A Hopscotch Summer

by Annie Murray

  At the darkest times, early in her stay, the other women in her ward did not affect her, by either their shrieking rages, the draggings away into padded rooms, their stony despair or their paraldehyde stupors. She was locked into a stupor of her own, a tight, sealed place where no one else’s happiness or misery could reach her.

  They had taken out six of her teeth, four at the back and her two bottom incisors.

  ‘You’re harbouring infection in your teeth,’ the doctor told her. ‘You’d be surprised how much that can poison the whole of your system and make you ill – we often find that.’ Gently, he added, ‘Childbirth exacts a high price from women’s teeth.’

  Afterwards, her tongue searched the strange, bloodied gaps that had appeared between the remaining teeth, but now she had grown used to them and the gums were smoother and felt part of her. The diet of porridge and overcooked stew presented no problem to chewing.

  As the days passed she started to notice the women on either side of her. One was an old lady called Alice Gregory, who seemed truly but quietly deranged, the other a woman in her fifties called Connie Spall. She was big and moved slowly but sometimes she looked at Cynthia and something like a smile seemed to flash over her face.

  Now Cynthia had become calmer they put her to work in the kitchens, cooking. Every morning they made huge pots of porridge and Cynthia found the rhythmic stirring and smell of hot milk comforting, as if they were beginning to break through her pain and numbness and connect her back into life.

  Next time Dot came, on one of the dark, lid-of-cloud days, she said, ‘Well, the weather’s enough to get you down. But you seem different somehow, Cynth. Is it me, or are you feeling a bit better?’

  And Cynthia dared to look her in the eyes. ‘I think . . . Oh God, I can hardly say it. A bit. Maybe.’

  Thirty-Seven

  ‘Hurry up, will yer! You’ll be late again and then there’ll be hell to pay!’

  Dot stood wearily at the door of number eighteen, shooing Em and Sid off to school, as she had done for so many mornings now. When David and Terry set off for work she took Nance next door and did all that needed doing. She stood watching the poor little scruffs scuttling along the road together, ragged-arsed Sid staggering along with his pockets bulging full of marbles, and Em, a skinny stick, her hair tousled as a bird’s nest. Dot had had Nancy up sick in the night and overslept herself so there’d been no time to search for the comb, which always seemed to be missing.

  Em turned briefly and waved at her and Dot raised her own arm, touched, despite her tiredness and resentment that she had been put in this position. Em’s foallike sweetness, her silent suffering could always melt Dot’s heart.

  It was no good even pretending that their father was looking after them, and many said how could he be expected to, a man on his own and holding down an exhausting job and with Cynth being the way she was? Dot felt for him, of course, some of the time. The poor sod was like a lost soul, just as lost as his kids, truth to tell – more like a kid himself.

  That was where her sympathy ended. Bob wasn’t even trying to look after his family. All he could think about these days was that bloody woman, Flossie Daw-son. In Dot’s mind now she was always That Woman. Of course everyone knew about their carry-on by now – Bob was up and down the road to her like a fiddler’s elbow. Every so often someone’d take him to task about it, even some of the other blokes. But it was like talking to the wall. Whatever Dot said to him, however many ding-dongs they had over the children, the old, dutiful, biddable Bob had vanished.

  ‘They’re all right, ain’t they?’ That was all he ever said. ‘They’ve food in their bellies and they’ve got you looking after them.’

  ‘But I ain’t their mom!’ Dot would explode at him. ‘It ain’t my job – they’re your kids, not mine. Don’t you think I’ve got enough on my plate without bringing up your family as well?’

  ‘Oh, don’t keep on, woman,’ he’d said during their last set-to. ‘I’ve handed you my wages. What more d’yer want?’

  ‘Oh yes!’ Dot’s voice was harsh with sarcasm. ‘What’s left of ’em after she’s helped herself.’

  ‘Well, that’s my bloody business.’

  He was deaf to any other voice but Flossie Dawson’s. The fact that he had not, in the end, gone to see Cynthia on Christmas Day as he’d said he would, but stayed at Flossie’s instead, still made Dot burn with hurt and outrage for her friend. So the woman had broken her leg – so what? That wasn’t the end of the world, was it?

  However deaf to all pleading Bob was, in the meantime someone had to keep things together for the children, and Dot knew the lot had fallen to her. In the name of friendship, as well as her great fondness for Cynthia’s kids, she knew she had no choice but to carry on doing whatever she could. God alone knew what would become of them if she didn’t, the way things were going. The burden on her shoulders felt a sad and heavy one.

  ‘Oh, Cynth,’ she murmured, watching the two children disappear along the road. ‘It’d break your heart to see ’em, that it would. You’d better get yourself well soon, love . . . You’ve just got to.’

  Her thoughts were broken into by a little hand sliding into hers. She looked down and saw Joycie, still in her vest and pants from bed and a thumb in her mouth, looking up sleepily at her.

  ‘What’s up, bab? I was just seeing Em and Sid off.’

  Without a word, Joyce held her arms up to the woman who had become like a mother to her.

  ‘Oh, you want a bit of a love, is that it?’ Dot said fondly, bending her aching back to pick the child up. ‘Come on, then. Let’s get this door shut or you’ll catch yer death.’

  She carried the little girl inside, feeling some comfort herself in the little warm body pressed close to hers.

  ‘Now,’ she said kindly, ‘our Nance’s been up poorly all night so she’ll stay asleep for a bit. When you’ve had yer breakfast, d’you want to come and help me do a few bits of shopping?’

  Joyce nodded, wide-eyed.

  Dot rumpled her hair. ‘Right, bab – you can finish off the porridge, and then yer can go up and get yerself dressed.’

  Since Christmas, Em and Molly had called off their campaign against Mrs Dawson. The shock of seeing Flossie come to the door that afternoon with the cast on her leg had been almost too much for Em and she couldn’t stop staring at it, wondering what they’d done. What if it’d been the head that came off the wax dolly instead? It was too frightening to imagine!

  After dinner, during which Bob and Flossie struggled with bright, difficult conversation, and Daisy made hideous faces at them over the potatoes, the children squirmed with boredom in the yawning, endless afternoon.

  Em looked round curiously at Mrs Dawson’s knick-knacks. Her eye was caught by a red Chinese dragon with a long tail that sat on the mantelpiece. It fascinated her but she didn’t dare ask to look at it.

  ‘Can us go out and play?’ Sid asked eventually, from the prison of Mrs Dawson’s back room.

  ‘Yeah – go on, off yer go,’ Bob said. His face wore an ardent, desperate look and they knew he wanted them gone.

  ‘Yes of course you can,’ Mrs Dawson said in her sweet-honey voice, as if she was bestowing a great favour on them instead of her obvious relief to get them out of her hair. ‘Why don’t you go and play as well, Daisy?’

  ‘Don’t want to.’ Daisy pouted.

  Em, Sid and Joyce didn’t wait for Daisy to change her mind. They bolted out through the front door fast as blinking. Em dashed round to Kenilworth Street, thinking she’d go off pop if she didn’t tell Molly the news. To her relief she didn’t have to go into the yard as Molly was already out with Bert and some others.

  ‘Molly!’ Em tore along to her. Molly’s face broke into a grin at the sight of Em, who pulled her urgently to one side and they both turned their faces to the wall. ‘Mrs Dawson – she’s broken her leg!’ Em gabbled. ‘She’s got a thing on it, a plaster, and it’s the same leg we cut off the wax one! We must’ve done it,
we must’ve voodoo’d her! D’yer think we did?’

  Molly’s face took on an expression of great self-importance. ‘I knew it – I knew it’d work,’ she said, awed. ‘Was it really ’er left leg? Like with the dolly?’

  ‘Yes!’ Em was nodding until her own head practically fell off.

  ‘Well,’ Molly said very solemnly, ‘we’d better stop there, then. If we do anything else,’ and here she lowered her voice even more, ‘it’ll be the end of her. The magic gets stronger and stronger each time you use it!’

  ‘Does it?’ Em shuddered in horror at what else they might be the cause of. ‘Have you still got the dolly?’

  Molly nodded. ‘I hid it in the brew house.’

  ‘Hadn’t we better get rid of it?’

  ‘We can’t burn it,’ Molly said. ‘What would that make happen? And if we throw it out, we don’t know who else might get hold of it.’

  They stared at each other, overcome by the awesome and dreadful thing they had started.

  ‘P’raps we’d better just leave it where it is and not touch it,’ Em whispered, wide-eyed.

  ‘What’re you two swuss-swussing about?’ The voice made them both jump violently. It was Bert, Molly’s mean-eyed brother.

  ‘Nothing,’ Molly snapped. ‘Go away.’

  ‘Nothing,’ he mocked in a silly voice. He aimed an idle kick at them. ‘Your mom’s locked up in the loony bin,’ he sneered at Em then ambled off as if he couldn’t be bothered. They were only stupid girls.

  Molly’s face burned with shame. ‘Don’t take no notice of him.’

  ‘I won’t,’ Em said, but the cruel words still stabbed right through her.

  In the six weeks since Christmas, life had otherwise gone on much the same. By the end of January, when Molly peeped into her hiding place in the yard brew house, the wax dolly had disappeared and a small coop had appeared with three chickens in it. Someone must have found the wax and either used or disposed of it, and there had been no bad effects on Mrs Dawson that they could see. In fact soon after that she had had her cast removed and other than needing support from a stick she was now walking normally, so Em relaxed over it. And she and Molly liked going and talking to the hens, with their darting heads.

  But during this time, Bob’s preoccupation with Flossie Dawson had turned into an obsession which the children were even beginning to get used to. Once she’d broken her leg – slipping on a patch of ice, she said – she needed every help that Bob could give her.

  ‘She’s a woman on her own,’ he said repeatedly when Dot kept on at him. ‘She needs help to manage.’

  ‘I’m a woman on my own an’ all!’ Dot retorted furiously. ‘Or haven’t you noticed? I don’t see you coming round to give me any help!’

  ‘But I have helped yer at times,’ Bob argued – which was true. Bob and Cynthia had done Dot a lot of favours in the past. ‘And it’s all new to Floss . . . to Mrs Dawson. She only buried her old man less than two years ago. She ain’t got anyone else. I’ve got to do what I can for her – she’s delicate, like.’

  ‘Oh yes – about as delicate as a bloody sledgehammer, that one,’ Dot muttered.

  But there was no getting through to him.

  Thirty-Eight

  Bob stood on Flossie Dawson’s step, holding a bunch of daffodils. It was a Sunday afternoon, he was all spruced up and in a state of high excitement which he was trying to keep under control, but when he heard her limping to the door to open it he was trembling with anticipation. Today was the day he was going to lay his cards on the table – so long as the girl wasn’t in. She had to be out – just had to be!

  ‘Ah, Bob!’ Flossie’s pretty face, and the sound of her soft Staffordshire accent, made his innards do a somersault. ‘How nice to see you!’ She spoke with polite formality.

  ‘Here, I brought you these,’ he said before he’d even got over the threshold. ‘It’s St Valentine’s Day. I thought you’d like ’em . . .’

  He tried to thrust them into her hands but of course she was holding the stick.

  ‘Oh, how nice. You’ll bring them in for me, will you?’

  ‘Yes, course. Silly of me, sorry.’

  ‘No, it’s very nice of you.’ Once inside the door the intimate, seductive tone of her voice returned. Its effect on him was, as usual, electric. Even the rise and fall of her voice now could arouse him in seconds, he was at such a pitch.

  ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’

  ‘Oh – tea? Yes. Yes, please!’ God, it wasn’t tea he wanted. He wanted her, right now. He wanted to lift her off her feet in those dainty boots, carry her upstairs, lay her back over what would of course be a whopping great bed and . . .

  ‘I think it’s getting a bit warmer at last,’ she remarked from the back. He heard the sound of water.

  ‘Yes!’ he agreed, peeping into the front room to check. Surely to God the girl wasn’t in there, not this time, watching him slyly and silently the way she always did. No! He almost punched the air. No sign of her. He hung up his cap, then went and sat on one of the green chairs, expectantly, his foot tapping.

  ‘There.’ Flossie came in. She was wearing a black dress that fitted her curves precisely. It was his favourite. He fought the desire to stand up and draw her to him. Her blue eyes looked at him – laughingly, did he imagine that? – and she said, ‘Kettle’s on. Won’t be long.’

  ‘Where’s young Daisy today?’ he asked, innocently. ‘At auntie’s?’

  ‘Yes – it’s her weekend away. I expect they’ll go out together somewhere. They usually do.’

  As if he cared, so long as the girl wasn’t going to walk in any moment. He’d waited so long, telling himself at first that Flossie was too good for him, more of a lady who he could admire from afar. Then of course she broke her leg and any suggestion of things going further seemed impossibly inconsiderate. Most of the time he wanted her so badly that he wouldn’t have cared if she had every limb in plaster. But to suggest it would have been wrong. All those signs she gave, the eyes, the way she spoke and moved herself seductively in front of him. God, yes, she wanted him, he knew. She was just too genteel to ask. And of course normally the girl was here . . .

  They drank tea but his sense of decency could only last so long. Once he’d downed his to the dregs, sitting the other side of the fire from her, he could bear it no longer.

  ‘Flossie . . .’ He stumbled into words, then helplessly out of them again, and sat in an agonized silence.

  ‘Yes?’ she said encouragingly.

  ‘I . . . I can’t help the feeling . . . I mean, I’ve noticed you . . .’ He stood up, burning, frustrated to the point of madness. ‘Christ, woman, I need you. Let’s go up to bed!’

  He’d said it – bloody hell, did he really say that? It was out now!

  Flossie stared up at him, her cheeks blushing gratify-ingly as if she was struggling with the idea, but as she didn’t seem about to reject him, Bob flung himself to his knees in front of her. ‘I can’t think of anything but you, woman. I’m beside myself with it.’

  ‘Bob,’ she said archly. ‘D’you mean what you’re saying? You’re a married man, you know.’

  ‘Married! Yes, I’m married,’ he cried passionately. ‘But where is she? I ain’t had a wife for months! It’s not that I’m not sorry for her, but what do I do? And what about me? I’m a healthy man – and then you come along and as soon as I saw yer . . . Well, I can’t help myself – I just can’t.’

  He looked down at the bright reds and blues of the Turkey rug on which he was kneeling. It was his turn to blush. He’d laid himself right in her hands now.

  ‘Bob – ’ she put two fingers under his chin and gently drew his face up – ‘that’s so sweet. You’re a very lovely man. I’m quite overcome.’

  He stared back like a little boy. ‘Are yer?’ He could hardly believe it all.

  Flossie nodded. He began to lean towards her, to kiss her lovely pink cheek, but she held back.

  ‘The thing is, Bob, I’m not
that sort of woman. I never have been. Before Arthur passed away . . .’ She looked down, seeming grief-stricken. ‘Well, there’s only been him, my husband. You do have an effect on me, dear, I can’t say you don’t.’

  ‘Well, then!’ he cried. ‘Look, I’m not messing with yer. I’ll come and be with yer, give you everything. I’m not married any more, that’s how it feels. You know that’s how it is. I want to be ’ere – be your feller.’

  ‘Oh!’ She gave a smile that melted his already besotted heart even further. ‘That’s so sweet, deary. You see I’ve been so worried. My nerves are shattered all the time worrying about things. About how I’m going to cope. Money’s such a problem.’

  ‘You mustn’t worry. I’ll help – I earn a wage, don’t I! It’s not princely of course but it’s summat. And I’ll give it all to yer, Flossie love. I’ll look after you!’ He hardly knew what he was saying. Wages were low and there was never a week when they didn’t have to hock something to get by, but he couldn’t think of that now.

  ‘Oh, Bob,’ she sat back yieldingly in the chair, ‘that would be such a weight off my mind. If perhaps you could let me have a little something this week? It would make all the difference in the world.’

  ‘Yes, of course!’ He promised her every bit of his money he could find, anything. He was hot and aching with desire. ‘I’ll help you, only kiss me, you lovely girl. Please do that for me.’

  Flossie looked at his desperate condition. ‘We must be careful, dear. I shouldn’t want another child. It happens so easily . . .’