Vaguely, Tom registered that Moira was pleading with him to stop. He drew back his fist and slammed it into the mouth that had kissed hers. There was a satisfying crunch as teeth gave way. Blood flooded from a split in the lower lip and dripped down the chin and on to the naked chest. Moira wailed. He felt her snatching at his arm and shook her off.
‘Not so pretty now, are you?’ Tom taunted. ‘Thought you’d knock my wife off while I was away, did you? I’ll show you!’
‘Daddy!’ A thin cry of terror cut through his fury. He glanced behind him, to where Michael was standing at the top of the stairs, white-faced and clutching his favourite teddy. Moira’s lover seized his chance and wrenched open the front door. Tom turned back and aimed a ferocious kick at his backside, sending him sprawling on the front path.
‘Go—and don’t you ever show your face here again!’ he yelled, and slammed the door shut.
He leaned against the door, his chest heaving. Moira was crouched on the bottom step of the stairs, sobbing. She had her dressing gown gripped tightly about her. Her bare feet looked oddly vulnerable. He looked beyond her to where Michael was still standing staring down at them, tears of fear trickling down his face. The anger drained away, leaving him hollow inside.
‘It’s all right, Mikey. It’s all over now,’ he said, and was surprised to hear an almost normal voice come from his mouth.
He walked past Moira and up the stairs. His body felt stiff and difficult to control. To his horror, Michael cowered away from him. He felt deeply ashamed. The boy should never have witnessed this. He should have handled it differently.
He sat down on the top step and spoke gently to Michael, coaxing and reassuring until the boy came forward and allowed himself to be hugged. Two small arms went round his neck and held on tight while Tom rocked him, taking comfort from the small warm body. He stroked Michael’s dark hair, smoothing the tuft that stood up at the back. This was real, this was solid. Whatever else happened, he still had his son. Leaving Moira still weeping below him, he picked Michael up and took him back to his room. He lay down beside the boy on the narrow bed and stared sleepless into the darkness as he listened to Michael settle back into the deep sleep of childhood.
Some time later he heard Moira come slowly up the stairs. Her footsteps stopped outside Michael’s room for some time, but she did not come in. Tom was relieved. He did not want to speak to her now. He did not know how he felt about anything. He wanted only to lie in the dark and say nothing. From the front bedroom he could hear the sound of muffled weeping.
In the grey light of dawn, he went downstairs and made tea. He stood looking out at the garden as every bird in Nottinghamshire seemed to be singing its heart out from the surrounding trees. The kitchen door opened behind him.
‘What are you going to do?’ Moira asked.
‘I don’t know,’ he said.
It was true. A whole night’s turning it over and over in his mind had got him nowhere. He knew he didn’t love Moira and she didn’t love him. But divorce was such an extreme step. Ordinary people like them didn’t get divorced. They put up with things. They carried on for the sake of the children. Of all the people he knew, there was only one divorced couple, a hasty wartime marriage that would never have happened under other circumstances. People of his mother’s generation referred to them with lowered voices and significant looks. Their children were objects of pity. He couldn’t do that to Michael. And yet he knew he couldn’t carry on with things as they were.
‘How long has it been going on?’ he asked, still staring blindly into the garden.
There was a slight hesitation.
‘A bit,’ Moira said.
He had to turn round. He couldn’t make out the sincerity of her words without seeing her face.
Moira stood in the doorway. She looked pale and strained and her arms were wrapped defensively round her, but there was still a faint belligerence about her. She did not look down, but met his eyes with defiance.
‘How long’s a bit? A month? Six months?’ Tom persisted.
Moira shrugged. ‘Does it matter?’
Tom realised that it didn’t, not really.
‘I just want to know,’ he said.
Moira said nothing. Tom thought of the warning he had received last week.
‘Who else knows?’
‘No one.’
‘Mrs Thing over the road told me, so that means the whole street knows.’
Moira did look shaken at that, but she recovered herself. ‘I expect the whole street does know now, after the row you made last night. Yelling out of the door like that! They must have all heard every word.’
‘So what was I supposed to do?’ Tom said. ‘Ask him politely to leave?’
‘You shouldn’t have gone for him like that. Attacking him like—like a wild animal. Getting him by the throat and hitting him. It was horrible. How could you do that? How could you hurt him like that?’
Moira’s white face was flushed now. Tears were standing in her eyes. Tom stared at her, appalled.
‘So you care more about him than about how I feel?’
Moira said nothing, but she no longer met his eyes.
‘Are you going to give him up?’ Tom demanded.
Still Moira said nothing.
Tom closed his eyes briefly. He took a long breath through his nose.
‘Do you want us to stay married?’
‘Do you?’ Moira asked.
‘I think it’s best for Michael,’ Tom said.
Moira cast her eyes to the ceiling. ‘Oh, well, there’s no more to be said then, is there?’ she said, and walked out of the room.
The day was the longest and most miserable Tom had spent in his civilian life. They went to Sunday lunch with his parents and attempted to keep up the appearance of normality. Tom’s mother was not fooled, and took him aside to ask what the matter was and give him a pep talk. Tom was sorely tempted to tell her everything, but did not. He still hoped to keep everything together. Being with his family had brought it home to him just how many people would be affected if he and Moira were to part. It wasn’t just him and her and Michael. It was her family and his. They would all be hurt.
If Moira would just promise him that it was all over with her boyfriend, if she would tell him that she really wanted their marriage to work, then it would be worth trying.
That evening, she went up to bed early. Worn out by the emotional stress of the day, Tom followed soon after. He found the door locked.
He rattled the door gently, not wanting to wake Michael. ‘Moira?’
The voice that came back was a hiss of hatred. ‘Go away.’
Tom spent yet another sleepless night, this time on the sofa.
He went to work early. The yard and the everyday problems to be solved seemed a haven of peace after the minefield that was home. He was glad when one of the drivers phoned in sick. That meant he had to go out on the road and not face his father’s trying to question him, for he was sure that his mother would have asked him to have what she called a quiet word. His father’s attempts at quiet words in the past had been embarrassing for both of them.
It was past seven when he got back. His father was waiting in the yard, looking apologetic.
‘I’m sorry, lad, but I’m going to have to ask you to go out again. It’s a last-minute thing, a favour. I didn’t like to turn it down. I’d do it myself, but it’s Lodge night—’
Tom nodded his understanding. After years of faithful Masonic membership, his father was rather hoping to be made Master next year.
‘It’s all right. I don’t mind,’ he said with masterly understatement. He was delighted to delay his return home.
So it was gone half past ten before he had to face going back to Moira. Even then, he went into the office, knowing that the later he got back, the more likely it was that Moira would have gone to bed. He sorted through the papers in his in-tray. And there it was. Just when he had almost given up waiting for it, just when he most needed it.
A letter from Annie.
A shaft of sheer delight went through him. Annie had not forgotten him after all. He tore open the envelope.
Dear Tom
I’m sorry it’s been so long since my last letter, but a lot has been happening and I wasn’t sure how to tell you.
Tom, you know how hard it is for me managing on my own, and how difficult it is for Bobby, what with him not having a father and everything, so the thing is, I’m going to marry Jeff Sutton.
‘What?’ Tom said out loud. ‘You can’t do this, Annie! You can’t do this to me!’
He scanned the rest of the letter, first swiftly, then with more attention, looking for clues. Nowhere could he find any reference to loving Jeff Sutton, only lots of reasons for making a sensible choice.
‘Sensible!’ he said to the letter. ‘Sod sensible! Look where that got me.’
He had to stop Annie from making a disastrous mistake.
‘Why aren’t you on the phone?’ he demanded of the letter.
He looked at it again to make sure of the date of the wedding. Tuesday. Tomorrow! Tomorrow was Tuesday! There was only one thing for it. If he couldn’t speak to Annie on the telephone, then he would go and have it out with her face to face. He locked up at top speed, jumped on his bike and cycled round to his parents’ house. Not wanting to have to tell a pack of lies to his mother, he waited outside for his father to arrive back from his Lodge meeting. As the car pulled up, he got into the passenger seat.
‘Dad, I need to borrow the car. Right now. I’ll bring it back by tomorrow evening.’
Mr Featherstone tried to take it in. ‘Now, hold on, son. What’s all this about? Where’s the fire?’
Tom tried to sound reasonable. ‘I’ve just had a letter from a friend of mine, one my RAF oppos. He needs help. I must be there tomorrow, and it’s down south. I’ve got to set out now, Dad. It’s imperative.’
It took a bit more persuasion, but five minutes later Tom was on the road. He felt alive again. He had purpose again. He was taking control of events instead of being pushed along by them. As he turned on to the A1 he found himself smiling for the first time in days.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
‘I DON’T want to go to the wedding,’ Bobby protested.
‘Don’t be silly, dear. Of course you’re going to the wedding. We all are,’ his grandma told him. ‘Now stand still and let me comb your hair.’
Annie sat hunched over a cup of tea as her mother smoothed Brylcream over Bobby’s hair and slicked it neatly back. The smell made her feel queasy. So did Bobby’s outthrust lip and mutinous expression. She knew just how he felt. She didn’t want to go to the wedding either.
‘There!’ Edna said, turning Bobby so he could see himself in the mirror. ‘Don’t you look smart? You’ll be the smartest boy there.’
He certainly looked a different little boy from the child who played about the farm. Edna had made him a real suit with a properly tailored jacket. His new shirt was gleaming white and he was wearing a red bow tie.
Edna sighed with pleasure. ‘All you need now is your buttonhole,’ she said.
‘Don’t want to look smart. It’s stupid,’ Bobby growled, and put both hands to his hair and mussed it up.
Edna and Annie both squealed with dismay.
‘Bobby! Your grandma’s gone to a lot of trouble for you,’ Annie cried, though part of her wanted to do just the same and rip the rollers out of her hair and go running off over the fields to the sea.
‘Now you just stand still and let me do it again, and then I’ll give you a cherry bun,’ Edna coaxed.
‘Don’t want a cherry bun,’ Bobby muttered, but eventually he submitted to the inevitable and let himself be combed.
Edna settled him at the table with a new colouring book.
‘Now,’ she said to Annie, ‘you take those rollers out of your hair while I get dressed, and then we’ll get you ready.’
Annie couldn’t get over the change this wedding had made in her mother. She had never seen her so animated, so happy. In the years of her marriage to Walter, she had always been fearful and often depressed, and since he had died she had sunk into a state of apathy. She had been pleased when Bobby was born, but in a furtive, anxious way. This was quite different. She had positively bloomed. The prospect of having Annie married but staying at home and, what was more, marrying one of the Suttons, was like a dream come true for her. She’d busied herself in an orgy of dressmaking, putting off customers’ orders to make the suit for Bobby, an outfit for herself and two for Annie—one for Beryl’s wedding and one for her own. As a family, they had never before had so many new clothes all at once.
‘Isn’t it exciting?’ she said now, giving Annie’s shoulders a squeeze. ‘I still can’t believe it’s really true.’
‘Neither can I,’ Annie said miserably.
She listened to her mother running up the stairs. Ever since she had agreed to Jeff’s proposal, a feeling of doom had been growing in her. She knew she was doing the wrong thing, and yet she felt paralysed, unable to stop the juggernaut that now carried her along.
It was not too late, she told herself, looking at Bobby gouging the paper with his coloured pencils. She could run down to the telephone box and call Jeff and tell him that it was all off. Then she would be free.
But upstairs, her mother was actually singing as she got changed. And over at the Suttons’, Jeff would be getting ready, also in a state of high excitement. At the Grand Hotel, lunch was booked for both families and the cake would be waiting, and Mr Sutton had already paid for the honeymoon.
‘You do like Uncle Jeff, don’t you?’ Annie asked Bobby.
‘No, I hate him,’ Bobby said.
He got hold of a black pencil and scribbled all over the picture he had been colouring.
‘He’s always nice to you,’ Annie said.
She could hear her mother’s voice in her own, coaxing and appeasing.
‘I hate him,’ Bobby repeated.
But it was partly for Bobby that she was doing this. When she was Mrs Jeffrey Sutton, people would no longer treat her like dirt because she was an unmarried mother, and Bobby would no longer be bullied for having no father. A stepfather was a whole lot better than no father at all. For the first time in his life he would be part of a proper family.
‘But why do you hate him?’ Annie persisted.
Bobby shrugged. ‘He’s stupid. Not like Mr Featherstone.’
The very sound of Tom’s name made Annie’s insides tie themselves in knots.
‘Tom,’ she whispered.
He must have got her letter by now, telling him that she was going to marry Jeff. She had put off writing to him for ages, ignoring the increasingly urgent notes he’d sent to her, asking if anything was wrong. She wondered what his reaction was going to be. Perhaps he would send a telegram of congratulations to the reception. She wasn’t sure whether she could bear that.
A car could be heard pulling into the yard. Bobby jumped up and ran to the door.
‘Oh,’ Annie heard him say. ‘It’s only the stupid flowers.’
The delivery man stood in the doorway with a large and a small flat box in his arms.
‘Would you be the blushing bride?’ he asked Annie.
The queasiness rolled over her again.
The bride. She was the bride.
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘Lovely day for it. Where do you want them?’ the man asked.
‘Er—better put them in here,’ Annie said, opening the door to the scullery. ‘On the draining board.’
The small box contained a rose and gypsophila corsage for her mother and a rose buttonhole for Bobby. In the large box was her bridal bouquet. It was fashionably enormous, a great mass of pink roses, cream lilies and clouds of gypsophila designed to trail down to her knees. The chilly little room was filled with exquisite perfume. Annie’s stomach churned.
The man, seeing her pale face, patted her arm kindly.
‘Pre-wedding nerves, love. You’ll get over it.’
Annie doubted it. She managed to thank him and send him on his way.
Edna came clattering downstairs.
‘Is that the flowers? What are they like? Are they all right?’
‘They’re lovely,’ Annie assured her.
Edna went into raptures.
Annie watched her as she raved over the bouquet, then tenderly lifted the corsage and held it to her shoulder.
‘And this must be for me. Mmm—smell—it’s so pretty—’
‘You’re the one who looks pretty, Mum,’ she said.
Edna had changed into her wedding costume, a navy silk suit with a navy and white spotted blouse, and she was actually wearing lipstick and powder. Nothing could erase the effects of years of hard labour and abuse from her face but, glowing as she was with excitement and happiness, her natural beauty shone through.
Edna actually blushed. ‘Oh—get away with you! Me? Don’t be silly. Now come along upstairs and get ready. The car will be here before we know where we are.’
‘I think I’m going to be sick,’ Annie said.
She rushed into the lavatory and threw up the very little she had had to eat that day. Her head began to throb. She stayed there for a long time, wishing she could just lock the door for ever and hide there.
There was a tap on the other side.
‘Annie, love? Are you all right?’
Annie wanted to say no.
‘I suppose so,’ she admitted.
‘Well, come on out and I’ll make you a nice cup of tea. And then we’ll get you ready.’
There was no escaping it.
Annie sat down at the kitchen table again, the tea cooling in her hands while her mother took out the rollers and brushed her hair. Then she was chivvied upstairs and supervised while she put on her make-up, then made to step into a petticoat made of layers of starched net.
‘So far, so good,’ Edna said, nodding her satisfaction. ‘Now for the dress …’
Her dress for the wedding was hanging under a cotton wrap in her mother’s wardrobe. Edna lifted it out and removed the wrap. A classic virgin white wedding dress had been out of the question, of course, but this was just as beautiful in its own way. It was a silk dress in cream with a sprinkling of tiny pink hearts, made with a sweetheart neckline, tight bodice and tiny waist, flowing out to a wide, calf-length skirt that floated over the stiff petticoat. Over it went a pink silk bolero jacket with tight three-quarter length sleeves and a stand-up collar.
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