The Women of Lilac Street

by Annie Murray

‘That poor child,’ were the words on everyone’s lips. ‘However will she recover from a thing like that? That father of hers will swing for this.’

  ‘I knew there was summat about that man,’ Irene Best kept saying. ‘He was a brooding sort of a person. I tried to warn that young Aggie not to have anything to do with him . . .’

  There were endless discussions about Rose Southgate. Dorrie Davis tried to persuade everyone that she’d seen it all coming.

  ‘Well, that’s a load of old rope if ever I heard it,’ Freda Adams commented. ‘What does Dorrie think she is – some kind of fortune teller with a crystal ball?’

  In the yards at the Mansions, all squabbles were forgotten. Everyone huddled together, fonder, involved with each other, life put in perspective for the time being by the horrific events so close by.

  And one morning, Muriel Wood walked quietly up the entry into the Mansions, in search of Freda Adams.

  ‘I’ve been to the hospital,’ she told her. ‘Rose – Mrs Southgate – asked for you. She wondered if you’d be kind enough to go and see her.’

  ‘Me?’ Freda said, startled.

  ‘She said, of everyone in the neighbourhood, you were so very kind to her.’

  The one person who was completely bemused by the whole episode to begin with was Mr Gates. Seeing Freda Adams and Jen sitting outside that Saturday afternoon, Dulcie Skinner with them and the children all around, he came over, hesitantly.

  ‘So – Ah hear there’s been bad news, like?’ He stood looking awkward, his burly shape towering over them. Aggie saw her mother squint up into his pink face.

  ‘Get yourself a chair, Mr Gates,’ Jen said. ‘We’ll tell you about it – what we know, anyway.’

  He carried a chair out and joined them. Aggie, who was playing jackstones with Babs and Ann nearby, heard her mom and nanna telling him about Rose Southgate and how her husband had turned a gun on her and her lover in his jealous fury.

  ‘He dain’t stand a chance, poor man,’ Jen said. ‘Shot through the heart – and in any case he was blind. Not a hope of getting out of the way. But by all accounts she was on the move when he shot at her. He got her here –’ She indicated the left side of her pelvis.

  Mr Gates’s face was a picture of horrified astonishment. ‘He shot his own wifie?’

  ‘It’s worse than that . . .’ Freda lowered her voice. ‘I’ve been to the hospital to see her this afternoon, Mr Gates. She’s in a bad way. They don’t know if she’ll walk again – or not proper, like. It’s made a right mess, smashed the bone. But . . .’ Freda wiped her hand over her face as if to dispel her emotion at the thought of Rose’s white, despairing face in the hospital, the way the young woman had clung to her hand. ‘There was a child as well – she was carrying a babby, but . . .’ She shook her head, running out of words. It was one of the very few times in her life that Aggie saw her grandmother close to weeping.

  Jen’s eyes were full of tears too, as she listened. ‘Whatever she did, she dain’t deserve all this,’ she said.

  Freda drew in a deep breath and went on. ‘She looked terrible, lying there – white as the sheet. Her voice was thin somehow. She said to me, “I’ve lost everything, Mrs Adams. I don’t want to go on living, not after this.” So I said, “No you haven’t, bab, you’ve still got Lily, and you’re going to have to soldier on and build a life for her.” Well, she was full of how she had nowhere to go and how she’d have to move away, where no one knew her, be surrounded by strangers. So I said, “Why do that? Why not come and live nearby? Everyone knows you, they know what happened and they know Lily. There’ll be those’ll cant for a bit, but they’ll get over it, we’ll all rally round. Why not stay where you’ve got friends?” Well – that gave her summat to think about. And d’you know . . .’ Her tears were close to the surface again. ‘She turned her head and kissed my hand . . .’

  ‘She always did like you,’ Jen said.

  ‘Oh, her heart’s in the right place, from what I’ve seen of her. Quite a kindly soul really,’ Nanna said. She cleared her throat, her tears banished. ‘A dark one all right, though. Pleasant enough, but you’d never know what she was thinking. And all that time she must’ve been carrying on with him.’

  Aggie half listened. She was constantly trying to shut thoughts of Mrs Southgate out of her mind, not to allow herself to picture what had happened in that night-time room, the two of them caught together in bed. And now of Mrs Southgate lying shattered and weeping in hospital. It made her feel too frightened and upset. And Mr King – that nice Mr King! They had been on the point of running off together, the landlady had said. Nothing had been quite how she thought. Aggie remembered Irene Best saying, ‘Be careful, Aggie . . .’ It made her feel fear and distrust of other adults, of what they might be after. All she wanted at the moment was her own home, Mom and Nanna, the yard, her family and Babs’s mom and dad. People she had known for years, who she was sure of.

  ‘It was a German gun, they say,’ Dulcie was saying. ‘A Luger. I mean, why did he have one of them?’

  ‘He must have brought it home – he was in the army in the war, wasn’t he?’ Jen said, shifting on her chair to get comfortable. ‘Got it from somewhere over there, brought it back? Fancy.’

  ‘D’you think he’d kept it all this time?’ Dulcie said. ‘I wonder if she knew he had it?’

  ‘A Luger,’ Mr Gates said thoughtfully. ‘That’s a pistol. He must’ve tyaken it off a German soldier. Hoo else would the feller’ve had it?’

  ‘Ooh,’ Jen shuddered. ‘It gives you the creeps to think about it.’

  Aggie had gone cold the first time she heard about the gun.

  ‘Told you, dain’t I?’ was all John said. ‘I told you I saw it.’ But he looked stunned and upset as well.

  Aggie and John discussed endlessly whether there was anything they might have done. Aggie told Babs about it, who was riveted by this information. But they didn’t tell the grown-ups. Not then and not ever. The thought that the gun had been up there in that tool bag, just waiting all this time, chilled them all and burdened them with guilt.

  ‘What if you’d told?’ Babs said gravely.

  ‘But we dain’t, did we?’ Aggie felt bursting suddenly with frustration, with anger. ‘And you wouldn’t have done neither.’

  They hadn’t known what Harry Southgate would do. How could anyone know or expect a thing like that? Why was life so horrible? It let your dad die, it allowed a man to turn a gun on his wife. All feelings were heightened then, this terrible event making everyone see things differently. All those messages she had carried to Mr King from Mrs Southgate! Didn’t that somehow make it her fault as well? Sometimes Aggie felt like weeping and never stopping. But all she said, in a bitter voice, was, ‘Don’t talk daft.’

  That afternoon they sat, playing half-heartedly, reassured by the rumble of the adults’ voices. Aggie liked it that Mr Gates was out there, his big, comforting presence.

  After a time, Jen got up. ‘I’d best get ready,’ she said. ‘Got to get to work.’

  Mr Gates looked up at her. ‘Should ye be ganning out working, tha’ far on?’

  Jen smiled. ‘Who else is going to do it? I’ve no husband. My Tommy died not long back.’

  His face creased with concern. ‘But what aboot when the bairn comes?’

  ‘Bairn?’ Jen flexed her back. ‘Bairns, yer mean.’

  ‘No!’ Mr Gates sat back, a look of wonder on his face. ‘Twins, like?’

  ‘That’s about it,’ Jen said. She grinned suddenly. She felt a bit like a wonder of the world, carrying two babies.

  ‘But how’re ye gonna manage? Earn a wage?’

  ‘I’ll be back – next week,’ Nanna said. Aggie saw Nanna take her right wrist in her left hand, as if to check on its progress. ‘They’re taking me back, for my sins.’

  Mr Gates looked even more astonished by this. ‘A woman of your age!’

  ‘Oh – there’s a bit of life in me yet, ta,’ Nanna said spryly. ‘We get by, any wa
y we can.’

  Jen walked heavily across to the house. Aggie saw Mr Gates’s eyes follow her. He looked kind and concerned, but he didn’t say anything more.

  On a sudden impulse, Aggie got up and ran to her mother. She felt more grown up suddenly. ‘D’you want some help, Mom?’

  ‘Well,’ Jen joked. ‘You could go to work for me if yer like.’

  ‘I’ll go!’ Aggie said. ‘I will, if you want.’

  Jen looked at her, seeing the need in her daughter’s eyes. With a smile she ran a hand roughly over Aggie’s head. ‘It’s all right, bab. I can manage for now. Your turn’ll come soon enough.’

  Sixty-Nine

  Phyllis Taylor was saying goodbye to her old neighbours.

  On a mellow Sunday in mid-September, after church, the Taylors progressed grandly along Lilac Street. Phyllis took her leave of the people she had known, at arm’s length at least, though she had never taken people into her confidence.

  Her children accompanied her, politely saying goodbye. The family were moving on. Now that all four of them were out at work, Phyllis informed everyone, they were moving out to a better class of house with more space. When quizzed as to where exactly, Phyllis was vague on the subject. Out west, she told them, towards Smethwick.

  She even went so far as to grace the yards of the Mansions with her presence, to speak to the Greens.

  ‘We just wanted to say goodbye,’ Phyllis said, restricting her gaze from looking round too carefully at the yard and its houses, as if for fear of what she might see. The place reminded her far too much of Spon End, of so many things best forgotten. She carried herself mightily. She wanted everyone to know she was moving up and out.

  ‘Well, best of luck to you,’ Jen said. She didn’t like the woman much, but as she was on her way out they would all be pleasant. ‘I hope you have some nice neighbours where you’re going.’

  ‘Oh, I expect we will,’ Phyllis said, as if, in the area she was moving to, you could expect nothing less.

  The four young people murmured their goodbyes and the family trooped out of the yard again.

  Jen watched from the doorway for a moment.

  ‘Funny –’ She frowned. ‘Those Taylor girls seem smaller than I remembered. They seem to have shrunk.’ She turned to her mother. ‘I could’ve sworn they were big strapping wenches – and that youngest one looked as if she was expecting, earlier on.’

  Freda looked up at her. ‘Don’t look like it,’ she said indifferently.

  Jen dismissed it, shaking her head. ‘Must’ve been seeing things. Ah, well – that’s them gone, anyway. Another lot moving on. I wonder who’ll move in there instead?’

  Before dawn, on the Saturday after Dolly’s baby was born, Phyllis got everyone up, except Charles who was to stay behind, and marched them all along to Brighton Road railway station. Charles, if anyone asked, was to say that the women had gone to visit his mother’s sister, which fortunately for Charles’s fastidious mind, also had the benefit of being true.

  Dolly, young and healthy, was recovering well physically from the birth. Emotionally she was in a bad state, confused, mutinous, one minute wanting the baby taken away and never to have to see him, the next passionately opposed to being parted from him at all. Susanna and Rachel were also upset, and scandalized by the granite hardness of their mother’s resolve that the little boy, however lovely and however much their flesh and blood, had to go. She was not having any bastard babies in the family and that was that.

  Phyllis did everything she could to close her own mind to the child, forcing herself to think of him as an object that had to be disposed of. She was the one who carried the little newborn at first, well wrapped up and hidden under a shawl she draped over her shoulders.

  The journey, from the walk through the deserted streets at dawn to the train ride out to Coventry, the bus ride to the farm, was all lived through in a state of sullen, welling emotions.

  Dolly sat pressed close to the window on the rumbling old bus, her baby clasped in her arms. He had been quiet while they were on the train, and she had insisted on her mother handing him over. Phyllis could hardly make a fight about it in front of the other two passengers. As they travelled, Dolly’s gaze scarcely left his little face, her eyes drinking in the way his lips and eyelids twitched as he slept. However much Mom would have liked to keep him away from her, she was the one who had to feed him. And in those two days, she had already begun to know him and to feel as if she had known him all her life.

  On the bus, he began to stir and started yowling lustily. Dolly felt her mother prodding her shoulder from the seat behind.

  ‘You’ll have to feed him – keep him quiet,’ she hissed.

  Dolly said nothing in reply, but she was raging inside. I know! she wanted to shriek. Of course I know he needs feeding – he’s my babby. I know what to do better than you. Stop bossing me!

  She fed him very discreetly under the shawl. Pain shot through her as he latched on, so sharp that she almost cried out. Her breasts, new to the whole experience, were sore and leaking so that everything about it was distressing. And all she could think was, He’s mine. He’s mine and she’s making me give him up. I hate her . . . She felt so torn with emotion that she cried nearly all the way and Susanna who was next to her was soon in tears too. They arrived at the farm in a hot, fraught, tearful condition.

  When the bus stopped, somewhere out in the country, their mother suddenly said, ‘This is it, I think. Quick – off, all of you!’

  They only had to walk a quarter of a mile along the road and they had arrived at the farm, where they were to stay one night, to settle the baby in with Lizzie and the family.

  At the gates, round which was a sea of mud, Dolly saw Susanna and Rachel exchange despondent glances. Dolly shot them both a despairing look and clung even more tightly to the baby. But what else could they do but follow?

  Phyllis led them, picking her way across the mired farmyard, full of dread and misgivings. The house, of faded bricks, did not look too bad, but the place was a dirty, functional farm. None of her children had been in the country before. Panic seized Phyllis for a moment. Nancy’s letter had been welcoming, but what did she really know of her sister’s life? It was years since she had seen her. What was she bringing them all to?

  The yard was coated in cow’s muck and bits of straw, and hens were strutting about, squawking away from them in panic. Their arrival set the dogs off. Three creatures, one black and white, the others of muddy, mongrel colours, came tearing out barking hysterically.

  Dolly let out a shriek. ‘Get them away!’ she cried, terrified. Rachel and Susanna clung together.

  ‘Oi – get back! Go on – all of you!’ A young woman rushed out of the house with a child clasped on her left hip and a poker in her right hand which she was swishing at the dogs, who retreated with whimpering, defeated noises. The young woman was curvaceous, with hanks of long, mousey hair taken up in a loose bun and dreamy, but friendly-looking grey eyes. The little girl on her hip had the same eyes and a cap of brown hair. She seemed worried by the sight of so many strangers and buried her face in her mother’s shoulder.

  ‘Are you my auntie Het?’ the woman said.

  ‘I am,’ Phyllis admitted, sensing the puzzlement of her daughters on hearing this name. ‘Only I’ve gone by the name Phyllis for years now. I like it better.’

  ‘Het!’ Another voice rang from the house and Nancy came hurrying over. She was a less heavily built woman than Phyllis, with faded hair and dressed in a workaday brown frock with an apron over the top. She had aged a good deal since Phyllis last saw her. ‘So you’ve got here all right – oh, and look at you all!’ Her lined, good-natured face took in all her nieces. ‘What a lovely-looking lot of daughters, Het! This is my girl Lizzie and her little ’un, our Susan.’ The young woman smiled. She was staring at them all with great curiosity. ‘Now you must be . . . ?’

  ‘Susanna,’ Susanna said.

  Nancy went along them all and when she go
t to Dolly she said, ‘Oh, now here’s the babby – let’s have a look. Oh, isn’t he lovely! He looks nice and healthy!’

  Dolly’s eyes filled again and she looked away.

  ‘Come on inside – I s’pect you need a cup of tea,’ Nancy said.

  Phyllis suddenly felt a deep sense of comfort. Her sister had always been more of a mom to her all those years back, and in that moment she felt the reassurance of that all over again.

  As soon as she walked into the farmhouse she could see that Nancy had made a good life. There was no great wealth. Farming, as Nancy told her, was always a struggle. But there was an atmosphere of chaotic cosiness, a sense of home in the big, busy kitchen. The table was still dusted with flour, there were big blackened pots and kettles steaming gently on the range and Nancy’s choice of colours for curtains and crocheted rugs on the chairs was bright and cheerful.

  She bustled about making tea, telling them to sit, that her husband Wilf and the three lads would be back later, as well as Lizzie’s husband, who worked on the farm. Nancy seemed harassed but happy. She told them how lucky she was to have so many sons – it meant the burden of the farm was shared, enough hands to go round.

  ‘This was Wilf’s family’s farm,’ she told them. ‘He inherited it off his father – there’ve been Pearsons here for years and years.’

  The girls sat quiet, overwhelmed by the whole experience. Lizzie had sat down and begun feeding her little girl. Phyllis tried not to look, either at her or Dolly. She wrestled to keep her own feelings tightly shut down. All those emotions and sensations of having a child, a baby at your breast, that had filled her so vividly with life when she had her own, were waiting to rush at her. She must not let herself soften. How was Dolly supposed to make a life with an illegitimate child? Her reputation would be ruined before she even started.

  ‘Look Het—’ Nancy began.

  ‘Phyllis,’ she said firmly, seeing her older girls’ ears prick up at the name. Dolly was too lost in her own misery to notice that she had heard the name Hetty before.