She bit her lip. She had dreamed so often that he would come back for her. It was impossible to take it in now that he had.
They went down the stairs, past the bathroom they shared with three other flats. There were rules on the wall, in a plastic frame so that the writing could not fade with the steam. Hot water from the geyser had to be paid for. The place was to be left as you would like to find it. Sponge bags were not to be left in the bathroom.
Helen’s thoughts never went back to the big comfortable bathroom over McMahon’s pharmacy, where the thick towels were warmed by a radiator, where there was a woolly mat to keep chilly feet warm.
“This is great fun,” Helen said as she ran down the stairs lightly. She saw from his smile that she was doing the right thing. Louis Gray loved life to be easy, to be free from furrowed brows.
Ivy looked out from her flat near the door. She was a small, wiry woman with short pepper-and-salt hair. She had a lined face but a bright smile. It was hard to know whether she was nearer forty or fifty. She wore cotton coveralls with tiny pink and purple flowers on them. She had the look of someone who had always worked very hard and who could take on any task. Certainly she found the business of being a landlord to many varied tenants no strain. She had a glass-fronted door with a thick curtain so that she could observe the comings and goings of her tenants.
“Off out to enjoy yourselves?” she said.
Helen didn’t resent Ivy Brown’s questions.
They weren’t like the inquiries back in Lough Glass. “Going for a walk by the lake, Mrs. McMahon?” “Off on your own again, Helen?” “And where have you been this afternoon?” She hated every greeting from Mrs. Hanley of the draper’s, from Dan O’Brien of the Central Hotel, from Lilian Kelly the doctor’s wife, with the eyes that knew too much.
Ivy Brown was different. She checked the stairs only so that Australian youngsters wouldn’t bring in a dozen more tenants to sleep on the floor, or that no one sublet so that some could use the room by day and some by night depending on the shifts they worked.
“He’s taking me out to see a bit of London, Mrs. Brown.” She flung her head back and laughed at the pleasure of it all.
“Call me Ivy, dear. Otherwise we’re all Mrs. Gray and Mrs. Brown, a bit gloomy,” Ivy laughed.
Louis stepped forward to shake her hand, to make the change from acquaintance to friend. “Louis and Helena Gray,” he said.
Helen felt a thrill as he said it. Like a sixteen-year-old, not a middle-aged runaway wife, expecting someone else’s child.
“Lena Gray,” said Ivy Brown thoughtfully. “That’s a lovely name. Sounds like a film star. You could be a film star, love, and all.”
They walked hand in hand down to Earl’s Court Road, and on the Old Brompton Road. Everywhere seemed to be commemorating somewhere or something important. Barons Court…and the places named after battles, Waterloo, and Trafalgar. The places sounded noble and dignified somehow, especially if you had lived for years in a place where people talked about Paddles’ Lane, meaning the narrow path down to the lake behind a bar run by a man who had great big feet.
“We’ll be very happy here,” she said, smiling at Louis and squeezing his arm.
“I know we will,” he said. A shopkeeper was bringing in the unsold fruit and vegetables that he had on display outside on the pavement. A flower fell on the ground. Louis picked it up. “Is this any use to you?” he asked the shopkeeper. “Or shall I give it to my beautiful wife?” His smile was infectious.
“That’s not your wife, mate,” the man said, his tired face breaking into a smile.
“Oh yes she is, this is Lena Gray, my wife.” Louis seemed outraged.
“Nah, never. Give her the carnation, but she’s not your wife. You’re having too good a time.”
They laughed like children as they ran from him up the street and found an Italian restaurant.
At the table Louis took her hand. “Promise me something?”
“Anything on earth, you know that.”
“Promise we won’t become like couples that have nothing left to say to each other. Promise?” His eyes were troubled.
“I’ll always have something to say to you, but you may not always want to listen.” He had tired of listening before and gone away, leaving her weeping for him alone in Dublin. It was in her eyes.
“You are my Lena…like Ivy said, Lena Gray. It’s a film star’s name. You are full of glamour and beauty, my love. Think of yourself now as Lena, as exciting as living a new life.” His eyes burned and she knew that if she was to keep him, there must be no more talk of one-horse towns, or of being provincial. She would indeed become Lena Gray, woman enough to hold a man like Louis with no fear of becoming dull and old.
For this whole week they said they would give themselves a honeymoon. No looking for work, no harsh realities of the living they would have to earn. They’d start that next Monday, November 10.
There would be plenty of time for that.
Louis was a salesman. There was nothing he could not sell. He would not have references, of course. Well, he had worked for this company in Ireland, and been highly regarded. Highly regarded until he had run off with the daughter of the family. That was that. They had gone to Spain. The details were never clear, and they had never been asked for. There had been years of movement since then, vaguely accounted for, never probed.
And Lena Gray would not probe for them now.
Louis had been paid some money to leave the girl, the only child of that family, alone. Naturally he had refused it. And then when the fire had run out of the relationship, when he had seen what a mistake he had made, he took it to give himself a start in life. The start was never discussed too much either.
It had involved going to America and working there, but without a visa, and then there was a time in Greece.
He would have come back for Helen, the girl he truly loved, but he had thought it would not have been fair. Her children were babies, she was trying to make a new life for herself. He would not come for her until he could prove he loved her and wanted her for the rest of his life.
He had known she was in Lough Glass, of course. And apparently he had come once or twice just to look at her from afar. He would not have spoken to her this year had he not seen her look so unhappy. He saw her on a winter’s day last January walking by the lake, tears or rain on her face, hitting away the nettles and bramble.
And he had spoken to her.
She had looked at him wildly as if he had come straight out of a dream, and then thrown herself into his arms. He had been mad to have waited so long, he accused himself. But Lena had said no, it was perfect. If he had come for her earlier she would never have been able to leave.
But now the children would be old enough…if not to understand, at least to make their own lives without her. They would be better without her if the truth was told. There was no life living with a mother who had no joy in her heart, no hope, and no wish to see the next day dawn. Kit was able to fend for herself…she had been trained over the months that her mother was planning to leave. And Emmet, she had done as much as she could for the boy, helped his stutter by taking him to Sister Madeleine, the old hermit woman whose clear eyes seemed to see everything and know what was going on in every heart.
And she had even done what she could for the maid, Rita, encouraged her to work toward an education so that she could be a better companion for the children when…after…well, when it all happened.
Martin would survive. She had always known that. He had married her knowing that she loved another man. She had given him her promise that she would not leave him without a full explanation. Yes of course it should have been face-to-face. But he was so emotional. He would have cried, he would have done something entirely inappropriate, like kneeling and begging her to stay, like threatening to kill himself maybe? Hadn’t she tried to talk to him…but each time he turned away?
No, he was too levelheaded for that. But he would accept it. He
was realist enough to know that it had always been in the cards. It was just so odd, so strange that he hadn’t responded.
Louis was telling her where they would go the next day. He would take her on a train to the seaside. There was nothing as wonderful as to walk on a beach in winter where there was no one but themselves. They might go to Brighton, and see the two great piers jutting out into the sea. They would go to the Pavilion, and walk in the little lanes looking at the tiny shops, each with its own magic.
His face was alive with the excitement of showing her all these places.
“You will never forget it,” he said.
“I never forget anything I do with you,” she said simply, and she saw his eyes water because what she said was so obviously true.
Lena Gray never forgot Brighton. That was where she began to lose her child. The feeling was a dragging one, a downward pain, a bit like a period. But she decided to ignore it. They had walked hand in hand as had been promised, and laughed at the gray clouds and run from the white-flecked dark waters.
They said that when their child was four they would take him, or her, back here and they would all play on the sands in the summer. They would stay in the same hotel. They would be rich and happy, their child would want for nothing.
Lena ignored that dragging cramp in her stomach.
At the Brighton railway station on the way back she felt a dampness but decided not to go to the ladies’ to investigate. Some superstition made her feel that if she didn’t acknowledge it here in Brighton where they had been so happy it would go away.
By the time they got to Victoria she was in no doubt.
“Something’s wrong,” she said to Louis.
“Can you make it home?” He had fear in his eyes.
“I don’t know.”
“It’s only whatever number of stops on the District Line,” he said.
It passed in a nightmare haze. She remembered being put on the bed and Ivy’s face very near her.
“You’re all right, love. Hang on. Hang on. Stay as still as you can.” Louis was over by the window, biting his hand. “The doctor’s coming, he won’t be a minute now…hold my hand.”
“I was going to tell you…” Lena wept. They had been told very specifically that this was a house where no children would be allowed.
The pain was sharp. The journey up and down to the bathroom intolerable. There seemed to be blood everywhere, even on Ivy’s flowered coverall.
Then a doctor’s face, a kind man, old, tired. Lena mixed him up with the greengrocer who had given them the flower last week, some week. Maybe everyone in England looked the same.
Questions about the number of weeks pregnant, about any complications earlier on in the pregnancy. What had her doctor said then?
“There was no doctor,” Lena said.
“She’s from Ireland, you see,” Ivy explained.
“They have doctors there too,” said the man with the tired face.
“Don’t tell Peter,” she said. “Don’t tell Peter and Lilian, whatever you do.” She gripped the doctor’s hand. Her eyes were wild.
“No, no,” he soothed. And to Louis standing by the window, “Who are Peter and Lilian…?”
“I don’t know. People back in…back in the place she came from.”
“Your wife has lost a lot of blood…” the doctor began.
“Will she be all right?”
“Yes, she will. She doesn’t need to be taken into hospital, we’ve done everything. I’ll give her a sedative. You have children already?”
“No,” Louis said.
“Yes,” said Lena.
There was a silence.
“From a previous marriage, she had,” Louis said.
“Poor lamb,” Ivy said.
“I’ll send a nurse in the morning. I’ll come again tomorrow on my way home from the surgery.”
“Thank you, Doctor.” Lena’s voice was weak.
The doctor supported her head as she drank the sedative. “The worst is over, Mrs. Gray,” he said kindly. “The best is ahead.”
“What did you call me?” She was drowsy.
“You’ll sleep now.” He spoke in a low voice to Ivy, technical matters, towels, buckets, water, keeping the room warm.
When they had gone, Louis came and held her hand. There were tears running down his face. “I’m so sorry, Lena…Oh Lena, I’m so sorry this should happen.”
“Do you still want me, do you want me to stay with you, even though there is no baby now, no family for us?” Her face was white and anxious.
“Oh my love. Of course I do…more than ever, my love. Now that there are the two of us, we need each other more than ever. Nothing will separate us. Nothing.”
Lines seemed to fall from Lena’s face and she slept holding his hand under her cheek. He sat there for a long time stroking her hair. All he could hear was her even breathing. Not the hiss of the oil heater that Ivy had brought in. Not the traffic out in the London streets below.
She found it a funny world for a couple of days. She kept expecting Rita to come in with tea and scones, but it turned out to be Ivy with Bovril and biscuits. She found herself waiting for the children to come home from school. And then Louis would come in the door again beaming with yet another treat. A little glass of tonic wine on a tray with two chocolates wrapped up in silver paper. Or a magazine for her to read with a card pinned inside saying “I love you.” Or a dish of chopped-up chicken he had got from the restaurant on the corner when he told them his wife was sick in bed.
“You’ve got a good one there,” Ivy said sagely about Louis when he had gone running off on yet another errand.
“Don’t I know it.” The color was coming back to Lena’s cheeks.
“Other fellow a sod, was he?” Ivy asked sympathetically.
“Other fellow?” Lena was bewildered.
“Your first husband…you know you said, he said the night the doctor was here…”
“Oh no. No, Ivy. He wasn’t a sod. No, not at all.”
Ivy felt she had put her foot in it. “Well, you never know. Takes all sorts…” she said vaguely. Then, as if to show comradeship she said, “My first husband was no loss. I don’t care who knows it.”
“I’m glad.” Lena was glad. Ivy was so kind to her.
“You and your first husband been split up long then?”
“Not long.” Lena drew down the shutters on the conversation.
How could she tell this woman that she had left Martin McMahon just nine days ago. How would Ivy, or anyone, understand that two weeks ago Lena Gray had gone to Mass in Lough Glass with her husband Martin and her children, and people had thought that she was Helen McMahon.
By Sunday Lena had color in her cheeks.
“How long have I been in bed?” she asked Ivy.
“It happened on Thursday, love. You’re not ready to get up yet.”
“But I have to. We’re meant to be looking for jobs tomorrow.”
“Not a chance of it. Not for another week at least.”
“You don’t understand…”
“No. You don’t understand. I told the doctor I’d keep an eye on you. Letting you go down to the Employment Exchange isn’t keeping an eye on you.”
“I have to, Ivy. Truly. Louis may not get a job at once, I can do anything…”
“I’m sure you can, but not this week. Believe me.”
“I need to.” Lena spoke the words she didn’t want to. “I need to, for the rent. You must have the rent.” She was thinking of the treats Louis had bought, the reckless disregard for money that had to be paid to Ivy. He would probably say that she was a good old soul, she’d not push them for it, not for a week…
But Lena had her pride. She would not let this kind woman think that they were the type of people who would skip a week’s payment. Even if she had to drag herself out.
Ivy bit her lip. “One week’s not going to come between us,” she said.
“No.” Lena was adamant.
&nb
sp; “Well then, let Louis earn it, love. I’m not taking any money you get out of your bed to make, and that’s a promise.”
They heard his foot on the stair. Lena looked up alarmed. “Not a word please, Ivy.”
“As long as you know my word is law.” Her frown was terrifying but they laughed together.
“What are you two conspiring about?” Louis came in with his arms full of newspapers.
“Louis, did you buy the whole shop?” Lena looked in dismay at the selection.
“Have to, my darling. This isn’t for pleasure, this is my research. I’ve got to find a job tomorrow, or had you forgotten? I have to take care of my beautiful sick wife, and pay my wicked landlady…” He looked mischievously from one to another.
Ivy spoke first. “The circumstances have changed. I wouldn’t mind letting you have a couple of weeks credit.”
Louis leaned over and patted Ivy on the hand. “You’re a good true friend to us, even though you’ve only known us a week. I don’t want you to think that we’re just unreliable Paddies who come in and take advantage of your hospitality. We’ll pay, Ivy. We want to be here a long time.”
Ivy stood up from the chair beside the bed. “I’ll leave you to it then. You’re a lucky girl, Lena. You got yourself a real man.”
“Don’t I know it.” She smiled up at him.
“And any references or anything…I’d be happy…” Ivy said.
“That’s so good of you.” His eyes were warm with gratitude. “People are very good,” he said as he spread the papers across the bed.
Lena stroked his dark hair. “Isn’t she so kind, it would break your heart…Imagine poor Ivy thinking she could give you a reference.”
“I’ll be very glad to take her up on it,” he said. He was utterly serious.
“Ivy! A landlady running a rooming house?” Lena was astonished.
“Well, who else will say I’m reliable?”
“But Louis…in business, in a company…you can’t say you have a reference from Ivy…”