Eleven
‘Have you got any brown sugar, Miss Barbery?’
‘Sorry, not a chance I’m afraid, Mrs Resterick,’ Lorna Barbery replied, glancing round apologetically at all the relatively empty shelves. Dummy items represented the foods the whole country would love to have back in plenty, but sadly post-war rationing was even tighter than during the duration.
‘Oh, what a shame, but I didn’t really expect any different,’ Dorrie said cheerfully. ‘We’ll have to settle for making rock buns again. Mr Newton must be finding you a godsend, having you to fill in behind the counter when he has a little break. I must say, if you don’t mind, that you’re looking very well and perky today?’
Lorna was of early middle age and clumpy in the body, and normally a flushed and breathless individual, but now she was holding herself up straight and was assertively calm. Villagers gladly remarked there was a pleasant atmosphere in the shop now that acid-tongued ‘old woman Newton’ and taken to her bed. ‘And let’s hope she stays there for a long while, stuck up old cow,’ or something of the like was often added on to the end. Delia had harassed Lorna, belittling her when she was out of earshot. Lorna wore her habitual print apron and tea-coloured, much-darned lisle stockings and thick-heeled brown shoes, her dull thin hair rolled up at the ends and secured with hair grips, yet she looked sparky and younger.
‘Any change in poor Mrs Newton’s condition?’ Dorrie inquired, successfully asking for bicarbonate of soda. ‘I was wondering if she’d like a short visit, someone to talk to, in the hope of cheering her up. Did she read the books I handed in for her?’
‘I’m afraid it’s a resounding no to all your questions.’ Lorna lowered her small voice to typical sickbed tones. ‘It’s very kind of you to think of her, Mrs Resterick, but things seem more and more hopeless. Nothing that Mr Newton or I do or the doctor prescribes or suggests lifts her out of her melancholy. All she wants to do is sleep. She doesn’t eat enough to keep a sparrow alive and she’s getting quite weak. Ah, here comes Nurse Rumford to give her a blanket bath. Excuse me a moment while I show her through.’
Thirty-one-year-old Rebecca Rumford was tall with a softly moulded figure and a comforting, optimistic manner. Her dark hair was scrupulously pinned up under her white long-tailed cap and she donned thick black stockings all year long. She looked and was utterly agreeable, which was how she usually got her patients to cooperate with her ministrations. She said breezily, ‘Good morning, ladies. The wind is picking up, the weather is on the change but it won’t hurt the gardens to have a drop of rain. Now, how are the pair of you?’
The two women replied that they were very well.
‘Wonderful, keep up the good work.’ She passed through behind the counter while Lorna held up the partition. ‘Mrs Resterick, I passed Miss Verity on my bicycle yesterday morning while she was on her way to Three Meadows Farm to start her new occupation. She was so excited about it. How did she get on with her first day?’
‘Oh, excellently, Nurse Rumford. Farmer Newton couldn’t have given her a better task,’ Dorrie answered, smiling at the memory of Verity’s enthusiasm when she arrived home at teatime.
‘May I ask what Miss Verity’s new job is?’ Lorna asked shyly. ‘Mr Soames is always interested in anything that happens on his cousin’s farm.’
‘Mr Jack has hired her to sift through decades of the estate’s business papers and then afterwards to go on to Meadows House and do something there.’
‘How nice,’ Lorna said, then blushed and gave a silly schoolgirl’s giggle. ‘I know Mr Jack has a certain reputation, but I do so like him. He’s always been kind to me and makes me smile. The other day when I was in Wadebridge picking up some things for Mrs Newton, Mr Jack saw me waiting at the bus stop and he kindly gave me a lift in his sports car all the way here to the front door. It was such a novel, thrilling experience, and he asked me how I was and said I was doing a wonderful thing for Mrs Newton in her hour of need. He even asked how she was even though sadly she’s never ever had a good word for him. She’s never looked for anyone’s redeeming features,’ she ended with more than a trace of hurt.
Dorrie and Rebecca Rumford exchanged understanding looks. Lorna was an old maid, rather afraid, it seemed, of men, but Jack Newton’s style of chivalry had clearly charmed her.
‘I’ll just go through and say hello to Mr Soames and then attend to Mrs Newton,’ Rebecca said, after pressing a soft hand to Lorna’s skinny shoulder.
When Dorrie left shortly afterwards with her shopping she frowned into space. She was pleased about Verity’s new job but worried that Jack Newton might try to press his beguiling masculinity on her. With Verity on the rebound from a crushed heart it could have very undesirable consequences.
In her careful way, Lorna crept upstairs with Delia’s lunch tray and into the double bedroom, which meandered through the living quarters to lie directly over the shop. At first Delia had overheard much of the goings-on below and created a fuss about what each customer had bought, or not bought, what they said, and how they had said it. She had complained bitterly about the inappropriately cheerful voices and laughter. Her demands on Lorna, sending her to dash pell-mell to bring her up precisely made cups of tea and meals, to change the bed linen in a certain way – the same with ironing it – and to do the dusting, the polishing and the sweeping of home and shop, and even how to beat and brush the doormats, had gradually tailed off because Delia had grown so sleepy.
‘You’re not doing yourself any good at all, Mrs Newton,’ Nurse Rumford had gently chided her this morning. Lorna had listened from downstairs after Soames relieved her at the counter. ‘Too much sleep and lying about has made you lethargic. During the blanket bath your limbs were limp and you were a little uncooperative. Keep this up and you’ll start losing your muscle tone and will find it hard to use your legs. The doctor has cut down the dose of your sleeping tablets. I’ll talk to him about halving it again. Now, before you go I’ll walk you to the bathroom. I shall ask Miss Barbary to take away the commode and you may only have it at night.’
The trip to the bathroom had been quite a performance.
‘Come along now, Mrs Newton. Try to put your feet into your slippers. No, no, no, sit up straight or you’ll fall off the edge of the bed.’
Lorna had smirked, knowing from the nurse’s vexed tone that she, like everyone else in Nanviscoe, believed that Delia was exaggerating her symptoms, symptoms of depression that had never been there in the first place. She had lived all her life in the tyranny of jealousy and snobbery, which she had dumped gleefully on others. The women in Faith’s Fare had pushed her down firmly into her place and her malice had charged her to seek revenge, but rather than make people feel sorry for her they couldn’t really give a damn, which was true justice. Now Lorna treated herself by gloating over the shrew that had treated her with such cruel disdain.
‘You’ll never get yourself a man, Lorna. You’re too gauche. You walk like an oaf. Your hair is thin and dull, your eyes are squinty, and your eyebrows are too bushy, your figure is dumpy and as for your hands, ugh, they’re ugly. You’re hairy all over, double ugh! I’ve seen you in a bathing costume, believe me any man would be horrified to see your pale lumpy flesh, and as for the way your nose goes bright red in winter! You can’t dance. You can’t do anything clever. You haven’t even got a nice smile. You’ve nothing to attract a man; no money and no position. You’re only good enough to work in service and then only as a scullery maid. It’s the fate of being an old maid for you and you’ll just have to accept it.’
The jibes and insults Lorna had suffered had tormented her like nothing else had, not even when she was thirteen years old and the smelly old man next door had touched her in a very private and forbidden place. He had given her a threepenny piece not to tell anyone. Lorna had not told on him, but after spending the money on sherbet dabs she had been careful to keep away from the old bastard. When Lorna had cried to her late mother about Delia’s taunts, Mrs Barbary had patted her head. ‘Remember, my handsome, sticks and stones may break your bones but names can never harm you.’ It wasn’t much help to Lorna but she had held on to her mother’s other saying: ‘Just remember that the tide don’t go out unless it comes back in again.’ She clung to the belief that one day Delia would get her just deserts. Now that day had come, and Lorna wasn’t going to spare her.
She plonked the tray down on the bed table. ‘Wake up, sleepyhead, can’t believe you’ve dropped off again already,’ she said in a fake kindly voice. ‘I’ve made a nice spam sandwich for you and put in a little chutney. You’re partial to a bit of chutney.’
Lying on her back in the middle of the bed, her mouth wide open while she breathed adenoidally, Delia barely moved a muscle; one eyelid only flickered a little. It was no surprise to Lorna. She got the reduced dose of sleeping tablets down Delia’s throat every night – accompanied by a full dose of one of her own. Since staying under this roof Lorna had needed occasionally to drug herself out of her lonely torment, but since Delia’s self-imposed bed rest she didn’t need sedatives at all, and she revelled in Delia’s comedown. Soames had moved into the back bedroom and since Delia’s more dozy days he only looked in on her first thing in the morning, but in case he just happened to pop upstairs, Lorna kept up her soothing nursemaid tones.
Suddenly, Delia stirred and lifted herself up on her forearms, shaking and trembling. ‘I need the commode!’ she shrieked. She sensed that much but comprehended little otherwise; her eyes stayed glazed.
‘Now, now, the nurse said you were to shuffle along to the bathroom. We must get you moving again,’ Lorna said officiously, enjoying herself. She dragged away the bed table and pulled back the bedcovers. It was very satisfying not to have to bother to be gentle. ‘Swing round and I’ll put your slippers on.’
‘I can’t. Oh no, it’s too late,’ Delia wailed, horribly awake now.
As a strong-smelling dark yellow stain pooled around Delia’s lower regions, even though Lorna knew she would have to clean it up – and Delia too – Lorna laughed softly, gloating.
‘I’ll report this to the doctor the moment I’ve got you sorted out, poor thing. I will insist they take your illness seriously. You could have something really dreadful wrong with you.’
‘Oh, do you think so?’ Delia sobbed clearly in fear, her wan face hot with shame.
‘It reminds me of a young family man I once knew. One minute he was as strong as an ox then some strange malady overtook him and he went swiftly downhill. Can’t remember what was wrong with him but he was dead and buried inside two months. Now don’t you worry, Delia. I’ll soon have you sorted.’
It took nearly an hour before Lorna got Delia’s floppy naked body washed and into a clean nightdress. While Delia shivered slumped on the easy chair that Soames had carried upstairs for the early days of her infirmity, Lorna added a quilted bed jacket and a plaid wool shawl round her quivering shoulders.
‘Thank you, Lorna,’ Delia addressed her humbly for the first time. ‘I’m sorry you have to do this.’
‘Oh, I don’t mind,’ Lorna replied cheerfully, tackling the soiled bed linen. Thankfully Nurse Rumford always advised a rubber sheet for a sick room, so the mattress had been spared. ‘You couldn’t help it.’ Never was there a truer word, Lorna revelled to herself. Delia’s humiliation would be complete when the neighbours saw the extra bed linen hanging on the washing line this week.
‘Is the shop busy?’ Delia mumbled, trying to stay awake.
‘Quite busy, I think. While Soames was taking his crib, I served Mrs Resterick.’
‘Did she ask after me?’
Delia halted at unfolding the clean bottom sheet and her eyes bored into Delia. ‘No, not at all.’
‘Oh, does anyone ask after me now?’ Delia kept her heavy head up with a hand.
‘No, no one, I’m afraid.’
‘Oh . . .’ Tears filled the edges of Delia’s droopy eyes. ‘I haven’t seen Soames for days. Seems I’ve been forgotten, that no one cares about me.’
‘Yes, Delia.’ Lorna licked her lips with delight and went up to Delia and hissed into her ear. ‘I’m afraid it does. You’re quite forgotten and no cares about you any more.’