Emma Sparrow

by Marie Joseph

  Emma was glad when he refused to look at her, because that proved she had pricked the bubble of his irritating superiority. And now she could hate him and love him at the same time with a clear conscience.

  Simon spoke directly to his shoes. ‘I took the things round to her, as a matter of fact, because it happened to be no more than ten minutes out of my way on my drive back from the hospital at Highgate.’ He got up to pour himself a drink and Emma did not realize that his studied calm was his own way of latching on to his slipping control.

  ‘Why did you marry me and not Chloe?’ she whispered, her heart pounding.

  ‘You know bloody well why I married you.’

  Still with his back to her, Simon poured his drink, the bottle jittering against the heavy whisky glass, so that the small sound like the whimper of an animal in pain escaped him. When he turned round Emma had gone, running upstairs and slamming the bathroom door with a crash that resounded all through the house.

  Wearily he took the drink back to his chair and sat down. Wearily he justified his own behaviour. What had started it all off, anyway? He drank deeply, shuddered, then drank again.

  Oh, the wedding. That stupid extravagant wedding of two kids who hadn’t begun to know what it was all about. Sharon treated him with a cheeky disdain, and that boy… oh, God, that pimply boy with a face like an anaemic weasel beneath that atrocious crash helmet. Money squandered on a lavish ceremony that nobody could afford. Utter stupidity. Crass ignorance. Working class ignorance....

  He drained his glass and got up to pour another. As if it mattered whether he went or not. Emma had decided not to be a bridesmaid, and he hadn’t been asked to be an usher or anything, so why the fuss? Simon drank the whisky as if it were water, then shook his head as a mist formed before his eyes.

  He wasn’t going to admit it, not even to himself, but the way things were going redundancies would be rife during the coming months. Women just weren’t buying clothes nowadays. Not the quality stuff his father had insisted on, anyway. Jeans and bright tops, that was all the kids wanted; and the elegant women of forty plus who had once been their best customers, well, they were into jeans and tops too. Or too weighted down by inflation and trying to keep up standards to pay the rising, astronomical prices for their clothes.

  Simon got up and poured yet another drink, only half aware of what he was doing.

  Yes, he had to face the fact that his father’s ideas on modern management techniques were completely out of date. He had been appalled to discover the wastage, and irritated at the sentimentality displayed in the retention of workers who should have been, in Simon’s opinion, pensioned off long ago.

  He sipped the drink, his eyes bleak above the rim of the glass, and the whisky flowed like fire through his veins.

  Take old Cummings … sixty-four if he was a day. He was one of Bernard’s old wartime buddies, wounded at Alamein, and therefore, by his employer’s code, immune from the chop. Simon had seen a tremor in the hand wielding the cutter, slicing through material, the cost of which had caused his own hand to tremble as he put it through the costing system. One of these fine days old Cummings would spoil the lot. Probably had done just that many, many times. And yet, because sentimentality was all, had been kept on.

  ‘Sentimentality!’ Simon’s voice slurred the word as he spoke it out loud. ‘Sentimentality is a dirty word, Dad. Hadn’t you even learned that much?’

  The truth was he was scared. Really scared. Bernard Martin had dealt his son a dirty trick in giving up the reins without letting them fall loose for a while. He had merely dropped them and walked away. Simon drained the glass, then closed his eyes in an attempt to stop the room from revolving round him.

  If Bernard Martin could bring himself to listen he would have to be told that only an enormous cutback in personnel could keep the firm solvent. And that would hit hard at a time when the old man was in no fit state to be hit hard. Not for the first time Simon asked himself if maybe, just maybe, his father’s heart attack had been a subconscious way of getting out of his seemingly unsolvable problems?

  Pushing himself up out of the low chair with difficulty, Simon began to weave his unsteady way upstairs.

  Whatever happened, whichever way things went, he would have to keep the aggro away from his father. That much he had promised his mother.

  He would cope. He had to. With so much at stake, he had no choice.

  The bed looked so soft and welcoming, it was as though it was holding out arms to him. Simon pulled his shirt over his head, rolled it up into a ball and hurled it away from him. He had drunk too much and too quickly. He wrenched his mouth out of shape as he tasted again the quarter chicken done in a wine sauce, with mushrooms scattered lavishly like brown pieces of rubber. He saw the florid-faced man he had entertained that evening gloating over the loaded sweets trolley and digging his fork into a chocolate cream gateau. He could even see the splodge of cream lodging at the corner of his slack mouth. The wine, mixed with the whisky, was sour tasting, and suddenly Simon knew he was going to be sick.

  And the bloody bathroom door was locked!

  By the time Emma crept into bed beside him she felt as ill as Simon looked. She had mopped up, heard him groaning as he splashed cold water over his head; she had sponged the worst away and left Simon’s trousers to be taken to the cleaners, and she had held her own nausea tight inside her as, white-faced, she had ministered to the man so sick and sorry for himself that all he wanted to do was to lie curled up before sinking into a sleep that was more of a stupor.

  This was no time to talk things through. No time to relive the way she had sat there on the bathroom stool, cold and shivering with the knowledge that after what he had said nothing could ever be the same between them again.

  The dream she had of them living together happily ever after had fallen apart. He had married her because of the baby and there, sitting in a chair downstairs, he had admitted it. She had opened the door of the bathroom cabinet and seen Chloe’s bottle of sleeping tablets, and God forgive her, but for a moment her hand had stretched out towards them.

  Emma lay on her back with her legs closed, as far away from Simon as she could get without falling out of bed. He was snoring now, and the stench of vomit lingered in the room. He was as unlovely as John Sparrow used to be when he had drunk a drop too much, and yet now it was worse. It was worse because she, Emma, was responsible for his deep unhappiness. She had trapped him, and she had been foolish enough to think that by reading textbooks and taking exams she could somehow turn herself into the kind of woman he wanted. She had imagined herself discussing the business with him, listening and understanding, as she was sure Chloe had listened and understood.

  Emma felt a slight tremor inside her, no more than the brushing of a butterfly’s wing. Yet even as she laid her hand over her stomach, it had gone.

  There was nothing she could do about the baby now except go on and have it. So she would have to grow fatter and walk about splay-footed till the time came.

  Then? Then what?

  Simon stirred and threw an arm across her, and it lay like a weight, uncomfortable and heavy. Emma lifted it from her and turned on her side.

  And went to sleep as lonely as if the man by her side did not exist; as bereft as if already he had gone far from her, never to return.

  *

  She went to see her father the day after he came home from prison, and seeing him crouched over the electric fire, in spite of the warmth of the day, it was as if he had never been away.

  Mrs Collins was there, bustling about, full of importance, making tea, telling him to stop where he was, that she would see to things, pandering to the ineffectual man as if she realized that this was exactly what he wanted.

  ‘How are you feeling, Dad?’ Emma wanted to put her arms round him, to have him tell her in detail just how he was, and how it had been. But with Mrs Collins there it was impossible.

  ‘What he needs is some good food down him.’ Nellie Collins, with
her hair like a steel-wool nimbus round her head, now that the perm was mercifully growing out, sat down heavily on the settee, and folded her arms. ‘He’s not fit for nothing, and won’t be for a while yet.’

  ‘Did the prison welfare people talk to you, Dad?’ Emma leaned forward, trying to ignore the squat watching figure in the bulging nylon blouse and crimplene skirt.

  ‘They don’t bother overmuch with short-term inmates.’ John Sparrow lit a cigarette from the stub of the last. ‘I’m not rushing into anything.’ He coughed and beat his chest with a clenched fist. ‘Anyroad, I’ll never be able to do long-distance trucking no more. These last months have taken years off me life. You could be dying on your feet for all them bastards care.’

  ‘But the money?’ Emma tried to persist, conscious all the time of the sharp dark eyes watching her. ‘Will you be able to sign on straight away? How will you manage?’

  When her father exchanged a glance with Mrs Collins, Emma knew they had been discussing her. He sniffed and flicked the ash into the tiled hearth.

  ‘Well, it won’t be the same with you and our Sharon gone, will it?’ he coughed feebly. ‘I never thought when I went away it would be to come back to both my daughters gone off on their own bats. But we’ll just have to manage somehow.’

  ‘But how?’ Emma heard her voice rise. ‘Look, Dad, when I was at home I managed the bills and the food shopping, and I knew just how much there was left over. An’ that was when you were working. Dad! It’s not just an idle question. I want to help, and how can I help if you won’t talk to me? Are you going to apply for Social Security, or what?’

  Mrs Collins did not move an inch. She just sat there with her knees slightly apart showing pink Directoire knickers, but it was as if she had shot out an elbow and nudged John Sparrow into saying what she had primed him to say.

  He took a deep drag of the dwindling cigarette. ‘Well, I won’t be asking you for nothing, that’s for sure. Nor our Sharon.’ His glance flickered sideways. ‘Mrs Collins has been a good friend to me while I’ve been away. Like a mother to Alan and Joe, an’ we had a long talk last night, me an’ her.’

  He glared at the telephone on the sideboard.

  ‘She was here when you rang up as a matter of fact, so I wasn’t on me own.’

  ‘I couldn’t come last night,’ Emma said gently. ‘Simon was bringing two men in for a meal, and I couldn’t let him down, not when it was the first time he’d done that.’

  ‘No, but you could let me down,’ her father said clearly as Mrs Collins nodded. ‘An’ our Sharon just had to go out, so between you I knew where I stood.’

  ‘Aye, he did that.’ Mrs Collins’s short neck almost disappeared into the collar of her shirt blouse.

  ‘So we’ve come to an arrangement.’ John Sparrow coughed again, but not too forcibly. ‘Mrs Collins will give her house up and move over here. That way she will save the rent and all the lighting and heating.’

  ‘And the overheads,’ said Mrs Collins with authority.

  ‘As my housekeeper.’ Emma’s father dared her to say another word. ‘She’ll stop where she is till our Sharon gets married, then she can have her room.’

  ‘An’ bring me bits and pieces over, so some of this stuff can go to the sales room.’

  Emma felt the cobweb-fine thread of hope that somehow, sometime, after the baby came and her part in the fiasco of her marriage had been played, she would go back to Litchfield Avenue, snap. If Simon did not need her, then for as long as he lived her father would be her responsibility. And the boys. She could never go back to work at Delta Dresses; that would be out of the question, but there would be a job for her somewhere. She tilted her chin to stop its trembling, and stared out of the window.

  You had to laugh, the way things turned out. For all those years, when a hand with the shopping or an eye on the boys would have meant so much, Mrs Collins had been merely a flounced nylon net curtain twitching in the window opposite; a grumbling voice when Ricky’s motorbike revved up outside, and a long nose quivering with distaste whenever the police called.

  And now she was going to sleep in Emma’s bed. Or was she? Emma looked at the unlikely pair sitting there. Her father, small and shriven, with his prison pallor accentuating the deep lines from nose to mouth, and Mrs Collins, chins, breasts and stomach hanging in pendulous folds.

  Surely? Surely not?

  ‘I’d best be getting back,’ she said as she had said before, and stood up. ‘If there is anything you want me to do about the wedding, let me know.’ She nodded towards the telephone. ‘You know where I am.’

  ‘Oh, aye, we know where you are.’ John Sparrow nodded, and in that moment Emma glimpsed the hurt bewilderment in his eyes. And if Mrs Collins had not been there she would have gone and knelt on the rug and laid her head on her father’s knees. Like when she was a child and he had towelled her hair dry for her in front of the fire.

  ‘Dad,’ she whispered. ‘Dad. I’m sorry.’

  But the words were in her head, and even as she turned to go he was lighting yet another cigarette, and Mrs Collins was patting his knee and telling him she was going through to put the kettle on.

  ‘She’s like a huge overfed rabbit,’ Emma told Simon that evening. ‘All twitching possessiveness, and my dad is loving every minute of it.’ She put her library book down and rubbed her eyes. ‘He could never have coped on his own, that much is certain, and in a strange way she is so much like Mam. Aggressive when there is no need to be aggressive. You know?’

  ‘Let’s drink to Mrs Collins then.’ Simon pushed the papers he was working on aside, and went over to the sideboard. ‘I’m forgiven about the wedding, am I, love?’

  He was so dear to her, so vulnerable in his white shirt now that the striped tie had been wrenched off, that Emma felt her eyes fill with the moist sparkle of tears as she watched him. His dark hair was badly in need of a trim and was growing down the nape of his neck into an endearing straggly point. If he would have let her she would have taken his worry to herself, absolved him of all anxiety, and rocked him in her arms like a child.

  ‘I wish there was something I could do to help.’ She spoke softly, but he heard her and turned round with the glass in his hand.

  ‘Perhaps you can.’ He came to sit beside her on the sofa. ‘In the next few weeks I have to send a quarter of the workforce packing, and I can’t. This town is sick, Emma, and further unemployment only adds to the downward spiral. Life wasn’t meant to be drab, Emma. We are having to scrap all plans for the Christmas dinner and dance because we just can’t afford it. And I am the chap who is continually having to say no. No, no and no!’ He reached for her hand. ‘What is happening to us, love?’

  Emma shook her head. ‘You don’t know Lancashire folks, Simon. It’s always been like this. In a different way, of course. My grandma used to tell me that her mother ran to the mill at five to six as the hooter blew, then the gates were closed, and as they began their work the trams stopped running and for one hour the streets were as still and deserted as if it were midnight. If they went too often to what was called the “necessary” they were fined threepence, and if they hung anything on the gas pendants it was another twopence. They were slaves, Simon. And during the Depression they were hungry, not like now when the state takes over to keep them fed. An’ in the twenties the weavers used to come out of the factory gates, arm in arm, and singing at the tops of their voices.’

  ‘Like an old Gracie Fields film?’

  ‘Just like that.’ Emma snuggled closer and laid her head down on his shoulder. ‘They’ll bounce back. It’s something inside them that makes them survive. Mam used to say there are bystanders and standbyers, and Lancashire folks are the latter. If one member of a family is without a job, then the rest rally round. You are dealing with tough nuts, Simon, not wets.’

  They were silent for a moment, then he said, ‘And I am going to take you away from all that. Your heart and your roots are here.’ He tweaked the ribbon holding her hair back
and pulled it free. ‘You are as Lancashire as a red rose, little Emma, and I am taking you away. You must hate me, and yet you’ve never said a word.’

  She jerked up and laughed into his eyes. ‘Come on, now. What about the last war, and the Londoners? This part of the country isn’t the only part with guts. I thought your father started on a stall on Petticoat Lane? He didn’t get to where he did by talking posh and sitting on his backside.’

  She bit her lip. ‘But none of that helps, does it? Nothing I can say is going to make these next few months easy for you.’

  Taking her by surprise, he pulled her close, holding her to him as if he could never let her go. ‘But you have helped, love. You have said exactly what I wanted to hear. And now I must finish this report. Redundancy might pay its own way in the long run, but it digs deep into the revenue. And you must go up to bed. You’ve been looking pale lately, and you are carrying a precious cargo. Never forget that.’

  The strength of his arms and the almost desperate way he had strained her to him had filled Emma with the longing ache of desire. Wanting him so much that she felt the heat rise in her body, she began to kiss his face, to nibble at his ears and to kiss the corners of his mouth with teasing slowness.

  ‘I love you,’ she whispered. ‘I love you so very much.’

  ‘You keep on doing just that.’ He reached across her for his spectacles and a large manilla envelope on the side table.

  Once again he had shut her out as completely as if he had slammed a door in her face, and although Emma knew she was being irrational, his rejection shocked her.

  ‘I’ll go upstairs.’ She picked up her book and walked towards the door. And when she turned round, he was reading a closely-typed sheet, as oblivious of her as if she had never existed.