Gypsy (6 page)

Beth was still sitting in the chair crying when she heard a sound from her mother’s bedroom. Something had fallen to the floor, perhaps the water glass. She didn’t want to see Alice again tonight, but she knew she had to go in there and check on her.

Her mother was lying over to one side of the bed, trying to reach for the family photograph which stood on the bedside table. It had been taken a year ago in a booth on New Brighton Beach when they had gone there for the August Bank Holiday. Reaching for it, she had knocked over a bottle of pills the doctor had given her.

‘Is that what you want?’ Beth said, picking it up and holding it out for her mother to look at.

Her mother lifted her arm with great difficulty and put one finger on the picture. ‘Don’t tell anyone about Molly,’ she whispered. ‘Let everyone think she was Frank’s. Not for me, but for her, and give her this when she is grown up, so she’ll know what we looked like.’

Her hand went from the picture to catch hold of Beth’s wrist. It felt as dry as an autumn leaf, so small and bony, and she was gripping tight. ‘I’m so very sorry,’ she said. ‘Tell me you forgive me.’

Instinct told Beth that this was the end or very close to it. Whatever her mother had done, whoever she had hurt, she couldn’t let her die without a kind word. ‘Yes, I forgive you, Mama,’ she said.

‘I can go then?’ Alice asked in a whisper.

The grip on Beth’s wrist loosened and her mother’s hand fell to the blanket. Beth stood looking at her for some little time before she realized she had stopped breathing.

Chapter Five

‘We
will
have the cheapest funeral,’ Sam argued stubbornly. ‘Because of her, Father couldn’t be laid to rest in hallowed ground and no one came to the funeral to say what a good man he was. So why should she have anything better?’

‘We can’t let her have a pauper’s funeral,’ Beth said wearily, for they’d been over this several times already since he came in for his supper, and it was nearly eleven o’clock now. ‘What would people think of us?’

‘Why should we care about that!’ he exploded. ‘Apart from the Cravens, everyone’s been whispering maliciously about us since Papa died. Let them carry on doing it.’

Beth began to cry because she didn’t know this stonyhearted person who had taken the place of her brother. Their mother had been dead for less than twenty-four hours, her body was still lying in the bed, and yet Sam had gone off to work this morning as if nothing had happened. She understood of course that he was afraid he’d lose his job if he didn’t, but he could have explained that to her, just a few gentle words to let her know he wasn’t angry with her too.

‘Don’t cry, Beth,’ he said, his eyes growing softer. ‘I don’t mean to be cruel, but things are desperate now. We can’t spend money we haven’t got on her funeral. And that baby has got to go!’

Beth moved protectively over to Molly’s cradle. ‘Don’t say that, Sam. She’s our sister and I will not abandon her. You can sell the piano or anything else to get some money, we’ll take in a lodger or move somewhere cheaper, but Molly stays with us.’

‘I can’t bear to see her,’ he said, and his eyes filled with tears. ‘She’s always going to be a reminder of what Mama drove Papa to do.’

‘If Mama hadn’t been so honest and brave admitting the truth, we’d have been none the wiser,’ Beth argued. ‘Besides, Papa would turn in his grave if we turned our backs on a helpless baby, even if it wasn’t his. So you’ve got to find the humanity to accept that we have to do right by Molly.’

Sam just looked at her thoughtfully.

It was some little while before he spoke again. ‘Put like that, I suppose I’ll have to agree.’ He sighed. ‘But don’t expect me to ever feel anything for her. And don’t blame me when you find out what being poor is really like.’

It was enough for Beth that Sam had backed down. ‘Then I’ll compromise and arrange the cheapest funeral. But you mustn’t blame me either if later you find it makes you feel bad about yourself.’

Christmas was bleak; they had neither the money nor the heart to attempt any kind of festivity. They left Molly with Mrs Craven just long enough to go to church on Christmas morning, but that gave them no comfort for it only served to remind them of joyful Christmases past. A few people approached them to offer condolences, but there was no ring of sincerity in them, only curiosity.

The funeral took place two days later, and Mrs Craven’s eldest daughter minded Molly. Heavy rain had melted the snow, but an icy wind blew across the churchyard, almost cutting them in half as the cheap coffin was lowered into the grave. Apart from Sam and Beth, there were only three other mourners: the Cravens and Dr Gillespie. As Father Reilly intoned the final words of the committal, Beth glanced over to where her father was buried in unhallowed ground. She thought how unjust it was that a man who had never sinned against anyone should be there, while his adulterous wife lay in the churchyard.

By the first week in February, when Sam became seventeen and Beth sixteen, they were forced to sell the piano. Beth didn’t really care much about it, after all she still had her precious fiddle, but seeing the piano being lowered out through the window to the street below brought home to her how tragically ironic it was.

To her parents the piano was a symbol that they had succeeded in lifting their children up to the middle classes, and as such they would never suffer the hardships they themselves had endured. Yet by being protected from want and shielded from the hard facts of real life, both she and Sam lacked the resources to cope with poverty.

Beth could bake cakes, lay a table properly, starch and iron a shirt, and had acquired dozens of other refined accomplishments, but she’d never been taught to plan a week’s meals on a tiny budget. Sam might be able to haul in coal for the stove, shovel snow out of the backyard and be on time every day for work, but he had no idea how to unblock a sink or fix a broken sash cord in the window.

All their childhood there had always been a fire in the parlour, the stove in the kitchen and even fires in the bedrooms when it was really cold. The gas was lit in all the rooms before it grew dark, there was always fruit in a bowl, cake in the tin and meat every day.

The coal ran out soon after Christmas and when they ordered more they were shocked at the price and could only keep the stove in the kitchen going. The gas ate up pennies so fast that they were afraid to light it. Fruit and cake disappeared from their diet.

Sam’s wages were spent on food long before Friday came round, and once they’d eaten all the preserves and stores of sugar and flour their mother had so frugally tucked away in the pantry, they were down to bread alone until pay day.

Maybe Sam should have held out for a better price for their mother’s prized round mahogany table and matching chairs, but they needed the money to pay for the coal and the bill from Dr Gillespie. There was no doubt they were swindled when the grandfather clock was sold. But neither of them had any idea of the real value of these items, or that second-hand furniture dealers could smell desperation.

Although Beth loved caring for Molly, she hadn’t reckoned on the loneliness of being home all day alone with a baby. She never seemed to have a minute for herself to read, play her fiddle or take a bath. Sam wasn’t interested in hearing about Molly when he came in from work, she had no one other than Mrs Craven she could talk to, and she was continually worried about money.

By the middle of March Sam could see no alternative other than to find lodgers to make ends meet.

One of the more senior clerks in his office suggested his cousin Thomas Wiley and his wife Jane, who had been staying with him and his family since Thomas moved from Manchester to take up work in the Liverpool post office. The couple were in their mid-thirties, and Beth took an immediate dislike to Jane. Everything about her was sharp — her eyes which darted around the room as she spoke, her nose and cheekbones, and even her voice had a sharp edge to it.

She showed no interest in Molly and she looked Beth up and down as if pricing up the value of her clothes. When Beth tried to suggest they figured out a plan when each would cook their evening meal, Jane dismissed her by saying she wasn’t one for cooking.

Her husband, Thomas, was easier to take to, a jovial, ruddy-faced man who appeared very grateful to be offered the parlour and Beth’s old bedroom up on the top floor above the kitchen, for she and Molly were now in her parents’ old room. Thomas said he had begun to despair of ever finding anywhere decent, or even clean, for he had been to view rooms that he wouldn’t even keep a dog in.

Sadly it soon transpired that Thomas liked the drink more than he did his wife or home. Most evenings he didn’t roll back till after ten.

Beth tried hard to get along with Jane, but it was clear from the start she thought a lodger should be waited on. She ordered Beth to fill the tin bath in the bedroom for her on her second day there. When Beth said she and Sam always had a bath in the kitchen as it was far warmer and more convenient, and anyway Jane must fill it and empty it herself, the woman flounced around indignantly, declaring ‘she’d never heard the like’.

As it was, she spilled water all over the kitchen floor and made no attempt to clean it up. She complained that the sound of Molly crying in the night woke her and that the mattress on the bed was lumpy. Beth rushed to feed Molly if she woke in the night, and she spent a good hour shaking the feather mattress outside to make it fluffier, but Jane didn’t reciprocate in any way. She could make a mess even making a cup of tea, and never cleared it up. She would fill the sink with washing and then disappear, which meant Beth had to do her washing for her or was unable to use the sink.

Day by day Beth saw the comfortable and orderly life she’d been brought up with, and had struggled to maintain, eroding away. As she was bathing Molly in the sink, Jane would come in and start frying bacon, knocking the clean nightgown, vest and napkin from where they were airing by the stove to the floor. If Beth wanted to sit in the armchair to feed Molly, Jane was already sitting there. She helped herself to their food; she didn’t wash up her plates or pots. Beth soon gave up hope of her ever offering to take a turn cleaning the kitchen, the stairs or the privy, yet Thomas would walk in at night with muddy boots and next morning Beth would see a trail all along the landing and up the stairs.

Beth felt unable to complain. Not only was she a little afraid of Jane, but she knew how desperately she and Sam needed the rent money. Yet it was so hard to see the home which had always been so clean and tidy degenerate into squalor, to listen to Thomas’s drunken ramblings late at night, and never to have any real privacy. Playing the piano or her fiddle had always been her tried and tested way of escaping from her problems, but she no longer had the piano, and with Jane stalking around she didn’t feel able to play her fiddle. She could feel herself becoming wound up like a watch spring, and she was afraid of what might happen when that spring finally snapped.

It happened one morning in July. Sam and Thomas had left for work about an hour earlier. Beth went into the kitchen with Molly in her arms, ready to feed her, and found Jane pouring some of the milk in the baby’s bottle into her tea.

‘What are you doing?’ Beth exclaimed. ‘That’s Molly’s!’

‘There’s no other milk left,’ Jane said.

‘Well, go out and get some,’ Beth retorted angrily. ‘What sort of person would take a baby’s food?’

‘Don’t you speak to me like that.’ Jane’s eyes narrowed and she stuck her thin face right up to Beth’s menacingly. ‘You feed her too much anyway, that’s why she’s so fat.’

At seven months old Molly was plump, but Beth took a pride in her being so healthy and strong. She had masses of dark hair, four teeth, and she could sit up unaided now. She was a happy, contented baby who smiled and gurgled all day long.

‘She’s beautiful, not fat, and you should be ashamed of yourself,’ Beth snapped back. ‘It’s bad enough you stealing our food. Have I got to hide Molly’s milk now too?’

‘Are you calling me a thief?’ Jane shrieked, and catching hold of a clump of Beth’s hair pulled her head back sharply, making her cry out. ‘That’s right, snivel. You think you’re so high and mighty, don’t you? But what’ve you got to be high and mighty about? Yer pa topped hisself, and everyone knows why.’

She let go of Beth’s hair and looked at her contemptuously. ‘Don’t yer know everyone talks about yer ma? Me and Tom heard about it afore we even moved in. Yer pa must’ve been soft in the head, topping hisself instead of throwing her out on the streets. No wonder yer brother don’t want nothin’ to do with the bairn.’

Beth backed away with Molly in her arms. She was horrified that the truth about her mother had got out, and she was afraid of Jane too, but she’d had enough, and she wasn’t going to let the woman get the better of her.

‘What you’ve just said is completely untrue,’ she shouted back at her. ‘I won’t have anyone slandering my mother, so you can pack your bags and get out of my home now.’

‘And how do you think you’re going to make me?’ Jane put her hands on her hips challengingly. ‘Big brother going to throw me out, is he?’ She cackled with laughter. ‘He’s as soft as shit.’

All at once Beth knew she had to be strong and fight for her rights. She turned, darted into the bedroom and laid Molly down safely in her cradle. She howled in protest, but Beth ignored her and returned to the kitchen to face Jane.

‘I don’t need my brother,’ she said defiantly. ‘I’m perfectly capable of dealing with the likes of you. Get out now and I’ll pack your stuff and put it down in the yard for Thomas to collect later.’

Jane leapt towards her, one hand raised to slap her, but Beth was quicker, catching her by the wrist and twisting it, making the woman squeal in pain. ‘Out!’ she yelled at her, still twisting her wrist as she pushed her towards the stairs. ‘And if you try to come back I’ll make you sorry.’

Beth had never fought anyone before, apart from play-fighting with Sam when they were younger, but anger made her strong and determined.

Jane tried to fight back, clawing at her with her free hand, but Beth had youth and righteous indignation on her side, and she managed to haul the older woman down the stairs towards the back door. Once she’d got her out into the backyard she pushed her so hard that Jane fell over.