The Back of Beyond (27 page)

Not wanting to upset her sister at this stage, Marge said, ‘OK, don't go lifting that case. Ask a porter to look after you when it's train time.'

Feeling anything but comfortable about the whole business, Gwen would have panicked altogether if she had known what a narrow escape she'd had from discovery. They had left Forvit at five past eleven, quite unaware that Mrs Mearns, the postman's wife, had come to Aberdeen by the next bus on her way to see a friend in Laurencekirk. She had arrived at the station while they went to the bank and, when the gates opened to let passengers in, had found a seat in a carriage near the engine because she was always afraid that the back end of the train might stop short of the platform.

Only five minutes later, the porter helped Gwen into the first empty compartment they came to, unwittingly enabling Gwen to escape detection.

The meeting on the platform at Newcastle some hours later was too much for her. Despite her abhorrence of bringing attention on herself, she burst into tears and rushed into Ivy Crocker's welcoming arms, heedless of the people milling around them.

‘Hush, love,' the older woman crooned, ‘hush now. It's going to be all right. Ivy'll look after you.'

When she composed herself, Gwen noticed that her old friend was looking much older. She still wore too much make-up, still bleached her hair, but there were lines on her forehead that could not be hidden. There was a sadness in her black-outlined eyes, a sadness that told how much she missed her life's partner.

Ivy was looking at her compassionately. ‘All right now, dearie?'

‘Yes. I'm sorry, I made a proper exhibition of myself.'

‘Nobody noticed, but we'd better get on. I'll carry the case, if you can manage the bag? Won't be long now, less than half an hour on the bus, then a few minutes' walk.'

In just over the half hour, Gwen was sitting in the kitchen of an old cottage in the village of Moltby. ‘Put your feet up on that pouffe till I pour you a drop of my plum wine.' Ivy pushed a squashed round pouffe towards her. ‘I bet you're exhausted after such a long journey,' she observed in a moment, handing over a glass.

Gwen nodded wearily. ‘I am a bit tired.'

‘Your room's all ready for you, so you can have a lie down any time you want.'

‘Oh Ivy, you've always been so kind to me.' Gwen's voice was trembling now, the tears perilously near the surface again. ‘What must you think of me?'

Ivy stepped in before she broke down for the second time. ‘Gwen, I make it my business not to mind anybody else's, and I wouldn't presume to judge you, but I would like to know … why?'

Knowing that Ivy had thought the world of Alistair, Gwen did her best to explain, in low, shamed monotones, beginning with Ken taking Marge and the bicycle home from the 1941 Hogmanay Do.

‘Sexual attraction,' Ivy said, when the tale ended. ‘That's what it had been, because you were both vulnerable to your emotions. I don't condone what you did, but I do understand. I had my own moments, you know, I wasn't always this old and this ugly.'

‘Oh, Ivy, you're not ugly, and I don't know what I'd have done if …'

‘That's enough of that. I think you're being very noble letting Marge have the baby.'

‘I'm not being noble. I'm only thinking of myself – I could lose Alistair if he found out. That's another thing I'll always worry about. I can't tell lies without blushing, or giving the game away somehow. So how will I manage when Alistair and Dougal come home? One slip, and I throw a spanner into the works and burst up two marriages.'

‘You'll have to harden yourself. Think of it as Marge's, right from the start …'

‘But I'll be feeding it and caring for it for the first two weeks …'

Ivy leaned forward and gripped her hand. ‘We'll sort something out. Have you seen a doctor, or anything?'

‘No, I couldn't let anybody in Forvit know.'

‘I'll get Tilly Barker to check you over tomorrow. She's our local midwife, and she's been a good friend to me. When it's born, we'll put it on the bottle, so you won't get too fond of it.' Gwen's frown made her add, ‘Believe me, it's best. If you're not suckling it, you won't bond with it. You must look on it as something you're doing for your sister. A sacrifice, if you like, to please her and Dougal.'

Gwen sighed, but did not reply to this, and Ivy carried on, ‘I had a baby, you know, before I met Len, and he loved that boy like it was his own. We both doted on him, maybe too much …' Her voice faded, her eyes misted.

Gwen leaned across and took her hand. ‘What happened, Ivy?'

‘Our little Billy was taken from us when he was just three and a half. The doctors never said what it was – I don't think they knew – but one day he was running about, laughing and tossing his curly head, the next, he was fighting for life in a hospital bed.' She stopped for a moment, then said, ‘Two days later, he was dead.'

‘Oh, Ivy, how awful. I don't know how you could have got over that.'

‘I don't think we ever did, not really. Len was in the Navy at the time, so I was mostly on my own, and it was really bad for a long time.' She straightened her back abruptly. ‘But it's surprising what you can survive if you have to.'

‘Maybe I shouldn't have come,' Gwen murmured, unhappily. ‘It might upset you …'

‘No, dearie, I'm as hard as rock, I am. Nothing upsets me nowadays.'

‘I was very sorry about Len … and your sister. I bet that upset you?'

‘Ah, yes, that did upset me, but I'd been expecting it with Len. He'd had two slight heart attacks, you see, so I knew it was coming.'

In Ivy's back room that night, Gwen wondered if Alistair would have accepted Ken's baby as his if she'd given him the chance, like Len Crocker had done. But … Len hadn't been married to Ivy at the time of her pregnancy, so he had nothing to forgive, whereas she had committed adultery while Alistair was fighting for his country, worse, while he was a prisoner of war. There was no comparison.

Ivy and Marge were both right. It was better this way. She, Gwen Ritchie, was the only one who would suffer, but that was as it should be, since she was the one who had sinned.

Chapter 20

Gwen was shocked out of her misery and self-condemnation by her old friend as they sat by the fire one evening. She had just said, for the umpteenth time, that she deserved to be punished for the awful thing she had done and Ivy had burst out, ‘Good God, girl! I'm sick of hearing you running yourself down like that. You surely don't think you're the only wife in this world that's ever had a little bit of fun on the side? Wives all over the country are doing it, and quite a few of them have landed the same as you. It's natural to miss the loving when your husband's away, and it's hard to resist if another man lights a spark in you. You're just one of the unlucky ones, that's all – too fertile. You had two children by the time you were two years married, remember?'

Scarlet-faced at what she took for implied criticism, Gwen hung her head, and Ivy went on, softly, ‘I'm not getting at you, I'm trying to make you see things in perspective.'

‘You can't understand. You were never unfaithful to Len, were you?'

Ivy rose to put some coal on the fire, then observed, ‘I'll likely regret telling you this, but, after my Billy died, I felt life was passing me by. Len was away in the Navy, and I took a job as a caretaker in a block of offices, for the company as much as the money, and there was a basement flat that went with it.' She hesitated and then went on, ‘I was only sixteen when I had Billy, and seventeen when I married Len, so I missed out on an awful lot. I didn't realize it at the time, of course, for I loved Len, but he was away so much.'

‘What made you change?'

Ivy shrugged. ‘Nothing really. I still loved Len, always have, but when young Mr Gerald, the boss's son, put his arm round me in the passage, I didn't push him away.'

She stopped again, smiling. ‘He was so handsome, and I'd gone all wobbly at the knees any time he as much as looked at me, but he didn't take advantage of me. It was me – and it went from kissing in the corridor, to cuddling, then downstairs to my flat, and that's when it happened … as I wanted.'

Gwen gasped in astonishment. ‘You planned it?'

A little sadly, Ivy said, ‘He was only a boy, maybe seventeen, and I was well over twenty. It only happened that once, but I never forgot him, and I never regretted it.
And
it never made any difference to how I felt about Len. Can you understand that?'

‘Oh yes,' Gwen breathed. ‘It was the same as me, in a way, not love, just …'

‘Just a need,' Ivy finished for her. ‘It wouldn't have happened if Alistair had been at home, any more than if Len had been at home with me, but I was lucky. I don't know if his father suspected anything, but he sent Gerald off to their branch in Edinburgh, and I never saw him again.'

‘Did you ever tell Len?'

‘Gwen, I might have been a fool, but not as big a fool as that. He had accepted Billy without a murmur, but I couldn't expect him to forgive that.'

‘And he never suspected anything?'

‘Why should he? So, Gwen, dear, if you're thinking, as I believe you are, of telling Alistair the truth, put it out of your head. Marge wants to give Dougal a child he thinks is his, and Alistair will be none the wiser, so why upset the apple cart? And clear the shame and guilt right out of your system before you bring this child into the world.'

Trying to do as Ivy said, Gwen assured herself that, if there hadn't been a war on, she would never have … She wouldn't have
met
Ken Partridge in the first place. It was this awful war that was to blame, yet … if she hadn't been worried about Alistair … if Ken hadn't been leaving the next day for good … if Marge hadn't encouraged them …

She drew in a long breath and let it out slowly. She must forget all the ifs. She was the only one to blame, no matter what anybody said. Ivy was made of different stuff … but maybe it was losing her son that had made her start painting her face and bleaching her hair … and seeking affection, if not love, outside her marriage. Gwendoline Ritchie didn't have any excuse. Ken Partridge had treated her like a lady, of course, done things for her and made her feel ten years younger, so was that why? She wished with all her heart that she could look back on her time with him as a pleasurable interlude, not the shameful incident which was overshadowing everything else.

‘Do you ken what kind o' operation Alistair Ritchie's wife's getting?'

Lexie shook her head. ‘No, Aggie, I'm sorry. Dougal's wife just said it was some woman's trouble she had.'

‘But naebody's seen her for months,' Mrs Mearns persisted.

Doodie Tough, waiting to be served and ever anxious to winkle out the last drop of any gossip or scandal, said now, with a touch of sarcasm, ‘Your Sandy musta seen her.'

‘Sandy? A magenty horse wi' a sky-blue tail and purple wings could knock him aff his bike and he'd never tell me. I couldna get a thing oot o' him, except she aye sat in a chair rolled up in a blanket.' Aggie picked up her change and left.

Lexie weighed her next words carefully. ‘That seems a bit queer, don't you think?'

Sensing something of interest, Doodie's eyes glittered. ‘What d'you mean?'

‘I wouldn't think you'd need to sit about in a blanket if it was just woman's trouble.'

Not particularly quick-witted for all her garrulity, it was a few seconds before Doodie got the meaning of this. ‘You think she's expectin'?'

‘Oh, I never dreamt it was anything like that, Doodie.' Not wanting it to be known that the idea had come from her, Lexie was glad that the woman had figured it out with so little prompting. ‘Though now I come to think about it … I suppose she could be.'

‘But …' Mrs Tough pursed her mouth and lowered her brows in thought, and at last she whispered, ‘But Alistair hasna been hame for …' Her eyes dilating, she stopped with a satisfied smirk. ‘She musta took up wi' ane o' they sodjers afore they was shifted.'

Lexie's face registered shock. ‘But she was so quiet, not like her sister.'

‘Still waters run deep,' intoned Doodie, narrowing her eyes now to emphasize this, ‘but I must say I'd never … she's a dark horse, right enough.'

‘We'd better watch what we're saying, though. We've no proof.'

‘What else could it be, an' her needin' a blanket to hide her belly?'

Wondering if she had gone too far by implanting the suspicion, Lexie now did her best to erase it. ‘We're letting our imaginations run away with us, Doodie. She must have something far wrong if she needs special equipment they haven't got in Aberdeen.'

Susceptible to anything, Mrs Tough digested this new concept with the same intensity as before. ‘Aye … we'd best gi'e her the benefit o' the doubt.' She paid for her purchases and went out, clearly trying to decide which of the two versions she should pass on.

Lexie felt a little uncertain herself now. She had been so sure that Gwen Ritchie was expecting, but voicing it to somebody else had raised doubts in her own mind. Maybe the woman was
really
ill – but she
had
been with a soldier, there was no getting away from that. Yet … how would she have met him? That was the sticking point.

Gwen's labour started one afternoon only days later, three weeks early. ‘Is a premature baby less likely to survive?' she asked, anxiously, during a pain-free interval.

Ivy pulled a face. ‘They used to say a seven-month baby was all right, but an eight-month wouldn't have any nails – old wives' tales. Anyway, you're into the ninth month, and we'd best get Tilly. I'll ask Mona next door to go, she's quicker on her feet than me.'

Both in their thirties, Gwen and Tilly Barker, the midwife, had taken to each other as soon as they met, and had gone walking together in the cool of the evenings, when Ivy was too tired to go out. Gwen had even told Tilly the truth about her pregnancy, which the other woman had laughingly shrugged off. ‘It's happening all over, lass.'

It hadn't been as bad as Gwen remembered, and it was a boy, which should please Marge, although she had always said she didn't care one way or the other.

‘He's all right, isn't he?' she asked, while Tilly was cleaning him.

‘Oh, you mothers,' the neat little woman smiled. ‘Why wouldn't he be all right? He's perfect, got all his important little bits. Look.' She held him up for inspection.

His face was a bit redder than either of her other two had been, Gwen thought, and his tiny mouth was screwed up like he had a pain somewhere, but he was still lovely. Only one thing jarred. His head wasn't bald like David's had been, nor covered in fair down like Leila's. He had bright ginger hair! Like Ken Partridge's! Would this make Dougal start wondering, when he came home? Could two dark-haired people make a red-headed baby? It would be a problem for Marge and her, at any rate; for it would always remind them of who his father had been.

Marge was delighted to get Gwen's letter saying she'd had a boy. He had come early, all to the good, and mother and child should be fit enough to travel in a couple of weeks. Once she held the infant in her own arms, she'd feel that the Finnies were a proper family at long last. She read the letter again, smiling a little because her sister seemed worried about the colour of his hair. Any couple could have a red-headed child whatever theirs was … couldn't they?

She took out the letter Gwen always enclosed, to be sent to their mother. Mum would have wondered what was up if she didn't get a letter from her eldest daughter for over a month, and although the place where it had been posted wasn't supposed to be franked on an envelope in wartime, maybe they did in the cities. That would put the cat among the pigeons with a vengeance. Mum would go on her high horse and demand to be told why Gwen was in Newcastle, and what was all the secrecy about?

After addressing an envelope for her own letter to her mother, Marge laid them both down on the ledge in the front porch, ready to give to the postman next morning. Thank goodness the final stage of her plan would soon be in motion, because Sandy Mearns was always saying, ‘Not long now, eh?'

He had no idea that she wasn't really pregnant, which was why she couldn't have a doctor or midwife coming to the house, not that he'd have known that. She had told him, so that he could pass it on to anyone he liked, that she was going to have the baby in a hospital in Aberdeen. She had already provisionally booked a hotel room for fourteen days, so she'd have to confirm it now she knew the exact dates it would be used. She'd been a bit worried about this end of the procedure, she hadn't really planned it properly because she hadn't been sure if Ivy would agree. She needn't have worried.

‘Gwen wouldn't manage taking her case and bag on and off the train, as well as the baby,' Ivy had written, ‘and I'll be delighted to see her all the way back to Forvit. I can stay for a week or two, if you need me, I wouldn't mind a little holiday.'

Ivy was going to save their bacon, Marge gloated. She had been really worried in case her sister got too attached to the baby, but Ivy had said that she had been doing as much as she could to prevent any bonding. Gwen would have less than two days in the hotel on her own with it, then maybe another couple of days letting her sister get accustomed to looking after it.

Marge's plan was carried out. Ivy saw Gwen settled into the hotel with the baby, and followed her instructions on how to get to the bus terminus. Marge met her at the end of the track, and insisted that she take a rest before Leila and David came home from school.

When they did, of course, they were overjoyed to see their Auntie Ivy again, and she invented a little fib to set their minds at ease about their mother. ‘One of my friends in London went to see your Grandma and she says she's looking much better. It shouldn't be long before your Mum's home.'

That night, when the youngsters had gone to bed, much happier because of what Ivy had told them, Marge said, with a broad grin on her face, ‘I didn't realize what a good liar you are. Almost as good as me.'

Ivy pulled a face. ‘Only when it's necessary.'

Her expression sobering, Marge said earnestly, ‘Me, too.'

The only sticky moments came when they went to the hotel next day. Although Gwen had agreed to it, she wasn't happy at having to hand the baby over to Marge, who was determined to take over right from the start.

‘You'll have to get used to it,' Ivy sympathized, ‘so just let him go. Look, I'll have to leave, can't keep that car waiting any longer.'

When she had gone, Marge said, ‘She insisted we took the car the Bankside garage hires out. She said it would look better than me going by bus when I was supposed to be in labour. I suppose she was right, at that. Now, let me see my little darling.'

Once the ball had been set rolling, things went relatively smoothly, although Gwen was quite tearful when her sister refused to let her even hold the baby.

‘Look, Gwennie,' Marge pointed out, softly, ‘you have to give him up some time, and I have to learn how to deal with him as long as you're here with me.' She paused for a second, then said, ‘Have you given any thought to a name for him yet?'

‘If you're so determined to have him right now,' Gwen said, miserably, ‘you'd better choose it yourself.'

‘Dougal and I used to discuss names … before we realized we'd never have a family, and it was to be Nicholas for a boy and Louise for a girl.'

‘Nicholas? I like that.'

‘Good, then Nicholas it is.'

Marge considered that little Nicholas was an absolute darling. At just over two weeks old, his face was no longer wrinkled and red like Gwen had said it was at first, and his hair, a beautiful, thick, gingery auburn, had a little curl in it already. His infant-blue eyes would likely change to brown, the same colour as Dougal's and hers, which would allay suspicions from all directions – though there shouldn't be any after the trouble she'd taken to pull the wool over innocently inquisitive and downright nosy eyes.