Some Old Lover's Ghost (22 page)

The baby was due on 18 December, but the midwife told Tilda that first babies rarely arrive on time. But a week before Christmas she was making mincemeat in the kitchen when she felt a pain in her back. She bent over the table, gasping, her splayed hands among the currants and cherries and suet. Max was upstairs in his study, finishing his article. When she could eventually move, Tilda plodded up the steep basement stairs and stood in the doorway, just looking at him. She saw all the colour
drain from his face, and then he helped her into the bedroom and ran for the midwife. She had to call him back from the front door to remind him to put on his coat and hat. It was frosty outside, ice crackling the puddles that lined the gutters.

The baby was born at ten o’clock in the evening. Although it hurt more than she could have imagined, there was a triumph in discovering that her body, of its own, knew what to do, that it repeated rhythms as old as time to create a new life. When her daughter was born, with a slither and a twist and a final, searing pain, Tilda knew that the past no longer controlled her, that she had made a different future.

The midwife cleaned the baby up and wrapped her in a blanket and gave her to Tilda to hold. Through the bedroom curtains, she could see a speckling of stars in a bright black sky. The child was pale and perfect. Tears of exhaustion, pride and delight swelled from Tilda’s eyes. When Max came into the room, she said, ‘Melissa. She is called Melissa.’ The name, which she had not previously considered, had just come into her head and she had recognized it instantly as her daughter’s.

They sat for a long time, Max’s arm round Tilda’s shoulders, the baby sleeping peacefully between them. Max registered his daughter the next day as Melissa Emma, taking her second name from his favourite Jane Austen novel. They celebrated their first Christmas together a week later, a small family: father, mother and daughter.

Tilda’s life revolved around Melissa. She was a contented, organized baby, waking at six o’clock for her morning feed, taking her late night feed at eleven, and sleeping the intervening seven hours with predictable reliability. She was dark-haired and blue-eyed, like Max. At four weeks old she smiled; at five and a half months she’d sit on a blanket in the middle of the kitchen floor, happily playing with rattles and wooden spoons. She rarely caught colds and was tolerant of the attentions of honorary grandmothers and aunties. Max’s mother, who had taken to Tilda, dropped in whenever she was in town, showering Melissa with little
dresses bought in Harrods and fluffy toys to pin to her pram. Both Tilda and Max knew that Melissa was the most beautiful, clever and adorable baby in the world, but tactfully refrained from mentioning this in the hearing of parents of lesser babies.

Emily was devoted to Melissa. She visited two or three times a week, calling in after work.

‘You are so lucky, Tilda,’ she said enviously. ‘A lovely husband like Max, and a gorgeous baby’ – Emily kissed Melissa, who was sitting on her knee, playing with her beads – ‘and not having to do beastly shorthand and typing.’

‘How’s the new job, Em?’

Emily made a face. ‘Awful. Simply awful. So dull, and the man I work for is happily married.’ She gently prised the string of beads out of Melissa’s mouth. ‘I have resigned myself to remaining a spinster.’

Tilda shook more salt into the stew. ‘You’ll stay to supper, won’t you, Em? Max is bringing someone home.’

‘A man?’

‘Harold Sykes works for one of the newspapers that Max writes for.’

‘Married?’ said Emily.

“Fraid so. Harold has three daughters.’

‘Oh dear,’ said Emily. ‘Perhaps I’ll become a nun.’

But Max brought two men home for supper, not one. Jan van de Criendt was Dutch, tall and blond and quiet, Emily’s opposite. Emily’s stream of inconsequential chatter faded away beneath the admiring gaze of Jan van de Criendt’s blue eyes. Tilda bathed Melissa and put her to bed. When she came back to the kitchen, the three men were drinking beer in the back yard, and Emily was laying the table.

‘He’s just too beautiful,’ hissed Emily.

At dinner, Emily pushed her food around her plate, and knocked over her beer with her elbow. Jan leapt up to find a cloth. Harold and Max argued about Spain. ‘Country’s a mess anyway.’ Harold Sykes was big and greying; his moustache sprouted cheerful curls,
and his suits never seemed to fit. ‘Could do with a bit of firm government.’

‘Dictatorship, you mean, Harold?’

‘You sound like a ruddy Commie, Max, old chap.’

‘I’m not a Communist. I just don’t want Spain going the same way as Germany.’

‘More peas, Jan?’

‘Thank you, Mrs Franklin. I must apologize for imposing myself on you—’

‘Germany’s supplying Franco’s lot with men and weapons, for heaven’s sake, Harold.’

‘It’s no trouble at all, Jan. I like Max to bring people home.’

‘You shouldn’t believe everything you read in the papers, Max.’ Harold chortled at his own wit.

‘Hitler will use Spain as a testing ground for the Luftwaffe. They’ll learn how to bomb Spanish towns so that they can destroy us more efficiently in the future.’

‘Are you a journalist too, Miss Potter?’

‘I work in an awful office, Mr van de Criendt. Tilda, I’m sure I can hear Melissa – it’s all right, I’ll go—’ As Emily ran from the table, her knife and fork clanged to the floor.

‘There could be a staff job coming up soon, Max, old boy,’ said Harold. ‘I had a word with Freddie. Yours for the asking.’

Max said, ‘I’ll pass, I think, Harold. You know I’m not much good at keeping to the party line.’

‘Steady income,’ Harold reminded him, through a mouthful of mashed potato.

Tilda found a babysitter and arranged a trip to the cinema for herself and Max, Jan and Emily. Trapped in the opulent darkness of the cinema, Emily’s self-consciousness was conquered by Jan’s quiet admiration. As they left the cinema, Emily whispered in Tilda’s ear, ‘He’s asked me out!’ and pressed her knuckles against her mouth in an agony of anticipation.

Jan, who owned an import business in Amsterdam, returned to Holland a week later. Emily’s mood became dependent on the
frequency of his letters. When a couple of days went by without one, she would sulk in Tilda’s kitchen-basement, picking over the minutiae of her relationship with Jan, eating cream cakes. When a letter arrived, she would hurl herself down the basement steps, sweep Melissa into her arms and cover her with kisses. When Jan wrote that he was to visit England again, Emily spent a fortune on clothes, lipstick and nail polish, and had her hair permed. The perm was a disaster: Tilda worked for hours trying to dampen down the wild curls. Muttering suicidally, Emily wore a hat to meet Jan at the station. Yet when he alighted from the train and took her in his arms, she knew from the expression in his eyes that he loved her and the frizzy hair ceased to matter.

Jossy and Daragh were invited to the christening of Jossy’s friend Marjorie’s first child. Afterwards, there was a buffet luncheon at Marjorie’s house. The day was hot and bright and headachy, and once Jossy had admired the baby and eaten a little lunch she longed to go home.

She wandered around the garden, looking for Daragh. Couples sat under trees or on benches beside the wall, escaping the heat. She thought she saw him beneath the pergola, a tall, dark-haired man, but as she drew closer she realized that it was a stranger. She returned to the house, where the maids were clearing up the remains of the buffet and she could hear, in the distance, Marjorie’s baby howling in the nursery. Jossy felt, as she started up the stairs, that she had been searching for Daragh for hours. It occurred to her that it was always this way round – she was always looking for him. She had to fight the wave of oppressive despair that washed over her.

When she heard the noise coming from the bedroom, she thought at first that someone was ill. A peculiar gulping, groaning sort of noise. She stood in the corridor for a moment, undecided whether to look for a maid or for Marjorie, or whether tactfully to offer help herself.

When she pushed open the door an inch or two and saw the couple on the bed, her first thought was, ludicrously, But
it’s a
christening
! Of all things, that they should do that at a christening. Of all things, that they should do that in Marjorie’s house, on Marjorie’s bed, at three o’clock in the afternoon!

Of all people, that it should be Elsa Gordon whom he betrayed her with. Jossy stumbled silently back from the doorway. Elsa, whom she had always looked down on; Elsa, who had been nothing until she had married Hamish Gordon; Elsa, whose father had been a house-painter.

With the crabbed, faltering steps of an old woman, Jossy went downstairs. Sitting alone in a corner of the drawing room, she felt physically sick from the shock. Every time she closed her eyes she saw them together, Daragh and Elsa, their clothing awry, writhing on the bed.

A voice said, ‘The little darling’s fallen asleep at last. He was so tired, poor love,’ and Jossy looked up and saw Marjorie.

Some of her pain must have shown on her face, because Marjorie said, ‘Are you all right, Jossy?’

‘I have a headache.’

‘Shall I get you a glass of water? Shall I fetch Daragh?’

‘Just the water, thank you, Marjorie.’

Alone again, she stood up, holding the arm of the sofa for support. She was going to tell Hamish what his wife was doing, and she was going to smack Elsa’s bland, pretty face. Then, as Marjorie came back into the room, Jossy’s anger suddenly evaporated and was replaced by hopelessness. She fell back onto the sofa. What if Daragh had fallen in love with Elsa? She took the glass from Marjorie, and muttered thanks and began to sip the water, but inside she was crumbling. What if Daragh deserted her? If he left her, how could she bear to return to the dull, featureless life that she had known before she met him?

She couldn’t sleep that night or the next. Elsa Gordon’s face haunted her dreams. She had been aware that Daragh missed sleeping with her, but it hadn’t occurred to her that he missed it that much. Jossy thought for a while of ignoring what the stupid doctor had said, and inviting Daragh back to her bed. But she remembered the ordeal of Caitlin’s birth, and shrank
from risking that again. Several times she almost confronted Daragh with her knowledge of his infidelity, but she always drew back from the brink. If she forced him to choose between herself and Elsa, what answer might he give?

She had built her life around Daragh; his contentment had been her purpose. Jossy’s peace of mind disintegrated, shattered by self-doubt and fear. When Nana, a few days later, told her that Caitlin was unwell, Jossy hardly listened. But then the doctor came and the illness was diagnosed as scarlet fever, and the whole house seemed to shift into a different gear. Voices were hushed and curtains drawn. Daragh sat beside the cot, bathing Caitlin’s forehead with a cold flannel. When the telephone rang after lunch, Jossy answered it. The line went dead as soon as she said her name.

Caitlin’s fever burned a red-hot rash over her tiny body. A nurse was engaged, but Daragh remained in the nursery, his hair uncombed, dark shadows smudged around his eyes. Caitlin’s fever rose and her breathing became short and hurried. Jossy cradled Daragh’s head against her, stroking his curls. He said, ‘If we should lose her—’ and could not go on. Jossy hushed him, comforting him as he wept. As he clutched at her, as if to draw strength from her, her fear and despair disappeared. She knew then that Daragh would never leave her, because he would never leave Caitlin. Jossy, looking down at the child in the cot, willed Caitlin’s temperature to fall, and breathed steadily as if to persuade her daughter’s struggling lungs to echo her own.

In the early hours of the morning, the fever broke, and Caitlin began to mend. A month later, when the child was out of danger, Jossy gave a dinner party. She invited Marjorie Tate and her husband, and the Talbots, who farmed to the east of Cambridge, and the Gordons.

‘What a treat, Jossy,’ said Marjorie, when the roast pheasant, trimmed with splendid tail feathers, were brought in. ‘Gorgeous. One always feels coddled here.’

Jossy said, ‘It is so important to keep up standards, don’t you think, Elsa? After all, there aren’t many of us old county families
left. So many estates have been sold off and bought by people in trade.’

Elsa gave a little laugh. ‘Aren’t you being rather old-fashioned, Jossy?’

‘Ownership is important. One wants to keep what one is entitled to. I’d hate to think of this’ – Jossy’s gesture encompassed the house, the estate, and Daragh himself, sitting opposite her – ‘used by someone who was not entitled to it.’

There was a silence. Jossy smiled. ‘How is your new nanny, Elsa? Hamish told me that you’d had difficulty finding the right woman. Choosing servants is such a bind if you haven’t the experience.’ It delighted Jossy to realize that Elsa was afraid to answer back.

‘Elsa picked the most frightful creature the last time, didn’t you, old girl?’ Hamish Gordon’s broad features were red and happy with claret. ‘John hated her. Made her apple pie beds, that sort of thing.’

‘John is to start prep school in September,’ said Elsa, proudly.

‘Did you manage to get his name down at a decent place? I could put in a word for you, if necessary.’ Jossy’s eyes met Elsa’s. Elsa’s mouth opened as if to speak, and then she closed it again in a small, thin line. Daragh seized the claret bottle and refilled the men’s glasses, and began to talk about shooting. The dinner party staggered on until around eleven o’clock, the bravado display of old money undercut by an exhilarated vengefulness on Jossy’s part and humiliated apprehension on Elsa’s. Daragh drank heavily. He was a good host, as usual, but his face was white, closed, knowing, and he always had a glass in his hand. The Gordons left first, Hamish dragged away by Elsa, and the other two couples followed soon after.

When they were alone, Daragh muttered, ‘Why did you have to be so bloody rude …?’ and Jossy turned to him.

‘Oh, I think you know, Daragh.’

The remaining colour bleached from his face. He went to the
sideboard and took a cigar from the box. His back was to her as he clipped the end from his cigar.