The Factory Girl (32 page)

The tight expression had become one of impatience. His tone when he answered had grown harsh. ‘I've got more on my mind just now. We'll talk about it some other time.'

Her anger too was up. He'd hedged on this matter long enough. How much longer were they going to go on, no family, just the two of them? How could he be so selfish? Him and his work! That's all he cared about, that and enjoying himself, dragging her along with him, going here, going there, in the company of this friend and that, not one of them genuine, not one as good as they ought to be; they with whom he did his shady deals, who used him, and if one day they were done with him would drop him like a hot potato, or – she dreaded the thought – would shop him at a moment's notice if they looked like getting into trouble, leaving him to carry the can.

He couldn't see it, refused to see it. He thought he was in the money forever, seeing himself as well in. He'd play cards with them, well into the early hours, leaving her alone while he gambled. There'd been a number of times too when he had shut her out of a conversation with someone, making her feel she was not to be trusted, an outsider. Sometimes she felt so alone. If Caroline had lived she wouldn't have felt so alone. She wanted a baby, wanted it desperately, and this hedging of his served to infuriate her, and frustrate her, as it was doing at this moment.

‘No, Tony, I want to talk about it now!'

Startling her he leapt up, stubbing out his cigarette in the ashtray on its stand beside him. In a split second their pleasant evening had changed.

‘I'm sick of hearing about babies!' came the roar. ‘Can't you ever be satisfied with what we have? I do all I can for you, work myself into the ground for you, even put myself at risk and all you do is carp. I'm sick of it!'

Before she could stop him even to say sorry had she wanted to, he'd stalked out of the room. She thought of following him either to have this thing out with him or make some sort of appeasement but instead continued to sit there seething. He wasn't worth trying to appease.

She listened to him moving about in the bedroom. Later, dressed for outdoors in overcoat and trilby, he passed the lounge without glancing in. The door of the flat closed with a thud, his footsteps raced down the stairs to the shop and then came a fainter thud as that door too shut behind him.

Where he was off to Geraldine had no idea. Maybe to see some friend, someone she didn't know, maybe to join a card game in that person's home – not a club, for gambling was illegal though she wouldn't have put that past him, his life so on the edge of the law since their marriage. He seemed always to have enough money to gamble with, to take her places with. But it did worry her, his apparently bottomless pit of ready money. How much longer could it last? Would it all come to an end one day? Suddenly, perhaps with him being caught and found guilty, sent to prison. What would she do then? How could she ever face her family knowing what they'd say – have to hear those inevitable words, I told you so.

She sat surrounded by thoughts while the gramophone played the cheery one-step ‘Ma, He's Making Eyes At Me' running down for the want of winding, the lively song falling in pitch to become a dismal, diminishing wail, then a growl, finally falling silent before the record had reached its end.

Tony glanced at her over the newspaper he was reading at the breakfast table.

‘What would you say to a trip to Egypt, darling?'

The suggestion, coming out of the blue, made Geraldine look up from her own meal.

‘What?'

‘Egypt. Let's say sometime in April.' He leaned forward and passed the newspaper to her, now folded at the appropriate place for her to read.

‘They're saying that people are flooding out there to see the tomb this Howard Carter chap discovered last November,' he went on as she read the piece indicated. ‘Said to be filled with treasure from this pharaoh, what's-his-name, Tutankhamun. Everyone wants to see it. So what d'you say, shall we? Can't find ourselves left out in the cold when others start asking if we've seen it when they already have.'

That was Tony these days, killing himself to keep up with others. Of course she wanted to go. Who wouldn't? But all this spending as if money grew on trees, it worried her.

‘Can we really afford it? It could be awfully expensive. Should we be spending out so much?'

A peeved look had come over his face. ‘Of course we can afford it!'

‘Well, we do get through quite a bit. Too much. I just feel it can't last.'

Reaching over he grabbed the paper from her in a small show of temper. ‘You let me be the judge of what we can and can't afford. Trouble with you, Gerry, you've never got over those penny-pinching times you used to know. It's about time you forgot all that.'

‘Old habits die hard, I suppose,' she snapped, though she hadn't intended to retaliate with quite that sort of retort, practically affirming what he'd said. Any reference to her upbringing rankled and made her say stupid things.

It seemed unbelievable that in three days she and Tony would be sailing off to Egypt. April already, April 1923, so much had changed in her life since marrying him two and a half years ago. She had only two regrets: no children, and the gulf that still lay between her and her own family. In a way she was glad that a similar gulf lay between Tony and his, for the very opposite reason to hers, but in a way they were both in the same boat. He'd not had a peep from either of his parents last Christmas, and one would have thought being so estranged from them, he might have looked to hers to compensate, but he seemed not one bit inclined to.

At her insistence they'd spent Christmas Day with her family, but he had been so cold and distant, his all-too-obvious, bored manner making the atmosphere so uncomfortable that all she wanted to do the entire day was to sink into the ground with mortification.

He had wanted to go to a party where it had been planned for them all to listen in to this new fad, the wireless. He'd been so eager but she'd played up, insisting in no uncertain terms that it was time her own parents had a look in until he finally conceded with a churlishness that foretold the sort of day she would have and she had ended up wishing to God that she'd gone with him instead.

That had been almost sixteen weeks ago and she hadn't seen them since. Just after the New Year she'd gone to Mum's on the off chance, looking to make up for his behaviour and for going with him to a New Year's Eve house party instead of to them. Mum hadn't been in.

Going on to see Clara, not daring to face Mavis although her sister seemed to be doing better these days for money and was expecting her third baby, she at least found Clara at home.

With no axe to grind with Geraldine's more than generous wedding present to them of a whole year's rent in advance on a little terraced house in Belhaven Street, just the other side of Grove Road, her sister-in-law had welcomed her warmly.

She had gone there a few days after they'd moved in to find it in a dreadful state, the previous tenants not at all finicky as to cleanliness. She'd taken off her coat and hat and got down to help with the scrubbing of floors, washing of walls and windows, even to cleaning a most revolting outside loo, all the while trying not to retch at the sight and smell of it. Clara had been so grateful, and in her she knew she had an ally against Mum's constant insidious remarks that had never really diminished in their smarting results.

With Clara's house, the first time she'd been there since helping to clean it, as neat a little home as anyone could wish for and as bright as a new pin, even to the well-scrubbed window frames and door as well as the doorstep, Clara had told her that Mum was at Mavis's where she always went on Wednesdays. Geraldine had forgotten that but was glad she hadn't chosen to go to Mavis's and have the two of them to cope with.

It was a nice afternoon with Clara offering a lovely cake she had baked and her tea like nectar. She promised to tell Mum that she had gone there and Geraldine had no reason to doubt that she wouldn't, but Mum had never responded, hadn't come nigh or by her flat. Over the weeks of silence Geraldine experienced a rebellious reaction. Why put herself out to go and see Mum again if Mum couldn't be bothered to come and see her?

Even a little note to Mum had reaped no response, probably still seething over Tony's attitude on Christmas Day. But surely such a small scratch should have healed by now. It was typical of Mum to pick and pick at it until it continually bled! Thus with her nose put out of joint by those weeks of silence, the weeks had blossomed into months and the gulf had grown wider.

She hadn't even told Mum she and Tony were off to Egypt, something she would normally have ached to spread around and see eyes open with envy and awe. The eyes of those friends she imparted it to in this present existence of hers wouldn't widen a thousandth of an inch. They'd all done it at some time or other – going abroad to those of the giddy set to which she now belonged was completely commonplace, perhaps only to awaken interest if one said one was off to chart some new undiscovered jungle or follow in the footsteps of Scott or Amundsen across the still much-uncharted Antarctic.

It seemed no matter who she spoke to, they had all either been already or were about to go and discover Egypt. To be in Egypt had suddenly become fashionable. But wasn't she too about to join in the fashionable rush for the place? She could hardly wait, and Mum, if she continued to be the way she was, would be the loser by not being told!

It was the first time she'd ever sailed on a proper ship. There had been those bobbing little packets going between England and France, the route to Paris or one of the resorts popular with society types.

This huge ship had her in awe, filled with excitement, hardly able to believe that she was about to travel in it to somewhere she'd never even dreamed she'd ever see. It was like a great floating hotel. The grand, ornate, central staircase you could watch people ascending and descending all day long. The high-ceilinged, brightly lit ballroom with its magnificent clean lines of art deco echoed dance music from an impeccable orchestra while men in their evening clothes and women in fashionably short, glitteringly beaded dresses that far outdid hers glided about the small dance floor or else kicked up their heels to the brand-new dances like the Black Bottom, the Jog Trot, the Vampire and the Shimmy.

There was the most fantastic lounge and an almost intimidating dining room where cutlery tinkled gently and voices droned with such a richness of quality that she felt she only dared to whisper to Tony in case her humble origins were detected, despite the odd explosion of some light ripple of laughter or high-toned, refined exclamation. There were people who milled about with names like Ponsonby and Fotheringay and Lord this and Lady that. And all the while came the regular thumping of the ship's engines until finally she got so accustomed to it she forgot to hear it, the only time to be aware of it was to lull her to sleep at night, listening to its subdued beat with knots reduced for the benefit of slumbering passengers.

Of course they were well segregated from third class – Tony had seen to that, spending money on this trip that had frightened the wits out of her and made her wonder just how much money he did make other than legitimately, and again what would happen to her if he ever got caught at what he was doing. But she forgot all this once on board, the big ship gliding out into the English Channel and on to the Bay of Biscay.

She'd heard ghastly tales of the Bay of Biscay ever since Tony had decided on this trip, of storms that induced violent bouts of seasickness. But it seemed almost for her benefit alone that those terrible waves remained virtually pond-like the whole way, giving her not one single moment of discomfort.

There were parties and dancing, the Captain's Dinner, deck games by the score, endless entertainment, then relaxing in deck chairs, a continuous round of eating such delicious food as she had never before tasted that she was sure she would be quite fat by the end of the trip with her breasts far larger than the accepted flatness of the day. But for now she would enjoy every second and everything that was thrown her way and damn the pounds she put on and damn the cost of it all. It seemed the motto ‘Live for the moment and forget tomorrow' was the normal pursuit of everyone on board, so why not join them?

With the ship moving steadily towards the Mediterranean, there were warm night breezes that merely ruffled the hair so long as one kept well out of the stiff wind created by the ship's own progress and she felt like a film star. Again and again she needed to pinch herself to see if this was really her participating in all of this, and every now and again a twinge of utmost excitement and elation would deal an unexpected punch deep in the pit of her stomach until she wanted to leap for sheer joy, though of course she never did. And show herself up among all these seasoned travellers to whom sailing the high seas was probably commonplace? Never.

Tony, however, was treated to it nightly in the privacy of their cabin and took great delight in hearing her explosions of joy.

‘I just can't believe it's me here,' she trilled, cuddling up to him as they lay in the somewhat narrow bed of their cabin, its narrowness bringing them closer together.

‘You wait until you see Egypt,' he promised as though he'd been there before, although he hadn't.

‘I can't wait,' she sighed. ‘To think – me going to Egypt!'

They made love as they had almost every night on board, with pleasurable abandonment, like during those early months of marriage. Unless too weary from dancing and parties so that they fell straight to sleep on hitting the pillows, they continued making love with such passion as the ship sailed on its way she was sure she must conceive, then wondered if she really wanted to – a baby would put a stop to all this sort of life, enjoying it so much that all she wanted at the moment was for it to go on and on. They could always have a nanny, but there'd be months during which she would slowly get fatter, finally too fat to go anywhere. She decided it be best left to fate and to make the most of what she had, as Tony had so often advised in his more provoked moments.