Wartime Family (36 page)

Henry slammed the beer mug against Routledge’s chest as he’d done before, only this time Alf sidestepped and it smashed on the floor.

Jack Kitson watched in horror from behind the bar.

‘Alf Routledge, you’re banned,’ he shouted as Henry charged out of the door.

Routledge smirked. ‘Stick yer bloody pub. It’s worth a ban just to watch old Henry go into action on that snooty cow!’

Tanked up with beer, Henry staggered across the road. ‘Oi!’ he shouted. ‘You get away from my wife.’

He saw Mary Anne’s cheerful expression change to one of total shock. Perhaps if he’d been sober he might have noticed that her glance at him was only brief. Her surprise was for someone beyond him, someone he did not know.

There was a man on the street cleaning windows, something he had resorted to after losing a leg at Dunkirk. He had dipped to fetch his cloth from his bucket when Mary Anne raised her head and saw Elizabeth Ford. Her first-born daughter was like a bird of paradise amongst a host of sparrows. The cut of her clothes, the quality of her hat and the beautifully made-up face set her apart from the midday crowds.

This was all too much. Henry and Elizabeth at the same time!

Taken off guard, her eyes flew from one to the other, unsure who to acknowledge and what to do. She hadn’t expected to see Elizabeth again. Hadn’t she said there was no room in her life for a mother who had abandoned her? Her heart would have leapt with joy, but just beyond Elizabeth and heading in the same direction, she saw Daw coming along the road with Mathilda in the pushchair.

Henry got to her first. ‘Slut!’

A heavy hand slammed against her cheek, sending her sideways. Henry was a blur of staggering anger, lashing out at the innocent window cleaner and sending his bucket rattling along the ground.

‘Keep away from my wife, you bastard!’

‘Henry!’

Mary Anne grabbed the raised arm. ‘He’s only cleaning the windows …’

The fist meant for the window cleaner came back and smashed into her ribs.

‘Dad!’

Daw shoved the pushchair between her parents. Her face was white with shock. Her father’s eyes flickered. He saw her, recognized her, but his beer-fuelled anger was unabated. Routledge had done his job well. A red mist swirled before his eyes, obliterating any attempt to keep up the illusion he’d created for his children – that he was a good father and a good husband who never raised a hand to any of them.

To Daw’s astonishment, he raised a fist in her direction, swearing at her and jabbing his knee into the side of the pushchair, sending it tilting on two wheels. Mathilda started to wail.

Mary Anne shouted, ‘Henry! For pity’s sake, this is your child and your grandchild!’

An elegantly gloved hand emerged from a mink sleeve, caught Daw’s shoulder and pulled her away. The pushchair came too.

Henry’s eyes narrowed. Mary Anne winced as his fingers dug into her neck. His other hand clawed over her face, digging into her cheeks and around her eyes. She heard Daw screaming at her father to stop; heard Mathilda wailing for her mother.

Another voice joined the melee. ‘Stop that! Stop that, I say!’

Gertrude had come out of the shop and began beating Henry across the back with her umbrella.

‘Leave me alone, would you,’ Henry growled, hunching his shoulders against the blows raining on his back.

‘I’m not surprised,’ shouted Gertrude, suddenly changing tactics and prodding him in the ribs. ‘No woman should have to put up with this. Emmeline Pankhurst certainly wouldn’t!’ Her swift jab knocked the breath out of him. His grip loosened.

Another body pushed in front of him. Something cold stabbed him between the eyes. ‘Stop it or I shall be forced to shoot!’

The voice was female, but cold and clear cut. Henry froze. His eyeballs fixed on the muzzle of a small silver gun jammed between his eyes. Some small part of his brain that had remained sober took control. The woman was a toff, too well dressed to be from around these parts. She smelled of flowers and face powder. The words she uttered were like sharp glass cutting into his brain.

‘Leave my mother alone or I shall shoot. Do you hear me?’

He tried to focus his gaze. This woman wasn’t Daw and she wasn’t Lizzie. He had only two daughters, didn’t he? Yet she’d called Mary Anne her mother. He let Mary Anne go, his mind confused by what had been implied.

‘Go home, Henry Randall. Go home now and sleep it off. If you don’t it’ll be the worse for you,’ said the imperious voice.

‘Or we’ll beat you black and blue. Then shoot you!’ The woman with the dangerous umbrella pointed it at him with as much intent as the woman with the gun. His arms fell to his sides. Wiping the drool from his mouth he turned away. He didn’t understand. The world was a labyrinth and it was becoming more and more confusing. Suddenly he yearned for his bed. Perhaps he’d persuade Biddy to join him there. She was fat and filthy, but her body was warm. All thoughts of Routledge and his wife were wiped from his mind. Staggering from one side of the pavement to the other, he tottered off, his brain as mixed up as the world around him.

‘Were you really going to shoot me dad?’ No one had noticed Stanley arriving, but he had seen all that had happened. He sounded thrilled at the prospect. ‘Is that really a gun?’ he asked Elizabeth with round-eyed fascination.

‘In a way.’ She pulled the trigger. A small blue flame flared into existence. ‘It fires flames at cigarettes.’

Gertrude Palmer chuckled as she sheathed her umbrella beneath her arm. ‘A lighter! How very ingenious.’

Daw was crying great, slobbering sobs as she helped her mother to her feet. ‘Ma! Oh, Ma!’ Mathilda too was sobbing, though less vehemently than her mother.

Daw’s face was a picture of contrition. ‘I didn’t know he was like that, Ma. Honestly I didn’t.’ She wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. ‘I’ve never seen me dad like that. He’s a swine, just like our Lizzie said he was. A right swine.’

Elizabeth was dabbing at Mary Anne’s bruises with a lace-edged handkerchief. ‘I can think of worse things to call him. He should be horse-whipped.’

It came to Daw as though in a dream that this woman with the pretty handkerchief had said something truly surprising. She’d told Daw’s father to leave
her
mother alone.
Her
mother?

‘I think we’d better get some ice put on those marks,’ said Gertrude, peering menacingly at the red welts on Mary Anne’s cheeks.

Mary Anne allowed herself to be guided back inside the shop. Her ribs hurt, her face hurt and she was sorry the window cleaner had had to experience this.

‘I haven’t paid him,’ she said through swollen lips.

‘Never mind him,’ said Gertrude. ‘I’ll see that he’s paid once I’ve helped him get his false leg into some sort of order.’

The window cleaner wasn’t the only person she was worried about. She kept looking over her shoulder, attempting to gauge Daw’s reaction to her half-sister, and vice versa.

Looking apprehensive, even scared, Daw followed her mother into the shop, Mathilda in her arms.

Elizabeth was helping Gertrude and talking to the window cleaner, opening her purse and giving him money.

A practical sort
, thought Mary Anne, and would have smiled if her lips hadn’t been so swollen.

The crowds that had gathered around outside now began to disperse. One figure remained for a moment until, satisfied that everything was over, he shuffled off, a look of triumphant satisfaction on his face.

Mary Anne recognized Alf Routledge and remembered what he had done to Michael – or rather what he had got others to do.

‘I know him,’ she said, pointing to the shuffling figure gradually disappearing among the afternoon crowds. ‘His name’s Alf Routledge. He’s a trouble maker. He incites other people to do his dirty work. He got the local kids to daub a swastika on Michael’s door.’

‘Never mind that, Mum. It’s in the past. You come and sit down.’ Daw’s voice trembled. Mary Anne could hardly believe how frightened she’d been.

‘That man’s a regular at the Lord Nelson,’ she said to Daw. ‘He’s always been trouble. Michael ordered him off the premises when he first came to this country.’

Daw winced at the mention of Michael. ‘Never mind, Mum. It’s all over now.’

Mary Anne wondered if she’d ever accept him, but she didn’t ask now. She did as she was told, sitting down on a bentwood chair usually kept for visitors. Where had her strength gone? And why did she feel so small?

She sighed and let the others take care of her. For the first time since turning forty, Mary Anne felt that her family was more mature than she was.
I’m slipping towards old age
, she told herself. It saddened her; not so much the thought of advancing years, but the ones wasted and long behind her now.

Her thoughts turned to Henry. She could guess what had happened. A few beers and Henry was easily swayed by male companions. Routledge would have goaded him on.
Wait till Michael comes home
, she promised him silently.
Just you wait.

The shop was an oasis of silence after the scene in the street, the only sound being the clattering of Gertrude putting the kettle on.

She heard Elizabeth asking for a bowl and cotton wool with which to bathe her mother’s injuries.

‘Such a clod,’ she heard her say. ‘My mother deserves better.’

Daw sat, tears streaming silently down her face, her eyes bigger than usual, as though they’d just been opened to the way things really were.

‘I’ll be fine,’ Mary Anne said to her, though the red marks hurt more than she’d ever let on.

‘I …’ Each time Daw attempted to say something, her voice failed. There were no words she could find to express how she felt. She’d been wrong. She’d believed her father could do no wrong because it had suited her to do so. She liked everything to be perfect, formed exclusively to suit her.

‘We never really know anyone until we’re married to them,’ Mary Anne said suddenly. ‘And we can’t change what they are. It’s impossible. Not everyone’s as nice as John Smith, you know.’

It wasn’t often easy to know what Daw was thinking, but Mary Anne thought she did now. Daw was thinking about the way she’d treated John when he wasn’t on time for meals, or had been waylaid by family or friends. Daw had wanted him moulded to suit her vision of the ideal husband, doing everything together and never straying into doing something that suited him and him alone. But life wasn’t like that, thought Mary Anne.

‘Is John still sleeping on the settee when he comes home on leave?’

Daw didn’t answer, but then she didn’t need to. Mary Anne could tell by the look in her eyes that he was.

‘You have to let John do things by himself at times,’ she blurted. ‘He’ll be off again shortly and who knows when you’ll see him again.’

Daw just stood silently, nodding her head in acknowledgement that her mother was right.

‘This is going to sting,’ Elizabeth said to Mary Anne, who smelled the unmistakable stink of witch hazel. She winced at the first dab. It wasn’t so bad after that.

The kettle in the kitchen whistled for the second time. Gertrude popped her head around the door. ‘Who’s for tea?’

Everyone said yes.

Mary Anne looked into Elizabeth’s eyes. Her daughter’s touch was gentle, her fingers cool. Her daughter had fine hands.
Daughter.
It was hard to accept. Elizabeth looked as though she’d just stepped out of the pages of a fashion magazine. She was so elegant, so beautiful.

Elizabeth tended the last red mark and let the cotton wool fall into the bowl where it bobbed gently on the surface.

‘Mother, what a brave woman you are,’ she proclaimed, as though she’d just carried out a surgical operation.

Mary Anne caught the look on Daw’s face. Perhaps she’d thought she’d misheard when Elizabeth had called her ‘mother’ earlier.

‘I gave birth to Elizabeth before I married your father,’ she said in answer to Daw’s look of amazement. ‘Her father was killed in France.’

Mary Anne Randall looked up into Elizabeth’s face. One question above all others burned in her mind.

‘I thought you wanted to forget me the other day. Why did you come back?’

The soft hands that now dabbed gently at her face with a dry towel barely paused when she answered. A slight smile hovered on her ruby-red lips.

‘Aren’t you glad I did?’

‘Yes. Yes, I am.’

Daw sat silently, her eyes darting between the mature woman she’d known all her life, and this new sister, this woman who looked so much like herself.

‘We could have been twins,’ she said suddenly.

‘Yes,’ said Elizabeth. ‘We look very much alike.’

Stanley hovered, fidgeting from one foot to the other. ‘Can I play with your gun?’

She turned her calm eyes on to the little brother she’d never known. The cool, confident look persisted and for a moment it looked as though she would refuse.

‘It’s only a cigarette lighter,’ she said. ‘It’s in my bag.’

‘You shouldn’t,’ said Mary Anne. ‘He’ll dash off to play cowboys and Indians and that’s the last you’ll see of it.’

Elizabeth stopped what she was doing. ‘Goodness! I hadn’t thought of that. Stanley!’ But Stanley was gone. ‘Oh well,’ said Elizabeth. ‘There’s obviously a lot I need to learn about my family.’

Daw’s eyes stayed glued on her. ‘I don’t understand. This has all happened so quickly. We’re your family? There’s so much I don’t know, yet everyone else seems to know about you. What happened to you? Why did we never know anything about you?’

Before Mary Anne could answer, Gertrude came in with the tea tray. ‘We’ve got oatcakes today,’ she announced. ‘I made them with porridge oats and a few secret ingredients. Don’t ask me what ingredients, they’re a trade secret. And besides, I don’t want you being sick even before you’ve tried them.’

For a change, Daw was totally uninterested in food. ‘Tell me,’ she said, her velvety brown eyes flickering between Mary Anne, her mother, and Elizabeth, the sister she’d never known she’d had.

Mary Anne sighed. She’d told Lizzie and Harry all about her first love and the child she’d given away. Now she had to tell Daw, a prospect that worried her sorely. Daw was very traditional, very conservative and downright sanctimonious at times.
But it has to be done
, Mary Anne told herself.
You’ve told her the bit that was likely to shock her the most, and now she might as well hear the rest of it. It’s only right.