‘That’s him,’ he said.
‘Looks like someone done him over. Lots of nasty blows to the head. Would he have had anything worth taking about him when he went out?’
‘He had his drinking money,’ Harry said.
‘Argumentative sort of bloke, was he?’
‘He was when he’d had a few.’
‘Ah – well. Can’t release the body yet, Mr Turner. We got to send it for a post-mortem. Unnatural death, like. Have to be an inquest.’
Harry nodded, outwardly taking it calmly, though an unreasoning fear shot through him. An inquest. They might find something, some sign. It might all come out. If they started questioning his mother, she would never hold out.
Somehow, they all lived through the days that followed. Now that Archie had been found, Milly could openly mourn his death. The women in the street came in and comforted her, and she was at last coaxed downstairs. Florrie was grateful for this. It was one small burden less. She slipped in and out of the house like a shadow, sharing the housework and cooking with Ida after the long day’s work, trying to keep the household afloat. She made herself as inconspicuous as possible, so that nobody would think to include her in their sympathy or ask what she thought had happened on the night of her father’s death.
Florrie put food on the table for the others, and watched them persuade her mother to eat, but was unable to swallow more than a mouthful or two herself. Food seemed to choke her. The little that she did get down lay heavy in her stomach, giving her pains. The days were bad enough, but the nights were worse. She stayed awake while the events of Saturday night revolved over and over again in her mind.
‘I’m glad,’ she said to herself, repeating it like a charm against the horrors of the darkness. ‘I’m glad he’s dead. He deserved to die.’
When she did sleep, nightmares pursued her. She was back in the kitchen again, with the chair leg in her hand, but her father snatched it from her and beat her mother to death and then started on all the others until there was just him and herself amid the bleeding bodies, then he came towards her . . . Or her family was sitting in the kitchen when she came in, and as one they all stood up and pointed at her, until she had to turn and run out into a foggy and featureless night, but wherever she went, people appeared out of the gloom, pointing at her with a stony absence of forgiveness until she knew there was nowhere she could go, no one she could turn to . . .
She woke, sweating and crying out, to be comforted by Ida. But once her sister had gone back to sleep again, she was terrified of the same nightmares recurring. She did not know what was worse, the dreams or her own night thoughts.
Most of all, Florrie was haunted by her mother. That was when the remorse and the guilt gripped her, when she was confronted by a face blank with grief, and heard the way her mother blamed herself, and saw her inability to do anything but sit and stare into space. Every night she resolved to speak to her, to tell her she was sorry, to try to get through the invisible barrier that her mother had put up between herself and the world. Every morning the words dried in her throat. She could not do it.
Without realizing it, she spoke less and less to anyone, shrinking within herself as her already slight body grew thinner still.
‘Florrie?’
She flinched as if she had been struck. Her nerves were raw.
‘Florrie, you look really poorly. Are you eating properly?’
It was Ellen, her kind face creased with concern.
‘I’m all right.’
‘You’re not all right. You’re ill. You got to keep your strength up, Florrie. You’ll fade away.’
She shook her head. She even found it difficult to talk to Ellen.
‘Jimmy Croft was speaking to me yesterday. He says he’s real worried and can’t get a word out of you. I told him you was all shook up about your dad and your mum and everything, and he’s got to be patient with you. But you can’t keep him waiting for ever.’
She wanted to go to Jimmy. She wanted to feel his arms round her, to give in to all the raging emotions that she kept pent up so tight inside her, to cry and cry on his shoulder. But she was afraid, afraid she might say something.
‘I can’t go out. Not at the moment.’
‘After the inquest, then. Once you got that over with, you must pick up the threads again.’
‘I don’t know.’ She could not imagine life ever being normal again.
‘You must, Florrie. Don’t let him slip away. Don’t make the mistake I did. He’s a good bloke, is Jimmy. He loves you, and I know you love him. Don’t mess it up. You’ll regret it all your life if you do.’
Slowly the words sank into her brain, the sense of them trickled down and connected. A little of the fog of fear, guilt and defiance that surrounded her cleared. She looked at her friend and for the first time since the night of her father’s death, considered something outside herself and her family.
‘Do you regret marrying Gerry?’
She saw Ellen bite her lip, saw loyalty and caution war with truth.
‘I regret not marrying your Harry.’
‘Oh.’ It opened up a whole new way of looking at things. ‘I never thought . . .’
Ellen gripped her arm. ‘So don’t do the same yourself, see? Promise me?’
Slowly, she nodded.
‘You’ll start going out with him again after the inquest?’
‘Yeah.’
But first there was the inquest to get through. Perhaps it would all come out. Perhaps she would be sent to prison. Perhaps she would hang.
‘We’ll give him a good send-off, Mum,’ Harry said. ‘You just name it – black horses, plumes, ham tea . . . Anything you like.’
Milly shook her head. ‘The expense.’
‘Never mind the expense. I can afford it. You just say what you want, Mum, and you can have it.’
‘I don’t know. I can’t think.’
‘Come on, you’d feel better if you tried to think about it. What d’you think he’d’ve liked, eh?
Harry was at his wits’ end. The inquest was over; his sister was safe and his mother no longer had to fear either questioning from the police or her husband coming home to beat her up, and yet still the family was reeling from the effect of his father’s death. His mother in particular seemed to be getting worse instead of better. She was unable to do anything. The girls had to nag her even to wash herself, and forcibly took her clothes away from her and gave her clean ones. She was locked away from them in a grey wilderness. Harry had some inkling why. It was the same terrible burden that he carried, a knowledge that the truth had been hidden, making him a party to the death. Even though he was convinced that what they had done was for the best, still he had to cope with a constant feeling of guilt and deception dragging at him like a stone. For his mother it was worse. She still held on to the idea that it was her fault. More than that, she actually appeared to be missing his father. This Harry could not comprehend.
So he pinned his hopes on a good funeral. Everyone said that funerals were great healers. It was worth taking out his precious savings if it helped his mother, and if he was honest, the thought of spending on his father salved a little of his own guilt as well.
The girls helped with the preparations, Maisie and Alma rallied round, and Ellen came in from next door. It was the best funeral the street had seen for a long time, gaining unmixed approval from everyone. But still the most they could get Milly to do was get dressed and actually attend. For the rest, she just sat and let it all go on around her.
‘I don’t know what to do with her,’ Harry confessed to his aunt.
‘She’s grieving, believe it or not. You’ll have to let her get over it in her own way,’ Alma told him.
But as the weeks went by, nothing changed. If anything, she seemed to withdraw further into herself. Harry felt helpless. It was like navigating though fog; there were no points of reference. When his father was alive, he had worried about his mother, but at least he had felt he could do som
ething in defending her from the worst of his father’s excesses. Now there was nothing. He could not reach her.
He wished there was someone he could really talk to about it. Alma was a brick, but she did not know the whole story. He could not speak to Florrie since it was she who had set the whole thing off and he did not want to heap any more on her head. The obvious choice was Ellen. He longed for her wisdom, her reassurance. Often it seemed to him that if he could just hold her in his arms again, the whole problem would be eased. But she was cut off from him. He stuck by what he had said in the gardens at Southend. She was married to Gerry, and that was an end to it. When they met on the doorstep or in the street, Ellen would promise to look in on his mother, and he would thank her. They were neighbours, tied up in the same secret, but that was all.
The Turner household became a place of heavy silences. In life, Archie had united them, they had been a solid conspiracy against him. But the manner of his death divided them. None of them talked about it, but it was always there. They each kept it locked up inside them.
Gradually, without even realizing they were doing it, every one of the brothers and sisters spent more and more time away from home. Harry’s job had always taken up most of his time. Now his spare hours were spent almost exclusively with his single friends. Ida and Florrie were courting. Johnny left school and started as an apprentice lighterman, coming home exhausted each night to sleep like the dead. Young Bob was the most faithful member of the Trinidad Street gang, appearing at home only at meal and bedtimes or when he was forced to do chores. From the outside they looked like a normal family. Only Milly, helpless in her pit of depression, seemed any different. But each one of them knew that they were drifting apart, and none of them knew how to stop it. In a way, none of them even wanted to, for to be together was to remember that night when they had acted as one, and they all wanted to forget.
One evening the following April, Jimmy Croft came to call. He stood in the kitchen doorway, his cap held tightly in front of him, as if uncertain what to do next. Tea was just finished and the girls were clearing away the dishes. Bob had been sent out the back to fetch in some coal, Johnny and Milly were still at the table, Johnny was asleep with his head cradled in his arms, and Milly just sat there, looking down at her hands.
Harry glanced at his sister, expecting her to go and greet her sweetheart, but she just went bright red and whipped out into the scullery. So he nodded to Jimmy.
‘Wotcher, mate. You staying till Florrie’s ready? Might be a drop left in the pot if you want it.’
‘No – er – yeah – that is, I am, but I wanted to have a word with you first.’
‘Oh. Right. What was it, then?’
‘Er – it’s a bit . . .’
Jimmy was rapidly turning as red as Florrie. Harry suddenly caught on. He grinned, and the weight inside him lifted for the first time in months.
‘Got you now, mate. Best come in the parlour.’
They stepped into the chilly little front room. From the other side of the door scrabbling feet and Ida’s high-pitched giggle could be heard. Harry guessed there were ears pressed to the door. Jimmy looked acutely uncomfortable. He started several times, but failed to get through a coherent sentence.
‘It’s our Florrie, ain’t it?’ Harry said, helping him along.
‘Yeah – that’s it.’ Jimmy snatched eagerly at this lifeline. ‘I thought, well, now your dad’s gone, it’s you I got to see.’
‘Want to get married, do you?’
‘Yeah, but, it’s a bit difficult . . .’
Harry could see no difficulty. Getting married seemed the best thing Florrie could do, and Jimmy was a good bloke. Briefly he wondered if she was pregnant and a quick wedding was needed. That would account for Jimmy’s embarrassment.
‘What’s the matter, then?’ he asked.
‘It’s her. She don’t – it’s like she’s a different person since your dad went. I can’t say how.’ He waved his hands about helplessly. ‘She’s just – different. It’s like she’s holding out on me, somehow.’
Harry knew what he meant. Florrie was just the same with him. She never had been much of a one for talking, not like Ida, but where once they had been able to discuss things that really mattered, now there was a barrier between them. Of course he knew why, but he could not tell Jimmy that. He tried to decide what he could say.
‘You still want to marry her, though?’ he asked.
‘Oh, yeah.’ Jimmy was definite on this point.
‘And she wants to marry you?’
‘I think so.’
‘Why don’t you just go ahead, then? Florrie, she, well – I think she feels bad because she always wanted him to die, see? And now he has, it’s like she wished it on him. What with Mum taking it so bad and all, it’s made her go ever so quiet. But I think she might cheer up if you got wed. It’s not much of a laugh in this house at the moment, I can tell you. You get her out of here and she’ll be her old self again, most like.’
Jimmy relaxed. ‘You don’t mind, then?’
‘Mind? I’m pleased for you! Best thing that’s happened in our family for ages. Here – shake on it.’
Smiling now, Jimmy grasped Harry’s hand in both of his.
‘Thanks, mate. Thanks a million. I’ll look after her like she’s made of glass.’
‘I know you will, Jim. She deserves it, does our Florrie.’
They went into the kitchen to break the news to the rest of the family. Amidst the laughter and back-slapping and ribald remarks, nobody noticed that Milly withdrew even further into herself, or that Florrie did not actually say very much.
‘My little sister! Ain’t it lovely? They’ll make a lovely pair, her and Jimmy. Oh, I’m ever so glad. Ain’t you glad, Will? Be nice to have a wedding. It’ll cheer Mum up and all. We ain’t had a wedding since Ellen and Gerry. Been nothing but funerals. I suppose I’ll have to wear the same old hat. Still, never mind, eh? Still be nice to think about. Perhaps I can get some flowers for it. What d’you think, Will? D’you think we could afford some new flowers for my hat, seeing as it’s my sister and all?’
‘What?’ As usual, Will was not listening.
‘My hat, I can’t wear it again, can I? Not for a wedding. Have to get some new flowers.’
‘Who bloody cares?’ Will shrugged.
‘Oh, Will, don’t you never care about nothing?’ Maisie looked crestfallen. Tears filled her eyes. ‘It’s my sister getting married. You ought to be pleased.’
‘Why? Because that poor sod Jimmy Croft’s getting spliced? I only hope he gets more fun out of Florrie than what I done out of you.’
The tears spilled over, trickling down her face. ‘You’re horrible to me, you are. What have I ever done for you to treat me so horrible? I look after you proper.’
Will groaned in exasperation. ‘For God’s sake, stop snivelling,’ he shouted.
Maisie only cried the more, while Alice, clinging to her skirts, joined in in sympathy. Lily and Albert’s faces appeared, pressed against the back window. It was raining outside and they wanted to come in. Their voices were added to the general din.
‘Shut your row!’
Will put his hands to his head, but as he did so they caught in the wet washing hanging from the strings across the ceiling. A damp shirt slapped down across his head. It was the last straw.
‘It’s Saturday night and I worked hard all week. Six days, with overtime every evening. I’m fed up, d’you hear? Fed up! All I want’s a bit of peace and quite in my own home and I get you and your bloody kids howling in my ears. Well, that’s it, I’m going out. And don’t wait up ^^cos I might be late, or I might not come back at all!’
He slammed out of the house, taking pleasure in hearing Maisie’s wail of dismay as he did so. He set off down the street, hands in pockets, head down against the rain. He kicked at a stone, venting his anger on it.
‘Bloody families!’ he growled. ‘Bloody women!’
He could see no end to it
. Life was just one long dreary treadmill. The only thing that had happened lately to break the monotony had been his father-in-law’s death, and that had done nothing but make Maisie go on and on about how badly her mum had taken it and how worried they all were.
However hard he worked, there never seemed to be enough money. With every baby, Maisie got more scrawny-looking and the house got fuller. He’d been glad when she miscarried the last three. It meant having her weeping about the place for weeks on end, but she got weepy when she did have babies, and it was better than having more mouths to feed.
Without conscious thought, his feet had taken him not to the Rum Puncheon but to the West Ferry Road. He was at the bus stop. He knew then where he was going – off the Island, away from it all, to the place where anything might happen.
The bus was packed with a noisy mass of humanity reeking of wet clothing, sweat and cheap cigarettes. Will had to stand all the way. Then there was a wait in the relentless rain until the tram came. He got a seat this time, but was jammed in by an enormously fat woman who wheezed as if every breath was her last. Will kept his thoughts doggedly on where he was going. Everything would be all right once he got there. He would step into another world. Even the past week of back-breaking overtime was worthwhile now, since he had money in his pocket. Not very much, but enough.
It was pouring when he got off the tram and set off to walk the last part of the journey. His shoulders were soaked to the skin by the time he got there and his trousers were clinging to his legs. One of his boots was leaking. The Saturday-night traffic crawled endlessly past him, cabs, carriages, motor cars, all noisy and smelly in their own way, all driven by men made bad-tempered by the rain. The puddles were slicks of liquid mud composed mostly of oil and horse droppings. Every time he was forced too near the edge of the pavement, he got splashed by passing wheels or hoofs. But through the downpour he could see the bright lights like coloured stars on the front of the theatre, the welcoming yellow warmth of the foyer spilling out on to the pavement. Without realizing he was doing it, he straightened his back and put a spring into his step. He joined on the end of the queue to get in, and was enveloped in the heat, the soft carpets, the glorious red and gold decor.
Trinidad Street Page 37