Dancing on Deansgate

by Freda Lightfoot

  Jess sympathised, understood a little of how he felt. After being in labour for almost twenty-five hours of seemingly unendurable agony, they’d finally put her child in her arms and she’d felt nothing; had looked down upon him with complete indifference, her heart turned to stone. Family and friends had come to admire him and make comments over who they thought he most resembled. If there was a moment when she’d looked at the baby and imagined that she saw Steve in the round, bright eyed features, and the shaggy red-brown hair, then she quickly dismissed it as wishful thinking. She and Cora knew better.

  Jess certainly hadn’t expected to love him. How could she? A child born out of violence. Even when she’d finally brought him home two weeks later, she could hardly bear to look at him let alone pick him up. Jess would leave him in his cot for hours at a time where he would contentedly sleep, or gurgle and talk to himself. Everyone said what a good, happy baby he was.

  Sometimes Jess would simply sit and look at him, wondering who he was.

  But even if she couldn’t manage to love her child as she should, not for the world did she wish him any harm. Jess did her best to care for him, would get up at night without complaint to feed, change and burp him, and walked him out in his pram every afternoon.

  Lizzie had come to live with them, as Doug had agreed that she could, but it hadn’t worked out quite as Jess had hoped. Any normal mother would have helped with the new baby, but Lizzie was not, and never would be a normal mother. She required too much care herself. At first Jess had hoped that having a grandchild would keep Lizzie off the booze. But, thanks to Harry, there was no shortage of that commodity and on too many occasions she’d returned home to find her mother senseless. On one, never to be forgotten day when little Johnny was just a few months old, Jess had agreed to let her hold him, while she pegged out the washing.

  She must have wandered off upstairs in search of a quick nip of gin, because Jess suddenly heard a piercing scream and came running in to find that her mother had fallen down the stairs. Her heart had very nearly stopped beating on the spot, until she realised that she’d left the baby lying safely in the middle of her bed, having forgotten that she’d taken him up in the first place.

  ‘Thank God! You could have killed him if you’d fallen with him in your arms. What were you thinking of?’

  The truth was Lizzie hadn’t been thinking at all. She was beyond thought, beyond feelings, beyond anything which didn’t come in the shape of a bottle.

  Finally, Doug convinced Lizzie that she should move back in with her sister-in-law; that Jess had enough on her plate looking after a new baby.

  And yet another dream had ended.

  Jess depended entirely upon Cora’s support during those first few months, learning the skills of baby care from her aunt which her own mother did not possess. The times when Cora was occupied with her own family and she was left alone with the child, were difficult. She felt trapped and very slightly resentful of this small, demanding infant who had destroyed her life.

  To her shame, Jess realised that this was exactly how Lizzie must have felt when she’d found herself in a similar situation. Not that it was quite the same. Lizzie had at least got pregnant through a normal, loving relationship, unlike herself.

  But then something happened which changed everything.

  It was Cora who first noticed that something was wrong with the baby. She kept saying that he wasn’t developing properly; should be eating better, sitting up by now, trying to crawl, and suddenly Jess too began to worry about him. She grew strangely protective.

  She even spoke of her fears to Doug. ‘Cora says there’s something wrong with the baby.’

  ‘Nonsense. It’s your own inadequacies as a mother that are at fault. You haven’t even breastfed him, giving him that dreadful National Dried Baby Food. No wonder the child isn’t thriving. You could well have hurt him by your neglect.’

  ‘Neglect? What are you suggesting? I would never do anything to harm him.’

  ‘Well, you’re certainly not a normal mother, not like my own, for instance. Wonderful woman, my mother. You could have learned a lot from her.’

  Jess listened to her husband’s criticisms, issued in what she’d come to recognise as that quiet, patronising voice of his and could hardly breathe as her throat constricted with unshed tears. Was she an unnatural mother? Was it even true that she didn’t love her baby? Looking down at where he lay, strangely immobile in his cot, she felt a shaft of such love and fear for him that it was as if someone had punched her in the chest. She would never hurt him, never!

  Very gently, she picked him up and held his rigid little body against her breast, tears rolling down her cheeks, splashing on to one tiny, clenched fist. It came to her then, in a blinding flash, that he was in pain. That was why he wasn’t thriving. Something was hurting him, very badly.

  She took him straight to the doctor where it was discovered that he had a dislocated hip, which had knitted together all wrong.

  ‘But how did that happen? He’s scarcely been out of his cot?’

  Tests were made but it was finally decided that nothing intrinsic was wrong. His bones were otherwise normal, so it had probably happened during the long and difficult birth. He was given an operation where the joint was broken and re-set, and then put in plaster, almost from waist to toe, save for his little bottom. Jess experienced every part of the agony with him. She sat for hour upon hour, day after day, unable to do or think of anything but the baby. Jess waited for news during the long operation, then sat by his bed waiting for him to wake up, and later to slowly recover. Only Cora or Leah’s occasional visits kept her spirits up. The nurses tried to insist that she should go home, pointing out that they had set visiting hours.

  Jess refused to budge. ‘I’m his mother. Don’t you realise I’m all he has. I need to be here for him.’ And something in the set of her face, in the pained resolution of her tone, made them leave her in peace.

  Cora said, ‘Didn’t I say something were wrong?’

  ‘I’m very grateful, Cora, for your perception. How would I manage without you?’

  ‘It’s all your fault,’ Doug told her when he was finally shamed into visiting the baby. ‘You realise he could have been disabled. As if the poor kid doesn’t have problems enough.’

  ‘What problems does the poor kid have?’

  ‘You know very well. Being – who, what he is.’

  ‘You mean the child of rape – of incest?’

  Doug looked about the crowded hospital ward in dismay, then hissed at her under his breath. ‘Don’t use such nasty words in so public a place. I’m only saying that if you hadn’t tried to disguise the fact you were pregnant, no doubt by strapping yourself in with corsets, then his hip wouldn’t have got damaged in the first place. You must have hurt him while he was still in your womb, or why would he be this way?’

  ‘Utter rubbish! I’ve never worn a corset in my life. The doctor says its just one of those things, an accident at birth.’

  ‘Well he doesn’t know you as I do. Or else you didn’t pay proper attention to what the midwife was telling you at the time, and that’s how he got damaged. Either way, you’re the one responsible, no doubt about it. You really have been a useless mother to that child, right from the start. You should have given him up, given him to someone who knows how to look after a child.’

  Jess gaped at him. ‘Give him up? I could never do that. Never! I can’t think why you say such horrible things.’

  ‘That’s what you said you’d do, when you were first pregnant.’

  ‘I don’t believe I ever agreed to such a thing. But he’s here now, so I feel entirely differently about him. And what about you? What kind of father have you been?’

  ‘Ah, but I’m not his father, am I? So he’s not my responsibility.’

  ‘No, thank God, you’re not!’

  Today, as she jiggled little Johnny in his pram in Albert Square, watching him laugh as she tooted on her trumpet for him, it was L
eah who asked, ‘When does the plaster come off?’

  He was sitting up all bright eyed and alert, delighting as much as she in the excitement of the day with not a sign of lethargy or pain in him. Jess fully believed that he would walk normally now. Oh, she did hope so, for didn’t she love the bones of him, as the saying went, only in her case she meant it literally. Nursing Johnny through his long illness had brought them together as mother and son. She loved him now more than she could say, more than life itself.

  ‘Oh, not for a few months yet. Even then we mustn’t rush him to try and walk. It will take a while before he’s strong enough. But it’ll come, all in good time.’

  ‘Poor little mite. I wonder how it happened.’

  ‘Don’t you start. I have enough of that from Doug. He’s a very quiet man, my husband, but he knows how to make his disapproval felt, with a silence you could cut with a blunt knife.’

  Leah suddenly started. ‘Heavens, look at the time. I must fly or there’ll be no tea waiting for Harry when he gets in.’ And she began desperately to look around for Cora, who had taken little Susie out of her pram to give her a walk around on her short, chubby legs.

  ‘It is OK for Saturday, I hope?’

  Leah’s face held an expression of momentary panic, one Jess had seen many times and which never ceased to bring a nudge of unease, despite the fact that these concerns were nearly always shrugged off or rebuffed. ‘Lord, I’d forgotten about that. I think so, yes - I expect it’ll be OK. So long as Harry hasn’t fixed up for me to work behind the bar.’

  ‘Tell him to find someone else for once. Don’t let him bully you.’ Jess regarded her friend for a moment out of narrowed eyes. ‘You don’t, do you?’

  Keeping her head down as she strapped the baby into her harness, all too aware of her mother-in-law’s curious gaze upon her, Leah brightly responded, ‘As if he’d dare. I’m fine, it’s just that trade hasn’t been too good recently and he’s short of the readies, so he’s cut back on staff.’

  ‘Well then, he won’t object to your earning a few bob by tinkling the ivories for me.’

  ‘No, of course he won’t. Give my love to Doug. See you on Saturday.’ Then Leah was breathlessly running down Deansgate anxious not to be late home, or else Harry would flay her alive.

  Leah really didn’t know why she put up with it. At first she had stayed because she’d still loved him and had hoped that he would change. And then out of pride, because she’d married him in defiance of her parents, despite their disapproval, and couldn’t for shame admit that she’d made a mistake. Now she was too afraid to leave, knowing he’d find her and bring her back, and because she had nowhere else to go. Nowhere she could be certain of being safe.

  She had once tried packing her bags and going home to her mother. Muriel had taken one look at her daughter standing forlornly on the doorstep, two suitcases at her feet and a brand new baby on her hip, and rolled her eyes in despair.

  ‘What did I say? Didn’t I predict that it would all go terribly wrong? If you’d listened to me, you could have married Ambrose, who is doing splendidly I understand. A Sergeant-Major, no less, with a long and distinguished career ahead of him in the regular army. Well, don’t think you can come back home with your tail between your legs. Your father is retiring. Robert is taking over the business and we are moving out to the Fylde coast to enjoy whatever years we have left, without work or worry of any kind.’

  Leah had been flabbergasted, unable to believe her ears. ‘Are you saying that you won’t help me? That you won’t even give me a bed for the night, your own daughter and granddaughter?’

  ‘You made your bed, Leah, so lie on it.’

  She hadn’t ever gone back again. On that occasion she’d ended up at Cora’s, trailing round in tears, the baby screaming her head off. Harry had been summoned to his mother’s house and been given a thorough talking to, accompanied by a clip around the ear. It had been an almost comical sight to see the diminutive, if somewhat round and solid Cora, laying into a son so big and brawny he could have flattened her with one hand, had he been of a mind to do so. But, in the end, with Harry’s promises ringing in her ears that he would behave better in future, Leah had gone home with him, feeling quite optimistic that everything would be different.

  She was soon put right on that score.

  The minute she’d put Susie down in her cot, Harry had locked the door of the little flat and taken off his belt. ‘This is for broadcasting our private affairs to all and sundry.’ He’d whipped her till her back bled and her blouse was in ribbons on her emaciated body.

  Leah had never risked leaving him again.

  Since then, she’d learned to toe the line and do as she was told to the letter, without thought or argument. Life was easier that way, with less pain and fewer arguments. She always tried to look on the bright side. She had Susie, after all, who was all the world to her. And at least, unlike Doug, Harry had never objected to her playing in the band. Probably because he needed the money she earned from it. No marriage was perfect, and there were still times when Harry could be funny and sweet, shower her with presents or take his her and Susie out for a special treat, particularly if he’d had a win on the cards. Leah kept telling herself that once he’d got these money problems with the club sorted out, he’d be nice as pie again. She simply had to be patient.

  Jess and Doug spent the following Saturday afternoon in Philips Park. It had become their custom to take little Johnny somewhere special at the weekend, instead of his usual perambulation down by the canal. This was Doug’s weekly effort at fatherhood, to prove to the neighbours, who saw him walk out with his child on his day off, what a very fine man he was. It was all show, since once out of their sight he would ignore the child completely, almost as if he weren’t even there. Jess accepted this little charade as better than nothing. The afternoon outing was for her an attempt to show her child a world beyond the muck and grime of the docks, particularly since Johnny’s play was so restricted. And she believed that the fresh air would do him good.

  They sat on the park bench, Doug with his hands on the knees of his best tweed suit, bowler hat set square on his head, lost in a world of his own. A small frown creased his brow revealing no emotion on his unsmiling face. Jess did not interrupt this inner scrutiny of his private thoughts. She had learned that if he wanted to reveal them, then he would do so. If he did not, then nothing she could say would persuade him otherwise.

  Jess jiggled the pram and mentally went over the tunes she’d planned for the evening’s programme. They were playing at the Ritz, amazing when she remembered how nervous she’d felt when she’d first gone there with Leah right at the start of the war. In truth she was itching for the walk to be over, then she could get over to the ballroom and take the band through a quick rehearsal, leaving little Johnny with Cora, as she always did.

  Doug suddenly broke into her thoughts. ‘Tonight will be the last dance then. Good place to finish, at the Ritz.’

  ‘Finish? Last dance? What are you taking about?’

  He cleared his throat, sat up a little straighter, long bony wrists sticking out from the sleeves of his jacket. ‘Now hostilities are over, this dance craze of yours will naturally come to an end, and a good thing too.’

  ‘I beg your pardon? Why should it come to an end?’

  ‘Because there won’t be the servicemen around any more, looking to pick up partners. Husbands will be returning home, wives to the fireside, as is only right and proper. So no more dances which, as I say, is probably just as well.’ He would have her home every evening then, all to himself. ‘Give you the time you need to be a proper mother to little Johnny and a good wife to me. I’ve given the matter a great deal of serious consideration and I’ve decided that it’s time for you to stop all of this nonsense, to hang up your trumpet and put an end to this little hobby of yours.’

  Jess was struck dumb for several long seconds before she finally found her voice. ‘Little hobby? I can’t believe I’m hearing
you right. You’ve decided that I stop. What about me? Don’t I have any say in the matter?’

  ‘Now, my dear, don’t I always know what’s best for you? You know I’ve worried about you going out and about on your own. I do like to be sure that you’re safe. Before Jess could interrupt again, he rushed on to remind her of when they’d first started walking out together, of how shy and awkward he’d been. ‘You must have thought me a right lemon. But then, you were so angry with the world, so full of bitterness at that time.’

  ‘That’s not quite fair. I was distressed, by what had happened to me.’

  ‘Of course you were. But I believe I’ve been a good husband to you. I took you on when nobody else would have, didn’t I? Despite your being soiled goods.’

  Jess winced, wishing he wouldn’t refer to her in that way. She was quite certain that he did it only to bolster his own ego, but it made her feel shoddy and used, fuelling her sense of failure and inadequacy as a wife.

  ‘Of course you’ve been a good husband. I’ve never complained.’

  ‘And you are happy?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so.’ Even as she spoke the words, Jess struggled to disguise the irritation in her tone. It had become so common for Doug to seek these sort of reassurances, that she inwardly groaned whenever he did so.

  ‘Then do try to smile a bit more, my love. I like to see you looking happy.’

  ‘Nobody can be forever smiling. Life is too full of sadness for that.’

  ‘Then I must try harder to remove the sadness from it. What more can I do? Is it me? Is it my fault? Do I make you sad?’

  ‘No, of course you don’t. I’m fine. For goodness’ sake Doug, stop fussing. Not everything comes down to fault and blame, yours or mine. Sometimes it’s just life, or what other people have done. Fate. I don’t know.’

  She saw the flare of hurt in his eyes and could have bitten off her tongue. How easy it was to offend him and make him look like a whipped dog.