by Maggie Ford
It had used all Mum’s strength to try to lift him, his legs in irons impeding her until Danny had finally removed them in the face of all his protests and had lifted him back into the chair, defying him to try it again. Dad had sworn and blustered and he could understand the man’s frustration, being treated almost like a baby, but it took another man to handle him and Danny couldn’t have him bullying Mum as he did. How would she cope without him?
It came out on that thought as Lily prattled happily on; came out of its own accord. ‘Lily, I can’t leave Mum alone to deal with Dad.’
She stopped mid-sentence about what curtains she would plan for the windows. ‘Darling, I was talking about our new house.’
‘I know. And I think it’s going to be impossible. The way Dad is, I don’t think it’d be the best arrangement for me to move away from home.’
God, he’d said it. She had stopped walking, had broken away from him in alarm. ‘Are you trying to tell me you don’t want to marry me, Danny? After all this time …’
‘No, it’s not that. The thing I want most in all this world is to marry you. What I’m saying is that we might not be able to think of getting a place of our own for a while after we’re married.’
She was staring at him. In the light of a lamp at the foot of the hill leading down to the level crossing, its gates open for them to cross, her eyes seemed to glint like those of a small animal. Her pink-rouged mouth had dropped open. Now it closed almost with a snap.
‘You’re joking, Danny. Danny, say you’re joking. We have to have a place of our own. All couples do. I’ve been dreaming of our own place, our own little house which I can be happy in, decorating and furnishing and making it look nice for everyone to come and see. It’s every girl’s dream to have her own place to show off.’
Disbelief had spread across her face but he had to go through with it now. He owed it to Mum. ‘It’s not possible, darling, not yet’
From one of disbelief, Lily’s expression had taken on a look of piqued contempt that held more than just a little fear. ‘What d’you take me for Danny? You expect me to come and live in your house, is that it? Have all my friends look down on me, them in their own homes, seeing me, pitying me living in with my husband’s family?’
‘Wealthy people do – in big country seats.’ It was a foolish inept thing to say but all be could think of in defence in that moment. Her sneer of contempt flayed him.
‘Yours is hardly a country seat, is it? A poky little end terraced house. All of us stuck in it. And what am I supposed to do, sleep on the floor?’
‘I can probably arrange for us to have Mum’s room now she sleeps on her own, and she can have mine. It’s a nice big bedroom. We can …’ He knew he was being completely impractical even in expecting this of Lily, but he pushed desperately on.
‘I’m virtually the breadwinner now Dad can’t work. Mum would probably agree to you having the entire run of the house, as if it was yours. She needs me there. I know she’d agree.’
‘And what about me? You haven’t asked me whether I agree.’
‘I’m just asking if you’d think about it.’
‘I don’t need to think about it, Danny Bowmaker. I’ve thought about it and wild horses won’t get me living in with other people in someone else’s house as if we’re poverty-stricken. I intend to have my own place to go into as soon as we’re married or not at all. We don’t get married. That’s final.’
Somehow she had moved back from him, or he had from her, for she was standing a little uphill, above him. Tall as he was, he was having to look up at her. ‘Lily, sweetheart …’
‘Don’t sweetheart me!’ she cried at him. ‘If you think you’re going to do me out of all I deserve as your wife, then I don’t want to be your wife. I’ve had enough of scrimping and scraping to save for us to get married. And now you jump this on me. Well, you can stick your wedding, and stick your idea of us living in with your family, and you can stick your ring as well.’
All this time she had been fiddling frantically with her ring finger and now the ring came off. She flung it at him. In the silence of the night air it tinkled metallically on the pavement and disap peared beneath some shrubby weeds. It could be anywhere, but Danny wasn’t thinking of searching for it. He had his gaze trained on Lily’s face.
‘You can’t mean that.’
‘I mean every word of it,’ she raged down at him, her voice echoing in the quiet night. ‘If you think I’d marry you and put up with being a lackey to your Mum and Dad, you’ve another think coming.’
‘There’s nothing to discuss.’
‘I think there is.’ Lily hadn’t moved or given way for him. She stood leaning on the door jamb, arms crossed protectively over her chest. She had on an old skirt and jumper, her hair in curlers, her face bereft of make-up, yet every part of him ached for her. ‘Let me come in just for a moment.’
She stood back for him then, begrudgingly, sullenly, not looking at him but at the floor as if that was the most important thing in her life.
They sat in the front room, the one her parents used for best and for visitors. They sat one each side of the empty grate, on the brown pretend-leather armchairs. The room was cold. Like our love, Danny thought, and then shrugged off the thought. He had come to claim her back if he could. He was sure after all this time of being in love, of making plans for weddings, it couldn’t all collapse just like that.
What they talked of, he wasn’t sure. The conversation just went round and round, as he pleaded with her to reconsider. She muttered about all the months wasted on him, indicating with despondent shrugs and sighs that it was over between them. He said something about didn’t she love him at all, ever, and she said she didn’t want to talk about it.
He offered her a cigarette and she took it. He took one himself. Later she offered him one of hers and took one herself. The morning went by in a sort of continuous stalemate, the upshot of those long hours being that she was not prepared to share her life with his family under their roof no matter what, that there were better things in life. Her refusal to be persuaded stunned him and, finally defeated, he came away because there was nothing else he could do.
At the door she asked suddenly, though in a listless tone as if it didn’t really matter, ‘Did you find the ring?’
‘No,’ he said.
She shrugged again and without looking at him closed the door, leaving him gazing at it.
The day Mum came home crying Josie had planned to tell her that she and Arthur wanted to get married. But the trauma of seeing Mum in that state put it from her mind and she hadn’t the heart to bring it up again as Mum went about her chores with a sort of quiet dignity that was painful to see. It was a month before Josie could bring herself to voice her own selfish wants.
What worried her most was that Sunday after he turned up at her house having ridden through a snowstorm on that decrepit bike of his like a knight on a winded horse, when she had carried out her secret promise to reward him as she had never done before.
He’d had dinner with her family. After dinner the snow had stopped. The sun had come out enough to thaw the pavements though little rounded caps of snow had sat like dabs of ice cream on the shadier bushes. They had gone for a walk, muffled up to the eyebrows against the cold. With his arm around her waist feeling seductive and meaningful even through the fabric of her coat, she’d guided their steps towards an old disused shed that stood near the Strand where boats had been laid up on the beach for the winter, its walls rickety, its door hanging off, its roof holed. She’d led him inside and there had let him make love to her, properly.
Fearful of discovery, they had lain side by side on a pile of dry broken nets. He had kissed her, their kisses growing more urgent. He had fondled her at her instigation, for she intended to reward him for that cold and courageous ride through the snow. As the feel of her warm bared flesh overcame him and he had moved breathlessly on top of her, fumbling, he had paused to ask, comically, if she minded. B
ut she hadn’t laughed. Her reply had been to pull him down to her. The end had come quickly, too quickly, the pair of them inexperienced, but he’d had enough sense to withdraw hastily at the moment of his climax, leaving her lying on the pile of nets feeling incomplete, already concerned by the thought that she might discover herself pregnant in a few weeks’ time.
They had adjusted their dress with haste, not speaking to each other apart from when he asked if she was all right and she nodded. Emerging from the shed they had walked back home in silence, each intensely aware of the other but the common ground they usually shared missing.
Mum had asked innocently where they had been and they had said together, ‘Walking,’ and she had turned back to whatever she had been doing.
Soon afterwards, Arthur had left.
The next week, snow lying deep on the outskirts of London, he hadn’t been able to make it. His letter that week said he’d had to get his old bike into working order and that he missed her. But without work she’d not had the train fare to see him. When he was eventually able to cycle up to see her they hadn’t repeated the episode in the Strand shed, but he had asked her once more to marry him and she had said yes, her thoughts dwelling on the possibility that she could be pregnant from that single act of love.
Almost a month had gone by since and at odd moments Josie found herself counting the days to her next period, knowing it should show itself any day now, each day seemingly a lifetime of waiting. Perhaps tomorrow, she thought, then as nothing appeared, perhaps tomorrow. And again, what if I am pregnant, we’ve got no money, no one’s got any money, and how do I tell Mum and Dad? Dad would roar, tell her she was a slut and to leave, as he had roared at Pam telling her to leave. Then on the third day of anxiety, Josie felt the wetness in her knickers and in a wash of sheer joy and relief raced for a piece of tape, two safety pins and one of those pieces of towelling her mother would cut up from old bath towels to hem into twenty-four inch squares for her daughters’ use.
Now she could speak about her and Arthur. There was no need to get married straight away. They could save up for a year, maybe longer. Her mother took the news quietly, but pointed out the obvious.
‘He’s not even in work.’
‘It’s different work he does, Mum. It’s spasmodic. It comes whenever there’s a ship in the dock.’
‘I know.’ Her mother was folding aired linen ready to put away. It was Wednesday. She always put away her airing on a Wednesday, a very methodical woman, even with having to look after Dad. ‘Read the papers, love. I’ve seen the pictures of hundreds of dockers all waiting around dock gates just for a handful of them to be picked. Josie, that’s no kind of life for a woman, forever wondering if her husband is going to be in or out of work. I like your Arthur. He’s a very nice young man, but I did hope for something better for you.’
Josie felt petulance flood over her. She stopped helping to fold sheets, shirts and pillowcases. ‘I can’t help it if I’m in love with him.’
‘Of course you can’t.’ Her mother’s words were calm, sympathetic. ‘But it’s going to take years for you two to save up enough to get married on and find a decent place to live. By that time anything can happen.’
‘Yes, it will.’ Josie resumed her folding, laying the results on the kitchen table ready to be put in various drawers and cupboards. ‘Things will get better. By next year all this unemployment will be over and Arthur might be coining it with lots of ships to unload again.’
‘I was going to say, you might meet someone else. Someone who’d be able to provide for you a lot better.’
Josie stopped folding altogether, realisation of what her mother was trying to say catching her unawares. ‘I’m not going to give Arthur up for anyone. I know he’s not what you’d have liked for me, that he don’t speak proper and that he’s not a doctor or a lawyer or in some fine-paying profession. But I don’t care what you say, Mum. I love him and next year I’ll be old enough to marry him without anyone’s permission. We’re engaged to be married anyway, and that’s all that matters.’
‘And where’s the ring?’
‘We thought it wasn’t worth spending money on one yet.’
The truth was Arthur couldn’t afford an engagement ring, not even a cheap one.
‘What do you think you two are going to live on?’
‘Pam manages.’
‘Pam’s older. You can afford to wait. At twenty you still don’t know your own mind and what this world is all about. I think you should wait at least two more years before thinking of getting married – to anyone.’
But Josie did know her own mind, no matter what Mum might think. All Josie could see was those two years stretching before her as she waited for that something to come right that might never come right. To a twenty-year-old, a year was a lifetime, let alone two. She couldn’t wait. But with no money what else was there to do?
‘Better not worry your dad about it yet,’ her mother said, picking up what she had already folded and bearing it off upstairs to be put away.
Chapter Twenty-Four
‘What do I do about our Josie?’ her mother asked a week later as she and Connie washed up the dirty cutlery and dinner plates between them. The pots and pans would be left to soak for another half-hour before being tackled.
Connie had already been familiarised twice this week with Josie’s ongoing bout of moping since receiving no succour from Mum on the matter of marriage. And now Mum was bringing it up yet again.
‘She’s driving me potty the way she’d behaving, as if I’m to blame for not saying, “OK, love, you go ahead and get married – you’ve got no money but that’s all right, love, you go ahead!” I can’t even tell your Dad about her. You know how he is. He’d just boil up like he always does. And I can’t talk to Danny. He seems to have been in a world of his own all this week. I can’t discuss it with Pam. I haven’t been round there for weeks. I’m almost afraid to.’ The truth of that was that she still felt humiliated, unable to face her daughter. ‘I feel I’m really on my own with the problems of this family lately.’ Mum dipped plates into the sinkful of suds with swift strokes, swishing the cloth around them and pulling them out as if she bore each one a grudge. ‘You’re the only one I can turn to.’
But Connie wasn’t much interested in Josie. She had problems of her own in the shape of Mr Ian Lindsay. She had found out the young curate’s name, by devious means – to ask anyone outright would have sounded to her own ears to betray her motives – relieved when it had come up in conversation over the Christmas mince pies and mulled wine given to its parishioners by the church. ‘Dear Mr Lindsay, we see so little of you lately. Flitting in and out before anyone can say a word to you, you’ve become quite an elusive creature.’ Then a low friendly aside by the vicar reached Connie’s ears: ‘Hand round some more mince pies, Ian.’
But the criticism of Ian Lindsay’s elusiveness had not been without foundation as Connie saw it. He’d not spoken to her since that declaration of his that foggy morning in November, in fact acted as if he’d never spoken to her that way at all. Whether it was because of that she wasn’t sure, but she’d find herself watching him surreptitiously as he went about his duties when she should have been concentrating on the service. She had become conscious too of an excited pounding against her chest wall as she hastily bent her head should he look her way.
She still needed to go to church for it was here that Ben’s memory was most keen. Nearly a year had passed since his death but it seemed far less; she almost imagined he might suddenly come into church and kneel beside her. She felt annoyed with herself that Ian Lindsay’s presence should so often invade her thoughts of Ben. She dreaded the possibility of his speaking to her again. What to say if he did? To avoid any chance of it, she’d arrive just as the clergy and choir began to gather, often only moments before the organist struck up the progressional hymn, and leave amid the main body of departing parishioners. Never again would he find her lingering behind as he gathered up the hymn
books from the empty pews. Yet as she made her way home, it would nag at her that she should be running off like this lest he approach her.
What worried her was that he evoked in her the same involuntary excitement Ben once had. Not only did it make her a traitor to Ben’s memory but it caused such turmoil inside her that it wasn’t at all comfortable. It would have been far better were she to give up going to church altogether. But, bounced back the convenient excuse, that would have been exposing a weakness within herself.
At such times she’d take a train up to London after Sunday dinner to visit Ben’s grave, longer April days giving her more time. In East London Cemetery, she’d work it out of herself, taking out the dead flowers from the blue-glazed pot to place in the nearby bin, refilling the pot with clean water from a tap further along, filling it with flowers bought from the stall by the cemetery gate, meticulously arranging and rearranging them, standing back time and time again to stare at the result until it looked just right.
Finally with a wet cloth she would clean off any mould that had gathered on the small marble headstone with its inscription:
In Loving Memory of Benjamin David Watson 1905–1930
A Dear Son Ever In Our Hearts
Her lips thin and tight so that they wouldn’t tremble while her eyes glistened and blurred her sight with unshed tears, she would hold little conversations with him as she cleaned and tidied and plucked tiny weeds from between the pansies and primulas his parents had planted in the soil at the foot of the headstone. Still needing to draw out her time with him, she would sit on the bench a few feet away; on warm days she would lift her face to the sun, a sun that no longer warmed him here on earth but, she hoped, did so in heaven; on cold days would huddle into the collar of her coat, the brim of her felt hat pulled down, her gloved hands tucked inside her sleeves, her lyle-stockinged legs in sturdy shoes crossed at the ankles and tucked well back under the seat to conserve warmth. She’d sit and remember the good days with Ben, try not to recall that last day they’d spent together, when happiness turned so suddenly to tragedy; guilt, not being there to help save him.