The Wayward Wife

by Jessica Stirling

  For eighteen years she’d been governed by her father in the paradoxical security of a life lived an inch above the poverty line. She had been pushed out of the nest only to fulfil her father’s promise to a mother she couldn’t remember, pushed out into the world to prove that even a cockney crane driver could make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.

  Her marriage to Danny Cahill had turned out to be less a romantic idyll than a vain attempt on her part to retreat into a world she’d left behind. And when the war had finally arrived and all the old verities had gone by the board how easy it had been to fall into the trap of equating uncertainty with irresponsibility, which had been all very fine and dandy until Ronnie had been killed.

  ‘Look at the girl,’ Basil said. ‘She’s still half asleep.’

  ‘No.’ Susan gave herself a shake. ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘Well, if she can sleep with a tummy full of your curry,’ Vivian said, ‘she’s a better man than I am, Gunga Din.’

  The curry Basil had put together was hot and tasty. The men and Vivian drank bottled beer and Susan drank tea. They all smoked cigarettes from a tin that Commander Willets had brought with him and talked not of the possibility of defeat but of a time beyond that, a brighter day when the victory Churchill promised had been secured and everything got back to normal, whatever ‘normal’ might mean by then.

  ‘Will you stay with the BBC?’ Derek Willets asked.

  ‘If I can,’ Susan answered. ‘I doubt if the Corporation will continue to employ married women. It’s stated in my contract, I think, that we married ladies will be out on our ear ten minutes after an armistice is signed.’

  `That policy may change,’ Basil said. ‘Indeed, I’ll be very surprised if it doesn’t.’

  Viv said, ‘You’ve more faith in the establishment than I have, dear. With all the chaps coming back looking for jobs, you can bet that working wives will get short shrift.’

  ‘Your husband’s with the BBC too, is he not?’ Derek asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Susan answered. ‘He’s placed with a unit in Evesham right now but I’m rather hoping he may be brought back to London quite soon.’

  ‘Are you?’ Vivian said. ‘I thought …’

  Basil cleared his throat and, under the pretext of stubbing out his cigarette, avoided meeting Susan’s eye. ‘Actually,’ he said, ‘Danny won’t be coming back to London after all.’

  ‘Why? Did Rupert Talbot turn him down?’

  ‘Quite the contrary,’ Basil said. ‘Danny turned Rupert Talbot down. Didn’t he tell you? He’s decided to stay in Evesham.’

  ‘No,’ Susan said. ‘He didn’t tell me.’

  ‘You must be disappointed,’ Derek Willets said.

  ‘Oh, yes, I am,’ said Susan. ‘Very.’

  One minute the priests were handing out wafers, wine and blessings in front of the altar and the next, or so it seemed to Breda, they were dishing out mail that had been left in a bag in the priests’ house over on Pound Street and that no one had found until this morning.

  It struck Breda as weird to be receiving letters early on a Sunday morning with the wind swishing through holes in the church roof and the altar boys in none-too-clean shifts running up and down shouting, ‘Beidermeyer? Mrs Beidermeyer? You ’ere, Mrs Beidermeyer?’ or ‘McIntosh. McIntosh. Got a postcard for McIntosh,’ as if the sacred precincts of St Veronica’s had turned into a sorting office.

  ‘That’ll be from her daughter, Faye,’ Nora said.

  ‘What will?’ said Breda.

  ‘The postcard. Her daughter, Faye, in Nottingham.’

  ‘What’s Faye doin’ in Nottingham?’

  ‘Factory work. Very hush-hush.’

  ‘Can’t be that hush-hush, Ma, if you know about it.’

  ‘I don’t know what Mrs Beidermeyer’s doing here, though,’ Nora said, frowning. ‘She should be at the synagogue.’

  ‘Maybe Father Joe’s converted ’er,’ Breda said. ‘Anyhow, it don’t look she is ’ere since the kid’s put the letter back in the bag.’

  Then: ‘Hooper, Hooper. Lookin’ for Mrs Hooper.’

  ‘Hoy,’ said Breda, heart thumping. ‘That’s me.’

  There were three letters for Breda and one for Nora.

  Sensibly, she should have taken the mail outside. Billy would no doubt be playing fast and loose with his grandfather who was in no fit state to chase a six-year-old round the buildings, but she couldn’t wait to find out who had written to her and what news the letters might contain.

  She slit the first brown envelope with her thumbnail, scanned the official letter from the Home Office and, glancing at her mother, folded it neatly and tucked it into the waistband of her skirt.

  She paused and stared out into the church, at the altar, at the blank space on the shrapnel-pitted wall where the crucifix had hung and at the hustle and bustle of choirboys and ordinary women and men milling about in the aisles.

  She didn’t know what she felt or how to respond to the news that Leonardo Romano had been a passenger on the vessel, Arandora Star, that had been sunk by enemy action in the Irish Sea and that he was missing, believed dead. No explanations, no apologies, no expressions of regret, just a formal statement, grudging in the extreme, that wiped away her childhood, relieved her of guilt and – she glanced at Nora once more – set her mother free to marry again.

  Breda swallowed the lump in her throat and said, ‘What you got, Ma? Is that a letter from Auntie Mary?’

  ‘No, it’s from Molly.’

  ‘Who’s Molly?’

  ‘Auntie Mary’s daughter.’

  ‘I didn’t even know Auntie Mary ’ad a husband.’

  ‘Well, she has. She had. She’s a widow. Molly’s your cousin. She’s got brothers, a husband and three kiddies, and …’

  ‘And?’ Breda put in.

  ‘She’ll have us. She’ll take us in.’

  ‘Even Matt?’

  ‘All of us.’

  ‘Did you tell ’er Matt’s a Proddy?’ Breda asked.

  ‘Won’t matter, not to Molly.’ Nora raised her eyes to heaven in a fair representation of ecstasy. ‘Sure an’ we’re all going home to Limerick. Wait till I tell Father Joseph.’

  Breda said, ‘Why don’cha do that right now, Ma. I’m sure the father will be as thrilled as you are.’

  ‘Yes,’ Nora said, leaping up. ‘Limerick,’ and, waving the letter from Breda’s long-lost cousin, set off down the aisle to buttonhole the already harassed priest.

  Breda opened the second brown envelope. It contained a short handwritten letter from Mr Reilly, the station officer at Oxmoor Road, in which he expressed his sympathy for her loss and told her what a good fireman Ron had been and how much he was missed by his colleagues.

  Breda folded that letter too and put it carefully into her waistband for safe keeping.

  Then, sniffing and puffing, she opened the last of the letters, which came from Evesham, from Danny, and would change her life for ever.

  The all-clear sounded early, at 2.41 a.m. At a little after four o’clock Commander Derek Willets took his leave and set off on foot to find out if the station had survived and what trains might be running to carry him back to Portsmouth.

  There was nothing sentimental in his farewell. It was very matter-of-fact. He shook Basil’s hand, kissed Vivian’s cheek, gave Susan a nod and a wink and, wrapped up in a duffle coat that had seen better days, strode off into the darkness as if, Susan thought, he was just popping round to the corner dairy to fetch a pint of milk.

  Soon after, with dishes and pans washed and dried and the kitchen all shipshape, Vivian and Basil said goodnight and retired upstairs to their bedroom to catch up on lost sleep while Susan, though she had a little cubby of her own with a bed in it, lay down on the davenport once more and, closing her eyes, tried to sleep too.

  Sleep would not come, though. Her mind hummed with uneasy thoughts of Ron, of her father, of the bright little girl she’d been before she’d realised just how her daddy had shaped he
r to fulfil not some vague death-bed promise to a wife he could barely recall and had probably never loved but only to satisfy his vanity.

  How disappointed he must be that he was still the man he had always been and she, the star of his show, had deserted him. She wished him no ill; he had lost a reliable son, as she had lost a reliable brother. Even so, she was relieved, vastly so, that he had taken up with Nora Romano who would look after him, body and soul, and who had Breda to rely on if things got out of hand.

  She sat up suddenly and crouched on the edge of the davenport, pressed her knees together. She was restless, agitated, in need not of Danny, who loved her and might be retrieved at the tug of a heart-string, but of her incorrigible lover who knew what she was and what she wanted and was more than ready to give it to her.

  Rising, she lifted a corner of the blackout curtain.

  The first pallid light of dawn filled the crooked little street that backed on to the mews. It was windy too, a thin penetrating wind that blew dust and leaves before it.

  Summer was over, the long hot Indian summer. The days were growing too short, the nights too long. Her restlessness took on an urgency that robbed her of will.

  She hurried into the bathroom, washed her face, combed her hair, applied make-up and, within minutes, overcoat flapping and hat held on with one hand, she was trotting up Salt Street in the direction of Berkeley Square.

  A bomb, one among the many that had fallen on central London that Saturday night, had ripped up Conduit Street and brought down some of the buildings there. Fire tenders and ambulances had spilled over into the square but, as far as Susan could make out, Lansdowne House had not been hit, though the façade was pitted by shrapnel and black stains marked the wall where, some nights ago, the oil bomb Bob had told her about had obviously taken its toll.

  The commissionaire knew Susan by sight but a warden guarding the doorway insisted on inspecting her identity card and asking impertinent questions before he let her enter. Early breakfast was already being served in the restaurant. Three men and two women brushed past Susan on their way downstairs – the elevator was under repair – but spared her not so much as a second glance. In the corridor outside Pete Slocum’s apartment several empty glasses and a dimpled bottle of Scotch, empty too, were scattered round the doorway.

  Susan pressed the bell button and waited.

  She hoped Bob would be asleep, that she could slip naked into bed beside him, waken him with an intimate touch and that, roused, he would make love to her, hot, forceful, indecent love before they fell asleep in each other’s arms.

  The door opened an inch or two and a haggard face peered at her through the gap.

  ‘Ah, it’s you, is it?’ Pete Slocum said. ‘Too late, Mrs Cahill. You’ve missed all the fun.’

  He was naked beneath the dressing gown, a knee-length woman’s dressing gown in pale yellow silk. Susan couldn’t help but glance down at his lean torso and bony hips and the long, flaccid member that hung between his thighs.

  She said, ‘Is he here?’

  ‘Yep, he’s here.’

  ‘Well, aren’t you going to let me in?’

  ‘You don’t want to come in right now, Mrs Cahill,’ Pete Slocum said. ‘Take my word on it.’

  ‘Oh, but I do,’ Susan said. ‘I most definitely do.’

  Slocum sighed, knotted the tie of his dressing gown, pulled open the door and ushered her into the hallway.

  She looked down it into the living room but could make out nothing but bare feet protruding from an end of the couch and a man in some sort of uniform curled up on the floor.

  ‘Where is he?’ she said.

  ‘In his room?’

  ‘Is he asleep?’

  ‘Mrs Cahill …’ Slocum shrugged. ‘Never mind.’

  She opened the door of Bob’s room, slipped inside and quietly closed the door behind her. She began to unbutton her overcoat, then, drawing close to the bed, stopped in her tracks. The blackout curtain billowed inward as a gust of wind found the open window. Daylight played across the bed.

  The girl, stark naked, sprawled across Bob’s belly, her slender legs stretched backward, one foot, one toe, touching the carpet as if she had been struck down while practising some strenuous balletic move. Between Susan’s shoe and the girl’s foot a discarded rubber leaked fluid into the rug.

  Susan clamped a hand to her mouth and squeezed her fingers into her cheeks. Bob hoisted himself up on an elbow. The girl stirred and, twisting round, stared at Susan without embarrassment or remorse. ‘Do come and join us, darling,’ she said. ‘I’m sure Bob won’t mind.’

  ‘You bastard, Robert. You utter bastard,’ Susan said, then, before he could stop her, fled.

  33

  Cloud covered the sun and the gusting wind that swirled dust in all directions made picnicking on the steps of St Vee’s too uncomfortable to put up with for long.

  Down in the crypt a team of volunteers were mopping the floor, airing beds and blankets and generally cleaning up. Priests and nuns went about their religious duties, and a WVS van, parked across the mouth of the lane, served tea and buns to those who had missed breakfast.

  For many of Father Joe’s homeless flock it would be a quiet day of rest and recuperation but for others, Breda and Nora among them, it was a day to make plans and the huge wood-panelled hall of the Dock Workers’ Union, now functioning as rest centre, was an ideal place in which to do it.

  Matt commandeered a table while Breda and Nora joined the queue at the counter to purchase tea, toast and a packet of the sweet oatmeal biscuits that Billy liked.

  There were many familiar faces in the Dock Workers’ hall that Sunday morning; too many. It required quite a bit of manoeuvring to keep Billy out of earshot of those who wished to commiserate with his mother and more than one white lie to explain why so many ladies wished to pat his shaven head and so many gentlemen pressed sixpence or a shilling into his palm until, without even trying, he had enough silver in his pocket to keep him in sweets and comics for a year.

  When Matt shifted his chair round, stuck out his injured foot and held up his stick like a sentry shouldering a rifle, however, all but a very few took the hint and when papers were spread out among the plates and cups it was apparent that the family had private business to conduct and was best left to get on with it undisturbed.

  ‘Old Leo – huh!’ Matt scratched his nose with his forefinger. ‘Old beggar beat me to it. Who’d ’ave thought he’d be the one to go first. Drowned like a rat in the Irish Sea. Makes you think, don’t it? Never know what’s round the corner, do yer?’ He smoothed a hand over the Home Office notepaper. ‘Seems like yesterday we was boys runnin’ wild together, now—’

  ‘Now you can marry my ma,’ Breda put in.

  ‘Eh?’ Matt looked up.

  ‘You ’eard me,’ Breda said. ‘God knows, you been rattlin’ on about it long enough. Nothin’ to stop you now.’

  ‘I’m a Protestant,’ Matt said, as if he had just discovered that fact about himself. ‘I mean, will they let me marry a Catholic in Ireland?’

  Nora said, ‘Auntie Mary married a Protestant an’ they didn’t burn her at the stake. What they won’t put up with is you an’ me livin’ in sin.’

  Breda said, ‘You don’t seem very upset, Ma.’

  ‘Upset?’

  ‘About Dad, about Leo?’

  ‘After all the trouble he brought me drowning’s too good for him.’ Nora glanced down at Billy who was seated by her side. ‘No, no.’ She crossed herself hastily. ‘I don’t mean that. Sure an’ I’m sorry he’s dead. I’ll even say a prayer for him.’

  ‘An’ light a candle,’ Billy suggested.

  ‘Yes, dear,’ she said. ‘And light a candle.’

  ‘Who’s Leo, anyway?’ Billy asked.

  ‘He was your granddad,’ Nora answered.

  ‘I thought you was my granddad,’ Billy said.

  ‘You got two granddads,’ Matt told him. ‘Everybody does.’

  ‘Now I
only got one?’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ Breda said. ‘Now you only got one.’

  ‘But I still got a dad,’ Billy said. ‘He’s in the army. You don’t get drowned in the army.’

  ‘Nah, hardly anybody gets drowned in the army,’ Breda said, adding quickly, ‘How many of them biscuits you had?’

  ‘Two.’

  ‘Have another one then an’ let the grown-ups talk. Okay?’

  Billy agreed to the deal by accepting the biscuit his mother offered and, head resting on Nora’s shoulder, bit into it.

  Finger to her lips, Breda gave Matt Mr Reilly’s condolence note and watched him read it. She expected tears or at least some evidence of emotion but her father-in-law just pushed the letter back across the table. ‘I reckon you’ll want to keep it.’

  ‘’Course I want to keep it. It’s all I got left.’

  ‘Be some money comin’ your way, though,’ Matt said.

  ‘There might,’ said Breda, ‘but it won’t be much.’

  ‘Remember to leave them your new address,’ Nora said.

  ‘My new—’

  ‘Molly’s house in Limerick.’

  Breda drew in a deep breath. ‘Ma,’ she said, ‘I ain’t goin’ with you to Limerick.’

  ‘You can’t stay ’ere on your own,’ Matt said. ‘I won’t stand for it, not with Billy the way he is.’

  Breda took Danny’s letter from her skirt and placed it on the table where both Matt and Nora could read it. ‘Danny’s found a place for Billy an’ me in the country.’

  ‘Damned if ’e has,’ Matt Hooper said. ‘You ain’t goin’, girl, an’ that’s flat.’

  ‘Who’s gonna stop me?’ Breda said. ‘Danny says it ain’t much of a place he’s found for Billy an’ me but there’s a school handy an’ there might even be a part-time job for me in the canteen of a factory where ’is friend works.’

  Nora said, ‘I knew Danny wouldn’t let you down.’

  ‘Let ’er down?’ Matt said. ‘Ron gone not ten bleedin’ minutes an’ that Scotch bastard wants ’er for ’imself.’