A Hopscotch Summer (12 page)

There was great excitement that afternoon. Dot came in, delighted to see her friend back home, and Em and Joyce scurried down to the school together to fetch Sid and tell him the news.

‘Mom’s home!’ they cried as soon as they saw him. He looked uncertainly at them, as if he couldn’t dare to believe it, before tearing home as fast as his little legs would carry him. Cynthia had been away for three weeks, but to the children it seemed like an eternity. They all clung round her.

‘You better now, Mom?’ Sid was the only one of the children to inherit Cynthia’s brown eyes, and now they gazed at her full of longing.

‘Course I am,’ she said bravely, hugging him to her. ‘I’m not going away again.’ To Dot she added in a whisper, ‘Not to that hard-faced bitch over there, I can tell yer.’

Dot rolled her eyes. ‘Like that, is it?’

‘I can’t tell you, Dot.’ Cynthia’s eyes started to fill and she shooed the children away. ‘Go on, all of you – go and play out for a bit while Dot and me have a chinwag.’

The children did as they were told, though obviously reluctant to leave her.

‘You all right now, Cynth?’ Dot asked carefully.

‘Oh, Dot.’ Cynthia broke down then. ‘Olive’s so mean and spiteful. She’s not got an ounce of kindness in her! I was grieving all the time I was there and she was horrible to me, making me feel in the way. I didn’t know where to put myself. She made me hide upstairs when she had visitors round! She’s always been hard-faced, but I never knew she was that bad.’

‘Never mind, bab, you’re back home now,’ Dot comforted her. ‘Your kiddies need you here. Your Em’s been ever such a good girl, trying to look after everyone the way she has. You should be proud of her.’

‘I know,’ Cynthia nodded. ‘And I’ll try and make it up to her.’

‘I’d best be off now, our Nance is all spots,’ Dot said. ‘I hope we ain’t all spreading it about.’

‘Yes you’d better,’ Cynthia urged. ‘And thanks, Dot. You’re the best friend anyone could have.’

‘T’ain’t been the same without you around, Mrs Brown,’ Dot said with a lopsided smile which meant she was close to tears. ‘T’ra for now.’

It seemed so quiet once Dot had gone. Violet was asleep and Cynthia sat, soaking in the feeling of being at home again. It wasn’t much, their house, but today it seemed to her like a palace. She looked round her simple room, with its poor furniture, the old range with the battered kettle resting on top, the big saucepan with mendits screwed through the bottom to keep the water in, the mantelshelf with its cover of threadbare red velvet and their few ornaments on it. Their precious photographs graced the mantel in the front room: their wedding portrait and the faded face of Bob’s mother looking out across the bare room. Cynthia had often wondered what she was like: she had a kindly face. Perhaps she’d change things round, she thought, and bring the pictures in here where they could see them all the time instead of saving them for best. They were family and what could be more important?

‘I’ve got to make it up to Bob,’ she said to herself. ‘I’ve got to be better – for his sake, and the kids.’

But she thought about the days before she left home, the hurt and anger in his face, and fear rose up to choke her. What if he couldn’t forgive her? And what if she couldn’t be the wife he needed her to be?

Putting her hands over her face she rocked back and forth, deep racking sobs working their way out of her. She was home at last, but everything still felt impossible and overwhelming. How on earth was she going to manage?

Em helped her make the tea. She was in the habit now and Cynthia seemed almost to have forgotten how. She had wanted to come home and take up the reins, be in charge as a mother, but she found herself standing helplessly, as if she couldn’t remember what to do.

‘I feel all mithered,’ she said, as Em turned from peeling potatoes in a bowl at the table, to see her mother just gazing at her in bewilderment. She was so thin, even Em could see her clothes were hanging on her. Her eyes had a stretched, staring look which had not been there before.

‘Why don’t you go and sit down, Mom?’ Em said cautiously. ‘You don’t want to go getting tired.’

‘No!’ She was shouting suddenly, but seeing the look of terror on Em’s face she tried to quieten herself. ‘No, I must help, I’ve got to. I’m your mother!’

Em stood back, offering her the old knife, talking cautiously to her. ‘You do the taters. I’ll get the cabbage done, shall I?’

‘All right,’ Cynthia said quietly, and Em had a terrible feeling suddenly, more frightening than all that had gone before. It was as if a big black pit was opening in front of her, because she was utterly alone: out of the two of them it was Mom who was the child, and there was no one above her to rely on. Together, they cooked liver and potatoes and cabbage, Em reminding Cynthia what to do at every step.

By the time it was ready Bob had not come home. Em had set the table and was ready to feed everyone, but Cynthia hovered expectantly by the front window.

‘Tea’s ready, Mom,’ Em called to her.

‘But your dad’s not here. We’d best not start without him.’

Em exchanged looks with Sid and Joyce. ‘I s’pect he’ll be late,’ Em said. ‘He is sometimes.’

Cynthia came in frowning. ‘Why? ’E’s never late normally. Always home by half past five.’

Em didn’t like to tell her that it was sometimes another three hours before Bob rolled in these days.

‘Well, let’s have ours and he’ll soon be here,’ she said.

By the time they had eaten and washed up, still there was no sign of him. His dinner congealed on his plate at the table. It was an awful evening, with Cynthia on pins asking again and again where her husband was and why he was late. In the end Em had had to say, ‘I s’pect he’s gone down the boozer. ’E does sometimes. ’E dain’t know you was coming home, Mom.’

‘He doesn’t, not “’e dain’t”,’ Cynthia corrected automatically. ‘Don’t drop your aitches, it’s common.’ Then she remembered what they were talking about. ‘You mean he’s left you, every night like this? Oh, I should never ’ve gone away. I shouldn’t’ve listened to him! I thought it’d be for the best, the way I was feeling, but I never should’ve.’

‘It’s all right, Mom. We’ve not come to any harm,’ Em said.

‘No but it’s not right!’ She was working herself up into a terrible state. ‘What’s come over ’im? And what the neighbours must’ve been saying . . .’

As time passed she was almost on the point of marching along to the pub and dragging him out, but Em stopped her.

It was past Em’s bedtime and she was already lying beside Sid, trying to soothe him to sleep, when she heard the front door open. She pulled the blanket and Bob’s old army coat up over her ears and screwed her eyes tightly shut.

Bob came round the door, and saw her waiting there. He was well oiled but not blind drunk, though he stopped and blinked a time or two to check he wasn’t seeing things.

‘Cynth?’

‘Where’ve you been?’ Her pent-up emotion came out in a shrewish wail. ‘It’s a fine thing, me coming home and you’re not here, and Em says you’ve been out every night! Why weren’t you here?’

She wanted him to come to her, to be sweet and reassuring and glad to see her, but her anger and misery had the opposite effect.

‘So, you’re back, are yer?’ He stuck his cap angrily on the hook at the back of the door. ‘Well, I hope you’ve pulled yourself together, cos if you ain’t you can pack your bag and go back there until yer have.’

‘Yes, of course I’m better.’ She wiped her eyes hurriedly at this threat and spoke appeasingly. ‘I was just worried, that’s all, love. It’s not like you to be out every evening and I was looking forward to seeing you. I didn’t know where you were, that’s all.’

‘I just went out for a drink, if that’s all right with you,’ he said sarcastically. ‘Since there weren’t no company at ’ome. What d’yer want, me sitting in by the fire waiting for you every night?’

‘No, I . . .’

‘Just cos you’d gone off on a little holiday . . .’

But he softened then and came to her, putting his hands on her shoulders, and her heart leapt with relief as he looked into her eyes.

‘So – you better, then, wench?’ His voice was gentler.

‘I th-think so.’ She ached for it to be true, though she still felt so strange, so lost and shut away from everyone. But she must make him believe she was better.

‘Glad to ’ear it.’

He took her in his arms and was immediately full of desire for her, fumbling to unbutton her blouse.

‘Bob, no . . .’

‘Come upstairs,’ he cajoled, tugging on her hand. ‘Come on – the kids are in bed, ain’t they? What’s to stop us?’

‘But I—’

‘But be dammed!’ he roared. ‘I said, get upstairs!’

Terrified, she could hardly recognize him. She begged him to be quiet but he dragged her up to the bedroom, kicked the door shut and forced her up against it, pushing himself against her, his beery tongue in her mouth. She felt his fingers digging into her arms as he pulled her to the bed, starting to tug her clothes off her, bruising her.

‘No . . .’ she wept. ‘Don’t . . . don’t . . .’

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, you miserable bitch, what’s the matter with yer now?’ The stinging slap he delivered across her face made her whimper.

‘Just stop yer blarting,’ he panted.

His need and arousal were so great that he forced her legs apart and pushed himself into her, thrusting and muttering until he came, quickly, with a sob of release. Cynthia turned her head aside, her eyes clenched shut. She could smell him, a mixture of sweat, coal dust and beer.

He withdrew from her abruptly and lit the candle. Seeing her there, limp on the bed, he was full of remorse and came and lay beside her, stroking her hair.

‘God, Cynth . . . I’m sorry. It’s been so long, so bloody miserable – I just had to . . . I dain’t mean to hurt yer . . .’

With a sob she snuggled up to him. She didn’t want to be angry with him, she needed to feel the comfort of his arms round her. Into his chest she murmured, ‘I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what’s the matter with me.’

Gentler now, and close to sleep, he held her. ‘Never mind, love. It’s been awful without yer. But we can make it better, can’t we, my bab? It’ll be all right.’

For the first few days Em thought it was going to be all right.

She went back to school, trying to resign herself to Katie’s rejection of her and hanging about with anyone who was prepared to be her friend, which of course Molly always was. She tried to push from her mind what had happened with Molly’s mom and the cat. Everything about Molly and her family horrified her. Cynthia had always said the Foxes were a dirty family, but it wasn’t just the dirt which made her stomach turn with dread. It was the feeling of chaos and cruelty which she saw in Bert and which had been so horribly demonstrated by Iris Fox that day with Molly’s kitten. So she looked upon Molly with mixed pity and dread.

A few days went past but even though they all tried to pretend everything was back to normal, Cynthia was anything but recovered. She seemed to exist on a knife edge, barely able to cope but trying too hard and flying into hysterics over the slightest thing.

There was no lying in bed now. Instead she got up each morning and flung herself into a fever of activity, cleaning and washing the neglected house. Soon her energy would run out. She was already very thin and had no appetite, and feeding Violet took a lot from her. Her face was white and her jaw seemed permanently clenched. At the slightest thing she dissolved into tears.

‘Hey – you’re s’posed to be getting a bit of rest, ain’t yer?’ Dot upbraided her when she dropped in for a cup of tea during a lull one afternoon. She found Cynthia ironing frantically, a blanket spread over the table. ‘Come and sit down for a bit and drink your tea.’

Cynthia snatched up the iron which had been heating on the range, a square of worn leather in her hand to prevent her from burning herself on the handle.

‘I can’t stop, Dot – I’ve got so much to do.’ She gave her strained, intense look. ‘What with me being away, the place is squalid! I’ve got to clean up – get everything put right . . .’

Dot got up from her chair with a determined expression, firmly took the iron out of Cynthia’s hand and replaced it on the range.

‘Cynth – ’ she put her arm round her friend’s shoulders and looked into her eyes – ‘come and sit down. The house can wait. It never ruddy well ends whatever you do, does it? You look all in.’

Cynthia protested, but allowed herself to be seated on one of the chairs. Dot drew hers closer and looked at her very seriously.

‘Look, bab, what’s ailing yer? You’re not right, you’re thin as a railing and you’ve got a look on yer face all the time now as if the devil’s behind yer. You want to go careful or you’re going to have a breakdown. You’re driving yourself too hard!’

‘I’m not,’ Cynthia said earnestly, knitting her bony fingers together. She blinked and rolled her eyes in the strange way that she did now. ‘I’m all right, Dot, really I am. But I’ve let Bob down, and the kids, and I’m just trying to make everything right again. He gets so angry with me.’ She trailed off, looking sad and bewildered.

‘He’s worried about yer. We all are!’ Dot leaned forward and gripped her hand. ‘For God’s sake, take it easy, love. I’ll come and help if there’s that much to do . . .’

‘No!’ Cynthia protested. ‘You’ve got your Nance down with the measles.’

‘Oh, she’s on the mend – they’re all tough little buggers, my lot,’ Dot said fondly. ‘I just don’t want to see my pal in this state. If you go on like this—’ She bit her words back. ‘Look, everything’s all right – your husband, kids, you’ve got a nice healthy bab there – you’ve no need to be in such a state. ’

She patted Cynthia’s hand and sat back, smiling. But Cynthia suddenly put her hands over her face.

‘I feel so bad sometimes, Dot. I can’t tell yer how bad. I feel . . .
evil.
I’m making everything worse for everyone, but I don’t know how to help myself.’ She moved her hands away, her face screwed up in revulsion. ‘I’m an evil woman. I don’t deserve to live.’

‘Cynth, what are you
on
about?’ Dot was really concerned but as a coper herself she was at a loss. ‘You’ll perk up soon. It’s just the babby, and what with the shock you had over Joycie and that. Come on, you need to get enough rest and try and look on the bright side.’

She sat chatting, trying to make Cynthia laugh and tell her jokes and bits of gossip. Her son Terry, she said, had a new girlfriend – quite a looker. ‘And I reckon Old Man Donnelly’s playing away again,’ she said in her comical way. ‘And with that hatchet face of hers you can hardly blame him!’

Before she left she managed to get a wan smile out of Cynthia. It was the last any of them were to see for a very long time.

Her mood of frantic energy began to slip away. The withdrawn, glassy-eyed mother reappeared, who seemed barely able to move a limb of her body without enormous effort.

Em noticed that suddenly Cynthia seemed not to want to take care of Violet. Em was allowed to struggle on at school. She caught up with her lessons quite easily, but still felt terribly hurt by Katie O’Neill’s abandonment of her. Katie was inseparable from Lily. Em pretended she didn’t care and went out to play with anyone who’d have her. When she got home she would often find Cynthia in bed or sitting in a chair, staring, taking no notice of her baby. If she was upstairs, as often as not she left Violet down in the back room, shutting out the sound of her cries.

‘I got Dot to get me some formula,’ Cynthia said to Em one day, her hollow-eyed face looking up at her from the pillow. ‘You just mix it with water in one of them bottles. I’m not going to feed her myself any more. It’s making me too tired. And I don’t want them to see me with her anyway.’

‘Who?’ Em asked, bewildered.

‘Oh – ’ Cynthia waved a bony hand, scornfully – ‘the people from the Welfare. They spy on people like me, you know. You never know when they might be watching you. So you take her and sort her out, will you, love?’

Em couldn’t make any sense of this, but she liked looking after Violet who, despite everything, was a round-faced, rather placid child whose smiles revealed a deep dimple in her left cheek. Em was sure her baby sister recognized her and began to wave her arms about when she appeared. She enjoyed sitting with the warm, milky weight of Violet in her lap, watching her suck out of a bottle. Violet was cross at first and spat the formula milk out, asking for the familiar warm nipple, but she was soon hungry enough to get used to it. Em and Joyce took turns.

Em wondered what Mom had been talking about. Did the Welfare people really watch you if you had a baby? And were they watching her as she fed Violet? She shrugged the thought away. They could only be looking through the window and she couldn’t see anyone. Besides, she wasn’t doing anything wrong, was she?

Things came quickly to a head. Bob came straight home that Friday evening, not going to the pub, trying to do his best for his family. The night was cold, he had a cough and was exhausted, and was as black as a chimney sweep as ever. He came in to find the downstairs rooms full of blue smoke and rank with the smell of burned fat. Sid and Joyce were squabbling and Em was jiggling a wailing Violet in her arms while the sausages she was cooking were charring on the stove.

He ran and snatched the pan off the heat, slamming it down at the back of the range.

‘For Christ’s sake!’ he exploded. ‘What the hell’s going on – where’s yer mother?’ Without waiting for Em to answer he tore off his coat and hat, flinging them onto a chair and stormed up the stairs. Sid and Joyce had stopped fighting and the three children all stood still, listening in dread.

The bedroom door was flung open, followed by the sound of terrifying screams.

Cynthia, who had been lying in bed like a rag, leapt up, electrified by terror at the sight of someone coming through the door.

‘No!’ she screamed. ‘Get away from me! Get out of my room – no, don’t touch me! AAAAAAA-AAAAAGH!’

Bob, startled and horribly disturbed by the hysteria in her voice, dealt her a stinging slap across the face.

‘Don’t take me away!’ Cynthia was crying, begging. ‘Don’t . . . I’ll be better, I will. I don’t want to be bad . . . Oh, help me, help me, for God’s sake!’

‘Cynth! CYNTHIA!’ Bob knelt on the bed and grasped her hands, shaking her, forcing her to sit still. ‘It’s me, for Christ’s sake. Stop screaming, woman, I can’t stand it.’

‘I thought they were coming to take me away.’ She was stunned and trembling, her hair wild, eyes full of fear.

Bob looked at her, the alien, strange woman beside him, and cautiously released her hands. He was beyond trying to comfort her. He was deeply afraid.

‘It’s no good.’ His voice was low and grave. ‘I can’t live with you no more, not carrying on like this. I don’t know what’s going on with you, Cynth, but you can get your things packed. You’re going back to your sister till you can pull yerself together, or not bother coming back at all!’

‘No, Bob – no, don’t make me go back there!’ Cynthia begged, weeping heartbrokenly. ‘I don’t want to go back there. She’s horrible to me, Olive is, and it’s all worse there. They’ll be watching me and I can’t stand it. I can’t stand them watching me . . . Their eyes . . .’

‘For God’s sake, woman!’ He was yelling now, completely distraught. ‘You carry on like this and you’ll end up in the asylum, that you will. You’re going off yer head and I can’t stand it! I can’t live with yer when you’re like this. I want my bloody wife back, that’s what I want – not some sodding loony who talks a load of bloody rubbish all the time!’

There was a momentary lull. Em stared at the floor, hugging Violet. She couldn’t look at Sid or Joyce, because upstairs something was happening that they’d never known before. Both their parents were weeping. Bob’s sobs came to them in raw, jerking sounds. It seemed shameful, hearing a grown man cry, and frightening because it was their dad. Over it came desperate weeping from Cynthia.

‘I’m not giving in to you no more,’ they heard, more quietly then. ‘You’ve got to go, Cynth. I can’t stand it and you’re no good to me or the kids in this state. I don’t want to do it, but it’s for the best. I can’t stand living with you as you are. Come back and be my wife, for God’s sake, love. But for now you’ve got to go – first thing in the morning. And that’s final.’

The night seemed to go on forever. None of them slept much. All night Em kept falling into a doze only to be woken by Violet crying, or her mother weeping and begging incoherently in the next room.

Sid got into bed with the girls, top to toe with them, so that rest was made all the more difficult by all being cramped in together. Em was afraid he’d wet the bed, but she was quite glad of the comfort of having her brother and sister close when her heart felt cold and full of dread. None of them had heard their father’s exact words; they just knew something awful and frightening was happening, that the sunny, secure life they had known before seemed to be being swept away forever.

In the grey light of dawn, Em woke, wet and clammy, enveloped in the pungent smell of Sid’s urine, and she clambered from the bed, her vest and pants clinging to her. Sid woke immediately and sat bolt upright, saying, ‘Where’s Mom?’

‘I dunno,’ Em said. ‘In bed, I s’pose.’

She woke Joyce and tugged the sodden sheet off the bed once more. They were growing used to the stinging ammonia smell, and the mattress was ringed with stains and this new damp patch. She went to take the sheet down to soak it, and the others followed her as if they didn’t dare let her out of their sight.

As their bare feet progressed down the stairs, there was a wail from the front room.

‘Oh God, Bob – they’re awake!’

Cynthia was standing by the front door in her hat and coat. Her little brown bag was up against the door and Violet was resting on a blanket in the seat of the chair. To Em, her mother seemed like a scrawny stranger. Her real mom, the old Cynthia, had gone away somewhere already.

Bob came from the back. He looked very annoyed to see the children standing at the foot of the stairs.

‘Right, well, you’d best say goodbye to your mother,’ he said brusquely. ‘’Er’s going away again, just for a few days, to your auntie Olive’s.’

‘Oh, Mom, I don’t want you to go away, you said you’d never!’ Sid ran to her, as did Joyce, both sobbing, holding out their arms to be picked up. Em, swept by the most terrible sense of dread, felt sobs forcing up in her chest. She wanted to be the big sister, who could control herself, but it was too frightening and difficult.

‘Don’t go, Mom!’ A wail of anguish tore out of her. ‘Please don’t go away again!’

‘Oh my Lord,’ Cynthia cried, holding out her pitifully thin arms to embrace all her children. Em felt her boniness as she was pressed to her and she clung to her mother, never wanting to let go.

‘I don’t want to go,’ Cynthia wept, her cheeks brushed by her children’s soft hair as they clung to her, all crying desperately. ‘I don’t want to leave you. It won’t be for long. I’ll come back as soon as I can.’

‘Come on now – let’s get it over.’ Jaw set, his own suffering locked within him, Bob pulled his wife to her feet. ‘You’ve got to go, Cynth, it’s no good.’

Em tore herself away from her mother but the two younger children were not so easy to shift. Sid roared in protest and in the end Bob hauled both him and Joyce roughly away, knocking Joyce’s leg painfully on the chair as he did so, making her cry even louder. He plonked the two of them on the rag rug, as Cynthia wept uncontrollably.

‘Now you stay there and stop yer blarting!’ he shouted at his distressed children. ‘I’m going to put your mother on the bus and I’ll be back.’