Mourning Doves (20 page)

‘I have the books, of course, that Mrs Jowett lent me, as a rough guide to the age of what I have. She said to set the price at the most you feel you can get, and come down very slowly if someone is interested in a piece.’

‘She would know.’ Betty stared at the wild conglomeration before her. She herself did not know how to advise her friend. She suggested, ‘I think there are one or two second-hand furniture shops in Berry Street, at the top of
Bold Street. You could go in and ask the price of anything that looks familiar to you. You might get some ideas.’

Celia agreed and, almost reluctantly, they locked up and went back to the office.

Celia looked worried. ‘I could always get an auctioneer, I suppose,’ she said.

Betty tried to cheer her up. ‘An auctioneer will just get what he can for you. Out here, where there are so many high-class homes, such auctions always draw antique dealers and they bid low. Unless you’re desperate for money, don’t try to hurry the selling. Learn a bit first.’

‘Mother is sure that we are poor as church mice, Betty. But Cousin Albert believes that we shall manage quite well once the house is sold. And I must say that I have been agreeably surprised at how much we have managed to do with what little money Mother had. And Edna has promised to help.’ She stopped, and then said with a rueful grin, ‘I’m the only one who doesn’t have a bean.’

‘Perhaps you could get a job.’

‘Me? How could I? I don’t know anything. Anyway, Mother wouldn’t let me – I’ve got to sell that barnful first, because Mother’s not going to stir a finger, as far as I can see. And it can’t stay here for ever.’

‘I don’t see why your mother can’t help you.’

‘You have to remember that she’s bereaved.’

‘So is everybody,’ responded Betty a little sharply, as she thought of her husband lying in a mass grave at Messines Ridge.

Celia bit her lower lip. ‘Of course. I know, Betty.’ Betty was so brave, she thought wistfully. She sighed, and said that she would come over in a couple of days, to make an inventory of the furniture, before pricing it. ‘If I’ve got everything listed in a notebook I can put a likely price by each piece. So that I don’t get flummoxed.’

Betty tried to pull herself together by concentrating on Celia’s problems. Before she replied, she told herself for
the umpteenth time that it was no good moping about David; it wouldn’t bring him back. With forced gaiety, she teased, ‘A notebook sounds most professional. We’ll make a businesswoman of you yet!’

Celia laughed, and they stood talking for a few minutes amid the busy whirl of the yard, before Celia reluctantly said goodbye.

Holding young Timothy George against her shoulder, Phyllis answered her front door herself. Two-year-old Eric, his cheeks stained by recent tears, clung to her skirt. Phyllis’s careworn face lit up as she saw Celia, and she stepped back to make way for her friend to enter the narrow malodorous hall. ‘Come in – come in, dear,’ she said. ‘How nice of you to come such a long way. How are you?’

She opened the door of a tiny front sitting room, which had the dank airlessness of a room not much used, and, as Celia responded politely to her inquiry, she led the way in.

‘Do sit down, Seelee. I’ll ask Lily to make some tea for us.’

She hastened kitchenwards, while Eric, with his finger in his mouth, stood in the doorway and stared at the visitor.

Prior to taking a tram out to West Derby, Celia had walked rapidly down Lord Street, Church Street and Bold Street to take a quick look in the windows of the one or two furniture shops that she found; as she went along, she jotted down prices in her notebook.

Near St Luke’s Church, she had found two second-hand furniture shops. She ventured shyly into both, and even more shyly asked the prices of one or two pieces amid their dusty stock, which were similar to those her mother owned; they had little of the quality of her mother’s furnishings or of the style of Mrs Jowett’s stock. She stored away the information that second-hand shop owners did not seem
to mind if you just wandered round and looked at what they had. Her inspection made her realise that there was quite a difference between second-hand and antique shops.

She was both tired and late by the time she arrived at Phyllis’s house, and she sat down thankfully in a pretty Victorian armchair. The room was familiar to her from many visits, when the friends had often shared their doubts and unhappinesses with each other – not many happinesses, thought Celia a little sadly.

She smiled at Eric and invited him to come to sit on her lap.

Eric refused to budge from the doorway until his mother returned to sit opposite her guest. As he moved close to Phyllis and rested his head against her arm, she laid Timothy George in her lap. He was awake, so Celia asked if she might nurse him.

‘Of course you can,’ Phyllis said and carefully laid the child in Celia’s arms. ‘And how is dear Mrs Gilmore?’ she asked with brittle brightness.

Celia chucked little Timothy George under his chin and he kicked his tiny feet quite happily at the attention. Celia sighed at the thought of her mother. She replied, ‘She’s a little depressed at leaving her old home – and she misses Papa very much.’

‘Naturally,’ Phyllis responded politely, though she could not imagine that one would miss a husband very much.

The conversation threatened to languish. It was disappointing to Celia, who was used to Phyllis’s pouring out the latest news about the small ills of her brood or about her husband’s complaints. She never knew how to deal with the latter, but, in talking the matter out comfortably with Celia, Phyllis had always seemed to gain fresh courage. Today, however, she seemed absent-minded, as if she could not bring her thoughts to bear on what her visitor was saying.

Celia smiled down at the baby and inserted a finger into
his tiny hand. The child grasped it, and Celia laughed. Before the organisation of the move to the cottage had fallen on to her shoulders and absorbed most of her time, she had managed to run over to see the new baby only once. It did not seem to have grown much so she now asked, ‘Is he gaining weight all right?’

‘I think so. My milk isn’t coming in as well as it should, and he doesn’t like the cow’s milk with which I supplement it.’

Celia made a face at the baby. ‘Poor Timothy George!’ Her eyes were on the child, and she did not see the fleeting despair of his mother’s expression.

Lily, the Woodcocks’ cook-general, pushed the door open with her backside. She eased Eric out of the way with a nudge from her bent knee, and set the tea tray down on a small table in front of his mother. The maid’s apron was crumpled and grubby, and, as she straightened up, she pushed untidy bits of hair back off her face with her forearm. ‘Will I be cutting the bread and butter for Christopher and Alison’s tea now?’ she asked, her accent sounding thick and ugly as if she had a cold. ‘They’ll be coming in from school soon.’

Phyllis replied mechanically. ‘Yes, please. Open the new pot of plum jam for them.’

‘When can Eric go to school?’ Celia asked.

‘When he is three – in September.’

‘That should give you a little more time to yourself, with only baby Timothy at home.’

‘I suppose.’

Celia wanted to bring up Edna’s advice that it was not necessary to have babies one after the other. Though she felt that it was momentous news, she did not know how to open the subject; it was not something for a single lady to talk about. It savoured of wicked private subjects.

Instead, she said brightly, ‘During the school holidays, you should bring the children out to visit us. We could
have a picnic on the shore, and they could paddle.’ Maybe Edna could talk more frankly to Phyllis and tell her exactly how a steady flow of infants could be brought to a halt.

Phyllis said, ‘Thank you,’ without expressing any particular enthusiasm for seaside picnics.

Celia looked at her friend uneasily. ‘Are you all right, Phyllis? Do you feel recovered from having Timothy?’

Phyllis smiled slightly. ‘Not quite. I am rather tired, Seelee dear. Timothy has not yet learned to sleep the night through, and Arthur gets so cross when I have to keep getting up to attend to the child.’

Celia knew only too well Arthur Woodcock’s cold, whining voice. She had always wondered what had attracted Phyllis to him – and, in fact, Phyllis herself did not seem to know.

Celia had often thought that, fearing being single all her life, Phyllis had done what most girls did and had accepted the first offer of matrimony which she had received from a man with prospects. According to his wife, bearing in mind the number of bank staff who had been killed in the war, Arthur certainly had reasonable prospects of promotion. She had remarked, ‘He was fortunate that his weak chest kept him out of the army.’

Phyllis had, during an earlier visit, mentioned that women who had served as bank clerks during the conflict were not being encouraged to stay on. ‘I expect they will be glad to be at home again,’ she had said idly.

It was a most unsatisfactory visit. Celia was unable to re-establish their usual freedom together. She told Phyllis how pretty the cottage looked and how kind Betty Houghton and Mr Fairbanks had been to her, about the shocking naked swimmers in the sea, and the putting in of a bathroom and hot water. It all came out higgledy-piggledy, and Phyllis listened politely and said, ‘Indeed?’ or ‘How dreadful!’ or ‘How wonderful!’ in all the right places, but there was no true reciprocation.

After twenty minutes and a cup of tea, a puzzled Celia gave up. She kissed the baby and carefully handed him back to his mother. She bent down to kiss a reluctant Eric, who turned his face away and clung to Phyllis.

‘I must go. Goodbye, dear. Don’t get up. I’ll see myself out.’ She put her arms round the little mother, and kissed her on the cheek. ‘I’ll come again soon.’

She was thankful to be out in the fresh air. During the train journey back to Meols, however, she worried about her old friend. That she herself had changed greatly since her father’s death did not occur to her.

When she had gone, Phyllis leaned back in her chair and burst into tears. She was in a state of numb terror that she might be pregnant again. Arthur was not a patient man and he had forced himself upon her nightly for the past two weeks. It had hurt her physically; her pleas for a little longer to rest between babies had been ignored. His lack of consideration had hurt even more.

At home, Celia found Edna peacefully reading a novel in front of the living-room fire. The room looked tidy; the table was already laid for the evening meal. There was no sign of her mother, and as she took off her jacket, she inquired where she was.

Edna looked up with a grin. ‘She’s resting. She’s had a busy day.’

Celia’s conscience smote her.

‘What happened?’

‘Well, I persuaded her to go to the village and order some groceries and buy some meat, and so on. She was most put out, because she was refused credit – she’s used to having weekly bills from the butcher and grocer, as you know.’

‘Oh, dear! Didn’t she have any money with her?’

‘Yes, I gave her some – she would not believe me that,
as a stranger, they wouldn’t trust her. I told her, also, that she must get her bank account transferred from Liverpool to the local branch here, so that she can easily draw money when she wants it. She didn’t like the idea of having a strange bank manager to deal with – said she would prefer to go to Liverpool each time she needed money.’

‘What did you say?’

‘I didn’t say anything. Let her learn how inconvenient it is going to be.’ She saw the shocked look on Celia’s face at this remark, and she sounded defensive as she added, ‘It’s no good, Celia, she simply has to change her ideas – we all have to. We are facing a new world, and we’ve nobody to help us, except ourselves.’

A sharp lance of fear of the unknown, the unpredictable, shot through poor Celia. She had already had too much of having to make decisions, of treading nervously along unknown paths, as she arranged for the cottage to be made habitable.

It had been a tremendous struggle for her. Her life had always been ordered by her parents, her slightest suggestion immediately crushed, and she had learned early to accept numbly all that they decided. Now her father was not there to order – and her mother had become a lamenting, pitiful heap.

She glanced round the cosy, crowded room as she sank down into her mother’s easy chair. Suddenly, the room seemed to spread out its arms and offer her sanctuary – and she realised that she had organised it all herself. She had created this sense of comfort. A good odour of cooking had now been added to it by someone else.

Swallowing her fears, she said to her sister, with a nervous laugh, ‘It smells as if everything fell out all right.’

‘It did. The stuff she bought was delivered this afternoon by various errand boys, and she made a chicken pie – which is in the oven. And I managed to make a bread and butter pudding, which is also in the oven.’

Celia was dumbfounded. ‘I would never have had the courage to push Mother into doing anything she didn’t want to do,’ she said flatly. ‘Quite frankly, I took it for granted that I would have to do everything, now that we have no servants.’

Edna patted her knee. ‘Oh, no. We’ll try to share the work fairly. I’ve had enough of that kind of nonsense. I enjoyed tidying up this morning, and talking to Dorothy and to Mr Fairbanks when I saw him in his front garden. He inquired how you were, by the way. And Dorothy did, too. She made a good job of the shed, though I saw her hanging around talking over the hedge to Eddie Fairbanks for quite a while.’

At the mention of Mr Fairbanks, Celia felt a small twinge of jealousy. He was her friend, not Edna’s or Dorothy’s. She managed to respond by saying politely, ‘That was very kind of him to inquire about me.’ Her mind, however, quickly reverted to her mother, and she suggested that they must see that Louise got a rest each afternoon.

‘Of course. But the busier she is, the less time she has to grieve.’

Edna put down her book and stood up. She took down a small brown business envelope from the mantelpiece, and dropped the missive into Celia’s lap. ‘Mr Aspen’s yard boy came down on his bike to deliver this to you,’ she said.

As she picked up the letter and looked at her name on it, Celia felt her nervousness return; nobody ever wrote to her except Great-aunt Blodwyn, who wrote meticulously at Christmas, Easter and on Celia’s birthday.

Celia wondered why Betty could possibly need to write to her. She had seen her only that morning, and she had already received a statement from her with regard to the work done on the cottage; though the sum involved had seemed reasonable to her and there was a note on the bill that arrangements could be made to pay by monthly
instalments, she had not yet had the courage to give the account to her mother.

She fumbled as she tore open the envelope.