by Marie Joseph
The narrow landing did not give him much of a run, but the months of training had left the American fighting fit. With a well-aimed kick the door shuddered and the flimsy bolt gave.
The water in the bath was just beginning to flood the diamond-patterned oilcloth on the floor. It was pink water; that was the first thing Sally noticed as she stood on the threshold, unable to move, a hand holding still the strangled scream rising in her throat.
Her mother’s head rested on the side of the bath, the blonde hair sleek to her skull as if she had tried to drown then changed her mind. Her hands were spreading tendrils of red through the water. She was fully clothed.
‘She’s cut her wrists!’ Lee turned off the tap, and bending over lifted the still figure up into his arms. ‘Go tell your father to call the hospital for an ambulance! Quick! She’s alive, honey. She’s alive!’
But by the time the ambulance came Josie had sunk into unconsciousness nearly as deep as death itself. Stanley hovered, helpless in his anguish, watching as Lee bound Josie’s wrists, telling Sally what to do, cursing when the ambulance took twenty minutes to arrive.
‘God damn it, man, what kept you?’ Lee followed the stretcher out to the door. ‘Go on, sir.’ He pushed Stanley through the door. ‘You go with them. I’ll follow with Sally. We’ll get a cab. Go on!’
‘You’ll never get a taxi. Not today. Not at Christmas.’ Stanley, ineffectual to the last, turned a piteous face as he stumbled down the path. ‘Better stay here with Sally. Better … far better …’
‘We’ll get transport, sir. Okay?’ Lee stood bareheaded in the pale afternoon sunshine, an arm round Sally. ‘Go on, sir. Please.’
‘He’s too gentle.’ Sally stood by the telephone, watching dazed as Lee did exactly what he had said he would do, and rustled up a cab. ‘Oh, how could she do it, Lee? Especially now?’
‘Because of now,’ Lee said, putting the receiver back on its stand. ‘Her mind couldn’t take it, so she did what she could to shut it all out.’ He pulled Sally into his arms and kissed her on her trembling mouth. ‘Now go get your coat, okay? Your momma’s going to be okay.’
Suddenly he pulled her close again with a desperate urgency. ‘I can see you’re going to need me around, honey.’ His blue eyes darkened with love. ‘And that’s where I’m going to be. Around as much as I can, and when I get settled and stop moving about – when we’re married, you’re going to come and stay near me.’ He looked into her eyes. ‘It can happen, honey. A guy can have his wife near the base.’ He traced her mouth with a finger. ‘Your momma’s not going to die. She’s going to be okay, and your dad will look after her.’ He smiled. ‘They might not be getting along too good, but in his own way he loves her. You know that.’
‘She had another man. A soldier.’ Sally reached up and clasped his hands as they lay on her shoulders. ‘She went away with him, then he chucked her, and it left her feeling …’ she groped for the right word ‘It left her diminished. You know?’
‘And your father hasn’t forgiven her?’
‘I don’t think he’s ever mentioned it.’ Sally felt her eyes begin to burn again. ‘They just hurt each other. All the time.’
The sound of the doorbell stopped Lee’s reply.
‘The cab’s here,’ he said hurriedly. ‘Ready, honey?’
They sat round the fire until late that night, Lee and Sally on the settee together and Stanley opposite them in his chair. There was no uncomfortable embarrassment about the American. He had slipped into easy familiarity as though he had belonged to the Barnes’s household for years. Already he knew his way around the kitchen, and kept disappearing then reappearing with a tray of tea.
‘She’ll be out of the hospital in a few days, but what then?’ Stanley shrank down into his knitted cardigan, droopy from many washings, the knot of his tie unloosened, even his small moustache following the downward lines of his whippet-lean features. ‘Hearing about John was only the final straw. She’s been depressed for a long time.’
He stared into the fire. ‘I wish you’d known her a year ago, lad. Always cracking jokes, and going out dancing.’ Stanley reached for his pipe. ‘I know some folks thought it strange for a married woman to go out dancing, but she needed to be gay and happy. I suppose some thought I was weak for letting her go and saying nothing, but Sally’s mother was different. She needed people round her all the time; she liked bright colours, music – not my kind of music – but I understood. At least I thought I understood.’
He was pretending the soldier had never existed, Sally told herself. After that first initial outburst, when Josie had come back from Morecambe and he had caught her out, her father had pushed it to the back of his mind. And now was certainly not the time to remind him of it.
A coal shifted in the grate, throwing up flames that made shifting shadows in the darkened room. Sally knelt down on the rug, feeling the heat on her face as she took the firetongs and put the coal back into place. She could still see her mother’s eyes as she lay in the high and narrow hospital bed, desperate blue eyes mirroring her damaged spirit. She wondered how much of the gaiety and sometimes crude light-heartedness had been a cover for a desolation that had always been there?
When she took her place beside Lee again, the brightness of her own eyes told him she was near to tears.
He took her hand and held it for a moment against his cheek. ‘I wish I didn’t have to go back in the morning,’ he whispered.
‘We’ll be all right.’ Sally nodded her head up and down twice, then flinched as Lee searched her eyes for a long moment.
‘God damn it! You English slay me. You crucify yourselves trying not to say what you really mean and think!’ He turned to Stanley. ‘Forgive me, sir. It’s impertinent of me to speak my mind. It’s just that the stiff upper lip mentality has me bugged, I guess.’
‘What other way is there, lad?’ Stanley sucked at the stem of the empty pipe. ‘The English, and in particular northerners, don’t and never have worn their hearts on their sleeves. It’s our way, and the only way we know.’
The piece of coal fell from position again in a shower of sparks, and this time no one moved to put it back.
‘The trouble with you Americans,’ Stanley said as if to himself, ‘you have no depth. It’s all a matter of roots, I suppose, roots that don’t go deep enough.’
He got up, bending to knock out the empty pipe against the bars of the grate. ‘Put the guard round and see to the front door before you come up, will you, lad? I’ll see you before you go in the morning.’
‘See how it is?’ Sally’s smile tore at Lee’s heart-strings. ‘He doesn’t even give me the responsibility for locking the front door if someone else is there.’
‘He’s okay.’ Lee pulled her close into his arms. ‘Oh, love, my little love, you look worn out. C’mon. Let’s just sit here awhile.’ He put up a hand and smoothed the hair away from her hot forehead. ‘You were born to be cherished. Don’t you realize that?’
‘I realize how much I love you.’ Sally closed her eyes, snuggling deep into his shoulder. ‘What would have happened if you hadn’t been here today?’
‘I’ll always be there when you need me,’ Lee said softly, and the words, unheard, hung for a moment in the stillness of the firelit room.
Barbara Shawfield heard the news as she tucked a stray strand of her mousey hair into the neat roll encircling her head before the mirror in the downstairs cloakroom at Telephone House.
‘Poor little Mr Barnes. It was bad enough getting the telegram, without his wife trying to commit suicide like that. He looks like a loser, though. I’ve always thought he looked like a loser. I’m surprised he’s come into the office today.’
‘I’m not!’
Heads turned towards Barbara, as, flushing red, she faced the small knot of clerical workers. ‘Mr Barnes would have come into work the day after, even if it hadn’t been the Christmas holiday. He’s like that. It doesn’t surprise me in the least!’ She walked swiftly from the c
loakroom, opening the door with a flourish and letting it swing back of its own accord.
It was only five to nine, but Stanley would be there at his desk. She climbed the stairs that had been the servants’ stairs when the offices were a family mansion, her jaw thrust out and her pale eyes glistening with emotion.
Christmas had been a barren time, and if that was sacrilege bordering on blasphemy then she couldn’t help it. The other woman always paid; she had accepted that a long time ago. The wireless and her records had been poor company. Twice she had lifted the receiver and dialled Stanley’s number only to replace it when she heard the ringing tone. If he had answered she would have murmured ‘A Happy Christmas!’ that was all, but at the last moment her courage had failed her. Barbara, more than a little breathless, reached the top floor.
But it wasn’t going to fail her now. If any man needed a shoulder to cry on then that man was Stanley Barnes, and she was here – with all the frustrated burning love inside her. She was here!
Stanley was staring at an overflowing in-tray on his desk when Barbara burst into his room. He looked up, mildly surprised, as she closed the door behind her. Then he snatched off his reading glasses to see her better as she sagged against the door, panting hard.
‘Ah … Barbara …’ Stanley nodded. ‘Please don’t say anything, dear. Not yet. I need your concern, God knows, but these past few days … I think I’ve been to hell and back.’
It was too much to bear. Barbara felt as if her soul was melting. ‘Oh, Stanley …’ With three long strides she was across the room, hands outstretched, her mouth wrenched into a twisted shape by the force of her emotions.
For a disbelieving moment Stanley thought she was going to hurl herself onto his lap, but as he leaned as far back in his chair as was possible without tipping it over, Barbara perched herself on the edge of his desk. Bending down, she took both his hands in her own.
‘Why didn’t you let me know?’ He saw her eyes redden as they filled with tears. ‘Why didn’t you come to me? You said I was your friend. I would have done anything … anything at all to help.’ She leaned even further forward. As her dignity crumbled away his own reasserted itself, but Barbara was past noticing anything that might have stopped her gushing flow of sympathy.
‘It’s beyond comprehension how your wife could do a thing like that when you needed her most. Oh, Stanley, when I heard about it all just now my one thought was to get to you.’ She squeezed his hands hard. ‘Please, my dear, let me share your grief.’
With a determined effort, Stanley managed to free his hands from the damp clinging fingers. Pushing back his chair he limped over to the window, leaving Barbara sitting foolishly on the edge of the desk, a carefully darned ladder in her stocking snaking down from her knee to disappear beneath the laces of her sensible shoes.
He hardly saw her. Cringing from the embarrassing show of emotion from a woman he had genuinely believed wanted nothing from him but friendship, he felt angry and dismayed. He stared down at the well-kept lawns fringed with darkly dripping rhododendron bushes, and asked himself what he had done to deserve this. Cruelty had never been a part of his make-up, but what he had to say must be said quickly, and now, before anyone came into the room. Stanley ran a finger round his white starched collar.
Josie’s attempt at suicide had done more than jerk him out of his complacency; it had shaken him to the depths of his being. For as long as he lived he would never forget the sight of his wife’s face on that hospital pillow. Without the habitual layer of make-up, Josie’s cheeks, washed clean, had seemed more transparent than pale. Her arms with the bandaged wrists had been stretched out on the bedspread, reminding him, as if the reminder was necessary, of what she had intended to do. Nothing could bring John back, but he had almost lost his wife as well, and as God was his judge he intended to try to make it up to her.
Turning round, he spoke quietly to the tearful woman who sat watching him devotedly.
‘My dear. You must not upset yourself on my behalf.’ He took out a white handkerchief and blew his nose, wanting to let her down gently, feeling for the right words. ‘I want you to know that you will always have a special corner of my heart, and under different circumstances, well, who knows?’ He opened both hands wide, then bent down to pick up the handkerchief as it floated to the floor. ‘I am not worthy of your touching concern, believe me …’
Barbara slid from the desk. How good this dear little man was. So much a man of integrity, a real Capricorn. Striving to be loyal to the wife who wasn’t fit to tie his shoelaces. She understood. Never by word or deed would she compromise him, ever, in any way. But in trying to kill herself, Josie Barnes had bound her husband to her side for ever. Barbara sighed deeply. It was all so beautiful, so inevitable and so very beautiful.
Moving across the room, she put a hand on Stanley’s arm and kissed him lightly at the corner of his moustache. Now it was her turn to make the ultimate sacrifice.
‘Remember me with love,’ she whispered, then turning swiftly ran from the room at a graceless plodding run, the welt of her grey cardigan showing peg marks from hanging on the line over her bath, the seam of her left stocking not quite straight.
Back in the downstairs cloakroom she locked herself in a lavatory to indulge in a few scalding tears. Then she wiped her eyes and pushed the handkerchief, with its spray of forget-me-knots embroidered in the corner, up the sleeve of her cardigan.
Her head was held high as she emerged. Let the girls in her department notice her red eyes and think what they liked. What did they know about anything, anyway? It took a woman of her age and sophistication to understand the real meaning of love and sacrifice.
On her way down the long corridor she almost bumped into Mr Armitage from Accounts, a tall stooped man with fine hair receding from a high domed forehead, and an invalid wife at home with a dicky heart.
‘Ah … Miss Shawfield.’ He made a little side-stepping movement. ‘Did you have a pleasant Christmas?’ His pale eyes were only briefly focused on her, but Barbara felt her spirits lift at once.
‘Have you heard about poor Mr Barnes’s dreadful Christmas?’ She lifted a hand to tuck a stray wisp of hair back into the sausage roll. ‘Life can be very cruel, can’t it, Mr Armitage?’
When she went to her desk five minutes later there was a gleam in her eyes, a gleam which would have made Edwin Armitage, Clerical Officer, choke on his morning coffee biscuit had he even begun to guess what lay behind it.
Eight
‘SALLY? SALLY BARNES?’
Christine Duckworth, now Christine Myerscough, very heavily pregnant, hating every inch of her grossly distorted figure, saw Sally hurrying to catch her tram. She called out to her.
‘Oh, God, I’d forgotten she was deaf!’ Christine, muttering to herself, started a lumbering run along the pavement, her swagger coat flying open to reveal a turquoise woollen smock hanging in gathers from a pointed yoke. The coat was made of what was called teddy-bear material, an apt description for the hairy garment which seemed to accentuate rather than conceal her enormous stomach. Christine, in spite of her tall willowy figure, had not carried well. When she touched Sally’s arm the smaller girl had difficulty in keeping her eyes fixed on Christine’s face. She felt a sense of shock as she saw the puffed eyelids and dulled eyes of the girl whose beauty had once been breathtaking.
The weather had turned very cold. The sky was low with the promise of snow to come. Sally had managed to buy a packet of soap flakes on her way to the tram and was clutching it, unwrapped, to her chest, bearing it home in triumph, anticipating her mother’s face when she handed it over.
‘Christine! I haven’t seen you for ages. How are you? I thought you were staying down south somewhere with your husband?’
‘I was.’ Christine hesitated. Oh, God, this was going to be more difficult than she had thought. There was a defensive look on the glowing face of the girl in the red bobble cap, as if she was remembering their last meeting way back at the end of
last summer. Oh, God, why had she bothered? Christine tried to pull the coat together at the front, and forced a smile.
‘I saw you, and I wondered … I just wondered if you had heard from Johnnie lately? You know? Whether he’s still where he was, and how he’s keeping?’
To her surprise, Sally simply stared at her, completely and obviously taken aback.
‘You mean you haven’t heard?’
‘Heard what?’
Sally frowned. ‘Well, no, you wouldn’t have if you’ve been away.’ She stared at the ground for a moment, then lifting her head looked straight into Christine’s face.
‘John is dead, Christine. We got a telegram to say he had been killed in action. I’m sorry. It seems an awful way to tell you, but well … I’m sorry.’
‘Oh, my God!’
Christine’s eyes opened wide, her jaw sagged, and her next words seemed to be forced through frozen lips.
‘Johnnie dead? Oh, dear God! Not Johnnie! I don’t believe it! I won’t believe it! He swore he’d come back … He promised me.’
‘Promised you?’ Sally couldn’t help it. There was more than a touch of her mother’s acidity in her voice. The self-control she had practised so assiduously since the telegram came now broke as she stared at the girl swaying before her on the busy pavement. ‘You broke your promise to John a long time ago. Remember?’
‘He can’t be dead,’ Christine said distantly. She was crying now, very quietly, so softly it was hardly noticeable. The fluffy coat had fallen open, and to balance herself she was swaying back on her flat heels, her stomach encased in the turquoise wool as rounded and huge as if half a barrel had been clamped to her front.
She began to shake. ‘Oh, Sally. Help me! I feel so ill. I think I’m going to faint …’ She clutched at Sally’s arm. ‘Don’t leave me … please.’
‘Hold on to me and we’ll find a taxi.’ Sally glanced round her at the hurrying Saturday lunchtime crowds, heads bent against the snow-spiked wind. Could no one see that they needed help? She looked at Christine’s ashen face, and urged her on. Round the corner there was a taxi rank with a lone car waiting, its driver hunched over the wheel.