‘No thanks, we can afford to buy our own, if we want one. It’s just that a fancy tea-strainer isn’t a priority right now.’
‘I see.’ Her mother-in-law’s voice was clipped, taught with disapproval. ‘You do realise that the biscuit barrel is empty. I always make sure I have some garibaldi biscuits in. They are Chris’s favourites. Fortunately he still likes to pop home for a snack now and then.’
Amy longed to say that this was Chris’s home now, instead she tried to make a joke of it. ‘It was Chris who finished them all off last night as a matter of fact. Greedy piggy! But then we were up half the night with meladdo here.’
She could have kicked herself. As expected, Mavis pounced.
‘Good gracious, I’m surprised at you, Amy, expecting your husband to help with night-feeds. Chris needs all the sleep he can get with having to rise before dawn to bake bread, whereas you can sleep during the day.’
This made her laugh. ‘Fat chance of that. I always mean to try for a snooze but then there’s the washing to be done, all by hand, the ironing, a sink full of pots to be cleared and a meal to prepare, so I never quite manage even five minutes shut-eye. Last night Danny had colic and just wouldn’t settle. The doctor says that will pass after the three month mark. Sorry about the biscuits though, I’ll get some more when I go out later.’
Now she was over-explaining, something she’d promised herself she’d never do. Drat the woman, why did she always have to get under her skin?
Mavis said, ‘Well, at least you’re taking the doctor’s advice.’
Amy gritted her teeth. ‘If Chris wants to help feed his son, I think that’s quite a good thing. We’ve agreed to take turns, as we both need to snatch whatever sleep we can.’
‘Good heavens, it wasn’t like that in my day,’ Mavis retorted, lost for any better argument.
‘Things change,’ Amy brightly informed her, putting Danny to her shoulder to burp him. And as for picking him up,’ she continued, deciding she might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, and make it clear from the start that she would bring up her own child as she chose. ‘I see nothing to be gained by letting him cry till he’s sick or gives himself wind. He might have a tummy-ache, or be feeling lonely and in need of a cuddle.’
‘You’ll live to rue the day if you spoil him,’ Mavis snapped.
‘I don’t think you can spoil a child with love. Everybody deserves a bit of a cuddle now and then. I intend to make sure that my baby gets plenty of that.’
‘I can see you have some very modern, radical ideas festering in that silly little head of yours.’
‘Yes, I do, don’t I? Love, comfort and fresh air, very radical. Oh, and the freedom for my son to explore the world and make his own decisions when the time comes,’ Amy said, smiling softly as she lay Danny on the new hearth rug where he could kick his bare legs and look about him. ‘No doubt you’d think that wrong too.’
The next thing Amy heard was the slamming of the front door. ‘Oh, dear, Danny love. I think I might have said something to offend her.’
Thomas was happily ensconced in his allotment shed. He’d been living there ever since the big row. It had all got very nasty. Mavis had gone on to rail and rant at him about how she’d never wanted Chris to move in the first place, and how it was all Thomas’s fault for finding them the house.
‘If you’d never interfered, my son would still be living at home, where he belongs.’
Pointless to remind her that Chris shouldn’t be living with his mam and dad at all now that he was a married man. Thomas had been down that road countless times and knew it to be a cul-de-sac with a brick wall at the end.
‘You’ve gone too far this time,’ Mavis had accused him. ‘If you think you can parade your fancy woman right before my eyes and shame me before everyone, you’ve got another think coming.’ At which point she’d marched upstairs and packed his bag, which she’d then thrown out of the house. Using the back door of course, so that nobody could see.
Thomas knew when he was beaten. He’d taken his cap and jacket from the peg and moved into his shed on the allotment that same night, where he’d stayed ever since. He thought he’d got away with it, that nobody knew, but now here was Amy, standing before him, her small face a picture of horror.
‘So this is where you’ve been hiding yourself, why I haven’t seen you for weeks?’ Amy pulled up an orange box, looking about her in open curiosity as she made herself comfortable.
The shed was small but remarkably tidy, if rather dusty and stacked high with tomato boxes, shelves of seed potatoes, rakes, hoes and spades hanging in a row on the wall. A paraffin lamp swung from a beam, and there was a stack of old newspapers in one corner. And among all this garden paraphernalia sat a small brown leather suitcase from which socks and shirts spilled. Amy stared at it in dismay.
‘You surely can’t be living here.’
‘I can and I am. I had a bit of a ding-dong with her majesty, and she threw me out. But don’t you fret about me, love. I went through worse when I was in the ARP. It were a bit parky the first night but I crept back home while she were out shopping and picked up a couple of blankets and a pillow. I’m nice as ninepence now. I’ve even got a friend.’
Amy couldn’t help smiling as she regarded the small black cat curled up fast asleep on the old man’s knee. Danny was also asleep in the pram parked outside the little hut. Thomas had oohed and ahed for a bit, commented on the lad’s strength as he gripped his grandfather’s finger, now they were sitting inside and Amy was struggling against the need to express the sensation of shock rushing around in her head. How could her father-in-law be living in a garden shed? It was unbelievable. What on earth had happened to bring about this miserable state of affairs?
She tickled the cat’s chin and it stretched itself luxuriously. ‘What’s his name?’
‘Blackie,’ said Thomas, imaginatively. ‘He shares me dinners and he’s no trouble.’
On one rickety shelf stood a small shaving mirror, brush and razor; a jug and basin on the tool box beneath.
‘How do you boil water?’ Amy asked, appalled.
Thomas indicated a small paraffin stove with a jerk of his head. A rusty old kettle rested on top, steaming gently.
It was too much. ‘Oh, Thomas, you can’t possibly live here. You can cope with that for a shave, but how do you go on for a bath? It’s awful!’
‘I go down to the public baths and manage very well, thanks. Eeh, I’m forgetting me manners. D’you want a cuppa?’
He reached for a teapot, stained from many similar brews, and began to spoon in tea leaves. Amy watched in silence as he added the boiling water. She even managed not to say a word as he wiped a couple of mugs on a grubby tea towel, then, after sniffing a half empty milk bottle, poured a drop into each.
She accepted the tea without a murmur, although she had serious doubts about that milk. Certainly something was smelling in here: a strange mix of stale food, sweaty feet, shaving soap and ripe tomatoes.
‘Where do you sleep?’ She could see no sign of a bed.
‘I put down me bedroll. Don’t worry, I’m quite comfy.’
‘Good job it’s summer then, or you’d be frozen to the floorboards.’
‘Wife’ll happen have got over her hump by the time winter sets in.’
‘And if she hasn’t?’
Thomas shrugged. Ever phlegmatic he seemed to be saying that he’d cross that bridge when he came to it.
Amy wondered if she dare ask what the row had been about, but decided against it. A private argument between man and wife really wasn’t any of her business. But then Thomas saved her the trouble.
‘She thinks I’ve been playing away.’
‘Playing away?’
‘With Belle Garside.’
Amy nearly choked on her tea. And she’d been right about the milk. ‘You must be joking. Belle Garside, and you?’ Did that sound a bit rude, she wondered, to imply Belle would never fancy her father-in-law?
&nbs
p; ‘Aye, it’s a bit of facer in’t it? As if she’d look in my direction, sexy lady like Belle. Mavis isn’t thinking straight. It’s the beans on toast which is bothering her the most, I reckon.’
Amy had quite lost the thread and decided it was perhaps time she left. She stood up. ‘I’ve got to go. Danny will be wanting feeding again soon and I need to do a bit of shopping before he wakes up. Can I get something for you while I’m out round the market, some fresh milk perhaps?’
He grinned at her. ‘That’d be champion.’
She plonked a kiss on his cheek. It felt all rough and scratchy, then she looked at the untidy heap of clothes spilling out of the suitcase. ‘I could take your washing.’
‘Nay, you’ve enough to do wi’ that babby.’
‘A few more shirts and socks won’t make much difference.’ It would make all the difference in the world. Amy was overwhelmed by washing. Her days were an endless round of scrubbing stinking nappies, and all by hand, since they still couldn’t afford to buy a machine. But she bundled Thomas’s dirty clothes into the tray beneath the pram without a word. With clean socks the shed might smell a bit fresher. Anyway, the dear chap deserved clean socks, if nothing else. ‘I’ll fetch ‘em back when they’re done, but you can always come over to ours you know, if you feel like a change of scene.’
Thomas shook his head. ‘Nay, I might run into our Mavis. Anyroad, I don’t want to be a nuisance. You need time on your own just now.’
Amy’s heart swelled with love for the old man. He was so kind, so understanding. But the idea of Thomas and Belle having some sort of torrid affair - Amy almost giggled at the thought. ‘I’ll fetch you a bit of hot pot later. I’ve some left over from yesterday. You can happen heat it up on that stove.’
‘Eeh, you’re a star, lass. A proper star. Our Chris struck lucky when he wed you.’
‘Tell that to your wife,’ Amy wryly remarked.
‘Nay, we communicate only by notes which she leaves stuck on the door with a drawing pin.’
Amy didn’t dare ask what these missives might say. She took the brake off the pram and hurried away, not knowing whether to laugh or cry.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Gina couldn’t take in what was happening to her. She stood in the magistrate’s court and heard them remand her in custody for burglary under the larceny act of 1916. She felt numb. As if this were happening to someone else.
‘Take her down.’
The words rang in her head and she felt nauseous, as if she might throw up all over the polished wooden floor. She looked into the eyes of the sergeant who was grasping her arm but he stared right through her, as though she didn’t exist. Gina flinched as he snapped on the handcuffs, then glanced in panic across at her parents seated at the back of the court.
Her mother had her hands to her mouth and was quietly sobbing. Papa sat frozen, his face in shock. There was Luc too, half out of his seat as if he intended to leap over the barrier to reach her. She felt she’d let them all down in some way, yet she’d done nothing. She was innocent of this dreadful charge. She wanted to run to them, to cry out that she didn’t do it, but it was too late. She was being led down a flight of stairs back into the cells, into a cold, unfriendly world where her only view of the outside world would be through a cell window.
As the prison van bore her away, jolting over cobbles, Gina kept her eyes fixed on the view through the back window. She felt desperate for one last sight of her friends and loved ones gathered in the street, of the places she knew and loved, of sunlight, but all she could see was rain beating on the glass.
When the van reached Strangeways, she passed within those same tall Victorian gates through which hundreds of others had gone before her, from petty thieves to murderers, from women who sold their bodies for hard cash, to Mrs Pankhurst and her fellow suffragettes.
How many of those poor souls had been innocent, like her?
Later, what Gina remembered most about that first day was the smell. It was dreadful! Overwhelming, indescribable. Sour and acrid. Stale food and urine, vomit and fear intermingled with the paraffin and disinfectant they used to clean it all up.
And then there was the terrible indignity of it all.
She was ordered to strip, made to stand under a cold shower. Her clothes and few belongings were taken from her. A form filled in. No one spoke except to issue her with orders, to tell her to stand here, or there, to take this or sign that. No one treated her like a real human being. Everyone assumed she was guilty and deserved to be locked up in prison.
Gina felt as if she’d ceased to be human. She’d become an object to be pawed at, inspected, and shifted about from place to place. They gave her some sort of canvas garment that scratched against her pale skin. Then she was marched along the wing, through a succession of clanging doors that had to be unlocked and locked again after her, taking her deeper and deeper into hell. It was terrifying, and no concession was made for her limp.
‘Hurry along there, we haven’t got all day,’ the prison officer barked. She was a thin, weasel-faced woman with narrow eyes that turned down at each corner.
Gina did her best, feeling exposed and vulnerable beneath the hard glare of the other women prisoners who watched her go by with silent animosity, as if they resented the interruption, this reminder that there was a world outside of these cells.
Then Gina was led into her own cell, a room little bigger than three paces by four, with a tiny barred window set too high in the far wall to see out of. It was bare, bleak and empty.
‘You’ll have company tomorrow. Tonight you get the place all to yourself. Aren’t you the lucky one?’ the woman said, rattling the huge bunch of keys at her waist.
Gina thought she might never forget the sound of the heavy door closing behind her.
If she slept that night, she wasn’t aware of it. She lay, hollow-eyed, a physical ache in her heart, thoughts whirling. So many questions were buzzing through her mind. How had this all come about? Everything seemed to happen so fast. Only yesterday the police had searched her room, found a transistor radio and other goods she never knew she possessed and charged her with shop lifting and burglary. They’d accused her of breaking into Alec Hall’s Music shop and, to her utter dismay and disbelief, found money and jewellery tucked away behind the loose brick.
‘How did that get there?’ She’d gasped out loud in horror, turning to her shocked parents and swearing that she knew nothing about it, that she’d never set eyes on the thing before. But, like her, they were too stunned to protest as the police bore her away.
Constable Nuttall had locked her up in a police cell where she’d passed the most miserable night of her life on a concrete bed with nothing more than a couple of blankets to make herself comfortable. They’d given her food she couldn’t eat, a plastic mug of sweetened tea that she’d had to force down her parched throat.
Now she was locked away in prison, her case to be sent to the Quarter Sessions for trial, which might not come up for months. How would she survive that long? What would she do with herself through the endlessly long hours each day? Would the other women bully her? Would the officers physically punish her? Panic gripped her, terror turning her insides to water as she tried to imagine what might happen to her in this dreadful place.
Gina had always seen herself as physically weak but mentally strong. Yet now she curled herself into a tight ball for comfort. Never had she felt so afraid, so utterly petrified. And nobody was listening to her protests of innocence. She gave herself up to despair and sobbed quietly into her musty pillow.
The moment the family were back in the house following the committal, all struck speechless with shock, Carmina made her momentous announcement that she was indeed pregnant, that the wedding with Luc must go ahead, after all. It was several minutes before her father could focus on what she was saying. He stared at her, perplexed, a small frown puckering his brow in a face that had aged ten years in the last twenty-four hours. He turned at last to address his
wife.
‘I don’t understand. Doc Mitchell said there was to be no baby. How can she be pregnant?’
They all looked at Luc who’d gone white to the gills. He shook his head, bemused. ‘I don’t believe this. I won’t believe it. Tell them the truth for God’s sake, Carmina, that you and I never did anything. We never had sex!’
‘Why do you keep denying it when I carry the proof?’ She patted her belly and Luc winced.
‘I’m not marrying you, Carmina, not now, not ever.’ So saying, he turned on his heels and stormed out of the house.
Carmina watched him stride away with a secret smile on her face, oblivious to his distress. He could protest as much as he liked but who would listen? It was still his word against hers, and now that she had a baby growing inside her it would be easy to prove that her story must be the true version. He’d come round to the idea of marriage once he saw it was inevitable.
She called after him, adopting a deliberately piteous tone, even manufacturing a few tears. ‘Don’t leave me, Luc. There’s no need to pretend any more. Gina isn’t here to hear you. You can do the right thing by me now.’
Now that her sister was safely out of the way.
Carlotta let out a terrible wail. Already, today, one daughter had been taken from her into the unspeakable hell of prison life for a crime she surely didn’t commit. Now another was telling her she was pregnant without the benefit of matrimony. It was all too much. She put her hands to her face and howled, sounding very like an animal in distress.
Marco quickly put his arms about his beloved wife and held her tight. Hearing this dreadful noise children came running from all directions, Lela, Marta, Allessandro, Antonia and the twins, to join their parents in a sobbing, loving heap.
Carmina had never felt more like an outsider, excluded even from the love of her own family. Yet inside beat a pulse of pure triumph. She’d achieved her object at last. Gina had been taken away and locked up where she could no longer get in the way of her plans.
Who's Sorry Now (2008) Page 26