Mourning Doves. Helen Forrester

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СКАЧАТЬ discovered one of the household cats asleep on what had been Timothy Gilmore’s chair. He was nuzzling into the animal’s long black fur. It seemed to be tolerating him quite well, so she asked Phyllis if she was comfortable in the chair in which she was sitting. Having been assured ruefully that she was – as far as it was possible to be comfortable in her situation – Celia asked, ‘How many babies do you want to have, Phyllis?’

      Phyllis laughed. She said cynically. ‘I don’t have any say in the matter. They simply come.’

      ‘Does it hurt?’

      ‘Yes – and it makes you so tired afterwards and you want to cry a lot. And husbands don’t like that, of course.’ Phyllis winced under her breath and straightened her back.

      Celia drew a stool towards the fire, so that she could sit close to her friend. ‘Perhaps, when Mr Woodcock progresses in his career, you will be able to have a nanny as well as your maid?’ she suggested. She leaned forward to tug at the bell pull hanging beside the fireplace, to call Dorothy and ask her to bring some coffee.

      Phyllis slowly drew off her black gloves, as she replied, ‘I hope so.’

      Long ago, she had, when Celia had asked her, told her frankly the basic facts of sexual intercourse and that it was a right of a man to demand it of his wife. Poor Phyllis had gone into her marriage totally ignorant of what it implied, and had been so shocked and her husband so clumsy that she had never enjoyed it. She endured it as best she could – and the babies came, and her husband grew ever more irritable and hard to live with. Neither she nor Celia, therefore, had any idea that intercourse could be pleasurable. It was popular to coo over babies and forget what went beforehand.

      Celia did not know the details of Phyllis’s marriage, but she did understand that her friend was worn out and unhappy, and she had long since begun to think that marriage was not quite the happy state that girls were told it was.

      If one had an income of one’s own, she had considered, it would be pleasanter to remain single – except that one could not have a baby, and she herself would love to have just one, like little Eric.

      Phyllis returned to the reason for her visit. ‘How is Mrs Gilmore?’ she asked.

      ‘She seems more herself this morning, a little less exhausted.’

      ‘I was horrified to see the For Sale notice on your gate. Does Mrs Gilmore really want to move?’

      Even to Phyllis, Celia did not feel able to talk of financial problems; it was not the thing. So she said abruptly that the house was far too big and that they were going to renovate a summer cottage that they owned, in Meols. ‘The sea air, you know – Mother thinks it will be good for both of us. My Aunt Felicity left the place to Mother. Father didn’t like it, so it has been let for a number of years. It’s vacant now.’

      Phyllis’s dejected expression lifted a little. ‘How lovely to be able to live by the sea,’ she responded longingly.

      ‘You’ll have to bring the family to visit us, once we’re settled in,’ Celia replied with a sudden glint of enthusiasm. ‘Sea air would do you a world of good.’ She suddenly saw an advantage to living in Meols. She could really give some relief to Phyllis by inviting her out for the day, with the children.

      A sullen Dorothy arrived in response to the bell, and Celia told her to bring a pot of coffee and some biscuits and a glass of milk for Eric.

      

      Celia’s ring had interrupted an anxious conning by Winnie and Dorothy of the Situations Vacant column in The Lady, a magazine devoted to the interests of middle-class families, which included a constant search for competent, cheap domestics.

      Back in the kitchen, while she assembled the tray, Winnie glumly closed the magazine. ‘All the best jobs is in the south. Nothin’ up in the north here at all. We’d better look in the evening paper when it comes.’

      ‘Oh, aye,’ Dorothy agreed, as she quickly measured coffee beans into the grinder and turned the handle vigorously. ‘I were thinking I might try for a waitress’s job. You get tips then.’

      ‘That’s all right if you’ve got a home to go to. If you haven’t, you’ve got to find a room somewhere – and that’ll cost you.’

      ‘I suppose.’ Dorothy whisked the ground coffee into a pot and poured boiling water over it from the kettle kept simmering on the hob. She stirred the coffee and clapped the lid on the pot. Then, as she paused to let the grounds settle, she asked, ‘Do you know where the Missus is? I want to do her bedroom.’

      ‘Lying in her nice warm bath, I’ll be bound – and no hot water left for washing the tiles in the hall. You take the tray up, and I’ll put the big kettle on the fire again.’

      ‘Ta ever so.’

      

      As Dorothy moved a small side table closer to Celia and then set the tray down on it, she took a quick look at Phyllis’s face. Very close to her time, she reckoned knowingly, and this was confirmed by Phyllis’s face suddenly puckering up as the ache in her back became sharper.

      If I were her, Dorothy thought, I wouldn’t be sitting here drinking coffee; I’d be on my way home, I would. It was not her business, however, so she withdrew discreetly, to descend again to the kitchen and share her thoughts with Winnie.

       Chapter Nine

      As Ethel clumped through the hall on her way to the kitchen to get a bucket of clean hot water with which to wash the tiles of the front hall, she heard a high shriek from the breakfast room, followed by the sound of someone bursting into tears. She paused uncertainly, wondering if the Missus and Miss Celia were having a row. Then she remembered that Mrs Woodcock had come on a visit while she had been wiping down the front railings and she wondered if the lady had, perhaps, fallen over the Old Fella’s footstool – and her expecting.

      She put down her bucket, wiped her hands on her sackcloth apron and ran across to the breakfast-room door. Clearly through it, she heard Miss Celia’s agitated voice say, ‘You mean it’s coming?’

      Mrs Woodcock replied tearfully, ‘Yes, dear. The water’s broken. Could you ask Mrs Gilmore to come – quickly? Please!’

      In response to this urgent request, the bell in the kitchen jangled distantly. Ethel tentatively opened the door, to peep round it.

      Mrs Woodcock was writhing and whimpering in the Mistress’s chair. She was gasping, ‘I’m so sorry, Celia. I’m so sorry.’

      In order to remove her visitor’s wide-brimmed hat, Miss Celia was trying to take out Mrs Woodcock’s hatpins, which were pulling at the poor lady’s hair as she turned and twisted.

      Thumb in mouth, Eric was staring at his mother. Then he let out a frightened yell and ran to her, to clutch at her skirt and try to climb on to her knee.

      Dorothy came running through the green baize door at the back of the hall. She inquired of Ethel in a low voice, ‘What’s up?’ She crowded close to the little kitchen maid, her nose twitching nervously as she peered at the breakfast-room door.

      Ethel stepped back from the door СКАЧАТЬ