by Annie Murray
There was a silence as the three older women sat together, as they had so many times before, Dolly smoking. She had offered Rachel a cigarette, but she shook her head. Melly, watching them, felt her throat ache with coming tears.
‘Oh, I’m gonna miss you all!’ Dolly burst out again, with a sob.
Soon all the women were crying and trying to laugh at themselves at the same time. Seeing them all, Melly couldn’t help letting her own tears flow as well.
‘It’s not going to be the same without you at all, Dolly!’ Rachel sobbed. Melly was surprised by how much Mom cried. Once she’d started she couldn’t seem to stop.
Gladys wiped her eyes, seeming not to trust herself to speak. A second later they noticed that the doorway had gone dark. Mo stood, leaning against the door frame, Danny just behind him.
‘Oh, good God,’ Mo said, ‘what’s this – the Wailing Wall?’ His eyes seeking out his wife, he added more gently, trying to hide his own emotion, ‘We’re all loaded up, Doll – time to go.’
Everyone trooped moistly out to the street. Melly pushed Tommy’s chair along the entry, so that they could all stand outside amid a gathering crowd of neighbours and general nosey parkers, to wave off a family who were much loved in the area.
Dolly hugged everyone, her dark eyes especially seeking out Gladys, to look intently at her.
‘You’re my best pal,’ she said. ‘Always have been. Get yourself over to ours soon, won’t you?’
Gladys nodded, her eyes swimming. She seemed unable to speak. Donna, who was nine now, clung to her mother, sobbing.
Melly stood behind Tommy’s chair as Mo, Dolly and Donna climbed into the front of the van. Reggie came limping out, with Freddie. They looked round at the crowd, shy and awkward. Melly’s heart bucked at the sight of Reggie, his fair hair, his thin, strained-looking face.
He ran his eyes over the crowd and gave an awkward wave to everyone. She knew he was not looking for her, that he never had been. She stood quietly, saying goodbye to him without words. She must close the door for good on those little-girl dreams, she thought, though the tears started in her eyes again. The boys climbed into the back, closed the doors and Reggie was gone from sight.
The van started up loudly and as the driver pulled away, everyone waved and shouted and whistled.
‘Bye, mate – bye for now!’
‘Get yerself back to the Salutation, Mo – we’ll keep yer seat warm!’
‘Good luck – don’t do anything we wouldn’t do!’
‘Ta-ra-a-bit!’
Tommy raised his good arm and Melly waved with the rest of them. ‘Bye, Reggie,’ she mouthed, silently. There was a strange unreal feeling to the afternoon, to them all standing there on the pavement and watching Mo and Dolly and their few things in the old green van disappear along the street, Dolly waving her little rag out of the window until they had disappeared into Summer Lane.
They were slow to disperse. The little knot of people stood in the mellow afternoon, men with sleeves rolled up, women in summer frocks. They were all still part of the occasion and they lingered there, not wanting to break it up.
Melly was at the edge of it, staring dreamily along the street, half thinking of Reggie, with a lightness now that he had gone, half hearing the conversations going on behind her. A breeze played on the hairs of her arms. She saw people come and go into the huckster’s shop along the street. A bus pulled up, let people out, roared up to them and passed, coughing fumes.
Someone among the little group who had been on the bus was striding fast along the street. It was a woman in a dark dress, a white bit of lacy stuff about the neck, an urgent but disdainful air about her. It took Melly a few seconds to see that the woman was familiar as she got closer and her features came into focus.
‘Mom.’ She turned, looking for Rachel. ‘Mom!’
Rachel half turned, not wanting to interrupt her talk with Lil who was out there with them.
‘Mom! It’s Nanna!’
That got her mom’s attention all right. She came over quickly. By now Peggy had almost reached them.
‘Mother?’ Rachel hurried towards her and Melly followed. ‘What on earth are you doing here?’
Peggy stopped. She was breathing heavily and Melly could see a sheen of perspiration on her forehead, under the thatch of frizzy hair. She looked very agitated.
‘I asked you to come and see me and did you bother?’ she demanded in a low, furious voice. ‘I knew there was something brewing with that girl. You might’ve been able to knock some sense into her – and now it’s too late.’
‘Well, I only got your card a few days ago,’ Rachel said. ‘I haven’t had time. What’s the—?’
‘The matter,’ Peggy snapped, ‘is your sister. Cissy. Is she here with you?’
Bewildered, Rachel shook her head. ‘I haven’t seen her.’
‘Oh!’ Peggy cried, not caring now if anyone else noticed. ‘I knew it! I’ve looked everywhere for her – there are things missing from her room. I knew she was planning something. Cissy’s gone missing – she’s run away!’
Twenty-Six
They had no alternative but to ask Peggy in. Things must be bad, Rachel thought, for our mom to grace the doors of a yard house in Aston. On any other such occasion she would have had a smell under her nose but this time she was preoccupied. She looked round her in spite of herself, out of curiosity. Peggy had never set foot in Gladys’s house before, though not because she had not been invited.
Rachel could see that Gladys was still in a state after watching Dolly depart so she took charge.
‘Sit down, Mom,’ she invited. It felt very odd seeing her mother in this house in her stiff navy frock.
‘What the hell’s going on?’ Danny whispered as she went to the stove. ‘What’s she doing here?’
‘It’s Cissy,’ Rachel told him, not bothering to lower her voice. ‘She’s run off – or Mom thinks so anyway. She’s most likely with that Teddy bloke she never stops going on about.’
Peggy’s head shot round. ‘Who’s Teddy? She’s never breathed a word about him at home.’
‘She talked enough about him round here.’ Rachel couldn’t be bothered with sparing her mother’s feelings. Peggy had never spared hers. ‘Some bloke with a fast car. She’s been knocking about with him for a few months.’
Peggy’s mouth opened and closed. At last she managed to say, ‘And you let this go on? You didn’t think to say anything to me?’
Thinking about it now, Rachel realized she probably should have asked Cissy more, tried to find out about Teddy, asked his age. She had never thought it was anything serious and she had no idea how old Teddy was. But he seemed to think it worth coming all the way from Coventry for. They just seemed to go gadding out to the pictures. She had also rather enjoyed the idea of Cissy pulling the wool over their mother’s eyes, the way she had done herself at Cissy’s age.
She turned to fiddle with the lid of the kettle. ‘I didn’t think it was anything.’ Rachel looked back at Peggy. Everyone else, Danny and Gladys, Tommy and the others gathered round the room, was listening. Ricky looked astonished by the appearance of this grandmother of his who he hardly ever saw. ‘Didn’t she come home from work then? She can’t have got far in that time, can she?’
‘She never came home yesterday,’ Peggy said.
Her words fell on the room. Rachel felt a curl of real dismay inside her then.
‘Yesterday?’ Gladys said. ‘All night, you mean?’
‘I thought she’d come over here.’ Peggy sounded furious, as if it was all their fault that Cissy was gone. But she needed their support. ‘And then I had a look in her room and . . . There were things missing – clothes.’ Her face creased then, the real worry showing through. ‘Where can she be? I don’t know what to do.’
‘I suppose it depends,’ Danny said, ‘how long you want to leave it before you go to the police.’
‘Police?’ Peggy stared at him in horror.
‘Well, if
no one knows where she is,’ Danny pointed out.
‘Come on, Peggy.’ Gladys got to her feet. ‘We’ll go to the nick in Victoria Road – I’ll show you the way.’
There was nothing they could do except wait and worry. After going, like a lamb, to Victoria Road with Gladys, Peggy went home to Hay Mills. For all she knew Cissy might turn up there at any time. The police had agreed to start making inquiries.
‘The little minx,’ Rachel said to Danny when they finally got to bed. She was reeling with exhaustion but knew it was going to be very hard to sleep. In spite of her worries for Cissy, a giggle escaped her. ‘Mom’s face when Auntie said she’d march her down to the police station. I’ll never forget it!’
Danny laughed as well, climbing into bed beside her. ‘Bit of a comedown for old Peg, I must say. I thought she was going to blow a gasket!’
They both laughed, but after a few moments, Rachel’s face became solemn. ‘All the same, though – where the hell is she? Stupid girl.’
‘If she doesn’t turn up tonight, you’d better go over there,’ Danny said.
‘What – to Mom’s?’
‘Yeah. She’s worried to death.’
Rachel turned to look at him, surprised by this consideration for his mother-in-law who had never had a moment’s time for him.
‘After all,’ he said. ‘That’s her second daughter gone to the bad.’
‘Danny!’ She thumped him, playfully. It felt so much better that they were friends again. ‘But you’re right. Melly can stay with the boys. I’d better go and see the old girl.’
Cissy did not arrive back that night, nor the next. Rachel went across town to Hay Mills and spent Saturday with Peggy and Fred as they tried, distractedly, to keep up the running of the shop. Rachel was glad to help, cutting lengths of cloth and selling needles and zips. It was something to do.
Fred Horton, Cissy’s father, his once gingery hair almost white, bumbled in and out of the shop, seeming stunned. Rachel felt sorry for him. She’d never warmed to Fred but he hadn’t really ever done her any harm and he loved Cissy. It was Peggy who had the sharp tongue on her.
At dinner time, when Rachel was standing in the back kitchen, Peggy came in. Staring hard at Rachel, she said in a disgusted tone, ‘You’re not expecting again, are you?’
Rachel was getting on for seven months pregnant. It shows how often Mom bothers to look at me, she thought. Her mother’s distaste made her feel defensive, almost proud.
‘Yes,’ she said, trying to sound glad. ‘Due in October.’
‘But that’ll be five children!’ Peggy said, as if this was a fact Rachel might have omitted to notice.
‘Yes,’ Rachel said, cutting a slice off the loaf without asking. She was starving and had to eat. ‘That’s right.’
Peggy went to switch the gas on under a saucepan. ‘I should’ve thought you might ask if you want something to eat in my house.’
Rachel didn’t reply. She had spread the bread with as much butter as she thought she could get away with and munched away on it.
Peggy was tutting. ‘Breeding like rabbits . . . Never a thought for the morrow . . .’
Rachel watched her stiff unloving back with a sense of detachment. If she had ever expected anything from her mother she had stopped doing so a long time ago.
Sunday was much more difficult. There was no shop to distract them. Rachel almost resorted to going to church to get out of the house, but she was too tired to make the effort in the end.
‘Where can she be? My poor, silly girl? What are the police doing?’ Peggy kept wailing. She hadn’t been able to wail in the shop, though the evening before had seen a fair bit of it. On Sunday morning she sat in the upstairs sitting room and gave herself up to fretting.
While Rachel was very worried about Cissy herself, Peggy acted as if she was the only person ever to care. For the umpteenth time she demanded, ‘Who is this man she’s gone off with?’
No one could answer this, other than to repeat that his name was Teddy and he drove a red car.
‘Teddy – oh, I can just imagine what he’s like,’ Peggy moaned. ‘He’ll be one of those dreadful men . . . We may never see her again! She’s been sold into the white slave trade – ruined!’
‘Don’t, Peggy,’ Fred said, sitting across from her, quietly anguished. He sagged in his chair, his hands never still on the arms. ‘Don’t say that. The police are looking for her. They’ll find her – she’ll be back.’
Rachel sat thinking longingly of home. She complained enough about the yard in Alma Street but now she was dying to get back there. I’ll have to go back tonight, she thought. There were so many things to do and she didn’t think she could deal with another day in the same house as her mother.
In the afternoon, unable to stand any more, she took herself off for a walk round Yardley cemetery, enjoying the peace of it, the quiet companionship of the graves. Stopping to look across the tightly packed space, she breathed, ‘Oh, Cissy, you silly girl – where are you?’
Her mind raced from thought to thought. One moment, she found that while she was worried about Cissy and wanted her to come home, she did not believe that anything terrible had happened to her, the way Peggy seemed to. She found a faith in her little sister’s luck and good sense. Thinking of herself at the same age, running off with Danny, she understood Cissy and the desperate desire she must feel to get away from Peggy, to look for someone to love, who would show that they loved her.
The next moment, doubt and terrible imaginings filled her mind. Supposing Cissy had gone off with some brute who was doing awful things to her even now? What if she never came back? Now and again there were stories in the paper. Her stomach churned with nerves. If only she’d come over when she’d received Mom’s card. Maybe she could have found out from Cissy if there was something going on.
When she walked back into the house, Peggy and Fred leapt to their feet at the sound of her feet on the stairs. When she saw them, both at the sitting-room door, frenzied with hope, her heart really went out to them. They were desperately worried and all they could do was wait.
‘Oh!’ Peggy burst into tears. ‘We thought . . .’
‘I’m sorry,’ Rachel said, and she really felt it. I’m sorry for not being Cissy.
Somehow they got through the rest of the afternoon, each tick of the clock a loud marker of the seconds slipping away.
At getting on for six o’clock, Rachel was just on the point of going out to catch a bus home, when they heard the door open downstairs. Peggy was across the floor and down the stairs before anyone could speak.
‘Oh!’ they heard her cry. ‘Oh, my God, my God – where in heaven have you been, you naughty, stupid girl!’
‘Mom!’ Cissy’s voice came up the stairs as Fred and Rachel stood at the top. ‘What’s the matter?’ She sounded both coy and impatient. ‘There’s no need to get in such a state – I’ve just been over at Rach’s, that’s all. You know, looking after Tommy and seeing Melly.’
There was a silence in which Rachel walked halfway downstairs. Peggy turned to look up at her and she saw Cissy catch sight of Rachel and register who it was. A look of naked shock passed across her features, which turned to shiftiness and fear.
‘Sis,’ Rachel said. She spoke in a calm, stern voice. ‘Everyone’s been worried to death. It’s no good pretending – I’ve stopped here all weekend with Mom. The police’re looking for you. Where’ve you been?’
Twenty-Seven
Cissy sat on her bed, sobbing extravagantly. ‘I’m not a silly girl and you’re all wrong – about everything!’
Fred, relieved that his little girl was home in one piece, left the women to perform the interrogation and went to telephone the police and say that Cissy had returned safe.
Cissy, already in a storm of tears, had rushed up to her room. Rachel and Peggy followed.
‘What’s been going on? Where’ve you been, you dreadful girl? Who is this man? What’s he done to you?’
Pegg
y’s questions rained down on Cissy who had flung herself on the bed and hidden her face in the eiderdown, quivering with sobs. Rachel sat on the side of the bed. Peggy was having none of this. She seized Cissy’s shoulder and shook her.
‘You sit up, my girl, and tell me what’s been going on. We’ve had the police out looking for you – the shame of it! All weekend we’ve been here, beside ourselves with worry. You damn well sit up and speak to me before I put you over my knee!’
The idea of manhandling Cissy’s voluptuous frame was absurd, but Peggy was beyond reason.
‘You’ve got to promise me never to go anywhere near this dreadful man again,’ Peggy decreed.
Cissy shot up on the bed to defend herself.
‘No! Teddy loves me and I love him and we want to get married.’
‘Oh – married!’ Peggy sneered. ‘What – to a man who steals you away from your family without a word or a by-your-leave and takes heaven knows what liberties . . . We’ve never even met this person you’ve been sneaking off to see . . .’
‘I only sneaked off because I knew you’d try and stop me,’ Cissy retorted, her freckly face blotchy from crying. ‘You don’t want me to be happy – you only want me to do what you want.’
Though Rachel could see that Cissy was overwrought and she herself was still highly suspicious of this Teddy person, she could not disagree with Cissy here. She remembered when she had felt just the same. Being with her mother this weekend had brought it all back, Peggy’s self-absorption, her unreasonableness.
Hands on hips, Peggy continued the interrogation. ‘You’re not even sixteen yet. Marriage.’ She made a contemptuous gesture with her head. ‘What nonsense!’
‘I’m nearly sixteen!’ Cissy argued, shifting to sit on the edge of the bed. ‘And Rach was sixteen when she got married.’