Reg spun his spoon between finger and thumb, waiting impatiently for the custard to tumble and his afters to be served. ‘Let’s hope she’s got a bit more to say for herself there than she has here, or they won’t put up with her!’
‘Leave it, Reg…’
‘Christ, can’t a man express his opinion at his own dinner table under his own roof? Is this how we have to live now? Treading on bleeding eggshells when she’s in earshot? Dinner times used to be fun, d’you remember that? Laughing and chatting. I can’t live like this, I really can’t!’
‘For God’s sake, Reg!’
‘Don’t shout at me, Joan, this ain’t my fault, the fact that you lost your job an’ we’ve been put through the mill. It’s cos she wouldn’t listen, we told her it would end in disaster, but she didn’t bloody listen! It ain’t my fault!’
Joan threw the apple pie spoon down on the table and a large gob of custard splattered against the cotton cloth. She placed her hand against her forehead and rubbed at her temples.
‘What? I’m only saying the truth. It ain’t my bloody fault she’s come back a bit soft in the bleeding head, is it?’
Dee started to cry. She didn’t like hearing her mum and dad shouting at each other like this, it made her tummy feel scared. Dot scraped the chair away from the table and shut the door behind her; she didn’t fancy apple pie after all. She climbed the stairs, taking care not to tread on the steps that creaked; she wanted to be silent, she wanted to be invisible, she wanted to disappear.
As Dot lay down on her bed, names of girls she knew from school and from work flashed through her mind, girls who had slept with loads of blokes and not been caught out. An image of Susan Montgomery popped into her head: ‘Tits and India, here I come!’ It was so unfair. Those girls still attended communion, dressed demurely and got away with it, living however they chose and with their reputations intact. She, on the other hand, even though she’d only slept with the one man, a man she had loved, the man she was going to marry, was forced to carry a label and was open to ridicule because she had got unlucky. It was so bloody unfair. For the first time in a long time, Dot prayed, though not to a benevolent God – she’d stopped trusting in him a while ago; this was more like popping a note into a glass bottle and casting on the ocean to see if she got a reply.
She closed her eyes. ‘Please, give me a way out of here. I’ll go mad if I have to stay under this roof. I will, I’ll go bloody mad.’
A couple of days later, Dot ventured out. She jumped on her old bus and rode the familiar route to the West End, then wandered along the streets with her hands deep in her pockets, watching shoeless assistants in shop windows prepare their Christmas displays. They positioned fat-bellied Santas and sacks of foil-wrapped gifts, placed fake icicles on invisible wires and sprinkled the whole space with silver and blue glitter. She had never felt less like celebrating Christmas in her whole life. She wished she could go to sleep and wake up in January – or May might be better.
She found herself outside Selfridges and pushed through the revolving door that had made her and Sol giggle back at the beginning of the year. The counters were decorated with silver tinsel and tiny bells, miniature Christmas trees with minute glass baubles. The whole store looked beautiful and smelt of baked apples. Dot meandered among the counters, spritzing Chanel on her scarf, admiring Dents leather gloves in the palest blue and fondling French lace handkerchiefs that were far too good to use.
She took the escalator and without thinking about it found herself in the nursery department. She studied the sturdy prams and matching carry-cots filled with hand-knitted blankets and soft toys. Changing mats with matching nappy buckets were set among stacks of terry-towelling nappies. Nursing bras for mothers with natty little flaps that folded down for feeding, rocking chairs with strategically placed cushions ‘for comfortable nursing’ – they had it all. Dot stood next to a display of matinée coats, hats and matching booties, all with delicate white ribbon trim, tied in tiny bows. She was surrounded by pregnant women whose anxious husbands hovered, and women with well-wrapped newborns in strollers, seeking dummies, feeding bottles and sterilising units.
‘Can I help you at all, madam?’ The young girl smiled.
Dot did a double-take to check she was talking to her. ‘Oh, just looking thanks.’
‘Well, if you need any assistance, I shall be over by the counter.’
Dot smiled; she had been similarly trained on how to approach not encroach, assist but not push. The girl had got it spot on.
‘My little boy’s at home…’ She didn’t know why she said it, it just popped out.
‘Aaah, lovely. How old?’
‘He’s nearly six weeks now.’ Six weeks that had passed so quickly.
‘Well, you look very well on it! Is he a good sleeper?’
‘Is he a good sleeper?’ Dot repeated the question as her tears fell. She stared at the young girl, who looked aghast, highly embarrassed by the display. She had been told to expect ‘high emotion’ from some young or expectant mothers, but this was off the scale.
Dot sobbed. ‘I don’t know, I really don’t know. He’s called Simon now.’
‘Can I call someone for you?’ The girl held Dot’s arm, she was sweet, sincere.
Dot thought about the one person who might have been able to make things better, the one person who had caused the whole sorry mess to start with and she cried even harder.
‘No, no, but thank you.’
With her head bent, she took the escalator and ventured out into the cold.
Christmas Eve had always been her favourite night of the year. Ever since she was little, she had felt the magic in the air. Lying in her bed, with her eyes screwed shut and her feet tucked up inside her nightie, she was always convinced she could hear the jingle of the bells on Santa’s sleigh and the pitter-patter of hooves on the roof as the reindeers parked up. She never failed to leave a raw carrot for Rudolph and a glass of milk and two biscuits for Father Christmas. In recent years she had laughed as her dad insisted that Santa preferred a glass of stout to a glass of milk. She and Dee weren’t so sure. This year, she sat in her room dreading Christmas Day, the first of many that she would mark without her son.
She ran her fingers over the inside of her shell. ‘I wonder how you do Christmas in the sun? Do you still have pictures of snow everywhere and icicles like we do? Do you have the same fat Father Christmas? I can’t imagine it; I don’t think it’d feel Christmassy if it was warm. I should’ve asked you, there’s lots of things that I wished I’d asked you. I don’t know much about your family, what it was like for you growing up in St Lucia. And there are things I never told you; did you know I’m allergic to strong cheese? It makes my throat go itchy! Our little boy’ll be getting on, eh? I expect he’ll be spoilt rotten tomorrow, his first Christmas. It’s been bloody freezing here. You wouldn’t be able to stand it – I remember you didn’t cope too well in March, let alone now we’ve got a bit of snow. But it’s the wind that gets you, goes right through you, blows your cobwebs out, and I know you weren’t too fond of that. I’ll think about you tomorrow, but then I think about you every day so that’s no shocker. I wonder if you’ll think about me?’
Dot was woken by her little sister’s squeals. ‘He’s been! He’s been!’
Plodding down the stairs, she took the seat next to the hearth and wrapped her dressing gown around her legs. The fire roared but only seemed to heat the space directly in front of it, as if the wind whipped the warmth up the chimney and blew it at the birds perched in a long line along the roof. Dot rubbed her thighs with her palms; she felt cold.
Dee tore the wrapping from her Bunty Annual, revealing a suspiciously toasty-looking Bunty on the front who was ice skating yet wearing nothing more than a mini Santa dress to cover her modesty.
‘Yeeeees!’ Dee jumped up and down in her nightie, delighted with her pressie. Next came a Barbie in an air hostess outfit. The little girl was beside herself with joy.
&n
bsp; Dot reluctantly, awkwardly, received her gift of tights and a jar of bath salts. She felt like a guest that had turned up at the last minute and whom the family felt obliged to ask to stay for dinner, even though they didn’t have enough veg.
That night, as snow fell on the cobbles of Ropemakers Fields, Dot held her shell in her arms and rocked it almost as if it was a baby. ‘I’ve been thinking about whether it would have been better never to have met you, better never to have known that another kind of life existed. Then I wouldn’t know what I was missing, but that would be all right, cos I wouldn’t know! But then I think about not having Simon and even though my heart is ripped in two, proper ripped in two, I wouldn’t have missed those weeks when I fed him and held him and he slept on me. I wouldn’t have missed that for the whole world. Night night, Happy Christmas.’
A few days after Christmas, Dot once again donned her coat and slipped out of the front door unnoticed, in need of some air and a change of scenery. She hadn’t really planned where she would wander but soon found herself outside Paolo’s. It had been months since she last set foot inside. See you tomorrow, soldier boy. Exhausted, but happy! Your Clover xxxxx
She pushed the door with her shoulder, uncertain as to whether reopening this wound was a good idea or not. The place was warm as usual, but strangely darker, grubbier and smaller than it had been on previous visits, as if in the cold light of day and without Sol’s love to polish her world, it had lost its fairy-tale sheen.
‘Here she is! Merry Christmas!’
‘Merry Christmas.’
‘Blimey, girl, I thought you’d fallen in the docks! Long time no see.’
Dot smiled. ‘Can I get a coffee please, Paolo.’
‘Certainly, love. Coming right up. Your usual seat?’
She nodded and slid into the booth. She stared at the table top and pictured their hands joined together across its shiny surface. She daren’t look up, couldn’t bear to see the empty space that used to be filled by him. Instead, she made out she was waiting for him, killing time like she used to, wondering if her eye liner was straight, her hair all right, her breath nice…
‘There we go, gorgeous.’
Paolo placed the dinky cup and saucer in front of her and she stirred the thick, frothy contents. It smelt lovely. He loitered before returning to the sanctuary of his counter. Wiping his hands on his apron, he slid into the seat opposite: Sol’s chair.
‘Your fella coming in?’
Dot shook her head. ‘Nah, we split up.’ It surprised her how easily she could utter the words that stung her mouth like poison.
‘I did wonder, as we haven’t seen you both for a while. But I have to say, I’m shocked, I really am.’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah! I see all sorts in here – charmers who think they can woo a dozy tart with a bacon sandwich and a few words of chat, players who come in with a different bird every week. And then there was you two. I thought you made a smashing couple.’
‘I thought so too, but he did a runner!’ She chewed her bottom lip, trying to make light of her heartache.
‘What? Never! Gawd, he didn’t seem the type. Well, all I can say, he must’ve had a bloody good reason, cos he was as smitten as ever I’ve seen.’
Dot stared at him, her eyes wide. She swallowed the bubble of happiness and excitement that rose in her throat. ‘Did you think so?’
It was the first time that anyone had confirmed what she thought she knew. Paolo, a witness with no axe to grind or any background knowledge, was able to tell her what she had longed to hear, confirmation that it hadn’t all been in her mind.
‘Yeah, absolutely. I don’t mind telling you that I used to watch you together. That was the real deal if ever I’ve seen it, the way you looked at each other, the way you were together. It was something else. I thought that you two would have gone all the way.’
Dot beamed. Maybe, just maybe what Paolo was saying was true. Sol had loved her after all, and maybe he did have a bloody good reason for disappearing in the way he did and if that was the case, she wasn’t mad after all.
‘It felt like love.’ She smiled
‘Well, mate, it certainly looked like it.’
‘Thanks, Paolo, that means a lot to me. You’ll never know how much.’
‘You’re welcome. D’you know, I don’t even know your name.’
‘It’s Clover.’
The euphoria of Paolo’s words didn’t last long; in fact it had worn off by the time she got home. It had only confused her more. If Sol had loved her as he said he did, why did he bugger off? Dot dozed, curled up like a little ball, lying on the mattress and wishing she could sink into it.
The rapping on her door roused her. ‘Yep?’
Barb pushed the door open and popped her head around the frame. ‘You decent?’
‘Come in.’
‘I was worried about you leaving on your own the other night, thought we’d agreed we’d all travel home together. You didn’t even stay for the music. They were brilliant. Wally said you just upped and left like you’d had enough.’
Dot remembered his sarcastic tone, his jibe. ‘Yeah, something like that. Sorry, Barb, I just wasn’t in the mood.’ As she spoke, her fingers plucked at the tiny loops of the candlewick bedspread.
‘D’you fancy a walk? Thought we could go and sit on the docks, it’s been a while.’
Dot looked at her friend; it had been a while, a while since they had spent any time together, a while since they were close. She felt a pang of guilt.
‘Why not? That’d be lovely.’
Barb visibly brightened; she had clearly missed her mate.
The two strolled along as the sun sank behind the buildings and the chimneys puffed away, shooting plumes of fine black fog up into the night sky. Dot pictured her neighbours in those houses, gathered around the hearths, with gravy-filled turkey and ham pies made up of Christmas leftovers and mugs of tea. In a few days’ time it would be another year. Dot looked forward to putting 1961 behind her, but, equally, the thought that 1962 would be a year in which she wouldn’t see her son, that this time next year she would be thinking, I have not seen him this year, was too awful to contemplate.
The water shimmered, reflecting the street lights and red and green flashes from the lamps on the boat decks. The girls took up their familiar seats on the dockside bollards.
‘It’s been a while since we came down here. We used to do it all the time, didn’t we; just sit and natter.’
‘Yep, it was all we did, Barb!’
‘But funny how it was enough. I’ve had some of my best times sitting here in all weathers mucking about with you.’
‘Same.’ It was true, before Sol, that was normal life and she had been happy.
‘D’you remember that Russian bloke, that day when I chucked a fag in your hair?’
‘Yes!’ The two rocked and giggled. That had been a funny day, one that would stay with them.
When the laughter subsided, Barb coughed, gathered her courage. ‘I’ve been worried about you, mate.’
‘Oh, you don’t have to worry about me. I’m all right.’
‘I know you say that, but I have and I am. You ain’t yourself, Dot, and you haven’t been for a while.’ Barb fell silent. Having given her friend the cue to open up, she waited for the explanation. None was forthcoming.
She tried again. ‘I’ve missed you.’
Dot knew Barb was sincere. ‘I’ve missed you too,’ she replied, although in truth she had been so preoccupied over recent months that her friend had rarely entered her head.
‘I’ve been wondering, did that farmer do something to you?’
‘What?’ Dot momentarily forgot the lie that had been cast. The question caught her off guard.
‘That farmer at the hop-picking place, did he do something to you or someone else there? Were his kids mean cos you were looking after them and not their mum?’
Dot sighed and gazed at the water. If only…
�
�No, no. Nothing like that. I’m fine, honest!’
‘But you ain’t fine, despite what you say. I know you ain’t. You haven’t been fine since you were seeing that black bloke…’
‘Sol.’ Dot would only tolerate him being referred to by name.
‘Yeah, him. I’m trying to figure it all out, Dot. You and me was real close and then you started seeing him an’ it was like I didn’t exist, an’ I’m not moaning, I understand what it’s like when you just wanna be with someone, I do! But then you bugger off to work for the farmer bloke and I had to find out from me Aunty Audrey, you never even said, you just went and we were supposed to be best friends. And then you come back and it’s as if someone has put a Dot lookalike in your house, someone that looks like you and sounds a bit like you when you do eventually talk, but it’s like… it’s like someone turned your spark off, put out your flame, you look empty.’
Dot was grateful for the encroaching darkness and the fact that she could cry into the night without being seen. That was exactly how she felt, as if someone had put out her flame – empty. She placed her hand on her flat stomach – empty. Her nipples tensed inside her cotton bra, desperate to feel the seeking mouth of her newborn, her son, her Simon.
‘I’m sorry, Barb—’
‘No, I don’t want an apology,’ Barb fired back. ‘That’s not what I mean. I just wanna know if I can do anything to make it better. I want the old Dot back.’
Dot laughed; the old Dot didn’t exist any more. The old Dot had drifted along with her head full of inconsequential rubbish, preoccupied with how to make people laugh and the state of her fringe, working hard to get enough money to have fun, an easy life. The state in which she now existed allowed no space for frivolity; her experience had left her so changed, so broken.
‘I am sorry, Barb. I’ve neglected you, I know, but the thing is, I fell for Sol completely and I thought he was the one.’
‘I thought so too, never seen you so smitten and he couldn’t take his eyes off you! I was planning the bloody wedding!’
No Greater Love - Box Set Page 83
