The Wind Off the Sea

by Charlotte Bingham

  Even at this time of day there was still ice on the inside of her window panes. The short dark bitter days of cold, the endless nights when her mood seemed to be echoed by the winds that constantly moaned around the cottage, the shortages of every needful thing – everything conspired to make her wonder why she now faced not new life, but yet more death. Too miserable to cry and too cold to feel anything except misery she tried turning her thoughts to spring and summer; towards flowers and a warm sea running up the harbour full of brightly painted boats. But since all she could see were black leafless trees outlined against darkening skies, even the idea of warm spring weather and blue skies seemed like a hopeless fantasy, something that, like her dream of motherhood to come, would never now happen.

  You’ll have another one.

  To other people the baby was just a baby, whereas to her a baby was a person. You couldn’t replace people, so why did the cruel unthinking world believe you could replace a baby?

  You’ll have another one.

  If she heard that said one more time Rusty thought she might kill herself. Even the vicar, as he parted from her at the baby’s funeral service, pressing her hand and turning to go, had said the same.

  You’ll have another child, Mrs Sykes, I feel sure of it.

  Rusty had nearly shouted at him – so very nearly. She was so upset that she wanted to take hold of him and tell him – tell him that a lost baby wasn’t like a broken plate. You couldn’t just apply to the shop for another one with the same pattern. But she hadn’t. She had just looked at the ground and nodded silently, before moving away from the vicar as quickly as politeness would allow.

  Now propped up on her cold pillows in the growing darkness Rusty stared numbly at the ceiling, which seemed to be growing less like part of the room and more like the dark lowering sky outside, a firmament that was reaching down, it appeared, with every intention of eventually smothering her. Hot tears trickled down her half-frozen cheeks as she rocked herself to and fro, one of her pillows cradled in her arms while darkness fell around her, enclosing the world outside her window. She heard the sounds of her husband returning, but rather than talk to him she feigned sleep when he quietly pushed open the bedroom door to check on her, a mock sleep that soon became a real one as she drifted off, only to wake again shortly afterwards when her son was brought up to bed by his grandmother. With a deep sigh she turned on to her other side, thankful that yet another long meaningless day was nearly at its end.

  Pulling her bedclothes up high, almost over her head, she buried herself as deeply as she could, and found herself hoping against hope that perhaps there would be no tomorrow, or at least if there were she might not wake up to it. Much as she hated the dark, for once in her life she found herself hoping that this particular night would have no end, and day would never break; that no faint light would creep through the thin curtains, and for her there would never be another winter’s morning – no voices would murmur, no doors would open and shut, and there would be no sounds of people going about their business. That there would be no more life, in fact; no more seemingly endless bitter days or long drawn out freezing nights, no more pain, no more utter misery, no more anguish. At this moment in her young life, all Rusty wanted was for it to come to an end. Now.

  * * *

  Judy Tate was due to go and meet Meggie at Cucklington House, but a change in the weather had delayed her departure. To pass the time, she sat in the window of Owl Cottage watching the skies for a break in the snow with Hamish, her black Scottish terrier, sitting beside her on the window seat, seemingly as intrigued by the blizzard outside the diamond-shaped lead panes as his mistress.

  ‘I don’t think it’s ever going to stop, old boy, do you?’ Judy asked him, stubbing out the end of her cigarette. ‘Having been frozen stiff I now think we’re all going to be buried alive under a blanket of snow.’

  Hamish leaped to his feet and started to bark at a cat streaking across the snow in front of the sitting room window. Judy was brushing some ash off her tartan skirt, reluctantly giving in to the idea of having to cancel her lunch date, when she saw the sun coming out, lighting up the snow which had stopped as suddenly as it had begun, and at once changed her mind, eager to get out of the cottage that, because of the bitter weather, had of late become something of a prison.

  Five minutes later the sun was shining so brightly off the deep, crisp snow that when she opened the front door to step out she had to shade her eyes to look over the winter landscape. The beauty that greeted her raised her spirits immediately, but once outside she found it was still as bitterly cold as ever, a cold that burned into her lungs when she breathed it in, forcing her to wrap a thick red wool scarf around the lower part of her face. Holding Hamish’s lead tightly in one gloved hand, she made her way slowly and carefully, passing only a few other brave souls trying to go about their business, or keep appointments somewhere in Bexham. The trek took her twice as long as usual so it was with some relief that she finally arrived at Cucklington House, where in answer to her tug on the old iron bell rope to the side of the wood-panelled, black-painted front door Meggie Gore-Stewart arrived to greet her, wearing an old fur coat, a matching hat and sheepskin gloves.

  ‘No Richards?’ Judy wondered, looking around the hall and suddenly noticing some missing paintings. Judy knew better than to pass comment. She was aware that Meggie’s financial circumstances had become somewhat straitened since the war, what with overdue taxes and debts she had been obliged to pay off following the sudden death of both her parents, killed in a car accident in America the previous summer. The tragedy had left the already chaotic Gore-Stewart family affairs in a bigger mess than ever, forcing Meggie to try to raise the necessary funds from everything she had been previously bequeathed by her adored and adoring grandmother. Judging from the increasingly bare walls of Cucklington House, and the lack of any silver on the sideboard, the going was not likely to get any easier.

  Meggie pulled a comically over-tragic face as Judy rephrased her question about the missing butler, wondering if he too had been hocked?

  ‘Richards is upstairs in his sty,’ she sighed, narrowing her eyes and taking hold of Judy by one arm. ‘Determined to keep warm with the help of a bottle of nose paint. Come on – come through to the kitchen at once. I’ve found some sardines in the larder and some biscuits for the cheese in an old tin – and best news of all, the biscuits have no weevils. Imagine? Besides, it’s almost warm in there.’

  Following her friend’s example and keeping on her overcoat, Judy trod carefully down the dark flagstones into the large kitchen. The room was dominated by an old cream-coloured range to which they both immediately gravitated, as towards an open fire, putting their still gloved hands on its comfortingly warm exterior.

  ‘I’ve got some brandy – or would you rather a gin?’

  ‘Anything. Anything as long as it’s alcohol.’

  Meggie poured them both large brandies, and then, still in gloves, hats and coats, with even Hamish carefully pushing his backside against the stove to warm himself, they raised their glasses to each other in a toast.

  ‘To hell with rationing and the Labour government and God save all here.’

  Meggie sat down on one side of the old table, while Judy pulled up another chair to sit opposite her.

  ‘So Richards has taken to his bed, has he? What a bother. I suppose that means you have to do everything, and in this place that’s not funny. I remember even your grandmother said it was too big for her, and she had plenty of people to help her.’

  ‘And wasn’t Madame Gran a lucky devil, to say the least of it. Even so, Richards can stay there and rot for all I care, even if the dust gets thicker and the cobwebs heavier. When all’s said there’s no-one to see them but him and me – and he can’t see much through his eternal hangovers anyway.’

  ‘Have you thought of kicking him out of bed?’

  ‘No, but I have contemplated murdering him. Only the thought of ending up swinging on the end of a
rope is stopping me. I don’t think being driven mad by your grandmother’s lunatic old butler is enough to risk being topped. Funny really, him taking to his bed now that the war is finally over – I mean, it just doesn’t seem to be in character. He was so utterly resolute when the bombs were dropping, a rock upon whom we all leaned, day and blooming night, really he was.’

  ‘Perhaps he’s missing all the excitement?’ Judy wondered. ‘Lots of people are missing the war. That could be the trouble. Or he could be just plumb tuckered out?’

  ‘I know just how he feels,’ Meggie sighed, lighting up a cigarette. As she offered Judy one, she saw the look of surprise in her friend’s eyes. ‘Don’t say you don’t miss it, Judy? Since I’ve come back from America, I don’t know why, but I seem to miss it more and more. It’s as if, having been wholly alive, I am now half asleep.’

  ‘I suppose that now you come to mention it, I suppose I do – a bit,’ Judy said after a moment, surprising herself with her reply. ‘I hadn’t really thought about it before. War seemed so awful, and I just thought, well – peace is going to be—’

  ‘Course you do,’ Meggie interrupted as she topped up both their glasses. ‘God, after all that danger and excitement, everyone pulling together – life is so dull. Don’t you find it dull, and grey, Judy? Walter must, surely?’

  ‘In a way I’m just glad to be still alive, Megs. I think I could take any amount of so-called austerity in return for us all still being here. Particularly Walter. Seriously – don’t you feel the same?’

  ‘About Walter?’

  ‘Seriously.’ Judy laughed. ‘I know it’s all a bit grim right now, but isn’t that the rough with the smooth thing?’

  ‘I suppose.’ Meggie sighed. ‘It’s just not quite how one saw it all. Not quite what one was brought up to expect. Still, long as you’ve got a bit of whoopee water in the drink cupboard, and a few friends to chew the old cud with, I suppose one must not grum. Only bugbear I have personally speaking is fighting the old ennui, as the song has it.’ She tapped the ash off her cigarette into the ashtray in the middle of the kitchen table in front of them. ‘Although must say – after the States, life here has an altogether greyer hue. Not a morning goes by but I don’t wake up and find myself missing real coffee that tastes of coffee, and fresh bread rolls and curls of cold butter … how I wish I hadn’t said that.’

  ‘How I wish you hadn’t.’

  Judy sighed gloomily, the idea of real coffee and equally real rolls and butter filling her with inexpressible longing. She turned her thoughts away from such unimaginable luxuries, and sipped at her drink instead. At least that was real. Rather than think about the change that had obviously come over them all, she turned her mind to the present, to the shift in Meggie’s circumstances, to this new strange life her friend was being forced to lead, all alone in a large echoing house, trying to find the wherewithall to survive. To say that she was curious would be understating it.

  Having finally warmed up due to the heat from the stove as well as the brandy Meggie slipped her fur coat off her shoulders and draped it over her knees. As Judy followed suit, she laughed.

  ‘My God, we both look like Madame Gran when she was being driven about Bexham in the old Rolls.’

  They both laughed again, then fell to silence.

  ‘Are you all right, Megs?’ Judy enquired, reading a sudden dark expression on Meggie’s face.

  ‘Yes. Of course. Why shouldn’t I be?’

  ‘Nothing. You just suddenly – you suddenly looked a little sad, that’s all. Is it still your parents?’

  ‘Is what still my parents?’ Meggie asked tetchily. ‘You know I didn’t get on with them.’ She averted her eyes and lit another cigarette from the one she was just finishing.

  ‘You’ve never really talked about it. The accident, I mean.’ Judy shrugged. ‘I just wondered whether you wanted to talk about it.’

  ‘Nothing really to talk about, darling. Besides its being a bit of a bore. Having to scratch round to pay their dues. I mean they really were quite hopeless. Not just with me – with money. With their affairs. I don’t think it’s quite fair, actually. Leaving such a terrible mess behind one. For someone else to clear up. I don’t consider that to be quite the thing. So there you are – that’s it. That’s how all right I am. I’m fine, darling. Just a mite miffed.’

  ‘Are you having to – are you having any difficulty?’ Judy corrected herself. ‘Getting the necessary, I mean.’

  ‘You’re wondering about the missing paintings?’ Meggie flashed a sudden smile, much to Judy’s relief. ‘It’s all right, I haven’t flogged them – yet – although dare say I’ll have to surrender them sooner or later. At the moment they’re only up in London being cleaned – just in case. Anyway, this is boring. I hate talking about money, et cetera. Much more interesting – how’s it feel to have a husband again?’

  Judy went to say something, and then stopped.

  ‘It feels strange,’ she said, finally and reluctantly. ‘I don’t know why, and I never thought to say it, but having Walter back after six years, after thinking he was dead – it’s a bit odd actually.’

  Meggie nodded, as if she hadn’t paid much attention to this admission.

  ‘Does Walter talk about his war much, or is he how they were when they came back from the last war? A lot of them wouldn’t talk about it, you know. Not a word. According to my grandmother. It was as if four years in the Flanders mud had never happened. Is Walter a bit like that?’

  Judy hesitated, not wanting to be disloyal to the only man she had ever loved, and at the same time longing to talk about the state of her marriage.

  ‘A bit,’ she admitted, finally. ‘You’d think that after all those years in Norway fighting with the Resistance he’d have a bit to say on the subject, but all he ever really says is later, Judy, later. All in good time. It’s a bit hurtful actually. At first I thought perhaps he had a mistress over there that he couldn’t tell me about – or something or other. But then I saw this look he has in his eyes and I know it couldn’t be that.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because he looks so lost. He looks as if he still doesn’t quite know where he is. Maybe it’s because he had to kill people, that kind of thing.’

  ‘Hardly surprising, darling. There was a war on.’

  ‘But then you don’t talk at all about France and being in the Resistance,’ Judy continued. ‘Not even to me, so I suppose it’s hardly surprising if Walter doesn’t either.’

  ‘We’re probably all afraid of being war bores, darling. Better by far to put it behind us, yes? It is actually all over now, you know. Better to leave be and not become a bore about it.’

  ‘You could never be accused of that.’ Judy laughed, pointing accusingly at Meggie. ‘You even turned down a medal without telling me! I only found out by chance!’

  ‘A medal’s a medal, for all that – that’s all it is,’ Meggie replied, getting up out of her chair. ‘Now then – I don’t know about you, but I’m famished. As always. Let’s eat.’

  Far from the expected sardine on stale bread with a bit of old cheese, much to Judy’s surprise and delight Meggie had performed a small culinary miracle, and from such basic ingredients as she had found made a delicious meal of sardines and anchovies – a lucky discovery apparently – served in a delicious dressing miraculously concocted out of some old white wine dregs, long ago turned to vinegar, and the last of an ancient bottle of olive oil, stuffed into two large baked potatoes, followed by slices of farmhouse cheddar served on hot toast.

  ‘Don’t tell me you’ve learned to bake.’ Judy stared at the loaf on the side. ‘You’ll be wearing a pinny next.’

  ‘Wouldn’t be caught dead. As a matter of fact I learned to bake bread when I was a child – Grandmother’s cook taught me, under Madame Gran’s insistence. Only three things a girl needs to know how to do to make her way in the world, she used to say. You’ve got to be able to make love, bread and Three No Trumps doubled and vulnerable.�
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  Further fortified by a bottle of claret Meggie had luckily brought up earlier from the cellar but which had only thawed out sufficiently to be drinkable after being stood on the stove for a full twenty minutes, the two young women reminisced about their times together at the start of the war, remembering those dark days now almost fondly, for all the world as if they were the good times that would never roll again.

  ‘Things can only get better, I suppose, Meggie,’ Judy mused as they moved back again to sit close to the stove. ‘Things always seem worse in the winter, particularly a winter as hard as this one.’

  ‘I don’t know about you, but I was brought up to believe that the spoils of war were what came with peace. Prosperity. Optimism. Triumph. Not shortages, queues and misery. I mean, regardez nous, would you? You’d think we’d lost rather than won the war, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Perhaps we did. What an awful thought.’ Judy stared ahead of her at something she couldn’t quite name. ‘In fact, in more than one way we just might have lost, you know, and no perhaps about it. In fact, in one way, I think that we actually did lose.’

  ‘And what way is that, do tell.’

  ‘I think maybe we’ve lost our innocence.’

  Ellen flicked her duster idly along the top of the desk, much more interested in what her employer’s daughter was doing than in the little bit of housework that was required that morning.

  ‘You’re smoking yourself to a standstill, since you and Master Max have come back from your London visit, Miss Mattie,’ she said, looking at the thin blue spiral of smoke that was rising from the sofa, and giving an extra flick of her duster as if to underline her point. ‘That’s the third cigarette you’ve had since I started doin’ in here this morning, and I think that’s too much, really I do, Miss Mattie.’