Freeing Grace (30 page)
I stretch forth my hands unto you; my soul gasps unto you as a
thirsty land.
But for once he felt no friendly answering presence, no hand on his shoulder.
He raged at the unfairness. The cruelty. He demanded answers. But no answer came.
They walked hand in hand on the hills, just the two of them. It would, perhaps, always be just the two of them. They talked and talked, worrying and tearing at their loss, baffled by their sense of powerlessness. They had lunch in a pub that had once been brimming with character. Nowadays the place sported plastic beams, a flowery carpet and three gaming machines. Still, it did decent chicken and chips, and there was a table near the fire. They both needed all the comfort they could get. And still they talked endlessly, round and round the subject, until they were exhausted.
They’d just arrived home when the doorbell rang. David groaned.
Leila went to answer it, considering whether to yell, ‘
Piss off !
’ and slam the door in the caller’s face. That would set the old hens clucking. ‘Have you heard about the curate’s wife? She’s actually gone mad, dear. Yes, completely off the rails. Sad, really.’
It was Elizabeth, waiting patiently on the doorstep, looking steady and composed. She was wearing a silk scarf dyed in the colours of a peacock’s feather.
‘Leila. May I come in?’
Leila nodded, stepping back to let the rector’s wife slip past. ‘I know what you’ve come about. Marjorie Patterson.’
‘Let’s go into the kitchen. I’ve brought a cake. It’s okay, I didn’t make it myself. Bought it at Saturday’s Bring and Buy sale, so it’s probably edible.’
David had rallied enough to put the kettle on. He stood by the bench, obviously trying to appear hospitable and succeeding only in looking strained. ‘Evening, Elizabeth. How nice to see you. Tea, or something stronger?’
‘Stronger, please. It’s been a pig of a day. I had to cover for another teacher who’s been sectioned—she’s in the psychiatric unit, poor girl—and her class was . . . unspeakable.’ Elizabeth shuddered and closed her eyes. ‘Surprised she lasted as long as she did.’
David fished in the fridge with more bustle than usual.
‘Marjorie complained?’ asked Leila, drying three glasses.
‘Inevitably. But I’m told you apologised.’
‘Well, yes. But I was very, very rude to her.’
Elizabeth nodded, gazing at Leila with appraising grey eyes. ‘So I gather. So I . . .
fucking
gather.’ The word gained resonance, somehow, from the masculinity of her voice.
Leila grimaced, and Elizabeth shook her head. ‘It’s not worth it, Leila. I know you feel that your life isn’t your own, that you are public property, constantly hounded by busybodies in flowerpot hats. I know, I’ve been a clergy wife long enough. If you wear jeans, you’re a fast woman. If you wear a skirt, you’re dowdy.’
‘That’s it! That’s it
exactly
.’
‘I’m a very dodgy character myself, you know. I’m not around to open the fêtes-worse-than-death, I make a lousy job of arranging the church flowers—twice left the tap on and flooded the vestry—and I refuse point blank to be Chair of the Women’s Institute. They think I’m downright sinister. Half the female parishioners want to marry Angus themselves, thereby saving him from my vile influence.’
‘The other half want to marry David, to save him from mine.’
Elizabeth inclined her head. ‘It’s a very strange life. But if you’re going to last the distance . . .’
Leila puffed out her cheeks. ‘Okay. Sorry. I’ll send her a card and a box of chocolates.’
Elizabeth gave a sudden shout of laughter. ‘I heard about it at lunchtime. Regaled them with the story in the staffroom, and they all rolled around. You’ve become a folk hero.’
David was standing very straight, twisting the corkscrew with distracted precision. ‘We’d just had some bad news, you see, Elizabeth. Really bad news. The adoption might be off.’
‘Oh, no!’ Elizabeth leaned towards him, taut with concern. ‘What’s gone wrong?’
‘The baby’s grandmother has thrown her hat into the ring.’
‘The
grandmother
?’
‘Apparently,’ sighed Leila, with an uneasy glance at David as he knocked over a glass. ‘And we know the little girl deserves to be with her own family, if possible. That must be the right thing. We ought to wish this woman well. But we can’t be that unselfish, Elizabeth, we just can’t. We’ve been trying all day. And we . . . Well. Actually, we hate her from the very bottom of our hearts.’
David dropped the corkscrew. ‘Why’s she turned up now? Why not before?’
He gulped, searching in his jacket pocket, while Leila wrapped her arms around his neck. Then he pulled out a handkerchief and blew his nose, clearly determined to regain control. ‘Sorry.’
‘It’s all right, David,’ said Elizabeth quietly. ‘You’re allowed.’
David drew a long breath. ‘All these people are playing games. Just games. We were painting the baby’s room. Leila’s handed in her notice. We’ve got the cot, and the blankets, and cupboards full of clothes and toys. In a way she was already a part of our family, d’you see? We were no longer just two, in our own minds. We were three. And now it’s all . . . it’s all a hoax. It’s so cruel to Leila.’
‘To both of you.’ Elizabeth glanced from one to the other. ‘Is this grandmother likely to succeed?’
‘No idea.’ Leila shrugged. ‘The baby’s not local, you see. Another mob has the care of her: they’re the ones who have let this happen.’
‘Which region?’
‘We’re not allowed to know. When Linda—at our end—gave them a piece of her mind they became very defensive and said it was down to their legal department.
They’ve
told them they have to give the woman a chance.’
‘So they’ve shifted responsibility onto some lawyer sitting in an office?’
‘That’s right. We don’t really understand how it works, and nobody seems prepared to tell us.’ Leila’s eyes were bright with bewilderment.
‘It’s quite appalling,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Maybe you ought to get on to our MP.’
‘Will he help?’
‘Probably not.’
David was calm now. ‘We’ve been talking about it all day. We wondered about going to a solicitor, or maybe taking our clothes off and chaining ourselves to the railings down at the town hall . . . just joking. We honestly believe that all we can do at the moment is wait, pray and—’
‘—murder Grandma,’ snapped Leila. ‘Interfering old bag.’
‘Unfortunately we can’t actually do that, since we’ve no idea who or where she is.’ David forced a smile. ‘So we’ve decided to sit tight while they decide. But if there’s any more cat-and-mouse games, we’re not playing. We’re going to tell them we’re not having the baby.’
‘That’s very understandable.’ Swiftly, Elizabeth glanced at the clock and drained the rest of her glass. ‘I’ll love you and leave you. I’ve taken up enough of your day—don’t want Leila to tell
me
to piss off too.’
The two women paused on the front doorstep.
‘I’m psyching myself up to phone my parents,’ said Leila, peering out anxiously into the gloom. ‘I’m dreading it. Poor Mum. She was as thrilled as we were.’
‘They’ve already left for Nigeria?’
Leila nodded. ‘This morning. No bad thing, really. Otherwise I’d go rushing down to Peckham and howl on their shoulders, and that wouldn’t be fair.’
‘When are you going to tell them?’
‘I’ll give them a day to recover from the journey. But I must do it soon—definitely before the wedding on Saturday—or Mum will have half of Lagos sending baby presents.’
‘Your parents have lived,’ said Elizabeth calmly. ‘They will be more resilient than you’re expecting. You concentrate on yourself and David.’
There was a pause. Elizabeth gazed up at the billowing brown velvet of the city night. ‘Leila.’
Leila hovered politely, holding the door, wanting to return to David.
‘I know you feel that this was your last chance,’ said Elizabeth. ‘I’m not going to suggest you’ll get over it. We both know you won’t.’
‘Thank you.’ Leila was genuinely grateful.
‘But I think you will have a full life.’
‘Oh.’ Leila sagged as though under an immense weight, exhausted by the need to be understood. ‘That’s all very well . . . I accept it’s irrational and mediocre and unimaginative to want a baby. But—’
‘No.’ Elizabeth held up a hand. ‘No. That’s not my point.’
‘It’s not something I can explain easily to you,’ persisted Leila. ‘You’ve had four children.’
‘Not so, actually.’ Elizabeth turned over a pebble with one toe. ‘I’m not the mother of Angus’s children.’
Leila stepped down onto the path, shutting the door sharply behind her. ‘I don’t think I quite . . .’
‘When I was a young teacher,’ said Elizabeth, ‘I married a man called Guy Nelson. Dashing, dramatic figure. The stuff of Mills and Boon. But . . .’ She hesitated and then smiled. ‘Guy didn’t want children. It was a stipulation of our marriage. Not negotiable. He insisted that he was too selfish, that the world was already overpopulated, we would have richer lives without them, they would spoil our remarkable partnership. I was utterly crazy about this man, deranged, wanted nothing more than to be with him forever and ever.’ Elizabeth turned away, looking at a pair of black plastic dustbins, shadowy under the hedge.
‘We had a wonderful marriage: seventeen years of it. Guy was a brilliant engineer, and we travelled all over the world. Thailand, the Middle East, Australia . . . We lived the high life, I can tell you. Parties, yachts, far too much alcohol. Hard for you to believe?’
Some part of Elizabeth—of who she really was
—
fell into place in Leila’s mind. The rector’s wife appeared through a new lens, the flat image springing abruptly into three dimensions.
‘No,’ she replied. ‘Not hard at all.’
‘I stuck to my side of the bargain and we never had children. I very soon gave up trying to change Guy’s mind. It wasn’t good—I had three bouts of depression, diagnosed and treated. Broke my poor mother’s heart too, but I adored the man—
adored
him—and we had a colourful, stimulating life.’
Elizabeth blinked at the dustbins, eyes narrowed in memory. ‘I was forty-three when Guy fell in love with the daughter of a friend of mine. Candy. Inevitable, somehow, that she should be called something sugary. I was the last to find out, of course—everyone knows everything in these expatriate communities. Guy told me that he had to go because young Candy was the love of his life and their star signs were compatible and they were meant to be together.’
‘
Bastard
!’ Leila shifted suddenly, and pebbles ground under her feet.
‘It gets worse,’ said Elizabeth, meeting her eyes.
‘They didn’t.’ Leila shook her head rapidly. ‘No. Tell me they didn’t.’
‘Got it in one.’
‘How many?’
‘Three. All boys.’
Leila did a passable imitation of an erupting volcano. ‘I hope you took him to the cleaners?’
‘I got the house.’ Elizabeth looked disparaging. ‘Complete with mortgage and dodgy foundations. We hadn’t saved much—too profligate. Guy kept his precious pension.’
Leila folded her arms censoriously.
‘But spare the chap a little sympathy, Leila,’ urged Elizabeth. ‘He’s a complete wreck, lost half his hair, going deaf, looks about eighty. He phones from time to time, moaning about how noisy and messy and expensive his sons are. Reckons he won’t be able to retire until he’s dead. Candy keeps making him go for facelifts and they hurt, apparently.’
‘Good,’ spat Leila.
Elizabeth’s profile was mottled in the streetlights. ‘It isn’t easy,’ she mused, head tilted as if listening to herself. ‘It’s not an easy thing to forgive. The aridity, you know. The loss. The loss.’ She paused. ‘I sometimes think my children were conceived when I was a child myself—conceived in my imagination—and now I’ve lost them. They’ve died.’
‘Yes,’ whispered Leila. ‘I know exactly what you mean. It’s a bereavement.’
‘I can’t pretend to be without regret.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Leila, hating the limp words, wishing she had better ones. She imagined her friend, childless and abandoned in middle age. ‘What did you do?’
‘Reinvented myself,’ replied Elizabeth, simply. ‘Went back to teaching. I had little choice. I was certainly older, and I hope I was wiser. I lavished my time and energy on other people’s children. It was a difficult time . . . my mother fell ill and I nursed her until she died. I met Angus several years later. A divorced vicar. Caused a sensational scandal. Of course, by then it was far too late to have a family of my own.’
‘I’m . . .’ Leila shook her head, defeated. ‘I didn’t know.’
‘We don’t broadcast it.’
‘Where’s Angus’s ex?’ asked Leila, overcome by curiosity.
‘Paula.’ Elizabeth grimaced in wry sympathy. ‘She couldn’t stand it when he went into the church. Well, d’you blame her? I certainly don’t. Ran off with a rich farmer. It’s all very amicable. Their children were almost grown up when we met.’
‘The church let Angus remarry?’
‘Oh, yes.’ Elizabeth nodded. ‘Quietly. We had a compassionate bishop. We’ve been married ten years.’
‘It’s not what I imagined,’ said Leila. ‘Not at all. I had you two down as solid and conventional. Christening photos, family holidays, silver wedding.’
‘It’s not what I imagined either.’ Elizabeth chewed her lip, then gave a small shrug. ‘My point is that you can still have a fulfilling life. And I
do
actually know what I’m talking about.’ She gathered the peacock silk around her neck. ‘And now I must go. You need to be with David.’
‘Elizabeth.’ Leila stepped forward, wanting to acknowledge the story somehow.
But the older woman waved her away. ‘You two should get started on that cake.’ She opened the gate and then looked back, grinning mischievously. ‘You’ll find she bakes a fine sponge, does Marjorie Patterson.’
When I rolled out of bed, the house was unusually quiet. I stooped to take a look through the low window, rubbing a hole in the condensation.
Outside, the countryside lay unconscious in mist. Nothing stirred. No birds sang. The world seemed to be having a sleep-in. Beyond the garden, ploughed fields merged into white gloom. I looked down at the veggie patch where rows of cabbages crouched, lifeless on the damp earth. I felt like one of them. I had to get moving. I couldn’t become a permanent accessory of the Harrison family.