by Maggie Ford
It had been strange sailing back home. Leaving Bombay in the damp debilitating heat, they had sailed up from the Indian Ocean to the still hot but by then arid climate. The ship had called in at Aden, and moved on into the Red Sea, still hot and dry, passing Alexandria and Cyprus. Then an imperceptible change had set in as they neared Marseilles though the weather remained warm. Even the passengers seemed to change too – a brisker attitude perhaps, more alert. Reaching Gibraltar the weather had taken a dramatic turn. Within a day, fresh progressed to cold as the ship sailed northward, the Bay of Biscay heaving, making her stomach heave with it, though not as much as it had going out. Perhaps she’d been too dull of spirit to care.
Now in the quiet chill of an English October, Annie stepped down the gangway to await the unloading of her several trunks, and heard an eager shout from the waiting crowd: ‘Annie! Annie, over here!’
The next thing she knew she was being held in the welcoming arms of her brother. The young lady with him stood back, smiling serenely, watching them reunite. It was the young lady’s presence that kept Annie tears at bay, but she would have loved to weep in Danny’s arms, and almost resented the woman’s intrusion.
‘Welcome home, Annie. How was the journey? We got your letter saying you was coming home. It said you’d tell us about things when you got here.’ Tucking her arm through his, holding it protectively, Danny gabbled on, conducting her through the main barriers, the young woman following behind. ‘The porters are bringing up your stuff. Mum couldn’t come – she had Dad to keep an eye on.’ Pausing, he turned to hold out a hand to the woman with him. ‘Annie, this is my … my fiancée. Yes you are, Holly. My fiancée. Annie, this is Holly. I wrote to you about her. We met six weeks ago. It seems longer, but it was at the beginning of September.’
Now he put an arm about the woman and drew her close. ‘I’ve asked her to marry me and she’s said yes, bless her. She’s all the things I never expected any woman to be. Loving and kind, honest and dependable and …’
‘Stop it,’ the girl scolded affably, her pale cheeks colouring, and he laughed.
‘She’s willing to come and live with us all once we’re married. Holly’s a school teacher. She’s got no family of her own and she lives in a furnished room at the moment in Prittlewell. We met just by accident and I instantly fell head over heels for her.’
Not a word about how she, Annie, was. But then, she hadn’t told anyone the reason why she was home. Holly was still protesting at the praise of her attributes, Danny laughing, planting a kiss on the flaming cheeks.
The trunks arrived on a trolley, were trundled to a waiting taxi and loaded on to it as the three of them got into the passenger seats.
‘This isn’t taking us all the way home, is it?’ Annie asked.
She was beginning to feel better, the cosiness of home beginning already to surround her, at least until she let her thoughts wander to Alex and her broken marriage again. Then the lump she had come to recognise as grief would lie within her breast squeezing the tears that hovered there up into her throat and to her eyes. But she must not cry now she was home.
‘No expense spared,’ Danny joked, and continued chattering all the way from Tilbury to Leigh. It was only as they got within a mile of home that Annie cut harshly through the light-heartedness.
‘Danny. There’s something I must tell you. I’m going to tell the whole family, but I need to tell you first, before we get home. I think I might need your support and you might understand better than the others.’
Danny, sobered, took his arm from around Holly’s shoulders. He sat quiet and so did she as Annie told the whole story behind her homecoming. She found herself not resenting the girl’s presence now, understanding exuding from her without her ever needing to say a word.
‘So you see,’ she finished glumly. ‘I can’t blame Alex. I’m to blame. I was lonely, out of my depth and Ansley Burrington was a straw to clutch at. He was so kind, but now I know he was only using me for his own pleasure. But I’m to blame for the break up of my marriage. I wrote and said Alex was sending me home for a visit, but this is for good. He doesn’t ever want to see me again. I don’t know how I’m going to tell everyone. I feel so ashamed. And they’re going to be so angry and hurt. I don’t know how I’m going to face them, especially Dad. You know how he is.’
‘You leave Dad to me,’ Danny said grimly. ‘But you’re going to have to tell Mum yourself. I suggest telling her on her own. Don’t make a public thing of it. Just her on her own. Let everything else sort itself out slowly.’
Danny was as good as his word. Annie sat with her mother and Holly, now privy to all of Annie’s guilty secrets, listening to her father’s roars from the downstairs bedroom they had made for him; Danny’s voice sounded strong and commandingly pacifying.
Mum, who’d had a little cry over Annie’s news, now sat quietly. Annie, waiting, felt Holly touch her hand and hold it firmly, as if she had known her all her life. For the first time Annie felt she had found a real friend.
In the taxi, Danny had extolled Holly’s virtues as the girl blushed, openly announcing that she was all the things his former girlfriend wasn’t. He explained proudly how Holly and Mum had got on famously from the start; how she had even gained his father’s high opinion. In the taxi, full of assurance about his own future, Danny had even spoken of how he was in a frame of mind to more or less forgive the Bryants for Dad’s accident, though not altogether, because that family would always spell trouble.
He’d told her that Pam was now living with the Bryants but occasionally came to see Mum, because Mum wasn’t inclined to set foot in the Bryant household even to see her own daughter. Dad still remained totally against her setting foot in his home, still refused to speak to her, but Danny had told Mum to ignore him, that he would sort him out, as he was sorting out this present business. It seemed to Annie, listening to his voice in the other room, that he’d taken complete charge of this family since their father’s accident and what he said, went. And when Danny finally came back to them he was smiling. ‘I’ve sorted him out,’ he stated, as if it was no more than expected.
Chapter Thirty
Christmas would arrive in a few weeks’ time and not a word had come from Alex.
‘I’m not going to say put it all behind you,’ Connie told her, and Connie should know. It had taken her eighteen months to put her loss of Ben behind her and Annie suspected her sister still pined after his memory even though she now had her vicar with talk of their getting engaged. Connie a vicar’s wife – it sounded strange.
‘Losing someone you love is what you could call a two-year disease,’ Connie said. ‘You can do your utmost to put it behind you but it’s no good.’
Maybe it was of some help to have someone who understood. Mum understood too. She’d lost Tony all those years ago and sometimes she still had a faraway, sad look in her eyes when she thought she was alone. And there was Danny, losing his girlfriend. Lily, that was her name. That must have hurt him very much. All three knew what it was like to lose someone, or be alone again. Yet none of it made her own heartache less. It seemed to break afresh the moment she woke up to a new day, seeming to get worse with time rather than better.
It was all she could do not to weep and make a nuisance of herself; all she could do to try not to harp on it and get on everyone’s nerves, and at least look interested in what went on around her, just as she tried to look interested and pleased when Josie came rushing home on the first Monday afternoon in December to say she had got a job as an assistant receptionist. At the Grand Hotel in Southend of all places.
‘It’s supposed to be over the Christmas period,’ Josie gushed as she danced around the kitchen in joy. ‘But if I prove suitable they’ll keep me on afterwards.’
The kitchen smelled of spice. The table was covered with bits of bread from making breadcrumbs, with flour, dried fruit, suet and all the other ingredients for Christmas pudding. Her mother, reigning supreme over it all, smiled at her da
ughter. ‘If you prove suitable.’
‘I know I will,’ Josie exclaimed. ‘I was always a good receptionist at the Cliffs Hotel, and I am presentable. I know one thing, good looks stand you in good stead when it comes to getting a job. Oh, Mum, I’m so thrilled.’
Ceasing to skip around the small kitchen, she flung herself at her mother and hugged her, ignoring the danger to her best coat from the large sticky wooden spoon with which Mum was blending the Christmas pudding mixture together. ‘There were crowds of girls there all hoping for the job. But I got it! I’ll have money for Christmas!’
Her mother, knowing where she had gone that morning and praying all day that she might get the job but holding out little hope for it, said she knew all along she would get it.
Annie, the only one at home besides Mum and Dad, and busy stoning raisins, gave her sister a bleak smile and tried not to let her voice break.
‘Congratulations, Josie.’
Josie sobered sufficiently to look at her and murmur a thank you, for a few seconds seeing the despondency that lurked in her sister’s eyes. But soberness didn’t last beyond those few seconds.
Her respect for her sister’s broken marriage forgotten, Josie swept on. ‘Not only that, but you remember that letter I got from Arthur this morning, Mum? Well, I couldn’t read it straight away, because I was in a hurry to get to Southend for the interviews before too many applicants arrived, and I was too nervous to read it on the way there and while I was waiting. But I read it on the way home. And guess what? Arthur’s got himself a job too.’
‘He’s already got a job – in the docks,’ her mother said, mystified. ‘If you can call it a job – more of them out than in, all the good jobs according to him going to men who know-what’s-about, as he puts it.’
Arthur when he came to the house was always on about the docks, and they had all become familiar with the jargon he used: words like gangers, and phrases like on the stones, shaping-up, call-on, and so on.
‘He’s always been a floater,’ Josie said, another of his words for men operating alone. She took a deep breath, preparing herself for what would be a long explanation. ‘He wouldn’t get in with other gangers after his dad died – felt like he was taking advantage of his dad’s name – Arthur’s funny like that, wants to do things his own way, and his dad getting killed in the docks upset him a lot – but I told him, he ought to look to the main chance or he’d never get anywhere, more so now times are hard. Well, Arthur took my advice at last, Mum, and a ganger who knew his dad offered to take him into his gang when some chap or other left, and now he’s realised what he’s been missing, and this chap’s apparently a real whiz and puts himself about so his gang get more call-ons than a lot do, and now Arthur won’t be left waiting on the stones on his own any more.’
She finished practically breathless after this enthusiastic surge of information, taking another deep breath to end, ‘So with us both in work, we’ll be able to get engaged properly, with a ring an’ all, and next year we can get married, and I’ll be twenty-one and just the right age, won’t I?’
Her mother, smiling gently, went on mixing the initial ingredients for the Christmas pudding. The rest of the ingredients waited, already prepared. Only the raisins were still to be stoned: Annie was working far too slowly with them.
‘Is that what was in your Arthur’s letter?’ Peggy asked calmly.
Josie made a face. ‘Well, not exactly, Mum, but we’ve talked about it a lot, so it goes without saying, once we get some money around us, we can get married, and we’ll be saving hard, and that’s what we talk about all the time, and …’
‘Yes, dear,’ her mother sighed. ‘But I’ve got to get on with this pudding and put it aside to rest or it’ll never get boiled.’
‘Are we all getting a stir and a wish?’ Josie asked, coming to a full stop mid-sentence.
‘I expect so. We usually do. And I’ll put in the threepenny bits too.’
Annie, still busy stoning raisins, knew what her wish would be but held no hope of it ever coming true. Her marriage was over, wrecked.
‘I’m going to wish for me and Arthur to get enough money to get married on next year,’ Josie cried. ‘And for dad to walk again as well.’
‘You only get one wish,’ her mother said, her face down as she mixed.
‘You can do it, Dad.’ Tense and anxious, Danny watched his father struggle to get the crutches under his arms. He dared not help him. Danny made himself appear calm, confident of his father’s eventual triumph. Not in a million years would he betray the fear that lay inside him. If Dad were to fall …
‘You’re all right. Just take it steady.’
For months Dad had been going on about getting back on his feet. But getting back on his feet would not be walking in the sense that others would recognise – his feet would never feel the ground beneath them, his dead legs would never move independently of each other. His whole weight leaning on the broad heavy crutches, he would only ever be able to propel his body forward on the crutches and swing his iron-callipered legs forward together until his weight settled on top of them and brought him upright a foot or two further towards whatever destination he was aiming for. But if it worked he’d be mobile, no longer a burden to others.
Only Danny and Holly had been allowed to see him struggle to stand on those lifeless legs, more like tree trunks supporting a too-heavy branch, his wife and the rest of his family were permitted nowhere near. Danny because he was his son, another man with whom he need not feel a lesser man; Holly because there was something about her that instilled confidence, a certain neutrality. Danny felt proud that Dad had taken her to his bosom. He couldn’t have wished for a better person than Holly to be his future wife, and Dad approving of her as he did had made it all the better.
‘Come on, Dad. You can do it.’
Peggy stared at her daughter, the light from the room piercing the December evening to pick out the man standing immediately behind her with Beth in his arms.
‘Pam.’ The shock seeing her husband standing there bold as brass made Peggy’s head reel, and she could find no other words to convey that while Pam was welcome, her husband was not.
Pam was smiling as if nothing untoward was occurring. She’d been here several times since moving in with the Bryants, she and little Beth, but always on her own.
‘We’ve come to wish you happy Christmas, Mum.’
‘Christmas’s still three weeks away. Bit early ain’t you?’ She couldn’t help the sharpness of her tone.
‘Well, we’ll be spending it with George’s people, Mum. Dad wouldn’t want us here, so we thought we’d come … Can we come inside for a bit? It’s cold out here and Beth’s already got a bit of a sniffle.’
She made to step forward but Peggy barred her way. ‘No! No, you can’t, Pam.’ Almost immediately she felt remorse for her abruptness, tried to modify it, but it was hard with George standing there. Still, he had to understand she couldn’t welcome him here. Pam, her own daughter, was one thing. George was another entirely. Old wounds did not heal as many might think. Natural instinct made him obnoxious in her eyes, for all she knew he was guilty only of being a son of the Bryants. Nevertheless, she moderated her tone, tried to sound civil as she spoke to him directly. ‘I’m sorry, I just can’t ask you in. I don’t want to be the cause of disrupting our family. Bad enough getting Pam’s father to accept her back, but not you. I’m sorry.’
The pair looked at each other, then came to an unspoken decision, and George handed the baby over to his wife. ‘You go in, love. I’ll stay here. I don’t suppose you’ll be long.’ It sounded pointed. She saw Pam wince.
‘I can’t leave you out here in this cold wind. You’ll catch your death.’
He gave a small chuckle, one that unreasonably grated on Peggy ears. The nerve of him coming here expecting to be asked in.
‘I’m out in all weathers, love,’ he said evenly as if the wife of his father’s adversary wasn’t there. ‘A bit of cold wind
won’t hurt me.’
‘Are you coming in or not, Pam?’ There was no Christmas spirit in her voice, not even premature Christmas spirit.
Without a word Pam followed her in, Peggy starting to close the door on the intruding husband, saying as she did so, ‘Your dad’s asleep. I don’t want him woken up.’
She had the door only half closed when Danny came into the room. He had full view of the man at the street door.
‘What’s he doing here?’
‘Shh! You’ll wake your dad.’ But Danny had already brushed past her. Chin jutting belligerently, his eyes glaring at the other man, he reached him before Peggy could stop him.
‘Bugger off, you!’
George stood his ground. ‘I’m with my wife to keep her company.’
Danny narrowed his eyes. ‘I tell you this. If you wasn’t my sister’s husband I’d send you on with a thick ear, standin’ here as if you own the bloody place. We tolerate you, at a distance, because you’re Pam’s husband. You’ve not done us any harm. It’s your family what has. But that don’t give you no cause to come here to our doorstep as if you own the bloody place.’
George appeared ready to shape up to him, his body tensing. A larger man than his father had ever been, and Danny not as big as his father, they were more or less well matched.
‘You’d rather me let me wife and kid out alone on a night like this then?’ George growled.
‘I’d better go, Mum,’ Pam said hurriedly. ‘We only came because of the season of good will.’
‘It’s a bit too early for that,’ Peggy said again, but this time more gently. She put a hand on Pam’s arm. ‘I don’t mean to be rotten, dear, but look, it’s difficult for us to take to your husband. Give it time.’
The soft words brought the two men into line, the wind going out of their sails. ‘He oughtn’t to be round here,’ Danny said.