Wartime Wife (31 page)

He raised his hand, but a blur of mauve dress leaped across the room.

‘Leave my mother alone!’

Lizzie clung to his arm, but he flung it wide, easily throwing her aside.

Mary Anne gathered every ounce of strength she owned and struggled to her feet. Her eyes blazed with anger. ‘Leave my children be, or so help me, I’ll kill you!’

Rising onto her hands and knees, Lizzie wiped blood from the corner of her mouth. This was the kind of scene Stanley had described to her. She saw him out of the corner of her eye, frozen to the spot, his eyes wide and staring.

‘And you’re not only a slut,’ Henry was saying, suddenly remembering his humiliation at the Red Cow, ‘you’re a bloody thief! That’s what you are! Took the last penny from me pocket, you thieving cow!’

Just as he reached for her throat, she found a surge of inner strength and wriggled out from under him, kicking at his shins as she eased herself sideways. He toppled, tripped over his own feet and fell head first into his favourite chair.

Mary Anne gripped the back of a chair for support, eyeing the supine body. Was she safe now?

Her breathing steadied, then quickened as he started to rise.

Cowering against the wall, feeling weak, she covered her head with her arms.

Just as he raised his fist, a small figure sprang onto a chair and raised something black and solid above his head. There was a clang of metal on bone as Stanley brought a cast iron frying pan down onto his father’s head.

‘No,’ cried his fearful mother as he raised it again, his pale faced flushed with temper.

The angelic face twisted with hate. ‘I’ll kill him.’

She wrested the frying pan from his hands, fearing for his life if Henry saw him with it.

‘Get outside,’ she murmured to Lizzie. ‘Take our Stanley with you.’

‘But …?’

‘Go into the washhouse and stay there.’

Their eyes met. Lizzie didn’t know when and how she’d come to interpret her mother’s thoughts and actions, but she knew whatever she was up to was for the best.

Before he’d quite come to, Mary Anne saw the look in his eyes and feared for her son’s life. The thing to do was to shift the blame. Only then would Stanley be safe, the home back to normal.

Gripping the pan with both hands, she summoned every bit of courage, product of the love she had for her family.

Henry’s mouth curled into an ugly snarl. ‘You—’

She raised the pan high above her head and brought it down on his, but he caught one wrist. She hit him but only a glancing blow. The backhander he gave her would have sent her spinning, but she stepped back.

But she’d seen the look in his eyes, and even though he was sober, she knew this was perhaps the defining moment in their relationship, the time when she had to make a more sombre choice than sexual submission or rejection. This was a matter of life and death – her life or her death.

Fear gave wings to her feet, the tearing pain still dragging at her insides, but her will to survive urging her on.

She ran out of the front door, along Kent Street and towards the corner shop. Every building in the street was in darkness, courtesy of the blackout. She stopped at the shop door, meaning to knock, to shout for help, but she could hear him calling her, threatening to beat her black and blue if she didn’t come back immediately.

She ran out onto West Street, almost got knocked down by a blacked-out tram, then headed towards East Street, round the back of the London Inn, and still she could hear him calling.

The pain worsened; her clothes were drenched in sweat and blood; her heart hammered against her ribcage. She feared it would burst, but hurried on, determined to survive because even when surrounded by violence, there were still things to live for.

As her strength ebbed, she no longer had any idea of where she was running and whether Henry was still pursuing her. All she could hear was the rush of her own pulse beating in her ears.

Despite the darkness, there was something familiar about the dank-smelling alley, the sound of babies crying, people quarrelling, a plaintive voice singing ‘
Let me call you sweetheart
.’

The alley spilled out onto another road, just as dark but wider than the one she’d left behind. To her left, she felt the low curve of a garden wall. Across the road a chink of light showed from the side of a blackout curtain. She turned right, flattening herself against a wall that swiftly became a large expanse of cold glass.

She felt her way along it, turning her head so that her cheek took on the coolness of the plate glass. There was no way of knowing where she was; how did blind people manage? Her legs were crumpling, and although she listened for any sign of pursuit, it no longer seemed to matter. The pain was all consuming, draining her of strength and purposeful thought. If she died here and now on the pavement, then so be it. Oblivion was becoming quite attractive, and her eyes were closing, her body sliding against the glass though her feet still moved, sideways now until the window gave out and she tumbled into a shop doorway.

The atmosphere at number ten Kent Street the following morning was both strained and strange.

Although Lizzie had expected her father’s anger to continue, Harry’s intervention the night before had changed everything, especially once Stanley had told him the same things he’d told her.

‘You bastard!’

Henry Randall’s life as a soldier was far behind him, and although he tried to defend himself, Harry was younger and stronger. He was down on the floor in no time, his own son standing over him, glowering a warning.

‘Lay a hand on any of these when I’m not around,’ said Harry, sweeping his arm over the heads of his siblings, ‘and I’ll strangle you my fucking self!’

Daw had gasped to hear such language, but Lizzie and Stanley were accepting. They’d seen things their sister hadn’t, and with Daw it was a case of seeing is believing, besides which, she took her world for granted, everything in its place including her parents, siblings and sweetheart. Home truths were too much to bear. Sobbing fit to burst, she ran upstairs crying that they were all horrible and that they’d ruined her life, and that John mustn’t know, and neither must the neighbours. Nobody, nobody at all!

‘She’ll get over it,’ Lizzie said to a puzzled Harry. For him, the sorting out of this whole scenario was cut and dried, though he wanted to know where his mother was.

Lizzie shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’ She hugged Stanley against her side and ruffled his hair.

‘Never mind,’ said Harry. ‘She’s got to be better off than she was here. And you,’ he said, addressing Stanley. ‘Will you be able to cope until we find our mother?’

‘Yes,’ said Stanley, his triumphant smile leaving Harry in no doubt that if he’d been big enough he would have beaten his father himself. ‘And you’re the boss here now, ain’t you, Harry?’

Harry nodded, his eyes sliding to where his father was deftly investigating cuts and bruises and trying to catch his breath following the punches Harry had jabbed at his stomach.

‘Right,’ said Harry, the look on his face leaving his father in no doubt that he would hit him again if he had to. ‘How far did you chase her?’

Henry winced, rubbed at his stomach then tentatively touched his bloodstained lip. ‘I don’t know. It was dark. Towards East Street maybe …’

Harry grabbed his father’s shoulder and dragged him to his feet. ‘Then get down the police station and report her missing. I’ll go out and search the streets. I’ve got a few friends that’ll help me – and take that look off your face,’ he added, a warning finger jabbed in front of the contempt that suddenly appeared on his father’s face. ‘I can see from your eyes that you’d love to be right about what I am; I bet you don’t sleep at night thinking about it. Well, I don’t care what you think, but I do care about my mother.’

Lizzie and Stanley had stood with their mouths open as Harry pushed his father to the door. ‘Get down to that police station. Report her missing. I’ll deal with the hospitals. Let’s hope we find her.’

Stanley’s eyes shone with hero worship. His brother was everything.

The police came round to the house later that night asking if they could have a photograph.

Lizzie made tea while Harry handed them a faded black-and-white from a day at the seaside a few years before. The whole street had got up a charabanc outing. All but Henry had gone along, and Mary Anne looked happy on it.

Henry, the blood washed from his cut lip, sat morose and silent, more dejected than Lizzie had ever seen him. In fact he looked as though he had shrunk overnight – thanks to Harry.

‘So what can the police do in such a situation?’ Harry asked, his hands shoved in his trouser pockets, his eyes fixed on the sergeant and constable sent by the local police station. He stood immediately in front of the fireplace, like a ringmaster at the circus, demanding a lot from those around him.

Lizzie found herself admiring her brother’s tenacity. He had a courteous way about him, a precise way of getting to the crux of the matter.

‘My mother must be out there somewhere. She can’t have vanished.’

The uniformed police sergeant mopped his forehead where the rim of his helmet had rubbed. He appeared to be gathering his thoughts and, once gathered, he addressed Henry, who he presumed was fretting over his wife’s disappearance.

‘Mr Randall, I sympathise and, rest assured, we will do our best to find your wife, but I feel obliged to state the facts as they are. Number one, accidents have increased tenfold since the blackout started. We’ve had more deaths from road accidents during the past three months than the previous two years put together.’

‘If that was the case, we would surely have found her in hospital or the morgue,’ said Harry.

Lizzie shivered and was glad an exhausted Stanley had cried himself to sleep, after telling her that he would be brave and was sure his mother was safe.

The police constable put his teacup back on the tray and got to his feet. ‘Not necessarily. We’ve had occasion of motorists picking up their victims and throwing them in the river to avoid detection. And I wouldn’t like to frighten you, sir, but there’s some pretty rum characters taking advantage of the blackout.’

Harry stayed out until the early hours looking for her. Lizzie lay on the settee, staring into the darkness, desperate to stay awake in case she was needed, in case the worst had happened. Being needed would mean consoling Stanley and smacking Daw’s face when she turned hysterical.

Her father had gone up to bed, but she knew he wasn’t sleeping. And neither should he, she thought, her anger concentrated on a single spot on the ceiling. She hadn’t been able to say goodnight to him, even to mop the blood from his broken lip. He’d had to do it himself. He’d looked at each of them in turn before going up the stairs, but no one acknowledged him, and the implications of it seemed to hit him hard. The strong man, who had regaled them over the years with brave tales of his time in the army, was now ignored by them, and for once there was pain in his eyes.

Even though she’d assured Harry she would stay awake until he got back, she started at the sound of his key in the front door.

The only light in the room came from a single candle she’d placed in the kitchen window. She’d read somewhere that in past wars women had placed candles in the window to guide their men home, and even though showing a light was breaching blackout laws, she didn’t care. Her mother was out there and so was her brother and she wanted them home.

Harry flung his hat and raincoat onto a chair. He smelled of rain and hair lotion and she loved it. He was the only man she knew who wore such an exotically smelling lotion. In her opinion, every man should wear a smell that masked stale cigarette smoke.

‘I like that lotion you’re wearing,’ she said, the words tumbling out and sounding stupid in the circumstances. ‘It hides things.’

Harry ran his hand through his hair, pushing its dampness away from his temples.

‘What?’ He sounded totally drained and his tiredness had aged him.

Lizzie couldn’t help herself. She rambled on. ‘Biddy Young should wear that lotion. It would mask the smell of her feet.’

She laughed, a hollow, nervous sound, swallowing it as quickly as it came and guiltily biting her lip. Laughing was out of place at such a time, a betrayal of her love and concern for her mother.

To her surprise she heard a muffled chuckle from Harry, or at least that’s what it seemed like at first, until she realised he’d choked back a sob.

Raising herself, she looked over the back of the settee. Harry had always seemed so sure of himself, so capable, but this upheaval in his home life had affected him just as badly as it had everyone else. There was little she could do to help. She felt pretty lousy herself. What could she do for him?

‘Would you like a cup of tea?’

It sounded such a pathetic offer. Why was it always the first thing that came into people’s heads when dreadful things happened? Your cat’s run over, your boyfriend’s ran away with someone else, your mother might have fallen into the river; never mind, have a cup of tea.

Negative thoughts about feeling pathetic disappeared when Harry smiled.

He sniffed and cleared his throat. ‘I could do with one.’

She didn’t need to ask him if he’d had any luck. He would have told her if he had.

The flickering blue of the gas flame under the kettle was reflected in the kitchen window, outdoing the gleam of the candle.

Lizzie eyed the reflection, a shadow of herself surrounded by light. Beyond the immediate darkness she could make out the stark edges of the washhouse. She remembered the tin box, the cupboards of pledges, the record book her mother kept under lock and key. To the women of the street, her mother’s business had been more than a lifeline when times were hard. She could imagine them exchanging problems and asking advice on how best to sort out their children, their finances and their husbands. Unfortunately, Mary Anne had never managed to sort out her own marriage. Now when she looked back, Lizzie could see the tiny signs that should have warned her that her parents’ marriage was far from being wedded bliss. Perhaps in that dark outhouse she might get some clue. Following a few hours’ sleep she would go to work, but when she came home she would search out there for any sign of where she might have gone.