Read Online Sadler's Birthday by Rose Tremain - Free Book Online

now.’
    â€˜To marry?’
    â€˜Maybe.’
    â€˜Yes or no?’
    â€˜She’ll come with me and we’ll see.’
    She was called Arabella. She followed Joe to a job on a farm in Essex and in February her grandfather died and left her some money. So Joe deliberated a week or two and then decided to marry her. All the Elkins made the long trip down for the wedding, but it was worth it, they said, because the bride and groom looked a picture.
    As March began, the first snow of the winter fell.
    â€˜You’d call that spring, March, wouldn’t you?’ Betsy remarked one morning when she called to see Annie on her way to work. ‘And just look at it.’
    But Annie liked the snow. Not to walk about in any more, just to watch, to sit at the parlour window in the warm house and watch it falling and drifting. She’d open the window from time to time and throw out crumbs for the birds.
    Then, doing her shopping one morning, Annie slipped on the icy pavement and fell down, the potatoes in her basket rolling away into the gutter. She scrambled to her feet, helped by passers by and a little boy who appeared from nowhere who went round and round picking up all the potatoes. Annie was all right, only a bit white from the shock. But by the time she got home, the pains had begun, so she wrapped herself up again and trod a careful path to the doctor’s house. She was shaking, with fear mostly, she decided, or from shock, she didn’t know which. And the doctor was enigmatic; his face told her nothing.
    â€˜How many weeks is it?’
    He found his own answer by consulting a green card in one of his files. ‘More than probable it’ll be all right,’ he said.
    When Greg came in from work, the house had an unfamiliar smell about it, like disinfectant. And it was deathly quiet.
    â€˜Annie!’ he called. But there was no answer. Then someone came tiptoeing down the stairs, a smiling fat woman in a blue overall.
    â€˜Ssh,’ she said. ‘She’s sleeping now.’
    Greg sat down on the uncomfortable chair in the hall. ‘You mean . . .?’
    â€˜Yes. The baby’s fine. Six and a half pounds. A boy.’
    â€˜Oh,’ said Greg, ‘oh.’
    Not such a god-forsaken world, then, for little Jack Sadler’s beginnings. A young mother who kissed him often and looked after him with infinite care, and a kindly man, aging a bit now, but still earning enough to keep the family going, who sat him on his knee and laughed to make him laugh. He was warmed and fed, he was given a plaything or two, he had a little patch of grass to crawl on. If he could have remembered his first months, he would have counted them happy. Annie was the centre of his universe, but Greg’s was the gentle hand that kept the universe spinning. Greg knew that without him, mother and child would have been cast helplessly adrift.
    This thought began to nag and worry him. They had no savings. Only eighty pounds in the bank, that was all. And they didn’t own the house they lived in, had paid rent for it all those years. No amount of thinking of it as theirs could make it so. Greg began to lie awake at nights, blaming his lack of foresight. I never thought, he accused himself, not far enough ahead. We could have saved years ago when things weren’t so dear and bought a place, but I’d never manage it now.
    He began to travel greater distances each week, to find more work. He told Annie they should cut down on things for themselves, think of the future. But Annie’s world had stabilized once more. Joe was gone, but she was watching her baby grow and she was perfectly happy. She refused to think of what the future might hold.
    â€˜What’s the sense in it, Dad? We’re well now and living, aren’t we? And whatever happened, I’d manage.’
    Greg had nightmares about her. He saw her carrying her baby in the old grey shawl and begging in the street.