Christmas Wish (13 page)

Magda accepted his judgement and his generosity.

It was rumoured that Jean Claude had once worked in a top fashion house in Paris, but had given it all up for the love of his
nurse. Her name was Irene, a serene woman with pale blonde hair and blue eyes set in a heart-shaped face. They had three children all of whom interspersed their Cockney accent with words that were definitely French.

‘Now all you need is somebody to take you up west in that finery,’ said Mrs Skinner after Magda had proudly shown her what she’d got. ‘Somebody with a few bob to spend. Take my advice, Maggie my girl. It’s better to be an old man’s darling than a young man’s slave.’

Magda laughed. ‘You are a one, Mrs Skinner. You definitely are a one.’

The next day she was in the square as usual, joking with the passers-by and accepting their compliments about how nice she looked.

‘How about I take you out tonight, sweetheart. We could go dancing. How would that be?’ The man offering had a silver tongue and the most successful pitch in the square. He also had a wooden leg and was rumoured to be a bigamist.

‘I need to stay home and do some knitting,’ Magda responded.

‘Can’t imagine you knitting.’

‘Can’t imagine you dancing.’

‘Can’t imagine you even owning a pair of knitting needles.’

‘You’re right. I’ve only got one needle.’

‘Can’t knit with that.’

‘And you can’t be much of a dancer with only one leg!’

Loud laughter from a crowd of onlookers followed.

Magda exchanged a wink and a grin with Mrs Skinner.

‘You’ll be breaking a few hearts with your good looks, Maggie darling,’ said Mrs Skinner. ‘You’ll make as lovely a blushing bride as I was, ain’t that right, Jack?’

Her husband Jack smiled and nodded. ‘You was indeed, my darling. Slender as a reed at seventeen.’

Magda hid her smile. Mrs Skinner was now as wide as a door, her chins resting one upon the other.

‘Well. What have we here? If it isn’t the lovely Magdalena.’

The instant she heard him use her full name, Magda knew who it was. Bradley Fitts.

She pretended to concentrate on tipping three pounds of potatoes from the scale scoop and into the canvas bag of a woman with three kids hanging around her skirts.

‘Ninepence, love.’

Bradley moved so he stood beside the woman, his hand resting on one of the children’s heads.

‘Ain’t you going to say hello, Magdalena? Ain’t you glad to see me?’

The woman handed over the money. Magda turned away, all fingers and thumbs as she placed the coins in the wooden cash box. Hopefully he would be gone when she turned back.

He wasn’t. There he was standing between her and the queue of customers that had formed.

‘How about you come out with me tonight? We make a pretty pair, we two. You know I’ve always liked you. Tasty you are. As tasty as they come. How about it?’

The thing she’d learned about the likes of Bradley Fitts was that it didn’t do to show fear. Show fear and he would work on it, a mix of charm and intimidation until the object of his bullying was totally in his power.

‘I’m not a pie,’ she retorted, pushing her hair back from her face.

A puzzled expression came to features that were too coarse to be handsome.

‘Did I say you were?’

‘You said I was tasty. In which case I don’t want to go out with you. You might bite me.’

‘Now there’s a thing,’ chuckled Mrs Skinner.

‘There’s nothing funny, Missus,’ snapped Bradley, not amused by Magda’s comment and throwing her a warning look.

Mrs Skinner was about to ask him who he thought he was, when her husband whispered Bradley’s surname into her ear.

Bradley’s gaze travelled back to Magda, smiling as though he were charm itself.

‘I’ve no time to argue. Business before pleasure. Another time,
Magdalena
.’

He rolled his tongue around her name as though he could taste it or her on his tongue.

‘If she don’t want to go out with you, she don’t have to,’ declared Mrs Skinner.

Without warning, his hand shot out, grabbing one of Mrs Skinner’s chins.

‘Just mind your tongue, Missus.’

Small and skinny as he was, Jack Skinner stepped forward.

‘Take your hands off my wife.’

Magda heard the trembling in his voice and saw the threat in Bradley’s eyes.

Bradley made a move towards Jack. Magda got in between the pair of them.

‘All right. I’ll go out with you. Just leave Mr and Mrs Skinner alone. Please.’

Bradley’s eyes flashed to her face and for a moment the air was electric with tension. He pushed Mrs Skinner back so that she almost flattened her husband.

His last look was for Magda.

‘Be here when I get back.’

‘Get off,’ hissed Mrs Skinner once he was lost in the crowd. ‘Get on home before he comes back.’

‘What if …?’

‘We’re off too. We’re shutting the stall early.’

Mr and Mrs Skinner began speedily sorting out the stall, throwing everything into a chaotic mess so they could wheel it all away before Bradley Fitts came back.

Magda hurried home feeling more scared than she’d ever felt in her life. It was with great relief that she gained the poor sanctuary offered by the scruffy house in Edward Street, using the key she now had to get in.

Magda locked the door and slid the bolt across. Like a cornered mouse, she cowered down in the dark, waiting for the tell-tale sound of footsteps.

Laying her head on her knees, she waited. It was getting dark outside and feeling frightened had tired her.

She closed her eyes and didn’t hear the approaching footsteps or see the gloved hand raised above furtive eyes that scoured the interior of the dark room.

The sound of somebody trying the lock followed by an insistent hammering sound jolted her awake. Her heart flew into her throat. Again a fist hammered on the door.

‘Magda! Let me in this minute. I’m catching me death out here. Open this bloody door or I’ll lay into you so hard; I’ll take the skin off your back!’

Magda leapt to her feet. Her aunt fell into her arms, her breath heavy with the stink of stale beer.

She looked totally dumbstruck when Magda held onto her in the only hug that had ever happened between them.

‘What’s this all about? What you been up to?’

Magda pushed back from her.

‘Nothing, Aunt Bridget. I was dreaming it was the bogeyman hammering at the door, but it wasn’t. It was you.’

It was the last Saturday before Christmas. The stall had been busy all day and at the end of it, Mrs Skinner made sure that Magda had plenty of food to take home with her.

Mr Skinner, as skinny as the greyhounds she’d seen at the White City, arrived just in time to give his wife a hand wheeling the barrow home.

‘Maggie my girl. This is for you.’

A plucked chicken was pulled out of a sack and dangled in front of her face.

‘A little bonus from us,’ Mrs Skinner laughed on seeing Magda’s surprised face.

Magda thanked them. They were kind-hearted people who’d worked hard all their lives and the only people she never corrected when they called her Maggie.

Off she went home, burdened with the lovely things she’d bought from Jean Claude, plus the fruit, vegetables and chicken the Skinners had given her.

A skipping rope was stretched across the pavement.

There’s somebody under the bed. I don’t know who it is, I feel so jolly nervous
…

The girls turning the skipping rope laughed when Magda
jumped through it and she laughed with them. Her exuberance vanished on noticing the black car parked outside Winnie’s place. Bradley Fitts was the only person she knew who owned a car.

A couple of street urchins who had been climbing over the car were clouted off by Emily.

‘Get off you little perishers.’

She chased them round the car and it was difficult to know who was enjoying it more – the kids or Emily.

‘It’s not your car,’ one of the boys shouted.

‘It’s the doctor’s car. Now get off before I tan yer asses!’

Magda breathed a sigh of relief that it wasn’t Bradley Fitts, and then worried why the doctor was there.

‘Is Winnie well?’ she asked Emily.

‘Winnie’s well enough, though ’er leg keeps playing ’er up. But there. She’s over fifty. What else can you expect at that age? Anyway, what’s it to you?’

‘I just wondered …’

‘The doctor’s for Gertie. She can’t bring the baby. It’s too big.’

A spine-chilling scream came from inside the house.

Standing as stiff as a statue, Emily folded her arms and flashed her eyes into the house.

‘Poor cow. She’s ’avin’ a pretty bad time of it. Still. That’s it. She’s a woman. She’s expected to give birth in pain. Says so in the Bible.’

More screams.

‘Can’t he do something? The doctor?’

Emily shrugged. ‘How would I know? I’m not a bloody doctor!’

‘Isn’t there a midwife living close by?’

‘Old Mrs Brown? She’s birthed every babe in the streets hereabouts and got rid of a few too. She tried to get rid of this
one for Gertie, but it didn’t work. So she won’t be ’round just in case she gets reported. The doctor came though, once he was promised double his due. Help keep his mouth shut. Need it to be over with fast. Can’t ’ave our gentlemen faced with that racket. Too late for the hospital though. Silly cow should ’ave gone earlier. Still, won’t be long now.’

‘I’m sure the doctor will do his best,’ said Magda, disturbed at the thought of Mrs Brown being both a midwife and an abortionist.

She’d heard the girls speak of abortion before; of getting drunk and taking strong laxatives, and then sitting in a hot bath before Mrs Brown came round with her water pump, her yard-long piece of rubber piping, and a box of soap flakes.

Feeling sick inside, Magda almost ran across the road. Emily had been so offhand. She never used to be like that. But things had changed between them. For a start she was grown up, had left school and was working.

Once back inside the house, she leaned against the door. The door was thick but nothing could hold back the screams of the woman across the road.

‘Something should be done,’ she muttered.

‘What’s that?’

Bridget Brodie was slumped in an armchair, her increased weight forcing the stuffing out through the bottom.

Magda noticed her aunt’s flushed face, the flaccid jowls resting on the collar of her cardigan. She was drunk – again.

‘It’s Gertie. One of the girls over the road. She’s in labour. Sounds as though she’s having a hard time.’

‘Serves the slut right!’

Magda slammed the fistfuls of carrier bags onto the stained and rickety table.

‘No woman deserves to be in that much pain!’

Her aunt’s droopy eyelids sprang open.

‘She’s a slut. Sells her body for money so she deserves all she gets.’

‘No woman deserves to suffer. There are doctors and midwives and ways of alleviating the pain.’

‘Now there’s a big word! ’Eviating. Where did you get that from? Off your common mates in the market? Off that French rascal’s charming words? Mark my words, hussy, he’s not being kind to you out of the goodness of his heart. He’s after sliding his hand up yer leg. Men are all the same. Love you and leave you. That’s what they do. Love you and leave you.’

As she uttered the last words, her aunt seemed to deflate like a balloon grown soft and used up after Christmas.

‘That is not how it is! That is not how it is at all!’

Magda took herself and her purchases upstairs to her bedroom. She’d heard in the market that her aunt’s ‘fancy man’, Tom Hurdon at the Red Cow, had dropped dead of a heart attack. A new landlord was taking over. Rumour had it he had a wife, a hard-nosed type who wouldn’t tolerate her old man carrying on with another woman. Having her aunt at home more often was worse than having her down the pub.

There was little furniture in the bedroom, but what there was she’d made more attractive by painting things white and pasting on flowers cut out from old birthday and Christmas cards, salvaged from elsewhere.

Even the cards she now made for Venetia, Anna Marie and Mikey were recycled from old ones that she’d begged off people who’d received them. Some came from another of the market stalls. One or two had actually been given to her. This year, because she was now earning, she’d actually bought two cards – one for the twins, one for Mikey.

For the twins she’d chosen a lovely scene of snow and a
deer, antlers stark against an evening sky. For Mikey she’d chosen a jolly-looking snowman complete with bowler hat, green scarf and a pipe.

Words were so important, she thought. I want to say how much I miss them, but don’t want them to know what I might have to do in order to see them again.

Using a new fountain pen she’d been given by Mr Skinner, to the twins she wrote,

Wishing you a Merry Christmas. There’s a baby being born across the way. Very much in the spirit of Christmas, don’t you think?

Aunt Bridget sends her regards. I hope you are both well. I myself have left school and am hoping to become a doctor. It seems like a dream. I dearly hope it comes true.

In the meantime I’m helping out some nice local people. They have a stall in Victoria Square. If you do ever get to London, Mr and Mrs Skinner will always know where to find me. And Aunt Bridget of course.

If you ever get to London? She covered her eyes with one hand. Who was she kidding? This card would never be posted. It would sit with the others in the shoebox until such time as she found them – if she found them. If only she really could remember the address Uncle Jim had written on the piece of paper her aunt had thrown on the fire.

It was some time before she could bear to write something in Mikey’s card, and even then she only got as far as wishing him a Merry Christmas.

Downstairs, her aunt was still sitting where she’d left her, eyes closed, mouth open. She woke up on smelling the meal Magda was cooking.

‘What’s for dinner?’

Since losing her fancy man, Bridget had been eating almost as much as she drank. Bottles were still coming home from the
off licence but the interest she’d once had in lipstick and rouge had transferred to food.