by Annie Murray
All her life long, Margaret could never get over the contradiction between that charmed evening and all that followed. It was almost as painful for her as it had been for Fred, because during those hours, in that little house, she felt that she had stepped again into a kind of paradise that she had lost on her dismal return to Birmingham.
They all sat round the table, as a family – something she had not done since leaving Buckley. Mrs Tolley was at the head, presiding over the tea in the chair that had once been her husband’s. As she poured the tea, Margaret noticed that her hand shook badly and she thought it was because the pot was heavy. She didn’t notice the amazed, grateful looks that passed between the Tolley children that night. She thought their excitement was just about Christmas. All she saw was family life, and all the warmth and comfort for which she yearned.
Mrs Tolley mostly sat quiet as the children chattered, especially Jean. Fred kept smiling, his pinched face soppily happy. As she sat beside him, Margaret saw that the sleeve of his blue school jumper that he was wearing was coming unravelled. She noticed how thin his wrists were as he carried the bread and jam to his mouth, eating ravenously.
They toasted with tea: ‘Happy Christmas, everyone!’
Afterwards Mrs Tolley seemed to have exhausted her energy, and the children cleared the table and sat round to play games. There was a cheap pack of cards for Happy Families, and they played Noughts and Crosses and Hangman. Margaret found herself laughing as she hadn’t in months. One of Bobby’s favourite things was making terrible faces, like a gargoyle, and Jean was full of jokes. Bobby got cross when he didn’t win the games, though. Jean crowed over him, but Fred was always kind and appeasing.
‘Go on, Bobby,’ he’d say. ‘You have another go. You’ll win this time.’
Mrs Tolley sat in a chair near the fire. When she noticed Fred glancing at her from time to time she would smile, at least with her mouth. Margaret just saw it as a smile.
When the clock chimed nine o’clock, Mrs Tolley roused herself and said, ‘Had you better be getting back now, Margaret? Your family’ll be missing you.’
Fat chance of that, Margaret thought. Dread filled her. It was like waking from a dream. Did she really have to go back, away from this charmed place?
‘Fred, you walk her home,’ Mrs Tolley insisted.
Margaret shyly thanked Fred’s mom, her words seeming wholly inadequate to express the bliss of that evening. Then she and Fred set off along the freezing street. When they reached her entry, Fred stopped by the lamp. Shyly, he handed her something from out of his pocket.
‘Here – I got yer this, but I didn’t want to give it yer in front of the others . . .’
Margaret could almost hear his blush sizzling on the cold air.
‘Oh!’ she gasped, mortified. ‘You got me a present! I never got you one!’
‘Never mind – here, take it. I hope you like it, that’s all.’
He thrust something papery into her hand. It felt like a piece of an exercise book, but there was something wrapped inside.
‘Open it when I’ve gone.’ He was backing away. ‘T’ra, I’ll see yer . . .’
‘Thanks – for tea and everything!’
‘S’all right,’ she heard, as his long, skinny form retreated.
Despite the cold she didn’t want to go inside. Full of curiosity, she moved closer to the lamp and unfolded the piece of paper. Out of it slid a ring, a light, cheap thing. When she held it up to the lamp, the stone in it gave off a deep-red glow.
Entranced, she slipped the ring onto the third finger of her right hand and it fitted perfectly. Margaret hugged herself. A ring! He had given her a ring!
Glowing with happiness, she stepped into the dark entry.
‘Where the hell’ve you been, yer little brat?’
Peggy’s barrel-like, red-eyed figure came at her the minute she stepped through the door. The room reeked of beer and spirits and of the sweat of two large, lazy people. Far from being out of it or away at the pub, as Margaret had hoped, they were here, large as life and twice as ugly.
Ted was sitting by the range, his eyes also bloodshot. He barely looked capable of standing up, let alone coming for her, but Peggy was spitting mad and spoiling for a fight. Drink always made her pugnacious. She had a police record for brawling in the street.
For a second Margaret thought of retreating back through the door, but Peggy read the idea in her face and grabbed her by the shoulder.
‘You get in here, ye little vormin!’
Margaret managed to wrench herself away from Peggy and get the other side of the table.
Peggy was swaying slightly. Her dyed hair had a greasy, mustardy look and her face was covered by a sheen of perspiration, her cheeks red and puffy. She was obviously finding it hard to focus.
‘Where the **** d’yer think you’ve been? Going off without cooking our dinner . . .’
‘I did the spuds,’ Margaret said. ‘All you had to do was boil them . . .’
‘Bile ’em?’ Peggy roared. ‘Let me tell ye – I don’t bile anything round here: that’s your job. And what’s this mess?’ She leaned over and lifted the lid on the remaining stew. ‘Not fit for the pigs, that it’s not . . . Not for a grown man like your father.’
‘Sorry,’ Margaret said, eyeing Ted to see if he was going to move, but he slumped back in his chair.
‘Sorry! You’ll be sorry all right!’ Peggy roared. She went to lunge round the table, but had to steady herself at the corner. ‘You ever do that again without my say-so and I’ll beat the ****ing life out of ye, d’you hear?’
‘Yes.’ Avoiding Peggy’s eye, Margaret shifted closer to the stairs. She could see Peggy was in no condition for any sudden moves.
Peggy frowned, struggling to focus. She pointed, unsteadily.
‘What’s that on your finger?’
‘Nothing.’ Margaret shoved her hand into her coat pocket.
‘That wasn’t nothing! You’ve got somethin’ on your finger, and I want to see it! Come here . . .’ She began lumbering round towards Margaret. ‘Where did you go getting a ring from? You give that to me, or I’ll—’
Margaret bolted and fled up the stairs to her room. With all her strength she dragged the metal bed frame across against the door and sat on the edge panting, her heart booming in her chest.
From below she could hear Peggy cursing and carrying on at her father. There was a smashing sound, but Peggy didn’t come up the stairs. She wouldn’t have been able to exert herself that much.
‘Fat bitch! Go to hell, you fat, stinking bitch!’ Margaret stuck her tongue out as far as it would go, as if Peggy was in front of her. ‘I hate you.’
But she was safe for the moment. She lay on the bed, waiting for things to quieten down. They’d soon be sleeping it off. There was no light in the room to look at her ring, but she turned it round and round on her finger, hugging her hand to her chest.
‘He gave me a ring! For me! Specially for me!’
She lay smiling into the darkness.
She saw Fred Tolley just once more after that.
There had been no Christmas to speak of in their house. Ted and Peggy spent most of the day sleeping off the excesses of the night before. Now the war was over, Ted no longer troubled himself with work and there was barely any money. He didn’t give Margaret anything extra for Christmas food, so she ate the last scrapings of stew and stale bread and spent most of the day on her own, cleaning up the house.
But even in this cheerless activity she was not downhearted. As she scrubbed and mopped, her spirits were kept high by the sight of the ring on her finger, the stone giving off its warm red glow. She was making a friend, and his mom kept a cosy house and he had a brother and sister. If she was allowed to go round there and visit once in a while, it would make all the difference to her life. She had something to hold on to.
A couple of days after Christmas she was on her way to Howlett’s in Cregoe Street to fetch some groceries with a few coppers tha
t, in desperation, she had stolen from her father’s jacket.
On her way she suddenly saw Fred tearing along the road, his face pale and tense. He didn’t seem to see her. As he ran past, his jacket flying behind him, she said shyly, ‘All right, Fred?’
He didn’t even turn, just ran on.
Margaret was hurt, but she could see that he was in a hurry for some reason, so she didn’t think much more about it.
During the last days of the school holidays she kept looking out for him. She didn’t dare call round at the house, and there was no sign of him anywhere. Her high spirits began to seep away. Fred didn’t want to see her again, that was what it was. He’d obviously decided she was no good and he didn’t want to know her. She wrapped the ring he had given her in a scrap of cloth and hid it at the back of the attic cupboard.
The school term started and there was no sign of him there. When she hadn’t seen him at school for a couple of days, she wondered if he was sick and whether she should pluck up the courage to call at his house and find out. Mrs Tolley might be pleased that someone was concerned about him.
So after school one afternoon she walked nervously round to Washington Street. It was a heavy, grey afternoon with more snow threatening, but as soon as she walked into the Tolleys’ yard she knew there was something more than the weather weighing the place down. It was strangely quiet. There was a woman mangling clothes at the end of the yard, who turned and stared.
Margaret walked up to Fred’s house. The windows were dark and it had a silent feel, with no sign of life. She was just reaching out to knock when the mangling woman shouted, ‘No good calling there, bab. There’s no one about and there won’t be, neither. Who’ve yer come to see?’
Margaret jumped, her nerves were so on edge. The woman, who was big and wearing a calf-length black skirt, was coming over to her, grim-faced.
‘I’ve come to see Fred,’ Margaret said.
The woman regarded her for a moment as if unsure what to say.
‘You a pal of his?’ she asked eventually.
Margaret nodded. She hoped so anyway.
The woman’s face softened a fraction. ‘You’ve not ’eard, ’ave yer? Those children ain’t living ’ere any more. The Corporation or someone came and took ’em away after . . . They couldn’t just leave ’em ’ere to fend for themselves.’
Margaret felt a deadly chill start to spread inside her. She knew something terrible had happened, but she couldn’t make any sense of what it was. She could only echo, ‘Took them away?’ in hardly more than a whisper.
‘To the orphanage, I s’pose. Look, bab.’ She spoke gently. ‘I’ll tell yer, as yer don’t know. Mrs Tolley took ’er own life. Hanged herself. ’Er’d always ’ad troubles since Mr Tolley was killed. It all got on top of ’er in the end. So they ain’t ’ere – none of ’em. I dunno where they’ve gone, bab, or I’d tell yer.’
The cold spread through Margaret, like the numbness of holding your hands in icy water.
‘Oh,’ she said to the woman. ‘Thank you.’
She left the yard and stood in the darkening street. A cart clopped past and the driver called out, ‘Penny for ’em, wench!’ She didn’t want to go home. She didn’t know what to do. . . . Took her own life . . . Hanged herself . . .
All she could think of was that evening they’d had – that wonderful, happy evening, with Mrs Tolley being a mom and tea round the table, when it had all looked so perfect. And she couldn’t put the two things together at all.
Thirty-Six
Margaret stood by the kitchen sink in Institute Road, holding a glass from which she had just drunk a long draught of water.
The window faced over the back garden. Outside the sky was cloudless, but hazy, promising to burn into another very hot day. Fred and Karen were long gone out to work.
She looked at the glass as if she had forgotten she was holding it, then slowly rinsed it out and stood it upside down on the plastic drainer.
I must water those plants, she thought, noticing the gasping geraniums on the patio.
But she just stood. That odd, swimmy feeling came over her, as it did a lot of the time, as if she wasn’t quite present in her own life. When she walked about, even that didn’t feel right, as if the floor was padded with cushions. Her body was full of sensations. Were these feelings normal? She could no longer decide.
With a shaky hand she reached for her ciggies and lit up, then stood staring out. The lawnmower (still not fixed) was grounded by the old clapboard fence.
‘Where were you going, that day I saw you?’ she had asked Fred, years later when they had met again. ‘You were running down Cregoe Street – you looked in a terrible state. Was that the day she . . . ?’
‘No,’ Fred had said. ‘That wouldn’t have been that day. It was just before. I was running for the doctor. That afternoon I came into the house and Mom was out cold on the floor, in front of Bobby an’ all. He was crying like a babby – he dain’t know what to do. I never knew what she’d taken, but I went for Dr Greaves. It was after that – a few days later – when she . . . yer know.’
Thoughts thudded through her head. She couldn’t seem to stop them. She recalled standing in the street that day for who knew how long. She had no idea where Fred and the others would have gone or any hope of ever seeing them again. This was how life went. People were taken from you, and that was that.
What she could remember now was somehow walking back to Upper Ridley Street, to the house that contained her unloving father and the vile, slovenly Peggy Loach. She stopped in the darkening yard, looking across at the mean, cold house and something in her gave way, like a rock fall.
Her sister Elsie stood facing her, her pale hair straggling out of its pins after a chaotic morning of toil with a maiding tub, dolly and mangle while minding two tiny children. She was wearing a stained, damp pinner and had her hands on her hips in an attempt at resistance.
‘Please,’ Margaret insisted. ‘I’ll do anything for you. I’ll cook and clean – I know how. And I can help with these two . . .’
Susan and Heather were leaping about the room, excited as baby goats at Margaret’s arrival.
Elsie’s face wore a frown, but Margaret could see she was on the point of caving in. The offer of help was too tempting, even if it did mean another mouth to feed. And Elsie had always had a kind heart.
‘But what about school?’ she protested. ‘You can’t get to school from all the way over there. And you can’t just stop – I’m not having the wag man pestering me. You have to stay on now, till you’re fifteen, they say.’
‘I’ll go to another school, over here,’ Margaret said. ‘I’ll do anything you say, but don’t make me live with the Old Man any more. You wouldn’t want to, would you?’
Elsie’s face darkened. ‘That I wouldn’t, especially not now that scheming Irish trollop’s moved in on him an’ all.’
‘She hits me,’ Margaret admitted miserably. ‘And all they ever do is drink.’
She didn’t cry because she almost never did, but Elsie could see all the troubles laid out.
‘Well, when would you come?’ she asked.
‘Now.’ Margaret had with her a small bundle containing her few bits of clothing and Fred’s ring. ‘I haven’t left anything over there.’
Elsie pulled a chair out from the table and sat down rather abruptly. She laughed suddenly.
‘Well, I’ll say summat for you – you know when your mind’s made up, don’t yer? What in heaven’s name is Jack gunna say?’
As Margaret was to find out, Elsie frequently wondered what her husband Jack was going to say about this or that, when the fact was that Jack Trinder left major statements of opinion to Elsie. Jack was cheerful and sandy-haired, with a smile that crinkled his face into mischievous lines. He was truly a family man and hardworking. He had stayed in Birmingham throughout the war in a reserved occupation working in munitions. Though a bit out of it among the forces lads, there were plenty like him in the city, and
he had his mates around him and had not suffered the problems of a disrupted marriage. He and Elsie rubbed along happily; she was in charge, though she pretended he was, and they had two sweet, happy little girls.
Margaret soon realized she had landed on her feet. She bunked up with Susan and Heather in one room, while Elsie and Jack had the other. They didn’t discover for some time how Ted and Peggy had taken her bailing out on them. More energetic people might have come looking for her, but they were either too drunk or too lazy to bother, and after a week or two Margaret started to relax. School was all right, certainly no worse than the last, and now she had the enjoyment of being with her two little nieces.
She stayed with Elsie and Jack for the rest of her single life – most of thirteen years, until she married Fred in 1960. Once she left school she picked up work in factories nearby. She was always a help to Elsie and a companion to the girls, especially Susan, to whom she was closest. News came from Dora Jennings that Peggy Loach had decamped from Upper Ridley Street not long after Margaret. With her skivvy gone, she thought herself too good for the place. Ted replaced her with another woman, then another. By 1951 he was dead of a liver complaint. Elsie and Margaret went to his funeral, but they had never seen him alive again.
When Elsie and Jack moved out to a little semi in Yardley in 1954, there was no thought but that Margaret would go with them. They were amiable, settled years, in which she felt safe, was obliging and grateful and expected very little for herself.
‘Why don’t you go out and enjoy yourself?’ Elsie would say sometimes. ‘Find a nice boy?’
Once or twice there was someone, but it never seemed to last. Margaret was already shy about her appearance and was never sure what to say to anyone. Boys found her closed and dull, and moved on to someone else. And Margaret never expected life to be especially good; she was just glad to keep it from being very bad. Safe and humdrum suited her. Once sweet-rationing was over, she took to sucking bull’s eyes and barley sugars, a comfort that had done her teeth no good. She also, enthusiastically, took up smoking.
