to be done.’ She took a huge breath before continuing. ‘Anyway, I’ll be getting plenty of leave soon. I’ll be giving up my job.’

  ‘Why?’ Anne asked in astonishment, handing Laura a cup of tea from the Thermos. For the first few weeks of her pregnancy she hadn’t been able to face tea and had gone to great lengths to keep the fact from her mother, but the nausea had passed and now she was able to drink it with pleasure. ‘I thought you enjoyed your work, though goodness knows, it was never meant to be like it is.’

  ‘It’s not the job, but I can’t go on. You see, I’m going to have a baby.’ There! It was out. Not the way she had intended, but out. She waited because her mother was sitting staring at her in the feeble light of the oil lamp, her cup halfway to her lips, frozen in shock. ‘Well, say something.’

  Anne put the cup down carefully on the little table they had brought into the shelter a few days before. ‘What do you expect me to say? “Well done, dear”?’

  ‘Don’t be like that, Mum. It’s not the end of the world.’

  ‘It’s the end of your world,’ Anne snapped. ‘How could you do it?’

  She couldn’t help it; the words flew off her tongue. ‘Don’t you know?’

  ‘Don’t be coarse. I brought you up to be ladylike with a proper sense of right and wrong. A handsome man comes along and it all flies out of the window.’

  ‘No, it didn’t. I am still the same, still your daughter—’

  Anne opened her mouth to say something and shut it again with a snap. She looked across the tiny space to where Laura sat watching her in the dim glow of the lamp, while all around them the bombs fell and people were dying. ‘I’m disappointed in you,’ she said quietly. ‘I thought you knew better.’

  ‘I loved Bob. We would have been married, if—’

  ‘Would have been, might have been, but that’s not good enough, is it? What will people say?’

  ‘I’m not interested in what people say. I want to know what you think about having a baby in the house.’

  ‘Here?’

  ‘Yes, of course. What do you expect me to do, go to some back street woman for an abortion? Give it away? What sort of mother gives away her own flesh and blood? I couldn’t do it. It is Bob’s child, a child made in love, and it will have all the love I can give it. I knew you would be upset but I never thought for a minute you’d be so unforgiving. I loved Bob, surely you can understand that? We jumped the gun, that’s all.’

  ‘How can you be so shameless?’

  ‘I don’t feel any shame, only sadness that Bob isn’t here to share my joy. Mum, please don’t condemn me. You loved Dad, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes, but we didn’t—’

  ‘You might have done if you hadn’t already been married when he was called away to war.’ She attempted a little joke. ‘I might have arrived a little too soon.’

  Anne’s reaction was to burst into tears. Desperate to make amends, Laura fell on her knees beside her and took her hands. ‘Mum, I didn’t mean it, I know you would have been stronger than I’ve been, but can’t you forgive me? I want this baby so very much and I can’t bear to think you will not welcome it too. Babies are precious.’

  Anne continued to sob. She was sobbing for herself, for what had happened in the past, for the hurt she had caused Tom, for the lies she had told and continued to tell, for broken promises, all piling up to be answered on Judgement Day. What right had she to condemn when her own soul was black with guilt?

  ‘Mum?’ Laura was becoming seriously concerned. She had never expected it to be as bad as this.

  Anne sniffed and attempted a smile. ‘It’s all right, love, I’ve had my say. And I do understand. But it won’t be easy, you know. People will condemn. All those who bought you wedding presents will walk by on the other side of the road with their noses in the air.’

  ‘I don’t care, as long as you stand by me.’

  ‘Of course I will. It’s what mothers are for.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Laura reached up and kissed her mother’s wet cheek. ‘I’ll try not to be a burden to you.’

  ‘You are not a burden, you have never been a burden. You have always been my joy. We’ll manage.’ She picked up her cup of tea and pulled a face. ‘Ugh, it’s gone cold.’

  Laura, too relieved to hide the fact, laughed. ‘I could go indoors and make some more.’

  ‘You’ll do no such thing. We’ll wait until the all-clear.’

  They settled down to sleep, but as far as Anne was concerned, sleep was impossible, not only because deckchairs do not make comfortable beds but because Laura’s revelation had shocked her, sent her hurtling back into the past, reminding her of her own spartan upbringing and inability to conceive a child of her own. More and more she found herself dwelling on it and tonight, with the uneven drone of bombers, the ack-ack of guns, the crashing of walls and windows and the clatter of debris on the outside of their shelter, she found herself going over it again, as if that would change one iota of it.

  Tom’s answer to her letter telling him she was pregnant was to tell her to give up her job and take care of herself and their precious child. Because it was wartime and women were needed when once they would have stayed at home and kept house, she had learnt to drive an ambulance. It was not something people of her class would normally do, but war had a way of turning everything topsy-turvy. She would meet the troop ships and transport the wounded to hospital. It was a job she enjoyed and made her feel as though she was doing her bit and bringing her husband safely home again. It also meant she could save a little money towards their dream home. But she realised cranking the starting handle of an ambulance and humping injured soldiers about was not a good idea for a pregnant woman, so she stopped working and instead made baby clothes, bought a second-hand cot and pram and watched the bump in her abdomen grow, waiting for her baby to start kicking. But it never did.

  She was scrubbing her front step one day when she felt a sudden spasm of pain, like a very bad period pain. She got to her feet, picked up her bucket and went back indoors, leaving the step half done. A few minutes later another pain gripped her and then she felt a wetness between her legs. She could not believe she was losing her longed-for child and for a moment could not make up her mind what to do. She would not go to her mother-in-law for help but trudged down to the midwife’s house, hoping against hope Mrs Bates would be able to stem the flow and save her pregnancy. She couldn’t; the baby was lost on the midwife’s spare bed. It was, so the widowed Mrs Bates told her, a girl. She lay there and sobbed and sobbed.

  ‘Give over, dear,’ Mrs Bates said, when it seemed she would never stop. ‘Cryin’ like that won’t alter anything.’

  She tried hard to pull herself together. ‘Will I be able to have more babies?’ she asked, mopping her eyes and blowing her nose.

  ‘Can’t say. Ask your doctor. If you can’t, you can always adopt. There’s poor motherless babes crying out to be given good homes…’

  She knew that. When she was a little girl she would have given anything to have had parents and an ordinary home. Oh, how she had envied those who had! She would have been overjoyed if someone had taken her in and adopted her. She dried her tears, accepted the rags Mrs Bates gave her to sop up the blood and left in a state so numb she could not remember how she got home. The nightmare was made worse the next day when the doctor told her she would never have children. She didn’t want to accept it, wouldn’t accept it; it was a mistake. The next time she saw her mother-in-law she told her everything was going on normally. And that was when the deception began.

  She carried on pretending, bulking herself out with more and more padding as the weeks progressed, shutting her eyes to the fact that at the end of the waiting, there would be no baby. It was crazy, mad, wicked.

  One day she met Mrs Bates in the street. The midwife stopped and looked her up and down. ‘Mrs Drummond, just what do you think you’re playing at?’

  Anne
stared blankly at her; it was the first time she had been challenged and had almost come to believe there really was a child growing inside her. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘Yes, you do. Come home with me and tell me all about it.’ She relieved Anne of her shopping basket and took her arm. Anne went with her like an automaton. Once in Mrs Bates’s kitchen, she was pushed into a chair and given a cup of hot strong tea. ‘Now then, out with it. I know you lost your baby and you can’t have got that big with another one so soon. Besides, your ’usband’s in France, ain’t ’e?’

  Anne suddenly deflated like a pricked balloon. The tears flowed and she could not hold the cup, which rattled in its saucer. Mrs Bates took it from her. ‘Pretending, are you?’

  Anne nodded dumbly.

  ‘It’s not uncommon, but usually the truth comes to light before this. You look ready to drop it.’

  Anne smiled weakly. ‘Everyone tells me it must be a big baby.’

  ‘Remind me. When was it supposed to be due?’

  ‘The middle of March.’

  ‘That’s less than a month away.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘What were you thinking of doing, dumping the padding and saying it was stillborn?’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking at all.’

  ‘Well, think now. You can’t go on like this, can you?’

  ‘No.’ It was said with infinite weariness.

  ‘I can get you a baby, a real live baby.’

  ‘Adopt one, you mean? Tom won’t have that. He’s said so enough times.’

  ‘He’s away, isn’t he?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then don’t tell him.’

  ‘I can’t deceive him like that. And wouldn’t he know?’

  ‘Not necessarily, men can be incredibly stupid, you know.’

  ‘But I’d have to sign papers and things like that, wouldn’t I?’

  ‘No. I know a doctor who runs a clinic for unmarried mothers and he arranges private adoptions. It’s not strictly legal, you understand, but it goes on and he does it for the sake of the babies. They have loving parents and a good home instead of being sent to an orphanage.’

  Mrs Bates knew nothing of Anne’s life before she arrived in Stepney, but mention of an orphanage was the deciding factor. She agreed to go with Mrs Bates to the clinic and talk to the doctor.

  ‘I have a young mother-to-be in here who is due to give birth at roughly the same time as yours,’ he told her. ‘She comes from an upper-class family who are anxious to keep the birth a secret. If you wish, we can arrange for you to have the child.’

  ‘Oh, yes please.’ Anne did not ask what it would cost; she didn’t care. She went home and waited and when Mrs Bates came to tell her the mother was in labour, she booked into the clinic. It cost her every penny of the money she had been carefully saving to leave Prince Albert Lane for a new home, but once the decision had been taken, she could not, would not, back out. Two days later, a baby was put into her arms by Mrs Bates. ‘She’s all yours. She hasn’t even been registered, so you can do it.’

  Anne looked down at the tiny infant, less than a day old, and wondered how any mother could bear to part with something so wondrous. She had a quiff of dark hair, huge violet eyes and a rosebud mouth. Her tiny fingers gripped Anne’s thumb with surprising strength. She was dressed in the most beautiful white cotton nightgown, hand embroidered with white daisies and drawn threadwork, and wrapped in a knitted shawl of the finest wool. It was more than Anne could afford to buy; the child’s real mother was obviously not short of a shilling or two. That was just like the upper classes; they took their pleasures where they found them and when the consequences became inconvenient, they disposed of them like unwanted puppies. She could almost hate the mother for her callousness, but for the fact she had given her this priceless gift. She would love this child, take care of her through thick and thin, and when Tom came home… She did not want to think of what she would say to him. She walked out of the hospital in a dream. The child was hers. She had seen nothing of the unknown mother, would not even think of her.

  It was just as well her mother-in-law did not expect to visit her in hospital; she could not afford to stay there, so she went to Mrs Bates’s for a couple of days. The midwife taught her how to mix up the powdered milk to give the baby a feed and bring up the wind afterwards, how to change her nappy and bathe and dress her. Every little task was a joyous revelation. Then she took her daughter home, a proud mother.

  Mrs Drummond and Tom’s sister, Maisie, came round the next day to view the new arrival. The expensive clothes and the shawl had been packed away and she was dressed in the little garments Anne had prepared for her: a cotton nightgown, a knitted matinée jacket and bootees. ‘I can’t see anything of Tom in her,’ her mother-in-law said, peering into the pram, which Anne had wheeled through the house to the kitchen, not having a back entrance. ‘She’s got dark hair. You’re both fair.’

  Anne was prepared for that. ‘Maybe she takes after someone on my side of the family.’

  ‘Maybe. We’ll never know, will we?’

  Anne ignored the jibe.

  ‘What are you going to call her?’ Maisie asked. She had recently married a tailor’s shop assistant and lived a few streets away. She was also hugely pregnant.

  ‘Laura.’

  ‘Laura! What a high falutin’ name. Did Tom help you choose it?’

  ‘Yes.’ How could she tell him of her deception? How could she disappoint him? He would be furiously angry. He might even want to give Laura back.

  Anne registered Laura as her own, and almost managed to deceive herself that she was. When Tom came back from the war, he was disabled by mustard gas and his sight was badly affected. He was also impotent, so she did not have to tell him she could not have another baby. Laura would be their only child.

  She was healthy, in spite of Mrs Drummond’s dire warnings that she would be a weakling on account of being bottle-fed. She grew quickly and by the time she was toddling about it became evident she would be taller than either of her parents. Tom laughed at his mother when she said Laura was none of their breed and there must have been a mix-up at the hospital. ‘That’s the trouble with having babes in ’ospital,’ she said. ‘You never know what you’re going to be saddled with.’

  ‘Do you think I don’t know my own child?’ Anne demanded, swallowing down the guilt. ‘Fine mother I’ d be.’

  The all-clear brought her out of her reverie. Laura sat opposite her, reading, knowing nothing of what had been going on in her head. They picked up their belongings and returned thankfully to the house. It was three in the morning.

  The raids were repeated every evening for fifty-seven consecutive nights until both Laura and Anne were almost asleep on their feet. They went to work numbed by what was happening around them, wondering each night as they made their way to the shelter if it would be their last. They installed a couple of camp beds, which left a tiny gangway between them, but at least they could lie down and try to sleep. They rose each morning bleary-eyed and went about their allotted tasks like automatons, wondering how much longer it would go on. But Laura had the consolation of knowing that she had no secrets from her mother. They would get through it somehow and Bob’s child would be born and grow up loved and happy. She prayed for it every night, she thanked God every morning when they emerged unscathed.

  Steve’s eyes were so gritty with tiredness he could not stop blinking. The fact they had clear warning that the bombers were on their way did little to help. The squadron got off the ground, but it was almost impossible to see the enemy. Occasionally, more by good luck than anything else, they encountered an enemy aircraft and there was a dogfight which resulted in bringing one down. One out of hundreds! He felt angrily helpless. Occasionally the searchlights picked up a Dornier or a Heinkel, but it usually escaped by flying higher out of range of the lights. Night after night was the same; he wouldn’t have noticed his twenty-third birthday come and go if he hadn’t had cards
from home.

  He worried about those on the ground, worried that he could not do anything to help them. He worried about Laura. He had seen nothing of her since Bob’s funeral. Bob had asked him to look out for her, but not even Bob could have foreseen the unremitting ferocity of the Luftwaffe’s attack. When the bombers left, the squadron just had time to land and refuel before they came back again. He was becoming very concerned for the health and safety of his men and by the end of October, he knew they were all at the end of their tether.

  The raids on London dwindled only because the Luftwaffe turned their attention to other industrial centres and ports, which were being heavily bombed, but it was enough for Steve to be given a week’s leave. It was never more welcome. He decided to go and see Laura on the way.

  Crossing the city was an eye-opener. He had seen the bombers coming in, of course, and looked down on the conflagration from above, but what he saw on the ground shocked him. There were great gaps where houses had once stood. Inside walls had become outside walls, propped up by baulks of timber when the house next door was demolished. Many of the basements of these had been filled with water ready for firemen to use. Roads were roped off because there was the danger of falling masonry, or because there was an unexploded bomb which hadn’t yet been dealt with. The extraordinary thing was that people were going about their business, walking, or taking a bus or tube, notwithstanding that the Underground stations were being used as shelters and were crammed with sleeping bodies every night. He didn’t know what sanitary arrangements had been made, but the stench, even during the day after they’d all gone home, was pretty bad. Delivery vans, coal lorries, taxis and buses were working; newspaper sellers stood on corners, their four-page newspapers being eagerly snapped up. Shops had had their fronts blown out and although some had been forced to close, others were open with chalked notices on the boards that had taken the place of windows, saying ‘Business as usual’, which was ironic, considering they had little on their shelves.