Thirty two
It was all Sylvester’s fault, Blake thought, guiding Pauline around the dance floor. He didn’t want to be there. She was smiling at him. She had been to the south of France for the summer and had a deep tan. Her dress was low and her arms were bare and she was making intelligent conversation. The dinner had been perfect, beef and wine and cream, red wine, low lights, candles, music. All he really wanted to do was take her somewhere comfortable, haul down her knickers and—
‘You’re not listening, Davy.’
He wished she wouldn’t, they all called him that now whereas once the only person who did was Irene. He couldn’t even give Pauline a decent kiss without her thinking she was almost to an engagement ring. He had to go on dancing and hear her talking about politics, proving that she had a mind.
It had been Sylvester’s fault, one Sunday afternoon after too much dinner and too much brandy. Blake had been seeing Pauline occasionally until then.
‘It isn’t good for you, you know.’
‘What isn’t?’ Blake had been playing on the hearthrug with Anthony.
‘I made the mistake. I don’t want you to do it.’
‘What?’
‘Go through the rest of your days without a wife. That child needs a mother.’
‘He has Hetty.’
‘That’s not the same thing and you know it. And he’s an only child. It isn’t good for him.’
‘I was,’ Blake objected.
‘Precisely. Do you want that for him?’
In the end that was what had done it, the idea of Anthony growing up with only one parent, and no brothers and sisters as he had done. Blake began to go out socially and was asked to parties and dinners that summer. He went to picnics and dances. Sometimes he enjoyed them, he liked the conversation, the change, feeling like a person again and not just a parent but all the time there was that pressure to try and find somebody. At first it seemed as if every young woman would do. They were all so nice, he liked them, they could make him laugh and they could talk to him and then he realised that he had no preference and therefore no feeling for any of them and he became bored.
The wanting of Irene became so bad that everything was a huge effort. Each day getting up was like beginning the climbing of an enormous mountain, each morning it was a bigger mountain. He had promised Sylvester that he would not drink and he thought of Pauline. Now he was dancing with her. One evening soon afterwards he took her home for Sylvester’s approval.
* * *
Sylvester was his usual self while they had dinner, he made her laugh, he told stories, he got her to talk but when Blake had taken her home, come back and demanded, ‘Well?’ Sylvester frowned.
‘It’s up to you, David. She’s very beautiful, very bright. Did you take her up to see Anthony?’
‘Yes. He was asleep.’
‘But you don’t love her?’
‘I can’t love anybody, Sylvester. I love Irene. Pauline’s the nearest I’ve got. I think I could care about her if I got to know her, if we spent some time, maybe.’
Blake tried hard. He took her out. One Sunday afternoon during the autumn he left Anthony at home for once with Sylvester and took her for a drive.
‘Where do you want to go?’
‘I want to go to the country and paddle in the river.’
It seemed stupid to stay away. There was nothing to stay away for any longer. It was a golden afternoon. They stopped at lunchtime and sat outside a pub and ate sandwiches and drank beer in the sunshine and then they parked the car in the village and walked. Blake deliberately didn’t look up at the hills or think about the past, he took her by the hand and they walked from the village across the bridge and down through the wood to the river. There she slipped off her shoes and stockings and put her slender brown feet into the water. Blake sat on the river bank with her and when she turned to him laughing he took her into his arms and kissed her and a harsh voice behind him said, ‘What are you doing here?’
Blake had long been stifling his conscience and as he turned and saw Annie it all came back to him, leaving her crying in the yard at Western Isle, pretending that none of it mattered, keeping the bitterness going in his mind so that he would not turn back or come back. He had felt safe at a distance in Sunderland and now he thought ruefully he shouldn’t have come here.
She was wearing old trousers and a dirty shirt as though she had put in a long shift. She reminded him somehow of the grim determination of the pit lads in the old days. Her face was smudged with dirt, her hair was pulled back unbecomingly and there were shadows under her eyes like great half-moons. She was thin and her hands were red with work and she was a shock to Blake after all the polite and well-bred town girls. Especially she was so different from the elegant blonde girl beside him in her expensive cream dress, with her brown skin and her hair bleached from the French sun.
‘We’re not doing anything,’ he said, getting to his feet. ‘Why?’
‘This is my land.’
Blake looked around him.
‘Yours?’
‘I’m farming Western Isle now and I can do without people like you trampling down the corn.’
It was a big field of golden wheat and he had come carefully around the outside of it to reach the river.
‘We haven’t trampled it down.’
‘Somebody’s come straight through the middle of it,’ she pointed out. ‘Some stupid town type.’
‘Well, it wasn’t us. I do know better than that.’
‘There’s no right of way here.’
‘Then how do other people get to the river?’ the girl said, speaking for the first time.
‘People around here have better things to do than paddle in the river once they’re older than about twelve,’ Annie pointed out.
Blake said nothing more. They left.
* * *
Annie didn’t wait to see them. She made her way back up towards the farm and was soon gone from sight. Charles Vane had been taken ill with the flu and was so bad that Annie decided to go over to Western Isle when the doctor was there. She didn’t go back to Grayswell, she stayed. First of all she looked after her father-in-law since Mrs Vane wasn’t well herself and then she began on the house. She turned the dogs out, she spring-cleaned the upstairs rooms and shut the doors and opened the windows to clean air. Then she began downstairs. She lit fires in the foisty rooms, she blackleaded grates and cleaned cupboards and polished furniture. Mrs Vane got better and began to help. Charles got worse and stayed in bed. Annie made a start with the animals. She cleaned the dairy. She fed the hens properly so that they laid well. She made sure that the milk did not go sour and there was butter and cheese. She took on help, a girl from the village for the house and a boy to help her outside and then she began with the fields.
There was always too much to do. When Charles would not give her any money to help run the farm she went out and sold his car. That summer when she saw Blake down by the river there was still a great deal to do but Annie was determined not to give up. It was to her now almost as though Susan had lost her mother and not her father, Annie felt like a father towards her now, striding around the fields, making decisions, buying and selling. She enjoyed it. She worked from dawn to dusk and sometimes went back to Grayswell to put her child to bed. More often she didn’t so in the end Susan went to live at Western Isle and then at least Annie saw her when they had meals together. It also gave Alistair’s mother something important in her life other than the man grumbling upstairs.
In the end he got better. Annie had harvested the crops by then, she had the farm working but once he was downstairs again there was nothing to do but see all her work come to nothing. By Christmas it was as though she had not been there, as though she had struggled and achieved nothing. He shouted at her, he hurled abuse, he wouldn’t let her do anything she wanted. In the end there was nothing for Annie to do but leave. She felt as though she was entitled to Western Isle, to do what she could for it because of Alistair and because she felt as though it was Susan’s birthright. Charles Vane could not have been less understanding.
‘This is my house, my farm,’ he raged. ‘Nobody’s ever going to take it from me, in particular no woman will get the better of me. Get out and take that brat with you.’
She didn’t want to go back to Grayswell. Her parents had moved out into another house just along the road because her father had been unwell the past few months so although her father officially ran the farm Tommy and Clara were doing most of the work. Annie felt like an intruder in the house even though Clara assured her that she was welcome to make her home there and especially because of Susan.
Annie got a job helping out at a café in Stanhope. She rented a small house for herself and Susan and there she lived that winter. It was not how she had ever thought her life would be. The house was so tiny after the farmhouses she had lived in and she was lonely. There was nothing but a back yard for Susan to play in. She went to school in Stanhope and Annie took her for walks when the weather was fine or up to see Madge and Frank or to visit Jack and Rose. She didn’t go to Grayswell much, Tommy was not welcoming.
One day not long before the end of the winter – and Annie was looking forward to that very much, warmer weather and lighter nights – Paul Monmouth came into the café. He had never married. He had a cup of coffee and asked her if she would have dinner with him and Annie agreed but when they were seated in an expensive hotel one rainy April evening she realised now why she had not married Paul. He was boring. Even being out, getting dressed up and having Frank and Madge take Susan for the evening, even the good food did not compensate for the fact that Paul was not interesting. He talked at her rather than to her, he showed no interest in her life. He didn’t once ask about Susan or how she felt being alone all this time. At the end of the evening she tried to force herself to see him again since the alternative was to stay at home but never had staying at home looked better. She tried to stop him from kissing her and when he insisted she was as polite as possible and escaped, running into the tiny house and shutting the door behind her. The peace and quietness in the little freezing house was so comforting.
She filled a hot-water bottle and went to bed, huddled there not able to sleep, lying in the darkness with her eyes open wishing things otherwise.
* * *
All winter there had been parties and dinners. People asked Pauline and Blake out as a couple now. He had gone to meet her parents and it was obvious that they wanted him to marry her. Sylvester was tactful and when Pauline came to the house he was kind to her. Hetty was kind too. Pauline seemed to like Anthony. Sometimes they took him out for the day and Pauline bought him ice-cream and held his hand when they went for walks.
Late at night when he took Pauline home and kissed her goodnight her body invited his hands but Blake never touched her. It cost him, it was like turning down the first drink on a Friday night or one of Hetty’s Sunday dinners when he was very hungry.
One Saturday night when he came home Hetty was still up. She made him cocoa. Blake hated cocoa but she always made it if she happened to be there so he drank it.
‘And how was the beautiful Pauline?’ Hetty asked.
‘She’s all right,’ Blake said.
‘I won’t buy a new hat yet then.’
‘What?’
‘For your wedding.’
‘I haven’t asked her to marry me, Hetty.’
‘No, but you will shortly.’
‘What makes you think so?’
‘I don’t know.’
They were sitting in the kitchen at their new house. It was a brand new kitchen with a cream Aga and neat cupboards, windows on two sides to let in the light, a wall-built refrigerator, a square wooden table – Hetty liked the house but she loved the kitchen.
‘Don’t you like Pauline, Hetty?’
‘She’s very nice. She’s also very bonny and very clever, clever enough to get you to marry her.’
‘I haven’t decided yet.’
‘Do you think men decide? She just has to play a waiting game, that’s all, lovely girl like that. Sooner or later you’re going to get tired of coming home to bed alone.’
‘I’m tired of it now.’
‘Yes, I know you are. You’re too young to be by yourself and you had too good a wife to think it can’t happen again.’
‘Don’t you like Pauline, Hetty?’
‘Yes, I think she’s a nice girl and you’re a very eligible young man. You’re a catch,’ Hetty said and she put the cocoa mugs into the sink and went to bed.
* * *
Blake thought that Hetty was mistaken, Pauline really did care for him and then he saw what the problem was, he didn’t really care for her. She was beautiful and intelligent and she would make a good mother for Anthony and a good partner in that she was classy and presentable but he did not love her. In the end he had to tell her because he knew that it was unkind of him to make her think they might marry when in fact it was not going to happen.
‘I loved Irene,’ he said, trying to explain without hurting her later that week at her parents’ home. ‘I don’t think I’m ready to love anybody else.’
She went to him, she did what Blake could bear least, she kissed him and put her arms around his neck and her lovely body close.
‘I understand how you feel, I know how much you loved Irene. There’s no rush, I can wait,’ she said and she kissed him hard. ‘Make love to me.’
‘Pauline—’
‘There’s no one here.’ She slid one hand down his shirt front. Blake stopped her.
‘No,’ he said.
* * *
‘So you aren’t going to marry her,’ Sylvester said when Blake went home and explained.
‘No.’
‘Thank God for that.’
‘What?’
‘You’d be making a big mistake just for the sake of going to bed with her.’
‘It wasn’t just that—’
‘I know it wasn’t. Young Anthony liked her. You’ll have to tell him something.’
‘I will.’
Sylvester gave him a large brandy and then he said, ‘What about the girl you had?’
‘What, Annie? No.’
‘I thought her husband had been killed. Has she married again?’
‘Not that I know of.’
‘Why don’t you go and see her?’