Water Gypsies

by Annie Murray

  It was only a short distance from the middle of town to Ladywood. As they walked through the familiar streets, Maryann experienced the mixture of feelings that returning to the neighbourhood always aroused in her: of recognition, of a deep sense of belonging, but also of anxiety and vulnerability. She was back in the home of her young years and it made her feel like a child again. She didn’t want to do the things which might have recalled a happier childhood – to take her own children to the house in Garrett Street and say,‘Look – that’s the house I grew up in. That’s where me and Auntie Sal played.’ Their Auntie Sal was long dead and the house a place of grim memory. Her mother had moved out of it after Norman Griffin left her; forced deeper into poverty, she had gone to a house in a yard on Sheepcote Lane.

  Court Two, it said over the narrow entrance to the yard.

  ‘Does she live up here?’ Sally said, puzzled.

  ‘Yes, she does – oi, stop that, you’ll end up black as the ace of spades!’ Maryann snapped at the boys as they rubbed their hands along the slimy walls of the entry.

  The children had never been anywhere quite like it before. These houses made even Alice Simons’s little terrace in Oxford look spacious and the brickwork was crumbling and caked in soot and dirt.

  Maryann saw Tony immediately. He was standing at the door of the house, blowing a blue stream of cigarette smoke from his lips. The other side of the yard, beyond the washing line, from which hung a single pair of limp, yellowed long johns, was a tap, fixed to the high wall and constantly dripping. A rotten smell drifted along the yard from the rubbish heap down the end.

  Maryann led her children across the dirty blue bricks, her brother watching them approach, though he didn’t move. He looked so much older, she thought. What was he now – twenty-three? A father with a small child, aged and pinched in the face. She felt a pang of pity for him, trapped here in this static life.

  ‘You got my message then,’ he stated.

  ‘This is your uncle Tony – remember?’ Maryann said as the children stood looking. Ada and Esther loosed her hands and wandered off across the yard.

  ‘Don’t go messing with anything,’ she called after them, without much hope of being obeyed. What’s happened?’ she asked Tony.‘How is she?’

  ‘She went. Last night.’

  Maryann nodded. She felt a lurch of emotion inside her, but that was all. And she knew that it consisted as much of relief as of sorrow that she would not see her mother alive again.‘What took her then?’

  Tony shrugged. ‘She were bad with her chest.’

  The older children waited, taking everything in.

  ‘Are we going to see our grandmother?’ Sally asked solemnly.

  ‘No, bab. She’s passed on. Last night.’

  There was a silence.

  ‘How’s your Dolly – and the babby?’

  ‘All right.’ Tony crushed the remains of the cigarette under his heel. ‘Joanie’s getting big. Dolly’s got another on the way.’

  ‘Oh – that’s nice.’ How quickly time passed, she thought, their lives moving on.

  ‘I’d better see her then,’ she said, as Tony didn’t volunteer anything else, and he stood back to let her in. ‘Joley, you all stay out here and keep an eye on the twins for now. You can come in a bit later.’

  Inside, she asked, ‘Who was looking after her –anyone?’

  ‘Couple of neighbours. Mrs Biggs.’ He nodded towards number four. ‘Lives over there. It went quick in the end. Someone came over to fetch me Friday night. The undertaker’s coming later.’

  Undertaker, Maryann thought grimly, clattering up the bare staircase. That had been the start of it all: her father’s death. The undertaker – Norman Griffin. She’d never been deceived by him, even then, she thought. Perhaps that was what had saved her sanity – not like Sal, who’d tried to believe in him, let herself be beguiled by the sweet talking, the outings to the cinema and his offer of a job working for him. Maryann had loathed him from the very first time he had set foot in their house.

  Stepping into her mother’s room, even now, when there had been so little feeling between them, tears of pity came to her eyes at the state to which Flo had been reduced. The bare room with its crumbling walls, without so much as a peg rug to relieve the splintered grime of the floorboards, was bigger than Maryann’s whole living space in the Esther Jane’s cabin, but without one iota of its intimate cosiness. This room was bleak, its only furniture the single iron bedstead, a rickety chair by the bed and an old chest of drawers.

  Maryann sank down on the chair. She barely recognized her mother. In her prime Flo had been a voluptuous, stately woman with thick hair of a natural blonde which had kept its fine colour until she was well on in years. It was a sickly grey now. She was thinner, yet her face seemed to have lengthened, making her look different, and the flesh of her cheeks had become slightly bloated and puffy. Had it not been for her familiar profile, her large nose, Maryann would have had difficulty in recognizing her.

  She sat struggling to think how old her mother would have been. When was she born? 1890, she thought she remembered. Fifty-four then. She stared at the yellowish face there beside her. Flo looked twenty years older.

  She hadn’t expected her tears. Her heart had been hardened against her mother for so long. When she had left this house it was with Flo’s screams of condemnation in her ears, words spat out with loathing – that she had been the ruin of them all, that everything that had happened in the family had been her fault because she was a liar who’d turned their stepfather against them. It was her fault that her mother was reduced to live in utter poverty. Maryann had barely wept over it then, but the tears came now. They came when she remembered other things she had long shut out of her thoughts: how Flo had been when they were all small, during the Great War and after. She’d been harassed and often beside herself with worry, it was true. And when Maryann’s father, Harry, came home a shell of the man he’d been, her worry and anxiety increased. But Maryann’s father had been a good, kind man and Flo, then, a strong woman. She was never a tender mother, more tough and matter of fact. But Maryann could remember being held in her lap, the rich sound of laughter that could rise up from her. She recalled being sent out with halfpennies for sweets. And, above all, she remembered that once the days had felt normal and untroubled. Back then, such a long time ago, she had felt safe. With her hands over her face, she felt tears run out through her fingers. Sobs were wrung out of her from somewhere deep inside and she knew she was crying not just for her mom, but for her lovely dad as well, for both her parents with all the hardships they’d had to face. And for herself too, for all they’d once been before the war, before that motor car knocked her father down one afternoon and he never came home again.

  She didn’t know how long she had been sitting there, but after a time she heard feet on the stairs and Tony appeared with a cup of tea, stirring in the sugar as he came into the room.

  ‘Here y’are, sis.’

  ‘Ta, Tony.’ She wiped her eyes, dazed. Are the kids all right?’

  He went and stood looking out through the dirty window, hands in his pockets. They’re in the yard.’ She thought how deep his voice was now, how his skinny body already sagged, as if worn down.

  ‘What’s next?’ she asked, feeling somehow that he was older now and knew what to do.

  ‘She’ll be buried, Tuesday.’

  ‘I don’t think I can stay.’

  ‘No.’ There was a pause.

  ‘Sorry, Tony.’

  He turned. ‘S’all right.’

  She sipped the tea. It tasted funny now, with stera. She was used to fresh milk.

  ‘It’s a shame,’ she said.

  His eyes followed her gaze round the room.

  ‘She wasn’t always like this. Did you come and see her much?’

  ‘She daint like Dolly. I come of a Sunday sometimes – just to see she was all right, like. Billy never come. He hasn’t been near for years.’

  Af
ter a moment she asked, D’you remember our dad?’

  Tony turned to the window again, his head dark against the light. ‘A bit. Not much. I remember the day he passed away.’

  ‘You were hardly more than a babby. And then Nanny Firkin passed on. And he was there by then.’

  Tony didn’t say anything. Maryann knew he understood what Norman Griffin had done to his sisters, that he believed her, had seen and heard things he knew should not have been done. But he didn’t want to talk about it. Not again.

  ‘Did she…’ She trailed off, hardly able to put into words what she wanted to ask. ‘Did she ever say anything about him – you know, regrets – that she knew … about him? What he did?’

  Tony hesitated, then shook his head.

  Pain roused itself in her again. ‘Nothing – ever?’

  ‘Look, Sis –’he came over to see if her tea was finished – ‘just leave it. It were years ago. She’s passed on now.’

  Maryann looked up into her brother’s dark eyes. ‘I know, Tony – but he hasn’t.’

  ‘We’d best get cracking then,’ she said when they were downstairs. ‘The landlord’ll want the house after Tuesday.’

  She was looking round the tiny downstairs room when the sound of yells and shouts of pain came from the yard. Tony ran out.

  ‘Oi!’ she heard him shouting. ‘Pack that in! Get off of him!’

  ‘You didn’t hear what he called me!’ Maryann went to the door to find Joley, fists clenched and puce with fury, being pulled off another, bigger lad by Tony, who had to clamp both arms round him to restrain him. Ezra, though, was busy landing a punch on another boy who’d appeared in the yard.

  ‘Ezzy – stop it!’ Maryann ran to him and hoiked him away. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Fuckin’water rats!’ the older boy shouted. He had a thin, unhealthy look and was wearing long shorts that looked too tight and no shoes on his blackened feet. Maryann saw his nose was bleeding and he was wiping it on the sleeve of his shirt. He backed away, shouting,‘water rats! Gyppos!’

  ‘You shut up!’ Sally yelled, defending her brothers. ‘You’re dirtier than us – what’re you calling us names for, eh?’

  Joley suddenly managed to twist free of Tony and launched himself on the other boy, who although bigger had not expected a water rat to have the strength acquired by working narrowboats from a young age. Joley ran at him and punched him hard in the belly and he sank with a groan.

  ‘What’s all this fucking racket about?’ An elderly man with a furious, drinker’s face appeared out of another house along the yard. ‘Who’re you lot? Clear off and stop making all this fucking carry-on!’ He waved his arms and there were suddenly two large women there as well, carrying on about gyppos and rough, nasty brats and how the likes of them oughtn’t to be allowed near the place, mixing with ordinary people. Maryann managed to get all the children into the house, her temper raging.

  ‘My family’s worth ten of you cowing slum roaches! Go on – you can all bugger off back indoors now, you nosy bastards!’ She slammed the front door so hard it shuddered.

  ‘I remember why I wanted to get away from this bloody place now!’ She was still shouting inside the house. Seeing the children all grinning with apparent approval at this outburst, she lowered her voice. ‘Fighting’s no way to carry on,’ she scolded. ‘Don’t do it again. Come on, Tony – let’s get this house cleared and get out. There can’t be much to get through. And you kids’ll have to find something to do in here – I don’t want you going out in the yard again, d’you hear?’

  She found a dog-eared pack of cards in the one little cupboard in the downstairs room and told the children to make do with them.

  ‘It won’t take all that long,’ she said. ‘There’s hardly anything in the house.’

  ‘I don’t like it here,’ Sally said miserably.

  ‘It looks as if most of this is only fit for burning,’ Maryann said to Tony, her face creasing with disgust. ‘That old chair looks riddled with vermin. How long’s she been living like this?’

  Tony shrugged. ‘I dunno. I s’pose she just let it all go.’

  When they had finished, Maryann carried Flo’s small collection of clothes down to the pawn shop. She walked back along the road looking around her, curious to see the old houses and entries and hucksters shops, yet still uneasy. She could never be free in this neighbourhood. It was too full of ghosts.

  She sorted out the scullery, going through her mother’s few pots and pans. Anything useful she and Tony divided between them.

  ‘There’s some papers and stuff in here,’ Tony said, opening a drawer at the bottom of the small cupboard. ‘Don’t look like anyfing much. Will you have a look, sis? You were always better at reading, like.’

  Maryann sat at the table with the thin sheaf of papers, most of them yellowed with age. The birth certificates of the four Nelson children were there. She stared sorrowfully at Sal’s for a moment, then put them aside. Don’t think about it, she told herself. Don’t start wallowing. To her surprise, the next sheet of paper was a receipt for payment from her father’s funeral all those years ago. Whyever hadn’t Flo thrown it out? Perhaps she had felt it was one of the few things she had left of Harry. She stared grimly at the fragile sheet of paper with N. Griffin & Son, Undertakers in faded black ink at the top. Had Norman Griffin ever really had a son? she wondered, frowning. If so, she’d certainly never met him. She tore up the paper into tiny pieces. As she was looking through the rest of her mother’s old, pathetic paperwork, a card fell out from between the sheets into her lap. It was whiter, newer than the rest. In blue ink it read, Albert Griffin, Toolmakers & Machinists.

  ‘Tony – come and have a look at this.’

  ‘Tony glanced at the card over her shoulder. ‘What about it?’ he said, moving away.

  Maryann frowned at it, the horrible realization only fully dawning on her now.

  ‘It’s him, isn’t it?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Oh, don’t be bloody dense, Tony!’ She stood up, scattering the rest of the papers.‘You know who! Is this who he is now? Has he been here? Has she been seeing him?’

  ‘No!’ Tony raised his voice so that the children all turned to look. ‘I mean – I dunno! I dunno anyfing about him or who he is and I don’t want to!’

  Maryann felt as if she’d been punched.

  ‘God in heaven,’ she gasped, ‘it is. I know it’s him. After all this – all that happened and she’d see him …’ She looked up wildly at Tony. ‘She didn’t take him back, did she?’

  ‘No! Of course not. Why the hell would she do that?’

  ‘I don’t know …’ Maryann’s hand went to her head, as if rubbing it might make things clearer. Why should she be surprised that Flo would have her stepfather back in her house? After all, she had never wanted him to leave. She had blamed Maryann for driving him away, her source of financial security. She’d never believed anything Maryann said, anyway.

  She dragged her eyes back to the card again. The address of the works was in Highgate. Face set grimly, she slipped the card into her pocket.

  Thirty-Three

  When they got back to Tyseley that evening, Maryann found Dot and Sylvia sitting out on the Theodore. Both boats had been unloaded and were riding high in the water. Sylvia stood up on the counter and waved when she saw them coming along the wharf.

  ‘We’ve got a potful of tea here!’ she beckoned. ‘Come and sit down for a bit. You must have had a lousy day.’ When they’d all clambered aboard, Sylvia put her arm round Maryann’s shoulder. ‘Poor old you. I remember when my mother died – I felt as if the stuffing had been knocked out of me for weeks.’

  ‘We weren’t close,’ Maryann said. She spoke so tersely that she was immediately ashamed. ‘I mean – I’ve hardly seen her in years.’ She knew Sylvia’s sympathy was well intended but she felt like a fraud. What grief and loss did she really feel for Flo? Nothing, but for that glimpse of the young woman she had once been, too long ago
for Maryann to remember clearly. ‘Me and Tony’ve cleared the house. There’s only the funeral now.’

  ‘Well, I think you’re being very brave,’ Sylvia said, handing Maryann her tea.

  Maryann smiled absently. She didn’t feel grief or sorrow at this moment. In her mind all evening, as she sat with Dot and Sylvia and they told her how the unloading had gone and that they’d managed to stove both boats in her absence to get rid of the bugs, was the thought of the card pushed into the pocket of her cardigan with its blue lettering.

  Longing to be alone, she told them she wanted an early night.

  ‘We were thinking of popping out for a bit – see if we can find a pub that’s not too soul-destroying,’ Dot said.

  ‘But we won’t if you’d rather we didn’t,’ Sylvia said hastily.

  ‘No – that’s all right. You go,’ Maryann said.

  Even when she was by herself on the Esther Jane later on, the children bedded down for the night, she still didn’t give any thought to the fact that she and the children were alone. Her head was too full of other things. She took out the card and propped it against the alarm clock near her head. She lay on her stomach in bed, staring at it in the candlelight. The words seemed to ripple and flicker as the flame moved gently. Albert Griffin, Albert Griffin…

  ‘Should’ve been a bit cleverer than that, shouldn’t you?’ she whispered. ‘Calling yourself Griffin again.’

  Thinking of him, of all he’d done, she felt herself clench up inside with anger and her own sense of defilement. And Flo had, at some time, seen him again, perhaps had him visit her house … However much she told herself she had no feeling left for her mother, that she didn’t care what she’d done, now she knew pain and outrage flooded through her until she could scarcely breathe. Once more she made herself force the thoughts aside. If she let them take her over, they would destroy her. She had protected herself from him so far as well as she could – she wasn’t going to let it happen now.