After that, there wasn’t very much that either of the Mr Owens could do or say, except agree.
But Joan still had to face Sid on her own when they got back to their rooms. They were such small cramped rooms that there was nowhere to hide.
It was still quite warm when they got home and the heat from the ovens below had risen into their living-room bringing a faint smell of dough with it. It was excuse enough for Joan to open the window to ‘let in the air’ Actually what she was doing was letting out the sound, for she’d learned from experience that Sid was less likely to have a row if he thought someone could overhear him.
‘Nice to see your Dad,’ she said, beginning to set the table ready for their early morning breakfast.
He sat in his chair by the fireplace and loosened his collar.
‘I thought you was going to get rid of it,’ he said, but he didn’t look angry or cruel, he looked battered, as if someone had been hitting him.
‘I took pills,’ she lied, smoothing the table cloth. ‘They didn’t work.’
‘Can’t you do nothing else?’ he asked, and the battered look increased, folding the skin on his cheeks and forehead into anxious furrows.
‘Not now,’ she said, sensing victory. ‘It’s too late for anything now. We shall just have to put up with it. I’ll have to book the nurse soon.’
‘Bloody babies,’ he said, and stomped out of the room, ducking his head to avoid hitting it on the lintel, and scowling horribly.
That was the last time he mentioned the subject. It was as if he’d blotted the very idea of the baby right out of his mind. Joan booked the midwife while he was working, and knitted clothes for the baby when he wasn’t in the room to see her, and gathered the things she would need for her confinement in an old orange box and hid it under the bed. And once a week on early closing day she went to Paradise Row where she and Peggy made loving plans and were entirely happy together.
‘I can’t wait to see it,’ Peggy said over and over again. First the kittens, and what a lot of kittens Tabby had had, and now a baby for Joan. It was perfect.
‘If only it didn’t take such a long time,’ Joan said, rubbing her back. It was aching rather a lot these days and the ache was wearying. ‘Your Tabby’s got the right idea. All over in nine weeks, lucky thing. I’d rather be a cat when I’m carrying and that’s a fact.’
Tabby carried two litters during Joan’s pregnancy, and the second was born four days before Joan’s baby was expected, if it could truly be called a litter, for it consisted of a single tabby tom-kitten with white paws and a very loud voice.
Jim came in to see it just before Joan was due to leave, bearing his customary offering.
‘You ought to keep him,’ he said, stroking the kitten. ‘Your Tabby’s getting old. I don’t reckon she’ll have many more.
’I might at that,’ Peggy said, for there was sense in his suggestion and it was a very pretty kitten. She felt curiously dispassionate, accepting that her dear old Tabby couldn’t live for very much longer. ‘She is old, ain’t you Tabby?’ she said, stroking the cat’s head. ‘She’s got an old face.’
‘Poh! Deary me! The stink a’ them fish heads!’ Joan protested.
‘They’re good for you,’ Jim told her cheerfully. ‘Nothing better for nursing mothers. I’ll bring you some if you like, when the time comes.’
‘No thanks,’ Joan said. ‘I’d rather have a nice bit a’ cod and two penn’orth.’
‘You cook the chips, I’ll bring the cod,’ he promised.
How easy he is about it all, Peggy thought, admiring him. He’s the only man I know who ever talks about kittens and babies and that sort of thing. All the others avoid it or get embarrassed, but it never bothers him. And not for the first time she thought how lucky they were to have him as a next-door neighbour.
And then Baby came crashing in through the front door full of complaints because she’d been made to work the telephone all day and she didn’t think it was fair. ‘It’s made my ears go all red,’ she wailed. ‘Look.’
‘Hideous,’ Jim agreed and left them to cope with her.
‘Time I was off,’ Joan said, easing herself out of her chair. Or Sid’ud be back from his football match before she was home and then there’d be the devil to pay.
Now that she was so near to her confinement her anxiety increased by the day. She worried that the birth might remind him how cross he’d been when she told him she was expecting. She worried that she wouldn’t be able to keep the flat clean while she was lying in, and that really would annoy him. And worst of all, she worried that he wouldn’t take to the baby, that he wouldn’t like it, that he might even hate it.
So she was relieved when her labour started quietly and conveniently after she’d cleared the supper things and he was downstairs in the bakery. She crept down the same stairs as quietly as she could to warn her next-door neighbour, Mrs Rudney, that she’d be needing the midwife, just as they’d arranged to do all those months ago, and she stood with Mrs Rudney as her oldest boy set off on his bicycle with the message, and felt pleased that everything was going according to plan. Then she went back upstairs to set the table for breakfast and make up the bed the way the midwife had shown her. Now that the moment had come she was totally calm.
It was a long labour and a painful one, but that didn’t worry her. She recognized the pain and felt that she was used to it, having suffered it that first time for nothing except misery. Now she was almost glad of it, for now there would be a live baby at the end of it all. Her own dear live baby. So she and the midwife laboured on, sweating and weary but adapting to the rhythm of the birth. And at last in the early hours of the morning the child slithered from her body into the midwife’s waiting hands and she knew herself delivered and was suddenly overwhelmed by a rush of such powerful emotion that she was physically shaken by it and fell back among her pillows trembling and weeping.
‘Oh my dear, dear baby,’ she wept, taking the infant in her arms, ‘my dear, dear baby. I’ve waited such an awful long time to see you.’ And the baby gazed up at her with enormous dark eyes, depending on her, trusting her. ‘I shall love you for ever,’ she promised, kissing that dark damp head.
‘A little girl,’ the midwife said with great satisfaction. ‘What are you going to call her?’
‘Yvonne,’ Joan told her. She’d chosen the name all on her own, right at the start of her pregnancy. A daughter, with the dearest little round face and fine fat rosy limbs and dark hair that was so soft it really was like silk, and those beautiful, beautiful eyes. Sid was forgotten. He no longer had any relevance. There was only this beautiful trusting baby.
The midwife left when Sid came grunting upstairs for his breakfast and by then Joan was in full command of herself and her new situation. ‘Mrs Rudney’ll cook for yer,’ she said. ‘All you got to do is ring their bell.’
‘What you got then?’ he said gruffly, peering at what little he could see of the baby in its swathing of shawls.
‘A girl.’
‘Oh. You all right? I mean, everything go all right, did it?’
‘Perfect,’ she said, and this time she smiled at him because he was so awkward and ill at ease. ‘What sort a’ night did you have?’
‘The usual,’ he said, stomping out of the room.
That evening, in answer to her postcard, Mum and Peggy and Baby came to visit the newest member of their family. And true to his promise, Jim sent a large piece of cod from the market, which Mum cooked for her while the others sat on the bed and admired the baby. Peggy was thrilled because the little thing held on to her finger and looked at her.
‘She’s gorgeous,’ she said to Joan. ‘Just look at those tiny nails. I could eat her.’ And just what you deserve, my poor big sister. A beautiful perfect baby. Just what you deserve. ‘We’re going to keep the kitten, did I tell you? I’ve called him Tom. Won’t she just love him when she’s bigger?’
‘She’s looking round for food,’ Joan said lovingly as the bab
y began to root against Peggy’s supporting arm. ‘I’d better have her.’
How she does love her, Peggy thought as Joan began to suckle the baby. There was no doubt at all about this love. It was as strong as the love they’d all felt for Dad. ‘When she’s a bit bigger and it’s warm enough we can take her up the park,’ she said. ‘She’ll like that. Oh won’t we have some fun together.’
And they did. Which Mrs Geary said was just as well, given the state of the world. ‘It’s a rough old time to be born,’ she said to Flossie, ‘so good luck to ’em, That’s what I say.’
It was a rough old time and in January it got rougher. There were more people out of work than ever, the weather was freezing cold with heavy snowfall and the worst blizzard for years and Mr Brown’s hero Adolf Hitler was made Chancellor of Germany. In February, when Tom had grown into a fine sleek little cat and on the very day Yvonne was five months old, there was a mysterious spectacular fire in Berlin. The Reichstag building was burnt to the ground, and not long afterwards news came through that the German Communist party had been blamed for it and many of its leading members had been arrested and sent to prison, just in time to get them out of the way before the German General Election in March.
‘Very nasty,’ Mr Cooper said, as the evening papers were passed round at the ding-dong.‘I don’t trust that Hitler chap an inch. He’s locking up the opposition, that’s what he’s doing, and that ain’t democratic. And all them young fellers strutting about in uniforms, doing the goose-step, Hitler Youth. If we don’t watch out he’ll be giving ’em guns next. That was the way the last lot started.’
‘The last what?’ Baby asked.
‘War, child,’ Mr Allnutt explained patiently. ‘The last war. We don’t want another war.’
‘Oh that!’ Baby said, drifting away from them. All this talk about war was so boring. Almost as bad as the way Peggy and Joan would keep going on about Yvonne. You’d think there’d never been any other babies born in the world. No, what she really wanted was to find someone who could advise her on the best way to go blonde. She knew you had to use peroxide, but she didn’t know how much and she was sure it would be tricky.
In the end she persuaded one of the girls in the shop to help her, but she didn’t make a very good job of it because it came out streaky. And to make matters worse, on the very day she made the change, Mum had a letter from old Aunt Maud to say that Grandpa Potter was dead and to invite them all to the funeral.
‘You can’t go with hair like that,’ Mum said. ‘What would people think? It wouldn’t look respectful. Whatever possessed you to do such a thing?’
‘It’s no good going on at me,’ Baby pouted. ‘It’s done now. And anyway I didn’t know he was going to die, did I?’
‘I don’t think I can go,’ Joan said. ‘Not with Yvonne so small and Sid wanting his dinner and everything.’
So in the end Peggy and Flossie went on their own.
It was a peculiar experience for Peggy to stand beside the grave in a churchyard that seemed to have shrunk and gaze across at a village that now looked small and lost among the fields. Mum and Aunt Maud wept a little as the coffin was lowered into the earth but Peggy felt no sorrow at all. She was remembering how spiteful Grandpa Potter had been, and thinking how little he’d ever loved any of them. But none of it mattered now, she thought, looking at the dark earth lying on the coffin, you can’t hurt any of us now, and Joan has a beautiful baby to make amends for all the things you made her suffer. But then she felt ashamed of herself for being so hard-hearted, for he was her grandfather after all, and she made an effort to pray for him and mean it.
After the ceremony they walked back to the cottage along the same, well-remembered, muddy path while Aunt Maud told them what a fine pig they’d had last year, for all the world as if they’d never been away. ‘Lovely bacon he made, an’ lard! Why that pig gave so much lard you’d never credit it.’
At the cottage they drank polite tea with the neighbours and tried to swallow Aunt Maud’s bone-dry sandwiches and nobody mentioned Grandpa Potter once. But just before it was time to walk down to the station for the return journey Aunt Maud took them both upstairs into her billowing bedroom, signalling with her eyes that she had something private to tell them.
‘Thought you ought to know,’ she said, when she’d closed the door, ‘I’ll be getting wed in a week or two. I don’t want the rest of ’em to know about it yet awhile.’
‘Why Maudie!’ Flossie said. ‘You sly old thing, Who’s the lucky man?’
‘It’s only old Josh up the end cottage,’ Maud said flatly. ‘Nothing to write home about. I shall lose the cottage you see now Dad’s gone, so we thought we might as well. He could do with someone to keep house for him, now he’s getting on a bit, an’ I need a roof over me head. So it’s a suitable sort of arrangement all round.’
Flossie kissed her quite affectionately. ‘Well I wish you joy,’ she said. ‘It’ll be quiet I dare say?’
‘Just the two of us.’
‘Very sensible.’
And there’s another marriage without love, Peggy thought, looking at the thin, grey hair on her aunt’s round head and remembering how Josh used to kick the cats about. She needs a home and he needs a housekeeper. How sad.
But she forgot about her grandfather and her aunt the minute she was back with Joan and Yvonne, for the bigger the baby grew the more absorbing company she became. It was a joy to see her smiling and babbling and crowing and clapping her pretty plump hands together. Unemployment might be as bad as ever, Mum might be touchy with nerves, all sorts of things might be wrong with the world, but this baby was living proof that there was always hope.
CHAPTER 17
That summer was extremely hot. In June the heat was pleasant. It produced a fine crop of roses in the wealthy gardens of Blackheath and allowed Joan and Peggy to take the baby to a weekly picnic in the park. But by mid-July it had become excessive. The shops sweltered and the market bred flies, and down in the crowded backyards of Paradise Row the drains and dustbins smelt so bad that the stink permeated every part of every house. The Saturday night ding-dong spilled out into the street and stayed there, and when the dancers were exhausted they sat on the pavements, resting their backs against the brick walls and fanning themselves with anything they could find for the purpose, handkerchiefs, old newspapers, even Jim Boxall’s library book.
‘What I would like,’ Lily Boxall said one particular airless evening, ‘is to go down to the seaside and sit in the sea right up to my chin. Suit me a treat that would.’
‘Well why not?’ Mr Allnutt said. ‘We could all go down. Bank Holiday Monday. We could take a charabanc. Needn’t cost the earth if we was to all club together. What d’you think?’
Once it was said they could all see what a marvellous idea it was. Providing they could afford it.
‘Would kids be half-price?’ Mrs O’Donavan asked with understandable anxiety.
So they clubbed together, kids half-price, and the charabanc was hired and they went to Brighton, singing all the way in their open-topped wagon as it trundled between wooded hills and the long dry Weald of brown cornfields and sun-baked meadows. And Joan and baby Yvonne came with them because they were ‘family’. It was a proper treat, especially as nearly three quarters of them had never seen the sea before except at the pictures. And Brighton was a wonderland with all those little kiosks along the promenade selling shrimps and cockles and whelks and jellied eels, and pubs roaring on every corner.
‘London by the sea,’ Mr Allnutt said, as they climbed out of the charabanc on the high promenade. After the dust and stink of Greenwich this place was so clean and bright, with the white paint of the huge hotels gleaming behind them and the railings along the promenade as blue as the sky and two piers like something out of a fairy-tale. ‘London by the sea.’ He was twice the size with the pleasure of the outing and the thrill of his successful planning.
The O’Donavan kids were shrill with excitement. ‘Can w
e go on the beach, Ma? Can we? Can we?’
So the party divided, men to the pubs and women and children to the pebbles, where they found another row of kiosks built in the arches under the promenade, where they were selling cheap tin buckets and spades, and sticks of rock and Indian toffee like pink cotton wool.
‘Gaw! What a place,’ Lily Boxall said. ‘Look at all the people.’
The roads and pavements had been crowded enough but there were so many people on the beach they could barely see the pebbles. Every inch of space between the promenade and the edge of the sea was covered by some body or other, standing or strolling or sitting on the stones. Some were even spread out on their backs fast asleep, as though they were in bed. It was as if the entire population of London had come down to the seaside for the day.
‘Let’s paddle!’ Pearl said, heading off towards the sea.
So the Boxalls and the Furnivalls edged themselves an inch or two of foreshore, and while Flossie, Mrs Geary, Mrs Roderick and Mrs Boxall guarded the bags, the younger ones stripped off their sandals and headed for the water.
It was luxurious, beautifully cooling after the heat of the journey and lukewarm when you got used to it, like a huge salty bath that you didn’t have to fill or empty. Pearl and Lily and Baby tucked their dresses in their knickers and waded out until the water was above their knees and Joan took all the baby’s clothes off and let her wallow in the water in chortling nakedness. But Peggy went for a swim.
As soon as she’d been sure they were really going on this outing Peggy had treated herself to one of the new knitted swimming costumes. It was years since she’d been for a swim, not since Tillingbourne, and she knew she might have forgotten what to do, but she was determined to try, just the same.
Now, after struggling out of her clothes and into the costume inside an awkward tent made by two towels held up by Mum and Mrs Geary, she picked her way over the painful pebbles and strode out into the sea. And of course she hadn’t forgotten. She could swim as well as ever. And the touch of the water, silky against her skin, brought back so many remembered pleasures, the sensation of speed as her thrusting legs propelled her through the water, the rhythmical splashing she could hear in her wake, the sight of her hands and arms flashing pearly-white against the green, the sun warming her face and shoulders when she finally stood up to catch her breath, throwing back her head and shaking her wet hair, so that water drops spun from her in a dazzling shower.
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