Elizabeth Elgin - The Willow Pool

Nell was curious. Any normal girl, she reasoned, would’ve done it weeks ago. But Meg Blundell was like her mother in a lot of ways: quiet, sometimes, and given to stubbornness. And besides, there really could be a bankbook locked away, and heaven only knew what else!

‘I suppose I must.’ Meg gazed at the tiny key in the palm of her hand. ‘I don’t want to, for all that. I don’t want to find out – anything …’

She and Ma had been all right as they were and all at once she didn’t want to know about the man who fathered her. And when she turned that key it might be there, staring her in the face, and she might be very, very sorry.

She fumbled the key into the lock, turning it reluctantly. In the fleeting of a second she imagined she might find a coiled snake there, ready to bite; a spider, big as the palm of her hand. Or nothing of any importance – not even a bankbook.

She lifted the lid, sniffing because she expected the smell of musty papers; closing her eyes when the faint scent of lavender touched her nostrils. She glanced down to see a fat brown envelope, addressed to Dorothy Blundell, 1 Tippet’s Yard, Liverpool 3, Lancashire. The name had been crossed through in a different ink and the words Margaret Mary Blundell written in her mother’s hand. The envelope was tied with tape and the knot secured with red sealing wax. Meg lifted her eyes to those of the older woman.

‘You goin’ to see what’s in it, girl?’ Nell ran her tongue round her lips.

‘N-no. Not just yet.’ The package looked official and best dealt with later. When she was alone.

‘There might be money in it!’

‘No. Papers, by the feel of it.’ Ma’s marriage lines? Her own birth certificate? Photographs? Letters, even? ‘Ma would’ve spent it if there’d been money. I – I’ll leave it, Nell, if you don’t mind.’

‘Please yourself, I’m sure.’ Nell was put out. ‘Nuthin’ to do with me, though your ma left a will, I know that for certain. Me an’ Tommy was witness to it!’

‘But she had nothink to leave.’ Meg pulled in her breath.

‘Happen not. But to my way of thinking, if all you have to leave is an ’at and an ’atpin and a pound in yer purse, then you should set it down legal who you want it to go to! Dolly wrote that will just after the war started; said all she had was to go to her only child Margaret Mary, and me and Tommy read it, then put our names to it. Like as not it’s in that envelope. Best you open it.’

‘No. Later.’ Quickly Meg took out another envelope. It had Candlefold Hall written on it and she knew at once it held photographs. To compensate for her neighbour’s disappointment she handed it to her. ‘You open it, Nell.’

‘Suppose this is her precious Candlefold.’ Mollified, Nell squinted at the photograph of a large, very old house surrounded by lawns and flowerbeds.

‘There’s a lot of trees, Nell.’ It really existed, then, Ma’s place that was heaven on earth. ‘Looks like it’s in the country.’

‘Hm. If them trees was around here they’d have been chopped down long since, for burnin’! And look at this one; must be the feller that ’ouse belonged to.’ She turned over another photograph to read Mr & Mrs Kenworthy , in writing she knew to be Dolly Blundell’s. ‘They look a decent couple. Bet they were worth a bob or two. And who’s this then – the old granny?’

A plump, middle-aged lady wearing a cape and black bonnet sat beside an ornamental fountain, holding a baby.

‘No. It’s the nanny,’ Meg smiled. ‘ Nanny Boag and Master Marcus, 1917 , Ma’s written.’ Her heart quickened, her cheeks burned. All at once they were looking at her mother’s life in another world; at a big, old house in the country; at Ma’s employers and their infant son.

Hastily Meg scanned each photograph and snapshot, picking out one of a group of servants arranged either side of a broad flight of steps – and standing a little apart the butler, was it, and the housekeeper? And there stood Ma, all straight and starched, staring ahead as befitted the occasion.

Another snap, faded to sepia now, of three smiling maids in long dresses and pinafores and mobcaps, in a cobbled yard beside a pump trough.

‘See, Nell! Norah, Self & Gladys . That’s Ma, in the middle. And look at this one!’

Tents on Candlefold’s front lawn, and stalls and wooden tables and chairs, and Ma and the two other housemaids in pretty flowered frocks and straw hats. Only this time the inscription was in a different hand and read. Candlefold 1916. Garden Party for wounded soldiers. Dolly Blundell, Norah Bentley, Gladys Tucker . Her mother, sixteen years old. Dolly Blundell ! So Ma had never married!

‘What do you make of that, Nell?’ Her mouth had gone dry. ‘Ma’s name was –’

‘Ar. Seems it’s always been Blundell.’

‘So whoever my father was, he didn’t have the decency to marry her. I am illegitimate, Nell!’

Tears filled her eyes. When she hadn’t been sure – not absolutely sure – it somehow hadn’t mattered that maybe she was born on the wrong side of the sheets. But to see it written down so there was no argument about it – all at once it did matter! Someone had got a pretty young housemaid into trouble, then taken off and left her to it. And that girl became old long before her time, with nothing to lean on but her pride!

‘There now, queen.’ Nell pulled Meg close, hushing her, patting her. ‘Your ma wasn’t the first to get herself into trouble, and she won’t be the last. She took good care of you, now didn’t she? Didn’t put you into an orphanage, nor nuthin’. And if the little toerag that got you upped and left, then Doll was better off without him, if it’s my opinion you’re askin’.’

‘I’m sorry I opened that case. I never wanted to.’

‘Happen not, but at least we’ve got one thing straight; somethin’ your ma chose to keep quiet about. An’ don’t think I’m blaming her! She brought you up decent and learned you to speak proper. You’d not have got a job in a shop if she hadn’t.’

‘Edmund and Sons? That dump!’ Years behind the times, it was, and people not so keen to part with their clothing coupons for the frumpy fashions old man Edmund stocked. ‘I’d set my heart on the Bon Marche, y’know. Classy, the Bon is.’

The Bon Marche had thick carpets all over; the ground floor smelled of free squirts of expensive scent, but you had to talk posh to work there.

‘You were glad enough to go to Edmunds, Meg Blundell. Your wages made a difference to your ma.’

‘Ten bob a week, and commission! Girls my age are earning fifty times that on munitions!’

‘So go and make bombs and bullets.’

‘I might have to, Nell. Trade’s been bad since clothes rationing started. The old man’s going to be sacking staff before so very much longer.’

‘Then worry about it when he does! Now are you going to get on with it?’ Nell glanced meaningfully at the attaché case. ‘Your mother’s will is in there somewhere.’

‘You’re sure?’ Meg slid the photographs back into the envelope. ‘I know she used to talk about a bankbook; said if we were careful with the pennies we’d go and live in the country one day.’

‘That’s daydreamin’. We’re talkin’ about fact – like all that’s in this house, for one thing, and the bedding and –’

‘There’s not a lot of that left. The people from the health department took Ma’s mattress and bedding when they came to stove the place out; you know they did!’

‘They always do, with TB. You were lucky they didn’t take more! But there it is, girl! It’s marked on the envelope, see? Will . Told you, didn’t I?’ Nell clenched her fists, so eager were her fingers to light on it. ‘And there’s more besides; that bankbook, I shouldn’t wonder.’