An Army of Smiles

by Grace Thompson

  The following week was worse than anything she remembered. Something had happened and no one would tell her what. Her sister locked herself in her room and refused to come out. Dad looked larger than usual as he stormed around the house, calling Sid evil, her mother spineless and warning Ethel, repeatedly, to stay away from men. He threatened to beat Wesley to a pulp if he saw Ethel anywhere near him.

  ‘You’re sure to go bad,’ Dai snarled. ‘You’re as evil as the rest of this tainted family. You mustn’t go near a man. Any man, d’you hear me? You have to stay here when you aren’t at work and never go out without me or your stupid mother with you, d’you understand? You stay in this house and keep away from men.’

  ‘Why?’ she whispered fearfully.

  ‘You’ll go to the bad like your… sister!’ He emphasized the word as though it was an insult. What could her inoffensive sister have done to make him so angry? To her horror and disbelief she woke in the morning to find her bedroom door locked, and no amount of knocking brought someone to open it. Bread, milk, boiled eggs and a few apples were on her dressing table.

  She climbed out of the bedroom window that night and ran down the road to find Wesley.

  Mrs Daniels opened the door in her nightgown and shook her head. ‘Sorry, Ethel, dear, but Wesley is forbidden to visit you.’

  ‘Why? What happened?’ A movement caught her eye and she looked toward the landing, as Wesley came down the stairs, fully dressed.

  ‘How did you get out? Your father told me you were forbidden to leave the house.’

  ‘I climbed out of the window but I’m not going back that way. I’m going to knock on the door and demand an explanation. I’m not a child!’

  ‘I’ll come with you.’ Wesley put a coat around her and she was aware for the first time that she was shivering, dressed in only a nightdress, a dressing gown and a pair of slippers – her father having emptied her wardrobe, presumably to ensure she didn’t leave.

  ‘Sorry we couldn’t celebrate our engagement properly,’ she said tearfully. From her dressing-gown pocket she took out the ring and gave it back to him. ‘I’ll wear it when this trouble has been sorted. I want to wear it proudly, not hide it for fear of sending Dad into a worse rage.’

  ‘I’ll walk you back home.’ Ignoring his mother’s entreaties to be careful, he left to face the furious Dai Twomey with less confidence than he showed.

  The house was quiet, no voices could be heard. The door wasn’t locked and they went in to see her mother on the floor being kicked by her father. She was making no sound. The hall door opened and Sid staggered in, his face bruised, one eye practically closed, his red hair sticky with blood. As though in a daze he walked past Ethel and Wesley and out into the darkness.

  Wesley and Ethel leapt on her father and tried to pull him off her mother. Dai turned and grabbed Wesley, throwing him with ease against the wall. He swung Ethel and released her, forcing her to stumble through the doorway and land at the bottom of the stairs. Every time Wesley stood up, her father hit him until he was dazed. It seemed to go on for ever but it was only a few minutes before Sid had gone, and Wesley was out of the door and staggering away down the path. He stopped at the stream and put his face into the water to cool his head then went back to rescue Ethel. At the door her father waited, smiling. He punched and kicked until the boy gave up and staggered away.

  Wesley made his way into town, shamed by his inadequacy, stopping to rest, sometimes crawling, staunching his wounds with handfuls of grass, two miles across the fields, and told the police. Then he sat in a cold damp field and watched dawn break on the rest of his life. A new dawn, new day, and life would never be the same. The shame at being unable to help Ethel and her mother printed on his mind at that moment was destined to stay there for ever.

  Her father was arrested, her mother refused to go to hospital and sat in an armchair, propped up with pillows. Ethel was taken to hospital to replace a dislocated shoulder but insisted on returning home to look after her mother. For what was left of the night and through most of the following day she sat near her mother and made her plans. Of Sid and Glenys there was no sign.

  Her mother slept quite a lot and every time she roused, Ethel pleaded with her to go to hospital. ‘Talk to the doctors and to the police. There’ll be evidence now for you to insist on his leaving.’

  ‘I can’t go anywhere before Sid and Glenys come back.’ She insisted that she would not give evidence. ‘I told the police I fell and I won’t say different,’ she whispered through damaged lips.

  In the morning Ethel went out to get some fresh air, wondering how she could prevent her father from returning home. She knew her mother would never be persuaded to give evidence and would also forbid her to do so. Loyalty at any price, even when your very life was at risk, seemed so utterly stupid.

  Her mother stood up and shakily made her way to the kitchen and made tea, which she would find difficult to drink. Despairing of talking sense into her, Ethel decided she should concentrate on finding Glenys. Sid had often fled from his father’s anger and would come back when he was ready, but Glenys had never run away before. She thought of Glenys’s friends; there were surprisingly few. Her sister had led a very quiet life. She would call on them and see if Glenys had stayed with one of them overnight.

  It was late afternoon and she looked up and down the road, hoping to see her sister appear. Beyond the field she saw smoke rising from Wesley’s house and wondered if he was all right. Realizing with a jolt that she hadn’t thought of him as much as someone in love ought to, she walked down and knocked on his door.

  Mrs Daniels told her tearfully to go away. After being assured that Wesley was safe but badly bruised and humiliated, she left and began searching for her sister and Sid. Although Sid could look after himself, she needed him and hoped he too would soon return home.

  None of Glenys’s friends had seen her and, with growing alarm, Ethel walked through the fields towards the wood where she had recently sat with her sister. Glenys had told her she was leaving, but surely not like this, without a word or an explanation?

  Without much hope of being heard, she walked through the trees and called her sister’s name. There were a few old buildings in the vicinity, the places where they had played childish games. Perhaps Glenys had sheltered there and was still sleeping. Rows like the one her father created were very exhausting.

  It was in the barn once used to store grain that she found her, hanging from a beam, swinging slightly in the draught from the open door.

  Chapter Two

  It wasn’t a good day for a funeral, Ethel decided. The sun was too bright, the colours of that spring in 1940 too bold and cheerful. Today, with her sister hidden away in the sombre dark coffin, the skies should have cried, the wind should have howled in agony.

  She looked around her at the serious faces of relatives and friends, then at the angry expression on the red face of her father. He had always been angry and fast to lash out at some unintended slight. Today was worse. Ever since the days before her sister Gleny’s body had been found hanged in the lonely shed out in the fields, his fury had been undiminished. Her mother bore the brunt of it, and she herself still wore a sling to help mend her dislocated shoulder.

  Something terrible had happened and Glenys’s suicide had been a part of it but no one would tell her the truth. There was just her father’s fury and her mother’s quiet, almost mesmerized acceptance of his anger. Her sister was dead, yet after the initial disbelief and the crying and her futile search for answers, her parents seemed more concerned with some other disaster. Bemused by it all, her mother silently grieving with no comfort from her father, her father simmering like a boiler about to burst, blaming herself and her mother for everything bad that had ever happened to them all.

  Ethel herself hardly coping, constantly crying and trying not to, pleading silently for Sid to come home and help her, dealing with the arrangements and keeping the world turning while everyone else seemed stunned and unable
to offer practical help. She couldn’t feel for the death of her sister as she knew she should. She was trying desperately to make sense of what had happened.

  The reason for her sister’s horrific suicide must be in some way connected to her mother’s fear and her father’s fury. And from the way her father stared at her with such disgust in his angry blue eyes, she had a frightening feeling that she herself was, in some unknown way, to blame. If she could only understand how and why then she might start to grieve properly.

  She looked around the room as people were gathering their coats and hats and preparing to leave and it was as though the scene was nothing to do with herself and her sister. She felt sorry for those who tried to offer comforting words. What could they say in such circumstances as these? She heard the women begin sentences that faded away incomplete, and the gruff kindnesses of the men who said even less.

  Her mother stood among them looking smaller and older, of her father there was now no sign. He had spent most of the time since his daughter’s death digging furiously in the garden making it ready for late spring planting. He worked outside from first light until dusk, clearing the ground and burning the rubbish, and would come in with red-rimmed eyes, his face stained with bonfire smoke and earth. He had hardly spoken a word. The people who had called to pay their respects he ignored completely.

  The food was almost gone and people were beginning to leave, thankful, no doubt, to escape from the tensions and glowering atmosphere in the house. As they drifted away, some mopping tears for the young life sadly lost, Dai appeared in the doorway.

  Ethel glanced nervously at her father as she began to stack the plates on to a tray. He was staring at her mother, then at her, undisguised hatred in his blue eyes, and she knew that the moment everyone had gone, his fury would once more errupt. She knew also, that she had to get herself and her mother away from this place before her father killed one of them.

  She packed the left-over cakes into a tin and was pained to see the remains of the birthday cake her mother had made. What a birthday it had been. Instead of a happy party to celebrate her engagement to Wesley Daniels, there had been this eruption of unexplained anger followed by the death of her sister. Tears flooded her eyes and she wiped them away angrily. Now was not the time for tears. Now was the time for action, but what form that should take, she didn’t quite know.

  Wesley wasn’t there. She hadn’t seen him since finding Glenys’s body, and his mother had told her he was away from home. He would have helped her to cope, and would have taken her away until her father had calmed down – if he ever did. His furious temper had never lasted this long before. It usually exploded suddenly and briefly, then sent him to sleep for a couple of hours.

  ‘Where’s Wesley?’ she asked her mother and the only reply was an urgent demand to be quiet.

  ‘But he should be here.’

  ‘He won’t be coming here again,’ her mother whispered, keeping her eyes on her husband, afraid he would hear. ‘Your father has forbidden him to see you again.’

  ‘What? But why, Mam? We’re getting married!’

  ‘Hush,’ her mother begged again. ‘Your father only wants to protect you.’

  ‘From what?’ Ethel hissed.

  The heavy hand on her shoulder made her legs weaken. She leaned against the table, dropping the plates she had been holding, as her father said, ‘You aren’t to speak to Wesley again. In fact, if I see you with any boy, you’ll have the worst beating you’ve ever known.’

  ‘Why?’ she dared to ask.

  ‘Because I don’t want you going bad, that’s why. You come from wicked, evil stock and I won’t have you going bad and bringing disgrace to this house!’

  Disgrace to this house? Ethel thought cynically. Bring disgrace to this house that was noted for violence? Where her brother had run away without a word and her quiet, inoffensive sister had killed herself rather than go on living there? What disgrace could be worse than that?

  She pleaded with her mother to go away with her, find themselves a room, anywhere away from her father and his barely controlled violence.

  ‘We could both get work in a factory. They pay good money, we’d manage well enough. Please, Mam, before something else happens. I don’t know why Glenys died but I know whatever it was isn’t finished.’

  ‘I can’t go. I don’t deserve better. You get what you deserve in this life.’

  ‘What on earth did Glenys do?’

  ‘Oh,’ her mother cried softly, ‘that was my punishment, losing her like that.’

  No matter how Ethel pleaded, there were no explanations.

  From then on life was utter misery. Whatever Ethel did she was punished, her shoulders where Dai constantly grabbed her and shook her, were never free of bruises. No one would explain why, or tell her the reason behind her sister’s suicide. She worked at her job in the café in town, and was given food as part of her wages. For this she was grateful as it meant she didn’t have to sit at the table with her parents in silence and fear, swallowing her food in indigestible lumps. Instead she sat and dreamed of escaping to freedom.

  Several times she tried to find shelter while she made plans to run away. She had few friends, as the house was two miles out of town and most of the girls she had known at school lived far away. Few people visited her at The Dell. It was all right in the summer but in the winter with its long dark nights few ventured there.

  Whenever Dai Twomey’s work as a lorry driver allowed, he would be waiting outside the café to escort her home. ‘You’re unclean,’ he would constantly tell her. ‘Not fit to mix with decent people.’ When she dared to ask for an explanation, he cuffed her around the head and told her not to question his authority. He had to look after her and do what was right.

  * * *

  Kate had told her parents that she had decided to join up and do her bit for the war effort and they had stared at her in disbelief.

  ‘But Kate, dear,’ said her mother, ‘there’s no need. We have to have you here, we can’t manage the business without you! They’ll understand. Food retail is war work and equally as important as other occupations.’ She nudged Kate’s father and added, ‘Tell her, Daddy, explain that she mustn’t go.’

  Kate told them it was too late, that she had signed and would be leaving within the month. She dried her mother’s tears and hid the excitement behind tears of her own. As she comforted her mother, said soothing words, she wondered how Rosie was getting on with her explanations to her Nan.

  * * *

  ‘I’m going away, Nan,’ Rosie said. ‘I’ve joined the Naafi and I’ll be leaving in a few weeks.’

  ‘Oh Rosie, love, do you have to go? I thought with you working on the farm you wouldn’t feel the need to do anything else.’

  ‘I don’t really want to leave you, Nan, but I want to do something and the Naafi seems a suitable job for someone like me.’ She laughed, coaxing her grandmother to do the same. ‘Scrubbing and cleaning and a bit of cooking, that’s all I know. Besides, I can’t imagine me marching and saluting and all that stuff, can you?’

  She felt distressed when she saw how upset her grandmother was during the rest of that day, and went around to see Kate knowing that her new friend would cheer her up. They bought fish and chips and sat eating them on the wall of the park while they discussed their anxieties. Neither had been away from home before and Kate wondered whether she would be able to sleep in a room with other people.

  ‘My biggest worry is not having enough to eat,’ Rosie admitted, helping herself from Kate’s paper package as her own had all gone.

  ‘Are you going to make changes?’ Kate asked.

  ‘How d’you mean?’

  ‘Well, for one thing, are you going to wear make-up now Nan won’t be there to stop you?’

  ‘I did try once,’ Rosie giggled. ‘I put rouge and lipstick on and then washed it off before going out, I felt so stupid.’

  ‘You’ve got lovely eyes. I think you should wear eye-shadow and masca
ra.’

  ‘What?’ Rosie couldn’t have been more shocked if Kate had suggested she became a prostitute. Kate smiled. She would persuade her, in time.

  ‘I wonder if we’ll stay together. Perhaps if we make a formal request they might arrange it?’ Kate mused.

  ‘I hadn’t thought of that. It’ll be awful if we can’t. Imagine sharing with someone we didn’t like.’ They went home each more gloomy than before they had met.

  Ethel didn’t see or hear from Wesley and was distressed by his absence and lack of explanation. What had been so terrible that he had left so suddenly? Was that her fault too? She couldn’t understand how. If she had been wicked surely she would remember? Besides losing her future, losing Wesley meant she had lost her childhood as well. He was her friend with whom she had spent so many happy hours, the recipient of all her innermost thoughts and dreams and he had let her down so badly she couldn’t imagine ever being free from the pain of it.

  When her father was out of the house she sometimes dared to call at the Daniels’ home but each time she was sent hurriedly away. She and her mother were not the only ones with cause to be afraid of her father’s anger. She wrote to Wesley, care of his parents, but if he replied, her mother never let her see the envelopes with his familiar spidery writing on them.

  She continued to plead with her mother to leave, but Molly only shook her head dully. ‘I’m needed here to look after your father and see to the chickens and the garden.’

  Ethel became more and more depressed, imagining that her present life would continue until she died. Then one day, Wesley’s mother came into the café, ordered a cup of tea and a scone and confided that when Wesley had left, he had joined the Navy Canteen Service, a branch of the Naafi, to serve on ships, providing food and shopping services for the seamen.

  Accepting that her mother would never abandon her father and regretfully leaving her to face his wrath, she made her decision. With Mrs Daniels’ reluctant co-operation, Ethel began to make preparations to leave. A letter of application, forms to fill, and the replies were sent to Mrs Daniels’ house and were passed on in the café.