by Tania Crosse
‘You want me to play gooseberry? No thanks.’
‘Oh, come on, Anna. Tidd’n like that. It’d do you good, the black mood you’m in. Thinking of your mum, is it?’
There she went again, Ethel, hitting the nail bang on the head. ‘It’s not just that,’ Anna murmured into her scarf. ‘My dad’s going through one of his depressed phases and I’ve told you how he can get a bit violent. I don’t know how long it’ll be before something really terrible happens.’
‘Getting worse, is it?’ Ethel’s voice was vibrant with concern.
‘You might say that.’ Anna sighed. She had struggled to hold everything inside, but suddenly the fight had gone out of her. ‘I reckon something’s really going wrong from the brain injury he had in the war,’ she went on. ‘Mum’s always said the doctors warned her to expect personality changes. That he’d be difficult for a while. Only it’s gone on all these years, and lately it seems to be getting worse. Something makes him fly off the handle and then he hits the bottle and all hell breaks loose.’
‘That’s why ’e lost ’is job at the dockyard back along, wa’n it?’
‘Yes. He was only passed fit to go back to work towards the end of the war, but they had to give him the sack. And now he’s lucky to hold down a job for more than a few weeks. Huh!’ She gave an ironic snort. ‘It was a good job for us that the whole of Plymouth needed rebuilding or there wouldn’t have been enough building sites for him to work at. Same place wouldn’t have him back twice. But it’s a vicious circle. He gets a job which puts money in his pocket, and once he’s paid off the back rent and any other bills we owe, he starts spending money on drink and loses the job because of it. The thing is …’
She stopped. They had reached the corner of their street and she couldn’t summon up the courage to go home.
‘The thing is,’ she repeated, her voice a hoarse whisper, ‘I really believe he was a good man once. I remember little things about him. From before it all happened and Mum had me evacuated. And they’re good memories. Even after the war when your mum got us this house to live in, there were happy times. I mean, I think my parents felt it was a bit of a come-down for them, but they were really grateful. Oh, Lord!’ Her hand went over her mouth. ‘I’m sorry, Ethel. I shouldn’t have said that.’
She felt herself flush with shame, but in the dim glow from the street lamp, she saw Ethel shrug.
‘Oh, you always was a bit more posh, like. Look at the way you speaks for a start.’ And then Ethel shivered, clasping her arms across her chest. ‘But I’s not standing on the corner bloody freezing all night. An’ I doesn’t want to be late for the pictures. You coming or what? Strikes me it’d do you good.’
Anna had to chuckle. Ethel was so down to earth and talking to her had provided some feeling of release.
‘Yes, I think I will!’ she answered with growing certainty. ‘Don’t know what’s on, do you?’
‘Not a clue. Don’t matter when you’m in the back row, do it?’ And seeing Anna’s look of horror, she grinned back. ‘Only kidding!’
Anna laughed aloud this time, but as they hurried down the narrow street, anxiety thudded in her heart again. ‘You won’t say a word to anyone, will you? You know, about—’
‘My lips is sealed. An’ don’t you be late. Want to find that Bert afore we goes in! Really nice, ’e is!’ she called back gaily as she left Anna at her front door and waltzed off to the little terraced house on the opposite side.
Anna took off her glove to rummage in her handbag, but that wasn’t why her hand froze as she put her key in the lock. That was her father she could hear, wasn’t it, ranting away inside? And her mother’s raised voice as she tried to defend herself.
Anna’s heart clenched with fear. God knew what she’d find inside. The ‘B’ film had been a light comedy and the main feature a John Wayne western with a love story thrown in. She could never understand how anyone was supposed to fall in love with John Wayne, but the evening had diverted her mind for some hours, and now she had returned to this. In desperation, she glanced back across the street, but the sliver of light from the hallway narrowed and was extinguished as Ethel closed the door behind her, and the pavements were silent and deserted once more.
Anna mentally braced herself as she let herself in. She slunk against the wall in a vain attempt to make herself invisible. If she closed her eyes, perhaps she would wake up and find it was all just a dream.
It wasn’t.
‘Why the hell didn’t you tell me?’
Anna glanced up at her father’s roar from the top of the stairs. He was on the landing, dragging her mother’s head up by the hair as she tried to escape from him.
‘I didn’t want to upset you—’
‘Upset me!’ Her father’s cry exploded like a crack of thunder. ‘Don’t you think I have a right to know that you’ve lost another one of our children?’
‘But—’
‘I thought your curse were going on a long time, and now you tell me it’s ’cause it were a miscarriage, and I didn’t even know you were pregnant! How could you? Or was it because it weren’t mine and you’d got rid of it?’
‘Vince, no!’ Freda Millington’s voice was a horrified shriek. ‘How could you think—?’
Anna had been cowering on the bottom step, stunned with horror. But at the sounds of her parents grappling at the top of the stairs, well, she wasn’t going to just stand by and—
‘Stop it!’ she yelled, and went to fling herself up the staircase.
She didn’t see quite what happened next. She heard another blow find its target and then a series of rapid bumps as her mother tumbled down the steps, knocking Anna off her feet. The wallpaper, the banisters, turned cartwheels before her eyes and the pair of them landed with a dull thud in a tangled heap at the bottom.
For a moment, Anna couldn’t move. But the sound of her father clumping down the stairs made her claw her way through the fog and painfully she lifted her head. A dark silhouette was grabbing her father’s coat and cap from the hallstand, and an instant later, the house shook as the front door crashed shut.
And then silence.
Anna dropped her head back on the floor, waiting for the grey dizziness to pass. A whimper fluttered from her lungs and slowly, very slowly, she began to drag herself upwards. Her mother was lying across her legs, pinning them down, and somehow she managed to twist round and pull herself out from underneath.
‘Mum?’
Anna’s own head was still spinning. It would take a few moments before either of them would be able to pick herself up. But her mum still hadn’t moved, and Anna shook her gently. Several minutes ticked by, and as the muzziness cleared and her mother still hadn’t stirred, a kernel of panic began to uncurl deep inside.
Anna shifted into a sitting position and shook her mother again. No response. Pulse racing, pounding in her ears. Trembling. A tiny, strangled sound in her throat.
‘Mu … um?’
She leant over, and realised how her mother’s neck was lying at an unnatural angle. And then she looked into her eyes – that were staring unseeing at the wall.
Chapter Three
How long did she sit there, the blood draining down her limbs? Light-headed. Her hand had shot out to her mother’s jaw. She knew she wouldn’t find a pulse. But she had hoped.
Her own pulse drummed at her temples. Her stomach contracted. Rigid. Oh, dear God.
At long last, her body started to move. She hadn’t told it to. It just did. Unfolding itself from its uncomfortable position on the cold linoleum. The lino that her mum polished twice a week. Religiously. Without fail.
She was standing. Her mother crumpled at her feet. What should she do? Her brain wouldn’t answer. Instinct took over. And as she stumbled across the darkened, silent street, the cold made her shiver.
She knocked on the familiar door. Fred Shallaford opened it. Singlet and pyjama bottoms. Perplexed at the late visitor.
‘Anna?’
She opene
d her mouth to speak, but the only sounds that came out were mumbled gibberish. So she snapped her jaw shut and stared up at Fred’s craggy face.
‘What’s up, little maid?’ he frowned. ‘Yere, you’d best come in.’
Fred stood back, scratching his balding head, and Anna groped her way past him and into the kitchen. Mabel was sitting at the table in an old dressing gown, hair still in curlers – Anna wondered vaguely if they had been there all day – and sure enough, puffing on a cigarette. Ethel was chatting away, and in the course of ten seconds, Anna caught the name of Bertie at least twice.
Then Mabel looked up, the welcoming smile sliding from her face, and Ethel’s eyes widened as she stared at her friend.
‘Anna! You’m as white as a sheet. What’s ’appened? Come on, sit yoursel’ down.’
Ethel was on her feet, guiding Anna to the seat she had just vacated. Anna obeyed. Meekly. Dissolving onto the hard, wooden chair with its chipped, scarlet paint.
‘Drink this.’
Fred’s swarthy hand with its oil-stained fingernails slapped a small glass in front of her, and through the veil of her shock, Anna was ready to do anything she was told. She took a sip and the amber spirit scorched the back of her throat. She spluttered, pushing the glass away.
‘Knock it back, maid.’
The trust Anna held in this kind family overtook her numbed brain and she dutifully swallowed the liquid in one gulp. Almost at once, she began to feel its warmth seeping into her body. She felt oddly weak, but soothed and comforted. Safe.
‘Now tell us what’s up,’ Fred prompted gently.
‘It’s … Mum,’ Anna managed to stutter, for her teeth began to chatter as soon as she tried to speak. ‘She’s … fallen down the stairs. And I … I think she’s dead.’
‘What!’
There were audible gasps around the table and for once, Mabel’s cigarette fell from her lips. She hastily retrieved it between yellow-stained fingers, stubbing it out on the ashtray only half smoked.
‘You’m sure?’ The horrified question catapulted from her mouth in a stream of grey smoke.
Anna nodded, and waited to see what would happen next as her own brain didn’t seem capable of deciding anything for itself. It was Fred who came to her rescue.
‘Give us your key, maid,’ he said, ‘or is the door open?’
Had she shut the door? Anna couldn’t remember. But as she felt in her pocket, the key was there. Silently she placed it on the table, and with a dark glance at his wife, Fred picked it up.
‘Where’s your dad?’ he asked grimly.
Her father? Oh, God. A barb of terror speared somewhere beneath her ribs.
‘I-I don’t know,’ she stammered truthfully. ‘Out somewhere. At the pub.’
‘Hmm.’ Fred pursed his lips. ‘It’s closing time. I’d best be there when ’e gets back. Ah, that sounds like Davy coming in. I’ll take ’en with us.’
He went out into the hallway and Anna heard him talking with his son. It was a relief to know there would be two of them if her dad came back. Davy was only seventeen, a year younger than Ethel, but he was as tall and broad-shouldered as his father and did a bit of boxing in his spare time.
‘You’m shivering.’ Mabel’s unusually lowered voice drew Anna back to the Shallaford’s warm kitchen. ‘Us was just going to bed, but I reckons us could all do with a nice cup o’ tea.’
It was all a bit of a blur from then on. Ethel placed an arm around her shoulders, ‘loving her up’, as she put it. The tea Mabel placed in front of her was strong enough to stand a spoon in with only a dribble of milk and heaps of sugar. Anna tried to sip at it but her stomach rebelled. And her lips could feel the dirty film on the rim of the cup.
Five minutes later, Davy was back, breathless and seemingly enjoying the crisis – until his mum clipped him round the ear. But it didn’t stop him reporting how he’d run to the telephone box on the corner of the next street and dialled 999. An ambulance was on its way, but his dad was sure … sure that, well …
So … that was it, was it? Anna sat. Staring at nothing. Feeling nothing. Some time later, a plain-clothes policeman appeared. An inspector of some sort. Had she seen her mother fall? Yes, she had. She had just got in, and her mum had come out of the bedroom and onto the landing to greet her, and then the next second she was tumbling head over heels down the stairs. Where was her father? Out at the pub. Which one? She didn’t know.
‘Leave the little maid alone, cas’n you?’ Mabel pouted her lips in accusation.
‘Sorry, madam. It’s only routine, but I have to ask. Seems to be pretty straightforward, mind. They’ll be taking the, er …’
Anna noted his light cough. Did he think she was an idiot? They’d be taking the body away, he was about to say, wasn’t he? And then she saw Mabel’s forehead crease.
‘Does you want to go with your mum in the ambulance?’ she said quietly.
Anna met her compassionate gaze. What was the point? She imagined the hospital. Cold, sterile corridors, still as death. Echoing footsteps.
She shook her head. ‘D-Dad?’ she croaked.
‘My constable will wait for him with Mr Shallaford. Perhaps you could stay here until your father gets back, if that’s all right?’
‘Course it is, the poor lamb. Is that all now? The cheel’s in shock, cas’n you see?’
Anna noticed him raise an eyebrow, but he turned and left the room, although she heard him mumble something about the possibility of further questions later.
It wasn’t until she was tucked up in Ethel’s bed in the room she shared with Primrose that it dawned on Anna what she had done. She had given the impression that her father hadn’t been there, hadn’t she? Somewhere deep inside, some defence mechanism had unaccountably taken over. In effect, she had lied. To everyone. Her mum had fallen down the stairs, she had said. Well, it was true, but she hadn’t explained why. That her parents had been having a vicious row on the landing and her dad had become violent. He hadn’t deliberately pushed her mum down the stairs, she was sure of that. In the struggle, her mum had lost her balance. But what if … ?
She sat bolt upright in bed. Fred hadn’t returned yet. What was going on at her own house across the street? Had her father come home yet? Was he being questioned by the police? Oh, God.
But then, there was nothing to arouse suspicion, was there? The bruises around her mum’s throat from the recent throttling her dad had given her had faded. And her dad would arrive home from wherever he had gone to have the tragic news broken to him that his wife had fallen down the stairs and broken her neck. Anna was convinced he hadn’t realised what had happened when he had stormed out, and God alone knew what his reaction would be when he was told.
The image of her mum lying there, so still, so twisted, seared into Anna’s brain again. What the hell did anything else matter? Her dear, frail, faithful mum was dead. Killed by her devotion to the man her husband had once been.
Thinking, thinking, a million thoughts were turning somersaults in Anna’s head. There was something she couldn’t identify trying to push its way into her mind. Some feeling she knew instinctively her mind was trying to blank out.
‘Ethel?’ she whispered into the darkness. ‘Ethel, are you awake?’
But she knew she wasn’t. She could hear her friend’s deep, steady breathing from the other bed where Ethel had squeezed in next to her little sister. Anna’s eyes opened, staring at nothing. A narrow column of moonlight peeped in between the skimpy curtains, and her eyes gradually adjusted to the gloom. Familiar objects. The battered chest of drawers. The box of Ethel’s toys which had now been passed down to Primrose. The rag rug where Anna and Ethel had played together as children. All so reassuring. Comforting.
Too comforting. Allowing tears to well up inside her at last. She tried to hold them back, but they rose up in a deluge and began to stream down her cheeks in a torrent of big, fat pearls. She turned her face into the pillow, weeping until she had no more tears to shed. And s
ome time in the small hours, when she still had not heard Fred return, she drifted into a restless, exhausted sleep.
‘I always said your father was no good for our Freda.’ Iris Catchpole folded her arms across her chest and hitched up her bosom. ‘Married beneath her, and now look. Didn’t look after her properly so she gets that weak that she faints at the top of the stairs. I could see it coming.’
Anna had been huddled on the settee in the little sitting room at the front of the house, staring at the glowing coals in the grate. The funeral had been a pathetically small affair with just a handful of neighbours coming to show their respects. Only Ethel and her parents had come back to the house – and Freda’s sister, Iris, and her husband, Clarence. Anna had watched her father pick up the empty coal scuttle, presumably to refill it from the bunker out in the backyard, and the moment he was out of earshot, Aunt Iris had delivered her damning condemnation.
‘Iris, dear, I don’t think—’ Uncle Clarence tried to mutter ineffectually, but was at once silenced by Mabel’s indignant riposte.
‘Saw it coming? ’Ow could you when you ’adn’t bin to visit your poor sister in years? Us was friends, Freda an’ me, an’ she told us what a proper cow you was, an’ never lifted a finger when Vince were injured. Could’ve bin left a cabbage, an’ what would you ’ave cared, eh?’
Anna blinked as Aunt Iris rose to her full four foot ten, her face suffused to a violent puce. ‘Who on earth do you think you are? No better than a fishwife, and you’re trying to tell me—’
But Mabel was standing firm, hands planted determinedly on her hips, and Fred stood up, towering protectively over his wife. Anna had been observing them, locked in her own fathomless grief, and not a word had sunk into her brain. And yet some small part of her must have been listening. Anger foamed up inside her, snapping the fragile hold she had maintained on her broken emotions.
‘Oh, shut up, all of you! Mum’s dead and all you can do is argue!’
She sprang to her feet, glaring at them all in turn, and saw Aunt Iris’s round, pink face puff up even further. It almost made her want to laugh.
