Irene tried to think of something to say but couldn’t. And then she tried to take him into her arms but he pushed her gently away.
‘You stick with Geoffrey, Irene. He can get you out of here. It’s more than I can do for you.’
Irene stared at him.
‘Do you really think that having turned down a catch like Robert Denham I would accept Geoffrey?’
‘You should,’ Blake said and he got up to go upstairs. He stopped at the bottom of the stairs and looked at her. ‘How many times have you wished you hadn’t turned Robert Denham down?’
‘Almost every day,’ Irene said softly. ‘I didn’t realise how things really were, that it was all I could expect. I thought I was entitled to more. I thought everybody was entitled to love and be loved.’
Blake left her there. When he had gone Irene began to cry. It was the first time she had cried since Will’s accident. She had been so shocked and so hurt that there didn’t seem to be any room for tears. She followed him upstairs and went quietly into her room. The crying wasn’t a problem, she had learned to cry soundlessly at her aunt’s. It was so cold up there but she needed the privacy somehow. She sat down on the bed, unable to stand up any longer, she felt so tired. It was a big bed, three of Mary Ann’s children had slept in it. Her bedroom was over the kitchen and was warmer than the other one though there wasn’t much evidence of it now.
She huddled in against the covers for comfort as well as for warmth. When the door opened she stilled her shuddering body and tried to remove the tears with the covers. Blake always knocked before he walked in. This time he didn’t. Irene pretended he wasn’t there, even when he sat down on the bed. He leaned over and kissed her damp face. She turned further away. He kissed the top of her head and the back of her neck and he put a hand on her back, gradually sliding it down to her waist. He turned her over towards him.
‘Come here,’ he said.
Irene went there, blotched face, misery and all. She hid her face against his shoulder which gave the tears leave to begin again. The more she cried the more he kissed her so it seemed politic to let the tears run but gradually the misery began to shift and the tears to dry as he stroked her hair and kissed her face and murmured little half-sentences of comfort. She became warmer, happier.
‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ he said softly, ‘I didn’t mean to be nasty to you.’
‘You weren’t.’
‘Yes, I was. I hate Geoffrey.’
Irene couldn’t help but smile.
‘You don’t have to hate Geoffrey.’
‘Don’t I?’
‘No.’
He smiled into her eyes. ‘I don’t think I’ve got any kind of a future, Irene.’
‘I’ve given up on things like the future. I don’t care. Now will do.’
‘What if you had to stay here for always?’
‘Is that the problem?’ Irene said. ‘You’re going to let me die an old maid in case I have to stay here? I didn’t realise you were such an idiot.’
‘You were brought up to be a lady, Irene.’
‘If you don’t shut up and kiss me I’m going to forget about being a lady and . . . I don’t want to be a lady, I just want . . . I just want you. Don’t make me say things I shouldn’t.’
Blake didn’t. He kissed her. Irene was even happier then. She liked the kisses, she especially liked the way that he put his hands under her jumper and on to the bare warmth of her skin. Her upbringing tried to get into the way here and tell her that no gentleman would have done such a thing and Irene knew that it didn’t count since he wasn’t a gentleman. Her upbringing also reminded her that she should have stopped him from sliding his hands past her underwear, loosening it and then putting his hands and eventually his mouth on to her breasts. Luckily by then Irene couldn’t think straight so that didn’t count either. After that her upbringing fought a losing battle. He put his hands and mouth all over her, he took her skirt off her, he pulled down her knickers. Irene was soon totally lost as a lady but she thought that possibly she made up for it as a woman. She felt like one big rosy glow, like she was the only woman in the whole world. She wasn’t cold at all in that freezing little room, naked against him, skin to skin, it was wonderful. She loved every second of what he did to her and what he encouraged her to do to him. Ralph and Mary Ann did not come back. In an idle moment much later Irene did chance to think of them and to be glad that they had discovered something so entertaining to do that evening that they weren’t there to discover their lodgers in bed together. She just hoped that the neighbours couldn’t hear what was going on. Crying out with delight was something she wasn’t prepared to contain.
It was very late by the time Ralph and Mary Ann came home and by then Irene and Blake were quiet in each other’s arms and half-asleep. Irene could not understand therefore the following morning late, when she was helping Mary Ann with the dinner, why Mary Ann looked askance at her. Irene had almost chopped off a finger with a kitchen knife and thrown out the vegetables instead of the peelings by then.
‘I hope he’s asked you to marry him, young woman. I’d hate to see you go down the aisle fat with your first like any common little pit lass.’
Irene blushed scarlet.
‘Well, has he?’ Mary Ann insisted.
Irene nodded. Mary Ann hugged her.
‘When’s the day to be?’ she asked.
‘Soon,’ Irene said.
* * *
Irene had always imagined that her wedding day would be lavish, that she would be married in a long white gown, wear a veil and have half a dozen bridesmaids, the girls she went to school with. She had thought that there would be a big
church and a reception at a top hotel, that all their family and friends would come to wish her well, that she would have a honeymoon in Paris, dozens of exciting gifts and a house
rather like her father’s house with its own set of gates, a drive, lovely gardens and that there would be welcoming fires in
the drawing-room and a library and servants and there she
would make a home comfortable for the gentleman she
had married. The vision became a little blurred then because there had never been a gentleman she cared about anywhere near as much as she cared about David Blake.
They had been given a house of their own and though it was in a dark narrow street she knew that she would much prefer living alone with him and to her surprise things were easier than she had thought.
Firstly Mary Ann made her a lovely white dress for her wedding and Mary Ann and Ralph organised a reception in the church hall.
It was a perfect spring Saturday when they were married. Ralph gave her away and all the people around the doors had made or bought small presents and suddenly these meant just as much as expensive canteens of cutlery and Wedgwood dinner services would have because she realised that she was part of the community now. Mary Ann had chosen the bridesmaids and made their dresses but she privately told Irene that she outshone not only the other girls but any bride she had ever seen. The sea was as blue as a summer’s morning, the waves broke gently on the shore, the church was decorated with wild flowers and everything at the reception had been homemade and there was plenty of it.
There would be no holiday, just the Saturday night and the Sunday since Blake was on early shift starting on Sunday night but when they were alone, when the day was over and they had all their new things around them and the good wishes of her neighbours were still in her mind, Irene looked back over the day and thought it was one of the best she had ever spent, even without her father and Simon.
She knew that the families on either side of her would help if she needed them, the fire was burning brightly in her kitchen and her sitting-room for once and she had the man that she had wanted. Robert Denham with all his education, money and background had never looked half as inviting as the young man who grabbed her by the waist and whispered in her ear, ‘I love you, Irene, let’s go to bed.’
‘What, now?’
‘Yes.’
‘Won’t the neighbours be scandalised?’
‘I don’t care. We’ve only got tonight.’
‘Right then,’ Irene said.
In spite of Will’s death that was one of the happiest summers of Irene’s life though she was poorer now than she had ever been. Blake was not quiet and difficult any more even though she knew how much he hated working down the pit and how much he missed Will. Sometimes he went drinking but not often because it brought back memories. He seemed content to sit at home by the fire with her but occasionally he went out for the conversation of other men.
Irene and Mary Ann went shopping together and Mary Ann urged her to buy good secondhand dresses and together they unpicked them and sewed them so that Irene went to church on Sundays looking what Mary Ann called ‘as fine as a new pin’. Mary Ann’s mother had been a dressmaker. Her husband had died when Mary Ann was small and her mother had made a living for them. She showed Irene all kinds of useful things about sewing which Irene had not known before or ever needed.
Irene was glad too that Mary Ann had shown her how to cook and bake and how to look after a house and a pitman. Her house was perfect, her pastry was light, the smell of her dinners drove people to put their heads around the open back door in approval but best of all was Blake who came home to her at different hours of the day and night depending on his shifts. Sundays were wonderful. On sunny summer afternoons they went for long walks on the beach but Irene preferred the days that rained because they bolted the doors and went to bed. She learned to love the sound of rain running down the windows.
Twenty two
Annie’s baby was a girl. Charles Vane was so disappointed that he didn’t even come to Sunniside to see the child but Alistair’s mother came and Annie realised that her mother-in-law was in fact delighted with the baby. She sat down with Rose and they congratulated themselves that she was the most beautiful baby ever born.
When Annie went to Western Isle all Charles Vane said to her was that he expected the next child would be a boy. She had not expected Alistair’s reaction.
‘It’s none of your damned business,’ he said, ‘and don’t you speak that way to my wife.’
‘I’ll speak to her how I choose,’ his father said angrily. ‘She was just the damned dairymaid.’
Alistair got to his feet and Annie was horrified. She thought he was going to hit his father.
‘Alistair!’
That stopped him but he turned around to her, said, ‘We’re going,’ and walked out.
Annie got up, the baby in her arms, stuttered something to his mother and went after him as best she could. He was already starting up the car in the yard.
‘That’s it,’ he said as she got in, ‘I’ve put up with him all these years and I’m sick of it.’
‘Alistair, he didn’t mean anything.’
‘How can you say that?’
‘He’s always been like that and . . . you can’t blame him for wanting a grandson. Western Isle is all he’s ever cared about.’
‘I don’t understand how people can care more about buildings and pieces of land than they do about people,’ Alistair said, wrenching at the car wheel as they took the track up to Sunniside.
‘Things are difficult. He’s doing his best to keep the place together. He wants it for you and then for your son—’
‘He’s not here to want things for other people. He’s not bloody well immortal,’ Alistair said.
When they got back to the house Annie soothed her daughter to sleep and then she went back downstairs and poured him a glass of whisky and took it in to where he was sitting on the sofa in front of the newly burned up fire.
‘Here,’ she said, sliding down beside him.
He took the glass from her hands.
‘Why didn’t your mother have any more children? Couldn’t she?’
‘She used to ride to hounds. She had a riding accident. He always said that was the cause. I suppose they had to blame something. Maybe it was him. He always goes on and on about wanting more children, he couldn’t even be kind to the one he had. It’s always been the farm first and everything else afterwards with him and now we’re in debt because he thinks he’s so important. If we ever lose the farm it’ll be his fault.’
‘Lose it?’
He didn’t look at her.
‘I keep trying to tell him not to spend money but he doesn’t listen. We don’t have it to spend.’
‘Why don’t we sell this place?’
He looked at her then.
‘And live with them? I couldn’t.’
‘Can we afford to go on paying the bank what we owe them in interest?’
‘Nobody’s going to buy it anyway, not the way that things are going. I’ll be glad when there’s a war. At least I’ll be able to get away from here.’
Annie was so hurt that she said nothing.
‘When I think of the things I could have done with my life—’ he said.
‘But you love Western Isle—’
‘Annie, I’m not going to have Western Isle if things don’t get better. I’m not going to have anything and I’m not qualified to do anything else.’
‘That doesn’t mean you have to talk about going and getting yourself killed!’
‘I didn’t mean it like that.’ He took her into his arms.
‘I’d have to stay here if you joined up.’
‘You could go to your parents.’
‘Don’t talk about it.’ Annie hid her face against him. ‘You probably won’t get called up anyhow. You’re needed here on the farm.’
‘You could do that,’ he said.
‘What, run the farms?’
‘Why not?’
‘What about the baby?’ Even as she spoke she could hear Susan start to cry. She ran upstairs and picked her up and held the child very close to her. The wind had got up. She went and pulled the curtains across. There was not a single light to be seen, the fog had come down so thickly across the hillside and in the valley. She rocked Susan in her arms until the baby fell asleep again and then put her down gently into her cot. It seemed strange to her that her child should have been born in the same room as Blake and the awful thought came to her. What if her child had to grow up like Blake without a father? It was so horrifying to her that when Alistair came to bed which he did soon afterwards she flew into his arms.
‘I’m so frightened,’ she said.
‘There’s nothing to be frightened of here unless it’s a few ghosts all with Blake’s scowl.’
She tried to laugh but couldn’t. They went to bed and made love for the first time since Susan had been born and Annie thought then that it was too real not to have a future. It was what life was all about, being in love, being in bed here with the night all outside and the baby sleeping peacefully in her cot. Nothing could destroy that, it was the most important thing of all. Alistair was right, his father cared for things which didn’t matter but she thought about the future, Alistair and Susan and herself living at Western Isle and using it as a home and providing it with laughter. And there would be other children too to fill the rooms and run down the fields and chase each other around the trees in the orchard.
She drifted into sleep. In her dreams she could see a fair-haired girl running up the hill and a tall-legged horse following. A man, dark like Alistair (was it Alistair?) getting off the horse and running after her and catching her. He was laughing. She didn’t think that the girl was laughing, she wasn’t, she was afraid, she was— Annie awoke covered in sweat to find the baby screaming and Alistair stirring beside her.