Far From My Father's House (22 page)

He thought of her voice and her laughter and then he thought of the way that her coffin had been lowered into the ground with her name and age so bright in brass on its plaque on the top, never to be seen again.

They had offered him a double plot in the burial ground as though his life was finished and he had been horrified but now it didn’t seem such a stupid idea. He did feel as if his life was finished.

He whispered her name to the room over and over again to try and keep her presence alive. There was no headstone at Irene’s grave. Sooner or later people would remark on it. Sylvester would want that and then, when there was a stone with her name on it, then he would know for certain that Irene was dead.

After this wakefulness Blake made sure that he was drunk every night when he went to bed. He couldn’t go through those nights where sleep was never a visitor. He couldn’t go on pretending that he was sane during the day without sleep of some kind. If he was drunk he could sleep for three or four hours before the wakefulness claimed him again and those hours were enough to get him through the work and the day.

He was not afraid of dying now. He never worried personally about the war and every teatime he looked forward to the evening, to that first glass of beer. He wished that his whole life could be that first glass of beer, when anticipation was the important thing. The second and the third were good, the fourth was important, the fifth was vital and after that he moved into the kind of happiness where nothing else mattered.

*  *  *

He and Sylvester moved into a house. It was better, Sylvester said roughly, than watching Marjorie salivate every time Blake walked into the room. Marjorie had, unknown to Sylvester, been very off-hand since Blake had walked out of his bedroom.

The house was on the edge of town and made Blake think of the country. The gardens were dug up for vegetables but the house was empty. It was not a big place, just a kitchen and bathroom, two small reception rooms and three bedrooms. The previous occupants, the landlord told them with a grin, had died of a nasty disease.

‘It doesn’t surprise me,’ Sylvester said, looking around when the man had left. ‘The plague by the age of some of this furniture.’

That made Blake smile.

Sylvester became absorbed trying to make some kind of order in the house and the nanny, Hetty, seemed determined to help. Hetty was not just the nanny any more, she did the housekeeping and she managed all by herself because the young women were away in the forces or the factories. Hetty was not a young woman, she was in her fifties. She seemed to like fussing over Sylvester and to Sylvester’s disapproval she had a brother who got her things on the black market so quite often there were real eggs for Sylvester’s breakfast.

She fussed because Blake didn’t eat. He took to going out in the evenings because she didn’t seem to approve of him drinking in the house or maybe it was the quantity. She didn’t approve of the way that he never wanted to see the baby either. If it hadn’t been for the fact that Sylvester liked Hetty so much – she was, Blake thought, the saving of his sanity – Blake would have got rid of her. So he left them sitting cosily around the fire with the baby and went out. It was weird. It was like, for the first time ever, having parents. Indeed, Hetty treated him so much like a son, that Blake would have been amused if amusement had been possible. So he went out after work no matter how tired he was and there at some bar he drank his worries away in a sea of alcohol.

*  *  *

The room was dimmed but not dark when he awoke that particular Thursday morning, as though beyond the curtains the day was trying out a pale sun for size. But that was unimportant. The important thing was that the miracle had happened, the thing he had most wanted in his life had actually occurred, the past few months were nothing but a nightmare and it was over. He was lying in her arms. He was naked and she was wearing the kind of nightie which he had loved best, with the satin feel to it which accentuated the curves of her body. He could feel the warmth of her beneath it, the swell of her breasts. She had her arms around him as though protectively somehow and she smelled of a perfume which was faint and all the more enticing for that.

And it was the perfume which broke the illusion. It was not Irene’s perfume. He tried to hold on to the first awakening, the delight, the magnificent blinding relief that Irene was alive and that it had just been a bad dream, that nothing had happened and they were in bed together just as they had been so many mornings though never enough but it was too late now, the illusion had gone and pressing behind it was the even more unacceptable idea that if she was not Irene then she was somebody else and although he didn’t have a hangover, just a strange rather pleasant lightheadedness, he didn’t remember who she was.

She was apparently awake because when he tried to move out of her arms she let him. The bed was big enough for him to move back and look at her.

She was very young, eighteen or nineteen and she had fair hair and blue eyes. She was extremely pretty.

‘Good morning,’ Blake said.

‘Hello. Would you like some tea?’

Blake had the thirst of a perpetual drunk. He nodded.

‘I’d love some.’

She got out of bed and Blake admired the outline of her figure before she put on a rather disappointingly shapeless dressing-gown and left the room.

He sat up. The bedroom was very ordinary. It had in it some dark heavy furniture, a wardrobe, a dressing-table and the bedhead and foot, all depressingly dark and dingy, he thought. Nothing modern here as though there was little money.
Sunlight was trying to get past the dark red and green curtains and here and there tiny shafts of it fell on the wallpaper. It
was the kind of wallpaper which could be painted over and it was dark cream.

When she came back with tea and toast on a small mahogany tray Blake sat up. She put down the tray in the middle of the bed, there was plenty of room it being a double, and she sat with her feet under her and handed him a teacup.

‘I ought to make you some kind of apology, I just don’t know what to say,’ Blake ventured.

‘You don’t remember?’

‘Not even your name.’

‘Helen, and you haven’t anything to apologise for. You just passed out. I’ve never seen anybody drink like that. And then we came back here and you took your clothes off and . . . when you were unconscious I thought you’d died.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘I know how you feel,’ she said, picking up a small piece of buttered toast. ‘I know exactly how you feel. My husband was in the merchant navy.’

‘Dead?’

She nodded.

‘Two months ago.’

She didn’t eat the toast, she sat there with a cup of tea in one hand and the toast in the other as though she needed to give her fingers an occupation. In the next room a baby started to cry and she got up from the bed and came back shortly with a little girl in her arms. The child looked about six months old. Blake put down his tea, took the baby from her and the noise stopped.

‘Magic,’ Helen said.

After he had cuddled the baby she took her, sat back against the pillows and fed her and Blake sat and watched her just as he had done with Irene, the intent way that the baby sucked, its tiny hands on her breast and afterwards she changed it, her hands deft with nappy and pins and there was silence. It was the most peaceful silence Blake had heard in a long time. He lay down and closed his eyes and Helen put the baby between them and in a very short while as the room warmed with the morning sunshine Blake fell asleep.

Twenty nine

When he got home late in the morning Hetty looked disapprovingly at him. Sylvester, sitting with the baby on his knee, looked surprised.

‘I thought you’d be at work,’ he said.

‘I’m just going. I have to get changed.’

‘Why don’t you have the day off?’

‘Can’t.’

‘I want to talk to you, David.’

Blake paused halfway to the stairs.

‘Won’t it wait?’

‘You work all day and you drink all night.’

Blake went with him into the small sitting-room where a fire burned high in the grate.

‘Did you spend the night with a woman?’ He caught Blake off-guard.

‘Yes. I’m sorry Sylvester, I—’

‘Don’t be sorry. You’re killing yourself with work and drink, you might as well have something to enjoy.’

‘I didn’t . . .’ Blake couldn’t go on.

‘Are you going to take Anthony?’

‘Later.’

‘He’s lost one parent. Don’t you think he needs you?’

‘Sylvester, I have to go to work—’

‘You’ll damned well listen,’ Sylvester said, raising his voice. ‘Your son needs you and so do I. You’re not more efficient for working the hours you do. How can you be with a bloody permanent hangover? The business will not fold up if you take the odd hour or even for God’s sake the odd day. When was the last time you had a day off? You even went to work the day of Irene’s funeral.’

‘I had to.’

‘I know you had to. Well, she’s been dead over seven months now, David—’

‘I know how long she’s been dead—’

‘I know you do but don’t come back here drunk any more and be back for dinner.’

‘I’ll be back in time for Anthony’s bath,’ Blake promised.

*  *  *

Blake went to work but was back in time to eat with them and he put the child to bed and he sat with Sylvester that evening by the fire with nothing stronger than a cup of tea. He went to bed early because he was so bored and slept. When he awoke it was eleven o’clock in the morning and he felt wonderful. His head was clear, the day was bright and he was hungry. He ate a huge breakfast and then he and Sylvester walked Anthony in his pram in the park. It was Sunday.

‘I didn’t mean to push you around,’ Sylvester said apologetically, stopping the pram as he spoke.

‘Yes, you did. I’ll make a bargain with you, Sylvester.’

His father-in-law eyed him with care.

‘I’m not sure I like the sound of this.’

‘I’ll stop drinking if you’ll come to work.’

‘I can’t come to work. I’m too old.’

‘Too heartbroken?’

‘That too. Both my children.’

‘You have a grandson.’

‘Thank God I have. Maybe he’ll be the saving of us both.’

‘I’ll stop drinking for a week if you come to work for a couple of hours every day. Will you do that?’

‘Two hours?’

‘Yes.’

‘I can do that.’

‘Right.’

Sylvester held his gaze.

‘What?’ Blake said.

‘It wasn’t Marjorie Philips, was it? The other night?’

Blake laughed.

‘No, it wasn’t Marjorie Philips.’

‘I am glad,’ Sylvester said and he set off pushing the pram again.

*  *  *

Their life settled into a dull routine. Blake went to work every day but not for such long hours and Sylvester went with him for four or five hours. Anthony walked and talked and grew and kept Hetty very busy. Blake went nowhere. He turned down the invitations and stayed at home listening to the wireless with Sylvester or playing cards with Hetty or just reading. He also spent a lot more time with the little boy who soon became a person and not a baby. Blake bathed and took him to bed every evening and read him a story. At weekends and on summer evenings all of them or one of them took Anthony to the park to sail his boats. The little boy was nothing like Irene. It hurt Blake. To his dismay the child looked like the Vanes, he was dark but the more time Blake spent with him the more the little boy responded to him.

It was a long time before Blake finally became sufficiently bored to want to go out again. The first night that he went drinking with some of his colleagues from work he wanted to get drunk, the beer tasted so good, but he didn’t. He had two pints and then went home. They managed to persuade him to a dance though he left early and occasionally afterwards he went out to eat but it was always such a relief to go home.

One summer evening after a day of very hard work he went with two friends into the country for a drink. They hadn’t intended to go far, petrol was short and journeys weren’t encouraged but it was such a beautiful evening and they had not been anywhere in so long that they just kept driving for the sheer novelty of getting away from the streets and work of Sunderland.

Blake wasn’t driving so he had no say in where they went. They stopped in Durham for a drink and went on and it was only when they ventured to within a few minutes of the dale that Blake’s nerves got the better of him.

‘Hadn’t we better get back?’

The driver looked at him.

‘It’s early yet, Davy.’ His friends at work had picked up Irene’s habit of shortening his name after she started using it all the time.

‘There’s a pub up here that I used to know quite well, just down the bank here.’

It was a lot further than just down the bank and Blake’s mind became a cinema reel of memories as they ventured nearer and nearer to his old homes. Finally they drove into the car park of a pub and there was a dance going on.

Inside the place was crowded and was as usual full of servicemen, in various stages of inebriation. They fought their way to the bar for drinks and Blake looked around. There were plenty of pretty women. One, coming towards the bar, rather drunk, cannoned into him and when she lifted her face in apology it was Madge.

Blake had always wondered how they would react knowing that he now owned Grayswell and Madge hesitated.

‘Blake! How lovely to see you,’ she said nervously. The sweet smell of gin and tonic wafted over to him.

‘How are you?’ she said genially.

‘I’m fine. How are you?’

‘Managing. Frank’s still away, you know.’

‘You must miss him very much.’

‘It gets worse,’ she said.

‘Yes.’

‘Tommy’s here somewhere, and Annie.’

‘Annie is?’

‘Yes.’ Madge waved vaguely. ‘Across there.’

She excused herself and went off to the ladies’ and Blake wandered around the room until he saw Annie. She was sitting on somebody’s knee and he was not Alistair Vane. He was a big man wearing an officer’s uniform. Tommy was sitting next to him. The music had stopped so Blake had no difficulty in hearing what Tommy said as he looked up.

‘Well, well, if it isn’t the owner. What are you doing, come to check that we’re running your farm properly?’

Annie didn’t speak to him at all. She had her arms around the man’s neck. Blake had a grave desire to pull her off his knee and hit the officer and then hit her. He went away back to the bar to his friends.

Annie danced with the officer, close. Tommy and Clara danced together and Madge had some man. Blake’s friends found women to dance with but he didn’t want to dance. He went outside.

The dale never changed, he thought, and it was a perfect evening, the kind that never got dark. He heard somebody behind him and when he turned it was Annie.

‘Did you call in at the farm to see my parents?’

‘I haven’t been any further up the dale than here.’

‘I should think you haven’t,’ she said.

‘Who’s that man?’

‘What man?’

‘The officer you’re with.’

‘Oh, Johnny. He’s just a friend.’

She was drunk too, Blake thought now, she was swaying slightly. Her black hair was shorter than it had been but just as shiny and her brown eyes were so cold on him.

‘I’m surprised you have the nerve to come back here,’ she said.

Blake said nothing. Annie’s gaze faltered.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘and Tommy’s sorry too. He sent me out here. We just didn’t know what to say to you, the abuse was easier than anything else. We’re very sorry about Irene, Blake.’

Blake couldn’t think of anything to say.

‘Come inside and dance with me,’ Annie said.

‘No, thanks.’

He walked back inside and left her there.

He badly wanted to go home now, back to the safety of the house and the child and Sylvester. He didn’t want to be here, there was nothing for him here, but his friends were dancing and drinking and seemed happy with the women they had found so he sat down in the corner of the bar and ordered beer.

After a few minutes Annie appeared at his elbow. ‘Where’s Alistair?’ Blake asked.

‘He’s in Burma fighting the Japs.’

‘And you’re sitting on somebody else’s knee?’

‘I don’t see what business it is of yours, or do you think you’re your brother’s keeper?’

‘He’s not my brother.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I just do.’

‘Well, you’re wrong.’

‘How do you know?’

‘There are ways of telling. He has exactly the same eyes as you. He kisses like you do as well.’

‘You’re drunk,’ Blake said dismissively.

‘It was one of the reasons I married him.’

‘Oh, shut up.’

‘Will you dance with me?’

‘Certainly not.’

‘I’ll go back and dance with Johnny. Or would you rather buy me another drink?’

‘You’ve had enough to drink.’

‘Yes, Grandpa.’

They danced. The music was slow. Blake looked around for Tommy first, thinking he might object and cause a fuss but Tommy and Clara had gone. It was getting late. Johnny tried to cut in but Blake wouldn’t let him.

‘If he leaves I have nobody to take me home,’ Annie said.

‘I’ll take you home.’

‘Do you still have that big silver car?’

‘I’m with other people.’

‘Do you still have it though?’

‘Sylvester won’t get rid of it.’

‘I don’t blame him.’

‘It’s not much good when there’s hardly any petrol.’

‘I’m sorry about Irene. I envied her so much, you can’t imagine.’

‘That was only because you thought I was rich.’

‘No, it wasn’t.’

‘Yes, it was.’

‘She was so beautiful and classy. I always wanted to be like that. When I saw you with her … I felt such a yokel.

Blake smiled at that.

‘You were never a yokel. How long has Alistair been away?’

‘A very long time.’

‘Is that why you sit on people’s knees?’

‘I wish you would stop going on about it. It’s none of your business.’

‘I wish you wouldn’t do it. It isn’t fair to him.’

Annie stopped dancing and looked up into his eyes.

‘You like Alistair, don’t you?’

‘Yes. I like him a lot.’

‘I don’t sleep with Johnny, you know. Or anybody else.’

‘All right.’

He took her back to the farm. The night was warm and still. Blake patted the old stone dog on the head. It was so strange being there with Sunniside almost in sight, the village not far away and the churchyard. He wanted to be there, he wanted to run into the farmhouse with her and be fourteen again. He had never felt less at home here than he did now that he owned it. He wanted so much to be welcome here, to be able to visit, for it to be normal, for Rose to ask him in for tea and ginger cake. Annie reached up and kissed him briefly on the cheek and said goodnight and he watched her in at the white gates and down the cobbled yard and up the step and in at the back door. He imagined her bolting the doors, walking through the big kitchen and up the wooden stairs and along the hall. He thought of her parents and her child asleep and then he thought of his own child asleep in Sunderland and was glad when he could go home.

*  *  *

Later that week when Blake went out for a drink with the same friends, he spotted some people he knew. Pauline Kington was with them with a man he didn’t know and Blake excused himself and went over. Somehow after seeing Annie he felt lonelier than ever and as he reached Pauline he thought that she looked pretty. She greeted him with obvious pleasure and asked after Sylvester and Anthony. Blake went back to his friends but he rang Pauline and asked her if she would go to the cinema with him. It was an easy way to ask her out, there were plenty of cinemas within walking distance and the nights were fine and light. They went out to tea first. Blake didn’t intend it but it was the same place he had first taken Irene out to tea in Sunderland when they had made trips up from Seaton Town so long ago. Pauline said it was her favourite teashop. It had been Irene’s favourite too. Somehow he missed her even more being there with another woman. He tried to think what they had ever talked about and only knew that it had always been wonderful but Pauline was pretty and kind and she sat there smiling at him from across the table so Blake wasn’t too unhappy.

He walked her home in the gathering dusk. It was good just to be walking with a woman again, to spend time, to appreciate her pretty face and her chatter. She worked in a shipyard office, her father owned the place, he was one of Richmond and Dixon’s rivals so they had plenty to talk about. Before he had always thought that women would be bored with his work but Pauline understood the intricacies of the business and was happy to talk about it. It was only when Blake got home that he thought Irene had hated talking about shipyards and shipping and work and it hadn’t made any difference to their relationship.