The Rainbow Years (3 page)
Authors: Rita Bradshaw
‘Thank you.’ Bess tried to smile back but it was beyond her. And then as Martha made to leave, Bess caught hold of her arm. Her voice low and urgent, she said, ‘I have to do it, you see, there’s no other way. It’s not as if it’s really a baby yet, is it? It’s not going to feel anything. It’s not really living.’
The silence that fell on them had no movement in it, even the clatter beyond the confines of the toilets seeming dulled. For endless moments the two women stared at each other, one pair of eyes beseeching and the other pitying. Then Martha murmured, ‘Like I said, lass, a day or two an’ it’ll be over.’ Then she turned on her heel and hurried away.
Chapter 2
As things turned out, Martha Todd couldn’t fix up the necessary visit to the old midwife she knew in the East End as quickly as she had promised. The very afternoon of the day Bess confided in her, Martha was involved in an accident at the factory which laid her off work for a while. It was over three weeks later - three weeks in which Bess had nearly gone mad with worry - before the older woman sidled up to Bess on her return to the factory. ‘Saturday afternoon all right for you, lass?’ she whispered out of the side of her mouth. ‘She can do it then.You meet me outside the Boar’s Head in High Street East at two o’clock an’ we’ll go along to Maggie’s.’
Bess had been about to climb the rope up to the cab of the crane she controlled, one of many which moved shells back and forth across the factory floor. She froze, staring at Martha but unable to speak for the relief flooding her. She had been frightened Martha would forget about her. It was only when Martha said, ‘Well, what do you say? You still want it done, don’t you?’ that Bess managed to pull herself together.
‘Aye, aye I do.’ She glanced about her and then up at Kitty who was in the next crane. Lowering her face to Martha’s, she whispered, ‘Will it take long?’
‘Aye, long enough. Good few hours. You’ll have to rest after for a while.’
‘But I see Kitty Saturdays and we go to the pictures in the evening. What’ll I tell her? She’ll have to cover for me.’
Martha shrugged. ‘That’s up to you, lass. Just be there for two. An’ Maggie wants thirty bob for her trouble. Can you manage that?’ She didn’t add that normally the price was a good deal higher but that she had called in a favour.
Bess nodded. ‘Thanks, Martha,’ she said softly.
Martha inclined her head and walked away, and Bess began to climb the rope. The action emphasised the changes in her body which had occurred since she’d last spoken to Martha. The thickening round her stomach and the tingling and fullness in her small breasts was only slight as yet, but she felt her body was reminding her all the time of what was happening. The week for her fourth monthly had come and gone now and, ridiculous though she knew it was, she had prayed like she’d never prayed before that she would see a flow of blood. But of course there’d been nothing.
‘What did she want?’ As Bess reached the cage of the crane, Kitty leaned out of hers. ‘I didn’t know you had any truck with Martha Todd.’
Kitty’s voice revealed she was disgruntled, but Bess knew it wasn’t really because she’d spoken to Martha. The last few weeks she had been so taken up with fear of what would happen if Martha didn’t help her, she knew she’d been a bit short with Kitty. She stared into the plain little face of her friend, envying Kitty with all her heart. Kitty’s chief problem was the spots which assailed her face. ‘I’ll tell you later,’ she said quietly. And then, when Kitty frowned and flounced back into the crane, she added, ‘I’m sorry I haven’t been meself lately, lass, but there is a reason. What say we take our bait outside when the whistle blows and have a talk?’
‘Aye, all right.’ Kitty was instantly mollified. ‘You feeling bad, Bess? You’ve been looking peaky since you had that gyppy belly.’
‘Aye, I don’t feel too good.’ The senna and salts she had taken after Martha had had her accident had scoured her to the point where she’d thought she’d lose all her insides, but still nothing had happened. She had heated the water to near boiling point for her weekly scrub in the old tin bath in front of the kitchen range at home when her parents went for their Friday visit to her brother’s house in Monkwearmouth, swigging the half bottle of gin she had surreptitiously bought on the way home before she’d lowered herself into the scalding water. The gin had made her sick and when she had finally climbed out of the bath she had fainted clean away on the clippy mat in front of the fire, but still she hadn’t had so much as a show.
‘I thought you was still bad.You ought to go and see the doctor, lass.’
‘Aye, maybe. We’ll talk later anyway.’
It was a round-eyed and blatantly horrified Kitty who sat looking at Bess in a corner of the factory compound at lunchtime. They had found a quiet corner near a stack of pallets close to the gates and Bess had told Kitty everything, leaving her friend too stunned to move or speak. Eventually Kitty whispered, ‘The rotten so-an’-so. To do that, to take you down when he was already married. I can’t believe it. He seemed so nice, didn’t he?’
Bess didn’t reply to this. Instead she said, ‘Will you make out I’m with you Saturday as usual? I thought we could say we want to listen to the band in Mowbray Park in the afternoon and that we’d get a pie and chitterlings somewhere before we go to the pictures.That way Mam wouldn’t expect me home for tea. Martha . . . Martha said it could take a while.’
‘Oh, lass.’ Kitty seemed to be on the verge of crying.
With September’s coming, the weather had changed. The fierce heatwave in August had broken on the very last day of the month, and September had been heralded with thunderstorms and lashing rain before settling into a cold windy month. Bess shivered and pulled her old coat tighter round her neck, her face white and pinched. ‘We’d better go in, it’s too cold out here,’ she said, making no effort to move.
‘Don’t worry, lass.’ Kitty leaned forward and took Bess’s hands. ‘I’m coming with you Saturday and if we’re late back I’ll say you were took bad in the pictures or something. It’ll work out.’
Bess felt as though she wanted to sag at the gentleness of Kitty’s tone but the tight rein she had kept on herself since the moment she had read Christopher’s brother’s letter prevented it. She dropped her head before saying, ‘You don’t have to come. You could go to your Elsie’s if you want and I’ll call for you there.’
‘I’m coming.’ And then, her tone uncertain, Kitty added, ‘If you want me to, that is.’
‘Course I want you to.’ Bess’s head rose and she regarded Kitty steadily. ‘But it might be . . .’ She couldn’t find a word to express what she wanted to say. ‘You’re squeamish, you know you are,’ she said quietly. ‘You can’t stand the sight of blood. Look how you passed out when Nora Gibson lost an eye.’
‘That was different, that was an accident.’
‘But I don’t know what this Maggie woman is going to do or how I’ll feel after.’
‘All the more reason for me to come with you, surely?’ And then Kitty settled the matter when she said, ‘You’d do the same for me, lass, now then, so don’t argue. I’m coming and that’s that.’ She squeezed Bess’s hands hard before rising to her feet and brushing the crumbs of the sandwiches she’d eaten off her coat. ‘And I won’t faint,’ she said matter-offactly. ‘I’ll keep me mam’s smelling salts handy. They’re awful, like cat’s pee.’
Kitty was a staunch Catholic like most of the folk in their street but she hadn’t said that what Bess was going to do was a mortal sin or attempted to talk her out of it.As Bess followed her friend back into the noisy, stinking factory building, the acrid odour of explosives thick in the air, she was aware of a deep feeling of gratitude. But then Kitty knew exactly what her da was like . . .
Muriel Shawe’s somewhat flat face was deadpan as she placed a large plateful of fried bread and bacon in front of her husband, but as ever her mind was working furiously. All over the country people were enduring ‘meatless’ days and cutting down on the consumption of bread due to the soaring cost of flour, but was Wilbur prepared to do his bit? Was he heck.
She returned to the kitchen range, took the big black kettle off the fire and filled the brown teapot with its two spoonfuls of tea. Once the tea had mashed she poured a large mugful for her husband, adding two heaped teaspoons of sugar and stirring it before she put the pint-size mug in front of his plate.
Wilbur did not acknowledge or thank her - and Muriel did not expect him to - he merely continued to devour his breakfast.
For a moment as Muriel stared down at the bent head, at the rich brown curly hair which was as thick as it had been on the first day she had met him some twenty-five years before, she felt a repugnance so fierce her lips pulled back from her teeth with the force of it. But almost immediately she schooled her face into its habitual blankness. As much as Wilbur filled her with loathing, the fear he inspired was stronger.
She returned to the range and fished out the two remaining rashers of bacon from the massive frying pan, placing them on two plates which already held a slice of bread and butter each, cut thin. She put these on the table and then walked to the kitchen door which was ajar, looking up the stairs as she called, ‘Bess, lass, it’s on the table.’
‘Leave her.’ Wilbur didn’t pause in shovelling food into his mouth, morsels dropping onto his plate as he spoke. ‘She knows what time breakfast is; if she can’t be bothered to come and eat, she can go without.’ He picked up his mug of tea, took a mouthful and then growled, ‘Like dishwater, this is.’
Muriel didn’t answer him. Rationing was beginning to bite and he was fully aware of this but he still had to have his gripe every morning. She sat down at the table but didn’t begin to eat until he shot her a glance, saying, ‘Well? What are you waiting for? I’ve told you, if she’s not down in a couple of minutes the table’ll be cleared.’
Why had she ever married him? It was not a new thought and as ever the answer was because he had been big and handsome and he had asked for her.
She had been working sixteen hours a day as a kitchen-maid at a big house Whitburn way, and had met Wilbur on one of her half-days off a month. She and one of the parlourmaids had taken a walk down to Holey Rock on Roker beach, and Wilbur had been watching a group of lads play football. She had barely known him when they had wed - one half-day a month was not conducive to any form of closeness. He had seemed a quiet, withdrawn sort of man but this hadn’t worried her at the time. Not until after her wedding had she learned that his solitariness hid a brutish unnatural streak which had made her wedding night, and all the nights following it, a time of terror.
At first she’d tried to tell herself that being orphaned at an early age and brought up in the workhouse, he’d never known what tenderness or affection was. He had no family, no friends - she would be everything to him and show him nothing but care and consideration. This thinking had lasted a few months until, after a night of such degradation and bestiality she hadn’t thought she’d survive it, she had run home to her mother in Monkwearmouth. She hadn’t been able to bring herself to tell her mother exactly what was wrong and Wilbur had come for her within the hour anyway. They had left with her mother’s admonition that she was a married woman now and under her husband’s authority ringing in her ears. Then had come a respite because within the month she’d discovered she was expecting a child and he hadn’t come near her for the whole nine months she had carried their son. After that she had prayed every day she would get pregnant again soon, but it had been eight years before she had fallen for Bess.
As though the thought of her daughter had summoned Bess down, Muriel heard measured footsteps on the stairs. The slow gait brought the worry she had been feeling for weeks to the forefront of her mind again. The time was, and not so long ago either, the lass would have been down those stairs like a dose of salts even knowing Wilbur hadn’t yet left for work. There was something wrong with Bess. She’d lost her sparkle, the liveliness which had characterised her from a little bairn, but every time she tried to find out what was wrong, Bess would have none of it.
‘Hello, hinny.’ Muriel’s voice was soft as her daughter walked into the kitchen. ‘Come an’ have a bite before we start on the range.’ Every Saturday morning they cleaned and blackleaded the kitchen range together, larking on like a couple of bairns on occasion. But there had been none of that lately. Her voice softer still, Muriel said, ‘Shall I pour you a sup, lass?’
‘For crying out loud!’There was a harsh scraping as Wilbur pushed his chair back on the flagstones and stood up. ‘She can do it herself, can’t she? Getting above herself, she is, and you’re to blame. You,’ he spoke directly to Bess now, ‘your back stick to the bed, did it? And look at me when I’m speaking to you.’
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