Poppy Day (23 page)

‘Oh yes?’ Olive said suspiciously.

Polly looked at Jess as she spoke, as if feeling that was safer. ‘There was this meeting – just in this woman’s house, down in Balsall ’Eath. She’s got a special gift like, she can get messages from people who’ve passed away . . .’

This was an immediate red rag to a bull. Olive was tutting loudly straight away.

‘It’s awright, Mom – really. Mrs Bullivant came with me, and they were all very nice. And I got a message from Ernie . . .’

But her mother got up and walked out of the room. They heard her going upstairs.

Polly looked at Jess with desperate appeal in her eyes. ‘’E said ’e’s in the pink where ’e is and I’m not to worry and that ’e loves me and is looking out for me . . .’ As she spoke her voice cracked and tears ran down her cheeks. ‘I know it ain’t much and Mom don’t want to hear about it, but it’s everything to me, to know e’s getting on awright and ’e’s still with me! I hadn’t seen him for such a long time and it felt as if ’e’d gone forever without us being able to say goodbye . . .’

Jess felt a lump rise in her throat, seeing the pain Polly was in, the joy that this simple message had brought to her, whether it was real or not. She got up, saying ‘Oh Poll—’ She and Sis went to her and took her in their arms.

Monday morning. Jess stepped into the Rumbling Shed and exchanged her cardigan for the overall and cap. It was going to be a hot day. Work started at eight and even on the journey she had felt almost too warm. As she slipped the rubber overshoes on, the other two girls came in saying ‘Morning, Jess!’

She greeted them absent-mindedly and stepped through into her section of the shed at the end. The other two exchanged looks which said, ‘What’s up with ’er?’

‘Yer never know with people from day to day nowadays, do yer?’ one of them said. ‘Anything could’ve happened.’

‘It could. Or maybe she’s just mardy ’cause she is.’

‘Nah – she ain’t like that.’

In the few moments before work was due to start, Jess leaned her back against the brick wall of the shed and pulled Ned’s latest letter from her pocket. She had collected it from Iris’s the evening before. Each time she read it hoping she’d missed something. A postcard fluttered to the floor and she bent to pick it up. It was a view of a French town, its church spire standing tall and noble. Small grey print on the back said, ‘
Albert – la basilique
’. He had enclosed a second card of the same view, but this time most of the buildings were wrecked, heaps of crumbling brickwork: the spire of the basilica was smashed away at the sides, its statue at the top lurching sideways at a right angle to the spire.

She read Ned’s letter again, urgently trying to find in it the warmth of the man she loved from this foreign country which felt so far away. Her eyes moved quickly over his sloping hand and settled on the end of the letter, needing his parting words which always meant so much to her. But they were so brief, matter of fact almost. And things he said in the letter: ‘
bombed it to hell
,’ . . . ‘
we were dead beat
. . .’ It didn’t sound like him. It was almost as if it was written by another man.

She folded the letter away and went to work, counting the detonators with half her mind, distracted. She turned the drum fiercely, feeling her cheeks turn pink with exertion, pounding all her misery and frustration into it.

For a while she fought against giving in to her emotions, mechanically doing her job. But after a time, going to re-load it she turned too sharply and caught her elbow hard on the edge of the drum.

‘Oh sod and damn it!’ She doubled up nursing her elbow and gave in to her feelings, tears running down her cheeks. ‘Oh Ned, I want you – I want you here now, just to see you!’

She was barely aware of the door opening.

‘Jess – are you all right? What’ve you done?’

She straightened up immediately, rubbing her elbow, then quickly wiping tears from her face. ‘Nothing. I just caught my elbow. I’m awright.’

Peter Stevenson looked closely at her. He had dark, sleepless rings under his eyes. The kindness in his expression, when she knew the loss he must be suffering, made Jess fill up with tears all over again.

‘It’s not just that, is it? Has something happened?’

‘No—’ Jess pulled out her hanky and mopped her eyes. She felt very stupid and her hands had gone all clammy. ‘No – not really. I mean . . .’

Peter Stevenson hesitated, struggling to overcome his natural shyness. ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t be asking, but do you have a young man at the Front?’

‘Yes . . .’ She was in an agony of indecision and embarrassment. Mr Stevenson catching her in this state – but she could hardly tell him anything about Ned! Yes, I’ve got a young man at the Front who I love like crazy and he’s married to someone else and he’s left her and his child for me and everyone thinks we’re wicked . . .

‘Nothing’s happened, I don’t think. It’s just I had a letter and . . . and . . .’ Her cheeks were on fire. She had no idea how lovely she looked, face glowing, her eyes wet with tears. ‘I just want the war to end,’ she added lamely. ‘It’s silly of me. And compared with what you must be going through with your wife and everything . . .’ Then she wanted to bite her tongue out. She shouldn’t have said that! They’d all put together a card for him, from the works, but she’d never imagined saying anything to him. It’d never’ve happened before the war, she thought. So much was nearer the surface now.

‘Oh . . .’ Peter Stevenson looked at the floor. Oh God, Jess thought, don’t let him start breaking down or carrying on as well because I shan’t have the first idea what to do.

‘Her name was Sylvia.’ He looked up at her again. ‘Everything feels pretty grim, at the moment.’ Jess felt her heart contract at the tender sadness in his voice. Ned was alive – what did she have to complain about? ‘But you know, although I miss her a great deal, what was worse almost was when she was very sick and we didn’t know how long she had left. How much she was going to suffer. Not knowing is terrible – the waiting.’ He tried to give a rueful smile but it reached no further than his lips. ‘So I do understand. There’re so many people waiting at the moment . . .’

‘I’m sorry.’ She didn’t know what else to say.

‘Thank you.’ For the first time she saw him really smile, a wide, rather melancholy uplift of his features, but wholehearted. It reminded her of the way Iris’s smiles transformed her face. What a lovely face, she thought. He’s a nice man. His kindness warmed her and she felt better for having let out her emotion.

Peter Stevenson’s tone changed, became businesslike again. ‘I really came to say – to warn you – that there’s another group here from the Woolwich Arsenal.’

He rolled his eyes half comically to the ceiling.

‘What, again?’

‘I’m afraid so. They’re over in the filling sheds at the moment so I thought I’d pop in and let you three know.’

‘Oh well – I’d better get to work then.’ Jess paused. ‘I’ll do my best, don’t you worry.’

Peter Stevenson turned away, smiling faintly again. ‘I know.’

That night, Jess lay in bed listening to the rain. The day had been intensely hot and close. Her temples throbbed and her body felt clammy and heavy. It was an effort to move.

The atmosphere at home was fraught. Polly had sloped out again, and though Olive didn’t say anything, the strength of her feelings seeped out in the way she slammed pans down on the range, chewed at the edges of her fingers when they were sitting together after tea. The sense that she was charged, ready to explode with some fearsome emotion, increased daily, making all of them nervous of her, not just Jess.

Jess and Sis had carried pails of water in from the tap and poured them into the tin bath so they could all have a wash to cool down. Ronny always loved it when it was bath night, and chuckled as they stood him naked in the tub like a little white freckly fish, to pour water over him. Their splashing and activity relaxed the atmosphere a little, and afterwards, Sis bundled Ronny up in an old shirt of Bert’s and rubbed him dry. Jess sat by her aunt twisting the long, wet skein of her hair between her hands. She liked the summer: they had bare legs so she didn’t have to keep darning stockings every night.

‘Yer know, Auntie—’ Jess reached out and dared to touch Olive’s hand for a second. ‘Poll’s awright. I know she’s picked up a few odd notions for the moment, but . . .’

Olive jerked her hand away and Jess retreated, chastened.

‘She said she’ll come back to work if Grace can stop with you and Ronny.’

‘She knows she can,’ Olive snapped. ‘I’ve said enough times, ain’t I?’ She was keen for Polly to get back to work, thinking it would help restore her to normality.

Polly got in just as the first growls of thunder echoed round the sky.

‘It’s flaming dark out there already!’ She sounded cheerful enough.

Don’t say nothing, Jess pleaded with her eyes. Don’t tell us about messages you’ve had from the ‘other side’ for goodness sake. Just keep them to yourself for now ’cause we need that like a hole in the head.

The storm distracted everyone. The strange quietness, as if the whole city was waiting for each lightning flash, for the loud wrenching of the thunder, as a release from the fetid stillness which had settled over everything. They sat in the gloom, not even lighting the gas. Their horizon was limited by the row of houses opposite, only a thin border of sky visible to them, but they watched, sometimes glimpsing the lightning across the thick swirl of clouds. At last the rain came in force, a hissing, sighing sound sweeping over the rooftops, swelled by the wind. Grace slept on despite the noise, but Ronny was too excited and frightened to go to bed and sat cuddled up on Sis’s lap, cowering when the thunder came.

They went up for the night when the worst of it had passed, but Jess could not settle. She lay for a long time with her eyes shut but no closer to sleep, feeling stirred up by the force of the storm outside. Storms visited themselves on you, powerful and out of your control, and it brought to her mind sharply the other events going on beyond them all, yet touching them, over which they had just as little influence. People said the guns sounded like the thunder. The feeling of her own insignificance which sometimes came over her at night filled her now. Sometimes that was comforting, but tonight her nerves were on edge with worry and longing and she felt small and frightened.

All she could hear was the steady fall of rain. But a few moments later there came a cry from the other end of the house, so agonized that it made her skin come up in goose pimples. She jolted upright, her heart banging, and found she was drenched in cold sweat.

Sis stirred, her bedsprings creaking as she half sat up. Jess could see her, dimly, across the room, hair hanging dark each side of her face.

‘What was that?’

‘I dunno. God, it was horrible. Sshh.’

They both sat absolutely still. The cry was not repeated, but gradually they heard the sound, at first low and intermittent, then louder, of anguished, unstoppable weeping.

Sis gasped. In a small, frightened voice she said, ‘I think it must be our mom.’

The two of them tip-toed along the landing, sliding their hands along the walls in the dark. As they passed Polly’s door it opened and Jess and Sis jumped, clutching at each other.

‘Poll!’ Sis whispered furiously. ‘Yer nearly made my heart stop coming out like that!’

Polly was holding Grace, who was awake. ‘That ain’t just Ronny, is it?’ She sounded frightened. The crying was childlike and utterly desolate.

‘I think ’e’s blarting as well now,’ Sis said. ‘She must’ve woke ’im and set ’im off.’

‘What’re we going to do?’ Polly held Grace close, the baby’s head tucked under her chin.

‘God only knows. Let’s get Ronny out of there anyhow.’

Sis pushed open the door of Olive’s room and felt around in the darkness for her distraught little brother, lifting him into her arms. He sobbed into her neck and she stroked him, murmuring comforting things to him. Olive was still weeping, more quietly now, sounding tired and defeated.

Jess, the only one with her hands free, knelt down by the bed.

‘You ain’t going to wake ’er, are yer?’ Polly said, alarmed. She moved Grace who was rooting around for milk and began to feed her.

‘She sounds so sad. What’s the matter with her?’

‘I don’t know. Honest I don’t.’

‘Sis – fetch us a candle, will yer?’

Sis persuaded Ronny to get down and in a couple of moments they were back with a lighted candle.

‘Auntie.’ Jess’s hands were shaking as she very gently prodded Olive’s shoulder. ‘Auntie, wake up.’

Olive’s eyes opened but at first it was as if she couldn’t see them or make sense of their presence in the room and she was still crying. After a moment she sat up, knuckling her eyes like a child. Her arms were bare and she had on an old vest which was tight across her slack breasts. Sitting close to her, Jess could feel the moist heat coming off her body.

Gradually she quietened and sat with her head in her hands. Minutes passed. At last, more composed, Olive spoke quietly through her fingers.

‘What’ve I been doing?’

‘You were crying out, Mom,’ Polly said gently.

They all waited. Jess expected Olive to say she was all right now, it was nothing, just a dream and what were they all mithering round her for in the middle of the night. But instead she continued to sit there, rocking gently back and forth, her breathing still ragged from crying. Jess thought how vulnerable and broken she looked in her yellowed old vest, her hair hanging down, no longer on her dignity, the fight gone from her. She wanted to embrace her, but didn’t dare.

After a time Olive wiped her eyes. ‘I can’t keep on like this.’

‘Auntie—’ Jess dared ask. ‘What’re yer so sad about?’

Olive’s hand went to her mouth as her emotion began to well up. Tears spilled from her eyes again.

‘I can’t stop crying,’ she shook her head helplessly. ‘Don’t know what’s got into me. I’ve tried never to think of it, never burden anyone with it, but lately I can’t . . . it keeps . . . I keep remembering.’

‘What, Mom?’ Polly moved closer. She sounded near to tears herself. ‘Why don’t yer tell us – get it off yer chest, ’stead of bottling it all up. Is it summat about our granddad?’

Olive shook her head. ‘No – not ’im. Not exactly.’

‘If yer tell us,’ Jess at last found the courage to touch her aunt’s arm. ‘Maybe it’ll make yer feel better.’

‘I worry I’m going off me head, that I do.’

‘We’ve worried about yer an’ all, Mom,’ Polly said.

‘And then you started on about all this . . . after Ernie died and I’ve been frightened to death you was – poorly . . .’

‘I ain’t, Mom. I just miss him so bad, that’s all.’

Olive looked at the stricken faces of the girls gathered round her. They’re not children any more, she thought. None of them.

‘If I’m coming out with it it’s now or never. By morning I’ll’ve changed me mind.’ More in command of herself, she beckoned to Sis who was still holding Ronny’s hand. ‘Bring ’im here.’ She gave the little boy a kiss. Jess was touched. She’d seldom seen her aunt show the boy much warmth.

‘Get ’im into bed, I don’t want ’im listening. He’ll soon be off to sleep and we can go in the other room.’

Sis settled Ronny back in bed and kissed him too, and they went into Jess and Sis’s room, and Olive got into Sis’s bed.

‘It was your grandmother,’ Olive began when they were all gathered round her. ‘My mother. Ours, Louisa’s and mine.’

Jess’s attention was fixed so absolutely on her aunt’s face and her voice, that she was conscious of nothing else. If another storm had taken the roof off she might not have noticed.

‘Alice, she was called. Alice Tamplin. Louisa favoured ’er but—’ Jess felt her aunt touch her hand for a second. ‘You’re the image of ’er, Jess. When I saw you again, that night you turned up ’ere, I thought you was a ghost. It was you coming seemed to set it all off. I’m not blaming yer – ’ow could you know? All the things I kept down, didn’t want to think about ever in my life again. I’d be standing there one day, getting on with things, and summat’d come flooding into my head, just for a second . . . And then it’d be gone. But it’d be so strong – like the past coming back, as if it’s still ’ere. You know – if you’ve got memories, people who’re dead’re still alive like, in a way, ain’t they? Almost like it’s still happening to yer.’

Jess saw Polly was about to speak, but she silenced herself. None of them wanted to stop Olive talking.

‘Our mom, Alice, had us – there was about two years between me and Louisa. I’d’ve been four – so that’d make Louisa two – when she had another babby. I don’t remember much before the babby came. Just odd things. But then there was three of us. Another girl, Clara. Our mom liked fancy names. She was bad after Clara. Louisa was taken away to stay with Auntie May. She was always the pretty one, see, the easy one, and the aunts liked her. I was plain and quiet. They never liked me as much.’ She pressed the large mole on her cheek with her finger. ‘They used to say it was a shame, me ’aving this. Said it spoilt me looks. But Louisa’d dance for them, like, and sing, even at that age. Queer how different sisters turn out when yer think of it. I was the older one who had to be responsible, even then.’

Olive spoke looking down into her lap, hands still moving restlessly on the sheet, alternately twisting and smoothing it.

‘I don’t know exactly what was wrong with ’er in the beginning. She was really sick like – poorly in herself. Lay in bed all day, feverish. Whiteleg or summat, I s’pose. Our dad came in and out, carried on going to work – ’e had a good job then, in a Japanning works. She got better so’s she could get up but she was still bad. Course I didn’t know. Not at that age. And then . . .’

Her breath caught. Until that point she’d been telling the story calmly.

‘All I remember is, she was carrying the babby about with her. Not just in the ’ouse. She’d been down the ’orse road carrying her in ’er arms. And she’d gone up and said to people – it just shows ’ow bad she was – showed ’er to people she met before she came home. What she’d done. She was upstairs – I was up there . . . just standing . . .’ She stopped, unable to speak. All that came from her was a moan of distress. Her need to speak battled with a terrible fear, swelling and filling her until she was gulping for air, couldn’t breathe. She threw back the covers and tried to climb out of bed. Jess moved quickly out of the way—

‘Auntie, where’re yer going?’

‘Oh God!’ Polly cried. She tried to restrain her but Olive flung her off.

‘I can’t!’ Olive gasped. ‘Oh that smell – I can’t stand it!’ She wanted to go to the window, to fling it open and get some air she was so hot, so desperate to breathe, to escape this mounting pressure inside herself. But as soon as she stood up she was dizzy, the room swaying and lurching round her. Sis and Jess caught her as she began to fall. She was both heavier and softer than Jess would have imagined, and hard to keep a hold on. It took all their strength to ease her back on the bed.

‘Get ’er head down!’ Jess instructed.

While Olive recovered, Sis went down and put the kettle on.

‘Auntie?’ Jess sat beside her, supporting her, stroking her shoulder. She felt more able than her cousins who found it harder to face all this emotion locked away in their own mother. ‘When you feel a bit better shall we go down and have a cuppa tea? Then you can tell us . . .’

They sat round the table downstairs with the candle in the middle. Jess looked round at them all: Olive, her face washed with tears, and Polly and Sis, both looking like little girls with their hair loose on their shoulders. The storm had long passed over but there was still the soft sound of the rain outside.

‘Will yer tell us, Mom?’ Polly said. ‘Did she do summat to the babby?’

Olive was able to speak more calmly now. ‘We was upstairs. I don’t know why. It was later on and I followed her up there. I was stood behind her and she had Clara in her arms. We had curtains on the upstairs windows, made out of this thick mustard-coloured material they were, and she was stood by them. Not looking out the window. They was drawn closed. She was holding this bottle of smelling salts to Clara’s nose, and the smell of it was all in the room . . . She must’ve thought it’d bring ’er back . . .

‘They came to get her. I don’t know ’ow long it took, ’ow it happened exactly. I heard ’em coming up the stairs. Two coppers. There was one of ’em, very tall, said to me, “Are you all right?” And then one of them took her arm and she walked down the stairs with them . . .’

She was crying again, but quietly, the tears simply flowing as she spoke. Polly and Sis were crying too. Jess reached over and took her aunt’s hand as tears poured down her own face.

‘See, it weren’t like – yer know, one or two you hear of get desperate, nowt to feed another babby on, roll over on it and say it were an accident. And there’s some’ll guess what might’ve happened but no one can say for certain. But our mom – Alice – she walked round the streets telling them what she’d done, pressed a pillow over ’er babby’s face ’til she went blue, and she weren’t newborn, she were a good four month by that time.

‘They wouldn’t leave us alone. Everyone knew. They were that cruel. Stones through the windows, shouting and making a display of us when we went out. Not everyone, but enough of ’em. And at school, because I’d just started going by then. My mom was a murderess so far as they was all concerned. She’d killed her child. Never mind that ’er mind was disturbed. Oh you don’t know what people can be like. Course, Louisa wasn’t there, she was still with Auntie May and Uncle Bill and they hung on to ’er after it happened. Louisa never remembered any of it too well. By the time she started at school we’d moved on. But in the beginning . . . They copped ’old of me once, bunch of kids held me down – there was this pothole in the road on the way back from the school, a real big’un, and when it rained, course it filled up with filthy water. They shoved my face in it and held me down. I thought I was going to drown. Yer can drown in a teacup, our dad used to say. ’E moved us on a few times – just nearby to begin with, but there was always someone found out where we’d gone. There was two of ’em, Doris Adcock and a Mrs Dobson. Doris ’ad these peculiar eyes . . .’ A shudder passed through her. ‘They daint ’ave one black bit in the middle like normal – there was two, sort of double. Looked more like a cat’s eyes and she frightened the life out of me. I don’t know why they did it, why they wanted to be so cruel, tormenting a man and his children. But Doris always found us, after a time. To this day I don’t know ’ow. She’d come and leave a note through the door, “I know where you are . . .” At first we’d not move too far. Round Saltley or Bordesley. I saw her once, in the street after we’d moved on, and I wet myself I were that terrified of ’er—’

‘Mom—’ Polly interrupted suddenly. ‘Is that the woman you saw, that day when you went shopping?’

Olive hesitated. ‘If it was her she’d be well into ’er eighties by now. I don’t know, Poll. It might’ve been her and it might not. Anyroad, in the end we went and lived the other side of town. Our dad only went back over that side when we was growed up. Once ’e thought everyone’d ’ve forgotten. Louisa ran off and got married the second she was asked.’ The bitterness in her voice was unmistakable. ‘Left me to it as usual.’

‘Where did they take our grandmother . . . Alice?’ Jess asked softly.

‘They put ’er in the asylum. In Birmingham first, and after we was told she’d been taken out to somewhere in Staffordshire. I don’t know why that was. I never knew any of the ins and outs. We just wanted ’er to come back to us. She was our mom. But we never saw ’er again, Louisa and me, although I think our dad went out there a couple of times. We never saw the babby, little Clara, again neither. Never ’ad her to bury so what they did with ’er I don’t know. And I never knew how our mom carried on or what state she were in after. Seven years she were there. She died in there, never came out. Pneumonia, our father said. ’E’d moved ’is new missis in with us by then, not that they was married or anything. Not ’til after Mom died.’ She seemed to notice then that she had been crying again, and wiped her eyes.

‘Oh Mom,’ Polly’s face was blotchy from her own tears. ‘What a terrible thing. Why didn’t yer tell us all before? We’d’ve understood – what yer went through and that.’

Olive gave a deep sigh. ‘I tried to put it all out of my mind once I was older – then married to Charlie. Past was past. And what good would it’ve done yer to know a thing like that? ’Specially when you was having babbies yourselves. When you turned up—’ she looked at Jess. ‘And then when you said you was expecting, out of wedlock – never mind who the father was – I just . . . It did summat to me nerves. I just couldn’t ’ave yer in the house. It was as simple as that. I know you thought it was just ’cause you was in trouble, but it weren’t that, though I was angry about yer leading Ned astray. But God knows, I’ve made mistakes in my time. You’ll’ve worked out that Ronny’s father was one of ’em. But you’re the mirror image of ’er . . . I thought history’d start repeating itself and I couldn’t even bear to look at yer, not knowing you was carrying a child. You’d come back to haunt me, that’s what it felt like. And I’ve been that frightened for you as well, Poll. I never ’ad no trouble after I had all of you, not being bad like, and I was scared of ’ow things would go then. But I had Charlie then and I was safe with ’im – solid as a rock, he was, whatever ’appened. When you started on all this talk about spirits and ghosts I thought yer mind was going . . . Don’t get that upset, love—’