Living a Lie

by Cox, Josephine

  “She was a bloody tart!”

  Mildred gave a short laugh.

  “Lucinda Marsh was never a tart. She was too attractive for her own good, yes, and she was like a kid at heart. She hated arguments and fighting. She wanted nothing more than to be a good mother and wife, and you made her suffer for it. She was the minnow and you were the shark. You took advantage of her soft nature…used her as though she was your personal property. You showed her off to your cronies, then slapped her good and hard if they dared to look at her in a certain way.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Well, now, that’s where you’re wrong. Lucinda came to me time and again after you’d beaten her up. She was desperately unhappy, yet she still she adored you…begged me not to confront you.” She spat out her next words.

  “If any man treated me like you treated her, I’d cut his balls off while he slept!”

  Laughing in her face, he replied, “It’s just as well we’re brother and sister and not man and wife, then.”

  “You really are a swine.”

  Picking up her coat from a chair she told him, “You’ll never find a woman to love you like she did. How could you do it, Bob? How could you torment her…accusing her of being unfaithful when she wasn’t…saying Kitty wasn’t yours, when you know damned well she is. God Almighty! You’ve only to look at the girl to see she’s your flesh and blood. Lucinda didn’t want other men. She loved you…and you knew that. Yet you never let up on her, did you?”

  She crossed the room to stand before him.

  “If the girl blames you, then so do I.”

  “I think you’ve said enough.”

  His eyes brimmed with tears, yet he was not sorry. If anything, he was angry, feeling neglected and unloved, as always.

  Mildred stared at him for a moment. He was her brother, and she wanted no part of him. No part of him, and no part of his daughter. He alone had created this tragedy and he alone would have to deal with it.

  In slow deliberate tones she told him, “When Lucinda threw her self under that train, it was because you made her life unbearable!”

  “GET OUT!”

  “Oh, don’t worry, I’m going. I may be your sister, but so help me, I can’t stand being under the same roof as you.”

  “Get out before I throw you out.” His voice was low, trembling with hatred.

  Kitty sat tightly huddled on the stairs, head bent and her heart breaking. The row brought back too many memories. Now her mother was gone and nobody wanted her. Not for the first time since that awful day she wished she had died with her mother.

  When the sitting room door was flung open and the small fair-haired woman emerged. Kitty raised her head. She didn’t speak but her sad eyes told their own story.

  Her aunt was not surprised to see her there.

  “I’m sorry you heard all that,” she apologised. “But it had to be said.”

  Still Kitty gave no response. There were so many questions in her head, and she could find no answers to any of them. Aunt Mildred came to sit beside her.

  “I can’t take you home with me,” she explained. “I’ve got four demanding kids of my own, and Len’s just lost his job. As it is, I don’t know how we’ll manage.”

  “I thought I told you to get out?” Bob’s voice called up the stairs.

  “I’ll go when I’m ready.”

  The sitting-room door slammed, and he could be heard swearing and complaining.

  “He knows better than to cut up rough with me,” Mildred told the girl.

  Still Kitty said nothing. Instead she gazed at her aunt and wished she could go with her.

  “Like I say, Kitty, money’s in short supply and I’ve too many mouths to feed.” Grimacing at the sound of something breaking downstairs, Mildred said, “I expect he would pay me to have you, but it would be like blood money.”

  Kitty wondered what ‘blood money’ was. But she didn’t ask. There were other, more important, things here she did not understand.

  Putting her arms round Kitty, Mildred murmured kindly, “If I can’t do anything else, I can at least give you some advice.” When Kitty didn’t respond she went on, “There will come a day when you’re old enough to marry. When that happens, think hard about the man you choose. Some men are born bullies. Like your father, they only feel good when they’re hitting a woman…it gives them a sense of power. But they’re not real men, they’re just cowards not worth the time of day.”

  Looking at the girl with renewed interest, she realised with a little shock that Kitty had a special kind of grace; blessed with dark and sensuous looks that would attract men like moths to a flame.

  “With your beauty you should be able to pick and choose,” Mildred remarked thoughtfully. “But, for pity’s sake, child…don’t make the mistake your mother made. Find a man who is gentle…a man who will share your love and treat you like a woman. They’re few and far between, so if you do find such a man, stick with him through thick and thin. Oh, he’ll probably have his little faults…we all do…but I promise you, Kitty, you can face anything in life if you have a partner who truly loves you.”

  Silently she marked her aunt’s words, but all she could think about was now. In a desolate voice she pleaded, “I don’t want to stay here, Aunt Mildred.”

  She recalled the screaming arguments, that had always ended in her mother crying and her father storming out of the house. In her mind she could see the angry mark her mother had shown her just before she jumped.

  Feeling only the smallest flush of guilt, and adamant that she would not make life easier for the man who had caused all this, Mildred told her firmly, “Now you listen to me. Kitty Marsh! Your place is here with your father. This is your home and you’ve had enough upheaval with all that’s happened. Besides, I’ve already explained why I can’t take you.” Realising how disturbed the girl was, she had to reassure her, “You have my word, he won’t lay a finger on you. He knows I’m on to him, and he’ll be wary of that.”

  “Please, can’t I come home with you?” Kitty had tried so hard not to blame her father, but she couldn’t love him. Not any more.

  “You can’t come with me, and that’s an end to it.”

  Fearing she might get dragged in over her head, Mildred gathered her belongings and hurried down the stairs. At the bottom she looked up, thinking herself as much a coward as her brother.

  “I’ve got to go now. Be a good girl. Kitty. Remember what I’ve told you, and everything will be all right.”

  “Aren’t you coming back?” With her mother gone and her father thinking only of himself, Kitty was feeling very lonely.

  At the door her aunt paused to look once again at that small dejected figure.

  “No, I won’t be coming back,” she answered truthfully.

  She didn’t feel responsible, nor was she prepared to make her own life more complicated by taking on other people’s problems.

  However, there was one more thing she could do to put Kitty’s mind at ease. Retracing her steps to the sitting room, she flung open the door.

  “You’d better know this before I leave,” she said. “If I find out you’ve raised a hand to that girl I’ll have the authorities down on you so fast your feet won’t touch the ground.”

  Sprawled on the settee, Bob Marsh stared her out. “Don’t tell me what to do in my own house…with my own kid.”

  “I mean it, Bob.”

  “Piss off out of it.”

  “One bad word from me and they’ll take the girl from you.”

  “They’re welcome to her.”

  “You’re a hard bugger!”

  “And you’re asking to be thrown through that door.” His angry eyes were like black slits. “I’ve told you…piss off out of it, before I forget myself.”

  As she went from the house, he chuckled softly. Hearing Kitty move on the stairs, he called out in a harsh voice, “I KNOW YOU’RE THERE, DAMN YOU! GET YOURSELF IN HERE!”

  Her fi
rst instinct was to run after her aunt. But it was suppressed as she dutifully delivered herself to the sitting room, where she stood at the door, a solemn little figure, her dark eyes sparkling with unshed tears.

  “Get in here.”

  Reluctantly she took a step forward.

  “Here, damn it! In front of me.” With one vicious kick he sent the coffee table flying; the shattered glass top flew in all directions. “Are you bloody stupid or what?”

  She was standing before him now, visibly trembling, her dark eyes upturned to his.

  Her fear seemed to please him.

  “Are you frightened of me?”

  “You hit her.”

  Leaning towards her, he clenched his fist and held it in front of her face.

  “Oh? And you think I’m going to hit you, is that it?”

  “Aunt Mildred said you wouldn’t dare.”

  Her dark gaze was unflinching. All she could think of was her mother and what he had done to her. He laughed out loud at her boldness.

  “Oh? Did she now?”

  When Kitty continued to look at him with accusing eyes, the laughter died and his face crumpled. For a while there was an awkward silence while he studied that small perfectly shaped face with its full mouth and those dark magnificent eyes; they were sad now, but he knew the sadness could not last. He knew there would come a day when those same eyes would turn any man inside out.

  Confused and humbled by her silence, he told her in a small voice, “One day, you’re going to be a real beauty.”

  “I want to go now.” She didn’t like the way he was looking at her.

  “Go where, eh?” Enraged, he roared like a man demented, “I’ll say when you can go!” Reaching out, he grabbed her to him, pressing her to his body until she could hardly breathe.

  “Your mother was a beauty too. Oh, not dark like you and me…a china doll she was, with eyes blue as the sky and hair like a summer’s day.”

  Terrified, Kitty fought to free herself, but she was held too close. She couldn’t cry out because her face was squashed to his breast and his arms were like steel bands round her shoulders. He rocked her backwards and forwards, his tears rolling on to her face.

  “I loved her, you know,” he was saying. “Whatever else I did, she knew I loved her.”

  Suddenly he thrust her away. Gasping, Kitty struggled to break his grip on her shoulders but he held her fast, his face twisted with loathing as he shook her hard.

  “You were there when she went under that train. Why couldn’t it have been you instead of her, eh?” Tears were flowing down his face and his sobs were terrible to hear.

  “You could have stopped her! Why didn’t you?”

  Kitty was sobbing, too.

  “I didn’t know!” she called. “Please, Daddy, I didn’t know.”

  With a fierce blow, he sent her crashing across the room.

  “IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN YOU!”

  Stumbling across to the drinks’ cabinet, he took out a bottle of whisky and turned to her again. But she was gone, and all he could hear was the front door closing behind her.

  “Good riddance,” he snarled, then took the top off the bottle and drank until he almost choked.

  “Doesn’t matter to me if you never come back,” he muttered to himself, and settled down to drain the bottle dry.

  Linda Jenkins was a kind soul. When Kitty arrived at her door, afraid and confused, her heart went out to her.

  “Stay here for a while,” she insisted. “As soon as Mr. Jenkins comes home, he’ll have a quiet word with your father.”

  A large woman with wild red hair and small brown eyes, she prided herself on being able to handle every little crisis. But this was different. A man had lost his wife and a child had seen her own mother leap to her death; had nearly gone with her too by all accounts.

  “You’re not to worry,” she reassured Kitty.

  It took only a few minutes to brew a pot of tea and pour it out. When that was drunk and Kitty was more composed, Linda urged tactfully, “Sarah’s gone to the shop. I forgot to tell her I needed an uncut loaf…if you go now, you can catch her on the way back. Go on.”

  Ushering Kitty to the door she told her, “It’ll be all right, you’ll see.”

  But she couldn’t be certain. Bob Marsh was known for his bad temper. He wouldn’t take kindly to others poking their noses into his business, and that was a fact.

  Once she had seen Kitty safely down the road, Linda returned to her chores. There was the evening meal to get and a pile of washing to fetch in.

  “Rain forecast,” she muttered, rushing about and falling over the dog as she fled outside. “Bloody weather.”

  The Jenkinses lived only a few hundred yards from Kitty’s home. Ron Jenkins earned his living as a mechanic at one of Bob Marsh’s two garages. The Marshes’ house took pride of place in Woburn Sands High Street, while the Jenkinses lived across the road in a terrace of older, more modest dwellings.

  Linda Jenkins ran a happy household. There was herself and her husband Ron, fifteen-year-old Harry, twelve-year-old Sarah, two cats named Bill and Ben, a budgie with one leg, and a spaniel named Jasper—a mad creature who spent his days chasing cats and his nights howling to get out so he could cock his leg up the clothes’ line.

  “Over the years, me and mine have had more than our share of troubles,” Linda muttered as she folded the dry washing. “There have been times when I wished things could have been easier. But I know this much…I would never have swapped places with Lucinda Marsh, not in a million years I wouldn’t!”

  Like everyone at the top end of the street she had heard the shocking row between Kitty’s parents on that last night.

  “Bob Marsh is a bad bugger deep down, and she were always too good for him, that was the pity of it.”

  Growing angry, she absentmindedly flung the washing in a heap. The dog ran off with a shirt and she gave chase, swearing like a trooper when she went flying over the clothes basket.

  As Kitty turned the corner of the High Street she caught sight of Sarah going into the Co-op. The same age as Kitty, Sarah was slightly built, with carrot-red hair, droopy hazel eyes and a face peppered with freckles.

  She also had what her mother called ‘a wicked temper’. Her moods blew hot and cold, so you never really knew where you stood with her.

  Cheered by the sight of her friend, Kitty went at a run along the street, screeching to a halt when a miserable old man confronted her at the doorway.

  “Get out of my way, you little sod!” he bawled, poking at her chest with his cane. The impact made her gasp. Opening the door for him, she apologised, but his answer was to push her aside. He went out, muttering all the time, “Bloody kids! Nearly knocked me arse over tip, she did.”

  Sarah had seen it all.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” she said. “Anyway, how did you know where I was?”

  “Your mum told me.” Kitty walked alongside her. “She says you’re to get an uncut loaf.”

  Sarah was surprised.

  “She already told me that.” Eyeing Kitty suspiciously, she remarked, “You’ve been crying. It’s your dad, isn’t it?”

  Reluctant to discuss it here in the shop. Kitty lowered her gaze. When she raised her dark eyes it was to glance around. Seeing there was only one other customer, and she was too far away to hear their conversation, she softly confided, “There’s been another row. Dad and Aunt Mildred.”

  Sarah reached up to the top shelf and took down a tin of beans, “I know,” said Sarah, “I heard it.”

  Taken aback, Kitty was curious.

  “How could you hear it?” Grabbing a packet of cornflakes, Sarah told her, “I called for you. There was so much yelling I don’t expect you heard me knocking on the door.”

  Shrugging, she explained, “It doesn’t matter. I just thought you might come shopping with me, that’s all.” Placing her hand on Kitty’s arm, she continued, “She’s a hypocrite.”

  “Who?”

  �
��Your Aunt Mildred.”

  “How did you know it was her?”

  “I saw her come out, that’s how.”

  Going to the cheese counter she pointed to the display. “A pound of Red Leicester please.”

  Lowering her voice she told Kitty, “That old biddy doesn’t want you, does she?”

  “Nobody wants me.” The truth was like a fist squeezing her young heart.

  “You’re wrong. Kitty,” Sarah’s soft voice reprimanded. “I want you, and so does Harry.”

  Kitty’s eyes swam.

  “I know,” she said simply “I didn’t mean that.”

  Eager to put things right, she explained, “I meant my dad and Aunt Mildred.” A thought crossed her mind, “Do you think your mum and dad would let me come and live with you?”

  Sarah shook her head.

  “I expect Mum would, but Dad says we have to look after ourselves and not bother about others.” Shrugging her shoulders, she made a sour face. “He’s a real misery lately.”

  “Why doesn’t he like me?”

  “’Course he likes you!” Sarah had already gone through all the arguments with her parents.

  “It’s just like I said…he’s frightened to get on the wrong side of your dad. He told our mam we shouldn’t poke our noses in where they’re not wanted, in case he gets the sack and we’re all put on the street. That’s what he said, but our mam told him he was talking through his arse.”

  “I see.” But the only thing Kitty saw was that she was on her own.

  “You wouldn’t really want to live with your Aunt Mildred, would you?”

  If she had been asked, Kitty might have gone with her aunt that morning, but now she gave it a little more thought and her answer was resolute.

  “No. I’d have to move to Bedford, and she might not let me visit you.”

  “Don’t worry,” Sarah told her with the wisdom of youth, “you and your dad will be okay now…you’ll see.”

  The lady had finished cutting and wrapping the cheese. After marking it with a big black pen she instructed kindly, “Pay for it at the till.”

  A passerby watched the two girls walk away, still deep in conversation.

  “Kids! They never cease to amaze me,” she remarked when the next customer came to the counter, “Look at them two…like a pair of old women discussing the ways of the world.” She chuckled then in more serious voice explained that Kitty was the daughter of ‘that poor young woman who threw herself under the train’. She went on to add that the two girls had known each other since primary school, then, in hushed tones, revealed every snippet of conversation she had just overheard.