by Marie Joseph
‘That Dora Ellis is leading you into bad ways,’ she said. ‘Going to the second house pictures together. You’ll be sitting in pubs with her next. Drinking.’ Off she went, worried stiff, not liking the way things were shaping at all. Disappointed that Amy hadn’t got her husband back long before this.
The minute her mother had gone Amy went upstairs into the back bedroom. The hope that it would one day hold a treasure cot draped in pink organdie had faded a long time ago. Now it was filled with clutter.
A doll’s house, made for the young Amy by her father and stored against the day when her own little girl would play with it. The brick patterned wallpaper peeling, the lace curtains at the cellophane windows hanging in tattered strips. Wesley’s old tennis racket, still screwed into its heavy press, lolled against a wall. There was an ice-cream making contraption that had proved to be more trouble than it was worth, a book on forensic medicine with rude explicit drawings, a bedding chest with a cracked glass top, and a few strips of left-over carpet.
The wellingtons were in the cupboard housing the hot water cistern. They fitted neatly into the space below the wooden slats used for airing sheets and towels. Amy hadn’t worn them in years, preferring to wear her rubber overshoes when it snowed. Wesley had said the wellingtons would perish in the warmth of the cupboard, but they hadn’t.
She got down on her knees, took one out and pushed her hand all the way down to the toe. Nothing. Disbelieving, she took out the other one and searched deep inside. Still nothing. The linings were slightly torn and she ripped them partly away, pushing fingers well down in case the money had somehow slipped inside. She upended both boots, shook them as hard as she could. Scrabbled on the floor of the cupboard. Nothing.
It hadn’t exactly been a fortune, and Christmas had accounted for some of it, but it was her nest egg, her rainy-day money, her one and only claim to financial independence.
The money had been saved week by week. It represented the only cash of her own she had ever possessed. Not just in her marriage, but in her life. It wasn’t much, only twenty pounds five shillings at the last count.
She sat back on her heels, feeling sick.
‘Why on earth don’t you give it to me to put in the bank?’ Wesley had asked, more than once. ‘That way you’ll earn interest on it.’
‘I like to have it near me.’
‘Well, why not put it inside a sock underneath the bed? I bet that’s where Gladys keeps hers, isn’t it? I don’t expect she trusts banks, either.’
‘She’s never had enough money to save to open a bank account, for goodness’ sake! Every last farthing has to be accounted for. She’d pretend she wasn’t hungry when there wasn’t enough food to go round. She wore cardboard insoles in her shoes when she couldn’t afford to have them mended.’
Wesley had tucked an imaginary violin beneath his chin and played an imaginary soulful tune. He had looked so funny that, God forgive her, she had laughed.
Amy stood up and shivered, as if a door had opened, letting in a sudden draught. Standing there in the bitterly cold room, filled with things of no use to anybody, she felt drained of feeling, numbed.
When exactly had Wesley taken it? Before he went away, or when he came back briefly? Had there been time for him to cross the little landing to the spare room while she was downstairs?
Maybe she herself had moved it, hidden it somewhere else? Her mind had been playing strange tricks on her lately. Only yesterday she couldn’t for the life of her remember whether one of her customers wanted a bust bodice and corset in pink brocade or a full corselette, an all-in-one much favoured at the moment by the town’s matrons. Even now she wasn’t sure. She couldn’t concentrate these days, couldn’t think of anything else but Wesley – what he’d said and what he’d done those last weeks before he left. It was a going over and over in her mind, a desperate knowing that he no longer needed her.
Amy tried to pull herself together. Wesley might have let her down, deceived her, betrayed her, but he wasn’t a thief. Not a mean and petty thief, stealing from his wife. She refused to believe it.
Slowly at first she began to search. She looked in drawers, felt in pockets, upended vases, even pulled all her books from the glass-fronted bookcase. She reminded herself that Wesley had come to sort things out; he had intimated that, and what had she done but fly at him, yelling and screaming swear-words and chucking his pullover through the window. Becoming more frantic by the minute, she began her search again.
Why, oh why had she relied so much on Wesley? Accepting that he was paying the bills, even handing over her wages as he said it made more sense to have just the one kitty. Why had she never questioned where the money was coming from for all his many little extravagances? The special hair-trims always followed by a bayrum massage, the chromium cigarette case with matching lighter which he had said was damaged stock. The coat made of real camelhair, his gold-plated wristwatch, cuff links and tiepin. Wesley hadn’t stinted himself for anything. Why had it never angered her before? Why had she never even realized the unfairness of it before?
She lifted the velvet settee cushions and probed down the sides of the upholstery. It was time to bank the fire up and get ready for work, though it might not be all that long before she was sitting by an empty grate, clutching a shawl to her chin, the mantelpiece bare of its Westminster chime clock, candlesticks and the hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil brass monkeys. The house bare of any ornaments at all.
Edgar Battersby was full of worries he could do nothing about with this hacking cough hanging on him weeks after his flu was finished. The doctor had told him that if he left the house he would be dead before he got his car out of the garage.
Wesley was conspicuous by his absence, though he sent the usual returns through with a note saying they would understand if he lay low for the time being. Lay low! What game was he playing now? Talking like George Raft in a gangster film. Couldn’t he try to imagine what he was putting his mother through? Phyllis had taken to hovering by the front-room window in the afternoons when she wasn’t out playing whist with her cronies, or going to the Inner Wheel wearing a Robin Hood hat to hear talks about foreign holidays other folks had been on. Amy hadn’t been round, either, though he couldn’t blame her. Dora had told him Amy was perfectly all right, thank you very much, and would he mind lifting his feet so she could get the Ewbank round his chair.
He felt helpless, frustrated, old as Pendle Hill. Once, long ago, he had walked to Preston and back, over twenty miles all together; another time he had cycled to Blackpool, left his bike tied to some railings and had a swim in the sea before riding back. Now he was puffed just sitting in his chair, and the pain beneath his right ribs was with him nearly all the time. Some days it almost creased him up.
Dora didn’t like the look of him at all, but she wasn’t going to burden Amy with more worry. She met Mr Dale in the street and told him she was sure something bad was happening next door. Amy had started looking for a full-time job which paid more, but as he didn’t need telling, B.Sc.s were sweeping the roads, so what chance was there for a woman of Amy’s age with the ability to read a tape measure the only qualification to her name?
‘How do you mean, something bad?’ Mr Dale had wanted to know.
‘Well, I think she’s stopped eating,’ Dora had told him, ‘apart from the scraps her mother brings in now and again, but she’d rather die than let on, she’s that proud.’
Amy got wet through walking home from work to save the bus fare from town, so she decided to have a bath then let the fire go out. The coal in the shed outside was dwindling rapidly, and for the last two nights she’d gone to bed at eight o’clock to keep warm. That was one of the advantages, she supposed, of living alone. Going to bed when you liked, bathing when you felt like it – every day if you didn’t know it would take all the oils from your skin and wrinkle you like a prune by the time you were fifty.
The bathroom was as narrow as a shoe box with a skylight window let into the r
oof. Amy sprinkled the last of a bottle of shocking-pink bath crystals into the water, sat down and lay back, just as the doorbell shrilled out.
Wesley! She had put the catch on the vestibule door without thinking, soaked through and miserable as she came in. The bell shrilled again, just as if someone had left their finger on it. Wesley! She knew it was him.
As she flung the door wide, the towel slipped from one shoulder to reveal a rounded breast. Snatching it up in frantic haste, Amy knew a moment of blind panic as she looked down and saw she was showing the unmentionable.
‘I see I’ve come at an awkward time,’ Mr Dale said, raising his trilby politely. ‘I’ll call again, if I may.’
5
THE FOLLOWING WEEK, at the time Wesley would, under happier circumstances, have been coming home from work, he walked into the house and counted a pile of pound notes out on the table, adding two half crowns with a flourish.
‘Hell’s bells,’ he said, seeing her face, ‘don’t tell me you’d missed it? I relied on you not finding out. I wouldn’t have dreamed of borrowing it if the need hadn’t been dire.’ He seemed genuinely upset.
Amy could hardly bear to look at him. His thick black hair was beaded with rain; a lock of it fell in a neglected wave over his forehead. For years she had seen him neglecting it every time he stared into the mirror. He was standing so close to her she could smell his last cigarette. How could she have forgotten how beautiful he was, how easy-going and relaxed, how strong his features, how mobile his mouth.
He was wary of her – she could read his expression, sense his embarrassment. He was unsure of her reaction since that last awful time, standing there just waiting for the ranting and raving to begin. All at once she wanted to cry.
‘I feel awful.’ He sat down on the piano stool, put a hand to his forehead. ‘You didn’t really think I’d stolen it, did you?’
‘Yes, that’s exactly what I thought,’ Amy said quietly.
He winced, annoyed with her because she had misjudged him, she could see. Waiting for her to apologize – she could see that too.
Amy felt in full control of herself this time. Shouting and screaming would never bring Wesley back to her. He couldn’t stand rows, never had been able to. He’d told her once that he could count on one hand the number of times his mother had raised her voice to him. Rows upset him, gave him headaches.
‘Well, I did go through the house with a fine-tooth comb,’ she admitted. ‘And I did imagine myself trekking to a pawn shop carrying my best coat over one arm and the clock off the mantelpiece under the other.’
He seemed to notice for the first time that she was wearing a coat and scarf, and that the fire was banked up with slack without a flicker of a flame. ‘You’re going out,’ he accused. ‘Where to? It’s coming on to rain.’ He sighed. ‘I’ve got such a bad head. I’ve had it all day.’
‘I’ll get you a Cephos powder.’
Amy’s reaction was instinctive and immediate, and even as she spoke she saw the way Wesley’s shoulders relaxed. He had always loved being made a fuss of, so that over the long years she had trickled cough medicine into his mouth, stood over him to make sure he swallowed aspirins, peeled his oranges, stripped the stringy bits from the celery he enjoyed so much, hand-knitted his socks because he preferred them to shop bought, and even on occasions cleaned his shoes.
Carefully now she opened the small paper of powder, folded it neatly so she could slide the powder into a tablespoon of milk, and guided it into his mouth.
‘All gone?’
Had his mother always done that for him? Asked that? Amy was suddenly quite sure she had, just as his mother had conditioned him into believing that a man never cooked a meal, never lifted a cup from the table except to drink from it, never turned on the kitchen tap except to wash his hands or add a drop of water to his whisky.
‘I saw Charlie and he tells me you and Clara want to get married.’ She kept her voice nice and casual. ‘Is that so?’
‘You’ve seen Charlie?’
‘Oh yes. As a matter of fact I’m making him a meal one of these days. Soon, maybe.’ She glanced at the money on the table. ‘A nice piece of topside with crispy potatoes and Yorkshire pudding, with apple sponge and custard to follow.’
He swallowed hard. Because his mouth was watering, she hoped.
The truth was he couldn’t make head nor tail of her. She even looked different, thinner in the face, taller surely, which was ridiculous. He felt rattled, illogically disappointed in her.
‘I’ve been waiting for you to throw something at me.’ He produced his chromium case, took out a cigarette, tapped it three times as he always did before flicking his lighter into action. She tried not to stare too hard at him. It would never do for him to realize how she felt watching his surgeon’s hands, his concert pianist’s hands, busy with the familiar ritual.
She wanted to go down on her knees and plead with him to stay, to forget what had happened and walk back into her life just as easily as he had walked out of it. To live with someone for twenty years must mean something to him. She could feel the hurt, the bewilderment, the pain of his rejection tightening her throat, welling up so that any minute now she would be shouting her frustration and fury aloud. If she did that he would look reproachfully at her, get up and leave. Once again he had managed to make her feel as if all this was her fault – that what had happened was none of his doing. She saw the injustice of it, but at that moment was prepared to accept it.
‘There’s no point in fighting,’ she said.
‘I can allow you a pound a week.’
She stared down at the carpet, clenching her hands, the humiliation a deep hurt inside her. ‘All right then, but only till I get a better job,’ she mumbled. ‘One that pays more.’
He got up, moved the piano stool, frowned for a moment then walked to the door.
‘Well, Amy . . .’
‘Wesley?’
There was a hint of a catch in his voice. ‘I still care about you. I still need to know that you’re all right. There’s still a corner of my heart kept specially for you.’
‘Don’t I look all right?’ Amy sat down and crossed her legs prettily. ‘Thank you for coming, Wesley.’
He was waiting for her to accompany him down the lobby to the door, to show him out, to stand on the step and watch him walk down the street, just as she had never failed to do in all the years of their marriage.
‘I’ll say goodbye then, Amy.’
‘Goodbye, Wesley,’ she said. Firmly, but nicely.
He hadn’t left her the pound he had promised. She gathered her savings together, the pound notes and the two half crowns, stood with them in her hand. He had forgotten, that was it, purely and simply. Or had he thought that by bringing her savings back to her he had absolved himself from any further obligations for the time being?
All at once she began to laugh, standing there in the chilly room in her coat and scarf, clutching the money to her chest. It was a laugh that held more than a touch of hysteria in it, a laugh that stopped as suddenly as it had begun.
She asked at work if she could possibly be taken on full time, but it was out of the question they said. Surely she realized how lucky she was as a married woman to have a job at all? Most of the shops roundabout were taking on school-leavers for two years, training them for low pay then sacking them and starting again, but not this establishment. Mr Mott’s jowls worked as convulsively as if Amy had accused him of such depravity.
She knew just how invaluable she was. Not one of her regulars would be willing to stand in the upstairs room in their rayon knickers and long vests while a school-leaver ran round them with a tape measure. They trusted quiet little Mrs Battersby, who spoke nicely, sounded her aitches, and never caught their eyes as she trundled her tape measure round their D-cup bosoms or well-cushioned hips. When Mr Mott himself bowed them out through the front door he never, by even a flicker of the eyelid, betrayed the fact that he knew what had been going on upstairs.
‘A rise?’ Amy suggested in desperation, reminding him that it was two years since . . . Her voice tailed away in embarrassment.
Mr Mott’s righteous indignation increased. Didn’t she know that the town was in the middle of a slump, with mills closing down every week. Why, one up Bolton Road way was already changed over to a raincoat factory, with all the looms ripped out and rows of sewing machines in their places.
She would work longer hours, Amy said, trembling now. She would come back in the evenings, come early in the mornings, anything . . .
Mr Mott couldn’t believe what he was hearing. One of the reasons he had taken young Mrs Battersby on was because of her connections. Her father-in-law had been put forward as a potential mayor at one time, and wasn’t her mother-in-law on the Board of Governors of the High School?
The pleading look on Amy’s face was beginning to get on his nerves. He pulled at his full lower lip. Hadn’t his wife once told him, a long time ago, that Mrs Battersby Senior had snubbed her in the Market House, stalking past with her nose in the air because she considered no doubt that tobacco came very high in the scale of things compared to corsets and fancy goods.
Now his wife was dead, and Mrs Battersby Senior was still lording it around the town with her fox furs slung round her shoulders, having tea in Booth’s Cafe practically every afternoon. And buying her own foundation garments no doubt from one of the big shops in Manchester or even from an Ambrose Wilson catalogue, where he believed you could get an all-in-one corselette for eight shillings and elevenpence, postage paid. No, not once had Mrs high-and-mighty Battersby put a foot inside his shop.
Almost bursting out of his waistcoat buttons with self-induced fury, he gave Amy a week’s cash in lieu of notice, telling her to pick up the money at the desk on her way out.