A Hopscotch Summer (3 page)

Sorry to leave the game, but feeling important because of this summons, Em went with him. He took her hand, and she felt safe with him tall and strong beside her.

‘I don’t know why your mom’s not picking up better,’ he said, and now he sounded sad. ‘It’s never been as bad as this before, but we’ll have to muck in and help. I can count on you, can’t I, Em?’

She nodded as hard as she could. ‘Yes, Dad. Course you can.’

He raised a smile and a wink. ‘Good kid.’

Cynthia did not know how long she had been sitting on the edge of the bed, staring out at the hazy sky. At last she rocked forward, covering her face with her hands. Her lips moved but only the faintest sound issued between them.

‘Dear God . . . help me . . .’

Outwardly she appeared recovered from the baby’s birth. The pallor had gone from her cheeks and she had washed her hair, which was hanging loose in pretty chestnut curls. The strap of her white nightdress had slipped to reveal her strong shoulder and more than a hint of a breast swollen with milk. She looked a healthy young woman, sitting in a shaft of sunlight on the rumpled bed, her baby daughter asleep at her feet in the bottom drawer of the bedroom chest which just fitted in at the end of the bed.

But the lifeless look of despair in her eyes told a different story.

Violet was now a fortnight old, and though only just over five pounds at birth, was feeding well and thriving. She lay pink-cheeked and sated with a ragged piece of sheet over her, oblivious to her mother’s desperation.

Bob had already gone to work. Em and Sid were back at school. But Cynthia could not seem to move, as if her limbs had been filled with wet sand.

‘You’ll be back to normal soon,’ Bob kept saying, cheerily. ‘You know you sometimes feel a bit down after a babby, just for a few days.’

And she would nod at him in a vague way, trying to wrench her lips into a smile, to make him feel better.

She didn’t feel as if she’d ever be all right again, as if she had been locked into this dark, despairing place and someone had thrown away the key. No one could reach her nor she them. It was blackness far worse than the ‘blue’ days she had known before. She felt utterly cut off from everyone.

It was only then that she saw it was a nice day and thought to open the window and let in the warm air, but she just couldn’t find the will to budge from the bed. She ought to be heating up the copper in the scullery so that by mid-morning she would have a line of clean washing drying in the balmy September breeze. But what would have been normal routine before now felt an impossible task. All she wanted was to lie down and slip back into oblivion, away from everything. Just sleep and more sleep. That was all she could manage.

Nothing felt the same. Until now she had loved this simple room where she and Bob slept each night. They couldn’t afford much; the floorboards were bare and there was nothing but the bedstead and an old chest of drawers and a chair, but it was theirs, and cosy with the colourful patchwork quilt she had stitched in preparation for marriage. They were not living on a yard, they’d not sunk that low. Now, though, everything had changed in her eyes. Even in the sunlight the room looked poor and mean, the quilt tatty, the floorboards wormed and rough. The grime on the windows blown from countless chimneys around them, and the endless battle with bugs and vermin, oppressed her. Everything screamed of tasks undone and it was all more than she could manage. And the child . . . Her eyes filled with tears as she looked down at Violet, so sweet and pretty with her down of soft, brown hair.

‘I don’t want you,’ she whispered. Hearing her own words, she was horrified that she should say such a thing out loud. ‘You’re too much. I can’t look after you. I’m no good as a mother, no good to anyone. Someone should take you away . . .’

For a moment she imagined pressing something over Violet’s innocent face: so quiet it would be, stopping her breathing, no more noise, no more crying. She could sleep, just sleep . . . Her hand even strayed to the pillow, as if daring herself, then she pulled back with a sharp gasp, starting to tremble all over. God in heaven, what had she come to? A child murderer?

She was about to give way to the desperate tears that seemed to well up so often when she tensed, hearing cautious footsteps on the stairs. Joyce came tiptoeing in, then, seeing her mom sitting up, relaxed and ran excitedly towards her.

‘I been sitting quiet in my room like Dad told me but you’re awake now! Can I help with the babby?’

Joyce looked so sweet in her gigantic frock, some of her hair caught up and tied with a strip of rag into a little topknot. Em must have done it before she went to school. She had her shoes on, little T-bars, and her face shone with eagerness, but Cynthia found that the child’s presence filled her with overwhelming panic. Joyce’s energy was too much for her, her sheer vitality seemed to drink Cynthia dry. She stared at her little girl and said, ‘Oh Joycie, look at you, your ribbon’s filthy and your shoes are all scuffs.’ Her dress had dried porridge spilled down the front, and at the sight of all this Cynthia dissolved into tears.

‘What’s the matter, Mom?’ Joyce asked, eyes wide with alarm.

Cynthia felt like two different people in one. Her real self that wanted to be kind, to let Joycie help her, had been locked away somewhere. The witch she had become snarled at her, full of irritation.

‘Just go on downstairs, Joycie. I can’t be doing with all yer noise up here. You’ll wake the babby and I need to get myself dressed.’

Joyce put her hands behind her back and swung herself from side to side for a moment, her face pulled into a hurt, angry pout. She was trying to decide whether to argue but she didn’t dare say anything. All excitement wiped away, she sidled off towards the stairs again.

‘Go and see Nance,’ Cynthia called after her. ‘Just go and play. Or go and see Mrs Button. She might have a cake for you.’

There was no reply. She heard Joyce pause halfway down the stairs and stand kicking her feet resentfully against the wall, until Cynthia thought she’d scream.

‘I said go down, will you!’ she yelled. ‘For heaven’s sake, let me be!’

As Joyce thumped furiously down the rest of the stairs, Cynthia fell sideways on the bed, sobbing her heart out.

‘If only I could sleep, I’d feel better.’ It wasn’t just the baby waking her. She felt so wound up all the time she just couldn’t settle, and she’d lost her appetite and could hardly get anything down her, despite Bob saying, ‘You need to keep your strength up, what with feeding and that. Come on, love, try a bit more.’ But she felt queasy and the smell of food repelled her.

Once again she found herself just lying there for she didn’t know how long. Time swam by, her thoughts turning like a cruel wheel. She found herself dwelling on things long in the past, on those weeks only a few months after Mom died. Her father, desperate for someone to care for his three children, Geoff, herself and Olive, had brought Mary Jones to live with them, saying she was going to be their new mother.

She’d never liked Mary, not even for a second. And with her came three sons, all older than Cynthia. Percy and Joe were thirteen and eleven, and Albert nine. She squeezed her eyes tightly shut, trying to block out the memory of when they’d arrived with their gross habits. Mary Jones was never much of a housekeeper, and the boys! Cynthia recoiled at the thought. Their loud, battering voices, the crude teasing, the skeins of snot and all the smells that came with them had filled her with the deepest loathing. They had bullied Geoff, her sweet-natured brother. And it was Albert’s fault she had burned her hand. One day he was clowning around in the back room, in a space far too small. His teasing always had a threat in it and he grabbed Cynthia and started to swing her round and round by her hands, too fast, while she shrieked at him to let go. Suddenly she was whirling across the room, unable to stop, and broke her fall by plunging her hand into the grate.

Mary Jones, a small, mean woman, had come running at her screams.

‘What in hell’s name are you doing, you stupid girl?’ She dragged Cynthia back from the fire and slapped her cheek for the racket, before realizing that her screams of agony were rooted in a genuine, terrible injury. She dressed Cynthia’s hand but she never said a word of reproach to Albert.

Those years of misery and fear, feeling so helpless with her mother gone, a father who didn’t care and the rough slovenliness of Mary Jones, all came back to haunt her. She had always tried so hard never to think of it, but now it all welled up, raw and agonizing, however hard she tried to push the memories away. All she had wanted was a place that was safe and clean and loving. All! That had been everything she yearned for!

As soon as she was old enough, Cynthia had got a job at a button factory on the edge of the Italian quarter in Duddesdon and moved into a bug-infested room. Anything was better than living with Mary Jones. Eventually, that day on the tram when she was eighteen and she had seen Bob’s dancing eyes fixed on her, and she’d looked back into his generous, open face, life had begun in earnest, with someone to love her.

They’d been so happy, in their cosy little house, making a family. Cynthia knew Bob was proud of her and relied on her. She loved the way he called her ‘my girl’ even now, or ‘my wench’, to tease her.

‘Girl sounds better,’ she’d say archly. ‘Wench is common.’

‘Oh, you’re not common,’ Bob might say, sidling up to kiss her, then pinch her bottom, making her squeal with laughter. ‘You’re queen of the household, that’s what you are, missis.’

Who was that person who could laugh, she wondered now, remembering all her happiness with him. And she’d had Dot to share everything with. Everyone respected Dot for managing the way she had after Charlie was killed without ever once turning to the parish. Dot had always been a staunch friend. Together, they’d been two of the most energetic and capable mothers in the street. She certainly didn’t feel up to much these days.

‘Oh, Bob, I’m sorry,’ she whispered, pressing her face against the pillow. ‘I don’t know what’s the matter with me.’ She was letting him down, letting Dot and all of them down. The way she felt now, they’d all be better off without her.

‘Emma Brown!’
Thwack!

A sharp slap across the side of her head forced out a whimper between Em’s lips.

‘What d’you think you’re doing?’ Miss Lineham towered over her. She was a young teacher, with pale, washed-out looks and a very strict, spiteful personality. ‘All this time and there’s nothing on your slate. Stop biting your nails, it’s a disgusting habit. I don’t know what’s come over you this term.’

The class all watched in amazement. It was almost unheard of for Emma Brown to get a telling-off.

They’d been back at school a week. The heavy, metal-framed wooden desks were arranged in lines, two children at each, and Em and Katie were seated side by side. In front of every pupil lay a slate and on the blackboard was a set of subtraction sums. The sound of the squeak of pencils on the slates filled the room as the children attempted the calculations.

Em and Katie had walked to school together, down Kenilworth Street and along to the big red-brick school which crouched there waiting for them. The doors which had been locked all summer were flung open now. Across the road was the big goods yard next to Windsor Street Wharf and behind, belching out steam, the power station. School did not normally hold too much fear for Em and Katie, as they were able girls and most people wanted to be their friends.

Em’s cheeks burned and tears stung her eyes at Miss Lineham’s attack on her. She wasn’t used to being in trouble. She had always tried her best at school, but today she couldn’t keep her mind on anything, was barely conscious of the classroom’s panelled walls, the wilting aspidistra in its pot on a little table at the side or the vase of pinks on the teacher’s desk. She sat dreamily chewing away at her nails.

‘You’d better get working or it’ll be the cane for you!’ Miss Lineham threatened.

Hurriedly Em took up her slate pencil and started to copy a sum from the board. Katie nudged her in sympathy but Em ignored it. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Molly Fox glance round and mouth something at her when Miss Lineham’s back was turned. There was an odd number of children in the class and Molly was the only one sitting at a double desk on her own as no one wanted to sit with her. Em felt her cheeks go even redder. She didn’t want Molly’s sympathy either.

A while later her left hand automatically strayed back to her mouth and she was nibbling at her nails again. She pulled her hand away and stared at them; they looked raw and ugly now she had bitten them down to the quicks. How did that happen? She never used to bite them.

Lost in her own thoughts, she didn’t notice Miss Lineham approaching until another cuff across the head slammed her back to the present.

‘What did I tell you? Go and stand by my desk!’

Miss Lineham followed her up to the front, frowning in anger. Em felt her legs turn to jelly as the teacher picked up the thin cane which lay across her desk.

‘Hold out your hand.’

Em obeyed, reluctantly, trying to be brave, but she was already trembling with fear and hurt pride and it took her all her will power to keep the hand there as Miss Lineham whisked the cane through the air and delivered six stinging lashes with it to Em’s palm.

‘Now you can stand there until I tell you to move, d’you hear?’

‘Yes, Miss,’ Em said, so close to tears she had to swallow hard to keep them back. She clenched her smarting hand and nursed it under her other arm. Her head was throbbing from Miss Lineham’s slaps and she felt the eyes of the whole class fixed on her. Many, she knew, would be on her side, but others would be enjoying seeing her brought down a peg. She didn’t look at anyone, but stared down at her slate through her swimming eyes.

Out in the playground at break time, Katie was at her side immediately.

‘Bad luck!’ Em wasn’t sure if she imagined the smug edge to Katie’s voice. ‘She was after
you
this morning, wasn’t she?’

Em shrugged, still trying not to cry. Everything was changing too fast and she didn’t understand what was going on. This wasn’t meant to happen, not to her – Emma Brown getting the cane! Nothing felt right at home, with Mom still so quiet and strange. It all felt wrong, and even the new baby seemed like an intruder now, because, lovely as she was, she was the one who’d made Mom poorly. Em just wanted her to be back how she usually was when they got home from school, standing on the step canting to Dot, or cooking tea, singing ‘Cherry Ripe’ or ‘Down Yonder Green Valley’, songs she’d learned at school, while she bustled about the kitchen, shooing Sid and Joyce out from under her feet. Now she was always upstairs having a lie-down and the house felt silent and deserted, as if Violet had stolen their mom.

‘Oh-oh.’ Katie nudged her. ‘Here comes old smelly.’

Molly hove into view, in a grey frock which was too big for her, her thick hair scraped back untidily into a bunch. They saw one of the others shout a nasty remark at her, and Molly scowled and retorted in kind.

Em waited for Molly to say something irritating in her sucking-up way but, to her surprise, she said matter-of-factly, ‘That Miss Lineham’s a cow. You don’t want to take no notice of her. Bet yer hand’s smarting, ain’t it?’

Em nodded miserably.

‘Here, what you wunna do is go and put it on the railings – they’re nice and cold,’ Molly said.

‘Who asked you, then?’ Katie said with a sneer, but Em could see that Molly meant well. She tried it, reluctantly, but she found Molly was right. Even though they were a bit rusty, the iron struts felt cool and soothing against her stinging flesh.

‘Bet that feels better, eh?’ Molly spoke in a motherly way, very pleased with herself for having been able to show Em something. She was used to dealing with canings. ‘D’you wunna play statues?’

Em looked at Katie, who rolled her eyes and said,
‘No!’

But Em was grateful to Molly. ‘Go on, then,’ she said.

On the way home Em thought: Let our Mom be all right, let her be up and making tea for us.

She was with Katie, and Molly, who was now determinedly glued to their side.

‘I’ve got three ’alfpence,’ Molly boasted. ‘Let’s go to Prices’ and I’ll get yer some rocks. Yer can have an ’alfpenny each.’

It was too good an offer to resist, even for Katie, and soon they were in the Price sisters’ palace of sugar and Em chose her usual favourite of liquorice laces. The sweet taste was a comfort.

‘Ta, Molly,’ she said, and Katie grudgingly said thanks too, sucking on her sweets.

‘You playing out after tea?’ Molly wanted to know.

‘Dunno,’ Em said. ‘Our dad said he’d make us a kite.’

The envy was naked on Molly’s face. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Can I come and watch?’

‘Dunno,’ Em said evasively. ‘I’d have to ask our mom.’

It was true about the kite. Bob had been promising and now that it was Friday he said he’d make the kite and they’d have a proper day out tomorrow while the weather was still fine, right up to the Lickey Hills or somewhere, and fly it. That was a big outing and they were all excited. Em had only ever been to the Lickeys once before.

But would Mom be well enough? Parting with Katie and Molly she went home, still tasting the last of the liquorice in her mouth. Nervously she pushed the door open. Yesterday when she got home, she’d found Joyce looking very down in the mouth, Mom upstairs, no dinner on. But tonight, relief flooded through her. Mom was downstairs and there was a delicious smell which made her mouth water!

Sid was already home. She was supposed to look out for him but he always ran off with his mates and as the school was so near it didn’t matter. He and Joyce were waiting at the table. Cynthia, with Violet resting in one arm, was beside them.

‘Our mom’s got us fish and chips!’ Joyce yelled importantly as soon as Em appeared.

And Mom was up and about, even though she looked pale, and she tried to smile as Em came in.

‘Come and have your tea now,’ Cynthia ordered Em. ‘Get your hands washed. I’ve got some kept warm for your dad when he comes in.’

They all sat round the table and Em felt something give inside her, as if her emotions had all been twisted up like tangled wool and they’d suddenly been released. Things felt right, back to normal and life was good. The kids ate their bit of fish and chips out of the newspaper, the air tangy with vinegar, and when Bob came in from work his face lit up at the sight of all the family round the table. Em saw how relieved he was too.

‘Well!’ Bob said. ‘This looks like a celebration!’ He rolled up his sleeves and went to wash his hands and face in the scullery.

‘Can we make the kite, Dad?’ Sid boomed, jumping up and down on his chair.

‘Let your dad get his tea down him before you start on him,’ Cynthia said.

‘Steady on, son, or that chair’ll be matchwood,’ Bob said, emerging, wiping his face.

He went to Cynthia, smiling at the sight of Violet plugged in at her breast and feeding contentedly.

‘You all right, love? Had summat to eat yourself?’

‘Yes, ta, I’ve had all I want – the rest’s for you,’ Cynthia said.

Em frowned for a moment. She hadn’t seen Mom eat any of the fish and chips, had she? Maybe she’d had some before they got home.

They spent an absorbing evening watching Bob carefully make a little kite out of thin strips of plywood, a frame onto which he glued thick paper. The smell of glue soon filled the room. It was a blue kite and he knotted on a thin string as a tail with little bits of coloured paper along it.

‘Can we fly it now?’ Joyce said, wriggling with anticipation.

‘No, it needs to dry,’ Bob said. ‘And d’you need a wee-wee, Joycie?’

Joyce shook her head vigorously. She wasn’t going out back to the privy and missing the fun!

‘Now, don’t touch it or it’ll break.’ Bob twinkled at his eager children. ‘I’ll put it above the stove and if it’s a nice day we’ll all go out and fly it tomorrow.’

The four of them were so caught up in the excitement of the kite that they didn’t see Cynthia, sitting over on the other side of the room, very still. The supreme effort she’d made to be there for her family when they came home, to get back to normal, had taken every ounce of her strength. Now, in the half dark, her face was a blank mask of despair.