Coronation Wives (34 page)

‘Don’t hold yer breath.’ Polly turned to leave.

His arm barred her from going out of the door. His fingers trailed down her spine. ‘Let me know when you are ready, my dear. And you will be. When the money’s short and the rent man is banging at the door.’

Before going back on duty, she grabbed her cigarettes from her bag and headed for the ladies’ cloakroom.

Muriel, the peroxide blonde with the bright pink lips and the voice of a foghorn, was in there spitting into a block of mascara, a Woodbine hanging from the corner of her mouth. She looked up and sneered when she saw who it was.

‘Heard about Billy. That’s men for you. Make you a bag of nerves, don’t they?’

‘Piss off!’

Muriel feigned surprise. ‘Oow! Charmed I’m sure.’

Locking herself in a cubicle Polly lit up and took a deep draw on her cigarette. In a moment her heart would stop pounding, but her despair would take longer to disperse. She was trapped. Bad news travels fast. Well, that was bloody true and Griffiths was bloody right! Employers preferred taking on single women rather than those who were married. Having a husband in prison would make things impossible if she had to look for another job. Griffiths knew that. The decision was hers.

In the break between the afternoon and evening matinees, Polly went along to Griffiths’s office and told him her decision.

Carol, Polly’s daughter, tucked the hem of her pink gingham
dress under her legs and wished for the day when she’d outgrow it altogether and it could go in the ragbag. The hem had been let down and the exposed material was less faded than the rest of the dress and ran all around the bottom like a strip of peppermint rock.

She was sitting with Sean Casey, a boy close to her own age who didn’t appear to notice that her clothes were mostly from jumble sales or hand-me-downs from someone else’s daughter. Most of her best hand-me-downs came from Geraldine Harvey whose mother bought clothes on tick from a club book so that even if her daughter couldn’t walk properly she was always dressed nicely.

‘I hate havin’ Geraldine Harvey’s old clothes,’ moaned Carol.

‘Her dad was black,’ Sean explained.

‘How do you know that?’ Carol asked as she concentrated on picking the cotton from around the hem of her dress.

‘You can see fer yerself. She looks like a cup of cocoa made with a lot of milk.’

‘Ain’t noticed ’er skin, just them irons and that hippity-hoppity way she walks.’

Sean asked her another question that he’d asked her many times before and gazed at her intently, impatient for an answer. Carol stared into the distance and tried to ignore the bland brick housing, the dead leaves and discarded sweet papers clustered in the gutter. When she was grown up she’d live in a place with green fields and trees all around where she could paint and draw and make model animals from blobs of clay.

‘Well?’ he said, eyes shining with hope.

‘No,’ she said emphatically. ‘You can never be my lover. You never wash your neck and your nose is always running.’

Sean sniffed loudly, then wiped the snot from his nose on the back of his sleeve. His brows beetled in concentration as he
searched for a way to endear himself to her. Suddenly his face brightened. ‘I’ve got a brand new marble, a real number niner. Do’ya want to see it? I bought it with me pocket money.’

Carol grimaced. ‘You’d have been better buying a new handkerchief instead of wiping yer snot on yer sleeve.’

Sean shrugged. He was bright enough when it came to making dandies – carts made from pram wheels and orange boxes. But girls were a mystery to him. He liked them a lot, but they seemed to want him to make too many personal changes in his clothes and his habits. He wasn’t sure he was prepared to do that.

‘How about marrying me?’ he asked suddenly. Wasn’t that what every girl wanted to be asked?

But Carol wasn’t listening. She was on her feet running towards her mother. ‘Where you goin’, Ma?’

Polly would have hurried on if Carol hadn’t seen her. ‘Pictures!’ she said and her walk turned into a trot.

Carol ran along beside her. Sean held back watching the mother and daughter, and wondering if the younger would end up looking like her mother. He wouldn’t mind that. Polly was a little plump, but she was blonde, pretty enough – for an old woman who was at least thirty-five! And she was friendly.

Polly stared straight ahead, a smile on her face and a sick feeling in her stomach. Her stride remained purposeful.

‘You ain’t got your work clothes on,’ Carol commented, running her eyes over the black and white flowered dress her mother was wearing beneath a black, three-quarter swagger coat. ‘That’s yer best one!’

‘Well, just for a change I’m going to
watch
a picture.’ She paused and almost choked on the next words. ‘With a friend.’

‘What, up the bug house?’

The words Carol used to describe the Broadway brought a smile to Polly’s face. Griffiths would have a fit if he heard it.

‘No. The Odeon.’

She didn’t stipulate whether it was in Bedminster or Broadmead because the fact of the matter was she wasn’t going to either. Griffiths had summoned her and there was rent to pay and pennies needed for the gas and electric meters and there was coal to buy. Then there was this dress. If only she hadn’t run up a debt with Mrs Harvey’s club book.

Carol frowned suddenly. ‘You’re not going to meet a chap, are you?’

Polly sighed. ‘Oh for God’s sake!’ Then she stopped and opened her handbag and got out her purse. ‘Look! Why don’t you take this thr’penny bit and go and get yerself some chips down at Hamblins.’

Carol took the money, and then said brightly, ‘I could wait with you till the bus comes.’

‘I’m going to Melvin Square. You go and get yer chips.’

Carol glanced over her shoulder to where Sean was bent over the gutter chasing one of his prized marbles with another. ‘Sean’s with me. Do I have to share the chips with him?’

Polly stopped again. Griffiths would kill her if she missed the bus and kept him waiting.

Carol eyed her mother and weighed up the possibilities of using her desire to get away to her own advantage. ‘What about some scrumpy?’

‘What? You cheeky little mare! You’re too young!’

Carol pouted and tried again. ‘Lemonade?’

‘Here,’ Polly said after digging out two pennies and two ha’pennies. ‘Give these to Sean.’

Then she tucked her bag under her arm and strode swiftly on. ‘I’ll see you later. All right?’

She didn’t look back. She preferred to imagine Carol running to join Sean and the pair of them racing off to the chip
shop together. Imagining what they were doing was easier than risking the condemnation on her daughter’s face.

Griffiths lived with his mother in a three-storey Victorian house in Britannia Road, which was just behind the London Inn, a principal stopping place for the buses running from the suburbs to the city centre.

Polly trod lightly, her heart in her mouth and a sickness in her stomach. Britannia Road was not attractive. The tall houses looked grim, the whole road smothered in their solid shadow.

The house where Major Griffiths resided had a green front door with a big black knocker and the brass step was dull and bent at one corner. Polly shivered and thought about running away, but the vision of her, Aunty Meg and Carol out on the pavement surrounded by their belongings forced her to stay.

A net curtain quivered at the window to her right before the door opened. Griffiths stepped to one side and waved his arm in a parody of a pantomime prince. He said nothing, but had a satisfied smile on his face.

She stood absolutely still while he closed the door, then followed him over the creaking boards of a long passage, through a door and down bare stone steps into a dank basement. This lower level was not obvious from the front of the house, but at the back the room had windows and a door that looked out onto a garden where striped towels hung lifeless and dripping wet on a washing line that ran from the house to the back wall.

An old chaise longue, a piece of furniture that a lot of people still had, stood against one wall, its springs apparent against its pale pink upholstery that might once have been bright red. There was a desk against another wall, a bookcase against another, two deckchairs hanging from nails and a bamboo table complete with a withered aspidistra. A small fire hissed from a cast iron range that was grey with ash and rusty from neglect.
Its warmth did little to dispel either the cold or her nervousness.

‘Is your mother home?’ Polly asked nervously, wishing to God that the old girl would come limping down the steps and, hopefully, throw her out into the street.

A smug smile appeared on Griffiths’s face. ‘Of course she is.’

‘Won’t she hear us? Won’t she come down here?’ She sounded genuinely worried though there’d been times back in the blackout when making love in the blackness had been made more exciting by the close proximity of other bodies doing exactly the same thing.

Griffiths leaned against the lime-washed wall at the bottom of the stairs, folded his arms across his chest and grinned. ‘My mother is deaf and not too good on her legs. That is why I chose this to be my private office. She
can’t
get down here.’

Damn! No chance of wriggling out of it even by moaning too loud. She had to get this over with. From somewhere – goodness knows where – she summoned up as much courage as she possibly could.

‘So,’ she said putting her handbag down on the desk and trying to look as though she really meant business. ‘I suppose that thing,’ she jerked her chin in the direction of the chaise longue, ‘is going to have to make do. Do you want me to take my clothes off now so we can get it over with?’

Griffiths smile widened. ‘Certainly not.’ His gold tooth glinted as he shook his head and laughed. ‘I want you to seduce me.’

‘Seduce you?’ Polly stared at him open-mouthed. Having someone take whatever virtue she had left was one thing. It helped assuage the guilt. Having to give it was something else entirely.

He loosened his tie. Black hairs grew on the backs of his fingers. She’d never noticed them before; now she fixed her
gaze on them because she didn’t know what else to say, what else to do.

Griffiths was saying, ‘If I had wanted a quick knee trembler up against the wall, I’d have done it during your shift. You may recall I said I wanted you to come to me. I didn’t mean for you to come just because you were short of money. I want you to do it with feeling, as if you really care for me.’

This was hard! This was incredibly hard! OK, she hadn’t been a saint in the war years. There were few that had, though you’d never get them to admit to it, but this was different. She was older now and married. All she could do was pray for a miracle.

‘Come along,’ he said, ‘I want to feel as though I am in heaven.’

‘Pity I don’t know any angels,’ Polly murmured as she turned away from him and peeled off her gloves and took off her coat, shivering as she carefully folded both onto the shabby chaise longue.

‘What did you say?’

‘I said I was just a fallen angel.’ She grimaced and said in a quieter voice, ‘But even fallen angels pray.’

‘Get on with it!’

Slowly she walked towards him, her stomach tightening. Sweat glistened on his face and ran through his moustache. She felt sick.
It would taste of salt.
She saw the vest beneath the shirt, the clutch of hair sprouting above the neckline. She felt sicker.
It would feel prickly, perhaps greasy.
How could she do this? She closed her eyes, tilted her head back, then opened her eyes again and stared at the ceiling. Was anyone up there listening?

Arms heavy as lead, she ran her hands up over his chest, placed her fingers on his jaw and brought his lips down to meet hers. He did taste of salt.

Behind closed lids she concentrated on pretending it wasn’t him but a man that she had fancied, exotic but refined; the gentleman that Griffiths could never be, one man in particular, dark and caring. Thinking of him, that man who had played the piano, made her want to cry. He was too good to be used as a substitute fantasy in lieu of this man. Perhaps Al or Gavin or … The list was long. Yes, she had had a good war but at least she had been willing and she hadn’t done it for money. Perhaps she should have. Perhaps she wouldn’t be in this situation now if she had turned professional back then. Sex was something she’d always enjoyed, not a commodity to be sold like bread or porridge.

The feel of his teeth behind his lips bruised her mouth. At the same time his hands ran down her back and squeezed her buttocks. A draught of air blowing through the ill fitting windows and door touched her thighs as he lifted her skirt fold upon fold.

‘Undo your buttons,’ he said nodding at the shiny black buttons that ran from her neck to the belt that helped hold her stomach in.

As his hands slid beneath the waistband of her knickers she did as he said and undid the buttons of her dress.

‘Pull it open.’

Feeling her face flush with shame, she did as ordered. Her breasts ballooned over the top of an ill fitting brassiere that she’d had for some years.

He lowered his head and kissed one of her breasts. She looked up at the ceiling wishing she could stick herself against it like the trapped flies she could see buzzing in a forest of spiders’ webs. She closed her eyes. She didn’t want to see this happening to her. Suddenly it was preferable to be homeless and penniless. This, she decided, would be the first and last time and she wished she could stop it now, but for once in her
life she was too afraid to say ‘no’. Instinct told her that Griffiths could turn violent.

He was murmuring against her breast, saying things in a foreign accent that she couldn’t quite understand.

She asked him what he’d said.

‘I was pretending to be Lugosi,’ he murmured. ‘Pretending to be a vampire. Haven’t you ever seen him as a vampire?’

‘No.’

‘Vampires like to bite their victims. Would you like me to bite you?’

An expectant silence followed. Polly’s heart thudded against her rib cage.

The feel of his hands pulling her knickers down over her thighs spurred her to do something.