by Susan Lewis
I don’t ever let on that I know about their rows. Mummy would say I was spying, which I suppose I am really, because I sit on the stairs listening when I’m supposed to be in bed. It’s horrible, because they shout and say horrible things to each other. I want to do something to make them stop, but I can’t let them know I’m there. I say prayers in Sunday school every week, asking God to make them stop. If only Mummy would give up smoking, then Dad wouldn’t get on at her so much, but she won’t. I don’t know why it makes him so angry. It never used to, but it does now. And then there are other things they row about, which I don’t really understand, because it doesn’t make any sense for Dad to be angry with Mummy for having a bad arm. Maybe he’s getting fed up with doing all the washing, and most of the housework. I don’t think it’s that that makes him mad though, I don’t know what it really is. I just hope they don’t row tonight, especially not like they did last week, when Mummy slapped Daddy across the face. He didn’t hit her back, he just went out for a drive, while Mummy sat in her chair crying and not even watching Coronation Street that night. I was really frightened that Daddy might not come back, and I think she was too. I wanted to go and comfort her, but I’d only have got into trouble for being out of bed.
Eddress
‘Eddress?’
I’m standing here in the kitchen, wanting to be on my own, but knowing I’d be upset if he hadn’t come out to find me. This is my place in the house, our bright yellow kitchen. The window cleaner was here today, flirting, the way he usually does. He got right on my nerves. I just wished he’d shut up and get on with his job.
‘Are you all right?’ Eddie asks.
I nod, but go on looking out the window, not really seeing what’s happening outside.
‘Tomorrow’s the last one,’ Eddie says, perching on the tall stool he made at one of his woodwork classes. ‘Then it’ll all be over.’
I know he means well, and he could even be right, but he’s not the one going through it, is he? He hasn’t even come with me for any of the treatments, so he doesn’t have a clue what it’s like really. It’s not his body getting filled up with radiation every Wednesday. It’s not him who has to lie under that bloody machine with black marks around his chest and shoulder showing where the radium has to go. It doesn’t hurt, but it’s radium, for God’s sake. It’s dangerous. If they get it wrong I could end up as a mushroom cloud. To think, we’ve even talked about what we should do to protect ourselves from a nuclear war, and here I am getting it fired right at me by a doctor who I swear doesn’t know what he’s doing. We can’t have that argument again though, because it’s one I never win, mainly because I don’t know what to do instead. Unless I just stop going. I’ve considered that a lot, but it’s a bit late now, when tomorrow’s supposed to be the last one. After that, they’ll know how successful it’s all been, whether they’ve got rid of it or not. Not the right bosom, of course, they’ve definitely got rid of that.
‘We could all go out on Saturday night,’ Eddie says. ‘And celebrate.’
‘Celebrate what?’
‘The fact it’s all over.’
‘It might not be.’
‘It will. You said yourself the doctor’s happy with the way it’s going. And you’re feeling better. Aren’t you?’
Yes, I suppose I am. Things seem to be working again. I can move me arm without it hurting too much and I’m not so nervous about rolling over onto my front in the night. I haven’t gone as far as picking Gary up yet, he’s too heavy now, not a baby any more. I still can’t get Susan’s hair up into a ponytail either, so she has to have it in plaits all the time. On the whole though, everything’s improving, providing you don’t include things between us, that is. But that’s not something anyone wants to talk about, is it? Too private. No-one else’s business.
Susan needs a new pair of school shoes. Term’s hardly even half over and she’s grown out of her others already. Gary’ll want some too, now winter’s coming on. Where the bloody hell did summer go. Any rate, I’ve been keeping a bit of cash back each week, so we should be all right for buying his shoes. We can’t afford to go out on Saturday night though. I wonder if our mam’ll have the kids, so Eddie and I can have some time to ourselves. But he won’t want that. The kids are his protection. I don’t want him near me, anyway. Not the way I am now. I just want to be how we were. I wish to God none of this had ever happened. I might be past the worst of it, but nothing’s ever going to bring my bosom back, is it? That little bleeder’s gone for ever, and look what it’s taken with it. Everything. We’re not who we used to be. None of us. Except Gary I suppose. He’s young enough for all this to go over his head. Susan doesn’t understand it much either, so she’s all right. If she was a bit older I could explain some of it, but she’s too young. It’s not right to burden children with your problems. If the other kids are saying things at school though . . . I’d like to get my hands on that little bugger Kelvin Milton, I’d make him sorry for upsetting my girl. I can’t let her know that it matters though. Kids will be kids, so best to let it all blow over, as though it never happened.
‘Thought I’d go to bingo on Saturday with our mam,’ I say.
Eddie doesn’t answer, but I know I’ve hurt him by not saying I’ll go out with him. But what am I supposed to say? ‘It only costs a few bob for bingo,’ I remind him. ‘We’ll need at least a couple of quid if we all go out.’
He could say that we’ll make ourselves afford it, but he doesn’t. He’s happy really for me to go out with our mam. Or relieved. Yes, that’s what he is, relieved.
‘What about this situation with Susan, at school?’ he says.
‘What about it?’
‘Well, if she’s getting into trouble, fighting with the other kids, shouldn’t we do something about it?’
‘Like what?’
‘I don’t know. That’s what I’m asking.’
‘It’ll blow over. Kids are always saying things.’
He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. I hate it when he does that, because I know he’s stopping himself saying what’s really on his mind. But I don’t want to know what it is, so I don’t ask.
‘Do you want me to come with you tomorrow?’ he asks.
I was about to snap at him again, but then it dawns on me what he just said. I wasn’t expecting him to say anything like that, and I’m not sure why he has. ‘What for?’ I finally say.
‘I just thought you might like me to.’
To tell the truth, I would like him to, but we can’t afford for him to take the time off work.
‘One day won’t matter,’ he protests when I tell him that. ‘I can always do a bit of overtime to make up for it.’
It would mean not having to get the cripple wagon again, which isn’t really as bad as I’d feared. The old codgers are all right. Poor sods. We even manage a bit of a sing-song and a laugh now and then. I’d rather go with Eddie though, let everyone in the hospital see I’ve got a husband who cares. He can talk to the doctor too. He understands things better than I do.
‘You don’t have to,’ I tell him. ‘No-one’s forcing you.’
‘I know. I’m just saying, I’ll come if you want me to.’
‘Suit yourself. I have to be there at twelve.’
We don’t say anything for a while. I’m still standing with my back to him, either staring down into the sink, or out the window where a few kids are playing statues in the street. Sounds like Top of the Pops is coming to an end, so our kids’ll be out any second. Eddie puts an arm round my shoulder.
‘Is it all right if I do this?’ he says. ‘I’m not hurting you?’
‘No,’ I say, and after a while I lean my head against him.
‘I love you,’ he says.
‘Oh stop all that nonsense now,’ I tell him.
We look at each other. He’s got a lovely face. It’s kind and serious. His eyes are the same blue as Gary’s. He’s a bit of a looker when he smiles.
He kisses me on the lip
s. It’s nice and makes me want to cry. He won’t want to go any further though, so I push him away before he can do it first.
‘Come back here,’ he says, keeping hold of my hand.
‘Oh, go on with you,’ I respond, with a laugh, ‘you don’t fancy me when I’m like this.’
‘Who says?’
Just like him to know the right words. ‘Then you’re mad,’ I tell him. ‘And the kids’ll be out any minute. You don’t want them to see us like this.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because it’s not decent. Now come on, let me go.’
He does, and I’m not sure if it’s whether he wants to, or because I told him to. I wish he’d tried a bit harder, even though I don’t want to do the business really. I wouldn’t mind if I never had to do it again, but I expect he would.
We’re at the hospital now. I’m keeping me head turned away as the doctor examines me scar, because I don’t want to see the mess I’m in. I know it’s all red and purple, and still a bit swollen, and there are black marks for the radiographer to show him where to point his lights. The doctor’s drawing on some more. The pen tickles a bit, like a feather. I just look at the wall. Eddie’s sitting on the edge of his chair, watching everything. This is the first time he’s seen the scar as bare as this. I’m glad I don’t know what he’s thinking. I could easily cry now, but I don’t want anyone to know how bad I’m feeling. I could scream, or thump the doctor, or even Eddie. I want to run home to my children. I want us all to be safe and tucked up together, not stuck here, where I’m just a lump of meat they’re going to put in a machine in a minute and radiate.
The doctor asks me about the side effects I’ve been having. They haven’t been too bad, apart from feeling dog-tired after, and sometimes a bit sick. I’ve had a couple of mouth sores, and some pains under the scar, but I don’t tell him about them, or he’ll just find something else to do to me, more drugs or injections, and I’m fed up with it now.
‘She’s had a couple of sores, in her mouth,’ Eddie says.
Why doesn’t he just shut up? What’s the matter with him? I don’t know why he trusts these people, when he doesn’t even trust the Government. Anyway, they’re all out to get us working-class folk. We’re guinea pigs for them to experiment on. I bet, if we were rich, I’d still have two bosoms and they’d have got rid of the thing inside me weeks ago.
‘That’s rubbish,’ Eddie retorted, when I’d said that to him on the way here. ‘If you’d read something about it, learn what it is and . . .’
‘I don’t want to know anything about it. It’s enough that I’ve got it, all right?’
‘But if you understood it more, you might be able to fight it a bit better.’
‘I’m fighting perfectly all right, thank you, so I don’t need you to tell me what to do. And as you’re not the one having to go through it, you can stop handing out advice and keep your books to yourself.’
‘You’re a stubborn bugger, sometimes,’ he grunted.
‘That’s right. And that’s why it isn’t going to get me, because I’m a stubborn bugger who won’t let it.’
I mean it when I say that, I am stubborn enough not to let it, and what’s the point of reading all those books, when they just end up frightening you even more than you already are. Let the doctors do their job, is what I say, even though I have reservations about that. I know Eddie has too, in his heart of hearts, because as a Communist he’s suspicious of most people in authority. I sometimes wonder if his bloody communism didn’t get us into this bleeding mess in the first place. The Government hates Communists, so now they’re using the wife of one to carry out their experiments. I haven’t actually said that to Eddie yet, but I will if he pushes me. It could all be his fault that I’m being wheeled under the radium machine now, ready to be nucleared.
I look at his face and I want to cry. I love him so much, but I don’t know how to tell him. I couldn’t do it with other people around, anyway, they’d think I’d gone soft in the head. I think he wishes it was him going through this instead of me. I have to be honest, sometimes I wish it was too, but really, given the choice, I know I wouldn’t make him. Would I be as patient with him as he is with me? Course not. I’m just not like that. So it’s probably for the best that it’s me lying here now, clutching onto his hand for dear life. They make me let go, so I look up at him, then I have to turn away before he can see me eyes filling up with tears. Don’t want him to see me crying. Won’t do either of us any good.
He has to leave the room while it all happens, and I find out later, as we’re driving home in the car, that while I was getting dressed he went in to talk to the doctor.
‘He says he’s really pleased with the way you’re coming on,’ he tells me. ‘The scar’s healing nicely and the treatments definitely seem to be working.’
‘Do I have to go again?’ I ask.
‘Only for a check-up. He’ll have the results by then, he said.’
‘When’s the check-up?’
‘The week after next. I’ll try to get a couple of hours off again to come with you.’
‘Were they all right about you taking time off today?’
‘Yeah, once they knew what it was for.’
‘You didn’t tell them!’
‘Of course. I had to. I can’t just take time off without a good reason.’
‘I don’t want people knowing. It’s none of their business.’
‘There’s not going to be anything to know, once you get those results,’ he says. ‘It’ll all be over then. The doctor didn’t come right out and say so, but he might just as well have. He was all smiles when I left him. He wouldn’t be like that if he wasn’t feeling optimistic, would he?’
If I wasn’t so tired I could be feeling a bit all smiles meself to hear that, even though I don’t want to get my hopes up too much.
For some reason instead of driving us home through Speedwell and New Cheltenham, he goes up through St George and Kingswood. It’s the middle of the afternoon, so there could be people around I know. I don’t want them to see me asleep in Eddie’s car, or all their tongues’ll be wagging, him at home in the day, me looking like death in the passenger seat. Bunch of idle gossips they all are. Got nothing better to do than stand around bitching about other people.
Eddie turns to look at me and I give him a wink. I won’t complain because he’s been really good today. I don’t know what I’d do without him.
When we get home he comes round to help me out the car. Too bad if anyone’s nosing out their windows as we go up the path. He’s my husband, isn’t he? I’m allowed to lean on him. I spot Betty in our kitchen window. She must have been waiting, ready to put the kettle on. Gary’s up our mam’s. I took him there this morning. Eddie came to pick me up on the corner, by the Star, so Gary wouldn’t see him.
‘How are you, me old love?’ Betty asks, as we come in the back door.
‘She’s a bit tired,’ Eddie answers. ‘I’ll take her up to bed.’
‘Kettle’s on,’ Betty tells him. ‘I’ve just put a shilling in the meter, and there’s a cheese sandwich on a plate in the pantry.’
Eddie helps me undress, pulls back the blankets and tucks me in. I love our bedroom with its matching dressing table and wardrobes, and the dark pink candlewick bedspread. It’s cosy in here, especially now he’s drawn the curtains. It’s not cold out, but I’m feeling a bit chilly so he lies down next to me, to keep me warm.
‘Once we get the results, and we’re sure, we’ll go out and celebrate,’ I say to him.
He kisses the top of my head. I love the smell of him, and the feeling of being safe that he gives me. I often wonder what the devil he sees in me.
‘Do you want some tea now?’ he whispers after about five minutes.
I’m nearly asleep. ‘No,’ I say. ‘I just want you to go on lying here with me.’
So that’s what he does, reciting bits of poems that I like, until I drift off to the land of Nod.
Chapter Four
Susan
Last weekend me and Gary – oops, I mean, Gary and I – went to stay with our cousins Julie and Karen. Uncle Bob, their dad, is our dad’s brother and they grew up in Wales, with an overcoat for an eiderdown that they shared with their two sisters until the girls left home to go into service. My aunties, who are both married now, don’t live far away, and my cousin Robert, Aunty Doreen’s son, who’s four years older than me, is my heart-throb. I’m going to marry him when I grow up.
While we went for a ride on the bus that Uncle Bob drives, and played in the park with Aunty Flo, Mum and Dad went to a bed and breakfast in Clevedon for the weekend. Mum said they were celebrating something she’d explain to me when I’m older. I don’t know why she said that, when I know very well what a wedding anniversary is, and theirs is on 21st November, which is the weekend they went away. They’ve been married for eleven years now. I expect we’ll have a new brother or sister next August, because Gary and I were both born in August, nine months after Mum and Dad’s anniversary. I want a sister. Gary wants a brother.
Tonight’s the first time Mum’s been to bingo in ages. I heard her telling Mrs Williams that she didn’t really want to see everyone, but Dad’s keeping on at her to get out of the house more, and anyway he’s driving her bloody mad.
‘He’s always got his head stuck in a bleeding book, or he’s in the front room listening to that bloody wireless of his,’ she grumbles. ‘Everything’s politics or sodding poetry with him. He’s in bloody cuckoo land, is what he is, and I’m fed up to the back teeth with it.’
