Always I'Ll Remember

by Bradshaw, Rita

  For a moment as he looked at his bride James saw a monkey’s head superimposed on the small, tight features of Phyllis’s face, and he had to remind himself to concentrate on the present and not slip away into that other universe which came under the heading of shell shock, according to the doctors.

  Phyllis smiled at him, her pale blue eyes bright, and he tried to smile back. This wasn’t her fault. She had always wanted him and he’d known it; it had been up to him to call a halt before things went too far. His father insisted it was a psychological thing, that as a result of the rejection and hurt he’d felt over Abby’s desertion he had subconsciously grasped a love which had stood the test of time. James knew his father and mother had had the bitterest of rows over him and Phyllis once her pregnancy had become known, his father blaming his mother for it all. They were still hardly speaking.

  ‘I now pronounce you man and wife.’

  It was over. James blinked; more than twenty minutes had gone by without him really being aware of it. He was a married man. Oh, Abby. Abby. Why didn’t you wait? Why didn’t you love me like I loved you?

  ‘All right?’ Phyllis’s voice was soft, her expression faintly anxious when he looked at her. He knew that look. She was frightened he was going to have one of his ‘turns’ and spoil her big day. But no, that wasn’t fair. She had never belittled how he felt or been offhand about the nervous breakdown he had suffered shortly after visiting Abby’s old home. That her understanding took the form of virtually smothering him was just the way she was and he would have to learn to live with it. It and her.

  ‘I’m fine and you look beautiful.’ It was the best he could do but it seemed to satisfy her, and as they walked into the vestry at the front of the church to sign the register, there was a happy tilt to her blonde head under its frothy veil. When he sat down to sign the book himself, she immediately put her hand on his shoulder, her slim body turned towards him and her voice soft and encouraging as she said, ‘That’s it, write clearly and take your time,’ as though he was five years old like the children she taught. He didn’t acknowledge she had spoken, merely finishing what he had to do and then standing up again, but as he did so he caught his father’s eye and the older man’s expression was one of commiseration.

  It was as they were leaving Phyllis’s parish church on the outskirts of Hendon close to Ryhope that a familiar face in the small crowd outside caught his attention. Was that Abby’s mother? He turned sharply, almost stumbling and treading on the hem of Phyllis’s dress as he did so.

  ‘Sorry.’ He looked down at his bride and she smiled back at him, holding his arm tightly. By the time he scanned the crowd again he could see no sign of Nora Vickers and he told himself he must be mistaken. Why on earth would Abby’s mother be here now, today? He hadn’t heard a thing from her since the day she had told him Abby was a married woman, or as good as. She wouldn’t know he was getting married today and she certainly wouldn’t have come to the church if she did. He was imagining things. He brushed his hand over his face as they reached the bottom of the path leading from the church door. It was time for one of his tablets and then he would feel better.

  The day was bitterly cold as he climbed into the back of his father’s car with Phyllis. His parents took the seats in front and they all set off to the little reception which had been arranged at the Grand Hotel in Bishopwearmouth. Sleety flakes of snow began to fall from a heavily laden sky. It seemed fitting somehow.

  It was done then, thank the heavens for that. Nora Vickers’s mouth was set in the normal grim line it assumed these days, but inside she was elated. It had paid off, her keeping tabs on James Benson, because now she could relax knowing he was beyond Abby’s clutches should her daughter decide to come back to Sunderland after the war.

  Nora was walking swiftly along Ryhope Road, her head down as the weather worsened and the snow became more like a blizzard.

  James Benson’s bride came from a good family and the father-in-law had given the lad a job in his own accountancy firm, so there was no reason at all why James and Abby would ever meet again, not with the newlyweds settling in Hendon close to the wife’s folks. It had worked out very well, all things considered.

  As she passed the trees and open grass of Hendon Burn on her left, the wind hit the side of her face with such force it almost whipped her hat off. What a day to get wed! The euphoria she’d felt on seeing Abby’s old beau leave the church with his bride on his arm heightened. She couldn’t have wished James Benson a nicer one. But although she felt this was the end of the story, she’d keep popping along to the family butcher who supplied the Bensons now and again to hear the latest. His daughter cleaned for Dr Benson and the butcher liked to think he was in with the doctor and his wife. Amazing what you could pick up from folk if they were trying to impress you; the man was all strut and swagger. Her lips curled with contempt.

  Drops of water were trickling down her neck and she knew she would be soaked to the skin before she got home. But it had been worth it. Wilbert was now living at home once more, and the foreman at the yard had just taken him on as a welder in one of the fitting-out quays, so they were sitting pretty: Wilbert was clear of the more dangerous work he’d done before the war, and with a bit of luck she’d be able to cut down her hours at the hospital laundry. By, she hated that place and the smell was enough to knock you off your feet most days. Still, the work was safer than some, she had to admit that. The munitions factories were lethal, from what she could make out, although her dear sister seemed to be doing all right. But that was Audrey all over. Drop her in a cesspit and she’d come up smelling of roses.

  Nora had only caught the odd glimpse of her sister over the last months, and Audrey’s increasingly slim shape and new hairdo and clothes had been enough to make her seethe with frustration. Her mind continued to worry and chew at the past, especially the events just after Christmas which had signalled the end of any further contact between her sister and herself. So wrapped up was she in her thoughts that she hardly noticed the mile and a half walk from the church to Rose Street. It was only when she let herself into the house that she realised how cold she was. Her hands and feet were numb.

  She didn’t pause in the hall to hang up her coat and hat, intending to put them on the clothes horse in front of the fire in the kitchen to start drying out. At the kitchen door, she stopped dead and stared. Abby was standing by the range.

  ‘Hello, Mam,’ she said, her tone and face expressionless.

  In a moment, Nora recovered herself. ‘Well, this is a surprise.’ She divested herself of her hat and coat and hung them on the clothes horse. ‘What’s brought you home?’

  ‘I wanted to talk to you about something.’

  ‘That’s a first if ever I heard one, you wanting to talk to me.’ Could Abby know about James getting married? Is that why she was back? But no, it was impossible. She knew for a fact her daughter didn’t correspond with the family. ‘How long are you back for and where’s Clara?’ She kept her voice flat; she had no real interest in her youngest daughter’s whereabouts.

  ‘I left Clara at the farm.’ Abby didn’t elaborate. ‘It’s about Clara I’ve come actually, or rather something she told me.’

  It caught Nora unawares and her eyes shot to meet her daughter’s steady gaze. They exchanged a look that held for a moment and then Nora pulled herself together, her voice deliberately airy as she said, ‘Oh aye? And what’s that then? Some tale or other, I’ll be bound.’

  ‘How can you say that when you don’t know what it is she’s said?’

  ‘I don’t have to know. The child’s a born mischief maker, always has been, although you’ve never seen it.’

  Abby ignored this. ‘It’s something to do with the night Da—’

  ‘Where’s Wilbert?’Nora interrupted abruptly. ‘Is he home yet?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Any tea in the pot?’

  It took all of Abby’s patience to answer quietly, ‘I only made enough for one and that w
as over an hour ago.’ Then she continued, ‘Clara said she saw you push Da down the stairs and that you told her you’d send her away if she said anything to anyone.’ This was blunter than she’d intended but the way her mother was behaving they could go on for ages fencing with each other.

  ‘What? The little madam! You wait till I get my hands on her.’

  The apparent outrage and shock would have been believable in anyone else, but Abby had seen what was in her mother’s eyes in that first unguarded moment. ‘You’re saying it’s not true?’

  Nora tossed her head. ‘I surely don’t have to, do I? You can’t believe her.’

  ‘Aye, yes, I believe her.’

  ‘I’ve heard everything now.’ Nora pulled in her chin and narrowed her eyes. ‘My own daughters to turn against me like this. Well, I’m not wasting my breath on you, girl.’

  ‘Look me in the face and say you didn’t push him.’

  ‘I shouldn’t have to, like I said.’

  ‘You can’t, can you, Mam?’ Abby’s voice was still quiet but it was taking all her self-control to remain outwardly calm. On the journey to her mother’s house she had felt sick with nerves but she’d promised herself she wouldn’t shout or lose her temper. ‘You can’t because you did it. Did you mean to do it? Was it an accident? What?’

  For the briefest of moments her mother seemed to hesitate and an expression flitted across her face that Abby couldn’t pin down. Then it had gone, and Nora said, ‘How you can take the word of a bairn against that of your own mother I don’t know.’

  Abby glanced about her. There was no trace of her father remaining in this house, her mother had seen to it that every last item, every belonging had gone. ‘Da was a good man,’ she said painfully, ‘and he never hurt a living soul, but you made his life hell when he was home from the sea. No wonder he couldn’t wait to get back to the ships all the time.’

  ‘You’ll go too far, girl, so be careful.’

  Abby’s chin went up a notch. ‘Everyone loved him, do you know that?’

  ‘You know nothing about it. No one knows what I had to put up with.’

  ‘Don’t come that. You lived like Lady Muck compared to some round these parts. Da provided for us and well too, but more than that he loved us. He’d have done anything for any one of us, me and Clara and Wilbert, and we all knew it.’

  ‘You stupid little fool.’ Abby’s idolisation of Raymond was too much for Nora. Over the last weeks and months she had assuaged the guilt which attacked her now and again by exaggerating the direness of her life with her husband until now she believed the excuses she’d given herself. ‘Your da was a great lump of nowt, that’s what he was. He hadn’t got the gumption he was born with half the time.’

  ‘He was the best father in the world,’ Abby shot back, ‘and he only stayed with you because of us.’

  ‘Oh aye?’ Nora was red-faced with temper. ‘Then he was the biggest fool in the world because not one of you has a drop of his blood in your veins. Father the three of you? Don’t make me laugh. He was useless. Years he tried with no result.’

  ‘What?’ Abby stared at her mother. ‘What are you on about? He was our da.’

  ‘I’m telling you he wasn’t. Haven’t you ever wondered why none of you look like him or how it is that Wilbert doesn’t like the water? And not just being a bit windy about it but scared into a cold sweat at the thought of going to sea. I’m your mother whether you like it or not, but as for him, he was nowt to you, your precious da.’

  Abby felt faint, but she held her ground rather than sit down as she wanted to. She scrubbed at her mouth before she managed to say, but weakly now, ‘I don’t believe you.’ But she did. Somehow she didn’t doubt her mother was telling the truth. ‘Who?’ she said at last. ‘Who was it?’

  Nora’s eyes hadn’t left Abby’s white, stricken face. Grimly, she said, ‘Ivor, who else?’

  ‘No.’ Abby moved her head slowly from side to side. She put her hands to her cheeks, her eyes wide with shock. ‘No, Mam.’

  ‘Ivor’s your da and Wilbert and Clara’s an’ all.’

  The only sound in the room now was the ticking of the clock on the shelf above the range, and as it started to get louder and louder Abby knew she had to get out of here before she did something terrible. She had never wanted to hurt anyone in her life the way she did right now. She picked up her handbag and walked past her mother and out into the hall, taking her hat and coat from the peg but not stopping to put them on. She had already opened the front door when her mother’s voice called behind her, ‘And you’ll get what’s coming to you afore too long, girl. You hear me? Don’t think you can come here playing the big I am because it don’t wash with me, madam. It never has.’

  Abby almost fell out into the street, shutting the door behind her and cutting off the torrent of words from the kitchen but still hearing them in her head. She slipped on the snow on the step and ended up sitting on the pavement. She didn’t immediately scramble to her feet but sat motionless for a moment or two, her heart pounding fit to burst. Then slowly she pulled herself to her feet, her glance sliding from her own front door to the one next door.

  Ivor and her mother. She swallowed against the rising nausea. It was horrible, dirty. All the years he’d pretended he didn’t like her mam, they had been . . . She swallowed again, harder. And her Aunty Audrey. She had seen her aunt and uncle carry on like a pair of bairns at times and she could have sworn they were happy together. Did her aunt know? And then she answered herself immediately. Of course she didn’t. Easy-going though her aunt was she would never have put up with that, not in a million years.

  The snow was settling on her hair and shoulders but Abby was unaware of it as she stood staring at her uncle’s front door. How could he have gone with her mother, his wife’s sister? And to betray her father like that, all the time pretending to be his friend. It was wicked. She did so hope the priests were right and there was an afterlife, because she wanted him to rot in hell for all eternity. Her mam had said her da wasn’t her da, but he was. In everything that counted he was. Oh, Da, Da. How could they?

  When the nausea was too strong to ignore, she forced herself to run to the end of the street, diving into the narrow back lane bordering Rose Street and Violet Street. She only just managed to reach it before her stomach came up into her mouth. Afterwards, although she felt shaky and weak, her head seemed to have cleared a little. The initial compulsion to confront Ivor and tell Audrey everything had gone. She just wanted to get away as fast as she could from these streets and the people in them, and she never wanted to come back.

  She straightened and wiped her mouth on her handkerchief. She was shivering as she pulled her hat and coat on. They were damp from being thrown onto the ground along with her bag before she was sick but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except Ike and Clara and her friends and the farm. They were her new life. Everything here was finished, everything. But she couldn’t go back to Yorkshire just yet.

  She reached into her handbag and fished out a small package. Three times Winnie had written to her parents enclosing a photograph of Joy, and three times the thick manilla envelope had come back unopened. Winnie was in no doubt that it was her father’s doing. The first two times she had been in a state for days, crying and carrying on. The third time the envelope came back Abby had seen something change in her friend. She couldn’t quite put her finger on what had happened but from that day Winnie only talked of her mother and never her father. When Abby had said she was coming to Sunderland to see Wilbert and find out how he was, Winnie had taken her aside and pressed the package into her hand. ‘Try and give it to my mam, would you?’ she’d pleaded. ‘We were all right, me mam and me, and I know she’d like to see her granddaughter whatever he says.’ The last words had carried great bitterness.

  ‘Course I will.’ Abby had hugged her friend, her heart heavy. She would have loved to have shared the real reason for her trip back home with someone but she couldn’t. Clara seemed to
have put the circumstances of their father’s death out of her mind since the night she had told her the truth, and Abby was glad of that, even though it meant she couldn’t talk about it with anyone. Once or twice she had been tempted to tell Ike, and several times she’d found herself on the verge of confiding in Winnie, but she never had. And she knew now she never would. It wasn’t something you could share with someone else. No matter who they were.

  Tucking the package back into her bag, Abby glanced at her watch. It was exactly two o’clock which meant that, with any luck, Winnie’s mother would be home alone.

  Mrs Todd was at home, but from her horrified expression Abby understood she wasn’t exactly welcome on her doorstep. But then Winnie’s mother disabused her of this idea when she reached out her hand and drew her into the house. ‘Whatever’s wrong, Abby?’ she said worriedly. ‘You look dreadful, dreadful. Come in, lass.’

  The motherly warmth and bustle was almost too much for Abby’s overwrought nerves, but this was about Winnie and Joy, not her, and she found herself saying, ‘I’m all right, Mrs Todd, just a bit cold, that’s all.’