Barbara Vine - The Chimney Sweeper's Boy

As she walked down to the hotel, Ursula remembered that it was her wedding anniversary. Had Gerald lived, they would have been married thirty-four years. Not that any celebration would have marked the day. Only she herself would have remembered it, for the girls had never shown the slightest interest in that sort of thing, though indignant enough if their own birthdays weren’t appropriately honored, and Gerald always appeared to have forgotten. Gerald, she thought, had forgotten he was married at all, had forgotten it for years, thirty years, and behaved—to put it bluntly but accurately—as if he were a widower with a housekeeper.

Still, she hadn’t been very nice to him, either, in later years. She had tried, but it had been impossible. And then she had stopped trying. For the sake of peace, she had simply given in to some of his whims. As in the matter of forbidding the baby-sitting. Well, she could do it now he was gone. She went into the foyer of the hotel, checked on the name and room number at reception, and went up in the lift to the third floor.

The couple in the room were further apart in age than even she and Gerald had been. There must have been nearly thirty years between them. He looked about her own age, a tall, very thin man with a lantern face and grayish fair hair, much the same color as her own. The mother of this boy of six and girl of three looked no more than Hope’s age. She was very pretty, with long fair hair piled up above a high white forehead and eyes of a turquoise blue, which her sleeveless dress matched.

“Molly Fleming,” she said, holding out her hand as he said, “Sam Fleming.”

Ursula shook hands with them. The fair-haired children stood staring at her, the little girl with her thumb in her mouth.

“I am going to put them to bed, Mrs. Candless, but they won’t sleep at once. Would it be too much to ask you to sit in there with them and maybe read or just chat to them?”

“Of course I will.”

Ursula squatted down on their level, asked them what they were called, said that once they were in bed, she would come in and they must get to know one another. If they liked, she would tell them a story or read from the book she had brought, which was The Tale of Samuel Whiskers.

When they had been taken away, she crossed to the window and looked across the bay. This was one of the sea-facing suites, and this evening, Lundy was clearly visible, as a blue shape on paler blue glass-calm water. Though it was not yet dusk, the light on the point flashed and danced like a firefly.

She said to Sam Fleming, “Are you enjoying your view?”

“Not mine,” he said. “My room’s on the other side of the corridor.”

She looked at him.

“You didn’t think I was those children’s father, did you?”

Naturally she had. “Of course,” she said crisply.

“They are my son’s children. My son is dead. He died last year.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yes. It was very bad, very painful. Well, it is. It still is. Molly, of course, is his widow. I have tried to help her with the children all I can—Edith wasn’t quite two when her father died—but I don’t suppose I’ve been much use. More in the way, no doubt. But I like to be with the children.”

Ursula said again, “I am truly sorry about your son. It’s the worst thing in the world to lose a child, an unnatural thing.”

Molly Fleming came back. “You won’t be reading for long, Mrs. Candless. James is already crossing the frontier into the Land of Nod.” She laughed. “If you’re ready, Sam, we can go down.” She said to Ursula, “I promise I will be back in here on the dot of ten.”

Ursula went quietly into the children’s bedroom. James was asleep. Edith said, “Story,” or that was what Ursula thought she had said. It was hard to tell on account of the comfort blanket, one corner of which was stuffed into the little girl’s mouth. Ursula said she would read to her and told her what she would read, and Edith said Samuel Whiskers was like her grandfather’s name, which was Samuel Wiston Fleming. So Ursula read about Tom Kitten and his sisters and Tom going up the chimney, but by the time she got to Anna-Maria stealing the dough, Edith was asleep.

Leaving the door propped open, she went back into the main bedroom. Why had she used those particular words to Sam Fleming? “It’s the worst thing in the world to lose a child, an unnatural thing.” They were a direct quotation from Mrs. Eady and they had sprung into her mind and found their way to her tongue almost without her volition. Ursula felt a coldness along her shoulders and down her spine, what was called “a goose walking over one’s grave.” The worst thing in the world, the unnatural thing …

Presumably, Sam Fleming’s son had not been murdered, as Mrs. Eady’s had, nor was it likely he had a daughter who was a nun. No, James and Edith’s father would have died in a road accident or of some young man’s swiftly progressing cancer. He wouldn’t have been beaten to death, his body discovered lying in his own blood. She didn’t want to think of it, wished she hadn’t summoned up those words, for they were like seeds that sprang up and grew and flowered, bearing poisonous fruits. They always were.

She sat down by the window, gazing outside to calm herself and drive away the image of the young man in Mrs. Eady’s photograph, not smiling cockily and cheekily as he was in the photograph, but with his skull smashed in and blood on the walls. No, she told herself, no! Out there, the sea had turned to a dull, smooth pewter. The island had disappeared. The dark furry headlands lay as sleeping animals lie, relaxed, heavy, calm, but on the tip of Hartland, the firefly still winked.

The dark sea washed away the bloody image. Ursula thought of her daughters. What could she tell Sarah about her wedding? She would have to tell her something, and it must be something true, though edited, though expurgated. Much bowdlerization must be done. Sarah would take it for granted that she and Gerald had been lovers before they were married. Anything else was unthinkable these days. It had been very nearly unthinkable in 1963, but still, they hadn’t been lovers. He hadn’t asked and naturally she hadn’t, because she’d thought that was for the man to do. She did wonder, but she thought it was something to do with his being fourteen years older than she.

None of that need be mentioned. Ursula had been married in white satin, low-cut, to show off some of the bosom she was proud of, and with a full skirt and detachable train. She carried white roses and white freesias. Her bridesmaids were her schoolfriend Pam and Helen’s little Pauline, by that time three and a half. Ursula had a sapphire and diamond engagement ring and a gold wedding ring with a pattern of leaves chased around the band. She had stopped wearing the engagement ring in the mid-seventies and taken off her wedding ring for good in 1988. By that time, the leaf-pattern chasing had worn down and it had become a plain gold band like anyone else’s.

In a gesture of defiance or anger or dislike (or something), Ursula had sold her engagement ring. She knew no one would know, just as no one had noticed when she ceased to wear it. She took the ring to a jeweler in Exeter and he gave her two thousand pounds for it. That meant it was worth much more, but she didn’t care. She rather liked the idea of Gerald’s expensive ring fetching much less than its true value. She didn’t need the money; he had always given her what money she wanted, within reason, and all she did with it was put it into their joint bank account.

That engagement ring had made a nuisance of itself at her wedding. That was one way of putting it. She had forgotten to do as instructed by her mother and Helen and put the ring on her right hand so that the third finger of her left would be vacant, so to speak, and ready to receive Gerald’s wedding ring. Helen noticed as Ursula was walking up the aisle on Herbert Wick’s arm, and she made faces at her and pointed, but Ursula hadn’t known what she was on about. She was observing, with a slight chill on this happy day, what huge crowds of her own relations there were on the bride’s side and what a mere smattering of friends (including Colin Wrightson and his wife) and no relatives at all on the bridegroom’s.