The Women of Lilac Street

by Annie Murray

  Aggie’s eyes widened. This was the most exciting thing she had ever heard! And if there was one thing Aggie longed for in her life apart from a pair of pretty shoes, and for Dad to be better, it was excitement.

  Now, every time she came to Rose Southgate’s house she asked to see the picture of Mata Hari and wondered how you started out if you wanted to be a spy. Rose said you had to find out things. So Aggie spent a lot of time peering out of windows (listening at doors being almost unnecessary in her house as you could hear most things through the floorboards without much special effort). She told her friend Babs about Mata Hari so that they could spy together, though Babs wasn’t as keen as her.

  There were a few details she had already found out. Watching the street, the first things she noticed were the movements of Mary Crewe. She was called Mad Mary because she was mad. She smoked like a chimney and went about with a shawl swaddled up in her arms and rocked it as if it was a real baby. She lived in one of the two courts at the Mansions at the end of the road, opposite the Eagle, Dad’s favourite watering hole. Babs lived in one of the six houses in Number One Court, at 4/1 The Mansions, and Mary Crewe in the next yard, at 6/2 with her elder sister Eliza, a thin, worn-out-looking woman. Aggie had started to notice that quite regularly, early in the mornings, Mad Mary left Eliza’s and her humble house in her grubby clothes, her hair a greasy mat as usual, and came lurching and puffing and muttering hurriedly along the road, carrying the ‘babby’.

  She had seen day-to-day things: all the little businesses opening up along the street, and the way Dorrie Davis, a matron in her forties with her shop at number one, who was always ‘so mithered it wears me down’, seemed to be out in the street an awful lot, spreading gossip, even though she was forever complaining she was ‘chained to that shop’.

  And she had seen other things. Sad things. Across the road at number six was a lady called Irene Best. Mr Best had been gassed in the war and hardly ever came out of the house, only just now and then, to be pushed along to church. Mom went over to call on Irene sometimes. When she came back she’d be shaking her head. It would make her gentler with everyone for a while and she’d say it all made you know when you were well off. A few days ago Aggie had seen Irene Best, a tall, painfully thin lady, come out of her house to go shopping. She closed the front door and, just for a moment, leaned her head against it. Aggie, young as she was and ignorant of adult feeling, could sense the despair and exhaustion in every line of her and almost wished she hadn’t witnessed this moment.

  And this morning, Dolly Taylor had come sneaking home early in the morning, her head down, hurrying along as if she didn’t want to be seen . . .

  What good any of this information was to her, Aggie had no idea. But everything she saw, every action, had taken on a heightened importance, as if everyone in the street was on a mission or scheme and it was up to her to find out what it was.

  That afternoon though, all she wanted to do was revel in the loveliness of being in Mrs Southgate’s house. She and May settled in for a cosy afternoon playing with Lily and eating bread which Rose cooked on the fire to make delicious toast, and for the first time that day, she was warm.

  Five

  Phyllis spent the rest of the morning doing battle.

  She stormed down to the shops, and somehow managed to get round and gather up fish and bread, spuds and fruit and veg, returning with a big leafy cabbage sticking out of her bag. All the while in her head thumped a livid refrain: She wants a damn good hiding, that girl, that she does . . .

  Her rage was almost uncontainable. All that she’d done to raise herself and bring up a decent family; all that she’d put behind her never to see the light of day again. And this little bit, little hussy flouncing in, threatening to tear it apart, to throw her mother’s struggles and efforts down the drain like so much slop! The way she felt she could have ranted and shrieked in the street fit to be dragged off to the asylum.

  But that wasn’t all she’d been thinking – not by a long chalk. In between selecting apples and carrots and greens, all the time another part of her mind had been in a fury of activity, surging this way and that, forming plans, discarding them, making calculations. No one must know . . . Ever. They would not be disgraced. Not Phyllis Taylor or her family. Not after all she had won for herself. Gossip and sniggering and pointing fingers; she’d do anything to avoid that.

  It came to her halfway along the Ladypool Road. The sounds died around her, the other shoppers, shoulders hunched against the weather, were all invisible to her. She stopped dead, oblivious to the cold, the smells of smoke and dung and butcher’s offal. Even the woman who cursed when she all but slammed into the back of her, Phyllis barely noticed.

  She didn’t remember the walk home and arrived at her front door surprised to see it suddenly before her. Steeling herself, she pushed it open, preparing for the sight of that girl . . .

  Dolly was slumped on the table, asleep, head resting on her arms next to the willow pattern milk jug. She had very dark chestnut hair which was plaited and coiled up in a loose bun. Phyllis could see everything very clearly, every hair of her daughter’s strong, dark eyebrows, where they burrowed into her pale skin, the dull gleam of kirby grips in her hair. Dolly was wearing a cream blouse with a cardigan over the top and against the black wool her face looked very pale and young.

  Dolly seemed to sense, rather than hear, her mother standing over her and opened her eyes. She sat up slowly, pulling a face at the feel of her queasy innards.

  ‘Mom!’ she said, alarmed, seeing the expression on Phyllis’s face and trying to lean away from her as if expecting a blow.

  Phyllis set her bags down and with a menacing air, pulled out another chair and sat down.

  ‘Right,’ she said. ‘Now you’re going to tell me whose it is.’

  Dolly hugged herself miserably. She kept her gaze fixed on the table. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  Phyllis slammed her hand down, grabbing Dolly’s.

  ‘You come with me.’

  ‘Mom, don’t! I don’t feel well!’

  She dragged Dolly into the front parlour, her pride and joy with its solid, elegant chairs, its deep rust-coloured curtains and all the ornaments Phyllis had collected over the years, saving any spare penny for them and, heaven knew, there’d been precious few at times. She pulled Dolly over to the fireplace with its shining coal scuttle, tongs and poker, the china ornaments – animals and little children – the clock and the pretty bowl at one end. At the other, lavishly framed, stood the photograph of her and James Taylor on their wedding day.

  ‘See this? That was the best day of my life, that was. And everything that came after.’

  There they stood, arm in arm outside the Methodist church, both dark haired and tall, smart and magnificent looking, she in cream tulle; oh, yes, they had had a good wedding. James lived very carefully, but his family were not poor. Her husband was a tall man, striking to look at with his prominent cheekbones and that blade-like nose which Susanna had inherited. People noticed James. And she had entered into all that, into his kind of life. Meeting him had changed everything about her, and she had risen fiercely to the change, all of which she wanted. She had learned to speak differently, to lead the most upright of lives; to try and be all that he required. She had won his mother over, the way she had fitted in and become so devout. And James Taylor had gained the woman he needed to satisfy the vigorous, hungrily passionate side of him, the side for which God was not enough.

  ‘You looked nice, Mom,’ Dolly said carefully.

  Phyllis put the picture back and turned on her daughter. ‘I’m not having a little bit like you drive a cart and horses through everything we built – I’ve built, since he was taken from me. You’ve no idea, that’s your trouble! Don’t you want your father to look down and be proud of you?’

  Dolly nodded miserably.

  ‘Now – you tell me. It didn’t get there by itself, did it? Who spawned the little bastard?’

  D
olly bit her lip, tears welling. ‘Don’t talk like that, Mom!’

  ‘Answer me, wench!’

  There was a long silence, then Dolly half whispered, ‘I’m not saying.’

  ‘Not saying!’ Phyllis roared, before remembering to lower her voice. She pushed Dolly through to the kitchen again and she sank down at the table. ‘Don’t give me that. You spit it out, Dolly Taylor, this minute, or I’ll—’

  Dolly’s eyes turned up to her, shining with angry defiance. ‘You’ll what?’

  ‘I’ll put you out on the streets like the little whore you are, that’s what!’ Phyllis hissed at her. ‘You can fend for yourself – it’s no more than what you deserve. Tell me who it was – was it the son? Is there a son?’

  She realized she had very little idea who Dolly had been working for. A Mrs Lewis, that’s all she knew. She could have had ten sons or none.

  ‘Or was it someone who called at the house? Some lad off a delivery dray?’

  ‘I’m not saying who it was.’ Tears rose again in Dolly’s eyes. ‘One thing’s for sure – I’m never going to see him again anyway so what use is there?’

  She put her hands over her face and began to sob. Phyllis was taken aback by this. Don’t say the silly girl had fallen for someone and entered into it willingly – oh, dear God!

  ‘I only came back here ’cause Mrs Lewis told me to go straight away – I had nowhere else to go. I didn’t want to bring this to your door, Mom. I’m sorry. Only I dain’t know what else to do!’

  Phyllis could feel herself softening just a fraction as the whole sorry state of things began to sink in. She sat back and let out a long sigh.

  ‘God in heaven, Dolly, how can you have been so stupid?’

  ‘I never meant – I dain’t know what was . . .’ Dolly had gone a queer colour again and a few seconds later she ran out to the privy.

  When she came back in, Phyllis had been upstairs. She had something in her hand; a tiny bottle.

  ‘Here – take this. Do you good.’

  Phyllis had the lid off and was thrusting the bottle of smelling salts at her. Dolly’s head jerked back.

  ‘Aagh – no!’ she cried as the pungent fumes knifed agonizingly up her nose. She gasped and moaned, grasping her nose, her eyes streaming. ‘Oh, that hurts so bad – it’s horrible!’

  With an air of satisfaction, Phyllis replaced the stopper in the little bottle.

  ‘Who was he, Dolly?’

  ‘I can’t . . .’ Dolly hung her head.

  ‘Why are you protecting him – the bloke’s not standing by you, is he? I don’t see him at my door begging to marry you . . .’

  ‘I can’t tell,’ Dolly sobbed. ‘I can’t, because I don’t know who he was – he just jumped on me.’ She got up tragically. ‘Just let me go to bed, Mom – I want to sleep. I feel so rotten and my life’s ruined. I want to sleep and never wake up!’

  Her feet thumped up the wooden staircase and Phyllis heard her fling herself on to a bed, crying her heart out. Eventually it went quiet.

  They were all gathered round the table, the curtains shut at the front even though no one was in the room. Phyllis felt as if she was sealing them all in against the world. They sat in the light of an oil lamp, in front of plates of boiled fish with cabbage and spuds, her son and her three dark-eyed beauties of daughters. Their father, James Taylor, who had been both an engineer and a lay preacher, had taken sick and died of pneumonia in 1914, leaving their mother in straitened circumstances.

  Susanna, nineteen, was the quietest of the three sisters, the most biddable and responsible, as the eldest girl. Of the three, looks-wise, she had the most of her father in her. She had James Taylor’s tall, slender build and strong, distinctive nose and, like her brother Charles, his dark brown hair and grey eyes. Rachel, eighteen, and Dolly, sixteen, were swarthier, like Phyllis, more curvaceous and very alike, though Rachel had a dark mole on her left cheek. They had plenty of spirit, yet along with Charles, who was twenty-one and training to be a lay preacher like their father, they had always been in awe of their mother, wanting to help and please her. The older three children had also seen more of her struggles to keep them all after she was widowed, the way she’d worked, two, even three jobs at a time to give them the best life she could, not to lose ground.

  It was Dolly who had always been the rebel, who had had to be almost dragged to church – ‘It’s so boring, Mom!’ – who refused to be moulded exactly as Phyllis demanded, into material for an upright, Methodist wife who would climb the social ladder. She had constantly fallen out with Charles over the years.

  ‘Why d’you have to say those things to him?’ Susanna would scold her, in defence of her pious brother.

  ‘He’s such a stuffed shirt,’ Dolly complained. ‘The minister this, the Bible that . . . Always quoting chapter and verse at me . . . He’s so stiff and starchy!’

  ‘He’s just trying to take after our dad, that’s all,’ Susanna told her. ‘It’s his way of honouring his memory – and he is the man of the house now.’

  ‘I know – but he’s nothing like our dad. At least Dad smiled now and again,’ Dolly argued. They both knew that it had been more than now and again. James Taylor had been a lively, fulfilled man and they missed him dreadfully. ‘With Charles it’s like living with Scrooge . . .’

  ‘Just try and see things from his point of view,’ Susanna said. She knew her brother was a boring fellow, but that he also had a tender side. ‘He’s doing his best – you know that really, don’t you? And he’s fond of you.’

  ‘I s’pose so,’ Dolly conceded sulkily. It was true – however much she goaded Charles, he had always had a soft spot for his youngest sister.

  At this moment, it was obvious that he was having difficulty staying in the room. There was no hiding the situation.

  ‘So,’ Phyllis told them. ‘That’s the long and short of it.’

  The Facts sat in the middle of the table like some grotesque creature that had crawled in. Charles had put down his knife and fork and was staring, stunned, into his lap. Phyllis could see that he was close to tears. Dolly couldn’t look up from her plate.

  It was Rachel who said, ‘But Dolly – what happened?’

  At this Charles pushed his chair back with a cry of distress and ran from the room and out of the house.

  The women sat silently for a long while.

  ‘If I don’t tell you, you’ll keep on at me till I do,’ Dolly said at last. She raised her head. ‘All right, then. If you must know. Mrs Lewis gave me an afternoon off a fortnight. She was a mean old witch – she didn’t need me all the time but she just liked stopping us going anywhere. Lizzie was no company – I used to have to wait till she was asleep.’

  Rachel gasped. ‘That must have been late at night!’

  ‘It was quite late sometimes. We used to sneak out – me and Viley, one of the maids from up Maney Hill – just now and again. There was nowhere much to go – it was just for the fun of it, doing something they didn’t know about. It made me feel really happy seeing Mrs Lewis in the morning when I was “yes, madam, no, madam,” and thinking, There’s things you don’t know about me, Mrs. You don’t own me.’

  Rachel and Susanna were both looking shocked. Phyllis tried to keep her face neutral. Dolly’s story sparked memories that she didn’t want to go into.

  ‘One night I was just going back to Mrs Lewis’s . . .’ Dolly’s face crumpled. ‘I swear I never really saw him. He was just there all of a sudden and he grabbed me. He was quite big and his breath stank of drink . . . He pulled me down to the railway, behind a wall there . . . It was so dark – there was no one about, not that I could see. I couldn’t stop him – it was horrible! I didn’t know what he was trying to do. I thought he was mad, like a mad dog . . . I never knew . . . And he tore my clothes, my bloomers . . . He hurt me . . . And then he’d done it and it was too late . . . I never knew that’s how you got a babby! Even when I was being sick I never knew . . .’

  Susanna leaned a
cross and put her arm round her little sister’s shoulder, her face full of pity and horror.

  ‘Oh, Dolly – you poor, silly girl!’

  This made Dolly sob even harder.

  ‘It wasn’t my fault – I never asked for it. And he ran off straight after – I never even saw his face. He was just a big, stinking shadow!’ She looked up, her face distraught. ‘I don’t want a babby, do I? Can’t I do away with it – somehow?’

  ‘No!’ Phyllis snapped, then recovered herself. ‘No,’ she said more quietly. ‘Not that. You’re not going to do anything of the sort.’

  There was a silence.

  ‘Mom,’ Rachel said eventually. ‘Whatever are we going to do?’

  Phyllis leaned forwards. Very solemnly she said, ‘I’ll tell you what we’re going to do. And you’re going to have to obey it to the letter. All of you. So you listen to me, and you listen very carefully.’

  Dolly lay awake that night. Her body felt limp and wrung out from being sick, but though she was exhausted, she could not sleep. She lay staring up into the darkness, hearing her two older sisters breathing. She was sharing the bed with Susanna; Rachel was across the room by the window.

  She laid her hands on her stomach: it was flat as a board. Could it be true – was she really expecting? But she knew she was now. The sickness, day after day. It was not so bad at night, and this left room for all the other feelings to rush in, all the anger and fear and resentment.

  Curling up on her side she let the tears come, quietly, so as not to wake the others. Here she was, back here, to be bossed around by Mom, when she thought she had been so grown up, leaving home and going into service. Showing them all she’d do as she liked – even though it was nothing but drudgery when she got there. Even that seemed all right now compared with this. What she’d give to be back in Mrs Lewis’s drab house, with all this just a bad dream! Her lips moved silently.

  ‘I don’t want this! I don’t want a babby! Please God, please take it away. It wasn’t my fault – not really. I’ll do anything you want – you can do anything, God . . . I’m so scared! Just make it not be happening, please.’