“Don’t tell him.” Molly’s practical, Irish voice made the solution sound unquestionably simple.
Nancy, standing by the window, smiled faintly and shook her head but did not reply.
“For heaven’s sake, if it’ll upset him as much as you think, what good will it do him to know? Oh, I know it might be—” she paused, delicately, “—a little difficult. But you could manage it if you really wanted.”
Nancy turned from her contemplation of the wet street and came to the chair where Molly sat nursing Danny. She touched the tiny face thoughtfully with a long, thin finger.
“You know as well as I do that I can’t. I don’t believe for a minute that you’d do it yourself. Oh, I’m not saying it would be impossible to hide the truth. In some ways Joey is very innocent. I could deceive him. But that’s it, isn’t it? What would be the point? What kind of marriage could be built on deception?”
“Perhaps you’re wrong about him. Perhaps he will understand. God above, Nancy, you were a child. A child! You didn’t know what you were doing—”
“I wasn’t forced.” Her voice was cruelly strained; she averted her face.
“So you said. You also said that Edward’s father was a grown man, a friend of your father’s. A man you had loved and trusted for years, as one of the family. A man who had known you since you were born. How can you possibly take any of the blame on yourself? How could Joey see it so? Edward’s father took advantage of your trust and your innocence. It was worse than rape. Worse! No one could blame you.”
“I blame myself,” Nancy said quietly, “Joe will blame me. Perhaps Edward, too, when he finds out.”
“Nancy. You’ve your life ahead of you. If you’re sure you want to marry Joey, then do it. Life’s too short and too – uncertain – to let a chance slip away.” There was an edge of bitterness to her voice. “We all do stupid things sometimes. I can see no reason why we – and others – should be made to suffer for them for the rest of our lives.”
In the silence that followed, the sound of the rain beating on the pavements outside filled the room. The weather had broken, the Indian summer was over and the clouds were so heavy that even at four o’clock in the afternoon a lamp burned on the small table by the door. “When are you seeing him?”
Nancy looked up. “Tonight.”
“And he expects your final answer?”
“Yes.”
Molly reached for Danny’s shawl. “Well, you know what I think.”
Nancy helped her gather together the baby paraphernalia that was spread about the room. “It isn’t that simple, Molly.”
Molly stilled her busy hands and looked into the dark, unhappy eyes. “I know it.”
Impulsively Nancy threw her arms about her, hugging her awkwardly, baby and all. “Oh, Moll, I’m that glad to have you back. Must you go? Can’t you stay to tea?”
Molly shook a curly head. “I ought to be home for Sam when he finishes work. It’s Saturday—” she grimaced self-derisively, “—we’re going to awful Aunt Maude’s.” Nancy lifted surprised eyebrows. “Oh we do, you know, keep up the silly pretence of happy families. Once a month we visit, and tonight’s the lovely night. Dear, bitchy Lucy will spend the evening inferring with every other sentence that there’s someone not a mile from her who’s no better than she should be, Aunt Maude and Ellen will sit there with faces sour as lemons scoring points off each other; and poor Sam will get more and more tongue-tied until he can’t get a whole word past his teeth without coughing his heart out. Uncle Thomas will retire to his corner and say nothing at all. Then when it gets so bad that I can’t stand it any longer I’ll give Danny a shake and get him to yell good and loud and we’ll make that our excuse, regretfully, to leave.”
Nancy, in spite of herself, laughed. “You make it sound such fun.”
Molly stood up. “You don’t know the half of it,” she said, and for the first time Nancy took note of a certain, fine-drawn hardening of the vivid, flower face, of a new expression in the wide-set eyes.
“Come tomorrow,” said Nancy impulsively, “to tea. And bring Sam. Mam won’t mind. It isn’t fair to keep leaving him out. He ought to come to meet us, and soon. I think he’s rather nice.”
“So do I.” Molly’s voice gave nothing away. She tucked Danny into the pram that had been brought in from the front path when the downpour had started, pulled the hood up to its furthest extent, snapped up the waterproof cover. “We’ll come if you’d like. If you’re sure.”
Nancy laughed a little shakily. “Who knows, we might even be celebrating?” And Molly, straightening, looked at her friend with sinking heart. Somewhere in Nancy’s voice, in her eyes, beneath worry and uncertainty, burned a flame of hope; her common sense, her knowledge of the man she loved, had not quenched that flame, nor even truly dimmed it no matter how hard she tried to pretend that it had. She, who had all along asserted that Joe Taylor, once he knew the truth, would repudiate her love, did not in her heart believe it. And Molly, who had in kindness argued otherwise, did.
The thought followed Molly to Linsey Grove, lay beneath the surface of her mind all through the evening, making the miserable, edgy occasion even worse than usual, and was still hovering when, thankfully, she shut the bedroom door behind her and flopped onto the bed, leaving Sam to tuck the baby into his crib.
“Uncle Thomas likes you.” Sam’s colour was a little better this evening and he had coughed very little.
Molly grinned suddenly, like a child. “That’s more than you can say about your Aunt Maude. Or Cousin Lucy, come to that. She thinks I’ve bewitched you; turned you from a handsome prince into a frog. Or something.”
Sam blushed. “Don’t be silly. Cousin Lucy doesn’t care twopence. She never did.”
“Ah, that’s what you think.”
Dramatically Molly threw her arms wide, the effect only slightly marred by the fact that she was lying flat on her back. “Heartless brute! Secretly she was dying of love for you. Dying!” She clutched her hands to her heart and used the exaggerated, declamatory tones of the stage. “You can tell just by looking at her. She’s fading away. Disappointed passion has rendered her the very shadow of her former self—”
Sam could not but laugh at this description of the pudgy and unimaginative Lucy. “You’re t-teasing,” he said gently, sitting on the bed beside her and touching her hand lightly. “I told you, Lucy never cared about me. T-truth to tell I think I irritate her. What she cares about is not being married, about having the b-bother of looking for somebody else.” The words were absent; he was looking down at her with sober, loving eyes. “I do love it when you laugh like that, when you tease me. N-no one’s ever done it before. You’re very good for me, Molly. You m-make me happy, just to look at you. R-remember that, won’t you?”
Molly smiled a little and moved her head on the pillow, embarrassed by the intensity of his gaze, aware suddenly of the warmth of his body beside her.
“I’m sorry things are so difficult for you here. I w-wish—” He stopped.
Molly squeezed the hand that he had put in hers. “Don’t be daft. It doesn’t matter. I’m all right. It’s you who suffers most, I know that. And I do try, truly I do.” She pulled a face and added honestly, “But not hard enough, I know. It’s difficult. But perhaps we’ll settle, your mother and I. Perhaps it won’t always be like this.”
He watched her face and forbore to say that time, that she so took for granted, might not be so kind to him. In the dim light his face was shadowed in planes and angles, the touch of his big-boned, thin hand was gentle. On impulse Molly lifted the hand to her lips, kissed it, bit the thumb lightly, nibbling with sharp teeth. He was trembling suddenly.
Molly half closed her eyes and as the lamp glimmered on blood-red curtains, out of nowhere, like a blow, came memory and pain. In this room, in the hot, scarlet glow of sunlight through those same curtains Harry had undressed her, had seen her naked. She moved restlessly, trying to suppress the thought, hating herself, unable to prevent the wildness in the blood that was not, had never been, for Sam. Tentatively Sam touched her breast. She could hear his breathing; harsh, difficult. She turned her head and closed her eyes. He would not kiss her, he never did. Neither would he take her, as Harry had, in blind strength and the certainty that she was his. His body would not command hers; always he was awkward, a little ungraceful.
And for her there would be no release, except in the tears that so often followed, sliding helplessly down her cheeks and soaking her pillow in the silent darkness.
Gently she lifted her arms and guided his mouth to her breast.
From the moment she stepped through the Bentons’ front door the following afternoon, Molly sensed disaster in the air. Nancy was nowhere to be seen. Jack’s face as he rose to greet the newcomers did not come easily to a smile, and Sarah’s face was strained. Charley had gone to fetch Annie – also invited to the tea party – and the only one unaffected by the obviously uneasy atmosphere was Edward who, ignoring Danny, greeted Molly a little coolly, then announced cheerfully to Sam that Sam bore the same name as his – Edward’s – favourite pet mouse, and wasn’t that funny? Sam agreed solemnly that it was and pronounced himself delighted at the honour, agreeing with pleasure to Edward’s suggestion that he should meet his namesake after tea. It was noticeable to all but Edward that Sam’s stutter, so pronounced when he was speaking to the others that it had made the introductions an agony, all but disappeared when he was talking to the child. Edward, happy to have found an audience at last in an adult world that seemed to have been acting a little oddly today, perched himself upon the arm of Sam’s chair and embarked upon a lecture on the delights of keeping mice, and was amazed, while taking full advantage of the unusual circumstance, that no one made any attempt to stop him.
Molly put up with the peculiar silence, upon which the child’s confident voice was superimposed like a painting on glass, for as long as she could before leaning to Sarah and asking quietly, “Is Nancy all right?”
But she chose the wrong moment; Edward had inconveniently paused for breath, and the question rang in the ears like a bell. Sam looked puzzled; Jack’s already sombre face darkened. Edward’s brown, intelligent eyes moved from one to the other.
“She’s got a headache,” he said clearly. “She shouted when I made a noise.”
“Where is she?” Molly was looking at Sarah.
“Upstairs.” Nancy’s mother made a small, helpless movement with her hands, obviously inhibited by the presence of the child and of Sam.
“Would it be all right if I popped up to see her, do you think?” Molly was already on her feet.
“I don’t know. I’m not sure if—"
“Let the lass go. It’ll likely do our Nancy good to have a visitor,” Jack said, then looked up at Molly. “Try to get her to come down. Likely her – her headache’ll get better if she makes the effort and comes downstairs. Charley and Annie’ll be here soon.”
On the dark stairway Molly paused for a fraction of a moment, trying not to remember the last time she had climbed these stairs; then she was on the tiny, lightless landing and calling softly.
“Nancy?”
There was no reply. Molly moved to the door of Nancy’s room, a box room, little more than a large cupboard, and tapped lightly upon it.
“Nancy? It’s me. Molly.”
Silence.
Molly pushed open the door; Nancy was standing by the window, her back to Molly, her neat smooth head and slim shoulders outlined sharply against the light that filtered through the draped net curtains.
“Nancy—”
“Please go away, Moll. I’m all right. I just don’t want to talk to anyone. Not now.” Nancy’s voice was austerely composed. She did not turn round.
Molly paused, half-in and half-out of the room. “Jack thought you might feel better if you came downstairs. Charley’ll be here soon with Annie.”
Nancy shook her head.
Molly stepped across the threshold and closed the door softly behind her. There was very little space; a narrow bed, pushed right against the wall, and a small wardrobe took most of the available room. A mirror hung on one wall, reflecting silvered light; a pile of books was stacked on a battered shelf next to a small vase of flowers. Nancy’s figure was as inanimate as the rest of the furniture; like a statue she stood, rigid and still.
“You told him,” Molly said at last.
Nancy moved her head in a tiny gesture of protest, took a sharp, controlled breath. “Yes.”
“And—”
“He was – shocked,” Nancy said drily, the understatement bitter. What single word could describe the brutal cruelty of Joe’s reaction to her stammered confession? It had been worse than anything she had imagined. His voice still sounded now in her mind, clipped and intolerant. She had listened, defenceless, to the awful words he had used, had flinched from his cold anger and had not been able to answer it; for the things he had said had been, in the strict sense of the word, true. Taking no account of age, of circumstances, of innocence, or of love, she had acted the part of harlot, she had borne a bastard, had hidden her whoring from the man who had courted her in good faith and virtue. The betrayal, he assured her, was beyond forgiveness, either here or in heaven. She had been reduced to begging, and he had turned from her in disgust. Now she looked across the ranks of familiar roofs and chimneys and saw nothing; had seen nothing, or so it seemed, since her last sight of his face, blazing white, a sickness in his eyes.
That the sickness was more in him than in herself she had not recognized.
Molly was quiet. She had read enough into the tone of Nancy’s simple sentence not to have to question further.
In the street outside there were voices, laughter. Charley and Annie were coming down the path.
“Come downstairs, Nancy, love. Please do. I’m sure you’ll feel better if—"
Nancy turned and Molly fell silent. The thin face was the colour and texture of ivory, the eyes set deep into bruised and painful sockets. The awful composure did not, would not, break.
“Not now. Later, perhaps.”
Molly wanted desperately to console; but the girl who faced her exuded a chill self-containment that dismayed and discouraged her. “I’m sorry, Nancy,” was all she could manage. “Truly sorry. But it isn’t the end of the world. You mustn’t think so, however badly you feel. You will get over it You will. Nothing hurts for ever.” She moved awkwardly to the door. Nancy still said nothing, but at least nodded faintly when Molly urged, “Do try to come down later. You shouldn’t be up here on your own, it isn’t good for you. You know how we all love you. We’ll help if you let us—” the last words were very soft and the door closed quietly upon them.
Nancy looked across her shoulder at the shut door for a brief second before turning back to her dry-eyed, sightless gazing across the regular grey ranks of the rooftops.