Summer House

by Nichols, Mary

  ‘Keep yar hair on,’ Ian mocked. ‘If I had anything to deal with, which I i’n’t sayin’ I hev, I wouldn’t deal with yar friends. Askin’ for trouble, that’d be. They can’t bear to see a man doing well for hisself.’

  Joyce turned back to the fire to hide the laugh that almost escaped her lips. She didn’t suppose for a minute she had achieved anything, except to let him know she was on to him, but whether she would really turn him in, she didn’t know. They’d been married nineteen years and she had stuck with him. It was a kind of habit, and she wouldn’t do anything to jeopardise her home, such as it was, because of her children. A wayward husband was better than no husband at all, or so her mother told her. But then, her mother liked the little treats Ian took her now and again.

  Chapter Five

  CHRISTMAS 1940 WAS a miserable time; there didn’t seem to be any good news anywhere. The whole of Europe, including the Channel Islands, had been overrun and U-boats were sinking allied shipping at an alarming rate. Great Britain was isolated and there were many miserable pessimists who said she was lost, especially as the United States refused to become involved. Everyone had to tighten their belts as rationing bit deeper and shortages of those things that were not rationed meant that unscrupulous men like Ian Moreton could fleece the public. Prices went sky high and to add insult to injury income tax had gone up to seven and sixpence in the pound. Rural Norfolk was saved most of the bombing, but it wouldn’t be long before more new airfields were ready and then it would be a target just like London and the cities.

  Kathy, who had cooked a large cockerel she had been fattening up for the purpose, tried to make it as festive as she could with holly and mistletoe and paper chains, which she had hoped to persuade the boys to make, but they had been so listless she had ended up making them herself. Meg and Daphne had been given leave to go home for Christmas, Petty Officer Carter had not arrived and neither had Steve. She was glad when the holiday was over.

  ‘Drat that siren,’ Anne said, as the wailing penetrated the blacked-out windows. She was just going to dish up the evening meal: a couple of sausages she had begged off the butcher, some mashed potatoes and cabbage. They had had a tiny, scrawny chicken for Christmas dinner, which, try as she might, she had not been able to make last more than two days. Getting the sausages had been a bonus for when the chicken ran out. Not that she cared for herself; she never felt very hungry nowadays, but Laura needed her food if she was to have a healthy baby. ‘You’d think they’d give it a miss over Christmas, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘They did.’

  ‘What, for two days? No doubt Jerry was enjoying himself with plenty to eat and drink and decided to take a holiday.’

  ‘Well, the holiday is over. I wonder if 1941 will be any better than 1940.’

  ‘I don’t know. I sometimes wonder if anything will ever be the same again.’

  ‘I don’t think it will. But we’ve survived and we’ll go on surviving.’

  ‘God willing,’ Anne said fervently.

  They sat down to eat but had hardly put a fork to their mouths when they heard the uneven drone of enemy aircraft. The sound went on and on, and then there was a tremendous crash, not far away, and all the doors and windows rattled. ‘God! That was a near one,’ Anne said. It was followed by several more in quick succession. ‘We’d better get out of here.’ She stood up and grabbed the bag containing a Thermos, two mugs, some milk and sugar, a packet of sandwiches and her little case which was always kept ready, then she put out the light and opened the back door. The sky was full of aeroplanes and criss-crossed with searchlights. Over the rooftops they could see smoke which was more orange than grey. The raid was nearer than it had ever been before. And bigger. They had never seen so many aircraft at once; the sky was black with them. They could hear the clang of a fire engine’s bell, as more fires sprang up. And in the light of these, the bombers could easily see where to drop their high explosives.

  ‘Come on,’ Laura said, pulling on her mother’s arm. ‘Let’s get into the shelter.’

  They dashed across the few yards of garden to the Anderson shelter, ducked inside, just as a dreadful screaming whistle assailed their ears. It was enough to frighten the hardiest. They stood, waiting for the explosion, but nothing happened. ‘It didn’t go off,’ Anne whispered. ‘I wonder where it is.’

  ‘I’m not going out there to find out. Shut the door and draw the curtain across. I’ll light the lamp.’ She looked round puzzled when her mother burst out laughing. ‘What’s funny?’

  ‘You, worrying about showing a light when the whole city is lit up like day.’

  The laughing set Anne coughing and she couldn’t get her breath. Laura sat her down and poured her a drink of tea from the flask. ‘Sit still and drink this, and then you’re going to tell me what’s wrong.’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Mum, I’m a nurse, I know when someone is ill. Now tell me.’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m tired.’

  ‘It’s more than that. Are you in pain?’

  ‘Now and again.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In here.’ She put her hand to her left breast. ‘It’s not all that bad.’

  ‘Rot. I’ve seen you wincing and trying to hide it. Now there’s to be no more arguments. When we get out of here, you’re going straight to see the doctor. I’ll come with you, if you like.’

  ‘No, I’ll go after you’ve gone to work.’ She didn’t want Laura with her. If there was something seriously wrong, she wanted to tell her in her own time and in her own words.

  They emerged the next morning to a devastated city. A pall of smoke, brightened now and again by a tongue of flame, hung in the air like thick fog; smuts tumbled down like black snow. The warden came to warn them not to go down to the end of the street where a bomb disposal squad were defusing an unexploded bomb. They would be well advised to stay indoors with the doors and windows shut, just in case it went off.

  ‘That’s a laugh,’ Anne said. ‘We’ve lost most of our windows at the front.’

  ‘You’re not the only ones. I’ll send the men down to you but you might have to wait a bit. Half the city’s been flattened. Can you nail some boards up for the time being?’

  They did the best they could, which meant the front sitting room and Anne’s bedroom were in permanent darkness. Laura insisted on going to work and trekked down to the opposite end of the road and took a detour to reach the factory. The fire service and the Civil Defence worked among the ruins, hoses were still being played on fires, the police were directing the traffic, refusing drivers access to streets where there were unexploded bombs or unsafe buildings. Even so, people were going about their business, picking their way over broken glass, brick rubble and firemen’s hoses to get to their work, going into shops which more often than not had their windows boarded up, pushing prams, riding bicycles, stopping now and again to tell each other what they knew.

  Anne swept up the glass and when the warden came along, telling everyone the bomb had been made safe, she set off for the doctor’s surgery, knowing she couldn’t duck out of it. Laura would insist on knowing the verdict.

  The talk in the waiting room centred on the raid. Incendiaries, high explosives and parachute mines had destroyed a large part of the old city and a large area surrounding it had sustained damage. It was the old buildings that fared the worst; the new ones, the ugly blocks of steel and concrete, could withstand a certain amount of fire, but several churches and the Guildhall had gone up in smoke and fire burnt all round St Paul’s Cathedral, which had somehow managed to survive. ‘Talk about the Great Fire of London,’ someone commented. ‘The whole city’s gone up in flames. My Rodney’s in the AFS and he said the hoses ran dry on account of the river being so low.’

  Back at home, musing on what the doctor had told her, which was no more than she expected, Anne tried to make herself a cup of tea but found there was no water and no gas. It was all part of her punishment. She went out again, made her way to
church and knelt there in the cold, to pray, to ask what to do, to beg forgiveness. But she knew what she had to do even before she got there.

  Helen put down her knitting and went into the hall to answer the telephone. ‘Helen Barstairs speaking.’

  ‘Helen. It’s Anne Drummond.’

  ‘Anne Drummond?’ It was a second before the name registered, and then her heart started to beat frantically. ‘Is anything wrong? Laura—’

  ‘Laura’s fine. But I need to see you. There’s something I want to tell you. Can we meet?’

  Helen sat down heavily on the chair beside the telephone table and forced herself to sound calm though questions tumbled over themselves in her head. ‘Of course. Where and when?’

  ‘Can you come up to London?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Lyons’ Corner House. Tomorrow at eleven?’

  ‘Yes, I can manage that. Can’t you tell me what it’s all about?’

  ‘I’d rather not over the phone. Don’t worry, it’s not the end of the world.’

  Helen put the receiver down and wandered into the drawing room, picking up ornaments and putting them down again. She fetched a photograph album from a drawer and sat on a sofa to look at them: pictures of Laura as a toddler; her first day at school, proud in her new uniform; getting a school prize; another with her adoptive father – sent, Helen suspected, to prove to her she had a daddy who loved her, which is something Helen could never give her. Nothing after she was seven or eight, which she supposed was when they had moved house. She had assumed that was when Anne had told Laura the truth and she didn’t want to know her. It hurt, hurt terribly, and it was a long time before she could even begin to accept it. But had she been wrong? Did Laura want to see her after all? She could not settle to anything, didn’t want to talk to anyone. She put the album away and went to the cloakroom, threw an old black cape over her shoulders, took a key from a nail just inside the scullery door and went to the summer house.

  She was so immersed in Anne’s call that she did not see that the knee-deep grass had been trampled round the door of the building. She did not even notice that the new padlock had been forced and she did not need the key. She sat down in the corner, but this time there were no ghosts, no visits into the past; for the first time she felt brave enough to look into the future. Her head was filled with questions. When had Anne told Laura about her birth? Could it have been recent? Did it mean she could at last see her daughter? Her daughter, her precious daughter! Oh, the joy of that!

  Suddenly realising how cold she was, she stood up to stamp her feet and bang her arms against her sides to restore the circulation. It was then she noticed the footprints and the cricket bats and the croquet hoops, which were normally kept in the bench. She bent to lift its lid and stared in disbelief at what she saw. The whole space was packed with tins, jars and packets. Kneeling on the dusty floor, she took them out one by one. Every item was something in short supply, things most women would give their eye-teeth for. There was drink and chocolate, stockings, make-up and perfume. Someone had stashed it all there, but who? A black marketeer, someone who knew the summer house was there, someone who felt able to come and go as he pleased. Ian Moreton! He had been creeping about at night and she thought he was after rabbits!

  Now what should she do? Confront the man? Inform the police? Tell his wife? Supposing she was wrong and it wasn’t Ian at all but a gang of crooks? She put it all back and put the lid down, then left, carefully hanging the broken padlock back as she had found it. Then she went back and rang Constable Harris. He was out, his wife said, but she would tell him to come up to the Hall the minute he returned. He hadn’t arrived by the time she went to bed and the next morning she forgot all about him in her eagerness to catch her train.

  When she arrived at the café and saw Anne sitting alone she felt disappointed, even though she had said nothing about Laura accompanying her. Helen did not recognise her at first, expecting the young dumpy woman she had been eighteen years before, forgetting to take account of the intervening years. This woman had wispy grey hair and was as thin as a rake. And her face was devoid of colour. Helen was shocked.

  As soon as Helen joined her, Anne beckoned the waitress and ordered tea and scones. ‘How are you?’

  ‘I’m fine but, forgive me, you don’t look at all well.’

  ‘I’ve got breast cancer.’ She spoke quietly, but there was no tremor in her voice, no sign that the diagnosis had hit her like a ton of bricks. She might just as easily have been saying she had a cold.

  ‘Cancer? Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes. I’ve known something was wrong for some time. I noticed a lump, you see, but I didn’t do anything about it until it became painful. I have to go into hospital for a mastectomy.’

  The waitress brought the tea tray and they waited while she set everything out on the table. Helen reached across to put milk in the cups and pour the tea. ‘Oh, Anne, I am so sorry. Does Laura know?’

  ‘Yes, I told her yesterday, just before I rang you. I don’t think she can quite take it in. To be honest, neither can I.’

  ‘What can I do to help?’

  ‘If anything happens to me, look after Laura, please. She’ll have no one else. I have no family and there’s only Tom’s sister and I don’t expect her to be sympathetic.’

  Helen felt desperately sorry for the woman and yet, deep inside, there was a spark of joy, a tiny hope that flickered and was instantly extinguished. It was wicked to feel pleasure at such a time. How could she wish for someone to die, especially someone who had brought up her daughter with such loving care. ‘You know I will. Does that mean you’ve told Laura about me?’

  ‘No. I keep trying, but then I can’t seem to get the words out. It’s been so long.’

  ‘You want me to tell her?’

  ‘No, it’s something I have to do.’

  ‘Let me pay for the operation.’

  ‘I couldn’t let you do that.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Why should you? I imagine you would be dancing on my grave. I took your child—’

  ‘You took a child, the fact that she was mine has nothing to do with that.’

  ‘That’s not what you said the last time we met. Threatened me with the police, as I recall.’

  ‘Let’s say I’ve mellowed.’

  ‘You kept your promise.’

  ‘Yes. To be honest, it was less painful that way. And I did have the pictures you sent. I wept when they came, but in a way they have been a comfort to me. But why did you stop sending them? And why didn’t you tell me you’d moved house?’

  ‘How did you know I had?’

  ‘I was worried about the bombing. I went to your old address but it wasn’t there any more. I spoke to a neighbour. She said you’d moved, but she couldn’t tell me where.’

  Anne sighed. ‘I was afraid you would tell Tom—’

  ‘You mean he didn’t know?’ She was astounded.

  ‘Not at the beginning. He didn’t want to adopt, you see, so I pretended Laura was mine. Then when you turned up out of the blue I had to tell him. It was awful. You have no idea how bad. He asked a lot about you. I told him you had died giving Laura birth and they were going to put her in an orphanage. I’m not a very good liar, Helen, and it was easier to forget you existed. In the end, because we both loved Laura, we stayed together. Moving house was supposed to be a new beginning for us. Unfortunately, he only lived two years after that and I was left to bring her up on my own.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me? I could have helped, would have been glad to do it.’

  Anne smiled, though the sparkle had gone from her eyes. She looked gaunt and worried. ‘We managed.’

  ‘And you still didn’t tell her?’

  ‘No, I was afraid she would want to meet you and you had so much more to offer—’

  ‘That’s silly. You gave her a stable family life and a loving father. I could not give her that. It was the only reason I kept my promise.’

&n
bsp; ‘Now it’s time to keep mine.’

  ‘Just like that!’

  ‘No, I’ll have to work up to it. I’ve been thinking about it and the first thing is for me to be suddenly reunited with a close friend I knew during the last war. You could visit us. It would give you and Laura a chance to get to know each other—’

  ‘You sound as if you don’t expect to get over this. You mustn’t think like that. You must fight it.’

  ‘Oh, I shall fight every inch of the way, and I shall probably survive the mastectomy, but I think it will only be a reprieve. Just long enough for me to put my affairs in order and for you to become part of our lives.’

  ‘Oh, Anne!’ Tears she hadn’t shed for years toppled over Helen’s lashes and ran down her cheeks. She fumbled for a handkerchief to wipe them away. ‘It’s so dreadfully sad that what I want most in the world has to be paid for at such a terrible price. But are you sure?’

  ‘I’m sure. I’m going home now. Laura will be wondering where I’ve got to. I shall be full of the extraordinary way in which I bumped into an old friend I haven’t seen in donkey’s years and how we have vowed not to lose touch again. I’ll say I’ve invited you to come and have a meal with us. You’ll do that, won’t you? Will Tuesday lunch suit? We’ll take it from there. Do you agree?’

  ‘Yes, but please let me pay for the operation. The sooner it’s done, the better. You can tell Laura you’ve got an insurance policy to cover it.’

  ‘Thank you.’ She fished into her handbag and withdrew a piece of paper. ‘That’s the address.’

  She paused, watching Helen put it in her own bag. ‘There’s something else you should know.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Laura’s pregnant. It’s due in March.’

  Helen, who had half risen, sank back into her seat, knowing there was more to come.

  ‘She was a nursing sister at the Middlesex, a good one, too. She got engaged to a pilot. He was shot down on the day they were going to be married. Unfortunately they had anticipated the wedding.’