The Bells of Bournville Green

by Annie Murray

  ‘I’m all right, Mom – I’m going to be all right,’ Pat assured her, weeping weakly as she spoke. ‘I’m so, so sorry . . .’

  ‘How could you do something like this to us?’ The words choked out harshly. ‘You’ve never been like this . . . You were a good girl . . . Your father is in a dreadful state . . . He’s been praying, praying, with no let-up until I’m afraid he’ll make himself ill!’

  Greta could feel herself beginning to boil. Why did everything always revolve round Stanley Floyd, as if no one else ever had any feelings? Who cared if he was praying or not? And she knew Mrs Floyd was afraid of her husband.

  ‘Pat’s very weak,’ she pointed out. ‘She’s lost a lot of blood.’

  This seemed to penetrate through Mrs Floyd’s frozen exterior to the real kindliness which lay beneath. Suddenly, she fell to her knees by the bed, tears welling in her brown eyes.

  ‘Oh, my poor dear!’ she cried, weeping now and not seeming to care who saw. ‘My poor little girl. . .’

  ‘But Daddy?’ Pat’s expression was terrible.

  Mrs Floyd closed her eyes. It was a moment before she opened them again. Her silence seemed to say everything there was to say and her tears continued to flow. They were all crying, Greta as well. A nurse walked down to the bottom of the ward, gave them all a distasteful stare, then turned on her heel and went away.

  ‘What did he say?’ Pat sobbed.

  Mrs Floyd wiped her eyes, but her face creased again with terrible grief.

  ‘I don’t know if he’ll ever be able to forgive you.’

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Pat stayed in hospital for almost three weeks, very low after all the blood she had lost and fighting an infection that sent her temperature soaring. Greta visited her often, but Pat swore her to secrecy.

  ‘I don’t want anyone else knowing,’ she said, her face pinched with worry. ‘Just tell them I’m poorly.’

  She was in a dreadful state all the time she was in there. Although her mother came to visit, she did so secretly: Pat’s father would not countenance her coming back into his house. She had broken one of the Ten Commandments in the most wanton and shameful of ways, and so far as he was concerned, his daughter was dead to him.

  And just when other Cadbury girls might have been able to give her friendship, Pat refused to let them know. She was popular in her quiet way and they kept asking after her. Greta found it difficult bearing the burden of Pat’s secret tragedy and having to make up stories about her having had appendicitis, which is what they decided on. Despite all that, it did not stay a secret.

  One Saturday afternoon when Pat was still in hospital Greta opened the door to find Marleen on the doorstep with the kids.

  ‘Oh!’ she said startled. It wasn’t like Marleen to call. ‘What’re you doing here?’

  ‘Just thought I’d come. Don’t you want to see me?’ Marleen responded in her usual aggressive style.

  ‘Well, yeah – I just wasn’t expecting you, that’s all. Hello, Mary Lou, Elvis! Trev – we’ve got visitors!’

  Trevor was on the sofa watching the football and Elvis, who was toddling now, ran in and flung himself roaring into his lap.

  ‘Oi mate!’ Trevor gave a pretend groan and rolled his eyes, which made Elvis gurgle with laughter. ‘You’re like the human cannonball!’

  ‘You be careful with your Uncle Trevor,’ Marleen said. ‘You’ll do him an injury.’

  ‘No, he’s all right.’ Trevor laughed. ‘D’you wanna watch the football, Elvis?’

  The kids gravitated towards Trevor, and Marleen buttonholed Greta in the kitchen. She leant up against the back of a chair. Greta could see her looking round, sizing the place up to see if there was anything new.

  ‘Nice outfit,’ Greta said. She always got on better with Marleen if she complimented her.

  Marleen smiled smugly. She’d got a job now, part-time in a clothes shop in town, and she had a bit of spare money for clothes. Today she had on a straight pinafore dress in big black and white checks over a white roll-neck jumper, her hair swinging long with a fringe. Marleen fancied herself as looking like the model Jean Shrimpton.

  ‘Ta.’ She flung her hair back, then looked down at the floor, rubbing the toe of her black shoe round a rough hole in the lino. ‘Shame,’ she said. ‘I’d’ve thought you could run to a new bit of lino, couldn’t you, Gret? It’s not as if you and Trev have got kids as a drain on yer.’

  No,’ Greta said drily, making the tea. She wasn’t going to be drawn on that subject. Marleen was ever so nosy about it. But she had other fish to fry today.

  ‘So—’ she eyed Greta slyly. ‘What’s this I hear about your mate Pat?’

  ‘What about her?’ Greta said sharply.

  ‘Why’s she in hospital?’

  ‘She had her appendix out,’ Greta said. ‘I’ve only got Rich Tea, sorry,’ she added. ‘Trev’s eaten all the others.’

  ‘That’s not what Trev’s Mom said,’ Marleen persisted.

  ‘What – that he’s polished off all the Bourbons?’

  ‘No. She said . . .’ Marleen whispered the words importantly, eyes agleam. ‘That Pat went to a back-street abortionist.’

  The blood rushed to Greta’s cheeks. ‘Is that why you came round? To spread lies and gossip?’

  Marleen narrowed her eyes. ‘It ain’t lies though, is it? I heard Nancy Biddle telling Mom that Trevor came to her saying Pat had turned up with some bloke and was drenched in blood from head to foot, and that he had to go and call an ambulance because she’d had a botched job. She said Trevor was in a right state . . .’

  Greta knew this was true. Trevor had come in from seeing the ambulance off, trembling and white as a sheet. It was partly the sight of all the blood, of course.

  ‘I’ve never seen anything like that,’ he’d said, sinking down on the sofa. ‘How could she do it? Killing her own child? She ain’t the type.’ He put his hand to his head. ‘I feel all funny – that was horrible that was.’

  Greta was furious with him. She had asked him not to tell anyone and he had gone running to his Mom, and now Ruby knew as well and soon everyone would because Nancy Biddle was leaky as a cracked bucket.

  All she said to Marleen was, ‘Don’t you go spreading evil gossip about my friend. You just shut it – right?’

  ‘So it’s true then?’ Marleen smirked triumphantly. ‘Little Pat, eh? Not such a Holy Joe after all then is she?’

  Trembling with rage, Greta poured the tea and swept past Marleen into the front room, ignoring her. She didn’t trust herself to speak. Marleen followed, a smug smile on her face.

  ‘You all right, Trev?’ she asked, as he romped with Mary Lou and Elvis. ‘You like your Uncle Trev, don’t you kids?’

  This wound Greta up even more, and as soon as Marleen had gone, she erupted.

  ‘Why did you go and tell your Mom about Pat? What the hell did you think you were doing? She’ll tell everyone under the bloody sun now!’

  ‘No she won’t – I said not to. Anyway –’ abruptly he turned nasty, ‘why shouldn’t I? She turns up at our house looking like summat from a slaughterhouse . . . I can talk to who I like, I don’t have to ask your permission.’

  ‘For God’s sake, Trevor – she’s telling everyone! My Mom knows, and Marleen – she’ll tell the world just to be spiteful . . .’

  No – she ain’t like that!’ Marleen was always sickly sweet to Trevor because he’d spend hours entertaining her kids.

  ‘Oh, yes she is! She’s a mean, scheming cow. God—’ She wanted to punch something in her frustration. ‘I could kill you for spreading that. I told you not to!’

  ‘Don’t cowing well keep on at me!’ Trevor threw himself down in front of the telly again. ‘Serves her right. You and your mates think you’re a cut above everyone else. You’re just not normal – you’re not a proper woman, are you, swanning off, going to all these classes instead of being a proper wife and mother. And that stuck-up little cow shouldn’t have got herself in
to that mess in the first place, should she?’

  Greta stood watching him, her jaw clenched, as he stared at the television. Just then she could have hit him with all her strength. Instead she went into the kitchen and filled the yellow plastic bowl to wash up. Seething with feelings, she stood for a long time with her hands resting in the soapy water, staring out at their tiny strip of garden with the old privy at one side. Trevor made her so angry and frustrated, but at the same time she longed for him to love her, for everything to feel right. Marriage was a lonely place and she was filled with longing. She saw the years stretching ahead. Couldn’t it be better than this?

  Chapter Thirty

  When Pat came out of hospital at the end of March, Mr Floyd had still not relented. She was forced to take up lodgings in a bedsit in Selly Oak which she and Mrs Floyd hurriedly found.

  Greta was disgusted by this.

  ‘So much for Christians!’ she raged to Trevor. ‘His own daughter and he’s treating her like some kind of whore!’

  ‘Well – she asked for it.’

  ‘What?’ Greta shouted at him. ‘What’re you on about, you prat? Pat was as innocent as anything – she was taken advantage of!’

  ‘That’s what they all say,’ Trevor said angrily. He seemed determined to disagree with whatever she said these days.

  Greta went to see Pat in her new place, and it wasn’t bad: an upstairs room in a house off the Bristol Road, quite newly painted and not too dark. Mother and daughter had set it up the best they could, and Pat made Greta a cup of tea on a little gas ring.

  ‘My Mom’s been so kind,’ she said.

  Apart from looking pale she seemed quite recovered, and was putting a brave face on. ‘I think it’s brought us closer. And she says she’s sure Dad’ll come round in the end.’

  She looked very anxiously at Greta. ‘No one knows except you, do they? At work, I mean?’ She was due back the next week. ‘If they found out, I’m sure I’d get the sack. Thanks for being such a good pal.’

  ‘Why wouldn’t I?’ Greta said, with a pang of guilt. She knew perfectly well that she wasn’t the only person in on the secret. Her Mom knew, and probably Edie, at Cadbury’s, and the Biddles and Marleen, but it seemed to have been contained and none of them were spiteful enough to report Pat and make her lose her job. At least, fingers crossed, that was the way it seemed to be.

  ‘I just want to forget all about it,’ Pat whispered, perched on the edge of the pale green candlewick bedspread with her cup of tea. ‘And about him.’

  Ian Plumbridge had come to the hospital to visit just once, at the beginning. He hadn’t a clue what to say to her and Pat had not heard another thing from him.

  ‘Useless bastard – what a way to go on,’ Greta said. ‘And you were ever so keen on him, weren’t you?’

  Even now, Pat’s eyes filled when she thought about it. She nodded. ‘I really loved him. He was obviously only out for what he could get.’ Wiping her eyes determinedly, she said, ‘I won’t make that mistake again. I just feel so guilty about Mom, having to manage Josie all on her own and everything.’

  ‘Well, what if you’d got married?’ Greta said. ‘You’d have to move out then, wouldn’t you?’

  Pat shook her head, miserably. ‘I s’pose so. That’s not going to happen now, is it? I’ve let them down. Disgraced them.’ She looked seriously at Greta. ‘I owe them, Gret. I don’t feel as if I deserve a life of my own. Not until Dad can forgive me, anyway.’

  Greta looked at her friend’s sad face. Knowing what Stanley Floyd was like, she thought her friend might wait for ever for forgiveness.

  As the spring passed into summer, Greta tried to forget about her own feelings and look after Pat. She worried about her, with her pinched face and sad eyes, and tried to do nice things to cheer her up.

  ‘We may not be able to afford a holiday,’ she said to Pat, ‘but at least we can sunbathe here!’

  She encouraged her to get out in the fresh air, walking round Bournville Green and the Girls’ Grounds, and groups of them sat out to eat their dinner on hot days by the lily pond, where they could sprawl on the grass and drink in the sun. At weekends they took their costumes and went to the Lido at Rowheath, the recreation ground for Cadbury’s workers. Pat had always been a keen swimmer, and a good splash in the water always put a smile on her face.

  One day, in the heat of August, they went shopping in town and found themselves walking across the end of Pinfold Street and found it was all blocked off. Across the street big white banners were draped, saying, ‘Birmingham’s Boy, Steve!’

  ‘They’re filming,’ a man told them. ‘Some film called Privilege.’

  ‘Let’s go and see!’ Greta said. ‘Blimey, a film – we might be in it!’

  They caught glimpses of the film crew hurrying along behind a clutch of motorbikes, and they hung about for a bit, wondering if the cameras had swept across their faces.

  ‘We’ll have to go and see it,’ Pat said. Her cheerfulness was returning more now, even though Ian’s and her father’s treatment of her were a permanent sadness. ‘We might see our ugly mugs flash past!’

  ‘Huh – speak for yourself!’ Greta said.

  When she got home that day, Marleen was waiting on the doorstep.

  ‘You again?’ Greta said sarkily, because Marleen seemed to be turning up a lot these days. ‘Looking for a free babysitter again?’ Marleen wanted someone to mind her kids on a Sunday afternoon and Trevor was ideal for the job. Sometimes she even came and just left the kids and went off. Greta got sick of it, but Trev said he didn’t mind. And the way he said it now was always touched with bitterness. You may not be able to give me any kids, was the message, but at least I can play with Marleen’s.

  ‘You’ve taken your time,’ Marleen said, but Greta saw she was really anxious. ‘You’d better come, Gret. Mom’s up the hospital. It’s Herbert – he’s collapsed.’

  They didn’t have long to wait. Soon after they got round to Charlotte Road, Ruby walked in, and her face told them everything. They both stood up, unsure what to do.

  ‘Well—’ Stopping just inside the doorway, Ruby made a helpless gesture with her hands. She looked much older suddenly, her hair limp and straggly, the dark roots showing. Greta felt a pang for her. ‘He’s gone. Just like that. His heart, they said. He didn’t even make it to the hospital.’

  ‘Sorry, Mom,’ Greta said softly.

  Ruby put her hands over her face and her shoulders began to shake. Greta and Marleen helped her to a chair, but she gathered herself, not giving way to it, and looked up at them.

  ‘I can’t take it in. He was just there, right as rain. Then he said he had a pain, he sat down . . . Thought it was just indigestion. There’s one thing, he didn’t suffer long.’

  ‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ Marleen said, softer and kind for once.

  ‘Yes bab, ta.’ Ruby sat on, staring ahead of her, obviously in shock.

  Greta sat on the chair close to her. The clock ticked loudly.

  ‘Well,’ Ruby said, eventually. ‘That’s him gone now as well.’

  And then she began to weep.

  Herbert’s body was cremated at Lodge Hill cemetery on a boiling hot day. Greta didn’t feel too well when she got up in the morning, and by the time they reached the crematorium she was feeling quite sick and dizzy.

  ‘I don’t know what’s the matter with me,’ she said to Trevor. ‘I must’ve eaten something bad. Must’ve been that fish last night. Are you feeling all right?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Trevor shrugged. ‘I’m fine.’

  Greta felt there was nothing she would have liked better than to crawl back into bed but she couldn’t miss the funeral. As she sat in the little chapel for the brief ceremony, she felt more and more sick and faint.

  Everyone was there of course: Edie and Anatoli, and Janet and Martin Ferris, lending support to their old friend. Greta could see them thinking, poor old Ruby. And while she couldn’t stand Herbert herself, she felt sad for her mother
. She’d had such a cursed life when it came to men! With a pang of gloom, in her sickly state, she realized she had no real idea how things were supposed to be between a man and a woman because she’d never seen it – not when it was good and happy. The sick feeling got worse, a cold sweat passed over her and she put her head in her hands.

  She just managed to get through the short service, but by the end she was feeling so bad she had to run outside and was sick in one of the flower-beds.

  ‘Greta?’ She heard Janet’s voice behind her as she was struggling to recover. ‘Oh dear, you poor thing! I thought you were looking groggy!’

  ‘I think I’d better go home,’ Greta gasped. ‘Oh, I feel dreadful!’

  ‘Let’s get you some water, and then Martin can drive you,’ Janet said, taking her arm. ‘Come along, dear.’

  Greta felt so ill she hardly remembered the journey home, just the relief of being able to lie down at last and give way to being ill.

  ‘I don’t know what I ate,’ she said to Ruby two days later. As soon as she was feeling better, she went round to her Mom’s. ‘Whatever it was turned me inside out, I can tell you! I’m sorry for missing the rest of it, Mom.’

  ‘Can’t be helped,’ Ruby said. ‘Your face was nearly as green as the grass, bab! It went off all right – and Edie and Janet were a big help, bless them.’

  She looked pale and sad, as if the life had gone out of her.

  ‘He wasn’t the love of my life or anything, Gret. If anyone was that, it was your Dad. But he was all right – and he was company.’ She managed a wan smile. ‘Ah well. Seems to be my bad luck, doesn’t it?’

  Greta smiled. Her Mom could bounce back, that was one thing for sure, and one thing she admired about her.

  ‘Maybe your luck’ll change one day,’ she said.

  But Ruby found she had another bitter pill to swallow on the reading of Herbert’s will. He had made no provision in the will, she told Greta and Marleen shamefacedly, and there was nothing left to her at all.

  The girls were completely confused. ‘But if you’re his wife you get his money don’t you?’ Marleen frowned. ‘I thought that was how it works?’