A Family Affair

by Nancy Carson

  Since she was a stickler for cleanliness she cleaned and scrubbed and wiped down all the paintwork. She hunted for woodlice that hid in the cracks of the window frames and the silverfish that emerged from behind the skirting boards and popped up from under the linoleum. Once she spotted a mouse poke its tiny head from a hole at the side of the grate and stood for ages waiting for it to pop out again, hovering with a kettle of boiling water to pour over the poor mite. She suggested to Ned that they get a cat, for there was sure to be a nest.

  But she could summon little enthusiasm for home-making, leastwise with Ned. She recalled how attractive Ramona had made Tom’s home and knew that she could not apply herself with anything like the same zeal – not for Ned. She had little interest in the house and even less interest in him. She still thought about Tom a great deal; she still loved him dearly. The last she had heard, the baby Daniel had survived and was doing well. Zillah kept her informed of any developments but nothing had been reported since. Clover didn’t even know whether Tom kept in touch with Jake. She presumed he did, since Daniel was Jake’s only grandchild, and she could not conceive of Tom wilfully withholding access.

  How was Tom coping? Did he have any inkling at all that the child he was committed to rearing was not his? Her heart went out to him when she thought of the sacrifices he must be making to bring up Elijah Tandy’s illegitimate son, believing it to be his own. And she had promised to reveal the truth. She had promised to confess Ramona’s misdeeds on her behalf. Fortunately, there was no rush; she would do it sometime. But when would she ever be able to pluck up the courage to impart that sort of information? Would it be fair on Daniel? How might such a revelation affect the relationship between Tom and the child? It was not a promise she relished fulfilling. Oh, she would love to see Tom again and no two ways, just the two of them, without either of the children present. She yearned to be close to him again, wondered whether that spark of love for her still existed within him. However, the prospect of meeting him, with the sole purpose of revealing what Ramona had asked her to reveal, filled her with dread. Had little Daniel not survived, that might have been different. But little Daniel had survived. And that made all the difference.

  Although Clover and Ned were at least on their own with Josephine, their fragile marriage was still in crisis over the ceaseless demands for conjugal rights which she continued to withhold, unrelenting, despite the move to Hill Street. Ned was bitterly disappointed, particularly because he thought he’d done enough to justify his rewards.

  ‘If you want that, why don’t you find yourself a mistress?’ Clover suggested huffily one night as they lay in the darkness of their bedroom. She had been woken up from her sleep feeling his hand probing between her legs, surreptitiously seeking her most sacred place. She brushed him away, thoroughly indignant.

  Ned sighed with exasperation. ‘I don’t think you’re being very fair with me.’

  She turned her back on him, roughed up her pillow and let her head fall back on it exaggeratedly to demonstrate her annoyance. He knew exactly where he stood. ‘Look, find yourself a mistress, for God’s sake. I won’t mind. Pay for it if you have to.’ She closed her eyes and knew that Ned had sulkily turned his back on her too. She sighed theatrically. ‘Oh, and if you do decide to go out and pay for your pleasure, just remember there’s a loan still hanging over your head that has to be paid back at some time.’

  ‘The loan isn’t your concern,’ he muttered.

  The next day, when he returned from work, he felt in his pocket and withdrew a black and white kitten.

  ‘You said we needed a good mouser.’

  Her face lit up and she held her hands out to receive the irresistible bundle of fluff and large eyes. ‘Oh, he’s beautiful,’ she drooled, stroking its soft, warm fur. ‘Look, Josie, Daddy’s bought us a pussycat to catch the mice.’

  The child watched with wide-eyed curiosity, too young to know whether the moment was auspicious or not. She waved her arms in front of her, emitted an appealing gurgle and turned her attention back to the clothes peg she’d been playing with.

  ‘Where did you get it?’ Clover asked.

  ‘One of the lads at work. His mother’s cat had had kittens. It seemed a pity to drown ’em all.’

  She continued to stroke the kitten as it lay in her arms. ‘What shall we call it? Any ideas?’

  ‘How about Tom?’ he suggested sarcastically.

  She looked at him askance but made no comment. ‘Let’s call it something daft. How about Liquorice?’

  ‘You daft bugger!’

  Ned felt he had earned some more points in his battle to win Clover’s favours. Despite her continued resistance, he realised that the move away from his mother had been a good decision. The cat could only enhance his standing. Over the weeks and months Ned became very attached to Liquorice. He would sit at night with it draped around his shoulders as he read the evening newspaper, or on his lap as he snoozed. In fact, he paid far more attention to the cat than he paid to Josephine. He would tickle its belly and Liquorice would lie in ecstasy, he would offer it morsels of food from his dinner-plate as it sat looking up at him expectantly. Certainly, Liquorice and Ned enjoyed a mutual affection. It seemed that the cat was his substitute for the warm relationship that he sought but failed to attain with Clover.

  In her heart Clover felt sorry for Ned. She understood what he was going through. But feeling sorry for somebody did not constitute strong abiding love of which sex should necessarily be an integral part. Besides, their marriage had been his idea. She loved him no more now than the day they were wed. She could never love him. In fact, the longer she lived with him, the more his negative side was revealed and the less she was inclined towards him. No, she yearned for Tom. Her heart had never stopped aching for want of Tom. To hold him in her arms again, just once, would brighten her life no end. But it could never be. She was trapped in a loveless marriage. Worst of all, had she side-stepped marriage for just a few more days, she would have known not to commit herself to it.

  But such was her luck; such was her fate.

  Yet all was not misery and unhappiness. She had Josephine. Josephine was the absolute light of her life and such a pleasant child. So contented was she that, if she cried, you knew it was because she was hungry or in discomfort. She was endowing everybody with her first bewitching smiles and Clover seemed to spend half her life now trying to induce them the more for the pleasure they brought her. She seldom stopped talking to Josephine. They played baby games and she spoke baby talk and their lives were filled with each other. When Ned returned from work Clover began to regard him as an intruder and was perfectly content to watch him tend to Liquorice. She was perfectly happy to watch him pour out all his affection on the cat.

  It was in March 1910 that Ned was called into the office of Mr Edward Lisle for a rare interview.

  ‘Ned,’ Mr Lisle greeted when he stepped over the threshold. ‘Please sit down. I need to have a chat with you.’

  Ned duly sat down on a high-backed chair facing Mr Lisle.

  ‘Ned, the time has come for me to turn my full attention to the question of developing an aeroplane.’

  ‘You mean unhindered development?’ Ned suggested with a hint of sarcasm.

  Mr Lisle ignored the jibe. ‘We had Bleriot crossing the Channel last July, we had the first international air race last August, and we’ve seen the Wright Brothers take an aeroplane to a height of sixteen hundred feet. All this has captured the public’s imagination, Ned.’

  ‘Yes, I know. But nothing’s changed here at Star, Mr Lisle. We still don’t have a suitable engine.’

  ‘Ah…Well, for the past couple of months I’ve been in talks with a Mr Granville Bradshaw, a fine engineer. He has some proposals for a new engine and for two new aeroplane designs. I am engaging him as a designer. His designs are already well-advanced.’

  Ned looked horrified. ‘I take it then that you don’t need me any longer.’

  ‘Oh, on the contrary, Ned. I wo
uld like you to work closely alongside Mr Bradshaw.’

  ‘And if we don’t see eye to eye?’

  ‘Oh, I’m confident you will. You could learn a great deal from such a gifted engineer.’

  Granville Bradshaw duly entered the firm. He brought with him proposals to manufacture a lightweight engine featuring weight-saving water jackets fabricated from copper instead of being cast from iron. Ned saw the potential in such an engine and was encouraged. Maybe Bradshaw was gifted. However, Bradshaw had also designed two new aircraft, as Mr Lisle had intimated. One was a biplane configuration with a pusher propeller, the other was a monoplane. The latter was unusual in that the control surfaces were incorporated only in the tail.

  ‘I can tell you straight, Mr Bradshaw, it’ll never fly,’ Ned advised when he saw the drawings.

  ‘Of course it’ll fly,’ Bradshaw argued. ‘It’s not a million miles from Levavasseur’s Antoinette VII and that flies. The only difference is I’m using the tailplane only for control.’

  Ned shrugged resentfully. ‘Even if it does fly, you’ll never be able to control it.’

  By July, Ned was proved right.

  ‘I have a perfectly airworthy biplane already built, just waiting for an engine, Mr Bradshaw,’ Ned informed him. ‘You have the engine, I have the aeroplane. Let’s just pool our resources and get on with it.’

  ‘I already have two designs, as you know, Ned,’ Bradshaw responded, too contemptuously for Ned’s liking. ‘I also have Mr Lisle’s permission – indeed, his specific instruction – that we give them priority.’

  Ned realised he was wasting his time and his talent. By August, he had left the Star Aeroplane Company Limited, as it was by that time called, and was unemployed.

  Yet another dream was shattered.

  ‘So what do you intend to do?’ Clover asked when he returned home from Star for the last time.

  ‘I’ll find another job.’

  ‘Times are hard, Ned. Jobs are not that easy to come by. It might be ages before you find another one.’

  He sat down and Liquorice leapt up onto his lap. ‘Times are hard, Clover, I agree. But I shall start looking for work tomorrow. I’m a good moulder. I could get a job moulding. Trouble is, I don’t fancy going back to foundry work.’

  Clover shuddered at the thought. ‘In the meantime, you’d better sell your motor car. That should raise enough to keep us going. It’s a bit of an extravagance anyway for a family like us. I mean, it’s not as if we need a motor car. We can walk and catch trams, same as everybody else.’

  He nodded. He was not so unreasonable that he would not see that her words made sense. ‘I’ll see about it tomorrow.’

  Ned sold his motor car within a week and it realised over a hundred pounds. He tossed a bag of gold sovereigns towards Clover with a look of triumph.

  ‘You take care of it, Clover. I know you’ll be thrifty. I know you won’t waste the money.’ This action and all it implied would earn him more points.

  She smiled at him in acknowledgement of his high opinion of her. ‘Maybe I could splash out on some new clothes for Josie,’ she suggested tentatively, appealing to his generosity. ‘She desperately needs new things.’

  ‘As long as you don’t go overboard.’

  ‘I won’t. Don’t worry.’

  Clover had her own idea of what to do with the money. She decided to use as little as she could. Whatever was left by the time Ned found other work she would put towards paying off that loan that was hanging over them. To her, it was like a big, black cloud forever looming. Until they were free of it she could hardly be extravagant. It was worrying her, although it hardly seemed to bother Ned. He, however, had received the money and it had to be paid back. There were no two ways about it. Whoever had been daft enough to stump up all that money in the first place, and trust Ned to use it wisely, obviously didn’t know him very well.

  By September, Josephine was thriving. At eighteen months, she was the apple of her mother’s eye, as well as Florrie Brisco’s. Over the months her name had evolved from Josephine to Josie, and then to Josy-Posy, only to be shortened further to Posy. Posy seemed to suit her and it looked as if it was going to stick. She was bright and intelligent, and possessed a sunny disposition that was utterly disarming. Not only that, everybody said she was the image of her mother. Clover, however, could only see Tom in her.

  Come October, and a workmate of Ned’s from Star who had changed his allegiance to the Sunbeam Motor Company in Wolverhampton, let it be known that Ned Brisco, a talented aeronautical engineer, was available for work. Sunbeam needed somebody with his natural flair and instinct and they approached him. They offered him a job at their works in Villiers Street where they, too, were developing aeroplanes and aeroplane engines. It was another feather in Ned’s cap as far as Clover was concerned.

  After more than a year and a half of marriage and sleeping in the same bed as her husband, Clover had got used to his foibles and quirks. Lately, he had been more affable, more relaxed about their relationship. Unemployment and the threat of mutual hardship forged a bond between them that had been absent before. She noticed that they were beginning to laugh together and his landing the job at Sunbeam relieved the pressure further. But the bond remained. Maybe she was learning to love him after all.

  Ned was no more inclined to fuss Posy but when, toddling now, she tugged at his trouser leg for attention with her disarming smile, she normally got it and he would pick her up and walk with her up the back yard and show her the pretty flowers he’d been growing in a bed alongside a wall, as if she understood everything about them. Even Ned was becoming ultimately susceptible to Posy’s charms, Clover realised.

  Clover was also beginning to understand that, with this growing esteem, maybe she was being grossly unfair in prohibiting further the possibility of his fathering a child. She didn’t relish the thought of physical union with Ned – nothing had changed there – but, doubtless, she could passively suffer it and think of something else – or even somebody else. It would be no good making believe it was Tom because whenever Tom touched her she’d simply melted. Thus, any such fantasising would only highlight Ned’s inadequacy and very likely incline her to shun him the more. But maybe he should father a child of his own. Maybe, at some time, she should allow him that. It might predispose him to become more involved with Posy, combine them more securely as a family.

  By Easter Sunday in 1911, Ned had endured two years of celibacy. Lying every night next to his lissom young wife, feeling the warmth of her body close to his but not being allowed to touch, had been purgatory. That morning he awoke to find her lying in his lap. His arm remained around her waist – a surprising turn, since usually she would have removed it. Most mornings he awoke with an erection and this morning was no exception. It pulsed insubordinately against her bottom.

  ‘By the feel of it, Jesus isn’t the only entity to have arisen this morning,’ Clover quipped. She had been awake a while, inordinately conscious of the disturbing protuberance hot in his pyjama trousers, but too cosy and warm in his lap to turn over. Besides, it was not an unpleasant sensation and she began to feel a warm glow of desire. It reminded her what a long time it had been since she had last enjoyed a sexual encounter, how long since Tom had exhibited similar excitement for her. Of course, that last time she had also conceived, she was certain of it. And in the ensuing two and three-quarter years she had grown used to celibacy, celibacy she would now give up reluctantly. But maybe it was time. To be fair to Ned, maybe it was time.

  She turned over, smiling at him with some of her erstwhile mateyness. ‘What do you think you’re going to do with that?’

  ‘I know what I want to do with it.’

  ‘I bet you do,’ she replied unflinching, her arm still propping up her head on the pillow.

  ‘You know, Clover,’ he said softly, ‘when you used to come around to the old stables at Joseph Mantle’s and help me build the Gull, we never said a lot…’ She nodded, acknowledging the fact; she�
�d often commented on it. ‘Well, while I worked, I used to daydream about us as a married couple. I used to imagine us in our own little house – like this one – with two or three kids around us, you mothering them just like you mother Posy. We were that contented…’ He shook his head as if to dislodge the dream and be left with the appetising reality. ‘All I ever wanted was to fly my Gull and make you my wife. Well, I’ve done both, I suppose, but only to a limited degree. I’ve flown the Gull but had nothing to drive it forward, and I’ve married you, but had nothing to drive that forward either – if you get my meaning.’

  She regarded him with a tenderness that had been lacking too long. ‘I know,’ she whispered. ‘And I’m sorry…’

  There was a pause while Ned, thrown, considered this unusual reaction.

  ‘You mean…?’ He looked into her eyes earnestly. ‘You mean, you don’t mind if we…?’

  She shrugged awkwardly as she lay on her side, facing him and smiled again. ‘Maybe it’s time you tried your luck.’

  His arms went about her in a frenzy of devotion. First, he kissed the soft part of her neck near her throat, nuzzling his lips against her slightly damp, warm skin. With fumbling fingers he managed to undo the top buttons of her nightdress and he inclined his head to more easily experience the smooth softness of her breasts against his eagerly exploring mouth. Oh, he’d yearned for these moments, for this opportunity. His free hand went to her bottom and he cupped her left cheek with his right hand. Encouraged by the distinct lack of resistance, the same hand found its way under the hem of her nightdress and glided lingeringly over the sleek tract of her thigh before cupping again the same warm left cheek, but in the flesh this time.

  ‘Oh, Clover,’ he sighed emotionally, unable to believe his luck, ‘I’ve been dying for this moment.’

  His hand went to her bare waist, advanced investigatively across her smooth belly. From there it journeyed up to her breasts and kneaded them to appreciate how they yielded to his touch like incredibly smooth sponges that magically resumed their true shape when he moved on.