All The Days of My Life (19 page)

Mary looked at her. She was being dragged into complicated responsibilities again. Ivy wanted a nice pram so that she could push her first grandchild about in it. What she, Mary, wanted, was a new dress. She had seen the others, girls of about her own age, wearing slippers, old shoes, old coats, because there was no money for new things, but still pushing flashy, well upholstered prams up and down the street. They were pale and worn as if no one cared about them any more, as if they were no longer allowed to care about themselves now they had the baby.

“Mary!” came Ivy's voice, calling her to attention. Mary stared round at the small houses, baking under fierce afternoon sun. The pavements glittered. The Smiths' shaggy dog peed against a lamp post.

“I don't want a pram, mum,” she said dully.

“What're you going to push the baby in then?” demanded Ivy. “A wheelbarrow?” Then she seemed to collapse and said, looking at her daughter's dull face, “Oh, God – I've done my best, Mary. If you can't pull yourself together it's not my fault. You've got a good husband and a baby coming. You ought to be pleased. There's a lot worse off.”

“Yes, Mum,” said Mary and turned round to go across the street.

“Here,” said Ivy, fishing in her handbag. “Here's ten bob. Why don't you and Jim take yourself out to the pictures tonight? Be a break for you.”

Mary took the note. “I'm going now,” she said.

“What about Jim? What about his tea?” her mother called after her.

“Sod Jim's tea,” she called back. It was the first time she had felt cheerful for many months.

Ivy stood on the pavement looking after her knowing the cry of defiance came from a prisoner. She felt depressed. What sort of a mother was Mary going to make if she carried on like this now? What sort of a wife was she making at present, come to that? Still, she consoled herself hopefully, pregnant women were a bit mad at the best of times. Perhaps she'd sort out when the baby came.

That night there was a row, caused by Mary, at 3 Meakin Street. Jim came back to find an empty flat and no supper. Mary came back from seeing
Moulin Rouge
in a good mood and started doing the can-can round the front room. Jim told her he had been worried and had gone to Ivy's, only to find that she, Mary, had gone off to the cinema
without thinking of him or his supper. Ivy had cooked him an egg and bacon, and now after going to a film without him, here she was prancing round the room doing silly dances likely to bring on a miscarriage. Mary shouted that she didn't care, that she was fed up with living in the flat, with him, and never having any money to enjoy herself. Even if they did, she added, making bad worse, nothing was any fun with him because he was such a misery. Then she went out and, equally suddenly, came back and went on arguing.

The shouting went on and on until the woman from the flat below came up and burst into the room.

“Look what she done!” she shouted furiously at Jim Flanders. In her arms she held a cat, round which many strands of wool were tangled, and half the Fair Isle sweater Jim's mother had knitted for him. “Look,” she said. “She tied the bottom row round Tiger's neck. She must've pushed him through the front door and trapped the sweater inside. Then the poor creature goes running about in a panic unravelling it and getting more and more frightened all the time. She must be barmy.”

“Mean me?” Mary said insolently, leaning on the mantelpiece.

“Yes – I do mean you,” said the woman. “I heard you come down earlier on and open and close the door. I never knew what you were up to. I thought you was up here having a nasty row, and that hasn't been very nice to listen to. What I never knew you'd decided was to take out your nasty spite on an innocent animal, as well as your poor, suffering husband. I found this cat trying to tug himself away from the lamp post outside and a couple of kids laughing at him. It's wicked. I don't know what the younger generation's coming to. Father's away too long in the forces, no proper discipline, life's been too easy for you lot, let me tell you that. Now look – victimizing animals – you ought to be locked up.” She studied Jim's embarrassed face and said, in a milder tone, “I'll leave you to deal with her. She's probably a bit funny due to her condition.”

When she had gone Jim buried his face in his hands. “Oh, Mary,” he groaned. “Why did you have to go and do that? What's the matter with you? I know you're fed up. So am I, but we can't get out of it now so let's try to make the best of it.”

“You've got your job and your money and your own flaming body, all to yourself,” said Mary. “And I've got nothing. Make the best of it? You've got the bloody best of it. I'm going to bed.”

She lay in bed, thinking of the can-can and the women's dresses,
paintings done by the little crippled man. When Jim came in to make it up with her she turned angrily on her side and pretended to go to sleep so that she could go on half-dreaming of Paris in the 1890s. He came back, hours later, from the pub when she was really asleep and tried to wake her and make love to her. She said, “Go away, Jim. Let me sleep.”

“They all tell me it'll be better when the baby's born,” he told her loudly. “And I'm telling you it'd better be better sooner than that because I can't stand any more of this.”

But as it happened things were not better when the baby was born. They were far, far worse. Jim Flanders was dead, which caused much grief in low places and a great deal of consternation in high and unexpected places. Jim was not just dead – he had been hanged for murder.

At a quarter to eight on December 1st 1952 Mary Flanders lay cold in the narrow iron bed back in her parents' house at 19 Meakin Street. Her head on the pillow was turned to the window, which was curtained by thick fog, as if a yellow blanket had been hung over it from the outside. The air inside the room was yellowish and acrid. Mary's eyes, a cold, pale blue now, like a washed out March sky, looked blankly into the fog. It was very quiet. Traffic crawled blindly through the streets. The fog itself caught all sound and muffled it.

Down in the foggy kitchen Ivy sat on a chair, her face rigid, feeding Mary's baby, Josephine, from a bottle. Shirley ate her cornflakes as quietly as possible. Sid was drinking a cup of tea. The oven door was open to provide warmth. The light was on and the curtains were drawn. Sid got up and pulled the curtains aside. Ivy stared hard at him.

“I'm going to open the curtains in the front room as well,” he told her.

“Do as you please,” she said.

A man passing the house on his way to work saw Sid pulling back the curtains and nodded at him. The few people passing the house that morning walked quietly, taking care not to whistle or talk in loud voices.

Back in the kitchen Ivy finished feeding the baby and put the empty bottle on the table. She sat with the tiny infant propped in the crook of her arm and stared into space. Then she said to Shirley, without looking at her, “You'd better take her up a cup of tea.”

Shirley poured milk and tea into a floral-patterned cup and stirred sugar into it. At the door she said, “Have I still got to go to school, Mum?”

“That's what your dad says,” Ivy told her. “He wants us to carry on as normal.”

Shirley went up the small flight of stairs to the bedrooms. She was afraid. Her mother's face had suddenly fallen into deep lines. She had never seen her look so old.

She opened the bedroom door timidly and walked in with the tea. Her sister, white as chalk, lay in the foggy room, staring at the window.

“Cup of tea, Mary,” she told her.

“What's the time?” asked the girl.

“Ten to eight,” replied Shirley.

My father put down
The Times
at nearly eight that morning looking involuntarily towards the large clock, almost six feet tall, which stood against the dining room wall. In its centre it had a panel of glass through which a large, bulbed pendulum could be seen moving. He stared at the big Roman numerals on the clock face for a little while. Then he got up, went to the end of the table, where the teapot was standing, poured himself another cup of tea and went back to his seat again. Even I, a boy of sixteen, eating bacon and eggs and looking forward to the day's entertainments – all the more so, since I had been sent home from school with pneumonia, was now better, out of bed and looking forward to some entertainment – even I could not help noticing how preoccupied he was. I became very much aware of the clock's heavy tick. Looking up from my plate again I was surprised to see him sitting with his head in his hands. Perhaps he was trying to block out the sound of the ticking. Alarmed, I was about to ask him if there was anything the matter when the clock began to chime and his attention to the sound somehow deterred me from speaking. When the chimes ended he said vehemently, “Damn them.” And repeated it – “Damn them. Damn their eyes.” He was very pale. Because I had seldom seen him obviously angry and he never swore while I was present I simply stared at him in astonishment. He got up, then, and walked straight out of the room. A few seconds later I heard the front door slam. I think after that he must have walked about for several hours – at any rate, the next thing I heard was my mother's protests.
He had evidently returned and was insisting that the family leave London and go to our house in the country for Christmas. Worse than that, he was not actually planning any date for our return. My mother was very alarmed by all this and tried to get him to change his mind but in the end we went next day. And we stayed, so that my brother and I both returned to school from the country, with no particular idea about whether we would be returning to London or the country at half term.

They must have persuaded him to come back but after that I think my father's attitude changed in some ways. He had been a man of the old school – somewhat rigid, perhaps unimaginative, unquestioningly dutiful, utterly honest, occasionally wry, or humorously cynical, but never really doubting his own integrity or the integrity of those he served. But after that morning, invisibly, he broke. He lost conviction.

In Meakin Street, just before eight, there was a flurry in the fog. A van drew up. Feet banged on the pavement. There was a loud knock at the door. In the kitchen neither Sid nor Ivy stirred and it was Shirley, coming downstairs with the empty cup, who answered.

“All right to come through?” said a cheerful voice. “We've come to get on with your bathroom.”

Shirley was saying, “Oh – I don't know –” when Jackie came out of the front room, dressed for work.

“I'll see to it, Shirl,” he told her. “Can you come outside a minute, mate?” he asked the workman.

In the kitchen Sid, Ivy and Shirley heard nothing, until the workman's shocked voice came to them, “Sorry, mate. Wouldn't have disturbed you for worlds if I'd known. We'll come back in a few days.” Then there was a pause. He added, “Give my sympathy to all inside.” The van door banged and it started up.

After a pause Ivy said, “People are very nice, sometimes.” She looked at the clock. It was two minutes to eight.

Shortly before eight Albert Pierrepoint, the public hangman, the doctor, the chaplain and some others entered the condemned cell at Wormwood Scrubs. Jim Flanders downed a large tot of brandy offered to him by a warder and held out his arms.

“Arms behind you,” a uniformed officer told him.

Jim put his arms behind him. They were strapped behind his back. He was led into the adjoining execution chamber.

On the scaffold his ankles were strapped together. The hangman then looked into his eyes and placed a white hood over his head. He adjusted the rope, the chaplain said the Lord's Prayer and Pierrepoint walked round Jim to the lever on the scaffold, pulled it down with a sharp jerk – and there was Jim Flanders judicially executed, dying with his feet kicking.

Jim's parents, Joe and Elizabeth Flanders, never really recovered. He had been their only child, a candid and humorous boy, the boy for whom Joe Flanders had tried to survive five years of active service in war time. The marriage had never been a happy one and with Jim gone it seemed to have no meaning. Of course, the manner of his death made matters worse. If Jim had just died, of an illness or through an accident, the Flanders could have endured their grief supported by the sympathy of friends and neighbours, and then, as grief faded, would have picked up the pieces and gone on. As it was, their mourning was complicated by their own doubts – had they done something wrong? If not, who was responsible? The situation was made worse by the reactions of those about them. There is no formula for expressing sympathy to a murderer's mother or father. And some did not want to sympathize. The Flanders were disgraced. In some ways they shared the blame with the killer. Others were so indignant on behalf of the murdered nightwatchman that they had no pity for the killer or his parents. The Flanders shut themselves up chiefly because it fell to Elizabeth to construct the life the couple were to lead after Jim's death. Joe was too stunned, for a long time, to do anything and Elizabeth, a proud woman, decided that they were being snubbed and despised and would therefore cut themselves off from everyone. Joe had to return to work at the bus garage where he led a relatively normal life but once working hours were over the pair stayed indoors, rejecting callers and all invitations. They lived, month after month, behind drawn curtains in a busy street in a huge city. They saw no one. Elizabeth Flanders shopped in the morning, well away from the area, sliding back with her purchases, hugging the walls of the houses, just after people had gone off to work and the children to school, but before the early shoppers had got their chores finished at home.

Sid often pressed Joe Flanders to come out for a drink after work but
he always refused, saying he ought to stay with his wife. Ivy, once the first shock of Jim's death was over, became enraged. She felt both families had trouble to face down and that they should do it together. Many of the people in the street had been kind – Mary, in hospital after the birth of the child, had been given more flowers than most of the other mothers in the ward. This was because the street knew she might be picked on by the other women, or their relatives, if it became known that she was Jim Flanders' widow.