Bye Bye Love (18 page)

For several long minutes she stood at the end of the street, tempted to just walk away and keep walking. For the umpteenth time she wished for her mother. She needed someone to turn to more than ever before. And then it struck her how terribly upset and disappointed her mother would have been to find that her one daughter was an unmarried mother, and something changed inside her. At least her mum would never know. She might hurt all the others around her, but she couldn’t hurt her mother. Scarlett took a long shuddering breath and straightened her shoulders.

‘Come on, girl,’ she said out loud. ‘Let’s face the music.’

It was her father’s day off. He was sitting listening to the radio with a drink in his hand. Scarlett’s announcement seemed to sober him up instantly.

‘You’re
what
?’ he yelped, getting up out of his chair. ‘It’s that singer, ain’t it? That Ricky? The little bastard, doing that to you! I knew he was no good. My God, when I get my hands on him, he won’t know whether he’s coming or going. I’ll wring his bloody neck. How dare he touch my little girl?’

Scarlett didn’t like to tell him that she hadn’t exactly been forced.

‘Have you told him yet?’ Victor asked.

Scarlett shook her head.

‘When are you seeing him again?’

‘I don’t know. Tomorrow, probably.’

‘I’m working tomorrow. This has got to be sorted out. Where does he live?’

Scarlett gaped at him.

‘We can’t go round his house, Dad!’

She knew where he lived. She had even been past his house on a couple of occasions, but she had never been invited inside to meet his parents.

‘Oh, yes, we bloody well can. What time does he get in from work?’

However hard Scarlett tried to persuade him that it would be best to tell Ricky quietly by herself, Victor wouldn’t back down.

‘I know these young lads. They’ll wriggle out of it if they possibly can. No, we got to get him in front of his parents. They’ll bring him into line.’

Defending his chick had a wonderful effect on Victor. He washed, shaved, cleaned his shoes, looked out his one suit and brushed it and had Scarlett iron him a shirt. By the time they set out for Ricky’s house, he looked a different man from the one who couldn’t get up in the morning without a drink. However much she was dreading this confrontation, Scarlett was glad to have him at her side. For the first time in ages, she felt she had a proper father. If it hadn’t been for the desperate circumstances, she would have been delighted.

Ricky’s parents lived in a neat terraced house in Westcliff. The privet hedge was clipped, the front path was swept and the brass knocker and letter box were polished. A small thin woman in a frilly apron with tightly permed pepper-and-salt hair opened the door to them.

‘Yes?’ she said, looking coldly from Victor to Scarlett.

‘Mrs Harrington? This is my girl, Scarlett. Your boy Ricky’s been taking her out.’

Ricky’s mother made no move to ask them in.

‘Yes?’ she repeated.

‘Well—’ Victor shifted uncomfortably. Scarlett felt her fleeting confidence in him begin to seep away. ‘Well…er…we got things we need to talk about. Things that’s better said inside. Sitting down, like.’

‘I don’t know who you are,’ Ricky’s mother said.

The man who used to run the Red Lion surfaced. Victor introduced himself and held his hand out. Ricky’s mother did not appear to be impressed, but she grudgingly let them in. She showed them into the front room, where a green moquette-covered three-piece suite was placed round a television set with a lamp on top of it in the shape of a crinolined lady. A small coal fire burned in the grate, but it had been recently laid and wasn’t yet giving out much heat. Scarlett and Victor perched uneasily on the sofa while Mrs Harrington fetched her husband.

‘This is George. I’m Betty,’ she said.

Mr Harrington was an older version of Ricky. He nodded silently at Scarlett and Victor and sat down in the chair nearest to the fire, staring resentfully at them.

Victor cleared his throat. ‘Well…er…’

‘I hope this is important. I was eating my tea,’ Mr Harrington said.

‘I’m sorry—’ Victor began.

Scarlett wanted to disappear into the stiff sofa. This was going to be dreadful. Her father was backing down before they had even started.

But Victor managed to bring himself up to the mark.

‘But yes, it is important. Very important.’ He plunged straight in to the business in hand. ‘Your son’s got my girl in the family way, and I want to know what he’s going to do about it.’

Mrs Harrington squawked with shock and horror.

‘My Ricky? With you? I don’t believe it. He’s a good boy.’

Mr Harrington just sat there, stony-faced.

‘It’s true. She’s been to the doctor’s and everything. It’s due in June.’

Mr Harrington finally spoke. ‘You sure it’s Ricky’s?’

Scarlett was outraged. This was the second time she had been doubted and she wasn’t having it. It was bad enough being pregnant without everyone assuming she was a bad girl.

‘Of course it’s his. What are you saying? I’ve never been with anyone else in my life.’

At that moment, there was the sound of a key in the door. Everyone’s heads swivelled round as footsteps came into the hall. Scarlett felt ill.

Mr Harrington broke the silence. ‘Richard! Come in here.’

Ricky stepped into the room. He caught sight of Scarlett and Victor and stopped dead.

‘Bloody hell. What are you doing here?’

‘Ricky! Language!’ his mother exclaimed.

‘We got some sorting out to do here, son,’ his father said. He gave Scarlett a hard look. ‘This girl—’

Victor interrupted. ‘You got my Scarlett in the family way, and I want to know what you’re going to do about it,’ he said loudly.

‘I…what…you’re never…’ Ricky stuttered.

He looked round at all the eyes fixed on him. For one terrible moment, Scarlett thought he was going to deny all knowledge.

‘Is it yours, son?’ his father asked heavily.

‘Mine?’ Ricky shifted his shoulders. Then, to Scarlett’s amazement, a cocky grin appeared on his face. ‘Of course it is. Nothing wrong with the old equipment, is there, babe?’

All three adults looked shocked.

‘You little—’ Victor growled.

Scarlett put a hand on his arm, afraid that he might get physical.

‘It’s all right, Dad.’

‘No, it ain’t all right—’

‘There’s no need for that sort of talk, son,’ Mr Harrington told him.

Ricky rolled his eyes. ‘Blimey, I only—’

‘You’ll have to get married, of course,’ Mrs Harrington stated.

‘Married?’ Ricky looked horrified. ‘I don’t know about that.’

‘You’ve admitted to it. You’re the one what indulged in immoral behaviour. Now you got to bear the consequences, and give this child a name,’ his father said.

‘Though everyone will know. A seven month baby. I don’t know how I’m going to hold my head up. Nothing like this has ever happened in my family before,’ his mother ranted.

‘Young people today. Got no shame. Wouldn’t have happened in my day,’ his father stated.

‘Girls in our day knew how to behave,’ Mrs Harrington agreed, glaring at Scarlett.

Victor flared up at this. ‘My Scarlett’s a good girl. She got led astray by your son.’

‘Bloody hell!’ Ricky exploded, producing gasps and cries of shock all round. ‘I tell you something, it’ll be worth it just to get away from here. Nag, nag, nag all day long. Don’t do this, don’t say that. Take your shoes off, chew your food proper, watch your tongue. I’ve had enough of it, you hear? Scarlett and me’ll get a place and do what we want, won’t we, babe? All night and all day, and no one to tell us we can’t.’

Scarlett hardly heard the furore that this produced. She sat staring at the flames as they began to lick round the coals. Married. She was going to be married to Ricky. A huge dark weight seemed to settle on her, filling her with dread. She knew it would be the wrong thing to do. Ricky was not the man for her. The only person she wanted to spend the rest of her life with was Jonathan. But inside her was Ricky’s baby.

There was no way out.

T
HE
wedding was quick and very unromantic. Ricky’s mother took charge and insisted that they married in church.

‘I don’t hold with them registry office things,’ she said. ‘I don’t care what they say, I don’t think you’re properly married at them places. It’s bad enough having to rush things like this.’

She did relent a little in her attitude to Scarlett when she realised that her daughter-in-law to be didn’t have a mother to guide her.

‘All the same, you should of known better,’ she kept saying.

That seemed to be everyone’s opinion. Ricky didn’t come in for much blame at all. It was all Scarlett’s fault for giving in to him. Some joker at work made up a new nickname for her—the Scarlett Woman. She heard it whispered wherever she went.

She hardly slept the night before her wedding. She harboured wild thoughts of running off and finding a ship to take her to Malaya and Jonathan. But imagining telling him that she was carrying someone else’s baby put paid to that. She was caught up in what everyone else had decided was the right thing to do, and the only alternative was to have the baby all by herself, which still wouldn’t bring back the old days with Jonathan. In the end she did what she had known she was going to do all along. She got up and put on the dress she had borrowed from one of the girls at work.

Mrs Harrington had been scandalised that she would be wearing white when she wasn’t a virgin.

‘You’re the one that wants to keep up appearances,’ Scarlett told her.

So here she was, wearing a nylon satin dress that didn’t really fit her. The fashion for tight bodices and tiny waists was not kind to the pregnant woman. The girl she had borrowed the dress from was much fatter than her, so though it went round her expanding belly all right, the rest of it was far too large. She sighed and plonked the headdress and veil on her pinned-up hair. It hid the worst of it.

Brenda arrived. She was also dressed in borrowed finery, a lemon-yellow bridesmaid’s dress from the same source as Scarlett’s.

‘You all right?’ she asked.

‘No.’

‘For Gawd’s sake! He’s a bit of all right, your Ricky, and he ain’t made any fuss about getting married, has he?’

‘Why should he? It’s his baby too, you know.’

‘Yeah, but it don’t always follow that they admit it. I bet there’s a lot of girls round this town ready to step into your shoes right now.’

‘They can have him. It’s Jonathan I want.’

‘You should of thought of that before you let Ricky put you up the duff,’ Brenda told her.

Which was so true that Scarlett was silenced.

Victor, Scarlett and Brenda took a taxi to the church. Victor was dressed once more in his suit and buoyed up with a bottle of whisky in his pocket. By the time they arrived, it was Scarlett who had to support him up the aisle.

A disapproving vicar intoned the service in a bored voice. Scarlett and Ricky repeated the vows, the register was signed, and there they were, man and wife. They all went back to the Harringtons’ for a buffet lunch, where Victor drank most of the beer and went out for more whisky and Ricky’s family looked more and more appalled at the whole set-up. The happy couple escaped as soon as they could for a one night honeymoon in Clacton, where Scarlett spent most of the time in tears. She still hadn’t told Jonathan.

Jonathan had a bad feeling about the letter the moment it arrived. It had been nearly a month since Scarlett’s last one, and that had been very brief, telling him that everything was fine at home and if he meant was her father a problem, he was quite all right, thank you very much. Jonathan had been regretting asking about him ever since Judy had advised him to try. After all, what did Judy know? She was very nice and kind, but she had never met Scarlett or her father. She couldn’t understand how loyal Scarlett was to him. He stood holding the latest letter, turning it over and over in his hands. Good news or bad, he knew it was best to get it over with, but he needed somewhere quiet to read it.

‘Another hot one from the girlfriend?’ someone in the hut asked.

‘Yeah. Not for your eyes, mate,’ Jonathan said.

He thrust it into his pocket, where it burned all morning long.

It wasn’t until the lunches had been served and cleared away that he had ten minutes to himself. He sat on a packing crate under the palms behind the kitchen and tore it open. The first thing he noticed was a new address in Westcliff, then that the letter itself was very short.

At first Jonathan was so shocked he just stared at the words on the page.

‘No,’ he said out loud. ‘No. You can’t do this to me.’

He read the whole thing through again slowly in the vain hope that he might have misunderstood. But no, there it was. Scarlett had got married. A terrible physical pain tore at his guts. This could not be happening to him. Not his Scarlett. He dug his knuckles into his eyes, trying to keep the tears at bay.

How could she do this? How long had it all been going on? Who was this man who had taken her away from him?

He thought of all the opportunities he had had here—the nurses, the Malay girls, the Chinese girls. He had turned them all down because he knew Scarlett was waiting for him at home. Or at least, he had thought she was waiting for him at home. Clearly she hadn’t. But to string him along like this! All the time pretending everything was all right, then to tell him she was married. He felt utterly betrayed.

A murderous rage came to his rescue. He couldn’t stay where he was a moment longer. Not caring what the consequences might be, he walked out of the compound through the hole in the wire at the back and went and got very drunk at a bar.

At some point in the evening he fell into the arms of a Malay girl who took him back to her village. After that he remembered nothing until he was finally arrested by the military police the next day and put on a charge. He didn’t care. Nothing mattered, now that Scarlett was no longer waiting for him back home. The future was blank.

His senior officer read him a lecture on ruining his unblemished record. Jonathan couldn’t feel anything much about it. It was his own sense of responsibility to the patients he was feeding that kept him doing his job properly. The routine of the kitchen held him together and made a pattern to each day.

He vented his feelings in a blistering letter to Scarlett that ran into several pages. He felt slightly better having written it, as if an abscess had been lanced. For days afterwards he wavered between regretting having sent it and being pleased that Scarlett should be made to feel bad about what she had done. Either way, the deed was done. He did not expect a reply.

It was Judy who put the pieces together again. At first she was sympathetic, then she became stern.

‘You’re drinking far too much,’ she told him after a going-away party.

‘Everyone drinks at parties,’ he said.

‘Not as much as you do. You’re not just drinking to be sociable like the rest of us. You’re drinking to forget.’

‘So? It works.’

‘And how do you feel this morning?’

‘All right.’

He hurt so much all the time that a headache was almost a welcome distraction.

‘Liar. You’ve got a huge hangover. I can tell. And do you remember what you got up to last night?’

Jonathan didn’t answer. He could recall the first part of the evening, but the rest was a blur. He had some unexplained cuts and bruises but he had woken up in the right bed.

‘You got very aggressive, you challenged Mike to a fight and then you fell over a table and passed out. The lads had to carry you home. You’d better thank them, because if it weren’t for them you’d be up on another charge.’

‘Oh.’

He hadn’t realised he had been quite that bad.

Judy put a hand on his arm. ‘I seem to remember you saying that your Scarlett’s father was a drunk, that he didn’t look after her properly.’

‘Yes.’

Just the sound of her name was like a kick in the stomach.

‘Do you want to end up like him?’

‘I’m not in the least like him!’

‘Maybe not yet, but this is how it starts.’

Jonathan refused to believe her. Only later did he turn it over in his mind and admit that drinking was no way out. More than that, the last person he wanted to be like was Victor Smith. He went on the wagon. At least then he felt he was in control of himself, if not of his life.

When he was just getting over the first shock, he met Agatha at a wedding. The daughter of a Dutch father and a Chinese mother, she was small and exquisite, with pale gold skin, Chinese features and startling blue eyes. In a classic rebound, Jonathan fell willingly under her spell. She was charming and funny and when she was with him she gave him her absolute attention, making him feel as if he was the only person in the room that mattered.

She invited him to her home to meet her family. Jonathan arrived in a borrowed Jeep to find that she lived in a vast bungalow surrounded by an exotic garden and run by what seemed like an army of servants. He was taken aback. He knew that Mr Van der Post ran a successful company exporting Malay silk and artwork and importing western electrical goods. What he hadn’t realised was just how well off the family was.

A uniformed houseboy conducted him to a broad veranda at the back furnished with comfortable cane chairs and hammocks and hung with baskets of orchids.

‘Jonathan!’ Agatha slid elegantly out of the hammock she was lying in and came towards him with both hands outstretched. ‘Come and meet my parents.’

He was introduced to a tall blond man with skin turned brick-red by years of tropical sunshine. He grasped Jonathan’s hand and studied him closely as he shook it. Jonathan looked steadily back at him. He wasn’t going to be intimidated by this man. Mr Van der Post was evidently satisfied with what he saw, and in turn introduced his wife. Mrs Van der Post was a surprise. Jonathan had expected her to be in traditional Chinese clothing with her hair in a bun, but instead found himself looking at a woman wearing a western hairstyle and the latest Paris fashions.

‘How do you do?’ she said, in the same prettily accented English as her daughter. ‘Agatha has told us much about you.’

Two younger sisters, not as lovely as Agatha, came forward to say hello. The only son of the family was away at school.

Lunch was served at a spacious table further along the veranda. Jonathan found himself questioned about his family, his education, his ambitions. All were met with polite nods but no great enthusiasm. It wasn’t until he described his dealings in surplus army food supplies that Mr Van der Post became enthusiastic.

‘Good, good. You have a business brain,’ he commented. ‘That is the way to get on in life—see an opportunity and exploit it.’

From then on the atmosphere around the table lightened. Mr Van der Post appeared to decide that Jonathan was acceptable and conversation became more general.

After lunch the four young people swam in the large pool, then played doubles on the tennis court. When the time came for him to leave, Agatha took Jonathan for a walk round the garden before he set off. They stopped to kiss under the cover of a jacaranda tree.

‘My father likes you,’ she told him. ‘You must come again.’

He was soon a regular visitor.

The weeks flew by. The end of Jonathan’s time in the army was fast approaching. As he lay awake at night, he tried to come to a decision about his future. His senior officer had offered him promotion if he signed up to stay on in the army. That one was fairly easy to dismiss. He had enjoyed army life, but he did not want to make a career of it. Far more tempting was the prospect of staying on in Malaya. He was fairly confident that if he asked Agatha to marry him, she would accept. Her father would readily find him a job in his business and he would be able to enjoy a very pleasant way of life. But was that enough? If he was really clear-eyed, he knew that under the surface attraction, what he felt for Agatha was nothing compared to what he still felt for Scarlett. And then there was the third option—going home. Without Scarlett there to welcome him, England seemed a grey place, foggy and cold. And so he wavered, until people started talking about his going-away party and he knew he had to make his mind up. He went into town on his day off and bought a sapphire and diamond ring. Sapphires would match Agatha’s eyes.