by Maggie Ford
Reading between the lines, it did seem the whole thing wasn’t quite what Annie had expected, scenery apart.
Pam thought about Annie. Thought about them all. Annie had now gone. Connie and Ben, planning for their June wedding, would soon be off too. Danny had brought home a girl called Lily Calder to meet his parents, which in itself proclaimed her some thing more than just a friend. Mum, taking to her, said she was demure and sweet. He would probably decide to get married and leave home, since at twenty-six he had nothing to wait for. Josie had made it known she was seeing a London boy, Arthur Monk, on a regular basis, which was taken as equivalent to going steady. He was working in the docks, a good job with prospects. Mum, with an approving look on her face, said that although Josie was still a bit young at eighteen to go steady, a couple of years or so would soon see her going off and getting married.
Pam, apparently with no boyfriend, felt herself looked on by them all with something like pity. All but Mum, whose eyes she noticed the next evening as she came in from seeing George, shedding her outdoor coat, turning towards her midriff and growing just a fraction concerned, not for the first time this week. Pam felt aware that even her winter jumpers and cardigans could no longer disguise that she was beginning to show.
‘You puttin’ on weight, Pam?’
‘No, Mum.’ Pam avoided her mother’s scrutiny. ‘Not as I know of.’
‘You seem to be. Around the waist, mostly.’
Now was the time to confess voluntarily before she was forced into it. But words wouldn’t come. Not the right words. Bad enough admitting to being pregnant, but by George Bryant? ‘I’m eating a bit too heartily lately.’
It cut no ice. Mum came close to her, looked down at her and then took her arm quietly. ‘Come in the kitchen a minute, love.’
She drew her away from the others who were busy listening to the wireless, the evening news with the football result soon to follow. During those Dad would demand complete silence while he and Danny checked the scores against their individual crosses in the crimson-edged squares of their individual pools coupons. ‘I want a quiet word with you.’
Reluctantly Pam let herself be guided from the room. In the kitchen, away from everyone’s hearing, her mother turned on her, her expression no longer one of anxiety. Now it was a look of determination, of certainty and of anger. But her voice remained low.
‘Now tell me the truth, young lady. You’ve not been indulgin’ in food, but you’ve been indulgin’ in something, ain’t you?’
Pam drew in a deep breath. ‘I’ve been intending to tell you for a long time now, Mum.’
‘So I am right.’ Her mother was nodding. ‘When’s it due?’
‘Some time in August. But it’s not what you think, Mum.’
‘What am I supposed to think then? That it was one instance, the first time you ever did it, you was taken by surprise, didn’t understand what you was doin’ – you a woman old enough to know what it’s all about? And if it was a one and only time, did you think it didn’t matter? I’m ashamed.’
‘Mum, don’t be ashamed. Do listen. There’s something I’ve got to tell you about this. Me and … and the young man I’m going with …’
Her mother interrupted immediately. ‘You’re goin’ with a young man and you’ve not said a word?’
‘There’s a reason.’
‘What reason?’ Her mother’s expression was – still angry, obdurate, and it took all Pam’s courage to begin her explanation, an explanation she was sure would shock her mother to the core as much as it would Dad.
‘Because the young man is someone you might not approve of,’ she began. ‘In fact I … we know you and Dad won’t approve and you’d forbid us ever to see each other again. But we love each other, and we want to get married, no matter what went on in the past, and we thought if I was pregnant, we’d be made to get married and no one could do anything about it. I know this is going to hurt you, Mum, but I waited until it was too late for anyone to do anything about it before I told you. But now I’ve got to tell you. It’s George Bryant. His dad is Dick Bryant.’
‘Oh, God! Pam …’ Her mother grabbed her arms, her plump fingers like talons through the sleeves of Pam’s cardigan. ‘You can’t.’
Pam forced herself to remain calm. ‘We knew this is how you’d both be. And George hasn’t told his family either, not yet. He says they’d be just as upset as …’
‘You silly little fool!’ her mother’s voice hissed at her. ‘D’you know what you’ve done?’
‘It’s the only way we could see for us, Mum. We want to get married and I didn’t want us to elope and get married secretly and hurt you both. I wouldn’t have wanted to be that underhanded. We both thought if I was pregnant, we’d have to get married, and that old quarrel would have to be laid to rest.’
Her mother let go of her, a limp sort of release as though her hands had lost all their strength. ‘You couldn’t have been more underhanded if you had got married in secret.’
‘Why?’ Defiance took hold of Pam as she thought suddenly of her sister off in India, the marriage known to them but not his family. ‘Annie and Alex have kept their marriage a secret from his parents, and you even went along with it. Then what’s so underhanded about what me and George has done? At least we’re being honest. We’ve not married in secret.’
‘Because …’ Tears were forming in her mother’s eyes. ‘Because you don’t know how deep that trouble between your father and that Dick Bryant went, the way he wounded your father, and me, and our whole family.’
‘But I wasn’t there.’
‘But it’s reflected on you ever since, on you all, though none of you know it. But for what he did to your father, we might have been wealthy by now and you’d all have had a fine education and …’
‘How do you know?’ Pam’s voice rose, growing exasperated. ‘All sorts of other events could have cropped up to stop you and Dad being wealthy, not just Dick Bryant. And I don’t want any fine education. All I want is to marry George. I love him, and your old quarrels have got nothing to do with me.’
The door opened and her father came in, his face creased with faint irritation. ‘What’s the bother with you two? I’m trying to do my pools and I can hear your two voices right through the wall. Can’t hear a thing on the wireless properly.’
His wife took her daughter by one arm and turned her to face him. ‘This girl’s got something to tell you. I can’t tell you. I can’t bring myself to. Pam, tell your father what you told me. See what he’s got to say about it. Then try and tell me you think you’ve done the right thing. Go on.’
Unable to defy her mother, Pam found herself mumbling over the same ground, a penitent before her father’s blank look, no challenge or entreaty in her tone now.
Her story finished, she stood watching that first look of mild irritation becoming ludicrously fixed on his face as though carved there. By now it should have been suffused with fury, yet she knew that below the paralysed features rage did indeed lie, a well of magma beneath a dormant volcano. And when it finally burst out, Pam sensed an end to all she’d once known.
But nothing came as without a word he turned and went back to the room he had just vacated to voice his petty complaint. Her mother moved off after him, and after a moment of hesitation, Pam felt compelled to follow.
In the living room with the news reader’s voice still coming over the wireless, unheeded now, all eyes trained on the silent three in vague premonition, Pam found her father standing gazing into the low fire, his back to her. Her mother had sat down in his chair where she was picking at a loose thread on her pinafore, intent on the task as though it was her sole interest at this moment. Pam felt her legs quaking.
‘Only one thing I’ve got to say to you,’ her father began without even bothering to turn round, as though the sight of her would have been offensive to him. ‘Get rid of it.’
Pam found her voice. ‘It’s too late. I can’t.’
‘No, she can’t,
’ her mother put in but they might as well have remained dumb for all the notice he took.
‘And you don’t see him any more – else you’re out of this house.’
Listening from the chair where she had been sitting, Connie felt her heart leap with shock. Just after Christmas Pam had confided in her, as they all did at different times, letting slip her affection for George Bryant. Connie had done her best to dissuade her, pointing out the hornets’ nest she’d be opening. Pam had sworn her to secrecy, thus putting her in an awful awkward position, but now it seemed Pam was pregnant. She wished now that she had confided in Mum at least, giving her some forewarning, but a vow was a vow and she had hoped Pam might see sense or that her fondness might only be short-lived and George Bryant be given up. Apparently not.
Running to Pam’s defence was instinctive. Leaping up from her chair, Connie hurried over to her sister, her arm going protectively around Pam’s shoulders. ‘What d’you mean, Dad, she’ll be out of this house?’
‘What I say,’ he said, turning now to glare around the room at them all: Danny still with his pen poised over his pools coupon, now forgotten; Josie, her library book, a gripping romance, open on the table where she’d been reading, her elbows still where they had been propped either side of it but her eyes on her father now instead of the book; Peggy, her eyes lowered as she continued to fiddle with the loose thread, running it between finger and thumb. ‘She’s been bloody messin’ about with that Dick Bryant’s son and the little sod’s got her in the family way and she thinks we’ll be willin’ an’ happy to see ’em wed. Well, that’s what she bloody thinks.’
‘But you can’t turn her out,’ Connie cried, the only one to challenge Dad’s authority. It seemed solely between her and her father.
‘She must’ve known what she was doin’ of, the way things stand twix’ us and them Bryants. It’s been spoken on enough all these years.’
‘Has it?’ Connie flared. She had always been a match for her dad and now made full use of it. It had occurred to her in the past that she was his favourite of all his daughters. Surely he would listen to her. ‘That family has never been allowed to be mentioned in this house as far as I know, Dad.’
‘It don’t alter things.’
‘It does when you’re so crabbed up by what happened all those years ago that you can tell your own daughter to destroy what’s alive inside her and then order her out of the house. If that happens, Dad, I’ll never speak to you again. And you won’t need to come to see me married either.’
‘I see. That’s how it stands,’ he roared. ‘Right then, there’ll be an empty place – two empty places, mine and your mother’s, at your wedding.’
‘Dan!’ her mother’s strangled voice came through the argument. ‘You can’t do that. You can’t refuse to be at your own daughter’s wedding.’
‘I can, an’ I will.’ His hands were flailing in temper. ‘We didn’t go to Annie’s. That was a fine state o’ things, I must say. Now we’re barred from our other daughter’s weddin’. This time she’s the one what’s barring us. Well, I go along with that, if that’s how she feels.’
Connie stood facing him squarely. ‘You’d hold a grudge against me, Dad, just because I’m sticking up for Pam? It seems to me your whole life has been a grudge against something.’
It was an unfair statement. She knew it and her father certainly did. Livid with fury, a roar broke from his lips, and snatching up the first thing that came to hand, the tightly folded newspaper beside him, he flung it blindly across the room. Still folded, it was a missile, hitting the as-yet unlit gas mantle, smashing the thin glass shade, sending slivers of glass tinkling on to the cloth-covered table.
Josie shrieked and ran sobbing from the room. Her mother cried out something which no one actually heard. Danny called out, ‘Watch it, Dad!’ But no one heard him either as Danny immediately began to gather up the larger pieces of shattered glass to hand them to his mother who accepted them dumbly in the palm of her cupped hands, her eyes trained on her husband. He, ignoring the devastation, was roaring like a bull, perhaps because of the havoc he’d wrought: ‘I said I bloody won’t be at your weddin’, and I won’t if you stick up for that connivin’, schemin’ little cow!’
Connie stood her ground, her own voice raised. ‘I don’t believe you. I don’t believe you could turn Pam out either.’
Pam was becoming hysterical. Her voice screamed above them all. ‘I don’t know what everyone’s so upset about. I’m leaving anyway, that’s what I’m doing. I’m leaving right now, so stop arguing about me. I don’t care what everyone does. I wouldn’t stay here …’
Connie turned on her. ‘No, Pam. Dad’s not going to throw you out.’
‘I bloody am!’ he bellowed. Pam ignored him.
‘He’s not throwing me out. I’m leaving on my own accord. I don’t want to stay here another minute. I’m going to George’s.’
‘An’ see how they’ll take you in,’ her father railed at her. ‘They won’t. That bastard Bryant won’t take you in any more than I’ll have you and his silly bugger son here, or the bastard you two’ve spawned. You couldn’t even be careful …’
Pam’s laugh was high, wild. ‘Careful? What d’you mean careful? We planned it, didn’t you know?’
‘Pam! No!’ Connie cried out, but Pam wasn’t listening.
‘We love each other and we mean to get married. We knew what you’d say, so we planned I’d get pregnant so I’d have to marry him. So there. And there’s nothing you can do, Dad, to make that any different. I thought it might make peace between everyone when I told you how I was. But it looks like even that wouldn’t stop this silly feud between you and his dad. Something we’re all expected to take part in, even to giving up our own lives and happiness, even though it’s got nothing to do with me or Connie or Josie or Annie. Over before we were born.’
‘It’ll never be over,’ he began, but Peggy, her hands still cupped around the broken glass, moved to his side, suddenly with him against what her daughter was saying.
‘You call it a stupid feud, Pam?’ she said evenly, softly, but there was a stern note of obduracy in her tone. ‘Is that what you call it? Let me tell you, Pam, because it’s never really been discussed before. We took it there’d never be any need. So you’ve never really known how it was and …’
‘Stop tryin’ to reason with her,’ Dan cut in viciously, but she stopped him by raising one of her hands, a piece of glass escaping from the lower one to tinkle on to the lino at her feet. But neither she nor any of them went to pick it up.
‘Let me tell it as it was,’ she said and looked intently into her third daughter’s angry blue eyes. ‘Yes, love, it is a feud. And like all feuds it started over nothing much at all. An argument in the Peter Boat. Started as a bit of fun over a pint and ended in a row. Your dad hit out and knocked Dick Bryant clean off his feet. You know how quick-tempered your dad can get. Nothing’s goin’ to change him. That’s how he is. Well, it started a fight and your dad wiped the floor with Dick Bryant. Two nights later the boat, the one your dad had saved and scrimped so hard to get … his dad, your granddad what you never knew, was a gambler and gambled away his money and then sold his bawley to pay a bookie. Bawleys them days was sailing boats only.’
The room had fallen quiet, Dad sitting down heavily in his chair as though exhausted by his fit of temper, or perhaps subdued by it. Though Connie, glancing away from her mother to look at him, didn’t think so.
‘But I’m gettin’ away from the subject,’ her mother was saying, taking a deep breath and glancing briefly at her husband to catch any reaction from him. ‘As I was sayin’, your dad when we first got married, and that on not a brass farthing between us, scrimped and scraped to get a boat of his own. Poor little thing it was, in bad condition, but he worked on it, every day, and me with a young baby and tryin’ to live on stale loaves from what the bakers had left over, and a bit of jam. That’s all we had. And a bit of fish some of our neighbours’d be able t
o spare. None of us was that well off them days. Well, your dad worked hard on other men’s boats, doin’ what his dad had done before him, cockling. Then he bought his boat, and so proud of it we was. Then two nights after the row in the pub when your dad floored Dick Bryant, our boat went up in flames. It was deliberate because we could smell the oil used to set it alight. And someone told us they’d seen Dick Bryant coming away with a can of oil in his hands just as the first flames got up.’
Connie saw a glimmer of light. ‘Did Dick Bryant ever admit to doing it?’
‘No, but he was guilty. He went around grinnin’ all over his face and sayin’ your dad had got all he deserved.’
‘But that’s not proof.’
She was stopped by her mother’s look, a look that froze her marrow, so fierce it was, so full of angry support for her husband. ‘You don’t know nothing about it, love. We didn’t need what you call proof. We saw it in his manner and his boasting, boasting so much that he might just as well have admitted it was him. And if it wasn’t, a man’s livelihood, what he’d struggled to build up, seeing a good future goin’ up in flames, meant nothin’ to Dick Bryant. If it wasn’t him, and we all know it was, the very way he acted and spoke was enough for us never to forgive or forget and to hate that family to the day we die.’
Silence lay about the room, its occupants standing or sitting stiff and tense, feeling the weight of this old, drawn-out feud descend upon all their shoulders.
‘So you see,’ Peggy went on. ‘Nothing, no marryin’ into that family is goin’ to alter what we went through and the loathing we feel for them.’
‘But Mum …’ Pam began, falling silent immediately, her mother’s gaze moving from one to the other, full of sadness.
‘No one knows how your father had to work to get us where we are today. We’re fine now, but it’s no thanks to the Bryants. I can’t go into how hard your father fought to get to owning his present boat, but he did it, and you should all be proud of him for where you are now.’