by Nancy Revell
Her revenge, however, though sweet, was also short-lived. Helen should have known that her mother’s emotional depths were actually quite shallow, and within a few minutes she had composed herself and was back to normal, pouring herself a fresh gin and tonic and sitting down to cross-examine her daughter about every aspect of Jack’s infidelity. And, of course, anything Helen knew about the said ‘love child’.
It had dawned on Helen, slowly at first, but then with gathering momentum as she answered Miriam’s questions, that the vocal expression of her mother’s torment had not been brought about by her husband’s betrayal, but from a kind of childish frustration. It was a toddler’s tantrum. A stamping of the feet. A spitting out of the dummy. Her mother was not getting what she wanted. It had nothing to do with her husband loving another woman, but everything to do with the humiliation she would be subjected to if – when – her husband left her.
Helen had not been able to offer up much more than what she had already told her, and once that was clear, her mother had suggested that Helen retire to bed early as she had clearly had quite a day of it and needed to get some rest.
Her mother’s words had sounded sincere, but Helen had been left with the feeling that she was being dismissed.
Just as Helen was leaving the room, however, Miriam had called her back.
‘Darling,’ she’d said, her voice unexpectedly soft, ‘go to work as normal tomorrow, but obviously I don’t need to tell you that you can’t breathe a word of this to anyone – absolutely no one.’
It was not a request but an order. Her mother was back in charge. She would deal with this in whatever way she saw fit. Like she always did.
As Helen lay curled up on her bed, she felt as though she was drowning in her own salty tears. Hearing her mother’s bedroom door close below, she looked at the clock and saw it had just gone eight. It looked like they had both had enough of this day.
Helen forced herself to get up off the bed where she had been lying fully clothed, crying for what felt like an eternity into her silk eiderdown. She quickly changed into her favourite winceyette nightdress and slipped under the covers. Her feet found the warmth of a hot-water bottle, which Mrs Westley must have put in there, probably guessing that Helen would head off to bed early after all the upset.
Helen switched off the side light and was glad to be immersed in complete darkness. As her mind reran the events of the day for what felt like the hundredth time, the tears came once more. This time they were steady and constant.
Her world had been turned upside down in the space of just a few hours. But worst of all, she knew it could never be righted again. Ever. This wouldn’t come out with the wash as Mrs Westley had promised her it would. No, the stain that had appeared in her life today was indelible. It would be there for evermore.
Over the next few hours, until sleep finally offered a respite, Helen cried on and off. Random thoughts pinged in and out of her brain. The image of Gloria’s bloodied face kept flashing across her mind’s eye. She had felt so sorry for her. Such compassion. In the back of the ambulance she had even felt a kind of camaraderie towards her. There’d been a connection there. She had nearly cried in front of her, she’d felt so overwhelmed with emotion!
Then came the anger as she thought of her father’s praise and how he had told her she was so ‘brave’ – when all along it was just a smokescreen. All the while, he had only been thinking of one person. Gloria. Was likely just desperate for Helen to leave so he could race to see his lover. The mother of his child.
God, she felt like shaking herself as she remembered actually thinking on the way to the hospital that perhaps she could even become friends with the rest of the women welders.
Helen tossed and turned in her bed as if trying to shrug off the sting of humiliation.
They must all be laughing at her now.
But this wasn’t just about her father having another woman. God knows, it happened plenty, especially in the circles in which her family socialised, where a blind eye was always turned, providing, of course, the marriage was not put in jeopardy. Providing the bit on the side remained just that. A side dish and not the main course. The problem arose when the status quo was threatened. When the two lovers wanted to leave their old lives and start a new one together.
Helen might only have caught a glimpse of her father and Gloria together, but she had seen the way they had kissed one another. She had never seen her mother kiss her father in such a way. That one kiss had spoken a thousand words. Her father and Gloria were in love. And in that moment Helen knew she was going to lose her father.
He had not only a woman he clearly loved, but a new baby – a whole new family.
Another batch of soul-wrenching sobs broke free from Helen. Her heart felt as though it was slowly being ripped to shreds.
Downstairs on the second floor, Miriam sat at her dressing table. To her right was her gin and tonic, to her left a bottle of her red ‘gems’. Tonight she was going to indulge in two little gems rather than just the one. She needed the escapism of sleep and her bottle of pills afforded that. Lately they hadn’t been quite as effective as they had been when she’d first been prescribed them, so tonight she intended to double her dose, guaranteeing at least ten hours’ respite from the nightmare she’d been plunged into. But before she allowed herself this release into oblivion, she had some thinking to do. Lots of thinking. And lots of planning.
She had left a note downstairs for Jack, telling him she had been struck down with one of her ghastly ‘heads’ and had gone to bed early to try and sleep it off. She had worded the note carefully and asked him if it wouldn’t be too much of an imposition for him to sleep in the back bedroom. It was imperative he didn’t get a sniff of a suspicion that she was on to him, so she had written it in such a way as to sound totally genuine and believable that she just needed silence and bed rest.
In truth, if Jack graced her bed with his presence tonight she might just end up stabbing him to death with the sharp end of her metal comb. Doing so would bring her immense satisfaction – but the consequences would be unpalatable. And besides, it would mean the whole world would get to know of her humiliation.
No, she had to calm down and work out a real solution to this hellish scenario she now found herself in. And what was absolutely paramount was that no one could ever find out about Jack’s infidelity, and definitely not about his bastard child.
Miriam took another sip of her gin and then started to take off her make-up with a generous amount of thick face cream and cotton balls. As she inspected her reflection in the mirror she congratulated herself on maintaining her good looks despite her age. Unlike Gloria. God, when she had seen her that time at Thompson’s she’d looked dreadful. Tired, worn out, pale and plump. Although now Miriam realised why she had looked so frazzled. What she had put down to middle-aged spread was obviously baby fat. Although Miriam doubted she would ever lose it. Not at her age. She’d just get fatter and fatter. And older and older. And Jack would rue the day he ever became involved with her again.
What on earth had made Jack go back to Gloria, she had no idea. If he had been having an affair with some young starlet, or even with someone who was the same age as herself but more beautiful, Miriam would have understood.
But not Gloria.
As Miriam inspected the tautness of her skin in her magnifying mirror, and checked out her profile for any sign of the beginnings of a wattle, she knew it would have destroyed her if Jack had been having an affair with a younger or better-looking woman than herself. At least that was one minor blessing in this whole debacle. Gloria was no match for her in any shape or form. No one would ever believe he was having an affair with her, which, Miriam mused, she could work to her advantage.
The real problem was Jack and Gloria’s bastard daughter.
After her momentary breakdown when Helen had told her about the ‘love child’, she had pulled herself together and carefully questioned Helen, eking every tiny detail out of her.
Now she knew everything, or at least everything that her daughter knew.
She knew Jack was having an affair, and that he had been seeing Gloria before he had left for America.
She knew that Gloria had given birth to Jack’s baby sometime back in August and had been passing the child off as her husband’s, but that she had finally been rumbled this very day.
And she knew, from what Helen had imparted about this afternoon’s drama at the yard, it was unlikely that this Vinnie character knew who had fathered Gloria’s baby – only that the baby wasn’t his.
It was a start.
Now she needed ammunition. For this was war. And the more ammunition she had, the more chance she stood of winning the battle. Or at least of saving her dignity, her reputation, her standing in society – her life as she knew it.
So, how did she go about getting the ammunition with which to destroy both Jack and Gloria – and thereby save herself?
As she plucked a stray hair from her already thin eyebrows, her mind idled over other bits and pieces of information that Helen had divulged.
Gloria had worked at the yard since they had started taking on women in August last year, and she had become very close to her squad of women welders.
Gloria’s gang included Rosie, whom she’d known for years, and Polly, whom Miriam already knew about because of the Tommy fiasco.
Then there was the young, pretty girl called Dorothy, her best mate, Angie, and, of course, there was Martha, whom everyone knew.
Finally, there was the little Czechoslovakian refugee, Hannah, who was now working in the drawing office.
Thinking about what Helen had told her about Gloria and how close she was to her fellow welders, the beginnings of an idea started to form in Miriam’s mind. A very good idea, if she said so herself. Of course, it was just a fledgling idea at the moment, but it wouldn’t take much to find out if it could be developed to provide her with the weaponry she needed.
Miriam smiled to herself and unscrewed the top of the bottle of her little red gems.
She congratulated herself on her ingeniousness, took out two capsules and swallowed them back with a good swig of gin.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Saturday 20 December 1941
When Miriam got up the next day her head felt thick and her mouth dry. She had slept right through until eight o’clock. Pulling on her warm dressing gown, Miriam padded down the carpeted staircase and into the breakfast room. There was now just the one place setting, which told her that both Jack and Helen had already had their breakfasts and had left for work.
She’d told Helen to go into work as normal, but not to give anything away. Not a word to anyone. It didn’t matter what Helen felt like doing, or saying, she had to put on a show that she knew nothing. Miriam knew it would be relatively easy for Helen to avoid Gloria and the rest of the women welders, but she realised she should also have stressed that she had to steer clear of her father. Jack was the potential spanner in the works. Helen had been using any excuse to go and see her dad at Crown’s since he’d started back at work and she was worried that her daughter would get overemotional and blurt out that she knew about Gloria. And the baby.
Helen adored her father, which might well mean that she would either spill the beans or, worse still, take Jack’s side. And that would truly be a disaster. Miriam needed her daughter on-board. There was to be no jumping ship, which could well be a possibility. After all, Helen now had a half-sister. Even if it was a bastard half-sister.
Miriam realised she would have to ingratiate herself with Helen as much as she could. With hindsight she wished she had been a little more sympathetic to her daughter when she had arrived home and found her in a state yesterday. But, Miriam reflected as she sat down and looked out into a side garden that was looking rather sorry for itself having been battered in yesterday’s winds, it was no use crying over spilled milk. She’d work her way round Helen. She knew how. Had done it enough in the past.
‘Morning, Mrs Crawford.’ Mrs Westley bustled out of the kitchen and into the breakfast room. She was careful to use the tone she always used to greet her employer of a morning. There was to be no hint of last night’s upset.
‘Just a pot of tea, Mrs Westley. I don’t feel that hungry this morning,’ Miriam told her cook.
As Mrs Westley headed back to the kitchen, Miriam looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. She had an hour to get herself ready, and then she would start putting her plan into action.
Jack had been relieved coming back last night to find the house quiet. When he’d read Miriam’s note that she had taken to her bed with ‘one of her heads’, he had breathed an even bigger sigh of relief. He didn’t think he had it in him to pretend that everything was normal.
He’d woken surprisingly early, and without the usual feeling of grogginess that he seemed to be suffering from of late, and had left the house before anyone else was up. He’d hurried to the Royal, but when he walked onto the ward and saw that Gloria wasn’t there he panicked.
‘Sir.’ Jack felt a tap on his shoulder and turned to see the same nurse who had been on duty yesterday evening. ‘Mrs Armstrong has just been discharged, but if you hurry, you’ll catch her down the pharmacy on the ground floor. She’s collecting a prescription.’
Jack didn’t need telling twice and ran along the corridor and back down the flight of stairs. He was looking for signs to the chemist when he saw Gloria walking towards him.
‘Jack!’ she said, her face a mixture of surprise and reprimand. ‘You shouldn’t have come here,’ she whispered as she reached him.
Jack put both hands on her shoulders and inspected her before planting a kiss on her lips.
‘How are you feeling?’ he asked, still scrutinising her face. He noticed a bruise the size of a penny had developed on the bridge of her nose.
‘I’m feeling fine, honestly.’ Gloria looked about her, anxious that someone they knew would see them. ‘Just got some painkillers, not that I need them.’
Jack caught her worried look and took her arm. ‘Gloria, I don’t give a damn who sees us any more. Now come on, I’ve got a taxi waiting to take you home.’
Gloria was just glad to get out of the hospital and into the black cab that was waiting at the bottom of the steps to the main entrance. Her concern about being seen dissolved as she climbed into the back of the car. Jack climbed in the other side.
‘Number fifty-six Fordham Road, please,’ Jack instructed the elderly cab driver.
Gloria looked at Jack with a half-smile on her face. ‘Did the girls tell you where I live, or did you remember?’ she asked.
Jack took hold of Gloria’s hand and squeezed it.
‘I remembered.’ He looked as pleased as Punch. ‘And what’s more, I’ve started to remember lots of other things too.’
A few minutes later they were pulling up outside Gloria’s home. As Jack paid the driver and gave him a generous tip, he looked around him.
‘God, I remember this when it wasn’t quite so nice,’ he said, suddenly hit by the memory of squalid tenements and open gutters.
‘You mean when it was a slum,’ Gloria said. The estate had been built just a few years previously after the decision was made by the Corporation to raze all the town’s poorest areas and replace them with new housing estates.
Once indoors, Gloria went straight into the kitchen and put the kettle on.
‘That hospital is lovely. I even had a bath there last night and they washed my clothes. But,’ she added, her face deadpan, ‘their tea’s like dishwater.’
Jack stood and stared at the woman busying about in her little kitchen. He had started to remember so much these past few days – images, thoughts and memories. He realised that this woman he loved, the one now hunting around in her cupboards for some biscuits, was different to the one he’d known, and it wasn’t his memory that was amiss. Gloria had changed. She was different from the woman he had left a year ago, when they had said their farewells in
the unlit porch of St Peter’s Church.
Jack carried the tea tray into the lounge.
‘You’ve changed a lot, haven’t you?’ Jack put the tray on the coffee table and sat down in a slightly worn-out, but very comfortable armchair. Gloria smiled. Never in a million years would she have thought that Jack would be here in her home, and that he would be sitting in what she had always secretly called ‘Vinnie’s throne’.
‘I have, but then I think we all have. This war’s changing us all in so many different ways.’ Gloria poured the tea and as she did so, the sleeve of her overalls rode up her arm slightly, exposing a sleeve of bruised skin.
Jack felt himself wince. Then he felt the familiar flood of anger as he thought about Vinnie. He couldn’t wait to get his hands on the bloke.
‘Do you know what’s happening with Vinnie?’ he asked.
Gloria looked up at Jack to see that his face had gone stony-hard; as she looked back down again, she saw her exposed, discoloured forearms. She pulled her denim cuffs so that they were covering the visual reminder of yesterday’s beating.
‘Well,’ Gloria said, knowing exactly what Jack was thinking, or, rather, planning on doing. It was exactly the reason why she hadn’t wanted it to come out that Vinnie wasn’t the father. It was like a bloody line of dominoes – you knocked the first one and there was a chain reaction.
‘From what the police told me yesterday, the impression I got was that they were going to keep him in custody for a good few days. Maybe even a week. I think they wanted to keep him in until they’d got him in front of a magistrate.’
Gloria looked back down at the tray, then picked up the plate of shortbread and offered some to Jack. She hoped he hadn’t picked up on the slight flush she’d felt come to her face. A flush she always got when she told a lie. Not that it was a lie as such – more an exaggeration. The police officer who had come to take her statement had told her that Vinnie would be kept in the cells overnight, but was unsure as to how they were going to proceed thereafter.