A Rather English Marriage (38 page)

June sighed. Gloomy old bugger, she thought. You try to change the subject, but he always brings it back to the same old thing: how much better people were in
his
young days.

‘Take the youth today,' he continued, ‘don't want to work, don't want to do nothing except pick up their dole money. And then it's down to the betting shop or the pub with it. When me and Grace was courting, no nice girl would be seen dead in a pub. You had Lyons tea rooms, or the Cadena, and it was your own hard-earned wages you spent.
And
there was no larking about afterwards.'

Not half, thought June. Unless human nature's changed all of a sudden.

‘Me and Alan met in a pub,' she said defiantly.

‘Proves my point,' said Roy.

‘Met in a pub,' June continued, ‘because I was working there.'

‘Behind the bar, eh? Well, you see life, I suppose.'

‘No,' she said, suddenly sick of his prudish, pernickety ways,
the sentimental harking back to his past, his rose-coloured innocence.

‘No,
not
behind the bar. I was the lunchtime entertainment. The stripper.'

‘June!'

She saw that she had hurt him; also that he did not know whether to be more shocked at the idea of her stripping, or of his son watching.

‘In my young day,' he said, tight-lipped, ‘a girl'd sooner have gone to the workhouse than show her body in front of a load of strange men.'

‘I didn't have that choice. My choice were stripping or the streets. I had Gloria to pay for, after me Mam had told me to go to London and get myself sorted out. But I didn't want no abortion. I went ahead and had her. Fed her myself: that's why me figure was big. So I stripped, to keep us both. It were the easiest way for a girl with no exams and no references to make money. I was nineteen, Dad, remember that.'

Roy couldn't bring himself to look at her. He was fussing about with a dustpan and brush. It gave him an excuse to bend down and avoid her eyes.

Right, she thought, so he's shocked. She was angry with herself for having hurt him, yet relieved that he knew the truth about her. Why should I be ashamed? It could have been worse. I could have gone on the game – plenty did,! and I had a good body. Still have, as if anyone cared. All I did was show it: look, don't touch, and three pounds ten an hour. Bloody good money in 1971. His precious Alan couldn't keep his eyes off me. Poor sod, with his prim and proper upbringing, glad enough to have a chance to stare.

She'd made up her mind to go for Alan the very first time he'd talked to her. The publican liked her to mingle with the customers afterwards; it made them stay on for extra rounds of drinks. She had liked Alan's strong, healthy looks; soon found out that he had a steady job, nothing criminal; and, most important of all, he lived on his own. There'd be no interfering parents to put him off her, just because she was a stripper and had an illegitimate child. So she'd set her cap at
him, twirling and gyrating just for him, and Alan knew it. He was flattered and excited and vulnerable.

Within a week they were sleeping together; within a month he'd talked her out of the job as a stripper. OK, she had said, but if I stop, how am I to earn my keep, and Gloria's?
I
will, he said; simple as that. She was nineteen, he was twenty-three, but there was no doubt which of them was more wordly-wise.

Roy was shuffling about in the larder, getting out the ingredients for God knows what: suet pudding or jam roly-poly or another of those big, heavy dishes that she could hardly persuade Billy and Joe to eat, not even to please Grandad. Oh God, she thought, he tries his best, poor sod; we all try our best, whatever he thinks.

There was a long, reproachful silence. Why the hell should I apologize, she thought, though I know that's what he's waiting for. Sorry I told you the truth, at last? Sorry I earned my keep in the only way I could? Sorry for being alive, and human, and young? She pushed her hands up inside her sleeves and clutched at her shoulders. She longed to scratch and mar the pale, freckled skin with her nails, or to watch a knife make its delicate incision – the fine parting of the flesh, the breath-holding moment until the bright line of blood sprang up.

‘I'll go and get the boys from school,' she said. ‘Might all muck about at the recreation ground for half an hour or so before I bring them home for their tea.' Anything to get out.

‘Please yourself,' he said, his voice shaking a little. ‘I'll hang their washing out on the line and get tea going; lay the table. Don't mind me.' Rather do it on my own, he thought.

She withdrew one hand from her sleeve, touched his arm and forced him to look at her. ‘It were ever such a long time ago now, Dad,' she said. ‘Twenty years.'

‘Yes,' he said. ‘And did you make him happy?' he continued unforgivably. ‘Why else is my son dead?'

The front door slammed behind her and its stained-glass flower panels rattled. In the kitchen Roy stood up, his eyes opaque with tears.
At least once a week – perhaps more often, if he stopped to count – Roy would go and see Molly. Brisk, practical and unsentimental, she redressed the balance between his expectations of June and the disappointing reality. ‘I grant you she ain't no plaster saint,' Molly told him. ‘She ain't never going to be Radio One's housewife of the year; I won't even say Alan couldn't maybe have done better for himself. But she ain't a bad girl. She's had a hard life and she hasn't gone under, though plenty do. Is she on the bottle? No. Pills? No. In the nut house? No. Did she run 'ome to her Mum when that first one was born, dunno her name, the girl – no, she did not. So she took her clothes off. Is there more shame in showing or looking? And your Ally was there looking, weren't he?

*

‘And then, later on, when they was married – and don't you kid yourself, he weren't easy – she stuck by Alan, would've waited for him and been there when he come out of prison, the which he never did, more's the pity. But she
waited.'

‘Gracie waited five years for me, all through the war,' Roy said indignantly.

‘Mebbe she did,' Molly riposted, ‘but there's plenty as didn't. I'm telling you that June's a good lass, when all's said and done. She done a good job with them boys. Bright as Scouts' buttons, both of 'em. Good-looking lads, too. I see trouble ahead. You listen to me, darlin': by her lights June hasn't made a bad go of things. She ain't Grace, that I grant; she ain't Molly Tucker, neither.' Molly cackled. ‘Gotta praise meself, you see, ‘cos no one else won't do it.'

‘Am I asking too much, then?' Roy asked.

‘Too much? You ain't asking enough, sonny Jim!' said Molly. ‘Time you was getting back to cook those lads their tea. Now don't you be too hard on June. Give her a smile when you get in, show her you've forgotten your quarrel. Remember what the Bible says? “Let not the sun go down upon thy wrath”.'

Several days later, having made a number of hard but liberating decisions, Liz Franks was buoyed up by weightless exhilaration. She had advertised the MG in a local and a specialist
paper, and received a gratifying number of calls asking for more details. The house had been discussed with various estate agents. The first had pointed out that, thanks to the recession in the South-east, the bottom had fallen out of the house market. Most clients' expectations were still pitched too high, and a house was worth only what someone was willing to pay for it. ‘You forget,' Liz told her witheringly, ‘that I, too, am a businesswoman.'

The second was more optimistic, reassuring her about how desirable the street was, how pretty the house, and what an excellent opportunity its purchase offered, always providing it were realistically priced. But asked to dispose of the shop lease and business as well, even he jutted his lower lip and turned his gaze upwards in a parody of thoughtful misgiving.

‘It's up to you,' she said. ‘I don't want to deal with half a dozen different agencies. If you want to sell the house, I'd require you to dispose of the shop as well. Preferably first,' she added. ‘For a number of personal reasons I am anxious to leave Tunbridge Wells as quickly as possible.'

The car sold first, at a price several hundred pounds higher than her worst estimate. Liz opened an account in Lissy's name without telling her, and put a thousand pounds into it. A red banner in the shop window, the biggest yet, proclaimed ONE WEEK ONLY! CLOSING DOWN SALE! MAKE ME AN OFFER FOR ANY GARMENT! When that's over, she thought, I'll put the best of the rest in to a large suitcase, put the very best on my own back, and set off to the south of France. In the last days of the sale she let things go for practically any price offered, refused to take credit cards, and prayed that the cheques wouldn't bounce.

Constance Liddell, the librarian, came in one evening just as she was about to close. ‘You can't!' she said in dismay. ‘For the first time in my life I find someone who really knows what suits me. You
can't
shut up shop! Where are you going?'

‘I'm not absolutely certain,' Liz told her, ‘but I'm heading first for the south of France. If that's no good I thought I might try Italy. But, tell me, how did the dinner go? It was
you, wasn't it?'

Constance blushed charmingly. ‘Very well,' she said, primly.

‘Now don't give me that!' Liz coaxed. ‘It went much better than that, judging by the look on your face.'

‘Too early to tell,' said Constance, ‘but he wants to see me again and he seems great. He's not married, not dirt-poor, not half-witted, and, above all,
not Polish!'

Liz smiled. ‘Well, anyway, good luck.' On impulse, she scooped a wine-red Italian dress from its hanger and thrust it into Constance's astonished grasp. ‘Here!' she said. ‘Take this for the next dinner. It's a present.'

‘I couldn't possibly,' Constance protested.

‘Go on, have it. It's your size. Wish me luck as well. God knows, I
need
it.'

‘You are an angel.' Constance put her arms round Liz and kissed her on both cheeks. ‘Good
luck.'
, she said intensely. ‘I wish we'd known each other properly before … and now you're going away.
Best
of luck.'

Confronting the bank manager was simplicity itself compared with her dread of telling Reggie what she had decided. Whittington was unctuous and smug, fulsome in his praise of her good sense and good timing; over-anxious to be helpful, now that she no longer needed his help. Liz commented on the change.

‘Well, now you see, Mrs Franks,' he said in his nasal whine, ‘banks can be very accommodating when customers take their advice.'

Stung by his pompous self-righteousness she flashed back, ‘I assure you, Mr Whittington, I do
not
order my life to gain the approval of bank clerks!' Fool, she thought. Now you've made another enemy.

Reginald, after nearly a month in hospital, was evidently starting to walk about. He rang her from time to time on the ward's mobile phone. His voice was growing clearer too, and his former bark had given way to a more sibilant, liquid speech. When he rang the shop, it was easy enough to put him off. When he rang her at home in the evening, it was harder
to know what to say. She was determined not to break the news over the telephone, yet she could not respond falsely to his tender murmurings and hints about their future together. She told him she was ‘winding things up' and ‘closing the shop', and left him to make what he could of that.

Eventually she could put off seeing him no longer. She had spent hours mentally playing through the conversation, working out what she would say, trying to anticipate his response, trying to cause the least amount of pain. These internal dialogues, in which she wrote and performed both parts, grew into a deafening cacophony. It was simpler to tell him and get it over. I never meant to hurt him, poor old heffalump, she thought. I may have been greedy and manipulative and vain, but I didn't mean to be
wicked
. But I cannot tie myself to an invalid whom I scarcely know and – let us face it – from whom there is nothing to be gained except boredom and exasperated pity on my side.

She dressed in black trousers and a tobacco-brown silk shirt, with flat black shoes, little make-up and a melancholy, dusty scent. In the ten minutes or so that it took to walk to the hospital she tried to make her mind a blank, to clear its ether of the clamorous voices that had rehearsed this conversation for so long, so that her actual words would be simple, gentle and spontaneous.

She walked into the ward. Reginald was sitting fully dressed on his bed, facing the door. He had not been forewarned of her coming, but he was alone. His rubicund face was set in lines of despondency which flamed into eagerness the moment he caught sight of her.

‘Darling!' he called out. ‘There she ish,' he commented in an aside to the old man in the bed next to his. ‘Tol' you. Thash my fianshée.'

‘Liz!' he called again. He held out both hands and drew her towards him, carrying her knuckles one by one to his lips. ‘My darling,' he murmured, ‘I've been longin' to shee you.'

‘Reggie,' she said. ‘Sweetie, is there anywhere private we can go and talk?'

‘Only the day room. It's where I have to go to smoke. They try to stop me smoking. Southgate brings me them. Decent of him. The room will stink of cigarettes. But it's quiet.'

‘Let's go there,' she said. He put his feet on the floor and she hooked an arm under his and supported his weight as he walked along. She knew he must be doing his best, but all the same, his shoes shuffled along the smooth polished vinyl.

She moved tattered piles of old magazines so that they could settle down side by side on a collapsing sofa. A crude ashtray shaped from silver-foil stood on a spindly occasional table. Reggie lit her cigarette and his own, and, turning her chin towards him, he said her name, its one syllable top-heavy with emotion.