A Hopscotch Summer (21 page)

Daisy was standing in the narrow hall and as they all squeezed inside she stood behind her mother, wrinkling her nose and sticking her tongue out at each of them in turn.

Cynthia sat looking out through one of the long windows at the side of the ward. They were called ‘sun balconies’, constructed especially so that inmates could benefit in mood from the touch of any available rays.

These days of February had been some of the darkest, dead-seeming of the year, with no sign of the sun and no breeze. Hardly a crack had appeared in the clouds, which spread themselves like a brooding lid between horizons. It was as if they were doubly shut in, by the weather and by the high walls and long drive curving out towards that distant world outside the hospital.

Today, though, the leaden cover suddenly crumpled apart and spears of sunlight pierced through. Cynthia, reclining in a chair, tilted her drawn, pasty face to drink in the light. The warmth seemed to stroke her closed eyelids like gentle fingers.

She breathed in deeply, her hands relaxing their grip on the arms of the chair. For some moments it felt as if she was floating; she was aware of a light, neutral sensation, as if there was no feeling, no mood inside her, like the moment of daybreak, neither dark nor light. She breathed in deeply and let out an ‘O-o-o-o-h’ sigh. Startled, she opened her eyes, realizing that what she felt was new and strange, like the first glimmering of dawn. She was experiencing pleasure.

‘Why don’t you put those away for a bit, dear – you’ll wear them out looking at them.’

One of the nurses came up to Cynthia later that day while she was gazing, for the thousandth time, at her little Christmas letters sent by Em, Sid and Joyce. In two months the folds of the cheap paper had become so worn that they were almost falling apart, but they were Cynthia’s most precious possessions.

Without a word, she clutched the flimsy pages defensively to her chest.

‘It’s all right, I only asked!’ the nurse said. ‘If it matters that much to you I s’pose they can’t do you any harm.’

Cynthia watched her move right away in her white uniform before she felt she could relax again. Nothing was your own here. They were always watching and interfering.

‘Dear Mom . . .’ She read again and again, trying to picture each of their faces.

At first, when Olive made her come here, she was in the most terrible distress after being torn away from Violet. She craved her baby with a wildness that several times resulted in her being dragged into the padded room to beat herself to exhaustion against the walls. In those early days her body was hot and feverish. At night, waking from uneasy pools of sleep she found the bed drenched in sweat and was convinced that Violet was there with her, but when she felt round in the dark she would meet only nothingness and the rough hospital covers, no warm baby form beside her. Each time she was overwhelmed by grief and hopelessness.

But she didn’t blame Olive for putting her in here. Nor did she blame Bob for not visiting. Christmas had hurt terribly. He had not come to join the relatives’ party on Christmas Day – no one had. She didn’t like to think back to that day – no husband or children, abandoned by everyone. She told herself it was all she deserved. She knew her man; Bob could not stand her being weak or ill. What he needed, had always needed, was for her to be strong and steady, to mother him as well as be his wife, and in all these she had failed. It was all her fault. She had let everyone down. Somewhere in her she knew she had never been good enough and everyone would always leave her in the end because she was a bad daughter, wife and mother.

In the early days, her agony was so overwhelming that she found it better to bite into the dwindling flesh of her arms until her teeth left deep pink grooves, and sometimes drew blood. Or she would bang her head against the wall, the floor, anything to let out the volcanic pulses of pain and loathing inside her.

Those first weeks, her whole being had craved Violet, but over time she found that she longed for her other children just as much: their voices, those cheeky smiles, their soft skin, the feel of them, the life in them. They were the only spark left in her, she decided, when she had none of her own.

At the same time she was so frightened of them coming anywhere near her because she could not trust herself. The thought of going home, to the house which had been her cosy haven, was utterly terrifying. Sometimes she imagined walking in through the green front door in Kenilworth Street, seeing all her familiar things, but with everyone watching for her, expecting, needing . . . All she could imagine doing was crawling into the tiny space under the stairs for safety, curling up tight in the gloom, from where her presence would seep, like a black, evil stink, through the house. She was bad, and lost to life: there was no possibility of going back. That was for other people, but not her.

At the darkest times, early in her stay, the other women in her ward did not affect her, by either their shrieking rages, the draggings away into padded rooms, their stony despair or their paraldehyde stupors. She was locked into a stupor of her own, a tight, sealed place where no one else’s happiness or misery could reach her.

They had taken out six of her teeth, four at the back and her two bottom incisors.

‘You’re harbouring infection in your teeth,’ the doctor told her. ‘You’d be surprised how much that can poison the whole of your system and make you ill – we often find that.’ Gently, he added, ‘Childbirth exacts a high price from women’s teeth.’

Afterwards, her tongue searched the strange, bloodied gaps that had appeared between the remaining teeth, but now she had grown used to them and the gums were smoother and felt part of her. The diet of porridge and overcooked stew presented no problem to chewing.

As the days passed she started to notice the women on either side of her. One was an old lady called Alice Gregory, who seemed truly but quietly deranged, the other a woman in her fifties called Connie Spall. She was big and moved slowly but sometimes she looked at Cynthia and something like a smile seemed to flash over her face.

Now Cynthia had become calmer they put her to work in the kitchens, cooking. Every morning they made huge pots of porridge and Cynthia found the rhythmic stirring and smell of hot milk comforting, as if they were beginning to break through her pain and numbness and connect her back into life.

Next time Dot came, on one of the dark, lid-of-cloud days, she said, ‘Well, the weather’s enough to get you down. But you seem different somehow, Cynth. Is it me, or are you feeling a bit better?’

And Cynthia dared to look her in the eyes. ‘I think . . . Oh God, I can hardly say it. A bit. Maybe.’

‘Hurry up, will yer! You’ll be late again and then there’ll be hell to pay!’

Dot stood wearily at the door of number eighteen, shooing Em and Sid off to school, as she had done for so many mornings now. When David and Terry set off for work she took Nance next door and did all that needed doing. She stood watching the poor little scruffs scuttling along the road together, ragged-arsed Sid staggering along with his pockets bulging full of marbles, and Em, a skinny stick, her hair tousled as a bird’s nest. Dot had had Nancy up sick in the night and overslept herself so there’d been no time to search for the comb, which always seemed to be missing.

Em turned briefly and waved at her and Dot raised her own arm, touched, despite her tiredness and resentment that she had been put in this position. Em’s foallike sweetness, her silent suffering could always melt Dot’s heart.

It was no good even pretending that their father was looking after them, and many said how could he be expected to, a man on his own and holding down an exhausting job and with Cynth being the way she was? Dot felt for him, of course, some of the time. The poor sod was like a lost soul, just as lost as his kids, truth to tell – more like a kid himself.

That was where her sympathy ended. Bob wasn’t even trying to look after his family. All he could think about these days was that bloody woman, Flossie Daw-son. In Dot’s mind now she was always
That Woman
. Of course everyone knew about their carry-on by now – Bob was up and down the road to her like a fiddler’s elbow. Every so often someone’d take him to task about it, even some of the other blokes. But it was like talking to the wall. Whatever Dot said to him, however many ding-dongs they had over the children, the old, dutiful, biddable Bob had vanished.

‘They’re all right, ain’t they?’ That was all he ever said. ‘They’ve food in their bellies and they’ve got you looking after them.’

‘But I ain’t their mom!’ Dot would explode at him. ‘It ain’t my job – they’re your kids, not mine. Don’t you think I’ve got enough on my plate without bringing up your family as well?’

‘Oh, don’t keep on, woman,’ he’d said during their last set-to. ‘I’ve handed you my wages. What more d’yer want?’

‘Oh yes!’ Dot’s voice was harsh with sarcasm. ‘What’s left of ’em after
she’s
helped herself.’

‘Well, that’s my bloody business.’

He was deaf to any other voice but Flossie Dawson’s. The fact that he had not, in the end, gone to see Cynthia on Christmas Day as he’d said he would, but stayed at Flossie’s instead, still made Dot burn with hurt and outrage for her friend. So the woman had broken her leg – so what? That wasn’t the end of the world, was it?

However deaf to all pleading Bob was, in the meantime someone had to keep things together for the children, and Dot knew the lot had fallen to her. In the name of friendship, as well as her great fondness for Cynthia’s kids, she knew she had no choice but to carry on doing whatever she could. God alone knew what would become of them if she didn’t, the way things were going. The burden on her shoulders felt a sad and heavy one.

‘Oh, Cynth,’ she murmured, watching the two children disappear along the road. ‘It’d break your heart to see ’em, that it would. You’d better get yourself well soon, love . . . You’ve just got to.’

Her thoughts were broken into by a little hand sliding into hers. She looked down and saw Joycie, still in her vest and pants from bed and a thumb in her mouth, looking up sleepily at her.

‘What’s up, bab? I was just seeing Em and Sid off.’

Without a word, Joyce held her arms up to the woman who had become like a mother to her.

‘Oh, you want a bit of a love, is that it?’ Dot said fondly, bending her aching back to pick the child up. ‘Come on, then. Let’s get this door shut or you’ll catch yer death.’

She carried the little girl inside, feeling some comfort herself in the little warm body pressed close to hers.

‘Now,’ she said kindly, ‘our Nance’s been up poorly all night so she’ll stay asleep for a bit. When you’ve had yer breakfast, d’you want to come and help me do a few bits of shopping?’

Joyce nodded, wide-eyed.

Dot rumpled her hair. ‘Right, bab – you can finish off the porridge, and then yer can go up and get yerself dressed.’

Since Christmas, Em and Molly had called off their campaign against Mrs Dawson. The shock of seeing Flossie come to the door that afternoon with the cast on her leg had been almost too much for Em and she couldn’t stop staring at it, wondering what they’d done. What if it’d been the head that came off the wax dolly instead? It was too frightening to imagine!

After dinner, during which Bob and Flossie struggled with bright, difficult conversation, and Daisy made hideous faces at them over the potatoes, the children squirmed with boredom in the yawning, endless afternoon.

Em looked round curiously at Mrs Dawson’s knick-knacks. Her eye was caught by a red Chinese dragon with a long tail that sat on the mantelpiece. It fascinated her but she didn’t dare ask to look at it.

‘Can us go out and play?’ Sid asked eventually, from the prison of Mrs Dawson’s back room.

‘Yeah – go on, off yer go,’ Bob said. His face wore an ardent, desperate look and they knew he wanted them gone.

‘Yes of course you can,’ Mrs Dawson said in her sweet-honey voice, as if she was bestowing a great favour on them instead of her obvious relief to get them out of her hair. ‘Why don’t you go and play as well, Daisy?’

‘Don’t want to.’ Daisy pouted.

Em, Sid and Joyce didn’t wait for Daisy to change her mind. They bolted out through the front door fast as blinking. Em dashed round to Kenilworth Street, thinking she’d go off pop if she didn’t tell Molly the news. To her relief she didn’t have to go into the yard as Molly was already out with Bert and some others.

‘Molly!’ Em tore along to her. Molly’s face broke into a grin at the sight of Em, who pulled her urgently to one side and they both turned their faces to the wall. ‘Mrs Dawson – she’s broken her leg!’ Em gabbled. ‘She’s got a thing on it, a plaster, and
it’s the same leg we cut off the wax one
! We must’ve done it, we must’ve voodoo’d her! D’yer think we did?’

Molly’s face took on an expression of great self-importance. ‘I knew it – I knew it’d work,’ she said, awed. ‘Was it really ’er left leg? Like with the dolly?’

‘Yes!’ Em was nodding until her own head practically fell off.

‘Well,’ Molly said very solemnly, ‘we’d better stop there, then. If we do anything else,’ and here she lowered her voice even more, ‘it’ll be the end of her. The magic gets stronger and stronger each time you use it!’

‘Does it?’ Em shuddered in horror at what else they might be the cause of. ‘Have you still got the dolly?’

Molly nodded. ‘I hid it in the brew house.’

‘Hadn’t we better get rid of it?’

‘We can’t burn it,’ Molly said. ‘What would that make happen? And if we throw it out, we don’t know who else might get hold of it.’

They stared at each other, overcome by the awesome and dreadful thing they had started.

‘P’raps we’d better just leave it where it is and not touch it,’ Em whispered, wide-eyed.

‘What’re you two swuss-swussing about?’ The voice made them both jump violently. It was Bert, Molly’s mean-eyed brother.

‘Nothing,’ Molly snapped. ‘Go away.’

‘
Nothing
,’ he mocked in a silly voice. He aimed an idle kick at them. ‘
Your
mom’s locked up in the loony bin,’ he sneered at Em then ambled off as if he couldn’t be bothered. They were only stupid
girls
.

Molly’s face burned with shame. ‘Don’t take no notice of
him
.’

‘I won’t,’ Em said, but the cruel words still stabbed right through her.

In the six weeks since Christmas, life had otherwise gone on much the same. By the end of January, when Molly peeped into her hiding place in the yard brew house, the wax dolly had disappeared and a small coop had appeared with three chickens in it. Someone must have found the wax and either used or disposed of it, and there had been no bad effects on Mrs Dawson that they could see. In fact soon after that she had had her cast removed and other than needing support from a stick she was now walking normally, so Em relaxed over it. And she and Molly liked going and talking to the hens, with their darting heads.

But during this time, Bob’s preoccupation with Flossie Dawson had turned into an obsession which the children were even beginning to get used to. Once she’d broken her leg – slipping on a patch of ice, she said – she needed every help that Bob could give her.

‘She’s a woman on her own,’ he said repeatedly when Dot kept on at him. ‘She needs help to manage.’

‘
I’m
a woman on my own an’ all!’ Dot retorted furiously. ‘Or haven’t you noticed? I don’t see you coming round to give
me
any help!’

‘But I
have
helped yer at times,’ Bob argued – which was true. Bob and Cynthia had done Dot a lot of favours in the past. ‘And it’s all new to Floss . . . to Mrs Dawson. She only buried her old man less than two years ago. She ain’t got anyone else. I’ve got to do what I can for her – she’s delicate, like.’

‘Oh yes – about as delicate as a bloody sledgehammer, that one,’ Dot muttered.

But there was no getting through to him.