by Pip Granger
That wasn’t easy for married women before the war started. Kids or no kids, married women didn’t work. A working wife was considered shameful, a sign that her husband wasn’t man enough to support her. Once children came along, finding paid work became even harder. I didn’t want to depend on Charlie for a crust, because I knew the bugger would either squander it or eat it, but he wouldn’t hand it over. I’d seen children bought up in homes like that, and I’d never wish that on any kid of mine.
I shook myself out of that miserable daydream to find Zinnia and Mum looking at me in a faintly worried sort of way. ‘What?’ I asked. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘Nothing, love,’ Mum answered. ‘I was just wondering what the matter was with you. You were miles away, then, and you looked so sad. Charlie giving you a hard time, is he?’
‘No, Mum, no. He’s not being too bad at all. Of course he’s a lazy sod, expects to be waited on, but don’t they all?’ I asked, with what I’m sure was a rather weedy smile.
‘So what were you thinking about, hen,’ Zinnia asked gently, ‘to make you look such a sorry wee scrap?’
‘Babies.’ I blurted it out before I could use my brains. Luckily, Mum grasped the wrong end of the stick and Zinnia just smiled sadly but kept quiet. I’m pretty sure she knew exactly what I was thinking.
‘Don’t you worry, love. You’re young, you’re healthy, there’ll be more babies. You just be patient and do what comes naturally,’ she chuckled, with a wicked twinkle.
As I was leaving, Zinnia hurried out of her gate after me with a jar of chutney she’d made the previous autumn. ‘Here, hen, take this. It’ll stretch some cold meat a bit further.’ She caught my arm and pulled me a bit closer, so that only I could hear her when she whispered, ‘Don’t worry, hen, there’ll be no baby this time. It’ll be all right, I know it.’ And she was gone, back to my mother. I can’t explain why, but I believed her, and I fair skipped down the road, all tiredness gone.
12
Charlie started hollering as soon as I walked in the door. ‘Where the bleeding hell have you been? My belly thinks me throat’s been cut, and I want my tea. I’m off out in about half an hour.’
I eyed my husband with distaste: he hadn’t washed, he hadn’t shaved and he was lounging about in his vest, khaki braces, uniform trousers and slippers. His eyes looked damp and red, as if he’d just woken from a deep sleep, which he probably had. During his leaves, Charlie rose in the afternoon and had a swig of something alcoholic to settle the beer he’d swilled before bedtime. After his tea, he’d wash, shave and dress properly for a night on the town. The routine didn’t vary much until he ran out of cash, when he was forced to stay in or cadge. That evening, though, it looked as if he’d taken more than a swig of the medicinal booze, judging by his foul temper and the empty half-bottle of whisky that lay on the kitchen table.
‘I’m supposed to be meeting me mates at seven, and it’s half-six now,’ he grumbled. ‘So you’d better get your skates on. What’s for tea?’
‘Not a lot. I haven’t been shopping today. I think I can rustle up some macaroni cheese,’ I said, almost running to get the water in the pan and on to the gas. The sooner he was fed and out the better, I reckoned.
‘I can’t stand fucking macaroni cheese, and you bloody well know it. I’m a bloke. I need meat and two veg, not bleeding cheese and that Eyetie muck,’ he said, an edge creeping into his voice.
‘I’m sorry, Charlie, but the meat ration’s all used up this week. I suppose I can see what Lenny’s got tomorrow, for your dinner, but it’s too late tonight. It’s macaroni cheese or there’s bread and dripping. Which would you like?’ I’d been saving the small, hard lump of cheese for the end of the week, when things were tight. Now I grated it for all I was worth. I just had to get him fed. It’d soak up some of the booze for starters, it might soften his mood, but best of all, it’d get him out of the flat that little bit faster. My fingers trembled so badly, I grated the tip off of one of them and had to rush for a tea towel so as not to bleed any more into the precious cheese.
‘Fucking hell, can’t you watch what you’re doing? I don’t want your claret all over me grub.’ The louder Charlie’s voice got, the more I seemed to fumble and the more furious he became.
‘Seeing you’ve fucking bled all over the Eyetie muck, and time’s passing while you fall over yourself, I’ll have the bread and dripping, or I’ll never get out of here. Make us a cup of tea to go with it,’ he instructed, and I leapt to it.
I set to work and Charlie went off to get washed and dressed. I had a steaming cup of tea and a plate of bread and dripping on the table by the time he got back. I carried on making the macaroni cheese: it gave me something to do while I waited, hardly daring to breathe, for Charlie to finish his tea and go. Anyway, I could have it for my own tea once he’d gone. I liked macaroni cheese. I jumped when he spoke from just behind me.
‘Where’s your purse? I need some readies, I’ve run out.’ He reached for my oilskin shopping bag and fished about until he found it. Before I could think, my hand shot out to take it from him – Friday was pay day, and he’d have the lot. But he was too quick for me, and he held it way out of my reach.
I didn’t see it coming, but I certainly felt it. The back of his hand met the side of my head in a thump so hard it rocked me on my feet and for a moment, I saw stars. His face was purple with rage and a vein throbbed in his forehead. ‘If you’d come straight home from work, you useless mare, you could’ve nipped into Lenny’s on the way, but no, you pissed off to God knows where and left me here to starve to bleeding death.’ He was panting, and spittle had collected at the corner of his mouth, like a mad and particularly spiteful dog.
‘And I get fucking bread and dripping for my tea. How the hell I got saddled with a dead weight like you is beyond me. Just because you got yourself in the pudding club, I’m stuck with you and your bleeding macaroni cheese for the rest of my fucking life.’ He raised his fist and punched me in the mouth, while I just stood there, too frightened to move, duck or do anything. Then he really let rip.
I managed to protect my head with my arms as the blows rained down on my back and sides. He kicked the back of my left knee so that I crumpled sideways in a heap on the floor and he drew his boot far back, ready to kick me into kingdom come.
For a second, I could see my wide-eyed, terrified face reflected in Charlie’s brilliantly polished toecap and the next, when I thought I must surely die, I heard hammering on the front door and someone calling.
‘Zeld! Zeld! Zelda! Are you there? Come on, open up.’ It was my sister Vi’s voice. I don’t think I’ve ever been so glad to hear it in my life.
It seemed to bring Charlie round, and he lowered his boot. He stared at me huddled on the floor for a moment, as if he’d never seen me in his life before, then picked up my purse that he’d dropped and emptied it of every brass farthing. When he left, he slammed the flat door behind him.
13
Terry Rainbird was a bit older than Dilly and me, but contrary to what Dilly said, he was not old enough to be her dad, not unless he’d started really, really young. And he hadn’t. He was only a year or so older than Vi. Scarlet fever had left him with what he called ‘a dodgy strawberry’. He made jokes about never starting any long serials on the radio and watching out for circling vultures overhead, but despite the jokes, his heart condition was serious. That’s why none of the Services would have him at the start of hostilities, and he’d tried ’em all. Army, navy and air force were united, apparently, in deciding he was unfit for duty, any kind of duty, even shuffling bits of paper.
I think the quiet depression he suffered following their decision was the only time in my entire life that I saw Terry anything less than fairly chirpy. Even the torch he carried for the uncaring Dilly was carried with good humour as well as resignation. So it came as a shock when, on seeing me and putting two and two together, his dear face twisted into something resembling fury.
‘Did Charlie
do this to you?’ he demanded as he, Vi and I stood on my doorstep. He’d caught us on the way out.
‘No,’ I said.
‘Yes,’ said Vi.
Terry looked from me to Vi and back again and sighed when I dropped my eyes, too ashamed to meet his honest blue ones. ‘The bastard!’ he muttered. ‘Look, you two hang on here a mo and I’ll nip round the garage and get the motor. I’ll drive you to where you’re going. You won’t want to be seen, I expect. If I can put two and two together, you can be sure every other bugger can. I’ll be back in a tick.’
The short trip to Zinnia’s was made in style in the front of Terry’s van, which was normally used for journeys to the wholesalers and back and that was about it. Terry was not one for gadding about much, despite the little extra petrol ration he got for his heart trouble.
To be honest, it was a relief to be driven to Zinnia’s, because everything hurt. Any movement sent agonizing pain through my side, where my ribs had taken a kicking. My head ached for the same reason. In fact I was beginning to ache all over, and I couldn’t stop the odd shudder running through my body, jerking muscles that really didn’t want to be jerked. I could almost feel the bruises on my face turning purple and black as I sat there, trying to be invisible as well as absolutely still.
If I hadn’t been so sore and scared, I’d have found our arrival at Zinnia’s funny. First Vi got out, had a good look around and scurried up to the front door to make sure that Zinnia was in. Then, with Terry on one side and Vi on the other, I was hustled up the garden path like a criminal on the way to the gallows. That’s how I felt, anyway.
Zinnia didn’t say a word at first. She just looked me up and down, thinned her lips and put the kettle on. She told Vi and Terry to ‘Bide here a wee while, while I look at her. Make a cup of tea, why don’t you? I’m sure we could all do with a drop.’ And she ushered me out of the kitchen and into a room that I had known since childhood and that had always fascinated me.
It was where she stored her supplies of herbs, dried and bottled, in a dresser that took up a whole wall, end to end, floor to ceiling. It looked as if it had been specially made for the job a few hundred years before. There were drawers, cupboards and shelves, big ones and small ones, each with a purpose. The small drawers, a hundred in all, housed dried herbs arranged in alphabetical order. Yellowing labels, in small brass holders, announced the drawers’ contents: Adder’s tongue, Eyebright, Feverfew, Lungwort, Meadowsweet, Motherwort, Plantain and good old Yarrow – if not a cure for all ills, then damned close to it, according to Zinnia. Sometimes there was the Latin name as well. One of the Makepeace women had been something of a scholar, way back in the distant past.
The larger drawers held bandages, forceps, scissors and stuff like that and some of the shelves held row upon row of labelled brown bottles. Many simply had the name of a herb on them – Thyme, Sweet cicely and Horehound – while others said things like Bronchial mixture, Kidneys or Liver tonic in Zinnia’s distinctive copperplate handwriting.
The rest of the shelf space held an assortment of jars, tins and several large, leather-bound books which Zinnia called ‘Herbals’, or sometimes ‘Materia medica’, depending on the tome. It seemed to me that the ancient Makepeace hadn’t been the only scholar in the family: they appeared to have made quite a habit of it.
Zinnia was brisk about looking at my injuries and careful not to ask any questions, other than ‘Does that hurt?’ as she prodded gently in the areas where my bruises were already beginning to show. She pronounced the injuries to be not too bad, considering the beating I had taken. My ribs weren’t broken, just badly bruised.
She asked me how many fingers she was holding up, then whether I had had any double vision, or had lost consciousness at any point, and did I feel sick? I answered ‘No’ to them all except the sick one. Zinnia said that I was probably free from concussion as well, but she’d like to keep an eye on me. Which was dead handy, really, because I wanted to stay, badly. We went back to the kitchen together to join the others since I was too afraid to be left by myself. I just couldn’t stop shaking and my teeth chattered.
We spent the rest of the evening together. I dozed in and out of an exhausted – and, I suspect, drugged – sleep on the sofa in the parlour. Zinnia had given me a small glass of something foul with brandy and told me to drink it, that it’d help me relax. I drank, and it did the trick. Pretty soon I was very relaxed, to the point of bonelessness, but also blessed painlessness; and I was snoring on and off, according to Vi and Terry.
The others drank tea and ate slivers of a fruit cake donated by a grateful patient who had contact with the royal kitchens. That explained why each sliver was almost black with dried fruit, rather than the token sultana, currant and half a morello cherry floating in an otherwise barren slab that the rest of us could get hold of. It showed how poorly I felt that I didn’t fancy cake that night, but, bless her, Zinnia saved me a piece.
I listened to the murmur of voices and, for the first time in a week, I felt safe. Even when Charlie wasn’t in a bad mood, I had been tense, waiting for the change to come over him. Sometimes, you could almost put money on it, if he’d been on a bender or a visit to his mum. He always came back from her place in a filthy mood. God knows what she said to him. I heard Vi’s voice get a little louder and a bit squeaky, like it did when she was getting cross or worried.
‘She can’t go to church on Sunday, the whole neighbourhood will be talking by dinnertime. And work on Monday’s out, I should think. Anyone got any bright ideas about excuses? I don’t know what to say to Dad.’ Which is where the squeak came in. I didn’t know what to say to Dad either.
‘Don’t say anything, hen,’ Zinnia suggested. ‘I’ll say she fell down my cellar steps in the dark. It’s probably best if you say she was fine when you saw her. Then you’ll not get the thumbscrews from your father.’
Vi agreed rapidly. It made good sense, given her terror of Dad’s interrogations. She’d always blabbed immediately, even after she was married and Dad gave up the right to use his belt on her. He believed that disciplining his daughters became their husbands’ prerogative, along with their ‘conjugals’, on their wedding day. He gave up beating his sons on the day they looked as if they could fight back and win.
Zinnia’s voice floated around me. ‘We’ll tell that to everyone but your mother and grandmother, agreed?’
Terry and Vi murmured that they did, then Vi’s voice came again, sounding sad. ‘Ain’t life a bugger?’ she asked, continuing before Terry could agree or Zinnia could object to her language, ‘There’s poor Zelda, stuck with a bullying bastard of a husband, who, God help me, few of us would miss if he was killed in action. I know as I shouldn’t say it, but if you’d seen him when he shot past me …’ Vi’s voice caught slightly.
‘If you’d found her lying there, all curled up in terror, then you’d say it too. And then there’s me with dear old Fred, who wouldn’t hurt a fly, not really, not given a choice. I’d give anything to have him safe home again.’ Her voice cracked. ‘Anything.’ Then she sniffed once, hard, and added, ‘Still, this isn’t about my troubles, it’s about our Zelda’s, poor little thing. What is she going to do? I never realized it was so bad. She never said and I never noticed any bruises or anything. Did either of you?’
‘No. Not a thing. He always seemed quite fond of her when I saw them together. Quite the loving hubby, in fact,’ Terry said quietly.
But I noticed that Zinnia said nothing.
Terry and Vi must have left when I was snoozing, because the next thing I knew, Zinnia gently woke me, led me upstairs to her spare bedroom, tucked me in and said, ‘Goodnight, hen. Call if you need anything. I’ll look in on you before I go to bed myself. Sleep now, Zelda.’ And I did.
It took most of Saturday for Charlie to track me down. Vi kept her mouth shut and point-blank refused to tell him anything when he saw her in the street. Luckily, there were loads of people about, the King’s Head having just chucked out, so he didn�
�t dare risk slapping it out of her. In the end, he had to rely on a process of elimination. If I wasn’t at my mum’s, my gran’s or my sister Doris’s, then Zinnia’s was the next logical place. It was teatime before he finally worked it out and came hammering on Zinnia’s door.
The moment I heard him talking to Zinnia at the front door, I began to shake and shiver like a Chivers jelly, even though I was cowering in her kitchen. I was certain she’d not let him in voluntarily; and if he managed to get past her, he’d think twice about another beating in front of a witness. He’d more likely try charm, which, in a way, was worse, because most people were taken in, even me. I always hoped that he meant the apologies and promises never to hit me again, what Zinnia called the triumph of optimism over experience. I suppose I wanted to believe because then the future didn’t look quite so bleak.
This time, however, charm didn’t work. Zinnia kept her bony frame firmly planted in the doorway. I couldn’t hear what they were saying to begin with, but then Charlie began to get louder as it became clear that Zinnia would not be moved. I crept closer to the kitchen door.
‘What d’you mean, I can’t see my own wife?’ he demanded. ‘I’ll see what the police have to say about that. She’s my wife and I can do what I like with her, including taking her to her rightful home if I want to.’
‘I think you’ll find, Charlie, that the police will be none too keen on giving you a hand. They don’t like interfering with what they call “domestics”; it’s usually messy. And do you really want the whole neighbourhood to know that you’re a coward who beats his wife?’
I heard Charlie splutter and his voice got louder still. ‘What do you mean, I beat ’er? She fell down the stairs. If she says any different, then she’s bloody lying.’
‘If she fell, Charlie, then her sister Vi would have found her at the bottom of the stairs. Instead she found her semi-conscious in the flat. I think it is you who is lying, Charlie Fluck. In fact, I know it is. I’ve known you both all your lives. There’s only one lying, spiteful wee bully in your house, and it isn’t your wife.