Letters From an Unknown Woman (21 page)

To which his answer was only a simple nod, a desolate glance, and then an immediate retreat to the sitting room.

He will come out soon, she thought.

Indeed, there was an enormous air of expectation about the house in the days and weeks following Donald’s return. Everyone, it seemed, was waiting patiently to see what he was going to do. But no one was inclined to ask him that question directly, and there were very few opportunities for such a question to be asked. Donald took his meals alone in the sitting room. He would make appearances in the dining room, but these were only transitory visits as he journeyed to and from the outside lavatory. Occasionally he would pause on his way there or back, and perhaps spend a half-hour in the armchair reading the newspaper, and he would politely return any friendly remarks from Tory or Mrs Head (the children usually disappeared to their rooms or the yard when their father appeared), but any attempt to engage him in more extended conversation would find him stiffly walking back to the sitting room, closing the door behind him. He hasn’t even told me what happened to his leg, Tory mused despondently.

*

It was little over a month after Donald’s return that there was a knock at the front door one evening and Bill Welch made his appearance. So rare was the sight of a face from Donald’s working days that Tory hugged him like a long-lost son. The war had treated Bill much better than it had treated Donald. He seemed to have grown, whereas Donald appeared to have shrunk. He, too, had a neat little moustache, where before the war he’d had a thick drooping one (the effect of the Second World War on moustaches, Tory thought, could be a whole book). He looked suntanned and muscular, even though she could see nothing of his body because he was wearing his working clothes – white apron splattered with paint, cloth cap, speckled boots.

By chance Donald was in the midst of one of his dining-room sojourns, so Tory merely had to usher Bill in there and introduce him to his old partner.

‘Donald, there’s someone to see you …’

At last, Tory thought, Donald would be going back to work and everything would be as it was before the war. Money had been very difficult in the last few years. At times it had been a struggle to survive, and on several occasions they’d had to draw on Mrs Head’s savings to make ends meet. Oh, the indignity of walking with her mother down to the bank to cash that carefully written cheque, but there was nothing else for it.

To her surprise, Mr Farraway hadn’t kept his word about not being involved in Branson’s life, and he had several times provided Tory with funds, sometimes by anonymous post, sometimes by surprising her as she was out walking Branson or wheeling him in his pram, by swooping down on her and walking alongside her for a little way. Sometimes he would put one of his big square hands on the pram’s handlebar, alongside Tory’s elegant fingers (the nails looking as papery as ever), and they would push the pram together, George bending every now and then to coo and gurgle at the infant, who returned the enormous gaze of his father with a frightened stare. Then he would depart as suddenly, and Tory would find, later, that he had slipped a note into her pocket, a folded-up five pounds, or ten pounds sometimes. So he is one of the good people, Tory thought. He is taking an interest after all. But the money was irregular and could not be relied upon. There were times when she would wheel Branson for hours so that George would have the opportunity to do one of his swoops, but she never tried to contact him directly. Such a thing could not have been done. Otherwise she and her mother took in laundry, and Tory did some cleaning. And now there was a prospect of an end to their money worries.

But Donald didn’t look very pleased to see his old partner. He squirmed awkwardly in his chair, and cast cross, accusing looks in Tory’s direction, as though he suspected the whole thing had been a set-up.

‘Hallo, old mate,’ said Bill. ‘I heard you were back.’

‘Word gets around,’ said Donald, quietly.

They briefly exchanged summaries of their war experiences. Bill, it seemed, was able to condense the whole episode into a little mime show, firing an invisible Tommy gun and lobbing a few invisible grenades. Donald was a little less enthusiastic when called upon to report his own adventures.

‘Me? I was unfortunate enough to be captured alive at Tobruk. Spent the next four years locked up. Wish they’d finished me off in the desert, I can tell you.’

This remark shocked all those in the room. Bill, having settled down on a dining chair and lighting his pipe, as if in preparation for a long, entertaining yarn from Donald, tried to brush over the silence. ‘Oh, well, it’s over now. History, isn’t it? We’ve all played our part in history, whatever we were doing.’

Donald didn’t say anything.

Bill puffed. ‘So you’ll be ready to take up the old brush again, Don? I’ve already done two jobs, but I can’t cope on my own. Wasn’t expecting it to happen so quick, but everyone’s redecorating. There’s a hell of a lot of work out there. And by this time next year, so long as Attlee wins, there’ll be new houses going up everywhere. They’re all going to need decorating.’

In the expectant pause that followed, Donald said, ‘I don’t suppose the gossips who told you I was back also told you about this,’ and, as if it was a log, lifted his damaged right leg and dropped it to rest perfectly horizontal on a vacant dining chair next to him.

‘No, Don, they didn’t.’

‘No, well. I don’t suppose they gave a damn. Bullet from a Karabiner 98 through the kneecap, left untreated for four years, with several sessions of marching between camps … Fact is I’m a cripple. I couldn’t stand up to hang a piece of wallpaper. I couldn’t climb a ladder or even carry one. Can’t ride a bike. Can’t walk. Can’t carry anything. Sorry.’

The leg remained in position on the chair, an unanswerable statement of Donald’s disability. Tory was compelled to say something. ‘But you can walk a bit, Donald.’ Ignoring another cross glance from her husband, she continued, ‘We walk down to the shops, you walk up and down the yard, I’ve seen you—’

She was interrupted by Donald bringing his walking-stick down with force on the back of the chair, nearly breaking both. ‘Are you calling me a liar?’ he barked. Then, to Bill, ‘You’d better clear off, old boy. Hop it before I boot you out – if I could. You shouldn’t have come round, but you weren’t to know. Good luck to you, sprucing up the homes of the conquering heroes, but I won’t be taking any part in it.’

Bill, by now, looked only too eager to make his exit, but he delayed as long as possible to make it seemly, fiddling with his cap, which he was holding meekly in both hands, asking Donald if he wanted to think again, and that if he should change his mind or that his leg might, you know, get better, he should come round and give him a knock. And with more apologetic looks, he was gone.

‘Well, Donald,’ said Tory, ‘I think you could have been a bit nicer to your old partner. I think you treated him disgracefully. After all those years you worked together.’ It was the first time she had felt able to express her anger towards him. It was now too long since his return for his behaviour to be easily excused.

‘What do you care?’ he sneered.

‘We need to live, Donald. We have very little money coming in.’

‘Well, if you can find a job for a one-legged war veteran …

Don’t you worry. I’ve got plans. I’ve got plenty of plans. Just give me time to get my strength back …’

‘But how long? We need money for food and clothes for the children.’

‘Well, why don’t you take your mother’s pearls down to the pop shop, if you’re so worried? Or go back to the jelly factory, Farraway’s, where you used to work. You liked it so much there, you were telling me.’

It was odd hearing him say George’s name. Odd also, she thought, that his name was also the name of a factory, and that the two were so easily interchangeable.

‘The men are back now, they’ve taken up their old positions. Besides, I haven’t worked there for years. And now I’ve got to look after the children. Mother’s too ill to manage with four of them.’

‘Three,’ said Donald.

‘No, Branson’s one of the family, Donald. I know he’s adopted.’

Here Donald gave a derisive laugh, and shook his head, as though full of pity for poor, lying Tory. ‘Adopted,’ he said. ‘I like that. How long are you going to keep this up, Tory? You know your little tale’s a lot of cock. I admit I was surprised you’d done the dirty on me at first, didn’t think you were the sort of girl to do that to me, not at all …’

‘It’s true,’ Tory protested, surprised at how fervently she had decided to stick to her story. ‘I know it might look suspicious from the outside, but I swear Branson is adopted …’

‘Well, if he’s been adopted he can be bloody well unadopted. You picked him up out of the rubble of some burnt-out shack in Leicester, you can send him back there for someone else to pick up.’

‘But he was a baby then, it was different. He knows us now – it would be cruel to give him away to other people.’

‘But there are plenty of couples who would like a little boy. Only three doors down, didn’t you hear? They sent their only son to Canada, and his ship got torpedoed. They’d like the boy, so why don’t you give him to them? Anyway, who’s to say he’s yours? You just picked him out of the ruins and claimed him, like he was a suitcase. Where’s his birth certificate? Which house, precisely, was he found in? He’s probably got relatives, uncles and aunts, who would like to claim him. You’ve stolen him, in effect, haven’t you?’

‘It’s all in the past now, Donald. We can’t talk about that – there’s no point. Branson’s part of our family.’

‘Well, I can look after him well enough …’

‘No, I don’t think it would be a good idea.’

‘Why? Don’t you trust me with him? You think I’m like a daddy lion that eats all the cubs that aren’t his own? You think I’m some sort of dangerous monster? Look at me, Tory. I’m a little broken thing, like a tin soldier that’s been stepped on. If I wanted to boot that kid out of the house I’d only fall over in trying. No, I’m not going to do the kid any harm, but I’m not going to do him any good either. I’m not going to play any part in raising another man’s children under my own roof. I’m not going to take any notice of his existence at all. And the only reason I’m not booting you out of the house as well is that I need someone here to look after me. I haven’t got anyone else. And I expect you to be on your best behaviour, old girl. After what you’ve done you owe me.’

*

So Tory wasn’t as good a liar as she’d thought. Or was it simply that Donald chose to believe she was a liar because that gave him a stronger position in the household? It was his undisputed right, as the wronged husband, to take over the sitting room and shut himself in there for hours on end, to refuse to make any effort to find a job or any attempt to earn money. Mrs Head was most indignant, after several weeks, that Donald had not done anything since his return home. The family would be crowded into the dining room, while he remained alone in the sitting room, taking up ten times his share of the household space, and Mrs Head would suddenly exclaim, ‘This is too bad. I’m going to sort this problem out once and for all,’ and disappear through to the passage. They would hear her knocking loudly on the sitting-room door, then delivering her usual harangues, to return this time to make the shocked announcement, ‘He’s locked it! He’s gone and locked himself in.’

No one quite understood how he’d done it. There was a lock on the door, but they had never known of a key to fit it, and it had never been locked in the many years the Heads had been in residence. Somehow Donald had acquired a key.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Bathing had usually taken place in the sitting room, in a zinc tub before the fire. Lack of access to this room now made things rather difficult. The only answer was to erect a screen across the dining room, and to bathe in privacy behind it. This seemed to be a manageable, if slightly awkward, solution to the problem, and the family quickly became used to going about their business in the dining room, while splashing and trickling noises came from behind the faded Oriental fabric of the screen. And then the bathtub disappeared.

Tory rapped loudly on Donald’s door. ‘Donald, have you got the bathtub?’

Donald’s voice came from behind the door, sounding very distant, as though the room had become enormous and he was at the far end of it.

‘I need to have a bath like the rest of you. It takes a long time to get rid of four years’ worth of dirt.’

‘Well, when are you going to bring the bath back?’

‘When I’ve finished with it.’

‘I can’t hear you.’

‘When I’ve finished with it!’

When, after three more days, the bath had not been returned, Tory asked again: ‘Donald, can we please have the bathtub back? The children need a bath.’

‘I need it.’

‘But you can’t keep it all the time. It’s not fair.’

‘I need it.’

‘How are we going to wash?’

‘You can use the sink in the kitchen.’

Mrs Head protested again, but it was useless. He simply ignored their voices.

After another week or so, he began to leave the house in the evenings. His claims of immobility turned out to be somewhat exaggerated, it seemed, and he could manage to walk all the way down the road to the Rifleman on his own, leaning heavily on his stick and swinging his stiff leg after him. He would return at half past ten, sometimes with companions, shifty-looking men in dark, pulled-down trilbys, so that only whiskery chins were visible as they shuffled after Donald into the sitting room to have the door carefully locked after them. They would stay sometimes for an hour or more, not leaving till after midnight, and sometimes rather noisily.

Tory would go downstairs and knock on the door, asking them to be quiet. Her voice would immediately silence those within. Then she would hear Donald muttering something unintelligible, which would produce laughter among the guests, to be followed by Donald calling, ‘All right, my treasure,’ to more stifled laughter.

Catching Donald in the hall one morning, she asked him who those men were. Donald looked affronted by her questioning ‘They are heroes,’ he said to her, ‘warrior-heroes, every one of them, returned from the war to build a better life for us all.’