Carrie felt a lump come into her throat again. There was a weight on her heart too and nothing now to hope for. She held out her hand to him. ‘Douglas?’
‘Yes?’
‘If he gets back – if your son comes home – we’ll see that they have a lovely wedding.’
Douglas was fighting back his tears. ‘We will, indeed,’ he said as he took her hand and held it firmly in his.
He took her to the back door and escorted her through the stable yard so she’d not need to go into the bar again. She wouldn’t have minded if he had taken her through the bar. That kind of narrow-mindedness seemed out of date.
‘Thank you, Miss Shrigley.’ They were on the pavement in front of the Swan. Douglas extended his hand to her. ‘Thank you for coming. It means a lot to me.’
St Michael’s church was filling up on the Sunday afternoon when Carrie stood in front of the chancel with the Choral Society. People were coming not just to listen but to gather and to give thanks for the deliverance of the army from the enemy’s clutches.
Only the strength of the new leader of the National Government, Winston Churchill with his obstinate bulldog qualities, was pulling them all together into one nation with one aim. Carrie had memorised his last speech and it came to her now: ‘You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word. It is Victory, however long and hard the road may be’. He had a powerful voice that stirred everyone.
All those she spoke to felt as she did; that now, with France fallen, they were on their own. At least they knew where they stood; alone against an evil force.
There was the empire of course. What had happened to Empire Day? She used to watch the children; teams of children criss-crossing to music in the market place, making Union Jacks from colourful streamers and squares and singing ‘I Vow to Thee my Country’. Would they ever do it again? There was talk of the old barracks being used for Canadian soldiers.
There were a number of men in uniform in the congregation. There were a few in black. Jessie Burgess was in mourning for her Ronnie.
Carrie had come into the cool church an hour before the rest of the choir. She had never been able to see it all clearly before; only the general shape. It was as if her sight were being restored overnight, the improvement was so rapid. Each new day brought her field of vision sharper and nearer.
This afternoon, dressed in a dark-green, silk two-piece with cream hat and gloves, she had gone, tip-toeing about the wood block floor, under a high hammer-beam roof that was carved with foliage and angels. She’d been reading the inscriptions over tombs. She was particularly taken with the one which read,
Here lyeth the bodie of Perkin-a-Legh
That for King Richard the death did die,
Betrayed for righteousness,
And the bones of Sir Peers, his sonne
That with King Henrie the fight did wonne in Paris.
The sexton had come up to her there and told her about the Legh family who had lost a son at Agincourt. He had taken her round the church, shown her the side chapels with priests’ rooms and she’d been immensely gratified to find in a wall niche, not far from where she was standing now, the effigy of a knight who, the sexton told her, was thought to be a Shrigley man.
The oaken choir stalls, three deep, faced inwards in front of the chancel steps where she would stand for her solo and the duet. She gave a quick smile to Douglas McGregor who stood opposite and had signalled, discreetly, to tell her that he had their music. He pointed to her eyes, as if to remind her that she wasn’t wearing her glasses.
Cecil had asked her not to come. He said that once she went through the big wrought-iron gates into the churchyard she was walking on heathen ground with the idolaters. Cecil said that going in for that, the chanting and singing, dressing up and choirboys was wrong. He didn’t like it. He said she’d be leaving the paths of righteousness, going astray. He said it was the same as worshipping idols. It was all there, he’d said, in the Old Testament. It was giving in to base and primitive desires. It was pagan.
This wasn’t idolatry. Here were the names of Macclesfield people; the Stanleys and the Savages, the Downes of Shrigley. You couldn’t help but feel proud. Here were the names of Venables, Roe, Fitton and Hesketh. She knew their descendants. There were some who knew her. Why, Mrs Venables was in charge of the billeting office. They treated one another with respect, she and Mrs Venables.
Cecil was wrong. It was not idolatory. It was history. These people were not devil-worshippers, unless paying homage to your ancestors was a sin. She nodded to Douglas. They were singing the duet straight after the processional hymn. The organist raised his hand. The choir leader told them to stand back a little so the choir could pass them and get to their stalls. All the seats were filled. The church was packed; there was standing room only as the introduction started and the choirs and congregation sang, ‘At the Name of Jesus’.
The girls were out, at work and at school when the priest called at the Temperance Hotel. Cecil never came on Mondays. Carrie invited him upstairs into her sitting room.
‘Have you come to see the girls?’ she asked politely as soon as she had closed the door. A priest had never been to the house before and she was not quite sure how she should treat him. He was only a few years older than herself, yet she felt him to be much older and wiser.
‘No. It was yourself I wanted,’ he answered.
‘Sit down, Mister – er,’ she began awkwardly.
‘Father,’ he said, seating himself. ‘Father Church.’
‘Oh. Right you are,’ she said. ‘Father Church.’ It didn’t seem so bad, saying it, even if you weren’t one of them. ‘Even so,’ she said, ‘the girls are in need of guidance. They are not behaving as they should.’
‘Oh?’ He smiled encouragingly and she felt emboldened to go on.
‘They don’t give me the respect that’s due to me.’ She hadn’t really meant to say that. ‘What I mean is,’ she began again, ‘that they are resentful of me.’
‘It has been an unhappy time for you all, Miss Shrigley. The girls losing their parents; you losing a sister.’
Carrie leaned across the octagonal table between them, near to the empty fireplace. ‘Perhaps you can have a word with them yourself,’ she said. ‘Tell them that I am suffering as well.’
‘Would you like to send them up to the presbytery, Miss Shrigley?’ he said in the gentle way he had. ‘I can see them any time.’ He gave her an understanding look. ‘But I am sure that you – you all are aware of the need for solace.’
She felt nervy again, excitable. She wondered if he knew everything that went on. ‘You’ve been at St Alban’s a long time, Father Church.’
‘I have.’ He smiled at her. ‘Twenty-five years.’
‘Do you remember Patrick Kennedy, Danny’s brother?’
‘Indeed, I do.’
Carrie felt colour flood into her face. What would he be thinking, this Father who had heard all about her, heard those old confessions? Did they remember them all? He had never heard her side of the story and she wanted, all at once, to put things right; to explain, to confess.
‘I wish I knew what he’d told you,’ she blurted out.
‘Did you know that Rose wants to get married? To Alan McGregor,’ he was saying.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You know that Alan was lost over France.’
‘Indeed, I do. But we cannot assume that he will not come home. In fact, Miss Shrigley, that is the very reason l am here.’
She took a deep breath and looked him in the eye. ‘What do you think about marriage?’
‘In which way?’ he asked. He was taking it very seriously.
‘Do you think marriages are made in heaven?’ she said.
He considered his reply for a few moments. ‘I rather think they are made on earth – with heaven’s blessing,’ he said at last.
‘And what do you think of people who – who act married when they’re not?’
‘In which respect?’
S
he wasn’t sure she was putting it well. ‘Suppose a couple want to get married but they can’t?’ she said.
‘Because one of them is underage?’
‘I beg your pardon?’ Carrie was taken aback for a moment. It seemed that they were talking at cross-purposes.
‘Are you asking if they should be allowed to marry if one of them is underage?’
‘No. Not that. How can I put it?’
‘Are you asking what God thinks about couples who love one another in the earthly sense and are not married? Is that it?’ he asked.
He’d got it right. ‘Yes. What does the Roman Catholic church think of that?’
‘I cannot speak for the Holy Father, though his views are well known, you understand?’
Maybe Father Church’s views would be held by most of them, Carrie reasoned. ‘What do you think? Yourself?’ She waited, holding her breath, as he thought about it for a moment.
‘The marriage ceremony, taking the religious vows that is, is not as old as marriage itself, Miss Shrigley,’ he said, slowly and thoughtfully. ‘I would think that the young couple in a case such as you have put to me might be justified in considering themselves to be married in the eyes of God.’
She let out her breath and smiled in relief. ‘Thank you. Thank you, Father Church.’
He looked directly into her eyes for a moment as if debating whether to say more. Then, ‘And I would think it wrong for anyone to withhold their blessing – their consent – to sanctifying such a marriage, Miss Shrigley,’ he added. ‘Now. Do I understand that if the dear boy is safe, if Alan is spared, you will consent to the marriage?’
‘Of course I will. I have already said so.’ Carrie looked at him squarely. ‘Did you know that I was contemplating marriage – before the girls came to me?’
‘No.’
‘Yes. Cecil Ratcliffe and I were going to announce our intention.’
‘And having the girls has made you postpone the wedding?’
‘Something like that.’ But it wasn’t. It wasn’t that at all. In the eyes of God, Patrick Kennedy’s God, their Roman Catholic God, she was married already.
‘Well. Indeed.’
Carrie stood up. ‘Can I offer you a cup of tea, Father?’
He got to his feet and extended a hand. ‘No thank you. I must be on me way.’ She went ahead of him to the front door, which she held open for him. She took his hand. ‘Goodbye,’ she said.
‘God bless you.’
She closed the door behind him and went to the kitchen to prepare tea. Of course. Of course, she kept telling herself. That was it. At the time of their wrongdoing she had not known he had a wife. She had considered herself to be married to him. It was he who had committed adultery. And now he’d done it again.
Chapter Twenty-one
Rose sat, cramped in the window seat on the train to Manchester. Inside the compartment the air was thick with cigarette smoke, which, since she had given cigarettes up in disgust months ago, was making her feel queasy. There was little conversation though plenty of coughing and sniffing was going on. Everyone was aware of the dangers of talking to strangers. ‘Careless Talk Costs Lives’ the posters and papers constantly reminded everyone.
There was a poster on every station. They might have been funny in another time, depicting as they did the careless, talking – and Adolf Hitler hidden under tables or behind doors; even on luggage racks in trains. She glanced upwards – nothing but a few cases swaying in the rope cradles above their heads.
She returned her gaze to the window. It was mid-October and the grass and fields were brown and dry. Never had there been such a summer with such an unbroken succession of long, hot days and cloudless skies. And every day a battle, the Battle of Britain had been fought overhead. And all the time she had been glad that Alan was not up there and sick to the heart with worries.
She was not losing faith in his being alive. She felt in her very core that he was – but as the days had become weeks and then months she had found it harder to convince anyone else, friend or family, of her belief. Her friends, Norah, Sylvia and Pamela, were embarrassed when she started to talk about Alan; as if they wished she would forget him.
Pamela Tannenbaum had spent two summer weeks in Kent with relatives. She had gone in June, just as the Battle of Britain started and on her return told them all she had seen.
Macclesfield was classed as a safe area but Macclesfield people like everyone else waited for the news bulletins – the count of German fighters shot down – our own losses – and prayed.
Vivienne, machining parachutes in the factory now, spent her spare time collecting and raising money for the Spitfire fund, just as Rose and the bank did. Five thousand pounds would buy a fighter plane.
Mary had surprised them all in July by announcing that she was going to train as a nurse. Nothing would change her mind. Rose was reminded again of how like Mum her sister was growing. Mum had always been determined to do what she felt was right. Mary lived-in at the nurses’ home near the park, visiting them at the Temperance Hotel when she had a half day off. She seemed only to get the half days once a fortnight, and often neither she nor Vivienne was at home when Mary came.
Mary was as happy as the day is long though her tasks were of the most menial and, according to their aunt, involved hours spent scrubbing bedsteads with carbolic. When they were not on duty, yet had not been given permission to leave the hospital premises, the cadet nurses spent their time rolling bandages or visiting the patients who had no family.
Aunt Carrie, to both the girls’ astonishment, began to talk about Mary’s interest in such matters having been inherited from herself. It transpired that their aunt had been something of a midwife in the old days, before everyone paid their penny a week to the panel doctors and went into hospital for their confinements.
Once again children were being evacuated to Macclesfield and the town was filled with strangers, for London was being bombed day and night. Along with the Cockney children and those families who had begun to ‘trek’ north from Coventry and Birmingham after the night pounding their cities had taken, Macclesfield’s streets and the WVS cafe rang with the different, exciting voices of Canadian and Dutch soldiers.
Rose looked around the compartment again, wondering if everyone was on urgent business, as she was, for it was seen as selfish to take up a place on a train unless the journey was really necessary. She returned her eyes to the passing scene, pulled her navy gabardine coat around herself and thought back to last Wednesday.
She’d fallen asleep in her cubicle at the bank at eleven o’clock in the morning, when she should have been counting the silver.
‘Rose!’ Pamela had entered and shaken her on the shoulder.
‘What’s the matter?’ She came-to at once. ‘What?’
‘You were asleep again.’
‘Oh, blast!’ Rose gave Pam a weak smile. ‘Thanks, Pam,’ she said as she went to lift a bag of shillings from the floor on to her counting table. ‘Pam?’
‘What?’
‘Would you bring me my soda-mints? They’re upstairs. In my handbag.’
Pamela gave her a cross look. ‘You aren’t still swallowing those things are you?’
Rose grinned at her. ‘No – you fool! I chew them, slowly.’
‘Still got heartburn?’
‘If that’s what you call indigestion.’
Pamela hesitated for a second before saying, ‘I’ll ask Sylvia to take over for you. Come upstairs. I want to tell you something.’
Rose nodded. ‘I’ll finish this bag and then come up.’ When she had done and Sylvia arrived to relieve her, Rose went running up the stairs to the cloakroom and found Pamela leaning, her back to the washbasins, head thrown back, in her usual challenging manner. Rose knew now that this was not, as she had first thought, an attitude of supreme confidence but Pamela’s way, as she put it, of ‘bearding the ruddy lion in his blasted den’.
‘Now what?’ Rose asked, out of breath from the run up the
stairs. ‘What have you got me here for?’
‘Shut the door.’
‘All right.’ Rose pushed the door to. ‘Come on. Out with it.’
Pamela’s face was bright red. ‘I think you’re pregnant, Rose Kennedy,’ she announced. ‘And I don’t think you even suspect it.’
Rose went weak at the knees. ‘What?’
‘And Daddy says you are. I’ve told him all about it.’
Rose dropped down on to the only chair in the cloakroom; a rickety old bentwood. ‘I can’t be, surely?’ she said.
‘You’re falling asleep all over the place. Daddy says you need an iron supplement,’ Pamela went on insistently, keeping her voice low so that they wouldn’t be heard.
‘Yes . . . but . . .’
‘And you’re constantly chewing these things.’ Pamela held out her hand, displaying the little cylinder of soda-mints.
‘Oh, Pam!’ It was ridiculous. She couldn’t tell Pamela about her –her peculiarity. And girls who didn’t have periods couldn’t have babies. It was obvious. ‘I’m not.’
Pamela’s face was even redder. She was silent for a moment. It had probably cost her a lot, Rose knew, to speak like that. Pamela wasn’t insensitive. ‘Whatever did you tell your father?’ she asked.
Pamela ignored the question. ‘He said, “Has she seen a doctor?”’
‘No.’
‘Look, Rose,’ Pamela went on quickly. ‘Daddy says to tell you that if you want to see anyone – if you find you can’t go to your own doctor – living with your aunt and all that . . .’
‘Well?’
Pamela gave a great exhalation of breath. ‘Oh hell, Rose!’ she said. ‘This is so awkward.’ She began again. ‘Look here. Come on Saturday. Come for the day. We’re off this Saturday. If you want Daddy to look at you. He has a surgery for his private patients – only of course he won’t charge you – on Saturday afternoons.’
Rose wanted Pamela to know that she wasn’t annoyed. She felt a warm rush of affection for her. ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘I’ll come. I’ll see him. Aunt Carrie isn’t on a doctor’s panel and I daren’t go to my old one.’
Mill Town Girl Page 33