Across the Mersey

by Annie Groves

  A decorator had been hired to distemper the walls pale yellow, and the oilcloth covering the kitchen table matched the pattern on the curtains.

  The house had a good-sized walk-in pantry with stone shelves and plenty of storage space, but Bella had still insisted on having a kitchen dresser with shelves at the top and two cupboards underneath.

  ‘I mean that there’s no supper,’ she told him, turning up the dial on the wireless and pretending to concentrate on the sound of Judy Garland singing ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow.’

  ‘When a man comes in from work, he ruddy well expects his wife to have his supper ready for him,’ Alan bellowed at her, red-faced, as he strode over to the wireless and turned down the volume.

  ‘Work? You?’ Bella scoffed. ‘That will be the day, or has your father given you a job drinking G and Ts now? Mind you, he should because it’s all you’re fit for.’ She turned the volume back up and started to hum along to the song.

  She had spent the afternoon with her mother. They had gone to see a film together and then she had gone back to her parents where her mother had cooked her some supper.

  With her father being so busy with all the extra work he was getting from the Ministry and no Charlie to help him, he was working all hours God sent, as Vi put it, and Bella knew that her mother welcomed her company.

  It was certainly far more pleasant going back home and being spoiled by her mother than staying here on her own or, even worse, having to put up with a husband who seemed to think a wife was some kind of skivvy on hand to wait on him hand and foot, instead of someone he should cherish and adore.

  ‘Now listen, you,’ Alan yelled, grabbing hold of Bella’s arm and forcing her round to face him.

  ‘Let go of me,’ Bella yelled back.

  ‘This is my house and I’ll do what I ruddy well like in it,’ Alan told her.

  ‘Your house? That’s a joke,’ Bella taunted him. ‘It’s my father that bought it and you’d better just remember that. And if you want some supper you can go round to your parents and get your mother to make it for you,’ she finished triumphantly.

  She knew perfectly well that he wouldn’t dare go to them in the state he was in, smelling of drink and hardly able to stand up properly.

  ‘I should have married Trixie and not you. Things would have been different then.’

  ‘Well, you didn’t, did you? You’re going to have to tell that father of yours he needs to pay you more, as well. I had to ask Mummy to help me out with the housekeeping again this week.’

  ‘If you didn’t waste so ruddy much, you’d have plenty.’

  ‘Plenty? You spend more on petrol for that car of yours than you give me. Daddy was saying that he’s surprised you can still get so much petrol.’

  In fact what her father had actually said was that the Parkers must have access to someone who was prepared to let them have more fuel than the Government was allowing for private use – but at a price – and that he wouldn’t mind knowing where they were getting it from as he could do with a bit more himself. Bella wasn’t going to say that to Alan, of course. She didn’t want him thinking that he was going to get her to ask him for something. He’d love that.

  She had never imagined that marriage would be like this. She had expected Alan to spoil her and give in to her in exactly the same way as her parents had. But instead … her mouth tightened.

  Her mother had tried to ask her if Alan was ‘being a good husband’ to her, as she had put it, and Bella had known from the look of embarrassment on her mother’s face that she had been asking if Alan was fulfilling his marital duties in the bedroom. What a joke that was! They had been married going on for three months now and there’d only been one occasion in the whole of that time when he’d managed to get his ‘thing’ hard enough to be a proper husband to her. Not that she intended to tell her mother the truth – or anyone else. She had smiled sweetly instead and nodded her head, knowing that her mother wouldn’t pursue the subject. No, as far as the rest of the world was concerned, Bella was determined that they must think of her marriage as perfect.

  Not that she minded all that much about Alan’s failure in the bedroom department. It wasn’t her fault, after all. Alan could bluster and complain all he liked, but they both knew that his inability to do what a husband was supposed to do with his wife had given her the upper hand, Bella thought triumphantly. One word from her to anyone else about his failure and he’d be a laughing stock, and she’d told him so. His failure put her in a position of power, so far as she was concerned. She didn’t need to do anything to try to please him if she didn’t feel like it, and that included cooking his meals.

  ‘I’ve ordered tickets for us for the Tennis Club New Year’s Eve dance, and you’d better stay sober because I’m not having you showing me up,’ she warned him.

  She’d already got her eye on the new dress she wanted; the kind of dress, with its low neckline, that an unmarried girl like Trixie couldn’t possibly wear even if she had the looks for it, but in which she, as a married woman, would easily outshine every other woman there. Alan was a very lucky man. Far luckier than he deserved to be. It was a pity Alan had had so much to drink, because she wished that he would go to his mother’s for his supper. She wanted to try out that new nail polish she’d persuaded her mother to buy for her and listen to the wireless in peace. Thinking of her mother reminded her of the conversation they had had.

  ‘Oh, and we’re going to my parents for our Christmas dinner,’ she told Alan.

  ‘I told you last week that we were going to mine.’

  ‘Did you? I must have forgotten,’ Bella told him insincerely.

  ‘Bitch.’ Alan swore at her as he made another grab for her, lunging towards her and then staggering into the table when Bella sidestepped him neatly.

  He was always aggressive and inclined to violence when he’d been drinking. She made to step past him, but he moved faster than she had anticipated, trapping her with the weight of his body, just like he did in bed, but now against the door.

  She gave him a withering look and then gasped in shocked pain when he thumped her in the stomach. The pain sent her sick and too dizzy to move, fury filling her that he should dare to treat her like this. But then he hit her again and again and her fury became fear and that fear became a pain that overwhelmed and enveloped her to become a red haze of agony splintered by his continuing blows, until mercifully oblivion overtook her.

  Bella came round to the savage thrust of Alan’s body within her own. Slowly and painfully she opened her eyes. She knew she was still in the kitchen, because from where she was lying she could see the blurry outline of the legs of the kitchen table. She shifted her gaze to Alan, too weak to do anything other than focus helplessly on the blind fixed expression of hatred and triumph contorting his face, as he thrust violently into her, the friction of his movements within her unwelcoming body a fresh source of pain.

  His lips were curled back against his teeth, his eyes narrowed and glittering.

  ‘Bitch! Bitch!’ He all but screamed the word at her when he saw that her eyes were open, his breath coming in short excited bursts until finally his frenzy overwhelmed him and it was over. The movement of his body blotted out the light as he leaned over her, his fingers fastening in her hair and then tightening, bringing fresh pain as he lifted her head and then banged it down hard on the linoleum, allowing her to escape back into nothingness.

  ELEVEN

  ‘You’ve passed! Oh, Grace love, I’m that proud of you.’ Jean dabbed at her eyes with the corner of her apron. Grace had arrived just as Jean was finishing peeling the potatoes for dinner, and now her mother added, ‘I knew it must be good news the minute I set eyes on you, you looked that happy.’

  ‘I still can’t believe it.’ Grace shook her head.

  Her mother was every bit as thrilled and pleased as Grace had known she would be, and it was lovely to be home. It was only now that she was here that she recognised just how much she had missed her f
amily

  ‘Your dad’s gone down to the allotment and the twins with him. Him and a few of the others have decided to try keeping a couple of pigs. They’ll be back soon. He’ll be ever so pleased that you’ve passed, love.’

  ‘I don’t know how I ever got to pass. I keep thinking it’s a mistake. I’m having to pinch meself to make sure it’s real,’ Grace laughed. ‘I’m that happy that the Hospital is letting us all go home for Christmas, Mum. I was really upset thinking I wouldn’t be able to be here. Do you think that Luke might get home?’

  ‘I don’t know, love.’ Jean looked sad, her face crumpling slightly.

  ‘I do so wish that Luke and Dad would make up,’ Grace said. ‘I had a letter from Luke on Wednesday. I think he must be in France, although of course he can’t say.’

  Jean tried to smile. Luke wrote regularly to them as well, but whilst she read his letters over and over again, Sam refused even to look at them.

  ‘Seeing as you’re back you can come down to St John’s market with me this afternoon. I want to go and order a goose for Christmas Day. With your dad getting extra pay for doing his bit, I’ve managed to put a decent bit away for some Christmas treats. Might as well buy them now ’cos your dad reckons we’ll have rationing before long. We can look round and perhaps order a nice tongue as well …’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mum, but I can’t go with you.’

  ‘You can’t? Why not?’

  Grace looked self-conscious. ‘I’ve promised to go to a matinée this afternoon.’

  ‘With those girls you’ve made friends with?’ Jean guessed.

  Grace went pink. ‘No, not them. It’s a lad I’ve met. A decent sort, he is,’ she told her mother hurriedly, seeing that she was beginning to look concerned. ‘I told you about him. He’s the one who gave me a lift back to the hospital after the wedding and that accident.’

  Grace could see that her mother wasn’t looking convinced.

  ‘He lives in Wavertree,’ she told her, ‘with his mum and dad up on Oakhill Road. His dad’s got a greengrocer’s shop.’

  Jean pursed her lips. ‘Oakhill Road? It’s all semidetached’s up there. Me and your dad looked at one. Nice big garden, it had, but only the three bedrooms, them not having any attic like we’ve got here.’

  ‘We’re closer to the shops as well,’ Grace pointed out. ‘Teddy says his mum is always complaining about how far she’s got to walk.’

  ‘Well …’ Grace could see that her mother wasn’t looking quite so concerned now that she had told her a bit about Teddy, but she still warned her with maternal concern, ‘Just you be careful, Grace. There’s a war on, after all, and some of these lads—’

  ‘Teddy isn’t like that,’ Grace assured her. ‘Bin just as he ought to be with me all along, he has. Anyway, it’s only a matinée.’

  ‘Well, I’m not sure what your dad will have to say.’

  ‘I’m nineteen, Mum, and a nurse – well, I will be,’ she amended before changing the subject. ‘I’ve brought the twins some chocolate. I thought I’d get them one of those records they’re so fond of for Christmas.’

  ‘Your dad won’t thank you for that. He threatens to get rid of that gramophone at least once a week. Mad about their music, they are. I caught the pair of them doing this daft dancing the other day. Jitterbugging, they called it.’ Jean shook her head. ‘They’ve learned it from that Eileen Jarvis in their class at school, whose sister teaches dancing. In my day we knew how to dance properly, a nice waltz or a foxtrot, not this silly stuff.’

  Grace hid a small smile. The other girls had been saying only the other day that they ought to be thinking of getting tickets for some dances over Christmas, and especially for New Year’s Eve, and they had mentioned the new jitterbug craze, which was so popular in America.

  Her head hurt so much she could hardly lift it off the pillow, and when Bella tried to move the pain in her stomach and her ribs took her breath.

  The chair was still where she had put it last night under the door handle to keep Alan out of the bedroom, though. She could see it in the dim light coming in through the blackout blinds her mother had made for her, and which were press-studded to the window frame. She looked at the alarm clock. Eleven o’clock! She had vague memories of dragging herself upstairs and then being violently sick in the bathroom before shutting herself in the bedroom and propping the chair under the handle so that Alan wouldn’t be able to get in.

  Alan. He’d be at work now. He was always moaning about the fact that his father insisted he work on Saturday mornings. She got out of bed cautiously, tensing in anticipation against the pain that movement would bring.

  Bruises were already forming on her stomach and her ribs, her flesh too sore to bear the pressure of her own explorative touch. Bitterness calcified the angry contempt she already felt for Alan, overlaying last night’s fear. He needn’t think she was going to let him get away with what he had done, because she wasn’t. She lifted her hand to the back of her head. She could feel a lump where he had banged her head on the floor, and her hair was sticky. She removed her had and looked in horror at the dried blood on her fingers.

  Tears burned her eyes as she moved too quickly and pain savaged her back into immobility. Just let him wait until she told her parents what he had done. Mummy would have her back home with them before Alan could say a word.

  Bella frowned, ignoring the thudding pain that struck right through her head. Was that what she wanted? Being a married woman was far better than being an unmarried daughter living at home. A married woman was to be envied by those girls not lucky enough to be looking forward to their own marriage. She could just imagine how some of those cats at the Tennis Club would gossip about her behind her back if it got out that she had let Alan treat her so badly that she had had to go running home to her mother.

  No, she had a better idea. Another way of punishing him. A better way; a way that would scare him, and give her the upper hand, she decided triumphantly.

  ‘Oh, it’s you, Bella.’

  Alan’s mother certainly didn’t look very pleased to see her, Bella acknowledged, but that didn’t bother her. Mrs Parker wore her greying hair scraped back into a tight bun. She was a tall woman, taller than her husband and very well built, with an uncompromising no-nonsense manner.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind, Mother-in-law, but I feel ever so poorly, I really do.’

  Bella might be having to fake her exaggerated politeness but she didn’t have to fake the pain that had her lifting her hand to her head, or the dark shadows bruising the skin beneath her eyes. ‘I would have gone home to Mummy, but, well, I wasn’t sure I could …’ She closed her eyes and leaned heavily against the open front door.

  ‘You’d better come in,’ Alan’s mother told her, curtly taking hold of her arm, and urging her, ‘Hurry up. I don’t want the neighbours talking.’

  Once she had closed the front door behind Bella, she released her, eyeing her with hostility.

  ‘Now what exactly is it that’s wrong with you?’

  White-faced, her voice faltering, Bella told her truthfully, ‘I’ve been ever so sick … and … and fainting. I wouldn’t have come round bothering you but I just didn’t know what to do. Alan will be back for his lunch any minute, but I’ve left him a note saying that I’m here. I thought that perhaps the fresh air …’

  Bella could see that Alan’s mother had looked more displeased and grim with every word she had uttered. Well, it would serve her right to be led up the garden path a little bit after the mean way she’d been with her, and think that she was pregnant, especially with her going on about goody-goody Trixie all the time, even if the truth was that Bella wanted herself to be pregnant with Alan’s baby even less than she knew her mother-in-law did.

  ‘Well, I still don’t know what you’ve come round here for. It seems to me that it’s a doctor you want to be seeing, not me,’ she told Bella forthrightly.

  ‘A doctor! Oh, no. I mean …’ Bella allowed her eyes to fill with t
ears and her bottom lip to tremble. ‘I know it was only an accident – Alan wasn’t even there – but … well, it sounds so silly saying that I knocked myself out walking into a door, and then went and cut my head as well.’

  Alan’s mother’s face was a picture as she struggled between immediate relief and the sudden horrified dawning that what she might be facing could be a lot worse than an unwanted grandchild.

  ‘You’ve had an accident?’ she demanded.

  ‘Could I have a cup of tea?’ Bella begged her. ‘And p’haps sit down? Only I feel ever so weak.’

  ‘You’d better come into the kitchen.’

  Delighted that her plan was going so well, Bella followed her mother-in-law down the cold drab hallway. The Parkers’ house was nowhere as nicely done out as her parents’. The skirtings and doors were painted dull dark brown, lincrusta wallpaper painted dark green stretched up from the skirting to dado rail height above, while the rest of the wall was papered in maroon and green striped wallpaper. The whole effect was overpowering and gloomy.

  The kitchen was no better, its walls painted in shiny green paint, the oilcloth on the floor the same dark brown as the skirtings.

  The smell of cooking tripe filled the kitchen. Bella’s stomach heaved. She hated tripe and her own mother knew better than to cook it ever.

  ‘So what exactly happened then?’

  Bella sank down into the chair she was offered and tried to blot out the smell of the cooking tripe.

  ‘It was just after Alan had come in from …’ Bella bit down on her bottom lip and let her voice falter. She was enjoying this. ‘Please don’t say anything to Mr Parker, will you, only poor Alan is working so hard and if he does stop off on the way home for a bit of a drink, well, he doesn’t mean any harm. Afterwards, he feels really bad about the way it makes him. He always says so.’