Eve and Her Sisters (34 page)

Howard had seen to it that the man was given a job at the engineering works, which had enabled the family to rent two rooms in a terraced house close to the works, but the whole incident had set Eve’s mind working. With Howard’s blessing she had spoken to several of the wives of his friends, and together they had banded together and opened the soup kitchen. In addition to making sure those in need had one good meal a day, they also distributed clothes and boots and blankets. When it became apparent that nits, ringworm, impetigo and fleas were rife, Eve arranged for a friendly school nurse to be loaned to them one day a week. Bad cases of infestation were dealt with at the cleansing station, a small room at the back of the vestry which Eve commandeered for the purpose. There the children’s heads were shaved.

Both Oliver and Alexander accompanied Eve now and again to the soup kitchen. She and Howard didn’t want their children to grow up in a privileged bubble as so many of Howard’s friends’ children did. They wanted their boys to be aware of poverty and the effect it could have on families from an early age.

On a sunny Saturday morning in late September, Eve glanced across the breakfast table at her sons. Oliver was eating his boiled egg and soldiers and Alexander was doing the same in his high chair next to his brother. ‘I’m going to be handing out some picture books and crayons to the children this morning, Oliver. Would you like to come and help me?’

Oliver looked up, his blue eyes bright. ‘Daddy said we could go and sail my boat on the river. Didn’t you, Daddy?’

Howard smiled ruefully, ‘Sorry,’ he said to Eve. ‘I didn’t know you would be working today.’

‘No, it’s my fault.’ Since Oliver had started at a small prep school at the beginning of the month, Eve had tried to make sure one of the other women, not all of whom had young families, took her place on a Saturday so she could spend the weekend with her family. ‘We’re short-handed today, Annabelle Sheldon and Verity Alridge are attending a garden party and Gladys Owen has gone abroad for two weeks.’ She wrinkled her nose as she spoke. Gladys was all right, but the other two women, both prominent members of Newcastle’s high society, never missed an opportunity to let her know she was not one of them. She was tolerated, for Howard’s sake, but she was not of their class and therefore socially inferior. The scandal of Howard marrying so far beneath himself might have been replaced by other, more recent gossip, but Annabelle and Verity made sure it was not forgotten.

Eve would have liked to say that the prejudice she met from these two women and others did not bother her, but in all truthfulness she could not. It was hurtful. Not that she let them see when they wounded her. She would rather walk through Newcastle stark naked. Most of the time, and certainly within these four walls, she felt fulfilled and content, but there was the odd moment when she longed to throw off the mantle of sedateness that went with being Howard’s wife and tell Annabelle and Verity and one or two others exactly what she thought of them. They might have been born with silver spoons in their mouths but they were the sort of upper-crust women Nell would have described as being up their own backsides.

‘What are you thinking about to put that look on your face?’

She realised Howard was still looking at her and said hastily, ‘Nothing, just how Annabelle and Verity have gone on about their new hats all week. They are desperate to outdo each other.’ She had never revealed to her husband how she felt. In the early days of their engagement she had told Nell she didn’t intend to have any secrets from Howard, but it had not taken her very long to understand that that was naive. Only then had she fully understood why Nell had not burdened Toby with the knowledge of the money she gave her sister each month. If she told Howard of the numerous but subtle slights that came her way, he would be both angry and upset. He would cut himself off from his friends and in doing so not only deprive himself of companionship and social acceptance, but probably endanger his business too. Because, say what you like, it wasn’t what you knew but who you knew that counted in this town. Probably every town. Their circle included shipyard owners and mine owners as well as a Sir or two. Oh yes, it wasn’t what you knew but who, she thought grimly.

‘Those two.’ Howard’s voice was scathing. ‘Flibbertigibbets, the pair of them. They haven’t got a brain cell between them. Do you remember that last dinner party at the Alridge’s, when they were discussing the Zinoviev letter? How they imagine a letter from the
Communist International
to British Communists just happened to mysteriously fall into the hands of the Tories so they could publish it just before polling day beats me. Of course the Tories romped home after that. And if that letter’s not a forgery, I’ll eat my hat. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when Verity said Tory politicians wouldn’t dream of showing such bad form as to sabotage the Labour Party.’

‘If I remember rightly you neither laughed nor cried but were somewhat rude.’

‘Believe me, I could have been a lot ruder.’

Eve smiled.‘I’m sure you could,’ she said soothingly.

‘Mammy, can I have all my hair cut off ?’ Oliver brought his parents eyes to him as he dunked a soldier into the yolk of his egg.

‘Why on earth would you want to do that?’ Eve asked helplessly. Since he had been able to talk Oliver had had the knack of completely disconcerting any adult he was with. He asked the most perturbing questions for a five-year-old.

‘Because then it wouldn’t get tangly.’

‘I see.’ She glanced at Howard. ‘But you wouldn’t look so nice then, would you?’

‘Those children at the church have their hair cut off.’ He dug into his egg with his spoon. ‘You let them so why can’t I? Don’t you think they look nice?’

Oh dear. Howard’s mouth was twitching but he said not a word to help her out. ‘Well, those children have to have their hair cut because . . .’ She wondered how to phrase it. She had learnt the hard way to be very careful what she said to her son who had a habit of repeating her words at just the wrong moment.

‘Because the nurse who comes to the church thinks it is necessary,’ Howard said, straight-faced. ‘When it isn’t necessary, it is not done.’

‘And she wouldn’t think it was necessary with me?’

‘Definitely not.’

Oliver made a face. ‘I don’t like that nurse.’

‘Now, now, we don’t say things like that, do we?’ Eve said quickly as Howard turned away to hide his smile. ‘The nurse is a very kind lady.’

‘To some children but not to me.’

She wasn’t going to win this one.‘If you’ve finished your breakfast, go and wash your hands and get ready to go out with Daddy.’ She looked at Howard. ‘Are you taking Alexander too?’

Alexander had been following the conversation and now piped up, ‘Stay with Mammy.’

Howard shrugged. ‘I’ll take him if you want but you remember the last time I did that when he said he didn’t want to go.’

She did. It had been a disaster. Looking at her two-year-old’s pretty little face, Eve smiled. Alexander might not be an extrovert like Oliver but he was just as determined in his own way. She knew one or two of their friends blamed the child’s fear of being parted from her on her refusal to have a nanny for the boys. It had caused eyebrows to be raised when Oliver had been born and she had said she was going to take care of her baby herself. It just wasn’t done, several of their so-called friends had murmured. She had replied it was done because she was doing it and that was the end of that. It had been the first time she had really shown her mettle since her marriage and Howard had backed her one hundred per cent. Dear Howard. Her smile included him.‘He can come with me, it will be all right. I’ll take Daisy with me and she can keep an eye on him.’

Once Oliver was ready and stood clutching his boat which had been his birthday present that year, Eve kissed him. ‘Be a good boy for Daddy, won’t you?’

‘He’s always a good boy, aren’t you, son?’ Howard ruffled Oliver’s curls as he spoke. They were waiting for the taxi cab Howard had ordered. Due to his disability they did not have a motor car as most of their social circle did, but this did not hinder them at all.

Eve knew where Howard was making for, it was one of their favourite picnic spots in the summer when they took the boys out for the day. The Tyne curled and wound its way past Newcastle’s industrial factories and shipbuilding yards and chemical works to emerge westwards near Ovingham and Harlow Hill as a far more gentle and picturesque river, with many streams and small natural lakes. There the boys could run to their heart’s content in the meadows thick with wild flowers, climb trees and sail their toy boats in tiny rivulets.

‘I wish you were coming too, Mammy.’

It wasn’t often Oliver said such a thing, he was the antithesis of his brother in that respect, and for a moment Eve was tempted not to go to the church. But they really were terribly short-handed, and so she bent down, took his face in her hands and kissed him again as she said, ‘We’ll all go together next week, I promise. All right? And for the whole day with a picnic. Would you like that?’

He nodded, smiling, and as she did every day of her life, Eve counted her blessings. She hadn’t known what love was until she had her boys, she reflected. The maternal love that had sprung into being the first time she had seen Oliver’s little face had outdone any feeling she had felt before then for anyone. Apart from William perhaps. But she hadn’t borne him, hadn’t had the wonder of carrying him inside herself for nine months, feeling him move, kick. It was such a different kind of love to what she had felt for Caleb and which she felt for Howard. But then that was natural, she supposed. The feeling one had for one’s parents, sisters, brothers was different too.

‘Here’s the taxi.’ Howard kissed her and Alexander who was clinging to her skirt.

On impulse she went into the dining room once the door had closed behind them and from the window watched the taxi draw away. It was a beautiful day, she thought wistfully. Probably one of the last really warm days they would have before autumn’s chill made itself felt. She hoped Howard wouldn’t let Oliver eat too many wild blackberries. Of course part of the thrill for Oliver was picking the ripe fruit himself. He thought himself such a big boy.

‘Come on.’ Eve whisked Alexander up into her arms, making him squeal with delight. ‘Let’s get you ready. And once we are finished at the church, we might have time for a walk in Leazes Park to see the ducks. Would you like that?’

 

When she arrived at the church hall with Alexander and Daisy, the other women were busy putting up the trestle tables on which they would serve the thick meat and vegetable soup and shives of bread, followed by treacle pudding, which was the meal that day. The doors of the hall were opened to the public at eleven o’clock, and Eve knew a long queue would have formed by then. A round table at the back of the hall held a collection of second-hand clothes, boots and blankets, along with a pile of baby clothes, and the same woman was in charge of that most days. Although most of the folk who took advantage of the soup kitchen were what Eve mentally termed respectable poor, a few from the worst area down by the quayside wouldn’t be averse to taking the items to sell on in return for drink and tobacco. They’d found if the same person kept charge of the stall each day, they recognised the opportunists.

Once the doors were open, Eve made sure Daisy was in charge of Alexander and began to help serve the food to those who shuffled in. The queue was orderly, it always was.There were usually lots of elderly couples and young mothers with children, and most of them were too thin and tired looking to do more than stand and patiently wait their turn.The church’s privy, situated outside the hall’s back door in the small yard, always had a long queue too. The communal lavatories in the teeming filthy tenements where most of their customers lived were often shared by twenty or more families. They were so nauseating that many women suffered constipation rather than use them. And Eve knew that some of the women she saw each day only ate the meal they provided and customarily went hungry the rest of the time for the benefit of their children.

As the numbers began to dwindle near two o’clock when they shut the doors and began to clear up, Eve glanced at a group of children playing with the colouring books and crayons she had brought in that day. They were sitting with Daisy in a corner of the room and it was with a pang to her heart that she realised only Alexander had shoes on his feet. They would have to obtain some boots for the children for the winter, she thought, making a mental note to bring the matter up at the next committee meeting. There were several pairs of adult boots and shoes on the table at the back of the hall, but the children’s sizes were always gone in a flash, probably because mothers who were too proud to take boots for themselves would receive them for their bairns.

At half past two the hall was restored to its usual neatness and everything was washed up and cleared away in the kitchen leading off the front door. After sending Daisy home to assist Elsie, Eve took Alexander to the park as she had promised.

They had a lovely afternoon in the late September sunshine. They sat by the ornamental fountain and Alexander had a nap on her lap while she watched other mothers stroll by with little ones in baby carriages and older children running here and there. She would like another baby, she thought drowsily, as one rosy-faced little cherub under a parasol was wheeled by. Maybe a little girl this time. She would call her Angeline, that was a pretty name. Or perhaps Rebecca. Nell had had another little girl three years ago and Betsy was a poppet.

It was just as Alexander woke up that she saw Daisy coming towards her, and something in the little maid’s face alerted her to the fact that all was not well. A long time afterwards she realised that that moment in time would forever be crystallised in her memory.The warm gentle breeze, the sound of children’s laughter, the young mothers in their summer dresses and her feeling of well-being.And then everything changed in one second of time. For ever.