Under the Apple Tree (44 page)

when a sound of swishing water made them all look round

that she remembered he was there, presumably .peeling

potatoes. Her hand to her mouth, she went swiftly out and

brought him through.

‘This is Joe Turner,’ she announced to her bewildered

sister and brother-in-law. ‘He - he popped down to see me.

From London.’ She could feel her face flooding with scarlet.

‘We ran into each other when I went up with the Mayoress

that time.’

‘Popped in?’ Dick echoed, his glance taking in Joe’s

rolled-up sleeves and the potato peeler in his hand. ‘From London? But what the flipping heck is he doing in our scullery?’

‘I was just helping with the dinner,’ Joe explained. ‘Poll

told me about your lad - I thought I’d give a bit of a hand.

But you don’t want me now, I can see that. Right, I’ll be

off’ He looked at Polly. ‘Some other time, eh?’

She stared at him, distressed, and then turned to Cissie. ‘I

asked him to stop for a bite to eat, him having come all that

way. But now …’

‘It don’t matter,’ Joe said, shrugging into the jacket he’d

slipped off when he began work. ‘I can see you’re in trouble.

I just wanted to help, but if there’s nothing else I can

do …’

‘No,’ Dick said, his eyes hard and suspicious. ‘There

isn’t.’

The women looked at him in surprise. Polly flushed

again, and began, ‘There’s no need—’ but Cissie interrupted

her.

‘Wait a mo.’ She looked at Joe. ‘It’s a lot to ask, but if you

really wouldn’t mind … It’s our Judy - my daughter. She’s

out in the country, and we don’t know if she’s heard about

the ship. You see, she’s deaf.’

He nodded. ‘I know. Polly told me.’

‘Well, we ought to let her know. I meant to send a

telegram while we were out, but we went to see Jean first

and then when she told us about her trouble -‘ Cissie

coloured, embarrassed first by the trouble itself and then by

the realisation that Joe must have heard her blurt it out,

‘well, it went right out of my mind. But if you wouldn’t

mind doing that for us, I’d be really grateful. I’ll give you

the money,’ she added, reaching for her purse.

‘Don’t you worry about that,’ Joe said. ‘And I tell you

what, I won’t send a telegram - I’ll go out there meself, on

the train. I dare say she’ll want to come home, and she’ll

need someone with her, ‘specially with her being deaf and

all.’ He looked at Polly. ‘Ashwood, isn’t it? Give me her

address and I’ll go straight away.’

‘Oh, but you can’t,’ Polly began, glancing from him to

Dick, who was still looking unfriendly.

‘Don’t see why not. You write out a note for her, so she knows I’m kosher. Look, I got nothing else to do. And don’t

worry about the fare, we’ll sort all that out after. The main

thing is to let her know what’s happened and see what she

wants to do.’ He buttoned his jacket and found the cap he’d

been wearing, while Polly scribbled a hasty note. She

handed it to him and he held her hand for a brief second, his

eyes meeting hers. ‘Don’t you worry, Poll,’ he said quietly.

‘She’ll be all right with me.’

The door closed behind him and they all stared at each

other. Dick sat down heavily beside his wife and Polly sank

back into the armchair.

‘Well!’ he said. ‘And who was that, might I ask? Coming

in here, taking over, saying what’s to be done and all. Well,

Polly?’

‘You needn’t look at me as if I’d done something wrong,

Dick Taylor,’ she said with asperity. ‘Joe’s a decent man.

His sister’s Cook at the WVS Headquarters in London—’

‘I don’t care if his sister’s the Queen of England,’ Dick

broke in. ‘What I want to know is, who is he, and what’s he

doing here in my house?’

‘My mother’s house,’ Polly reminded him sharply, getting

to her feet. ‘Just because you’re Cissie’s husband …’

‘Look, I may not be much cop as far as you’re concerned,

but I’m the man around here and I’m head of the family!’

Dick’s voice rose. ‘And I don’t much like coming home and

finding some other bloke what I’ve never seen before nor

heard of, making free with my kitchen - all right, your mother’s kitchen. I don’t say there’s anything wrong with the bloke, I don’t say that, I just don’t like it, that’s all.

‘Specially when we got our own private family business to

talk about. You don’t know what he might have heard

before we knew he was out there. And now he’s gone off to

fetch our Judy from the country, for all the world as if he’s

one of the family himself. It’s all too quick, that’s what it is, and I don’t like it.’

‘Dick,’ Cissie begged, ‘don’t upset yourself She cast an anxious glance towards Polly. ‘You know what he’s like

when he gets upset.’

Polly bit her lip and sat down again. She knew very well

what happened when Dick got upset. He didn’t lose his

temper often, but he could blow up quite unpredictably, and

then he would be quite unreasonable, keeping a row going

for hours and only ending it with an asthma attack. Over the

years, they had all grown accustomed to fending off any

situation which might cause an outbreak, but the present

troubles were too great to be ignored.

‘Let’s forget about Joe,’ she said quietly. ‘He’s a decent

man and he just wants to help. I’ll tell you about him later,

but we’ve-got other things to worry about now. Tell me

about Jean. Is it true what you said? Is she really expecting?’

Cissie nodded miserably. ‘She said it happened the last

night he was on leave at Christmas. You know he stopped

over at their house because they were out late. She said they

just couldn’t help it. He was going away, and they didn’t

know when they might see each other again, and they

wanted to get engaged - they wanted to get married but

there wasn’t time. And they were there in her mum’s front

room, saying goodnight, and everyone else had gone to bed

and - and …’ She started to cry and Dick’s hand moved on

her shoulder. ‘Oh Polly, it was just the once, she swears it

was just the once.’

‘But once is enough,’ Dick said grimly. ‘And you can

guess who did the leading on.’

‘Dick, we don’t know that.’

‘Don’t we? Look, our Terry was a decent boy. We always

brought him up to know right from wrong same as we did

our Judy, and when he went off to join the Army I had a

talk with him. Keep yourself decent, I told him, and you’ll

never have no trouble. I know what it’s like when these

young chaps get off in a gang in foreign parts. There’s a lot

of temptation and—’

‘But Terry wasn’t in foreign parts,’ Polly said. ‘He was home with Jean.’

Dick glared at her and she remembered suddenly that he

was fifteen years older than she, and had known her as a

little girl. Perhaps he still thought of her that way. ‘There’s no need to get clever, Polly,’ he said heavily. ‘The facts

speak for themselves. Our Terry’s dead, and young Jean

Foster’s carrying his baby, and it don’t matter which way

round you look at it, they been daft and done wrong, both of

them. But I know what it’s like to be a young bloke going off

to war, and I know it don’t take much to—’ He closed his

mouth abruptly. ‘Well, never you mind. I just know it

wasn’t all our Terry’s fault, that’s all.’

‘I don’t see as it matters whose fault it was,’ Alice said

suddenly, speaking for the first time. ‘What we’ve got to

think about now is what we’re going to do about it.’

There was a short silence. They looked at her, and then at

each other, Cissie was the first to find her voice.

‘Do about it, Mum? Why, what can we do about it? It’s

for Jean to make up her mind about that. It’s her baby. Not

but what we won’t do what we can to help, of course,’ she

added. ‘I mean, we’ll make it a few clothes and that sort of

thing, we can’t let it go naked. But I dare say she’ll get it

adopted, won’t she? There’s not much else she can do.’

‘Get it adopted?’ Alice stared at them. ‘Your grandchild?

My great-grandchild? The first I’ll have - maybe the only

one I’ll ever have? Get it adopted?’

They were silent again, astonished by her outburst. Then

Polly said in a reasonable tone, ‘But what else can she do,

Mum? I mean, she can’t keep it, can she, not without a man

to stand by her. How could she afford to? And what would

everyone say? You know what it’s like for a girl in her

position.’

‘I know what people would say,’ the old lady said grimly.

‘I know it wouldn’t be easy for her. But she’s not the first

one to have a baby born the wrong side of the blanket and

she won’t be the last, neither. And I reckon there’ll be a lot more kiddies like this before this lot’s over. Children who

won’t ever know their daddies, but still need their mothers and their grandparents and great-grandparents too,’ she added forcefully. ‘Why should they have to go to strangers

when they’ve got a family already? Why shouldn’t they be

with their own family, with the people who’ll love them just

because they’re their own flesh and blood? Don’t they have

no say in the matter - don’t they have no rights? And don’t

the rest of the family have no rights neither? This is our

Terry’s baby,’ she said, fixing them all with a brilliant stare.

‘Our Terry’s. It might look like him. It might be him all

over again. We’ve found out about it only a few hours after

we’ve heard about Terry. Doesn’t it seem to you as if it’s

meant? How can you talk about giving it away?’

The silence this time was longer. They glanced at each

other uneasily. Dick was staring at the table, his lips tight,

his jaw clenched. Cissie was crying again, silently, the tears

running down her face. Polly felt a huge lump in her throat,

a lump that wouldn’t go away.

‘But Mum,’ she said, trying to talk past it, ‘it’s going to

be so hard for Jean. You know what people are like. They

won’t talk to her. They won’t have anything to do with her.

How’s she going to manage?’ She glanced at Cissie. ‘What

do her own mum and dad think about it? What do they say?’

‘People forget,’ Alice said before Cissie could answer.

‘They might cross the street when they see her coming at

first, but they’ll get used to it. And babies bring their love

with them. Once it’s born and she’s pushing a pram, people

will want to stop and look at it. They might be funny at

first, but they’ll come round.’

‘Not all of them,’ Cissie said. ‘Some people will stay

funny all their lives.’

‘Well,’ Alice said, ‘they’re not worth bothering about

then. They’ll only be people like Ethel Glaister down the

road and who takes any notice of her?’

They had to smile at this. Nobody liked Ethel Glaister, who had a sharp word to say about everything and made no

bones about letting folk see that she thought herself better

than they. But Cissie’s smile faded quickly and she frowned.

‘I still don’t see what we can do about it, Mum. It’s for

Jean and her mum and dad to work out. It’s not really our

business, is it?’

Alice thumped her wrinkled hand on the arm of her chair

and spoke forcefully. ‘Of course it’s our business! Isn’t that

just what I’ve been trying to say? It’s our baby too - our flesh and blood. We can’t just stand by and let it be given away to

strangers. It’s our Terry’s little boy or girl. Think about it!’

They stared at her. Polly thought about the baby, still a

tiny being curled up in its mother’s womb. She thought of

how it would look after it was born — streaked with blood

and mucus, screaming its way into life and, later, bathed and

wrapped in soft white clothes, sleeping peacefully in its

mother’s arms. She thought of it as a toddler, running about

with its fingers into everything. Looking like Terry had

looked. Laughing like Terry had laughed, crying as he had

cried.

‘Mum’s right,’ she said, feeling the ache of loss in her

breast even though just an hour ago she hadn’t even known

of the baby’s existence. ‘If it’s Terry’s baby, it’s ours too.’

She hesitated. ‘What I don’t understand is why nobody

knew. I mean - it was Christmas, wasn’t it? And now it’s

May. That’s five months. Isn’t she showing?’

‘Well, she’s just started to,’ Cissie admitted. ‘But you

know Jean, she’s a plump little thing and if you don’t have

any reason to suspect anything, you’d just think she was

putting on a bit more weight. Her mum was beginning to wonder, I think, but it would’ve been another couple of weeks before she could be sure.’

‘And how did she take it?’ Alice asked. ‘Her dad wasn’t

there, I suppose, so they’ll need to talk it over when he

comes home from work, but how did her mum seem?’

‘Well, what d’you think? She was proper upset. I thought she was going to hit Jean for a minute. Then she started to

cry, and Jean started again, and —’

‘And you joined in,’ Dick said. ‘I had to go and make

them all a cup of tea,’ he told Alice. Me. In someone else’s

kitchen and all. Couldn’t get no sense out of any of ‘em, so I

said to Cis we ought to come away and leave ‘em to it. Say