Clover's Child

by Amanda Prowse

  Dot looked around at the pale concrete buildings that surrounded her. Each block of flats was five stories high and was joined to its neighbouring block by sky-high walkways. The buildings formed a square of sorts. Each was identical, each balcony or walkway faced the other, the only difference being that one block had front doors painted red, another green, another blue. Dot and Wally’s block had yellow doors.

  Dot walked timidly behind Wally, trying not to look over the third-floor balcony to the patch of tarmac below, in which she could see large communal bins and a couple of vans. There would be no garden here for her. She thought about Ropemakers Fields with its squashed-together terraces and cobbled streets with wide pavements and tall sycamore trees planted every twenty feet. Tonight it felt like a different world. Here, everything was square and cold to the touch: concrete, moulded and formed into slabs. The windows had no familiar sashes or stained glass, but instead were large single panes that looked functional, but not homely.

  Dot could not imagine living in one of these boxes, so close to other families in other boxes, some above, some below and some on each side. She couldn’t imagine opening a front door and not finding herself on the street but instead on a walkway high up in the air, like a bloody pigeon. She couldn’t envisage opening a back door and not stepping into the back garden to check on the progress of the determined chrysanthemums. She was breathing the cool night air but felt inexplicably claustrophobic. Placing two fingers inside her polo neck, she pulled the woolly fabric away from her skin, as though she was struggling to take a breath.

  ‘Here we go.’ Wally stopped at a yellow door that looked exactly like all the others and put the key with its little swinging beer glass in the lock.

  Dot wondered what that expression meant. Here we go, home at last; or here we go, the first step into a concrete prison that will trap us until we wake one day and realise we are already old – a slow death.

  Wally glanced at her face, but could make out little in the failing light. He disappeared inside and flicked the bare bulb into life in the square hallway. Dot hovered on the walkway, wondering how far she could get if she ran – not very far, she figured, not without a penny and only a change of undies and very little else in her crappy little suitcase. She considered the tradition of carrying the bride over the threshold and was grateful that her new husband had not attempted it.

  She stepped inside, holding her case with both hands against her chest. She could see the small galley kitchen straight ahead and spied a frying pan full of bacon fat sat on a two-ring burner on the worktop. Wally had obviously managed to master the art of bacon cooking in the week that he’d had the keys, but not washing up. He came from a side room.

  ‘This is the front room.’ He stood aside to let her pass.

  It was a square room, with an electric fire and nothing else; no curtains, no furniture and not so much as a lampshade.

  ‘All it needs is a woman’s touch, but you can get it done up, eh? Get all the bits and bobs you want to make it home.’ He tried out a small smile before striding out. Dot followed him. He stood in the hallway and pointed to three identical doors. ‘Bedroom, box room…’ The third door at the back of the hall was open. ‘And our bedroom.’

  Dot swallowed the bile that rose in her throat; the way he’d said ‘our bedroom’ made it quite clear that they would be sleeping in it together. Of course they would, they were a married couple. That room was not empty; its windows also had no curtains, but there was a mattress on the floor with a candlewick bedspread on it, almost identical to the one she had slept under for most of her life. This fact did not give her any comfort; in fact, it just made her feel more homesick, more isolated and more desperate. It was as if she was lost – where was she? And how could she be homesick for a home that no longer existed except as a fantasy.

  Dot was speechless: how could she spend even one night in this environment with this man? She looked at the bare concrete floor, which was peppered with splats of the white paint that had been used on the ceiling. They reminded her of tears.

  ‘Why did you marry me, Wally?’

  It was the first time she had spoken to him in hours and the question caught him off guard.

  He too looked at the floor, as though that was where the answer lay for them both.

  ‘You’re lovely… Who wouldn’t want to marry you?’

  She looked at him and, despite the compliment, felt nothing but a wave of pity – not only had he trapped her, but he’d unwittingly trapped himself too.

  ‘Don’t you think people should really know each other before they get married? Or be in love?’

  ‘I think it’ll all come in time, Dot. It’ll all come in time if we let it, if we work at it.’

  There was nothing else for Dot to do but nod. Any words that might have found their way out of her mouth would have severed this quiet optimism and she could not be that cruel.

  For Dot and Wally Day it would be a very long time before such sentiments would be discussed again.

  Dot brushed her teeth in the cold bathroom, grappling with the unfamiliar taps on the pale green sink before slipping into her nightdress. The rayon skirt clung to her legs; she tried to pull it away from her body and felt the tiny pins and heard the crackle of static against her skin. She patted her hair into place and put some talcum powder on her armpits before trying to slide into the room unseen. But Wally was sitting up on the mattress, leaning against the wall, smoking a cigarette. The bedroom light was off, but an orange light from the street lamps flooded the room with their glow.

  Dot was fascinated and sickened in equal measure by his naked white torso. He was very slim: wiry, with tight bunches of muscle to either side of his belly button. His skin was near translucent, revealing clusters of spider-like meandering purple veins. She doubted that his body had ever seen sunlight. It was inevitable that Dot would compare his body to that of the only other man she had seen naked. Sol’s brown skin had shone. His strong arms and broad, muscular chest on which she used to love lying her head had felt like home. The two men could not have been more different, and that at least was some small mercy, for had Wally been a poor imitation of Sol, it might have been confusing. Tonight there was no confusion: if Sol was warm, Wally was cold; if Sol meant strength, Wally weakness; and if Sol was love, Wally was indifference.

  Dot tiptoed around the mattress to the vacant side and crouched down, pulling back the corner of the bedspread with a trembling hand. She climbed in and lay as stiff as a board on her left side, facing the wall, shivering with cold and fear. She screwed her eyes tightly shut and prayed, prayed that he would let her sleep. She wasn’t comfortable but was far too nervous to pull her nightie further down her legs or change position so her knees were not resting on each other. Her feet were cold and her muscles tense, but still she didn’t move, didn’t want to risk any part of her body inadvertently touching any part of his.

  An hour passed, maybe more. Dot listened through the pretence of sleep as Wally drew rhythmically on his cigarettes and flicked ash into a glass ashtray that he’d placed on his thigh. He coughed a few times, a phlegm-filled rattle that reminded her of her dad first thing in the morning. She sniffed surreptitiously at the pillow from her childhood bed, knowing that it would soon lose its perfume of apple shampoo, hairspray and Coty L’Aimant.

  Finally Wally placed the ashtray on the floor with a thud and slunk down on the mattress. He pulled the blanket up, which loosened it from Dot’s grip under her chin. She ground her teeth and tried to stop her limbs from shaking. Pushing her eyelids even closer together, she held her breath, which meant she then exhaled more loudly and obviously than she had intended, betraying the fact that she was awake. There were a couple of seconds of stillness when she thought she might have got away with it before she felt his thin hand grip her right shoulder.

  Dot felt herself jump; her arm jerked. He didn’t attempt to move her, thankfully. Instead he gently squeezed her shoulder and touched the hair that hung down h
er back.

  ‘Night then.’ He withdrew his hand and turned over.

  They lay like actors, both feigning sleep, both praying for and dreading the relief that daylight would bring. It would mean they could leave this room, but what would they do tomorrow? With no wedding for distraction, it meant a whole twenty-four hours in each other’s company, with nothing to say and nothing to do.

  Dot heard the change in his breathing and knew that he slept. That was when she started to cry. Hot, silent tears leaked down over her nose and cheekbones and into the pillow. She cried both with sadness at her newly married state and with relief. She had expected a violation – how could she not? They were man and wife. It wasn’t just the thought of having to lie with a stranger, it wasn’t even the revulsion she felt at her husband’s physique. It was much more than that. Wallace would be entering a space, both physically and mentally, that had been the sole reserve of her love, her Sol. It would be an invasion that threatened to erase the perfect memory of their union and dilute the act of creating Simon.

  Dot lay awake long after Wally slumbered, appreciating the solitude. She blinked into the ether and tried to answer the big question: how long could she live like this, with this man, in this horrible, cold flat before she started to lose her mind?

  11

  Three months had passed since their wedding. Three months that for Dot Day might as well have been years. She lived in a state of silent agitation when Wally was around and in a state of silent agitation when he wasn’t around, waiting for him to come home – not that it would ever feel like home. Joan and Reg had visited once; it had been awkward and embarrassing. Wally and her Dad had bantered as they always did, recounting the hilarity of the wedding reception and arranging to meet soon in the pub. Their jollity merely highlighted all that wasn’t being said. Joan tried not to make too much of the sparse surroundings of her daughter’s marital home, although her raised eyebrows and sharp intake of breath spoke volumes. She tried not to comment on the lack of food on offer or the dark circles that sat beneath her daughter’s clouded eyes like two bruises. The four sat in the front room, with Dot and Wally on cushions on the floor. After one hour Joan commented that they did not want to miss the bus and everyone had nodded, no one publicly acknowledging the fact that there was a bus every forty minutes. No one insisted on another cup of tea or delayed their exit with one final story. Another hour would have been unbearable. They promised to bring Dee next time; she was doing well at school, they said, and this was the only time Dot smiled, when she pictured the bundle of energy that was her clever little sister.

  She woke bright and early and did as she had every morning since her arrival in Walthamstow: squeezed out a healthy dollop of Ajax, scrubbed the worktops in the kitchen, cleaned the two-ring hob and mopped and dried the kitchen floor. Then she wiped around the stainless steel sink until it shone, ran the carpet sweeper over the lino and the concrete floors, flicked a duster over the fireplace and rubbed over the two vinyl chairs – donated by Wally’s mealy-mouthed, whinging mother – with a damp cloth. This took approximately twenty minutes and that was her list of chores complete for the day.

  Wally had been signed off the sheet metal for a while with his back and had got into the habit of sleeping in until mid-morning. He would appear at around eleven a.m., having sloped from the bedroom to the bathroom to the chairs in the sitting room, where he would yawn and stretch with a look of happiness on his face, reminding Dot of a retarded cat. When he did appear, unwashed but dressed, flat-haired and with the indent of a pillow crease on his grey cheek, she would slip into the bedroom and fling open the window on its tilt, trying to rid the room of the smell of him. It was the musky tang of male sweat and smoker’s breath; no matter that she knew what to expect, Dot had to fight her gag reflex or would have thrown up all over their mattress. She longed to wake in a room that smelt like her childhood bedroom, sweet and untainted by adult scents, or indeed in a room that smelt of Sol, expensive cologne and sensual oils. She would stare out over the roof tops, taking great gulps of air before throwing the sheet and bedspread over the mattress and plumping the two pillows just so.

  Wally, enjoying his first fag of the day, would mutter ‘Are you hungry?’ as she passed the door. To this she would give a little nod and reach for the frying pan in the kitchen. He was nervous around her and did not have the courage to ask outright if there was any breakfast. Dot fed Wally twice a day. Every day. Eating breakfast so late meant that this meal was a kind of lunch/breakfast hybrid, consisting of fried bacon between two slices of white bread and tomato ketchup, washed down with a mug of strong tea. At around five p.m. Wally would be hungry again and she would present him with either more bacon, again served between two slices of white bread and tomato ketchup, or a fried egg between two slices of white bread and tomato ketchup. Every Wednesday and Friday night she would fetch fish and chips from the chippy in the new precinct on the ground floor and they would eat it out of the wrapper with their fingers. Every time Dot lifted the scalding batter-wrapped cod to her mouth, she thought of Sol and a large conch on a large plate.

  Dot placed the white china on the arm of the chair and waited for Wally to stop scratching his chin so that he could eat his breakfast.

  ‘Ooh, bacon – lovely!’

  She knew he was lying, but couldn’t figure out why – or why the lie was delivered in the veil of a compliment; did he think she cared? ‘I could do you some toast?’

  ‘Toast? Nah, bacon’ll do, but I reckon if you carry on like this, I’ll turn into a bleeding pig!’ He laughed, hoping that it might be infectious. It wasn’t.

  Dot stared at the man who never used cologne, who didn’t sing or dance, who scratched himself with abandon and never cleaned his teeth. She didn’t say a word.

  Wally took a large bite, filling his mouth with half the sandwich. ‘I thought you might like cooking, what with your mum being a cook and everything.’ A small blob of wet bread landed on the chair; she resisted the temptation to clean it up right away.

  Dot shrugged in response and wandered into the kitchen to scrub the frying pan. She replied to Wally in her mind, as she often did. ‘Truth is, Wally, I do love cooking, I just don’t want to cook for you. If I was married to Sol, I would strive every day to make something wonderful that we would eat together and laugh about before falling into bed. Truth is, Wally, if he was the man I shared this flat with, I’d live in this horrible place, with its shitty kitchen and its cold floor, and I would be living wrapped up in clovers. In fact, as long as I was with him, anywhere and anything – a tent in a blizzard or homeless in a jungle – would make me happy. And the exact opposite is true of you, of us; if you put us in a mansion and gave me jewels, I would feel the same as I do now. I would wake with a desolate heart and want to run away, because you aren’t him and you never will be.’

  ‘I’m going out.’

  Dot nodded in his direction. He was probably off to meet one of his creepy mates up the pub. Not that she cared; it was a relief to be alone. As soon as the front door clicked into the frame, Dot wiped her hands on her skirt and went into the bedroom. Pulling her suitcase from the corner of the room, she flipped up the locks and removed her shell from beneath her underwear. She carried it with both hands into the sitting room, sat in the chair only recently vacated by her husband and placed it on her knees. She breathed deeply and spoke slowly. She wanted every word to reach him.

  ‘Me again. Things pretty much the same here. I know I should try harder, but it’s difficult. Wally ain’t bad, but he’s not you. He’s not fat or wicked, but truth is it could be Billy Fury that I’m shacked up and I’d feel exactly the same. I want your skin, your face, your voice and anything else is not good enough. I can’t help wondering what it’d be like living with you, here. We’d be all right, wouldn’t we? We’d be more than all right. I was thinking earlier that we’d be fine anywhere. I’d make you apple crumble just like I promised and we’d find nice places to walk with Simon. It’d be bril
liant. See, I don’t need no formal and informal lounge – whatever that is when it’s at home. I just need you, that’s all, just you. Being with you was like being home.’

  Dot considered her next phrase. She drew breath and smiled, wanting to talk about Simon some more.

  ‘What the bleeding hell are you doing?’

  His voice took her by surprise; she jumped. Dot looked up and into the face of her husband. She hadn’t heard him come back in, had been too engrossed to hear the key in the lock or the rattle of the front door. She was mortified, embarrassed to have been discovered. Not because of what Wally might think, but in case their exchange could be heard on a beach far, far away.

  ‘N… nothing. I’m not doing nothing!’ She placed her hands protectively around her shell, hugging it close to her lap.

  ‘Who the fuck are you talking to?’ It was a rare flare of aggression. Wally flexed his fists by his side.

  ‘I wasn’t talking to no one.’

  ‘I can see that, cos you’re sat here all on your tod, but you were talking to someone as if they were here, telling him you’d make bleeding apple crumble…’

  Dot stared at the floor and felt the creep of a blush over her neck and face; he must have heard it all. Oh God…

  Wally bent down. Crouching on the floor in front of her, his voice was once again quite soft. ‘And what I really want to know, Dot, is who you’d make apple crumble for, while I choke meal after meal on bacon, always grateful that you are making me something, no matter how boring or tasteless it is?’

  Dot ignored the question.

  Wally continued. ‘Nah, you don’t have to answer, love. I bet I can guess. I bet I know who all this is in aid of. It were that bloke you were seeing before, weren’t it? That darkie bloke who had first pickings. Barb told me you had a fancy for a bit of foreign.’ Wally breathed deeply and stood, placing his hands on his hips, figuring out how to continue. ‘I reckon you’ve got some bloody nerve. You marry me, live here, never show me the slightest bit of kindness or interest and as soon as me back’s turned, you sit chatting to some bloody bloke on the other side of the bleeding world who didn’t give a shit about you and yet you talk to him like he’s royalty, and me, muggins here, I’m just the annoying bastard that’s put a roof over your head! I’m the idiot that puts up with your bollocks and what do I get in return? I get nothing, fuck all!’