‘Anyone for more porridge?’ Agnes shouted through from the scullery where she seemed to be banging and crashing a lot of pots and pans about unnecessarily.
‘Aye, go on then, hinny. I’ll have a dollop more. Set me up for the day ahead,’ Pearl shouted back through to her daughter’s mother-in-law. Joe had to force himself not to smile as he heard Agnes let out a heavy sigh before plodding back into the kitchen and practically throwing a lump of sticky porridge into Pearl’s bowl.
It was a Saturday morning and the Elliot household seemed to be growing by the minute. Just over a week ago there had just been Agnes, Polly, Bel and little Lucille – as there had been for the past year and a half since the twins had gone off to war. Now, not only did they have Joe back home, but they also had an unexpected house guest in the form of Bel’s mother Pearl, and within the next hour Tommy’s seventy-year-old grandad, Arthur, would also be joining them to live there permanently.
When Agnes knew that Joe would be coming back and that they would need an extra room, she had asked the landlord, Mr Bernie Boyd – whom they all called Mr BB for short – if she could take over the three spare rooms on the second floor left empty by the previous tenants who had done a moonlight flit. She’d managed to persuade Mr BB to give her the extra accommodation at quite a considerable discount – mainly due to the fact he had not found anyone else to rent them out to and it was a case of some money was better than none, but also because he had more than a soft spot for Agnes.
Because of Joe’s disability, Agnes had given him her bedroom on the ground floor next to Bel and Lucille, and had moved herself upstairs to the room at the front of the house with a window that looked out on to the main road.
Pearl had taken up residency in the second vacant room on the very night she had shown up. Agnes wasn’t quite sure whether Bel’s mother had known there was a spare room going beforehand, or if it had just been a coincidence she had turned up when she did, but there was no way she could have chucked Pearl back out on to the street that night, much as a part of her might have wanted to, and even though she sensed she would have had Bel’s backing had she done so.
It had, however, been Agnes’s idea for Arthur to end his tenancy at the Diver’s House on the south dock and to take the third spare room. The old man had more or less become a part of the Elliot family since Polly and his grandson had started courting, and when Tommy had joined up, leaving Arthur on his own in what had been their home for many years, Agnes had argued that it made sense he live with them.
This morning there was just Bel, Lucille, Joe, Pearl and Agnes at the breakfast table, as Polly had already left for work at the yard. She was now working most weekends, often doing a full day on Saturday and half a shift on Sunday.
‘Agnes, come and sit down and have your breakfast. You’re not our skivvy, you know,’ Bel said, glaring across the table at her mother, who she saw was just about to make a grab for the jug of milk.
‘And, Ma, we haven’t got a cow out back producing an endless supply of milk. There’s something called “rationing” going on these days.’
Pearl pursed her lips like a spoilt child, putting the milk down, and eating the rest of her porridge with a sullen face.
‘Bel.’ Agnes pulled up a chair at the table and poured her tea from her cup into the saucer to cool it down before taking a slurp. ‘Would you mind changing Joe’s dressing for me this morning, please? It’s just that I need to get Arthur’s room ready for him before he arrives.’
Bel glanced across at Joe; she realised he was looking at her.
‘Yes, of course, Agnes. I’ve told you before. As long as I’m not working, I want to be doing as much as I can here to help out.’
‘Thanks.’ Agnes smiled, taking another mouthful of tea, ‘I really don’t know what I would have done these past few weeks without you.’
Bel had always been a good actress, and she had managed to cover her reticence at having to tend to Joe’s injured leg well. In reality, it was the last thing she wanted to do. She would have preferred to clean the lavvy and the washhouse from top to bottom rather than play nurse to Joe.
It wasn’t that she had any qualms about cleaning Joe’s wound, which was still refusing to heal properly and which meant he had to have clean, fresh bandages first thing in the morning and last thing at night, but that she was finding it increasingly difficult just to be near Joe; or even talk to him.
If she was honest, she could not bear to be in his company at all. Since Joe had returned, it was as though his very presence irritated her. She felt awful for feeling like she did, but she just couldn’t help it. She found herself being snappy with him when he didn’t deserve it – Joe hadn’t done anything wrong since he’d come back. Quite the reverse. He had been incredibly easy-going, even though she knew he was still in a lot of pain with his leg.
But what really annoyed her more than anything was that Lucille seemed to worship the ground he walked on, or rather hobbled on.
She had lain awake at night and thought about why she was feeling so angry towards Joe and so wound up by him. She had practically grown up with Joe, and, of course, Teddy and Polly. She had fallen in love with Teddy, but Joe had been like a brother to her, just as Polly had been like a sister. So why did she feel the way she did?
Bel forced a smile and got up from the table.
‘Come on then, Joe, if you sit by the range it’ll give me more space and I can get your dirty bandages on the boil …’
Bel tried hard to keep any kind of resentment from her tone of voice, but she caught the way Joe looked at her and realised he was aware of what she was thinking and feeling. He knew her too well. She could pull the wool over Agnes’s eyes when she really had to, but she’d never had to do so with Joe, Teddy or Polly. All three of them had always been very open with each other.
‘Me watch Doey,’ Lucille demanded as she slid off her chair, toddled over to Joe and pulled at his hand. Bel was not sure if Lucille genuinely found it difficult to say Joe, or that it was her way of calling him a mix of ‘Daddy’ and ‘Joey’. Bel had given up trying to get her to call him ‘uncle’, but had come down hard on her when she had kept calling him ‘daddy’ during Joe’s first few days back home.
‘No, you’re not going to watch your uncle Joe,’ Bel said, stressing the words uncle and Joe. ‘Your grandma can take you out for a little while to get some fresh air.’
‘Oh, pet, dinnit call me Grandma, makes me feel like a right old woman,’ Pearl said, bending down to pick up her granddaughter, who immediately tried to wriggle out of her grip.
‘Just you call me Pearl, petal,’ she told Lucille, who had sidled up to Joe again.
Bel felt another wave of irritability wash over her.
‘What is it with everyone? Why can’t we all just call each other what we’re supposed to call each other? By our proper names? Joe is “Uncle Joe” and you, Ma, are “Grandma”,’ Bel said in exasperation.
‘Ha,’ Pearl blustered, ‘that’s rich coming from you, Mrs “My-name-is-Bel-no-one-calls-me-Isabelle”.’ Pearl was triumphant, clearly pleased with herself for getting one up on her daughter. ‘I think the proper word is hypocritical,’ she added, as she got up, and looked around for her cigarettes.
‘If you’re looking for your fags, I’ve put them in your coat pocket. You know I don’t like to see them cluttering the place up.’
The real reason Bel hated seeing her mum’s smokes around was that they reminded her too much of when she was growing up; there had always been empty cigarette packets or tobacco pouches lying around everywhere, as well as an array of overflowing ashtrays. Funny that her ma had always had money for her cigs, but there’d never been a scrap to eat in the house.
Bel pushed thoughts of the past from her mind. Every second thought she had at the moment seemed to be filled with resentment. It was exhausting, and she was exasperated with herself.
‘Come on then, petal,’ Pearl said to Lucille, ‘get your coat and Pearl will take you out for some fresh air.’
A few minutes later, when Lucille and her grandmother had headed off into town to look at the large stone lions that guarded the famous Winter Gardens (something she had never done with her own daughter), and Agnes was bustling around upstairs getting Arthur’s room as spic and span as possible, Joe and Bel found themselves on their own in the kitchen.
Bel wished she had not been so quick to get rid of her mum and Lucille as she hated being on her own with Joe, more than she hated her mother being around.
There was an awkward silence before Joe asked cautiously, ‘It must be hard having your ma around?’
‘Just a little … But she’s my ma whether I like it or not,’ she said, not giving Joe any eye contact as she bathed the still raw wound just above his knee.
Joe heard the bitterness in her voice and it sounded unfamiliar. He had never known his sister-in-law to be like this. He was aware that he had changed. Of course, he’d changed. War had changed him. The horrors he’d seen had changed him. And, of course, his brother’s death had changed him. But he hadn’t expected to see such a difference in the people he loved, in those he’d left behind. And yet they’d all changed in their own ways: his mother had become older and wearier, Polly was no longer his baby sister but now a strong, confident woman – and an engaged one at that – and Bel … well, Bel had become hard, cold, and bitter. He knew she was grieving, he could only imagine what she was going through, but it still didn’t make seeing the change in her any easier.
As Joe gritted his teeth while Bel sponged his leg with warm, soapy water, then dabbed it with salt water before carefully covering the open wound with a piece of gauze, he thought that the only person who didn’t seem to have changed was Bel’s mum. The years might have taken their toll on her looks, but she was still the same old Pearl.
‘She’s no different to when we were all kids,’ Joe spoke his thoughts aloud.
‘I know,’ Bel muttered, thinking that Joe was right – her ma had never changed, but she had learnt to camouflage her true nature as she had got older, to make herself slightly more socially acceptable.
Bel tried not to touch Joe’s bare flesh as she unravelled a clean length of bandage and wrapped the new dressing around Joe’s leg. It seemed wrong to have any kind of physical contact with another man. The only man she’d ever touched was her Teddy.
‘Has she said why she’s come back? Or how long she’s staying for?’ Joe pursued the subject of Pearl, much to Bel’s annoyance.
‘Not really,’ she said, purposely keeping her answers as brief as possible.
Didn’t Joe realise she didn’t want to chat?
They were, of course, the same questions she had asked her mother herself, and from whom she had not really got a straight answer.
‘I heard about poor Teddy,’ Pearl had told her the morning after her impromptu arrival, ‘and I just had to come and see my Isabelle. My daughter. My widowed daughter,’ she’d added with her usual lack of sensitivity. Bel’s instinct told her that her mother was lying and that there was some other reason she had come back, and that it had nothing to do with Teddy’s death, or any kind of care for her daughter, whom she’d never given two jots about.
One thing she did know, though, was that her ma seemed quite at home at the moment, and unfortunately looked set on sticking around for a good while longer.