I did not say anything. Kate is not on his beat now, and even if she were, I would not tell him. She had been persecuted enough. I would have to get up the nerve myself to talk to her about Sammy. Our Miss Bullock, so conscientious in her field work. But our Miss Bullock can’t forget that she saw terror flash into a child’s eyes.
I got up to go, and Johnny said that he would call Jean down to say goodbye. For something to say, he asked me what I was going to do, and when I said I thought I was going back to America, he said, ‘Was this a holiday for you then, coming back now?’
I hesitated, standing in the narrow hall with the red and blue patterned carpet and the bright infested wallpaper. I hung on to the flat swirl of polished ginger wood where the banister ended, and tried to stop myself telling him about my father.
It was a stale squib of news. It shattered no one. Joel had said, ‘He would do it just when I’m hoping to get leave.’ Kate had shrugged and hardly heard, and started to talk about herself.
Jean came down the stairs in an apron, smiling, and I looked up at her, and then I looked back at Johnny Jordan, too big and muscular for his little over-decorated hall, frowning at me because I had opened my mouth to say something and no words came out.
‘What is it, Emma?’
I told them. Suddenly they break, he had said, and let you have it all. I broke. I let them have it, weeping as hysterically as any of his unbalanced women, living too near the edge.
He put his arm round me, not like my father, because he is much taller and more secure, and I yelled stupidly into his shirt, ‘He cheated me, he let me down!’
Jean put me to bed, telephoned my mother, and said that the car had broken down and I was staying with friends. I slept until the next midday. When I woke and dressed, Johnny and Jean were both out. Nancy was home from school, getting her own lunch, and I realized that I had spent the night in her bed.
‘Where did you sleep?’
‘On the sofa, I often have. We had two pairs of twins once in my bed, the night the Buildings burned.’
I knew that I should stay with my mother, if I was the right kind of daughter, but I was the wrong kind, and I couldn’t stay with her.
My father was letting her have the house. ‘You can’t say he’s not been generous, Emma,’ she said, because her sickening line now is to try to change my attitude towards him.
She is always dropping in a good word, in the special soft voice she uses for talking about him. If she goes on talking about him like this, as if he were dead, what will she have left to say when he really does die? Perhaps she will die first, of boredom and lack of purpose, and he will live on into his nineties, the old goat, in the health and bloom of sin.
Ninety. That will make Benita about seventy-six, if she stays the course. Well preserved, she’ll be, like plums in brandy, and spend too much on clothes. I shall be a raw-boned and leathery colonel’s wife of fifty-seven, with Joel at the Pentagon, giving buffet suppers at my split-level in Arlington and pretending I have a maid.
My mother is going to sell the house. It was when she told me, that I realized absolutely that I can’t stay with her. I realized then how much the house inevitably means, reeking as it is with the lives of all of us. All the things I detest about it - the pathetically disguised suburbanness, the fake country view, the gloss and the tidiness and the things replaced or re-covered or re-painted as soon as they began to get shabby - even these are part of the essence of the house, my home. They could even, if the house were to be loved, be loved along with it, as you can absorb a beloved person’s bow legs or taste in clothes.
With the house gone, and my mother’s unsubde taste in decorating transferred to a flat in Hampstead near Aunt Millicent, I knew I couldn’t make it. If it was claustrophobia in the house, it would be padded cells in a flat.
Uncle Mark took me out to the kind of lunch he has every day, which is why he has to stay late at the office and loses a secretary every few months, and asked me what I wanted to do.
I told him the truth. I can, these days. It is surprising how, as you grow up, your most impersonal relations become human. He said that he would get me off the hook, and ordered a heavy claret and talked business for the rest of lunch, since we had exhausted the subject of my mother over the prawn cocktails.
He has plans for me in the firm. He is going to spread out into Canada, with a B.B. supermarket in a Toronto suburb, as a guinea-pig to see how he can compete. The Canadians are very American in their shopping habits, although they would kill you if you said so, because they see the Great Lakes as a barrier wider than the Atlantic; so if Uncle Mark goes on getting good accounts of me from friend Ralph in New York, he may send me up there to work on the layout.
‘She can’t fiddle about, Laura,’ he told my mother. ‘I sent her to America for at least two years - at her request, incidentally, and David’s - and she’ll stay there as long as I want her to. She’s beginning to be useful to me at last.’
Words a mother should be proud to hear.
‘She’s all I’ve got now.’ If you put long felt ears on my mother, she could look like a bloodhound.
‘She’s working for me. Just because David chooses to make a fool of himself, she’s not going to mess about with her career - or my business.’
Although I had already told my mother that I would not be with her in the new flat, she pretended dismay. ‘Then I’ll have to reconsider all my plans,’ she said. ‘I had so much in mind for her room. Off-white rug - Emma’s much more careful these days. The dressing-table in sprigged muslin. I saw it at Peter Jones’.’
‘Buy it,’ Uncle Mark said, as crisply as he can say anything through his beard, which muffles and softens the edges of words a little, after they leave his hedged lips. ‘I’m not sending her to Siberia. She’ll need her room with you. I’ll see that she gets plenty of leave, and help with the fare too.’ He is trying to make up to her for his brother, but it is hard going. ‘Shell be home with you a lot. Everything will work out splendidly, don’t you think?’
‘I shall be very lonely,’ my mother said, in the flat voice that puts an end to all jollying. ‘I may have to buy a pekinese.’
EM CAME BACK to say goodbye, and Mr Zaharian, who keeps his door open to watch out for all comers, greeted her like an old friend. He is always pleased to see anyone coming up the stairs, even Norma, who laughs at him and won’t say anything, just laughs and keeps on walking, and Phyll Conroy who won’t let her boys go in his room for sweets, but they go anyway.
We heard the racket of him crying: ‘Aha! and how are you, lady?’ and Bob said: ‘Who the hell is that?’ He was blocking in a picture of hussars in a colouring book. I had bought him some new crayons that morning. He’s easy to keep amused, I’ll say that, but the kids are going to have it rough keeping him away from their toys as they get older. He bought Sam some tin paratroops, Christmas, but guess who plays with them.
Mr Zaharian knocked on our door with his bloodstone ring that Sammy likes to suck. I yelled, ‘Come on in!’ because I was doing the wash, and he flung open the door with a grin and cried: ‘Your girl friend!’ - when I’m rich I’ll have him in a turban and red sash, announcing guests at my receptions - and there was Em grinning too, with her arms full of parcels and flowers.
‘Hullo, Em,’ said Bob, and his grin was the widest of the lot.
‘Get up, you slob,’ I said, and he did, and ambled over to put his arms round Em like a tame bear. Everybody loves Em. It’s easy to be loved when you arrive in a pink and white suit like marzipan with crocodile shoes and a present for everyone. Don’t be bitter, Kate. When she could disentangle Sammy, clamouring like a raving lunatic, she threw the parcels on the bed (thank God I’d made it), and came quickly to the sink and kissed me, and I took my arms out of the suds and put them round her all wet and scummy. I’ve never seen harder water anywhere, never. It’s something in the tank. Rotting bones I shouldn’t wonder.
Although I miss her all the time behind the back cur
tain of my mind, and often at the front of it, thinking of the old days when we were silly giggling girls with Moll to do the worrying, it’s when I actually see her that I realize how much I need her.
She is going away again, so all right, I can’t have her. I got over crying for what I couldn’t have years and years ago. If you could remember being a baby, I’d probably remember screaming myself blue because I was cold or hungry or wet, with results nil.
She had brought toys for the children, a cake, a blouse for me and nylons. Nylons! I haven’t even got a suspender belt. I’ll have to roll them. Cigarettes for Bob, and a bottle of port. Then she saw Mr Zaharian still standing in the doorway beaming with silly joy over the Lady Bountiful scene, and she was quick-witted enough to give him the box of biscuits and pretend they were for him. He shut the door softly and went away crooning to himself high in his nose.
‘Look, Em, you shouldn’t - ‘ I began, for we don’t need charity from her, or anyone, but she passed it off as going-away presents, and started to talk to Bob, to shut me up.
‘Katie’s going to have another baby,’ Bob said.
‘I know.’
‘It’s good isn’t it? I’ve always wanted lots of kids. Lots and lots of ‘em. I knew a chap at work once, had a whole football team. Soccer, mind. Eight boys and three girls, and they put the baby in goal. When I go in the Army, that should be next year, if they don’t call me sooner, I’m going to get Sammy a little soldier suit, with a drum.’
Never a dry eye. He’s sopping wet about the boy, Bob is. He’s taught him to salute, and they do what he calls drill together.
‘Go on, show Em how you salute.’ He did, and when we laughed because his hand come up so quick and comic, he fired up red and ran behind Bob’s legs, catching at his trousers.
‘He’s your boy,’ Em said. ‘Most children run behind their mother’s skirt when they’re shy.’
I looked at her, sharp. She was getting at something. That’s why she came. She’s always been critical of me, ever since the days at the Council flat when I used to leave Sammy alone, and she fussed at me. If she thinks I’m too rough on him, she should just have him, that’s all. She should just have him for only one day even, and she’d see. There’s only one thing that kid understands, I mean that.
He went to play with the car she had brought, and I went over to him and sat down on the floor, so gentle and tender, and showed him how to wind it up. He didn’t want to come on my knee, but I pulled him on to me and sat there smiling and talking to him, the very picture of motherhood.
OUR MISS BULLOCK never did get the chance to say anything to Kate. When I went to say goodbye, she was much better with the boy, and Bob obviously adores the children, so I suppose it will be all right.
I hope it will be all right. Surely an unhappy childhood would make you want to give your own child something better? Johnny Jordan has his theories, but if you work mostly with failures, you see defeat for everybody. Doctors think the whole world is sick, and undertakers see potential death in a newborn baby.
As soon as I was on the plane, even before it took off, I stopped worrying about Kate, and about my mother’s poor harmless face, still babyish about the mouth, and puzzled, when she kissed me, brave and tearless, and said: ‘Come back soon, Emmie.’
The gush of real love and pity I felt for her should have come much earlier. It should have come when I arrived, not when I was safely leaving.
Mrs Patterson has eminent domain. She made it sound like a skin disease, but it means that a new elevated intersection is going to scoop off the top of her house. Dodie and Brenda have already gone, and since Mr Vinson has raised my pay, or as he put it, upgraded my salary bracket, I am sharing an apartment across the river in New Jersey with a mad Danish girl called Toni. We are planning a new store for a giant housing project on what was once a desolate marsh, and Toni is one of the draughtsmen the engineers are using for the layout, and I’m afraid using may be the right word, for when she works late, she doesn’t usually come back to the flat.
Joel delayed his leave, and he spent it all in New York with me after I came back. He is being sent to a weapons school in Texas, where wives are not allowed to go. Next year, he expects to get a posting abroad, and then we think we will be married.
Part Four
We would have had to leave that room in the house of hell anyway, because there was not enough room with Susannah.
It’s a pretty name. My mother was thinking of it once for Loretta, but I picked the wrong time to say I thought it was beautiful, and they said: What the hell business is it of yours? and called her Loretta.
Sometimes I think I will take the baby round there and say: Look, I’ve got a Susannah. Sometimes I think of going and I pretend that it would be laughter and people jumping up and crying: Look who’s here! and I’m afraid I might go. When I’m tired, which is all the time, chronic, like piles, I go off on this road to nowhere like I used to when I was little and alone, and I’m afraid I might get round that corner one day and find it led to Butt Street.
Marge took Emily, and Bob turned in his job and took care of Sammy while I was in the hospital. If they’d only let you stay there a month, it would be worth having a baby every year, for the rest. But they kick you out in a few days with some brisk, kindly words about getting plenty of the right food. Smile.
Bob brought home a great piece of steak that evening. It cost a pound, and we had the bottle of wine Dino gave me for home-coming, and sat at the table and threw bits of steak to the kids on the floor and they ate it like dogs. Emily can’t chew, but if you give her red meat, she sucks it white, like a vampire. Then they curled up where they were on the rug and went to sleep, so we left the gas fire on all night, and Bob was like a mad thing, because the doctor had dared him to go after me before, the last couple of months.
But the next day, there it was all back on top of me, and no shillings for the meter, and the baby into the bargain.
We’ve got to get a bigger place, I’d keep telling Bob, and he’d smile and say: That’s right, like he does when he doesn’t intend to do a thing about it.
He did get another job though, I’ll say that for him. It’s something in a warehouse. I’m not sure what he does, but he says they move pianos fifty yards one day and then move them back the next, to give them something to do, but it’s better paid than the butcher’s shop, and it’s muscling him up. You wouldn’t know him for the limp and sloppy boy he used to be. He looks quite a man - till you try to start a sensible conversation with him.
He’s lazy still. Oh God, you could set his chair on fire before he’ll move, but in the end he had to go out and look for a new place for us to live, because of Dino.
When I got my figure back again after Susannah, or as near back as it will ever be, with the punishment it’s been getting, Dino got his interest back. He’s a waiter, that’s the trouble. He’s at work when the men are at home, and vice versa, which is to say that he’s at home when the men are out at work.
Even Mr Zaharian, who is doing something now for the Salvation Army, who have given him another pair of trousers that fit this time, was out of the house the day Dino came into my room and shut the door behind him.
What to do? When you live in a house like that, you don’t scream. You don’t advertise your problems.
Sammy told Bob, of course. Trust our Sam. Bob is a dreadful coward. He hit me and called me a terrible name, which Sammy will store up to come out with, but when I said, ‘Why don’t you go and fight it out with Dino?’ Bob said, ‘He’s gone to work,’ as if that let him out.
Three days later, we moved out, with Mr Zaharian waving us down the stairs with his lower lip in a trembling little pout, as if he wanted to come too, and Mrs O’Hara, who is an undercover agent for the landlord, watching from behind that piece of gunny she calls a curtain, to see we didn’t steal the light fixtures.
We are now in a basement flat, and although there’s more room to move about, and at least we can call
the taps and drains our own, there are times when our old room seems better than it did when we were there.
At least that house had once been something, in the days when maids carried hot water up and down the stairs. I must have seen an illustration in a book, for I could always see them, with streamers on their caps and those brass jugs. That was all they seemed to do. The drawing-room, our room must have been, with the high ceiling and the raised design round the top of the walls. In the summer, when the sun was high enough to stand over the high houses opposite, it came flooding into us through the tall windows, and there was always plenty of light.
Where we are now, there is always plenty of dark. We call it the Tunnel, Thomas’s Tunnel, and that’s about what it is. This house is in the same district, but it has always been a house of the poor, wretchedly built and full of sodden bugs and sadness. The ground floor and top floor are empty now, because of the roof, and it’s a marvel that the basement is still classed fit for habitation, let alone rentable at five pounds ten a week, which is what we are fools enough to pay.
But there’s nowhere else. When you are in a hurry to move, there is nowhere but these odds and ends of dwellings, and bloody few of them, thanks to the Spades.
We moved in here at the tail end of last winter, and before we’d really begun to feel the Tunnel’s damp soul, down here among the gnomes and mushrooms, the spring came, and then the summer, and it wasn’t so bad, and we’ll find something else before next winter.
There are two rooms, and a sort of humpy shed at the back where Bob keeps his bicycle alongside the toilet, and a passage between the front and back room with a broken stone floor where the sink and cookstove are. They call it open-plan living.
The back room doesn’t have a proper window, just a grated opening high up in the wall, which will have to be stuffed with newspaper if we don’t get out before the cold weather, or the kids will freeze to the mattress. They say it’s going to be the hardest winter for fifty years.
Kate and Emma Page 21