The Back of Beyond Page 33

  His mind in a state of turmoil, Alistair bade Lexie goodbye and walked pensively along the road, going over what he had heard. By the time he reached home, he had convinced himself that what Lexie had told him didn’t prove he was wrong. It didn’t prove he was right, either, that was the only thing.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me about your operation?’ he asked Gwen when he went inside.

  By the expressions on his children’s faces, he could tell that they hadn’t known either, and he regretted not waiting until he and his wife were alone. But it was done now, so he persisted, ‘Why didn’t you let me know?’

  Gwen’s face was chalk white. ‘Marge said … it would be best … not to worry you,’ she said, haltingly, obviously upset at the accusing way he had spoken to her.

  He took a deep breath, and his next words were more gentle. ‘Didn’t it occur to you I’d want to know?’

  ‘You couldn’t have done anything, Alistair, and … maybe I should have told you once it was all over, but …’

  ‘You didn’t tell us either, Mum,’ David said loudly.

  Leila was looking puzzled. ‘Was that the time when you were supposed to be looking after Grandma?’

  Gwen’s sigh was a little tremulous. ‘We only said that to save you worrying, dear.’

  ‘But why did you have to go to London to have an operation?’ David demanded. ‘Isn’t there a hospital in Aberdeen that could have done it?’

  ‘It was … it was … how can I put it? They wanted to try out a new piece of equipment.’

  Alistair’s face darkened. ‘They were experimenting on you?’

  ‘It wasn’t dangerous. It had been tested and tested, and I was all right, so can we just forget it? It’s all over, and I’m as fit as a fiddle. Tell us how you got on in London.’

  When Alistair left, Lexie wished that she hadn’t mentioned Gwen in connection with the soldier at the tower – she could tell it had upset him. It would be better to let him think it was Marge, though she was absolutely positive that it hadn’t been. He had suffered enough as a prisoner of war, it would be a crime to stir up trouble for him when he was getting his life back together again.

  What Lexie told Alistair, however, had farther-reaching effects than she realized. Leila, who had only been ten at the time, was old enough now to put two and two together and make sense of what had gone on. Her mother had told a lie about going to London to look after Grandma, so the rest of it could have been a lie, too. It was too much of a coincidence that Auntie Marge and Mum had both grown so fat at that time. Now that she came to think back, they could both have been expecting babies. Uncle Dougal had been on leave about the right length of time before Nicky was born, so that was OK, but Dad had been away for a year and a half, if not more, so if Mum had had a baby, it must have been to somebody else.

  Every time her mind touched on this, Leila felt sick, but there was nothing she could do. She couldn’t accuse her mother, not unless she had proof, and in any case, she could be wrong.

  Gwen felt she was living on the edge of a crumbling precipice and could do nothing to save herself if it gave way. If it ever crossed Alistair’s mind, she kept thinking, that saying she’d had an ovarian cyst removed could be an excuse for going away to have a baby conceived in sin, he wouldn’t have anything more to do with her. Nevertheless, even if he didn’t suspect her of being Nicky’s mother, if he ever accused Marge to her face of being unfaithful to her husband, or told Dougal that he wasn’t Nicky’s father, she would have to tell the truth. She couldn’t let her sister shoulder the blame.

  She had hoped that by moving to Forvit, Alistair would never have the opportunity to air his suspicions to Marge or Dougal, but he was speaking of making occasional trips to London to buy stock for his shop. Yet, even knowing that it was bound to come out some time, she was too much of a coward to confess unless she was forced to.

  She would have to exist in this awful state of limbo until … the end.

  Chapter 24

  ‘Are you feeling well enough, Alf?’ Rosie studied her son-in-law in some concern. ‘You look ghastly.’

  He gave a faint smile. ‘Thanks, Rosie. That makes me feel absolutely tip-top.’

  She shook her head at his sarcasm. ‘You didn’t need to cook anything for me if you didn’t feel up to it. I could easily have slapped two slices of bread round a chunk of cheese. Or Marge would have done something for me, if you’d asked her.’

  ‘No need, Rosie, old girl, though I don’t feel quite up to scratch, if you must know. Age catching up with me at last, I suppose.’

  ‘Oh, poof! I can give you fifteen years and there’s nothing wrong with me … apart from my stupid legs. If I got a new pair of knees, I’d be on top of the world.’

  ‘You always are on top of the world, Rosie, dear. I wish I’d half your spirit.’

  ‘No sense in moping like a dead duck all the time,’ she laughed.

  He ate little of the steak and kidney pudding he had prepared, and not a single spoonful of the apple pie with the melt-in-the mouth pastry almost as good as Tiny used to make, but Rosie passed no comment. He’d be upset if she fussed.

  She lay back in her chair when he had gone, her feet on the brown plush pouffe she kept handy to ease the pain in her legs. Should she say anything to Peggy, or would it worry her? Well, of course it would worry her, Rosie scolded herself, so she’d better see what Marge thought first.

  As she always did, Marge went to check on her mother at half past three on the dot, having given her time for her afternoon nap, and Rosie, who hadn’t slept at all that day, jumped straight in. ‘I’m worried about Alf, Margie. He doesn’t look a bit well, and he hardly ate any of the steak and kidney pud he cooked for me.’

  ‘He loves cooking,’ Marge smiled. ‘You should think yourself lucky having at least one domesticated son-in-law. Dougal wouldn’t know how to boil an egg, and neither would Alistair, I shouldn’t wonder.’

  ‘I wish you’d stick to the point,’ Rosie sighed. ‘It’s not like Alf. He was so pale, and there was sweat on his brow like he had a fever.’

  ‘Shall I go and have a word with him?’

  ‘Have a look at him anyway, then come right back and tell me what you think.’

  ‘I can’t just look and walk out,’ Marge objected.

  ‘You can surely think of some excuse.’

  The distance between the two back doors was not sufficient to give Marge time to think of anything, but as it happened, she didn’t need an excuse. When she went into his kitchen, her brother-in-law was slumped over the sink. ‘Oh, dear God, Alf!’ she cried. ‘What’s wrong?’ He patted his chest and, remembering that he had medication for his angina, she asked, ‘Have you taken a pill?’

  His nod made alarm course through her. If the pill wasn’t helping, it must be bad – a proper heart attack. She helped him into the living room and, while she settled him in a chair, she said, ‘I’ll phone for the doctor. I’ll just be a jiffy.’ Rushing through to the hall, she was glad that Alf had made them all have telephones installed. It was her mother they had feared for, of course, but it might be his life she could be saving now.

  Having caught the doctor towards the end of his afternoon surgery, she was back in no time, not even popping in to let her mother know what was happening. ‘He’ll be here as soon as he can, Alf, so I’ll wait with you till he comes.’

  ‘It’s a good thing your Mum told you to have a look at Alf,’ Dougal said, that evening. ‘He could have been dead by the time Peg came home from work.’

  ‘I know,’ Marge muttered, ‘and I nearly didn’t go. I thought Mum was fussing about nothing, you know what she’s like, but … oh, Dougal, I thought it was all over before the doctor even turned up, and he was there in less than ten minutes and took him to hospital himself. How was he when you saw him?’

  ‘He’s not too good, but we’ll have to play it down in front of Peg. She’s worrying herself sick about him.’

  ‘I’d be out of my mind if it w
as you. Um … do you think he’ll pull through?’

  ‘I wouldn’t like to say.’

  ‘Thank goodness you’ve the car. It’ll save Peg having to take buses … or taxis, if the worst comes to the worst.’

  Dougal frowned now. ‘Take things as they come, eh? Don’t look on the black side.’

  The black side, unfortunately, came looking for them. At five minutes to five the following morning, they were roused out of fitful sleep by the slam of a car door, and when Dougal jumped to look out of the window, he gave a feeble groan. ‘It’s the police at Peg’s!’ he told his wife, pulling on his trousers and jacket over his pyjamas. ‘We’d better get round there.’

  When he left his house, his heart sank even more. One policeman was hammering on the Pryors’ door while another was knocking on Rosie’s. ‘No, no!’ he called to the nearest man. ‘She’s an old lady. You don’t want to frighten her out of her wits.’

  ‘We thought Mrs Pryor should have a neighbour or someone with her when we told her. Her husband has just died in hospital.’

  Marge came running up now, trying to get her arm into the sleeve of her coat. ‘Oh, no! Poor Alf … and poor Peg.’ With an effort, she kept hold of her senses, and explained, ‘I’m her sister and this is our mother’s house, and she’ll be wakened now anyway.’

  ‘You’d better go in and tell her,’ Dougal advised, ‘I’ll look after Peg.’

  The next few hours were horrendous for the inhabitants of all three houses. While Dougal was running Peggy to the hospital, Marge was attending to Rosie, who had been rigid with fear when she went in. ‘A burglar was trying to break in,’ she whispered, her teeth chattering, her face grey, ‘and I was sure he’d kill me if I made a sound.’

  ‘It wasn’t a burglar, Mum,’ Marge soothed. ‘It was one of the policemen. They came to tell Peg that Alf had … passed away, and they were trying to get a neighbour to be with her. They didn’t know … you could hardly walk …’

  ‘Oh, dear Lord! Poor Alf, I knew he was ill! He shouldn’t have cooked lunch for me. It’s my fault he’s dead.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Mum. He loved cooking, and oh, it’s awful, really awful. I don’t know what Peg’s going to do.’ Noticing then that her mother’s face was an even more peculiar colour and that her breathing was so shallow she scarcely seemed to be breathing at all, Marge exclaimed, ‘Mum! Take it easy! We don’t want you …’

  Marge was too late. Rosie, like Alf, had suffered a fatal heart attack, but unlike his, hers had given her no warning.

  Only David was his normal self at breakfast time, the other three were so quiet that he said, grumpily, ‘Don’t know why you lot are so miserable. Just think about me. Even if that blasted rain goes off, the pitch’ll be waterlogged.’

  Not receiving the reprimand he expected from his mother for saying ‘blasted’, he drained his cup and pushed back his chair. ‘I’m going upstairs again. There’s nothing to do down here.’

  ‘You could help with the dishes,’ Leila suggested, but he pretended not to hear her. Washing and drying dishes was women’s work, not men’s. His father never dried as much as one measly teaspoon, and he wasn’t going to let the side down.

  In his room, he sifted through his comics listlessly; he’d read them all dozens of times. He didn’t care much for books, though he quite liked the William series, by Richmal Crompton. He gathered the Wizards and Boys’ Owns into a semblance of neatness and stuffed them back in his cupboard. He was bored, bored, bored.

  Then his curiosity was aroused by something hanging down the back of the shelf; it must have been under the comics and he’d pushed it back when he put them in again, but he’d no idea what it was. He couldn’t remember ever putting anything there. Stretching over the sundry items that he regarded as treasures, he pulled out a slim paper wallet. Then it came back to him.

  Rushing downstairs, he said, ‘Dad, I just found something you’ve never seen. I forgot all about them.’

  Alistair turned round with a smile, and held out his hand for whatever he was meant to look at. ‘Oh, it’s photographs.’

  ‘I took them when we were living here before and the packet must have got jammed at the back of the shelf.’

  ‘You took them? They’re really good. Are these boys still at school with you?’

  ‘He’s left,’ a grubby finger pointed, ‘but the others are still there. And that’s Auntie Marge digging up potatoes. She was sweating. And here’s one of Mum speaking to the postie. Uncle Ken took this one of us all having a picnic at the tower, and he took that one of me another day, after he’d been teaching me how to bowl. This was the last one in the film – Uncle Ken standing between Mum and Auntie Marge.’

  Gwen’s gasp made her son look at her anxiously. ‘It’s all right to speak about Uncle Ken now, isn’t it, Mum? I forgot it was supposed to be a secret, and anyway, it surely doesn’t matter when the war’s been over for so long, does it?’

  He was astonished to see that his mother’s eyes were round with what looked like terror, her mouth gripped in her chalk-white face, and he knew that it was not all right. He switched his eyes back to his father, who was angrier than he had ever seen him.

  ‘Why had it to be kept a secret?’ Alistair asked, very quietly.

  ‘Well, you know …’ the boy began, then believing that his father didn’t know, that maybe the rule hadn’t applied to servicemen overseas or even in other parts of Britain, he gathered confidence and went on, ‘… because soldiers weren’t allowed to visit other soldiers’ families. He’d have got into trouble, maybe been stuck in the glasshouse.’

  Alistair studied the picture once more, and when he raised his head, his eyes were icy and his voice was clipped as he addressed his wife. ‘And who is Uncle Ken?’

  ‘He was a soldier who drove Marge home from a dance one night,’ Gwen muttered, through lips almost frozen with fear, then, realizing what her words implied, she added, ‘He was only a friend.’

  ‘A bloody good friend, going by the amount of times he must have come here!’

  She pulled her senses together with a great effort. ‘Stop it, Alistair! If you want to pick a quarrel, please don’t do it in front of the children.’

  His face dark with anger, he snapped, ‘Go to your rooms, you two! I want to have something out with your mother!’

  They were only halfway up the stairs when he called, ‘David, what colour was Uncle Ken’s hair?’

  ‘Um … red, or ginger, or whatever it’s called. Can I go now?’

  Waiting until he heard a door closing, and guessing that they had both gone into the same room, Alistair’s bottom lip curled. ‘So that’s why young Nicky’s hair’s red? Yet you swore to me Marge hadn’t been unfaithful!’

  ‘She wasn’t! She really wasn’t! Ken was only a friend. He had a wife and two children in Birmingham and he missed them something awful. We asked him here because we could see he was a decent man, not like some of the single boys who left a lot of sore hearts when they were posted away. He was so grateful to be part of our family.’

  ‘He’d had a lot to be grateful for,’ her husband sneered. ‘He’d two kids on tap to replace his own, and a woman ready and willing to be a substitute wife!’

  ‘It wasn’t like that! We treated him like a brother, and he brought presents for Leila and David, and sometimes something for us from their cookhouse, and …’

  ‘And you’re still trying to tell me it was all above board? What d’you take me for, Gwen? A bloody fool?’

  ‘You are a bloody fool!’ Gwen couldn’t help saying it. She had to protect her sister’s marriage … as well as her own. ‘You won’t listen to reason, but please don’t go telling Dougal what you’ve got in your stupid mind! You’ll only turn him against Nicky … and Marge never did anything wrong. I swear, Alistair, swear!’

  Nostrils flaring, he inhaled deeply, then said, his finger on the photograph and enunciating each word clearly, ‘Do you swear that Nicky is not that man’s son?’

>   In her desperation, Gwen would have sworn to almost anything … except this, and she had to fight her rising nausea before she could say, ‘Marge wasn’t unfaithful to Dougal. Never, Alistair. I’ve sworn it dozens of times and it’s the honest truth. Believe me, all Forvit would have known if she had been.’

  ‘Maybe they did! Maybe it was only you that didn’t know. I promise you, Gwen, if I ever see Marge again, I’m going to have it out with her. Now, I’m going out for a while to clear my head. I need to think.’

  The door slammed behind him and she turned guiltily as David ran down the stairs. ‘I’m sorry, Mum. I didn’t think … I should have remembered.’

  ‘It wasn’t your fault, dear,’ she said, wearily. ‘Your father’s been different since he came home from the war, and he doesn’t like the idea of us keeping secrets from him. Don’t worry about it, David. Everything will be all right.’

  His clouded eyes cleared. ‘Can I go out now? The rain’s just about off.’

  ‘It might be a good idea to tidy your bedroom a bit, the cupboard, at least. I’m sure there’s a lot of stuff that you’ve grown out of and could be thrown out.’

  She was relieved that he went back upstairs without arguing, and hoped that he and Leila wouldn’t start discussing what had happened. The girl was old enough to see what had caused her father’s anger, and perhaps wise enough to work out that her mother was not telling the truth. To take her own mind off things, Gwen cleared the table, washed up the dishes and then wielded the sweeping brush on the kitchen floor as if repelling an army. Why hadn’t she remembered about the photographs? She didn’t blame David, he hadn’t dreamt … Nevertheless, the evidence of Ken Partridge’s visits was there in black and white and there was no denying that.

  Her innards tight with worry, she took a duster and the tin of Jamieson’s wax polish from the cupboard and attacked the floor again. Some moments later, perhaps as a result of this physical effort, her fears eased a little. Even if Alistair asked the entire population of Forvit, no one could give him any scandal about Marge, not even if he went to the shop, because Marge had done nothing to give rise to any. It was she, his own wife, who could have set tongues wagging … but not a soul could have seen her on either of the nights she had been with Ken. They had been well away from the village.