by Maggie Ford
‘Well, blow me! What brings you ’ere?’
Geraldine gave her one of her brightest smiles, still somewhat stiff but after three days of thinking about what Fenella had said to her, then Alan, her mind was learning to cope again with the world.
‘I thought it was time I came to see yer, Mum.’ She’d automatically lapsed into her old way of speaking, but there was no disguising the veneer of culture she’d acquired, and she saw her mother frown as if she viewed her as slumming it.
‘Well, yer’d best come in.’ Mum stepped back to allow her entry, closing the door behind them to instantly dim the narrow passage. After months of not setting foot here, Geraldine’s unaccustomed nose took in the smell of washing, yesterday’s Sunday dinner, and all the other little smells that had once made home while hardly noticing them. Now they struck her as quite unpleasant, not even a welcoming feel to them.
‘So what did yer come ’ere for?’ her mother asked, leading the way to the kitchen where the inevitable cup of tea would be offered to anyone who entered: friends, neighbours, the man coming to empty the gas or electric meter.
‘I thought it was time I came ter see you rather than you coming to see me.’
‘That’s nice of yer.’ Noisily Mum filled the kettle and put it on the black-leaded gas stove, applying a match to the gas ring which gave a little plop as it ignited. ‘But I didn’t come that often.’
‘As you said, Mum …’ She sat down at the table. ‘It was the buses.’
‘Blooming long trot, that’s why.’
‘Yes. Well, I’m here now.’
Mum turned and studied her. ‘Yer look a lot better than when I last saw yer. More perky. Getting’ out, at last. Must say it took yer long enough.’
Didn’t Mum notice how her words could hurt, or was it deliberate? Geraldine forced cheeriness.
‘Everyone orright? Dad? Fred and Evie, Wally? And Mavis?’
The last name was an effort. Four weeks ago Mavis’s baby had been born, a lovely little girl as ever there was, Mum put it when she’d visited just afterwards. Her lips had tightened when tears had flooded Geraldine’s eyes at hearing it, her testy remark, ‘Ain’t you over it yet? You ain’t the only one ter lose a baby,’ stinging like a scab ripped from a half-healed sore.
Now Geraldine asked the question, managing to stay dry-eyed and without her voice wavering, ‘And the baby?’
‘Doin’ grand,’ Mum said casually as she put two cups and saucers out on the kitchen table, giving herself the worst chipped one, and began ladling a spoonful of tea into the brown teapot, that too somewhat chipped – no money to buy such luxuries as a new teapot the second a chip or two appeared on the lid or spout.
‘Lovely little thing, she is. Barbara. Barbara Hilda, after me. That’s nice, I thought. But of course it’s another mouth for ’er ter feed, and ’er Tom on the dole again too. She could of done without ’aving another baby at the moment, way things is going. But then, babies take no ’eed of people being ’ard up, do they? They just come, money or no money.’
It seemed to Geraldine’s sensitive mind that Mum was delighting in rubbing it in, but she fought back the threatening tears that would only irritate her mother, seeing her as the one with the money and therefore with no cause to feel sorry for herself.
Ironic though that the one living from hand to mouth with a husband out of work still should have another baby to feed, a bouncing, bonny girl with nothing at all wrong with her, while she with everything to give a baby should lose hers. It seemed to her that Him up there enjoyed playing games just to see how a body reacted – ‘Like playing chess with us all,’ came the bitter thought.
It must have shown on her face for Mum stopped pouring hot water into the teapot to glare at her.
‘What’s the matter now?’
‘Nothing.’ Geraldine shook her head vigorously to clear the moisture misting her eyes, but Mum was already ahead of her.
‘You ain’t cryin’ again, are yer? Is that why yer’ve come ’ere ter see me, fer a bit more sympathy?’
The moisture dried as if by magic. If she’d wanted sympathy, Mum was the last one she’d have come to. She had come from a sense of duty and all she seemed to be reaping was a hard, unforgiving reception.
‘Yer’d be more upset,’ Mum was going on, ‘if yer was in yer sister’s boots. We’re ’aving ter ’elp her out these days with a bit of this, a bit of that, ’er Tom gettin’ just a day’s work ’ere, a day’s work there, if he’s lucky. On the dole fer months on end and ’er not knowing where ter turn for ’er next penny. You should count yerself lucky, ’aving a bit of money around yer, and count yer blessings instead of moping all over the place, and p’raps put yer ’and in yer pocket to ’elp ’er out a bit. Yer can always ’ave another baby any time, but money never do come easy – except fer some.’
The tea drawn, she began pouring it into the two cups, adding milk from an opened bottle, adding sugar. Geraldine had gone off sugar but had no will left to stop her.
True, she hadn’t given her sister anything to help her these last couple of months, but she had been ill, had lost a baby, hadn’t been herself. On the other hand the last time she’d tried to give her something, Mavis had turned on her savagely saying she didn’t want people’s charity, other people’s handouts. Yet she was happy enough to accept handouts from Mum who was just as hard up as she at times, and from Wally desperately saving to get married. The odd thing about not having to fight for money was how to give to others without appearing superior and patronising.
‘What yer doin’ fer Christmas?’ It was the inevitable question, November always the month for Mum to ask what you were doing for Christmas, more or less demanding an appearance.
‘I’m not sure yet,’ she hedged, looking across at Tony whose expression remained blank and she knew what that meant – he had no intention of spending Christmas with her people. To his credit he had no intention of spending it with his own, they keeping no contact at all.
It was Saturday evening and she and Tony were at Mum’s. So was everyone else, her brothers and sisters and one or two relatives on Dad’s side, each with a present for Dad’s birthday as well as a little something to supplement the birthday tea for which Mum had made a cake with icing on.
Mavis sat with her new baby, Barbara, on her lap. It had been an effort of will to go and sit beside Mavis, smile and force herself to admire her baby and not let herself be seen as resentful, an emotion that still churned within her, threatening to surface if not carefully guarded. Even so, she was sure Mavis saw through her bright façade and would alternately show pride in her achievement where her sister had failed or draw back from appearing too pleased with herself.
Either way it nibbled away at Geraldine’s resolution to remain strong, made her feel a complete failure, even though Mavis had a wan and weary look and the baby clothes were obviously second-hand, as were the clothes her eighteen-month-old son Simon had on. Mavis’s own best dress with its cardigan was little better than everyday wear, Tom looking equally poor, the little family enough to wring the heart of the sturdiest onlooker.
Geraldine ached to suggest giving them something to buy themselves a decent outfit each and put a bit of good food on their table, but again drew back from the possible reaction she might reap.
Dad of course was in his Sunday suit, still able to hold down his job and bring in a little money, if erratically. He sat amid his family, stiff in his buttoned-up jacket and waistcoat with its silver-plated fob watch and chain, his collar and tie stretching his neck, though they would come off later when he’d had a drink or two.
Everyone was dressed in their best such as it was, although Geraldine, knowing the quality of what they considered their best, had deliberately sought to wear something modest. Even so, she was aware of the glances towards the green wool dress with its fashionably lowered waistline, and read envious disdain into those glances. Even Tony’s quite ordinary suit drew looks at its cut and quality.
&nb
sp; ‘Well, yer’d better make up yer mind,’ Mum said, as she passed the sandwich plate across the table around which they were all crowded. ‘So’s we know what yer doing fer Christmas. Unless of course yer planning ter spend it with some of yer friends.’
Mum’s intimation was glaringly obvious, that she saw her family not good enough for her any more, and yet it wasn’t like that. How could she command Tony to spend his Christmas with her family if he had other plans. She had to follow him or cause a row, and she hated rows.
‘It’s not like that, Mum,’ protested Geraldine, taking a couple of fish-paste sandwiches from the plate that was being offered her, but Mum didn’t answer and her refusal to reply rankled still more.
She was glad when the evening was over, with Dad nodding almost casually to her birthday present to him of a pair of leather gloves, a white scarf to wear with his Sunday suit and a large tin of pipe tobacco, nothing too grand to embarrass him. She’d had a disconcerting sense that he’d looked on the gift as meagre considering her circumstances, yet had it been grander she was sure he’d have taken it as being ostentatious and belittling to one in his circumstances. It seemed to her that there was no way she would ever win.
As for Tony, he seemed heartily glad to be home, hadn’t once referred to the evening or to spending Christmas with her family, and she knew that if he hadn’t so far made other plans he would be going out of his way now to make them. In that respect she felt she couldn’t care less what they did over Christmas so long as the months following it would speed by so as to heal her still raw sense of loss the quicker.
Maybe in a few months they might try again for a baby and the next time it would be successful.
Chapter Nineteen
Last month Tony had suggested she manage his shop. ‘It might help to get your mind off all you’ve been through,’ he’d said.
It had made her angry. First, that he should think helping him in his business was the answer to what she had gone through, and second, the very words ‘all you have been through,’ rather than we, as though her loss had been hers alone, nothing to do with him. Yet she knew he was trying to help, and now, a month into 1922, she felt she was at last turning the corner, if not completely.
Every now and again, even as she joined in the spirit of this new year, being invited to house parties, dinner parties, accompanying others to the theatre – all those new friends Tony was making in his astonishing rise to prosperity – the ghost of her dead child would reappear, she would hear that strange haunting mew and remember the moment that little life became extinguished and all the pain would come flooding back even as she laughed and smiled with those in whose company she was at the time. Sometimes it felt worse than the initial sense of loss.
Tony would never be capable of feeling what she felt for all his efforts to help her get over it. He was making money hand over fist and the more he made the more he strove to make, so that in his haste to rise up in the world little Caroline, dying at birth, held no place in his heart. He’d not seen her alive, had not heard her cry, so how could her memory ever mean anything to him? And if she mentioned their child or appeared to slide into a moment of moping, he would grow impatient with her, these days demanding bluntly that she snap out of it.
‘I’m trying to give you a good time. Why can’t you appreciate it? All the moping in the world isn’t going to change things. What’s the point of my trying to provide you with the good things in life if you can’t appreciate them and throw all that I’m trying to do back in my face? You couldn’t have had a better Christmas.’
They’d had a lovely Christmas and a simply wonderful New Year, she and Tony invited to spend both with some of Tony’s friends with whom he was beginning to acquire a place in their social hierarchy.
She’d met a couple of them last year at a party, Yvonne and Terrance Gallsworth, he too in the trade but far larger than Tony with jewellery shops in Birmingham, Chester and Gloucester. Of the other people, one introduced as Douglas Timmerson apparently had a small factory, another, George Grieg, seemed to be engaged in some sort of business dealership – all rather obscure though they seemed to know a lot about Tony. Both were somewhat intimidating: Timmerson was heavily built, fat and overbearing, Greig large and raw-boned with a scowl that showed even through his broad, handsome grin. Their wives, however, were both slim, very beautiful, expensively dressed and made up with powder, mascara and lipstick, their hair fashionably bobbed or marcel waved. Learning to mix easily with them, it seemed to her that she was living two lives – this and the one she took on when going to see her parents.
She’d gone there, without Tony of course, on Christmas morning with presents for all the family: a soft, thick cardigan for Mum, a warm pullover for Dad – she’d have loved to give something more expensive but feared to in case they were misinterpreted as usual. Even what she gave were received somewhat coldly, a nod and a thank you, to be left on the table without even being tried up against them. A pair of humble, home-knitted gloves given to her in return had brought home both how hard it was for them to pay out for presents at all and the guilty fact that these days she would never be wearing such things, that they would lie in a drawer unused except to be displayed on the times she went there during the colder months of the year.
Wally and Clara, with both of whom she felt far more comfortable, had been pleased enough with theirs, something for the bottom drawer. Clara had admired the set of Irish linen sheets, pillow cases and the embroidered cushion covers, had unpacked them and held them up for display, coming to give her future sister-in-law a big thank-you cuddle while Wally beamed, no doubt seeing himself lying back on that linen with his wife beside him.
Evie and Fred too had been genuinely pleased with theirs: a fashionable dress for Evie, now a pert young lady, and a silk tie for Fred to wear in his intended upward climb in the newspaper world, their exuberant thanks conveying no animosity at all.
She’d popped to Mavis with something for all of them: clothes mostly, a warm skirt and jumper, a shirt and pullover, clothes and toys for the children, maybe going a little over the top, but Geraldine felt they needed all they could get.
She had asked if there was anything Mavis wanted, anything she could do, and at first Mavis had said no, then almost rebelliously said, ‘Yes, yer could, such as get my Tom a job so we won’t ’ave ter keep going cap in ’and ter the likes of them what’s better off than we are.’
It was a stinging reply that had thrown her for a moment, then Mavis had added as if regretting her words, ‘Or else a few quid ter get us over the next few weeks till he does find a proper job.’
A pathetic entreaty and Geraldine saw the tears spring as Mavis broke down, blubbering while her husband looked on in wretched embarrassment.
‘We’re in debt. Tom did a bit of borrowing. They want it paid back and he ain’t got the money ter pay it back and we owe on the rent, four weeks in arrears, and the landlord’s threatening to evict us if we don’t pay somethink. We don’t know where to turn. I daren’t tell Mum, and Tom’s family can’t ’elp us. They’re as ’ard up as we are. Thank God we’re ’aving Christmas dinner at Mum an’ Dad’s, else we wouldn’t be ’aving nothink.’
‘Why in God’s name didn’t you tell me?’ Geraldine had exploded.
She’d delved into her purse and brought out the paltry sum required to cover the four weeks back rent: twenty-two shillings in all, plus a couple of pounds to see them over what should have been for them a festive season. When the banks opened after Christmas she had taken out money from her allowance which Tony always made sure was very substantial to hand to her sister prior to New Year’s Day, saying she didn’t want it paid back and would be upset if she tried to do so. But looking around the poor living room with its tatty, second-hand furniture, its scuffed linoleum, its lack of ornaments, just some home-made Christmas paper chains and on the mantelpiece over a tiny flame of a fire a few Christmas cards, including her own, she knew there was no likelihood of Mavis ever payin
g the money back whether she’d have intended to or not.
It was agreed to say nothing to Mum about it. But even though she felt Mavis was on her side again, her sister seemed to continue bearing resentment towards her from the fact that she’d had to ask for her help at all. It was an odd situation, the sisterhood that had once existed between them no longer there.
As expected there had been no card from her. One had come from Mum and Dad saying love from them including Evie and Fred, and one from Wally and Clara, a few from relatives and one from her old workmate, Eileen Shaw – not a word since her marriage and then, typically, a Christmas card enclosing a note saying she was married, living in South London and expecting a baby in six weeks time, which immediately brought such an agony of emptiness to Geraldine’s stomach that she thought it would rip itself out through her very flesh.
There had been one from Tony’s parents, an insignificant, postcard thing that struck Geraldine as hardly worth posting, wishing him Happy Christmas, her name not mentioned. There’d been a great ostentatious one from Fenella, full of Christmassy sentiments, and the cards from the many friends Tony had made over the past year stood in a double row on the shelf over the fireplace of the flat. (Geraldine had settled down well in the flat with its cosy feel and in the hub of things. Tony had been right in that it had helped lay the ghost that had haunted every corner of the house they’d left.)
There was one card that did not sit alongside all the others, a small, unpretentious card from Alan Presley, wishing her every happiness in her new home and that her life would be easier and more contented as time went on. It held a note of nostalgia that made her want to cry, almost feeling his loneliness, and had borne the words, ‘With all my heartfelt love, Alan.’
She’d sent him one in return, saying she hoped he’d have a happy Christmas, knowing that it probably wouldn’t be, refraining of course from mentioning his admission of love the day he’d visited her. She couldn’t help wondering what sort of Christmas he would have with no family of his own but his parents. By now a man his age should have had his own family.
