Spilt Milk

by Amanda Hodgkinson

  Henry Farr had been an army man all his life, and now he was finishing his career as a company sergeant. It was over. He was fagged out, used up and useless. With the shrapnel wound he’d got in his groin, and he hoped she’d pardon his French, he couldn’t even piss straight.

  He described the French villages he’d seen, all bombed and ruined. He told tales of wounded men and the dead horses that lay where they had fallen. He spoke like the other soldiers in the wards spoke to each other, a bantering rough language full of slang and filth and hard jokes.

  He was nothing like Joe Ferier. Henry was not interested in travel. It seemed a noble thing to him, to walk the same path every day. Sticking to something was what was important. Nellie said she agreed. He wanted to know all about her life. About her sisters. The types of apple trees in the orchard. How to force rhubarb and blanch dandelions. Nobody had ever asked her so much about herself.

  They walked through the gardens of Hymes Court, where other soldiers strolled or stood around smoking, looking out over the fields, contemplating the horizon of sky and woodland. Henry thought they were probably composing poetry because war seemed to do that to some men. Either it made them bloody-minded cynics or it made them weep like women and take up writing verse.

  ‘And do you write poetry?’

  ‘No, no. I’m the bloody-minded cynic, I’m afraid.’ But if he was honest, and he said it seemed an easy thing to be honest with her, he did weep. Sometimes he laughed too, though he didn’t know why. ‘Fucked up royally,’ he said, laughing. ‘Done over by those cunts we call officers. Oh, but we did it all for glory, heh?’

  ‘Ah,’ said Nellie, thinking of Rose and her belief in the glory of work. ‘Ah, yes, glory.’ She told him she had known an artist who had read poems to her. She hadn’t liked them much. ‘He’s probably in France now. Joe Ferier, does the name mean anything to you?’

  ‘Not at all.’ Henry stopped walking. ‘Does it mean anything to you?’

  ‘He was a friend of my sister,’ she said lightly.

  Beyond the kitchen gardens were abandoned glasshouses, and they sat on a bench in the shelter of one, the sun filtering through the frames and colouring the glass with rainbow prisms. Henry hoped he didn’t shock her with his coarse language. He was too used to the company of soldiers.

  ‘I don’t mind a bit of swearing,’ Nellie said, lifting her face to the sun and closing her eyes. He didn’t have to mind his Ps and Qs with her. She liked him just as he was.

  Henry picked flowering lilac for Nellie, woody branches of it, but she refused to take it indoors because lilac in the house was bad luck. She had a list of plants he should never bring indoors. Blackthorn, bluebells, may blossom, ivy. White flowers of any kind. She was full of old wives’ tales and fears that would have made him laugh if he hadn’t heard the same kinds of superstitions in the trenches. He and his men had all of them relied on charms and omens to keep the shells away. Counting broken trees, finding meaning in the foolhardy way a bird might fly across the shell-torn sky, seeing another day’s grace in the sudden sprouting of mushrooms in the grassy fields of no-man’s-land: all of it the base of calculations they made on staying alive. Coming from Nellie, though, such beliefs seemed charming and innocent.

  ‘This is the tree of the heart, the hawthorn,’ she said, putting a green bud on his tongue, telling him locals called it bread and cheese. When they were children, she and her sister had loved picnicking on the sweet buds. He ate, wondering whether he might die of poisoning and not minding too much if he did.

  ‘What do you want from this wretched world?’ he asked Nellie as they walked through the village. They were going to watch newsreels at the Parish Rooms.

  ‘Company,’ she replied, and their hands brushed together for a moment.

  In the Parish Rooms the vicar shook Henry’s hand and said it was an honour to have a veteran come by. He apologized profusely for the footage. Six months out of date, but what could you do?

  The newsreel turned and flickered. Soldiers marched in fields of mud. Henry felt hot. He started to sway. Somebody moved beside him and he tried to apologize for his shaking.

  ‘Got to get out,’ he whispered to Nellie.

  She took his arm and led him outside. He gulped the air. The sky was darkening to dusk. He shivered and shook. Children gathered, curious to see a grown man falling to the ground.

  When he stopped shaking, Nellie was there, talking to him. Her words came and went in his ears. She was explaining about the birds she liked to watch, how they flew in the wind like rags. How she felt like that herself sometimes, all ragged and lost. She put her hands on his shoulders. They sat in the damp shadow of evening, holding each other.

  Nellie drummed her fingers on her kitchen table. She blushed deeply. Henry was saying she must think about the consequences of marrying him. He coughed and cleared his throat and went outside and came back into the cottage and went out again, wiping his boots on the doormat so many times Nellie told him he’d wear it out if he didn’t stop.

  ‘You don’t have to do this,’ she told Henry, but he bolted the door of her cottage and said he had to show her what she was getting into, marrying him. It would be a marriage without children. They were agreed on that. Friendship and companionship were what they would have, but still, Henry felt there were things to be discussed. There were things he simply could not give her. Physical relations were out of the question.

  ‘But I don’t want them,’ she insisted, her hands covering her face.

  It was impossible to talk of these things, she told Henry. Her heart, she said, was a terrible dry thing. She did not say that it had been hurt so badly by Joe and by Vivian that she did not dare expose it a third time. That, he did not need to know.

  ‘I’m a rotten old codger who’s past his prime. I want you to see what you’re buying before you sign the cheque.’

  He took off his shirt and unwound his puttees, laying them out on the table. He unbuckled his brown leather belt. Nellie glanced at the door. She hoped nobody would call at the house. She fanned her face. It felt very hot in the room.

  ‘Henry, really, you’ve got nothing I haven’t seen before …’

  ‘Too late, old girl, here I am.’

  Henry stood naked in front of her, except for his socks and his eye patch.

  ‘This,’ he said, pointing to his thigh and groin, ‘was shrapnel. An eight-inch shell burst alongside me in the trenches. And here,’ he pointed to his chest, ‘was where a shell came in through the top of my shoulder and out just here by the collarbone. So. What do you think? You can tell me honestly. I don’t want charity. We can call it all off. Just say the word. I am no good to a woman who thinks her husband has certain duties to perform, because I’m not up to that kind of thing. I can’t do what a man should do in a marriage bed, and I haven’t the heart for it either.’

  Nellie lifted her skirts and pulled down her stocking, showing him a curved purple scar on her right thigh.

  ‘A stone flew up from the threshing machine. It had a line of flint in it. Went clean through to the bone. Blood everywhere. I couldn’t walk for a while. They had to stitch it and I wouldn’t let the doctor near me. I was ten years old. My sister Rose threatened to hit me over the head with a hammer if I didn’t sit still. She would have done it too. She was the one who stitched it up. The doctor said I was too much trouble. I’m after company, Henry. Nothing more than that.’

  In Rose’s old bedroom – because Nellie had never been able to sleep in her old room since Vivian left – they lay down together and held hands. Henry was naked under the coverlet; Nellie lay on top of it, fully dressed. They slept for a few hours. When they woke, they agreed they would marry as soon as possible.

  Nellie and Henry married in a register office in town on 12 November 1918, the day after the war ended. Their local town was splendid with celebrations and there was dancing outside the corn exchange, but they avoided the crowds in case the noise set off Henry’s nerves. Vivian sent a pair of
white lace gloves for Nellie and apologies for not being able to attend the ceremony. Frank had bronchitis again. He’d come out of hospital now and she was nursing him. Henry’s brother George, who ran a public house in London, sent them two crystal tumblers and a little Union Jack flag. The vicar and his wife sent a hamper. Nellie opened it and found jars of chutney, pickled walnuts, a bottle of cider and a box of fancy cakes, little squares of sponge iced in bright colours.

  ‘Now that is a splendid gift,’ said Henry, standing behind her, putting his arms around her waist. ‘They must think a lot of you. Just as I do.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Nellie. She was still thinking about Vivian. She’d been surprised when her sister had written to say she could not come to their wedding. Had she been paying Nellie back for not attending hers? Nellie took the old brown teapot down from the shelf and set about making tea. A memory of Rose drifted into her mind. Her sister’s grey hair scraped back into a tight bun, her worn hands reaching for the same teapot. How disappointed Rose would be to know the sisters had separated. There was a space on the dresser next to it where their mother’s best teapot had been. Vivian had taken it when she left.

  She didn’t care about teapots, but there were shadows between her and Vivian she couldn’t get rid of. She still woke some nights thinking of the river. How cold the water had been, that moment when she hadn’t known which bank to swim to. She had not swum again in the river since that night. The baby owned it now. Every time she stood on the riverbank and considered swimming, she knew she could not.

  Nellie made tea and buttered a few slices of bread. Henry liked sugar sprinkled on his. She set two plates down on the table and put out the teapot and a jug of milk and poured the tea. On the wooden dresser their wedding photo sat in a metal frame.

  The photo had been taken in a studio. Nellie seated on a wicker chair, white lilies and trailing ivy in her hand, Henry standing behind her in his army uniform. A pair of fluted wooden pillars towered behind them.

  ‘Corinthian,’ said the photographer when Henry asked. ‘Don’t move. No smiling. Very good. Thank you.’ Behind the pillars was a richly painted screen. Ragged children playing in an olive grove. Blue skies. A glaring sun. ‘Ancient Greece,’ the photographer had told them.

  Mrs Henry Farr. Friendship seemed to shine out of that name like a lamp lit in the dark. Joe had said she would never leave the village and he had made it sound like a failing in her. He was right, but so what?

  Here she was in a photo, getting married in ancient Greece. Wherever Joe was now, she would bet he had never been to ancient Greece.

  She took the lid off the sugar bowl and spooned sugar onto Henry’s bread. She was sure they could be happy here, the two of them. A muscle twitched in Henry’s cheek. She reached out her hand very slowly so as not to frighten him, and stroked his face.

  Nine

  Vivian sat at her sewing machine, putting the finishing touches to a dress. She had thought she would never wear black again. Especially now when the war had been over for months and everybody seemed to want colour around them. Even the trees had held on to their autumn hues longer this winter and green shoots and catkins were coming through, shivering in the March days while the old leaves still clung to the branches.

  In the high street, red, white and blue flags waved and snapped back and forth like wet washing in the breeze. Coloured bunting dangled in front of shops and buildings, tangled up in windows and wrapped around lamp posts. Fireworks still went off at the weekends, and the church bells rang out at all times of the day. On the trams the women conductors sang ‘It’s a Long Way to Tipperary’ and let soldiers ride for free.

  Vivian had decorated the guest-house façade with bright flags and bunting too; Mrs Dunn’s son Stan, a limping man who had not fought in the war due to his poor posture, had got a ladder up and done it for her. Then, in respect for Frank, she had asked him to take them down. She’d hung a black silk bow on the door knocker to show she was in mourning for her husband.

  At the funeral she sat next to Dr Harding, Frank’s two brothers and their wives. Vivian looked behind her to where Nellie and her husband, Henry, sat together on a pew nearest the door. Henry was a tall man with a battered, scarred face and, Vivian thought, a rather caustic way of speaking, as if he thought he was a lot cleverer than anybody else. When she looked back later, as they stood to sing hymns, Nellie and Henry had gone.

  After the service Dr Harding talked to one of the brother’s wives while Vivian sat quietly, relieved to be left alone for a moment. She listened to their whispered discussion about the tragedy of the war. The loss of a generation of young men. The woman’s sons had been lucky and were returning home. She hoped they might settle into jobs and find decent women to marry, the need for family being greater than ever.

  ‘The Empire,’ sighed Dr Harding, as if it were a shimmering thing he saw in front of him.

  As the mourners left the church, Vivian saw Nellie standing with Henry among the gravestones, the wind whipping their coats. She hurried across to them.

  ‘There you are, Nellie.’

  ‘Sorry about that,’ said Henry. ‘I get a bit bothered in crowds.’

  ‘That’s all right. I was worried you’d gone.’

  ‘We’re so sorry,’ said Nellie. She hadn’t stopped saying this since she had arrived. The way she said ‘we’ annoyed Vivian. She wanted Nellie to speak to her as a sister, not as somebody’s wife.

  Vivian had thought to link arms with Nellie, but as they walked back to the guest house Nellie slowed to allow her husband to keep up with her and Vivian was obliged to walk in front of them. Henry carried a cane, his stride stiff and careful. It occurred to Vivian that perhaps the sour look on his face was due to pain from his war wounds. She was surprised to see how gentle Nellie was with him. As if the man was breakable.

  At the guest house Mrs Dunn provided sandwiches and glasses of sherry and fruit cake with royal icing, all laid out on white tablecloths. Vivian was relieved to see the old woman had put on a clean apron to serve the guests. Vases of lily of the valley were on the tables, filling the room with their sweet scent. She could see Frank’s brothers were impressed. She’d had long conversations with the undertaker about the style and ways of doing these things and had taken his advice freely. ‘Fashions change, Mrs Stewart,’ the man had said, straightening a brilliant-white cuff. ‘But good taste must prevail.’ It was he who told her lily of the valley was the most fashionable flower for funerals this year. ‘I’ll have them then,’ said Vivian, and when he said they’d be out of season and costly, didn’t even ask the price.

  Frank’s two brothers said she’d done a very good job of the funeral. They were aged, balding, short-statured men. They had the same mild, apologetic look about them that Frank had had, and both were fat like him. Edward was an insurance agent; Clifford, a post-office clerk. Vivian served them sherry and they agreed Frank’s death from influenza was an absolute tragedy.

  ‘He never actually told us he had married,’ said Edward. ‘He was always devoted to Mother.’

  ‘He worshipped our mother,’ added Clifford, raising his eyes to the ceiling. ‘We didn’t think he’d ever marry.’

  ‘She might have left the house to the three of us, but of course Frank was her favourite and got the lot.’

  ‘Isn’t Mrs Stewart a marvel, Edward?’ said Dr Harding, stepping into the conversation. He gave Vivian a pat on the arm. ‘I never saw Frank as happy as when he met and married this dear woman.’

  Thank goodness Dr Harding was there to support her. It seemed every time Vivian was at a loss for words, he was beside her, at her elbow.

  ‘I’ll get another plate of fruit cake,’ Vivian said, and escaped thankfully into the kitchen. She stood at the back door, smoking a cigarette, looking out over the muddy gardens.

  ‘There you are. I’ve been searching for you.’

  She turned. Nellie stood there, her pale grey eyes studying her.

  ‘Your hair suits you s
hort.’

  Vivian touched her head. She thought her new cut a touch too daring really, but her hairdresser had encouraged her to have it done. He’d said it showed off her neck. He’d been the one to suggest she wear a shorter hemline too.

  Nellie still had her long hair pinned up in a top knot, pre-war style. She held a pair of gloves in her hand, and she wore the old black coat she’d had for years. Vivian could see the inexpert mending Nellie had done to the shoulder where the seam had come undone.

  ‘I didn’t know you smoked.’

  Vivian smiled and threw the cigarette outside. ‘Frank got me into the habit. I rather like it, though I don’t smoke in public.’

  ‘If Rose could see us now,’ said Nellie. ‘You with your cigarettes and your big house. Me married to a soldier. She’d be scandalized. Do you remember how she liked to find newspaper stories about drunken soldiers?’

  Vivian laughed. She felt the warmth of Nellie’s voice. They knew each other again. They were sisters once more. Girls who had grown up sharing a bed. Vivian could feel them both stepping back into the place where they shared thoughts and sentences, all the secrets of their sisterly hearts. It was, she discovered, all she wanted. If she could walk away from the guest house and back to the cottage with Nellie to live as spinsters once again, she would have done so without a second thought.

  ‘I’m hiding from Frank’s brothers. Frank has left everything to me in his will and they’re furious about it. He had life assurance too, so it turns out I’m worth a pretty penny. Apparently it was Edward who urged Frank to take out the policy. He must have thought the money would go to him.’

  ‘Blimey, Vivian the heiress,’ said Nellie. ‘A rich widow. I’m shocked.’

  ‘It’s not an awful lot, but I will be comfortable and I own the house. When I think how poor we were, growing up, and yet we were happy together, weren’t we?’

  ‘We were always happy together, Vivie.’