by Annie Murray
‘You’re not going anywhere, d’you ’ear me?’
Dot appeared by her open door.
‘All right, Cynth? Oh—’ Her thin, good-natured face grimaced comically. ‘One of them days, is it? What’s up with you, Joycie? Coming out to play with Nance?’
Joyce pouted and Cynthia, too wound up even to speak, grabbed her by the arm and propelled her towards the front door, leaving Dot staring in wonder. ‘Huh – like that, is it?’ she muttered, going back to her work.
‘You just do as I flaming well tell you and get back in the house, my girl!’ Cynthia snapped, pushing Joyce indoors.
Violet’s screams met them as they went inside and Cynthia’s nerves tightened another notch.
‘You can get up to your room and stay there till I tell you to come down!’
She saw the fear and hurt in her little girl’s eyes as Joyce resentfully stamped her way upstairs.
Cynthia sank down at the table, her heart thudding so hard that she laid her hand over it.
‘God in heaven . . .’ she whispered. What was the matter with her? Only two days ago she was running through the streets, ready to give her own life and soul if only she could see Joyce again, have her back home safe, her precious little girl. Yet now, the state she was in, she was turning on the child as if she were the devil himself! How had she come crashing down so low again in such a short time?
The baby’s screams cut right through her, tearing at every nerve in her body, and she put her hands over her face, trying to find the strength to go and see to her. The tears ran out between her fingers.
‘Help me . . .’ she whispered. ‘Please . . . Someone . . .’
‘Cynth?’
There was a tap at the door twenty minutes later. Cynthia had dragged herself upstairs to fetch Violet and was still sitting with her, feeding by the table.
‘Can I come in, bab?’
Dot pushed the door open and leaned against it, her wiry figure in a faded pale blue frock with an apron over it and stout black shoes. Her hair, long and straight and caught up in a loose bun, had once been glossy black, but was turning prematurely grey. She was smiling her toothy smile, then, seeing the state of Cynthia, her expression sobered.
‘You all right, love? You look like Barney’s Bull.’
Cynthia tried to say yes of course she was all right, but another wave of tearfulness choked her and her eyes filled. She looked down at Violet who was still sucking sleepily at her breast.
‘Oh dear, oh dear – feeling a bit like that, are yer?’ Dot said, turning to close the door, rattling its loose handle. ‘I thought there was summat this morning and our Nance’s been on at me, wanting Joyce out there with her. Joycie poorly an’ all, is she? I’m not surprised after all that carry-on at the weekend.’
Cynthia was shaking her head. ‘No, it ain’t her, it’s me.’ The sobs broke out then and Dot came and patted her on the shoulder.
‘You’ve ’ad a lot on yer plate, bab. I ’spect it’s the blues after the babby. I always feel like drowning myself and the whole bleeding family for a week or two after!’ Dot said this with such cheer that it was hard to imagine it had ever really been true. ‘And you’ve had a shock, what with your Joyce . . . ’Ere – ’ she went over to the range – ‘kettle’s not been on. And the thing’s almost out! Come on – I’ll get it going – we could both do with a cuppa. Good job I’m still in me pinny!’
Dot stoked the range, filled the kettle in the scullery and set it on the heat. Cynthia watched her, still unable to stop crying. ‘Soon ’ave yer feeling better,’ Dot said, mashing the tea and flashing another smile at Cynthia, who made a weak attempt to smile back. She didn’t believe she’d ever feel better.
It had all happened as if overnight. When they found Joyce again after those agonizing hours of searching, they’d all been relieved and overjoyed. Everything felt right, the low state she was in before Joyce disappeared seemed to be forgotten. They were together again as a family after the terrible threat of losing Joyce forever and nothing else mattered!
But in two days everything had changed. She could feel herself sliding down, down, like someone disappearing out of the light into a mineshaft, leaving all the others around her at the top wondering where she had gone. It was a terrible effort trying to get through even the simplest tasks. Everything felt overwhelming, as if she couldn’t cope. And now there was the fear as well: it had occupied her, eating away inside like woodworm. Danger seemed to lurk everywhere, threatening her children, especially the youngest, Joyce and Violet.
‘Look,’ Dot said kindly as they drank their tea at the table, ‘let me take Joyce and she and Nance can play out. I’ll keep an eye on them.’
‘No!’ Cynthia protested, wild-eyed. ‘I don’t want her going out there again. You never know who might be about, what might happen. I’m keeping her in with me . . .’
Dot looked concerned. ‘Cynth, you’ve got to get yourself together. You can’t just keep her in all the time. Where is she now, upstairs? It’s hardly fair on the child, is it? Not if she wants to see her pals. I know it was a bad do at the weekend but that were different – it was up the park. There’s no harm’ll come to her here.’
Eventually Cynthia gave in, especially when Joyce, who had crept down and was listening on the staircase, came running into the room.
‘Please, Mom – let me go with Auntie Dot – please!’
She watched the ever capable Dot lead Joyce out of the house, her heart pounding, hands sweating, but she clenched her fists and said nothing. Dot was right, she could hardly keep Joyce a prisoner in the house for evermore!
When they’d gone she sat down again, staring across the room, her face a blank. She lost track of how long she stayed sitting there.
As Dot led the two little girls out of Cynthia’s she almost ran slap bang into Iris Fox, who was crossing the road towards her. Dot felt her hackles rise as Iris’s ignorant features formed into their usual spiteful sneer.
‘Out with yer little darkie, I see?’ she said, nose in the air. ‘I’d’ve thought yer’d have more pride in yerself, Mrs Wiggins.’
She walked on by with a triumphant smirk. Dot’s temper was boiling but she never let herself rise to Iris’s taunts. She was never going to sink so low as to bandy words with that creature.
‘Come on, you two,’ she said tartly, ushering Joyce and Nancy through her front door. Luckily they were giggling together and hadn’t even noticed Iris. The two of them were soon playing together. Dot started on some vigorous cleaning to work off her temper.
But as she cleared the floor to give it a scrub, her thoughts still dwelt furiously on Iris Fox. Iris had always been the first to come out with mouthy comments about Nancy, whoever was in earshot, and Dot especially loathed her for that. It didn’t exactly take a genius to work out that Nancy wasn’t Charlie’s after all this time. Of course there was going to be gossip when she was first expecting and no husband in sight, but most people just accepted it and kept their traps shut, especially now Nancy was growing up. It was only Iris who would boom along the pavement so that everyone could hear, ‘Huh, look at that little piccanin! Touch of the tar brush there all right! Been with a black man, ’ave yer, bab?’ Her ignorant face would be screwed up with smug malice.
Dot held her head high and ignored Iris, and never said a word to anyone else either, however flaming nosy they were. Only Cynthia, her staunch friend, knew who Nancy’s father was – a musician from somewhere near Naples who had been busking his way round the country, looking for somewhere to settle. He’d been staying for the time being nearby, in the Italian Quarter in Duddesdon, but Dot had met him in the Bull Ring. The mutual attraction was immediate and he walked her all the way home, carrying her bags, his squeeze box slung on a strap over one shoulder. His name was Fausto – ‘Fah-oosto!’ he taught her to pronounce it – and in her loneliness, her aching body and spirits had fallen easily for his flashing smile, his jaunty songs and jovial, accented conversation. Secretly he
spent two nights with her before he departed for London, never knowing he had left her carrying his child.
‘Fausto,’ she murmured, standing the chairs on the table, trying to pronounce it the way he had. A smile played round her lips. Christ, he was a handsome bloody chancer, she thought, remembering him fondly, despite it all. Swinging into her life then swinging right out again. He’d made everything a gruelling struggle. Yet she had no regrets. If she couldn’t have her Charlie back, at least she had a beautiful daughter to fill some of the loneliness. Bugger Iris Fox and her like – the silly cow was too thick even to tell a black man from an Ey-tie! And anyway, her Nance was the joy of her life now.
She heard the girls giggling upstairs and smiled to herself. But then the smile faded. Joycie was all right after all her adventures, that was for sure. But what about Cynth? She’d never seen her friend in such a low state. Surely she should have bucked up after the babby by now.
‘I’ll come and see yer again later, see you’re all right,’ she murmured, going to the scullery to fill a bucket of water. ‘Cos I don’t like the look of yer at the moment – that I don’t.’
Twelve
Molly stepped out of the entry from the yard into Kenilworth Street, glad of the swathing October fog in which she could hide as she peered cautiously up and down. She shivered, having no top coat to her name and only a threadbare jersey as an outer garment. There were other children dawdling on their way to school and she could see the coalman’s cart emerging out of the murk at the far end of the road. She checked instinctively for danger, this time in the shape of Katie O’Neill, and as there was no sign of her she ran across Kenilworth Street and knocked urgently on the door of number eighteen.
Her nervousness made her jiggle up and down, and for a second she was frightened she was going to wet herself. It just seemed to come over her sometimes and she was weeing without knowing it was going to happen. She stood scratching the itchy patches inside her elbows, through her clothes.
The door opened a crack and she could just make out Em’s frightened face in the gloom.
‘Oh – it’s you.’ Em opened the door a fraction wider.
‘Who did yer think it was, the bogeyman?’
‘Nah, stupid, the wag man.’ Em came out onto the step and looked up and down even more fearfully.
‘Well, ain’t yer coming to school again, then?’
Retreating inside, Em shook her head. Her face was pale, her fringe needed cutting and she didn’t look like the usual carefree Em. Molly wanted Em to smile and skip along the road with her. Em was being quite nice to her these days, even though she was Katie O’Neill’s friend, but now she’d suddenly stopped coming to school.
‘Tell ’em I’m poorly,’ Em said.
‘What’s up with yer, then?’ In her disappointment it came out harshly.
‘Nothing.’ Em glanced behind her, lowering her voice to a whisper. ‘It’s my mom. She ain’t too good. I gotta stay home and help ’er.’
Molly had heard the rumours about Mrs Brown. She’d never ‘picked up’ after the babby, everyone said. Wouldn’t go out. The gossips said she couldn’t even get down to Great Lister Street for a pound of potatoes. Dot Wiggins was doing her shopping for her and minding Joycie every day, and Em was keeping house. It was a shame. Molly found it very strange that Em was kept at home. Iris couldn’t get her out of the door quick enough.
Out of the corner of her eye Molly suddenly saw a figure approaching who she didn’t want to meet: Katie was coming, on her way to school.
‘You gunna play out after?’ she said, backing swiftly down the step. ‘Everyone’s playing tipcat.’
Em shook her head. ‘I dunno.’
‘Gotta go,’ Molly said hurriedly. ‘T’ra.’
But it was too late.
‘What’re you doing here, stinky?’ Katie said, as Em closed the door.
‘Calling for Em,’ Molly said, trying to be defiant. ‘Why shouldn’t I?’
Katie’s face screwed up and she reached out and pinched the one piece of soft, bare flesh she could find at the side of Molly’s neck.
‘Cos you aren’t her friend, so don’t think you are!’ Katie sneered. ‘Why’d she want to be friends with you, yeller drawers? And anyhow, she ain’t coming to school, dain’t yer know? Stale buns for tea!’
Katie’s slim figure and long swinging hair flounced past her and along the street. Showing off to Molly, she called out to two other girls and linked arms with them and they went along chattering excitedly towards the school.
Molly watched, feeling shut out as usual. She was always on the wrong side of the window pane, looking in. School was bad enough, but now Em wasn’t even there either . . .
Trying to shrug off her loneliness, she dragged her way along the street towards the yawning doors of hell, or rather the elementary school.
‘Shall I make you a cuppa tea, Mom?’
Em stood timidly at the door of the bedroom. Cynthia lay in bed on her side with Violet beside her, suckling. She raised dull eyes to her daughter. Her face was gaunt now, with dark circles under her eyes. She could not sleep properly, and she was barely eating, so the weight was dropping off her.
‘All right, love,’ she whispered in the flat voice with which she spoke all the time now, as if the life had been drained out of her.
‘I’ll put four sugars in it,’ Em said. It was the only way she could think of lavishing care on her mother that might be acceptable.
‘You’ve gotta get her to eat summat,’ Bob kept urging. ‘She won’t take any notice of me and you’re the one here all day. Try and get summat down her.’
But this was easier said than done, Em thought. You could lead a horse to water . . . And she wasn’t used to ordering her mom around!
She went down to the silent kitchen. Sid was already at school and Dot had come and taken Joyce next door.
‘I’ll come back in a bit, bab, when I can find the time,’ Dot had told her kindly. ‘Only I’m rushed off my feet at the moment what with the girls and all the washing and that. ’Ere – I’d better help you with yours an’ all.’
With her brisk, effective movements she’d got a fire going under the copper in the back kitchen, ready for the washing.
‘Now, you get started and I’ll see yer later. You know what to do, don’t yer? You’ve seen your mom do it hundreds of times. If you need some help just come running round, all right? Come on, Joycie – our Nance is waiting for you.’
Joyce had trotted off happily. She and Sid were aware that their mom was poorly but they were busy getting on with their lives. The burden fell on Em. And she noticed her dad seemed to be out even more than usual these days. He had been kind and helpful for a short time but now he was running out of patience.
‘You’re going to have to pull yerself together, Cynth,’ he’d said when he got home, tired, the night before. ‘It’s no good, we can’t go on like this.’
His anger and her own hopelessness had reduced Cynthia to tears once again.
‘For God’s sake, woman – is that all yer can do? Sit and blart? That won’t get us our dinner on the table, will it?’
Em had been shaken by her father’s angry words. She’d run upstairs and hidden in her room. She knew most people’s moms and dads had fights and shouting matches. Josie and Eamon Donnelly two doors away were forever at it like cats and dogs. But her mom and dad had always been different. They rubbed along without yelling and carrying-on. They’d been good pals. Hearing the hurt and fury in her father’s voice had rocked Em’s world. She wondered how she could make things right. If she was good, and did everything, maybe Mom would get better and they could all go back to normal.
Down in the kitchen now she tied one of her mother’s pinners over her clothes. It was a faded pink thing which could have reached round her several times and she had to hitch the hem up into her drawers. Then she put the kettle on, her skinny arms shaking as she hauled its weight up onto the hob. First opening the back door to let
out the steam from the hot water in the copper, as she knew Mom always did, she dragged a chair over to it to add the Hudson’s soap – a bit too much, she realized, making the water froth – before climbing up and down with armfuls of washing which she shoved down into the copper with the wooden tongs which were almost as big as she was. Once the kettle boiled she mashed the tea, sweating with the effort of controlling the big kettle. When it had had its five-minute brew she poured herself and Cynthia a cup, spooning plenty of sugar into both. She loved sweet tea.
‘Here y’are, Mom,’ she said proudly.
Cynthia had finished feeding Violet, who was lying kicking on the bed. At six weeks old she was filling out into a pretty little thing. Cynthia barely seemed to have the strength to sit up.
‘Ta, love.’ She looked down, as if unable to bear the sweet sight of her daughter in the huge pinner, trying so hard to do everything right.
Em sat on the side of the bed and tickled Violet’s tummy, which made her squirm and kick even more. She gave a little gurgle and Em laughed.
‘She’s smiling, Mom!’ She looked up eagerly. ‘She’s ever so pretty now – you’re a good girl, aren’t you, Violet!’ She kissed her sister’s tiny cheek, then looked up, burbling eagerly, ‘I’ve got the first lot of washing in the copper so I’ll go down and get it in the maiding tub in a minute. Then I can get the next lot on and I’ll have it all hung out in the yard soon.’
She wanted to please Mom, to show how much of a help she was being, but Cynthia put her hand over her eyes.
‘Just go on down, will yer, Em, please. Just leave me. I can’t stand it.’
Cut to the quick, and afraid Cynthia might start crying again, Em clomped down the stairs. She spent the morning washing furiously and sloshing a good deal of scummy water all over the kitchen floor and out into the little yard at the back. Hauling the wet clothes out of the copper to put them in the maiding tub, she ended up clutching them against her body. Soon she was soaked to the skin, even her boots filling with water. At first her sodden clothes were still warm as she energetically pounded the washing with the wooden dolly and rinsed it in the sink. But when she took it outside in the tin pail to mangle it and hang it out, the cold wind cut through her wet clothes, making her teeth chatter.