Family of Women

by Annie Murray

  They walked along the side aisle to the back of the church. Johnny shone the torch on a little door at the back and when he opened it she saw steps.

  ‘You’re not frightened, are you?’

  ‘No!’ It hadn’t occurred to her to be afraid.

  ‘Best thing is, if you go ahead of me, I’ll shine the torch for you. I’m right behind you.’

  The staircase wound round and round and the only sound was their footfalls on the stone and their breathing, and all they could see were the shadows winding round with them from Johnny’s torch. At the top there was another door, and when Johnny opened it Linda felt a rush of cold air.

  ‘This is the bell tower,’ he said. ‘Mind your head.’

  They were in a wide, flat space, in which hung the dark shapes of several bells. Linda would have liked to look more. They seemed so big and heavy, hanging there. But Johnny was steering her over to the side, where there was a window. Fixed over it was a mesh.

  ‘That’s to keep the birds out,’ Johnny said. ‘You get pigeons messing all over the bells else and it’d stink. But . . .’ He struggled with something at the side of the window for a moment. ‘It’s loose. Look – come up this end.’

  He unfastened the wire at one end and folded it back on itself so there was a space at the end for them to look out. Linda leaned against the wall, her hands on the sill, which was level with her collarbones. Johnny had to bend to look out over her head. He switched off the torch.

  ‘You can’t see much down there. We’re high up, you know – above everything. If it was daytime you’d see all the houses and factories – the roofs – from up here.’

  ‘Can we come back in the morning?’

  She heard him laugh, faintly. ‘One day, maybe. But look up. This must be one of the clearest nights of the year. Just for once, no clouds and you can see past all the smoke.’

  She turned her gaze to the sky. Johnny was right. Apart from a few faint streaks there was nothing to obscure the arc of sky, the great sea of stars. She had never seen it like this before. The more she looked, the more of them she could make out, as if they were coming out in their tens of hundreds just for her. Silently the two of them stared into the sky’s vastness and after a time she had a strange feeling, the same that she had had in the church downstairs, that she was in a special place and all that was around her was somehow alive and in communication with her, making her feel she was awash with life, but she could never have put the feelings into words. Words might have made it disappear.

  ‘See over there – ’ Johnny broke their long silence. He pointed out a shape of stars, guiding her, and eventually she could see what he was talking about. ‘That’s Orion, the hunter. See those three stars? Those are his belt.’ He pointed out arms, legs, a sword. ‘Oh – and that one’s Ursa Major – the Great Bear. The Plough they call it as well.’

  ‘Looks like a saucepan,’ Linda said.

  ‘Yes, I s’pose it does.’

  He pointed out another shape which he said was a Greek lady called Cassiopeia, but she thought looked like a W on its side. She liked the pictures in the sky, but best of all she liked standing looking out in the quiet, high above everyone, in a place she’d never been before. It was some time before she noticed how cold she was.

  ‘Best go now,’ Johnny said, fixing the mesh back. ‘Keep those pigeons out.’

  ‘I like the night better than the day,’ she said, and he laughed.

  ‘Only when there’s no clouds.’

  When her mom asked what they’d been doing, when she finally got to Nana’s, Linda said, ‘Looking at the stars.’ She didn’t say where. Johnny didn’t ask her to keep it secret, but it was her secret because it had been special.

  ‘That Johnny’s stupid,’ Joyce said spitefully. He didn’t pay Joyce much attention.

  ‘Bats in the belfry,’ Bessie said.

  ‘He’s not stupid,’ Linda said crossly. ‘He’s clever.’

  That night stayed with her; and Johnny’s books and interest in things that a lot of other people didn’t seem to care about. There had to be more, she knew, than the life she saw round her. Working in factories, having babies. She couldn’t have put that into words either, but the knowledge sat in her like a hunger. And going to the grammar school was part of that hunger, of answering the need for more.

  Soon, Lucy got on to the bus. She was a quiet, serious girl with thick brown bunches lying neatly on her shoulders. Linda adored Lucy, but she’d never invited her round to her house. She was ashamed of the state of the place, the smell. Lucy lived in a nice villa in Sutton Coldfield with a neat front garden and clean, tidy furniture inside. She didn’t have any brothers or sisters and her mom and dad were quite old and they took her to church every week. Everything about Lucy’s life was gentle and calm. Linda had been to her house a few times and they were very kind to her.

  ‘Sorry I can’t really take you back to mine,’ she said. ‘My dad’s not well. He has to have it quiet so we’re not allowed to take people back.’

  She didn’t want home and school meeting each other anyway. At school she could be someone else, just like Johnny Vetch said.

  ‘You done your French homework?’ she asked Lucy.

  ‘Yes. I got stuck on my arithmetic though – could you do it?’

  ‘Most of it.’

  Lucy pulled her book out, and for the rest of the journey they talked sums and lessons, heading for the hours at school, those ordered hours of timetables and routines and being sure when you will eat, in which Linda was in heaven.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Rain lashed down in slanting lines. It was early in the morning, November and bitterly cold.

  The men were harnessing the horses on to the floats in the Co-op Dairy, and loading them up ready for the day’s delivery. The light was poor and they were cursing the cold and wet. Hot breath streamed from the horses’ nostrils.

  The supervisor came over. One of the carts was not being attended to.

  ‘That Harry Martin’s?’ He nodded grimly at it.

  ‘Yup,’ the next man said. He rolled his eyes. ‘Poor bugger.’

  ‘We can’t go on like this. Where the hell is he?’

  It had been getting worse, week by week. Harry’s timekeeping, the drink.

  ‘He’s here!’ One of the others called, relieved.

  All the men felt for Harry Martin. Who wouldn’t? Christ alone knew what had got him in that state. He’d been out East in one of the Jap camps, and it was written all over him. Anyone’d need a few drinks after that. They tried to keep him going, made excuses for him. But Harry was going down the pan, they could all see it. Must have had a night of it last night.

  He was shambling along, a pathetic figure, clothes hanging on him and bareheaded, no cap, even in this weather. And what was worse, he wasn’t even sobered up now, his gait unsteady, lurching from side to side.

  The supervisor tutted, shaking his head.

  ‘Come on, pal,’ the other bloke was saying hurriedly to Harry. ‘I’ll give you a hand.’

  ‘Ta,’ Harry said. He clung on to the side of the float to steady himself. His face was so thin and drawn it was pitiful to see.

  ‘Look, Harry,’ the supervisor spoke quietly, not wanting to make a song and dance about it all in front of the others. ‘You’ve been late in every day this week. And look at the state of you! The other blokes’ve been covering for you, but you can’t go on like this. For heaven’s sake pull yourself together! I’m giving you one more chance, but after that – you’re out. I’ll have to let you go.’

  Harry seemed to be listening but not taking in the import of what his boss was saying. A smile played around his lips. His coat hung open and they saw that his clothes were only scantily buttoned up, the top of his shirt hanging open, showing the bones in his emaciated chest. And he was soaking wet.

  ‘Are you listening to me?’ The supervisor was aggravated now. ‘I’m trying my best for you, pal, but you’re a bloody mess – look a
t the state of you! Come on – get yourself together!’

  ‘I can’t.’ Harry was still smiling. His face and words didn’t match.

  ‘Come on, Harry,’ the other man said, trying to shift him with briskness. ‘Get to work.’

  Harry was swaying, smiling, almost laughing now. ‘Can’t no more.’

  The two other men looked uneasily at each other.

  ‘Look – we can’t go on like this. You can see that, can’t you? I’m going to have to let you go.’ The supervisor felt a real heel doing it, the state the bloke was in. The last thing he needed was more punishment. ‘I’m sorry, Harry.’

  There was no reply. It was as if he hadn’t heard.

  ‘D’you hear what I said?’ His tone was harder now. ‘I’m sacking you. You’re not doing your job. You’d best get off home now in any case.’

  There came a dark trickle from Harry’s nose, blood running down his chin, but he didn’t appear to notice. Gashes of it fell on his shirt.

  ‘Harry? You don’t look any too well, mate. Go on – get yourself home.’

  But Harry continued smiling and swaying from side to side. ‘Can’t. Can’t go home.’

  A moment later his legs gave way and he collapsed on the floor. His hands went over his face and he curled up on his side and lay there, his whole body trembling.

  ‘God Almighty,’ the supervisor breathed. ‘This isn’t just the bottle, is it? We’d best call an ambulance.’

  Harry was taken to Good Hope Hospital and it was soon clear he would not be coming home for some time. He was in a state of collapse.

  ‘It’s terrible seeing him,’ Violet sobbed to Bessie.

  She’d taken them straight round there after visiting Harry, and sank down in Nana’s kitchen amid all the napkins and the smell of milk heating in a pan. Violet had snatched up a piece of old rag which she was using for a handkerchief, and kept squeezing it into a ball in her hands.

  Linda and Joyce sat at the table, pretending to play with Nana’s toffee tin of old buttons.

  ‘He’s like a shell. As if he’s got lost somewhere in himself and can’t find the way out!’

  ‘Terrible. Terrible thing,’ Uncle Clarence kept saying over and over. For once he’d got out of his chair and was standing in the doorway, fingers hooked in his braces. ‘He’s never been right since them Japs.’

  ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do!’ Violet said. ‘What with him there and our Carol all that way away! I feel as if I’m going out of my mind with it all.’

  Linda took a black coat button and ground it into a crack in the table. The button snapped in half.

  ‘Look what you’ve gone and done!’ Bessie roared at her. ‘Can’t you behave yourself for five minutes?’

  Linda pushed her chair back and it scraped the floor. ‘I don’t want to play with the buttons!’

  ‘Well, sit quiet and behave yourself and don’t give us your lip!’

  Linda would normally have taken herself off to the lavatory but today she didn’t want to miss what was being said. She went and stood in the scullery, arms folded mutinously, where she could see them all, Joyce sucking up to Nana as ever, sorting buttons as if she was five years old.

  Bessie poured the milk into a cup. The child she was looking after now was not far short of a year old and she was getting fed up with him. They were trouble when they got older. She only liked the young ones. She stirred a spoonful of sugar into the milk and put it in front of him.

  ‘Ere – get that down you and pack in that blarting!’

  ‘Where’s Auntie Marigold?’ Joyce asked.

  Marigold was just always there, normally, like the gas stove and the table.

  ‘We’ve just had a new ’un come – only a few days old. Marigold’s got her in the pram.’

  Linda could see her mother, sitting bolt upright, her eyes filling with tears again.

  ‘You’re going to have to pull your horns in, now you’ve lost your breadwinner,’ Bessie decreed.

  ‘I’ll have to get a job,’ Violet said flatly.

  ‘You’ll be out at work soon enough, won’t you Joyce? I don’t know why they keep them in till they’re fifteen now, that I don’t – waste of time, staying on at school for nothing. And that one,’ Bessie interrupted, nodding her head contemptuously in Linda’s direction, ‘will have to stop getting big ideas – swanning off, wasting two bus fares to get to school. There’s been quite enough of that carry-on. What use is all that lark going to be to her? Bad enough when you had Harry in a job, but now – well, that’s the first thing can go . . .’

  Linda felt the words stab her, like poisoned arrows. Her eyes narrowed with loathing towards her grandmother.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Violet was saying. ‘Harry quite likes her going there . . .’

  ‘Well, he ain’t in any position to have a say, is he? He was always a fool to her – and he’s not the one left to bring in the money. It’s time you faced up to things. All those fares you’re paying out getting to see him, and to Coleshill – it’s all costing you, Vi, before you pay the rent and put a crust in their mouths.’

  As if reminded, she leaned over, reaching for a finger of bread to give to the orphan child. There was a bowl of orange boiled sweets on the table and she took one for herself, untwisting the wrapper and popping it in her mouth before sitting back, arms folded across her bosom. Her skirt rode up, exposing her scarlet bloomers.

  ‘You want to get her out of that school – all these bloody fancy ideas, and get her ready for work. She’ll be no use to anyone, else . . .’

  Linda looked across at her grandmother, at her broad, rough face, cheek bulging with the sweet, her battering ram of a body and bullish face, always so sure she was right about everything. The rush of rage she felt finally propelled her outside to the lav.

  Between the rough brick walls she stood with her back to the stained lavatory pan, shaking, as if she was going to burst with the great, silent scream inside her. No, no! Mom couldn’t listen to that advice, wouldn’t take her away . . . She couldn’t . . . Wouldn’t! The thought of it was too unbearable. Clenching her fists, she banged them down on her thighs until they ached.

  She stayed in there as long as possible, perched fully clothed on the edge of the toilet bowl, staring at the cobwebs across the hinges and dreading going back inside. She wouldn’t say a word to anyone, not while they were still with Nana.

  On the way home she could contain herself no longer. Words tumbled out.

  ‘Mom, you won’t take me away from the grammar school will you? Like Nana said? You can’t, please. You won’t, will you?’

  Her mother whipped round in the road, all her own fear and tension pouring out.

  ‘Just bloody shut up, will you? Stop going on at me! I’ve had enough! I don’t know what I’m going to do, so just shut it till I’ve had time to think!’

  Chapter Forty-Three

  12 Bloomsbury Road,

  Kingstanding

  B’ham

  Nov 18th, 1950

  Dear Muriel,

  Sorry I haven’t written – have been at my wits end lately. Harry was taken ill last week and he’s in the hospital. All the back-and-to between him and Carol is taking it out of me and I don’t know what to do for the best.

  Harry’s in a very poor way. He’s never been right of course, so when he started feeling poorly we didn’t think much of it but he shouldve stayed in bed and he kept on instead. He was taken bad at work his lungs are bad and he’s feverish and doesn’t always know me.

  When I went up the hospital the first time he said the doctors said, Do you keep birds at home? (Well I thought he’s gone barmy at first, coming out with that.) And I said yes, we had budgies and the parrot and they looked at one another as if to say, ‘Oh, yes, told you so.’ They told him he’s got some disease you catch from birds on top of everything else that’s wrong with him that is. So I said, but the parrot’s not poorly or anything. But they said it can be sick and not show it and I should th
ink very hard about getting rid of the birds as Ive got children in the house as well because you can catch it by breathing it in. I didnt like the way he talked to me as if I wear dirty or something. I suppose the dogs make a mess I might have to get rid of Silver and the budgies but the worst of it is Harry’s not right at all. He can hardly do a thing for himself he’s like a child and he keeps crying over the least thing. He kept hold of my hand all the time when I went the first time and kept saying, Don’t go, Vi, don’t leave me. He was frightened to death, I don’t know where he thought he was and course I had to go home. The doctor took me aside and asked about the war and Burma and the camps and that and when I told him he said “I see.” I just don’t know what to do, Mu, which way to turn. I wish you lived closer.

  Our Carol’s still over at the hospital in Coleshill and at least she’s getting better, there’s no doubt. Her arms aren’t too bad it’s her legs. And they say her back’s not right and she might have to have an operation not yet though. But I feel as if they’re taking her away from me. She’s fixed on one of the nuns who’s looking after her she’s called Sister Cathleen and I know she’s very kind but it’s as if they’re getting their claws into her. Someone’s put holy pictures by her bed and she said last week they took her to Mass and Sister Cathleen said Carol asked if she could go but I don’t know if that’s true. She’s only young and it feels as if she’s more theirs than mine now. Sometimes I feel very down.

  Done nothing but moan, have I? Thanks for your card. Glad you and Dickie are getting on so well but your news came as a shock, you can imagine. Australia! Harry always wanted to go there but I don’t think I’d be brave enough to start a new life. I can’t say I’m glad you’re going though. I miss you enough, all the way down in Brighton!

  Keep in touch, won’t you? Need any welding doing! Sorry if this is a bit miserable.

  Best wishes, Violet. x