The Most Precious Thing
Page 29
‘David! He’d say black was white to please you.’ Olive did not give Matthew a chance to speak, but then, on the last words, her voice died away as though her mind was elsewhere. She stared at Carrie, her face working for a moment, but whatever she had been about to say was never voiced. She simply got up and headed for the door. ‘I’m going to my room.’
Carrie’s face was pale. Had she given herself away with that remark about giving David a bairn, or was she imagining the speculative look she thought she had seen in Olive’s eyes?
‘You didn’t have to go for her like that. She’s had enough to put up with with Granda leaving like he did.’
Carrie glanced at Matthew as she ushered Katie and Luke to the table. ‘Have you ever bothered to ask yourself why a nice man like your granda would do such a thing?’ She seated each child on a chair and put a scone in front of them. ‘Well, have you?’ she asked again. ‘It might have escaped your notice but she led him a dreadful life.’
‘Is that what he said?’
‘It’s nothing to do with what your granda said or didn’t say. I saw it with my own eyes. And what about your Uncle Alec? He didn’t want her with them, did he? Have you ever asked him why?’
‘Because of Aunt Margaret. He told me so.’
Matthew had an answer for everything and all supplied from one source, or maybe two with Olive putting in her two pennyworth. Carrie’s gaze rested on Luke’s ear as the little boy cupped it in his podgy hand for a brief moment as though it was hurting, which no doubt it was. It was pillarbox red. When she said, ‘I’ll get a warm flannel for your ear in a minute, Luke,’ Matthew rose abruptly from the table.
‘That’s all you’re bothered about, isn’t it?’ he said bitterly. ‘Luke and Katie, Aunt Lillian, Da - everyone but me.’
‘Matthew, that isn’t true.’ She was deeply hurt and it showed in her face, and for a moment Matthew looked down at his feet, his face reddening.
When he looked up again, he said very quietly, ‘It’s true, isn’t it, about you and Da having to get married because I was on the way.’
Carrie’s voice was even quieter. ‘I’m not going to lie to you, Matthew. The only thing I would say is that no one has to get married, one chooses to in the end. I chose to marry your da as he did me.’
‘Who knew?’
‘Knew?’
‘About me. About you being . . .’ He waved a hand.
‘Only your Gran and Granda McDarmount, that’s all. They’re still the only ones who know for sure. We said you came early to everyone else.’
He was standing very straight, his back rigid. ‘You don’t think that fooled anyone, do you?’
What could she say to take that look off his face? When had Olive started whispering her newsmongering? How long had he been drinking in her poison? ‘We wanted you. We wanted you very much, Matthew. You have to believe that.’
He stared at her for a long moment. ‘I’m going round to Brian’s and I shan’t be back for dinner. We’re going to the pictures.’
‘Don’t go like this. Please, let’s talk.’
She was wasting her breath. He grabbed his coat and cap and didn’t stop to put them on before he left the house.
Carrie stood staring after him. Had he believed that last lie? She had told him she wouldn’t lie to him but she’d had to; she couldn’t have let him go without saying something to reassure him. She pressed her eyeballs with her finger and thumb, her head throbbing. She hated David’s mother. How could Olive have told him, her own grandson, such things? It was cruel.
‘Aunt Carrie? ’Nother one?’
When she looked down, Luke smiled up at her disarmingly, his baby mouth smeared with crumbs. It didn’t seem two minutes since Matthew had been that age but now he was all but grown up. The pain in her head intensified. And he didn’t like her. Her boy didn’t like her. She had read dislike in his eyes before he walked out of the house.
Carrie cut open two more scones mechanically, put a smidgen of jam on each and placed them in front of the delighted infants. Should she have lied to Matthew and assured him he was conceived after her marriage to David? No, he had known. There hadn’t been the slightest doubt in his face or voice. It hadn’t been a question so much as a statement.
She drew in a shuddering breath, feeling sick to her stomach. This was the end as far as her mother-in-law was concerned, she wasn’t tolerating Olive in the house one more hour after this.
She bent down to the children. ‘Sit still and eat your scones and I’ll be back in a minute. All right?’ Then she straightened, drew in another breath and smoothed her dress. She walked with measured steps into the hall, pausing for a moment and glancing upwards before she began to climb the stairs.
When Olive reached her room, she did not walk across to the bed or to the chair standing to one side of the window. Instead she reached to the top of the narrow wardrobe and brought down the big cloth bag she’d put there.
She had no intention of remaining in this house until David got home from his shift just after ten, she told herself. He was a deep one, was David. Of all her children she had never been sure what he would do or say next. She wasn’t sure if he was capable of physical violence, but when he was informed of what had occurred here today and what she had told Matthew, she wouldn’t put it past him.
She took her clothes from the wardrobe and the small chest of drawers, and folded them into the cloth bag. She stared at it for a moment. It hadn’t taken long to pack all her wordly possessions, she thought bitterly. She’d had to sell all her furniture, apart from a few of the best bits which she had taken with her to Lillian’s, and they were now under a pile of rubble.
Oh, to be reduced to this. Her, who had always prided herself on her lovely home and nice things. And there was that cocky little madam downstairs, who had been dragged up in the bottom end, with this bonny place.
The thought of Carrie brought her plumping down on the bed. She’d always thought Matthew was the image of Alec in his ways and mannerisms; perhaps that was why she had taken to the boy. The way he had of looking at you sometimes, his mouth, his smile especially, but until now she just hadn’t put two and two together. But then who would? Her Alec, with that scum of scum. Olive screwed her thin buttocks into the bed in protest. But what man wouldn’t take it if it was offered on a plate? And that’s what would have happened, sure enough. Little baggage. She was a sly one, Carrie McDarmount. Olive had never allowed herself to think of Carrie as a Sutton.
But perhaps instead of putting two and two together and making four she was making ten here. Olive thought back to Carrie’s face when she’d talked about giving David a bairn, and shook her head slowly. No, she wasn’t. She’d bet her life she wasn’t. And the way the little scut had tried to cover up. She would never have twigged if Carrie hadn’t done that, but she’d been rattled, flummoxed, and it had been plain to see. And if David wasn’t the father, it had to be Alec with the bairn so like him.
When Olive heard footsteps on the stairs she braced herself for the knock at the door, but instead Carrie walked straight in, her face grim. She glanced at the bag on the bed. ‘You’re leaving?’
‘Aye.’
‘Good, because you’re not welcome here any longer.’
‘I never was.’
Carrie did not deny this. Instead she said, ‘You’ve got a cesspit for a mind, do you know that?’
‘Because I call a spade a spade?’
Again Carrie didn’t respond to the taunt. ‘I hope God can forgive you for what you’ve said to Matthew because I can’t, and I know David won’t. Now please go.’ She stood to one side of the door and waved her hand towards the landing.
‘I’m going.’ For one moment Olive was inclined to throw her suspicions into Carrie’s face just to see her reaction, but she restrained herself. Now was not the time. There were more ways of killing a cat than drowning it, and she would use this to better advantage if she didn’t let on for the moment. Her time would come.
‘You and your sister.’ Olive turned on the threshold to the scullery where her coat and hat were hanging. ‘One a big blowsy tart who will go with anyone and doesn’t care who knows it, the other acting so pure and holy but just the same under the skin. I’ve had the measure of the pair of you for years.’
Carrie stared at the face twisted with spite. ‘I think it is high time you left,’ she said steadily.
‘Truth always outs, girl. Don’t you know that?’ Olive grabbed her hat and rammed it on her head, then pulled on her coat.
‘I’ve done nothing I am ashamed of.’
‘More’s the shame on you then.’ So saying, Olive opened the back door and stepped out into the raw afternoon which was already growing dark.
For just a second Carrie was tempted to ask her mother-in-law where she intended to go, but then she just let her walk away out of the yard. She didn’t care where Olive was going so long as it was away from this house. Her presence had been a constant strain on everyone from day one, everyone except Matthew, that was.
Carrie closed the door and went back into the kitchen. Lillian’s children were sitting as quiet as mice, cowed by the grim voices and the way their grandmother had glared at them when she’d come downstairs. The sight of the small frightened faces brought a swell of emotion in Carrie’s chest, which could have led to tears if she’d let it. Instead she forced a smile and said brightly, ‘Who’s going to help me get dinner ready? I need someone to scrub vegetables.’
Normally the tots loved any such activity and Katie shouted, ‘Me! Me!’. But Luke, a year older, said solemnly, ‘Where is Granny going?’
‘She’s going to live with someone else, Luke.’
‘For ever?’
‘And ever and ever.’ Carrie brushed back a lock of his hair as she spoke. ‘Do you mind?’
The little boy shook his head, looking up at her with big brown eyes. ‘Me an’ Katie don’t like Granny,’ he whispered confidingly. ‘Do we, Katie?’
Katie obediently shook her head.
‘She’s got hard hands,’ Luke said revealingly.
And a hard heart.
Olive walked swiftly and with purpose once she was clear of the side roads which were heavily banked with snow and almost impassable in places. She knew exactly where she was making for, and now she was on her way she told herself she should have done this weeks ago. Anything would have been better than living under that baggage’s roof, and why should she be dictated to by Carrie and David and the rest of them anyway? Alec was her son and it was about time he did something for her. That wife of his all alone in that great big house with a housekeeper and maid and goodness knows what. There was plenty of room, and no one had actually approached Margaret on the subject as far as she knew. She’d put it to her straight that she was prepared to come and stay and Margaret could do away with having to hire a nurse. She’d look after Alec’s wife.
It was beginning to snow again, and as the flakes began to whirl and dip about her, driven by the raw north-east wind, Olive said to herself, a night like this and being cast out by my own son’s wife. By, it’s come to something. But Margaret was a different kettle of fish to Carrie; she could handle Margaret.
Olive did not consciously think here that Margaret was frightened of her, but the thought that followed flowed from the belief. Give it a day or two for her to settle in and she’d find out what Margaret knew about Alec and Carrie. Because there was something there, she’d swear it. Now that the possibility of Matthew being Alec’s child had reared its head, so much fitted into place. Carrie had always tried to keep Alec away from the bairn, fearing, no doubt, that David would cotton on he wasn’t the father. She was a loose piece all right. Olive pursed her lips. Renee was bad enough but there was something about Carrie that had spelled trouble from the first time she’d laid eyes on her. Even as a bairn she’d had the menfolk buzzing about her like bees to a honeypot. Men were such fools.
In all the time that Alec and Margaret had lived in the better part of Hendon, Olive had been invited only twice - once for Christmas five years before and again when a large party had been organised by Margaret for her father when he reached the grand age of sixty-five. The occasion had not been a success. Margaret had been fraught with anxiety and she had communicated her tension to her guests, with the result that the party had been awkward and strained.
It was quite dark by the time Olive walked through the tall iron gates set in a high stone wall bordered by laurel. She was panting heavily now with the weight of her bag, and as she marched up the long drive she was hoping Margaret’s father was not visiting. She had been disappointed in him when she’d met him on Alec’s wedding day, and her opinion of him had not improved on the two subsequent occasions she’d been in his company. Olive considered him to be coarse and abrupt and not at all as someone in his position ought to be. This opinion was heavily flavoured by the fact that Arthur Reed did not suffer fools gladly and had made his opinion of Olive blatantly obvious. Since Margaret’s mother had died a few years before, he had become even more taciturn with people he did not like, and he definitely did not like Olive.
When Olive knocked on the big oak front door set in the middle of the large double-fronted house, it was opened almost immediately by a tall thin woman of middle age or beyond. She was dressed in a light grey dress with sparkling white collar and cuffs. Olive knew her to be the housekeeper, Mrs Browell, and as though she was a daily visitor, she said, ‘Where’s the maid? Surely it’s her job to see to the door.’
Freda Browell peered at her for a moment. ‘Mrs Sutton? Madam has not informed me you were expected.’
Olive did not reply to this until she had stepped into the wide spacious hall. She stood for a moment, glancing round at the thick wall-to-wall carpeting and expensive embossed wallpaper. Then, planting her bag firmly on the floor, she said, ‘No, she wouldn’t have, Mrs Browell,’ before repeating, ‘where’s the maid?’
‘Gone to work in a munitions factory like all the young things.’ It was said with unconcealed disapproval. ‘One just cannot get the staff since this wretched war, Mrs Sutton. Madam has advertised for weeks now since the agency were unable to help but all to no avail, and what can you expect when bits of girls can earn more than they ever dreamed of a year or two ago? I said to madam the other night, what are we going to be left with when the war is over? Once a young lass’s head is turned, it stays turned, and I can’t see the majority of them returning to work in service. Even the nurse has taken herself off this week.’
Olive did not care what the housekeeper could or could not see and her tone made this perfectly clear when she said, ‘Kindly take my bag to one of the spare bedrooms, Mrs Browell. Is Mrs Sutton in the drawing room?’ On her first visit to the house she had made the mistake of calling this room the sitting room and it had been the housekeeper who had corrected her, albeit tactfully. But Olive did not forget a slight and that was what she considered Mrs Browell’s correction to be.
‘Madam is in the dining room. I was just about to serve dinner.’ Freda Browell had stiffened in both voice and manner.
‘I’ll join her.’
Olive watched the housekeeper’s eyebrows give the slightest movement upwards. But Freda Browell had been in service since she was thirteen years old and she wasn’t about to argue with her mistress’s mother-in-law, even if she did privately consider her to be an upstart who was as common as muck under her airs and graces.
‘Very good, Mrs Sutton.’
Very good, Mrs Sutton. Olive didn’t move until Mrs Browell had picked up her bag and begun to walk up the stairs which were situated halfway down the hall. Thinks she’s the real mistress here no doubt, Olive thought sourly, what with Margaret forever ta
king to her bed. Olive had heard Alec expounding the housekeeper’s virtues on more than one occasion, saying she ran the house like clockwork and that since Margaret’s own mother had died his wife relied on Mrs Browell more and more. Well, those days were finished if she had anything to do with it. She had blamed Alec for not having her to live with them when Ned skedaddled, at least at first, but the more she’d thought about it, the more she had been convinced it was Mrs Browell and Mr Reed bringing their influence to bear. Neither of them liked her and she knew why - they thought she was too close to Alec, had too much of an influence on him. And it was true he had always listened to her - would he be where he was now but for her guidance when he was a lad?