Lynda La Plante - The Legacy

She cried herself to sleep, her face buried in the pillow, afraid to waken Doris. No one must know, ever, of her humiliation. Suddenly she remembered that

dreadful painted woman at the window of the inn, just like Nellie Lanigan from the village, she knew the men paid money to go with her. Evelyne sobbed into the handkerchief David had once given her, and even through her tears she could smell him, his faint lavender perfume.

THE TWO brothers died with their arms around each other, Mike and Will, but the cable Benjamin Rces brought didn’t mention that, simply the dreaded words, ‘killed in action’. Dicken wrote a letter from the front dated March 1917 — it took four months to reach the village, and that was when they learned how the two brothers had died.

The Old Lion seemed to bend under the weight of their loss. The drinking had stopped when little Davey had been buried, and Hugh had found work in a small colliery. When the news of the boys’ death came he went straight back to work a double shift. Every morning he rose at dawn and, wrapped in his greatcoat and carrying his tea caddie, sandwiches and tools, he donned his cloth cap and silently left the house. Money was very short and there were now three lodgers who worked in the mine with Hugh.

Lizzie-Ann had been very brave. Rosie was now almost eighteen months old, a pretty little girl with rosy cheeks and curly hair. Lizzie-Ann had made considerable progress as far as housekeeping and cleaning were concerned. She was skinny again, and spent hours chalking and polishing the front step. Often she had a faraway look in her eyes, daydreaming, but she never talked about London now. She was grown up, a widow with a daughter to look after, a widow and still only just eighteen.

Evelyne worked at the local brick factory, tough, hard labour from six-thirty in the morning until three o’clock. In the afternoon she went to the schoolhouse to help the new teachers. Doris Evans was still at the school, but she taught the senior girls and boys. The only house without a lodger was Doris’ — she was still able to keep her four neat rooms to herself.

Poverty was everywhere in the village. The children scavenged for coal chips on the slag heaps, the men no longer sat eating their packed lunches together, laughing at what the missus had landed them with this time. They all knew they had the same, bread and dripping and tea.

Evelyne trudged up the hill to the schoolhouse. The rain was bucketing down, and she’d got soaked earlier in the day on the way to the brick factory. Her hands were raw and blistered, and she was as thin as ever. She had grown even taller, reaching five feet nine and a half inches. She was Hugh Jones’ daughter all right.

The schoolhouse was cold, the small fire banked low, and the children huddled in their overcoats to keep out the freezing draughts. Evelyne helped in the junior class and also cleaned the school.

Mr Matthews, the new headmaster, was elderly, and had actually retired, but he had come to take the place of the original headmaster who had joined up. He called Evelyne in.

‘Mrs Evans has not been in for the past two days, Miss Jones, will you look in on her?’

Evelyne pushed open the polished front door and called out. When she got no reply she began to worry, and went along the passage into the kitchen. It was neat and clean as ever, but empty and very cold. She hurried into the tiny living room. There were books on the table as always, but no sign of Doris. Eventually Evelyne found her lying in her clean bed with the starched white sheets. She was extremely pale and as Evelyne pushed open the door she asked, with a strange look on her face, ‘Walter, is that you?’ Doris didn’t seem to recognize Evelyne at all as she bent over the frail, thin woman and rubbed her icy hands. She pulled more blankets from the wardrobe and laid them on top of Doris.

The coal bunker was piled high, and Evelyne took the full bucket back into the bedroom, laid the fire and lit it. Then she found vegetables in their neat trays beneath the kitchen sink and made some broth. She held the frail woman in her arms, the skinny frame wrapped in the blankets, and gently spooned the hot soup into her. Slowly, Doris seemed to come to herself, and gave Evelyne such a heart-rending look that Evelyne said: ‘I’ll not leave you tonight, Doris, I’ll stay with you.’

She sat by the fire and read Dante’s Inferno until Doris slept, then she banked the fire, pulled a rug over herself and went to sleep.

The following morning Doc Clock came and examined Doris, muttering that she was not taking care of herself — and with her money! He stuck a thermometer into Doris’ bird-like mouth, and fumbled for the watch that wasn’t there, as usual. Doc Clock, the village said, would stick a thermometer into a dead man’s mouth and pronounce him perfectly fit.

Doris went very fast and as quietly as she had lived. Doc Clock said she had a brain tumour, must have had it for years. Lizzie-Ann, who always got everything wrong, told everyone that Doris had died from a brain rumour, and that she’d had it for years. Evelyne wrote to Dr Collins, taking the penny postage money from Doris’ little leather purse. The money was needed, but there was no reply to her letter.

Evelyne had to arrange for the coffin and the funeral, since there was no one else to do it. All the while she still worked at the brick factory and up at the school. She made sure Doris’ house was locked up tight, because already the coal bunker was empty and with things the way they were it was a wonder the furniture was still intact. Evelyne would shiver as she checked the house, knowing Doris was lying upstairs, cold and stiff.

Doris was buried beside her husband, Walter, in a simple ceremony attended only by Evelyne and a few villagers. In her neat handwriting, Evelyne noted down all the expenses she had paid out from the money she had found in the house, and how much was left, and sent the list to Dr Collins. Still she heard nothing back and often villagers passing the cold house would mutter, ‘What a waste’, the four rooms could easily be let and be making someone a few bob a week.

Lizzie-Ann ran from the post office with Dicken’s letter. All the women went every day and asked old Ben Rees if there was any news from the Front. Ben used to get angry, swearing that he did his three rounds a day with the post, and if there was a letter or any news they would be the first to know, but it still didn’t stop the women popping in and asking.

The pub would be lit up and the piano wheeled out when any of the boys came home on leave, only to be wheeled back again when they had to go again after too short a time. Then there would be the tears at the station and the Sunday prayers that the boys would come home.

Hugh and Rosie were sitting by the fire, playing with a bat and ball. Lizzie-Ann had gone on a date with a boy who had been invalided out of the army. He was a good-hearted boy with a bad limp, and Lizzie-Ann seemed to have some of her old sparkle back. ‘Will you not find yerself a lad then, Evie?’ Evelyne laughed, and carried the washing out to dry. Over her shoulder she told him she had no time to spare for lads. As she hung out the cold, worn trousers, she remembered the night she had danced with Lloyd George. She pictured David’s face and sighed. She still thought of him, almost every night and prayed every Sunday that he would be safe and unharmed. It was strange that she had received no word from David’s father in Cardiff, maybe they felt it best simply to forget poor Doris.

Summer was coming on and the war still raged. The villagers found it hard to picture their menfolk fighting in another country somewhere, even harder to understand what they were fighting for. The old boys sitting in the pub said they were after the bastard Germans, and that the Tommies would ‘wipe ‘em off the face of the earth’ — their lads could do it, it was as if only Welsh lads were over there.