‘I can’t quite believe we’re both here and not in some torrid nightclub in Cairo or waiting for a tennis court to be free at the Gezira Club,’ he went on.
Her nightgown was at the top of the suitcase, which the porter had placed on the rack. She opened the case and stroked its creamy silk folds. Robert would pull the dainty straps down her arms, roll the lacy skirt up her thighs. Perhaps it would rip, tear along the seams even though silk was strong enough for parachutes. But despite its strength a knife could cut through any fabric, even parachute silk, and reveal what was hidden underneath.
She had to stop these thoughts. This was the now, the reality, starting a new life with this man she loved. There were two parts of Maud: a scared, jumpy woman, and a bride who’d married the person she adored. She needed to push the first one away.
Maud stood up.
‘Pass me my sponge bag, darling.’ Her voice was steady. ‘I’m going to freshen myself up.’
16
June 1947
‘Eisoptrophobia,’ Dr Rosenstein says. ‘Fear of mirrors, or of seeing oneself in them.’
‘A sign of madness?’
‘A phobia. Sometimes fears make people lose their grasp on reality, some are more debilitating than others. Some people don’t like heights or spiders, but not to a pathological degree.’ Dr Rosenstein makes a note. ‘But telling me about your dislike of mirrors adds another piece to your story. It’s helpful.’ She gives me one of her long, searching looks. ‘So you really did want to marry Robert? There was no sense of coercion?’
‘No.’ I’d felt desperate, almost. ‘I loved him.’
‘Where did you go for your honeymoon?’
I close my eyes, hearing the sea hiss on the shingle. ‘The Dorset coast.’ It was the last time I’d seen the sea. ‘The weather was mild for England in early October, but foggy first thing.’
Robert and Maud didn’t actually mind the fog and would have stayed in bed had the chambermaid not arrived each morning at nine. They’d sit in the hotel lounge drinking coffee and waiting for the sunlight to break through. Maud thought of the couple in The Return of the Native on honeymoon on Egdon Heath, not so far from here, of how they hadn’t minded staying indoors, either. When they went out for a walk on the beach and she shared this observation with Robert he knew exactly what she meant. ‘Though I have no intention of ending up in a Thomas Hardy tragedy, darling.’
They stopped at the shoreline, waves breaking gently in front of them. He held her in his arms. ‘I can’t believe we’re really here.’ When he released her she looked out to sea. A thin band of light lay to the south, towards France. It hadn’t been so long ago that people had eyed the sea with fear, peering at it for signs of invasion. ‘England is safe,’ she said. People could go on honeymoon and make plans for the future.
‘For now,’ he said, very quietly. ‘While we guard her.’ His face had fallen into something set, almost sullen. He caught her looking at him. ‘Sorry, darling, I mustn’t bring work on honeymoon with me.’
Half of her was curious, wanting to ask more about his job, about the new team he was assembling in his office in St James’s. But he was right, this was a honeymoon.
‘Sergeant Troy drowned himself somewhere near here, didn’t he?’ he said musingly. ‘When it all went wrong with his women. I read Far from the Madding Crowd a long time ago, though.’
She laughed. ‘I think we should read some comic novels on honeymoon. P. G. Wodehouse, perhaps.’
‘They say P. G. Wodehouse was a traitor, don’t they? Broadcast for the enemy when he was interned.’ Robert’s face took on a closed-off expression. ‘Sometimes it’s hard to make the right choice.’ He plucked a pebble from the shore and skimmed it across the waves. Five bounces.
‘Very good,’ she said. How strange it was that she was now the one praising him for a feat well mastered. He seemed to stand straighter.
‘There are rumours of a local teashop baking fresh scones every afternoon,’ he said. ‘There might even be cream. And strawberry jam.’
‘Both together?’
‘I know, probably illegal. Funny how the thought of such fripperies can obsess you. I had a colleague in Cairo once who was obsessed with baked goods. Always seeking out pastry shops.’
They walked on. She thought of a cake from Groppi’s, of a man coming into a training room and eyeing the ruined sponge with appetite, of how he’d brushed the crumbs from his moustache.
‘And at first married life went smoothly?’ Dr Rosenstein asks. ‘You were content?’
Is content the right word? I remember how I used to pace the small house, looking at my watch. ‘Yes. It was a change, becoming a housewife, making my husband and home the centre of my existence. But I liked turning the house into something I could be proud of.’ I’d enjoyed painting the walls of the sitting room myself, to the horror of Mama. I’d even put up some bookcases. Constant movement had hushed the demons in my head.
‘I felt as though I was joining the adult race.’
I place a hand on my stomach. ‘But I was slowing down. I was walking miles every day, but moving around felt harder. Sometimes thinking did, too. And I annoyed Robert when I forgot things.’
‘Did that often happen?’
‘I didn’t think so. But he was put out when I forgot to send things to the laundry.’ I frown, remembering. ‘Or didn’t take his shoes to the cobbler’s. Small things like that.’
‘You were sick?’ Dr Rosenstein is watching me very closely now. I want to run, run up to my room and get Ingrams to lock me in. But I am Amber, trained in making myself act bravely even if I don’t feel it.
‘Not sick.’ Although hospitals were involved. ‘Something else. Oh God.’ A bolt of memory strikes me, searing my nerves, causing my body to jolt as though someone’s applied electrodes to my temples. For a moment I think I might vomit with the shock of it. ‘That silly dream I’ve been having, the apple . . .’
‘What about the apple?’
‘It wasn’t an apple, it was a pomegranate. I used to buy them in Cairo. Robert brought one back for me when he met me in London for dinner.’
A pomegranate full of seeds, of potential, stolen from me. ‘It was my future, but something more than that, it was life itself. And he let them take . . .’
I start talking. I’m there, back in 1946. The words come out all garbled. ‘I’ve remembered what happened with that blade. Robert—’
‘Slow down,’ Dr Rosenstein says.
‘But my dream—’
‘Start from when you came back from honeymoon.’
The back garden of the house near Hyde Park was tiny, a little square with thin, dusty, soil, but when spring came Maud started a vegetable patch in its little flowerbed. Her parents drove down a trailer-load of topsoil from Shropshire, her father hinting at a favour carried out in return for petrol coupons.
‘Do not ask your father what this favour was,’ Mama said. ‘But it got us to London without needing the train and for that I am grateful.’ She fingered the new curtains in the sitting room. ‘You chose the right fabric,’ she said. Maud felt her parents’ approval like sunshine. Robert welcomed them with enthusiasm and everyone seemed to enjoy their stay. Even when the little lapses Maud had made were related to her parents, it was done with affection and humour. It was strange how forgetful she had become since her marriage: leaving windows and doors open when she went out, mislaying her purse.
‘It’s nothing we can’t manage,’ Robert said, squeezing her hand across the tablecloth.
Mama gave her a sharp look across the table. ‘You seemed organised enough when you lived with us in Shropshire at the end of the war,’ she said.
‘It’s just a stage,’ Robert said. ‘You’ll see.’
When her parents left, Maud missed them more than she thought she would, more than she had when she’d returned to boarding school as a child.
At least there was the garden. She never seemed to forget anything to do with that. The top
soil her parents had procured benefited the little plot. Each morning Maud went out to look for signs of vegetables shooting up.
Domesticity seemed to take up every hour at the moment, especially when she found herself in such a muddle with simple things. Surely organising a household ought to be straightforward? She’d made a list of things that needed doing, by day. She ticked them off as they were done: shirts and sheets sent to laundries. Books returned to the library. A suit of Robert’s taken to a seamstress for alterations.
One afternoon Cecilia appeared with the remains of a cold roast for Maud. Maud was looking for her watch. ‘I took it off at night as usual but it wasn’t on my bedside table when I got up this morning.’
‘Has it fallen off?’
‘I looked all around. It’ll show up.’
Cecilia placed the enamel plate on the kitchen table. ‘You can mince this lamb and make a shepherd’s pie,’ she said.
‘Thank you. How do I make the pie?’
‘I’m not sure. Our cook does that for me. You could probably find a recipe.’ She looked benevolently at Maud. ‘It can’t be that hard. Just don’t go into a daydream and forget to take it out of the oven.’ She looked at something over Maud’s shoulder.
Maud turned to follow her gaze and saw her watch on top of the gas heater. ‘I didn’t put it there.’
‘You probably did. When you were washing up or something?’
Maud blushed. When Cecilia had left she unwrapped the waxed paper and eyed the cold meat. A layer of fat, yellow and thick, had congealed around the bone. Maud made a dash for the lavatory.
She had to dash again, later on, when Robert was home and the minced-down roast was simmering in a frying pan with onion and stock. ‘Sorry,’ she called from the lavatory. ‘I just don’t think I can finish cooking it.’
‘Potatoes,’ he said. She heard him rattling pans. ‘I’ll boil and mash them. It’ll be fine.’
When she emerged he’d poured her a glass of water. ‘Sit down,’ he told her. ‘Don’t move again this evening.’ He put a hand on her forehead. ‘Would you like to lie down?’
‘No, I mustn’t give in.’
‘Stay there.’ His voice was soft. He went upstairs and she heard him opening the airing cupboard and running the bathroom tap. He returned with a damp flannel and wiped her face very carefully. ‘Don’t you think, darling, that you might be expecting?’
‘Oh.’ She thought about it. ‘I suppose, yes, I could be.’ She did the calculations. It made sense.
He kissed her. ‘I’m so thrilled.’
‘So am I.’ She said the words automatically but found they were true.
‘You’ll have to tell me what I can do to make it as easy for you as possible. I never had sisters, and Alice, well, she died before we could do any of this.’ He sounded apologetic. ‘Are there special things you need to eat or drink? Is it annoying if I fuss over you or will you let me pamper you?’
‘I never mind being pampered.’
And he did pamper her, seldom returning from work without a small present: fruit from a stall near his office, a precious single piece of steak, a bottle of stout because the doorman at his office had told him that’s what his wife always drank in her confinements, flowers, books he thought she might like. ‘If I’m smothering you, I’ll limit myself to one bunch of freesias a week and a juicy piece of cod a fortnight,’ he told her.
‘I like all the things you bring for me.’ He looked like a small boy, relieved he’d found favour. The emotion this aroused in her surprised Maud. Robert was no longer her superior. They were equals, going into this big responsibility together. In the evenings he even read some of the books on pregnancy and childcare Cecilia had lent Maud.
‘Not encroaching on your territory, am I?’ he asked.
‘Not at all. I’m just . . . surprised.’
‘I surprise myself. I can’t think of anything that’s made me happier. I just . . .’
‘What?’
‘Oh, nothing.’ He closed the book. ‘Can I make you a hot drink? Is there something on the wireless you’d like to listen to?’
As the months passed, Cecilia appeared more often. Recommendations were made about perambulators, muslin cloths, doctors and midwives and the best place to have the baby. James Holdern had an old medical-school chum who ran a good maternity hospital near Marylebone, very handy.
Running this little house and garden and preparing for the next stage was all Maud did now. Cecilia’s arrival two afternoons a week became a highlight, even though she was never sure if she actually liked Cecilia or not.
‘How’s Robert?’ Cecilia would ask before she asked anything else. When Maud told her of Robert’s presents, of his keenness to educate himself on babies, Cecilia shook her head. ‘I’ve never known him like this. He’s transformed.’
‘He’s been wonderful.’ She told Cecilia how Robert insisted on bringing her tea and toast in bed before he left for work, how he rang every lunchtime to make sure she was all right.
But June turned to July and Maud found herself admitting that Robert had become more distracted, retreating to his small study after she’d served the supper.
‘Work must be tough.’
‘I think it is.’
Cecilia nodded at that morning’s newspaper. ‘Well, it’s worrying, isn’t it? The Russians wanting to build more nuclear weapons. The Communists in China.’
‘There’s always an enemy,’ Maud said. Beneath the maternal outlines of her body something of Amber stirred inside her. Keep your wits about you, don’t lose concentration, don’t be lulled into a false sense of security. Ask your husband about his work. Sometimes when they were eating supper Maud would be conscious of Robert’s eyes on her, watching her as she ate.
She would make more attempts to get him to talk to her about his work. Obviously there would be things that he couldn’t tell her, but surely he could give her an idea of what he was doing?
‘Darling, it’s much of the same, keeping an eye on the Balkans, on how they’re shaping up,’ he said when she asked him questions. ‘You know, it’s so lovely to come back here in the evening and relax with you. Other wives would be blasting husbands with questions, but you know what the score is with sensitive work.’
It’s not the war now, Maud told herself.
The days were passing quickly now. ‘Pack a bag,’ Cecilia Holdern told Maud. ‘In case the baby comes early.’
‘My due date isn’t until October. It’s only just September now.’ Summer had vanished into a depression, bringing rain with it.
‘Better to be prepared. You don’t need that much.’ Cecilia listed an alarmingly large number of items. Maud would need a small suitcase to take them all to the clinic. A good start would be to dig one out, leave it open to air in the spare room and then make it a daily goal to place necessary objects in it. Her own suitcase, the one she’d taken on honeymoon, was far too large; she’d need to be having triplets to fill it with maternity pads, nightdresses, nappies, matinée jackets and bootees. Her mother was well equipped with luggage of all shapes and sizes, but should a married woman need recourse to her parents for something like this?
Robert was still a little withdrawn, not as openly enthusiastic as he had been in the early months of her pregnancy, but the presents had continued. He would, she knew, be delighted to buy her a suitcase.
When they’d moved in to this house he’d stored his old suitcases and bags underneath the spare bed. The spare room was to become a nursery, the cot arriving in the following week, a present from her parents. She could usefully remove the suitcases and bags from underneath the bed and place them on the landing so that Robert could transfer them to the loft. At the same time she could choose a suitable case for herself.
Neither of them had brought much with them to this house, he because he’d been bombed out and she because much of her stuff was still in Shropshire. She pulled out a large leather case with his initials monogrammed on to it. Her own honeymoon suit
case. A Gladstone bag. Hatboxes. A vanity case Mama had given her for the honeymoon. And a small, old suitcase, a little battered, and singed slightly in one corner, but made of fine-quality leather, a label still attached to it. ABH.
Alice–something–Havers. The case must have been plucked from the ruins of the first home. It rattled when she shook it, but was locked.
Maud stood up, dizzy as she did, and perched on the spare bed. She could push the suitcase back underneath, or pile it with the others on the landing, leaving it without a comment for Robert to store in the loft. She couldn’t take Alice’s suitcase to the clinic with her. Even looking at it felt wrong, somehow. She knew Robert wouldn’t like it.
A natural sense of curiosity is your best friend. Why shouldn’t she look at something that’d been left in a bedroom in her own home?
Maud padded downstairs to the small room at the back of the house where Robert worked at night. She’d opened his desk before, looking for stamps and envelopes, but that had been when he’d been here to ask.
She found the suitcase key in a small drawer. Before she went upstairs, Maud sat at Robert’s desk, staring at the blotter. By the way, darling, I was looking for a suitcase and found that old one of Alice’s under the spare room bed. Cecilia said something of that size would be perfect. But I don’t know how you’d feel about my using it, as it was Alice’s? Using Cecilia’s name would give her carte blanche.
Back in the spare room the suitcase opened easily. Inside was a brown-paper-wrapped package, about four inches deep and six by eight inches wide and tall, tied with string. In for a penny. . . There was no writing on the package, no indication as to what it might be.
She pulled out photographs in silver frames. Alice on honeymoon – somewhere with palm trees. Alice as a bride. Alice sitting beside what looked like a Scottish loch, easel in front of her, a paintbrush in her hand. Perhaps these photos had been safe in his office at the time of the bomb that had killed Alice in their home. He’d been discreet, tucking them away from Maud so she wouldn’t have to look at her predecessor. Alice was beautiful: slender with what Maud imagined to be light-brown hair and almond-shaped eyes that did indeed resemble those of her brother, James. She’d doubtless been a fine artist. Jealousy, followed almost instantly by pity, flowed through Maud: pity for the dead girl who’d never lived to paint a peacetime loch again, pity for Robert, who’d suffered her loss.
The Lines We Leave Behind Page 21
