She worried about Mam. She wrote to Aunt Winnie and asked why couldn’t Mam write? Was she back in the hospital? She’d heard nothing now since Mam’s Christmas card. But Aunt Winnie didn’t answer.
The Saturday nights went on. In the daytime Auntie Hilda and Uncle Jack were so kind that sometimes she told herself – she almost believed it – that they were different people on Saturday nights. Like in some of the fairy tales – they weren’t really Auntie Hilda and Uncle Jack but wicked spirits that got into their bodies at midnight. She tried to think of that the next time the hairbrush came down. They’re different people.
March, and still winter. In the middle of the month there was heavy snow. One Friday afternoon Auntie Hilda was waiting to meet them as they came from school. She told Billy to go right upstairs and play with his Hornby engine. Then she took Helen into the small room at the back of the shop.
‘Get sat, love,’ she said, pointing to the chair by the fire. She stayed standing up. ‘I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, love, but your auntie and uncle, they’ve wrote …’
Dear Our Lady, please say they’ve sent for us. ‘Is it – have we to go back? Can we go back?’
‘They’ve wrote – what they’ve said is, you see … Your Mam, she’s passed over like.’
Passed over. Moved to another place?
‘Over where, Auntie?’
‘Passed over,’ Auntie Hilda repeated. ‘Passed on … She’s not with us any more.’
‘Is it a hospital in another country, then?’
‘Dead. Your Mam’s dead.’ She said it abruptly now, embarrassed. Her voice was sharp, like a knife cutting.
Helen didn’t try to answer. She just sat on by the fire, feeling cold and dizzy. A feeling like creepy-crawlies in her hair. Giant shivers.
‘You’ve understood then, love? I didn’t want … It’s difficult for us, that we’ve to tell you.’ When Helen still didn’t speak, she said, ‘You know you’ve always a home here, love.’
‘Can I see her? I want to see –’
‘They said not. Your auntie … You’ve to stay here and not upset yourself with funerals. Your priest has written to you, Father Casey, is it? It’s a nice letter.’ She rustled the paper. ‘Will I read it you?’
But Helen couldn’t answer. The pain in her heart was choking her.
‘Don’t feel badly, love. You’d not want her to suffer, would you? And your priest … It says here she went easy.’
A great heavy stone settled in her heart.
‘Who’s to tell our Billy?’ she asked.
She couldn’t remember anything about the rest of the day. At bedtime, she took Billy into her bed and didn’t bother if he wet or not. They clung together. Billy woke up before she’d gone to sleep at all. He banged his fists on her back. ‘I want Mam, our Helen, I want Mam.’
Everyone was kind, very kind. Auntie Hilda and Uncle Jack couldn’t fuss over them enough. At school even the boys were careful: no one called her ‘skinny-stick’ or ‘daftie’, or Billy ‘a dirty bucket’. On Sunday, Miss Dennison said, ‘I’m so sorry, Helen dear,’ taking her in her arms. Hugging her a little stiffly.
Perhaps it was to try and cheer her that Auntie and Uncle suggested she serve in the shop. Before she’d occasionally helped Uncle Jack, handing out Fry’s chocolate cream or Cadbury’s Filled from under the glass cover. Now they showed her how to weigh out and how to use the till. ‘You’re a smart little lass. Quick with figures. We’ll have you running the place yet. Then Father can retire and I’ll put my feet up –’
‘But I shan’t be living here that long,’ Helen said.
‘Where are you off to, then?’
‘To my family. We’ll go when, when –’ She broke off. When? Auntie Winnie hadn’t said anything about sending for them. Perhaps when the war ended? But it showed no signs of that. She knew the French were all right because they had built a Magic Line with tunnels to keep the Germans off. People laughed about the German line. In school they sang with Miss Foster, We’re gonna hang out the washing on the Siegfried Line.
‘Mr Hitler’s missed the boat now,’ Auntie Hilda said. ‘He should’ve got on with it, oughtn’t he?’
Spring came at last. The first days of warm weather. Perhaps Auntie and Uncle thought they’d been kind long enough, but the bad things started again. One dread Saturday night – woken from a deep sleep, not sure where she was. Frightened. Then sick with recognition of it all.
This time it was worse. She wasn’t asked to show anything –not that. But the smacking was twice as hard, with a stick now, not a hairbrush. She thought afterwards: If I’ve ever to undress at school …
She couldn’t see how anything was going to come right now. No one talked about what was going to happen to them. ‘When the war’s over,’ they said. But the news was beginning to be bad now. Norway and Denmark had been invaded. And even if she and Billy went back, it wouldn’t be home. Auntie Winnie and Uncle Arnold didn’t care for them, she knew that. Oh, Mam, she cried inside, why did you have to die? Any Saturday night now, until the war was over, that stick might come down on her, and then the awful things afterwards.
Once or twice now when Auntie beat her, she’d let herself be angry as well as frightened. It hurt so terribly. ‘Ungrateful,’ Auntie said to her, ‘making a fuss like that. And if you tell folk of it, there’ll be worse things. We might have to cut Billy’s … cut off his little, you know. Don’t you dare tell a soul.’
She had to get through the days. She had a ritual at bedtime. She lay on her right always, Bambi tucked under her left arm. In her right hand she held the pink rosary. Then she prayed for Mam. Miss Dennison had had a Mass said specially for her. Helen heard the name read out. ‘…for the repose of the soul of Evelyn Connors …’
It was the month of May. The whole feeling about the war had changed. ‘Waiting for Mr Hitler,’ they said now. Their teacher, Miss Garner, showed them a map with all the countries the Germans had conquered. The boys at school boasted of what they’d do to the Germans when they came to England. Helen knew she would just be frightened. She seemed to be frightened all the time now. Miss Garner asked her several times if anything was the matter. ‘You’re missing your Mam, aren’t you, love?’
Once when she’d been beaten really quite hard and it hurt her to sit down, Auntie said, ‘I wonder why ever that should be?’ Helen knew then for certain that she and Uncle Jack were different people … Oh, Mam, come and take me away. Take me to Heaven with you …
She helped a lot in the shop now. Twice she’d been left on her own, which in a way she rather liked. She was good with the till and it was nice to make people happy. She had to stand on a stool to serve, and climb up the steps to get down the glass jars.
The weather was very warm now and she wore the summer dresses which Auntie Hilda had bought her in Whitby, together with real leather sandals. It was June, and the sun shone in a cloudless blue sky. ‘Waiting for Mr Hitler.’ She heard that all foreigners were to be hidden away in case they took the Germans’ side in an invasion. After church Miss Dennison was talking about it. ‘I fear for several friends,’ Helen heard her say. ‘Particularly a certain crooner.’
She didn’t know what got into Auntie Hilda that next Saturday. Perhaps they were more worried than they said about Hitler, because the stick came down really hard. She stifled her cries into the pillow. Oh, but she couldn’t bear it. She twisted her arm round, put out a hand to stop the stick – only instead down it came on her hand.
Auntie was really angry. ‘Stop mucking about – how many times have I to tell you? You know it’s for your good, don’t you? You’d not want your mother in Heaven to know you made a fuss about a bit of chastisement –’
She cried into the pillow, ‘Leave my mam out of this –’
Uncle Jack said suddenly, ‘Send her back. I can’t be doing … Get rid of the lass.’
‘Off with you, then. To bed. I don’t know what he’s about …’As Helen stumbled out, she could
hear their voices raised in argument. I don’t want to know anything more. She curled up in the bed. If she could never wake up … The idea was wonderful suddenly. If she could die and go to be with Mam. I could ask Our Lady to come for me … Then she thought of Billy. It was too much. Was he to come with her? She’d promised Mam she’d look after him. Oh, I just want to die.
The next day her hand was swollen, and very sore. ‘You had an accident with that,’ Auntie said, looking at the brown and black patches. ‘That got caught in the door, I shouldn’t wonder.’
‘Please, Miss, my hand got caught in the door,’ she said on Monday. Miss Garner put witch hazel on it and told her to be more careful in the future.
On Tuesday after school, Uncle asked her to mind the shop for an hour. He and Auntie were donating some prizes for a whist drive. They took Billy with them.
At first it was very quiet. Two Mars Bars and a quarter of jelly babies only. She sat on the stool and shut her eyes and said the prayer about dying and going to Heaven. Our Lady, come for me soon.
The bell tinkled as the door opened. She looked up and couldn’t believe what she saw. For there was Our Lady. Just as she would look if the statue came to life. A lady with dark wavy hair and olive skin, in a white dress with floating panels and a thin blue sash. It was Her face too.
‘Hello,’ Our Lady said, ‘I need some sweets for presents. Could I have a half of nut toffee, a quarter of humbugs – and a box of Pomfret cakes? Can you manage all that?’
‘Yes,’ Helen whispered. She was frightened as well as happy.
‘You’re very young to be minding the shop –’ Our Lady said.
‘I know how to, though – and I can work the till. I do it often, when they’re out.’
Our Lady frowned as Helen began shovelling toffee on to the scales: ‘What did you do to your hand?’
‘I shut it in a door.’
‘It looks nasty. Are you taking care of it?’ Her voice was so gentle. Deep, and warm. Just as she had always thought Our Lady would sound.
She burst into tears.
‘Darling,’ said Our Lady, ‘darling, what’s the matter?’ ‘Nothing.’
‘Well, something’s wrong. Tell me. Tell me what’s the matter …’
‘It’s what they do to me. I haven’t to say –’
‘What mustn’t you say, darling?’ Our Lady opened her hands wide.
‘Oh, help me, help me!’ Helen cried, lifting the counter flap, knocking over the jar of toffee. ‘And take me to Heaven with you.’
In a moment she was round the other side and in Our Lady’s arms.
3
‘Well, what do you know,’ Gwen said, turning over towards Dick as his arm came round her, ‘Betty joining up like that. Only the nineteens have to, but I knew she would.’
They were proud of Betty, that summer of 1941. Bossy Betty (she never seemed to mind the name), in the Women’s Army now, in the ATS.
Saturday, with an early morning sun filtering through the thin summer curtains. A weekend visit to Thackton. He and Gwen in the old double bed against the wall. The bed that had been Dad and Mother’s. Memories … Mother, nightcap, little spectacles, sitting up reading. Dad, on the same side as Dick slept now, against the window, turned away from her. Arm up as if to shield himself. Heavily asleep.
‘Gone six o’clock,’ he said now, ‘and not a sound. Usually Helen’s about, dealing with little Billy.’
‘She did well, Maria, taking on those two –’
‘They could hardly have been separated, not after what Helen’d been through. Hanging’d be too good for them, that couple … Anyway the thing is, it’s a success.’
It certainly was. Dad, having finally decided at seventy-five to retire to Moorgarth, was loving it. With young Peter in Canada with Sybil, and the other grandchildren grown big, the arrival of these two meant he could start again. Every day he thought up new treats for them, allowing a now lively and confident Helen to get away with real cheek.
Maria had been in Thackton since last June when, during the invasion scare, Eddie had been interned as an enemy alien. In the autumn he had been deported to Australia. It had been Dick’s idea, after the internment, to invite her to Moorgarth. A month or so’s visit to recover from the upset, the distress caused by his arrest.
‘You and she always got on well. Now, let bygones be bygones,’ he had said to Dad. To Eleanor too. It would be quite safe after all – Guy, who had just joined up, would not be in Thackton. (No one now could undo that meeting in August of 1939.) So the twentyyear-old ban had been lifted. Then, within three days of her arrival, the pathetic encounter in the sweet shop. Neither Maria, nor anyone, had thought of her going back after that. It had seemed so obvious, so natural, so approved of by Eric, that Helen and Billy should stay with her here, at Moorgarth. She had wound up everything, every interest in London, had joined the local WVS, had become a busy countrywoman, and foster mother. How she loved the mothering … Maria the childless. No – Maria robbed of her child by us. (We did it. Dad, Eleanor, Peter, all of us.)
There were not so many people to use Moorgarth these days. Red-haired Jan came always with Dick and Gwen, but this time was away with a schoolfriend, youth-hostelling in Swaledale. Ida, seldom seen now, was teaching in Northumberland. Dulcie, sixty-two now but looking only fifty, was in London, working in a nursing home in Wimpole Street, and seeming very happy. She had said, ‘I could stay up here with your father. But then, you see – after all these years …’ She had not expanded on this. Letters came regularly from Jenny and from Sybil, who with young Peter had been nearly two years in Canada now. Jim, Jenny’s eldest, wanted only to be old enough to join the Air Force. Jenny and Sybil were doing Red Cross work.
And as ever, there was his own happiness. He felt often that he shouldn’t have it. Not now, during a war. And yet it was there: underground stream, running through his life. Times like this morning – Gwen lying in his arms, the smell of her skin between hair and shoulder where the neck of her nightdress ended. Sensibly dressed Gwen, with her long-wearing night-clothes, flannel for winter, dimity for summer. Move a little, and feel her thigh against his. Change position again. Gwen, Gwen, Gwen. Whenever he was deep inside her, he would cry out or mutter into her skin – not too loud, the family were not to hear –‘My princess.’
Perfect happiness, almost. Gwen did too much, was overtired – part of the reason he’d insisted on this weekend away. She was mother to Jan, wife to him and how many other things besides? Her war work as a nurse. So capable was she, it seemed the hospital wouldn’t run without her. Too much time on her feet, and then working nights. That was the reason for the backache, that dragging pain inside which she mentioned occasionally. There was a cough too which had persisted now right from the winter. (Hadn’t she had an uncle or – someone with TB? Words of old Mrs Ackroyd came back to him.) But perhaps, as Gwen suggested, it was still the Change. That could go on a long time.
Reaching across her now: ‘Pass me a cigarette, love.’ First cigarette of the morning. Oh bliss.
‘You smoke too much,’ she said as the flame from the lighter shot high.
‘I don’t cough. I’ve puffed going on thirty years now. But I don’t cough – unlike some.’
Her answer was to cough suddenly, a spasm.
‘What did I say, then? You might take that to Dr Appleyard when we’re back – just so I don’t have to worry. And mention the backache at the same time.’
‘He’ll only tell me to do less.’
‘Do less, then.’ He hissed smoke in spirals. ‘That’d be good.’
She said, laughing fondly, ‘What’d be good for you’d be cigarette rationing – except you’d get extra, of course. Buy your way out … Mrs Bamford at the hospital knows lots of women who’ll sell their clothing coupons. They haven’t the money to use them. That’s your Fair Shares for Everyone country.’
‘Are we buying any?’
‘We’re just like the next person … Yes. Betty’s all
right, ATS uniform and plenty left over for mufti, but Jan’s that unsure age … When I let her get shoes, she got some frightful peeptoes that didn’t fit. They can’t afford mistakes on coupons, and that’s hard. She’s a real clothes-horse –’
‘Dulcie, Aunt Dulcie she gets it from. Not from Mother.’ His cigarette was finished. He leaned across her to stub it out. Instead of turning back, he remained on top of her.
‘Get away. I was going to make us some tea.’
‘I’ll let you then, when I’ve had my way.’
‘Oh, you,’ she said, laughing, arms round his neck. ‘You with your loving. Never have enough, do you? You’d best get on with it, then. Folk are stirring.’
There was the sound of Helen passing on the landing, going down the stairs, singing ‘I’ve got sixpence, jolly jolly sixpence,’ in her funny little voice.
Maria, woken by Helen, felt something almost like contentment. Back in Thackton, back at Moorgarth again. Her new, her busy country life, a year old now.
And that meant a year since they had come for Eddie. I was sick, physically sick, with losing Eddie. Even though lately we had had such difficulty in getting on. Worst of all, since America. Nothing went right after America. And the most terrible thing of all, the thing I don’t think about (and there’s so much of my life I don’t think about, cannot think about), Peter’s death. My secret. (And Rocco’s? No wonder perhaps that I can seldom write to Rocco.)
Eddie, the philanderer, the ever ready. I could not become used to it. I never shall. My own fierce loyalty. If anyone else should criticize him … Eddie, for whom I would have died. How to live, though, with that passionate rage which couldn’t bear him to look at others? Looking as if he wanted to touch (I know he does, I know he does). To know was one thing, to see it another. (That early summer of ‘39 on tour …)
And his career? Gone now, of course. But before internment, what to make of it? He was flattered, of course, with these new holiday camps, that he was asked for the first season. Good, good. But then the war began. The theatres and cinemas closed. There was nothing. It seemed no one wanted him. That same Eddie who played the Rainbow Room in ‘35.
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