by Annie Murray
Melly kept having to slow her pace so as not to stride on ahead. It wrung her heart to see Gladys like this. With her faded hair and stiff gait she really did seem like an old lady, when until now she had always been full of vigour, always been the boss of the family.
In the ancient parish church, Gladys stared ahead at the mellow-coloured windows behind the altar. But she did not join in the service or sing the hymns. Melly quite enjoyed singing and wished Gladys would join in as she had always done in Aston. It bucked you up, a good singsong. While the vicar was talking Melly sat thinking about Reggie. Soon, she would stand beside him and make her marriage vows. It seemed very distant at the moment and not quite real.
Once the service was over and the organ playing them out, they shuffled along amid the congregation.
No wonder no one speaks to Auntie, Melly thought. She just sticks her head down and never looks at anyone. She, instead, looked round, smiling, saying good morning. She knew a few people vaguely and they greeted her.
‘I say,’ a voice said behind her. Melly turned, to see a middle-aged, toothy woman in a white straw hat and pale green suit, her hand held up tentatively. ‘Yes – you, dear. Sorry – can’t quite remember the name?’
‘Melanie.’
‘Ah, yes, that’s right.’ Appearing to think that Melly should remember hers she did not disclose it, but drew her aside at the back of the church. Gladys showed no sign of hearing all this and continued on outside.
‘I just wanted a word, dear – you being the age you are. I’m worried about Mrs Hughes.’
Melly waited and gave what she hoped was an obliging smile. She hadn’t the remotest idea who Mrs Hughes was.
‘She attends here usually – off and on. A young mother – little boy called Peter?’
Melly vaguely recalled a lady of about thirty, with a solemn, brown-haired little boy, so she nodded.
‘Well, of course she’s not been here lately because of having the second one – a girl, I believe. The thing is, dear . . .’ She seized the top of Melly’s arm and pulled her even further into the side aisle to whisper to her. ‘She’s not very well. By that I mean . . . You know, some women, after the baby . . .’
‘A bit low in herself?’ Melly suggested, thankful once again for the nursing conversations she had heard.
‘Exactly, dear, yes. She’s looking to employ someone and I did wonder . . . Someone said you had done some nursing – or perhaps you might know somebody? She really is in desperate need of help with the children.’
Gladys was waiting for her in the churchyard, near the gravestones with their slanting shadows. She had closed her eyes and tilted her face up to the sun. Sensing that someone was standing close to her, she opened them again.
‘What did that one want?’ she asked.
‘I think,’ Melly said, starting to walk, ‘she’s just offered me a job.’
Mrs Hughes was a sallow-skinned lady with bushy brown hair, cropped startlingly short in a bob round her ears. She opened the door to Melly, the baby in her arms, looking out with anxious, grey eyes. She was wearing a straight, shapeless, steel grey dress.
She conducted a brief interview in the front parlour, holding the restless baby on her lap, wrapped in a gauzy thin blanket. Even that, Melly thought, looked too warm for the weather. The room, shrouded by net curtains, was furnished with solid, boxy armchairs upholstered in sage green. There was a black-and-white patterned rug by the fender and a leaded fireplace. Against the back wall was a piano, the lid open and music on the stand.
‘This is Ann,’ Mrs Hughes told her, nodding down at the baby. ‘I can’t seem to get her to settle very well . . .’ Her eyes filled with tears. ‘Oh, dear . . . I just . . . It wasn’t too bad with Peter. He’s two and a half now – he’s with my friend at the moment. I thought it would be easier . . . He was a placid child . . . I just seem to let things get on top of me.’
The baby squawked and Mrs Hughes hefted her up against her shoulder. ‘Oh dear . . . I should be asking you questions.’ She got up and jiggled the baby. ‘Why don’t you tell me about yourself – Melanie?’
‘Melly, usually.’ She decided she might as well be honest. After all, she already had a job. It wouldn’t be the end of the world if Mrs Hughes did not want her. ‘The thing is, I’m not a children’s nanny or anything. I was training as a nurse – at Selly Oak. I was . . .’ She hesitated. ‘I was ill. So I had to stop. I’ve been getting over that. But I’m the eldest of six – I’m used to little ones. I could help you for a time, if you like.’
Her words seemed to catch Mrs Hughes’s interest. ‘You were nursing? I see.’ She paced back and forth, which seemed to settle the baby a little. ‘Are you not going back?’
‘I . . .’ Melly hesitated again. ‘No. Well, I can’t really. I’m getting married.’
‘Really? Goodness, I see.’ Mrs Hughes seemed to see her with new eyes. ‘You look so young! How old are you, if you don’t mind?’
‘I’m about to turn twenty – in a couple of weeks. D’you think,’ she dared to suggest, as the baby’s wailing took off again, ‘she might be a bit hot?’
‘Oh – is that what it is?’ She peered down at the child in consternation. ‘I expect you’re right. Look – why don’t you hold her for a moment and get to know each other?’
She thrust the moist, squeaking bundle at Melly. The baby was pink with whatever annoyance she was feeling but had a sweet, round face. Melly lay her on the chair, unwrapped the blanket and picked her up, looking into her eyes.
‘Hello, little Ann,’ she said.
Baby Ann seemed to find this turn of events so astonishing that she stopped crying immediately.
‘Oh, my goodness,’ Mrs Hughes said, slumping on to another chair opposite. ‘How soon can you start?’
‘I thought I might as well,’ Melly told Reggie the next weekend as they walked round the park. ‘I’ve told her I won’t be here forever. She’s just a bit mithered at the moment – but she only wants help in the week anyway so I can do the market with Auntie on a Saturday. And the boy, Peter, is all right – quite quiet really and sweet. It’s better than standing in that sweet shop all day long. I can bring them here for walks – get out of the house.’
It felt, in fact, more what she was made for – looking after people – though she didn’t say that to Reggie. They were walking hand in hand. It was a dry, sleepy August day.
‘Good practice for when we have our own,’ he teased, drawing her close to kiss her.
Melly looked back at him, trying not to show her alarm. Children – already? God, she hardly felt more than a child herself, as Mrs Hughes had said. She was startled to realize that the thought of having her own children had hardly crossed her mind.
‘What – straight away?’ she said. ‘Reggie – you haven’t even finished at college yet.’
‘Well – it’ll be all right. That’s what married people usually do, isn’t it? And you’ll be living with Mom and Dad. Mom’ll love it – you know what she’s like. Can’t get enough of babbies.’
‘Oh, flipping heck, Reggie!’ She took his arm, trying not to show that she felt as if the walls were closing in, that he was asking her to end her life before it had really begun. It was all part of the dream that Reggie had led her into. But it was one that would mean the end of her other dreams. Having a baby would surely mean she could never, ever be a nurse – didn’t it? She hardly dared think about whether she had fully closed the door on that. But she didn’t mention these misgivings to Reggie.
‘One thing at a time,’ she said, laughing. We haven’t even got married yet!’
Fifty-Nine
‘There’s another letter for Tommy.’ Rachel frowned at the handwriting and felt the good-quality envelope. ‘Nice. He’s the only one ever gets any letters in this house.’
Melly was on her way out to work with Mrs Hughes and Tommy had already left.
‘Know who it’s from?’ her mother asked.
‘No. Unless it’s th
e people about the three-wheeler. He had a few letters about that.’ She opened the front door. She knew perfectly well who it was from.
‘This is different writing,’ Rachel mused, squinting down at it.
‘See you later,’ Melly called.
Melly set off to Mrs Hughes’s neat terraced house. It was almost the end of her second week there and life felt good. Reggie had taken her out last Saturday for another curry to celebrate her birthday, and the days with Mrs Hughes were already taking on a rhythm. She was enjoying the job, especially as it was the summer and that meant she could take the children outside.
Mrs Hughes insisted that Melly call her by her first name, Dorothy.
‘It makes me feel so old being called Mrs Hughes all the time,’ she said. ‘I can’t get used to it.’
Sometimes when she arrived, she found Dorothy Hughes playing the piano. It helped to lull baby Ann back to sleep after her morning feed, she said, and she wanted her children to grow up with the piano as one of their earliest memories. Peter would be playing on the floor behind her with his tin fire engine or a row of soldiers. Melly saw that Mrs Hughes adored playing the piano. She rushed to it whenever she had the chance. Whenever Melly took the children out, Ann in the pram and Peter walking along holding on at the side, she would come back into the house to the sound of music.
Melly had quickly come to the conclusion that there was not much wrong with Dorothy Hughes that a bit of company and time to herself would not cure. She soon came to like her very much. Dorothy told Melly that before she married her Victor – who worked in technical drawing and was very busy – she had trained in secretarial skills. ‘Shorthand and typing and all that,’ she added. Melly wasn’t sure what ‘all that’ meant except that it was to do with offices. She worked in the offices of the LMS Railways. Her real passion, though, was for music.
‘I should have liked to be so much better at it,’ she sighed. ‘Then I could have been a teacher.’
‘You sound very good to me,’ Melly said.
‘Well, that’s nice of you. But I’m very run-of-the-mill. And Victor doesn’t like me playing in the evenings. It gets on his nerves. But it’s such bliss to have time to play in the day now you’re here. I was beginning to think I would go mad. One child is difficult enough . . . No one ever really tells you what it’s like.’
Melly did not find the two Hughes children difficult. They were just like any other children so far as she could see and she became fond of them. Her week was spent moving to the beat of their routines. On Saturdays she was at the Rag Market and on Sundays, Reggie was always there. The summer was rushing past.
Everyone was excited and full of plans about the wedding, for which Melly and Reggie still needed to set a date. On Sundays when they went round to see Dolly and Mo, as they almost always did, Gladys and Rachel often with them as well, it was all everyone wanted to talk about. Sometimes Freddie was there too with his new girlfriend, Sal, a plump, cheerful girl with waves of blonde hair round her cheeks, and the four of them got along well. Despite the fact that they had been engaged for months they had still not set a date.
‘Seems like you’re gonna get there first, Reg,’ Freddie said. ‘Still – it’s only right, you being older than me, I s’pose!’
Melly and Reggie had decided to get married at St Mary’s in Moseley.
‘It’s ever so pretty,’ Dolly said one afternoon as they were all sitting round with cups of tea and fruit cake. ‘I mean, I know there’s some in my family’ll have summat to say about it.’ Dolly’s family were all Catholics. She eyed Gladys.
‘I don’t recall you ever taking your lot to church,’ Gladys said. ‘Except for . . .’ She trailed to a halt. Everyone knew what she meant. Going to Mass had meant mostly bad times: her mother’s funeral, Wally’s funeral. Though there had been her sisters’ weddings.
‘Well, Melly’s not a Catholic,’ Dolly said. ‘And Reggie’s hardly . . . You don’t go to Mass, do you, Reg?’ She looked round at him. Reggie shook his head.
‘Filthy little heathen,’ Dolly said fondly. ‘Anyway – Melly does go to church with you, Glad, so it only seems right. Don’t you think, Melly?’
Melly nodded. It all just felt unreal to her still, as if she was at the pictures, watching herself. In a few months she’d be married. In a year she might be like Mrs Hughes, if Reggie had his way. At home with a baby. Here in fact, most likely, with Dolly, in this lovely big house.
‘She’d have to move over here for a bit, Doll,’ Gladys said. ‘A month or so before. So they can read the banns.’
‘Well, that’s all right, isn’t it?’ Dolly said happily. ‘You can come and stop with us before the wedding. You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Donna? We can get you all ready – do your hair and . . .’ She stopped, suddenly realizing she was taking over. ‘I mean – Rach, you could come over here whenever you like as well. We could all do it together.’
Melly saw her mother smile. Rachel didn’t seem resentful. Melly felt a pang of hurt at this. But then she looked at Donna and Dolly and thought, Donna’s going to be my sister-in-law. She was so sweet and beautiful, and Mo and Dolly were so kind, she felt a swell of excitement. How lucky she was! She reached for Reggie’s hand and squeezed it. Their eyes met.
Love you, he mouthed silently and she beamed back at him.
‘Ooh, you look so pretty these days, Melly,’ Dolly said, ‘Doesn’t she, Mo?’
‘Yeah.’ Mo looked at her. ‘She always was, though.’ Which made Melly blush.
‘Nice to see you up and about again, Glad,’ Dolly said. She stubbed her cigarette out in a grey-stained saucer on the table and stood up. ‘You back on the market then, are you? You don’t want to let this one take over your stall for too long – you might never get it back!’ She reached for the teapot. ‘I’ll go and top this up.’
After tea they all saw Rachel and Gladys off in the car. Rachel had to get back to cook for everyone. She was the one driving now – with her L-plates on. Melly had come over in the back of the car, clenching her jaw as Rachel rasped the gears setting off. She was used to Reggie’s smooth driving.
‘Dear God,’ Gladys muttered, one hand clasping the side of the seat.
‘There’s no need to be like that,’ Rachel had snapped. ‘I’m getting the hang of it. It always takes me a while to get going. You just keep quiet, both of you.’
If Tommy could drive, she kept saying, then surely to God she could as well.
They had got there without major disaster, though there was one nasty moment as she stalled turning right across the Pershore Road. Melly was relieved not to be driven back home by her as well. She said Reggie would bring her later.
She and Reggie went to the little park down behind the house and strolled round the lake, hand in hand in the serene afternoon.
‘I wish I didn’t have to go back,’ Reggie said, his warm hand squeezing hers. ‘I just want to stay here with you.’
‘It’ll soon go,’ she said. ‘And I’ll be here with your mom.’
She didn’t like to admit that it was a relief to her that he was away some of the time. She loved him and missed him but she just wasn’t sure she was ready to live with him day in and day out yet. Every time she thought about it she had an uncomfortable, shameful feeling, that this was the end of the line. It seemed so wrong to feel that about the man she loved.
‘Melly.’ He stopped her, in the shade of a tree close to the water. Moorhens drifted nearby. ‘You’re so pretty and so . . . Well, nice. You’re my girl. I love you – I do.’
He pulled her tight into his arms and she wrapped her arms round his waist. She hugged him, her face turned to nestle against his shoulder.
‘Reggie,’ she murmured, feeling the beat of his blood under his warm shirt, smelling his man smell of cotton, sweat, salt. She swelled with love for him. ‘My Reggie.’
‘Won’t you mind?’ he asked. ‘When we’re wed, like – being here with my mom instead of with your husband? It seems wrong.’
Melly knew she had to be careful what she replied. She didn’t want to hurt Reggie’s feelings by saying she really didn’t mind – which was the truth.
‘It’s not nearly as bad as my mom had to put up with, is it?’ she said, looking up at him. ‘In the war. Our dad was away for years. And she never even knew if he was coming back.’
Reggie gazed deeply at her and kissed her briefly on the lips. But he looked troubled.
She reached up and stroked his cheek. ‘And you’re only down the road and I know you’re coming back – or I hope you are!’
‘Oh, I am.’ He grinned then. ‘You can bet I am.’
It wasn’t until Melly had been working for Dorothy Hughes for three weeks that she met Victor Hughes, her husband. That Friday evening she stayed a bit later than usual, listening to Dorothy play the piano after they had fed the children. As they sat in the front room, they heard his voice from the back of the house.
‘Dorothy!’
He sounded peevish, as if he had called before and not been heard.
Dorothy’s hands sprang from the piano as though it had given her an electric shock. A moment later a man’s head appeared round the door of the front room. Mr Hughes was a tall, long-faced man with thin brown hair and a solemn expression. His brow was moist and there were rings of sweat round his armpits from his cycle home from where he worked in Smethwick.
He looked about to say something abrupt, but he spotted Melly sitting on a chair with Ann on her lap.
‘Er . . .’ He gave a terse nod. ‘Hello?’
‘This is Melanie, dear,’ Dorothy said. Melly could see she was nervous. ‘The girl who comes to help with the children.’
Melly thought she had better stand up and she struggled to her feet, still holding Ann.
‘I see,’ he said, looking her up and down. ‘Did we get references for her, Dotty?’
Melly felt chilled by the way he was looking at her.
‘Well, no, dear, but . . .’
He looked at her disparagingly. ‘You didn’t get references? You’ve just handed our children over to some . . . Some child who we’ve never seen before?’