The Golden Lion

by Pamela Haines

  Then the shock of last summer. 1940. The Fall of France, Dunkirk, the invasion scare. But worst of all, for me, when they came for Eddie. Bitterness all dissolved in that moment. My outrage that they should do this. I forgot, did I not, that I was angry with him? The day before there’d been a blistering row. That woman, half as good as me (yes, I dare to say it), badly made up, loose flesh, poor complexion, bad teeth. But younger. Younger by nearly ten years. And crazy about him. Like that one at Christmas: nineteen or twenty, mouth opening vacantly on pearly white teeth, ‘Oh, you do sing marvellously.’ In uniform by day, but wearing Schiaparelli by night. Shades of his earlier conquests: he can never forget that Harry Roy married the daughter of the Rajah of Sarawak. Princess Pearl. Perhaps he wishes he’d never tied the knot with me, then he could think himself in line for Princess Margaret Rose in eight or nine years’ time. After all, he’ll only be fifty or so then. And still so charming.

  The thoughts tasted bitter. Remembering them was bitter too. She had had them that very day they came for him. She had even spoken some of them.

  And then, the knock at the door. The tenth of June, 1940. The police: ‘He’s to come with us.’ Formal identification. ‘Eduardo Sabrini, 37 years old, born in Chieti, Italy. Dance band crooner. Member of the Fascio.’

  Yes, yes, of course. But a token membership only. Everyone knew that. It had been to do with his parents, more of a social club than anything. He, they, didn’t know the first thing about it all, didn’t even care about politics.

  ‘Well, you’re going to care now, sonnie.’

  Enemy alien. Enemy alien. What a label to put on careless, harmless (to his adopted country at least) easygoing, happy Eddie. She didn’t want to remember how he’d crumpled. His incredulous expression, face becoming soft, unbelieving. The ready tears – that should belong only to the songs he sung, to his love-making.

  ‘I’m glad Poppa’s not alive to see this …’

  And then suddenly he’d rounded on her. ‘Why not you?’ he’d asked.

  ‘Why not my wife?’ he’d said to the policeman. Yes, in his distress he had even stooped so low.

  ‘We’ve our orders. A list. It says nothing here about Mrs Sabrini.’

  ‘Well, it ought. She’s the real thing, she’s Sicilian. You should be afraid of her. What she can do to you. She has the evil eye sometimes.’

  Had he meant to make them laugh? Had he laughed himself? She had felt bitter, at him, at them: the police, rifling through Eddie’s wardrobe, chest of drawers, suitcases. And very frightened.

  They were bad days after that. His first weeks up in Lancashire, at Warth Mills, when she’d heard nothing from him – and only learned later by indirect means of the conditions. The fastidious Eddie: rats and filth everywhere, cold water only, boards in place of mattresses. Then his time on the Isle of Man – never a great letter-writer, he had still managed the two short pages allowed a week. But much of it was censored and because of the backlog, so late in arriving that he was already on his way to Australia. Now, she had to believe that he was making something of life in a camp. He was certainly singing again.

  Apart from the distress of it all, those first few days, her body had wept for him. And wept for him still. It had been then she had made the decision to come up to Yorkshire: going first to Middlesbrough, to stay with Dick and Gwen. The kindness of those two – a weekend had been spent discussing what she should do. ‘For the time being, go to Thackton,’ Dick had said. ‘To Moorgarth.’ Yes, Eric was there. Retired. But Dick would arrange it all. Betty and Jan would be along later to spend August there. Gwen couldn’t leave her hospital work. But for Maria, it was time to be friends with Eric again.

  Hot June days. The invasion threat over us still. Myself, dressing up for a garden fête at a house near Lealholm: white shantung frock with the floating panels – bought for last summer’s tour. Stopping off at the sweet shop for Uncle Eric’s favourites, and humbugs for Elsie. And then, that extraordinary … A child behind the counter. Skinny little waif. Scabby, with an ugly voice and bad teeth. Nothing like my own child. Nor the child of my dreams. So why? Unless it was that I’d been waiting, without knowing it, all this time. So that I noticed – what? The hand. That small bruised hand. And then the flood of tears, the frightened howl. And bit by bit, the whole sad story.

  I was the Virgin Mary. In my white frock and blue sash, I was Our Lady. I still don’t know whether to laugh or cry. (And God and the real Virgin Mary, do They laugh or cry at people’s cruelty?) I made enough fuss. With Eric, with Eleanor Dennison. Police threats. Mr and Mrs Bolton: their incredulous denials, their accusations of the child. But I knew. Never for a moment did I think it a fantasy.

  I believed her. So now here she is, under my care. Just as, twenty-five years ago, I was under Eric’s. Full circle.

  Our Lady, indeed. Mother too, for I began so soon after to think of adoption – of them both of course. The money, that must be thought of later. And their dreadful aunt and uncle – not cruel like the Boltons, but uncaring – they couldn’t wait for me to take Helen and Billy off their hands. (‘Said that, did she? She always was a little storyteller. The father was Irish, you know.’)

  The little brother. What can I say of Billy? What I do for Helen I must do for him. He too is pathetic, but not attractively so.

  Helen still believes, I think, sometimes, that I’m the Virgin Mary – in disguise. Her worship of me is almost embarrassing.

  ‘If your name’s Maria, that’s Her name too, isn’t it? Mary, mother of God.’

  Oh, how I long and long for Eddie.

  The railings in front of the Graingers’ old house, and Dick and Gwen’s too, had been taken down as scrap metal for the war effort. The fronts looked strange – like mouth with teeth missing. Coming back at night, Dick would think: How incomplete home looks. Twice, in the dark, he had walked right past.

  But tonight in the autumn light he was watching out. Hurrying home. Worried as ever about Gwen. He had thought she looked tired this morning. She was on a day shift just now, and she’d promised that if she felt no better she’d go to bed when she came in.

  It was Jan’s night for Red Cross. The wireless could be heard in the kitchen so Gwen must still be up. He went through. She was standing, beating mixture in a bowl.

  Kissing her, he asked: ‘Why not sit to do that, love?’

  ‘Daft. When did I ever sit?’ With great care, she broke an egg into a cup and then into the mixture, ‘Jan’s birthday cake. I’ve been saving margarine, and eggs. I want it to be special, a birthday to remember …’

  He pushed the kitchen stool against her legs. ‘Are you wanting your backache better or not?’

  She had visited Dr Appleyard in the summer, as promised. She’d told Dick then, ‘He says what can you expect at my age, and with a war on. I’ve to cut down a little. That’s all. It’s not serious.’

  He had tried to make her rest. And for a while she’d gone along with him. But soon it was rushing about as before. It had seemed to him too that she was getting thin. He wanted her to sit down and be waited on. Be a princess.

  He hung up his coat, changed his shoes, went to the letter-box in the hall. A pile of bills, circulars, several items which ought to have gone to the Foundry and an already opened letter from Betty. He read that first.

  ‘She’s happy,’ he said, sitting at the kitchen table. ‘Happy as a sandboy.’

  ‘That’s a daft way of talking. Sandboy! Did you see – she’s getting leave? Not in time for Jan’s party, though.’

  He opened one of the bills, then another. The third one he stared at, puzzled.

  ‘What’s this? When did you see a consultant?’

  ‘It’s a lot, is it? I’d –’

  ‘Five hundred, a thousand, ten thousand, I wouldn’t give a damn. No – Why a consultant? Why did you see him? You’ve said nothing –’

  ‘I forgot. When I was at Dr Appleyard’s … there were some X-rays, you see. He just wanted someone else to look
me over. I mean, we always go privately – I didn’t think –’

  He said angrily, pushing the letters aside, ‘Stop it about the money … I want to know what he said. And why you didn’t tell me.’

  She shrugged her shoulders, still beating the cake. ‘Nothing to tell. Isn’t that why I forgot?’

  ‘Did he say everything was all right, then?’

  ‘He said there was nothing we’d to do – that’s right.’ She tipped in some flour, stirring it gently.

  ‘Very good then, if everything’s so all right, how is it you don’t feel well? Don’t look well. And with winter coming on. Not even a tonic. Nothing prescribed.’

  ‘Hush now, while I turn out the mixture –’

  ‘I’m too quiet, too often. You promised to go to the doctor.’

  ‘And I went.’

  ‘You didn’t think I might want to know there’d been a consultant called in?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, wearily. ‘Is that enough?’

  Irritable with anxiety, ‘It’ll have to be,’ he said. ‘Except –’

  ‘Just give over about it all. Be a love.’ She sounded, for Gwen, cross, anxious. Only extreme fatigue would make her short with him in that manner.

  The lined cake tin lay ready on the kitchen table. She’d finished folding the flour into the mixture. She turned, and as she did so, tripped over the leg of the stool he’d placed behind her. The Pyrex bowl fell. On the stone floor, fragments of glass, dollops of cake mixture.

  ‘Drat,’ she cried, ‘Drat that stool. Oh, Jan’s cake, her birthday –’ She slumped into a kitchen chair, arms on the table, head down, heaving with sobs.

  ‘Hush, love. It’s only a cake.’ His arms were about her. ‘Bob knows someone … we can get the stuff tomorrow. What’s wrong with a black market cake?’

  Still she sobbed.

  ‘Love. For you to cry over a daft bit of cake mixture … It’s not life and death. I’ll clear it, and no more said.’

  When she looked up and reached for a handkerchief, scrubbing at her eyes, he was struck suddenly by something in her expression. He saw for the first time since he’d known her – a Gwen afraid.

  ‘Something’s up. You’ve not told me something.’

  She looked away.

  ‘Had it to do with the consultant, Parry? Did he say something – anything I ought to know?’

  ‘I’d meant … When I was sent on to see him, love, I said nothing to you – because, why scare you? Then after I’d been, it seemed … why two people miserable?’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘Not like me, is it, not speaking plainly?’ She put out a hand. He clasped it tight. Too tightly. ‘You see, love, because of the X-rays – he’d to examine me. You don’t want medical terms, Dick … But inside, a great mass. From the ovary. And then the liver. That’s the bad bit, the liver. It’s in there –’

  ‘It?’

  ‘A growth. It’s gone to the liver. But there’s nothing we’ve to do. He said that – nothing can be done.’

  ‘And you kept that from me –’

  ‘They’re not ones for straight talk, Dick. I’d not have been told either, except I know too much. I asked him directly.’

  She was silent for a moment, then she said, ‘Do you – guess, from all that? Or have I to say?’

  Although his hand clasping hers was firm, his body had begun to shake. A pain, a jerking in his bad leg. ‘Did he give any sort of let-out? I mean … it’s as bad as that?’

  ‘Yes. No hope. Not with something that size. Gone that far.’ She turned to him, ‘Don’t be saying now, how if I’d gone earlier … He said not. The cough, it could have been anything. Nothing neglected. It’s just – this dratted sort, in the ovaries, no warnings really … I’d have told you later, of course. It was just – oh, why, love, before I need?’

  He knew he could say no more. He wanted to ask, most of all he wanted to ask the dreaded question – How long do you think? How much time? But he knew he couldn’t. Perhaps she did not know herself. All that was known was the sentence.

  He was afraid he wouldn’t be able even to stand up. He whom she would need as a support in the days to come.

  ‘I can’t live without you,’ he opened his mouth to say. ‘I can’t –’ he began. Then stopped himself.

  ‘Can’t what?’ she said brightly. Standing up, all businesslike. Rough, busy, caring Gwen. Gwen, rumpling the hair of the birdman who’d called her princess. ‘It’s me to clear this mess up, I can see … And mind you get those illegal ingredients quick. If there’s no cake by Friday …’

  When at last he stood up, dragging his aching leg, he felt the ground trembling beneath him. A world without Gwen? Without Gwen, he thought, there is no world.

  4

  Guy at Park Villa, on leave for a fortnight. What Eleanor wanted more than anything these wartime days: Guy home with her, and safe. (Better not to think that soon, too soon, he would be sent overseas.) A cold April day and Guy arriving, tired but smart as paint in his uniform. Changing at once into grey flannels, Clydella shirt, the blue pullover she’d knitted him at Christmas. Feet up, smoking, drinking the Glenfiddich she’d hoarded for him, leafing through a pile of magazines.

  Later, he’d go out for a drink, be off to spend the day in York, ring up a girl or two, perhaps a dinner-dance. But mostly he would just be man about the house again. ‘My nephew, Guy.’

  His being there made even the evacuees all right. Rosie, Malcolm, and baby Kevin. The home offered in 1939 to a Catholic mother and child, and now regretted. Rosie’s army husband had been overseas from early in the war, and was now out East. Nevertheless she’d had a second baby. Eleanor had been too embarrassed to ask any questions and Rosie had said nothing. Kevin, eighteen months now, trailing a bunched and often smelly napkin peeping out from torn rubber pants. ‘Can’t get rubber for love nor money,’ Rosie said. She thought very well of Guy, putting curlers in the day before his arrival and filing her nails in the kitchen, leaving the shavings in the cutlery drawer. Guy took just enough notice to make it worth her while (‘Flattery costs nothing,’ he told Eleanor. ‘I don’t expect it’s much of a life.’).

  His visit, an oasis. She could put aside the trivial worries that nowadays took up so much of life. Coal soon to be rationed, electricity, paraffin. She thought with dread of the cold winters to come, and to come. Although the war had taken a turn for the better, with the Americans our Allies now, it was a long way from over.

  Guy. Why should he be spared over any other mother’s son? (His namesake, fighting in a far less worthy cause, had not been, nor his uncle, James.) All her life, all her love for Eric, all her lifetime’s dreams, everything – all invested in Guy.

  It would have been a perfect time, this fortnight together, if it hadn’t been for Maria’s request. Plea, rather. Maria, at Moorgarth for the duration, looking after Eric, caring for Helen. Billy too, until last Christmas when there’d been the surely welcome appearance of Cousin Fred, a relative on their father’s side, over from South Africa to fight, and married to a Scots girl last year. They were willing and eager to have the boy.

  Maria’s strange plea. And why now? After all these years? Let sleeping dogs lie, Eleanor had thought. ‘My parents are dead,’ Guy told everyone. And it was true enough – of Peter. Did he really need to know the rest?

  Three weeks ago now and Maria coming to see her. For once not in WVS green, but elegant in navy blue wool dress and striped jacket, high heeled brogues. A sailor type hat.

  ‘I’ve thought,’ she said. ‘I want you to tell Guy. I want him to know.’

  ‘Is that wise, dear?’

  ‘Please. He must know.’ She looked directly at Eleanor. ‘If something happens, were to happen to him. Peter’s gone. Uncle Eric’s an old man –’

  ‘Is Eric to know or not? What are your wishes?’ Eleanor spoke coldly, feeling already a chill around her. That she was to do the deed, that it would be up to her.

  ‘I’ll tell him, i
f needs be … But the other – telling Guy, it oughtn’t to come from me. I’d ask Dick to do it, but with Gwen so ill – with Gwen dying, I couldn’t.’

  ‘I am to tell Guy, then?’ It would be difficult, terrible. She would not do it. Why me? she thought.

  ‘Why not? Who else?’ Maria asked, her voice sharp.

  ‘It’s just that it’s so … Dear, it will be very difficult –’

  ‘He’s not mine!’ Maria cried. It was the voice of the sixteen-year-old in Florence. ‘He’s not mine,’ she repeated angrily. ‘You took him. Brought him up as your own. A twenty-one-year-old deceived man. His chances … when he goes overseas, he could die not knowing –’

  ‘Hasn’t he enough,’ she tried to say it gently, ‘with possibly going into battle? Do you want him to go off in turmoil too? How can this revelation be anything but a terrible upset?’

  ‘I want him to know.’

  That was to be the gist of it, her argument, over the next half-hour as Eleanor talked, suggesting this, that compromise. Coming back always to the obstinate: ‘I want him to know.’ Nothing for it but to agree. She saw it as a punishment. For what? What had she done wrong?

  ‘It’s the price,’ Maria said suddenly. ‘For what you took.’

  ‘You’re very hard.’

  Punishment perhaps because I did it all for Eric? That we two who could be joined together in no other way, might for ever be linked through this child. And now Maria, who was robbed, exacts her price.

  ‘He may well want to see you about it,’ she said coldly.

  ‘Or he may not. He may want nothing to do with me. I’ll take the risk.’

  The days were passing. Only four left now. And the deed not done. She could not have believed herself so cowardly. Each morning she woke and determined that today would be the day. Not of course at breakfast, she must not spoil his morning. And never at a mealtime. Afternoons were too precious and as evening drew on, how could she threaten his night’s rest? There never will be a right time, she thought. She was afraid to meet Maria when out. Afraid Maria would call on her.