Family of Women (28 page)

Rosina.

Linda didn’t notice Rosina until they got right outside.

Everyone was milling about, lighting cigarettes, talking and laughing like children let out of school, amid the whirl of confetti scattered by Joyce’s workmates.

‘Who’s that?’ Carol nudged her.

The woman in the peach hat and dress had collared Violet and pulled her away from the rest of the group.

Linda shrugged. But there was something about the stranger that drew her attention. She seemed familiar, yet Linda knew she didn’t know her. The woman was holding Violet’s upper arm as if to stop her moving away, and talking urgently. Linda saw her mother nodding in a bewildered way and then as the peach-dress woman started to pull back, Violet made a sharp movement to stop her. All this only took a few seconds and it was only then that anyone else began to notice.

‘Who’s that?’ she heard Bessie say behind her. ‘Someone come to see Violet. Looks posh. Fancy barging in in the middle of all . . .’

‘That’s Rosina,’ Marigold’s flat voice pronounced.

‘Ros . . . No! Don’t be so bloody silly, Marigold.’

‘ ’Tis. It’s Rosy.’

‘It’s never . . . Is it?’

But the woman leaned forward, swiftly kissed Violet on the cheek and hurried away along the road on her high, white heels. She seemed almost about to break into a run. Violet stood staring after her, a hand up to her cheek.

‘Vi?’ Bessie shoved through the other guests to where Violet was standing by the road. Linda followed. ‘Who was that? Was that Rosina?’

Violet turned. Her eyes were full of tears. ‘She wanted to come. But she wouldn’t stay. I wish she’d stay . . .’

‘Well, what’s she playing at?’ Bessie erupted, red-faced. She threw down her cigarette and ground at it with her heel. ‘Go after her and make her come back! Swanning in and out like that after seventeen years! Not a word to her mother. What the hell did she have to say for herself?’

‘Not much . . .’ Violet was weeping now, in shock and disappointment. ‘I want her to be here – to see her . . .’

‘Little bitch! I’d like to get her here and put her over my knee. You should’ve got her and made her stay. There’s a few things I’d say to her, I can tell you. She always was a selfish little cow!’ Bessie’s raging started to filter through to everyone else and they went quiet. Joyce came hurrying over.

‘Nan!’ she hissed, mortified. ‘Stop shouting – everyone’s staring. What’s going on?’

‘I’ll tell you what’s going on. That . . . that trollop mincing off down the road there were your auntie Rosina, looking down her nose at us and then taking off as if she was royalty and too good for us. Wants a good hiding, that she does.’

God, Nana,
shut up
, Linda thought, mortified. Making all this carry-on at Joyce’s wedding!

‘Nan, please,’ Joyce begged. ‘Leave it. Everyone’s staring at you.’

Bessie wheeled round to face everyone on the steps. ‘Go on then – have a good look. That’s it – walk away. See you down the pub, you bloody miserable lot!’

‘Stop it!’ Joyce wailed. ‘You’re spoiling my wedding. Just stop it!’

‘Mom,’ Violet begged, wiping her eyes. ‘Don’t keep on. It’s no good. Rosy’s gone. Don’t let her spoil Joyce’s wedding. Not after all this time.’

Bessie quietened and sank down on to the low wall. E P@k. For a moment she looked frail. ‘She’s upset me, that’s all, turning up like that, ungrateful little bitch.’

Everyone else, unperturbed by Bessie’s outburst, was moving along the road towards the pub.

‘I must go and get Harry!’ Violet said, gathering her wits.

‘Mom – ’ Linda hurried after her, sorry for her. She felt different about everything, just today. Able to forget her own feelings. Mom never said how much she missed Rosina, but Linda could tell. ‘Mr Rodgers’s taken Dad home, remember? And your mascara’s smudged.’

‘Oh – ’ Violet stopped on the steps and fished out her hanky. ‘Is Carol all right? I feel all shaken up.’

‘What did she say? Auntie Rosina? How did she know about the wedding?’

‘I wrote to her. Just dropped her a line. It was when I wrote to Muriel telling her about Joyce, as if
she
was my sister. I just thought Rosy should know. And she’d sent her address this time. I thought she might want to know us again. And she came up all this way . . .’ Violet shook her head, sadly.

They reached Carol, who was waiting by the church door. Violet laid her arm round Carol’s shoulders and in that absent-minded gesture Linda saw another of those unguarded moments of devotion, of something only Carol brought out in her.

‘She just said, “I wanted to come but I can’t . . .!” ’ Violet said. ‘Something about not being able to face it. It was all so quick and then she went off. It’s made me feel peculiar seeing her.’

‘Mom – ’ Joyce came flaming up to them, all upset. ‘Nana’s spoilt it – she’s spoilt everything!’

But Danny was close behind.

‘Don’t talk daft.’ He put his arm round her waist and gestured at everyone strolling off along the road. ‘They don’t look bothered, do they? Come on, wench – Mrs Rodgers! Our dad’s waiting in the car.’

He squeezed her close and kissed her ear, and Joyce softened and giggled.

‘Danny! Gerroff!’

The two of them went off down the steps arm in arm and Violet managed a smile.

‘Look at them – least they’re all right, anyway.’

That night, Linda couldn’t sleep. She lay in bed, just able to hear Carol’s breathing in the other bed. No Joyce next door now, of course. She and Danny were off for a few days by the sea before moving into the tiny flat above Mr Rodgers’ garage, where Danny worked.

There were no sounds from next door. When they got home, after the celebrations in the pub, Dad had been asleep in his chair, flaked out and grey in the face. Linda noticed her mom’s face alter as she saw him, that thought that went through her head from time to time, wondering if he was em" Pstill with them, if the wedding had been the end of him. But he woke and managed a bowl of chicken soup.

Linda could feel Sooty, a warm, reassuring bundle curled up by her feet. She needed comfort. Soon after they got home her monthly period had started – thank goodness not in the middle of the wedding! She lay with the thick Dr White’s pad between her legs and gripes low in her belly. She felt fragile and emotional. Not that it hadn’t been a good day. They’d celebrated with Joyce and Danny, and things in the family had been more or less all right. Linda felt for once that she hadn’t been out on a limb, angry and misunderstood the way she normally felt these days. She knew how difficult things were for Mom, what with Dad and Carol, and she’d wanted to do her best to help. And for all that she and Joyce had never been close, she could see that she and Danny made each other happy.

But then Auntie Rosina turning up had upset Mom. Pleased her in a way too, but brought out a lot of emotion. And the wedding ceremony itself came back to her now, all the feelings that had swept over her as Joyce and Danny made their vows, then swept in triumph out of the church.

There’d been that moment as they turned, just married, Joyce’s cheeks flushed pink. She looked pretty, Linda could see. The prettiest she had ever looked. But all she could feel herself was a stony sensation in her chest.

She’s done it, Linda thought, she’s done the right thing – the thing every woman is supposed to do. As everyone went ‘Aaah’, all she could see was a vision of how Joyce’s life would be, mapped out in children and meals and Monday washes and hanging Danny’s socks out until she was old like Nana, sighing with memories at the weddings of her grandchildren. And this ought to have seemed a happy thing, yet it made her sink inside with dread at the inevitable vision in front of her.

I don’t want that
, she was thinking.
I don’t, I don’t
. . . Yet what else was there? Being old and a spinster like Marigold, or funny Miss Turpitt who lived a few houses down and talked to the starlings and pigeons in the garden as if they were her family?

And what else was there to want, anyhow? Her years at the secondary modern had brought no satisfaction. The lessons were too easy and she couldn’t be bothered any more. She felt like a misfit, and became lethargic, sullen. What was the point of anything? If you stepped out of where you belonged you ended up like Johnny Vetch, in and out of the mental hospital.

The organ had started up and Carol was tugging on her arm, smiling up at her. ‘Wakey, wakey,’ she whispered. ‘Daydreaming again!’

As they turned to walk back down the aisle to the last hymn, her father looked ashen and exhausted from the effort of it all and he didn’
t stand up. He was watching the couple with a haunted expression, and she saw tears running down her mom’s cheeks and a soft smile on Bessie’s plump face.

Outside, Linda found herself next to her grandmother and Marigold. Bessie’s breathing was laboured just from walking out of the church, her lungs giving off a sound like rustling paper. Linda watched as her eyes followed Joyce and Danny, both laughing as their friends threw confetti.

‘I’m s’posed to thsqu Pqo row my flowers, aren’t I?’ Joyce cried. ‘Come on, you lot – who’s going to catch ’em?’

Bessie gave a low laugh. Soppy face, Linda thought, watching her. She was filled with a swelling sense of loathing, of panic. Look at her stupid, soppy face!

Bessie turned to her, watery-eyed.

‘Well, I s’pose you’re next on the list?’

And for a moment she wanted to run and run and never come back.

But lying here now, there was a weariness, a surrender, as if all her dreams were ashes and might just as well be. What did it matter? She had thought she might have a different sort of life, but she was cut out to be just like anyone else after all. This was her last term at school, and then she’d go to work in some firm or shop, meet some factory Jack, marry and settle down and that was that.

All right, she thought, her foot pressed against Sooty’s warm shape. If that’s what they want, they can have it.

Linda ambled home from school along Bandywood Road, not in any special hurry to get there. Home, school, what was the difference? She felt numb about all of it, the days drifting by, always the same. She’d tried a bit, at the beginning, when she first went to the secondary modern, but not now. Mostly she felt as if her head was full of scraps of soggy paper. And at home, Dad was always ill and there was nothing to look forward to.

Along the street, gardens were in full bloom with lilacs and beds full of pansies and marigolds, phlox and lupins. Bandy Woods used to be just that – woods. But the estate was more than twenty years old now and the gardens were maturing, trees softening the lines of the houses. Most of them were still draped with streamers of coloured bunting.

She always walked part of the way with Maureen, but she’d turned off for home now. Maureen was a slow, spotty girl, but the one person who seemed prepared to hang around with her. The others thought Linda was stuck up. She’d known a lot of them at the elementary school, but she never seemed to fit in. Maureen Lister, though, was glad just to be anyone’s friend. Linda had been like that with Lucy, at the grammar school: honoured to be her friend.

It hurt, remembering Lucy. On that last day at King Edward’s, on the bus home, she’d handed Linda a little parcel. Inside was a book with a red cover, with ‘Autographs’ embossed in curling gold script. It had pink and yellow pages and inside, Lucy had written:

Roses are red, violets are blue,

Sugar is sweet, and so are you.

Best Friends forever – Love from Lucy xx

>It Qiving offh; wo/p>

‘I’ll get you a present,’ she managed to croak.

‘No – you don’t need to,’ Lucy said in her earnest way.

And Linda saw she was being kind because she knew Linda’s family hadn’t got much money, and she felt even worse. She looked at Lucy’s pale, kind face and barley-coloured hair and saw what she had always known deep down: that Lucy
belonged
in the grammar school in a way Linda never had and never could. That was what Nana had always said, wasn’t it? Not for the likes of us. Getting above herself, fancy ideas. And if you had fancy ideas, there was punishment waiting at the end of it. That was what her life felt like now – a punishment, with the lessons that never fired her with enthusiasm, and nothing about that school feeling right. And Dad was sick all the time now – really sick. Past getting drunk.

Linda dawdled into Bloomsbury Road. Just round the corner a man was up a ladder, taking down more bunting from a telegraph pole.

‘Load of bloody fuss that was, weren’t it?’ he called down chirpily. ‘Still – all over now.’

Linda didn’t answer, nor did he seem to expect her to. The new queen had just been crowned and Coronation fever had set in all over town, infecting every street with the urge to have parties to celebrate. The occupants of Bloomsbury Road shared out the jobs – who was to set up tables, or make jelly, or ham sandwiches or cake. At least eggs were off the ration now. Violet was talking about getting chickens but hadn’t done it. Sugar was still rationed though.

Grass was mowed and the gardens trimmed and watered. The Martins’ garden at number 18 was still the one to disgrace the street. Even though grass was sprouting in the old bald spot where Harry’s bike had stood for so long, the specimens in the front garden were not the pretty flowers of the neighbouring ones ( Joe Kaminski was growing flowers between the vegetables now), but groundsel, dandelions and quitch grass.

‘It looks a right mess,’ Violet said, staring helplessly at it. ‘I ought to clear it up . . .’ But they knew she wouldn’t. She was too bowed down by everything else, and didn’t even know where to begin.

A week before the great event, Eva Kaminski reported that a Rumbelows van had drawn up outside and two men carried a television into the Bottoms’ house. Reg Bottoms had kept mighty quiet about it though. There was another family at the far end of the road who had a television, with the tell-tale H-shaped aerial on the roof, and it was a magnet for all the kids, who they generously invited in for
The Flowerpot Men
and
Rag, Tag and Bobtail
on
Watch with Mother
, but Mr Bottoms didn’t want the neighbourhood traipsing into
his
house. The little drama of the television unfolded as the week went past. Linda was home in the afternoons when her mom came in from work and Eva came trotting round to report from the front line.