The September Girls (17 page)

‘In what way?’

‘I thought you would want us to set up home together. I thought you loved me, you said so often enough. I love
you
.’ She was doing her utmost not to cry and was angry with herself when she felt two tears trickle down her cheeks. She wiped them away with her sleeve and willed no more to come.

‘I love you! Oh, darling, I love you with all my heart.’ He knelt at her feet and put his arms around her waist. ‘But . . .’ he sighed.

‘But what?’

‘We agreed, didn’t we, right from the start, that this was just an affair? We were just having a wonderful time and it would lead nowhere.’ He looked at her pleadingly, as if expecting she would agree, go home and not bother him again.

‘We did indeed, Daniel, but it’s no longer just an affair: it has led to me becoming pregnant with your child.’

He shrugged. ‘I have so little money to take on you and a baby.’

‘I thought you had been saving all these years to travel around the world?’

‘There’s about thirty-five pounds saved.’ He got to his feet and backed away across the room, as if she was about to snatch the money off his person.

She had more than a hundred times that much, but had no intention of telling him. The money might persuade him to take her on: money was the only reason Marcus had wanted her and she wasn’t going to let it happen again.

‘Perhaps your husband will accept the child as his own?’ he suggested.

‘You really think so?’ She was tempted to laugh.

‘Eleanor, ever since I was sixteen I have longed to travel. It’s what I want to do more than anything in the world.’ There was that pleading look on his face again.

Eleanor stood. ‘Oh, well, don’t let me stop you.’

‘Under different circumstances,’ he said piously, ‘I wouldn’t dream of letting you down, but you have a wealthy husband, a beautiful home. You won’t exactly be destitute.’

‘No, I won’t, will I? Well, goodbye, Daniel. The boys will be wondering where I am.’

He followed her to the door. ‘Do you want me to come to tomorrow?’

‘Of course. Anthony needs you, but that’s the only reason. I would prefer it if I never saw you again.’

 

‘Nancy?’

‘Yes, pet?’ It was Nancy’s day off, but she was in the kitchen making an evening meal.

‘I’ve got a frightful headache and I’m going to lie down. Tell Nurse Hutton to leave me alone, will you? I don’t want her fussing around.’

Nancy looked at her searchingly. ‘You look awful pale. Would you like some Aspro? It seems ages since you last had one of your heads.’

‘I think it was the wind in Southport. It was quite penetrating on the beach, actually brought tears to my eyes.’ She’d cried herself silly on the beach. The boys were too far away to see and Lennie Beal was waiting in the car.

‘Look, pet, sit down and I’ll make you a nice, strong cuppa - I love using this new kettle. I’ll get the Aspro and you can take a couple,
then
lie down. What d’you say, eh?’

‘All right.’ Eleanor sat in her usual place at the table, a far nicer place to be than her cold bedroom where she would just cry and cry and only feel worse. But sitting in her old place by the kitchen fire, the place where she’d sat ever since she was a little girl and her father was alive and life had seemed so uncomplicated and happy, made a lump come to her throat and she burst into tears.

‘Eleanor!’ Nancy was beside her in an instant, stroking her hair. ‘Oh, my poor girl. What’s the matter?’

‘I’m having a baby, but it’s not Marcus’s, it’s Daniel’s, and he doesn’t want any more to do with me.’ It was such a relief to let it all pour out.

‘Holy Mary, mother of God,’ Nancy gasped. ‘What are you going to do now, pet?’

‘I’ve no idea. I couldn’t possibly tell Marcus. He’d kill me.’ Eleanor shuddered at the idea of telling her husband the truth.

‘I think you’ll find Marcus already knows about you and Daniel,’ Nancy said, and Eleanor’s blood turned to ice in her veins.

‘How could he possibly know?’ she asked shakily. ‘I thought we’d kept it a secret.’

‘It was obvious weeks ago at Sybil’s party - that’s when I guessed meself. I never said anything. I expected you’d tell me in your own good time.’

‘Obvious?’ She felt utterly stunned.

‘It was written all over your faces, pet.’ Nancy groaned. ‘Oh, Eleanor, and now you’re expecting a baby. You’ve got yourself into a dreadful pickle.’

Eleanor laughed a touch hysterically. ‘I don’t suppose you can think of a way out of it?’

‘Not at the minute, girl.’ They both sat silently staring into the fire. ‘You could always throw yourself on Marcus’s mercy,’ Nancy said after a while, although her expression was doubtful.

Eleanor raised her eyebrows. ‘Do you really think that would work?’

‘Nah.’ Nancy shook her head. ‘It was a soft idea. I doubt if he’s got an ounce of mercy in him.’

‘There’s nothing else for it, I’ll just have to leave - I’d already planned to. I had expected to be living with Daniel, but that’s not on, I’m afraid.’ The thought of Daniel made her want to cry again.

‘But it wouldn’t be right, you leaving,’ Nancy said angrily. ‘This house belonged to your father and he left it to the both of you: you and Marcus. Why should you have to leave? No matter what you’ve done, Eleanor, you’ve every right to stay.’

‘Oh, Nancy! He’d make my life even more of a misery than he does now. You know he would. I couldn’t stand it.’ She had another thought. ‘He might even have the right to throw me out: after all, I’ve committed adultery.’ Making love with Daniel hadn’t seemed like anything so gross as adultery, such an awful word.

‘It still doesn’t seem right,’ Nancy muttered.

Over the next few days, her mind was in turmoil and she was plagued by headaches. Daniel came, but she made sure they didn’t meet, although half hoped he would come and say he’d changed his mind: that he loved her too much to let her down, that he wanted them to spend the rest of their lives together. It was what she’d thought he’d wanted, the impression that he’d given. How could she have been so naive as to believe him?

Her tortured brain relived their last conversation, word for word, every inflection in his voice, the varying expressions on his face. Perhaps, as he’d claimed, he really did love her, but there was something - travelling - that he loved more. He may not have even realized it himself until faced with the choice.

But she wasn’t too sure that, if he changed his mind, she still wanted him. His initial reaction was the only one that really mattered and she wanted his total commitment, not some half-hearted promise to look after her and their child because his conscience pricked.

But Daniel’s conscience mustn’t have pricked because he didn’t come, clearly as anxious to avoid her as she was him. And, while Eleanor struggled to come to terms with being so cruelly let down, she also had to contend with her terror of Marcus. He knew! He’d known for weeks. Why hadn’t he said anything? What was he waiting for?

Eleanor didn’t think she would ever raise the courage to face him. The best thing would be to find a house -
quickly
find one before her pregnancy became obvious - and then just go when he was at the factory or his club, taking only her clothes, and leaving both her children behind. Any minute now, Daniel would be dismissed - she was surprised Marcus hadn’t done it before - and it didn’t seem fair for Anthony both to lose his tutor and be taken away from the only home he’d ever known. It would break her heart more than it already was, but she was prepared to make the sacrifice in order to do what was best for her child. Anyway, she was hopeless at communicating with him, just couldn’t remember the signs. Nancy was better at it than she was and Fergus would be there to act as Anthony’s ears.

She’d start looking for a house tomorrow, Eleanor resolved with a sigh.

Brenna and Colm had swapped rooms. Now Colm occupied the box room and Brenna and Cara slept in the big double bed, the empty cot in the corner waiting for the new baby who should arrive next May: Rory if it was a boy, Maire for a girl.

Fergus and Tyrone had noticed the new arrangements, but hadn’t said anything: the significance of their mammy and daddy sleeping apart no doubt escaped them.

The baby was like a lump of lead in her stomach. Brenna dreaded to think what it would be like in another four or five months. She felt lethargic and slightly sick most of the time and kept stumbling clumsily all over the place, banging into the furniture and tripping over the mats. She climbed stairs like a ninety-year-old.

‘I never felt like this with the other three,’ she told Colm. It was impossible to ignore someone in such a small house and, after a few days of coldness on her part, she’d started speaking to him again.

‘I know, luv.’ He couldn’t have been more sympathetic and understanding, refusing to let her lift a finger once he was home from work, washing dishes and putting the children to bed. He insisted she did the laundry on Sundays, supposedly a day of rest, so he could do the mangling and put the heavy things on the rack and hoist it up to the ceiling, a task that required a very strong hand. Brenna didn’t seem to have a strong anything these days.

She appreciated all he did. He wasn’t helping in the hope that she would forgive him for sleeping with Lizzie Phelan: he’d have done it anyway, because he was that sort of man and she still loved him desperately. What she wanted more than anything was for them to lie in bed and for him to stroke the heavy lump and make it lighter, make her stronger, make her smile, because she didn’t feel much like smiling any more.

He’d lit the fire before he went to work, and made tea and porridge for the children, and now the house was empty except for her and Cara, who was playing under the table with the little building blocks her daddy had made. Brenna forced herself out of the chair on to her feet. The house needed tidying, there was dusting to be done. She might feel as weak as a puppy, but she was determined her house would stay clean.

Upstairs, she made the beds: there were little sticky bits on the lads’ pillowslips from the rock that Fergus had brought back from Southport. ‘Mrs Allardyce bought it for us, Mam. She got a stick for our Tyrone, too.’

‘That’s very kind of her, I must say,’ Brenna had said, tight-lipped.

‘She was dead miserable today, Mrs Allardyce. She kept crying all the time. Her eyes were all red.’

‘Huh! What’s
she
got to cry about?’

‘I dunno, Mam. I didn’t ask. She only cried when she thought me and Anthony weren’t looking.’

‘Probably upset her hair doesn’t look right or she doesn’t like her latest frock,’ Brenna muttered.

She opened the window and gave the pillows a shake, then put them back on the beds - another time she would have changed the slips, but the days of changing pillowslips before they’d seen the week out were over for the time being.

Colm had already made his bed. She wanted to weep when she saw how neatly it was done: the sheets tucked firmly under the mattress, the pillow plumped up. The books he’d taken to reading were in a tidy heap on the pine chair she’d bought for threepence in a second-hand shop, carrying it home triumphantly on the pram.

The top book was called
The Levellers: A History
- she had to divide the words into syllables and pronounce them slowly, but they still didn’t make sense. The other books had equally difficult titles that she didn’t bother trying to read - her own efforts to improve her reading were proceeding very slowly. Colm’s books were all about politics, that much she knew. He read them after she’d gone to bed. ‘I want to better meself,’ he’d told her. ‘I don’t want to work in a builders’ yard me whole life.’

Brenna had no idea if he still saw Lizzie Phelan. The last time her name had been mentioned in the house in Shaw Street was the night he’d confessed they’d made love.

 

It had come as a relief to Colm to find he didn’t have to leave his job. When it was time to have his dinner on the Monday after the fateful party, he hid himself at the end of a stack of timber and sat on an upturned bucket to eat his sarnies. It was one thing, in the heat of the moment, to vow he’d find another job, but easier said than done in the cold light of day. He hoped Lizzie wouldn’t come looking for him when he failed to turn up in the kitchen for a drink.