‘You shouldn’t be here, you need rest after such a shock. I’ll go round and tell the clients that you’re unable to open.’ he said, guiding them to chairs. ‘Sit there for a while before you go home and I’ll get you a cup of tea.’
Bravely, Jennie choking back tears, they insisted on carrying on as usual. The last thing Jennie wanted was to be at home. Looking after her mother could so easily become a habit. Dad was quite capable, albeit untrained and undomesticated, but he’d have to learn to cope.
At nine o’clock their first client arrived and they had disguised their damaged faces with make-up and were ready to begin. The sympathy and extra tips made it well worthwhile.
They closed at a quarter to one and when Jennie reached home, hoping to find at least a snack waiting for her, she was pleased to see her sister there, mashing potatoes to accompany sausages and tomatoes.
‘Thank goodness, our Marie, I’m starved.’
‘Best you enjoy it because tomorrow it’s your turn.’
Jennie ignored that fearful reminder. While they ate she talked about her morning, making them laugh at some of the comments she and Lucy had received. She stood up and hugged her father. ‘You’ll cope, won’t you, our Dad?’ You won’t expect me to give up my job and let Mr James down, not while Miss Clarke is on holiday. Pity ’elp his customers if he did their hair, eh?’
‘I’ll make a couple of sandwiches for your tea,’ Marie said. ‘Then you’re on your own. I’m working tomorrow all day and in the evening.’
‘Don’t worry about sandwiches for me. Lucy and I will be going to the pictures straight from the shop. Save me some supper, though, I’ll be starving when I come in.’
‘As usual,’ Belle said fondly.
Marie was irritated by her sister’s selfish attitude. ‘Jennie! You’ll have to come straight home tonight. Mam can’t manage without help.’
Jennie spread her arms to encompass the tidy room. ‘What’s there to do?’ She winked at her father. ‘I don’t think Mam and Dad want me moping about with a sympathetic face, do you? Make the place untidy, wouldn’t I, our Dad?’ She put on a freshly ironed cardigan, grabbed her handbag, patted her hair and, with a chirpy wave, left the room.
‘We’ll manage between us, love,’ her father said as he walked with her to the door, but he looked full of doubts. ‘Getting older we are, Belle and me. And so lucky to have you still at home.’
The words stayed with her all the way back to the shop, terrifying her with their implications.
*
Marie and Jennie both finished work at five thirty and, a few days later, when Marie left Ladies Fashions, her sister and Lucy were waiting outside.
‘How long before Mam’s better?’ Jennie asked at once. ‘It’s been a while and she’s still not able to do much around the house.’
‘I don’t know. Weeks rather than days. She won’t be able to lift anything for a while, even after the plaster’s removed. Why?
‘It’s what Dad said the other day about them getting older, things like this might happen more often.’
‘What, breaking her arm? Don’t be daft!’
‘Falls do happen, and there are other things, illnesses. I can’t leave my job to look after them, whatever they think. You don’t know what it’s like being the youngest. So much is expected of you.’
‘I hope you don’t think I can do more. You know what Ivor’s like these days. I need my wages to keep us fed. I’m responsible for five of us, remember, not just myself.’
‘I hope you don’t think I should give up my job? Hairdressing’s valuable work. Morale and all that. Besides, you’ve got a husband.’
‘Who isn’t supporting us!’ In her exasperation Marie was shouting. Lucy was standing uneasily near by.
‘Perhaps if you weren’t so damned clever and efficient, and left more to Ivor, he’d be more inclined to take responsibility!’ Marie was startled by the reprimand and she stared at her sister’s face, a pretty face that so rarely showed such anger. ‘A man doesn’t like to be bettered by a woman. I might not be married but I do know that!’ Jennie went on. ‘And if it was me, I’d—’
‘Stop! Now, this minute! You know nothing. How long d’you think we’d last if I left everything to Ivor? He tells lies and he gambles money his family needs. Do you have any idea what that means?’
‘If you trusted him to look after you, and not go gallivanting off working for strangers, showing him up, making him feel a failure, he might stop.’
‘You’re talking nonsense. As usual!’ They were both raising their voices. ‘I didn’t do extra work to keep the bills paid until he let us down.’
‘Always right, aren’t you, Marie? It’s never you in the wrong.’
‘Are you all right, Jennie?’ a voice called, and Mr James appeared. ‘Not feeling worse, are you?’ He was wearing a dark suit and a trilby, his black shoes shone impeccably. He looked older than his forty-eight years, partly because of his pale skin and heavy eyes, and partly because of his formal dress and manner. ‘Once Miss Clarke gets back you and Lucy can have a few days off, one at a time of course, she can’t spare you both at once.’
‘Thank you, Mr James. It’s just our Mam, broken her arm she has and we have to share responsibility for looking after her.’
‘I’ll leave the appointments to you, so you can arrange them to do what you have to at home.’ He lifted his hat politely and walked away.
‘Thank you, Mr James,’ Jennie said, with a slight bend of the knee.
‘Thank you, Mr James,’ Lucy echoed, the chant similar to the responses of children at school.
‘Stuffed shirt,’ Jennie whispered to Marie. The sisters stifled laughter and their quarrel, like so many others, ended as quickly as it had begun.
Marie collected Violet from her parents, went home to change her clothes and put out food for Royston and Roger and Ivor, fed her ever patient daughter, then went straight out to prepare a floor for staining. Sanding was hard work and, once the job was finished, nothing showed for all the effort. Vi sat with the owner of the house and read ‘Sunny Stories’, the Enid Blyton magazine for children, reading out pieces occasionally to her mother. Marie thought about her sister’s words and wondered. If she hadn’t asked Geoff Tanner to find her some extra work, what would have happened? If she’d allowed them to reach the point where they couldn’t pay the bills, would Ivor had been less willing to gamble away his wages? Somehow she doubted it. They would have been in such debt by now that there would have been no way out. There wasn’t now, if she stopped accepting the work Geoff Tanner found for her, unless Ivor miraculously returned to being the devoted family man he had been for almost nine years. Since his sudden transformation from loving husband to stranger, she no longer believed in miracles. What had gone wrong? Why hadn’t he been able to talk to her?
Even after these difficult weeks had turned to months without an end to their problems in sight, Marie occasionally had dreamlike moments when she forgot them.
One morning she woke early. The late-August sun creeping into the bedroom spread around the room and touched her face. She was glad she had opened the curtains before getting into bed. At this time of the year it was a joy to be woken by the sun. She stretched out a hand, but Ivor wasn’t beside her. Sleepily she roused herself, stretching, enjoying the few moments of peace before starting her hectic day. He was probably downstairs, drinking tea, smoking and listening to the wireless. Idly she imagined him coming up the stairs with a cup for her.
Then the shock of memory hit her. That was a fanciful dream. Ivor wasn’t that sort of husband. Not any more. He had forgotten all the loving and caring he had lavished on her. Ivor was a stranger, sharing their house but no longer the focus of their life, their home. No, he would walk up the stairs soon, but only to remind her that he was hungry and demand his breakfast.
She pulled on a dressing gown and, shivering in the early morning air, went downstairs. To her surprise Ivor wasn’t there and the kitchen was as sh
e had left it the night before. Where on earth could he be? He wasn’t the type to go for a walk, however wonderful the morning. She prepared a tray for tea, her mind sleepily going over explanations for his absence. While the kettle boiled she opened the back door and stood for a moment or two listening to the calming sound of birdsong. They were quieter than in the spring, hiding their shabbiness as they began their moult, and it seemed to her they too were subdued by the unhappiness that had taken over her life.
As she poured milk into a jug and waited for the water to reach its irritable boiling point, she heard voices. Going outside again, she saw Royston and Roger coming across the field towards the house. She waved then took two more cups from the dresser. They had been fishing again, walking across the fields to the beach, where they would have fished the incoming tide.
‘Morning, Mam,’ Royston called as he threw his rod and bag on the floor.
‘It isn’t fair,’ Roger complained, throwing his equipment to join that of his brother. ‘He gets all the luck.’
Royston laughed and began teasing. ‘Casting into a tree won’t catch many fish. Fancy, our Mam, he’s so hopeless he lost yards of line, bait and a good hook, all tangled in the hedge.’ Too late, his brother pushed him to shut him up. ‘What am I talking about, trees? I mean an old boat on the beach.’
Hands on hips, Marie glared at them. ‘Poaching you’ve been!’
Both boys took the tea she had poured and hid their faces in the breakfast-sized cups.
‘Don’t think I’m paying your fines if you’re caught. You’ll have to pay out of your wages. And,’ she asked as an afterthought, ‘where’s your father?’
‘He wasn’t with us,’ Royston said. ‘We went out at five o’clock. Had to catch the tide, see.’
‘Did you catch anything, except the tide? Although what tide there is in Farmer Jones’s river I’d like to know!’
‘Only a couple of trout too small to bring home,’ Roger admitted.
‘Sorry, Mam,’ his brother added.
‘Did anyone see you?’
‘There was someone down there, near the old barn. Some ol’ tramp sleeping rough probably. I don’t think he saw us. In fact he seemed anxious for us not to see him. Creeping about, hiding behind the hedge he was.’
‘If you land up in court I won’t pay your fine. You’ll have to do that.’
‘We can’t, we lost our job on Friday.’
‘Again?’ She glared at them. ‘My first day off for weeks and this is how it starts. Where’s your father?’
‘Here I am, love,’ a voice called and Ivor stepped out of the hall doorway and reached for the teapot. ‘Damn me it’s cold. Make another pot will you, Marie? Gasping I am.’
‘Where have you been?’
‘Nowhere! What you talking about, woman? Only now this minute I’ve come down, to a smell of fishy clothes and cold tea.’
‘You weren’t in bed,’ she accused. ‘Where have you been?’
‘In the lavatory.’
‘You weren’t. I went in there.’
‘Looking in on our Vi then. Stop making a mystery when there isn’t one, for heaven’s sake!’
‘Catch anything?’ he asked the boys as Marie turned to reboil the kettle.
‘Nothing. The river’s too flat. Rain we want to liven it up a bit. We saw a water vole, though. Pretty little thing. I bet he had better luck than us.’
They began to discuss the wildlife to be seen around the river until Marie interrupted.
‘Tell your father about losing your jobs again. And perhaps you’ll explain what happened.’
‘Lost your jobs again, have you?’ Ivor asked almost conversationally. ‘What happened this time?’
‘Mam got us separate jobs and we hated it.’
‘So it wasn’t fighting?’
‘We mitched off to go fishing, didn’t we?’
Marie saw the glimmer of a smile on Ivor’s face and said, ‘I keep telling you, Ivor, they’ll have to find jobs far apart from each other. I understand that being twins and close they want to work alongside, but they can’t spend every moment together and we have to face the truth, that individually they stand a better chance of keeping a job. Trouble they are, one leading the other into scrapes. I’ll go to the employment exchange with them and make sure they are separated. One each end of the town, if necessary, if that’s the only way they’ll keep a job.’ She glanced around and saw the wink he gave the boys. Irritated she banged the teapot on the table and asked, ‘Ivor. When are you going to take this seriously? Employers are crying out for workers, ’specially in the building trades, and these two idle their way through the weeks and there’s us keeping them. Fourteen they are, not four!’ She poured tea and pushed it towards Ivor. ‘Why are you wearing your best suit? Where have you been? You don’t wear that first thing in the morning.’
‘It’s for work. I’m going to see a supplier. I’ve just been up to change.’
‘But I didn’t see you upstairs, and you came in from the garden.’
‘Oh, don’t keep on, Marie. Give it a rest.’
The door to the hall pushed slowly open and Violet stood there. ‘Stop shouting,’ she said, tearfully. ‘Always shouting you are.’
‘Sorry, Vi, love. It’s your lazy brothers that’s the trouble. Out of work again and that’s the fourth job they’ve been given. Mitching from school day after day and now they’ve left and can’t keep a job.’
Ivor held out his arms and Violet climbed on to his lap. He offered a sip of his tea, tipping some into a saucer to cool for her.
‘And I still want to know where you were,’ Marie demanded of her husband.
‘All right, I was very late. A card game at Trevor Williams’s if you must know.’
‘If I must know? Don’t you think I’m entitled to know?’
‘We had a few beers and I fell asleep.’
‘How much did you lose this time?’
‘Now come on, why presume I lost? Here, buy yourself something.’ He fished in his pocket and gave her a ten shilling note.
They were interrupted by the back door opening and Marie’s sister walking in.
‘Jennie? What’s up?’ Jennie’s face looked pale, the bruises still visible, and the lack of make-up making them more alarming. Her blond hair was wildly untidy, as though she had just risen from bed. Her eyes were wide with shock. ‘I just heard, there was a road accident last night and Emily Clarke was killed.’
‘Emily Clarke?’ Marie queried.
‘Our Miss Clarke, manageress of the shop. There’s been talk that she and Bill, Mr James’s son, were getting engaged at Christmas and now she’s gone! Dead on the road she was, tucked up in her coat all tidy, and pushed under a hedge. The car didn’t stop. Someone called an ambulance but didn’t give a name and didn’t wait for the help to arrive.’
‘Oh, the poor woman. Poor Bill. And Mr James will be devastated,’ Marie exclaimed.
‘And what about me?’ Jennie wailed. ‘Mr James will probably close the shop and I’ll have no job and there’s only the enamel factory and I can’t stand the thought of working in a place like that. An artiste I am, not a factory hand!’
Marie flinched at the selfishness of her sister. She loved her, but there were times when she wanted to slap her.
‘You’ll have to go to work as normal until you find out what is going to happen to the shop,’ she said, biting off the retort that sprang into her mind. Her sister had always been self-centred. She shouldn’t have been surprised that Jennie’s first thought was how the poor woman’s death would affect her. ‘And don’t talk nonsense. Work in a factory? When have you ever done something you didn’t want to do? If you have to find another job it will be as a hairdresser. You do dramatize everything. Think of poor Bill.’
‘What d’you mean, poor Bill? He’ll get over it, this will be his third “real thing”, and once the girls start filling their bottom drawer, planning a wedding, they quietly fade away.’
Ivor began
cutting bread awkwardly, the slices thick at one end and tapering off to nothing at the other. Marie took it from him. She saw him give Jennie a sympathetic glance and pat her shoulder comfortingly, putting Marie in the role of unreasonable sister.
She lit the grill on the gas cooker and asked Jennie to stay. They ate toast as they talked, using a loaf and a half, a pot of home-made blackberry jam and most of the margarine ration with it, while Jennie complained about the lack of butter.
‘This is awful, our Marie, eating margarine instead of decent butter,’ she sighed, taking another slice and spreading it liberally with margarine and jam. ‘The war’s been over almost a year and there’s us still being told we can’t have any more than two ounces of butter.’ All concerns for the death of Miss Clarke were forgotten.
When Jennie had gone, Marie went up to make the beds and noticed for the first time that Ivor’s side of the bed was unruffled, the pillow smooth and obviously unused. He hadn’t been late; he hadn’t come home at all.
It wasn’t the first time he had stayed out late recently playing cards. Gambling was his life now, and when he played, or followed the horses or dogs, nothing else mattered. Thank goodness it had been a Saturday night. At least she’d got some money from him. If he went out on a Friday before she got back from work, she risked having to cope without a penny for housekeeping.
She frowned deeply as she wondered again what could have happened to change him so. Was there a debt he had to repay? Or had he borrowed money and was trying to pay it back? When Airborne had won the Derby and they’d spent that wonderful day on Barry Island’s golden sands, that was the last time they had been truly happy. At the time there had been no shadow over their lives, no hint of what was to come.
Later that day, as she began preparing the dirty washing ready for the following morning, putting it into piles, some for washing in the big galvanized bath Ivor carried into the kitchen and another for boiling, she found his jacket. The front was stained and to her untrained eye it looked at first like oil. Then, finding a similar stain on his shirt, she realized it was blood. She looked again at the jacket and found several holes, torn as though it had caught on something and had been dragged free, tree branches perhaps.
The House by the Brook Page 4