by Marie Joseph
That he was thinking in clichés never occurred to him. The words in his head sounded like poetry. He could almost convince himself that he had thought of them first.
Around half-past two that morning Phyllis stopped trying to ring the Preston shop and fell asleep on the chesterfield in the drawing room, wearing her fur coat like a blanket, her head lolling uncomfortably on a Sanderson patterned cushion bound with gold braid and edged with large tassels, which had left wavy red marks down one cheek when she woke up.
They were the first thing that Wesley noticed about her when he arrived breathless and penitent around ten o’clock, taking a taxi from the station, waving the change away, to rush into the house, long coat flying, black hair in need of a cut tumbling fetchingly over his forehead.
‘Oh, my poor little mother. What have you done to your face?’ He pulled her to him briefly then led her to a chair. ‘I knew something was terribly wrong. I lay awake all night wondering why I couldn’t sleep, feeling sad yet not being able to make any sense out of it.’
‘I rang and rang.’ In control of herself again, Phyllis shook her head from side to side. ‘But you weren’t to know.’
Wesley looked as if he might be going to cry.
‘Of course you weren’t to know,’ she said again.
She told him about his father’s illness, of the surgeon’s predicament in not daring to operate until the septicaemia was cleared up. She said that his father had been behaving strangely lately and not just because of the pain, either. She said that Amy and he seemed to have become very friendly, and that Amy had been there at the infirmary the night before.
‘We’ll go now,’ she said. ‘But first you ought perhaps to go up to the bathroom and have a shave. Your father’s razor blades are in the cabinet on the left-hand side. You don’t mind me saying this, do you, son?’
‘What do you think?’ said Wesley, his mouth curving up into a tender smile, much too considerate to tell her that she didn’t look too hot herself.
The nurse on Edgar’s ward thought Wesley looked exactly like Robert Taylor, only twice as handsome. No resemblance to his father at all. In fact, it was almost impossible to believe they could be father and son. She was sure he was admiring her legs, but how could that be when his father was so gravely ill? All the same, she was glad she was wearing her fully-fashioned black stockings that day and had washed her hair the night before.
And after all Edgar was asleep, hardly there, drifting in and out of consciousness. They were bringing in a Mr Jenkins from Manchester that afternoon, Sister told them – a brilliant man in his own field of haematology.
‘Father . . .’ Wesley said, bending over the still figure in the high white bed. ‘Don’t worry about a single thing. I’m here with Mother. We’re both here.’
‘He can’t hear you,’ Sister said, sounding nasty instead of kind and efficient, because the nice old man’s son was already getting on her nerves. Too smarmy by half, too conscious of the effect he was having on all around him. Thought he was having, that was. Or was her instant dislike of Mr Battersby Junior merely due to the fact that she should have been off duty two hours ago?
‘Father . . .’ Wesley was saying again, laying a hand on the yellowed forehead. ‘We’ll come back again tonight. I’m taking good care of Mother.’
Dora was bursting to tell Amy the unbelievable news about Charlie Marsden and his offer of a job, but when she left the house at five o’clock that morning Amy’s curtains were still drawn across both the upstairs and downstairs windows. For the fraction of a second she paused. Drawn curtains during the daytime meant only one thing. Death. Mr Battersby wasn’t that ill. How could he be when he’d driven his car the day before? No, the old man wasn’t ready for popping his clogs for a long time yet, she felt sure of it.
Down the steep street to the mill she ran, nimble as a mountain goat, wispy hair straggling from beneath the jumble sale hat, nose and cheeks shiny from their quick scrub with a worn-down bar of old Ma Battersby’s Palmolive soap. Down to the mill before the streets were even aired, before even the knocker-up, with his umbrella spokes at the end of his long pole, came round to get the mill-workers from their beds. Into the mill to begin the familiar round of raking out grates in the offices, fetching coal, burnishing brass fire-irons, sweeping floors, polishing desks, emptying wastepaper baskets and kow-towing to everyone because there was no one lower down the scale than Dora Ellis.
She turned into the short street leading to the mill. To think that soon she could be stopping in bed till seven o’clock, beginning work at ten, wearing a black dress with a high collar and a fob-watch on her chest. Housekeeper to the Marsden Residence. Putting her feet up in the afternoons for forty winks and a read of the paper. She slipped through the small door let into the gate, already wishing the hours away till she could tell Amy her good fortune, maybe have a drink on it with the wonderful Wesley’s whisky – if there was any left.
Wesley rang the bell once then walked in without knocking. After all, it was his house, wasn’t it? Amy’s mother was there, which didn’t surprise him, wearing a hat made in the shape of Amy Johnson’s flying helmet, green with earflaps, and with her everlasting flowered pinny showing at least three inches beneath her coat.
Nobody spoke for a moment. Amy’s face paled, while Gladys as usual jumped in with both feet, gabbling because she was overcome at seeing him, saying something stupid simply because she was made that way.
‘I boiled a small piece of silverside,’ she told Wesley, pointing to a covered basin on the table. ‘It potted nicely, set to a jelly, so I fetched it round for her to have with a boiled onion for her dinner.’
‘Your father . . . ?’ Amy looked as if she might faint.
‘He’s all right. I’ve just come from the infirmary. Mother and I went together.’
Sheer relief sharpened Amy’s voice. ‘She was trying for hours to get through to you on the phone. Your father might have died and you wouldn’t have known.’
‘I wasn’t to know he was in hospital. I didn’t even know he was ill enough to be in hospital.’
‘He’s not been well for a long time. You knew he was poorly at Christmas, but you’ve hardly kept in touch.’ The colour had come back into Amy’s cheeks. ‘I thought when you walked in you’d come to tell me he’d died! He’s been needing you, Wesley, and you’ve not been there.’
‘Now, wait a minute . . .’
‘And your mother . . .’ Amy could feel control slipping from her, could do nothing to hold back the torrent of words. ‘She was going crazy trying to contact you last night! Where were you, Wesley, or have I no right to ask that?’
‘I’d best be going,’ Gladys said, not wanting to be accused of interfering between husband and wife. ‘I’ll have the basin back when you’ve finished with it.’
‘Don’t go on my account, Mrs Renshawe,’ Wesley said clearly. ‘I’d almost forgotten you practically live here anyway.’
‘Just go, Mam,’ Amy said, without looking at her. ‘I’ll slip round and see you when Wesley’s got what he’s come for. What have you come for?’ she asked when the front door slammed, shaking the house to its very foundations. ‘I’m surprised you haven’t brought an empty case with you this time, or maybe there’s a furniture van outside?’
‘I came to tell you about my father.’ Wesley was all dignity and hurt feelings. ‘But now you’ve said that, I might just as well take a few things with me.’ He stretched out a hand and lifted the lid of the piano stool.
‘It’s not there,’ Amy said quickly, because to say it quickly was the only way. ‘I threw it all on the fire, the whole lot.’ She swallowed. ‘It took a long time to burn through. It almost put the fire out, clogging the grate up.’ Amy couldn’t forgive him for being so cruel to her mother. It wasn’t even true!
Was she mad? Had she gone stark staring mad? Wesley narrowed his eyes as if the image of her standing there kept fading from his vision. She was wearing her hair different too, tucked behin
d her ears instead of drooping forward on to her cheeks. It altered the whole look of her, and the change in her appearance coupled with what she had done flared his temper.
‘Do you know how many years it took me to collect that music?’ He took two steps forward and grabbed her wrist. ‘Some of those songs were as good as collector’s pieces! They were my entire repertoire! Part of me!’ He twisted her wrist hard. ‘That music meant more to me than you can ever hope to understand.’
‘That’s why I threw it on the fire,’ Amy said into his face.
When he hit her it was as though her head had exploded. Her teeth caught her bottom lip, she tasted the saltiness of blood.
‘I wanted to hurt you, just as you were hurting me,’ she shouted, tears running down her cheeks and a trickle of blood running down her chin. ‘If you’d been there and I’d had a knife I’d have stuck it in you!’ Her voice broke on a sob. ‘You let me down in front of everybody. You had to be centre stage – even to walk out on me!’
The second time he raised his hand to hit her, she jerked and backed away so quickly that her foot caught in the half-moon rug, making her lose her balance and fall, striking her forehead on the raised edge of the tiled hearth.
‘Amy! Oh God, I’m sorry. God, I don’t know what I’m doing.’
He helped her to her feet. She was alive, thank God. For a terrible heart-searing moment he had thought he might have killed her. She was holding a hand to her forehead, bringing it away and staring at the blood in disbelief.
‘Amy? Let me get something . . . oh God, sit down here.’
He came back from the kitchen with a damp teacloth and held it to her forehead. She was going to have a lump like an egg, and there was a red bruise underneath her left eye. She looked awful, worse than awful, white and trembling, saying nothing. Driving him mad saying nothing.
‘You fell,’ he said. ‘You tripped over the rug, twisted round and fell. Oh, God, Amy, speak to me! I wouldn’t hurt you for all the world. You know that.’
She looked straight at him then, with an expression in her eyes he couldn’t fathom. She was looking at him as if she was weighing him up and finding him wanting.
‘Yes, you’re right, I fell,’ she said quietly. ‘Now go, Wesley. Just go and leave me alone.’
How could he go with her sitting like that on the settee, with her face all out of flunter and her lower lip beginning to swell? His stomach churned. What would people say if they thought he’d done all that? They would think he was a monster, and he wasn’t. They would think he was rough, like the men who came home drunk on a Friday night and knocked their wives about. It would get around, and people would believe Amy, not him, never dreaming she had provoked him beyond endurance, when he was worried sick about his father lying so ill in hospital. Never believing for one minute that she could be vindictive enough to burn all his music. The thought of what might be said about him, the light he would be seen in, trembled his legs, dried his throat so that he sat down in what used to be his chair when he lived there. He buried his face in his hands.
‘I’m all right, Wesley.’ Amy’s voice was as calm now as if nothing had happened.
Which didn’t surprise him. She was like that – always the one to reassure, to put things back on an even keel. She must have been of unsound mind the day she burned his music. He wished he didn’t have such a vivid imagination, because with his eyes closed he could see her thrusting sheet after sheet of music into the fire, jabbing at them with the poker, glorying in the destruction of them. Was it any wonder he had lost control? Any man would have done the same – some men would have throttled her – some men had killed for less than that. No one would blame him if they knew the truth.
He lifted his head and saw her watching him, touching her forehead and wincing.
‘I was going up to the infirmary to see your father this afternoon, but I’ll wait until tomorrow, till this settles down.’ She stood up, holding the tea-towel to her face. ‘I’d like you to go now, Wesley.’
He stood up too, but how could he go until something was sorted out?
‘I fell,’ she said, reading his mind. ‘I tripped over the rug and caught my head on the edge of the hearth. Thank you for coming to tell me your father is holding his own. I appreciate that.’
As he turned and walked away from her down the lobby to the front door he seemed to her to have shrunk, to have gone to nothing inside the beautiful camelhair coat, swathed round him like a dressing gown.
He closed the door quietly, with only the merest click.
She went upstairs, pulling herself up by the wall banister like an old, old woman. In the narrow bathroom, with grey light from the grey sky coming through the skylight, she bathed her face, trying to stem the blood from the small cut just lower than her hairline. She seemed to remember reading somewhere, or being told, that heads bled a lot, more than any other part of the body. A bit of blood went a long way, it was a well-known fact. But she didn’t like the look of the cut on her forehead. It was like a small gaping mouth, obscene in its redness, still oozing blood.
She folded her face flannel into a square, pressed it against the place, rammed her hat over it, bringing the brim down almost to her eyebrows. Doctor Owen’s surgery was a mere five minutes’ walk away. Morning surgery was over, and he was on his way out to begin his calls, but when he saw Amy’s face he turned back and led her through the dark and narrow passage beside his dispensary into his consulting room.
‘I fell and bashed my head on the hearth, Doctor.’ She sat down and removed her hat. ‘It’s me own fault for hitting the bottle before dinnertime. I was wondering if it needed an embroidery stitch in it?’ She was laughing, as she always seemed to do when life hit her with a flat-handed slap.
The doctor’s eyes were shrewd as he examined her face. ‘You must have gone with an almighty wallop, lass.’
‘Another step an’ I’d have been up the chimney,’ she said, quick as a flash.
How many miscarriages had she suffered? The good doctor didn’t need to get down his boxes and take out her card to jog his memory. He’d been practising in Oldham when her first baby was born, perfect, but dead, a seven-pounds boy, but his predecessor had told him about it in grave detail.
‘My guess is she’ll never deliver a live child,’ he had said, ‘but she’ll try and go on trying, if I’m not mistaken. She’s not much more than a child herself and she’s completely besotted by that husband of hers. He must have taken her straight from the classroom.’
Doctor Owen was touching the edges of the cut with expert fingers. ‘I don’t think there’s any need for embroidery here.’ He reached for the iodine bottle. ‘A plaster maybe for a day or two. It’s your lip that’s come off the worst. You’ve nearly bitten through it, lass. Hubby all right?’
He knew. Amy was convinced of it. Were the marks of Wesley’s fingers on her cheek? Had the bruises come up while she was walking to the surgery?
Her smile was agony, but she persevered with it. ‘Wesley? He’s fine. But his father’s not well at all. He’s got septicaemia. That’s serious, isn’t it?’
‘Depends.’ The doctor stood away from her to admire his handiwork. ‘No special treatment for it as yet. No cure, but they’ll come up with something one day.’
‘People do recover from it, though?’
‘Nothing the human spirit can do surprises me any more.’
‘I like . . .’ She hesitated. ‘I love him very much, you see.’
She had shown herself up good and proper, she told herself, hurrying back up the hill, hoping not to bump into anyone she knew when she was looking like Greta Garbo hiding from her fans with her hat brim pulled low over her face. Fancy her telling the doctor that she loved Mr Battersby! Feeling the tears come into her eyes as she said it. It was funny, but since Wesley went away she was nowhere near as impassive – was that the word? – as she used to be. Every waking moment her heart was full of emotion so that she needed to tell those she was fond of that she
cared for them. Was it in case they too went away and left her? She had a feeling Mr Dale – Bernard – would know the answer to that.
Turning the corner she bumped into Mrs Rakestraw from across the street on her way down to the Co-op.
‘I fell,’ she said quickly. ‘But I’m expected to live.’
‘You look like you’ve just gone three rounds with Joe Louis.’ Mrs Rakestraw, clutching a big brown leather purse and a large shopping basket, barred her path. ‘I saw your husband going in your house this morning.’ She eyed Amy’s swollen mouth. ‘I hope you’ve patched things up and got together again. You’ve always been such a lovely couple.’
Amy tried to step round her, but the big woman hadn’t quite finished.
‘Did you know that Mrs Tunstall who works for Charlie Marsden happens to be a cousin of mine?’ Amy was sure her lip was beginning to bleed again. ‘She came round to see me first thing. Seems he’s given her the sack, to set Dora Ellis on as his housekeeper. Don’t tell me you don’t know.’
‘No, I didn’t know.’ Amy could only shake her head as she walked on.
‘I always thought you were as thick as thieves.’
‘So did I,’ Amy muttered to herself, taking her key from her purse and letting herself thankfully into the house.
‘I fell,’ she told Dora, the first chance she got. ‘Anyway, what are a few cuts and bruises here and there compared to your news? I’ve been sitting here all day waiting for you to come and tell me.’
Dora felt ill just looking at Amy’s face. ‘You look terrible,’ she told her.
‘Like I’ve just gone three rounds with Joe Louis?’
‘I wouldn’t say that exactly.’