For All Our Tomorrows (40 page)

‘What on earth are you doing?’

He looked up, startled, to face his wife’s amused frown. Hugh could think of no excuse, no explanation for digging in the dustbin.

‘Have you lost something?’

‘No, er yes. It doesn’t matter. It’s not important. I thought you were on your way to The Ship to deliver the pasties. Oh, and Sara, I noticed you’d forgotten to clean out the beer pumps yesterday.’

‘No, I hadn’t forgotten. I’ve decided that I haven’t time for that job any more either. In any case, you never were satisfied with my efforts so you’re much better off doing it yourself in future. Once I’ve delivered the pasties, I shall be occupied all afternoon, helping out at the hospital.’

Hugh grunted. ‘Why the hell you’ve got yourself involved with all of that, I really cannot imagine. How am I supposed to manage on my own at the pub, with you up there all the damned time?’

Sara sighed. She should have known that he wouldn’t simply let the matter drop. ‘You aren’t on your own. You have Sid.’

‘That’s not quite the same.’ He marched into the kitchen to wash his hands. ‘It really is too much. You’re getting very full of yourself, Sara, always dashing about here, there and everywhere. You never seem to be in this lovely house for more than five minutes. Where was the point in my buying it for you. It’s really quite infuriating.’

‘I didn’t ask you to buy it for me, you bought it for yourself. But it’s true that I am very busy.’ She smiled, taking his criticism as a complement.

Hugh tossed the used towel onto the floor and glowered at her, ‘I don’t remember your asking me if I minded you working at the hospital?’

Sara stared at the crumpled towel, considered picking it up but then changed her mind and turned to make herself a sandwich instead. She hadn’t even had time for breakfast this morning as she’d dashed straight up to the base at Windmill after taking the children to school, and she was hungry. ‘That’s because I didn’t ask you. I didn’t see any reason to. Ham sandwich do you for lunch?’

‘No reason? Have you quite lost your mind? I’m your husband, and no, I will not have a ham sandwich. I’ll have a cooked lunch, as usual, if you don’t mind.’

‘Ah, but I do mind. I don’t have time to cook, not right now. I’ve promised to take some library books round the wards. Those poor boys get so bored, and no doubt Sister will have other jobs lined up for me. In any case, you’re my husband, not my keeper, so I really don’t have to ask your permission, do I? I can do whatever I please. It’s time I grew up and made some decisions of my own, don’t you think? That’s perhaps what I’ve learned most from this war, that there are all kinds of things I can do. And it’s really a rather wonderful feeling.’

Hugh was staring at her as if she’d run mad, as if the world had turned on its axis and was going in the wrong direction. His whole life seemed to be falling apart, first Iris, and now Sara. He grasped her by the wrist and gave her a little shake. It was clearly time he knocked some sense into her. ‘Stuff and nonsense. You are my
wife
, and you will do as I say!’

Sara had the temerity to laugh as she wrenched her hand free. ‘Dear me, how very cross you sound, like a bad tempered school teacher with a wayward pupil. Is that how you’ve always seen me, Hugh, as a child to scold and punish if I don’t do as I’m told?’

‘I see you as an obedient, loving wife.’

Following the debacle of her illicit weekend away, it had given him enormous satisfaction to watch his chastened wife feed and nurture her children, because those very same children were his greatest weapon in keeping her. Sara would never risk losing them, no matter how much she might yearn for independence or want to indulge her romantic dreams. Her greatest charm, also perhaps her greatest weakness in a way, had been her quiet compliance, her readiness to do whatever he asked. But since that fateful weekend something had changed in her. His control over her seemed to be slipping away.

 
Even now she was tilting up her chin in a most defiant manner.

‘Let me tell you that I am not a child, that I’m a woman with needs you’ve largely ignored. All right, so I’m your wife, and because of my darling children I will agree to stay married to you, for the time being at least, but things have changed between us, you know they have. I’ll tolerate no more bullying, Hugh. I will not allow you to lock me in my room like some recalcitrant adolescent, or take your pleasure of me whether I wish you to or not. In fact, since we are now living in such a large house and have all this lovely space, I think it would be best if you moved into the guest room at the back. Yes, I think that would be an excellent idea, don’t you?’

‘What the hell are you suggesting?

‘That we can maintain the fiction of a happy marriage, for the sake of appearances, without having to endure each other’s constant presence. Or would you prefer it if I moved into the spare room? I really don’t mind.’

‘I thought I’d made my position clear. You’ll stay in
my
bed and do as
I
say.’

‘No, Hugh, I will not.’ And smiling coolly at him, she picked up her sandwich and walked away, leaving him to make his own lunch.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

The triumph didn’t last long. Peggy took her revenge for what she deemed a public humiliation by checking all Bette’s papers and quizzing her on her home background, on when she’d met Chad and how she’d managed to get transport to the States. When Bette explained about Barney finding her a billet on a transport ship, she was instantly suspicious.

‘That don’t sound legal to me.’

‘Nobody queried it when we arrived so I shouldn’t think anyone is going to bother about that now.’ Bette tried to sound unconcerned, but could have kicked herself for this carelessness. She wouldn’t put it past the woman to try to have her thrown out of the country.

‘And why would Barney help?’

‘I’ve told you, he was a friend.’

Peggy considered her with a shrewd, calculating gaze, lips pressed firmly together. ‘You and he must’ve got mighty cosy around that time.’

More chillingly, on another occasion, Peggy suddenly, and quite casually remarked, ‘They do say that a child most resembles it’s father at the moment of it’s birth.’

Bette’s heart skipped a beat but even as she struggled to find some sort of answer to this weighted comment, Peggy blithely changed the subject and began talking about bottling peaches and stocking up the wood store before winter set in. Bette said that it was still only July so there was plenty of time for such things, but Peggy insisted that winter came early in these parts, and in any case she’d be wanting the house warm for the baby, wouldn’t she, and food to eat? ‘We all do know how you like your grits.’

Nothing Bette said seemed to be right.

A wedding was hastily arranged the very next week, the parson coming up to the farm specially to conduct the ceremony in peace and quiet. No friends or neighbours were invited, as Peggy insisted that Bette was too far gone in her pregnancy to display herself as an object for folk to gawp at, just as if she’d been the one putting off the wedding all this time.

Chad, while being thankful that he’d been relieved of the task of breaking this difficult news to his mother, apologised to his young bride for the paucity of the ceremony. ‘I meant for us to have a fine, grand affair with you in a fancy frock and a big cake an’ all.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Bette insisted. ‘We’re married at last, man and wife. That’s all I care about.’

Bette wore her one good dress, the blue crêpe de chine and carried a posy of marguerites which Chad picked for her. The entire family took a day off from working the land, drank a good deal and ate mounds of food, laughing and shouting and being generally raucous and loud. Only Bette sat at the table feeling like a stranger at her own wedding.

Never had she missed her own family more than she did at this moment. What she wouldn’t give to have Sara act as bridesmaid, Cory to give her away and even Sadie around to tell her how things should be done. She felt so alone without them.

That night, she tried again to persuade her new husband to make love to her, but he patted her shoulder kindly and set her away from him. ‘Wait till the baby is born, hon, maybe I’ll feel more comfortable then. We don’t want no problems.’

Bette turned over, curled up in a ball and by sheer will power, managed not to cry. What would happen when the baby was born, she dreaded to think. She didn’t even know where the nearest hospital was, should anything go wrong. She felt so lonely and afraid, so desperate for affection, for her mam and dad, for Sara, it was a wonder she wasn’t howling into her pillow. And how could she ever love this baby, when it had got her into this mess?

Bette went into labour on the thirteenth of October. The pains were shocking but thankfully short lived and a golden dawn was breaking over the Appalachian Mountains when Jackson Junior slipped quietly into the world, making no fuss and crying on cue when his new grandmother picked him up by the heels and smacked his bottom.

Bette, in a daze of exhaustion and relief, was simply thankful that the birth had been relatively straightforward, and that it was all over.

‘Is he all right? Let me see him. I want to hold him.’

Peggy seemed to be examining the child with a scrupulous intensity, holding the squirming infant close to the light while she studied its features. Once she was done, she plonked the child unceremoniously into it’s mother’s arms. ‘That ain’t no Jackson. That’s a Willert, as I live and breathe. You married my son under false pretences, girl, just as I always suspected.’
 

Bette could hear voices at the other side of the bedroom door: a mix of Chad’s, Mary-Lou’s and Peggy’s, and every now and then the resonant notes of Pop Jackson, but she caught only the odd word. Willert being the one which most rang in her head, hammered in it like a drum beat. In her worst nightmares, she had never imagined such a moment. But no matter how carefully she studied the baby’s features, she could see no obvious evidence of Barney in his features.

Admittedly the fuzz of hair on his head was darker than Chad’s, and slightly curly, but then they said a baby’s hair rubbed off in the first few weeks and came back a different colour, so how could she be certain? His eyes were dark, neither grey nor brown, which surely proved nothing. They too might change. Barney’s eyes had been clear grey with a rim of violet around the iris, nothing like this child’s, and Chad’s were a deep, warm brown. What could Peggy possibly have seen which so convinced her that the child was not Chad’s? Or had she simply made up her mind from the start that she had no wish to accept the child as a Jackson.

All seemed to have gone strangely quiet beyond the door, perhaps because they had moved downstairs to the kitchen to continue their frantic chatter, and still Chad had made no appearance to welcome his son into the world. Bette felt bitterly disappointed, cheated of his presence and desperately close to tears. Why didn’t he come?

The baby began to cry and not knowing what else to do, she put it to her breast. At first he refused to suck and Bette was nearly in tears. ‘Oh please, someone help me. How do I feed this baby? Why won’t he suckle?’ As the baby became increasingly distressed, Bette began to sob. ‘Hello, is anyone there? Can someone help me, please!’

Nobody can have heard her because nobody responded to her cries and her chest felt tight with fear, sheer panic overwhelming her. Had they all gone out and left her alone? How would she manage? The baby would starve and fade away. So would she? Oh why had she come to this wild place in the middle of nowhere; why had she stayed? She could have been home in Cornwall with her family around her, and Barney, oh Barney, whose child is this?

She stared at the baby in her arms as if he were a stranger, his tiny, wrinkled face red with fury, his small mouth open wide in desperate, heartrending cries.

The child was hers, that’s who he was. What was she thinking of, giving way to panic? Slapping away the tears, Bette steadied her nerves and began to massage and tug at her breasts, trying to encourage the milk to flow, to demonstrate to the baby what he must do. Thankfully, a tiny drop of clear liquid emerged and he suddenly got the idea, gripping the teat with his tiny, birdlike mouth and holding fast with single-minded tenacity.

Bette felt a surge of love flood through her, a huge swell of emotion and she knew it was going to be all right. Everything would be fine. She lay back on a sigh of relief and actually laughed, smoothing a hand gently over her child’s head, seeing the pulse of life beating on his crown and it suddenly no longer mattered whether Barney or Chad was the father. He was her child, a part of her that she’d created. He was sucking stronger and stronger, a fine, healthy baby. She was so very lucky.

All she needed now was for Chad to come and see him. Once he clapped eyes on this tiny scrap of humanity, this fine little boy who was his son, Bette felt quite certain that he would fall in love with him, just as surely as she had done.
 

All day she waited but Chad did not come. Sometime around noon, Mary-Lou brought her a bowl of tomato soup and a crust of bread. She peered closely at the baby, now asleep in the crib they’d prepared for him. ‘What you going to call him? Barnaby?’

‘Your sarcasm won’t work today, Mary-Lou. I’m far too happy. Isn’t he wonderful? Where is Chad? Is he out? When will he be back? I’m longing to show him his son.’