by Annie Murray
Chapter Eighty
They sat in Mario’s café all afternoon.
‘I don’t want to take you back to the house,’ Rosina said. ‘You shouldn’t be in a place like that – not a kid your age. Next time, you come home, properly, when Clarkie and Vivianne are here. You’re cousins, after all!’
Later on she slipped out to buy more cigarettes and on the way back in joked with Mario and asked him for ‘a nice bun or something’, and he brought toasted teacakes to them, with butter and jam. Linda had barely digested the huge dinner, but she tucked in anyway, while Rosina continued to smoke endlessly, one cigarette after another. The whole afternoon passed for Linda as if bathed in light. She was overwhelmed by Rosina, shocked and impressed by what she had seen in her of steeliness and tears. And the feeling that she had always known her, not just the familiar dark eyes from Bessie’s picture, but that she had always known that she would be like this, that she would feel familiar.
‘What d’you do with yourself?’ Rosina asked, sitting back and drinking yet more tea.
‘I’ve got a job – in a bakery.’
Rosina stared shrewdly at her.
‘Any boyfriends?’
Linda moved a blob of butter round with her knife on one half of the teacake. ‘Sort of.’
‘What d’you mean, sort of?’
She found herself spilling it all out, Alan, the accident.
‘That what’s wrong with your arm?’
Linda nodded. ‘I was all right. It was him got the worst of it.’
‘Serves him flaming well right, by the sound of it. It’s no good, love – if he drags you down, ditch him. It won’t get any better. What does your mom say?’
‘Nothing much. She likes him.’
Rosina watched her for a moment, and Linda blushed.
‘What’re you going to do?’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘I mean, with yourself? Don’t you want more than working in a bakery for ever more?’
Linda met her gaze, hungrily. ‘Yes.’
Rosina leaned forwards and looked closely at her. ‘You could go far, girl, d’you know that?’
‘Like you?’
‘I think you are like me – in a way. Only, Linda love – don’t be like me, eh? What am I when you come down to it? The madam of a whorehouse with two bastard children who she can’t look in the eye and admit what she does, and who can’t face her own family. God knows, sometimes I ache to see someone else who’s flesh and blood. Maybe I’ll get up the courage again one day. But don’t be like me – be more than me.’
They left the Soho Café after Rosina had exchanged more fond banter with Mario while paying the bill.
‘You’re the best bolthole in town!’ she told him.
‘Eh – that’s what they say about your place, Rosy!’ he joked.
‘You’ll need to get back or Vi’ll be doing her nut,’ Rosina said. ‘I’ll walk you to the Tube, all right? But you come down again, girl – I’ll pay your fare. That ain’t a problem. Will you?’
‘Yes.’ Linda felt a smile break across her face. ‘Course I will.’
Before Linda disappeared into the Underground, Rosina hugged her tight, and when she let go, Linda saw the tears in her eyes.
‘Will you tell them, at home – about me?’
‘D’you want me to?’
Rosina put her head to one side. ‘No – best not. Not all of it. I don’t want you lying – just hold a bit back, eh? One day I’ll have to get out of all this – and then it won’t matter any more anyway. Take care, love.’
And she turned, and walked away amid the crowds in Piccadilly, curvaceously attractive in her bright dress, and resolute, yet somehow the more vulnerable for it.
As Linda watched her, she caught sight of a postbox across on the corner of the street. She found a moment of resolution of her own. Making her way across the road, she took out the envelope, Mister Alan Bray . . . on the address, and glanced at it for a second. The feelings Alan brought out in her rose up again – the longing and sympathy, the sense of hopelessness. I do love you, she thought. But I can’t stay. I need to live – properly. She slipped the letter into the box. For a moment she felt stricken, then elated.
‘Bye, bye,’ she said.
Chapter Eighty-One
‘Cold today, isn’t it?’ Violet said loudly. She was doing a wash and set for old Mrs Busby and had to speak up or the lady didn’t hear a word. ‘Feels like winter already, doesn’t it?’
‘Don’t say that,’ Rita said, pushing a trolley of rollers, pins and combs past her. As usual she had on the highest pair of heels you could find, in a bright shade of green to match her skirt. ‘Gets you down thinking about it. One of these days I’m going to go and live somewhere where it’s always hot and sunny.’
‘Nice to have dreams!’ Violet quipped, rolling a section of the lady’s thin hair round a fat roller.
The girl Rita now employed to clear up and do some of the washes was sweeping up bits of hair round her feet. Violet stepped aside for her, feeling a sense of satisfaction. Not long ago that had been her job, salon skivvy, before Rita had made her a kind of apprentice, and now they were partners in their own little business! She eased her shoulders back, standing straighter in a gesture of quiet pride. For the first time in her life she was getting somewhere, being someone for herself!
‘Cuppa tea, Vi?’
‘Ooh, yes please – I couldn’t half do with one. D’you want me to do it?’
‘Nah – you’re in the middle of Mrs Busby. I’ll get it.’
Rita disappeared out the back and as she did so Violet saw a familiar figure hurry past. Like everything else outside, she was stained yellow by the protective film hanging behind the windows to mute the sunlight. They looked out on a surreal, yellow world.
It was Joyce, with Charlie on her hip. She seemed flustered and pushed her way in through the door. Violet twisted round, still pushing pins through Mrs Busby’s roller. Joyce looked pale, sickly. She had announced a couple of weeks back that she was pregnant and she wasn’t feeling very well with this one and was none too pleased about the fact.
‘Hello, babby – Charlie boy! What’re you two doing here?’
‘It’s Nana,’ Joyce panted. ‘Danny’s just had Clarence on the telephone – from the phone box. Nana’s had another bad turn . . . Marigold’s with her but . . . He said I should get you.’
‘Well, how bad is she?’ Violet, immediately tense, snapped out the words.
‘I dunno, do I? And there’s no need to take it out on me, I only came to tell you!’ Joyce was almost in tears.
‘Oh, for goodness sake,’ Violet said. ‘I didn’t mean it like that.’ She left Mrs Busby and went to kiss Charlie’s squashy cheeks. ‘Sorry, Joycie – don’t get in a state. It’s only that I’m in the middle of – you know, everything.’
‘What’s up? Oh – hello, Joyce!’ Rita walked in with two mugs of tea. ‘Ooh, look at him – you going to let me have a hold today?’
‘It’s my mom,’ Violet explained.
‘Well, you go – I can manage,’ Rita said. She had taken Charlie’s little hand. There was something so inviting about him, everyone wanted to touch him. ‘Poor old duck – no good her being there on her own, is it?’
‘I’ll finish Mrs Busby . . .’
‘Don’t be daft – I can do her. Go on – scarper!’
On the bus over to Aston, Violet looked out at the grey sprawl under a heavy grey sky and felt her spirits sink low. In the background of her mind was the nag of worry about her mother, but she couldn’t do anything until she got there and saw what was what. She’d deal with it then.
She knew the reason for her low spirits. After all, most things were going well. She loved her job, Carol was well and thriving and happy at school, and Linda was like a changed person. Quite a bombshell that, coming home saying she’d been to London – to Rosina! She had some nerve, Violet had to hand it to her!
Whatever had happ
ened, a few days after Linda came home she announced she was going to start at night-school, learn all sorts, shorthand, typing, accounts – maybe even a language if she could. She was full of it!
‘I want a better job,’ she said. ‘I can’t stay doing what I’m doing for ever, can I?’
And that Alan lad seemed to have disappeared off the scene. Violet was half sorry about this – he’d seemed rather nice and obviously wasn’t short of a bob or two, with that bike and everything, even if he did dress like a tramp.
As for the business about Rosina, she still felt stirred up about that.
‘You should go and see her, Mom,’ Linda said. ‘I think she misses the family.’
‘Why doesn’t she come and see us – we’re all up here, it’s only her down there, all on her own. Is she all right? She’s not in trouble?’
‘No. She’s all right.’
Linda had been quite cagey about Rosina, just said they’d sat and talked a lot and Rosina had told her about her children. Violet knew perfectly well she wasn’t getting the full story.
What had kept her from contact with Rosina all these years? All her own troubles, the war, Harry, Carol, had all loaded down on her so there was no room to see out. And something else about Rosina herself: the distance she had created between them by taking off, accentuating a distance that had always been there somehow, the way it was with Linda, because they were so opposite to her. They were bold, hungry, they saw things very differently. They’ve got guts, Violet thought. Not like me – I’ve always been a stop-at-home. Not much about me really. That was how she had always felt, except for that brief, glittering time with Roy, Roy who had seen something in her . . .
And that was the source of the pain she felt now. For all these years she had turned her back on the memory of those months during the war, tried to see it as a time when she had been unfaithful, wicked, and that Carol’s illness had been sent to punish her. How much more so, she thought, knowing what had happened to Roy and Iris’s twins. A double curse! They had paid all right, both of them. Didn’t that show how wrong they’d been? It was the war – all sorts of things happened, a chaos which sent people flying in all directions like skittles. And when peace came you had to settle back to what you knew, to the real commitment of your life. And she had done, hadn’t she? She’d been a faithful, caring wife to Harry in sickness and in health – sickness especially. She had done her duty.
When she’d seen Roy she had not let herself feel anything much – not at the time. It had all been too quick. Once she was alone, the reaction set in. She sat in the back room, smoking to try and calm herself, shaking. Eventually, out of the deep ache, the tears came. Roy, after all this time, those eyes, hands . . . and all the questions she wanted to ask, things she wanted to say – This beautiful girl is your daughter . . . Do you remember? . . . Do you feel anything for me still? Because I loved you like no one else – all these things echoed in her unspoken. There had been nothing she could read in his expression. She had had that one chance, in such a hopeless place with all those other people around them, and now he had gone. She had no idea where he lived. Of course, it was the best thing. What else could she have done? Yet ever since, she had been full of regret and longing.
All the way to Bessie’s she sat staring through the window and ran the scene over and over in her mind, seeing not the streets they were passing through, but Roy Keillor’s face.
Chapter Eighty-Two
Clarence was standing on the front step, peering anxiously along the road. He’d always been a bit shortsighted and still refused to wear glasses, despite the National Health Service. When he caught sight of her he waved agitatedly and took a few steps towards her with his stick.
‘Took your blinking time!’ he quavered at her. ‘I’ve been waiting here . . .’
Violet didn’t answer. No good getting cross: he was old and frightened. His hair was almost all gone now, barring a few wisps. You’d never think he was younger than Bessie, not even sixty yet.
‘Go on up!’ Clarence fretted behind her. ‘Marigold’s up with her, but she ain’t no bloody good.’
Violet flung her coat on a chair on the way through and hurried up the stairs.
‘Marigold? What’s up – how is she?’
Marigold had lumbered to her feet from beside Bessie’s big brass bedstead.
‘She had a turn. This morning – before she ever came down.’ Marigold’s face was as blank as ever, yet Violet could sense something in her, a kind of suppressed excitement. Also, she stank of hard liquor of some sort. Poor old Mari, with all this going on.
She thought her mother was asleep. Her eyes were closed, hanks of grey hair on the pillow round her head, her face sunken. The left side of her mouth seemed tugged to one side, as if by an invisible thread. Violet could hardly believe her eyes. It was as if a huge tree had been felled. As she knelt down beside Bessie, though, her eyes opened and she gave a whimper of distress, nostrils flaring.
‘It’s all right – it’s only me. What’s up, Mom – you feeling bad?’ There was no reply except for something Violet had never seen in her mother before: a look of utter terror in her eyes.
‘Has the doctor been?’ she asked Marigold.
Bessie made a loud, strangled sound.
‘Can’t she talk?’
Marigold shook her head. ‘No. And she don’t want the doctor. He’ll make her go to the hospital.’
Looking at Bessie’s frightened face, she knew Marigold was right.
‘But Mari – Dr Cameron won’t make her go. And we need to know what’s wrong – how to look after her.’
Dr Cameron had known them all since they were children. He was about Bessie’s age himself.
Marigold just stared at her sullenly.
‘You’ve done everything right,’ Violet reassured her. ‘Only I think we need help. It’s all right, Mom.’ She squeezed Bessie’s hand, struck by how cold it was. ‘We won’t let them take you away. But I’ll get Dr Cameron to pop in and see you, all right?’
Violet walked down to the surgery to see old Dr Cameron. His rumbling Scottish voice had always been a comfort.
‘I daresay she’ll be averse to going near any hospitals,’ he said jovially.
‘She can’t speak,’ Violet said. She suddenly felt tearful.
‘Can’t speak? What, Bessie? Dear me – that does sound serious.’
Violet knew Dr Cameron was one of the people who had only ever seen the good side of Bessie, all the babies she’d fostered, pillar of the neighbourhood.
He came as soon as he could and stood looking down at her.
‘Now, Bessie – what have you been up to? This won’t do, will it?’
Bessie tried in vain to speak. Her eyes rolled with frustration and a sweat broke out on her forehead. All that came out were grunting, distorted sounds.
‘You’re worried I’m going to pack you off to the hospital, aren’t you? You do know it’s not the workhouse any more? Things have changed, Bessie. You’d be better off there, you know.’
An agitated quiver was going on in Bessie’s right hand and her face was working. Violet could see that every fibre of her was protesting. She took Bessie’s good hand and was surprised how hard Bessie gripped it, face working.
‘What, Mom? I can’t make you out.’
Bessie was trying desperately hard to speak, but all that came out was, ‘Arrr . . . arrr.’
‘Clarence?’ Violet guessed. ‘You can’t look after Clarence?’
She saw that she had guessed right.
‘Don’t you fret. We’ll all look after him.’
Marigold’s voice came from behind them. ‘She wants to stay here.’
Dr Cameron turned to her. ‘Yes. That’s pretty clear. And I don’t know that in terms of her health there’s much to be gained from taking her in. But you’re the one here, Marigold. D’you think you can manage?’
Marigold nodded, stolidly.
‘We’ll help you,’ Violet hurried to sa
y. ‘All of us – I’ll come over after work and Linda’ll come sometimes . . . And the neighbours’ll help, of course.’
‘Is that all right then, Bessie? Are you happy now?’
Violet thought how kind Dr Cameron was, his smiling eyes looking down at Bessie, who gave a relieved moan in reply.
‘Violet –’ He spoke to her quietly, on the stairs, knowing Clarence was hovering about in the back room. ‘You know, your mother may recover from this – but she may not. Another stroke and there’s no knowing. If anything happens, we shall have to go against her wishes, I think. But we’ll see for now – hm? She’s not a well woman – that’s all I’m saying. You’ll all need to keep an eye on her.’
Chapter Eighty-Three
‘Well, you sound cheerful this morning!’ Mrs Richards said, smiling as Linda came humming through the bakery door, ready for work.
Linda nodded, pulling her hair back into a ponytail and putting on the little white hat. ‘Cheerful’ didn’t feel a strong enough word for what she was feeling just now. In the weeks since she’d seen Rosina, she felt as if everything had changed, her whole outlook on life. She constantly bubbled inside with excitement. At her evening classes at the Commercial School she was learning shorthand and typing. She was very quick at shorthand. Her mind seemed to suck it in like a hungry sponge waiting for water. She practised at home, and Carol was fascinated by all the little Pitman squiggles and helped to test her. The teacher told her she was one of the best pupils she had ever had.
‘If you carry on like this,’ she said, ‘you’ll be faster than me! I’ll be able to write you an excellent reference.’
She had no clear idea in her head about where she was going, only that she wanted to move on, to learn and make something of her life.
‘I think you’re marvellous,’ Mrs Richards said, when she first heard what Linda was doing. ‘Good for you, duck. Course, I could never have done it, not like you. And my Arthur wouldn’t have liked it.’