Mona, an entirely different Mona from the bridesmaid of that February day in ’43, smiled broadly and turned her head fully round to look towards Dennis as she said, ‘Tell us, she says, Mr Cooper, and she doesn’t let us get a word in, does she?’
‘Well, you should know her by now, Mona,’ laughed Dennis. ‘But as she says, sit yourself down. Have you had any tea?’
‘Yes, yes, I went straight home from the train and had a meal.’
‘You’re looking bonny, Mona.’
The smile did not slide from Mona’s face as it sometimes did when any reference was made to her appearance. At first she had found it hard to adjust to a glass eye and a zig-zag scar that started at the lobe of her left ear and traced its way across her neck to disappear between her breast bones. Yet the fight to adjust to the new condition had given her a self-assurance and an animation that hadn’t been hers before. Before the raid she had been a plain girl, a dull girl some would have said, mousy. She was still plain but it was a different plainness; her nervous animation had, in a way, released her personality.
She swung round now in her chair and looked to where Mary was entering the room, saying, ‘Hello, Mrs Cooper.’
‘Oh hello, Mona. You’re back soon. I thought you were staying until the weekend?’
‘I was, but something happened.’
‘I knew it.’ Annie nodded at her father. ‘I knew something had happened to her. I could tell as soon as she came in.’ Annie now pulled her chair up close to Mona, adding, ‘Well, come on, don’t keep us in agony. And anyway, if you don’t open your mouth and tell us, I’ll tell you, and I’ll only have one guess out of three.’
‘Aw you!’ Mona pushed at her, and they laughed at each other knowingly. Then whipping off her glove, Mona held out her hand.
‘My! My!’ Dennis’s exclamation was deep and sincere. ‘By lass! Isn’t that lovely. A half-hoop of diamonds. Aye, it’s bonny, grand.’
‘Oh, it is, Mona. Oh, it’s beautiful, lovely.’ Annie’s response was utterly genuine, without a trace of jealousy in it, but when at last Mary spoke, looking down at the extended hand she said, ‘Very nice. Yes, very nice. You’re very fortunate. I suppose you know that, Mona, very fortunate.’
‘Yes, Mrs Cooper; nobody knows it better than me.’
Annie looked at her mother as she turned away and it was on the tip of her tongue to exclaim, ‘You’re a bitter pill, Ma. That’s what you are, a bitter pill. Yes, she’s fortunate, but trust you to rub it in.’ She said now, quickly, ‘What are they like, his people? I’m sick to death of hearing Georgie on about them. Royalty, that’s what he thinks they are, royalty.’
Mona dropped her hands back into her lap. Then with her head on one side and her face straight, she looked directly at Annie as she said, ‘They were a surprise, Annie. Perhaps it was me, but somehow I don’t see them like Georgie sees them.’
‘Snotty?’
‘Snotty.’ Mona turned and looked at Dennis and, a smile breaking her lips now, she nodded at him, saying, ‘Yes, Mr Cooper, that’s what I would say, snotty. Nice you know, nice, but snotty. And, and Arthur, well, he doesn’t seem to belong among them. He’s not a bit like them, except perhaps his sister, Olive. She’s just a year older than him. She’s nice enough. I like her. We didn’t have much to say to each other but…but I liked her. Though I couldn’t say the same for her husband. Oh now—’ she again nodded towards Dennis—‘if he lived around here do you know what they’d call him, Mr Cooper?’ She gave a little giggle. ‘A b…nowt.’
‘Oh, one of them, eh?’
‘Yes, Mr Cooper, one of them. But Annie—’ she turned fully round again—‘you’ll see them all for yourself at Christmas.’ She hunched her shoulders up. ‘You’ve been invited, you and Georgie, for the Christmas holidays.’
‘What! Us?’
‘Aye…Eeh! There I go sayin’ aye…Yes, Mrs McCabe.’ She now assumed a high-faluting tone. ‘Your husband will be bringing you the invitation come Wednesday week as ever was.’ She now burst out laughing, then looked towards the scullery door where Mary was standing. They all looked towards the scullery door, and Mary said, ‘What’s that I was hearing?’
‘I was saying that Annie and Georgie have been invited to go to Hereford for Christmas, Mrs Cooper.’
‘That’s what I thought you said.’
‘Well—’ Annie was now on her feet—‘if that’s what you thought she said, Ma, you’re not looking very pleased about it.’
‘Well, should I be, leaving us here on our own, at Christmas an’ all?’
‘Oh my God! Ma.’ Annie put her hand to her head, and Mary said quickly, ‘That’s it. Start to shout and wake him…And mentioning him, what about him?’
‘He’ll come with us, of course.’
‘You’re not traipsing the countryside with that child in the depth of winter and bringing him back here with pneumonia. Oh, no. Oh, no, me girl.’
‘Ma!’ Annie’s voice was ominously quiet. ‘Let me ask you a question. Whose child does he happen to be?’
‘Aye, that’s a good question.’ Dennis rose from his chair and gave his wife one long look before leaving the kitchen and going into the passage. There was a pause that gave him time to put on his coat and cap, then the front door banged.
Annie now looked towards her mother, and Mary, through tight lips, muttered, ‘You’re determined to spite me, aren’t you, girl? Not only jumping at the chance to spend Christmas with strangers but depriving me of the child at the same time.’
‘Ma!’ Annie’s voice was still quiet. ‘It surprises me, an’ it has done since he was born, that you should take such an interest in him. Hating the father of him as you do, I wonder you look at him, ’cos don’t forget, he’s Georgie McCabe’s child. And it’s Georgie McCabe will let you know that once he’s back for good. As for this Christmas business, I’ll see what he says, and if he’s willin’ that I should leave the child with you I will, otherwise he’ll come along of us.’
Her face red now, she turned to Mona, saying, ‘He’ll be asleep but would you like to come up and see him?’ and without waiting for an answer she stalked from the room and Mona followed her.
Quietly Annie turned the handle of the bedroom door and they went in, and when they stood by the side of the cot that was placed near the bed Mona whispered, ‘He gets bonnier.’
Annie made no comment on this but, staring down at the child, she said, ‘Life’s hell here, Mona; I’m getting out. I’ve got a house. It’s not in a very good quarter, it’s not far from the Mill Dam docks. It used to be Hanlon’s coal depot, near Bunton’s Corner.’ She lifted her eyes and looked at Mona, then nodded and said, ‘I know what you’ll say, sailors, Arabs, the lot. But to tell you the truth, Mona, I wouldn’t mind if there were Arabs upstairs and downstairs and left and right of me, anything will be better than living here when Georgie’s back.’
‘Yes, I can see that, Annie.’ They moved from the cot to the farthest corner of the room, and there Annie asked in a low murmur, ‘Do they really want us to go for Christmas?’
‘Arthur does.’
‘You say Arthur does, what about the rest?’
‘Oh, it’s a kind of open house, there’s always people dropping in, all kinds of people. They’re a bit arty-crafty. You know the type. You remember the Miss Burgess that used to teach standards four and five at school, well, they’re something of that type, only more so if you know what I mean. During the war I understand they entertained all kinds.’
‘That’s why they accepted Georgie I suppose.’ Annie’s voice was flat.
Mona forced herself to say, ‘No, no; they like Georgie. And Arthur thinks the world of him, he does really.’
‘Oh, I know Arthur likes him, but I think that’s just because Georgie likes him so much. Georgie’s always been grateful because Arthur took notice of him.’
‘I don’t think it’s like that.’
‘Oh, I know what I know, Mona, and we two don’t need to cover up thi
ngs. Anyway—’ she turned towards the door—‘they must have liked him for himself in some way else he wouldn’t have kept going back. He’s not so thick-skinned that he wouldn’t have noticed how they felt, I mean if they were just tolerating him for Arthur’s sake. Anyway—’ she turned her head and looked at Mona and whispered, ‘I’ll see for meself if I go, won’t I? And tell me, how did Arthur come on about the job?’
Mona smiled wryly and jerked her head. ‘He got it and turned it down. He said he didn’t fancy sitting on an office stool for the rest of his days. You know what he’s after now? A little pub out in the wilds. It’s sort of two stone houses stuck together, miles from anywhere. And the views are beautiful. But I said to him, “Nobody’ll come here for beer”, and he said I’d be surprised ’cos in the summer the hills are thick with hikers. It’s costing four hundred and fifty pounds, but he says when he’s finished with it it’ll be worth one thousand four hundred and fifty. I think his father’s glad about it, if only that it’s a good distance away. Arthur gets in his hair. They’re an odd family, a mixture. Anyway, as you say, you’ll see for yourself. And we’ll get a giggle, if nothing else, eh?’
‘Aye, Mona.’ Annie nodded at her. ‘I could do with a giggle. My God! Yes, I could do with a giggle.’
Two
‘So you have left your baby at home?’
Annie stopped herself from exchanging a glance with Mona who was sitting to the side of her; instead, keeping her eyes on the woman opposite, she answered briefly, ‘Yes.’
‘Nice to get away from babies at times, isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
‘It was at your wedding that Arthur caught it, wasn’t it?’
‘… Yes.’ She knew fine well that Arthur had caught it at her wedding. She was his mother, wasn’t she, yet anyone more unlike a mother she had yet to see. She was sixty-five if she was a day but she acted like a skittish lass. Arthur was the youngest and she must have had him late. His brother, Peter, the one sitting on the couch near the fire, looked older than her da, and he was at that. From what she had gathered from Mona he was thirty-nine and the brother, David, sitting near him, was thirty-eight. There was over ten years, Mona said, between those two and Arthur and his sister Olive.
Having bairns late must have knocked her back into her second childhood, Annie thought. Talk about being mutton dressed up as lamb; she jumped about like a spring lamb, she was never still. And if she had remarked on her leaving the child once, since she had come into the house, she must have done it half a dozen times. She didn’t seem to pay attention to what anyone was saying to her except when she was talking to the men. Oh, she paid attention then all right.
The house seemed full of men. There was the father, whom everybody called Gerald and who in his way was as skittish as his wife. Then there were the brothers, David and Peter, and the snotty one, Olive’s husband, James Partridge they called him. He was standing now in the far corner of the drawing room talking to another man named Ron. Ron had a tiny moustache and he looked like one of those fellows in that funny book Georgie had brought home, called Plonk’s Party. It was all about the air force and the types in it. Then there were Arthur and Georgie; they were at the moment in the billiard room knocking the balls about. She hoped they stayed there, at least that Georgie did. The way he had greeted everybody when they came in made her feel embarrassed, he had acted as if he were back home. He had called the mother Gwen, and she had called him Georgie boy.
Mona was right. She had hinted pretty broadly that they would all take some sorting out, and they would that. She had been right about Olive, too. Olive was nice, she was what you would call a natural kind of girl—or woman. She looked thirty-five but she could be only twenty-eight, as she was just a year older than Arthur. And she had a nice child too, cute; he had spoken to her a short while ago. He had taken her hand and said, ‘Hello. Do you know what I am going to get from Father Christmas?’ He spoke beautifully. She would love Rance to speak like that one day, but there was little chance with Georgie about.
She had replied no, that she had no idea; and then he had made her laugh by saying sadly, ‘Nobody seems to know what I am going to get from Father Christmas.’
‘David.’ The mother was calling across the room while screwing round on the couch and drawing her legs up under her like some loose-limbed carefree girl. ‘Let’s have a drink before dinner.’
Annie looked towards the son, David, who had his slippered feet well onto the big open hearth, and he yawned before he answered, ‘If you have it now, sweetie, there’ll be nothing for after. And don’t forget it’s Christmas Eve in the morning.’
‘Christmas will be taken care of, darling. Richie has promised to drop in.’
‘Oh! Oh!’
Annie’s eyes followed David as he pulled himself up languidly from the second sofa and walked across the room to where a miniature bar had been erected in the corner. It had a counter stretching between the walls, and the shelves arranged against the walls supported bottles, all empty, and hanging from a wrought-iron bracket, that had once graced the front of an inn, was a sign on which was painted in red letters THE NAUGHTY BULL.
Annie turned her head slowly and looked at Mona. They were exchanging glances when the mother let out a high girlish shriek and, unwinding herself from the couch, stood straight with her face clasped between her hands while looking towards her eldest son and exclaiming, ‘Oh Peter you’ll never forgive me. I forgot to tell you, Liz phoned when you were out. She wanted you to ring her back. Oh darling, I’m so…’
The man with the balding head almost sprang from the couch now, crying, ‘My God, Mother! That’s hours ago. And she’ll have been waiting all this time. She’ll blow her top.’
As he hurried towards the door he looked towards his brother-in-law, James Partridge, and exclaimed, ‘She’s the limit. I tell you, she’s the limit.’
Mrs Bailey now dropped petulantly down onto the couch again and, addressing Annie and Mona in a plaintive voice, she said, ‘Well, there’s so much to be thought of. And it was just as Olive arrived, and I wanted to see the child. He’s sweet, isn’t he, I mean Alan. Wonderful for five; so advanced, don’t you think?…I must go and see about dinner or we’ll never eat.’
She again bounced to her feet and turning her attention from the girls to her son, who was standing behind the bar filling glasses, she called to him, ‘Bring mine into the kitchen, David, that’s a dear boy.’
‘Will do.’
Annie leant her head against the back of the couch. It wasn’t real; all this wasn’t real. Did they live like this all the time? Had the war made them like this? No, no; you could see similar set-ups on the pictures. Yes, that’s what it was like, like looking at a film where all the people were larger than life, and funnier than life, and odder than life. Oh aye, odder than life.
But that woman, the mother of three grown men and a daughter, and a grandmother into the bargain, she wasn’t real. Yet there was one thing real about her, and she knew what that was all right. She was man-mad; she was the kind of woman that would still be man-mad when she was seventy. That type never gave up. In a way she was like that Miss Swillwell back home, who even went after the young priest. There had been quite a do about that. She used to come to Mass dressed up to the eyes in the most startling colours. Way out she was. They said the gas man wouldn’t go to her house alone, he always took a pal with him…But then there was an excuse for her; you could be sorry for her for she had never been married. But this one here was well married. Why hadn’t her husband put a stop to her gallop years ago? But he seemed like all the rest, treating her as if she were a young scatterbrained girl.
Of a sudden she had a great desire to be home. Over the distance 114 Weldon Street glowed with comfort and sanity. But they were to be here till the day after Boxing Day, and it wasn’t Christmas Eve yet.
To save the last minute rush they had travelled down today, for tomorrow the trains would be crammed full. As it was, they had been bad
enough; they’d had to stand for five of the eight hours in the freezing corridors. During the whole journey Georgie had aimed at cheering them up with details of this place and the reception they would get, and what Arthur and his mother and the rest of them would say when they saw him in civvies.
Their arrival was in a way the beginning of the end for her. She hadn’t believed her ears when Mrs Bailey had taken Georgie in her arms and hugged him as she cried, ‘Oh Georgie boy! You look wonderful,’ for in her opinion nobody with two eyes in their head could say that Georgie looked wonderful in civvies. His suit, besides being a workhouse grey, was as ill-fitting as any she had seen on the old fellows who came out on a Sunday from Harton Workhouse. As her da said, it fitted where it touched; and he had said it openly to Georgie, but Georgie’s answer was, he didn’t care a bloody damn; he’d wear anything, even a shift, as long as it wasn’t air force blue.
As she looked down the long drawing room that was overfurnished with couches and chairs, she had the crazy idea of saying she was going for a walk, then phoning Mr Wilson’s shop on the corner and asking him to bring her mother to the phone. And when her mother came she would say to her, ‘Phone the house and tell them me da’s bad and I must come back.’
Eeh! The things that came into her head. She pulled herself up from the couch, saying softly to Mona, ‘I’m going upstairs a minute,’ and Mona said quickly under her breath, ‘I’ll come with you,’ and they left the room without anyone commenting.
The drawing room led into a large hall. This, too, was overfurnished and had a musty smell. The whole house, Annie thought, had a musty smell, and it could do with a good spring-clean, especially their bedroom. She had already remarked on the condition of the house to Georgie, but he had laughed and said, ‘They’re not like us back home, lass; they don’t lay stock by the same kind of things. You’ll see, you’ll see.’ He had appeared very knowledgeable, and she had thought how odd it was that Georgie, of all people, should be mixing with folks such as these, for in spite of their odd ways they were what you would call educated. Oh yes, she granted them that, for their accents hit you.
The Invisible Cord Page 6
