A Ruthless Need, page 15
She heard voices outside the door: Meg was saying, ‘Geoff’s gone into Durham to get his dad’s medicine. He won’t be long. She’s in here.’
When the door opened, she did not turn round, but glanced at Meg when she came to her side, and she, bending over her as one did over a sick person, said, ‘You’ve got a visitor, dear.’
She didn’t want visitors. She didn’t want to see anybody, nobody. She wanted to be alone, left alone in this emptiness where there was only herself, not Andrew, nor anything inside her, nothing.
‘Hello, Lizzie.’ She looked up into the scarred face looking down at her, and she said softly, ‘Oh, Richard.’
Meg now said to him, ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ and he said, ‘Yes; yes, I would, Meg, please.’ And then he was sitting down by Lizzie’s side and holding her hand, as he looked into her face, the lid of his good eye blinking rapidly over the deep sorrow that lay there.
‘Oh, Lizzie. What can I say? I…I only heard last night.’
Some part of her mind moved as she thought, he must have come straightaway. It’s a long journey. But she didn’t say anything, just stared back at him.
‘He was the nicest fellow I knew. We had plans. He may have told you: when it was all over we were going to work together. Oh! Lizzie. Lizzie.’
Something was happening deep down in her throat. She managed to press some words upwards: ‘I’m going to have a baby, Richard,’ she said.
His eyelids blinked rapidly, but not in unison; and then he said softly, ‘I’m glad. I’m glad, Lizzie. He’ll still be with you, then; you won’t have lost Andrew when you have his child.’
‘Oh, Richard.’ Her voice was high and she repeated, ‘Oh, Richard!’ She was calling to him now over a long distance. ‘What am I going to do, Richard? I…I can’t live without Andrew. Oh, Richard.’
She was on her feet now, her mouth wide open, the lump in her throat threatening to choke her. She struggled for breath. When she felt his arms about her she clung to him. They were in the water again, going over and over. She was swallowing the water. It tasted dreadful. She was yelling something, but she couldn’t hear what she said for the rush of the water.
He held her more tightly to him, crying, ‘There, there. That’s it, my dear, that’s it. Let it come. You’ll feel better now.’
‘Oh! Richard. Richard.’
‘I’m here, dear. I’m here. Come. Come.’ He led her stumbling towards the couch, and when he went to ease her down on to it, she kept her hold on him, and he fell by her side and held her again like a child. But when her sobbing increased, he looked anxiously towards the door; and when it opened he saw the tall soldier pause for a moment, then come hurrying forward.
The man did not speak to him but, putting his hand on Lizzie’s shoulder, he shouted, ‘Come on! Come on! Now stop that! You’ll make yourself ill.’ Then to Richard he said, ‘Let me have her.’
But when Richard attempted to rise from the couch, she clung to him again, crying, ‘No! No!’
Meg and Bertha now both appeared on the scene, and Bertha, putting her hands gently on Lizzie’s shoulders, said, ‘Come along now. Come along. That’s enough. That’s enough. It’s all over. It’s all over, dear. You’ll only make yourself ill.’
Bertha’s face was close to Richard’s, but she kept her eyes averted from him until he said, ‘You had better phone the doctor,’ then turning his head, he looked up at the grim-faced Geoff and added, ‘Put your arm round the back of her. We’ll get her upstairs that way.’
Geoff hesitated for a moment before he obeyed what had sounded like an order; then, almost roughly, he bent and put his arm under her oxters and tugged her away from Richard’s hold. But once on her feet, Lizzie pushed at Geoff with a force that almost made him lose his balance, and then gasping, stood looking from one to the other, and her words distinct and spaced, she said definitely, ‘Leave…me…alone…I’m…all…right…so…please…leave…me…alone.’
They all stood staring at her as, pushing past Meg and Bertha she went to a straight-backed chair and sat down; and there, her head drooping, she gasped, ‘I…don’t…want…the…doctor…just…leave…me…be.’
‘I’ll get you a cup of tea, dear.’ Meg was scurrying away down the room now. And Bertha, limping towards Lizzie, asked quietly, ‘Wouldn’t you like to lie down, dear?’
‘No…No, Mam.’ She shook her head. ‘I’ll…be all right now. I just want to be quiet.’ She turned to Richard and said quietly, ‘I’m sorry, Richard.’
‘Oh, my dear.’ He came towards her and took up one of her hands and held it between his, while Bertha, looking at her son who was staring at the visitor, said, ‘Did you get Dad’s medicine?’
Geoff blinked; then turned his attention to his mother, saying, ‘Yes. Yes.’
‘Well, come along and take him up a dose, please.’ She now looked at Lizzie, saying, ‘I’ll be back in a minute, dear.’
It was some seconds before Geoff followed her, and there was one thought in his mind as he crossed the hall and that was, My God! I’m lucky.
Back in the room Lizzie said again, ‘I’m sorry, Richard. I suppose it had to happen, but no…’
‘Oh, my dear Lizzie, please. I take it as a great compliment…no, something more, that you could turn to me, me of all people.’
She looked up into his face: perhaps it was because her eyes were still flooded with tears, but the pink, stretched skin seemed more prominent, more puckered, seeming to have eclipsed the good patch that was left. She put her hands out to him and he held them as she said, ‘I remember telling you I’m going to have a baby.’
‘Yes. I’m so glad for you.’
‘You really are?’
‘Oh, yes, truly, and—’ the skin of his face moved up, his thin lips spread showing a surprisingly good set of teeth as he said, ‘I’m putting my claim in now, to be the godfather, boy or girl.’
She brought his hands together within hers as she said brokenly, ‘You’re such a good man, Richard; Andrew said that. Andrew liked you very much.’
He made no reply and she looked away from him. It was odd that she should speak of Andrew. She had been feeling she would only be able to voice his name again to herself. Over the past two days her mind had been elsewhere; somewhere, but not here. It must be like this, she supposed, if you were going mad, your mind going somewhere else. But she was back into reality, and reality was pain. Now she wanted to cry out against the loss of her love. She wanted to wail again, Oh, Andrew, Andrew, but she mustn’t, she mustn’t ever cry again like that; it had been terrifying. For a time she had thought she was drowning, as when she and Richard had been in the river. She looked up at him, asking quietly, ‘How are you?’
And quietly, he answered, ‘Niggling. I can say that to you. Strange, isn’t it? That I haven’t got to say to you, Oh, I’m feeling fine. Oh, I’m facing up to it. Such ludicrous statements. In fact, someone did say to me, “You must face up to it”; and you know, I have to, for my parents’ sake. Said another way, I put on a show, because they’re so troubled, they’re so concerned for me. You see,’ he took his hands away from hers and pulled a chair closer to her, then sat, his elbows on his knees, staring down at his joined hands as he said, ‘They are not young as you would expect the parents of someone of my age to be. My mother was forty-two when I was born, and my father was forty-five. It was his third marriage. His two previous wives had died and left no issue, as they say, and he didn’t expect any when he married a woman of forty-two; but there, dear Mama, she gave him me, and I altered their lives. They brought me up in love, and now they are so unhappy for me. Would you…would you come and visit sometime…soon? I…well, I told them you would. You know, I’ve asked you before. It’s like this—’ He now drooped his head still lower over his hands, until all she could see was the crown of his head. His hair was thick here and had a wave in it. It was a deep brown colour. She thought he must have been a good-looking man…She brought her attention back to what he was saying: ‘They can understand me making a man friend here and there, but not a woman. So, Lizzie, if one day you would come and visit us, you would be doing me not only a great favour but offering me something far deeper than that, something that as yet I cannot find words to express.’
For a moment she forgot the pain that was like an abscess beneath her ribs, and she said, ‘Oh, Richard. Yes, of course, I would be only too pleased, and…and I must tell you, that at the moment I feel closer to you than anyone’—she spread her hand wide—‘here; I suppose because you…you knew Andrew, and as I said, he liked you. You see, although Geoff was quite civil to him, he couldn’t forget he was Mr Bradford-Brown’s son; nor could Mam or Dad come to terms with the difference in our positions. Meg seemed to be the only one who took us both for what we were; two people in love who wanted to get married.’ She bowed her head now and muttered, ‘A week, ten days, and it would have been done; but…but somehow that’s of no consequence now. We couldn’t have been closer. You know something, Richard’—she looked up at him again—‘I would have been full of regret at this moment if…well, if we hadn’t come together. We were married. In both our eyes we were married.’
‘Yes, yes of course you were, my dear; and…and you’ll be all right. Don’t worry. You’ll be supported by your family too. He…Geoff, seems a very capable fellow.’
‘Yes. Yes he is.’ Her mind springing away from the pain and going off at a tangent again, she thought, I wonder if he’s thinking that’s the man, or one of them, who was with my wife. She had heard Bertha telling the doctor that it was Richard’s wife who had brought the news. Why her? she wondered. It was a question she would have to ask later.
The door opened and Geoff entered. He came straight to her and placed a hand on her shoulder. It was firm and protective. ‘How are you feeling?’ he asked her.
‘Better.’ She nodded at him. ‘Much better.’
‘Good.’
He looked across at Richard, staring him fully in the face for a moment, before saying, ‘I’m sorry you had to run into this.’
Richard made no reply whatever, but going to Lizzie, he leaned towards her, saying, ‘I’ll write and make arrangements. Perhaps you could come for a few days. It would make a change for you. It’s rather lovely up there, you know, at this time of the year.’
‘Thank you, Richard. Yes; yes, I will.’
‘Soon?’
‘Yes, soon.’
‘I’ll leave our telephone number with your mother.’
‘Do. Do. Goodbye, Richard. And thank you.’
‘Goodbye, my dear.’
Her mind registered the fact that he had called her ‘my dear’ a number of times during the last hour or so. He was such a nice man, and it was such a great pity he was so scarred. Fancy his parents being old, and them worrying because he had no woman friend, no-one who would look at him.
When the door had closed on him, Geoff said, ‘What was all that about? You going to stay there?’
‘He’s invited me. He…he was a friend of Andrew’s, you know. They were to go into partnership after the war.’
‘Oh yes?’
‘Yes.’
‘What kind of partnership?’
‘Farming. He has an estate in Scotland.’
‘Nice for him. Anyway, it’s a good job he’s got something to keep him busy.’
She recalled that Richard had hardly spoken to Geoff, seeming to ignore him. They clearly hadn’t liked each other. Well, they wouldn’t, would they? Richard’s wife had been a great disturber of the peace. He had lost his other friend through her. Why was it that it was she who had to bring the news about Andrew? But what did it matter? Why was she troubling herself about anything? The pain was filling her chest again; how long would it last? Forever, and ever, she thought. They said time healed. Such sayings were…stupid, spoken by people who had never known loss.
Four
To Lizzie, the months that followed were strange. Every member of the household seemed bent on doing his or her bit to take Lizzie’s mind off her loss when she was in the house. Meg chattered constantly and told funny tales about the happenings along the Tyne: ‘Did you ever hear of Jessie Bugs and Wiggie? Oh, they were famous in Gateshead,’ she said. ‘Then there was the blind bellman in Felling. He was like a town crier. And oh, you must have heard of Tommy on the bridge. He was barmy. It was a wonder they didn’t lock him up, because there he was on the bridge, every day for fifty years.’ Her mother said she used to stand and watch him waving his arms about. Then did she ever tell them about the time when the Raffertys’ house caught fire? She had? Oh well, she still laughed about it herself. She could see Peggy Rafferty hauling the bairns out of the house—nine of them she had—and when one of them said, “Where’s me da?” “Up in bed,” she had said; “and I hope he fries; an’ he will with all the whisky he’s got in him.” And she would double up with laughter before ending, “You see, I didn’t really know that Pat was up there. But the men made a dive, just in case, and got him down. The bed was alight and he was still asleep.”’
On and on her tales would go and sometimes the tears ran down her face, so heartily did she laugh.
Bertha had taken to relating the happenings of her own childhood, when the place had been a busy little farm. But strangely, it was John who seemed to monopolise the conversation. Talking pointedly to Geoff, who hardly opened his mouth, he would recall various events from earlier in the war. And this would catch Lizzie’s attention, for he had never previously given them any inkling of having a detailed interest in the war.
He would nearly always start with, ‘You should have been here, lad. July 1940, it was, about the middle of the month when it started. The bombers would come over, often the fighters with them—and it developed into the Battle of Britain. Dowding was a marvel. He had to fight not only the German Air Force but the bloomin’ government. “Protect the convoys,” they would say; “look at all the ships they’re sinking.” But no, he kept our boys going and they brought down three hundred of their planes. Then what d’you think they did, the Germans? They set out to destroy the bases in Kent, where the fighters were stationed, and they bloomin’ well nearly succeeded an’ all. We lost over one hundred and eighty planes there. Then where did they turn to next? London, of course. But lad, you could understand that, ’cos we went over there and bombed Berlin and some of their other towns as well. It was a kind of retaliation, but by God! what a retaliation! And we all thought we were for it; that they would land at any time.’
On and on he would go while Geoff sat across the table staring at him, trying to still the whirling in his own mind that his father’s talking always engendered, the whirling that was full of sand that parched his throat, making him unable to swallow. He would feel his legs and feet leaden, when he would hardly be able to lift one foot in front of the other. Then, miraculously, they would come alive and he would run, before throwing himself flat on his face, barking to the others, every other word a curse, his mind always yelling at him; if only he could see the bloody enemy! Then he did. Quite unexpectedly he did. He saw the fellow about to stick a bayonet into young Fairbanks and he fired and he fired and he fired. He had to lift the corporal to his feet because, for a moment he was stiff as if he, too, were dead. Then he jabbered, ‘Thanks, Sarge. Thanks, Sarge. Thanks, Sarge.’ He had looked around for other Germans, but there were none. Where the hell had the fellow come from…? And his father was going on and on again.
‘What did you say, lad?’
He looked at his father. ‘Nothing. Nothing, except Lizzie looks tired. She should go to bed.’
Lizzie was indeed feeling tired; she felt tired all the time these days. Especially she was tired of listening to war talk. She thought that John had become very insensitive. Why did he keep on about the war? And Geoff was kind. She didn’t know how she would have got through these past weeks without him. He would see her to the bus in the mornings and he would wait for her coming back at night.
And as her body became heavier she became, in a way, tired of that too. The first awareness that she was carrying a baby had filled her with joy. But now all she was filled with was a dull ache.
She was about to start her holidays and she had decided to accept Richard’s offer and stay at his place for a few days. Twice recently he had called to see how she was and they had talked about Andrew. He was the only one she could talk to about Andrew; nobody else mentioned his name.
Last night, she had suddenly made up her mind to go to Scotland: she felt she must get away from the claustrophobic atmosphere in the house; they were all so concerned for her; nobody acted naturally.
When she told Geoff what she was planning to do, she saw immediately that he wasn’t pleased. ‘Why do you want to go there?’ was his reaction.
‘It’ll be a change,’ she had answered, ‘and he’s invited me several times.’
At this, he had muttered, ‘You…you don’t mind being with him, looking as he does?’
She had shown her indignation in her answer and by the tone of her voice. ‘No, I do not mind being with him. He can’t help looking as he does. I would have thought you’d have understood that. Anyway, he’s the same person underneath, and I find I can talk to him.’
