Shelter from the Storm (35 page)

‘Please …’

Thaddeus left the office.

*

Darkness had fallen long since. Joe waited outside. He stood there for hours and hours until the day turned into evening and evening into night. The wind was bitter beside the river. The doors were locked, he had tried them all, and the curtains were pulled along the windows. The lights burned upstairs all through the long night and then, just as it was beginning to come light again, the outside door opened and the doctor emerged. As he did so Joe hurried inside. George was standing in the hall.

‘I have a son,’ he said, and his eyes glowed with satisfaction.

‘And Luisa?’

‘I’m afraid not.’

Joe ran up the stairs and burst in on the nurse and Alice.

‘Mr Forster!’

Down on his knees beside the bed he gazed at her but she saw nothing.

‘Luisa. Luisa.’ He kissed her, all over her face and neck. ‘I love you. I love you.’ Kissing her, kissing her, her breath warm, her lips alive, her golden hair sticky with sweat. ‘Luisa.’

‘Mr Forster.’ The nurse close beside his ear. ‘Mrs McAndrew is dead.’

‘No. No, she isn’t. She isn’t. She isn’t. No. No.’ Placing kisses everywhere, and in a moment her eyes would take him and she would say his name and he would run away with her as he had threatened and promised to do so many times, like that stupid man on the horse. She had always laughed and said how silly it would look, but he would. He would pick her up in his arms and run away with her, down the stairs and out of the door
and past all the dark flowers in the garden and down to the river, and there, if she did not open her eyes and speak his name, he would drown them both.

‘Mr Forster.’ Firm hands descended to his shoulders. ‘Mrs McAndrew is dead.’

‘It was because of you,’ Alice said. ‘My husband told me. You did this.’

He heard Thaddeus’s voice behind him.

‘Leave. Leave before George sets the dogs on you.’

Hands pulled him up, shoved him out of the room and down the stairs and finally beyond the front door.

Joe walked slowly down the drive and then the road and began to take the bank that would lead him up towards the little pit town and the fell. He stopped when he got to the top of the first bank. The sun was beginning to come up, turning the river silver and lightening the tops of the hills and the windows of the little houses into golden squares.

By the time he reached the streets of Deerness Law the shops were beginning to open. He walked down the main street. He could see Vinia moving about at the front of her shop. She looked up as he was about to pass the door and opened it.

‘Why, Joe,’ she said, ‘whatever’s the matter?’

Joe came inside the shop and stood back against the closed door and regarded the gloom.

‘I did it worse than my father. Can you imagine that? I actually did it worse. Luisa’s dead and the child is a boy and I have no claim on him at all. George McAndrew has my son.’ He closed his eyes.

‘Come and sit down.’

‘I can’t. I have to go to work.’

‘Won’t it wait?’

‘I daren’t. God knows what Thaddeus will do. I have to see to the pit.’

‘She loved you.’

‘It doesn’t matter. They wanted so much for her and she wanted it too, so that the boy … the boy will have everything.’

That afternoon Thaddeus came to Joe and stood in the office.

‘George is taking the child to Scotland. You have no legal claim, of course, and as far as I can determine no moral rights. As for our partnership you can consider that finished. I will have my solicitor attend to it as soon as it can be arranged. I wish you well of your pit, Joe. It was your father’s and now it’s all yours.’

It was late when Joe got home. The lights were burning. He didn’t expect his housekeeper to have waited for him; she usually left in the early evening and went back to the village before dark. He didn’t bother going into the kitchen, but went straight into the study and poured himself a stiff whisky.

‘And you can put that down as well,’ said a stern voice behind him.

Joe nearly dropped the glass. When he turned around Vinia was standing there. She came across and took the glass and the bottle out of his hands.

‘You aren’t your father or your mother and you aren’t going the same way.’

‘What on earth are you doing here?’

‘Men always do it. Tom did, Dryden did, and now you think you’re doing it. Well, you’re not. You can come and sit in the kitchen like ordinary people do and have your dinner. Come on.’

Joe followed her.

‘It’s a beautiful stew,’ she said. ‘Get it eaten.’

‘If it’s so nice you eat it,’ Joe said, and he took the bottle and the glass from her and downed what was in the glass and poured some more and sat down with her at the kitchen table with his legs up on another chair. ‘I’m not going to drink a lot, honestly. Why did you come here?’

‘Because I don’t want you ending up like your father. You’re too nice for that. I won’t have it. I’m sorry about Luisa, Joe, I really am, and about the baby. You can do a lot. You don’t need Thaddeus.’

‘Would you like a drink?’

‘What, that stuff?’

‘I think there’s some wine in the cellar. Shall I look?’

‘I don’t drink.’

‘I’ll look.’

Joe came back with something so pale that it looked like water, but when he opened it and she tasted it Vinia approved.

‘It’s really nice,’ she said. ‘You mustn’t tell anybody that I did, mind. I should go home.’

‘It’s almost midnight.’

‘It can’t be. I can’t stay. People will talk. She did love you.’

‘You keep saying that.’

‘I can’t forget how when we were coming back on Christmas night you said nobody had ever cared about you.’

Joe winced.

‘I think she just wanted a child.’

‘Is that so very bad?’

‘No, it isn’t bad. It’s the most important thing in the world, surely. She got what she wanted. Luisa was very good at getting what she wanted.’

They went back to the study fire with a bottle of wine and a bottle of whisky and sat there on a big sofa that Joe had found a good long time ago in the attic. It was a great big soft piece of furniture which was made for nothing but comfort, and Joe found that he needed all the comfort he could get. Luisa was lost to him and so was the child, and the world was suddenly a much older, much more difficult place, and there were echoes of his father and mother in the room and of his failure. He didn’t drink the whole bottle or even half the bottle, so it was a relief to realise that he had not turned into his father. Vinia fell asleep eventually and so did he, but somewhere in the depths of the night he found himself in her arms. There was no more to it than that, but if there had been he was not sure he would have been able to say no or wanted to. The night was suddenly too dark and too limitless and too frightening, because you just didn’t
know what it was going to do next and in the end you needed another person there as close as you could get them. As it was he went back to sleep in the knowledge that he was not alone and the night would end and he would be able to begin again tomorrow.

When she got back the following evening Dryden looked darkly at her. He didn’t say anything but Esther Margaret did from where she was ironing in the kitchen.

‘Where on earth have you been?’

‘I went to stay with Joe. Luisa Morgan died yesterday.’

Esther Margaret stared.

‘You stayed?’

‘He needed somebody.’

‘You could have said.’

Dryden left the room at this point. It was Saturday night and the fire was on in the other room. When he had gone Esther Margaret said in a low voice, ‘He spent half the evening looking for you.’

Vinia followed him into the sitting room and sat down on the rug before the fire and looked at him, twisting around and leaning her arms on his knees.

‘I’m sorry.

‘You don’t have to excuse yourself to me.’

‘But you went looking for me?’

‘When the shop was all shut up and dark I thought you must have gone somewhere. If you want to spend the night with Joe Forster that’s your business.’

Vinia’s face burned.

‘I didn’t spend the night with him!’ she objected, and then realised that she had. Dryden looked at her sceptically.

‘Like I said, it’s nothing to do with me.’

Vinia didn’t understand why she cared what he thought or why she had been sitting on the floor at his feet with her arms on his knees.

‘Joe was upset and on his own and—’

‘I don’t want to hear about it!’

He shouted as Tom would have done. Vinia got hastily to her feet, trembling, and he got up too and took hold of her by the arms.

‘I didn’t mean to yell at you.’

‘Nothing happened. Joe doesn’t think of me like that.’

‘Doesn’t he? He must be nuts.’

Vinia smiled, and then she suddenly realised that she wanted to get nearer and she broke free of his light hold. She panicked and ran back into the kitchen, where Esther Margaret was busy and everything seemed normal. All night she had lain against Joe and felt nothing, but every time she went near Dryden she began to think about how he had kissed her under the mistletoe and how she wished he would do it again. The baby was already showing under Esther Margaret’s clothes. Vinia left the house and went outside and took great breaths of air, and then she began to walk away from the house. In the end she went to the shop and worked, bringing the books up to date and trying to think of sketches for new clothes, but nothing worked. She couldn’t concentrate.

Saturday night was noisy, and the later it got the noisier it became — drunks singing and a fight some way down the street with swearing and various crashes. There was a knock on the door and she ventured out slowly, fearing it might be somebody undesirable. It was Dryden. Vinia opened the door.

‘You needn’t have bothered,’ she told him as they went into the back room. ‘I’m perfectly capable of walking home by myself.’

‘It’s rowdy,’ he said. ‘Vinny, look …’ He stopped, not meeting her eyes. ‘You don’t have to worry. You didn’t have to run from me. I’m not the stupid lad I used to be. I’m not going to touch you.’

Vinia stared at him, standing there with his hands in his pockets like he wished he was somewhere else. He went on, and his voice was hoarse.

‘I know which side my bread’s buttered. I’ve got a wife and a bairn on the way and I’m not going to make a mess of it this time, I swear it to you before God. You don’t have to be afraid of being by yourself with me. I wouldn’t dream of it.’

Suddenly all she could see was him lying in the middle of the floor unconscious, having stopped Tom from hurting her. She understood why she had gone to him at the bottom of the stairs and kissed him, why she had run from the sitting room earlier on.

‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘No.’

‘I said it’s all right—’

‘No.’

‘Vinny—’

‘You don’t understand. I want you like I’ve never wanted anything in my whole life. I feel like I can’t breathe without you. I want to run home to you all the time. I didn’t want you to think that I’d … that I would … with Joe.’

‘I wish you would.’

‘Do you?’

‘Yes. No. You really love me?’ He looked as if he couldn’t believe it.

‘Yes.’

He smiled at her idiotically. His eyes shone like black stars for a few moments and then dimmed.

‘I’ve loved you since the day Tom took me back to your house for Sunday dinner. I remember you standing in the pantry, wearing that black dress with the little collar. I wanted to scoop you up and dash down the back lane with you and keep you
somewhere very close and secret. Isn’t it awful, considering how I felt about Tom?’

‘You didn’t do anything.’

‘I tried not to even think about you.’

‘And do you now?’

‘I try not to betray my wife even with a thought. She doesn’t deserve that I should do that.’

‘She’s unhappy.’

‘I didn’t want the child and I didn’t want her but I will do the best I can.’

‘I think I should move out.’

‘I think so,’ Dryden said.

*

Mary Cameron had gone mad with grief. As the weeks went on she not only waited for Dryden coming home but watched for him going out, called after him down the back lane and came to their house constantly ‘with something for Tommy’s tea’. She appeared perfectly normal but she began to time her visits for when Dryden came home, most especially if he was coming in at teatime. If Alf was on the same shift as Dryden he would take her back to their house, but often he was not. She began to come inside. Her eyes shone over Dryden, just as they had for Tom all his life — hungry, desperate. She came to him, touched him as though she feared his loss, feathering her hands over his hair and smoothing her fingertips across his face. She almost crooned. He didn’t stop her and neither did he say anything, even when she kissed him on the mouth. It seemed such a proprietorial thing to do. Vinia had to stop herself grasping hold of Mary and marching her to the outside door.

Vinia had tried absenting herself but she found Esther Margaret crying upstairs one evening when Mary had been there.

‘I wish I’d never wanted this baby. He doesn’t touch me. He doesn’t even kiss me when he goes out and she’s making it worse. He hates me pregnant.’

‘It’s her he hates, and it’s difficult hating people who have lost their minds. Give him time.’

As she spoke Dryden walked into the bedroom, his face full of concern.

‘Summat the matter with you?’ he said to his wife.

‘That woman …’

Dryden sat down on the bed. Vinia got up as he did so.

‘Don’t upset yourself, sweetheart. Think about the baby.’

Vinia went downstairs and left them. They didn’t come back down and she didn’t want to think of them so she went to the shop. She was avoiding Joe. She was avoiding Dryden. She spent so much time at the shop that she was in danger of becoming tired of the place and the business. She couldn’t find anywhere to live but Dryden had been true to his word. They had not so much as brushed past one another on the stairs and she was becoming used to it, though she thought she would never grow used to living with him as another woman’s husband — it was too hard, too much to ask, and she was tired.