by Anne Bennett
He had tried two assistants since she had left and both had proved useless and he was limping along on his own. He did tentatively mention coming back to Angela, but she was vehement in her refusal. ‘I don’t think Barry would like it,’ she said. ‘He earns well enough now and we can manage and though Mary isn’t old, she’s too old to start looking after babies. She’s done enough of that and anyway I would miss my wee girl if I didn’t see her all day, every day. Unless there is no alternative I don’t see the point of having children and giving them to someone else to rear.’
‘I do quite understand my dear,’ George said. ‘It was just a thought.’
‘And kindly meant I’m sure,’ Angela said. ‘You were always very good to me, all of us really and if I had to have some form of employment I would be back here like a shot.’
But that wasn’t likely to happen and George knew he had to accept it and move on as Angela had. She bade goodbye to George as customers appeared, but it wasn’t so easy to leave because they all wanted a peep of the baby and they oohed and aahed over her and said she was a darling wee dote.
Angela didn’t mind because she was immensely proud of her baby, but later as she was making her way home she was a little anxious about George. It was common knowledge that his wife wasn’t an easy woman. She was a fine-looking woman still and must have been a stunner in her youth, but Angela doubted she had a kind or loving bone in her body.
‘It’s often the way with very beautiful women,’ Mary said when Angela mentioned her concerns about George when she got home. ‘The men have their heads turned and Matilda Maitland would have made a play for George because of the shop.’
‘But she doesn’t like the shop.’
‘Doesn’t like demeaning herself to serve in it, but I bet she likes the living it brings in,’ Mary said and added, ‘Women like that seldom have children. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if George is lacking in that area as well, and you know what I’m talking about.’
Angela did but she was still young enough to blush discussing even mildly intimate things. But she thought Mary was probably right and it might explain how emotional George had become when he saw Connie. She felt sorry for him, for he was a kind and generous man and she was sure he would pay Matilda back a thousand-fold for the merest scrap of affection.
‘It wouldn’t happen in the Catholic Church for the man would have the priest out to give the wife a talking to, but he’s Church of England and likely they don’t do that kind of thing.’
‘No I suppose not.’
‘And I know what you think of George and I am fond of him myself,’ Mary said, seeing Angela’s woebegone face. ‘But there is nothing you can do and there is a saying that he has made his bed so he must lie on it, so if I were you I would try to put George’s problems out of your head and get ready to feed Miss Connie for she’s stirring in her pram and will be hollering in a minute.’
Mary was right, she thought as she lifted Connie from the pram, really what ailed George was none of her business and she could do nothing to help him and she sighed as she sat down and began unbuttoning her blouse.
Connie was almost five weeks when she smiled for the first time and Angela thought for a moment her heart had stopped beating and she lifted her up in her arms and held her tight and called to Mary to come and see. And she did see because now that Connie knew how to smile, she seemed to do a lot of it.
‘Wait till her Daddy sees that,’ Mary said. ‘He’ll be turning cartwheels, so he will.’
Angela laughed. ‘He might well,’ she said. ‘For he’s one proud father. I think as she grows she will wrap him around her little finger.’
‘I believe it’s the way with fathers and daughters,’ Mary said. ‘And sure, didn’t you have Matt where you wanted him? He never cuddled the boys as he did you.’
Angela knew Mary spoke the truth and she smiled wistfully. ‘I would have loved him to see Connie,’ Angela said with a sigh.
‘Then he would have wanted to live long enough to see her grow up,’ Mary said. ‘Anyway, if we believe the priests that there is something after this life, he might well be looking down on us just this minute.’
‘Do you doubt there’s an afterlife then?’
‘No,’ Mary said. ‘Not really. I can’t afford not to believe for then I would never see my boys again, or Matt of course. As it is I can hope that all those I’ve loved and lost will be waiting for me at the other side.’
‘And my parents and siblings,’ Angela said. ‘Comforting thought that, isn’t it.’
‘It is,’ Mary said with an emphatic nod. ‘And so I will believe it until I’m proved wrong.’
‘And so will I,’ Angela said and she removed the baby from her breast and sat her up, rubbing her back to get her wind up. Connie sat groggily, almost replete and then she gave an enormous burp. ‘I hope that’s not an opinion, young lady,’ Mary said in mock severity and both women burst out laughing.
Angela relished every day and took delight in every milestone Connie passed like the first time she rolled over, or a tiny tooth peeping through the swollen red gums, often after many fractious and fretful nights. Then there was the first time she held a rattle in her hand without dropping it, and a few days later she could pass it from one hand to the other. Barry was absolutely delighted when she shouted ‘Dada’ one day as he came through the door and she learned to clap her hands and sit up unaided without a pile of cushions around her in case she fell over.
‘She’ll be walking soon and then she will be one body’s work,’ Mary remarked one day. ‘So you best get ready to run after her, because my running days are over.’
Angela knew that only too well. She could never linger at Mass nattering to Maggie now because as Connie became more mobile, she went to the early Mass at nine with Barry while Mary minded the baby and she had to hurry home so Mary could go to the one at eleven and Angela did the dinner for them all. So the girls agreed to meet on Saturday mornings as they did their shopping and Connie loved her Auntie Maggie very much. ‘Tomorrow’s Barry’s favourite day in the week,’ Angela said as they were wandering around looking for something cheap but tasty for Sunday dinner.
‘Why, because he gets a lie in?’
‘No he doesn’t have one of those, he wakes the same time, which is just as well, as Connie thinks six, or sometimes before six is a grand time to get up. No, he looks after Connie while I get on with the dinner. He says it’s the only time he has her all to himself and they do have some fun together.’
‘He’s good to do that,’ Maggie maintained.
‘I suppose,’ Angela said. ‘He always said she’s his baby too.’
‘Well that is true, but some men think looking after a baby is beneath them, women’s work. He doesn’t go for a drink then on Sunday morning?’
Angela shook her head. ‘Nor at any other time in the general way of things. He earns enough to pay the rent, the gas, put good food on the table, have a cellar full of coal in the winter and buy clothes for Connie as she grows and for us all to have good boots on our feet. Many aren’t as comfortable as we are but there is little slack. If there is any money left he tends to put it in the Post Office, so there is always something put by for that proverbial rainy day.’
‘So he doesn’t go to the football either?’
Angela shook her head and Maggie said, ‘Angela you have got a good man there.’
‘You don’t have to tell me that,’ said Angela.
It was coming up to Christmas, which hadn’t been fully celebrated the year before because of Matt’s terminal illness, but Barry said they must do the works with a child in the house, although she was far too young to know anything about it.
Mary had made the cake some time ago with Angela’s help and they had all had a stir of the pudding. Now with just a fortnight to go Barry and Angela got the tree, streamers and decorations down from the attic where they were stored while Mary made mountains of mince pies. ‘Mammy, you’re not feeding an army,’ Bar
ry complained good-naturedly.
‘Well Stan’s coming too isn’t he?’
This was true. Barry had asked the Gaffer when he found out he would be spending Christmas on his own, again. He had spent every Christmas alone since his wife had died, but unless they had been related Barry couldn’t have asked him while he was an apprentice. People might have thought he was sucking up. ‘Stan is only one more person, Mammy,’ Barry said.
‘I know,’ Mary said. ‘But I want to make plenty so he can take some home with him and I know you when you get started on mince pies.’
‘It isn’t my fault,’ Barry said. ‘You shouldn’t make them so tasty.’
‘Hmm, the term “greedy guts” springs to mind.’
‘Oh come on, Mammy,’ Barry protested. ‘Christmas is one day in the whole blessed year when you can indulge yourself.’
‘You’re right and so that’s why I’m making so many mince pies.’
Angela listened to Barry sparring with his mother with a smile on her face because it was all play acting. Mary would cook them a wonderful Christmas dinner and not stint on anything so that they would be hardly able to move after it. The mince pies would be for the tea along with chicken sandwiches, sausage rolls and pickles and slices of Christmas cake. And then Stan Bishop would go back to his lonely house.
‘It is a shame Stan Bishop would be by himself if you hadn’t asked him to our house for Christmas,’ Angela said to Barry as they scurried home from Mass the Sunday before Christmas. The day was icy so wisps of vapour surrounded her mouth as she spoke and her feet crunched on the frosty ground and she cuddled closer to Barry as she went on, ‘He is such a lovely, considerate man, I’m surprised he’s still single. I mean his wife has been dead some years now. I couldn’t remember all of it because I was just a child, but Mammy told me all about that and I could sort of remember the funeral. It was ever so sad and then to lose the baby as well.’
‘He didn’t lose the baby,’ Barry said. ‘Not in the way you mean. He’s been brought up by his wife’s sister.’
‘So why isn’t he spending Christmas Day with him?’
Barry shrugged. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘He never mentions him.’
‘Never mentions his own son? That doesn’t sound like the Stan I know.’
‘Well he’s pretty good about keeping things close to his chest is Stan,’ Barry said. ‘Maybe you should ask him.’
‘Oh I don’t know that I’d like to do that,’ Angela said. ‘There night be a good reason for him not mentioning him. I am intrigued, though, because I always thought he would make a good father, a bit of a doting parent, you know?’
‘Yeah, I would have thought that too.’
What Barry had told Angela about Stan made her feel differently about the man. She felt incredibly sad for him, but the subject wasn’t broached again until they were sitting round the table eating their Sunday dinner, Connie on her father’s knee. Angela said Barry had told her about Stan’s son that she thought had died and that he never mentioned.
‘He’s not let see him,’ Mary said. ‘So I suppose there’s nothing to say.’
‘Not let see him?’
‘No,’ Mary said. ‘You have to see the situation as it was then. First of all, I have never seen a happier couple than Stan and Kate, and they had a bit of a wait for Daniel because he wasn’t born till 1905. And then tragedy. I wasn’t surprised Stan was so distracted, they were so kind and loving the pair of them. Awful it was and when Kate’s sister Betty came with her husband Roger, I really think Stan saw her as a Godsend, at first. Anyway, even when she took the baby to live with her, because he was all at sixes and sevens and wasn’t in any fit state to look after a baby, and he knew he couldn’t look after him and work.’
‘Yes,’ Angela said. ‘But if he had kept in contact with Daniel and got to know him a bit, he might have come back to live here with him in the end when he was older.’
‘I doubt that,’ Mary said. ‘If he was brought up in the lap of luxury as he is, according to Stan.’
‘No he’d never settle to life here,’ Barry agreed. ‘And why should he? His home, his life, his friends, his school and his doting parents are there. Why would he want to leave all that?’
‘Anyway, that wouldn’t be at all the way Betty would want it. I met her at the funeral and didn’t take to her at all. She wasn’t a bit like her sister Kate. She was quite a lot older and she has never been able to have children.
‘Now I am not saying she wasn’t sorry her sister died and she did mourn her, but the consolation for her would have been the newborn child. She was certainly one of the first ones to hold him, she could almost have given birth to him. She was possessive about him and only begrudgingly handed him over when I was at the font and took him back straight afterwards. I think she wants to pretend the child is hers and Roger’s and doesn’t want Stan in his life. She wants all the child’s love directed towards her.’
‘I don’t think that’s a healthy way of looking at things,’ Angela remarked.
‘It isn’t and the losers are Stan and his son.’
‘He’s still a decent bloke though,’ Barry said. ‘And a good boss. I know he was upset when my brothers were sacked when they finished their apprenticeships, but look how he fought to keep me on.’
‘Yes, I often wondered about that,’ said Angela.
‘It was a bit because of my brothers,’ Barry said. ‘Apparently, Stan told them that it was unlikely the boys would have gone to America if they had been kept on in regular work at the factory and they ended up being drowned at sea. And then with Dad taking sick and dying, he said they had to bear some responsibility.’
‘Even though all Stan said was true,’ Mary said, ‘I’m surprised they took any notice. Places like that are not generally noted for their charitable gestures.’
‘You’re right, they’re not,’ Barry said. ‘But just at the moment they needed experienced workers like Stan and to a lesser extent even me.’
‘Why?’
‘Well it’s a bit hush hush,’ Barry said, remembering too late that Stan advised him not to say anything just yet. ‘Don’t tell anyone, will you?’
‘What sort of anyone?’ Mary commented dryly. ‘I don’t know many Russian spies and the people I do know will not, in the main, be the slightest bit interested and I think Angela would say the same. Your secrets are safe with us.’
‘Well it’s just that we are starting up new lines. It means employment for some, and that’s the good news, and it means all the qualified men have to learn how to work the new machines so we can train the new ones.’
‘Is that all?’ Mary said. ‘That’s what all that cloak and dagger stuff was about?’
Barry nodded as Angela, watching his face, said, ‘So what are the new lines?’
‘We have a whole new section starting up and the people working there will be making bullets. There will be about fifty jobs going.’
‘Bullets!’ Mary echoed. ‘What would we want with so many bulllets?’
Barry didn’t answer, he just said, ‘And that’s not all, because two of the forges are having new dies fitted in the new year to make long narrow tubes, and they will be the barrels for rifles, and batches will be sent along to the gun quarter to be assembled.’
‘But what’s it all about, son?’ Mary asked. ‘It isn’t as if we are at war or anything.’
Barry was suddenly very still and Mary said, ‘You think there’s going to be a war don’t you?’
‘I don’t know,’ Barry admitted. ‘But Stan thinks we might be dragged into that business in Europe.’
‘How could we be?’ Angela asked. ‘It’s miles away.’
‘I know,’ Barry conceded. ‘But the company must know or suspect something, or they wouldn’t go to all this trouble and expense, and if we do go to war then I’d like to think that we were semi-prepared. We can’t wait till the bullets are flying to make our own.’
Just at that moment Connie started
shouting and wriggling and Angela had to take her from Barry so he could eat the rest of his dinner in peace. She put her arms out to Connie who rewarded her with a smile that nearly split her face in two and Angela’s heart constricted with the love beyond measure she felt for this child. As she took her in her arms she knew without a shadow of a doubt, however hard life might be, she would never give her child away for someone else to bring up.
THIRTEEN
That Christmas was a magical one for Angela and she was woken by Barry kissing her lips very gently. ‘What is it?’ she asked him drowsily.
‘Nothing,’ Barry said. ‘I mean, that is, nothing bad. I just couldn’t wait one more minute to give you my Christmas present.’
She fully understood Barry’s impatience when she sat up in bed and opened the large box he handed her, for he had bought her a good, warm coat in navy with a fur trim and matching hat. ‘Oh, Barry, it’s wonderful,’ she cried as she lifted it out of the box.
She knew few women had a coat of any description and none would have one of this quality and she did wonder how Barry had managed to afford it, but she couldn’t spoil the moment by asking him. It was much later when she found out he’d seen it in the Rag Market and Stan had bought it for him and he had paid him so much a week, cutting down his cigarettes to do so. She had been further moved when she heard that, but on Christmas morning she was looking forward to wearing it to Mass.
Oh how proud Angela felt as she stepped out for Mass that crisp, cold Christmas morning. She barely felt the icy chill of the day, wrapped in her warm coat and hat. Even her hands were covered with thick, black, woollen gloves which had been Barry’s present to her the previous Christmas.
She had her hands on the handle of the pram because Connie had to go along with them that morning as they were all going to nine o’clock Mass. Angela made sure though that Connie was wrapped warmly, from her flannelette vest and petticoat beneath her winter-weight dress and cardigan to the pram suit covering all that, one of the two from her two brothers in the States. They said in the letter sent with them that they were all the rage in America, made to protect babies from a harsh New York winter. One was a sort of royal blue and one dark red and Angela had chosen the red one for that morning.
