Elizabeth and Lily Read online

  Lily, often with her mother round kitchen tables in the neighbourhood, felt unhappy when she heard her go on like this. She couldn’t understand why Eddie was better off dead, or why her mother could say so. When Queenie launched into those speeches at home, Charlie put a stop to them. ‘Queenie, give over,’ he would say. ‘We all saw the boy die, and now the less said the better. We’ve got to go on.’

  Queenie would then call him heartless and too ready to forget his dead child, and Charlie would go out to the pub, leaving her sobbing. The couple, though they did not realise it, drew apart. And Lily formed conclusions about the meaning of Eddie’s death which influenced the whole course of her life.

  Fourteen years later, a large marble angel was to be erected in St Michael’s churchyard, and at the bottom of the plinth was inscribed in gold letters: ‘Edward Strugnell 1887–1889. Never forgotten. This monument erected by his loving sister, Lily. We shall meet again.’ This was taken, by the local residents, to be a most handsome tribute from Eddie’s wealthy big sister. It was also a symbol, though they did not know it, of the forces which drove Lily on.

  Chapter Two

  The owner of 54 Linden Grove, a house in a long, tree-lined street in west London, was Mrs Christina Macfarlane, the small, energetic, fifty-year-old widow of a railway engineer who had drunk his evening whisky in many strange and far-flung spots of the world – in Turkey, in India, in China. He had died, a relatively young man of only forty-eight, as a result of pneumonia contracted sitting through a long sermon while home in Dumfries on leave. A return to her native heath had seemed attractive to Christina Macfarlane while she was in the middle of jungles or dried-out plains. But in reality, the prospect of going back to Scotland, the bosom of the family, and living under the command of her energetic and firm-minded eighty-two-year-old father was far from appealing.

  Mrs Macfarlane therefore told her family that she would move into the house left to her husband by his close friend and colleague, who had died of a fever somewhere near Afghanistan many years ago. They had, she said, always planned, all three of them, to spend their retirement years together at the Kensington house left him by his mother, and though neither poor David nor their friend Jack had lived long enough, they would, she knew, approve of her moving into the house.

  But Christina had spent many years on horseback and muleback – had even, on one occasion, been mauled by a tiger. She had dealt with epidemics, confinements and riots, and all the strangenesses of other climes and cultures. So life in London as a widow in straitened circumstances did not fully occupy her. She had a few friends, her charity work in the poor area half a mile away known as the Old Potteries, and the management of her small household – a cook and a maid – but it was not enough. She became that woman so common in urban life, politely called an observant neighbour, or, less politely, a nosy woman at the window, a peeper-out from behind lace curtains. The peeping was quite benevolent, never troublemaking, but it was still peeping.

  Her sitting room was on the ground floor of the large three-storey house (with basement) overlooking the road outside. Her window provided a day-long feast of entertainment for Christina Macfarlane. Through it she observed, weekly, a thousand things. It was better, as she told her women friends, than a play. She’d been taught as a girl that no respectable person ever sat at the window, peering and prying at the neighbours. ‘But, respectable or not,’ she would say, ‘it’s highly entertaining.’

  Thus it was that when the residents of the house opposite moved away, Christina Macfarlane was the first to observe one day the arrival of the furniture van of the new occupants of number 53. The new owner, seemed to be about thirty, a tall, red-headed man in a frock coat, with a big, beaky nose. As he mounted the steps of number 53, he had his arm protectively round his wife, who was, Mrs Macfarlane thought, younger than himself. With a small, round face, and fluffy light brown hair escaping from her pretty bonnet, she seemed barely out of childhood. The couple was greeted by the elderly housekeeper who had let the furniture in.

  The day after, up went the brass plate of Dr Henry Armitage, surgery hours from nine to ten in the mornings, five to six in the evenings, except on Sundays. Mrs Macfarlane, though resolving never to leave her own aged medical practitioner, Dr Barlow of St John’s Crescent, in favour of this young, inexperienced man, nevertheless wished the new young doctor luck in his new life, and was always touched by the couple’s appearance on their rare outings, he so protective, she so pretty, leaning on his strong arm.

  It was six months after the couple had moved in, on the afternoon of Christmas Eve 1886, cold and threatening snow, when Mrs Macfarlane, sitting beside the driver of a hired coach, warmly wrapped in an old fur coat, a plaid shawl over her head, noted the midwife going into number 53. Thinking, a Christmas baby for the Armitages, how nice, she pretended to notice nothing, for this was after all the south of England, where good manners meant observing nothing about the neighbours unless their house was on fire. So she ordered her coachman to drive on, and they turned off Linden Grove and went on down the narrowing streets to the warren of lanes making up the Old Potteries, where she delivered a sack of coal to every house where she knew fuel was needed. There were many who, without this gift, would have had no fire to warm them or cook their food on Christmas Day. Then, chilled and seeking her own fire, she went home for a light supper and an early night. Her servants had had half a guinea each and a ‘Merry Christmas’, and had departed to spend it with their families. They would not be back until Boxing Day.

  Next morning, Mrs Macfarlane was preparing early to go to the house of her friend Mrs Kennedy-Johnson, another railway widow, in Chelsea. The two women and Mrs Kennedy-Johnson’s nephew would enjoy a dinner of capon and Christmas pudding. As she was about to leave, she observed the midwife coming back to number 53. Mrs Macfarlane concluded that the woman had left the day before to let nature take its course, and had now been recalled because it was doing so. This would be a Christmas baby, born on the very day itself, thought Christina Macfarlane with satisfaction. She popped her gifts for the Kennedy-Johnsons into her small leather travelling case, and went out to her cab.

  She passed a pleasant day. In the evening there was company, and some singing round the piano. Mrs Macfarlane spent the night in her friend’s spare room, and left Chelsea after lunch on Boxing Day, in a light sprinkling of snow. As her cab came to a halt at her own door, she noticed that the only other vehicle in the street was a smart carriage, just drawing up opposite, from which stepped a bearded man in a frock coat and silk hat, looking grave, and behind him a younger man carrying a medical bag. Oh dear, oh dear, thought Mrs Macfarlane. Complications. A difficult confinement and a specialist called. Not good news at all. She pitied the poor young woman.

  Barely stopping to put down her bag in the hall, take off her coat and light the fire, Christina Macfarlane took up her position in her comfortable chair just to one side of the window, behind thick lace curtains, a small brass watering can to hand. If the need to see better arose, she would lift the curtain and pretend to be watering the massive rubber plant on the small table in front of the window. She embarked on this manoeuvre only fifteen minutes later, when the bearded doctor came down the steps of number 53, shaking hands with Dr Henry Armitage and delivering what seemed to be messages of reassurance. Called to a medical crisis, and there wasn’t one, perhaps. Or, thought Mrs Macfarlane, who was sceptical of doctors, called to a medical crisis and said it wasn’t one, though it was. Meanwhile, the poor woman was labouring on in agony, she supposed. Though childless herself, Mrs Macfarlane had helped deliver several babies in all kinds of circumstances, and believed that the difference between bearing a child on a truckle bed in a wooden hut and bearing it in a good bed in a warm room with a doctor present was minimal for the woman concerned. The pain was there, the baby coming, and no one present, be they a medical specialist or a dirty old woman, could do very much to help or hinder the event. Later, the midwife returned and left again.
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br />   That evening, a short woman in a thick cloak arrived in a hurry with two suitcases. This would be the young woman’s mother, Mrs Macfarlane thought. Perhaps things would go better now. Meanwhile, she ached to know what was going on in the house. Next morning, the day after Boxing Day, she got her opportunity.

  At about eight o’clock, just after breakfast, she saw an anxious-looking Dr Armitage, shirtsleeves rolled up, working on the pipe in the basement with a blowlamp. The short woman stood on the steps, looking over the railings. With a baby on its way and the pipes frozen (her own well-lagged pipes were not) came Mrs Macfarlane’s chance to forget the code of the southern English. She might have sent a servant with a message but instead stepped over the road herself and courteously asked the pair if there was an emergency, and if they needed to take water from her kitchen.

  As Dr Armitage hesitated, his mother-in-law, who introduced herself as Mrs Warren, accepted with alacrity. ‘I’m sure we would be delighted. I dread using a blowlamp on frozen pipes – it’s so easy to melt the pipe, however careful you are, and then you’re worse off than before.’

  Mrs Macfarlane agreed that this could be the case, and the two women regarded each other with the mutual understanding of those who have seen and dealt with many a frozen pipe and, by the same token, everything else that could go wrong in a household, from rats and mice to unreliable servants and tiles coming off the roof.

  As Dr Henry Armitage agreed that it would be helpful if they could get water from Mrs Macfarlane’s house, a piercing scream could be heard through the front door. Dr Armitage, very worn, looked alarmed and said, ‘My wife – excuse me – I must go to her.’

  Mrs Warren, mother of the suffering woman, showed no sign of moving and seemed much less upset than her son-in-law.

  ‘Well then – whenever you need water, please come to the house,’ said Mrs Macfarlane, and returned to her own home.

  The elderly housekeeper from number 53 came over half an hour later with the maid. Both women carried buckets. Mrs Warren, also carrying a bucket, arrived moments later.

  Mrs Macfarlane, telling her own servants to assist those from number 53 to get water, offered a glass of sherry. Mrs Warren accepted, and sat down in Mrs Macfarlane’s cosy living room before a bright fire with what appeared to be a sigh of relief. Mrs Macfarlane was a little surprised. It seemed odd that with her daughter in such distress she felt able to make herself comfortable at a neighbour’s.

  Mrs Warren explained that the previous day she’d received a telegram from her son-in-law asking her if she would come to London as Bella’s baby was on the way. She’d instantly got a train from her home in Cornwall. ‘And now – frozen pipes,’ she said ruefully. ‘And I’m part of the bucket gang. To think that early on Boxing Day my only anxiety was that my husband might come off his horse at the meet and break a bone…’

  ‘Ah – family life,’ said Mrs Macfarlane in a knowing tone.

  ‘As you say, family life,’ responded Mrs Warren. Her voice held a suggestion of irritation, strange in a mother whose child was suffering the pangs of childbirth for the first time.

  ‘And how is Mrs Armitage?’ enquired Christina Macfarlane.

  ‘She’s uncomfortable,’ Mrs Warren told her, ‘but there’s nothing serious occurring as yet.’

  Since the midwife had been calling for three days, and a specialist had arrived the day before, Mrs Macfarlane found this statement baffling. It could hardly be that the signs of an approaching confinement had been mistaken – the husband was, after all, a doctor. Was the girl’s mother a monster, away from home drinking sherry when her daughter needed her? She offered another drink, and was refused.

  ‘But I feel much the better for your hospitality,’ Mrs Warren said. ‘Thank you. You’re a friend indeed – water for the household and restoratives for the inmates. May I impose on you and your fire for just a few more minutes before I return home?’

  ‘You’re most welcome,’ responded Mrs Macfarlane. ‘Is there anything else I can do to assist you?’

  ‘No – nothing at all, thank you. We’re getting shipshape within. The housekeeper, Dolly Gage, is a very good woman – my old servant, on loan to the young couple to keep them in order during their early years. A new marriage and a new baby are quite enough to contend with, without difficulties with servants who may be unreliable or take advantage of a novice. But my daughter’s approaching confinement has taken its toll, as these things will, so it’s just as well I’m here to do what I can.’ She paused. Then, apparently seeing no harm in explaining to this trustworthy woman a little more of the situation, she added, ‘My daughter and son-in-law were married less than a year ago and, however delightful it is for me to think of a marriage and a grandchild coming close together, it is bound to be something of a shock to a young woman, barely more than a bride, to find she will so soon be a mother.’

  Mrs Macfarlane nodded. A well-brought-up girl, with little knowledge of the coarse realities of life, could be badly unsettled by encountering too many of them too quickly. Before she had adjusted to the carnal side of marriage, not to mention the constant demands of housekeeping for a husband, the need for meals punctually on the table, clean shirts and the like, along came pregnancy, with its trials and tribulations.

  Though that, she thought, hardly explained the shriek she had heard. Perhaps, she frowned, perhaps Mrs Warren may have sensed her confusion. At any rate, she evidently resolved to speak more bluntly.

  ‘Bella is only twenty and rather frightened of the confinement, and indeed of her coming responsibilities.’ She paused, then added, ‘She is young and has always been a little timorous. Perhaps we were too protective of her when she was a child. One does what one thinks best.’

  She stood up to leave. ‘Thank you so much for your kindness.’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Mrs Macfarlane, adding, on the step, ‘If the pipe doesn’t unfreeze, please send for more water.’ As she watched Mrs Warren’s resolute figure go back across the street, she felt she was beginning to understand more about the situation at number 53.

  Evidendy the pipe did unfreeze, for there were no more requests for water, but if that situation resolved itself, there were others which apparently did not.

  The midwife called the next day, and the day after that. The specialist came and left again, but there were still no signs that the house across the street had been blessed with a baby.

  On the evening before New Year’s Day, at about eleven o’clock, Mrs Macfarlane was woken by her maid, who said, ‘I thought I’d best rouse you. I just looked out of my window, and the young lady from across the road is out in the street, alone. And she’s only wearing her nightdress.’

  ‘Good Lord above,’ said Mrs Macfarlane in alarm. She got out of bed and went downstairs quickly. There she put on shoes and a cloak over her nightdress and opened the front door.

  ‘She’s on the steps over there now,’ said the servant, who had young, quick eyes.

  Mrs Macfarlane crossed the street. The poor young woman, her nightdress swollen out in front, a plait of brown hair down her back, was sitting on her own front steps, sobbing. Mrs Macfarlane went up to her. ‘Now, what’s this?’ she asked.

  Bella Armitage looked at her. She sobbed, ‘It hurts.’

  ‘I’m afraid it may,’ responded Mrs Macfarlane. To her maid, who had followed her over, she said, ‘Fanny, will you run up and ring Dr Armitage’s doorbell.’

  Bella moaned, evidently experiencing a pain, and held her stomach. Then she said, like a child, ‘See – it hurts.’

  ‘Well, perhaps you’d be better in your warm bed,’ Mrs Macfarlane said.

  Bella thought about this, and said in the same childish way, ‘They’ll give me something to make it better.’

  Mrs Macfarlane disguised her feelings and made soothing remarks, but she was secretly horrified. It was plain to her that as yet Bella was nowhere near having her baby. If she was so badly affected now, at what looked like the beginning of labour, how on ea
rth would she sustain the rest of it?

  Dr Armitage now appeared on the step, fully dressed, but in slippers, with a cigar in his hand. He looked at Mrs Macfarlane, at the foot of the steps, then at his wife’s back. He took in the sight. ‘Oh my God,’ he exclaimed. ‘Bella, Bella, come in.’ He ran down the steps and crouched beside her on the step.

  ‘I don’t want to,’ she said. Mrs Macfarlane sent her maid home. The girl walked slowly back, stopping and staring over her shoulder from time to time. Eventually Bella was persuaded to go inside. Her husband and Mrs Macfarlane took her arms. As they helped her up the steps, she let out a cry and appealed again for medicine. Mrs Macfarlane stayed in the hall as the couple went upstairs, Bella clinging to the banisters, crying out in pain, saying that she did not want to go to bed.

  Returning to her own house, Mrs Macfarlane met her cousin Hamish on the step. He was first-footing round his Scottish friends and neighbours in London – whether they liked it or not. She invited him in to give him a dram, and consequently overslept the next morning. She was still eating her boiled egg in the dining room when the doorbell rang.

  ‘Mrs Warren,’ announced the servant.

  ‘My goodness – show her in,’ said Mrs Macfarlane. ‘Bring another cup.’

  ‘My dear,’ said Mrs Warren, coming in in a rush, still in her coat and hat. ‘This is a flying visit, to thank you for last night’s kindly intervention – and to tell you,’ she was smiling, ‘Bella has had a little girl.’

  ‘I’m delighted for her, and all of you,’ said Mrs Macfarlane. ‘And is all well with mother and child?’

  ‘It is indeed,’ said the happy grandmother. ‘The baby is big and healthy, and Bella is delighted. The confinement was quite short – the baby was born at six o’clock. She was under anaesthetic for much of the time, of course.’