The Staircase Girls

by Catherine Seymour

  As the vicar went on about ‘we leave this world as we entered it’, she couldn’t help but remember Clark’s innocent expression when he was telling her that the pills would prevent a car crash. Now she was certain that they had been the reason that she had to bury her eldest child when he was not even twenty years old.

  That early winter was a terrible time for Rose, and the week after Clark’s death she learned from another bedder that one of her boys at college had gone missing. Phil, an engineering student who liked motorbikes and beer in almost equal measure, hadn’t been seen all week, and his bed hadn’t been slept in.

  Desperate to not mope around at home following Clark’s funeral, Rose returned to work the following week, and was told that she couldn’t do Phil’s room. Initially she thought he had left college because someone had reported him for having a motorbike in his room. Rose didn’t mind that he used to have newspaper on the floor with all his bits of motorbike on them, even though she knew it was breaking college rules to do so (he shouldn’t have a motorbike within thirty miles of the place, so having one, albeit in pieces, in his room was very wrong). She was saddened if that had been the case, because she would have liked to have said goodbye to him. She and Phil got on well, and always had a good chat in the mornings. He’d told her that he was not totally happy at Cambridge and she knew he drank too much on weekends, and had mentioned as much to the porter who let Phil’s director of studies know. In recent weeks, Phil didn’t seem to have been drinking as much, or at least Rose wasn’t taking so many empty bottles back to the off-licence from his room. Still, she thought, if he’s left, maybe he’ll send me a card to say goodbye.

  However, when later that day Rose was asked to go to the housekeeper’s office and found a policewoman waiting for her, she had the same sinking feeling she’d felt when a policeman and woman had knocked at her door early that horrible Saturday morning two weeks earlier.

  ‘Have a seat, Rose,’ the housekeeper said to her. ‘The WPC wanted to talk to you about Phil on your staircase, you knew him quite well, didn’t you?’

  ‘What do you mean “knew”? We have a chat and a laugh most mornings. What’s happened, he’s not in any trouble is he?’ Rose looked anxiously at the WPC.

  ‘Rose, did you think Phil was very unhappy here?’ asked the WPC.

  ‘What? No, I mean, a bit, but nothing terribly bad, why?’

  The policewoman explained that they’d found Phil’s body that morning. ‘It seems the boy had been walking over Jesus Green on the previous Saturday night,’ she explained, ‘and must have wanted to go to the toilet. Rather than going behind a tree or bush, though, we think he went to the footbridge by the cricket pavilion and fell into the water. His body was washed down river and we found him today. His flies were undone.’

  The news was too much for Rose and she broke down and cried hard. She wasn’t just crying for Phil, of course, but also for Clark and his friend, and all the boys that she’d known at the college who had never grown up, the ones who committed suicide or met with terrible accidents. She covered her face with her hands, leant forwards onto the housekeeper’s desk and sobbed until she was dry.

  Rose left without doing any work that day, and never returned.

  The college forwarded a letter to her a week later, from Phil’s mother. In it she thanked Rose for looking after him. But I bloody didn’t, did I? Rose thought to herself, not really. I wasn’t there that week, was I?

  Inside the letter was a thimble that had been found in Phil’s room and sent to Rose as a keepsake. She recalled that he was always sewing buttons on shirts, not just his own, but those of other students on his staircase who needed it doing, too. As tears came to her eyes, Rose again determined that she wouldn’t go back to her staircase. There were now too many bad memories for her there. Not just of Phil but also of Clark. His chemist shop pal’s mother also worked at the college, and seeing her reminded Rose of the accident. It was too hard to take, so she sent in her notice by letter.

  Less than a month later, Rose was on her bike at 6 a.m. in a freezing fog that left icicles in her hair, riding in tandem with a couple of old friends named Doll Gentle and Plummy Smith, to start as a bedder at the college where they worked. Aware that Rose was out of work, the women had spoken to their housekeeper, Mrs Moyer, about taking her on to work with them. After a very brief meeting in the housekeeper’s office, Rose was hired and began work a couple of weeks before Christmas 1965. Her work was pretty much the same as it had been at her previous college, and because they all looked the same, sometimes she forgot where she was and thought she was back on staircase B, and might see Phil at any time.

  But meeting new people proved to be reviving for her. She had one fellow named Jocelyn who she’d always describe as being ‘kindness itself, and wonderful to look after’, as well as twelve undergraduates who shared a gyp room between them, which was in a constant state of chaos and mess. It didn’t take her long to find the chapel, designed by Christopher Wren, which she loved to sit in for a bit of peace and quiet at the end of her shift. While there she’d think about Clark and what might have been for a while, until the nagging worries about what she was going to do when Maurice left home took over.

  The bitter winter of early 1966, although not quite as bad as it had been in 1962, added to Rose’s troubles. Large amounts of snow prevented her from cycling every day, and the buses wouldn’t run, so often she’d walk and push her bike to work, hoping that by the time she finished the roads would be clear enough to cycle home.

  Rose felt more tired than she’d ever done before. At first she put it down to the increased workload – carrying coal to make up seven or eight fires a day was exhausting – but when she started to get pains in her lower abdomen, she decided that it was time to see a doctor. He sent her straight to Addenbrooke’s, who admitted her for an emergency hysterectomy. She had enough time to telephone Maurice at his workplace, a garage on Newmarket Road and he told her friend Ann that evening. She went straight to visit Rose.

  It was usual practice in those days for women to be advised to take three months off from work following such an operation. The hospital had suggested that Rose go to a convalescent home in Hunstanton to recover, but she had refused, not wanting to leave Maurice on his own. Not that she felt as if she’d be any use to anyone anywhere at present, as Rose explained to Ann. ‘They said I won’t be able to pick a cup and saucer up, and they were right, Ann. I can’t do nothing. They’ve cut me up and I’ve got clips and God knows what in there,’ she pointed to her stomach. Sighing, Rose reached for her cigarettes and lit up.

  ‘I’m a bit stressed, an’ all, ’cos I won’t be at work at the end of term and so I won’t get my usual end of term tips, will I?’ At the end of every term the money Rose received in tips went towards paying her bills or she would put some away for Maurice. ‘You know they’ve put the rent up when I started getting family allowance for Maurice, don’t you?’ Rose went on. ‘So I took the ten bob from the family allowance straight down to the rent office when it arrived, and said, “There you go!” ’

  Rose relied on those tips more than she liked to admit. The students would leave it on the coffee table under something like a pot, a cup or a book. Sometimes Rose would be given a little ornament or something similar, but she preferred to get the cash. ‘How about if I ask Doll or Plummy to get them for you?’ suggested Ann.

  ‘No, don’t worry, if they’ve taken on my work then they deserve the tips themselves.’

  Ann changed the subject. ‘Fred said I can get a job at the colleges, Rose, if I want to, now the kids are older.’

  ‘Well, I should think so an’ all. It’s a good job, and they’ll look after you too. There’s a pension, trips out and the perks. You’ll have to tell them you won’t be able to work on the conferences in the summer, though,’ Rose remembered. ‘You know, in the school holidays.’

  ‘Oh right, yes,’ Ann said brightly.

  ‘Yeah,’ Rose shifted slightly in her
bed, ‘I’ll have a word soon as I get on me feet again, if you want? Or I’ll get Dolly to ask around. Don’t worry, we’ll find you something.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Ann with feeling.

  Rose raised a smile, shook her cigarette packet and asked, ‘Ann, love, do me a favour and bring me some more fags tomorrow would you?’

  JOYCE

  Cambridge 1962 onwards

  Joyce and Ken’s marriage wasn’t the stuff of romance novels or soppy movies. They were both happy to have carried on as they were before the ‘accident’ that prompted the ceremony. Ken was away at sea as much as ever, and sent wages back for his new wife. Joyce continued to work as a cleaner until she became too big with their first son, and then she stopped until baby Trevor (named after the brother she sadly lost) was six months old and her mother could care for him – Celia and she slotted their cleaning work in to suit each other’s schedule. Ken was home on extended leave only four times in the first couple of years because he was stationed in the Middle East, and two weeks’ leave didn’t really give him enough time to get home quickly and cheaply. Flying was out of the question, which meant taking a ship or trains, boats and buses, and at least four days out of his precious fourteen of freedom from duty. He’d write, but Ken’s letters were usually prosaic, regular affairs, never written with any kind of romance or even much love, it seemed to Joyce. Still, life went on pretty much as usual for her and the baby, and they’d moved in with Celia and Charles because it was cheap and convenient, plus his grandparents loved Trevor.

  When Ken did make it home they’d have a couple of days of ‘smooching’ as Joyce put it, and then he would be out most nights at the pub, and in no time it seemed he was gone again. When Trevor was two years old Joyce was pregnant again, and nine months later Trevor had a little brother, named Kevin.

  With the arrival of a second child came the offer of a two-bedroom council house which was barely a year old. It was sited at the edge of a new development in the process of being built in the north-west area of the town, called King’s Hedges. Kevin was ten months when they moved into the new house, and a few months later Ken arrived for a surprise fortnight leave.

  As usual he had arrived home unannounced, having not written to tell her he was on his way, nor left a message anywhere that had a telephone where they knew her. He was his usual self, she thought, for the first week of his leave, playing football with Trevor in the fields out back of the house – although for no more than fifteen minutes at a time – and she and he went to the pictures to see a Western film called Apache Rifles. ‘This is good, innit?’ he said with eyes widening as Linda Lawson walked across the screen. ‘Cor yeah,’ she agreed, as her favourite cowboy Audie Murphy rode up to the blonde actress on screen.

  All was well until one night after tea when, with the boys in bed, Ken turned to her and said, ‘Oh by the way, I shall be going tomorrow and I shan’t be coming back.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘I’m leaving ya.’

  Just like that.

  Bang.

  The next thing Joyce knew she was standing in a field. She’d walked out in a daze and didn’t know where she was going, but after a good long walk, she came to in a field with the thought, I’ve left the kids with him!

  She ran home.

  Ken nodded at her as she entered the back door and asked, ‘You alright?’

  ‘What do you think? I’m going to bed.’

  He nodded again. ‘OK, I’ll be up there in a minute.’

  Joyce started. ‘You don’t think I’m sleeping with you, do you?’

  She made her way upstairs to Trevor’s room, gently moved him across the bed and lay down next to him, fully clothed.

  The next morning, the memory of which would never leave her, Joyce stood at the door as Ken was about to walk off down the road with his kit bag slung over his shoulder. He looked her in the eye and told her that he didn’t love them, they were nothing more than pieces of driftwood on the beach to him. With anger flaring, she said, ‘Right, you can tell that boy why you’re leaving,’ and pointed at Trevor, who was trying to push past her to get to his father.

  ‘He won’t understand,’ Ken said dismissively.

  ‘Oh yes, he will, you tell him why you’re leaving. He’ll want two sides to the story, so you give him your side.’

  With a sigh, Ken bent down and spoke directly to his four-and-a-half-year-old son. Then he straightened up, turned and walked off.

  As he moved away, Joyce let Trevor out and he ran after Ken, crying, ‘Daddy, Daddy, come back . . .’

  They heard nothing from him ever again. There were no birthday or Christmas cards, nothing. When he was older, Trevor took to keeping a cricket bat behind the front door and said that he’d use it on his dad if he ever turned up again. When Kevin asked why his dad didn’t live with them – he was about four or five years old at the time – Trevor said, ‘I’ll tell you why, but I don’t want to hear about him ever again.’ He told Kevin that, ‘Dad said he didn’t have any love for us any more and he was going away.’

  Ken’s parents, the boys’ grandparents, also cut off all contact and sent no cards at birthdays or Christmas. Despite the fact that they lived barely thirty miles away in the Fen town of March, they chose to never see their grandsons again. Joyce would have been happy for the boys to visit and even stay over with Ken’s mum and dad, but they never as much as wrote a letter saying how sorry they were about everything. It was as if she and their grandsons had ceased to exist.

  It was left up to Joyce to initiate divorce proceedings, which she did nine months after he’d left them, citing desertion as the reason. She had heard that Ken had gone off to live with another woman, but she didn’t know for sure if that was so, and didn’t really care either way. When the divorce was granted she was awarded £5 a week maintenance money from Ken. It was automatically taken from his wages and sent to Joyce as a postal order, which she’d put into her Post Office account. Out of that she’d give a pound each to the boys.

  Being a single mother of two young boys is not easy, and Joyce knew that she’d need all of her strength and attention for her sons if they were not to grow up getting into trouble all the time. She was hugely thankful that her own father took it upon himself to spend as many weekends with them as he could, and instilled in them both a respect and interest in the military which resulted in them joining the scouts and then, when old enough, the army cadets.

  They were amazingly well behaved at school and when playing out in the neighbourhood. Trevor and Kevin always showed respect for their mother, tried to help out at home as much as they could and loved their grandparents – when Celia was taken so ill that she couldn’t work and Joyce took on her cleaning work as well as her own, the boys would go to Celia’s house and cheer her up. When Celia was too ill to look after the boys, Joyce took them with her to the houses that she cleaned. At one house they played with the sons of her boss, who were the same age, so she could get on with her work without interruption.

  Even when they entered their teenage years, Trevor and Kevin gave Joyce no cause for concern, and she never had the mortifying sight of policemen bringing either of them home. She’d seen so many of their neighbours’ sons being helped out of the light-blue-and-white Austin panda cars by policemen on Saturday evenings, that she fully expected her boys to appear in the back of one, too. But they were never sent home from school, kept behind as punishment for cheek or unruly behaviour, and she never had a visit from the truant officer. She might not have been lucky in love, Joyce often thought to herself, but she was blessed with her boys.

  Both of them understood from an early age that because they didn’t have a dad, then their mother had to work and couldn’t afford to buy them everything that their friends had. Still, when they were little Joyce would save up some money in order that once a month they’d be treated to a bit of dinner at the Civic Restaurant then to the Regal cinema for a film, before going back to the Civic for some tea. She’d offer them
comics or sweets each weekend and they’d usually go for the comics. Despite the cleaning work and Ken’s small allowance, Joyce had to go on the social.

  There were never any new ‘boyfriends’ in her life – ‘I’ve had enough of ’em,’ she’d say whenever friends asked if she didn’t miss having someone to warm her feet on in the winter months. ‘A hot-water bottle’s a lot less bother!’

  One expense Joyce always did her best to be able to afford was an annual holiday. Depending on how much she’d been able to save, she would book one or two weeks at Butlin’s in Skegness or Bognor Regis with her friends, who happened to also be mums to her boys’ pals. There’d be three mums and five or six boys in two or three chalets (the dads having to stay at home and work), with a mum taking it in turns every night to cook the evening meal for everyone. The mums would leave the oldest two boys in charge and go dancing. Joyce accepted invitations from blokes to dance if she’d seen that they were any good, but she’d just as often stick with her pals. On one holiday in the late 1960s, Joyce came second in a glamorous mum contest in Bognor. She looked like Princess Margaret in her two-piece suit, matching hat and handbag, a string of pearls round her neck. Blimey, she thought, I’m nearly forty and winning a beauty contest! Plenty of blokes wanted to dance with her that night, but she stayed seated, looking at her trophy, drinking Babycham.

  Celia passed away when the boys were in secondary school. She ended her days in a care home not far from Joyce, who used to visit every Saturday (her sons were both in the army at the time, stationed overseas). It was a quiet end, not unexpected and she didn’t suffer. For that, Joyce was grateful. Not long after, and with no need to be home for the boys’ sake at lunchtime, Joyce went back into the college as a bedder. This time, though, she wasn’t on a students and fellows’ staircase, but instead went to work at the master’s lodge. She’d heard that one of the two bedders who worked there were leaving, and despite it being almost twenty-five years after Joyce had first done the job, the same housekeeper at the college was still in place. Mrs Atkins remembered Joyce as a discreet, hard worker, so the job was hers as soon as she applied for it.