The Poppy Factory (31 page)

All mock-innocent, he asked what was wrong with eating teacakes and I said it wasn’t what we were doing, it was
why
we were doing it. The intention.

The smile disappeared off his face then and he reached across the table to take my hand, but I pulled it away. He looked directly into my eyes and said, ‘You’re right. I can’t help it either.’

The pull between us was so strong, like a magnet, almost impossible to resist. I could have leaned across the table and kissed him right there in the restaurant, not caring what anyone thought. But, just in time, I closed my eyes and took a deep breath instead and came to my senses. I really had to go now, I gabbled, it had been lovely meeting him and I would see him again soon when the factory started back … and then I grabbed my coat and ran for it. What a fool I am – whatever must he think of me? I should never have let things go this far.

Sunday 13th August

Johnnie received a very special present for his first birthday yesterday – his auntie Freda and little cousin Annie came home!

We were in the middle of celebrating – I’d made a cake and invited Ma and Pa and Mr and Mrs B. Alfie came too of course. It felt horrible having to invite my husband to his own son’s birthday tea, at his own home.

Mr B brought a beautiful silver spoon he’d found among some bric-a-brac he’d been selling for someone, and had shined it up till it glittered like new. ‘Mightn’t have been born with one in his mouth, but this is the next best thing,’ he mumbled, as I opened the parcel with Johnnie ‘helping’ on my lap. Dear Mick, he’s not good at expressing his thoughts but he has a heart of gold. When I kissed him, his ears flushed bright red.

Ma had knitted some bootees and a hat for winter, and Pa brought two pounds of best sausages so we could have a proper high tea with mashed potato and gravy, which even Johnnie can enjoy.

Alfie had drawn a birthday card with three stick people on the front: a tall skinny mum with a short brown bob, a dad with curly hair and a walking stick, and a little boy holding hands between them. I had to get busy putting the kettle on to stop myself from crying.

I suppose it was his way of saying he wants us back together again. He was very quiet; perhaps afraid of saying something out of turn. But I was glad he came and it felt almost normal, even though we haven’t yet talked at all about that day or how we can mend our marriage from here.

Then, just as I was cooking the sausages and Pa had gone out to the pub for a jug of beer, there was a knock on the door and in walked Freda, with Annie in one arm and a small suitcase in the other. Mrs B shrieked so loudly it set both babies off crying and soon we were all weeping with joy and clutching on to each other in our delight at seeing them safe and well. Elsie from next door had seen Freda coming down the street and she called in, to wish her well.

When the hubbub had died down a bit I went to put the kettle on again to revive the pot. Looking at her from the side, as she sat with Annie on one knee and Johnnie on the other, I could see how the strain of the past six months had told on Freda. For all her elegant clothes – far fancier than anything I’d ever seen her wear at home – she is painfully thin, with cheekbones I never knew she’d had now showing in her face. Annie, with her dark hair and Claude’s olive complexion, is a solemn little thing. I suspect she’s never had much company before, and was probably overawed by all the people and their chatter.

But they’re back safely with us now. They’ll both soon be blooming.

It was only when it came time for everyone to go home – Freda and Annie were plainly exhausted from their journey – that things became a bit awkward. Ma and Pa went first, then Alfie went to pick up Freda’s suitcase, she looked at him a bit oddly and asked, ‘Where are you going?’ He flushed and muttered something like, ‘I’m bringing your case for you.’ She looked at me and then him, with her eyebrows raised, until Mrs B nudged her out of the doorway with a loud whisper of ‘don’t ask questions, we’ll explain later.’

This morning, Freda came round without Annie.

‘Please tell what’s going on,’ she said, outright, almost before we’d sat down. ‘Alfie won’t say a word, and Ma says it’s none of my business. But why the hell is he staying with us?’

Her worried eyes brought home to me the seriousness of the situation, the shocking state we’d got ourselves into. Six months ago it would have been unthinkable that Rose and Alfie, childhood sweethearts, the perfect couple everyone always said were meant for each other, could be on the rocks. And yet here we were, living apart and barely speaking to each other.

‘There’s so much to explain,’ was all I managed before breaking down. Two hours later, after crying in each other’s arms, then talking, laughing, making cups of tea and then talking and laughing some more and weeping all over again, I’d told her all about Alfie’s drinking, how he’d given up looking for work, the terrible incident with Johnnie that left me feeling that I’d been living with a stranger, and how difficult it was to find it in my heart to forgive him. She’d told me about her extraordinary adventures in Paris, the ‘high life’ they’d enjoyed until Claude reverted to his old ways and doing his disappearing act again.

‘What a pair we are,’ I said, putting the kettle on again. I was just starting to think that, now Freda was back, everything was going to work out just fine, when she dropped the bombshell. ‘There’s just one thing. Who were you with at Waterloo on Friday afternoon?’

It felt as though all the air had been sucked out of my lungs. I’ve been feeling so guilty about meeting Walter, terrified by the strength of feeling I’d had for him in the tea room. But with the excitement of the birthday and Freda’s homecoming, I’d managed to push it to the back of my mind.

‘You were at Waterloo on Friday?’ I managed to gasp, burning with embarrassment from head to toe.

‘No, I wasn’t. But Ma was,’ she said, looking me straight in the eye. ‘She saw you having tea with a good-looking fellow with yellow hair, was what she said. She’s worried it might be … you know?’

I jumped in a bit too hastily, saying that she could tell her ma that it wasn’t anything, that he was just a friend, a lad called Walter, lost an arm in the war, works at the Poppy Factory opposite Mitchell’s, and we … Then I dried up.

‘We …?’ she prompted.

‘He asked me out to tea and I was feeling so low …’ I ran out of words again.

‘It’s serious, isn’t it?’ she said, after a moment.

I shook my head and then changed my mind and nodded. We sat in silence for a long minute and then she said, ‘We’ve got to sort this thing out, between you and Alfie. Otherwise you’re going to get off with this yellow-haired chap and that would be a disaster. Believe me, I know how difficult it is to resist a handsome man, even when you know it’ll all end in tears. I’m a walking example of how not to do it. Just stay here and I’m going to talk to my brother.’

I pleaded with her not to tell him about Walter. ‘Of course not, silly,’ she said. ‘Your secret’s safe with me. I’ll make up some story to reassure Ma. I’m going to tell Alfie what he needs to do to save his marriage.’

Tuesday 15th August

Alfie moved back last night. It’s still early days, but I think it’s going to work if we are careful with each other.

Freda was good as her word. By her account, she went straight round to the pub on Sunday lunchtime after she left me, and demanded that Alfie should leave now and come for a walk with her. When he refused she announced in a loud voice that if that was the way he wanted it, they could talk about the problem with his wife and child right there, in front of everyone. Well, that got him to his feet quick enough, she told me, and they went out to the park.

When she relayed to him what I’d told her, about the drinking and shaking the baby, he apparently broke down in tears and said he was a failure of a man, disabled and unemployable, not good enough for me and Johnnie, and it was best if the marriage stayed broken so that I could be free to find a proper husband and father instead.

She shouted at him to pull himself together and start thinking of other people for a change rather than just feeling sorry for himself, and he looked pretty shocked that his little sister could be so fierce, at least that’s how she put it.

Then she went on to tell him that his drinking had to stop,
now
: it was becoming too much of a habit, and one he couldn’t afford, and if he carried on like this he’d end up in the gutter like a tramp, and didn’t their ma and pa have enough to worry about what with business being slow, and her and Annie with no income and nowhere to live?

He got angry at this and said that was her lookout not his, and stood up to go and when she asked him where, he said ‘to The Nelson’, and she said, ‘over my dead body. You’re going to see Rose, right now’.

So she virtually dragged him to the flat and then she put Johnnie and Annie together in his pram and said she was going to take them both home for tea and wouldn’t be back for several hours. Before she left, she looked at us both sternly and said that by the time she returned she expected us both to have apologised to each other and sorted out our differences.

In the first few moments after she left, both Alfie and me were so astonished that we could find no words to say to each other. Standing there in our parlour, wet from the rain, he looked so pale and dejected, like a dog that’s stolen a bone and is afraid of getting beaten, that all I could think of doing was to give him a big hug.

After a little while he wrapped his arms around me, too, and we stood there for several minutes, just breathing and feeling each other’s warmth. Then he turned his face to my cheek and kissed it, and I turned my face too and we kissed properly. It was a warm and comfortable feeling, like putting on a familiar glove. It didn’t feel sexy, but I’m hopeful that will come back as we learn to forgive each other.

By the time Freda returned with the babies three hours later, we had both apologised for all the thoughtless and hurtful things we’d said and done, Alfie had promised to lay off the booze, and I had promised to be less snippy with him at home. I’d nearly exploded when he asked me to give up my job, but managed to hold my tongue and told him that as soon as he found something that earned him enough for us to rent a two-bedroom flat, I would definitely stop working.

He seemed to accept this but then started to grumble about how was he expected to go out looking for work when he had to look after the baby and do all the household chores too? I had to bite my lip again because Ma has done most of the childcare these past few months, and he’s done precious little around the house. But then I had a brainwave and suggested we could ask Freda if she would look after Johnnie while I was out at work, since she had to be at home with Annie anyway and this way she could earn a few shillings to contribute to her keep and he could go on looking for work.

Finally, I reminded him that there was a possibility of work right here on our doorstep, at the Poppy Factory, but this was the final straw.

‘I’ve agreed to everything you’ve asked,’ he said. ‘But spare me the bleeding heart sympathy from some ruddy charity, paying tuppence halfpenny to make artificial flowers.’

That made me think of Walter, and his pride in the job which had – his words – ‘given his life back’, but of course I said nothing. Alfie is still clinging to the belief that he can get the sort of job he might have had as an able-bodied man, even though there are nearly three million unemployed. But perhaps it’s a step too far, just now, to insist.

It will take a while to rediscover the trust we once felt for each other, but I am confident that now it will happen. Tomorrow I will go and buy Freda a present – perhaps some new nylons? – as a thank you for making us both see sense, at last. And I will ask her about looking after Johnnie. I pray she agrees.

Monday 21st August

Saw Walter again this morning when I went back to work after the break. It was embarrassing at first, recalling the undignified way I’d rushed out of that tea room, smitten with guilt. But he reassured me, saying he fully understood how I felt and although he thought me the most beautiful girl in the world he didn’t want to cause any problems at home and couldn’t we try just being friends?

Then he told me a joke, the kind of gallows humour that only an amputee could get away with:
An injured British soldier captured by the Germans has to have one of his legs amputated and asks the camp doctor if the limb can be sent back to his family in England. The doctor thinks it a strange request but agrees. A few days later, they have to amputate his other leg, and agree to the same curious request. Then they have to take off an arm, and finally the other arm. This time, the camp Kommandant refuses.‘Nein!’ he says.‘Ve cannot do zis! Ve suspekt you are trying to escape.

I love the way he is determined to make light of his disability. Perhaps because it is very obvious that he’s lost an arm, so he might as well admit it and joke about it. But while Alfie has got a pronounced limp, he can ‘conceal’ the fact that he’s only got one leg, which allows him to deny it to himself.

Still, I can’t complain. He has been the most loving and attentive husband since our reconciliation. Freda agreed to look after the babies; in fact she was thrilled by the idea of being able to earn a few shillings, and this was the first day that Alfie has been out job hunting.

He returned limping more than usual and quite grey-faced with tiredness. Most places he approached told him to come back in September after the summer break, but he wasn’t rejected out of hand, which has cheered him up a little.

Tuesday 22nd August

Walter told me today that Major Howson is still hiring. When I mentioned it to Alfie he bit my head off. I’m not going to mention it again.

Monday 4th September

Alfie’s got a job! In ‘sales’, no less. I am so proud of him.

Today was his first day and he came home utterly exhausted, falling into bed immediately after tea so I hardly had a chance to ask him how his day went, let alone what ‘sales’ means. Perhaps tomorrow?