Family of Women (16 page)

‘There’s someone at the door,’ Muriel called up to Violet. It was a week later and Violet was settling Linda into bed. After a moment she hissed, ‘It’s that Roy Keillor bloke again!’

Violet felt a jolt go through her. She thought of his eyes looking down at her on the bus. What on earth wa"0"; you wwneur babbs he calling for now?

‘What’re you looking like that for, Mom?’ Joyce said, leaning up on one elbow in bed.

‘Like what?’ she said crossly. ‘I’m not looking like anything. Get to sleep.’

From the stairs she could hear voices, Muriel’s, joking as usual, and Roy saying something softly. It struck her then how different a man he was from Harry, whose voice always carried loudly all over the house.

He was watching her as she came to the bottom of the stairs.

‘Oh – ’ she spoke rather abruptly, trying to cover the fact that his being there affected her in a way she was quite sure it shouldn’t. ‘Come for some more slack, have you?’

He smiled nervously. ‘No – I er . . . Iris is getting the kiddies up to bed. I don’t know why, I just . . .’ He shrugged, and Violet noticed then that he was holding a thick little book with a worn leather binding.

‘Tea?’ Muriel asked. Behind Roy Keillor’s back she gave Violet a comical smirk as if to say,
We’ve got a right one on our hands here!

‘Sit down – if you want,’ Violet said, rather clumsily.

Roy settled himself at the table. He seemed shy.

‘You’ll think I’m a bit funny coming asking you this, but – do you like poetry, either of you?’

‘I’m not much one for it myself,’ Muriel admitted, tipping the tea grouts out. ‘Cannae make head nor tail of it to tell you the truth.’

‘Not even Robbie Burns?’

‘Who?’ Muriel said.

Violet, taken aback as much by the oddness of coming to ask such a question as the question itself, tried to think back to any poetry she had ever known. Bits at school of course, ‘The Lady of Shalott’ . . . ‘And through the field the road runs by To many-tower’d Camelot’ – that was all she could remember. And something else about the boy on the burning deck.

‘I know it’s peculiar coming like this. It’s just – there are things in here . . .’ He held out the book. ‘Just marvellous things. And if you don’t read them at school, or afterwards . . . I mean, no one talks about them – normally like, you know. I thought you might like to hear some of it?’

‘All right then,’ Muriel said politely. ‘You carry on while I brew up.’

Violet, unsure what else to do, took a seat at the table. Roy opened the book and thumbed through.

‘This is by William Wordsworth,’ he said solemnly.

He began reading what turned out to be a long, long poem. Muriel filled the pot and brought cups over and dribbled milk into them and eventually, with a droll expression, she poured the tea.rdsolet, tI kem" Glancing up at her, Violet saw the suppressed laughter in her eyes. Normally Violet would have laughed with her, but this time she found herself feeling annoyed. She liked the way Roy Keillor was reading to them, and she wanted to understand, but she had been lost almost from the beginning. It all seemed to be about meadows and birds and lambs, some of it very beautiful, she could tell, and he read it in a soft, slow rhythm. Sometimes she caught a bit of the sense of it, but then it kept slipping away from her. She listened to his gentle voice, affected by the fact that it evidently meant so much to him, but she just didn’t know what he was on about.

And then in the middle of it, a few lines seemed to link up straightforwardly so that she could hear them, and she rolled along with them:

‘Hence in a season of calm weather

Though inland far we be,

Our souls have sight of that immortal sea

Which brought us hither,

Can in a moment travel thither,

And see the children sport upon the shore,

And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.’

She felt her skin prickle, as if all her hairs were standing on end, and the feeling that she had had sometimes as a child of being immense and spread out, and, as on that night looking out over the rooftops, that there was something in her that could fly and extend itself wide over the land. She felt as if in her soul she was a huge bird, or had been in another life, and rds reminded her of all that had once been and might be again that was bigger and grander than ever this life she was living now. She sat very still, feeling expanded inside herself by rds, and found that her eyes were full of tears as if for something momentous that she had lost.

A few verses later he finished reading and she had not heard much more of the poem. Just for once, she longed for Muriel not to be there. She looked up at Roy Keillor as he closed the book.

‘S’pose I got a bit carried away,’ he said. ‘But can you see why I wanted to read it to you?’

Muriel was struggling to look polite, if not exactly impressed.

‘I’ve never heard it before,’ Violet said. ‘I mean I couldn’t follow it all, but . . .’

‘It is long,’ he agreed. ‘But it’s worth it.’

‘Yes,’ she said.

His eyes were searching her face. Violet met his gaze, and knew that no one had ever looked at her like that before and she had never looked back like that.

‘Your tea’s getting cold,’ Muriel pointed out with just about concealed irritaf ning expse " width=tion.

‘Oh yes.’ He smiled and closed the book.

And they talked about other things.

‘Have these two weans ever seen the sea?’ Muriel asked the next day as they hurried through the early morning routine.

‘The sea?’ Joyce piped up. ‘Can we see it? I’ve never seen it.’

‘Where is it?’ Linda was four now. Violet was startled often by the life and intelligence shining out of her brown eyes, as if there was a powerful engine purring away inside her. Everything she did, even fastening her shoes, was done with intense concentration. Joyce was more vague and scatty.

‘Here – eat up now.’ Muriel placed a bowl of porridge on the table in front of each of them. The day didn’t begin right for Muriel without porridge and she insisted on making it even though it meant getting up early to allow it time to cook. The girls were learning to like it – even salty, the way she made it – as they would have walked across hot coals for Muriel.

‘The sea is round the edge of the country and we’re right on the middle,’ she told them. ‘Where I come from in Scotland, we’re only a stone’s throw from the sea.’

Linda frowned. ‘D’you throw stones in the sea?’

Muriel laughed, her jolly red lips parting. ‘Aye, sometimes we do. One day, when the war’s over, you’ll have tae come up to Scotland and pay me a wee visit, won’t you? Anyways – my auntie Jean married an Englishman and she lives down in Brighton. What d’you think, Vi? We could make a trip?’

‘I s’pose so,’ Violet said. The thought had never occurred to her. She thought of the poem, the children playing along the shore, and wondered if despite all Muriel’s mocking of Roy and his poems, that was what had set her off on thoughts of the sea.

‘We cannae go on to the beaches now, so they say – but at least we could see the sea,’ Muriel was saying, having to explain to the children that the beaches were mined and fenced off in case the Germans tried to get in.

‘Are they trying to get in?’ Joyce said, alarmed.

‘Well, we hope not – they’re not taking any chances. Vi – if we went one time when we have an early shift before a day off I’m sure Auntie Jean would put us up. You’d like her – she’s my mum’s sister. She and Uncle Mort have a wee bakery.’

The chance came within a couple of weeks. Auntie Jean had written back to say she’d be over the moon to see them, and if they sent a telegram to say when they were coming they’d come and meet them.

‘I’ll send Mort,’ she wrote. ‘He likes a little walk.’

I"julett was the first time Violet had ever been out of Birmingham.

The girls were so excited they were hard to settle down in the carriage, wanting to jump about and kneel up on the seats, and Violet felt almost as frisky herself. She craned her head round as the train pulled out of her city, seeing its sooty factories and warehouses recede, its workaday yards and smoking chimneys, the barrage balloons still hanging over it like bloated guardian angels.

They all squeezed in close to the window, seeing the green expanses of spring fields and the farms and sheep and cows. Muriel kept pointing out things to them as they chugged along. The girls’ excitement over the sight of a donkey or a farm dog was a cause of amusement to the middle-aged couple sharing their compartment. Violet was astonished by the orchards they saw full of pink blossom and the sheer prettiness of the countryside. She watched Linda, and at some moments, when she had seen something new, saw her face transformed in a moment of wonder, a glow which brought a lump to her throat.

At last they climbed down wearily in Brighton. It was only about nine o’clock but to Violet it felt like the middle of the night. She took the girls’ hands as they walked nervously along the platform.

‘Toot toot,’ Joyce said, as the train let off a great sigh of steam.

Muriel carried the holdall into which they had squeezed all their clothes.

‘Uncle Mort!’ She raised her spare arm suddenly to wave. ‘There he is!’

A short, plump man came towards them, smiling broadly.

‘Well, hello there!’

As soon as she saw Uncle Mort, Violet’s nerves started to subside. She could see she was going to like him. He was almost bald except for a ring of mousy hair and everything about him was plump and round: his body, cheeks, chin. He had an old raincoat round him with the buttons done up wrong.

‘Well – young Muriel!’ He kissed her cheek, squeezing her hand. And this is your friend?’

‘Friend – and landlady!’ Muriel said.

‘Very nice to see you, very nice.’ He shook her hand, speaking in a deep, burring voice. ‘Come on now – let’s get home. Jean’s on pins waiting for you.’

He led them through the dark streets, a little torch lighting their path. Soon they were in a row of terraced houses and Uncle Mort took them into one. He kept the torch on as they went indoors.

‘Just follow me – up here.’

Violet knew that the couple lived over a bakery. There was a low counter on their left in the small room, and a strong, yeasty smell. They could see a light on upstairs.

‘Is that you, Mort?’

The voice sounded so like Muriel’s that for a moment Violet thought it was she who had spoken.

‘We&rsqu lidiv hei hi

‘Bring them all up – quick!’

Violet and the girls were the last up oden stairs and she could hear the exclamations of ‘Look at
you
!’ at the top as Muriel was greeted by her aunt. Auntie Jean was in her fifties, and as round and comforting a person as her husband, with pink cheeks and her hair, still deep brown, tied back in a bun. She greeted Violet with a broad smile, then bent to speak to the children.

‘I expect you little girls would like a wee piece of cake?’

Joyce and Linda nodded, wide-eyed.

Looking round fondly at Muriel, Violet was touched to see that she was struggling not to cry. Auntie Jean resembled her mother very much in looks and Violet knew that for all her cheerful antics, she missed her mother and home terribly.

‘I’ve got the kettle on – come on, sit down out here.’ There was a kitchen built on to the house above the storeroom at the back. ‘We have nae much room here but you’re welcome to what there is!’

‘We brought all our bacon rations,’ Muriel said, wiping her eyes.

‘Oh, you should nae have done that! Well – bacon butties in the morning for you! Here, you little ones – I hope you like a nice scone. I put a few raisins in . . .’

She offered Violet a scone, saying, ‘You never said your landlady was so bonny! I was imagining some middle-aged matron!’

Violet laughed, shyly.

‘Och – and you had it terrible with the bombing up there, didn’t you? I should think your nerves were in shreds after that. I don’t know how you all stood it.’

Jean and Mort tutted and shook their heads sympathetically.

‘And you’ve a husband away in the forces, have ye, Violet?’ Auntie Jean said.

‘Yes – army. I don’t know where, for certain.’

‘Well, that’ll be a worry too.’ There was a silence. Everything looked so grim out East. It was hard not to feel pessimistic. ‘Still – ’ She smiled. ‘We’re so glad for you to come down here, both of yous, and take your minds off it all for a little while.’

They sat drinking tea with the comfortable couple. Auntie Jean asked after Muriel’s father, from whom she hardly ever heard, then went on to bemoan the fact that the piers and beach were all off limits.

‘These poor weans – I hope they haven’t come thinking they can play on the sand?’

‘They’ve never seen the sea before,’ Muriel said.

‘Have you not?’ Jean looked at them in amazement.

‘Well – you can see it,’ Uncle Mort said, holding u hediv heid s="jp his teacup. ‘But you won’t be able to get in it – not the way things are at present. You’ll have to come back.’

‘That’s what I told them.’ Muriel smiled at the girl.

‘Come back when there’s beach and ice creams!’ Auntie Jean said.

‘Mom! Mom!’

Violet managed to open her eyes with great difficulty. A crack of dim light was visible at the edge of the blackout curtains. She tried to think where she was. There was a strange, delicious smell.

‘Mom – I want to go and see the sea!’

‘Oh, Linda – what time is it? I’m sure you should be asleep.’

She realized then that nderful smell was of baking bread, and where she was, and that they only had one day here. Linda was right – they needed to get going!

Auntie Jean was already downstairs, in a big white apron, looking as if she had never been to bed. A row of newly baked loaves lay on the counter in the tiny shop.

‘You go and have a look at the waves – it is nae far,’ she said. ‘And I’ll have that bacon frying for when you get back.’