Wartime Family (33 page)

On one of Margot’s weekends with Owen, she was burning the last of the autumn leaves on a bonfire at the edge of the vegetable garden. Margot had already phoned to say they were coming. ‘And we’ve got a surprise for you,’ she’d added.

There was no point in asking Margot what the surprise might be; she was terribly good at keeping secrets.

The sound of a car engine made Lizzie raise her head. The sun was bright but low in the sky, seeming to hang by a thread above the wide, flat landscape.

She shielded her eyes, aware that her cheeks were prickled red by the cold. Her hands were cold inside some old leather gardening gloves she’d found. Her stomach muscles were aching; she wouldn’t admit, even to herself, that strenuous exercise could bring on a miscarriage, though she’d heard it could. She just carried on with whatever she wanted to do, just as she would once the child was born.

Margot’s car appeared, framed by thorny branches and rosehips forming an arch above the white wooden gate. The weak sun glinted on the car windows. Two figures were in the front – Margot and Owen of course – and another sat in the back. She squinted, trying to make out who it was – definitely familiar, she decided; definitely male. The sudden shifting of her stomach was only partly due to the growing baby, as at least ten per cent was apprehension at Margot’s ‘little surprise’. Crisply efficient and smiling broadly, Margot closed the car door behind her. The figure from the back seat got out and joined Owen, the two men chatting amiably, though Patrick’s attention – for that was who it was – kept straying to her.

‘My dear,’ said Margot, her lips barely brushing Lizzie’s cheeks. ‘You are in need of good company and I—’

‘We,’ Owen corrected her.

‘It was our shared opinion that you needed good friends around you and Owen and I cannot always give you our full attention.’

‘Because we’re too wrapped up in each other,’ added Owen, at the same time hugging Margot tightly to his side with one arm.

Margot untangled herself from Owen, took Patrick by the elbow and dragged him forward. ‘So who better?’

Patrick fiddled with his cap, turning it this way and that as he fought to decide whether he’d done the right thing by coming here.

Lizzie couldn’t make up her mind whether she’d ever found Margot insensitive in the past. A sneaking suspicion that she was being manipulated wouldn’t go away.
Margot is clever, and don’t you forget it
, she told herself.

‘This is going to be a marvellous weekend,’ Margot declared, sliding her arm into Owen’s. Together they headed up the garden path, the dried leaves of winter foliage rustling against their legs as they passed.

Together Lizzie and Patrick watched them go, neither quite ready to say what was on their mind.

Patrick got in first. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t want to intrude. I did tell Margot that, but you know how she is.’ He paused, waiting for her reaction. ‘I’ll go if you don’t want me here.’

She didn’t answer at first. It wasn’t easy to ask herself in the space of a minute exactly how she felt about him staying, though one practical question did spring to mind.

‘I don’t know where you’ll sleep,’ she blurted.

Patrick’s cheeks flared the colour of the rosehips hanging languidly by the gate. ‘She said I could have the settee by the fire.’ He hung his head for a second. ‘I’ll be warm there.’

Damn Margot! Didn’t she know that Patrick staying would make her feel awkward, guilty and every other negative emotion she could think of? The answer was obvious: yes, of course she knew! That was the whole purpose of this visit, wasn’t it? To get her to accept Patrick’s offer of marriage and keep the child.

The prongs of the rake dug into the ground as she thought things through. Her first inclination was to send Patrick packing. That would teach them!

‘Let me finish this.’ She let him take the rake from her hands and watched as he meticulously raked up leaves and twigs embedded more deeply in the soil.

She folded her arms. ‘I thought you were going abroad again.’

‘I was, but then, what with the Americans getting involved, plans got altered.’

‘Did you want to go back overseas?’

‘What young chap doesn’t want to see the world? But then I didn’t think it was so important any more. There are other things more important than seeing the world, and anyway, I’ve seen a fair bit of it so far.’

He glanced up at her. She didn’t need him to tell her what or who was more important; she could see it in his eyes.

‘There,’ he said, shaking the last of the leaves on to the bonfire. ‘All done.’ He turned to face her. ‘Shall I stay, or shall I go?’

She pursed her lips and swayed from side to side. ‘I’ll make us a cup of tea. I might even find a slice of carrot cake.’

‘Carrot cake?’ Patrick looked surprised. City people never came across cakes actually made from carrots.

Lizzie laughed. ‘May makes cakes from anything that’s plentiful – even turnips.’

He looked faintly sceptical. ‘I’m not sure I’m going to like this.’

‘Oh, you will,’ she said, her voice lighter now she’d made the decision that he could stay.

‘I expect Margot’s already got the kettle on,’ he said, nodding towards the square of amber light that was the kitchen window.

Lizzie, a light smile playing around her lips, shook her head. ‘I doubt that very much.’

Just at that moment a sudden movement at the bedroom window drew their attention. The curtains were being drawn – and in broad daylight. Unlike the kitchen, the bedroom windows did let in enough light to see by. But Margot and Owen were after privacy, not daylight.

‘I see,’ said Patrick. ‘Looks like the tea and cake is for us alone.’

Once inside, Lizzie pulled off her gardening gloves, took off her heavy coat and Wellingtons and reached for the kettle. The kettle was big, black and made from cast iron. Originally made to cater for a whole family plus a few farmhands, it was heavy even when only partially filled.

‘I’ll do it,’ said Patrick, taking it out of her hands.

‘I’ll cut the cake.’ In the end she laid out cold rabbit as well as the cake.

‘Parsley,’ she said on seeing Patrick pick at the green bits.

The sound of creaking bedsprings sounded from the ceiling above them.

‘It’s a four-poster,’ said Lizzie as though that alone explained the series of squeaks.

‘Should we leave anything for them?’

She shook her head. ‘I doubt they’ll want feeding until morning. Tuck in. Eat all you like.’

Patrick did as ordered. ‘Tastes good,’ he said after swallowing the first mouthful. ‘Your mother will be surprised when I tell her how well you’re eating up here.’

Alarm made her prickly. ‘You haven’t told her, have you? I will never forgive you if you have.’

He looked hurt and shook his head, placing the rabbit bones on the edge of his plate. His voice was quiet, considered. ‘No. Of course not. You should know me better than that.’

‘Thank goodness!’

She couldn’t bring herself to say anything more substantial to him. If she did it might give him hope. Up until now she had been strong, determined to go through with this and come out the other side unchanged. To carry it through she had to remain strong, untouched by any pressure from her family. If her mother ever found out about the child, she’d persuade Lizzie to keep it.

‘I don’t want to end up in the same circumstances as my mother,’ she said to Patrick. ‘I don’t want to marry a man purely to save my reputation. Once this is over the child will have a good home and will never know or care that I ever existed.’

‘If that’s what you want,’ he said. He fell to silence, pushing bits of meat around his plate as though he’d lost his appetite.

Watching his reaction made her feel bad, and she didn’t want him to think badly of her. The feeling was new, or at least she thought it was, but didn’t friends always think well of each other? Wasn’t that what friendship was all about? The urge to make amends, to rebuild his opinion of her, was intense. There seemed to be only one way of doing this. She fingered her piece of cake, breaking off small bits that didn’t find their way to her mouth until she’d made the decision to explain.

The steady squeal of the bedsprings continued above their heads. Another illegitimate baby in the making? No, Lizzie decided. Margot was too fly for that.

‘You never knew your father, did you, Patrick?’

‘I remember him only vaguely – or I think I do. I can never tell with Rosie.’

Rosie was his mother, though he could never quite bring himself to call her that now he was a man; it was his reaction to a neglected childhood.

‘You know my father and you know my mother. You also know Michael.’

Patrick nodded. ‘Michael’s a nice bloke even though he is foreign.’

‘But not my father. Henry Randall is not so nice, is he, or hadn’t you noticed?’

Patrick speared a piece of rabbit with his fork. ‘I’ve noticed he likes a drink.’

‘My mother’s sweetheart died in the trenches but left her pregnant. She had the child adopted and was forced into marrying my father. It was the worst thing she ever did – marrying my father, I mean.’ She leaned forward, her wide eyes looking directly into his in an effort to emphasize all she was saying, all she was feeling.

‘She married him and began to trust him. She trusted him so much that she told him about the child she’d had adopted. That was when he took to the drink and began to treat her badly – very badly. He was very careful to hide his behaviour from us, but I began to suspect. It was our Stanley who opened our eyes. Poor lad was sick a lot when he was younger and kept from school a lot of the time. He saw it all. Shocking for a boy of that age.’

Patrick frowned. ‘But surely things would have been different if your mother had kept the baby.’

‘Not without a husband. She did the right thing in finding the child a home. What she did wrong was to marry my father just to save her reputation. Men can change once you marry them.’

Patrick looked down at his plate and dropped his fork. ‘Oh. I see. You think I might turn into a monster like your father.’

She shook her head. ‘No! That’s not what I mean. What I mean is that marrying you and foisting someone else’s child on you is unfair. Don’t you see that?’

It had been some time since the last creaking bedspring; now it started up all over again.

Patrick raised his eyes to the ceiling. ‘It doesn’t matter who you are or what you are if you love one another. Nobody’s perfect. We all fall off the straight and narrow now and again.’

‘Have you fallen off the straight and narrow, Patrick?’

He looked perplexed rather than guilty. ‘I’m not perfect,’ he said enigmatically.

The weekend turned out to be better than expected. In the daytime moments when Margot and Owen could be roused from the four-poster bed, they sat in front of the fire, talking, drinking dandelion wine and eating more of the rabbits shot by May’s husband. A walk to the White Hart pub resulted in green cider. A poker was thrust into embers falling from a burning log and held there. Once it glowed red hot it was thrust into the cider, sizzling and sending the aroma of apples drifting to the rafters.

‘I still want to marry you,’ Patrick said to Lizzie as they walked back through a field stiff with stubble. ‘Will you at least think about it?’

Lizzie sighed. ‘I can’t promise anything, Patrick. Leave it a while. I’m so mixed up at this moment in time.’

They plodded across the field while Margot and Owen raced ahead of them like greyhounds, keen to get back to the cottage and the four-poster bed.

A cloud of crows rose from the trees ahead of them, cawing and shrieking in continual argument.

Patrick suddenly asked her the question she’d often asked herself. ‘Your mother must wonder what happened to that child.’

‘I suppose she does.’

‘Have you ever asked her about it?’

Lizzie shook her head. ‘No. I expect she did at first, but not after all these years. The child accepts the adoptive parents as their own. It’s best that way.’

Patrick was silent as he helped her over a stile. The air smelled of wood smoke and the promise of frost. ‘And yet you think she would persuade you to keep your child. What makes you think that?’

‘If I told her right now, she’d let her heart rule her head. Once it’s all over – if she ever does find out – she’ll understand that I’m being sensible.’

‘And that’s your final decision?’

‘Yes!’ she said, her resolute tone meant to leave him in no doubt of her commitment to this plan of action. ‘That is my final decision.’

The threesome left the cottage on the Sunday evening, and Lizzie was again left to her own devices. She watched the car until it disappeared into the winter mist that hung in waves over the low countryside.

Despite her initial reluctance to welcome Patrick’s presence, she found herself missing him. It had been a good weekend. She had stated her case and Patrick had accepted her decision. She told herself that she was doing the right thing, that her mother would agree – that is if she ever found out.

Nothing would sway her, or so she thought – that was until she received another letter from her mother. She read the first paragraph, stopped, took a deep breath and read it again. The unexpected had happened and suddenly a fine filigree of cracks began to appear in her plans.

Elizabeth Ford stayed in Mary Anne’s mind for a long time after she’d left. While she was sewing, helping in the Red Cross shop or looking after Mathilda, two separate visions – one of a baby and one of a grown, elegant woman – floated and then merged in her mind.

They were sitting in the back room of the shop; Edith was unpicking ancient cardigans and knitting them into socks, hats and matching scarves. Mary Anne was trimming a broad-brimmed funeral hat with a tiger-print silk scarf.

Edith’s eyes still sparkled but age was catching up with her. Her tear ducts ran constantly, leaving sticky trails at the sides of her eyes. She dabbed them with a folded-up handkerchief and blew her nose with another kept solely for that purpose.

‘A penny for them,’ Edith said, taking a break from knitting to dab at her eyes.