‘’Twas barely a morning!’ said Bea, in surprise. ‘She was only away an hour or two, what are you saying?’
Violet was checked. She was convinced that she was right, and that their mother had journeyed a long way, over several days, and that she and her sister had neared death from privation in her absence. They had lain together in a bed, just as they were now.
‘We remember it differently,’ she said, and they agreed that this was so, and she changed the subject, for it was a painful one, even for Bea, who had thought so little of it, something that had haunted Violet’s own dreams for years.
‘D’you think you can sleep?’ she asked, as Bea prepared to blow out the candle.
‘Ain’t slept properly for weeks,’ said Bea gloomily, ‘not for months. Not since I realized.’ It was sad to see her face fall, take on the dreary lineaments it had worn earlier. Violet put her arms about her.
‘Well, you can now,’ she said. ‘Off you go.’ Bea had turned in her arms, and gone straight to sleep, as if Violet had made her do it. Violet lay and listened to her breathing for a while. She would surely never sleep herself tonight, she thought, what with all there was to think about and after a day of such emotion and talk and weeping, more in one afternoon than for ten years at least, a regular bit of melodrama, she’d never sleep tonight, that was for sure!
Her eyes closed. She slept.
In the morning Bea seemed rather inclined to be her old self again, up and bustling well before Violet awoke. She brought her a cup of tea.
‘You want to go to chapel? There’s a place in the village.’
Violet sat up groggily. She felt exhausted, as if she really had lain awake all night, and shook her head. She would manage Evensong tonight, she thought, back home in Silkhampton.
‘I dint look up the trains. They run on a Sunday?’
‘Course they do. You’ll take a bit of breakfast though?’
As she dressed, Violet could hear the children playing outside. She drew the curtain back; the whole lot of them, it seemed, were out there in the sunshine at the front of the Home, running and playing and shouting together on the grass, a couple of nursemaids overseeing them and the usual row of big perambulators, each of them holding two or three, from the number of flailing arms and legs, and flapping bonnet frills.
They need a good airing, Bea said, before the service; the curate would insist on it, though frankly she wouldn’t herself care if none of them heard so much as a single word of the gospel from one year’s end to the next. Another rasher?
Part of this speech rang a bell with Violet. She thought back, and remembered her own little Bobby running noisily about the gallery in St George’s, and Bea wanting to let him.
‘If he rackets about now, be easier for him come Sunday,’ she had said, and she, Violet, had scornfully replied, to her sister, to a woman who had given up her only living child and just had another miscarriage, and in God’s own house, ‘And what would you know about children?’
‘No, thank you,’ she said gently, ‘you have it, Bea.’
She thought some more, sipping a final cup of tea before she left to catch her train. She remembered how the little children had clustered about Bea, that visit long ago when there were cakes to give out, how fond and unafraid they seemed, running to her, clutching at her skirts. She thought of all the children Bea had helped look after all these years, how she had given up the pleasures and company of the old Red Lion, successful hotel though she had made it, to bury herself out here in the wilds, working for next to nothing, working for love. She might have missed out on children of her own, overlooked her own grandchild, but she had hardly missed out on motherhood, Violet thought.
No, indeed, Bea’s way of mothering was perhaps merely just like her: carried out with grandeur, and on a wildly lavish scale. And still going on, too; still hectic.
Still paying for the moments when she watched the door of the workhouse in Exeter swing open, thought Violet, trying to imagine what that might have felt like. When she had stayed out of sight while someone bent and picked up her baby. When the someone took a good look round, saw no one, took the baby inside. Closed the door again.
How many times over the years must she have thought of those moments?
‘You remember the bee and the violet? On the dolly’s little handkerchief?’ said Violet now. ‘Loved that, Gracie did. I did too. Where’d it come from?’
Bea shook her head, smiling.
‘You know Gracie’s bin doing it on to ladies’ handkerchiefs? Does it lovely. Sold quite a few.’
‘Ladies wiping their snotty noses on you and me,’ said Bea, but before Violet could reply there was a sudden sharp knock on the door, and one of the nursemaids pushed it open.
‘Just come, Mrs Givens.’ She held out a telegram.
‘Has the boy gone?’
‘Yes please, mum.’
‘Alright then, Betty.’
Bea closed the door again. ‘Funny,’ she said, and opened the envelope. Read the slip, sat down suddenly, the thin paper in her hand.
‘Here,’ she said. She gasped as she spoke. With instantly shaking hands Violet found her glasses, and put them on. The telegram had been sent by Dr Summers from the Silkhampton Post Office, and read:
URGENT STOP WHERE MRS DIMOND STOP PLEASE TELL HER COME HOME STOP GRACE IN HOSPITAL STOP
17
Like a fool he’d gone to see Ted’s older brother off; hadn’t a notion how that was going to feel beforehand. God, it was shaming. All the men in uniform! Even Ted’s brother had almost looked a man. Leaving the kids behind with the women. How was he going to stand it? Two years – it would all be over before he could get anywhere near it! It was so unfair, he thought, when he was ready now. Letting that streak of weak piss Geoff Hall go, and not him, it was ridiculous, what did your age matter, compared to your height and your strength and your manly British fighting spirit!
Ted’s Ma all over him. Dozens of other old dears all snivelling into their hankies. Dads shaking hands.
Would his own mother come to see him off? Mrs Dando trying not to cry as the train drew in, Oh, Tommy, my darling, come back safe to me, Tommy, my dear!
Tom Dando not at all aware of the picture he was conjuring up, but feeling its heady influence nevertheless.
He would simply die if they didn’t let him go soon, he thought. The old Silkhampton Colliery Band playing ‘The British Grenadiers’, it should all be for him, he should be the one in uniform, casually swinging the kitbag over one shoulder, saluting his churlish stay-at-home mates farewell, kissing his old mum goodbye, goodbye, goodbye …
He wanted to kick something. Looked across the platform, and saw, Oh – her mother. The Holy Terror herself, Violet Dimond. Carrying a sort of Gladstone bag and looking up the track, clearly waiting for the coast train.
What did that Gladstone mean?
Was it possible that the old hag was going to be out of the way for a while? Out of the picture? It jolly well was, he told himself: possible.
Grace came home tired. The shop had been busy, and Mrs Ticknell very fretful all morning, and unable to talk about anything other than her two boys, Jim off to join his regiment later that very day, Gerry still in training. She had been away two whole hours in the afternoon, coming back from seeing Jim off at the station just as Grace was shutting up shop. She slumped on to the velvet sofa, her eyes all swollen.
‘Though I kept it all back, Gracie, not like some I could mention, not a tear did I shed till the train pulled out, I wasn’t going to shame my boy –’ She broke off, weeping again.
Grace was frightened and embarrassed. She had never seen Mrs Ticknell, or in fact any other grown-up, cry before, not like that, not out loud. She understood that Mrs Ticknell was worried for her sons, of course, but all the same, she wished she wouldn’t carry on so, you’d almost think they were both dead already.
‘They’ll be alright,’ said Grace, sitting down beside her and putting her arm round Mrs Ticknell�
�s plump shoulders.
‘Oh, Gracie, do you really think so?’ gasped Mrs Ticknell, and then flung herself into Grace’s arms, squeezing her tight and hiding her wet face in Grace’s shoulder.
Crumbs, thought Grace. Self-consciously she patted Mrs Ticknell’s back. Mrs Ticknell felt very hot, the tough cotton of her dress very tightly drawn over her shoulders. She’s packed right into this gown, Grace thought, and then was instantly ashamed, catching herself making unkind inward remarks in the face of grief.
‘Course they will,’ she said. ‘They’re big tough men, they’ll be fine.’ She sought about and came up with something else she had heard: ‘You should be proud of them, fighting for their country and all.’
‘I am proud,’ said Mrs Ticknell, freeing herself and wiping her eyes. ‘I am proud, Gracie. I just want them both back again safe and sound. That’s all.’
‘They’ll be home before you know it,’ said Grace. ‘You wait and see.’ Presently she escaped to put the kettle on.
So when Grace got home she was startled and rather put out at first to find the note from her mother. Especially as Violet had clearly not banked the fire up properly and it had died right down and the place was chilly. Grace doubted the note as well. There was absolutely nothing wrong with Aunt Bea at all, she felt certain; her mother had clearly just gone to have it out with Aunt Bea, whatever it actually was. She’d been spoiling for a fight for months.
Honestly, what a pair! Worse than a couple of kids, thought Grace enjoyably, as she took off her good dress and put the housework one on instead. With an apron over it she poked the embers and set about coaxing the fire back to life.
Catch me and Lily having endless rows and refusing to speak to one another for weeks on end, she thought. What was it about Bea that so got on Ma’s nerves? She was never as touchy with anyone else. And it was always about something really small; all that fuss, Bea’s last visit, when Ma had used Bea’s hairbrush, or was it the other way round? Bea flouncing off home in a bate two days early! And once a few years back they had disagreed about a recipe their own mother had used, for a particular stew, or something equally uninteresting, and neither of them had seemed able to let the matter rest.
‘How can she think parsnips?’ shouted Violet once, furiously crumpling Bea’s letter, and Grace had had to jump to her feet and run up the garden to the outhouse, for it did not do to laugh at Violet at the best of times, and certainly not when she was in a temper.
The line had become something of a catchphrase with Grace and Lily that year, an easy laugh, delightfully baffling to everyone else, to be theatrically declaimed beside all playground dissent, from the mildest squabble to fist-fights.
‘How can she think parsnips?’ Lily had demanded despairingly, the back of one hand pressed to her brow, when tough Joey Killigrew was rolling up his sleeves and Tim Reynolds shrugging off his jacket and all the other senior boys were gathering about them in a circle for the deadly masculine business to begin.
‘How can she think parsnips?’ The memory even now made Grace giggle.
Still smiling she got up from the hearth, where the little flames were taking nicely, washed her hands, and then lit the lamps as it was getting so dark outside. Her reflection looked briefly back at her in the darkened windows as she drew down the blinds – very taking; and she altogether lost a minute or two, in sweet formless thought of Tommy Dando.
Surfacing again: supper. The pie looked a bit small and lonely, she thought. Were there any spuds? She checked the wooden box beside the front door: yes, plenty. And would you like a few greens, Miss Dimond, after your hard day? Why yes please, Gracie, I think I would. Especially if you’ve got a bit of best butter, ooh good, yes …
What happened next was in some ways clear, in others foggy. She had run the water into the sink, and tipped the potatoes in; decided to do enough for three, for Violet and herself to use up tomorrow, rather than go to all the trouble and washing-up of spuds for one. She had put a plate to warm in the special flat warming drawer at the bottom of the range and taken the greens from the basket to give them a rinse.
Definitely got that far.
What had she been thinking about, while she did all those things?
Something light, surely, something careless. But she never could remember what it had been. She was interrupted by a light rap on the back door.
She dried her hands on the apron and went to open it; sure, afterwards, that she had been expecting someone else, someone who would never make her heart beat faster, someone ordinary, but who could it have been? Whoever she was perhaps half-expecting, opening the door so casually, it was not Tommy Dando himself. He stood on the cinder path, smiling in the light from behind her.
‘Hello, my darling Gracie!’
She remembered joy.
‘I come in? Just for a minute.’
‘Well – not for long: Mother’s – back in a minute, she’s just – gone to church,’ said Grace. She knew she lied. She could remember the guilt of it. She remembered wishing she had not put on the old house-dress, and that she had taken off the sacking apron.
He stepped inside and at once she was aware that something was different about him. There seemed something heavy and massy about his whole body, as if he was standing in her way, and wouldn’t easily get out of it. There was a strange smell coming from him too, which she did not recognize, as the only alcohol she knew about was the whiff of stale beer that flowed out of pub doorways as she passed them on the way to work in the morning, when they stood wide open for cleaning.
‘Had to see you,’ he said. His cheeks were pink and his eyes very bright. He opened his arms, and gladly she walked into them. It was a different embrace though. It started off like last time, and then changed; he drew back from her and held her away for a moment, then bent and kissed her on her lips.
Just for a little while it was the most glorious thing. It was the most glorious thing that had ever happened to Grace Dimond, a shock of delight all over. His mouth was very soft, his breath full of the strange fiery smell, but still sweet, his own. Her palms were pressed against his chest, against his shirt, as his jacket was unbuttoned; her fingertips felt the thin further layer, cotton, beneath his shirt and beneath that the just-discernible resilience of his smooth warm skin. He kissed her cheek and her neck, and she slid her right hand a little further inside his jacket, and felt the steady fast thrum of his heartbeat beneath her palm. She moved the hand very gently, caressingly.
She remembered that. She led him on, that was the main thing. No use saying you hadn’t realized, that you just hadn’t had any idea that you were leading someone on, that you would never have done it if you’d known that’s what it was.
‘No – stop, don’t do that.’
‘Don’t you like it?’ He had only done what she had done, moved a hand, put it over her heart. But the hand was pressing at her breast. It felt all wrong. It was far too much.
‘No, no, stop.’ Right over her breast now, squashing it, as if he were angry.
‘No – Tommy, please!’ He dug the fingers in, hard, really hurting her, and then at last she twisted her whole body and pulled herself free, not frightened yet, but hurt, and bewildered.
‘What are you doing?’ she cried, the tears starting to her eyes.
‘What are you doing?’ he repeated, parodying her shrillness. ‘What d’you think I’m doing, you silly bitch?’
Shock dazed her. It stopped her doing anything. It made her legs go weak, it made her arms turn to empty sleeves that swung helplessly while he pulled her about, pulled at her apron, he was so angry, he was angry with her, and why, what had she done?
‘No,’ she said, but instead of the scream just the merest whimper came out, and as she turned away to run he took her by the shoulder and gave her a violent shove, so that she fell over hard, without even staggering, with hardly time to put out a hand to save herself, hitting her chin and cheekbone hard on the stone flags of the floor. Before she could take a breath he
was pulling at her again, trying to turn her over.
No.
A small voice inside her saying No.
No I won’t. She drew up her knees and wrapped her arms round them, lying curled up on her side. She turned herself into a ball, all thickly skirted and hidden in her petticoats, let him scrabble and fumble all he chose.
‘Gracie!’ he cried, as if she were being unreasonable. ‘Gracie, come on!’
She wouldn’t move, no. He threw himself down beside her, and grabbed at her, trying to force her on to her back, his arms were like iron, impossible iron bars, his leg casting itself over hers, trying to push hers apart, trying to force itself between them, his breath coming fast; he put his hand into her hair and pulled hard until she cried out, but no, no, no, she would not let go, she would not uncurl, she held on to her own arms, her good thick shielding skirts and petticoats caught tight, tight, between her crossed ankles, between her pressed-together knees. ‘Dirty black bitch!’ he hissed, into her ear, and then he shuddered all over and groaned as if he were in pain, and everything stopped.
Stopped, all of it.
Grace still curled up thinking – she remembered thinking – had all that really happened? Surely none of it had happened, not really. It was all too unbelievable, it was nonsense. None of it had really happened.
He was getting up. ‘You shouldn’t have led me on!’ he said hoarsely. He was still angry. ‘Why’d you do it, why’d you lead me on, eh?’ There was a grating crash as he kicked a chair over. Her whole body winced as if it were her that he kicked. A silence, apart from noisy breathing, footsteps. Was he going?
She kept her eyes closed, with a vague notion of pretending to be dead. Playing dead, that was it, Grace told herself. Go away now, I’m dead.
His footsteps came back again, he stood over her. ‘Gracie?’
The Midwife's Daughter Page 20