by Anne Bennett
Then, they went on to talk about the new televisions they were developing alongside wirelesses and whether they would really take off. Elizabeth glanced at Hannah and raised her eyes to the ceiling, for she hated it when the men talked business all night, but Hannah didn’t mind and she sat and planned the outing she was going on with Elizabeth Banks.
‘This is the nursery unit, Mrs Bradley,’ the rather stern-faced headteacher said. She’d introduced herself as the principal, Miss Halliday, and readily agreed to show Mrs Bradley and Mrs Banks around the school.
Hannah followed her down the corridor and thought the woman with her sharp features and grey hair scraped severely back from her face would frighten the living daylights out of her.
But any doubts about the suitability of the school for Angela vanished as they entered the nursery unit. She was open-mouthed at the array of toys, the home corner where two earnest little girls were cooking on a pretend stove, and another area where water in a large container was offered for the children to play with and one small boy was painting in lurid colours at an easel. Children’s art work covered the walls of the bright and airy rooms and Miss Halliday explained that the mornings were given up to the more academic work with the older age group.
There was a yard outside where wooden tricycles and prams were for the children’s use and other trolleys that the children pushed one another about in. On the grassy area was a slide, climbing apparatus and a swing and the children were making use of the outside equipment, as the afternoon was dry and quite warm.
‘My daughter is coming here in January,’ Hannah said, looking about her.
‘And you were anxious, feeling her a trifle young?’ Miss Halliday enquired. ‘Many mothers feel the same. Have we allayed some of your doubts?’
‘You certainly have,’ Hannah said. ‘I’m sure she’ll be very happy here.’
‘At least she’ll have the benefit of other children to play with,’ Hannah told Gloria, just a few days before Angela was due to start her posh new school.
‘Yes, and she may learn to share.’
‘And not think she’s the most important person in the world like she did at that ridiculous birthday party,’ Hannah put in.
Angela had been awful, wanting to be first in everything, pushing others out of the way and screaming if thwarted in anything. Arthur had proudly looked on in amused tolerance while Hannah had writhed in embarrassment. She knew it was no good her trying to control the child, it would only lead to worse behaviour, but she appealed to Arthur, but he refused to intervene. ‘It’s her birthday,’ he said. ‘She’s excited. What do you expect?’
Hannah expected better behaviour from a child of hers. She’d grown up in a family of children where no one ever thought to push themselves forward like that and behaviour only half as bad as Angela’s would assure them a sharp slap on the legs and better manners in future.
Hannah saw the mothers looking askance at her tolerating such bad behaviour. She knew they didn’t blame Arthur. Disciplining children was a woman’s job and everyone knew that. Hannah knew it was another black mark against her, but by that time she didn’t care, she just wanted the whole fiasco to be over.
Gloria had shaken her head over her when she’d come to tell her about it later. ‘Exert your authority over her before it’s too late,’ she told her sternly.
‘It is too late. Gloria, you have no idea,’ Hannah said. ‘Arthur’s laid it on the line. I either accept it, or I go and if I go, so does Josie, and I have her welfare to consider and he’ll bring any pressure to bear – medical or otherwise – to prove that I am an unfit mother, to prevent me from possibly ever seeing Angela.’
‘He couldn’t.’
‘He could, Gloria. In the hospital, the nurses thought me cold and unnatural and even the doctor doubted my emotional state of mind. Arthur and Pauline, even neighbours, could testify I cared nothing for Angela after her birth.’
‘But you were ill.’
‘Do you think that would matter?’ Hannah cried. ‘The clever lawyers Arthur could afford would make mincemeat of me. They’d think me a candidate for the funny farm by the time they were through.’
‘Oh Hannah. I feel so responsible,’ Gloria said. ‘I pushed you and Arthur together.’
‘I could have said no,’ Hannah said with a shrug. ‘I married him for a child and that’s no reason to marry anyone. But I’ll tell you this, Gloria, I know what I have isn’t ideal, but if another child was taken from me again, which in effect is what Arthur is threatening, I really don’t think I could bear it.’
Gloria remembered the state Hannah had been in when she came to her and she doubted she could either. She squeezed her hand tight. ‘You know the answer then,’ she said, ‘if you can’t change the situation, you’ll have to live with it, at least till the child is grown.’
And Hannah didn’t say anything, for there was nothing to say.
On 6th January 1951, Angela stood before Hannah, dressed head to foot in the Haselhurst school uniform; the green gabardine coat covered the cream blouse with the tie on elastic, the pleated pinafore, the cardigan and barathea blazer. Thick green stockings covered her legs and stout black winter shoes her feet, while the green velour hat with the Haselhurst band tried to tame the unruly mop of auburn curls.
It failed miserably and tendrils of hair poked from beneath the hat and framed Angela’s lovely little face, the green of the uniform making her green eyes look larger and more beautiful than ever. Hannah choked back a sob. Angela’s babyhood was almost gone already. ‘You look lovely, darling, so you do. You’re absolutely beautiful.’
Angela was happy that morning, happy and excited, not a bit apprehensive, but then why should she be. All her experiences so far had been good and pleasant ones and her daddy said she would enjoy this place and he never told her lies, so she was anxious to be gone and couldn’t understand why her mommy should look so sad. ‘Will you miss me today?’ she asked.
‘More than you’ll ever, ever know.’
‘Well,’ she said. ‘You can hug me if you like,’ and Hannah lifted her into her arms and hugged her daughter and if someone had told her she’d just won a million pounds she couldn’t have looked happier.
It only took a matter of weeks to determine that Angela adored her nursery and would have gone Saturday and Sunday too if it had been open. It took the same amount of time to establish that Hannah was bored out of her brain with nothing to do all day, for the house wasn’t big enough to occupy the two women.
‘Gloria suggested me getting a job,’ she confided in Josie one night.
‘Well? Why don’t you?’
‘Arthur wouldn’t allow it. He was bad enough before.’
‘Does he have to know?’
‘Pauline will tell him if I don’t.’
‘No she won’t. Not if you ask her not to,’ Josie said. ‘She’d probably welcome it, because she knows you’re getting under one another’s feet here.’
‘Has she said?’
Josie shrugged. ‘Not in so many words,’ she said, ‘but I know.’ Then she looked at Hannah and said, ‘What kind of work were you thinking of anyway? Will you go back to Mrs Emmerson’s?’
‘No,’ Hannah said. ‘She has someone in my place anyway. I was thinking of something different. Office work maybe, or work in a shop. Oh, I don’t know. Anyway, like I said, Arthur would never stand it, so that’s that.’
But Josie kept the conversation in her head. She knew how unhappy Hannah was, both in her marriage and in her relationship with Angela. Really she had very little to look forward to each day.
Maybe a job would give her more self-esteem. At least it would get her out of the house. And then, she might have people to talk to who didn’t make fun of her like Arthur, or reject her like Angela. She decided to put her thinking cap on. There must be a job somewhere that Hannah could do and if Arthur didn’t like it he could bloody well lump it, she decided.
Chapter Twelve
Josi
e didn’t exactly forget about Hannah and her decision to get her a job, but she was taken up with excitement as were many more with the preparations for the ‘Festival of Britain’. It was beginning in May and it was to show the world how far Britain had come on since the war. Many thought it was premature. Conscription had been re-introduced for men aged eighteen to twenty-six since 1948 and with the increase in hostilities between North and South Korea, many of these conscripts were out there fighting in yet another strange land. It seemed wrong for some then to celebrate.
‘Don’t they think this country’s done more than its fair share?’ Gloria said to Hannah one day when she popped up to visit. ‘And another thing, they say this festival is going to cost eleven million. Think how many that would house that are living in slums now.’
Hannah knew she was right; many people were living in substandard housing and not everyone had a job and yet she couldn’t help feeling that maybe this festival was the boost everyone needed.
The Labour government had done some good things, powering through welfare reforms, but those reforms, in the wake of the expense of a World War, had put the country even more in debt to America. They’d also nationalised the steel works, coal mines, the docks, railroads and electricity in order to try and rationalise employment to peacetime.
But still, Hannah felt people had to have something to look forward to after the grim and austere post-war years. The festival was supposed to be going some way to put the Great back into Great Britain and give the people something to be proud of again.
It promised to be spectacular. The bulk of the festival’s activities were to be in London as expected, though smaller events were planned all over the country, and special trains were being laid on for those who wanted to travel to London. Josie came home in a fit of excitement in April. Mary Byrne and her family were travelling down the first weekend and wondered if Josie would like to go with them.
Hannah looked lovingly at her excited niece. She was very dear to her. She’d been fourteen in February and in the ordinary way of things would be leaving school in July, but in 1947 the school leaving age had been raised to fifteen. She saw the girl was growing up fast, her dress straining over her budding breasts – new clothes needed there. Well, that’s what the money from America was for, and also for treats, like going along to this festival in London. Something she would remember for ever.
Hannah, however, was not prepared for Arthur dropping his bombshell a week later as they sat around the table for their evening meal. ‘Take Angela to London to the Festival?’ she repeated incredulously, looking at Arthur as if she couldn’t believe her ears. ‘Arthur, she’s only three years old!’
‘Three and a half,’ Arthur corrected, and he beamed across the table at Angela who was looking from one parent to another. ‘You’d like to go with Daddy to London, wouldn’t you, pet?’
‘Yeah! Yeah! I wanna go, I wanna go,’ said Angela, banging her fork on the table. She had no idea what a festival was and she didn’t care as long as she went with her daddy. She glared at Hannah and said, ‘Nasty Mommy!’
Arthur smiled. ‘And who would you like to come with us, darling, Mommy or Pauline?’
‘Arthur …’ Hannah began, but Angela shouted above her. ‘Po! Po! Po!’ she cried, for she’d retained her baby word for Pauline. ‘I love Po,’ Angela continued. ‘I don’t love Mommy.’
Pauline and Josie saw the colour drain from Hannah’s face and Pauline said sharply, ‘Angela, that was very unkind and very rude.’
Angela’s eyes slid to her father’s and he said, ‘Unkind? Rude? Nonsense! Angela speaks the truth, but it is unpalatable to some.’
Hannah could bear no more. ‘Excuse me,’ she muttered, jumping up from the table and making her way from the room. Josie gave a sigh and her eyes met those of Pauline, who she now knew felt deeply, deeply sorry for Hannah.
Hannah sat on the bed, rocking herself, her hands gripped between her knees to stop them shaking so much, and she moaned, but quietly, so no one could hear. She felt as if she was crumbling away inside, dying, falling apart. She was hurting all over. She knew her child didn’t like her, she’d accepted it, or thought she had, but to hear her say it like that at the table and then for Arthur to applaud it. How in God’s name could he be so cruel?
Much later, when a form of numbness had taken over her body, Josie came looking for her. ‘Hannah?’
‘I’m all right,’ Hannah said shakily. ‘I feel nothing now.’
‘Angela is going to bed. Pauline wants to know if …’
‘No. Whatever it is, the answer is no. I couldn’t cope with a second rejection tonight.’
‘She doesn’t mean it. She’s only wee yet. She doesn’t know what she’s saying.’
Hannah lifted her face to Josie and said, her voice steady, ‘She does mean what she says, however small she is. Maybe because of what happened after her birth, but certainly compounded by Arthur, the child doesn’t like me. One day, when you’re fully grown up, I may tell you why that hurts me so much.’
‘Oh Hannah, I feel for you,’ Josie said. ‘Pauline and I both do. Pauline feels guilty. She says you should be the one going with Arthur and Angela, not her.’
‘There’s no need for Pauline to feel that way.’
‘Maybe not,’ Josie said. ‘But I can see her point too. Anyway, this has decided me, I’ll tell Mary tomorrow at school that I can’t go with them. They’ll soon sell my train ticket, there were hundreds after it.’
‘You will do no such thing!’
‘Hannah, I can’t go off to London and leave you on your own.’
‘You can.’
‘But what will you do with yourself?’
‘God, girl, there’s hundreds of things I can do,’ Hannah said. ‘I may go and see Gloria, or give the house a good clean when I’ve got everyone out of it, or spend the day in bed with a book. That’s my business, but if you pass up this chance, I will be cross with you.’
But for all Hannah’s spirited response for Josie’s benefit, it was hard to see them all set off that Saturday morning. Josie had already gone, as she was spending the night with the Byrnes, and as the door closed behind Arthur, Pauline and an excited dancing Angela, the house seemed incredibly empty. For a little while, she was overcome with self-pity. Here I am, a married woman, mother of a three-year-old, aunt to a young woman of fourteen and I’m here alone while the whole household is out enjoying themselves. She decided to take a grip on herself. She wouldn’t stay in the house, she decided. She would go out. She’d visit Gloria, talk to people and stop feeling sorry for herself.
Gloria was delighted to see her. ‘I hoped you’d come,’ she said. ‘I’ve bought one of those new televisions. It’s in the residents’ lounge and much of that Festival in London is being televised, they say. When young Josie comes home, you’ll be able to tell her you’ve seen everything.’
Gloria knew about Josie going to London, but not Arthur and Angela, and when Hannah told her, she exclaimed, ‘And he took that nanny instead of you? God, but he’s a mean bugger! Well, this isn’t the same as being there, duck, but it’s the next best thing. And one thing, eh, we don’t have to push our way through the crowds. We can sit in comfort and have a cup of tea with it as well. So I’ll put the kettle on, shall I?’
Most of the televising began in the afternoon and no one could fail to be impressed. Hannah saw the long series of pavilions alongside the Thames and displays telling the story of Britain and the British people. A thing called a Skylon, a thin pencil of aluminium and steel, seemed to hover in the air, while a huge Dome of Discovery was perched on stilts. Two and a half miles down river, the muted sound of the fair in the Festival Gardens in Battersea reached them and put Hannah in mind of her disastrous honeymoon at Blackpool.
In the pavilions, architects and designers were out in force. For years, any furniture made had been utility-stamped and styleless, but now Hannah saw beautiful tables and chairs to match with spindly legs, and modern comfo
rtable armchairs and sofas and wished she could change some of the heavy furniture she’d inherited and now seemed stuck with.
‘Against the background of the grime and ruins of a battered, battle-scarred London, the South Bank is an enclave of colour and light,’ said the announcer and Hannah was caught up by his enthusiasm.
They were holding up a new way of living, one that had no place in the grim and dreary 1940s, and Hannah and Gloria looked with awe at the piazzas and brightly coloured restaurants and the accent on youth and fashion and the good times to come. Hannah hoped with all her heart that they were right and the world would be a better and safer place for the youngsters to inherit.
Only a couple of weeks after Josie had been to London, she sought Hannah out one evening, because she’d heard news that day at school that might benefit both of them and help them get employment. In September of that year, Josie was to begin her last year at school and the school were offering the boys the chance to do woodwork and the girls a commercial course.
‘Do you think it would be useful?’ she asked Hannah.
‘What does it entail?’
‘It sort of prepares you for office work; accounts, shorthand and typing.’
Hannah was delighted. ‘That’s just what I wanted for you,’ she said. ‘It’s great that you can do it at school. I wish I’d had the chance. You go for it!’
‘Aye, but this is it, Hannah,’ Josie said. ‘What if I was to show you what I learn in the day and you practise it at home? It would make me concentrate more and it would help you get a better job, too. We’ll have to get a typewriter, though.’
‘Will it cost much?’ Hannah said. ‘I have no money of my own. There is a tidy sum in the account I opened for you, but I’d feel bad using that.’
‘Come on, Hannah. This is to help both of us,’ Josie said. ‘It’s better than asking Martin and Siobhan for more money.’