Mr Watkins didn’t speak to Libby for the entire journey to Brighton.
Indeed, Libby wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d deposited her in a third-class carriage and hurried away to avail himself of the rarefied air of first class. He didn’t though. There were a lot of other things he failed to do too. Such as ask Libby if she minded sitting with her back to the engine or if she needed help putting her suitcase on to the luggage rack, earning him the disapproval of an elderly gentleman whose splendid handlebar moustache quivered in outrage at Watkins’ cavalier attitude. ‘Chap’s an out-and-out bounder,’ he muttered to Libby as he hefted the case for her, but unfortunately he departed at Clapham Junction.
Then it was just the two of them, Mr Watkins seething from behind The Times, though Libby was sure he must have read it from cover to cover several times.
Libby had borrowed a couple of Angela Thirkell novels from the library but she couldn’t settle to reading. She wrote a list in her diary of things she needed to do on Monday when this hellish weekend would be over, then took out Freddy’s letter. She’d already committed it to memory but the same old lines jumped out to taunt her.
It’s impossible to love you the way you wish to be loved.
I don’t believe that I’ve ever managed to give you one single moment of the true, pure happiness that you deserve.
If only I were a better man, but I’m not and you always knew that, old girl.
It was a letter from a liar. The confession of a coward. Libby stuffed it back into her handbag and pressed a hand to her belly.
At one point, as they were approaching Hayward’s Heath and each jolt of the train along the tracks sharpened the pain in her right side, Libby glanced up to see that Mr Watkins had lowered The Times, so his gaze could flicker over her. He caught Libby’s eye then and made not the slightest attempt to hide his distaste, as if she were some shabby tart whom Mickey had found hanging around Shepherd’s Market.
Then, at last, they were in Brighton. Back in the day when she was still doing rep, occasionally as the female lead, more often much further down the bill, Libby would visit the town at least twice a year to do a run. Sometimes at the Theatre Royal, more usually at the Grand before it became a cinema. The company would take over a ghastly boarding house in Kemptown, sleeping six to a room and three to a bed and staying up to all hours playing gin rummy for ha’pennnies and drinking cherry brandy from enamel mugs.
Now, Libby and Mr Watkins stood outside the station. Libby turned up the fur collar of her astrakhan coat and glanced hopefully towards the one cab that idled on the station forecourt.
‘We’ll walk,’ Mr Watkins decided. ‘It’s not far.’
He set off, not bothering to check with Libby that she wanted to walk, which she didn’t. She was wearing such silly, flimsy shoes because all her others needed mending and when she lifted her suitcase, she winced at the throb of pain in her side.
Libby followed Watkins through the drizzle down Queens Road, which was much longer than she remembered. Halfway down, when all she could see in front of her was a murky greyness so it was impossible to distinguish between sky and sea, the wind picked up. She had to keep tight hold of her hat with one hand, her case with the other, bobbing around people walking towards her, their heads down, their steps brisk, and that terrible wound tightened and pulled so now it felt like the very worst, most agonising kind of stitch.
It was all too soon. She’d only been back in England since mid December, not even six weeks had passed. She was meant to be resting but idling in bed all day didn’t pay the bills. To take her mind off the pain, the thin soles of her shoes sliding over damp paving stones, the bitter wind, Libby stared at Mr Watkins’s black-coated back and cursed him silently.
‘You unutterable bloody sod. Buggering son of a whore. Pox-ridden son of a bitch.’
He suddenly whirled round as if she’d hurled the epithets out loud. ‘Don’t dawdle,’ he barked at her.
‘Oh, you fucking bastard! You arsehole…’
It was that anger that kept Libby going, even once they reached the seafront and the wind all but flattened her against the buildings. Finally Watkins stopped outside a fancy hotel, door held upon by a uniformed flunky. Mr Watkins sailed in before her.
Libby gratefully relinquished her case and with hobbling steps caught up with Watkins, took hold of his sleeve and tucked her arm in his.
Though she already thought him impossibly stiff, he stiffened even further at her touch. ‘We’re meant to be in love,’ she reminded him quietly. ‘As if a weekend in a hotel together isn’t an ordeal by fire.’
‘Very well,’ he muttered and continued his path to the reception desk, with Libby on his arm as if they’d suddenly become attached and he didn’t have the first idea about how to shake her free. No wonder the erstwhile Mrs Watkins had found comfort with another man.
It was as they were taken to their room by a porter, the lift creaking alarmingly between floors, that Libby decided she would simply have to find it within herself to be gay and charming. When she really set her mind to being gay and charming there were very few people who failed to succumb. Mr Watkins might present her biggest challenge to date, but they couldn’t spend two whole days together with him either silent or snapping at her.
They were shown to a large, rather nice room on the fifth floor with sea views and its own bathroom. No bundling into one’s robe and thundering down the corridor in dread of bumping into another guest. Libby smiled approvingly when Watkins tipped the porter half a crown and as the young boy shut the door quietly behind him, she made her smile bigger and brighter.
It was wasted on Watkins. He turned away from Libby to stare out of the window at the rain-lashed view. He hadn’t even taken off his hat and coat. ‘It needn’t be awful, spending time together like this,’ she said to his shoulders, which tightened when she spoke. ‘It’s only two days. That isn’t such a long time. We might as well make the best of it, don’t you agree?’
At first, Libby thought that he hadn’t heard, though she’d spoken clearly enough. She sighed, put a tentative hand to her side where the pain ebbed and flowed, and was just thinking of the drubbing she’d give Mickey when she got back to town, when Watkins turned round.
Libby wished he hadn’t, because those glances he’d given her before, disdainful as they’d been, were nothing compared to the contempt that now contorted his face.
‘Just how do you suggest that I make the best of this damned ugly business?’ he demanded. ‘If you have any ideas then I’d love to hear them.’
‘Two days,’ Libby repeated with less conviction. ‘They’ll be over in a flash.’
‘Two days for you. Twenty bloody years for me gone down the drain and all I get to show for it is a weekend in a hotel with some floozy…’ He stopped then, for which Libby was grateful, though she’d been called much worse.
‘I’m not a floozy,’ she said mildly, because there was absolutely no point in antagonising the man any further.
‘And I’d bet a pound to a penny that your name isn’t Marigold and you’re not an impoverished widow either,’ he said and sprang towards Libby. She reared back, but Watkins walked past her, to the door, then he was gone.
Libby sank down on the bed – she didn’t even want to think about how the bed would feature in her bravura performance tomorrow morning when the maid brought in tea and saw her and Mr Watkins tucked up together as if they’d spent the night hours in the throes of passion. Instead she hung her head until the pain had receded enough that she could get up and, very slowly, take off her coat and hat, then slip off her shoes.
It gave Libby no small amount of satisfaction to stuff her damp shoes with pages torn out of Watkins’s copy of The Times, then she decided to run a bath.
Soon enough Libby was sinking into the water, head lolling back, arms on either side of the tub, her eyes closed. She didn’t know how long she lay there, occasionally easing up the plug with one foot, so she could let in more hot water, but it was so blissful to simply do nothing. To free her mind from worry.
Then she opened her eyes, glanced down, and the calm was shattered. She always tried not to look at the scar. It made her wonder again and again what they’d done to her in that hospital in Paris, because now she felt so empty.
True, her heart was still intact, beating away, though there had been times that Libby wished that it would simply stop. Her heart had always been a useless thing. Leading her such a dance, making a fool of her, persuading her she was in love time after time…
Now Libby had nothing to show for all that love but a jagged, puckered scar across her belly. The raised red skin itched and Libby put her hand between her legs then held it up to see her fingers streaked red. Oh, not again.
There’d been so much blood: thick, viscous, clotted. Libby had had to stumble into the hospital with one of the hotel towels between her legs. Freddy, his face muddy with shock, had clung to her arm, though he’d meant to be the one holding her up.
Libby put her hand between her legs again, and her fingers came away clean and the pain was retreating.
There was a rap on the door. ‘What are you doing in there?’
It was Watkins. She’d managed to forget about him this last hour. ‘I’ll be out soon,’ Libby tried to say but she needed every ounce of strength to brace her hands on the lip of the bath and heave herself out of the water.
Climbing out of the tub was like trying to scale a mountain but finally Libby was standing on the bathmat, legs shaky, fingers fumbling with her robe.
Another peremptory knock. ‘Please come out. You’re being very childish.’
Libby pulled a face, but even that made her head swim, as if she were in a dream, pitching forwards. ‘I’m not decent.’ It was nothing more than a whisper.
‘I can’t hear you!’
Oh go away, you hateful man.
Libby took a faltering step towards the door and then she really was pitching forward, falling…
Libby drifted in the hinterland between sleep and wakefulness. Sometimes Freddy’s face was all she could see. How she’d missed the soft, tender look in his eyes when it was just the two of them. Other times, she was aware of being jostled and dragged, another man’s face, creased with concern, two young women in white caps, black dresses, like nuns, their voices muted as if they were speaking from another room.
Then Libby was awake, in bed, covers pulled up to her chin. ‘Ah, she’s back with us,’ said a voice and Libby looked up see an older man, well fed, with beetling brows and a bulbous red nose. Likes a drink, she thought, as he patted her shoulder. ‘You gave your husband quite a fright, Mrs Watkins.’
‘I’m not…’ She was Mrs Morton and yet she was in this room, in this ghastly situation, helping another man leave his wife. She turned her head to see Watkins at the other side of the bed.
She’d been too cowed by his contempt to look properly at him before but now she could see dark, glossy hair swept back from a patrician face, dark blue eyes, full mouth. He looked rather like Freddy but his features were broader and there was a weariness to him; a jaded quality Freddy had yet to acquire. ‘Did I faint? I never faint.’
‘No more hot baths for you,’ the doctor said jovially, then he chivvied Watkins from the room so he could take Libby’s temperature and pulse. It seemed a pity to waste the services of a doctor when one was at hand, so when he asked her if she was still feeling peculiar, she nodded.
‘I lost a baby last November. In Paris. I had to have an operation and ever since then I’ve had these episodes where I feel quite queer.’ Libby described the agonising stitch in her side, the intermittent bleeding, how sometimes she felt so tired, so low, she could hardly drag herself from her bed.
The doctor had a cursory glance at the scar marring her belly then patted Libby’s hand. ‘These things happen,’ he said in the same jovial tone. ‘How far along were you?’
‘About six months, but I thought… I hoped… I’d still be able to have a baby.’ Libby shut her eyes and sniffed. ‘At the hospital, they never really explained and my French isn’t very good. There was a letter but it got lost and you see…’
‘I do, my dear. From the mess they made of stitching you back up and the symptoms you’re presenting with, I’m afraid there can be no doubt that they performed a hysterectomy. Removed the whole kit and caboodle. That’s the Frogs for you. Knew a French chap once, type of fellow to take a sledgehammer to crack a walnut. How old are you?’
Usually, Libby told people that she was twenty-seven – she’d always been able to pass as younger. ‘Thirty-two,’ she admitted.
‘Well, you had left it rather late to start a family.’ Libby was starting to hate the doctor with his glib pronouncements and air of a man who was long overdue a stiff drink and his dinner. ‘Still, best not to dwell on it. I have a sister who never married. She breeds poodles and seems happy enough.’
‘I’ve never liked poodles,’ Libby said as there was a soft knock on the door and Watkins came back into the room.
‘Maybe gardening then,’ the doctor said, as he opened his case. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out that you were anaemic too. We shall have to build you up, my dear. Two spoonfuls of cod liver oil twice a day. A glass of milk stout every evening and if I were you, young man, I’d make sure your good lady has steak once a week.’
‘Well… I… that is…’ Watkins was wrong-footed and stuttering, so different from how he’d been before. Libby wondered if she shouldn’t faint more often.
‘Can’t afford steak?’ The doctor looked around the hotel room in disbelief. ‘Liver, then. She’ll be as right as rain in no time.’ All the while, he was putting stethoscope, thermometer and notebook back in his bag. ‘Aspirin for the pain if you really must, but I don’t hold with it myself.’
Then he stood there for one awkward moment until realisation dawned on Watkins’s face. ‘I’ll see you out.’ He walked the doctor to the door, where they had a brief, hushed conversation before money exchanged hands.
Libby arranged the pillows behind her and when Watkins turned from the door she was sitting up, hands neatly clasped together. Someone, she fervently hoped that it was one of the two maids she’d glimpsed, had dressed her in the mint-green silk nightgown that had been part of her trousseau – the only item in her trousseau, because she’d hardly been a blushing virgin on her wedding night.
She was surprised at how calm she felt. ‘I don’t know what you must think of me.’ Libby wondered exactly what information about her condition the doctor had shared with this man. She decided she didn’t much care. After this weekend, she’d never have to see Watkins again. ‘I generally don’t make a habit of swooning.’
‘It wasn’t a swoon, it was a dead faint,’ Watkins said. His voice was much softer, kinder, now that he wasn’t shooting words at her like they were bullets. ‘What I said to you, how I behaved, it was unforgivable.’
‘Either way, it’s forgiven,’ Libby said and she meant it. Not just because her forgiveness might prolong this new accord between them but because she also knew exactly how it felt when the person you loved hadn’t cared one jot for the ‘till death do us part’ portion of their marriage vows.
‘Shall we start again, you and I?’ he asked her, as he came to sit on the bed, in the same spot that the doctor had recently vacated. Not that Libby was alarmed. She liked to think that she could spot a wrong ’un a mile away and only a wrong ’un, the very lowest of the low, would take advantage of a woman who’d been in a dead faint not half an hour ago. ‘Is your name really Marigold?’
‘It’s really not.’ There didn’t seem much point to the pretence any more. ‘It’s Elizabeth. Libby, my friends call me.’
‘Hugo,’ he said, holding out his hand for her to shake. ‘Pleased to meet you.’