Marie had been to her parents’ to collect her daughter, but they didn’t go straight home. She had a small job to finish at a house in Steeple Street and, giving Violet a bag of chips to ease her hunger, even though she had eaten with her grandparents, she worked until the job was finished. Sizing the walls ready for papering and painting the skirting boards with primer were tiring tasks, and her muscles were stiff with fatigue when they reached home at nine.
Marie had promised herself that, if she could stay awake long enough for the washing boiler to heat the water, she’d have a soak in the bath before bed. She filled the boiler and lit the gas under it, and dragged the galvanized bath from where it hung on the coalhouse door. Fighting sleep she sprinkled some scented crystals into the bath and prepared to wait. As she walked through the hall with her night clothes and a towel, an official-looking letter on the hall table caught her eye. It must have come by second post. She was curious but she settled Violet into bed and dealt with the dishes before sitting down to read it. The contents made her gasp. The rent was in arrears and if they weren’t cleared in four weeks they would lose their tenancy.
Quickly swallowing the fear, confident there had been a mistake, she went to the sideboard to find her rent book – the book she left on the window sill every week for the rent collector to take the money and mark the book. Nothing had been paid for weeks. Foolishly she never checked the book for receipt and signature. Someone must have taken the money before the collector arrived.
‘Ivor!’ she said aloud. The twins wouldn’t dare. Not the rent. Only Ivor would be foolish enough to believe he could gamble with it and return it before it was missed!
What could she do? There was no spare money to clear it. There was barely enough to pay the weekly bills. She would have to take time off work and go to the town hall and plead for an opportunity to pay off the arrears week by week. There was no sign of either the boys or of Ivor and, turning off the gas and forgetting about her luxurious bath, she ate a sandwich of marmite and drank a cup of cocoa and went to bed.
She couldn’t sleep, her mind was too active, stimulated by all that had happened. Several times she went down to see if the boys were home. She tried not to think of where Ivor might be. Spending their rent money on another woman? Visions of a young woman, a cross between her sister and Rita Hayworth, came to mind but somehow it no longer hurt. She had to get away and make a home for herself, the twins and Violet. She knew the twins wouldn’t want to go with her. They were not yet fifteen and to them Ivor, with his easygoing ways, was sure to be a more attractive prospect than her with her apparently futile attempts at guidance.
She had to face the fact that, if she decided to leave, Royston and Roger would almost certainly choose to stay with their step-father. These days he seemed to take a pride in their idleness and consider their escapades a joke, convinced they were nothing more than childish devilment. He often said that he couldn’t criticize them as he had been worse at their age. It had been a joke, given the comfortable life he had led until the death of his parents, a privileged life. He’d have had no need to steal or poach fish. But perhaps Jennie was right, and he would change if the finances became his own responsibility. The thought of leaving was frightening. She knew the twins would give her a hard time, and how could she leave the home where she and Kenneth, her first husband, had been so happy, the house in which the children had been born?
She gave a huge sigh that seemed to come from the very depth of her being. It was hopeless. Leaving her home and starting again without Ivor was nothing more than a foolish dream. How could she leave, wash her hands of him and pretend not to care? ‘Better or worse’ wasn’t a mindless promise, no matter how many times she pretended that it could be broken. Besides, with no money and in debt how could she begin to look for a fresh place to live? What landlord would trust her?
She heard the boys come in at eleven o’clock and went down to see them. ‘Where’s your father?’ she asked, the oft-repeated phrase seeming to echo in the air around them.
Both boys shrugged. ‘We had a row and went out, he was here then.’
‘What did you row about? You haven’t lost your jobs again, have you?’
They looked at each other rather sheepishly and she demanded to know what had happened. ‘The day can’t get much worse, so tell me.’ They glanced at each other again but still said nothing. ‘I worked all day and then most of the evening,’ she told them then. ‘I came home to find the house empty, no note to tell me where you were. No idea where your father is, and then I found that the rent money has been stolen. Not just this week, but for more than six weeks. So come on, let’s have it. Nothing you can tell me can be worse than all that.’
‘We got caught shoplifting,’ Royston said.
‘It’s not fair,’ Roger predictably wailed, tears not far away. ‘We were only looking.’
Marie sank into a chair and stared at them.
‘Fool, wasn’t I, to think it couldn’t get worse. Well swallow this, you stupid, stupid boys. Two weeks and we’ll be homeless. And that, with all the hours I work…’ she said glaring at Roger, ‘is definitely not fair!’ She walked around the small room, pushing chairs under the table, bringing them out again. ‘And where’s your father?’ she demanded again of no one in particular.
‘We don’t know,’ Royston muttered. Both boys looked stricken, staring at her as though she were a stranger. ‘Is that true? We’ll have to move out?’
‘We’ll be homeless?’ Roger whispered.
‘Where will we go? Where will we sleep?’
She regretted blurting it out so suddenly the moment she had spoken, but decided that, having done so, she had to tell them the full story. ‘And so,’ she finished, ‘we’ll probably have to leave here, and with nowhere to go, you tell me what we should do. Fourteen you are, finished with school and supposedly a part of the adult, working community. Assuming responsibilities, capable of contributing to the household, of keeping a job. So you tell me, where should we go? What should we do?’
A sound outside made her stop and listen, and they all looked towards the back door. The handle turned and a bedraggled Ivor came in. His jacket and trousers were creased and bits of straw and foul-smelling stains were spread over them. He tried a nonchalant smile. ‘Bit late for a family conference, isn’t it? What’s new then?’
‘Where have you been?’
‘Nowhere special, just out, talking to Jack Harris and Morris Fender.’ He thumped Roger on the shoulder light-heartedly. ‘Got sacked again I hear, you stupid boy. You’d have done all right with Jack Harris. A mate of mine he is.’
‘Royston has lost his job too.’ Marie spoke softly.
‘I’ve got to get out of these filthy clothes or I’ll be sick,’ he said, his face a mask of horror. ‘I can’t bear dirt and this is stinking.’
Another time it might have been funny, Ivor, who was so particular about the tiniest mark on his clothes, who was offended by a stray thread of cotton spoiling his immaculate appearance, standing there covered in dirty straw that smelled of manure.
‘That’s not all. There’s something else,’ Marie said.
Ignoring her he glanced at the boiler, from which steam drifted up like a miniature cloud. ‘Hot water, thank goodness.’
‘That was for me,’ Marie said, but she shrugged and added, ‘Your need is clearly greater than mine.’
Saying the words was going to be hard. Telling him that the rent money had been stolen had to be said without sounding as though he were accused. His need for a bath was a reprieve that she accepted with relief.
Ivor hoped he could avoid her asking how he had got in such a mess. He could hardly explain that he’d left his tidy clothes hidden, changed into old ones and returned to find that his good clothes had been stolen. Otherwise he would have returned as clean as when he’d set out. He couldn’t explain the reason for the complication either. That was something she must never find out, however many lies he needed to tell.
They moved from the kitchen and no one offered to help him fill the bath from the boiler, bucketful by bucketful. No one moved. He closed the kitchen door and they listened to the sounds of his washing himself singing cheerfully, then the swish of pailful after pailful gushing down the outside drain and the scraping sound as he dragged the bath back outside.
The twins yawned but were unable to go to bed until they knew what Ivor had to say about the missing rent money.
Hopefully he would reassure them that they were not about to be thrown into the street to sleep in doorways like some sad, injured and confused ex-soldiers they had seen. A family being driven from their home, protesting wildly, with their pathetic collection of furniture piled haphazardly around them on the road outside, was something they had witnessed once and the memory still frightened them.
When Ivor emerged from the kitchen wearing underwear and carrying the rest of his clothes delicately in an outstretched hand, he saw the line of anxious faces and began to pass through the room and head for the stairs, humming nervously.
‘Something’s happened and you have to help us deal with it,’ Marie began. She didn’t want to start with a challenge, there might still be a mistake. An error at the rent office, or even a reason for the money to have been moved. She desperately wanted there to be a simple explanation, although none of the more and more unlikely thoughts whizzing through her mind gave her much hope.
‘Let’s get to bed,’ he said with exaggerated patience. ‘Now isn’t the time for serious discussions. It’s almost midnight and I’m tired.’
‘We might as well hear it now. Waiting till morning won’t change anything, Ivor.’
Ivor glanced around the room, at his solemn-faced wife, at his sons, who were uncharacteristically subdued, their blue eyes wide, their faces white. Ignoring her quietly spoken remark he returned to the subject of the boys and their inability to stay in employment. ‘Its only a job,’ he said, clouting Roger softly on his head. ‘Plenty more for strong lads like you two.’
‘It isn’t about the boys.’
‘Oh come on, love, I’m tired and I want to get these clothes off. Fell I did. Right into the chickens’ coop, sneaking home through the farmer’s yard. That’ll teach me, eh?’ He looked at the boys, expecting them to smile, but their faces were numb. ‘All right, what’s happened?’
All her intentions of taking it slowly, treading carefully, vanished. ‘You! That’s what happened. You’ve been stealing the rent money and we have little more than a month to find the arrears or we’re being evicted.’
Ivor tried a laugh but it vanished from his face the moment it appeared. ‘What d’you mean. I stole the rent money? That collector must be a thief. Yes, that’s what happened, he took it and didn’t hand it in. I always thought he had shifty eyes.’
‘When have you seen the collector? He comes when you’re at work. Or have you been sacked too?’
It took a while but he eventually admitted that he had borrowed the money. ‘There’s these deals, see. Some cigarettes at half price, and I bought them and sold them with a bit of profit. I’d have put the rent money back in time for the next week, no trouble. But then there was the chance of some foodstuff, tins mostly, and that went all right. That’s why I’ve been out so late at night. Had to be careful not to be caught, see. Then I got some off-ration bacon, ham and some meat and it went wrong. I hid it in the barn near the river and someone found it and I lost the money. I wasn’t worried, though, I knew there’d be another chance.’
‘So you “borrowed” more money, but once more you couldn’t pay it back?’ Marie was feeling sick. Until she had spoken to Ivor she’d held on to a faint hope that the situation could be retrieved, and hope was fading with every word he spoke. ‘What you’ve said accounts for a couple of weeks. What happened before that? Where did it go before these “deals”? Treating your friends? Handing it over to the bookies?’
‘Tonight I’d arranged a meeting with a couple of restaurant owners who were going to buy the last batch of stuff, a good deal it would have been, sorted out all our troubles, but when we got there the farmer had filled the barn with young chickens and they’d ripped open the packets and, well, it’s all ruined.’
‘And so are we,’ Marie whispered in a voice that trembled. ‘So what are you going to do? Where will we live?’
‘Don’t worry, I’ll find us a place. Better move if we can, no point paying off the arrears when we can leave and make a fresh start.’
‘Moving won’t cancel the debt!’ Marie’s voice rose to a scream. ‘The cost of moving will just add to what we already owe!’
‘Hush, love, we don’t want to wake our Vi, do we? If we move all quiet, at night, and tell no one where we’re going, we’ll get away with it.’
‘Oh yes, hide away, not tell Mam and Dad and Jennie. Or d’you intend involving them in your lies and fraud? And what about Vi? Hide her away? Keep her out of school? Brilliant that would be.’
‘Let’s go to bed. Tomorrow we’ll sort it.’
‘We’ll sort it? You’ll do nothing, as usual. It will be me having to sort it, but this is the last time, Ivor. One more disaster, one more mess that I’m expected to retrieve us from, and I’m leaving you. Did you hear that, boys? One more chance for you as well. This is the end. Right?’
She ran upstairs and threw down bedding and a pillow. ‘Use the couch, Ivor Masters! I’ll be awake all night wondering what will happen to us, and I hope the broken springs do the same for you.’
Marie went downstairs the following morning at six o’clock, having struggled to stay in bed, certain she wouldn’t sleep but knowing that to walk around downstairs wouldn’t help solve the difficulties that faced her. Her mind was made up. She would try to arrange a regular repayment to the council, or borrow the money somewhere. There was no shortage of work for her, but how could she possibly work longer hours than she was doing already? Tears threatened but she forced them away. The time for tears and self-pity was long gone. Now action was needed.
Moving wasn’t a possibility. Where would they go? To find somewhere cheaper would mean living further from town or renting somewhere very run down. Typical of Ivor to think of doing a moonlight flit, running away, leaving everything they owned, covering their tracks in the hope of leaving no trail for the debtors chasing them. What about her beautiful furniture, things she had chosen with Kenneth, gifts from his parents, valuable pieces that she had treasured?
She walked to school with Violet and wondered how she was going to get through the day, smiling, advising people with apparently charmed lives about the best gown to buy. Would the police call regarding Roger and Royston’s shoplifting? They were well known already because of their poaching. Again her thoughts turned to her first husband. Disloyal thoughts or not she knew none of these things would be happening if he had lived. Then, as always, she reminded herself that she and Ivor had been happy for all these years, until the day Airborne won the Derby, and she wouldn’t have had Violet. She put an arm around the little girl and hugged her tightly. ‘I love you, you know that, don’t you?’
‘Of course, Mam, and Daddy loves me too.’
‘Yes, he does.’ But he loves gambling more than either of us, she thought sadly. Dealing in illegal meat was only slightly different from betting on the speed of a horse, it was a gamble against being caught, losing everything or making a profit. The excitement was much the same.
Ivor was an orphan, she knew nothing about him. From what he’d told her he’d been born into a moneyed background. His parents had been wealthy people, but their money disappeared when they died. There was nothing to suggest a weakness for gambling. Perhaps that wasn’t his only problem. Perhaps he was involved with another woman, even taking these risks to keep two homes. Had her sister hinted at it when she had reminded her to take more care about her appearance? Was she working at two jobs, struggling to keep them out of debt, to finance another woman? Sadly, that made sense. If it were true, what could she do except leave?
Roger and Royston were worried. Both decided they had to help.
‘We’ll have to stop fooling around and keep our jobs for a start,’ Royston said.
‘We could ask Gran and Gramps to help. They might have enough to pay off the arrears.’
‘No. Our Mam doesn’t want them to know.’
‘Why?’
‘Pride I suppose, although what’s pride if we’re sleeping on the pavements?’
When Marie left the shop at lunchtime they were waiting outside.
‘We’ve decided to get a job in the factory, making saucepans and things,’ Roger said at once. ‘It’s better pay and you can have all of it.’
‘Thank you,’ Marie said, hugging them, to their embarrassment. ‘But I’d rather you stay where you are, if Gwennie Flint and Jack Harris will give you one more chance. Just until you’ve decided what you really want to do.’ She put a hand on their shoulders, pulling them towards her. ‘I love you and I’m proud that you want to help. Whatever job you take, do it well. Get a reputation for being good workers, that’s the best way you can help.’
‘You’ll still have all we earn,’ Roger said tearfully. ‘No pictures or treats.’ She waited and, as expected, he added, ‘It isn’t fair.’
‘No, but we’ll deal with it, together.’
Jennie and Lucy were happy sharing the management of the hairdressing shop. Mr James didn’t interfere and, apart from when they handed over the appointments book and the takings every evening, they rarely saw him. Their wages had increased generously, and it was this that gave Jennie the idea that they should find a couple of rooms to share.
‘Leave home you mean?’ Lucy asked, as though her friend was joking. ‘We can’t do that.’
‘Why not? We’re old enough. Time we unfastened our mothers’ apron strings. Just think, Luce, we’ll be able to please ourselves what we do and when we do it, invite friends around, it would be great. And I’d get away from Mam and Dad taking me for granted as a live-in nurse.’ She gave a low groan.
‘Imagine it, Luce, at Mam’s beck and call all day every day. Heavens, I’d not only leave home to avoid that, I’d leave the country!’
‘I don’t know,’ Lucy said doubtfully. ‘It would be a lot different. Going home and having to cook a meal for ourselves. Do our own washing, and cleaning and shopping, managing the rations.’
Jennie hadn’t thought deeply about that side of the independent life, but she shrugged it aside as unimportant. ‘What’s a bit of washing?’ She grinned and said, ‘We can always take it home to Mam! And as for cooking, what’s wrong with fish and chips? We’ll be able to afford to eat out now and then and there are always men willing to treat us, eh? Come on, Luce, it’ll be a gateway to freedom. After all, girls have been going into the forces, haven’t they? Living away from home? Most of them a lot younger than us. Old Mr James was married with kids when he and Thelma were younger than we are. Come on, it’ll be fun.’
Lucy knew her friend well enough to remind her that, ‘We share the work, mind, both taking turns at all the jobs, nice and nasty?’
‘Of course. Shall we start looking then? Get the evening paper and see what’s to let?’
‘All right, but not a word to anyone. If we can’t find anything suitable it’s best our parents don’t know we’ve tried.’
‘We’ll find something.’ Jennie waved a hand, brushing away the mild concern as an irrelevance. ‘I’ll ask our Marie. She knows a lot of local people and we can ask our customers. Bound to find something we are. Oh, Lucy, it’ll be great.’
Jennie took the appointments book and the takings to Mr James. Bill was there and he looked on with amusement as his father asked politely what the girls were doing that evening. ‘Pictures? I go now and then, but it was dancing I used to enjoy.’
‘Why don’t you start again, there are plenty of—’ she had been about to say old people but checked just in time and said instead. ‘—Plenty of all ages. You’d find a partner. I’ll dance with you myself, I’m really quite good.’
‘That’s something to think about,’ Mr James said with a laugh. ‘Can you see me on a dance floor, Bill?’
‘Why not?’ Bill was looking at Jennie with a curious expression. ‘Jennie would give you a few lessons in… whatever you wanted to learn – wouldn’t you, Jennie?’
‘Of course,’ she said, wondering exactly what he meant. ‘Any time, Mr James, just ask.’
‘I think Mr James almost invited me out on another date,’ she whispered to Lucy as they put on their coats.
‘He never did!’
‘Yes. He said he used to like dancing and might try it again.’
‘Oh yeah? In his navy suit, collar and tie and his trilby stuck on his head?’
‘Now Bill-the-lovelorn, he might be a different proposition,’ Jennie said with a wink. They went out singing ‘In the Mood’. ‘Mister what you call it what you doin’ tonight…’
A few days later, Bill was at the cemetery. He laid the posy of late marigolds and cornflowers he had brought on the grave of Gloria, the first of his fiancées who had died after being hit by a car. The more recent grave of Emily was not far away and he had already placed a bouquet of Michaelmas daisies, one of her favourite flowers, on the harsh, freshly disturbed earth. How could this have happened a second time? And why hadn’t the police found the vehicle? He had been devastated when Gloria had died so tragically, but the death of Emily was far worse, haunted as he still was by the possibility that if they hadn’t moved her she might have lived.
Why had Ivor and he panicked? He was innocent but he’d been afraid the police might have been able to prove different. Guilt swept over him as he stared at the new grave, returning to the moment he saw her lying there in the road. It had been so reminiscent of the last time. The sudden realization that Gloria’s death was being repeated made him fear for himself. Both had been engaged to him, and there was nothing else, no one else, connecting the two women.
He sat for a long time staring into space, seeing in his mind the two women in the road. Gloria, then Emily, until the two scenes melded into one and it was as though he were standing there watching the car come and smash into them. The shock was repeated time and again, the sound of a car approaching and suddenly increasing its speed, intent on murder. Both were dead and somehow he had been the catalyst. But why?
As he walked away, stooped and sad, grieving for the young lives destroyed, a figure stepped out of the line of trees and bushes on the perimeter of the quiet place. The flowers on both graves were snatched up, shredded and strewn wildly across the wasteground outside the wall. A spray of Michaelmas daisies escaped and fell near her feet and she kicked it and stamped on it until it lay in ruins.
Taking a couple of hours off work was frowned upon by Mr Harries, manager of the dress shop, but when Marie told him it was important business he reluctantly agreed. Dressed in her smartest clothes for work, she presented herself and asked to discuss rental arrears. An hour later, humiliated at having failed to admit to a sensible explanation for the lapse, she had been given an alarmingly short extension. They would accept additional payments each week but the book had to be brought up to date by the middle of December. ‘So we could be homeless by Christmas,’ she said, after sarcastically thanking them for their cooperation.
‘I’m sure we won’t do that, Mrs Masters.’
‘No, perhaps you’ll wait for the January snows. How kind.’ Alarmed by the implication that that outcome wasn’t excluded, she glared at the poor man. She knew the newly appointed clerk was not to blame, he was stating the facts, doing what the rules stipulated. No, the fault lay with Ivor, but that hadn’t stopped her treating the young man as though he were the cruel landlord in a Victorian melodrama.
On her way back to the shop she decided to risk an extra few minutes and call in to place an order for lino paint. Mrs Ricky Richards again. This time she was painting a linoleum floor in a back bedroom. She was tempted to ask for more money, knowing how the woman forced her payment down with a tirade of excuses, but she couldn’t. However she found the money it wouldn’t be by cheating, even on people as difficult as Mrs Richards. She didn’t want to copy any of Ivor’s tricks.
She had written to both Jack Harris, the wholesale fruiterer, and Mrs Gwennie Flint at the chip shop asking them to give the boys another chance. She wasn’t very hopeful and wondered whether the boys were actually looking for work as they had promised, or had sneaked down to the river to poach a few more fish. What a life!
She hoped the fear of losing their home might have given them more determination to find and hold down a job, but suspected that, at fourteen, as time passed they had persuaded themselves it was less serious than she had implied, that neither she nor Ivor would allow it to happen.
‘You look worried,’ Geoff said as she went to the counter. ‘Anything I can do?’
‘Tell me how to win with the football pools when I can’t even afford to play?’
‘Surely you aren’t seriously worried about money – you work all the hours of daylight and more. Is it the thought of Christmas?’
She laughed then. ‘Oh yes, it’s Christmas all right.’ Unless something amazing happened she would be homeless, but how could she tell anyone that? Admit that her husband had been so stupid? That he had risked prison for a small profit and lost the lot?
Loyalty in some circumstances was foolish, and an openness, an honesty, especially to friends, could sometimes offer a solution, but loyalty was a strongly held principle. Loyalty to a husband was not easy to forgo, even when that husband had been as disloyal as Ivor. She had told Geoff too much already. She was glad when another customer came in, and she hastily put down her list of requirements, waved goodbye and hurried back to work.
Over the next day every moment seemed filled with disasters. The farmer knocked her door and held out Royston’s donkey jacket. ‘This belongs to your son. I believe.’
‘Oh, well maybe, it looks a bit like his.’ Marie spoke warily. She didn’t want to say something that would incriminate him. ‘I wondered where it had got to.’
‘The next time it walks on to my land and settles down to do a bit of fishing, I’ll walk it to the police station. Right?’ He pushed the jacket into her arms. ‘I won’t this time. I know they’re in enough trouble at the moment, but you’d better warn them. No more. Right?’ He stormed off and if he heard her ‘thank you’, he showed no reaction.
Two policemen called a few minutes later and told her that the boys had been charged with shoplifting by three shops in the town. One ticked off on his fingers. ‘Poaching, trespass and now shoplifting. Unless you’re fortunate and have a very generous judge, Mrs Masters, your boys could be sent to a remand school for this little lot. What were they thinking of? They have a decent home, they aren’t deprived and certainly not stupid, so why do they do these things?’
‘Us losing our home. That’s what they were thinking of. And, like their father, they’ve only made things worse.’
‘You’d better explain,’ he said kindly. ‘It might help if there are extenuating circumstances, Mrs Masters.’
‘Oh,’ she said airily as though it was hardly important enough to mention, ‘there’s been a mix-up and the rent hasn’t been paid.’
Marie had no one to talk to. She had never felt more alone. Ivor would have to take their situation seriously. The twins’ behaviour could no longer be treated as a joke. She sat at the table unaware of time passing, the arrangement to whitewash a garden wall and outhouse forgotten. A remand school. The very words made her shiver. How could two boys, hardly more than children, cope with prison? There was another knock at the door and she snatched it open, expecting more trouble, prepared to shout her anger and rage to whoever stood there. Her anger subsided when she saw Geoff.
‘I’ve brought the white paint for you,’ he said. Then, ‘I saw two policemen leaving. Is everything all right?’ He stepped inside, put the box he carried on the table and took her hands in his. He led her to a chair and coaxed her to sit. ‘Where’s the kettle, you look as though you could do with a hot drink.’
‘It’s outside. I was washing the drains with soda,’ she murmured.
He fished around in cupboards and found tea and sugar, and when he had made a pot of tea and poured a cup he sat down and faced her. ‘Are you going to tell me what’s happened?’
‘I can’t.’
‘Marie, we’re friends. We’ve known each other all our lives. I was at your wedding, you were at mine. You can trust me to help if I can, and not interfere if I can’t.’
She looked at him and slowly began to explain. ‘Ivor has never been very good at managing money, he can’t help it, it’s the way he is,’ she said, trying to make an excuse for him. ‘I’ve always known that. He makes grand gestures we can’t afford. Although he was brought up in a children’s home he seems to have the wealth of his parents and his early years indelibly marked on him. He spends money we don’t have, a tendency I’ve always had to curb. But something happened in June, I’ve no idea what, and since then everything’s got worse. Far less money and there are weeks when I don’t have any housekeeping at all, and I’ve learned to cope, and, thanks to you finding jobs for me, work to compensate for his weaknesses. A week ago all the money put aside to pay the coalman and the rest was gone and then I had a letter.’ She opened her handbag and showed it to him. ‘He’s been taking the rent money, trying to make more cash to put things right, and of course it didn’t work. Weeks we owe. And unless I pay what’s due we’ll be out of here by Christmas.’
‘I’ll lend it to you.’
‘No, Geoff. I can’t let you do that,’ she said at once. ‘And if you repeat the offer I’ll never talk to you again and I really need someone to talk to. I really, really do. I’m telling you as a friend, not to beg for money.’
‘Very well.’
‘I can’t tell Mam and Dad. They don’t have the money to help and there’s no point in worrying them unnecessarily. Although I’ll have to tell them about moving out, make up some story I suppose. Lies create lies and more lies, don’t they?’
‘Only if you let them. Sometimes the way to deal with things is to face them honestly. The offer still stands, and I know you don’t want to talk about it,’ he added, holding up his hands as she half stood and glared at him, ‘but facing it is usually the best way, believe me.’ He picked up the cup and offered it to her. ‘Drink this, there’s plenty of sugar. Sod the rations for once, eh?’ She sipped and he waited to hear the rest.
‘The twins tried to raise the the money we need by stealing, they have to appear in court and it seems likely that they will go to a remand home.’
‘What? Stealing a few fish can’t be that serious.’
She told him the rest and he listened in silence until she had finished.
‘Where are their brains?’
‘So you see, Geoff, whatever I do it’s never enough. As soon as I get straight, Ivor and the boys do something to ruin everything again.’
‘I came to tell you about a job that’s going. Decorating four flats in a house in the main road. They’re all empty and before they’re re-let the owner wants them all painted and re-papered. I recommended you for the job. But now I don’t think it’s a good idea. You should be doing less, not more. It sounds a contradiction, but money problems aren’t always helped by money. It has to be a complete change of attitude, and I can see how Ivor’s behaviour convinces the twins that it’s all right to cheat and steal. ‘They’re at the age for hero worship and the danger of being caught – even though they think it will never happen – adds to the sense of adventure. He’s the one who has to change and I don’t know how you’ll accomplish that with someone like your Ivor.’
‘Those flats, that job would put everything right, we’d have a fresh start. If Ivor would help…’ There was a gleam of hope in her eyes.
‘Let me help and if you can persuade Ivor to join us that’s great. We’d get it finished in a week or so. Plenty of time to settle the arrears and well before you have to start worrying about the court appearance.’
He discussed the work with her for a while and Marie decided that decorating the flats was something she had to do. But how? She could hardly work through the night and there wasn’t time to finish them in the time she had before the arrears were due. Ivor would have to help.
‘I’d be able to work later into the evening if Jennie would sit with Vi,’ she was saying, when there was another knock at the door and she felt her heart leap.
What further problems would this visitor herald? The door burst open and her sister walked in carrying a small gaily wrapped parcel. ‘Happy birthday, sis,’ Jennie said, pushing the gift towards a surprised Marie.
‘My birthday? I’d forgotten.’
‘It’s for tomorrow, you daft thing. But I thought you’d better have it now as I’m busy tomorrow.’
‘Thank you. Where are you going tomorrow then? Aren’t you working?’
‘Oh yes, but in the evening Lucy and I will be looking at places to rent. We’re going to share a flat, or at least a couple of rooms. Exciting, eh? Honestly, Marie, we can’t wait. But don’t tell our Mam. Not yet. Not till we’ve found somewhere and it’s definite.’
Marie was so bemused at the reminder about her birthday that she didn’t remember to ask Jennie about sitting with Violet. Although as she was planning to move she would have an excuse not to help. Good at finding excuses, Jennie was, but surely when she knew the trouble Marie was in she’d spare her some time? Hope didn’t burn with a bright flame: she knew her sister too well.
When Geoff and Jennie had gone, Marie sat thinking about what lay ahead. She was stunned by Jennie’s news about moving out of their parents’ home. Besides meaning that she would have to spend more of her fractured time checking on their parents, gone was her hope of asking Jennie to look after Vi. Her only hope was Ivor.
When Ivor came in later he laughed at the idea of helping. ‘Me hang wallpaper? Get on with you! I’d be useless. Damn me, you know that. Besides, I hate working for other people, having them look down on me as though I were their servant.’
‘You don’t mind if I do?’
‘Of course I mind. I hate it, seeing you going around dressed in shabby working clothes. I wish you’d stop.’
Ignoring his useless protests she said, ‘Then you’ll have to stay in with Vi. This time I insist. It’s your mess I’m trying to sort out and you’ll have to help.’
‘Have to, will I? You insist, do you? You’re getting stroppy aren’t you?’
‘Help or get out!’
‘Come on, Marie. You’re overwrought.’
‘We’re losing our home! The boys are facing prison, I’m exhausted and you’re useless!’
Instead of adding to his guilt, her reaction increased his anger. The impossibility of explaining made him want to run away, put miles between them. He calmed himself, then turned the complaint on her, saying quietly, ‘You’re worried about the boys, I understand that, love.’ His voice was soothing but the tautness of his jaw belied the comforting words. Ignoring her further outburst, pretending to put it down to anxiety, he touched the teapot to see if the contents were drinkable. ‘Uh! Stone cold. What about a fresh cup of tea for your old man, then, eh? They’ll be all right, Marie, they won’t go to prison – that was said to frighten you.’
‘What frightens me is the conviction that we’d all be better off without you. I’d cope with everything better on my own. You only drag us all down.’
‘Don’t be stupid.’
‘I can’t help being stupid. I promised to love, honour and obey, for better or for worse and all that stuff. Well, I’ve had the worse for long enough. I have to decorate those flats if were to keep our home. Help me, or get out.’
‘I don’t give in to threats, so you can stop talking like that. I’ll help, but only this time. I’m not going to make a habit of working for other people. And I think you should stop too. You don’t seem to mind what people think of us but I find it degrading. Leaving us to fend for ourselves while you grovel to inferior people for a few measly shillings, it isn’t right.’
‘But it’s to pay off your debts!’ Exasperation made her shout.
‘Don’t raise your voice to me, woman. And ask yourself why I go out to meet friends and have a laugh. It might be because you’re never here and there are no laughs when you are.’
She calmed down, put the kettle to boil and set a tray for tea. ‘Then you’ll help, if I take on the flats? To pay the arrears? I can’t do it on my own, Ivor. I really can’t.’
‘I don’t know if I can, but I’ll try. Right? I’ll try!’ Anger fizzed in the air around him, and Marie felt her spirits drop lower. Reluctant help would be worse than no help at all.
‘I have worries too,’ he said.
‘Then tell me, help me to understand.’
‘I can’t.’
His handsome face was moving as he sifted through ideas to escape from his promise. He was so upset by what had happened and his inability to explain. Scenes filled his mind and he saw deals that had gone wrong, the stupidity of the boys, the nagging face of his wife, and at that moment saw himself as the victim, the misunderstood husband. Everything was hanging on by a thread that might snap at any moment. While it held there was still hope of coming through this with his marriage intact and the love of his family weak but surviving.
Marie could almost see the way his mind was working, and to emphasize their need for money she told him again about the farmer bringing back the jacket.
‘What jacket?’ he demanded. As she explained, she wondered whether he was thinking of that other jacket, the one he had burned and which she had thrown away with someone else’s rubbish.
‘Poaching?’ he said with a laugh. ‘The miserable old miser. Kids is all they are. It isn’t as though they caught anything, is it?’
Irritated by his determination to make light of it, she said. ‘The least we can hope for when the boys appear in court are heavy fines. Without the money for decorating these flats we face years of you—’ She was about to say, ‘your debts’, but changed her mind. ‘Years of debt. If we are penniless and then made homeless, there’s even more likelihood of the twins being sent to prison. We need to show the court they have a secure home and to do that we need money. We need it desperately, now and not next year, Ivor. I can’t do this without your help.’
‘And it’s my debt, eh?’ He stared at her then and, knowing that this was one battle she simply had to win, she stared him out until his expression softened and he said, quietly. ‘All right. Just this once, mind. For the boys. Just this once.’
Geoff was driving past as Ivor came out of his office the following day, and he called to offer him a lift. In the lane a short distance from his house he stopped the van and turned to face him.
Ivor reached for the door handle. ‘Don’t tell me you’re going to have a go at me as well, it’s none of your business.’
‘You’re right, it isn’t. At least it wasn’t, until I found out about your father.’
Ivor’s face paled and Geoff began to think he would faint. ‘You haven’t told Marie?’
‘Of course I haven’t. I don’t know much, only that an ex-schoolfriend was talking in the pub and mentioned something that I picked up on. No one else knew who he was talking about. Is that where the money’s been going?’
It wasn’t the whole truth. By sheer chance Geoff had seen Ivor on the night he had found his father, and, made curious by his furtive manner, he followed him as he left the road and walked through the woods. Some distance from the village he had watched as Ivor met an elderly man gathering firewood. He couldn’t hear what was said but it was clear that the old man was pleased initially then upset as they began to argue. They walked off together along a path between the trees, anger increasing Ivor’s speed and forcing him to stop and allow the old man to catch up with him.
The path twisted and turned, which made it easy for Geoff to follow unseen. The two men talked spasmodically, the younger angry and the older pleading for something that went unheard. They left the trees and jumped down on to a quiet lane and into the overgrown front garden of a rather large cottage tucked into the edge of the wood.
Geoff dared not go any closer but he saw them both inside, Ivor gesturing with his arms and the old man standing with bowed head as though being verbally chastised. Geoff was puzzled about who the old man was and by a coincidence found out the following day.
He had gone to the pub for a pint at lunchtime and had met Jinks Jenkins, who had regaled him with stories about how Ivor had been teased as a boy. Geoff had only half listened: he was thinking that the chance meeting would enable him to tell Ivor he knew about his father without mentioning that he had followed him.
‘Don’t tell Marie or the children. I couldn’t bear it, Geoff, I really couldn’t.’
‘I found out, so there’s always the possibility someone else might. I know Marie and she’ll cope with anything as long as she knows the truth.’
‘I can’t tell her now. The boys’ problems are enough for her to cope with.’
‘That and you causing her to be kicked out of her home!’ Geoff’s voice was sharp.
‘Yes, that too.’ Ivor was shaking and Geoff knew he had to be less harsh with the man. He was on the edge of a precipice.
‘I won’t mention it again, I promise you that, but you have to. She has the right to know.’
‘I can’t.’
‘You’ve handled things so badly. Mainly by not trusting your wife. You’ve betrayed her love, haven’t you?’
‘All right! Don’t rub it in!’ In his distress, Ivor was shouting.
‘Do something, man, before someone else tells her. But believe me, Ivor, it won’t be me.’
‘Thanks.’
Geoff restarted the engine but Ivor opened the door. ‘I’ll walk from here.’
Geoff watched him go: a stooped figure with a stumbling walk that was taking him towards a family in trouble, who needed him to be strong. He wondered whether he had helped or made things worse.
Ivor went in and began sorting out brushes and all the other items they would need for the decoration of the flats and, for the first time for weeks, Marie felt hopeful of a way out of their difficulties.
They began at the weekend, going down on Saturday evening while the boys, obedient in their anxiety, looked after their sister. Ivor worked fast and with surprising efficiency.
Stripping the walls of two rooms was accomplished that evening, the walls washed and the paintwork sanded for painting. Marie felt very hopeful, but when Geoff came to help the following morning, armed with paint for the kitchen, Ivor glared at him and walked out.