by Marie Joseph
The thought of going back to her lonely house set in an avenue of other lonely houses, where people either went out to work or shut themselves away behind their lace curtains, appalled her. Since her parents had died Ethel had felt unwanted, not needed. She had waited on them hand and foot, cherished them, preserved them like bottled fruit, not letting the wind blow on them if she could help it.
Ethel rolled up a pair of grey lisle stockings and tucked them down the side of her case before laying her bottle-green velveteen after-six dress on the bed and filling the folds with tissue paper. She was a good packer and always had been.
She could still hear her mother’s voice: ‘You’re a good packer, Ethel. There’s never a crease when the case is opened at the other end.’
The memory of her mother brought tears to her eyes. One plopped on to the green velvet and she wondered if it would leave a mark. She was good at getting marks off things, she knew that too. She had this knack of knowing what to use – bread for a stain on the wallpaper, salt and lemon for ink, soda water for coffee, and blotting paper, then talcum powder for grease.
‘No one can remove stains like Ethel,’ her father had said. ‘There’s not much she can’t turn her hand to.’
Now her skills weren’t wanted because she had done the one thing Phyllis could never forgive her for – she had dared to criticize Wesley. Groping for a handkerchief Ethel cried in earnest, great glycerine tears down her mottled cheeks, running in rivulets down her chin. It was as if all the tears of her life were draining her heart.
From the doorway Phyllis watched her cry. She had been crying herself, and it had suddenly struck her how incongruous it was – two old women in floods of tears, one upstairs and one down.
‘Why don’t we go away for a holiday? Goodness knows we’re both ready for a break. What do you say, Ethel? I like the idea of Rhyl or Colwyn Bay. Do you remember we always went to North Wales when we were children? I can’t bear the thought of Bournemouth now Edgar’s passed away. We went to the same hotel there year after year.’
Two pairs of red-rimmed eyes met and held. There would be no more mention of what had been said today, Ethel knew that for a fact. Phyllis wasn’t waiting for an apology, she was just making it clear that an armistice had been declared.
‘Llandudno’s nice, too,’ Ethel said. ‘The last time I took my father there he was in a bathchair. He loved sitting on the front with a rug round his knees.’
‘Right then.’ Phyllis nodded. ‘We’ll go downstairs and I’ll look hotels up in a book I have.’ She pointed a finger at the case. ‘You’ve always been a good packer, Ethel. You can do mine for me when we’ve decided where to go.’ She marched along the landing, stiff as a steel poker. ‘While I’m doing that you can make us a pot of Earl Grey if you will. I always find him strangely comforting.’
Ethel followed on, her cup running over, needed. There to make herself useful, a person again.
Wesley was still feeling sick with anger when they got back to the flat. When he went upstairs after checking the till and locking the door behind Arnold Porrit he found Clara in that same strange frame of mind.
‘Things are definitely moving,’ he told her. ‘I reckon that we’ll be out of here by the end of the summer, if not before.’ He tried to take her in his arms. ‘You’ve been very patient, darling, putting up with all this.’ He waved a hand at the rickety table, the cardboard boxes, the sagging sofa. ‘There are always bound to be hiccoughs where Wills are concerned. I’ll have you in the house of your dreams before you know it.’
Clara closed her eyes so that she would not betray her disgust at the way he repeatedly made promises she knew by now he could never keep.
‘I’m leaving you, Wesley,’ she said.
He seemed to be pretending he hadn’t heard her. He was still half smiling, still putting on what she had come to know as his ‘endearing’ act.
‘By tomorrow, when I’ve smoothed Mother’s ruffled feathers, the picture will be different. I played it all wrong today, but tomorrow . . .’
‘There won’t be any tomorrow, not for you and me, Wesley.’ She was looking more animated than he had seen her for a long time. Behind her the rain pebbled the window, and already the room had darkened, but her blonde candyfloss hair stood out round her head like a nimbus.
‘I’m going to live with Colonel Brown-Davies,’ she said. ‘As his housekeeper, for the sake of gossip, but as soon as my divorce from Charlie comes through we’ll be married.’
The breath left Wesley’s body as if he’d been winded. He bent to light the gas fire without any conscious volition, totally unaware of what he was doing. When it plopped into life he swung round.
‘Do you mind saying that again, because I can’t believe what I think I heard. You and that old man? Him touching you, making love to you? He’s been married at least twice before. Do you know that?’
‘Yes, he told me. His first wife died in childbirth and the second after being in a nursing home with consumption for years and years. He’s a lonely man, a kind man, and he doesn’t make promises he can’t keep.’
‘And you love him?’ Wesley’s voice was a sarcastic sneer.
‘As far as I’m able to love anyone, yes, I care for him.’
‘The fact that he’s worth half a million at least has nothing to do with it?’
‘I would say it had more than a lot to do with it.’ Clara smiled at the thought of the mink stole she’d been promised, feeling already the touch of the soft fur at her throat. ‘I know how to make him happy, you see.’ She looked Wesley straight in the eye. ‘As for what you’re thinking about, he might need a little help, but he’s far from past it.’
‘You little . . .’ Wesley raised a hand, then as quickly lowered it. What she was saying, what she was inferring, made him sick to his guts. He could hardly bear to look at her, so he covered his face with his hands, ashamed to find that he was shaking, hoping she wouldn’t notice.
‘Look, Wesley.’ She actually came to sit beside him. ‘I’ve never pretended to be other than I am. You think back and you’ll realize that’s true. You’ve given me a wonderful few months – God, they must have been wonderful for me to stay in this dump!’ She touched his arm. ‘Have you stopped to think what it’s been like for me day after day in this room? Helping that halfwit in the shop when it was busy. There were days when I even considered going back to Charlie – but there’s Lottie, and just to look at her makes my flesh crawl.’
‘Your own daughter . . .’ Wesley sounded very old and very ill. ‘Charlie’s daughter.’
‘But she isn’t, you see. Lottie’s the result of four or five minutes’ stupidity on the way home from a dance. I didn’t even know his name.’ She jumped up. ‘For God’s sake, Wesley, which part are you playing now? King Lear? Hamlet? You’ve known the way I am since the first time you kissed me. You said you’d never met anyone like me and I don’t suppose you ever will again. I’m a sod, Wesley, through and through. If there’s a hell I’ll go straight down to it, straight into the flames of burning hellfire.’
‘Don’t say things like that!’
‘Go back to Amy. She’s cared for you all down the years and she’ll go on caring for you. She’s frightened of hellfire, you see. She’ll feel married to you till the day she dies. You had pure gold, Wesley, and you threw it away.’ She sat down near to him again and touched his arm. ‘I told you when all this began that I hated upsetting Amy. I couldn’t laugh the way she does if I’d gone through what she has. I saw her one day, you know. She was outside the library in Blackburn talking to a tall thin man with straight brown hair blowing in the wind. He left her and went into the Education Office, and there was something – I don’t know what it was – but there was something between them. They should have seen me, but they didn’t.’
‘You can forget that. I know who it was and he’s a jessie. Reads poetry and bakes his own bread. He was probably giving Amy a recipe for date and walnut loaf. The last time I saw him was the
night we came here to live together. I was on my way to pick the taxi up and meet you, and he was on the other side of the street. Striding along in the pouring rain to his cup of cocoa by the fire. Amy wouldn’t look twice at him. She wouldn’t look twice at anybody but me.’
‘Why?’
‘Because she wouldn’t, that’s why. She’s religious for one thing, so once married she’ll stay married; and for another she’s not that way inclined.’
‘What do you mean?’ Clara had moved closer and was stroking his arm. He had calmed a little now, but she could still feel the trembling of him, still sense the effort he was making not to pull her to him. ‘You mean she doesn’t enjoy doing the things we’ve enjoyed? Are you trying to tell me that she’s frigid?’
Wesley’s arm jerked upwards so suddenly that she fell back against the sofa cushions. When he turned to look at her, the expression in his eyes made her recoil.
Moving away as quickly as she could, she ran across the tiny landing into the bedroom, took her packed case from its hiding place and crept to the top of the stairs, then slowly, slowly down each creaking step into the shop, lifting the counter-flap and sliding the bolt on the front door.
It was a full twenty minutes until the time she was being picked up, but she was no fool. An innate sense of self-preservation had got her out of many a tight corner before, and what she had seen in Wesley’s eyes had been murder. Not premeditated, but the swift and total loss of control of a man who didn’t know how to cope with his anger.
Trembling herself by now, she glanced up at the square of light above the shop, and darted down a narrow back street to stand shivering in the shadow of a cold wet wall, feeling the rain beating down on her uncovered head.
Wesley heard the car draw up outside and the slam of the doors. He had no idea of how long he had sat there, unmoving, staring straight ahead, feeling the rage gathering inside him, choking his throat, pounding his heart. Five, ten minutes, or longer?
Picking up the cushion by his side, he tore at the braid and found that it came away easily in his hand. It was the same with the cupboard door – when he wrenched at it that too came to pieces, to loll drunkenly from its hinges. The chair he smashed against the wall splintered like dry firewood, and the card table crumpled like tissue paper.
He cried aloud without knowing who to. How dare Clara leave him? He was always the one to leave, his the exit line. First his mother, then Clara, deserting him when he needed them most. He sat down and buried his face in his hands.
Charlie had Clara’s letter in his hand as he came into the kitchen. Dora could see at once that something had happened. He was half smiling, half serious, walking about with his hat on the back of his head, going over to the window to read it again because he wouldn’t wear his glasses, yet needed the light.
‘She’s coming back, isn’t she?’ Dora hadn’t a discreet bone in her body, so saw no reason to conjure one up now. It had always been like this with Charlie. Say what you were thinking right out, no messing about, just straightforward talk. ‘So this is where I hang up me pinny and do a bunk, isn’t it? Because there’s no room for her and me in the same house. Do you think I could carry on working here, seeing the way she put you down and ignored Lottie? I’d throttle her with the tea-towel, and swing for it gladly.’
All the time she was talking Dora was rolling out the pastry crust for a steak and kidney pie. The meat was steaming away in its brown dish, the gravy thick, dark and brown, bubbling slightly, straight from the oven. The rolling pin went thump thump along with Dora’s heart, but she wasn’t going to do any touting for sympathy from this lovely little fat man staring at her from the other side of the table.
‘Have you finished, woman?’ Charlie threw the letter to one side and leaned on the table, getting all floury but not noticing. His cheeks were flushed and a bead of sweat glistened on his upper lip. ‘By ’eck, woman, but you don’t half go on! Stop that flamin’ rolling till I’ve had a chance to get me speak in.’
‘She’s claiming half the house.’ Dora was too upset to keep quiet. ‘She had your Lottie near to tears – the poor little lass hasn’t come down since – but did she come in here and tell me she was off? Not on your nelly! Too jumped up for the likes of me.’
‘Stop it, Dora! Do you hear me? Shut up!’ Charlie snatched the rolling pin and hurled it from him. ‘This letter is to tell me that my dear wife is leaving Wesley Battersby and going to marry a chap with a double-barrelled name. She wants the divorce speeded up so they can marry. She encloses a forwarding address and hopes that I will be as happy as she knows she is going to be.’
‘Just like that?’ Dora said, when she’d got her breath back.
‘Just like that,’ Charlie agreed. ‘But this time my guess is she’s serious. My guess is this chap is loaded. Money has always been Clara’s god. Wesley must have spun her a good tale to lure her away from the material comforts she had here.’
‘A little palace,’ Dora said. She rubbed her hands down her apron. ‘I’m sorry I jumped in too quick. But ever since she went, and Lottie wouldn’t come downstairs, I’ve been telling myself that she was coming again, the next time for good. And being you, you’d have had her back, wouldn’t you?’
Charlie pretended to think for a minute. ‘Well, I wouldn’t exactly have seen her go short of a bob or two, but there’s no place for her in my house again. I never thought to see Lottie so happy – she can go two days at a stretch without lying now.’ He picked up the letter from the table. ‘I’d best go up and talk to her, and you’d best get that crust on yon pie if we’re to eat at a decent hour.’
Yon pie . . . Dora smiled to herself. Charlie often lapsed into dialect when he was particularly happy. It was as though the soft words of long ago were a cover-up for the reticence he felt at talking soppy. Lovingly she laid the pastry lid over the meat, fluting the edges and, quite carried away by her own euphoria, shaped a couple of leaves complete with veins from the left-over bits.
‘It seems silly you having to go home at this time every night as soon as you’ve done the washing up,’ Charlie said later. ‘Don’t you think?’
Dora thought. But only for a minute. Only a little while ago she had thought the gates of heaven were closed against her. She had seen herself going back to her shabby house with carpets so thin you could see the nicks of the floorboards through them, and an emptiness that was beginning to drain the very life from her. She went on scouring out the brown pie dish, careful not to turn round.
‘Are you suggesting that I move in here? Be a living-in housekeeper?’
‘Yes, I am.’ Charlie sounded aggrieved, as if already someone had challenged his decision. ‘What’s wrong with that?’
‘You mean me to give up my own house?’ Dora scraped away at a burnt-on bit of kidney. ‘You mean move in here lock, stock and barrel?’
‘Every lock, every stock and every flamin’ barrel.’
‘You’d have to marry me of course,’ said Dora, squeezing her eyes tight shut and sending up a fervent prayer. ‘When the divorce comes through.’
He was so close behind her she could feel him through her skin. She loved him, every inch of him, including his little twinkly eyes, his two chins and not forgetting his beer belly. He wasn’t a bit like Ronald Colman or Robert Donat, there was neither of them a patch on him. He was cuddly, funny, with a sense of the ridiculous to match her own, and she loved him in a way she had never thought to love again.
‘Art thou proposing to me, lass?’ she heard him say, ‘because if thou art, then I accept.’
When she turned round she was enveloped in a hug that took the breath from her body, and when she looked into his eyes they were filled with tears.
‘I’ll look after you,’ Dora whispered fiercely. ‘And Lottie, and that lad she’s going out with, and anybody who comes into this house. Everyone will be as welcome as the flowers in May. I’ll fill the tins with cakes and I’ll polish the sideboard till you can see to shave in it . . .’
There was no controlling her. The dam of Dora’s unhappiness had burst; she was transported into a realm of such delight that it threatened to overwhelm her. The only time she calmed down a little and grew serious was when she tried to talk to Lottie about her feelings for her mother.
‘When you stayed upstairs after she’d gone I thought she must have upset you, love. I’ll never try to take her place, I promise.’
Lottie’s dark eyes flashed scorn. ‘I stayed in my room because I wanted to be quiet. I knew she was telling the truth when she said she wasn’t coming here any more, and I wanted to dwell on it.’
‘Dwell on it?’
‘Let it sink in that I never needed to try to make her like me again. Mothers are supposed to love their children, aren’t they? So I never gave up the hope that one day my mother might look at me and like what she saw. Now she’s gone for ever and I don’t need to try any more. As far as I’m concerned she’s dead.’ The hardness in the dark eyes suddenly softened. ‘But you won’t go away, will you, Dora?’
‘When the time comes for me to leave for good I’ll be in me box,’ said Dora, making Lottie laugh out loud.
‘Jimmy says you’re a card,’ she said.
‘Good thinking there,’ said Dora, going through into the sitting room to tell Charlie that she was going now, that it would take a week or more to clear her house and wind up her affairs.
He offered to get out the van and run her home, but she refused. She wanted to see Amy, to tell her the wonderful news and break it to her that she wouldn’t be living next door for much longer.
‘Do you and Amy tell each other everything?’ Charlie looked a bit worried, though Dora couldn’t for the life of her see why.