Sail Upon the Land (39 page)

He tensed and gazed at her, waiting. She groped with her right hand for the handkerchief that was on the arm of the chair. ‘It isn’t very nice what I have to tell you. I’m sorry. The thing is, I suppose, that the sex was non-consensual.’

‘What?’

‘I was raped.’

Her father looked horrified. She hastened on, ‘Oh, it wasn’t some stranger in a dark alley, I knew him a bit and he didn’t hurt me. He just didn’t stop when I said no. I was frightened but I was also mortified at getting myself into that position, that’s why I didn’t tell anyone. These days, they call it date rape.’

‘Is this something to do with why you went back to India?’

‘Yes, I went to see if I could find him. I wanted an explanation or some kind of closure. I found him dying alone in his isolated house. You couldn’t make it up,’ she smiled ruefully.

‘I helped him and called for aid, probably saved his life. He offered to give himself up to the police, said it was the only time he’d ever done anything like it and that he tried to find me afterwards. I ran away from his house you see. I don’t know if I believe anything he said but at least he said it. Perhaps people don’t lie when they are close to death. They do lie to survive though. I don’t know.’ She’d thought about it all so much and there were no real answers.

Munty didn’t ask who the man was but his fists clenched and then relaxed. They sat quietly, then Damson got up to change Hari’s nappy. When he was clean and happy, she placed him on his great-grandfather’s lap with a muslin to catch any overflow. Munty grasped Hari firmly by his middle and lifted him to stand on his knee so their faces were at the same level. They examined each other with interest. Then Hari carefully removed Munty’s half-moon glasses.

Hari slept right through the first night of their new life. The next morning, Damson got up, excited at the idea of arranging a home for them both. She dressed and fed Hari, and left him on the floor, the safest place for the very young and not yet mobile. But Hari didn’t like lying on his back, unless he was sleepy. He had taken to rolling on to his front and then raising himself on his arms.

He was lying in front of the unlit fire, on the hearth rug, with the old nursery fire guard hooked on to the chimney breast on both sides, while she nipped upstairs. She came back down a minute later into her new sitting room to find him gone. She felt herself go into shock. She had a momentary sensation as if she had dreamt it all, that he was a phantasm called up by her intense longing to be allowed to have a baby. Or that Leeta had changed her mind, crept in and stolen him away.

She took herself firmly in hand and searched, finding him in the kitchen doorway on his front, having wriggled off like a baby seal to find her. He looked at her over his shoulder. She laughed out loud and seized him in her arms, covering his pleased golden face with kisses, blowing raspberries in his soft little tummy. Her nerves were shot.

Damson would never get anything done if he was roaming free. She remembered there might be some old-fashioned, solid equipment up at the Castle dating from when she was a baby, so she called her stepmother’s mobile.

Margaret answered, and said, yes, she could meet her up at the Castle. Damson put Hari’s coat on and strapped him into the three-wheeler pushchair, jogging up to the Castle, pleased to get some exercise and spring air into her lungs. Margaret opened the door, smiling at her shyly. Damson kissed her stepmother, and thanked her for the trouble she had gone to in getting the Lodge ready. Margaret bent over Hari and took his hands in hers, saying, ‘Welcome, little man,’ and kissed him on the head. She seemed unusually quiet, only remarking on how nice Damson looked. Damson examined herself for her usual irritable reaction but found it was quite gone.

Leaving Hari safely strapped into the pushchair, they went up and searched the attics above what had been the old nurseries. In the dusty space under the roof they found an old-fashioned playpen in the form of a folding wooden cage that collapsed inwards if you lifted the solid wooden floor. It was heavy, so Margaret brought it up to the Lodge in her car. She commented that she’d used something similar for the twins, because they were complete monkeys, plotting together to wreak havoc.

Once it was delivered, Damson invited Margaret to stay for coffee, but she declined, just saying that she was always there if Damson needed anything and it would be lovely to catch up.

Damson took her hand, ‘Margaret, there is nothing to regret. You helped me to do what I had already decided to do. Honestly.’

Her stepmother looked surprised, and squeezed Damson’s hand. ‘Thank you for that,’ she said. ‘I’ll leave you to it, but let’s talk soon.’

She bent to kiss Hari again and then left.

Now Damson could move freely around their new home without worrying about him. He would peer out through the bars at her and make meeping noises to attract her attention, and she scattered a selection of rattles for his amusement. After an hour of unpacking Damson heard a car draw up outside and, looking out of the window, she saw Munty with Sarah in the passenger seat. They were both smiling, which gave Damson joy. Previously, she had always noticed a reserve in her grandmother’s manner with Munty.

There was a knock on the door, and Damson went to answer it.

‘Granny.’

Munty waved from the car and drove off.

They hugged each other, Damson losing herself in the sweet-scented softness of her grandmother’s bosom.

‘Now then,’ said Sarah. ‘Where’s Hari?’

‘He’s over there.’ They turned to see Hari lying on his back in the playpen strumming his toes.

Sarah went over to the playpen to pick Hari up. She held his face against her cheek and kissed him. Then she put him back.

Damson went to put the kettle on, saying over her shoulder, ‘I’ll give Hari a bottle and then put him down for his rest.’

Sarah poured the tea. Damson picked up Hari, and settled him comfortably on her knee for his bottle.

‘There are a few more things I want to talk about.’

Sarah nodded.

‘Do you mind if we talk about my mother?’

Sarah turned her face away, and was quiet for a minute.

‘Don’t worry if it’s too painful. But I know you were ill around the time I was born or just after, so you weren’t with her when she died?’

‘No, I wasn’t well enough to come over and help. And everything went wrong very quickly after the monthly nurse left.’

‘Went wrong?’ Damson was alert to her grandmother’s tone.

‘Yes. I felt terrible that I hadn’t been there.’

‘So did they get her to hospital? Is that where she died?’

Sarah took a deep breath.

‘No, she died here. Pauline found her.’

‘Pauline found her? It must have been very sudden. Septicaemia? Or was it her heart?’

Sarah’s pale downcast face alarmed Damson but now she had to know the details. She dreaded digging up painful memories, and her grandmother was looking so sad and agitated. Hari continued to drink his milk peacefully.

‘Munty and Arthur decided that no one should know what happened. Most of all they didn’t want you to know. I’m so sorry, Damson.’

Pauline sloshed up the drive in cut-down wellingtons, unable to see much under her tightly clutched umbrella as the wind threatened to turn it inside out. It was her first day helping out up at the Castle, and she assumed she should cross the scruffy yard and go in through the kitchen door. Something made her glance to the right, towards the lake at the bottom of the sloping lawn.

She thought she could see through the driving rain what looked like a pram in the lake, and beside it something very pale, floating. A noise escaped from her mouth, and she began to stumble across the grass, calling ‘Help, help’ – screaming now, the words whipped from her mouth by the wind, the umbrella dropped, forgotten and bouncing across the ground behind her.

As she drew closer she could hear a baby crying. Thank God. Crashing and splashing into the water, her attention was on that white and blue thing. She could see something rounded and something else washing gently around it. Then her mind, reluctant, made sense of the shapes. Long white legs, heels and buttocks, pale blue material floating like ectoplasm. She reached out but her boot gave way in the mud and she sat down hard, up to her waist in the freezing water, all the while screaming and screaming for help.

‘Oh God, oh God, oh God.’ She recognised Lord Mount-Hey splashing past her, pushing his arms under the woman’s stomach and trying to lift her sodden weight. She floated away from him, now face upwards but under the water. He tried again, clutching at her, half pulling half lifting her out of the lake. On the bank he fell to his knees, and his wife’s body rolled from his arms. Her eyes stared up at the weeping sky. Her hair, dark with water, streamed across her face. White arms, palms upwards, flopped on to the grass. Lord Mount-Hey immediately started artificial respiration.

Pauline struggled to her feet, kicking off her boots and wading across to move the pram out of the water, glancing at the screaming baby and hastily covering it up in the blankets that lay inside. Then she went to the woman and with both hands pulled the wet blue nylon gently down over her thighs to restore her dignity.

It stuck and was completely transparent. She was wearing nothing else at all, and Pauline shied away from seeing through the clinging fabric the blue veins marbling her breasts, the dark nipples. She turned, feeling vomit rising in her throat and, lifting the baby out of the pram, started to trot on her stockinged feet up to the house, gasping over her shoulder: ‘Going to call ambulance and police. Where’s the phone?’

He looked up at her.

‘In the sedan chair. Like a little hut, by the front door on the right.’ Then he bent again to try and blow air into his wife’s lungs.

She knew Lady Mount-Hey was dead. Still as stone, white and cold. How long had she been in the water?

In the hall, she opened the door of the antique chair and grabbed at the receiver, dialling 999 with a numb, wet forefinger and dripping water all over the floor. The baby wailed in her ear and she couldn’t hear the response. She was worried by how cold the baby must be but could do nothing but put her down on a sofa and go back to the phone.

‘What service do you need?’

‘Ambulance. And police. A woman has drowned. I think she must have died. She’s very pale and her eyes are open.’

‘Are you OK?’

‘Yes, it’s Lady Mount-Hey. She was in the lake.’

‘Where are you?’

‘At Castle Hey. Just outside the village of Hey, up the hill. The police will know it. Army had it during the war.’

‘On their way. Now, can anyone there do first aid?’

‘Her husband’s trying.’

She dropped the receiver, checked the baby, who was crying but seemed unharmed and relatively dry, and ran back out of the house, down the lawn to try and help Lord Mount-Hey.

When she got there, she saw he was kneeling by the body, staring at it. He stood up heavily when he saw her coming and went over to the pram. He took one of the blankets and carefully laid it over his wife’s face.

‘She’s gone.’

She could see he didn’t know what else to say, but the ambulance arrived at that moment, its bell ringing and the blue lights flashing.

Lord Mount-Hey turned his stricken face towards Pauline: ‘Can you look after the baby?’

She nodded and ran back to the house. She looked back once to see the ambulance men race to the body, check for a pulse and heartbeat. The police arrived.

She peeled off her soaking coat before picking up the baby. Unwrapping her, she noticed that she was not wearing a nappy. Then she remembered seeing the missing nappy, still inside its rubber pants, lying on the hall floor. It had better stay there for the police. She couldn’t imagine what had happened to Lady Mount-Hey, or why she was in the lake, but she must do all she could now to make sure her baby was warm and fed.

The baby was scarlet in the face from screaming, her tiny hands and feet purple with cold, and Pauline hurried her upstairs as fast as she could. Lord Mount-Hey had pointed out his wife’s room the day before, without introducing her, so she knew where to go. She hastily switched on the electric heater and shut the top of the window. In the little room next to the bedroom, she found chaos. There were nappies and baby clothes all over the floor. The enamel buckets were so full that the lids had fallen off, and the room smelt awful.

She took the screaming baby’s nightie off, and noticed she was not wearing a vest or any other clothes. There were a couple of clean, dry nappies on top of the chest of drawers. She quickly folded one, looking round for a pin. There they were, sticking out of a large bar of Wright’s Coal Tar soap. She pulled the nappy as tight as she could and pinned it round the baby’s tiny behind. A rubber nappy cover lay discarded on the floor. She smelt it gingerly, but the priority was warmth rather than cleanliness so on it went. Then she found a clean nightie in a drawer, and a cardigan, booties and a shawl, and tried to dress the little girl who was red and rigid with furious protest.

She laid her in a Moses basket. She realised she was sopping wet and cold herself. She pulled off all her clothes, leaving them in a heap on the floor. There was no one to mind. Lady Mount-Hey’s stained blue quilted dressing gown hung on the back of the door. It smelt stale, but Pauline slipped it on, looking round for slippers. She couldn’t allow herself to think about the person who had last worn these garments. She shuddered as she did up the buttons.

The next pressing need was to feed the baby. She remembered seeing bottles and Cow and Gate in the scullery, when she had looked around the day before. She thought about the poor lady in the lake, and began to cry as she carried the Moses basket with the screaming baby inside down the stairs. In the kitchen, which was at least warm from the Aga, she pushed two Windsor chairs together and put the basket down on them. She hurried into the scullery to find the means of making up a bottle. The angry sounds of hunger and distress pierced her ears and made her fumble with the kettle, powdered milk and measuring spoon.