by Nancy Carson
She returned to Ezme’s bedroom carrying a tray, and placed it on the dressing table. She began arranging the cups and saucers and spoons, conscious that Sylvia was watching.
‘The district nuss is as good as gold, Sylvia,’ Ezme croaked, breaking the focus. ‘Good as gold. Comes in every day.’
‘And Lizzie’s as good as gold,’ Jesse affirmed, knowing his mother would never admit as much. ‘She sends a cooked dinner round for her every night, and does all the cleaning.’
Lizzie was pouring out the tea. ‘Everybody take milk?’
‘How often does the doctor call?’ Sylvia asked Ezme, and had to repeat herself.
‘Oh, every wik. Comes in every wik. He’s bin as good as gold, an’ all.’
Lizzie handed the plate of cheese sandwiches to Ezme, and placed a cup of tea on her bedside table. Then she picked up the tray bearing the other cups and offered them around. Sylvia took hers, thanking Lizzie pleasantly, and poured in a spoonful of sugar.
Jesse was as determined as Lizzie to tell his mother that very night that they were about to get married. He was proud of the fact, and he was also keen to assert his love for his bride-to-be in the face of Sylvia. This presented a golden opportunity. This way, Sylvia could hardly claim that he still had his cap set at her, which he believed she was ever likely to do. To tell his mother now, with Sylvia unexpectedly present, would leave her in no doubt as to where his real love lay. There could be no misunderstanding.
‘There’s er … there’s something me and Lizzie want to tell Mother tonight, Sylvia, and it’d be unfair on her to wait any longer to tell her,’ he began. Lizzie felt the tray trembling in her hands as she proffered tea to Edgar, who looked up and smiled. ‘So as I see it, you might as well hear it as well.’ He, too, took a cup and saucer from the tray, spooned in sugar, and stirred it nervously as everyone waited to hear what he wanted to say. He waved to gain his mother’s attention. Ezme looked up, a crust hanging out of her mouth, about to be savaged by the uneven, discoloured tombstones that were once a decent set of teeth. ‘Lizzie and me are getting married next month.’ There. The truth was out.
‘What say?’
‘I said, Lizzie and me are getting married next month.’
‘Well, congratulations, Lizzie,’ Edgar said with a look of genuine pleasure.
Lizzie smiled self-consciously, but couldn’t help glancing at Sylvia, who avoided her eyes and scrutinised Jesse instead, her gaze as cold as granite.
Ezme had still not heard, but she had picked up everybody’s reactions: Edgar’s smiling face; the bitter resentment in Sylvia’s glance; Lizzie looking abashed, but with bright, expectant eyes; and Jesse, her only son, watching her own expression with apprehension. Something monumental was being announced. She dearly hoped it was not what she had dreaded more than anything else in the world.
‘What did yer say?’ she asked again, suspiciously. ‘I aer’ catched what yo’ said.’
Jesse sighed with frustration and put down his cup and saucer. ‘Married,’ he yelled. ‘Christ, it’s like talking to the bloody wall.’ He wanted to get this over and done. He pointed to Lizzie, and then to himself, and his mother watched his telling movements. He took Lizzie’s hand and drew an imaginary ring around the third finger of her left hand.
‘Yo’m gettin’ wed to Lizzie?’ Her face bore a look of absolute horror.
He nodded, relieved. She knew at last.
Ezme shook her head and choked as if from shock, sending wet pieces of bread and cheese over her counterpane. ‘No, yo’ ai’,’ she barked. ‘Yo’ cor’… Never.’
Jesse nodded back in cool defiance. ‘Yes, we can.’
‘Over my jead body.’
Jesse let out a little laugh of frustration and shook his head, signifying that this was the response he’d anticipated. He took Lizzie’s hand and squeezed it reassuringly. ‘We’re getting married, and there’s nothing you can do about it.’
Ezme couldn’t hear, but his challenging look gave her the gist of it. ‘If yo’ think yo’m marryin’ ’er …’ she wagged what remained of her sandwich contemptuously at Lizzie, ‘yo’d best think again. I’ll mek sure yo’ doh. I’ll get to the church some road or other, and shout out as I’ve got just cause and himpediment why yo’ shouldn’t.’
Lizzie wanted the floorboards to slide open and consume her, presuming Sylvia’s intense satisfaction at witnessing her excruciating ordeal. Why was Jesse so adamant in choosing this moment when Sylvia was right there? Was it just to snape the girl? He could easily have waited till she’d gone.
‘I knew she’d be like this. Cantankerous old bugger.’ He turned to his mother. ‘What just cause and impediment? It’s nothing to do with you. I was only telling you out of common courtesy, ’cause the banns have been read today. We’re getting married and that’s that.’
‘I’ll stop it ’appenin’,’ Ezme shrieked. ‘I’ll send for the vicar and tell him.’
‘You’re too late, Mother. We’ve already seen the vicar. The banns have been published. It’s all fixed.’
‘The banns? The banns, did yer say? The banns am so as anybody with just cause can spake up again’ it. An’ I shall.’
‘You can speak up till you’re blue in the face.’ Jesse’s anger was rising. ‘You’re a bit too late, though. Lizzie’s already pregnant. We’ve got to get married.’ With a look of satisfaction he signed a rounded belly on Lizzie, and Ezme understood at once.
Lizzie thought she heard Sylvia gasp.
‘Oh, yo’ pair o’ bloody fools,’ Ezme snarled.
Then Edgar stood up, and hovered hesitantly. ‘I think maybe it would be best if Sylvia and I left. I’m sorry to have witnessed this, Lizzie. It must be most embarrassing for you. It certainly is for us … But you can depend on our utmost discretion, I can assure you … Sylvia …’
Sylvia stood up. She sighed heavily. It was such a pity to leave now, just as things were getting so interesting.
‘Sit down, the pair o’ yer,’ Ezme ordered, and the couple sat down again compliantly. ‘I want witnesses to this, for fear of anythin’ ’appenin’ to me. And yo’ll do, Sylvia. In fact yo’ll do better than anybody. If he’d a-married yo’ in the fust place there’d be no need for any o’ this malarkey.’ She turned angrily to Jesse again, and he noticed a bead of water form in the corner of her eye that begin to trickle down her overwrought face. ‘Yo’, yer big saft bugger, why d’yer think as I never encouraged yer to goo with Lizzie Bishop, eh? Why d’yer think as I dai’ want yer to have anythin’ to do with her? Why d’yer think I was so bloody keen for yer to marry Sylvia and get yer out the road, eh? Well, I’ll tell yer now, wi’ these good folk as me witnesses. Our Jesse, it’s ’cause Lizzie’s your own flesh and blood. ’Er’s your own sister, as God’s me judge. Isaac Bishop was your fairther as well as hers’n … And may God forgi’ me for me sins.’ She broke down, weeping piteously, her face an icon of misery. ‘It’s a cardinal sin to lie with your sister, our Jesse.’
‘My God! And I thought it was because of the dressmaking,’ Lizzie said, stunned.
Chapter 26
The rain was ceaseless. It seemed to slap Lizzie’s face as if it was her own unforgiving mother, blending with her tears as it ran down her anguished face. She bit her lip to stop herself screaming out into the darkness over what she’d just heard. The whole situation was irredeemable; her love; his love; their whole lives. As she trudged up Cromwell Street she was unaware that she was stepping in puddles, stumbling on uneven cobbles. There was an ice-cold numbness in her mind, and yet she was focused, more acutely than ever before, on her own private hell. Her chest stung inside, like bile rising, and her poor heart was hammering sickeningly in her ears. There was a dull, miserable ache ravaging the pit of her stomach; it was not the child she was carrying, but alarm, fright, and unbounded horror.
She had no idea where she was heading, yet she walked on up Hill Street, oblivious to the downpour, to where it flattened out and you could see for miles on a c
lear day. She stopped, and stared out into the darkness. On the plain below she could discern just a few twinkling lights; just a few lights out of the many thousands that must be there, but masked by the foulness of the weather. Through the filter of her tears and the driving rain they looked like long pointed stars stretching and contracting animatedly. She sighed, a heaving, desolate sigh, hunched inside her coat, her hands in her pockets. She saw nobody; she heard nobody. The only sounds were the heavy rainfall, sibilant as it splashed the ground, turning puddles into streams, and yet more water spewing onto the footpath from broken guttering on the terrace of houses fifty yards away. She was alone, utterly disorientated, utterly bewildered. As she looked out across the saturated night she realised where she was, but could not remember walking there.
It triggered thoughts of that first evening she spent with Ben; an evening that was to change their lives; an evening that was to change the lives of Jesse and Sylvia. They’d stood here on this very spot. Ben had asked to kiss her, and she’d allowed it; their first ever kiss. Then she recalled that awful chilling sensation that had fleetingly unnerved her. She’d huddled to Ben to keep warm. Had it indeed been an omen of things to come? A portend of Ben’s injuries and his death, of the child she had conceived with her cousin and lost, and now this relationship with Jesse that had promised so much, but had now been exposed as ungodly? In the crisp, biting cold of that frosty night twenty-one years ago, she and Ben had looked out across this same valley and watched the clear, bright stars in the sky, had seen the flaring fires of distant furnaces, heard the rumble of far-away machinery, and had been enchanted by it all, by thoughts of the future and by each other. They’d had no idea then what that future held in store; what joy; what disaster; what heartache.
An hour or two earlier than that, Jesse had surprised her by expressing his love for her. It was just as well he hadn’t told her a week sooner, else she might easily have been tempted. But what good would it have done? What chance would their romance have had then, to be nipped in the bud just the same? Under no circumstances could it have been allowed to flourish. It was always destined to be repressed. Yet prohibiting it might also have brought defiance; an ardent will to meet secretly; and who knows what might have followed from that? She was a young girl then, and love promised so much. It promised so many good and wonderful things. She did not know then that love could also bring unbearable pain and suffering, and scars that even time could not always heal.
She let out a shuddering sigh, and felt in her pocket for another handkerchief. She found it and blew her nose, and then began walking again, slowly, back down Hill Street, towards home. But she could not go home. She could not show herself to her children looking like she felt, with puffed eyes, weeping tears that were impossible to stem. She thought about this love-child growing unbidden in her belly; this poor, incestuous bastard. Who could be to blame? Neither had known Jesse was her half-brother. Anyway, how could they possibly have known? The shock of that knowledge wrought unmitigated torment. It was impossible to cope with. It might take weeks or months to sink in. But somebody was to blame for the agony this revelation brought, and that somebody had to be her father – or Ezme.
Over the years she had heard rumours and tolerated snide remarks about her father and his womanising, but never had she thought it amounted to anything as serious as this. He really had deceived Eve, and made a cuckold of old Jack Clancey. How ironic that Jack Clancey’s horse had killed him. If he’d planned it all it couldn’t have wreaked a more warranted revenge. No wonder there was no remorse in Jack. No wonder he was said not to have grieved. He must surely have known the truth; he was not about to grieve. Now it was plain why. It was plain why nobody else was particularly fond of Isaac Bishop either. Except Ezme, of course, who must have been only in her twenties when it all happened.
Lizzie found herself walking past The Junction again, all sorts of possibilities crowding into her mind. One thing was certain. She would have to arrange an abortion. The law allowed it if a child was conceived in incest. It must allow this. This was totally different to the time she was pregnant by Stanley; she had no husband now to assume fatherhood; Jesse was her half brother; she could not marry him. It would be a sin. It was against the law.
She walked past the dairy house, looking, hoping that Jesse might see her and come running out. Before she had left him, after Sylvia and Edgar had gone, he’d cried with her, sobbing pitifully that his dream of spending the rest of his life with her was so cruelly crushed. Then he agreed to let her go. He wanted to find out more about this hideous disclosure from his mother. But he did not come running out now, and she did not go in after him.
She did, however, know where she ought to go to try and seek some peace of mind; to find some answers.
The rain was seeping through her coat. She was cold and wet. She could feel a clammy dampness in her hair where it had soaked through her hat. Her stockings clung to her lower legs with a gripping wetness that was rising to her thighs now. Yet it hardly mattered. It was nothing to the discomfort, the degeneration she felt in her heart. She had no idea of the time, but Billy Witts’s motorcar was still outside the house. She wouldn’t dream of returning home while he was still there. So she hurried past, lest they saw her.
Somebody passing on the other side of the street bid her goodnight as she turned the corner into Price Street, down the steep slope by the brass foundry. Sometime this week she would have to pluck up the courage to see Donald Clark and arrange this abortion. He would be as shocked as she was to learn why. Would the offspring of brother and sister, or father and daughter, be any different from the rest? Why should society be so eager to dislodged from the womb a child thus conceived? Was there something unspeakably evil about such a child? She would ask him. Not that she wanted it. But she would like to know.
Before she knew it Lizzie was walking through the lych gate of St. John’s church, past the bell tower and the main door, and into the graveyard beyond, as if drawn to it. In the valley below a locomotive whistled and huffed, and seemed to sigh in profound sympathy as it shunted wagons into a siding. The clatter of its buffers seemed to echo her own life; shunted from relative contentment to abject misery in the time it took to say she was Jesse Clancey’s sister. The muddied, overgrown pathway descended, and she picked her way in the darkness between the graves. Fronds of wet, limp grass clung to her legs like tentacles, but she hardly noticed. Though it was dark, the distant streets reflected sufficient light for her to find the grave of her mother and father. She felt no fear, alone, surrounded only by the dead and the dark skeletons of trees dripping water incessantly.
‘In loving remembrance of Isaac Bishop,’ she recited from memory as she peered into the gloomy void of the headstone, ‘who died tragically and unexpectedly 15th March 1902, aged 59 years. Also of Eve, his wife, who passed away peacefully 3rd December 1915, aged 67. At rest. They have sown the wind. Thy Will be done.’
Lizzie sat on the soaking wet grave and another spate of tears stung in her eyes, so that she was barely able to discern the bunch of daffodils she’d placed on the grave a few days before. She wondered what other indiscretions, what other heartaches, were so blithely withheld by bland, engraved words on surrounding headstones. They have sown the wind. What on earth did it mean? She recalled asking her mother its significance years ago. ‘Just a saying from the Bible,’ Eve had answered dismissively. So had her poor mother known about her father and Ezme? How could she not, living so close? And watching Ezme’s belly grow big, Eve had stood by him, loyally, no doubt deflecting any criticism or suggestion of infidelity.
‘Isaac Bishop, you didn’t deserve her,’ Lizzie cried out aloud. ‘And while you were lying with Ezme, taking your ill-gotten pleasure, did you spare a thought for the likely consequences? Did it ever cross your deceitful, dirty mind that a daughter by your lawful wedded wife might fall in love with a son by your lie-by?’ She paused, heaving with distress, her scorn for her father increasing inexorably with every so
bbing breath she took. ‘I wish to God you were here now so’s you could see just how much Jesse and me are hurting.’ She snivelled, and wiped her nose again. ‘We were to be married, Father.’ She uttered the word scathingly, contemptibly, her voice rising, quivering. ‘I’m carrying his child … my own brother’s child … God help me. If only we’d known. If only somebody could’ve warned us. Mother, Mother, why didn’t you warn me?’
She broke down again, her howling sobs overwhelming her words, her handkerchief pressed against her mouth lest her crying be heard. Her eyes were streaming, her nose was running, she shivered with cold and felt utterly demolished. Any chance of happiness was gone. From now on there would be only shame and ridicule.
And then she likened herself to her father. Maybe she’d inherited her wantonness, her easy virtue, from him. She’d behaved no differently. Was one generation ever any different from another? Was not human nature now the same as when Adam had lain with his Eve? And because of this same despicable wantonness, had she not tortured poor Ben over Stanley Dando, in exactly the same way that her father had tortured her mother? Of course she had.
