But when her father took the proffered spade and shovelled the first load of earth to cover his son and she heard the sharp clods rattling down on the lid of the coffin, she was suddenly pulled to such grief she was afraid she would fall and closed her eyes against the pain of it. At that point, her mother began to wail, standing alone on the other side of the grave, and she went on and on until the service was over and they were all walking back to the yards again. Poor Ma.
‘Whass goin’ to happen now, Bar’bra?’ Jimmy wanted to know. He’d clung on to her hand all through the service and was holding it still, so tightly that his grip was quite painful.
‘There’ll be a few sandwiches or something,’ she told them. ‘People generally have a bite to eat after. That won’t take long.’
But to her horror, plate-loads of food had been prepared, and were being carried into the house by her neighbours; shrimps, cockles, winkles, fish-paste sandwiches, even a flatmeat pie. And there were boxes full of glasses, and a keg of beer standing in the corner where the kids’ stool had been.
‘Got to give him a good send-off,’ her uncle said cheerfully. ‘Come on Crusher, bor, git that down yer. Mek all the difference that will.’
Thass a party, Barbara thought with disbelief. They’re holding a party. Feeling returned in a rush of temper. How dare they do such a thing! Hain’t they got any sense? All those great coarse mouths chomping up bread an’ marge an’ fish-paste, all that beer slopping over the edge of those glasses an’ running down those stupid chins, an’ Norman burnt to death.
Her father was hunched in his corner again. He had a full glass but for once in his life he wasn’t drinking.
‘Best of the bunch,’ he said, holding the glass in both scarred hands as though it were a bouquet. ‘Well an’ away. Best of the bunch. I should of told him an’ now he’s gone an’ thass too late.’
‘Never you mind, bor,’ his skipper said, comforting him in the only way he knew. ‘He’d of knowd it. Just you drink up.’
‘Thass a cruel mistress, that ol’ sea,’ another commiserated. ‘All onnus knows that. Thass took many a good un, one way or ’nother. You think of ol’ Tanker. Took him.’
‘An’ Froggie,’ one of the uncles put in. ‘I ’member when they brought him in, all over slime, an’ his face caved in, an’ all. You ’member that, don’t you Crusher.’
But Crusher could only sigh.
So they went on encouraging him with gruesome tales. ‘You ’member when Jiggy fell outta the riggin’. That was a funeral! I ’member the percession. All round Pilot Street an’ in ter Chapel Lane.’ ‘You ’member when we took that ol’ corpse out the water. Three mile out that was. The stink of un. D’you ’member? And not one on us knowd un.’
Barbara couldn’t believe they were being so insensitive. It was hideous, barbaric. She strode through the throng until she was standing among them. ‘Stop it!’ she said, the words hissing through clenched teeth. ‘Just stop it! Can’t you see what you’re doin’ to him?’
‘We hain’t a-doin’ nothin’ to him,’ the skipper told her. ‘We’re cheerin’ him up. Ain’t we, bor?’
But one of her uncles moved into the attack. ‘S’pose you know what’s best for us now you’re livin’ up Lonnon,’ he said, sneering at her. ‘S’pose you’re all high an’ mighty now. What you done with that bebby of your’n, eh? You tell us that.’
It was such an unexpected attack that it took her breath away but she fought back at once, bristling at them. ‘What bebby?’
‘The one you was aspectin’ when you went hossin’ off with that soldier boy of your’n.’
You vile man, she thought. How dare you say such a thing! How dare you imply … In a small honest corner of her mind she knew it could easily have been true but that only made it worse. She drew herself up to her full height and pulled in her stomach so that it was as flat as she could make it. ‘Thass just a load of ol’ squit what someone’s been tellin’ you,’ she said. ‘There ain’t a bebby. There never was a bebby. I onny been married five months an’ he been in France four an half of ’em. I’ll trouble you not to spread wicked rumours, Uncle Ned.’
Her mother was at her elbow, flushed in the face and breathing quickly. But she’d come to defend her cousin, not her daughter. ‘That could ha’ been true though,’ she said to Barbara. ‘How was we to know? You went off so quick, you could ha’ been in any ol’ state, we wouldn’t ha knowd.’
It was a shock to come under attack from her own mother but Barbara turned to take her on too. ‘Well I wasn’t,’ she said stoutly. ‘So now you do know.’
‘This is what comes a’ marryin’ a foreigner,’ her mother complained, tears springing to her eyes again. ‘You should ha’ stayed here an’ married one of your own kind, like we all done. Thass what you should ha’ done. But no. You would go your own way. There was no tellin’ you. Well you made your bed so now you must lie on it. An’ your poor brother cold in his grave. You oughtta be ashamed of yourself.’
‘So thass a sin to get married now,’ Barbara said furiously. ‘Is that what you’re sayin’?’
‘You don’ marry out the North End,’ Maudie said. ‘No good never comes of that. As you’ll find out.’ She turned to address her relations. ‘But no, she won’t be told. You’ll see. Never would. Always disobedient she was, even as a littl’un. Downright wilful. Go her own way. Say what she please. Break your heart an’ damn the consequences.’ Grief and drink had tipped her into an anger she couldn’t understand or control. ‘Well don’ you think you can come back here upsettin’ us, just ’cause your brother’s dead. Poor boy. We don’ want you. None of us. You’re no daughter of mine. Not now. So you can just clear off. You made your bed an’ now you just gotta lie on it …’
To be spoken to in such a hateful, harmful way, and right after poor Norman’s funeral, was too much for Barbara to endure. She had to get away. Now. Before they said anything worse. She stepped back, her face stiff with pain, stumbled through the crush, pushing bodies away from her to left and right, careless of spilt beer and scattered food, and pelted out of the yard. She had no idea where she was going, she simply ran blindly, but after a few yards she realised that instinct was taking her to the quayside and then she calmed a little and walked instead of running.
I should never have come up here, she thought as she stood beside the river gazing out at the great soothing expanses of water and sky. I got no place here. They don’t want me. I been cast off. That was a leaden certainty. ‘You’re no daughter of mine.’ Wasn’t that what she said? I should’ve stayed in London. Thass where I belong now. But that brought another rejection into her mind. When she went back – and she’d have to go back, they were expecting her at the depot – where would she stay? She couldn’t live in Childeric Road any more. Not after the awful way Mrs Wilkins had spoken to her. ‘Gallivanting about with your fancy man.’ They all think so badly of me, she anguished. To hear them, you’d think I was a good-time girl, not a married woman. And that hurt almost as much as their rejection. Oh Steve! she mourned. If only you were here and I could talk to you about it. He was the only one who would understand. The only one in all the world. If he were here he’d put his arms round her and kiss her and storm off into her mother’s wretched hovel, tall and handsome in his uniform, and give them a piece of his mind for being so unkind. Oh if only she could see him just for a minute. It was so lonely without him.
She sat sadly on the wall, perching there the way she’d done as a little girl. The quay was full of fishing boats waiting for the tide, their masts dark against the bright sky, their faded sails set, nets and pots already loaded. On the opposite side of the river she could see the spire of East Lynn church, sharp as a bodkin among the bronze branches of the denuded trees. Was it only last spring they’d made love in that haystack? It seemed a lifetime. Was it only last spring they’d strolled around town with their arms round each other and kissed in the Walks and sat in the back row at the pictures and danced in the old Corn E
xchange? This had been her home then and no one had been sent to France and Norman had been alive and everything had been wonderful. Oh Norman! Norman!
Now that the first rush of anger and grief was clearing, she realised that she was sitting in the self same spot where he’d been so good to her the last time they’d been together, where he’d dried her tears and sorted out her problem, getting that form signed, looking after her. She could hear his voice. ‘There’s more than one way to kill a cat … I can see another right here on this ol’ piece a’ paper.’ Dear Norman. He’d been such a good brother, always there and always sensible, and they’d had such fun together when they were little. She let her mind drift back into the past, remembering how they’d gone rowing in the dinghy, and how she’d watched him set out with the fishing fleet that very first time, and how proud he’d been when he came back because he hadn’t been sea-sick. And the afternoon gradually gentled into evening around her, holding her safe in a salty haze, the sky amassing lilac cloud, the river darkening from milky blue to brooding brown, a faint grey mist rising from the water to drift dreamily towards the opposite bank. Thass beautiful, she thought, an’ thass my home no matter what they say.
She was easier now, aware that there was no need to feel rejected, no need to feel anything if she didn’t want to. It was simply a matter of solving her present problems, that was all, the way she and Norman had done that last time. There’s more than one way to kill a cat. She couldn’t stay in Lynn, but then she didn’t want to anyway. And if she couldn’t live in Childeric Road there were other places. If she was to be in the depot by eight o’clock the next morning, she’d have to catch an early train. A workman’s or something. They went very early. Then she’d work through her shift and after that she’d look for a room of her own. There ought to be something somewhere, even in London. If she couldn’t find one straight away, she’d go round to Betty’s mum and see if she’d put her up for a night or two. Or failing that she’d sleep in a shelter. She just had to get on with it, that was all.
Planning her life made her feel better. Although she wasn’t consciously aware of it, she had squared her shoulders and lifted her chin. She would walk back to Becky Bosworth’s and see if there was a fire going and something to eat, because she was cold now and quite hungry. Then she’d get cracking.
There was a fire. She could feel the warmth of it and hear its comfortable hiss as Becky opened the door. And there was a feast on the table, for her aunt had brought home a selection of the funeral shellfish. And sitting by the fire, as if he belonged there, was Victor Castlemain.
She was really pleased to see him. After being spurned and insulted by her family, it was a pleasure to be able to talk to one of her own kind without fear of criticism. ‘I thought you’d gone back to London,’ she said, as she held out her cold hands to the blaze.
‘Went. Did the business. Came back again,’ he told her. It had actually been a good deal more difficult than he made it sound but he certainly wasn’t going to let her know that. ‘Brought you a tin of peaches. In case you were hungry. I didn’t think you’d want much after the funeral.’
‘No,’ she agreed sadly.
‘But peaches might be all right?’
His kindness lifted her spirits. He was so blessedly normal after the miseries of the day. Despite their sadness, the three of them sat up to the table and ate what they could and talked in a gentle, disjointed way, remembering Norman as a boy at school saucing the teacher – ‘D’you remember how pink she used to go? All up her throat. Poor ol’ mawther’ – swimming in the river on a summer’s day – ‘He was always a good swimmer’ – out bird’s nesting, sitting in the Saturday pictures cheering Roy Rodgers – ‘I can’t think what we saw in him.’ It was wonderfully comforting and it spun the meal out for over an hour.
But eventually Vic stood up and said he’d have to be leaving. ‘I’ll be back at five o’clock tomorrow morning.’
‘Five o’clock?’ Becky said. ‘What for?’
‘To drive our Barbara to London.’
‘You sure?’ Barbara asked.
‘Thass why I came back,’ he said. ‘You won’t get there in time for work if you go by train. I checked. Could you be ready at five o’clock?’
‘He’s a good feller,’ Becky approved when he’d gone. ‘I’m glad you’re goin’ back with him. I never did like those ol’ trains, bumpin’ about all over the place. You never know who’s on them. He’ll look after you.’
Waking at five was very odd and driving out of Lynn along completely empty roads in the pitch dark was even odder.
‘I never seen Lynn so empty,’ Barbara said as they purred through Tuesday Market Square. ‘Thass like a ghost town.’ The sight of it was making her shiver.
‘Tell you what,’ Vic said, ‘there’s a blanket on the back seat. Why don’t you wrap it round you an’ have forty winks. I bet you didn’t sleep much last night, did you?’
‘Sure you don’ mind?’ It seemed a bit mean to sleep while he was awake and driving.
‘’Course not,’ he said. ‘You go ahead.’
So she pulled the blanket through to the front seat and cocooned herself in it, glad of its warmth. ‘I shan’t sleep long,’ she said. ‘Just a nap.’
When she woke, they were driving past a tram. It was half past seven and daylight, and they were in London.
‘Said I’d have you back in time,’ he said. ‘’Nother quarter of an hour an’ we shall we there. How’s that for driving?’
She thanked him and meant it. He’d been very good to her these past two days. ‘I don’t know what I’d have done without you’, she told him, ‘an’ thass a fact.’
She couldn’t have said anything to please him better, so he joked to cover his delight. ‘Gone by train,’ he said.
They were at the depot in a quarter of an hour, just as he’d promised. He leant across to open the door for her and as she gathered her things, he wondered whether he could ask her out. ‘I don’t suppose you feel much like dancing Saturday?’
‘No,’ she said sadly. ‘Not really.’
‘Pictures then? I could call for you Thursday.’
‘I shouldn’t think so,’ she said, as she eased out of the car. ‘Thass too soon.’ And as the words were in her mouth she had a sudden terrible vision of Norman lying face downwards in a great sea, turning in the wave, burnt black. It was so overpowering that she had to run into the depot to get away from it.
So he drove away.
It was a great relief to Barbara to be back in uniform with her cap on her head and her ticket rack round her neck, taking her tram out of the depot and off to a working day. Having a job to do rescued her from her thoughts and, even if her passengers complained about the rations and told her the same old tales about the doodlebugs, at least she knew when to answer them and when to listen. That day, to everyone’s relief, they didn’t see any of the horrible things and the only explosions they heard were a long way away. But when the shift was over she was so tired her bones ached.
I’ll get away quick, she decided, soon as I’ve signed off and see if there’s anything advertised in the newsagent’s. It was already growing dark and she didn’t fancy traipsing the streets in the blackout.
Mr Threlfall was standing by the incoming trams with his checkboard in his hand and his pencil behind his ear. He waved to her as she walked towards him and so did another, bulkier figure standing beside him.
It was Aunt Sis. ‘Ah! There you are,’ she said, as Barbara checked out. ‘I come to see you home.’
Barbara retrieved her case and walked with her aunt until they were out of Mr Threlfall’s earshot. Then she explained, rather wearily. ‘I hain’t livin’ at Childeric Road no more, Aunt Sis. I’ve left.’
Sis smiled benignly. ‘I know,’ she said comfortably. ‘Bob told me. I heard all about it. All I need to hear anyway. She’s a good woman our Heather but she’s got it wrong this time. And while we’re at it, lovey, I heard about your poor brother too. A
bad business. Our Betty told me. So you don’t have to tell me anything if you don’t want to.’
After two days overburdened with emotion, it was comforting to be beside such calm. Comforting and soothing, as if the weight of her sorrow were being lifted from her shoulders. They strolled out into the darkening High Street, together but not talking, waited for a tram to emerge from the depot, crossed the High Street, headed off towards Woolworths. They’d walked right past its long frontage before Barbara asked where they were going.
‘Why home,’ Sis said. ‘Where else? You’re comin’ home with me.’
Chapter Eighteen
Aunt Sis – or to give her her full and proper title, Mrs Cecily Tamworth – had lived in her cramped flat above the newsagent’s ever since Dunkirk, maintaining that now she was on her own, two rooms and an outside WC were more than enough for her to keep clean. ‘Just so long as I’ve got room fer me books an’ papers,’ she would say, whenever her brother suggested something better. ‘That’ll do me fine.’ As the years passed and her loss became more bearable, she gradually acquired the few creature comforts that were now indispensable to her, a sagging armchair, eased to accommodate her bulk, a padded stool for her aching feet, the bottle of three star brandy on the dresser to cheer and sustain her, the box of Havana cigars beside it to mellow off the day. It was a solitary life but it was what she wanted.
Nevertheless when her brother Bob came round to see her, anxious because Steve’s wife had nowhere to live and explaining that Heather had ‘been a bit tricky’, she agreed almost without hesitation that the kid could muck in with her ‘for the time being’.
Avalanche of Daisies Page 22
