‘Yes, it’s quite all right for you to be unfaithful, isn’t it? But not me.’
‘I am allowed to be unfaithful, Aurelia,’ he roared. ‘You, as my wife, are not. It’s that simple.’
* * *
Algie leaned his bicycle against the wall and went into the house, resigned to the inevitable chaos that his confession to Marigold would create. Clara, his mother, was in the kitchen preparing food.
‘My goodness, Algie, you look as if you’ve lost a sovereign and found a sixpence,’ she remarked on witnessing his sombre expression.
‘Maybe I have,’ he replied glumly. ‘Where’s Marigold?’
‘Out the back, fetching in the washing. It’s been a good drying day.’
He nodded. ‘I’ll go and find her.’
In the back garden, beneath billowing sheets, he saw her dainty feet and black stockings protruding below her long skirt as she reached on tiptoe for the wooden pegs that attached the sheets to the washing line. He called her name. As she pulled back a sheet, as if peering behind a curtain, she saw him approach.
‘Hello, husband,’ she greeted with a warm smile, ‘it’s been a good drying day.’
‘Mother said.’
‘Our Rose has been a proper little madam all day, though.’
He forced a smile.
‘Here, Algie, help me fold this sheet properly, save getting it creased. Sheets can be a devil to iron if they get too dry and ain’t folded proper, all smooth like. Are your hands clean?’
He inspected them cursorily. ‘Yes.’
She held out one edge of a sheet to him and he took it. Between them they stretched it taut and made the first fold, then another. Marigold took the long folded sheet, gathered it in cross-folds, and placed it in the wicker washing basket at her feet.
‘Have you had a good day?’ she asked chirpily.
‘Not particularly.’
She unpegged another sheet and offered him one end. ‘Oh? Why’s that?’
‘There’s something I have to talk to you about, Marigold.’
She smiled enigmatically and he detected a twinkle in her eye. ‘Well, it can wait till I’ve got the washing in, I daresay.’
‘I daresay.’ He was glad of the delay and shrugged as they pulled on the sheet to make it taut before executing the first fold. When they had finished he took her hand and led her to the wooden bench at the top of the garden at the point furthest from the house, so as not to be overheard. They sat down, he turned to face her, conscience-stricken, and took her hands in his.
‘Before you say a word, Algie Stokes, I have something to tell you,’ she said, and it pained him to see how cheerful she was, and how soon his news would turn that cheerfulness into misery.
‘What?’ he asked, grimly.
‘Oh, just wait till I tell you.’ There was no mistaking the teasing frivolity in her eyes, the contentment.
‘So tell me,’ he demanded impatiently.
‘I’m having another baby. You’re going to be a dad again.’
‘Jesus Christ!’ he exclaimed, closing his eyes and facing the sky. He let go of her hands and stood up, bewildered by her news. ‘How? I mean, when?…I mean, how long have you known?’
She giggled at his obvious perplexity. ‘Oh, Algie…Since before today, o’ course. Ain’t you pleased?’
‘Why didn’t you tell me sooner?’
‘I’ve been meaning to for days and days. But you can never be sure early on…’ she shrugged. ‘I didn’t want to get your hopes up, then have to tell you I was wrong.’
‘So how far gone are you?’
‘Well, I’ve missed two months. So I reckon I might be nearly three months already.’
‘Jesus,’ he repeated. He sat down beside her again and leaned against the backrest. This was a twist he had not reckoned on.
‘Ain’t you pleased?’ she asked again, disappointed at what seemed to her his detachment. ‘I thought you’d be ever so pleased.’
He laughed at the sad irony of this new, unanticipated development and threw his arms about her. ‘Oh, sweetheart, I am ever so pleased,’ he said, and smothered her with kisses. ‘Does Mother know?’
Marigold shook her head. ‘I wouldn’t tell anybody afore I’d told you, you daft thing.’
‘So Aurelia doesn’t know either?’
‘Course she don’t know.’
‘Shall you tell her, or d’you want me to tell her?’
‘Why d’you think I’d want you to tell her?’ she asked. ‘No, I’ll tell her meself. She’ll be that pleased.’
‘Oh, she will,’ he remarked, the irony in his voice lost on Marigold.
‘I think she should be the baby’s godmother, don’t you?’
‘If you still think so…once you’ve had the baby, I mean.’
‘So what is it you want to talk to me about?’ she asked.
‘Oh, nothing really.’ How could he possibly mar the happiness of these precious moments by telling her his preposterous news? Besides, it might be better to keep quiet about it until he knew for certain that Benjamin had begun divorce proceedings. After all, it could conceivably have been a hollow threat.
‘It must have been something, Algie,’ she prompted.
He shrugged, struggling to invent a plausible tale. ‘Oh…I’d been thinking about applying for a loan to buy a new stoving oven for the business. But it can wait. After your news, it can certainly wait.’
She stood up and smiled sassily. She offered her hand and he took it, also rising from the seat. ‘Come on, help me carry the washing in,’ she said. ‘Then we can tell your mother the good news over tea.’
* * *
When Clarence Froggatt was a child, his father realised that his only son was blessed with an unusual combination of talents, namely an aptitude for mathematics and a fondness for drawing and designing things. As far as Dr Froggatt was concerned, these were not the relevant ingredients for a career as a physician like himself, but were entirely applicable for life as an architect. Thus, he encouraged his son to think along those lines from an early age. The lad should strive for it he believed, simply because he saw that it was attainable. By the time Clarence had wed Harriet Meese, he had passed all his examinations and was a fully qualified architect.
Dr Froggatt had seen to it that his son received as good an education as it was possible to get, without it actually costing him good money on private schooling, for thrift was no stranger to generations of Froggatts. Yet parsimonious as his father had been, Nature had been decidedly lavish with the gifts she bestowed on Clarence. Besides his mathematical and artistic abilities, he was blessed with a handsome face and a fine physique, hinting at good health and greater than average physical strength. The only aspect of his looks that could have been improved was the occasional aloofness of his facial expression and a tendency to appear more serious than he actually was. Some people interpreted this as a sign of being morose, unduly solemn, miserable, lacking a sense of humour, some even as haughty. Yet