by Maureen Lee
She took it into the back kitchen to cool, rather glad Eileen hadn’t agreed to the suggestion that she have half. The girls would go through the cake like a dose of salts when they came home from school. She also felt glad she hadn’t asked that question. Eileen Costello and Brenda Mahon were as different as chalk from cheese. Once Eileen had the baby, she’d no doubt have a string of men running after her. Indeed, there’d been a rumour going round about a year ago that she was having an affair with someone in the RAF, though Sheila stoutly denied the whole thing.
Everyone in the street was waiting to see when Eileen’s baby was born. If it didn’t arrive before the end of September, then it couldn’t be Francis Costello’s, which meant his wife had been up to more than digging fields when she was in the Land Army.
Brenda went into the parlour and stared at her dumpy reflection in the full-length mirror. If only she wasn’t so damned plain, It just wasn’t fair. She fluffed out her mousy brown hair, but it merely fell back against her scalp, as flat as a pancake. Maybe if she used a different shampoo, but it was hard enough to buy a shampoo of any sort nowadays.
The sight of the sewing machine in the corner only added to her sense of despair. It might be a good idea to pawn it, get the thing out of the way forever, instead of leaving it as a constant reminder of how she’d been betrayed. Anyroad, the few bob it would fetch would be more than useful. Things were a bit tight at the moment, as the allowance from the Army was scarcely enough to keep body and soul together. If she gave it a good polish . . .
She fetched a duster and a tin of beeswax and began to polish the heavily carved top which had the make SINGER attached to it on a little black and gold enamelled plate. Brenda had always thought the name appropriate, as she often sang as she slid the material through and saw it emerging from the other side, the stitches satisfyingly neat and perfect. She removed the top for the first time since she’d made herself that horrible green frock for the dance on New Year’s Eve, and the sun dancing through the parlour window caught the silver bobbin pin, the needle and the slide plate underneath, the gold paint on the curved black body of the machine; SINGER again, in big gleaming letters. Without thinking, she pressed the treadle with her foot and the needle flashed up and down and the shuttle shot back and forth with a quiet, well-oiled clatter.
Brenda caught her breath, and Xavier might as well never have existed, as a strange warm sensation swept through her body. It was almost as good, no better, than making love! She ran her hand up and down the smooth cast-iron body, and it was like caressing something live, a real person.
She was almost choking with excitement as she opened the door of the sideboard where she kept remnants of material, and began to fling them wildly on the sofa. By the time she’d removed the lot, pieces of cloth were spread all over the room: jewel-coloured velvet, stiff taffeta, soft silk so satisfying to touch, a length of chalk-striped suiting, a lovely piece of navy-blue linen, several pieces of cotton, both striped and gingham, which she’d bought to make frocks for the girls, numerous odds and ends of lace . . .
The pattern books were on the mantelpiece, full of Sonny’s crayoned scribbles. When Brenda opened the Vogue, fingers trembling, it was like greeting a crowd of old friends. She turned to Maternity. There were several smocks, and she could run up a couple for Eileen that very afternoon. Perhaps one in gingham for every day, and that piece of navy-blue linen with a cream lace collar for best.
Brenda felt a bit guilty about the way she’d thought about Eileen earlier on. So what if she’d had an affair! Francis Costello had appeared to be the perfect husband, but then, who could have seemed more perfect that Xavier?
Men, Brenda thought in disgust, they were all the same!
She dragged the machine into the middle of the room, opened the drawer in which she kept her thread, and tut tutted when she found several spools of cotton were grubby on the surface. She recalled how the children used to roll them to each other during the crazy upside-down period when Carrie had been there.
Half an hour later, the material had been cut out, and Brenda Mahon was singing at the top of her voice as she fed the navy-blue linen under the silver foot of her sewing machine.
Ruth knocked on the door of Jacob’s old bedroom and Matt called, “Yes?”
“I was wondering, would you like a cup of tea?”
“No, thank you.”
She hovered on the landing, and jumped when Matt suddenly opened the door. “I’m sorry,” she murmured, though had no idea why she should apologise. It was, after all, her landing.
“I shall be going out in a minute,” Matt said. “I’m on duty with Jack Doyle, firewatching.”
“I know. I just thought you might like a drink before you went, that’s all.”
“Perhaps a flask of something to take with me?” Matt suggested.
“Would coffee do, though I’m afraid it’s that awful Camp stuff?”
“That would be fine,” Matt said politely.
Ruth hurried downstairs, feeling he’d asked just to stop her fussing, and he probably didn’t want a drink at all. It was just like when she’d been a child and Jacob had insisted she put a scarf on in the winter, when a scarf was the last thing she wanted to wear.
Matt came down just as she was screwing the top on the flask. He was dressed as if for work, with a donkey jacket over his old clothes.
“Would you like some sandwiches?” she asked.
“No, thanks.”
“It would be no trouble.”
Matt smiled. “I hate to say this, Ruth, but you’re beginning to sound a little like my mother.”
“I’m sorry.” She sensed irritation behind the smile.
“That’s all right. But if I want anything, I promise, on my heart, I’ll ask.”
After Matt had gone, Ruth checked on Michael who was sleeping peacefully in the cot beside her bed. She watched him for a while, hoping he’d wake up so she could take him downstairs and nurse him, but the baby didn’t stir.
Leaving the door half open, Ruth crept along the landing into Matt’s room, something she often did when he was out. She knew she was prying, and felt ashamed.
It was precisely the sort of thing she detested in other people, the persistent curiosity about other people’s lives, but Matt bothered her. Except for meals, he hardly ever sat downstairs, to talk or listen to the wireless, but spent all his time shut in this room. She realised it was unreasonable to expect otherwise, after all, the marriage had been made on the clear understanding that they expect nothing from each other, but she couldn’t help feeling slightly hurt that he’d sooner be alone than in her company.
The room was exactly the same as when it had been Jacob’s. Apart from a few books, Matt had added nothing to turn it into his own. But then he’d come to Pearl Street with only the working clothes he stood up in. The house in Southey Street where he’d lodged had been completely destroyed in the blitz, and he’d lost whatever few possessions he had. Although they’d both agreed the wedding was a mere formality, that there’d be no fuss, he’d had to buy clothes for the ceremony.
Ruth opened the wardrobe. Matt’s new suit, a rough brown tweed hung neatly alongside Jacob’s small collection of faded shirts and his one and only suit. Ruth ran her fingers along the collar of the shiny black jacket. Strange, but she hardly missed her father. In fact, the neighbours appeared more upset at his passing than she did. Although she’d grown to love him during the short time they’d been reunited, now he’d gone, it was as if they’d never come together again. When she thought about him, it was the Jacob of her childhood who came to mind.
She was about to close the wardrobe, but instead paused and, looking from left to right, as if worried someone were watching, she rooted through the pockets of Matt’s suit to see what she could find.
Nothing, except for a handkerchief, which had been there when she looked the other day.
Ruth bit her lip, slammed the wardrobe door, and leaned against it, panting. What on earth h
ad got into her lately? She was becoming obsessed with Matt. Although she’d affected sympathy, she’d actually felt glad when he told her Maria’s photograph had been lost in the bombing, as well as her letters and the watch she’d given him on their wedding day.
“They were all together in a tin box,” he said. “I searched through the rubble, but it was nowhere to be found. I wasn’t even sure if I was looking in the right place.”
“Never mind, you have your memories,” Ruth said.
“That’s right. No-one can take them away, can they?”
Then he’d gone upstairs and she hadn’t seen him again for hours.
Ruth recalled that Jacob had once said something much the same. She sighed and noticed the cover of the bed was creased where Matt had been sitting. There was no chair in the room. She straightened it, then realised Matt might notice and gather she’d been in, so she sat on the bed to crease it again.
“What a fool I am!” she whispered. “I’m falling in love with him.”
There was something about the Liverpool air, Matt Smith thought as he was on his way round to Jack Doyle’s, particularly when it was sunny. It had a uniquely special quality, a sort of vivid brightness and a luminosity he’d never encountered before. He took a deep breath. No matter how low he felt, he always felt uplifted, even if only momentarily, when he walked through the streets of Bootle on a sunlit day.
Double summertime had been introduced recently, and despite the fact midnight was a mere hour away, it was still light. The fiery sun had just disappeared behind the roofs directly ahead, leaving the sky a magnificent vista of vivid purple slashed with green and gold.
He passed a bomb site, then another. He always felt terrible guilt when he saw the damage his fellow countrymen had inflicted on these, generous, big-hearted people.
Perhaps justice would have been served if he’d been at home when the bomb struck Southey Street and he’d been killed, along with his landlady and her two little girls.
But then he wouldn’t have been there to marry RuthI Matt thought uncomfortably about their recent conversation. Ruth worried him, the way she fussed around pressing food and drink on him which he didn’t want. It could be just his imagination, but he sensed she resented him spending all his time upstairs, as if she would have liked them to sit together like a proper married couple and discuss their day as he and Maria used to do. She seemed to have become a different person altogether from the cold, haughty woman he’d spoken to in Reece’s. Perhaps it was only natural she’d want to look after him with her father so recently dead, offering to darn his socks and do his washing when he was only too happy, indeed preferred, to do all these things for himself.
She was even worse with that poor baby. In fact, Matt thought uneasily, Ruth was almost certainly not fit to adopt Michael. The child was quite literally smothered with affection and scarcely out of her arms during the hours he was awake. It bordered on the unhealthy, the obsessive and possessive love for another woman’s child.
On the few occasions when Matt was left with Michael, he noticed his basically goodnatured and sunny personality was beginning to change. He refused to lie quietly in his pram, which Matt felt sure was what babies were supposed to do, at least for some of the time, but bawled to be picked up and nursed.
Matt kicked at a stone and it landed with a little ping against a lamppost. Perhaps the way Ruth behaved with Michael was only natural, too. After all, her other children had disappeared, perhaps forever. Who could blame her for attaching herself so passionately to a child which had appeared in her life as if by magic? But if that was the case, Matt thought, feeling even more uneasy, so had he. What if she was re-creating for herself a family; first a child, then a husband?
“What the hell have I got myself into?” he cursed as he knocked on Jack Doyle’s front door.
There were raised voices coming from inside. Jack called, “Is that you, Matt?” and without waiting for a reply, “Let yourself in.”
Matt drew the key through the letter box and went inside, where Jack and his eldest daughter, Eileen, appeared to be in the throes of a blazing row.
“You’ve no right to call him a hypocrite,” Eileen said heatedly. “We’re allies, now, just like he said. What did you expect him to say?”
“Allies!” Jack was almost beside himself with rage.
“Allies! He hates Russia and he hates Communism and everything it stands for. He allus has and he allus will.”
Matt sat down and listened with interest. He wondered who the “he” was, the subject of the argument.
“Frankly,” Eileen said icily, “I haven’t got much time for Russia meself. They invaded Poland at the same time as Germany did. Not only that, Russia and Germany signed a Non-Aggression Pact. Nevertheless, we’ve got to accept that things have changed. I mean, he couldn’t very well refer to them as ‘Our former enemies’, could he?”
“Huh! He could have apologised for all the things he said in the past.”
“Don’t be stupid, Dad.”
“Has something happened?” Matt intervened nervously.
Jack turned on him so fiercely that Matt flinched, half expecting a blow. “You bet your bloody life it has,” he spat. “Germany’s only gone and invaded Russia! It was on the wireless earlier on. What d’you think of that?”
Matt closed his eyes briefly. It seemed that Hitler’s ambition knew no bounds, that he was intent on dominating the entire world. To Matt, it only meant more carnage, more cruelty, more wasted lives. He almost felt like apologising to Jack for what his country was doing, but then, Jack knew how he felt.
Instead, he said tiredly, “Well, it didn’t do Napoleon much good, did it?”
“What gets me,” Jack went on, “is on the wireless Churchill referred to Russia as ‘our great ally’, the bloody hypocrite! He’s been calling them every name under the sun for the last twenty-five years, ever since the Revolution.
In fact, the entire establishment is anti-Communist.
They wouldn’t play the Internationale on the BBC when it was May Day.”
“But Churchill didn’t have any choice, did he?” Eileen looked at Matt imploringly, as if anxious to get him on her side.
Matt had no intention of becoming involved in a family argument, though he privately thought Jack was being foolish. Winston Churchill was the best leader the country could possibly have, a fact Jack seemed to recognise most of the time, even if he couldn’t hide his basic, long-held dislike. “I’d sooner not take sides,” he said, smiling.
“Oh, well,” Eileen sighed. “At least it means Hitler’ll be preoccupied somewhere else, though I feel dead sorry for the ordinary Russian people, the same as I feel sorry for ordinary Germans.”
“I reckon the Fiihrer’s bitten off more than he can chew, taking on Russia,’Jack said ominously.
Matt felt that was something with which he could agree.
He nodded. “You’re right, Jack. Let’s hope he has.”
Suddenly, everything was back to normal. Eileen said, “Would you like a cup of tea before I go, Dad?” as if they both had these sort of arguments quite frequently and neither appeared to hold a grudge.
“I wouldn’t mind. How about you, Matt?”
“Please.”
Eileen got to her feet. “I’ve made a sponge cake for me Dad and I was going to give him half to take with him.
Would you like the other half, luv?”
“That would be very nice, thank you.” Matt felt he could take things from these people, because they gave without wanting anything in return, unlike Ruth. Every time he let Ruth do something for him, he felt as if he were making another small commitment, and the more he let her do, the more he let her give, he had the feeling that before he knew it, he would be committed fully. Anyway, he liked the Doyles. He liked being in Jack’s house, and the one in Pearl Street in which Eileen lived with her sister and a crowd of children, where Jack had taken him once or twice. He watched Eileen Costello through the doorway of
the back kitchen. She wore a red and white smock over her swelling stomach, and her long straight fair hair was held back with a wide red ribbon. She was humming underneath her breath as she put the dishes on a tray, the spoons on the saucers . . .
“Do you take sugar, Matt?” She turned and caught his eye.
“No, thanks.” He looked away, uncomfortably aware he’d been staring.
“That’s a blessing. There’s not much left and me dad takes two.”
The kettle boiled on the hob over the fire. Matt carried it out to the back kitchen.
“Ta, luv.” She took it off him, smiling, and Matt was conscious of the faint smell of lavender.
“Can I do anything else?”
“You can carry the teapot in. Me Dad likes the tea poured at the table. He says it tastes different that way.”
“It does!’Jack shouted from the next room.
She winked at Matt and said loudly, “It’s best to humour him. He’s quite likely to get in a terrible rage if he doesn’t get his own way. He used to beat us something awful when we were kids.”
“Don’t go saying things like that,’Jack growled. ‘People might believe you.’
Matt and Eileen carried the tea things in between them.
Matt returned to his seat and Eileen handed him his drink-he’d forgotten to mention he didn’t take milk. He noticed the way her hair fell forward when she bent towards him, curling over her smooth cheeks in creamy swathes. Until tonight, he’d never realised how lovely she was. Jack had told him all about her. She was eine Witwe—think in English, think in English, he told himself—she was a widow who had lost her husband and son, her only child, six months ago. So many tragedies, Matt thought sadly: Eileen, Ruth, himself—he remembered his landlady and her two little girls . . .
“I’ve got something to show you!” Jack went out and returned with a bowl of strawberries. “We picked them in the cottage this morning,” he said proudly. “Have you ever seen strawberries that big before?”
“Never!” Matt affirmed, though they were only half as big as those his father used to grow. For a moment, the sight of the rich red fruit brought back memories of the farm where he’d grown up: his mother in the garden in her long cotton apron, his father tramping off to work and disappearing into the wet, early morning Bavarian mist.
