Hope at Holly Cottage

‘Where the hell’s my dinner, you lazy slut?’

Upstairs in her bedroom of the little terraced house, Anna Millington lifted her head from her homework, feeling the familiar pulse of anger and fear at the sound of her father’s voice. What time was it? Half past eight already? She had been so engrossed in her study of Racine’s Greek tragedy,
Andromaque
, that she had forgotten her own problems, but now they flooded back with a vengeance.

The house shook as the front door slammed, making the pencils rattle on the little table she used as a desk. Another crash reached her ears. Her father stumbling into the kitchen, no doubt.

‘I told you to have my dinner on the table!’

Oh, no! Her father had been drinking again. The pubs opened soon after knocking-off time at the building site. Doubtless he’d been downing pints ever since. Oh, please don’t hit Mum this time, she silently prayed, and suddenly
her cold hands were clammy with sweat. She would have to go downstairs and sort it all out – as usual! How on earth was she supposed to get her A levels like this?

‘Please, Vince,’ she caught her mother’s feeble voice as she flew down the stairs. ‘We didn’t know what time you’d be back and—’

As Anna scudded along the narrow hallway, she was met by a resounding slap and another crash. Reaching the kitchen threshold, she saw her mother crouched on the floor where she had fallen, while her father was towering over her, one hand gripping his wife around the throat while the other was poised to strike her face.

‘Dad, no! Stop it! Let her go!’

Anna tugged forcefully at her father’s raised arm. He turned his flaring eyes on her and she glared back. But then she saw the hatchet lines of fury on his face first freeze and then slacken before curiously melting away. He turned back to his wife with stricken eyes, slowly uncurling his fingers from around her throat, and as Anna released her grip on his raised arm, he let it flop powerlessly to his side. She watched him feel for the kitchen chair, his anger-flushed cheeks now grey and the great white scar in the deep dent on his forehead fading into his ashen skin.

Anna gulped in a huge sigh of relief. The crisis was over, and she doubted there would be any more trouble from her father that night as she watched him sink into the chair with his head in his hands. She stood back as her mother scraped herself from the floor, swallowing and rubbing her neck, and went to kneel in front of her husband, enclosing him in her arms and rocking him like a child.

Anna turned her head away, unable to witness the pathetic
scene. In her opinion, her father belonged in an asylum or some such institution, but he was too proud to ask for help. And he refused to apply for war disablement benefit or whatever it might be called. But his wasn’t an obvious disability. Anna wondered if it might not have been better if he had lost an arm or a leg. There was no shame in that. But to have your brain damaged so that you were frequently and unpredictably attacked by a personality disorder that brought on fits of black depression and drunken violence, well, that was something else. It was unutterably hard to live with, and too shameful to admit to.

She went into the scullery that led off the kitchen. There was just room for the built-in washing copper in the corner, the gas cooker on its tall, enamel legs, and the chipped butler sink with its wooden draining board. Anna turned on the stiff cold tap that dripped constantly however hard you turned it off, and ran some water into the aluminium saucepan.

It was one of the few relatively new utensils they possessed. Her mother had often told her how she had dutifully given up all but one of her precious pans to the war effort so that she could proudly watch them fly overhead transformed into a Spitfire in one of the dogfights over Plymouth. Anna remembered when, some time after the war was over and she had been reunited with her parents in their new home, she had gone with her mother to the hardware shop to buy what she hadn’t been able to pick up second hand.

Anna had been fascinated. Even the shopkeeper had seemed proud of his rows of gleaming saucepans, and looking back, Anna realised it was because such things were only just becoming available again. The pan wasn’t quite so
shiny now, despite her mother’s efforts with the Brillo pad. Anna crowned it with her father’s dinner on a plate, lit the gas beneath it and left the meal to steam. Her father would doubtless feel better once he had eaten.

She crept back through the kitchen. Up in her room, she still had a large chunk of
Our Mutual Friend
to read for her Dickens class the following day. That was if she could concentrate after the upset. No matter how often it happened – and it seemed to be happening more often of late – she could never get used to it. But someone had to stand up to her father when he had one of his ‘fits’ and jolt him back from the demon that overtook his brain. Her mother wouldn’t – or simply couldn’t, Anna wasn’t sure which.

‘Your dinner’ll be ready in about twenty minutes,’ she said brusquely.

She was making for the door without stopping, but her father caught her arm and extricated his head from where it was buried against her mother’s shoulder.

‘Thank you. And I’m so sorry.’

Anna nodded briefly. Oh, yes. The
real
Vince Millington was sorry
now
, but how long would it be before it happened again? Next week? Tomorrow?

She climbed the stairs wearily. Back in her room, she sat down at the little table, wrapping herself in the blanket again. It was the only way to keep warm. There was a tiny cast-iron fireplace, but they couldn’t afford the coal to burn in it. Anna dreaded the approaching winter. Though a hot-water bottle tucked into the scratchy old blanket would keep her body warm, her hands would grow painful from cold and eventually she would be driven downstairs to the warmth of the kitchen. She found it so hard to study down
there with her mother creeping about the room. And if her father was there, even in his normal state, he would be rustling the newspaper or cleaning and refilling his pipe. The silence would be palpable, tense, and concentrating would be impossible.

Ah, well, she must get her head down over her book while she could.

It was like living on a knife-edge. As she sat in the classroom, Anna’s mind kept wandering back to the Victorian terrace in the old area of Ford not far from the Devonport Dockyards. During the day, her mother would potter about the house making sure everything was clean and tidy, just as Vince liked it. She might turn on the radio, ever so quietly, and hum along to
Music While You Work
. She would do the shopping, so much easier now that rationing was finally at an end – nine years after the war was over! And then she would scuttle back home like a little mouse, never popping in for a ‘cuppa’ and a chat with one of the neighbours. Not that she was asked anymore.
Stuck-up cow
, Anna’s best friend, Ethel, across the street had confided her mother was known as. Freda Millington’s only friend was Ethel’s mum, Mabel, and as far as Anna was aware, even she didn’t know the truth.

The bell heralding the end of the school day started Anna from her deep thoughts. She packed her books into her satchel and made her way along the corridor to her form room. Silent and in single file, keeping to the left. They were like soldiers, she mused. But she supposed when hundreds of girls were moving round the huge school the rules were sensible. And adherence to discipline was what had won the war, or so Anna’s form mistress frequently told them.

‘Anna, I’d like a word with you.’

Miss Moore’s steely grey eyes fixed her with an accusing glare, and she inwardly sighed. Miss Moore was like a sergeant major. Even the most rebellious pupil would cower under her withering gaze, but Anna felt nothing. Her mind was sealed to everything but the prospect of what the evening might bring.

‘I’ll wait for you in the cloakroom,’ her friend Maud whispered as she closed the lid of her own desk.

‘Afraid I can’t,’ Pam who usually walked with them added. ‘Got my ballet class and I’ll be late if I wait for you.’

Anna bobbed her head in acknowledgement and waited impatiently in front of Miss Moore for the room to empty. What did the old battleaxe want? Surely she wasn’t going to complain about the stain on her gymslip? How ludicrous. And anyway, they couldn’t afford a second one, so if they wanted her to come to school in uniform, they’d have to put up with the dirty mark until she could wash the garment over the weekend.

‘Anna, your subject teachers have brought it to my notice that your work is slipping,’ the tight lips pronounced when everyone had finally gone. ‘And as your form mistress, I must warn you that you really must pull your socks up. If you want to get into teacher training college, you’ll need good grades in your exams, and June will be here before you know it. And when are you going to fill in those application forms?’

Anna met the woman’s ice-flinted eyes. ‘I’m not really sure it’s what I want to do,’ she answered evasively.

Miss Moore drew in her double chin. ‘And what would you do instead? You could go to university if your work
returns to its usual high standard. But we all thought you wanted to be a teacher.’

Anna’s eyes flashed. She had more important matters to deal with just now. ‘I can change my mind, can’t I?’

Oh, Lord, she shouldn’t have said it like that. Miss Moore would probably give her a detention as well now. But the dragon’s face softened as she eyed Anna suspiciously.

‘This is most unlike you, Anna. Is anything wrong?’

Huh! No more than usual! But Anna had hidden it all her life, and she wasn’t about to spill the beans now. She couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t been obliged to protect her mother from her father’s violent outbursts. At least, not since the incident that had ruined their lives.

‘No, nothing,’ she lied. ‘May I go now, please?’

Miss Moore’s lined forehead pleated further. ‘Yes, you may. But remember what I’ve said.’

Yes, she would. And anyway, Maud would want to know what the ‘harpy from hell’ had wanted her for. As they walked the mile or so together, Maud was all ears, just as Anna knew she would be. She would have to be careful what she said. Maud and Pam were both good friends, but Maud in particular was apt to spread things around.

‘I thought you wanted to be a teacher,’ she was saying quite predictably.

Anna’s mouth twisted. ‘Well, I suppose I would really. But to be honest, we can’t really afford for me to do the training. So I thought instead of three years at college, I could do a year’s secretarial course. I could keep on my Saturday job at Dingles, and then I should get a good job at the end of it. Plymouth’s a growing city now. I’m sure I’d get a decent position somewhere.’ It wasn’t the main reason, of
course, but she wasn’t going to tell Maud. For how could she tell her that she was afraid of leaving her mum to cope alone with her father while she was away at teacher training college?

She set her mouth grimly as she said goodbye to Maud and turned off in the direction of her own home. She hurried along the narrow streets, the evening already drawing in and everything, the sky, the rows of houses, the very air, a drab grey. At least in the summer the world had seemed generally brighter, and on warm Sundays she had escaped with Ethel to the frivolity of the Tinside swimming pool and lido, possibly meeting up with other friends and splashing in the water or licking at a mouth-watering ice cream. But it would be a long haul before the summer came round again, despite what Miss Moore had said.

‘Mum, I’m home!’ she called cheerily as she let herself in.

There was no answer, so Anna assumed her mum had popped out to use the privy in the backyard. Taking off her school gaberdine and the velour hat she hated with a vengeance, Anna hung them on the old utility coat stand in the hallway and went through to the kitchen.

The room struck oddly still and not as cosily warm as usual. Anna went over to the little coal stove that heated the room and provided a constant supply of hot water. She used the tongs to lift the lid, but needn’t have done. It was cool enough to touch, and peering in, she could see that the coals had burnt through. Anna frowned. It wasn’t like her mum to let it go out. She set to, raking out the cinders, relaying and lighting the fire, adding more coal when it got going and adjusting the air vents. Gosh, her mum had been a long time. She hoped she didn’t have a funny tummy. And
then a knot of apprehension tightened in Anna’s stomach as she found that the back door was locked.

The creases on her forehead deepened. Had her mother gone out? But she was always there with the kettle on the go waiting to make a pot of tea and chat to Anna for half an hour before she started on her homework. But what if, God forbid, something had happened to her father and her mum had been called away? If her dad had suffered one of his flashes of uncontrollable rage at work – it wouldn’t be the first time – he might have caused an accident or brought one on himself.

Anna shot up the stairs. She must focus her thoughts, be rational. It was probably no such thing. She would change out of her uniform, hang it up ready for the morning, and put on her comfortable slacks and the big woolly jumper she had knitted for herself. And by then her mum would probably have come in through the front door with a packet of tea or some other essential commodity she had run out of. A bit scatty like that was her mum.

It was as she pushed the door to her own room that Anna heard the stifled sob from the front bedroom. A lump of ice froze around her heart. So her mum
was
there! Good Lord, whatever could have happened? She tapped gently on the door and poked her head into the room.

Her mother was huddled in the bed, still wearing her blouse and cardigan. Her hair was all awry from its frizzy perm and her eyes were red-rimmed in her pallid face. But as soon as she saw her daughter, she rearranged her expression into a watery smile.

‘Hello, Anna, dear.’

‘Mum, whatever’s the matter?’

Her mother sniffed and wriggled herself into a more upright position. ‘Good heavens, is that the time? I hadn’t realised. You must have come in quietly.’