The Choice Read online

  It’s as if he’s been preparing for this great event, waiting for it, longing for it to happen. Now all he has to do is persuade Moira she wants it, too.

  Walter knows it might be a long, hard struggle. He’ll throw his heart and soul into the battle until she agrees. Then, oh then, the day cannot come soon enough: then there will be no going back.

  Moira will be his and his alone.

  It takes Walter three months of planning and persistence.

  Week after week he arrives at Moira’s door with scented flowers, expensive Woodstock gloves, baby clothes for Felix, a smiling teddy bear from De la Mere’s in George Street, chocolate éclairs for tea. He buys himself a cream linen suit and a navy cravat from Arthur Shepherd’s on the High Street. He arrives for each visit looking as spick and span as a ship on her maiden voyage. Gently, single-mindedly, he courts and cajoles, describing the glories he’s offering.

  One memorable afternoon he takes Moira by the hand and makes her inspect all the changes he has made to his house: its new furniture, its delightful curtains, its spotless kitchen. He begs her to imagine the life he’s planning for them, full of space, cleanliness and light. He’s sure she’s tempted. He can see her imagining what it will be like to have her own bedroom and studio.

  ***

  By early October, when the skies have darkened and the Oxford trees have almost lost their leaves, Walter knows it’s not a question of whether Moira will say yes, but when. Her excuse that she doesn’t want to move Felix to another new home no longer holds water. The child is thriving, cheerful and confident, with a ready smile and eyes that have changed from blue to sparkling hazel: a boy who seems to grow in size, strength and shape beneath Walter’s adoring gaze. Who recognises his voice and his smile. Who grasps his fingers and squeezes them tight.

  It’s obvious that, in Walton Street, Moira doesn’t have an inch of space or a minute of time in which to paint. Clearly, she’s beginning to resent having to help Lizzie with the dressmaking. And when Lizzie complains she has been woken in the night by Felix, Moira looks guilty.

  Walter knows his game of cards is playing his way. Ever the perfect gentleman, he kisses Moira’s hand as he leaves and looks into her eyes.

  “Will you say ‘yes’ very soon?” he asks softly, patiently, so as not to wake the child. “Come to live with me, so we can be a proper family?”

  “I don’t know.” Moira’s eyes are cold, her hand feels unresponsive. “Please stop pestering me, Walter. It’s a big decision to make.”

  Walter slams out of the door, his mouth dry with rage. How dare Moira claim he’s “pestering” her, after everything he has tried to do. He marches into The Bird and Baby and spends the evening getting drunk on warm beer.

  The following morning Walter wakes with a headache and an infuriating cough. He has reached the end of his tether. Miserable and out of sorts, reluctant to face his canvas, he cycles to the chemist where he buys bottles of Eno’s Fruit Salts and Veno’s Cough Cure. He sits in the Covered Market café, drinking coffee together with several large spoonfuls of his medicines. The mixture is revolting. It can’t possibly be doing him any good. He remembers how he’d plied Moira with tea that extraordinary afternoon, unable to take his eyes off her. How patient he has been since then. Courteous, generous, understanding – even, some might say, heroic.

  His head continues to pound. He watches a pair of lovers kissing in a corner. Overwhelmed by jealousy, he makes a bad-tempered decision. That afternoon, after his art class, he’ll arrive at Moira’s with an ultimatum. He’ll be perfectly within his rights to demand she makes up her mind on the spot. The model who’ll sit for his class that afternoon – a ravishing blonde called Alexandra, with black come-hither eyes and skin that shines like silk – has made it clear she’ll jump into Walter’s bed any time he wants her.

  The truth is: Walter does want her. Not as much as he wants Moira, of course. But the chaste life he has led since Moira’s arrival – he can hardly keep it up forever, can he? He’s a man of flesh and blood, not a cardboard saint.

  Later, Walter stands in Moira’s front room, his hat in his hands, trying to look calm, urging himself to spell out his demands. Felix sleeps peacefully in his crib. Moira fiddles with her sewing, then tosses it aside.

  She looks up at Walter. “You’re very quiet.”

  “The thing is,” Walter blurts out in a rush before he can lose courage, “I’ve come to a difficult decision… I won’t be calling on you again.”

  Moira catches her breath. “Why ever not, Walter? I thought you liked—”

  “Oh, I do. I more than like seeing you and Felix, as you know. I adore you both. Since your return, the two of you have become the centre of my world… But I can’t go on coming here to cajole and plead like a lovesick fool.” Walter takes a deep breath. “I’ll ask you one last time. Will you bring your beautiful Felix and come to live with me?”

  Moira stands up. She walks towards the window, her long skirt trailing across the floor. Walter notices she looks thinner and more vulnerable. He longs to catch her in his arms, smother her with kisses, undress her, take her to his bed…

  He swallows his feelings, trying to dampen his passion. Surely Moira can’t refuse him. Not after all the efforts he has made.

  Moira turns to look at him with one of her straight, dark, uncompromising stares.

  “I’ll come to live with you on one condition.”

  Walter’s heart jumps into his mouth. “Anything, Moira… Name it… Tell me.”

  “That you don’t ask me to marry you.”

  He kneels at her feet. “I promise not to, ever again. Just having you with me will be more than enough.” He stands up, takes her in his arms. “My darling Moira… When will you come to live with me?”

  “Tomorrow afternoon,” Moira says. “I’ve already packed my suitcases.”

  Not that Mitchell girl!

  Wolvercote, 1908

  The only fly in Walter’s magnificent ointment is his father.

  Walter knows he must tell Henry his glad tidings, and as soon as possible. He’ll have to see him the following morning, before Moira and Felix arrive, in case his father decides on the spur of the moment to drop in for tea.

  Walter finds his father sitting at the breakfast table, inspecting the outside of his boiled egg.

  “Good morning, my boy!” Henry jumps to his feet. “This is a nice surprise. It’s not Sunday, is it? I’m getting so absent-minded I can’t even remember the days of the week.”

  “No, Papa, today is Friday. Please sit down and finish your breakfast.” Walter pours himself a cup of coffee, loading sugar into it. It tastes tepid and disgusting. “I have some news for you. You probably won’t like it, but I wanted to tell you before you heard it from anybody else.”

  “Out with it, my boy.” Henry waves his spoon in the air. “I hope you won’t be leaving me for a teaching post in London.”

  “No, Papa.” Walter stares at his reflection in the coffee pot. It could do with a good clean. Not his face, the pot.

  He clears his throat and squeaks, “It’s about Moira.”

  Henry stares at him. “Not that Mitchell girl!”

  “Yes, Papa.”

  “I thought she was abroad—”

  “She was, but now she’s back in Oxford. She’s been staying with Lizzie Farrell.” Walter adds as fast as he can, “But now she’s coming to live with me. She has a baby son called Felix. She’ll bring him too, of course.”

  “A baby son?” Henry gasps. “Is it yours?”

  “No, Papa. I only wish he were. Moira and I, as yet, we’ve never…”

  As Walter details his liaison, his father pushes back his chair and dances with rage around the breakfast table, hardly listening, his face purple, his eyes bulging. Then he slumps at the table, picks up his spoon and crashes it
down on his egg. Its shattered white and yellow innards curl over the cloth and lie in a congealed heap.

  “Now look what you’ve done.” Walter butters a piece of cold toast. “You’d better eat this instead.”

  Walter’s patience and Henry’s fury continue for half an hour. Finally Walter gets to his feet, sick of listening to his father rant and rage.

  “I must go, Papa. I’ve a hundred things to do before my new family arrive.” He clears his throat. “I’m sorry you feel so strongly about the way I choose to lead my life, but it makes no difference to my love for you. Our weekly meetings will, I hope, continue. I’ll see you for Sunday luncheon as usual.”

  Henry wipes his mouth. “If you must.”

  “I suppose it would be too much to ask whether I could bring Moira and Felix with me? I should love you to meet them.”

  “I forbid you to bring them here. I can’t possibly condone what you’re doing. As for who you are doing it with, words fail me. You couldn’t have made a worse choice in all the world. Nothing good will come of your living with that woman, you mark my words. You’ll rue the day you met her.”

  Walter cycles home, his teeth clenched with disappointment, determined not to let Henry’s bitterness cloud his triumph. The arrival of Moira and Felix will mark one of the happiest days of his life. Henry is an ancient stick-in-the-mud, a bigoted conservative. When Moira asks how his father has taken the news, Walter will make light of the episode. He’s too ashamed to admit he’s been unable to talk any sense whatsoever into the man he loves.

  The day becomes a whirl of activity. Bridget – initially rather shocked to hear Walter’s setting up home with an unmarried mother and a child who’s not his own, but quickly reconciled to the idea by the offer of twice as much money every week – flies from floor to floor, giving the house an extra polish. Windows are opened to air the rooms and then closed to warm them. Fires and candles are lit. Supper is prepared and left to cool in the pantry. Moira and Lizzie come and go in drizzles of rain, carrying boxes and parcels, clothes and crockery, toys, shoes, pots and pans. Two delivery men arrive, carrying a small antique mahogany bureau which apparently belonged to Moira’s mother so she refuses to part with it. Walter thinks bitterly that she managed without it well enough in France, but he says nothing. It’s carted upstairs to Moira’s studio, and placed underneath the window where it immediately looks at home.

  Finally, Felix himself is trundled over the road in a new perambulator, his cheeks rosy, his damp woollen hat squashed over his eyes.

  Walter lifts the child out of his pram. Felix, whose nappy obviously needs changing, sticks a thumb in Walter’s eye. Walter stumbles over the threshold and collides with the hall stand which is not where he’d left it two hours ago.

  “This is your new home, Felix Mitchell,” he says. Felix grabs a hat from the hall stand and crams it onto Walter’s head. “Here you may eat and sleep and laugh and play to your heart’s content. If there’s anything you ever want, you are to let me know… Welcome aboard.”

  With Felix balanced on one hip as if he’s an experienced father, Walter reaches for Moira’s hand and raises it to his lips.

  “Finally, my darling girl… I’ve waited for this moment all my life.”

  Christmas

  Oxford, 1908

  The house in which Walter has lived for the past three years now changes character around him. Suddenly it smells of women, wet washing and soiled nappies. It feels full of life. It sounds different. Moira constantly talks to Felix: not private baby babble, but long sentences as if her child is an adult who understands everything. Even when Walter is working in his studio, he can hear the echoes of her marvellous voice reverberating from room to room. He listens to her singing as she paints, or giving instructions to their nanny, or the sound of her footsteps flying up and down the stairs, or the wheels of the pram as she trundles Felix into the street for their daily walk.

  Sometimes Moira’s Votes-for-Women friends arrive to take tea in the kitchen and discuss their next meeting, or Lizzie knocks at the door, bringing a new frock for Moira and clothes for Felix. Their nanny knows Bridget’s family and is a constant source of salacious gossip. There’s always some hustle or bustle going on.

  For the first seven nights, overjoyed to have Moira with him, Walter keeps his distance. At the end of every evening he retires to his bedroom, allowing Moira to go to hers, determined not to force the issue and possibly scare her off. But he leaves his bedroom door ajar and lies in bed, praying Moira will come to him.

  The evening she does is one Walter never forgot. She taps on his door: her hair is tumbling down her back, and she’s wearing a long blue-silk peignoir. She looks so beautiful, so vulnerable and feminine that Walter wants to fall to his knees in worship.

  “You’ve been so kind and patient with me, Walter,” she says.

  Oh, God, that deep, mellifluous voice!

  “So wonderful with Felix. You really are the most generous man alive… How can I ever thank you?”

  “You know exactly how,” Walter says.

  “Yes.” Moira lets her peignoir slip from her shoulders. “Indeed, I do.”

  Throughout the autumn, Walter continues to spend Sundays with his father. He needs to keep an even closer eye on him, now that Henry has stopped turning up for tea. Any discussion of Moira and Felix is carefully avoided. But one Sunday in late November, Walter decides to raise a subject that has been much on his mind. He knows he can’t postpone it any longer.

  He waits until they’ve eaten their meal and Henry’s housekeeper has cleared the dishes and gone home. Then he says, “How long do you think you can keep this up, Papa?”

  “Keep what up?” Henry pretends to search for his newspaper.

  “This not talking about Moira, not wanting to know about my life or how she and I are getting on. Not asking after Felix. It’s ridiculous, Papa, and it must stop.”

  “So what do you propose to do about it?”

  Walter takes a deep breath, prepared to do battle with Henry all afternoon. “I want you to come to us for Christmas.”

  “I can’t,” Henry says quickly, as if he has anticipated Walter’s invitation. “My Wytham friends have asked me for Christmas Day luncheon.”

  Walter clenches his fists. “Then come to us for supper on Christmas Eve, Papa. Moira feels snubbed by your ignoring her. I’m enjoying the happiest time my life, because of her… Come at six o’clock so you can see Felix. Spend a couple of hours with us, that’s all I ask. We can drink a glass of mulled wine and have a special meal. Moira will roast a goose. She’s becoming an excellent cook. And I’ll arrange for a cab to drive you home… Please, Papa.” Walter’s eyes begin to burn. “We may not have many more Christmases together. Do me the honour of recognising my new family. Is that too much to ask?”

  Henry flaps at his paper, jams his pince-nez on his nose. He looks like an angry parrot.

  “Oh, all right, I give in. If you must live with that Mitchell girl I suppose I’ll have to get used to it.” Henry lights a match, his hands trembling. “Christmas Eve it is.”

  Walter sighs with relief. “That’s wonderful, Papa. Shall I come to collect you?”

  “Thanks, but I’m perfectly capable of getting to your house on my own two feet. I may be elderly, but I continue to perambulate everywhere.”

  “Very well.” Walter hesitates, not wanting to hammer home his victory. He decides to risk it. “Moira will be delighted. I’ll tell Felix his grandpapa will be coming to see him. He can call you Granpa Henry. Gramp for short.”

  “Strictly speaking,” Henry says tartly, “I’m not even a distant relative.”

  “Stuff and nonsense.” Walter throws an apple log on the fire. “Who gives a fig for strictly speaking, for other people’s rules and regulations? Live your life by your own rules, that’s what I say. I’m Felix’s father
in everything but name. And I’m ecstatically happy to be so.”

  Henry leans forward in his chair. He pokes at the logs, staring at the brave leap of flames. “That Mitchell girl, she really has struck gold… Does she have any idea how fortunate she is?”

  “Probably.” Walter shrugs. “Who cares?” He wants to change the subject. “What have you been reading?”

  Henry takes out a handkerchief. Walter, relieved to see it’s freshly laundered, is horrified to hear his father cough.

  “I’ve been hunkered down over an article by this journalist chappie. Claims there’s a war brewing in Europe.”

  “Oh?” Walter’s right hand strokes his right knee. Badly injured it was, his knee, from that afternoon on Port Meadow. He was seven years old and had almost drowned in the river. A stranger had fished him out in the nick of time, had stood over him and done various things Walter couldn’t remember. Afterwards, they’d taken him to hospital. It turned out that he’d broken his knee in several places, meaning he can never be a soldier or a sailor or anything heroic like that. “Well, I can’t fight, can I?”

  “No, my boy, more’s the pity. Wish I still could!”

  “What, dress up in one of those dreadful uniforms and march around with a pistol strapped to your shoulder?”

  Henry gives Walter the most ferocious stare. “It’s called fighting for your country, dear boy. Taking arms against a sea of troubles.”

  Walter snorts. He lights his pipe, glancing at Henry over its drift of briar tobacco smoke. “So now you think I’m Hamlet, eh?… If I’m Hamlet, where do you fit in?”

  Henry wheezes with laughter. “I’m the bloody ghost on the battlements.”

  “Not quite, you’re not!” Walter puts down his pipe. “Not before you’ve come to have supper with me and the most beautiful woman in the world.”

  “My goodness!” Moira says that evening. “I thought Henry couldn’t stand the sight of me! How on earth did you persuade him?”