The Married Girls

by Diney Costeloe

  Janet did as she was told, going to the sink and running her hands under the tap.

  ‘With soap.’

  Janet used the soap and then dried her hands on a roller towel on the back of the door, before returning to her place at the table.

  Daphne watched her as she did so, thinking, It’s just the same as it was when I was a kid. Mum at the stove when I got in from school for my dinner. Being told to wash my hands.

  At that moment her father, Norman, reached her and awkwardly took her hand in his. His hand was large and oily from his work under the car in the yard, and instinctively Daphne drew back, saying, ‘Careful, Dad!’ The last thing she wanted was oil on her suit.

  ‘Sorry, love,’ he said, letting her hand fall. ‘Don’t want to get oil on your lovely frock.’

  He edged past her and made his way to the sink where he scrubbed at his hands with a nail brush. Looking across at her he said, ‘So, how’ve you been keeping, Daph?’

  ‘Dinner’s on the table,’ her mother interrupted, as she doled out three steaming plates of hotpot. The smell assailed Daphne’s nostrils and took her straight back to her childhood. It was the smell of home, of the kitchen where they all sat to keep warm in the winter. Mum’s hotpot had always been a family favourite.

  Her father sat down at the table and waved to the chair opposite. ‘Come on, Daphne, sit up to the table and tell us what you’ve been up to.’ He nodded at her suit and added, ‘Doing well for yourself, whatever it is, by the looks of you.’

  Ethel sighed. She knew she couldn’t simply ignore Daphne any more and reluctantly she ladled another portion of hotpot onto a plate and setting it down on the table, motioned to her to take her place.

  For a few moments they ate in silence, the three because they were hungry and this was the main meal of the day and Daphne because she didn’t quite know how to broach the subject of her marriage.

  After a while her father wiped his plate with a piece of bread and said, ‘Well, come on, Daph. To what do we owe the pleasure?’

  Daphne extended her hand to show her engagement and wedding rings. ‘I came to tell you that I got married,’ she blurted out.

  ‘Married? Did you now?’ Her mother sounded sceptical. ‘Did you have to?’

  ‘No!’ Daphne snapped. ‘No, I didn’t.’

  ‘Who’s the lucky man, then?’ asked her father.

  ‘His name’s Felix Bellinger. He’s an officer at the Air Ministry.’

  ‘Did he buy you that dress?’ asked Janet, reaching out to touch her sleeve, taking it between her fingers and rubbing the soft material. Daphne resisted the urge to pull away. She simply nodded and said, ‘He did. He’s very generous, he gives me an allowance to buy my clothes.’

  ‘You still in the WAAFs, are you?’ asked Norman.

  ‘No, I left when we decided to get married. Felix doesn’t want me to work any more.’

  ‘He must be very rich,’ Janet marvelled, staring at the rings Daphne wore.

  ‘I think his family is well off,’ Daphne said, ‘but he has a good salary at the Air Ministry. He’s a wing commander,’ she added with a touch of pride.

  ‘And what do they think of him marrying a girl like you?’ asked Ethel.

  ‘Who? The Air Ministry?’

  ‘His family.’

  ‘He took me down to Somerset to meet his parents. They live in a village called Wynsdown,’ Daphne said, adding defiantly, ‘and they made me very welcome.’

  ‘That’s nice,’ said her father, pushing his plate aside. ‘So when are we going to meet your husband? What did you say his name was? Felix?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Daphne shrugged. ‘Before long, I expect. He’s very busy.’

  ‘Didn’t ask us to your wedding, I notice,’ remarked Ethel. ‘Ashamed of us, was you?’

  ‘No, course not, but it was just us and witnesses at the registry office. Anyway, he knows all about you. You’ve already met him, Dad.’

  Her father looked startled. ‘I have?’

  ‘Yes, and you too, Mum. He knows where we live, he’s been here. It was Felix what brought me home that time when I sprained my ankle, remember? That night in the air raid.’

  ‘You mean the officer what brought you home in a taxi?’

  ‘Yeah, he’s the one.’

  ‘An’ you been seeing him ever since?’ Her mother sounded incredulous.

  ‘No, course not. I met him again at the end of the war.’

  ‘And he remembered you?’

  ‘No. But I remembered him.’

  Ethel glanced up at the clock on the kitchen mantelpiece and gave a cry.

  ‘Janet, look at the time! Off you go, you’ll be late for school.’

  ‘But I want to talk to Daph, Mum. I want to hear about Felix.’

  ‘School!’ repeated Ethel. ‘An’ get a move on.’

  When Janet had gone, Norman said that he needed to get back to work as well. ‘Got to get that Morris back on the road tonight,’ he said. ‘Bloke’s coming back for it later.’ He smiled across at his daughter. ‘Pity you’re in your posh frock,’ he said, ‘or you could’ve come an’ give me an ’and.’ Never a demonstrative man, he gave Daphne an awkward pat on her shoulder, saying, ‘Come and see us again soon, Daph, and bring this Felix with you next time.’

  ‘Yeah, Dad, I will,’ promised Daphne, knowing it was a promise she had no intention of keeping.

  When they were alone in the kitchen Ethel poured them each a cup of tea and then sat down opposite Daphne and fixed her with an unwavering stare.

  ‘Sounds as if you’ve landed in clover, then,’ she said at last.

  ‘Yes.’ Daphne took a sip of her tea.

  ‘You’re a lucky girl,’ went on her mother. ‘Him knowing the sort of family you come from. Not many officers would marry beneath them like that. You quite sure you ain’t in the family way again?’

  ‘Quite sure,’ snapped Daphne.

  ‘Good,’ said Ethel. ‘Now then, what are you going to do about your daughter?’

  Daphne stared at her. ‘What do you mean, what am I going to do about her?’

  ‘Well, I’d have thought, now as you’re married, you’d want to take her into your own home and look after her yourself.’

  ‘Take her into my home?’ Daphne echoed faintly.

  ‘Why not? It’s where she ought to be, ain’t it? With her mother? An’ now you can provide for her properly like, well it stands to reason she should come and live with you.’

  ‘But... Mum, I can’t! I mean, what would Felix say?’

  ‘I can’t see why he’d mind,’ said Ethel mildly as she saw Daphne’s panic-stricken face. ‘I mean, he already knows about her, don’t he?’

  ‘And Janet wouldn’t want to come,’ Daphne said, ignoring the comment about what Felix did and didn’t know. ‘She’d want to stay here with you and Dad. You’re her parents... at least she thinks you are. I’m just her big sister. How would we explain to her why she was having to leave you?’

  ‘He doesn’t know about her,’ Ethel said flatly. ‘You haven’t told him about Janet, have you?’

  ‘Course I have,’ Daphne retorted. ‘We was only talking about her the other day.’

  ‘But he don’t know she’s yours, do he?’

  ‘At the moment he thinks she’s my sister, yes, but he wants kids, so he won’t mind when I tell him. Just got to pick my moment, haven’t I?’

  ‘He may want kids,’ replied Ethel, ‘but he’ll want them to be his own, not some sailor’s by-blow.’

  ‘Mum!’ cried Daphne. ‘You shouldn’t call her that!’

  ‘Why not? It’s what she is.’

  ‘She’s your granddaughter!’

  ‘She is my granddaughter and I’ve seen to it that she’s never gone without, but she’s your daughter. She’s your responsibility. I took it on when you was in no position to look after her yourself, but now you are. Never a penny your dad and I had off you towards her upkeep, even when you was earning good money in the air
force. You could have helped out then, couldn’t you? But did you? No, not you. You left it all up to us. Well, my high and mighty lady, now it’s going to stop. Now it’s your turn.’

  ‘Mum, stop! Let’s think this through,’ begged Daphne. ‘Let’s work it out the best way for Janet.’

  ‘Oh yes, the best way for Janet,’ agreed her mother in a voice thick with sarcasm. ‘How do you propose to do that then?’

  ‘The thing is, Mum, that if Janet came and lived with Felix and me, well she’d be uprooted, wouldn’t she? She’d have to go to a different school, and leave all her friends behind. She’d miss you and Dad dreadfully. I know, I know, you keep telling me I’m her mother, but she doesn’t know that...’

  ‘We could tell her,’ pointed out Ethel.

  ‘She thinks you and Dad are her parents, she loves you and Dad far more than she’ll ever love me, or Felix.’ She saw her mother was about to interrupt again and held up a hand to stop her. ‘I think it would be far better if she stayed here with you, where she knows, where she’s at home and comfortable, so I got a suggestion. I’ll take my responsibility seriously but in a different way. I’ll give you the money you need for her to have the best. It’ll help with your housekeeping, you can buy her nice clothes, and give her little treats. I can come and see her sometimes, as her big sister, bring her presents and the like.’

  Unsurprised at this suggestion, Ethel looked at Daphne hard and long. ‘We could do it that way,’ she said at last. ‘It might work better. Course, she’d come and visit you from time to time. Big sisters like to have their little sisters to stay, don’t they?’

  ‘Yes.’ Daphne gratefully grabbed hold of her mother’s agreement. Anything not to have to tell Felix that she’d lied to him all this time, that he wasn’t the first man to make love to her, that she had an illegitimate daughter.

  ‘I mean,’ went on her mother, ‘I’m sure he’d understand that you wanted to make your sister a small allowance so that she could have a few of the things that your dad and I can’t afford. How much does Felix give you a month?’

  ‘Ten pounds,’ replied Daphne and immediately regretted that she hadn’t halved the amount.

  Ethel’s eyes widened. ‘Does he indeed? Obviously a very generous man. That’s £120 a year. Well, suppose we say that you give me five pounds a month for Janet. That’ll be enough to give her a few extras.’

  ‘Oh, Mum, I can’t,’ Daphne cried. ‘It’s too much!’

  ‘Too much, is it? I can see it might be. Well then, I think the best thing would be for me to come and meet your Felix and explain the whole situation.’

  ‘Mum, you wouldn’t!’

  ‘I’m sure, as an honourable man,’ Ethel went on as if Daphne hadn’t spoken, ‘he’ll want to do what’s right, and when he learns that Janet is your daughter, he’ll help all he can.’

  ‘That’s blackmail,’ muttered Daphne mutinously.

  ‘No, it’s taking responsibility,’ said her mother. ‘Shall we agree five pounds a month, to be going on with?’ She gave her daughter a hard look. ‘Now,’ she went on, ‘you write down your address. I want to know where I can find you. And don’t think you can disappear into the blue, my girl, cos I swear to you if this address is wrong, I’ll go and see your husband at his office. Air Ministry you said, didn’t you?’

  When Daphne left to take a bus back to the West End, Ethel Higgins sat in her kitchen and thought about the arrangement they had come to. She looked at the address Daphne had scrawled on a piece of paper. Oakley Street. She didn’t know where it was exactly, but she could find it if necessary. She’d had no intention of letting Janet be uprooted to move in with Daphne, nor had she any intention of telling Janet about her true parentage, ever. She’d banked on the fact that to avoid that happening, Daphne, secure in her new-found prosperity, would pay a good deal towards Janet’s upkeep from now on. It was clear as day that she hadn’t told Felix the full story about her family. They had not been invited to the wedding because Daphne was ashamed of them. Well, Ethel could live with that, but she was devoted to her granddaughter and prepared to go a long way to make her life better than her own had been, and Daphne? Daphne was the key.

  Daphne, sitting on a bus heading back to Chelsea, fumed at how she’d been outmanoeuvred by her mother. Five pounds a month! Half her monthly allowance from Felix. Could she ask him for a bit more? she wondered. He gave her housekeeping money as well, perhaps she could syphon off some of that to pay for Janet’s keep. That was certainly a possibility. She’d have to be careful but with a little clever budgeting she ought to be able to manage that.

  She had no intention of going back to Barrack Street for a very long time and she’d agreed to send her mother a postal order for five pounds on the first day of every month. The matter was settled and Daphne could put it out of her mind. She might tell Felix she’d made the visit, she might even admit to giving her parents a little cash from time to time, to make their lives easier, but she would pick her moment; perhaps after one of their more successful lovemaking sessions. But when, after changing buses three times, she finally reached Oakley Street and pushed open her front door, all thoughts of telling him anything about her visit to her family went out of her head as she was greeted by a fuming Felix, with the words, ‘There you are, Daphne! Where the hell have you been?’

  Daphne stared at him. ‘I been out,’ she said. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘My father’s had a stroke, that’s what’s up. There’s a train in three-quarters of an hour.’

  ‘A train, where?’

  ‘My father’s had a stroke, Daphne. We’re going down to Wynsdown.’

  12

  They arrived at Temple Meads station and took a taxi straight to the hospital. Following directions from a receptionist in the entrance hall, they found Marjorie sitting on a chair in a small office outside one of the wards. She was alone, staring sightlessly at the floor.

  ‘Mother!’ Felix hurried to her and dropping down beside her, took both her hands in his. ‘Mother?’ he said again, gently, but now, as Marjorie lifted her eyes to his and he saw that they were wet and red-ringed, he realised the worst. ‘I’m too late,’ he whispered.

  ‘He died this afternoon,’ Marjorie said, her voice cracked with emotion. ‘He never regained consciousness.’ She tightened her grip on Felix’s hands. ‘Don’t blame yourself, Felix, he wouldn’t have known that you were with him.’ She stifled a sob as she said, ‘He didn’t know I was.’

  ‘Where... where is he now?’

  ‘They’ve taken him to the hospital mortuary. They said they’d tell me when I could go and see him.’

  ‘Were you with him?’ Felix hardly dared ask, but he didn’t want to think of his father being alone as he died.

  ‘I was holding his hand,’ replied his mother, ‘but he didn’t know I was.’

  ‘You don’t know he didn’t, Mum,’ Felix said. ‘Somewhere inside he may have known you were with him and drawn comfort from it.’ Fighting his own tears he said, ‘But I wasn’t.’

  His mother raised his hand to her cheek. ‘Darling,’ she said. ‘You came as soon as you could.’

  And Felix wished that it was true, that he hadn’t waited for Daphne to get back from wherever she’d been, that he’d left her an explanatory note and simply gone straight to the station.

  Daphne stood at the door of the little office and watched as mother and son shared their grief and tried to comfort each other. She felt awkward and embarrassed. She had never been comfortable with overt emotions, and here were Felix and his mother both in tears. She felt no grief for her dead father-in-law, she hardly knew him, but she knew that she’d have to show at least a degree of sadness, later, for Felix’s sake. Now she turned away and went back out into the corridor. Felix heard her go, but didn’t follow her. He simply knelt on the floor beside his mother’s chair and held her hands.

  A few moments later a nurse came into the office. ‘Mrs Bellinger, I can take you down to see your husband now.’ She
looked at Felix and asked, ‘Is this your son? I’m Sister Deben, I was looking after your father. If you’d like to come with me...’

  Felix stood up and helped his mother get to her feet. She rose stiffly and clutched his arm for support. She’d had virtually no sleep in the last forty-eight hours and felt that if she let him go, exhaustion would take over and her legs would fold beneath her; she’d simply collapse back into the chair.

  ‘Follow me.’ Sister Deben led the way out of her office and along the corridor to some stairs leading down. Daphne, seeing them moving off, left the window where she’d been standing looking out at the courtyard below and trailed along behind them. Felix paused and turning said, ‘We’re going to see my father now. Will you come with us?’

  Daphne’s expression of horror was answer enough and when she shook her head, he simply said, ‘Well, never mind. Wait for us in the entrance hall.’ Sister Deben pointed along the passage to another set of stairs and murmured, ‘It’s that way. We’ll come and find you there,’ before leading Marjorie and Felix down the staircase in front of them.

  Daphne watched them go, her relief making her almost light-headed. Why would anyone want to go and look at a dead body? She could think of nothing worse, and she only hoped that Felix would understand why she didn’t, couldn’t. He wasn’t her father, though she knew in her heart that even if he had been, she wouldn’t have gone. Still, there was no need to say that to Felix. She went down the stairs that the nurse had pointed out and found herself in the open foyer through which they’d passed when they arrived. There was a row of seats along one wall and taking one of these, she settled down to wait. Surely they wouldn’t be very long viewing the body.

  Felix and his mother followed Sister Deben along another corridor, and paused when she did outside a door.

  ‘We’ve laid him out in here,’ she said, opening the door. ‘Stay as long as you like.’ And with that she stood aside to let them in, gently closing the door behind them.

  Peter Bellinger was laid out on a bed. He was still wearing the pyjamas that Marjorie had brought in for him. Lying on the bed with his hands at his sides and his eyes closed, for a moment he looked to Felix as if he were asleep, but there was a stillness about him that made it clear he would never awake again. A chair had been placed on either side of the bed, and when he’d settled his mother in one, Felix took the other. He reached forward and took his father’s hand. It was cold, the skin already with a different texture and feel. Felix had seen death before, many times during the war – death of friends, death of companions, young lives, often brutally cut short, in air raid or battle – but never the quiet, end-of-life death of someone so close to him. He looked down at his father’s peaceful face and saw the lines of worry – which he’d noticed but dismissed as ageing – were smoothed away, and Felix realised just how much he loved him and how great his loss was going to be. He’d left it too late to talk to his father as a man. He’d been away in the air force, fighting a war, at a time a young man might begin to learn the true character and being of his father. He’d left the family home as a youth and returned to it only when necessary, not often from choice. There’d always been plenty of time in the future to do that, but now, suddenly, there wasn’t. The future had been cut off, abruptly and irrevocably. Silent tears spilled down his cheeks. He hadn’t realised when he’d said goodbye to his father the afternoon of his wedding day, when he’d been glad to see his parents leave and return to Somerset, allowing him and his new bride to forget them and begin their married life in London, he hadn’t known that he would never see him again. Of course he hadn’t! He hadn’t said a proper goodbye, just a clap on the shoulder and a vague promise to visit soon, a promise, he now acknowledged, he hadn’t intended to keep in the very near future.