Mr Cadmus Page 2

  Chapter 2

  Montmorency

  Millicent Swallow hated the Hammersmith house ever since she could remember. She was now thirteen, but her anger and resentment had grown. It was of dark grey stone with a decoration of red brick of no discernible pattern. She hated the fact that when relatives came to stay she was sometimes obliged to share a bed with her mother or even, worst hell of all, with her grandmother. She watched them when they washed their breasts in the kitchen sink, to save the hot water of a bath, and stared at her grandmother when she climbed upstairs with a chamber pot. She hated the smells of the two women when they took off their corsets. When they called out to her in the morning, ‘Millikin!’, she blenched. There was no way out of this. She was trapped in the little house, with all its smells and its dustiness.

  She kept a budgerigar, Clementine, in a small cage in her bedroom. One afternoon her grandmother opened the the door to the cage, in order to clean it, and Clementine flew out. Pursued by the old woman the bird fluttered, and faltered, but eventually escaped out of the open bedroom window. Millicent had never forgiven the woman, and indulged in a hatred that was almost joyful in its intensity. She believed that her grandmother, out of malice towards her, had deliberately released the bird. But she took care not to show her anger. She remained outwardly polite and amiable. Her mother and grandmother had endless arguments and rows that led to screaming matches. In one of them an incautious reference gave her the impression that her real father had left home just after she was born. She was soon convinced that the two women had driven him away, so that now she was trapped with them. Her grandmother would hurl plates or saucers at her mother, whereupon her mother would walk out, shutting the door very loudly as the grandmother called after her ‘And what about the poor child?’ Millicent was always shaken by these episodes, which only increased her resentment and distaste for both women.

  At the bottom of the little garden was a wooden shed that contained a miniature toy dog, gardening tools, a rusting lawn-mower and several half-empty tins of paint. It was here that Millicent would come when she wished to avoid the others in the house. She felt that she had concealed herself, and could spend long periods in solitary meditation. She had not yet outgrown the shaggy toy dog. He was still her friend and adviser. He sat astride one of the tins of paint, his four legs akimbo. His name was Montmorency.

  ‘They have become wild beasts again,’ she told him. ‘Screaming and carrying on. As if the neighbours can’t hear. Of course they can. I know Mrs Wilson pities me. But I don’t want pity. I want them to be arrested.’

  ‘And what would happen then?’ Montmorency asked her.

  ‘They would be sent to prison. That’s what I would like.’

  ‘You are talking about your ma and grandma.’

  ‘Call them mother and grandmother.’ She was silent for a moment. ‘What am I supposed to do?’

  ‘There is nothing you can do.’

  ‘But why should I be trapped? I have nothing to say to them. I want nothing to do with them.’

  ‘They are your family.’

  ‘I hate families. I hate mealtimes. I hate listening to the wireless. I hate them.’

  ‘But what would you do without them?’

  ‘I would survive. I’ll be old enough next year to leave school.’

  ‘And then what would you do?’

  ‘I don’t know. Become a nurse. Or a typist. Something like that.’

  ‘Or a nun?’

  ‘Why are you staring at me?’

  ‘I’m not staring, Millicent.’

  ‘Your eyes look like fire.’

  ‘It is the light of the sun setting. It shines through the window at this time of day.’

  A curious auditory illusion of this area was the apparent sound of waves breaking against the shore, accompanied by the crash of crumbling cliffs. Everyone recognised the noise and justifiably explained it as the roadworks for the new motorway. But Millicent knew better. She believed it to be another beach and shoreline just beneath the surface of the earth. They would find the stairway when they were older.

  Millicent often held such conversations with Montmorency in the privacy of the garden shed. Unfortunately they were both quarrelsome by nature, and there were occasions when she would snatch up the dog and hurl it to the other side of the hut before breaking down in tearful apologies. Sometimes she would sing to him, cradling him in her arms. Sometimes she would lay him down to sleep, a small cloth over him as a blanket.

  There was a call from the house. ‘Milly!’ It was her grandmother. ‘Supper’s ready. It’s your favourite!’

  ‘What is your favourite?’ Montmorency asked her.

  ‘Anything they don’t have to touch.’

  She had two more terms at school, and was intent on making her plans for the future with Montmorency. They whispered together.

  Weeks passed and Millicent’s frustration grew. On Thursday nights her grandmother would prepare a batch of chips in a frying pan greased with fat. The fat would then be allowed to cool overnight to make dripping. Millicent knew well enough when her mother and grandmother had fallen asleep; she was familiar with the rhythm of their breathing and snoring that could be heard through the paper-thin walls of the little house. She waited until she could wait no longer. Two months later, silently she opened the window of her bedroom and climbed down the stairs; she crossed the living room into the kitchen where the pan of fat lay beside the oven. She turned on one of the gas rings and lit it with a long match. As the fat seethed and bubbled she opened the door into the garden. She went back to the stove, and then threw another lit match into the pan. The fat burst into flames at once, and at that moment Millicent ran out into the garden and closed the door behind her. As soon as the flames took hold of the house, she began to call out ‘Fire! Fire!’ She knew that her mother and grandmother slept well, and kept her voice low. But the smoke was now creeping about her and she screamed in earnest. Some windows were opened. ‘Fire! Fire!’ In the confusion the fire brigade was called by a young neighbour, Peggy, from a telephone box at the corner of the street.

  By the time the firemen came, it was too late to save the lives of the two women trapped in the flames. It seemed to be little short of a miracle that the girl had survived and was quite unhurt. Of course she broke down in tears when told about her mother and grandmother, and she was for a while inconsolable. She spent the rest of the night sitting in the kitchen of a neighbour, drinking tea. She was questioned gently by a police detective on the following morning. Yes, she had smelled the smoke and heard the sound of fire; instinctively she had opened the window of her little bedroom and, driven by fear, she had jumped down to the garden. It was a distance of only a few feet, and she had not been injured. Still, she could not help but limp a little.

  When the fire took hold of the house, she never heard any sound from her mother and grandmother; they must have beeen smothered as they slept. She took out a handkerchief and blew her nose.

  ‘You had a lucky escape, young lady,’ the policeman said to her.

  ‘Lucky?’ She blushed.

  Her aunt Helen came to collect her that afternoon; she was now Millicent’s most prominent living relative; and she was very tearful. She was wearing a large black hat, and Millicent noticed with disgust that she had a perpetually dripping nose. ‘You poor thing,’ she said, as she threw her arms about the girl. Millicent was carrying Montmorency, who was only slightly singed. She gently disengaged herself from her aunt’s embrace.

  Millicent had already decided that she did not want to attend a new school. She would be fourteen the following month, and had no need to do so. ‘You know,’ she told her aunt after living with her for a month or two, ‘I think I might be a good nurse.’ Aunt Helen was delighted. It would take this difficult girl off her hands; she had in fact two nieces who had looked on her for support and protection during the war. As well as Millicent Swallow she had a second niece, Maud Finch. There were many such extended families in wartime. But, with the shortages, two were too many.

  Aunt Helen was in charge of the local Women’s Institute and, according to administrative practice, served on the board of governors of the local sanatorium on Ealing Common.

  The sanatorium was under the auspices of the Roman Catholic bishop and, according to the strict regulations, even the youngest nurses were addressed as ‘sister’. They dressed as plainly as nuns in a convent, and tried to be equally demure. Millicent was recruited without discussion. Nurses were needed. As a very junior nurse – now known as Sister Swallow – she was assigned a cubicle with another young trainee, Sister Appiah, who had a habit of tearing photographs out of the Barbados Gleaner and pasting them into a large red volume. Her principal interest was in the many beauty contests on the island and it was rumoured that Sister Appiah had taken first prize in one of them; so she was known by the patients as Sister Beauty, when in fact Millicent believed that she was on the plain side. Millicent had in fact taken an immediate dislike to her, and waited for a chance to cause her trouble.

  In the winter of 1944 an epidemic of dysentery spread across West London that particularly affected the frail with vomiting, diarrhoea and abdominal cramps. There was such an overflow of fluids, of all varieties, that the nurses were happy to delegate their work to the trainees. All of whom, including Sister Appiah and Sister Swallow, were called to duty as a result. Millicent already regretted having joined the profession. One evening Millicent knocked quietly on her aunt’s office door in the sanatorium, at the end of a long corridor. ‘I think,’ she said, ‘that you ought to come with me.’ Her seriousness and quietness affected her aunt, and slowly they tip-toed along the corridor.

  They walked through the three wards, accompanied by such a cacophony of groans and tears that Millicent put her hands up to her ears. ‘Don’t do that, sister,’ Aunt Helen rebuked her. ‘It creates a bad impression. We are all God’s children.’ At the same moment both women heard the distinctive sound of Caribbean music, vey close to the cha-cha-cha, which could only have come from the nurses’ day room. Helen stared at Millicent. ‘Is this why you called me?’

  The girl nodded and then bowed her head as if in shame. She knew very well that the blame would fall on Sister Appiah. ‘Say no more about it,’ Helen told her. ‘There are more ways than one way to skin a cat.’

  Within a fortnight Sister Appiah and the other revellers had been transferred to work in a mental institution at Hounslow, and Millicent had the luxury of the shared cubicle to herself. Space was still comparatively cramped, however, and a few days later there was a knock at her door. ‘Sister Millicent! Sister Millicent! God be with you!’ Immediately she sensed an intrusion. The matron was accompanied by a young woman of indeterminate age who continually brushed her hair across her face with a nervous gesture.

  ‘I am reserving my special ones to your care,’ Helen told her. ‘This is Sister Finch.’

  So what was so special about this pale-faced brat? The fact she was Millicent’s cousin was known only to Aunt Helen at the time. Favouritism was not popular in those years of combat. They were soon left alone to compile ‘notes’ on their sick and grieving patients, many of whom seemed to Maud to be close to death.

  ‘Well, Sister Finch,’ Millicent said. ‘You have flown to the right nest. Finch and Swallow. Our parents named us after two birds caught in a storm. No, not a storm. A tempest. Thunder and lightning.’ She gave an involutary shudder.

  After a period of recuperation Maud Finch had been enrolled at the municipal hospital on Ealing Common; both her parents had died in the previous year, during the recent epidemic. Another nurse was a blessing. She now agreed to share her house at Lambeth with Millicent Swallow, who, after the death of her mother and grandmother in the fire, was looking for a new home. She was of course also to be trained at St George’s; it was a catchment area for females who could be prepared for war work. As a result, the two young women became natural companions.

  Maud had been ‘seeing’ a young man, Harry, who was employed in a department store off Oxford Street as a draper’s assistant. Millicent had been keeping a close eye upon the younger girl’s behaviour. On one Saturday evening Maud was setting out for a date with Harry at the Bermondsey Pleasure Garden in the grounds of the old abbey. ‘Now,’ Millicent told her before he arrived at the door. ‘Don’t you be allowing any “how’s your father”.’

  ‘Why ever should he do that?’

  ‘He’s a man, isn’t he? Men have sweaty hands. You just feel them, and you’ll see.’ Millicent did not trust Harry; she disliked his camel-hair coat and his brilliantined hair. Still, Maud was now sixteen and could make her own life.

  It was sixpence each to enter the pleasure garden, and Harry paid. He also bought a pitcher of beer from a stall in a circus tent, and pointed out the barrage balloon floating overhead, which filled her with a vague dread. Maud was not accustomed to drink. ‘That’s my girl,’ he said, as she attempted her first glass. ‘Get that down you, girl. There’s more where that came from.’ She now realised that he must have been drinking earlier in the day; his speech was slightly slurred and he exaggerated the wrong words. ‘Feel like a walk among the trees? Of course you do. Nothing wrong with trees, is there?’ He went back to the tent and bought another pitcher of strong ale. ‘This’ll do you good, Maudie girl. Get a bit of colour in your cheeks. Hold on a mo. I’m just going to pop behind this bush.’

  He unbuttoned his trousers and, to her astonishment, began to urinate. She had never seen anything like it before, and quickly began to walk towards the public spaces of the pleasure garden. He caught up with her and put his arm around her shoulders. ‘It’s a usual thing, isn’t it? You see dogs doing it. You see dogs doing all sorts of things. Isn’t that right? It’s a dog’s life, Maudie.’

  He was walking her towards the canopy of trees, but she did not struggle or call out for fear of making a scene. ‘Here we are. This is lovely, this is. Nice and comfy. You just lie down, my princess. Harry boy will look after you. I can promise you that.’

  He lay down beside her, watching her out of the corner of his eye. ‘You and I can have a little game. Fancy that, do you? No harm in it, is there?’ He touched her leg, and she pulled it away with a gasp. ‘Did that frighten you? It wasn’t meant to.’ He then took hold of her leg and pulled it back towards him, at the same time putting his hand up her skirt. ‘Here we go round the mulberry bush,’ he said. He unbuttoned his trousers and lay on top of her. ‘Nice and pink, princess. Nice and pink.’ He took down her knickers. ‘Here we go, here we go, here we go. Up the Gunners!’ He entered her so forcibly that it would have seemed, if anyone were watching, that he was in fact stabbing her. When he rolled off her, he stared up at the sky. ‘You won’t be saying anything about this, princess, will you? You being a nurse and everything.’

  Maud had to conceal her shock and hysteria from Millicent; no one could know. She told her that she had developed a migraine, possibly from excessive study, and took to her bed in a darkened room. She would not eat but would sometimes wander around the house with an expression that seemed to Millicent to be one of dismay or despair; Millicent knew very little about migraine, and concluded that these were some of the symptoms.

  Maud then began to suffer from abdominal pains, but refused to visit the local doctor. ‘You’re looking very peaky,’ Millicent told her. ‘You should take some iron pills.’ When Maud missed her period, she still refused to consider the possibility that she was pregnant. She told herself that it was simply the result of stress. Yet within a fortnight she knew; her knowledge came not from any outward signs, but from an inner sense that could not be contradicted. She was carrying a child.

  For some months she was able to disguise her condition and attend the municipal hospital. She wore large knitted sweaters and dresses that concealed her shape. She believed that there was no reason why she should not be able to hide her pregnancy until she reached full term. No one would ever know of her humiliation. Yet there soon came a time when it was too late for prevarication or concealment with her cousin. The signs were too urgent and too insistent. She walked calmly into Millicent’s room.

  ‘I’m having a baby.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A baby. A human being.’ Then she sat down and told her the story of the rape in the Bermondsey Pleasure Garden.

  Millicent was the first to bring up the subject of abortion. In her work she had heard of certain powders, and of certain instruments.

  ‘I don’t want it to die inside me. I don’t want to carry a corpse around night and day. What if it began to rot in my belly?’

  ‘But it doesn’t happen that way.’

  ‘How do you know? What if it begins to stink?’

  ‘You’re upsetting yourself, Maud.’

  ‘No. I want to see it come out of me naturally. Then I will decide what to do with it.’

  In due course there began the first contractions. Millicent had already taken a course of rudimentary hospital procedure, and immediately boiled a kettle of water. She washed her friend and then prepared for the delivery. ‘Don’t push too hard,’ she said. ‘It will come naturally. Yes, I see its head. It will just drop out.’

  Maud found herself staring intently at the wallpaper. It seemed to be moving of its own accord.

  The baby eventually emerged and seemed to be searching blindly for its mother’s breast. It was crying, but Maud sensed an apology in its wail. Millicent had been considering the unexpected birth with Montmorency, and both had agreed that the baby must die. After fifteen minutes the placenta had emerged, and Millicent now cut the umbilical cord with a vegetable knife. The two girls looked at one another for several seconds. Then Maud nodded. Millicent took one of the two pillows on the bed and thrust it down over the baby’s small body. It did not cry out, and only seemed restless under the unexpected weight until it was finally still. ‘Now,’ she said, ‘you must get rid of it.’