Thirty
Long before the war ended, at least it seemed to Blake like long before and at least before other people thought the war was ending, things changed in the shipyards. By the end of 1944 the Admiralty began to cancel their contracts. Blake had an aircraft carrier almost finished when it was cancelled with two more cancelled which were just at the planning stage. By the early part of 1945 he had a good amount of non-warship orders and the pressure was off. The men gradually went back to working normal hours.
Sylvester had been of late very dissatisfied with the small house they were renting and as soon as the war was over he went looking for another.
They had no celebrations. They had lost too much to be anything other than relieved it was finished and to sorrow over Irene and Simon. Between work and house-hunting Sylvester tried to encourage Blake to go out more but he never wanted to now. He thought that perhaps it was the aftermath of war, the coming down. Some months before he had awoken in the night from some terrible dream he could not recall and had not felt the same since.
There had been a kind of fear, maybe even physical which he had not experienced before within the dream, of men shouting in another language and of open land somewhere that was not here and then there was a loud bang and after it silence, a complete silence such as he had not known, like a cushioning, a peace and when he had awoken it was strange to find himself in darkness in the small rented house and it was different than ever before. It was the strangest thing, as though there had been too much loss, as though there had been too much sorrow, as though nothing that went on in the world had anything to do with him now. The peace before he awoke had been an unimaginable relief.
The feeling passed when day came and the ordinary noises of the day began. He felt that he belonged again, there was the child and Sylvester and Hetty and there was work but there was too an almost physical pain which did not go away, it had to be carried around with him like a heavy parcel and it was as if only work and home were safe. Nothing made Blake happy. His friends introduced him to various women but other than being polite to them Blake didn’t spend any time with them.
One day in the spring of 1945 he and Sylvester went to look at a house. It wasn’t far from where they were living now and while they were there Blake began to think about Grayswell and the family.
‘You aren’t paying attention,’ Sylvester said.
‘What?’
‘You aren’t listening to me.’
‘Sylvester, I spend a great deal of my life listening to you.’
Sylvester grinned.
‘I know you do, my boy. I want to know what you think about the house.’
‘I like it.’
‘Good. I like it too. We must get some help for Hetty when we move here. The poor woman’s managed all this time. She can’t be expected to go on forever doing everything herself.’
‘Sylvester, would you mind if I sold the farm?’ Sylvester looked at him.
‘If you need money—’
‘It’s not that. I want the Lowes to have it. I thought that if I give them a chance to repay me bit by bit it might work but you bought it for me, gave it to me. I don’t want to upset you.’
Sylvester stood there grinning happily.
‘I wondered how long it was going to take you,’ he said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, I did offer to lend you the money to give them in the first place, if you recall, but I don’t think you felt sufficiently friendly enough towards them to help them and I wasn’t going to push it. I don’t mind what you do with it but I’m very glad.’
‘Sylvester, you are a serious manipulator.’
‘How else do you think I got rich?’
* * *
On the first Sunday afternoon that Blake could get away alone he drove Sylvester’s Bentley up to the dale. He knew that it was the best time to catch Jack and Tommy straight after their Sunday dinner so he timed his visit. He drank in the views all the way. It was a sunshiny spring day and the world looked good. He parked the car a little way from the house and walked back.
The yard was empty. He opened the little side gate and went over and knocked on the door. To his surprise Annie came to the door. He had not thought of her there, he thought of her with Alistair, perhaps having dinner with his parents at Western Isle.
‘Hello, Blake,’ she said.
It was not the most overwelming welcome Blake had ever had.
‘Hello.’
‘You’d better come in.’
They had evidently just finished eating. Rose was washing up in the back kitchen. Madge was not there, she must have been at the Hall with Frank and Mr Harlington but Elsie was there with a young man he didn’t recognise and whom nobody offered to introduce him to, and Jack and Tommy were there. Alistair was nowhere to be seen.
The room went silent as Annie ushered him in and she went straight back out again. Rose didn’t even come out of the kitchen. They didn’t greet him, they didn’t offer him a seat. Blake stood in the middle of the floor and said to Jack, ‘I want to talk to you about the farm.’
‘As far as I’m concerned there’s nothing to say unless there’s something you’re dissatisifed with.’
‘No, it’s not that.’
‘You can’t put us out—’
‘No, it’s not that either.’ For some reason Blake couldn’t get the words out. ‘I want to sell it to you.’
Jack shifted in his chair. Tommy, for once in his life, had nothing to say and Elsie got up with her young man and they went out.
‘If I could have afforded to buy it I would have done when Mr Harlington offered. I haven’t the money to buy it and I can’t raise it. Don’t tell me you need the money.’
‘No. We could draw up a legal agreement and you could pay us back gradually like a mortgage.’
‘At what price?’
‘The same as Sylvester paid.’
‘At what interest?’
‘None.’
‘It was a low price.’
‘Yes, I know.’
‘Why?’
‘No reason. A farm isn’t any use to me.’
‘I don’t understand why you bought it, or why your father-in-law did.’
‘He was just trying to make a point.’
‘Dear way of doing it.’
‘Maybe.’
‘I’m sorry about your wife,’ Jack said shortly.
‘Thanks. The solicitor will be in touch.’
Blake turned to go. Annie was standing in the doorway. She followed him out to the car.
‘You haven’t got rid of it yet,’ she said.
‘We will, sooner or later.’
‘Make it later. It was nice of you to come. You didn’t have to. You could have done it through your solicitor by letters.’
‘I decided I did owe your parents.’
‘And you’d rather it was the other way round?’ she asked, smiling.
‘Who bought Sunniside?’
‘Elsie and her young man are going to live there. His parents have it. They own shops and picture houses.’
‘That’s nice.’ Blake opened the car door. ‘How’s Alistair?’
Her face changed. Blake pushed the door shut.
‘He is all right, isn’t he?’ Blake’s insides were doing crazy things now as they had been trying to do for months. The black blinding feeling came down on him, the feeling he had been pushing away all that time. ‘He’s at Western Isle with his parents?’
She was shaking her head but she didn’t say anything.
‘He’s not. He got hurt in Burma? I knew it.’
‘The Japanese shot him. He’s dead.’
‘No. No.’ He could remember the night, he could remember the shot, he could remember how it had felt since then. The loss, the sick feeling, the not wanting to go on, the not wanting to admit that something important was stopped and he knew then for the first time what he had not admitted to himself all these years, that he and Alistair were about as close in blood as it was possible to be. Alistair was dead and there was nothing in his memory that would make it any easier.
‘I think you’d better come back inside,’ she said.
‘Never. Never again, never. I hate this place. I hate all of it,’ and to his own consternation Blake leaned his arms on top of the car roof and started to cry but only for a minute or two. He turned wet eyes on her. ‘And what did Charles Vane say when they told him his only son was dead?’
Blake hauled open the car door. Annie tried to stop him.
‘Blake—’
He pushed her out of the way.
‘Blake, stop it, you’ll have an accident. Don’t you think it’s bad enough? Don’t you think it’s bad enough for me?’
He stopped, took a couple of deep breaths and said, ‘You could have bloody well told me. You never write any bloody letters to me. Never.’
‘I’m sorry. I just knew that you were going to feel like this about it and you’d already gone through it all with Irene and . . .’
‘Why didn’t you tell me? I could have come and . . . I couldn’t. Nothing helps, I know it doesn’t. I knew that he was dead.’
‘How?’
‘I don’t know. I just knew. I kept telling myself that I was just being stupid and that it hadn’t happened, that I couldn’t have known. Nobody could have been less close than Alistair and me.’
‘I don’t think that’s quite true. He liked you a lot. Come back inside. I’ll get Mam to make you a cup of tea.’
‘No. I’m going home. Your dad will have the farm now. It was what he always wanted.’
He drove away. He drove for a couple of miles and then pulled in at the side of the road and gave in to the tears, tried to think of the few good times they had ever spent together and remembered the night before Madge’s wedding, sitting in the ford at Stanhope, singing drunken songs with Alistair.
Thirty one
‘I need another drink,’ Annie had said, waving her glass.
‘We should go.’ Madge looked uneasily at her.
‘Stop worrying, will you? There’s plenty of people to take us home.’
‘I didn’t want to be here in the first place.’
‘You’ve danced every dance with a different man. What more could you want?’
‘I could want a particular man,’ Madge said and got up and walked away.
Annie watched her threading her way through the couples. She felt wonderful. The music blasted its way through the night, the gin and tonic flowed. She only hoped that Madge would not try to go home by herself. Home. She laughed out loud. Some home.
A tall man appeared beside her. She thought hard for his name but couldn’t recollect it and went off to dance with him.
Madge had not gone home and at the end of the evening there was a car and two men. They stopped on the way back, though she could hear Madge in the back objecting and she watched him look at her, turn towards her and then take her into his arms and then it was the moment before. It was the moment of hope when his lips came down on hers and he would be Alistair Vane.
She fought him off. She persuaded him to drive them home. She got out of the car laughing and reached in and rescued Madge and amid the protestations from the men she slammed the car doors and led Madge in at their gates and across the yard to the house.
‘He had twenty pairs of hands,’ Madge said. ‘How could you make me get in with them?’
‘It was a lift home and they’re officers, aren’t they?’
‘I don’t know how you could kiss him. He’s married. They have two children. What about his wife?’
‘I don’t know his wife. Who cares?’
Clara had looked after Susan and was sitting up waiting for them. They often went out together and Madge would spend the night. Susan was crying.
‘She’s hardly stopped since you went out.’
Annie made no remark. She took her child and went on upstairs to her room. She wasn’t thinking about the child, she thought about the man in the car and the moment that his mouth touched hers and the cold-water kind of disappointment. It always happened and she always expected it and she hated the tiny part of her which told her in a silky voice that this time it would be him, that this time she would remember and forget and the world would come together again and he would be there.
She hated the going out to look for that this time and she hated the staying in that reeked to her of her youth finished. Alistair was dead and she had sworn to herself that her life was not over but that tiny silky demon voice purred its way through her consciousness and even her dreams and it was cruel.
He was there in her dreams, he was a dozen men and more and himself. He went away, he came back, he found her again and she had given herself to another man and yet she never did, not even in her sleep. She did not understand how her body could ache so much and yet whenever a man touched her she felt disgust. She wanted the ache to go away but it seemed that it was all that was keeping her alive and what she wanted more than anything in the world just then was for Alistair Vane’s daughter to shut up. She had cried constantly for months now. Anybody would think that she knew her father wasn’t coming back.
Annie did finally sleep and the gin and tonic soothed her. She thanked God for alcohol and silence and then she lost consciousness.
* * *
That was before, before the war ended. Now it was to some people as though it had never happened, they went on with their lives. Annie didn’t know how to go on. Sunniside was long gone, she didn’t feel at home here any more with her parents and Tommy and Clara and she couldn’t go and live at Western Isle because now that Alistair was dead his parents had no interest in her and none in Susan.
She went often, mostly out of a sense of duty because they were Susan’s grandparents and Western Isle was still a wonderful place but there was a defeated air about it because Alistair was dead. His father no longer wanted to do anything. There were few visitors to the place now and Annie began to hate going so much that she put off her visits. It was as though the house and land had gone into mourning.
Charles dismissed what help they had and retreated to his study. What he did there Annie could never make out but Mrs Vane could not manage things by herself and the house took on a dusty neglected air.
One winter day when Annie had trudged up because it was almost Christmas she walked into the hall and stopped short. Usually there was a big fire with the dogs sitting around it but today there were no lights and no fire and no dogs – she could hear them howling from one of the outside buildings. Mrs Vane came out of the kitchen, she was making a meal, but there was no sign of Alistair’s father. The place was freezing. She went thankfully to the kitchen with her mother-in-law and sat for a while but that day was just the beginning. It seemed to her after that that every time she went there things were worse.
The stone walls were allowed to fall down, the road to the house became covered in weeds and rubbish, the fences were in bad repair. Charles got tired of listening to the dogs howling outside with the result that they were allowed in all the rooms and there was mud and hair even in the bedrooms.
That winter Charles went out with the dogs shooting a lot when Annie visited. Dead pheasants lay outside on the stone steps until they were hung, a fox was left to rot by the back fence. Moles were strung up, and rooks by their necks. Inside there was always the smell of wet, muddy dog and Charles stormed about in his wellingtons complaining. Cracked windows were lashed with rain. Alistair’s mother gave up trying to keep things right and kept to the kitchen where it was warm. The once that winter when Charles came out of his study when Annie was there he took one look at Susan and said, ‘Get that brat out of my house!’
‘This brat is your grandchild,’ Annie pointed out furiously.
‘Do you see this house? Do you see it? There’s nobody to inherit it.’ He glared at his wife. ‘All she could produce was one child. One.’
‘It’s only a house,’ Annie said, not caring that it was the wrong thing to say.
‘Only? Have you any idea how long we have lived here? How long this has been the home of the Vane family? Over seven hundred years and now because of her and because of the war there’s no son. That’s the first time.’
It seemed to Annie that she understood then what Western Isle meant to Charles Vane. It was more important to him than his wife or his son had ever been just because his family had stuck in one place for hundreds of years. It was quite ludicrous, she thought, that a piece of ground could be so important, and now that he was frustrated he was destroying it along with himself. He didn’t understand that he and Western Isle were separate things, he thought that Western Isle was something to be possessed, that he could hold things. Now because the house could not go on being his reason for living he was abusing it, neglecting it. The house needed caring for, not like this but as a part of things which went on regardless of who lived and died, Annie could see. There was nothing she could do, she took her child and went back to Grayswell.
* * *
And there she had an idea. She telephoned Blake at his office.
‘I want to talk to you. Do I have to make an appointment?’
‘Of course you don’t. Is there something wrong at the farm?’
‘Do I have to come to Sunderland?’
He hesitated.
‘I’ll come there if you really want.’
‘To Western Isle.’
‘Why?’
‘I just want you to come.’
‘Annie—’
‘It’s important. I know you don’t want to come over here but it’ll take ages by train and there’s Susan.’
‘All right, all right. Just tell me when.’
* * *
Annie looked around her with great satisfaction that morning. It was pouring with rain and had been for several days. The crops were sodden and spoiled in the fields, the house was cold and smelled foisty, the yard was filthy. It looked even worse by the time Blake turned up in a brand new car the colour of thick farm cream, a Bristol 400. He looked around him and then got out.
Annie ventured into the downpour.
‘Do mind your shoes,’ she said sarcastically, looking at his unsuitable footwear. ‘Come in.’
Blake hesitated.
‘Hurry up. Mrs Vane has the kettle on and you’re getting soaked.’
She didn’t spare him. She took him in through the front door. The hall was bare and cold. The kitchen was better. Alistair’s mother chatted nervously and gave him tea. Annie watched him shudder over the tea which had been sitting on the Rayburn for some time and was mahogany coloured and stewed bitter. When the woman tried to drink hers her hands shook so much that the tea spilled into the saucer.
Blake didn’t linger. Annie didn’t blame him. Outside the rain had stopped but the sky was deep grey.
‘Do you want a lift home?’
‘This is my home.’
He didn’t misunderstand her or pretend to.
‘All right, you’ve made your point. It’s nothing to do with me.’
‘This is your inheritance. Look at it.’
‘It’s not mine.’
‘Your family has lived here for seven hundred years.’
‘No, my family lived at Sunniside. The fact that Alistair’s father raped my mother does not make this my inheritance.’
‘He raped her? How do you know that?’
Blake looked at her. ‘Do you seriously think that a shy sixteen-year-old girl would have sex with a man like that willingly?’
‘She might have done.’
‘That’s ludicrous, Annie and you know it. He effectively killed her by what he did. He ruined my grandparents’ lives and rather than do anything he let me lose Sunniside to go and work as a servant for other people. You don’t really think I’m going to come here and play Santa Claus to help him?’
‘It’s not for him.’
‘Isn’t it? Who is it for then, you? You think I owe you something?’
‘No.’
‘That’s good because that’s how I feel about it. I hope the place falls to bits around his ears.’
‘And what about your son?’
Blake laughed.
‘You really are scraping the barrel now. My son will have everything. He doesn’t need a broken-down farm in the middle of nowhere.’
‘Oh, Blake, that really is awful. Look at it, Blake, look at the lovely mullioned windows, look at the stonework. People have lived here for a thousand years. You can’t do it.’
‘Can’t I?’ He turned away towards the car.
‘What about Alistair? His father made him stay here because of this place. All that sacrifice for nothing. Have you any idea how he would feel if he could see it?’
‘Well, he can’t see it, can he?’ Blake said roughly.
‘You could do it for Alistair.’
Blake turned around and glared at her.
‘Where are you with all this blackmail?’
‘I don’t care how I do it,’ Annie said from between her teeth, ‘I just want you to help,’ and she thumped him on the shoulder.
The tears which usually behaved themselves when other people were there suddenly were uncontainable, brimmed and even fell, two or three.
‘Will you stop crying?’
Charles Vane came out of the house.
‘What the hell are you doing on my land?’ he said.
Annie tried to control the tears so that she could speak. ‘This is—’
‘I know who he is. You have no right on my property, David Blake.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Blake said, ‘I’m leaving.’
Annie watched the cream car glide out of the yard. ‘That was your chance,’ she said.
‘They were nobody,’ Charles said, ‘they never had anything,’ and he turned around and walked away back into the house.