The Women of Lilac Street

by Annie Murray

  ‘You come with me, Lily,’ she said. ‘We’re going to the church and we’ll sing some songs and do some pictures. See, May wants you to come, don’t you, May? And then you can come and play at ours after.’

  Lily yielded and took Aggie’s hand. Soon she was walking off along the street with Aggie, Ann, Silas and May with hardly a backward glance.

  It seemed so wrong, so illicit, but neither of them could help themselves. Following Arthur up the thinly carpeted stairs, both on tiptoe, to the dark landing, Rose felt she was living a dream, but one more real than anything she had ever dared to hope. And then his room opened out to her, its window overlooking the back garden. She saw a bed, table and cupboard, a dressing table with a mirror. Otherwise, a bare room. After all, what was the use of him putting up pictures? But at least it was light and sunny, though he probably could not tell.

  Arthur closed the door, very carefully, then turned, seeking her out.

  ‘My dear?’

  ‘I’m here – oh, my love, here!’ She stepped so eagerly into his arms.

  ‘We must be careful not to keep walking about,’ he whispered. ‘She’s under us, but I really don’t think she’ll hear. If she does she’ll think it’s just me!’ But however quiet they were it felt as if someone was listening.

  But the sight, the feel of him close, rendered Rose helpless, her body pulsing, yet limp with desire for him. She had no rational thoughts, except, Thank heavens I have been a married woman so that I know what physical love is, that it is not frightening and strange. Because she knew – they both knew – that now they were alone they could not hold back. Never in her life had she experienced this kind of desire, like being washed over a waterfall and not caring, only knowing that they must be together and must physically possess each other.

  As soon as they began to kiss it was hopeless. Rose caressed him, at first under his jacket, which she soon removed, undoing the buttons of his shirt as their lips and tongues met, playful at first but soon hungrily, forcefully. She heard his fast, excited breathing. She helped him to unfasten her dress, felt the air on her arms and shoulders as they took it off her and then she slid his shirt from him, seeing for the first time his fine, muscular chest and arms.

  ‘Oh, you’re lovely!’ she said. So beautiful after Harry’s thick body.

  Reverently he reached for her breasts and she helped him, took his hand and trembled as he touched her, his head slightly tilted back almost as if listening. The pleasure of it coursed through her. Moved, she helped him undress further, until both of them were naked.

  ‘Oh, my love,’ Arthur said, holding her close, his hands stroking her back. ‘How I wish I could see you – but there is nothing to compare with how you feel! You’re so smooth, so lovely.’

  Their touching became more heated. Rose found herself, again as if dreaming, leading him to the bed, where she lay and spread herself for him and led him to her and then he was in her, crying out with pleasure and love and gratitude. She held him with a tenderness she had never felt for a man before, taking him to her, her body answering him wholeheartedly.

  The sun was streaming on to their bodies as they lay in each other’s arms, their blood slowing. Their heads were in the shade so that they were both cool and warm at once. Arthur lay with her cradled in his arms, a hand on her breast, and every few moments he kissed the top of her head which lay close to his lips, her pale hair loose on the pillow. They murmured amazed, loving words to each other.

  ‘You’re here,’ Arthur said several times, in wonder. ‘You’re really here with me!’

  ‘I’m here . . .’ She snuggled closer. ‘I’m here, my love.’ She reached up and ran her fingers gently over his face. ‘Can you see anything?’ she asked. ‘The sunlight?’

  ‘No. It’s completely dark. But I can feel it.’ He moved his hand in and out of the shadow. ‘Where it begins and ends. D’you know what the worst part of being blind is?’

  She thought about it. ‘Having to have people help with everything?’

  ‘No – that can be very trying. But the worst is, that it’s so boring.’ His tone was matter-of-fact, not self-pitying. ‘It’s hardly like living in the same world as everyone else any more. There’s no colour. One of the things about enjoying life is being able to see it, to look forward to things that you can see. You don’t realize, you take it all for granted when you can always see. But now I can’t see my food, so eating’s not so much of a pleasure. I eat because I have to live of course, but it’s not the same. Imagine going to post a letter – I’ll never see a pillar box again – never see red! No trees, no sky . . . And worst of all, I can’t see you, all your colours, your shape, the light and shadow . . .’

  Releasing her, he pushed himself up and kneeled over her. ‘I want to learn every part of you – with my lips.’ He kissed her tummy button, tracing a necklace of kisses round it until she squirmed.

  ‘That tickles!’ she giggled. ‘You don’t want me to scream, do you?’

  ‘No! The bedsprings have made enough noise already. We’ll have Mrs T rampaging up the stairs.’

  ‘From the sound of her she’s not a rampaging sort.’

  ‘True.’ Arthur considered. ‘But I expect she could rampage should an urgent need arise. And this would probably count as one, don’t you think?’

  ‘Ooh, don’t,’ Rose said with a thrill of fear. ‘There’s not even a lock on the door!’ She pulled on his arm. ‘We should have put the chair there.’

  Arthur got up and did as she suggested.

  ‘Come and lie with me here again,’ she begged. ‘Don’t go so far away.’

  She was in a heaven that she didn’t ever want to end. She didn’t want to think about anything outside that could spoil these moments.

  ‘Arthur,’ she said seriously as he took her in his arms again. ‘I’ve never, ever done anything like this before. I mean, I don’t want you to think . . .’

  ‘Nor me!’ He laughed, suddenly so youthful sounding, so happy. His lovely voice throbbed with it. ‘You are the most wonderful woman, Rose – you just bowl me over with desire.’

  His words thrilled her. Desire. The way things should be, love and passion between a man and a woman who love each other, like it said in the stories.

  ‘My darling,’ he said earnestly. ‘I know you have Lily to consider, and that when it comes down to it I’m not much of a catch. A blind man round the house is not ideal. But I do at least have a living, thanks to the firm and good old St Dunstan’s. But I can’t imagine a life now without you in it. Dearest one, I want to be with you, to be your man – your husband, of course, I mean – and live with you always.’

  ‘Oh, my love!’ Rose said, stricken to the core. It was all she wanted to hear, all she longed for. But she had told so many lies. There were so many difficulties! She was so deep in untruth – what could she possibly say about Harry, about how things really were? He would never see her in the same way again.

  She lay silent, caught in a trap between truth and dishonesty, like a drowning island between two rivers. Surely one day she must tell him everything, about Harry and why she had acted as she had. But supposing Arthur rejected her in horror? He seemed such a straight, truthful person. If only she had not lied in the first place! But if she had not, surely she would not have had this now, here, this miraculous lovemaking, with him?

  ‘Darling?’ He sensed it, her hesitation. Had he guessed there was something wrong? She spoke quickly, stroking her hand over his belly, loving the place where the smooth skin met an edge of wiry hair at his groin. With Harry she only ever felt a degree of revulsion. With Arthur the love was complete and for every part of him.

  ‘It’s all I want as well, my love,’ she said. ‘You are . . . Well, I can’t really say what you mean to me. You’re everything. But this is all so fast, and there is Lily to consider, as you say. We must take things slowly.’

  ‘Of course.’ Arthur sounded happy enough. He lay back slack and contented. ‘Look, Rose, the fact that y
ou are here, that you’re part of my life – it’s more than I ever dreamed of. When I came back here with no sight – well, I thought that was an end of it. Of any sort of life where a woman could want me. There’s no need for any rush – I love you. That’s all we need to know. God I do –’ he added with vehemence, turning to her. ‘Oh, my sweet – hold me –’ Gently he took her hand and guided her to him, ready to love her all over again.

  Thirty-Five

  ‘Morning, Mrs Taylor!’

  Phyllis jumped violently as her neighbour called from the next doorstep. Phyllis was leaning out of her front door, arms folded, watching as Rachel and Dolly departed along the street. Did they look all right? Would anyone notice anything?

  ‘Oh!’ She came to herself, laying a hand on her pounding heart. ‘Morning, Mrs Paige.’

  ‘Bit warmer today – at last.’

  ‘Er, yes – very nice,’ Phyllis said vaguely. Yes, it is a bit warmer, confound it, she thought. If there was one thing they didn’t need it was hot weather, with her sending her girls out padded up to the hilt.

  ‘Your girls are looking bonny!’

  Phyllis forgot to breathe for a moment. Her pulse started thudding. What did the woman mean? Groping for words, she managed, as casually as she could, ‘Oh, yes – they’re all very well.’ But her neighbour was already turning away. She’d meant nothing by it.

  Phyllis hurried back inside. She had been about to set to on the washing, but found herself in the back room, clutching at the table, her legs almost unable to hold her up.

  ‘Come on, Phyllis Taylor – this is not like you,’ she rallied herself. She was about to sink on to her chair, but she muttered, ‘Let’s have a cuppa – that’ll put me right.’

  Kettle on, she sank on to the chair. Holding her plump hands out in front of her, the flesh swelling round her wedding ring, she saw there was a tremor in them. Her head ached along one side. Her sleep had been broken by bloody, nightmarish, dreams.

  I’m a bag of nerves these days, she thought. She took in a deep, shuddering breath, feeling the bite of her corset at her waist. She wore a traditional whalebone corset, what she considered ‘proper’ as clothing. It was what respectable women wore. It held her in, made her walk upright and straight. But it felt too tight today, hot and constraining, and that only increased her anxiety. She shifted uncomfortably in her chair, breathing in and pushing out her chest and ribcage to try and get her fingers under the edge of it and ease the tightness. It didn’t help much. Her wool dress was too warm for today and she felt trapped in her clothes, in her own body, as if she wanted to fight her way out. Sinking down again, she had a sudden desire to weep. If she could have put her feelings into words she felt worried and small and vulnerable. And Phyllis Taylor didn’t want to recognize vulnerability. It was something she had closed the door on years ago, something she never wanted to feel ever again.

  She was worried to death about all the ways her girls might give themselves away, especially Rachel, with that mouth on her.

  ‘Mom – we’re not wearing those, are we?’ was Rachel’s horrified reaction as Phyllis outlined her plans. Dolly was getting on for five months gone now. From a small, almost imperceptible bulge, the girl was beginning to stick out distinctively at the front. A fat belly and a babby didn’t look the same. Most women would be able to tell, those who knew a thing or two. It wouldn’t do – Phyllis had put the first part of her ideas into action.

  Rachel was staring in horror at the object in Phyllis’s hand, a sort of cushion affair she had stitched out of old ticking and stuffed with sawdust. She gathered the girls round her (Charles had fled at any mention of underwear) and gave them their marching orders. Susanna already wore a girdle – a more up-to-date thing, not like Phyllis’s ‘dreadnought’ as they called it. Susanna thought it the right thing and that it improved her figure. Rachel, who disliked anything constricting round her, was appalled.

  ‘We’re already putting on flesh – look,’ Rachel said, feeling round her thickened waist. Usually she was supple as a sapling. Phyllis had been making them eat and eat: potatoes, dumplings, suet puddings, piling their plates full.

  ‘Well, you can wear one of these instead if you don’t like it,’ Phyllis snapped, running her hands over her ribs and the whalebone corset.

  ‘I’m never wearing one of them!’ Rachel cried.

  The elasticated girdle was the lesser of two evils. But now Rachel was baulking at the next step of the plan – that she and Susanna should slip these sawdust pillow things underneath the girdles to pad themselves out!

  ‘Go on,’ Phyllis instructed them. ‘Stick it in, spread all round the front of you, see? That girdle’s a big size – it’ll all fit in.’

  ‘Mom – what’ll we look like!’ Rachel said, chin jutting obstinately. ‘I’m not going about in that! I’ll be flaming boiled alive!’

  ‘Yes, you are!’ Susanna’s tone was tight and angry. ‘Look, Rach, it’s not just you. We’ve got to get through this somehow, without anyone finding out. It’s all right for you – you don’t even have a man friend, or anyone else to worry about. What am I going to say to David? If he comes anywhere near me or touches me he’s going to feel it!’

  Rachel had sulkily removed the top part of her dress to reveal her white, slender arms and was wrapping the girdle round over her camisole.

  ‘Don’t you want it underneath?’ Phyllis asked. Dolly’s eyes were wide with a mix of anxiety and astonishment. She had become quieter lately, as if resigned to her fate.

  Once the padding was inserted, the girdle fastened and Rachel’s dress back on, she looked a rather more substantial young woman at the front. Susanna began to do the same.

  ‘Well, what am I supposed to do?’ Dolly said quietly.

  ‘What d’you mean, “What am I supposed to do?”’ Rachel advanced on her, hands on her hips. ‘Why do you need to do anything when you’re the one with a babby sticking out and making the rest of us dress up as if we’re expecting a cowing snowstorm?’

  ‘Shush, Rachel!’ Susanna snapped. ‘And stop that language.’ Her eyebrows tugged into a frown. ‘We’ll have to let our dresses out, Mom.’

  ‘We might as well wear coal sacks,’ Rachel muttered.

  ‘Just stop keeping on!’ Susanna exploded. ‘We’ve got to do this and it’s no good mithering on about it. You’re getting on my nerves!’

  Phyllis sat thinking about them. Usually in family disputes her word was law and that was that. But this was different. She knew her girls were trying to pull together. Susanna and Charles cared as much as she did about keeping it secret. She was less sure of Rachel and Dolly. They were doing their best, but one false word and it’d be out – scandal, gossip, how the mighty are fallen . . . She knew what people thought of her – Mrs High and Mighty, putting on airs. That somehow she was not quite the thing, whoever she had managed to marry. Phyllis didn’t care. In fact she revelled in it. She hadn’t dragged herself up in life to care about a bit of neighbourhood tittle-tattle – not of that sort. She could hold her head high, whatever they might say. But this sort of gossip about one of her family getting caught out, playing fast and loose – bastard brat, bun in the oven – was another thing altogether. Gossips never took into account the circumstances – and she did believe Dolly’s account of what had happened. Phyllis knew what men were like. But God, how they’d love it, Mrs Paige, Mrs Green, that Mrs Davis – no first names for Phyllis, she was always ‘Mrs Taylor’. They’d love showing her up! She’d never live it down – nothing in her carefully built life would ever be the same again. And she wasn’t having that – oh, no, not at any price.

  So the girls had been going off to work with their first lot of padding on. She’d have to thicken it up as the months went by. And she’d have to pad Dolly up too in due course, to hide the shape of it. A steady gain in weight all round and as much clothing covering it as could be born. It had to work – had to.

  ‘It’s going to be hell all summer,’ Rachel had stor
med once the girdle was fastened in place. ‘I’m going to be so hot, I’ll die of it.’

  But the girls were not the only reason Phyllis was in such a state. There was another fear, more uncertain and threatening, which broke into her rest. When she did manage to sleep, horrors slithered through her dreams. In the light of morning she told herself she was being ridiculous. But it ate away at her, had done for the past ten days, since Easter when Rachel had suddenly come out with it about that rough-sounding woman who was looking for her.

  By a stroke of luck, when Rachel and Dolly started talking about it that evening, Phyllis was standing with her back to them at the range, waiting for the milk pan to come to the boil.

  ‘Oh, I’d forgotten about her!’ Rachel said when Dolly brought it up, about that horrible old hag who’d collared them on the way back from church.

  ‘Ugh,’ Dolly said. ‘She didn’t half stink! And she gave me the creeps – did you see her teeth? They were like a dog’s, what was left of them, all yellow, like fangs . . .’

  ‘What was she on about?’ Rachel said. ‘Some woman she thought we could tell her about – Hetty or someone?’

  Goose pimples prickled all over Phyllis. She found herself breathing very fast, aware that she needed to control her face. The girls were giggling and shuddering as if discussing a pantomime goblin.

  ‘Ooh, I’ll have nightmares about her, I should think!’

  But it wasn’t Rachel who was having the nightmares.

  ‘Who was this?’ Phyllis turned, pouring milk on to the cocoa, trying to sound unconcerned.

  ‘On the way back, this morning,’ Dolly said. ‘She came up to us on the Moseley Road – she even grabbed Rachel’s arm in her claws!’ They both laughed, enjoying this now. ‘She wanted to know if we knew some lady called Hetty something . . .’

  ‘Baker?’ Rachel said.

  ‘Barker, wasn’t it? Any road, she had Rach by the arm and she stank of booze and . . . Ooh, she frightened me half to death.’