The Invisible Cord

by Catherine Cookson

  ‘Ta-rah…Mollie.’

  Mollie now gave her a nod and a knowing smile, then went out quietly. But a minute later her high laugh came to Annie where she was standing staring at her reflection in the mirror, her hand over her mouth but her lips moving as she repeated, ‘Thatch a roof with rotten straw.’

  The reflection moved its head wildly at her. She watched the tears run down the cheeks in the mirror. Thatch a roof with rotten straw. She was only seventeen, it wasn’t fair. Through the mirror she saw the white satin wedding dress lying over the foot of the bed…Oh God, what a farce. Life was a farce.

  The word farce brought back to her a tale that Georgie had told her about the twins. When they were seven years old they were in a class where, on a Friday afternoon, the teacher let the pupils recite or sing a verse of a favourite song, and Archie had put his hand up and said he would like to sing ‘All By Yourself In The Moonlight’. Having been granted permission, Archie walked to the front of the class and sang the recognised words, until he came to those in the chorus:

  There ain’t no sense

  Sitting on the fence

  All by yourself

  In the moonlight,

  for which he substituted:

  Life’s a farce

  Sitting on your arse

  All by yourself

  In the moonlight.

  She had thought it rude, but nevertheless she had laughed, primly at first, then loudly; but that was the night she’d had the sherry followed by the whisky.

  But life was a farce, everything about today was a farce. The only good thing, she felt, she would remember about it was that her ma had held her in her arms for the first time in years.

  Three

  It was done.

  Two umbrellas had been held over them as they ran from the church doorway across the pavement to the waiting car. There were no sightseers, and for this she was grateful. She had told herself she should be thankful for the rain for she would have died if Katie Newton, and Florrie Turnbull, and the rest of that crowd had been waiting outside the church. And they would have been if it hadn’t been the kind of day it was.

  Father Carey had married them in a sort of word-gabbling rush; he had seemed in a hurry to get it over. There she had stood in her white dress with her veil held in place by a wreath of Virgin Mary blue forget-me-nots; Mona had made the wreath for her. She had even gone to the trouble of bringing it to the church yesterday and sprinkling it with holy water in a kind of blessing. Mona was nice. She glanced through the rain-filled window of the car before it started and saw Mona standing inside the church door with the best man, Arthur Bailey. He seemed a nice fellow, this Arthur Bailey, superior like. She had met him last night for the first time. Georgie had brought him back from Madley with him. His home was in Hereford; he seemed a different type of fellow from Georgie. She wondered at them being friends; perhaps it was because they both worked in the kitchen.

  ‘Well, love.’ She was pulled back onto the seat within the tight circle of Georgie’s arm, and now she was looking into his face. It wasn’t a bad-looking face, sort of homely; he had his mother’s wide slack laughing mouth and his eyes were dark brown, much darker than her own. His eyes were his best feature; the kindliness his mother had talked about was in his eyes. He wasn’t very tall, not much taller than her, and she thought that she was still growing. Five-foot eight, she supposed he was, but he appeared taller because of his bulk, he was heavily made.

  ‘Well, it’s done.’

  It was as if he were repeating her words, and she echoed them, saying, ‘Yes, it’s done.’

  ‘Happy?’

  ‘I…I don’t know yet.’ Oh dear God! she hadn’t meant to say that. She should have just answered a plain yes, it would have satisfied him. Fancy telling a man on his wedding day that she didn’t know if she was happy or not. She saw that his face had clouded.

  He said soberly, ‘Well, I’ll have to try to make you know, won’t I? It’s up to me then, isn’t it?’

  She didn’t answer, she just stared at him. Then they both swung to the side as the car veered round the corner and his arms tightened about her and he looked down into her face, muttering, ‘I love you, Annie. I can’t put it like I should, I’m not much use with words, the bloody things won’t come for me, never would somehow.’ His mouth spread into a quick grin, reminiscent of his mother’s ever-ready defence, before he went on, ‘But one thing I’ll tell you. I’ll do me best for you. I’ll try to go steady, I mean with the drink an’ that, and we’ll get a home together for the bairn…You know what me ma said just afore I came out?’

  He was grinning widely now, and she shook her head. ‘No.’

  ‘She said she’d break me bloody neck if I didn’t do the right thing by you. What do you think about that for a mother-in-law? I asked her whose side she was on. She said Hitler’s. That’s me ma; she’s a case but…but she’s all right, me ma. We would have known some pretty tough times if it hadn’t been for her ’cos me da’s no bloody good, never has been. Him and work never agreed; he used to get the smit if he went near it, but she wouldn’t have it that he was lazy, bawl you down if you said he was…Hie! Hie! you’re not cryin’, are you?’

  ‘No, no. Well, I don’t know what I’m doing, laughing or crying…You’re funny, Georgie.’

  ‘You think I’m funny?’

  ‘Well, not funny that way, amusin’.’

  ‘Aw well, amusin’ am I? Well that’s one thing I’ve got in me favour anyroad, at that’s not bad for a start, is it?’

  ‘Georgie.’

  ‘Aye?’

  ‘Promise me something?’

  ‘Anything, anything in the world.’

  ‘Don’t…don’t get drunk the day.’

  He stared at her, then smiled, a quiet smile, and bending his head he kissed her on the lips, then said, ‘That’s a promise.’

  As the car came to a stop opposite 114 she asked herself why she had made him promise such a thing, because once he started to drink he’d soon become paralytic, and such being the case she might have warded off a repeat of the incident following Hilda Tressell’s wedding.

  There were twenty-one at the reception in the front room. Annie and Georgie were wedged in at the top of the table, while five of those seated down the left side and five down the right were also wedged in. The rest had room to move their chairs back. Mary and Mollie McCabe and Mrs Rankin from next door, the only neighbour, together with her husband, who had been invited to the wedding, saw to the filling of teapots and the replenishing of plates.

  There had been general acclaim at the sight of the well-laden table. How had Mary done it? Cold brisket, a leg of pork, and half a ham, besides salmon sandwiches! Where on earth had she got the salmon! Some of them hadn’t seen a tin of salmon for years.

  The answers with regard to the food were given by Dennis with nods and winks in the direction of the top of the table, and the guests looked at Georgie and said, ‘Ah ah!’ Georgie was a cook, and cooks were no fools.

  Annie hadn’t looked at Georgie but at her mother who, although she didn’t like Georgie, hadn’t apparently been above taking the tins of stuff that he had brought on his last few leaves. Then she chided herself. She mustn’t think anything against her mother; she must remember what happened in the scullery this morning. Her mother had feelings that she didn’t show.

  Her da was on his feet, speaking now, her da knew how to do things properly.

  Dennis looked up the table towards his daughter and new son-in-law and the action brought a cessation of the gabble and the room became quiet. ‘It has fallen to me,’ he began, ‘to say a few words on this auspicious occasion. For it is an auspicious occasion.’ He nodded his head twice. ‘My daughter this day has not only changed her name from Cooper to McCabe, she was written that name at the head of a page to a new life.’ Again he nodded his head twice. ‘It’s a clean page and it’s up to her what she writes on it.’ He turned his gaze now from Annie and brought it to rest on Mary
, where she was sitting at the bottom of the table, her hands in her lap, her eyes cast down towards them. And she didn’t raise them when, speaking to her pointedly, he said, ‘There’s her mother. She was only a year older than Annie the day I married her, and from the day Annie was born she has looked after her like a mother should. What credit goes to Annie today is due to her mother.’ There was a long pause here while he stared at the bent head. Then turning his eyes once more towards the top of the table, he went on, ‘I’m goin’ to cut this short, lass, I’m only goin’ to say this, that if you look after Georgie as your mother has looked after me and our home, then you won’t go far wrong. Now—’ his eye swept the faces all turned towards him, and he commanded, ‘Get on your feet, lift up your glasses and drink…To Annie and Georgie.’

  ‘Annie and Georgie. Annie and Georgie. Annie and Georgie.’

  When the company was again seated there followed a babble of voices, everyone talking at once, until the stranger, the best man, rose to his feet; then everyone gave him their attention. Even the twins stopped stuffing food into their mouths and looked at the foreigner, the fellow who talked different. And Arthur Bailey’s voice was definitely different from that of anyone in the room. He began to speak with a slow softness, and he kept his eyes on Annie and Georgie as he spoke, saying, ‘If there’s anyone wishes Georgie and his bride health and happiness it’s me. Georgie and I have been pals for the past eighteen months, and I want to state here and now that I’ll never find a better. As good fellows go he’s one of the best, and I know that Annie will have a happy life ahead of her as long as she has him by her side. Here’s wishing you both happiness and contentment.’

  The best man’s speech was greeted with more applause than Dennis’s had received, and Georgie, red in the face, looked at Annie and asked, ‘Well now, what do you think of that for a reference, eh?’ He leaned over her and punched his pal in the shoulder. Then his attention was drawn towards his mother, whose voice, well above the rest, was exclaiming, ‘Now, that’s for you. Wasn’t that nice? Talk about a pal.’

  Nodding in the direction of Arthur Bailey, Mollie now called, ‘Thanks lad. Good for you; you’ll always be welcome in our house.’ Then turning to her husband she shouted at him as if he were at the far end of the street, ‘Did you get an earful of that?’ and when he replied, ‘Aye, aye, I heard. Couldn’t help but, could I?’ she pushed him almost off his seat as she cried, ‘Well, let it sink in then, let it sink into your puddle head.’ And at this the twins and her married daughter, Daisy, and Daisy’s husband, Frank Stewart, and Winnie, her sixteen-year-old daughter, who was but a younger replica of herself, all howled with laughter as if at some great joke, while Mary and Mrs Rankin exchanged looks, then rose from the table, each picking up a teapot, and went into the kitchen.

  ‘That woman!’ Mrs Rankin pursed her lips. ‘She’s as common as muck. It’s just as well you’ll have Annie here under your wing.’

  Mary made no reply to this but she filled her teapot from the spluttering kettle, then placed them both side by side on the hob and, looking to the deepening twilight of the rain-drenched day, she said, ‘I think we’d better do the blackouts and put the lights on.’ She glanced at the clock as she spoke, and the clock said quarter to four.

  The air-raid siren went at a quarter to nine.

  The table had been cleared, the two end additions, boards on trestles, had been taken out and stacked at the bottom of the bunks in the air raid shelter in the yard. Most of the chairs had been brought into the kitchen, but the centre table had been upended and placed in front of the little china cabinet. The radiogram had been put in the passageway, allowing for one person only to pass at a time towards the front door, and then this could only be achieved with indrawn breath.

  In the front room, interpreting a quickstep in their several ways, were Mona and Arthur Bailey, Daisy and Frank Stewart, while Winnie and her mother, shaking with gales of laughter, were trying to get Dennis to do Knees-up-Mother-Brown.

  Arrayed around the kitchen were Annie’s grandparents and Mona’s mother and father, and in between them sat Georgie, talking quite amiably as he was apt to do when nicely warmed, which stage he usually reached with a couple of drops of hard and four pints. This intake in no way suggested that he had broken his promise to Annie, for as he maintained, he always knew where he was until he’d had half-a-dozen doubles, or failing that, a mixture of anything he could come by from port wine to cider.

  He glanced now to where he could see Annie in the scullery drying the glasses that her mother was washing up, and he paused in his talking, until Mrs Broadbent said, ‘You’re spinnin’ them, Georgie, aren’t you? Anybody getting bacon and eggs any time they like!’

  He turned his attention to the little fat woman again, saying, ‘No, no, it’s a fact, Mrs Broadbent, true as I’m sittin’ here. You get on a bike and go into the country outside Hereford an’ stop at one of them cottages or little farms, an’ you’ll get a feed fit for a king. It’s a fact. An’ butter and eggs away with you an’ all. Lots of our blokes do it, especially the ones living out in Hereford. Cor! you want to see what they bring back. I once refused to give a fellow on guard duty extra butter, ’cos I didn’t like his bloody guts, bighead he was, and the next week when he was off he comes back and pushes a bloody great slab of country butter under me nose. Even the colour of it made our stuff look like lint. “There, McCabe,” he said, “you know what you can do with your butter.”’ He now closed his eyes and raised his hand, palm outwards, saying, ‘Ladies present, ladies present; better not say what he told me to do with that butter.’

  It was when the laughter was at its highest that the siren went.

  For a split second there was a startled calmness in the house as they listened to the wailing sound. Then like a fusillade of bullets they were scattering for the doors, that is all except Georgie, Arthur Bailey, and Dennis. It was Dennis who yelled, ‘Don’t go mad. Don’t go mad,’ and the answer he got from all quarters was, ‘Fancy it happening the night of all nights.’

  ‘Get in!’ Mary was pushing Annie towards the steps of the air raid shelter in the backyard when Annie suddenly stopped and, turning to her mother, whose hand was still on her arm, said, ‘I’m not going in yet, Ma. Anyway it isn’t right, we should see them off home…everybody.’

  ‘They can see themselves off home, you get in.’

  As Mary went to force her down the steps Annie evaded her mother’s hands, saying harshly, ‘Have a bit sense, Ma; the siren’s just gone, they could be ages.’

  ‘They weren’t ages last week, were they?’

  Before Annie could answer a voice came out of the darkness, saying, ‘You get down, Annie. I’m away to see me ma and them inside, I won’t be long. Arthur’s comin’ along of me.’

  ‘Get somebody to see Mona and her ma home, will you, Georgie?’

  ‘Don’t be silly girl—’ Mary was pulling at her—‘Isn’t Mr Broadbent there!’

  ‘Aw, Ma, you know he’s got bad sight. He can hardly see in the daylight never mind the dark…See to it, Georgie, will you?’

  ‘Aye, aye, I’ll see to it. Get yoursel’ in, don’t worry. But my God, it would happen the night, wouldn’t it…That bloody man! All this through one bloody man. He’s a bastard…’

  When Mary reached the bottom of the steps and went into the air raid shelter she could still hear Georgie’s voice coming from the direction of the scullery describing what he would do to that bastard if he only had him within arm’s length.

  ‘It’s a pity he can’t open his mouth without swearing.’

  ‘Who better should he swear at than Hitler, Ma?’

  The silence told Annie of her mother’s set lips and tight face, and when she had lit the old-fashioned lamp that hung from a nail on the brick wall between the bunks it showed Mary’s face as she had visualised it, and she said softly, ‘I’m…I’m sorry, Ma.’

  Mary made no answer, and after a moment Annie said, ‘Where’s me da got to?’
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  ‘Where would he be but at the A.R.P. post?’

  ‘It isn’t his night on.’

  ‘No, it isn’t, but he’s got an urge like other people I could mention to get themselves killed.’

  ‘Oh, Ma!’

  They sat on the bunks, one on each side of the shelter, opposite to each other, their knees almost touching, their postures almost identical, heads bent, hands gripped on their laps. After a time Annie said, ‘We didn’t bring the flask, will I go and get it?’

  ‘No, you’ll do no such thing.’ Mary’s head jerked upwards. ‘I’ve…I’ve got a feeling on me. I don’t know why, but I feel it’s goin’ to be a night of it.’

  Annie restrained herself from saying, ‘You’ve had those feelings before, Ma, you have them every time you come down here.’

  A second later her mother’s prophecy brought them hurtling together, their arms about each other. Then they were on the floor, their heads bent towards their knees and making identical sounds as the trembling of the earth passed through them.