Limehouse, 1945–55
Dolly Farrell went to the bad early on in life, but when she was born, a blank page for history to write on, she already had one major distinction: she came into the world just as Adolf Hitler left it. She was yanked, already screaming, from her mother’s body on the same day the beaten Fuhrer, trapped in his Berlin bunker by the oncoming Allies, decided that the party was over, and put a bullet in his brain.
‘And not a minute too soon. Fucking shame the crazy bastard didn’t do that five years earlier,’ said Sam, Dolly’s father, as he heard the news while smoking a celebratory Player’s down in the sitting room of their rented terrace house. He could hear the new baby bawling its head off upstairs and thought in admiration, Jesus, the mouth on that kid.
My son, he thought, and smiled to himself.
The Farrells were Catholic; not practising as such – there was no church on Sundays for them, no confession – but more or less going by the Catholic creed they’d been raised with. Which meant that this first child, now Dad was demobbed and home from the war and wanting to work on the railways like his dad before him, was going to be followed by many more.
Sam went up after the midwife had done the necessary, cleaned all the muck away, and there was his wife Edie, looking flushed and exhausted, holding the new baby in a blue blanket. Of course it was blue. The blanket was blue because Sam had wanted a boy and refused to countenance anything else. He’d been convinced that the bulge on Edie’s front contained his son, who would play footie with him and be a big healthy lad, take after his dad.
‘My son’s in there,’ he’d once said happily, ecstatic that his wife had got pregnant so quick after he’d come home from the war. Hadn’t expected to live through it, not really, Adolf throwing so much shit at them all, but he had, and he’d climbed down off the train, come home, dropped his trousers and bingo! There was Edie, pregnant.
She’d wanted a girl, of course, but he’d said, ‘No, it’s a boy. Course it’s a boy,’ and he wouldn’t let her get pink stuff for the spare room, only the blue, he was that certain he was right. Sam was always right.
And now look at this. A fucking girl.
Edie’s face was sheepish; she knew he’d be disappointed.
‘It’s a girl, Sam,’ she said quietly.
‘Ah, never mind,’ said Sam, fag still in hand, exhaling an irritable plume of smoke all over the new baby as he peered in for a look. ‘Ugly little runt, ain’t she?’ he joked with a grin. Then he looked at Edie and gave her a quick peck on the cheek. ‘A boy next time, eh?’
Edie did have a boy next time – two years after Dolly arrived – and Sam got royally pissed down the Dog and Duck celebrating with his mates and then reeled home and clouted Edie when she commented on the state of him.
It was a lesson learned – after that, Edie didn’t say a word when he got drunk, which he often did after a hard day on the railways. He’d started in the signal box after the war, but it was all hours and he didn’t like being cooped up in there, pulling levers and listening for the many different-sounding bells. It was all too complicated. So he applied for another job and went out on to the tracks as a wheeltapper. He liked that, all his mates were around him and they toasted him, slapped him on the back, said what a great feller he was.
Sam thought he was a very great feller indeed. After the boy was born – Nigel, they named him – Sam lost no time in climbing on board Edie and impregnating her a third time. A girl this time, Sarah, and then he got to work on Edie again and – at last! – another boy to be proud of, little Dick. After that, Sam put his own little dick to good use, and then along came Sandy, who was a boy but a bit sickly, prone to the sniffles.
‘She shouldn’t have many more,’ said the midwife, who’d attended all five of Edie’s births and could see that it was dragging the poor cow down. Not only having the kids, but on a railwayman’s wage it was a fight to keep them all clothed and fed. Edie was struggling, anyone could see that. If they wanted to. Which Sam didn’t.
Sam wanted a big Catholic family, seven minimum.
‘Mind your own fucking business,’ he told the midwife.
Who’d asked for her opinion anyway? He was keeping the kids fed, just about, although of course he had to have his fags and beer first. After all, he was the breadwinner, wasn’t he? There had to be something in it for him.
After Edie’s fifth pregnancy there was a stillbirth, then a miscarriage, then another stillbirth. Tired, depressed, Edie finally said to her husband, enough. He would have to use something if he wanted to go on enjoying marital relations. That earned her another clout around the ear. He was from a good Catholic family, Sam told her in a rage; what she was talking about, wasn’t that a sin?
‘I can’t go on with it, Sam,’ said Edie in tears. ‘It ain’t fair.’
‘It’s God’s will,’ said Sam, and that was an end to it. He was doing well on the railways, he was responsible for a small gang of men on the tracks now, his pay was better than before. There was no reason he shouldn’t enjoy his own wife and have the big Catholic family he wanted. No reason at all.
‘I’m so tired,’ whinged Edie.
He was sick of the sound of her voice, always whining on about what a hard life she had. He supported her, didn’t he? Treated her all right. Wasn’t that enough?
Nothing would deter Sam from making her perform her wifely duties. Back from the pub, he would fall into bed and right away he’d be on her. Sometimes she protested, and then it turned into straightforward rape, but if ever Sam felt a twinge of conscience over that he salved it quickly – because he knew that a man could never rape his wife, he had legal rights over her. Conjugal rights, wasn’t that a fact?
There came another miscarriage.
Another stillbirth.
Edie seemed to shrink into herself, become like a shadow. She lost weight and her face was pale with misery; she was no longer the pretty, engaging and hopeful girl he’d married, and Sam felt cheated.
‘I don’t know what the fuck you want from me,’ he raged at her. ‘You’ve got a bloody good earner looking after you, you’ve even got help around the house now Dolly’s getting older. What the hell do you want?’
Edie never answered that question openly, but in her head she did: she wanted him to leave her alone. She wanted him to go out one day and never come home. That was what she wanted, and if she said as much he would kill her stone dead. So she didn’t; couldn’t. Worn out by the misery of endless pregnancies and bloody miscarriages and devastating stillbirths, she stepped back from the world. And in her heart she grew to hate him, her Sam, once her best love, her only love. All that had turned to dust.