HE COMES IN THE EVENING, IN THE DARK. THEY haven’t thought that there is anyone to come for her, haven’t thought to push her out of the way when Mr Blunt opens the door. It was Mrs Blunt who called to him to do it, even before there was a knock. She must have seen the mackintosh and bowler hat from the upstairs window and thought that’s news, money even.
The steady rain is dripping over his hat and the part of his face she can see, but Grace only needs an inch to know her brother, the way he holds himself hasn’t changed. He’s upright and wide, pushing his shoulders out to fill as much of the doorway as he can. His chin is raised as if to avoid the blows he must be expecting, to give as much as to receive. If Mr Blunt has his eyes open, he’ll duck.
A draught’s coming in. The cold air cuts between the armchairs, heading straight for the fire, and Baby, and they’re all shivering. Michael doesn’t speak, and even though she’s quaking at the thought of it, Grace feels a surge of strength as she waits for what he might tell her to do.
Grace can’t see his eyes beneath the rim of his bowler and the shadow of the door, but she can see the direction his chin is pointing and the hardness to him. He is staring at Baby sitting on the rug in front of the fire, and Grace’s heart feels like it’s trying to escape her ribs with just the thought of what might be going through his head. Baby’s all he needs to see to understand her letter, though. Grace, don’t be a fool, she tells herself, of course he knew. Whether he’s going to ask her to hand Baby over, or invite her to come with him, she doesn’t know. She’s not going to wait, either, for she’s between Mrs Blunt and Baby, and she moves towards her child as Mrs B. is still facing Michael, waiting for him to speak.
Mr Blunt’s eyes are following Michael’s gaze from Baby to Grace, and he starts to lift his arm back to the door. Grace has packed a bag ready, Baby’s too, and hidden them both far under her bed. But there’s no time for that, not unless she wants a fight, and what about Baby in that, and Michael? Grace doesn’t want to think what Mrs Blunt might have in her hand.
Michael’s put his foot in the door quick as silver, and Mr Blunt can see Michael moves faster than he can, and for a moment Mr Blunt isn’t pushing it any further. Grace is like lightning, she grabs Baby up quick and he cries out at the suddenness of it all. She pulls him tighter, he’s feeling soft and hard with the struggling, but she takes a hold and pushes his soft wet cheeks against her. She runs through the gap that Michael has left between his back and the door, and into the watery blackness outside, her boots squelching into the reeking mud.
She goes on running. There’s a moon and she can see where she’s going, can spot the glints of metal lying in wait for her feet, but her feet are sticking in the thickness of the mud, making her stumble. She won’t fall, though; you can’t fall when you’re carrying your baby, there’s something stops you doing that. She holds Baby tight, she’ll keep him warmer that way, for though the rain has stopped his blanket is damp, and it’s not the time of year for an infant to catch a chill. Not that Grace can feel the weather herself. It could be baking July, could be snow. If she shut her eyes she couldn’t tell which. She squeezes Baby tighter, then loosens her arms a little, to make sure he can still breathe.
When she hears the squelches behind her she keeps on running, Baby light in her arms. Don’t look behind you, Grace Campbell, stop to look and they’ll have you, and back you will go. It’s only when she hears Michael’s voice telling her to calm it, that she slows to a walk, a fast one, mind. She’s still waiting for the squeak of the Blunts’ trap, though it’d take them a little while to harness up first. And there’s the mud to slow them down too.
Grace and Michael walk on. No more words. Two and a half years, and each of them could have been dead. Grace can’t look at him, what does he think of her? He came to her, though, even if he’ll leave her and never speak to her again. She’s waiting for him to ask her how it came about, how she could be so short-brained. He says nothing, there’s no scolding, no demand to know who the father is and that he should take Grace straight to him. Although Grace should be relieved that he’s not telling her how angry he is, the silence is worse, because she’s still waiting. Perhaps this is it, silence because he’s so angry with her that he can’t bring himself to speak. He reaches his arms out for Baby but Grace pulls her child tighter to her.
Michael takes off his overcoat and hooks it around her shoulders. She pauses to let him button it up the front, Baby in her arms in the warmth underneath.
‘Where are we going, Grace?’ Flat as a pancake.
Why’s he asking her? For two years she hasn’t been able to see beyond a half-dozen fields.
‘Wherever you’re taking me.’
‘I don’t know where you want to go, Grace.’
She stops walking and he stops beside her. She turns to look up at him, under his hat. It has stopped raining, but she can feel warm wet lines running down her face. ‘With you,’ she says. ‘I want to go with you.’
Tonight, he says, we’ll stop at the village. Gowden? she asks, though it is the only village around here. There’s an inn there, he says. The King’s Arms. But Grace doesn’t like the thought of going into the village. Can you afford it, Michael? He doesn’t reply.
Don’t be silly, Grace Campbell, she tells herself. What’s Miss Beatrice’s sister going to be doing wandering about the village at night, and not that she’d recognise Grace anyway.
‘Don’t you think it’s too close, Michael?’
‘It’s as far as we’ll get tonight.’ Don’t worry, he continues, I’m here now. There’s something about Michael that makes her not worry. Nonetheless, as they approach the King’s Arms, they see a couple of slight figures walking away in the dark. Grace turns her head in the opposite direction. You never know, she thinks.
As they reach the inn, a pack of uniforms, bandages and crutches hobble out of the door and start to climb into a couple of cars.
‘Back to the monarchy of Matron,’ one calls out, and the others chuckle.
‘Those who can walk, do so,’ says a voice that sounds as if it is used to being obeyed. ‘We need space,’ he continues, ‘to pick up the two ladies who were with us this evening.’
‘They were insistent,’ says another, ‘that they wished to walk. Good Lord, who’s this? Joseph and the Virgin Mary? No offence, my good man, but you do look like refugees.’
‘What’s up with you?’ Michael asks Grace when they’re in their room. They are to share a bed, Baby between them like a married couple. ‘Can’t you calm down now,’ he asks, ‘now that you’re free of them?’ Now that she’s free? Of course Grace can’t. Freedom’s one thing for a man like Michael, for Grace and Baby it’s simply uncertainty. ‘It’s just,’ she tells him, ‘that I haven’t been anywhere new in so long.’
Bread, soup, she is managing that. ‘You must eat,’ he tells her. ‘I’ve not come all the way here for you to starve to death. We have to go on tomorrow.’
When she’s eaten, she can’t keep her eyes open. ‘Get into bed,’ says Michael. ‘I’m going downstairs to see if they’ll still give me a drink.’
‘Take the key, Michael,’ she says. Still, her head is full of worries, but her eyelids are too heavy to think them through. As he makes for the door, he hesitates and turns to her.
‘What’s his name, Grace?’
Her stomach tightens.
‘The child’s name, Grace.’
‘Edward,’ she replies.
A week now, and Grace still isn’t used to seeing that this is how Michael lived. She never came here, they just met out somewhere, and now she can see why. To think where she was living all that time she was in London. Not that her room was anything but plain, but at least it was white instead of grey, and she didn’t have her washing hanging in the corner.
It’s her doing Michael’s clothes now, and a struggle it is, for his and Baby’s whites seem to be absorbing the colour of this room. What would Ma have said, to see them living so? Coming down south was supposed to be the opportunity of their lives, but their home was a palace compared to this. Let’s hope Ma can’t see them from wherever she is up there. Though at least she’d be pleased to see them together, Grace and Michael. And that’s how it will be, Grace knows that.
He’ll go back to the law and rise to head clerk. She’ll keep house for him and, yes, she’s found the will again: she’ll have a business of her own and stay as far from the kitchen as Ma would have wanted. Baby will grow, and make up for the fact they’ve no other children between them. And how would either of them want a husband or wife then?
The landlady looked a little queer at first when Grace and Baby arrived and mumbled something about Piccadilly Circus. Then her eyes ran over Grace’s face again, and back to Michael’s, but when Michael asked for a camp bed, she calmed down. Michael’d given a wedding band to Grace, and the landlady looked a little tender when she spotted it on her finger and said, ‘So you’re still wearing it, love?’ Grace nodded. Michael hadn’t yet asked who Baby’s father was. That first night in Pimlico he just passed Grace a letter written to him by Mrs Wainwright. She was returning to Michael’s unit a letter that Michael had sent to Grace at Park Lane more than a year ago. Mrs Wainwright explained that Grace had departed suddenly, leaving no forwarding address, and that Mrs Wainwright would be grateful for news of her as they were all concerned. Further, she had to pass on the sad news that Grace’s friend Joseph was reported Missing In Action two weeks since. Would Michael be good enough to pass this on as he saw fit? With many thanks, Elsa Wainwright.
As she read this, Grace’s head spun. She pictured Joseph, and it was as though he was disappearing out of sight. She didn’t know what to feel, for she’d so long put out of her mind that she would ever see him again. But nobody would see him again, would they? She imagines him lying there quite still, his arms unable to give one of his hugs again. Then came the shakiness and tears.
Michael watched her read the letter, then sat down right next to her, wrapped an arm around her and squeezed. ‘I’m here now,’ he said.
They do the same every night, and that’s what they’re doing this evening. She and Michael have a chair each by the stove, and baby asleep on Grace’s bed. There have been few words, their thoughts echoing around the room. We have each other, thinks Grace. It’ll be what I wanted and we’ll make a happy life. Thank the Lord that we’re both still here.
There’s a sadness to Michael that makes Grace’s stomach tight. It’s almost as if he’s not pleased to have her here. It can’t be that, she tells herself. She may have given him woman and child without as much as a by-your-leave, but she’s looking after him and that gives her ground to hold. This is the way it has to be, she wants to tell him. Family comes first. For Grace isn’t giving Michael up, not ever.
Then there’s a knock at the door and it breaks her thoughts. It is a gentle, reluctant-to-disturb-you knock. Michael stands up, equally gently, straightens his trousers and walks to open it.
‘Michael,’ Grace says. ‘You don’t know …’ for she’s still scared that the Blunts will have found her, and be standing there, sticks in hand.
‘Stop worrying, Grace. You’ll be all right. And the boy.’
Still, she stands up, too, and crosses to the corner of the room shielded by the open door. How long will she do this for? She hates this, when he opens the door. No, nobody snatches anything from Michael, she tells herself. One of his looks and they’ll back away.
Then she hears the voice. Hullo. It’s a woman’s voice, and cut-glass, and Grace wonders what a woman like that is doing coming to see her brother. A woman like that, though, think what she could offer Michael, and a worry comes into Grace, her ears turn razor sharp. The voice doesn’t go far. Just, ‘Hullo, how are you? I’ve come to …’ And it stops, as though it was going to say more.
But there’s something about that voice, isn’t there? Hard on the outside, soft in the middle, she hasn’t heard it for more than two years now but she’s half dreamt of doing so, of being back in those gold and coloured rooms, thick oil paintings all over the walls. It’s the voice she felt worst about leaving, and now she’s come to find her. My word, Grace hadn’t thought anyone back there, let alone Miss Beatrice, might care about her that much. And how had she found her? It was Michael, wasn’t it? Said he’d written back to Mrs Wainwright with this address, just the day before he received Grace’s letter, just in case Grace went back there. So now she’s here, Miss Beatrice, and what’s she going to say to Grace? That she’s getting married and can Grace come to be her lady’s maid? A little surge of excitement rises in Grace, she starts to smooth down her apron and straighten her collar, readying herself to come round and bob to Miss Beatrice.
Grace hasn’t quite stepped out when Baby cries, or rather whimpers, and her dream wavers. Miss Beatrice would never have her if she knew. But what’s to stop Grace saying he’s a nephew, and going back to his mother before the day is out. She’ll find someone to take him. It’ll be the best thing for Baby; she could have him taken in near enough to see on Sundays, and think of the future she could give him, on a lady’s maid’s wage.
As Baby cries, Grace, though she can’t see a thing from behind the door, is waiting for the exclamation, the how divine, what a cherub, waiting for it, a little hesitant for she doesn’t want Miss Beatrice to look at Baby too closely. That’s not what comes. Instead she hears a gasp and an ‘Oh my God, Michael. Oh my God.’ Then soles and heels clatter down the stairs as if they’re being chased by the Devil, which must be Michael, because he’s vanished down after Miss Beatrice. Grace is left listening to Baby’s cries mount as her mind races as to how well Miss Beatrice must know her brother to call him by his first name. She stares at the empty doorway and realises she is now hoping that, for all she’s thought about Miss Beatrice, she will never see her again.
When Michael comes back into the room and sits down heavily and quickly in the chair nearest the door, and puts his head in his hands and shakes, Grace hopes that even more.