Family of Women

by Annie Murray

  Bessie came to the wedding in the enormous frock she’d had made for Charlie and Gladys’s wedding the autumn before, in primrose yellow, dotted with little nosegays of blue and violet, and a big straw hat. Uncle Clarence was there to give Violet away, in a dusty black suit, his balding head glistening with perspiration. Before they stepped into the church he said, ‘You quite sure about this, wench?’

  ‘Bit late to ask me that,’ she said crossly. After all, when had either of them taken any notice of anything she did, so why should he care now? Violet felt strong. She was a woman now, still at Vicars, earning as much as eighteen shillings a week on piecework if she worked overtime. And she had Harry, and Harry wanted her.

  Harry’s father was not at the wedding. He had shown his face a couple of times in the early days after the family had finally turned on him, then disappeared. Mrs Martin gradually relaxed, knowing he was not going to come roaring back in through the door, but she was a nervy woman who depended completely on her sons. Violet saw in her all she didn’t want to be herself, and thought the woman demanded too much of Harry.

  ‘When we’re married, are you going to go and spend every evening with your mom?’

  She asked it teasingly. But Harry’s mother was coming to feel like an obstacle in her way, always so tired and pathetic-looking and forever whining to Harry. He seemed to be round there every spare moment. Although she tried not to feel annoyed and jealous, Violet sometimes couldn’t help it.

  She would have liked to live in a different area, get right away from her mother and Harry’s, and from the sad spectre of Marigold. She dreaded seeing Marigold now. She was eighteen going on forty in her frumpy old dresses and with her lank greasy hair. Bessie had taken to having some of the women in the yard – and men if she could get them – round to play cards in the afternoon, holding court at the table, dishing out tea and anything stronger that was going and eating, forever eating. Lardy cakes were her favourite, and bags of sweets, barley sugar and humbugs. Marigold joined in, bracketed in with the middle-aged, one of those buzzing round her queen bee of a mother. She had no friends her own age. All she had was her pretty soapbox full of songs, all scrawled on little scraps of paper. Rosina helped her with the spelling, when she could be bothered. For the wedding Marigold had tried to dress up, and there was something even more heartbreaking about the sight of her with her badly cut hair washed and hanging dead straight, and the dress of Bessie’s which had been taken in for her. Like all her clothes, it aged her and made her look shapeless and sexless like a sack of spuds.

  Rosina was causing trouble now. She was thirteen but, Bessie said, very ‘forward’ for her age, always wanting to make her face up and nagging for clothes and wanting to be out and about. She was a precocious little miss, not like Violet. She stood up to her mother and there were frequent rows.

  ‘You can’t get married, Vi!’ she said when she first heard the news. ‘You’ll leave me here on my own!’

  All Violet really wanted was to get as far away from it all as possible.

  But neither of them wanted to leave Vicars. Harry was already twenty and was champing at the bit to be able to get out and follow his dreams. But he couldn’t go. Not yet.

  ‘I want to see our mom all right first. I’ll have to keep working here for now – that’s all there is to it. We’re young yet – there’ll be plenty of time.’

  Of course it made sense not to rent a place too far away. And being in the Summer Lane area meant wasting no money on tram rides to work. All the money they could put away was for Harry’s dream passage to Australia.

  ‘Let’s get the lowest rent we can,’ Harry said. ‘There’s only the two of us. We don’t need much.’

  So they rented a two-up house in Ormond Street, a back-to-back, on the front facing the street, with no attic. There was the downstairs room and scullery and two tiny bedrooms. For water and the toilets they had to go down the entry and into the yard. Violet looked round it, the first day they were allowed in. The place was in bad repair, great cracks up the side wall, cockroaches and silverfish all over the place. It was gloomy and stank of damp and mould.

  ‘Oh, Harry,’ she said dismally. ‘It’s horrible. Can’t we go somewhere a bit better?’

  ‘It’ll be all right after a lick of paint!’ Harry said, ever optimistic.

  ‘But what’s Mom going to say? I can’t have her here!’

  ‘It’s our house – not hers!’ Harry came and took her in his arms in the dismal little room and his eyes were alight with enthusiasm. ‘Look – the rent’s only six bob a week – think how much we can save with your wages and mine. The more rent we pay, the longer we’re going to have to stay in this rat-hole!’

  ‘I s’pose you’re right.’ Violet was lifted by his dream again. It just managed to raise her spirits above the sight of the stained old stone sink in the scullery and the pile of mouse droppings by the grease-encrusted gas stove. That and a lopsided shelf in the scullery were the only things in the house.

  Harry was full of energy. He moved into the house two days before the wedding and spent the evenings and half the night with his big brother Tom, fixing the hinges of the front door and painting the flaking walls – pale green downstairs and white up in the bedrooms. He bought a table and chairs from a secondhand shop, and a mattress, and Violet bought some bedding and a few pans and crocks.

  When they arrived back there on the evening of their wedding it looked better. Marigold had bodged a rag rug for them and Rosina had hemmed a red and white gingham tablecloth, on which were laid their white cups and saucers. Suddenly it began to look a little bit like a home.

  They closed the door behind them and Violet stood still just inside.

  ‘Listen – ’

  Harry stopped, frowning. ‘What?’

  ‘Peace.’ In fact you could hear the murmur of voices from next door, but that was comparative peace. No Mom booming out orders and Rosina backchatting, no babies and stinking pails of napkins. Nothing but their own place.

  ‘It’s ours,’ she said.

  ‘And you’re mine.’ Harry turned, and she was moved by the look of pride and happiness in his face. He came and took her in his arms and his eyes were solemn.

  ‘My wife. We’re going to make it better, aren’t we? Better than we’ve had it. Better than my father . . .’ He looked vulnerable, like a little boy, and she reached up and stroked his hair.

  ‘Course we are.’

  ‘Up and up.’

  ‘Yes – up and up.’

  He grinned suddenly. ‘Now for the best bit.’ He stroked his hand over her little round breasts. She’d been very determined about not going with him before they were married. Not after Marigold. She was afraid of it. Didn’t really know what ‘it’ consisted of except that the consequences were so frightening. And what if he went off and left her? Then where would she be? So whenever Harry had got a bit too amorous she’d pushed him off.

  ‘Oi – don’t get cheeky,’ she’d say.

  ‘No need to wait any longer,’ Harry said. He took her hand and led her up the narrow, twisting staircase and both of them laughed at the sight of the bare room with nothing but the mattress on the floorboards, the sheets carefully tucked under it by Violet.

  ‘Not exactly the Ritz, is it?’ she said ruefully.

  Harry pulled her down on to the mattress, kissing her hungrily.

  ‘We’ve got everything we need.’

  He hurriedly unbuttoned her dress and lifted it over her head, then slipped off her camisole. She looked down at his dark head, stroking his hair in wonder as his lips fastened hungrily on her breast. Later, Violet worked out that she must have caught for a baby that very first night.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The first week after the wedding, Bessie had said to her, ‘There’s no need for you to go cooking a joint on a Sunday – it’s a waste of gas. Charlie and Gladys’ll be round as usual. You and Harry come here with us.’

  It was almost an order, not quite, but
you didn’t gainsay Mom. And it was quite nice, just for a bit, to be back with everyone, Marigold helping with the cooking, Rosina on about the latest picture she’d seen at the flicks, and Clarence sitting there talking about the Villa with Harry (Charlie had always supported the Albion, just to be different), and the smell of a joint of beef in the oven. Harry wasn’t fussed about going, so long as he had a good dinner, and Bessie’s dinners were mammoth events, with big steamed puddings.

  Violet was feeling queasy that Sunday when they went, six weeks after the wedding. She found it hard to eat much and could feel Bessie noticing. They were all crammed into the little room, Bessie, Charlie, Gladys, Violet and Rosina squeezed round the table, Clarence and Harry on the sofa. Bessie always went round the table with the pans of food, breathing hard, dolloping it on to everyone’s plates in huge quantities. As she came round with roast potatoes, Violet said, ‘Not too much, ta – that’ll do.’

  It was the same with the cabbage.

  Bessie sat down with a grunt in front of her heaped plate, face red and perspiring from all the cooking. She eyed Violet.

  ‘What’s up with you?’

  Violet looked down at her plate.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘You got a bun in the oven?’

  The tone of her mother’s voice was so grossly blunt that it cut right through Violet. Her cheeks burned red.

  ‘Well – have you?’

  Blushing, Violet looked up. ‘Think I might have.’

  Her mother’s face changed. She sat back, seeming to swell with smug satisfaction.

  ‘Hear that, Clarence?’ She was beaming in triumph. ‘Our Violet’s expecting. I’m going to be a grandma. Now I really have got summat to tell everyone! ’Ere – Marigold – pass us over some more gravy will you?’

  For the first time in her life, Violet felt she had done something right.

  Charlie’s wife Gladys, who was taking a long time to conceive a child, had to put up with Bessie’s constant boasting about Violet.

  ‘Course – she comes from poor stock, you can see by the look of her,’ Bessie said.

  Violet wasn’t taken with Gladys, who she thought was a narrow-minded nag. All the same, she was embarrassed by Mom talking about Gladys as if she was a farmyard animal.

  Violet didn’t like being in the ‘condition’ she was in. She felt sick, and when that wore off and her belly began to swell she felt invaded, frightened and out of control. Panic-stricken, she remembered Marigold, lying there like a great bloated cow when she got big, and the terrible sounds she made giving birth. Sometimes she wept with fright just thinking about it.

  ‘I don’t want to do it!’ she cried to Harry one night, as they were lying in bed. ‘I’m only seventeen – I don’t want this yet. My life’ll be over!’

  ‘Don’t talk daft.’ Harry gave her a cuddle and stroked his hands over her buttocks. Her new, curving shape excited him. He started touching her and Violet sighed. She didn’t want him messing with her, she wanted him to understand and reassure her. She felt very alone. Apart from his sexual excitement, she saw that he didn’t really want the baby, even though he tried to pretend.

  When she’d first told him was on a Sunday morning. She’d made tea and they were snuggled up in bed together, with the luxury of no work and the morning stretching ahead of them. Violet didn’t feel very well, but she’d been sick and felt better for it. She lay with her head on his chest, tickling him lightly with her fingers, just below his collarbones. Close up she could see the strong black hairs curling up from his pale skin.

  When she told him she was being sick because there was a baby, Harry lay still without replying. After a moment he gave a deep sigh.

  ‘Don’t!’ she cried, tearfully. ‘Aren’t you pleased?’

  There was a pause, then he turned to her, and she could tell he was making himself smile.

  ‘Course I am. I don’t s’pose it makes any difference – we can still go to Australia.’

  ‘We’ll be a family,’ she said. But she felt a plunge of fear. Australia was just a name to her. All she knew of it was that it was hot and dusty, and there were kangaroos! And it was so far away. The thought was frightening. All she wanted now was safety and what was familiar.

  Chapter Fifteen

  ‘I don’t know why you didn’t marry your mother!’

  Violet shrieked at Harry’s back as he left the house once again.

  There was no reply, but he slammed the door so hard that it sprang open again. Violet sighed sharply and banged it shut again.

  I’m turning into a proper fishwife, she thought. She didn’t like shouting like that. They seemed to be rowing so much of the time these days. And it was usually over the same thing. But he’s never here!

  ‘You might as well bloody live with her still! Why can’t one of the others go?’

  As soon as he knew about the baby, Harry seemed to spend more and more time at his mother’s. Mrs Martin wasn’t well; his two other brothers were married now so there was no man about the house. Harry was the dutiful son; she needed him. Violet had gone off Mrs Martin very quickly as soon as she was married. She thought she was a selfish woman who made herself constantly helpless to get her own way.

  Even when he was at home, Harry never understood how she felt, that she needed comfort and reassurance. Violet turned to Jo Snell and her family. Her friendship with Jo had come to be one of the most important things in her life. She could pour her heart out to Jo, and often did.

  ‘I expect he’ll come round when the baby’s born,’ Jo told her. ‘And if he doesn’t, more fool him. You can always come and see us.’

  It was marvellous to have a friend like that. But even Jo didn’t know how it felt to have a baby. The one person who seemed to understand, for the first time ever, was her mother. More and more often after work she found herself slipping along Summer Lane and into Bessie’s yard. Home. That’s how she thought of it still, and it felt reassuringly familiar, although she lived with Harry and that was supposed to be her new home.

  Suddenly though, Bessie was treating her with a new respect. Almost, though not quite, as an equal. Violet existed for her in a way she never had before and when she went round there her mother was welcoming in her aggressive way. Yesterday when she’d gone there, feeling lonely, Bessie greeted her with, ‘Oh – so you’ve come running back again, have you? You’d better come in then. How’s the babby?’

  To Violet’s relief, no one else was in.

  ‘Rosy out with her pals, is she?’

  Bessie scowled, banging the kettle down on the fire. ‘When’s she ever in, little minx. She’s felt my hand a few times lately, I can tell you. There’s some factory Jack hanging round her already – at her age! I’ve told her she’ll come to a bad end. The lip she’s got on her! I said to her this morning, you’ll have mustard on your tongue if you carry on like that but it’s like talking to the wall . . .’

  Violet was surprised how little authority Bessie had over Rosina. The rest of them had always kowtowed and tiptoed round her. Rosy had always been different – now she was even more so. She was just fourteen and had started work at a button factory and according to Bessie spent as little time at home as she possibly could. Violet felt sorry for her though, left at home with Clarence and Marigold.

  Bessie brewed up the tea and set it on the table. As usual, the room was as clean as a pin, plates gleaming on the shelves, the rag rug shaken out and laid back by the range. Bessie was obsessed with cleaning.

  ‘Here – have one.’ On the table were boiled sweets in a little pale blue bowl. ‘Barley sugar – that’ll make you feel better.’

  Violet obeyed.

  ‘You should be drinking raspberry leaf tea . . .’ Bessie sat down with a grunt in the big chair by the range, smoothing her capacious apron over her lap. ‘Helps with the pains . . .’ She poured from the old brown teapot and spooned plenty of sugar into her cup.

  Violet didn’t need to say a word. Bessie sat back, holding her cu
p up close to her chin, her dress riding up to show inches of coloured bloomers, shoes off to ease her corns. She reminisced about her own childbearing days.

  ‘Ooh now, you don’t know what’s coming to you, wench. I’ll never forget Charlie and Marigold – sick as a dog I was! Just be grateful it’s not twins. Jack’s face when she told him there was two of ’em! Treated me like a queen he did, your father.’ She gave a great sigh. ‘My Jack, God rest him. Now he was a man, he was. Father of twins! He was cock of the walk!’

  Violet could see her mother had felt like one of the seven wonders of the world for producing twins. It was the great event of her life. Details followed over the willow-pattern teacups about swollen legs and having ‘trouble going’ or, as Bessie called it, ‘corkage’, and piles and other gruesome delights of childbearing, until Violet felt even more sick with dread.

  ‘Don’t tell me any more,’ she begged.

  This made Bessie laugh, her huge body quivering. ‘You’ll soon find out for yourself, any road, Vi.’

  ‘I don’t know as I want to find out,’ Violet said miserably.

  To her surprise, her mother leaned over and patted her leg. ‘Time of your life, bab – that’s what it is. Makes a woman of you.’

  Violet was overcome by all this sudden attention from her mother. For the first time she wasn’t just the spare part, just one other girl stuck in the middle between the twins and Rosina, the pale, sickly-looking one whom no one ever noticed. Suddenly Bessie wanted her, and she was brought inside her mother’s powerful orbit with a warmth and sense of approval she had never felt before and barely knew Bessie was capable of. Bessie marched her off to the doctor for a check-up, and when they went round for the big Sunday dinner which was becoming tradition, Bessie kept making mention of ‘Vi’s condition’ and ‘Vi and Harry’s babby’. She knew Bessie didn’t think much of Harry, but he’d given her a child and that was what mattered. Gladys was having no luck, and Marigold didn’t count. At last Violet felt she counted in a way that so far none of the others did.