The Women of Lilac Street

by Annie Murray

  ‘Well, that’s the queer thing,’ Dulcie said, sipping her tea. ‘About what happened. I mean, the lad should never’ve done it but it were only a few minutes and he gave it back. He thought it was a joke but she scared the living daylights out of him. It was as if her whole world had fallen apart, just in a few minutes.’

  ‘Poor soul,’ Freda said. ‘I hope she’s not done sum-mat hasty.’

  Aggie and the others were already in bed that night when the news came. The neighbours had carried on searching and those still at home were in and out of each other’s houses talking about it. Mary Crewe had been seen up and down the street as regular as clockwork for years. Everyone felt they knew her even though she spoke scarcely a civil word to anyone from one year to the next.

  Aggie was lying beside May, who was already asleep. They had stayed up late to wait for Mom to come home, and they’d had a few chips each, but still there was no news that Mary Crewe had come home. Aggie’s eyes were closed and she was drifting off, when she heard the knock downstairs. She raised her head and listened. It sounded like Dulcie.

  May and Ann were both asleep and she slipped off the bed without disturbing them, but she found John getting up as well.

  ‘Who is it?’ he whispered.

  ‘Mrs Skinner, I think.’

  They crept halfway downstairs.

  ‘It was at Moor Street,’ Dulcie was saying in hushed tones. ‘She managed to get right out along the track.’

  ‘Oh, dear God,’ Aggie heard her mother say. ‘Ooh, I feel quite peculiar.’

  ‘Come on, bab – you sit down,’ Dulcie said. Aggie and John looked at each other in the gloom of the staircase.

  ‘She’s thrown herself under a train!’ John whispered and Aggie was infuriated by the objective relish in his voice.

  ‘I know,’ she hissed. ‘And it’s horrible. How can you say it like that?’

  She left his side enraged, and went back to bed. She found she was shaking, and it took her a long time to sleep. All night, her mind was full of it: Mary out by the dark tracks, and the sadness and the horror of it. All the next day she felt sick and exhausted.

  Fifty-Seven

  ‘I’m always chasing rainbows!’ Rose sang out in her sweet voice as she worked.

  She was scrubbing her way down the stairs, sleeves rolled up. As she reached the bottom and stood up, for a moment she was overcome, her head swam and she steadied herself against the wall, breathing deeply to push the feeling away.

  ‘Why’re you singing, Mom?’ Lily asked. She looked genuinely puzzled.

  Rose felt a blush spread over her cheeks. She hadn’t realized Lily was watching her.

  ‘Was I?’ She wiped her arm across her forehead to move wisps of hair out of her eyes. ‘Oh, I don’t know. Must be because it’s a nice day. Come on –’ She held out her hand to distract Lily. ‘I’m going to make a cup of tea and then how would you like to come and help me wash the windows?’

  She had scarcely noticed the terrible events with Mary Crewe because she had spent the afternoon with Arthur, and on returning had stayed at home with Lily and closed into her own thoughts. When she heard eventually, on the Sunday, she could see what a tragic event this was, but nothing seemed to be able to dent her own happiness.

  On Saturday, she had asked Muriel Wood if Lily could spend some time at her house because she had to visit her sick sister, and on Sunday Lily had gone to Sunday school with Aggie and the others. Rose felt pangs of guilt about her untruths to Muriel, but Muriel was so kind-hearted and would welcome Lily anyway. And above all, the force of her need to be with Arthur had overridden everything.

  She persuaded Arthur to introduce her to Mrs Terry as his fiancée.

  ‘She doesn’t know anything about me, does she?’ she reasoned, though Arthur, ever truthful, was very hesitant.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘It seems devious. Supposing she finds out?’

  ‘But how could she do that?’ Rose said. ‘Oh, please, Arthur – otherwise it’s going to be so awkward, all this creeping about smuggling me into the house, or having to stay out all the time. That’s not very honest either, is it?’

  Arthur had to concede that this was true. So he announced to Mrs Terry that he was engaged and that Rose would be visiting him. Mrs Terry was surprisingly accommodating about it and Rose realized that crusty as she was, she had a soft spot for Arthur.

  So they had spent two delicious afternoons being able to come and go as they pleased and planning a new life.

  ‘Maybe we’d be best off in London,’ Arthur said.

  ‘I don’t see why,’ Rose said as they cuddled up on the bed, half clothed in the warmth. ‘Can’t you just advertise yourself as a piano tuner anywhere?’

  ‘I suppose so.’ He sounded doubtful.

  ‘London’s so big,’ she said. ‘It frightens me a bit.’

  After a silence, Arthur said, ‘It’s my family that’s really troubling me. How will my parents feel – and Connie and Ede? I feel so underhand taking off like this, not saying a word, after all they’ve done for me.’

  Rose lay thinking about it. It was so long since she had had her own mother and father. She would have loved to know Arthur’s mother and father, to get to know them and be accepted by them. But in their circumstances, how could this ever happen?

  ‘I don’t know –’ she sighed, really burdened by this. ‘I’m bringing you so much trouble, my dear. Could you . . . perhaps write to them, later, when we are far away, and explain? Would they hold it against you for ever?’

  ‘They’re very old-fashioned,’ Arthur said. ‘They don’t like to stand out, or have any scandal. But since the war – I suppose that’s changed things. I know they’d rather I was alive and happy . . .’ He turned and kissed her. ‘I can’t imagine being happy without you, Rosie. It’s just all rather a lot to think of at once. So . . . Where would you like us to make our home?’

  ‘What about going to Manchester or . . . I don’t know, York? There must be plenty of pianos up there.’

  Arthur laughed. ‘Oh, I’m sure there are. You’re an adventurous soul, aren’t you?’

  She rolled over to look at him and kissed his warm cheek. ‘Only when I’m with you.’

  Arthur pulled her close, laughing joyfully. ‘Oh, Rose, my beautiful Rose. God, I love you. This is all terrible and not how it should be – not at all. But why doesn’t it feel wrong?’

  ‘It’s not wrong,’ she said fiercely. ‘Not you and me. It’s right –’ She kissed him between the words each time. ‘Right, right!’

  The more they talked, the more they felt that going north would be best. To Manchester or Leeds. And soon.

  ‘I don’t know what to think,’ Arthur said. ‘Losing my sight makes me much more timid. Do we just go, pack a case one day and take our chances, like vagabonds, or do we prepare ahead? What about Lily? She needs to go to school.’

  ‘No – not yet,’ Rose reminded him. ‘She’s only little.’

  ‘I’d forgotten. Yes, I suppose she just needs to be where you are. But she’ll miss her father.’

  ‘You can be her father,’ Rose said. She thought of the queasy feelings she’d been having from time to time. She kept ignoring it, telling herself she was a little bit ill, or that it was the heat. She knew in a part of her mind that she was expecting a baby and that, the way things had been, only Harry could be the father . . . But she just wouldn’t let herself admit it. She couldn’t worry Arthur with it. Not now, when he was so apprehensive about everything else.

  All she wanted to think about was that soon, she and Arthur would walk away and never come back, and that that momentous day was coming very soon.

  For now, though, with Harry, she had to carry on pretending.

  One afternoon that week, he came home early, having finished a job. Rose was in the kitchen cooking. She had let Lily go and play out with the Green children and some of the others and she had been embroidering. Luckily she had just put her sewing away and started on a st
ew. All afternoon she had been in a dream, her mind fixed on Arthur, on their plans. She jumped when Harry suddenly appeared at the back window, wheeling his bike.

  Rose arranged her face into pleasant lines. She might as well try and be nice. What did it matter now?

  ‘You’re back early!’

  ‘No sense hanging about. We’d finished.’ He looked round. ‘Where’s the kid?’

  ‘Out playing. I’ll put the kettle on,’ she said.

  But Harry came up behind her and laid his hands over her breasts.

  ‘Careful,’ she said, trying to wriggle away. ‘You’ll dirty my dress – you’ve got paint on you, look!’

  But he was insistent. ‘It’s dried. Won’t do any harm.’ He took hold of her again, his eyes already glazing with desire. ‘Come up with me. While we’re on our own.’

  She could think of no reason to object and she wanted to do anything to avoid trouble. With his hands at her waist, Harry steered her up the stairs, stopping once or twice to nuzzle at the back of her neck. She could smell his sweat, the plaster dust, paint, white spirit on his clothes. Nausea twisted her insides at the smells and she had to swallow hard, but she went with him, quiet and docile. Harry was too caught up in his own desires to take any notice of what she was doing.

  In the bedroom he pawed at her clothes.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ she said, not wanting him to tear anything.

  ‘No, let me,’ he insisted. He seemed as excited by undressing her as anything. Usually she undressed in the dark with her back to him. He undid her buttons clumsily, pulled off her dress, her underclothes.

  ‘Lie down,’ he ordered.

  He undressed only as much as was necessary and took her, hard and urgently, his eyes closed. Rose turned her head so as not to look at him, holding her mind apart. After her love with Arthur, who saw her far more with his blinded eyes than Harry ever did with his unharmed ones, it was horrible to be shamed like this. She felt dirty and small, his weight forcing her down, pressing on her lungs, his stale breath panting into her face. She made herself think about Arthur. Soon this would end. It would be over for ever.

  Harry’s need was soon satisfied and he rolled off her, on to his back, and yawned. Rose turned from him and sat up, reaching for her bloomers, longing to go and wash.

  ‘Make us a cuppa tea, bab,’he said sleepily. ‘I’ll ’ave a kip, just for a minute.’

  She dressed hastily and went downstairs. As she did so, Lily came running in with a scraped knee.

  ‘Oh, dear, never mind,’ Rose said, thanking heaven she hadn’t fallen over even a few minutes earlier. She sorted Lily out while the water boiled, then gave herself a quick wash, before taking Harry up a cup of tea.

  She expected to find him lying prone, but instead, he was sitting up in bed, covered by the sheet. His eyes were fixed unwaveringly on hers as she came through the door; this was startling and she stopped, unnerved by it.

  ‘I thought you were going to have a sleep,’ she said, forcing herself forward with the cup of tea.

  ‘Nah.’ Harry pushed himself into a more upright position. ‘I wasn’t sleepy in the end.’ He added, ‘Ta,’ as she put the cup on the chair by the bed.

  As her steps receded down the stairs, Harry reached under the sheet. He had leaned over the side of the bed earlier to look for the po to relieve himself. As he did so, he saw something on the floor under Rose’s side of the bed. He unfolded it now: a well-worn sheet of paper with a poem written on it:

  . . . time, nor ties, nor distance,

  makes love less. A

  Harry folded it up again, and reaching down, slipped it under his side of the mattress. He straightened up again, his features pulled into an expression of grim triumph.

  Fifty-Eight

  ‘So they won’t have her in the churchyard, will they?’ Aggie heard her mother and Nanna talking. ‘Not as she took ’er own life. Poor Eliza’s in a terrible state.’

  Mary Crewe’s funeral had been delayed to allow for an inquest, but the coroner decreed that she had died at her own hand ‘while of unsound mind’.

  ‘And it means,’ Jen reported back after much talk in the yard, ‘that Mary wasn’t in control of her own actions so she can have a funeral like anyone else.’

  It was a humble affair. Eliza was as poor as a church mouse and some of the neighbours had a whip-round to help her out a bit. The street gave Mary the best send-off they could manage in the circumstances. Aggie and the others were at school when it all happened, but she was haunted by Mary Crewe. When she was going to sleep at night, she kept seeing herself lying on the railway track, like the ladies in the pictures, when they lay there trembling and the piano drummed louder and louder as the enormous engine bore down on them, billowing smoke. Sometimes she scared herself so much she sat up, trembling, hugging her knees in the darkness, and Ann would grumble sleepily, ‘Stop it, Aggs, you’re pulling all the covers off!’

  That week a number of odd things happened. One day Aggie came home from school to find Mrs Southgate waiting for her.

  ‘Oh, no,’ she groaned to Babs. ‘I bet she wants me for summat.’

  She was beginning to feel resentful towards Mrs Southgate, although the bits of money came in handy of course and pleased Mom.

  ‘Aggie,’ Mrs Southgate greeted her as if she had just stumbled on her by accident. Her manner was exaggeratedly cheerful. ‘What a good thing I’ve met you! Can you run an errand for me, dear – straight away?’

  As Aggie trotted along Lilac Street, hurrying to get it over with, a voice called out to her, ‘Aggie! Come over here a minute will you, bab?’

  Mrs Best had a chair in the street outside her door, her husband in his wheelchair behind her in the doorway, and standing beside her was Mrs Davis.

  Aggie went over to them. Dorrie Davis was staring at her and Aggie could tell she was eager for information of some sort. She always was.

  ‘Aggie,’ Mrs Best said gently, looking at her through her watery eyes. ‘Where’re you going?’

  Aggie immediately knew that Mrs Southgate would not want her to tell these women anything. But it was tricky because she liked Mrs Best.

  ‘On an errand.’ She couldn’t think what else to say.

  ‘Who for?’ Dorrie Davis asked immediately.

  Aggie swallowed. ‘Mrs Southgate.’

  The two women looked at each other.

  ‘Sends you on a lot of errands, does she?’ Dorrie asked.

  ‘Sometimes,’ Aggie agreed.

  Irene Best’s face wore a gentle, concerned look, the sort of face people put on when they knew someone was about to receive some bad news.

  ‘You will be careful, won’t you, bab?’ she said.

  Aggie stared at her.

  ‘She won’t know what you mean,’ Dorrie said.

  ‘I just mean,’ Mrs Best struggled on, ‘well . . . Don’t get too involved, that’s all. You don’t have to run errands for Mrs Southgate if you don’t want to. Just keep your wits about you, won’t you, Aggie?’

  Aggie nodded, backing away. She hurried past the Mission Hall and on towards the Ladypool Road. She didn’t know what Mrs Best was talking about, not exactly, but in another way she did. She knew that Mrs Southgate had secrets; that she, Aggie, was running errands for her that no one was supposed to know about. That there was something queer about it all and that Mrs Southgate had changed. But she didn’t know what it was all about and she also didn’t feel she could get out of it now even if she wanted to.

  Mrs Terry answered the door in Oldfield Road.

  ‘I’ve got a message for Mr King,’ Aggie announced.

  ‘I see,’ Mrs Terry said. ‘Well, he’s only just this moment back. Mr King!’ she called up the stairs. ‘I’m afraid you’ll need to come down again. That girl’s here again with a message – probably from your fiancée.’

  Arthur King came downstairs quite fluently, skimming his left hand down the wall. He looked very cheerful and different from when Aggie had last seen him.r />
  She didn’t want to ask Mom or Nanna, so she waited until school the next day.

  ‘Miss Neal?’ she asked her form teacher, just as they all poured out at break time. ‘What’s a fiancée?’

  Miss Neal, an older lady with glasses, looked amused. ‘A fiancée? Well, it’s a French word, meaning a woman who is promised to a man in marriage.’ She turned to the blackboard and wrote FIANCÉE. ‘It has two e’s because it’s feminine, in French. For a man it’s spelt the same but with only one e.’

  Aggie stared at the word. ‘Is that the only thing it means?’

  Miss Neal was wiping the board. ‘Well, yes – so far as I know.’

  Aggie ran outside into the playground, her mind full of confusion. Was Mrs Southgate playing some sort of game? Why was she calling herself a ‘fiancée’ when she was already married to Mr Southgate?

  She ran over to where Babs and their friends were playing. The adult world seemed bewildering and frightening. She threw herself into a game of tag and decided she’d been a fool not to stick with playing with Babs in the first place – never mind Agnes Green: Spy. So far as she could see, spying didn’t get you anywhere.

  Rose felt that everything she did these days was secretive. She had started going shopping further away, to avoid gossips like Dorrie Davis. She liked to go later in the afternoon to get some air, after she had been sitting sewing.

  As she shut the front door behind her and Lily, the realization struck her, forcefully: By the end of the month, I’ll be gone, and I’ll never see this house again! Taking Lily’s hand, she thought tenderly, And you’ll be with me, my little darling. Just you, me and Arthur. This filled her with a sense of bliss. By the end of July, they had decided, they would go and start their new life.

  Once she had done her shopping people were starting to come home from work. Just as she was approaching the end of Lilac Street, someone familiar was coming from the other direction. But she had to look again, to check. Yes, it was Susanna Taylor. Susanna saw her and waved, quickening her pace.