Christmas Fireside Stories

by Diane Allen, Rita Bradshaw, Margaret Dickinson, Annie Murray, Pam Weaver

  Two

  A Journey into the Past

  RITA, LIZZIE AND KEN – LONDON 1963

  ‘’Ere, sis, you said you wanted a new bleedin’ handbag, so I bleedin’ got yer one.’

  The brown, square-shaped bag landed in Lizzie’s lap. She could see it wasn’t new, and this set up a worry in her. Turning it over she noticed, though old-fashioned, it showed hardly any sign of wear. The leather, soft and of good quality, was gathered into a brass trim with a tortoiseshell clasp that she had to twist to undo. As she did, a fusty smell clogged her nose. Sifting through the contents – some papers, a few exercise books rolled up and secured with an elastic band, and several photos, all yellowing with age – she found the bag didn’t contain a purse or anything of value. But then, she hadn’t expected it to. Ken or his cronies would have removed anything of that nature.

  ‘Look at you, ferreting already. I knew it would suit yer. You’re a right old square.’

  ‘I ain’t—’

  ‘Well, what’s with the Perry Como, then?’ A screech set her teeth on edge as Ken shoved the arm of the gramophone, causing the needle to slide across the long-playing record. Perry’s ‘Can’t Help Falling in Love’ stretched and distorted on the last line.

  ‘Don’t do that! You know it scratches the record! And I ain’t a square. Rita put that on before she fell asleep. I just didn’t bother to change it, that’s all.’

  ‘Huh, in that case yer won’t like rummaging through that crappy old stuff, then. No one who’s with it likes the stuff you like. Who digs history and antiques these days? Accept it, me little skin and blister: you’re a square.’

  Ken came towards her. A cold feeling of apprehension clenched her stomach muscles. She turned in her wheelchair, but what she saw gave her no hope of help from Rita. Slumped on the settee, dead to the world, Rita’s lips flapped on every exhaled breath, filling the room with alcohol fumes. One slack arm rested on the empty gin bottle lying on the floor.

  ‘What’s up, darling? You look like a bleedin’ caged animal. Don’t yer like the present I got for yer?’

  His voice soothed some of Lizzie’s fear. It didn’t hold a hint of what had fuelled her dread. His mood changes had her treading on eggshells. She didn’t like how he talked at times, joking in a way she knew wasn’t a joke about how, even though she was disabled, she shouldn’t be deprived. At these times his body leaned closer than she was comfortable with, and his eyes sent messages she didn’t want to read as he made out that one of his mates – the one he nicknamed Loopy Laurence – fancied her.

  She kept her voice steady as she answered him. ‘Course I do, but it’s where you got it from that worries me.’

  ‘Found it.’

  She doubted that – more like half-inched it, as he called pinching stuff. He always used Cockney rhyming slang. It was as if he thought it added to the tough, bully-boy image he liked to portray. Snatching bags was a bit below his league, though, so he wouldn’t have done the deed himself; he’d have got it from someone who owed him. It must have seemed strange to them, him wanting the bag as well as the valuables it contained.

  Rita stirred and opened one eye. ‘You bleedin’ got it, then? How much were in it? The old cow’s been a bit tight lately with what she’ll give me.’

  ‘Shut your mouth or I’ll shut it for yer, you bleedin’ drunk.’

  ‘Don’t talk to Rita like that, Ken . . .’

  ‘Don’t you bleedin’ start or—’ The shrill tone of the phone cut his threat short. ‘No! That’ll be bloody Rednut. He can’t do anything on his own.’

  Relief slowed Lizzie’s breath and released the tension in her as she heard him say he would meet Rednut in ten minutes. From what she picked up of the conversation, something had gone wrong with a collection. She didn’t know the extent of Ken’s dealings, but he’d talked about some of the known gangs running protection rackets and that kind of thing, but to what extent he was involved and exactly who with she wasn’t sure. She knew he wasn’t big-time, not in the league of the Krays and gangs like that, but she hated to think of what he did get up to. If she could get real proof, she would go to the police. But then, would she? Always conflict raged inside her where her brother was concerned, one minute wanting him to get caught, and the next praying for his safety.

  ‘Right, I have to go. Will you be alright, love?’ His tone surprised her. She’d thought she would bear the brunt of his anger at Rita and Rednut. Still might, but that didn’t stop her retorting, ‘If you would stop doing whatever it is you are up to, I would be.’

  ‘Not that again. Whinge, whinge, whinge. You don’t mind when I get things for you out of the proceeds, do you? Look at that chair. The National Health Service would never have got you one like it. You’re such a bleedin’ ungrateful sod!’

  Taking hold of the handlebars and squeezing the lever set her wheelchair into motion. She needed to get out of his presence. He jumped in front of her. ‘Where’re you going?’

  ‘To my room.’

  ‘Look, sis, I brought the bag back for you, didn’t I?’

  His pleading look sickened her, but the softening of his attitude towards her gave her courage to take him to task again. ‘Ken, it ain’t right what you do, why can’t yer see that? I know yer mean well, and think getting me things will make up for everything, but the way yer get them ain’t right. I’d rather go without. What happened to the lady this belonged to? Is she hurt?’

  ‘Lady? She ain’t no bleedin’ lady! I could tell yer tales. Anyway, Ken, where’s me cut, then?’

  This from Rita shocked her. Rita knew the owner! And by the sounds of things she’d helped to set up whatever Ken had done to get the bag.

  ‘You’ll get it when I’m good and bleedin’ ready.’ Ken had moved towards Lizzie’s bedroom, a ground-floor room originally intended as a front room. A beam of sunlight shone through the door as he opened it for her. It lit a trail back to the sofa and glinted off the gin bottle. Ken stood still. His face held a look of contempt. ‘That bag was a payment. I earned it for you, sis. I hurt no one. What others did, including her,’ he pointed at Rita, ‘ain’t my fault. Christ, you’re a bleedin’ hypocrite, sis. Look how you’re clinging to it, afraid I’ll take it back, and yet you’re on your high horse about my morals!’

  As she passed him, tension and fear tightened her throat. Please don’t let him follow me in.

  He didn’t. The door slammed shut behind her, giving her a feeling of safety from the threat of him, but the knowledge of why he did what he did completed the circle of her inner conflict. He wanted – no, needed – to get things for her to assuage the constant guilt that nagged at him over her disability, and it was this need that had started him down the road of his illegal activities.

  Throwing the bag onto her bed, she let her head drop and screwed up her eyes. The latch to the part of her she kept locked away had shifted, letting in unwanted thoughts. She tried to fight them, but her mind ran back down the years. Shudders rippled through her as she saw again the blood – always the blood. Her mum’s blood, spurting from her nose, her lip and her forehead. And Ken’s, seeping through his shirt as their dad’s belt lashed his back. The screams and the vile threats assaulted her ears afresh. Her dad’s face, ugly with his intent, flashed into her mind, and she saw again his big, muscle-bound body dripping with sweat as he turned and aimed another blow at their mum as she tried to stop the onslaught on Ken. And into the memory came the moment when something had snapped inside her and had taken away her fear . . .

  Her teeth clenched, as if they remembered independently of her how they had sunk into her dad’s leg. The taste of the oil and gunk spilt onto his jeans came back to her. Its tang stretched her mouth and brought her Aunt Alice to her mind. Her dad had been mending Aunt Alice’s car. Hate welled up in Lizzie. Alice should be the one to shoulder the guilt. She shouldn’t have told their dad about Ken pinching from her purse. She’d have known what would happen. Mum would have sorted it on the quiet.

&nb
sp; Lizzie held her ears, trying to block out the memory of her dad’s howl of pain. Like the soundtrack to a horror movie, it had stayed with her down the years, filling her head each time she relived the scene. With it came the feeling of her hair being wrenched till she’d been forced to release her bite, and the sensation of hurtling through the air and down the stairwell. He’d thrown her! Her own dad had thrown her as if she was nothing. The world encompassing her had changed from the moment she’d hit the bottom step.

  She’d never seen her mum again. A brain haemorrhage that night had taken her. Her dad, wanted for her murder, had been missing ever since.

  Rita, her mum’s youngest sister, had taken her and Ken on, which couldn’t have been an easy thing to do. Rita had come back from Australia after her man had conned her out of everything she had. Knowing what had happened to them hadn’t stopped her going, but she’d thought one of the other family members would take care of them. Finding her, a fifteen-year-old, in a children’s home and sixteen-year-old Ken in Borstal had enraged her. She’d not given up until she had them both with her, falling out with all of her sisters and brothers in the process and never speaking to them again. Five of them, there were – well, five still alive though there had been ten altogether. There’d also been two aunts on her dad’s side, and not one of them had stepped in to help her and her brother. They would have let them rot.

  She and Ken hadn’t known Rita very well, and their mum hadn’t spoken much of her. Their dad had referred to her, for as long as she could remember, as ‘that bag in jail’, and as being no better than her mum’s brother Alf, but that hadn’t meant much at the time. Now it didn’t seem possible that Rita coming into their lives was just four short years ago. It had been wonderful at the time, but things deteriorated when Rita took to the drink and Ken’s carry-ons caused friction. Ken had no respect for Rita.

  These last thoughts held in them the misery of their lives today, but they still couldn’t hold a candle to what had gone before, nor stop the quiver of her nerves when she wondered about the future. But dwelling on it didn’t help. Physically shaking herself free of the terrible recollections, she felt the pain of her nails digging into her palms. Taking her time, she unfurled each cramped finger from the tight fist they had curled into, took some deep breaths, and wiped the sweat and tears from her face.

  The bag came into focus. Leaning forward, she pulled it towards her. Maybe she could get a clue as to the owner by going through it. An address, perhaps, though if she did find that she’d have to post the bag back to whomever it belonged to, as taking it might implicate Ken.

  A frayed, faded-green, wartime ID card lay on top of the pile of paperwork that had dropped from the upturned bag. Opening it revealed a black-and-white image of a young woman. Her face, though not smiling, was beautiful. Her hair – old-fashioned in its style: rolled on the top and falling into soft waves – caught the light in its dark colour. Something about the eyes and the expression told of this girl having hidden depths and a strong determination. She read the information: Theresa Laura Crompton, born: 23.3.1911, York, United Kingdom.

  Looking at the date stamped on the card told her Theresa would have been thirty at the time. That would make her fifty-two now. Oh, God, please don’t let her have been hurt . . .

  Something had fallen out from inside the ID card: a similar document in French, though smaller and brown in colour and with the same picture inside. And yet, it bore a different name: Olivia Danchanté, date de naissance: 24.5.1911, Paris, France. Puzzled and with her interest piqued, Lizzie shuffled through the rest. An envelope tied with ribbon revealed several scribbled notes, again written in French. If only she’d paid more attention to languages in school. But, excelling in history, English and maths, she had given little to anything that bored her, and her education had been cut short after . . . No, she’d not let those thoughts in again. They had already taken her spirit and shredded it.

  Laying the letters down, she picked up the photos. Some of them were in sepia, while others were in black and white. There was one of Theresa or Olivia – confusing with the identity cards showing different names – with a young man of the same height and very similar in looks and age, around twenty to twenty-six-ish at the time. She’d have thought them to be brother and sister, as there was another photo of them with an older couple that had Terence and me with Mater and Pater written on the back, but in this picture, their way of leaning close and how he looked at her suggested a lover; turning it over, Lizzie read, 1938, Terence and me at Hensal Grange.

  There were others of Theresa/Olivia with young people in uniform, and in a separate envelope there was one of her in a man’s arms. They were holding a baby, one of a few months old, and looking into each other’s eyes – clearly lovers. Husband and wife, even? In this one she noted that Theresa/Olivia had pencilled a Margaret Lockwood beauty spot on her cheek, and that she had exaggerated the fullness of her lips with her lipstick. This made Lizzie smile. As a young woman, she must have been a romantic and a follower of the latest fashions. A happier thought from Lizzie’s past surfaced, bringing the image of her mum all dressed up and ready to go out with her dad and looking similar to the young woman in the photo. Her dad, looking dapper in his dark suit and white shirt and with his white silk scarf dangling from his neck, had leaned forward and tickled her with the scarf’s tassels. The memory cheered her as she looked at a photo taken in a field. Remnants of a picnic could be seen in the background. Theresa/Olivia was bending forward with her arms outstretched. Her skirt clung to her legs at the front and billowed out at the back. It must have been a windy day. A little boy held on to a wooden truck as if he might let go and walk towards her, but he looked only around ten or eleven months old. His face was a picture of joy. On the back it said, my son, Jacques, August 1944. And yet another of the man on his own – a foreign-looking man, with floppy hair parted on one side, nice eyes and a handsome face, though his smile, tilted to one side, gave him a rakish look. This connected with Lizzie. She loved a sense of humour in a man. On the back of this photo she read, Pierre Rueben, October, 1943, the father of my son. Then in French, and in a different handwriting, Je t’aime, jamais m’oublier. With the little she remembered from her French lessons, she could just make out that this said something along the lines of: I love you, never forget me.

  Putting these to one side, Lizzie picked up the roll of exercise books. The strong elastic band rasped along the cover of the outer book as she forced it to release a bulk that was almost too much for it.

  With edges resisting her attempts to straighten them, the books – ten in all – lay curled in front of her. On the top one, written in neat handwriting, she read:

  MY WAR – MY LOVE – MY LIFE

  Theresa Crompton

  With her imagination fired, Lizzie opened the book. On the first page she read how Theresa had begun the memoir in September 1953, to commemorate the tenth birthday of her lost son Jacques, whose whereabouts she did not know. The milestone of his birthday had prompted her to write about her life and her war, as now the world was at peace she felt she could hurt no one by doing so.

  Even though she did not know Theresa, it saddened Lizzie to read that as she wrote Theresa was fragile in her mind and body and hoped the writing of everything down would act as a cathartic exercise for her. The dedication fascinated her and she felt her heart clench with sadness.

  This work is dedicated to Pierre Rueben, my love and my life. And to our son, Jacques Rueben, and to my first child, my Olivia, who will probably never know who I am but whom I have never stopped loving. Not a day passes that I do not think of her and of Pierre and Jacques, and of course Terence, my beloved late twin brother.

  To Lizzie, these words held a story in themselves. One of a lonely woman, left without everyone she’d ever loved. But why? So many questions she hoped the books would answer.

  KING’S COLLEGE HOSPITAL – LONDON 1963

  ‘So, no one has come forward to claim the old girl, then, nu
rse?’

  ‘No, Officer, and we think her general frailty is giving us the wrong impression of her age. She tells us she is fifty-two, but as you can see, she looks nearer seventy. Who she is, is a mystery. One moment she is Theresa Crompton, and the next she says she is Olivia Danchanté. But then, she is obviously suffering some kind of mental illness or dementia. She seems to be reliving the war years, talking of the Nazis and someone called Pierre. Sometimes she speaks in English, sometimes in French. Poor thing thinks we are the Germans and have captured her. She’s terrified.’

  ‘That would explain her house. The whole place is barricaded with old newspapers and cardboard boxes stacked from floor to ceiling. There’s just a small gap to get in and out through, and the smell . . . Well, anyway, as of yet we haven’t found her bag or any private papers, but the woman who found her confirmed she is Miss Crompton.’

  Theresa lay still, her fear compounded. What are they saying? They’ve been in the house? How did they find it? What of Monsieur et Madame de Langlois? Smell . . .? Have they gassed them? Please, God, no . . . But they haven’t found my papers. Oh, Pierre, they don’t know of you yet. My darling, please wait. I will get to you. How brave you are, my darling.

  ‘Oh dear, she’s getting agitated again. It’s alright, love. Miss Crompton, come on. You’re safe now. You’re in hospital. No one can hurt you. Look, I’m sorry, Officer, you can see how distressed she is. I’ll have to fetch the doctor. She needs a sedative. There’s nothing more I can tell you at the moment anyway, but if she does have a lucid moment and gives us some indication of what happened to her, I’ll contact you.’

  ‘I’d like to try to talk to her if I can . . .’

  ‘Sorry, not until the doctor says so. I won’t be a moment.’

  Fear once more gripped Theresa as she listened to this conversation. Oh, God, they want to talk to me. Pierre, take over my thoughts. Help me through this.