The Other Child (30 page)

‘Brian! You've really grown this winter!'

He gurgled and laughed. His mental development continued to lag behind his physical progress.

I turned back to Arvid.

‘Arvid! Where's Chad? Please tell me!'

Something changed in his face. His eyes finally lost their blankness and saw me. He moved his lips, but needed two attempts before he could articulate what he had to say. For a few seconds he seemed disturbingly like Nobody with his babbling.

‘Chad signed up for t' army Friday.'

I gulped. ‘What?'

‘Couldn't stop him,' said Arvid. ‘Didn't want t', either. He's a man. Has t' decide what t' do.'

‘But … what … what did Emma say to that?'

She could not have given her permission. She would never have allowed it. There was nothing she was more afraid of than …

Further silence. Even Nobody had stopped prattling. The silence thickened around me and in it I could hear the truth blaring, blaring so loudly and clearly that with horror I realised what it was before Arvid finally managed to speak.

‘Emma died two weeks ago,' he said.

I had gone on a journey to nowhere. That is what I felt on that night, lying in bed sleeplessly in my old room on the Beckett farm, even though I was completely exhausted by then. I could hear the familiar sounds in the house – the creaking of floorboards, the quiet rattling of the windowpanes and the sighing of the trees outside when the wind blew through their bare branches. There was nothing I had dreamt of over the past months with as much longing as the moment when I would be in this house, this room again. The only thing was, I had imagined it differently. Emma should have been there to hug me, and Chad of course. I wanted to clamber down into the bay with Chad, out of breath and with my heart beating wildly. I wanted to give myself to his words, his voice and his tender hands … Instead …

Emma was dead! I could barely grasp it. Chad at the front: at least that made sense. It had always been obvious that he would go, if his mother's objections weakened for whatever reason. Chad had grasped the opportunity immediately. Without a word to me! He had not told me he was off to the front, nor that his mother had died. Where did I fit into his life? It was clear his thoughts did not revolve around me nearly as much as mine around him. I felt hurt, sad. And helpless.

I had sat for a while longer with Arvid in the kitchen. It was actually the first time since I had met him that we were having a chat. He had suddenly become a very lonely man. He was in no way up to the task of running the large farm with all its sheep on his own, even less so now that he had to do without his son's help. The Beckett farm was becoming more and more rundown, which was already visible in the house. Emma had always managed to hide its shabbiness. Arvid did not have the time, energy or – I suspected – the necessary skills.

He told me that Emma had fought a nasty bronchitis all winter, and in January it had become full-blown pneumonia.

‘She refused t' go t' hospital. I were worried …‘er fever were so high, for days on end, but I didn't want t' take ‘er off against ‘er will. Then it all ‘appened so quickly. She couldn't fight it any longer.'

I had to think of the Emma I had met for the first time that dark November evening on a meadow near Staintondale. She had been a healthy woman, slight maybe, but not fragile. She had fallen ill so suddenly, without any obvious trigger. Her recurring colds. The continual coughing. The previous year's pneumonia which she had so struggled to get over. And from which she had never really recovered.

Sitting in the kitchen, shivering because the oven did not give off enough heat, for the first time I had the feeling that although the Beckett farm was paradise on earth for me, for Emma it might have been a place of toil and travail. A draughty, damp house. With ovens which needed to be heated every morning. To get water in the kitchen, you needed to use a pump. That was physically demanding. Time had stood still on the farm. Everything was as it had been a hundred years earlier, except that there was electricity and electric lights. Chad had once told me that the cable had only been laid in 1936. Doing the cooking, laundry and ironing – all the things which Emma did every day – required enormous amounts of time and energy. She had slaved away from morning to night without ever complaining or expecting too much help from us children. It was more important to her that we did our homework properly and had some time to play. Without us noticing, she had exhausted herself.

‘Arvid,' I finally said, after my third cup of tea. ‘Arvid, can I please stay here? I don't want to go back to London.'

He rocked back and forth, uncertain what to say. ‘That's impossible,' he said in the end.

‘It can't be. I'm so unhappy there. I don't get on with my … my stepfather. He drinks. He's disgusting.'

‘How old are you?'

‘Almost fourteen,' I said. It was still a long time until the end of July, but there was no need to be too exact.

‘So: thirteen. You're a schoolgirl!'

‘I could keep house here. Cook, clean, do the laundry … I can do all of that!'

‘You have to go to school. An' your parents would never agree. If I had a phone, I'd have t' call them now. I could get int' ‘ot water … livin' 'ere alone with a young girl like you! No, Fiona, I'm really sorry. I'm halfway t' prison, if I let you stay!'

‘And what if my mother lets me?'

‘She won't,' Arvid prophesied. ‘Your mother didn't mind me farm as long as the bombs were hailin' down on London and we were livin' 'ere as a family. Now everythin's changed. She'll raise ‘ell t' fetch you back.'

Unfortunately, as I lay in bed and tried to make some sense of all I had learnt in the last few hours, it dawned on me that he was right. Mother had not wanted me here even while Emma was alive. It was more than unlikely that she would let me live here with just Arvid and Nobody.

The next morning some snowflakes were falling. Nevertheless I spent half the day wandering around the farmland, followed by Nobody, who gazed at me adoringly. I said hello to familiar places and cried silent tears because I was about to have to leave them again too. I climbed down into the bay and sat for a long time on a rock, looking out to sea. It was harsh and grey that day. I thought of Chad and the last summer evening we had spent there. The shrill, despairing calls of the seagulls seemed like the echo of my dark thoughts. Where was Chad? Was he in danger, right now while I was here at our spot thinking of him? Would he survive the war? Would I ever see him again?

I did not hold back my tears. Nobody was squatting beside me, but he did not disturb my crying or my thoughts. As usual, he was perfectly happy just to be near me. At some point I looked at him and realised that his whole body was shaking and his lips were almost purple. I probably did not look too different myself. I had not noticed how I had slowly become a stiff icicle. By now there were thick flurries of snow and it was hard to make out the sea. I stood up.

‘Come on, let's get home quickly,' I said. ‘We'll catch our death of cold out here.'

He immediately followed me. He would have followed me into the sea if I had asked him to.

Back in the house I got fires going in the fireplaces, made tea, tidied up the kitchen, and gathered together the larder's sparse supplies to make dinner. Arvid was to see that I was more capable than any other thirteen-year-old schoolgirl, and that it could be to his advantage to have a female on the farm. While I swept the floor and scrubbed down the surfaces, Nobody sat at the kitchen table, drinking tea, eating a few rather dry biscuits which I had found, and looking at me with shining eyes. I could not help being worried about his fate too. He must be around ten years old by now, but showed no sign of developing mental abilities beyond that of a five-year-old at most – one who was unable to learn to speak and probably never would. In losing Emma he had lost a mother for a second time in his short life. For reasons I could not comprehend, I was his great love and no doubt in his eyes I would, emotionally, balance out the loss of Emma. Except that it looked as if I would not be able to stay. What would become of him?

Arvid had never wanted him, never cared for him. What was he to do with a mentally disabled boy?

A home, I thought. Now there really would be no other option but to put him in a home.

I felt uneasy at the thought of it. But what was I to do?

By evening the house was sparkling clean, the clammy air had become warm and dry. It smelt of the wood burning in the grates and of the food I had prepared. Candles were lit in the windows. In addition, I had given Nobody a bath and dressed him in fresh clothes and made myself look as nice as possible. I was at least going to make it hard for Arvid to send me away. Thick flakes of snow were falling outside. Inside, two purring cats were lying on the living room sofa. Arvid
had
to notice the change when he returned, frozen, from a long, hard day's work.

When I heard his steps at the door I stood up, smoothed down my skirt and stepped out into the hall with an expectant smile. I heard him knocking the snow off his shoes.

The door opened and two men stepped in.

They were Arvid and Harold.

‘Let's have a frank talk,' said Harold. He looked tired, and he was sober. I was hardly used to the latter. He seemed different.

We sat in the kitchen. Arvid had made himself cosy in the living room. I had sent Nobody to bed, although I could hear a scraping on the stairs which revealed that he was hanging around there, probably hoping to be near me again. We had eaten together. I had barely managed a mouthful and had not even been able to appreciate Arvid's praising my work that afternoon – in his sparing way: ‘House looks good. Your food's tasty.'

He and Harold had met at the farm gate. Arvid had been on the way back from one of the meadows. Harold had come from the bus stop and was extremely relieved to have found human habitation. Arvid had probably guessed immediately who he had in front of him.

‘I know that you can't stand me,' Harold said. His hands lay on the table in front of him, tangled up together. ‘Not that I know why, because I haven't done anything to you … but that's the way it is.'

I did not say a word. What could I have said?

‘At a pinch I would say you could stay, if Mr Beckett agreed, but I wouldn't see it as a good solution, and … Well, it doesn't matter what I think. Fiona, you can't. Because of your mum. I can't leave you here. She wouldn't cope with that.'

‘She managed for almost two years,' I said.

There was a reason for that. You were in danger in London. That's no longer the case.'

‘The war isn't over yet.'

‘It won't go on too much longer,' Harold said. ‘The Germans are running out of luck. They're almost done for.'

I did not care about that right now.

Harold fished a handkerchief out of his trouser pocket and wiped the sweat from his forehead. ‘I took time off work to come here,' he said. ‘And I told some whopping lies to your mum, because she'll notice of course that I'm not visiting her in hospital for two days. She can't know that you ran away. We can't let her get worked up.'

‘How did you know I'd be here?'

‘I didn't know. But I guessed.'

‘You didn't have to come.'

‘And what was I to tell your mum? Who is lying in a hospital bed in pain and crying her eyes out because she has lost our child. How should I answer her when she asks why you aren't visiting her? What should I say when she comes home and asks me where you are?'

I bit my lip. I had not really thought what I was doing to my mother.

‘Fiona, I'm doing this for your mum,' said Harold, and I thought I saw in his puffy features an expression I had not seen before: resolve.

‘It's not about me or you. It's about your mum. You have to come back. Please. She'll be in the pits of despair if you don't.'

‘She has you,' I said.

He made a dismissive gesture. ‘You can't compare. You're her child. Her only one. And, well, as I've said, it looks like it'll stay that way.'

I could hear real pain in his voice. The loss of his son had affected him deeply. It had shaken him to his depths. He was a different Harold to the one I had known: hurt, helpless, but at the same time strong enough not to abandon himself to his woe. I had expected him to collapse in a corner and drink without any limits. Instead he was so concerned for my mother that he had got on a train for Scarborough, found me, and now was trying to encourage me to go back with him. I did not harbour any illusion that he would not soon be the same old drinker as before. But there was obviously another side to him, and I was able to see this side for a short time. For the first time I felt some respect for him.

‘How do you think it would work here?' he asked. He had heard about the deep changes to life on the Beckett farm over dinner. ‘I mean, you and Arvid here on your own … that's not good!'

‘Brian is here too!'

‘A little boy! God, Fiona! Do you think your mum would allow this set-up for a single day?'

I crumpled. They were all against me: Mum, Harold, Arvid. I did not have a chance.

Arvid came into the kitchen. ‘Can you brew me a cuppa tea?'

I was happy to turn around and work the pump handle, to fill the kettle with water. The two men could not see the tears filling my eyes.

‘She has to come back to London with me tomorrow,' said Harold.

‘Aye, I think so too,' said Arvid.

I put the kettle on the hob. My hands were shaking.

‘My wife … Fiona's mum … is in a bad way,' said Harold, who for some reason seemed to trust taciturn Arvid. ‘She's just lost a child. Our son. He was going to be born this summer.'

‘Sorry t' ‘ear,' said Arvid awkwardly.