The Girl Now Leaving

by Betty Burton

  Untying his leather cellar apron, he came close, pressed his belly against hers and cupped her shapely, generous left breast. ‘You got a soft heart, Peg.’ His other large hand parted her legs and moved upwards without any of the preamble or finesse in ‘courting’ that, in her younger days, before she became wise to them, Peggy had always believed a decent man would show. In other ways, Dick Briardale was a decent man, and according to Dick himself, a good ladies’ man. A big ladies’ man, and don’t they love it? Handsome and knew it. ‘Soft and warm,’ he said, playing around with her in a way he knew softened women up a bit.

  ‘Oh, Dick,’ Peggy said, ‘you get worse. It isn’t hardly half-past eight.’

  ‘Just a refresher, Peg, it don’t take five minutes. Go on, undo me, you know you’re dying to… Go on, I haven’t got three hands.’

  He wasn’t asking. She was under his roof, in clothes he had paid for, his gin inside her. A year ago he had become a single man again, with a nice ale-house and a decent trade. There were plenty of other women who’d like the chance to know what it was like to sleep in Dick Briardale’s bed at nights, and stand up for Dick Briardale when he was full of eggs and bacon and perky from a wash and shave. And there had been several women, since his wife had died, who did already know. But he liked Peg, she wasn’t any sort of a prude. No, sir! Not one bit. So he wouldn’t mind if she stayed, which was why he let her twist him round her little finger.

  Peggy lifted the silky skirt. The little girl had surreptitiously fingered it, probably hadn’t felt silk in her life. She leaned back with her elbows on the bar so that her boss could take his morning exercise… his physical jerks, his daily dozen. His joke. Peggy, looking over his shoulder as he concentrated on her soft, easy body, knew that he was oblivious to everything except his gratification. Next time Old Hec called, she would ask him how the girl had settled in. Breathily she whispered, ‘She looks to me as though she won’t make old bones, Dick. Seems such a waste. Just a dried-up little angel with her big eyes.’

  Dick groaned.

  He hadn’t heard a word. She hadn’t wanted him to hear. She could say anything to him whilst he was grunting away, giving her what he knew a woman of twenty-five bloody well wanted. ‘There!’ he said. In the mornings he said, ‘There!’, and at night he said, ‘You liked that, didn’t you?’ Sunday afternoons, he said, ‘You shouldn’t have let me eat so much, Peg.’ Predictability was good in a man. Some men would kiss you one moment, slap you around the next. Dick wouldn’t ever hit a woman, you could rely on that. Dick was all right: she liked his predictability. Surprises are never what you expect – Peg’s joke.

  He pulled away and she went into the toilet. Standing her gin on the little shelf under the mirror, a newly lighted cigarette beside it, she looked into her own eyes as she pulled down a long length off the roll and asked herself the same question as she’d asked before, ‘What would he say if I stopped wearing my little cap?’ He wouldn’t know… accidents happen… they didn’t guarantee caps to be a hundred per cent. He said it never bothered him that his first wife couldn’t have babies, but when it came down to it, there wasn’t a man born who didn’t want living proof that he could deliver, that he wasn’t all talk and trousers. Southwick itself wasn’t much of a place, but The Bells was all right. She was doing better here than she’d done for ages. Pity to risk it just because she got broody. So what if he did give her the heave-ho? He wouldn’t be the first man to do that. She could still pull a man. She peered closer, inspecting the fine lines. What about in five years? Ten? She’d be thirty-five. She bit on her lips which she had repaired with bright red lipstick. Then again, she might be pushing up the daisies. Pity to pop off and not know what it was like to do what women are supposed to do. Anyway, Dick might get the idea himself; he’d been soft enough over the puppies his pedigree bitch had gone and got without letting him know she was even interested.

  Two of the few things that were her own she had given away that morning. What she had given Dick he didn’t see as being a gift, but the hair-slide that she had given to that little Louise, the girl’d treated as though it was the crown jewels. Her mum was called Vera; what must it be like to have a little kid, bring her up, and then have to look on, helpless, as she wasted away. Peggy felt like weeping. ‘This is all your bloody fault!’ she said to the gin as she tossed it off.

  * * *

  The rest of the journey seems to go in a flash, with Mr Barrit keeping saying, ‘Not long now’, ‘Only a mile or so’, ‘Nearly there’. They turn off the main road and go down a long narrow lane with fields on both sides, but these ones aren’t endless and empty, there are rises and hedges and trees. And suddenly they are there. A proper painted notice on a post says, Roman’s Fields. Proprs. Strawbridge & Wilmott. Strawberries and veg. in season. Wholesale and retail. Eggs. Chickens. Honey. Call at side door or in fields. Ring bell for service.

  ‘Look, Uncle Hec. Wilmott.’ Her own name in curly letters on a proper notice like outside the church or over a shop. She had never known that the May and Ted Wilmotts were posh. Ralph said that, except for the Lampeter Street Wilmotts, the Wickham ones were better than all the rest. Uncle Hec had been really nice today, so perhaps Uncle Ted would be too.

  Absently, because he is manoeuvring the lorry, Uncle Hec says, ‘Yes, my pretty, that’s our Ted.’

  Uncle Hec slows down, Mr Barrit jumps out and swings open a wide gate, and Lu watches as the lorry is manoeuvred into a kind of yard surrounded by sheds and outhouses. Mr Barrit holds out his arms and helps her down. Her legs feel shaky and her stomach is turning over with alarm. As she is looking at the outhouses a voice behind her says, ‘You got here all right then?’ and Uncle Hec says, ‘Course we did, May, here’s the little maid safe and sound.’ Lu swallows on a dry mouth. There is no turning back now; she turns and sees this unknown aunty in whose house she will have to stay.

  Aunty May is nothing at all like her other aunties. She is pretty, a lot younger than Mum, about the same age as Peggy, and she has the same low, slow way of talking as her too. Aunty May is wearing leather sandals with buckles, and a wrap-around apron with no sleeves. She is so different from anything Lu had imagined. ‘Hello, Lu,’ she smiles. ‘I’m so glad you could come and visit us. We’ve been looking forward to it that much.’ She takes Lu’s hand and holds it between her own two. ‘Are you cold, pet? I hope Hector didn’t keep the window down.’

  Lu can only shake her head. She tries to smile but feels that it is coming out all wrong, and her hand really does feel cold, enclosed as it is between the two very warm ones. Because of Aunty Else and the other aunties – Glad, Ethel, Rose and Vi – Lu had created Aunty May from a composite of them.

  No wonder May Wilmott was such a surprise: the other aunties were hard-voiced and bony-faced and in their forties, mothers of several children. The other aunties always appeared to frown and have their arms folded close across their bodies. Such faces and arms are familiar to Lu, because she has grown up among women who have spent their lives living on a diet that lasted a long time in the stomach: combinations of potatoes, bread, belly-pork, lard and suet. Protein was usually fish in batter or sausages. Few fresh vegetables or fruits, and a great many daylight hours spent in ill-lit factories bent over sewing machines, score deep creases in their grey faces.

  Lu, of course, does not realize that her grim Pompey aunties have good cause to look grim. All she sees – to her great pleasure – is that this aunty is very pretty, with a kind face and a gentle voice.

  She stands with her hand held as Aunty May asks Mr Barrit if he would mind bringing Lu’s bag into the house.

  Aunty May’s hair is as light as Peggy’s, but not the same goldy colour; nor is it shiny and neat, but spills out in little twirls from the sides of a blue handkerchief which is knotted at the back. It is not reasonable to expect Lu to take in much else, for she is held by Aunty May’s beautiful eyes. Lu has heard of ‘smiling eyes’, but until Aunty May, she has never seen eyes that do this. As Aunty
May turns to Lu, the smile spreads to her lips as well.

  A minute ago, when May Wilmott saw her waif-like little niece in her cheap plimsolls and ill-fitting cardigan, she needed to put her hands together in order to stop herself clasping the girl herself. Instead she took Lu’s hand; a bone-cold, bone-thin, sinewy hand which, except for the soft skin, was like that of a very old lady. What a pathetic, sick-looking child. How overwhelmed she must be. All those weeks of illness, and now being uprooted and put down in a place that must feel very strange to her. May has promised herself that it must not feel strange for long. She says again, ‘We’ve been so looking forward to it, we don’t get many visitors, so it’s a real treat.’

  Lu’s blush is noticeable on her pale face. Vera has most likely given her a talking-to about good manners. Vera brought them all up like that. May hears the Pompey cockney of back-street Portsmouth as Lu hands over a neat packet. ‘Thank you for asking me. These is from Ralph, he saved all last week’s Evening News for you. He said Uncle Ted would probably like to know what’s been going on in Town.’

  May was touched by the simple present. ‘Well now, isn’t that good of Ralph to send something interesting. It’s not often we get to see the Portsmouth papers, that’s true. I’ve always remembered Ralph as such a nice boy.’ The winsome girl, whose face seems to be overburdened by her large eyes, and her head by such heavy, lank hair says eagerly, ‘He is, Aunty May… and he’s going to get a “priv” and come over and see me when he’s on the right shift, or he’s going to borrow the paper-shop bike.’

  May suspects that this statement is to get the proposed visit established right at the outset. ‘Well, pet, you’ll have to tell me what he likes, because we’ll have to make him a special dinner. Now come on in, your Uncle Hector and Mr Barrit will want a ham sandwich before they get off down to Wickham.’

  * * *

  The first night at Roman’s Fields. Lu, having embarrassingly fallen asleep over her supper, now finds herself wide awake, her mind in turmoil with the events of the day. Peggy swims in and out of her mind; her bird earrings and the roses and frills of her dress; the way she talked as though Lu wasn’t just a girl, but a person. Then Aunty May’s kind, pretty face smiles out of all the new faces. She raises her eyebrows when she smiles, as though she’s being given a surprise present.

  About this characteristic, Lu is quite perceptive. May is a woman given to acknowledging enchantment whenever it presents itself, and if it should slip by unnoticed, she’s likely to say later, ‘That was really nice. I don’t know why I didn’t notice at the time.’

  Ever since Hector had mentioned how worried Vera had been over the girl, and how when it had come to the crisis it had been touch and go, May had planned to ask Vera to let the child come to stay. May’s visits to Portsmouth always appalled her. Whenever she had visited the city, on her return to Roman’s Fields, she and Ted had virtually the same conversation. ‘Oh, I like the city itself well enough, it’s a change to be in a place where they’re so rich the town hall looks like it come from ancient Greece. And I always like a chance to go to a play or a show. And I have to admit, Joycey’s in the village isn’t quite the same as that big new Co-op, that’s all nice when you come from the country.’

  Ted would say his line, ‘There’s not many Pompeyites lives in the guildhall.’

  And, as though Ted had never seen his own birthplace, May would bring out the piece of stone that weighed heavier than any of the purchases she had brought home with her. ‘It’s only when I see it all again that I remember how bad it all is. There’s poverty enough around here, Lord above we all know that, but all that part of Pompey where your people live… it’s all so mean, squalid, and the air tastes like sulphur. And they have to go on breathing it every day. All those families packed together in those dreadful narrow streets. I don’t reckon there’s hardly a house can open a window or door properly the frames are that warped.’

  ‘It was throwed up overnight, cheap bricks held together with hardly anything ’xcept sand and water.’

  ‘And how the place did smell. I tell you, Ted, all those streets round where the market is… well, our goat shed was a sight more sweet than they were.’ Finding Ted’s only response was to shake his head, May would ask the same question she had asked before. ‘Why do people stand it?’

  ‘You know why they do, May – because we’re born to it. You know what it’s like if a rabbit’s born in a old orange-box that’s full of droppin’s and old cabbage leaves… He don’t know nature intended him to have a decent nest down a warm burrow. Well, people born in slums don’t know nothing else.’

  ‘Ah… but if you showed your rabbit a green field and opened his box, he’d be gone before you could blink. I mean, human beings actually know it isn’t nature to live so cramped up with hardly a green leaf in sight. Why don’t they all just get out, live in a tent? Eli bringing up his family in our old barn is better housed than your people, Ted.’

  ‘Eli Barney’s born a gypsy – he knows how to turn a penny and live off the land… There isn’t a Wilmott in generations who’d know about livin’ off of the land.’

  ‘You do, Ted.’

  And Ted would smile, shaking his head ruefully. ‘And a pretty fist I made of it at first. If it hadn’t a been for your dad, I’d a gone back and lived in my old orange-box, droppin’s, cabbage leaves and all.’

  Of course, May Wilmott knew only too well how and why slums existed and how and why it was virtually impossible for people trapped in them to escape. But, although May no longer thought of herself as a Quaker as her parents had been, she still saw the world and its people with a particular view of what was right. Her mother had died a long time ago, but Gabriel Strawbridge, her father, now arthritic and losing his sight, still lived on in Roman’s Fields. He had inherited the few acres and a house from his father, whose forefathers had squatted on the bit of land which had been overlooked by the big estate at the time of the enclosures. Each generation of Strawbridges contributed something to the betterment and fertility of the smallholding; now, when May and Ted are working it, it is about as productive as a bit of land can be.

  The sad thing for Gabriel Strawbridge, and for May and Ted themselves, is that there are no children to carry on Roman’s Fields. Gabriel would have liked to know that it would be kept up by somebody who loved the place. May, although she would like to have had a child, had never dwelt on it, instead enjoying the presence of other people’s children – Eli Barney and Ann Carter’s children came and went at Roman’s Fields almost as an extension of their own encampment. So, when Hector said how sick Vera’s girl had been, the opportunity to do something worthwhile arose, and she had sent the letter that had caused such a stir in Lampeter Street. Vera’s message in reply had caused an equal stir at Roman’s Fields. Every evening for a week she spent preparing one of the rooms for her niece, sometimes with the help of young Bar Barney, Eli and Ann’s girl.

  In a way, it was history repeating itself. Ted had come to the farm as an ailing youth, with a damaged arm. The arm had never grown as the youth had grown, healed as the rest of him had healed. Withered and useless on its own, Ted’s left arm hung around waiting for his right hand to move it. Once in position, his left hand functioned reasonably well and was able to grasp a hoe, carry a bundle, push a cart and even grip the steering wheel of a van. And now, late in the evening of the first day of Lu’s visit, May was out in the garden with Ted, lamenting quietly at how ill the child looked.

  ‘Have you ever seen such stick arms, Ted? I never have, she looks as if you could snap her in two or a breeze would blow her away like thistledown. It breaks my heart to see her, Ted, and that’s a fact.’

  Ted hmmed agreement. ‘You’ll soon put her on her feet, m’dear. You’re the best cook I know. But if you’ll take notice of me, you’ll have to take it steady, little bits of this and little bits of that. You’ll have to treat her like she was a runty piglet or an orphan lamb.’

  Seeing a snail in the beam of
her torch, she picked it up and deposited it in a pail of salt water where it expired along with others of assorted sizes and colours. ‘Thank you, Ted, but I do know what I’m doing. Little and often, sweet and savoury, pretty to the eye and tasty in the mouth.’

  ‘Ah well, yes, May, I was only sayin’, I wouldn’t attempt to interfere, it’s just that I’m as keen as you to see the girl grow back to health and spirit.’

  ‘I doubt her spirit’s ailing.’

  ‘Nor her intelligence, she’s bright enough… There, look, May, by the forcing bell, one of them great yellow ones.’

  ‘You know I can’t abide to touch a slug,’ and she trowelled it to its saline doom. ‘Did you hear what she said about the barmaid at The Bells?’

  ‘I thought I’d smile.’

  ‘Never mind smile: what she said was observant for a girl of her age. She was the kind of lady that people down our street would say things about behind her back, without even knowing she was nice, she said.’

  ‘I know, I heard her.’

  ‘She said, “People don’t think somebody like her would care about children, but she did, she was kind to me.” She’s only young, after all, Ted.’

  Ted, sounding as though he was smiling: ‘And I can hear you telling it her back when you’re old and grey.’

  ‘Well, I thought it showed a perception. It’s the sort of thing sticks in your memory.’

  ‘I an’t arguing about it. She’s a nice little thing. A Wilmott in name only, though.’

  May did not respond at once, until she had despatched another half-dozen snails. ‘I reserve judgement on that; she hasn’t been here a day and a night yet.’