Over her dead body!
No one had noticed Celia, intent only with Lizzie, and none of them knew Celia would be in the house. Even though Stuart had seen the girl with the beautiful face and shapely figure and straight, cropped hair earlier, her presence had not been explained, nor had she been introduced, and he’d presumed she was a neighbour.
Flo had thought the same and hadn’t bothered mentioning the girl to Neil at all, so when Celia cried, ‘Get your fucking hands off her!’ Stuart and Roy turned. Neil barely heard her words. He was rubbing his penis with one hand and so close to his goal, he was unaware of much around him and his breath was coming in short gasps. Then, catching sight of Celia, he burst out, ‘Oh God. You want a bit, do you? You’ll have to wait your turn.’
Only Stuart saw that Celia was enraged. Roy was too taken by her body to notice. He licked his lips. By Christ, he’d have this one first, whatever Neil said, and soon, before his aching dick exploded altogether.
‘I said, get your fucking hands off her.’ Celia sprang across the room as she spoke, picking up the poker as
she ran, and as Neil continued to rub his penis between his hands she clouted him roundly on the head before he had recovered his wits about him to even try and protect himself.
Lizzie felt Neil’s weight roll off her and she arched her back with such suddenness Roy let go of her feet. At the same time, she manoeuvred her mouth, for Stuart had relaxed his hold a little, and she bit hard between his thumb and first finger with all her might. He leapt up with a howl, his finger dripping blood, but Roy was more concerned with Neil comatose on the floor.
‘You’ve killed him,’ he said to Celia, who still held her menacing stance, poker at the ready, as Lizzie gingerly got to her feet and held on to the mantelshelf to steady herself as the room tilted and dipped before her.
Lizzie was shocked by Roy’s words; not so Celia. ‘If I have,’ she said, ‘it’s no great loss.’
‘Celia!’
‘Have you seen your face, Lizzie, and that’s not the only thing that bugger tried to do. And he brought his mates along to share the fun. Some loss to mankind, that man, whoever he was.’
‘He’s Steve’s brother, Neil,’ Lizzie said, and letting go of the mantelshelf she knelt on the mat where Neil lay and picked up one of his limp hands. ‘He’s not dead,’ she said at last, ‘but I would take him to hospital to be on the safe side.’
‘What about me?’ Stuart asked plaintively.
‘What about you?’ Lizzie repeated, as if in surprise, and then added, ‘I’d get that seen to as well. Human bites are the most dangerous kind, I’ve heard.’
‘We could have the law on you,’ Roy said, and Celia
laughed. ‘Oh aye, just try that,’ she said. ‘And we’ll tell the courts how three big, strapping soldier boys inveigled their way in here.’
‘We’d say you knew all about it. We arranged it and you were more than willing.’
And they’d be believed, Lizzie thought, and if there was any doubt the presence of Georgia would put the tin hat on it.
Celia thought the same, but wasn’t going to admit it. ‘We’ll see about that,’ she said. ‘Tomorrow, Lizzie will visit the doctor, and whether she says she walked into a door or tells the doctor what really happened tonight is up to you.’
Stuart saw the steel in the young girl’s eyes and heard it in the timbre of her voice, and he knew Lizzie had a strong ally in her camp. She didn’t even seem to feel at a disadvantage because of the way she was dressed, and she flounced across the room and flung open the door. ‘Now, fuck off before I brain the lot of you, and don’t come back if you know what’s good for you.’
‘We can’t go just like that,’ Roy complained. ‘What we gonna do with Neil?’
‘That isn’t my problem.’
‘I can’t carry him with my bad hand,’ Stuart moaned.
‘You’ll have me in tears in a minute,’ Celia commented sarcastically. She pushed her face right up to Stuart’s and she hissed, ‘I don’t care how you do it, but if you don’t all get out of my sight, and soon, you’ll be lying beside your man, for I’ll give you a clout an’ all.’
‘Come on,’ Stuart said, ‘we’ll handle him between us. The night air might revive him a bit.’
Celia shut the door on them. She would have liked to have slammed it, but for the sake of their other neighbours she didn’t. She heard the latch click and she turned the key in the lock and bolted the door top and bottom before turning to face Lizzie.
Lizzie had retrieved her shawl and was sitting before the fire. She’d put a few nuggets of coal on and she was shivering from head to foot. Celia knelt before her and held her and felt Lizzie’s tears dampen her shoulder. ‘Don’t give in now,’ she urged. ‘This is what they want, you upset like this.’
Lizzie, knowing Celia was right, made an effort to control herself. ‘Flo put Neil up to this,’ she said. ‘He’d never have thought about it himself. I thought she’d been too quiet for too long.’
‘Aye, well I don’t think you’ll be troubled from that quarter again,’ Celia said grimly. ‘What d’you say to me making a cup of tea to settle our nerves, and I’ll try and do something with your face.’
‘You can’t do much with bruises, Celia.’
‘I can wipe off the dried blood that’s smeared all over your face for a start, and warm water might soothe you. Are you sore?’
‘Everywhere,’ Lizzie admitted. ‘And I could murder a cup of tea.’
The following evening, Violet called to tell her the tale of Neil and another man set upon by a gang as they left the pub, and Neil with a lump the size of a duck egg on his head and kept in hospital overnight for observation. But the words died in her throat as she looked at Lizzie’s face. ‘Who did this?’ she demanded. ‘What happened to your face? Is it at all connected with young Neil Gillespie and his injuries?’
Lizzie shrugged. ‘You might as well know it, Violet. You know everything else.’
She told Violet, helped by Celia, of the events of the night before, and though it could have been far more serious, how Celia had reacted caused Violet to smile. ‘Gawd blimey, girl, they should have had you in charge of the army,’ she said. ‘Missed an opportunity there all right. Germans would have turned tail and gone home by now, I reckon!’
‘You’re not far wrong,’ Lizzie said with feeling, for she knew what might have happened if Celia hadn’t arrived on the scene when she did. ‘Celia’s a grand person to have at your back.’
Lizzie refused to go to the doctor. ‘What the hell can he do for bruises anyway?’ She had no desire to go anywhere or be seen by anyone and she seemed struck with a kind of lethargy. Celia, who got on famously with Violet, spoke of her concerns when Lizzie had skulked inside for nearly a week. ‘That last incident seems to have knocked the stuffing out of her,’ she said. ‘I mean, her face is near enough back to normal now.’
‘Let’s face it, she hasn’t much to be cheerful about,’ Violet replied. ‘And I reckon she misses the kids more than she lets on, and with Christmas just around the corner it’ll be worse, I should think.’
‘I know what that feels like, to miss children,’ Celia said, her voice wistful. ‘But she never complains much about it.’
‘Lizzie’s not the complaining type.’
‘She never talks of the money situation either,’ Celia said. ‘But our funds must be getting low and I have no intention of living off Lizzie. I’m going to go for a job in the new year. My hair might be shorter than is fashionable, but at least I don’t look like an escaped convict any more.’
‘No, you don’t, girl,’ Violet said. ‘Your hair’s not looking bad at all, and I think it will turn out to be wavy in the end.’
‘It always was,’ Celia said, ‘in my other life, when I was somebody’s daughter.’
Violet’s heart constricted with pity for the girl; and that’s all she was, just a slip of a girl. And yet she knew Celia would push away sympathy and so she
said instead, ‘You’ll have a fine choice of jobs to choose from, anyroad. As long as this damned war goes on, at least.’
Two days after this conversation, very early one morning, Minnie tapped on the door. Lizzie had just come downstairs and she opened it cautiously as she seemed to do these days. ‘Minnie!’
‘I was on my way to the lavvy, Lizzie, but well…it’s your wall.’
‘My wall?’
‘And your door, like,’ Minnie said. ‘I think it’s bloody disgusting.’
Lizzie had opened the door as she spoke, and painted in black across it were the words:
Filthy Stinking Whore
.
Hoisting Georgia on one hip, she went into the yard. Across the front of the house was written:
Bugger Off—No Trollops Here
.
‘Thought you’d like to know, like,’ Minnie said.
Lizzie was shaken. The words were bad enough, but the menace and hatred, which a person or persons must have felt to write them, was harder to cope with. What was heartening, though, were those women from the court not at work, who turned out with mops, buckets and grim determination to help Lizzie and Celia remove every offending word in short order.
‘God,’ Celia said, after using the scrubbing brush on the brickwork. ‘I bet this house thinks it’s a birthday. I bet these bricks have never had such a clean since they were laid.’
But it wasn’t funny, and no one was pretending it
was. Neither was the excrement pushed through the letter box on Christmas Eve, nor the woman who spat at Lizzie full in the face the same day as she was leaving Moorcroft’s with the rations.
Christmas would have been an awful time if Lizzie and Celia had not spent it in Violet’s house. Carol, who’d been told of Lizzie’s problems, was full of sympathy for her and got on famously with Celia. She had with her a young pilot, Gavin Honeyford, and both young people seemed determined to make it somewhat of a special time for all concerned. Even Violet packed away her sadness that Colin was dead and gone, which still surfaced at special times like this, and everyone was enchanted with Georgia.
Carol knew all about the rape and felt really sorry for Lizzie. All the coloured people she’d met had, in the main, been American airmen, and as she’d said before, often more friendly and definitely more polite and respectful than their white counterparts. However, whoever had raped Lizzie and attacked her so brutally was a maniac, plain and simple, for no sane and sensible person would do such a thing.
‘Do you ever think about it?’ Carol asked as the three young women washed up in the scullery. ‘You know, what he was like? Why he attacked you?’
‘Carol, long before I knew the man was black, I tortured myself with thoughts like that,’ Lizzie said. ‘The only reason I care about the colour of the man’s skin at all is because of Georgia and how it will affect her and make life harder for her.’
Carol acknowledged that that was probably the case,
for while Georgia was beautiful and delightful, she was different. ‘Sometimes,’ Lizzie confessed, ‘I wish she could stay a baby, so that I can always be there to protect her.’
‘She’ll be all right,’ Celia cut in. ‘Whatever bastard fathered her, she has a bit of you in her and that means grit and determination as well as kindness.’
‘I couldn’t agree more,’ Carol said with conviction.
‘Give over,’ Lizzie protested as her face flushed with embarrassment. ‘But as we are singing people’s praises, I do like your young man, Carol.’
‘Is he your young man?’ Celia asked. ‘You just introduced him as a friend.’
Now it was Carol’s turn to blush. ‘He is a friend,’ she said, ‘though I’d like him to be more. I’ve tried to hold back from attachments while the war rages, because some of the boys I even half-liked never came back, but I can’t seem to stop myself falling for Gavin.’
‘That’s the way of it when love lights,’ Celia said with a wide smile. ‘No telling where it will end up.’
Carol gave Celia a push and the three women laughed together.
‘Is there any washing up being done in there at all?’ Barry shouted through. ‘There’s too much hilarity for my liking, and here’s us gagging for a cup of tea.’
‘Hark at him,’ Carol said with mock indignation. ‘I’ll take his tea in and tip it over his head if he’s not careful, and then I’m going for a walk with Gavin.’
‘Don’t blame you, girl,’ Lizzie said, and hoped for Carol’s sake that Gavin would be one of the war’s survivors.
Early in the New Year, Celia opened the door to a woman she’d never seen before.
Lizzie was at the stove and she turned as the woman walked in. ‘Auntie Doreen,’ she exclaimed, pleased to see her because they’d always got on so well. She introduced Celia as a friend and said she was staying with her for now. Doreen, noticing how short the girl’s hair was, assumed she had been ill and asked no further questions.
Instead, she accepted the cup of tea Lizzie offered her and had it in front of her before she said, ‘Tressa has told me how things are, my dear, and I just wondered if you’d like to come and stay with us for a bit—your friend too, of course.’
Lizzie longed to accept. It would be marvellous to be away from the streets, away from the antagonistic people who tried in all ways to make her life a misery. But, practically, it was not a solution. Celia had got a job in Fisher and Ludlow’s factory in nearby Rea Street, which she was starting the following Monday, and she would be hesitant, Lizzie knew, to give it up.
But, more importantly, Lizzie knew that eventually Tressa would come back from Ireland. She’d have to when the war finally ended and Mike was demobbed and took up his old job in the car industry, and she now had six children. However big Arthur and Doreen’s house was, it would not take all of them, and by then if Lizzie had given up this house she’d never get another.
And so she thanked Doreen for the offer but had to refuse. Doreen could see her reasoning, especially with regards to the house, for accommodation was hard to get, but she felt bad that she could do nothing
to help. When she voiced this, Lizzie said, ‘You have helped, just by coming to see me.’
‘The way I heard it,’ Doreen said, ‘you were sinned against rather than being a sinner, and I know you as an honest and respectable girl. No woman can be held responsible, in any way, for a violent rape. And now, before I go, could I see the baby?’
Lizzie could have kissed Doreen for her understanding, and later, as Doreen sat and held the baby, she was as entranced by her as others had been.
Celia had been at work just three days when Minnie came to tell Lizzie that Flo was coming down the street. ‘Someone’s gone to get Gladys, because Flo looks set to murder someone. If I were you, I’d lock your blooming door and not open it, whatever she does.’
Lizzie thought it good advice. She had been almost waiting for Flo, for she’d known she wouldn’t just let things drop, but now she was here Lizzie didn’t feel up to dealing with her. She locked and bolted the door and crept upstairs with the baby and prayed the child wouldn’t cry and betray them.
Flo firstly tried the door and then, annoyed to find it locked, she hammered on it shouting, ‘Come out of there, you bleeding trollop.’ Annoyed at no response to her knocking, she then let forth a string of obscenities at Lizzie and what she termed her ‘carry on’. Lizzie risked a peep from the bedroom window. Flo was wearing a long and shapeless coat and just had slippers on her feet, while her hair was unkempt and her eyes wild. In her clenched hand was a rock and, with a cry, Flo suddenly threw the rock at the living
room window whereupon it shattered with a crash, sending splintered wood and glass spilling out onto the yard.
Gladys arrived then, taking in the scene immediately. By then, Flo was weeping great, gulping sobs, and the women of the yard, alerted by the crash, had come to their doors to see what was going on.
‘Seen enough, have you?’ Gladys demanded, glaring around at them. ‘Piss off, the lot of you. We all know whose fault this is and that’s the sodding whore in there.’ She jerked a thumb at Lizzie’s house and, raising her voice, shouted, ‘I know you are in there, Lizzie Gillespie. That rock should have been used on your face, and by God I wish it had found its mark.’
Then Gladys turned to her sister and said crossly, ‘Put a sock in it for Christ’s sake our Flo. God Almighty, you’re blarting every time I look at you. Give us your bleeding hand and let’s go home.’ Flo lifted her hand as if she were a child and Gladys took it and led her out of the yard, just as Georgia began to cry.
Lizzie’s legs were trembling and she had the urge to sink onto the bed and, like Georgia, cry her eyes out, but she resisted it and instead she went downstairs to inspect the damage to the window. ‘Soon clear this up,’ Ada said, moving the debris around with her boot. ‘Then you need a bit of cardboard for now, like, and have a word with the rent man in the morning. Repairs is their job.’
Lizzie nodded and gave a sigh.
‘Don’t you mind her, ducks,’ Ada said. ‘Nutty as a fruitcake, her is. That business with Neil being beaten up has sent her over the edge right and proper. Everyone
knows. People say her’s one body’s work to watch. Might be Highcroft Loony Bin for her before she’s much older.’
And then, seeing the guilty look on Lizzie’s face, Ada said, ‘Stop that. It ain’t your fault, none of it. Small wonder the old cow’s gone doolally tap, anyroad. All the badness she had inside is bound to send you mad in the end.’
Although Lizzie couldn’t help feeling somewhat responsible for Flo’s collapse, she was relieved when Violet heard on the grapevine that Flo had been taken to the mental home when she got too much for Gladys.
Father Connolly also visited one day, and Lizzie hid from him too. Gloria, seeing him at the door, told him Lizzie was now working. He was surprised, but had no reason to disbelieve Gloria and he thanked her for letting him know and never came back.
After their traumatic experiences at the hands of nuns and priest, neither girl was in any hurry to return to the bosom of the church. As Celia put it, ‘I’ll take my chance with the man upstairs when my time comes, and the first thing I’ll ask him is why he allows such evil people to do such awful things in his name. We’ve all heard of the wrath of God. Why didn’t he use a bit of that? Well, I’m finished with the clergy, nuns, priests, monks, the whole lot of them, and I imagine I’ll get on just as well.’
‘You will,’ Lizzie said. ‘You’re a survivor.’
‘You and me both,’ Celia replied, and she gave Lizzie a punch on the arm and the two laughed together.
The third Friday evening in February, Celia came home from work to a little bundle of cards for her eighteenth birthday. Seeing how pleased she was, Lizzie was glad she’d told Johnnie about the impending birthday in her last letter. He’d sent a card to her himself and Tressa had too. She didn’t know the girl, but wished her Many Happy Returns as a friend of Lizzie’s. Lizzie gave Celia a card of her own, but although there was no money for presents, and nothing to buy anyway, there was something else and she told Celia to shut her eyes and not peep.
Lizzie had carefully saved a little of her margarine and sugar ration for the last fortnight, and that previous day Mr Moorcroft had given her two eggs. She knew if Mrs Moorcroft had been around she wouldn’t have had sniff of them, but as it was she was able to make a satisfactory sponge cake. She even rummaged in the drawer of the cupboard set into the fireplace alcove for the candles she’d used on the children’s cakes in the past.
Celia threw her arms around Lizzie in delight and tried not to remember that her previous birthday had been spent alongside a stern father who was driving her to a living death—the convent near Sligo. She remembered how she’d ached and throbbed all over from the beating her father had given her and that not even her face had escaped. Her mother, terrified she would miscarry, had bathed the weals where the belt had bitten into the skin and refused to let Celia go until they’d healed somewhat, but her eyes had still had yellowing around them from the punches and her bottom lip had been puffy, while the lower one had a scar from the vicious punch that had split it open.