Marnie (35 page)

‘Listen,’ I said. ‘What’s that?’

‘What’s what?’ said Lucy.

‘I thought I heard footsteps on the stairs.’

We sat there like mice at the tread of a cat; it was a sunny morning but this window faced west and the curtains were drawn, so it was half dark; Lucy’s cup began to rattle so she put it
down.

So I said: ‘I’d better go and see.’

‘Nay, leave it be, Marnie.’

I thought of my mother and wondered if she was still upstairs or if she was standing outside listening with that thin knobbled hand of hers on the kitchen door. I couldn’t move. I
couldn’t go and see. There was cold sweat on my face.

I got to the door somehow and wrenched it open. There was nothing there.

But it was darker than ever out in the lobby, and maybe there were things I couldn’t see.

I shut the door and stood with my back to it. ‘She said she wasn’t going to have a baby.’

‘No . . . that’s what she said. She wouldn’t admit it to no one. Not a soul. I was always in an’ out, though she was never afraid to tell me to be off when I wasn’t
welcome or when she ’ad “a friend” coming. The last month, of course ’twas clear and plain to everyone, but if I so much as dropped a ’int she choked me off. You know
’ow she could. There was never sight nor sign to the very end of anything made ready, no baby clothes, no linen, no knitting, no nothing. Then on the night it ’appened she come to me .
. . Sit down, dear.’

‘Let me stand.’

‘The night it ’appened she come to me and says, “Lucy, I’m very unwell. I think there’s something the matter with me. Come in a minute.” When I went in, there
was you sitting in front of the kitchen fire crying your eyes out, and she fair collapsing on the bed in ’er bedroom as she followed in after me . . .’ Lucy’s face twitched.
‘Well, I done what I could but I seen what was wrong and I was for going for the doctor, but she says, “No. I won’t allow it, Lucy. Get the child out of the way. We can manage. It
will all be over very very soon.” Well . . . well, there ’twas, I should’ve gone, no doubt, but ’twas almost too late anyhow. ’Ow long it’d been going on before
she sent for me I haven’t the least notion. So I put you in the next bedroom and locked you in, poor mite you was trembling and trembling, and I came back to your Mam, and in an hour a fine
baby boy was born. Cor, I was in a terror, I reely was. But when ’twas over, my dear soul, I felt a changed woman! I says to her, “’Tis what you deserve, Edie, for being so
obstinate and stubborn, but God be thanked, all has been for the best and you have a lovely little boy!” And she looks at me and says, “Lucy, don’t tell anyone yet. Leave me now
for an hour or two to rest.” And I says “I’ll do no such thing, the baby wants washing and binding. You’ve got nothing ’ere, so I’ll nip in my place and fetch
what I can lay me ’ands on.” So I went . . .’

Lucy poured herself another cup of tea. She slopped a good bit in the saucer too, and sat there all hunched up licking her fingers. Then she tipped the tea out of the saucer into the cup, and
the rattle of the crockery in her shaky hands was like a morse code.

‘So I went and – and when I came back in twenty minutes the baby was gone. God ’elp me, Marnie, that’s how ’twas! She was there in bed, in a muck sweat, and looking
white as paper and she stared at me with all ’er eyes. I never seen the like, God ’elp me, I never. I says to ’er: “
Edie
, where’s the baby? Edie!” And she
answers me in two words. “What baby?” Just like that: “What baby?” as if I’d dreamed it all.’

The milkman was coming round with his bottles. He rattled down a couple outside and then his footsteps went thudding off.

Lucy said: ‘Maybe she was crazy mad, Marnie. Maybe I was too. ’Twas like looking at someone you loved and seeing ’er for the first time. But you see, I was never so
strong-minded as ’er and if there was no baby ’twas my word against ’ers. You was screaming to be let out, and she just lay there with ’er great eyes and said, “What
baby?” as if I dreamed it all . . . Gracious knows what I’d’ve done in the end. My life and soul, I b’lieve I’d’ve let it go, but soon after she started a
’aemorrhage and it went on and nothing would stop it, an’ I knew then I couldn’t just stand there and let ’er die – though she said I must; she said: “Let me
die, Lucy; no matter, you can look after Marnie, let me die.” But Marnie, ’twas too much for me and I fled from the bungalow and sent for the district nurse. And when she come she found
the baby, just as it say in that there paper, under – under the bed in the next room . . .’

I went away from the door and went through the kitchen to the scullery and I vomited there, as if I’d taken poison, and I ran the water and tried to run it over my face and arms. Lucy came
out.

‘Marnie, dear, I’m sorry. ’Tis all past and done with and long since forgotten. ’Tis no fault of yours and she suffered for it and no one’d have been the wiser but
for her silly foolishness keeping that paper, and there’s no call to take on so. Lie down and let me see for your breakfast.’

I shook my head and got away from the sink and took up a towel. My hair was hanging in wet streaks like seaweed. I dried my face and hands and I stood by the flickering fire and my fingers
touched something on the mantelpiece. It was Mother’s gloves. I pulled my hand away like I’d touched something hot. I started shaking my head to try to clear it.

‘Marnie, dear . . .’

‘What got her off?’

‘Well, ’twas the doctor really. Dr Gascoigne. And then—’

‘She told me it was all his fault for not coming when he was sent for!’

‘Yes, well, dear, that was only ’er way of seeing it later on. It done him no ’
arm
because ’e was dead. It just made it seem better to ’er to tell it to you
that way. If I—’

‘Why should he try to get her off?’

‘Well, ’twasn’t quite like that, but he said in the box she was suffering from something – something like purple—’

‘Puerperal.’

‘Yes, puerperal. Puerperal insanity, caused by worry and distress and what not. It was true more’n likely . . . Women do get that way sometimes after childbirth. They go off their
’eads temporary like. A few days or so and they’re good as new. ’Tis a sort of fever that takes ’em.’

I finished wiping my hands. I put the towel on the table. I put my fingers through my wet hair, threading it back from my face and eyes. I said: ‘I still don’t know why she did it.
You’ve told me nothing. And I don’t know why she fed me those lies. Why all that story, all that lying story about the doctor not coming and . . . Why did
you
let her
lie?’

Lucy’s eye was watering. ‘You was all we got, Marnie.’

‘That doesn’t answer anything.’

‘Well, dear, you was all we got.’

I said: ‘I mean, if she didn’t want to tell me the truth couldn’t she at least have just kept her mouth shut? Couldn’t she? Why couldn’t she?’

‘I believe ’twas comforting to her to feel you was on her side . . .’

There were real footsteps on the stairs this time and Doreen came in. She said: ‘I had nasty dreams. My, Marnie you look as white as a sheet!’

The funeral was at two. Uncle Stephen came about half past twelve. We hadn’t seen each other for four years. He didn’t look as good-looking as I remembered him, but
he still had the same smile and the same grey eyes that saw through you. I went through that funeral like a sleepwalker, I really did.

There were seven of us and six wreaths. Doreen had ordered one for me. ln fact she’d fixed everything. The only thing she hadn’t fixed was the narrow turn out of the stairs into the
hall. They had to get the coffin down by sliding it through the kitchen door but then, it wouldn’t turn, so they took it up two steps and tried the other way. But it still wouldn’t go
so they had to stand the coffin on its end like a mummy-case and get it round that way. I wondered if the tiny thin corpse inside had slipped down and was going to be buried in a heap for all
eternity.

I thought I ought to be buried too. Or I thought I’ll go on the streets to celebrate. But I wouldn’t be as discreet as mother. What the hell. No soldiers tapping on my window. The
door would be open wide.

Just before we left the house I was sick again, but after that I was all right. I nearly burst out laughing in church, but it’s just as well I didn’t as I should never have been able
to stop. And it wasn’t at anything funny either. It was the church on the hill. I forget the name, but from the churchyard you could see over the roofs of the houses to Torbay. The sea was
like a blue plate with bits chipped out of the edges. Over to the west I fancied I could see the roofs of the new Plymouth, the Guildhall and the shopping centre, where the buildings had grown up
out of the rubble and dust that I remembered as a kid.

It was bright but perishing cold; the wind whistled through the trees from the north and made my coat feel like rice paper.

I thought, I wonder what Mark’s doing. It was the first time I’d thought of him since I came last night. I thought, well, no one will be after me in all that much of a hurry now
because I didn’t steal anything yesterday. I shan’t be missed till tomorrow probably or the next day. By then I can still be in France.

But was it any longer all that urgent to run to France? For the first time now with this death I was really, truly free.

Uncle Stephen’s hair was blowing in the wind. He’d gone quite white, though he was a good bit younger than Mam, five or six years. He wasn’t like Mother at all, except that
maybe they’d both got a good shape to the bones of the face. Christ, I thought, I’ve been living – what have I been living? Why didn’t
he
tell me?

I remembered now that girl at school, Shirley Jameson, what she’d said. That had begun the fight; I’d gone at her with waving fists. She’d said: ‘Garn, putting on airs !
Your mother done a murder!’

Well, so Shirley was right after all. Come to think of it, that often does happen – that the thing somebody tells you when you’re a kid that makes you the most indignant at the time
– sooner or later you find it’s true. It’s one of the things you learn . . . And me afraid to tell Mother I’d pinched a few pounds to keep her comfortable! I did laugh then,
but somehow it must have sounded like a cough because no one turned round.

‘Ashes to ashes,’ said the vicar, ‘dust to dust. If God won’t take her the devil must.’

No, he couldn’t have said that, I must have misheard him, I was going crazy. But of course I
was
crazy. That was obviously what had been wrong with Edie Elmer. I was her daughter, I
took after her. Except that instead of going with soldiers I ran away from them. I couldn’t stand them touching me. Perhaps that was just the other side of the penny.

All her life had been a lie. How much of mine had been? Bloody near all of it. I’d started from scratch and built up a beautiful life of lies – three or four beautiful lives all as
phoney and untrue as Mother’s. I wasn’t even content with one.

I felt I wanted to break the top of my head off. What a fool she’d made of me! What a fool I’d made of myself.

The others were moving away now but I didn’t move. The shiny brown box with the brass plate and the brass handles had gone into the red earth, the sexton or whatever he was was leaning on
his spade. I didn’t feel any grief. In a few weeks I’d changed from feeling too little to feeling too much – like a skin rubbed raw – but now I’d passed out of that
into numbness again. I just stood and stared at the hole in the ground. It was like a slit trench. The wind blew a cloud over the sun. There was an oak tree about my height standing beside the next
grave; it was covered with brown withered leaves that rustled in the wind; the leaves should have fallen long ago. They were like lies that had long since forgotten what they were told for but
lingered on and on. You told a child about Father Christmas until he was ten and then you told him the truth. But some people fixed their children up in such a paper chain of make believe and sham
that they never got free.

Well, now I was free, free as I hadn’t ever been before. Free of Mark and free of Mother and free of Forio. They were all gone and as good as dead. I ruled a line under them. Now I started
afresh.

Uncle Stephen touched my elbow. ‘Marnie . . .’

‘Go to hell,’ I said.

‘The others have left. I’ve sent them on. Anyway Doreen has a train to catch. Lucy can fend for herself . . .’

‘So can I.’

‘Presently yes. You’ll have to. But before we do any more I want a talk with you. Lucy tells me you know about your mother.’

‘Go to hell,’ I said.

‘Marnie, dear, we have to talk. I’ve a taxi here. Let’s drive somewhere.’

‘I’ll walk, thanks.’

‘Come on.’ He got hold of my arm.

Suddenly I hadn’t any more fight left in me. I turned away from him and went down to the waiting taxi.

We drove down and had tea somewhere; it was one of the posh hotels, and I thought afterwards he took me into a public place because there I couldn’t give way or blow off altogether –
that’s while I still had some feeling for appearances. He was taking a hell of a risk. I felt like kicking the table over. But it wasn’t temper, I swear it wasn’t that, it was
just the most awful despairing deathly empty desolation, which was more than any human being could stand.

He said: ‘Marnie, take a hold of yourself.’

‘What bloody right have you got to say what I shall do?’

‘Marnie, stop swearing and try to see this thing straight. I know it’s been a terrible shock, losing your mother and then learning all this about her so suddenly just afterwards. But
see it in its proper proportion. If you’ll let me talk about her – perhaps it’ll help.’

‘If you’d talked about her ten years ago you might have some right to talk now.’

‘What, told you this when you were thirteen? In any case I hadn’t any right to: you were her child, not mine. But if I had, are you saying you would have understood what I’m
going to tell you now?’

I stared across six white tablecloths at a bowl of flowers; narcissus, iris, tulips. I realized for the first time that his voice had a west-country burr.