Orphans of War (34 page)

Maddy nodded meekly. She must try and get up and behave as normal, but her slacks were nowhere to be found and Gloria had vanished. There was nothing to give away their secret. The room was tidy, the sheets
were clean and she had no recollection of getting out of bed, but the dream was spinning in her head; Little Dieter’s sculptured face, lifeless in her arms. Where was he? Her arms ached to hold him again but it was as if he was never born on 3 April 1948.

Alice brought in some tea and a slice of soggy toast. Maddy was hungry and grateful.

‘Gloria’s gone to the Gunns’,’ she said, and sat on the end of the bed. ‘She’ll pop back at dinnertime. She’s such a good mother’s help. How’s your gran doing? We heard she was failing fast.’

Everyone knew everything in Sowerthwaite and the Belfield doings were always a source of speculation. She mustn’t add to the family woes. In one supreme effort of will Maddy got out of bed, trying not to let Alice see the state she was in.

‘Gloria’s dried your clothes…it’s awful when you get caught short,’ smiled Alice. ‘I’ll bring them up if you like.’

She’d never been so grateful in all her life for these simple acts of kindness, or the fact that trusting Alice believed their story. The cover had held. She accepted another pad, hoping it would hold until she got home. Her breasts were sore now. It was an effort to hook herself into her corset, but she must look normal–as if nothing had happened. As if her insides had not ripped open and delivered a life of sorts.

Mustn’t think about that now, but get dressed, gather her stuff and leave a note for Gloria on the kitchen table, asking her to call round.

They must meet up and then she’d know where little
Dieter was and yet she didn’t want to know. Last night was just a blur of pain and fear.

Her mind was racing; confused one minute, relieved the next. What she didn’t know and hadn’t seen wasn’t real. The birth never happened, that was it. Would it be wrong to conceal a birth? Was it a crime? It was all a nightmare and she couldn’t remember. It was as if it had happened to someone else.

Would she get Gloria into trouble? She couldn’t think. It’d never lived so there was no proper birth to disclose. Round and round the excuses, the lies, the images flashed in her fuzzy brain.

The walk back to Brooklyn took every ounce of her strength and all her concentration to put one foot in front of the other. All she could think of was climbing those stairs and creeping under her eiderdown to sleep for a hundred years.

She staggered up the avenue of tears. If it’d lived…What would they have made of this new Belfield, this German-English hybrid? If it had lived would she be making this walk now? Why did she call the thing, it? She didn’t want to recall any of it ever again.

There were cars outside the portico on the gravel drive, black cars and a man in a frock coat came down the stairs and doffed his bowler hat.

‘Ah, Miss Belfield, our deepest condolences on your sad loss,’ he whispered. ‘Sowerthwaite will be diminished by her passing.’

Maddy nodded, not taking in his words at first, but she knew it was Alfred Platt, the joiner, owner of the funeral parlour. Her heart was thudding when she saw
Plum scowling as she came down the stairs. Her lips pinched with disapproval.

‘Where on earth have you been? Staying out all night. As if I hadn’t enough to worry about. Couldn’t you not have stayed at home one more day and seen it through with us?’ she snapped.

‘I was only at Gloria’s. Someone could have rung there,’ she replied. ‘Has Grandma…?’ She couldn’t finish the sentence.

‘This morning, very early and peacefully. We were all at her side but you should’ve been there. It was the least you could do after all she’d done for you.’ Maddy had never seen Plum so vexed and agitated. ‘It’s not like you to let us down. I am disappointed in you.’

‘I’m sorry…’

‘So you should be. I thought you might at least have rung to see how things were, but no, when you young ones get together, there’s no thought for anyone else. I might know Gloria Conley would lead you on.’

‘It wasn’t like that. I had a bad period and she looked after me. I couldn’t move. I get them like that and I fell asleep. I’m so sorry,’ Maddy wept. Tears of sadness, frustration and exhaustion were rolling down her face.

‘You do look a bit off. Never mind,’ Plum sighed. ‘Everything’s under control now that Platts are here, but you’ll need something black for the funeral. At least we can give her the send-off she deserves. Oh, Maddy, I wish you’d been here. It would’ve helped me.’

What was there to say to that? If she had blurted out that while Gran was dying she was giving birth to a dead baby, what good would that do?

‘Would you mind if I had a bath? I’m still feeling a bit wonky,’ Maddy said, gripping the banister rail for dear life. It was the only thing holding her up. ‘Are there any aspirins in the cabinet?’

‘Oh, go and sort yourself out. Then you can help me send out funeral invitations for the service. We’re not going to hang about. Gerald is seeing to it with the vicar. At least we’re both hitched to the same wagon on this one.’

Maddy crept up the stairs, checked the hot-water tank, ran a bath with some Dettol in it. She sank into it slowly, letting the heat warm her through and soothe the soreness.

What was she going to do with her blood-soaked clothes? Then she noticed liquid seeping out of her breasts, trickles of juice for a baby that would never suck, and she wept and wept for all that was lost.

She had never felt so alone, so unloved and unnoticed. It was as if something of her had died with the thing she’d birthed last night. Grandma was gone out of the world at the same time. Had she met her baby in the avenue of tears when she joined all her sons in that far-off country? Were they all looking down in disgust?

She could have bled to death but for Gloria’s care. She ought to thank her but to see her would bring it all back again. For a second she wanted to dunk her head under the bathwater and never come up. Who would care what happened to her now? Dieter didn’t care or know her terrible fate. Plum was angry, Uncle Gerald uninterested. No one had a kind word
for her. She was on her own again. That was nothing new.

It was time to make herself decent, stuffing pads into her brassiere to soak up the flow. She felt so weak it was all she could do to get downstairs and try to look useful. The whole day went by and still she’d not seen Gloria. They must make their stories tally if Plum was on the warpath.

The next few days were taken up with receiving visitors, ringing guests, finding Maddy something to wear, arranging flowers for the church and trying to stay upright.

The funeral took place on the Friday with all the due ceremony befitting a Belfield; a horse-drawn carriage, men in top hats and frock coats walking before the hearse, curtains were closed and flags lowered, the church bell tolled a bell for every one of her years on earth, as was the custom. There were the usual clutch of aged aunts and companions, with sticks and ear trumpets.

The reception was to be at the house. Maddy helped Grace prepare canapés, but outside caterers would see to all the other arrangements. Plum was too busy to talk, Gerald looked distinguished, brisk and brusque with her, but jovial and chirpy with his hunting cronies. It all looked fine on the surface but Plum and Gerry were not speaking to each other.

Maddy was the bridge between the two, relaying messages of condolence. There was no time to visit Gloria and she was hurt that her friend had not bothered to come and check on her.

But maybe she had a point. Better to stay away. The longer they stayed away from each other the easier it was to pretend the birth had never happened. There was nothing to link the two of them. The fact that Maddy looked like death, pale, stumbling and stooping, would be put down naturally to grief.

In her head she thought that the sooner she got back to Leeds and college, the sooner she could put this nightmare behind her–but that gave her no comfort at all.

Somewhere there was a little body laid to rest, hidden away when it should have been here alongside its great grandmother, but that would never happen now.

The Belfield reputation had to be respected and this was no time to draw attention to her own shameful secret.

Gloria went with the Gunns to the funeral, as was expected. The church was full, the vicar droning on about Old Ma Belfield’s virtues, but Gloria could only remember her being a cantankerous old cow, until she recalled that first visit when Mrs Belfield picked her out as one of them by mistake. Thinking she was Maddy.

They were stuck in a side aisle and she didn’t get a chance to speak to Maddy until the handshake at the end.

‘How are you?’ she whispered.

‘I’m fine,’ Maddy blushed, not looking her in the eye. She wore a navy coat with a fur collar, a silly hat
perched on her head like a pillbox, over which a black net veil hid her puffy eyes as if she were royalty.

‘But we have to talk…’

‘I know. Later,’ Maddy said. ‘Not now…not here.’

‘Come over to the hostel and we can sort things out.’

‘What’s there to sort out? You did your best and I’m so grateful, but it’s over with,’ Maddy replied, turning away to greet the next in the line as if she was just some onlooker.

‘But I thought you’d want to know what I did with—’

‘Shush! Not here. People will hear…I have to go.’ Maddy darted from the line-up.

Gloria was puzzled. It was if Maddy didn’t care about any of it now, as if she was pretending it had never happened.

She’d taken a huge risk, thinking on her feet, burying the evidence as best she could, saying a prayer. She’d even baptised him Dieter, just to make sure, like they did in the pictures when a baby died. Now she was being spoken to as if she’d done nothing special.

She wanted to tell Maddy about the nightmares she was having when his little face kept peering up, eyes open, pleading with her to let him breathe. What if he wasn’t dead? Why should she carry the burden when there Maddy was, Lady bloody Bountiful, all airs and graces, greeting the gentry, ignoring her friend as if she was a nobody.

That wasn’t what friends did. They stuck together
through thick and thin. She’d chew off her ear when the funeral was over, tell her what was what.

Maddy owed her big time for concealing this birth. What they’d done couldn’t be ignored. Gloria felt her eyes smarting with tears of frustration. It was like being turned away all those years ago, the childish fear of being rejected for getting the wrong end of a tale, fear of being thought common and silly and of no consequence.

How could they know how hard it was to pull yourself out of the gutter, she thought, distancing herself from Mam and her Peel Street cronies. She’d found a steady job, for starters, and she had ambitions. This wasn’t fair after all she’d done for her. One day she’d put Maddy and all those snooty Belfields in their place. No one was going to put her down again–especially after what she’d just done and what she knew. Gloria was shocked how angry she felt at her friend’s behaviour.

You owe me, Maddy Belfield and one day I’ll make you pay your dues.

Three days later Maddy caught the early morning train back to Leeds in fear of Miss Meyer’s wrath. She’d lost her new briefcase and notes somewhere in the hostel. Search as she could, she’d not found it. Alice had looked under the beds and in the cupboards but it was gone. It was not in Gloria’s room either. It had all her homework in it. Now she’d have to add another lie to her collection of fibs about it being stolen on the train.

She felt hot and cold and shivery, her breasts still solid with stale milk, and she was in agony. In desperation she tied a tight bandage over them to squash them, and that relieved the pain enough so that she could think straight.

It was awful to have avoided Gloria when she called in at the Brooklyn to see her. Maddy’d hid in the stables like a coward until she’d gone. She didn’t want to talk about any of it. It was too terrible to dwell on that fearful night. Now she was running away, sneaking off without saying goodbye, leaving a note for Plum.

This was mean and a poor show, but she felt so drained and miserable, bursting into tears at the slightest thing–hearing music on the gramophone, watching the sun set, the lambs bleating in the fields. No one must see the state she was in, not even Gloria. She was too ashamed and it was agony to be so close to where she and Dieter had made love by the foss, and yet he was so far away now. Memories of happier times flashed into view. She’d written three letters to Dieter confessing what had happened but then tore them up. The price of her freedom must be silence. Now she had to be strong and carry on as if nothing had happened.

Going back to Leeds was like starting afresh in a new place. She was a different person from the one who had left not long ago, growing up overnight into someone colder and more calculating. No one must know the truth. If Gloria said anything she’d deny it all and call her a liar. Gloria had let her down before.
She must get away from her friend in case she was tempted to spill the beans. Maddy’s Brooklyn life was over.

Plum was staying put at the old house but Gerald had gone back to London in a huff. Grandma had made sure of that. Her will was making sure they didn’t divorce or he would lose out on everything. If he remarried, the house and land would revert straight to Maddy and her heirs, and he was furious. Plum was not sure now what she was going to do. None of this made any sense to Maddy.