by Annie Murray
She found it hard going back into the little terraced house, with Norm’s mom and dad sitting in their chairs – Edna knitting, Bill with the paper – asking them how they’d got on and where they’d gone. They were only being kind, they were good people, but she longed for an empty house, a house of their own where they didn’t have to answer to anyone.
Norm was very loving that night and Em woke later than usual, with no Robbie pulling at her. Though she found it a wrench leaving him, it was also a relief and she felt rested and content. She went down and made them both a cup of tea and, once they’d drunk it, luxuriously still in bed, Norm put his cup down and said, ‘Now then – come ’ere, Mrs Stapleton. You needn’t think I’ve finished with you!’
Their bed was two single beds pushed together, so they had to watch the crack down the middle. Giggling, hoping her in-laws next door couldn’t hear anything, Em snuggled up on Norm’s side of the bed, cuddling into his arms. They were soon making love again, and things felt close and warm just as they used to, before the war when they had had such a short time together as husband and wife. Maybe, Em thought, as she held her husband in her arms and they loved each other, maybe this time, we’ll make another baby . . .
She kissed Norm’s neck, the combination of soft skin and hard muscle beneath, which she loved.
‘Em,’ he nuzzled her. ‘You’re my girl, my woman, that’s what you are.’
She told him she loved him, over and over, stroking his back, his strong buttocks, and suddenly tears sprang into her eyes because things felt right again, when they had been tense for so long.
‘You glad to be home?’ she asked.
She saw the slightest hesitation before he said, ‘Course I am. Where else would I want to be, eh?’ He turned and looked at her. ‘You’re home to me. It wouldn’t matter where.’
They curled up together, warm and happy, and asked each other things about their long separation – things there had scarcely been time for, with all the adjustment to living that they had had to do. Norm told her more about some of his times in Italy, about how beautiful the country was.
Em smiled, listening, ‘I’m glad you liked it there. I always wondered – it seems so far away and so foreign. And then you didn’t write . . .’ She leaned on her elbow for a few seconds and looked down accusingly at him. ‘I was flaming worried.’ She pretended to thump him, then lay back down again in the warm.
‘Sorry,’ Norm said.
‘So you broke your leg? Falling off a truck?’ she snorted.
‘All right – you can laugh.’
‘Sorry, love . . .’ She stroked his bare tummy appeasingly. ‘Only what I don’t understand is what happened next. I thought you were in hospital – how come you got so ill?’
‘Well, you know what they say: don’t go to hospital if you want to keep in good health.’
‘But what happened?’
Her question was met by such a long silence that Em lifted her head again and saw that Norm was blushing red to the roots.
‘I don’t want to tell you,’ he said.
‘What d’you mean, you don’t want to tell me?’ she demanded indignantly.
‘I want to, sort of, ’cause I feel I ought to.’ He was stumbling over his words. ‘But there’s some things you’re maybe better off not knowing.’
She was fully alert now, still thinking he was joking. She sat up and pummelled his chest. ‘You can’t say that and not tell me – come on, out with it!’
‘OK, well, here goes. You won’t get cross, will you?’
‘I don’t know yet, do I?’ She started to feel worried. What on earth was he going to say?
‘Oh dear,’ Norm said. ‘Look – lie down again. I’ll tell you, but don’t keep looking at me!’
Obediently she settled in the crook of his arm again and waited.
‘Thing is,’ he said. ‘After I broke my leg – I mean, it’s not as if I was sick really, I just had my leg in plaster – they moved a couple of us into this other place. It had been a big house, just in a street, and they’d requisitioned it to use as a sort of convalescent rest home. I had a nice room looking out the back, over a little garden, more like a courtyard really, with a couple of trees, oranges and lemons – lovely, it was. Anyroad . . .’ Here she heard him sound more reluctant again. ‘My bed was by the window, so I could look out, and over the other side of the yard – well, I thought I was imagining it to start with, but then I knew I wasn’t – there was this girl – well, woman. She kept whistling and calling out to me, over and over, beckoning me, you know, all coy-like.’
Em stiffened, but didn’t interrupt.
‘Anyroad, this kept on, and course I was a bit bored by now and she never left me in peace, so . . . Well, I went over. I mean, I couldn’t just go, I had to sneak out: through the window . . .’
Her head shot up. ‘With a broken leg?’
‘Well, yeah. It weren’t easy, I can tell you. There was this big vine thing, growing up the wall . . . Don’t look at me!’ Firmly he pushed her head down again. ‘She came down and let me in and, well . . . The thing is, Em, it wasn’t anything – not that meant anything, not like you and me. I was just passing the time! And anyroad, I got what I deserved because she was a naughty girl, that one, I had to pay her a bit and give her my ciggies and’ – he finished in a rush – ‘whatever it was I caught, I got it off her.’
‘You mean . . . ?’ Her first reaction was to snort with laughter.
‘The clap – and it’s not funny, that I can tell you. The cure’s not funny, either . . .’
‘Did I say I thought it was funny? You carrying on with someone – some Italian bird with great big—’ Em made a gesture at her breasts.
‘I never said she had . . . !’
‘But I bet she did, dain’t she?’ Em shot out of bed, hurt and furious. ‘There’s me stuck here worrying about you, bringing up your son, when all the time . . . Well, you got what you bloody deserved, didn’t you?’
‘Oh, Em, don’t – look, I told you, it wasn’t like that . . . It was all stupid, a mistake. She was just a tart on the make, and I fell for it . . .’
But she was out of the bedroom door, running downstairs in her nightdress, full to the brim with fury. The bastard! The filthy, unfaithful, cheating . . .
She paced up and down the back room, arms crossed over her chest, shaking with hurt and anger. She kept thinking about that woman’s big breasts, which he hadn’t told her about. After a few moments she burst into tears. She’d never even thought of being unfaithful to Norm, and yet look what he’d done – and so easily! And all the time here she’d been, waiting, worrying. She sank down on a chair, feeling very sorry for herself.
After a time she was cold. She wiped her face and tried to think. What was she going to do? Hold this against him and leave him? Move back in with Mom and Dad and have to explain to everyone? Her heart sank at the thought. She couldn’t exactly go anywhere at this moment, because she had nothing on but her nightie. There was nothing for it: she was going to have to forgive him – but not too soon! A moment later she started to see the funny side of it. It was so like Norm to get in a scrape like that.
Soon she heard movements upstairs. Her in-laws would be down any moment and she didn’t want to see them. She crept back upstairs and went into the bedroom, trying to keep a straight face, but her lips were twitching. Norm was still in bed, but he eyed her warily. He looked rotten.
‘Look, I’m sorry, love,’ he said wretchedly. ‘I know it was wrong and stupid. It’s not as if I felt anything for her. I don’t even know what her name was, to tell you the truth. It’s just – you know what us blokes get like. And she was on at me, morning, noon and night . . .’
‘Were you very poorly?’ Em asked, sitting on the edge of the bed, keeping her face straight.
Norm winced. ‘Ooh – yes.’
‘I’m surprised you didn’t break your flaming neck getting out of the window in the first place!’ The laughter erupted out of he
r then, at the thought of Norm shinning out of the window with a plaster cast on and trying to creep quietly across some courtyard. In a moment more tears, of mirth this time, were running down her face. ‘Oh my God, you really are the end!’
Norm, relieved and surprised, started laughing too.
‘You are properly better now, aren’t you?’ she asked. ‘I don’t bloody well want to catch anything!’
‘I’m all right,’ he said. ‘They gave me some of the new stuff – penicillin. It’s marvellous. God knows what it would have been like without it. The stupid thing is, they was always on about it, VD this and VD that. Films and talks, and that. There was this girl in the films who they were always telling you to, you know, beware of, called . . .’ He started to chuckle himself, so at first he couldn’t get the words out. ‘She was called Susie Rotten Crotch!’
‘What?’ Em fell back on the bed so that her head was resting on Norm’s stomach, both of them howling with laughter.
It was a while before either of them could speak again, but eventually she managed to roll over and look directly at him. They searched each other’s eyes and, knowing that what they saw was true, put their arms around one another.
‘You,’ Em said, wet-faced, ‘are the daftest bugger alive, but for some reason I love you. I can’t seem to help it.’
1948-1949
VII
KATIE
Thirty-Eight
June 1948
‘Bye-bye – see you tomorrow. Say goodbye, Michael!’
Maudie, heavily pregnant, stood at her door waving them off, a smile on her face, which was for the moment plumper than usual.
‘Thanks, see you in the morning!’ Katie called.
Michael waved and then, without looking what he was doing, reached out for his mother and almost fell down the step.
‘Careful! I’m here, silly,’ she laughed, taking his hand and walking along with him. ‘Have you had a nice day?’
Michael turned his serious, deep-brown eyes up to hers, nodding. ‘We did plasticine. Can I have a bun?’
Katie showed him a little white paper bag. ‘I got a currant bun. But you have it for your pudding. You’ll spoil your tea else.’
‘Oh, Mom – I’m hungry!’ Michael protested. ‘Please. Can I?’
As they turned into their road she relented and broke off a bit of the bun. ‘Here, that’ll keep you going. But you’re not having it all, so don’t ask me. ’Ey-up – what’s going on?’
Usually when she got home from work the house was quiet. On a nice day like today, Sybil would be out at the back, tending her beloved garden. But in the distance Katie could see Sybil out at the front, and the neighbours, Edna Arbuckle and her daughter Susan, were at the wall that divided their houses, all deep in conversation. Both Arbuckles were large, fleshy women, especially Susan, who was thirty-five and still lived with her mother. She was big-boned and beetle-browed, her thick hair cut savagely into a bob around her heavy jaw. Her mother’s one reigning obsession was to find her a husband.
They all turned as she and Michael reached the gate, and Edna Arbuckle, a paler-haired, softer woman than her daughter, said portentously, ‘You’re going to have to tell her, Miss Routh.’
Katie’s pulse quickened. What on earth was the matter? Michael was perfectly fine, as obviously were Maudie and Sybil Routh, and there was no one else she could think of to worry about.
‘Ah – Katie,’ Sybil said, limping towards her. She suffered with her feet and was, as usual, wearing slippers with her smudgy green frock. In the bright sun, her grey hair seemed to have a yellow tinge. ‘Bit of a do, I’m afraid. We’ve lost Mr Gudgeon.’
‘Lost him?’ Katie wondered for a split second whether he had ambled off somewhere.
‘Dead in his bed,’ Sybil said with her usual directness. Katie heard Edna Arbuckle make a slight sound of protest. Edna would always have whispered passed away. Or even fallen asleep, which would only have confused things further. ‘I had to have him carted away in an ambulance.’ This phrasing provoked another squeak from the other side of the wall.
‘The poor, poor man,’ Edna said, mopping her eyes. Susan looked weepy and pink-cheeked too. If Sybil was upset, it would have been hard to tell, but Katie knew that was the way with Sybil. She didn’t wear her heart on her sleeve. Michael, still chewing on his bit of bun, was staring up at them all in fascination.
A thought made Edna perk up. ‘I suppose you’ll be looking for another lodger now, won’t you, Miss Routh?’
‘Oh, I dare say.’ Sybil held the gate open for Katie and Michael and, as if grateful to have a reason to escape, ushered them into the house and shut the door.
‘Oh!’ she declared. ‘That woman – how she does keep on! I’m all behind myself, but I have got a stew pot on. I expect you need a cup of tea . . .’
Katie followed her shuffling figure – so familiar now, with her baggy clothes, hair pinned up in a bun – to the back kitchen, from where there was a delicious smell of stew. Sybil was good at making food tasty, even on short rations. In fact, despite her bad hands and feet, Sybil ran the house very competently.
She made tea, then fished about in the kitchen cupboard. ‘I could do with a nip of something stronger . . . Want some?’ She held out a bottle of malt whisky, which she only ever drank on very special occasions.
‘Oh, no thanks,’ Katie said. She didn’t like even the smell of whisky, and certainly didn’t want to deprive Sybil.
‘Ah!’ She took a nip and sank down on a chair with an outrush of breath. ‘That’s the ticket.’
Katie sat Michael down and poured a helping of tea into her saucer for him.
‘So – whatever happened? To Mr Gudgeon, I mean?’
‘Oh, well, the old boy never got up this morning is the long and short of it. Must have gone in his sleep. The awful thing is, I didn’t notice, because as you know he didn’t always rise early, and I was going up to the shops myself today. I went off smartish, so as not to be right at the back of that beastly meat queue – hence . . .’ and she gestured at the stew pot. ‘It was only later, when I’d got back and was looking to see if I had any pearl barley . . . I realized the house was quiet. You know, a different sort of quiet from usual. Eventually I went up and tapped on his door, and there was no reply. The poor old fellow was stiff as a board by then, no teeth in – oh dear, oh dear. I mean, he was going on for eighty, but it’s always a shock when it happens.’
‘Poor you,’ Katie said sadly. ‘What a thing to happen. She had liked Mr Gudgeon, who had been a timid, kindly man. They had seen more of him after the death of his wife, last year.
‘And now,’ Sybil said, knocking back the last of her Scotch and rallying herself, ‘as Edna so rightly predicted, I shall have to look for a new tenant.’
‘You won’t have any trouble there,’ Katie said. ‘There’ll be a queue.’
‘I know.’ Sybil grimaced, before her lined face broke into a wicked grin. ‘But will any of them be a husband for Susan?’
When Katie first moved into the household of Sybil Routh, it had taken her some time to get used to it, and to what was expected.
‘I think it’s going to be all right,’ she reported to Maudie the first week, as they had a cuppa together. ‘The room’s lovely, now I’ve got a few of my things in it, and Miss Routh is so much nicer than some of those other miserable old bitches I could have had as landladies. She even lets Michael tinkle on the piano sometimes, and it’s quite a racket. And she’s very pleased if I lend a hand, which I’m quite happy to do. Her feet look so sore for moving around much. But she is rather odd, isn’t she?’
‘I think her background was quite bohemian,’ Maudie said, frowning as she tried to remember what she’d heard about Sybil Routh. ‘At least on her mother’s side. Father was a clergyman of course, but with his own ideas to some extent, and I think her mother had come from a family of arty types. So what with the missionary input and the artistes, she’s a bit of a rum mixture.’
&nbs
p; At first, Katie was nervous of Miss Routh. Her posh, outspoken manner was not what Katie was used to, but she quickly discovered several things that made life in the house a very good experience. The first was that while Sybil Routh was interested in what was going on in the world, and in humanity in general, she was not nosy about people in particular. She did not pry, nor did Katie find herself cross-questioned about her past or feel that her privacy was going to be invaded. But she realized, over time, that if she did tell Sybil things, she would not been shocked or judgemental – she seemed to treat people with a broad, breezy objectivity.
Secondly, the fact that she demanded that the household share their evening meal together meant that life was not lonely, that Michael got to know other adults, and that the atmosphere in the house was gently, if eccentrically, friendly. They all assembled in the evening after Sybil banged the mellow-sounding gong on the hall table. At first there had been the quiet banker Mr Treace, who over time had been replaced by various harmless young men, clerks and salesmen requiring lodgings in what was the smallest room on offer in the house. None of them really stuck in the memory. The latest was a slightly older man, Mr Jenkins, who was doing the accounts in a firm on the Soho Road. Then there were the Gudgeons. Mrs Gudgeon scarcely ever left her room, but Mr Gudgeon had taken his evening meals with them, before carrying a portion up to feed to his sickly wife. He was a faded, shy person with clicking, badly fitting dentures, but had a genuine and kindly nature. Sometimes he told them stories about his past out in Barnt Green as a boy.
Katie began to relax and realize that she and Michael could have a safe, settled life here. Sybil had a gift for uniting this rather unpromising group of people into a household with character. Katie also began to have time to take more interest in the outside world. Sybil was forever listening in to the news. When the Mahatma, Mr Gandhi, had been assassinated earlier that year, Sybil was so upset that none of them could have avoided hearing and learning about the man, and all that he had meant.
