A Woman's Fortune

by Josephine Cox

  ‘And one of my lads dead and the other gone to live with strangers. And all I hear is you women talking about fabrics and customers and advertisements, and other fancy things that don’t matter a bit—’

  ‘Michael, they’re my sons, too. You’re not the only one with the right to feel sad. We’re all heartbroken about what happened.’

  ‘Are you? Are you really?’ shouted Michael, getting up again and pushing his plate to one side. ‘Well, you don’t look very heartbroken to me – any of you.’ He looked at each of them in turn, pointing with his knife.

  ‘It’s not a competition to see who can be the saddest and who can feel worse, Dad,’ said Evie quietly.

  ‘Evie, shut up. I’ve heard enough from you.’

  ‘Well, you haven’t heard enough from me,’ said Jeanie, both fury and resolve suddenly written all over her face. ‘Because I’m fed up to the back teeth with your drunkenness and your selfishness.’

  ‘Me, selfish?’

  ‘Yes, you, you pathetic drunk. You haven’t come in sober one evening this year and it’s nearly February and I’ve had enough. I’ve kept quiet till now because I hoped you’d feel better about Bob after a bit and I wanted to be understanding about how you felt, but you’re getting worse, not better. This isn’t about Bob dying any more, it’s about you drinking too much, as you’ve always done … as you did in Shenty Street, and look where that got you!’

  Michael opened his mouth to reply but Jeanie had got into her stride now.

  ‘Be quiet! I’m speaking! Don’t you think my heart is broken, and Mum and Evie’s, and Peter’s? But we’re trying – we’re really trying, Michael – to make something of our lives because we have to! Because if we don’t, no one else is going to do it for us. Mum and Evie have made a whole new life for themselves with their own talents, with their own efforts, no one else’s, not propped up by beer and self-pity, and what do you do?’

  ‘I—’

  ‘You sneer at them, like it isn’t the money they make that’s kept us all going. Like it isn’t the respect they’ve won in this village that has made it a nice home for us against all odds, and though we knew not a soul here when we arrived.’

  ‘I’m doing my best—’

  ‘You’ve just been brought back from the pub again by Jack. Every evening this year you’ve been there, drinking away your wages, and going over to Clackett’s every morning looking like death warmed over. How that poor man gets a day’s work out of you I’ll never know. It’s time for you to sober up, Michael, and start behaving like a man because, I’m warning you, I’m getting very near the end of my patience. Oh, in Shenty Street we all bowed down to “the man of the house” – but all the time you cared more for your drinks and your bets than you did for us. And in the end, how did you repay our loyalty? With an enormous debt to some violent card sharp, that’s how. And so we’re here, where we never chose to be, and we’re all trying to do our best. Except you. You don’t even know what doing your best for other people is. Because you’re a bone idle drunk, Michael, and I’ve thought so for years now.’

  ‘How dare—’

  But there was no stopping Jeanie as years of anger were now pouring out. ‘I’ve earned the right to speak out, Michael, that’s how I dare. Because once I was too busy having babies and running about after little ones to think life could be any different. I thought I’d made my choice and I had to put up with it. But now … now, well, I’ve seen you for what you are.’

  Michael sat speechless for a few moments, as if he couldn’t believe what he had heard, and then he got up and lurched towards the door, slamming it behind him. Jeanie, Sue and Evie heard his uneven tread up the stairs and then, inevitably, the bedroom door slam, too.

  Then there was a long, long silence during which Evie and Sue looked at each other in open-mouthed astonishment and Jeanie pretended to eat her dinner until her tears flowed and she couldn’t continue. She pushed her plate away and put her head in her hands, sobbing.

  Sue got up to put the kettle on the hob, patting Jeanie’s heaving shoulder as she passed.

  Evie went to put her arms around her mother and they held each other tight and then Sue enveloped them both in her sturdy arms, kissing the tops of their bowed heads.

  ‘It’s all right, Mum. You’ve got us … you’ve got us …’ whispered Evie, stroking her mother’s hair.

  Jeanie cried all the harder then, shaking her head, too upset to find any more words.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The next morning Evie kept out of Michael’s way. A night’s sleep hadn’t improved his mood and he was quite clearly in a foul temper, seething with anger and nursing a hangover as he sat sullen and glowering over his breakfast. Where had her once cheeky and cheerful father gone, Evie wondered. Having to leave Shenty Street, the loss of his son and his disappointment in the hard work required of him at Clackett’s seemed to have broken him.

  After he had staggered off to work Evie heard her mother moving about upstairs and went to see if she was all right and whether she wanted some toast before she went to her job at Frederick Bailey’s house in Redmond.

  ‘Mum, what are you doing?’ Evie looked askance at Jeanie’s suitcase on the bed and the piles of folded clothes beside it. Among them were some pretty things she only half remembered seeing before: a brightly coloured scarf that looked as if it was silk, some fine suede gloves and a little brooch shaped like a bow of ribbon with shiny white stones set into it.

  ‘I’m packing my things, Evie. I’m leaving.’

  ‘What? Mum! You can’t leave us! Where will you go? What will we do without you?’

  By now Sue had come to stand in the doorway, and she shuffled into the room and put her arms around Jeanie.

  ‘I guessed this would happen. In fact, I knew it would, though I tried to pretend it wouldn’t, but when I saw how you were with him …’

  ‘Grandma …? Mum …?’ Evie looked at them, completely at a loss. ‘What’s happening? Please tell me.’ She felt as though something important had been discussed and decided behind her back and she’d missed out on what everyone else knew all about.

  Jeanie pushed her mother gently away and faced her and Evie. ‘You’re right, Mum,’ she said. ‘I made up my mind a while since, but after last night I’ve decided not to wait any longer.’

  ‘What? Tell me, Mum, please.’

  ‘I’m going to live at Marlowe House … with Freddie.’

  ‘With Frederick Bailey?’ said Evie, thinking she must have misunderstood.

  ‘We’re in love and he’s asked me to go to him. At first I said I couldn’t, but now I think it would be better if I did.’

  ‘In love with Mr Bailey? Mum, don’t leave us, please! How is it better if you’re not here?’

  ‘Don’t get upset, Evie. You and your grandma have got a right good little business going in the front room. Peter doesn’t live here any longer and, honestly, I don’t see him coming back, not with the way he feels about his father. I went to see him a few weeks ago on my way back from Redmond and he’s happy with the Thomases. He’s got everything there he wants.’

  ‘He hasn’t got his mother,’ said Sue quietly.

  ‘He’s always got me whenever he wants me,’ said Jeanie firmly. ‘I just won’t be living here. Same goes for you two. You know where I am and you can come to me at any time, but I won’t be living here with Michael any more, and nor do I want to.’

  ‘So you knew all along that Peter’s not coming back?’

  ‘Frederick has been paying Mr and Mrs Thomas for Peter’s keep since the beginning of the year. That’s what will happen for as long as Peter wants to stay there and for as long as the Thomases are happy to have him.’

  ‘But, Mum, please don’t go,’ said Evie again. ‘There’s only Grandma and me here now with Dad. Bob’s … gone, and then Peter left, and now you. There are fewer and fewer of us. We were all together when we left Shenty Street, and I thought we’d manage in this new place because there were al
l of us, but now there’s only Grandma and me. And Dad, of course.’

  ‘Oh, love, I haven’t been happy for a long while but I thought I could put up with it because it was how it was going to be. I thought I had no choice. But then Frederick gave me a choice. At first it was out of the question that I could ever leave you all and go to him, even though I wanted to, but then Bob died. And then when Pete went to the Thomases – that was his decision and no one made him go – I could see that the moment would soon come when I’d know it was time to leave – when my family didn’t need me any more. And that moment is now.’

  ‘But I need you, Mum!’ Evie cried, wringing her hands. ‘What about me? Please, please, don’t go.’

  ‘Shush, our Evie. Don’t take on, lass.’ Sue sat down on the bed, her weight toppling the neat piles of clothes beside Jeanie’s case. ‘Well, Jeanie, love,’ she sighed, ‘I can’t say I approve, but nor do I approve of the way Michael’s behaved. You always were one to do exactly as you wanted, and I know nothing I can say will change your mind. You were just the same with Michael, don’t forget. I warned you not to be taken in by his charm, and now it seems that his charm was all he had, and he hasn’t even got that any longer. You chose him then, my girl—’

  ‘And now I’m choosing someone else, Mum. I made a mistake with Michael but it’s not too late to change that.’

  ‘But you’ve still got two lovely children with him, Jeanie. You can’t just forget them and start again.’

  ‘Who said anything about forgetting? I’ll always be a mum to Evie and Peter – even if I live in Marlowe House with Frederick, and even if Evie lives here with you and Michael, and Peter lives with the Thomases.’

  ‘But, Mum, you won’t be here,’ said Evie. ‘And I really, really need you.’

  ‘Well, you may say that, love, but you’re nearly seventeen now, and getting quite grown-up, and it may not be long before you want to go away and make a life of your own – maybe with Billy Taylor back in Bolton, or maybe with someone else.’

  ‘Not with Billy. That’s all over, Mum. I doubt I’ll see him again.’

  ‘Well, sorry, love, but I’m making a life for myself.’

  ‘I’m not sure marriage is to be thrown off so quickly, Jeanie,’ said Sue. ‘You vowed to take each other for better and for worse.’

  ‘I know that, Mum. And I’m not making this decision lightly. I wish I loved Michael as I used to, but I don’t. It’s Frederick I love now, and I can be so much happier with him. Don’t you think I’m allowed to put my mistake behind me and be happy again?’

  ‘I want you to be happy, Jeanie, you know I do. But I just wonder if you’ve thought about this properly. Michael’s behaved badly on so many occasions, but maybe there are better times ahead if you stick together. It’s not all bad with him.’

  ‘I’ve thought about nothing else,’ Jeanie said desperately. ‘When we came here it was to a new life that Michael had made us have. We didn’t choose it. But when I went to Marlowe House to find Frederick that day, I realised that I could have a better life.’

  ‘Mum,’ said Evie, visibly pulling herself together, ‘I don’t want you to go but I don’t want you to be unhappy either.’

  Jeanie held out her hands and took both of Evie’s, pulling her towards her. ‘Love, you’re a good girl, and I promise I’m not abandoning you. I’m leaving Michael but I can never leave you – or you either, Mum.’

  Jeanie hugged her mother and her daughter, and then they drew away from each other and wiped away their tears.

  ‘Evie, off you go down and make us all a cup of tea,’ said Sue. ‘Your mum and I need to get this case together.’

  Evie did as she was told.

  ‘All right, Jeanie. I can see you’re set on this,’ said Sue quietly as the sounds of Evie’s footsteps faded down the stairs, ‘but I have to tell you summat that’s been bothering me since I heard it at the Bonfire Night do. Frederick Bailey might be a good man, for all I know – and he’s shown us nowt but kindness, what with the low rent, and not standing in my way over the sewing business – but is it true that he’s been divorced three times?’

  ‘Good heavens, Mum, where on earth did you hear that?’ asked Jeanie.

  ‘Gossip, love, and I shouldn’t have listened, but I know what I overheard and I can’t unknow it. So, is it true?’

  ‘You shouldn’t be gossiping about Freddie,’ Jeanie said sharply.

  She turned away and started to pack her clothes into the case.

  ‘What is the truth then, lass?’ Sue was growing impatient.

  ‘It’s nowt to do with you.’

  ‘It is if you’re leaving Michael to go to live with a fella what’s had three wives,’ snapped Sue, pulling Jeanie round to face her by her cardigan sleeve.

  Jeanie shrugged her off. ‘He has had three wives—’

  ‘So it is true—’

  ‘But the first one died, and the second one ran off with someone else – a so-called friend of his who’d got a lot of money, and Freddie did divorce her, but can you blame him? – and the third left him too.’

  ‘Doesn’t sound like Frederick Bailey is so lucky with his women, Jeanie. Do you really think this is the man you want to spend the rest of your life with? Because I’ll tell you summat for nowt, my girl, you won’t want to come back to Michael – even if he’ll have you – after you’ve got used to living the kind of life Bailey seems to lead, and which you’ve clearly taken to. What happened to the third wife? Did he divorce her, too?’

  Jeanie looked away. ‘No, Mum,’ she said in a small voice. ‘He’s married to her still. She lives somewhere else, not nearby, by herself, I think, and she’s some sort of potter.’

  ‘Good heavens, you mean she works at a pot factory?’ asked Sue, distracted from the point by this information.

  ‘No, Mum, she’s an artist. She makes special pots, one at a time, I gather, and people buy them to display rather than to use.’

  ‘Well, I never! And you say they’re still married?’

  ‘They are.’

  Sue took a few moments to digest this. ‘But, Jeanie, love, to go and live with a man you can’t marry, and who is someone else’s husband? How do you know this woman isn’t going to reappear at any moment to move back in with him? What would happen to you, then? You’d be out on your ear, because I reckon she’d have every right to return if she wanted to. You’d be the one in the wrong because you’d be living in her house. With her husband!’

  ‘It’s not like that, Mum, really it’s not,’ said Jeanie. ‘She’s been gone for years. She’s never coming back. Don’t you think I haven’t asked Freddie about her and where I stand? Honestly, Mum, there are different folk in the world than those that live in Shenty Street. It was all we knew until we left there, but it was only one way of living – for people like us.’

  Sue was silent as she watched Jeanie slowly finish putting all her clothes in her case, and gathering her second pair of shoes into a paper carrier bag. Sue thought back to her life in the big house where she’d been a lady’s maid until she’d met and married Albert and left to be a housewife and then a mother. She remembered the lives of the people there, the secrets and the romances, even the scandals. She’d seen all kinds of folk there – high-born and low-born – and she recognised that poor people had less choice, less licence. Then she had got used to living a smaller life in Shenty Street and almost forgot that she had ever seen anything any different. Maybe the values of the people she knew there were sounder than those of folk with more money and more choices, or maybe ordinary working folk were long-suffering and prepared to put up with unhappy marriages because there was nothing for them outside of that and nowhere to run to.

  ‘You go, then, lass. I only hope you’re choosing the right road. I won’t put up with gossip about you but nor will I lie to our friends. I just want you to be happy.’

  ‘Thank you, Mum.’ Jeanie hugged her close again.

  ‘All I ask is that you tell Michael. Don’t lea
ve it to me to tell him. And I want you to say it to his face, not leave him a note.’

  ‘I’ve told him already, Mum. I don’t know if he believed me, but he knows, and when he comes home and finds me gone, he’ll believe me then.’

  ‘And you’ll see the children, won’t you, lass? And me? Please don’t leave us completely, Jeanie,’ Sue begged quietly. ‘You’re the heart of this family – what’s left of it – and we won’t survive without you if you leave us and we never see you.’

  ‘No, Mum, I promise.’

  Then Jeanie tied the pretty scarf around her neck in a dashing new way she seemed to have copied from Frederick, pinned the bow brooch to her cardigan, picked up her case, her bag of shoes, her handbag, her coat and the beautiful fine gloves. She gave a look around the shabby bedroom one last time and then walked down the stairs with her back straight and her head held high, leaving her mother, bowed under the weight of her worry, to follow behind.

  Evie and Sue were too upset to go to Redmond as they had planned that morning, so they stayed in working on some mending. Mrs Cooke’s curtains were ready and waiting for her, and, as they sewed, the two of them spent the morning in silent worry, dreading Michael’s return, with his inevitable anger.

  ‘It feels like us two alone now, Grandma,’ said Evie. ‘Do you really think we’ll see Mum again?’

  ‘Not only do I think we’ll see her, I know so,’ Sue replied staunchly. ‘Because I shall make sure we do. I’ve never been to Frederick Bailey’s house, but I mean to visit my daughter there from now on and you can come with me. I can’t imagine a place where everything’s got a price label on it, but I expect I shall soon see what it’s like.’

  Evie smiled. ‘It’s not like a shop, Grandma. There aren’t the prices on the things, it’s just that Mr Bailey lives among stuff that he buys and sells. Some of it is lovely.’

  ‘How does he know what’s his and what he’s got to sell on?’ asked Sue.

  ‘Does it matter?’ Evie said. ‘I don’t suppose he has to sell anything he wants to keep. Say he bought a nice tea set and he decided he really liked it – provided he didn’t need the money I expect he’d just keep it and use it.’ She remembered the odd cups with no saucers. It seemed that Mr Bailey hadn’t yet found a tea set he liked enough to keep. She said as much to Sue.