“That’s exactly what she’s like,” she said quickly. “A kind of—stray person. Almost as if she doesn’t really belong.”
“She looked perfectly ordinary to me,” I said. “What did you talk about?”
“Oh . . . this and that.”
“Babies, I expect.”
“No.” She shook her head. “She didn’t seem interested in babies—or any talk of them . . . And yet it appears she’s had a number of children . . .”
“More than us?”
“So it seems. And I’ll bet she can’t be more than in her late twenties.” She broke off to call out to the children not to go too far away, then turned back to me. “She never mentioned her husband. And going by what little she told me, I gathered that none of her children lives with her.”
“You might have got it all wrong,” I said. “Perhaps they’ve all been adopted or something.”
She nodded. “Yes, perhaps. Still, there was something about her.”
The fire had caught now, the flames crackling, devouring the twigs. Through the smoke I looked up across the lake. The girl was still sitting there. I turned my attention away from her, back to the fire, feeding it with the dead wood the children had collected. Kate had put Matthew back in his pram, and now she unpacked the picnic bags—we didn’t go in for hampers. She paused in the act of unwrapping the food and straightened up.
“Yes,” she said softly, “that’s what was particularly weird—the way she held Matthew.”
I looked over to where his pram stood in the shade of the leaves. “What do you mean?” I asked. But before she could answer, Davie’s voice came ringing out as he bounded, chanting, across the grass towards us, Lucy and Sam following behind and taking up his cry:
“Sausages! Sausages! Who wants sausages!”
And then it was time to eat.
A long time after, when all the food was gone, when the thermoses and the pop bottles were empty and all the games had been played, we packed up to go. At a leisurely pace we moved back around the lake, Sam and Davie on either side of me while Kate and Lucy came close behind with the pram. Lucy, taking the idea from Kate, had picked more flowers, and now the hair of both of them was bedecked with the yellow rockroses, moon daisies and clover.
“I’ll tell you what, Daddy . . .” This was Sam, tugging at my left hand, eager to whisper.
I stooped. “Tell me.”
“You could be Cyril.”
“Who’s Cyril?”
“Cyril’s the horse. In his book.” Davie spoke as if I were a fool not to have known.
I nodded. It was good to know these things. “And what would I have to do?”
“I could ride you to the shop. And we could have ice-cream.” Sam again.
“Does Cyril eat ice-cream?”
“I don’t know. Big Man does.”
“You’re Big Man, I suppose.”
“Yes.”
I hoisted him onto my shoulders as before and he gently prodded me with imaginary spurs while I gripped his ankles.
“Off we go!” he shouted, and we galloped off.
As we ran past the tree-trunk I saw that the young woman had gone. Then, too, she was gone from my thoughts, and Sam and I emerged onto the road where I slowed to a dignified walk.
When Kate, Lucy and Davie caught us up we were standing outside the corner shop eating strawberry and vanilla ice-cream. I went back into the shop and bought more.
“You shouldn’t,” Kate admonished as I handed her a large cone. She watched for a moment as Lucy ran a pink tongue over the deeper pink of a raspberry ice. “They won’t want their supper.”
“It’s not every day.”
Kate nodded. “You’ve got an answer for everything.”
We continued on our way homeward. Sam was on my shoulders again, flagging a little, I knew, after his long day. His hands gripped my hair (“Not too tight there.”) while I held tight to his left ankle. Lucy walked at my side and put a small moist hand into my large protective one. I looked down at the crown of her head, onto her straight chestnut hair trimmed with flowers, and as if obeying some secret sign she lifted her chin and gave me a bright smile, her brown eyes shining. I grinned back, winked.
“Tired, chicken?”
“No, not a bit!” She gave a hop, a skip and a jump to prove her point, and a moon daisy flopped, dangled, and fell onto the pavement. She retrieved it and stuck it back behind her ear. “I could stay up forever! And I will want my supper!”
As I tucked the sheet up under her chin a couple of hours later she was sound asleep. I thought of her defiant cry and, stooping, lightly kissed her. She stirred for a moment, her mouth tightening from its sleeping slackness, then relaxed again, all softness and vulnerability. I brushed a wisp of hair back from her forehead and murmured into her ear, “Goodnight, chicken licken.” For a second I wanted her awake again, resenting, just briefly, her unawareness of my caring. Too soon, I thought, she, like the boys after her, must grow up and grow away from me.
In the next bed Sam sucked his thumb as he slept. And so what? I said to myself. His hair was like Lucy’s—straight as a yard of pump water, thick, rich in colour, coarse textured like my own. Beside him, head burrowing into the pillow, Davie lay, hair a shade lighter, and of a finer texture—more like Kate’s. On his bedside table was a little mound of stones he had collected. The room was full of his trophies—his maps, the pheasant’s feather above the bed. Davie, our incipient naturalist, explorer, botanist, philosopher—you name it. “If you knew the dreams I’ve got for you,” I murmured. I felt sentimental, and so aware of the reality of my happiness.
I sat down on the foot of the bed, looking at the boys’ smooth, sunflushed, untroubled faces. There was such a sense of peace there: I must hang on to it while it lasted—as it must surely change—nothing stayed the same . . . Behind me I heard the sound of Kate’s soft footsteps as she approached from the doorway. Her hand touched my neck, cool, familiar.
“You really are a hopeless individual.” Her voice was low in the quiet.
“Really?”
“Really. It’s a damn good job I’m here. They’d be spoilt rotten left to you.”
“You’re probably right.”
“I know I’m right . . . And you’re quite unashamed.”
“Quite unashamed.” I paused. “But I don’t care.”
“Good,” she said. “I don’t either.” She stood looking at me for a few seconds, her face shadowy in the dim light. “What were you doing up here so long?”
I shrugged.
“Counting your blessings?” I could just see her smile.
“Something like that,” I said. I stood up and put my arms around her. Her hair still smelt of the flowers from the afternoon. It fell soft to her shoulders. I put my face to it, kissed her forehead. Sometimes I still couldn’t believe my luck. I felt the softness of her lips against the roughness of my seven o’clock shadow.
“Come on,” she whispered after a moment. “Your baby son is waiting downstairs. Waiting to be fed. And he won’t be patient much longer.”
I was reminded of the pregnant woman by the lake. I said: “What did you mean about that girl . . . ? Something to do with Matthew . . .”
She frowned, thinking back on the afternoon.
“I was rocking Matthew in my arms, and I suggested that she might like to hold him for a while . . .”
“And . . . ?”
“Yes, well, I could tell that she really didn’t want to. Not really. And when she was holding him she made me—nervous.”
“I don’t get you . . .”
“Well—I don’t know—she just held him as if she’d never held a baby before.”
“That can’t be,” I said, “not when she’s had several of her own.”
“It’s true,” she said quickly. “Can you remember the day when Lucy was born?—the first time you held her in your arms? You had no confidence at all. Well, she was just like you. So—uncertain. As if the act was quite foreig
n to her.”
From downstairs Matthew’s loud yell told us that his hunger was stronger than his patience. I grinned at Kate and she moved towards the landing, but still immersed in her thoughts of the other woman.
“Exactly as if she’d never held a baby before,” she murmured. “She didn’t know how to hold him.”
TWO
On Monday, feeling refreshed after my break, I went back to my pictures.
Along with the house, my father had left me a fairly large cottage, and it was there where I worked at my book illustrations. My studio—we always referred to it as “the loft”—occupied the first floor; the ground floor I had converted into a flat and let to a pleasant, elderly couple from London who had come to escape the stairs, hassle and the noise of their city home.
From my windows in the south wall I looked out over the Somerset hills. The other side gave me a view of quiet streets. It was ideal, and situated on the other side of the village from our house, the short mile between the two places gave me the perfect sense of separation of home and work.
I had not always worked in the loft. Before my marriage, and for some time after, I had worked in the house. But as our family grew in size it became more and more apparent that I must find another spot in which to earn our daily bread. Not only because of the growing shortage of space, but also because of the constant, minor interruptions from the children which made concentration increasingly difficult. Sam’s arrival clinched it, and when my young school-teacher tenant left the cottage for foreign parts it was the natural choice.
Now I had a quiet place, a place where I could be undisturbed and where, when my working day was over, I could leave everything behind me until the next day.
Also, before, in the house, the lines where work ended and leisure began had become diffused. I could find myself tempted to leave my drawing-board and join Kate or one of the children in their own pursuits. Then come the end of the day, I would berate myself for the unproductive hours. Or, as easily, I might slip into my work-room during the evening—“just for a few minutes”—and realise later that I had been there for hours . . .
It was easier now. I started at a set time, and usually finished at a set time. Office hours, almost, except that my work was more interesting and absorbing than I could ever imagine any office work to be.
At the moment I was working on a rather luxurious new edition of The Arabian Nights. It was an interesting assignment and I worked steadily—with a short break for lunch—throughout the day. I was absorbed, totally, in the task before me and was barely aware of the stream of talk and music spewed out by the radio on the shelf above my head. Although I could not tolerate the disturbing sounds imposed on me by other people’s radios and other people’s chatter I found it easy to work with the sounds of my own choosing, and over which I had complete control—in this case the on/off switch. Sometimes, when I tired of the radio I would play records, putting perhaps the discs of a complete opera on the auto-changer. How much I heard of it would ultimately depend on how engrossed I was in a particular job.
Today I was. During the afternoon I played all of Lucia Di Lammermoor and didn’t register a single top C.
When, eventually, I looked at my watch I saw with surprise that it was almost six. I had worked way past my usual time. I washed my brushes, put the caps back on the tubes and jars of paint, covered up my unfinished picture and locked the door behind me. Enough was enough for one day.
I reckoned that I must know just about everybody who lived in the village, and as I walked home along the narrow pavements I delighted in the friendly nods and smiles that greeted me from the passers-by. I was aware—viewing it objectively—that I was well-liked, and it gave me a feeling of warm contentment, a sense of belonging. I did belong. I had been born there, and I had grown up there, and every house, every wall, every tree was as familiar to me as the faces of Kate and the children.
Each dwelling I passed I could identify with particular individuals, and I pictured them there behind the screening walls going about their lives: I could almost hear the newspapers rustling, see the meals being prepared, smell the food. Little Haverstraw was a part of me, and I was part of it. I couldn’t envisage living anywhere else.
Reaching the end of the main road I turned off up a narrower way into the lane that led to our own house, the grey stone of its walls rising up on the brow of the little hill. This was the view I knew best—as I approached it from the lane—and I loved the look of it through all the seasons. Now I saw in patterned gaps—formed by the vivid green of the hazel and beech trees—the flash of the sun reflecting on the windows, blotting out for a moment the rust-coloured curtains that Kate had hung there.
It was not such a large house. But it was big enough for Kate and me and our growing brood. Standing secluded in its own acre of ground, its situation marked the northernmost point of the village. Our nearest town was some ten or so miles away. For many people, I knew, our lives there, away from the main stream, must appear cut off and insulated. Okay. For me it was fine. It had suited me for all my thirty-seven-odd years and I had no doubt it would continue to do so.
I had brought Kate—a city girl—to the village with certain misgivings after our marriage, concerned lest she would find the pace of life too slow after London, the peace and quiet too much for her city-tuned ears. I need not have worried. She adapted so quickly to country life and never showed any yearning for the more sophisticated existence she had known before. And she was liked by the villagers too—after the first few wary weeks during which they had eyed her, and listened to her London accent with the suspicion they afforded all strangers. But their wariness hadn’t lasted long, and in no time at all she had come to be regarded as one of them. As testimony to their affection they took us completely by surprise and clubbed-together to buy for her—on the occasion of Lucy’s birth—a beautiful porcelain madonna that she had seen and coveted in a nearby antique shop. She was absolutely overwhelmed by the gesture, and I loved them for it.
Yes, she was happy, and when I did sometimes ask whether she missed her life in London she would treat my question as if it were the height of absurdity: “Sometimes I despair of you.”
Now, turning the bend in the lane with the house full in view, Sam came running from the gravel drive and launched himself at me, throwing his arms around my neck.
“The lady’s in there!”
“What lady?”
“The lady. You know. That lady.”
When we entered the house a minute later I saw that “that lady” was the girl from the lakeside.
“She’s been here for ages.”
Kate whispered the words to me as I stood in the kitchen pouring an orange squash for our visitor. “No alcohol for me—not in my condition,” the girl had said in answer to my offer of a drink. I added American ginger to Kate’s scotch and stirred the ice a couple of times. Behind us at the kitchen table the children sat finishing their supper. Soon it would be time for them to be washed and put to bed.
“What’s she here for?” I asked.
“God knows. She just turned up on the doorstep. Said someone in the village showed her the way.”
On my arrival half-an-hour before I had found the young woman sitting, apparently quite at ease, on the sofa before the empty, open fireplace. One might have supposed that seeing me return from a hard day’s work she would consider it the right time to make her departure. Not so. She merely smiled, raising her arm for the brief contact of a handshake:—“Hello, I’m Jane”—then settled comfortably back again. I had not minded; I thought that her presence there might make a welcome change for Kate—we had few visitors.
The girl appeared even younger than in my memory of her. I didn’t think she could be more than twenty-six. She had a relaxed, carefree air about her, an unruffleable quality, an air of acceptance of things that made me feel she could be an easy person to know. And yet somehow these very qualities seemed in a way at variance with the youthfulness of her appear
ance. For a moment I wondered on Kate’s earlier comment—that there was something odd about her . . .
I picked up the drinks tray and asked Kate what we should do.
“I don’t know,” she said. “What can we do? Can’t very well ask her to go.” She sighed. “I’ve got the children to see to . . .”
I nodded. “I suppose we’ll have to ask her to stay for dinner.”
“I suppose so. We’ve got to eat sometime. And you must be starving.”
“To put it mildly.”
“Well—” Kate shrugged. “We’ll manage somehow.” Though I could see she wasn’t happy about it. She indicated the tray in my hands. “You’d better take that in. We can’t stay out here too long. I’ll be in in a moment.” Then she turned and gave her attention to Sam who was asking for more pudding.
The girl accepted happily our casual invitation to stay on for “whatever we are having,” and sat sipping her orange squash with as much ease as if she lived there.
Later, with the children safely in bed and Matthew settled until the time of his next feed, Kate went back into the kitchen to finish preparing dinner, leaving me and the girl alone. I sat across from her in my easy chair, sipping at my second scotch, the smoke from my cigarette drifting up between us. She had refused a cigarette with the same reason she had given for her refusal of any alcohol. I didn’t press her: I admired her willpower.
As the occasional chink of metal and china came from the kitchen—Kate going about her work—the girl asked me about our life in Little Haverstraw and about my occupation there. And I found myself warming to her—perhaps I was flattered by her interest—but she was a good listener and obviously intelligent. She was beautiful too, in a rather wild, undisciplined way. Her blue, blue eyes were steady on my face as I talked and her wide, warm smile made it easy to continue.
When I had finished my cigarette I set the table at the other end of the room. Then the three of us sat down before our plates and Kate served the casserole to which she had added a few more hastily-prepared vegetables.
Over the meal the talk was mostly of generalities and things that affected Kate, me and the family, though I could tell that Kate was trying, in a subtle way, to elicit from the girl some more information about herself. It was only later that I came to realise how unsuccessful she was. By the time the coffee was poured we knew little more about her than we had at the beginning of the evening. We already knew she had had a number of children, but how many, and where they were or what had happened to them we weren’t to learn. Neither did she give a hint as to any lover or husband hovering in the background. Whenever she did impart some item relating to her life it was never specific, and any line of conversation that threatened to invade her privacy was deftly dodged and steered back in our direction so that we would find ourselves once again talking of our own lives. The few facts—if you could call them facts—that we did manage to glean only served to make her more of a mystery.
The Godsend Page 2
