Since He Went Away

by Marie Joseph

  ‘She’s been seeing a lot of Mr Dale, though she hasn’t told me that. Amy can be very secretive when she wants to be.’

  Charlie looked relieved. ‘But you have a feeling that Wesley will be back soon?’

  ‘A definite certainty, Charlie. Now that Clara’s leaving him, the wonderful Wesley won’t stop on his own for long. He has to have a woman fussing round him like his mother used to do.’

  ‘Am I like that?’

  ‘Not a bit like that.’ Dora was quite firm. ‘I wouldn’t have let myself be persuaded to marry you if you’d had the slightest resemblance to Wesley.’ She came further into the room, closing the door behind her. ‘My opinion of Wesley was formed one day when he came into my house and tried to kiss me.’ She shuddered. ‘Well, more than kiss me. He almost tore my blouse off before I got my knee to him.’

  Charlie couldn’t help a small smile lifting the corners of his mouth. The thought of his little Dora biffing Wesley Battersby where it would hurt the most struck him as being hilariously comical, though what she was telling him now wiped the smile clean away.

  ‘In the house next door, in the living room on the other side of my wall, Amy was lying on the settee trying to get over her third miscarriage. I’d just been in to see her and the look on her face was still with me. She was heartbroken, Charlie, and yet she was trying to laugh. The thing about Amy that’s so upsetting is she always tries to laugh when the rest of us would be having a good old scream. She’ll have Wesley back because she’s not hard enough to send him packing, though it won’t be long before he’s off with some other woman – that’s the way he is. There are some women who are born mugs where men are concerned and Amy’s one of them, I’m afraid. He’ll turn up with his case one day and she’ll forgive him because that’s what they tell her to do at Sunday school.’ She turned back for another hug. ‘Oh, Charlie me darlin’, I’ll see you tomorrow.’

  ‘And tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,’ he said in a deep throbbing film-star voice, making her laugh once again.

  Her face ached with smiling so much, she told herself as she walked along, wanting to get to Amy and tell her the unbelievable news.

  14

  ‘DID YOU LIKE Shakespeare when you were at school?’ Bernard asked, as they fell into step.

  ‘Not the way we acted it,’ Amy said. ‘The way we said the words parrot-fashion made them seem meaningless. When I first heard As You Like It performed by Shakespearian actors on the wireless I couldn’t recognize it. At school we got the wrong rhythm to the words somehow.’

  She knew there was a reason for his question so she waited, walking along by his side, turning up the familiar road leading to the park, wanting to take his hand but not quite liking to. She marvelled at the ease of their conversations, the way she felt she could say anything she wanted to him, be herself, not have to sound happy when she felt sad, not feeling she should match her mood to his, as she had with Wesley.

  ‘What never ceases to amaze me is the way Shakespeare first said almost everything that’s worth saying.’ He took her hand, holding it tightly in his firm warm grasp. ‘Give sorrow words,’ he whispered softly. ‘The grief that does not speak whispers o’er the fraught heart and bids it break.’

  Amy pulled away from him. The rain had left the air smelling fresh and green. The evening clouds had parted and rolled away, the wind had dropped and soon there would be stars.

  ‘Tell me about the babies,’ Bernard said. ‘It’s time, you know.’

  ‘I can’t,’ she said, unwilling to try to release the pain held so secretly inside her for so long. ‘It’s not a subject I care to talk about.’ She began to walk more quickly. ‘What right have you to intrude on my private thoughts?’

  ‘Tell me,’ he said again, leading her to their favourite seat by the duck pond. ‘I’m waiting.’

  She sighed. ‘The words are stuck in my heart. It hurts me to try to say them.’

  ‘That’s because they’ve gone rusty,’ he said.

  ‘You’re not my doctor, you know.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘Nor a psychiatrist.’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘I don’t have to . . .’

  ‘I agree.’

  ‘My own mother never asked me any questions.’

  ‘I can’t believe that.’

  Amy’s hands were balled into fists. When she began to speak her voice was filled with anger, raw with pain.

  ‘People think, if they think at all, that the first baby, the one born perfect but dead, must be the one I grieve for most. Because he was finished and whole, you could count the nails on his tiny fingers and toes. He was so beautiful, you see.’ She was quiet for a while. ‘What they don’t understand is that each time I miscarried it was like losing a baby just the same. To me, maybe because of that first one, a conception, a first realizing I was carrying again, was like a birth merely waiting to happen. I would get out the baby clothes again, buoyed up with hope, sure that this time . . .’ Her voice faltered. ‘One day I overheard my mother talking to a neighbour: “Our Amy’s had another ‘miss’, but she’s only stopped off work one day this time. She’s not one to make a fuss.” And each time she would assure me that what was happening to me was all for the best. Once she caught me lying down on the settee and told me that she remembered women weavers in the mill standing at their looms with blood running down their legs, but still there, working, not giving in to it.’ Her voice rose. ‘My mother isn’t a cruel woman, not at all. What was happening to me, not once, but time and time again, was beyond her grasp. In her book a miscarriage was like a bad cold, to be got over as quickly as possible and then forgotten. Certainly not mentioned in company. Or in private, either.’

  She sat up straighter, lifting up her chin. ‘Wesley’s mother was ashamed of me. Disgusted would be a truer word. You’d have thought I was doing it on purpose, but all her sympathy was for Wesley. By some twisted quirk of her imagination, losing an unformed baby was common, something only ignorant women do. Though Mr Battersby always asked me how I was, without putting into words what he was referring to, of course.’

  ‘And Wesley?’

  ‘Oh well, he did try and help.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘He got the address of a birth control clinic in Manchester. You can find them if you know where to go.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Well, he suggested it might be a good idea if I went. So I caught the train one morning and though I was scared stiff, it wasn’t as bad as I expected. You waited in a big bare room. I was surprised to see quite young women there. You went behind a curtain into a cubicle and a lady doctor examined you and asked a few questions. She passed no comment on anything I told her, it was just like having a normal conversation. She gave me . . . she explained to me . . .’

  ‘It’s all right, lassie. You don’t need to tell me any more.’ Now he was angry. Amy could hear it in his voice, sense it in the way he sighed deeply. ‘Couldn’t your mother have gone with you?’ he asked.

  ‘My mother?’ Amy’s eyes widened with horror. ‘I couldn’t tell my mother! She doesn’t know such places exist.’

  Bernard picked up a loose pebble and skimmed it clean across the grass verge and the railings into the water. He was imagining her sitting in the train alone, with the address in her handbag, shelled in her own anxiety, fearful of what to expect.

  ‘Dora?’

  ‘She was always so busy, every moment to account for. Anyway, Dora doesn’t like Wesley. I wouldn’t have put it past her to shout at him and ask him what he was doing to get me pregnant so often when he knew what was almost bound to happen.’ She turned to him. ‘Is all this shocking you?’

  ‘Yes. It’s shocking me all right. But not for the reasons you think. Oh, Amy, Amy, wasn’t there one person you could turn to during all those years? Not one person who would understand? There comes a time when everyone needs to take an outstretched hand.’

  As he had stretched out his hand to Do
ra, Amy thought, without being able to stop the words coming into her head.

  ‘I understand that,’ she said softly. ‘Once I wouldn’t, but now I do.’

  He pulled her into his arms and kissed her, gently at first then with passion.

  ‘If someone sees us,’ Amy whispered.

  His answer was to kiss her again, so that she clung to him uncaring, feeling the rain beginning again and not caring about that either.

  ‘You mean you went with Mr Dale for a walk in the park? In the rain?’ Dora said, coming in and catching Amy drying her hair on a towel. ‘I’ll be thinking there’s something going on between you.’

  ‘I’ll tell you some day,’ Amy said from inside the folds of the towel.

  ‘But not tonight?’

  ‘Not tonight.’

  In a way Dora was glad. Her own news was so thrilling, so momentous, she wanted the stage to herself without anything to steal her thunder. She went to sit in the wonderful Wesley’s chair, dangling her thin legs because it was too big for her.

  ‘Charlie has asked me to marry him!’ she burst out, only slightly embroidering the truth. ‘So I’m moving in with him and Lottie sooner than later.’

  Amy’s response was even more than she had imagined it would be. The damp toffee-brown hair swung forward as Dora felt the kiss land somewhere near her ear.

  ‘That’s the best news I’ve heard since the Co-op put their divi up!’ Amy couldn’t conceal her delight. Charlie and Dora. Perfect. Absolutely definitely perfect. ‘Do you remember that time we went to the pictures to see Deanna Durbin in Three Smart Girls – the night you met Charlie to speak to for the first time?’

  Dora clasped her hands together. ‘Two smart girls, he said, sweeping his hat off and bowing to me. I couldn’t get over how lovely he was then.’

  ‘And do you remember how we sang all the way home? Linking arms and singing.’ Amy threw back her head, sparkled her eyes like Deanna Durbin’s, made her mouth into the same pouting shape. ‘Will there be someone? Someone to care for me?’

  Dora waited till she’d finished, then joined in at the end, totally out of tune: ‘Will there be happiness for me?’ she carolled, flinging her arms wide.

  ‘Yes! Yes!’ Amy cried. ‘Oh Dora, can I be your bridesmaid?’

  ‘In purple satin with shoes dyed to tone?’

  ‘Oh yes, please.’ Amy sat down and they beamed across the sunrise rug at each other. ‘This calls for a drink,’ Amy said, going through to see what she could find.

  ‘I’d gone off whisky, anyway,’ Dora told her, sipping the dandelion and burdock. ‘You can have too much of a good thing, I always say.’ She looked straight at Amy. ‘You haven’t asked me how I can be so sure that Charlie’s wife won’t want to move back with him.’

  ‘Because she’s going to marry Wesley one day when the divorce is through.’

  ‘Have you seen any divorce papers, Amy?’ Dora put her cup down on the floor beside her chair. ‘Has Wesley asked you to go to a solicitor?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, Charlie’s got his papers through. He told me tonight. I’ll be named as co-respondent I imagine, but who cares?’

  Amy was a bit perplexed. ‘But Charlie isn’t the guilty party. Clara left him.’

  ‘He’s a gentleman, Amy. You know that.’

  ‘There’s something else, isn’t there?’ Amy frowned into her cup. ‘You’re holding something back, aren’t you?’

  ‘Clara’s left Wesley,’ Dora said in a rush. ‘She’s gone to live with an old geezer with pots of money. She came to Charlie’s house today and left a letter spelling it out, giving him a forwarding address.’

  Amy went first white then red. There was too much emotion going on inside her to properly take in what Dora had said.

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ she said at last. ‘You can’t just . . . I mean to say, how could she?’

  ‘If you say poor Wesley, I’ll clock you one,’ Dora warned.

  But Amy said she wasn’t going to say anything of the sort. ‘I never understood how he could take her there in the first place. That flat is awful. It was only meant for the odd overnight stay. Wesley used to sleep there sometimes when it was stock-taking time, or if he wanted to work on the books.’

  Dora’s lip curled. Oh yeah? she said in her head. ‘That must have been jolly convenient,’ she said aloud.

  Phyllis had let lucky with her holiday arrangements. The Grand Hotel at St-Annes-on-Sea had two single rooms vacant and would be pleased to welcome Mrs Battersby and Miss Tunstall for two weeks’ stay. The lady next door, who had turned out to be quite charming since Edgar’s death, had promised to see the milkman and explain.

  ‘There are times, Ethel, when there’s no shame in letting a neighbour know one’s business.’

  ‘As long as they don’t get too familiar, dear.’

  Ethel was doing lots of packing, following the list that Phyllis had given her and saying nothing, even though she couldn’t see when a full-length evening dress would come in at St-Annes-on-Sea. For herself, the bottle-green, calf-length velvet would do nicely, worn with her crystal beads and her silk evening bag with the tortoiseshell clasp.

  She knew full well, though she wasn’t saying anything about that either, that Phyllis was in effect running away from another confrontation with that son of hers. Another scene like that and Ethel wouldn’t give a tuppenny bun for Phyllis’s heart. And she hadn’t helped either, shouting and chucking her glass into the fireplace. She would never touch another drop of anything stronger than sarsaparilla for as long as she lived. She burned with shame when she thought about it.

  ‘I ought to ring Wesley,’ Phyllis said about half-past nine. ‘He’ll be coming to see me to apologize and I wouldn’t like him worried when he finds the house locked up. He’ll be sorry for the way he behaved. Do you remember when he was a little boy how he would go out into the garden and pick a flower for me when he’d been naughty? I’ll have Mr Thomson round when we come home to detail something out for him. I’m sure Edgar wouldn’t have wanted him to feel so cast down.’ She handed Ethel a pair of sandals which should have gone at the bottom of the case, but in her contrite state her cousin said nothing, just took them from her and reached for the tissue paper.

  Phyllis went into her own bedroom and picked up the telephone receiver. Ethel stopped rustling paper to listen.

  ‘Hallo, dear, this is Mother. Have you got a cold coming on? You sound a bit hoarse. Yes, dear, I know you’re sorry, and I am too. People do get heated about Wills. Yes, I know, dear. But I won’t be in tomorrow. No. Me and Ethel are going away for two weeks to St-Annes-on-Sea, staying at the Grand Hotel on the front. The one not far from the pier. I’ll send you a card, dear, so you’ll know we’re all right. Wesley? You do sound peculiar. You mustn’t take things so much to heart. Well, if you really want to see me . . .’

  ‘Put the receiver down!’ Ethel urged in a fierce whisper from the next room. If Phyllis Battersby cancelled their holiday so as not to disappoint her precious son, Ethel would . . . she would take to drink again! ‘Put it down!’ she hissed, knowing that she couldn’t be heard but praying there was something in thought transference. ‘PUT IT DOWN!’

  ‘I’ll have to go now, dear,’ Phyllis was saying. ‘There’s someone at the door.’ The receiver went down with a click that brought tears of relief to Ethel’s eyes.

  ‘God forgive me.’ Phyllis looked shattered when she came through. ‘I just told Wesley a white lie because I didn’t want to go on talking to him. I told him there was someone at the door.’ She sat down on the bed, looking so shriven and worried that Ethel went to sit beside her and put a comforting hand on her arm. ‘Am I doing the right thing?’ Phyllis whimpered. ‘I’d walk to hell and back on hot coals for that boy, and yet now when he’s sorely troubled, when he needs me, I run away.’ She turned an anguished face to Ethel. ‘I want to run away, you see. I just don’t want to face him. Does that make me a bad mother?’

  In all her ye
ars Ethel had never heard her Cousin Phyllis talk about feelings like this. Never heard her question herself. She swallowed hard. ‘You’ve been a marvellous mother. Too good, that’s been your trouble, dear. Now he’s playing on your sympathy, though I don’t think for one minute he’d allow you to cancel your holiday just for him.’

  ‘But he would!’ Phyllis cried. ‘He would. Don’t you see, Ethel? That’s why I have to be strong and go away . . .’

  ‘And enjoy yourself, even if it kills you,’ Ethel said, taking no notice when Phyllis took a lace-edged handkerchief from her sleeve and wept gently into it. ‘What time is the taxi coming, dear?’

  The next day being a Saturday Amy went with her mother on the market. She had been doing this every week since Wesley went away and the routine was always the same. First they would each buy a quarter of loose lettuce leaves from the stall by the Market House, then a quarter of tomatoes from the stall opposite because they were cheaper and local grown. Gladys liked talking to the shrimp women who came from Southport and sat in the open cobbled space. No matter how cold or how warm the weather, they wore long full skirts and flowered cotton sun-bonnets, selling their shrimps from wide baskets covered with check cloths.

  Amy hung back while her mother passed the time of day and remarked on the weather for the time of year with the fattest of the four stout ladies.

  ‘Two pots of buttered? Yes, me love, the shrimps is lovely today, pink and tender as a baby’s toes.’

  ‘Let’s be extravagant and go in the Market House for a cup of tea,’ Gladys said when the shopping was done, ‘and if we’re careful not to let anyone see us, we can eat one of the eccles cakes you’ve just bought with it.’

  ‘Mam!’ Amy said, following her inside, stopping for a moment at the covered button stall, which had always fascinated her. In you could go with a few buttons and a piece of material and come out with them covered so neatly they would make a homemade dress look as if it had been made by a professional dressmaker. She was always thinking she would make something just to see it covered from neck to hem with a row of exquisitely covered buttons.