They had to see the children. They’d stay with them in Keepers Cottage; they’d feel safer there with all their own things about them. Someone had to be strong. Baby Oliver, not yet one year old, missed Louise the most and caused the biggest problem. When it came to putting him in his cot he howled. Missing his nightly routine with Louise, too young to have anything explained to him, he was inconsolable. The older ones seemed to accept her and Ron putting them to bed, despite their ineptitude at coping with so many children. Finally they were all asleep except for young Gilbert. ‘Nana, will Mummy be better soon?’
‘Yes. She will. She’ll be back home in no time taking care of you all.’
‘When Daddy spoke on the phone he said the baby was very, very poorly.’
‘Yes, he is.’
‘Nana, will the baby be coming home?’ Young Gilbert pulled the duvet up and snuggled down. ‘Do you think, perhaps, he won’t ever come home?’
‘Well, not yet a while. We’ll have to wait and see.’
‘I think he’s too poorly to come home. He is, isn’t he? He’s not coming home, is he?’
‘We’ll have to be patient, but don’t build up your hopes just yet.’
‘I see. Perhaps he’s an angel, come down to earth by mistake. Say it, Nana. Say it.’
Sheila tucked the duvet round his shoulders. ‘Sleep tight and mind the bugs don’t bite.’
She heaved herself down the stairs and went into Louise’s kitchen to make a cup of tea for her and Ron. She stood leaning against the worktop, looking round while she waited for the kettle. This kitchen was only half the size of her own. Same with the living room. She could have sat an army down in her own and here was Louise coping with this little house and five, her mind shied away from saying six, children. The very best thing they could do was swap houses with her and Gilbert. It would be Louise’s anyway in time, because her brother never communicated, was wealthy beyond belief and didn’t need a thing she and Ron might, in time, leave behind them.
Once all the upset was over, she’d suggest it to Ron. Give Louise something to focus on. Something to think about, because that baby wouldn’t survive no matter how much loving attention he got. In fact, he mustn’t survive, for his own sake, the poor little scrap. The kettle whistling brought her to her senses and, as she watched the crystal-clear water pouring into the teapot, it brought to mind christening the baby.
‘They’ll have to get it done, Ron, without a shadow of a doubt. Can’t waste any time. Here’s your tea.’
Ron sank gratefully down into a chair with his cup. ‘We’ll have to suggest it very carefully.’
‘I know that. But the others were all christened so we’ve to make things the same, before it’s too late.’
‘You’re right.’
‘The other thing is this: how about us and Louise swapping houses?’
‘Eh? What?’
‘Look here, Ron, we don’t need a cottage the size of ours. Your Union speaking jobs and such are coming to a close—’
‘Just a minute—’
‘Well they are, you know that and so do I. When was the last time we had anybody staying for a meeting or whatever. When did the TV ring up and ask for your opinion? Ages ago! When did the Union last send for you for your advice? Even longer ago. This small house might not have as much style as ours, but it would be enough for the two of us, wouldn’t it? And they need it.’
‘Well, their garden wouldn’t take as much looking after. It would cut down on our heating bills too, and the community charge, wouldn’t it?’
‘Exactly. Christening first and then moving house.’
‘You’ve missed out a rather important factor there. There’s Roderick, remember?’
‘I haven’t forgotten Roderick, but it will take Louise’s mind off things, won’t it?’
‘You might think it’s a good idea but what about Gilbert? He might not.’
‘Oh, you and Gilbert. You’ll just have to give in and do it. I’m determined. They need our big bedrooms; we certainly don’t, now do we?’
Ron thought about how heavy the spade had seemed when he’d sorted out their endless flowerbeds for the winter. Gilbert, with his physique, would have them sorted in no time at all. He was used to digging, being an archaeologist. Perhaps Sheila was right. But he’d put it off for a while. ‘All in good time, Sheila. We mustn’t rush things. They’re very distressed right now.’
‘Oh, I know. So am I.’ She burst into tears, put down her cup and cried as though her heart was breaking, which it was, for all of them. Herself included. That beautiful picture she always had in her mind of Gilbert and Louise wandering happily through a wood carpeted with bluebells and the children scattered about playing, with the sun shining through the trees and looking so enviable and perfect, had shattered into fragments. She’d see Anna first thing, then she remembered she was no longer the free agent she’d been for years. First she’d have five children to feed and dress before she went anywhere at all. To say nothing of the daily washing machine routine. As she carried the tea tray back to the kitchen, she thought about Roderick’s tiny toes and how sweet those tiny toes would have been if only his feet were perfect … Life for the whole family would be a living hell. And for poor little Roderick, a hell he didn’t deserve. Years ago he would have died almost immediately and he’d have been back with God where he truly belonged. She mopped her eyes, blew her nose, straightened her shoulders and accepted her burden.
Gilbert had already rung Anna and told her of their situation. ‘Could you come? Louise wants the baby baptised as of now, and what she wants she gets at the moment.’
‘Gilbert, I’m so sorry, I hadn’t heard. Of course I’ll come. Today. Lunchtime. Will you want Sheila and Ron there? Of course you will, I shouldn’t need to ask. One o’clock?’
‘Can I ring you back? We shan’t want the children there and Ron and Sheila are caring for them at the moment so I’ll have to organize them all. Parcel them out. I’ll ring back.’
So when one o’clock came they were gathered at the hospital. Roderick looked so sweet with his tiny blue woollen hat on his tiny head in spite of the machines and the bleeping and the tubes. The unspoken words in everyone’s mind were – if only everything was all right. But it wasn’t, as they all knew.
Anna conducted a lovely service, so poignant and tender, with soft, loving words, full of meaning, which tore the heart. Ron and Sheila stood in as godparents and though it only lasted a few minutes they felt they’d done the right thing. Ron wheeled Louise back to her room and they all had a glass of champagne and drank a toast.
‘To Roderick, our dear little son, God bless him.’
Before she left Anna kissed Louise, then Sheila, then Ron and last of all Gilbert.
She lingered for a moment with her hand on his arm to say, ‘Keep strong. They all need someone like you.’
But it was Sheila who kept strong and held them together, not Gilbert. He was too distraught.
Chapter 16
In years past, no one had had much sympathy for Louise and still looked upon her as the troublemaker she’d been when she first came to the village, but the generosity in their hearts overrode that when they heard of little Roderick and all his problems.
‘Dottie’s working all hours helping Sheila and Ron. I understand there’s no improvement in that little babe, poor little mite,’ Greta Jones said on the Friday afternoon after Roderick was born.
Angie Turner, leaning against the big desserts freezer in the Store, said, ‘Well, Dottie’s lining her pockets, I can tell yer. I’m told Ron is paying her in gold bars, that glad they are to have her. Gilbert’s got three weeks’ leave, saw him getting out of his car at the rectory the other day. He was always lean before, but he’s more like a walking skelling-ton now. Looked terrible, he did.’
Greta moved to make way for someone wanting to search the freezer. ‘They say he won’t live. Well, yer can’t win every time and they’ve had a good run.’
‘D
oesn’t make it hurt less though, does it? You still love ’em, they’re still yours.’
‘Oh, yes, I’m sure. Oops! Time I wasn’t ’ere. Jimbo’ll be looking for me anytime. Two minutes past one! Heck! I’m definitely not ’ere.’ Greta sped away into the back.
Within minutes she heard Gilbert’s voice in the Store. No good, she had to get the latest. She dashed through from the back to offer her sympathy and hope little Roderick was improving. But Gilbert looked at her with eyes that had seen hell. Greta froze. His eyes shocked her to the core and the words died on her lips. ‘Oh, Gilbert.’ A great lump came in her throat and no more words would come.
In a dry, cracked voice shaking with emotion, Gilbert answered, ‘The baby died late last night.’ He hunched his shoulders and spread his hands with deepest despair.
It was on the tip of her tongue to say, ‘Well, perhaps it’s all for the best, with all his problems.’ But she remembered what Angie had said about them all being precious no matter how many you had and instead told him how sorry she was and to give her love to Louise.
Gilbert’s heart was filled with grief but above all with terror, because he didn’t know how he would get through it all. If only he’d been there. Right when he was needed, where was he? Fast asleep in bed. Ron had sent him there at seven o’clock with the children because he hadn’t slept since late on Sunday night and he’d shared young Gilbert’s bed because his in-laws were in his. Ron and Sheila had gone back to the hospital to keep Louise and the baby company. Gilbert slept like a log until the clock reached midnight and Ron had come to wake him.
‘Gilbert. Gilbert. You’ll have to wake up. I’ve come to get you. Louise needs you. Gilbert?’
He’d felt a hand shaking his shoulder, dragging him into consciousness.
‘Yes?’
‘I’m afraid there’s bad news from the hospital.’
Gilbert had sat up. ‘Louise?’
‘No, not her. It’s little Roderick.’
‘He’s …’
‘Gone, I’m afraid. I’d just been for a drink from the machine for Sheila and me, and when I came back, well, he’d passed away.’ Man to man, Ron dared to speak his thoughts. ‘I think perhaps for his sake we’d better be glad. There was too much wrong, Gilbert, the holes in his heart, his hare lip, the cleft palate, his limbs not straight. His life would have been a travesty of what it should be for a little boy. Now get up and go see Louise. I’ll stay with the children, and we’ll be here all day tomorrow, too.’
Gilbert had dressed in a complete daze and gone back to the hospital.
When he got there, Sheila was standing by the incubator, staring down at the baby. They’d taken all his tubes and machines away and he was laid for all the world as though fast asleep, wrapped in a crocheted shawl all the children had used when they were newborn. All she could say was, ‘He’s at peace now. He’s at peace now.’ Time after time, after time. She stood there, rooted to the floor, muttering, ‘At peace now.’
‘If you’d like to hold Roderick to say goodbye, Mr Johns, please do so.’ The ward sister had said this in such a caring tone Gilbert had almost lost control and broken down in tears. So he picked up his son, carrying him for Louise to cuddle in her arms.
Someone came and led Sheila away so they could be on their own.
Standing in the Store, trying to remember all the things they needed, Gilbert couldn’t believe that Sheila could be as lively and patient as she was this morning at breakfast. Last night she’d been out of her mind: this morning, it was as if nothing had happened at all. It worried him because it appeared so odd, but he concluded that grief affects people in all sorts of strange ways. He picked up three loaves of Jimbo’s special wholemeal bread, two pounds of butter, two dozen eggs, a big pack of cheese, some baby food jars for Oliver to make life a little easier, meat from the fresh meat counter, then he abruptly stopped and stood staring into space again, remembering the feel of tiny Roderick in his arms when he’d carried him for Louise to hold for the first and last time. The child, so tiny, so frail, so without hope. He recalled how his heart broke when he witnessed Louise’s painful distress as she cuddled him. Selfishly, the thought occurred to Gilbert that perhaps it was all for the best. Roderick would’ve needed hours of special care that would have meant the other five not getting the loving attention they needed and which was their right to expect. He berated himself for his thoughts, so dwelt again on the loss of his tiny son who’d had such a fragile hold on life and wept inside himself with grief, then decided there wasn’t the remotest possibility that Roderick could have the joys of a carefree childhood, which young Gilbert, Rosalind, Jenna, Emily and little Oliver celebrated every day of their lives. Perhaps it was right what Sheila had said; he was at peace now, free from struggle, free from pain.
Chapter 17
Dean, shaken by witnessing Roderick’s tiny coffin being taken into the church for the funeral, went to sit on the seat by the pond to think. Ever since that day in the vestry when he’d pressed Anna’s hand to his lips and been observed by Muriel, Dean had been extremely upset. He’d known at that moment, when he’d realized Muriel’s face was a curious mixture of sadness and disgust, that he could no longer let his life meander on. It had taken hours of deep thought to come to this decision, hours spent wide awake in bed, doodling on bits of paper at the office, long walks through the woods at night and poems galore. Nothing had stilled the raging passions inside him.
In a desperate attempt to calm his inner turmoil, he’d torn to pieces the beautiful, glossy William Morris cover of his book of poems, shredded the pages and furiously brushed away his tears, as the last few lines of his poetry shrivelled and blackened in the flames of the kitchen Rayburn. That was that. His big romance gone up in flames. Given the chance, he’d have married her tomorrow. But at the same time he knew she would never marry him.
She seemed to think he was capable of being more than an accountant in an insignificant office in sleepy old Culworth. Maybe he was. Just so glad of a job when he’d come down from Cambridge, he’d have taken almost any offer in order to qualify. He’d never rise to giddy heights in Neville’s office, though. Comfortably off but nothing more. Besides, both Hugh and Guy Neal would inherit the business and he certainly couldn’t work under those two, with their over-inflated self-esteem. He had to strike out alone.
He heard the mourners coming out of the church, so he quickly sprinted away across the Green, squeezed through a gap in the hedge between Glebe House and the brick wall surrounding the Big House estate, and cut across the field to home.
Grandad was dozing in the chair before the sitting-room fire, and his mother was nowhere to be seen. But she had left a note to say a college friend of his had rung. She didn’t catch his name but he’d given a number to ring. The number was familiar but Dean couldn’t just place it.
When Dean dialled the number he found it was his college friend Rory O’Donoghue on the other end of the line with the offer of a job.
‘Chap just left Pa’s office without notice and disappeared over the horizon with about a hundred and fifty thousand pounds of clients’ money,’ said Rory. ‘This damned blackguard chose his moment to steal and took off when he knew Pa would be abroad. I’m desperate for a compatible right-hand man, who could sort out, as a matter of extreme urgency, exactly how this chap managed to steal it. Got to close the loophole a1 sharp. Be a good chap and come, help me sort out the mess? We always got on well together, didn’t we? Will you answer the call to arms?’
Without the slightest hesitation, Dean agreed to go up to London immediately, and wrote a letter to Neville Neal explaining his hurried departure. Knowing what a stickler Neville was for protocol – and not caring, in fact – he almost smiled at the thought of Neville going ballistic at his lack of notice, and was packing his bag by the time his mother returned. She’d got a car now instead of that wobbly bike his stepfather had bought her years ago and he heard its unique engine noise long before she reached home. Ah! This wa
s going to be hard.
‘Dean! Am I glad to be home. Never ever am I going to a child’s funeral ever again. It’s too harrowing. They were all weeping and Gilbert and Louise looked as though they’ll be next in a coffin. Put the kettle on, there’s a love. It’s been horrific. I stopped long enough for a cup of tea at Sheila’s out of respect and then I left. Is Grandad OK? Put out another cup. He always manages to wake up just as the tea’s brewed and then grumbles when I ’aven’t put out a cup for him. You all right? You’re very quiet.’
Pat slipped off her high-heeled shoes and put her house slippers on. ‘That’s better.’ She sat on a kitchen chair and waited for Dean to serve her tea.
‘Mum, that phone call was from Rory. Rory O’Donoghue.’
Pat thought for a minute. ‘Oh! I remember him. He came here once, didn’t he? Plum in his mouth and as ugly as sin.’
Dean had to smile. ‘That’s the one. He got a double first, he’s very clever.’
‘What did he want?’
‘To offer me a job in London, in his dad’s firm. Big accountancy company in the City. Prestige offices, pots of money, first-rate prospects.’
‘That’s a feather in your cap, then.’ She pondered what he’d said, glad he had a steady job in Culworth, which she was sure he wouldn’t want to leave, well in truth she didn’t want him to leave. ‘Pity you can’t go.’
The door opened and in ambled Grandad. ‘Tea on the go? Good, I’m just in time.’ He launched himself into a chair and held out his cup. ‘Strong, that’s right. Thanks.’ He had a drink of his tea and then looked at the two of them. ‘Missed something, have I?’
Dean rushed through the story, unable, as yet, to say his case was already packed.
Grandad looked Dean straight in the eye and said, ‘Take it, lad. Take it. You’ll never get another chance like this. Just go. I’ll be glad to see you out of that Neville Neal’s clutches. He’s a slimy toad.’
Whispers in the Village Page 19
