Family of Women

by Annie Murray

  ‘Has anyone said anything?’

  Muriel looked away, hesitating. ‘I’ve heard the odd whisper. You know what people are like. If he kept coming along to the house, what were they going to think? Honestly, Vi!’ For a moment, her exasperation flashed out.

  ‘We just couldn’t help it. Look, he’s asked me to meet him – tonight.’

  ‘Well,’ Muriel released her. Solemnly, she said. ‘Go on. You’d better get going then.’

  By the time she reached the foundry round the corner from the recreation ground she heard footsteps, running behind her, and he caught up with her.

  Without a word, they clung to each other in the dark street.

  ‘What’s happened? You’re in such a state!’ She could feel it before he said a word.

  He kissed her face, feverishly, as if she was the most precious thing in rld.

  ‘Let’s go to the park – if it’s open. We can talk in there.’

  The gate was unlocked and they slipped in, across the moonlit grass. The night park smelt lovely, of flowers, and she ached for this moment to be different, for them to be able to enjoy each other instead of being gripped by this cold fear inside her. When they reached the bandstand he took hold of her again, wrapped himself round her.

  ‘Iris knows, doesn’t she?’ Violet burst out. There was no point in waiting any longer.

  ‘I think the whole flaming neighbourhood knows.’ He gave out a sigh, almost a laugh. ‘Goes round like wildfire. God, Violet . . . How can we have been so stupid?’

  ‘You mean – ’ She felt as if he had punched her. ‘You wish you’d never met me?’

  ‘No! God, no – you’re the most . . . I don’t know what to say. You’re man I love. I know that. It’s about the only bloody thing I do know at the moment.’

  ‘What are you saying then?’

  ‘We just should’ve been more careful.’

  ‘But how?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  For a moment they stared intensely at each other in the darkness, then Roy broke away from her and turned his back. She stood, bereft. A dog barked, somewhere outside the park.

  ‘I can’t go on like this, Vi, I know that. Lies, trying to be in two places at once. I’d leave, honest to God I would, if it was just her and me. She’s all right, Iris is. She’s a good sort really. But she’s not you. She and I – I don’t know – we’ve never had what we have, me and you . . . I’d leave now, for you. But there’s the kids – and your girls and your husband. It’s all too difficult . . . It’s wrong.’

  He turned to her again and she was rooted to the spot. She didn’t want to hear what he was saying because it was true and therefore unbearable.

  ‘We’ll move,’ he said. ‘That’s what Iris wants. She can’t stand it any more. She can see it, see.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’ Her voice cracked.

  ‘That I’m different. Feelings that . . . She can see what I feel about you, however much I try to hide it. It’s no good.’

  The last words were said with flat despair. He came to her again and drew her to him, pressing his cheek against hers. She was not crying, not yet. The tears were like a great wave, swelling deep inside her. Instead she felt shocked and cold. There was no hope now.

  ‘I’ll always love you,’ she said wretchedly. ‘Can’t you stay near somewhere?’

  ‘No. If I did I’d always be watching, hoping to see you somewhere, and it’d never end. I couldn’t stand it.’

  They held each other for a long time, silently, as if each engraving on them the feel of the other’s body so it would never be forgotten.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  The Keillor family moved out later that week and left the street.

  For a few days number two was left empty, but by the end of the week another family had moved in and the whisperings and snide remarks to which Violet was subject died down for the moment. Muriel was her loyal friend throughout.

  ‘Folk can always criticize,’ she said. ‘But I think no one ever knows what something’s like until they’ve had to live with it. But now you’ll just have to get over him somehow.’

  Violet did not say a word even to Muriel during those anguished days after he left. She held the pain of it inside her in silence. It felt too much to put into words. And from across the world there was news of such terrible things, the human race in a spasm of agony on a scale to which she would not compare hers. She bore it alone, all her tears saved for night-time, clasping her pillow to her and aching for it to be him. She longed for him so completely that it felt like an illness. But after all, he was another woman’s husband. She didn’t deserve any sympathy, did she?

  Sympathy of a different kind came much later when a letter reached her in February 1944 telling her that Harry had been killed in action. They didn’t tell her how, only that he had been in Burma.

  Her mother appeared on the doorstep one day with rough words of comfort.

  ‘I’m sorry for you, bab. I lost my man, and now you’ve lost yours. It’s hard bringing up little ’uns on your own. But it makes you strong. I’ll tell you that. Makes a woman of you. And strong is what you’re going to have to be now.’

  Part Three

  1950

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  The machine was like a long metal coffin.

  Violet’s hands were trembling as she reached down with a convulsive movement and stroked the blonde head, the only part of her daughter not swallowed up by the iron casing.

  ‘Don’t cry, babby – oh, don’t, you’ll make it worse!’

  The bellows pump sucked the air from the machine again with a loud whoosh, and the little girl let out a sob.

  ‘I want to come home, Mom!’

  You could almost smell the child’s fear.

  The nurse’s heart went out to the mother, with her elfin face and poor, down-at-heel look. The disease was a horror, and a scourge, and this mother was taking it especially hard. It was her first visit, you could tell by her stricken face, and of course she’d brought her other two girls, not thinking they’d not be allowed in. There was far too much risk of infection. So the two lasses had gone to wait outside, with their forlorn faces and grubby summer frocks.

  ‘You’ll be little Carol’s mother? Mrs Martin?’

  ‘Yes – ’ Violet pulled her gaze away from her little girl. The nurse saw a face pinched with anxiety, with clear blue eyes and blonde hair scraped back and carelessly pinned up. Hearing a note of sympathy, her eyes filled with tears. ‘I’ve never seen anything like this . . . It’s horrible!’

  ‘I know – it’s a shock when you first see it.’ To give the woman time to compose herself, she turned to smile at the child.

  ‘D’you know why it’s called an iron lung?’

  She stroked a hand over the curved metal surface. There were little windows in it so you could catch a glimpse of Carol lying inside, covered with something white.

  ‘The disease attacks the muscles, you see. Carol’s lungs aren’t working properly at the moment and without the machine they’d collapse. It pumps air into the chamber here and presses the breath out of her body. Then, when it sucks the air out again – d’you hear it? – her lungs get bigger and she takes in a big breath, see? Don’t you Carol?’

  Carol’s head with its tufts of blonde hair could be seen resting on a pillow at the end of the machine. She tried to nod. There were tears running down the sides of her face into her hair. She wanted to speak, but was forced to wait for the machine to give her breath.

  ‘Show your mother what a brave girl you are.’ The nurse touched the top of the girl’s head for a moment. Don’t cry, the pressure seemed to say.

  ‘She’s the image of you, isn’t she?’ she said to Violet, who nodded, absently.

  The nurse wondered how old man was. There was something so worn and sad about her.

  ‘How long will she be in there – in that thing?’ Violet kept fiddling with the bottom edge of her cardigan as if to fasten it, but
the button was missing. The cardigan had once been white.

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you. Not yet. It does take time though, and it depends how well her muscles come back to her. Some of the children do very well.’

  ‘I don’t understand it . . .’ Violet’s emotion bubbled to the surface again. ‘She only had a bit of a headache. One minute she was all right . . . She said her neck was getting stiff, that was all, and then . . .’ Her face contorted. ‘She won’t die, will she? Oh God, she can’t die – she’s only seven! My little babby, just look at her . . .’

  ‘That’s how it is with polio.’ The nurse spoke abruptly, as if panic-stricken by Mrs Martin’s emotion. She turned on her heel, flicking her white veil over her shoulder. She had other patients to attend to, after all. ‘We just have to wait and see.’

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  ‘Linda? Wake up – we’re coming into Birmingham.’

  ‘All right. Ouch – leave us alone, will you!’

  Linda shoved her sister’s sharp elbow away. She wanted to push Joyce all along the aisle and off the bus in her baggy blue frock and never see her again, ever! In any case, she hadn’t really been asleep. She’d sat with her eyes closed, head resting against the throbbing window, to block out Joyce and her moaning about how even when they got into town they still had to get all the way out again to the estate.

  ‘Have we got to do this every week? It’ s miles away and it takes up the whole day!’ Joyce had bad adenoids and always sounded as if she was holding her nose when she talked.

  Linda felt as if she was going to explode. There was Mom on the seat across from them, turned away as if she was looking out of the window, even though the panes were filthy dirty. Like staring into a sandstorm. That was what Johnny Vetch said – in the desert there were storms of sand, whirling in the air and you couldn’t see out.

  She knew Mom was crying and that was why she wouldn’t look round. Linda gripped the edge of the seat. All that they’d seen that afternoon kept burning through her mind. That hospital, the stink of it, and glimpses of sick children before the nurse had told them to get out and they’d stood around outside, feeling lost and stupid.

  When Mom came out she looked as if someone had hit her. Carol was inside a big tank thing, she said. It was called an iron lung and it stank of rubber and made big sucking sounds of the air going in and out. She said there was a little mirror by Carol so she could see a bit more of what was going on. Linda decided that not seeing it was worse than seeing it. Every time she thought of being inside there she felt panicky and had to take in a deep breath. She could feel sobs rising in her and she forced them down. She wanted to see Carol so badly she thought her heart would burst.

  If only it was me instead! She’d give anything for Carol to be all right – anything. To see her running round again in the garden with the rabbits, or with her skipping rope, her long golden hair lifting as she jumped.

  Not that polio was to blame for the cropped state Carol’s hair was in. Linda’s mouth twisted in fury. It was Dad who’d done that.

  ‘I’m starving,’ Joyce moaned, slouching along once they’d got off the second bus. She found something to complain about all along Bandywood Road, one of the main arteries of the Kingstanding estate where they lived. ‘These shoes’re pinching me rotten!’

  ‘What d’you wear them for then?’ Linda’s feet were sore too, the black pumps worn wafer thin on the bottom and rubbing her toes, but she wasn’t moaning was she? Joyce was tripping along in that stupid pair of sandals which had never fitted properly in the first place.

  ‘Look –’ She displayed one foot. ‘There’s blood pouring down my heel!’

  ‘Oh, shut it!

  ‘Shurrup yourself miss bloody know-it-all!’

  ‘Just wrap up, the pair of you,’ their mother snarled exhaustedly. ‘For God’s sake let’s just get home.’

  They were walking down the row of municipal houses, doors all painted green. Theirs was number ten – the one with the garden that stood out for having nothing in it except Dad’s old Norton bike, rusting away under a ragged tarpaulin amid the forest of dandelions, where it had been since he crashed it three years ago, leaving him with a deep scar on across his left cheek. Reg Bottoms next door, who grew prize-winning dahlias, took the presence of the wrecked Norton as a personal insult, which was the main reason Dad left it there.

  They went along the cracked little path and Violet stopped at the front door and listened. Linda’s eyes met Joyce’s, all squabbles forgotten for the moment in the more momentous thought, will our dad be in?

  He wasn’t, of course, this time on a Saturday. Pubs’d be open. You could feel the house was empty. The dogs went mad when they heard the key in the lock, yowling, claws scrabbling at the kitchen door. The sour stink of parrot hit them in the hall.

  ‘Mrs Martin!’

  They were stepping inside when they heard Mrs Kaminski calling from the house the other side. The Kaminskis were Poles. They had the corner house, so the garden wrapped right round the side, and every inch of their land was covered in vegetables, potatoes right up to the front wall. Dad said they were afraid of going hungry. Mr Kaminski was a stocky, silent man who was out there almost every moment he was not at work, digging and weeding. Mrs Kaminski’s face appeared over the fence, her lips a bright scarlet. She was a diminutive woman who seemed to hum with energy.

  ‘Ze animals – again!’ She hissed in warning. ‘Mr Bottoms – very angry!’

  ‘Oh . . . no!’ Violet sagged against the doorframe.

  Linda noticed how her mom never swore in front of Mrs Kaminski. She also kept the dogs well away from her because Mrs Kaminski was terrified of them. Everyone seemed to have a strange respect for the Kaminskis and she didn’t really know why, but she’d heard whispers of ‘After all they’ve been through . . .’

  ‘Thanks, Mrs K – girls, get out there now and catch those flaming rabbits!’

  Linda and Joyce scuttled through the house, sore feet forgotten. The dogs leapt up, insane with joy when they went into the kitchen. The back of the kitchen door was all scratches from them, brown scars in the blue paint.

  ‘Get in – now!’ Violet shouted to them and all three, two brown mongrels and a beagle, shot through the house, only to be imprisoned in the front room.

  ‘Right – get the bloody rabbits, and don’t forget to shut the door.’

  Linda and Joyce looked out through the back window. Over the fence they could see Mr Bottoms’ head appearing and disappearing in an agitated fashion as he darted back and forth after the rabbits. Extending out of the chickenwire run in the Martins’ garden was a seam of freshly dug soil. Moonlight and Snowdrop had burrowed their way out. Again. And were running riot in Mr Bottoms’ perfect garden.

  ‘Mr Bum’s going to kill us,’ Linda breathed.

  The two of them stared in horrified awe at Mr Bottoms’ bobbing head.

  ‘I told you to get out there!’ their mom shouted along the passage. ‘Go on – before they do any more bleeding damage!’

  It wasn’t often the sisters were allies, but they looked fearfully into each other’s eyes. ‘Here goes.’

  Pushing open the back door, they stepped outside as if into the line of fire. Their own garden was a half-bald patch of badly scuffed grass, pocked with holes where the rabbits had dug. The only patch of colour was the scrubby clump of marigolds Mom’d planted up in the corner by the house once in a fit of enthusiasm. Linda went to the loose bit of fence and pulled it back, wishing they could just go in and catch the rabbits without Mr Bum seeing them. If only they were invisible!

  She thought he was going to explode.

  ‘About time! Get in here and get your bloody vermin out of my—’ He lunged as Moonlight shot past his ankles, then stood up, puce in the face. Mr Bottoms was a short, compact man of military trimness, with mousy hair clipped to a military length.

  ‘Sorry, Mr Bottoms,’ Joyce murmured, putting on her most syrupy voice. ‘Only we’ve been o
ut to the isolation hospital. Our Carol’s got polio . . .’

  ‘I don’t care where you’ve been! Those flaming hounds of yours’ve been howling all the afternoon . . .’

  Linda thought Mr Bottoms looked like an angry hamster, his eyes popping, and she wanted to laugh. ‘And these vermin’ve been at my lettuce. It’ll never be the same! And droppings all over the lawn. Get them OUT!’

  Linda managed to get hold of Snowdrop first, hoiking her out of the vegetable patch, which was carefully screened off by a flourishing set of runner beans. Snowdrop was so round and greedy that she couldn’t be bothered to stop eating and run away.

  ‘About time!’ Mr Bottom’s spluttered again. ‘Now get the other one. Filthy animals everywhere – it’s a disgrace!’

  Mom just couldn’t seem to stop getting more animals. It was as if she was running a refugee camp.

  ‘You naughty, naughty girl,’ Linda whispered into Snowdrop’s quivering ear as she continued munching.

  Walking with the warm bulk of the rabbit clutched close to her, she saw Mrs Bottoms watching from the window. She was a neat, darting woman, always full of cheerful comments. Her mouth was trying to smile even now, but Linda thought her eyes looked sad in a way that didn’t match. She often looked like that.

  By the time Linda had deposited Snowdrop in the hutch, Joyce had managed to get Moonlight. Mr Bottoms was pacing dementedly along the other side of the fence.

  ‘How did they do it this time?’ they heard. ‘Where’re the little so-and-so’s getting in?’

  Linda and Joyce collapsed into pent-up giggles over the hutches, hands clasped over their mouths.

  ‘I can hear you!’ Mr Bottoms roared. ‘And it’s not funny – like a bloody menagerie, your place. A slum. No wonder you catch diseases! I’ll be having words with that father of yours . . .’ In a lower tone he added, ‘If he’s ever sober enough to take in what I’m saying.’