‘Aren’t there any others he can play with?’ Cynthia said. ‘Girls?’
‘
Girls!
’ Em made a wry face. If there was one thing in the world for which Robbie had complete contempt, it was girls.
She and Cynthia laughed.
Robbie came bursting back into the room, hair spattered with droplets of rain, knees all muddy. ‘It’s bostin! Is it finished – can I go on it?’
‘I’ve told you: no!’ Cynthia said. Wait till Granddad gets back later, and then we’ll see. Anyroad, you’re going to have to come to the shops with me today.’
‘Again?’ Robbie groaned. ‘That’s boring!’
‘You can say that again,’ Cynthia said. ‘Queue after flaming queue. But it’s got to be done. We’ll see if we can find you a big aniseed ball, eh, Robbie?’
‘I’d best get off,’ Em said, downing her tea and picking up the umbrella. ‘Bye-bye, darlin’,’ she said to Robbie, but he was sulking about the unfinished moke and wouldn’t look at her. Em felt rather crushed by this.
‘We’ll be all right,’ Cynthia said. ‘Won’t we, Robbie? Off you go.’
Em set off into the wet, cursing the hole in her left shoe. Her spirits were low. Though she was trying to put a brave face on it, she loathed living with her mother-in-law. Edna and Bill Stapleton had both been kind to her, though she knew Edna thought she was soppy over Robbie. Bill was a quiet, capable man and there was no reason to be ungrateful. But now – especially now that the war was over and Norm was home – all Em wanted was for them to have a home of their own, not always be living with other people.
The other reason she felt drained and disappointed was that her period had come on that morning. Somehow she had thought that, with Norm back, it would happen straight away – another baby on the way. She knew she was being silly, but it had happened so easily the first time that she just expected things to repeat themselves. Robbie was growing up fast and she didn’t want him to be on his own. He would already be a lot older than any brother or sister who came along.
‘Ah well,’ she told herself as she walked to work. ‘I mustn’t get silly about it. It’s early days yet.’
When Norm came home off shift that Friday afternoon, Em was waiting to surprise him. As so often now, he came in with a tired, morose expression, longing to get out of his uniform and in need of something to eat.
‘I’ll get the kettle on,’ she said. ‘Then I’ve got something to tell you.’
‘Oh yeah?’ Barely listening, he glanced over the paper that was lying on the table. What’s that then?’ He glanced round the room. ‘Where’s the lad?’
His words cut through Em. ‘The lad’ – almost as if Robbie was someone else’s, not his.
‘That’s what I was going to tell you. You know you’ve got the day off tomorrow? Well, Mom said Robbie could stay over tonight, partly to give us a break. But Dad’s nearly finished making his moke: he’s going to let him take it out tomorrow, so Robbie’s gone off happy as a sand boy, and we can have a lie-in – or maybe go out somewhere.’
She saw Norm’s face relax, which both encouraged and saddened her. She wanted to make him happy, but it tore her up to see how hard he was finding it coming home and adjusting, not just to life in Civvy Street, but also to the fact that he had a son and that life was not free as it once was.
‘That’s nice.’ He came towards her and took her in his arms, was about to kiss her when his mom came in from out the back with a bucket of coal. Em suppressed a sigh. There wasn’t much privacy to be had. But she could at least see that Norm was pleased. She knew he felt squeezed out, that she spent so much time with Robbie that even the few opportunities for lovemaking they had were often prevented or interrupted by him. Em was used to her life revolving around Robbie – Norm wasn’t, not yet.
She asked him if he wanted to go to the pictures, but Norm said he’d prefer just to go out for a bit of a walk with her, that they never seemed to get time alone.
‘Tell you what,’ he said. ‘Let’s go up to Aston Park – get a bit of fresh air.’
Em was flattered by this, that he’d rather spend time with her than lost in a story on a screen. They caught the train at Duddesdon and went for a lovely stroll, arm in arm round the park, with the old mansion in the middle, relaxing together and talking over old times. She tried not to think about Robbie, how her mom would be putting him to bed about now and was he all right? And about the questions and doubts regarding Norm that nagged at her:
Do you love Robbie? Do you, really?
she wanted to ask, because she really wasn’t sure if he did. But she knew this was not the moment.
She found it hard going back into the little terraced house, with Norm’s mom and dad sitting in their chairs – Edna knitting, Bill with the paper – asking them how they’d got on and where they’d gone. They were only being kind, they were good people, but she longed for an empty house, a house of their own where they didn’t have to answer to anyone.
Norm was very loving that night and Em woke later than usual, with no Robbie pulling at her. Though she found it a wrench leaving him, it was also a relief and she felt rested and content. She went down and made them both a cup of tea and, once they’d drunk it, luxuriously still in bed, Norm put his cup down and said, ‘Now then – come ’ere, Mrs Stapleton. You needn’t think I’ve finished with you!’
Their bed was two single beds pushed together, so they had to watch the crack down the middle. Giggling, hoping her in-laws next door couldn’t hear anything, Em snuggled up on Norm’s side of the bed, cuddling into his arms. They were soon making love again, and things felt close and warm just as they used to, before the war when they had had such a short time together as husband and wife. Maybe, Em thought, as she held her husband in her arms and they loved each other, maybe this time, we’ll make another baby . . .
She kissed Norm’s neck, the combination of soft skin and hard muscle beneath, which she loved.
‘Em,’ he nuzzled her. ‘You’re my girl, my woman, that’s what you are.’
She told him she loved him, over and over, stroking his back, his strong buttocks, and suddenly tears sprang into her eyes because things felt right again, when they had been tense for so long.
‘You glad to be home?’ she asked.
She saw the slightest hesitation before he said, ‘Course I am. Where else would I want to be, eh?’ He turned and looked at her. ‘
You’re
home to me. It wouldn’t matter where.’
They curled up together, warm and happy, and asked each other things about their long separation – things there had scarcely been time for, with all the adjustment to living that they had had to do. Norm told her more about some of his times in Italy, about how beautiful the country was.
Em smiled, listening, ‘I’m glad you liked it there. I always wondered – it seems so far away and so foreign. And then you didn’t write . . .’ She leaned on her elbow for a few seconds and looked down accusingly at him. ‘I was flaming worried.’ She pretended to thump him, then lay back down again in the warm.
‘Sorry,’ Norm said.
‘So you broke your leg? Falling off a truck?’ she snorted.
‘All right – you can laugh.’
‘Sorry, love . . .’ She stroked his bare tummy appeasingly. ‘Only what I don’t understand is what happened next. I thought you were in hospital – how come you got so ill?’
‘Well, you know what they say: don’t go to hospital if you want to keep in good health.’
‘But what happened?’
Her question was met by such a long silence that Em lifted her head again and saw that Norm was blushing red to the roots.
‘I don’t want to tell you,’ he said.
‘What d’you mean, you don’t want to tell me?’ she demanded indignantly.
‘I want to, sort of, ’cause I feel I ought to.’ He was stumbling over his words. ‘But there’s some things you’re maybe better off not knowing.’
She was fully alert now, still thinking he was joking. She sat up and pummelled his chest. ‘You can’t say that and not tell me – come on, out with it!’
‘OK, well, here goes. You won’t get cross, will you?’
‘I don’t know yet, do I?’ She started to feel worried. What on earth was he going to say?
‘Oh dear,’ Norm said. ‘Look – lie down again. I’ll tell you, but don’t keep looking at me!’
Obediently she settled in the crook of his arm again and waited.
‘Thing is,’ he said. ‘After I broke my leg – I mean, it’s not as if I was sick really, I just had my leg in plaster – they moved a couple of us into this other place. It had been a big house, just in a street, and they’d requisitioned it to use as a sort of convalescent rest home. I had a nice room looking out the back, over a little garden, more like a courtyard really, with a couple of trees, oranges and lemons – lovely, it was. Anyroad . . .’ Here she heard him sound more reluctant again. ‘My bed was by the window, so I could look out, and over the other side of the yard – well, I thought I was imagining it to start with, but then I knew I wasn’t – there was this girl – well, woman. She kept whistling and calling out to me, over and over, beckoning me, you know, all coy-like.’
Em stiffened, but didn’t interrupt.
‘Anyroad, this kept on, and course I was a bit bored by now and she never left me in peace, so . . . Well, I went over. I mean, I couldn’t just go, I had to sneak out: through the window . . .’
Her head shot up. ‘
With a broken leg?
’
‘Well, yeah. It weren’t easy, I can tell you. There was this big vine thing, growing up the wall . . . Don’t look at me!’ Firmly he pushed her head down again. ‘She came down and let me in and, well . . . The thing is, Em, it wasn’t anything – not that
meant
anything, not like you and me. I was just passing the time! And anyroad, I got what I deserved because she was a naughty girl, that one, I had to pay her a bit and give her my ciggies and’ – he finished in a rush – ‘whatever it was I caught, I got it off her.’
‘You mean . . . ?’ Her first reaction was to snort with laughter.
‘The clap – and it’s not funny, that I can tell you. The cure’s not funny, either . . .’
‘Did I say I thought it was funny? You carrying on with someone – some Italian bird with great big—’ Em made a gesture at her breasts.
‘I never said she had . . . !’
‘But I bet she did, dain’t she?’ Em shot out of bed, hurt and furious. ‘There’s me stuck here worrying about you, bringing up
your son
, when all the time . . . Well, you got what you bloody deserved, didn’t you?’
‘Oh, Em, don’t – look, I told you, it wasn’t like that . . . It was all stupid, a mistake. She was just a tart on the make, and I fell for it . . .’
But she was out of the bedroom door, running downstairs in her nightdress, full to the brim with fury. The bastard! The filthy, unfaithful, cheating . . .
She paced up and down the back room, arms crossed over her chest, shaking with hurt and anger. She kept thinking about that woman’s big breasts, which he hadn’t told her about. After a few moments she burst into tears. She’d never even thought of being unfaithful to Norm, and yet look what he’d done – and so easily! And all the time here she’d been, waiting, worrying. She sank down on a chair, feeling very sorry for herself.
After a time she was cold. She wiped her face and tried to think. What was she going to do? Hold this against him and leave him? Move back in with Mom and Dad and have to explain to everyone? Her heart sank at the thought. She couldn’t exactly go anywhere at this moment, because she had nothing on but her nightie. There was nothing for it: she was going to have to forgive him – but not too soon! A moment later she started to see the funny side of it. It was so like Norm to get in a scrape like that.
Soon she heard movements upstairs. Her in-laws would be down any moment and she didn’t want to see them. She crept back upstairs and went into the bedroom, trying to keep a straight face, but her lips were twitching. Norm was still in bed, but he eyed her warily. He looked rotten.
‘Look, I’m sorry, love,’ he said wretchedly. ‘I know it was wrong and stupid. It’s not as if I felt anything for her. I don’t even know what her name was, to tell you the truth. It’s just – you know what us blokes get like. And she was on at me, morning, noon and night . . .’
‘Were you very poorly?’ Em asked, sitting on the edge of the bed, keeping her face straight.
Norm winced. ‘Ooh – yes.’
‘I’m surprised you didn’t break your flaming neck getting out of the window in the first place!’ The laughter erupted out of her then, at the thought of Norm shinning out of the window with a plaster cast on and trying to creep quietly across some courtyard. In a moment more tears, of mirth this time, were running down her face. ‘Oh my God, you really are the end!’
Norm, relieved and surprised, started laughing too.
‘You are properly better now, aren’t you?’ she asked. ‘I don’t bloody well want to catch anything!’
‘I’m all right,’ he said. ‘They gave me some of the new stuff – penicillin. It’s marvellous. God knows what it would have been like without it. The stupid thing is, they was always on about it, VD this and VD that. Films and talks, and that. There was this girl in the films who they were always telling you to, you know, beware of, called . . .’ He started to chuckle himself, so at first he couldn’t get the words out. ‘She was called Susie Rotten Crotch!’