by Nancy Carson
But she recalled with a start that earlier last evening Will had been complaining of pains in his stomach. His sterling performance in the middle of the night had cleared it completely from her mind. ‘Perhaps I should go and see if Will’s still here, Florrie. He hadn’t come home when I left for work, and last night he was complaining of stomach pains. I think I ought to pop over to his department, just to make certain everything’s all right. I’ll drink my tea when I come back.’
‘See yer in a bit, then.’
‘No, Will ain’t here now, bab,’ Sidney Joel confirmed when she reached Product Development. ‘He left about ten to nine this mornin’. They’ve had a right night of it, by all accounts. Everythin’s gone wrong. Nothin’ wairkin’ right. It maikes yer wonder if it’s all wairth it, all the effort everybody’s bin puttin’ in.’
‘Did he seem all right, Sidney? Did you see him when you came in?’
Sidney guffawed. ‘He looked a bit rough, to tell yer the truth, Henzey. I ain’t surprised, mind, if he spent as much time on the lavatory as he said he did. Said he’d had rotten guts ache all night. Said he’d been on the lavatory half the night.’
She smiled to herself. That, of course, would be his excuse for being away so long; his excuse for sneaking away from his shift to be with her. It was a valid one as well, since he had been suffering earlier.
‘Yes,’ she confirmed. ‘He did have stomach-ache before he left home. I hope he’s all right.’
Sidney drew her aside, as if others might be listening, although nobody was. ‘Has he bin all right lately?’
‘What do you mean, Sidney?’
He shrugged and tightened his lips. ‘I was wonderin’ if all this work was gettin’ to him, that’s all.’
‘Why? What makes you say that?’
‘I hesitate to say anythin’ really – you know me – but the other Tuesday night he come into The Reservoir pub…’
‘The other Tuesday?’
‘Ar. But I couldn’t fathom him out. We all said the same after…’ He looked about him to make sure nobody was within earshot.
‘What do you mean?…Go on, Sidney, you can tell me.’
‘Well first off he went in the smoke. He never goos in the smoke, bab. He always uses the bar. Then he was drinkin’ shandy. He can’t abide shandy, you know he can’t – he’s a pale ale man. An’ I was that surprised to see him in his best suit, an’ all, all done up like a dog’s dinner…An’ talkin’ posh – real hoity-toity. I told him straight: “Cut the posh talk,” I said. “You ain’t with the lah-di-dah set from Lucas’s now,” I said. It was almost as if he was pretendin’ to be somebody else.’
‘Fancy,’ Henzey replied, puzzled. ‘You’re sure it was a Tuesday?’
‘I know it was a Tuesday all right. I’d got a darts match the next night…An’ that’s summat else, an’ all. He played darts like a proper nincompoop, though he asked me never to mention it to yer.’
‘At the match, you mean?’
‘No, he was at work the night o’ the match, I expect. I mean at The Reservoir – that Tuesday. It was as if he’d never picked up a set o’ darts in his life before. I couldn’t believe it. I looked at him gone out.’
‘Fancy,’ she repeated, her thoughts drifting, confused, alarmed.
‘I was that concerned, bab. I thought you ought to know. But for God’s sake don’t tell him I told yer.’
‘Thanks, Sidney, I won’t tell him. I’m glad you told me, though. To tell you the truth, he hasn’t been quite himself lately. He’s had a lot on his mind – one way and another.’
She returned to her own department, bewildered, her earlier euphoria gone. She sat at her place on the line and poured the tea from her flask, not knowing what to make of what she had been told. Florrie enquired if everything was all right and Henzey replied that she did not know. Break time was ending and she finished her drink quickly. As the track started moving again she picked up a piece of work and became engrossed in her thoughts once more.
So nobody had missed Will last night when he returned home, yet he must have been gone two or three hours at least. Even they must have realised he wouldn’t be in the lavatory that long. But this talk about him visiting The Reservoir public house the other Tuesday could not be right. He had not been out on a Tuesday night for months, except to go to work, and even then it would have been getting towards closing time. Sidney had been adamant, though. Yes, Will had been different lately. But that could be for any number of reasons; the pressure she herself had been putting on him to start a family; shift working and its inherent change in routine.
But that shirt was still niggling her. Why would he lie about it? She had seen without doubt that he had gone out in his blue shirt that night, and the same blue shirt was in the dirty laundry now. But he was definitely wearing a white one when he came back for his keys. If he had changed it, that meant he must have another shirt at work. But he couldn’t have. All his shirts were accounted for. It was almost as if he had been another person that night, as Sidney had suggested.
Florrie nudged her again. ‘By the way, Henzey, I forgot to tell yer – Molly Parkes wants yer to draw a portrait of her husband for his birthday present.’
‘Molly Parkes? Oh, right. I’ll go and see her later.’
‘I’d rather yo’ than me, though,’ Florrie chuckled. ‘Have yer sid him? My God, he’s an ugly sod. I wun’t like to meet him comin’ up our entry of a dark night. He meks Boris Karloff look like Ronald Colman.’
Henzey laughed. ‘I’d have to do it from a photo anyway, Florrie. I wouldn’t have time to go to their house or anything.’
‘Yo’ ain’t done no pictures for a while, have yer?’ she said conversationally.
‘I suppose not. Hardly any since I’ve been married. It’s having the time.’
‘Yo’ll be gettin’ rusty.’
‘I daresay I’m rusty already.’
‘Well, with Will workin’ nights it’ll gi’ yer the chance to do some more, eh? Was he still in his department?’
‘No, he left about ten to nine, Sidney Joel said.’
‘An’ how was he?
Henzey grinned impishly. ‘He’d been on the lavatory half the night.’
‘Poor soul. Oliver had a bout o’ that a wik or two agoo…’
While Florrie soliloquised on the extraordinary bowel movements of her fiancé, Henzey drifted off again into her current preoccupation. Because of Molly Parkes’s wish for her to draw Mr Parkes, she was reminded of the drawing she’d done of Will from a photograph; the drawing that had brought them together. She could recall the first attempt that she felt was not quite right; the drawing that failed to capture his openness. It was finished, but she had not been satisfied with it. She remembered each pencil stroke she made in building up the eyes of the second one, and relived their construction as they seemed to speak to her from the textured drawing paper. There was no other feature in her mind’s eye; only Will’s eyes, searching, uncannily revealing the suffering he’d endured at the loss of his wife and child. Just the eyes; sad, soulful; but at the same time conveying a burning inner fire, strangely subdued yet bursting to come to the surface.
And then, for no reason that she could comprehend, she knew she was also seeing Neville Worthington’s eyes. The same sad, soulful statement over the virtual loss of his wife but, in his case, through her infidelity rather than her death and, more latterly, through her muscular disease. And there was that same suppressed passion, anticipating release, like a hare expecting to be sprung from a trap. They were so similar they could be brothers.
They could be brothers!
That realisation jolted her violently.
Of course they could be brothers. Will had been adopted, as had Neville at about the same age. He did not know who his real parents were. He could feasibly be Neville’s missing twin, they were so alike. Of course! Why had she not considered the possibility before when all the time the evidence had been quite literally staring her in the face?
But she had to check somehow. How could she possibly prove this new perception without yet alerting him?
She thought she saw a way.
‘Florrie, I’m going.’ She put down the headlight she was assembling and reached for her basket as she got up from her chair. ‘I’ve got to go, Florrie. Tell the supervisor for me that something urgent’s cropped up.’
‘What is it, Henzey?’ Florrie queried with genuine alarm. ‘Is there summat I can do?’
Henzey touched Florrie’s arm in gratitude. ‘Thanks for the offer, but there’s something I’ve got to sort out. I’ll see you tomorrow.’
Henzey reached the dairy house about an hour later. Lizzie was in the kitchen preparing vegetables. When she saw Henzey she dried her hands on a towel and greeted her with a kiss.
‘I was just thinking about you, our Henzey. But I didn’t expect to see you. How come you’re here?’
‘I didn’t expect to see you either,’ Henzey replied, panting and hot from her run from the station. ‘But I had to come. Where are all my drawings, Mom?’
‘In your old bedroom, just where you left them. Why, what’s the matter?’
She darted out of the kitchen and ran upstairs. The bedroom that used to be hers had changed. Now Alice slept here, occasionally sharing her bed with Elizabeth, Herbert’s fiancée, when she stayed. Now it was littered with Alice’s things, arranged in Alice’s way. Henzey opened the wardrobe door and stooped down, parting the dense curtain of dresses and coats. A random pile of Alice’s shoes greeted her but, underneath them all, she could see a brown, paper parcel which she knew contained most of the drawings she’d ever done, bundled with pencils, pens and a set of watercolours. Purposefully she flung the shoes to one side and grabbed the parcel.
It was coated in dust which she blew away. She sat on the bed, put the parcel at her side and, when she’d opened it, began flipping through the pages of the several sketch books. It was a trip into her past and she lingered over those drawings and paintings that meant most to her. There were those early ones of her father, showing enormous promise; some pictures of her first boyfriends; of Herbert; of Alice; of Jack Harper. Another sketch book: drawings of Jesse in his wedding suit; of her mother; of Maxine. In another book were watercolours, some of Cromwell Street, some of Peel Street and the Tin Mission where she used to attend Sunday school, of The Sixcore and its overhanging trees, of St John’s church and its pretty lych gate, of the ruined limestone castle that dominated the town. There were views across the fields from Hill Street where her father’s allotment used to be, drawings of the old sandstone church in Kinver where she and Billy Witts had sheltered from the rain. Each reminded her of something dear to her. But where was the drawing she was seeking?
She opened another pad. Portraits, countless portraits of Billy Witts and his artful eyes. She lingered over him, recalling the good times they’d had, remembering with a shudder how he’d broken her heart. How was he now, she wondered? Was he happy? Did he ever think of her? Did he ever wish he’d married her instead of that snooty Nellie Dewsbury? That she still felt resentment towards Nellie Dewsbury came as a surprise. More of a surprise, however, was that she felt at liberty to allow herself to wallow in memories of Billy Witts.
What is it about men like him that make them what they are, she pondered? Why do they lead you to believe they are so ardently in love with you when all the time they are so callous and so ruthless? Why can’t they be like women? Women are steadfast, loyal, sentimental, gentle creatures – well, some of them…Men are only interested in one thing. Always they are headed for the bottom line. Whatever they sincerely tell you, whatever they earnestly promise, their prime motivation is to get into your underwear. However they go about it, whether by wining you and dining you, by turning your head with sweet words of love, by astounding wit, or by expensive gifts, the aim is always the same: seduction; to get between your legs. And once they’ve been there, they know you are hooked; because that’s how women are; because they know a woman feels commitment to a man once she’s given herself. Maybe women should be more like men after all; maybe they should kiss and run; maybe they should run a mile in the opposite direction, as fast as they can go.
She thumbed through another book. Faces from Lucas’s. She flipped each page over carefully and saw girls from her department, one or two from goodness knows where because she’d since forgotten…At last, she found it: the drawing of Will Parish. The first she’d done of him from those photographs the girls in his department had given her. It was the drawing she didn’t think she’d got quite right. She looked at it intently. It was good enough for what she had in mind. The second one, the perfect one, was in its frame of course, hanging over the fireplace in their front room in Daisy Road, a keepsake of the time they met. She could hardly use that for her purpose without prompting Will to ask seriously unwelcome questions.
Her heart was beating fast and she felt hot. What she was about to do was likely to settle something one way or the other, but she did not dare to contemplate some of the implications yet. One step at a time; it might still prove nothing. She took the softest pencil and, clutching it tightly, her hand hovered over the drawing for a few seconds for want of the courage to make any mark. She urged herself on. Do it, go on, do it.
She drew a fluid line in a shallow arc from the top of his right cheek to well below his chin. Then another, and another. The same on the other side of his face, from the upper cheek to under his chin. Then she began filling it with more lines, wavy, from top to bottom; then heavy shading. She looked at the whole and her heart was hammering inside her breast. Before long she had drawn a thick, bushy beard on the face, just like Neville Worthington’s. Now the moustache to flow into the beard.
All this facial hair emphasised the forehead, the cheekbones, but particularly the eyes. Just a finishing touch now: thicken the hair, draw some sprouting from the back of his neck and over his collar.
There.
It was him, as she had feared. It was the image of Neville Worthington.
There could be no doubt. There could be no doubt at all. Will was Neville Worthington’s missing twin brother. They were a match. This drawing proved it.
She sighed profoundly, put the drawing and the pencil down and ran her hands through her hair, deep in thought. She had made this connection, but what did it mean? What could it mean? Consider carefully now. Could it mean that Neville knew all along that Will was his brother? Had he recognised Will as his brother when he met him at work? He could have done so as soon as he saw him. Will would have found it virtually impossible to do the same, not knowing the existence of a twin; and especially if Neville’s features were hidden behind a beard.
It struck her then, that just as she had added a beard to this drawing, so Neville could just as easily shave his off. Maybe he had done so already. If so, it could well have been Neville Worthington that Sidney Joel had seen in The Reservoir public house. Which in turn could mean that Neville might have been impersonating Will, rather than Will pretending to be somebody else, as Sidney had suggested.
At this possibility she felt her temperature rise and her heart pound. How many other times might he have impersonated Will? Could it possibly have been Neville who came to the house that night, claiming to have lost his key? No. Of course not. She would have seen some difference in their likeness, even though the light was poor. Neville could not fool her. She knew her own husband well enough to spot even the most subtle differences; and there must be some differences. No two people were that much alike. In any case they spoke quite differently.
But what if…? What if they were so alike that even she could not tell the difference? What if it had been Neville?
Impossible.
…The shirt!
The shirt was different; Will had worn a blue one all the time, not a white one. The dirty laundry in the linen basket bore testimony to that.
In horror, she buried her head in her hands, and the altered drawing slid to the floor. If it had be
en Neville – if he had actually fooled even her with an impersonation of Will that night – it might just as feasibly have been Neville that visited her last night while Will was at work. It might just as feasibly have been Neville that made love to her last night with more passion and commitment than she had ever known…from Will. If that were so…and if she were pregnant as a result…
She did not know how long her mother had been standing at her side. She scarcely had the courage to think about what had almost certainly happened, and the possible consequences. All she could think of was an urgent, compulsive need to be home. She wanted to be alone in her bedroom with the door locked, the sheets and blankets over her head, hidden from the world. She wanted to cry; she wanted to die.
‘Whatever’s the matter, our Henzey? You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.’
A shaft of sunlight, diffused by the net curtains at the window, illuminated the oilcloth on the floor and warmed Henzey’s ankles. It was like a trigger to get a grip on herself. Quickly she collected all her loose drawings and shuffled them together into a pile, then re-wrapped them in the brown paper.
‘Oh, it’s nothing, Mom,’ she answered, sorry for the need to lie. ‘I just wanted to have a look at these drawings of Will.’
‘Oh. Are you doing another one of him then?’
‘No,’ she said. The drawing left on the floor was facing up for Lizzie to see. ‘I wanted to see what he’d look like with a beard…I, er…and I wanted to check on how I’d done something.’
‘Why don’t you take them with you? Alice could do with the extra space in her wardrobe.’
‘I’d rather leave them here, if that’s all right. I’ll take my pencils and paints, though. I daresay I’ll find them useful.’
Henzey took the tram back to Ladywood. It seemed the simplest way. She did not know the times of the afternoon trains and, besides, she was too preoccupied with her thoughts to make sense of any timetables. As the tram rumbled and clanked through Tividale, Oldbury and Smethwick, she was unaware of her changing surroundings. All she could think about was that Will had to be Neville’s twin brother. Now she had considered it, they not only had the same eyes, they had the same nose, the same forehead. Physically they were identical, too; the same height exactly, the same colouring. A matching pair. Both had come from humble beginnings. Will had been the one fostered by the poor Methodist family Clara had told her about. Even that connection had eluded her before.
