‘See it?’ She seemed surprised. ‘If you like.’
The rocking horse was in the small back room, squeezed in between a small unmade bed and dresser with bulging drawers. Three colourful yo-yos littered the flagstones and the clothes strewn across the bed smelled of must. The horse’s white ears were darkened with dirt and the paint on the saddle was chipped. The neck and rump were bare, the silver hair of the tail and mane lying in a tangle on the floor. It had become a toy, a plaything, just like any other and it was no longer Ruby’s dapple grey mare.
‘Mrs Brown!’ I cried.
She stared at me, her face blank.
I pointed to the horse. ‘What happened?’
She blinked quickly and frowned as if not understanding my question.
‘It’s been less than a week!’ I said.
She shrugged. ‘They are kids, Mrs Marks.’
I gasped. ‘Kids?’
‘Yes, Mrs Marks,’ she said slowly. ‘They are child-ren.’
‘No!’ I said. ‘That’s no excuse. No normal child would do—’
‘That’s exactly what a normal child would do,’ she spat. ‘Kids is full of life and energy, Mrs Marks, they ain’t dolls to dress up in lace and sit all quiet at parties and eat blancmange.’
‘I can’t believe it!’ I whispered.
She gave a little sniff. ‘You weren’t to know,’ she said, tossing her head. ‘You don’t know about kids.’
She stomped off and I heard the whirr of the Singer from the kitchen. I stood and stared at the rocking horse and then I went back to my seat and sat down heavily. I pulled a pile of linen on to my lap and hunted for my needle, but she had tidied it away, so instead I unpicked a clumsy stitch with an old crochet hook. Gradually the patter of rain on the roof was dimmed by the whirr of the Singer as Maud worked it faster and faster. The clatter of the mechanism began to throb in my head and I was forced to stop. I tried to get her attention but she did not look up. Her hands worked rapidly, feeding the material under the needle. Her face was red, a vein bulging from her temple and her eyebrows knotted and low.
Then the noise stopped suddenly. ‘Shit!’ she cried, holding up a bloody finger. ‘Oh shit!’ Then her face seemed to crumple and she put her head in her hands and started wailing.
‘Mrs Brown?’ I said quietly. ‘Mrs Brown… Maud, are you all right?’
‘No, I ain’t bloody all right,’ she sobbed. ‘You know what they’ve been talking about all weekend? Bloody cakes and blancmange. Cakes and blancmange! I can’t even give them jam. Let alone cakes and blancmange or a rocking horse!’
I stared at her. Her face was wet from crying but her tears were not accompanied by elegant snivels and lace handkerchiefs like in the movies. Maud was all snot and growling. Her mouth gaped large, crushing her eyes into little black crescents, melting tears onto her cheeks. I put out my hand to touch her arm but she drew it away quickly.
‘I’ll make some tea,’ I said.
I put the kettle on the stove and I stood at the draining board staring out the window on to the yard. The rain was constant, a murmur of thunder somewhere in the distance. Through the slats of the henhouse, the chickens flicked raindrops from their feathers, their dull clucking rising over the rain. The earth in the yard had softened into mud, brown water pooling in the furrows. Ruby would surely catch a chill if she really was out hunting for blackberries. I thought of the nursery at Little Willow; the bright paint on the walls and the thick carpet. Then the stupid extravagance of the rocking horse – given away on a whim, and the silver rattle – buried. I had so much to offer Ruby and, at the moment, she had so little – a run-down cottage, Maud who struggled to make ends meet, and a father - well, a father maybe.
Then I thought of Clarence. Did he even exist? There was no sign of him, only a worn rocking chair that was always empty. I tried to imagine the man who sat in that chair. He was a grafter, Maud had said, did work for the farms and odd jobs, so he would probably be dressed in dungarees or even a smock and be black with dirt. His body would be muscly and built for work, but there was only one other part of his body that Maud had mentioned; his hard oak truncheon. I stopped myself, not wanting to think any more, but only when I imagined his body did I really see the man who sat in that chair – see him, feel his warmth and smell his sweat. He was the coarse labourer, the muscled farmhand. I could imagine him kicking open the door at dusk, demanding his supper and sinking into that rocking chair, with a pitcher of ale in his hand. He would drink and laugh, bark orders at Maud, box the children’s ears, spread his legs, rub his crotch. And George, well, George wasn’t perfect but he could at least provide security and a regular income and Clarence… well Ruby would surely be better off without him, without any of her family.
My thoughts were broken by a new wail from the basket chair, as if the turmoil Maud was trying to suppress had resurfaced again but then sunk into a fit of sobs and sniffles. Maud was right, of course, she had said that she could never give Ruby cakes and blancmange, but really she had meant stability, education, dreams and a future. Did I want my Violet growing up in a place like this? A place where she had nothing? A place where Maud had to work all hours just to put bread on the table? A place where she had just the ghost of a father? A place where she would feed chickens and milk cows and sew aprons for chambermaids? I was not the only one who thought this – Maud had admitted that much to me not long after we first met – Ruby had no future here, no chance of becoming the grand Missensham lady with the grey mare. But at Little Willow things could be better for her, and I vowed to make them so.
Maud took the tea without a thank you. She had a long sip, the tension falling from her face as if the hot liquid had relaxed every muscle in her body before it hit her throat. She wiped her eyes and smiled at last.
‘I’m sorry, I should have brought some wine,’ I said, remembering the party and the brimming beaker of wine that she had brought me as a comfort. She caught my eye and smiled weakly. I remembered how close I had felt to her back then. I sat back down and she turned her chair away from the table, stretching her legs out in front of the empty grate. ‘You must have had a fair amount to drink that day too,’ I said. ‘You told me about the time you had called for the cat instead of Ruby,’ – I leaned towards her and smiled – ‘and then about how you had cried out another man’s name when you were in bed with Clarence.’
She nodded. ‘Ah, well yes, but you know me.’ She winked. ‘I would have told you that anyway.’
‘I know,’ I said, feigning weariness, and we laughed again.
‘You raced through that big glass of wine,’ she said. ‘I never knew a real lady would be such a drunk!’
I laughed.
Then her brow furrowed. ‘You were still a lady, though, weren’t you? Despite everything.’
‘What do you mean?’ I said.
‘Well, you still wouldn’t tell about the other lover you’d had. You came across all bashful, all “yeses” and “nos” and then “don’t knows”. How much would it take for a lady to give away her little secrets?’
Suddenly I felt ashamed. I knew so much about Maud, yet I had told her so little about myself. She must have already guessed that I had lied about needing money and about George being a gambler, so I felt I owed her something. ‘It wouldn’t take any alcohol,’ I said. ‘Just good friendship.’
She smiled.
I thought about her confession again; crying out the wrong name in her passion, the droop in Clarence’s truncheon, their fight in the kitchen. And the way she had laughed about it, like she didn’t care who knew, as if it meant nothing.
‘There was another man,’ I said, giggling like a schoolgirl at the memory. ‘Shortly after George and I were married. It didn’t last long.’ I touched her arm but felt her flinch, her face became pinched and she was silent again.
I laughed, nervously this time, patting her knee. ‘Oh, come on, you’ve never met George.’
‘I don’t need to,’ she said. ‘After y
ou were married! No man deserves that.’
I opened my mouth in amazement but her face was hard. Then I heard myself laugh again, but my voice was weak. ‘Oh come on, Mrs Brown. What does marriage mean to you when you and Clarence never see each other and fight so much? I’ve never even heard you refer to him as your husband, so I’m assuming that you are not even legally wed. And really, all these children? Henry so fair, but John and Jim so dusky and Andy with his red hair – and well, Andy, at his age he must have been conceived during the war when surely Clarence would have been serving—’
‘What do you mean by that?’ she snapped, her eyes were wide and staring.
‘Oh, don’t be so high and mighty,’ I said. ‘You must know exactly what I mean – some of your children may not be Clarence’s, one of them might not even be yours!’
‘What!’
‘Well, I just thought, what with all your talk of—’
She jumped from her chair, her face red and her body quivering.
‘—truncheons,’ I whispered.
‘Always Clarence’s!’ she yelled. ‘I’ve only ever talked about Clarence’s truncheon. It’s all right for you upper classes to sleep around, with your c-c-courtesans and fancy boys, but it’s more serious for the likes of us, we stay faithful. These are our kids – mine and Clarence’s – we made, and bore every single one of them!’
‘You’re lying,’ I said weakly. ‘I know for a fact that Ruby—’
‘Ruby? What about Ruby?’
‘—with her fair hair… and her face so different from the boys.’ I was gasping, my breaths were coming quickly between words. ‘And she doesn’t even look like you.’
‘What do you mean by that?’ she shouted.
I opened my mouth, but in all my rage I couldn’t bring myself to say it. ‘She doesn’t even call you “Mother”,’ I whispered. ‘Why doesn’t she call you “Mother”? She can’t be yours. You must be lying, you must be!’
‘How dare you call me a liar!’ she screeched. ‘When you turn up here from nowhere and sit in my kitchen with your deception?’
‘What?’
‘Why are you really here, Mrs Marks? A housewife from Sunningdale Estate! Don’t tell me it’s gambling. Doctors don’t gamble and their wives ain’t short of money.’
‘You don’t know—’
‘Don’t I? I ain’t stupid.’ She started to cough again. The way she had when I had arrived, burying her face in her handkerchief. ‘Ladies what throw parties with wine,’ she wheezed, ‘and blancmange and give kids rocking horses don’t work as seamstresses.’
‘I need the money,’ I pleaded. ‘I do.’
‘Then why did you leave it here last week? Any woman in debt would need that money for bread and potatoes, you didn’t even know that you’d left it. You didn’t even notice!’
‘I just forgot,’ I said. ‘It was an honest mistake, I…’
‘Why are you here, Mrs Marks?’ she said again wearily. She was staring right at me.
I sat down. It was time to tell her. I searched for the words but I couldn’t find them. ‘I want my daughter back,’ I said at last. ‘I want Ruby.’
She opened her mouth, gulping like a frog. ‘Your daughter’s dead, you said so yourself.’
‘Look, I don’t know how it happened, Mrs Brown, but she’s not. Maybe there was a mix-up at the hospital or something, maybe she was stolen, but somehow my daughter is alive. She is alive and living with you… Ruby is my daughter.’
‘Get out!’ she screamed. ‘Get out of my house!’ Suddenly her face was right in front of mine, mouth gaping and eyes wild.
I got up and backed toward the door, tripping over the doorstep, her hand on my back as I stumbled into the lane. Then the door slammed behind me, putting an end to any chance I had of getting Violet back.
17
I had not seen the nursery for nine years. Not properly that is. Of course I had been in there during my drunken plan to get the rocking horse. But then my brain had been numb with wine and I had felt no need to linger.
Now that I stood in the nursery again, I took my time. I felt the softness of the carpet between my toes and opened the curtains, listening to the grate of the heavy rings along the rail. I ran my fingers over the walls, the pale yellow like a captured sunbeam, lambs kicking their feet as they played among the poppies. The curls of their wool were hard under my fingertips, the paint ridged with the stroke of the brush. The counterpane was on the sideboard, folded to show the embroidery on top – ‘Violet’ – the ‘V’ was proud and ornate but the other letters were just tacked onto the cotton as if the stitcher had realized that there would be no one to cherish them. Despite everything that had happened, this room was still Violet’s. It was this room, and not the white room at the hospital with its cold surfaces and glaring lights, that Violet should have come to – but it was this room that she never saw.
I grasped the rail of the cot, lifting the sheets from the mattress and burying my face in them. They smelt musty now, the newness faded. I opened a drawer and saw the swaddling blanket, just as I had folded it nine years ago when the midwife had passed it to me.
A small piece of card was folded into the wool. It was the photograph of the infant Violet; older and slightly faded but still the image I remembered,
In the end I had shown the photo to George. Not when I first got it, when it was my secret, but some months later. Back then I had told myself that it was my wifely duty to show him, that it was something that should be shared, but deep down there was something that I needed to know – whether the photograph had captured the last moments of life or merely the body that it had left behind.
I remember standing in the lounge, holding the photograph out to him, pushing it gingerly over the top of his open newspaper. He took it, examined it – with glasses both on and off – then looked up at me.
‘What a very strange gift!’ he had said, his leg quivering the way it did with some trifle or annoyance. Then he had jabbed his finger in the air. ‘But I remember her, the midwife, she was a middle-aged woman, wasn’t she? Well past her own childbearing years. This kind of thing must have been popular in her youth, some memento mori. The Victorians were a superstitious lot – but I suppose in a way it would help them get through the process of mourning.’
He had let out a little chuckle, the kind of coughing laugh he gave when he thought he was about to say something clever. ‘Memento mori were usually pretty formal of course, this silly woman seems to have devalued it somewhat by surreptitiously snapping the shot with a Box Brownie’. He rolled his eyes, as if mocking the midwife was more important than the photograph itself. ‘Rather morbid, if you ask me.’ He turned the photograph over and studied the back, his spectacles folded as he moved the lenses across the paper like a magnifying glass. ‘There’s a mark here too,’ he said. ‘Something left by the developer probably, yes a “one” and then a little slash and then I think it must be a “two” after that – one out of two.’ Another little cough chuckled in the back of his throat. ‘Yes there must have been another copy of it at some point – maybe the midwife kept it for her records or for some superstitious reason. Obstetrics has been in the hands of women for far too long, if you ask me. It’s only with proper modern medicine that we will be able to put an end to this kind of mumbo jumbo.’
I had stood in front of my husband, wondering whether it was even worth asking more. Whether my questions would just lead to more rants about the merits of modern photography, memento mori and obstetrics
‘And to have the light on that cheek,’ George continued, ‘the one with the mark, it’s not very well positioned!’ He touched the photo, his finger skimming the birthmark and he grimaced. ‘You know, I do think it would be best if you didn’t mention such details to others.’
‘Details?’ I said.
‘Yes – things like the name we gave her and her face; especially not the face. Talking about such things with other people is far too personal and will only upset you.’<
br />
I wanted to tell him that these ‘details’ that he spoke of were what made Violet special to me but, deep down, I knew that he what he said did not matter – I had never been able to talk openly about Violet and what few friends I had knew only that I’d had a baby who died.
He turned back to his newspaper, muttering to himself and shaking his head.
I took a deep breath and tried to keep my voice steady: ‘George, there’s no chance she would have been alive when this was taken, is there?’
‘Alive?’ he said, surprised. He traced his finger over the bonnet. ‘No, no not by then. Not by then.’
Not by then, I thought – so final, over.
Then he handed the photograph back to me. ‘I’d get rid of it, if I were you.’
‘No!’ I said quickly. ‘How about we just keep it in the nursery instead? After all, it is where she belongs.’ He looked at me sharply, so I added: ‘It’s just that we have so much in there already, and this is just one more tiny thing.’
‘Oh, all right then,’ he said. ‘But I had better do it. We don’t want you going in there and upsetting yourself.’
I knew George’s ways by now and I knew that he would do as he said and put the photograph back in the nursery. I also knew where he would hide the key to the nursery door. But, as I handed the photograph back to him, I found that part of me wondered whether I would ever see it again.
*
Ten years had passed and now, standing in the warm glow of the nursery, I still had the photograph. I touched the outline of the baby’s face; the three tears and the smudge on the cheekbone, just below the eye. Suddenly I was sure. I had not been imagining it – the birthmark in the photograph was identical to Ruby’s and, as I stared at the faded picture of the little grey baby, her birthmark bloomed crimson.
18
Without my visits to Rose Cottage, life went back to normal. I became Mrs Marks again, the suburban doctor’s wife. But being a wife yet not a mother meant that I could neither work, nor had children to raise. I was too old for the London nightclubs and too young for the Women’s Institute, and I could not face volunteering at the Sunday school or Girl Guides, or any of the places that I might have imagined Violet. For the first time in weeks, the days seemed to stretch ahead of me – long and empty. George rejoiced in this and his little notes started to appear again. When I came down in the mornings I would find little bits of paper left around the place, all filled with George’s crabbed handwriting. Each note would detail the delivery date of a newly published medical journal, a troublesome bird pat that had landed on the bedroom window or some instruction or complaint to be passed on to Mr Tuttle and, of course, there were arrangements to be made for the Hospital Ball. My days became defined by endless lists of errands and reminders, all so urgent yet all so unimportant. George would sign each note off with ‘Your loving husband’ and his signature, ‘George Marks’, ornate with whirls and loops like a royal seal.
The Liar Page 11
