Nameless (13 page)

‘But you’ve been married five years, isn’t that right?’

‘Yes. Five years.’

‘And she’s not . . . ?’

‘She had a miscarriage in the first year,’ he said. ‘After that? Nothing.’

Ruby swallowed hard past a lump in her throat. This was horrible, painful, talking about Vanessa having sex with him. But it was like a scab – she just had to pick at it.

‘She’s small,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘Vanessa,’ he said. ‘She’s too small, it hurts her. She complains I’m too big.’

He
was
big. But too big? No. She didn’t think so. When he was in bed with her, they seemed perfectly matched in every way.

‘But she’s so desperate to have a child,’ he sighed. ‘Well, we both are.’

‘So she keeps on with it, even though it hurts?’ Now Ruby was feeling sorry for Vanessa too.

He nodded.

‘That’s awful.’

‘I know. She does it because she sees it as her duty. But every time, I see the pain in her eyes, and she denies it when I ask her. I say, “Do you want me to stop?” But she never says yes. Sometimes I can’t even do it at all with her, I can’t bear to have a woman who’s so obviously doing it against her will.’

‘You poor thing,’ said Ruby. It was tragic.

‘That’s why I’m so lucky to have you, my darling,’ he said, turning to her, running his big hands down over her hips. ‘You make up for all of it.’

He buried his blond head between her breasts. Ruby stared into space, thinking about Vanessa, desperate to have a child yet hating the very act that could create one. No wonder he needed the release of this, no wonder he needed to be with a woman who enjoyed bed, not dreaded it. But she felt a twinge of unease as she lay there, just the tiniest sliver of foreboding.

31

1922

When she was alone in the shop, Alicia put up the CLOSED sign, then went behind the counter and opened the trapdoor into the cellar where she kept the surplus stock. She switched on the light down there,illuminating the chilly gloom of it. Dense shadows bloomed along the side of the steeply slanting staircase.

Alicia gulped. She was nearly three months gone now and soon she’d really start to show. Sick with fear, she took a step forward. Hesitated. Then she flung herself down the cellar steps.

She was bruised, sore all over and stunned by the impact of falling. Sobbing, she clawed herself onto the bottom step and sat there. She couldn’t believe Leroy had abandoned her like he had. But now it would all be as it was before he came. Now the baby would come away.

When it didn’t, she threw herself down the stairs again.

The baby seemed to be refusing to give up its life. After those two hideous, painful, terrifying times, she couldn’t summon the nerve to do the steps again, she couldn’t bear the pain of more scrapes and bruises. If she wasn’t careful, she’d break her bloody
neck
and that would be the end of that. Her boys would be motherless.

She thought of knitting needles, metal coat hangers to claw the baby out of her. She sat one day with them in her shaking hands before dropping them with a shudder.

Instead, she tried gin,
lots
of gin to deaden the pain of Leroy’s betrayal and the fear of what would become of her. Time and again she took the scalding-hot baths that should have made Leroy’s baby perish and abort.

It was on her fifth attempt at this, when she’d just stepped from the tin bath in front of the kitchen fire, her skin lobster-red from the nearly intolerable heat of the water, that Ted came home early. He stepped through the back door into the scullery, then into the kitchen where she stood exposed.

Alicia lunged for the towel, but not quickly enough. Ted stood there staring at her nakedness,at the full round belly,the distended breasts.

‘What the fuck’s
this?’
he said, stunned.

‘Ted . . .’ She didn’t know what to say.

Ted seemed to gather himself.

Suddenly his face twisted and reddened. He yelled:‘What the fuck you been doin’, girl?’

Then he was across the room, grabbing her arm, his fist coming up and whacking her around the face.

What followed that day was worse than the cellar steps. Much, much worse. But still, the child held on. Ted smashed the Jelly Roll Morton record, and the Maxitone.

‘Nigger music!’ he bellowed in fury.

As Alicia lay crying and broken-hearted in bed that night, her husband rigid with disgust beside her, she knew that this was her destiny. She would carry Leroy’s child to full term. And then, probably, Ted would kill it – and her.

32

Vanessa Bray was first made aware that her husband had taken a mistress by her sister-in-law, Julianna, who came over to take tea with her at Brayfield in the deep wilds of Hampshire.

Vanessa didn’t much like Julianna. She was big, robust and blonde, just like her brother, Cornelius, with flaring blue eyes that widened and leapt with fire and fury as she spoke forcibly about this issue or that.

Julianna was so unlike Vanessa that she could have been a separate species. Vanessa was a tiny woman, delicately boned and quietly spoken. She found Julianna, with her passionate rantings, more than a little wearing.

Vanessa was the well-bred and beautifully schooled daughter of a blustering major general in the British Army. She had long ago learned to just nod and smile, like her mother did. Also like her mother, she took refuge in her garden, and tried to ignore the chaotic state of the outside world.

She saw the planes go over –
Nazi
planes – and heard their horrible deathly drone. She knew they were bombing Southampton to get the Spitfire factory, knew they were going to London to bomb the docks, knock out the gasworks, bring the city to its knees. She worried about Cornelius being there, going about his War Office business amid the catastrophic impact of the Blitzkrieg.

She tried not to think about it. Her nerves were delicate, her mother’s had been too. She couldn’t allow herself to become upset. She had been trying so hard for a baby, they had
both
been trying. She did her duty with absolute forbearance. Every time Cornelius penetrated her, she flinched and tightened, it was agony and all she wanted was for it to stop. She thought he sensed it, although she was always careful not to let her anguish show.

She shuddered even to think of it, him undressing and then approaching her with his naked penis rearing up like a one-eyed snake. Pushing her back onto the bed, finding the place, pushing it inside her, panting and pawing at her breasts, bruising her in the throes of his passion, until he cried out and released his seed into her sore, waiting body.

But now – at last! – she had been to the doctor and he had confirmed it: she was pregnant. The end result was worth all the discomfort; she would have a child, she
longed
for a child, to prove that she was worthy, not the disappointment that her witch of a mother-in-law so clearly believed her to be.

Then she thought of that awful day when she had bled uncontrollably, the baby she had miscarried in their first year of marriage. She had lost one baby already. She couldn’t bear to lose another, she knew she’d fall apart.

And now here was Julianna, intruding on her fragile peace, forcing her to confront things she would far rather be in ignorance of.

‘I just thought you should know, that’s all,’ said Julianna bracingly. ‘No good burying one’s head in the sand, is it? He’s got this girl, up in town.’

‘Girl?’ Vanessa didn’t want to hear this. But Julianna was relentless in her honesty, bludgeoning Vanessa’s fragile tranquillity with her careless words.

‘Don’t fret about it for a moment,’ said Julianna. ‘They all do it, don’t they? Terence has had a few dalliances, they mean nothing really.’

‘Who is this . . . girl?’ Vanessa was pouring tea with only a slightly shaking hand. She wanted to throw the pot at Julianna, to stop that busily working mouth and its careless outpourings.

She’d known from early on in the marriage that Cornelius was what people called a
player.
There had been tearful phone calls from dejected floozies, receipts for gifts he’d been too careless to hide. She didn’t want to
hear
about it – couldn’t Julianna see that?

‘She’s a tart, darling, nothing to worry about.’ Julianna was slathering butter onto a scone. ‘Works at that dreadful theatre place where they all stand around nearly naked. Can you believe that? It’s a complete scandal. I just think it’s unfair how people collude to keep such things from us. A wife should at least
know
.’

‘Is she . . .’ Vanessa put down the teacup before she gave in to temptation and lobbed it straight at Julianna’s bright blonde head. ‘Is she pretty?’

‘Pretty?’ Julianna spoke through a mouthful of scone. ‘Well, yes, I suppose so. Very
dark.
I saw them at the Ritz. She’s tall with black hair. Attractive, I suppose. You know Cornelius – he never could resist dipping his hand in the honeypot. It’ll blow over soon. These things always do.’

When they next met, Ruby could see straight away that something was different. Cornelius was jittery, on edge. Usually he chatted easily to her, telling her a little – only a little, because careless talk really could cost lives – about his War Office work, about Churchill and what a great man he was, and about the newly proposed Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe, which would be formed when the war was over.

‘Will it
ever
be over?’ asked Ruby gloomily when he spoke so confidently about it.

‘Yes, it will – and of course we’ll win,’ he always said. ‘I shall become a British delegate.’

But tonight there was little conversation. And finally, at the end of the evening, after they’d made love, he spilled the beans.

‘She’s pregnant,’ he blurted out. ‘Vanessa. She’s pregnant.’

So this was his great, exciting secret. Ruby just lay there, thinking,
What am I supposed to say now? That I’m happy? That I’m sad?

Truthfully, she didn’t know
how
she felt about it. Clearly, he was delighted. Vanessa must be over the moon. But her . . . Where did this leave her? Would he forget her now, become wrapped up in family life? She didn’t think so. He needed the release of sex, and in Ruby’s limited experience, having kids made a bad sex life worse, not better. But . . . she couldn’t be sure. She could never be sure of anything, because she was just the bit on the side. He was always careful not to impregnate
her
.

But Vanessa was his
wife
.

‘Well . . . say something,’ he said, watching her anxiously.

‘I’m pleased for both of you,’ said Ruby.

‘Really?’ He was staring at her in disbelief. ‘I thought you’d be mad as hell about it.’

Ruby shrugged. She was wounded to the heart, but she kept her face clear of all emotion.

‘What would be the point of that? I knew you were still sleeping with her. I know that’s what you both want, so it’s good news. Isn’t it?’

‘Darling, you’re a marvel,’ he said, and kissed her.

But something inside Ruby had shrivelled up and died. Her place in the pecking order was
way
down the line. This just confirmed it.

33

Alicia Darke gave birth to her baby on a black rainy night. When the little girl emerged into the world,Ted was there in the room, pacing around. Waiting. There was no midwife with her; Ted wouldn’t even allow Alicia’s mother to attend.

When he saw the child, his lip curled in disgust.

‘It’s black,’ he said, eyeing his wife accusingly. ‘Fuck you to hell and eternity, Alicia. It’s a little black
bastard.’

Exhausted and ashamed, Alicia could only stare at the little girl. She
wasn’t
black. She was a beautiful caramel-coloured child. Ted himself cut the cord and tied it, and took the baby and bathed it.

Alicia was afraid, watching him handle the little girl. She had chosen a name already.

Rupert for a boy. Ruby for a girl. She held her breath as she watched Ted holding the child at arm’s length, like she was something loathsome, distasteful. When he placed Ruby back in her mother’s arms, Alicia breathed out at last, relieved he hadn’t harmed her.

‘You’re still bleeding,’ said Ted, seeing the blood pooling on the sheets.

‘That’ll stop,’ said Alicia. She had bled a fair bit with Charlie and Joe too. It was nothing new.

But it didn’t.

By morning, she was unconscious.

By midday, Ted panicked and called the doctor. But it was too late. Alicia was dead.

‘Haemorrhage,’ said the doctor, snapping his bag shut. ‘Should have called me sooner.’

Ted stared down at his dead wife and at the tar-brush baby in the crib.

This was God’s work.

Alicia had paid for her evil ways. Now he would have to raise the child, and his two poor boys, alone. He didn’t shed a tear for his wife, the treacherous mare. Let her burn in hell for her sins.

34

Something was niggling at PC Churcher. It had been a silly little incident, the old man and the woman scrapping over the ugliest dog he had ever clapped eyes on. And Alvin the reservist, what a twat he was, playing at coppers on his evenings off. You heard such bloody stupid things. The ARP wardens, trying to get people charged for lighting a fucking candle or puffing too brightly on a cigarette. A lot of these part-timers were
loonies
, in his opinion, finally getting some power in their drab little lives and instantly getting drunk on it.

PC Churcher was an ambitious man. He wanted to make his mark, to step up the ladder of promotion in the force. He was always on the lookout for the possibility of advancement. And something about the dog incident set his copper’s nose twitching.