One of the Family

by Monica Dickens

  Charlotte did not notice that Bella was tired and off colour. After the blow that had felled the family, nobody could be said to be on colour. Bella got up earlier than her mother, so that Charlotte did not know that she started her day by being sick in the bathroom.

  Bella thought the vomiting and dry heaving were symptoms of her turmoil of emotions: mourning the lost family angel at the same time as secretly mourning the family villain. Toby, Toby, when will you come back?

  Am I going into a decline? She was not getting any thinner. After being sick in the blue and gilt heavily patterned basin which her mother had ordered from an expensive firm who supplied sanitary ware to the German royal family, she could always eat a good breakfast.

  One cold morning when Hurd the butler was in the hall with her father, primping up the astrakhan collar of his full-skirted coat, Bella found herself alone in the dining room with the parlourmaid.

  ‘Sure you’ve got enough? Don’t mind us downstairs.’ Sybil pointed her nose at the loaded plate Bella was bringing away from the chafing dishes. ‘Eating for two, aren’t you, dear?’

  ‘What? What do you mean?’ Bella stopped between the sideboard and the table.

  ‘I hear from the washerwoman that she has not seen any monthly towels from you for quite some time.’ Sybil Crocker was above giving the lowly creature a name, but not above listening to her gossip.

  ‘That’s because I’m upset. It happens to a lot of women.’

  ‘You’re right there.’ The parlourmaid gave a mirthless laugh, jerking her sharp face forward like a bird of prey. ‘But it’s not usually called being upset.’

  The tall door opened and the butler slithered round it. Bella put her plate down on the starched white tablecloth and began to eat her breakfast.

  Later, discussing symptoms, interrogating Bella, who was frightened and confused, it was generally agreed in the servants’ hall that the poor ignorant girl had fallen pregnant. ‘Bit of a shock for your ma and pa.’

  ‘You’d never tell them?’

  ‘Like the grave.’ Sybil made a cross sign on her stiff aproned bosom.

  Having no one to talk to, Bella was driven to discuss her crisis with these interested parties downstairs.

  ‘Find the man. Make him do right by you,’ was Cook’s opinion.

  ‘I don’t know where he is.’

  ‘Anyone we know, dear?’ They wheedled Bella for information, giving her slices of Victoria sandwich, but she would not tell them.

  ‘I must say.’ The butler leaned back in his chair, assessing Bella narrowly from under the disconcertingly dark eyebrows that did not match his pale oiled hair. ‘I never would have thought it of you.’

  ‘It was only once.’ Bella blushed.

  ‘That’s all it takes.’ The housemaid went off into one of her raucous laughs, clapping her hand over her mouth and letting down the front legs of her chair with a bang at the butler’s frown.

  ‘Well – twice, as a matter of fact,’ Bella admitted.

  ‘There’s a bad girl.’ Sybil put on a shocked face, but they were none of them shocked. They seemed almost to admire Bella for what she had dared to do, as if it was an entry into their club.

  ‘What shall I do?’ she asked them.

  ‘Well, there’s mustard baths and gin.’ The parlourmaid counted off on her fingers. ‘Or so I hear, not ever having had what you might call personal knowledge. There’s Epsom salts or Towle’s pills, though it’s a bit late for that. There’s falling downstairs or jumping off a table. There’s driving down Exhibition Road in a growler without springs.’

  ‘There is also my auntie,’ Hurd put in. ‘Don’t let’s be forgetting her. She has a reputation second to none.’

  ‘For what?’ Bella asked innocently, and they told her.

  ‘Oh no, I couldn’t possibly.’ Bella put her hands over her stomach in fear.

  ‘You know what happens to young girls who fall pregnant?’ Sybil’s eye was like cold bacon. ‘They get put away. They’re labelled moral imbeciles and locked in an institution.’

  Bella rode her bicycle to the house where Hurd’s aunt practised her witchcraft. She pedalled down Lansdowne Hill across the curving streets that followed the lines of the old Hippodrome racecourse, and turned up Clarendon Road towards Pottery Lane.

  She and Madge had ventured down there once or twice when they were foolhardy children, and it did not seem to be any more salubrious now. The gutterless streets were filthy with mud and refuse. Some of the dwellings were almost derelict. Hobgoblin boys ran after her, jeering at her divided serge skirt. There was a miasmic smell all about, of pigsties and something worse. She had read in the Kensington paper about ‘the ocean’, the lake of slime and poisonous gases that was held to be responsible for the deaths of twenty per cent of local babies and children. And here came Bella Morley, to add another to their number.

  The house of the butler’s aunt was round the corner from a grim beleaguered church and was, as he had said, a cut above the rest. It stood in a little yard with a few bedraggled bushes. Its plaster walls had once been painted pink, and the doorstep was decently whitened.

  Bella stood with her bicycle at the arched entrance to the yard, and saw a light grow in one of the two windows as someone carried a lamp into the room. She saw the shape of a woman with a shawl over her head, waiting for her beyond the low latticed panes.

  Go forward, Bella Morley. But the small scene was horribly reminiscent of the fatal cottage in Hansel and Gretel Bella pushed her bicycle back under the arch, staggered a little as she tried to mount it under the gleeful eyes of the hobgoblins, and rode away as fast as she could up the hill to Kensington Park Gardens.

  ‘’Ow did you get on with ‘er?’ The butler did not bother to mind his aitches below stairs.

  ‘She wasn’t at home.’

  ‘’Ave to go back, then.’

  ‘Yes.’ Bella had left her bicycle in the shed and come in through the back door. ‘I will, but don’t bother me about it, none of you. No one is to breathe a word to anyone, or I’ll get you all sacked.’

  ‘You and ‘oo else?’

  ‘No one is to mention it to me. Please.’

  She knew now what she would do. She would have this baby. Toby’s baby – what a marvel it would be! Somehow, somewhere, she would find Toby and tell him, and he would be pleased and they would marry and the family would forgive him, for Bella’s sake.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Hiding at Ferry Cottage, Toby was in a limbo in which he did not have to think. He explored the river banks, collected firewood, walked to the farm at Gatehampton for milk and bread, and bought a few supplies from an itinerant trader on the road. He dug worms from the muddy backwater where the boat was pulled in at night, and with the ferryman’s rod he managed to catch a few dace and perch. One red-letter day, he caught a chub that must have weighed three pounds.

  Toby’s beard grew in dark and bushy between the low brim of his hat and the high collar of his enveloping cloak. He liked to sit on the bank in the ferryman’s Sunday boots, far sturdier than his London ones that were already wrecked and leaking, and watch the slow winter life of the river go by. The ducks at first seemed like throngs passing. Then, as he watched them more closely, he saw that there were actually only quite a few ducks going up and down the same stretch of the river, like a stage army. When the water surface was still, coots and water rats crossing from bank to bank made tiny arrowhead tracks, which Toby watched until the last tremor at the edge of the wake died in the sunk reeds.

  On a clear night, the moon was brighter in the oily water than in the sky. Toby had never been so alone before. There were not many ferry passengers, but he kept the money for Todd in a pot on the mantelpiece: twopence for a horse, a penny each for pigs that were driven over from the farm to be sold on the other side, sixpence a wheel for a handcart, two penny coins for a passenger, the same fare that the Romans used to put on the tongues of the dead to pay Charon to ferry them across the river Styx
.

  ‘Two coins to cross the Styx,’ Toby joked to a cheery young stranger. ‘No one returns.’

  ‘Oi will,’ the young man said. ‘Come about sunset. Where’s old Todd, then?’

  ‘He was hurt. I’m helping out.’ No one had questioned Toby running the ferry, any more than they would question it when he was no longer there.

  The irrepressible brown dog, which was a cunning hunter, lived on rats and mice and the occasional waterfowl. Toby started to call it Cerberus.

  Bella knew from discreedy prurient gossip that some women ‘showed’ earlier than others. Although the tall bathroom scales with the heavy weights that dropped on your foot showed a gain of only a few pounds, there was a definite swelling of her stomach, and she did not know whether it was all right to tighten her corset. It was lucky that although the S-shaped look, with pouter chest and tucked back waist was still fashionable, the Empire line was coming in again. At a shop where she was not known, Bella bought herself a soft heavy dress that flowed out loosely below the bosom.

  ‘That’s quite passable,’ her mother conceded, ‘even though you wouldn’t let me choose it with you. I hope it doesn’t mean she is planning to go without stays, like some of these brazen young women, don’t you, Hugo?’

  ‘Please, Charlotte.’ This occasional coarseness in his wife was unpleasantly Germanic. ‘Spare me the grisly details.’

  In her mauve Empire dress, with the beaver-trimmed raglan that she had always liked, although Madge said it made her look like a walking tent, Bella went once more to Egerton Terrace and rang the bell.

  ‘Yes?’ The hóusekeeper, not in uniform now, looked formidably at ease.

  ‘I just wondered if you could give me Dr Taylor’s address. I have an unpaid bill,’ Bella invented desperately, as the woman’s insolent silence forced her to say something, ‘I’d like it settled.’

  ‘So would he, no doubt, if I knew where he was.’

  ‘You don’t know?’ The woman was obviously lying.

  ‘I’ve told you, haven’t I? Now, if you’ll excuse me . . .’

  Bella went away in her brown beaver tent, and sat for a while in an A.B.C. teashop at South Kensington, where she ate an éclair and a mille-feuille to satisfy the craving for sweet things that she had always had, and which was justified now. When dusk began to settle, she walked back to Egerton Terrace. She did not completely believe that Toby was not there.

  As well as the lower floor where the housekeeper lived, two of the upper front rooms were lighted behind drawn curtains. If she waited long enough, she would surely see the front door open and Toby come jauntily out to start his evening’s entertainment. After the lamp-lighter came by, Bella stepped just out of range of the street light and stood for a long while in the shadow, watching the upstairs windows.

  *

  As December dragged on, with its inescapable promise of winter, and the dread of how they would all get through Christmas without Dicky, there were a few unseasonably warm days that made you feel worse when you could not enjoy them.

  There was something that had been on Leonard’s mind, and he decided to do it now. He would hire a motor launch at Goring and make a small pilgrimage to cast a wreath for Dicky on the river he had loved so much. Gwen could not face it, but Austin and Madge would go, and Bella said she wanted to go, too, although she was slowly growing frantic about the future.

  She had thought Uncle Leonard would hire the boat above the flashlock and take it upstream, as he usually did, because it was easier to punt back with the flow of the current, but he wanted to go downstream to the water-meadows above Pangbourne where Dicky had had his last picnic. They made the journey in silence, Austin piloting the boat, each busy with their own thoughts. Beyond the railway bridge, Bella turned her head away so as not to look at Ferry Cottage.

  Opposite the meadow where the Jacob’s sheep had grazed and Bella had run races with Dicky and Laura to make it look as if she was having a good time while Toby’s actress flirted with the other men and Toby quoted E.A. Morley’s A Small Country Town to Grandmother, Leonard stood up and cast the big wreath of evergreens and chrysanthemums out upon the water. They all said a prayer as the wreath floated away. It spun into an eddy, caught on a waterlogged branch, and broke free to dwindle out of sight.

  They were more talkative on the way home. Madge brought out the Thermos flask and sandwiches from her basket. There was a feeling of relief that the little ceremony had been performed. Something had been done for Dicky, and they could talk about him more easily. ‘Do you remember . .. ?’ ‘He always had to be Captain. I can see him with that jaunty little yachting cap on the back of his head.’

  Passing Ferry Cottage, where a spiral of smoke hung in the still air above the crooked chimney, Bella’s stomach suddenly bubbled up like molten lead, and she thought she was going to be sick. A dog was barking. Not just any dog. It was the unmistakable high shrill yelp of Toby’s brown terrier.

  Next morning, Bella took the train back to Goring and walked along the towpath. The ferry boat was crossing the river towards her, the dog standing alertly in the bow. There were no passengers, only the ferryman, rowing steadily with his back to her. He was muffled up in a dark cloak with a shapeless hat pulled low on his head.

  The dog sprang across the gap between the boat and the bank and ran towards her, yelping and jumping about. Bella stood still in the wet grass and watched the rower throw a rope over a post and step out on to the landing stage. He had a full dark beard, and his cloak and hat were stiff with weather and water stains.

  He stared at Bella, but did not smile until she said breathlessly, ‘Toby.’

  His dark eyes gleamed and his teeth showed very white through the moustache and beard. He turned back to look at three ducks going past on the river.

  Bella went towards him. ‘Toby, I’ve come to tell you –’

  ‘Look, look, Bella, the eternal triangle. The drake swims ahead of the female. The second drake, he’s always just behind, hoping and clucking. Sometimes they fly to the bank to shake him off. He can’t fly, I think.’ ‘Never mind about the ducks.’

  ‘I do. I spend a lot of time watching them.’ Apart from the disguise, this was a different Toby.

  ‘Can we go into the house?’ Bella asked.

  ‘Of course. I’m sorry. I spend so much time out here. Come in, Bella, and tell me why you’re here.’

  Inside, Toby took off his hat and cloak and dropped them on the floor. Bella would not sit down.

  ‘Can you guess what I’ve come to tell you?’

  He shook his shaggy head. The skin of his face was browner, and not very clean.

  ‘I’m going to have a baby.’

  ‘You can’t be.’ He laughed, as he had laughed at her when he pulled out the sponge and string.

  ‘It’s true.’ She smoothed down the mauve wool dress over the slight swell of her belly. ‘I’m – I’m pleased about it. Are you?’

  ‘Why should I be?’

  ‘Because we could be married.’

  ‘Married! To the family murderer? You’re mad, girl. They’d cut you off without a bean.’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind.’ Bella moved closer to him. ‘I’d be with you. We’d be the three of us against the world.’

  Toby laughed again and sat down in the old chair and leaned forward to poke at the fire. ‘Sounds wonderfully romantic. Only –’ He paused, looking at the fire, then threw down the poker and said, ‘Look here, I’ll have to tell you this. I’ve got a wife already.’

  ‘We’ve never seen her. You’re lying.’

  ‘Hush. She – well, she’s in an institution. It’s very sad. She’ll never be well enough to come out, but she’ll always be my –’ He stopped, and gave Bella the disarming, candid look that she had seen before when she knew he was not telling the truth. ‘Always be my wife.’

  Jack Haynes had come back to the Loudon Street Settlement one day when Madge was there, and she had told him about Dicky’s death.

  ‘Deh?�
�� His troubled eyes searched her face. He could not seem to understand it.

  Madge spelled out Dicky’s name, then spread her hands out, palms down: Finished. She rubbed her fingers in her eyes to signify crying, and Jack did that, too. There were real tears on his thick lashes.

  He told her, ‘I come see your mother.’ He was very fond of Gwen.

  ‘Yes.’ Madge nodded. It might be helpful to her mother. When you were talking to Jack, you had to concentrate on him and what he was getting from it, not on yourself. ‘You come to 72.’ She wrote the number on the air.

  Flora was alone at No. 72 Chepstow Villas. Mrs Roach and Tatiana had the half day off, and Gwen Morley had gone to Addison Road to see her grandchildren.

  Flora had her shoes off and her feet up on the kitchen stool. The infernal telephone could ring its head off. Anyone at the front door could go away ... Someone at the back door? Who the hell? Tradesmen always came in the morning, and there were no deliveries expected.

  The back-door bell jangled again as if it had come off its spring.

  ‘All right, all right.’ Flora padded into the scullery in her stockinged feet. ‘Keep your wool on!’ She pulled open the door with a scowl.

  ‘Thanks for the loving welcome.’ Bull Bolt stood there, cocky, corduroy-coated, smelling of beer through his broken-toothed grin.

  Flora stepped back, speechless. Her hand automatically went to her neck, where he had cut her.

  ‘Don’t worry, love. I didn’t bring me blade.’ With a hand on each side of the door frame, he leaned towards her, peering through into the kitchen. ‘Coast clear, eh? I seen the old cow go out, with the little vixen.’

  ‘You can’t come in, Bull.’ Flora was trembling with shock. She was conscious of the weakness at the side of her mouth.

  ‘I’m in.’ He stepped into the scullery. He had new boots, and a check waistcoat. He looked more prosperous. ‘Get me a drink.’

  Flora shut the door into the kifthen and stood against it. She did not want him to come close to her and put his hands on her. She did not want anything to shake her determination never to have anything to do with him again.