Emma Sparrow

by Marie Joseph

  ‘Now is the time to make a start. Roger says he will come in and have a talk to you. He’s really keen. It takes one compulsive student to recognize another. Thank God I never had any academic tendencies. Shitty nappies fulfil my leanings. I could sometimes lick my baby all over.’ She clapped a hand to her mouth. ‘Oh, God! I always say the wrong thing.’

  ‘You are the nicest friend I have ever had.’

  Ginny whipped round at Emma’s words, pity welling up in her and spilling out into her expression. For a moment they stood and stared at each other, with the width of the kitchen floor between them.

  Why, Ginny was wondering, why can’t two women put their arms round each other and just hug the pain away without being thought abnormal? Why couldn’t she take that small girl into her arms and pat her sorrow away? Why was she so conditioned that the very thought was taboo?

  ‘What you need is a mother,’ was all she could manage to say, and as she ran back to her own house through the gap in the privet hedge she was swearing at herself for once again putting her big foot into it.

  ‘Oh, Mum,’ she said, as her mother looked up from stirring something at the cooker. Then she scooped up her baby from the floor and buried her flushed face in the downy softness of his fluff of hair. ‘Oh, Mum.’

  * * *

  When Emma went up to the bedroom the first thing she did was to take the slip of paper with her own mother’s address on it from the drawer in the dressing-table.

  She smoothed it out and read the neat writing over again so that the words were imprinted on her mind. But the words she was hearing in her head were the words Ginny had tactlessly thrown out as she left the house: ‘What you need is a mother.’

  The ache that was in Emma’s chest dissolved as the tears filled her eyes. She walked over to the bed and sat down on the green spread, hunched over like an invalid with her hands hanging loose between her knees.

  You could not mourn a mother you had never known. Okay, she accepted that. A child identified with the woman who brought her up. Right? And that woman had been Mam. So far so good. Emma drew her eyebrows together, then rubbed the place with her finger as an ache like a thousand hammers beat rhythmically.

  Her mother was an unknown quantity. Emma knew nothing at all about her, because every time she had asked, out of what was surely a normal curiosity, John Sparrow had clammed up tight.

  ‘When was my mother’s birthday? I mean, what month was she born in?’

  ‘Why do you want to know?’

  She did not know why, but somehow it mattered. Like wanting to know the colour of her mother’ eyes, or whether she had a sense of humour. Whether she read a lot, or whether she was musical. Whether she had wanted her baby and, most important of all, why she had walked away?

  It was the sense of rejection her daughter could not come to terms with, even though she knew there must have been two sides to the argument, because anyone knew that there were always two sides. Mam must have come on the scene before Emma’s own mother went off. She must have. And yet how did a man like John Sparrow have two women at one and the same time?

  The questions were now part of the hammering in Emma’s head, as she saw in her memory Mrs Collins sitting on the settee, as close to her father as if they were actually touching.

  And what of him? Was John Sparrow a lady’s man? That small, shrivelled, coughing man – did he possess some magnetism that enslaved women? Sexually? Was it his infidelity that had driven her mother away? And why had she not taken Emma with her?

  ‘Your mother has married and has children of her own.’ John Sparrow had shouted that in angry frustration when Emma had rebelled against Mam’s strict discipline, and cried for her own mother.

  ‘But I was her baby first!’ Emma had yelled back.

  And now because of her deep unhappiness, because of Simon’s attitude of uncaring solicitude, she wanted her mother so desperately that her whole body ached with the wanting. She wanted loving arms around her; she wanted a comforting shoulder to cry on; she wanted to sob and wail her sadness away.

  She wanted her mother.

  Getting up from the bed and walking over to the long cupboard, she took out a short jacket and slipped a silk square from the rail on the door.

  The house was closing in on her. She felt ill, but not too ill to get out. She was still losing blood from the miscarriage, and even as she stood there she felt a warm trickle between her legs.

  It would be better outside. There would be the cold clear Lancashire air on her face, and more than that, she would be away from the house so filled with Chloe’s choice of furniture, Chloe’s choice of curtains. Green, always green. The colour of jealousy.

  Taking her leather shoulder-bag from the hall table, Emma went out and shut the door with a final-sounding click behind her.

  Then, shivering a little, she tied the scarf round her head and began to walk away in the direction of the bus stop.

  In the glass-fronted office of Delta Dresses, Simon Martin glanced at his watch and reached for the telephone. There was just time before the meeting with the shop steward to ring Emma. He nodded as Mrs Kelly switched off her electric typewriter, gathered her handbag and a magazine together and, right to the minute, went out of the office en route for the canteen and her morning coffee.

  Harry Gordon was out in the yard talking to the van drivers. If Simon turned and looked down through the high window he could see him standing there, a squat black beetle silhouette, writing busily on a clipboard.

  He had been right about Harry. He had the common touch, human relations they called it, and the men, although they laughed at him, respected him and knew he always knew what he was talking about. Simon dialled. Yes, Harry Gordon would keep the flag flying over Delta Dresses, and once the mail order side was tidied up Simon could really begin to think in terms of moving back down south. His parents, before leaving for their cruise, had hinted that their house might be too big for them and declared their intention of looking round for a smaller place. A bungalow maybe to ease the strain on Bernard Martin’s tired heart.

  That meant that Simon could move into their house with Emma. That meant there would be no trauma of searching for the right place, with hours off to drive Emma round, because since the accident she had cancelled her driving lessons and showed no signs of ever wanting to take the wheel again.

  Simon listened to the ringing tone, scribbling a list of figures with his free hand.

  ‘Come on. Come on, love.’ His voice was sharp with impatience which changed to anxiety as there was no reply.

  As he faced the shop steward across his desk he forced himself to moderate his growing irritation. Where the devil was she? He had left her that morning looking so pale and diminished that his instinct had been to turn back and take her in his arms.

  Women sometimes got queer notions in their heads when they lost a baby. He must have read or heard that somewhere. But it had not been a full-term baby. It had not been much bigger that the one Chloe had deliberately ‘gotten rid of’ – to use her own phraseology.

  He stared into the red face of the protesting man jabbing with a pencil at a sheaf of papers, and tried to smooth his own expression into one of co-operation. A strike was all they needed at this time: an all-out strike would finish Delta Dresses, and the stupid, bigoted sod couldn’t realize that. Simon nodded, agreed and went into what Chloe would have called his charm routine.

  ‘I am sure that between us we can work out a compromise.’ His voice was smooth and his manner filled with reassurance, but all the time his mind was telling him that whilst Chloe had apparently shrugged off losing a baby, Emma could not.

  Chloe was Chloe, and Emma was Emma.

  ‘You were saying?’ He raised an inquiring eyebrow at the calmer face of the man facing him acoss the cluttered desk.

  ‘I was saying my members won’t stand for it,’ the man said, pushing his already jutting chin forward to challenge Simon. Eyeball to eyeball.

  When Simon went
into the house that evening it was just like the last time, with empty rooms and everything neat and clean, like a house built specially for the Ideal Homes exhibition. He called upstairs, then getting no reply went into the kitchen and stood there, still holding his brief-case, a tall, bewildered man with shoulders already beginning to stoop a little from the weight of too much responsibility.

  It was strange, but he had never really felt at home in this house. It was as if Chloe had left too much of herself in every corner, while Emma had left no imprint at all.

  It was cold too, now that the harsh bleak winter was coming. Lonely, cold and about as cosy as an army barracks. He went into the living-room and threw the brief-case on to the velvet sofa.

  Was this how it was for Emma when he was away or out all day? Simon walked over to the sideboard and reached for the decanter. She had never said. Not once had she ever complained of being lonely, not even that time she had flared up at him, and he had drunk too much and been sick upstairs.

  There was a sad soft sighing in the trees outside, and the darkness was already inky black. Simon put his glass down untouched and ran upstairs, taking them two at a time. Where the devil was she?

  Chloe, he decided, must have been thinking of the warmth of the sun back in the States when she had chosen the colour scheme for this bedroom. This cool sharp green needed blue skies outside, not an infrequent sun which, because of the northern outlook, did no more that touch the outer wall first thing in the mornings.

  Emma, he felt sure, would have chosen pink, or a soft pale yellow. He knew that instinctively, and yet he had brought her here and expected her to like it; expected her to be overwhelmed by the contrast with the house she had left in Litchfield Avenue. Expected her to be grateful.

  Oh, God, what an unfeeling, patronizing, insensitive dope he had been!

  He turned to go back downstairs and as he turned saw the slip of paper on the dressing-table.

  The name and address meant nothing to him. Birmingham? He frowned. He had stayed overnight in Birmingham once or twice on business, stopping at a hotel in the centre, all black plastic, vivid carpets and ultra-modern light fittings. He tried to think…. As far as he remembered, Emma had never mentioned knowing anyone there. Picking up the piece of paper he held it in his hand, trying to reason why it was there in the first place. With any significance? With intent?

  Outside the wind sighed and rain lashed the window. He left the room to walk slowly downstairs, to stand for a while staring at the telephone on the hall table.

  He was uneasy without knowing why he should be so uneasy. The last thing he wanted to do was to ring Litchfield Avenue and have that woman with the biting tongue answer the phone, but he had to know. There was no way he could decide what to do, not without finding out first if Emma was there. Not without knowing she was safe.

  He braced himself for the sound of Mrs Collins’s strident voice. He had only spoken on the telephone to her once before, but she had yelled at the top of her voice as if she thought she was speaking to someone in Outer Mongolia.

  ‘Hello? Yes? Who is it?’

  John Sparrow answered the telephone only when he was forced to. To him a ringing telephone spelled bad news, or at least something unpleasant. He shifted the cigarette from one side of his mouth to the other, narrowing his eyes against the upcurling smoke.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘It’s Simon Martin. Simon.’ He wished he hadn’t rung now. If Emma had been there she was sure to have answered the telephone herself. Simon drummed with impatient fingers on the polished half-moon table. ‘I was wondering. Is Emma there?’

  John Sparrow’s hacking cough exploded in Simon’s ear like nails rattling in a tin can. ‘No, she’s not here. She’ll be at home likely as not on a night like this. It’s pissing down.’

  ‘I am ringing from home.’ Simon bit his lips hard. ‘Thanks, anyway. She’s probably next door. Thanks a lot.’

  ‘Mrs Collins has gone to bingo.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Simon glanced down at the slip of paper, frowning. ‘How is she?’

  ‘Fair to middling. Our Joe’s off school with a cold.’

  ‘Do you know anyone …?’ Simon had made his mind up. ‘Do you know anyone called….’ He read the name and address from the paper, waited, then held the receiver away from his ear and sighed. They had been cut off, or the phone was out of order. Damn, that was all he needed.

  ‘Say that again.’ John Sparrow’s hoarse croak of a voice crackled into life again. ‘What did you say?’

  Slowly, pronouncing every syllable, Simon read the name and address again. ‘I’ve just come across it and, well, I wondered if it meant anything to you?’

  He seemed to wait an interminable time for his father-in-law to stop coughing, then his reply caused Simon’s eyes to narrow and his heartbeats to quicken.

  ‘Mean anything to me, did you say? Oh, aye, well, it doesn’t mean nothing to me, but I know who it is all right.’

  ‘Then who is it? Simon tried to curb his irritation. ‘Is it somebody you know?’

  ‘It’s only Emma’s bloody mother, isn’t it?’ John Sparrow began to cough, and was still coughing when Simon slowly replaced the receiver.

  Seventeen

  GETTING THERE HAD been almost too much. Emma had waited at bus stops, walked in the rain with head bent and finally, when she reached her destination, wondered why she had come.

  There had been a need to talk; she had known that much. A powerful ache somewhere deep inside her, and a desperate urge to get out of the house. But when Patty Bamford opened the door to her she knew she had been right to come.

  Here was sincerity. Here was caring, and here was a girl who because of her own deep unhappiness understood.

  Patty, in the short time since her hospital visit, had come to terms. She would be coming to terms perhaps for the rest of her life, making the best and accepting the inevitable. Her face was as rouged as if she were made up for the stage, blue eyes ringed with black, and cheeks shaded into hollows with a blusher of a strange coppery tinge. She had just been on the point of going out to see about a full-time job as a cleaner-cum-usherette at one of the town’s smaller cinemas, but as she stared in surprise at Emma’s face she recognized heartbreak, and acted accordingly.

  ‘Come on in, love. I’ll put the kettle on. Our Ben’s shaping up grand. He’ll be out in a couple of weeks on crutches for a bit, but knowing him he’ll be shut of them before long. He’s the life and soul of the ward he’s in, and every time I go he asks about you. I reckon he’ll always fancy you, but knowing Ben he’ll never say.’

  Emma glanced round the room and, coming straight from her own comfortable house, was struck afresh with its shabby neglect. All Tracy’s things had disappeared, the broken pushcart she had used to get around with, the dummy rolled to a corner of the room, the little cardigan draped over the back of a chair.

  ‘I wish I could think of something to say,’ she said, sitting down gratefully and leaning her head back against the greasy upholstery of the small upright settee. ‘That time in the hospital. I never got a chance to say much, I seem to have been so full of my own problems; yet when I think what you have faced, mine are nothing.’

  ‘You mean us both losing our babies?’ Patty was like Ginny Boland. No beating about the bush. And though their backgrounds were completely different Emma realized how very alike they were. It was she, Emma, who was mixed up.

  She shook her head from side to side as if trying to compose her thinking into some kind of normality. ‘No, Patty. You are quite wrong. I told you when you came in to see me at the hospital: you can’t possibly compare what has happened to me and what happened to you.’

  ‘I’ll make us a cup of tea; you look awful,’ Patty said, just as Ginny had said. ‘You shouldn’t be out if you ask me. It’s the shock coming out. Shock can do funny things.’

  Emma watched her light the gas and bend down, putting her plucked eyebrows into jeopardy as she lit a cigarette before putting th
e kettle over the flame. She shivered and wondered why she had come out on an afternoon like this wearing only a short jacket. She considered quite calmly the possibility that she might be going mad. Making a determined effort to pull herself together, she spoke quietly.

  ‘No, Patty. What you lost was a child. What I lost was a hardly-accepted idea of a child. There’s a big difference.’

  Patty smiled. ‘Ben always said you talked lovely, and you do.’ She put the milk bottle on the table beside two cups. ‘I expect it is because you were clever at school. I know I wasn’t. My teachers all gave me up, but then I was hardly ever there, and when I was I didn’t listen. I was just waiting for the day when I could leave.’

  She was deliberately biding her time. As far as she could make out, Emma Sparrow, or whatever her name was now, was on the verge of cracking up. She had turned up here, for what reason Patty hadn’t fathomed yet, but she guessed it was because there was simply nowhere else for her to go. If she had Emma ’s gift for putting her thoughts into words she would say that the anguished girl sitting so still was like a lost soul. Patty screwed up her face with the effort of her thinking. Maybe biding time wasn’t what was needed in this case. Just maybe a straight out-with-it talk was called for. She half turned away, telling herself she was proper flummoxed.

  Emma needed to open her heart, that much was certain. Not necessarily to a close friend, so Patty Bamford might be just the job. The kettle came to the boil and Patty poured the boiling water into a brown teapot. Now, if she was clever, she would know what to say. Her eyebrows drew together in a deep frown. She remembered the time she had run out in the night with her lip cut and bruised after a bashing. She had run out in her nightie and met a policeman down the street, and had told him her whole life story. And he had said bloody nowt; just walked her home and said nowt.

  But his hand on her arm had been caring and she had felt a lot better.

  ‘Here y’are, love.’ She passed a cup of tea over to Emma. ‘I hope you don’t want a biscuit ’cos I haven’t got none.’