My Daughter, My Mother (8 page)

There were: volumes with dark-red and black covers. Nora Paige sat by the range at night, squeezed into the straight-backed armchair that was pushed into the corner in the daytime, reading by the light of the oil lamp. She did not possess a wireless to break the silence. Margaret was expected to make herself invisible.

‘You sit quiet there,’ Mrs Paige would instruct her, pointing at the settle with its hard cushions. ‘Not a word, d’you hear?’

The aching boredom of those evenings! Somewhere, within a couple of days of arriving, Margaret had lost Peggy Doll, dropping her from her pocket, never to be seen again. There was nothing whatever to do, and no Tommy to make her laugh or invent games. Margaret would sit, sometimes with Seamus beside her, who would at least let her stroke him. Other times he was moody and lashed out with claws that drew blood.

Margaret would draw her legs up and pick at her knees, or at a thread in her old grey skirt, or at the piping at the edge of the cushions. The clock ticked, round-faced on the mantel, its pendulum swinging, and she watched, half-hypnotized. Mrs Paige turned the pages of her book, cleared her throat, scratched her scalp, a finger questing delicately through the hairnet.

Earlier on in these endless evenings she always prepared food to take up to Ernest.

‘The poor man needs my company, lying alone up there all day.’ Only one plate of the thin stew would go up with her. ‘I have to feed it to him, you know,’ she would say.

As Margaret ate her own meagre ration of food, picking up the plate to lick off the last traces of gravy, she could hear Mrs Paige’s voice through the floorboards, though not what was said. She strained to hear Mr Paige’s replies, but could never make them out.

School was a pleasant dream in comparison: the warm bodies round the table at the back of the vicarage; the bustling vicar’s wife, Mrs Bodley-Fisher; the crackling fire in the grate. Had they been worried about her, she wondered now? There had been odd snatches of conversation that she overheard, their eyes fixed on her face as they talked with heads close together. But each day Miss Peters brought her from Nora Paige’s house to her classes, then took her back again. New billets were not easy to find.

Winter drew in and their breath was white on the air. She had worn out her pumps and the
Birmingham Mail
charity boots, which had once been Tommy’s, were still too big. She clumped along in them, her legs bare in all weathers under the old skirt and vest and royal-blue jumper. All the time she was hungry – so hungry.

One day, in the vicarage, during the mid-morning break, when they were each given a beaker of milk and a biscuit, Margaret had wolfed hers down in two bites. Joan was sitting next to her, taking tiny nibbles of hers. Margaret felt saliva rush into her mouth. Quick as a snake she leaned round, snatched the biscuit and stuffed it into her mouth. Joan set up a shrieking.

‘Whatever’s wrong, Joan?’ Miss Cooper asked. She was the tall redhead who stomped through the snow to fetch Joan to school each day.

‘Margaret took my biscuit!’

‘Margaret!’ Miss Cooper bore down on her. Margaret chewed and swallowed quickly, as if the disappearance of the biscuit could make it not have happened. Everyone was now staring at her. ‘What d’you think you’re doing, snatching Joan’s biscuit?’

Margaret stared back in silence. Her appearance seemed to aggravate people. ‘Well, say something, child.’

‘I dunno,’ Margaret said through her adenoids.

Miss Cooper clicked her tongue. ‘Well, don’t do it again. That’s
greedy
and it’s
stealing
. Now, Joan, there’s another biscuit for you. Eat up.’

Mrs Paige fed her less and less. Because Margaret was a sturdy child it took a while before anyone noticed, though Miss Cooper often urged her to buck up and listen. But one day soon after she arrived at the makeshift school, blackness suddenly closed down on her like a lid. She came out of the faint feeling sick and confused.

Then it started snowing. On the way to school Miss Peters coughed, bending over, eyes streaming.

‘Oh dear,’ she kept murmuring as she straightened up. ‘How am I to manage?’

Soon afterwards Miss Peters disappeared. Miss Cooper arrived the next morning in a great hurry, having already walked to collect Joan.

‘I’m afraid Miss Peters has been taken ill,’ she said, peering curiously in at Nora Paige’s cottage door. There was nothing to see: just the unlived-in parlour. ‘They’ve had to take her home – she’s developed pneumonia.’

‘Oh dear,’ Mrs Paige said. ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’ Her eyes widened, then blinked hard.

What did the teachers say among themselves about Nora Paige, Margaret wondered now? Did the vicar’s wife say, ‘Oh, she’s been a recluse since her husband died’? These things she only found out later. ‘TB, you know, soon after the war ended. He must have been dead fifteen years by now at least.’

‘Well, she’s an odd one all right,’ she heard Miss Cooper mutter as the door closed.

Margaret, cold and weak, her feet already so chilled that she could barely feel them, followed Miss Cooper through the snow. The wind bit into her cheeks. Each meal she had was smaller than the last. She was eternally hungry.

It was almost impossible to steal food. Everything in the low cupboard was in tins or jars, and the big meat safe with its mesh door, where Mrs Paige kept bread, cheese, meat and butter, was locked and the key removed.

‘Don’t think I don’t know your cunning,’ Nora Paige would say, slipping the key into her pocket. ‘I’m not having you taking the food out of my poor sick husband’s mouth.’

There were no more free apples, or blackberries in the hedgerow, now.

One evening Mrs Paige was standing by the table in her flat shoes, the beige wool of her sleeves pushed up her brawny arms as she spooned out a portion of food to take to Ernest. On a small plate she put a helping for Margaret – two morsels of meat, a spoonful of gravy, a mouthful of boiled potato.

‘You see, Meg,’ she announced, going to the door with her plateful. ‘What I have discovered is that death is a state preferable to life for some people. No more pain and suffering, no more cold and anguish. I believe Ernest finds it so. After death has occurred, once they have passed through the eternal portal, it’s so much easier for all concerned. I have come to the conclusion that this is how it is supposed to be. You’ll find it to be true, I’m sure.’

Margaret pushed the tiny meal into her mouth. She had no idea what Mrs Paige was talking about.

She didn’t know what devilment had driven her to it. It was a Saturday, a mild day during a temporary thaw. The two teachers who were left now that Miss Peters had gone had decided to gather their charges for an outing.

It was noon. Mrs Paige had given Margaret her midday meal – half a slice of dry bread – and gone out to the garden with a rake to gather up the skin of sodden leaves in between remaining patches of snow. Margaret watched her for a moment from the back doorstep and saw the movement of her sturdy calves, encased in a pair of man’s boots – perhaps Ernest’s? – across the grass, the rhythmic movements of the rake.

The air was damp and mild for late November. It was ages until the teachers were coming to collect her for the nature walk. Margaret wandered through the house and went to sit on the stairs. Much of the time now she was lethargic and hazy in the head. She never seemed to learn much at school. Mostly she just wanted to sink into the warmth and go to sleep. But they had all been cooped up and bored because of the snow, and the bit of bread had given her a spurt of energy.

Without willing it, she found herself climbing the stairs. She knelt on the last step from the top, looking from door to door. She didn’t know what to feel about Ernest. She believed that he was in there – every day he was given meals, his room was cleaned, his opinions sought. But she had never even so much as heard him clear his throat. How bored he must be too! Maybe he’d like someone to come and see him.

Listening carefully, she could hear nothing. He must be asleep. To her surprise she saw that the latch of the door was not fastened. She would be able to peep at Ernest, the way she used to peep at her father, Ted Winters, when he slept drunk by the hearth. She’d found a fascination with his sagging mouth and dark stubble.

She crept across the landing and pushed the door open, her heart thumping. Supposing he woke up and shouted at her, and told Mrs Paige what she’d done? Putting her head round the door, she relaxed, seeing that the bed was empty. Had he gone down to the privy? Was he hiding in the cupboard again? Perhaps he had heard her coming and was watching her. The door of the cupboard was shut tight, but this didn’t mean he wasn’t there . . .

Seconds passed and, as nothing happened, she crept forward. The best thing in the room was Mr Paige’s false teeth, grinning at her from the bedside table. She’d never seen any before and they held a fascination for her. Daring herself, she picked up the teeth and pulled them apart, then let them snap closed. The clacking sound and the sight of them made her giggle. After a few goes she held them in her hand and wandered round, picking up other things. The bristles of the shaving brush were stiffened by soap into a solid mass. She looked in the slanted mirror, saw her white, thin face, her dark eyes, one looking back at her directly, the other wandering to the side. Her hair was longer now and straggly.

Margaret went to the window. Now that the leaves of the hedge opposite had died back there was a clear view of the field, ploughed up for winter, a few lines of snow still caught in the furrows. She clacked the teeth between her fingers, staring out.

She didn’t even hear Mrs Paige. She was caught from behind by the hair and was swung around, with a burning yank on her scalp that made her scream.

‘What are you doing, you crossed-eyed little brat?’ Mrs Paige was demented with rage. ‘You monster! You filthy vermin! How dare you touch my things, my Ernest’s things? Out, you little rat – get out!’

The dentures fell to the floor and several of the teeth jumped out of them. Margaret was dragged downstairs by the hair, mewling and crying.

Mrs Paige shoved her out of the back door and the few steps across to the wooden shed behind the house . . .

She struggled, crying, begging. In with the rats, Mrs Paige had threatened. Desperate, she tried to pull away, to get out of the woman’s grasp, but Mrs Paige was so big, so enraged, that all Margaret could do was jerk and pull, crying, ‘No, no, don’t – not in there . . . No-o-o!’

‘Mom?’ The voice cut through her terrified rememberings. ‘Mom, it’s all right . . .’ A hand soothed her shoulder. ‘I think you’ve been having a dream – don’t worry.’

Margaret stared up at the face, the dark eyes like her own, the familiar voice. Of course, her own daughter, Karen! Here she was in her room. It wasn’t 1939 – it was now. She almost wept with relief.

‘Must’ve been dreaming,’ she said muzzily.

‘It’s all right, Mom.’ Karen struggled to sound in command, though she was frightened. ‘Look, I’ve just got home. I’ll make us both a nice cup of tea. Dad’ll be back soon, and I can get the dinner on, so don’t worry – all right?’

‘Thanks,’ Margaret said. She sat up, reaching for her specs, feeling stunned and foolish. ‘Thanks, love.’

Ten

May 1984

The next Tuesday morning Joanne pushed Amy along to the playgroup, very relieved to have somewhere to go. I need a break from family, she thought guiltily. As she turned into Villa Road she took deep breaths of the warm air, feeling as if she had been let out of a lock-up. Karen had been on the phone again last night, on about Mom having bad dreams and seeming frightened and not herself. And Dave’s mood had slid down again. She badly needed to get out.

While Margaret had been in hospital, Dave had been as kind and supportive as it was possible to be, minding Amy while Joanne went to visit, sending a get-well card to his mother-in-law, and treating Joanne as if she was fragile and needed his care and protection. But she could feel it beginning to wear off. Nothing had happened, but she could sense she was back to walking on eggshells, that his mood was building up again, until some unpredictable moment when he would explode.

She hurried along, anxious not to be late, realizing how much she was looking forward to the toddler group, to seeing Tess and, even more, Sooky and Priya.

‘Who’re we going to see – d’you remember?’ She leaned over the buggy while she was still moving to talk to Amy.

Amy twisted round to look up at her.

‘You’re going to see your little friend Priya.’

‘Piya!’ Amy couldn’t manage the ‘pr’ yet. She jiggled against the straps in excitement. ‘Piya!’

It felt wonderful to Joanne to think they had friends. Michelle had always been her best mate before, but Michelle didn’t have children and lived so far away – not to mention the rift between them over Dave. She couldn’t count on Michelle for everything now; she needed to make other friends. She walked much more confidently into the church hall, said hello to Tess and helped her finish getting the things out. She was pleased with the way Tess almost seemed to expect her now to come early and help. As the other mothers arrived, she found it easier to talk to them too.

‘Where Piya?’ Amy asked.

‘She’ll be here in a bit, I expect,’ Joanne said. ‘What d’you want to do, Amy?’

Amy immediately pointed at the painting table.

‘How about waiting for that till Priya gets here – shall we go and play with the dollies instead?’

But no, nothing else would do. Joanne sat beside Amy again, talking to Mavis. She kept looking at the door. Sooky was often late. But after the first hour had gone by she realized Sooky and Priya were not coming. She was surprised by just how disappointed she felt.

When it was over they all spilled out onto the pavement. Despite Sooky not turning up, Joanne felt quite cheerful. She had had a chat with a few people and hadn’t felt so crippled by shyness as she had the first few times. A nervous new mother had come, and she had been able to show her what to do. Just a bit of conversation and company made the whole day seem so much brighter. Humming, she turned to cross the road.