Orphan of Angel Street (22 page)

By Christmas Elsie had withdrawn from life on the yard in Angel Street. She was thinner, more stooped, and between her grief for her dead children and her concern for those still hanging on to life she had no energy to give to anyone else.

It was to Mabel that everyone was gradually turning for help and advice. Mabel who was seen as the strong one, who had ‘come through’ and was always there to help Mary Jones and, increasingly, everyone else. Even Josie Ripley, a hard case of a woman who was hardly ever heard to say anything to her six kids unless it was, ‘Ger’over ’ere or I’ll belt yer one!’ had been known to turn to Mabel. Mabel made sure everyone took their turn to clean out the dry pan lavs down the yard, and had their go at washday in the brewhouse. She’d organized the yard women into a ‘didlum club’, taking pennies from them week by week as savings for Christmas. She’d gained in dignity, walked stately and handsome in her tartan shawl. She had people’s respect. She was Someone nowadays.

She even showed sympathy to Mercy over Tom.

‘It’s a terrible thing, that,’ she said to Susan. ‘Like a living death. Be better if ’e’d – well, you know – altogether, wouldn’it?’

Mercy didn’t want her sympathy. She still couldn’t talk about Tom, even to Susan who seemed to feel that now Mercy was in effect ‘alone’ again, the two of them should be as close as ever. But Mercy didn’t feel released from Tom. She had come to dread this helpless wreck of a man who had come home to her, yet she was still tied to him by his suffering, by the past, by guilt.

One afternoon, freezing outside, she sat by his bed looking at him. Once again, he was staring up at the ceiling, hands twitching, an occasional disconnected sound coming out of his mouth. He could do nothing for himself: not feed or walk or clean himself in any way. He had, in all ways that meant anything to her, ceased to be a person, certainly a lover. Yet here he was, this troubling, physical presence that was undeniably in the shape of Tom.

‘Are you there?’ she asked him over and over. ‘Are you still in there? Can you hear me?’ She leant over so that her face was level with his eyes. ‘Please, Tom – if you can understand me, show me somehow. I can’t stand this.’ He seemed to be looking straight through her.

‘You was everything to me . . .’ She began to cry, the first time she had allowed herself to in front of him, though she had many times after leaving the hospital. The old Tom would have been distraught at the sight of her tears, would have done anything he could to comfort her.

This Tom shifted slightly in the bed and let out a low groaning sound, but Mercy knew instinctively that this had no connection with her words. She sank back on to her chair, taking his hand and kissing it, wetting it with her tears.

‘I want you back,’ she cried. ‘I can’t bear it. Don’t leave me. Come back to me, Tom, my love, please!’

In the end, the only person Mercy could confide in fully was Dorothy. She hadn’t told Dorothy about her feelings for Tom, but now she had to talk to someone. She waited until Dorothy was leaving one afternoon and said, ‘I’ll walk a bit of the way with you.’

‘Oh, there’s no need,’ Dorothy said, gathering up her coat. ‘It’s ever so cold out.’

‘No – I want to.’ Mercy eyed Susan, but she was eagerly looking over a dress Dorothy had brought to be altered.

Dorothy saw the desperate look in Mercy’s eyes and said, ‘Come on then, if you like.’

The two women, both warmly wrapped, walked out along the slushy street in the dusk. Mercy poured out her troubles.

‘His mom thinks ’e’s going to get better, keeps telling me to hang on. But it just ain’t going to happen, Dorothy. He don’t even know me now, and I loved ’im, I really did love ’im . . .’ She broke off, unable to speak any more.

Dorothy stopped, saying, ‘Oh bab, oh Mercy,’ and drew the girl into her arms, overcome at seeing her so sad and vulnerable.

‘I thought I’d found someone,’ Mercy sobbed into her shoulder. ‘Someone who could really be mine and be family. And now it’s just like talking to a stone. He can’t do nothing for hisself, and the way he looks at me. It’s as though he’s staring right through me, as if he hates me.’

‘Oh Mercy, poor babby . . .’ Dorothy sounded near to tears herself. ‘We – I had no idea all this was on your mind. Why didn’t you tell me before?’

Mercy shrugged, head resting on Dorothy’s shoulder, still crying, relieved at being able to let out her feelings to someone.

‘I know I ought to want to be with him – say I’ll stay with him even if he is injured. It ain’t his fault, is it? His life’s ruined. But . . .’

‘There, there – it’s a terrible thing’s happened to you, and to ’im.’ Dorothy’s heart was heavy. ‘I’m sure no one expects you to stay with ’im forever, course they don’t.’

Mercy raised her head, wiping her eyes. Dorothy thought how pretty she looked in the dim light, even in her misery.

‘We would’ve got married, I’m sure of it. I wanted to stay with him for ever, and now I feel I still ought to—’

‘Don’t!’ Dorothy broke in fiercely. She took Mercy by the shoulders, her dark eyes stern. ‘Don’t ever marry someone unless you want it with all your heart. It’ll only lead to misery for both of you. Remember that. I’ve seen it at close hand and believe me, you’re better off without it.’

Mercy frowned, calmer now. ‘Where’ve you seen it?’

Dorothy hesitated, her expression bitter under the rim of her hat. ‘If you’d known my mother and father you’d’ve thought marriage was summat invented by the devil himself. Come on – keep moving or we’ll catch cold.’

Mercy walked beside her suddenly seeing how little she knew Dorothy.

‘No one’s going to expect you to have a married life with a man who can’t even speak to you, let alone anything else. Don’t be a fool, Mercy.’ Dorothy spoke with fierce authority. ‘For God’s sake don’t throw your life away.’

The Weston household had enjoyed a harmonious few months with the master of the house absent. Neville had been sent into a Motor Transport Division behind the lines in France, and wrote home very occasionally.

With him gone, Dorothy lived alongside Grace almost as her equal. The boys were far more relaxed, especially Edward, the younger one, whose sensitive temperament, similar to Grace’s, grated on his father who tried to insist that he behave ‘like a proper boy’.

When Dorothy returned rather later than expected that evening, Grace was sitting at her little writing-desk looking through the household bills and she turned, smiling, although the smile was, as ever, tinged with anxiety.

Dorothy sat down opposite her. Seeing her sombre expression, Grace’s face fell.

‘Whatever’s the matter, dear? How is she?’

‘If only we had more control of the situation,’ Dorothy burst out. ‘If only you could see her, tell her . . .’

Grace looked down at her lap. ‘I can’t. I just can’t risk it.’

‘But while he’s away . . .’

Grace gave a wan smile. ‘My darling Dorothy, how fierce you are on my behalf . . .’

‘Not just yours, Grace.’

‘No, I know what Mercy is to you too. But I’m so afraid. I simply daren’t risk such an overturning of all our lives, even with Neville away. There are the boys to think of. If Neville were to find out – and we don’t know what Mercy might do, do we? While she is my daughter by birth, I can’t be certain of her loyalty and her affections, can I?’ Grace stood up. ‘Look, dearest, what’s happened?’

Wearily, Dorothy rubbed her temples. Grace went to stand behind her, circling her fingers gently along the older woman’s forehead. ‘Please tell me what’s the matter.’

As Dorothy talked Grace stopped her massage and sat down beside her, her expression increasingly troubled.

‘She said she thought she’d found someone – real family at last. Not just the young feller – of course, she’s close with Elsie, his mother as well. But now . . .’

Grace’s eyes filled with tears. ‘Now she’s been abandoned all over again.

February 1918

The day they brought Tom home the remains of snow lay on the ground, rounded, filthy cushions of it still bunched in untrodden corners. Mrs Ripley’s snotty-nosed kids picked it up to chew mouthfuls as the ambulance pulled up, melting it to metallic soot in their mouths.

Elsie, the only one at home, walked beside the stretcher as they carried him in, clinging to one of his hands, her back ramrod straight. He still had a light dressing on his head and round it his hair was growing back as a brown stubble.

The two men who accompanied him were quiet but gentle.

‘There yer go,’ one spoke at last as they lowered him on to the bed Elsie had ready downstairs. ‘Home sweet home.’

Elsie propped Tom up on what she had in the way of pillows and he lay staring across the room.

‘There y’are, love. You can be at home with yer mom now. See – you can watch me while I’m cooking and cleaning up, and whenever you want anything all yer ’ave to do is say. I’ll look after you. Now – will yer ’ave summat to eat?’

*

When Mercy came in from work that night Mabel was frying onions in a pan on the range, trying to spin out the meagre amount of food available. Her hair was greying but still more pepper than salt, and was fastened in a thick coil behind her head. When she saw Mercy she pulled her shawl tighter round her.

‘I’ve seen ’im,’ she said. ‘Bad, ain’t it?’

Mercy’s face was very pale in the gaslight, her eyes glassy with exhaustion. Even Mabel took in the pinched expression of despair. ‘He’s home then?’

Mabel nodded. ‘I looked in earlier. She’s got ’im sat up downstairs like Patience on a monument . . . Be better up out of the way to my mind.’

‘What – the way you kept me?’ Susan retorted sharply. ‘Some people ain’t ashamed of their family whatever state they’re in, you know.’

Mercy turned to the door again and said in a tone of heartbreaking flatness, ‘I’ll go and see them.’

‘’Ave yer tea first – it’s ready.’

‘No – I’ll not be long.’ She knew if she went now, she’d have an excuse to leave.

Mercy had not been in to see Elsie and Alf for some time. She’d been unable to face the house, empty of children except Jack who was out at work now, and Rosalie. And Elsie’s grief, a black depression she’d slip into for days at a time alternating with a determined, brittle optimism about Tom.

When she walked in there that night, the living room was transformed. Gone was the horsehair sofa, and instead there was only just space to open the door without colliding with the foot of Tom’s bed. The table was almost up against the fire and Elsie, Alf, Rosalie and Jack were squeezed round three sides of it. The room smelt dismally of the damp washing which was hanging everywhere.

‘Come to see ’im, ’ave yer?’ Elsie said brightly. ‘’E’s been waiting for you, ’ain’t yer, Tom?’

Mercy’s eyes moved from Elsie’s thin, exhausted face to Tom’s expressionless features. She could feel all of them watching her expectantly. What did they want – that she should run over and embrace Tom as if he were still the same? Would that make them feel better? She knew she couldn’t do it – just couldn’t. She tried to force a smile to her lips.

‘Nice to see ’im back.’ She was unable to lift her voice out of the sadness which encompassed not just her own feelings for Tom, but for all of them. They were all so changed, Elsie like an old woman at fifty-two, her face framed by dusty-coloured hair in which almost none of the former copper remained, Alf – for he was always Alf now, his nickname somehow buried with his children – had a redder, coarser face. Jack was the least altered visibly, red-haired and very like Johnny, but he was quiet, had lost his spark. And Rosalie, now ten, who’d always been a rounded, rosy child, was so terribly thin, her face pinched and sad. Mercy, pulling herself together inside, stepped over to Rosalie and put her hands on her shoulders, kissing the top of her head before she went over to Tom. She sat down, hands in her lap. Though she was close to Tom she just couldn’t touch him. She felt somehow afraid of him.

‘So how’s ’e been?’

‘Not so bad,’ Elsie said as Tom let out a long groan which sounded like water disappearing down a drain. ‘’E’s ’ad ’is dinner. Nothing much wrong with ’is appetite any’ow.’

Tom could eat once the food was in his mouth, but he no longer had the coordination to put it there himself.

Mercy asked a few more questions, tried to be warming and cheerful with this family who had, over the years, lifted her own spirits so many times. But after a few minutes she could think of nothing else to say and she could feel her own distress mounting. Tom seemed to take up so much of the room, filling the place with a sense of all that was broken in their lives. If he had looked very different it might have been easier to accept, but his disfigurement was mostly internal. Added to that, all the empty chairs . . . Cathleen’s, Frank’s, no Johnny either . . . Mercy suddenly felt she could bear it no longer.

‘Mabel’s got my tea ready—’ She stood up. ‘I said I’d only be a minute.’

‘Come whenever you like, won’t you?’ Elsie pleaded. ‘After all, you’re more or less one of the family.’

That night, when she had blown out the candle in their bedroom, Mercy turned and cried for a long time in Susan’s arms.

‘Oh Mercy,’ Susan said as her friend’s sobs finally calmed a little. ‘I’m so, so sad for you. But I’m so glad you’ve come back to me.’

The world was convulsing round them. The end of 1917 had seen more fighting: the remainder of the long battle of Ypres, and at Cambrai. The Tsar had been overthrown in Russia and now the United States was also in the War. At home, they were told the German civilians, their ports blockaded by the Allies, were starving.

‘We’ll be bloody starving soon too at this rate,’ Mabel complained. She’d finally taken on proper responsibility for the house. ‘There’s hardly any meat to be had, and that stuff they’re passing off as bread – like eating chaff, that is.’

For Mercy, the limits of life had shrunk more than ever, so that it was comprised of the grenade factory and numbers one and two, Nine Court, Angel Street. She’d got into the habit of paying a visit to the Peppers every night after tea. They seemed desperate for her to come. Mabel and Mary Jones sometimes popped in during the day, but Elsie, utterly tied to Tom’s needs, was isolated and very down. Whenever Mercy walked through their door, their eyes fastened on her hungrily as if she represented normality and hope, things they couldn’t keep hold of when left alone together.