by Anne Bennett
Hannah was to find Amy to be right about a child being a great healer. The people in Grange Road tended to keep themselves to themselves more than those in Harrison Road, but after Adam was born, even some of them had thawed enough to knock on the door to ask about the baby and offer a gift, or stop Hannah in the street to peep in the pram.
The consensus seemed to be firstly that it wasn’t the child’s fault and then that Hannah was pleasant enough and really you couldn’t believe all you heard. Even knowing she’d left her child wasn’t so bad when you realised the child was at boarding school and that was the father’s choice they believed.
But even with the people in Grange Road, now smiling at her, or calling out the odd greeting, Hannah was still wary of braving Erdington High Street, but she couldn’t go to town with a baby in tow. She’d found it a strain the last weeks of her pregnancy.
Still, she was full of trepidation when she made her first trip up there, but because she’d chosen her time well she met few old neighbours. But she did bump into some patients from the old practice. Some smiled and some ignored her, but there were no nasty comments and she told herself she could cope with that.
Vic knew, though, that Hannah had still not really settled into her new life, despite the fact that she was now at least on nodding terms with the neighbours, and he suggested having a christening-cum-housewarming party when Adam was a month old. ‘We’ll invite the neighbours,’ he said. ‘Then they’ll see for themselves that we are a solid and rather boring family unit.’
Hannah agreed that it was a good idea in principle, though she didn’t think even Father Fitzgerald would be interested in baptising a child he considered a bastard. But he had no problem with that for in his opinion none of it was the child’s fault. ‘What date had you in mind?’ he asked them, consulting his diary.
‘The second Sunday in October would be good,’ Vic said. ‘The shops might be selling fireworks by then and we may be able to get some for the party.’
Hannah went suddenly cold. Fireworks always made her think of Angela because November 6th was her birthday. Another child I can’t send a birthday card to, Hannah thought, and she hugged Adam so tight, he struggled against her. But she said nothing to Vic. She didn’t expect him to remember Angela’s birthday, nor did she want him to think that Angela was on her mind so much. He might think then she was unhappy and it wasn’t that at all.
She just wished she could see her, talk with her, watch her develop into the young woman she was now teetering on the edge of becoming, but Hannah didn’t blame Vic for not being able to do these things; she knew who was to blame. Vic caught the look of sadness on Hannah’s face, however, and knowing her well, did a quick calculation and cursed himself for being an insensitive fool. There would be no fireworks at this party, he decided. He would do nothing to add to Hannah’s unhappiness about the situation with Angela.
Hannah refused to ask any people from Harrison Road to the party, so not even the Byrnes got an invitation. Amy and Tom came, of course, and some other new neighbours who’d been particularly friendly and Josie and Phil and baby Phillip in a carrycot, and Josie’s friend Cynthia and her brother Peter. Vic invited two colleagues, one was married and brought his wife and another who was a bachelor by the name of Colin Ferguson. Hannah found him an interesting man and one who was passionate about the National Health Service and had deliberately chosen to take an inner ring practice in the poorest part of Edgbaston.
Though he had no wife to support, Vic had told her Colin had ailing parents and a young brother trying to establish himself as a barrister who he was giving financial help to, and as he had no private patients in his area to supplement his income, it was proving difficult. Hannah thought he sounded such a considerate and generous man that she went out of her way to talk to him and make him welcome.
He didn’t advertise any of the altruistic things he did, but he did say that he’d had to give up his car the other day as his brother needed a large deposit to put down on a flat. ‘Had to come over though, didn’t I, with Vic asking me to be godfather and all.’
‘But how will you manage without a car?’ Hannah asked.
‘I won’t of course. At least not for any length of time. I’m looking at a cheaper model in the morning. Not that I use my car to do the bulk of my visiting, I usually walk. The streets are too narrow for one thing and the children are so unused to seeing cars there, they leap all over it. They’ve broken countless mirrors and scratched it all over more than once.’
‘So how will you get home today, perhaps you’d like to stay the night?’
‘That’s kind of you,’ Colin said. ‘But I won’t stay this time if you don’t mind. I’ve got the car to see early, before surgery. I won’t be able to stay on too late though, because I’m not sure of the time of the last bus.’
Josie, passing at the time, heard this and stopped. ‘No need for that, Colin. We can give you a lift.’
‘No, no, I can’t put you out like that.’
‘It’s nothing,’ Josie assured him. ‘It’ll take forever to get home this time of night when the buses are none too frequent and then once in town, you’ll have to walk right across the city centre to get another. No, we’ll take you.’
And so it was arranged and when they drove Colin home, it was the early hours of the morning. It was as they drove along Pershore Road that Josie spotted Arthur coming out down the steps of a house there. ‘There’s Arthur,’ she said, turning around and pointing him out to Colin. ‘Slow down, Phil, and let Colin have a deck at the creep.’
‘Hannah’s ex-husband, you mean?’
‘Yes, I wonder what he was doing in there,’ Josie mused. ‘It doesn’t look his type of place.’
And it didn’t. Even in the light of the street lamp, they could see the steps were a dingy grey and pitted and broken and the paint on the door was peeling. The whole place looked shabby and seedy.
But then the whole neighbourhood was the same, a place where no one lingered and decent women seldom left the house once darkness had fallen. The streets of houses were shabby and run-down and peopled at night by prostitutes. The whole area reeked of poverty and pubs stood on every corner. Driving through it, you could see the scantily clad, often very young girls approaching the cars cruising slowly along the kerb. Then, with the price arranged between them, they would climb in and be spirited away God alone knew where. And lolling on street corners would be the pimps watching them with narrow, fox-like eyes.
This was the practice Colin Ferguson had chosen to work in and Josie thought the man deserved a medal and yet she still couldn’t understand why Arthur Bradley, who’d always had ideas above his station, should be in such a place.
Colin had heard varied and fantastic rumours about what went on behind some of those doors, but in the main he discounted rumour and in that part of the city it was wiser and healthier to do so. He’d had no occasion to visit the places, but now he suggested, ‘Maybe he has another woman?’
Josie recalled the early days of Hannah’s marriage and said, ‘I don’t think he’s interested in that side of things very much.’
The man moved under the street lamp to light a cigarette and Colin had a good look at him. A docile, unpretentious kind of man, it was hard to credit him with some of the things Vic said he did. Not that Colin disbelieved Vic. He knew him to be honest and trustworthy, but he knew many who would choose to doubt Hannah’s word if she began to explain what her life had been like with him, just because of his appearance and manner. His brown hair was very thin on top and the glasses fastened over ears that stuck out slightly were balanced on a thin straight nose. He took a drag of his cigarette through lips so thin they spoke of primness, pocketed the cigarettes and matches, turned up his coat collar, though the autumn night was warm, and sloped off.
And this man, who Colin could never remember seeing before, he saw regularly after that night, sometimes coming up or down the same steps, or sometimes in his car. He told Vic, but cautione
d him not to say anything to Hannah in case the news should upset her. Besides, he didn’t know what went on behind the shabby door and would probably never know, and feeding Hannah with rumour and speculation would do her no favours.
Josie and Phil never mentioned the sighting of Arthur to Hannah either, though Josie puzzled over it for weeks and if Phil had his own ideas, he kept them to himself. ‘It couldn’t be another woman, nothing like that,’ Josie said a few weeks later. ‘He doesn’t … Well, you know? More can’t really, I suppose.’
‘It might be completely innocent,’ Phil replied. ‘Maybe Hannah knows all about it?’
‘No, she doesn’t,’ Josie declared stoutly. ‘That I do know. Sometimes he went out every night of the week and Hannah never knew where he went. She never asked him, but if she had, he’d probably not have answered her.’
‘Well, I shouldn’t think what he does now would interest her in the slightest,’ Phil pointed out. ‘All the same, I wouldn’t say anything. It might bring it all flooding back again and start her fretting all over again about seeing Angela.’
‘No, I shan’t,’ Josie said. ‘Arthur can take a long jump off a short pier for my money. Hannah’s far better off without him. She deserves some happiness in her life.’
‘And so do I,’ Phil said, but with a smile. ‘I’m feeling neglected. If you’re not worrying about Phillip, it’s Hannah.’
‘Okay,’ Josie said and though she knew the answer she said, ‘What’s your problem?’
‘Frustration. The need to make love to my wife.’
‘Okay. I’m up to that as long as his lordship stays asleep,’ Josie said and taking Phil’s hand, she snapped off the light.
Angela kept a thread of hope alive until her birthday in November. Though she’d received no answer to her letters, she was sure her mother hadn’t forgotten her totally. She wouldn’t forget the day she’d been born, no mother ever did that. Maybe she’d even send her a present? She received cards from her father, Reg and Elizabeth Banks, and Pauline, but none from her mother or Josie and she couldn’t believe it. It was just like her father said, she didn’t exist for them anymore. Well, she thought, she wouldn’t care about them either. She wouldn’t. No, she bloody well wouldn’t. Her father had written to tell her he would be along to see her at the weekend and bring all her presents with him. But a leaden weight of disappointment settled inside Angela and in time developed into a dense hatred.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Hannah didn’t often analyse her life, it was too full to leave her much time to do this, but had she been asked, she’d have said she was happy, content and satisfied.
She’d married Vic in April 1960, just a week after her fortieth birthday. It had been a quiet ceremony and quite soulless, Hannah thought. None of Vic’s family attended, neither the ceremony nor the reception. But Tilly, together with her husband and children, and Pauline came after Hannah had said they had plenty of room in the house to put them up for the weekend. Hannah was especially glad to see Pauline for the busyness of her life meant she’d rather lost touch with her. Amy and Tom and of course Josie and Phil and baby Phillip were invited too.
Vic had also asked some colleagues from the hospital and in the end the reception proved to be a lively gathering. Vic had eventually persuaded Hannah to go away for a long weekend, a short honeymoon to the Lake District. He said they both needed the break, but Hannah had been difficult to persuade, for though Josie had offered to look after Adam and she had absolute faith in her, she didn’t like letting the child go out of her sight.
However, she loved Vic and realised they needed time alone together. Vic’s job was stressful, she knew that better than most, and made worse, Vic said, by the fact that he’d not had a decent secretary since the day she’d had to leave. She still did his accounts, as this function seemed to be beyond the capabilities of any secretary Vic engaged.
She was due to take a more active role when Adam was a little older and so she was staggered when in the spring of 1961, she missed a period. Vic examined her and to his dismay found she was pregnant again.
Hannah was delighted and even more so when she found Josie was pregnant too, both children expected in October and within days of each other. Vic was not so delighted with Hannah’s pregnancy. She would be forty-one years old before the child was born, and as a doctor he knew the risks. He told Hannah there could be no more children after this one.
Though Hannah had to have another Caesarean section, Frances Humphries, named after Hannah’s sister, was born without any problems in the pearly dawn of a mid-October morning in the maternity unit of Good Hope Hospital. The baby, though smaller than her brother, was hale and hearty and Hannah felt wonderful. Again Vic was there when she awoke, holding the baby, and that meant a great deal to her. He’d told the staff his wife would probably want to breast-feed the baby. But he needn’t have worried, breast-feeding was fashionable once more and the nurses applauded Hannah’s decision to feed Frances and gave her all the help she needed.
The following day, Josie gave birth to a baby girl at home, as she’d had no problems with Phillip, and she called the baby Leonie.
She gave up work now that she had two children to care for and consequently saw more of Hannah. The two of them pooled clothes, toys and ideas and looked after one another’s children. The birth of Frances also brought about a thaw between Hannah and Vic’s family. Vic’s two sisters were both still unmarried and Vic’s mother saw the chance of either of them making her a grandmother was remote. She also missed her son, and after all, she decided, since the war, while divorce wasn’t commonplace, it certainly wasn’t a rarity anymore.
There was, of course, the problem of the Catholic Church, but even then Flo made it clear to her disapproving parish priest that her son’s happiness came before any doctrine and Church rules. ‘Surely it’s not a good thing to be estranged from my son as I once was,’ she said. ‘And after all, what’s done is done now. We have to accept it as you do.’ Vic’s father and sisters followed Flo’s lead and Hannah was glad, not for herself – she’d never really taken to Vic’s parents – but for Vic’s sake.
His sisters, Betsy and Dorothy, were dowdy girls who’d had the life sucked out of them by their domineering mother, but all their lives they’d doted on Vic, their young and favoured brother, and accepted Hannah now they were able to do so and adored the children. They were grateful for the kind and sincere welcome Hannah gave them, not being brought up to expect kindness, and Hannah again felt sorry for them both.
They were only too willing to baby-sit so that Vic and Hannah could go out now and again, and once Hannah got over the fear that something would happen to separate her from her children forever if she turned her back for a minute, she took full advantage of it.
It enabled her to accompany Vic both to medical functions and also to put time aside to go out together. Vic was fond of saying a relationship had to be worked at like anything else and they needed time alone. Vic loved Hannah even more than he had when he’d married her. Her hair was still as auburn as ever, without a hint of grey, her skin as flawless and her eyes as clear and shining.
In turn, Hannah found she loved Vic more and more with each passing week, month, year. He was a wonderful husband and lovely father and took pride both in his impetuous, boisterous son and his quieter, reflective daughter. But for Hannah’s sake, he wanted her to risk no further pregnancies and after Frances’s birth, he encouraged Hannah to take the new contraceptive pill, which had only gone on sale in the United Kingdom that year.
Hannah had been sceptical that taking a tiny pill could prevent pregnancy, but to please Vic she took it and as the months and years passed, she had to accept it worked.
It had been heralded as a breakthrough for women, though it was slammed by the Catholic Church who were against planning one’s family. Vic was angry about that. ‘They should see some of the sights I’ve seen,’ he complained. ‘Women old before their time, worn out by child-bearing year
after year, bringing children into the world they can’t afford to feed or clothe. This will be the making of people, you’ll see.’ Hannah thought of Miriam’s lot and agreed with Vic.
It seemed Vic was right as family planning clinics began opening up and what had begun as a trickle had become a flood as women believed for the first time that they could choose how many children to have.
People generally were feeling more optimistic about the future. The austere post-war years were behind them and most people looked forward to the future
The emancipation of women was just one aspect of it all. Cosmetics, once frowned on by some as being ‘fast’, were worn by the majority of women, and there was more choice available. Now powder was dusted across faces moisturised with Pond’s Cold Cream, rouge rubbed into cheeks, and lipstick, eyeshadow and mascara were used as a matter of course.
The world seemed to belong to the young and they spent their evenings jiving and rocking and rolling to Billy Fury, Neil Sedaka and a bit of a girl called Helen Shapiro. When the new dance ‘The Twist’ was launched by a man that went by the unlikely name of Chubby Checker, it caused a storm.
It was as different from the world in which Hannah grew up as it was possible to be. Even Josie had spent her teenage years in a world where rationing and shortages were a fact of life and where boys disappeared at eighteen for national service.
Now that national service had been abolished in 1960, the young had more freedom than ever before. Teddy boys were a thing of the past. Now at the dances some boys wore Oxford bags and two-tone shoes with pointed toes called winkle-pickers became the thing.
Many of the girls wore silky, brightly coloured skirts with layers of starched petticoats underneath them so that their dresses stuck way out. They were very popular amongst the boys as, when they were thrown about with vigour when jiving, there was often more than a glimpse of suspenders. These were called bouffant dresses to match the bouffant or beehive hairstyles the girls sported, achieved by vicious backcombing.