Grand Affair Read online

  ‘They’ll give her a good Catholic funeral, I hope?’ Mrs Mac called after her. ‘For I’m sure I saw the poor girl once or twice at early morning Mass.’

  ‘Never mind the funeral rites, Mrs Mac,’ Mrs Proctor sighed, clicking her tongue. She stopped and turned. ‘Have you any idea of her name? I can find nothing in her room except these few pasted-up pictures. Did she not have any friends around here? Mrs Burgess—’

  Mrs Mac said a little too quickly, ‘Mrs Burgess used her for sewing and that but there would not be a hope of her knowing who she was, believe me, Mrs Proctor, not a hope. Ask anyone round here. Young girls coming to London, they call themselves all sorts of names to avoid being found by their parents, or – well, all sorts and shapes of reasons. You can’t blame them. Why don’t you step in for some tea now? Wait till you see the weight our little angel’s put on for us,’ she went on, all too anxious to change the subject. ‘What a wonderful thing you did the other night, Mrs Proctor, for this is surely just a little angel sent to visit us all, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘She’s a very pretty baby all right,’ Mrs Proctor agreed, as Mrs Mac made the tea and she stared into the straw basket with protective feelings mingling with reverence for a new life. After a pause she said, ‘I’ll be truthful with you, I don’t like to think of her being handed over to the Council, I don’t like it at all, Mrs Mac. She’d be much better off with you, here, wouldn’t she?’ She looked around the poorly furnished but scrupulously clean kitchen in which they were sitting. ‘Much better off. They never do well, babies that are put in municipal care, I don’t think. Particularly during a harsh winter like this. There’s always some bug, and we’re all still locked out of the hospital, you know, whole wards closed down because of the outbreak.’

  ‘She might have died so, the baby might have died had you not left her in with me?’ said Mrs Mac with evident satisfaction.

  ‘She still might die if she goes there, and then all our efforts would be for nothing, just wasted.’

  ‘Dead like her mother,’ Mrs Mac went on. ‘What a waste of our little flower’s life,’ she continued, hammering home the point. Mrs Proctor didn’t seem to notice this but only stared thoughtfully into Mrs Mac’s handsome face with its white skin and freckles which were so prolific it would be hard to find a space between them.

  ‘If she goes to the Council she’ll be up for adoption and maybe sent into the wrong hands. Some of these adoption families, I don’t know. Not suitable at all. They adopt and then they send them back after a few months. It’s pathetic, the things I’ve seen, you can imagine. No, perhaps you can’t imagine, Mrs Mac, being so kind, but believe me, it is pathetic.’ Mrs Proctor stared down once again at the little face lying peacefully asleep in the basket. ‘Well, I couldn’t tell you.’

  ‘She would be better off here so, with us,’ Mrs Mac agreed, and taking the baby from her crib she placed her in Mrs Proctor’s arms. ‘There now, put your finger into her hand and feel the strength of her.’

  Mrs Proctor put her index finger into the baby’s palm, and then she looked up at Mrs Mac and shook her head disbelievingly at the power that seemed to be coming from the tiny hand. No council could ever give her the love and care that Mrs Mac could give her, and that was the truth. There was only one course to take now, and she was convinced of it, the one that would be best for the baby.

  ‘Supposing – just supposing that the poor baby had died with the mother? I mean no-one hereabouts knows she was born alive, except us and the doctor – and if we told the hospital and the undertaker she must have died and the girl disposed of her, no-one will know better, will they, Mrs Mac?’ she said, dropping her voice despite the fact that they were quite alone. ‘And what with all the bad weather there’s enough going on for them not to even bother to ask. There’s the death certificate saying the mother died of a haemorrhage, of course, but nothing else to say exactly what happened, and what with the mother being such an unfortunate creature—’

  ‘Well now, I don’t suppose they would know there was a live baby,’ Mrs Mac interrupted quickly, her voice too at its lowest level as she looked up from her tea, all innocence. ‘No-one would know but us, and that young locum. But he’s gone off. He was hardly here more than a minute that night, as I remember it. Not likely to return either. You know locums, Mrs Proctor, they can’t wait to shake the dust from their feet. Too much like work, London, you know?’

  ‘There is only the death certificate signed by the doctor,’ Mrs Proctor repeated, more to reassure herself than Mrs Mac. ‘That’s all there is. Dr Bailey thought I would come back for the baby, but he was gone the next day so there was no-one to make sure.’

  ‘Nor would they care if they did know about the baby, Mrs Proctor, saving your presence, you being a medical person – not with the shortage of staff, and one thing and another. Sure the baby could have been thrown dead into a dustbin by the mother before she crawled up onto that bed upstairs and died, for all the rest of the world knows or cares, when you come to think about it, wouldn’t you say? Or I could have given birth to the baby myself, could I not now, for all they know? And as for my boys, they believe what I tell them, if they know what’s good for them, particularly since their father left for America and I’m doing all the raising of them.’

  ‘So. No-one knows about her, not really, except you and I.’

  The two women stared at each other for a few seconds, each knowing what they meant without having to say anything. Mrs Proctor felt a satisfying surge of relief at the idea that the baby might not have to be handed over to the authorities.

  More than that, she felt a great deal less guilty.

  This way at least the baby would be adopted into the kind of home the poor dead girl would have liked, and kept in the place where she herself, after all, had lived. Like this the child would be raised with other children, and by a kind and loving mother. It could not be better, really. Much better probably than if the mother had lived, friendless and alone, struggling against the odds to keep her child.

  ‘What have you decided to call her, Mrs Mac?’ she asked, as if the whole matter had now been well and truly settled and there was nothing else to say.

  ‘Sure my boys settled that long ago, Mrs Proctor.’ Mrs Mac looked up, smiling. ‘They’ve called her Ottilie – for wasn’t it the name of the shoes on the side of the box you brought her in?’

  Two

  1954

  Ottilie’s day always began with climbing into bed to lie beside the woman she would always know as ‘Ma’. Here, with Ma’s body in its clean but much-mended white cotton nightdress warming her, and the pleasant smell of the early morning tea Ma was sipping, she was certain that she had once again awoken to her own safe little world, a world where Ottilie was the star.

  Here too, lying beneath the old faded flowered quilt, her blissful sense of being loved and wanted was emphasized by the distant sounds of all her brothers leaving for school, Ma’s radio playing, and the noise of the London buses pulling slowly past their flat window. All these outside disturbances only underlined Ottilie’s feelings of contentment.

  Sometimes she would slide right down beneath the sheets and blankets, almost to the bottom of the bed, pretending that she wasn’t there, trying to avoid all her older brothers kissing her goodbye. Other times she would lie against the thin old pillows in their coarse hand-sewn cotton pillowcases waiting for the boys’ farewells and their murmurs of ‘Lucky thing, wish I was staying at home.’ Always answered by Ma’s saying, ‘Get on with all of yous, best years of your life, school.’

  This morning was different, though. Not that there were not shouts from the kitchen, and Lorcan the eldest as always bringing Ma her cup of tea with ‘There you are, Ma’ as Ma listened to Housewives’ Choice on the grand old mahogany radio that occupied pride of place in the corner of their bedroom. This morning was different because the boys were up and shouting not because they were going to school, but because they were all moving to the country.

>   It had finally all seemed to happen so quickly. First a letter from Da in America and talk of money’s being sent, finally Ma giving a little scream and sitting down in the kitchen very suddenly as she opened a letter. And then instead of just talk of getting out of London to what Ma always called ‘a land of milk and honey’ – now, all of a sudden, this was it, they really were moving, leaving Number Four and going far away into a foreign country that Ma and the boys called ‘Cornwall’.

  They were going somewhere where, Lorcan kept telling Ottilie, they could all learn to swim and fish, and there would be sandcastles and he would buy Ottilie a spade with which she could dig on those sandy beaches that she could see in some of the pictures on Ma’s kitchen walls. In ‘Cornwall’, Lorcan told Ottilie, the sun always shone just like the pictures.

  ‘But where ’xactly are we going, Ma?’ Ottilie wanted to know, clinging hard to her mother’s index finger as they walked down to MacDonagh’s for the bread and potatoes. ‘Where is Cornwall, ’xactly?’

  Mrs Mac looked down at her youngest, and hearing the anxiety in Ottilie’s voice she said, ‘You know where Cornwall is, Ottilie pet, you’ve seen the pictures in the kitchen, that’s Cornwall, dotie. Cows and fields, and little houses with thatched roofs where you can sit out in front of the door when the weather’s fine, not like here with the smog and the buses going so close to the bedroom windows you could shake hands with the passengers. And we can take all our furniture. Sullivans is helping move us. You know, Mr Sullivan, the undertaker?’ She stopped momentarily, frowning in remembrance of something, and then went on, ‘You’ll love where we’re going, pet, you wait and see.’

  But Ottilie still felt uneasy and strange about the idea of leaving Number Four, although when she stared at the pictures she could see that this place called Cornwall did look a great deal prettier than the main road outside Number Four where the rubbish lay listlessly in the gutters on a hot afternoon, or pieces of torn newspaper blew about under their feet on winter mornings, and all night long traffic moved past the window and babies cried. And yet, now that she knew they were really moving, going away from Number Four, she was only really happy under the kitchen table with her toys.

  ‘Here.’

  Ma bent down and for a moment her freckled face appeared upside down as she handed Ottilie an old postcard.

  ‘That’s where we’re going to be near, dotie, just round the corner from that pretty place. Gorgeous, wouldn’t you say?’

  Ottilie turned over the postcard before looking at the picture on the front. There was no writing on it, but when she turned it back there was a picture of an old house with gardens running down to the sea. At six Ottilie’s reading was not so perfect that she could understand all the words underneath the picture but she did understand ‘The Grand’, although the rest eluded her.

  ‘That’s right, pet, that’s exactly it,’ Ma said from above the table where she was making pastry and not really listening to Ottilie. ‘It’ll be grand, just grand, so it will. A home of our own, with our own front door, and summer coming, nothing could be more grand than that, I’d say. Away from streets and noise and dirty people, just flowers and fields, and air so clean you can hang your washing in it.’

  Mr Sullivan gave them the loan of one of his oldest hearses to move themselves, and Lorcan’s friend Charlie the young greengrocer on the corner offered to drive it for them because he said he could do with some sea air. Ottilie watched with interest as all the boys heaved and pushed everything they owned, and some things Ma joked she was sure they definitely should not own, into the back of the great black empty limousine.

  ‘Now isn’t that a fine sight if you like, pet?’ Ma said, her usual deep optimism reflecting in her voice as she saw her proudest possession, the great old mahogany radio-gram, being placed reverently beside the cardboard boxes of toys and books, old tea tins, towel rails and saucepans, all taped up with Mr Sullivan’s special string and labels that said SULLIVAN across them. ‘Have you Mrs Teddy safe, Ottilie pet? No you haven’t? You’ve left Mrs Teddy? Well now, run back quickly before we all go without you. Imagine leaving Mrs Teddy, that’s terrible for her, wouldn’t you say? She’ll cry her eyes out without yous.’

  Quickly Ottilie ran back up the steps into the big dark hallway that had been the first place she had learned to recognize outside her own small world, back into the now empty flat, its door still swinging open as always, back to find Mrs Teddy.

  There she was, in the corner of the boys’ bedroom, a strangely forlorn sight, a small bear clothed in a blue dress and a hat sitting alone on the window sill. Ottilie snatched up her toy and then, feeling a little panic-struck at the sound of her sandals echoing on the stone floors, she ran into the kitchen searching for the dear familiar sights of her first home. But they were gone. Now there were no rows of green tea tins to stare up at, and no washing horse drying what Ma always called ‘gansies’ by the old gas stove, and when she peered into Ma’s bedroom no mahogany radiogram, no bed, no piece of curtaining with small elephants on it to cover the window looking out onto the street where her family were patiently waiting for her to reappear. Clutching Mrs Teddy all the more tightly she bolted out into the street again. Whatever happened they must take her with them, they mustn’t leave her behind at Number Four, because Number Four had quite gone.

  ‘Just wait till you see the lovely green fields and feel the warmth of the sun on your face, pet,’ Ma sighed, sitting back with her arm round Ottilie while in the front seat their neighbour Mrs Burgess gaily crashed through the gears of her new Morris Minor, doing her best to take off after Charlie in Mr Sullivan’s hearse at a faster speed than was thoroughly normal for her.

  Ottilie was sick seven times on the first leg of their great journey to Cornwall. She actually became quite proud of how many times, but after they had all stopped off to stay over at a pub called the Three Horseshoes, her sickness quite disappeared and she fell happily asleep with her ears full of the sounds of people laughing and talking in the bar below, her tummy at last having righted itself with a bowl of bread and milk and brown sugar. She only woke momentarily when Ma came in much later, rolled into her own bed under the window and fell asleep, soon snoring loudly as a result of drinking a great deal of her favourite stout.

  It was only the next day, as they neared the village where Ma had bought their cottage with the money sent from America, that Ottilie started to feel the strangeness of the new country into which they had driven. To her childish eyes the hedges that shielded the little winding country roads appeared enormous, and the grass beyond them strangely uninteresting because of the lack of shops or lights. And the quiet, the very peace of it all, seemed so frightening that she found herself once more clinging to Ma’s index finger.

  ‘Well now, will you look at that, Mags Burgess?’ Ma exclaimed as they pulled up behind the hearse in front of a cottage with a dark green front door. ‘Will you look at what I’ve bought? It’s even nicer than the man in the estate agent’s promised, wouldn’t you say?’

  Mrs Burgess, a large woman with bright red lips and handbag and shoes to match, turned her equally bright blue-rimmed eyes on her friend.

  ‘Never tell me this is the first time you’ve seen the place, love?’

  ‘Of course not, Mags,’ Ma replied, tossing her red plait behind her and pinning it up to the top of her head with a kirby grip as she always did in times of stress, ‘sure didn’t I see it all in the details that Lorcan and I sent for? And in the window of the agency? Of course it’s not the first time I’ve seen it.’

  ‘It’s the first time you’ve seen it all right,’ said Mrs Burgess, a triumphant look in her eyes. ‘You had no idea until now what you had bought, did you?’

  ‘I did too.’

  ‘You did not.’

  Without another word Ma opened the car door and stepped out into the midday sun. She strode up to the front door and opened it, Ottilie closely following. The two younger boys began to run wildly around the garden, shoutin
g and yelling for no other reason than that they had arrived, while Lorcan and Charlie threw open the back of the hearse and started to unpack their few possessions.

  ‘I did too know what it was like.’ Ma stepped into the small flagstoned hall and turned to Mags Burgess who had followed her out of the car, inquisitive as always. ‘See, it’s lovely, isn’t it?’

  But that was before they stepped through into the other rooms. Water, damp, walls bulging, a tap dripping non-stop in the downstairs bathroom. There was a long silence as the three of them tiptoed gingerly through not just the darkness of the low-ceilinged rooms but the large pools on the old flagstoned floors. It was broken finally by Ma, who said with her customary good humour as she stared at all the water, ‘Well now, isn’t it just as well that the first thing the boys want to do is learn to swim?’

  There was just one more second of silence, and then Mags Burgess and Ma started to laugh uproariously before turning back to the warmth outside, to the tall grass of the garden, to the unpacking of the hearse, and most important of all to the finding of the old brown teapot from Number Four. Once they had that everything would start to be right again, Ma said, while Mrs Burgess lit a cigarette and said, ‘Well, you can always come back to London when you want, love, don’t forget that. The landlord hasn’t found anyone for Number Four yet.’

  At which Ottilie’s heart gave a little leap and she thought, ‘Yes please let’s all go back,’ because secretly, deep down, that was what she wanted more than anything in the world, to go straight back to their safe life at Number Four with the noise of the traffic thrumming past the outside door and the half-open windows and everyone and everything that they knew so well, the manager who ran the pub and always slipped her chocolate, Mr North the manager of MacDonagh’s who gave Ma the end-of-day loaves, Charlie’s uncle in the greengrocery who set aside the cabbages. They were all her friends, and she knew now that she might never see them again, because of being in Cornwall, just because Ma wanted everything to be the way it had been when she herself was small and lived in somewhere called County Kerry.