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DEDICATION
When one knows thee, then alien there is none, then no door is shut.
Gitanjali-Rabindranath Tagore
CONTENTS
COVER
TITLE PAGE
DEDICATION
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
OTHER WORKS
COPYRIGHT
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER
CHAPTER ONE
‘Dawn’t be a fool,’ shouted James as he slapped me hard across the face.
I stopped shrieking and began to weep, rocking myself backwards and forwards, my hands clutching at my nightgown as if to tear it.
James, with tears running down his face, was saying: ‘Now, dawn’t take on so, luv.’
His Lancashire accent, usually carefully suppressed, was homely and comforting, and gradually my weeping lessened and I lay back on the pillow. The medicine bottles on the mantelpiece changed from red blobs to definite shapes, and James’s face, so like Barney’s, ceased to be a blurred mirage and I saw how exhausted he looked.
That last winter of the war had seemed particularly long and cold. Although in Wetherport bombing raids had ceased some time before, most of its inhabitants were worn down by overwork and poor food, and Mother was not surprised, therefore, when at the end of March I caught influenza. On the morning that James called, I was feeling better, and, with the promise that on the following day I should get up, Mother had tucked me up in bed with two hot-water bottles, and had gone out to shop. She had been gone only five minutes when the doorbell rang.
I let it ring twice, in the hope that whoever was at the door would go away, but the third ring was such a prolonged one that in desperation I got out of bed, hastily wrapped myself in a blanket and pattered along the icy upper hall and down the equally icy Victorian staircase to answer it.
On the doorstep stood James, looking as white as if he had just seen the sticky result of a direct hit on an air-raid shelter. Mist had formed little globules of moisture on his red hair and on his muffler; his face was blue with cold.
‘What’s the matter?’ I asked apprehensively, and shivered in the draught from the open door.
‘Get back into bed and ah’ll tell thee,’ said James.
In spite of ten days of illness, I ran up the stairs and scrambled into bed, my heart pounding with foreboding.
‘It’s Barney,’ I muttered, my teeth chattering. ‘Something has happened to Barney.’
James limped slowly up the stairs, drawing off his gloves as he came, entered my bedroom and sat down heavily on the bedside chair.
One of my hands lay on the coverlet and he took it in his.
‘Peggie, dear, Barney was killed the day before yesterday. Mother got the news this morning.’ The words came in the precise, clear tones he used when clarifying a point of law for one of his clients.
Although the news was something I had feared daily for months, I was stupefied by it and could not for a moment grasp the implication of his words. It was said that lightning did not strike twice in the same place, and it seemed impossible to me that in one war a woman could really lose two fiancés.
Jackie had gone down in the Swallow in 1939, a month before our wedding, and it broke my heart, but I was young then – and young hearts mend – so that when Barney proposed to me four years later life once more became worth living.
I had known Barney all my life. He was big, red-headed and impetuous, and I fell in love all over again. His only sorrow seemed to be that his twin brother, James, was lame and could not, therefore, join the Army with him. This had separated them for the first time in their lives – and now they were separated for ever.
‘Kill me, Lord, kill me too,’ I had shouted in my agony, as James’s words bit into my heart and mind.
I must have had hysterics; otherwise James would never have struck me, but I remember only an enveloping, physical pain. Barney was dead, and the knowledge of it killed part of me.
I clung to James’s hand: ‘Why did he have to die?’ I sobbed. ‘Why not take a useless fool like me, not a good man like him? Why couldn’t I die instead?’
James loosed his hand and put his arm around me. He smoothed the hair away from my eyes: ‘The good God must have other work for you to do,’ he said.
James was not the kind of man to talk about God, and his words stuck in my mind, but at that time I just lay in his arms with his face close to mine, and thought only of my own misery and not of his. He and Barney were identical twins, and he must have felt as if one of his limbs had been amputated without anaesthetic – yet he never mentioned his mother’s or his own suffering.
James was still nursing me against his damp overcoat when Mother returned from shopping. She could never tell the brothers apart unless she saw James limp, and she thought it was Barney sitting beside me.
‘Barney, how nice to see you. Leave at last!’
James said, ‘I’m James,’ and Mother understood.
‘My poor darlings,’ she said. ‘Your poor mother.’
In her time, Mother had faced many crises, and she was wonderfully patient with James and me that day. It was she who remembered to telephone James’s office – James was a solicitor, as was Barney – to ask his clerk to cancel his morning appointments, and it was she who later bundled him off to work, after letting him talk to her about Barney while she prepared lunch for him.
‘Is someone with your mother?’ she asked.
‘My aunt is with her.’
‘Then when you have eaten this, go away and work. Work is a good opiate.’
When he had gone, she came and sat on my bed and talked to me. She did not talk about Barney, but about James, of his brilliant brain, his sensitiveness and the sorrow he must be feeling. She said firmly that Angela, who is my younger sister, and I must help to comfort him and his widowed mother.
I listened dully. At that moment I did not care about anybody except Barney, and every time I thought of his lying, blown to pieces, in a German field, sobs shook me and I writhed in my bed, so that the pillows grew damp and the sheets became hopelessly twisted.
When Mother realised that it was too soon to divert my thoughts to other people, she sat quietly by me until Father and Angela returned from work. Perhaps she knew what I had not realised, that James loved me more than Barney did; and maybe she hoped that when the pain had worn off, I would transfer my love of one brother to the other.
Father came in and stared down at me with pitying eyes.
‘I am sorry, child,’ he said.
He bent and kissed me: ‘Have courage, little girl.’
He went away to eat his dinner, and I heard the quiet murmur of his and Mother’s voices in the room below.
I heard also Angela’s key in the lock of the front door, and the patter of Mother’s slippers as she went to meet her in the hall. I heard Angela give a little cry of anguish; Mother must have told her the news immediately, so that she did not blunder when she came up to see me.
There was a pause and then Angela’s dragging footsteps up the stairs. Enwrapped in my own misery as I was, even I thought how tired she must be to come so slowly.
Angela came into the room. She had taken off her hat and coat, but still wore the slacks and the overall she used in her work as a ‘back-room girl’. She had studied electronics, but none of the family really knew exactly what she did in the closely guarded Government laboratory where much of her life was spent.
She shut the door behind her and leaned against it. Her face was an unearthly white and, despite the heat of the sickroom, she was shivering.
‘Pegs.’ Her voice was only a whisper.
She looked so stricken that I motioned her to come to me. I had not imagined that my elegant, sophisticated sister had so much feeling in her, and I was jolted out of my self-pity.
She came and sat down on the bed, her shoulders hunched and her hands dangling hopelessly between her trousered knees. This ugly posture was enough to tell me how deeply she had been affected by the news of Barney’s death; usually she sat very gracefully, with straight back and ordered hands.
Suddenly she flung herself across me and wept, her breath coming in harsh gasps. I said nothing, feeling too full of grief myself to speak.
‘Dinner’s ready, Angela,’ called Mother.
‘Give me a handkerchief,’ said Angela, looking up quickly, her sobs hastily stifled.
I gave her a very wet handkerchief and she wiped her eyes and blew her nose. She tried to smile at me, as she said: ‘Woman must eat as well as weep.’
She went across to the dressing-table and powdered her nose with my puff, then came back to the bed, and in almost motherly fashion, straightened my top sheet and kissed me on the forehead. I could feel her lips trembling as they touched my skin, although she looked fairly composed as she walked to the door.
As she went out, she said: ‘I’ll come up after dinner and keep you company while you eat your supper.’
‘I can’t eat,’ I said.
‘My dear, you must. In times like this, one must keep strong – and you have a long way to go yet.’
‘I wish I was dead,’ I said.
After Angela had gone downstairs, I lay for a long time, thinking of Barney. I had always had a great affection for him, hot-tempered and ruthless as he often was; when we were younger, I had imagined that he preferred Angela to me as he had taken her out frequently, but it was to me that he proposed during the last Christmas he had spent at home. I had been so happy; it seemed as if the war could not possibly last much longer, and we planned to be married as soon as Barney was demobbed. He had survived the invasion of France safely and had enjoyed one more leave when his badly mauled regiment was brought home to be reformed. He had been tired and morose during that last leave, as if he had a premonition of what was to come, but after he was rested he became more cheerful and we spent two or three happy days together before he went back to his barracks.
I had begun to collect linen and china for the small flat we hoped to find. I wanted Barney to enjoy all the comforts I could scrounge for him in a tightly rationed country. I had bought sheets on the blackmarket, made pillowcases out of bleached flour bags, begged old curtains from Mother, and had bought from auction sales pieces of painted china and prewar silverware. Even now, on the bedside table, lay a half-finished tablecloth, which I was contriving by faggoting together tiny pieces of linen left over from the manufacture of aeroplane wings.
In a paroxysm of rage, I sat up and flung the tablecloth and the coloured embroidery silks across the room. Unfortunately, I flung the water glass as well; but the explosion it made when it crashed released the tension in me, and when Mother came running into the room, I was crying with steady, hopeless sobs.
Mother picked up the cloth and folded it carefully. It was to be a long time before I would spread it on a table, and if some, self-appointed prophet had told me where the table would be, he would not have been believed.
CHAPTER TWO
When I was seven, my father, Thomas Delaney, came to Wetherport to work in the Income Tax Offices. In order to be near his work, he bought a Victorian house not far from the middle of the city. It had a walled back garden, in which my father managed to grow the daffodils for which he was famous locally. In spite of the heavy fall of soot and the fact that the surrounding houses had long since deteriorated into apartments or boarding houses, the family was very fond of its home and we refused to be dislodged from it, even during the heaviest bombing; and when we surveyed it on Victory Day, five weeks after Barney’s death, we were happy to find that it was in as good condition as when we first entered it.
From this house, I had gone out to school and later to the University; and now when my long day’s work was done, it was the place to which I thankfully returned each night.
About half a mile from home there was a very old part of the city, which bordered upon the docks, and it was in this area that, after taking a degree, I took up social work amongst unwanted and neglected children. A scar on my lung kept me out of the Forces during the war, and I was left undisturbed by the Ministry of Labour and National Service to continue my work. Most of the prostitutes of Wetherport lived in my district, and the place swarmed with troops and sailors of every nationality. Many of the residents were coloured – part West African Negro, part Arab and part Chinese, with a few Indians scattered amongst them. Their poverty was great and was intensified by the bombing which they bravely endured. They knew me as ‘the lady from the Welfare’ and I was classed with ‘the man from the parish’, that is, the Relieving Officer, as someone to whom the front door could be opened without hesitation. The war brought work to those who were dock labourers and seamen, and the young men were called into the Army, so that their fighting cocks tended to languish in their backyards, but games of fan-tan and crown and anchor flourished, and betting and drinking carried away much that was earned; the poverty and filth of their homes remained.
As the war progressed, illegitimate children seemed to be born faster than I could cope with them and my work was always far behind. I therefore returned to the office a week after James’s visit, still feeling shaky from the effects of the influenza.
The elderly voluntary workers, who were my staff, were horribly kind. They had seen Barney’s name in the ‘Killed in Action’ column of the Wetherport Telegram, and they handled me as if I was a delicate ornament, liable to breakage. They tiptoed in and out of my room, brought me specially made cups of tea, and murmured that I was looking better or looking worse. I felt like screaming at them to stop, to be normal, to make some vulgar joke, so that the automaton that was me could try and laugh.
One day James rang me up and asked me to join his walking club – it was surprising how far his lame leg could carry him over rough country. By the end of the summer, I had become, at his instigation, an unprotesting member of a music club and an opera society. He kept me in circulation firmly; every time I showed signs of slinking back to the family fireplace to weep he hauled me out again.
Very few of our friends came home from the war, and, in the topsy-turvy world in which we found ourselves, Angela also seemed glad of James’s company, and she frequently came with us on our outings. She was witty and she often made James laugh; he had the same throaty chuckle as Barney – and it hurt me to hear him. I love to hear merriment, but a dead man’s laugh is saddening, especially when you still love him.
Occasionally it was very like torture to have James striding along beside me, looking just as Barney always did, and then to catch his eye and see a different soul, a strange mind, peering out at me; but he was an old friend and I did not have to make a special effort to be pleasant in his company, so I clung to him, and for nearly three years saw him from time to time, either at the various clubs to which he had introduced me or at his mother’s home, which I visited occasionally. His mother welcomed my visits and, presumably, hoped that I would marry him. This solution had not occurred to me and James gave no hint that it had occurred to him; he continued to behave in his usual silently courteous manner and asked nothing except my company. He had other women friends, with some of whom I was also acquainted, but he never showed any particular preference for one of them.
I gradually picked up the fragments of my life and stuck them together again as best I could. The sickening reaction from the effort entailed by the war had, however, set in, and like many others I felt low and dispirited. I had been the only young woman left in our organisation at a time when our work was increasing; the war itself had brought many problems which were not the concern of any particular authority and I often found myself doing work far removed from the care of children. Many were the days when there was no time to eat and many the nights I spent on an old sofa in the office rather than waste time by going home. Once the Japanese war had been brought to a horrifying finish by the atom bomb, however, new social workers were recruited and my hours of work became normal. I should have been grateful for a life once more returned to a peaceful routine, but I found myself intolerably bored and very tired of solving other people’s problems.
In the autumn of 1948, however, James’s love of chocolate caused a sharp change in my life. We were attending a first night at the Royal Theatre, and I had elected to wait in the foyer, while James carried on a delicate negotiation with the girl in the sweet shop next door, for the purchase of a box of rare, handmade chocolates, for which he had not enough ration coupons. I stood idly watching the people arriving for the show. Every tram that stopped outside unloaded a fresh mass of shabby humanity; a few small private cars added their quota of patrons. Dressed in old sweaters, tweeds and raincoats, the women hatless like myself, they poured into the theatre. They certainly did not care much about outward appearances, but I knew they would form an attentive and critical audience.
I had just seen a Duchess slip quietly into the auditorium, chivvied from behind by two students who were afraid of being late, when a voice behind me gushed: ‘My deah, where have you been all these years?’
The voice was familiar, and I turned round quickly, to face a middle-aged woman who was extending a black-gloved hand to me.
‘Bessie,’ I cried, overjoyed at meeting someone I had known before the war. The last time I had seen Bessie she had been in khaki uniform – a sort of female brass hat – but there was nothing of that about her now. Her black suit and frilly, red hat made her completely feminine.
‘My deah, you are just the woman for whom I’ve been looking. Can you dance?’
‘Yes,’ I said blankly.
James came up to us, triumphantly bearing his box of chocolates, and was introduced. The foyer bell rang, and Bessie said hastily: ‘Come and see me, my deah, tomorrow evening at 42 Belfrey Street – the McShane Club. Come at seven.’ She looked about anxiously. ‘Please excuse me – I must find my party.’
She waved one plump hand vaguely in the direction of the front door and tripped across the hall, her high heels clicking merrily on the marble floor, and to my amazement, joined a party of Negroes. She greeted them gaily and vanished with them into the auditorium.
James’s eyebrows lifted, as he asked: ‘Who are they?’
‘No idea,’ I said.
‘Have a chocolate,’ said James, tearing off wrappings.
James had invited a young married couple to join us, and as soon as they arrived we went in to see the play. It was a good play about the escape of a prisoner of war from a German stalag – but my mind was on Bessie.
Bessie Forbes used to live in a flat near to us. Her husband had been a lieutenant in the Regular Army and had been at Wetherport Barracks for nearly a year before the war broke out. He had been sent to Norway and had been posted as Missing. Bessie waited for further news but none came, and, as she had no children, she enlisted in the Army Territorial Service. I knew she had done very well in the Service, but presumably she had now taken her discharge. I wondered if she had married again. And what was she doing in the company of Negroes? Negroes were an everyday part of my working life – but that was unusual. It was not reasonable to suppose that a woman of Bessie’s station in society would be well acquainted with any – the colour bar still functioned in England quite effectively in respect of Negroes.
At the end of the second interval, as the audience was surging back to its seats, I was tossed against Bessie, and she smiled at me.
‘Who are you with?’ I whispered, nearly dead with curiosity.
‘Nigerian chieftains,’ she said. ‘See you tomorrow,’ and she was swept away from me.
The mystery was beyond me, so I ate James’s chocolates and tried to concentrate on the play.
James and I walked leisurely home together. The night was clear and there was a sweet smell of rotting leaves in the park. We did not talk much on the way, knowing each other well enough not to have to make conversation. He lingered at our gate and I asked him in.
‘No, I – I won’t come in tonight,’ he said.
He made no move to depart, however, and leaned awkwardly against the gate pillar, his fingers drumming on its dirty, granite sides.
He said abruptly: ‘Peggie, will you marry me?’
My mind was on Nigerian chieftains, but the answer came without hesitation, and I surprised myself with the certainty of it.
‘No, Jamie,’ I said gently, ‘I can’t.’
James stopped drumming on the gate pillar and gripped it hard.
‘Why not, Peggie? Ah love thee.’
‘I know, dear, and I’m sorry.’ I paused, and looked at him in the light of the street lamp. ‘You are so like Barney, Jamie, that I would love you because of the likeness and not because you are you. It would not be fair to you.’
He stood there, silently biting his lower lip, just as Barney used to when puzzled.
‘Ah might’ve guessed it,’ he said at length. ‘Are you sure, Pegs?’ The light-blue eyes gleamed suddenly in the poor light and there was pain in them.
My resolve faltered; James would make a good husband, I knew. He had a depth of character which Barney had lacked. I looked up at him again. The light was playing tricks with him and it seemed as if Barney was standing there, instead of James; like a tormenting dream, I thought bitterly.
‘I can’t, Jamie. You’re the finest man I know – but I can’t marry you – I just can’t.’
‘Dawn’t fret yourself, luv. Ah do understand.’ He lifted my chin with one hand, so that the lamplight fell upon my face. His lips were curved with pity. ‘Just remember, that ah’m always around if you want me,’ he said softly. His arm dropped to his side and he turned to go. ‘Good night, Peggie, luv.’
‘Good night, Jamie – I’m truly sorry.’