Polly's War (34 page)

Yet Lucy also knew that neither could she give Michael up. The sacrifice would be too great. Since Belinda’s death, she needed him more than ever. Life was too short.

Lucy invented a new friend, named Sally, and claimed she lived in the next street. She persuaded Tom to allow her to continue having one evening out a week with her ‘new friend’ to go to the flicks. In truth she would be seeing Michael but Tom agreed without demur, making no comment as he sat quietly watching her apply lipstick, sweep her hair into bangs and select a pretty frock to wear. It renewed her hope that he was becoming more reasonable, that he deeply regretted his outburst.

Michael was more than willing to meet and they took a bus as far from the twitching lace curtains of Pansy Street and the bustling wharves of Castlefield as they could. They would hold hands and talk, relishing this time together. Week after week they met in this way. Sometimes they’d sit and cuddle on park benches, in dreary little cafes, or on the back row of anonymous picture houses, never noticing what was on screen. Once, Michael took her for lunch to a seedy hotel out in Ashton-in-Makerfield.

‘You’re mad,’ she told him, excitement cascading through her.

‘I’m in love.’

They sat in a drab dining room that smelled of stale cabbage and endless fry-ups yet barely recognised the fact. They paid even less attention to the curiosity and amusement in the eyes of the landlady who served them fatty pork and jam rolypoly pudding. All they wanted, all they needed, was each other.

‘Will you be wanting to use the facilities?’ the woman enquired when the meal was over, not quite with a wink but plainly enough for them both to understood that she was not discussing the bathroom arrangements.

Lucy gazed across at Michael and, embarrassed by what she read there, dropped her eyes to the grubby tablecloth, blushing furiously. Then somehow, without any conscious thought she was smiling up at the woman and saying thank you, that would be splendid.

Michael handed over the money to buy them an afternoon of privacy, an hour or two away from reality.

 
No time was wasted in preliminaries. They were tearing at each other’s clothes the moment the bedroom door was closed, Lucy shivering with a new intensity of longing when Michael caressed her breast. The excitement of warm naked flesh meeting for the first time was too overwhelming for either to spare a glance at their surroundings. Neither noticed the fly-spotted wallpaper or the dingy curtains. They were too absorbed with tasting, sharing, loving, becoming one with the other, lost in a private world of their own where they could express the pent-up emotion and passion that they felt. Afterwards, lying with arms wrapped tight about each other, they could hardly bear to get up and dress and return to cold reality.

‘You realise this is wicked. It should never have happened,’ Lucy whispered, nuzzling close against the warmth of his body.

‘Ask him for a divorce. Explain how you believe there is no hope for the marriage.’

‘I did try, but failed. It’s too soon.’ Lucy related parts of their conversation but made no mention of the knife. She believed Tom regretted that moment of lost control, that he would never do it again.

‘Try one more time. Please Lucy.’

‘I will, as soon as he’s more settled in his new job, more used to civilian life and has come to terms with whatever is eating him up about his past.’

‘I can’t bear to give you up.’ Michael was rolling her over onto her back, placing feathery light kisses over her throat and breasts, making her gasp with new desire. How could she resist, when she needed him so?

Over the following weeks the dingy hotel in Aston-in-Makerfield became a favourite haunt for the two lovers. The landlady came to welcome them as old friends, asked no questions, simply took their cash and left them alone. It felt to them both as if it were only here, in this grubby little room that they truly became alive.

It amazed Lucy to find how adept she became at lying. She returned home that first evening, as on every other following and smiled at her husband, asked how the children had been. She behaved as if they were a normal, happy family and she had not just betrayed him with another man. But Lucy knew in her heart that what she was doing was wrong, and it couldn’t go on like this.
 

Decisions needed to be made.

She was afraid that if she asked for a divorce she might lose the children for wouldn’t she, in theory, be classed as the guilty party? Not for a moment did she consider giving Michael up. She’d felt suffocated, trapped in a marriage without love. She gloried in the love she found with Michael, bloomed with the wonder of it so that her hair shone, her face glowed and her eyes sparkled with happiness. Yet she continued to shy away from making any decision. Much better to leave things as they were. Tom didn’t suspect. How could he? They were very careful. No one was getting hurt, she told herself Tom was reasonably content, and she could deal with her mother if she started interfering again.

‘But I want more than this Lucy, more than a hole-in-the-corner affair,’ Michael would protest. ‘I want us to be together all the time. For us to be man and wife.’

‘I know love, so do I. Oh, what are we going to do?’ And her heart would melt with need for him, so that they would have to make love all over again.

Polly, still keeping a close eye on the goings on of her family, was surprised one evening in late June to find young Sean walk into the warehouse, bold as you please. ‘Heaven help me, where did you spring from? Where’s your mam?’ She quickly peered out through the door on to an empty street.

Sean grinned, jumping up and down on one foot with excitement. ‘I came all by meself Nan.’

‘What, all the way, on your own, across the canal basin? Even under the railway arches and over the canal bridges?’
 

Sean nodded vigorously, evidently proud of this feat.

‘Glory, isn’t that a brave thing to do,’ Polly said, trying not to alarm the child while hugging him tightly to her breast. Later, when she’d taken him back home and found the house empty save for Sarah Jane who was going frantic with worry, she fed them both and gave a stern lecture about strangers who ran off with small children, and Jinny Greenteeth who lived down by the water and ate them if they wandered off alone. Then having thoroughly frightened her beloved grandchildren into staying safely at home in future, Polly read them two cheering stories and tucked them up in bed. After that she sat in the kitchen and waited impatiently for Lucy to come home. Within seconds of her daughter crossing the threshold, Polly laid into her, determined to frighten her witless for her neglect of the children, using words such as irresponsible, dangerous, wanton, lazy and hair brained eejit.

It made no impression on Polly that Lucy insisted this was her one evening out a week, or that Tom had agreed to stay in and mind them. Polly had been too frightened by the little boy’s adventure and told Lucy in no uncertain terms that the task of child minding was, first and foremost, a mother’s responsibility. ‘Did you even remember to ask Tom? If you had he would surely have been here with them.’

‘Oh, so he’s innocent and I’m guilty without even the benefit of a fair trial, is that it?’

‘Where was it ye had to go that was so urgent? And don’t try and lie, for you know I can allus tell.’ Polly watched the tell-tale signs of guilt wash up her daughter’s throat to mantle her cheeks with pink. ‘So that’s the way of it. I might’ve guessed. Aw, Lucy, have ye no sense?’

Any hopes Polly might have had of talking sense into her daughter were demolished as Lucy flounced out of the room, refusing to answer any more questions. Undeterred Polly went instead to see Minnie Hopkins and demanded she tell her what was going on between Michael and Lucy.

The old woman folded her arms across her skinny breast and sucked on her teeth, which for once she had in, and shook her head. ‘I
 
know nowt. Not my business.’ Nor yours neither, her expression seemed to say.

‘Saints preserve us, of course it is. Isn’t he your nephew and Lucy a married woman. It’s a sin for sure. Aren’t they committing adultery, apart from the unholy mess they’re getting them poor kids into.’

‘Don’t tell me you’ve turned to religion in your old age, Polly lass, and after all tha suffered from it in the past by way of bigotry from that brother-in-law of yours.’
 

Polly had the grace to blush but persisted with her concern for Lucy. ‘No good can come of it. They’ll all end up getting hurt.’

‘Don’t be too hard on t’lass. She’s doing her wifely duty and sticking with Tom, po-faced and shifty though he is, just as you asked her to.’

Polly was startled. ‘Shifty, who says so?’

‘I do. Never looks you straight in the eye. There’s allus summat suspicious when folk won’t do that. And don’t try telling me how much he’s suffered. We know about suffering in this house, and he looks pretty fit to me.’

‘Lucy is neglecting her children, going out night after night.’

‘Nay, only one night a week, so far as I’m aware. Surely any woman has a right to that? But if yon lass is doing summat she shouldn’t then it’s for her and that husband of hers to sort out, not thee. You’re her mother, but you don’t rule her life.’
 

Minnie terminated the discussion by firmly changing the subject to the coming Bring and Buy in the church hall. Polly was forced to make a tactical withdrawal if not an absolute surrender.
 

The following Thursday, Lucy was late leaving as Sean had been fractious, trying to persuade her to take him with her to the pictures. She’d had to run to catch the bus and could hardly believe her eyes when, the moment she jumped on board, there was Polly, large as life in her tweed coat and head scarf, seated next to some toothless old dear in a rain hood. ‘Hello m’cushla, and where are you off to?’ She might very well have added - at this time of night - for it was writ plain in her bright enquiring eyes that she’d caught the bus on purpose to check on her.

Lucy took a moment to answer while she found a seat opposite her mother, fumbling in her pocket for some loose change for the conductor. Thrusting a collection of carefully hoarded halfpennies into his hand, he jiggled them and wisecracked, ‘Carol singing started early this year, has it?’ He gave her a broad wink as he clipped her ticket. Lucy tried to smile, her brain whirling.

‘I’m going out with a friend,’ she said at last, unable to find a better excuse.

‘Who might that be?’ Polly softly enquired. Her neighbour removed the rain hood so that she could better hear the reply, shaking drops over everyone seated nearby. ‘I thought they all lived in Castlefield. This bus is going to the city centre. Now who d’you know who lives there? No one at all, I’m thinking.’

Lucy met her mother’s shrewd, probing gaze and surrendered, mainly because a friend was the one thing she needed most in all the world. There were times, like now, when she ached to have Belinda to talk to, but her dear sister-in-law was gone. ‘All right. I’ll tell you, but you mustn’t blame me too much. We couldn’t help it.’ Lucy became embarrassingly aware of how a bus full of prattling chatter seemed to grow oddly silent as ears positively twitched in their eagerness to listen in to this fascinating discussion. While Lucy hesitated, Polly pressed on with her interrogation.

‘I suppose you’re going to tell me that you love him.’

‘I suppose I am.’

Polly’s neighbour sucked on her gums and gave a brisk nod of her grizzled head. ‘God makes ‘em and the devil pairs em.’

Lucy shot the woman a fierce glare. The bell pinged and the bus lurched to a halt, the conductor calling out to mind the step. There was the usual jostling crowd waiting at the bus stop, anxious to get on before people had time to alight. Lucy waited until the conductor ping-pinged for the bus to start again then was on her feet in a second and jumped off the moving vehicle.

She waved cheekily at Polly as it roared away, her mother’s face tight with annoyance.

Chapter Twenty-Two

During the long hot summer of that year, Lucy struggled to cope with her difficult and loveless marriage. How she envied the young Princess Elizabeth as her romance progressed smoothly towards what would undoubtedly be a happy one. The young couple were so clearly in love. But then Lucy’s too had once seemed equally full of hope and promise until the war had changed everything, destroying the Tom Shackleton she’d once known and loved. In his place had come this hard, unfeeling person.

Despite his protestations to the contrary it was as if Tom was barely aware of her as a person. He would sit mute through family meals, barely register her presence as she went about her household chores. To her enormous relief his love making, if you could call it that, became less frequent, though it remained as rushed and insensitive as ever. Lucy could barely bring herself to tolerate the intimacy let alone respond. But fearful of arousing his irascible temper, she never refused him. Afterwards she would stare up into the darkness and silently nurse her despair.

With Michael it was entirely different. She only had to see his smile, look into his eyes for her to burst with love for him. He would stroke her with such a loving tenderness it made her cry. He would kiss her warm eager mouth and groan with desire as he pressed against the soft silkiness of her skin; they’re bodies melded together as if created for that sole purpose.