Clover's Child (17 page)

Joan had a new job at the Queen’s Head and things appeared to carry on as normal for the other members of the Simpson family. The noises of the house were familiar: the dull echo of the radio from the back room, as though the presenter and all musicians were speaking and performing through a pillow; the flush of the loo and then the hiss as the cistern refilled itself, the sharp snap of the bolt on the bathroom door. The bang of her mum’s big saucepan as it hit the bottom of the sink, usually after the spuds or greens had been drained, as though her wrist had finally tired of carrying the heavy weight. The occasional shriek of laughter from her mum or little sister, probably at something funny her dad had done or said, which might be anything from an impression of Mrs Harrison to putting a tea towel on his head.

After a week, however, these distractions felt like a taunt to Dot’s whirring brain. The sounds of normal life seemed strangely magnified, until they deafened her. Every time there was a creak on a floorboard or stair tread, she jumped, waiting to see who or what was approaching. It was usually no one.

One day her mum came up, stood in the doorway and informed her, quite casually, of the grand plan. She had decided to tell the neighbours that Dot had got a job on a farm in Kent, the same one where they as a family had picked hops years before. The farmer’s wife was unwell and they had asked if Dot might be available to help out with the kids, cook dinner, that kind of thing. It was certainly a step up from Bryant and May. She overheard her mum and Mrs Harrison chatting one day, heard their neighbour pause from dragging on her fag to comment, ‘All them fresh apples, country air and home-cooked food, why wouldn’t you? Lucky girl.’

That’s me, thought Dot, such a lucky girl.

Once or twice, keeping her head low, she peeked through the tiny gap in the lace curtain and watched the kids playing in the street. It felt like an age away that she had been similarly amused by nothing more than a stick and a scruffy tennis ball. The kids were innovative, resourceful, changing the game to keep everyone interested. One minute you could touch the third lamppost along and be safe, but two turns on, touching it meant instant disqualification – hence the howls of the little girl at Number 26, who could not keep up with the new rules but very definitely did not want to be out. Dot smiled as the little waif called her big brother a ‘poo-poo shit head’ before stomping off to the kerb with her arms folded high across her chest, sulking at the injustice of it all.

It felt strange that life went on as normal for those around her, while her own world was held in limbo.

When the days were hot, Joan would march in and climb up on the window sill to open the top window. There was nothing suspicious in a mother airing the bedroom of her daughter who was working on a farm in Kent. The metal arm would stick out, pushing the net curtain into a V that would catch any breeze and flutter all day long. This could fascinate Dot for hours, especially the patterns on the wall as the lace filtered the rays and fell back against the glass. On the warmest days, the sound of clicking heels and heavy soles on the cobbles was replaced by the light tap of rubber sandals and the pat and squeak of sneakers. No rain or wind meant that birdsong was louder. People seemed to laugh more, happy to feel the warmth creeping into their bones, driving out their aches.

Sometimes she heard voices she recognised. When it was Barb and her Aunty Audrey, usually chatting about nothing in particular, Dot had to sit on her hands to stop herself from jumping up and banging on the glass; she would have so liked her mate’s company.

Dee was kept inside for much of the summer as well, poor little mite; it was almost punishment by proxy. The neighbours had been told that Dot had gone to Kent and when Dot did eventually leave, this would be the story Dee would get told too. Joan and Reg figured that any inconsistency with dates would be attributed to a little girl’s confusion. They distracted their youngest daughter with stories, the making of fairy cakes and the colouring in of pictures from her book, which, once completed, were ripped out and stuck on the fireplace with Sellotape. They hoped that she would forget that her big sister was being held hostage in the front bedroom and, for most of the time, she did.

One morning, though, not long after school had started again after the summer holidays, Dot was woken by the creak of a floorboard on her bedroom floor. Her mum usually waited until she was asleep before tip-toeing in, bringing glasses of milk and ham sandwiches that Dot would sip and nibble when and if the fancy took her. Dot opened one eye and was pleased to see Dee’s smiling face and not her mother standing there in stony-faced judgement as though the very sight of her daughter was enough to renew the anger, the shame she felt at the situation.

‘Hello, Dee! What a lovely surprise. Are you all right, darling?’

Dee nodded. She had been told to stay out of Dot’s room and was nervous. She flicked the ear of the stuffed bunny under her arm.

‘School all right?’

‘Yep, I’m doing tables.’

‘You never are! Which ones d’you know?’

‘I don’t know none yet, but I’ve got a book.’

Dot smiled. ‘That’s brilliant! You’ll have to learn them all, Dee, and then you can do any sums you want to. You’re such a big girl now.’ It was true, her little sister had grown in the weeks that Dot had been confined to her bedroom.

‘Are you feeling better, Dot? Mum said you’ve got tonsils.’ Dee looked sheepish, she didn’t know what ‘tonsils’ was, but if it meant that her sister was banished to her room and wasn’t to be spoken to, she knew it must be bad.

‘I tell you what, Dee, seeing you has made me feel a
lot
better, honest.’

‘Mum and Dad are having a nap in the front room. They had some beer and now they’re asleep.’

‘Beer?’ It wasn’t like her parents to be drinking in the afternoon.

‘Yeah, they had a dance and they were having beer because of the rent.’

‘Because of the rent?’ It made no sense, Dee had probably got the wrong end of the stick, bless her.

Dee nodded. ‘They got a letter saying that they don’t have to pay no rent. Not just now but not never ever, not until they die!’ Wide eyed, Dee delivered the last word with drama.

‘That can’t be right, darling.’ Dot shook her head at her sweet little sister.

‘It
is
right Dot! Dad said it was a bleeding good job cos your shenanigans meant that we were nearly bleeding starving anyway! But now they’ve got no rent and mum’s got a coupla shifts up the Queen’s Head in the kitchen, he says we’ll be all right.’

Dot gave a small laugh, hearing the words ‘shenanigans’ and ‘bleeding starving’ coming from the mouth of her little sis, although in truth it was far from funny.

‘I’ve got to go now, Dot, but I hope you feel a bit better. I miss you. I liked it when you had your dinner at the table with us.’

‘I liked it too, Dee.’

‘I gotta go now. I don’t want to get tonsils.’

‘Ooh no, you don’t. But don’t worry, tin ribs, you’re a bit too little for tonsils!’

Dee crept forward and kissed her sister on the cheek. It was the sweetest kiss Dot had received in a very long time and made her tears pool instantly.

‘Thank you, baby girl,’ she whispered through her tears.

Dee poked her head through the door before finally leaving. ‘Dot?’

‘Yes, darling?’

‘Tonsils has n’arf made your belly fat!’ With that she clicked the door shut and plodded off down the stairs.

Dot promised herself every day to try and put Sol out of her head, but it was like trying not to breathe. She divided her time between thinking about the time they spent together and imagining what life might be like if he were still here. She spoke to her bump, rubbing at the stretched skin of her stomach and filling in all the little details that she thought her baby might like to hear.

‘We used to go to a little cafe that wasn’t flash, but your dad said it was perfect. We’d sit for hours and hours talking about nothing much really. I was very happy to watch him and listen to him. He’s beautiful, you see, and he told me stories of a place far, far away that sounds like paradise. I thought I’d live there too one day, but it wasn’t to be. I expect if he was still here now, we’d be going for picnics and enjoying the sunshine; he hated to be cold.’ Dot got off the bed as she remembered something. She opened the wardrobe door and there behind a couple of jumpers and skirts that she could no longer get into was her summer frock, a cotton tea dress with big fat roses all over it. She pulled it from the hanger and remembered the day she had sponged it, making sure it would be lovely for the summer. Her tears spilled at the memory of that day, she could never have envisaged that this was how she would spend her summer.

‘I thought I’d wear this for him, but look at me now, baby. What on earth happened?’ Dot lay on the bed and placed the dress over her stomach. ‘I know it’s happened, I know he’s gone, but I still can’t believe it, if that makes sense. I keep imagining he’ll pop up and whisk us away, give me an explanation, because it doesn’t make sense, any of it. And I don’t want to scare you, but I don’t know what to do.’ Dot considered her options: she had no intention of giving up her baby, yet every solution she considered led her right back to the facts. With no money, no job, no husband and no home, the prospects were grim.

Dot often dreamed about Sol. Her dreams were always set in the St Lucia of her imagination, where the sun warmed her skin, her hand was always clasped inside his and she felt happy and optimistic about a future with the man she loved. They would drink pineapple juice and lie on soft sand with the ocean lapping at their feet. Sometimes the smell and feel of him was so real that when she opened her eyes a fresh blanket of grief would envelop her, the pain in her heart and chest as raw as just after he’d disappeared. It was like probing a rotten tooth with the end of her tongue.

Try as she might, she couldn’t stop loving him. She knew that if only she could erase her feelings for him, life would be a little easier, but it was not to be. It made no difference that the man she loved did not exist, that the man she loved had been a mirage, a fantasy; that in reality he was a liar, a charlatan. She ached for him nonetheless.

Dot also felt an overwhelming sense of disappointment. It wasn’t enough that Sol had broken her heart; he had also stamped on her dreams. Escape from Ropemakers Fields to paradise had felt within her reach, but on the day he left, he took that possibility with him. How he must have laughed at her confession of wanting to be a designer, smirked at her seaside that existed inside a conch shell and mocked the fabric rainbow that sat against a panelled wall in a West End store. Well, he was right. A life of success and ambition was laughable for someone like her. His mother’s words, delivered so calmly, were there for perfect recall whenever she tried to stop her cogs from turning.
‘If he loved you, would he simply disappear without speaking to you first? If he had wanted you to go with him, he would have made provision for that, but he didn’t, did he?’
Dot rubbed at her rounded stomach, which pushed against the elasticated waist of her trousers. ‘No he bloody didn’t.’ She smiled bitterly, thinking of his name. ‘A bringer of peace, my arse.’

* * *

October finally arrived and with it Dot’s last night at Ropemakers Fields. Leaves had started to turn russet and small piles of fallen gold gathered against kerbs and behind bins. The sun was bright and the sky blue; London was at its most beautiful. These were just the kind of days that she would liked to have shared with Sol, probably walking hand in hand along the Serpentine. But the day of her exile to Battersea could not have been further from a walk in the park. It was all arranged, the car was to collect her at five in the morning, when there was least risk of her being spotted by the neighbours as she decamped from bedroom to waiting car.

Dot felt a sense of relief as the morning dawned. Her small suitcase was packed with basic essentials: a couple of nighties, a change of underwear and her hairbrush and toothbrush. Nestled under her things lay a brown paper packet with some mid-blue material in it. Dot had finally decided what she would use it for.

Her dad stayed in his bedroom and Dee was tucked up, sound asleep with her bunny under her chin, so it was left to her mum to wave her off.

‘You’ll be all right, Dot.’ It was the first time her mum had addressed her directly in weeks.

‘Will I?’ She wasn’t so sure.

Joan didn’t answer, but instead pushed something into her daughter’s hand.

‘What’s this?’ Dot looked at the cotton square.

‘It’s one of your nan’s hankies.’

Dot stared at her mother.

Joan gave her a reluctant, awkward hug. Then, after a quick glance left and right to make sure there were no witnesses, she closed the door.

The taxi wound through the familiar streets of Limehouse, which were silent at this early hour. Dot deliberately kept her gaze inside the car; she didn’t want any sharp memories to jab her heart and erode her frail strength. Nonetheless, in her mind’s eye she could still picture the east London lanes down which they had walked arm in arm, could still glimpse the ghost of her smiling face as she ran to meet the man she loved, the man she thought she would marry.

Daylight was creeping across London and Dot felt the occasional short-lived flutter of excitement to be out and about. The longest she had ever slept away from home was one night and that was under the roof of her paternal grandma on the night Dee was born. Yet, unsurprisingly, this was the aspect of her forthcoming incarceration at Lavender Hill Lodge that worried her least. Eventually the cab pulled into a driveway in Battersea, passing a square gate house of red brick, whose white-painted window frames and cheerful window boxes full of pretty little red and yellow flowers made it look cute and welcoming. The sight lifted her spirits for approximately ten seconds. Then the car rounded the bend in the drive and stopped in front of Lavender Hill Lodge.

The burly cabbie did not attempt to help her retrieve her bag from the boot. Instead he watched in the rear-view mirror as she struggled to haul it over the rim without bashing her swollen stomach. He pulled away the second the boot was closed, his small wheel spin on the gravel and shake of his head telling her all she needed to know about where his sympathy lay. It didn’t matter. What was one more disapproving click of the tongue and curl of the lip compared to the battle she was about to undertake.