Women on the Home Front (100 page)

Christopher was a man and he'd fallen in love with a nice girl. Stevie realised he wished things would come right for Chris and Grace. He wished his son might soon be a father himself. But most of all he wished he'd told Chris he was sorry for what he'd done, and if he still wanted to find his mother, he wouldn't stand in his way.

Since he'd got out of hospital nobody had mentioned Pam, not even Matilda. Having mulled things over in his mind Stevie had come to the conclusion that it would be unwise to dredge it up, even to apologise. Many months had passed since it all blew up so the best thing might be to let sleeping dogs lie and in that way Chris might put all his efforts into getting back with Grace …

‘Smells good … make the gravy, shall I?' Chris came into the kitchen towelling his hair. He pulled a box of Bisto out of the cupboard, dropped it on the table then wandered off into the front room to turn on the wireless.

‘Oi! That gravy won't make itself, y'know …'

Chris's contribution to the gravy making was always limited to finding the box, leaving it on the table, then disappearing.

Stevie heard his stomach grumble and he realised he was hungry. Pushing aside his troubles, he got stiffly to his feet and opened the oven door. Inside he could see a crisp golden crust, from which was coming a rich, savoury aroma. He smiled wryly wondering why it had only just occurred to him how good it was to be back home.

Chris stopped drumming his fingers on the steering wheel and started tapping his feet instead. Suddenly he thrust back against the seat, dropping his eyes to study his fists clenched on his thighs. Abruptly he hauled open the van door and jumped out. Having carefully locked the vehicle he strode away. He swung about, came back to test the door. It didn't budge. He rubbed a hand across his mouth as he quickly turned to enter an un-gated garden path. He rapped on the door, then clasped his hands behind his back. There was no answer but a middle-aged woman two doors along, sweeping up fallen autumn leaves, straightened wearily from her task and stared at him.

‘D'you want me?'

‘Er … no … I'm after Mrs Riley.'

‘That's me …' She smiled at Chris. ‘You've come about the gate, have you? I saw you sitting in your van and wondered if you were the builder I called yesterday. Managed to get here sooner than you thought, did you?'

Chris licked his lips; his voice seemed trapped deep in his throat. Carefully he planted a hand on her red-tiled windowsill to steady himself as he felt his head swim. From his father's, and Matilda's, descriptions of Pam Plummer's looks and character he'd built up an image of his mother now being a blowsy old bottle blonde, about Shirley's age, and with a similar tendency to appear as mutton dressed as lamb. He couldn't have been more wrong. The woman getting slowly to her feet was thin and dowdily dressed in a shapeless cardigan and pleated skirt, her lank, greying hair scraped back into hairgrips fastened either side of her head.

‘Oh … you're wondering what I'm doing over here.' The woman was now brushing together her palms to get dirt off them. ‘It's Mrs Lockley's garden, not mine. She's almost eighty and widowed, you see, and isn't up to a job like this.' She came out onto the pavement, latching her neighbour's gate behind her. ‘She had a bit of a tumble on wet leaves last year. Done her hip in, poor old girl.' She was rolling down her cardigan sleeves as she approached. ‘Don't mind helping out 'cos we're all gonna be old someday. 'Course you've got a way to go, by the looks of it, but it's catching up on me, I can tell you …' She halted by the opening to her property, grimacing at the space where a gate should be. ‘So, how much d'you reckon? Doesn't need to be fancy; a plain wooden one with fastenings will do, and I'll paint it myself.'

‘I'm not here about the gate.' Christopher barely recognised his own voice and his knuckles showed white against the red tiles.

‘Oh? Who are you then?' She looked him up and down. She'd wondered why a builder would turn up in his best clothes to price a job, unless he was going straight out on the razzle, of course. It was only mid-afternoon but he looked the sort of handsome young man who would have a full social life.

‘Christopher …' Chris ejected his name hoarsely. ‘I'm Christopher Wild …'

She was still smiling faintly at him, but when her features froze in shock, and she sagged at the knees, he simply watched his mother crumple to the ground. Jerking into action Chris rushed forward with his arms outstretched to help her up. She flapped both hands at him, her eyes screwing shut as though he were an abomination she couldn't bear to gaze upon.

‘Go away,' she gritted through her teeth and lowered her head so her chin rested on her chest.

‘I just came here … wanted to say hello … see you … that's all,' Chris stuttered quietly. ‘Please let me help you up …'

‘Go away … go away and never come back!' his mother hissed into her muffling cardigan.

‘I just … I'm sorry … I just wanted to say …'

‘Go away!' she screamed, her small hands balling into quivering fists.

Chris stumbled past her cowering figure and hovered on the pavement for a moment, staring at her. He strode to the van, then returned, his hands alternately plunging into his pockets and ripping free again. ‘I'm sorry. Let me help you up …' His voice was raw with pleading. He glanced to his right and saw that a neighbour was peering out of a window. A moment later the woman was opening her front door and staring open-mouthed at the scene.

‘You alright, Pam?' the woman called urgently. ‘You got trouble with him? Do you want me to call the police?' Gladys Rathbone came further down her path but halted behind the protection of her gate. ‘What's happened to her?' she demanded of Christopher. ‘What in God's name have you done to her? I'll get the police on you.'

Pamela Riley slowly hauled herself to her feet, using the privet hedge as support. ‘It's nothing,' she told her neighbour. She tottered quickly towards her front door, searching in a pocket. ‘My fault … Just had a trip, that's all. It's nothing.' Her voice was so low it was virtually inaudible yet it held an unmistakable demand for privacy. A moment later she'd found her key and thrust it into the lock. She barely opened the door but managed to squeeze herself through a tiny aperture, before closing it.

As soon as Christopher found an area that seemed deserted he pulled up and jumped out of the van. He prowled to and fro on weed-strewn concrete outside an ugly brick building that resembled a warehouse. As though comforting himself had just occurred to him he jammed a shaking hand in a pocket and pulled out his cigarettes. He smoked one while pacing then lit another from its butt before halting and remaining motionless till the cigarette clamped between his lips had had the life sucked out of it, and the stub had been shredded beneath his foot. Like a drunk, he weaved a path to the brick wall of the building, turning his back to it for support. Squeezing shut his burning eyes he sank to his haunches then gripped his scalp with both hands as the first sob tore out of him.

‘Supper's ready …'

Grace had known it was suppertime even before she heard her mother calling up the stairs to her. The warm aroma of toast had wafted into her bedroom while she sat, dressed in her pyjamas, legs curled under her on the eiderdown.

It had been a Coleman family ritual, for as long as she could remember, to have a light supper of toast and jam, or toast and dripping, with a hot drink of Ovaltine, just before turning in. As children, she and her brother would draw out their suppers for as long as possible to delay bedtime. Grace didn't really fancy anything else to eat today; however she'd go down and eat a few mouthfuls so her mother would have no reason to again remark that she wasn't herself since breaking up with Chris Wild. The comment was always followed by a heavy hint that it was time she stopped moping over him, because he wasn't worth it, and started going out with friends to find herself a nice fellow this time.

The faded photograph on the coverlet drew Grace's eyes and she picked it up, placing it back in the shoebox with the other little treasures that Chris had given her when they'd been a couple. There were blackened copper coins, and a tin soldier that he had said had probably been pilfered from the factory in Thane Villas. It might even have come via his father's cousin: Alice had worked there before the First World War when just a girl, straight out of school. There was also a brass belt buckle that Chris had said he believed once belonged to his grandfather. It had been found in a house where Stevie and Rob had lived with their parents for many years. His father had found the buckle and, having stared silently at it for several seconds, had flung it away as far as he could. He'd told Chris afterwards he recalled being thrashed with such force by his rotten father, Jimmy, that a buckle had come loose from his leather belt, and he'd got another swipe because of it.

Even before Chris had told her a bit about his wicked grandfather, her mother had related a few tales about the notorious Jimmy Wild, with pointed references to how bad blood in families passed down the generations. Apparently, Jimmy had been a pimp and a criminal in his time, but what sickened Grace was the knowledge that he'd regularly beaten his wife and children.

As soon as Chris had mentioned to Grace he and his workmates were unearthing odds and ends in the Whadcoat Street houses she had expressed an enthusiastic interest in seeing them. The first item he'd brought her had been a battered old cocoa tin, rusted firmly shut, but containing something – probably coins – that clattered when it was shaken. When Chris had made to force it open, Grace had stopped him for some reason, wanting the treasure to remain safely sealed within.

The tin had been discovered behind loose bricks in a wall. Chris had explained a likely reason it had been put there: when his father was a kid growing up in Campbell Road, his mother, in common with most women, would use hidey holes to conceal money from husbands who drank or gambled. He'd gone on to tell her his dastardly grandfather would loot any small savings his grandmother, Fran, would stash away to buy Christmas treats for Stevie and Rob, as children.

The photo had been found wedged down the back of a drawer in a built-in cupboard, and was badly fissured, but the face of the handsome youth, taken when he was many years younger than she was, Grace guessed, was still brightly smiling. He was dressed in First World War army uniform. Chris had told her that his dad had studied the photo, but hadn't recognised the young private as a neighbour from his days living in The Bunk. But then Stevie had been only seven years old when the Great War started, and the fellow might have perished on the Somme, and never made it back home to Campbell Road.

The last item he'd fetched her, before they'd split up, had been a tattered letter that had brought Grace to tears. A woman called Violet Brewer, living in Lancashire, had sent it in January 1901. In a spidery, uneducated hand the poor wretch had begged her husband, Alfred, to come home, or get some money to her somehow, so she could feed their remaining five children, the baby having recently died of a fever.

Grace touched the stained and crumpled envelope, but didn't take out the note to reread it. She felt guilty for having pried at all into Violet's misery. But she wondered, as she always did, whether Alfred
had
returned to help. Chris had read the letter too, and had said, in his blunt way, he doubted the poor sod would have had any help to give if he'd ended up in one of The Bunk's notorious doss houses …

‘This is going cold, Grace, and I'm not making more, 'cos there'll be no bread left for breakfast.'

‘I'm coming down now,' Grace called in response to her mother's tetchy complaint. She put the lid on the shoebox and returned it to its place in the wardrobe.

‘Who on earth's come calling at this time of the evening?' Shirley dropped her jammy toast to her plate and, sucking her sticky fingers, exchanged a look with Grace. The knock on the door had startled them both while they'd been sitting at the kitchen table, enveloped in a comfortable quiet.

Shirley hurried into the hallway and disappeared into the front room. Having twitched aside a curtain to spy outside she whipped back to hiss, ‘It's Christopher. Did you know he was coming round?' There was a hint of blame in her voice.

Grace shot to her feet. ‘Of course not!' She glanced in dismay at her pyjamas.

‘I'll tell him you're already in bed,' Shirley whispered crossly.

Grace suddenly realised that he'd knocked some minutes ago, and hadn't done so again. As nobody had answered, he might have gone away, thinking they'd already retired for the night … or were intentionally ignoring him. She dodged past her mother and quickly yanked open the door, hoping he hadn't disappeared, and gazed straight up into his dark features.

‘For Heaven's sake, Grace, act with a bit of decorum,' Shirley muttered angrily at her from behind.

Grace kept her pyjama-clad figure concealed behind the door as she stared wide-eyed at him.

‘Can you come out?' It was a husky plea.

‘Well … it's a bit late … and I'm not dressed …'

His eyes dropped to her lightly shivering figure.

‘I'll wait in the van. Can you get dressed and come out? I need to talk to you.'

‘This is a fine time to come calling, I must say,' Shirley directed at him while trying to peer past her daughter. ‘No manners,' she sighed out heavily.

‘Shut up, Mum,' Grace sent over a shoulder. ‘I'm just off out for a while.'

‘What?' Shirley barked. ‘You'll do no such thing, miss. It's gone ten o'clock …'

‘I'm twenty-three!' Grace snapped in a suffocated voice. ‘If I want to go out for half an hour on a Sunday night, I will.'