The Factory Girl (11 page)

She glanced at her daughter who had settled herself in her father's chair to read the
Evening Standard
he'd put aside to go to bed.

Geraldine was the only person handy whom she felt she could turn to. She'd kept her worries bottled up for so long she felt she might soon explode. There were people she could have confided in. There were her sisters, Lizzie and Daisy, but they might only pop in once a fortnight, maybe not even that often. They didn't live all that far away, Lizzie in Arbery Road and Daisy in Antill Road, but they had their own families. She could have gone round to them but she too had a family to look after. It was nice when they met, but they weren't here this evening and Geraldine was.

Mavis came Thursday mornings, had a sandwich and left mid-afternoon to go home and cook Tom's tea for when he came home from work. She had no babies yet to take up her time, her first due sometime in June. She'd visit Mavis on Tuesdays, tomorrow in fact, but things had built up so much inside her that being as Geraldine wasn't out this Monday evening she felt she had to confide in her or go potty with worry about Jack. It had been building up all day since Jack had almost not gone to the docks, ashamed of his condition, and she couldn't keep it inside herself any longer.

Biting her lip, she let the stocking she was wearily darning after the usual Monday washday fall idle in her lap. The washing now hung on several lines strung across the kitchen, the weather being too damp for it to hang outside. On Wednesday it would be ready for ironing and then airing on a clothes horse around the old kitchen range, that in this weather was lit although they had the gas stove for cooking. By the time Mavis came on Thursday it would all be folded away out of sight and the house nice and tidy for her.

‘I've been ever so worried about your dad lately, Gel,' she began and saw Geraldine look up at her as though in surprise. ‘It's 'is waterworks,' she hurried on.

Geraldine gave a shrug and a smile. ‘We're used to him.'

‘I know, love. It's not that what worries me, it's that it's getting worse and I really am worried about 'im. I said 'e can't go on like this and should see the doctor but yer dad thinks they'll send 'im to 'ospital and he'll be kept in and lose time off work. We can't afford that, Gel, not if it went into weeks. I keep wondering what yer dad's got wrong with 'im. It's gone on so long, it can't be just a matter of being given a few tablets ter clear it up.'

Geraldine put the newspaper down, aware something was seriously wrong. ‘You've got to get him to see the doctor.'

‘You try makin' your dad do anythink 'e don't want to do.'

‘Then you've got to put your foot down, Mum. If it's not getting any better there must be something badly wrong. You're going to have to, don't matter what he says.'

Her mother sighed and went back to her darning. It'd take some doing getting Dad to do what was needed, but Geraldine was right.

‘I bloody told yer, didn't I?'

Jack burst into the kitchen, flinging his cap down onto a chair, following it with his jacket and checkered cloth choker.

‘Bloody doctor! “I'm sending you to hospital, Mr Glover. Get them to 'ave a look at you. I think you might 'ave some trouble with your prostrate gland.” That's what 'e told me, all bloody clever-like. “And that'll be two and sixpence!” So I've just 'anded 'im 'alf a crown what I've worked me bloody guts out for, just ter be told 'e's sendin' me to bloody orspital. What time've I got ter go ter bloody orspitals?'

Hilda looked up from her Wednesday ironing on the kitchen table, an old blanket and sheet yellowed from much use of the iron being spread across its surface.

‘You are going?'

‘I bloody ain't!'

He strode over to the mantleshelf above the kitchen range and picked up a taper. Lighting it from the fire that was helping to air what had already been ironed and generally keep the place warm against a cold, wet April, he held the taper to a hand-rolled cigarette he'd extracted from several in a tin box.

‘I told 'im what ter do wiv 'is bloody orspitals. I asked 'im if he was ready ter pay fer me bein' out of work, and per'aps all fer nothink. He told me I could be very ill if I didn't take 'is bloody advice. Well, I'd sooner be ill than lose me work.'

Hilda put the iron back on its trivet in front of the range to warm up again, doing it with a sharp, angry thump. ‘Yer will lose work if yer fall ill, won't yer? And yer might not be well enough ter go back ever if yer get seriously ill because yer wouldn't take the doctor's advice. Yer might even lose yer job. And all because yer won't see sense.'

He was unmoved. ‘And where's the money comin' from ter pay the orspital fees then? Tell me that, Mrs bloody Know-All.'

She was really angry now. It had taken her all this time to get him even to go to the doctor, and now this.

‘You're the only know-all round 'ere. I tell yer this, Jack, if you fall really ill because you ain't got the sense to at least 'ave yerself looked at proper, I ain't goin' ter struggle on nothink to try and feed this family. I'll go to one of me sisters, or me brother, and stay there and you can fend for yerself. What if yer died 'cos yer didn't take medical advice? What if yer've got somethink what could kill yer and you not knowing, but what could have been cured if yer took notice? I tell yer, Jack, you go and see an 'ospital or I won't be responsible for yer.'

With that she grabbed up the now heated iron, fingers protected from the handle by a thick wad of cloth, and began swishing the thing back and forth across the pillowcase she was smoothing, in her anger her elbow going like a piston rod.

Jack watched her for a moment, belligerence fading. When he spoke again his voice was dreary and defeated. ‘Yer don't understand, ole girl. There's lots of unrest in the docks over pay. There's talk of goin' on strike. If that 'appens it could be weeks with no money comin' in. I can't afford ter be off from work just at the moment.'

The threat was enough to make her stop ironing and look at him as he continued, ‘Things could get bad. Prices are risin' and pay ain't keepin' up with 'em. Everyone's struggling. This land they promised ter be fit fer heroes ain't what they said it'd be. There's unrest in the mines too. We're 'eading fer trouble all round and it ain't a time ter go worryin' about meself.'

It was another month before she could tell anyone about him, bottling it up inside her until it felt she might burst. Finally she told Geraldine, once again being the nearest person handy. Her daughter listened with concern but there was no advice she could offer, saying that what Dad said was true and he knew best about himself and his situation.

Now it was Geraldine's turn to fret and worry. Maybe Mum had thought of her as being unsympathetic but what could she do? She could hardly go to Dad and demand he do something about himself. Now she was the one bottling it up. It wasn't the sort of thing you talked about. ‘Trouble with his waterworks' to people asking what was wrong if he did go to hospital would provoke an instant grin, striking the enquirer as funny. People would naturally want to know what was wrong with him. That meant lies and evasions. Better keep it to herself, but like her mother she'd become worried sick about him.

Finally she told Tony, it coming out by accident. That Saturday in May was wet and for something to do they'd gone to a lovely restaurant, going there in his car. The meal over, coffee and brandy having arrived, they were talking of the numbers out of work which promoted a comment from her on her own father's plight, how his sort of work was always so erratic and how if he did have to go into hospital her mother didn't know how they would manage. Immediately after it came out she wanted to bite her tongue off as he asked what was wrong with her father. She couldn't bring herself to lie to him and told the truth but he didn't laugh or even grin. He shook his head sadly, not lifting his eyes from the brandy glass he was toying with.

‘It's unfair that a man must be afraid of losing his job because his health is in jeopardy. This country is so ungrateful. We were all led to believe we'd return to a better country after beating the Hun. Instead it seems the world has been turned topsy-turvy. I wish I could help your father.'

She tilted her head in silent agreement to the sad inevitability of what he'd been saying, and for a while they sat on without speaking, each taking sips of their brandy to help fill the hiatus.

He looked up suddenly. ‘Geraldine, I do have the means to help your father over this difficult period so that if he is told he must go into hospital, he can do so without any worries.'

She looked at him aghast. What he was referring to was money. She hadn't meant for him to offer money and squirmed in embarrassment at having virtually brought the subject up. ‘Tony, I was never asking you for—'

‘I know that. This is my own idea. I'd like to help. After all, I intend to marry you. He'll be my father-in-law eventually. Who else better to help?'

She remained feeling awkward. They'd spoken of an autumn wedding and Tony had already taken it that he would pay for it all – a fact that had immediately annoyed her father when told. ‘Who do 'e think 'e is? If I can't afford ter sort out me own daughter's weddin', what sort of man am I? I ain't 'aving us looked down on like we was paupers, someone else offerin' ter pay and slinging their money about like they was better'n us.'

Tony had gone very quiet when she told him her father's sentiments, though not in those exact words of course – she knew better than that. Even so, he was upset.

‘I want my future wife to have the wedding she deserves, several wedding cars, a decent reception, plenty of high-class food, a big three-tiered bridal cake, a lovely bridal gown, all the trimmings. Why should you have to put up with second best to please your father, with him having to scrape the bottom of the barrel to pay for it when I can afford better for you? I don't want to be disrespectful to him but it is our wedding. You're going to be my wife. I ought to have a say in it.'

From then on there'd been friction between him and her family which struck her as very unfair being that all Tony had been trying to do was his best by her. Now having unintentionally let slip her father's present state of health, it seemed he'd seen a way to heal the wound, but offering to pay for Dad to stay in hospital if it came to that was only rubbing salt into it, or worse, opening the cut even more, knowing how Dad felt about being helped out by someone else. Being made to eat humble pie, as he'd see it.

‘I don't think you should say anything to him,' she said hastily. ‘For one thing he'll know I've been blabbing about him and it's something he'd rather people didn't know about. Understandable when you come to think of it – a sort of delicate subject. For another, it'll give his pride a knock having someone assume he's too hard up for money to take care of himself, and us. That's how he'll see it.'

After a while, Tony shrugged although rather reluctantly, and she was glad that he didn't return to the subject again. Had he done so it would have put her back up and maybe started an argument.

Whereas their engagement in January should have made her utterly certain of him, she was growing anxious of it all falling apart. He seemed to sense it and did all he could to avoid any cross words that might cause that to happen. She sometimes wondered if he wasn't as terrified as she of their breaking up – they being from different backgrounds, the slightest jolt might so easily cause it to happen. It made them both edgy and she could hardly wait for autumn when they would be husband and wife with no more need to fear such things.

Geraldine had no idea if their courting was the same as other couples. She only had Mavis and even then felt embarrassed when asking her what she and Tom got up to in those days.

‘What yer mean,
did anything
?'

‘Well, you know, getting lovey-dovey. What did you do?'

‘Kissed and cuddled, I suppose. What do you want ter know for?'

‘It's just that, well, me and Tony kiss and cuddle, but we don't … Did you go any further?'

‘That's none of your business.'

‘I just … need to know. So I know what me and Tony do is what courting couples usually do.'

Mavis had eyed her with suspicious alarm. ‘You two ain't been up ter tricks, 'ave yer? You ain't got yerself in trouble?'

‘No, of course not!' She'd become angry. ‘What d'you take me for?'

‘Because if you 'ave—'

‘I ain't! Because I've never 'ad the chance.' In anger and confusion she'd lapsed back into her old speech. ‘We don't do enough fer that sort of thing to 'appen to me.'

For a second Mavis had looked pityingly at her. ‘You mean he ain't never tried it on?' she said in a way that intimated Tony couldn't truly be in love with her. ‘Don't he ever get all worked up an' trembly when he's wiv yer?'

He had tried it on, as Mavis put it, last summer a month or two after they'd started going out together. They'd been strolling in Hyde Park on a cool evening, having listened with a good audience to music being played by soldiers of a Guards regiment in the bandstand. They'd finally come away as the band finished and the audience dispersed and sought a more secluded place as all lovers do.

After the music all had been quiet. The soft shadows of that summer night had spread themselves across the park to enfold leafy copses in darkness. It was to one of these that Anthony had led her, the two of them sinking down onto a small, dry, grassy patch well hidden from any passer-by and filled with the warm dank breath of last year's undergrowth. He'd gently kissed her and as she returned his kisses, something inside her responded in a way she didn't understand and which frightened her a little. He began to tremble and it occurred to her that he might be taking ill, the evening not so cool as to make him shiver. Then his kiss hardened against her lips as he began to ease her back until she was lying beneath him. Thinking about the damp from the grass penetrating her blouse, she became aware that his hand was cupping her breast, the other easing her skirt up above her knees.