The Twisted Way (8 page)

‘No fuss,’ Pam had said. ‘I don’t want a flashy engagement ring or a white wedding, complete waste of money,’ a sentiment that pleased the introverted John. They purchased a modest secondhand solitaire diamond engagement ring from a small backstreet shop. A blue imitation silk suit, flat black patent court shoes and a small spray of yellow carnations were her choice when they got married in the local register office.

‘Lovely ring, darling John,’ Pam had said. ‘Reasonable too.’ ‘Cheapskate,’ her mother muttered under her breath when she set eyes on the ubiquitous ring. ‘What is the matter with the man? It looks worn and jaded.’

‘It’s antique, Mummy,’ Pam had said with pride when she showed it to her parents.

‘I should jolly well think it is,’ her mother responded with sarcasm and struggled to swallow her irritation in order to spare her daughter’s feelings.

‘Darling Pammy,’ John had called her; in his eyes she was perfect. Love and affection were, at long last, his to enjoy.

‘Darling,’ she would reply and fuss around him. She was warm and loving and that was an ingredient of which he had been starved for a very long time. He could not receive enough of her attentions.

Pam’s parents were disappointed that they were not able to invite all their relatives to the wedding. A couple of college friends who were witnesses and Pam’s mother and father were the only guests.

‘You are letting us all down,’ her mother declared in a fierce high-pitched voice but her ranting fell on deaf ears. ‘The miserable buffet and wedding cake were a disgrace. We would have arranged something much better if you had let us. Uncle Bob and Auntie May will be most upset when they realise that they were not invited and they won’t be the only ones.’

Shortly after John obtained a post in Everton Grammar School Pamela became pregnant. They purchased a rambling old cottage in need of renovation on the outskirts of Everton and looked forward eagerly to the arrival of their baby. A large garden and lawns surrounded the cottage on three sides. It was well fenced and private. ‘Ideal for children to play in, perfect,’ Pam declared.

‘There will be plenty of room for our family,’ John said. ‘We’ll have three or four, I expect. I’ve always wanted to be part of a large family.’

Pamela was like a clucky hen; she bought a wicker cradle, lined it with pink and blue gingham, decorated the small spare bedroom in cream (suitable for a boy or a girl) knitted various baby garments and planned with avid enthusiasm for the future of their baby. She would stand in front of a long mirror that hung in their hall for at least half an hour almost every day gawping at her expanding shape. It was fascinating John thought, though he likened it to the swelling belly of a fish in a local pond but was sensible enough to keep that idea to himself.

‘I’m sure he or she will go to Oxford, John,’ she said. ‘Our child is sure to be academic just like we are.’

She looked at him through her thick pebbled glasses and pressed her soft expanding body against him for comfort and love. John was ecstatic. Pam and the baby she was expecting were all he needed.

‘I wonder if it will be a boy or a girl?’ she often said to him. ‘It’s kicking, darling, feel it, the doctor told me it is a good healthy child,’ and she would press his hand to her stomach.

‘A fluttering, just like a tiny bird,’ he would marvel and looked forward to holding their first child in his arms. A child that would be part of him, his own flesh and blood. He would never treat it like his father had treated him. Their baby would be loved and cherished.

Two months before the baby was due Pamela slipped on ice on an old patch of cobbles that formed a short path from the kitchen to the dustbins at the back of the cottage. Nobody could see her or hear her when she cried out for help though she called out many times as loudly as she could manage.

‘Somebody help me, please, somebody ... oh, help me,’ she called until her voice grew faint and weak.

Tears trickled down her face and cramping pains determined to assail increased in strength as her womb reacted with strengthening contractions in an effort to abort the baby. Her voice became weaker as the minutes passed. She tried to cry for help but soon found it impossible to make any sound. Her mouth felt dry and her skin cold and clammy.

‘My baby,’ she mouthed. Have I damaged my back? Oh God, she thought. Someone help me. Her legs had begun to feel strangely numb. She tried to drag herself a few inches, holding on to the branch of an old plum tree that grew nearby. The sharp flinty stones that were interspersed in the cobbles dug into her legs, tore her fine silk stockings and inflicted deep scratches but she could hardly feel them. Dampness crept deep into her bones and she lifted her right hand to button the top of her cardigan to keep out the cold wind that licked her neck without mercy. The branches of the large trees at the bottom of the garden rustled and creaked as the wind found its way through her clothes. ‘My right arm,’ she groaned. ‘It’s difficult to move it. Have I broken it?’ The mounting shock threatened to overcome her. She could feel the warmth of what she thought was liquid creeping down her legs. Perhaps her waters had broken, or was it blood? Her hips started to shake uncontrollably as fear gripped her. How could her bones keep jogging about like that?

‘Pray God, stop the dreadful jerking, the awful pain!’

She turned her head and looked at the large white snowdrops nodding their heads under the trees. Purple and yellow crocus too were evident, their buds shut firmly as though objecting to the harsh frosty weather. The daffodils and tulips had yet to burst through the cold ground. Her attention momentarily shifted towards them.

‘They’ll be lovely in the spring, Pam,’ she recalled John saying when they planted them together in the autumn. ‘They’ll give us pleasure for many years. They’ll form part of our future together.’

Was there a future now? That thought became uppermost in her mind as her body foisted painful spasms upon her.

She managed with fresh resolve to cry out once again in a voice now reduced to a faint quivering whisper, tempered by the shaking that her body was enduring. Nobody answered. It was futile.

The back door she had painted with zeal a bright deep blue shortly after they had first moved into the cottage now beckoned her. If only I could open that door and feel the warmth of my small kitchen, she thought. Tears trickled again down her cheeks. A vision of the new units they had installed recently passed through her mind. She was proud of them and had filled some of the shelves with goods that would be useful when the baby arrived. She thought too about the small white wool jackets she had recently knitted, booties and hats stowed carefully away in the small bedroom that they had equipped as a nursery.

‘Oh, thank heavens, the pain is going and the shaking is stopping, perhaps I will have some bones left,’ she told herself with relief. She heaved a sigh, deep and languid, and watched her breath, misty and white, float away from her. As her strength ebbed and she almost lost the struggle to keep her eyes open she instinctively placed her hands across her swollen stomach in an effort to protect her baby.

‘My baby ... darling ...’ she whispered. ‘I can’t feel you kicking ...’

Their neighbours were working in Everton and an uncomfortable silence cloaked the cold damp mist that later started to form as the wind dropped. It was her only companion. Pam felt the insistent cold and dampness sink deeper into her bones and the blood from the haemorrhage trickle from her body. What could she do about it? She must be able to do something, though exactly what now eluded her. From the corners of her eyes she saw some of her rich red blood filtering along the edges of the stones where she lay, outlining them with resolute force.

She mouthed. ‘John, oh my love, where are you?’ The bright blue door was the last thing she saw before she slipped into unconsciousness.

John found her cold and lifeless in the pool of frozen blood when he returned from his teaching post that evening. Their baby had died within her. He never knew whether they would have had the pleasure of a son or daughter, but that no longer mattered. He did not want to know. With Pam gone and the baby gone he retreated once more into his lonely self, unloved and unwanted, a state with which he was familiar. He found the idea of having any more children in the future abhorrent and vowed he never would. Pam had been his hope for a happy life and now that had been snatched away from him. He knew he was being illogical but a huge barrier rose up; a barrier that would be very difficult to remove.

He called out to her in his sleep night after night, ‘Pam, my Pam, come back to me. I need you,’ and cried like a child, the kind of free-flowing tears he had never been able to shed when he was young. She had released his inhibitions and liberated his emotions but she had gone and the fear that he was destined never to have any children became entrenched in his mind, indeed he no longer wanted them.

His health suffered and life become bleak once again for the introverted lonely John whose one taste of genuine affection had evaporated. He found concentration difficult and his work unsatisfying. The outbreak of war in 1939 became his salvation. He joined the army in 1940 and spent the war in army intelligence. He did not see much active service though he did spend six months in Egypt in connection with his duties at headquarters.

After the war the lost and bewildered man returned to teaching. He did some supply work in junior schools and found to his surprise that he enjoyed working with younger pupils; their eagerness and candid behaviour lifted him out of his introverted shell, so that he eventually applied for the post of headmaster at Enderly Junior School, a post he obtained with unexpected ease. Experienced teachers of John’s calibre were hard to find and the Government were offering short courses to returning servicemen in the hope of filling the shortage of trained teachers. He sold his cottage, there were too many unhappy memories there, and purchased a small terraced house near the school. ‘It’s good enough for a widower like me,’ he told himself. The fact that he was a wealthy young man and could have bought something more prestigious did not even occur to him.

‘What a nice chap,’ his neighbours proclaimed. ‘Not at all stuffy and stuck up, probably hasn’t got much money, like us.’ He found himself, to his embarrassment, plied with home-made cakes and pies from his neighbours who were themselves still suffering from the effects of food rationing.

‘He’s a returning solider, he’s done his bit,’ and ‘Poor fellow, he needs fattening up,’ were remarks that he heard passed around in broad Russetshire accents. They were pleased to have their new headmaster and accepted him into the community with open arms. He was happy, at least as happy as he could be without Pam. He fitted into village life and respected the villagers’ needs. He became a pillar of strength for many parents who had difficult children, and they appreciated him. It was good to feel wanted.

Pam and her unborn baby had been buried in a churchyard in Everton in an unobtrusive grave with a small headstone of which she would have approved. Almost every week he took a bunch of her favourite yellow roses to place on her grave and would sit for a while and talk to her if there was no one else nearby in the cemetery to hear him, and it made him feel less lonely. He would tell her little snippets about school life.

‘Darling Pam, there is a little girl in my class, just about the same age as our child would have been at the end of the war. She even looks like you, she has the same colouring … and there’s a very naughty boy …’

He replaced the small headstone after a few years with a suitably engraved one made of marble and embellished with a cupid, a symbol of his undying love. He anticipated that he would join her there one day, his bones rotting above Pam’s and those of the child they had made together, something precious, worth more than any amount of his damned hoard of money. The larger stone had room for his name to be added when he died. John told himself that he would end up in this life a crusty old man with a dog or cat for company. It was his destiny.

John worked hard, the school became his life, and he appreciated the dedicated staff he had inherited, particularly Janet Anderson, who appeared to be as hardworking as he was. A charming woman, he thought many times, although her husband was a right misery. He found himself feeling very concerned for Janet who was obviously distraught and fighting hard to hide her unhappiness. He had not liked her husband when he met him at a school function which James had apparently condescended to attend. What a selfish beggar, he’s not good enough for Janet, he had thought and was surprised by the emotion that coursed through him. The wretched man is bound to let her down sooner or later.

After the war the infant and junior schools in the village had been amalgamated for the sake of economy. A new post-war estate of shoddy modern houses had been built in haste just outside the village and with the returning servicemen there had been an inevitable baby boom which John anticipated would ensure the future of his school and eventually compensate for some time for the dwindling numbers of children in the village. The post of deputy head in the school became vacant shortly after James Anderson left Janet and John hoped, with more than professional feeling stirring in his loins, that Janet might apply for the position. He decided to approach her.

‘Janet, could you come to my study in the lunch hour, say 12.30?’ he asked. ‘I have something to discuss with you.’

Janet arrived looking sober and miserable. Tears welled in her eyes all too often lately and she tried to concern herself with the school children in her care, not the fickle and unreliable James.

‘As you know, the post of deputy head has become vacant,’ John said. He brushed his fine thinning hair back from his forehead with his hand that had to his surprise developed a slight tremor. ‘You are a good teacher,’ he continued, trying to get a grip on his emotions, ‘have you thought of applying? We would work well together. Of course, the post will have to be advertised and suitable applicants interviewed so there is no guarantee you will be offered the position.’