Kitabı oku: «The War Widows», sayfa 5

6 Farewell to Freddie

‘Where’ve you been? I thought you’d run away with the coal man,’ whispered Walter as he pecked Lily on the cheek. ‘And what’s all this about Freddie’s wife and kiddy? I never knew he were wed.’

The jungle drums were at work already. Lily sighed as she struggled to bring in the washing from the line in the back yard of his house in Bowker’s Row. It was starting to rain and his mother was dozing in the leather armchair, blissfully unaware. There would be just time to iron Walt a clean shirt and unpack the shopping she had brought before they must set off for the memorial service.

‘We’ve not seen much of you these last weeks,’ yawned Elsie Platt, rubbing her striped brown slippers with holes cut out to accommodate her bunions. Her bulk was wired tightly, like an overstuffed mattress, into a black funeral outfit. A winter coat lay over the back of the chair with a fur tippet and black felt hat. Elsie loved a good funeral tea and a chance to give Waverley House the onceover.

‘Levi says it’s the talk of the Coach and Horses about the foreign girls who turned up at your place. Why am I the last to know anything?’ Walter sniffed, standing over her while she plugged the iron into the lampshade.

‘What’s wrong with the shirt he’s wearing, Lil? It was clean on yesterday,’ Elsie snapped.

It was hard to explain that a clean shirt and cuffs were important when the whole family was on show. Sometimes after a day on the stall and a night in Yates Wine Lodge, Walt was not as Lifebuoy fresh as he ought to be, poor lamb. She blamed Elsie, whose idea of housework was just to keep the smells down in the two up, two down terraced house. That inbred Lancashire pride in being spick and span with bright white nets, donkey-stoned steps and starched washing had somehow passed her by.

The Platts’ weekly wash was a steeping of smalls in the sink and hung out overnight, where it gathered sooty smuts, unless Lily took them back home herself. It wasn’t as if Walt’s mother had anyone else to look after, but it took all sorts, Lily supposed.

The Winstanleys would only pick holes in Walt’s appearance if he turned up shabby. They all needed to put on a united front on this sad occasion. She wanted no more sly digs about his appearance.

‘What’s all this about your Freddie? What’s the sly beggar been up to? I hear there’s nappies on your washing line?’ Elsie sniggered.

‘You’d think folk had nothing better to do than to count washing. It’s a long story and we’ve not time to be gossiping when there’s a service to be going to. I’ve brought the van to give you both a lift.’

‘His back won’t stand it in the rear of that, dear. You’d better take me and return for him later,’ said Elsie, rising to don her outdoor finery. ‘Will there be a collection? It’ll have to be a widow’s mite from me. You know how we are placed.’

‘I expect so, but don’t worry about it. You’ll have to make do as best you can with one trip, though. It’s not far and I’m running out of time.’

Did they think she was a taxi service and a laundry maid? There were a hundred jobs on her list and no time to get dressed properly. They were lucky that guilt at neglecting Walt had made her come early to sort them out. He was hopeless without her chivvying him up. That was one of the things she loved about him. He needed her.

When they arrived at Waverley House there was another fuss going on.

‘They’re not going dressed like that?’ Ivy stared at these new upstarts. She was bedecked in a dark suit with a fox fur draped over her shoulders. ‘Here, I found some mittens for them to cover their fingers. It’s chilly outside. I hope there’s a good turnout. We don’t want these two showing us up, do we?’

This was not a fashion parade or a celebration, thought Lily with only five minutes to tear off her old clothes and put on her winter best frock and tired coat. There was no time even to powder her nose. Usually Ivy would have nothing to do with Ana and Susan, sniffing down her nose every time they came in a room, and the offer of a pair of knitted gloves each was only so they could hide their ringless fingers from view.

The family assembled outside the house for the short walk to Zion Chapel, ambling slowly, flanking the two strangers on all sides to keep them out of view. There was a goodly crowd gathered by the church steps, waiting for the family to process in.

It was left to Lily to kit out Ana and Susan for church with warm coats and hats, stockings and suitable underwear for the chilly climate. They had no coupons for anything new.

Susan was so tiny she fitted into Lily’s old school gaberdine mac with a lined hood. Ana was wrapped in Grandma Crompton’s old fur coat, which hardly fitted across her swollen bust. But winter was coming early this year. They would not look out of place all muffled up.

Lily held little Joy’s hand as she struggled on the slippery pavement in her pixie hood and warm gaiters. Word was out about the strangers at Waverley House pushing a pram. It did cross her mind that half the crowd might be gathered today just to ogle. Esme covered her black hat with net veiling to hide her grief and her confusion. She was very quiet, too quiet, and Lily wondered how they would get through the service without someone breaking down. There was nothing to do but brazen it out.

‘You’ve heard about our big surprise then?’ Lily smiled up at neighbours, trying to look casual, hoping they wouldn’t notice how her voice was quaking.

‘It’s all round the Coach and Horses that young Freddie left his mark in Burma,’ whispered Doris Pickvance.

‘Then they were wrong as usual!’ Lily whispered back.

Bar-stool gossip could be so crude. Lily’s heart began to thud. What if everyone thought Su was Freddie’s wife? How could they pass Anastasia off as his bride instead? Perhaps they should change them round again. All this lying was hard work, so many pitfalls and tracks to cover over. Perhaps it was better to tell the plain truth.

All eyes were on the two strangers as they were led down a side aisle into a series of boxed cupboard pews. The mourners were put at the front in full view, waiting in silence until Reverend Atkinson, wearing his black gown, stood before the assembled family to welcome them and began the special service with the hymn ‘I vow to thee my country’.

Lily felt herself choking up. The tune brought back memories of schooldays. Why did she suddenly think of Pamela Pickvance and the ice slide?

It wasn’t that Pam was always horrid to her, it was just that she couldn’t rely on her as a friend. One minute she was all over her like a rash and then she ran off and ganged up with girls in the playground, pulling faces and calling her names.

Pam across the road was in the top class and ‘bonny’, which was a polite way of saying ‘fat’, round as a barrel with a nip on her like pincers. Her brother was even bigger and when the two of them stopped her on the way home to snatch her bus money, it made for a long walk on a wet night.

Funny how she would hand it over without a fight until Freddie started in the infants’ and she had to drag him along into the infants’ playground. Pam and Alf would wait until she had shoved him in the yard, then pounce. If she’d spent her pennies, they pulled off her ribbons and that meant bother at home. Mother thought she was careless and made her pay for some more. There was no point in telling tales when they lived across the road. She just put up with it hoping their bullying would go away.

Then came the bad snow and a chance to make an ice slide on the pavement, sliding down until it shone like glass. Pam and Alf started shoving her off, making her legs go sideways out onto the road. That was scary and she cried in front of them.

Freddie was watching, open-mouthed, seeing his sister sobbing, and suddenly he rushed at Pam and knocked her over. He pulled her by her pigtails until she screamed and when her big brother came to the rescue, he kicked him in the shins.

The scrap that followed was like Goliath beating the hell out of David until he had a busted lip and a bloody nose and his new winter coat was torn.

‘You lay off my sister or I’ll shove you down!’ Freddie snorted.

‘You and whose army?’ sneered Alf Pickvance.

‘I’ll get my big brother on you and he’s got boxing gloves and we’ll come and get you.’

‘Oh, yes,’ snivelled Pam, a hole in her lisle stockings. ‘I’m telling on you!’

Doris was round next morning complaining that her darling Pam had been set upon by Winstanley ruffians, and what was Esme going to do about it?

Esme rose to her full height with an icy smile. ‘What happens in the street between children is not our affair. My children don’t fight unless provoked…Thank you and good day!’ She slammed the door in Doris’s face and turned her fury on her own.

Lily was sent to her room. Freddie got his bottom paddled, but neither broke their vow of silence, their omertà: All for one and one for all.

Funny thing was, Pam was as nice as pie after that, and Alf gave them a wide berth. It was then that Lily realised that having two brothers had its advantages. There was nothing she wouldn’t do for them then.

Lily buried her nose in her handkerchief. She could still see Freddie as a little lad, not a grown man. In six years all she had of him were a bunch of letters full of jokes and pleasantries, she sighed. They knew nothing of his real life, his war, his lovers, nothing about the real Freddie. He was a stranger.

Both her brothers were strangers and that was what war had done to this family: torn them apart. In truth she’d lost Freddie years ago.

This can’t be a real church, thought Ana as she stared around the bare walls as they were escorted down a side aisle into a series of boxed cupboard pews. The mourners sat in silence until a man in a suit and teacher’s gown stood before the Winstanley family and began the service.

To her a church was the very soul of a place, set high on a hill or in the market square, painted white, shining in the sunlight, not tucked up in some grimy street like a factory, she mused. Where was the rainbow of colours: ochre, crimson, azure wall paintings? Where were the bells, candlelight and smell of incense?

The walls of Zion Chapel were painted white, the woodwork was dark oak polished to a mirror finish. There were no flowers, no silken robes and vestments, shimmering purples and crimson velvets, embroidered with silver and gold threads, no wall hangings and frescoes, nothing on which to rest her sad eyes for comfort. Where were the scenes from the Gospels, painted between the windows and the walls, by monks centuries ago, some depicting the miracles wrought by St Andreas, Archbishop of Crete? Did Grimbleton not have its own patron saint to adorn with jewels and gold leaf?

She looked up to the wooden rafters holding the ceiling. Where was the risen Christ in glory arching over the cupola in mosaic tiles glistening gold and silver and sapphire in the heavens?

There was nowhere to light a sacred candle of intercession for Freddie. She could not hate him for his weakness. He was a man and men had needs. He brought her back to life after years of darkness. He was her candle of light and she wept that their time together had been so short.

There were no jewelled icons to pray before, hanging with silver tamata, those precious votive offerings, flowers, silver templates with eyes and legs and bodies, offered for a cure. There was no cure for death, only the resurrection in the fullness of time.

She did not understand this English plainness. How could anyone find comfort in such stark surroundings? It felt an insult to all that was holy in her heart. Freddie would not rest in peace until she had found a proper church and lit candles and all the rituals were performed.

She was weeping not for her loss now but for herself and memories of the little white chapel of St Dionysius, the patron saint of her village, weeping for the comfort of familiar faces processing to the great Easter ceremonies and Christmas festival, weeping an exile’s tears. There was no going back now.

There was such a silence, no weeping and wailing of death songs, no mother and black-clad widows keening. The sounds of grief could purge away suffering. Her family had kneeled prostrate over her sister’s grave, wailing in agony, only to rise and prepare a meal for the living family as if that beautiful girl was not in the graveyard.

Eleni was the first of many deaths in their village, the year the Germans came from the sky, floating down into their olive groves. But no, she could not think of all that again.

They were singing hymns now, ones she could not understand, and there were words, so many words. There was no ceremony in this memorial. There was no body to wash with wine and rosewater, no linen to bind up, no body to bury. How could you lay to rest a man who was not there?

She twisted the brass ring around her wedding finger. It was loose. What would a real priest make of these lies? Susan Brown was sitting in front, prim with her straw hat bound with black ribbon, her luscious coil of hair constrained in a hairnet. She was used to English worship. She was wearing her gold earrings, showing them off for all to see.

Ana sensed there were curious eyes in the congregation, wondering just who these strangers were. There would be more stories to make up when they went back home for the funeral tea and guests sidled up to her with polite questions about her connection to the family.

I will never get used to this chilly air, she sighed, the dampness of the rooms, the smells of soot and smoke and burning rubber, or people with faces like doughy white bread rolls. You made your bed, now you must lie on it, she thought. There is no other way, sigara, sigara… take it easy.

However many layers she borrowed from Lily she could not keep warm. It was as if a mist of forgetfulness and lethargy clouded all her resolve and energy, sapping her hope away. Only Dina gave her a reason to rise each morning to do all the chores her mother-in-law insisted they divide between them. They must earn their board and lodgings until they had achieved their independence from the Winstanleys.

They had been taken down to the town hall, a soot-black building like a Greek temple, where she had to sit in a long queue for hours with Dina, waiting to register as a refugee with child. It was all papers to sign in a language she couldn’t read very well, but Lily tried to explain why she must do this.

It felt wrong to be sitting in her best clothes, not in black widow’s weeds. Black and grey were the colours of this drab town. What on earth was she doing here?

There were other queues she must stand in to register for identity papers, rations, welfare. She was a refugee with no status. Susan had a passport. Susan had gold bracelets stuffed in her bag to buy extras for her child. Despite their ruse, Susan was still thought to be a regular wife who was just a visiting relative here under sufferance.

Ana’s only relief was to borrow the bucket pram and walk up Green Lane to the top shops where the family was registered for groceries. Here she could pretend to be an ordinary housewife with her baby, not a lonely exile trapped by winter in an alien land.

Freddie, I hate you, she sighed, shaking her head. But how can I hate the man who brought me back to life?

The man with the smiling face and freckled nose who waltzed into her dreams. How could she forget the brush of khaki on her cheek and the smell of eau-de-Cologne. ‘Moonlight Serenade’, dancing under the stars, strolling through the village square.

You told me about the other woman, how she never wrote and you feared she might be dead, thought Ana. You were sad and I was sad, for I had lost my home and my sister. You filled the hunger in my belly with food from the NAAFI and wine from cellars that loosened our limbs. You filled the hunger for love with your caresses and promises. I heard what I wanted to hear. Were all your words lies as we lay among the stars?

I cannot hate you. You were a gift from God, a candle in the darkness to guide my path. May you rest in peace.

Susan sat in a trance listening to the hymn, such a familiar hymn but in such a strange place. Memories came flooding back, of the high-vaulted roof, the fan whirring, the heat of the old church. She was so cold she could hardly think for the chattering of her teeth.

I am a prisoner now, she decided, a prisoner in a cold dark dungeon with no escape, only lies and sleeping next to the enemy: the girl who stole my sweetheart; the big liar with dark eyes and big bosoms.

Her spirits sank so low she wanted to fade away but Joy bounced on her knee, unaware that she was fatherless and nameless. Joy was the one true precious trophy.

So many babies took sick and died on the trek north, bundles passed down and buried at the border on Burmese soil, little graves in the track. Her child was round and rosy and full of life, a special gift. Big Ana’s baby was plain and too thin and cried. Joy was the true number one daughter.

She would be strong for her, fight for her and make her a true Winstanley. She recalled the night Joy was made. Her cheeks flushed and for a second she felt the heat of the tropical night.

It was a night of a thousand stars. They had danced and she had worn her best silk skirt with a blouse the colour of orchid pink. They had walked back slowly to the veranda where Auntie Betty would be waiting, Susan’s heart aching, for it was Freddie’s last night of leave.