by Maggie Ford
‘No time for that,’ George called, coming back into the flat after running down to the bathroom, feeling his chin after a scrape round with the razor. In his haste he had left a patch of bristle but there was no time to remedy it as he struggled into his work clothes. ‘I’ll grab a mug at break time.’
‘There’s your sandwiches,’ Pam said. Her stomach had begun to ache a little, a hardly detectable throb. ‘It’s a good job I always do them overnight, that’s all I say.’
A quick kiss on her cheek and George was gone. She heard him race down the bare wooden stairs, already ten minutes late for the bus he should be catching on the corner. The journey took half an hour to Southend where they were building new council houses to take the overflow of people looking to get out of East London for more open spaces, the current whim of city people. If George missed that bus he’d have to wait another ten to fifteen minutes for the next one. He would definitely be late. Pam prayed as his footsteps faded away, then turned to put out a cup for herself. She’d have a slice of bread and jam for breakfast, save George’s egg for tomorrow morning.
All morning as she tidied their home, made herself a sandwich of bread and cheese for lunch, then lay on the bed for an hour, the ache in her stomach persisted, not much but becoming more noticeable, seeming to creep around to her back at times. By afternoon it had become a real nagging ache that became more pronounced when she made to get up off the bed. It would go. She’d probably strained herself this morning getting up just a little too fast for an her care.
She was still lying on the bed when footsteps were heard coming up the last of the stairs, a trudging sound. She wondered who it could be this time of the afternoon. Not Josie. Josie was at work. So was Connie. For a second she thought of Mum and her heart gave a little leap of hope. But instead of a tap on her door, it opened and George stood there.
Pam sat up in surprise, wincing at the sharp pain in her belly. ‘What you doing home? You’ve an hour yet before you come home.’ It was a nonsensical statement but he didn’t smile. His face was expressionless.
‘Lost me job,’ he said, his voice that of a man worn out from a long day’s hard graft. ‘Six minutes late. Someone jumped in two minutes before I got there. Foreman said he couldn’t wait in case I didn’t turn up at all.’
‘Oh, George.’ Pam felt the tears well up from the pit of her stomach as though about to consume her completely, so strong was the disaster she saw before them.
‘I’ve been wandering around Southend and Westcliff all day looking for something, but there ain’t nothing. Nothing at all.’
Pam stared at him. ‘Oh, love, what’re we going to do?’
‘I don’t know. I just don’t know.’ She watched him sink down on a chair like a man suddenly bereft of muscle, and felt the same herself.
Chapter Sixteen
The pains persisted through the weekend; if getting no better at least getting no worse and as Monday came round she put it down to the way she had clambered out of bed on Friday, a bit less carefully than she should have done in her panic to get George off to work. All a waste of time, he’d lost his job anyway. Six minutes late. It didn’t seem fair. Clusters of unemployed hung about building sites and everywhere else like hungry vultures, showing no scruples about jumping into a man’s job the second he tripped up. The dole queues grew every day. Yet some people could still afford day trips to resorts like Southend. And here she was, cooped up in this tiny two-roomed flat with a husband out of work.
George under her feet when he wasn’t hunting for work made the place even more cramped, practically claustrophobic. She longed for somewhere to go to get away from it, but even if there had been someone she could have gone to see, the weight of her stomach and the nagging pain in it would not have let her go far.
George’s parents came on Sunday as they often did, and, as they often did, looked around themselves at the cramped rooms with constant glances of guilt that they were unable to do more for their son and his wife. It would have been better to have said nothing, but his mum couldn’t keep her thoughts to herself. A small, thin, prematurely wrinkled woman, with a head of exceptionally light grey hair that spoke of once-blonde locks, she seemed to relish the worst side of most things – what some people would term a Job’s comforter. Pam had the measure of her by now, a woman who lorded it over her husband, he a follower who did all she told him, who took her advice, had probably taken her advice in not attempting to heal the rift between himself and Dad long ago. In fact, Pam saw Milly Bryant as the sort of person who would actually get satisfaction out of being an enemy. Pam was sure of it as she continued to regard their humble habitat.
‘No place to bring up a baby, this. Only got a week to go now, ain’t you? You should’ve got somewhere better to live than this. Lord knows me an’ George’s father did our level best for you, what we could do under our circumstances. But …’ the rest of the sentence going unsaid, accompanied by a long intake of breath, a shake of the head and a slow significant shrug.
‘We’re OK here,’ Pam lied, smiling. ‘It’s not too bad. Don’t have to do so much cleaning in a small place, and the way I am at the moment I can do without that.’
She had tried to make light of it, a joke, but Mrs Bryant wasn’t done yet. She sat stirring the cup of tea Pam had handed to her. ‘Nice if you’d had a bit of help from other sources, I say. But …’ Again the rest allowed to go unsaid, the sigh, the shake of the head, the shrug of the shoulders. Milly Bryant was adept at leaving sentences hanging meaningfully. Pam knew what she was getting at: her own parents’ lack of assistance, though this woman for all her apparent conviction hadn’t courage enough to finish what she was implying. Just digs and references, leaving nothing for one to say in defence. Pam hated it.
‘We’re doing all right,’ she said again, but the woman’s dig had her thinking about her family which at most times was only too easy to do.
There had been an effort at contact from her mother – a letter from her some time in early July. Still blistering under the way she had been treated by her own parents when she’d needed them most, unable to forgive them, a feeling she thought at times would never subside, she had torn up her mother’s letter unopened in a fit of rage that she dared to write after all that had happened, regretting her action only when the dustmen came and emptied the communal bin in which she had thrown it. Mum hadn’t written again and her own chances of healing the rift had receded even further.
But bitter as she was against her own people, that bitterness turning itself inward so that she hated herself more for having such feelings, it wasn’t for some outsider to criticise her own flesh and blood.
‘How’s the work?’ Dick Bryant was asking his son.
Pam saw George redden, knew he hadn’t told his father about losing his job. George had spent Sunday with his dad on the boat, for once bringing in a relatively good haul. He had come home excited at his share of the profit which would come as a small godsend during the week when the catch was sold.
‘Work?’ she heard him echo as she listened to his mother going on about what baby clothes did she have ready for the birth.
‘The building lark,’ Dick Bryant reminded him. ‘I’m sorry, son, you havin’ to do jobs like that. You’re a fisherman, like me. But trade just ain’t there. Some on us shrimpers is havin’ to go out of business altogether. But your mum intends us to hang on as long as we can. Things’ll get better in a year or two if we hang on.’
‘Yes,’ George said as his dad glanced across to his tight-faced wife for confirmation. He was a small man, once agile but now become bowlegged, which made him even smaller. Pam wondered how her father could have socked him on the jaw all those years ago and kept his self-respect. Even today Dad, a well built man, stood at least five inches taller than Dick Bryant. According to legend, Dick Bryant had made some nasty remark, but that was no reason for a big man like Dad to belt into a man several inches shorter and quite a bit lighter than himself. No wonder the man had go
ne creeping off in the dark to get his revenge. Though burning down someone’s livelihood had been unjustified, she had to admit, no matter what the cause. Yet she found herself liking George’s father. He seemed a man who wouldn’t say boo to a goose, not now, not then.
‘As soon as things get better,’ he was saying, ‘you and me, we’ll take out the boat together, an’ you can get shot of the job you’re doin’, son. Ain’t no job for a born fisherman.’
George’s blue eyes had brightened suddenly. ‘What if I pack the job in and come on board with you permanently again? We could make a go of it.’
His father shook his head sadly. ‘Not a chance, son. I couldn’t pay you.’
‘But we did well enough yesterday.’
‘Drop in the ocean. A fluke. It’s like that sometimes as you well know. A spell of fine weather and up come the shrimp into shallow water, just askin’ to be taken. A week later, back comes the cold an’ out they go again. An’ there’s the competition, everyone trying to get at ’em. An’ what with all the oil in the estuary nowadays, shrimp like clean water. It’s a lost cause, son. You’re probably better off doin’ what you’re a-doin’. Me, I’m too old to give up and go into something else. I’ll stay in it till I’m in me box I expect.’
‘Dick!’ Milly Bryant turned on him, then turned back as Pam gasped at a sudden sharp pain in her womb. ‘My guess, Pam, is you’ll be havin’ that child in the next couple of days, if not tomorrow. George, you’d do well gettin’ hold of that midwife, alertin’ her to what’s to happen in a day or two.’
‘This business’ll see me in me box afore long,’ Dick mumbled to himself and had his wife turn on him again.
‘Dick!’
Josie’s Sunday had been a miserable one. Fed up to the back teeth with nowhere to go, no friends to go out with, she felt left on the shelf.
‘It’s a lovely day,’ Mum had said. ‘You should be out, a lovely day like this.’
Mum didn’t understand, when Josie had told her that all her friends had begun courting, and had voiced what seemed to her the simple solution.
‘Then go out and find some more friends. Look up some of them you used to know at school. Some of them could be at a loose end. Better than moping around here all day. Ain’t healthy.’
She said that a lot these days. ‘Ain’t healthy.’ About Connie and her new preoccupation with church. ‘Too much religion. It ain’t healthy. That girl’s moping and she ought to be snapping out of it. I know we’re all sorry for her. Terrible thing to happen to her, my heart goes out to her every day to see her, but she’s still young. She’ll find someone to take poor Ben’s place one day. Can’t go on living in the past, her with all her life ahead of her. Moping about going to church won’t help her. But what can you say? It ain’t healthy.’
‘Go for a walk,’ she said as she put the meat into the oven for their Sunday’s dinner. ‘Get a bit of air into your lungs. Staying indoors on a lovely day like this, you’ll make yourself ill.’
She hadn’t wanted to go out only to see other girls her age arm in arm with their boyfriends or fiancés. In desperation she’d sat down that afternoon and had written a short letter to Arthur, had posted it this morning and now waited in a fever of anticipation for his reply.
With the tide well out, and plenty of cockles to pick, Danny, out on the smooth sand with Dad and his uncles, thought of his Sunday with deep satisfaction.
He had come to a decision. He wouldn’t go buying Lily a ring and presenting it to her out of the blue, like they did in films. On Saturday he had taken her to the pictures, the resplendent Rivoli in Southend. They had sat in the cheaper seats – he had to be a bit careful with an engagement ring to buy, for all he’d been secretly saving for ages. In the film they’d seen, Greta Garbo had been presented with such a ring by a prospective suitor to her obvious delight, but it was all make believe. He couldn’t see Lily being so overwhelmed except to say it wasn’t quite what she’d have chosen especially as she’d be wearing it for the rest of her life and it didn’t quite suit her fingers etc. He knew Lily well, and understood. So after they came out from the cinema he’d said, almost matter of factly: ‘Lily, do you think it’s about time we got engaged?’ And when she had said, ‘Ooh, Danny, please,’ he had added, again casually, ‘Then what about us going to choose a ring next Saturday if I’m not working?’
What had followed, in the darkness of her porch, had not been at all casual as they cemented their engagement prematurely.
Thinking about it as he worked the sand with the others, he could hardly wait for next Saturday to come. Already reckoning the tides ahead to next Saturday, it appeared they’d have plenty of time to go and buy the ring, display it first to her parents then his, both of whom were already anticipating a union.
‘Oh, Danny! Darling! Look – that one there!’
The forefinger of Lily’s right hand stabbed decisively at the window pane of the jeweller’s shop. They’d spent all morning and part of the afternoon wandering up and down Southend High Street – Danny had balked at going into London as she would have wished with the prices they charged up there – and he reckoned they must have gazed into every shop there was.
Nothing seemed to satisfy her, and now he was hot from all this fruitless searching although Lily still seemed as fresh as a daisy and as equally excited and enthusiastic as she’d been when starting out.
‘I’m looking for a special one, darling. It has to be a special one.’
By special, Danny could only see every last penny in his pocket disappearing. He had £12, the result of months of careful saving. He had hoped, in fact banked on a ring costing definitely no more than £7. A lovely five diamond cluster they’d seen had cost that. On an ordinary man’s weekly wage of around thirty shillings, £7 was a ridiculous fortune to fork out. Something around £5 would buy a fine enough ring. But Lily was worth more than that.
The one she now pointed out flashed and glinted in the August sunshine. Danny peered doubtfully at the band of five diamonds; the centre one looking alarmingly huge. He was surprised to see only £7 on the price tag. Even so …
‘It’s a bit expensive,’ he ventured. It was the wrong thing to have said.
‘Oh!’ The single word spelled pique.
‘But if that’s what you want,’ he hastened.
Pique vanished like a spark falling on water. ‘You mean I can have that?’ Beaten, he nodded to her cry of, ‘Oh, darling! Danny, I do love you!’
Fifteen minutes later they walked from the shop, her eyes glistening with tears of joy. On a bench at the end of the pier which for a moment had become theirs as another couple got up and walked off, he ceremoniously slipped the ring on to the third finger of her left hand, and with sea breezes ruffling her hair and the hem of her skirt, kissed away her joyful tears.
Josie was over the moon. A reply to her letter must have been on its way almost at once after the postman slipped it through Arthur’s letterbox. He had been thinking about her lately – coincidence he should get a letter from her – maybe they could meet in London – perhaps next Saturday – around twelve o’clock by the Salmon and Ball Pub on the corner of Cambridge Heath Road and Bethnal Green Road, just under the railway bridge there – perhaps go up town for the afternoon – could she let him know with a quick telegram if she agreed or not – would be nice to see her again.
That it was worded rather formally didn’t seem to matter as Josie hugged it to her. Only later as she hurried in a fever of joy to send off her answer did she think about the coolness of his reply, wondered if he’d had a string of girlfriends in her absence and had merely contemplated adding her to his list so he could fall back on it when needed. After all, he was so very good-looking, the best-looking boy she’d ever met. It was only his rough Cockney ways and speech that spoiled it. But then, girls in the East End he must have been going out with in the interval would have fallen over themselves to have him as a boyfriend. They, who spoke exactly as he did, would see nothing detri
mental in it, only that he was a good catch.
Josie felt jealousy roll over her in a hot wave as she entered the post office; jealousy she firmly shrugged off, as, with heart braced, she worded her telegram carefully so as not to appear too eager.
‘TIME AND PLACE SUITS ME FINE STOP JOSIE’
Brief, but all she could afford, and perhaps it was just as well not to appear too chummy as yet. She’d know one way or the other on Saturday how things stood between them. If it was the other then she’d have to dismiss him from her mind and get on with her life. This she told herself with stern determination. Trouble was, her heart was beating so fast after she’d sent the telegram – partly in misgiving that she had made a fool of herself, partly in a welter of doubt that she had cheapened herself in his eyes, partly from a overwhelming desire to see him again – and beat hard enough all that day to make her feel almost sick at the thought of Saturday, that determination didn’t have a chance to come into it.
Her men out in the estuary, Josie and Connie at work, Peggy was left with time to think. She hated these times where others would have revelled in being alone for an hour or so out of the reach of a busy demanding family. But having time to think was a bane to Peggy. Visions of those no longer here plagued her. Annie, answering her letters, wrote regularly every fortnight, pages filled with the wonders of India yet, reading between the lines, that girl didn’t seem quite as happy as she made out. It was more than homesickness, some unhappiness, she felt it, and that she was too far away to be reached caused Peggy untold heartache.
Then there was Pam. Living virtually around the corner she might as well have been as many thousands of miles away as Annie. But it did not stop her thinking about Pam, which she did constantly, despite herself, thoughts of Pam invading her mind as involuntarily as breathing or the beating of her heart. It was in a fit of remorse one day in July that she had sat down and written to her.