Born to Trouble (35 page)

From that first day ten months ago when she’d brought her brother home, Nessie had instinctively seemed to know how to deal with him. That Seth was a damaged and complex individual was in no doubt and, impaired though his body was, it was his mind that was the real battleground. But Nessie wouldn’t let him brood. She’d breeze in on him when he was in one of his dark moods, talking to him at length, making him laugh, even teasing him on occasion. Other times they would talk for hours about the things he had seen and done in the war. At least, Pearl had thought, it was only about that until recently, but then a casual remark Nessie had let drop had revealed that Seth had confided details about his murky life before the war too.

Pearl had been slightly hurt at first. Seth never talked with her like he did Nessie. But Nessie, sensing this, had been quick to reassure her. ‘You’re almost too close to it all, lass,’ she’d said softly, ‘and he values your high opinion of him more than he could express. Now you and I know that’d never change whatever he told you, but he doesn’t understand that, being a man.’ She’d grimaced, making Pearl smile. ‘But this is like a cleansing for him, I think. He needs to bring it all out into the light. Mind, I never imagined I’d ever be placed in the position of a Mother Superior.’

Now Pearl laughed out loud. Anyone less like the head of a female religious order than Nessie Ramshaw was hard to imagine. But she was good for Seth.

By the summer Seth was feeling stronger and he began to help Nessie for an hour or two in the front of the shop. This proved so successful that when the girl who worked for Nessie left in the autumn, having been enticed away by the three pounds a week she could earn in the local munitions factory on the night shift, Seth declared himself well enough to work full time. Certainly a man’s presence, especially one as big as Seth, was a curb on the more unruly element who sometimes came in late on a Friday or Saturday night after drinking in the pub. Being an ex-serviceman who had been invalided out of the Army, Seth was treated with respect by even the roughest of their customers.

So it was with a much more settled heart about her brother that Pearl prepared for the fourth Christmas of the war. James and Patrick had written to say that entertainers, from opera singers to jugglers, were now putting on shows regularly along the front to boost the spirits of the British ‘tommies’. The one they’d been to the night before near Very had included light opera, a Scottish comedian, a Charlie Chaplin impressionist and a trick cyclist – along, of course, with a singalong. The letter was received with mixed feelings by Pearl. She was glad her brothers felt they hadn’t been forgotten by the world in general, but the thought of popular songs such as ‘Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit Bag’ and ‘If You Were the Only Girl in the World’ being roared out by men who knew they could all be blown to bits the next day was very poignant.

On Christmas Eve, the night of hope, she prayed fervently for her baby brothers once she was in bed, and with her defences low she couldn’t keep the usual guard on her mind regarding Christopher either. She didn’t know if he was alive or dead, lost on some foreign field where so many had fallen, but when she closed her eyes she could picture him as he had been. Whole, handsome, hers. It was a long time before she slept.

On Christmas Day they lifted their spoons to James and Patrick when they ate their Christmas pudding. The War Office had supplied British troops in France with Christmas puddings, and Pearl hoped the day was another brief respite from the carnage for her brothers. Outside the house, a fresh fall of snow was adding to the inches packed hard on the ground, but inside was warmth and comfort – and the thought of loved ones so far away, fighting to preserve what they were enjoying now. It made for a sad, emotional day.

She and Nessie went to the evening service at the parish church, but Seth wouldn’t accompany them. Pearl wasn’t surprised at this. She knew Seth’s views on a God who allowed the bloodbath and butchery of the war well enough now. He didn’t force them on anyone, but if asked he didn’t hold back either. She had listened to him and Nessie having long talks on a Sunday afternoon when they all took the chance to relax after dinner. She rarely joined in because Nessie’s views were so similar to her own that she felt she didn’t have to, besides which she enjoyed listening to the other two. They had some right set-tos.

‘There’ll be more and more folk thinking like I do when this lot’s over,’ Seth had said last Sunday afternoon.

‘Then I pity them like I pity you,’ Nessie had replied spiritedly. ‘It wasn’t God who made the guns and fired the bullets, Seth. It was men. Men started this war with their greed, and when it’s over they’ll still be greedy, that’s the nature of the beast. If the world was run by women there’d be no wars, because what lass wants to send her da or husband or son into battle? Most women have more commonsense in their little fingers than men have in the whole of their bodies. There’ll be some changes now women have won the right to vote, take it from me.’

‘Oh aye, I thought we’d get back to this afore long.’ Seth enjoyed teasing Nellie on this topic. ‘But don’t forget, it’s only women over the age of thirty and it’s not happened yet.’

‘The Commons voted in June, so it’ll be through next year – and we’ll soon have it down to twenty-one, same as men,’ Nessie declared passionately. ‘Some countries have got women MPs already.’

‘May this God you say is on your side help them, that’s all I can say.’

‘I don’t say He’s on the side of women any more than He is of men. I’m just saying you can’t blame the wars and terrible things that go on, on God. He gave us free will to choose to do right or wrong, the Good Book tells us that.’

‘And you believe it?’

‘Aye. Aye, I do.’

Pearl remembered how Seth had suddenly leaned across to Nessie and patted her hand. ‘Then go on believing, lass. I wouldn’t want to take that away from you.’

‘Don’t worry, Seth Croft, you won’t. It’d take a bigger and uglier bloke than you to do that.’

They had looked at each other for a moment and then burst out laughing.

Pearl glanced at Nessie now as they came out of the church. It had stopped snowing although the air was bitterly cold. ‘I wish Seth had come with us,’ she said quietly. ‘It was a beautiful service and it might have given him some comfort.’

‘He’s got a long way to go before that day, lass, but we’ll keep chipping away at him, eh?’

‘It’s you who does that, Nessie. He talks to you like he never talks to me, or anyone else for that matter.’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that.’ Nessie was suddenly brisk, dismissive.

‘He does,’ Pearl insisted. ‘I know he thinks the world of you. You’re such a good friend to us both, Nessie.’

Nessie fiddled with her hat, a strange expression flitting over her round face. If Pearl hadn’t known better she would have termed it sadness, but Nessie was never sad.

‘Seth’s a fine man,’ Nessie said shortly. Then, her manner changing, she dug Pearl in the side with her elbow. ‘Come on, get a move on. I know we had a bite before we came out, but me stomach’s thinking my throat’s been cut and that Christmas cake you made is calling.’

Pearl smiled back. ‘Last one in the door makes the tea,’ she said, tucking her arm in Nessie’s, and slipping and sliding on the frozen ground, the two women made their way home.

Seth had been sitting in front of the fire while the women had been gone, his head bent and his big hands palm downwards on his knees. If someone hadn’t looked too closely they would have supposed he was dozing, but they would have been wrong. Although his body was relaxed and still, his mind was very active – and it was dealing with the problem that had begun to assail it more and more in the last few weeks.
Nessie.

A piece of coal slipped into the glowing cave beneath it, sending a momentary firework of sparks up the chimney before harmony was restored, the only sound now in the room the ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece.

What would she say if he told her how he felt? And then he immediately answered himself she’d laugh her head off. Then, no – she wouldn’t do that because she was kind; she was kindness itself, was Nessie. No, she wouldn’t laugh at him but he would read the amusement in her face nonetheless. ‘Eh, lad,’ she’d likely say, ‘I’m old enough to be your mother.’ That was what one of the bairns had said the other day in the shop when Nessie had been pretending to rail at him for dropping a pie he’d been wrapping up for the child. ‘Is she your mam then?’

But she wasn’t old enough to be his mother, leastways not unless she’d had him when she was nowt but a bairn herself. There was eleven years’ difference between them, that was all.
All!
He gave a ‘Huh!’ in his throat. And the stupid thing, the frustrating thing was if it had been the other way round, if he had been forty-two and she thirty-one, no one would have blinked an eye if they’d taken up together.

But all that was relative anyway, because he knew full well she would never look at him in that way. And who could blame her? He’d been in a bad way when he’d first come here – how bad he hadn’t realised until that first night when he’d cried like a baby. He hadn’t cried since he couldn’t remember when, but once started he hadn’t been able to stop, or so it had seemed.

A tide of red washed up his neck and flooded into his face as he squirmed in shame. Day after day he’d gone on, he couldn’t remember half of it. And then had followed the need to talk. He’d told her things about the years before he joined up that could send him down the line if she opened her mouth – not that she would, he knew that. And then he’d started on about the war, about Fred and Walt, the slaughter that had gone on, the constant deafening blast of artillery and the screams and groans of the dying and injured. The way men had turned into dumb killing machines, with vacant eyes and loose mouths. And the mud. Oh yes, most of all the mud . . .

She must think him a weak-kneed nowt. His head jerked as though he was attempting to toss the thought aside. And she was right, he was. For years he’d played the big fellow – it had been the way he’d survived – but he was the big fellow no more, certainly not in Nessie’s eyes.

Rising abruptly to his feet he left the sitting room and walked through to his bedroom where he had left his pipe. After lighting it he poured himself a large glass of brandy and then walked back into the sitting room.

Deep down, Nessie must think him an excuse for a man but because she was kind she didn’t condemn him as many would have. But she pitied him, which was worse. He’d seen a look on her face sometimes when she glanced at him.
Damn it.
He stared into the fire again. But he owed it to Pearl to stay and help with the shop, labour being scarce, at least until James and Patrick came home. And then he bit his lip. Who was he kidding? If Pearl had girls queueing at the door for a job, he’d still stay – because Nessie had become as necessary to him as breathing. It was as simple as that.

As the carriage wheels bumped over yet another deep rut in the lane they were travelling along, Clarissa Armstrong glared at her husband. ‘I’m going to be black and blue at the end of this. You should have summoned Christopher to the house as I told you to.’

‘You know as well as I do that he wouldn’t come. I tried, damn it.’

‘You should have
made
him come.’

‘For crying out loud, woman, talk sense! If three visits by Parker wouldn’t persuade him, what would? You tell me that. Do you think I want to travel to the back of beyond?’ He almost added, ‘With you,’ but he was too weary of her perpetual harping to provoke a scene. He’d cursed Christopher every inch of this hellish journey himself, but silently. He hadn’t felt at all well for the last few months and the pains in his body were getting worse, not better, in spite of the pills and potions the doctor had prescribed. Damn quack, he was. Tension and worry, he’d said, and put in a bill for two pounds ten shillings.

Oswald snorted to himself. Was it any wonder he was worried? He didn’t know if he was on foot or horseback half the time these days. The war had played havoc with his business dealings but his home life had been worse hit. The damn Government, insisting that servants needed to be given their marching orders so as to release them for what was called ‘more useful purposes’! This had decimated his staff. He hadn’t long bought a motor car and employed a chauffeur, but the latter had skedaddled and joined up. With Clarissa bleating in his ear that all their friends travelled by car he’d tried driving the thing himself and crashed it into a tree. After that, they’d reverted to the carriage and horses, and his wife hadn’t stopped complaining ever since.

They had only halved their staff, which was nothing compared to others he could name. The Steffords were left with only their housekeeper, cook and one maid, and had shut up part of their home for the war effort, but when he’d suggested doing the same, Clarissa had bitten his head off. Kate Stefford had thrown herself into this and that, organising food and clothing parcels for the troops and heading umpteen committees, but to his knowledge Clarissa hadn’t lifted a finger.

But it was the death of Nathaniel that had hit him the hardest. He hadn’t expected to miss him so much, hadn’t realised how much he’d relied on him. He’d been proud of him in his officer’s uniform, of course, proud that his son had been willing to fight for his country and hadn’t waited until he’d been conscripted like many he could mention, but when they’d received the telegram . . . Now they were going to see this one who wasn’t worthy to lick his brother’s boots. It was true what they said: the devil looked after his own.

Clarissa was holding a handkerchief scented with cologne to her nostrils as though they were travelling through a Newcastle slum area rather than the fresh countryside. It was one of many of her ‘genteel’ habits which drove him to drink. ‘You didn’t have to come,’ he said irritably. ‘I told you I could handle this on my own.’