by Anne Bennett
‘How do you keep your patience?’ Violet asked her one day.
‘Oh she’s just a bag of old wind,’ Lizzie said. ‘And Steve hates me to argue with his mother.’
That was an understatement. One day, when she’d had an up and downer with Flo, his father was quick to make Steve well aware of it that night at the pub. ‘Your mother was proper put out,’ he said. ‘Your Lizzie really flew at her, she said, and all she did was make a comment, like.’
Later, a drunken Steve went for Lizzie. He said the last thing he wanted to cope with was arguments between her and his mother. Lizzie had to understand Flo’s position. ‘Can’t you show some consideration? You knew she would be jealous.’
Lizzie knew she should let Steve rave on, knowing he hated to be criticised, argued with, and especially when he had a load on, but the unfairness of his accusations got to her. ‘Why doesn’t she show me any understanding? She’s always moaning, complaining and finding fault, and I’m sick of it.’
Steve grasped Lizzie by the arms and shook her as if she was a rag doll, shook her till she felt as if every bone in her body had loosened. ‘She needs to show no consideration for you, you stupid bitch. You respect her because she’s my mother, or I’ll want to know the reason why.’
Lizzie, shocked to the core and frightened, said not another word but got into bed, and later, while Steve slept, cried herself to sleep.
The next morning he was contrite when he saw the dark blue and black bruises ringing both arms. ‘Sorry about that,’ he apologised. ‘I know I was a bit too rough, like, but dad went on and on, and God, she is my mother. I can’t have my wife treating her badly.’
Lizzie didn’t bother with a reply and kept her arms hidden from Violet and the others. They’d have sympathised, but would be unable to lift a finger to help her. Lizzie had heard of women near killed by violent husbands, and within the bosom of the community, where everyone had been aware of it and those in the house adjoining must have heard every blow, every shuddering scream through those paper-thin walls, and yet none had gone to their aid. So, what price sympathy?
When Lizzie told Steve she was expecting, she could have done anything to Flo he was that delighted with her. Later, at Phillip’s first birthday party, Lizzie found out Tressa was pregnant again too, both babies due towards the end of May, but Steve seemed to think no one had ever been pregnant before.
Lizzie was a little annoyed with Mike turning the conversation around to less joyful things, like the Jews who’d marched through London to draw attention to the persecution of their race, which they claimed was happening in Germany.
‘What the hell are we supposed to do about it?’ Steve said. ‘Declare war for a handful of Jews, when we’ve not recovered from the last one?’
‘I don’t know,’ Mike answered. ‘But I don’t like this Hitler. Anyway, I’m getting a wireless, see what is going on in the world.’
‘You can, man, you have the electric in.’
‘You can get one too,’ Arthur said. ‘Even without electric. You get one with a battery and get an accumulator with it for power, like, and get it charged up every so often. They do it at any garage.’
‘I’ll certainly look into it,’ Steve promised. ‘I suppose it’s probably as well to know.’
Lizzie began having pains just a few days before Christmas and her knickers were stained with blood when she went to the lavatory, so she went for Violet.
She was in the bed, warmed by the hot-water bottle, when Doctor Taylor arrived, closely followed by a frantic Steve.
‘She might be miscarrying,’ Doctor Taylor said, ‘and then again it might be a warning that she’s doing too much. Only time will tell. Call me if you’re worried.’
Worried! Steve was beside himself. But he needn’t have fretted quite so much for the neighbours were all willing to give Lizzie a hand with things till she was on her feet again, and the doctor was pleased when he called again. ‘It might be better,’ he told Steve, ‘if sexual activity were to cease for a little while. Best to be on the safe side.’
Steve wanted this child as much as Lizzie, and wanted it, son or daughter, to be born hale and hearty; and yet, ‘God,’ he confided to Stuart, ‘it could be months. I’ll be a raving loony by then.’
‘There’s an alternative,’ Stuart told him. ‘Like I’ve said before. You’re often doing the woman a favour.’
‘Oh I don’t know, I’ve not been with another woman since…well, for months.’
A month later, Steve was burning up with frustration. ‘She won’t know owt about it,’ Stuart encouraged. ‘How could she, and how would it hurt her anyroad?’
‘You’re right,’ Steve decided. ‘She needn’t know a thing about it.’
But Lizzie did know, or at least had reasonable doubt, for the odour of cheap perfume lingering around Steve and the smell of cosmetics on the shirt he’d worn were apparent enough. Later, she had further evidence, for she knew the marks on his neck that she saw when he stripped for his wash had nothing to do with her. However, Lizzie was too ashamed to voice her suspicions and far too nervous of Steve to challenge him about it, and so she drew a veil of secrecy over it all.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Niamh Mary Gillespie was born on 30th May 1934, a day before her cousin Deidre was born to Tressa, and Steve’s delight was sincere and enthusiastic.
He was a wonderful father, who never objected to minding Niamh if Lizzie was busy, even if he’d just come in from work. Flo was shocked one day, seeing him do this while Lizzie was sorting the hot water for his wash, but Steve paid her no heed. ‘I see little enough of her, Ma,’ he said, cradling her in his arms. ‘This is no hardship to me.’
Nothing he did for his daughter seemed a hardship to him, and every fine Sunday afternoon Steve would forego the lunchtime binge with his mates and walk out with his wife and baby, pushing Niamh proudly in the pram he’d bought from Lewis’s when she was just a few days old.
‘When she’s older, we’ll take her to the Lickey Hills,’ Steve would promise as they wheeled the child through Calthorpe or Cannon Hill Park.’ My old man never did much with me or our Neil, and I intend to be a better dad than that to mine.’
How could Lizzie resent the few occasions when she’d known he’d sought satisfaction elsewhere, when under doctor’s orders she’d been unable to have sex before she’d had the child? There had been times she had burned with frustration herself and she’d missed the cuddles they used to have in bed, but Steve said you never knew where that might lead. He was right, but it had been hard, and if she’d found it difficult how much worse must it have been for him? Men couldn’t really do without sex like women could, it was a well-known fact, except for priests of course. She resolved to put those past incidents out of her head and let them both take joy in their child.
Niamh was over three months by mid-September, old enough to make the trip to Ireland, and so, desperate to show her daughter off, Lizzie went to see her mother. Steve didn’t go with them, so he was able to indulge himself with all the street women he wanted as soon as Lizzie’s back was turned.
She was none the wiser for Flo had looked after Steve in her fortnight’s absence, loving the opportunity to once more cook for her son and wash for him. If there’d been telltale smells or marks of make-up on his shirts they were effectively obliterated and nothing was said.
But, on the whole, Lizzie was a contented wife and considered she had a happy marriage. She never argued with Steve, but then he wasn’t an unreasonable man about most things. He loved Lizzie in the only way he was able to love anyone, and he would give her anything she wanted if he could. He was proud of her and liked her to wear nice clothes on their jaunts to the park.
When she smiled, it was for him alone, for Lizzie was his, she belonged to him. Often, when he made love to her she’d cry out with joy, and he lived for those moments. The street girls he dallied with was just sex, as Stuart said, and even if Lizzie was aware of them she needn’t concern herself, f
or they meant nothing to him and had nothing at all to do with his marriage and the vows he’d made.
When Tressa gave birth to Sally in August 1935, when Deidre was only fifteen months and Phillip was four months before his third birthday, Steve said, ‘The Malones must be trying to populate the earth by themselves. I don’t want the body pulled out of you like that,’ he added. ‘I’d not like Niamh to be brought up by herself, but time enough yet.’
Lizzie agreed, but wondered why, with Steve’s voracious sexual appetite, she hadn’t become pregnant immediately Niamh was born. But Steve had told her he would deal with that part of things and not to concern herself.
Lizzie didn’t, and when she had suspicions that Steve was seeking pleasure elsewhere, she told herself that she was imagining things. Was she going to think Steve was straying every time he stepped down the road for a pint? she asked herself. If she was not careful, she’d turn into a nagging, jealous wife and maybe cause arguments between them when there was no need. It was better by far to say nothing at all.
When Niamh’s brother, Thomas Patrick Gillespie, was born on 5th October 1936, Lizzie did wonder what sort of world he’d been born into. She was finding the wireless that Steve had bought not long after Phillip’s first birthday party brought world events right into the living room and so she heard of the Civil War, which had begun in Spain in the summer of that year, when the government was fighting against some group called Fascists that Steve said were no better than the German Nazis.
At home, things were no better. King George V had died in January and his son Edward seemed to take his kingly duties flippantly. Tales about his lavish and extravagant lifestyle abounded, as did his association with an American divorcee, Wallis Simpson.
Then, on the very day of Tom’s birth, two hundred unemployed men set off from Jarrow, to present a petition to the Prime Minister. ‘Too frightened to see them,’ Steve said a couple of days later, when the Prime Minister refused to even speak with the men and they had massed in Hyde Park in disarray. ‘Frightened of anarchy, see. They don’t give a monkey’s for the likes of us. They need overthrowing, the whole damned lot of them.’
There was talk about arrests being made if the men from Jarrow didn’t disperse and go on their way, and that incensed Steve. ‘Arrest innocent men on a peaceful rally,’ he exploded. ‘If they are that keen to arrest someone, it should be that bloke Moseley and his British Fascists’ Party, leading an anti-Jewish march down the Mile End Road in London, inciting trouble.’
Britain everywhere appeared to be in a terrible state, and it seemed the last straw when Edward, asked to choose between Wallis Simpson and the Crown, made a speech from Windsor Castle on the eleventh of December:
’…I have found it impossible…to discharge my duties as King as I would wish to do, without the help and support of the woman I love.’
‘Rat’s deserting the sinking ship,’ Violet remarked to Lizzie when she popped in later and commented on it.
‘Don’t you believe it,’ Violet’s husband Barry said. ‘Oh, he was dashing and handsome and said to be popular, but too friendly with the Krauts for my liking. His brother George will do nicely for me, especially if he can conquer his bloody stammer.’
‘He can’t help his stammer, Barry.’
‘Well, he’ll have to try. God, he can’t lead this country to bloody war and stumble over his words.’
‘You think it will come to that?’
‘Course it’ll come, now that madman Hitler is in total charge of Germany.’
Lizzie shivered, but she knew it would be worse for Violet and Barry, for their son Colin, having left school, had kicked his feet in idleness for eighteen months or so before declaring he didn’t intend to spend his life on the dole and gone off to join the Royal Navy. Violet had tried to dissuade him. ‘But what could I tell him?’ she’d asked plaintively. ‘It wasn’t as if he had some golden future lined up as any sort of alternative. I mean, Barry has tried at his place, but they’re not setting on, not even at the foundry.’
Colin had been in the Navy six months and Violet worried about him and would be frantic if there was a war.
‘Our Carol’s leaving school in the summer,’ Violet went on. ‘God knows what she’ll do, though sometimes it’s easier for girls and women and she has a mate left school last year that has a job at Cadbury’s and she says she’ll have a word. What good it’ll do I don’t know, but then worrying never did much good either.’
But you can’t help worrying with children, Lizzie thought, and keeping them well-clad and well-nourished enough to fight any disease was of paramount importance to both her and Steve. Steve gave her plenty of money for groceries and there was always money for footwear for herself and the children and they all had good warm coats. She hadn’t ever had to visit the pawnshop, like many of her neighbours, and when she lay in bed and waited for Steve, wondering what state he would be in, or picked up the shirts reeking of cheap perfume or stale make-up, she still told herself she had much to be thankful for.
In February 1937, Tressa gave birth to her second son, Sam, and just two months later, the Germans, who sided with the Fascists in Spain under Franco, bombed the Basque town of Guernica. It was Market Day and half past four in the afternoon when the church bells began to peal. The town was filled with its own people, those drawn in by the market and refugees fleeing from other towns, and Guernica was nearly destroyed and many ordinary people killed or injured.
‘Why?’ That was the question asked. They were civilians and Steve knew that under Hitler’s domination no one would be safe. ‘If war comes,’ he said to Lizzie, ‘will you go home to your mom’s?’
‘What? I don’t know. I’d not thought of it.’
‘It’s just with raids like that…’
‘Surely to God we’ll have shelters of some kind?’ Lizzie said. ‘The Spanish people weren’t prepared, there was no provision.’
‘Mike is determined to take Tressa home,’ Steve said. ‘He said as much when we went up a couple of months ago to see the new baby.’
‘I don’t know,’ Lizzie mused. ‘It’s a bit like running away, but then there’s the weans and I couldn’t send a couple of babies away on their own. Oh, don’t let’s talk about it any more. It frightens me.’
In March of the following year, German troops marched into Austria and were welcomed by the government and the two nations were united in the Anschluss. Hitler then turned his attention to Sudetenland, a part of Czechoslovakia where many German people lived. The whole world seemed poised on a knife’s edge.
Lizzie was glad to go to Ireland that year, away from the doom and gloom. She went every year, only missing 1936 because Steve had said she was too near her time to risk it. Catherine, who’d often been quite sharp with her own children, doted on Niamh and little Tom, and they were great favourites too with their aunts and uncles and cousins.
In the main, most of their cousins were older than they were, but put up with their little Brummie relations with tolerant good humour. But their favourite was Johnnie, who loved them like they were his own, he supposed because they were Lizzie’s. The bond between him and Lizzie had never been broken, despite Lizzie being so far away, and every year he longed to see her.
‘No girl on the horizon yet, Johnnie?’ she’d asked him that year.
‘No, the girl I wanted is already married to another.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ Lizzie said. ‘Who is it? Do I know her?’
‘Aye, very well, I would say,’ Johnnie said. ‘For it’s you.’
‘Johnnie!’ Lizzie said with a laugh, giving him a push.
‘It’s right,’ Johnnie protested. ‘When I was wee, I always told myself I’d marry you. It was a while before I realised I couldn’t and you up and went to England. God, if Steve hadn’t been such a fine fellow, I’d have hated him with a passion.’
‘You are a fool.’
‘I know it,’ Johnnie said with a grin. ‘It’s not so bad if you’re aware of i
t.’ But Johnnie was only half-joking, for every girl he was interested in he compared to his sister.
He was glad Steve was good to her, and he obviously was, for she looked well and so did the children, and dressed more than just respectably. Added to that, the children plainly adored their father. Niamh talked of him often and in glowing terms and he’d take a bet that Tom would be the same when he was a wee bit older.
Aunt Margaret was envious of Catherine seeing her daughter every year, for since Lizzie’s marriage Tressa had either been too pregnant to travel or had a baby too small, or else was unable to come so far with little ones. Margaret always came to see Lizzie soon after her arrival to get news of her daughter, things that maybe she wouldn’t tell her in a letter. She was worried by the number of children Tressa had and the small gap between them all. ‘I know it’s wrong to plan your family,’ she said one day. ‘But, God, she must have the life pulled out of her the way she is.’
She did often look drawn, Lizzie thought, but it wouldn’t help to say so. She’d also gone extremely plump and seemed to get bigger with every child. Mike didn’t seem to mind. He said jokingly there was more of her to get hold of and they still did seem to adore each other. But Lizzie wondered if Tressa ever thought back to the figure she once had just a few short years ago and hankered for the young woman who’d turned matronly and looked older than her years.
‘She’s coming over if there’s a war, you know,’ Margaret went on. ‘And you will, I suppose?’
‘Um, I don’t know yet.’
Lizzie didn’t really want to go home, not to live there for months, maybe years. She was a wife and mother now and had ways of doing things and ways of rearing the children that her mother did differently. For two or three weeks a year she could take her children being spoilt and herself treated as a wean with half a brain, but for longer…no thanks.
