Tara (24 page)

Amy was never sure how she felt about her mother. Love and hate, fear and affection were all mixed together and at different times each one struggled for supremacy. She accepted having to hand over her entire wages each week, yet she resented never being allowed to have any fun. She still felt bitter about her terrifying experiences during the Blitz, although she understood her mother had been through some kind of breakdown.

The girls at work said she should pack her bags and leave. Neighbours said she should stand up for herself. But Amy's compliance was partly due to the belief that, now the War was over, Mother would put aside her religious fervour and regain her old personality.

She went off to bed then, glad to be alone so she could dream about Bill. She had fallen in love with him completely and he with her, and every moment away from him was torture. Just lying in bed thinking about him made her pulse race and a hot flush creep all over her body. He was twenty-five, and experienced with women, yet despite his background he was a gentleman. Not once had he tried on anything that frightened or embarrassed her. The truth was that if an opportunity arose where they could be alone, somewhere warm, then she knew that it would be she who would forget herself. Only tonight he had slid his hand inside her blouse while they were kissing. As his fingers squeezed her nipple she found herself pressing hard to him, understanding perfectly well what that hard lump in his trousers was, even though no-one had ever explained such things to her.

They had written to each other secretly for almost a year while Bill was in Germany. During that time Bill urged her continuously to tell her mother the truth and prepare her for when he was demobbed.

It was late November in 1946 when he finally came home and she remembered so well that reconciliation when he took her to see
Gone with the Wind.

'I'm coming round tomorrow night, when you get back from church,' he insisted. 'I didn't come through fighting the Japs just to cower before your mother, Amy. I love you. I want to marry you. Where's the shame in that?'

But Bill didn't know what her mother was like. She saw all men as representatives of the devil, ready to draw girls into evil. She even seemed to have forgotten she ever loved her husband.

In church on Sunday evening Amy offered up frantic prayers for support when Bill arrived. They had only been indoors long enough for Amy to rake the fire into life again and put the kettle on when the knock came on the front door.

'Who on earth can that be?' her mother snapped, getting up from her armchair. Amy froze in the kitchen, praying silently. She heard the heavy wool curtain swish back, the bolts drawn and the door creak open.

'Good evening, Mrs Randall,' she heard Bill say. 'I'm a friend of Amy's. Might I have a word with you?'

Amy took a peep round the door, her heart in her mouth and her legs turning to jelly. Bill was wearing his dark grey demob suit and a striped tie, his hair neatly slicked down.

'Amy?' Mabel turned towards her daughter with a look of consternation. 'Do you know this man?'

Amy patted her hair and took a deep breath.

'Yes, mother, this is Bill MacDonald, he called on Mr Cohen the other day.'

Bill's lips were set in a strained smile, and he held out a bunch of chrysanthemums.

'These are for you, Mrs Randall. I wanted your permission to ask your daughter out.'

If Amy hadn't been so frightened she might have laughed at Bill's demeanour. He was speaking correctly as if born to it, the polite, slightly servile smile more in keeping with a man in a hatter's than a tough docker's son from Limehouse just out of the Army. Mabel took the flowers and opened the door wider.

'You'd better come in.'

Amy quickly made the tea, adding another cup for Bill, but her hands shook so much the tray rattled as she carried it in.

Bill made the parlour seem tiny. He looked even bigger in a suit than in his uniform. The wide reveres made his shoulders huge, his white shirt accentuated his golden skin and his neat moustache added a note of distinction to his fine bone structure. He stood awkwardly, twisting the brim of his hat in his hands.

'Take Amy out?' Mabel sat down heavily by the fire. 'She's much too young for that.'

'She's sixteen.' Bill shrugged his shoulders and his easy smile showed perfect white teeth. 'My mother was married then.'

'Sit down,' Amy whispered to him, guessing her mother would never suggest it. Bill sat on the edge of the couch.

'I've just been demobbed,' he said. 'I'm taking a job as a motor mechanic, starting tomorrow.'

'How old are you?' Mabel spun round in her seat, fixing her eyes on Bill.

'Twenty-five.' He smiled warmly, dark eyes fixed on her mother's face. 'I wouldn't keep her out late or give you anything to worry about.'

A chilling silence fell. Amy poured the tea and passed it round, guessing what her mother was thinking. Why hadn't Amy said something about this young man? Why the haste to call on her at home?

Bill's hands looked too big for the dainty cup. He held it awkwardly, but kept his eyes resolutely on her mother.

'Please, Mum,' Amy whispered.

Still no answer. Mabel's mouth was pursed and her back stiff with disapproval.

Bill was shocked. He had prepared himself for a frail old lady, imagined himself overcoming her resistance with charm and chatter. But Mrs Randall was an attractive woman who didn't look a day over forty, despite her black clothes and her hair scraped back off her face. Those strange amber eyes worried him, though, they were studying him minutely, and he felt she'd already decided he was lower than a cockroach. His eyes wandered to the black draped photograph of her husband in uniform.

'I'm so sorry about your husband. The War took a great many good men. My brother was killed at Dunkirk, too. I know how you must feel.'

For a moment Amy thought Bill had found the right opener, his remark was so kind and sincere it was bound to touch her mother's heart.

Mabel turned her head slowly towards him, studying his face intently.

'Get out, you snake in the grass,' she hissed suddenly. 'I don't need to be patronised. I know what you're after.'

Bill's face turned pale. 'I'm not after anything, I just want to take Amy out.'

'Don't use that tone with me,' Mabel screeched. 'My daughter will not be going out with anyone.'

'Mum, please.' Amy dropped on to the floor in front of her mother's chair and grasped her hands. 'I want to see Bill, but I want it with your blessing.'

'You hussy,' Mabel dragged her hand from under Amy's and slapped her hard across the face. 'How long has this been going on?'

'Don't hit her!' Bill was on his feet instantly, knocking his tea on to the floor in his haste. 'I only came back from Germany last week, we've done nothing to be ashamed of.'

Amy moved back from her mother in horror, holding a hand over her stinging face. Mabel's eyes blazed insanely, the corners of her mouth twitching as if she were possessed. Had Amy seen sadness or fear she might have felt sympathy, but instead all that sprang to her mind was how much misery this woman had put her through.

'I will go out with Bill,' she shouted. 'If I'm old enough to work, then I'm old enough to choose my friends. I'm not going to stay here alone with you and end up an old maid.'

Bill instinctively put his arm round Amy, drawing her away from Mabel as she rose from her chair in fury.

'A guttersnipe, that's what he is! To think the Lord spared him instead of my Arthur. Don't you know what this is, child? The devil come to tempt you! Get him out of this house now!'

'I was good enough to fight for my country, surely I'm good enough for your daughter.' Bill took a step towards the older woman, his voice cold. 'If you are refusing to let me court her, then I'll take her with me now.'

Mabel raised her hand as if to strike him.

'I'd kill her sooner than let her leave with you!'

'Go and get your things, Amy,' Bill said quietly. 'I'll take you to Ma, she'll welcome you.'

Amy hesitated. She knew if she backed down to her mother now she'd never win at anything, but in the same instant she was afraid.

Upstairs she threw everything she owned into a bag as fast as she could. Her mother's voice rose up the stairs, shrill and hate-laden. Grabbing the bag, she ran down the stairs, snatching her coat and hat from the peg in the hall.

'If you go now, you can never come back,' Mabel screamed like a harpy behind them as Bill hurried Amy down the dark street. 'You've made your bed, my girl, now lie in it.'

'Tell me, Mum?' Tara took her mother's hands in hers and squeezed them. 'Tell me what's making you cry?'

Amy looked like a child as she lay in the chair, sobbing. She was rubbing her eyes with her fists, angry rather than grief-stricken. Instinct told Tara that some memory from the distant past had caused this outbreak.

Harry had returned to his work behind her on the porch, laying bricks so fast it was obvious he felt awkward. She could hear Gran shouting some instructions to Stan out in the yard and willed her not to come round and interrupt.

'Tell me, Mum?' she whispered. 'Don't keep it in!'

'She was so mean to Bill,' Amy whispered. 'If it hadn't been for her forcing me to leave, things might have been different.'

'It's all so long ago.' Tara tried to jolly her along. 'Does it matter now?'

'No, nothing matters now,' Amy sobbed. 'I had happiness in the palm of my hand for such a short while, but it's gone now, and I'll never feel that way again.'

Chapter 11

Mabel and Tara were convinced that the morning's events were a major breakthrough. Although Amy had scuttled off into the house later and stayed in her room for several hours, at tea-time she had reappeared looking much more relaxed. After the evening meal she got up and cleared the table without any prompting, and she'd even asked questions about Betsy and a litter of pigs.

It seemed to Amy as if she was waking from a long, deep sleep. For weeks now she'd been aware of little more than heat and cold, but now pain hit her from every direction. It was like watching her life on Pathe News at the cinema. Every unpleasant incident, each mistake, misjudgment, wrong turning – they were all there, larger than life, faithfully recorded.

With hindsight she could see now that she alone was responsible for how things turned out. By allowing both her mother and Bill to manipulate her that night in '46, she had blindly stumbled into the world which Bill himself was so anxious to escape. She forced herself to relive every moment of that evening and the events which followed, knowing that until she did so she couldn't make sense of the present.

'I don't think I should trouble your parents,' she said weakly as she and Bill made their way down to Limehouse that Sunday night. The icy wind whipped through her thin coat and she had to hold on to her hat and trot to keep up with Bill. 'Couldn't I just get a room somewhere instead?'

She only had five shillings, but that was enough until she got paid on Friday.

'I'm not taking the risk of letting you stay in one of those places.' Bill glanced up at a sign saying 'Room to let' on a dismal house in Cable Street. He lifted her bag under one arm and put his free one round her shoulder. 'They're full of sailors, dockers and brass. A pretty little thing like you wouldn't last five minutes there. Our place is grim, but at least you won't come to no harm.'

She wanted to ask him to take her to Flossie's house but the grim set of his chin deterred her and instead she let him take her further and further into the area which she knew only by its grim reputation. Street lighting was almost non-existent and again and again she almost slipped on foul-smelling refuse and muck. Children were playing in the shells of bomb-damaged houses, despite the dark and cold. Skeletal dogs barked warnings, raucous laughter spilled from pubs, and the fog sirens from boats on the river added to the sense of danger.

Bill appeared not to notice any of this; he even waved cheerfully to a couple of blowsy-looking women huddled outside an eel and pie shop.

'Hitler had more respect for his bombs than to drop one here!' he joked as they approached his home.

It was like catching a glimpse of the end of the world. A wasteland lay before them – pits full of slimy water, uncleared rubble from bombed buildings and piles of stinking rubbish. Grafton Buildings lay just beyond this morass, one of four tenements left standing where once were twelve. A lone gaslight illuminated the central spiral staircase that led to a rabbit-warren of flats. Amy's heart was sinking even though Bill kept her hand in his.

'I know it's horrible,' he said. 'This is why I want to get out of London. But it's only for a couple of nights till I can find you something else.'

Amy barely breathed as he led her up the dark staircase. She could smell the shared lavatory on each landing as they approached, and that was enough. It was so noisy, too! Sunday night, but there were babies screaming, women shouting, a drunk yelling abuse and a group of small boys firing their catapults at milk-bottles down on the waste ground.

The front door was almost off its hinges, as if it had been kicked in, and it led straight into a living room which doubled as a kitchen. There was no rug on the floor, dirty brown paint peeled off walls and ceiling and the only furniture was a rickety table, two stools and two armchairs greasy with age. The cooker was an ancient, rusting range with socks and underpants hanging from string above it to dry. Amy took in the sink full of blackened pots, the table strewn with the remains of a meal and the cracked lino and almost ran straight out.

'I'm sorry, luv.' Bill took her in his arms and kissed her. 'I know it's not what you're used to.'

Amy knew that her own home was far superior to most in East London and she hadn't expected the same standard here. But this place was like a hovel.

'Where are your parents?' Amy looked around fearfully.

'Down the boozer.' He shrugged his shoulders. 'They'll be back soon. You can sleep in my bed, I'll kip down in here.'