The Very Thought of You (26 page)

“Would you like to stay in here for a while? You don’t have to go to lessons this afternoon—”

Her head was ringing with odd phrases.
No more Latin, no more French, no more sitting on the old school bench.
At least I’ll miss my maths lesson, she thought.

“I’m fine now,” she said to Mr Ashton, attempting to look up, hoping the laughter would not sweep back. “I’ll go now.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, thank you,” she said, standing.

Her polite smile stung him: did etiquette really oblige her to thank him for reporting her mother’s death?

“Just remember to ask if we can help you with anything—”

She was fidgeting to get away now. Should he keep her back, not let her go, give her a biscuit, or what? She handed back the handkerchief.

“Please – keep it,” He said, and she backed off, trying to leave the room now, thanking him again for the handkerchief, which she clutched into a crumpled ball in her hand.

She was lucky not to meet anyone as she ducked out into the gardens, then escaped into the woods. Her breathing was shallow, but she ran without stopping until she reached her favourite old aspen grove. Nobody was watching. She hunkered down there on her own, and got back her breath as she folded the handkerchief into neat squares.

Then she just sat there, shaking with laughter. She did not know why.

* * *

Anna only emerged from the woods for tea. Facing the enquiring eyes of the other children, that would be daunting.
She went into the dining room knowing they would have been told about her news.

“Where have you been?” asked Katy Todd.

“In the woods.”

“You missed maths. Fractions.”

“I know. I can’t do fractions.”

“Shall I help you with them?” chipped in another child.

“I could help you,” said another.

Help with fractions. A dead mother.

She could see it in the avid faces of the other children, their guilty fascination to know what it might feel like to lose your mother. A part of her felt strangely important: an aristocrat of grief. But she felt self-conscious and exposed too. She was lucky that Miss Weir suddenly appeared and swept her up.

“Would you like to come and pick some tomatoes with me? The cook has asked me to fetch her some.”

She went with her gladly.

They set out down the drive to the Victorian glasshouse. Miss Weir walked in a calm rhythm, putting Anna at ease.

“You know, the Ashtons were amongst the first families in England to enjoy hothouse flowers and fruits.”

“Why was that?”

“They had an enlightened gardener. He gave them oranges, figs and grapes. And the gentlemen in those days always had carnations for their buttonholes.”

“But we’re picking tomatoes?”

“Well, carnations would hardly be the thing now, Anna.”

She laughed, and Anna relaxed. They reached the glasshouse, muggy with stale heat and an odd stench of overripe fruit. Anna plucked the tomatoes for Miss Weir; she placed them in her basket, then locked the rusty door behind them.

Their way back home was uphill, and neither spoke. But as they passed the last bend of the drive, Miss Weir turned and looked at Anna with her calm, gentle face.

“If you ever want to talk about your mother, Anna, please do come to me. Don’t forget that we’re always here to help you—”

Anna was shaken by her teacher’s gaze. Gratitude welled up in her, and for a moment she was connected with her deepest feelings, making her eyes fll up. But she clenched up her face, and they walked back up to the school, with Miss Weir quietly pointing out wild flowers which Anna had never noticed before.

It was not until three nights later, once the other children had got used to her news and no longer whispered as she passed, that she cried in her bed at night, trying to remember her mother’s face.

She could not remember the last words they had ever said to each other. Had she not just cried at their last parting? She thought,
there were so many things I would have liked to tell you.

Anna would never know if her mother had got her most recent letter. Worse still, she could not remember where she had put her mother’s last letter. She had read it a couple of times, but could hardly recall anything in it now. A new dance band playing at the BBC. Wondering if the spring sunshine was as fine in Yorkshire as it was in London. Was that it?

She thought,
I never said goodbye. I will never see her again. I will never send her the picture I’ve been drawing in art.

She did not dare to ask the teachers about a funeral, because she guessed they would have told her if there was one to go to. What would her father think? Would they call him back from Africa?

For days she searched for her mother’s final letter, but it was not in any locker or desk or anywhere she could think of. Every morning, she looked again. But it was gone.

Instead, she carried around Mr Ashton’s white handkerchief as the token of her loss.

45

As he feared, Thomas sometimes said Ruth’s name in his sleep. For so long Elizabeth had been too drunk to notice such things, but one night she heard him. It puzzled her, and she began to be watchful.

It had not occurred to her that Thomas could feel anything for another woman. But now she began to observe that he was exuding private contentment, that he was warm and animated when talking to Ruth at lunch. That they studiously avoided each other’s eyes.

Was there some kind of complicity between them? Ruth seemed such a prim and formal girl that Elizabeth found it hard to believe that she would dare to flirt with her husband.

But she was curious now. She started to lure Thomas once more into lovemaking at night, and found him responsive and passionate. But she saw that he closed his eyes, and she wondered if his desire was fired by thoughts of another body, another woman.

She observed the young teacher. Ruth was unflashionable and awkward, and without obvious allure – how could she appeal to Thomas? But a part of Elizabeth grew jealous, because she knew that Ruth was intelligent. She was unwilling to admit that men might be drawn to female cleverness – and yet she could see that Thomas enjoyed his solemn, bookish conversations with the young teacher.

At lunch, one day, she could not resist complimenting Ruth on the very ordinary dress that she was wearing.

“It looks so pretty on you,” she said. Ruth blanched, and sensed the malice. Thomas did not register the insult.

After the distress caused by Pawel’s departure, Elizabeth had slowly begun to revive. She had taken over the school’s practical management once again, and derived a new stimulus from this work. But she was capable of caustic impatience with those who irritated her; there was a bitter self-sufficiency in her which was forbidding to kitchen staff and teachers alike. The children were generally spared her sarcasm, and sometimes she would jest with them in their break times. But they were wary of her too, knowing that her mood could suddenly darken for no obvious reason, when she would turn abruptly and walk away.

Thomas dreaded his wife’s random acts of petty violence. Sometimes these flared up when she was frustrated by one of their conversations in the bedroom. Or sometimes they were dredged from the resentful vortex of her silence. Suddenly she would smash a perfume bottle on the floor, or a china dish, just wanting to break something, unable to resist her own streak of high drama. Then she would coolly walk away, to do other things, leaving the splinters of glass or porcelain scattered around.

Perhaps it was the chilly equilibrium of their marriage which provoked her, or perhaps she feared that Ashton Park wouldn’t always be filled with evacuated children. By the autumn of 1942, the tide of the war appeared to be turning at last: the Allies had triumphed at El Alamein, and Hitler’s army was haemorrhaging men in Russia, outnumbered by Stalin’s apparently limitless forces.

But there were still frequent casualties on the home front, keeping the evacuees at Ashton. In January, the papers reported
the tragedy of A school near London which was bombed as the children watched a performance of
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
. The school collapsed under a direct hit, and twenty-three schoolgirls were killed, together with four teachers. Parents worked through the night with defence workers to recover the children’s bodies. “
Charles Alford, a gunner on leave, came to the school to find the corpse of his four-year-old daughter Brenda carried out from the debris
,” read Thomas, stricken by such random young deaths.

Bomb blasts were never more than a distant echo at Ashton, but there were occasional domestic mishaps. Two boys were playing a vigorous game of badminton in the Marble Hall one Saturday morning, when their shuttlecock hit the chandelier wire with particular force, putting the final stress on a fixture which had been quietly disintegrating for a hundred years. There was an ominous noise. The boys paused warily, then ran to one side as the chandelier came crashing down and shattered on the marble floor. The sound of breaking glass reverberated through the entire house.

Thomas heard the noise, and hurried over to see what had happened. Stunned children lingered at the edge of the hall, staring at a sea of smashed crystal. Slivers of glass had scattered into every corner. He saw Elizabeth appear at the other side, followed by Ruth.

Elizabeth took charge and called for brooms and buckets. From the gallery above the hall, Anna and the others gazed down onto the glinting shards. The carcass of the chandelier lay inert on the floor, with coloured lights shimmering through its prisms in a show of pointless magic. The glass crunched underfoot, and tinkled when brushed away.

For months afterwards, the children were always finding tiny splinters of glass in every far-flung corner of the house, carried there on the soles of their shoes.

* * *

Ruth was unnerved by the broken chandelier; she took it as a sign. How long could she and Thomas go on as lovers before the whole precarious edifice of his life came crashing down? She was afraid of Elizabeth and her cool hard glances.

Nonsense, said Thomas; it was just an old wire. But he, too, was anxious to find a way forwards. He had no wish to continue hiding Ruth as his mistress, but he wanted to be sure that she really did want to be with him. Had their consummation marked the end of an infatuation or the beginning of a deeper bond? The months went by, and it felt to him as if they were growing closer to each other all the time.

But he still worried about the difference in their ages, and about his disability. He knew she ought to have children of her own, and that he should put her off, really, not let her get stuck with him through a sense of honour. Yet he sensed that sometimes odd love, unexpected love, could create a deeper union. At least so he tried to tell himself.

From the library window, he watched her in the gardens one day. There was a spring in her step and a freedom in her shoulders as if she had thrown off a burden.

Ruth had not yet told him that she had missed her period. At first she thought nothing of being a few days late. But the days passed and her breasts felt faintly enlarged and no release came.

The next time they were together, he read her unease, and the dread rose up in him that she was trying to part from him. She sensed his fears, so she blurted it out, that she was late, might be pregnant.

She looked anxiously into his face, but saw only a spontaneous flash of joy there.

“That’s the most wonderful news I could ever hope for—”

“I thought you might be worried about a scandal.”

“Do you think anyone who has longed for a child cares a thing about that? It’s
miraculous
news – a child, with you. It’s more than I could ever have wished for,” He added, jubilant.

If he could give her children, then they could be together. It was that simple. He embraced her for the first time with the feeling that he could offer her a future: she could be his, now. He could not believe his good fortune as he kissed her.

Ruth went to the hospital in York, where her pregnancy was confirmed. Thomas felt an overwhelming urgency now to be firee for her, before it showed. But he dreaded the conversation which he knew he must have with Elizabeth. He rehearsed it endlessly in his mind. No time seemed right. The days ticked away until he could postpone it no longer.

One spring afternoon in 1943 he asked his wife to meet him in his study. She knew something was wrong when she stepped into the room and he asked her to close the door. He wheeled himself forwards and tried to look at her.

“There’s something I need to talk to you about.”

“Go on,” she said, waiting.

“I’ve been putting off this conversation because I didn’t want anyone to be unhappy. But Elizabeth, I think the time has come to try... parting.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’d like us to separate.”

“But why?”

“Because our marriage has drifted to... to an end, and there is still time for both of us to – start again, find somebody else.”

“What is this all about?”

“I just think the time has come to face our mutual differences.”

“You’re not being truthful. You mean
you
want to be free. I don’t want that.”

“Surely you do?”

“I don’t.”

“You would feel released if you weren’t locked in with me.”

“You’re making excuses, Thomas.”

She waited for an answer, but when none came she pressed on.

“There’s somebody else, isn’t there? Go on, say it.”

He was surprised. She knew.

“And what if there is?”

“Do you think I haven’t noticed you watching your little schoolmistress? She’s pathetic.”

He ignored the provocation, and resisted the temptation to mention Pawel. He simply wanted his fireedom, with as much dignity for them both as was possible.

“Whatever the circumstances, I am asking you for a divorce.”

“I don’t want to give you one.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re my husband and I love you.” She said this with fierce sarcasm, but he knew it was true, too, in a strange way.