Family of Women

by Annie Murray

  I’m her dad, he thought, as if he’d only realized it for the first time. He could see himself in her, the way she looked. The thought filled him with joy and fear. Whatever kind of father did he know how to be?

  They were sitting and the vicar was reading: ‘For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday . . .’

  There was a thump at the back of the church as the door opened and a bang as it closed. Harry felt the hairs stand up on the back of his head. Somehow he could not bring himself to turn round, not while they were all sitting facing the front. Whoever it was must have sat down and it was quiet again.

  But within a couple of minutes, before the vicar had got to the end of the readings, they all heard it start, low at first, then louder and unmistakable; the lurching, indecipherable singing of a drunk man. A drunk man who was the husband of the woman being commended to her grave.

  The eruption that had been waiting to happen inside Harry began then. He loosed Linda’s hand and got up from his seat, charging down the long aisle of the church to where Josiah was sitting, slumped to one side in the back row.

  ‘Get out!’ He seized him by the lapels of his jacket and hoiked him to his feet. ‘Get yourself out of here – now!’

  Outside the church door, Harry had no words any more. For the second time in his life he laid into his father, holding him pinned against the wall with one hand and punching and punching him with the other. There was no holding back on it, no reserve: all self-control was lost in the bursting floodgates of his rage and pain. Josiah made no sound except a winded ‘urrgh’ noise when Harry punched him hard in the stomach and he collapsed, sagging to the floor.

  ‘Harry – don’t, for God’s sake, what’re you doing?’

  Violet was beside him.

  ‘Don’t, love – stop it! You’ll kill him!’

  She was pulling at his arm, trying to prevent him doing any more. Josiah lay on his side on the wet path. He was straining to breathe, after the winding he had taken from Harry’s punch.

  ‘You could’ve killed him!’ she said. He could see the horror in her eyes but could not really take in what he might have done in his rage. ‘D’you want to go to prison? Come on – we’d better sit him up.’

  They managed to wedge Josiah in a sitting position against the wall. He groaned and mumbled and his face was all cut about, but Harry had done no more damage than that.

  For a moment the two of them stood, stunned, in the rain. The organ was playing inside the church.

  ‘Christ,’ Harry said, his voice beginning to crack. ‘Just look at him.’

  ‘Oh, love,’ Violet said.

  Her eyes were full of emotion and she went to put her arms round him, but he couldn’t stand her affection, her pity.

  ‘Don’t,’ he said. And pushed her away.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  October 1941

  Violet stood by the gas stove, grimacing at the pans of butter beans and boiling fish. Harry was bound to moan. What was she supposed to do? She’d never been a good cook but now, with all the shortages and rationing, it was harder than ever.

  Eyeing the clock on the mantel she wiped her hands on her apron. Saturday evening, and she was alone, as usual. She never knew when Harry would come home. Most nights he went to the pub and she didn’t know what mood he’d be in when he got back. He seemed to be always frustrated and angry. With petrol in short supply, he couldn’t take the bike out much now and it was under a tarpaulin out at the back. It had all got much worse since his mother died. There were still rare moments of tenderness between them, but the good times had grown fewer.

  ‘Let’s see what you’ve got to say.’

  She switched on the wireless which stood in pride of place with its accumulator on the sideboard. Harry had come home with it a few months ago and she loved having it. He was spending more money these days – had given up on saving all the time. The wireless was company and cheered the place up no end. She missed Jo Snell and the rest of the family horribly. The ache of it never quite left her. Without Jo as a friend and with Harry hardly ever in, she was very lonely.

  Making friends didn’t come very easily to her. But she tried to make things nice and keep herself looking presentable. It seemed a bit daft, the war on and everything, all those ships going down and Russian names she’d never heard before. The raids seemed to be over. There’d been warnings, of course, but not much in the way of actual raids since the really bad ones in April. But you still had to keep cheerful somehow, put a face on, a bit of lipstick and powder. She had let her hair grow over the past months, put some rollers in at night so it hung in pretty waves on her shoulders.

  Humming along to the wireless, she went to the back door. The girls were playing out in the little yard in the grey light. She could see the barrage balloon – ‘our’ balloon, as the girls called it. A sycamore tree on the scrubby bit of ground the other side of the wall had shed its papery brown leaves over into their yard.

  ‘Joycie! Linda – get in here for tea!’

  ‘Mom – they’m birds, they’m flying!’ Linda cried, her plump hands releasing a drifting shower of leaves into the air.

  ‘Birds,’ Violet muttered, shaking her head. That child was a proper one for seeing things a queer way.

  But she smiled and leaned against the doorframe, watching them. It had been a long day, nothing but hard graft and kiddies, but it was a treat to see their cheeks rosy in the biting air, especially Linda, whose round face seemed to glow. Whenever she stopped to look at her girls she was struck by the difference in them – Joycie, five now, was thin as a twig, with her pale, wispy hair, and Linda, three, was sturdier like Harry, with his brown eyes and thick black locks. You’d never guess they were sisters. Even the way they laughed was quite different. Joyce had a high, thin giggle and Linda chuckled with a rich gurgle in her throat.

  Breathing in deeply, Violet relished the smell of fallen leaves, mixed with smoke from the house chimneys. Mrs McEvoy next door was shouting to be heard over all her children. Eamonn, stop that – stop it now! She was forever yelling. Violet felt a moment of contentment, standing there by the glow of sycamore leaves. Then Joyce kicked up a shower of them, lifting a stone with them which hit Linda on the side of the head.

  ‘Owwww!’ Linda howled.

  ‘Oh, Joyce – what d’you have to go and do that for?’ Violet snapped. ‘Get in now, the pair of you.’

  ‘Stinks in here,’ Joyce said resentfully. ‘Why do we have to have fish?’

  Sighing, Violet sat them down at the table.

  ‘Urgh,’ Joyce whined, seeing the pale beans being doled out. ‘Don’t like those.’

  ‘Nor do any of us,’ Violet said sharply. ‘But that’s what there is today. That or go hungry.’

  She felt the boredom that accompanied the children’s mealtimes come over her in a wash, like fatigue, as if her limbs were suddenly too heavy. It was a constant struggle, keeping it all going with rations, let alone trying to cook anything they really liked.

  Joyce groaned and picked up her fork, leaning on one elbow and pouting.

  ‘How many beans make five?’ Violet asked, trying to distract them.

  Linda’s dark brows dipped in a frown. ‘Five, dafty.’

  ‘You calling me dafty?’

  ‘Don’t like fish. And I don’t want beans. They’re nasty.’ Joyce was moving them round the plate as if they were dead beetles. A couple of them flicked off the edge of the plate.

  ‘Oh, shut your face and eat them, for God’s sake.’

  Violet got up and fished in her pocket for her Woodbines. They were in paper wrappers now – it saved on cardboard. She lit up and stood over by the wireless. George Formby was singing and she managed a smile, recovering her temper.

  ‘. . . as a certain little lady passes by . . .’ she sang, conducting with her cigarette so that the smoke drew circles in the air. ‘Eat up, Joycie.’

  The door rattled and Violet felt herself tense up. Harry! How much booze wou
ld he have put away this time? His dark, handsome features appeared round the door. Not enough, then, for him to be scowling and in a temper.

  ‘Hello, ladies!’ he cried jovially, flinging his cap at the hook behind the door. It fell on the floor.

  ‘Missed by miles!’ Joyce giggled. The girls immediately sensed his good mood.

  Clownishly, Harry stooped to pick it up and try again. He missed two more times, messing about, and Joyce and Linda giggled. Violet relaxed a little.

  ‘There!’ He managed it finally and turned, swaying a little, an amiable grin on his face.

  ‘How’s my wenches?’ He circled the table, shrugging his jacket off. He was strong and square, his muscular shoulders appearing about to burst out of his shirt, and he seemed to take up most of the room. Bending over the table, he tickled each of the girls under the chin and they laughed, squirming.

  ‘Do it again, Dad!’ Joyce got up and tugged at him. They were so hungry for his attention. Often he barely did more than grunt at them.

  Violet doled out more of the beans and fish for Harry and herself. She felt light-hearted as well. At least for now it was going to be all right!

  Harry stood across the table from her, and his face changed. He looked instantly sober and regretful, but behind this she could also sense an excitement. She would never forget the look on his face at that moment.

  ‘Got summat to tell you, Vi.’

  ‘What?’ She was holding the plate of food out to him.

  ‘Me and Goosey – we’ve joined up.’

  ‘What?’ She put the plate down with a bang. Beans spilled on to the table. ‘You can’t’ve – what d’you mean?’

  ‘The army. We’re going. The both of us.’

  ‘But . . . You can’t! You’re reserved occ— Mr Riddle won’t let you!’

  ‘He’s said I can. I’ve asked him – a few times. He was down the pub earlier on and he said, “Well, lad – I can tell you’re just going to keep on and on and wear me down. If you’re that restless you’ll only go upsetting everyone – you’d better go with the others.” ’

  Violet pulled out the chair and sat down, as her legs would no longer hold her.

  ‘But – you don’t have to go, do you? They want you in the factory! You mean it’s what you want, to go off and leave us?’ Her voice was starting to thicken with tears.

  He came round behind her and put his hands on her shoulders; the warm feel of how he used to touch her made her weep.

  ‘I don’t want to leave you. That ain’t it. I just . . .’ He sounded completely sober now, and sad. ‘You know me, Vi – I’ve always wanted to get out of here. I’m a silly sod, I know – itchy feet. Just want life to be . . . bigger than anything I’ve ever seen. Never thought I was going to do it, like, not now, with the kiddies and everything. But there’s blokes going off and . . . I don’t want to be left behind.’ He shrugged. ‘Won’t be for long, I don’t s’pose.’

  He sounded apprehensive, as if only now was it sinking in what he had done.

  She turned to him, wiping her face. The girls were watching in silence and she didn’t want to upset them.

  ‘Oh God, Harry – why d’you have to go? I need you here – I can’t do all this on my own. How’m I ever going to manage?’

  ‘You’ll manage.’ He kissed the top of her head. ‘You’re my missis – and you’re much stronger than you think.’

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  He left a few days later, for basic training. The night before he went, they lay together in their room with the leaking roof. It was raining and the drops fell with a metallic ‘plink’ into the pail underneath.

  They made love with a tenderness that had been missing for a long time. She lay resting on his strong, stocky body afterwards, her cheek resting on the V of black, wiry hair on his chest. He curved his arm round her and laid his hand on her head.

  ‘Wait for me, won’t you?’ he said quietly, and she could hear that he was frightened, although he wanted to go. Frightened of what was facing him, and that everything would have changed by the time he came back. ‘I’ll be able to think of you – in this house, the girls and everything.’

  She reached up and kissed his cheek, her tears coming again. If only it was always like this – this closeness between them. For the first time in such a long time she could feel she loved him, and had a glimpse of a kind of heaven that she had always longed for. Why did it have to be snatched away now?

  ‘I don’t want you to go!’

  ‘I’m no good to you.’

  She raised her head. ‘What d’you mean? Course you are!’

  ‘Nah. Look at my old man. I’ll be no better, in the long run.’

  Whatever she said, that he wasn’t like that, it seemed to make no difference and when he spoke like that his eyes were very sad.

  He left very early the next day, when the girls were still in bed. Before he opened the door he took her in his arms once again and looked down at her.

  ‘I just have to go. Don’t really know why. But I love you. I do.’

  Violet stood at the door in the dawn light, with her coat over her nightdress, and watched him walk away, past the run-down houses of the streets he had so long wanted to escape.

  I’m all on my own was all Violet could think, for days. She felt desolate and frightened. What on earth am I going to do?

  Out of habit, she did what she had always done. She turned to Bessie. There was no Josephine, no husband. Bessie was already looking after the girls, as well as Gladys and Charlie’s two boys. It felt easier to go back to being Bessie’s girl than try to do anything else for herself.

  Every morning she was up early, pulling back the blackout curtains in the hope of some light to get ready by, though winter was coming fast now. She got Joyce ready for school and took both of them along Summer Lane to her mom’s. Bessie made sure Joyce got to school all right and had Linda for the day. It gave Violet a soft feeling inside, seeing them playing in the yard with Colin and Norman, where she’d played out not so long ago herself. Somehow it made her feel safe, as if amid all the destruction there was something that wouldn’t ever change.

  ‘Give me your ration-book,’ Bessie said, soon after Harry left. ‘No point in us both making tea, is there? Waste of gas. We’ll all have it together.’

  Violet hesitated for a moment. Wasn’t this just what she had wanted to escape from? From Bessie being in charge of everything? But it was so much easier, and nice not to go home to an empty house and know no one else was going to walk in through the door that night. Charlie and Gladys took the boys every night and went home for their tea, but Violet stayed and ate with Bessie and Clarence and Marigold and the girls. Even Clarence was working more now, in munitions, and was full of importance about it.

  So Violet did as Bessie told her. The more she stayed away from home, the more she could forget how alone she was.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  In December they all went to the flicks together and saw the Pathé news about how the Japanese had bombed America at Pearl Harbor. It had been all everyone talked about at Vicars for the past days.

  ‘If we’ve got to fight the bleeding Japs an’ all, there’ll be no end to it,’ Clarence said. He was full of opinions these days.

  However, in the Wiles family even the news of the attack on Pearl Harbor faded into insignificance compared with the news received a few days later. Violet had just come in, after trudging along the dark street from work.

  ‘Look at this –’ Bessie, tight-lipped, went to the mantelpiece and fetched out an envelope.

  Violet stared at the looping handwriting. There was something familiar about it. Bessie watched with her arms folded. As Violet turned the envelope round, something fell out. She gasped at the photograph which lay on the table. There, after a silence of almost five years: Rosina.

  ‘Is that Rosy?’ she cried excitedly. ‘Oh, my goodness, look at her! She looks like Jessie Matthews!’

  Joyce and Linda ran up, attracted
by the excitement, and they all pored over the picture. Rosina was dressed in a white hat with a black feather in the band, the brim upturned at the front, and a white dress bordered with black at the neck. Lacy white gloves reached almost to her elbows. Her dark hair was bobbed level with her chin and her eyebrows had been plucked to thin, elegant lines. She looked at once provocative and sweet.

  ‘Who’s that?’ Joyce demanded.

  ‘That’s your auntie Rosina,’ Violet said, staring at the picture, still hardly believing it. ‘It is her, isn’t it? I mean you can see it is, only I can hardly believe . . . Oh, my word, look at her!’ She felt a sudden surge of longing for her little sister. Marigold also stood beside them, quietly looking.

  ‘It’s her, all right,’ Bessie said. Her voice was full of bitterness. Rosina had long escaped her control. Yet look at her! Violet thought. There she was, so beautiful and obviously making a go of it.

  Joyce was pulling a letter from the envelope.

  ‘Read it, Nana – read it to us!’

  For a moment Violet saw a hunted expression cross her mother’s bullish features.

  ‘I ain’t reading it!’ The aggression was back.

  ‘Can’t you read, Nana?’ Joyce laughed.

  There was a terrible silence.

  ‘Get your mother to read it. I can’t be bothered with it.’ And Bessie turned her back and busied herself by the range as if she couldn’t care less.

  ‘Give it here, Joycie. Ooh – ’ Violet raised the blue paper to her nose. ‘This paper smells nice!’

  ‘Perfume.’ Bessie tutted. ‘Just like that one to drench her paper in perfume.’

  There was only part of an address at the top. It just said, ‘Clapham, London.’