Lakeland Lily (32 page)

On the day she heard that Bertie had been wounded and was in an army hospital at the front, Lily finally took her child to visit Hannah. Perhaps it was some primitive instinct to run to her mother at this time, even a mother she hadn’t seen since before he was born.

It had taken all her courage to open the much-dreaded telegram. She’d quickly scanned the few words then closed her eyes in relief, handing it over to a near-hysterical Margot before going at once to the nursery. There she bundled her son into his best blue sailor coat, stuck a hat on his head and carried him quickly downstairs, shaking with emotion. It seemed imperative she should get out of the house.

Margot stopped screaming long enough to confront Lily in the hall, demanding to know where she was going.

‘Out.’

‘Out
?
My son lies dying somewhere in France and you are going
out?’

‘I need fresh air.’

‘You should go to him. Be the good wife he deserves.’

Lily barely paused as she hastily made up the big pram. Thomas was far too old for it now but it was quicker than letting him walk on his short chubby legs. At the door she said only, ‘We don’t know that he’s dying. But if he is, then his son will need all the family support he can get. Including those members he hasn’t yet met.’

As she set off down the drive at a brisk pace, Margot’s cries turned to fury.
‘You’re not taking my grandson to The Cobbles!’

Heart thumping, Lily didn’t even glance back, only pushed the pram steadfastly before her. At the folly she rang the bell and waited impatiently for the ferry to come. Bob was adept at manhandling the pram into the boat, and was all concern over Bertie.

‘Don’t you fret now. He’s a fine healthy young chap. He’ll be right as ninepence. Mind, too many of our young men are going missing.’ He sadly shook his head, making the fishing flies on his hat cavort in a mad dance. ‘That Nathan Monroe might’ve got hissel killed. Did you hear?’

Lily couldn’t find her voice to reply to this and shivered as if a goose had stalked over her grave. It was six weeks since she’d received any letter from Nathan. What madness was the world coming to?

It was hard to imagine death could come so near when here in Lakeland a late-summer sun still shone and a few half-hearted tourists wandered the woodland paths, no doubt feeling guilty at taking a few days away in the middle of war. A young boy stood knee-deep in water where a beck flowed into the lake, happily guddling for trout. Bertie had told her it had been a favourite sport of his as a child. Now he was a man with his life torn apart by an endless war.

Bertie must live. He must come back to her. Nathan too.

Oh, for those blissful days of steaming out in the
Faith,
and lovely picnics by the lake. Days of youth and hope, now long gone.

Old Bob set her down at the Fisherman’s Inn, and Lily walked past the fine terraced villas along The Parade, through Fairfield Park with its empty band stand and along the promenade. If she came this way she could avoid Fossburn Street, which would suit her very well. She had no wish to see Rose today.

At the old boathouses she paused, remembering another summer’s day when Bertie had kissed her properly for the first time. She’d teased him into it, of course, wanting him to fall hopelessly in love with her so she could get close to his family and take her revenge on them. How young and intense she had been, full of fire and fury. To her surprise she’d grown truly fond of Bertie, and in the end lost all taste for the fight.

Giving the pram a hefty push she turned left into Fisher’s Brow, feeling as if she were stepping back in time as she struggled up the hill. Lily had constantly assured herself that Margot was right to insist she keep her son away from The Cobbles. It was a dangerous place, filled with dirt and poverty and disease. This was the first time in years that she’d actually walked these streets in broad daylight. Her recent visit to Nathan’s housekeeper at the corner of Drake Road on the very edge of the district, had been a furtive affair in late-evening. Even the enforced visit to Rose’s house afterwards had been hasty.

Yet today when she walked along Mallard Street, where she and Bertie had first lived, she was surprised by how remarkably clean it appeared. Every house had net curtains prettily looped or frilled, an aspidistra or pot dog reclining on the window sill.

Turning into Carter Street she was instantly struck by the fact no filthy water ran along it. There was no mud, no rats, no men urinating, or bare-bottomed children sitting in muck. Where once it had been little more than a dirt track, deeply rutted and filled with puddles, the whole area was now a sound metalled road. A horse-bus came along, stopped to allow several chattering women to disembark before clanging its bell and starting off again. Lily could hardly believe her eyes, so entirely different was it from The Cobbles she had once known and hated. Even the children playing with hoops in the street looked better fed and clothed than in her day.

Hot with guilt, and the long walk, she jiggled the pram to keep her son happy as she tapped on the door of number four, pausing a moment while she waited to take note of the changes here too. The door had been painted a sensible dark green, the flagstones in the back yard gleamed from much scrubbing and white stoning, and there were pots of geraniums now on the ash-pit roof.

All was peaceful and quiet, not even a sound from the Adamses next door. But then both boys were away in the war, so how could there be?

Lily waited with growing trepidation. What would she say to her mother? How could she explain these years of neglect? She must somehow get it across how she’d striven to be a good wife to Bertie, to keep her bargain with Edward. How she’d owed it to the Clermont-Reads to put her past behind her because of little Amy, and her regrets over her own ill-fated quest for revenge. As Lily considered the weakness of her argument, she armoured herself with a shell of defiance. She vowed not to let Arnie bully her, or her mother make her feel guilty. They didn’t have to live with Margot after all.

Lily flinched when she heard the click of the sneck and then she was looking into her mother’s face. In that moment all her defiance melted away like snow in the sun.

‘Mam? Oh, Mam,’ she cried, and falling in her mother’s arms, began to weep.

Hannah sat rocking the child on her knee. Thomas contentedly chewed on a gingerbread biscuit, far too young to understand the undercurrent of emotion, or the questions not being asked amongst the idle comments made above his head.

‘He’s a fine strong bairn. Big for his age.’

‘Yes.’

‘And Bertie such a neat chap.’

‘Not exactly small though.’

‘Not got his father’s sandy hair then.’ She was fluffing up the cap of dark curls on the child’s round head.

‘Takes more after me, I suppose.’ Clearly a lie, Lily thought, since Thomas was so much darker.

‘No doubt it’ll change as he grows, as will his eyes.’

There followed an achingly long pause in which Hannah smoothed the dark locks and smiled into her grandson’s surprisingly blue gaze while she considered her daughter. Not that this smart young woman in the fashionable double-breasted jacket and wrap-over skirt, button boots and fancy wide-brimmed hat, bore any resemblance to the ragamuffin child she’d given birth to twenty-three years before.

‘We’re hoping Bertie will be sent home soon,’ Lily burst out, anxious to deflect attention from her son’s looks.

‘Where is he then?’

‘They don’t say. He tried to work out a secret code in his letters and postcards home, but I know nothing about France so could never understand them. Dora would know but she’s in France too, driving an ambulance. Asked me to go with her. Did I tell you?’

Hannah shook her head, gaze steady upon her daughter’s bright face, not saying, How could you have told me when I haven’t seen hide nor hair of you in years? Yet Lily sensed it in the bleakness of her mother’s eyes, and the deep grooves drawn between nose and mouth. Hannah had recovered well from the consumption, but perhaps less so from her daughter’s neglect.

Lily talked on, filling the silence, assuaging her own guilt. ‘I was pregnant at the time, so how could I go? Now I’m stuck at home with Margot’s committees.’ She laughed as if it were the funniest thing in the world.

‘I’m sure they must keep you very busy.’

‘We have to supply sheets, bed socks, pyjamas and the like for the soldiers who come to convalesce at the hospital. Roll miles and miles of bandages.’

‘And you have the bairn to care for.’

‘Yes, I have this little monster.’ Lily leaned forward and tweaked the boy’s nose, making him shout with laughter.

Hannah’s face was thoughtful and again the silence grew awkward between them. Lily struggled to find something to say. ‘How are the boys?’

‘Doing well in the Navy. They visit whenever they can get leave.’ Again the implied criticism.

‘And our Liza and Kitty?’

‘Kitty’s ten. Liza’s sixteen, and courting young Joe Broadley.’

‘Oh, lord, that makes me feel old.’

They talked of the war, of campaigns lost and won, of which family in the street had suffered a casualty or the ultimate tragedy. Lily longed to ask if Hannah ever heard any news of Nathan, but daren’t risk it. At last the words burst out. ‘I would’ve come sooner only…’

Hannah stiffened. ‘No need to explain. I’m sure you had your reasons. Though I would’ve enjoyed being there when this little chappie came into the world. A mother likes to be with her daughter at such times.’

‘Oh, Mam, I wish you could have been too. Margot wouldn’t ... I didn’t like to...’

‘Nay, don’t tell me she’s got the better of you at last? Who’d’ve thought me own daughter would ever admit such a thing.’

Lily might have taken this as jest, were it not for the condemnation on her mother’s face.

‘I wasn’t in a position to argue.’ She gave a sheepish smile. ‘Margot was very much in charge.’

‘I dare say she was.’ Hannah didn’t ask why Lily hadn’t brought her newborn son to see her as soon as she was recovered, or at any other time in the two long years since. She didn’t need to. The question hung between them, held by that deafening silence. When she could bear it no more, Lily fell on her knees before Hannah and gathered her mother’s work-worn hands in her own.

‘Mam, I’m so sorry. I didn’t meant to hurt you. Can’t we be friends, like we used to be? With Bertie gone, I can’t bear to think of us like this.’

Hannah stiffened. ‘That’s what this visit is all about, is it? You might be about to lose a husband so thought you’d best make it up wi’ your mam, eh?’

Lily’s face paled. ‘No, that’s not true. I’ve hurt you, I know I have. But I feared for my child, after Amy… I was only thinking of Thomas ... Of disease and…’

‘Plenty of babies survive here now.’

‘I hadn’t realised how much it had improved.’

‘You never came to find out.’

Again the guilt bit deep. She’d needed to live entirely in her new world and abandon the old. But how could she explain this without its sounding as if she were ashamed of her own parents? And she’d been afraid to risk her mother guessing of her affair with Nathan.

There was a moment in which Hannah considered her daughter’s very real distress, seeing there were secrets held back and wondering at them, yet trying to put herself in Lily’s place, stuck in a fancy house with Margot Clermont-Read and that superior daughter of hers - Selene, wasn’t it? Criticising Lily at every turn, no doubt, making her feel inferior because she’d been born the wrong side of the blanket and the wrong end of town. Drat the pair of them for driving this wedge between Lily and her family!

But this was her lass and she loved her, so she would forgive her. Hannah opened her arms and gathered Lily close, holding her lovingly as she used to do when she was a child.

‘You’re here now, that’s all that matters. Let’s put the past behind us, eh? We’ll set the bairn down for a nap while us’ll have a cup of tea and a bit o’ crack. What d’you say?’

‘Oh, Mam. That’d be grand.’ Lily’s face was awash with fresh tears and Hannah smoothed them away with the blunt tips of her rough fingers. Kissed her daughter’s cheek.

‘Five minutes in your old home and you’re talking as bad as ever. What happened to the elegant Mrs Clermont-Read?’

Lily shook her head. ‘She’s still your Lily underneath.’

For the first time, Hannah smiled. ‘Well, I’m right glad about that, lass. Right glad. And he’s a bonny wee bairn.’ No matter who his father is, her eyes said.

When it was time to leave, Hannah rested a hand upon Lily’s arm, her eyes on the child. ‘You’ll come again soon? When your dad’s in next time. He’s missed you.’

Lily nodded, her eyes again filling with tears. ‘I will, don’t worry. I don’t care what the Clermont-Reads say, I’ll not stay away.’

‘Aye, see you don’t. We all have to stick together these days.’ She helped Lily tuck Thomas into the big black pram and stood at the yard gate to wave to him.

Then before Lily set off she asked the question that had burned in her head all afternoon, as casually as she could. ‘Do you ever hear anything of Nathan Monroe? You remember, your old lodger?’