by Mary Nichols
‘Do you need to ask?’
‘Yes, or I wouldn’t have. Oh, George, if only you knew what a hell the last four months have been for me, pretending nothing is wrong, being friendly to Barbara, not going to town council meetings in case I bump into you…’
‘I shan’t be on the council long, if there’s a whiff of scandal.’
‘Is that more important than loving me?’
‘No, of course not.’
‘I need to know, George, I need to be sure.’ She paused. ‘There’s someone… Well, he likes me and he’s free and… Oh, George, I’m hellishly tempted.’
The thought of someone else making love to her, taking possession of that beautiful body, brought him up short. His heart was pounding and his hands began to sweat. He couldn’t let her go. ‘But I’ve told you, over and over again,’ he said. ‘Look, let me pay the bill and we’ll go somewhere… I’ve got an hour or so to spare.’
It was when they got up and left together Rita knew she had been right. She turned back to serve another customer and noticed that Colin was propping up the bar a little further along and he had seen them too. She was hardly surprised when he came home from work a couple of days later and told her he had been promoted and given a pay rise. In fact, he had been put on the salaried staff: he was one of the managers, paid once a month, with two weeks’ holiday and an annual bonus.
Chapter Eight
Barbara rang for a cab in the early afternoon of 21st February 1928. It had been a dreary, raw week, when the sky was grey and overcast and even the fields and gardens seemed colourless, a waiting time between winter and spring, not freezing as it had been a few weeks earlier, but full of cold dampness, the sort of week which made you feel as if summer would never come again. But earlier that day, the sun had broken briefly through the mist and it was during that short spell of sunshine she felt her first contraction and knew that she was about to bring a new life into the world.
Because Alison and Nick were getting old enough to ask awkward questions, they had decided the baby should be born in the cottage hospital. She called a cab and asked the driver to take her round by Victoria Terrace to alert Elizabeth who was going to look after the children for her. Then she went on to the hospital alone. She didn’t ring George’s office. She wanted to see the baby first, to hold it and look at it and have it all to herself for a brief time before he came claiming them both. She had counted back the weeks carefully and knew the day it had been conceived, almost knew the hour. It was bang on time; she had known that morning when she woke that today was the day. She told the nurses that her husband was out of town and could not be reached until the evening.
Jeremy John was born a few minutes after nine o’clock and two minutes later was put into her arms. He had very little hair but what there was of it was nearly white, and when he opened his eyes, they were as blue as cornflowers. There was a huge lump in her throat. She touched his hand, ran her fingers round his tiny fingers, felt his chubby thighs and perfect toes, gazed at his little pink face and smiled stupidly. ‘He’s lovely,’ she said, almost in surprise, as if she couldn’t believe she could be so blessed. ‘Perfect.’
She had almost managed to convince herself that George was her baby’s father, but looking at the infant lying contentedly in her arms, she knew he was not. There was not a single feature to remind her of her husband but any number to make her think of Simon: the fair hair, the clear blue eyes, the shape of his jaw. She wanted him beside her to share in the wonder of what they had brought into life, but that she could not do. Not ever.
The sister came into the room. ‘Your mother-in-law rang a few minutes ago,’ she told Barbara. ‘She’s going to try and get in touch with your husband.’
He arrived an hour later almost hidden behind a huge bouquet of hothouse flowers. He laid them on the bed and stooped to kiss her cheek. ‘How are you?’
‘Fine. How are you? And the children?’
‘Fine. They were almost too excited to go to bed when I told them they had a baby brother.’
‘What do you think of Jeremy John? I’ve decided he’s going to be Jay-Jay. It suits him, don’t you think?’
He moved over to the cot at the foot of her bed to look down at the infant. ‘He’s a grand little chap.’ He reached out and stroked a finger round the baby’s face and she wanted to scream out, don’t touch him, he’s mine, not yours. ‘My goodness, what blue eyes he’s got. Like a summer sky.’
He reached into the cot and picked Jay-Jay up, bringing him to her bed, sitting on the side of it, cradling the infant in his arms, looking down at him with a delighted smile. She felt the tears coming again and could not stop them. They rained silently down on the coverlet, tears of regret, of guilt, of sorrow that something which had once been so good, so precious, had turned so sour.
‘Barbara, why are you crying? Is something wrong?’
‘I’m being silly,’ she said, attempting a smile. ‘Don’t worry about it.’
He stood up and put the baby into her arms. ‘I’d better get back.’ He bent to kiss her. ‘Cheer up, old thing. You’ll be all right, once you get home.’
As soon as he had gone she began to breastfeed her baby, holding him almost too tightly, sobbing her heart out. She wanted Simon. She wanted him to share this moment, but she had shut him out too.
Breakfast was always a busy time in the Kennett household. George rose early to be in his office before eight; Alison and Nick had to be bullied out of bed, made to dress and eat some breakfast and Jay-Jay cried pitifully for his first feed of the day. George mislaid folders he had been studying the night before, the children lost socks and spelling lists; milk was spilt, toast burnt, and dirty nappies had to be changed and the baby bathed. It was a miracle when it all sorted itself out: George left for work, Alison and Nick were dressed in their outdoor clothes and Jay-Jay, fed and wrapped up, was put in his pram for the short walk to the school. And then, blessed, blessed peace, she was alone with only the baby for company and he was good as gold, sleeping or kicking his feet in his pram while she got on with the household chores.
She loved her children, loved hearing stories of school and their special friends, listening to their grievances, monstrous in their eyes, watching them eat, indulging them more often than she ought; but her own personality was being overwhelmed, her own needs ignored. It wasn’t as if she and George had a life together in the evenings when they could talk to each other of the day’s happenings, have a little grumble, commiserate with each other, laugh together. He didn’t belong to her, he belonged to his workers, to the voters, to the council, to Virginia; Barbara came way down on the list.
She didn’t think he had given Virginia up, though she conceded he had tried in the beginning. She had tried too, been especially loving, but something had happened to make him backslide and she had no idea whose fault it was. She took trouble with her appearance, didn’t slop around in a dressing gown, made him appetising meals, though half the time they were ruined when they had to be kept hot for hours, and she tried to make interesting conversation when he came home. That was the hardest of all because there was nothing she could say which didn’t sound like a complaint or an accusation. And how could she complain when her own guilt hung over her like a cloud? This was what their marriage had come to: it was as if they were standing on either side of a chasm so wide that even when they stretched out their arms towards each other, their fingers didn’t touch.
George came home unexpectedly one day during the Easter holidays and found her trying to cope with three fractious children with colds, a mountain of washing and ironing and nothing done towards a meal. Alison had been sick on the sofa, Nick was at his naughtiest because he didn’t feel well and Jay-Jay was crying to be picked up. She had cleaned up the sofa but it was damp and the smell still clung to it. She half expected him to rail at her for her incompetence, to tell her that other mothers coped with a house and three children. Instead he said, ‘We’ll get you some help.’
&nb
sp; And so Kate Watkins arrived. She was in her fifties and a widow who had brought up four children, all of whom were off her hands. Her presence gave Barbara a new lease of life. She renewed her charitable work because it was needed as much as ever, and finished painting Children on a Beach, adding a tubby Jay-Jay to the scene, propped in a pushchair, his blue eyes intent on the Punch and Judy show.
George decided it did his image as a self-made man, the entrepreneur who provided Melsham with several hundred jobs, no harm at all to be seen to have a luxurious lifestyle. Employing a housekeeper, which was the title he used when referring to Mrs Watkins, was just the beginning. His affair with Virginia, though still a compelling force in his life, had been muted and kept very much under wraps. Virginia didn’t like it, but she acquiesced, knowing she would lose him if she complained. He was like a juggler with half a dozen balls in the air at once and that gave him a great buzz; he couldn’t imagine a time when he might drop one of them.
He bought the premises next door to the yard. ‘I’m going into retailing,’ he told Barbara. ‘If people can’t afford to have work done by the professionals, then we’ll sell them the materials to do it themselves and when they botch it, we’ll be there to put the mistakes right. Everyone knows it costs more to undo someone else’s bad workmanship than start from scratch. Profit margins will be tight, but if I keep a firm hold on expenses, it’ll work. After all, there’s only Doughty’s tin-pot hardware store in Melsham, so we’ll be filling a gap in the market and providing a service.’
Barbara’s reaction was to think ‘Poor Mr Doughty’, but she knew better than to voice it. The work went ahead and Kennett’s became one of the largest employers in Melsham, a fact which was not lost on his fellow councillors or the workers themselves. He was swimming against the economic tide and seemed to be making headway. He was popular with the man in the street, who saw only his carefully nurtured public image. ‘My door is always open,’ he was very fond of saying, but in trying to live up to that and keep his business flourishing, he had little time for his wife and family.
The problems of the nation, characterised by high unemployment and workers’ discontent, were discussed in the pubs and clubs and on football fields. The need for something to be done was the chief subject of conversation when a general election was called early in 1929. George was in the thick of campaigning on behalf of the Conservatives and Barbara found herself pushing leaflets through letter boxes while Jay-Jay laughed at her from his pram.
‘You may laugh,’ she said to him one day when she was busy working the Newtown Estate. ‘It’s not your feet dropping off. I don’t know why I do it. I don’t even believe what’s in them.’ She bent over to tickle him, smiling when he chuckled. ‘Don’t you tell a soul I said that.’
‘Dear, dear, talking to yourself, that’s a bad sign.’
She whipped round to find Rita grinning at her. She was wearing a three-quarter-length red coat and a black skirt which was only a little longer and revealed quite a lot of black-stockinged calf. A deep cloche hat with a turned-down brim was pulled down over her red hair but it was only partially successful in hiding a black eye and a bruised cheek. ‘Rita, what happened to you?’
‘I walked into a door. Trust me not to look where I’m going. What are you doing out this way?’
‘Delivering these leaflets for George. The trouble is I wonder how many of them are actually read and whether I’m wasting my time.’ She laughed suddenly. ‘I shouldn’t be saying that, should I?’
‘Don’t worry, I won’t tell. Why don’t you dump the rest and come and have a coffee?’
‘Oh, I couldn’t do that, dump them I mean.’
‘Who’s to know? ’Ere, give ’em to me. I’ll deliver them, then you can come with a clear conscience.’
They transferred the box of envelopes from the pram to Rita’s bag and set off for the café on the marketplace. Barbara had no idea where the leaflets would end up; she felt sure they would not be posted through letter boxes. She pushed the pram into the café and found a table in a corner where it would not be in the way, while Rita beckoned to the waitress.
‘You’ve got a bruise there too,’ Barbara said, nodding towards a purple mark on Rita’s arm just above the wrist. ‘Was it the same door?’
If it had been anyone else making that remark, Rita would have told her to mind her own business, but she couldn’t say that to Barbara, who hadn’t a spiteful bone in her body and had troubles enough of her own. In spite of their different backgrounds, they had become friends, not in any close sort of way, but they met now and again when they were out shopping. They always chatted easily, drawn together by some hidden empathy neither had tried to put into words. Nor had they told their respective husbands, knowing it would cause friction. ‘Yeah, well, this door had hands.’ She laughed and put her hand to her lip when she found it hurt.
‘Oh, Rita, I’m so sorry. Why do you stay with this door with hands?’
‘I don’t know. It’s like a habit you can’t break.’ She shrugged. ‘What else would I do? Where would I go? And you know how it is, a sort of habit you can’t break out of.’
Barbara knew exactly what she meant. ‘There must be something you could do.’
‘There isn’t, you know. I’ve thought of going to the police, but that’d mean going to court and that’s not what I want. I just want ’im to stop using me for a punch bag, but that’s askin’ for the moon because he doesn’t know any better. He had a rough life as a kid. Lost his parents and was brought up by foster parents. They turned ’im out when he began to grow up and cause a bit of trouble.’
‘But that’s no excuse…’
‘No, but I weren’t no angel, I tricked him into marrying me…’
‘How?’
‘I seduced him and got myself pregnant, so he had to marry me…’
‘Is that what you wanted? Marriage, I mean.’
‘Yes. I wanted to get out of the life I was in. My mother, well…’ People like Barbara had no idea how the other half lived. ‘Don’t get me wrong, she was, and is, a good mother in her way, but she never had a penny from the bastard who fathered me. I never knew him and she’d never tell me his name. But you don’t want to know all this.’
‘If it helps to tell me, then I’m interested. It won’t go any further, I promise.’
‘It’s ancient history anyway. Ma got pregnant but the feller was married and he didn’t want to know, so she was stuck. With a kid hanging onto her apron strings, she had no chance of finding work or a husband, not one of her own anyway, so is it any wonder she did what she did? She had to keep me fed and clothed. I never went hungry but I had a helluva lot of uncles.’ She smiled crookedly, almost defiantly. ‘It didn’t bother me. It wasn’t until one of the uncles started touching me up when I was alone, I realised what was what…’
‘How old were you?’
‘Twelve or thirteen, don’t remember exactly. I kicked him in the balls and he let go. Ma came in then and threw him out and then she came down on me, said I’d tempted him, that if I weren’t careful I’d end up like her. I didn’t understand. It was then she told me the truth. I’d often heard people say “like mother like daughter”, but I’d taken it as a compliment. Mum was pretty, you see, with lovely dark hair, not ginger like mine, and she was nearly always laughin’. But you had to – laugh, I mean – if you were going to give someone a good time. That’s what she called it. When I look back, I don’t know how I managed to stay so ignorant, but once I did know, I made up my mind I wasn’t going to end up like her and the only way I could think of preventin’ it was to get married. I met Colin when I was seventeen. I was pretty in those days and sexy with it and…’ She gave another grin. ‘I deliberately set out to get pregnant.’
‘What happened?’
‘Oh, he married me, but the baby died. Colin couldn’t cope. We were both too young. He lost his job and the one after that and then he began drinking and taking his frustration out on me. He’d get disgusted
with hi’self and leave me to go looking for jobs in other places, but he always came home when he lost ’em and, daft bugger that I am, I always took him back. That’s when I fell for Zita. Born in 1914, she was. I don’t know where he went after that, then seven years later he turned up again. Seven years, I ask you! When he first got a job at Kennett’s, he promised to turn over a new leaf and for more’n a year he didn’t lay a finger on me, then off ’e went again. There was some sort of trouble…’ She stopped, realising that Barbara probably didn’t know the truth and it was not her place to let the cat out of the bag. ‘He’s not been too bad since he came back. Your husband gave him another job, so he’s stuck around.’
‘So, what happened this time?’
‘Oh, it was something and nothing. He said he needed a drink and started groping in my bag for the money. There was only a pound and a bit of loose change and I needed it, so I grabbed it back. That did it. He gave me a good going over and took the money anyway, I might just as well have given it to him in the first place.’
‘Have you tried talking to him about it, explaining how you feel?’
‘Course I ’ave. It’s like talking to a brick wall.’ She laughed and drained her cup. ‘Or a door.’
‘I’m sorry. I wish I could help.’
‘Oh, don’t mind me, love, I’ll get the better of the bugger yet.’ She spoke so cheerfully it was difficult to take her seriously, which was, Barbara supposed, Rita’s way of coping. ‘Now, tell me what you’ve been up to. Apart from shoving bits of paper through letter boxes, I mean.’
Barbara found a few amusing anecdotes about the children and by the time she arrived at the school gates at a quarter to four, having drunk two cups of coffee and gorged herself on cream cake, she was feeling more cheerful.
Her truancy, which is what it felt like, or her vote, couldn’t have made any difference to the outcome of the election. Although for the first time Labour, under Ramsay MacDonald, had the greatest number of MPs, they could not govern without the support of the Liberals and Melsham remained staunchly Conservative. George and Barbara were invited to the reception to thank those who had helped the successful candidate.