1951
The Invisible Worm
Viola delayed her appearance on the world’s stage. Teddy and Nancy had been married for five years with no sign of a baby and had almost given up hope. They considered adopting. They would soon be too old, a humourless woman at the council-run adoption agency said, and babies were scarce at the moment (as if they were seasonal). Did they want to put their names down?
“Yes,” Nancy said, more eagerly than Teddy had expected. The humourless woman, a Mrs. Taylor-Scott, was sitting behind a cheap government-issue desk. Teddy and Nancy sat on uncomfortable chairs in front of her, being grilled. (“Rather like naughty pupils,” Nancy said.)
“If there’s a ‘shortage,’ ” Nancy said, “then we don’t mind if it’s a coloured baby.” She turned to Teddy and said, “We don’t, do we?”
“No,” he said, caught on the hop. This wasn’t something they had ever discussed. It had never even crossed his mind that their baby wouldn’t be white. On one op in the war he’d taken an odd bod, a rear-gunner who was from Jamaica, black as coal. Couldn’t remember his name, only that he’d been nineteen years old and hopping with life until he was hosed out of the rear-turret on a return from the Ruhr.
“I don’t mind,” Teddy said, “although I might draw the line at green.” It was, he knew, a feeble attempt at humour. He imagined not telling Sylvie of this plan, of watching her expression the first time she peered in the crib and saw a little black face looking back at her. He laughed and Mrs. Taylor-Scott gave him a doubtful look. Nancy reached across and gave his hand an encouraging squeeze. Or perhaps a warning. They did not want to appear mentally unhinged.
“Accommodation?” Mrs. Taylor-Scott said, writing something illegible on their application form in her cramped hand.
They had left Mouse Cottage behind now and were living a few miles further into the dale, in a rented farmhouse called Ayswick, on the outskirts of a small village that had a little school, a pub, a shop, a village hall and a Methodist chapel, but no church. “Everything we need,” Nancy said, “although perhaps not the chapel.” Half a century later the pub was a “gastro pub,” the school had turned into a pottery, the shop was a café (“all home-made on the premises”), the village hall was an art gallery that also sold the usual tourist bric-a-brac of tapestry kits, calendars, “spoon rests” and sheep-themed ornaments, and the Methodist chapel was a private house. Most of the remaining cottages were second homes. The tourists came, in coachloads sometimes, because the village had been used as the backdrop of a television series that was set in the nostalgic past.
Teddy knew all this because he returned with Bertie in 1999 on his “farewell tour.” They found that Mouse Cottage had disappeared altogether, not a stone remained, but Ayswick was still where it had been, looking much the same on the outside. It was a B&B now, renamed Fairview, run by a couple in their fifties “escaping the urban rat race.”