Where the Heart Is (35 page)

Even so, ‘You’d better go, Wilhelm,’ she told him, more for his sake than for hers.

‘Well, this is a fine turn-up for the books,’ Con announced when Wilhelm had left and Tommy had gone upstairs to his room. ‘I must say, I never thought you’d be the sort to get yourself a fancy man. Didn’t think you’d got it in you, to be honest.’

‘Wilhelm is a … a friend, that is all,’ Emily defended her relationship with fierce dignity.

She wasn’t going to lie and pretend that Wilhelm was just someone who did some work for her, but neither was she going to allow Con to besmirch
Wilhelm’s good reputation with all his nasty talk and insinuations.

‘Come off it. It’s plain to see what he’s after, and I’ll bet there’s plenty round here that think the same. Looks like I turned up just in time to save you bringing disgrace on yourself and breaking your marriage vows. I reckon I’ve done you a real favour coming here.’

Emily didn’t say anything. She didn’t trust herself to. There was no point in antagonising Con, she knew. The only person he ever did any favours for, in her opinion, was himself.

‘What is it you’ve come here for, Con?’ she asked him. ‘What do you want?’ How much do you want would be closer to the mark, Emily suspected.

Immediately he gave her a falsely injured look. Managing the Royal Court Theatre might mean that he mingled with actors but he certainly hadn’t learned any true acting skill from them himself, Emily thought critically.

‘I’ve come here to see my wife, of course. What other reason could there be? Mind you, I’m not going to say that it wasn’t a shock to come in here and find that German, acting like it was his house and the brat his kid.’

‘Wilhelm and Tommy get on well together.’

‘I’ll bet your neighbours think it’s a funny setup, you here with no husband and a kid that’s calling you his mum, and that German making himself at home. I’m surprised no one’s said anything to you about it.’

‘Why should they?’

‘Well, for one thing that kid ain’t yours, and if you was to ask me I’d say that he ain’t even that cousin’s of yours you reckoned was his mother. And for another, you’re a married woman and we all know what decent folk think of married women wot consort with other men, when their husbands are fighting for their country.’

‘But you aren’t fighting, Con.’ And you aren’t even really my husband, not properly, Emily was tempted to say, but she didn’t want Con going into one of those moods of his when he started imagining he could coax her into bed, just as he had done in the old days, before she had come to her senses and realised what he was.

‘Not fighting, mebbe, but I’m still doing war work, keeping people entertained. Do you know what I reckon, Emily? I reckon that if your neighbours round here knew what I know about you, that you’ve got a poor husband you’ve deserted, wot’s having to live by himself in ruddy Liverpool, and what’s bin going on, they’d have some questions to ask about that kid and where he really came from, and about you and that German.’

‘That’s nonsense, Con. You were the one who was unfaithful to me–and not just the once–and as for Tommy, you might have this daft idea that my cousin wasn’t his mother—’

‘Daft idea, is it? Well, I reckon if the authorities was to be asked to check up, they’d pretty soon find out the truth one way or another, and then there’s the matter of you taking the kid on without my agreement.’

Emily’s heart had started to beat uncomfortably fast.

‘Records don’t mean that much when there’s a war on,’ she retaliated despite her anxiety.

‘Well, as to that, I reckon things could be left as they are, with the kid, if you and me can come to an agreement about one or two things, like, for instance, you recognising that a man needs a decent amount of money to live on when he hasn’t got a wife to look after him.’

So she had been right: Con had come to Whitchurch in the hope of getting some money out of her.

‘You’ve got your wages,’ she pointed out to him.

‘Huh, a pittance. There’s girls working in munitions that earn more than I do. I’ve got a position to maintain, Emily; I’ve got to entertain the right people, and be seen around with them, and that takes money, you know that. Look, give me five hundred quid and we’ll say no more about… anything.’

Anything being Tommy and Wilhelm, Emily guessed, but she knew Con too well to put that into words.

Five hundred pounds, though! It was a small fortune! Emily wanted to refuse. Was Con in some kind of trouble? If he was, did she really want to know?

She might wish she could tell Con that there was no way she was going to let him blackmail her, and that there was no way either that she owed him anything either financially or as his wife, but she knew that she couldn’t, not after his threats to her. It wasn’t just the disgrace she would suffer, there
was Wilhelm himself to think of, and there was Tommy. If the authorities were to start asking questions there was no saying where things might end.

‘I haven’t got that kind of money in cash, Con,’ she told him truthfully. ‘It will have to be a cheque.’

Con felt relief filling him and smiled triumphantly. He’d won, just as he’d known that he would. Con loved winning.

‘A cheque and twenty quid to cover what it’s cost me to come out here.’

Emily hesitated. She knew that she shouldn’t give in to him and give him the extra twenty pounds he was demanding, but what else could she do?

‘And if I give you that, do you promise me that you won’t come here again?’

Con nodded.

Ten minutes later the cheque was written and in Con’s pocket and the twenty pounds in five-pound notes was lying on the table.

As he picked it up, Con leaned towards her, the smell of his hair oil and the cologne he wore making Emily’s stomach muscles clench with distaste. How could she ever have thought she loved him? He was nowhere near the man that Wilhelm was. Wilhelm was worth ten of him, and more.

Stuffing the money into his wallet, Con was oblivious to what Emily was thinking. He’d got what he’d come here for, and he was satisfied with that–for now.

‘Con isn’t going to tell anyone about me, is he?’

Emily hugged Tommy to her. Not even the excitement of the new bicycle had been able to drive the look of worry from Tommy’s eyes completely, and now as they walked to church he had finally come out with what was bothering him.

Never once in the time they had been together had Tommy ever referred to the fact that she had no business calling him her cousin’s child, and nor had he ever offered any information about his own life prior to her finding him in the alleyway behind the Royal, Court Theatre.

‘Of course he isn’t,’ Emily assured him stoutly. ‘What is there for him to say, after all, exceptin’ that you’re my cousin’s boy?’

‘Nothing,’ Tommy answered her vehemently.

Emily squeezed his hand in the smart navy gloves she had knitted for him out of her father’s old pullover, and he squeezed hers back.

‘And it’s all right for me to call you Mum still?’

Emily’s heart melted. ‘I don’t see any reason
why you shouldn’t, although if we ever had to explain it for official reasons, like, we might have to say that you call me that on account of you not having a mum.’

She waited, holding her breath, wondering if perhaps now Tommy would say something about his past, and when he didn’t she wasn’t sure whether she was disappointed or relieved. The truth was that if Tommy ever did tell her where he’d come from and where he belonged, she’d then be honour bound to restore him to his rightful family and she didn’t think she could bear that. He was so much a part of her life now that sometimes she actually forgot that he wasn’t hers, or at least her late cousin’s.

Would Wilhelm still want to come and have his Christmas dinner with them after yesterday? It had given her ever such a lovely feeling the way he’d told Con that he’d only leave if she asked him to, but then Wilhelm was a gentleman and that didn’t mean that he wasn’t shocked and put off by what Con had had to say.

Emily was guiltily aware that she’d never really spoken to Wilhelm about Con, but then she’d never spoken to anyone in Whitchurch about him. Not deliberately on purpose; it was just that somehow the subject hadn’t come up, and the truth was that she’d preferred to forget all about Con and the misery of her marriage to him. He might be her husband, but he’d never been much of one, never a proper husband to her, not the kind of husband that a man like Wilhelm would be.

* * *

‘Isn’t Wilhelm going to have Christmas dinner with us now?’

Emily could hear the disappointment in Tommy’s voice.

They were back home, their coats hung up in the hall, and the kitchen filled with the mouth–watering smell of the roasting goose. Emily tried to feel enthusiastic about the day for Tommy’s sake, whilst really aching inside for the reassurance of Wilhelm’s presence. The trappings of Christmas were only that–trappings–without having the man she loved to share them with, Emily knew, as she tried to make an effort to bustle round the kitchen, opening the door to the lower oven of the Aga, to lift out the heavy roasting tin and put it into the top oven so that the fat from the goose would heat up for the roast potatoes. Emily had seen Wilhelm in church along with the other POWs, but there hadn’t been any chance to speak to him, and when her neighbours had suggested walking back with them, she’d had no option other than to agree.

‘I don’t know, Tommy,’ she was obliged to admit, both of them immediately looking at the door when someone knocked on it. Emily’s heart leaped so hard that she had to put her hand on her chest, whilst Tommy rushed to the door and opened it.

His, ‘Wilhelm, you
are
coming. Good,’ told Emily all she wanted to know.

Even so, she felt awkward and self-conscious, hesitating, not wanting to look directly at him, and yet at the same time longing to do so as she
went towards him and then stopped. And then when he came towards her she stepped forward too, so that they had almost bumped into one another in a way that would have seemed comical if she hadn’t been so nervous.

‘I wasn’t sure whether or not to wait for you at the church,’ she said him as she took his coat and scarf from him, every bit as delighted as Tommy, although of course she couldn’t show it. It was easier instead to bustle about, hanging up his things, keeping her back to him.

‘There was transport for us to take us all to those who had kindly invited us. I must go with that so that all is in order.’

‘Well, you’re here now, and that’s all that matters.’

She put down the old tea towel she’d been using to lift the roasting tin from one oven to the other, and then picked it up again, her movements betraying her tension.

‘I’ll just get the roast potatoes on and then we can go and sit in the front room. We’ve got a nice fire going in there, haven’t we, Tommy?’ Emily knew that her voice was stilted but she couldn’t help it. She was so desperately afraid that Wilhelm wouldn’t want anything more to do with her because of Con.

‘Yes, I set it just like you showed me, Wilhelm, and we can put the tree lights on as well. I’ve got some binoculars, and some books, one of them about birds, with really good pictures in them, and a game.’

She couldn’t put it off, Emily knew. She was going to have to say something, explain … apologise.

‘Tommy, why don’t you go upstairs and take off your good clothes?’ she suggested.

She couldn’t talk to Wilhelm as she knew she had to with Tommy there. They needed a few minutes on their own. She couldn’t let what had happened with Con go without trying to do the right thing, no matter how embarrassed she felt about doing so.

Even so, once the door had closed behind Tommy it was several seconds, during which she wiped her already dry hands on the tea towel she had picked up, before she could begin.

‘Wilhelm, I’m ever so sorry about yesterday.’ Emily paused and then admitted, ‘What you must think of me, I don’t know, me having a husband and yet letting you …’

Oh, this was so hard to do. Poor Wilhelm must think she was a dreadful person, having a husband and not letting on to him.

‘I should have told you about Con, and that’s a fact.’

Wilhelm hadn’t said anything so Emily risked a quick look at him. He was so nice to look at, was Wilhelm. Looking at him made her feel so happy normally, but today she was far too on edge for happiness.

‘I should have told you,’ she repeated, twisting the tea towel in her hands, and then putting it down when she realised what she was doing, only to snatch it up again as though somehow keeping a tight hold on it helped her. She certainly needed to squeeze it tightly when she told Wilhelm, ‘But the truth is that I didn’t want to think about him
once I’d left Liverpool. I dare say you think that’s no way for a wife to speak about her husband. But me and Con–well, he’s never been what you might call a good husband to me. And when I first came here I reckoned that he’d be pleased to be rid of me.’

She had to turn away from Wilhelm; there were some things that it was very difficult for her to talk about because they made her feel so ashamed of herself.

‘The thing is that Con never wanted to marry me, not really, and there’d always been girls that he’d be seeing, lying to me and to them. In the beginning it was them I used to blame, thinking they were trying to steal him away from me, but then I began to realise that he was making just as much of a fool of them as he was of me.

‘He only married me for my father’s money, but I was that much of a fool I believed him when he said it was me he wanted. I should have told you, though …’

‘Emily.’ The sound of Wilhelm saying her name in a voice that held such obvious kindness had Emily standing still and looking at him directly for the first time. Would he understand or would he turn his back on her? She was so afraid she might lose him.

‘You have already told me all I want to know when you smile at me, and I can see that you feel about me as I do about you, Emily. This man, this Con, he is no true husband to you, I could see. He comes here, trying to make trouble. Upsetting you, upsetting Tommy. I did not like that, but he
does not upset me, other than for you. He does not change the way I feel about you. He cannot. No one can.’