Everybody's Somebody

by Beryl Kingston

  ‘Yes?’ Gerry asked, kissing her throat.

  ‘Yes!’ she said.

  Afterwards, as she lay recovering her breath and trying to control her spinning thoughts, she knew she ought to feel guilty. But she couldn’t do it. That amazing explosion of pleasure was still echoing in her mind and her body, powerful, overwhelming and quite unlike anything she’d ever experience before. It had been wrong to let it happen, of course. She knew that now. Terribly wrong and unfair to her poor Jim. It wasn’t the way she should have behaved, and she must never, ever do it again. But it had been so wonderful that all she wanted to do for the moment was to lie beside him in the sunshine and savour it.

  Chapter 17

  Strong sunshine was reflecting light from the river yet again, projecting its delicate rippling patterns across the creamy wallpaper. Rosie lay on her back among the pillows, with Gerry drowsy beside her, and gave herself up to the pleasure of enjoying it, as she usually did now that she’d stilled her conscience. After all Jim didn’t know what she’d been doing, and it was fun and very pleasurable. This is such a beautiful room she thought. There ent a thing in it that ent really classy.

  Gerry stirred himself, smiled at her lazily and picked up his watch to check the time. ‘They’ll be back in ten minutes,’ he said. ‘We’d better make ourselves respectable, I suppose.’

  Rosie eased herself from the bed and picked up her clothes.

  ‘That’s a very pretty belly,’ he said, admiring her.

  Nobody else would have noticed it, Rosie thought. That’s what’s so interesting about this man. He notices things. Poor old Jim just looks away.

  ‘It don’t feel partic’ly pretty,’ she said, as she began to dress. ‘It feels huge.’ And in two more months, she thought, I’ll be as big as a house, same as I was last time. She wasn’t looking forward to it. Big as a house and all these lovely afternoons over — even if was only for the time being. She knew she was going to miss them very much. They’d become a private reward for all the times that Gracie had woken her in the night needing a drink or a cuddle or when money had been tight, or she’d had a struggle to ease poor Jim out of another bout of miserable despair. Poor old Jim. He looked so drawn and unhappy when he was down, and his lovely mane of hair was flattened and dull as if the life had gone out of it. She felt so sorry for him then. It was sometimes quite hard to remember the handsome, daring young man he’d been before that foul war. Marriage might be an honourable institution, she thought as she pulled her smock over her head and I wouldn’t be unmarried for the world, but it’s darned hard work.

  But for the moment, life was good, and she meant to make the most of it. They had picnics in the garden and the park, whenever she wasn’t posing, and took Gracie to the zoo no fewer than three times in July and gave her rides on the elephant and introduced her to the penguins and the lions and the polar bears, while Gerry made sketches. As he drove home after their third visit, Rosie said he was spoiling them.

  ‘Ah,’ he said, smiling at her, ‘but then this is a sort of goodbye present. I’m off to the States next week with Augustus. They’re running an exhibition of our war pictures and want us there for interviews. And my patron wants me to take Spring and Autumn over to him at the same time.’

  Her heart was suddenly squeezed with misery. It hurt her that he could be speaking so casually about leaving her, even if it was only for a few weeks. It made her feel he didn’t really care about her at all, despite all the fun they’d been having. But she put on her bold face at once, determined not to let him know. If he could be casual, so could she. ‘How long will you be away?’ she said.

  ‘I couldn’t say,’ he said, negotiating a right turn. ‘This sort of trip is unpredictable. I know they’ve got a lot of things planned for us once we’re there. I’ll phone you as soon as I’m home again.’

  And that was that. He helped her out of the car, gave her four day’s pay in his usual plain envelope, kissed her on both cheeks in his usual flamboyant way and drove off. The street seemed shabbier for his going, noisier, dustier and much more dull. I shall miss him, she thought. But what was the use of even thinking it? There was nothing she could do about it. He was a law unto himself.

  The hot summer and her rapidly expanding pregnancy made life increasingly difficult for her. In the middle of August when the baby was kicking so much it was hurting her ribs, Jim took her to the pictures for a treat, leaving Kitty to look after Gracie. It was a Charlie Chaplin and very funny, but she couldn’t enjoy it much because she was so uncomfortable.

  ‘I shall be glad when this baby comes,’ she said to him as they strolled home. Even walking was difficult by then and she did so hate waddling. It made her look like a duck.

  He tried to cheer her up. ‘Can’t be much longer. There ain’t much left of August now. Soon be here.’

  But the baby stayed where it was until August 31st and then it took nearly eighteen hours to be born. Rosie was exhausted before it even began. She’d spent most of the previous day doing the wash, struggling to put their heavy sheets through the mangle in a steamy, clammy washroom and hanging them out on the clothesline through the kitchen window, with a lot of difficulty. The pulley was stiff and hard to work, the washing dripped all over the place, her back ached and Gracie seemed to be grizzling for attention all day.

  ‘I need my bed,’ she said to Kitty as she dished up their supper. And she was only half-joking.

  ‘You look done in, mate,’ Kitty said, sympathetically. ‘Leave the washing-up. I’ll do it.’

  But Rosie only slept for a few hours and then she was woken by the first pains. It was half past one in the morning. From then on, she tossed and turned and timed the pains until dawn, when Jim woke up and went downstairs to make her a cup of tea and to ask Mr Rogers if he would send his boy to fetch the midwife. Then he and Kitty cooked the breakfast — which Rosie couldn’t eat — and washed up and swept the kitchen and went to work.

  I wish giving birth wasn’t so lonely, Rosie thought. Gracie was sitting on the bed chattering to her, but she needed an adult that morning and preferably a knowledgeable one. It was a great relief when the midwife came toiling up the stairs carrying her black bag and with her starched apron all newly washed and clean, ready for action. But action was a long time coming and the baby didn’t emerge until supper time. Jim and Kitty were both home from work by then and had carried Gracie’s cot into Kitty’s room and put her to bed. They were waiting rather anxiously in the kitchen when the new child gave its first complaining cry. Jim took the stairs two at a time without noticing them, which was the first time he’d dared to do such a thing since he was wounded, and the midwife met him at the bedroom door.

  ‘We’ve got a little lion cub,’ Rosie said, lifting the baby up so that they could both see her. ‘Look at her. She’s the spit an’ image a’ you, Jim.’

  She looked like a scrunched up newly born baby to Jim, but he had to admit her hair had a tawny tint to it, what there was of it. ‘Least she ain’t got my great hooter spread all over her face,’ he said. Which made all three of them laugh.

  ‘What are you going to call her?’ the midwife asked.

  Her parents answered with one voice because that was one thing they were perfectly sure about. ‘Mary.’

  ‘Welcome to the world, little Mary,’ the midwife said and made a note in her book.

  Rosie was stroking the baby’s face and breathing in the warm newborn smell of her. ‘Was it nasty then, my darlin’?’ she crooned. ‘All that pushin’. I know. I know. But you’re here now an’ you shall have some titty presently.’

  Kitty sat on the bed beside them and stroked the baby’s foot, very gently. ‘I wonder what our Gracie’ll say,’ she said.

  She was saying it very plaintively at that moment, from the prison of her cot in the next room, ‘Mummeee! Mummeee!’ So Kitty went to get her, and Jim lifted her up onto the bed so that she could see her new sister.

  She wasn’t interested in the baby at all but snuggl
ed up to her mother demanding a hug. ‘You can’t blame her,’ Rosie said, cuddling her. ‘She must have felt very out of it, stuck out there on her own.’

  Their lives settled into the familiar and time-consuming routines of looking after a new baby. Kitty phoned Mr Matthews at breakfast time the next morning to tell him the baby was born and to check that it was all right for her to have the next ten days off work to look after Rosie. The midwife called every day until Rosie’s lying-in was completed. Gracie got used to having a newcomer in her life although she needed a lot more cuddling than usual and sucked her thumb a lot, especially when Mary was being fed.

  Once she was up and about again, Rosie went out and bought a second-hand pram so that she could put both her babies in it when she went shopping, Mary lying cocooned and snug under the hood and Gracie sitting at the other end, wrapped up warm with an old shawl over her coat and an umbrella beside her in case it rained. Mr Rogers let her keep the pram in the office behind his shop which was very kind of him and saved having to drag it up and down stairs. But even so there were days, especially when she was wearily boiling up nappies in her steaming bathroom and both her babies were fretful, when she felt what she really needed was a second pair of hands to do all the things that had to be done in the course of a day, and she thought longingly of the days when she’d had a nursemaid to take Gracie for a walk while she wallowed in what Gerry called ‘sinful idleness’. I wonder where he is now, she thought, pushing the damp hair out of her eyes and straightening her back to ease it, and what he’s doing. Not boiling nappies and that’s a certainty.

  When Mary was seven weeks old and smiling, Edie sent a postcard to say that she and Johnnie and Tess were coming up to London to see them all. ‘I got a bit a news of my own for to tell you,’ she wrote, ‘what I hopes will please you.’ But she didn’t tell them what it was until they’d all taken it in turns to cuddle the new baby and made a fuss of their Gracie. Then she gave a grin like a Cheshire cat and said. ‘Now.’

  Rosie guessed what was coming. ‘Yes?’ she said, grinning at her sister.

  Edie blushed and ducked her head. ‘Me an’ Joey Taylor’s gettin’ married,’ she said.

  ‘That’s lovely, our Edie,’ Rosie said. ‘Best a’ news. When’s the weddin’? You got it planned, have you? What does Pa say?’ Then her intelligence caught up with her excitement and she realised that although Jim and Johnnie and Kitty were all smiles, Tess was being too quiet and looking down. And she felt sorry for her and knew she was feeling left out of it.

  ‘We thought next summer,’ Edie said. ‘We’ll both be eighteen by then, what’s about right, don’ee think? He’s a good chap, Rosie. He’s got a job as a fireman on the railway an’ he says he’s going to be a driver one a’ these days, what I’m sure he will.’ Then she gave Rosie a rather anxious look and said, ‘I got sommink to ask you, our Rosie. Well not ask you exactly. I mean for to say, if it ent right you’ve only to say. I mean for to say, it’s a bit of a sauce really. I wouldn’t want you to think you got to or anythin’. Only…’

  Rosie laughed at her. ‘Spit it out Edie,’ she said. ‘Ask away. I won’t bite you, whatever it is.’

  ‘It’s only…’ Edie said and then plunged into her request. ‘You wouldn’t let me have lend a’ your weddin’ dress, would you? I’d look after it. I wouldn’t spoil it or nothin’.’

  ‘Course you wouldn’t,’ Rosie said. ‘Come on. Let’s go upstairs an’ try it on. Jim an’ Johnnie’ll look after the babies, won’t you. What a lark!’

  It fitted quite well. ‘Just the odd seam here an’ there,’ Rosie said, ‘what’ll need lettin’ out. An’ you’ll need the hem took up. You’re shorter’n me. What sort a’ length d’you want it?’

  ‘You look a treat,’ Tess said, as Edie admired herself in the mirror. ‘You’ll need a new hat to finish it off. One a’ them modern ones with flowers in. Might treat mesself to one an’ all.’

  They came downstairs pink-cheeked with success.

  ‘About time,’ Jim teased. ‘We thought you was makin’ a new one, didden we Johnnie? Who wants tea? Kettle’s on the boil.’

  From then on, the visit became a long and happy conversation about weddings, Rosie’s remembered and Edie’s planned. There wasn’t a sour note until they were all saying goodbye. And then it was Edie who struck it.

  ‘Two lovely babies in two years,’ she said to Rosie. ‘You’re gonna be just like Ma.’ She meant it as a compliment, but it made her sister cringe.

  And Jim made it worse. Now that that smarmy artist was out of the way, his confidence had tripled. ‘Boy next time,’ he agreed. ‘Eh Rosie?’

  ‘Who knows?’ Rosie said, trying to make light of it. But she was thinking, not if I have anything to do about it.

  She went on thinking about it at odd moments for the next few weeks. She would have to do something about it. She couldn’t go on churning out babies for the rest of her life. Two were quite enough. But apart from refusing poor Jim — and she couldn’t do that — there was nothing else she could think of. If Gerry had been there, she might have asked him, but what was the use of thinking that. He was still gadding about in America. He’d sent her a postcard just after Mary was born, to say he’d won a prize at the Carnegie International Exhibition. But that was no help to her at all because he hadn’t put an address on it.

  In the end it was the local Tate Library and Gracie’s affection for the tale of the three little pigs that gave her the information she needed. She’d bought a rather battered copy of the fairy tale from the second-hand bookstall in the market and she and Gracie had read it every night as a bedtime story until it began to fall to pieces with overwork.

  ‘Tell you what,’ she said to Gracie, when the tenth page had fallen out, ‘let’s go down the library and see if we can borrow somethin’ else you’d like.’

  And although Gracie insisted on ‘more free piggies’, that’s what they did.

  The librarian was very taken with a two-year-old book lover and having given Rosie a form to fill in, provided her with a ticket and suggested that she should borrow ‘The Three Billy Goats Gruff’, which she did. Then she asked if there was anything that Rosie was interested in borrowing for herself. ‘A novel maybe?’

  Rosie squared her shoulders and stuck out her chin. ‘Something about marriage and having children maybe?’ she said and was annoyed with herself because she knew she was blushing.

  ‘Ah yes,’ the librarian said, smiling at her kindly. ‘Married Love. Of course. Wait there and I’ll get it for you.’

  It was a plain-looking book written by someone called Dr Marie Carmichael Stopes and it started with the bold declaration that, ‘Far too often marriage puts an end to a woman’s intellectual life.’ From then on, Rosie was hooked and read on avidly, but it wasn’t long before she realised that what was being said was so embarrassing and made her blush so much that she could only read it when Jim and Kitty were out of the house. But it was full of useful information.

  ‘When the man tries to enter a woman whom he has not wooed to the point of stimulating her natural physical reaction of preparation,’ the doctor wrote, ‘he is trying to force his entry through a dry-walled opening too small for it. He may thus cause the woman actual pain.’

  Just like Jim did when we finally got round to having a wedding night, Rosie thought. I wish I’d known all this then. Gerry knows about it. I’m not sure how, but he does. That’s what’s so good about being with him. He’s gentle and takes his time. I must see if I can learn my Jim to do the same. He rushes me somethin’ chronic sometimes.

  But it wasn’t until the end of the book that she found the information she really needed.

  ‘Children,’ the doctor wrote, ‘should be planned by means of birth control.’

  And she went on to describe how it could be done and gave the address of a clinic in North London where there were midwives who would show you how to do it.

  Rosie sat by the fire in her nice warm kitchen, with her childr
en at her feet and wanted to cheer. Now she could take charge of her life. I’ll go there first chance I get, she thought. And did. Although it took planning, patience and a downright lie. The first thing she had to do was to find someone who would look after the babies while she was out, and the only person she could think of was Kitty and, as she could hardly tell her what she was really going to do, she had to invent an old friend from the RAC Club who wasn’t well and wanted to see her. Kitty was very sympathetic.

  ‘Poor thing!’ she said. ‘’Course you must go. Only thing is, you’ll ’ave ter wait till Tuesday now ’cause I’ve had me day off for this week. Is that orl right?’

  So Tuesday it had to be, and it felt like a very long wait. It was also rather a difficult journey. Holloway was a good way out of the London that she knew and simply heading north could have taken her well out of her way but, by dint of asking tram drivers and her fellow passengers and several passers-by, she finally arrived at Marlborough Road, out of breath but still determined. Number sixty-one was a small and very ordinary-looking shop with a half curtain masking the window and an explanatory sign on the fascia saying, ‘The Mothers Clinic’. She set her shoulders and stuck out her chin to give herself the courage she needed and opened the door. Her heart was beating most uncomfortably.

  The room was ringed with wooden chairs, and there were half a dozen women sitting in them, knitting and waiting, and a nurse in her reassuring uniform looking up from her desk and saying, ‘Good afternoon. May I help you?’ But for a few seconds Rosie felt muddled and unsure of herself. Then she took a deep breath and walked to the desk. She was there. The first step had been taken.

  It was very quiet in the waiting room and very little was said. Her fellow patients were shy and only spoke in whispers and, although she smiled at them and they smiled back, she didn’t like to press them to talk to her for fear of embarrassing them. She hadn’t had the foresight to bring any knitting or even a book to read so time passed slowly. But at last, when three more quiet women had joined the queue, the nurse called her name and led her into the surgery. It was a plain, functional room, green walls, lino on the floor, a white screen like the ones she’d seen in Jim’s hospital, a long cupboard, an examination couch with a very strong light suspended above it, and another desk, with two chairs, where a midwife was sitting waiting to greet her. She sat down in the empty chair and the midwife asked her a series of questions, writing the answers on a card as she proceeded, her age, her husband’s age and occupation, the date of her marriage, the number of children she’d had and how old they were. Then the midwife took a little round tin out of one of the cupboards and introduced her to the cervical cap.