Family of Women

by Annie Murray

  Marigold’s eyes narrowed. With a lightning move she snatched the pillow from under Bessie’s head, which thumped down on to the mattress. Bessie gasped. What the hell was she playing at?

  Marigold hoisted her skirt up with one hand to reveal the thick white thigh above her brown stocking, and half knelt on the bed.

  She was holding the pillow up and her face was contorted.

  ‘You think I’m going to keep on looking after you, don’t you? Be your little slave for ever? Well, you’re wrong. I’m not.’

  Suddenly she lashed out and Bessie felt a sharp slap across her cheek. She moaned. The sight of Marigold’s face was terrifying now, and she was trapped, trapped as she had been under Arthur Gibbins . . . She tried to move, to escape, but her body wouldn’t work for her.

  ‘All those babbies . . . You took in everyone else’s babbies, but you wouldn’t keep mine, my little Tommy.’ She was howling. ‘He was mine, not yours. MINE!’

  Another slap, this time across the other cheek. Bessie heard herself mewling.

  ‘You’ve had your life – and you’ve had all mine as well. Taken it away, and taken my babby away. And now you ain’t going to take away any more . . .’

  The pillow came down over her face with the force of Marigold’s whole body lying over it and Bessie managed to move her good arm, just for a second, but then there was no air, no breath, just the scream of a train whistle in her head coming closer, and closer, and after, all was dark.

  Chapter Eighty-Seven

  Linda was never sure, not absolutely, one hundred per cent.

  ‘Can you go to our mom’s this afternoon?’ Violet had said. ‘I need to work late.’

  Going into Nana’s house, Linda saw Clarence fast asleep by the fire in the back room, his mouth open.

  She could hear Marigold upstairs, her voice, shouting, she thought. She’d have to go up, even though she was anything but looking forward to seeing her grandmother. Even in her depleted state there was something forbidding about Bessie.

  On the stairs, she heard Marigold’s voice again, saying something brief and emphatic, though she couldn’t hear the words. As she went into the room she saw, or thought she saw, something. Did she? Was that how it was? Marigold holding Bessie’s head up by her hair, as if she had a dog by the tail, and pushing the pillow roughly under her head. Marigold heard her and turned, straightening up, her face blank and guarded. And even after what happened next, Linda would wonder always, whether that was what she had seen in those seconds, or whether it had been a trick of her imagination. And yet she thought she knew, but didn’t want to allow herself to know, what Marigold had done with that pillow in the moments before she got there.

  Her aunt stood very straight by the bed, looking down, like a maid awaiting orders.

  ‘How is she?’ Linda said.

  ‘I dunno.’ Marigold seemed a bit stunned. ‘Not too good.’ There was a pause. ‘Gone. I think she’s gone.’

  ‘Gone?’ She started to feel shaky, like she had the morning she’d seen her dad lying there, dead. ‘You mean . . . passed away?’

  Linda went to the other side of the bed. She could see Bessie was dead. Her face was quite different. It was a bluish mauve, especially round the lips. She didn’t look like herself any more.

  She looked at Marigold and their eyes met. Linda remembered for ever what she saw in Marigold’s eyes that afternoon. In that stolid, impassive face the eyes glowed, with defiance, and challenge and triumph. Linda met her stare. She thought of everything Rosina had told her. Her heart was beating terribly fast, but she spoke carefully to Marigold.

  ‘Did she have another funny turn?’

  Marigold nodded, still staring defiantly. They looked at each other in silent understanding.

  Chapter Eighty-Eight

  Violet walked through the gate of Witton Cemetery, holding her little bunch of flowers. It was the dead of winter after all, not a time for blooms.

  ‘D’you want to come?’ she’d asked Linda and Carol. Both of them shook their heads. They were playing Ludo, stretched out on the floor. Linda smiled up at her.

  ‘I’ll stay here with Carol – we could go and see Joyce.’

  And Violet had been quite glad. It was the very last week of the year, the quiet, cold time before the new year of 1955 would break upon them. They’d buried Bessie before Christmas, after that final big stroke she’d had.

  It was one of those still days when the sun never truly seems to rise. The path was edged with sodden leaves. Violet pulled her scarf further up, shivering as she walked between the rows of gravestones in the smoky light. She passed a middle-aged couple walking arm in arm, leaning into each other.

  They had buried Bessie beside Jack, adding her name to the stone: ‘BESSIE WILES – 1892–1954, A beloved wife and mother.’ Charlie had insisted on organizing things, much to everyone’s surprise, though it shouldn’t have been surprising as he was the boy and the oldest. He suddenly came into his own.

  Violet had brought a jam-jar of water, and put the little offering by the stone.

  ‘Here you are, Mom.’ Then as an afterthought added, ‘. . . Dad.’ Not that she could remember Jack, or hardly. She had a dim memory of him being home, him being in bed, and sick, and then he was gone, like a shadow that had fallen on her life for only moments.

  But Bessie going: it was going to take a long time to come to terms with that. She didn’t feel sad exactly, not that. The state Mom had been in it was a blessing really that it came the way it did. But I feel like an orphan, she thought. I’m lost. Mom had been this big, dominating, endless presence in her life, inevitable, inescapable, at times cruel and unbearable but also comforting. And now it was like the roof being taken off. There was no counterweight above her, no one to look up to. She was top of the ladder now, and it felt a lonely place to be. There was Charlie of course, and Marigold, who was still looking after Clarence, but she’d never been close to either of them. Now, more than ever before, she wanted Rosina.

  A card had come at Christmas. She knew Linda had written to Rosy after Mom died. Violet felt ashamed that she hadn’t written it herself.

  ‘Did you ask her to come?’ Violet asked.

  ‘Course I did.’

  ‘Did you say we really want her to be here?’

  ‘Yes.’

  But come the day of the funeral, there was no sign of Rosina. In the card she sent, she had scrawled – she always had bad writing, Violet remembered –

  Dear Vi – sorry, sorry, sorry I flunked it again. I want to come and I thought of you all and said a prayer on the day. Thought I could do it but when it came I couldn’t face it there with everyone. I will come, quietly and just see you one day. Promise. Rosina. xx

  PS Your Linda’s a lovely girl.

  ‘What’s she doing down there?’ she asked Linda. ‘What’s she so bothered about, coming back and everything? Anyone’d think she’d done a murder or something.’

  But Linda just shrugged. (Why did she shrug all the time like that?) ‘She’ll have to tell you herself.’

  ‘Well, she always was one to turn on the drama.’

  But Violet kept thinking about her, and wondering.

  Standing by the grave, she felt as if there was something else she was supposed to do. Were there some set words she should say? If so she didn’t know what they were. No one had ever taught her anything like that. It seemed odd seeing Bessie’s grave. It levelled her down to the same size as anyone else and seemed to have nothing to do with the mother she had known. She tidied the little jar of flowers and turned to leave, in the darkening afternoon.

  Couldn’t be bleaker if it tried, she thought, shivering. There seemed to be no one else around at all now, and she started to feel a bit uneasy. Why should the place give her the creeps? But it did, a bit.

  Then she saw there was someone else up ahead, coming towards her, and felt somehow relieved. She squinted. Her heart began to beat harder. She was seeing things, surely?

  The tal
l, thin figure came towards her. Even at that distance she could tell, somehow, that he was fixed on her, rather than anything else that was here. He had not come to tend a grave, he had come to find her.

  ‘Hello,’ she said, once he was near enough. She was surprised how calm and matter of fact she sounded. After all, she was used to pushing her feelings away. She mustn’t let them surface, mustn’t expect anything.

  Roy smiled, nervously. ‘The girls told me you’d come over here.’

  ‘My girls?’

  ‘I called at the house. I just . . . Look, it’s freezing out here. Let’s walk a bit. They’re not locking up quite yet.’

  They turned back, along the main path of the cemetery, side by side, not touching. There was a silence which felt so full of feeling that Violet felt she must break it in case she was imagining it. She knew her feelings for him had not changed, that if she allowed herself to think about him and how they were together she was filled with such longing that it made her physically ache. But he was a married man . . . She mustn’t allow herself any thoughts like that. So, abruptly, she said, ‘Why did you come to find me?’

  Roy had his hands in his pockets. He gave a deep sigh.

  ‘Seeing you again, seeing her – Carol, I mean . . . I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it, about you.’

  She waited, watching her feet in their little black court shoes take one step after another, as he struggled to reach what he wanted to say. After a moment he stopped and turned to her.

  ‘There’s no point in me saying anything unless I say this.’ Seeing her raise her eyes to look at him, and knowing that she could not hide the hunger in them for what he might say, he seemed encouraged. ‘I’ve tried to do the right thing and got it wrong all the way along the line. I felt I had to stay with Iris . . . Life doesn’t come easy for her. She’s never been a very happy person. What I know now is that she never will be, whatever happens. And you were married then. It was a mess, I know. But if I’d known about the baby . . . I can’t even say how it felt seeing you again. It was like . . . I don’t know, like the sun coming out or something. So’s I didn’t know how I’ve got through these years and not been with you.’

  ‘Roy . . . Oh God, don’t . . .’ As he spoke tears began to roll down her cheeks.

  ‘I’ve got to, Vi.’

  ‘D’you mean it? I can’t believe this – that you’re here, saying this to me . . .’

  ‘I had to come this afternoon. I don’t know why. It was as if—’ He reached out and put his hands on her shoulders. ‘I’ve thought and thought and tried to hold back, tried to think I could stay with Iris, when all I want is to be with you. I thought if I waited long enough and did the right thing all that would fade. But there’s never been anyone like you, not for me. I can’t feel for anyone else the way I feel for you. And I’ve just made such a mess of it all . . .’

  ‘No, you haven’t. I mean, it was just the way it was, back then. And Harry was so poorly . . . If he’d come back and been all right it might have been different. But you’d gone by then anyway, and you were with Iris.’

  He looked longingly down into her face.

  ‘Poor Iris,’ he said. ‘It’s been bad for her. I mean, I let her down first of all. And then the polio. She’s convinced it was a punishment, a sort of curse – on me, I suppose. Sometimes I’ve felt it myself. And John died of it so quickly, within a few days. It was like being struck by lightning. We thought Philip would die as well, after that. It was terrible to watch – well, I don’t need to tell you. And then the iron lung and everything . . .’

  ‘I thought it was a punishment too, when Carol got it. I remember looking down at her in that thing and thinking, if only I hadn’t felt anything for you, if I hadn’t found out what it meant to feel that much for someone . . . Maybe we’re not meant to feel so much? Maybe it pushes everything out of balance or something. As though, if there’s too much love and happiness, something bad has to happen to make up for it.’

  ‘It can’t really be like that, can it? Don’t you think we’ve had enough of the bad already, anyway? Vi, I love you. For what’s left of our lives, after all this, I want to spend it with you – if you want it too.’

  His sensitive face was full of earnestness. She reached up and gently stroked his cheek.

  ‘But what about Iris?’

  ‘Iris isn’t happy with me. Ever since the polio, she’s turned against me. She’s like a closed book. We hardly speak to each other, but we’ve just kept on, for the boys. And because that was what we had to do. And I could manage it, going to work, looking after Philip, not thinking or feeling anything else or that anything might be better. And then I saw you again. And I couldn’t go on like that. Not any more. If you still feel anything for me . . . I couldn’t tell if you did, that was the worst of it . . .’

  He stroked his thumbs across her cheeks, wiping away her tears.

  ‘Do you?’

  She nodded, half laughing, though the tears were still coming. ‘Yes. Oh God, Roy, I can hardly believe this! Are you really here?’

  ‘I’m here all right.’ He took her in his arms and she rested her cheek against his chest. ‘I’m here, my love, and I never want to be anywhere else.’

  She breathed him in, the loved, familiar smell of him, stroking his back. ‘Oh, I remember you. I remember every inch of you.’

  She pulled back to look into his eyes and he lowered his head, his lips searching for hers, and she knew she had found again what she needed.

  They walked in the cemetery until it closed, arms round each other, talking, catching up on each other’s lives, kissing, holding each other, not even aware any more of the cold and wind.

  ‘I feel terrible about Iris,’ she said as they went out through the gate.

  ‘I’ll see Iris all right, of course I will,’ he told her. ‘But she doesn’t want me, not really. Sometimes I think she hates me. I’ve made her unhappy all the way along – well, me and the way things have gone with the kiddies.’

  ‘Are you going home now?’

  ‘I’d better. When can I see you?’

  ‘As soon as you can.’ She hugged him, squeezing him tight. ‘Don’t go away again for long, will you?’

  He began to walk away, but strode back to kiss her again. ‘I don’t want to go. Don’t want to leave you.’

  She was laughing now, her heart lighter than it had been in years. ‘Go on – don’t worry, my love. I’ll be waiting. I’ve waited this long, haven’t I?’

  Part Seven

  1960

  Chapter Eighty-Nine

  They stood on the deck of the huge liner, all four of them in a line, waving to their wellwishers, who all looked so small down there on the quay. Linda couldn’t see the exact expressions on Violet and Roy’s faces but they had their arms round each other, like a little island together.

  They’ll be all right, she thought, blowing them yet another kiss. She knew now all the story about their love for one another, and about Carol. It brought tears to her eyes thinking about it, and about her own dad and how things had been. Mom was happy now, happier than she’d ever seen her. No Carol down there to see them off, of course: she wasn’t allowed out. But the few times she’d visited her sister, she’d seen the joyful light in her eyes and knew she was in the right place for her. When they’d first told Rosina that Carol was going into the convent, she’d thought she’d be horrified. But instead, Rosina looked quite wistful.

  ‘Wish I’d been like that,’ she said. ‘Done something with my life that was straight and pure.’

  The ship let out a long, sonorous hoot.

  ‘We’re moving – my God, we’re off!’ Rosina cried. ‘I can’t believe we’re really going! Oh, at last – I can’t keep this up! I shan’t have any tears left!’

  As they finally pulled away from the dock a silence fell over them all. Their light coats were pulled round them in the strong breeze, eyes narrowed against the glare, a row of hopefuls in a long line of emigrants leavi
ng Liverpool bound for the far side of the world – for Australia.

  Bye, Mom, Roy . . . Linda said in her head. It was too far to shout now. I’ll give your love to Muriel and Dickie, soon as I see them.

  She glanced along at the others. Rosina, beside her, hair taken up in a neat French pleat, despite her protests, still had tears running down her cheeks. Irene, dry-eyed, was still bright blonde, but instead of the ponytail her hair was blowing back in waves from her face as she leaned over, shielding the flame to light up a cigarette. She’d been waving to her brother and to her son Kevin and his wife, who’d come to see her off, but now they had moved too far away. And next in line was Linda’s cousin Vivianne, a wholesome, peachy-faced nineteen-year-old, her mop of honey-coloured curls blown all over the place, cheeks pink from the wind. She was staring into the distance at the fading coastline and the cranes and gantries of the dock with her dreamy blue eyes.

  ‘She’s so like Hump was,’ Rosina always said. She was plump, pretty and half the time seemed in a beautiful dream. But Vivianne was going to be the most crucial part of the business.

  ‘They may not have taught her much at that posh school I forked out for,’ Rosina sometimes said. ‘But they didn’t half teach her to sew.’

  Vivianne seemed able to master anything that involved shaping and sewing fabrics and Rosina also had a natural flair for clothes. She’d had to pick up her sewing skills from her daughter though! With Linda’s commercial head and training and Irene’s shrewd ways with money and people, they were going to make this embryo business of theirs work when they got to Sydney all right! Glad-Rags, they called themselves. After years Linda had spent learning the ropes, slogging away in other people’s firms, they were going to make it happen for themselves. Be their own bosses. Rosina’s ambition was to make costumes for the stage as well.