Spring was just within sight. The promise of sun after such a dreary winter made one long to shake off the doldrums, begin to hope, to think about the future without fear. Libby even dared to imagine that her feelings for Freddy were fading and she was ready for life without him, for starting anew, just as the first crocuses and snowdrops were bravely budding on the heath.
Then the cold snapped. Even though it was mid March, the temperature on the ornate barometer in the hall dropped towards zero, the foolhardy crocuses and snowdrops were snuffed out, smothered by a cruel blanket of snow, and there was a letter waiting for Libby when she came down to breakfast one bitterly cold morning. The aunts and Miss Bettany were swathed in shawls, Mrs Carmichael in an ancient fur coat which reeked of mothballs, and one of the salesmen, Libby couldn’t remember his name, was wearing a muffler and fingerless gloves as he tucked into his porridge.
‘I saw Freddy’s handwriting and I couldn’t help myself. I was sure he was writing to his dear mama,’ Millicent said as Libby picked up the envelope and gasped indignantly to find it had already been opened. ‘A mother’s love cannot be judged too harshly, Elizabeth, dear.’
Libby was so angry she could barely speak. She swallowed down the bitter words forming in her throat, and tucked the letter into her bag.
She didn’t have time to read it until the morning break when the girls were playing outside, throwing snowballs and shrieking. Libby could hear them from outside her studio as she sat on the window ledge, feet resting on the radiator, the warmth seeping through the rubber soles of her tennis shoes.
Two weeks ago Libby had been engaged as a teacher of dance, drama and movement at a small girls’ school in one of the huge Gothic houses on Fitzjohn’s Avenue. The Frognal School for Girls was apparently a Steiner Waldorf educational establishment, though all Libby knew was that it had the same smell that all schools did, of boiled cabbage, chalk dust and Jeyes fluid.
The headmistress, Beryl Marjoribanks, a tiny, blonde thing not much older than Libby, had all but begged her to take the job. ‘I never dreamt we might find someone who’d trained in Paris,’ she told Libby at the interview.
‘Oh, I didn’t train in Paris, I’ve just been to Paris,’ Libby had said. ‘I’m more of an actress than a dancer. I could muddle through a ballet class but…’
Beryl had blinked china-blue eyes and flapped her hands feebly. ‘I’m afraid the salary is somewhat lacking – you’re not certificated – but I can scrape together seven pounds a week during term time. Shall we say a term’s trial? Do you think that might suit?’
It suited very well though Libby was given a wide berth and a cold shoulder in the staffroom. She suspected that it was because the other teachers, all women, were university graduates and could sense she was a fraud. Or they disapproved of her outfits because Libby had taken to wearing Freddy’s old trousers and jumpers because it was easier to teach dance, drama and movement when one could actually move about.
Besides, the first day that she’d tripped downstairs wearing Freddy’s grey flannel trousers and his old school pullover, Millicent had almost choked on her bran flakes, which had been immensely satisfying.
Now, Libby crossed her legs, because her feet were too warm after so long resting on the radiator, and turned her attention to Freddy’s letter. Simply the act of sliding the sheets of paper out of the envelope made her heart thump uncomfortably. There had once been a time when a letter from Freddy had been a joy, a treasure, a sign that he was thinking about her.
Freddy’s perfect grammar-school script swam in front of Libby’s eyes. She blinked, shook her head to clear the fug and began to read.
Hotel Splendide
Plaza Santa Ana
Madrid
Libby, oh Libby, my dearest Libby
So many times I’ve started to write to you then given up. Put my pen down, paper torn in half because my words are so inadequate.
I imagine that you hate me so very much, but it can’t come close to how much I hate myself.
But what I did, why I left, was an act of love, maybe the only loving thing I’ve ever done for you, because you really are better off without me. I never did deserve your regard, your passion, that fierce, all-consuming love of yours.
I was never worthy of it, never knew what I’d done to make you love me so completely, because I never treated you that well, did I, old girl? You wanted all of me and I just wanted you when it suited, then wished I could pack you away, like a toy that I’d grown tired of.
This wasn’t what I meant to write. But when I think about you, the thoughts chase around and around in my head, impossible to pluck one at random and search for the truth in it.
What is true is that I did a wicked thing. Deserted you when you needed me most but that love you had for me, it nearly killed you, Libby. No good can come of a love like that.
When I try to think of you, I don’t see you any more; your beautiful face, the smile you said was only for me, the curve of your breasts, the sweet promise of your thighs – all gone. Now I see you pale-faced and corpse-like. And the blood. So much blood, pools of it at my feet as I hurried you to hospital, screaming at the cab driver to go faster while you lay on the seat, your head in my lap. I knew the child was no more and I thought I’d lost you too and in that moment I loved you as completely as you’d ever wanted.
And it was also in that moment when love and loss battled for my soul that I saw our differences with a clarity that cut through everything else. You need a man who’s more, much more, than me. Steadfast and true, who’ll love you and honour you and give you the life you crave. That happy life centred around hearth and home that you had before the war, before your father died, before your mother and your sister were taken by that cruel plague.
I am not an honourable man, Libby, but leaving you is the only honourable thing I’ve ever done.
Are you happy now, Libby? Or happier, at least? Are you well? I hope you are.
I also hope that living with Ma isn’t too much of an ordeal. I’m in Spain (long story, involves a couple of Americans and a bullfighter) and filing pieces quite regularly for the Daily Mirror and Daily Herald. How are you for funds? If you speak to a Mr Gough at the Mirror he will send you a money order for however much you need.
I don’t know how long I’ll be here, now the elections are over. The political situation is still quite volatile, like a tinderbox, everyone waiting to see who’ll light the first match.
If you don’t mind, if you can even bear to say my name much less think it, could you ask Ma to send me a few items?
Typewriter ribbons – three (you know the ones I use)
A packet of tea
Two shirts – not white
A good English–Spanish dictionary
Notebooks – the small black ones from Woolworths will do.
There’s so much more I want to say, have to say, but it can wait until I get back.
Yours,
Freddy
Libby was crying, tears streaming down her face, because she’d been trying so hard not to think about Freddy. Not even letting herself hate him because that would mean he was still centre-stage when she’d sent him to the wings.
And God knows, she’d tried her very hardest not to think about the baby. In the same way that she always averted her gaze from the still-vivid pink scar across her belly. But it was utter madness to imagine what might have been if the baby hadn’t been swept out of her on a sea of blood but brought safely into the world and placed in her arms.
The baby would have been someone to love without rhyme or reason and he would have loved her back in the same way. And now thoughts of the baby rushed at her, reached out to grab her, so that the loss of him was again as raw and as painful as it had been on that day she’d woken up in a bed in a hospital in Paris. Then a couple of weeks later, still in the same hospital, Libby had woken up to find that Freddy was gone too.
Libby crumpled the letter in her fist. How she wanted to howl. Wanted to lie down on the floor and beat at it with her hands, but all she could do was cry quietly for what had been stolen from her.
There were no bells to signal the end of break – apparently the sound of a ringing bell would turn the girls into mindless automatons unable to think for themselves – so suddenly the room was full of shrieking seven-year-olds. They were still rosy-cheeked and boisterous from throwing snowballs.
Libby was glad of their intrusion, the noise and utter joyousness of them. She allowed herself one last shuddering sob and ran her thumbs under her still-streaming eyes. Then she clapped her hands to be heard over the roar of sixteen little girls.
‘Goodness me! Is this my class two or have they all been replaced by a pack of savages from darkest Borneo?’
Somehow Libby made it through the rest of her lessons then returned home to be met by her mother-in-law who’d obviously spent the best part of the day preparing to have words.
‘I didn’t read Freddy’s letter,’ Millicent burst out before Libby had even removed her hat or scarf. ‘I realised my mistake almost immediately but I couldn’t help but notice, the words simply leapt out at me, that he’d said that living with me was an ordeal…’
‘That’s not exactly what he wrote,’ Libby said wearily.
‘I’m sure that I’ve been most welcoming. Treated you like a daughter.’ The older woman’s chest heaved and Libby wondered, as she often did, what Millicent was made of under all her layers; the stiff black fabrics she favoured, the corseting, the rigging. She was so thin Libby suspected that without all her underpinnings, she might just blow away on a cloud of her own self-righteousness. ‘I even took a taxi home when I met you off the boat train, though the driver robbed me blind.’
‘You did and I was very grateful, I still am.’ Millicent had read Freddy’s letter, all of it, several times over. Libby would bet her life on it. So why couldn’t she say something about Libby’s loss, about the grandchild that she could have had, offer some small word or gesture of comfort? A touch on the arm, a smile soft with sympathy instead of her usual peevish expression as if she’d recently taken a sip of curdled milk and couldn’t get the taste out of her mouth. ‘If the taxi was that expensive then I could reimburse you.’
Millicent considered it for just long enough to make a mockery of her tight reply. ‘Of course not. We’re family, but much as I love Freddy, I simply can’t be haring around town buying all those things for him. He seems to forget that since his father passed, I’m on a considerably reduced income.’ The curdled-milk look crossed her face again. ‘I daresay if his editor is in a position to release his earnings, then we should have a discussion about the rent. You are paying less than my other tenants.’
‘Because I’m family and yet you’re still charging me only two shillings less a week than Mrs Lemmon across the road charges her PGs. And she has an indoor lavatory and is plumbed for hot water,’ Libby reminded her sweetly. ‘If it’s any consolation, I’m going out tonight so I won’t need dinner. That should save some money.’
Then she swept up the stairs, leaving Millicent Morton speechless.