All The Days of My Life (20 page)

They sent the flowers to show they were standing by her. On the other hand, those who helped in the crisis soon went back to normal but the backbiters had been saving themselves up for later. Ivy's life in the street was difficult. There was a shortage of greetings when she appeared. The respectable Mrs Fainlight would frequently pretend Ivy was not there as they pegged out their laundry on the lines in their adjoining yards, six feet away from each other. She would do the same when they were both sweeping their front steps. Ivy had to hold her head very high when she pushed the twenty guinea pram with the white wheels down to Meakin Park in the afternoons. It was worse because since she had been obliged to give up her job in the breadshop in order to look after the baby her only society now was the street. With Mary lying in bed all day staring at the wall, with Elizabeth Flanders practically slamming the door in her face when she called, Ivy felt desperate. She also thought that Elizabeth should have offered to help with the baby so that she, Ivy, could go on working part-time.

Ivy sometimes thought she would go mad. She suspected her daughter was mad. Mary had given birth to Josephine in four hours, had not risen from her hospital bed for a week after that and had refused to give her child anything but the most mechanical attention. The staff had put it down to the strain of the trial, which was not over. She had come back to her parents' house and became worse. She lay down all day, or sat in a chair in the front room. She would not go out and neglected the baby until Ivy, pitying the child, which was fed only after long crying spells, took over the care of Josephine. Shirley was too young to be much help. Jack was always studying these days. Sid had been made an inspector and his friends at the depot, after expressing sympathy and having a whip-round to buy the baby an expensive cot, had chosen to forget the whole business, or at least make it appear that they had. It was Ivy who had given up her job; Ivy who was exhaustedly coping with the night and day demands of a
small baby; Ivy who had a deeply depressed daughter on her hands. She had not even the support of Lil Messiter, who was like a zombie after a long, hard labour and could scarcely string two coherent words together because she was so tired.

Life was hell at 19 Meakin Street during the early months of 1953. The baby cried. Ivy shouted. Shirley, Jack and Sid slunk about trying to keep out of the way and not be noticed. But however much Ivy went round the house bawling that her daughter was just a poor girl who had made an unfortunate marriage, and there was no need for Mary, or the innocent baby, or anybody else to be held in contempt for that, the others all knew this was merely noise. They respected her battle to protect Mary's good name and to establish Josephine as a respectable baby in the eyes of the world but they knew two guilts were being denied – Ivy's, for forcing the marriage in the first place, and Mary's, for having made such a poor job of enduring it. Even Shirley knew this. They were all sorry for Ivy but they wished she would give up her struggle.

One evening, as Ivy was giving Sid an enraged account of how Elizabeth Flanders had again turned her from the door, where she had gone in a neighbourly way to enquire if Elizabeth would like a chocolate Swiss roll from Froebel's bakery in the High Street, Sid spoke out at last. “I don't know why you don't give over going there. The Flanders don't want anything to do with anybody, least of all us. It's their decision and it's their loss. If they want to live like that they've got the right. Why don't you let them be?”

“You should talk to Joe, man to man,” was Ivy's response. “I've asked you time and again. It's not healthy, the way they're carrying on.”

“Nor's the way you are,” Sid told her. “Let them sort out their problems the best way they can. You've got enough to look after here.”

“People are talking,” said Ivy.

“They'll never stop, while all this is going on,” said Sid. “You stay home and mind your own business. Half this noise is just your way of ignoring what's happened. But it's happened – we've got to deal with the consequences – Jim's dead. His kid needs care and protection. Mary needs the doctor to see her. You can't just go on spending a small fortune on frills and furbelows for the baby, to prove she's as good as anyone else, and badgering the Flanders. Even Shirley's looking peaky. She hardly dares move in this house for fear of getting yelled at and
clouted. You want to pull yourself together, Ivy: concentrate on priorities, get the doctor to look at our Mary –”

“I'm supposed to sort all this out singlehanded?” demanded Ivy. “Why don't I find a cure for cancer in my spare time? What will you be doing while I solve it all? Sitting in that chair, I suppose. You've got a nerve, lecturing me. I suppose all this is supposed to be my fault?”

Sid did not reply. Ivy studied his face and her own face went paler still. Two red spots burned on her cheeks. “You think it is, don't you? You're blaming me for all this. That's always the way, isn't it? Things go wrong and it's the woman's fault – she's got to put everything to rights. Of course, if the kids are doing well the man goes down the pub and boasts about it.”

Again, Sid said nothing.

“I know what you're thinking,” said Ivy. “And you were as much in favour of it as I was. My God – you men are traitors to the core, every man jack of you. Let a woman take the responsibility – if it turns out right you take the credit. If it turns out wrong the woman takes the blame.”

“My job's to put bread in their mouths,” Sid told her. “And that I have done and I'm still doing.”

“Lovely,” said Ivy. “You organize a few buses and I have to organize all the people. I know which I'd choose if I had my time all over again.”

“No choice for either of us,” Sid said and went off to make a cup of tea. He brought Ivy a cup but, to her surprise, did not immediately sit down in front of the television with his own. Instead he went out of the room and she heard his tread on the stairs, going up to Mary's room.

Her nerves were so jangled that all she thought was, “He'll upset her. He'll make more trouble. He blunders about like a bull in a china shop. He's hopeless.” She lit a cigarette and tried to relax until the baby cried again, or Sid made some impossible demand or Mary appeared in her dressing-gown to sit, silent and withdrawn, in front of the television.

“All right – I'll get you a bloody TV,” boomed the distorted voice of Jim Flanders through Mary's head. “I'll get you a washing machine. I'll take you to the pictures every night –” Inside her head, flat on her pillow, looking towards the window, she heard the bang, like an explosion, of the front door. She lay there, rigid, with the film of her life with Jim unrolling behind her eyeballs.

Mary's fair hair had grown longer, and duller. Her eyes were blank
and pale, her face expressionless as pictures went through her head – of the angry young man leaving Meakin Street in a rage – the door banging, the heels of his shoes hard on the pavement outside. Then came images of a body, like a rag doll at the end of a string, swinging at the end of a rope. She saw Jim getting naked out of bed in Meakin Street and bending to kiss her. She saw him in his Sunday suit, shoes well polished, hanging, with his face turned blue and his tongue lolling out. It had probably not been like that, she knew, but that was what she saw. She saw, then, her own hands twisting in her swollen lap as she sat in court, watching Jim in the dock as he stumbled and faltered under the cross–questioning.

“Better when the baby's born – better be – I'll get you a bloody TV –” came the distorted voice, finally cracking and shouting “– wish to God I'd never met you –” Then the banging of the door.

Tears came down Mary's face, cooling on her frozen cheeks as she lay there motionless. Poor Jim. Dead. And the nightwatchman dead, too. Poor old man, beaten over the head by Jim, as if he had turned on the innocent old fellow instead of his wife, who had nagged and nagged – and the judge had said society could not tolerate these violent young men, deprived of proper parental discipline during their formative years, going about like wild beasts in the jungle, taking what they wanted without thought or mercy. The verdict of the jury would determine whether or not the nation was prepared to countenance the wave of violence and lawlessness sweeping the country. Poor Jim. Poor old man. In the end the jury had decided Jim Flanders was guilty but made a strong recommendation for mercy because of his youth, personal circumstances and his previous good record. The judge had told them they were not entitled to add recommendations of any kind and had sentenced Jim to hang. The jury realized, too late, that they had condemned to death a young man whom none of them wanted to see die. Not that there was any doubt of his guilt. He had been seen running away from the warehouse by two people. Only a few minutes later a policeman had discovered the nightwatchman unconscious, bleeding from the head. He had died shortly after and the weapon, a heavy meathook, found beside him had carried Jim Flanders' fingerprints.

Mary, blurry, puffy-faced and heavily pregnant, had been knocked up at three in the morning by the police. A hastily summoned policewoman broke the news to her. She did not respond at first because she could not believe what they told her. When, finally, they
made her understand that Jim had been arrested all she said was, “Find Harry Smith.” She knew that Jim alone would never have conceived the idea of robbing the warehouse. Moments later, as the Detective Inspector and his sergeant began to question her closely about Harry Smith, she realized she had made a mistake and refused to say any more. If Harry Smith had been involved he was not going to admit it. If he did, Jim would be no better off. It was no surprise to hear later that the entire Smith family had decamped the day after the robbery. No one knew where they were except Mary, because Harry had confided to her the secret of the caravan in an Essex field which proved so useful as a holiday spot and hide-out when creditors were after them. But Mary, overcome with the horror of what, so arbitrarily, seemed to be taking place, saw no point in sending the police to Essex after the Smiths. She did not react to anything during the rest of the time up to, and after, Jim's death. After the trial a middle-aged woman in a dusty black coat came up to her and tried to wish her, and the coming child, a better future. As the woman stumbled through her thought-out phrases, “No point in dwelling in rage and pain, what's done is done, now we must all get on with the future,” Mary merely muttered “Thank you” and walked away. It was left to Ivy to express her thanks to the nightwatchman's daughter for her forgiving behaviour.

Mary's attitude disappointed, and partly alienated, the neighbourhood. At first everyone was ready to be sympathetic to the poor girl, to give her more than her due, in fact, for being the heroine of a drama dignified by proceedings at the Old Bailey. But Mary, refusing to talk to reporters or to sympathetic, if curious, well-wishers, gave no satisfaction to her waiting audience. She would not appeal to their sentimentality as the young, pregnant widow of the hanged man. She would not arouse their self-righteousness by responding to remarks about the strangeness of the Smiths' sudden disappearance the day after Jim's arrest. It may have been dissatisfaction with Mary's general behaviour which led to the mutterings about Jim having been driven to crime by his wife and even suggestions that she, a notorious dare-devil, had actually thought up the plan for the robbery and sent him out to do it.

Meanwhile Mary lay day by day upstairs in her bedroom, hearing her baby cry, Shirley get into bed, the noises of the household, through a fog of despair. She heard Elizabeth Flanders' voice as she left the court, leaning on Sid's arm, “You killed my boy. He died because of
you.” Tears welled from her open eyes. She looked out into the darkness.

She was startled when Sid said, from the open door, “Here's a cup of tea, Mary. I want you to get up.”

“I can't, Dad. Not now,” she replied.

“Yes, you can,” said he, prepared for a long battle.

Mary sighed a long sigh and turned over in bed to look at him. She pulled herself into a sitting position.

“All right,” she said. “Never mind the tea. I'll come down and drink it.”

“See you in a minute, then,” he said.

Downstairs Ivy said, “Go and listen at the foot of the stairs, Sid. I'm afraid she may do something desperate.”

“If she doesn't, I will, if this goes on,” Sid told her. He added calmly, “Anyway she's out of it, now.”

Ivy was almost convinced. “I hope you're right,” she said.

Mary washed her face and cleaned her teeth and came down while Sid and Ivy waited nervously. Ivy was afraid she would kill herself if Sid was brutal to her. Sid was bent on having the matter out whatever the consequences. And Mary, although she did not know it, had recovered. During the long months of depression, as she had endured the constant replaying of Jim's departure, the arrival of the police and the horrors of the trial, as she had, like a child, winced and flinched from the vision of Jim's body being eaten away in a lime-filled grave in a prison, she had without realizing it been thinking about, and working out, the life open to her as the widow of a convicted murderer and the mother of a small child. She could easily see what the terms were.

She certainly could not go on living with Sid and Ivy. There was no room for her and the child. It would be a strain on all of them. She would be the shameful creature who is returned to her family to be sheltered and forgiven. But if she was lucky, within a few years she could have a job and a Council flat. If she was luckier a man would come along and marry her and take away the stigma of the past. They could move to another area. She could have another child.

Mary felt she couldn't face her parents. She had to get out. After she had gone Jack opened his eyes and said, “I thought she was coming round.”