Wives & Mothers

by Whitmee, Jeanne

  WIVES & MOTHERS

  Jeanne Whitmee

  © Jeanne Whitmee 1991

  Jeanne Whitmee has asserted her rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 1991 by Judy Piatkus Publishers.

  This edition published in 2017 by Endeavour Press Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  For – Leslie, Ann, Julie and Phyllis.

  Chapter One

  The war had been over a year and a half when Grace first met Harry Wendover. He had joined the pit orchestra at the local variety theatre and was lodging with Mrs Grainger who lived next door to the Manse.

  Mary Pringle, Grace’s mother, had died a month before VE Day, giving birth to her sixth child, a boy, which had died with her. Rodney Pringle had borne his loss with stoic forbearance, true to his Methodist beliefs.

  ‘It is God’s will that your mother has been taken from us,’ he told Grace in his booming, lugubrious voice. ‘Now it is up to you to take her place.’

  And so she had, to the best of her sixteen-year-old ability, caring for her four sisters as well as she knew how. The three youngest girls were still at elementary school but thirteen-year-old Rachel had won a scholarship to the local grammar school and Rodney was determined that she should stay there. When Grace had tentatively suggested that Rachel might share the work, he had been adamant.

  ‘Your sister has her studies to attend to. She has a good brain.’ he said, intimating that Grace had not. ‘And I want her to have the opportunity to use it.’

  So Grace had meekly accepted her role of substitute mother, falling into the gruelling routine and managing as best she could. Getting up early every morning, she did the housework and got the younger girls ready for school before going to her job behind the drapery counter at the Co-op. Each evening when she came home she would cook the evening meal and do the washing and ironing, sometimes not falling into bed until well past midnight. On Sundays she dressed the children in their best and took them to chapel to hear their father preach.

  By the time a year had passed Grace had slipped into the gap her mother had left. She accepted her lot in life because she could find no reason to rebel. But she often longed to go out with the other girls at work. She listened enviously to their chatter, hearing them talk about dances or the films they had seen; the boys they’d been out with. But she knew better than to ask if she could join them. Her father strongly disapproved of what he considered the ‘Temptations of the Devil’. The cinema was iniquitous, and as for boys — she knew better than even to mention them.

  It was a Sunday morning when she first saw Harry. He was leaving the house next door just as she was marshalling the younger ones on the pavement outside the Manse, ready for the walk to chapel.

  ‘Good morning. What a lot of children. Are they all yours?’

  Grace looked up. ‘They’re my sisters,’ she told him rather crossly, re-buttoning little Christine’s coat and pushing a stray curl under the brim of Victoria’s straw hat.

  ‘Where are you going? I’ll walk along with you if you like — give you a hand.’

  ‘I can manage perfectly well, thank you.’ Grace took the hand of each of the two youngest ones while Rachel walked behind with ten-year-old Sarah. Undeterred, Harry fell in companionably beside her.

  ‘Well, I’ll walk along with you anyway. I’m going this way too.’

  ‘Suit yourself. I suppose I can’t stop you.’ Grace took a sidelong glance at the tall young man striding along beside her. He had crisply curling brown hair and the bluest eyes she had ever seen. He was very attractive and she couldn’t help feeling flattered that he wanted to walk with her. He wore a smart tweed sports jacket and grey flannels and she wished her own coat had been newer and more up to date. All the other girls at work had gone in for the New Look and she would have given anything for one of those coats with a nipped-in waist, flared skirt and alluring velvet stand-up collar. Red, she would have chosen, to complement her dark hair. And with it she’d wear one of those little feathered caps. But there was no money for fancy coats and hats. All the spare money went on keeping Rachel smart in her school uniform and the little ones in socks and shoes.

  ‘You’ve got pretty hair.’

  The remark startled her out of her dreams of fashion and her hand rose involuntarily to the glossy dark hair which she wore tied back in a pony tail. That was another thing, she longed to have it cut in one of the smart fringed bobs that were so popular, but her father wouldn’t allow it.

  ‘I’d like to have it all cut off,’ she said wistfully.

  ‘Oh, no.’ He sounded horrified. ‘Girls with hair like yours should never have it cut. It’s beautiful.’ He smiled at her and she noticed his mouth for the first time. It turned up at the corners as though he was always smiling and a fascinating dimple twinkled elusively in his left cheek. His lips were firm and well shaped and when they parted they revealed even white teeth. ‘I’d like to see what it looks like when you untie it and let it down,’ he said daringly.

  Grace blushed, suddenly acutely aware of his eyes on her face as they walked side by side along the narrow pavement. They were nearing the chapel now and she slowed her pace. ‘Are you going to chapel too?’ she asked.

  He threw back his head and laughed. ‘No fear. We’ve got a band call — rehearsal,’ he added, seeing her puzzled expression. ‘I’m a musician. I play the piano — at the Theatre Royal in Bridge Street.’

  Grace stared at him speechlessly. The Theatre Royal was out of bounds to her, just like the cinemas. And she had never met a musician before, unless you counted Miss Aitkin who played the asthmatic harmonium in chapel on Sundays.

  Seeing her expression, Harry laughed. ‘Does that make me completely unspeakable? I’m not always going to play in a theatre pit, you know. One day I’ll be a concert pianist, or on the wireless at least.’

  Grace stared at him. She fully believed he would. It was a world utterly outside her comprehension where anything might be possible and she longed to know more about it.

  By now they were standing outside the chapel door. ‘Well, I expect I’ll be seeing you around.’ Harry was already beginning to walk away, but he stopped. ‘I’m Harry, by the way. Harry Wendover.’ He paused. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Oh — Grace Pringle.’ She blushed. She hated the name. It sounded so stuffy and old fashioned. But Harry was smiling.

  ‘I might have known,’ he said. ‘Grace. The name was made for you.’ He reached out one finger and touched her cheek. ‘Bye then, Grace. Be seeing you.’

  She watched him swing away down the road, utterly captivated by this debonair, carefree young man. She wondered wistfully if he had a girlfriend, imagining a fashionably dressed laughing girl with short blond hair and endless legs, like Lana Turner in her photograph outside the Roxy last week. Or maybe he took out one of the dancers from the theatre. She’d seen photographs of them displayed outside too, a
ll dressed in wonderful spangled costumes with elaborate feathered head-dresses. She looked down at her shabby brown coat. It had been her mother’s and was a size too large for her. The style was out of date too, but the cloth was good — or so her father said. Harry Wendover had only spoken to her out of kindness, she told herself. Why should she interest him, surrounded as he was by so much glamour?

  ‘Come on, Gracie.’ Rachel nudged her, her pale blue eyes reproachful behind the steel-rimmed spectacles. ‘You know how cross Father gets if we’re late.’

  Reluctantly she ushered them all into chapel. They filed down the aisle in front of her and settled into their pew. Each of them knelt. Five dark heads bent over folded hands, eyes tightly shut. Four pairs of lips moved in a mechanical ‘Our Father’. But the fifth pair remained still. Inside her head Grace was praying for a red coat with a velvet collar.

  She saw Harry often after that Sunday, going in and out of the house next door. Once or twice they exchanged a few words, but Grace was always acutely aware of her father’s eyes watching from his study window. It inhibited her and she always hurried away as fast as she could, her eyes lowered. Harry couldn’t know how he occupied all her dreams and fantasies. In them she was always beautifully dressed and wearing powder and lipstick. He would take her in his arms and they would dance together, under a crystal chandelier, their steps matching perfectly. The dreams warmed her on the coldest nights. They cheered her when her hands were red and raw from the washtub or scrubbing the kitchen floor; when her back ached and she knew that all her friends were out enjoying themselves. She hugged the dreams to her and made herself believe that they would some day come true. Later they helped her to bear the shame and humiliation of the other, nameless thing her father called ‘her duty.’

  Mary Pringle had been dead a year and a half when her father first told her about that ‘duty’. In a voice that trembled with emotion he described to her how much he missed her mother and how hard it was for a man alone to fight temptation. It was late at night and he had surprised Grace by coming to her room when she was getting ready for bed.

  ‘I could never take another wife,’ he told her, his head in his hands. ‘No other woman could take the place of your mother, and anyway, the parishioners would not approve.’

  She had felt so sorry for him that she had sat down beside him on the edge of the bed and put her arm around his shoulders. ‘You have us, Father,’ she said gently.

  He lifted his head and looked at her and suddenly she was afraid of what she saw in his eyes. He clutched suddenly at her shoulders. ‘You’re a good daughter, Grace. A good daughter and a lovely young woman. You’ve taken your mother’s place well. But there are other duties a daughter can — and sometimes must — perform.’

  Even in her innocence, apprehension stirred some instinct deep within her and she shrank from him, shaking her head and backing away. ‘Father...?’

  ‘Don’t you see, child, we’re both tormented by temptation. We can save one another, you and I. I’ve seen the young men ogling you with their lustful eyes. I won’t let them have you, do you understand?’

  ‘No, Father. They don’t ogle me. I don’t want them even if they do.’ She was uneasy — afraid, of the wild glint in his eyes and the flecks of spittle at the corners of his mouth.

  What he did, then and at other times, late at night when the house was silent and her sisters were asleep, left her with profound feelings of guilt and shame. Although he always insisted afterwards that she was a good girl, performing her Christian duty in keeping her father from temptation, she still felt guilty. And somehow she knew that it was the kind of guilt that would never be erased if she lived to be a hundred. Her father bought her the coat she had wanted for so long. He bought her other things too — small treats that she suspected he could ill afford. His generosity led her to wonder if he felt guilty too, but she pushed the thought from her. She’d been brought up to believe that her father could never do anything wrong. After all, he was a man of God, wasn’t he? It must be all right if he said so.

  *

  When Harry saw her for the first time in the red coat he gave a long low whistle.

  ‘You look lovely, Grace.’

  She was walking home from work one evening in late March. The first daffodils were beginning to open and there was a feeling of spring in the air. He fell into step beside her.

  ‘Why don’t you ever come to the theatre?’ he asked.

  She shook her head. ‘My father doesn’t approve of theatres.’

  He stared at her. ‘You’re kidding. Do everything your dad tells you, do you?’ When she didn’t reply he asked: ‘How old are you, Grace?’

  ‘Almost eighteen.’

  ‘Don’t you think you’re old enough to make up your own mind?’

  ‘Old enough to know that it’s none of your business.’

  He grinned good naturedly. ‘Fair enough. Look, I’ve got a couple of comps. Want one? Have them both and bring one of your sisters if you want.’

  ‘Comps?’

  ‘Complimentary tickets — free seats. Oh come on, Grace. I could meet you for a drink afterwards and walk you home.’

  She was just about to refuse when something suddenly occurred to her. Maybe her father wouldn’t mind? He’d bought her the coat, hadn’t he? And he’d been much less strict with her lately. Her spirits rose. ‘All right,’ she said suddenly. ‘I’ll come.’

  *

  Sitting in her seat in the front stalls, wearing her red coat, Grace felt like royalty. Harry looked so handsome in his black dinner jacket and bow tie. When the lights went down and the band struck up she glowed with pride at the sight of him, sitting there at the piano. She wanted to turn and tell those sitting around her that he was her friend.

  To Grace, who had never been to the theatre in her life, it was a magic world of colour and music. She loved it all, from the blue plush seats and the usherettes in their smart uniforms, to the acts on the bill — comedians, acrobats, jugglers and singers, not to mention the chorus, scantily clad girls who could kick higher than she would ever have thought possible. When the lights went up she treated herself to an ice-cream and looked around her, wishing she could see someone she knew and that they could see her.

  She met Harry afterwards, waiting for him at the stage door round at the back of the theatre as he’d told her. He came out with several of the other musicians who eyed her speculatively, nudging Harry and winking knowingly. She felt slightly embarrassed but the feeling soon left her when Harry took her arm and smiled down at her. He wore a dark overcoat over his evening suit, with a dashing white silk scarf.

  ‘Enjoy the show?’

  ‘Oh, yes. It was wonderful.’

  He laughed. ‘Easy to see you’re not a regular theatre goer,’ he said. ‘It’s a load of old tat compared to the West End shows.’ As they walked he regaled her with descriptions of some of the shows he’d seen — describing how some of the theatres had stages that could revolve and equipment that could produce special magical effects. He took her to the Crown and Anchor, a pub in the next street to the theatre. Grace had never seen the inside of a public house before and she gazed around her, wide-eyed with curiosity, while Harry went to the bar to buy drinks. It seemed to be full of smoke and pungent yeasty smells; of people laughing and talking, every one of them with a glass in their hand. There was so much to see: the fascinating mirror behind the bar that reflected the lights and the bottles, the golden-haired barmaid in her black, low-cut blouse and glittering earrings; and the customers. She recognised some of Harry’s fellow musicians and returned their smiles shyly from her seat in the corner, but she gazed in awe when some of the performers from the show came in. Even in their outdoor clothes they still looked special to Grace. They had panache — a kind of gloss — that made them stand out from ordinary people in some indefinable way that made her want to stare and stare at them.

  Harry had asked her when they first came in: ‘What will you have?’ and she’d shaken h
er head. How silly and naive he must think her.

  ‘Oh, whatever you’re having,’ she’d replied. Now he reappeared, shouldering his way to her through the crush, carrying two glasses of golden liquid which he put down on the table in front of her. She looked at it apprehensively. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Whisky — with a dash of ginger.’ He laughed. ‘It’ll bring the roses to your cheeks. All right?’

  ‘Oh — yes, thank you.’ When she took a sip and swallowed it she thought her throat would burst into flames, but she smiled at Harry, blinking back the moisture that sprang to her eyes. ‘It’s lovely.’

  He reached for her hand, his eyes suddenly serious. ‘Grace, I’ve got something to tell you.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I’ve got another job. I’m leaving here.’

  She felt her heart turn to ice. ‘Oh — when?’

  ‘Tomorrow. I leave in the morning.’ His fingers tightened round hers. ‘I really wish we could have got to know each other better, Grace. I’ve tried, but I thought you didn’t like me.’

  ‘Oh, no...’ She looked at him, speechless with disappointment. ‘I — it was Father. He...’

  ‘I know. I realised that later.’ He nodded. ‘He’s pretty strict with you, isn’t he? But when I saw you in that red coat, I though perhaps he was easing up a bit.’

  Grace was silent. What would she do when he was gone? All her dreams, all her hopes of happiness, seemed to turn to dust and she saw her future stretching endlessly ahead of her, grey and dull and forbidding. She tried hard to swallow the tears that thickened her throat and made herself ask: ‘What sort of job is it?’

  He launched enthusiastically into a description of his new job, but she hardly heard any of it except to register that it was in London somewhere and that he was excited about it. It was as though the bottom had dropped out of her world. Presently she said: ‘I think I should be going home now.’

  ‘Of course.’ Harry got to his feet.