All the Days of Our Lives (27 page)

They slept, slotted together spoon-like, Em facing the wall, with Norm curled protectively around her.

She woke to a yelp of pain from Norm. It was already light. Turning her head, she could see a shoe banging up and down against Norm’s head.

‘Ow! For Christ’s sake – what’re you doing! Stop it!’

Robbie was whacking Norm with a hard, determined face.

‘Don’t like you!’ he shouted. ‘Don’t like you. Go away – you go away again and don’t come back!’

‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you’ Cynthia shouted, over Robbie’s hysterical screaming. ‘You’ve made a rod to beat yourself with, that you have.’

Em was standing over her son, trying to persuade him to eat his breakfast.

‘Come on now, pet. You know Mommy’s got to go to work – and you’ll be here with Nanna, just like you always are. Now just calm down . . .’

Her quiet pleading suddenly cracked open and she snatched him up frantically from his chair, holding him in her arms and shouting into his tear-stained face, ‘Just stop it, Robbie! Stop this shrieking. You’ve got to eat your breakfast and behave yourself – I can’t stand any more of it!’

And then it was her turn to cry, all the strain and tension of the past week since Norm had come home pouring out.

‘Oh, Mom – what’m I going to do? He’s like a different child since his dad came back. I can’t stand to see him like this!’

Robbie, seeing his mother’s tears, cried even more.

‘Oh now, stop that, the pair of you. Come ’ere Robbie.’ Cynthia, still in her pale-blue nightdress with a cardie over the top, came and took her distressed grandson from his mother. ‘Look, I said this would happen, didn’t I?’ she grumbled, her own nerves on edge with all the screaming. ‘You’ve given in to him all the way along the line, sleeping with him, letting him have it all his way, as if the world revolved round him . . .’ Realizing that this lecture was not helping especially, she buttoned her lip.

‘Look, bab,’ she added more gently, stroking Robbie’s quivering back as he clung to her. ‘You get off to work. We’ll be all right. He’ll calm down once you’re gone.’

‘Mom, MOM!’ Robbie started to scream again at the top of his voice, kicking and struggling.

‘Robbie,’ Cynthia cried firmly. ‘Just stop that – now! D’you hear? Go
on
, Em, for heaven’s sake.’

Em, still crying, left the house, with obvious reluctance. Cynthia stood watching, jiggling her grandson on her hip. Now that Em had gone, he quietened gradually and she sat him down at the table again.

‘There you are, you silly thing. What was all that for, eh? Your mom’s just gone to work, that’s all. She’ll be back. Now you eat up – there’s a good boy. What a kerfuffle!’

Cynthia’s words rode on the back of a sigh. She began to clear the breakfast things away. Some days it felt as if the end of the war had made things more difficult instead of less. All that hope and expectation they’d had: that the war would make everything better, everyone trying so hard and doing without, in the grand cause of beating Hitler. And now look at us! she thought, going into the scullery to fill the kettle for washing-up water. We’re all crammed into this house, there’s even less to eat than before and no end of it in sight. What was the carrot now, to keep them all going?

Within days, Em and Norm were due to move in with Norm’s mom and dad, Edna and Bill Stapleton, though Cynthia would still be looking after Robbie on the days when Em worked. Though Cynthia dreaded them going, and the wrench of not having her grandson living there any more, at moments like this she felt the day could not come too soon.

Em wiped her eyes, hurrying along the road to Mr Perry’s grocer’s shop, where she had worked through the war. Mr Perry was a widower and his one son was still serving out east, so her nice little job had just carried on.

She felt like sobbing her heart out, but didn’t want to be seen crying out in the street, so she swallowed her emotions. But oh, how sad and upset she felt. For the past three years and more, since she had had Robbie, he had been her closest relationship, the love of her life. She had invested everything in him, all her affection and energy, telling herself that she had to be both a mom and dad to him until Norm came back – if he did. There was always that terrible thought. She had let Robbie share her bed, needing the feel of his warm little body beside her as much as he needed her for reassurance. The thought of moving him out into a cold, lonely little bed of his own was unbearable to her. Nor could she bear his tears if he was upset. The sound of his distress cut right through her and she would do almost anything to mollify him. She knew Cynthia was right: she had warned Em and told her that she was spoiling him. But without Norm home, there didn’t seem to be any point in doing anything else. She’d do all that in due course.

Norm had been patient at first. ‘It’s bound to be hard for the lad,’ he said, when Robbie screamed when he came near and tried to hold the door shut, so that Norm couldn’t come into the bedroom. ‘I mean, to him I’m a stranger. He’s got to get to know me.’

Em could see that he was hurt, but was trying to make the best of it. At first, torn in half by the needs of her son and husband, she suggested that Robbie sleep in the bed with both of them. But the bed was only a single one, so she and Norm were cramped enough as it was. And Robbie wouldn’t let Norm get into bed anyway. He would start up as soon as Norm appeared and would kick and scream. Norm tried hard, speaking nicely to him to try and calm him down, but it didn’t make any difference. On the third night, Norm stormed out.

‘For Christ’s sake, get that child in order. What a welcome – in my own home! How’s anyone supposed to get any sleep with all that going on?’

And Em was left to get into bed with Robbie and soothe him, until at least they could move him into the little makeshift bed on the floor. It took a long time some nights, as Robbie would not settle and go to sleep. Em was up and down the stairs while the others sat together down there.

‘Just give him a bit longer,’ she kept saying, her own nerves in shreds, seeing Norm’s disapproving expression and with the memory of Robbie’s tearful, betrayed-looking face.

At last, they’d be able to creep into bed, terrified of waking him.

Norm, who was looking forward to good times with his wife and had not grown used to life with a child in any form, kept suggesting they go out.

‘We could go out for a dance,’ he’d say. Or another night, ‘Come on – let’s go to the pictures tonight.’

Neither time had they made it, because Em didn’t feel she could leave until Robbie was settled, and it all took so long that it was too late by then.

‘I’m sorry, Norm,’ she’d whispered the night before, when they were finally curled up in bed together. ‘I know it’s not how things should be. Just give us a bit of time.’

‘Don’t worry, love.’ Norm cuddled her, but she heard his stifled sigh. ‘There’s no rush. We’ve got our lives in front of us, haven’t we? Anyroad, when we get to my mom and dad’s he can have a proper bed of his own. It’ll all be different, you’ll see.’

Em’s heart shrivelled at this. She was dreading moving out to the Stapletons’, even though she quite liked Norm’s mom and dad. But Em, who struggled with any kind of change, had got very settled in her routines in her own family’s house over the past years, with her mom always there. She knew it would upset Robbie too, and she was chilled by the way Norm spoke about moving over there, as if that would put him in charge of everything. There was an ‘and then we’ll see an end to all this nonsense’ tone to his voice.

Reaching Mr Perry’s, she tried to put these gloomy thoughts of out her mind. It was early days. Things weren’t easy for anyone. There were rumours about some of the other men who’d come home, the state some of them were in, and she counted herself lucky in that. Their first week together had contained extremes of great anger and frustration, but also great tenderness between them.

I must look on the bright side, she thought.

‘Morning, Mr Perry!’ she called out cheerfully, finding him outside, still setting up. The summer veg were coming in now, so the place was not so bare.

‘Morning, bab!’ Mr Perry touched an imaginary hat. ‘’Nother fine one!’ She expected him to add, ‘And you’re a sight for sore eyes.’ But just for once, he didn’t.

There was so much to have to get used to that week. Em could see that Norm was restless, having to adapt to civilian life, to rationing and shortages and restrictions. Norm kept a lot of his feelings to himself, but she noticed changes both in him and in herself that they were having to get used to.

For a start, Norm was bossier than he’d used to be: more commanding. Even though he’d only been promoted to Corporal in the RAF, he had had people to order about. There was more confidence in the way he expressed his opinions, both about Robbie and things outside.

‘They’re going to sweep all this away, you know,’ he’d said one evening over tea. ‘All this area’ll go. It’s a new era, now we’ve got a Labour government – they’ve got to do better for the working man, better houses. The lads’ve been talking about it all through the war. They won’t let them get away without doing it now.’

‘Swept away?’ Cynthia said.

‘All these old houses – they’ll have to go.’

Em and Cynthia looked at each other in dismay. They knew that the powers that be had plans, but they weren’t at all sure that they wanted their house swept away.

‘Equal shares – none of this government by the rich. We’ve all had more than enough of that.’

He tried to draw Bob, Em’s dad, into discussions, but Bob, though obviously not in any disagreement with him, was not a great talker. Last year, in the elections after the war, they had voted Labour, even though they were grateful to Winnie Churchill. But it was just odd, hearing Norm suddenly giving off opinions like that. The war had changed him.

‘I’ve seen blokes killed,’ he said tersely to her, when she accused him of being on a soapbox one evening. ‘And I’ll be damned if they’re going to have died for nothing – for it all just to go back to how it was before, with
certain people
lining their pockets.’

He had also come home with other high hopes – of independence, of starting something up.

‘I’d like my own little business,’ he said to Em, when they were alone in bed, soon after he came back. ‘Not have a boss – to be the one in charge.’

‘But what could you do?’ Em asked. The thought seemed extraordinary to her, and well out of reach.

‘That’s the trouble – I don’t know.’ He sounded frustrated. ‘A shop, maybe?’

But very quickly he was coming down to earth. There was no money for anything new. Norm was having to come to terms, within those first days home, with the fact that the only obvious thing for him to do was go back into the police force, where he’d started out.

Last night, lying with her in the darkness, he’d said sadly. ‘I dunno – I thought things were opening out. That was the feeling I had: I wanted to keep it up, carry on like that. In the war things felt important.
We
felt important. Now it just feels as if things are closing in, getting smaller, as if there’s nowhere to turn.’

And Em stroked one of his arms, which were wrapped around her, and felt desperate, because it felt as if she and Robbie were part of that closing down and hemming in. As if they were making life for him feel like a prison, shutting him away from his new, high hopes.

June 1946

She didn’t think she could face knocking on yet another door.

Katie stopped for a moment in the street, trying to hold back the tears that were stinging her eyes. Her throat felt sore with the effort of not crying. The light was at last beginning to die on this long June evening, but there were a few people about and children still playing out, and she didn’t want anyone to see the tear that oozed over and ran down her cheek.

So far, all she had met was suspicion and hard-faced rejection. It was all very well when they opened their doors and saw her, smart in a sage-green shirt-waister with its matching belt, and her white cardigan and neat navy shoes. She wore her hair swept back stylishly so that she looked every inch a reliable working girl, the sort who would have money to meet the rent and no trouble.

‘I’m enquiring about the room,’ she’d say. ‘It says you have one to let?’

The landladies could afford to be fussy: there were far more people in need of a room than the accommodation to meet it. A quiet, single woman – that’s what they all wanted. Or, second best, a quiet, single man. So far so good. Seeing Katie’s respectable look, some of their faces broke into cautious smiles. But sooner or later in the conversation she had to tell them the full truth. That wiped the smiles off them. The last one had been the worst, the one who’d really got under her skin.

‘I have regular work,’ she’d begun. ‘With solicitors Rowan and Johnson on Bennett’s Hill . . .’ This always impressed them. This last lady had been in her apron, middle-aged with tight brown curls, genteel but hard-faced in a thin, tight-lipped way. The sort who could damn you with a look or a whisper. She stood twisting her wedding ring round and round her bony finger, as if to emphasize how respectably married she was.