I lived now like a puppet. I cooked and cleaned, and shopped and scrubbed: I washed his clothes and made his bed. I replied when he spoke to me, and gave answers when he questioned me on my small daily doings – but I told him nothing.
Only my body was alive now; my mind, my heart, my soul were dead. But my body – that remained alive. It ate and drank and carried me back and forth between the terrace and the town. And at night, up in the small bedroom, it wanted him. At first when he had come to bed I had turned my back, pretending to be asleep – I knew he would not force himself upon me now. But it was no use, my body would not be denied and I would wake in the night with a terrible insistent fullness in my belly and turn to him urgently – and he would fill me and give me rest – for a little while. So then I began to put out my arms to him blindly as soon as I felt him heaving his heavy body on to the bed; he never failed me.
Once he had to go out on a night shift – to work a goods train over into Yorkshire, he told me. I listened apathetically, but that night my body cried out for him in the empty bed. As soon as he came in in the morning I ran to him and he looked at me, with surprise in his red-rimmed eyes; then he shook his head. ‘It’s no use, Helena – I’m worn out.’
All morning I went mechanically about my daily tasks, aware that he was there, in the bed above me. At lunchtime I crept up the stairs and into the room; he was fast asleep. I took all my clothes off and slid into the bed beside him, twining my bare arms and legs around his sleeping body, pressing my belly against his. He began to stir, as I had known he would, and at last he came heavily over on top of me and began to thrust, as I had known he would. He was already asleep again by the time I pushed him off me and crawled out of the bed.
That evening as he sat over his meal he said, ‘I had a funny dream today – almost like real it were…’ He watched me, his eyes wary. I felt the blood rise in my cheeks, and he added, heavily, ‘Aye – I reckoned mebbe it weren’t a dream. You can’t go a day without, can you?’ I stood up and took the used plates out to the scullery.
But outside of the bedroom door there was nothing. Whenever he entered or left the house he put his lips to mine and held them there; I did not move. Once, early on, he came back from the plot while I was in the parlour – he put his arm round me and bent to lift my skirt and I felt his warm hand fumbling between my legs, seeking to get inside my drawers. For a moment my legs opened, but then I turned my eyes and fixed them on Gerald’s photograph and I was able to hold my body rigid until the man dropped his hand and backed away, shamefaced, mumbling some words – of pleading, of apology – I did not know because I did not listen. When he had stumbled to a halt I told him, ‘The bedroom is the place for that – can you not wait another hour?’
‘Aye, aye lass – of course – I didn’t mean…’
I smiled at him, without looking into his eyes, and my voice was honeyed as I promised, ‘You may have your fill of me in the bedroom, Ben Holden, just as you always do – have I ever denied you there?’
‘No, no, lass – you been a good wife.’
He slunk through into the kitchen and I smiled at Gerald’s face, whispering, ‘Thank you, my darling, thank you.’
And now I let my mind dwell often on Gerald; I would linger before his photograph, remembering – remembering the first time I had seen him, riding in his shining breastplate and plumed helmet at the head of his troop. I remembered his tall slim figure and smiling eyes as he had greeted me in the pension at Munich, that first Christmas, and I remembered – oh how I remembered – his strong hands propelling me across the ice of the Englischer Garten as I reclined in the carved wooden swan – skimming like a bird over the frozen meadows at his touch. I rode with him again in the shires, and sang to him again before the German Ambassador, and worshipped him as my lost voice soared up to the shadowy beams of the small church at Hammersmith – and then I was happy for a little while. But when he came in, smelling of coal dust and sweat, with his rough awkward voice – then my dreams were broken, and I hated him for what he had done to me.
I often saw him looking at me strangely, and in the evening he would try to make conversation; I would answer him politely – I was always polite – but he seemed uncertain, dissatisfied. But that night I would close my eyes and reach out for him, and sometimes cry out and writhe and moan and explode under him. Then he would kiss me and say, ‘I love you, Helena, I love you!’ I would turn my face away and shut my ears – but in the morning he would be more cheerful.
Once the fat woman under the green dome spoke to me. ‘How are you these days, lass? You don’t look quite right, somehow.’ Her big round face was concerned, kindly – and for a moment my eyes filled with tears – but I blinked them away, smiled politely and left. I did not visit the green dome again, though it was difficult, because my body was changing.
The first weeks I had still fostered a faint hope in the corner of my mind – I searched my underwear as I came near my time. Perhaps God would relent, perhaps I might still escape. But each day my drawers showed only the white stains of his seed; the red blood did not appear. And my breasts, which had always been so small, became fuller and heavier, my nipples grew and darkened, and I felt my womb pressing on my bladder – so I knew God had not relented, and hope died.
So now I needed Gerald more and more; he became my refuge, my hiding place. It was not enough simply to remember him – especially not down in the parlour where he was a stern soldier. Upstairs I took out my other picture of him, smiling at me, in his morning suit – not Major Lord Staveley now, but Gerald, my lover. But I did not want him to see this picture of the intimate, private Gerald, so I took my treasure into the back bedroom, where he never came. Opening a trunk, I took out a thick soft blanket and a pillow, then pulled the boxes into a square to make a small shelter, where I could be safe and unobserved, building a little nest for myself in which I could dream. Because memories were not enough now – my memories only led to the war, and the terrible blankness it had brought. So I followed my memories just to the moment when he put his ring on my finger, and then I transmuted them into dreams. And in my dreams there was no war: Franz Ferdinand and his duehess were safely buried and forgotten; the Kaiser continued to strut before his parading soldiers – but only in Berlin; and the Belgians went contentedly about their daily business in the picturesque little town of Ypres; the world was at peace.
And so my wedding day came, as planned – my real wedding day, to Gerald. I stood before the altar beside his tall, handsome figure – and for once I was beautiful, because he loved me. We journeyed to Munich and stayed in the Regina Palace Hotel on Maximilian Platz – with its sixty bathrooms and its palm house – and visited Frau Reinmar and Franzl – Franzl still with two hands and the smile of friendship on his face. We went to Elsa Gehring’s studio – and Gerald praised her for my singing – then we visited the opera every night – and perhaps, one afternoon, if the weather was kind, we skated again on the frozen meadows beyond the Englischer Garten. And then we came back, to Bessingdon – to our home.
I had never seen Bessingdon, and now I was glad because I could imagine it exactly as I wanted it to be, golden and glowing in the afternoon sun as it welcomed us home. The tenants cheering us from the station, the indoor staff lined up in the hall – all were there; so too was Moira Staveley, but she was a shadowy figure in the background, for I was mistress now.
I pictured my bedchamber, with silver brocade hangings, and walls of the palest blue – a cool, gracious room. And there, at one side, was the door which led to Gerald’s dressing room, with his bedroom beyond. I would glance at it shyly, my heart fluttering at the thought of him there, asleep. Sometimes there would be a gentle tap on that door, and I would call out to come in, my breathing quickening, and he would enter and walk towards me, elegant in his silk dressing gown. He would bend over me as I lay waiting in the wide bed, his low voice asking. ‘Are you asleep, Helena?’ And I would whisper back, ‘No, Gerald, not yet.’ Still he would stand beside me, until I felt the gentle touch of his fingertips on my cheek. ‘Then, Helena, may I join you for a little while?’ ‘Yes Gerald – please do.’ And my face would be suffused with blushes in the darkness as he slipped gracefully under the covers beside me.
But try as I might I could imagine no further – for my experience in this house overshadowed that dream. Gerald would never have roughly thrust up my nightdress and prised my thighs apart – and I, I would never have turned to him with that terrible driving insistence in my belly – no, because I loved Gerald, so it would have been quite different. But I knew that afterwards he would have kissed me very gently, then whispered goodnight and left me there to dream. And in my dreams I was always cool and clean and fresh-smelling – my belly was never damp with his sweat nor my thighs sticky with his seed – Gerald, my pure true lover.
But sometimes my dreams were dangerous. There was a day when a boy came to tell me Ben Holden would be late – so I knew I had hours for myself. I turned off the gas and ran up the stairs, as excited as a girl going to her lover – I was a girl going to her lover. I curled up in my nest and gave myself to my dreams – but I dreamt too long, and one night Gerald’s face changed, and his hands became harder, and he loomed over the bed and there was no gentle touch on my cheek, instead he seized me and used me, violently – and then left me without a word; and I lay sobbing and broken. I was still trembling when I heard the latch of the door downstairs. I stumbled to my feet and ran down, and my husband was there in the kitchen, hanging up his working jacket. ‘Have you been having a lie down? Good girl.’ Then he turned and saw my face. ‘Lass, you look as if you seen a ghost – happen you’ve had a nightmare.’
‘Yes – yes – a nightmare!’
‘Poor little lass.’ His large dirty hand reached out to stroke my cheek, and this time I did not flinch away; his voice dropped. ‘Never mind, sweetheart, I’m home now.’
‘Yes – yes, you’re home.’
‘You sit down in a chair, I’ll not be a minute in bath, then I’ll give you a hand dishing up tea.’
After that I learnt to ration my dreams as I walked on the terrace at Bessingdon, with Gerald, and sang in the drawing room after dinner, to Gerald; and rode in the park, beside Gerald. But then, one day, I knew I ought not to be going on horseback any longer, and when he asked, smiling, ‘Will you ride with me this morning, Helena?’ I shook my head and blushed: ‘No, Gerald – I shall not be riding now, for a while.’ And I saw the joy in his face as he came to me and his lips brushed my cheek. ‘Helena, my dear – you have made me so happy, so very, very happy.’ And that evening he would come to my room, still in his evening suit. ‘I’ve come to say goodnight, my dear – because now…’ I would smile back in understanding and gratitude. ‘Thank you, my dearest – goodnight, Gerald.’ And I would lie in the cool darkness, with his child below my heart.
When I uncurled my cramped limbs I was weeping; but I had to go downstairs and peel the potatoes and shell the peas and prepare the fish – for my husband.
June had ended, July came, and now the peas that I cooked were from his plot – from those plants whose tiny tendrils I had watched him train up the sticks so long ago. Each day he brought in more of his growing, and I cooked them for him, hot and sweating as I bent over the stove in the stuffy kitchen.
At the end of August he began to talk of taking a week’s holiday in the autumn; he wrote to a farm in Yorkshire, I was not sure where because I did not listen. But I would go with him, because I needed him more now – my womb was becoming more urgent as it filled. Yet he had become hesitant – sometimes he asked, ‘Do you think, lass…?’ But the scent of his strong body next to me was past bearing and I beat at his shoulders with my balled fists and pressed my belly desperately against him, until he responded and took me – and then I was satisfied, for a while.
One day he called me upstairs, and I saw he was in the back bedroom – I hurried up in a panic, but he was nowhere near my sanctuary. He waved his hand at the piled-up boxes. ‘Look, lass – I’d best get some of this clutter cleared out – we’ll need space soon, with child coming.’
I stared at him like a small animal at bay. ‘How did you guess?’
He touched my hand diffidently. ‘Lass, you’ve come to me every night, so I know you’ve not bled since day we were wed.’ The silly rhyme rang through me: ‘not bled since the day we were wed, not bled since the day we were wed.’ I held myself very still. ‘I reckon you must have fallen that evening when we come back from Ada’s first time – you been different since – looking inward all time.’ He straightened his back from the trunk he was inspecting and told me, ‘You mun go to doctor’s soon.’ Vehemently I shook my head. Not yet, not yet – he might tell me it was true.
I followed him listlessly downstairs, stumbling on the last step; he swung quickly round and reached up to steady me. ‘And another thing, lass – you shouldn’t be wearing them shoes – you might catch your heel and fall, it’s that steep round here. I’ll buy you some more.’ I took no notice of his words: they were my shoes; I ate the food he earned and slept in the bed he had bought – but I would not wear shoes he had paid for.
So I cooked and cleaned and washed and shopped – and each day I retreated into the solace of my dreams, and each night I used his strong body in the bed upstairs, while my breasts became fuller and my body swelled – and by now, September was half over. It was a Tuesday when I heard the brisk rat-tat at the door – so I thought it was the rent man. I picked up the money left ready under the clock and walked slowly through the parlour and opened the front door – and there, on the step, was Conan.