Gull Island

by Grace Thompson

  ‘And you didn’t send a card,’ Kate said.

  ‘Stayed in, didn’t I? Sick I was and hardly left my room.’

  ‘There’s a shame,’ Mrs Carey said at once. ‘All that money and you no better off for it.’ She shook her head and tutted sympathetically. ‘You might just as well have stayed home.’

  For some reason Rosita didn’t understand, the words hung in the air. Richard’s head jerked around and he glared at Idris. Rosita frowned as the brothers continued to stare unblinkingly, one challenging, the other with an air of defiance. It was obvious they shared some guilty secret.

  Then she looked at the red-faced Hattie, who was looking at the floor with self-conscious scrutiny. Slowly her eyes focused on Idris, who was thumping the cushions of the armchair, beating time to some silent dirge of his own. In that brief moment of time, Rosita knew that the problem, whatever it was, involved Hattie and Idris. But what could it be? She remembered seeing Hattie and Idris in her car and wondered if they had done more than a bit of furtive kissing. But no, Idris wouldn’t be that stupid. Perhaps he had ‘tried it on’ with someone and Richard had discovered it? Or worse, perhaps Kate had somehow learned of it.

  Unaccountably, Rosita felt shame. Idris had certainly ‘tried it on’ with her and she had ignored it. Why hadn’t she faced him and told him that if he didn’t behave she would tell his mother? For an adored son like Idris, that might have been enough to warn him off. Or at least make him think twice about having an affair while his wife and children were away from home.

  ‘Idris wasn’t alone while we were away, Mam,’ Kate said softly. ‘I found evidence that he’d had … company.’ She didn’t say female company but it was implied by the seriousness of her expression.

  ‘Never!’ Mrs Carey gasped. ‘Oh, Kate, love, you must be mistaken. Not my Idris.’

  ‘I had a few pals around, that’s all, Mam. You’d think, listening to Kate, I’d done something real wicked. Thieving or burglary.’ He smiled at Richard, unable to resist reminding Richard of his early career.

  ‘Oh, just some friends!’ His mother looked relieved. ‘Well, now, you can’t blame him for that, Kate, him being unwell an’ all.’

  Kate didn’t say any more, unwilling to upset her mother-in-law, knowing perhaps that whatever revelations she announced, they would be twisted into something innocent.

  The party broke up soon after, and Idris and a pale, silent Kate took their girls home. Hattie followed them at a slight distance, as if unsure if she should. Richard and Rosita stayed a while, wanting to smooth over the disquiet of the previous moments. Perhaps now they could tell his parents their news. In his chair, Henry Carey snored rather noisily and their derisory laughter was also loud, glad of the chance to release some of the tension.

  ‘What was up with Kate and Idris, then?’ Mrs Carey asked. ‘I know there was something, so don’t try and tell me different. Is she angry with him because he didn’t keep the house tidy? Or for leaving dishes piled up in the sink? Men are like that. Always have been and always will be. She shouldn’t start a row when she’s been away for a week. Now isn’t the time.’

  She didn’t seem to expect answers so Rosita and Richard stayed thankfully silent.

  Rosita gathered up the last of the wrapping paper and Mrs Carey made tea. Richard sat staring out of the window, wondering what would happen between Kate and his foolish brother. It had spoilt the homecoming. He had imagined the family sharing his delight when he announced that he and Rosita were planning to marry. Now the event had been soured. Damn that brother of his.

  Richard glanced at his father, who seemed safely asleep, then quietly told Rosita about finding Idris in bed with another woman. To save her distress, he didn’t tell her the woman was Hattie.

  ‘And Kate knows?’

  ‘She’s guessed.’

  ‘Poor Kate. I thought she meant a woman, from the way she said he’s had “company” in her absence. Auntie Molly Carey will never believe it, you know. He’s a fool, that brother of yours. Imagine Kate’s humiliation discovering that while she was away, Idris was finding comfort with another woman. Poor Kate. I won’t know what to say to her tomorrow. It’s such – such an insult.’

  Richard thought of how much worse it would have been if Rosita had known who the other woman was. He hoped she would never find out.

  When Mrs Carey came in with a tray of tea, she stopped beside Henry, whose snores had ceased, and nudged him.

  ‘Tired out, he is. Slept a lot while we were away. I think all the walking and pushing our way through the crowds was too much. He loved every minute, mind,’ she added, not wanting Richard to regret arranging the holiday for them. ‘Never seen him so happy.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it be better to get him to bed, Mam?’ Richard suggested. ‘He doesn’t look very comfortable, slumped like that.’

  ‘Here’s your tea, Henry. Come on, cariad, push that stupid dog off and drink this. You’ll never sleep tonight, dozing at this time.’

  There was no response and she placed the cup and saucer on the table near him. It was ten minutes more before they realized Henry Carey was dead.

  The rest of the night was a blur. For a few moments, after realizing he was gone from them, they all sat, unmoving, numb with the suddenness and shock. When Mrs Carey did move it was like an old, old woman, completely different from the bird-like brightness she usually displayed.

  Rosita helped Mrs Carey take the dog away and cover the face of her dead husband, while Richard made telephone calls. Idris came back and hugged his mother, bringing forth her tears. He sat beside her, his arms holding her, and Richard was grateful to him for being able to give some comfort to his stunned mother.

  It took half an hour of that dreadful, uneasy silent waiting before the doctor came and declared Henry dead. Then, more waiting, interspersed with a visibly shaking Mrs Carey making tea that no one wanted but which they all drank.

  Rosita went straight from the Careys’ house to the shop to open up and sell newspapers. Her first customer was Monty and she told him what had happened.

  ‘Can I use your phone?’ he asked. She heard him telling Richard that he would deal with everything that day and call to see him after work that evening.

  ‘It was such a shock,’ she told Monty. ‘We were laughing at him, sitting there nursing that dog of his. And all the time he was …’

  ‘Best way to go but hard for those left behind.’ The platitudes always came more easily than original remarks and were somehow more reassuring.

  ‘We were looking forward to telling them all that we’re getting married,’ Rosita said in a lull between serving customers. ‘It would have been a cause for celebration, and now …’

  ‘Now you can keep it to yourselves for a while and enjoy the privacy of it for a while longer. My congratulations to Richard on his good sense in … capturing you. He’s a lucky man.’ He smiled, winked and left. She was sorry to see him go. He was a kind man and she wished he could have stayed a while longer to allow her to talk.

  Customers kept her busy for the next hour and a half as workmen and then business people filed in for their morning papers and cigarettes. The businessmen were followed by mothers buying magazines and spending their sweet ration. The small coupons had to be cut out of the ration books and put into a tin to be counted later and exchanged for fresh stock, a job Rosita hated. Restless and unable to think of much besides the death of Uncle Henry Carey, she tackled the irksome task to keep her fingers and at least part of her mind busy. She threaded them onto cotton with the aid of a sewing needle, separating every twenty coupons with a cardboard disk to make counting easier. At 9.30, during a lull, she made herself some coffee.

  Richard rang to tell her that the undertakers were there. She sipped the warm drink and allowed her thoughts to return to Monty. He was such a good friend to Richard, someone he could rely on, very much as she had depended on Miss Grainger. She knew he was fond of her too and seemed genuinely pleased that she and Richard were i
ntending to marry.

  The funeral took place on a warm June morning and after dealing with the morning papers, Kate and Rosita closed the shops and went to the house near Red Rock Bay to stay with Mrs Carey while the men went to the graveside. A surprisingly large number of people turned up. The house was crowded with people wanting to show affection and sorrow. Yet there were tensions within the family.

  Kate pointedly ignored Idris. Rosita noticed that her sister Hattie was absent. So were the rest of the Carey family. None of Mrs Carey’s children were there apart from Idris and Richard.

  ‘They’ve all written to say they’re sorry to miss the funeral,’ Mrs Carey told Rosita, but she didn’t sound convincing. Richard had given the task of contacting them to Idris and she guessed he had probably left it too late for arrangements to be made. If Mrs Carey noticed the absence of Hattie she didn’t say anything. There were so many people milling around she might not have noticed. Rosita found herself in charge of handing out cups of tea to the women, while Richard and Idris poured stronger drinks for the men. Hands appeared and were filled with a cup and saucer, hands connected to people she rarely looked at, the crush was so great.

  At two o’clock the last of the mourners left and Mrs Carey stared around the empty room in disbelief. From the moment of Henry’s death the place had been constantly full of people. Now they were gone. Her eyes rested on the armchair where Henry had spent a lot of his time.

  ‘From now on it’ll only be me,’ she whispered to Rosita and Richard. ‘Once there were twelve of us, can you believe that? Now there’s only me. At night when I wake, the bed will be empty and I’ll be alone. In the day, whenever I have something to say, there’ll be no one to listen. Or care about my opinion. No one to touch me or to give me a hug. Will I ever get used to it?’

  She seemed to have forgotten that Richard still lived there, and neither bothered to remind her. After all, she was right, she was alone. She was alone because Henry was no longer there.

  There were no words. Rosita hugged the elderly lady, who seemed to have shrunk in the past few days. Richard put an arm around them both and for a long time they stayed together. Mrs Carey went through the people who had come, seeing them as a procession before her eyes. Suddenly she said with bitterness, ‘She didn’t come.’

  ‘Who, Mam?’

  ‘Barbara, of course. Rosita’s mother. You’d have thought she’d come after all me and Henry did for her.’

  Rosita felt an almost painful shock at the mention of her mother.

  ‘How could she have known?’ Richard asked.

  ‘Because I wrote to her, that’s how!’

  There are always feelings of guilt around at a funeral, Rosita thought as she continued to hold Mrs Carey. Words regretted and words unspoken that should have been said. In the atmosphere of grief at the funeral of Uncle Henry Carey, whom she had loved as much as a father, guilt for her deliberate neglect of her mother stabbed like a knife. Richard seemed aware of her thoughts and moved to pull her closer.

  Was it just this moment of sentimentality that made her feel shame and remorse? Or was it the reminder that time was passing, that the generations were beginning to change, with one going and another moving up to take its place? One day her mother would die and then it would be too late for a change of heart. For those brief moments she seriously considered making contact with her. After all these years, wasn’t it time to forgive? Forgetting was impossible, she knew that, but surely she was a big enough person now to forgive?

  It could be speedily and simply done. All she had to do was mention it to Kate and something would be arranged. Perhaps a meeting at Kate’s home, with Hattie there to help things along? On neutral ground in a restaurant with a meal to edge away their initial strangeness? It would be so easy, but easier still to leave it and do nothing.

  Life settled back into a routine. ‘Like one of those snowstorm scenes,’ Rosita said to Richard. ‘The ones you shake and release thousands of flakes then watch them land once more, slightly different but normal enough to appear the same; safe and familiar.’

  ‘I’m worried about Mam, though,’ Richard told her, helping himself to the Oxo-flavoured casserole she had prepared for their evening meal. They were in her Station Row flat and, it being Saturday, Richard knew he could leave his mother because Idris and Kate would be visiting her. The weekly arrangement had quickly become a regular habit so neither Rosita nor Richard ever questioned it or checked on it; they just accepted it as a part of their new togetherness. Saturday evenings and Sunday afternoons were theirs.

  ‘I go as often as I can,’ Rosita said. ‘And always stay for a cup of tea and a chat. I think she faces each day as if it were a long expanse of empty space to be filled.’

  ‘Rosita, d’you think we could make a date for our engagement? It would be something good for Mam to look forward to. She loves a celebration and you know how she loves an excuse to cook, and fill the house with people.’

  ‘Have an engagement party?’

  ‘Now. Very soon.’

  ‘I don’t know. I’ll have to think about it.’ She didn’t look at him, knowing the disappointed ‘little boy’ look on his face would have made laughter inevitable and she wanted to tease him a little. Love and laughter are good companions. Solemnly she refilled their wine glasses. ‘Richard? Persuade me,’ she coaxed.

  Now it was his turn to tease and for a few heart-stopping seconds she waited. She looked at him in alarm. Had she misread his mood? Was he upset by her response? Then he jumped up and held her so tightly she couldn’t move – not that she wanted to.

  As Richard had predicted, Auntie Molly Carey was overjoyed at their announcement.

  ‘Pity Uncle Henry Carey won’t be here,’ she sighed, ‘but never mind, this is a glad occasion, not one for sorrow and regrets. I’m alive to see it and that’s what I must remind myself! Every day is a blessing when you’re my age.’

  With the newspapers being an everyday occupation, it was impossible to arrange a day off, so they decided to have the engagement party on a Sunday afternoon, 14 July.

  ‘Like cows you and your papers are, Rosita,’ Mrs Carey said with a laugh. ‘Cows can’t go on a five-day week either, now can they?’ Her words, with connotations of the farm where Rosita had lived so unhappily, brought her mother to mind. This engagement party was an excellent opportunity to invite her mother and shake off the ghosts of the past, but Rosita determinedly ignored it. One day, but not yet. She wasn’t ready yet and wondered if there would ever be a time when she was.

  Whether it was the prospect of marriage and, if she were fortunate, children, or simply the passing of time, Rosita began to warm a little towards her mother. Perhaps, when the wedding was arranged, she would contact her. With Richard to support her it would be easier than when she was alone. The thought grew and was embellished with imagined scenes in which her mother would hug her and everything bitter and unpleasant would miraculously melt away.

  By the time the engagement party was only a couple of weeks away, she was teetering on the point of writing to her and arranging to meet, just briefly. If their meeting went well then she could come to the party. It would be a good time to revive the damaged relationship, with everyone in celebratory mood and no time for long conversations of the soul-searching kind.

  On Wednesday evening, with only eleven days to go, she was still trying to make up her mind. She had said nothing to Richard, but thought she would broach the subject with Auntie Molly Carey, the recipient of so many of her secrets and problems. Her intention to go there immediately after closing the shop was altered when she found Kate’s handbag on the counter. Instead of going to the Careys’ house, she would call on Kate and return it.

  At Walpole Street, near to Kate and Idris’s home, there was obviously a party going on and for that reason there was no room to park near the front door. So, finding herself closer to the lane, she went through the small yard and, finding the back door half open, she stepped inside. The soft sandals
she wore made no sound.

  The day had been hot. After an absence of more than a week, the sun had returned to shine brassily down out of a blue sky. Stepping out of the brightness, the kitchen was dark and for a moment Rosita’s eyes couldn’t pierce the gloom. When she did focus, it was to see a couple on the couch against the far wall. They didn’t look up, unaware of her arrival. The sounds they were making made clear their complete absorption in each other. Beside them a radio played softly.

  Rosita was so shocked that even if she had wanted to speak she was unable to utter a word. Idris lay sprawled along the couch and, on top of him, her position leaving Rosita in no doubt as to their activity, was her half-sister, Hattie.

  Afterwards she was to wonder at the speed with which the various thoughts, memories and facts fell into place. So this was what Kate had come home to! The ‘company’ Idris had entertained was his wife’s sister. Hattie hadn’t been to Weston, but had stayed behind when the others had gone to London.

  Hattie and Idris! It was obscene! She gasped, paused a moment as though to berate them, then ran unnoticed down the path with a choking sob.

  On the way to the car she saw Kate, who had gone back to the shop for her handbag, realized what had happened and returned. Rosita walked with her to the front door and stood talking to her, to allow the couple inside time to separate. Only when Idris sauntered out, casually dressed, and kissed his wife, did she leave.

  Hurrying back to the car she decided that Idris and Hattie must get their kicks from the risk of being caught. There was no other explanation. She wondered whose idea it had been to make love where they would have to run to the stairs as soon as they heard Kate’s key in the lock. Hattie might be trying to take Idris away from Kate, but Idris might just be vain enough to believe Kate would love him however badly he behaved.