Wartime Wife (21 page)

‘Don’t go thinking you’re too big to have your mouth washed out with soap and water or that I won’t pull down your trousers and wallop your backside, Paul Grant!’

His bottom lip quivered. ‘I’ll tell my ma about you!’

Mary Anne was defiant. ‘You do that. And you can also tell her that if she does take it into her head to come and see me, remind her to bring the three bob she still owes on that hat she bought off me for your granny’s funeral. The old dear’s been in Arnos’ Vale Cemetery for six months now and I’ve not seen hide or hair of the money or the hat. Tell her that!’

At the first swing of her shopping bags, the other boys had ran off and now huddled around the guy sitting on the orange box. Initially, the ramshackle figure had seemed no more than a ragged jacket and oversize trousers stuffed into worn-out boots. Most of his face seemed composed of a beard made from horsehair pulled from an old sofa. A greasy trilby covered the upper half of his face including his eyes.

Now it sat upright, hat shoved back to reveal a pale face and defiant blue eyes. Her own son!

Like the others, he was open-mouthed, staring at a shamed leader pinned against the wall with pee dribbling down his leg.

‘Stanley! Come here this minute!’

‘Aw, Ma!’

Whispers ran from one boy to another.

‘That’s your ma?’ asked one.

Stanley, his face like thunder, didn’t answer but pulled off the smelly outfit, showing his temper by flinging each item onto the ground.

‘What a bloody battleaxe,’ commented another.

Mary Anne threw him a warning look. ‘And you’re another whose mouth could do with washing out,’ she shouted.

Round-eyed, the boy clapped both hands over his mouth.

Mary Anne turned her attention to her son. ‘And you’re getting a good bath the minute we get home,’ she scolded, eyeing the bits of straw sticking to his clothes. She didn’t want to think of what else the old clothes had left on him; they’d been far from clean.

Stanley’s face remained stiff with defiance. ‘I don’t want to go home. I want to stay out with my mates.’

His accusing look was disconcerting. It made her want to ask him what she had done wrong and the firm jutting of his chin was totally at odds with his cherubic features. Where was her little angel, and why was he acting like this? Deep down she knew the truth, but pushed it aside, still not able to face the fact that Stanley, the most innocent, the youngest of her family, knew the true state of her marriage. She hated Henry for that.

Stanley sloped along behind her and stayed in a foul mood all the way home. When they got back to Kent Street, she immediately put the wash boiler on and got Harry to get the zinc bath down from the backyard wall.

But Stanley was still rebellious, and transferring hot water from the washhouse boiler into the bath would take time.

‘Come here, you little blighter,’ she said, as Stanley dived under the kitchen table.

‘Nope!’

‘Nope! That’s his favourite word,’ she said, too exasperated and tired to chase him any longer.

Sweeping her hair back from her face, she slumped onto a chair at the table, her tiredness washing over her in dizzying waves.

Lizzie noticed. ‘Mum. Are you all right?’

Mary Anne nodded from behind the hand with which she shielded her face. Mum. Lizzie always called her that when she was worried.

‘Don’t worry,’ said Harry, who had already stripped off his shirt, ready to wash before going out that evening. ‘I’ll deal with our Stanley.’

Harry dived under the table, crawling and scrabbling after his brother, who chuckled and laughed.

At last Harry pulled him out. ‘Come on. I’m boiling you along with the sheets.’

Fists punching in fun against his brother’s back and shouting words of protest, Stanley was carried out to the washhouse.

‘I’m dumping him straight in,’ Harry shouted over his shoulder.

Lizzie put the kettle on. ‘You have a cup of tea, Ma, and I’ll put the shopping away.’

Her mother did as she was told. Relief from taking the weight off her arms and feet flooded over her and gave her time to think.

Lizzie’s comment about her children being grown up now had hit home, especially the fact that she would be left alone with Henry. When they were no longer at home he could only get worse.

At present Henry Randall was triumphant. Before John had
gone back from leave, he was told of the marriage and had made no objection. On the contrary, he’d been over the moon, slapping John on the back, offering him a cigarette and telling him he was proud of him joining the RAF and that he was joining the family.

‘Very glad we’ve such a brave chap in our street,’ he’d said, while throwing an accusing glare in Harry’s direction. ‘We need more like you if this bloke Hitler is to be taught a lesson.’

Harry had smiled in that disarming way of his, as though he knew secrets no one else was privy to. Casually, as though it wasn’t him his father was referring to at all, he took up his pen to yet another crossword.

John had glowed in his praise, and Daw had thrown her arms around her father’s neck and rained words of thanks against his ear, including the words her mother had asked her not to utter.

‘Oh, Dad, I’m so glad you didn’t mind us getting engaged before John joined up. Mum said it would be all right.’

Mary Anne perceived a tightening around his throat; the veins prominent like fine bones. The engagement had been kept secret until John came home on leave to ensure his acquiescence, Mary Anne taking the view that he couldn’t refuse anyone in a uniform.

His tone was like treacle. His eyes were like lead. ‘No, sweetheart. Of course not. You’ve got yerself a good man, a son-in-law any chap would be proud of.’

Mary Anne’s stomach had tightened at the subtle change in his voice and eyes. Her children did not notice, but then that was the way their marriage had developed. To his children he was a firm but doting father who boasted to anyone who would listen that he never raised a hand to his children – and he didn’t. His wife was another matter entirely.

Henry had been livid that she’d known about the engagement and hadn’t told him. The storm clouds were most
certainly gathering, but she’d kept up the pleasant facade. Years of practice had made it easy.

After everyone had drank the health of the happy couple with a small glass of Harveys Bristol Cream, Daw and John decided to go out and celebrate.

‘Are you coming, Lizzie?’

Lizzie declined. She had kept her own secret that she was missing Peter. The only thing she was happy about – besides her sister’s engagement – was that she’d had her monthlies, and so had Daw.

‘I don’t want to be a gooseberry,’ she said, settling herself down at the table with a copy of
Picture Post
and a second cup of tea.

They’d laughed and Daw had blushed. ‘You won’t be. We’re going to watch the film.’

‘All right, then. I’ll powder my nose and get my hat and coat. It’s turning chilly.’

John had turned to their brother. ‘What about you, Harry?’

Harry was standing in front of the mirror above the mantelpiece smoothing his Brylcreemed hair. He was wearing a well-cut navy blue suit; his shirt was crisply white and his tie a subdued mix of red and yellow stripes. His mother had commented how handsome he was, that she was proud of him. She also mentioned that the suit looked very expensive.

‘Must have cost you a fortune.’

‘Been doing a lot of overtime, Mother,’ he’d said, and kissed her.

‘No thanks,’ said Harry in response to John’s invitation to accompany them. ‘I’ve got a previous engagement.’

‘A date?’ The girls said it in unison, their faces bright with curiosity.

Harry shook his head and went back to smoothing his hair. ‘No. Just a mate.’

His father had scowled, his lips curling with distaste. ‘Making yerself look nice for a mate, now if that ain’t strange …’

Harry turned, the set of his broad shoulders and scowling face leaving his mother no option but to stand between father and son.

The girls and John were too wrapped up in their own plans to notice that anything was wrong.

‘We’ll be off then,’ said Lizzie, linking arms with her sister’s fiancé. ‘Now we’ll go in the back row if you like, John, but that does mean you’ll have to share your kisses with both of us. Is that all right?’

John’s pink and white complexion turned scarlet. ‘Oh … um …’

‘Only joking,’ laughed Lizzie.

Mary Anne smiled. It was the first time that week she had heard her laugh. Why had everyone been so glum of late? The war, she thought, answering her own question. Just the war.

Once they’d gone, Henry had sat glaring at his son, his knuckles almost white because he was gripping the chair arms so fiercely.

His face was one big, angry scowl.

‘Don’t you feel ashamed not doing as John’s done?’

Harry raised his eyebrows in pretended surprise. ‘Going to the pictures?’

The blood vessels in Henry’s neck pulsed with anger. ‘You know damn well what I mean. You’d have more mates in the army, more worth bothering with, that is.’

A half-smile lifted the side of Harry’s mouth as he buttoned his suit jacket and reached for his brown trilby. He skimmed its brim with his fingers so that one corner dipped over his right eye when he put it on.

Mary Anne thought how much he resembled a photo of
Humphrey Bogart she’d seen in
Picture Post
. Her heart swelled with pride. Some might say he was more like Noël Coward, but she couldn’t see it. Regardless of how they appeared to others, all her children were faultless in her eyes.

‘You don’t need to be in the army to have a lot of mates,’ Harry said, sliding his arms into his overcoat. One side of his mouth twisted in contempt. ‘Personally, I think a load of blokes being so close smacks a bit of left footers, if you know what I mean.’

Mary Anne balked at the insults flying back and forth between father and son.

Henry’s face turned puce and puckered as he sprang to his feet. ‘Us blokes in the army didn’t smell like bloody pansies! We were men. Real men.’

Harry smirked. ‘And stunk like it no doubt.’

Henry leaped at him.

Mary Anne moved more quickly, standing between the husband she tolerated and the son she loved.

‘Now stop it! Just stop it!’

Henry winced before her ferocious gaze. This fiery look was unfamiliar on the woman who kept the peace and had created as loving an environment as possible for the sake of her children; a rare glimpse of the woman beneath the dutiful exterior.

There was pleading in her voice. ‘Leave him, Henry. Leave him to be what he wants to be.’

Henry raised a purposeful finger, his face still glowering with rage. He wagged his finger just inches from Harry’s face.

‘If he thinks—’

Mary Anne gripped his upper arm with both hands.

‘Henry. Please. Who knows what’s in the future. As he said himself, he might be one of the first to be called up, and if he is, so be it. All he’s saying is that he will not rush to enlist.
Remember all those in the last lot? Rushing to do their bit and certain all the fighting would be over by Christmas. Well, let’s face it, they were wrong then and it looks as if they’ll be wrong now. No one’s even began fighting on a big scale just yet and Christmas isn’t far away. Remember,’ she said again, the fierceness gone and a sad look on her face. ‘Remember how it was, how many of your own comrades never came back.’

Fixing on the yellowing photograph of him and his friend Lewis, Henry blinked as the memories she’d provoked came flooding back, his whole body slack as though each and every one of those old pals were weights around his shoulders.

Terminating their conversation, Harry turned his back on his father, now slumped in his favourite armchair.

Harry kissed his mother on the cheek. ‘Don’t wait up for me, Ma.’

All might have been mended if he hadn’t turned up the knob on the wireless as he passed it. ‘Dance a bit. Enjoy yerselves.’

Memories shoved aside, Henry sprang to his feet.

‘Don’t you bloody treat me like—Ouch!’

In attempting to intercept him, Henry hit his knee on a chair.

Mary Anne pretended not to notice. His mood would be foul enough without her making a comment about his clumsiness.

Once the sound of the front door being slammed reverberated above the sound of the wireless, she began gathering the last of the dinner things, moving swiftly to pile saucepans upon frying pan and plate on top of plate.

Out of the corner of her eye something moved; the prongs of a fork glinted beyond Henry’s tight grip.

He was on her before she had time to pick up the plates and dash to the scullery, the fork digging into her cheek, just below her eye.

‘Turn my family against me, would ye!’

She winced as the prongs dug into her face, enough to cause a red mark, but not enough to break the skin.

‘Please Henry. Everyone will see. And I haven’t turned anyone against you. Why do you say that?’

She bit her lip as he repositioned the fork against her throat.

‘Like hell you didn’t! Never told me about me own daughter getting engaged. What right have you got to do that, eh? What right? They’re my children. I’ve a right to know. The other … the other don’t matter … the other …’

His voice fell away and his brown pupils turned to black.

‘It was a long time ago, Henry. Why can’t you forget it? It’s all in the—’

His face leered closer. ‘Because you never told me! That’s why! You never told me!’

Tears squeezed out from her eyes. ‘But he died … he died.’

Henry sucked in his lips and raised his hand.

‘The opening bars of the Blue Danube waltz played by the BBC Light Orchestra …’

The wireless, its walnut case gleaming and smelling of beeswax, sounded so sane, so ordinary.

He dug the fork into her side more deeply than her face or throat.

She screamed.

‘I could easily kill you for what you did,’ muttered Henry, his hands around her throat, his face black as thunder. ‘Had another man’s baby and didn’t tell me.’

‘Edward didn’t come back. He died and the baby was adopted, Henry. My parents wouldn’t let me tell you. You know that very well—’