Family of Women

by Annie Murray

  ‘It was no good. You were all getting too bound up with him. It was never going to be any different, you know – not right from the start.’

  ‘She is seventeen,’ Mrs Jones put in. ‘I mean I had our Michael at that age . . .’

  ‘She may be seventeen in years,’ Bessie said, thumping the flour down on the table. ‘But in her head she’s a child – a babby herself. The girl’s not all there.’

  Violet looked at Rosina, still not understanding.

  Tears ran down Rosy’s face again. ‘D’you know what she’s gone and done? She’s taken Tommy away and she’s given him to the orphanage!’

  ‘You didn’t?’ She whispered it, disbelieving. But she saw from Bessie’s defiant face that it was true.

  ‘You can’t have – he was ours! He was one of us!’

  ‘No he wasn’t!’ Bessie lost her temper completely. ‘He were born out of a filthy act and he was a bastard child with no father. I’m not having a bastard child brought up in my house, and that’s that. You conceive in filth and you live and die in filth, that’s how it is. I’ve done the only decent thing and I don’t want to hear any more from either of you.’

  Rosina had got to her feet.

  ‘He wasn’t yours . . .’ She was backing away from her mother, towards the stairs. ‘You think you can tell everyone what to do – but he wasn’t yours. He was Mari’s!’

  ‘Any more from you, my girl, and you’ll have a damn good hiding!’

  Violet followed Rosina up the stairs.

  ‘Rosy!’ Outside the bedroom she pulled urgently at the back of her sister’s dress. ‘Does Mari know?’

  Rosina turned. Her eyes were burning with grief and fury and Violet could feel her trembling.

  ‘She knows,’ she hissed, clenching her fists. ‘I hate Mom. I hate her.’

  Marigold’s face was turned away and for a moment they thought she was asleep. Both of them tiptoed over to her and she moved her head and looked at them.

  ‘Oh, Mari – your little babby!’ Rosina sobbed, and she flung herself on the bed, clasping Marigold in her arms. ‘Your little Tommy. How could she?’

  Violet stood watching, tears running down her own cheeks. She could see no expression on Marigold’s face. She was blank, as if she had been rubbed out. She said nothing. But just for a moment, feeling Rosina’s warm shape pressed to hers, she lifted her hand and gently stroked her little sister’s dark hair.

  Chapter Twelve

  Marigold’s mute misery was terrible.

  They could neither take it away, nor stand to see it. It was as if no one could reach her. Sometimes she just started crying and couldn’t be comforted. If she did it in front of the family, Bessie sent her upstairs.

  ‘Can’t stand all that carry-on,’ she said. ‘Time she got used to it, that’s all.’

  Violet couldn’t bear it. Sometimes she saw Rosina looking at their mother in a way which almost frightened her. She could imagine Rosy getting a knife and sticking it in her, the way her face went.

  For Violet, Harry had changed everything. Having Jo as her friend to natter to was wonderful enough, but this was different. Although she had occasionally heard people comment on her looks, that she was pretty, she had never believed it. Now, when she saw Harry looking at her, almost drinking in the sight of her face, she began to feel pretty as well.

  In the one tiny looking-glass which Bessie kept nailed to the wall near the door, she began to notice that her hair was a nice blonde shade, and that the eyes which looked solemnly back at her were blue and remarkably large. She did something she had never done before during her reluctant glances in the glass: she smiled at herself. A sweet though sad face smiled back, the dimple appearing in her left cheek. She brushed her straggly hair back into a loose bunch and it suited her elfin features.

  ‘You’re the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen,’ Harry would say, and Violet drank this in, heady at experiencing more attention than she’d ever had in her life before.

  She revelled in it. All the wages that she kept off Mom now went on prettifying herself: a little pot of rouge, some stockings, a blouse with a little navy tie in the neck. She didn’t tell Bessie about the pay rise Vicars had given her, so now she was two shillings a week better off. Anything was better than being at home, and she basked in being wanted and admired. She never gave a thought to what she felt about Harry. He loved her, so she must love him and that was that. It was like that tiny glimpse Miss Green had given her, making her feel she could be good at something, and special, only this was so much more powerful because with Harry came a real possibility of love, of a life of her own.

  And Harry was full of dreams of escape as well. His loves in life, apart from her, were the Villa ground, where he spent every Saturday he could afford when there was a match on, his mom, who Violet soon learned lived a hellish life with Harry’s drunken, vicious father, and his big dream of Getting Out. As the months passed and she and Harry spent more and more time together, this was his constant refrain.

  ‘We’ve got to get out of this place, Vi. I’ve got plans, I have. Give it a year or two and I’ll be on a boat to Australia to make my fortune. I want to see our mom all right. The old man’s never looked after her proper, like. I want her to live like a queen.’

  Sometimes, as they were walking, arms wrapped round each other in the dark, along the back streets of Nechells or Aston, Harry would erupt with restless frustration.

  ‘Look at this – bloody hole of a place! The state of these houses – crawling with vermin. They’re hardly fit for animals. The filth – look at it!’ He’d squeeze her arm, passionately. ‘We’ve got to get out of ’ere, Vi – go somewhere better. There’s got to be summat better than this.’

  Excited, she’d nod, though she had very little notion of how you were supposed to achieve it. Getting out of two, back of sixteen Joseph Street felt quite good enough for now.

  Months passed and they got used to each other, but there was always an understanding that they wouldn’t go back to each other’s houses.

  ‘I want you to meet our mom one day,’ Harry told her. ‘But it’s not a good time – the old man and that . . . Let’s keep it as it is.’

  And Violet was just as happy to keep Harry away from home. Harry was hers, her one bit of happiness, and if Bessie got in on it she’d only start taking over, spoiling everything. It was exciting having this secret. If Mom asked where she’d been she said she was at Jo Snell’s house.

  ‘Must be very nice over there,’ Bessie would say, sarcastically. ‘Don’t know why you don’t pack a bag and move in.’

  When Mom started keeping on, Violet just didn’t listen any more. She just thought about something else.

  Everything about home got on her nerves. Bessie filled the house with her overbearing personality and the coming and going of babies. Violet was sick of it all. She didn’t care if she never saw another baby, after all the screaming and wet nappies strung up flapping round their heads and Bessie sitting nursing them like a bloated queen bee in a hive, lording it over everyone in the house and yard. Rosina was hardly ever there, except to sleep and eat, and neither was Charlie. He was still courting Gladys, a shrew-faced redhead and the bossiest person Violet had ever met barring her own mother. Charlie was already talking about getting married. Lucky Charlie, Violet thought. As for Marigold . . .

  ‘She’s just let herself go,’ Bessie said sometimes. ‘She ought to pull herself together.’

  Marigold hardly ever washed herself and her charcoal hair grew long, hanging lank and greasy. Her face was a mass of pimples, worse than it had ever been, and she had a pungent smell about her. Instead of being mutely obliging, she was silent, now, as if resigned. She followed Bessie’s orders, sat for hours cradling the babies in her arms or pushed them out in the battered old pram that they kept in the brewhouse. Violet began to forget that Marigold had once had more life in her than this, had run with them in the yard playing tip-cat, that she used to laugh and smile. Her state becam
e accepted, a way of life, and for Bessie she was a useful skivvy. The only thing that was different was that after a while they kept seeing her with scraps of paper at the table, and a stub of pencil, writing laboriously in her looping, childish hand.

  ‘What’re you doing?’ Violet asked her, the first time she saw it.

  With no change of expression Marigold sat up to let Violet see what she had written. The smudged line of writing read, ‘If you were the only girl in the world, and I were the only . . .’

  Violet hummed the tune.

  ‘That’s nice,’ she said.

  ‘Wasting your time messing with bits of paper,’ Bessie said.

  But Violet hoped Marigold was feeling a bit better.

  And she had a lot else on her mind. One day during that winter after Harry Martin fell in love with her, he came to work one morning with his face in a terrible state. She saw him as they clocked in.

  ‘Oh, my word – what’s happened to you?’

  There was a huge shiner all across his left cheekbone and the eye was swollen and bruised so he couldn’t open it.

  ‘Nothing. I’m all right. Leave it.’ He shook her off, not wanting her sympathy in front of everyone else.

  ‘But Harry!’ She was hurt.

  ‘Leave it – I’ll see you later.’

  He stormed off in his overall to start work at the other end. During the morning she kept glancing along the noisy factory floor to see if she could see him at his lathe in the light of the long windows. Harry kept his head down and seemed to be working with almost frenzied energy. In the dinner break she kept away from him and stayed with Josephine. She and Jo usually ate their dinner together in any case. She felt upset with Harry, pushing her off like that. If that was how he was going to be, then hard luck to him!

  ‘Sorry about this morning,’ Harry said when they got outside.

  Violet was with Jo. She stood waiting.

  ‘D’you want to come home – meet my mom?’

  He asked the question almost shamefacedly, looking down to avoid her eyes. Violet was immediately appeased. She knew he was trying to make it up to her. She looked at Jo.

  ‘Go on,’ Jo said. She was so easy-going. ‘You go with Harry. You can come to ours tomorrow if you like.’

  Walking down the road, Harry took her arm and slipped it through his. Violet didn’t ask anything. She waited.

  ‘She threw the old man out last night.’ The words erupted out of him at last.

  ‘What – you mean, for good? Is that why he hit you?’

  ‘He came home in his usual state – only worse. Set about Mom – with the poker. Tommy and me had to stop him. Mom’s told him she don’t want him back – ever. He never pays a penny of the rent or nothing. It’s me and the lads do that – and Marj.’

  ‘But – where’ll he go? Won’t he just come back?’

  Harry shrugged. ‘Dunno. Last night I told him I’d kill ’im if he did.’

  ‘You never!’

  Harry turned to her, his face set and intense. ‘Bloody would, an’ all.’

  The force of his anger filled Violet with sudden dread.

  ‘You’d go to prison.’

  ‘It’d bleeding well be worth it.’

  ‘It wouldn’t, Harry!’ She squeezed his arm. ‘You want to get away, remember, go somewhere where there’re open spaces – not be locked away. Don’t talk like that!’

  He took a deep, shuddering breath. ‘I could’ve – last night. Easy.’ He stopped abruptly and, turning to her, took her in his arms. Violet was moved.

  ‘You’re what I need,’ he said into her neck.

  She held him close, stroking his back.

  ‘Let’s get wed,’ he said.

  She pulled back, startled, but excited. ‘But I’m not even sixteen till next month!’

  ‘Soon – next year?’

  She beamed at him, and kissed his cheek, the side which wasn’t all sore.

  ‘All right. But don’t let’s tell anyone yet.’

  Harry agreed. He released her. ‘Come and see our mom.’

  ‘She won’t want visitors – not after last night.’

  ‘It’s all right. Come on.’

  The Martins’ house was not on a yard, but one of a row of two up, two down terraces in ill repair, identical to the hundreds of others in rows stretching all round Birmingham. Violet knew that her mother could have afforded to move from the yard into one of these now, with all their wages coming in, and it would have allowed them a bit more space, but Bessie was well established and a move would have lost her her status as yard gaffer. She was used to being the big fish in a little pond.

  When Harry pushed the door open, Mrs Martin started violently. She was standing by the range in the shadowy room, having just replaced the kettle on the heat.

  ‘Lord love us, you made me jump, bab!’

  Violet saw a slender woman in her forties with a lined, anxious face and what would have been wide, brown eyes like Harry’s, except that one eye was badly bruised and swollen and her top lip was thick and had been bleeding.

  ‘S’awright, Mom.’

  ‘I thought for a minute . . .’

  Then a smile flickered across her face for a second, but she winced and her anxious expression returned. Violet could see she was looking at a very frightened woman.

  ‘Mom – this is Violet. Works up Vicars with me.’

  ‘Hello,’ Violet said, nervously.

  Mrs Martin stared at them both for a moment, wringing her hands as if she couldn’t make any sense of the situation.

  ‘We’re courting, like,’ Harry told her gruffly.

  ‘I’m all at sixes and sevens today – don’t know what I’m doing. We had a bit of trouble last night . . . Don’t know if he’s told you. My husband . . . I don’t know what’s going to happen . . .’ She collected herself and stepped forward. ‘Nice to meet you, Violet . . . Let’s . . . let’s have a cup of tea . . .’

  She turned back towards the range but still seemed at a loss. Violet could see she’d had a shock. She seemed nice enough anyway. But she wondered why on earth Harry had brought her here today of all days.

  They drank a cup of tea together but Mrs Martin sat perched on the edge of her chair holding her cup, rocking slightly, backwards and forwards. Violet could see all the tension was affecting Harry as well.

  ‘Oh, Harry – what if he comes back?’ Mrs Martin burst out at last. ‘Every time I hear footsteps . . .’

  ‘It’ll be all right. He won’t.’

  Mrs Martin looked stricken. ‘I can’t take any more . . .’ Her eyes filled. ‘What if he does?’

  ‘He won’t – I’ve told you. And if he does, I’ll see to him.’

  ‘You’re a good lad. He’s good, my Harry. Always was.’ Mrs Martin wiped her unblemished eye on her sleeve and tried to compose herself.

  ‘D’you like working at Vicars?’ she asked Violet, calm for a moment.

  ‘Yes – it’s all right. I’ve never worked anywhere else, though.’

  ‘Oh, it’s nice, Vicars is. Worked there myself for a bit once.’ She looked anxiously at Harry again. ‘Where’s he gone? Where d’you think he is?’

  ‘I dunno. Good bloody riddance.’

  Violet was glad to get out of the house. Harry walked her down to the corner. It was already dark.

  ‘Come ’ere,’ he said, before they parted. ‘Are you my girl?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Course I am.’

  He held her so close and tight, as if she was the most precious thing in the world, and she understood that he had wanted her to see his mom with her bruised face, for her to understand. And she knew how much he needed her.

  Chapter Thirteen

  1932

  ‘I s’pose it’s all right if you want to look common as muck,’ Bessie said, when Violet showed her the simple frock she had found for her wedding.

  She unfolded her arms and twitched at the material with her fingers.

  ‘Could do with a good wash
, I should think. You don’t know where that’s been.’

  The dress wasn’t new, but Violet felt she had had a stroke of luck finding it on the market, in with all the other frowsty old rags. It was white and scattered with tiny blue forget-me-nots and had pretty frills edging the neck and sleeves. She was delighted with it and Jo said she thought it was perfect, but of course Bessie had to spoil it, nose in the air as if it was a dirty floorcloth.

  ‘You going to give me the money for a better one then?’

  ‘Don’t you go getting uppity, wench,’ Bessie snapped. She moved away, starched apron crackling round her. ‘You’re not marrying the Prince of Wales. Old man Martin’s a drunk and a waster and it’s like father, like son – I’ve never seen it go different. But you make your own bed – and you lie on it.’

  On an overcast May morning Violet and Harry stepped, husband and wife, out of the little Congregational church a few streets from Vicars.

  Nearly all the factory had come to see them marry and shower them with rice at the door. Their wedding photograph showed Violet in her pretty dress, with orange-blossom in her hair. Rosina was not in the picture, but she was Violet’s bridesmaid, with her dark-eyed looks, her long hair plaited and coiled round her head and entwined with flowers, which Josephine Snell had done for her. Rosina adored any sort of dressing-up and revelled in the attention.

  ‘You both look lovely!’ Jo said, kissing Violet outside. ‘You lucky girl, you!’

  The church was one which Harry’s mother sometimes attended. Bessie, who never darkened the doors of any church, was not in a position to influence the situation much and she sulked. She wouldn’t take much interest in the wedding, offering only sarcastic remarks.

  She’d been sniffy about Harry from the moment she knew they were courting, and she’d been just the same over Charlie’s Gladys, even though she was a young, red-headed harridan in the same model as herself. Charlie had certainly married his mother. Bessie’s children had all been under her tight control for so long that she didn’t like Violet making decisions for herself or moving out of her orbit of command. Yet weren’t marriage and children all that she had insisted was a woman’s place, loud and clear? Violet ignored her comments and her sulking. This was her chance to get out and away.