by Annie Murray
‘Get out of my bloody way, woman!’
Grace heard Neville’s arrival, as indeed most of the street must have done in the calm of this spring evening, the door slamming thunderously behind him and the howling of her younger son as he roared, ‘And get these brats out of the way as well!’ She heard Edward crying as their nanny hurriedly escorted them upstairs. Grace clenched her hands until the nails dug into her palms. Neville had very little time for his sons, spared them no attention or tenderness.
She stepped out of the front parlour into the hall where he was standing, so swollen up with fury she thought his shirt buttons might fly off. She glanced coolly at him.
‘Damn it – look!’
‘What is it, Neville?’ He was so prone to outbursts of temper that she had learned over the years to remain absolutely calm in the face of it. This was effortless nowadays since her feelings towards her childish boor of a husband had passed through pain and loathing to an icy indifference.
‘Are you blind, or just dim-witted, woman – look!’
In his hand was a large feather, greyish rather than white, but its meaning as it was thrust at him in the street was clear enough.
‘Some damn woman—’ he spat out the word as if it in itself was an insult, ‘had the gall to stick it in the front of my coat!’
Grace tried to summon at least a pretence of indignation as Neville hurled the feather down on a polished side table and poured himself a large whiskey. Grace watched him with distaste. Her Temperance upbringing gave her an inbuilt revulsion for his drinking. He took a large mouthful and she saw his florid cheeks suck in and out as he washed it around his mouth.
You are foul, she thought. You disgust me. He was still young – not yet forty – though a little portly, and dressed in the clothes of a much older man: a thick worsted suit with watch-chain and weskit, and a Homburg for outdoors.
‘But where?’ Grace asked.
‘It was in – I don’t know where . . .’ He took another gulp from the glass. The fact that he’d been set upon by the woman – one of those suffragette harridans most likely – as he came out of one of the more notorious brothels on the Warwick Road was hardly something he could tell Grace.
‘It doesn’t matter where, does it? ’Ere I am, working night and day – the factory’s never quiet – keeping most of the British Army’s Motor Transport in supplies, and I get treated like a shirker and a coward.’ He banged the empty glass down on a little rosewood table so hard that Grace jumped.
‘But, Neville, you did say just the other day that shirkers ought to be tracked down and arrested.’
‘Not me though, for heaven’s sake! God knows it’s no good trying to talk to your sort. I’m wasting my time.’
He strode out of the room and went crashing up the stairs.
Grace was left standing alone in the middle of the room. ‘Oh dear, poor, poor you,’ she murmured. The loathing in her eyes and voice was unmistakable.
Two days later he burst into the house again earlier than usual, loud and elated.
‘The Master of the house is home!’ he bawled from the hall. ‘Is no one here to greet him?’
Grace, the nanny, Dorothy and the children dutifully appeared in the hall and stood in a semicircle in front of him. Grace laid her hands on the boys’ shoulders.
‘Well, I’ve done it!’ Neville let out his bellow of a laugh. ‘Come ’ere, boys – your father’s got summat to tell you.’
Robert and Edward stepped uncertainly towards him as Grace gave them a little push.
‘Well.’ Neville squatted down, pulling his sons between his thick thighs. ‘Listen to me. I want to tell you summat.’
The two boys fixed their eyes obediently on his face, Robert with his father’s thickset looks, Edward fair and slender.
‘Your daddy’s going away to be a big, brave soldier.’
Grace gasped, hands going to her cheeks. ‘What? What’re you saying, Neville?’
‘It’s all fixed. Joe Grable can run the firm – he’s too old to enlist and he’s worked there since ’e were a lad. Could run the place in his sleep. And I’m off to the Front, to serve my country.’ He stood up, shoving his sons away as if they were tiresome puppies.
‘But you could get killed, Neville,’ Grace said carefully.
‘But you could get killed, Neville,’ he mocked her in a prattling voice. ‘So the little woman has begun to grasp something about warfare these last two years has she?’ He strode over and caught hold of her roughly under the chin. ‘Concerned for me all of a sudden, are you?’
‘You’re hurting me, Neville.’ She kept her voice even in front of the children, the servants. ‘I’m thinking of our – your boys, our sons. You’re their father.’
‘Oh yes, I’m their father – at least according to you. Well, boys want to grow up with a father they can look up to, and that’s what I’m going to give ’em.’ He released Grace’s chin, jerking her face aside, and as he did so, caught sight of the expression in Dorothy’s eyes as she stood at the foot of the stairs.
‘Don’t look at me like that, woman.’ He looked round at them all with a horrible sneer on his face. ‘Hell, to think I’ve got to leave my lads in the hands of all you namby-pamby, coddling women.’
‘So, my wench, your husband’s off to the Front tomorrow.’
Neville’s body thrust against hers, fleshy and bullying in its force as they lay between crisp linen sheets.
‘Hardly the Front.’ Grace spoke quietly, evenly, though her mind was recoiling with dread. ‘You’ll surely be training for quite some time yet?’ She tried to inch her body surreptitiously away from his, revolted by his hard maleness forcing against her.
‘So come on then—’ Neville pulled himself up so he was leaning half over her, his breath thick with whiskey. ‘Where are the tears, the “Oh Neville, I don’t want you to go?” Some wife you are!’
‘I don’t wish you to go,’ Grace lied, struggling to speak as he was forcing the breath out of her. ‘But you chose to do it, Neville. You didn’t have to, darling.’
‘Darling, eh?’
Suddenly he forced his hand up between her legs, rooting against the folds of her nightshirt. ‘Let’s see how much feeling you’ve got for me, shall we, you prissy, bloodless creature. All these years I’ve spent servicing a dead cow. That’s what it’s like with you – and less rewarding probably. When I want you panting for me you’re there with your eyes shut as if I’m serving you poison, you prim neuter, you.’
Grace let out a moan, automatically squeezing her eyes closed.
‘Look at me!’ He gripped her cheeks between the fingers of one hand, squeezing hard, and Grace couldn’t contain her cry of pain, hands clawing at him to release her.
‘That’s it – if I can’t have you moaning with pleasure you’ll have to moan without it instead!’
Releasing her face, he wrenched up her nightgown and forced her legs apart. He started to force a thick finger up inside her, cursing.
‘Dry as a dusty attic. Well, see ’ow yer like this then!’
He pushed his face into the most private parts of her, so that all she could feel was the hard grip of his hands on her thighs, his tongue licking, intruding, and the painful rasp of his stubbly chin.
‘Oh God,’ she whimpered. ‘No – stop. Please. I beg you, not this . . .’ The most degrading, disgusting . . . She felt sick with revulsion at him, at those unseen, awful parts of her body . . . She wanted to lose consciousness rather than feel any more of this gross nuzzling. She put her hands tight over her face, forced her mind right down into the blackness inside herself.
‘That’s better – I like a nice wet cunt . . .’
He was hugely aroused now, and she knew her own powerlessness was as much a stimulant to him as the feel of her body.
‘Now then, my wench.’ He pushed up hard inside her, his face, wet with her juices forced against her own cheeks, his thick-lipped mouth on hers making her sick to her stomach.
/> ‘Go on,’ he pumped urgently. ‘Cry out – you’ve got to cry out . . .’
Grace squeezed out a few distressed, catlike sounds and he climaxed, arms tensed straight, face puce, the veins on his neck sticking out.
Minutes later he was asleep, prone on his belly, breathing heavily.
Grace crept from the bed and poured water from the pitcher on the washstand into the deep, rose-ringed bowl. She washed all that she could of him away from her sore body, still sick with revulsion. She who had, all those years ago, committed this act of union with a man in such rapture! So long ago, the feelings buried by all that had happened since, that it seemed a life belonging to someone else.
She stood looking at Neville before blowing out the lamp.
Die, she prayed. Die an honourable death in France. The stain be on my soul, but God in heaven, please grant it that he die.
Death was to visit Angel Street, one death among so many in 1917, yet one which was as tragic and untimely as any of them.
Early one April morning, returning from the privy down the yard, Mercy heard a woman’s high, grief-stricken wail, a shrill keening that no walls would contain.
She hesitated for a moment, unsure where it was coming from, the sound causing the hair to stand up on her neck and her heart to beat like a hammer. Mrs Ripley was also out there, staring down towards the entry, face as hard as a flat-iron.
‘My God!’ Mercy cried aloud. ‘That’s Elsie!’
She tore down to number one and as she did so their door opened and Bummy Pepper tore out pulling on his jacket as he ran heavily, lurchingly down the entry.
She heard Elsie’s cries coming from upstairs and stepped inside, relieved to see Rosalie looking the picture of health. Jack was with her.
‘What’s going on?’
‘Our Cathleen—’ Jack could barely get the words out. ‘Summat’s ’appened to ’er.’
‘Where’s your dad . . .?’
‘Gone for Dr Manley.’
It had gone quiet upstairs. ‘Should I go up?’ Mercy asked, full of dread.
‘I think yer should,’ Rosalie was trembling. ‘None of us knows what to do – she’s up the top.’
Mercy climbed the narrow stairs which, unlike theirs at number two, had a thin runner of carpet up the middle of them. The second flight was bare and Mercy felt as if her boots were making the most deafening sound.
‘Doctor?’ Elsie sprang out of the attic room looking like a madwoman. Her red hair was a wild mass round her head and her eyes were stretched wide and full of terror. ‘Oh, it’s you. Oh my God,’ she moaned. ‘I thought you was Dr Manley.’
‘What’s happened? I hope you don’t mind me coming up, only . . .’
Elsie grabbed Mercy’s hand and pulled her into the room.
‘Look – look at ’er! My girl – what the ’ell’s ’appened to ’er?’
She broke down again and began sobbing helplessly. ‘I don’t know what to do for ’er. I just don’t know how to help ’er!’
Mercy’s legs turned weak and shaky at the sight of Cathleen. A seeping patch of red half covered her pillow and a very straight line of blood led from her mouth down the side of her chin. Her face was sickly yellow against her red hair, lips a strange blue. Her eyes were closed and she seemed lifeless, lying there on her side, except for an occasional shallow, rasping breath.
‘I can’t rouse ’er!’ Elsie cried, going to the bed again. She picked up her daughter’s limp hand. ‘Cathleen, Cathleen, chicken, say summat to me! Open your eyes and look at me – it’s your mom. Just show me you can hear me for God’s sake!’
Cathleen’s head gave the faintest movement.
‘There – did you see that?’ Elsie shook her suddenly, taking her by the shoulders, the girl’s head lolling back, and there came a sudden, horrifying gush of blood from Cathleen’s mouth. Mercy saw it spurt up in a thick, scarlet jet. Cathleen’s back arched and her eyes snapped wildly open for a second as the blood poured out over her chin, spreading darkly across the bed. Elsie screamed in horror, recoiling from her, and Cathleen fell back like a rag doll and lay quite still. Elsie’s screams went on and on.
Mercy felt the blood drain from her own face. Blackness come down on her like a shutter. When she came groggily round from her faint she was propped against the wall, head pushed between her knees and Elsie was beside Cathleen sobbing and shouting, imploring her to speak.
By the time Bummy arrived back with Dr Manley, Cathleen was dead.
‘I told ’er. I kept telling ’er to get a job somewhere else.’
The doctor told him over and over that there was nothing to suggest Cathleen’s munitions work had anything to do with her death, but Bummy needed to blame something and it was all he could think of.
‘I’ve seen ’em,’ he said, distraught, to anyone who’d listen. ‘Them young girls all fainting and sick outside them shell factories. It killed ’er, that did. It did for our girl.’
The doctor said Cathleen had died of a brain haemorrhage, a ruptured artery in her head. But when he talked to Elsie during the numb days after Cathleen’s death he said, ‘You know, Mrs Pepper, I’ve known Cathleen since she was a young child, and I’ve often suspected that she wasn’t long for this world. That bluish complexion, the lack of strength . . . The child was almost certainly born with a defective heart. If it hadn’t been for this, that would most likely have killed her sooner or later.’
‘All this time and we never knew.’ Elsie was inconsolable. ‘Why didn’t ’e tell us?’
‘’E said ’e couldn’t’ve done nothing except for upset and worry us,’ Bummy said, fighting the tears which kept welling up in his eyes. His face was shrunken, the life knocked out of it. After a silence he said, ‘I don’t know. I don’t bloody know, that I don’t.’
‘At least we’ve got ’er to bury,’ Elsie said. ‘Not like Frank. Oh Alf, what’s ’appening to our family? We’ve always looked after our kids, tried to bring ’em up right. Now everything’s falling apart. And Tom and Johnny going over there . . .’ Sobbing, she said, ‘I’d cry out before God if I thought there was one, but now I’m not so sure there is.’
Chapter Sixteen
September 1917
They marched into Ypres at evening, along the road from Poperinge, walking in a silence broken only by the clump of boots on the cobbled streets and the thud of guns. It was already almost dark as they crossed the Ypres–Yser Canal, and the silky blue of the sky was lit up ahead by the German counter-attack, shells exploding, flashes of light which quickly evaporated, leaving it seeming a shade darker than before.
Tom marched, half hypnotized by the rhythmic sound of feet around him and heady from drinking rum in the estaminet in Poperinge. Johnny was ahead of him along the line, and with them somewhere, two other Midlanders, Billy Cammett from Kidderminster and Fred Donaldson from Erdington. The four of them had been transferred to this company together and were now surrounded by taciturn, undramatic Suffolk men, some of whom had heard the boom of the guns from Flanders across their farmland even before they’d left home. Most were young like himself, no more than lads. In this war you could be a veteran at twenty-one.
The air was rank with smoke and cordite. It was dry tonight. Earlier a hazy sun had shone over the flat Belgian fields as they waited behind the lines, rehearsing campaign strategies, outlining objectives again and again for this push on Zonnebeke, one of the hurdles standing in the way of Passchendaele Ridge. They had eaten well – for here at least – concoctions fashioned from army biscuits, bully beef rissoles, Trench pudding with jam. Johnny had boxed that afternoon against a beefy-faced farm lad from Saxmundham.
And they wrote letters. Tom sent a postcard to his mom and dad. He sat for a long time trying to write to Mercy. Mercy, his girl, his love. He strained to see her face before him, this girl from another existence. He found he had no words. Since August, words to describe anything, to connect in any true way with the life at home, had deserted him. His first experience at t
he Front, his soldiering baptism, was the Passchendaele salient and even those present were hard pushed to take in the extremity of its horrors. The letter was tucked, barely begun, into the pocket of his tunic, pressed tight to his heart. He kept Mercy’s image as a light, a flower in no man’s land, a shred of purity to keep him a man.
Tom had known very early on that he was not made for the army: all the noisy camaraderie into which Johnny fitted as if he had been born to the life. Johnny, quickly christened ‘Ginger’ by the Suffolks, relished the ribbing, the half-friendly brawls, the boxing, drinking, everyone in together.
Almost from the moment he began training Tom had loathed all of it, ashamed though he was to admit it. This was what it was to be a man: soldiering. It had been exciting to get out of Birmingham: Sutton Park, France, Belgium. But he was homesick. Missed his mom and his sisters, even dopey old Cathleen. And with an ache of longing and desire made strong by all the talk of sexual exploits by the other lads, he missed Mercy. He dreamed of her constantly, her face, hair, her bare skin . . . This, all this war was a waste of time for no other reason than it took him away from her.
Tom played football while they were on rest, did his best to join in, but mostly he sat, quiet, on his own. Johnny picked up French or Belgian girls with casual ease, all attracted by his strong muscular frame, his lively cheek, his generosity and jokes. This evening a round-faced blonde had sat on Johnny’s lap in the estaminet screaming with laughter, pressing kisses on his cheeks although they shared barely a word of spoken language in common. Tom knew perfectly well that Johnny’s relations with women had progressed a hell of a lot further than his ever had.
