“I didn’t say that!”
“Yes you did, just as we were going through Stow on the Wold.”
“What on earth were you doing going through Stow?”
“Linda got us lost.”
Ted did not seem to be taking much notice of this exchange and spoke seriously. “I know it’s not exactly what you might be looking for but it might be interesting. Linda has told you that the business world is changing. We’re finding it more and more difficult to get women for the typing pool and I know we’re not alone. There’s a bureau of sorts in Liverpool but it isn’t very reliable and I think it’s gone to the wall, but they used these new machines with memories. All very technical really, completely beyond me.”
“That’s it.” I had a moment of inspiration “Linda and I will go into business together. With her experience…”
“All nine months of it.” she interrupted modestly
“and my enthusiasm and business acumen…”
“not to mention funding…”
“and Max and Ted’s contacts…”
“It can’t fail.”
“What are we going to call it?”
“You haven’t got a business yet, or offices, or anything but you want a name?”
It took several weeks to arrange everything but I think both Max and Ted were impressed with the energy we put into the project. Linda gave in her notice and agreed to work two of the required four weeks. “We’ll be sorry to lose you,” her boss had said “but we’ll know where to come when things get too busy here. Consider us your first client.”
An office was found close to the post office and the station. The previous occupants were a firm of auctioneers who were moving to bigger premises and, during the discussions about the property itself I picked up our second client. “It’ll be a lot of work each week, you know. There’s only two days to get the catalogue finalised. Will you be able to do that? Regularly?”
“Of course, the answer’s yes.”
Equipment was bought from the bureau in Liverpool that had, as Ted suspected, gone out of business. “Very good value, you know, all less than a year old and hardly used.”
Linda and I spent a lot of time with Ted. He was very helpful and seemed to be enjoying himself, frequently ringing during the day with an idea or an answer to a problem.
“I hope it isn’t bad luck to take over all this stuff from a failed outfit.” Linda commented, it was the first indication I had that Linda was superstitious.
“Of course not. We’re a completely different set up. I’ve got all the figures together. I’ve been reminding myself hideously of my father. He used to sit at his desk filling out page after page of accounts paper with rows of figures that for him never added up, but for me they will! The frightening thing is I think it’s him writing the numbers sometimes. I’ve started crossing my sevens, something I’ve never done before. Anyway, my numbers….”
“Whatever they look like.”
“….exactly, my numbers, whatever they look like, do add up. Even Ted and the Bank Manager agree.”
“We’ll need a receptionist. I’m happy to do the typing but I draw the line at answering my own phone.” I was not going to be a sleeping partner. When I told Linda she smiled, teasing me ‘in any sense of the words’.
“We’ll need to do some advertising and then sit back and wait for the clients to queue up at the door.”
We worked well together and almost without talking about it, knew what needed doing and which one of us would do it.
“I’m glad we got all that sex stuff out of the way before we started spending all day every day together.”
“Me too, though it was quite interesting trying.”
“Interesting! I’d thought any other word but ‘interesting’!”
“Embarrassing?”
“I was going to say fun.”
“This is going to be much more than just fun.”
Chapter Nineteen
We didn’t consult Max and Monika about our plans for a New Year’s Eve Party. I’m afraid I decided it would be a good idea and Linda and I just went ahead and arranged it. The first they knew about it was, as with my birthday barbecue what seemed a lifetime earlier, when they each received an invitation.
I did ask Max’s advice about one aspect of the party. “There’ll be quite a lot of people; the three of us; Linda and her family. I think her brothers will be around, Carl if he’s up.” It was left unsaid that Carl would only be there if Susannah wasn’t, but we hadn’t seen or heard of her for a long time. “There’ll be a few clients, Eric and the others from the office at the auctioneers, some of Linda’s old colleagues from Birkenhead, Ted and some of the chaps from your firm, Max. The only problem really is Holly. Linda thinks she ought to invite her even though they don’t see much of each other these days, but that means Graham and neither of us are keen on inviting him.”
Max was firm. “You must ask her. She and Linda have been friends ever since she came to this country and she’s had such a difficult time since her mother died. I’ll keep an eye on Graham. Leave him to me.”
“What about her father?”
“No. Definitely not. I draw the line there.
In the event Holly arrived without Graham.
As soon as I let her in she went straight to Linda, barely allowing me to take her coat. “Can we talk? I know it’s not the best time, you’ve got guests and everything but I’ve left him.” And then she burst into tears.
Half an hour later I wondered what had happened to them and went down to the kitchen. The two of them were sitting on the same side of the table, their chairs close together. Linda’s arm was around Holly’s shoulders their heads so close that Linda’s red hair was mingling with Holly’s blonde. I caught Linda’s eye as she looked over Holly’s shoulder and she shook her head. I backed away, shutting the door lightly behind me. Whatever it was they were talking about it was best left between them.
Linda described the conversation to me later, when all the mayhem had ended. “I’ve left him.” Holly had said “I can’t go back. I’ve had enough. I thought I could last until September but I can’t. I tried but I really can’t.”
Linda let her talk without trying to interrupt. Whatever it was Holly wanted to say she had to have the chance to say it.
“I thought I’d be OK with him, it couldn’t be worse than living with Dad but it is. He’s vile. He’s disgusting. He’s a control freak. I can’t do anything he doesn’t want me to do and I have to do everything he wants. And he’s got me sacked.”
“It started off all right, he would ask how I was doing and listen while I told him how horrid things were when I couldn’t keep order with the girls. He seemed sympathetic and didn’t argue too much when I spent so much time in the evenings on lesson plans and marking. I really needed his help, I was so tired and there was always so much to do. He was very good for a week or so, he’d even cook some evenings and bring me coffee. But then he began to moan, ‘I’d not done the washing up.’ ‘The house was getting dirty.’ ‘When did I last get the hoover out from under the stairs?’ ‘Had I forgotten he worked all day as well and he needed a rest?’ So I tried harder, I stayed up later doing the house after the lessons were planned and the marking done, I wasn’t getting to bed till well after midnight and getting up at 6 so I just got more and more tired. Then he complained we weren’t, you know, ‘doing it’ often enough. He said we’d only been married a short time and should be doing it every night. I couldn’t! I didn’t have the energy. So he said he’d go elsewhere for that. I honestly didn’t care. I knew he was going elsewhere since the day we got married. I’ve only been holding on till we’d been married for three years and I could divorce him.”
Linda felt guilty and said something about never having known she was that unhappy.
“You haven’t seen me for ages! You’ve been so wrapped up with your business you haven’t given me a thought. I rang you the other day, at your office, and got some girl who said
you were busy and would call back – could I leave a number? Well I couldn’t I was calling from the call-box at school and I couldn’t ask you to call the house. You haven’t known how unhappy I’ve been for years. Since Mom died. You haven’t cared what happened to me!”
Linda thought this a little unfair since she had tried to talk that year in Leicester, but realised there was some truth in what Holly was saying.
“I put up with everything he did, all the things he made me do, because I always had this dream. Next year I’d be free. I’d have a job, get a flat, I could divorce him. Now he’s lost me my job I can’t do any of it.
“I do care, you know. We spent all those years together but we grew apart didn’t we? Was it because of Graham? Funny, I always thought that if we ever really fell out it would be because of Carl.”
“Well it doesn’t seem like you care! Since that summer in Oxford, since, well yes, since Graham.” And she burst into tears again.
Linda tried to talk to her, asking gently “You say he got you sacked. What happened?”
Holly had made a real effort to pull herself together and be fair. “It wasn’t all his fault, he might have just been trying to help.”
“I don’t believe that for a moment.”
“He knew I was having trouble with one particular girl in the lower fifth, Julia. She’d always whip up trouble with the others in the class and even if they wanted to listen and work she’d stop them by making some stupid remark or laugh and point out how I’d written something wrong on the blackboard. It got so that I couldn’t bear lessons with her, and there was one almost every day of the week! Anyway, I told Graham about her, told her how difficult she made everything. I never told him her name! I may have said ‘Julia’ but I never said ‘Julia Robinson’. He must have checked her homework or something and found her name. On the last day of term I was called to the Head’s office. It was awful! She was so angry! She didn’t raise her voice at all, she just sat there quietly explaining that she was going to have to let me go as she had had a complaint from a parent. I wasn’t going to be able to complete my probation. Mr Robinson had phoned. Graham had been to see him and had threatened him! He had threatened that unless Mr Robinson controlled his daughter she would be found to be a thief. Things had been going missing in my lessons, silly little things, pens, small amounts of money, dinner tickets, nothing serious, I shouldn’t have told him about it but it was just one more thing I couldn’t cope with. I don’t blame Mrs Smith for sacking me! I’d sack me!”
There was not much Linda could say.
“ Could he have meant it for the best?”
“I wanted to think so. I tried to think so. I cleared my locker in the staff room. It was horrid. They all knew what had happened and no one said ‘Happy Christmas’ or ‘Good Luck’. No one. It was absolutely horrible. I went home and cleaned the house like I hadn’t cleaned it for weeks. I cooked a nice meal for Graham so he’d have no reason to be angry, and I waited for him to come home. I wanted him to sympathise, to apologise, to explain; anything to make it easier to bear. I’d worked so hard, I’d tried so hard.”
“What happened?”
“He was pleased! He said that now I could concentrate on being his wife, we could start a family. He said it didn’t matter! But it did. It does. It matters so much. I knew he’d done it deliberately, to get me fired. He hadn’t liked the time I’d been working, he felt I had been neglecting him and he thought this would be a good way to get me to himself. He’d humiliated me to control me. I was so angry I lashed out at him and knocked his glasses off. I’d really tried to hit him! I couldn’t believe it! I’m not like that! And then he hit me back so I stamped on his glasses and he really freaked out. It was my fault. I shouldn’t have hit him first. He kept saying it was my fault. And it was.”
“No, Holly, look at me. No it wasn’t. He could have just taken one hit and stopped you. You probably had only hurt his feelings, you aren’t strong enough to really hurt him. He didn’t have to hit back. Did he hurt you?”
Holly just nodded.
“Are you OK now?”
Holly nodded her head again.
Linda did some calculations in her head. “You will have broken up what, two weeks ago?” she asked “What have you been doing since then?”
“Not much. I couldn’t go out until the bruises had died down. We had a quiet Christmas. He didn’t even mention my birthday.”
“You’ll come and stay with us won’t you?”
“Can I?”
“Of course. We’d love to have you back. I’ll find Pat.”
“Don’t you call her ‘Mum’ any more?”
“Since I started work they said it seemed daft so it’s first names all round, they’ve known we’ve called them Mutt and Jeff for years. It was weird to start with but now it seems quite normal.”
“Are we friends again then?”
“We’ve always been friends, silly, we just went our own ways for a bit.”
“It’s a lot more than that. There’s so much I haven’t told you.”
Holly began to tell Linda something of what her life had been like for past two years. Linda could only listen in dismay at what she had allowed her friend to endure.
“You were all absolutely right. I should never have married Graham. I knew you would never say ‘I told you so’ but I knew you would be thinking it if I told you. I’d wanted to go away to the sun for our honeymoon but he had said we couldn’t afford it. ‘Only if you give up university and get a job Doll.’ I hated him calling me ‘Doll’ or ‘Holl Doll’. Only did it because he knew I hated it. Perhaps I should have given up university. Perhaps I should have done what he said.”
“No. You did the right thing.” Linda said little, but what she did say she wanted to be unequivocally supportive.
“We spent all that fortnight in bed, Graham said he had to show me what I had to do to give him the pleasure he expected. I’d never thought it would be like that.”
“Are you sure you want to tell me this?” Linda asked.
“I wanted to talk to you every day. I wanted to tell you you’d been right all along. I wanted to ask for your help, even go back to live with you. But after those two weeks I didn’t think I could ever tell anyone what being married to Graham was like. I would just have to make the best of it. I could never admit my failure.”
Linda squeezed her hand if only to say she was still there and still listening. Holly seemed like she was in a world of her own.
“I dreaded going back to Leicester last October. I knew that if I weakened for one moment I would break down and you would know how much I hated my life. And I couldn’t do that. Could I?”
She looked at Linda who was feeling more and more guilty for having left Holly to face all this alone.
“I couldn’t relax for one moment. All year. I saw a solicitor. He told me to be patient, not to do anything stupid like having an affair but to keep my head down and wait out the three years until I could apply for a divorce. I couldn’t believe it couldn’t happen any sooner but he assured me that three years was the minimum. He told me to make sure I qualified so I could support herself and most importantly, make sure I didn’t get pregnant. I began counting down to 15th September 1976 on that day.”
“Why didn’t you go to Ted, he’d have found a way to get it sorted more quickly?” Linda knew she shouldn’t have said anything that made Holly feel worse than she already did, but she had to ask.
“How could I?” Holly answered Linda’s question directly before continuing telling Linda things she knew if she didn’t say now she never would.
“Since I left Leicester I haven’t been able to do anything right. He’s yelled and shouted at me and criticised everything I’ve done. Unless there’s other people around. He had a sheet of paper where he noted everything I’d done wrong and at the end of each week the tally was reckoned and the ‘debt’ as he called it had to be repaid.”
Linda looked questioningly.
�
��Do you really want to know? Well there was a tariff. If I lost 5 points it was fellatio, if it was 10 points he could bugger me. 20 points I had to have sex with one of his friends while he watched. You really want to know?”
Linda did not.
“I just did as he said and waited for the days to pass.”
“Oh Holly. I’m so sorry.”
“It got worse.” Holly was going to tell Linda everything now. “The first time Graham had told her we were going to spend Sunday with my father I hadn’t believed him. I didn’t understand how they could be friends? ‘Him and me, we’ve got things to do’ was all the explanation he gave. I knew he wouldn’t change his mind, even if I could have told him how much I hated that flat. Every visit was the same. He’d drive the three miles so we arrived just in time for them to go out to the pub. I’d cook the Sunday meal and clean the flat though Dad’s bedroom was always locked. After we’d eaten Matt would make a show of getting out the key to his room and they’d leave while I cleared up. They never said what they were doing. All I could hear was loud classical music that I’d had never known he’d liked. We’d have tea at five and then we’d leave an hour later. I never spoke to Dad and I made sure I was never alone with him. “
Linda couldn’t imagine how she would feel if this had been her life.
“The only Sundays we didn’t go to see Dad Graham would set off in his car very early and not get back till late. I had no idea where he went or what he did. I didn’t ask and he didn’t tell me. I just enjoyed the day on her own. Occasionally he went out on a Saturday evening, as if going to the pub, but when he didn’t make me go with him I knew he wouldn’t be back all night. I enjoyed the luxury of that time alone, sleeping in the spare room, doing my best to forget what her life had become.”
“Why didn’t you call? Why didn’t you phone and tell me?”
“How could I let you know how much of a mistake I’d made? How could I explain? I just enjoyed those hours being alone.”
“But you got a job, he let you do that?”
Walking Alone Page 21
