Tara

by Lesley Pearse

  Bill instinctively put his arm round Amy, drawing her away from Mabel as she rose from her chair in fury.

  'A guttersnipe, that's what he is! To think the Lord spared him instead of my Arthur. Don't you know what this is, child? The devil come to tempt you! Get him out of this house now!'

  'I was good enough to fight for my country, surely I'm good enough for your daughter.' Bill took a step towards the older woman, his voice cold. 'If you are refusing to let me court her, then I'll take her with me now.'

  Mabel raised her hand as if to strike him.

  'I'd kill her sooner than let her leave with you!'

  'Go and get your things, Amy,' Bill said quietly. 'I'll take you to Ma, she'll welcome you.'

  Amy hesitated. She knew if she backed down to her mother now she'd never win at anything, but in the same instant she was afraid.

  Upstairs she threw everything she owned into a bag as fast as she could. Her mother's voice rose up the stairs, shrill and hate-laden. Grabbing the bag, she ran down the stairs, snatching her coat and hat from the peg in the hall.

  'If you go now, you can never come back,' Mabel screamed like a harpy behind them as Bill hurried Amy down the dark street. 'You've made your bed, my girl, now lie in it.'

  'Tell me, Mum?' Tara took her mother's hands in hers and squeezed them. 'Tell me what's making you cry?'

  Amy looked like a child as she lay in the chair, sobbing. She was rubbing her eyes with her fists, angry rather than grief-stricken. Instinct told Tara that some memory from the distant past had caused this outbreak.

  Harry had returned to his work behind her on the porch, laying bricks so fast it was obvious he felt awkward. She could hear Gran shouting some instructions to Stan out in the yard and willed her not to come round and interrupt.

  'Tell me, Mum?' she whispered. 'Don't keep it in!'

  'She was so mean to Bill,' Amy whispered. 'If it hadn't been for her forcing me to leave, things might have been different.'

  'It's all so long ago.' Tara tried to jolly her along. 'Does it matter now?'

  'No, nothing matters now,' Amy sobbed. 'I had happiness in the palm of my hand for such a short while, but it's gone now, and I'll never feel that way again.'

  Chapter 11

  Mabel and Tara were convinced that the morning's events were a major breakthrough. Although Amy had scuttled off into the house later and stayed in her room for several hours, at tea-time she had reappeared looking much more relaxed. After the evening meal she got up and cleared the table without any prompting, and she'd even asked questions about Betsy and a litter of pigs.

  It seemed to Amy as if she was waking from a long, deep sleep. For weeks now she'd been aware of little more than heat and cold, but now pain hit her from every direction. It was like watching her life on Pathe News at the cinema. Every unpleasant incident, each mistake, misjudgment, wrong turning – they were all there, larger than life, faithfully recorded.

  With hindsight she could see now that she alone was responsible for how things turned out. By allowing both her mother and Bill to manipulate her that night in '46, she had blindly stumbled into the world which Bill himself was so anxious to escape. She forced herself to relive every moment of that evening and the events which followed, knowing that until she did so she couldn't make sense of the present.

  'I don't think I should trouble your parents,' she said weakly as she and Bill made their way down to Limehouse that Sunday night. The icy wind whipped through her thin coat and she had to hold on to her hat and trot to keep up with Bill. 'Couldn't I just get a room somewhere instead?'

  She only had five shillings, but that was enough until she got paid on Friday.

  'I'm not taking the risk of letting you stay in one of those places.' Bill glanced up at a sign saying 'Room to let' on a dismal house in Cable Street. He lifted her bag under one arm and put his free one round her shoulder. 'They're full of sailors, dockers and brass. A pretty little thing like you wouldn't last five minutes there. Our place is grim, but at least you won't come to no harm.'

  She wanted to ask him to take her to Flossie's house but the grim set of his chin deterred her and instead she let him take her further and further into the area which she knew only by its grim reputation. Street lighting was almost non-existent and again and again she almost slipped on foul-smelling refuse and muck. Children were playing in the shells of bomb-damaged houses, despite the dark and cold. Skeletal dogs barked warnings, raucous laughter spilled from pubs, and the fog sirens from boats on the river added to the sense of danger.

  Bill appeared not to notice any of this; he even waved cheerfully to a couple of blowsy-looking women huddled outside an eel and pie shop.

  'Hitler had more respect for his bombs than to drop one here!' he joked as they approached his home.

  It was like catching a glimpse of the end of the world. A wasteland lay before them – pits full of slimy water, uncleared rubble from bombed buildings and piles of stinking rubbish. Grafton Buildings lay just beyond this morass, one of four tenements left standing where once were twelve. A lone gaslight illuminated the central spiral staircase that led to a rabbit-warren of flats. Amy's heart was sinking even though Bill kept her hand in his.

  'I know it's horrible,' he said. 'This is why I want to get out of London. But it's only for a couple of nights till I can find you something else.'

  Amy barely breathed as he led her up the dark staircase. She could smell the shared lavatory on each landing as they approached, and that was enough. It was so noisy, too! Sunday night, but there were babies screaming, women shouting, a drunk yelling abuse and a group of small boys firing their catapults at milk-bottles down on the waste ground.

  The front door was almost off its hinges, as if it had been kicked in, and it led straight into a living room which doubled as a kitchen. There was no rug on the floor, dirty brown paint peeled off walls and ceiling and the only furniture was a rickety table, two stools and two armchairs greasy with age. The cooker was an ancient, rusting range with socks and underpants hanging from string above it to dry. Amy took in the sink full of blackened pots, the table strewn with the remains of a meal and the cracked lino and almost ran straight out.

  'I'm sorry, luv.' Bill took her in his arms and kissed her. 'I know it's not what you're used to.'

  Amy knew that her own home was far superior to most in East London and she hadn't expected the same standard here. But this place was like a hovel.

  'Where are your parents?' Amy looked around fearfully.

  'Down the boozer.' He shrugged his shoulders. 'They'll be back soon. You can sleep in my bed, I'll kip down in here.'

  Bill's bedroom was even tinier than her own at home, yet once four boys had lived in it. No curtain hung at the window, and the sagging, lumpy bed made her itch to look at it.

  Bill did his best, he prodded the stove back to life, put a kettle on to boil and washed up the pile of pots and plates. Amy sat on the edge of one of the chairs and listened to his explanation.

  'Mum had eight kids in ten years.' He smiled ruefully. 'Two died at birth, three more before they was five. I came along ten years after the last one, the same year Dad lost his arm in an accident down at the docks, so we was on welfare from then on. They ain't never seen the country or the sea, all they know is round here. I prayed this place would be bombed so they'd get a decent home, but they weren't even lucky enough for that.'

  'But your brothers. Where are they?'

  'Mick, the eldest, was the one killed at Dunkirk.' Bill sighed. 'Our Frank did a runner years ago when the bluebottles were after him. He ain't never showed 'is face again. Ernest, the next one up to me, joined the Navy as a lad and he lives in Portsmouth. He writes at Christmas, that's all, and I'll get away too as soon as I can.'

  The arrival of his parents was heralded by dogs barking furiously and the sound of arguing.

  'Don't mind Ma, she's all right really,' Bill said quickly. 'Just a bit sharp-tongued.'

  Gertie MacDonald was fat, o
ld and slatternly, with wispy white hair and pale brown eyes that swept over Amy in astonishment.

  'Who the 'ell's this?' she asked, wheezing as she sank into the other chair and spread her fat thighs wide enough to show long pink bloomers.

  Norman MacDonald lurched in unsteadily; a tall, thin man with a hangdog expression, his empty sleeve flapping.

  Bill explained briefly what had happened and Amy turned pink as the old couple studied her. It seemed impossible to her that such a pair could have a finelooking son like Bill. Gertie was short, with a deeply lined face that held traces of grime, made worse by having only two or three blackened teeth left. She wore a crossover pinny ingrained with grease over a shapeless mauve print dress, and stockings that only reached her knees, held up with elastic garters, above which purple, veiny flesh bulged.

  Norman needed a shave. His collarless shirt was black with dirt, his brown trousers several sizes too large. He looked as if he'd lost weight dramatically, leaving folds of skin just hanging.

  'Clear off, you two.' Gertie pointed to the door and nodded her head. 'I want a word with 'er.'

  Norman obediently staggered off, his eyes glazed with drink. Bill followed him, looking round once at Amy as if to reassure her.

  'Well, out wiv it,' Gertie said immediately they had left. 'Are you up the spout?'

  'Of course not!' Amy said indignantly.

  'You mean you ain't bin 'aving it off with our Bill?'

  Amy was shocked by the crude question, but she shook her head, tears filling her eyes.

  'Don't cry,' Gertie's tone softened. 'Our Bill's a good-looking fella, I could 'ardly blame you if you 'ad. Sounds like yer ma's a bit cuckoo!'

  'She's never been right since Dad was killed.' Amy explained about the religion and her mother's coldness. 'Bill only came round to make it right courting me.'

  For a moment the only sounds were Gertie sucking her gums and a murmur of conversation from Bill and his father in the next room.

  'I tell you now, I want somefin' better for my lad than what me and Norm got,' she said at length. 'You're a pretty little thing and you speak nice. If Bill can get on his feet and get a bit of cash behind him you'll do nicely for 'im. But use yer 'ead, girl, not the bit you sit on. I don't want no hanky-panky 'ere, and no babbies.'

  Amy had a feeling this speech was meant as approval. Still stunned by her mother's reaction to Bill, she felt a wave of affection for the woman.

  'I'll find somewhere else soon,' she said quickly. 'I've got a good job, Mrs MacDonald:'

  'You'll need it, luv,' Gertie snorted. 'Just you save your pennies, keep yer drawers on and you and our Bill will do fine.'

  But they didn't do fine. Weeks slid into months and still Amy was at Grafton Buildings, hating it more each day.

  The winter of 1947 was the worst on record. Snow came at Christmas and it lasted until the end of March. An icy wind whistled through ill-fitting windows, buses were stopped and pipes froze up.

  The lavatory was so disgusting Amy would leave home an hour early to walk to Aldgate to use the one in the workroom. They had to get water from a stand-pipe down in the street and lug it up the steep flights in buckets.

  Bad weather meant Gertie and Norman couldn't even get out to the Two Brewers and they spent the evenings huddled in front of the stove, bickering. There was no opportunity to be alone with Bill unless they braved the cold outside. Just the brush of his body against hers, or the touch of his hand, was enough to inflame their senses, so they avoided close contact.

  Bill came home from work frozen stiff and exhausted. His suit and best shirt hung on a nail in the bedroom as a reminder of better days. He wore old grease-smeared trousers, matted sweaters that stank of engine oil, and by the time he got home he had a dark shadow of bristles on his chin.

  'We'll have to wait till spring,' he said wearily each time she asked if they could find a room somewhere. 'I ain't got the energy to do a place up now.'

  There were many times when she wanted to go home. She dreamed of her clean, tidy bedroom, getting into the tin bath in front of the fire and a table laid properly with a white cloth. But to go home now would be to lose face. Even if her mother eventually accepted Bill, she would always believe he had failed to provide for her daughter.

  Rats grew bolder. They lurked on the stairs, waiting for an opportunity to run into the flat to forage. Once she felt one run over her bed at night and she screamed so loudly the neighbours thought someone had hit her.

  When the thaw came things were worse in many ways for at least the snow had hidden the ugliness. Rubbish, putrid and stinking, was revealed, heaving with maggots and rats. Bomb holes were full of black slime and the frozen earth turned into thick, glutinous mud. The warmer weather brought back noise, too. With windows open again and children playing outside, Amy's ears were bombarded with shouting and shrieking from first light until long after dark.

  Durward Street was rarely quiet, especially on a Saturday night, but here it never let up for a minute. Babies screamed, couples fighting, women yelling down through open windows and kids running up and down the stairs. No colour or beauty ever showed in these dismal streets; even the weeds that sprouted up over the bomb sites had a grey, distorted look about them, just like the residents.

  Amy learned to go to the public baths once a week, pushing an old pram with the bag wash. She black-leaded the stove, scraped at saucepans till they looked fit to use and cleaned the flat as best she could. Now she understood why so many women gave up. It was an effort to keep any standards of cleanliness when there was nowhere to put anything, no space or privacy.

  And Ma was making a mint out of the pair of them. Bill worked twice as hard to try to save, but the more he worked, the more Ma wanted. For six months he was unaware that Amy was paying her, too. He was happily convinced Amy was stashing money away for a home of their own when in fact it was going into the till at the Two Brewers or down the dog track.

  Amy heard from neighbours that Bill had been part of the Limehouse gang before he joined up. Although he claimed he had put that all behind him, men often called to see him and he would have muffled conversations out on the landing. Sometimes he would disappear with these men, never explaining later what it was about, but on several occasions he returned with skinned knuckles and dried blood on his clothes.

  Everything was frustrating. The slow rate their savings built up, the long hours they both had to work, the lack of privacy, even the secrecy which Bill maintained about his friends, but most of all suppressing desire.

  All around them was evidence of what happened when passion got out of control – girls with swollen bellies, screaming babies, and so many children. They weren't going to be trapped in Limehouse. They could wait.

  On June 2nd 1947 Amy heard Bill calling to her from below. Opening the window she saw him standing by a gleaming black Austin Seven, its chrome glinting in the sunshine. It was just seven in the morning and, though he'd hinted the night before he was taking her out for her birthday, she hadn't expected anything more than a day in Victoria Park.

  That morning she didn't notice the weeds sprouting up through broken concrete, the bomb holes, the rubbish or even the evil smells. All she saw was Bill.

  He was wearing grey slacks and a fine white cotton shirt she'd made him during the winter. He had shaved off his moustache and he looked so boyish as he grinned up at her.

  She put on her new pink sundress and sandals and ran down the stairs to join him.

  'Happy birthday.' He ran to meet her as she reached the bottom stair and swung her round in his arms as if she were a child. 'The car's only borrowed, but we're gonna have a day in the country.'

  He smelled of lavender hair oil and soap, and he kissed her there in the yard with no concern for the nosy neighbours peering out of their windows. His brown eyes sparkled the way she remembered from their first meeting and his lips were as warm and soft as the sunshine.

  Amy hadn't been out of London since she was evacuated at the star
t of the War and the air was so clean and fresh she wanted to sing with delight. Green fields, woods and hills, then every now and then a little village basking in the warm sun.

  'Are we going to the sea?' she asked, seeing a signpost to Folkestone.

  'Maybe. After you've seen my special place,' he said mysteriously.

  'Is this it?' Amy stared in surprise at the little garage Bill pulled up by.

  'No, that comes later.' He took her hand and squeezed it. 'But this is the kind of place I want to own.'

  The garage was nothing more than a shed with a petrol pump, next to a row of cottages, a pub and a post office running along the main road into Folkestone, fifteen miles away. The garage was a messy place, straddling one corner of a crossroads, the ground covered in oil and bits of engines left to rust. But at the side of it was a small cottage and a young woman was pegging out a line of nappies in the garden.

  Bill's face was a picture as he stared longingly at the place, lost in a silent dream of a sparkling forecourt, gleaming cars parked ready to be collected by their owners and his name above the garage door.

  'It's in a good spot.' His smile was infectious. 'People on their way down to Folkestone, and the local folk wanting repairs done. I'd clean it up, paint the workshop, maybe even make a little shop. And look at that house, Amy! Wouldn't you like to live there?'

  Amy's heart lurched at his question. Would she like to live there? She would almost kill to! No rats or smells, no fighting and screaming. She could make that place into a little palace.

  'Oh, Bill.' She sighed, leaning her head against his shoulder. 'It would be heaven.'

  'I want you so badly, Amy,' he whispered, holding her face in his hands with such tenderness she could scarcely bear it. 'This is how I want it to be forever, just you and me.'

  They left the car there and hand in hand they walked up a country lane, as Bill told her of his vision of their future.

  'Everyone will have a car soon,' he said, eyes shining with confidence. 'We get a little place like that to start, then another. We live right by the garage, so it's no trouble to keep it open all hours. You could build up the shop, look after the house and maybe even do some dressmaking. I'll grow vegetables in the garden.'