Poppy Day

by Annie Murray

  She shook her head to dislodge him from her mind.

  ‘Yow awright?’

  ‘Yes – course.’ She tried to concentrate on what the woman was saying to her.

  ‘After they’ve been fired, they’re ready for filing and polishing – so they go to them lot over there . . .’

  Once she was left to do the job, arranging the blue and white powders on to make the badges, she quite enjoyed it. Care was needed and she became absorbed, hearing the chatter of the other workers. Eavesdropping was no problem as they worked in such a small, dark room. It might once have been someone’s bedroom over the street. But at least there was the work to distract her. The ache in her heart let up a bit. She ate her dinner with a freckle-faced girl called Evie, who was chatty and cheerful. Afterwards she went back to work much less weighed down.

  Put him out of your mind, she told herself. He’s someone else’s. There’s not a thing you can do about it now.

  But the next week, one morning she started crying. She wet the enamel powder with her tears and had to start again.

  ‘’Ere – what yow playing at – it costs, that does!’ the gaffer was on to her straight off, seeing her scraping the powder off the badge again. ‘What’s the matter with yow today?’ She scowled at Jess’s tearstained face. ‘Look – go outside and pull yowerself together, and then get back in ’ere and make a proper job of it.’

  Mortified, Jess went out of the workshop with everyone having a good nose round at her from their benches.

  There was nowhere much to go. She sank down on the stairs, put her head in her hands and burst into tears again, sobs rising from somewhere deep within her.

  ‘Oh Ned . . .’ she cried. ‘Oh God, Ned, please . . . please . . .’

  Tears dripped through her fingers on to her work overall as the words poured out. In her state of turmoil she only knew that everything felt wrong. She would have to live with Ned calling on them in Allison Street with Mary and the baby when she had such overwhelming feelings for him as she’d had for no one else and she could not tell him or show him.

  He was being kind to me, that’s all, she told herself. He doesn’t need anyone else. Of course he don’t feel the same. Even if he did like me he couldn’t say, could he?

  She pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes.

  I’ve got to stop this. To pull myself together, or I’ll lose this job as well.

  ‘Hope yer feel better tomorrer,’ Evie said to her as they packed up work. Evie always tried to look on the bright side of everything. ‘I feel a bit any’ow meself today. Let’s ’ope the wind changes, eh? See yer then – I’m in a rush!’

  Jess stepped out along Frederick Street. The evening was warm, the air seeming to stroke her skin. She always walked home instead of using up money on tram fares, and this evening she set off head down, not looking about her. Other people were coming out from the factories and workshops in the surrounding streets. She stopped for a moment as a crowd came out of the Griffiths Works, afraid that Mary might be among them.

  Maybe I should move on somewhere bigger when I’ve done a bit of time at Blake’s, she was thinking, when she felt herself gripped forcefully by the arm and pulled to one side against the railings. She let out a cry of alarm before she saw him.

  ‘Ned! What . . .?’

  ‘Can yer come with me – just for a minute?’

  He led her quickly away from the factories, back down to St Paul’s church yard where she had sat to recover from her run-in with the horse. There were other people about, but all of them on the move, in a hurry to get home and get their tea inside them.

  They sat down on the same bench, gravestones behind them. A group of boys were throwing stones at a row of empty bottles. Jess didn’t dare speak. She had to know what he wanted to say. She could feel an enormous tension coming from him. For a few moments he sat leaning forward, arms resting on his knees, looking at the ground.

  He feels something for me, he does, she thought. But in her mind she was also prepared for the opposite, for this to be about something else completely. Eventually, the silence had gone on so long that she said,

  ‘What d’yer want, Ned?’

  He put his hands over his face. ‘Don’t yer know?’

  ‘No. I can’t say I do.’

  There was another silence, then he said, ‘This is terrible. I shouldn’t be here. Neither of us . . . I’ve got to go and meet Mary in a minute.’ He sat up and turned to her.

  She looked ahead of her.

  ‘Jess—’

  Slowly, frightened, she turned her head.

  ‘Help me . . .’ He managed the words at last. ‘What yer said about it not being worth it if yer don’t feel more than just a bit of fondness . . . I’d never, I mean I didn’t know what it was, how I could feel . . .’ He looked fearfully at her, then plunged in. ‘Ever since you’ve been ’ere I’ve thought about yer all the time. You’ve taken me over – I keep seeing you everywhere. I didn’t know it could be like this. I mean me and Mary, we’ve always been good pals. She’s a nice girl, a good girl, and I’m fond of ’er, but . . . s’

  He waited for her reaction. Her face was solemn, not angry or laughing at him as he’d feared. The emotion in her eyes affected him so he could barely speak.

  ‘Say summat to me. I don’t know what yer thinking of me.’

  Her voice came out barely more than a whisper. ‘You’re in my mind all the time as well, whether it’s right or not, Ned. I can’t seem to help it. I feel as if I belong with yer and I can’t make any sense of it.’

  He opened his arms and after a second’s hesitation she leaned into them, clasping him very tightly, raising her head to search for his lips. She felt them urgent, on hers. Then they sat holding each other, his chin resting on her head, both of them rocking together slightly, as if for comfort.

  ‘You’re so beautiful,’ he said. ‘I’ve never met anyone at all like you before. When I was at yer auntie’s I ’ad to keep looking somewhere else, keep my eyes away, so I didn’t just sit and stare at you all afternoon. It was like an ache in me—’

  ‘You’re married to someone else.’

  Ned pulled away.

  Jess was wide-eyed, stricken. ‘That’s the truth of it. You made vows in church. I’m frightened, Ned, by all I feel. I’ve been lonely all my life, wanting someone to love, and now I love you it’s not right. I can’t stop thinking about yer and wanting yer but I don’t see how it can be anything but wrong . . .’

  He gave a great anguished groan. ‘Jess – I ’ad to tell yer – to see yer. It was wrong of me. She’s going to ’ave my child any day now . . .’

  Jess watched his face as he spoke, her eyes full of tears.

  ‘I’m stuck with it – all those things Auntie Olive said, about sticking together and keeping bellies fed. That’s what yer marry for, Jess . . . And there’s my mom and dad to think of . . .’

  ‘I know – I know, I know . . .’ She was weeping. What she wanted, longed for, was an enormous, inconceivable thing.

  ‘But I can’t do it to Mary – and her mom. Yer should see ’em Jess. Her Mom’s so thin and ill, and all them children she’s got. It’d kill ’er if I broke it off. And Mary . . . I’ve ’ardly slept thinking of it. Not knowing what to do for the best. I ’ad to see yer, to know ’ow yer felt, but I can’t just throw it all away . . . I’m sorry, Jess.’

  She pulled herself to her feet, hugging herself as if to nurse her aching heart, her face wet with tears.

  ‘I don’t know if I wish you hadn’t come to me and told me. I couldn’t stand loving you and thinking you had no feeling for me. But now I know . . . what you’ve said . . . us having to go on as we are . . .’

  Unable to bear seeing her in such distress he went to comfort her.

  ‘Don’t touch me!’ She slapped his hands off her shoulders. She saw his look of pain and made as if to reach out and stroke his face, but she drew back, wiping her eyes. ‘I want you to hold me in your arms forever, Ned, but I
don’t think I can stand it if you touch me now.’

  ‘Please—’ Again he tried to move close to her. ‘I love you, Jess. Come ’ere, just for a minute, while we’ve got the chance.’

  She backed away. ‘No. No. I’m going now. You go and catch up with Mary. And don’t come round to ours when I’m in. I don’t want to see yer.’

  She walked away, her arms still folded tightly.

  ‘Jess!’

  But she didn’t turn. Ned stood watching helplessly. Her shoulders were hunched, head held at a dejected angle, her thick hair escaping in wisps from its pins. He felt as if she was taking a part of him with her as she left. His whole being ached for her.

  He sank down again on the bench and stared desolately ahead of him. He couldn’t stand the thought of going home.

  PART II

  Eleven

  June 1914

  Mary laboured long and hard to produce her child. When Ned got in from work that evening the next week, she was well underway. Her mom, Mrs Smith, was up there with her, and Mrs Martin, a local woman who came in to help with birthing. The fire was lit and they were up and down the stairs for water and cups of tea, stoking the range, looking knowingly at him.

  ‘She’s doing her best, poor lamb,’ Mary’s mom said. She was a thin and wrung-out looking woman, forty-five years of age but appearing sixty if a day, though with a genteel dignity about her. ‘There’s a stew on the fire, Ned. Will yer have ’taters with it?’

  He nodded, accepting as graciously as he could. He’d known when he married Mary that they’d live close to her mother in her little terrace in Handsworth. He just hadn’t bargained on it being next door. They were in and out of each other’s houses, Mary’s brothers and sisters too, as if they all lived together and there never seemed to be a moment’s peace. He knew he should be grateful. It saved Mary worrying, and Mrs Smith was close by to see her through with the babby.

  It was just that sometimes he felt he was married almost as much to Mrs Smith as to Mary.

  ‘That all right for you now?’ his mother-in-law laid a plate of scrag-end in front of him, edged with potato. The whole meal was the grey of an old floor cloth.

  ‘Yes, ta.’ He tried to tuck in, glad once she’d shuffled off upstairs again in her badly fitting shoes. From the room above his head, he could hear the leg of the bed banging on the uneven floorboards and the women walking about, exchanging a word or two in low voices. Now and then came a low, muffled moan.

  Ned ate up his tea in large, hungry mouthfuls, then took his cap and went down to the corner for cigarettes. God knows, he was going to need summat to get him through the evening. He didn’t want to think about what Mary was going through. It only stirred up the turmoil of emotion within him even further.

  Once he’d bought ten Woodbines he still wanted to stay out. It was a still, summer evening and his pace slowed. The thought of going back to the cramped house full of all the disturbing, female things going on in it filled him with revulsion and guilt.

  He passed a church and thought about going in to sit in the musty gloom to try and set his thoughts straight, but he could hear the chat and laughter coming from the pub so he went there instead, settled with his pint at a table awash with spilt drink, amid the smells of beer-soaked sawdust and smoke. He lit up a Woodbine, not wanting company. If he sat here for a bit, he might get home when it was all over. It was fuggy and comforting in there and his mind drifted. He couldn’t bear to think about the future or what he was going to do.

  It was getting on for ten when he walked in. Nothing seemed to have changed in the hour and a half he’d been out. The kettle was boiling. Mary’s mom came down and brewed tea.

  ‘Getting a bit closer,’ she told him. ‘It’s not often very quick the first time you know, Ned. Nothing to worry yerself about.’

  It only then occurred to Ned that he might worry. He thought of Mary upstairs, her scrawny body writhing on the bed. That was as far as his imagination went. He didn’t know what was involved, not really. He sat by the fire drinking tea, a saucer between his feet on the peg rug Mary had made. Over the mantel, a picture of a puppy with bright eyes and a shiny nose stared down at him. Stew and beer formed an uneasy partnership in his belly. The noises from upstairs were growing louder, coming more often, although he could tell Mary was trying to stop herself crying out. Occasionally the cries crescendoed out of her control, like a lid lifted off something.

  The clock ticked. The saucer at Ned’s feet filled up with stubs. He sat in the murky light feeling like an old man. The path of his life seemed laid out straight in front of him. Get up, go to work, come home. Mary, babbies, young’uns tearing in and out, struggling to feed them, clothe them, until he dropped dead.

  Mary was a good girl, a sweet wife. Cheerful, dutiful, bound up in family, as he’d known she would be. As he’d imagined he would be too, thought that was what he wanted. He’d chosen. But he’d chosen because she was always there, because his family liked her – because he’d barely thought of it as a choice. That was what you did.

  He hadn’t seen Jess since the day she’d run from him, crying. Memories, her shape, the way she moved, her eyes, came back to him with such force that he closed his eyes, letting her take him over. She moved before him like a cinematic show, her smile, her dark-eyed gaze burning into him, her lithe figure bounding on to Bonney and trotting off along the road. The feel of her lips on his, that once . . . The thought made him long for her like a hunger. An agonized scream came from upstairs. He got up and paced the room. Lit another cigarette from the fire.

  Upstairs, Mary lay limp as a rag between the bouts of pain, her hair soaked with sweat.

  Mrs Smith sat on a chair beside the bed, holding her daughter’s hand. Mary almost crushed the bones of it during each contraction, so that her mother barely managed not to cry out too. She was suffering through every pain with her daughter and her face was dragged down with exhaustion.

  ‘Terrible, watching your own go through it,’ she said to Mrs Martin.

  Mary’s teeth were clenching again. She cried out at the height of it, then sank down again, exhausted.

  ‘Mom?’ she murmured as Mrs Smith wiped her face.

  ‘Yes, darlin’?’

  ‘Is Ned here?’

  ‘Oh yes – ’e’s downstairs, waiting.’ The corners of Mary’s mouth turned up in a faint smile.

  Finally, at three in the morning, when everyone concerned felt tested past endurance, Mary pushed out her baby, a girl, and a ‘tiny snippet of a thing’ as Mrs Martin called her. She coughed and squeaked and finally cried, gratingly, waking her father from his uneasy sleep in the chair downstairs.

  Ned sat listening to the unfamiliar sounds round him. He heard the child and felt it was a dream. But he was excited. Was that sound part of him?

  After a long time he heard the slow tread of his mother-in-law on the stairs.

  ‘You’ve a lovely little daughter.’ She smiled, revived by joy. ‘Go up and see.’

  The tiny face was just visible, a triangle of dark pink flesh between the tight swaddlings. She was lying in the crook of Mary’s arm in the candlelit room.

  ‘You’ll all be right now,’ Mrs Martin yawned. She stood by the door, waiting.

  ‘Oh – ’ere,’ Ned slipped coins into her hand. He was shy of her, of what had gone on in this room.

  ‘Thank you,’ Mary murmured. All her attention was on the baby.

  But when they were alone, Ned knelt beside the bed, looking at the pair of them, awed, but distant from what had gone on.

  ‘Ned?’ Mary’s eyes fluttered open.

  ‘What, love?’ He leaned closer to hear her.

  ‘Can we call ’er Ruth?’

  ‘Awright.’ He would have agreed to anything at that moment. ‘Ruth’s a good name. In the Bible, Ruth is.’ He took Mary’s hand and kissed it.

  ‘She’s pretty, ain’t she?’ Her voice was fading.

  ‘She’s the prettiest girl in the world,’ he whispered, gent
ly stroking the infant’s cheek with the side of his finger. ‘’Cept for you.’ At that moment he meant it, was humbled and full of gratitude.

  Mary barely managed to smile. She was falling asleep.

  He stayed there in the deep quiet of the night, the creaks of the old house and their breathing the only sounds. He watched the child, her face twitching in sleep. He had not yet seen her with her eyes open. He felt his sense of himself expanding, taking in this new responsibility. New life. Family. This was where his duty lay. Eventually he climbed gently on to the bed beside them, and they all slept.

  ‘We must take her and show her to Mrs Beeston,’ Mary said.

  It was Sunday morning. Little Ruth was ten days old, and though tired, Mary was well recovered from the birth. She sat holding the baby, suckling her, smiling down into her face. ‘She’ll be ever so annoyed with us if we don’t pay a visit. We promised, daint we?’

  Ned was in the scullery, bent over in his shirtsleeves, trying to unblock the sink. For a moment he froze. Mary didn’t see him.

  ‘No hurry. Why don’t we leave it for a bit? You’ll get tired traipsing all the way over there. It’s even further now they moved.’

  ‘Ned!’ Mary laughed. ‘I want to take ’er out and show ’er off a bit! She’s starting to look quite bonny. And Mrs Beeston said she wanted to see the babby, soon as it arrived.’

  Ned hesitated. ‘We ought to give ’em a bit of warning – take a note to say we’re coming . . .’

  ‘Why? What the ’ell’s got into yer? You always said she’d be pleased if you turned up anytime. She sent ’er new address, din’t she? So she wants to see yer. We’ll go after we’ve ’ad some dinner. ’Ow about that?’

  ‘What’s the matter with yer, Jess – yer poorly or summat?’

  Jess was lying on her bed in their room in the new house in Oughton Place. Olive had insisted they move. Apart from the fact that the neighbours on one side, the Bullivants, who had nine children, were a raucous and sometimes quarrelsome lot, they’d had a lucky find. The new house was on a terrace which backed on to the railway, close to Camp Hill Goods Yard. It was much more roomy than the back-to-back they’d been in before, with an extra bedroom, and although there were the usual problems of damp and bugs, the previous occupants had done their best to keep it nice. All the rooms were papered and the roof was sound. Olive kept saying they should have done it years ago.