The War Widows (16 page)

Lily blushed at the memory of the row they’d received. Ivy had been hysterical with rage. But she lied now. ‘They understood how these things can happen.’

‘We are in big disgrace.’ Su butted in. ‘No one is speaking to us.’

‘It’s not that bad,’ Lily countered. ‘Oh, I see, you have a gramophone,’ she pointed out, hoping to distract Maria. ‘What music do you like?’

‘Gilbert and Sullivan, and opera. You’d like to hear some?’ Maria jumped up and found a record from a case, winding up her handset.

It was something dramatic, played loud and so sad that as they listened, tears streamed down Maria’s face.

‘When I hear this I fill buckets with my tears. You like it? Poor Madame Butterfly is deserted by Mr Pinkerton. I think of Marco and all the lost boys. I think of so many sad things. War is terrible.’

Su was sniffling into her hanky. ‘Poor Mr Stan. We all lose our men in the war.’ Now they were all weeping. It must be the wine and the music.

‘Have you anything to gladden us up a bit before we go home?’ Lily asked, seeing gloom descending like a fog.

Maria found some ballet music, much more cheerful, from the
Nutcracker Suite.

‘I watch the ballets when they come to the King’s. I clean the stalls and watch the rehearsals. As soon as she is clean, I take Rosaria to the dancing class. It’s never too soon to learn to dance. Thank you for coming. Will you come again?’

‘Only if you will come to us,’ said Su. ‘It’s only fair, isn’t it, Lily? Titty for tat!’

Lily sighed. What was Mother going to say to
that
?

‘What did I tell you? I knew they couldn’t be trusted out alone.’ The righteous wrath of Ivy on the war path was a sight to behold. The bedraggled bunch had arrived back full of apologies and explanations. A week later she was still going on about the pram theft.

‘It wasn’t their fault,’ said Lily, doing her best to smooth the situation to no avail. ‘I should have known not to leave it outside. I’m sorry. Maria Santini’s given you a pushchair in its place.’

‘It’s just a greasy hunk of tin. I bet she sold the Silver Cross on the black market before the night was out. They’re worth a fortune. How am I going to take Neville to the park?’

‘Oh, give it a rest, Ivy. Let him walk and build up his legs. You coddle that bairn. It’s not as if you’re going to be needing the pram again after what the doctor said about your insides.’ Esme couldn’t resist a snipe.

‘Mother! That’s private business,’ Ivy sniffed. ‘I’m sick of this lot cluttering up the place. Listen to that Joy making so much fuss in the playpen. It’s like bedlam.’

‘If you hadn’t shouted at her mother and sent her upstairs in tears perhaps it would be a bit quieter,’ snapped Lily.

‘I’m not giving into her,’ said Esme, turning her back and plugging her ears from the din. Joy was howling in protest at being caged into the wooden frame. Dina was yelling now too. ‘It’s for her own good. Truby King says all children must learn to be obedient and I’ve got tea to see to. Polly’s gone home. Shush! Your mother won’t be long.’ Ana had offered to help out on the stall to make up for taking board and lodging. Dina was missing her.

Esme couldn’t think for the noise of the screaming infants. Lily was hovering, wanting to give in to her, but Esme waved her back. ‘You’ll only spoil them.’

Dina’s cheeks were puce with rage as she rattled the bars, refusing to be pacified by a line of Neville’s wooden cars laid out for her amusement.

‘That’s right, you tell her,’ yelled Ivy from the door. ‘It’s good for them to scream. They have to learn who’s the boss of the playpen. Neville was never any bother.’

‘How did you get on at the clinic? What did the doctor say?’ Esme asked.

‘Just a tickle in his throat,’ said Ivy, who never took any chances with Neville’s health. ‘You can never be too careful, and what with a house full of foreigners you don’t know
what
germs they are breeding. He told me to get his hair cut. But it might rob him of his strength.’

Lily bent down to lift Dina out of the pen. ‘Come on there, it’s not natural to cage them up like puppies.’ She smiled sweetly.

Ivy was scowling down at her with a withering ‘What do you know about it?’ sort of look. ‘You don’t have to clear up after their trail of havoc or wipe sticky fingers up the stairs. Nothing is safe from wandering fingers. They’re into cupboards and through doors in a flash. Those two could roam around unchecked and teach our Neville bad habits.’ She paused to nail her mother-in-law with a sharp look. ‘How long do we have to put up with these women in our house? It’s been weeks now. Time they were finding themselves rooms of their own.’

‘You know they won’t get rooms to let with small children in tow,’ Lily answered, jiggling Dina on her knee. She was getting far too fond of those youngsters, in Ivy’s opinion.

‘I don’t see why they should be living at our expense,’ Ivy snapped. ‘You don’t know the half of it, trailing in and out as they please.’

Esme stood back and let them bicker. It was not an unreasonable request for Levi and Ivy to want things to go back as they were. At first they were too shocked to turn the visitors out of the door. Now the Christmas season was upon them, such as it was, with meagre rations to share and snow up to their back door. How could she send them packing in the snow?

Every night she struggled with her conscience over how to deal with the tissue of lies they were building around these girls. Every night she knelt on the linoleum
and did her eternal accounts before the One who knew the secrets of all hearts.

On the one hand, Ivy was right. Esme had gone beyond the call of duty in taking them in the first place. To her credit she had fed them and protected them from public shame, sorted out their paperwork with the authorities and perjured herself in the process. To her credit she had taken in foreigners and it sometimes sounded like the Tower of Babel with them jabbering away to their babies in Greek and Burmese and pidgin English. She made them part of the family, even helped them out financially to start with. Lily was befriending them and now they were all pally with the Santini woman, another foreigner, and a Catholic too, from the ice-cream parlour.

Every Sunday they all took themselves off to her flat for tea so the girls could play with their new friend. They came back scented with garlic, wine and other funny smells. It was not right on the Lord’s Sabbath.

‘All this gallivanting on the Lord’s Day, these spaghetti Sundays…you needn’t go with them. You ought to be with your young man,’ Esme argued.

‘I’ve only been twice and Walt doesn’t mind. I’ve never missed church yet. Marco is now permanently in Moses Heights. Maria is glad of company.’

‘I should think she’s got enough company in that family. They say Santinis breed like rabbits.’

It was Lily who argued that it was no different from them all going to visit other Winstanleys for Sunday tea or entertaining company themselves after church. Esme didn’t hold with going on buses into town in the
evening after dark. Lily kept borrowing the van to give them lifts. They were not a taxi service.

That was another thing. The Greek wanted to take a bus to Manchester to light candles in some church on Bury New Road-Greek Orthodox, would you believe, a church full of golden idols-while the Burmese took herself off to St Matthew’s parish church with the parishioners from Green Lane. She was driven back in a fancy car and that got Ivy all het up about nothing. Zion Chapel, it appeared, was not good enough for them now. Esme blamed the Eyetie for putting fancy ideas in their heads.

Part of her struggle each night with the internal workings of this spiritual book-keeping was to weigh up the debits, as well as the pluses.

First, there was the bad grace with which she did all the creditable stuff. It was hard to smile and look relaxed when you were harbouring your son’s secret lovers.

Ivy was always on guard duty, reminding her of any infringements to their rules, any liberties taken with Neville’s toys, and the loss of the big pram was hard to explain away. She watched to see if they used the wrong rations, or left lights on, or the paraffin heater.

Esme had to admit they hardly put a foot wrong. They crept around the house in carpet slippers, made no noise, were very polite and deferential when there was company. They were eager to find work. They saw to their own washing when everyone else used the electric agitator in the outhouse. They kept their rations in a separate cupboard and didn’t eat much, shared any shopping and delivering and mending duties. They paid their way as best they could.

To her credit, she bought the little ones warm clothing with her coupons and Lily was knitting jumpers for them. They were doing their Christian duty to ‘suffer the little children…’ It wasn’t easy.

There was an atmosphere growing that she didn’t know how to deal with. Ivy was rude and Levi let her go unchecked. The foreigners were pretty girls, full of life, and that reminded her she was getting old and fat and not as fit as she once was.

‘Freddie would be proud of you, Mother, but enough’s enough,’ Ivy would scold, that shrill voice bending her ear.

What if they were entertaining angels unaware? What if this was some spiritual scholarship test the family had to pass? What if she had to make up in life for all of Freddie’s failings?

Yet there was something about having a house full of toddlers and young people, the rush of feet on the stairs and laughter of children, that gave her heart a lift better than Wincarnis and feet up by the fire. It was a sign her life wasn’t over yet and she was still needed.

The girls lived up in the attic room and sometimes when they were out she crept upstairs to peek at the sleeping infants and gave herself a pat on the back that she had done right by them all.

They were her grandchildren, illegitimate or not. Only the four Winstanleys knew that secret. If some of her neighbours were curious and wondered why the widows were staying on it was easy to talk about room shortages and bombed-out houses down south, and
how families must help each other out. It felt right as she was saying it, but was it another debit?

Telling lies was not in her nature; white lies told to protect the good Winstanley name were a burden she must bear to preserve their respectability. Surely that wasn’t a debit on her Eternal account? They were honourable lies, she argued.

‘Oh Lord!’ she prayed. ‘You’d better balance my books yourself. It’s not easy. Show me the way to righteousness.’

Lily handed over the child into Esme’s arms, the Concertina child who bore the name she had always hated but hadn’t the heart to confess. She plonked her down in the playpen again to a wail of protests just as Ana came in from the hall with Levi, back from the stall.

‘What is Dina doing in the cage? I told you, no cages. I see too many cages in war. Cages no good for children.’ Ana pulled her out again and the child, hot and bothered, looked pleased.

Suddenly Esme caught a glimpse of Freddie, defiant and naughty, with those blue eyes looking up at her. It was like seeing a ghost.

‘I have to keep her under control for her own good. She might put something in her mouth,’ she argued, but Ana was angry, her eyes flashing.

‘She is my baby. Dina is too big for a cage.’

‘Don’t you talk to Mother like that,’ said Ivy. ‘Does she argue with customers like this? They won’t understand a word she says.’

Levi shrugged and left the room, not wanting to get involved in the bickering of women. Ana was jabbering away to the child in Greek.

Esme’s heart lurched to see Freddie in the girl. How could she let this bit of him go, perhaps never to see her again? How could this bit of her son grow up never knowing her granny? There would only be Neville left, and he looked just like Ivy with curls.

‘I wish you would speak English so we can all join in,’ Esme said with a sniff. ‘Speaking two languages must confuse the child. We don’t want her in the backward school.’

Susan had taken her teaching certificate to the Education Department Office to find work with a nursery unit. She was no trouble. Susan had British manners and a politeness that charmed people, and she knew her place.

‘We speak home tongue to them and you speak your tongue and they know which is which,’ said Ana with defiance. This one didn’t know her place yet. There was something rock-like in those green eyes that could not be moved. ‘Konstandina is forward girl, not backward girl. You see.’

All this argy-bargy was making her head spin. Perhaps the kiddie was too old for a playpen after all. It was too strange and she was frightened. The bairn had had so many changes in her life.

‘I am trying to make Concertina safe from fire, and from Neville when he’s got a mood on him,’ Esme mouthed slowly. ‘I have to get on with my jobs. I am not a nursemaid,’ she said, and hoped it would be the end of the matter.

‘I know. You good woman but my Dina must be free to explore. Susan says it is good for children to explore.
In my country they had white sand and green hills and fields to play in, plenty of aunties and uncles to watch over them,’ Ana sighed.

‘Well, this is Grimbleton and my house, and I don’t want any more ornaments being shovelled into the bin. You need eyes in the back of your head, Anastasia, with that one.’ There it was said. ‘She will have to go into a nursery if this carries on.’

‘I take her to watch dancing class soon,’ Ana smiled, and went to make herself a cup of tea with no milk.

‘Never, she’s nobbut a baby still,’ Esme said. Where did this girl get these notions from?

‘Maria is taking Rosa, and Susan think good to let girls dance to music. What Joy has, Dina must have,’ she said, looking pleased with herself.

That’ll be a waste of money, lass, the kiddy can’t even walk yet, she thought, but for once she bit her tongue. It was a struggle but it would look good in her Eternal account book. Joy was a pudding, a lump of lard. How a tiny bird like Susan could produce such a round thing was way beyond her but the Winstanleys were big-boned and hefty.

‘Whatever you like,’ she managed. ‘But you’ll have to pay for it yourself.’ It was a struggle to keep her gob buttoned up when Ivy was hovering, looking daggers.