In the Still of the Night

It was a high price to pay, though, lying here in the dark, wide awake, listening to the other patients snoring, breathing, calling out in their sleep in quavering, old, frightened voices. It reminded her of her first husband’s death. She had married Frank because nobody else had asked her and at least she would escape from her home, and her father’s relentless pressure.

‘Oh, I was weak, weak as water, I should have stuck to my guns,’ Trudie said aloud.

That first marriage had been a disaster. She had been expected both to work in the greengrocer’s shop and to run the house. There had been no love, and no children. Frank had said it was her; he was full of resentment, told her she was barren, kept wishing he had never married her. After a few years, they hadn’t even slept together. He had ignored her around the house except to complain – until the illness started and then he’d become pathetic and taken to his bed. She had almost liked him once he was powerless and dependent on her. She treated him like a baby, fed him and changed him and kept him clean, and he was grateful, but it went on too long. The daily strain wore her down; she’d felt as if she was dying too, at times.

His death was a release for both of them. She had been thirty-five, young enough to marry again, and this time she had chosen the man. Her parents were dead by then, and Trudie had nobody to please but herself.

He had been a good man, too, had Bill Lang. A quiet man, a solicitor’s clerk. She had met him when she went to the solicitor’s office so that she could have Frank’s will explained to her.

She was left the shop, but there was very little money; Bill had visited her a few days later, bringing her some papers to sign, and advised her to keep the shop going.

She made him tea and brought scones and home-made biscuits, and he had stayed a long time; they found it easy to talk to each other.

He had told her about his own first marriage – his young wife had died in childbirth, her baby had died with her, and he blamed himself.

‘She was a little slip of a thing. I should have waited until she was older, we were both eighteen, it was selfish of me, but I loved her so much, and I killed her.’

‘Oh, no, don’t say that!’ Trudie had protested, shocked.

‘It’s the truth, and that’s why I couldn’t face marrying again and having some other woman go through what my Jenny went through.’

She had told him then that she couldn’t have babies, she had never been able to have one with Frank. She was afraid it would put Bill off, but he had asked her out to dinner the following weekend and again they talked easily, so relaxed together it was as if they had known each other for years.

After she had been widowed for six months Bill asked her to marry him. They were both conventional: they didn’t want fingers to be pointed at them. The neighbours were openly critical of a recently widowed woman seeing so much of another man, so they waited another six months before they actually got married.

By then Bill had told her, ‘I don’t want kids, Trudie, I couldn’t risk it, I couldn’t bear to see you die the way my Jenny did. I’m not marrying you to have kids. I’m lonely, Trude, and I think you are, too. I think we can be happy together, don’t you?’

She did; she hated living alone, she hated the silences, thick as centuries-old dust, the empty rooms, the feeling of dread she got at night when she was alone and afraid someone might break in and murder her in her bed.

So they had married, and six months later she was told by her doctor, smiling slyly at her ignorance, that the worrying symptoms she had noticed meant that she was pregnant.

‘I can’t be!’ she gasped.

‘You’re married, aren’t you?’ he said, almost laughing out loud.

‘But I thought I couldn’t … I never had one with my first husband.’

‘Then that couldn’t have been your fault, because you are definitely pregnant now,’ smiled the doctor.

‘Oh, my God, what will Bill say? He doesn’t want any kids. He’ll be afraid I’ll die.’

‘Why on earth should you die? A healthy woman like you should have babies as easy as shelling peas.’

‘His first wife died and her baby died with her.’

The doctor sat silent, gave a sigh. ‘Ah, well, send him along to me, I’ll reassure him. Now, don’t you let him worry you. You aren’t going to have any problems.’

Bill had burst into tears when she told him, and despite everything the doctor said to him he had watched over her like a mother all the months of her pregnancy, made her stay in bed, treated her like an invalid, but the doctor proved to be right. She had had the baby easily enough, although it was a first birth: a lovely little girl with dark, dark blue eyes and a skin that looked perfect even then.

‘She’s beautiful,’ Bill had said, perspiring with relief the day she was born, holding her gingerly, as if she might break.

He adored her from the first, but he was determined that Trudie should have no more babies, so he had had a vasectomy, and Annie had been their only child. They loved her the more for knowing there would be no others.

Bill had died of a heart-attack after running for a bus one hot summer day when Annie was eleven. He hadn’t ever complained of his heart before. He had never had a day’s ill health.

It had been a terrible shock for Trudie and Annie, coming out of the blue like that. Annie had loved her father almost as much as he had loved her, and Trudie had become very fond of him although her feelings had never been deep. She had married Bill because she felt comfortable with him and she was lonely, and she knew he had married her for the same reasons. Neither of them had been wildly romantic.

All her capacity for loving had been focused on Annie from the minute the baby was laid in her arms. She had responded instantly to the child’s weakness and helplessness, to knowing it needed her, and with Annie still there, needing her, she was able to cope with Bill’s death, although it came as a terrible shock.