Coronation Wives

by Lizzie Lane

  In that split instant she had the distinct impression that she’d seen him somewhere before. She shook her head and told herself she was probably imagining things. There was nothing she could do and she had quite enough problems to think about without enquiring further, though something about the fighting men stayed with her.

  That evening before dinner she kissed David on the head. He did not respond. He never did. You’re both middle-aged, a time of mellow fruitfulness. Physical affection is best left to the young.

  She remembered the letter from Josef and felt an instant pang of regret for past moments that had been short, but very sweet. Pull yourself together, she said to herself, then swallowed hard and adopted her cheeriest smile.

  ‘Has Janet gone out?’ she asked, noticing that only two places had been set on the green and white tablecloth.

  David put down the medical journal he was reading. ‘She told Mrs Grey she had a headache.’

  ‘Again?’ Charlotte frowned. ‘She’s had a headache for three or four days. I’ve hardly seen her.’

  ‘You’ve been busy.’

  ‘Oh dear. Yes, I have. Do you think she’s very ill? Something more than a headache?’

  ‘I don’t know. She won’t let me examine her, but I understand she hasn’t been to the office for three days according to John Hooper, one of the surgeons she works for.’

  Charlotte recalled the empty room and the rag and bone man to whom Janet had given some of her clothes. She decided not to mention it to David. After all, it wasn’t very important and she had his ill health to consider. Instead she said, ‘That’s not like her. I’ll just go up and see if she’s all right.’

  David called after her, ‘Tell her that whether she likes it or not I’m coming up in the morning to give her a thorough medical examination. That should sort out whether she’s ill or not.’

  The bedroom door was locked. Charlotte tapped at it softly. ‘Janet? Do you want any dinner?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Have you had an aspirin, darling?’

  ‘No … I mean … yes …’

  Charlotte sighed with exasperation. Children not eating – even when they are adults – are still a cause of concern. ‘I’ll get Mrs Grey to make you some sandwiches.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Chocolate cake?’

  Chocolate was the ultimate temptation, a luxury made wickedly tempting by years of deprivation. ‘No! I don’t want anything! Go away.’

  Charlotte bit her lip. Kindness deserved a positive response and she was annoyed at not getting it. After taking a deep breath, she adopted a firm voice. ‘I think you need a doctor, Janet. Your father’s going to examine you in the morning. We are concerned, darling.’

  ‘There’s no need! I’m feeling much better.’

  ‘That’s good. I expect they’re missing you at the hospital. Good medical secretaries are hard to come by. Your father will tell you that.’

  Charlotte listened, her ear close to the door. Not a sound. She sighed. Defeat was difficult to take.

  ‘Goodnight, dear. Have a good night’s sleep.’

  On the other side of the bedroom door Janet was staring out of the window. Twinkling lights festooned the wedge of city she could see between the cliffs towering on either side of the Avon Gorge. Trees rose dark and thick on both sides of the river. Straggly growths stuck out of fissures in the towering cliffs.

  Why me?

  Again and again … Why me …

  If only … if I hadn’t gone … if I hadn’t walked …

  Don’t scream …

  A carousel of words whirled in her head. She couldn’t turn the clock back. The damage was done. Would people be able to tell what had happened to her? Was ‘Damaged Goods’ printed across her forehead?

  He’d smelt of dust, just like the ruined buildings and the concrete blowing from the building sites.

  Don’t scream.

  She could still feel his breath against her ear and those two words again and again and again.

  She shuddered at the thought of him, the way he’d smelt, the way he’d said those words.

  He’d had a foreign accent. Not Welsh. Not Scottish. Nothing like that. More like …

  She closed her eyes and willed herself to hear the voice again. More like … European. Similar to the accents of the people her mother was helping to settle in this country. She’d met some of them. They’d stared at her as one might a rare butterfly. She’d stared back like a cocksure crow at a band of redundant scarecrows. People from Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, places in Eastern Europe she knew little about. They were pouring in, so she’d heard, and not everyone was happy about it.

  We don’t want them here … bloody foreigners … coming over here taking our jobs … taking our houses … raping our women …

  Earlier that evening Mrs Grey had knocked at the bedroom door to say that Dorothea had called. ‘She wants to know whether you’re still going to the Coronation Ball at the Grand Spa,’ explained Mrs Grey, her voice muffled by the door.

  Janet had sat on the edge of the bed, gripping the bedding and gritting her jaw. ‘I’ll let her know.’

  She stared out at the night. God, it was partly Dorothea’s fault that she’d got raped anyway. It was her who’d wanted to see the damned stupid film, her that had got picked up by that cretin of a boyfriend.

  Janet wasn’t so ungenerous that she’d lay the blame at anyone’s door. Her resolve to rise above the incident and get on with her life was still strong. At least she didn’t feel quite so alone. She had told someone and Edna had offered to listen. Janet instinctively knew it was the right thing to do.

  The next morning Charlotte took the letter from her bag meaning to rip it into shreds. Was it wise to tell a happily married woman that the past had come back into her life?

  Tell him she’s dead.

  She paused and sighed. God, but it seemed so brusque, so final. Best to leave it for a while. The rolltop desk grated open to reveal a leather surface, a host of small drawers with mother-of-pearl handles and brass keyholes. She opened one of the drawers, put the letter in and locked it.

  Wait and see, she decided. But not for too long. Someone was desperate for a response.

  Chapter Four

  As the lights of the Broadway Picture House went out, Polly Hills paused, looked up and down the street, and stopped dead when she spotted Billy’s checked cap bobbing out of the window of a scruffy black van. Balancing on three-inch heels, she tottered down the steps and along the pavement.

  ‘Where’d you get this?’ she said accusingly, eyeing the vehicle with a suspicion born of experience.

  Billy’s grin never wavered. ‘It’s a mate’s. I’m doin’ a bit of work for ’im so I thought you might like a ride ’ome in a high-class vehicle complete with yer own chauffeur!’

  He looked her straight in the eye as he said it. Amazing, she thought! It might even be the truth.

  ‘Well, mustn’t grumble I suppose,’ she said tartly. ‘It certainly beats the Raleigh and the bicycle clips!’

  Billy winked and tapped a finger yellow with nicotine against the side of his nose. ‘Just you watch, darlin’, we’re gonna be goin’ places!’

  Unconvinced, Polly folded her arms and said, ‘Oh yeah. You said that to me when I was still living in York Street and look where I ended up. A bleedin’ council ’ouse in Knowle West. Call that going places?’

  Billy’s engagingly confident expression never faltered. ‘I know fings didn’t go right in the past, but you wait and see …’

  Polly didn’t want to hear it. She had her own plans. Ten pounds to Australia; it seemed too good to be true. She’d made an appointment to find out more and, when the time was right, she’d tell Billy all about it.

  Billy got the message that his promises were falling on deaf ears and offered a diversion.

  ‘Want some chips?’

  ‘OK.’

  Stomach rumbling and her taste buds twitching in anticipation, she headed fo
r the chip shop.

  ‘Hey!’ Billy shouted out after her.

  She turned round knowing full well what he was going to say. She’d heard it all before.

  ‘It will get better, Poll,’ he said and winked again, as if that one little action held all the promise in the world – which it did. It was just that Billy had trouble keeping promises.

  First he’d quit working with Colin making and selling toys, then the ramshackle properties left to him by his father had been demolished. The bit of money he’d got for them went into slightly suspect schemes that all went west, hence the move to Knowle West.

  The council had built the estate in the thirties. The houses were squarely constructed of red brick and had metal-framed windows that poured with condensation no matter the time of year. The garden of each house was segregated from the road and from its neighbours by a privet hedge. Empty bags of Smith’s Crisp wrappers and Fry’s Five Boys nestled against the roots of hedges along with discarded Tizer bottles of thick glass and wire-fixed corks, the quarry of streetwise kids bent on getting back the penny deposit. Some hedges were neat. Some were overgrown due to the fact that no one owned a pair of shears or had the inclination to cut them.

  Sunshine, a house by the beach, wide open spaces, mooned Polly as the heat from the chip shop fryers hit her full in the face. Appreciatively, she rubbed her hands together. Nice and warm them fryers, but no substitute for a warmer climate.

  ‘Put in a bit of cracklin’, darlin’,’ grated a familiar voice at the head of the queue. Polly recognized Muriel Harolds, one of the usherettes who used to be on the buses before she’d got a job at the Broadway.

  Mouth like the bloody Avon Gorge, thought Polly. Muriel had probably needed one in the days when she was a clippie, shouting her mouth off as she told them to move down the bus so she could get more on. And she’d certainly had a few on in ’er time, mused Polly, and not just on the buses!

  Their eyes met just as Muriel was about to leave, half a crown’s worth of supper for her and her old man tucked under her fleshy arm.

  ‘’Night, Poll.’ There was a surly contempt in the way she said it.

  Polly adopted the same tone in response. ‘’Night, Muriel,’ she muttered, adding ‘You old cow’ under her breath.

  They eyed each other warily, as they had from the moment they’d met. Muriel thought she was better qualified to have Polly’s job – and Polly knew it.

  ‘Good riddance,’ she murmured once Muriel had left, taking her fish and chips and her hostile glare with her.

  Her relief didn’t last. Muriel’s face, pink from the heat of the chip shop, poked back through the door. ‘I see your old man’s got a van. Where’d ’e nick that, then?’

  Polly glared and tapped at her nose. ‘Mind yer own bleedin’ business! And if you must know, it ain’t nicked, it belongs to a mate. My Billy knows a lot of likely blokes.’

  ‘Not as many as you’ve known in yer time,’ sneered Muriel.

  ‘Oh yeah! It’s a well-known fact, Muriel Harolds, that you’ve had more on top than a double-decker bus!’

  ‘Common cow!’

  ‘Slag!’

  ‘Slut!’

  ‘Takes one to know one!’

  The rest of the queue, relishing a bit of entertainment while waiting for their cod lots, pressed forward and began to egg them on.

  ‘Go on! Bash ’er one!’

  ‘Rip ’er bloody eyes out.’

  ‘Look at ’er! Mutton dressed as lamb!’

  Muriel dashed off before Polly could make a move. If it hadn’t been late and she wasn’t waiting to be served, Polly would have gone after her. They’d never got on. Polly considered Muriel a right old tart who needed her mouth washed out with soap and water. The fact that she herself let a few choice words slip now and again was neither here nor there. Polly considered herself better than Muriel. It didn’t occur to her to question the crowd as to who they considered was mutton dressed as lamb. It had to be Muriel.

  It didn’t take long to get served after that. Hamblins, the fish and chip shop owners, didn’t like dealing with troublemakers that late at night and the police weren’t keen on coming out either.

  Fish and chips wrapped in newspaper and hugged to her chest, Polly installed herself in the passenger seat of the van, her right knee raised higher than her left by virtue of the sacks on the floor. ‘What’s that?’ she said indicating them with her foot.

  Billy started the engine. ‘Money in the bank!’

  ‘Oh ah!’ Polly knew better than to query further. Instead she concentrated on gaining the best position possible on the ripped leather seat. An exposed spring squealed in protest. ‘So how long ’ave you got this?’

  ‘Could buy it if I want to.’

  Polly continued to wriggle. ‘It ain’t exactly first-class, is it? Look at these seats! They’re all ripped. It ain’t aff scratching my bum. And this stuff you’ve got packed in ’ere – there’s ’ardly room to bloody breathe!’

  ‘I can get the seats fixed. And the stuff’ll be going.’ He smirked, his mouth tilting to one side like a wickedly naughty adolescent. ‘Got to get rid of it before it burns a hole in the floor.’

  Polly sighed. ‘Don’t tell me any more! It’s ’otter than these bloody fish and chips I’ve got in me lap.’

  The van was old, the controls none too smooth. As Billy pulled away the vehicle jerked violently forward then stopped dead. The engine had stalled. A hoard of boxes in the rear fell into the back of Polly’s head and her forehead bumped onto the dashboard. ‘Oh for Chrissakes!’

  The parcel of chips caught on something sharp and was ripped open. Vinegar, grease and a fillet of cod fell out of the paper and onto her lap. The chips showered the floor and the dusty sack at her feet.

  Polly was livid. ‘Billy Hills, this van is a death trap!’

  ‘Stop moaning, Poll. A second-class ride’s better than a first-class walk, ain’t it?’

  ‘You’ve got to be bloody kidding! Look at my uniform!’

  ‘It’ll wash, won’t it?’ he said in easy, amiable tones as he concentrated on pushing the boxes back behind the seats.

  ‘The vinegar’s gone through to my knickers!’ She held her clothes away from her legs. ‘I smell like two penn’orth of cod! I’ll have all the bloody cats following me now!’

  ‘Lovely smell! Better than the best French perfume.’

  ‘Well, I know which I’d prefer!’

  ‘Right! Soon be home. I expect yer Aunty Meg’s done us a bit of supper anyway. I don’t mind a bit of bread and cheese.’

  Polly closed her eyes and shook her head in exasperation. There was grease on her lap, dusty chips and squashed cod round her feet. What a waste!

  It was at times like these that she really wished that things had turned out differently. Most of the time Billy made enough to survive, but the flow of money wasn’t regular and he tended to shift from one dodgy venture to another in a constant search for instant wealth.

  Sometimes when Polly looked in the mirror after another application of peroxide to her greying hair she wondered where the old Polly had gone, the one who had danced the jitterbug and canoodled in a darkened picture house with Canadian or American servicemen. If Carol’s father had come back from the war, she would never have married Billy, would never have been working at the Broadway and would not be living in a council house. It had all been a pipedream. The glamorous life she’d dreamed of having in a country barely touched by war never happened.

  As they drove along Billy prattled on about his latest scam for making money. It was something to do with gambling. Polly shut her ears. She had other plans. Was this the time to mention Australia? Perhaps not. Not just yet.

  She began to hum and look distractedly out of the window, her thoughts filled with the vision of a sun-filled home and a beach at the end of the garden.

  Billy misinterpreted her reason for appearing uninterested. ‘OK! I’ll shut up.’

  Polly hummed ‘One Day My Princ
e Will Come’, her daughter Carol’s favourite song from the film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

  ‘What’s that tune yer singing?’

  ‘“Some Day My Prince Will Come”.’

  Keeping his eyes on the road he leaned closer and whispered, ‘Yer prince is right ’ere, sweet’eart.’

  Polly eyed him disdainfully. ‘Where? All I can see is a bloody frog!’

  The light from the streetlamp next to the garden gate filtered through the curtains and hit Colin’s metal legs, which Edna had placed in the corner of the bedroom after helping him out of them.

  ‘They look like the bottom half of a medieval knight waiting for his top half to arrive before going into action.’

  Edna laughed. ‘Do they have to stand there in that particular corner every night?’

  ‘You’d give a pet dog its own special place. So why not my legs? Aren’t they worth more than a dog?’ Colin joked.

  Catching his mood she flippantly asked, ‘Should we get them their own bed?’

  Colin laughed. ‘Come here,’ he said and patted the space in the bed beside him. She got in and helped him turn towards her. There was no embarrassment between them about this. Most people, Edna realized, were uncomfortable with disability. Colin had no problem with the fact that his legs had been blasted out from under him and she’d got used to it. He was one of the lucky ones – he’d come home.

  ‘I love you, Edna.’ He stroked her hair. His breath was soft and warm. They kissed and embraced just like any other married couple, except perhaps that there was a little more sensitivity when it came to making love. Colin’s strong shoulders and overdeveloped biceps compensated for his lack of legs. Sometimes he forgot that his legs were truncated at the knees and that his body wasn’t quite so easily manoeuvred as it used to be. Sometimes there was just pain, his phantom legs kicking in the night, kidding his brain into thinking they were still there, strips of flesh clinging tenuously to shattered bones.

  They lay on their sides facing each other, his palm warm on her breast, his lips moist on her throat.

  She ran her hands over the firmness of his shoulders and chest. Colin made her feel secure, more safe and loved than she’d ever felt in her life. There was great pleasure in touching him, helping him move towards her, clasping his pelvis tightly against her own, until the moment they were ready to join together when Colin rolled onto his back and Edna moved on top of him.