Road to Berry Edge, The (30 page)

‘Why didn't you tell me about the child?'

Susannah took a deep breath. ‘The child is nothing to do with you.'

‘That's not what I hear.'

‘Nothing in my life is anything to do with you. You walked out and left me, don't you remember?'

‘Faith found out and now she won't marry me.'

‘Faith did? Oh I understand. She came to see Nancy, she discovered that Nancy was living here.'

‘So Nancy knew all about the baby?'

‘Are you going to accuse her of disloyalty too?'

‘Nancy doesn't owe me anything.'

‘I'm glad you think so.'

‘Can I see my child?'

‘She's not yours.'

‘What is she called?'

‘Victoria.'

‘May I see her?'

‘No.'

‘Why not?'

‘Because …'

‘You hate me.'

‘I don't hate you, Rob.'

‘Yes, you do. What other reason could you have for keeping the knowledge from me when you knew it might cost me so dearly?'

‘I didn't think about that. You didn't love Faith.'

‘It wasn't meant to be love. I was trying to save myself from Hell,' Rob said, smiling just a little. ‘Isn't that what always motivates people? You know in your heart that that's where you'll end up because God lets bits of it seep through until you get accustomed to the idea or make some sort of huge effort to atone. You can see the full horror of what you've got waiting. Couldn't I see her just for a moment?'

‘She's asleep.'

‘Don't children look best when they're asleep?'

Susannah led the way upstairs and into her bedroom where Victoria lay, not in her cot - she wouldn't rest in there - but in the big double bed. It was a new bed, Susannah comforted herself, no man had ever been there, but that thought did not prevent her from remembering how she had discovered what love really meant in this room. It seemed so strange, because it was the same room where she had taken men to her for money, in distaste, in dislike. She didn't work now. This room was hers and Victoria's, and she had sworn to herself that she would never let a man over the threshold.

It even looked different than he would remember it, all pale blue and cream, so feminine. The thin summer curtains were drawn back, the windows were open to the warmth and from there the view was the same as it had been for eight hundred years, the river and the outline of the cathedral and the castle across the water. But he was not noticing any of it.

Victoria was so tiny, her dark hair against the sheet, her eyes closed, the lashes long and luxuriant. Susannah held her breath, convinced either that he would pick up the baby and run out of the room, or that Victoria would awake and instantly scream, but neither happened. Susannah watched him as he sat down carefully on the bed. He looked out of place.

Susannah had pretended to herself before now that he was never here, that she had not fallen in love with him, that he had not opened her heart with his readiness to begin again. His gaze was fixed on the child.

‘She doesn't look like me at all,' he said, not sounding disappointed, ‘she looks just like you. Perhaps she isn't mine.'

‘There was no one else,' Susannah reminded him.

‘You weren't going to tell me, were you?' he said.

‘I thought you might try and take her.'

‘Take her?'

‘You might have, though not after you decided to marry Miss Norman. It would hardly have benefited you. You were going to Nottingham to live. You would have been married, having your own children. She's all I have.'

‘You could have prevented my marriage.'

‘Perhaps I didn't wish to prevent it.'

The room was so quiet after that that Susannah could hear the river beyond the windows. He got up. It was even worse then, it was all those times come together, all those mornings when he had left her; and that was when she remembered the nights.

‘I think that you had better go,' she said.

When he had gone Susannah's heart beat so hard that it hurt. In her mind she had tried to turn him into things that he was not just to survive, but surviving did not seem quite as important as being glad that he was none of those things, even though he had gone.

She knew that there was nowhere in their small civilised
world where they could have hidden together, and that she would never be forgiven by this man's world for what she had done. His achievements, his successes, his talent and ability would count for nothing with the wrong woman at his side, and she knew that he could not have stood that, having lost so many things. His work was all he had now.

Susannah was angry. Most of all she was angry with Faith for not seeing how things really were, but then perhaps Faith had done just that. Perhaps she had seen that he would never belong to her when morally he belonged to the prostitute who lived up the street from the bridge in Durham.

Harry was still sitting in the garden room, even though he could no longer see anything. When the banging began, he stumbled downstairs in the darkness and opened the door.

‘I thought you weren't here,' Rob said. ‘Then I thought maybe you were asleep.'

‘Just at present Faith's parents' house holds little attraction and sleep … is for the innocent alone.'

‘Are you drunk?'

‘I could be if you helped.'

‘Have you got any whisky?'

‘How long have you known me, Rob? We don't have any glasses.'

‘A bottle will do.'

‘I'll get you a cup.'

They went back upstairs to the garden room. There were no chairs in there, but you could sit on the floor. Because the windows were way down, not quite to the floor, like a conservatory, you could look out over what you fondly imagined was the view of Berry Edge. When you had had a few, as Harry presently explained, you could see anything you wanted.

‘Did you see Susannah?'

‘Yes, and the baby. She is mine.'

‘Is she beautiful?'

‘She looks just like Susannah. She's so small though, so very, very little.'

‘Was Claire there?'

‘No.'

‘Claire was good fun,' Harry said.

‘How was Faith when you left?'

‘Crying. You know, I always think of her crying into the coats that first night. Do you remember that? She stood in the hall and cried into the coats.'

‘I wish I could cry into some bloody coats,' Rob said. ‘I'd feel a lot bloody better.'

‘You wouldn't.'

‘How do you know?'

‘I don't. One thing about my parents, however awful I thought they were as parents, they didn't make me cry. If I did for some reason, they always came to me.'

‘Christ, did they?'

‘Always. Ida was a big apologiser. Women are very good apologisers, don't you find?'

‘Well, I don't see Vincent being much good at apologies.'

‘No, but he makes up for it in other ways. He called you “a bloody imbecile” after you left, but I think he was relieved and my mother will be ecstatic that you and Faith aren't getting married and it's quite ir— ironic. Do I mean “ironic”?'

‘I don't know what the hell you mean,' Rob said. ‘Why is it ironic?'

‘Because of Faith. Because I love her.'

‘You love Faith?'

‘I do, yes.'

‘Well, don't go telling anybody anything, for God's sake.'

‘I'm telling you now.'

‘Christ, Harry, you pick your moments.'

‘I didn't want to spoil anything.'

‘There's nothing to spoil now.'

‘I know. Do you want some more whisky?'

‘I do, but do you?'

‘I do definitely. We should never have come here.'

‘For once in your life you're right. We shouldn't. We should have listened to Vincent.'

‘I'm sick of listening to the old bastard, he's always there.'

‘He's all right though, Harry, really.'

Harry poured out more cupfuls of whisky. ‘What are you going to do now?' he said.

‘I'm going to Nottingham and then to London. That was what I intended to do.'

‘I can't come with you, not if you want the works keeping right.'

‘I don't need you to come with me. I need you here. You will look after the place.'

‘I'll look after it,' Harry said.

*

Faith cried until she felt sick. Rob did not come back and neither did Harry. It seemed so cow-hearted of them both, Faith thought, to just go like that. There was nobody there to be shouted at, nobody to blame. Her mother put her to bed, though Faith thought she could detect a small amount of resentment on her mother's part. She had failed to marry again. She had run out of Berkeley brothers, and there was nobody else. Whatever was she to do now?

Faith was so exhausted that she slept. When she awoke in the early morning, it was with the disbelief that anything so cruel could have happened to her. She hated Rob as she had not hated him before, and most of all she didn't want to show her face in Berry Edge for the next ten years.

When she finally ventured downstairs her mother was wrapping presents to be sent back.

‘I'm sorry,' Faith said.

Her mother looked up.

‘It wasn't your fault,' she said. ‘How people will talk.
How shocking, and how dreadful for Rob's mother to know what he has done and to know that everyone else will soon know.'

‘It won't be very nice for us either,' Faith pointed out.

‘Your father has gone to see the minister and the other arrangements are to be cancelled. Rob's mother is already packing to leave to go to Ashington. I doubt she will come back. Mr and Mrs Shaw are taking the first train back to Nottingham.'

It was as her mother said. Suddenly the house was empty and it was rather to Faith as it had been before Rob came home, there was just her mother and her father and herself, except that now there was nothing to do, nowhere to go. She had no life there any more, having given it up to be Rob's wife.

Faith took her pretty clothes and put them in the attic, and tried to resume her life. Going out was difficult, she knew that people were talking about her. Her parents didn't mention Rob's name, and since Harry had his own house she didn't see him.

Faith went to Chapel but people were polite and distant. She wore her old dresses to get them to see her in the same way they had before, but she was not deceived herself, so how could they be? She had one wild idea when a visiting minister came from London, and talked to the young people about a Methodist college in London which trained people to be teachers, but they were surprised when Faith made enquiries. She was too old. She had amazed herself by thinking that she might leave Berry Edge. When Rob had wanted her to go, she had wanted nothing more than to stay, but now she would have given almost anything to leave this place where she was branded, for good and all, an old maid. For the first time in her life Faith felt trapped in Berry Edge, with the future empty before her.

She went to John's grave and there she felt nothing. She realised then that she could not resume her life as
it had been. Rob had cured her of wanting his brother. She remembered only too clearly the feel of his mouth and hands and his body against her. When she longed for someone it was Rob, not the long-dead brother, and she came to acknowledge that it was the lack of someone as much as the lack of a particular person that she felt. She knew now that she ought to have married, that if anyone else had taken time and trouble over her, had guided her away from John, she would have been married by now with her own house and children. Rob had taught her that.

There was nowhere here she wanted to be. Faith could have screamed. She walked the short distance home and wondered how she could ever have borne Sundays here. What did she do? How did she fill those endless Sunday hours? Time went by so slowly. She went to Chapel twice just as she used to do with her parents, and there was the big meal to get through, but even so there were huge long gaps which had not been there before and there was nothing to fill them with. She sewed, she read, she even invaded the kitchen, much to the surprise of the maids, and offered to help there and had to leave, having embarrassed both herself and them. She would have gone into the garden but that was not allowed either; their gardener was the kind of man who had to be talked nicely to before he would let anybody pick a bunch of flowers, much less tolerate interference of any kind, or even suggestions except from her mother.

Faith avoided Durham because of Susannah and she avoided the streets of Berry Edge because people were talking about her. She escaped to the fell and there, thinking of how she and Rob had gone walking several times that summer, she sat down and cried.

*

Harry had moved into his house straight away in spite of the lack of furniture. He had no intention of going back to face the house down the bank. He went to work on Saturday and
was glad of it, and on the way back he called in at Michael and Nancy's house because he had bought them a present. The wedding had been early, the party afterwards was still going on though many people had left.

Nancy unwrapped the present. It was a dining room clock, a handsome mahogany one inlaid with walnut, and after they had thanked him they gave him a drink. Nancy said, ‘I hear the other wedding didn't happen.'

‘That's right,' Harry said.

‘Poor Miss Norman.'

‘Where's Rob?' Michael managed to ask him in a quiet moment.

‘Nottingham.'

‘He'll find somebody else,' Michael said comfortingly.

‘Yes.' Harry sighed. ‘We could eventually be treated to a permanent state of Miss Castleton and
Furry Leaves.
I dread to think what he might do now.'

‘Who's Miss Castleton?'

‘She's a very young, rather pretty lady at the top of Nottingham society. Her father owns a hosiery factory. She plays the piano and she does like Rob's money.'