‘Oh, Sol, yes! I love you. I love you so much!’
He beamed at her teary-eyed face. ‘I love you too.’ He brought her fingers up to his mouth and kissed the back of her hand. He couldn’t wait to make it all happen.
‘It’ll have to be our secret for a while longer,’ Dot murmured, trying not to picture her dad’s reaction. ‘I need to drip-feed the idea to my mum and dad, let it settle with them. I need their approval and it might take a while.’
‘We’ve got all the time in the world, my beautiful Clover.’
4
Dot beamed as she eased the front door shut behind her and slid the top and bottom bolts. Even a whole twenty-four hours after her magical evening at the Merchant’s House, she couldn’t stop smiling. She’d just come from seeing Sol again; they’d been at Paolo’s for hours and had then taken a very leisurely walk home.
Her mind felt ordered; for the first time in her life she could see her future and that future was wonderful. She bit her bottom lip to compose her expression; it wouldn’t to do be walking around grinning like an idiot. As Sol had said, timing was everything; they would firm up their plans and then tell the whole world! She didn’t know what she was most excited about, her marriage to Sol or waking every day with a view of the Caribbean Sea and having her breakfast on the beach. Maybe even a bath in the sea; she wondered if they bothered with bathrooms with so much water around. She pictured herself in the sea with her loofah.
She crept into the hallway and eased her shoes off, picking them up and tiptoeing in her stockings across the floor; she didn’t want her heels clicking on the lino to betray the fact that it was well past eleven o’clock. Pushing on the back room door, she was startled to see her dad sat in his chair. It was unusual to find him awake at this hour and even more unusual to find him without his newspaper shield over his face.
‘Oh, hello, Dad, I wasn’t expecting to see you up! Cuppa tea?’ She smiled at him; it was quite nice to have a bit of company as midnight loomed and the dark filled the windows and whistled down the chimney.
He didn’t answer. ‘Dad? I said, do you fancy a cu—’
‘I heard you the first time and no I don’t want no cup of tea.’
Dot heard the reedy tone to his voice, noticed for the first time his sinewy arms, flexing in their vest, like a spring coiled and ready to launch. He was angry.
Dot tried to placate him; she knew she was late and that he worried. ‘I’m sorry I’m late, Dad. You shouldn’t have waited up. I missed the bus and then—’
‘Is that what you think this is about, missing the bleeding bus?’
She didn’t recognise his aggressive sneer, so unlike him. Her stomach shrank around her intestines; he had never spoken to her like this or looked at her like this. It felt horrible.
‘Well, I did! But now I don’t.’ She gave a small laugh – that was usually enough to lighten her dad’s mood.
‘Let me ask you something, do you think I’m stupid or blind or both?’
She shook her head. No, no she didn’t…
‘Cos I’m not and I’m not deaf either and I don’t like what I’ve been hearing.’
Mrs Harrison…
Dot braced herself. She sat down in the chair and carefully placed her shoes on the floor with the heels together before folding her arms across her chest as though this could somehow protect her from the verbal blows that she thought were coming. She was right.
‘I always thought you might make something of yourself, Dot, but now I’m not so sure.’
She looked up at him, wanting desperately to tell him that she would make something of herself. She wanted to share her plans, her designs and Sol’s idea for shops all over the world. She wouldn’t spend the best part of her life sitting in a chair fighting off the cold.
‘Your mum and I have always done our best by you, always made sure you never went without.’
Dot decided not to comment that she had frequently ‘gone without’ and that if anyone had made sure she had anything at all, it was her mum.
‘And you repay us by doing this?’
‘Doing what?’ Dot wondered how much her dad knew.
‘You want me to spell it out, Dot?’
‘Yes, Dad, I do.’ She tilted her chin upwards, projecting a defiance and confidence that she did not feel.
‘Wog meat. That’s what I’m talking about. My own daughter reduced to wog meat!’
Dot’s mouth fell open. Her arms weakened, lost their grip and fell from her chest, dropping limply into her lap. The colour drained from her face as the breath faltered in her throat. Tears pooled instantly and threatened to fall from her eyes, wide with fear.
‘I… Dad… I…’
‘No. Don’t even try and deny it. You’ve been caught. My own fucking daughter.’ He shook his head in dismay. Standing, he gripped the fireplace and stared into the dying coals that glowed and ebbed.
‘I wasn’t going to try and deny it. I love him.’ Her voice was small, but loud enough.
‘Do what?’
This time she spoke a little louder. ‘I love him, Dad, I really do!’
‘No. You don’t! How can you? Urgh, it turns my bloody stomach, it’s not natural. It’s disgusting!’
‘Please don’t say that, Dad! I don’t care about the colour of his skin, or anything else. I love him and that’s just how it is.’
Reg Simpson moved quickly, his arm describing a perfect arc as it flew from the fireplace to the side of her face, catching her mouth with the back of his hand.
Dot held her breath. He had hit her! Her dad had hit her. She saw herself sitting on his lap in her winceyette nightie, a little girl.
‘Who you gonna marry, little Dot?’
‘I’m going to marry you, Daddy.’
‘Well that makes me the luckiest daddy in the whole wide world.’
‘Well you bloody should care! “That’s just how it is!” What’re you talking about? You think the colour of his skin doesn’t matter? Let me tell you, it matters a great deal. What d’you think my mates’ll make of this? I’ll be a bloody laughing stock! How could you? You are a fucking disgrace, if I even think about it I am sick! So don’t tell me it doesn’t matter – I’ve never heard the like! What decent bloke is going to want to lay a finger on you after this? Eh? Tell me that?’
Dot struggled to draw breath through her tears, feeling the sting of her dad’s slap and the swelling of her bottom lip against her teeth. ‘I have a decent bloke and I don’t want any other to lay a finger on me.’
‘Well that’s a good job, cos they won’t! You disgust me. Fucking wog meat – my own daughter!’ He was shouting now.
The altercation had brought Joan downstairs and she stood in the kitchen now, out of sight, clutching her dressing gown to her neck and with her eyes closed. She wanted to offer comfort to her daughter but knew this needed to be said.
‘How could you think that this might turn out all right? You’d have to be stupid or mad – I can’t decide which you are, maybe both!
‘You’ve never even met him, never even seen him, so I don’t know how you can make a decision and be so bloody horrible when you don’t even know the person that you are trying to keep me away from. He’s lovely to me, Dad, really lovely and he will make me happy. You always said all you wanted was for me to be happy!’
Reg sank down into his chair and rubbed his face with his shaking hand. ‘Does Gloria Riley’s story not mean anything to you?’
Dot shook her head. No it didn’t, she was nothing like bloody Gloria Riley.
‘You think you are so different, but you’re not. She was just an ordinary girl like you, from an ordinary family like ours. Let me tell you how her story ended. She was just a bit of fun for her bloke, a distraction. Her mum and dad were finished with her, filled with the shame of it and I can’t say I blame them. When the bloke wasn’t interested any more, she knew no one else’d want her so she lay on the line between East Ham and Fenchurch Street and was decapitate
d. I worked with her dad. The funeral was the saddest thing I’ve ever seen. Her family were relieved that she’d done herself in. It was easier to grieve for her than live with what she had done to herself, done to them. It will ruin you, Dot, it will ruin us, and I’m not about to sit back and let that happen to my family.’
Dot didn’t try to stem the tears that ran down her face. ‘Please, Dad!’
‘There is no “Please, Dad”! I am warning you!’
‘Are you saying you’d rather I was dead than seeing Sol? Is that what you are saying?’
Reg looked at his daughter’s tear-stained, bruised face. ‘What I’m saying is—’
The back room door opened and Dee stood in the doorway in her vest and pants. Dot tried to smile at her little sister so as not to alarm her. Aware of her fat, bloodied lip, she blotted at her tears with the end of her sleeve.
‘I heard Dad shouting.’ Dee looked close to crying too; her small chest heaved beneath her thin cotton top.
‘It’s okay, darling. Go back to bed, tin ribs.’ Dot tried to use her soothing voice, but speech was difficult.
Reg ignored both his daughters and continued to stare at the mantelpiece.
‘What does wog meat mean, Dot?’ Dee looked up in sad-eyed confusion.
Dot stood up and ran from the room. It was the final push she needed; she would leave with Sol and go to St Lucia. She would drink fresh pineapple juice and swim in the sea and if ever she felt homesick, she would recall this evening’s events and know that she had made the right decision. Her dad didn’t understand because he didn’t know Sol and it would appear he didn’t know her either. She wasn’t Gloria Riley, she was different, they were different.
The next morning, Dot hauled her legs over the side of the bed and slipped her nightie over her head before reaching for the black skirt and white blouse she wore for work. She had watched the hands of her alarm clock inside its red leather travel case shuffle around until dawn, trying to fathom how such a revelation of pure joy and happiness could turn into a nightmare within a few hours.
She applied a little lipstick and rubbed a smear of pan-stik across the dark shadows under her eyes and over the slight bruising on the side of her jaw. A slick of black eyeliner and she was all set. She trod the stairs and went straight out of the front door, unable to face any of the family, especially her dad.
‘Dot! Dot!’ Her mum’s calls echoed down the street. Joan tiptoed across the cold pavement in her stockings and drew her quilted housecoat around her body, trying to protect her modesty.
‘D’you not want any breakfast, love?’
Dot shook her head, no, she didn’t want any breakfast. What she wanted was to hear her dad’s apology and to walk to work with a spring in her step because Sol had asked her to marry him! She loved and was loved in return and that should have been cause for joy and celebration.
Her tears gathered and spilled over her pale cheeks, and she dashed them away with the back of her hand.
‘Oh, love, come here.’ Her mum stepped forward and held her against her chest, kissing her scalp. ‘I know it feels like the end of the world, but it ain’t. This will all pass, love, mark my words. Your dad’s mad and you can’t blame him. But he’ll calm down in time and we can put it behind us.’
Dot pushed her mum away and stood facing her from the kerb.
‘He hit me, Mum.’
Joan nodded. ‘I know. He’s under a lot of strain at the moment, Dot; it isn’t easy for him, with his chest ’n’all. He loves you really. This is for your own good, trust me; no good would come of this, no good at all.’
‘I love him.’
‘No you don’t.’
‘But that’s just it, Mum, I do! I love him!’
‘Don’t talk rot! Course you don’t. You don’t know about love! You might think you do, but it’s just a bit of excitement, a bit of a distraction, that’s all. You’ll know the difference when you really love someone, you wait.’
‘I don’t wanna wait, Mum. I DO love him and he loves me.’ Despite her desperate sadness, Dot couldn’t help but smile at this.
‘No he doesn’t, Dot! He can’t! You’re too different. It isn’t right.’
‘Not right? How can loving someone and wanting the best for them not be right? I’ve told him all my dreams, Mum and he doesn’t laugh at me. He thinks I can be someone!’
‘Does he now? Well, I’ve met him, don’t forget, he’s got the gift of the gab all right, but you can tell him from me that the only way you will be someone is if you stop hanging around with a black man!’
Dot’s tears fell freely again. ‘I can’t believe you are saying that, Mum! I can’t. First Dad and now you – I can’t believe it. I’m so ashamed.’
‘And so you should be, your dad’s right, it’s a disgrace!’
‘No! I’m not ashamed of me or Sol, I’m ashamed of you! You an’ him!’ Dot pointed back towards the house.
‘Don’t you get it? You’re ruining your future and you’re dragging us down with you. We’ve never had much, but we have always, always been respectable and you are undoing that with one careless fling! There are landlords that would turf tenants out for having anything to do with them – do you know what sort of landlord we have, Dot? Cos I don’t know where they stand on it. Are you willing to take that risk on our behalf? Would you see us on the bloody streets, see Dee on the cobbles because you can’t keep your pants on? What’s your dad supposed to do? Sit back and see if that happens without speaking out?’
‘He’s never even met him! And yet he feels free to judge him, to judge us. But you, you have, you know he ain’t a bad person; you can see that he’s smart and clever and he loves me, Mum, he really does!’
‘Does he? I tell you what I see, a bloke with the gift of the gab and more money than sense and as if that wasn’t warning bell enough, he’s black! He’s not like us, not like you!’
‘I don’t want him to be like us, or like me – that’s why I love him. He’s different and he’s amazing and we will have a good life!’
‘Oh, grow up, Dot, here’s a newsflash for you: life ain’t no fairy tale – welcome to the real world!’
The two women were unaware that they were shouting. Mrs Harrison opened her front door, carrying two empty milk bottles that had taken her some minutes to locate, giving her a legitimate reason to open the door,
‘Morning, Joan. Dot. Everything all right?’
‘Everything’s perfect, Mrs Harrison, just bloody perfect.’
Joan trotted in one direction, towards home, and Dot in the other. Mrs Harrison lit a fag and smiled. Some people needed to be brought down a peg or two and that Joan Simpson was too smug by half.
The day could not go by fast enough. By three p.m., when the two young lovers were finally reunited at Paolo’s, Dot had worked herself up into a frenzy. She was agitated, angry and sad.
Sol held both her hands inside both his, across the table top in their booth. She had given him the outline of her dad’s words, but had decided not to divulge that he had hit her.
‘It’s not a surprise, but still upsetting none the less.’
‘It’s a bloody surprise to me!’ Dot countered.
‘Then you must have had your head in the sand. I see this every day here, every day. Like that taxi driver that drove us up to the West End, remember?’
Dot cringed. She’d thought the cabbie’s vile comments had gone unheard. ‘How do you put up with it, Sol?’
‘I put up with it because I know change takes time. I can’t take on the whole world, but I can change my bit of the world, by challenging prejudice and standing up for what is right when I can. Just like my great-great-grandfather did with his beloved Mary-Jane. But it’s hard in the face of ignorance.’
Dot felt her cheeks flush, she knew her dad was ignorant.
‘Has it put you off me, Sol? I’ll understand if it has.’
He laughed and stroked his thumb along her palm. ‘How could it put me off you? I love you.
It’s not conditional, not love in measures. It’s just love, one hundred per cent, unshakeable and steadfast. I love you, in all circumstances and whatever may come. In fact, even if you didn’t love me back, I would still love you forever.’
‘I do love you back, Sol, forever.’
‘Well, forgive me for being so blunt, but that’s all that matters, isn’t it? Not what your dad or some taxi driver thinks.’
‘I guess so.’ She nodded, wanting desperately to believe him.
‘I know so. I’m not after approval or acceptance, I just want you. I want to wake up with you every single day and I really couldn’t care what anyone else thinks about that.’
‘You make it sound so easy.’
‘It is so easy. When we are on the other side of the world, sitting on our beach in the sunshine, we won’t care how many people in Ropemakers Fields disapprove, we won’t think about any of them. It’ll be like living in paradise.’
‘Or like a fairy tale.’ Dot smiled.
‘Or like a fairy tale,’ he agreed. ‘Anyway, good news – my parents are in Paris; fancy another duet?’
The two ran hand in hand through the rain-soaked streets, jumping over puddles and slipping on cobbles like children. They laughed at the sheer joy of being together and Dot knew that she had never been happier. He was right; loving each other was all that mattered.
With her naked form wrapped in a soft blanket, the two sat on the floor in front of the fire.
‘I feel like no one can get to us here, we are in a little bubble.’
‘That’s what it’ll feel like when we’re in St Lucia.’
‘I can’t imagine it, Sol – is there enough room for me?’
He smiled at the memory of the Jasmine House and its grand proportions. ‘Yes, it’s a very large house with plenty of guest bedrooms and a formal and informal lounge, but the best thing is the incredible view. It’s like nowhere else you have ever seen.’
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