Polly's War (38 page)

The two of them might have to go away of course, somewhere other than Castlefield, or even Manchester. But she no longer cared where she went so long as she had her children with her, and Michael. The decision had been made.

She put on her prettiest pink dress, the one cut on the cross which so enhanced the neatness of her figure. She was three and a half months gone and there was as yet little alteration to her slender waist or the firm flatness of her stomach despite her worries and fussing with a corset. For the first time since realising she was pregnant Lucy felt happy, which only added to the surge of excitement she always felt when she was going to meet Michael.

‘Where are you going tonight, Mam?’ Sarah Jane asked, coming into the bedroom as Lucy was getting ready, Sean trailing behind her, thumb in mouth.

‘I’m off out with my friend Joan,’ Lucy fibbed, not meeting her children’s collective gaze through the mirror. She tapped Sean’s hand and the thumb came out with a loud sucking noise.

‘I thought she was called Sally.’

‘I’ve more than one friend.’ Lucy made a mental note to be more careful. She understood now why they said liars should have good memories.

Sarah Jane flung herself on to her parent’s bed, chin propped in hand and watched with interest as Lucy applied Hollywood red lipstick to her rosebud mouth. Sean scrambled up beside her, sliding the thumb back in, eyes wide. ‘Do you ever see Michael?’ Sarah Jane innocently enquired, a wistful expression on her pale face.

The lipstick slipped from Lucy’s fingers, leaving a trail of crimson extending over the corner of her mouth and she began to scrub at it with a licked finger. ‘Why would I?’

‘He never comes to see us any more. I thought he was our friend.’

‘He used to take me fishing,’ Sean said, speaking around the thumb. Lucy again removed it and worried about why he’d recently taken up this babyish habit. She tucked her children up in bed, read them the story of the Gingerbread Man and then, acutely aware she was late, half ran downstairs. As usual Tom was in his chair by the fire, reading the sport’s pages. He made no move as she shrugged on her best brown coat and carefully pinned an evidently new and very perky little scarlet hat atop her curled bangs

‘I’m off out then,’ she said, kissing the air an inch above the top of his head. Tom neither moved nor spoke. Lucy took a step back towards the door. She wanted to call and speak to Polly first and if she didn’t hurry she’d miss the seven o’clock bus and then Michael would think she wasn’t coming. ‘I won’t be late. It’s the first house pictures we’re going to. You’ll mind the kids?’ No response. ‘Are you listening?’ And when he still didn’t respond, she turned and left the house.

Only then did Tom fold his paper and get up from his seat. He hovered in the shadow of the front door while he watched Lucy hurry up the street and go into her mother’s house. She was barely in there more than a second or two before she was out again, half running this time, in the direction of the canal basin and maybe the warehouse. Tom collected his jacket and followed her, maintaining a safe distance.

Lucy hurried down Pansy Street, scarlet hat askew, coat flying open in her haste to put her decision into effect. She skirted Potato Wharf, barely glancing at the rushing sluice and clattered over the iron foot bridge on her way to Polly’s warehouse near Knott’s Mill. Ahead of her were the railway bridges and viaduct that spanned the canal basin, a section she loved during the day when she could watch the comings and goings of brightly painted barges and folk about their business but now, with dusk falling, she kept up a brisk pace, the thunder of train wheels going over just at the moment she passed beneath, seeming to rattle the teeth in her head.

‘Spare a penny luv, or an ‘appenny’ll do.’ A voice from the shadows beneath the arches made her jump and she hurried on, drawing her coat close, starting to button it. The November night was cold and dank and she wished, not for the first time, that Polly spent more time at home and less at the warehouse. A drunk with a whiskery chin lurched out from behind a pillar so that by the time she reached Castle Street Lucy was running flat out, arriving at the side door of the warehouse, built into the filled-in arch, quite out of breath.

It was unlocked and she wrenched it open, the shadows seeming to leap out at her as she stepped inside. She heard a sound, a rustling whisper and Lucy halted in her tracks, staring about from eyes grown wide with fright. The entire warehouse was shrouded in darkness, the only light coming from Polly’s office. She glanced back over her shoulder, thinking the noise must have come from outside and quickly pulled the door shut behind her. The darkness became even more intense and the looms reared like black apparitions in the dusty shafts of moonlight that seeped in from semicircular windows set high in the walls. Lucy shuddered, then took a step out into the void. As she hesitantly negotiated the crossing of a room littered with obstacles at every step, though now empty of its workers at the end of the day, the sound of her heels echoed hollowly on the wooden flooring. So loud were they, that had there been any other sound, she would not have heard it.

Polly set down the wad of papers she’d been studying when Lucy entered the office and stood, arms akimbo, to consider her daughter. Lucy saw at once that she wore her most disapproving frown, not at all what she’d hoped for.

‘Saints preserve us, what is it now? I can see something terrible has happened by the look on your face.’

It took no time at all for Lucy to pour out her guilty secret, for the burden of it had grown heavy of late. In order to quench any expressions of joy or attempts at congratulations she quickly added that it was Michael who was the father and not Tom. Polly showed her disapproval only by a slight widening of her eyes.

‘And what does Tom think of all this?’

‘He doesn’t know, and you mustn’t tell him.’

‘He needs to be told.’

‘I know and I’ll tell him myself, as soon as I’ve spoken to Michael. He doesn’t know either.’ She let it all pour out then, all her disappointment in the marriage, her efforts to please Tom in the beginning, quickly stifled by his selfish and cold attitude towards her. Polly responded as Lucy would have expected, with exhortations for her to show more patience, to allow for the fact that this man had spent years as a POW so how could he be expected to behave normally? Guilt cascaded through Lucy, making her feel small and cheap. She could see that her mother was doing her best to hide her shock, but Lucy could sense her disapproval in the stiff way Polly’s head moved on her neck, the pursing of the lips and the way her hands were folded tightly together.

‘You neglect your children because of this foolish passion with your fancy man. Running wild they are. And have ye thought of the babby? You’d be making it into a bastard if you choose Michael as the father and, to my way of thinking, that’s what ye would be doing - choosing. For how can ye be sure?’

Lucy hung her head, saying nothing, unable to deny the truth of that. What proof did she have either way?

‘Shame on ye lass, for such wickedness. I’m disappointed in you. Didn’t I think you’d show more sense and be kind to your poor husband when he comes home to ye at last.’ Somewhere in the depths of the building there came a scraping sound, as if a door or window had blown shut in a draught. For an instant Lucy was aware of it and then forgot it in her distress.

Tears ran down her cheeks at her mother’s lack of understanding. Nobody did but then how could she explain the misery of living with Tom, the long accusing silences, his volatile moods and his episodes of violence. He exerted an almost dehumanising control over her which assumed that he alone was capable of making decisions, treating her as if she were an idiot with no mind of her own. And then there was the callous way he used her body which made her shudder whenever she thought of it. How could she face the embarrassment of telling her own mother all of that?’

‘If ye take my advice you’ll kiss goodbye to Michael Hopkins, however lovely a man he might be, for it wouldn’t be right. Don’t tell him about the babby. What good would it do, except to bring more pain. You’ve not been with Tom a year yet. Give him a proper chance. Wouldn’t he just love the chance to be a dad, a proper one this time, there every day to watch the child grow up. Ye owe him that at least, do ye not?’

Lucy felt herself driven almost to the limits of her endurance. Why couldn’t somebody be on her side, instead of always taking Tom’s? It was perfectly clear Mam wasn’t going to find it easy to accept a daughter who’d given up on her marriage. But then having been fortunate in both her husbands, how could Polly ever hope to understand? To all outward appearances Tom was an impeccable and caring husband, always smartly turned out and mindful of his family’s needs. Only Lucy, as his wife, was aware of his darker side, of a simmering anger that nothing seemed to mellow,
 
and how he too often seemed poised on the brink of explosion.

She pushed her face up close to Polly’s. ‘I owe him nothing. You don’t understand. Tom
lies!
All right, I’ve no proof but I know he lies all the same. I’ve only his word that he was anywhere near a POW camp. Who knows where he was or what he’s been up to all those years. Half the war he was missing and more than a year after it ended with not a single word. Nothing but silence. Michael is good to me. He’s kind and gentle, and I can hardly bear for Tom to touch me. It’s no good. It won’t work.’ Her voice broke on a hiccupping sob. ‘However long I stay with him, I’ll never feel the same about him as I should.’

She began to sob in earnest now and, seeing her distress, Polly put her arms about Lucy, a tide of sympathy and love for her daughter breaking down the barriers of disapproval.

‘Aw m’cushla, don’t I know what it is to be in love, to have no other thought in your head.’ This surge of sympathy might have brought forth more details about the dark side of her marriage, and of Lucy’s secret fears, were it not for the crack of erupting flames as they shot through the open doors opposite, and the smell of dense smoke suddenly alarmingly evident to them both.

Lucy arrived home in the early hours in great distress. Tom was waiting in the kitchen with the kettle simmering on the hob despite it being past two o’clock in the morning, almost as if he’d expected her to walk in at any minute. But then he’d probably been half out of his mind with worry over why she was out so late. It was a wonder he wasn’t standing at the door with his sleeves rolled up and fists at the ready. Instead, he was surprisingly kind to her when he heard about the fire, and as tears of shock rained down her smoke-blackened cheeks, Lucy told more than she had meant to.

It was Tom who helped her out of her soot-blackened clothes, washed her face and limbs and dressed her in a warmed night-gown, just as if she were Sarah Jane. Then he assisted her up the stairs to bed, all the while explaining how he’d known all along about the coming baby. Hadn’t he heard her throwing up in the sink each morning? He was glad, he told her. He’d always wanted another child. They stood at the top of the stairs and he told her how delighted he was of this chance to be a proper father at last. He made no mention of Michael Hopkins, and neither did she. His only reference to her evening out was to mildly enquire if she’d ever got to the pictures and Lucy dolefully shook her head, then put her hand to it for it throbbed horribly. ‘Sally wouldn’t mind. She’d go in and see it anyway.’

His fingers closed about her arm, ‘I thought you were going with Joan. Forgotten your friend’s name already?’

‘No, both - Sally and - Joan were hoping to go, but at the last minute Sally had to cry off,’ Lucy hastily fabricated.

‘So poor Joan would be on her own?’

‘Yes, yes - that’s right. Joan would be on her own. God, I’m tired.’ She made to move towards the bedroom but he was still holding her arm.

‘You’ll have to go round tomorrow and explain.’

‘Yes, I will. We’ll talk then, shall we?’

‘And no one else was expected to be there, at the pictures?’

‘No, no one.
 
Just the - three of us.’

It was as she turned to step thankfully into the bedroom and the oblivion of sleep, that it happened. His attitude suddenly changed. One moment he was stroking her arm and smiling sympathetically at her, the next he was spitting his fury directly into her face. ‘
You’re a liar
! I don’t believe a bloody
word
! Then she was falling, over and over back down the narrow stairs. She had time only to wrap her arms instinctively about herself to protect the coming child as her hips and knees bumped and jarred on every step.

Seconds later she lay shaken and crying, having cracked her head on the door post. Tom was beside her, cradling her in his arms, murmuring words of remorse and sympathy, stroking her bleeding head and saying how he’d never meant to hurt her. ‘Something just comes over me, Lucy. I can’t seem to help myself.’ Then somehow her tears had dried and it was she who was comforting him. Yet in that moment everything changed, a turning point had been reached in her mind.

‘I know it was an accident, that you never meant me any real harm. Nevertheless, I think I’ll sleep with the children tonight. My head is aching so badly I
 
might disturb you with my restlessness.’

For once Tom did not argue.

In truth, only the warmth of her children’s loving bodies were able to ease the horrors of the night’s events. Exhausted as she was, sleep deserted her the moment she lay down. Tom was a consummate liar. She felt his behaviour tonight had proved that. He’d given every impression that he believed this to be his child with his soft words and caring gestures, yet his actions, by deliberately thrusting her down the stairs, proved he didn’t believe that at all.