The Rainbow Years Read online

  She wasn’t going to cry for him. She passed the museum and library as she left the park but didn’t glance at the imposing building, lost as she was in her thoughts. She wasn’t going to think about him falling on foreign soil because he had a wife who would do all that, who had the right to do it. From this point on, she was going to think only of herself. It didn’t do to be trusting and soft, not in this world. And God didn’t care. Half the world was fighting and killing the other half and He did nothing to stop it. And she didn’t believe the priests were one step down from the Almighty either.

  She stopped, looking up into a high blue sky, the colour as hard and flat as a painting. The thought had come like a revelation but now Bess realised she’d been considering this matter for a long time in the depths of her mind. Her da was cruel and mean and yet Father Fraser thought the sun shone out of his backside. She didn’t know if her da was fooling the priest or whether the Father turned a blind eye because her da always stumped up with a good offering, but either way it reduced the priest to a mere man in her eyes. And that’s all he was, a man like any other.

  Even yesterday such a thought would have immediately made her cross herself and ask for forgiveness but today it was different. She was different. Maybe the process of change had begun when she’d met Christopher and listened to his views on everything from religion to politics - most of which she admitted she hadn’t understood - but she couldn’t blindly accept everything the Church said any more. And when the war ended she wouldn’t let her da force her to go back to being a parlourmaid. He’d said a skivvy was all she was good for but she’d show him. She’d make something of herself, do something, become someone.

  She began walking again, part of her fearful at her temerity but the other part rearing up against the unfairness of life and the position she found herself in.

  But before she could do anything, she had to deal with what needed to be dealt with. For a moment her hand hovered over her stomach, touching the creased linen of her summer coat. And then she brought it sharply to her side, her eyes narrowing. She could do this. She had to do it, she had no option. And she had to do it quickly.

  ‘Ee, lass, what were you thinkin’ of to get caught out like that? An’ what about your lad? Can’t he do the decent thing an’ marry you quick afore it shows?’

  Bess stared into the yellow face of Martha Todd. When she had first started work at the munitions factory she hadn’t understood why the women who filled shells were called canaries, but at her first tea break it had been Martha and one of her pals who had explained that repeated exposure to TNT had turned their faces yellow. Martha and her cronies had thought it a great joke but Bess had been horrified, mainly because she dreaded a jaundiced pallor developing in her own skin. By the time she had worked there a few months and seen two women lose fingers and another blinded in the accidents that were commonplace, she’d realised yellow skin was the least of her worries.

  ‘He . . . he’s dead. Killed in action,’ she said now, her voice weak, not because of her condition but because they were standing in the section of the factory toilets which had been divided off for use by female employees, and the stench drifting over from the men’s side was overpowering. She felt hot and sick but the toilets were the only place she could have a quiet word with Martha. ‘Do you know anyone who might help me?’ she asked again.

  ‘Lass, there’s plenty who’d help Old Nick himself for the right price.’ Martha’s voice was soft. She had drawn her own conclusions about Bess’s father from listening to Kitty and Bess talk, and she pitied the pretty young girl in front of her.

  ‘How much would they want?’ said Bess, a little anxiously. She didn’t have a great deal in the old toffee tin on the top of her wardrobe at home. When she had been set on at the factory her father had made sure her mother doled back one shilling out of her wage packet, thruppence more than when she’d been working as a parlourmaid. It was only her mother slipping her an extra half-crown on the sly each week that had enabled her to save anything at all after she had bought her toiletries and paid for any extras, such as having her boots soled or new woollen stockings. Before she had managed her stolen evenings with Christopher her only treat had been a seat at the Avenue or Palace or one of the other picture houses with Kitty on a Saturday night.

  ‘Don’t worry about that.’ Martha’s voice was softer still. ‘I’m known for bein’ as good as me word an’ if I say you’re all right that’ll be enough to get it done, but you’ll have to pay after at so much a week. You could do that, couldn’t you?’

  ‘Aye, yes.’ Bess nodded. ‘I could do that.’ She gulped and then said, ‘How soon could they see me?’

  ‘I dunno, lass, but I’ll find out. The thing is, you don’t want to go to just anyone for somethin’ like this; some of the old wives don’t care what they do as long as they get paid. The woman I’ve got in mind might be as rough an’ ready as old Harry’s backside but she’s a good ’un an’ she knows what’s what. She’ll make a clean job of it, will old Maggie.’

  Bess felt she was going to faint or be sick or both. She stared at the other woman from eyes so huge they seemed to fill her face.

  ‘You told your mam you’re in a pickle?’ Martha asked.

  ‘No, no one knows, not even Kitty. I can’t risk me da finding out.’ A little shiver passed over Bess’s face which said more to Martha than any words could have done. ‘You wouldn’t tell anyone?’

  ‘Not me, lass. Silent as the grave, I can be.’ And when Bess didn’t look reassured, Martha added, ‘Don’t worry, I won’t say nowt. I know what it’s like when you’re livin’ with someone like your da. Me own was a swine an’ all.’ She smiled grimly. ‘Put me on the game when I was nowt but eight or nine, he did.’

  ‘Oh, Martha.’ Up until now Bess had been both slightly afraid and contemptuous of this woman whose reputation was well known, but never once had she asked herself how a woman might come to be working the streets most of her life. Shame made her voice husky when she said, ‘How could you stand it when you were so young?’

  Martha shrugged beefy shoulders. ‘You bear what has to be borne, lass, that’s what I’ve learned in life. Mind, I’d have liked to have got wed, had bairns an’ that, but what decent man would have looked the side I was on?’ For a moment Martha’s eyes were unfocused, as though she was looking at something Bess couldn’t see, and then with a seeming effort she smiled, flapping her hand as she said, ‘Anyway, don’t you worry, lass, I’ll see what I can do. A day or two an’ it’ll all be over. I’ll tip you the wink when I’ve set it up.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Bess tried to smile back but it was beyond her. And then as Martha made to leave, Bess caught hold of her arm. Her voice low and urgent, she said, ‘I have to do it, you see, there’s no other way. It’s not as if it’s really a baby yet, is it? It’s not going to feel anything. It’s not really living.’

  The silence that fell on them had no movement in it, even the clatter beyond the confines of the toilets seeming dulled. For endless moments the two women stared at each other, one pair of eyes beseeching and the other pitying. Then Martha murmured, ‘Like I said, lass, a day or two an’ it’ll be over.’ Then she turned on her heel and hurried away.

  Chapter 2

  As things turned out, Martha Todd couldn’t fix up the necessary visit to the old midwife she knew in the East End as quickly as she had promised. The very afternoon of the day Bess confided in her, Martha was involved in an accident at the factory which laid her off work for a while. It was over three weeks later - three weeks in which Bess had nearly gone mad with worry - before the older woman sidled up to Bess on her return to the factory. ‘Saturday afternoon all right for you, lass?’ she whispered out of the side of her mouth. ‘She can do it then.You meet me outside the Boar’s Head in High Street East at two o’clock an’ we’ll go along to Maggie’s.’

  Bess had been about to climb the rope up to the cab of the crane she controlled, one of many which moved shells back and
forth across the factory floor. She froze, staring at Martha but unable to speak for the relief flooding her. She had been frightened Martha would forget about her. It was only when Martha said, ‘Well, what do you say? You still want it done, don’t you?’ that Bess managed to pull herself together.

  ‘Aye, aye I do.’ She glanced about her and then up at Kitty who was in the next crane. Lowering her face to Martha’s, she whispered, ‘Will it take long?’

  ‘Aye, long enough. Good few hours. You’ll have to rest after for a while.’

  ‘But I see Kitty Saturdays and we go to the pictures in the evening. What’ll I tell her? She’ll have to cover for me.’

  Martha shrugged. ‘That’s up to you, lass. Just be there for two. An’ Maggie wants thirty bob for her trouble. Can you manage that?’ She didn’t add that normally the price was a good deal higher but that she had called in a favour.

  Bess nodded. ‘Thanks, Martha,’ she said softly.

  Martha inclined her head and walked away, and Bess began to climb the rope. The action emphasised the changes in her body which had occurred since she’d last spoken to Martha. The thickening round her stomach and the tingling and fullness in her small breasts was only slight as yet, but she felt her body was reminding her all the time of what was happening. The week for her fourth monthly had come and gone now and, ridiculous though she knew it was, she had prayed like she’d never prayed before that she would see a flow of blood. But of course there’d been nothing.

  ‘What did she want?’ As Bess reached the cage of the crane, Kitty leaned out of hers. ‘I didn’t know you had any truck with Martha Todd.’

  Kitty’s voice revealed she was disgruntled, but Bess knew it wasn’t really because she’d spoken to Martha. The last few weeks she had been so taken up with fear of what would happen if Martha didn’t help her, she knew she’d been a bit short with Kitty. She stared into the plain little face of her friend, envying Kitty with all her heart. Kitty’s chief problem was the spots which assailed her face. ‘I’ll tell you later,’ she said quietly. And then, when Kitty frowned and flounced back into the crane, she added, ‘I’m sorry I haven’t been meself lately, lass, but there is a reason. What say we take our bait outside when the whistle blows and have a talk?’

  ‘Aye, all right.’ Kitty was instantly mollified. ‘You feeling bad, Bess? You’ve been looking peaky since you had that gyppy belly.’

  ‘Aye, I don’t feel too good.’ The senna and salts she had taken after Martha had had her accident had scoured her to the point where she’d thought she’d lose all her insides, but still nothing had happened. She had heated the water to near boiling point for her weekly scrub in the old tin bath in front of the kitchen range at home when her parents went for their Friday visit to her brother’s house in Monkwearmouth, swigging the half bottle of gin she had surreptitiously bought on the way home before she’d lowered herself into the scalding water. The gin had made her sick and when she had finally climbed out of the bath she had fainted clean away on the clippy mat in front of the fire, but still she hadn’t had so much as a show.

  ‘I thought you was still bad.You ought to go and see the doctor, lass.’

  ‘Aye, maybe. We’ll talk later anyway.’

  It was a round-eyed and blatantly horrified Kitty who sat looking at Bess in a corner of the factory compound at lunchtime. They had found a quiet corner near a stack of pallets close to the gates and Bess had told Kitty everything, leaving her friend too stunned to move or speak. Eventually Kitty whispered, ‘The rotten so-an’-so. To do that, to take you down when he was already married. I can’t believe it. He seemed so nice, didn’t he?’

  Bess didn’t reply to this. Instead she said, ‘Will you make out I’m with you Saturday as usual? I thought we could say we want to listen to the band in Mowbray Park in the afternoon and that we’d get a pie and chitterlings somewhere before we go to the pictures.That way Mam wouldn’t expect me home for tea. Martha . . . Martha said it could take a while.’

  ‘Oh, lass.’ Kitty seemed to be on the verge of crying.

  With September’s coming, the weather had changed. The fierce heatwave in August had broken on the very last day of the month, and September had been heralded with thunderstorms and lashing rain before settling into a cold windy month. Bess shivered and pulled her old coat tighter round her neck, her face white and pinched. ‘We’d better go in, it’s too cold out here,’ she said, making no effort to move.

  ‘Don’t worry, lass.’ Kitty leaned forward and took Bess’s hands. ‘I’m coming with you Saturday and if we’re late back I’ll say you were took bad in the pictures or something. It’ll work out.’

  Bess felt as though she wanted to sag at the gentleness of Kitty’s tone but the tight rein she had kept on herself since the moment she had read Christopher’s brother’s letter prevented it. She dropped her head before saying, ‘You don’t have to come. You could go to your Elsie’s if you want and I’ll call for you there.’

  ‘I’m coming.’ And then, her tone uncertain, Kitty added, ‘If you want me to, that is.’

  ‘Course I want you to.’ Bess’s head rose and she regarded Kitty steadily. ‘But it might be . . .’ She couldn’t find a word to express what she wanted to say. ‘You’re squeamish, you know you are,’ she said quietly. ‘You can’t stand the sight of blood. Look how you passed out when Nora Gibson lost an eye.’

  ‘That was different, that was an accident.’

  ‘But I don’t know what this Maggie woman is going to do or how I’ll feel after.’

  ‘All the more reason for me to come with you, surely?’ And then Kitty settled the matter when she said, ‘You’d do the same for me, lass, now then, so don’t argue. I’m coming and that’s that.’ She squeezed Bess’s hands hard before rising to her feet and brushing the crumbs of the sandwiches she’d eaten off her coat. ‘And I won’t faint,’ she said matter-offactly. ‘I’ll keep me mam’s smelling salts handy. They’re awful, like cat’s pee.’

  Kitty was a staunch Catholic like most of the folk in their street but she hadn’t said that what Bess was going to do was a mortal sin or attempted to talk her out of it.As Bess followed her friend back into the noisy, stinking factory building, the acrid odour of explosives thick in the air, she was aware of a deep feeling of gratitude. But then Kitty knew exactly what her da was like . . .

  Muriel Shawe’s somewhat flat face was deadpan as she placed a large plateful of fried bread and bacon in front of her husband, but as ever her mind was working furiously. All over the country people were enduring ‘meatless’ days and cutting down on the consumption of bread due to the soaring cost of flour, but was Wilbur prepared to do his bit? Was he heck.

  She returned to the kitchen range, took the big black kettle off the fire and filled the brown teapot with its two spoonfuls of tea. Once the tea had mashed she poured a large mugful for her husband, adding two heaped teaspoons of sugar and stirring it before she put the pint-size mug in front of his plate.

  Wilbur did not acknowledge or thank her - and Muriel did not expect him to - he merely continued to devour his breakfast.

  For a moment as Muriel stared down at the bent head, at the rich brown curly hair which was as thick as it had been on the first day she had met him some twenty-five years before, she felt a repugnance so fierce her lips pulled back from her teeth with the force of it. But almost immediately she schooled her face into its habitual blankness. As much as Wilbur filled her with loathing, the fear he inspired was stronger.

  She returned to the range and fished out the two remaining rashers of bacon from the massive frying pan, placing them on two plates which already held a slice of bread and butter each, cut thin. She put these on the table and then walked to the kitchen door which was ajar, looking up the stairs as she called, ‘Bess, lass, it’s on the table.’

  ‘Leave her.’ Wilbur didn’t pause in shovelling food into his mouth, morsels dropping onto his plate as he spoke. ‘She knows what time breakfast is; if she can’t be bot
hered to come and eat, she can go without.’ He picked up his mug of tea, took a mouthful and then growled, ‘Like dishwater, this is.’

  Muriel didn’t answer him. Rationing was beginning to bite and he was fully aware of this but he still had to have his gripe every morning. She sat down at the table but didn’t begin to eat until he shot her a glance, saying, ‘Well? What are you waiting for? I’ve told you, if she’s not down in a couple of minutes the table’ll be cleared.’

  Why had she ever married him? It was not a new thought and as ever the answer was because he had been big and handsome and he had asked for her.

  She had been working sixteen hours a day as a kitchen-maid at a big house Whitburn way, and had met Wilbur on one of her half-days off a month. She and one of the parlourmaids had taken a walk down to Holey Rock on Roker beach, and Wilbur had been watching a group of lads play football. She had barely known him when they had wed - one half-day a month was not conducive to any form of closeness. He had seemed a quiet, withdrawn sort of man but this hadn’t worried her at the time. Not until after her wedding had she learned that his solitariness hid a brutish unnatural streak which had made her wedding night, and all the nights following it, a time of terror.