Walking Back to Happiness

by Anne Bennett

  He’d been moody since he’d come home that afternoon and Hannah couldn’t understand why. He should have been in good spirits; they’d had a little party in the office at lunchtime, a few drinks with his colleagues and his boss, and he’d come home with a sizeable bonus, and a large box of chocolates for Hannah, the same as all the company wives had.

  Hannah at least was delighted for, with the sweet ration still in place, chocolates were like gold dust, and yet nothing seemed to cheer Arthur.

  Hannah wasn’t too worried. She knew her husband’s passion for hoarding money and for spending as little as possible and she thought it had probably upset him to have to increase her housekeeping in order to supply the few extras that even he saw they needed at Christmas time.

  She took it as a hopeful sign that he agreed to go with her and Josie to the Abbey for Midnight Mass, certain the beautifully clear night with the stars twinkling and the moon shining down, lighting up the earlier fall of snow that crackled under people’s feet, would be enough to lift anyone’s spirits. ‘Very Christmassy, a bit of snow,’ she said, slipping her arm through Arthur’s.

  He just grunted a response, but Josie squeezed Hannah’s other hand and said, ‘I love snow too.’

  Neither of them knew of the long hard winter to come when they’d be heartily sick of snow, but that night, it had a sense of rightness about it. The world was a beautiful place, Hannah decided, and it was almost Christmas Day. What could be better?

  She couldn’t believe it when she felt Arthur’s weight upon her later that night. She’d been almost asleep, the carols still running in her head when he launched his attack as he came in from the bathroom. She tried to twist away from his grasp and felt her nightie rip open as it was torn from her. ‘For pity’s sake, Arthur, will you leave me be?’ she cried.

  But it was if she hadn’t spoken and somehow the obscene words that Arthur spat out that night seemed to defile all that had gone before.

  Afterwards, aching everywhere, Hannah cried herself to sleep and was in no great humour for Arthur’s abject apology the next day. ‘Don’t say you’re sorry,’ she cried. ‘Just don’t. If you were sorry, you’d not do such things to me. Leave me be, Arthur. It’s not right the things you do. Surely you can see that?’

  Arthur got to his feet, avoiding her eyes, and began to dress. ‘Look me full in the face and tell me what you do is normal behaviour,’ she demanded shrilly.

  And then Arthur faced her, his own face expressionless and his voice cold. ‘If you’ve quite finished your tantrum,’ he said, ‘it’s time to get up.’ He paused at the door and said, ‘By the way, my dear – Happy Christmas.’

  If Hannah had anything to hand she would have hurled it after Arthur. Instead she punched the life out of the pillow and imagined it to be his face. She knew that Arthur would never in a million years believe that he might be in the wrong. In a way, she wished that she wasn’t going to Gloria’s house that day. Gloria was too astute by half and Hannah knew that feeling and looking as she did, she’d not be able to convince her that her life was hunky-dory.

  Hannah was right; Gloria was not fooled. She sensed the tension in every line of Hannah’s face and the smile that seemed to have been nailed there. Only Arthur seemed normal, for Josie was far too quiet, especially as it was Christmas Day.

  I’ll pop over and see her one day soon, she promised herself, and have a chat. See what’s what. But she couldn’t, for the bad weather put paid to any plans she had.

  At first, most people had been quite philosophical about the snow. After all, that’s what happened in winter and Birmingham only really got a sprinkling of it that didn’t last long. The children loved it through the Christmas holidays, making snowmen, hurling snowballs at the unsuspecting and making slides that were a danger to life and limb for the unwary.

  The adults struggled to maintain some semblance of order to their lives, going to work and shopping and later, when the schools reopened, taking children to school. But gradually things slowed down and ground to a halt altogether in some cases. The snow was relentless and blown into drifts by the gusting winds. This then froze solid at night and was covered by more snow the next day. The skies were leaden grey and not a glimmer of sun penetrated them and so lights were kept on most of the day and fires stoked up.

  This caused a further problem in the increase in power used and so power cuts began and coal was rationed. Trams and trains were very late, or cancelled altogether. They couldn’t run on rails filled with frozen ice, while buses and other vehicles couldn’t operate on roads cut off by snow. As fast as the emergency services cleared them, they were soon as bad as ever.

  1947 was the first year Gloria had not gone to the January Sales in the city centre stores. Normally, she stocked up on things for the guesthouse, as well as finding a few choice bargains for herself.

  Even collecting the weekly rations was a chore. Not indeed that there was much in the shops to be had, for many supplies were just not getting through. One woman that very day in the grocer’s had commented to anyone interested, ‘Looks like the bloke upstairs thinks Hitler d’aint kill enough of us already with his bloody bombs, he’s now trying to starve us to death.’

  She wasn’t so far wrong either, Gloria remarked to Amy later. ‘I mean, I don’t say it’s got much to do with God, like, but some of the shelves are near empty. And it’s no joke with half the stuff on ration anyhow. I mean, if they haven’t got one thing in, then you’ve got hardly much choice to get anything else. Must be a nightmare for women with families to feed.’

  Gloria was glad she had Amy to talk to, glad their back doors were not that far away and that Tom always cleared the path so they could pop into one another’s houses. She often thought she’d have gone mad in that big rambling house without Amy. Of course, normally she would have been kept busy. She was usually quieter through December, but once the New Year was over, the commercial travellers were on the road again, trying to make up the money spent out in the festive season.

  But not this year. In a way, she was pleased she didn’t have to heat the whole place as well as finding coal for the residents’ dining room and lounge for there was a desperate shortage of it. As it was, she’d shut off all the house, but her own rooms, and even then she often went to bed early to save fuel.

  She wasn’t in trouble yet with money. She was canny with it and had plenty saved and yet she knew she couldn’t go on with the situation indefinitely without any income.

  She wasn’t the only one. Many people either couldn’t get to work, or got there and found there was no heating and often no light either. She’d seen pictures in the Evening Mail of people in shops wearing overcoats and trying to serve customers by candlelight.

  But thinking of families brought Hannah to mind and how odd she’d been at Christmas. If she’d have been able to see her since, she’d have felt better. Amy knew what her friend was fretting over.

  ‘You can’t do anything about Hannah,’ she said. ‘She’s a married woman now.’

  ‘I know that, Amy, but you must admit she was peculiar over Christmas, they all were.’

  Amy knew they were. She and Tom had come over in the evening for a bit of tea and you could have cut the atmosphere between Hannah and Arthur with a knife. But it wouldn’t help Gloria to tell her that. She was a proper old worryguts about the girl as it was, but she was no fool either. ‘Maybe she was a bit strained,’ she admitted. ‘They’d probably had a tiff.’

  ‘Do you think that’s all it was, a bit of a row?’ Gloria asked anxiously.

  ‘Bound to be,’ Amy said confidently. ‘Newlywed, see. Still getting to know one another.’

  ‘If only I could see her, check that everything is all right.’

  ‘Why shouldn’t it be?’ Amy said. ‘She’s better off than us, only yards from the High Street in Erdington and Tom says they try and keep that clear. Doesn’t always work of course, but I bet Hannah can get out to shop and get coal delivered.’

  ‘You�
�re right there,’ Gloria said. ‘I thought that last coal lorry was going to overturn.’

  ‘Or go ploughing through someone’s garden and into their front rooms,’ Amy said with a grim smile, remembering the coal man’s valiant efforts to control his lorry that had skidded the last time he’d tried to deliver coal to them. ‘Tom says this road’s a bugger,’ Amy went on. ‘You should see him slithering and sliding over it to reach the main drag. Mind you, the kids make it worse. Them and their flipping slides. Something should be done about it before someone breaks their neck.’

  ‘They’re bored with the schools all closed,’ Gloria said wearily. ‘We’ll just have to put up with it. God knows, it can’t go on forever.’ She gave a sigh and said, ‘Put a few pieces of coal on that fire, Amy, before it dies out altogether and I’ll make us some tea.’

  Chapter Six

  ‘What’s happened?’ Gloria asked, staring at Hannah in shock. Even in the gloomy half-light of Hannah’s breakfast room, for the February day was dark and overcast, she could see the blue-black bruise on her left cheek and the split lip on the same side. The rest of Hannah’s face was bleached white and her hair, once her crowning glory, was lank and tied back from her face with an elastic band. ‘I walked into a door,’ Hannah replied.

  Even Josie, sitting on the chair in the room watching silently, couldn’t have stilled the retort from Gloria’s lips. ‘Walked into a door, my Aunt Fanny. This is me you’re talking to and I wasn’t born yesterday. I know what manner of door it was.’

  Gloria glanced at the child. There was nowhere else she could go, for the rest of the house was like an icebox and Gloria supposed Hannah could only get coal enough to heat one room. In front of Josie she could take this no further. But she’d not let it rest there. No, by God, she wouldn’t. She’d encouraged Hannah to marry Arthur, she felt responsible. She never thought he’d be the kind to hit her, to hit anyone in fact.

  But this would never do – this uncomfortable ominous silence. She must find something to break it. ‘Did you have a nice birthday?’ she asked Josie, knowing it had been two days before. ‘I sent a card, did you get it?’

  To her surprise, a shudder passed through Josie’s slight frame before she said, almost expressionless, ‘Yes, yes thank you, Mrs Emmerson.’

  Gloria felt decidedly uncomfortable, but she soldiered on. ‘I couldn’t get out to the shops to buy you anything with the weather you know, but I found this in my jewellery box and thought you might like it,’ and handed Josie a tissue-wrapped little parcel.

  ‘Oh,’ Josie cried, pushing the tissue paper aside and taking the delicate silver chain with its sparkling sapphire pendant from the velvet box. It was the loveliest thing she’d ever owned and she was almost overcome with pleasure. ‘Oh, it’s beautiful.’

  Hannah came forward to examine the necklace. ‘Gloria,’ she said. ‘It’s lovely, but isn’t it a little valuable to give to a child?’

  ‘Not at all,’ Gloria said. ‘Josie is ten now, a fine age. Double figures at last and I know she’ll look after the necklace. I haven’t worn it for years. It’ll do it good to be worn by someone who values it.’

  ‘You’re very kind,’ Hannah said and she smiled at Josie. ‘Take it up to your room, pet, and put it safe,’ she said gently.

  There was a look exchanged between them, but Josie left the room without another word. Barely had the door closed when Gloria asked, ‘Hannah, what is it?’

  Hannah sighed, a resigned and weary sigh. ‘It’s many things,’ she said. ‘Too much to tell. Josie will be back in a minute, the upstairs is no place to linger. The whole house is freezing apart from this room.’

  Josie would have loved to linger, to have snuggled down under the covers of her bed and pretended what had happened two nights before, the night of her birthday, hadn’t happened.

  She felt particularly guilty because she knew it had been partly her fault or at least that’s what had annoyed Arthur to begin with.

  Hannah had said she could invite three friends to a birthday tea, but with the bad weather it would be best to choose three who lived close so they wouldn’t have so far to come. But that was all right for Mary Byrne, Cassie Ryan and Belinda Crosby, the three girls she’d made friends with at the Abbey school, all lived near her. ‘It’s a party,’ Josie had told them.

  She’d never had a party before in her life and neither had the others. The war years had put an end to that, rationing not allowing much in the line of party fare, and when Josie saw the table filled with delicacies and the beautiful cake in the middle with ‘Happy Birthday’ written on it in icing and ten candles, she felt tears prickle her eyes.

  The children had gone by the time Arthur came in from work, Hannah had seen to that, and she was in the kitchen cooking his tea when he came through the door. But his eyes alighted straight away on the remains of the cake. ‘What’s this?’

  Hannah turned down the stove. ‘A cake I got for Josie,’ she said and closed the door so that Josie had to strain her ears to hear. ‘It’s her birthday today.’

  ‘And where did you get the money for such rubbish?’

  ‘Not from you anyway,’ Hannah snapped. ‘From her sister and brother in New York, that’s where I got it.’

  ‘I should say that’s for necessities, not frivolous nonsense.’

  ‘It’s for anything I see fit to spend it on. And a cake and a few goodies is not considered nonsense when you are just ten years old. Can’t you see, Arthur, what the child has had to put up with this year?’ Hannah hissed in a lower voice. ‘This was her first birthday without her mother and family around her. I wanted to make it a little special for her, that’s all.’

  ‘I still say it’s stuff and nonsense.’

  ‘Then say what you like,’ Hannah snapped. ‘You have your opinion and I’ll have mine.’

  Josie, in the other room, sitting on a cracket pulled up before the fire, had been trying to read The Railway Children, one of the books Hannah had given her, but the voices distracted her. It was a shame, really, because she’d been enjoying the story. She’d never had a book bought for her before – not one to read just for itself. She’d had school books with extracts from stories in and poetry that you had to read and then answer questions about, but never a whole book for pleasure. And now she had two, for as well as The Railway Children, she had Black Beauty.

  Arthur came into the room, rustling his evening paper impatiently, and Josie leapt to her feet. She wished the house wasn’t so cold and she could run upstairs to escape the hateful glare Arthur turned on her. Hannah saw the look, too, and her heart sank for she knew she was in for it later that night as soon as the bedroom door was closed.

  Suddenly she was angry. Why should she put up with it just when Arthur had the notion, the mean-spirited man she’d married who begrudged a child a birthday cake? He wasn’t normal and she knew that as well as anyone.

  She’d almost asked the priest about Arthur’s verbal attacks on her in confession, for she felt sure honouring and obeying wouldn’t include holding his wife forcibly on the bed while he spat obscenities at her. But how could she tell the priest that and explain why Arthur felt the need to do it in the first place? Nice Father Fitzgerald would be so embarrassed if she asked, while Father Milligan would probably say whatever a man did was just fine. He seemed to believe in the divine right of men to do exactly what they pleased to their wives.

  So it was no good appealing to the priests for help, but she was determined if he started his obnoxious bullying behaviour that night he’d not have it all his own way. She remembered with a wry smile the old lady in Ireland who said she kept a hat pin under her pillow at night. She hadn’t understood at the time, but by God, she did now. She thought a hat pin would have been a very comforting thing to have by her side.

  But Hannah had no hat pin to hand later when Arthur came into the bedroom. She was in bed, clothes pulled up to her neck, and she saw Arthur smile maliciously as he began to peel his clothes off.

 
; Hannah would not allow herself to be intimidated by Arthur’s attitude and she spoke quickly before she lost her courage and louder than she had intended. ‘Arthur, I need to talk to you.’

  ‘You’ve had all evening to talk,’ Arthur almost growled.

  ‘I need to talk to you now,’ Hannah persisted. ‘About your behaviour. I can’t have you going on the way you do. It’s humiliating.’

  Arthur, now naked, turned off the light and climbed onto the bed where he knelt and looked at her. ‘You promised to obey me,’ he said. ‘Before a priest and a full congregation.’

  ‘Not in this sort of thing.’

  ‘It didn’t stipulate. You just promised to obey.’

  ‘Arthur, the things you say, some of them are pure filth, dirty, disgusting words. You’d need to confess them so it can’t be right.’

  ‘What I say in confession is not your business, you nosy bitch,’ Arthur snapped. ‘You’re my wife and you’ll do as I say,’ and with a shot, he was upon her.

  But Hannah, tensed, was ready for him and she rolled away and in a second had thrown the covers from her and was on her feet. ‘You sodding bitch,’ he said and added sneeringly, ‘You want to play games, eh? Okay, I’ll play games.’ He reached her side as he spoke and as she tried to twist away, he grabbed her arms.

  ‘Leave go of me.’

  ‘Like hell I will, you bleeding whore!’

  ‘I’m not! How can you say things like this?’

  ‘All women are the same.’

  Frustrated beyond endurance at her inability to get free from Arthur’s vice-like grip, Hannah cried, ‘Well, all men aren’t the same. There’s real men and half men like you.’

  The blow Arthur administered knocked Hannah off her feet. But she had no memory of falling or hitting the floor and when she came to, Arthur was bending over her. He’d been horrified that he’d hit her and then further surprised to find his penis harder and more erect than it had ever been.