Family of Women

by Annie Murray

  Chapter Forty-Four

  ‘What’re we going to do with him?’

  Violet stared into the parrot’s cage. ‘He looks all right, doesn’t he? You’d never know there was anything the matter.’

  ‘He’s shivering,’ Joyce said.

  Linda watched the parrot as he sat huddled up at one end of his perch. She’d thought of the name Silver after reading Treasure Island.

  ‘I think he looks poorly,’ she said. He had an air of misery about him.

  ‘Don’t breathe near him!’ Violet said suddenly. ‘Oh, I don’t know! I can’t give him to anyone, can I? Who’s going to want a parrot with a disease?’ Linda could hear tears coming in her voice.

  Out at the front Mr Kaminski was working with a spade, turning over the soil in his vegetable garden. In need of another adult opinion, Violet went and asked him. Linda and Joyce stood leaning against the smelly tarpaulin covering their dad’s Norton. Linda felt her head swim with tiredness. Last night Mom had been crying. It had gone on a long time.

  ‘He is sick?’ Joe Kaminski said, standing his spade up in the soil. In the winter sunlight his chiselled face was divided into planes of light and shadow. ‘Then you have to . . .’ He made a wringing motion with his hands.

  ‘Ooh no – I can’t do that – I just couldn’t! I mean, we’ve had him a long time.’

  Mr Kaminski shrugged. ‘I do it if you want. Or you let him go. What else?’

  Violet came in and shut the door with a slam. ‘Fat lot of good asking him.’

  Next day she decided to let Silver go. First thing, she was down there in her nightie with an old cardi over the top, the cage door open and the back room window. Silver sat stubbornly on his perch, not taking the blindest notice of this generous offer of freedom.

  ‘He doesn’t want to go,’ Joyce said, eating toast.

  ‘You don’t say,’ Linda retorted. They were both dressed ready for school, shivering as the frost-nipped air streamed in.

  ‘Shut it, clever clogs.’

  Violet tried moving the cage over to the window, a development that Silver looked no further impressed by.

  ‘You’ll have to get him out,’ Linda suggested. ‘He doesn’t like the cold.’

  ‘He’s poorly. What d’you expect? How would you like to be turfed out when you’ve got the flu or whatever? Just hang on. Something’ll happen.’

  ‘Yeah – a wizard’ll come with a spell book,’ Linda said, sarcastically.

  ‘That’s enough of your lip!’ Violet turned on her, wagging her finger, her eyes narrowed. ‘I’ve had quite enough of it. You can pack in thinking you’re better than the rest of us – and you needn’t get ideas about staying on at that posh bloody school any longer. I’m going to tell them – after Christmas you can go to school here with Joyce like everyone else!’

  It came so suddenly, like a slap.

  ‘No!’ Linda gasped. She saw Joyce looking smug.

  In a fury Violet reached into the cage. Silver didn’t make any protest which showed he was not well.

  ‘Mom – Mom, you haven’t said anything to them have you? You can’t – don’t, please . . .’

  She was whimpering like a tiny child, so full of shock and betrayal at this attack on the one thing she held so precious.

  Violet steered Silver out of the cage and hurled him out of the window. ‘Go on, you silly sod – just go! Get out of my sight!’

  ‘Mom!’ It was Joyce’s turn to be outraged now. ‘You can’t – the dogs’ll get him. That’s horrible!’ She ran to the window. A great chorus of high-pitched barking came from the garden.

  Linda could see nothing, think of nothing but the shock of her mother’s words. She went to her, pulling on Violet’s bony arm, her voice high and shrill.

  ‘Mom, don’t make me leave, don’t, please! I’ll do anything, just don’t make me. I like my school – I don’t want to go to Joyce’s school, please, Mom, please . . .’

  ‘Get off of me!’ Her mother shrieked. ‘Stop keeping on – you’ve heard what I’ve said so shut it, ’cause that’s how things’re going to be. Your dad might die and your sister’s bad and all you can think of is your bloody school! I’ve put up with your airs and graces long enough. I said shut up!’

  Her own nerves at breaking point, she shoved Linda violently across the room so that she staggered back and fell, hitting her head on the hard arm of the chair. The stab of pain through her temple floored her and she curled up, head down, sobbing, dimly aware of the cold, smelly lino under her and Joyce shouting somewhere in the room that Silver couldn’t fly.

  After a moment Linda realized she was alone, because Mom and Joyce were outside trying to get the dogs off Silver. She raised her head and looked through her tears at the dirty floor, her arms resting on it, the woollen sleeves of her school jumper. She could still hear the dogs, wild with excitement outside. Somewhere in it all was the furious voice of Mr Bottoms demanding to know what was going on at this unearthly hour of the morning.

  Linda couldn’t think straight. Every nerve in her body seemed to scream NO to all that was around her: her family, the filthy chaos of her home, being taken away without any say from the one thing she really loved. She put her throbbing head down on her arms, nipped a mouthful of the sweater between her teeth and bit into it, while her body shook with helpless sobs.

  Her one hope was that her mom would simply forget, or not get round to talking to the school as she didn’t get round to so many things. But Mom had Nana behind her, nagging and keeping on. And Nana wanted to bring her down a peg. She always had. With despair, Linda knew that her mom was in a state and couldn’t think for herself, that in the end she would always do what Nana said. No matter if Linda cried herself to sleep every night and begged and begged, Bessie’s word would rule. By the end of that week Violet had been to King Edward’s School and told them Linda would be leaving at the end of term.

  On Saturday they all trekked over to see Carol. She had a wheelchair now and had made friends with some of the other children. Linda was so pleased that she looked better, but she could not hide her own misery. The journey over there had been silent and mutinous.

  ‘You can’t sulk for ever,’ Mom said.

  Sulk? Linda thought. She was too outraged to reply. Mom and Nana between them were pulling her whole world apart and Mom could call it sulking?

  ‘I don’t see what you’re making such a fuss about,’ Joyce said. ‘After all, you’ve been to the grammar school for a bit – you can always say you’ve been there, can’t you?’

  Linda turned her face to the window. Joyce would never understand. The secondary modern suited her perfectly well. If you were a girl they gave you just enough to get a little job to fill in time before you got married. You weren’t supposed to expect anything much.

  ‘Oh, leave her,’ her mom said. ‘She’ll come out of it.’

  Linda’s throat ached, and her body felt brittle, as if she might just break apart. She didn’t answer either of them. If only she could see Johnny Vetch again. He was the one person who would have understood what it meant to have your dreams smashed. She thought of that night up on the church tower, seeing the stars, the greatness of it. But Johnny had gone away for a bit. They said he wasn’t very well.

  Carol was not by her own bed when they arrived. She was sitting beside a friend’s bed, and Sister Cathleen wheeled her back when her visitors arrived. Carol beamed.

  ‘Someone cut your hair?’ Violet asked straight away. Now it had grown longer, it had been trimmed into a bob round her chin and it suited her. She looked very pretty.

  ‘Sister Cathleen did it,’ Carol said. She turned and beamed up at her nurse, whose freckly face smiled back very fondly at her.

  ‘D’you like it?’ Sister Cathleen said. ‘Looks grand, doesn’t she?’

  ‘Yes. Thanks.’ Linda heard the coldness in her mother’s reply. She could tell Mom didn’t trust Sister Cathleen. She didn’t like Carol loving her the way she did.

  ‘I
’ll leave you to have a good old chat,’ Sister Cathleen said. ‘She’s had a grand week, though, haven’t you?’

  Parking the wheelchair, she moved off along the ward. Violet stared after her energetic figure for a moment.

  ‘Sister Cathleen’s been teaching me some prayers,’ Carol said, as Linda and Joyce settled on her bed close to her.

  ‘Oh, has she?’ their mother said. Carol didn’t hear the hostility in her voice.

  ‘And look – she’s given me some rosary beads – aren’t they nice?’

  From her hands dangled a set of pretty blue beads.

  ‘She told me how to say it in Latin – it goes, Ave Maria, gratia plena, dominus tecum . . .’

  ‘That’s enough of that,’ Violet interrupted, exasperated. ‘She shouldn’t be telling you all that mumbo-jumbo without asking me. Gives me the creeps, all that.’

  ‘It’s not creepy, it’s nice. She says Mary is our mother and she’s always with us.’

  ‘What a load of bloody twaddle! I’m your mother. Aren’t I good enough for you any more?’

  Carol looked taken aback at the fierceness of her mother’s outburst.

  ‘Well yes, but . . .’

  ‘Sorry, bab.’ Violet stroked her hair. Linda watched. She saw the way her mother looked at Carol now. It was a peculiar thing. Carol was the one she had paid no attention to before. Now, though, it felt as if she was the only one of them Mom really cared about.

  They had to tell Carol that Dad was poorly. And about Silver. Violet kept it light, so’s not to upset her. Between her and Joyce they made what had happened with Silver into a funny story instead of a sad one.

  ‘In the end, we had Mr Bum yelling over the fence on one side, and Silver was sitting there with all the dogs round and Mom lifted him up and he flapped over into the Kaminskis. I reckon he likes it in there.’

  In fact, Silver had sat in the Kaminskis’ garden for the rest of that day looking stunned and unwell. By the next day he had disappeared, and Linda imagined that Mr Kaminski had done what he’d suggested doing to Silver in the first place, but none of them had seen, so they all chose to believe that he had flown off into the cold blue air and found somewhere to be happy. At least that was what they wanted Carol to believe.

  Linda didn’t say a word all this time. Eventually Carol reached over and touched her hand.

  ‘What’s up?’

  Tears came into Linda’s eyes straight away. Trust Carol to be the only one to notice how upset she was!

  ‘Mom’s making me leave my school . . .’ She couldn’t stop the tears then. It hurt so much.

  Carol’s eyes widened. ‘But why? You love it there, don’t you? Mom – why?’

  ‘It’s just how it has to be,’ Violet said, in a voice that said don’t argue. ‘Too much on our plates.’

  ‘Oh.’ Carol squeezed Linda’s hand.

  ‘She’s making a fuss,’ Joyce said. ‘Can’t you shut up about it now, Linda? It’s getting boring.’

  But Carol kept hold of her hand. ‘Poor Linda,’ she said, and her brown eyes were full of an understanding beyond her years.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  ‘Come on – time to go!’

  Linda was up on her bed. Sunday, and time to go and catch the bus to Nana’s for dinner, the way they did every week, as sure as eggs was eggs. She didn’t move. Joyce was already downstairs. She heard Violet’s voice, full of irritation.

  ‘Where is that girl? Linda? Come on!’

  Slowly, limbs heavy, she dragged herself off the bed and downstairs.

  ‘Why d’you have to make me keep on?’ Violet was hoiking the dogs into the kitchen to be shut in. She already had her coat on. She had shrunk very thin, like a dry twig, always ready to snap.

  Mutinously, Linda put on her school coat and scarf. She didn’t know she was going to do it, but as soon as they were out of the front door she ran for it.

  ‘Oi – what the hell’re you playing at?’ Violet shrieked after her. ‘Get back here!’

  ‘No – I’m not coming!’

  ‘What d’you mean, you’re not bloody coming? Get here now, or we’ll miss the bus.’

  ‘I don’t want to go to Nana’s!’ She stood some way off along the road, poised for flight.

  ‘I don’t care what you want – you’re coming!’

  ‘No!’

  A furious Mr Bottoms erupted out of his house, newspaper in hand, practically frothing at the mouth.

  ‘D’you think you could possibly conduct your family business somewhere else so the whole road doesn’t have to hear it?’

  ‘Oh, sod off,’ Violet roared at him. ‘Come on – we’ll leave the little cow. You won’t get any dinner then!’

  ‘Don’t care!’ Linda yelled.

  She watched her mother and sister disappear along Bloomsbury Road to get the bus. For a moment she felt bereft. It was the first weekend in December and freezing cold. Her breath was white on the air, the sun at a low angle in the sky. She didn’t have a key and she’d have to be out for hours now until they all came back.

  But anything was better than going to Nana’s. She boiled inside every time she thought of her grandmother. It was all her fault she had to leave her school. Mom wouldn’t have made her if Nana hadn’t kept on. The way she made everyone do what she wanted. Like poor old Auntie Marigold. Why did everyone just do what she wanted? Why was everyone frightened of her? It was only Auntie Rosina, whose pretty, dark-eyed face stared out of the dusty photo on Nana’s mantel, who gave her any hope. She’d got away, hadn’t she? But where was she now?

  Sunk in misery, she came to the bit of waste ground where there was an old see-saw and a couple of swings. Across the way was Mrs Nixon’s house. She had a refrigerator with an extra cold compartment and she made ice cubes out of orange squash in the summer. Linda sat on one of the swings but she’d come out without a hat or gloves and the chains made her hands cold so she got off again. Her palms smelt of rust from the chains.

  Soon she came to her old school, where she’d gone before King Edward’s. Of course it was silent and empty. She looked over into the playground, imagining herself in it with all the others, the games of ‘hot rice and cold sago’, running, bouncing the ball. All the girls she’d known there went to the secondary modern except for her. Of course she still saw some of them round the estate, but there was a distance between them. She had separated herself off, going to the grammar school. And now she’d have to go back. It felt like a disgrace.

  She stood listening to the echoes of shrieks and laughter, games and chants: On the mountain stands a lady, who she is we do not know . . .

  Turning away she walked and walked to keep warm, a determined little figure, dark hair waving round her cheeks, hands pushed down into the pockets of her coat, bare legs and ankle socks. She felt defiant. Never mind the cold, and no dinner! Who cared? She’d refused to go to Nana’s! It was time someone refused Nana something. She got her way over every single thing. It was Nana’s fault she had to leave her school . . . At this thought she was full of rage again. I hate her, I hate her, the bloody old cow! Just because she can’t read or write!

  There was a place on the estate that Peter Kaminski had shown them, years back when he was still not above playing out. Peter was sixteen now, and an apprentice engineer. He had always been a daredevil, seemed to have no sense of danger. And he had shown them where it was. Behind a fence, tucked in out of sight, was an old Spitfire.

  Linda went to the fence and peered through at the little plane standing there in the weeds, its shape unmistakable, the round-ended wings, the bits chipped off the propellors. No one seemed to know why it was there. Peter used to run round, arms out, roaring and sputtering, and they all followed and joined in, a childish squadron of Spitfires. She remembered one summer evening when they were all up here, her and Joyce, Peter and Alenka Kaminski, who was Joyce’s age, with Carol laughing and straining against the straps of the pushchair as she watched them all playing. Linda used to push Carol a
ll over the place when she was little, she never minded. And now they were having to push her again.

  She hugged herself and stared at the sad, silent plane in its bed of nettles. All that cold afternoon she felt herself changing shape inside, shrinking back. No more King Edward’s. No more hope of being something special. Fate hadn’t chosen her for something after all. She’d go to the secondary modern and be like everyone else, leave school at fifteen, get a job. At the grammar school they talked about taking more exams, going to college or university. Another world, and it was not to be hers.

  She thought about Johnny Vetch’s words, ‘If you go there, you’ll be a different person . . .’

  Her breath streamed through the fence towards the Spitfire, lying there in the citrus afternoon light. There it was, a battle hero, grounded and unseen. For a moment she felt like reaching out and stroking its wing for comfort. Instead, she picked up a big stone and hurled it, heard it thump off the rotting wing and fall to the ground.

  Part Four

  1953

  Chapter Forty-Six

  1953

  ‘Pass me my shoes over,’ Joyce ordered.

  She was preening in front of the bedroom mirror in her white taffeta wedding dress, the veil a cloud of net over her shoulders. She was thoroughly enjoying the audience of her mother and sisters, who she assumed were rapt with admiration.

  Without enthusiasm, Linda reached for the pair of white shoes with their two-inch stiletto heels.

  Watching her, Violet was struck once more by the way that Linda was a mystery to her – quite different from the other two. She was getting tall now, curvy, with a sultry look to her, that black hair curling inwards in waves round her face. She could tell Joyce was getting on Linda’s nerves – as usual. They’d heard about nothing but Danny and the wedding for months now and Linda was bored sick with it.

  ‘God, Lin – I’m getting married!’ Joyce gibbered. ‘Can you believe it?’

  ‘Not really,’ Linda said.