The Girl From Barefoot House

by Maureen Lee

  Josie plodded wearily up to the second floor. The office had been exceptionally busy today. Peter Schofield had wanted an urgent quotation to catch the post, and she’d had no alternative but to stay till half past six because two girls in the typing pool were off.

  ‘Don’t worry, darling. You’ll find an extra few quid in your wage packet on Friday,’ Peter said. He was very generous. ‘Now you go home to that nice hubby of yours. I’ll post this.’

  ‘Ta.’ Josie managed to squeeze her face into a tired smile. Peter didn’t know about Laura.

  The couple in the first-floor back room were having a fight, screaming at each other at the tops of their voices. Thank God we don’t live over them, she thought. The man in the room below them made hardly a sound, unlike the young man on the ground floor who had friends round every night and played music till the early hours. The woman in the basement seemed quite respectable, but there was something wrong with her. More than once Josie had heard the sound of desperate weeping coming from the flat. She might have investigated had she not felt much like weeping herself. Jack said the woman’s name was Elsie Forrest. She was a retired nanny, and often admired Laura. There were other tenants she didn’t know – they kept changing all the time.

  It was time Mr Browning got someone in to give this place a good scrub. She scowled at the dirt encrusted in the corners of each linoleum-covered stair. And a few repairs wouldn’t have gone amiss. Several bannisters were missing, the light in the hall didn’t work and there was a cracked window in the communal bathroom, where hot water was just a far-off dream. But all Mr Browning was interested in was collecting the rent. Still, he hadn’t turned them away when she was obviously pregnant, like so many other landlords and landladies had done. But, then, Mr Browning didn’t live on the premises, and probably didn’t give a damn if a crying baby disturbed the other residents.

  Josie reached the second floor. Before opening the poorly fitting door with gaps top and bottom, she threw back her shoulders and fixed a bright smile on her face. She turned the knob, and went in. ‘Hi,’ she sang out. ‘How’ve things been?’

  Jack was pounding away at the typewriter, and Laura was fast asleep in her cot at the foot of the bed. Josie bent over her beautiful six-month-old daughter, half resentful, half thankful she was asleep. She longed to give her a cuddle, yet ached to sit down and relax with a cup of tea.

  ‘Everything’s fine, sweetheart.’ Jack abandoned his typing to give her a hug. ‘You’re late. I was getting worried.’

  ‘I had this quotation to do. I tried to phone, but it’s out of order again.’

  ‘You can’t hear this far up, anyway, particularly if I’m typing. The kettle’s boiled. Fancy a cuppa?’

  ‘I’m dying for a cuppa.’ She sank thankfully on to the lumpy settee, her head swimming. ‘How’s the play going?’

  Jack made a face. ‘Okay, but two came back this morning, one from the Liverpool Playhouse.’ He grinned. ‘Bastards! No loyalty to a fellow scouse.’

  She knew the grin was fake, like her smile. Every play he had submitted had been returned – even The Disciples, in which he’d had such faith – usually with unfavourable comments. ‘Not tense enough.’ ‘The characters have no depth.’ ‘Where is the plot?’ one director had rudely demanded.

  ‘Perhaps you’re before your time,’ Josie had suggested once. ‘Like Van Gogh, for example.’

  ‘Well,’ Jack drawled, ‘let’s hope I don’t have to wait as long as he did, like long after I’m dead.’

  He was unhappy in London. He missed his friends and the buzz and excitement of New York. Instead of looking out over a row of busy shops and a cinema, their large, dingy bedsitting-room in a Fulham cul-de-sac was opposite an abandoned factory with smashed windows and graffiti on the walls. Unlike New York, where Jack’s radiance made everything around him seem pale in comparison this ugly room with its bits and pieces of well-used furniture and faded, fraying lino diminished him. He seemed smaller, slighter, less important, just an ordinary man struggling, unsuccessfully, to make something of himself. Moving to London had been a disastrous mistake.

  He brought a mug of tea. ‘I thought I’d send a play to the BBC,’ he said. ‘Bob knows someone who knows someone there. He said they’re always looking for new writers.’

  ‘It wouldn’t hurt,’ Josie said encouragingly. She didn’t say it would hurt their finances. With ten plays constantly in circulation, the cost of postage both ways, and envelopes and paper, bit deeply into her wages. But the whole point of this very unsatisfactory way of life was so Jack could concentrate on nothing but writing.

  During her pregnancy, and for two months after Laura was born, he had worked for a pittance in a pub in Fulham. There had been scarcely enough to pay the rent and buy basic food. Josie didn’t know how she would have managed if Mrs Kavanagh hadn’t sent a huge parcel of baby clothes from Marigold, with a tactful note to say, ‘It seems a shame to let these go to waste. Some haven’t even been worn.’

  ‘I could kick myself for not staying at college, getting a degree,’ Jack complained frequently. He was completely unskilled. All he knew was bar work.

  Josie was the one with a trade, but she hadn’t worked as a shorthand-typist since leaving the insurance company four years ago. When Jack was out, she sharpened her skills by retyping his plays, with the excuse that the manuscripts had got shabby during their constant journeys in the post. As she typed, she had the worrying thought that the plays weren’t very good. They seemed too wordy, rather dull, a bit preachy. Even The Disciples, of which he was so proud, had copies of the reviews clipped to the cover, and they weren’t all that marvellous. Only two, from badly printed magazines she’d never heard of, had flattering things to say. When a play was returned with the comment, ‘Where is the plot?’ she couldn’t help but agree.

  She brought her shorthand back to speed by taking down the news from the wireless. As soon as she felt up to it, she suggested Jack give up the pub. She would work so he could write.

  ‘I can earn more than you. It seems the sensible thing to do.’ It was the hardest decision she had ever made in her life, to desert her lovely baby.

  Jack’s reaction still upset her when she thought about it four months later. He had gazed at her wretchedly. His body seemed to shrink before her eyes. ‘Oh, Christ!’ The sound, a mixture of a groan and a cry, seemed to come from the very depths of his being. ‘I’m no good at this.’

  Josie felt as if she were shrinking herself, melting away to nothing in the face of his despair. ‘At what?’ she asked shakily.

  He gestured round the room. ‘At looking after a wife and kid. It’s not me. It’s not what I had planned, at least not until I was someone. Back home I was a playwright who worked in a bar to make a few dollars. Now, I’m a fucking barman! Sometimes I feel too damn dispirited to write.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Josie said tightly. The doubts she’d had on her wedding day had been confirmed. He hadn’t wanted to marry her. He didn’t want to be a father. He may well love her, and he adored Laura, but both were burdens to this rather splendid, rather immature, intensely good-humoured man. She remembered the first time she’d seen him in the coffee-bar in New York, without a care in the world. That man no longer existed, though he still put up a front, but now, with his guard down, he looked destroyed.

  ‘It’s not your fault, sweetheart.’ He dropped his head in his hands and didn’t speak for several seconds. Then he looked at her dully. ‘Look, why don’t I find something else? One of those smart West End places might well snap up a Yankee barman, and if I smile nicely at the customers, I’ll make a load in tips.’

  ‘You’re not a barman, Jack. You’re a playwright.’ Her voice was sharp. ‘You expected to take London by storm, but maybe the storm’s a long time coming. Oh, does that sound stupid?’

  He smiled. ‘A bit.’

  ‘Anyroad,’ she said seriously, ‘our best plan is for you to concentrate on writing, and I’ll work. It shouldn’t be for long
. Laura won’t give you any bother. You’ll just need to take her for a little walk around lunchtime, that’s all.’

  She would have to stop breast-feeding. That would be the hardest part. She had so much milk, gallons of it, and breast milk was so much healthier for a child. The best times of the day were when she watched her daughter suck furiously on her white, overlarge breasts, sometimes grabbing the flesh with her tiny hands, squeezing it. It was the oddest sensation, almost sensual and at the same time totally natural. Mother and child, joined together, one nourishing the other.

  Everything about leaving Laura was hard. On her first day as a secretary with Ashbury Buxton, a civil engineering company in Chelsea, she cried the whole way on the bus. She couldn’t stop thinking about her little daughter.

  She’d told all sorts of lies to get the job, apart from the glaring omission that she had a child. She’d been working as a secretary in New York, she told Peter Schofield, and tried to look confident, at the same time praying he wouldn’t suggest sending for a reference to the mythical company she’d invented. He’d been impressed, didn’t mention a reference and employed her on the spot. There was a good atmosphere in the office, though the work was hard, and there was never time to stop for a chat with the other women.

  Four months later, Josie still hadn’t got used to leaving her child. When she got home Laura was usually asleep. She’d always been a perfect baby, and rarely woke during the night.

  I’m missing so much, she thought as she watched Jack move the typewriter to the floor, then take the casserole she’d made the night before from the oven and put it on the table. She’d been at work while Laura had spent a whole hour trying to pull her fingers off one by one, and when she’d sat up unaided for the first time and held out her arms to be picked up. At weekends, when she nursed her, she noticed Laura’s eyes turn to Jack. Who is this stranger? Josie imagined her thinking. Who the hell is this funny woman whose knee I’m sitting on? In another few months Laura would start talking, and her first word wasn’t likely to be ‘Mummy’.

  The graffiti-covered factory served as a background to their meal. If there had ever been cypress trees in Cypress Terrace, there was no sign of them now. ‘I was wondering,’ Jack said, ‘if we could run to a television? Not buy one,’ he added hastily. ‘I mean get one on hire. It only costs about a dollar a week. It’s just that, if I’m to approach the BBC, I’d like to see a few plays first. Bob said they have on at least two a week. You might enjoy having a set, sweetheart.’ Bob was someone he’d met in the corner pub, his only social outlet and so utterly pathetic when compared to the frantic clubbing and partying in New York.

  She would never have time to watch TV. There was always ironing to do, Laura’s nappies to wash and soak before they went to the launderette, things to mend, next day’s meal to prepare – the inevitable casserole or stew – tidying, cleaning. She was lucky if she managed to snatch an hour with a book before it was time for bed, where Jack always wanted to make love, and she had to pretend it was wonderful when all she wanted to do was sleep.

  He was looking at her pleadingly, and she couldn’t stand it. She hated being the breadwinner and her husband asking for money.

  ‘Of course we can afford it,’ she said cheerfully.

  ‘I’ll arrange it tomorrow.’

  She took her empty plate over to the sink, and noticed a canvas holdall on the floor. ‘Jack, did you take the washing to the laundrette?’

  ‘Christ, I forgot.’ He jumped to his feet. ‘I’ll take it now – they’re open till ten.’

  ‘You might as well have a drink while you’re waiting.’

  He planted a kiss on her cheek. ‘I suppose I might. Bye, sweetheart. See you later.’

  ‘Bye.’ Josie let out a long, slow breath when the door closed. She put the dishes in to soak and sat at the foot of the bed beside the cot. Laura was on her back, her hands raised in a position of surrender. Josie lifted the quilt. Her knees were spread, feet together, making a perfect diamond.

  ‘I love you,’ she whispered. Laura uttered a tiny cry, opened her brown eyes – Jack’s eyes – stared unseeingly at her mother, then closed them. She was Jack’s child, with his eyes, his fine nose, fine eyebrows, the same coal black hair.

  The nurses had exclaimed in surprise at the amount of hair she’d had when she was born. ‘This baby already needs a haircut,’ the midwife said. The birth had been as easy as the pregnancy – no complications, no stitches, hardly any pain.

  ‘You’re a dream baby,’ Josie told her, ‘which is just as well. If you were like some babies I’ve heard of, your dad would hardly get any writing done. Mind you, I wouldn’t mind if you had a little cry in the middle of the night, so I could pick you up and give you a bit of a cuddle, like. But then, frankly, luv, I feel more than a bit worn out, so ignore that.’

  Two months later, Josie came home to find Laura standing up in her cot, clutching the bars and grinning fiendishly. ‘She did that herself,’ Jack said proudly. ‘You should have seen the look of determination on her face. She was going to stand up or die in the attempt. She’s enormously pleased with herself.’

  ‘I wish I’d been here,’ Josie said wistfully.

  ‘So do I.’ His expression changed to one of mild irritation. ‘Lately, her favourite game is throwing her toys out the cot, and expecting them back straight away so she can throw them out again. I must have got up at least twenty times.’

  ‘She can’t stay in her cot for ever. She’ll be crawling soon.’ Josie knelt beside the cot. ‘Won’t you, darling?’

  Laura did a little jig. ‘Bah!’ she cried.

  ‘Would you like a rusk?’

  ‘Bah!’

  ‘I’ve already fed her,’ Jack broke in. ‘Don’t give her any more. She’ll get fat.’

  Josie stroked her daughter’s plump arm. ‘She’s already fat. Shall I change her nappy?’

  ‘She had a fresh diaper about half an hour ago.’ He put the kettle on. ‘Hey, despite the trials and tribulations of the day, I finished that play for the BBC. It took some discipline, trying to fit the whole thing into an hour and a half.’

  ‘Good.’ Josie picked Laura up out of the cot and carried her to the settee, half expecting Jack to tell her not to. The baby immediately made a grab for her necklace of multicoloured beads. ‘What’s it about, the play?’ He was unwilling to discuss plots until he’d finished.

  She only half listened as he explained that it was about a pit disaster somewhere, followed by a famous strike, aware only that it sounded dead dull, as Jack’s plays usually did. It was strange because he was basically a happy sold, yet everything he wrote was as miserable as sin.

  How much longer would this go on? she wondered as Laura tried to strangle her with the beads. They’d been in London fourteen months, yet Jack was no nearer success than the day they’d arrived.

  Suddenly, the beads broke. They fell on the cushions of the settee and rolled on to the floor.

  ‘Damn!’ Jack exclaimed.

  ‘It doesn’t matter, they’re only cheap ones.’

  ‘I don’t give a shit about the necklace,’ he said irritably. ‘I’m worried Laura’s got one in her mouth. You should have stopped her chewing it.’

  ‘I didn’t notice she was,’ Josie said in a small voice.

  Laura, conscious that something was happening she didn’t understand, raised her arms and looked nervously at Jack. He came over and plucked her off Josie’s knee. ‘It’s all right, honey. Open your mouth for Daddy. Let’s see what you’ve got in there. Good girl, four perfect little teeth, another two on the way and not a bead in sight.’

  It was all Josie could do not to burst into tears.

  It was Friday. Josie came out of the office, and saw Jack waiting on the other side of the road. He smiled, waved and came striding across, lightly dodging the traffic. For the first time in ages she felt a tiny thrill. There was something about the confident, bouncing walk that reminded her of the Jack of old.

  �
�Where’s Laura?’ she demanded as soon as he arrived.

  ‘I left her with Elsie Forrest,’ he said easily. ‘I’ve got some great news.’

  ‘Elsie Forrest, the woman in the basement?’ Josie hurried towards the bus stop. ‘She’s not quite right in the head, Jack. Haven’t you heard the way she cries?’

  Jack laid a restraining hand on her arm. ‘Josie, I told you ages ago, she used to be a nanny. She’s looked after dozens of children. Laura’s completely safe. Elsie only cries because she’s lonely, that’s all.’

  ‘But, Jack …’ Entirely against her will, she found herself being steered into a pub. ‘I’m worried about Laura.’

  ‘I’ve told you, she’ll be fine. What do you want to drink?’

  ‘I don’t want a drink.’

  ‘Well, you’re having one, so sit down. We’ve got something to celebrate.’ He brought her a sherry and a beer for himself.

  ‘What have we got to celebrate?’

  His dark eyes danced. ‘This morning, I was leaving the apartment to take Laura for her walk when the phone rang. It was a woman from the BBC, wanting to talk about my play. The long and short of it was, she asked if I was free for lunch. It was too good an opportunity to miss, so I said yes. I was going to call your office, ask you to come home, but thought about Elsie Forrest. She was only too pleased to oblige. I’ve been home since,’ he said quickly when Josie opened her mouth to speak. ‘Laura didn’t want to know me. She’s fine with Elsie. Anyway, back to this afternoon. Matty took me to a very smart restaurant in Mayfair.’

  ‘Mattie?’

  ‘Mathilda Garr, Mattie, the woman from the BBC.’ He waved a dismissive hand. ‘She’s old. Although she didn’t think much of the play, she reckons I’ve got a way with dialogue. She wants me to write a pilot for a series she has planned. My play arrived quite fortuitously while she was casting around for a writer.’