Full Circle

by Connie Monk

  As Louisa carried the bucket and floor mop out to the washroom and the nurse took off her apron and rolled it away in her workbag, they heard the tread of Leo carrying the baby up the stairs. Secretly Nurse Wilkins considered him a rum sort of father – a rum sort of husband, too, for he had made no attempt to see his poor wife lying there on that hard floor. Well, if he was no use with the struggles of childbirth he was better out of the way, but he could at least have made pretence of wanting to share those first moments with the poor girl.

  And Louisa? She imagined him carrying his bundle into the spare room and laying it on the blanket she had folded in the wooden drawer. She felt confused, excited and frightened; and yet there was no logic in the nameless emotion. It must be because the day had been like no other. She made herself think of Bella, brave, strong-minded and yet, surely, this night should have held something that Louisa was sure was missing for her.

  Bella didn’t stir when Leo came into the room; exhaustion and relief were taking their toll. He felt a moment’s shame that he was thankful she didn’t stir before he dumped his bundle in the makeshift crib, his mind elsewhere, meaning to creep away quietly.

  What happened next was outside his control and took him by surprise.

  Four

  It wasn’t to the sleeping figure in the bed that Leo turned, but to the baby. If he had laid her down gently she probably wouldn’t have stirred. Nurse Wilkins had pushed the bundle into his arms and, having delivered her to the makeshift bed, he started to move away, his mission accomplished. But something pulled him back and made him bend over the tiny form. From her shoulders downward she was tightly wrapped, only her face visible. Rarely, if ever, had he felt such a rush of tenderness as he did for the tiny creature. His daughter, his flesh and blood, so small and vulnerable, dependent on him to love and care for her. Very tenderly he moved his finger down her cheek, silently mouthing the word, ‘Alicia’. She opened her eyes, seeming to gaze up at him even though, in reality, at no more than a few hours old she hadn’t even learnt to focus. As he watched her his vision misted, not with tears that would escape for the world to see, but something he shared just with her. Only a minute before, he had dumped her unceremoniously in the drawer; now he picked her up tenderly and held her so that he could reach to lay his face against hers. Instinct told her to nuzzle against him, to open her mouth.

  ‘What, not got her in that bed yet?’ In a stage whisper the nurse’s voice cut across his emotions, leaving him feeling exposed. ‘Goodness me, this won’t do. Now, don’t you wake your poor wife. After what she’s been through today she needs a good sleep. Nature will make her ready for you by morning. Now, give me this bundle. Come along, my pretty, into bed you go.’

  Like an obedient child, Leo handed the bundle over. ‘I’ll wait for you downstairs and run you home as soon as you’re ready.’

  And so the day of Alicia’s birth came to a close. The day had been orchestrated by a storm that would find the locals talking about it the next day and remembering it long after; but by late evening the air was clear and the clouds had rolled away leaving a cloudless, starry sky. The only evidence of what had gone before was a few old and brittle branches in the lanes and one tree uprooted and fallen across the road on the far side of the village. With the coming of evening all was calm. Nature had sent a reminder of its power and a reassurance that after the storm calm would always follow.

  Despite Bella’s ethereal beauty there was a quality of true grit about her. The morning after Alicia’s birth, when Leo drove to fetch her home to the farm, she refused his offer to carry her to the car, holding up the nightdress and dressing gown she had borrowed so that the hem wouldn’t get dirty from the muddy pathway as she led the procession to the parked vehicle.

  ‘The nurse is coming to Ridgeway to see Alice and me – no, it’s not going to be Alice. Leo likes Alicia. Pretty, isn’t it? She said I must stay in bed until either she or the doctor tells me I can get dressed. But think how silly that is. I want to be getting on with living, especially now that the baby is here to be introduced to the world.’

  She looked from Leo to Louisa, trying to influence them into agreeing with her.

  ‘I don’t know anything about babies,’ Louisa said, unable to crush a feeling of relief that for a few days her life would be her own again. Her views on Bella may have changed through the weeks and no longer did she find her chatter empty, but even so, she had always been a loner and the promise of time on her own appealed to her. Then she imagined the fear Bella had been determined to fight the previous day as she had struggled to give birth to the baby Leo carried with tenderness, and felt mean and unfair.

  Leo remained silent. Still cradling the baby, he opened the door on the passenger side and, once Bella was seated, passed the bundle into her arms. Bella had eyes for nothing and no one except the day-old miracle.

  ‘I can’t thank you enough for what you did yesterday,’ Leo said as he made sure the door was safely closed, ‘and for keeping them overnight.’

  ‘I’ve never experienced anything so humbling. Bella is a remarkable girl.’ Then, before he had a chance to enlarge on what she’d said: ‘Don’t hang around. She ought to be home and in bed – that was the nurse’s instruction.’

  ‘Ah,’ he answered, raising his eyebrows and with that mischievous twinkle in his eyes. ‘The good nurse – she who shall be obeyed.’

  Despite all her good intentions not to let his mood influence her, Louisa laughed.

  ‘Certainly she deserves nothing less. What she must have thought when she arrived to find her patient bedded down on the kitchen floor I can’t imagine. But she took it in her stride. Don’t hang around here talking, Bella ought to be home and resting. Off you go.’ She dismissed him before opening the passenger door a couple of inches and saying to Bella, who was gazing at the baby as though she couldn’t believe there could be a miracle so beautiful, ‘In a day or two I’ll walk up and see you, if I may, Bella.’

  A minute later the car was making its way up the track to the farmhouse and Louisa collected her weeding tools. After yesterday’s storm even the deeply rooted dandelions ought to give themselves up. Satisfied that the action was over, Gladys Holmes, from the end of the three terraced cottages opposite, moved away from the window. ‘Like looking back in time,’ she muttered to herself. ‘Just like his father, that one. And as for the Harding woman, spitting image of her aunt, she is. Well, we shall see. It wouldn’t surprise me if—’ But even to herself she didn’t finish the sentence. Good, plodding Alice was a far cry from that pretty child Leo’s burnt his hands on … and serves him right. He’d always been a rascal and that was his affair, but little Bella was nought but a child and deserved better than she’d ever find with a ne’er-do-well like Leo Carter.

  If she could have looked into the confusion of Louisa’s thoughts as she stabbed and yanked at the weeds it would have done nothing to set her mind at rest. For Louisa was angry with herself. There was an arrogant self-assurance in Leo’s manner that annoyed her. That was what she tried to make herself believe, but the truth was not so straightforward. Yes, she disliked that, but even more she felt uncomfortably suspicious that he was laughing at her, seeing her as a humourless spinster who tried to keep up with his natural and good-natured flow of lightweight chatter. He was just the sort of man she most disliked, but he was Bella’s adored husband and for that reason she must make herself polite to him – coolly polite.

  It was mid-morning the next day when there was a knock at her front door.

  ‘Damn,’ she muttered, getting up from her worktable and marking how far she had added the sales figures from the ledger of an old-fashioned bespoke tailor’s establishment where she was preparing his forms for income tax. Closing the workroom door behind her she hurried across the hall to see who could possibly be calling on her.

  ‘The top of the morning to you,’ Leo greeted her. ‘I set off for a walk and then I saw your gate ajar and was tempted in.’

  ‘I t
hought you were supposed to be working from home. Surely you haven’t taken a day off already?’

  ‘Indeed I have not. If there is thinking to be done, then where better than walking the country lanes?’ The smile on his face was reflected in his tone of voice as he added, ‘My mind turned to my previous visits here and I sensed I could smell coffee brewing. Would I be right, or was it wishful thinking?’

  She seemed powerless to refuse him, or even to stop her face from breaking into a smile. He was indolent; he played at work because he felt safe in the family business while his elder brother shouldered the responsibility. He didn’t appear to take even his marriage or parenthood seriously. He saw life as a game. These were some of the things she was telling herself as she led the way to the kitchen. He was the sort of man for whom she had neither time nor respect. So why did she fill the globe-shaped bowl of the coffee maker with water?

  ‘We need the coffee beans ground. The grinder is—’

  ‘I know where the coffee grinder is. It’s just inside the larder door. Oh, but I say, you’ve got rid of the old one. This is very state of the art.’

  ‘It still needs all your elbow grease, so if you want coffee you have to earn it.’

  He spooned the beans into the funnel and started to turn the handle.

  ‘This is nice. You don’t exactly welcome me with open arms and yet I feel so at home here.’

  ‘If you’ve been used to coming here most of your life you are hardly likely to feel a stranger.’ Perhaps that sounded more welcoming than she intended, so she added, ‘I look on Bella as a friend so naturally I wouldn’t turn her husband away.’

  ‘That’s my girl. The beans are ready; shall I put all of them in the top of the machine?’

  ‘Yes. I measured them out before you ground them. They won’t take long. I usually let the water boil up twice.’

  ‘A lady after my own heart; there’s nothing worse than a feeble cup of coffee. Ciggy?’

  ‘Let’s wait until we take the coffee outside. It’s too good a morning to waste indoors.’

  ‘Wasn’t that what you were doing when I interrupted your labours? I seem to remember hearing your workroom door shut before you bid me enter.’

  What was there about him that gave her this feeling that he was laughing at her – at her, not with her? ‘That’s different,’ she snapped, ‘I wasn’t wasting my time, I was working. Just as I shall be again when we have had our coffee and you’ve gone on your way. Do you take sugar? I can’t remember.’ In fact, she could remember perfectly well that he wanted neither milk nor sugar. ‘No? Then we won’t bother to take it out with us.’ To her own ears she sounded crabby, unwelcoming. But he appeared to be completely unaware of it, which did nothing to improve her humour.

  A few minutes later it was impossible not to relax outside in the warm sunshine, sipping strong black coffee and inhaling the vaguely scented smoke from the cigarette he had passed her.

  ‘I’ve never smoked these before,’ she said, looking at the cigarette she held between her fingers, ‘the oval shape makes it feel odd to hold.’

  ‘You don’t like them? Passing Cloud. I bought my first packet when I was still at school and felt frightfully sophisticated.’ He laughed, remembering. ‘I considered them more glamorous than the ordinary ones Dad smoked.’

  ‘And are you still striving to give the impression of sophistication?’ She made sure her tone held a note of mockery, even though as happened so often with him, she was interested in his answer.

  ‘No. That sort of thing dies with adolescence. It’s all part of growing up. You must have found that yourself.’

  ‘I honestly don’t think I gave it any thought. I only had one goal and that was – still is, for that matter – to be as well qualified as my male peers and, if I’m truthful, to overtake them.’

  He was looking at her thoughtfully, trying to imagine this groomed and confident woman being young and gauche.

  ‘Now, there’s a wasted youth for you! I shall never believe you had nothing more exciting to dream about than other people’s finances.’

  She frowned, annoyed with herself that she had led the conversation into a trap.

  ‘To be honest,’ she answered, speaking the truth, ‘I wasn’t interested in a client’s finances except that my work involved the figures and I was, I am, vitally interested in accuracy. Right is right and there is no other way.’

  For once he studied her seriously. ‘You are a remarkable woman, Louisa Harding. I understand what you mean. I knew it without your having to spell it out to me. Just to look at you: not a hair would dare to escape out of place, as immaculate at home on your own as you would be in town with a client.’ The brief moment of seriousness had been overtaken by the merriment that danced in his eyes.

  She was annoyed. Was being fastidious in her appearance something to turn her into a figure of fun?

  ‘And you?’ she retorted, none too politely. ‘Work may not be important to you but clearly you are pernickety about your appearance. So why should you expect me to be different?’

  ‘Don’t be cross,’ he smiled disarmingly, ‘you know I was pulling your leg.’ And again he had wrong-footed her, sending her confidence on a downward spiral.

  ‘How are your family, Bella and Alicia?’ she asked.

  Immediately his manner changed. There was warmth in his expression, and she felt she had intruded into happiness she had no right to see.

  ‘She is so beautiful,’ he said softly. ‘I’ve never felt so – so – I don’t know what it is. It’s not just love; it’s not as simple as that.’

  ‘Yes, she is truly beautiful. And, Leo, she must have been frightened to death but she was so brave, so incredibly brave.’

  ‘Bella? Yes, you said, and I’m sure she was. She’s a good lass. You know, I envy her. Nature gives her a claim on Alicia that I’m outside of. This morning I went into her room and she was holding Alicia. I was jealous. I’m ashamed to say it, but it’s the truth. The baby was at her breast, lying there in her arms and gazing up at her with a sort of unblinking stare. You could almost feel the bond binding them together and I was on the outside.’

  ‘But that’s imagination, Leo. The love Bella feels for Alicia is natural, but it won’t take anything from what she feels for you. If ever a young wife adores her husband, then it’s Bella.’

  He frowned, puzzled. ‘I didn’t mean that. Never mind. I can’t expect you to understand how I felt when I can’t even understand it myself. The night she was born, when I carried her up to the bed you’d made for her, it was the oddest, most overwhelming sensation I’ve ever known. A feeling so pure, so – so humbling.’

  ‘She’s a lucky little girl. I wonder whether all new fathers feel like that?’ She thought of her own father and felt sure they didn’t. In the last minute or two she believed Leo had let her see a side of his nature he usually kept hidden behind his banter. Later she would think about it or, perhaps more accurately, she would try to push it to the bottom of her mind. For she was certain his words hadn’t been spoken lightly and she knew instinctively he wasn’t a man to share his emotions easily. Then she conjured up the image of Bella holding the baby to her breast, Bella who adored him and deserved more from him than he gave. ‘It’s time I went back to my world of figures and you got walking and dreaming up some new agricultural masterpiece. Give my love to Bella and tell her I’ll look in tomorrow, if that’s OK.’

  ‘Yes, m’am, message received. If there’s to be no, “May I get you another cup?” I shall leave you to your labours.’ He stood up to leave and then hesitated. ‘Louisa, you didn’t mind me dropping in like this? I enjoy talking to you, you’re – oh, I don’t know – you’re sound. Is that crazy? It is meant as a compliment, I promise you.’

  ‘I’m not looking for compliments. If you want to call in, of course you may. But, if I’m up to my eyes in work you mustn’t mind if I send you packing.’

  His smile told her he was pleased with her answer.

 
As summer gave way to autumn they followed the rules: every few days he would stroll up the garden path and, on her instruction, rather than knock at the front door he would walk round to the back door and go straight into the kitchen. If she was busy, true to her word, she would ‘send him packing’. Otherwise, they would exchange views on things they’d read in the morning paper, often but not always seeing things from the same angle. Louisa’s life had been insular, but that wasn’t borne out in her interests. Like so many loners she read widely, was interested in the arts and loved music, even though she had never learnt to play an instrument. And to her surprise, fun-loving Leo was very similar, so there was never any shortage of topics for them to unravel and rebuild. Louisa found herself increasingly enjoying her time with him, but while she grew closer to Leo and, she was sure, he grew closer to her, she was mindful of the fact that he was Bella’s husband, and never considered his attentions as anything more than those of a friend.

  Bella was a natural homemaker and was in her element at Ridgeway Farm. If she needed advice she asked Eva Johnson, who enjoyed teaching ‘the pretty child who had stolen young Leo’s heart after all his years of philandering’. Eva had never had a daughter and her two sons had moved far away up north, so she liked to think of herself as taking the place of the mother poor Bella had lost so long ago. Altogether it was a happy situation and with every passing day Bella gained more respect for the way she filled her role. As for Harold, as his mind became more vacant he found a new contentment. To have Leo, always his favourite, actually living at home again made him feel secure. But more than that there was Bella with the baby, a new joy to fill his days.

  To be well groomed was second nature to Harold. Each morning when he arrived at the breakfast table he was shaved, his tie the correct shade to go with his shirt and a clean white handkerchief just protruding from the breast pocket of his jacket. Yet despite that, there was one morning in October when he wore one brown shoe and one black. When Leo pointed it out to him he was mortified, especially as Bella was within earshot. What sort of an old fool would she think him? But Bella, with more consideration of other people’s feelings than her husband, gave no hint that she had been listening to what was said, purposely making a noise running water and clattering plates as she prepared to bring the dish of food to the table. The shoes were forgotten and Harold might have been left wearing odd ones all day but for the fact that as Leo went to get ready before setting out for a meeting with an old client she followed him upstairs.