Mrs Sinclair's Suitcase (21 page)

Would she write to him? A proper letter at last? This time, he thought – he knew – she would write to him freely, with love and abandon. He could not wait.

We did Whernside today, Ingleborough tomorrow. Went to Bolton Abbey on Monday. So far weather is sunny and warm, aren’t we lucky? We hope to do Penyghent if weather lasts, on Friday. Everything is comfortingly the same up here, just what we all love about it.

(A postcard of Hawes in Wensleydale. Sent to ‘Mum and Dad’ and signed by their daughter Abigail. This was found inside a 1946 copy of
Jane Eyre
published by the Zodiac Press, and a very good copy, priced at £12 and placed on the hardback fiction shelves in the back room. I was tempted to keep the book, as I had kept the postcard, but it sold quickly.)

I
t’s a scourging late October day, that day in autumn where you finally understand that summer really is over. The wind is blowing hard, a cold rain is drifting across the churchyard. It’s the sort of rain that seeks to slap your face and blind you.

I am standing at my father’s grave. It’s at the bottom of the churchyard, by the wall, where there had once been stinging nettles and a compost heap. I tiptoe through the graves, some of them familiar from childhood. Mary Sarah Wight, beloved daughter, sister, niece, wife, aunt, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and friend, 1868 to 1967. That was always my favourite. I always thought, what an amazing life Mary Sarah Wight must have led. To be all those things, to all those people, for all that time.

I stand now, alone in this bleak churchyard, and I feel so small. It frightens me. I had not spoken to my dad about … certain things … and now we can never speak again. He died a fortnight ago. The decline was sudden and swift. The breathing problem returned, only much worse. He was rushed to hospital. And there he stayed for four days, begging all the while to be allowed home to die. I backed him up, and finally I took him home. A kindly nurse called Lisa came to Dad’s house and brought oxygen, showing me how to help him use it. She administered morphine and other drugs. They, all of them – Dr Moore, Lisa, a couple of Dad’s friends – wanted him in the hospice, it was ‘the best place for him’. But when I discussed it with Dad, while he could still reason and say what he wanted, he refused. So I refused too. And between us, somehow, Lisa the nurse and I looked after Dad. And how strange it was. I became familiar with my father’s body, his bodily functions. I washed him, brushed his teeth, combed his hair, washed the bedlinen when it was soiled, dressed him, undressed him. I had to be like a wife to him. Lisa and I were with him when he died. It was swift, in the end, and merciful. Lisa said she had witnessed far worse deaths.

I felt no shock, at first not even any sadness. Then, that night after his death, trying to sleep, I realised I had not phoned anybody to tell them the news. There were a few friends, a few former work colleagues, from his days at Pietrykowski and Wallace, but I would gather myself and ring them in the morning. In fact, I would email most people, which was so much easier and safer. My voice would not hold out, I feared, over the telephone. They were all the sort of people who would not mind my crying, they would come to the funeral and say nice things about my father, and it would be truthfully meant, and it would even be comforting.

There is one other person to tell, of course. I think, I wonder if … I know I should … tell Babunia that her only son has died. We have never told her about his illness. Dad and I discussed it after he first told me he had it, years ago. We would not worry her; the chances were that she would die before he did. But she is still alive, and Dad is not. And it will take some thought, and sensitivity, and I seriously doubt I am up to the job. I have put it off so far. The time needs to be right. I need to feel strong first. And right now I feel as weak as a soaked tissue.

I’ve been going through my father’s things and I have found his birth certificate, neatly folded and stored in a Manila envelope along with his decree absolute. And my Polish grandfather was alive, according to the birth certificate, on the day that my grandmother registered my father’s birth, which was 13th January 1941. I can only assume my father knew this, as he must have read his own birth certificate. And she was already calling herself Dorothea Pietrykowski, which I think must have been an outright lie – the deed that Suzanne showed me wasn’t drawn up until March 1941. Were my father and grandmother in cahoots? Did Dad know the full story? I wish I had pushed him, and got some answers. Because, of course, now, as I feared, it is too late, another piece of the jigsaw is missing and I may never build up the whole picture. Do I want to, though? I don’t really know what I want any more. I seem to have become bereft of all my energy, as well as bereft of my father.

I miss him. I loved him so much. He was my friend as well as my father.

And if I expect anybody, anyone at all, to pull up in his car and find me standing alone at my father’s grave in this whipping-whispering rain, to stroll over in a nonchalant yet purposeful way, to put his arm around me in friendship, as a colleague might do, and tell me how sorry he is, and offer to buy cakes, and make a sweet, hearty mug of tea, and make me laugh with a pithy and sardonic comment about the inexplicable nature of death, or grief, or of life, I am to be disappointed.

Why do I feel this need to be rescued? I have lived alone, essentially alone, for sixteen years. By alone I suppose I mean without a long-term partner. By alone I suppose I mean without children. For most of my life, I have been without my mother. Now I feel tears blooming, I cannot stop them, and I know I am feeling sorry for myself, that most despicable of emotions. And I need a friend, I know this, I want a friend so badly. And by friend I mean lover, confidant, trusted individual, significant other. Maybe I even mean husband. Maybe all this distils down to that. I have denied myself all of this. I stand still, looking at the sky, the church, feeling the rain mingle with the tears on my face, and I cannot look into my future. I stand alone – for hours, it seems – and finally I recall myself, and I walk back to my car. I climb in, and I am so cold I cannot get the key into the ignition for several pained minutes.

O
h, but Nina was so cold. Dorothy put the shivering girl and her baby boy in the girls’ double bed, and banished Aggie to the spare room. Initially, Aggie baulked at this – knowing what had only recently occurred in the room, and in particular the bed – but Dorothy told her briskly to help herself to fresh bedding from the airing cupboard and to stop being silly, for heaven’s sake. Aggie found the forgotten dough set to rise in the cupboard that morning, and Dorothy told her to throw it away. It was a hell of a waste, but it couldn’t be helped. Dorothy delved into the bottom of her wardrobe and retrieved the stack of nappies and pins she had bought two winters ago. They were huge on the tiny newborn, but they would do. She hauled armfuls of logs and a scuttle of coal upstairs and lit the fire in the double bedroom, then she dressed Nina in a flannel nightgown and bed jacket and put fresh warm socks on her poor cold feet. She piled an extra eiderdown over Nina, tore a bed sheet in half and swaddled the baby in it, and instructed Nina to keep him in bed with her that night, but to be careful. Dorothy helped her to arrange pillows and showed her how to wriggle down the bed so her head was level with the baby’s head, meaning she would not pull up the covers and suffocate him.

Dorothy took to her own bed, but kept her door open so she could hear each time the baby woke up. And each time he did, she got up, poked the fire and added more coal. Nina did not want to feed the baby. So Dorothy explained, with patience, that there was no suitable milk available and Nina would have to feed him if she didn’t want him to die – at least, until they could get milk for him.

‘Might be best if he did die,’ said the bewildered girl, holding her baby awkwardly, but trying to feed him.

‘Do not talk like that,’ said Dorothy as she helped Nina to position him comfortably.

He latched on, squeezing shut his tiny eyes, his little body rigid with the richness of suckling his mother. Dorothy was wakeful, watchful, fearful, all night. She didn’t mind the little boy’s cries and whimpers. She thought these sounds had been taken from her forever. Nina was clearly exhausted, as all new mothers are, but she rocked him and fed him with Dorothy’s help.

By the first light of dawn, as the cockerel announced its arrival, Dorothy was both delighted and dismayed to wake from a fitful doze to find Nina fast asleep, cuddling her little boy, also fast asleep, mother and child breathing in unison, pink-faced and contented. It was a vision Dorothy couldn’t tear herself away from, and a rage ballooned inside her, a blind and fierce feeling of hatred and nausea. She was still rational enough to recognise jealousy, although she had never truly felt it until now.

She put on her pinny and made breakfast, and Aggie went off to work with a concocted tale of her friend’s illness, her vomiting, her incapacity. The need for recuperation. Poor overworked Nina, it had finally brought her crashing down. If anybody questioned her story, Aggie was to ignore the questions. On no account was she to tie herself up in knots. Nina wanted this baby kept secret, and Nina’s wish must be respected. So. There it was.

Dorothy pulled her suitcase from under her bed, blew off the wisps of dust, and with trembling hands unlocked and opened it. Sidney’s clothes were pristine and fresh, and the evermore aroma of dried lavender swamped Dorothy with the welcome surprise of a spring heatwave. She took out the bundle of Jan’s letters and threw them on to her bed along with her notebook and pen. With care she carried the case across the landing to Nina’s room, and showed her all the things she had once made. Nina must use them, of course. There was nothing else. Dorothy gave the baby his first wash – just a lick and a promise, as Dorothy’s mother had always called it – with Nina looking on as she gently wiped the baby’s face and neck and hands with a flannel. And as she and Nina dressed the baby boy, it seemed to Dorothy that this baby was a charmed imposter, animating the ghost-clothes meant for a different baby. A baby who no longer existed, and who might never have existed, he was so distant from Dorothy now. The clothes were a large fit, but Nina’s baby looked well, Dorothy thought, his little legs kicking, his arms quaking up and down as if in joy at the lovely new clothes he was so privileged to be wearing.

Nina was clumsy and still in shock. She was feverish and trembling. Dorothy hoped she would not need to call in the doctor, even though she knew, yes, this should be done, really, both for Nina and for her little boy. It was common sense, it was the responsible thing to do.

She brought the tin bath into the kitchen, boiled water and helped Nina to bathe. ‘Let me look after you,’ she murmured.

The girl was cold, hot, shivering. But she pronounced herself warmer after the bath, and Dorothy helped her back upstairs and tucked her back into bed.

‘You’re a good woman, Dot,’ said Nina. ‘I don’t know what the bloody hell I’d do without you.’

‘Nonsense. I’ll bring you some tea.’

Dorothy threw out Nina’s bright red bathwater, rinsed the bath and refilled it for herself. She hadn’t washed since the morning of Christmas Day, and part of her didn’t want to, but she knew she ought to. She luxuriated in the water, taking time to soap herself and to slowly rinse it off with her flannel. Her towel was stiff and warm, and she allowed herself to stand in it for some time, wrapping it tightly around her body. In time she dressed, threw out the bathwater and replaced the bath on its hook in the wash house. There were chores to attend to, a baby and his weary mother to look after.

Dorothy remained confident. She was vigilant. Nina was hardy. She would pull through. She stoked up the fire in the bedroom. Babies need to be kept very warm, she advised Nina. And you need to be warm too, so stay in bed and look after the baby.

‘He was Polish,’ said Nina as she watched Dorothy put coal on the fire.

Dorothy smiled a slow, rueful smile of understanding. It might have been compassion. She hoped it was compassion.

‘He was funny,’ added Nina. ‘I liked him. It’s wartime, ain’t it? I think he’s the one that died. In the crash out the back. The one you tried to rescue.’

‘Oh.’

‘It couldn’t have been … I don’t think it was nobody else. Not at that time anyway. Do you see?’

‘Yes, I see.’

‘But that’s no help to me. My mum and dad … I can’t tell them. They can’t ever know about this baby. Shirley. My brothers. I can’t tell none of them.’

‘What on earth will you do?’

‘Have you spoken to the nuns yet?’

‘No, of course not, you ridiculous girl! Oh, I’m sorry, Nina. Forgive me. You gave birth only yesterday. I haven’t had time … it’s … I don’t actually know of any nuns. Nina. Please understand.’

‘You can find out. You’re clever, Dot. People listen to you.’

The baby, who Nina had named David, suckled in unknowing peace at the young woman’s swollen and cloud-like breast. His hair was dark and sticking to his head, and he was blessed with the tangy, musky, minty, yeasty, orangey, earthy, other-worldly smell of the newborn baby. The smell was a drug to Dorothy, but Nina appeared unmoved.

‘Nina, there is no real shame in having a baby, you know. Whatever the circumstances may be. A baby is a gift.’

‘I don’t care about that,’ replied Nina. ‘I don’t want it. I never even knew I was carrying it. You believe me, don’t you?’

Dorothy patted her free hand. ‘I do. I truly do. I didn’t know you were carrying him either, and I’m much older than you and I should have realised. There were signs that I should have noticed. You’ve been so hungry! You even fainted, do you remember?’

‘I do. Rotten feeling, that was. Like falling off the edge of the world.’

‘Just try to get some sleep, will you? If you want to get back to work this week, you must rest.’

‘I am going back to work this week.’ Nina’s jaw was set stubbornly. ‘But what about David? How can we hide him?’