The Yorkshire Pudding Club (31 page)

‘Hello there, Happy Birthday,’ he said, striding in, handing her a card and then giving her a brotherly squeeze on the shoulder. She looked up at him like a little stunned rabbit lost, disorientated and scared and as if she had been crying because her mascara was smudged, although he didn’t draw attention to it and embarrass her.

‘Thank you,’ she said, holding the envelope stiffly.

She felt awkward, uncomfortable; she didn’t know how to act around him now and it was clear that he didn’t know how to act around her either because he was keeping his distance.

It hurt to see him in her house, knowing there was someone else on his mind, and when he said, ‘I’m not staying, I’ve somewhere to go,’ it was as if he had rubbed salt into a big open cut somewhere very deep inside her.

‘I thought I’d just bob up and take a chance you were in, seeing as you never rang me back,’ he added, ‘so don’t put the kettle on for me.’

‘Oh, okay. Well, thanks for this.’

‘Aren’t you going to open it?’

‘Oh yes…yes, of course.’

She opened up the card; it had a nice verse, a ‘dear friend’ verse.

I’ve lost him.

She kept her head bowed, trying to read it, and battled with some mutinous tears. She felt as if she had cried an ocean since the day she told Laurence to stick his job. It was hard work being emotional and letting people in, although she had let them in too late and had only a gaping wound in her heart to show for it.

‘I’ll be off then,’ he said.

‘Okay,’ she said, managing a small smile that accentuated the sadness in her watery grey eyes. ‘Well, thanks for the card. See you, John.’

She expected him to turn and go then, but he didn’t. He just stood there, waiting for something.

‘Come on, then. Get your coat if you need it.’

‘What?’

‘Get your coat,’ he repeated.

‘What do I want my coat for?’

‘You’re going with me, that’s why.’

‘Where?’ she said.

‘I’ve got something to show you,’ he said, grabbing her little summer jacket from the peg near the door, because the day was cooling and he had seen enough of her shivering to last him a lifetime.

Helen gently rocked on the swing by the little babbling stream at the bottom of the garden and lifted her face to the sun. It was wonderful to be able to enjoy the summer without itchy eyes and sneezing every two minutes because her hay fever seemed to have been chased away by her pregnancy.
It was so peaceful there in the grounds of the Old Rectory, especially because she wasn’t being relentlessly fussed over by her mother, who was away at a wedding in Oslo for a few days. She had been reluctant to go, but Helen had made her. First babies were notoriously late, she told her mother, she could easily last another five weeks.

She had quite enjoyed being by herself there, padding around her old home and remembering all the wonderful times they’d had in it. The study still smelled as it had done when her father was alive–of old books and polished leather–and his presence was so warm and dear in it. Even the patio where she had found him the morning after he had died held no bad memories for her any more. The years had gently edited out the ugliness and guilt from the scene and finally she could remember him as looking peaceful and released from the pain that had depressed and frightened him so much.

Her mother’s dressing-table was still busy with the lotions and potions that Helen used to dab at and poke into as a girl, and in the kitchen lingered the spirit of their old housekeeper, Mother Hubbard, in her voluminous housecoat leaping on any speck of dust with an aggressive cloth and filling the air with the wonderful aromas of her baking. Helen would steal the cooling scones, throw butter at them and smuggle them upstairs to her two friends, splayed over her floor cushions as they savoured the problem pages of
My Guy
and
Oh Boy
whilst Mother Hubbard pretended not to notice.

She so wanted to bring her child up in a happy home like this one had been for her. A wonderful feeling of elation flooded like sunlight through her. It was so sharp it was almost a pain.

‘Where are we going?’ Elizabeth said as he drove off.

‘Shut up and wait and see.’

‘You shouldn’t speak to your elders like that!’

‘You’re only older by two weeks.’

‘I’m still older.’

‘Like I say, shut up and wait and see.’

So she shut up and waited, whilst he drove out of town, into the surrounding countryside and turned into his building plot at Oxworth. It was eerily different to the last time she had been there, as if a magic wand had been waved over it, for now there were four complete houses, two on each side of a small road that went up and round a corner to a further destination. They were large, double-fronted constructions, two with turf already laid at the front, and each with a weighty millstone set in the garden bearing the number of their address.

‘You wanted to check I’d done ’em right,’ he said, ‘so now’s your chance.’

‘I hadn’t imagined them as nice as this though,’ she said.

‘Oh, charming!’

She punched his arm, not that he felt it, it was like hitting a brick wall. He helped her out of the car and she followed him down the path to the first house. Then he opened the door and turned off the burglar alarm. She came in behind him and nosed around at the large, light rooms.

‘They cram houses into estates these days, don’t give any space between them and hardly let you have any room inside either. Well, I didn’t want to be known as a builder that did those sorts of homes. I want my buyers to be able to breathe,’ he explained to her as her shoes echoed around the oak floors of a very generous kitchen.

‘You could have built a lot more houses here, John, surely? Made yourself more profit.’

‘Aye, I could have, if I’d wanted,’ he said.

There was a long sitting room that went front to back of the house, a study downstairs and a utility room. Upstairs were four bedrooms, one en-suite, one with a vanity sink, and a lovely separate bathroom. There was a boxroom as well for storage, although it would have been big enough to sleep in at a push, and outside she could see there was a good-sized back garden and a double garage. She noticed the roof of the fifth house out of the upstairs window.

‘What’s that?’ she said, pointing to it.

‘That’s the one I’ve been working flat out on to get finished these past weeks. Come on–I’ll show you,’ he said.

They walked out and round a corner of thick hedges and trees that looked as if they had been there
years already. The fifth house was different to the others, much larger and set apart in a very grand plot.

‘Bloody hell,’ was Elizabeth’s immediate verdict. ‘Which rich sod bought this then?’

‘Come in and see it before the owners move in,’ he said, finding the keys for it on his big jailer’s keyring. They walked into a wide hallway with rooms leading off everywhere and an imposing oak staircase going up the middle of it with an arched stained-glass window of summer flowers at the top through which light flooded and tinted the walls with soft pastel shades.

‘Wow,’ she said, twirling a full circle and looking up at the galleried landing. ‘This is lovely, John.’

It was, too, just like the dream house she had drawn for him a long time ago.
I’d have doors going everywhere…like a labyrinth
…

‘Come on.’ He led her into a square sitting room. There was a study leading off, cosy but decent-sized enough to have a big desk, lots of bookshelves and a sofa under the pretty picture window that framed a view of a landscape garden in the making. There was a sweet little downstairs loo that she would have killed for in her pregnant state and a huge country kitchen area with knotty beams above her head, and a Belfast sink set in one of the thick wooden worktops, a walk-in pantry and a utility room just like the sort she had always thought would be really handy to have. There was a breakfast area round the corner of the L, and a couple of steps down to a
separate dining room, leading out to a lovely light conservatory.

Whoever was moving in here would be lucky, Elizabeth thought, because they would never be able to leave it and find another better. It was the sort of house she hoped Bev was living in now. In peace, in the country, with a kind man who could make her forget her nightmares. She went back for a second look at the kitchen because it was so nice.

‘That’s lovely. Where did you get it?’ she said, examining the solid pine table that must have weighed more than she did–i. e. a ton and a half.

…I’d have a big heavy table that I wouldn’t ever be scared of scratching, that people would want to sit at and talk around…

‘I made it,’ he mumbled modestly. ‘Come on, there’s upstairs to see yet.’

She struggled up the wider than average staircase, having made enough complimentary vowel sounds downstairs. There was a bathroom facing her, then three sizeable bedrooms to one side. A spiral staircase led up to a vast loft area that was almost all windows. She was puffed out at the top of it, but it had been worth the climb. It would have been her fantasy room, her folly.

…
I would have a room that caught the sunlight all day just for painting in…

The fourth bedroom had its own bathroom and a spacious dressing-room, just as she had drawn on her house, all those years ago. The windows looked out onto the stream, and when she unlocked one of them
and opened it, she could hear the water shushing past and a duck laughing like Sid James. She had always wanted to live by water. Give or take the sea, this would have been her perfect house.

Her perfect house…

Then she knew.

He’s built this for me, she thought. He
has
been working flat out all these weeks, on this…for me. Her body locked, she stood there, looking at the stream as it danced past over the stones. He saw her back stiffen and he knew she had worked out why he had brought her here. His voice cracked when he started to speak.

‘There was only ever you, Elizabeth,’ he said, coming up behind her. ‘I never wanted anyone else but you. Every time I tried to put you out of my mind, you came back stronger than ever. No one even came close.’

She couldn’t answer him. There was a heartbeat in her throat that no words could get past.

‘I want you and the baby,’ he said softly. ‘I want you both so much.’

‘You can’t take on another man’s child, John,’ she said at last, dropping her head.

‘Why? Why can’t I? I’ve watched that bairn grow, I’ve seen it with you before it’s been born, I’ve felt it moving inside you. Don’t you think I’ve not come to love it as well? As much?’

‘But you’re not its dad and you never would be,’ she said, wishing he was. Wishing this was her bairn’s dad with all her heart.

‘Your dad isn’t always the one who started you off,’ he said.

‘Of course he is. How can you say that? You don’t know…’

‘I can, and I do know, because my dad isn’t my real dad.’

Elizabeth turned to face him. ‘Your dad isn’t what?’

‘I’m adopted. I never knew my real father.’

‘You’re making it up! You and him…for a start, you look so much alike!’

‘I’m not making it up, Elizabeth. I know, everyone says we look alike, but he’s still not my real father.’

He cleared his throat then he told her the two memories that had dominated his childhood. The first was his mam telling him to pick three toys to show to this smart-looking woman that was visiting. Then, when he’d rushed upstairs to pick out his best, he had his coat put on and buttoned up, and the woman took him away for a little ride with a suitcase in her car, but they didn’t go back home. Instead he found himself in a bleak, cold house with lots of other kids, bewildered and crying and not knowing what he’d done wrong or where he was, and desperate to get home to his mam. He’d only have been about three.

The second was just before he was five and a nice lady and big strapping man took him for a walk around the garden and said that they were looking for a little boy to come home with them that they could be a mam and dad to. He had to be a really special little boy though because they were really choosy, but they had thought he was very special
and would he like to come to their house with them and be their son.

He had said he couldn’t because he was waiting for his real mam to come for him but she must have got lost. He sat at the window every night, still waiting for her, watching for her…and the lady’s eyes had filled up with tears and she had given him a big cuddle and it felt lovely because he hadn’t been cuddled before. She smelled sweet, like flowers, and she said he could come and try them out as a mam and dad if he liked. They had a big sloppy dog and a cat and a budgie called Whistle that sat on your finger and they’d got a swing in their garden.

Then the man had dropped to his haunches and said that if he were his lad they could go fishing together and his new mam would make them a picnic up and they could go and kick a football in the park and would he like that? He had always wanted his own swing because the big lads never let him play on the one in the Home and he would love a budgie that sat on your finger. The man had a kind smiling face and he really wanted to kick a football about with a dad and someone to cuddle him like the lady had just done, and so John had gone with them and he recovered most of the faith in grown-ups that he’d lost too early on. But not all of it, because there was a scar in his heart that ran deep and would never quite heal, and he saw the same scar in Elizabeth. She too knew what it was like to have been so little and lost in the dark woods that ran alongside the happy sunlit path of other people’s childhoods.

‘Oh John, love,’ said Elizabeth, watching the tears
run down the big man’s face as he let her into that terrified little-boy place that lived on inside him where a part of him would always be sitting at a window waiting for his mam. He would never try and trace her though, there was no point. He could not face a woman who had put a child through that.

‘I didn’t tell you about it because there was no reason to, till now, and I don’t like to think back to how it was before them. Trevor and Margaret Silkstone are my real mam and dad as far as I’m concerned, and I couldn’t have wished for more love from any person I came from. I couldn’t have had better than them.’

She reached out tentatively to put a comforting hand on his arm, but he hijacked it en route and placed a tender kiss on its palm.

‘I love you and this bairn so much; you’d want for nowt,’ he said, sniffing back his tears.

Elizabeth’s heart was pounding in her chest. ‘John…’

‘Please, Elizabeth, just give me a chance to show you. I’m begging you…’

She pulled her hand slowly away. She couldn’t; there was stuff he didn’t know. She ripped herself away from his space. Life was so bloody cruel. However much she wished she could, she just couldn’t…

Damned stress incontinence, thought Helen, feeling very wet down below, although it was her own fault for drinking the equivalent of the Irish Sea in lemonade as she sat in the hot sunshine. Dismounting from the swing, she daintily picked her way back to the house like a ballet-dancing crab. She padded across the kitchen as
fast as she could towards the downstairs loo, to find that she was actually leaving a trail across the kitchen floor. It was then she realized that this was not stress incontinence, after all.

Oh help! My waters are breaking!