Family of Women

by Annie Murray

  She tried not to think about what had happened to Johnny Vetch, and barely knew how the weight of it crouched inside her. All she knew was that she just couldn’t be bothered. Nothing reached her, not the teachers encouraging her, saying she was a bright girl and she could do much better, nor them turning on her and telling her she was lazy. They’d given up doing either now. She’d be gone from there in two months anyway.

  She let her appearance go. Her hair hung in greasy hanks round her cheeks, her shoes were always scuffed and dirty and she wore a sulky, closed expression. Everyone just left her alone, except Maureen, who placidly accepted whatever she did.

  Some days she didn’t go to school at all. One day, a warm, beautiful June morning, she got on a bus right to the edge of Birmingham and got off and walked into the fields and farms and spent the day wandering aimlessly. She didn’t think she felt anything except the glory of having escaped from the humdrum ordinariness of the day. No one ever asked her how she felt, so she didn’t find words for it. But it was her secret, running away like this, and it made her feel strong. Once in a while she did it again, not often enough to attract too much attention. She just didn’t feel well sometimes, she said. Often she thought about Rosina. She’d run away too. So many times after Joyce’s wedding she’d asked her mother when they were going to see Rosina. Violet would shrug and say, ‘Sometime I’ll get round to it,’ but she never did.

  That day she lay at the edge of a field of young corn, watching white clouds sliding across the deep blue. It made her feel as if she was floating, and she thought about death and heaven.

  Are you there, Johnny? Her lips moved. Can you see me?

  She saw his gentle, tormented face in front of her eyes and wondered whether he was free now. Could he circle the world and see all his deserts and jungles, see the sea creatures and stars that he’d taught her about, without all the pain he carried with him in this life?

  ‘I wish you’d taken me with you,’ she said.

  She lay on her side, curled up, and cried in a way she hadn’t been able to before, from deep down. After that she didn’t hurt quite so much for a while, as if she had dissolved a hard stone inside.

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  One day she came home after school, bag slung carelessly over her shoulder, this time with Maureen Lister tagging along beside her. Coming along Bloomsbury Road they saw the bulky shape of someone sitting on the doorstep of number 18.

  ‘Who’s that?’ Maureen nodded at the house.

  It only took a glance. It was quite unmistakably Marigold, her swarthy features shaded by her blue hat. She was wearing a pale pink dress dotted with little pink roses, lace round the sleeves and bodice, like a pretty little girl’s frock made up in a very large size. With a slight frown on her face she watched them draw closer.

  ‘Hello, Auntie,’ Linda said. ‘You can go in if you want. Our dad’s in.’

  ‘No,’ Marigold said aggressively. She didn’t budge.

  Close up, they could see Marigold’s dress was very grubby down the front.

  ‘Is she all right?’ Maureen whispered. She’d never met Marigold before, but Linda wasn’t worried about her seeing. Maureen had a kind heart. She’d helped get Carol into town at Christmas, on her crutches, so she could see the petting zoo at Lewis’s and Father Christmas.

  ‘Yes. Course.’ To Marigold, she said gently, ‘Shall we go inside?’

  Marigold lumbered to her feet. Linda saw that her eyes looked glassy as they sometimes did, and she was not very steady on her feet. All of them knew Marigold tippled, but this time she seemed quite far gone.

  ‘Did you come on the bus?’ Linda asked. There was no other way to get out to the estate but she didn’t know what else to say.

  ‘Course I bloody did,’ Marigold said.

  Linda took her inside and they all stood in the hall. Sally and Sooty came and rubbed themselves round Linda’s legs.

  ‘I’m gunna see the dogs,’ Marigold said, indistinctly.

  ‘Oh – all right,’ Linda said, praying Mom would walk in with Carol. She showed Marigold to the back door, expecting Molly, Dolly and George to set up a great rumpus. But watching through the smeary window she saw Marigold sink down on her knees on the scrappy lawn, and the dogs, after their initial yaps of excitement, all fawned round her. After a second she realized Marigold was feeding them something out of a brown paper bag.

  ‘She all right?’ Maureen asked, peering out at Marigold.

  ‘Yeah.’ Linda turned away.

  She looked in on her father. He was in his chair with his newspaper, the room blue with smoke as usual.

  ‘Marigold’s here,’ she said.

  Harry rolled his eyes. ‘Is she? Blimey – what’s brought that on? Where is she?’

  ‘Out the back, with the dogs.’

  Harry tried to move, and groaned. Linda looked out of the window.

  Even though she was so used to the sight of her father, sometimes she couldn’t bear to look. People asked after him sometimes. She would meet men from the dairy who’d say, ‘Haven’t seen old Harry in a while – I must pop in. How is he?’ And she always said, ‘He’s all right.’ She knew they didn’t really want to hear the truth, how he could barely eat and that his insides were never right and that he’d break down and cry right there in the living-room. They didn’t want to face this ghostly wraith of a man, or the sweet, cloying smell that hung round him. No one came near now except Uncle Tom and Joe Kaminski. Joe would come in and sit at his side, just be there. And Eva came and chatted to Mom.

  ‘They’re such good people,’ Violet said in wonder sometimes. ‘I don’t know how we’d do without them.’

  It was Joe who had finally got rid of Dad’s bike, which had sat out there all this time like a promise of renewed youth. But there was to be no renewal. The tarpaulin was rotted and covered in moss, and the cycle still smashed up from the accident. Early one morning Joe took the bike away and there was nothing to see but the patch of dead grass where it had stood so long, like a wound in the corner of the garden. Later, Joe quietly handed Violet the few bob he had got for it for scrap.

  ‘Linda?’ The front door opened and Violet was calling. ‘Come and give us a hand.’

  She and Mom helped Carol in and Linda brought the wheelchair up the step. Maureen stood in the hall staring.

  ‘Mom – Marigold’s here.’

  Her mother stopped in her tracks, on the way to the kitchen.

  ‘Marigold? But she never comes out here! What the hell’s she doing here?’

  Linda shrugged. She heard her mom go to the kitchen and call out of the window.

  ‘Mari? All right are you, bab? Why don’t you come in and have a nice cup of tea?’

  Linda helped Carol into the kitchen and Maureen followed. Marigold came in from the garden, closing the door with a great slam.

  ‘Go easy, you’ll have the glass out.’ Violet eyed her sister. ‘You all right, Mari?’

  ‘Why shouldn’t I be?’ Marigold’s tone was still aggressive.

  ‘Sit down then – I’ve got the kettle on,’ Violet said cautiously, reaching for the packet of Tetley. ‘Linda’ll find you a Rich Tea . . . That’s it, sit there, love. Why’ve you come all the way out here then?’

  ‘ ’Cause I wanted to,’ Marigold stated. She took off her hat, which had already been knocked to the side by the dogs. Her hair shone with grease. Linda tried not to make faces at the way Marigold smelt. She was breathing heavily through her nose. Carol and Maureen were both staring at her, fascinated.

  ‘Everything all right with our mom?’ Violet tried again.

  ‘She’s all right. Where’s my tea then?’

  Marigold started ravenously on the Rich Tea, crumbs dropping all down her chest. Violet brewed up a pot of tea.

  ‘I wanted to go out,’ Marigold said through a mouthful of biscuit. ‘Why shouldn’t I go out?’

  ‘Course you should!’ Violet smiled and sat down opposite her with the milk bottle. ‘It’s lov
ely to see you, sis. I wish you came more often. Come when you like and see the dogs – they all love to see you too.’

  ‘She’s gone, see?’ Marigold said.

  ‘Mom? Where’s she gone?’

  Marigold seemed to lose the thread of the conversation.

  ‘She’s gone to one of the neighbours – or the shops?’ Violet prompted.

  ‘Asleep,’ Marigold said. ‘Er’s asleep.’

  Linda saw her mother’s baffled expression. She looked at the two sisters, her mom with her blonde hair, made pretty and fashionable by Rita, and Marigold’s smelly locks which had never been near a hairdresser her whole life long. She found in herself, along with her sense of revulsion at Marigold’s state, a sense of kinship with her, with her dirty hair and low sense of herself. That was how she felt. Sometimes she almost felt like rubbing dirt into her hair and skin to make her outside match how she felt inside.

  Marigold asked a few more disconnected questions, about the dogs, and about Carol. She turned to Carol once and stroked her hand over her head, giving her a sweet smile.

  ‘You’re a pretty little thing, you are,’ she said, with a genuine smile. Linda saw her features light up into someone who once might have been pretty in a handsome way.

  After a while she stood up, unsteadily. ‘I’m going to the bus now.’

  ‘Linda’ll come to the bus stop with you, won’t you?’ Violet said.

  Marigold made a performance of putting her hat back on before they left. She was obviously far from sober, but seemed more mellow than when she’d arrived. Linda led her out to the warmth of the road.

  They didn’t speak until the corner of Bloomsbury Road. Then Linda took a chance.

  ‘Auntie – d’you know why Auntie Rosina left the way she did?’

  Marigold looked at her, seeming blank.

  ‘You know – your sister, who was at the wedding. Then she ran off again.’

  ‘Rosy – course I know Rosy. It was me saw her, wasn’it?’ This clarity startled Linda.

  ‘But why did she leave home – when she was so young?’

  ‘She weren’t like the rest of us,’ Marigold said. ‘Clever, she was.’ She shook her head with apparent fondness. ‘Good old Rosy. Anyway, she had a man so she left.’

  Linda stood watching the bus as it rolled away with Marigold on it. She thought about Auntie Rosina. Clever, she was . . . Clever? Or clever to get out? She, Linda, had been told she was clever, but where had that ever got her? She had a man . . . The message was becoming ever clearer, from Marigold, from Bessie, from Joyce’s wedding. Nothing counted, not being clever, or working hard. If you wanted to get out from where you were, what was needed was a man. And what stayed with her after Marigold had gone was the tone of deep wistfulness with which her aunt had said it.

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Linda left school that summer without praise and without regret. She and Maureen walked out into the summer day and did not look back.

  ‘That’s that, then,’ Linda said.

  By the next week she had a job, the first one offered, for an electrical engineering works in Witton called Porteous’s. It was somewhere her uncle Charlie, Marigold’s twin brother, had told her about. The work meant standing in a line fixing a fiddly electronic part into power connectors for electric cables. It was repetitive, very boring and she didn’t give a damn. That was what she’d been destined for all along, wasn’t it? Why bother looking for anything better?

  ‘What the hell d’you want to go there for?’ her mom demanded when she came home and said where she’d been taken on. ‘That’s two buses – you’ll have to be up at crack of dawn!’

  ‘Well, I’m earning a wage now, so I can afford two buses, can’t I?’ she retorted savagely.

  She was always rowing with Mom now. Everything about her always seemed to be wrong. Violet eyed her lank hair, spotty face and unkempt look, her old white shirt hanging out of her skirt, shoes all scuffed.

  ‘I’m surprised they took you, looking like that.’

  ‘It wasn’t a fashion model they were after.’

  ‘If you came to Rita’s and had a trim – tied your hair back nicely, you’d get rid of those spots.’

  ‘Well, I don’t want to – all right? Just ’cause you’ve decided to pull yourself together after all these years, you don’t have to keep on at me!’ She slammed out of the back room and upstairs.

  ‘Don’t you talk to me like that!’ Violet’s voice followed her upstairs.

  She knew what they’d be saying downstairs. What had got into that wench these days, cheeky bint? Needs her hide tanned (from Dad).

  Not that he had the strength to do it.

  Somehow, over the last weeks, Violet had ended up cooking Sunday lunches for everyone. Two weeks later she was standing in a kitchen full of the steam of cooking vegetables and the delicious aroma of roasting beef, complaining, ‘Why the hell did I end up doing all this?’

  ‘ ’Cause Nana said so,’ Carol said from behind her, sitting at the table, slicing up a lump of suet for the pudding. Carol often helped in the kitchen. She knew how to cook more things than Linda, who wasn’t interested.

  ‘And we always do what Nana says, don’t we?’ Linda said.

  Violet turned on her. ‘Don’t you start off again! Nana made Sunday dinner for all of us for years on end and she’s no spring chicken any more . . .’ She lunged to rescue a pan that was boiling over, its water putting out the gas.

  Linda looked at her through narrowed eyes. So what’re you moaning about then? her expression said. But she didn’t say anything.

  Bessie, Clarence and Marigold arrived in time for lunch. As they came in, Bessie and Marigold’s bulk seemed to fill the whole hall. Linda, who was taking Dad’s porridge in to him, could hear Bessie giving orders.

  ‘Hope you put the joint in early enough,’ she started, loudly. ‘I like a bit of beef well done, I do. Don’t like to see any blood in it. Joyce coming an’ all?’

  ‘She said she was,’ Violet was just saying, and then there was a rattle at the door and Linda heard Joyce and Danny being welcomed in as well. Linda’s heart sank. She was hungry and wanted some lunch, but most of all she just wanted to run away.

  ‘Here y’are, Dad – ’ She put the tray with the porridge on his lap. It was sprinkled with brown sugar and looked nice and creamy.

  ‘Ta, Linda.’ He shifted himself to take the tray. He looked very ill. His face was so sunken, hands skeletal. He’ll die soon, she thought. He can’t go on like this. He was never angry now. Petulant at times, and jumpy, but real anger required too much energy. A kind of passive gentleness had come over him, almost as if there was nothing else now that could touch him.

  He often seemed dreamy, not quite with them, but now he looked up into her eyes.

  ‘Want to stay in here with me, do you?’ There was a flicker of a wink. She knew Dad had never been able to stand Bessie.

  She smiled back. ‘Best go back in there, hadn’t I?’

  But she lingered in the hall.

  ‘Where’s the other ’un?’ she heard Bessie ask, roughly. She never could seem to bring herself to use Linda’s name. There was the sound of cutlery being laid round the table.

  ‘Don’t talk to me about her,’ Violet said. ‘Got the sack, she did, this week – sent home with no pay, the lot!’

  ‘What’d they sack her for?’ Bessie demanded. ‘Looking a bloody mess?’

  Linda’s pulse raced. She tried to bite her nails except there was nothing left above the quicks.

  ‘No – ’ere – put them cups round – they told her she was doing it wrong all the time. I mean it was electrics. Can’t have it going wrong, can you? Could be dangerous, that.’

  Danny came out of the kitchen, carrying Carol in his arms as if she was a damsel in distress that he’d rescued. Carol was giggling.

  ‘All right, Linda?’ Danny said cheerfully.

  Linda managed a smile back.

  ‘Coming in, then?’ he said over
his shoulder.

  ‘Waiting for our mom. I’ve got to help.’

  ‘. . . she went and got another job, at least,’ Violet was saying. ‘In some box factory.’

  ‘Well – let’s hope that one lasts a bit longer. I can see that one being a proper rolling stone,’ Bessie pronounced.

  ‘Oh, it’s just a stage she’s going through. She’ll find a man, settle down properly, sooner or later.’ Joyce’s matronly tone grated on Linda so that she wanted to scream. ‘Anyway, everybody – where is Linda anyway? – I’ve got summat to tell you all.’

  Seeing this as a moment when attention was directed away from her, Linda came and stood in the doorway. Joyce, who was looking incredibly pleased with herself, glanced at Danny as if for approval, then looked round the table to make sure she had everyone’s full attention.

  ‘I’m going to have a baby!’

  Drowning out Violet’s gasp of pleasure, Bessie gave a crude laugh. She was in the middle of lighting another cigarette.

  ‘Well, you two didn’t waste any time! Conceived in wedlock, was it? Don’t want any bastards in the family, do we?’ And her shoulders shook.

  Joyce blushed right down her neck. ‘Yes it was, Nan, as a matter of fact. What d’you take me for?’

  Bessie blew out a mouthful of smoke. ‘No need to get on your high horse – I was only having a joke. Good for you, wench. Make a proper woman of you, that will. There’s a few I know could do with a dose of it, the way some of the girls carry on these days . . .’ She eyed Linda with vicious contempt.

  Linda watched Marigold, whose face was a mask. She showed no reaction to the news at all, but Bessie saw the direction of her glance.

  ‘Yes, and she’s a fine one.’ Bessie spoke to Violet, but nodded her head at Marigold as if she was a wanton child. ‘Playing me up good and proper. D’you know, she’s started sneaking in and out, sly as anything, and I said to her, “What’re you playing at, Marigold Wiles? You needn’t think you can keep anything from me – I can read you like a book, I can!” And what d’you know but she’s been carrying on with some bloke she met down the Crown. Old enough to be a grandfather he is! I told her, I’m not having it, so she can pack that in right away.’