by Maggie Joel
‘Telephones are such fearsome beasts, of course,’ announced Aunt Daisy, with a glance at Mrs Lake for confirmation. ‘We do not have one here as we have no need for one, and I feel sure they are not quite respectable nor healthy either.’
Bertha smiled tightly because she knew all this, Aunt Daisy having said the very same thing on her previous visit.
Mrs Lake and her elder sister were as alike as two sisters divided by seven years in age and a lifetime of marriage and motherhood for one, and spinsterhood and paid employment for the other, could be. They were perhaps in their late sixties and early seventies, both tiny of frame with child-sized hands, thin-faced with long narrow noses, their wispy grey hair tied up in a neat high bun. They both dressed in heavy black crinoline skirts that rustled at every movement and high-collared white blouses. By comparison, Miss Crisp seemed the height of fashion.
The two sisters operated as a team, so that it was a constant challenge to remember which was which. One would open a door, the other would pull the trolley through, one would hold up the plate, the other would cut the cake and place the slice on the plate. It all happened wordlessly and seamlessly. They both perched on the edge of an overstuffed maroon leather settee and stared at her in unblinking silence.
‘These muffins are delicious,’ Bertha said, and Mrs Lake and Aunt Daisy looked collectively pleased.
‘We made them specially,’ confided Mrs Lake and Bertha thought, Supposing I had turned Matthew down?
‘I do like a good muffin,’ she replied.
‘You’ll soon be making your own,’ observed Matthew proudly as though he had offered to show her how to drive or had made her captain of a cricket team.
The clock chimed the hour loudly and for seven counts no one had to say anything at all. Seven o’clock. They had been here one hour.
‘And what about your own people, my dear?’ said Mrs Lake abruptly, her tea cup poised in mid-air halfway between saucer and mouth.
‘Yes indeed, you’ll be wanting to tell your own people the wonderful news,’ agreed Aunt Daisy, and the way they said Your Own People made Bertha feel as though she were of some other race entirely rather than just Bertha Flaxheed of Wells Lane on the other side of High Street.
‘Well, yes, I expect I shall tell them,’ she replied. ‘You must come over to tea on Sunday, Matthew, and we shall tell them then.’
And this was such an odd, such a significant thing to do—arranging for your new fiance to come to tea so that you could tell your parents you were engaged to be married—that for a moment the room, the plate, the muffin in her hand, the two little old ladies leaning eagerly towards, seemed quite unreal.
Then she saw that her fiance was Mr Matthew Lake of the post office whom Mum and Dad had already met and whom they had thought rather old and had said very little to, and suddenly it all seemed very real indeed.
‘Yes, that would be very nice,’ said Matthew, and he didn’t appear nervous at the prospect.
Now that tea had been settled, they plunged into another silence until Matthew finally said, ‘Well, perhaps we had better be getting along.’
‘Yes, yes indeed, we must,’ Bertha agreed, putting down her plate.
‘Oh, but Miss Flaxheed hasn’t finished her muffin, Matthew.’
‘That’s alright, really.’ Bertha was already on her feet.
‘Don’t want to spoil our fish supper,’ agreed Matthew.
Oh, they were going to Pontison’s after all.
Aunt Daisy went out to the hallway and retrieved their jackets. ‘Don’t tire Miss Flaxheed out, Matthew,’ she said in a chiding manner.
‘Yes, you mind Miss Flaxheed gets home at a respectable hour, Matthew dear,’ agreed Mrs Lake, holding out Bertha’s jacket.
‘Now then, Mother, we’re only going for a fish supper at Pontison’s then I shall escort her straight home. Ready, my dear?’
Bertha nodded and made for the front door. How, she wondered, did you say goodbye to your future mother-in-law and her elder sister? Her mind baulked at the idea of kissing them. She turned as she reached the door, smiled as brightly as she could, and waved a cheery farewell. ‘Thanks ever so much. Goodbye,’ she said, and Mrs Lake and Aunt Daisy smiled brightly back and waved goodbye. Bertha stumbled out into the cool night air and made her way quickly along the path to the gate.
‘Well. This is lovely, isn’t it?’ said Matthew as they walked arm in arm back along Oakton Way.
‘Yes, lovely,’ said Bertha.
Sunday came around, as Sundays do, very quickly indeed—quicker, in fact, than most, because this was a Sunday filled with nervous trepidation.
Bertha had remained steadfastly silent on the subject of engagements for forty-eight hours. Not that either of her parents appeared to have noticed the fact, Dad’s attention being entirely taken up with the curious machinations of the local council with whom he had become increasingly obsessed to the point of considering standing for election himself, and Mum’s time being taken up with The Saving of Janie, her sister’s eldest, who had got herself in the family way by some young man at the factory who looked in no hurry to marry her. Amid such uproar, a secret betrothal and the appearance of an engagement ring on the finger of their own eldest daughter went entirely unnoticed.
And so be it, thought Bertha. She certainly did not need their approval any more than Jemima had sought their approval to marry Ronnie. Jem had simply come home late one evening and mentioned it casually over breakfast the following morning, right between the first pot of tea and the arrival of the Sunday paper. Then she had flounced out and acted like Lady Muck all the rest of the day and Dad had been absolutely furious. But there was little he could have done about it because it had already happened. It was soon after that he had begun to get interested in the local council.
No, announcing your engagement so casually over Sunday breakfast, without your intended even being there, was not quite right, Bertha decided. She and Matthew would do it properly and respectably and everyone would be glad and congratulations would be offered and toasts made and perhaps Dad would pour them all a glass of sherry. And the best part was that Jemima and Ronnie would be there too, because they usually came to Sunday tea if they weren’t doing something more important. And of course she would make it absolutely clear that Matthew had Prospects, that he Owned his Own House and was Comfortable. Ronnie and Jemima lived in a dreary little flat above the butcher’s in High Street. She had only visited the place once. It had smelled of sawdust and fresh meat.
Matthew arrived as the clock on the mantelpiece struck four and Bertha, who had been brazenly studying the wedding announcements in the Gazette, looked up and met Dad’s eye.
Dad’s expression said, Punctual—I like a fella to be punctual, which was the sort of thing Dad did say, but he could just as easily have said, Ay ay, this chap’s a stickler, better watch out for him. Either way, both Bertha and Mum, who was knitting for cousin Janie’s baby (‘poor little mite’) remained in their seats while Dad got slowly to his feet, smoothed down his trousers, buttoned up his waistcoat, flattened his head where his hair had once been, and generally acted as though this was Leadheath Hall and he was still Mr Flaxheed, the butler.
He’s going to call the lounge the ‘parlour’, thought Bertha.
‘That’ll be your Mr Lake,’ observed Mum, as though there were any number of gentleman callers at this time on a Sunday afternoon and she had, by means of clever deduction, surmised which one it was.
‘Of course it’s Mr Lake,’ Bertha replied, and she recalled with sudden clarity the tea with Matthew’s mother and aunt on Friday evening. Did Matthew think of her parents in the same way she thought of his? The idea was unsettling but, once entertained, would not be dislodged.
‘You’ll find us in the parlour,’ Dad was saying in the hallway.
‘Goodness! I’d better see about tea,’ exclaimed Mum, as though she hadn’t been preparing the tea all morning. She jumped up so that wool and needles cascaded in all dire
ctions, and Matthew and Dad, entering the room at that exact moment, were met by a particularly rebellious ball of sky-blue wool (‘Bound to be a boy, they always are’).
Matthew stooped to retrieve the recalcitrant ball and held it out to Mum, who looked momentarily disconcerted, as though unsure whether to greet Mr Lake or to thank him for returning the wool. She settled on the latter.
‘Oh you’re too kind, Mr Lake. Isn’t he too kind, my dear?’ she said.
Bertha agreed that Mr Lake was too kind and silently wished her mother would go and see about the tea.
‘Bertha,’ said Matthew, coming to her and touching her hand. Behind him Dad’s nostrils flared, which meant he was shocked to his core that this man had addressed his daughter by her Christian name in his parlour.
‘Hullo,’ she replied, not quite able to return the greeting in full. But still, in a few short minutes the news would be out and they could all relax.
Matthew was shown to the second-best armchair and Dad settled himself in his own armchair. Bertha sat down too. She exchanged a glance with Matthew: they must wait until Mum had returned. And Jemima and Ronnie weren’t here either, though they often arrived late—sometimes by a quarter of an hour.
There was a silence. A bewildering list of conversation topics flashed through her mind—the post office union issues, tea with Aunt Daisy and Mrs Lake, the worsening conditions of the miners—but they were all unsuitable. Something, she felt fairly certain, had just happened with a well-known cricketer, but what, and which cricketer, she didn’t know.
Finally Dad said, ‘You’ll have seen what those daft idiots at the council have gone and done, Mr Lake?’
Bertha sank down a little into her chair. What had the council done?
‘The bus route between Rosemont and Creffield roads?’ said Matthew, obviously hazarding a guess.
‘Allotments!’ said Dad, dismissing the bus routes with an angry shake of the head. ‘Daft idiots are threatening to do away with residents’ allotments permanently in order to sell the land to developers.’
Ah yes, the tricky allotment question. Dad had been banging on about it for the best part of a fortnight. Not that he had an allotment or knew anyone who did, but it was the principle of the thing, whatever that principle might be.
‘No, I haven’t seen anything about it,’ said Matthew. ‘I’ve been glued to the cricket news this last week.’ He sat up, suddenly enthusiastic. ‘You saw that Mr Jack Hobbs has beaten Grace’s record of one hundred and twenty-six centuries—and fourteen in a single season!’
Yes, that was it, thought Bertha; Mr Hobbs getting some big score or other. Then she looked carefully at Matthew, not having realised before that he was a cricket follower. Dad, of course, detested cricket. It was a game for Eton schoolboys, or something like that.
Silence fell once more and Bertha’s heart raced anxiously. Where on earth were Jemima and Ronnie?
‘Here we are, a nice bit of tea,’ said Mum, carrying the tray into the lounge, and Bertha leapt up to help her. The next few minutes were filled with the normal questions and thankyous of polite company at Sunday afternoon tea, but all too soon the four of them were seated with cups of tea at their elbows and plates of sardine sandwiches on their laps and only the weather left to debate. It was quarter past four—surely Jemima was on her way?
‘You are knitting baby clothes, Mrs Flaxheed. Is there a happy event on the horizon?’
Horror of horrors! Bertha froze, the sardine sandwich dissolving to dust on her tongue, and her eyes flew to her mother, who had flushed red and seemed frozen in horrified inaction. Dad was expressionless but for a twitching of a muscle in his jaw.
‘Dad, Matthew and I have some news,’ said Bertha, smiling grimly and turning to include Matthew in her announcement. Matthew hastily put down his plate and scrambled to his feet. ‘Yes, yes, so we have. Indeed, we do. We...’ He turned to her, then back to Dad. Mum appeared to be redundant in this conversation. ‘I have asked Miss Flaxheed, Bertha, to be my wife and she has done me the honour of consenting.’
There, it was out. There was no going back, there need be no more silences, no more raised eyebrows or flaring nostrils, it was done and she was officially engaged. All they needed was to await the congratulations.
But the front door was at that moment flung open and there were hurried footsteps in the hallway.
‘Alright, we’re here at last. Don’t fuss, Mum. Ronnie had some piano recital thing on and I don’t know what else. Anyway, it doesn’t matter because we’re here now and we’ve got news, so you’d better stop what you’re doing and listen!’
And here was Jemima marching into the lounge, plonking herself down on the settee with Ronnie bringing up the rear, suddenly remembering to remove his hat.
‘Give me a kiss, Mum, as we shall be having a baby! What do you think of that? Well, aren’t you going to congratulate me?’
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
MAY 1926
THE BABY WAS THREE months old and so far all it had done was cry, soil its nappy, dribble and vomit, and sometimes it did all those things at once.
Jemima kicked the kitchen door shut and clamped her hands over her ears. But the miserable flat that she and Ronnie lived in was so poky and cramped it was impossible to block any sound out at all no matter where you were or how many doors you slammed.
The baby paused, hiccoughed and let out a louder yell.
What was wrong with it? She had fed it, changed it, turned it over. She had even held the rotten little thing in her arms and paced up and down the hallway to calm it down but even that had only stopped it for five minutes.
‘Stop it! Stop crying!’ she ordered, but that only caused it to cry more.
It had cried all last night from the moment she had put it down to the moment when Ronnie had noisily let himself in, sometime after midnight, and then it had cried until he had left again for work this morning.
It was the Union. The Union and their stupid threats of a big important strike. A pathetic, pointless waste-of-everybody’s-time strike, a strike that wasn’t ever going to happen. And Ronnie was coming home after midnight because of it and leaving her alone with this...this...this crying thing. Coming home at all hours, full to bursting with this resolution and that demand and the stupid government saying this and the even more stupid Union saying something else and what did it matter anyway when everyone knew, they all knew—except Ronnie and his stupid little league—that there wasn’t going to be a strike tomorrow or the next day or next week or next year, and in the meantime here she was all alone with the baby crying day after day after day and driving her to distraction.
‘STOP! Stop crying!’ she shouted, hands over her ears, but the crying continued and she flung open the door and marched into the hallway and into the baby’s tiny boxroom. When she saw it lying there, so small and helpless and red-faced and wretched, she wanted to pick it up and shake it and shake it until it stopped.
It had looked so sweet, so small and vulnerable, she remembered, the first few days after it was born; sort of tawny and downy, like a little chick. Her heart had melted. Its face and hands and feet so tiny you wondered how they could possibly work. But work they did, and soon the face was screwed up in rage and the hands and feet plucking at the blanket and grabbing at everything and the downiness and the tawniness, which was just a touch of jaundice, had faded to a bald pink. Not a chick, a monster.
She turned and fled back to the hallway and into the mean little lounge, but the sight of the mean little dining table with the three mean-looking, mismatched chairs and the patched and overstuffed settee left over from the previous tenant and the single bookshelf donated by Dad and the horrible, ugly dresser (a present from Clive and Rose in Camberwell) that looked as though it belonged in some other century made her want to shout again, louder, and she returned to the kitchen.
It was the second day of May, a promisingly warm spring Sunday that had turned into a damp spring evening, and now the kitchen was as chill
y as an icebox in January.
It was 1926—1926!—and most houses, certainly most houses in Acton, had gas cookers, but not Mr and Mrs Ronnie Booth, oh no! They had a range, a solid fuel range that you had to kick into action first thing in the morning when it was still dark outside, then feed constantly with coal or wood to prevent it dying. Other people—people who lived in Maida Vale and Kensington and whose husbands wore suits and bowlers and worked in the City—had machines that did their washing for them. Or, rather, their maids had machines to do the washing for them. Their wives no longer had to sit in front of the tub and scrub for a whole morning then drag everything downstairs to the yard to put it through the wringer and hang it, still sodden, on the line just in time for a downpour. But it was laughable to think of Ronnie ever buying such a machine for her. And laughable that she, Jemima Flaxheed, late of the tearoom of Gossup and Batch of Regent Street, should actually desire one!
She let out an abrupt laugh and for a moment, in the other room, the baby paused in surprise, then, with a deep breath, it started up again.
So this is it, thought Jemima, her hands still pressed to her ears, this was her lot: to feed the baby one minute and the range the next; to scrub Ronnie’s dirty clothes with her bare hands and hump great loads of washing up and down the stairs; to spend all afternoon making tea then all evening cleaning it up again in that dirty, cracked enamel sink; to heave Mum’s old black perambulator up and down the stairs each time she took Baby outside and, when she had the bright idea of leaving the wretched perambulator in the downstairs porch in the yard, to have Mr Parson the butcher tell her to move it and get angry when she refused.
And that was another thing, they were living above a shop! A butcher’s shop! Parson’s in High Street, a place you never went to unless you were living on charity because the cuts were small and sometimes the meat wasn’t fresh and here they were living over it! As if the baby’s crying wasn’t enough to send you to a madhouse, at five o’clock every morning except Sundays they were woken by the delivery van and the sawing of bones. Every morning, saw saw saw, enough to set your teeth on edge—and after having to go through all that you’d think old Parson, the stingy old miser, would at least have the decency to give you a bit of shoulder or a spare chop or something but no, all you got from him were demands to move your perambulator. Well, she was damned if she was going to move her perambulator for anyone, let alone him. The old sod could just step around it and no matter if he did bang into it all the time.