Orphan of Angel Street

by Annie Murray

  ‘His mom thinks ’e’s going to get better, keeps telling me to hang on. But it just ain’t going to happen, Dorothy. He don’t even know me now, and I loved ’im, I really did love ’im . . .’ She broke off, unable to speak any more.

  Dorothy stopped, saying, ‘Oh bab, oh Mercy,’ and drew the girl into her arms, overcome at seeing her so sad and vulnerable.

  ‘I thought I’d found someone,’ Mercy sobbed into her shoulder. ‘Someone who could really be mine and be family. And now it’s just like talking to a stone. He can’t do nothing for hisself, and the way he looks at me. It’s as though he’s staring right through me, as if he hates me.’

  ‘Oh Mercy, poor babby . . .’ Dorothy sounded near to tears herself. ‘We – I had no idea all this was on your mind. Why didn’t you tell me before?’

  Mercy shrugged, head resting on Dorothy’s shoulder, still crying, relieved at being able to let out her feelings to someone.

  ‘I know I ought to want to be with him – say I’ll stay with him even if he is injured. It ain’t his fault, is it? His life’s ruined. But . . .’

  ‘There, there – it’s a terrible thing’s happened to you, and to ’im.’ Dorothy’s heart was heavy. ‘I’m sure no one expects you to stay with ’im forever, course they don’t.’

  Mercy raised her head, wiping her eyes. Dorothy thought how pretty she looked in the dim light, even in her misery.

  ‘We would’ve got married, I’m sure of it. I wanted to stay with him for ever, and now I feel I still ought to—’

  ‘Don’t!’ Dorothy broke in fiercely. She took Mercy by the shoulders, her dark eyes stern. ‘Don’t ever marry someone unless you want it with all your heart. It’ll only lead to misery for both of you. Remember that. I’ve seen it at close hand and believe me, you’re better off without it.’

  Mercy frowned, calmer now. ‘Where’ve you seen it?’

  Dorothy hesitated, her expression bitter under the rim of her hat. ‘If you’d known my mother and father you’d’ve thought marriage was summat invented by the devil himself. Come on – keep moving or we’ll catch cold.’

  Mercy walked beside her suddenly seeing how little she knew Dorothy.

  ‘No one’s going to expect you to have a married life with a man who can’t even speak to you, let alone anything else. Don’t be a fool, Mercy.’ Dorothy spoke with fierce authority. ‘For God’s sake don’t throw your life away.’

  The Weston household had enjoyed a harmonious few months with the master of the house absent. Neville had been sent into a Motor Transport Division behind the lines in France, and wrote home very occasionally.

  With him gone, Dorothy lived alongside Grace almost as her equal. The boys were far more relaxed, especially Edward, the younger one, whose sensitive temperament, similar to Grace’s, grated on his father who tried to insist that he behave ‘like a proper boy’.

  When Dorothy returned rather later than expected that evening, Grace was sitting at her little writing-desk looking through the household bills and she turned, smiling, although the smile was, as ever, tinged with anxiety.

  Dorothy sat down opposite her. Seeing her sombre expression, Grace’s face fell.

  ‘Whatever’s the matter, dear? How is she?’

  ‘If only we had more control of the situation,’ Dorothy burst out. ‘If only you could see her, tell her . . .’

  Grace looked down at her lap. ‘I can’t. I just can’t risk it.’

  ‘But while he’s away . . .’

  Grace gave a wan smile. ‘My darling Dorothy, how fierce you are on my behalf . . .’

  ‘Not just yours, Grace.’

  ‘No, I know what Mercy is to you too. But I’m so afraid. I simply daren’t risk such an overturning of all our lives, even with Neville away. There are the boys to think of. If Neville were to find out – and we don’t know what Mercy might do, do we? While she is my daughter by birth, I can’t be certain of her loyalty and her affections, can I?’ Grace stood up. ‘Look, dearest, what’s happened?’

  Wearily, Dorothy rubbed her temples. Grace went to stand behind her, circling her fingers gently along the older woman’s forehead. ‘Please tell me what’s the matter.’

  As Dorothy talked Grace stopped her massage and sat down beside her, her expression increasingly troubled.

  ‘She said she thought she’d found someone – real family at last. Not just the young feller – of course, she’s close with Elsie, his mother as well. But now . . .’

  Grace’s eyes filled with tears. ‘Now she’s been abandoned all over again.

  Chapter Eighteen

  February 1918

  The day they brought Tom home the remains of snow lay on the ground, rounded, filthy cushions of it still bunched in untrodden corners. Mrs Ripley’s snotty-nosed kids picked it up to chew mouthfuls as the ambulance pulled up, melting it to metallic soot in their mouths.

  Elsie, the only one at home, walked beside the stretcher as they carried him in, clinging to one of his hands, her back ramrod straight. He still had a light dressing on his head and round it his hair was growing back as a brown stubble.

  The two men who accompanied him were quiet but gentle.

  ‘There yer go,’ one spoke at last as they lowered him on to the bed Elsie had ready downstairs. ‘Home sweet home.’

  Elsie propped Tom up on what she had in the way of pillows and he lay staring across the room.

  ‘There y’are, love. You can be at home with yer mom now. See – you can watch me while I’m cooking and cleaning up, and whenever you want anything all yer ’ave to do is say. I’ll look after you. Now – will yer ’ave summat to eat?’

  *

  When Mercy came in from work that night Mabel was frying onions in a pan on the range, trying to spin out the meagre amount of food available. Her hair was greying but still more pepper than salt, and was fastened in a thick coil behind her head. When she saw Mercy she pulled her shawl tighter round her.

  ‘I’ve seen ’im,’ she said. ‘Bad, ain’t it?’

  Mercy’s face was very pale in the gaslight, her eyes glassy with exhaustion. Even Mabel took in the pinched expression of despair. ‘He’s home then?’

  Mabel nodded. ‘I looked in earlier. She’s got ’im sat up downstairs like Patience on a monument . . . Be better up out of the way to my mind.’

  ‘What – the way you kept me?’ Susan retorted sharply. ‘Some people ain’t ashamed of their family whatever state they’re in, you know.’

  Mercy turned to the door again and said in a tone of heartbreaking flatness, ‘I’ll go and see them.’

  ‘’Ave yer tea first – it’s ready.’

  ‘No – I’ll not be long.’ She knew if she went now, she’d have an excuse to leave.

  Mercy had not been in to see Elsie and Alf for some time. She’d been unable to face the house, empty of children except Jack who was out at work now, and Rosalie. And Elsie’s grief, a black depression she’d slip into for days at a time alternating with a determined, brittle optimism about Tom.

  When she walked in there that night, the living room was transformed. Gone was the horsehair sofa, and instead there was only just space to open the door without colliding with the foot of Tom’s bed. The table was almost up against the fire and Elsie, Alf, Rosalie and Jack were squeezed round three sides of it. The room smelt dismally of the damp washing which was hanging everywhere.

  ‘Come to see ’im, ’ave yer?’ Elsie said brightly. ‘’E’s been waiting for you, ’ain’t yer, Tom?’

  Mercy’s eyes moved from Elsie’s thin, exhausted face to Tom’s expressionless features. She could feel all of them watching her expectantly. What did they want – that she should run over and embrace Tom as if he were still the same? Would that make them feel better? She knew she couldn’t do it – just couldn’t. She tried to force a smile to her lips.

  ‘Nice to see ’im back.’ She was unable to lift her voice out of the sadness which encompassed not just her own feelings for Tom, but for all of t
hem. They were all so changed, Elsie like an old woman at fifty-two, her face framed by dusty-coloured hair in which almost none of the former copper remained, Alf – for he was always Alf now, his nickname somehow buried with his children – had a redder, coarser face. Jack was the least altered visibly, red-haired and very like Johnny, but he was quiet, had lost his spark. And Rosalie, now ten, who’d always been a rounded, rosy child, was so terribly thin, her face pinched and sad. Mercy, pulling herself together inside, stepped over to Rosalie and put her hands on her shoulders, kissing the top of her head before she went over to Tom. She sat down, hands in her lap. Though she was close to Tom she just couldn’t touch him. She felt somehow afraid of him.

  ‘So how’s ’e been?’

  ‘Not so bad,’ Elsie said as Tom let out a long groan which sounded like water disappearing down a drain. ‘’E’s ’ad ’is dinner. Nothing much wrong with ’is appetite any’ow.’

  Tom could eat once the food was in his mouth, but he no longer had the coordination to put it there himself.

  Mercy asked a few more questions, tried to be warming and cheerful with this family who had, over the years, lifted her own spirits so many times. But after a few minutes she could think of nothing else to say and she could feel her own distress mounting. Tom seemed to take up so much of the room, filling the place with a sense of all that was broken in their lives. If he had looked very different it might have been easier to accept, but his disfigurement was mostly internal. Added to that, all the empty chairs . . . Cathleen’s, Frank’s, no Johnny either . . . Mercy suddenly felt she could bear it no longer.

  ‘Mabel’s got my tea ready—’ She stood up. ‘I said I’d only be a minute.’

  ‘Come whenever you like, won’t you?’ Elsie pleaded. ‘After all, you’re more or less one of the family.’

  That night, when she had blown out the candle in their bedroom, Mercy turned and cried for a long time in Susan’s arms.

  ‘Oh Mercy,’ Susan said as her friend’s sobs finally calmed a little. ‘I’m so, so sad for you. But I’m so glad you’ve come back to me.’

  The world was convulsing round them. The end of 1917 had seen more fighting: the remainder of the long battle of Ypres, and at Cambrai. The Tsar had been overthrown in Russia and now the United States was also in the War. At home, they were told the German civilians, their ports blockaded by the Allies, were starving.

  ‘We’ll be bloody starving soon too at this rate,’ Mabel complained. She’d finally taken on proper responsibility for the house. ‘There’s hardly any meat to be had, and that stuff they’re passing off as bread – like eating chaff, that is.’

  For Mercy, the limits of life had shrunk more than ever, so that it was comprised of the grenade factory and numbers one and two, Nine Court, Angel Street. She’d got into the habit of paying a visit to the Peppers every night after tea. They seemed desperate for her to come. Mabel and Mary Jones sometimes popped in during the day, but Elsie, utterly tied to Tom’s needs, was isolated and very down. Whenever Mercy walked through their door, their eyes fastened on her hungrily as if she represented normality and hope, things they couldn’t keep hold of when left alone together.

  Elsie was enormously protective of Tom. She couldn’t bear to feel people pitying either him or herself.

  ‘’E’s awright – ’e’ll get better. The doctors said it’d take a bit of time after what ’e’s been through.’ She toiled day after day to keep him clean as a whistle, fed him, talked to him endlessly.

  But to Mercy she complained. No one was doing enough.

  ‘Alf’s out all the time, and Jack. I’m left to do it all. And Josephine hardly ever comes over now. It ain’t right, keeping a littl’un from seeing his nan. It ain’t fair. She ought to come.’

  ‘She’s got ’er hands full,’ Mercy tried to reason with her. ‘What with the pub and that flat and little Janey to look after . . .’

  Josephine had come sometimes when Tom first arrived home. She’d turned to Mercy on more than one occasion with a look of desperation in her eyes when Elsie wasn’t looking. One day, when Elsie had popped outside she said, ‘I can’t stand seeing ’im like this.’ Looking across at Tom her eyes filled with tears. ‘Look at ’im – ’e’s just not ’ere, is ’e? Where’s ’e gone? It ain’t right, none of it. Would’ve been better to my mind if ’e’d . . .’ She bit her lip, suddenly busying herself picking Janey up and wiping her hands. ‘I shouldn’t talk like that, I know. Mom’d ’ave a fit . . .’

  Her words sent a great wave of relief through Mercy. Josephine was the only one who’d expressed what she herself was thinking. This wasn’t hopeful, all this. Tom wasn’t a hero. It was a dreadful, heartbreaking hell seeing him in this state day after day, this man whom she’d loved, whose hand she had wanted to hold into the future.

  Josephine appeared on rare occasions now, but ever since then Mercy had felt some release. She could begin to let go of Tom, to acknowledge that he really was lost to her. She could visit and try to support Elsie without feeling she had to catch hold of a dream and hang on, for her dream had already dissolved. The man she loved was dead.

  It was a long, sad winter. The fighting on the Western Front was held up. No moves could be made before spring, and morale among the troops was low. The casualties at Ypres had been vast and there was a shortage of troops. Johnny Pepper had spent much of the winter up on the freezing altipiani, the ‘high plains’ between Italy and Austria, among the divisions sent to reinforce the Italians. As the snow began to melt, however, and spring came, they were being despatched back to the Western Front. First though, Johnny was sent home on leave.

  He arrived in Birmingham at the end of March. A tall, stringy-looking figure now, his shorn hair merely a red haze round the edge of his cap, he strode back into Angel Street, feeling he was in a dream. This was home, but now it seemed so strange, so alien. It was as if the army, for all the degradation and horror it entailed, had become his true home, the only true way of life.

  Elsie would never forget her son’s face as he walked into the house that day and saw his twin. Johnny’s eyes, already red from lack of sleep, fastened on Tom’s face, and Elsie saw burning in them horror, pain and disgust. That sight of hope dying in Johnny’s face broke her heart more than she had allowed Tom’s condition to do so far.

  ‘Tom?’ Johnny swung his kitbag to the floor and went to him. Elsie watched, pulling her old cardigan tight round her.

  ‘Tom – it’s me, Johnny. ‘’Ow are yer, mate?’

  Tom was in his usual position, staring intently upwards as if the flaking ceiling was a puzzle which held all the secrets of the universe. When Johnny spoke to him he moved his head a little.

  ‘Tom!’ Johnny took him by the shoulders and started to shake him violently. ‘Say summat – speak to me, for God’s sake. Stop playing about!’

  ‘Johnny, stop it – you’ll hurt ’im!’ Elsie tried to pull him off. ‘’E can ’ear yer – I’m sure ’e can. But ’e can’t say anything to you – not yet.’

  ‘Not yet!’ Johnny stepped back, eyes stretched in horror. He slammed his fist on the table with such force that one of the cups flew off and smashed on the floor. ‘’E’s been home nigh on six month! You wrote and said ’e was doing all right. D’you mean ’e’s been like this all the time?’

  ‘Oh, ’e was much worse to begin with—’

  ‘They said to me that day—’ Johnny was shouting, completely distraught. ‘They said ’e’d be awright – that’s what they said. And all this time I thought, well whatever else, Tom’s awright . . .’

  ‘But ’e is—’

  ‘You call that awright? ’E’s nowt but a vegetable!’

  He strode out of the house again leaving the door swinging. He didn’t come back until evening.

  ‘Hello Johnny,’ Mercy said softly.

  Johnny looked up from his tea and saw her in the doorway. She was dressed in her work clothes, thinner, more grown up. But God she was lovely, he thought. Those little w
hite teeth, the deep, inscrutable eyes.

  ‘Mercy—’ He put his fork down, wanted to say more but couldn’t think of anything. In that moment though, for the first time, he really felt he’d arrived home. She was still Mercy, while otherwise at home nothing else was the same. His mom and dad had turned into old people, and in this short time he’d had to take in Tom’s condition, Cathleen’s death and the extent of the grief they still all shared for Frank . . . No one and nothing was as it had been. But Mercy . . . Johnny watched as she took off her coat, the smooth way she moved. His mind was skipping on fast. She wasn’t Tom’s any more – she couldn’t be, could she? So why shouldn’t he have her?

  Mercy said hello to Tom, then sat down at the table between Johnny and Alf.

  ‘You’ve seen ’im, then?’ she said.

  ‘Yeah.’ He was looking down at his plate.

  ‘So how are you?’

  He looked at her out of the sides of his eyes. ‘Awright.’ She was so close to him, and he found himself sizing up her breasts as if she were a Belgian whore.

  ‘Good to be home, eh?’

  ‘Yeah. I s’pose.’ He didn’t know what to say to her, could only think of the excitement rising in him, shaming him. But he wanted her. Sex was his customary way of briefly finding warmth and humanity. He wanted Mercy under him, the hot clutch of her round him so he could come in her and forget.

  ‘Johnny—’ Mercy was disturbed by his manner, his short, savage answers to her questions. ‘It’s – it’s been very hard with Tom. We all hoped he was going to get better than this. They operated on his head and that, but – well, it must be a shock to you.’

  ‘I’ve seen worse.’

  ‘I dare say.’ Mercy found she was furious. ‘But this is your brother. He’s had a bullet in his head and it’s done a lot of damage – he was really badly injured—’

  ‘I know ’e was bloody badly injured!’ Johnny stood up, yelling with all his force so that Tom made a whimpering noise and Alf protested, ‘Eh, son, son—’