The Poppy Factory (14 page)

‘Did I touch something painful?’ I asked him. ‘Or was it something I said?’

He muttered something under his breath and I asked him to repeat it.

‘It’s no ****ing good,’ he swore, starting to get out of bed. ‘I’ll never be any good for you. I’m going home.’

‘No you’re not,’ I said, pushing him back and getting angry now. ‘You’re my husband and I love you and it’s up to me to decide whether you’re good enough. Now, you stay here and get some sleep.’

He started to answer back but I just leapt up, grabbed my dressing gown and this notebook and came downstairs, holding my breath for fear that I would hear his footsteps clomping above and that he would stick to his threat. Him going home seemed to be admitting defeat, a sign that our marriage was over. Thankfully he seems to be staying put.

So here I am, two hours later, still writing. In my better moments I tell myself that we can sort it out, but right now I’m starting to wonder.

Tuesday 22nd April

Things are looking up!

When Ma came downstairs yesterday morning and found me sleeping on the sofa she asked what was wrong and I burst into tears and told her it was impossible for Alfie and me to share a single bed any more, what with his injury and the pain it causes him. She looked a bit surprised and said surely we’d be getting our own place soon and couldn’t we put up with it for a little while? But I said it could take weeks or even months before Alfie got his pension sorted out and found a job so we could afford to rent our own flat, and in the meantime were we supposed to sleep apart every night?

I stomped out to the privy then and later I heard her and Pa talking. Today while Alfie went with another Tommy to see the pensions people, me and Ma have been in the boys’ room, packing up their stuff into some boxes and cases Pa fetched down from the attic.

It was the small things that hurt the most, the cricket bat, the school cap, a broken toy car, and even a dirty sock that had rolled under the bed and been missed. We cried a lot and made endless cups of tea and I had to grit my teeth to keep going and keep her going too. She refused to throw a single thing away, even the dirty sock, so by the end we had three huge boxes and two suitcases of clothes and toys ready for Pa to hoist up into the loft somehow.

After that it got a bit easier. When we took the carpets out into the yard to beat them, I imagined that every thwack was hitting a German soldier over the head for killing my brothers, and it made me feel better to get angry. Ma took down the curtains, washed them and hung them on the line; we pushed the beds together and tied the legs with string, then put an extra blanket over the two mattresses to smooth out the join. We sat and sewed the single blankets and sheets together, and then made up the bed as a double.

Ma cleaned the mirror and the windows and I found the little lace runner that I’d been given by one of Alfie’s aunties on our wedding day and laid it out along the top of the chest of drawers. With a bunch of primroses as a finishing touch, it looked so pretty.

Alfie came back in good spirits, having been told that he would probably get 70% of the disability pension which is not enough to live on but a great help to supplement his wages (and mine) if we can both find jobs. He now has to wait for the Board to assess how disabled he is. They also went to the housing office but he was told there’s such a shortage of housing we don’t stand a chance, not unless we had children.

So I said, ‘We can work on it.’ And he smiled in his suggestive way and said, ‘I like the sound of that,’ and then I said, ‘We’ll just have to find somewhere that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg.’ The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them. What a stupid thing to say to a man with only one leg. But he just laughed and said, ‘I can’t afford to lose another one!’ We were both in hysterics when Ma came in and offered us tea.

When I showed him our new room he took me in his arms and kissed me then and there, and promised things would be better come that evening. He was right: we had a lovely, loving night, almost like old times and although he is still very embarrassed about it, I am even getting quite used to his poor stump and his missing leg.

That’s not to say it didn’t feel a bit sad and strange, at first, sleeping in the room where both of my brothers had spent their first twenty years or so. They were so close and such good friends, they spent hours holed up in here, playing games or just reading and talking together. I was only allowed into their sanctuary on very special occasions, and if I dared to creep in when they were safely out of the house it always felt like trespassing.

Oh God, I hope you are keeping them safe in heaven. I miss them so much.

Friday 2nd May

Today was my birthday and everyone made a big fuss of me. Ma baked a cake and Freda bought me a beautiful bead necklace. How ever could she afford it, I thought, but said nothing. I suspect Claude may have had something to do with it, so it’s better not to ask. Alfie gave me some white socks. Dear man, he’d heard me saying I needed some, but has absolutely no idea that it’s not the sort of thing a girl wants for a birthday present! Nylons would have been much more welcome.

Pa came home with pork chops for our tea, all excited because they’ve announced that from now on children will get a full meat ration instead of half as it’s been up till now. He reckons he can open three days a week instead of two, and his profits will nearly double, on account of there being so many littl’uns around here.

Saturday 24th May

Nearly a month has passed since my last entry, but with Alfie around I never seem to get enough time on my own to write. Reading back, I seemed so optimistic that with him safely home, everything would fall into place. Sadly, the past few weeks have proved otherwise.

In the first instance, I am constantly tired because of Alfie’s nightmares. He shouts in his sleep and sometimes swears quite horribly, imagining himself back in the trenches or going over the top. I have to put my arms around him and whisper in his ear until it stops and he falls asleep again. Sometimes he sits up in bed suddenly, and seems to be fighting off the person he’s dreaming about, flailing his arms around quite dangerously, so all I can do is talk to him, trying to wake him from the dream. The other night he rolled right out onto the floor and cowered on the bedside rug, quivering and moaning at some imagined terror, so I had to climb out too, and help him back into bed.

I’ve tried talking to him, but he just clams up. I’ve also suggested he might go back to see the doctor but he just pooh poohs the idea and says they can’t do anything and it will go away before long, just as soon as he can get back to some kind of normal life. But it pains me dreadfully to see him suffering in this way – and it brings home the horrors that he and his fellows have endured. It’s not only the visible injuries, but the invisible scars in their brains that they are having to cope with, even months after the war has ended.

When he’s not having nightmares he gets what the doctor in the hospital called ‘phantom pains’, which is what he feels in the leg that isn’t there any more. He won’t talk about it much but I can see his face clenching with the agony, and apparently there’s nothing they can do for it. The strange thing is that he can go for days without a problem and then it’ll hit him again, there doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason.

Secondly, although he’s tried his very best, he’s still unemployed, and jobs seem to be scarce as hens’ teeth. We read in the newspapers almost every day about soldiers having to sell matches in the street, or even take up begging to get by, but we just assumed these were the weaker kind of man, not prepared to put in the kind of hard work needed to find a proper job.

The government has told companies to offer returning soldiers their old positions wherever possible, so I helped Alfie write a letter to the boss at the warehouse where he worked before he signed up. They invited him for an interview and he made the difficult journey (lots of walking) only to be told that all the light work jobs were filled and because of his leg he wouldn’t be strong enough to do the heavy lifting.

He’s never been a shirker, and not one to give up without a fight. He spent the rest of the week walking the streets and offering himself for work at every factory and warehouse he could find, but all he ended up with was a vicious blister on his stump which has turned into a sore and means that now he can hardly bear to wear his leg any more.

Yesterday was the date for his appearance at the Disability Board and he was determined not to miss it. I persuaded him to let me wrap the stump with soft bandages and antiseptic cream so that he could at least get to the bus. It broke my heart to see the way he had to grit his teeth with every step, trying not to show the pain though it was clear from his face all the same. By the time we reached the bus stop his cheeks were quite grey with the effort, and although he seemed to recover himself on the journey, the walk from the bus stop to the office in the West End was even longer and more exhausting.

I bought a cup of sweet tea from a street vendor and forced him to drink it before he went in, and then I sat in the park waiting for him. Heaven knows what they did in there, because it seemed to take hours. But it’s good news: they have confirmed that he will get 70% of a full disability pension and should be able to collect it from the Post Office in a couple of weeks’ time.

We have to give thanks for small mercies, I suppose.

Monday 2 June

Today I’d had enough and managed to persuade Alfie to allow a doctor to visit. Pa kindly offered to pay for it. The ulcer on his stump is now a full two inches round, and looks disgusting but strangely doesn’t seem to be causing him as much pain as before, so he insists on wearing the leg and it just gets worse and worse.

The doctor just gave us some cream and told Alfie he would have to rest and not use his artificial leg until the abscess has fully healed. He said the wound was now so deep that it had destroyed the nerve endings in his skin, which is why he doesn’t feel so much pain. When I asked how long the healing would take, he sucked his teeth and said at least a couple of months, and if Alfie went on using the artificial leg before his wound had properly healed, it could make it much worse and take even longer. He must use crutches instead, he said, or rent a wheelchair.

As I showed the doctor to the door he whispered, ‘Make sure your husband takes care, won’t you, Mrs Barker? He’s already had a close shave, so don’t let him risk his health for the sake of a few weeks taking it easy.’ If only it was that simple.

After all that Alfie went into one of his black moods again, cursing the fact that he would be stuck indoors now that summer is here, and when I tried to suggest we should get hold of a wheelchair he refused to speak to me. I know how he detests the things, hates being at other people’s waist height, loathes the idea that people might pity him for being a cripple, but it’s only for a few weeks, and then he can get back on his feet again.

Tonight he was still sulky and turned away from me, and I was so upset that I came downstairs to write this. It feels like we are back at square one.

Wednesday 25 June

PEACE IS OFFICIAL. The Versailles Treaty will be signed in the next few days. Today was showery and at teatime Pa was full of a story about the rainbow which appeared in the sky just as the news broke.

‘I was just serving Mrs Gittins, and was asking about her son, you know, the one who got gassed, and we was talking about the peace announcement when we looked out of the shop window and there it was, right across the sky.’

I imagined them peering between the carcasses of meat, and the hares hung up by their hind legs, wondering at the rainbow. ‘It’s a sign,’ Ma said. ‘A symbol of hope, like the one that came to Noah at the end of the flood.’ Pa pooh-poohed it but I could tell he was a bit moved by the whole affair too.

Well, it might be peace in the world, but it doesn’t make life any easier here at 25 Trafalgar Road. Alfie hobbles along to the pub on his crutches every lunchtime and evening, for the company, he says, and I can hardly blame him. It’s no fun being stuck here with his in-laws without a place of his own. He can’t afford to buy more than a pint for himself but there is usually someone who’s happy to stand a few drinks to a disabled serviceman, so he often comes home a bit worse for wear.

They are talking about a peace celebration next month, with parades and parties and the rest, but at teatime Alfie had a moan about how the whole thing will be a waste of money and they ought to spend it on getting soldiers back to work or building homes for them. ‘A land fit for heroes, is that what Lloyd George calls it?’ he grumbled. ‘Fit for ruddy nothing, if you ask me.’

Pa wisely held his counsel but Ma weighed in, muttering something about, ‘All the victory marches in the world can’t bring my boys back.’ It doesn’t help that it’s the 3rd anniversary of Johnnie’s death next week, even though no-one is mentioning it.

I’m not sure what I think. It would be good for our morale to have a little celebration, but I can see what Alfie means about expensive parades and the rest.

The nightmares seem to have quietened down, recently, but maybe this is because he’s been drinking so much.

Monday 30 June

It’s been decided. There’s to be a street party in Trafalgar Road on Peace Day, Saturday 19th July.

After all the fireworks and maroons and the rest being set off all over London yesterday to celebrate the news of the signing, Bert held a meeting with the regulars at the pub and announced that he would support it with a free half pint for every adult and lemonade for the children.

We had a right row at teatime though. Ma has completely set her heart against any kind of celebration and Alfie said he would rather go to Whitehall to see the march past at the new Cenotaph that’s been built to honour the dead, even though it’s a struggle for him to get down the road, let alone to central London. The last thing he wanted was a stupid party, he said, because it was an insult to those who lost their lives and whose lives have been destroyed by the war. ‘And all for what? For the men who fought in those bloody trenches to spend their days begging for bread and their nights on the streets.’ He thumped the table, making the cutlery rattle.