A Second Chance (63 page)

No letter ever came. But at the end of
March, just after Daisy’s first birthday, Amy was sitting at the
table with Eddie one afternoon when she heard the sound of a
horse’s hooves coming up the track. Eddie got up at once,
abandoning the arithmetic lesson Amy had been giving him, and ran
to open the door.

‘It’s a man,’ he announced. ‘It’s not one of
the uncles.’

As every man in the valley was some sort of
uncle to Eddie, this visitor must have come from further afield.
Amy went to the doorway and looked over the top of Eddie’s head, in
time to see the rider dismounting his horse close to the garden
gate. The man was a complete stranger to her.

She quickly took off her apron and hung it
on a hook behind the door, then went out to greet the visitor,
Eddie trotting along beside her.

The man stood outside the gate, holding the
reins of his horse. He was tall and rather thin, with a slight
stoop. He took off his hat as Amy approached, revealing thinning
brown hair streaked with grey.

‘Is Mrs Stewart at home?’ he asked, his
voice low.

‘That’s me. I’m Amy Stewart.’ Belatedly she
remembered that there were two Mrs Stewarts on the farm, but it was
most unlikely that a stranger would be seeking Beth.

She saw the man’s gaze flick to Eddie, then
back to her. ‘I’m Sid Carter,’ he said, dipping his head
uncertainly as if wondering whether she would recognise the
name.

‘Oh! You’re Milly’s—’

Amy suddenly found herself unable to speak.
She reached out blindly to draw Eddie close as she stared at Sid
Carter’s sleeve, drawn in above his elbow by the black armband of
mourning. Her eyes met his, and he nodded slowly.

With an effort, Amy recovered herself.

‘Eddie, you fetch a bit of rope so you can
tether Mr Carter’s horse,’ she told the little boy, who was staring
at Sid Carter with frank curiosity. ‘And then I want you to go and
see Uncle Dave and Aunt Beth. Ask them… ask them what sort of jam
they want with the scones later,’ she said, flailing for an excuse,
however feeble. ‘There’s no need to come straight back, you can
stay with them for a bit. Tell Daisy about getting all your sums
right.’

Eddie hesitated for a moment, still staring
at Mr Carter, then appeared to decide that the visitor did not hold
much promise of excitement. He slipped through the gate that Amy
was now holding open, and set off at run.

Mr Carter tied the reins loosely to the
fence and came through the gate, a leather satchel held under one
arm.

‘That’s Milly’s boy?’ he asked, looking
after the small figure.

‘Yes, that’s Eddie.’ There was a pause, just
long enough to be awkward, then Amy spoke again. ‘Would you come
in? I’m sure you could do with a cup of tea.’

Mr Carter followed her up the steps and into
the kitchen. He took a seat at the table, placed the satchel on a
chair beside him, then sat turning his hat between his hands.

Amy sent covert glances at him as she
quickly tidied away the remains of Eddie’s lesson and set out tea
things. Milly had said her husband was some years older than she
was, but this man, Amy judged, must be at least fifty, which would
make him ten years older than Amy was herself. Perhaps it was the
pall of grief hanging about him that bowed his shoulders so; for he
was grieving, Amy had no doubt. He had soft brown eyes that struck
her as kind, but full of pain.

She set the teapot down and sat opposite Mr
Carter.

‘When did Milly pass away?’ she asked.

‘Three weeks ago, it would be. The tenth of
the month.’

Just a few days after the last letter she
had ever sent. ‘And how did it happen?’ Amy prompted gently.

‘It was when the child came. You knew she
was with child?’

‘Yes, she wrote and told me.’

‘She hadn’t been keeping well for some time.
I was worried sick about her. But she wouldn’t hear of letting a
doctor see her. She kept saying it was nothing to worry about, it
would be over soon enough. And I’d never had anything to do with a
woman in that state before, so I thought perhaps I was worrying
more than I needed to.’

Amy nodded in what she hoped was an
encouraging way, anxious not to interrupt Mr Carter’s flow.

‘She was taken poorly one evening not long
before it happened. She still had two months before the child was
due, and she told me she didn’t think it had started, but she was
quite ill in the night. I nearly went for the nurse then, but it
passed. She was… she was never quite right again after that. It was
as if she knew what was to happen.’

He took a gulp of the hot tea that Amy had
just placed before him, and stared into the distance. ‘And then a
week later her pains started. I didn’t think she should be left on
her own, but I had to fetch a nurse to her. There aren’t any other
houses close by, but some men were working on the road not too far
away, and one of them said he knew where the nurse lived, and
offered to go and tell her.

‘I went back to Milly and got her to lie
down. I think I made her a cup of tea. I didn’t think the nurse
would be long, I thought the best thing I could do was try and keep
Milly calm till then.’ He gave his head a small shake. ‘She was
calmer than I was, I think. Though I don’t know if calm is the
right word. It was as if she was beyond worrying. Worrying about
herself, at any rate.

‘It felt like hours we waited for the
nurse—it
was
hours, come to that. Milly’s pains eased for a
time. It was happening so long before the baby was due that I
thought perhaps it wasn’t that at all, perhaps it was a false
alarm, but Milly said no, this was childbirth. I argued the point—I
remember I almost tried to make a joke of it, asking her how she
could be so sure. That’s when she told me. “Because I’ve been
through it before, Sid,” she said. “I’ve got a little
boy.”
 
’

Amy frowned, trying to make sense of his
words. ‘But you knew that already. Milly had—’ She stopped in
mid-sentence, awareness flooding in.

Sid Carter had noted her reaction. ‘You
thought I knew about her boy. Yes, she told me she’d said that to
you. We had a long talk while we waited for that nurse, in between
the pains. She told me about her boy’s father dying in the war, and
how she’d had to leave the child with his grandmother when she
started working at the hotel. And that you thought she’d told me
about Eddie, and I’d said he could come and live with us once
things were more settled.’

He gave a heavy sigh. ‘Of course I would
have let her have him with us—right from when we were first
married—if I’d only known about him. I didn’t like to think she
hadn’t felt able to tell me. But I couldn’t scold her over it.

‘She said she’d been scared to tell me
before we got married—she thought I’d want nothing to do with her
if I knew she’d had a child by another man. And then afterwards she
was scared because she hadn’t told me before. She’d been missing
him all that time, poor girl. She started crying then, for all she
was being so brave over the pains. She asked me to see that her boy
would be all right. I told her we’d fetch him as soon as she was
well again, but she was having none of it. Things weren’t going
right this time, she told me. She was too weak by then to argue
over it, but she kept shaking her head when I told her she’d come
through it. And she kept saying she had to know her boy would be
all right. I promised her then. I promised I’d see that he was.
That settled her a little, until the pains got bad again.’

‘Poor Milly,’ Amy murmured. Milly’s
deception seemed a small thing in the face of her suffering.

‘I tried mopping her forehead and holding
her hand, and giving her a bit of water, but there was nothing much
I could do. I could see by the clock a couple of hours had gone
since I’d sent off for the nurse, and I was starting to think I’d
have to leave Milly and go out looking myself, but then the woman
turned up.’

Amy expected to see some small sign of the
relief Sid must have felt at the nurse’s arrival, but instead his
face hardened.

‘I’d booked the nurse already. It was early,
but I didn’t want to leave anything to chance, and I’d been told
she was the best in the district. But of course she wasn’t
expecting to have to attend Milly just then, and she was off with
another patient, as I discovered later. The chap who’d gone to
fetch her found she wasn’t home, but someone on the street told him
there was another nurse living not too far away, and he went there.
That was the woman who turned up. I could see she was the worse for
drink the moment she walked in.’ Amy saw in his face that he had
heard her sharp intake of breath.

‘She wasn’t even clean in her person. But I
didn’t have a choice by then,’ he said, his mouth twisting with the
effort of speech. ‘I had to trust the woman knew her business. I
made her wash her hands before I’d let her touch Milly, I had
enough sense for that, at any rate. Not that it did much good.’

Amy did not dare interrupt him, even with a
murmur of sympathy. He had clearly come to the darkest part of his
tale.

‘I had to… to help the woman. She wasn’t
steady enough on her feet to manage on her own. Just fetching and
carrying, but I hadn’t expected to be there during it. Though I’m
glad of it, really. At least Milly had someone she knew with
her.

‘The child was definitely on the way, the
woman said, for all it was so much before its time. But it wasn’t
sitting right. She’d have to turn it, she said.’ He shuddered. ‘I’d
thought it was bad before, but the noises Milly made when that
woman had her hands on her…’

He recovered himself and went on. ‘I don’t
know how long it all lasted. I do know the fool of a woman took her
time giving Milly anything for the pain. She asked if I had whisky
in the house, but I’m not one for strong drink. She might’ve wanted
it for herself, for all I know. She took little enough notice of
the state Milly was in.

‘It was past midnight when she said things
were well enough along for her to put Milly out. She had some
chipped old bottle with a few drops of something in the bottom—she
put it on a dirty old rag and held it over Milly’s face, but there
wasn’t enough to put her properly under. It dulled the pain, I
think. She was groaning instead of screaming, anyway.

‘The child…’ His voice broke; he swallowed
noisily. ‘It was stillborn. I caught a glimpse before the woman
wrapped it up in a towel. Such a tiny thing, but it seemed… broken,
somehow. I think she’d damaged it trying to turn it in the womb.
But I was told later a child born that early would never have
lived.’

‘No, it wouldn’t,’ Amy murmured in
agreement. She fumbled for a handkerchief and dabbed at her
eyes.

‘The woman cleaned Milly up, then she took
herself off. I put the baby beside Milly, and I sat there with them
both. She came to herself after an hour or so, and she cried a
little, but she didn’t have strength to do much more than lie
there, drifting in and out of sleep.’

He moved in his chair. Amy waited quietly
for what she knew must be about to come.

‘When it got light, I could see Milly had
more colour in her face. I thought it was a good sign. But when I
put my hand on her cheek I felt how hot it was. She’d taken a
fever.

‘I cooled her down as much as I could with
wet cloths, then I ran off to the nearest house and asked them to
send for the doctor. When I got back to Milly she was bad with the
fever, tossing about and moaning. She was burning up worse than
ever by the time the doctor arrived, and he said she was bleeding
badly.

‘He did what he could to make her more
comfortable, and he had a woman come in to tend her and keep her
clean. There was nothing else to be done. She died the next day. I
had them bury the baby with her.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ Amy said.

Sid Carter looked up, startled, at the sound
of her voice, as if he had forgotten where he was. ‘She was calling
out for her boy at the end. “Eddie, Eddie,” she kept saying.
Calling for him and… I think your son’s name must have been
Mal.’

‘Yes, it was,’ Amy admitted. ‘Milly would
have been muddled in her head by then, she must have slipped back a
few years.’ Sid looked unconvinced. ‘She talked about you a lot in
her letters,’ Amy said. ‘She was always saying how good you were to
her. You… you made her very happy.’ She felt a little awkward
making such a personal comment to a man she had just met, but she
was rewarded by a tiny spark of life in Sid Carter’s eyes.

‘As she did me,’ he said in a low voice.
‘Perhaps not always the most truthful of girls, but a warm-hearted
one.’

Amy let the silence rest between them for
several moments before she spoke again.

‘It was very kind of you to come all this
way to let us know.’

He blinked at her. ‘I had to. I promised
Milly I’d see her boy was all right. I told her I’d look after him
myself if need be.’

‘No!’ The word escaped from Amy before she
had the chance to formulate a calmer response. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t
mean to… It’s very good of you, Mr Carter, but there’s no need for
that. I want to keep Eddie with me.’

‘You’re quite sure? It’s not every woman
would welcome a child dropped on her like that.’

‘He’s come to feel like my own after having
him all this time. I wouldn’t want to part with him. And he’s…’
He’s all that’s left of Mal
. Amy left the thought unsaid,
rather than remind Sid Carter that Eddie was also all that was left
of Milly.

‘I’m glad of it,’ Mr Carter said, his
shoulders slumping. ‘I’d have done my best by him, but I’ve no
notion how to raise a child. And I’d have had to get someone to
mind him during the day, and see that he ate properly, and whatever
else boys need.’ He hesitated, then asked diffidently, ‘I can see
the lad’s healthy, but I wonder if I might speak to him before I
leave? Just a few words. It would set my mind at rest, after
promising Milly.’