‘I’m fine.’ The strange, slanting eyes opened suddenly, for a moment no longer narrowed in their usual defensive way, but wide and clear as a child’s. ‘Thank you.’
For the space of a heart-beat the back of his hand rested against her cheek, then without a word he left her.
His face shuttered he went back down to the parlour, picked up the brandy bottle that stood by the hearth. It was empty. A full one stood on the sideboard. He picked it up, looked at it for a moment before, very precisely, replacing it unopened. Then, with his usual contained and efficient movements he gathered up Sally’s damp, discarded clothes, delivered them to the laundry room and took himself to bed.
II
Charlotte did not want to go home. She did not want to go back to England, let alone to the squalor of Poplar and the teeming activity of the Bear.
She had fallen in love.
She had fallen in love with Bruges. She had fallen in love with the van Damme family, and with their lovely, tall gabled house overlooking the canal on the Groenerei, which was like something from a fairy tale with its stepped gables and diamond-paned windows, its steeply sloping tiled roofs and tall chimneys. The orphanage – smaller and very much better organized than the Bear – was run with care and kindness by Aunt Alice, her husband Anselm, their son Philippe, who was about Charlotte’s own age, and their daughter Annette and her husband. Two younger children had been lost in an epidemic of typhoid three years before. They were the happiest of families, united in their dedication to each other and to the children in their care. Aunt Alice was a plump, motherly, warm-natured person, an ordinary-looking little woman of wisdom and perception whom, it seemed to Charlotte, no one could fail to love. Within days their relationship had blossomed to the confidences of mother and daughter, and within days Charlotte was too under the spell of the lovely old city in which Aunt Alice had chosen to live. She felt as if she had known the van Dammes all of her life. Rachel, of course, was made much of – particularly by Annette, who was herself carrying her first child, and by the lively Philippe, who delighted in Rachel’s gurgles of laughter as he bounced her on his knee or tossed her boisterously in the air, at risk to limb if not to life. He delighted too in showing off the beautiful little city that was his home. As the cobbled streets basked in the soft sunshine of a balmy late autumn he escorted Charlotte, Nurse Winterbottom and the bouncing perambulator containing a happily cooing Rachel upon walks along the banks of the picturesque canals that were lined so prettily with Hansel and Gretel houses and delicately spired churches. Ancient bridges spanned the waterways and willows bowed with grace, autumnal fronds drifting, like long-haired girls admiring their reflection in the still sunlit mirror of the water. They took coffee and cakes in the Market Square, to the mellow and lovely sound of the carillon housed in the Halles tower, the forty-seven bells pealing joyously across the spires of the city in the still and golden autumn air. Bruges was a city of bells, a city of quiet cobbled streets, of markets gay with flowers, of shimmering, peaceful water that reflected the lovely façades of the medieval buildings like an illustration from an ancient romance. A city from the dreams of childhood, enclosed by its ancient walls and embankments, watched over by its windmills. And Charlotte was enchanted. She regained her spirits and her looks. The exercise she took brought the bloom back to her cheeks and brightened her eyes. Her figure grew trim again. She laughed with a wholehearted delight she had not felt in years, joined in the games and the musicales of which the van Dammes, were so fond, flirted light-heartedly with Philippe – a game of their own in which he joined in with enthusiasm.
She did not want to go home.
She spent long hours in the big old kitchen with Aunt Alice, who herself cooked for the whole household, and within the first week had confided most of her troubles, although never did the secret of Rachel’s parentage escape her, for the thought of risking losing Aunt Alice’s good opinion was too awful to be contemplated. However, simply to have a sympathetic ear into which to pour her miseries was a balm beyond price.
‘Ben always could be a solemn little chap,’ Aunt Alice volunteered a little unexpectedly one day. ‘Very – intense – even as a small boy.’ She smiled fondly. ‘But such a mischief!’
‘Really?’ Charlotte was surprised.
Up to her elbows in flour, cheeks pink from her exertions and from the warmth of the huge stove, Alice laughed. ‘Oh, yes! The scrapes he got into! He used to drive his poor mother mad! She always used to say he could make a living in the circus!’
Charlotte pulled a mildly bemused face. She had never thought to imagine Ben as a child, let alone a mischievous one with a mother who thought he belonged in the circus.
‘It was when Henrietta died that he really changed, of course.’ Alice’s eyes were placid upon the dough she kneaded so expertly upon the board. ‘Poor lad. He was in an awful state. He blamed himself. They’d known each other – loved each other – for years. They were true childhood sweethearts. He adored her,’ she glanced at Charlotte. The full lower lip was out, prettily sullen. Charlotte picked with impatient fingers at the lace trimming of her skirt. Alice shook her head gently. ‘Don’t begrudge it to her, my dear. It lasted for such a little time, and ended so very tragically. She was dead within the year and his child with her. Can you wonder that he nearly went out of his mind? Or that, when he recovered, he was never quite the same young man he’d been?’
‘I remember a little,’ Charlotte conceded, trying hard not to sound grumpy. ‘I was about ten years old at the time, I think. Ben was so much older. I never really knew him.’
The kindly eyes met hers in silence: and she flushed very slightly at their gentle message.
The weeks slipped by. The weather chilled and broke. Four weeks. Five.
She did not want to go home.
* * *
‘Is that from Charlotte?’ Hannah asked Ben at the breakfast table. ‘Is she coming home?’
Ben shook his head, folding the letter. ‘No. She wants to stay for another week or so.’
Hannah looked doubtful. ‘It’s November already. If they leave it much longer the weather could be very bad for the crossing.’
He shrugged. ‘She’s enjoying the break. She sounds happier than she’s been for months. There’s no reason for her to hurry back.’ He applied himself to his toast and marmalade.
Hannah shot a small, doubtful glance at him, but said nothing.
Peter reached for his hat. ‘Good for her. Wouldn’t mind a few weeks off in foreign climes myself. But hey-ho for the daily grind – Hodges and Son, here I come.’ He perched the hat at a jaunty angle, grinned like an irrepressible child, ‘Only one thing keeps me going. There’s always the hope that this is the day I can persuade old Hodges to sack me – eh?’
Hannah tried unsuccessfully not to laugh at him. ‘Mrs Briggs was asking if you’d be in to dinner tonight?’
He breezed to the door, turned. ‘No. I’ve got—’ he tapped the side of his well-shaped nose secretively, eyes bright, ‘—a little business to attend to. ’Bye.’
Hannah shook her head ruefully as, humming cheerfully, he clipped off down the corridor. ‘Mother always swore he was a changeling,’ she said, ‘I sometimes think she might have been right!’
Ben smiled and stood up, folding the newspaper.
‘Ben?’
He looked at her.
‘How much longer do you think Charlotte will stay away?’ In her sisterly concern she could be every bit as stubborn as he was.
‘I don’t know. All I know is that the trip seems to be doing her some good. Another couple of weeks won’t hurt.’
‘But—’
‘Hannah—’ Very firmly he opened the paper and spread it in front of her. ‘Read the paper—’
‘And mind my own business?’
‘I didn’t say that. It’s just – Charlotte is my wife – you have to let me decide what’s best.’
Hannah nodded. ‘Sorry.’ She glanced at the paper, raised
her brows at headlines an inch high. ‘What’s all this?’
He shrugged. ‘Whitehall paranoia I’d say, most of it. A disease Fleet Street is always very quick to catch.’
Hannah scanned the article quickly. ‘You don’t think the build up of the German Fleet is a threat?’
‘Who knows? Possibly. Possibly not. What I do suspect is that it makes a very convenient red herring.’
‘Oh?’ She looked up at him, interested. ‘In what way?’
He reached to take the last of the toast, munching it absently. ‘If there’s trouble brewing – and there is – I don’t think it’s coming from Germany. Not yet, anyway.’
‘Where then?’
‘Here. Right under our noses.’ He finished the toast, walked to the door. ‘Ask Ralph. There are men working the wharves who haven’t had a rise in wages since they won their “docker’s tanner” upwards of ten or twelve years ago. Have you seen the price of bread lately? Some employers are making noises about actually cutting wages – not just here in the docks, but in Wales in the mines, in the north in the mills. There’s a good few beginning to ask why they should spend their strength making money for the owners when their own children go shoeless and hungry.’ A memory flickered elusively. Where had he heard that phrase?
‘What can they do about it?’
He shrugged. ‘They can sit down under it or they can fight it. And there are plenty to encourage them to fight.’
‘Fight?’ Hannah looked at him in true amazement. ‘You mean – really fight? Physically fight?’
‘If it comes to it, yes. You know as well as I that the syndicalists in the docks have been advocating firm action for years. So have some of the more militant miners. What do you think will happen if they get together? Do you think the Government would allow working men to cripple the country with industrial action? Of course not. No – if things keep drifting the way they seem to be, then British soldiers are as likely to be used on the streets of England and Wales as they are against Germany, fleet or no fleet. What happened a couple of years ago in Russia could just as easily happen here.’
‘Oh, surely not! I can’t believe that! Why – that was almost full-blown revolution! And repressed so bloodily! Oh, no, Ben! That could never happen here!’
He shrugged. ‘Let’s hope you’re right.’ He stopped at the door an expression of deep and earnest thought on his face, ‘I don’t think it would be absolutely the first time, though I’m damned if I can actually remember the last time it happened.’
‘Pig!’ she said mildly, smiling her affection. ‘When brothers were handed out, didn’t I get a pair?’
* * *
The heavy November sky seemed to rest upon the pointed roofs of the fairy-tale houses. The wind cut across the flatlands of Flanders, scouring the countryside. Rain drove in gusts along the swollen canals, drenched the cobblestones, ran in small rivers in the gutters. In the warmth of the kitchen on the Groenerei Charlotte sat at the table, slicing cabbage. Stew bubbled on the hob and the savoury smell filled the room. Charlotte’s face was downcast, her mouth set miserably.
‘I’m sorry, my dear – we don’t want to lose you, you know we don’t – so far as we’re concerned you could stay forever. But it’s barely three weeks to Christmas. Your family—’
Charlotte nodded. ‘Yes. I know. I’ll make the arrangements. I’ll telegraph Ben today.’
‘But no!’ Philippe stood at the door, hands spread in a characteristic, laughing gesture. ‘Not today! It cannot possibly be permitted before Monday! For we have our musicale on Saturday night – and who will sing so sweetly for us if you go? We won’t hear of it! Next week, eh, Mama? Stay till next week!’
* * *
‘So Miss Charlotte’s coming home at last, eh?’ Bron tucked bedclothes and plumped pillows with the unthinking efficiency of habit. ‘’Bout time too if you ask me! It’s weeks and weeks she’s bin gone – and with Christmas just round the corner, mind! A pair of extra hands might have come in handy round here. It’s all very well to go off gallivanting, isn’t it – but at such a time of the year?’
Sally let her chatter. For herself she had come to admit, not without some difficulty, that if Charlotte never came home at all it would be too soon for Sally Smith. The house was so much easier without her moods and tantrums, her dull, resentful silences. There was more than enough work with the children without having a self-pitying semi-invalid taking up everyone’s time and energy.
She straightened, sighing, rubbing her back. That wasn’t it. Why pretend it was? How many times had she impressed on Toby – lying to others was one thing; lying to oneself was a fool’s game. She did not want Charlotte Patten back at the Bear because, quite simply, she did not want her near Ben. She did not want to see those lines of tension back in his face, the grim, unsmiling set of his mouth. And – to carry honesty to its cruellest extent – neither would she welcome back a changed Charlotte. If the break had truly helped her – if she came back the pretty, laughing girl she had been before Rachel’s birth, ready to make amends, ready to share her husband’s bed and board like any devoted young wife—
‘Bron, for heaven’s sake! What are you doing with that? It looks like a haystack!’ Ill-temperedly Sally pulled the sheets from the bed Bron had been making. ‘Here – take the other side. If you’d talk a bit less and concentrate a bit more on what you’re doing—’
Bron fell to injured silence. They made the bed. Sally pulled a rueful face, reached a hand to the other girl. ‘I’m sorry. I’m tired, that’s all.’
Bron could not have held a grudge for more than a moment if she had tried. She beamed. ‘That’s all right. We all have our off days, mind.’
Back in her cubbyhole Sally sat, elbows on her desk, face resting in her spread hands. An off day? Was that what you called it, she wondered with a twist of wry humour? An off day? When you could not get a man’s face from your mind? When you spent your days ridiculously listening for the sound of his voice, the rare peal of his laughter? When a smile could light a room like a lamp and a sharp word cut like a knife? Jesus, Mary and Joseph – had she taken leave of her senses? Or was it true – could it possibly be true? – that since the night Ben Patten had stitched her damaged lip there had been something between them? Something so nebulous, so fragile that to try to name it – almost to think of it – would be to destroy it, to dispel it like mist in the sun? Like a half-caught image at the corner of the eye that vanished at the turn of a head. Had she imagined over these past weeks the especial gleam in his eyes when he looked at her? The lightening of that craggy face when she walked into a room? Had she wanted so much to see it that she had created it in her own heart; a mirage, a lie? Certainly their rapport when they worked together was not in doubt – each seemed to understand the other’s view or idea before more than half a dozen words had been spoken. And a shared dry humour, an often hidden amusement at the perversities of life, acknowledged by a flicker of the eyes, a lift of the head, often created an odd bond, as if the two of them were alone together in a world that teemed with people.
An off day.
She lifted her head, stretched her neck tiredly, resolutely kept her mind from the absurd, all but lunatic longings that had kept her from sleep the night before.
No. Sally Smith did not want Miss Charlotte to come home.
Chapter Nine
I
Christmas time for the Pattens and their charges was a special time indeed. Everyone was part of it, a part of the hints and secrets, the preparations and anticipation. Sally had been planning it for a month. After church in the morning the children were to sit down to a special meal – goose followed by plum pudding – cooked by Mrs Briggs and served in the gaily decorated schoolroom. After that there were to be games and then, treat of the day, tea in the parlour with Doctor Will and his family, where presents from the tree that sparkled like a small, colourful miracle in the corner of the room would be handed out. Under Sally’s guidance the children were making l
ittle gifts for the family. The ‘babies’ were painting bright pictures for Doctor Will and Miss Charlotte, the ‘seconds’ – a group of half a dozen six and seven year olds – were making cardboard bookmarks for Mr Ralph and an ingenious cardboard tiepin holder for Mr Peter, and the others – eight children ranging between the ages of eight and twelve – were producing a desk tidy for Doctor Ben and a neat sewing box for Miss Hannah. They worked like little demons in the week leading up to Christmas, every room in the home littered with seashells, beads, cardboard and multi-coloured scraps of cloth, all to be hastily hidden away amidst much shoving and giggling if the intended recipient of the gift should come near.
‘Well, at least it keeps them occupied,’ an all-but exhausted Sally said to Hannah two days before Christmas Eve, ‘even if not entirely out of mischief. The things they get up to, even right under our noses!’ She laughed a little wryly. ‘That young Tom for instance – he’s got the makings of a market trader if ever I saw one! He’d sell a grindstone to a knife sharpener that one. You know what he did the other day? He swopped a piece of red sticky paper for Billy’s last two bull’s eyes. God! The one thing we’ve got more of than trouble is red sticky paper! When Billy found out he was ready to tear Master Tom limb from limb. Tom took off like a jack rabbit all over the house and it took us a good hour to get the place back to normal again!’
Hannah laughed. ‘You’re making such a wonderful job of the children, Sally. Ralph’s delighted.’
Sally smiled her swift, slightly crooked smile. ‘Thanks.’
‘I came to say that Pa wants you to come to dinner with us on Christmas night – you, Bron and Mrs Briggs. After the children are settled. Would you like to?’
The day before, Dan had asked her, ‘Christmas Night, Sal – Surely they’ll let you off for that?’
Tomorrow, Jerusalem Page 25
