by Marie Joseph
He narrowed his eyes against the upward curling smoke as he recalled, for some reason, the lonely housebound women he had often met on his rounds before the war. Hungry-eyed and nearly asking for it, and though God forbid his Maggie was not like that, there was something not quite right. She had been terrified of him touching her, and the conclusion he was coming to was that it had not been him she was frightened of, but herself. . . .
Joe drew too deeply on his cigarette and started to cough.
And it wasn’t easy walking all that way downhill, carrying a case and managing with his stick, but he stopped now and again pretending to be looking in a shop window, or waiting for a tram. By the time he reached Foundry Street he was hot and sweating, and his knee was aching with the familiar throbbing grind.
He did not attract all that much attention in his badly fitting suit, but one woman, standing on her doorstep gossiping with a neighbour, said:
‘That man is back from France. You can tell by his face, even without seeing his stick. It’s awful to see them so pulled down. What they must have been through is hard to realize.’
Her neighbour nodded. ‘Aye, it was a terrible war, but it’s over now, and there will never be another, that’s one blessing.’
‘You look ill,’ Maggie said when she opened the door to him, just as if she had known he would be coming; as if they had arranged it all the day before.
‘You don’t look all that well yourself, love,’ Joe told her, and she led the way through into the living-room, pushed the kettle over the flames, and set the tea-pot down to warm in the hearth.
‘I didn’t get much sleep,’ Maggie said, being careful not to look at him, not wanting him to see the joy just having him there shining from her eyes. ‘Sit down, then, Joe.’
He put his case down by the dresser, and lowered himself stiffly into the rocking chair. ‘And you sit down, lass. There’s something I have to tell you, and I want you to take it all in, every word.’
Maggie did as she was told, then folded her hands in her lap and waited, her head dropping so low that all he could see was the top of her piled hair.
‘I had a bit of a dust-up with Will,’ Joe said. ‘I only just stopped myself from belting him one. So I can’t stay there any longer. I’d outlived my welcome there, anyroad.’
Just for a moment the memory of what Will had said about the rat in the yard caused a spasm of pain to cross his face. Maggie glanced up briefly and saw it, and her own heart contracted in sympathy.
‘Joe Barton,’ she said, trying to make her voice light. ‘You seem to make a habit of setting yourself against somebody, and running away. And calling here to say goodbye first.’
As she spoke it came to her that she never seemed to have a normal conversation with this man. When they had been young it had all been teasing and laughter, and now, after all these years apart, they still talked with an intimacy as if the years between had never existed, as if all the trivia of politeness and small talk had been dispensed with, leaving them free to say exactly what came to mind.
She got up and got down the cups from the shelf. She got out the big glass sugar-bowl and clattered teaspoons into saucers, keeping her back carefully turned to him.
‘So I won’t be seeing you again, then?’
He came and putting his hands on her shoulders turned her to face him, standing so close she could see the puckered line of the scar, and the way his dark eyes were flecked with green.
‘I’ve told you to listen to me, lass,’ he said, and all at once she was aware of the excitement in him, the barely controlled violence.
‘Don’t touch me, Joe,’ she said, and even as she said it she was aching for him to pull her close, to hold her face between his hands, and to kiss her with the mouth that was not fleshy as Kit’s was fleshy, but firm and strong.
‘Stop messing about with those bloody cups. I don’t want a cup of tea. I’m not here to be soothed with tea,’ he said.
Turning round he picked up the poker and pulled the stand away from the flames. ‘Tea’s not what I’ve come for, and you know it.’
He came close to her again, and putting his arms around her, held her close. She could feel the heat from his face, and she knew that she was powerless to push him away.
‘Joe,’ she whispered. ‘I’m not that young girl you came to say goodbye to long ago. It’s not the same, an’ it’s not going to be the same. Go and catch your train, and be happy, and, Joe . . . you’ll take care of yourself? You’re not fit to be on your own, not yet.’
He gave her a little shake.
‘I’ve been taking care of myself all me life, love. All my life. You know that.’
‘Yes, I know that,’ she whispered.
And then he kissed her. Gently at first, with his mouth softly covering her own, searching with sweetness, tracing her face with his lips, murmuring her name.
‘Maggie! Oh, lass, you’re so beautiful. So bloody marvellous and beautiful. You know that I love you . . . you must know that I’ve always loved you.’
He kissed her with passion, tangling his fingers in her hair, then letting her go so violently that she groped behind her for the arm of the chair.
Sitting down, she buried her face in her hands, but grasping her by the upper arms, Joe pulled her to her feet again.
‘An’ don’t go and tell me I shouldn’t have done that, because you wanted it as much as I did,’ he said brutally. ‘Tell me, Maggie, because it matters. It has a lot to do with what I’ve come to say. Has your husband never kissed you like that? Ever?’
For a long moment she was silent, then she shouted:
‘No, no, no!’
And she was crying, openly in front of him, crying her shame away, feeling the hot tears run down her face. Sobbing her rejection of the night before away even as she despised herself for her disloyalty.
She raised her face.
‘Joe. Don’t ask me to talk about it. Not about Kit. He is the kindest, the most considerate man in the whole world. He hasn’t done the brave things you’ve done, Joe, but in his own way he’s been brave.’ Her breath caught on a sob. ‘I’m the wrong one, not Kit . . . He can’t help being . . . being different. It’s just that he’s not made that way, that’s all. He can’t help not having feelings, Joe.’ She was talking wildly, agitated and uncontrolled, and giving herself away with every word she spoke.
‘And now you must go. Take your case and go. Please.’
Joe cupped her face in his hands, and Maggie even in her distress thought they were the kindest eyes she had ever seen. There was a tender sympathy there, an understanding, and a love that made her close her own eyes against it.
Joe spoke quickly and with urgency. . . .
‘Now listen hard, Maggie love. If I could, and if there was time, I would get down on me knees to the bonniest, the bravest woman I’ve ever known. But I’m down on my knees in me heart, lass. An’ that’s the way it’s going to be from now on.’
He let go of her, and limping back to the chair sat down and felt in his pocket for a cigarette. She saw that his hand trembled as he held the lighted match, and knew she would have to hear him out.
It was no good though. There was no ‘from now on’ for either of them, but she had the sensitivity to realize that what Joe was about to say had been well rehearsed in his mind. And when he began to speak she knew she was right.
‘In two hours from now there’s a train to Preston. That train goes to Crewe, Maggie love, and from there on to London. It’s a long journey, lass, but it won’t seem long, because you are going with me.’
Maggie shook her head violently, but Joe put up his hand for silence.
‘You and the baby. Our baby, because that’s what she is. It all fits like a pattern. You losing ours, then me coming back here and Rosie being put in my arms just after she’d been born. Me coming to find you. Will forcing me to act quickly. I thought it all out in the night and there’s no other explanation than that it’s a sign. Maybe from that God y
ou’re always on about.’
He nodded towards the basket by the fire. ‘You can wrap her up well, and there are . . . there’s a place at Crewe where you can get warm milk for her bottle.’
He had gone very pale, but Maggie let him carry on.
‘We’ll get her there all right. She won’t come to no harm, an’ we’ll go to an hotel till I can get my place fixed up nice. Then it will be you and me and her, just like it was meant to be. You’ll never want for nothing, Maggie, not for the rest of your days.’ He stared down at the cigarette smouldering away in his hand, as if wondering what it could be.
‘So just you go upstairs and get a few things together, not much because tomorrow you can go out to a fancy London shop and buy yourself and Rosie anything you need . . . no, not anything you need, anything you want.’
He grinned. ‘And I won’t take no for an answer, Maggie lass. You gave yourself away when I kissed you. You feel just the same way as me, and don’t go saying it would be a sin, for staying apart would be a greater sin. Love, the kind of love we feel, doesn’t come all that often, and what I saw in France taught me one thing:
‘You have to take what you want from this life, ’cos nobody is going to hand happiness to you on a plate. Nobody.’
His face darkened. ‘And it’s our turn, Maggie. It’s our bloody turn.’
There! He had said what he had come to say, but he had never dreamt it would take so much out of him. Drained and spent, he put his head back, closing his eyes, so that Maggie saw his face as she imagined it would look when he was dead. White and still, with the only thread of colour the pink scar tissue running down one cheek.
It was very quiet in the little room, quiet with the hush that came at that time in the morning. When Clara began raking the ashes from her fire-back at the other side of the wall, Maggie jumped as if someone had suddenly prodded her in the back.
‘But I can’t come with you, Joe,’ she said. ‘I can’t leave Kit. He needs me. You don’t know just how much he needs me.’
‘And don’t I bloody need you?’
Joe opened his eyes and stared straight at her. ‘I need you in a way he has never needed you. You said so yourself, Maggie. Oh, Maggie love, you are still a young woman. You can’t live out the rest of your life in this house, in this town. There’s another side to life down there.’
He leaned forward, his thin face serious and intent.
‘Do you want to grow like the rest of them? Like my sister Belle? She was a washed-out child and now she’s a washed-out wife. Maggie? Do you really want to turn into a worn-out drab, waiting on a man what needs a mother more than he does a wife?’
Joe threw the half-smoked cigarette into the fire.
‘Oh aye, I know his sort. There were some like your husband in the army. Soft mammy’s boys who should never have been breached. Show them a woman, a real woman, and they’d have run a mile. You can’t stay here with a man like that, little love. You need someone to care for you. Not t’other way round.’
Maggie shook her head sadly.
‘Now it is your turn to listen, Joe Barton. Even if I wanted to leave Kit . . .’ She lifted her chin. ‘And I can’t and I won’t. It could never be as you say. For one thing, I burnt my boats yesterday after you had gone.’
She glanced over to the dresser drawer where the bank book no longer rested beneath the pile of tea-towels.
‘Kit came home and told me his boss had sold the shop to somebody else so that he could retire on the proceeds and the pile he’s made over the years. Kit had worked that shop up from nothing, doing all the buying and the figure-work, besides working all the hours God sends for no extra. Yet that mean old goat of a boss gave Kit the sack. Just like that.’
Maggie nodded towards the drawer again. ‘I’d been saving up, bit by bit, not much, but it was all money I had earned with sewing, every penny of it. I gave it all to Kit and told him to go and buy that shop for himself. I said I would ask Clara to have Rosie to mind till we got things straight. I told her about it early on this morning, and she’s over the moon about it. She reckons she never wanted babies, but to see her with Rosie is a revelation.’
She nodded. ‘So I am committed, Joe. That shop is in an awful district – nearly as bad as Montague Court – but there are two rooms above, and I’m sure I can make something of them. It’s a challenge, Joe. I can decorate those rooms myself, and in between I can help Kit in the shop.’
Twice again she nodded her head. ‘So that is what I am going to do, and even if I was the sort who could just walk out on her husband I can’t now. Because it is too late.’
‘Come here.’
Joe spoke quietly, but the command rang out like the crack of a whip.
‘Come here, Maggie. Over to me, and kneel down by this chair, then look me in the eyes and tell me you don’t love me. Never mind what you have just been saying – them’s only excuses. Just come and tell me that one thing.’
Slowly Maggie obeyed. She got up from her chair, walked across the front of the fireplace, then knelt down by Joe’s side on the pegged rug.
There were tears glistening in her eyes, but she wasn’t going to let them fall. Crying was a waste of time. Nobody knew that better than she did, but she had to try to make Joe understand. This time he would go away for ever, so what she had to say was important, because she wanted him to remember her words.
‘Joe . . . oh, Joe. I can’t tell you that I don’t love you, because it would not be true. I don’t think I have ever stopped loving you and wanting you. Even on my wedding night I stood at the window upstairs and looked up the street, wishing with all my heart that you would come round the corner. I saw a shadow an’ I thought it was you. I made it into you before it disappeared for ever.’
She blinked the gathering tears away.
‘You are my only true love, Joe. I think, like my mother, I was only meant to love one man, and that one is you. But, Joe . . . dear Joe. Nobody has things just the way they want them. Nobody. Life is a compromise for everybody in some way or other. Even Kit has to make do with me when probably he would be happier with someone who didn’t blow their top as often.’
She dashed a tear away from the corner of her eye.
‘Kit will come home tonight, and the shop will be ours. I know what I have facing me. I know that all right. I have years of serving in the shop, fighting to bring up little Rosie decent, looking after Kit when he is too old to work such long hours, and yes, you were right. I will probably grow old before my time. . . .’
Now the tears were rolling down her face. ‘My father used to long for what he called a “glimpse of green”, and there’s none of that where I’m going to live, Joe, I can tell you that.’
‘Where is the shop?’
Joe’s voice was cold and he was looking at her as if not a word of what she had been saying had penetrated.
Maggie told him the name of the street where Kit’s shop stood on the corner, then she drew back on her heels startled as he banged angrily on the arm of the chair with his fist.
‘And you talk about bringing a child up round there? I know you, Maggie. I know you of old. What will you do when Rosie wants to go out and play in the gutter with the rest of the kids in that neighbourhood? Will you lock her up in her room and hope she ends up talking as nicely as you? Will you wash her hair every night to keep the nits out of it?’
Joe thumped the chair arm twice more. ‘What sort of a man is this Kit who would allow Rosie to be brought up round there? And where do you come into it? Strikes me he’s a selfish bastard as well as a . . .’
Maggie put up a hand to cover Joe’s mouth, and he took it, and turning it palm upwards, bent his head and kissed the blue veins on her wrist. Immediately she tried to pull away, but he held fast.
‘Look, lass. I’m going now. I am going down to the station on me own, because I know you have a lot of thinking to do, then at twelve o’clock I am going to send a taxi-cab for you and Rosie. If it comes back without you then I�
��ll know. But talking’s not my way, and we’ve said all we need. . . .’
He jerked her to him and kissed her hard, so hard that she felt the pressure of his teeth. So long that when at last he lifted his head she opened her eyes and saw the ceiling dip and sway towards her.
‘It’s me or him, Maggie. A straight choice. One or the other. You’ll not be fulfilling your part of the bargain you made when you got wed, but then he’s not fulfilled his either, has he? If I go alone this time it will be for ever. I will never come back to this town again. Ever. . . .’
Maggie felt him move away from the chair. She heard him unhook his stick from the dresser, and she heard the front door slam behind him.
Too shattered, too filled with emotion to get to her feet, she stretched out her arms across the seat of the chair and gave way to wild and anguished weeping.
It was a cold, bitterly cold day, with the sky hanging low with the threat of snow. Joe walked slowly, past the statue of Queen Victoria on the Boulevard, past the tramcars with their overhead cables, and across the wide stretch of road to the station forecourt.
He spoke briefly to a cab driver who nodded and wrote down his instructions, then in the entrance hall he walked over to a window and booked two tickets for London.
Then he sat down on his case to wait. . . .
He was quite calm, as calm as he had always been when waiting to go over the top in the trenches. He was so pale that one or two people, rushing for their trains, glanced quickly at him then looked as quickly away.
There were so many men like Joe Barton in those early months after the war had ended, hanging about at stations, wearing suits that did not fit right, looking as if they were waiting for nothing, with nowhere to go.
War did that, they told themselves, and there was nothing anyone could do except feel pity, and a sort of shamed gladness that it was all over without having affected them directly.
And Joe, sitting as still as Queen Victoria’s statue, saw none of them. Every muscle in his body, every nerve inside him tuned into waiting for what might be.
