Nest of Sorrows

by Ruth Hamilton

‘Hello?’

  ‘Fetch me that thing you had earlier. The one you were wearing on your head.’

  Ernie approached with the chamber pot. ‘There you are, missus,’ screamed Rachel at the top of her voice. ‘Shove this under your bed and never mind about being incontinent, it’s nothing to be ashamed of, getting took short in the night. Comes to all of us, it does, specially at your age. And look, it’s a nice big one, so it should hold plenty.’

  A few passers-by stopped to watch this performance. ‘And go down to Baxter’s for a rubber sheet,’ continued the furious Rachel, ‘that should save your mattress from getting stained and smelly.’

  Dora’s face paled to a shade of grey. ‘How dare you?’ Her teeth were clenched. ‘I can see where your daughter got her unpleasant ways from! Yes, indeed I can.’

  ‘My daughter has no unpleasant ways!’ Rachel waved the pot as if she intended to crown Dora with it. ‘My daughter is the best . . .’

  ‘Oh yes? The best, is she? Well, she walked out on a good husband and a lovely little girl. Broke their hearts, she did.’

  ‘She walked out on you as well, you daft old bat. Who wants to be living with you and all your illnesses, eh? Who wants to live with a woman who still wipes her grown son’s bottom for him? You ruined that man’s life, positively ruined it. And you made my girl miserable by turning your own lad into a fairy-cake. It’s your fault, yours!’ She raised the chamber pot even higher, and Ernie crept up behind and snatched it from her threatening hand.

  Dora staggered back, a hand pressed against where she imagined her heart to be. ‘I am not used to . . . being spoken to in such a way. This is unforgivable.’

  Shoe-ey Hughie stepped forward with a chair and pulled Dora into it, then ran off to continue taking slippers from a large box. Shoe-ey had a marked sense of the ridiculous, and was having trouble arranging his features. Dora sat in the centre aisle, legs splayed out any old way, skirt and coat riding up to display knee-length tea-rose directoire knickers. ‘I shall tell Geoffrey about this,’ she gasped.

  ‘Oh aye? And what do you expect him to do, big soft gumboil that he is? Will he hit me? Or sue me? Nay, I shouldn’t rely too closely on your Geoffrey if I were you. Keep giving him his nice chucky-eggs with soldiers, love, build him up a bit if he’s going to come to grips with my Arthur. Because my Arthur will have him in a surgical corset before you can eat your next creamcake. Have you thought about dieting, by the way?’

  The situation was getting too dangerous for Ernie’s liking. He grabbed Rachel’s arm none too gently. ‘Listen,’ he whispered. ‘You’ll have this stall lost if the bosses come round. Keep away from her. Look, go out to the van for those washleathers. I’ll get rid of madam here.’

  ‘That’s a good idea.’ Rachel’s tone was a long way from quiet. ‘I’ll go and get the stuff. Keep that potty handy; if she’s still here when I get back, I shall clock her one with it!’

  Dora was looking like a Victorian painting entitled, ‘Never Darken My Door Again’, all hurt eyes and breathlessness. She was defeated, absolutely routed, so she summoned up what was left of her dwindling strength to make some sort of effort towards peace. ‘Rachel,’ she muttered.

  ‘What?’

  The large lady took a deep shuddering breath. ‘I . . . I take it all back. Let us . . . not quarrel. This is . . . not . . . our fight.’

  The little stallholder was immediately mollified by such an undignified apology. After all, the poor old lass looked so daft sitting there with her pantaloons and underskirt on show. Rachel shook her head slowly. ‘All right. Don’t over-fret yourself, Dora. We’re all as the good Lord made us, can’t help the half of it, I suppose. You stop here while I make you a brew.’ She bent to rearrange Dora’s coat into a more decorous state. ‘You shouldn’t fash yourself, woman. Don’t get involved, keep clear of the blessed bullets. Them two’ll sort their problems out without you and me shoving our noses in the cat litter.’

  ‘Yes.’ Dora was almost sobbing by this time. ‘I feel so ill, Rachel.’

  ‘I’m not surprised, missus! Take too much on yourself, you do. Credit where credit’s due, you’ve always been a good little worker in the house. But you should have learned when to let go! No use worrying over Geoff the rest of his life . . .’

  ‘He was all I had . . .’

  ‘I know that. I do know that, love.’ Any newly-arrived spectator would have taken these two for the best of friends – no-one would believe that they had so recently been at each other’s throats. ‘But you should have let go. If our Katherine and your Geoff had been left to get on with it, well, who knows? They might have made a go of it.’

  ‘So. It’s all my fault? All of it?’

  ‘Did I say that? Did I? Nay, I always knew they weren’t best suited. I don’t like what’s going on, no more than you do, but she’s me daughter, lass, I have to side with her right or wrong. Just as you’ve got to side with her husband. As for Melanie, I reckon that young lady can make her own mind up about things.’

  Dora wriggled miserably on the flimsy wooden seat. ‘I . . . I miss Kate. There’s nobody to talk to, Rachel. There’s only the girl next door and she doesn’t have Kate’s . . . wit. Oh, I know we didn’t always get on, but she used to be so kind. The change in her was unbelievably sudden. I am concerned for her mental health. After all, with her history . . .’

  Rachel bit her tongue deliberately. ‘Tea or coffee? Light that stove, Ernie. And watch out for the boss, he’ll only start going on about fire hazards.’

  Dora continued, almost to herself, ‘My daughter-in-law used to listen to me. Until she turned like that. Why did she turn?’

  ‘Could be her sugar diabetes. I know this much, Dora, there’s nowt wrong with my lass’s brain. Happen it’s more emotional, this upset. Only to be honest, I’ve not seen our Katherine so contented for donkey’s years. It’s as if she’s got her second wind or summat.’

  ‘Oh. Oh dear. What shall we do, Rachel? I know that you agree with me, marriages are made in heaven. We never had divorce in my family before. Or abortion.’

  Rachel’s face paled as she staggered back against the stall. ‘You what?’

  ‘After Kate had left, Geoffrey told me that she had been forced to have an abortion. The doctors warned her that the baby might be born dead anyway, and that her own life could be at risk. As you say, it’s probably the diabetes . . . Rachel? Are you all right?’

  ‘But . . . but she never . . . that’s against our religion! Abortion . . . it’s not allowed. Not for any reason!’

  Dora, for once, managed to lay her tongue on a bit of commonsense. ‘You couldn’t let her die, could you? Look, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize that you hadn’t been told. She might have died! You would have lost your daughter, forever!’

  ‘I don’t like it.’ Rachel’s face was still ashen. ‘I don’t hold with killing unborn kiddies.’

  ‘Neither do I! Neither does my son! And I’m sure Kate had her reservations about the whole matter.’

  Rachel bridled. ‘Oh, I see. And why are you defending her now, eh? You’d enough to say about her before, why suddenly change your tune and start sticking up for her?’

  Dora’s chin dropped. ‘Because . . . because since she left, I realize how much I liked her.’

  ‘Right. Well, here comes Ernie with our cuppas. I’d best get back to me job, these here pots don’t sell themselves. As you noticed last week, I have to get involved.’

  Rachel stamped away angrily and left Dora sipping tea from a new china mug.

  All that morning and for most of the afternoon, Rachel seethed. The seething helped put a lot of aggression into her selling, and profits that day topped all previous achievements. She didn’t even notice Dora’s exit, so engrossed was she in off-loading a heap of clay cookware.

  That evening, she refused a lift from Arthur and set off on the bus to visit Kate. When the door was opened, Rachel bounced in like a rebounding rubber ball, cheeks ablaze, hands clenched with temper. ‘How co
uld you? How could you kill a little innocent child? In the same league as Herod, are you?’

  Kate paused momentarily, feet apart, arms akimbo, eyes fixed on the sight of her furious tiny mother. Why couldn’t she have been like this when it had really mattered, when Peter Murray had been alive?

  ‘Well?’ Rachel’s eyes glowed with energy. ‘Nowt to say for yourself?’

  ‘Who told you? I thought I was in enough trouble already, didn’t think he’d stoop so low . . .’

  ‘What trouble?’

  Kate shrugged. ‘At school. He keeps mithering on the phone.’

  ‘Mithering? I’ll tell you about mithering, girl! That’s murder, that is. Cold, calculated murder. It’s a mortal sin. Did you talk to a priest or to one of Geoff’s ministers before you did it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Who the heck did you talk to, then?’

  ‘Nobody. I was supposed to go for counselling, but I didn’t bother.’

  Rachel threw her handbag across the room. ‘Didn’t bother? Didn’t blessed well bother? How could you? And it might have been a boy. All my life I’ve wanted a boy in this family. Your dad wanted a boy, he was convinced you’d be a boy . . .’

  ‘How disappointing for him! I suppose that’s why I got clouted and left out so often, for being bloody female. And you expect me to breed just because you want a grandson? What sort of a reason would that be?’

  Rachel waited a second before speaking again. ‘I didn’t mean that how it sounded.’

  ‘Well I did!’

  ‘Katherine!’

  Kate inhaled slowly. ‘Get out, Mother. Go on, out of my house!’

  ‘But . . .’

  ‘If you think I could do that easily, if you believe that I am capable of taking a life without caring . . . Go away!’

  ‘Explain it to me! Just explain why . . .’

  ‘No!’ Kate’s temper matched her mother’s by this time. ‘I owe no explanation about that to anyone! It was between myself, the doctors and my . . . my child. I used to lie with my hands on my belly, wondering what to do. And no, I don’t even need to tell you that much, do I? This is none of your business. The whole affair has been hard enough without . . . without . . . Go on! I mean it! I want you out of here!’

  ‘I only need the truth. I only need . . .’

  ‘You’ll get what you deserve, and that’s nothing. And until I receive a full apology in writing, you and I will have nothing to say to one another.’ She picked up the handbag, tossed it into the back yard, then pushed her mother out through the doorway. Breathing heavily, Kate threw herself against the solid door, then twisted the huge key in its lock.

  ‘Katherine! Open this door! At once!’

  For answer, Kate moved into the bed-sitting room and turned on the radio, locking the internal door after a few moments’ thought. Rachel, in her present mood, might well try to gain access via the main front door.

  But she didn’t. After a short while, the banging stopped and Kate sank into a heap on the floor by her bed. ‘Oh, little one!’ She hugged her belly and rocked back and forth. ‘If they only knew! If they only knew what I’ve been through! Decisions . . . decisions . . .’

  That night, Kate’s dreams were terrible. A tiny dead boy was delivered into her hands, perfect but blood-streaked from the womb. ‘Michael? Look at me, be alive! For God’s sake, be alive!’ She sat bolt upright in her sweat-soaked sheets. ‘Jesus,’ she moaned. Then, as she turned to face the wall, she cried out in a small voice, ‘Oh, Mother!’ before falling into another fitful sleep.

  ‘I’m not apologizing to her!’ Rachel’s face was pink with righteous indignation. ‘She should never have spoken to me like that, I am her mother when all’s said and done. I was only sticking out for what I believe in, only speaking me mind . . .’

  ‘So was she.’ Arthur poked the fire and sucked loudly on his dead pipe. ‘She’s near thirty-five years old now, Rachel. You can’t be throwing your weight about at this stage in her life. Cast your mind back to Dora Saunders and what you’ve always thought of her . . .’

  Rachel’s spine was suddenly as straight as a ramrod. ‘Eh? Are you comparing me to that great big soft powder puff? I’m nowt like her, nowt at all . . .’

  He fingered his tobacco pouch nervously. ‘She’s interfered with that marriage all the time, dripping like water on stone. You’re doing it now, just the once, but in a very big way. Stop shoving your nose in.’

  ‘Arthur!’

  ‘Well, you’re forever going on about how Kate’s marriage might have lasted without Dora and her messing. Just you take a look at yourself, love. You can’t walk up to a young woman and tell her how to run her own life. It’s not right. And I think you should apologize, else you will have lost your daughter.’

  ‘I am not apologizing. I can’t see that I’ve done owt wrong. I only said . . .’

  ‘You only said that she ought to have risked her life so that you might have a grandson.’

  ‘I never did. I never said no such thing, Arthur Bottomley. I just know what she’s done is a sin. Our church believes in baby before mother, that’s all. You’re supposed to take your chances.’

  ‘And you’d have let your girl die?’

  She could not meet his penetrating gaze. ‘Well, I would have hoped . . . with all the medical things that they’ve got now . . .’

  He shook his head gravely. ‘Could you have stood by and watched her struggling through a pregnancy that might have killed her? And the kiddy too? There’s times when I’m not so sure of my faith, Rachel, and this is one of them times. If Kate were my daughter – and I wish she were – I’d give an arm and a leg to make sure she survived come what may.’ He picked up a large Persian grey from the hearthrug. ‘You’ll get sunburnt there,’ he said to the huge creature.

  ‘She wasn’t sure she’d die,’ went on Rachel. ‘And she’d talked about it to nobody, nobody at all.’

  ‘Ah.’ Arthur cleared his throat. ‘Now we’re getting down to it, right to the crux of the matter, as they say. What you can’t stomach is the fact that the girl did something without telling you first. Even when she left home, she reported to base before making her move. So what’s the difference between you and Dora Saunders, eh?’

  ‘I never haunted them day and night, did I? I never told her how to do her washing, or that she was ironing his shirts all wrong. I didn’t fall in the door every other day with some incurable illness. There’s a mile of difference between me and Dotty Dora!’

  ‘Is there?’

  ‘Yes!’ At last, she looked him in the face. ‘Yes, there is.’

  He lit his pipe slowly. ‘Well, all I can say, Rachel, is that I’ve watched that poor girl looking at you. Worships you, she does . . .’

  ‘Not as I’ve noticed. Specially today.’

  ‘Shut up, Rachel! For once, bloody shut up and listen to somebody else for a change. At a guess, I’d say that Kate has spent her life looking for love and not finding it. From the little she’s said, I gather that her father didn’t love her, and I don’t think she was so sure about you either. If you’d loved her, you would have protected her from him – that’s how a child thinks. Now, them childhood feelings don’t go. You can argue with yourself, tell yourself you’re being stupid, but a kiddy that grows up feeling unloved becomes a grown-up what can’t cope.’

  ‘She can cope! Course she can cope!’

  He nodded. ‘Aye, happen she can on the surface. But what about all them years she put up with Geoff and his mother, never a word out of her, never a try to defend herself. That was because she didn’t believe in herself, couldn’t make no decisions. Well, happen her first big decision was not having the baby, and her second was getting away from them two leeches. This is just the beginning of who Kate is, she’s never been herself before.’

  ‘Rubbish!’

  ‘Just you leave her alone, Rachel.’

  ‘She’s my daughter, not yours. Who are you to tell me what to do with her? And I shall leave her
alone, never fear. My daughter’s a murderer, and I’m not apologizing to no murderer. So there!’

  He looked up to the ceiling as if seeking divine guidance. ‘You’ll regret this, lass. This will be with you all your life.’ He sighed deeply. ‘Well, as you said, it’s nowt to do with me, none of my affair. So,’ he stared hard at his wife, ‘on your head be it. Aye, on your head and not on mine, thank God!’

  12

  The man in the white coat carried on hitting her. She wanted to sit up in the bed, needed to scream out, ‘I’m not dead, I’m still here,’ but he continued with the heart massage. And she didn’t even feel detached or dizzy, so she couldn’t understand why this great fight to save her life was going on.

  How long had she been here? Years and years. And years. But here, in this extremely bright white room – how long? Was that her heart, beep, beep, hiccup and beep? Or was the other noise – that long drawn-out sound – was this the echo of a heart not beating at all? I am alive! Look at me, you idiots, I am alive!

  ‘She’s back, Sister. What’s the BP?’

  ‘Ninety over forty and rising.’

  ‘Good. Let’s hope she’s strong enough for more treatment. We’ll need to get her dialysed tomorrow if these kidneys don’t pick themselves up of their own accord.’

  Kate stared up at him. He had a silly moustache with some food stuck in it. She wanted to tell him about the food, only her mouth was on strike. Am I paralysed? Did the operation turn out a mess? No! There is nothing wrong with my kidneys. I have been monitored weekly for centuries now. Prodded and poked and weighed and measured. Analysed, tested, catalogued, categorized, filed, disposed of! There is nothing wrong with my kidneys, you stupid ill-washed man.

  The sister bent over the bed. ‘I wonder if she can hear us?’

  Of course I can hear you. I can hear and see like everyone else. Your moustache is nearly as thick as his, though at least you don’t have your dinner stuck to it. What is the matter with this place? Is this an emergency room or a bloody pantomime?

  The doctor coughed thickly and Kate wondered what she was going to catch in here. After joining the private medical scheme, too, posh Chorley New Road nursing home with operating facilities and television in every room. Bloody hospitals. Breeding grounds for germs, they were . . . If a person insisted on being ill, then he or she would be better staying away from hospitals altogether.