Emma Sparrow

by Marie Joseph

  She still, to her surprise, had failed to come to terms with her pregnancy; she told herself that maybe it was because it had been wished on her and not entered into voluntarily. The books she read one after the other made pregnancy out to be a joyful thing, where eyes and hair shone and the mother-to-be went around in a state of bovine contentment.

  Emma waited for this to happen, and when none of it did she sat down and quietly assessed the situation with the same matter-of-factness that was so much a part of her character.

  Nothing in this life was handed to you on a plate. This much she knew and accepted. If she was lonely then it was up to her to do something about it, and when she saw the girl next door getting out of her car and carrying a carton of groceries inside, she called out to her:

  ‘Like to come in for a coffee? It seems silly us not knowing each other. Bring the baby in. We’ve already made friends over the wall; he’s a real smiler, isn’t he?’

  And as soon as Ginny Boland came through the kitchen door, balancing her round fat son on her hip, Emma knew that the courage it had taken to speak first would be rewarded.

  ‘I feel awful.’ Ginny said this with a broad smile. ‘I know I should have come round to see if there was anything I could do, but, well….’ She spread her hands wide. ‘I know I’m probably dropping a brick, but I did talk to… oh, God, I hope I’m not speaking out of turn … I did get to know the other girl I thought was coming to live here. Then when she stopped coming and you turned up, oh, God, what have I said?’

  ‘That was Chloe.’ Emma busied herself with the kettle. ‘My husband had a long-standing relationship with her, then it was off, then he married me. Because I was pregnant,’ she added wickedly.

  Ginny plonked the fat baby down on the floor. ‘Fair do’s. And now you’re dying with boredom? I know because I was the same, but I taught geography and maths till I resembled one of my own contour maps. Couldn’t you have carried on for a few months yet? Or were you modelling swimwear or something? You’ve got the face for it, anyway.’

  Emma bent down and tickled the round cheek of the placid baby who was making no attempt to crawl or even move from his fascinated scrutiny of his own podgy feet. ‘I worked in a clothing factory making buttonholes on a machine, and it wasn’t on the cards for me to carry on because my husband was my boss.’

  ‘You mean punching holes in stuff? All day long?’ Ginny’s face was a study. ‘What were you doing? Turning your back on the system and finding yourself? How fascinating!’

  Emma poured a stream of water into two earthenware mugs. ‘I did it because we needed the money fast and I wasn’t trained for anything. My father was always out of work, then my stepmother died and he went a bit off the rails. He’s in prison now, as a matter of fact.’

  Ginny stirred her coffee thoughtfully. She was a big, carefree, pleasant girl with devoted parents, a mild-mannered husband and a baby who only cried when he was hungry. Even the children she had taught at the private school in Preston were from the same kind of background, taking extra music lessons, horse riding, and ballet as if it were their right. She put the spoon down and stared straight at Emma.

  ‘You’re testing me out, aren’t you? You’re making your life sound like a soap opera just to see if I drink my coffee politely then go, making it clear that I never wish to darken your door again. Right?’

  ‘Something like that.’ Emma nodded, biting her lip. ‘I know it’s a kind of snobbery in reverse, but I thought….’ Her voice tailed away.

  ‘Tell me something.’ Ginny leaned forward, her rather protruding blue eyes alight with genuine interest. ‘How many could you do a day?’

  ‘How many what?’

  ‘Buttonholes. And what is your father in for? Trying to rape you?’ She curled both hands round the coffee mug. ‘It’s like having a bit of that Dallas thing on television right next door, except that you’re a lot prettier than Sue Ellen. I think she’s a drag.’

  ‘What I would really like to do,’ Emma said when the second mug of coffee had been drunk and the baby had fallen asleep on the velvet sofa with a towel underneath his head, ‘is to take some sort of a course.’ She waved a hand at the books piled on the low table. ‘I am floundering and I know it. No, what I would really like to do would be to work for O levels and then As, and maybe to go on to read for a degree. Work I can do at home till the baby is old enough go be left for part of the time.’ Her brown eyes glowed with enthusiasm. ‘I used to dream of doing something like this when I was at work, but after Mam died there was always too much to do at home.’

  ‘Because you have seventeen stepbrothers and stepsisters, and nine of them are mentally retarded,’ Ginny suggested sadly, and as their laughter joined, the baby woke up and, waving his dimpled hands in the air, grew cross-eyed as he absorbed their fascination.

  ‘Roger will know. He lectures in engineering at the technical college, and he’s all for educating the masses. Says it’s our only salvation. I’ll get him to give you all the information you need, and then perhaps when your baby is here we can do swaps two or more days a week, and you can study and I can maybe take a part-time job. Swap the babies, I mean, well, not swap but, oh, you know what I mean!’ Ginny ruffled her short curly hair till it stood out round her head. ‘We are terribly poor, you see. Even with my parents giving us a whacking down-payment on the house the mortgage repayments are crippling.’

  Emma smiled. ‘Would you really like to know just what being poor means, Ginny?’

  Her new friend laughed out loud, reminding Emma for a moment of Ben Bamford. ‘Oh, God, there we go again! Okay, tell me about being really poor then. But nowadays it’s all relevant, truly. You’ll soon find out, or is your husband a bloated capitalist?’

  ‘So much so I’ll be voting Conservative at the next election,’ Emma said straight-faced, then joined in Ginny’s uninhibited laughter.

  Filled with optimism, Emma caught the bus into town then another out to Litchfield Avenue the next day. Simon had told her it would be nine at the earliest before he came home, so she planned to be there when the boys came in from school, and to take over from Mrs Collins for just the one day.

  But when she let herself in with her key it was to find Nellie Collins sitting in a chair reading one of Sharon’s magazines, as much at home as if she were growing there.

  ‘No need for you to do nothing, love.’ She patted her hair which had been so tightly permed that it clung to her scalp like small dry curly worms. ‘I’ve a potato pie on the go, and I’ve taken to eating with them since it saves me running up two gas bills. I’m stopping on tonight anyroad to let Sharon go out with her boyfriend. There’s nothing coming to any harm over the road; that’s what living alone means, you can go back to find that nowt’s changed from when you left it. Would you like a cup of tea?’ The small brown eyes were sly. ‘You’re looking a bit peaky, but then that’s only to be expected, isn’t it?’

  ‘That would be nice. Thank you very much.’

  Emma sat down on the lumpy settee and listened to Mrs Collins making housewifely noises from the kitchen. For all the world like a visitor, she thought, and reminded herself to tell Simon about it. If he had time to listen.

  And in the kitchen Nellie Collins clattered cups on saucers, saying to herself that ‘that was telling that young madam what was what’. Thinking she could just turn up bold as brass and take over. Putting on airs and walking in looking like Lady Muck in her white dress and pale-green cardigan that hadn’t come off no stall down the market if she was any judge. Her stepma would be revolving in her grave if she knew the way things had worked out, with Sharon getting married and not before time, Alan running wild with a bunch of skinheads, and only Joe amounting to anything as far as she could see.

  Nellie Collins’s granite features softened as she thought about Joe and his puppy-like devotion to her. Childless through no fault of her own, she felt her insides melt when the little bullet head butted her with a shamed show of affection. She had known Ma Spa
rrow for a long time, and had often envied her the brood of children, even whilst telling herself that she could have made something from John Sparrow, given the chance. Her barren widowed existence had been depressing her lately, and even her twice-weekly bingo sessions had begun to be more of a chore than a pleasure. What mattered was to be needed, and here, in this house over the road, she was needed, and that young upstart waiting for a cup of tea needn’t think she could just walk in and take over as if nothing had happened. Nellie Collins was at the helm now, and Emma could either like it or lump it. An’ if she thought she was still in charge, then she had another flamin’ think coming, because she would sort her out right, and give her a piece of her mind if needs be.

  ‘I’m going with Sharon to fetch your father out when he’s finished his stretch in three weeks,’ she told Emma, when she had handed over the tea and settled herself down with a cup. ‘Then I’ll still come over of a morning to see to things to help him to settle in. Being in prison knocks the stuffing out of a man. He won’t know which way to turn, left to himself. An’ I’ve got the time. Even without the money I’ve still got the time.’ She half drained the cup of hot tea at one gulp. ‘Time is a terrible thing when there’s too much of it.’

  If Emma had not been preoccupied with her own feelings she could have felt pity for the large sloppy woman sitting opposite her. Mrs Collins had the strong features of a pantomime dame. Her enormous bust gave a top-heavy appearance to her slim legs and surprisingly small feet, and over the years Emma had known her the spade-calling remarks had ceased to be insults.

  ‘My husband and I were going to drive over and pick my father up.’ She stopped suddenly, trying to remember whether she had asked Simon to leave the date free. Knowing that if any entry wasn’t written down weeks ahead in his diary, the odds were that he would be ‘tied up’ as he called it. She jumped as the telephone, on the sideboard for want of a better place, shrilled out.

  ‘Now who can that be?’ Mrs Collins stared at it as if mesmerized, and when Emma picked up the receiver she felt the small eyes boring into her back.

  ‘Emma? It’s Simon. I’m speaking from home. Listen, love. I’ve just thrown a couple of shirts into a bag and I am off to drive down to London. Dad has had a heart attack. He’s in intensive care and they think he’ll be okay, but I have to go. My mother sounded almost out of her mind when she ’phoned.’

  ‘Then I’m coming with you.’ Emma forgot all about Mrs Collins sitting behind her listening to every word. ‘I’ll get a taxi and come right now. It won’t take me a minute to get some things together.’

  ‘No!’ Simon’s voice was firm. ‘For one thing I can’t wait, and for another it isn’t necessary. Things will be chaotic at the office and I will have to take over at once. They’re right in the middle of this proposed closedown, and as dad could never delegate there’s only me to step in.’

  ‘But it’s my place to be with you!’ Emma felt her heartbeats quicken. ‘Simon! I can maybe help your mother. I want to be there.’

  ‘There isn’t time for me to wait.’

  Emma could almost see him glancing at his watch, the overnight case on the floor in the hall by his side.

  ‘If there had been time to catch a plane I would have done that. No, you be a good girl and stay put, then maybe as soon as we know he’s out of danger I’ll send for you.’

  ‘Simon! Don’t shut me out! Please.’ Emma heard her own voice rise on a note of hysteria. ‘Don’t go without me. I know you’re upset, but this is something I have to share with you. I can be with you in twenty minutes if I get a taxi straight away. The whole thing will only delay you for less than an hour. Please wait for me … please.’

  But it was no good. The impatience with which Simon refused to tolerate even the slightest delay when his mind was made up had spilled into his voice, sharpening it with barely controlled anger. When Emma replaced the receiver and sat down again she was trembling with frustrated disappointment.

  ‘You can understand him wanting to rush to his dad’s sickbed. Heart attack, is it? It was a heart attack took my husband off. One minute there and the next minute gone. Just a little cough, then nothing.’ Mrs Collins leaned forward and patted Emma’s knee. ‘An’ getting upset in your condition won’t help matters. Driving all that way could easily bring on a miss, especially at three months.’

  Emma could see her doing little sums in her mind. If she had been Sharon she could have told Mrs Collins to mind her own flamin’ business and stop treating number twelve as if it were her own home. But she wasn’t Sharon. She was herself, and the self she was could only sit there shelled in her own self-made solitude, listening to someone else telling her what to do while making up her own mind. Quietly.

  ‘I will go now.’ She picked up the soft green jacket from the back of the settee and put it round her shoulders. ‘I don’t feel like waiting now.’ She tried not to see the gleam of satisfaction in Mrs Collins’s eyes. ‘Tell Sharon what happened, and … and thank you for looking after them.’

  ‘We only pass this way but once.’ Mrs Collins followed her to the door, showing her out like a visitor, and Emma walked down the long winding avenue to return to an empty house, and the knowledge that even in a moment of acute distress her husband had not felt the need for her.

  Fourteen

  BERNARD MARTIN HAD no intention of dying, not this time, and when, propped up against his pillows, he was declared fit for visitors he told his wife he had decided to take an early retirement.

  ‘What left-over life we have we are going to enjoy,’ he said, holding her hand and smiling into her anxious eyes. ‘I’ve talked it over with Simon and he’s going to leave things as they are down here, mebbe till Christmas. That will give him time to put a man in charge at the northern end, then he will take over here as chairman. So I won’t be hanging on, even part-time like some silly blighters do. It will be a clean break, with somebody else doing the worrying for a change.’

  ‘You mean Simon has agreed to give up his home and move back down here?’ Mary Martin patted his hand gently. ‘I thought he was settled in Lancashire?’

  ‘So he was. So he was. But me flaking out has thrown a spanner in the works, hasn’t it?’

  Emma was upset when Simon told her of his intention of moving south. He had returned haggard and pale, to plunge immediately into the business of the northern factories – dates fixed, appointments made a month in advance – and when she reminded him of Sharon’s wedding he flipped over the pages of his long leather-bound diary and shook his head.

  ‘Can’t be done, love. That’s the day of the shareholders’ meeting in London, and as their new chairman I have to be there. You’ll just have to make my apologies, that’s all.’

  Emma felt herself grow pink. She wasn’t being unreasonable. She could see that Simon’s father’s sudden retirement meant that his son would be over-burdened with responsibilities for a long time to come. And as dull day followed dull day, she played the part he seemed to be expecting her to play. She waited with meals, kept warm now on a hotplate she and bought with the money she had saved from her first month’s housekeeping money. She drank coffee with Ginny from next door; she took her vitamins and swallowed her fruit juice; and only at minutes like this did she admit that the very protectiveness she had craved had become oppressive.

  Like Mrs Collins, now almost permanently ensconced in number twelve Litchfield Avenue, she needed to be needed, and so far as she could make out this self-sufficient man she loved with all her being needed nobody.

  Almost without realizing it she found herself plunged into their first real quarrel.

  ‘If you won’t go to Sharon’s wedding with me, then I won’t go either!’

  ‘I didn’t say I won’t go. I said I can’t. You don’t expect me to send a circular letter round cancelling the meeting because my wife’s stepsister is getting married, do you?’

  ‘You never wanted to go. You are glad of the excuse. Admit it!’ Emma could hear herself
being childish, but it was too late.

  And Simon, because he was tired, and because whenever he closed his eyes figures danced in macabre fashion behind his eyelids, turned to sarcasm as a weapon of defence. ‘Well of course I wanted to go! That is my idea of a good time, going to a wedding that is all for show, when the happy couple haven’t even the price of a table and chairs to set up home together! Then eating a four-course meal at half-past three in the afternoon … oh, yes, I was indeed counting every minute to the day!’

  Mam had once said that on the few occasions when Emma lost her temper it was enough to make a cat laugh. But Emma was losing it now with a vengeance. She had never asked again to be taken down to London on one of Simon’s now weekly visits, telling herself that she had her pride. And yet pride, she was discovering fast, was a very expendable commodity.

  Speaking with a slight tremor in her voice, she said, ‘I am really sorry that things haven’t gone straight forward for you since we got married. Since that afternoon in the flat,’ she amended, wanting to hurt and wound with an intensity that was quite alien to her equable nature. ‘An’ I am truly sorry about your father giving up so readily when it was on the cards that he could have carried on for a while.’ She walked over to a chair and held on to the back to try to stop the trembling of her hands. ‘Maybe it would have been easier for me if I had been brought up to accept that a husband’s job of work takes precedence over everything. Even his marriage. But I am sick of being treated like a housekeeper whose job it is to keep you fuelled so that you can scoot from one factory to another.’ She brushed angry tears from her eyes. ‘An’ while we are on about it, I’ve never mentioned it before, but that day when your father was rushed into hospital – that day you couldn’t wait half an hour for me to come back from Litchfield Avenue – you weren’t in too much of a hurry to collect Chloe’s things together to take down with you, were you?’ Her voice broke on a sob. ‘Did you meet her to hand them over, or am I so much a nothing that I am not supposed to want to be told that either?’