The Second-last Woman in England

by Maggie Joel

Cecil stared at her as the roast beef and Yorkshire pudding was slammed down onto the table in front of him. He waited until the waitress had thrust the toad-in-the-hole at Felicity. It was served with a handful of green peas which rolled in a cluster around the plate like a school of tiny green fish.

  ‘Do many West Indian families have television sets?’ replied Cecil in some surprise.

  ‘I really have no idea,’ said Felicity, unfolding a paper napkin and laying it on her lap.

  ‘And of course one has to question whether hippos do in fact come from the West Indies,’ added Cecil, attempting to lighten the tone.

  ‘I doubt it,’ replied Felicity, taking the question at face value. ‘No more than they come from the home counties.’

  She had a point. The hippo in Hippo and Friends had a distinct home counties plum in his mouth. No doubt the BBC was not too concerned about zoological accuracy. It was, evidently, concerned about audience numbers.

  ‘Oh, I almost forgot,’ and Cecil reached inside his coat pocket and placed her present on the table. ‘Happy birthday, old girl.’

  There was a moment of awkwardness as they decided whether it was appropriate to kiss, decided not to risk it and instead smiled at each other.

  Cecil was rather pleased with the present. After all, it wasn’t every day one turned forty, was it? It called for something a bit special. Felicity took the present and unwrapped it carefully. It was a box and she looked up at him curiously. He smiled back and suddenly felt a moment of shyness. She opened the lid and looked at the ring nestling inside.

  ‘It’s mother’s,’ he explained quickly. ‘Don’t you remember—no, of course, you were too young. It was her engagement ring. After she died, father kept all her rings in his desk drawer. I found them after he died. I mentioned it to you at the time. Anyway, I completely forgot about them until I found them in my own desk a few months ago. I got it altered to your size—Leo lent me one of your rings.’

  He stopped, feeling pleased with this story, with his efforts.

  Felicity looked at the ring again and her eyes filled with tears. Cecil was appalled. Somehow he had not imagined this. He attacked his roast beef with vigour.

  ‘What a lovely idea,’ said Felicity after a moment or two. There was a silence and Cecil continued to eat, concentrating on his Yorkshire pudding which was thankfully a little leathery and therefore took all his attention to saw through. ‘Thank you, Cecil,’ she said finally.

  ‘Don’t mention it, old girl. Hmm, the Yorkshire’s very good. How’s yours?’

  ‘Super,’ she replied though she hadn’t taken a mouthful.

  Her hand was shaking. He noticed it out of the corner of his eye as he lifted a forkful of roast beef to his mouth. He looked away with a frown, alarmed. Was it the ring? Lord, one wanted her to be pleased. Hadn’t occurred to him she might be upset by it.

  ‘Oh. Forgot to ask: how were Margery and the kids?’

  He had rung her three nights ago to confirm the lunch and Leo had answered the telephone, reporting that Felicity was away overnight, staying with an old school-chum in Maidenhead.

  She looked up at him, her fork poised mid-air.

  ‘Leo mentioned it when I rang. Didn’t he say I’d called?’

  She looked almost unwell.

  ‘No. No, he didn’t.’

  ‘Well, and how was Margery?’

  ‘Fine. I mean, she’s been a little down since John died, you know. Did you know John had died? It was a while ago, of course, but I think she still misses him a great deal.’ She smiled, but the smile did not touch her eyes.

  ‘No, I didn’t know. Poor Margery.’ Cecil ate for a moment in silence. Then he looked up. ‘Felicity, are you all right? You look … quite unwell.’

  He couldn’t recall ever saying such a thing to her before. Ever noticing such a thing before.

  She blinked at him.

  ‘Of course I’m all right. Quite all right. Why do you ask?’ She laughed uncertainly.

  ‘Sorry, old girl. Don’t mean to appear rude. Just a little concerned, that’s all.’

  ‘I was feeling a little queasy,’ she admitted, then she appeared to regret this admission and turned back to her toad-in-the-hole.

  Cecil looked at her and a sudden, an astonishing thought came to him.

  ‘Good Lord, you’re not expecting a baby, are you?’

  He regretted it as soon as the words left his mouth. She looked at him aghast and he realised his mistake.

  ‘Of course not, Cecil. What a thing to suggest.’ She smiled that same unnerving smile again. ‘Leo and I have never wanted children, you know that.’

  ‘Of course.’ He hadn’t known that—how would he? Though it came as no surprise. And better not to want children than to have childlessness forced upon you.

  ‘Anyway, I’ve been meaning to tell you, I have had some ideas for a new television program,’ said Felicity, leaning forward and placing her fork and knife on the plate though she had eaten almost nothing. ‘It has puppets—I mean puppets with strings rather than a glove puppet like Hippo, and that allows for much great movement around the set, you see.’

  Cecil nodded. ‘Yes, I see,’ and he listened silently while outside the fog closed in.

  Chapter Seventeen

  FEBRUARY 1953

  The news hoarding outside Knightsbridge tube station announced in dramatic black letters that the Government had offered a general amnesty for deserters. It was to be a special measure during Coronation year.

  From the top deck of the number 14 bus Jean looked down at the paper-boy, muffled up in a long scarf, who shouted these words as he tossed papers at passers-by and neatly caught their coins. A lady in a wide-brimmed hat side-stepped the noisy paper-boy and climbed into the back of a black cab.

  During the war men had died and other men had survived, some had fought and some had not. Now, eight years on, what mattered to the people of Knightsbridge late on a chilly Tuesday afternoon was hailing a cab ahead of someone else further up the street, avoiding the frozen puddles on Old Brompton Road and getting home before dark.

  The bus pulled away from the kerb and a young couple, giggling and clutching a wet packet of chips, emerged onto the top deck and took a seat at the front of the bus. Behind the couple came a man, a little older, in a long overcoat and hat and carrying a hastily folded newspaper. The bus swerved and he swung into the seat in front of Jean, grabbing the handrail to steady himself.

  Tuesdays were Jean’s afternoon off. Often she took the bus to Kensington High Street and had a slice of cake and a cup of tea at the Lyons tea shop and watched the people going by, then took a walk in Kensington Gardens. If there was something good showing, she went to the pictures, then she bought fish and chips and ate them on the bus coming home. But this Tuesday she had left the house as soon as the clock in the hallway had struck twelve, and taken the bus east to the City. She had got off and walked along the river past the Tower and the crowds of tourists. She had avoided the docks, turning north into Cable Street towards Shadwell, and then into Stepney.

  It had been a shock to see all those empty, bombed-out streets, the few remaining rows of ugly, overcrowded tenements, the lines of grey washing criss-crossing the lanes and alleyways; to see so many filthy children playing in the dirt, inadequately dressed against the cold February day. And it was a shock to realise that she was shocked, when she ought not to have been, when she had grown up right here.

  The bombsites were in every street. Dreadful gaping wounds in the roadside, remnants of a wall here, a doorway there, and everywhere rosebay willowherb choking and consuming everything in its path. And so few cars. The streets were as full of craters as they had been when the war ended. What was the Government doing? And where was everyone living? On top of each other, seemed to be the answer—all that washing outside one grimy window, all those children playing outside a single doorstep.

  As she passed them, the children paused in their games to stare at her.

  One little b
oy stooped and picked up a stone and hurled it at her, not with any obvious anger, it seemed, but out of boredom, or habit. The stone sailed past Jean’s ear and landed with a thud on the pavement, bouncing and rolling into the gutter.

  Jean quickened her pace. It had only been six months and yet she hurried with her head down like a stranger.

  Turning into Malacca Row she paused. Half the street was gone, of course, from number twelve right the way down to number twenty—an open sore of scorched bricks and piles of rubble that had lain undisturbed for eight years. The willowherb crept over every surface, strangling, reclaiming, gradually turning city back into country. Into wasteland.

  And behind the hole that had once been the north side of Malacca Row was the gasworks, looming five storeys high and making her stand and stare because for the first twelve years of her life the gasworks had been hidden. Now, even after eight years, it was still a shock to see it, so vast and exposed, like a bone when the flesh had been blasted off. If the rocket had fallen one street to the north, everyone had said—if the rocket had landed on the gasworks and not on the north side of Malacca Row—the whole area would have been blown sky high. But it had fallen on Malacca Row and numbers twelve to twenty had been reduced to rubble and five families had been wiped out. It could have been more—would have been more, but the rocket had fallen on a Sunday, and in the daytime when folk were outside hanging out their washing and waiting for the pub to open. The Corbetts hadn’t been hanging out their washing, as Sunday was Chapel day. But that Sunday—for the first Sunday in living memory—the Corbetts had not gone to Chapel.

  The McIlwraiths lived at number ten. When the bomb had hit, their house had lost all its windows and most of its tiles and a couple of outside walls, but it was, generally speaking, still standing. Mr McIlwraith was long gone by then, but in the years since the rocket Eddie or Liam or one of Mrs McIlwraith’s other nephews had shored up a wall here, a roofing joist there, a doorway somewhere else, using bricks and bits of timber salvaged from the debris of the other houses. Jean had long ago trained herself not to wonder if the particular piece of timber shoring up the doorframe or replacing the banisters had once been part of her own house. Life went on. And Mrs McIlwraith had been good to her.

  She crossed the road and the front door of number 10 opened just as though she was expected, and there was Mrs McIlwraith standing in the doorway, a scarf tied around her head, a fag in the corner of her mouth as always, the rug—it looked like the rug from the hallway—in her hands, and she began to beat it vigorously against the doorpost. She looked up and paused in her beating, seeing Jean.

  ‘Well, if it in’t little Jeanie Corbett,’ she announced as though addressing a third person. And Jean almost skipped over to her, ten years old and with her socks fallen down to her ankles.

  ‘You ain’t ’ere to see Eddie, I ’ope?’ Mrs McIlwraith added, placing a hand on her hip and blocking the doorway.

  Jean stopped.

  ‘Hello, Mrs McIlwraith. No, I—’

  ‘Because he’s upped and gone off with that Brenda Sykes from the Dog and Rabbit. Her that was goin’ with young Ted Henshaw before he got himself banged up for them fake ration books.’

  There was a pause. Mrs McIlwraith gave the rug a brisk shake to indicate what she thought of Ted Henshaw, and perhaps what she thought of Brenda Sykes too.

  ‘No, I was just poppin’ round. Say hello, that’s all,’ said Jean feeling, a little awkward.

  ‘Yeah, well.’

  Mrs McIlwraith appeared not to think much of someone ‘poppin’ round’. She scowled.

  ‘They feedin’ you all right, are they?’ she inquired suspiciously, as though Jean were at a girls’ reformatory school.

  ‘Yeah, course,’ Jean replied, a little defensively. She stood and watched the rug beating and found she hadn’t much else to say.

  Mrs McIlwraith rolled the cigarette from one corner of her mouth to the other and regarded Jean for a moment.

  ‘I daresay you’re too posh for the likes of us now,’ she observed.

  Jean made no reply to this.

  ‘Well, I can’t be standin’ round here all day yackin’, can I? There’s work to be done,’ and with that Mrs McIlwrath gave the rug a final thump and turned and closed the door behind her.

  Jean left Malacca Row and turned south towards Wapping and the docks.

  Soon the oily, salty, vaguely fishy smell of the river filled her head. The boom of a large ship sounded once, twice, then faded, a haze of smoke filled the horizon and the blood quickened in her veins. Up west the river was a quaint waterway of pleasure craft bobbing up and down and going nowhere. Not a real river at all. Here it was a working river, a proper river, and her heart leapt to think of it. But she was not here to see the river.

  Ahead of her was a narrow laneway into which she turned. At the end of the laneway in between two warehouses, one mostly intact, one reduced to rubble, was the Chapel. It was a squat brick building, not fancy like the Catholic or the Church of England churches with all their stained glass and their stone carvings and what have you. No, this was a plain sort of building—ugly, really—yet her heart swelled with joy when she saw its four tiny windows, its green-painted door and two tatty posters flapping in the breeze, one proclaiming God’s love, the other—handwritten in bold blue ink—listing the service times. Hitler’s bombs had fallen to right and left but the Chapel, by God’s mercy, had been kept safe. Even Hitler’s rockets had proved no match for His protection.

  Jean marched boldly up to the peeling green front door and pushed it open. Inside a familiar warm and musty smell greeted her, of wood and disinfectant and dust and damp. Of paper and candles burning. Some things hadn’t changed. And there were the eight rows of hard wooden pews—room for only 30 worshippers and not a cushion in sight. At the far end of the hall was the altar, a simple wooden affair constructed years ago by one of the brethren, and on it the cross and the candles in their candleholders—they were wooden too. Gold, Pastor Bellamy had always said, was too much of a temptation to the weak-minded and He didn’t mind if you used gold or wood to worship Him.

  There was no pulpit. Pastor Bellamy, or whichever of the elders was preaching that day, stood behind a crude wooden lectern. Dad had stood there himself on many a Sunday, not that he ever required a lectern to hold his sermon notes for it was all inside him. Fire in the belly was how he described it, and he could summon that fire at will, it had seemed, to the awe and delight of the little congregation. Sometimes it had been frightening. How many times as a small child, and then when she was a little older, with Gladys and Nerys squeezed in tightly beside her on the pew, had she sat quaking with fear as Dad’s eyes had blazed and those terrible words had poured forth, evoking the damnation and torment that awaited the sinner.

  There had been one Sunday during the war when a member of the congregation, a young girl, had made some transgression—the exact nature of this transgression was never mentioned, though it seemed obvious now that the girl had got herself in the family way—and Dad had railed against her furiously, urging the congregation to expel the sinner, and his wrath and indignation when Pastor Bellamy had suggested they show the girl mercy and allow her to remain in the church had been terrifying to behold. Dad had leapt up and stood right here, addressing the other elders and their wives and families, demanding they act decisively. ‘Temptation leads only to damnation!’ he had roared, thumping the lectern, and eventually they had come round to his way of thinking and the girl had been expelled.

  What had become of her? Perhaps she had joined the Catholics. Perhaps she had turned from God completely.

  The chapel was silent. The echo of Dad’s words was just that: an echo, and only Jean could hear it.

  ‘Hello? Is anyone in? Pastor Bellamy?’

  She went to the door that led to the tiny room at the back of the hall that served as both office and Pastor Bellamy’s vestry, then stepped back in surprise when another man entirely came out of the room.
/>   ‘Hello. Can I help you?’ said the man, pausing and peering curiously at her. He was a young man, only a few years older than herself, with a narrow frame and a narrow face, thinning hair, dark eyes that studied her closely. He wore a collar and seemed vaguely familiar. He stood in the doorway of the office as if he had business to be there. Jean stepped back and felt a moment of alarm, confusion.

  ‘Yes … I was looking for Pastor Bellamy.’

  ‘Well, I’m Pastor Lennard,’ he replied, as though that somehow answered her question. ‘Bob Lennard—I was an elder over at Hackney. And what’s your name?’

  Yes, she remembered him, he had helped out one Christmas when the Pastor had been unwell and had visited on other occasions.

  ‘I’m Jean. Jean Corbett. You’ll know of my Dad, Owen? Owen Corbett—he was an elder here for twenty years. And my Mum. We all came here, the Corbetts …’

  He smiled politely, but there was no recognition in his eyes.

  ‘Please, where is Pastor Bellamy?’

  ‘I’m afraid he passed away some months ago.’

  He delivered this news, then—perhaps out of respect—he paused, though if it was respect, the pause was hardly long enough.

  ‘November it was. There was a break-in.’ He began to close the door to the office, pulling out a large key and inserting it in a new-looking lock. ‘Poor Pastor Bellamy was here on his own and they struck him down. The Lord alone knows what they were after, but desperate times …’ He shrugged a little sadly. ‘Mrs Angel found him next morning. Still alive, but insensible. They took him to the London Hospital at Whitechapel, but he only lived a few days. May he rest in eternal peace,’ he finished with a helpful smile.

  Jean stared at him as another part of her old life crumbled into dust and vanished.

  ‘No one told me,’ she said at last.

  ‘No, I’m sure,’ he replied, nodding. ‘You’ve left the district, then?’

  Jean heard him but her head began to hurt at her temples, a pounding that pressed against her eyes.

  ‘Yes, I … Yes. I had to get work …’