The Willow Pool

ELIZABETH ELGIN

The Willow Pool

Dedication

For David North

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

Keep Reading

About the Author

Also by the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

One

Two hats. A leghorn straw and a warm winter felt, belonging to a faraway, mist-wrapped happiness. They were all she would keep of her mother; all that mattered. Meg closed her eyes and clamped her jaws tightly against tears. Yesterday she had wept, raged against the Fates for the very last time. Today she arranged her mother’s clothes into two piles: one to be discarded, the other to be given to the deserving – except the hats, of course.

She picked them up, spinning one on each forefinger, liking them because Ma had worn them year in, year out; disliking them because they were the badge of her poverty, given in charity. Dolly Blundell would not wear them again. She had laundered her last sheet, ironed her last starched shirt, washed and laid out her last corpse. Ma had gone to a heaven called Candlefold, where all happiness was and is and would be, and only someone selfish as herself, Meg thought sniffily, would want to call her back to Tippet’s Yard.

She slid her eyes to the clothes on the tabletop. Not much to show for over forty years of living, and they could go as soon as maybe. All Meg wanted was the hats, and Ma’s nine-carat gold wedding ring that hung now on the chain around her neck. Funny about that ring, when there was no man in Ma’s life; never had been.

Of course, there must have been really. If only for a brief coupling there had been a man, though who he was and where he was Meg would never know now. He’d never even had a name, which was sad. Bill Blundell was he called, or Richie or Ted – and had he been a seaman, a scholar or a scallywag?

Ma had never let herself be drawn to speak one word about him, good or bad. Nor had Nell Shaw been of any help. If Nell knew anything, she too had been stoically silent and had Meg not discovered at an early age how babies were got, she could have been forgiven for thinking Ma had found her on the doorstep of 1 Tippet’s Yard, and taken her in and worked like a slave to keep her fed and clothed.

‘Come in, Nell,’ she called, when the door knocker slammed down. But it couldn’t be her neighbour, because Nell always walked in uninvited. ‘That you, Tommy?’ Meg squinted through the inch-open door.

‘No it isn’t, and let me in, girl, or you’ll not get the pressies I’ve brought you!’

‘Kip! Kip Lewis, am I glad to see you!’ She nodded towards the table. ‘I was trying not to whinge, see. But sit yourself down and I’ll make us a brew. And leave the door open, let a bit of air in!’

And let all the misery out, and Ma’s unhappiness and that constant, frail cough. Let Dolly Blundell go to her Candlefold and be happy again.

‘Sorry about your mother,’ he said gently. ‘Amy told me. I knew she wasn’t all that good, but I hadn’t expected – well – not just yet …’

‘Nor me, Kip. It came quick, at the end. Looking back on things she’d said, I think she’d had enough. I found her there one morning early, sitting against the lavvy wall, arms round her knees; must’ve been there for hours. You might have thought she was asleep, but I knew straight away she was dead – it had been a bitterly cold night. Promise you won’t say anything to your Amy, but I think she meant to do it. She’d got that she couldn’t work, because of the coughing. She was just getting thinner and weaker, so in the end I sent for the doctor.’

She set the kettle to boil, closing her eyes tightly, determined there would be no more tears.

‘Ma wasn’t best pleased; said doctors cost money and, anyway, there was no cure for what she’d got. But the one who came was very decent; said he’d get her into a sanatorium in North Wales; told her there was a charity ward for people like her, without means. Said he could have her in, within a week …’

‘She had TB?’

‘Yes. I think she always knew it. Mind, she had a decent funeral. Always kept her burial club going, no matter what. Said she wasn’t letting the parish give her a pauper’s funeral. God! She was so cussed proud, even at the end!’

‘Don’t get upset, Meg. You did your best.’

‘I did what I could, once I was working. And I think she’d have gone into that sanatorium if the doctor hadn’t mentioned charity. There was something about her, Kip; a sort of – of – gentility. Even Nell noticed it. Maybe it was because she’d been in service, you see; housemaid to the gentry.’

‘She was different, I’ll grant you that. Amy said she always kept herself to herself.’

‘Which wasn’t hard in a dump like this.’

Apart from the entry and a sign to the left of it marked ‘Tippet’s Yard’, you could pass by and never know it was there.

‘It isn’t such a bad little place, Meg.’ He wanted to take her in his arms and kiss her breathless, but he held back, sensing her need to talk. He loved her, did she but know it, though he’d never dared say so; never gone beyond hugs and goodnight kisses.

‘Not bad, but the Corporation would’ve had it pulled down if the war hadn’t come. If it hadn’t been for flamin’ Hitler, me and Ma would’ve been in a decent house now, with an inside lavvy and a garden. But where have you been, Kip? It was a long trip this time.’

‘Sydney and back by way of Panama. Never been through the canal before. It’s amazing. Fifty miles long and about a dozen locks. Australia’s a smashin’ country. Real warm and no blackout, them being a long way from the war. And when it’s Christmas there, it can get up to eighty degrees! The opposite to us, see. Upside down!’

‘Kettle’s boiled. Tea won’t be long.’

She looked up and smiled and it did things to his insides. This was the time to tell her how he felt, ask her to be his girl, but instead he said, ‘I’ve brought you a few things. There’s not such a shortage of food down under as there is here.’ He emptied the carrier bag he had brought with him.

‘Kip! Are they black market?’

‘No. All fair and square.’

‘Oooh!’ A packet of tea, a bag of sugar, tins of butter, corned beef and peaches and – oh my goodness, silk stockings! ‘Kip Lewis, you’re an old love and you’re to come to Sunday tea, and share it. I’ll ask Nell and Tommy too.’

‘By Sunday I’ll be gone again. Got the chance of another trip the same, so I signed on for it before I came ashore. The Panama run is a good one – safer than the Atlantic. And don’t look so put out, Meg Blundell! You won’t miss me!’

‘But I will! When I saw you on the doorstep I was real glad to see you, honest I was! It’s been awful these last six weeks. I just couldn’t believe Ma was gone; not even after the funeral. I’ve been putting things off, I suppose – y’know, sorting her clothes and going through her papers.’

Papers. That was a laugh. Ma’s special things, more like, locked inside a battered attaché case and, since the war started, never far from her side, night or day.

‘That’s sad, Meg.’ He took the mug she offered, then sat on the three-legged stool beside the fireplace. ‘And I interrupted you, when you’d made up your mind to tackle it.’

‘No, Kip. I wasn’t given much choice. Nell said if I didn’t shift meself and sort things out, she’d batter me! None of Ma’s things fit Nell, so she’s goin’ to find good homes for the best of them and take the rest to the jumble for me. She’s been a brick. I don’t know what I’d have done without her that morning I found Ma.’

She closed her eyes, biting her teeth together, swallowing hard on a choke of tears. Then she drew a shuddering breath, forced her lips into a smile and whispered, ‘Now you know how glad I was to see you, Kip. There’d have been another crying match if you hadn’t come when you did. I’m grateful. Honest.’

‘I’d come to ask you out, but I can see you’ve got other things on your mind. What say I leave you in peace, girl, and take you out tomorrow night? There’s a good band at the Rialto. Fancy going to a dance?’

Meg said she did, and would he call for her at seven, so they could get there early before the dance floor got crowded. And could they find a chippy afterwards, and walk to the tram stop, eating fish and chips out of newspaper?

‘The only way to eat them, sweetheart,’ he smiled. ‘I’ll be here on the dot. Want me to wear my uniform or civvies?’

‘Uniform, please.’

She liked to see him in his walking-out rig, peaked cap tilted cheekily. And besides, uniforms were all the fashion these days, and popular. Men in civilian clothes were not!

‘Then I’ll leave you to get on with things.’ He placed a finger beneath her chin, kissing her lips gently. ‘Sure you don’t want me to stay?’

‘Sure.’ This was the last thing she could do for Ma, and she needed to be alone. ‘See you tomorrow, Kip, and thanks a lot.’

She watched from the doorway as he crossed the yard, bending his shoulders as he entered the alley that led to the street. When Tippet built his yard in 1820, Meg thought, men must have been a whole lot shorter. She looked to her left to see Nell, arms folded, on the doorstep of number 2, waiting to be told about the visitor.

‘There’s some tea in the pot,’ Meg called. ‘It’ll take a drop more hot water. Want a cup?’

Nell said she did, ta very much, and wasn’t that Kip Lewis who just left?

‘It was. And I’ve done what you wanted, Nell. Just got to put them in bags.’

‘And her case? Have you opened it yet? I think you ought to. Dolly told me there was a bankbook in there, and her jewels.’

‘Ma had no jewellery, and I don’t think there’d be much in the bankbook.’ If a bankbook had ever existed, that was. ‘And I haven’t got around to the case yet. One thing at a time, eh?’

‘Then you’d best do it whilst I’m here to give moral support, as they say.’

Dolly Blundell had been a quiet one, Nell thought frowning. Never said two words when one would suffice. She had always chosen not to reply to questions concerning Mr Blundell, and had answered Nell’s probings about why the tallyman never called at number 1 with quiet dignity.

‘The tallyman doesn’t call because I don’t borrow. We manage. I’ve got money in the bank.’

Dignity. She’d learned it in service, Nell had long ago decided. How always to speak slowly and quietly; never to shriek or laugh loudly; always to hold her shoulders straight and her head high. There had been a dignity about her even in death, because who but Doll could fade away so quietly and with so little fuss? And who but Doll could look almost peaceful with her face pinched blue with cold, her shoulders leaning against a lavatory wall?

‘Saccharin for me, please.’ Nell was not a scrounger of other people’s rations, even though she had noticed the bag of sugar the moment she walked through the door. ‘An’ when we’ve drunk this, I’ll fold the clothes whilst you get on with seein’ to that case. I’ve brought a couple of carrier bags.’

Two bags, she thought, briefly sad. Her neighbour’s life stuffed into a couple of paper carriers. It was to be hoped, she thought, all at once her cheerful self again, there’d be more to smile about when Meg got that dratted case opened.

‘Cheers, queen!’ She lifted her cup in salute.

‘Cheers!’ Meg arranged her lips into a smile, liking the blowzy, generous-hearted woman, even though she drank gin when she could afford it, and swore often, and took money, some said, from gentlemen. Nell’s man had not come back from the last war, and she had remained a widow. Marriageable men were thin on the ground after the Great War, so Nell had become a survivor and laughed when most women would have cried.

‘And thank the good Lord the clocks have gone forward, an’ we’ve got the decent weather to come, and light nights.’

To Nell’s way of thinking the blackout was the worst thing civilians had to endure; worse even than food rationing. In winter, the blackout was complete and unnatural. Not a chink of light to be seen at windows; streetlamps turned off for the duration and not so much as a match to be struck to light a ciggy outdoors, because Hitler’s bombers, when they raided Liverpool, were able to pick out even the glow of a cigarette end. If you had a ciggy to light, that was.

‘Think I’ll put a match to the fire.’ Early April nights could be chilly. ‘And I suppose I’d better open Ma’s case. I’ve put it off too long.’

‘You have! What are you bothered about?’

‘Don’t know.’ Meg reached into the glass pot on the mantelshelf for the tiny key. ‘Nell – did Ma ever tell you about my father? I could get nothing out of her, so in the end I stopped askin’. Was he a scally or somethink?’

‘Dunno. Doll made it plain that the subject of your father wasn’t open for discussion. I never even knew if her and him was married.’

‘But she wore a wedding ring!’

‘Weddin’ rings come cheap, and ten bob well spent if it buys respectability. Your mother never said he’d been killed in the trenches either.’

‘But she wouldn’t say that when I was born four years after the war ended. I wish she’d told me, though. Had you ever thought, Nell, that my father could be a millionaire or a murderer? It’s awful not knowing, and all the time wondering if you’re a bastard or not.’

‘Now that’s enough of talk like that! Your ma wouldn’t have allowed it, and neither will I! Dolly asked me to look out for you, once she got so badly, so it’s me as’ll be in control, like, till you’re twenty-one. Doll wore a wedding ring, so that says you’re legitimate, Meg Blundell, and never forget it!’

‘OK. I won’t. And I’m glad there’s someone I can turn to, though I won’t be a bother to you.’

‘You’d better not be, and you know what I’m gettin’ at. No messin’ around with fellers; that kind of messin’, I mean. And where has Kip Lewis been, then?’

‘Australia. He brought me those things.’ She nodded towards the table. ‘You and Tommy are to come to Sunday tea. We’ll have corned beef hash, and peaches for pudding. How will that suit you?’

‘Very nicely, and thanks for sharin’ your luck, girl. Tommy’ll be made up too. Poor little bugger. He’s that frail he looks as if the next puff of wind’ll blow him over. Sad he never wed. But are you going to open that case or aren’t you?’

Nell was curious. Any normal girl, she reasoned, would’ve done it weeks ago. But Meg Blundell was like her mother in a lot of ways: quiet, sometimes, and given to stubbornness. And besides, there really could be a bankbook locked away, and heaven only knew what else!

‘I suppose I must.’ Meg gazed at the tiny key in the palm of her hand. ‘I don’t want to, for all that. I don’t want to find out – anything …’

She and Ma had been all right as they were and all at once she didn’t want to know about the man who fathered her. And when she turned that key it might be there, staring her in the face, and she might be very, very sorry.

She fumbled the key into the lock, turning it reluctantly. In the fleeting of a second she imagined she might find a coiled snake there, ready to bite; a spider, big as the palm of her hand. Or nothing of any importance – not even a bankbook.

She lifted the lid, sniffing because she expected the smell of musty papers; closing her eyes when the faint scent of lavender touched her nostrils. She glanced down to see a fat brown envelope, addressed to Dorothy Blundell, 1 Tippet’s Yard, Liverpool 3, Lancashire. The name had been crossed through in a different ink and the words Margaret Mary Blundell written in her mother’s hand. The envelope was tied with tape and the knot secured with red sealing wax. Meg lifted her eyes to those of the older woman.

‘You goin’ to see what’s in it, girl?’ Nell ran her tongue round her lips.

‘N-no. Not just yet.’ The package looked official and best dealt with later. When she was alone.

‘There might be money in it!’

‘No. Papers, by the feel of it.’ Ma’s marriage lines? Her own birth certificate? Photographs? Letters, even? ‘Ma would’ve spent it if there’d been money. I – I’ll leave it, Nell, if you don’t mind.’

‘Please yourself, I’m sure.’ Nell was put out. ‘Nuthin’ to do with me, though your ma left a will, I know that for certain. Me an’ Tommy was witness to it!’

‘But she had nothink to leave.’ Meg pulled in her breath.

‘Happen not. But to my way of thinking, if all you have to leave is an ’at and an ’atpin and a pound in yer purse, then you should set it down legal who you want it to go to! Dolly wrote that will just after the war started; said all she had was to go to her only child Margaret Mary, and me and Tommy read it, then put our names to it. Like as not it’s in that envelope. Best you open it.’

‘No. Later.’ Quickly Meg took out another envelope. It had Candlefold Hall written on it and she knew at once it held photographs. To compensate for her neighbour’s disappointment she handed it to her. ‘You open it, Nell.’

‘Suppose this is her precious Candlefold.’ Mollified, Nell squinted at the photograph of a large, very old house surrounded by lawns and flowerbeds.

‘There’s a lot of trees, Nell.’ It really existed, then, Ma’s place that was heaven on earth. ‘Looks like it’s in the country.’

‘Hm. If them trees was around here they’d have been chopped down long since, for burnin’! And look at this one; must be the feller that ’ouse belonged to.’ She turned over another photograph to read Mr & Mrs Kenworthy, in writing she knew to be Dolly Blundell’s. ‘They look a decent couple. Bet they were worth a bob or two. And who’s this then – the old granny?’

A plump, middle-aged lady wearing a cape and black bonnet sat beside an ornamental fountain, holding a baby.

‘No. It’s the nanny,’ Meg smiled. ‘Nanny Boag and Master Marcus, 1917, Ma’s written.’ Her heart quickened, her cheeks burned. All at once they were looking at her mother’s life in another world; at a big, old house in the country; at Ma’s employers and their infant son.

Hastily Meg scanned each photograph and snapshot, picking out one of a group of servants arranged either side of a broad flight of steps – and standing a little apart the butler, was it, and the housekeeper? And there stood Ma, all straight and starched, staring ahead as befitted the occasion.

Another snap, faded to sepia now, of three smiling maids in long dresses and pinafores and mobcaps, in a cobbled yard beside a pump trough.

‘See, Nell! Norah, Self & Gladys. That’s Ma, in the middle. And look at this one!’

Tents on Candlefold’s front lawn, and stalls and wooden tables and chairs, and Ma and the two other housemaids in pretty flowered frocks and straw hats. Only this time the inscription was in a different hand and read. Candlefold 1916. Garden Party for wounded soldiers. Dolly Blundell, Norah Bentley, Gladys Tucker. Her mother, sixteen years old. Dolly Blundell! So Ma had never married!

‘What do you make of that, Nell?’ Her mouth had gone dry. ‘Ma’s name was –’

‘Ar. Seems it’s always been Blundell.’

‘So whoever my father was, he didn’t have the decency to marry her. I am illegitimate, Nell!’

Tears filled her eyes. When she hadn’t been sure – not absolutely sure – it somehow hadn’t mattered that maybe she was born on the wrong side of the sheets. But to see it written down so there was no argument about it – all at once it did matter! Someone had got a pretty young housemaid into trouble, then taken off and left her to it. And that girl became old long before her time, with nothing to lean on but her pride!

‘There now, queen.’ Nell pulled Meg close, hushing her, patting her. ‘Your ma wasn’t the first to get herself into trouble, and she won’t be the last. She took good care of you, now didn’t she? Didn’t put you into an orphanage, nor nuthin’. And if the little toerag that got you upped and left, then Doll was better off without him, if it’s my opinion you’re askin’.’

‘I’m sorry I opened that case. I never wanted to.’

‘Happen not, but at least we’ve got one thing straight; somethin’ your ma chose to keep quiet about. An’ don’t think I’m blaming her! She brought you up decent and learned you to speak proper. You’d not have got a job in a shop if she hadn’t.’

‘Edmund and Sons? That dump!’ Years behind the times, it was, and people not so keen to part with their clothing coupons for the frumpy fashions old man Edmund stocked. ‘I’d set my heart on the Bon Marche, y’know. Classy, the Bon is.’

The Bon Marche had thick carpets all over; the ground floor smelled of free squirts of expensive scent, but you had to talk posh to work there.

‘You were glad enough to go to Edmunds, Meg Blundell. Your wages made a difference to your ma.’

‘Ten bob a week, and commission! Girls my age are earning fifty times that on munitions!’

‘So go and make bombs and bullets.’

‘I might have to, Nell. Trade’s been bad since clothes rationing started. The old man’s going to be sacking staff before so very much longer.’

‘Then worry about it when he does! Now are you going to get on with it?’ Nell glanced meaningfully at the attaché case. ‘Your mother’s will is in there somewhere.’

‘You’re sure?’ Meg slid the photographs back into the envelope. ‘I know she used to talk about a bankbook; said if we were careful with the pennies we’d go and live in the country one day.’

‘That’s daydreamin’. We’re talkin’ about fact – like all that’s in this house, for one thing, and the bedding and –’

‘There’s not a lot of that left. The people from the health department took Ma’s mattress and bedding when they came to stove the place out; you know they did!’

‘They always do, with TB. You were lucky they didn’t take more! But there it is, girl! It’s marked on the envelope, see? Will. Told you, didn’t I?’ Nell clenched her fists, so eager were her fingers to light on it. ‘And there’s more besides; that bankbook, I shouldn’t wonder.’

Nell was right, Meg thought, picking out two smaller envelopes, glancing inside them. Ma’s will, and the bankbook! It made her wonder – just briefly, of course – if this was the first time Nell Shaw had seen inside the case.

‘So is this what you and Tommy signed?’ Meg offered the sheet of paper. ‘All I own is for my daughter, Margaret Mary Blundell. Straight and to the point, wouldn’t you say?’

Her words sounded flippant, though she hadn’t meant them to. It was just so sad that it made her want to weep again.

‘Your ma wasn’t one for wasting words. Keep it safe, girl. That’s a legal document, properly witnessed and dated. And you’d better open the bankbook!’

‘Yes.’

To be told of the existence of a bankbook had always been a comfort in a strange sort of way. Not many in these parts, Meg had been forced to admit, would have one; wouldn’t have a magic carpet that might one day take them to a cottage in the country. It had been something to cling to when bad times got worse. To return to the countryside had been Ma’s shining dream. She had often talked about how clean the air was; how sweet the washing smelled when you took it from the line. They would have a little garden, one day. Dreams. Ma had had them in plenty.