Alone Beneath The Heaven (37 page)

Authors: Rita Bradshaw

‘Oh I see, I see it all now.’ Her furious gaze swung from one to the other of them as she spat, ‘I’m to be the sacrificial lamb, is that it? How cosy, how very cosy and convenient. Rodney is whiter than white, and I’m to clothe myself in sackcloth and ashes. Well, no thanks. The pair of you are cowardly hypocrites, that’s the truth of it. He knows and I know that he has lusted after me for years, and while we’re on the subject, it didn’t worry you too much that Rodney and I had been lovers before we got together, did it? In fact, you couldn’t get me up the altar quick enough, and don’t tell me it was because you appreciated my mind. Your thinking was motivated by what’s between your legs, and it still is. That’s the problem now, isn’t it?’

She had risen and walked across the room as she had been speaking, and now she paused in the doorway, turning to face them both as she delivered her parting shot. ‘Now I can’t stand you touching me, now you
disgust
me, it’s all suddenly coming out into the open, isn’t it?’

‘I want a divorce, Vanessa.’ Richard’s face was like lint, the scarred flesh standing out in angry contrast to the surrounding skin. ‘Any terms you like, but I want it settled and done with.’

She didn’t answer him, beyond a slight shrug of her shoulders that spoke of utter indifference, then she swung round and disappeared from their view.

They stood quite still, neither of them saying a word, but Richard was breathing heavily through his nostrils, his hands clenched at his side. It was a full minute before he said, without glancing Rodney’s way, ‘I’m going to ask you this once, and then that’s the end of it. Did you ever try to touch her after we were married?’

‘Not once, I swear it.’

‘You knew about her lovers? You knew you could have been one of them, that the offer was always there?’

‘Richard, for crying out loud, you’re my brother. I wouldn’t do that to you.’

‘No, I know you wouldn’t, but I had to ask.’

When Richard walked across to the sofa and sat down, his back bent and his brow almost touching his knees, Rodney joined him, his arms going instinctively round his brother in much the same way as Richard’s had used to do when he was small and had hurt himself. How long they sat there, Rodney didn’t know, it could have been minutes or hours, time seemed immaterial; but when they both rose it was still without another word being uttered. And even when they collapsed in the two winged armchairs in front of the gas fire, Richard having fetched a full bottle of whisky and two glasses from the cocktail cabinet en route, silence continued to reign.

It was Sarah’s full day off, and she had spent it working at the hospital which was fairly buzzing with the news that in a British Medical Association poll, eighty-six per cent of doctors had voted against joining the proposed national health service due to be introduced later in the year. Although the doctors and nurses had been full of it, it hadn’t interested Sarah that much. One of the children she had got to know really well over the last eight weeks had had a relapse, and she had spent virtually the whole day at his side, trying to jolly him along. Besides which, Rodney had already indicated that he considered the proposed changes to be long overdue and essential for the working classes of Britain, so as far as she was concerned they couldn’t be bad.

It was gone eight o’clock by the time she left the big square red-brick building, and the evening was dark and cold, but she didn’t take the short cut that would have taken ten minutes off her walk home. Since Sir Geoffrey’s threats at Christmas she always kept to the main roads and thoroughfares, walking briskly and keeping alert. Not that she really thought he would try to attack her again, she told herself reassuringly as Emery Place came into view. Lady Margaret had told her that Lady Harris had made it quite clear to her son that the continuation of his generous allowance, along with all the privileges he enjoyed, such as membership of his club and so on, was entirely dependent on his behaving himself. Sir Geoffrey hadn’t liked it, Lady Margaret had reported with understandable satisfaction, but he had known better than to push this new matriarch, who had materialized in his mother’s tiny frame, too far.

The London air was chilled and misty, the pavements wet and shiny, and as Sarah walked the last few steps she found herself comparing it with the clean, sharp, biting cold of the north. She shook her head at herself, a little smile playing at the corner of her mouth. Fancy her feeling homesick for the raw freezing conditions she had moaned about all her life. But she did. She couldn’t help it - Sunderland was home. Not that there was anything wrong with London, and she was glad she had come and experienced the difference of life in the capital in spite of Sir Geoffrey and everything, but . . . Sunderland was Sunderland. It was where Maggie and Florrie and Rebecca were, and that other shadowy figure she intended to search out one day.

She stopped, glancing up into the grey sky as droplets of mist attached themselves to her hair and eyelashes like minute diamonds.

She would never be truly at peace with herself until she had done everything within her power to find her mother, she knew that now, had always known it deep inside. And being down here . . . it was too far away, somehow. Not just in road miles, but in a way she found it difficult to explain even to herself. In Sunderland, when she was under the same northern sky, looking at the same stars, breathing the same air, her mother seemed closer. It was a link. Tenuous maybe, imagined possibly, but it was how she felt.

She reached the steps of Emery Place, mounting them quickly and opening the front door, then walking through to the kitchen. Its warmth was full of the scents and smells of one of Hilda’s baking days, and her mouth watered even as her brow wrinkled at finding the elderly cook and Eileen in the middle of a tiff.

‘I did clean it out.’ Eileen was at her most sullen, a trait which seemed to have developed more and more over the last two months or so. ‘I scrubbed till me hands were raw.’

‘Never mind your hands.’ Hilda pushed the offending articles away as Eileen thrust them under her nose. ‘What about my pan, eh? Cleanliness is next to godliness, my girl, and don’t you forget it. Now you have another go at it with a bit more elbow grease before you get yourself off to bed, and I want it clean this time mind. None of your slapdash antics.’

‘Huh.’ As always, Eileen liked to have the last word, another thing which Hilda found exasperating, but tonight the cook just gave her junior a scathing glance before turning to Sarah as Eileen flung herself down at the kitchen table and attacked one of the big copper saucepans.

‘You’re back late today, and you look all done in. Sit yourself down and I’ll put the kettle on. There’s some fresh fruit buns in that tin by the way, help yourself.’

‘Thanks, Hilda.’

Eileen’s puffing and blowing increased to gale force over the next few minutes as she laboured over the heavy pan, and when Hilda couldn’t stand it a moment more, she said, ‘All right then, off to bed with you, Eileen,’ and the young maid was out of the door like a shot.

‘That’s the first time I’ve seen her move her rear end all day. I don’t know what’s wrong with that girl, straight I don’t.’ Hilda’s voice was tart as she served up their cocoa and gestured for Sarah to have another of the delicious moist buns that were packed with fruit and candied peel, and thumbed their noses at even the concept of rationing. ‘She’s too big for her boots if you ask me, and lazy isn’t the word. And I’m not at all sure she’s telling the truth about where she goes on her time off either. Last week, when she said she went to that musical,
Annie Get Your Gun
, with her cousins from Lewisham, and was so late back because her cousin Harold’s car broke down? Well, I asked her a bit about it the next day, just out of interest, you know, and she couldn’t remember hardly any of the songs.’

‘You think she was lying?’ Sarah asked through a mouthful of bun.

‘I don’t know, but she’s a bit too secretive for my liking. Say what you like about Peggy, but she was as straight as a die, that girl.’

Sarah had to hide a smile. When Peggy had worked for her, Hilda had done nothing but criticize and complain, but as soon as she had left and been replaced by Eileen, Peggy had achieved sainthood.

‘I’ll have a word with her again tomorrow’ - it would be the latest in many ‘words’ - ‘but her time off is her time off, Hilda, and if she tells us one thing and does another, it’s almost impossible to prove. And that was the first time she has been late back, to be fair.’ Sarah was aiming to pour oil on troubled waters, and so she didn’t add that she agreed one hundred per cent with Hilda. But she didn’t trust Eileen either.

It wasn’t the young flighty maid she was thinking of later that night, however, as she lay in bed watching the flickering shadows from the fire. It was Rodney. It was always Rodney.

Had she done the right thing in refusing his invitations to the cinema and a meal out? she asked herself for the hundredth time. She knew he had made them out of kindness. She hadn’t been able to hide her concern for Rebecca and how everything was going to turn out with the baby and all, her anxiety was too fierce, and it was his way of comforting her, providing a release, she supposed. But she didn’t want him to be kind to her when the underlying motive was pity, in fact she couldn’t stand the thought of it. And she had no intention of turning into one of those sad sort of human beings that pined and wasted away with unrequited love either, or worse, tried to manipulate themselves into the other person’s life. She loved him. She couldn’t imagine ever loving anyone else. But, if she couldn’t have him - and she couldn’t - then she would have to make another sort of life for herself than the one she would have chosen. Perhaps nursing?

She flexed her toes under the covers as she considered the idea that had grown over the last few weeks. It would mean years of training, and it would have to be put on hold until she knew what was what with Rebecca and how soon she could make definite plans for herself, but eventually, that was what she would like to do. It satisfied something inside her when she was dealing with, and looking after, people.

And if Rodney asked her out again? The thought intruded, as it had done on and off since she had refused the last invitation. Perhaps she could say yes just once and spend an evening with him? She wanted to, oh, how she wanted to; and surely, if she was fully aware of how everything was, it could do no harm . . . could it?

And Vanessa? The name popped up like an evil genie. Well, she didn’t
know
anything for sure, did she? She didn’t. Not for sure. It might just be her putting two and two together and coming up with ten, never mind five. ‘
Oh . . .
’ She sighed out loud, irritable with herself and the situation. She couldn’t keep rehashing everything over and over again. If Rodney asked her again, she’d say yes. She knew it could lead nowhere, but she deserved a treat, and she could think of no better one than an evening with Rodney. It might not be wise, it probably wasn’t at all clever, but she didn’t want to be wise or clever. The decision made, she snuggled down under the covers, shut her eyes, and was asleep within minutes.

‘Miss Brown, please.’

The voice at the other end of the telephone was cool and crisp, and Sarah wrinkled her brow at it as she said, ‘Speaking.’

‘Oh, Sarah? This is Vanessa Mallard, Richard’s wife. You probably know what I am ringing about.’

Did she? She didn’t think she did.

‘I presume Rodney has told you that Richard and I had a heart-to-heart last night, and that we have decided to separate?’

Separate? Sarah just stopped herself saying the word out loud, and instead, forcing her voice to match Vanessa’s tone, said, ‘No, he hasn’t, but I haven’t seen him in the last twenty-four hours, and I wouldn’t expect him to discuss your personal affairs anyway.’

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