An Unsuitable Job for a Woman (17 page)

After a couple of minutes, during which Cordelia watched her in silence, she paused satisfied and began smoothing the surface of the grass as if comforting the bones underneath. Cordelia read the inscription carved deep on the headstone.

‘At rest’; the commonest epitaph of a generation to whom rest must have seemed the ultimate luxury, the supreme benediction.

The woman rested back for a second on her heels and contemplated the grave with satisfaction. It was then that she became aware of Cordelia. She turned a bright, much wrinkled
face towards her and said without curiosity or resentment at her presence: “It’s a nice stone, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is. I was admiring the lettering.”

“Cut deep, that is. It cost a mint of money but it was worth it. That’ll last, you see. Half the lettering here won’t, it’s that shallow. It takes the pleasure out of a cemetery. I like to read the gravestones, like to know who people were and when they died and how long the women lived after they buried their men. It sets you wondering how they managed and whether they were lonely. There’s no use in a stone if you can’t read the lettering. Of course, this stone looks a bit top-heavy at present. That’s because I asked them to leave space for me: ‘Also to Annie, his wife, departed this life, …’ and then the date; that’ll even it up nicely. I’ve left the money to pay for it.”

“What text were you thinking of having?” enquired Cordelia.

“Oh, no text! ‘At rest’ will be good enough for the both of us. We shan’t be asking more of the good Lord than that.”

Cordelia said: “That cross of roses you sent to Mark Callender’s funeral was beautiful.”

“Oh, did you see it? You weren’t at the funeral, were you? Yes, I was pleased with it. They made a nice job of it, I thought. Poor boy, he hadn’t much else, had he?”

She looked at Cordelia with benign interest: “So you knew Mr. Mark? Would you be his young lady perhaps?”

“No, not that, but I cared about him. It’s odd that he never talked about you, his old nurse.”

“But I wasn’t his nurse, my dear, or at least, only for a month or two. He was a baby then, it meant nothing to him. No, I was nurse to his dear mother.”

“But you visited Mark on his twenty-first birthday?”

“So he told you that, did he? I was glad to see him again after all those years, but I wouldn’t have pushed myself on him.
It wouldn’t have been right, his father feeling as he did. No, I went to give him something from his mother, to do something she had asked me to do when she was dying. Do you know, I hadn’t seen Mr. Mark for over twenty years—odd, really, considering that we didn’t live that far apart—but I knew him at once. He had a great look of his mother about him, poor boy.”

“Could you tell me about it? It’s not just curiosity; it’s important for me to know.”

Leaning for support on the handle of her basket, Mrs. Goddard got laboriously to her feet. She picked at a few short blades of grass adhering to her skirt, felt in her pocket for a pair of grey cotton gloves and put them on. Together they made their way slowly down the path.

“Important, is it? I don’t know why it should be. It’s all in the past now. She’s dead, poor lady, and so is he. All that hope and promise come to nothing. I haven’t spoken to anyone else about it, but then who would care to know?”

“Perhaps we could sit on this bench and talk together for a time?”

“I don’t see why we shouldn’t. There’s nothing to hurry home for now. Do you know, my dear, I didn’t marry my husband until I was fifty-three and yet I miss him as if we had been childhood sweethearts. People said I was a fool to take on a man at that age but you see I had known his wife for thirty years, we were at school together, and I knew him. If a man’s good to one woman, he’ll be good to another. That’s what I reckoned and I was right.”

They sat side by side on the bench, gazing over the green swathe towards the grave. Cordelia said: “Tell me about Mark’s mother.”

“She was a Miss Bottley, Evelyn Bottley. I went to her mother as under-nursemaid before she was born. There was only little
Harry then. He was killed in the war on his first raid over Germany. His dad took it very hard; there was never anyone to match Harry, the sun shone out of his eyes. The master never really cared for Miss Evie. It was all the boy with him. Mrs. Bottley died when Evie was born and that may have made a difference. People say that it does, but I’ve never believed it. I’ve known fathers who loved a baby even more—poor innocent things, how can they be blamed? If you ask me, it was just an excuse for not taking to the child, that she killed her mother.”

“Yes, I know a father who made it an excuse too. But it isn’t their fault. We can’t make ourselves love someone just because we want to.”

“More’s the pity, my dear, or the world would be an easier place. But his own child, that’s not natural!”

“Did she love him?”

“How could she? You won’t get love from a child if you don’t give love. But she never had the trick of pleasing him, of humouring him—he was a big man, fierce, loud talking, frightening to a child. He would have done better with a pretty, pert little thing, who wouldn’t have been afraid of him.”

“What happened to her? How did she meet Sir Ronald Callender?”

“He wasn’t Sir Ronald then, my dear. Oh, dear no! He was Ronny Callender the gardener’s son. They lived at Harrogate, you see. Oh, such a lovely house they had! When I first went into service there they had three gardeners. That was before the war, of course. Mr. Bottley worked in Bradford; he was in the wool trade. Well, you were asking about Ronny Callender. I remember him well, a pugnacious, good-looking lad but one who kept his thoughts to himself. He was clever, that one, oh he was clever! He got a scholarship to the grammar school and did very well.”

“And Evelyn Bottley fell in love?”

“She may have done, my dear. What there was between them when they were young, who can tell. But then the war came and he went away. She was wild to do something useful and they took her on as a VAD, though how she passed the medical I’ll never know. And then they met again in London as people did in the war and the next thing we knew they were married.”

“And came to live here outside Cambridge?”

“Not until after the war. At first she kept on with her nursing and he was sent overseas. He had what the men call a good war; we’d call it a bad war I dare say, a lot of killing and fighting, imprisonment and escaping. It ought to have made Mr. Bottley proud of him and reconciled to the marriage but it didn’t. I think he thought that Ronny had his eye on the money, because there was money to come, no doubt about that. He may have been right, but who’s to blame the boy? My mother used to say, ‘Don’t marry for money, but marry where money is!’ There’s no harm in looking for money as long as there’s kindness as well.”

“And do you think there was kindness?”

“There was never unkindness that I could see, and she was mad about him. After the war he went up to Cambridge. He’d always wanted to be a scientist and he got a grant because he was ex-service. She had some money from her father and they bought the house he lives in now so that he could live at home when he was studying. It didn’t look the same then, of course. He’s done a lot to it since. They were quite poor then and Miss Evie managed with practically no one to help, only me. Mr. Bottley used to come and stay from time to time. She used to dread his visits, poor darling. He was looking for a grandchild, you see, and one didn’t come. And then Mr. Callender
finished at the university and got a job teaching. He wanted to stay on at college to be a Don or something like that, but they wouldn’t have him. He used to say it was because he hadn’t influence, but I think he may not have been quite clever enough. In Harrogate we thought he was the cleverest boy in the grammar school. But then, Cambridge is full of clever men.”

“And then Mark was born?”

“Yes, on the 25th April 1951, nine years after they were married. He was born in Italy. Mr. Bottley was that pleased when she became pregnant that he increased the allowance and they used to spend a lot of holidays in Tuscany. My lady loved Italy, always had, and I think she wanted the child to be born there. Otherwise she wouldn’t have gone on holiday in the last month of her pregnancy. I went to visit her about a month after she came home with the baby and I’ve never seen a woman so happy. Oh, he was a lovely little boy!”

“But why did you visit her? Weren’t you living and working there?”

“No, my dear. Not for some months. She wasn’t well in the early days of her pregnancy. I could see that she was strained and unhappy and then one day Mr. Callender sent for me and told me that she had taken against me and that I’d have to leave. I wouldn’t have believed it, but when I went to her she just put out her hand and said: ‘I’m sorry, Nanny, I think it would be better if you went.’

“Pregnant women have strange fancies, I know, and the baby was so important to them both. I thought she might have asked me to come back afterwards and so she did, but not living in. I took a bed-sitting room in the village with the postmistress and used to give four mornings a week to my lady and the rest to other ladies in the village. It worked very well, really, but I missed the baby when I wasn’t with him. I hadn’t
seen her often during her pregnancy but once we met in Cambridge. She must have been near the end of her time. She was very heavy, poor dear, dragging herself along. At first she pretended that she hadn’t noticed me and then she thought better of it and came across the road. ‘We’re off to Italy next week, Nanny,’ she said. ‘Isn’t it lovely?’ I said: ‘If you’re not careful, my dear, that baby will be a little Italian,’ and she laughed. It seemed as though she couldn’t wait to get back to the sun.”

“And what happened after she came home?”

“She died after nine months, my dear. She was never strong, as I said, and she caught influenza. I helped look after her and I’d have done more but Mr. Callender took over the nursing himself. He couldn’t bear anyone else to be near her. We only had a few minutes together just before she died and it was then that she asked me to give her prayer book to Mark on his twenty-first birthday. I can hear her now: ‘Give it to Mark when he’s twenty-one, Nanny. Wrap it up carefully and take it to him when he comes of age. You won’t forget, will you?’ I said: ‘I’ll not forget, my darling, you know that.’ Then she said a strange thing. ‘If you do, or if you die before then, or if he doesn’t understand, it won’t really matter. It will mean that God wants it that way.’ “

“What do you think she meant?”

“Who’s to say, my dear? She was very religious, was Miss Evie, too religious for her own good, I sometimes thought. I believe we should accept our own responsibilities, solve our own problems, not leave it all to God as if He hadn’t enough to be thinking about with the world in the state it is. But that’s what she said not three hours before she died and that’s what I promised. So when Mr. Mark was twenty-one, I found out what college he was at and went to see him.”

“What happened?”

“Oh, we had a very happy time together. Do you know, his father had never spoken about his mother. That sometimes happens when a wife dies but I think a son ought to know about his mother. He was full of questions, things that I thought his father would have told him.

“He was glad to get the prayer book. It was a few days later that he came to see me. He asked the name of the doctor who had treated his mother. I told him that it was old Dr. Gladwin. Mr. Callender and she had never had any other doctor. I used to think it a pity sometimes, Miss Evie being so frail. Dr. Gladwin must have been seventy then, and although there were people who wouldn’t say a word against him, I never thought much of him myself. Drink, you know, my dear; he was never really reliable. But I expect he’s gone to his rest long since, poor man. Anyway, I told Mr. Mark the name and he wrote it down. Then we had tea and a little chat and he left. I never saw him again.”

“And no one else knows about the prayer book?”

“No one in the world, my dear. Miss Leaming saw the florist’s name on my card and asked them for my address. She came here the day after the funeral to thank me for attending but I could see it was only curiosity. If she and Sir Ronald were so pleased to see me, what was to stop them from coming over and shaking hands? She as good as suggested that I was there without an invitation. An invitation to a funeral! Who ever heard of such a thing?”

“So you told her nothing?” asked Cordelia.

“I’ve told no one but you, my dear, and I’m not sure why I’ve told you. But no, I didn’t tell her. I never liked her, to tell you the truth. I’m not saying there was anything between her and Sir Ronald, not while Miss Evie was alive anyway. There
was never any gossip and she lived in a flat in Cambridge and kept herself to herself, I’ll give her that. Mr. Callender met her when he was teaching science at one of the village schools. She was the English mistress. It wasn’t until after Miss Evie died that he set up his own laboratory.”

“Do you mean that Miss Leaming has a degree in English?”

“Oh, yes, my dear! She wasn’t trained as a secretary. Of course she gave up the teaching when she started working for Mr. Callender.”

“So you left Garforth House after Mrs. Callender died? You didn’t stay on to care for the baby?”

“I wasn’t wanted. Mr. Callender employed one of those new college-trained girls and then, when Mark was still only a baby, he was sent away to school. His father made it plain that he didn’t like me to see the child and after all, a father has his rights. I wouldn’t have gone on seeing Mr. Mark knowing that his father didn’t approve. It would have only put the boy in a false position. But now he’s dead and we’ve all lost him. The coroner said that he killed himself, and he may have been right.”