by Connie Monk
‘How does she feel? She and I have been good friends. Yet I had no idea.’
‘You sound very calm.’
‘Answer my question, Den. Does Claudia feel the same as you do or are you just dreaming dreams?’
‘What’s the point of answering your question? I can’t walk away from our marriage. But yes, Claudia feels just as I do. Here I am, lamer than any of your ducks, yet she wants to spend the rest of her life with me. In marrying again she’d lose her alimony, but it seems she sees me as worth that.’
‘And Ollie?’
‘The kid? Oh, kids get used to things.’
Kathie seemed to stand outside herself as plans started to take shape in her mind. He watched her, knowing her so well he recognized she was working something out.
‘I shall stay at Westways,’ she said, speaking with no emotion and leaving him in no doubt. ‘You say I’m blind, but I’m not so blind that I don’t realize you won’t try to do things here because deep down you are unhappy; you’re frightened to hold on to the past. Our marriage is over. It has to be. Even if I agreed and we went somewhere else, what we had is gone. I want you to arrange for the lease to be transferred to my name. I shall carry on here.’
‘I can’t believe it, Kathie. I’ve been putting off talking to you for weeks – months. You seem so calm.’
‘I may be calm, but I’m not soft. We used to be so happy here – but nothing is the same, nothing can ever be the same. It’s as if we’re different people . . .’
‘We’ve got to look to the future,’ he cut in.
‘The past is precious too; it’s the one thing no one can ever take from us. If you can’t hold on to memories, then you get frightened and bitter. Don’t let that happen, Den. We’re not the same people we used to be when we were young, full of hope. And then the joy of our darling Jess—’
‘Don’t, Kathie!’
‘Take her with you into your second chance; take memories of our good years. If you don’t – I wish I could think of the right words – if you shut part of your life away and are frightened to remember the good things, then you won’t be whole. Claudia has a past too, we all have. We are what we are today because of our yesterdays.’ She stood up, seeming to put an end to the conversation. ‘I must finish getting the soup ready. I’ll move in with Beth tonight.’
‘You don’t have to do that. I won’t—’
‘Oh for God’s sake, Den!’
From the kitchen she heard him making his slow progress upstairs. She knew just what she meant to do – what she had to do. So from the open door of the warm room she listened for the clump of his crutches on the landing and finally the closing of the bedroom door. There was finality in the sound. Could this really be happening to them? ‘I love Den, I’ll always love Den’ came the echo of her words. Were they true? Yes, even now – and always – she knew she would love him. He was part of every haunting memory. It seemed a lifetime ago when she’d found Jess crying on the night he went away. ‘I want to say goodnight to Dad.’ She must never let those memories of Jess fade, and Den was part of every one of them. But it was all past, gone as surely as snow in sunshine.
Picking up the telephone receiver she waited for the operator then asked for Sedgewood 172.
‘Bruce?’
‘Kathie, something’s wrong! Kathie, what is it?’
‘Not wrong, Bruce. I think it had to happen. I can’t tell you on the phone. Can you come through the woods and I’ll meet you by the gate.’
He was there ahead of her, waiting outside the gate in the lane. It was a moonless night but after two years of blackout their eyes had become used to adjusting. When she saw the outline of his body she ran towards him and found herself held in a close embrace.
‘Tell me, darling.’
‘Den is leaving me.’
‘Claudia? Yes, of course, Claudia.’ He couldn’t have said anything that surprised her more.
‘Has she talked to you? How did you find out?’
‘No one has talked to me. I’ve seen the change in Claudia. To begin with it was because she fell under the spell of Westways, but latterly it has been more than that. I believe she truly loves him. But it’s not them I care about; it’s you.’
‘He wants to be free to marry her. Bruce, I’m ashamed. All the years – such good years before the war – and all I can think of is that I’ve been given my life back. He says we must look to the future.’
‘Years ago, I was told that because of Elspeth’s irreversible mental state I could get my freedom. I couldn’t do it then – I had no reason to want to – and Kathie, my darling precious Kathie, I can’t do it now.’
‘And if you could, you wouldn’t be the man I love. Elspeth needs you even if she doesn’t realize it.’
‘And you?’ he asked softly, knowing the answer.
‘Oh yes, I need you. I know we can’t marry, but Bruce love isn’t confined to those who have a certificate to make their union legal. You once told me that when you fell in love with Elspeth you were young and inexperienced, but you and I are—’
‘Moulded of the same clay,’ he finished the sentence. ‘Perhaps I could better liken us to tempered steel. We know about sadness, pain, loss, they are woven into what we feel for each other. Darling,’ he whispered, and she knew the moment was something that would stay with her always, ‘I can’t offer you marriage, but I give you my undying love.’
‘I know and you have mine. I love you with my mind and spirit, but Bruce that can’t be enough.’ In the near darkness he could just see her face was raised to his, her lips parted as his mouth covered hers. Her heart was pounding, every nerve in her body was crying out for his touch. What a moment for her to think of that mountain she had so often strained to climb and so seldom reached the summit. Now, she was almost to the peak as she stood with her body pressed tightly to his. One day she’d tell him about that mountain; somehow, somewhere, they would climb it together.
‘Kathie, I didn’t mean it to happen,’ Claudia said as, the next morning, she approached where Kathie was working at the far end of the field. ‘You won’t want even to look at me after what I’ve done. It sounds so feeble to say it just happened.’
‘If he had to fall for someone, I wish it hadn’t been you. It must make things different for you and me, and that’s a pity. Already we’re different, guarded.’
‘I feel such a heel.’
‘That’ll pass,’ Kathie said with a laugh that held no humour. ‘I must get on, I’m short of workers. There used to be a lady in red wellies.’ Then, stopping work and leaning on her hoe, she added, ‘Claudia, are you truly prepared to give up your comfortable lifestyle, your good income?’
Life would be very different for Claudia Marley, the glamorous ‘stuck-up bit’ as some of the villagers still thought of her. But they didn’t know her. Living comfortably on more than enough alimony to finance her lifestyle in London, let alone in Devon, with a house bought for her by her ex-husband so that she would be near Oliver’s school, the changes made the future look bleak. But bleak wasn’t a word in Claudia’s dictionary.
‘I’ve never been so sure of anything, Kathie,’ she answered. ‘You know what I’ve learnt these last months? The most important thing isn’t to be comfortable and worry-free. It’s to matter, really matter to someone – and to care about that person more than you do about yourself. Doesn’t that sound mushy,’ she said with a laugh, suddenly embarrassed, ‘and fancy having the cheek to say it to you of all people.’
Kathie shook her head. ‘You’ve taught him to laugh again. Only when he’s with you, I admit, but it’s more than I could do. But Claudia, what you and Den are doing is right, right for Den and right for me. We couldn’t have gone on as we were, we’re different people. None of it would have happened if Jess were still here.’
‘Well, Oliver’s a good enough kid, but I’m damned if I’m going to run my life to please him. He’s a funny lad; I’ve never told him about Den and me – well of course I hav
en’t; until today there has been nothing to tell – but he knows jolly well what’s going on. And he’s really got the hump. Well, he’ll just have to put up with it. I say, Kathie, you won’t mind me poking around in your bedroom, will you? I’ve promised Den I’ll help him shift his stuff.’ Then with a mischievous twinkle, she continued, ‘And please ma’am, may I borrow the delivery van? We can’t walk down the High Street with his luggage on his lap. All his worldly goods.’
How it brought back memories: Kathie seeing him off at the end of his disastrous embarkation leave, all his worldly goods in that kitbag bearing his name and number. For them, the change had started even then.
‘Of course you can. Bring it back in time for Hopkins’ run though, won’t you.’
She was glad when Claudia left her. She ought to be distraught, her husband of nearly twenty years, dear Den who had been her life, was leaving her for another woman. The thought suddenly came to her: was he perhaps not as blind as she had been? Had he seen what was happening to Bruce and her? Then her mind was cleared of all thoughts of Den and Claudia too; her imagination leapt ahead to the evening to come. She was leaving Sally and Beth and going out to dinner with Bruce. And after that?
She had nothing suitable to wear. The dress she looked on as best and had worn last Christmas at Claudia’s would have to do. But she took extra care getting ready, bathing, washing her hair, putting on her best underwear and finally the cherry coloured dress. She looked at her work-worn hands, by contrast imagining Claudia’s, and was ashamed.
Bruce collected her in a taxi and they were taken to the Pendragon Hotel on Picton Heath near Deremouth. She realized that never in her thirty-eight years had she dined in a hotel. The evening had all the ingredients of magic. Then, having asked for a taxi to be called, they drove back to Sedgewood Hall and to the wing known as the Headmaster’s Lodge. With the door locked and the blackout curtains securely closed, the world was their own. He put records on the radiogram, a modern machine powered by electricity and set so that one record would follow another. The volume was low, no more than a background to what they both knew was ahead.
In the bedroom item by item they undressed, she taking off his clothes, he taking off hers, just as she’d dreamed. There was no wild tearing off of garments; what they did had the quality of a religious ceremony, until finally they stood naked in front of each other. That was when she caught sight of herself in the mirror on his mahogany wardrobe.
Instinctively she folded her arms across her thin and sagging breasts. Gently, he moved them, holding her hands to her side.
‘Wish I was different. I wish I was beautiful for you.’
Suddenly his Adam’s apple seemed to have doubled in size.
‘Kathie, my precious Kathie, you are just as I dreamed you would be, just as I’ve longed to see, to touch. I can’t marry you, but I can’t think of my life without you. No church, no one to hear our vows and bind us legally, but I promise with all my heart that I am to love you and be faithful just to you for the rest of my life.’
‘I promise too, for the rest of my life and when my body is old and dies, then for all eternity.’ She knew about these things. As she was drawn almost reverently into his arms she seemed to hear that piping childish voice, ‘Tell you what, Mum – you’re going to be ever so happy. He’s nice and he knows about things.’
Later, lying in his arms, she thought of those words. At the mountain top she had found joy and fulfilment she had never known possible.
‘Mother is leaving Sedgewood – Mother and . . . and him,’ Oliver told Kathie a week or two after Den had moved in with Claudia. ‘She . . . they –’ the way he said it made Kathie look at him anxiously – ‘they are going to live in Hampshire. She says I shall like the house they’ve found. I won’t; I’ll hate it. We were fine with things like they were, her helping you here, me coming as if – well, as if we were all sort of one family. I don’t want to go there, Mrs H. She can’t make me, can she?’
‘She might be very hurt if she thought you didn’t want to.’
‘Not likely, she wouldn’t,’ he said with an unchildlike sneer in his voice. ‘I don’t care what she does,’ he tried to convince himself as well as Kathie, ‘except that if she wanted to steal someone else’s husband, she ought not to have taken yours.’ His view was firm and Kathie was trying to think of something to say that would lessen his hurt, when he went on: ‘I told her when she came to school to say goodbye. And I said I wanted to write to Dad but didn’t know where he lived. She didn’t like it, I could see she was angry. But she wrote down his address. And I wrote to him. So there!’
‘Is someone buying her house?’ Kathie changed the subject.
‘She has people coming to live in it. Pleased as anything she was because it means she will have some money from the rent they pay and the house is still hers.’
It wasn’t Kathie’s responsibility to worry but how would Claudia cope with having so little money? Den had a pension, she had the rent of the house, but once she and Den were married her alimony would be cut leaving just enough that Oliver wouldn’t suffer. But it seemed Oliver wanted nothing to do with them.
‘I’ve finished the chickens,’ Beth shouted. ‘All right if we go to the common, Aunt Kathie?’
And just as always, Kathie told them, ‘Yes of course. Listen for the clock to strike twelve.’
‘It must be something to do with the work here,’ Kathie said laughingly to Sally, ‘you look positively blooming.’
‘I’m getting as big as a house, but I feel sort of – oh, I don’t know Mrs H – bountiful. Is that silly?’
‘It’s wonderful. But, Sal, it’s time you did less. Another six weeks and you’ll be a mother. The lad who rides the delivery bike for Jack Hopkins is coming in for a few hours each day and I’ve had a letter from Bert Delbridge saying he wants to help out when he’s on leave in three week’s time.’
Sally chuckled. ‘Bet Sarah’s chuffed. Do you reckon that’s why he wants to spend his leave here Mrs H?’
The suggestion came as a surprise to Kathie. But hadn’t Den told her she must be blind and never looked beyond her own affairs!
On the 1st November Sally had a son. It was Bruce who went to Deremouth to register the birth: Steven Clive Dunster, son of Sally Muriel Brent and Clive Anthony Dunster. He was born at Westways, a home with freedom for anytime visitors; but apart from those who lived in the house there were few to come and admire the new arrival. Sarah came at every available moment, Bruce came, Nanny Giles even brought Elspeth but the baby didn’t attract her interest. It was some weeks before Clive knew he had a son, for on the lst November he was already on the high seas, destination unknown.
History was repeating itself as Steven’s pram was put on the grass for him to sleep when he was very tiny; then as he grew strong enough to be propped on his pillows he liked to be wheeled to where the action was taking place; from that stage it seemed no time before he was staggering after the workers with his seaside spade, wanting to help. Sometimes Kathie drew comfort from seeing him following the pattern set by Jess; sometimes it hurt unbearably.
When word first got around that Dennis had walked out on her for ‘that Marley woman’, the gossips enjoyed the excitement. But soon the waters closed over the incident and Kathie probably gained a little unmerited respect for carrying on with no visible self-pity. Nanny Giles continued to bring Elspeth to Westways; Oliver spent every available hour there and even persuaded Claudia that he could stay at school for part of his holidays and spend each day ‘helping’ in the market garden. School holiday times were very special; there was plenty of work for everyone, and that included Bruce and Oliver.
‘I had a letter from my father this week,’ Oliver would sometimes say with pride when he arrived on Saturday morning. Kathie had worried when the child had first written to his matinee idol father, fearful that Richard would be as casual as Claudia always had been. But she was wrong. Letters came regularly and between father and son a bond w
as developing that was to shape Oliver’s life.
Nanny Giles loved Elspeth as if she were her own, but that didn’t mean she had no sympathy for Bruce. She was a wise woman and one who missed very little so, whilst in the village Kathie was looked on as a hard-working woman whose husband had left her after she’d given him her best years, Nanny saw deeper. If Bruce and Kathie cared for each other, then it was no more than he deserved and each night when she knelt at her bedside and prayed that her darling Elspeth should always be happy, she added a rider that the love between Bruce and Kathie would find favour.
‘Have they suggested at school that Beth tries for a scholarship for Deremouth Grammar?’ Bruce asked Kathie as he carried a box of runner beans into the shed for her to weigh. It was early summer of 1943. By the end of the year Beth would be ten.
‘Isn’t it too soon?’
‘Too soon for the exam, but not for her to be primed for it. If she likes to come up to me, say a couple of evenings a week we could work together. I have enormous hopes for her.’
‘Bruce, you know we talked once about me persuading Den to see if we could adopt her. It’s not Den now; it’s you.’
‘I don’t think the adoption society would see it like that. In their eyes my presence in your life would be decidedly detrimental.’
She frowned, realizing that what he said was true. If hard and fast rules had to be adhered to, then the last months of her marriage to Den would have presented a better chance of adopting Beth than putting her in the care of a divorcee with a lover. Hard and fast rules be damned!
‘I shall go to see this Tilly woman and see if I can get her to give her permission.’
‘It’s half term next weekend. I’ll come with you. With Sally here, we could stay in town for the night.’
She nodded, her dark eyes saying more than any words.
That same day, just as she often did, after she’d taken her daily delivery to Jack Hopkins she drove on up the hill to the lodge to spend a few minutes with Nanny Giles.
