Spilt Milk (26 page)

A fortnight later, Framsden put on wading boots and made his way across the fields. Where the river looped around the house, down where his boat used to be moored, the land was muddy. The field opposite was still flooded, a wide lake as grey as a milk churn, with the reflections of clouds and trees and pale sky mirrored across its surface. Framsden stood on the riverbank. If it wasn’t so awful, all this might be beautiful to behold.

His mother had given up a daughter. He had a sister. His mother had believed Ella Hubbard was her daughter. There was no sense to it, only a bruised hurt that made his shoulders ache. He hung his head and kicked the ground with the toe of his boot. At his feet something caught his eye, and he bent down, picking up a smooth fragment of what looked like bone. It was very thin, curved like an eggshell, and green staining patterned its fissured surface. He cupped it in his hand. It was bone. Part of a skull, he thought. A small animal, perhaps. He wasn’t sure. He was sure, though, that it had been in the river for a long time. The flood must have thrown it up on the bank here.

A flock of wild geese descended and landed nearby, pecking at the blades of grass. Framsden turned the bone over in his hand and considered keeping it. As a child he had liked collecting
things: feathers, sloughed snake skins, oak apples. But he wasn’t a child now and he had nowhere to put found objects in any case. All that was behind him. He took a step forwards and dropped the scrap of bone into the river, back where it had come from, back where he thought it belonged.

‘There you are,’ his father said, when he went into the house. He had a tall bottle balanced on a table made from lambing crates. His father never drank.

‘I found it floating in a cupboard,’ he said. ‘It’s a bottle of port your late grandfather sent me for Christmas years ago.’

‘When is Mum coming back?’

‘She’s not coming back.’

‘So you didn’t know either? She lied to you too?’

‘You’re young,’ his father said, staring at the glass in his hand. ‘Everybody has things … things that don’t need talking about. That’s not having secrets, son, that’s life.’

He finished his drink and poured himself another.

‘Are you drunk, Dad?’

‘Not yet. But I will be. I’m going to sell up. I’m selling the farm at auction. That’s how I bought it. That’s how I’ll sell it.’

‘You don’t mean that.’

‘I do,’ his father said, slapping his knee with his free hand, as if he were sealing the deal right there and then.

Early next morning, Framsden heard him go out, calling the dogs, the front door banging shut. He realized he would always connect his father with the vague half-light of early mornings. Framsden watched him trek across the yard, the familiar hunched shoulders, the long, loping walk that covered miles each day. His father would never sell the farm. It was his life.

Framsden walked to the end of the farm track. The water had blocked the road in places, but he jumped over it and with dry feet caught a bus. If he could have chosen, he would have gone to his
grandmother’s house, but he didn’t have enough money for the coach ticket all the way to Hastings. On the bus, he realized how easy leaving was. The thought of it had seemed impossible before. He had believed he was deeply rooted here. A river child, as his grandmother had once said. But he wasn’t. He could go anywhere.

He got off the bus at the station and walked over the bridge, up the hill, past the church and up the cobbled road where the stones were dark after a fresh shower of rain, wet and shiny as eels.

The guest-house windows had net curtains covering them, and the sign beside the door advertising electricity in all guest rooms was flaked and faded. He wondered why it was still there when his aunt had not run the property as a guest house for years. He knocked on the door.

‘Come in, my dear boy,’ his aunt Vivian said, as if he often called to see her.

Nellie stood in the doorway to the spare bedroom, watching her daughter sleeping. Birdie was such a tiny woman. Nellie could never understand how she had given birth to such a delicate person. She’d not been the right mother for Birdie. She should have been Vivian’s child. Nellie left her to sleep, shutting the door behind her.

That first day that Birdie arrived, straight off the coach with not even an overnight case in her hand, no hat or gloves, her eyes red from crying, she slept for hours. She woke briefly to drink the hot milk and brandy Nellie insisted would do her good. She slept through Nellie’s neighbour popping by for a cup of tea, and she slept through the evening when Nellie made herself sardines on toast, eating it on a tray in front of the television, wondering what had happened to her estranged daughter.

In the morning, just before dawn, they were both up, yawning and crumpled-looking.

‘Women in this family have always been early risers,’ said Nellie. She set a bowl of warm water on the kitchen table and put out a flannel, soap and two clean towels. Birdie made a pot of tea while Nellie stripped down to her vest and washed, flannelling her arms and her neck and face. ‘Do you want me to boil the kettle?’ she asked, blinking water from her eyes. ‘Or will you use the bathroom? I can never get used to having one. I always wash here. I hope that doesn’t bother you. That’s a new bar of Imperial Leather. I only just took the wrapper off it.’

‘I’ll use the bathroom later,’ said Birdie.

She drank tea and smoked cigarettes and went back to bed again.

‘Come down to the beach with me,’ said Nellie a few days later. She thought Birdie must have caught up on her sleep by now. ‘I need to swim.’

Birdie looked out of the window.

‘You swim in this weather?’

‘I have to find somebody who will stand on the shore and watch me. George made me promise I’d never swim alone.’

At around eight the next morning, Nellie changed into her black swimsuit and put on a pair of elasticated slacks and a blouse and pullover. She handed Birdie a bag with towels, a flask of hot soup, a bar of Kendal Mint Cake and a blanket. ‘Don’t fall asleep on the beach,’ she instructed her daughter. ‘You have to watch out for me.’

Nellie headed down to the sea, wading out into the waves, feeling the shock of the cold water washing over her shins, the surprise of it flooding between her legs, probing at her. Then she was in over her stomach, the worst was done with and she swam. A numbness covered her, and she knew she would have to swim hard to warm herself. She felt as though she didn’t have any body parts. She was seventy-two years old, she reminded herself. She had to be careful not to get too cold.

She turned to check Birdie was still there. She was a lonely figure on the deserted beach. Something had happened with her husband, Nellie was sure. She suspected Birdie had told him what she should never have told anyone. Didn’t her daughter understand that some secrets were not to be shared? When she got back to the shore, Birdie was curled up on the beach, asleep again.

Nellie insisted Birdie come out shopping with her. She didn’t like her sleeping all the time. There was a long list of things to buy. Nellie had been surviving on snacks – tinned food, cheese and crackers – but with Birdie there she decided to get into the habit of cooking meals again.

Nellie prepared the kind of food they’d eaten when Birdie was a child: tripe and onions, liver and mash, eggs in aspic, beef tea, calves’ foot broth, stewed rabbit in milk, oxtail stew, sardines on toast with plenty of butter and pepper. She spent long hours in the steamy little kitchen. Birdie didn’t eat much. She sat at the table, looking out on the small back garden, her face still and pensive.

‘This is good food,’ said Nellie. ‘Eat.’ She was exasperated by Birdie’s silence, but she didn’t know how to break it.

In the afternoons they played Monopoly and Sorry and watched horse racing on the television while the March wind outside whistled and wailed. Birdie talked about things that were in front of them. The Monopoly board. Whether she preferred being the iron or the top hat. How long it would take to walk to the newsagent’s to get another packet of cigarettes.

At the end of March, Birdie got a letter from her husband. She read the letter, handed it to her mother and went to bed again.

‘Everything has fallen apart,’ she said as she slipped out of the room.

Nellie read the letter. So the child had been a girl. Nellie sat down heavily. She had never asked Birdie or Vivian what the sex of the baby had been. She hadn’t dared. All these years she’d felt she should act like the whole experience had never happened to any of them.

The decision she and Vivian had made loomed in front of her again. A simple decision made from a belief that it would be best for Birdie and for the child. What else could they have done? And yet there was so much regret. Birdie’s daughter, a young woman who knew nothing of them, had been a leading character in all their lives.

From the cupboard in the bathroom, Nellie took a dark blue glass bottle and emptied the Milk of Magnesia from it down the sink. She couldn’t quite remember what Anna Moats had used in her charms
except that possibly mare’s urine had been part of the main ingredients. Birdie would probably object to that, so Nellie filled the bottle with olive oil, which was medicinal after all and would have to do. She put pins in the bottle and presented Birdie with it.

‘We need a lock of your hair to chase away your bad luck.’

Birdie laughed wearily. ‘Mother, this is ridiculous.’ She sat up on the bed. ‘You’re not a witch, you know. Oh, all right. Go on then. What harm can it do?’

In the morning, they woke late to a calm day. The wind had dropped and the sky was a hopeful pale blue.

‘March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb,’ said Nellie. They would get breakfast later. The bottle needed to be floated away first. Then Birdie’s luck would change. Nellie was going to swim out and drop the bottle in the sea. She would make everything all right.

Nellie trod water, looking back at her daughter standing on the shore. She was wearing one of George’s old waterproof capes. She looked like a fisherman who had misplaced his boat.

When Nellie reached the big metal buoy, she let the bottle go, her heart filled with hope for her daughter. A wave rolled over her and knocked her against the metal buoy. She trod water, trying to calm the panic that rose in her chest. Nellie was not given to panicking. It surprised her, this feeling of anxiety. Another wave hit her hard in the face and she swallowed salty water, coughing and choking. She set off swimming, head down, kicking hard, and a wave hit her again, pulling her back out to sea. The cross-currents were too strong for her. She heard a baby crying. A high-pitched screaming sound. Another wave hit her and rolled her under the water again.

She struggled to the surface and took a breath as fast as she could before another wave hit her in the back of the head and sucked her under. She was washed forwards and she struck out, under the curve of its roll, swimming through it.

The strength was going from her legs and arms. Down she went, like she was weighted by stones. And still the sound of a baby screamed in her ears. She was sinking. Wrapped in velvet and stones, cold granite, river pebbles, a body of shingle and sand and broken shells. The water wanted her. She heard a woman calling her name. If she could just follow the voice, then she’d be safe. Another wave pulled her under and she realized the voice was gone.

Birdie stood watching her mother, far out in the water. She remembered days as a child, the lido they swam in together. Her mother plunging into the water and swimming lengths while Birdie doggy-paddled behind her. She’d never been a swimmer like Nellie.

Nellie in a black bathing costume was still surprising to see. There was something majestic about her long back and strong limbs. The way she held her head high, as if she were listening to a sound nobody else could hear.

This morning she had pushed away Birdie’s doubts about swimming at this time of year, when the weather could change so quickly. Her face was pinched by her bathing cap, her eyes pulled up.

‘I’ll be fine,’ she’d said briskly, rubbing the goosebumps on her pale arms and hopping from foot to foot. She picked up the blue glass bottle and ran into the sea without a backward glance.

Birdie walked towards the tideline. Her mother was swimming back to shore. She was there and then she was not. She came into view and then disappeared silently, like a bottle bobbing in the waves. Something was not right. Birdie called out, running to the tideline, yelling. Her mother didn’t respond. She was gone again, under a wave.

Birdie threw off the waterproof cape. She kicked off her shoes, pulled off her cardigan, her blouse, her skirt, dropping them on the yellow sand.

She was not a swimmer, but her mother was in trouble. She
waded into the sea. The waves were up to her waist now, and it dawned on Birdie that she might drown. That they might both be lost. There was sand and grit in the waves. She felt it scrape her skin as it churned around her. The ground went from under her and her feet floated free. She sank, her hair covering her face like weeds, and then up she came, eyes closed, kicking and struggling with the taste of salt in her mouth, burning her nostrils. Gagging and spluttering, Birdie swam towards her mother, the fear of losing her pushing strength into her limbs.

Birdie caught hold of Nellie’s arm and hung on. They were carried towards the shore by a wave and finally Birdie felt sand again under her feet. She pulled her mother forwards. Nellie was so much bigger than her, a solid, exhausted weight. They made it to the beach on all fours, crawling, pulling each other onto dry land.

Nellie woke in a panic. She turned the bedside lamp on. It was four in the morning. She shifted her weight in bed. Her hip hurt. The bedsprings squeaked. Yesterday she had nearly drowned. Birdie had saved her life. Her daughter had rescued her.

What was her life now, without George, here on her own? Her sister was far away; her two husbands were lost to memories. She’d muddled through, one way or another. She’d been a great crow-scarer as a child. A fast runner. Leaping through the bean fields, skirts all wet with dew and bean-flower petals. A fearless girl who had turned into an uncertain mother.

Birdie was awake when she knocked on her door.

‘You all right, Ma?’

‘I will be. I’ve got things to say.’

Nellie fetched a chair from the kitchen. She sat down in the doorway.

‘You were a dear thing when you were born. Tiny, and I’m not a small woman. I was surprised by you. I thought you were too delicate for me. You know I can’t abide fragile things. They make
me feel clumsy. I was worried you might not survive. The doctor said to feed you on condensed milk, and that’s what I did.

‘I thought I’d call you Evie. Or Peggy. Henry said he wanted to name you after his mother, Bertha. Henry didn’t want children, on account of his health, so when he asked to call you after his mother, I was so pleased, I agreed straight away. You were such a surprise. We’d neither of us planned to have a child.’

‘I knew you didn’t want me,’ said her daughter’s voice in the darkness. ‘I always knew you didn’t want me.’

Nellie heard the sound of bedclothes being arranged, a pillow being plumped.

‘I didn’t want a child,’ she said. ‘I didn’t want one, it’s true. But when you were born, I wanted you, Birdie. I wanted you with all my heart. You were a colicky little thing, and every time you cried, Henry started shaking like the bombs were coming down on him again. We couldn’t keep you. It was impossible. So we fostered you out for a year. I went to see you every Sunday. Then Henry suggested I write to Vivian and she said she’d have you. She came to London to get you.’

‘You gave me to your sister?’

‘She had you for two years. Then Henry said we could get you back. He wanted you, you see? So I went and got you, and we never talked about how we gave you up because it didn’t matter. But you looked at me like a stranger for such a long time. You kept asking for Vivian. I was always afraid you’d hate me for taking you away from her, so Vivian and I agreed you should forget you’d ever been with her. We agreed to never tell you. But I always felt you didn’t trust me after that. I always felt you believed I had let you down. Sometimes I wonder if I should have let Vivian bring you up. I wonder if it wasn’t the most selfish thing I did, taking you back. But I did want you, Birdie. I wanted you with all my heart.’

‘And Henry was my father?’

‘Who said he wasn’t?’

‘Aunt Lydia wrote to me. She said I was George’s child.’

Nellie shook her head. Oh, Lord. This was one story that would not be told. There were promises that had been made.

‘You are Henry’s daughter,’ she said firmly, and knew this was what George would have wanted her to say. ‘Your uncle George loved you like a daughter, but Henry Farr was my husband and your father and that’s an end to it.

‘I love you,’ Nellie whispered, and wondered why on earth such simple words were so very hard to say.

Birdie was in the kitchen when Nellie got up the following morning. She had an apron on and was making toast.

‘I think it’s time I went home,’ she said, sitting down at the table, reaching for the marmalade. ‘I have to see Charles.’

‘You don’t have to. You can stay as long as you like.’

‘I’ve been thinking about it. You’re on your own here. Why don’t you come back and live with us?’

‘At the farm?’

‘It would be like coming home, wouldn’t it? I don’t want to leave you here alone. We’ve missed out on too many years. We all have. Come home with me.’

Nellie got up and pulled the lid from a saucepan on the back of the stove and lit the gas under it. She took a jug of cream from the refrigerator and poured it into the bubbling pot of porridge. She got a tin of golden syrup from the cupboard. It was a plain dish, even with the rich syrup and the cream, but it was warming and good. They were nearly finished eating breakfast when they heard a car draw up the drive. Through the front door’s frosted glass they saw Charles knocking on the door and heard him calling Birdie’s name.