1951
BARBARA THEDDLE TURNED UP AT our house again the following evening, this time with a bottle of sherry and a Madeira cake.
‘I always tell Alan’ (apparently the gardener) ‘to keep the shed door closed,’ she’d told us. ‘But Smudge must have got in somehow on Sunday when Alan was doing the lawn. I just couldn’t believe it. There he was behind the wheelbarrow, a cobweb on his nose. You saw it so clearly, Nancy, in your vision: our seed chest, Alan’s old gardening coat. Of course there are no apples left at this time of year, but still . . .’
‘I’m glad I was able to help,’ my mother said modestly.
‘We’re all so incredibly grateful, Nancy. You’ll have to come over for our garden party at the weekend. It will be a quiet affair. Nothing fancy. A few of us from the tennis club, the WI and the Housewives’ League.’
My mother had smiled. ‘I’ll bring a trifle.’
And so my mother found herself somewhere on her way to social acceptance, back where she considered herself to belong.
The news of my mother’s triumph spread quickly. It wasn’t only Barbara Theddle who was impressed; a local reporter came over and took my mother’s picture, and there she was the following week on page seven of the Ludthorpe Leader next to an advert for a vacuum cleaner: Local Medium Finds Mayor’s Cat.
‘You’re a star,’ Reg tells her. ‘Beauty and brains. We’ve got to up our game, not leave so much to chance. We’re moving up in the world, Nance.’
My mother has lots of visitors in the evenings now. Not only those who want to contact the dead, but those who have misplaced something: wedding rings, wallets, glasses, husbands. ‘Yes, Mr Pearson, your slippers are definitely under the sofa,’ I hear her say when I pass the dining room one evening.
Reg is chuffed to bits about my mother’s new-found success, the business picking up, her becoming chummy with the Theddles and ‘their set’ and ‘the dough rolling in’. Not that Reg manages to hang on to money for very long; he’s always out playing poker in the back room of the pub, going down to the dogs or popping into Reynold’s (the corner shop used as a front for the local bookie) to place a bet on a horse that’s ‘a sure thing’. He sits with his ear close to the wireless, wearing a tense, nervous expression, then storms out of the house, banging doors and cursing loudly. When I asked him why he bothers with it all he gave me a cold stare and said: A man’s got to have a way of enjoying himself. He never looks like he’s enjoying himself to me.
Reg also has unpredictable moods, meaning my mother is often on edge. She gets upset if she thinks she’s spoiled the dinner. Goodness, are the potatoes overdone? she asks, prodding them with her knife whilst Reg is busy helping himself to seconds. I don’t know why she worries. I’m sure Reg doesn’t even taste what he eats. He wolfs his food down like a starved dog then goes off to The Bird in Hand, not returning until late. My mother doesn’t sleep until he comes home. I’m surprised she sleeps at all: I can hear Reg snoring from my room. I keep my door closed in an attempt to block it out. One evening last week he came home drunk and angry after an unsuccessful poker game and shouted at my mother. I could hear him banging about in the kitchen, calling her a floozy. She had been seen speaking to Mr Goy, the fishmonger, outside the town hall. About what? Reg wanted to know. About a seance, my mother told him. The following morning she had a bruised cheek. When I asked her about it she said a tin of Spam fell on her at work. I arrived home from school to see a bunch of flowers sitting in a vase on the kitchen windowsill. Reg gives my mother other gifts, too, packages of meat which he brings home after we’ve used our ration, trinkets and odd bits of junk he gets from goodness knows where. Yesterday evening he came home with a large cast iron doorstop in the shape of a rabbit. The rabbit has a chipped ear but nevertheless it now props the kitchen door open and I have to remember to step around it so as not to stub a toe.
It seems cruel that just as my mother’s social life has perked up, things have become difficult for her at home. Reg is always more interested in his van than he is in us. He goes off to the works garages in order to tinker about with it, even at the weekends. ‘Got to keep her in tip-top condition,’ he says. ‘You care more about that van than you do me,’ Mother replies, but really, I believe Mother is still so flattered by Reg’s praise, so excited about her new-found fame and friends, she forgives Reg for his rages and absences, makes excuses for him, or else she buries her head in the sand about his moods and demands. She doesn’t seem to notice the money disappears as fast as she makes it. ‘Maybe one day we’ll be able to afford a cottage by the sea,’ she said dreamily the other evening when we were eating our ham and chips. (My mother has always wanted to live by the sea.) ‘Don’t be daft,’ Reg said, shoving a chip into his mouth. ‘I hate bleedin’ seagulls. Noisy buggers.’
As for Lucy, it’s been three weeks since the dance and she hasn’t mentioned Rupert, what happened between them. Whenever I broach the subject she tells me not to worry, that it was just a misunderstanding. I expect she’s keeping away from him.
All Lucy has wanted to talk about is Mr Wheaton: how wonderful it is when they’re together, how much he understands her, how clever he is. She tells me about being squashed into the back of his car, of having to wear sunglasses and a headscarf when she goes out to meet him, of snatched half-hours and broken promises when he can’t get away, which is often, by the sounds of it. It doesn’t sound much fun to me: waiting around for a man, being a part of his lies and deceit, being let down when he doesn’t show. I picture Mr Wheaton taking Lucy’s hands in his. But you must understand, darling, it’s all terribly tricky . . . She writes him long letters which Mr Wheaton apparently adores but has to burn immediately. He never seems to write to Lucy, nothing more than a quickly dashed-off note which he leaves tucked under the wheel of his bicycle – some kind of code telling her whether he can meet her that evening.
I worry about Lucy; I can’t help feeling she’s in over her head. She says she’s happy but she’s often anxious, concerned about upsetting Mr Wheaton in some way or other. Her nails are bitten and I catch her staring out of classroom windows, something I am usually guilty of. Edie Green, the sky will offer no solution to Pythagoras, Miss Munby said to me last week. Still, it’s all terrifically exciting: to hear about Lucy’s affair, to be friends with someone who is having a real grown-up relationship, to know that I am the only person who knows.
Yesterday, after school, we stopped off at the library as Lucy wanted to take a book out: Married Love by Marie Stopes. Mrs Murdle, the librarian, asked Lucy how old she was before she gave her the book and Lucy had to lie. I am sure Mrs Murdle knew Lucy was lying but she let her borrow the book anyway, slipping it to her in a brown paper bag. I need to learn more about relations between men and women, Lucy had told me. I really don’t know anything at all and I don’t want to look silly in front of Max. I have to admit, I don’t know much either. I remember when I began to bleed and my mother told me that I was to stay away from boys and never to sit on cold doorsteps. Then, there was that rather embarrassing biology lesson with Mrs Lark, who announced it was time we learned how babies were made. She hastily explained that a male rabbit ‘deposits his fluid’ into the female and that it works the same way for all mammals. This had left us feeling more perplexed than ever. Cordelia Keal, who has four younger brothers, all born at home, and who knows something of the male and female anatomy, was just as confused as the rest of us. But how on earth do you squish it in and manage to keep it in for long enough? she’d mused. It must be like trying to get toothpaste back in the tube.
I’ve had a lot to write in my diary; it’s been hard to keep up and I’ve taken to carrying it around with me, making little notes about things I might want to write more about later. I write everything down if I can, trying to make sense of it all.
It’s three thirty on Monday afternoon, the bell has just gone and I’m hurrying along the upper corridor, on my way to meet Lucy at our usual place outside the gates. We’ve brought our bicycles to school and are planning to cycle to the beach. I haven’t spoken to Lucy since Friday and I’m desperate to hear how it went with Mr Wheaton at the weekend. His wife was planning to visit her sister in Harrogate, and Lucy was supposed to be spending the night with Mr Wheaton in a hotel along the coast. Of course, we’ll have to pretend we’re married, she’d told me, chewing her thumbnail.
‘Step into my office a minute, will you, Edie?’ Miss Munby appears in the corridor in front of me, holding the door open, and I feel I have no choice but to reluctantly enter, wondering what she could possibly want. The sun streams through the windows. A picture of the King in his robes hangs on the wall, and another of a group of Victorian schoolchildren posing for a photograph. A brown teacup and saucer sit on Miss Munby’s desk amongst piles of papers. The room smells of old school dinners, her small office being above the dining hall. She gestures for me to have a seat as she moves behind her desk.
‘So, it’s nearly the end of the term, Edie.’
I nod agreeably then look down at my hands. My pen leaked during maths and my fingers are stained; I rub at a mark on my thumb.
‘We were wondering if you’d made any plans. If you know what you might do when you finish here?’ She fans herself with a sheet of paper.
There’s a scuffle of footsteps and giggles outside the door as a group of girls rush by. It’s the hottest day of the year so far and everyone is keen to be outside.
I haven’t made plans, but I’m not sure I want Miss Munby to know this. I stare at a small trophy on her desk and dig my knuckles into the padded fabric seat of the chair.
‘There are some girls, Edie,’ she continues, ‘who we know won’t be returning to Ludthorpe Grammar in September.’
I nod. Linda and Cordelia have already enrolled on a typing course, but neither of them intends to work for long. Ann’s going into nursing but she sees it as short-term, something to be dropped as soon as there’s a ring on her finger, I’ve heard her say. Judy is going to work as a secretary in her uncle’s office. She doesn’t even need to do a course. She’s excited as the office is ‘full to the brim with potential husbands’. Her mother has already bought her a twinset and pearls.
‘But there are plenty of other girls who are returning to us in the autumn, Edie,’ Miss Munby is saying. ‘Girls who wish to gain further qualifications, who want to give themselves more possibilities.’
I glance up at the clock on the wall; I don’t want to be late to meet Lucy, she might leave without me.
Miss Munby taps her fingers on the desk then tries again. ‘You must understand, by getting a place here, you were offered a chance so many others don’t get, a chance of a better education. If you stay and complete the new A level qualifications, you’ll leave here with something that many others don’t have. A key to a better future, to a career. You’re a bright girl, Edie.’ Miss Munby studies me for a moment, as if to make sure she trusts in her own judgement. ‘Well, bright enough.’ She rests her thin wrists on the desk in front of me. I can see a silver watch strap. The sleeve of her blouse is fraying and I avert my eyes to the floor.
She clears her throat. ‘I would highly recommend you return in September. The additional qualifications will stand you in good stead.’
I look up at Miss Munby, cautiously. She smiles at me, trying to tell me that we are the same, me and her. I have nothing against Miss Munby, but I do not believe I am in any way like her. She is a different species, after all, an older person whose life is settled and dull. She may not be as old as some of our other teachers, like the Miss Drays of the world – women who never married after a whole generation of young men died, leaving a short supply. Miss Munby is probably only thirty-five, but to me she is old and washed up. She also hasn’t secured a husband. For that, my mother would consider her a failure. When I look at her I see a cold cup of tea, a frayed sleeve, slim fingers with no rings, tiny wrinkles at the corners of her eyes, a weary smile.
‘What I’m saying, Edie, is that you will have more options if you return next year. We’re all very fond of you here, and of course we’d be delighted if you stayed.’
I mumble that I will have to think about it. Although I don’t know what I am going to do, I hadn’t been planning on returning to school next year. I assumed I’d look for a job. I’ve no idea what job, only a sense that one will be there for me when I want it, and that it will be my first step out into the real world, a world away from cold classrooms, greying teachers and cruel, giggling girls. Oh, I am sure there will be cruel girls wherever I go, but I sense they will be less interested in me once they have their husbands and babies to deal with, once they are busy doing their duty, busy repopulating. Or perhaps I will be less interested in their interest in me. I will grow a thicker skin and at the same time grow into the one I have.
Then I think of Lucy. She is planning to come back next year. She wants to take the new A levels so she can move away to study to be a teacher in London. It never seemed possible that I could do something like that. Miss Munby appears to think it might be.
‘Give it some thought, Edie. But don’t think too long. You’d be very welcome back here next year.’
I promise her I will consider my options, and then I stand, assuming I am dismissed, leaving her to her papers and her cold cup of tea.