Marie didn’t know what to do. Should she run after Ivor and plead with him to come back? Or ignore his behaviour and accept the willing assistance of Geoff? With a hardening of her heart she realized that, of the two, Geoff was the most likely to really support her. If she told Geoff to leave she knew Ivor wouldn’t see the job through. She faced weeks of hard long hours of work and couldn’t do it on her own, with no thanks, only criticism. And, she reminded herself, causing her brow to crease in a deep frown of anger, it was Ivor’s debt!
Geoff sensed her dilemma. ‘Shall I go?’ he asked. She didn’t reply, her mind still filled with anger and frustration at this predicament that was not of her own making.
‘Perhaps, if I walk away, let Ivor see me leave, pacify his resentment, I can come back later. I should be able to get the undercoat on these rooms this evening.’
Marie stared at him, his words slowly penetrating, only half heard. ‘Please, Geoff, please don’t leave. I really need help, and Ivor was just looking for a reason not to give it. He’s found his excuse and he’s off! This is his mess and he won’t even help me to sort it out.’
Geoff said nothing more. He had a picture in his mind of Ivor going to meet the frail, confused man in the wood. However Marie worried, he couldn’t tell her what he knew. That was for Ivor to explain. By talking about it now, he would be setting himself against Ivor, and that might alienate Marie when she needed a friend.
Sanding done, he began to wipe the skirting boards with a damp cloth. They worked for three hours with hardly a word spoken. Marie knew that if a hint of sympathy were offered she would burst into tears. Geoff knew that unless the day ended with some sign of progress she would give up.
It was ten o’clock that night when they washed their brushes and put everything away for the following day. Marie began to thank him but he waved her words aside.
‘No need for thanks, we’re friends and friends help without question. Right?’
When she reached home, she hesitated to open the door. Music was playing, so the boys were still up but was Ivor with them?
She stepped into the kitchen and called, ‘I’m home,’ and there was a scuffle from the living room and the record that was playing was hurriedly changed for another. When she opened the door, the twins were listening, ironically, to ‘My Heart Belongs to Daddy’ and Violet was asleep, still dressed, on the couch.
‘Royston, Roger, why didn’t you send her to bed?’ she demanded, throwing off her coat and bending over her sleeping daughter.
‘Got fed up with arguing with her, didn’t we?’ Roger moaned. ‘It’s not fair leaving us to look after her.’
‘She said you’d told her she could wait up for you,’ Royston added, leaning pointedly closer to the gramophone to show his irritation at her interruption. The pile of records slid across the couch and Marie saw two that were indisputably new.
‘Where did they come from?’ she asked. She sifted through them and saw several more that looked new, the slip covers crisp and clean. She picked one up and waggled it in front of Roger’s face. ‘Where have these come from? Have you been stealing again? Tell me the truth!’
‘Mam! Of course they aren’t nicked. Borrowed they are, from Arthur Malin. Said we could borrow them till his father comes home on Sunday week.’ Marie looked at his guileless face, big eyes with an air of offended innocence. Marie stared at him, but his gaze didn’t waver. She was almost certain the records were stolen, but she was too weary to investigate.
‘Wait till your father gets in. He’ll get to the bottom of it.’ Fortunately she failed to see the amused glance exchanged between the boys.
‘Go to bed. Now, this minute,’ she demanded, and lifting Violet from the couch without waking her she struggled up the stairs and put her in her bed.
When at last she fell into her own bed she felt as though all her bones had softened and her muscles had hardened in their stead. Every movement hurt. Despite her exhaustion anger kept her awake. Anger at her own stupidity for getting into this situation. She had taken on the role of family saviour when she should have done nothing at all except to wait for Ivor to get them out of the mess he had caused.
She switched on the bedside torch, which was in fact an old bicycle lamp, and saw that it was almost two a.m. Where on earth was Ivor? He couldn’t be playing cards – the usual reason for a late return. So far as she knew he had no money and no one was likely to lend him any.
She tiptoed downstairs and made a cup of tea. With the inexplicable hope of encouraging his arrival, as people at a bus stop will when their bus is late, she walked to the corner and looked along the road. The night was still. No moon, yet her eyes accustomed themselves to the darkness until she could gradually make out the nearby houses and the ghostly shapes of trees and bushes that imagination could form into strange beasts. There was no sound of footsteps and she went back inside, as wide awake as ever, and tried to read for a while.
Instead she found herself thinking about the flats. It was something she would have to do. Martyr or not, overworked idiot or not, if she did not there was little hope of paying the arrears and there was only one outcome to that situation. They would be out on the street.
She didn’t hear Ivor come home that night even though she sat up, dozing, listening for the sound of his footsteps, or the door opening. At half past six she lit the fire, and as she began preparing breakfast he came in, looking neat and tidy, except for needing a shave. It was another woman, it had to be. She sliced the loaf for toasting, unable to see clearly for the tears in her eyes.
Ivor helped himself to a cup of tea from the teapot and, carrying it in one hand and a kettle of hot water in the other, he went straight upstairs to wash and change into the suit he wore for work. He hated this filthy situation. Last night he had washed in a freezing cold brook in an attempt to rid himself of the smell. Even after that, and although he had changed clothes and hidden the others in a hollow tree, the smell remained, seemingly trapped in the pores of his skin.
Another two evenings and the wall papering and painting of two rooms was finished and the floors sanded and varnished. Once the kitchen and bathroom were painted she’d be able to ask for part payment. In one hand and out with the other. There were three more flats to be done and she looked ahead to days in the shop and evenings and half the nights decorating, and wondered how long she could keep going. With Geoff it was possible. With only Ivor she would fail. Her over tense mind drifted through the possibilities – and probabilities – for the future. Even at best they would continue to live hand-to-mouth with a man who had become incapable of supporting them. At worst they would be homeless, separated from each other and treated like rubbish, worse than the tramps who wandered around the countryside in increased numbers since the end of the war.
She went to bed light-headed with tiredness, on the edge of tears, her mind jumbled with a dozen questions to which there were no answers. She finally slept and didn’t hear Ivor creep in at five a.m., his pockets empty and a few more IOUs in other people’s pockets.
The following lunchtime, Marie gathered the suspect gramophone records and handed them into the shop on the high street, explaining that she had found them on a park bench. The manager smiled stiffly as he thanked her and then apologetically told her that her sons were banned from entering the shop. ‘Nothing to do with your kindness in returning these records you “found”, Mrs Masters, indeed not. There was an – er – an incident here last week and, well, we think it’s best they stay away. Sorry I am to tell you, and you on a mission of kindness, too.’
She thrust the records into his hands and walked swiftly away. A strong desire to hit the twins and their father, to hurt them, filled her heart. The boys for their foolishness and their father who thought their behaviour was a joke. She bumped into several people as she rushed blindly back to the shop.
Jennie and Lucy had found a flat, and, in her usual confident way, Jennie asked Mr James for his opinion before she and Lucy signed the agreement. The flat was in fact two rooms in a house near the park and consisted of a basement room and one room up a flight of stairs, part of the ground floor of the house which the owners had furnished as a bedroom. They would have use of a bathroom, and the kitchen was a corner of the living room with a cooker and a sink and very little besides, hidden by a curtain.
‘It isn’t much, we know that, Mr James,’ Jennie said. ‘It’s our first strike towards freedom though, and we love it. We just wondered whether you, with your experience, could see any problems we haven’t noticed.’ The flattery was blatant as she went on, ‘You’re a businessman and clever enough to look below the surface of things, if you know what I mean. We’d really appreciate you looking at it, wouldn’t we, Lucy?’
‘We’d be ever so grateful, Mr James,’ Lucy said, nodding earnestly.
The house was owned by a nurse and her family and she left them to make up their minds while she went back upstairs. Mr James looked around, checked the walls and under the floor coverings for signs of damp, and declared it sound. ‘You’ll need to keep the place warm, mind. It could get damp being a basement, and that can bring health troubles. We don’t want you ill, do we?’ He was looking at Jennie when he spoke but turned to encompass Lucy, adding, ‘I need to look after you both.’
‘I don’t expect a lot of noise,’ the nurse told them. Deliberately misunderstanding, Jennie said brightly. ‘Don’t worry, we aren’t the sort to complain.’
‘I meant from you. I don’t like noise.’
‘We’ll be able to play our gramophone, won’t we?’ Jennie looked aghast. ‘Mr James, we couldn’t live without our music.’
A few moments of reassurance from Mr James that his employees would be exemplary tenants and the matter was settled. The girls would move in the following week. ‘Bill will help you move your things,’ Mr James promised. ‘I’m sure he won’t mind.’
Bill did mind, and, rather than disappoint the girls, Mr James came instead, using his car to transport their belongings, including their collections of records, to the flat.
Jennie’s goodbye to her parents was tearful. Belle and Howard had come to the flat with gifts on the day they moved in, and left after much hesitation, waving to their daughter as if she were off on an Arctic expedition or to face dangerous animals in a distant jungle. She sobbed with them but as soon as they were out of sight she shrieked with delight and danced around to music, until Mrs Roberts upstairs banged on the floor and shouted. Their laughter was almost as loud as the record.
‘What are we going to eat?’ was Lucy’s first question. ‘I’m starving.’ Belle had packed them some food ‘to get them started’, and they tucked into meatless pasties and fatless cakes with gusto. ‘Tomorrow it’s chips,’ Jennie said, munching happily. ‘Isn’t this great?’
With help from Geoff and offended criticism from Ivor, the flats were finally finished and Marie went to pay off the arrears. Filled with relief, she almost ran to the office to pay off the full amount.
The clerk was nervous and he kept glancing around as though hoping someone would come to his rescue. ‘Too late, Mrs Masters, sorry I am, real sorry. But it’s been allocated to an ex-soldier and his family. We have to do our best for the men who went to fight, you can see that I’m sure. You have to vacate the property on – er—’ he glanced at a piece of paper on his desk as though he’d forgotten, ‘on the twenty-fifth of September.’ He went around the counter and guided her to a chair as she had begun to shake.
‘Less than two weeks? But I thought we had until December.’
‘We tried to tell you that had changed. We’ve sent you two letters, Mrs Masters, I wrote them myself. You must have received them. I put the second one through your letter box on my way home to make sure there was no delay. Worried I was, you not replying, like, and I wanted to make sure you got the warning.’
Ivor must have found the reminders and hidden them. What was he playing at?
The embarrassed clerk stood nervously beside her, then began to explain about repaying her debt. ‘You still owe the money, Mrs Masters,’ he reminded her gently. She clutched her handbag as though suspecting him of trying to rob her. ‘That won’t be cleared by your vacating the premises,’ he went on softly, as though talking to a child. ‘But I can arrange for you to pay it off real slow, a few shillings a week. Best I can do. Will that be all right?’
She thanked him vaguely and, still gripping her handbag with fingers white with pressure, rose from the chair like an old woman.
Half a dozen times she stopped on the way home to rest on benches and garden walls. The money in her handbag seemed unreal, heavy, weighing her down. All that work and it wasn’t enough. Instead of going home, she went to Geoff’s shop and knocked on the side door. When he came out she handed him the money she had intended to use to pay off her debts. ‘Look after this for me, will you? If Ivor knows I’ve got it he’ll wreck the house trying to find it.’
He took it without a word.
She didn’t go back to the shop that afternoon. Instead she went to the woodyard office and told Ivor what had happened.
‘We can’t talk about it here, Marie. Go home and wait for me there. I’ll get things sorted, I promise.’
‘Your promises aren’t worth anything. How can you sort this when we owe months of rent and are being thrown out into the street?’
‘Hush, love, I don’t want our business touted all round the town.’
‘Too late to worry about that. Everyone will know when our furniture is piled up on the pavement.’
He calmed her down and walked her home after a hurried word with his boss, explaining that his wife was worried about the boys, and his sympathetic employer told him he could take the afternoon to sort it out.
After seeing Marie into the house and making her a cup of tea, he left, after repeating his promise that he would sort it out. But instead of going back to work he went to the bus stop and, dragging the suitcase from its hiding place, changed into the filthy clothes with a shudder of disgust.
Jennie and Lucy decided to have a party.
‘So long as everyone brings some food,’ Jennie stipulated. ‘I don’t want the worry or expense of feeding people.’ Lucy agreed, and besides some of their dancing friends, they asked Bill James if he’d like to come.
‘Sorry, but I don’t feel very sociable,’ Bill excused.
‘You can’t give up,’ Jennie coaxed, ‘Life goes on. You got over Gloria, remember, and you’re still young enough to find someone else.’
‘Don’t talk like some women’s magazine! I loved Emily. It isn’t easy to recover from losing her.’
‘You loved Gloria too, and that funny little girl before her. The one that disappeared so suddenly, remember?’
‘Don’t try to make me sound shallow, unfeeling.’
‘I don’t think you’re shallow,’ Jennie said as though surprised. ‘I’m reminding you that grief isn’t for ever, that’s all.’
He gave her a penetrating look which she matched and then allowed to dissolve into one of her special smiles. As she smiled she was thinking, pompous ass, he’s worse than his father. Old before his time.
Bill came and the party was a success, with too many guests crowding into the small space and somehow managing to dance to the records of Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey and Ted Heath. The noise increased as more and more people arrived, and the records were played louder to be heard by the dancers. Bangs on the floor from Mrs Roberts above went unheeded. Jennie danced with Bill several times, opening the door to the garden – which Mrs Roberts had insisted was her private domain – and kissing in the darkness, an experience Jennie found far from unpleasant.
The following morning they had a visit from their landlady, who stood at the door, glaring at the trodden-in food on the floor and the slithering pile of records against the wall.
Unwilling to tell the boys or Violet about their dilemma, and with only a couple of weeks before they had to leave the house, Marie began packing surplus china. Begging boxes from the shops and using the piles of newspapers put out for the ashmen, she worked until she could hardly move a muscle. Then she gathered the boxes and piled them as well as she could in the corners of the living room. Pictures came off the walls, garden tools were tied together with string. The contents of cupboards were stacked into yet more boxes, and when the children asked what she was doing she told them she was spring cleaning. As she was scrubbing out each cupboard as it was emptied, they seemed to believe her. Ivor said very little and seemed unaware of the turmoil.
She tried to persuade him to face up to the fact they were homeless, but although he promised that they wouldn’t be out on the streets, assuring her he was dealing with it, he didn’t offer any concrete hope of anything other than the sky for a roof. He was out most evenings and several times he came home very late.
Every day, when he came home from work and changed into less formal clothes, she made him promise not to go out, but most evenings his presence at home ended by nine o’clock after he had put Violet to bed and told her a story.
‘It has to be another woman. What other reason could there be?’ she asked Geoff one evening as they worked on a house refurbishment, a job he had found and insisted on helping her complete.
‘I doubt it, Marie. I’ve heard nothing and in the shop I pick up all kinds of gossip, which I try to forget. There’s no rumour about your Ivor and another woman.’
‘I’m so tired by the time ten o’clock comes I have to go to bed, but tonight, if he goes out. I’ll wait up and make him tell the truth,’ she said.
It was a clear night with the moon riding high, three-quarters full and adding a glow that was like an enchantment.
The air was still with not even the tiniest movement in the trees. It was a temporary balm to her weary spirits, until fears and imaginings beat against her brain and she wondered if she would ever find peace again. She would miss this house where so many happy memories resided. She couldn’t think clearly. Not knowing where they would be in a few weeks time was a barrier to any attempt at making plans. She looked up at the sky and thought the emptiness was matched by her own situation. Miles of emptiness without a goal in sight.
Although it was chilly, she sat in the garden for a while, trying to stay awake after the three children were asleep and the house was quiet, trying to recapture that momentary peace of a few moments ago.
She didn’t like being in the living room any more. It was no longer hers. All her possessions had been packed away apart from the bare minimum. Soon someone else would be there putting their mark on it, and in no time at all every trace of herself and Ivor and Roger and Royston and little Violet would disappear, floating in space like the moon and stars. It would be as though they no longer existed. Ghosts for a brief moment, just until every last trace of them had been overlaid by the newcomers, then gone.
Although she was cold, from time to time she dropped off to sleep, her neck at an awkward angle, then jerked awake to momentary confusion and further disappointment. A blanket she had brought out had fallen to the ground and she gathered it around her. In the distance a church clock chimed twelve. It was tempting to give up and get to bed; the thought of a couple of hot water bottles to warm it appealed to her, making her realize how cold she had become. She went inside and put the kettle on the gas to fill the stone hot water bottles, then took them and placed them in the bed. She was about to refill the kettle to make a hot drink when she heard footsteps. She switched off the gas under the kettle and went back outside. Someone was approaching, and momentarily she felt a spasm of fear. It could be a thief, looking for something to steal, but the footsteps were quick and, with no sign of secretiveness, undoubtedly Ivor.
‘Marie? What are you doing outside? The children are all right, aren’t they? Is something wrong?’
‘Fine they are, and so am I, apart from wondering where we’ll sleep next week. Where have you been?’
‘Oh, talking to Jack Harris. He said our Roy’s doing all right, working hard and he’s pleased with him. That’s a relief, eh?’
‘Chatting with friends, there’s nice for you. What have you done about us? Homeless we are and there’s you having a nice chat with Jack Harris. You’re fiddling while Rome burns!’
‘“Fiddling while Rome burns”, that’s good that is, but I haven’t been doing nothing. I’ve been trying to work something out. I’ve a plan in mind but I don’t want to talk about it until everything’s certain sure.’
‘Forgive me if I don’t believe you!’
‘Be patient a little while longer, Marie. We’ll have a place to go, I promise.’
‘You have to tell me what’s happened, Ivor.’ Aware that he was keeping his distance from her she stepped towards him, suspicion making her search for evidence of another woman. It was too dark, impossible to see his expression or any tell-tale marks on his clothes, but there might be a hint of perfume – something she couldn’t afford for herself. Once inside she might see a mark on his clothes; lipstick is a stubborn stain and he could hardly come home without a shirt. His scarf was tight around his neck under his overcoat; what was it hiding? She would stay close until he took it off. She stepped towards him and he backed away.
‘I’ll go and have a wash,’ he said.
She reached out and pulled him towards her and then the smell hit her, and it couldn’t be described as perfume. It was a noxious odour of sourness, of rotting food, of fermenting fruit, and the deep, unwashed smell of the tramps she sometimes passed in the bus stop shelter, forcing her to wait outside.
‘Where have you been?’ she demanded, holding on to his coat as he struggled to get away. ‘You stink! You haven’t been talking to Jack Harris. His house doesn’t smell like an ash bin. Tell me, Ivor! I want to know where you’ve been going. Who’s keeping you out all hours and making you ignore what’s happening to us?’
‘Let me have a wash and change my clothes, please, Marie. I’ll be sick if I don’t get out of these things soon.’
Her arms fell from him as though their strength had failed, and she watched as he hurried through the back door and up the stairs. Once before he had been in clothes that stank and he’d told her he’d been in the farmer’s barn, but the smell wasn’t of chickens, it was filthy rotting food and unwashed humanity.
He came out of the bedroom smelling clean and dressed in freshly laundered pyjamas, with his hair neatly combed, and shiny faced as though he’d scrubbed himself to get rid of the last vestige of that awful stink. Aware of the children sleeping nearby, she repeated her demand for an explanation in a hissing whisper.
‘Get into bed, love, I’ll make us a hot drink and come up in a minute or two. You must be frozen, sitting outside like that.’
‘I want an explanation. And I want it now, this minute!’ she whispered harshly, her voice louder than she intended, startling in the silence of the night.
‘We both need a hot drink, Marie, love. Go to bed and wait for me to make it.’
‘Then we’ll talk?’
‘Soon, I’ll explain everything soon,’ he promised, as he ran softly down the stairs, his head buzzing with possible reasons for his behaviour that didn’t reveal the truth.
Marie slid into the bed that had been warmed by the hot water bottles, and felt the comfort relax her, her body becoming limp, her eyes succumbing to drowsiness, and, in the welcoming warmth, anxiety eased away, and as the minutes passed she found it more and more difficult to stay awake. An hour later, Ivor looked at her, bent over and kissed her gently and went back downstairs.
Marie woke and, before she opened her eyes, stretched out a hand and felt across the bed for Ivor. He wasn’t there and his pillow showed no sign of his ever having been. She rushed downstairs but his coat and umbrella were gone. On the table was a note. ‘I’ll be late tonight, but don’t worry, Everything will be all right.’ He had signed it ‘Your loving Ivor.’ She heard the twins rising and stuffed it into her dressing gown pocket.
As she began to get breakfast she felt the threat of tears as she realized how badly she needed someone to talk to, someone to whom she could open up and in whose sympathy and understanding she could wallow. Her parents wouldn’t want to know. Theirs was a simple, uncomplicated life in which any problems had been spirited away before they became serious. There was only Geoff, and somehow she couldn’t tell him about the filthy state in which Ivor had arrived home. She had to keep it to herself, like the bloodstained jacket, which Ivor had told her had been an accident caused by chopping wood.
Fastidious as he was, she had almost accepted his explanation that he couldn’t bear to wear that jacket again after such staining, even after cleaning. Almost, but sometimes she wondered about the coincidence of it happening on the same evening that Emily Clarke had died in a road accident. The jacket incident, and last night’s return covered in the disgusting smell, would remain a secret. Until she made sense of it herself she would have felt disloyal discussing it. Stupid as it might seem, she still felt loyalty and told herself there would be a logical explanation for his behaviour.
She wondered briefly whether he had been helping at one of the reception centres that had opened around the countryside to accommodate the vagrants, ex-soldiers many of them, men and a few women, whose lives had been disrupted by the war and who had lost touch with where they were from or who they were. But surely if that were the case he would have told her. Ivor was vain enough to want admiration for any such altruism. And surely such goodness didn’t necessitate depriving your own family to help those less fortunate. That would have been replacing misfortune with misfortune, wouldn’t it?
She fed the children and watched as the boys left for work. She forced a cheerfulness into her voice as she walked with Violet as far as the school gates then left her and hurried to the shop. It opened at nine a.m, but the staff were expected to be there fifteen minutes before, to make sure everything was in readiness for their first customer. Again that forced cheerfulness as she helped a young woman to choose a dress for a birthday party. A birthday celebration far different from her own, she thought with a sigh. How wonderful to be spoiled as this woman appeared to be. She carefully pinned up the hem of the full-skirted dress and marked a few tucks in the bodice to ensure a perfect fit, then watched as the smiling customer swept out to buy the accessories, for which her doting parents had given her their clothing coupons.
‘There are two pins on the floor, Mrs Masters!’ The sharp tone of her boss brought Marie out of a daydream in which she was féted and spoiled and made into a star for the day at an imaginary birthday party held in her honour. At that moment her sister came in and asked to speak to her.
‘Can it wait until lunchtime, Miss – er—’
‘If it must, Mr – er,’ Jennie replied cheekily. ‘I’ll wait outside, shall I? How fortunate it’s only raining and not the season for snow.’ She smiled at Mr Harries and he succumbed to her gentle criticism and gestured towards a chair. She thanked him and sat, with her legs crossed, showing an inordinately generous amount of leg.
She clearly made the pompous Mr Harries nervous, as, fifteen minutes before her usual time, he told Marie she could leave early and come back at the usual time. Grabbing her coat she hurried out offering effusive thanks, and followed her sister along the dull, damp street.
‘What got into him?’ Marie said, laughing at the unexpected freedom. ‘He’s never done anything like that before.’
‘Oh, just an inch or two above the knee, that’s all it took to transform him to a jelly.’
In spite of trying to disapprove, Marie laughed, and when her sister suggested they went to a café for a coffee and a bun she agreed.
‘I shouldn’t really,’ she said. ‘I promised to pick up Mam’s bacon ration. You know she always likes bacon and egg and chips for Tuesday’s dinner.’
‘Honestly, our Marie! D’you think I won you an extra fifteen minutes out of that miserable boss of yours so you can get Mam’s bacon ration? Coffee and a bun and I’m paying. Whatmore d’you want, woman?’
‘How is life in the flat, enjoying it are you?’ she asked.
‘Wait till the waitress has brought our order then I’ll tell you.’
Marie sensed trouble.
They were guided to a table near the window, and as the waitress delivered their order Marie was staring into space, lost in thoughts of Ivor, wondering what he was up to and whether it was legal. With the boys due to appear in court in a month’s time, and the threat of eviction hovering over her, what was she doing sitting here drinking coffee as though she were a lady of leisure?
‘Come on, sis, cheer up, or I’ll wish I’d invited old Mr Harries instead of you! And he looks more boring than Mr James!’
‘What did you want to see me about?’ Marie forced her attention back to her sister.
‘It’s Mam and Dad.’
‘Jennie, I can’t do more than I’m doing at present. You know how I’m fixed. Thanks to Ivor. I don’t know where we’ll be in a month’s time and I have to take work when it’s offered to pay off the debts were leaving behind.’
‘I’ve decided not to stay in the flat Lucy and I found. Her boyfriend is coming home, leaving the RAF, and I can’t afford it on my own. They’re getting married, see.’
‘When?’
‘Well, not for ages yet, but—’
‘What’s the real reason?” Marie demanded. ‘Come on, Jennie, the truth.’
‘All right, we’ve been told to leave. That Mrs Roberts is a real misery. Can’t bear to think of us having fun. There was some trivial complaint about noise. I ask you, can anyone have a party without making some noise? Besides, I hate being away from Mam and Dad. I miss them.’
‘Their spoiling more like.’
‘All right. I miss their spoiling. And I want to go back home but I don’t want Mam and Dad to think it’s for selfish reasons. Can you tell them you persuaded me to go back for their sake?’
‘Why make complications? Tell them you’re moving back home and they’ll kill the fatted calf.’ She tried to hide the resentment she felt.
‘Don’t be like that, our Marie. I can’t help it if I’m not as perfect as you!’
‘I just wish you’d help me sometimes! We’re in a real mess you know.’
‘Most of it’s your fault! Soft you are, Marie. A bit of backbone is what you need!’
‘Would you like anything else, ladies?’ the waitress enquired.
‘Backbone and a kick up the—’ Jennie hissed. The waitress straightened up, offended.
‘Sorry,’ Marie said. But catching sight of Jennie’s unrepentant face, and hearing the whispered, ‘I’m not sorry. Do her good it will, stuffy tart,’ she felt a bubble of laughter working its way up her throat. Whatever Jennie’s intentions had been, the result was a far more cheerful Marie returning to work that afternoon.
Someone else called to speak to her the following morning, and fortunately it was while Mr Harries was out of the shop. Geoff explained to the first sales lady that he needed to give her a message. She stood in the porch without giving him a chance to speak, assured him that everything was under control and Ivor was arranging for them to rent another house. He said nothing, just stared at her for a long time. Then, as the false smile left her lips and sadness filled her eyes, he said, ‘I’ll wait for you after work and we’ll talk it through, right?’
‘There’s nothing to talk about, we’ll be all right.’
‘I’ll be waiting and I’ll drive you home. One o’clock, is it? Half day closing?’
For the rest of the morning she kept busy, finding tasks both useful and unnecessary, telling herself all the time that she wouldn’t discuss the most recent events in the saga of the Masters household.
Geoff began the conversation by offering her some more decorating work, small jobs, painting a shed and a garage, but she refused. Her sister’s comments, unkind though they were, about her lacking backbone, and other things she’d said in previous arguments, reminding her that she had taken responsibility from Ivor instead of making him deal with things, had made her change her mind about the importance of working to pay off Ivor’s debts. Cleaning and decorating the flats had almost killed her. Jennie was right, or partly so, and although she didn’t hold her sister up as an example on which to model her life, she decided not to do more than work at the shop. She would leave it to Ivor, see where it got them.
Geoff listened to her reasoning and nodded agreement. ‘If you change your mind, I’ll help you,’ was all he said. She watched him as he drove carefully along the road. He gave her the impression he had more to say, much more.
When they reached the house, he held her arm as she prepared to alight. ‘Now, Marie. I want you to tell me what happened when you waited up for Ivor to come home. I know I’m interfering and I make no apologies. If I know all the facts and you need help in the future, I’ll be in a better position to give it. Nothing more than that. And what you tell me goes no further. You have my promise on that.’
‘Nothing. He told me nothing. Just made useless promises, telling me I mustn’t worry, that “everything will be all right”.’
‘Did he give any explanation for his absences?’ He needed to know whether Ivor had told her about finding his father.
He listened in silence, still touching her arm as she told him everything that had happened, about the foul stench on Ivor’s clothes and his putting them into a bag for the dry cleaners, and his evasion when she demanded an explanation. He released her arm and said, ‘Give me until tomorrow. I’ll know something by then.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘Find out what he’s up to. Don’t worry, if it’s a police matter I’ll talk to you before I do anything, but I doubt it’s anything worse than poaching. He tried to cheer her up by adding ‘What a family. If Ivor’s in trouble for poaching, he could be standing as a good character witness for your sons just before appearing in the same court accused of stealing the farmer’s fish and fowl!’ He was rewarded with an amused smile.
His mind was made up. He would have to threaten Ivor that he would tell Marie himself if he didn’t explain. He had only seen the father’s house from a distance. The outside was neglected and from Marie’s description of the foul smell emanating from Ivor when he got home, presumably from visiting the place, the inside must be far worse.
Marie hurried into the house, anxious to make use of the afternoon off by clearing the bedroom drawers and packing the surplus items in tea chests borrowed for the move. Where they would be unpacked again she tried not to consider.
Geoff returned to his shop but he couldn’t concentrate on his work. It began to rain, darkening the office behind the shop. He didn’t switch on the light, unaware of the gloom, his thoughts taking him far away, to a place where Ivor and Marie would be together, and the worries about her husband’s dishonesty would vanish and he would become a reliable provider again. Ivor was lucky that Marie wasn’t the sort to give up on a marriage. Her vows were immutable.
He sat looking through accounts, listing those overdue for payment, but the invoices didn’t get written and after a while he gave up, pushed them into a drawer and closed the shop. It was earlier than planned but his intention of talking to Ivor until he persuaded him to take Marie into his confidence overrode everything else. He drove to the edge of the farmer’s three-acre field, in which a small herd of cows stood staring at him with their soulful eyes. Leaning against the bonnet of the car he could just see the entrance to the wood yard and the sound of saws reached him from the work sheds. He seemed unaware of the rain as he stood, glancing at his watch from time to time, tilting his head to allow rain to spill from the brim of his trilby.
At five o’clock he moved away from the car and slipped through the hedge and across the field to a position from which he could see the office door. At five fifteen the sound of the hammering and sawing ceased. He heard doors being dragged shut and locks rattled as the place was made secure.
At twenty past five Ivor came out of the office, neatly dressed in a mackintosh, waterproof over-shoes covering his feet, and wearing a trilby. He stepped cautiously across the yard, avoiding the few puddles and the slush of wet sawdust and mud, carrying an umbrella high above his head. Geoff thought he looked a dandy, yet there was nothing about their man, with all his finicky attention to his appearance, that was effeminate. Moving with great caution, Geoff prepared to follow him. They left the area around the wood yard behind them in a procession of two, heading for the other side of the wood from where Geoff’s car was parked.
At a bus shelter about a mile from the village, Ivor stopped. After looking around furtively Ivor changed his shoes for wellingtons he had previously hidden in the hedge. Geoff watched him take a battered suitcase from its hiding place deep in the trees and, removing his mackintosh and jacket, folding both with infinite care, he put them into the suitcase from which he took other clothes. He saw him put on an overall and a shabby overcoat, rather too large for him, tighten the belt to take up some of the slack and, after replacing the suitcase in the tree, walk on, head down, in a hurried, purposeful manner.
With relief, Geoff followed, thankful that the dull and wet evening discouraged the man from looking back. They left the country road, crossed fields, with Geoff holding back several times to avoid being seen. Once he thought he’d lost him, but the sound of cracking twigs helped him to relocate him easily. After about twenty minutes the path led them out and into a clearing in which a cottage stood, forlorn and apparently abandoned, as no light showed on this dark evening and no smoke issued from the chimney. Ivor went in without knocking.
Cautiously Geoff approached. His heard voices, one angry and loud, the other frail and quaking. Looking through a window he saw a scene such as he’d never imagined, even in nightmares.
The old man who sat on a chair near the empty grate was surrounded by filth. Papers of all description and what looked like stale food and empty bottles and tins were strewn around the room and the old man held his arms up as though to protect his face. He couldn’t see Ivor but he could hear him shouting at the man, the words indistinct but clearly angry.
Forgetting the need for secrecy Geoff stared through the grimy window at the mess, and half imagined, half smelled the foulness of the place. The old man was saying something in reply to Ivor’s tirade and, presuming he was still standing there, Geoff was startled by a shout as Ivor appeared silently behind him and shoved him angrily away from the window.
‘What are you doing here? You’ve followed me!’
‘I came to find out what was going on and to insist you tell your wife!’ Shock and anger made Geoff shout as loudly as Ivor. ‘What’s going on?’ Geoff recovered his balance and returned to stare through the window.
‘Why did you follow me?’ Ivor demanded. ‘Did Marie ask you to?’
‘She doesn’t know I’m here. I had to find out what was happening that was making you change from a good husband and provider to a man who gambles to the extent that you’re making your family homeless. How can rediscovering your father cause that?’
‘You know?’
‘Yes, but Marie doesn’t and as your wife she should!’
‘Are you sure she doesn’t know?’
‘She thinks it’s another woman.’
Ivor relaxed his shoulders, his body drooping. ‘Not another woman, just that dirty old man.’
‘But I don’t understand.’
‘Look at him,’ Ivor said in disgust. ‘That filthy confused creature is my father. How can I tell her?’
Geoff said nothing and they watched as the man inside gathered papers and a few sticks and lit the fire in the grate, the glow from the dancing flames making a mask of his lined old face. Seeing him close to, it was hard to believe in a connection between the meticulous Ivor and the dirty, pathetic old man. Then he said, ‘Get help for him, Ivor. But you have to tell Marie.’
‘I can’t do that. The truth is, my marriage has been built on lies.’
‘Now is a good time to rebuild it, this time on honesty. Marie deserves that, surely?’
Ivor shook his head. ‘I can’t.’
‘That old man is suffering, desperately in need of help, and I don’t have to tell you that your wife is suffering too. She’s trying to hold everything together. How much longer are you going to wait? Is your pride worth all this misery? Will you wait until everything falls apart with no hope of rebuilding?’
There was no word from Ivor.
Geoff turned and grabbed him, glared into his face then shook him like a dog with a rat. ‘You pathetic, cowardly excuse for a man.’
‘I’ve lost her and nothing else matters.’
Geoff shook him some more and threw him against the wall of the house.
‘Tell her!’ he shouted.