Wives & Mothers

by Jeanne Whitmee

  She waited until she knew her father would be out, then went to the Manse and rang the front door bell. Rachel answered. She was wiping her hands on the front of a grubby print pinafore. Grace was shocked at her appearance. Gone the neat hair and smart school uniform. Her hair hung around her face in greasy strands and she looked like a middle-aged woman instead of a sixteen-year-old girl. She stared at Grace with undisguised hostility.

  ‘Oh, it’s you.’

  ‘I came to see if you were all right. Can I come in?’ Grace made to step over the threshold but Rachel barred the way.

  ‘You’re not welcome here,’ she said. ‘Going off like that. I had to leave school because of you. You’re a selfish cat, Grace Pringle. And Father says you’re a bad girl.’

  Grace held out her left hand. ‘I’m Grace Wendover now. Harry and I got married soon after I left here. Father’s wrong about me.’

  ‘Well, you’re not coming in.’ Rachel stood her ground. ‘If I were you I’d clear off before Father gets back and sees you. He said if you ever came back I wasn’t to let you in or even speak to you.’

  Grace felt the hot colour creeping up her neck. ‘I suppose he didn’t happen to tell you why I left?’ she asked. ‘Did he ever tell you what he did to me? Did he ever try...?’ She stopped in mid-sentence. She could tell by Rachel’s face that he hadn’t. That was a relief, but at least she could defend herself. ‘He thrashed me,’ she went on. ‘That night, just because I went out with Harry. He thrashed me with a stick — within an inch of my life. That’s why I left.’

  Rachel began to close the door. ‘Liar,’ she said, thrusting an accusing chin at Grace. ‘He said you’d come back with a lot of wicked lies and that I wasn’t to believe them. And I don’t.’

  ‘It’s true.’ Grace put her hand against the door. ‘Let me see Sarah and the little ones — please, Rachel.’

  ‘No. Father said we weren’t to have anything more to do with you.’

  ‘He isn’t telling you the truth. He’s the one telling lies,’ Grace insisted.

  ‘I know who I’d rather believe.’ Rachel pushed the door and it clicked shut abruptly in Grace’s face, leaving her standing on the step. She walked slowly down the path but as she turned to fasten the gate she saw the net curtains next door twitch and caught a glimpse of Mrs Grainger’s grey head whisking out of sight. Apparently even their kindly neighbour’s mind had been fed with lies about the Minister’s errant eldest daughter. There was nothing more for her here, she told herself. Easthampton wasn’t home to her any more. She wondered dejectedly if anywhere was.

  There was no point in staying the night. She caught the first train back to London and sat miserably in her corner seat throughout the two-hour journey, feeling rejected and alone. In her mind she relived that terrible night when her father had beaten her, remembering the pain and the terror as she fled from the house; the chill of the night air on her bruised flesh and the eerie skeletal rattling of the tree branches in Mrs Grainger’s garden as she crouched in the draughty garden shed all night. What had she done that her sisters should turn against her? It had all been for Harry and now it seemed that even he didn’t want her. What had gone wrong between them? More important, how could she put it right? If she lost Harry she’d have no one.

  At Liverpool Street she caught a bus, getting off at the stop before hers to buy bread and milk at the little corner grocer’s shop she often used. Harry wouldn’t bother for himself, but she was dying for a cup of tea and something to eat.

  She climbed the stairs wearily and let herself into the flat. She took her purchases into the kitchen and put the kettle on, then she turned towards the living room. It was then she heard the quiet buzz of voices. Frowning she turned the door handle quietly, pushing the door open a few inches. It was then that she saw them, reflected in the mirror on the opposite wall. The girl had blonde hair. She and Harry lay side by side on the bed — both of them naked. It was all too clear that they had just made love.

  The shock seemed to bring all the injustices of the day to a head. Afterwards she realised that she must have gone a little mad. Bursting into the room, she screamed shrilly at the girl.

  ‘Get out. Do you hear me? Get out.’ She picked up one of the female garments that lay strewn about the floor and began to tear it into shreds. Harry leapt up and tried to restrain her, but she pulled away from him, letting loose a torrent of words she’d hardly been aware that she knew. Going to the window she threw it open and began to hurl the girl’s clothes down into the street. Later she vaguely remembered the pale upturned faces, blank with surprise, as the flimsy garments fluttered down, but at the time she neither saw nor cared. When the clothes had all gone she turned her attention on to the girl, now cowering by the door, wrapped in Harry’s dressing gown, her eyes wide with shock and her mouth a round O of fear. Grace leapt at her, tearing wildly at the blond hair, clawing at her face, oblivious to the girl’s screams, or to Harry shouting at her, until he grasped her flailing arms and held them behind her back, urging the girl to leave; bundling her out of the flat.

  Suddenly it was quiet; uncannily quiet. The flat was empty. Harry had pushed her into a chair and hustled the girl outside on to the landing, taking her — as it later transpired — to safety in the flat below. Grace slammed the door and locked it, leaning against it breathlessly. He would not come back — ever. He wasn’t her husband any more. Now she was all alone. She began to weep, silent, furious tears that seared her cheeks like acid and tore agonisingly at her chest and throat. Now she was really alone. Perhaps she had always been alone. Perhaps she always would be.

  *

  Grace was slightly breathless when she reached the top floor of the building in Charing Cross Road. She’d been here once before with Harry but she’d had to rack her memory really hard this morning to remember the name of his agent. Tapping on the half-glazed door and receiving no reply, she pushed it open and went in. A bored looking girl sitting at a desk, looked up without interest.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Can I see Mr Sylvester, please?’

  ‘What’s it about?’

  ‘It’s — a personal matter.’

  A small spark of interest glimmered in the girl’s eyes for a second, then faded again. She stood up. ‘I’ll see if he’s free.’

  She went through to the next office and Grace heard a murmured conversation. When she reappeared the girl said grudgingly: ‘He can give you five minutes.’

  Gerry Sylvester looked up. The young woman standing in front of him didn’t look like a musician, but he had been in the business long enough to know never to judge by appearances. Some of the most unlikely people could produce music that sounded as though it came straight from heaven. He smiled. ‘Good morning. How can I help you?’

  Clutching nervously at the strap of her handbag, Grace came straight to the point: ‘Can you tell me where Alfredo’s Rumba Band is playing this week, please?’

  It wasn’t the usual approach and his bushy eyebrows rose in surprise. ‘Now why would you want to know that?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m trying to find Harry Wendover,’ she told him, her heart thumping uncomfortably. ‘It — it’s important that I find him — quickly.’

  Gerry leaned back in his chair, regarding her with curiosity. Harry was one of his better clients. He worked hard and he was ambitious. The job with Alfredo was working out well. He’d just booked them a summer season at Bournemouth. Gerry had even got Harry a couple of BBC engagements recently too. Only accompanist work, but still... The boy wasn’t brilliant but there was no doubt that he had a good steady career in front of him. He wouldn’t like anything to happen to spoil it. On closer inspection he saw that the woman in front of him was hardly more than a girl. His shrewd eyes took in the down at heel shoes and shabby handbag; the red coat whose buttons strained a little at the front — his spirits sank. Oh God, no. What sort of mess had Harry got himself into here?

  ‘Well now,’ he said slowly, lighting a cigarette to give hims
elf time to think, ‘it’s my rule not to give out information about my clients. I’m sure you can understand that?’

  ‘Yes — but you see, I’m his wife.’ She held out her left hand.

  The cigarette almost dropped out of Gerry’s mouth in surprise. He had no idea that Harry was married. Odd he’d said nothing. ‘Forgive me, but if you’re his wife, my dear, how come you have to ask me where he’s working?’

  Grace coloured. ‘We — had a row. And parted. Several weeks ago.’

  After a moment’s hesitation, Gerry pulled a notepad towards him and scribbled something on it, then he tore off the page and passed it to her. ‘This is where the band is working this week,’ he said. ‘It’s a Palais de Danse in South London — think you can find it?’

  Grace nodded gratefully, pushing the paper into her bag.

  ‘You won’t make a scene, love, will you?’ he asked. ‘I mean, he will be pleased to see you, I take it?’

  Grace turned at the door. Was it possible he had heard about the humiliating evening she’d found Harry at the flat with the girl? Summoning every last shred of her dignity she said: ‘Don’t worry, Mr Sylvester. There won’t be any trouble — not this time. Thank you for helping me.’

  *

  Grace was acutely aware from the moment she entered the building that she looked incongruously out of place at The Palais. She wore the blue two-piece that she had been married in, but, like the red coat, she’d had trouble fastening it. It was ten weeks since the terrible night when she had returned from Easthampton to find Harry in bed with the girl. He’d tried to come back several times, knocking on the door and begging to be allowed in to talk, but she’d sat silently, her hands over her ears and her lips pressed tightly together, determined not to see or speak to him again. He’d even sent her money for the first few weeks, but she’d sent the cheque back, care of the bank, enclosing a note addressed to Harry saying that she wanted nothing more from him. Unable to afford the rent of the flat on her own meagre wage, she’d moved out, taking a dingy bed-sitting room in Bow, telling herself that she’d manage all right somehow. But the long winter nights were cold and the hissing little gas fire ate her shillings voraciously so that she had to exist mainly on baked beans on toast and bread and jam.

  Discovering she was pregnant came as a shattering blow. Somehow she didn’t associate pregnancy with the barely endured couplings she and Harry had shared. At first she ignored the tell-tale symptoms, hoping that perhaps it might be a mistake after all — the result of her poor diet. But as the weeks passed she was forced to acknowledge the fact that her condition would not be ignored. Each morning she retched miserably in the dingy bathroom two floors below, whilst the other tenants of the house rattled the door handle impatiently. Every time she fastened her skirt it was a little harder to make the waistband meet. Soon it would show and she’d have to give up work. What would become of her then? Eventually she had to face the fact that she must pocket her pride and find Harry again. After all, he was responsible.

  She’d never been in a dance hall before and the opulent Victorian splendour awed and intimidated her; as did the brash young people in their flounced dresses or draped suits. She bought herself a glass of lemonade and found a quiet corner in which to sit and drink it, wondering how she could manage to speak to Harry alone in this crowded place.

  When the band came on and began to play, the floor soon filled up with dancers. Grace’s heart sank. She could see Harry, smiling and looking as handsome as ever there at the piano, but he would never see her among all these people. She didn’t see the remotest possibility of being able to speak to him. She might just as well go home now. But she sat on, hoping against hope that some way of attracting his attention would present itself to her.

  In the end it was by sheer accident that they met. During the interval, when the band left the stand, Grace decided that she had had enough. She wasn’t going to see Harry this way. She would have to write to him. Somehow find the words to make her humiliating capitulation and send it here, hoping that it would reach him. Before facing the bus queue she went to find the Ladies. It was packed with giggling girls renewing their lipstick and straightening their stocking seams. Most of them were about Grace’s own age, but she felt much older, an interloper among their frivolous camaraderie. She shrank from the way they looked at her — curious; pitying. Some of them glanced critically at her clothes without bothering to hide their patronising smiles. As soon as she came out of the lavatory cubicle she left, going through the swing door and into the corridor again with relief.

  It was as she was walking towards the front entrance that she heard him call her name: ‘Grace!’

  She turned, stopping in her tracks as she found herself face to face with Harry.

  He walked towards her. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I — came to see you.’

  ‘But why? I don’t understand. You never came to see me play before...’ He touched her arm, his eyes suddenly concerned. ‘Are you all right?’ He didn’t tell her that Gerry Sylvester had already warned him that Grace was looking for him and that she seemed unwell.

  ‘Yes — well, no.’ She’d dropped her gaze but now she looked up into his eyes. It was important suddenly for her to see his expression when she told him. ‘I’m going to have a baby, Harry.’

  For a second his eyes registered the same disbelief that she herself had felt. Perhaps he too hadn’t thought it possible to make a baby out of revulsion and coldness. Then, slowly, a look of wonder and excitement came into his eyes. ‘A baby? How — how long?’

  ‘Almost five months,’ she told him.

  ‘Five? Then you must have been...’

  ‘Yes. But I didn’t know.’

  Reaching out he pulled her into his arms and held her. ‘Oh, Grace, love. I’m sorry. If only I could turn the clock back. That day — it didn’t mean anything, you know. I’d give anything for it not to have happened.’ He looked down at her. ‘Look, I’ll make it up to you, I promise.’

  His words brought the tears she’d so far denied herself. ‘I will too. It was my fault, I know that. I always knew it really.’ She hid her head against his shoulder. ‘Oh, Harry, I do love you. It will be all right, won’t it?’

  ‘Of course it will.’ He kissed the tears from her cheeks.

  A crowd of girls came out of the Ladies and gazed at them in amazement. That dowdy girl in the awful blue dress, what could the handsome pianist possibly see in her, they wondered? But Grace was oblivious to their envious glances. Harry and she were back together. She wouldn’t have to be alone any more. Everything was going to be all right.

  *

  Harry’s summer season at the Pavilion, Bournemouth, began in the second week of May. Grace went with him and they managed to find a nice flat on the edge of town. It was in a tree-lined road of rather grand Victorian houses, quite close to the railway station. For Grace it was an idyllic time. Once her initial morning sickness was over, pregnancy suited her. She lost her pinched, undernourished look and grew rounded and serene, her complexion smooth and golden from fresh air and sun. When Harry was at rehearsals she would walk down into the town and look at the shops. Sometimes she would walk to the East Cliff, past the smart, newly refurbished hotels and down on to the beach by way of the zig zag path, to spend an afternoon sunbathing on the beach; riding back up later in the cliff lift. On some days she would make sandwiches and meet Harry in the pleasure gardens for a picnic lunch. She loved sitting under the pine trees and watching the children paddling in the Bourne stream, while the tame squirrels scampered for scraps of food.

  It was on a humid night in late July when she wakened Harry at two in the morning with the first pains.

  ‘Harry, I think the baby’s coming.’

  He was awake instantly, helping her to dress and gather her belongings together, going downstairs to telephone for a taxi. He’d stayed at the hospital for the rest of the night and all next morning, but when it was time for him to go to the the
atre for the afternoon performance, the baby still hadn’t been born. Grace was exhausted. They allowed him to see her for a few minutes before he had to leave, but she hardly seemed to know he was there. Her rambling words and glazed eyes, her flushed face and damp hair, alarmed him.

  ‘She seems in such terrible pain. Will she be all right?’ he’d asked the sister anxiously. But the staff hadn’t seemed unduly concerned about her.

  He returned at teatime to spend a couple of hours at her bedside, then went reluctantly to the theatre for the evening show.

  Left on her own Grace felt abandoned. Exhausted and racked with pain she called out for Harry time and again, until the sister came into the small side ward where she was and told her quite crossly that she was disturbing the other patients and must be quiet. It was nine o’clock when they wheeled her down the corridor to the labour ward, and half-past ten when her baby daughter was delivered. Miraculously, the moment the baby was laid in her arms, Grace felt well again; refreshed and charged with a new and powerful energy. She gazed down into the baby’s dark blue eyes, touching the fine black down on her head with her fingertips, afraid to look away in case it was all a dream. ‘My baby.’ She said the words experimentally to herself, over and over. ‘My daughter. A real person of my very own — made out of my own flesh and blood.’ It seemed like a miracle. Now it didn’t matter that her family had rejected her. She need never be alone again, whatever happened.

  Harry came as soon as the show was over and stood by the bed holding the baby tenderly in his arms and looking down at her with an expression of love and wonder in his eyes.

  ‘What shall we call her?’ Grace asked, watching them happily, intoxicated with the new potent power that coursed through her veins.

  ‘Elaine,’ he said without hesitation. ‘I’ve always liked that name. It was my mother’s. We’ll call her Elaine Grace.’

  *