Chapter Forty-One
Back in Nuneaton, Mrs Taylor-Lloyd was also tossing and turning.
She’d dismissed the nurse she had employed to look after her husband some days ago, along with the housekeeper.
She’d had no choice. Now that her husband was confined to bed there was no money coming into the house and their savings were diminishing at a frighteningly rapid rate.
And so the care of her spouse now fell solely on her shoulders, and she hated having to look after him.
She’d long since moved out of the bed they had once shared and into her own bedroom.
She had never enjoyed the physical side of marriage and after Monty’s birth she had considered that she’d done her duty.
Things weren’t helped by the fact that Reggie was constantly coming to her for handouts.
Since being injured in the war, he’d refused to work, although his mother was sure there were lots of jobs he could have done had he a mind to.
It was only his face that was disfigured, after all.
But then Reggie had never been keen on hard work.
As dawn streaked the sky, she heard guttural noises coming from her husband in the next room and, sighing, she swung her legs out of bed.
He’d probably soiled himself again, which would mean yet another bed bath and another lot of clean bedding.
The maid wouldn’t even be up yet, so it would be down to her to see to him again.
Not that the maid was much help when it came to him.
She was so small and slight that one good puff of wind would have blown her away and she couldn’t even roll him over, let alone lift him.
That left only the cook, and she flatly refused to help.
With another sigh, she slipped into her dressing robe and pushed her feet into her slippers before making her way along the landing.
As she opened the door the stale smell of vomit and urine met her and she wrinkled her nose in disgust.
Her husband’s eyes found hers, staring and afraid, but she had no sympathy for him.
‘Have you soiled yourself again, Henry?’ she snapped.
He tried to raise his hand as he lay drooling and she shivered with a mixture of cold and revulsion. It was too early for the maid to have made up the fire and the room was like an ice box.
And then the tears came. She was exhausted and at the end of her tether. ‘I can’t do this any more,’ she sobbed, and suddenly, without thinking, her hand reached out and she pulled one of the pillows from beneath him and pressed it against his nose and face.
He began to thrash from side to side and his breathing became laboured, but he was weak and completely at her mercy and soon he fell still.
She stood looking down on him as tears coursed down her cheeks, but she felt no regret. He could never hurt her, or anyone else, again now.
‘You really thought I was unaware of what you’d been up to all these years, didn’t you?
’ she muttered, although she knew he could no longer hear her.
‘About little Emma and Eve, the maids you got pregnant, and all the other women you’ve had.
’ She shook her head sadly. ‘But believe me, I knew about every single one. I only stayed silent because I liked living in this house and the lifestyle you gave me. But what use are you to me now? Now at least I can sell this house, and I’m still young enough to catch myself another wealthy husband.
And so, my darling husband, I’ve simply put you out of your misery and helped you to move on to a better place. ’
Very slowly, Eunice Taylor-Lloyd withdrew the pillow.
His mouth was open in a silent scream and his unseeing eyes were dulling.
With a grunt she managed to lift him and replace the pillow beneath his head, then as silently as she could she crept from the room and padded back to her own room.
She felt no guilt, no regrets; he had got what had been coming to him and she was glad she would no longer have to tend him.
The doctor had already warned them that another stroke could be fatal for Henry, so when the maid came in to make the fire up, she’d find him dead and everyone would assume he had simply passed in his sleep.
Now all she had to do was wait. It was almost an hour later when she heard the maid struggle up the stairs with the heavy coal bucket, and then came a blood-curdling scream that echoed through the house. Seconds later there came a loud hammering on her door.
‘Missus, missus . . . come quick. There’s sommat wrong wi’ the master.’
Eunice crossed to the door, pretending she’d just been woken. ‘Whatever is the matter, girl?’
‘It’s the master, missus. I reckon he’s . . .’ The girl was crying and close to hysteria. ‘You’d best come quick.’
Eunice followed her back across the landing and when they entered her husband’s room, she feigned shock as her eyes settled on him. He was just as she had left him.
‘Run for the doctor and tell him to come immediately,’ she told the girl, and turning the maid ran out without even stopping to snatch up a coat.
The doctor arrived within fifteen minutes. Eunice had positioned herself on the edge of the bed and was holding her husband’s hand, looking every inch the grieving widow as she brushed away imaginary tears from her face.
‘Oh, Doctor, thank goodness you’re here. I think he’s . . .’ She allowed her voice to trail away as the doctor bent to examine him.
After a few moments, he rose and solemnly shook his head. ‘I’m so sorry, there’s nothing I can do. I’m afraid he’s gone.’
‘B-but how? I only checked on him a couple of hours ago!’
‘I think he must have suffered another stroke,’ he told her gently. ‘And I did warn you that if that happened, there’d be nothing more I could do for him.’
Reggie appeared in the doorway looking bedraggled and still half asleep. ‘What the hell is all the commotion about?’ He’d been drinking heavily the night before and looked awful.
‘It’s your father,’ his mother told him pathetically. ‘I’m afraid he’s passed away, darling.’
Reggie looked suitably shocked as the doctor gently drew the crumpled sheet up across Henry’s face.
‘I’ll write out the death certificate for you, then would you like me to call into the undertakers on my way home, or would you prefer to keep him here?’
‘Oh no,’ she answered hastily. ‘I think I would prefer them to take him to the chapel of rest. Thank you, Doctor.’
He took a pad from his bag, filled in the death certificate and after offering his condolences once more, he quietly left.
Reggie shook his head looking bewildered. ‘I could have sworn he looked a bit better yesterday,’ he commented.
His mother shrugged as she checked the certificate. It gave the cause of death as a stroke, just as she’d hoped it would.
Half an hour later the solemn-faced undertaker came to collect the body and once it was gone, mother and son made their way to the drawing room where the maid had prepared a pot of tea for them.
‘I know this is a bad time to ask, and I wouldn’t if I weren’t desperate,’ Reggie said cautiously as his mother handed him a cup of steaming tea.
‘But I had a few games of cards with the lads last night, and I’m ashamed to say I lost. I wondered if you could let me have a few quid to get myself straight again? ’
He was shocked when she looked him full in the face and shook her head.
‘No, I’m afraid I can’t let you have any more money, Reginald,’ she told him coldly.
‘From now on you’re going to have to start supporting yourself.
Once your father’s funeral is over, I shall be selling the house and starting again somewhere else. ’
Reggie was so surprised that the tea in his cup slopped over into the saucer and burnt his hand. ‘What? But what about me? Will I be coming with you?’
Again, she shook her head. ‘I’m afraid not. We have supported you ever since you came home from the war but you’re going to have to start looking after yourself.’
Reggie was so incensed that he slammed his cup and saucer down and stormed out of the room, leaving his mother with a little smile playing about her lips. All she had to do now was get the funeral out of the way and then she could begin her new life, and it wasn’t a moment too soon.
Word of Mr Taylor-Lloyd’s death spread like wildfire, even as far as London, when Peggy rang Annie to tell her about it three days later.
‘They reckon the maid found ’im dead in bed one mornin’ when she went in to make the fire up,’ Peggy reported. ‘He’d ’ad another stroke apparently.’
‘I see.’ After what the man had done to Nancy’s mother and Eve and the way Mrs Taylor-Lloyd had treated her and Adam, she couldn’t be a hypocrite and pretend to be sorry.
‘I’ll tell yer now, though, she ain’t playin’ the part of a grievin’ widow very well,’ Peggy went on in her usual forthright way.
‘It’s as if she couldn’t get ’im in the ground quick enough an’ it were a right low-cost funeral.
She buried ’im yesterday an’ word ’as it she ’ad the cheapest coffin she could get an’ not even a wake after the service.
There weren’t many attended that either.
But that’s enough about that,’ Peggy said. ‘How are you an’ ’ow is Nancy?’
‘I’m fine and Nancy is getting better by the day. She’s still not quite right enough to look after Adam, so I’m leaving the running of the shop to Ruth. But to be honest she’s doing as good a job as I could and I’m starting to feel a bit like a spare part. I don’t even really need to be here.’
‘Sounds to me like yer up fer another challenge,’ Peggy chuckled. ‘We’ll ’ave to ’ave a talk about that the next time yer home. An’ it’s not long now to the weddin’, is it?’
‘Not long at all, I can hardly wait. You’re going to make a lovely bride,’ Annie told her.
They talked for another few minutes and when Annie put the phone down a wave of homesickness swept through her. Perhaps it was time to start thinking of going back for good.