Spilt Milk

by Amanda Hodgkinson

Nellie read the letter. So the child had been a girl. Nellie sat down heavily. She had never asked Birdie or Vivian what the sex of the baby had been. She hadn’t dared. All these years she’d felt she should act like the whole experience had never happened to any of them.

  The decision she and Vivian had made loomed in front of her again. A simple decision made from a belief that it would be best for Birdie and for the child. What else could they have done? And yet there was so much regret. Birdie’s daughter, a young woman who knew nothing of them, had been a leading character in all their lives.

  From the cupboard in the bathroom, Nellie took a dark blue glass bottle and emptied the Milk of Magnesia from it down the sink. She couldn’t quite remember what Anna Moats had used in her charms except that possibly mare’s urine had been part of the main ingredients. Birdie would probably object to that, so Nellie filled the bottle with olive oil, which was medicinal after all and would have to do. She put pins in the bottle and presented Birdie with it.

  ‘We need a lock of your hair to chase away your bad luck.’

  Birdie laughed wearily. ‘Mother, this is ridiculous.’ She sat up on the bed. ‘You’re not a witch, you know. Oh, all right. Go on then. What harm can it do?’

  In the morning, they woke late to a calm day. The wind had dropped and the sky was a hopeful pale blue.

  ‘March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb,’ said Nellie. They would get breakfast later. The bottle needed to be floated away first. Then Birdie’s luck would change. Nellie was going to swim out and drop the bottle in the sea. She would make everything all right.

  Nellie trod water, looking back at her daughter standing on the shore. She was wearing one of George’s old waterproof capes. She looked like a fisherman who had misplaced his boat.

  When Nellie reached the big metal buoy, she let the bottle go, her heart filled with hope for her daughter. A wave rolled over her and knocked her against the metal buoy. She trod water, trying to calm the panic that rose in her chest. Nellie was not given to panicking. It surprised her, this feeling of anxiety. Another wave hit her hard in the face and she swallowed salty water, coughing and choking. She set off swimming, head down, kicking hard, and a wave hit her again, pulling her back out to sea. The cross-currents were too strong for her. She heard a baby crying. A high-pitched screaming sound. Another wave hit her and rolled her under the water again.

  She struggled to the surface and took a breath as fast as she could before another wave hit her in the back of the head and sucked her under. She was washed forwards and she struck out, under the curve of its roll, swimming through it.

  The strength was going from her legs and arms. Down she went, like she was weighted by stones. And still the sound of a baby screamed in her ears. She was sinking. Wrapped in velvet and stones, cold granite, river pebbles, a body of shingle and sand and broken shells. The water wanted her. She heard a woman calling her name. If she could just follow the voice, then she’d be safe. Another wave pulled her under and she realized the voice was gone.

  Birdie stood watching her mother, far out in the water. She remembered days as a child, the lido they swam in together. Her mother plunging into the water and swimming lengths while Birdie doggy-paddled behind her. She’d never been a swimmer like Nellie.

  Nellie in a black bathing costume was still surprising to see. There was something majestic about her long back and strong limbs. The way she held her head high, as if she were listening to a sound nobody else could hear.

  This morning she had pushed away Birdie’s doubts about swimming at this time of year, when the weather could change so quickly. Her face was pinched by her bathing cap, her eyes pulled up.

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ she’d said briskly, rubbing the goosebumps on her pale arms and hopping from foot to foot. She picked up the blue glass bottle and ran into the sea without a backward glance.

  Birdie walked towards the tideline. Her mother was swimming back to shore. She was there and then she was not. She came into view and then disappeared silently, like a bottle bobbing in the waves. Something was not right. Birdie called out, running to the tideline, yelling. Her mother didn’t respond. She was gone again, under a wave.

  Birdie threw off the waterproof cape. She kicked off her shoes, pulled off her cardigan, her blouse, her skirt, dropping them on the yellow sand.

  She was not a swimmer, but her mother was in trouble. She waded into the sea. The waves were up to her waist now, and it dawned on Birdie that she might drown. That they might both be lost. There was sand and grit in the waves. She felt it scrape her skin as it churned around her. The ground went from under her and her feet floated free. She sank, her hair covering her face like weeds, and then up she came, eyes closed, kicking and struggling with the taste of salt in her mouth, burning her nostrils. Gagging and spluttering, Birdie swam towards her mother, the fear of losing her pushing strength into her limbs.

  Birdie caught hold of Nellie’s arm and hung on. They were carried towards the shore by a wave and finally Birdie felt sand again under her feet. She pulled her mother forwards. Nellie was so much bigger than her, a solid, exhausted weight. They made it to the beach on all fours, crawling, pulling each other onto dry land.

  Nellie woke in a panic. She turned the bedside lamp on. It was four in the morning. She shifted her weight in bed. Her hip hurt. The bedsprings squeaked. Yesterday she had nearly drowned. Birdie had saved her life. Her daughter had rescued her.

  What was her life now, without George, here on her own? Her sister was far away; her two husbands were lost to memories. She’d muddled through, one way or another. She’d been a great crow-scarer as a child. A fast runner. Leaping through the bean fields, skirts all wet with dew and bean-flower petals. A fearless girl who had turned into an uncertain mother.

  Birdie was awake when she knocked on her door.

  ‘You all right, Ma?’

  ‘I will be. I’ve got things to say.’

  Nellie fetched a chair from the kitchen. She sat down in the doorway.

  ‘You were a dear thing when you were born. Tiny, and I’m not a small woman. I was surprised by you. I thought you were too delicate for me. You know I can’t abide fragile things. They make me feel clumsy. I was worried you might not survive. The doctor said to feed you on condensed milk, and that’s what I did.

  ‘I thought I’d call you Evie. Or Peggy. Henry said he wanted to name you after his mother, Bertha. Henry didn’t want children, on account of his health, so when he asked to call you after his mother, I was so pleased, I agreed straight away. You were such a surprise. We’d neither of us planned to have a child.’

  ‘I knew you didn’t want me,’ said her daughter’s voice in the darkness. ‘I always knew you didn’t want me.’

  Nellie heard the sound of bedclothes being arranged, a pillow being plumped.

  ‘I didn’t want a child,’ she said. ‘I didn’t want one, it’s true. But when you were born, I wanted you, Birdie. I wanted you with all my heart. You were a colicky little thing, and every time you cried, Henry started shaking like the bombs were coming down on him again. We couldn’t keep you. It was impossible. So we fostered you out for a year. I went to see you every Sunday. Then Henry suggested I write to Vivian and she said she’d have you. She came to London to get you.’

  ‘You gave me to your sister?’

  ‘She had you for two years. Then Henry said we could get you back. He wanted you, you see? So I went and got you, and we never talked about how we gave you up because it didn’t matter. But you looked at me like a stranger for such a long time. You kept asking for Vivian. I was always afraid you’d hate me for taking you away from her, so Vivian and I agreed you should forget you’d ever been with her. We agreed to never tell you. But I always felt you didn’t trust me after that. I always felt you believed I had let you down. Sometimes I wonder if I should have let Vivian bring you up. I wonder if it wasn’t the most selfish thing I did, taking you back. But I did want you, Birdie. I wanted you with all m
y heart.’

  ‘And Henry was my father?’

  ‘Who said he wasn’t?’

  ‘Aunt Lydia wrote to me. She said I was George’s child.’

  Nellie shook her head. Oh, Lord. This was one story that would not be told. There were promises that had been made.

  ‘You are Henry’s daughter,’ she said firmly, and knew this was what George would have wanted her to say. ‘Your uncle George loved you like a daughter, but Henry Farr was my husband and your father and that’s an end to it.

  ‘I love you,’ Nellie whispered, and wondered why on earth such simple words were so very hard to say.

  Birdie was in the kitchen when Nellie got up the following morning. She had an apron on and was making toast.

  ‘I think it’s time I went home,’ she said, sitting down at the table, reaching for the marmalade. ‘I have to see Charles.’

  ‘You don’t have to. You can stay as long as you like.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about it. You’re on your own here. Why don’t you come back and live with us?’

  ‘At the farm?’

  ‘It would be like coming home, wouldn’t it? I don’t want to leave you here alone. We’ve missed out on too many years. We all have. Come home with me.’

  Nellie got up and pulled the lid from a saucepan on the back of the stove and lit the gas under it. She took a jug of cream from the refrigerator and poured it into the bubbling pot of porridge. She got a tin of golden syrup from the cupboard. It was a plain dish, even with the rich syrup and the cream, but it was warming and good. They were nearly finished eating breakfast when they heard a car draw up the drive. Through the front door’s frosted glass they saw Charles knocking on the door and heard him calling Birdie’s name.

  Twenty-five

  The spring of 1964 was mild, and blowsy with daffodils and blossom. Grey clouds rushed across the sky and the sun appeared and then hid itself. Yellow cowslips filled ditches. A line of electricity pylons stretched into the distance across the farmland.

  Nellie and Vivian walked through the village together. It had grown bigger, with new housing estates on its outskirts. Cars and vans were parked along its high street, and women pushed prams and children ran along its pavements. Two bus stops and a twice-daily bus route into town had brought new life to the place. With the train station, it was a commuter’s paradise, Charles said. Nellie still felt it was on the edge of things, a village just out of reach of the rest of the world. She remembered too well the loneliness of the place, the summers when there wasn’t an ounce of shade anywhere, and too many gloomy winters where the wind came down the street like a panic of swallows, brushing her cheeks with wingtips of ice.

  The White Horse Tavern had brown carpet on the floor. Nellie peeped in the public bar. There was a jukebox playing pop music, and a pinball machine surrounded by boys in tight-fitting suits. The sisters drank port and lemon in the saloon bar where horse brasses hung from the dark beams. They had never been in the village pub before.

  The local store had a sign outside, hanging over the piled-up boxes of fruit and vegetables: Self Service. You had to get on and do everything yourself these days.

  ‘Ferier?’ said Birdie’s friend Connie when she took them in her car back to the farm. ‘I don’t know that name. It’s unusual. Perhaps the doctor has a patient with that name. I can ask him.’

  Nellie shrugged. ‘Don’t bother.’

  ‘If you just had time to look,’ said Vivian.

  Ark Farm was sold in July, and the neighbours that Birdie had so dreaded seeing again went away. The Hubbards had bought a house in Oxfordshire. The farmhouse was sold with a few acres, and the rest of the land merged into another farm.

  ‘Charles tells me you were too kind to those people,’ Nellie said to her daughter. ‘You looked after their children, and it was only normal that you felt like they were your own. Anybody with a heart would have done the same.’

  Nellie wasn’t sure she believed her own words, though. She didn’t think she had ever fallen in love with other people’s children, only with her own family.

  She was wading through the long grass in the orchard when she struck upon the idea of having her own place. It wasn’t that she didn’t like living with Birdie, but both of them were used to having their own space. Birdie was more like her than she had realized. They liked their own company, and she knew her son-in-law wanted his wife and house to himself. She stood looking at the wooden railway carriage in the orchard. It had dusty gingham curtains in the windows and a broken step up to the door, which hung open on its hinges. She went inside. There was a bedroom to the right, with a striped mattress that the farm dogs slept on. A dead bird’s feathers were scattered across the floor. The main living space had a table and three chairs. A bench ran along one side, with the window above it. Over the window was a shelf where Charles had stacked a few books. Perhaps to save them from the flood, she thought. She put her hand up and pulled one down, wiping dirt from its cover. It was a Bible. Wedged inside it was an old photograph of a woman in a wide-brimmed hat, holding hands with two little girls with ringlets and white pinafore dresses. Rose, Vivian and Nellie. It was the photograph Rose had kept by her bedside.

  She nearly cried at the sight of it, those young faces from long ago, staring at her, three sepia maids in a row, eyes as dark as winter rain, paper-cut women all holding hands. She lay it down with a trembling hand. It was a sign. She would live out here in the orchard. How could the Bible and photo have got there, if not by some kind of magic?

  ‘Oh,’ said Charles, and scratched his head, frowning. ‘I found that Bible when I was knocking down the old cottage. There was a baby shoe too, and an ox bone in the roof space. People used to put those things in houses to bring luck. I stuck them in here when I built the farmhouse. I had forgotten all about the Bible and the photograph. And that’s you, is it?’

  ‘Let me see,’ asked Birdie. She held it up to the light. ‘And that’s Rose? I always wondered what she looked like. What a serious face she had. Ma, are you sure you want to live in the railway carriage? It’s a bit basic.’

  ‘I’ve got my beginnings in the orchard. I might as well make it the place to live out my endings. Old Anna Moats brought me into the world, and she put …’ She didn’t like to use the word afterbirth in front of Charles. But that was what had been buried in the orchard. Vivian’s too. ‘Anna said this was where I belonged,’ she said.

  Nellie waded through the long grass, swinging a scythe back and forth, cutting a path.

  ‘I can do that,’ said Charles, following behind her. ‘The scythe is sharp, Nellie.’

  ‘I know what I’m doing. I was a farm girl once,’ she replied, watching the grass fall at her feet.

  Vivian visited once a week. She’d thought of selling the guest house and moving into the railway wagon with her sister. They had always promised to live together by the river when they were old. And now they were certainly old. They were silver-haired, both of them. Vivian’s hair had gone feathery and as soft as the lining of a bird’s nest. Nellie’s hair was thick still, a long rope of a plait hanging down her back.

  Each time Vivian visited, Nellie asked her if she would be coming home soon. But with Framsden living with her, it seemed difficult for Vivian to imagine going home just yet. She was enjoying being his aunt, fussing over him. He was a good-hearted young man, and she adored him living in her house.

  ‘So you do think this is home?’ asked Nellie. ‘You said you were not ready to come home.’

  ‘This is where Josephine is, and where you are, Nell.’ Vivian looked at her sister, meeting her grey eyes. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry for hurting you. I loved Joe, and I was blind to the pain I caused you.’

  Nellie turned her mouth down slightly. She waved a hand at Vivian, as if she was batting away a fly. Too late, she wanted to say. It’s far too late for this. They sat on the swinging seat on the verandah of the farmhouse, looking out to the river beyond the vegetable gardens, th
e two of them silenced by their own thoughts of the past.

  ‘Josephine might have lived if she had been born at another time,’ said Nellie. ‘They have medicines today that we never had.’

  ‘We didn’t even get a doctor to see her.’

  ‘The doctor was drunk in the pub, if I remember. We did what we could.’

  ‘And what about the hagstone?’ asked Vivian. She felt it in her pocket. ‘Has it really kept Josephine’s grave safe all these years?’

  ‘I believe it has,’ said Nellie. She cleared her throat. ‘I missed you, you know. I can’t think now why we spent so much of our lives apart.’

  Vivian looked away. ‘Neither can I,’ she said.

  Vivian would not mention having cared for Birdie as a baby for two years and then the dreadful hurt, the resentment really, of giving her back to Nellie, who had never known what it was to yearn to have a child. There was no point in going over that. Or that Vivian still returned in memories to a brief moment in her life, hardly a blink of an eye, a few short days in a summer long ago when she’d been young and Joe had loved her. She had kept such faith in his declaration of love that she had managed, like a thrifty housekeeper with few ingredients, to make meal after meal out of them. She still sucked on the bones of his words and found goodness in them even now.

  ‘Joe Ferier was a bad lot,’ Nellie said, and made a tutting sound.

  The farmhouse’s corrugated-iron roof creaked as the day cooled. Sunlight spread across the last hours of the afternoon, a burnishing glow that made the trees look like they were full of tiny dancing flames.

  ‘I still think of him,’ said Vivian.

  ‘I know you do,’ said Nellie, reaching across to take Vivian’s hand. ‘I know.’

  Framsden drove Vivian to the farm on Sundays. He had an apprenticeship with a furniture company and went to college one day a week. His mother suggested they clear out a barn for him to start his own business, but Framsden said he was thinking of taking a job with the furniture company after his apprenticeship had finished. When he came to the farm, he walked along the riverbank or he took his boat out, fishing for trout for a few hours until Vivian wanted driving home again. He didn’t avoid his parents, but he was quiet with them. Some days he went off into the village and came slouching back, hands in his jean pockets, whistling a pop song.