Tin Hats and Gas Masks (16 page)

‘Let me help, I can't just sit there,' she said.

‘Get the cups out then, and bugger the tea ration. I suppose we'll have plenty of the stuff again soon, now the war's over. At least you'll have a peacetime baby, Annie.'

But suddenly Annie couldn't see for the tears rushing from her eyes. Stumbling towards the table she sat down on the bright-red stool and sobbed.

‘There, there, there my love, have a good cry and get it out of your system.' Mrs Bookman bent over and comforted her as she might a very young child. When the weeping had subsided she said, ‘Listen, Annie, I've just had a wonderful idea. You can go and stay with Auntie Bess in the country.'

‘Auntie …' the tears were still in her voice and she shuddered them away. ‘B-bess?'

‘That's right. She's a darling. She's my aunt really – about seventy now but you'd never think it. She was
widowed very young and she ran a cat's-meat-shop afterwards. Later, when trade was bad she went to work in one of the big shops in the West End. Smart she was, and with a good brain. Got to be head of her department. Always wore lovely clothes. Anyway, about ten years ago she went to live in the country, little place hiding in the Sussex Downs. Tell you what, Annie, why don't we go and see her. She loves company and she's got a spare bedroom. Be ideal for you until your time comes. We could get you a wedding ring so you won't have no unpleasantness like….'

‘I don't know … and what will I do for money. I really need to keep on with my job for as long as I can. And it would be cheating to have a wedding-ring, wouldn't it?'

‘Well now, as the law stands, you can't marry without your parents' consent until you're twenty-one. But you can marry at sixteen with their consent. That poses problems, love, don't it?'

‘It would mean I'd have to tell them? I wonder what they'd do? You know, Mrs B, I don't believe they'd allow me to marry.' In her mind she added, ‘Johnny' but her tongue stayed silent.

‘Are we having a cuppa today or next week, Maggie?' Charlie Bookman popped his head round the kitchen door. ‘We're all bloody parched in here, gal.'

‘Just coming.' She turned to Annie. ‘Think about it, love. You've got nothing to lose by coming to see her, have you now?'

Annie thought of nothing else for the rest of the day and most of that night. She knew she had to make her decision
quickly, for Mrs B had told her that she would probably begin to ‘show' within weeks. If she told her parents and obtained their consent to marry – but she simply couldn't see that happening. Her mother would disown her, she was in no doubt about that. These last few years had wiped away any lingering dreams that she was anything other than an ornament for her family. Amodel daughter tucked away to boarding-school to be brought out and paraded now and then. Then there was her father's condition to consider. Would the shock really kill him?

If they couldn't marry yet, surely the best thing would be to accept Aunt Bessie's hospitality until the baby was born. Beyond that her thoughts refused to travel. And it wasn't certain that Aunt Bess would take her in anyway, although Johnny's mum was so confident.

On Monday morning Anita's mother remarked how hollow-eyed she looked. ‘Too much celebrating,' she said. ‘You look positively
ill
, child. You'd better see the doctor and ask him for a tonic. I can't look after you as well as your father.'

‘I'm all right,' she mumbled, ‘just tired.'

‘I'm not surprised, out every evening. With that boy you brought to the hospital, I suppose. Johnny something or other?' Suddenly a different look appeared on her face and she screwed her eyes up in concentration. ‘That's not that schoolboy you were messing around with at Buckingham Palace that time, is it?'

Annie faced her defiantly across the breakfast table. ‘Yes,' she said, ‘it is, and we want to be married.'

‘Married. What nonsense. You're only a child.'

‘No mother, I'm not. And you may as well know this too. I'm going to have a baby.'

She gripped the edge of the table and watched a dozen or more expressions roll across her mother's face. At last Mrs Evesham spoke, seeming to have difficulty in getting the words out.

‘Anita, did – I hear – you – correctly? Did you say …' she swallowed her words, then they came out in a rush, ‘did you say a baby?'

‘Yes.' The girl lowered her head.

‘Are you sure?'

‘Yes.'

‘Pack your bags. I never want to see you in this house again. And don't try cajoling your father into changing my mind either, because it won't work.'

‘Johnny and I want to get married.' Annie's knuckles were white as she increased her hold on the edge of the table. ‘We need your permission.'

‘Never.
You did this thing without the blessing of marriage – why bother now? I'm going to my room to lie down. When I come out I want you gone; do you understand?'

‘Only too well. But first I shall tell you something. This baby, our baby, Johnny's and mine,' she saw the shiver pass across her mother's features as she said the words, ‘will be born into a loving environment whatever material benefits are missing. I
want
Johnny's baby. I'm sorry it's like this – we should have waited, but that too was mostly my fault….'

Mrs Evesham clapped her hands over her ears. ‘I won't listen to any more. You've broken my heart and I don't wish to know the sordid details. One other thing, Anita. Keep away from your father. It will kill him to know what sort of girl you really are. I'll …' For the first time she faltered. ‘I'll think of something to explain your absence. I've never lied to him in all our married life, but because of you I shall do so now. I'll – think of something,' she said again, ‘because he'll be coming home soon.' Turning away abruptly she left the room and Annie heard her slowly walking upstairs.

Annie heard her mother’s bedroom door close, then she went upstairs herself. Taking her suitcase from the top of the wardrobe she methodically emptied the chest of drawers, then moved on to the wardrobe itself. She wondered for how long these clothes would fit, but she would need them after the baby was born.

Last of all she came to the dressing-table with its three mirrors. As she waggled the side ones to look at the back of her hair it released the memory of when her parents had bought the dressing-table for her. She had loved this one as soon as she saw it in the furniture store but her mother thought it too big.

‘Whatever do you need three mirrors for? Ridiculous.’ She had wandered across to a tiny dressing-table, ‘This is
nice,’ she said, ‘and perfectly adequate. After all you’ll only be using it during the school holidays.’

She was eight at the time and had been at the boarding-school for a year. Standing perfectly still before the three-mirrored one now she recalled her childish voice saying petulantly, ‘I don’t like that one, I’d rather go without.’

‘Nonsense, child.’ Her mother took her arm and turned her away from the one she wanted to the small one. ‘This will go very well in your room.’ Her father had inclined his head slightly as she went to protest again and then he said, ‘Why don’t you have a wander round and see what else they have, Anita, while your mother and I discuss the matter.’ She knew then that there was just a chance that she might be able to have the one she had set her heart on. Her father didn’t often interfere but when he did it was usually on her behalf. She never knew how he did it but when he came and fetched her and they walked through the maze of other furniture to where her mother was waiting for them, he said quietly, ‘Remember to thank your mother properly and keep the dressing-table in good order, Anita.’ She always had.

She wanted to jump up and kiss him but she knew that that might lose her the precious dressing-table if her mother saw the gesture. She remembered how she had squeezed his hand hard and said squeakily, ‘I’m so excited, Daddy. It’s beautiful.’

Looking at it again now with that memory so close in her heart the tears cascaded down her cheeks. She laid her
hand on the wood and gently stroked it and when she looked up she saw, through her tears, three blurred images in the triple mirrors.

Out of nowhere it seemed another childhood memory surfaced. She was very small, possibly no more than three or four, and she had had earache for most of the day. She woke in the night, screaming with pain, and her mother made up a hot-water bottle and laid it on her pillow to warm it for her. She had cuddled her for a while until the pain eased a bit, before letting the warm pillow send her to sleep. It was the only comfort memory she had of her mother and she clung to it now to stop her hating the woman who had just ordered her out of the house.

At the bedroom door she gave a last look round, then, gently touching Johnny’s ring which hung on its chain round her neck permanently now because her fingers had long since grown too big for it, she picked up her suitcase in one hand, her handbag in the other, and walked slowly down the carpeted stairs. There was no sound from her mother’s bedroom.

That evening after work she told Mrs B she had left home for good and would like to meet Aunt Bessie at the weekend. Johnny announced that he had two jobs, his daytime one and working in a café at night. ‘Tried for a job behind the bar down the road, but my age was against me. But this’ll do for a start and you can come in some nights and sit over a cuppa, Annie. That way we’ll still see each other.’

‘No, Johnny, I shall carry on with my job for as long as I
can and maybe get an evening job myself. That way we shall be able to afford to rent a place of our own, even a small flat.’

Johnny kissed her. ‘No, sweetheart. Not an evening job. Carry on with the daytime one a bit longer if you’re sure you feel up to it, but no more than that. We’ll get by and some day you’ll have a house and garden that’s worthy of you. We’ll be poor for a while, I daresay, but not for ever, Annie, not for ever.’

They were sitting in the cosy room in Johnny’s home, his parents having gone for a drink after telling Annie she must stay at least until the weekend and the visit to Aunt Bessie. ‘We can take the bedchair up to Johnny’s room,’ Mrs B said guilelessly. ‘I think there’s room, then at least you’ll be together.’

Johnny was working over the weekend so Mrs Bookman and Annie went together to see Aunt Bessie. They took the train from Victoria to Brighton and the bus from outside the station to Aunt Bessie’s village.

Annie thought Aunt Bessie was like a softer version of Johnny’s mum. She hugged her and said how much she hoped she would come and stay.

‘It’s very kind of you,’ Annie said.

‘It will be lovely for me to have company for a while, too.’ Aunt Bessie had a wonderfully wide smile and Annie felt at ease immediately. After a meal the three of them took a stroll round the village, and when they returned Johnny’s mum brought up the subject of a wedding-ring.

Annie took a deep breath. ‘Mum,’ she said, almost
shyly, because only during this last weekend had Mrs Bookman suggested that she began using the word. ‘Mum, please don’t think I am ungrateful, but Johnny and I have discussed this and we would prefer to wait until I can wear a ring legally. We – we don’t want to embarrass you though, but we …’ she paused aware of both women’s eyes intently on her, ’we feel this is best for us.’

‘And for the baby?’ Mrs Bookman’s voice was gentle and questioning.

‘We don’t know. But if it is necessary we can do it later and in any case we shall marry as soon as ever we can.’ Annie reached up and fingered the ring round her neck. ‘We love each other, we are committed to each other and a ring won’t make any difference to that.’

‘That’s fair. No, Annie, my love, if you can do it that way I won’t interfere.’

It wasn’t easy to adjust to living with Johnny’s family. They treated her as one of them and couldn’t have been kinder or more helpful. She loved them all dearly now but it was so different from living at home, or even with the Dovers in Winchurch.

‘You’re lucky not having morning sickness,’ Mrs Bookman said one day when she and Annie were together in the kitchen. ‘Had it with the three of mine – still, it’s a small price to pay for a new little life.’

Johnny’s mother behaved so naturally with her that sometimes it made her want to cry. This is how life should be, she thought. Maggie Bookman never condemned, never said having Annie in the house made more work and
caused inconvenience. She did mention becoming a grandmother one day, though.

‘Didn’t ever think young Johnny would be the first to make us grandparents,’ she said. ‘Well, you wouldn’t, would you, not when you have two older sons?’

The whole family rallied round, even Charlie Bookman, after his initial outburst to his son, had been totally accepting of the situation.

It was Charlie who eventually found them somewhere to live. ‘It’s two rooms in a semi-basement,’ he said, ‘but there’s an indoor lavatory down there, which is more than Maggie and I had when we got wed. Could do with a lick of paint and a bit of tarting up, but I’ll see to that for you. That’s why the rent’s cheap. It’s in Lamont Street, over the back there.’

They went to look at the rooms that evening before Johnny went to work. Annie, now five and a half months’ pregnant went carefully down the steep steps, behind Johnny, and with his father behind her.

‘No chance of you stumbling then, sandwiched between us,’ Charlie Bookham said.

He inserted the key and the rusty door creaked as he pushed hard to open it.

‘I’ll stay out here and have a fag,’ he said, getting out his rizlas and tobacco, ‘while you two look round.’

‘What d’you think, Annie?’ Johnny’s hand slid into hers.

Annie looked at the two tiny rooms where the hearts-and-flowers patterned paper was peeling from the walls and the ceiling was the colour of sour milk.

She felt more depressed than ever before in her life.
Even with the light on, the room was in semi-darkness. She looked through the smeary window. Gazing upwards she could see ankles and feet as people walked past, while immediately outside her future father-in-law leant against the concrete wall and inhaled deeply on his cigarette.

‘It will be a start, Johnny,’ she said.

‘I know it’s not what we had in mind, Annie, but we can make it nice, I’m sure we can.’

She returned the pressure of his squeeze on her hand and, fiercely quelling her doubts, she turned towards him and smiled into his anxious face.

‘Our first home, Johnny. We’ve got years ahead of us to work and save and improve our lot.’

‘And we will,’ he said, kissing her, ‘we will, Annie, that’s a promise.’

There was a small grate in one room and a very old gas-stove next to the deep yellowy butler sink in the other. They settled the deal with the landlord, Charlie Bookman paying a week’s rent as a deposit to hold the rooms.

‘Gives me a chance to decorate,’ he said. ‘Maggie’ll help with curtains and cushions and I reckon as to how she’ll let you have a couple of chairs too – clear our place out a bit and give us more room.’

In bed that night in Johnny’s room back in his home, Annie thought fleetingly of her old bedroom and of the one in the Dovers’ house.

Now she was in his bed and he was in the bedchair. As she looked down on him as he lay fast asleep an overwhelming
whelming rush of love shot through her whole being. ‘It won’t be for long, Johnny darling,’ she murmured. ‘Once the baby is born we’ll get on our feet and some day we’ll have that shop and our own house and garden.’ As the child kicked inside her she winced and laid her hands across her stomach.