Since He Went Away

by Marie Joseph

  ‘Thank you, Amy,’ she said, patting her hair. ‘No doubt we’ll be in touch. You’ve been a great help. And Dora, I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon.’

  ‘God willing,’ Dora said piously, edging out of the door with the holdall full to bulging. ‘Mean old cow,’ she said as soon as they were through the gate. ‘Not a penny extra for all that work. That one wouldn’t give you the time of day if she thought it would cost her anything.’

  ‘A veritable feast,’ Bernard said, coming into the house just as they sat down. He put a big brown envelope on the sideboard and turned to go. ‘I’ve put a few pamphlets together, with details of secretarial courses and night classes. It might be worth your while looking through them, Amy.’

  ‘Please sit down.’ Amy nodded at the plates of mushroom vol-au-vents, the neat rolls of boiled ham, the fairy cakes in their fluted cases, the almond slices and the iced fancies. ‘These are just one or two bits left over from this afternoon.’ She blushed a bright scarlet. ‘It seemed a shame to let them go to waste, but we made sure there was plenty for Mrs Battersby. We wouldn’t want you to think . . .’

  ‘Have a vollyvarnt, Mr Dale.’ Dora passed over a plate.

  Bernard hesitated. The poached egg on toast eaten well over an hour ago had been a culinary disaster, with the egg set rock hard and the toast as black and brittle as charcoal.

  All at once he seemed to make up his mind. ‘I’ve a bottle of something that would go down well with this,’ he said, going out and leaving the front door wide open.

  ‘What’s all this then?’ Charlie Marsden wanted to know, coming in without knocking. ‘Can anybody play? Your front door’s open. Did you know?’

  Amy looked with something akin to dismay at his mobile rubbery face and mirthful eyes.

  ‘Pull up a chair, Charlie,’ Dora said. ‘It’s a free-for-all.’

  Charlie had explained to Lottie exactly why he felt he had to go and see Amy Battersby. It was because he couldn’t bear the thought of her going home from her father-in-law’s funeral to sit alone and brood in that empty house.

  ‘Alone because her husband has run away to a better life with Mother.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know about a better life, chuck. Certainly to a different one. Don’t you ever feel you’d like to see your mother? Say just for a couple of hours? I could run you over in the van. It could be arranged, chuck.’

  ‘I’m not bothered.’ Lottie wished her father would make up his mind and go. There were one or two phone calls she wanted to make, and the hairs on her legs needed shaving again so she’d have to borrow his razor. With summer coming, she’d die of shame if anyone saw her looking like a gorilla.

  ‘All right, then. I’ll be off . . .’ Charlie hesitated, sighed deeply. His stomach was playing him up again so he made himself a glass of hot water and sipped it slowly before putting on his little Tyrolean-like hat and departing, looking upset.

  He would be glad when little Dora Ellis came to work at the house. It wasn’t natural for a girl of fifteen to spend so much time on her own. Though Lottie could never have been described as ‘natural’, could she? Not in a month of Sundays. Why didn’t she behave like other girls her age and go giggling in groups down to the library every evening? Why wasn’t she a Girl Guide or a Sunday school teacher?

  He climbed into his van and drove off, filled with pity for himself and his lot in life. He wouldn’t put it past Clara walking back one day with her case, just like she’d been on her holidays. It wouldn’t be the first time. But he wouldn’t have her back, not this time. He couldn’t face those last few years with her again. Putting him down in company, flirting with his pals, sticking her chest out at them. Laughing in his face when he accused her of showing him up and spending his hard-earned money like water, as if it grew on trees.

  As different from Amy Battersby as chalk from cheese.

  He clutched the driving wheel, taking a corner as if he was racing in the British Grand Prix.

  Lottie telephoned her friend. ‘Could I speak to Olive, please? This is Lottie Marsden. I’ve left my geography textbook at school and I need to know one or two things.’

  Olive’s mother reached out a hand behind her and closed the door leading to the hall. She would never have believed herself capable of reading her daughter’s diary, but she had. For her sins she had.

  Lottie Marsden figured on almost every page. It seemed as if Olive had taken it upon herself to keep a detailed log-book of the Marsden girl’s unsavoury doings. A lot of it seemed to be in some kind of simple code, but it hadn’t taken much imagination to decipher the unwholesome gist of it. Which was that Lottie Marsden’s parents weren’t worthy of the name, that they were either drunk or having sexual relations with other people, at times both at once. That Lottie herself was on occasions beaten senseless, and that the only light in her life was her close liaison with a boy called Jimmy who only needed to whistle outside the house late at night for Lottie to rush outside and hurl herself into his waiting arms.

  If Olive’s mother hadn’t had both feet firmly on the ground and known Charlie Marsden for the amiable chap he was, she would have telephoned the RSPCC. As it was, she merely told Lottie that Olive couldn’t come to the phone as she was too busy doing her homework, and that she would prefer it if Lottie didn’t telephone quite so much.

  ‘Is Lottie Marsden good at English? At writing stories?’ she asked her daughter later that night.

  ‘She always comes top,’ Olive said. ‘She’s going to write books one day.’

  ‘That comes as no surprise at all,’ her mother said, rolling up her knitting and putting it away.

  ‘Can you come round?’ Lottie asked the boy with the husky voice, seeing him in her mind’s eye, clutching the telephone close to his ear and blushing bright red.

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Right now?’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘He’ll be back soon, so we haven’t got long.’

  ‘Okay.’

  Jimmy Dibden had a long way to bend to put on his bicycle clips. So tall he walked with an apologetic stoop, he cycled the short distance to the Marsden house, one hand lightly holding a handlebar, the other one in his pocket.

  Lottie let him in at once, led him through into the sitting room, where they fell onto the chintz-covered settee and glued their lips together, only surfacing for long enough for Jimmy to remove his glasses before they set to again.

  Wesley drove his father’s car with one hand on Clara’s silken knee. Now that the funeral was over she felt she deserved a bit of an outing after spending so long on her own, wandering round the shops in the afternoons or going to the pictures. She accepted that she couldn’t have foreseen Wesley’s father’s death, but even so nothing was turning out as she had expected it to. It wasn’t that the excitement was wearing off, it was that the excitement seemed to have been lacking in the first place. She glanced sideways at the devastatingly handsome profile of the man beside her.

  This was the same Wesley who had set her on fire with his smouldering glances, whose touch had filled her with longing so that their snatched moments together were a mixture of heaven and hell. He had promised her everything, told her they would be out of that poky little flat in a matter of weeks, brought her flowers, scent, told her over and over that she was the most beautiful woman in the world, kissed her all over, even first thing in the morning, then gone downstairs to sell cigars and tobacco flake to men on their way to work.

  It wasn’t that she hadn’t been perfectly honest with him. She had warned him she couldn’t cook, wasn’t domesticated, would never have made a nurse, but he still expected a meal to be ready at the end of the day, even though she’d told and told him that the gas cooker should have been an exhibit in a museum years ago.

  Amy, she supposed, would have a hotpot in the oven, with a rice pudding slowly simmering on the bottom shelf when he got home from work. Amy had massaged his head when he had a headache because he had told her so, and she had darned his socks i
nstead of throwing them away when they got holes in them. Amy had been a paragon of all the flamin’ virtues, by the sound of her.

  ‘Did she do this? And this?’ she had asked, kissing the corners of his mouth, teasing, caressing, guiding his hand to the buttons of her blouse, to the fastenings of her suspenders, the button at the side of her crêpe-de-Chine French knickers.

  He had lost weight, he told her, with so much lovemaking; he was spent, a man almost destroyed by the strength of his passion. She was in his mind all day long, he couldn’t get enough of her.

  ‘If you take me home I can pick up a few more clothes,’ she said, as they drove past the Hoghton Arms. ‘I can see how Lottie is and have a word with Charlie about one or two things.’

  ‘Whilst you’re doing that, I’ll call in and pick up my flannels and a couple of cravats. I think it’s better if I don’t go up to Mother’s house. Poor dear, she looked worn out when I left this afternoon. I’ll ring her when we get back.’

  Clara said nothing. Today wasn’t the day to have even the mildest kind of confrontation about Wesley’s mother, but this poor dear this and poor dear that would have to stop. It sickened her. Just because a woman gave birth to a child it didn’t give her the right to own that child body and soul for the rest of its life. Some women – well, most women, she supposed – had children as a kind of insurance against their old age. But not her, not Clara, thank God. The last time Charlie had taken her on holiday to Scarborough there’d been a middle-aged couple in the hotel with two of their grandchildren. Two snotty-nosed whining little brats, for ever wanting to go to the lavatory or demanding an ice-cream cornet or sweets, and she’d thought how awful to have got your own offspring grown up then start all that again with another flamin’ generation. Thank God she and Lottie had nothing in common – the umbilical cord had been well and truly severed there. And thank God that after the horrendous experience of Lottie’s birth, the doctor had told her they’d done something clever, like tying up tubes, so that she’d never have to suffer that hell again.

  When they turned into the well-known avenue, there was a bike propped up against the privet hedge. Clara noticed it as Wesley was driving away, but when she went into the house Lottie was alone. The sofa cushions were any old how, with one down on the floor.

  ‘Mother!’ Lottie looked angry, shocked, embarrassed, all at the same time. ‘I didn’t know you were coming tonight.’

  ‘Apparently not.’ Clara rushed to the front door, opening it just in time to see the tail light of a bike disappearing down the long avenue. ‘You’ve had a boy in,’ she said. ‘As I came in the front he went out of the back!’ She sniffed. ‘I can smell something funny.’ She snatched at Lottie’s hand and looked at her fingers. ‘You’ve not been smoking, have you?’

  How lovely she was. Lottie had never quite been able to come to terms with her mother’s looks. Her eyes were the colour of bluebells, squashed wet bluebells, and her skin had a soft down on it, like a peach, so faint as to be almost invisible. You could look at her and never want to look away.

  ‘You’ll get yourself into trouble if you mess about with boys,’ Clara was saying now. Her beautiful eyes narrowed. ‘You haven’t, have you?’

  ‘Haven’t what?’

  ‘Been messing about.’ All at once Clara lost patience. ‘I suppose you’ll be telling me next that there wasn’t a boy in this room. With you. On that sofa.’ She stared at Lottie’s mouth. ‘Kissing you.’

  Lottie’s heart was beginning to steady now. She gave a trill of a laugh. ‘What boy?’ She opened her hands in a dramatic gesture. ‘What boy?’ she said again.

  Clara’s blue eyes raised themselves ceilingwards, then she turned to go upstairs. ‘Where’s your father? Out with the lads?’

  ‘Gone to see Mrs Battersby.’ Lottie really enjoyed the way her mother’s head whipped round. ‘He goes to see her a lot. Now that she’s on her own. They’re never out of each other’s pockets.’

  In her bedroom Clara sat down on the peach and white quilted bedspread and drank in – took in to herself – the softness of everything, the paleness, the dreamy peachy colour of the curtains, the thick carpet, the soft wash on the walls. There was a thin film of dust on her dressing table, but she supposed Mrs Tunstall didn’t bother to come in here every day.

  Lottie had followed her up and was drooping in the doorway, not standing, hunching her shoulders as if weighed down by a heavy yoke.

  ‘I’ve never done anything dirty,’ she said. ‘You have to believe that.’

  But Clara’s mind was on other things. ‘It looks to me as if Mrs Tunstall is skimping her work. The stair carpet needs a good brushing and this room hasn’t been bottomed in weeks.’

  ‘Mrs Tunstall’s left. We’re getting a Mrs Ellis any day now. She lives next door to Mrs Battersby, where Father’s gone tonight. I expect he heard about her that way.’

  ‘Mrs Ellis?’ Clara felt the name should ring a bell. ‘What’s she like?’

  Lottie considered. ‘Petite,’ she said at last, pursing up her mouth. ‘Makes you laugh. Years and years younger than Mrs Tunstall. More glamorous. Wears floaty clothes. No husband. No children. Nicely spoken.’

  ‘So why isn’t she working on the perfume counter at Afflick and Brown’s in Manchester? A gem like that wouldn’t lower herself to housekeep for you and your father.’

  ‘She has a sad past.’

  ‘Who hasn’t?’ said Clara, getting up from the bed and pulling open a drawer. ‘I’ve remembered the Mrs Ellis you’re talking about. She came to the Dramatics once looking like she’d been sleeping rough on a bench in the park for three weeks.’ She turned round dangling a cone-shaped bra from her fingers. ‘I’d forgotten you could tell lies to music, but I’m not going to ask you why because I gave up trying to fathom you, madam, a long time ago.’

  Lottie said: ‘Your hair needs bleaching. It’s all black at the roots.’

  ‘Thank you very much.’ Clara turned back to the drawer in exasperation.

  Yet something in Lottie’s closed and obstinate face, her telling eyes, filled her with pity. It wasn’t Lottie’s fault that whatever relationship they might have had was doomed from the start. Clara could never tell her the truth – the truth could easily destroy a girl of Lottie’s temperament. Clara didn’t need a psychiatrist to tell her that.

  ‘How about going down and making me a cup of tea?’ she asked, seeing in her mind’s eye the dark young man she had met at a dance all those years ago, when she and Charlie had quarrelled and he had left her to find her way home alone. Dear God, if only she had not been alone!’

  Even now when she allowed herself to think about it she felt the same sinking of the spirit, the same disbelief that she could have let a total stranger have his way with her round a corner, leaning against a wall. It was so awful, so stupid, so degrading, her heart still curled in shame when she thought about it. She walked towards the door, cringing visibly at the memory. It hadn’t been rape, not quite. Her struggling had been token, that was all. He had tried to give her money when she cried after it was over, but she had run the rest of the way home, never wanting to think, to dream of him again, only to forget, to blot out his memory for ever.

  Downstairs Lottie was taking two cups and two saucers from the cupboard, setting them on the table, opening the door of the fridge to take out a bottle of milk. Making a nonsense of the forgetting, forcing Clara to remember the black-haired young man whose name she had not known. Forcing her to realize what in all these years she had tried to ignore – that Charlie was not, could not possibly be Lottie’s father. Merely to look at Lottie was to see the stranger again.

  ‘Are you still doing without sugar for the sake of your figure?’

  Lottie held the spoon poised over the basin, then dropped it with a clatter on to the table, bewildered, hurt and uncomprehending at the expression of sheer dislike on her mother’s face. As though the very sight of her daughter had suddenly turned her stomach, as though just looking at her
had made her ill.

  ‘I’m going out for a minute,’ Lottie said, going into the long back garden in the dark, leaning up against the empty greenhouse with her face lifted to the sky, her mouth open and her eyes closed. As if she was sunbathing, trying to get a bit of a tan.

  Wesley heard the laughter the minute he opened the front door.

  They were there round the table, the four of them, with a champagne bottle in the centre. Dora from next door, brushing crumbs from her flat chest, Charlie with his clown’s face, Dale the jessie from up the road, and Amy, staring at him mesmerized.

  They all went quiet and well they might, sitting there like that having a party, drinking champagne out of cups, enjoying themselves, eating what looked like . . . All at once he found his voice.

  ‘That’s funeral food!’ he accused. ‘My father’s funeral food. I recognize the vol-au-vents. Oh, my God! Have you no feelings?’

  Amy was on her feet, holding out her hands to him. ‘It’s not like that, Wesley! It’s not a bit what it looks like . . .’

  ‘We buried him today, and here you are – the four of you! God, I feel sick.’

  ‘I can explain, old chap.’

  That was Dale, the jessie, the conchy, with his la-di-da voice.

  ‘Don’t you “old chap” me!’ Wesley felt the anger rise in him, the familiar quick flash of temper he had no power to control. Dora realized what he was about to do, but before she could stop him he grabbed a corner of the tablecloth and yanked it towards him, crashing plates, food and the empty champagne bottle to the floor.

  ‘Out!’ he shouted. ‘The lot of you!’ He stood there like the wrath of God, pointing to the door. ‘I’m waiting. Get out of my sight, all of you!’

  ‘Best do as he says,’ Dora whispered. ‘It’s for the two of them to sort this lot out.’

  One by one they filed down the lobby, shambling shamefaced, so embarrassed they didn’t know where to look.