Charlotte turned and stared at the fat woman. She spoke so much sense in her offhand way. She nodded at her but didn’t speak.
Lizzie now closed the door and walked back to the bed and, sitting down, stared at her son, at the son who hadn’t given her a kind word for years. As a boy he had liked her and teased her, as a man he had insulted her, scorned her, even hated her, but all the while, through all the phases, she had loved him. And now her heart was in ribbons. He was the only thing she had of her own flesh and he was on his way out.
On the day he was born when he had lain on her arm and first grabbed at her breast she had thought, He’s strong; he’ll hold the reins through life all right. And everything he had done since seemed to have pointed the same way, for he had earned a copper here and there since he was seven. And hadn’t he been sent to school? And hadn’t he been given full-time work afore he was fourteen? And then to jump from the factory into the high position of a rent man. Moreover he had been the best dressed rent man in the town because he made enough out of his gaming to keep himself well rigged out and still have a shilling or two in his pocket. Then his latest bit of luck, marrying into this house. Who would ever have believed that would have come about? He’d always had the luck of a gambling man.
Aye, but she hadn’t to forget that a gambling man’s luck went both ways. And she had thought of that at tea-time yesterday when that ghost walked in the door. How she stopped herself from collapsing she’d never know. Only the fact that Ruth was on the verge of it herself had saved her, for to see Janie standing there, the Janie that wasn’t Janie, except when she spoke. God in heaven! Never in all her born days had she had such a shock. And nothing that would happen to her in this life or the next would equal it. But a couple of hours later, as she watched Janie go down the path looking like something from another world, she asked God to forgive her for the thoughts that were passing through her mind, for there had been no welcome in her heart for this Janie, whose only aim in life now seemed to be the ruin of the man she had once loved, and whose wife she still was. Aye, that was a fact none of them could get over, whose wife she still was. And that poor soul back there in the room carrying a child. Well, as she had always said, God’s ways were strange but if you waited long enough He solved your problems. But dear, dear God, she wished He could have solved this one in some other way than to take her flesh, the only flesh she would ever call her own.
When the door opened behind her she rose to her feet, and going towards Charlotte, she said, ‘I’ll call Ruth and the young maid, an’ I’ll come down along of you and put me feet up for a short while.’
Charlotte passed her and walked to the bed, and, bending over it, she laid her lips gently on the white sweat-laden brow, and as she went to mop his face Lizzie took her arm and said, ‘Come. No more, not now. And them nurses should be here by daylight.’
Out on the landing, Jessie was sitting on a chair by the side of the door, and Charlotte said to her, ‘Sit by the bed, Jessie, please. I’ll . . . I’ll be back in a few moments.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
The girl disappeared into the room and Charlotte crossed the landing and gently opened the door opposite, and Ruth turned from her vigil beside Jimmy’s bed and asked in a whisper, ‘How is he?’
‘Asleep.’ She went to the foot of the bed and, looking at Jimmy, she said softly, ‘His hair will grow again, it’s only at the back. He’s sleeping naturally.’ Then she asked, as if begging a favour, ‘Would you sit with Rory just in case he should wake? Jessie’s there, but . . . but I’d rather—’ She waved her hand vaguely. ‘You could leave the door open in case Jimmy calls.’
Ruth stared up at her for a moment, then looked at Lizzie before she said, ‘Aye, yes, of course’. . . .
In the drawing-room, Charlotte sat on the couch, her hands gripped tightly in front of her, and stared at the fire, and when the door opened and Lizzie came from the kitchen carrying a tray of tea and a plate of bread and butter she did not show any surprise.
The time that had passed since nine o’clock last night was filled with so many strange incidents that it seemed to have covered a lifetime, and that this woman should go into her kitchen and make tea seemed a natural thing to do; it was as if she had always done it.
It seemed to Charlotte from the moment she had knelt beside Rory last night that she had lived and died again and again, for each time she thought Rory had drawn his last breath she had gone with him. That he would soon take his final breath one part of her mind accepted, but the other fought hysterically against it, yelling at it, screaming at it: No, no! Fight for him, will him to remain alive. You can’t let him go. Tell him that he must not go, he must not leave you; talk to his spirit, get below his mind, grasp his will, infuse your strength into him. He can’t. He can’t. He must not die . . .
‘Here, drink that up and eat this bit of bread.’
‘No, thank you. I . . . I couldn’t eat.’
‘You’ve got to eat something. If nothin’ else you need to keep the wind off your stomach when you’re carryin’ or you’ll know about it.’
‘I’m sorry, I couldn’t eat. But you . . . please, please help yourself.’
‘Me? Aw, I’ve no need to eat.’ Lizzie sighed as she sat down on the edge of a chair. There followed a few moments of silence before Charlotte, wide-eyed, turned to her and said, ‘What do you think?’
‘Well, lass, where there’s life there’s hope they say. As long as he’s breathin’ he’s got a chance, but if you want my opinion, it’s a slim one. He was always a gamblin’ man, but he’s on a long shot now.’ She put her cup down on a side table and her tightly pressed lips trembled.
Again there was silence until Lizzie said quietly, ‘It’s not me intention to trouble you at this time, for God knows you’ve got enough on your plate, but . . . but I think there’s somethin’ you should know ’cos there’s only you can do anything about it . . . Janie. She’s been outside all night sittin’ in the stables, your coachman says. He doesn’t know who she is of course. He told one of your lasses that there was a strange woman there and she wouldn’t go, she was one of his relatives he thought.’
Lizzie now watched Charlotte rise to her feet and, her hands clasped tightly in front of her, go towards the fire and stand looking down into it, and she said to her, ‘When she walked into the kitchen last night I was for droppin’ down dead meself.’
Charlotte’s head was moving in small jerks. The woman, the girl, his wife . . . his one-time wife in her stables? She had a vague memory of seeing a black huddled figure kneeling at Rory’s side in the yard, then again when they had lifted him on to the cart, and for a moment she had glimpsed it again in the shadows of the drive. What must she do? Would Rory want to see her? He had once loved her . . . She couldn’t bear that thought; he was hers, wholly hers. The happiness she had experienced with him in the months past was so deep, so strong, that the essence of it covered all time back to her beginning and would spread over the years to her end, and beyond. And he loved her, he had said it. He had put it into words, not lightly like some unfledged puppy as he had been when he married his childhood playmate, but as a man who didn’t admit his feelings lightly. So what place had that girl in their lives? What was more, he had told her he wanted none of her . . .
‘If he had been taken to the hospital she would have seen him, she would have claimed the right.’
Charlotte swung round. Her face dark now, she glared at the fat woman, and for a moment she forgot that she knew her as Rory’s aunt. She was just a fat woman, a common fat woman, ignorant. What did she know about rights?