‘Oh – fine.’
‘You look as if you’re not eating enough. I mean, brides are meant to lose weight but I don’t think bridegrooms are. Stay for supper when you’ve finished talking about whatever it is. We’ll probably be eating in the garden, it’ll be lovely. Shall I tell Mrs Hemmings to find a bit of extra everything?’
‘Er, no. Let’s talk first at least,’ said Ned. ‘Where shall we go where we can be sure of being left alone?’
‘Gosh, it’s serious. Well, why don’t we go to my bedroom? Whatever can it be? I’m hugely intrigued. Come on.’
Her bedroom was large, more of a sitting room where she worked and studied, with a desk, a chaise longue and a couple of easy chairs, as well as her bed. It was a beautiful evening, and the windows were wide open, the curtains blowing in and out of the room with the breeze. She paused in the doorway, looking at it thoughtfully.
‘I love this room,’ she said. ‘I shall quite miss it. Oh, what a thing to say to you. Sorry, Ned.’
‘That’s – all right.’
‘Well, shall we sit down? Where would be appropriate? The chaise longue, perhaps.’
She crossed to it, patted the space beside her. ‘Ned, darling, you’re as white as a sheet. Would you like a drink? I’ll go and get you a whisky.’
‘No, no, don’t,’ he said, and he didn’t even sit down, just stood in front of her, clearly waiting to speak.
‘All right,’ she said. ‘Go ahead. Have I done something awful? I’m terribly sorry if I have. I know I’ve been a bit of a bitch lately, I—’
‘You haven’t,’ said Ned, ‘but I have.’
‘Well, I promise not to be cross.’
‘You can be as cross as you like,’ said Ned. ‘Jillie, look at me. I want you to listen very carefully to what I have to say.’
He took a deep breath and told her that he couldn’t marry her. And then he told her why.
Chapter 32
1952
‘It’s disgusting.’ Tom’s voice was full of hostility. ‘Disgraceful. I cannot understand how anyone can behave like that.’
Since he was reading the paper, Alice thought that whatever it was, the Conservative party must be doing it. She was right.
‘We started all these reforms,’ said Tom. ‘Now they’re claiming it was entirely due to them. God, I hope Gaitskell goes for him in Question Time. Just listen to this: “In every way the nation is better off under this new Conservative government. Its health –” health! I suppose they brought in the National Health Service – “education, nutrition – rationing is almost over – identity cards are gone, and wartime regulations almost at an end. Wages have trebled.” Oh, I can’t go on. We did every one of those things, or were well on the way with them . . .’
‘It is dreadful,’ said Alice carefully, ‘I agree. But it’s the way of the world in politics, isn’t it?’
‘I suppose so. But I’m going to write to this paper – your friend Josh Curtis wouldn’t print this rubbish in the Daily News. I think I’ll ring him in the morning, or maybe now –’
‘Well, I’m going to take Kit to the park,’ said Alice. ‘You’ll have some peace and quiet to think about your letter.’
She picked Kit out of his playpen and hurried away, before Tom could decide she should ring Josh, or want to discuss some other plan altogether.
It was a lovely October day; golden and warm. She tucked Kit into his pram, and pushed it out through the front door and down the street. Kit struggled to sit up, his latest accomplishment. He smiled at her, showing one white half-emerged tooth. He was a lovely golden brown colour himself, having spent much of the summer outside. He really was a remarkable baby. His temperament remained level and cheerful, even when he was clearly in some discomfort from his teeth. Alice, who refused to take any credit for his behaviour, was much envied for it. She insisted he had simply been born happy, but both her mother, and Tom’s married sisters who they saw occasionally, thought otherwise. ‘It’s because you’re so calm, darling,’ her mother said. ‘You enjoy it all. They pick up on that sort of thing.’
Whatever the truth, Alice was grateful. And particularly over the past three months, when Jillie, as her best friend, had needed so much companionship and comfort and she had had to leave him to play by himself as Jillie wept and talked and begged to be with her. More than once she had had to spend the night at number five, with Kit; Geraldine Curtis, grateful to have someone to share the burden of her distraught, humiliated, heartbroken daughter, had Jillie’s old cot brought out of the attic and fitted it with new covers, bought toys for him, stocked up with Cow & Gate and often gave him his bottle if Alice seemed stressed as she prepared it and said Jillie was crying and she wanted to get back to her.
She would never forget the wail of grief that came down the telephone from Jillie that dreadful evening: ‘Alice, something dreadful’s happened, you’ve got to come, got to. Get a taxi, I’ll pay. Is Tom in?’
‘Yes, of course. He’ll look after Kit. I’ll be over as soon as I possibly can. Is your mother there?’
‘Yes, but it’s you I need really. Oh, Alice –’ and then came the wail, like some animal in pain. Which of course, Alice thought afterwards, she was. A wounded animal.
Geraldine, white and drawn, let her in.
‘I’ll let her tell you what’s happened, Alice. It is dreadful. I – she’s coming, Jillie,’ she called, as Jillie appeared at the top of the stairs, swollen eyed, shivering with shock and pain.
‘I just don’t know how he could do it to me,’ she said to Alice, who sat frozen with horror listening to the dreadful news. ‘He says he loves me. How can he love me, Alice? He’s humiliated me, hurt me, deceived me for all this time.’
As the dreadful evening wore on, as Jillie tried to make sense of the situation, and her parents to decide what best to tell people, Alice cried quite a lot herself. This was cruelty beyond anything she could imagine. She could offer no comfort, beyond her company and her sympathy. She held Jillie in her arms while she sobbed and said how could she have been so stupid, so trusting?
‘Not so stupid,’ Alice said gently. ‘You were worried about the – the bed thing from the beginning, weren’t you?’
‘Yes, of course.’ That appeared to steady her momentarily. ‘I suppose I’d tucked it away somewhere, decided not to think about it. Oh, Alice, what are we going to tell people? What are we going to say?’
Downstairs, Peter and Geraldine Curtis were trying to solve that very dilemma.
‘It’s not for us to tell people the real reason,’ Geraldine said.
‘No, of course not. That has to come from him. It’ll be the end of his career – he could even be arrested.’