by Annie Clarke
‘There’ll be nowt of that, I’ll have you know,’ Ben grumbled, ‘and what’s more, I’ll be a little ray of sunshine, that I will.’
Annie laid his plate before him, then hurried back into the scullery, bringing out her own. She snatched a look at the clock. ‘Heavens, quick, quick, ’tis seven o’clock. We need to leave at ten thirty to be there at eleven, or your Davey’ll be left standing at the altar, looking gormless with Stan, who’ll no doubt realise he’s lost the ring.’
They were all sniggering now, Ben most of all, as they gobbled up the eggs. He finished, laid down his knife and fork, and made for the back door. ‘I reckon our Fran’ll need a good three hours to make herself look beautiful, but I’m first in the netty, so that’s that.’ He was out of the door like a shot.
The three of them looked at one another and laughed till they felt exhausted. Fran pictured herself here, at this table, with her man, and with these people she loved, and knew it was all right. Suddenly, she couldn’t wait, and the happiness exploded within her.
They dressed in old clothes, bustled to the Miners’ Club hall to meet up with the co-op, who were sorting out the tea, though after an hour they sent the girls home to get ready. Fran tried to ignore the fact that Beth was so pale, even though she still helped, and laughed, and Fran could have wept, for how could she, when the poor lass’s life was in shreds?
At ten thirty, when the girls were waiting in the kitchen, dressed, with some lippy and with their hair washed and gleaming, they heard a car horn at the front. Sarah gripped Fran’s hand. ‘You look a picture, our Fran. A right picture, a real princess. Look how it fits.’ Viola insisted she do a twirl, a spin, and thought Mrs Oborne had done a beautiful job, for you couldn’t see the stitches at all.
Sarah turned to Viola. ‘You in your green, and Beth, that blue suits you to a T, and here I am in me pink. By, a fine gaggle of women we are, eh?’
Beth whispered, as though she was quite suddenly too tired, ‘Sarah, that pink was made for you, and Viola, the green is so good with your dark auburn hair, isn’t it, Mrs Hall?’
Annie was nodding, tears in her eyes. ‘You are all so lovely. I’m proud of you.’
There was another hoot, and Fran picked up her bouquet of late daffodils. There weren’t many left on the verges, but enough. They lifted their hems and rushed to the front door, waving goodbye to Mrs Hall, telling her how elegant she was in her lilac.
Ben was opening the door, ushering them out. ‘Mam has to get going an’ all, out to the bus up the back alley, so get in the bliddy car.’
‘Language,’ they all yelled.
Sarah cuffed him, while Fran whispered, ‘If me hands weren’t full of the posy, I’d wallop you good and proper.’
The girls clambered into the car, with Alfie, smart in his grey uniform, holding the door, and Ben leaping into the front passenger seat, fiddling with his collar and moaning at the tightness of it. ‘Bet that little silver mascot on the front of the bonnet didn’t expect white ribbons tied to her,’ he muttered.
Alfie looked at him, his uniform cap set straight, not at its usual jaunty angle. ‘She’s called Spirit of Ecstasy, lad, and she’ll do as she’s told, and if you don’t, you’ll be the one polishing her next time.’
The girls laughed. Fran called, ‘Don’t you go being a right pain, our Ben, just because you’re in your suit. Alfie has orders to grab your tie and pull it tight if you get out of hand.’
Ben grinned at Alfie. ‘You wouldn’t, would you, for you’d have to take your hands off the steering wheel, and your boss would pull your tie tight if you wrote off the car.’
‘It’s more than a car, lad,’ said Alfie. ‘It’s a Rolls-Royce, silent as a gentle breeze. The only noise is you, so shut your gob.’
Ben sank down in his seat. ‘You know our lasses will all start calling themselves Ecstasy Spirits after riding in this. Especially looking so grand in their kegs.’
The girls exchanged glances. Beth said, ‘Well, someone’s noticed, even if our Alfie hasn’t.’
As Alfie drew away, he said, ‘That’s because I’m speechless at all the beauty around me.’
‘You’ve a smooth tongue, our Alfie,’ called Sarah.
Alfie laughed quietly, saluting the pitmen’s wives who were waving from their doorsteps. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘who wouldn’t be right gobsmacked to see all this beauty on the doorsteps waving at little old me.’
‘Slap him, Ben,’ demanded Viola, as they waved back to the neighbours until they turned onto Main Street and set off for St Oswald’s.
It was then that Ben turned. ‘They’ll be dressed up in their kegs at the Miners’ Club hall for the tea, or so Mrs Wainwright of number ten told me this morning. They’re getting there early, putting the urn on, and this and that, or so they said.’
Fran sat next to Sarah. ‘Best if the Reverend Walters’ sister makes a few windy pops on the organ, and then no one will hear our shoes. The blessed things don’t squeak anywhere else, so it must be those flagstones. Too much polish?’
‘D’you remember Ralph winking at my wedding and wondering if we had mice in the church?’ Sarah asked. ‘He was nice that day, it sort of crowned the difference in him, made it public somehow. How’s he doing, Viola?’
Viola smiled, blushing again. ‘We hope he’s coming to the wedding. He’s been telephoning every evening while he’s been getting himself functioning again. Sophia thinks he sounds as good as new and is so excited to be seeing him, but we haven’t told the children, in case he can’t get here. Eva’s missed him more than anyone, it seems to me. She loves him so much. He spent time with them all when he was recovering from his septic cut.’
And you aren’t backward in wanting to see him, I reckon, thought Fran, and knew that Viola could do much worse, for Ralph had finally proved himself a good man. She stared out of the window, and in the reflection she saw the kirby grip, falling—
She turned away. No, not today, not ever. That was over, and she was home, her mind had healed, and her memories.
She said finally, ‘I hope he’s really better.’
‘Aye,’ said Viola, ‘I reckon some of what’s ailing Sophia has been her worry over him. He’s her lad, after all.’
Fran looked down, for Beth was grieved too, and hers was a running sore. Fran still couldn’t bear that she had not seen the pain and struggle of her friend. Sarah must be thinking much the same, for she reached for Beth’s hand and squeezed it. ‘You look so lovely, Beth, and you’re so brave.’
Beth looked round at them. ‘Aye, well, ’tis what it is, and today you’ll be at the church, our Fran, happy as Larry, and it will be a grand do, like Sarah’s, and then there’s just Viola to sort out.’
‘I’ll say this once, and once only,’ Ben called back to them, ‘that Bob’s a disgrace and a fool, for you’re a bliddy diamond, and I’m saying that to your face, our Beth.’ He looked at her. Then turned to the front.
Fran heard Alfie whisper, ‘Put a sock in it.’
‘No I won’t,’ muttered Ben, ‘for I want to punch him on the nose, so I do. So, you just concentrate on your driving, why don’t you.’
Alfie flung a packet of Woodbines and a box of matches at him. ‘Put a Woodbine in that big gob of yours, light it and give it me back. But don’t make the end all wet. And for the love of Mike, shut up, for you’d have to stand on an orange crate to reach his nose, you daft bairn.’
There was silence, and then Beth began to laugh, high-pitched, but at least it was a laugh. Relieved, the others joined in, and as they petered out Fran slipped her free arm through Beth’s, whispering, ‘The lad’s right, you’re a diamond, and that’s all you have to remember.’
Sarah was saying, ‘By, the mams looked right smart, don’t you think? Though their shoes are a size too big so there’s room for the feet to swell.’ There was more laughter and Beth joined in, and again they were four marrers, excited at the thought of the wedding.
‘Penny for them?’ Fran murmured t
o Sarah, who was looking thoughtful as Alfie checked his watch.
‘We’re all right for time,’ he called.
Sarah smiled. ‘Penny for me thoughts, eh? I were just thinking who’d have known that a parachute could make a bride look so magical, and some cotton material make the bridesmaids a sight for sore eyes. For we are, Beth, and you too, Viola. Beth, you look a picture with your hair up like that, caught up in that silver-looking slide.’
‘Aye, where’d you get it?’ Ben asked, as Alfie seemed to glide on air round the bend.
Beth flushed and said, ‘Oh, just an old one I found.’
‘I don’t remember you ever wearing that, our Beth,’ said Ben. ‘Where’ve you been hiding it?’
There was a long silence, and finally Beth muttered, ‘It was in the back of my drawer.’
‘Right,’ called Alfie. ‘We’re on schedule. I’ll take you to the top of the church hill, then charge off for the Massinghams. You tuck yourselves in the vicar’s robing room, though to call it that makes him sound like the Pope.’
He braked in front of the church. ‘Let the beauties out, our Ben. And don’t you dare go down the aisle till ’tis five minutes past eleven. Got to be late and give our Davey a scare – ’tis obligatory.’
The white ribbons were fluttering in the breeze as Ben opened the back door, bowing and beckoning them out. As Viola was first to leave the car, Sarah whispered to Fran, ‘Be grateful the ribbons are only on the cars, for in times gone by they’d have decorated your bed and we’d all have a good look with you two in it.’
Beth clambered out next, holding her dress up with one hand.
‘Take my hand, Beth,’ said Viola.
‘I meant to say,’ called Alfie, ‘the mams have left the bridesmaids’ flowers in the robing room. They probably pinched them off the altar.’
‘Shut up,’ Beth and Viola shouted together and Alfie laughed.
‘Bring the saxophone when you come, Sarah, if you would,’ Viola asked.
Fran was easing herself out now, carefully gathering up the silk, but she called out, ‘Nobody get any ideas about coming into the bedroom, or I’ll have to belt you all.’
The wind was tugging at their hair, the sun catching Beth’s silver slide. She’d have seen the new girl’s kirby grip if it was silver, Fran thought. She brought up Ralph’s face, his voice and that was enough.
Sarah was standing beside her. Ben shut the door with a tiny click. The mams were at the church door, which meant Bert’s busload were already there. Annie beckoned. ‘Quick, quick, out of the wind.’
They hurried past them into the entrance lobby. Fran glanced to the right, along the nave to the altar. Davey was already sitting in the front pew, with Stan. As Alfie eased the car down the hill, Fran swung round, seeing more people straggling up the hill.
He mam turned her round. ‘By, look at your hair, ’tis blowing amok.’
‘Have you any hairpins?’ Mrs Bedley asked.
Ben held open the robing room, or vestry, which led off the lobby and gestured them in as though he was a policeman. ‘I need to remind you Mam, your job is to greet; the girls are to hide,’ he announced.
Beth hurried into the pale light of the vestry, glad she’d be hidden from those who had finally reached the church and were chatting to the mams. Once the girls were in, Ben closed the door. Beth wanted to lean against it, or against something, because she was weary with holding herself upright. She stared at the motes dancing in the light from the high, narrow window. She breathed. Yes, breathe, and now she smelled the ancient, tatty prayer books that were piled on every available surface.
She fixed on those on the shelf by Walters’ desk, thinking of the hands that had held them. The books were so worn they seemed imbued with the prayers that had been repeated, prayers that had sunk into the very pages, into the stones of the church and probably the old oak pews.
In that moment she smelled the chrysanthemums that the co-op and the other women decorated the church with at Harvest Festival, at which the choir had sung. A choir they had joined when at school. Why had they left? Work, and the war? They should join again. Was that why Bob had left her – payback for failing the vicar? Or only for failing Stan and the gang and choosing Bob? No. Don’t.
She saw the shafts of light coming through the stained-glass windows onto the church lectern, she heard voices raised in hymns, and now a quiet calm fell on her, because the world went on, no matter what people did. She looked around and up at the plain glass window, through which the bright morning light shone onto her marrers, those she had known for years, and would continue to know, just as the co-op continued, and the pitmen, Marrers and the Massingham people. As Fran tidied Viola’s hair, and Sarah fiddled with Fran’s, Beth smiled and her shoulders dropped. She breathed in easily, and out again. She sent a message to her da. ’Tis all right, Da. When I opened his new letter this morning, I felt I could not go on, I wanted to be there with you, away from it all. I miss you, Da, and I need you, but I still have my friends.
She moved closer to Fran and said, ‘Aye, lass, let’s get this deserter back in place.’ She tucked away the dark chestnut strand that kept escaping – but it wouldn’t stay. So, she removed her slide, and clipped the hair into place with it. ‘There, you look right tidy, and not as though you’ve been dragged through a hedge backwards.’
Fran smiled and smoothed Beth’s auburn curls. Viola complained, ‘If we could have long hair, then we’d look elegant for weddings. It could be down and flowing, or up in a chignon and smart.’
Fran grunted. ‘I divint want me hair catching in any machinery and me ending up scalped and bald like that lass Esther, but you grow yours, you daft thing, but be aware that Eva might pull it, if she is displeased.’
Sarah turned Fran around, stepping back to check her. ‘Aye,’ she said. ‘Our hair’s barely streaked and our skin’s not really yellow, is—’
‘Not the Factory today,’ called Ben through the door. The girls hushed. Ben called again. ‘The church is filling up with people, and I reckon I should hold out a collection plate and nip off to buy a few beers with it.’
‘One more word out of you,’ said Fran, ‘and you’ll spend the wedding locked in here. And stop listening – we could be talking secrets.’
There was no reply. Then Ben said, ‘Aye, Bert, choose left or right, ’tis no matter. Been having a quick fag, have you, after parking your bus nice and neat, I hope?’
‘You mind your own business, young ’un,’ growled Bert. ‘Or you can go down there yourself and look after it.’
The girls waited. Finally, Ben said, ‘Howay, Bert. I’m to give our Fran away, and if I don’t we’ll be stuck with her for ever, so I canna do that.’
The girls smothered their laughter and Bert muttered, ‘Ah well, that’d be punishment enough for a cocky young bloke, I reckon.’
At that Fran called, ‘I heard you, Bert Evans. No special sandwiches for you, my lad.’
There was silence, then Bert said, ‘You could have said they were in there, you little varmint.’ He raised his voice. ‘You just get yourself down that aisle, our Fran, quick march, then we can get on to the important stuff at the club, eh.’
As they laughed, Beth pictured Ben standing with the brass collection plate in his hand, and now, in that moment, she allowed herself to think again of the letter she had received this morning, signed, as a final insult, by both Bob and his nurse, Heather, in which they’d informed her that a divorce had to be heard in the High Court. They had gone on to say that this was beyond their means.
Heather had written a section: Without a divorce we cannot have the allotment which is a wife’s due, so woman to woman, I ask you to be honest and send it on to us to make it easier when our bairn is born.
Then it had reverted to Bob’s handwriting: It’s not unreasonable, is it, for you to pay half the divorce costs, or give me back my own pay each month? I thought you would have done this of your own accord by now, for you earn good money at t
he Factory, and there’s your singing.
She had read it again. Bob? Bob had written this to her. Heather, too, and both had signed it. Beth moved to the shelf containing the prayer books. The spines were tattered. Were they spares to be used if necessary, or to be thrown out? She refused to think of herself in that way. Thrown away, eh, and expected to pay for the privilege. No, no Bob here, in this room. She reached out and laid her hand against the spines, holding the image of the work-worn hands that had gripped them.
Viola came to stand alongside. ‘A lot of prayers have been said here, in this church. We’re so small, aren’t we, Beth, so bliddy small, and people come and go, and these stones breathe us in, and we know that we have lived, and so have all those that have gone before, and we will somehow go on living until we don’t. Simple as that.’
Beth dropped her hand. ‘You understand.’
‘Oh aye, I’ve had me house on top of me, bricks digging into me, darkness, soot in my mouth, crunching between my teeth, till a distant voice said, “We’re coming for you.” Then another said, “Take my hand, let me lead you out.” I thought it were an angel, or God, and it might as well have been, for the bricks were shifted, and this grimy, calloused hand came down. I reached up, his hand closed around mine, and out I came, into the darkness of the blackout, though fires were burning. “Who does this lass belong to?” he called. And no one answered, for those I belonged to were gone.’
Both girls stood in silence. Viola squeezed Beth’s hand. ‘Then, bonny lass, there I was, under another load of bricks in Scotland, and when I was out of hospital, there you all were, and your mams, and you all took my hand, led me into the warmth of Massingham.’ Viola leaned closer now. ‘So, you need to let us take your hand, pet, firm, like this.’ She held up her hand clasping Beth’s. ‘Let us walk you out of the gloom, eh.’
Beth touched the spines again, with her other hand, pressing it against the rough, worn edges, harder and harder. She would tell them about the letter, another day. She would tell them she had started drinking and couldn’t stop, and it was only now she really understood Mrs Bedley. But not on Fran’s happy day. And she would pay the allotment, of course she would. She had already decided because it wasn’t her money, and the bairn would need it, after all, none of this was its fault.