Family of Women (7 page)

She turned back towards the range but still seemed at a loss. Violet could see she’d had a shock. She seemed nice enough anyway. But she wondered why on earth Harry had brought her here today of all days.

They drank a cup of tea together but Mrs Martin sat perched on the edge of her chair holding her cup, rocking slightly, backwards and forwards. Violet could see all the tension was affecting Harry as well.

‘Oh, Harry – what if he comes back?’ Mrs Martin burst out at last. ‘Every time I hear footsteps . . .’

‘It’ll be all right. He won’t.’

Mrs Martin looked stricken. ‘I can’t take any more . . .’ Her eyes filled. ‘What if he does?’

‘He won’t – I’ve told you. And if he does, I’ll see to him.’

‘You’re a gd fp heiay towood lad. He’s good, my Harry. Always was.’ Mrs Martin wiped her unblemished eye on her sleeve and tried to compose herself.

‘D’you like working at Vicars?’ she asked Violet, calm for a moment.

‘Yes – it’s all right. I’ve never worked anywhere else, though.’

‘Oh, it’s nice, Vicars is. Worked there myself for a bit once.’ She looked anxiously at Harry again. ‘Where’s he gone? Where d’you think he is?’

‘I dunno. Good bloody riddance.’

Violet was glad to get out of the house. Harry walked her down to the corner. It was already dark.

‘Come ’ere,’ he said, before they parted. ‘Are you my girl?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Course I am.’

He held her so close and tight, as if she was the most precious thing in the world, and she understood that he had wanted her to see his mom with her bruised face, for her to understand. And she knew how much he needed her.

‘I s’pose it’s all right if you want to look common as muck,’ Bessie said, when Violet showed her the simple frock she had found for her wedding.

She unfolded her arms and twitched at the material with her fingers.

‘Could do with a good wash, I should think. You don’t know where that’s been.’

The dress wasn’t new, but Violet felt she had had a stroke of luck finding it on the market, in with all the other frowsty old rags. It was white and scattered with tiny blue forget-me-nots and had pretty frills edging the neck and sleeves. She was delighted with it and Jo said she thought it was perfect, but of course Bessie had to spoil it, nose in the air as if it was a dirty floorcloth.

‘You going to give me the money for a better one then?’

‘Don’t you go getting uppity, wench,’ Bessie snapped. She moved away, starched apron crackling round her. ‘You’re not marrying the Prince of Wales. Old man Martin’s a drunk and a waster and it’s like father, like son – I’ve never seen it go different. But you make your own bed – and you lie on it.’

On an overcast May morning Violet and Harry stepped, husband and wife, out of the little Congregational church a few streets from Vicars.

Nearly all the factory had come to see them marry and shower them with rice at the door. Their wedding photograph showed Violet in her pretty dress, with orange-blossom in her hair. Rosina was not in the picture, but she was Violet’s bridesmaid, with her dark-eyed looks, her long hair plaited and coiled roundt mrsqem" al her head and entwined with flowers, which Josephine Snell had done for her. Rosina adored any sort of dressing-up and revelled in the attention.

‘You both look lovely!’ Jo said, kissing Violet outside. ‘You lucky girl, you!’

The church was one which Harry’s mother sometimes attended. Bessie, who never darkened the doors of any church, was not in a position to influence the situation much and she sulked. She wouldn’t take much interest in the wedding, offering only sarcastic remarks.

She’d been sniffy about Harry from the moment she knew they were courting, and she’d been just the same over Charlie’s Gladys, even though she was a young, red-headed harridan in the same model as herself. Charlie had certainly married his mother. Bessie’s children had all been under her tight control for so long that she didn’t like Violet making decisions for herself or moving out of her orbit of command. Yet weren’t marriage and children all that she had insisted was a woman’s place, loud and clear? Violet ignored her comments and her sulking. This was her chance to get out and away.

Bessie came to the wedding in the enormous frock she’d had made for Charlie and Gladys’s wedding the autumn before, in primrose yellow, dotted with little nosegays of blue and violet, and a big straw hat. Uncle Clarence was there to give Violet away, in a dusty black suit, his balding head glistening with perspiration. Before they stepped into the church he said, ‘You quite sure about this, wench?’

‘Bit late to ask me that,’ she said crossly. After all, when had either of them taken any notice of anything she did, so why should he care now? Violet felt strong. She was a woman now, still at Vicars, earning as much as eighteen shillings a week on piecework if she worked overtime. And she had Harry, and Harry wanted her.

Harry’s father was not at the wedding. He had shown his face a couple of times in the early days after the family had finally turned on him, then disappeared. Mrs Martin gradually relaxed, knowing he was not going to come roaring back in through the door, but she was a nervy woman who depended completely on her sons. Violet saw in her all she didn’t want to be herself, and thought the woman demanded too much of Harry.

‘When we’re married, are you going to go and spend every evening with your mom?’

She asked it teasingly. But Harry’s mother was coming to feel like an obstacle in her way, always so tired and pathetic-looking and forever whining to Harry. He seemed to be round there every spare moment. Although she tried not to feel annoyed and jealous, Violet sometimes couldn’t help it.

She would have liked to live in a different area, get right away from her mother and Harry’s, and from the sad spectre of Marigold. She dreaded seeing Marigold now. She was eighteen going on forty in her frumpy old dresses and with her lank greasy hair. Bessie had taken to having some of the women in the yard – and men if she could get them – round to play cards in the afternoon, holding court at the table, dishing out tea and anything stronger that was going and eating, forever eating. Lardy cakes were her favourite, and bags of sweets, barley sugar and humbugs. Marigold joined in, bracketed in with the middle-aged, one of those buzzing round her queen bee of a mother. She had no friends her oyedn obslaxe wwn age. All she had was her pretty soapbox full of songs, all scrawled on little scraps of paper. Rosina helped her with the spelling, when she could be bothered. For the wedding Marigold had tried to dress up, and there was something even more heartbreaking about the sight of her with her badly cut hair washed and hanging dead straight, and the dress of Bessie’s which had been taken in for her. Like all her clothes, it aged her and made her look shapeless and sexless like a sack of spuds.

Rosina was causing trouble now. She was thirteen but, Bessie said, very ‘forward’ for her age, always wanting to make her face up and nagging for clothes and wanting to be out and about. She was a precocious little miss, not like Violet. She stood up to her mother and there were frequent rows.

‘You can’t get married, Vi!’ she said when she first heard the news. ‘You’ll leave me here on my own!’

All Violet really wanted was to get as far away from it all as possible.

But neither of them wanted to leave Vicars. Harry was already twenty and was champing at the bit to be able to get out and follow his dreams. But he couldn’t go. Not yet.

‘I want to see our mom all right first. I’ll have to keep working here for now – that’s all there is to it. We’re young yet – there’ll be plenty of time.’

Of course it made sense not to rent a place too far away. And being in the Summer Lane area meant wasting no money on tram rides to work. All the money they could put away was for Harry’s dream passage to Australia.

‘Let’s get the lowest rent we can,’ Harry said. ‘There’s only the two of us. We don’t need much.’

So they rented a two-up house in Ormond Street, a back-to-back, on the front facing the street, with no attic. There was the downstairs room and scullery and two tiny bedrooms. For water and the toilets they had to go down the entry and into the yard. Violet looked round it, the first day they were allowed in. The place was in bad repair, great cracks up the side wall, cockroaches and silverfish all over the place. It was gloomy and stank of damp and mould.

‘Oh, Harry,’ she said dismally. ‘It’s horrible. Can’t we go somewhere a bit better?’

‘It’ll be all right after a lick of paint!’ Harry said, ever optimistic.

‘But what’s Mom going to say? I can’t have her here!’

‘It’s our house – not hers!’ Harry came and took her in his arms in the dismal little room and his eyes were alight with enthusiasm. ‘Look – the rent’s only six bob a week – think how much we can save with your wages and mine. The more rent we pay, the longer we’re going to have to stay in this rat-hole!’

‘I s’pose you’re right.’ Violet was lifted by his dream again. It just managed to raise her spirits above the sight of the stained old stone sink in the scullery and the pile of mouse droppings by the grease-encrusted gas stove. That and a lopsided shelf in the scullery were the only things in the house.

Harry was full of energy. He moved into the house two days before the wedding and spent the evenings and half the night with his big brother Tom, fixing the hinges of the front door and painting the flaking walls – pale green downstairs and white up in the bedrooms. He bought a table and chairs from a secondhand shop, and a mattress, and Violet bought some bedding and a few pans and crocks.

When they arrived back there on the evening of their wedding it looked better. Marigold had bodged a rag rug for them and Rosina had hemmed a red and white gingham tablecloth, on which were laid their white cups and saucers. Suddenly it began to look a little bit like a home.

They closed the door behind them and Violet stood still just inside.

‘Listen – ’

Harry stopped, frowning. ‘What?’

‘Peace.’ In fact you could hear the murmur of voices from next door, but that was comparative peace. No Mom booming out orders and Rosina backchatting, no babies and stinking pails of napkins. Nothing but their own place.

‘It’s ours,’ she said.

‘And you’re mine.’ Harry turned, and she was moved by the look of pride and happiness in his face. He came and took her in his arms and his eyes were solemn.

‘My wife. We’re going to make it better, aren’t we? Better than we’ve had it. Better than my father . . .’ He looked vulnerable, like a little boy, and she reached up and stroked his hair.

‘Course we are.’

‘Up and up.’

‘Yes – up and up.’

He grinned suddenly. ‘Now for the best bit.’ He stroked his hand over her little round breasts. She’d been very determined about not going with him before they were married. Not after Marigold. She was afraid of it. Didn’t really know what ‘it’ consisted of except that the consequences were so frightening. And what if he went off and left her? Then where would she be? So whenever Harry had got a bit too amorous she’d pushed him off.

‘Oi – don’t get cheeky,’ she’d say.

‘No need to wait any longer,’ Harry said. He took her hand and led her up the narrow, twisting staircase and both of them laughed at the sight of the bare room with nothing but the mattress on the floorboards, the sheets carefully tucked under it by Violet.

‘Not exactly the Ritz, is it?’ she said ruefully.

Harry pulled her down on to the mattress, kissing her hungrily.

‘We’ve got everything we need.’

He hurriedly unbuttoned her dress and lifted it over her head, then slipped off her camisole. She looked down at his dark head, stroking his hair in wonder as his lips fastened hungrily on her breast. Later, Violet worked out that sing.

The first week after the wedding, Bessie had said to her, ‘There’s no need for you to go cooking a joint on a Sunday – it’s a waste of gas. Charlie and Gladys’ll be round as usual. You and Harry come here with us.’

It was almost an order, not quite, but you didn’t gainsay Mom. And it was quite nice, just for a bit, to be back with everyone, Marigold helping with the cooking, Rosina on about the latest picture she’d seen at the flicks, and Clarence sitting there talking about the Villa with Harry (Charlie had always supported the Albion, just to be different), and the smell of a joint of beef in the oven. Harry wasn’t fussed about going, so long as he had a good dinner, and Bessie’s dinners were mammoth events, with big steamed puddings.

Violet was feeling queasy that Sunday when they went, six weeks after the wedding. She found it hard to eat much and could feel Bessie noticing. They were all crammed into the little room, Bessie, Charlie, Gladys, Violet and Rosina squeezed round the table, Clarence and Harry on the sofa. Bessie always went round the table with the pans of food, breathing hard, dolloping it on to everyone’s plates in huge quantities. As she came round with roast potatoes, Violet said, ‘Not too much, ta – that’ll do.’

It was the same with the cabbage.

Bessie sat down with a grunt in front of her heaped plate, face red and perspiring from all the cooking. She eyed Violet.

‘What’s up with you?’

Violet looked down at her plate.

‘Nothing.’

‘You got a bun in the oven?’

The tone of her mother’s voice was so grossly blunt that it cut right through Violet. Her cheeks burned red.

‘Well – have you?’

Blushing, Violet looked up. ‘Think I might have.’

Her mother’s face changed. She sat back, seeming to swell with smug satisfaction.

‘Hear that, Clarence?’ She was beaming in triumph. ‘Our Violet’s expecting. I’m going to be a grandma. Now I really have got summat to tell everyone! ’Ere – Marigold – pass us over some more gravy will you?’

For the first time in her life, Violet felt she had done something right.

Charlie’s wife Gladys, who was taking a long time to conceive a child, had to put up with Bessie’s constant boasting about Violet.