Mourning Doves (9 page)

Impeccably neat in a black jacket and pinstriped trousers, Arthur Woodcock arrived on foot precisely as the Gilmores’ grandfather clock in the hall struck a quarter past five. He had taken his usual bus from town.

He handed his black bowler hat to Dorothy and asked to see his wife. Dorothy showed him into the sitting room. It was her own decision; she did not want dear Mrs Woodcock made unhappy by an unfeeling husband, she told herself. She smiled at Arthur, and said politely, ‘I’ll get Miss Gilmore. The Missus is a bit upset.’

‘Humph.’ He did not inquire why Louise was upset – he presumed it was from the disorganisation of her day. Well, she wasn’t the only one – he would be late for his tea, thanks to his wife’s stupidity.

When Celia came into the room, he rose from his chair. Celia looked even more lachrymose than she usually did. Her nose was red, as were her eyes, her hair was disarranged – and she still had on her apron.

She tried to be cheerful for him. ‘You’ve a lovely new son,’ she told him, as she held out her hand to him. ‘And Phyllis is fine – she’s sleeping at the moment.’

‘Good.’ He shook her hand. ‘I’m sorry that you have been so inconvenienced. I’ve ordered a taxi to come here at half past five to take us home.’

Celia’s eyes widened. ‘Oh, you can’t move her yet. She must rest – and it’s not wise to take the baby out. Mama
would be quite happy for her to have her ten days’ lying-in with us. We would see that she had complete rest. Mama says it is vital for her health that she rest,’ she finished eagerly.

‘That’s most kind of you. She can, however, rest at home. May I go up to see her?’

Confused by his arbitrariness, Celia said, ‘Yes, of course.’ She wished her mother was with her to insist on Phyllis’s staying. Her mother was, however, still on her bed, weeping to Winnie that she could not go on.

As Celia led the way up the stairs, Dorothy again answered the front doorbell. On the step stood a heavily moustached male, wearing a stiff peaked cap. He was wrapped in an old overcoat and innumerable scarves.

‘Taxicab for Woodcock,’ he announced. Behind him stood one of the new-fangled hackney carriages; as Dorothy told Winnie afterwards, ‘making a noise somethin’ awful’. In fact, the vehicle was the pride of the cab driver; its boxlike body, its engine gently pulsating under a brass-trimmed hood, were the latest in rapid local travel. It bore no comparison to the old hackney carriages drawn by horses, and the driver did not want it to be kept waiting. ‘Now, ‘urry up,’ he admonished Dorothy. ‘ ’Aven’t got all day.’

Dorothy told him primly to wait in the hall, while she told the Mistress of his arrival. The man took off his hat to expose a very grubby-looking bald head and stepped inside.

Meanwhile Celia quietly opened the bedroom door for Arthur.

Arthur marched straight over to his sleeping wife. He shook her shoulder, and announced that he had come to take her home.

As Phyllis stirred and opened her eyes, Celia said anxiously, ‘I’ve told Arthur that we all hope you will spend your lying-in with us – it would be a pleasure to us.’

‘I am afraid that will not do,’ Arthur said primly. ‘The other children need you.’

‘Lily can …’ Phyllis began rather desperately, but nothing she or Celia could say would move him. And the decision was precipitated by the arrival of the taxi. ‘I’ve no clothes to put on,’ was her last protest.

Arthur lost his temper. ‘Did you walk round here like Lady Godiva?’ he asked.

Shocked, Celia interrupted to say that Phyllis’s clothes were in the wash.

When he asked what had happened to them, neither woman answered him. If, after three other children, he did not understand childbirth, they were much too shy to explain it to him.

He asked if he might borrow the blankets off the bed to wrap her in, and added sarcastically, ‘I suppose her shoes are fit to wear?’

Totally out of her depth, Celia rang the bell for Dorothy, who fumed as she clumped upstairs again, past the waiting taxi driver who was muttering in the hall because he was being kept waiting, and the taxi outside was consuming petrol at an awful rate. She was sent for Phyllis’s shoes, at that moment lying in the kitchen hearth to dry. Her dress and a black petticoat had been hung to dry over a clothes horse by the same fire. Her underwear had been put in the wash house in the back garden, ready for the attention of the washerwoman when she came on Monday.

Celia glanced around her desperately, unwilling to enter the argument going on between man and wife. ‘I’ll get Mother,’ she said and ran down the passage to Louise’s bedroom.

Her mother was lying quietly on the bed, and Winnie was seated beside her gently patting her hand, and saying that everything would get sorted out after a while and then she would feel better. The cook looked up as Celia ran in.

Celia told her that she could not cope with Arthur, who was insisting on moving his wife. ‘Please come, Mama,’ she pleaded.

Winnie interrupted to suggest that Arthur could come to Louise. When Louise protested that she could not receive a man in her bedroom, the cook pulled another quilt over her.

A furious Arthur was brought in and was amazed to see her recumbent. The surprise cooled him down sufficiently for him to ask, ‘Are you well, Mrs Gilmore?’

Louise said, ‘I’ve just heard that Edna has lost her husband. I am afraid it caught me at a weak moment.’

‘My condolences. In that case you will be thankful to hear that I am taking Phyllis home in a taxi, which has’ – he looked at his watch – ‘already been waiting for nearly ten minutes. So much expense! So much bother, simply because Phyllis did not stay at home as she should have done.’

Louise immediately forced herself to sit up and say that having Phyllis in the house was no bother at all. She should stay.

While Louise did her best to persuade the irritable young man to give his wife time to recover, Celia went back to Phyllis, who was sitting on the side of the bed in her bloodstained nightgown.

Horrified, she ran to her. ‘Phyl! You’re bleeding!’

Phyllis smiled weakly and asked for a fresh napkin of some kind. ‘It’s all right, dear. Don’t be afraid of the blood. I shall be bleeding off and on for a while yet.’

‘I’m sure you should rest, Phyl. Tell him to go to blazes!’

‘I have to live with him all my life, Seelee.’

It sounded like a death sentence to Celia, as she delved into a chest of drawers to get yet another clean nightgown, a winter vest to go under it and a winter woollen shawl, and then went to the airing cupboard for a clean towel to stem the blood. She did, however, understand Phyllis’s
remark. It did not do to quarrel with men. They held the purse strings.

Silent and disapproving, Louise, Celia and Winnie eased the drooping little mother into the taxi. Dorothy held the baby, swathed in towels and shawls contributed by Louise and Celia, and then laid him in his father’s arms. It was the first glimpse of his father the child had had. He opened his tiny mouth and howled. It did not endear him to his angry parent.

That evening, though an exhausted Louise was reluctant to discuss their position, Celia insisted that they go through her list, which had lain neglected in her skirt pocket all through the momentous day of little Timothy’s birth.

‘Everything is too, too awful, Celia,’ the older woman sobbed.

Celia really pitied her mother. But fear of the future outweighed pity, and she said firmly, ‘I’m so very sorry to bother you, Mama, but if we can get ourselves a little organised, we may feel better.’ She did not mention that she was afraid that, tomorrow, Edna might bring with her a whole host of additional difficulties for them to cope with.

Still lying on her bed, Louise pleaded, ‘Let me rest for a little longer. We could talk after dinner.’ She looked appealingly at Celia, and begged, ‘I don’t know how to bear it all, Celia.’

‘Of course you don’t, Mama. It is all so heartbreaking for you. Rest a little longer. I’ll get Dorothy to bring some wine up with your dinner.’

She herself felt she had been so racked that she had no more strength. She arranged the warm quilt over her mother and kissed her gently. Then she went down to the kitchen to arrange for dinner on a tray to be sent up.

Celia snatched a quick meal in the dining room, and, later on mother and daughter went painstakingly through
Celia’s list of the things they had to do. It was obvious that Louise was doing her best to cooperate.

Celia felt that she was being quite brutal in her treatment of her mother and she herself longed to go to bed, but she knew that there was nobody else to take charge of the situation. There was a limit to what she could achieve in one day, she thought wearily, and tomorrow Edna would have to be met and comforted and her plans inquired about.

Edna and Paul had never had a home in England. At the time of their marriage, Paul had been preparing to go to Brazil. They had stayed in Southampton, therefore, with his parents during the months of preparation that were necessary, before his company finally sent him out to supervise a seven-year contract to provide electricity for a rapidly increasing population in Salvador and its environs. As a result, Edna had no house of her own to return to, and Celia wondered if, now she was widowed, she expected to live with her mother. She did not bother Louise with this likely problem. Louise was already distressed enough.

After some persuasion, Louise tremulously agreed that she could, the following day, manage to go, alone, to see the bank manager, the bank being only a short distance away. She would pay in Mr Billings’ cheque and inquire exactly how much money she had. She would also ask Mr Carruthers about getting a solicitor of her own; they had agreed that they did not want Mr Barnett to look after them. Meanwhile, Celia would take Dorothy out to the cottage and get her started on cleaning it. She would then go into Hoylake village to see Ben Aspen, the building contractor recommended by Mr Billings, about repairs and redecoration. She would take a train direct from Hoylake to Liverpool to meet Edna.

‘Whatever will poor Edna think, if I don’t meet her, Celia?’ Louise asked in dismay.

‘The trouble is, Mama, that we don’t know exactly how
much time we have, before we have to move – Cousin Albert said the estate agent believed he could sell this house quite quickly, and neither of us has any idea what he means by quite quickly. It could be next week.’ She sighed. ‘And the expense of running this house is very great – coal, gas, servants, gardener, not to speak of feeding the five of us. I doubt if we can last for a month financially, unless Mr Carruthers can spring some nice surprise on you.’

‘I know, dear.’

‘I’m sorry that I can’t go to the bank for you. It is not my account – it is yours, and I imagine they will surely need your signature on something. If you don’t go tomorrow, everything will have to wait until Monday – and we will have lost a whole weekend.’

‘It really is too bad. Are you sure, Celia?’

‘I am sure.’ She would go insane, she thought, if she did not reduce the number of things on her list – the load was too great. ‘Until we know exactly what money we have, Mother, we can’t even buy a new broom.’ Her nerves were in shreds and she was not being very diplomatic.

Louise burst into tears, as she agreed. ‘I wish Tom or George were here,’ she cried. ‘They would have been such a support.’

At this mention of her strong, laughing younger brother, who had sailed off so lightheartedly to face the German navy, and Tom, big silent Tom, Celia felt a physical pain, a tug at her heartstrings. How could God be so cruel as to take them both? And then, when the slaughter seemed over, it was strange how the Spanish flu epidemic had swept away millions more of the strong, like Paul.

Where was God in all this? As she had done earlier, she felt a terrible sense that she was spinning alone in a great void.

And then there was beautiful Edna. It was really hard on her. No husband, no father, no child.

In response to her mother’s cry, Celia said simply, ‘Yes,
the boys would have helped. They were the nicest brothers any girl could have.’ Her small frame trembled with her efforts to contain her own grief, to attend only to what she was doing, and, above all, not to panic.

She decided to leave until the next evening the question of what furniture they should take with them and what should be sold; to go through it all would take hours, possibly days, and she had a feeling that her mother would defend every bit of it from the horrors of its being sent to the auction room; yet much of it was so large that the removal men would never get it through the cottage’s front door, never mind up the narrow staircase.

She tucked her grieving mother up in her bed and told her to try not to worry about anything; she would feel stronger in the morning. Then she went slowly down to the basement kitchen.

She found all three servants, themselves tired out by the unusual day, sitting quietly round the fire, drinking cups of cocoa before going to bed. Their conversation stopped immediately she opened the door. They put their mugs down on top of the fender and stood up.

Celia was embarrassed at having intruded on them at an hour in their long day which was one of the few they had of their own. She said shyly, ‘I’m sorry to disturb you.’

Then she quickly went on to ask if, the following morning, Winnie and Dorothy would put together some basic cleaning materials that would be needed at the cottage. ‘There’s an old straw trunk in the attic,’ she told Dorothy. ‘We could put everything into it. If the leather straps have rotted, you could cord it up.’

Though resentment welled within her, Dorothy said, ‘Yes, Miss,’ in her usual dull fashion. She did not want to do anything more, once she had cleared Miss Celia’s dinner things from the dining room. Now she would have to go all the way up to the top of the house and root around the
dusty attics to find the trunk Miss Celia meant – she would never have the time in the morning. Yet Miss Celia looked so ghastly that she could feel only pity for her.

As Dorothy hunted through the contents of the house’s enormous attics for the straw trunk, Celia crouched by the dying fire in the morning room, and planned exactly how she would manage the next day. ‘To begin with, I’ll send Ethel down to the stables to order a taxicab to take us to Central Station to catch the electric train,’ she decided. ‘Though it will be more expensive, it will be quicker than going by bus.’

‘Miss Celia looks real ill,’ Dorothy opined to Winnie, as early the next morning, they packed clean rags, a bucket and ewer, soap, scouring powder, rust remover, a bottle of oil for hinges, black lead for the fireplaces, a big black bottle of pine disinfectant, broom heads, and a dustpan with its appropriate hand brushes.

After they had corded up the trunk, they slipped a couple of the brooms’ handles under the rope, so that the whole bundle could be carried between them.

‘Oh, aye,’ Winnie agreed in response to Dorothy’s remark. ‘It’s all too much for her – what with Mrs Woodcock’s baby, and now Miss Edna. I’m going to pack you both a lunch and you take care of her, Doll, and make sure she eats.’

She turned to Ethel, who was wearily working her way through the washing up of the breakfast dishes. ‘Ethel, luv. Go down to the cellar and look on the tool shelf. I’d better put in a hammer and nails and some screws and screwdrivers – and a pair of pliers. Bring up what you can find.’

‘Holy Mary, Winnie! What are we supposed to be doing out there? Rebuilding the place?’ Dorothy interjected. ‘I’m not going to undo all them knots, so we can add tools to that lot.’

‘Don’t be daft. I’ll put them in the little shopping basket. But a place what has been empty so long is sure to lack a nail or two, and there’s no man to be putting them in for her. She’ll have to learn to do it herself.’

Celia took her mother’s breakfast tray up to her bedroom, since Dorothy was packing the straw trunk.

Immediately she had wakened her and had drawn back the thick velvet curtains, she asked Louise, ‘Could I have a little money from the housekeeping, Mama, please? For the fares and anything extra Dorothy may need for the cottage.’

She had never asked her mother for money before and she hardly knew how to phrase the request. She had received three shillings a month as pin money from her father, the same amount as Ethel earned, and she still had the current month’s payment in her locked dressing-table drawer. In view of their sudden straitened circumstances, she had earlier been conscience-smitten as to whether she should give it to her mother or keep it. Then she had been caught up in a fear of making a mistake during the difficult days ahead. Suppose I get off at the wrong station, she had agonised – or get on the wrong train. If I have no money of my own, I won’t have a hope of sorting myself out, of being able to buy another ticket or take a bus. I’m so stupid.

Her mother rubbed the sleep out of her eyes and looked at her daughter doubtfully. She sighed, as she said, ‘Celia, I’m so tired. I hope we’ll be able to manage.’ Then she looked about her bewilderedly before telling her daughter, ‘Bring my cash box to me – it’s in the centre cupboard of the dressing table.’

It was quite a heavy seventeenth-century mahogany box, originally meant to house a Bible, and Celia lifted it with care on to her mother’s lap. As Louise sleepily fumbled for her keys in her dressing-gown pocket, Celia stroked the
polished wood and said, ‘I’ve always thought what a lovely box this is.’

‘Humph. I brought it with me when I married your father – like a lot of the furniture in this house, it came from my grandfather’s home.’

Her mother paused to yawn, and then realising that Celia was interested, she went on, her voice still heavy with sleep, ‘My grandfather was a widower for years. He lived alone, except for a couple of servants to care for him.

‘As you may remember, Felicity and I were the only children left, after my brother died in India, so, on my own marriage, my parents, in their turn, were left alone in a large and very empty house. My grandpa was getting very frail by that time, and he gave up his home and came to live with them.’

She yawned again, as she opened the box and scrabbled about in it. ‘Grandpa was very fond of me and he told me I could have anything I wanted of his furniture, provided my mother did not want it.’ She looked up at her daughter, and smiled at the recollection. ‘Mother thought the stuff was dreadfully old-fashioned, but I was young and I thought it was very fine and delicate-looking – and dear Timothy, your father, though he had an excellent pedigree, didn’t have much money when we were first married, so we were both grateful for the offer.’ Her mouth quivered as she mentioned her late husband. Then she swallowed, and after a moment, continued, ‘Later on, we had everything reupholstered and refinished.

‘Then when your other grandfather died, he left us his picture collection, as you may possibly remember. I think the pictures are rather gloomy, but your father liked them, so, of course, we found space for them.’

Celia glanced round the bedroom. ‘You always did have lovely taste, Mama. And you mean to say that all this stuff goes back to Georgian times – the Regency? That it is all antique?’

Her mother glanced up from her box. She was pleased by Celia’s unexpected compliment. ‘I suppose it is. It’s certainly very old indeed. But it has been well looked after.’ She picked out a note. ‘Here is a five-pound note, dear. It’s a lot of money. Don’t lose it, and don’t spend what you don’t have to. But I imagine you may have to pay Mr Aspen something on account.’

‘I’ll be careful, Mama.’ She folded the note and stowed it in her own deep skirt pocket. ‘Do you have any small change, Mama – for tips? For porters. Edna’s bound to have a lot of luggage. And Dorothy and I have to carry all the cleaning stuff out to the cottage. I think that, at Meols Station, I will have to get a porter to help.’

‘Yes.’ Her mother took her change purse from under her pillow; Celia had crocheted it for her as a Christmas present, because one could no longer buy such a purse in the shops – housewives now used leather ones. She pulled back the rings of it, to delve amid the sovereigns in the pocket at each end, and finally gave Celia some silver sixpences.

Celia’s hand automatically closed on the coins, but she did not thank her mother. Her mind was elsewhere. ‘You know, Mama,’ she said thoughtfully, ‘we shall have to sell a lot of furniture, because we have far too much for the cottage.’

‘I know. Don’t remind me.’ Louise’s voice was suddenly full of reproach, as if it were Celia’s fault that her well-kept furniture would have to go.