Snow Angels (24 page)

‘I didn’t ask you to save it and I didn’t want you to. I asked you to take Matthew and I’m grateful for that, but I have scores to settle, I have things to do.’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘You must take some responsibility since you insisted on keeping me alive.’

Gone was the urbane conversationalist. Gil’s eyes were like black ice and his voice was soft and deadly.

‘Responsibility?’

‘Why don’t you go back to the country?’ Gil said and turned away and eased his jacket off. He was still doing that carefully, she noticed.

‘I don’t want to go back to the country and leave you here with my father.’

‘What on earth do you think I’m going to do to him?’

‘I daren’t think.’

‘Don’t be silly, Abby. Have you told Robert that you’re expecting a child?’

Abby’s heart lurched.

‘What?’

‘Have you?’

‘I haven’t told anybody yet. How did you know?’

‘I remember what Helen looked like when she was pregnant. So beautiful.’

‘She was always beautiful,’ Abby said impatiently.

‘But that special glow. That’s what you look like. Your hair is all shiny and so is your face and your eyes and—’

Abby was offended, not just that he should know without her telling him that she was pregnant, but that he should dare to mention Helen in the same breath.

‘You still love her,’ she accused him.

‘I shall always love her.’

‘You’re disgusting,’ she said and went to her own room.

There was nothing left for her but to go home and when she had done so she was glad. She made a visit to the doctor immediately, who confirmed that she was having a child and she was able to tell Robert on her very first day back. She had not seen him as glad about anything. It made her think that perhaps now her marriage would work. He wanted to tell everybody that she was having his son. Abby warned him.

‘It could be a girl.’

‘No, it isn’t possible.’

He insisted on having a party and Abby could not refuse because she wanted him to be this glad. Her home was pretty with spring flowers around it and the coming summer. She could envisage herself sitting in the garden with her new baby, how proud he would be. Everything would be right now. It was like the beginning of her marriage again. Robert didn’t leave her at night; he didn’t drink too much; he didn’t go out much without her. People came to visit and the party was a great success. Everything she suggested, he agreed with. Abby was happy except when she went back to Jesmond, which she did each Sunday to see her father. The one thing Robert refused to do was be in the
same room as Gil, so he wouldn’t go. Abby didn’t blame him. It looked to her now as though Gil would always be there, he was so comfortably settled. He had been to her father’s tailor and wore expensive clothes. When she complained to her father, Henderson said simply, ‘He earns his keep,’ and this was another thing she worried about.

Gil had started working, designing for Henderson. At first just at home and then at the shipyard. By the time her pregnancy was almost over, Gil was at the shipyard drawing office every day. When she went to the house, he was always working. There was another downstairs room which had been her mother’s private room, where she wrote letters, read and sewed. They had turned it into another study and there Gil worked. It meant that she could have more time alone with her father, but it didn’t please Abby. Gil was polite to her. She barely spoke to him, but Henderson was happier than she had seen him since before her mother died. It made things worse somehow. He was so enthusiastic about work and she knew that with Gil in his drawing office he could build bigger ships, take on competitors like Collingwood’s and she feared that.

William and Charlotte had come to the party. Abby hoped they did not know that she had taken Gil back to her father’s house in Jesmond and it was obvious by the way they reacted that they thought Henderson responsible for the whole thing. He was in part, Abby thought now. Henderson would lose his friends because of Gil. People would not endure such things. William did not mention Gil, but Charlotte said to her, ‘William is in a dreadful rage and has declared he won’t speak to your father ever again, that he will do him out of business. He had no right to take Gil in.’

‘Doesn’t he matter to you, Charlotte?’ Abby said, thinking of what it was like to bear and bring up a child and have everything go wrong.

‘Matter to me? How could he?’

‘He’s your child.’

Charlotte hesitated and then she said, ‘You can’t imagine what it’s like having a child you don’t care for. I tried hard to love Gil and now he’s broken my heart. I’m so glad to have Edward, so pleased to have one who acts as he should. We didn’t know that Helen had betrayed Edward, that that was why he had gone away. How awful it must have been for him to find out that his wife cared only for his brother. What a dreadful woman she was, don’t let us talk about her. And as for poor Rhoda … We have Edward back now and William is so glad. They go to work together each day and it’s my only comfort. Tell me, how is my grandson? Has Gil poisoned him against us?’

Abby didn’t know what to say to that since Gil didn’t mention his parents and Matthew was too little to realise what was happening. Charlotte was eager for every detail: what Matthew looked like, how much he had grown, what he could do and say now that he couldn’t when she had seen him, whether he was being properly looked after. She soaked up each detail; her eyes were hungry. Abby told Gil this, but he said nothing and, when she spoke of Edward marrying again and having other children so that Charlotte would not feel quite so bad, he laughed and said that it was unlikely.

‘Why, because he broke his heart over you and his wife? How could you do it?’ Abby had long wanted to say this to Gil. ‘How could you take your brother’s wife? And what about Rhoda? I didn’t think you would marry anyone you didn’t love, even to change things. I thought you were happy together. I didn’t know that you were—’

‘It’s nothing to do with you,’ Gil said.

He wouldn’t say anything more and Abby wanted to think well of him, but she couldn’t.

On a warm summer’s night she went into labour and it seemed like a very long time. In fact, it was thirty hours of extreme pain before the child was born and it was a girl. Abby was only glad that the child was healthy and that she was well soon afterwards, but Robert did not trouble to hide his
disappointment. The day after the birth he got very drunk and stayed out all night and Abby knew that it was not in celebration. He did buy her a beautiful diamond bracelet to thank her for his daughter, but it was too late by then. Abby realised that she had committed a
faux pas.
The christening for the little girl was very small, only immediate family, and she had to arrange it herself when she recovered. Nobody mentioned it. Neither did Robert appear to care what the child was called. She was immediately banished, to the upper reaches of the house, surrounded by nannies and nursery maids, so that Abby’s vision of sitting in the garden with her child did not become reality. Even Henderson wasn’t interested. Only Gil seemed bothered and she couldn’t understand that.

‘I thought you’d bring her to see us,’ he said, looking at Abby’s empty arms when she came to Jesmond for the first time after the child was born.

‘I didn’t realise your passion was for babies, Gil.’

‘I can’t say it is but … she’s your daughter. You look tired. How do you feel?’

She was tired. Nobody else had mentioned it and she wished anybody except Gil would be nice to her. She was tired of fighting to spend time with her daughter, tired of Robert not wanting the child around him. It was unfashionable to see your children except for an hour in the evening and babies didn’t seem to count. If she went upstairs to the nursery, the nanny made her feel out of place; nobody asked after the baby. It was almost as though she didn’t exist and Robert had been astounded when she had suggested taking the child out with them when they went to visit friends. No baby, Abby concluded, could ever have been so unwelcome and all because she was the wrong sex.

That Sunday afternoon she lay in the hammock in the garden at her father’s house and swung gently, looking up at the blue sky, while Henderson dozed in a deck chair and Gil played silly games with his son on the lawn. It was so peaceful and she missed Georgina. She had not even been able to choose the
child’s name. How ironic, she thought, that they didn’t particularly want her but she had to be called after her great aunt for some reason. Abby could not help remembering her own happy childhood, all the time spent with her parents, especially her mother. She determined that Georgina should not grow up like this, but when she looked around at other daughters she realised that they were not often with their parents, they weren’t allowed to speak until spoken to and there were no careless happy childhood days as she had had. They were packed off to schools or to the upstairs of the house or rarely seen. Abby thought that many of the men cared more for their dogs and horses than they did for their children. Georgina would be brought up in the country, not invited to go away with her parents to London or abroad to visit friends.

‘You’re making a fool of yourself,’ Robert said, ‘and of me, wanting to take her with us. She has to be watched all the time. Nobody can have a sensible conversation when a child is there. Really, Abby.’

‘I feel as though she hardly knows us.’

‘I can’t think what you mean. Children need routine. Nanny has it all in hand.’

A month after the child was born her husband walked into her bedroom and to her surprised face he said, ‘We have one female child. It won’t do.’

Abby wanted to burst into tears. She didn’t want him near her. She didn’t want anybody near her just then, but he got into bed and there was no way in which Abby could refuse him. It would have been difficult to say who was the colder there. Robert did not waste his time on kisses. He had her as he might have had a street walker, but with less enthusiasm. After that, he had her night and morning except when she was bleeding and she bled with a kind of determined regularity so that his efforts were all in vain. She felt so old, so used up and so useless. She knew that he had to have a son, but nothing happened. Robert began to drink and gamble and sometimes he even stayed away from
home that autumn. Abby couldn’t help being glad of it. She felt physically sick at the idea of a man in her bed. She didn’t want to be pregnant again, but she thought that if she was he might at least leave her alone. It was not to be, and when she went to Jesmond on Sunday she watched Matthew growing up and was envious.

Gil went to see Toby. It wasn’t far. He didn’t know what his reception might be. It was early Saturday evening and it was full summer. Gil remembered what Toby’s garden was like at this time of the year and how cool and elegant his house was. The young man who opened the door was barely recognisable, bearded, unkempt and so thin that his cheekbones stood out. He smiled brilliantly.

‘My dear boy,’ he said, ‘how are you?’

Gil hesitated.

‘Do come in. Do. Do. It’s been an age.’

The house was different, and it was not just the atmosphere. It smelled cold, as though no fire had been lit in there a long time, and though the garden was sunny and the day was bright the warmth did not penetrate the house. It was not very clean. Dirty dishes were piled up in the sink. Toby offered to make tea and then called himself silly because there was no fire to heat the kettle. When he would have offered wine, there was none of that either. There was whisky, so Gil accepted that. In the sitting-room there was a bigger muddle, as though nothing had been tidied away for a very long time; books and papers in great piles on the floor and on the seats. They went out into the garden and Gil tried not to stare. It was completely overgrown. The lawn was high; the flowers had gone wild and were choked with weeds,
but Toby didn’t seem to notice. They sat on wooden chairs and Gil remembered being here with Edward and how he had kissed Toby. He had also thought that Toby might blame him for Edward’s leaving him. He hadn’t been sure before that Edward and Toby no longer saw one another but he knew it for certain now.

‘How are you, Tobe?’ he said.

‘Extremely well. How are you?’

‘About the same.’

‘Yes.’ Toby smiled.

They sat in the wreck of a garden and drank whisky and it seemed incongruous.

‘My parents are wanting me to go back and live at home,’ Toby said after a while.

‘And will you?’

‘I expect I shall. I’m getting married.’

‘Married?’

‘My father is quite old, you see. I’m the youngest.’ Toby looked seriously at Gil. ‘Try not to blame Edward.’

‘I don’t!’

‘Your father spent years telling him how he would inherit everything and how important the shipyard was and that he must provide a son. And it is important. One’s family is important. If they turn you out, where have you to go? You know that. I have to go home now and pretend, just like he did. I love them, you see.’

‘But would you have done so if Edward had stayed with you?’

‘I would have given up everything,’ Toby said. ‘He blames me for what Helen did. He thinks if it hadn’t been for me, she would not have gone to you.’

‘She loved him,’ Gil said.

‘He did love her, in a way. I think as much as anything it was this house and the way of life, the simplicity. It wasn’t just me. If he had cared so very much, he would have left altogether. I would have gone anywhere with him.’

Gil left Toby sitting in the garden, looking out over what had been perfection.

*

That night, for no reason, Gil awoke and thought there was someone in the room. There wasn’t. He got up and made sure, but when he went back to bed he remembered his attacker and for the first time knew that it was Jos Allsop. He couldn’t understand then why he had not known, but from somewhere his mind gave him an extra sight and, as if from a distance, as though he was an independent observer, he saw the man and the action and the knife. He saw the hatred and he could hear in his mind the way that Jos had reacted when Rhoda was found and, to his astonishment, he realised that Jos thought Rhoda loved him. In his twisted mind what he had done to her was what she wanted him to do and he bore no blame for the fact that Rhoda had died, whereas in Gil’s better moments, when he was not completely blaming himself, he knew that Jos had played a great part in Rhoda’s mind and that he had pushed her towards her death long before anyone else had had any part in it. That was not to say that Gil excused himself in any way. He knew what he had done, that if he had not given Helen a child, if he had been a stronger person and not gone to bed with her, that he could have had Rhoda as his wife. It was always there in some part of his mind that Rhoda’s death was his punishment for sleeping with his brother’s wife, but that was not the whole of it, that was not all of it. Allsop was a strange, twisted man and he had not done Rhoda any good. Jos Allsop had tried to kill him. Perhaps he would do it again. Gil had no idea of his whereabouts, but he would make enquiries and find out.