Coronation Wives (21 page)

Edna was speechless. Weakness of mind should, in her opinion, have made her mother less abrasive, more approachable perhaps. This was certainly not the case. Despite her senility, despite the growth of her body and the shrinking of her mind, Ethel Burbage still had the power to reduce her daughter to tears.

Chest heaving with subdued sobs Edna rushed from the room, along the passage and out into the back garden where her father grew prize chrysanthemums in a lean-to greenhouse. Pamela was in his arms and he was pointing at the big round flowers and telling her each of their names, not their generic names, but those he himself had given to each flower.

‘This brownish-gold one here I call Edna after your mother. When I’m talking to the plant I pretend that it’s her—’

‘Dad! I’m going!’

She tugged Pamela out of his arms, wincing as her strong little legs kicked in protest.

‘No! Don’t want! Don’t want!’

‘We have to get out of here!’ Edna’s words were strangled by tears.

Face anxious, his fists clenched, her father ran after her. ‘Edna? What did she say?’

Tears would flood any explanation. Best to turn her flushed face away and run back inside despite the fact that Pamela pressed heavily on her stomach. Pamela brushed her small hands at her mother’s tear-filled eyes.

‘Don’t cry, Mummy.’

She didn’t stop until she was outside the front door, her father still agitated and frowning anxiously into her face. ‘What did she say?’

‘She disowned me.’

‘Edna. You shouldn’t take too much notice of what she says
any more. She ain’t been right lately and she’s getting worse.’

Edna fastened Pamela back into her pushchair out by the front door without saying anything. Her father tapped his pipe against the solid stone of the house. His fingers trembled. He tried again. ‘You saw what she was like up at your ’ouse on Coronation Day.’

Edna straightened and looked into the craggy face of her father, noted the diminishing hair and the red capillaries amongst the yellow at the edges of his eyes. He looked pathetic, but then he’d always been pathetic. And so had she. Her mother had seen to that.

Edna said exactly what was in her heart. ‘I don’t care if she is ill. I hate her. I never realized it before. But I’ve always hated her!’

The words surprised her as much as they did her father.

‘Edna! She’s your mother!’

‘And I’m her daughter and I’m giving her back as much sympathy and understanding as she’s ever given me.’

She saw him blanch, his eyes flicker as he attempted to take in words said in a tone alien to his daughter’s nature.

Edna left. Tears of anger stung her eyes as she walked quickly away from Nutgrove Avenue and her mother. But walking wasn’t fast enough. ‘Blasted car!’

Without looking back she left Nutgrove Avenue, cut through the park and made her way along St John’s Lane to the bus stop. There was a sick, heavy feeling in her stomach that made her wish she hadn’t carried Pamela at all. Just strain, she told herself, you’ll be fine once you’re sitting on the bus.

Buses along St John’s Lane were frequent and the bus conductor was helpful. ‘Come on then, love. Leave the pushchair to me.’

By the time she’d changed buses at the Tramway Centre the pain had subsided and her face felt cooler. Just as well; she
didn’t want Colin to see her like this. He didn’t deserve it.

That night she dreamed a woman who looked like her mother was brandishing a spear and stabbing her in the stomach. When she awoke she was sweating and felt a sticky moistness between her legs.

Colin stirred beside her. ‘Are you all right?’

‘I need to go to the bathroom.’ She struggled out of bed, both arms over her stomach, and tried to control her panic. She was only five months.

‘Edna?’ Colin sat up in bed, his arms braced to hold him upright. His face was creased with worry.

‘I’ll be fine.’ Gasping for breath, Edna staggered to the door and along the landing.

‘Edna!’ The anxiety in his voice followed her to the bathroom.

‘There’s nothing you can do,’ she shouted back, her tears mixing with the moisture running from her nose and mouth, a disgusting predicament but unavoidable.

The pain was terrible. She wanted to scream, but if she did that the children would wake and Colin was likely to panic and crawl to her aid. She didn’t want that. Whatever happened she was by herself. Thousands of women went through this. She wasn’t the first. Best grit her teeth and bear it. Her mother’s voice was with her.
You brought it all on yourself, my girl.

It wasn’t Pamela she blamed for kicking her stomach, but her mother for spoiling the day.

Spasms of pain seared her stomach and she tasted blood on her lips. She closed her eyes and told herself she could do it.

Although Colin’s legs stood in their usual place in the corner of the bedroom and he could not follow her, Edna felt his presence as the small form slid out of her body and onto the floor.

The kitchen was Janet’s favourite room at the house in Royal York Crescent. Daylight filtered down from street level and into the basement courtyard at the front. The rear door and windows looked out onto lawns, shrubs and groups of tea roses in circular beds. Pine cupboards with round, white china handles stretched from floor to ceiling. A large grey and white enamel stove sat next to a new and very fat fridge on one side of the room and there was a butler’s sink below the window on the other side. Red and black quarry tiles covered the floor on which sat a large pine table, scrubbed to near whiteness by Mrs Grey’s constant elbow grease.

Because it nestled below ground, had south facing windows, and had the benefit of Mrs Grey who insisted on baking her own bread,
None of that sliced muck
, the room was warm and always smelled good. This was where Janet had always felt safe and cosseted, like a fledgling bird in a cosy nest, but since Ivan’s arrival she’d avoided it entirely because he ate here rather than joining the family for dinner.

This evening she made an exception. Coley rissoles and mashed potato swimming in tomato soup had been the main choice for lunch at work that day. For once her hunger overrode her determination to avoid their Polish lodger, the unwelcome cuckoo in her nest.

Visions of thick slices of homemade bread liberally spread with butter and plum jam lured her across the hall and down the stairs. Smells of something peppery cooking wafted upwards even before she’d opened the door. Not one of Mrs Grey’s usual delicacies, she thought, but perhaps something foreign cooked at Ivan’s request.

Hesitating, she considered her options. Should she control her appetite, retreat and wait for dinner, or follow the dictates of her stomach and barge in?

‘You’re scum! Running scared from the truth!’

Her brother’s voice! He was home unexpectedly from Cambridge again.

The door banged against the wall as she flung it open.

What was this? Geoffrey and Ivan, facing each other, hands flat on the table, stiffly menacing like two bulls about to lock horns.

‘You do not know what you are talking about!’ Ivan growled the words, like a dog just about to sink its teeth into unprotected flesh.

Unmoved, Geoffrey glared at him. ‘Workers of the world unite! That is the creed at the centre of the Communist doctrine. Fairness and equality for all, the dispersal of wealth in fair proportion. That,’ he said, slamming his fist onto the table so that the cups and saucers rattled, ‘is what it is all about!’

With a courage born of necessity, Janet dashed for the stove and turned off the gas beneath the bubbling saucepan. ‘Burnt offerings is what it’s going to be about shortly.’

A treacherous rumble sounded in her stomach in response to the spicy, just slightly burning smell wafting up at her.

Geoffrey and Ivan did not budge. Ivan said, ‘You are an ignorant fool if you really believe that the Soviet Union is not an empire and a greedy giant gobbling up all the small countries around its borders. Thieves, rapists, murderers!’

Janet had never seen such an acrimonious expression on her brother’s face. His eyes were bulging with angry hatred and his lips were pulled back in a menacing leer so that he too looked as if he were going to bite. His voice was as surly as his looks. ‘I’ve been warned about your sort – typical of the fascist pigs that fled Poland when—’

Ivan leapt on him. His hands were around Geoffrey’s throat as they both crashed to the floor. Ivan was on top, Geoffrey flattened beneath him, his face slowly turning puce.

‘No! No! No!’ Janet shrieked like a street girl as she rained blows upon Ivan’s back.

‘Let him go! Let him go, you dirty Pole!’ Ivan loosed his hands, and tried to turn, to get up and escape the rain of angry blows, but couldn’t quite make it.

Geoffrey coughed and, as Ivan got to his feet, now gripping Janet’s wrists, managed to sit up.

Janet’s sudden courage left her. Ivan was too close, too frightening. He was foreign and, although she would never have held that against anyone in the past, she couldn’t help doing so now. ‘Let go of me!’ She struggled and got her wrists out of his grasp. ‘Look what you’ve done,’ she shouted as she helped Geoffrey to his feet. Just as she did so, the kitchen door opened. Tall and elegant in a soft wool dress that was blue in a certain light, but green in others, her mother stood there and, for once, Charlotte’s expression was less than serene.

Silently but emphatically, she looked at each of them in turn. ‘Is anyone going to explain?’

Janet couldn’t stop herself. ‘It was his fault!’ She pointed her finger at Ivan. ‘He almost strangled my brother.’

Charlotte raised her eyebrows in mock surprise. ‘Your brother? I haven’t heard you call him that for years. And as for strangling him …’ She grinned sardonically. ‘There have been
times just lately when the idea has occurred to both me and your father.’

With an undeniable sense of purpose, she pulled a chair out from under the table and sat down. ‘Right,’ she said, her gaze raking over each of them. ‘Who is going to explain why Bedlam erupted in my kitchen?’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Ivan, clicked his heels and bowed his head. Janet presumed he was going to relate exactly what had happened. She couldn’t have been more wrong. ‘I cannot talk about it. Do excuse me.’ He didn’t wait for Charlotte’s reply, but marched smartly out of the room.

Geoffrey slammed himself down on a chair. ‘Bloody rude!’ he said as he rubbed at the redness of his neck. ‘Typical bloody foreigner!’

Grim-faced, Charlotte got up from the chair, slammed the kitchen door shut and leaned against it looking as if she meant business. ‘What is this about?’ She directed her question at Geoffrey.

Geoffrey adopted an air of disdainful indifference. ‘We were talking politics. We disagreed.’

‘Politics!’

Janet jumped. Geoffrey looked surprised. It wasn’t often that Charlotte shouted, but when she did she certainly commanded full attention.

‘Geoffrey, you may talk all the politics you wish at university. You may argue at great length with those with as much experience of the world at large as you, but you do not argue such matters in this house. It is obvious from Ivan’s reaction that you said something to upset him.’

Geoffrey was noticeably indolent. ‘I called him a fascist.’ His mother stared at him in disbelief.

‘Ivan attacked him,’ Janet interjected, for once taking her brother’s side, an infrequent occurrence at the best of times.
Charlotte’s eyes glittered with anger as she looked from son to daughter then back to Geoffrey. ‘I’m not surprised. Do you have any idea of what Ivan and his family suffered during the forties?’

Geoffrey opened his mouth to say something, then, seeing his mother’s steely gaze, changed his mind.

Charlotte went on, ‘Ivan’s family suffered as much under the victors of that war as they did at the hands of the vanquished. But that’s beside the point. I will not have a guest in this house – any guest – assailed by ill-conceived arguments offered by persons of minimal experience. Do I make myself clear?’

Janet had never seen her mother looking so fierce, so ready to defend one of her ‘projects’ against her own family.

Charlotte repeated the question – louder this time. ‘Do I make myself clear?’

Geoffrey was jolted into agreeing, begrudgingly.

Janet’s stomach chose that moment to rumble. Charlotte turned to her. ‘Judging by that noise, I take it you were coming into the kitchen for another reason.’

‘Yes. I was hungry.’

‘Fine. But
you
, Geoffrey, may leave the kitchen.’

She opened the door wide. Smothered in hurt pride, he got up from the chair, raised his eyebrows briefly in Janet’s direction as if to say,
Oh well, better humour the old girl
, then left.

Charlotte, her expression bereft of its usual serenity, then said to Janet, ‘Although you were not involved in this shameful display, I have noticed that you are not as friendly towards Ivan as you should be. Is there any particular reason for this?’

A shiver accompanied another stomach rumble as Janet fought to make the right decision. Should she tell her mother about the man who had pounced on her from out of the
shadows? Should she tell her about the way he smelled, the way he spoke – and what he did to her?

No. No. She could not. Her mother made a career helping people rebuild their lives. How much more sympathy and assistance would she heap onto a member of her own family? Janet would be swamped with affection and not necessarily in the way she wanted. The look of knowing would never disappear from her mother’s eyes. She couldn’t live with it.

‘I can’t help it,’ she blurted.

Her mother eyed her speculatively as though it couldn’t possibly be the truth. Then the moment passed. Charlotte sighed. ‘Well, do your best, Janet. Ivan has a lot of healing to do. We must help him as much as we can.’

After her mother had gone, Janet stood looking out of the window on the garden side of the kitchen. The leaves were turning gold and heavy-headed dahlias flopped forward despite the string and bamboo canes meant to keep them in place. Summer was coming to a close and she was glad. The sooner this year was over and a new one started, the happier she would be. It would be like, she thought, turning to the next chapter of a book, starting a fresh, clean page as yet unread and unsullied by events. But then, she thought, the events in preceding chapters always have a bearing on the present one.