Someone Special (37 page)

‘Same as you, I reckon,’ Hester said. She threw back the covers and climbed into bed. ‘Dear God, I’m tired! Goodnight, Cissie.’

‘Goodnight,’ Cissie mumbled. She sounded rather surprised, but Hester did not intend to talk, not tonight. Today had been too important, too special. She wanted to go over it all again in her mind, to ensure that some of the brilliance and pageantry would remain with her always, as
she had told the children it would. But she rather thought, as she drifted on the edge of sleep, that the Coronation Day of King George VI would live in her memory longest because it was the day Ugly Jack had asked her to marry him. Which meant it was also the day she had regretfully refused.

She was very fond of Jack, that was the sad part. But she was already married to Matthew and her heart, she thought rather grimly, belonged to Mr Geraint. Or did it? She longed for him, thought about him, even dreamed about him, but he had been cruel to her, had threatened to take Nell away from her, so how could she possibly love him? She did not know, perhaps she did not even want to know. But she could not ruin Jack’s life by agreeing to a bigamous marriage which could not even be a true love-match. So she had said ‘no’, as nicely as possible, and Jack had said humbly that if she ever changed her mind he would be the happiest man on earth. And Hester had made an excuse and gone off to spend a penny in one of the temporary lavatories which had been erected in the park, and had cried bitterly for ten whole minutes.

Because Hester knew that, even had things been different, she could not possibly make a man happy. Not after the way she had been punished after she had left Matthew. The first months after she had joined the Allinghams’ fair had been hard beyond her worst nightmares and it had been bad too when they had lived in the Gullivers’ trailer. Fat Tom was all right really, but he liked to fondle young women and she had fought off the old man’s advances on more than one occasion. This had given her a genuine distaste for being touched which had lasted for many, many months. She bore Mrs Gulliver no grudge for evicting them, was even rather grateful, but it had been no joke trying to live through the winter in the flimsy little tent. Nell had sometimes been so cold she had cried with the pain of chilblained fingers and toes and
Hester had suffered not only from the cold but had been filled with black despair and with the fear that she would not make a go of it, that she would wake up one day and find the trailers gone and the fair with them, leaving the two of them alone and destitute.

Destitution was her worst fear; that and freezing to death in winter. This year, before Cissie’s offer, she had been saving every penny she could so that she and Nell might live in lodgings when the weather was at its worst and the fair was over-wintering, but she could always have been caught out by a snowstorm in March, or a sudden frost in November. And what, in God’s name, could she do then? There was the workhouse, but she would never go there, not while she had breath in her body to resist. They separated you from your child, shut you up with the sick and the old and the useless. She would have killed herself rather than end up in a workhouse, dependent on others to the end of her days.

Inevitably, her pleasure in the physical joining of a man and a woman disappeared during those dreadful days. Cissie sometimes talked wistfully about finding the right man; for Hester, such a thing had ceased to matter. Mr Geraint had been her lover, Matthew her husband, and they had brought her misery and bad luck. Jack was a good man, she was sure he would take care of her, cherish her, but it would mean all that bare-skin stuff, as she put it to herself, all that bouncing and grunting and sweating. And afterwards, all that pain, for lovemaking, to Hester, had become almost inseparable from the pain of loss and the agony of guilt. She had loved well but not wisely and look how they had all suffered for it: Geraint had lost his housekeeper and the little girl he loved, Matthew had lost his wife and the little girl he had believed to be his own. And she? Ah, she had lost hope, and that was the hardest loss of all.

She had never considered, even in her darkest hour,
that she might go back to Matthew. She did not regret leaving him, for he had frightened her so badly on that awful day that she had no doubt he would have killed her had she stayed. She was, as he had said, an adulteress; she accepted the truth of that. She had been unable to refuse Geraint’s loving, she had been weak and sinful and the bible said that adulteresses had little chance of anything but eventual damnation, so that put heaven out of the question, except that Hester, raised by nuns, knew that God forgave repentant sinners. She was repentant all right, and now that it was too late she wished she had been a good girl, had refused that first wild loving on Rhyl beach with Geraint so long ago, and his subsequent advances. She could still remember the moment when she had looked into her little daughter’s face for the first time and seen the innocence in those limpid eyes, the sweetness of the baby’s mouth, and she thought it quite likely God had forgiven her for making love with Mr Geraint. Probably He had decided to let her off from his planned punishment for wickedness as soon as she married Matthew and became a respectable wife. The punishment had come only after her adultery.

She adored her daughter. Nell was hers, her very own, in a way nothing else had ever been or would ever be. She had made Nell out of nothing, within her own body, and though she knew that she could not have become pregnant without the man’s seed, she could not convince herself that he had had anything to do with her little girl. Hester had not loved him that first, exciting night, she had known nothing about love, she had just wanted to be cuddled and kissed, and when he had demanded more it had seemed polite to give in to him. Besides, she had enjoyed it – such a wonderful sensation, better than anything before. She had happily lain with Matthew when Geraint had disappeared from her life, for the pleasure it gave her. She had married
him, not as Geraint seemed to think because she was pregnant, but because Matthew had wanted her to marry him and she had wanted to go on making love with someone, almost anyone would have done. She had had no desire to go back to being a dull little girl working in a shop or a factory or even an office, and watching life, hot and exciting, pass her by.

Her sins might not have found her out but for Geraint wanting her all over again and using his experience of her desires to persuade her. I did try to be good, she told herself desperately, every time she remembered it; I tried and tried, but he knew me too well, he knew I couldn’t resist. Yet she could not blame him entirely, nice though it would have been to pile the guilt on his shoulders. Now that the dangers and miseries of living in a tent and never having a penny to spare had receded, she had felt a couple of times that surging heat of desire and knew she could easily go to the bad again, if she let herself.

There was a Hester who desired Ugly Jack, who thought that since no one knew she was already married perhaps she could get away with it, and perhaps the bare-skin part was what mattered to men, really. Perhaps Ugly Jack could be content with half a wife… was half a wife better than no loaf, she thought confusedly as sleep thickened in her tired brain?

But Matthew might find her; worse, Geraint might find her. And she would have to run again, to abandon the fair and Ugly Jack, because they would try to take Nell away from her and that must never happen. She was doing a good job with Nell despite everything and she wanted desperately to finish it, to see Nell a well-rounded grown-up. When that had happened, perhaps she might find time for herself again, but until then it was Nell who mattered most.

Nell was happy in the trailer with Fleur, regarding
her as a little sister, and with Cissie, a fond adopted aunt. If I married Ugly Jack, Hester told herself, Nell would lose Fleur, and Nell might remember I was married before, which would start all sorts of awkward questions. Better to be content with what she’d got. She would still see Jack each day, work next to him on the rifle range or the scenic railway. That she would probably, one day, dance at his wedding to someone else was possible, but she did not consider that. She had tried marriage once and found it did not suit her; she preferred Ugly Jack as a friend rather than a lover, and she had proved herself capable of bringing Nell up without any help from anyone and would go on doing so.

But there was no doubt that Ugly Jack’s proposal and her rejection of him would colour her memories of Coronation Day for many years to come.

Nurserymaids have always got up betimes, but Coronation Day saw Peggy out of bed at an unnaturally early hour, woken by what she described to herself as all the ‘fuss and botheration’ of the troops, the police and various other officials getting into position outside the palace.

The children were to go to the abbey of course, with their grandmother, the Dowager Queen Mary. Peggy, moving quietly around the room, glanced now and then at the child’s sleeping face and hoped devoutly that the dear Duchess … no, Queen Elizabeth, might soon give birth to a boy. Elizabeth was a good child, a sweet-natured child, but too serious already. And now she was heir presumptive. She’ll be queen one day if we don’t watch out, Peggy thought, smoothing a wing of golden-brown hair away from the child’s eyes. She would make a very good queen, but what she likes is her dogs and her ponies and her books, she wouldn’t want all that State stuff, no young girl would.

Elizabeth stirred; Peggy watched the thick lashes slowly lift, the dark blue eyes turn towards her.

‘Peggy, it’s the
day
, isn’t it? What’s happening outside?’ Without waiting for a reply, Elizabeth jumped out of bed and padded to the window, leaning on the sill and staring out at the grey and misty morning. ‘Oh, it’s been raining – all the poor people!’

‘It fairly pelted down last night,’ Peggy told her charge. ‘Now you put your slippers on, my girl, and you’d best wrap the eiderdown round your shoulders, it’s a lot chillier than you’d expect for May. Do you know what time it is?’

Elizabeth glanced towards the bedside table where her wrist-watch had ticked away the long night hours.

‘No-oo, but it feels awfully early. What time is it, Peggy?’

‘It’s half past five. Shall I make us a cup of tea, since we’re up betimes and you’ve got a long day ahead?’

‘Tea would be lovely; milky tea,’ Elizabeth said. She was sitting on the windowseat, resting her forehead on the glass and staring at the bustle beyond the walls and railings. ‘There are people on the stands already – children, too – I wonder what they’d say if they knew I was watching them?’

‘They’d say “Good morning, Princess”,’ Peggy said promptly, to be rewarded by her charge’s rich, gurgling laugh. ‘Are you sure you wouldn’t rather get back into bed, love? It really is chilly.’

The Princess sighed and shook her head impatiently. ‘No, Peggy, really, I’m toastie-warm in this eiderdown and I can see all sorts … oh, there are more soldiers … I hope none of them faint. Did you know that the guards on duty at the gate faint sometimes? Uncle Kent told me.’

‘Standing for too long, I daresay,’ Peggy said. ‘Poor fellers. I shan’t be long, just you wait there.’

Buckingham Palace was a rambling, ill-planned place, however, and it was a good twenty minutes before she returned with a tray of tea and some biscuits, to find Elizabeth standing by the dressing-room door, looking through the doorway at her state robes swaying slightly in the draught from an ill-fitting window.

‘Tea, Elizabeth, and just you shut that door now; it’s colder in there than it is in here, and that’s saying something. It’s far too early for you to dress, but when you’ve drunk your tea perhaps you ought to go along to the bathroom. I’ve brought some of your favourite biscuits, so if you hop back into bed and cuddle down I’ll put your undies to warm by the fire.’

The fire was a small electric one which gave out quite a good heat. Peggy arranged the white vest and knickers, liberty-bodice and short white ankle socks on the fireguard, then got the Princess’s dressing gown from its hook behind the door and put that on the fireguard too.

‘There you are! When your tea and biscuits are finished then go along to the bathroom and have a quick bath. The room will be nice and warm by then so you can dress and go up to the nursery as soon as you’re ready and get your breakfast.’

‘Should I wear my robes for breakfast?’ Elizabeth said, staring solemnly at Peggy over the top of her teacup. ‘I wouldn’t like to get egg on them, it would be dreadful!’

‘It would indeed,’ Peggy agreed fervently. The Dowager queen would probably have me beheaded, she thought, sipping her own tea, if I sent her granddaughter out on the most important state occasion for years with egg down her chest. ‘I’ve been told to dress you and Margaret Rose in your state robes after breakfast, not before. A skirt and blouse and a warm cardy will do until then.’

‘All right, Pegs,’ Elizabeth said placidly. She drained her teacup, crunched down the last biscuit, and hopped out of bed. ‘Isn’t it exciting, though? I wonder how darling papa feels? And Mummy, of course.’

‘A bit nervous, but excited too, I expect,’ Peggy said. ‘Now run along, dear, we’ve a lot to do today!’

‘Oh, look at all the children! Does someone put them in the front or do they just wriggle through the big people’s legs?’

Queen Mary smiled affectionately down at Princess Margaret Rose; she was exceedingly fond of both her granddaughters but sometimes thought the elder a little too serious. Margaret Rose was far more happy-go-lucky. She was sitting on two cushions so that she might see and be seen and waving spasmodically as the glass coach swayed through the streets. On Queen Mary’s right-hand side, Elizabeth, who had been staring out just as interestedly and waving automatically as she did so, leaned forward to smile at her sister.

‘I expect they wriggle,’ she said. ‘Aren’t there a lot of them, Margaret Rose? Children, I mean. I wish we could get down and talk to them, I expect they could tell us all sorts of interesting things, don’t you?’

The small Princess looked doubtful. ‘I wouldn’t know what to say,’ she said. ‘But they have very exciting things to eat, don’t they? And some have balloons and little flags as well as lollipops and sticky buns.’