The Private Parts of Women (23 page)

It was not me that ruined our friendship, that ruined everything, my life included, it was Harold. It was not my fault. I did my best but when Mary came back there was this formality, this awkwardness between us that had not been there before. I never met Harold's eye. Mary rarely met mine. She came less to my room. Soon after Mary's return their engagement was announced. They seemed happy together.

I felt like something dirty and devilish, a temptation overcome.

Something else too, another disappointment. I'd made an application for officer training. I'd talked to Mary and Harold about my plans. ‘Are you sure, Trixie?' Mary asked. ‘Of course I am, why?' I was surprised she was not more encouraging. But I was turned down at the first stage of application. There was no explanation. The disappointment was crushing. I could not understand, I worked as hard as anybody, harder, I lived my life in holiness as far as I was able. I prayed every morning on waking and after each meal. At 12.30 each day, like Salvationists everywhere I paused to ask God's blessing on The Army all round the world. I worked till I was fit to drop in the shelter, glad to help the degraded souls; I sold papers; I collected money. I attended several meetings every week, always staying behind for the prayers. I lived simply, frugally. I did everything I could do and it was not enough.

But whoever knows what God has in store for them? What tests he will devise. I should not question His wisdom but I cannot help it, sometimes I cannot. Sometimes I scream at Him, I shake my fist, I shake my tambourine. I scream and I cry,
It is not fair. I tried. I tried and tried but I could not be good enough. Dear Jesus listen to me. It is not fair
.

What tests. A few weeks after Mr Petit's death in the shelter, there was a letter, a blunt-pencilled note rather, from a Mrs Petit in search of her husband. She had been told by someone, I've no idea who, that her husband had been at the Bothwell Street shelter. She'd been turned out of her home with her three children, the youngest a babe in arms, the oldest only four. She was using her last remaining resources to try and trace him.

There was no address, no means of replying. But she said she was coming. I was glad. I felt I had let Mr Petit down, leaving him to die alone. I thought I could make up for it. I imagined a large soft woman, down-at-heel and shabby but good at heart. I planned to win her soul for Jesus.

‘She must stay with us,' I told Mary.

‘Yes,' she said, ‘it will be good to have children in the house.'

We moved some furniture round to make things comfortable. We bought cots for the babies and brightened Mrs Petit's room with ornaments and flowers. They could have slept in my parents' room. I stood by the locked door where the wardrobe was, trying to steel myself to go in. But could not. Mary did not ask questions, I think she sensed my fear but did not intrude. Oh she was good. I wish, I wish, I wish. If wishes were horses the devil could ride. So we left the room and the wardrobe inside it where it was.

I hate it, hate it, that wardrobe. But still, when I moved up here, when I sent for my stuff – because I could not show my face there after what followed – I sent for the wardrobe too. I had the removal men put it in the attic, though they had to saw it in half to get it up the narrow stairs and reassemble it up there. They thought I was mad. I saw the way they looked at me. They thought I was a mad woman, but I paid them for the job, they almost doubled the price when I insisted that they get the wardrobe into the attic. ‘What do you want to go keeping this for?' they said. ‘And all the junk inside?' It was full of the things, the same old things. Truth is, I don't know why I kept it. I just could not let it go. It was a reminder of something. Father's punishment. Why should I want to remember that? No, not that. It was more like a part of me. And a reminder of Benjamin Charles, my brother. If he had lived … oh how different my life would have been.

Mrs Petit arrived at the Citadel at the end of a meeting. It was a hot night, July, still light. As soon as I saw her I knew who she was. Mrs Petit, Ivy, was a tiny woman, under five-foot tall, bird-boned, sharp featured – and heavily pregnant. Her babies looked incongruously huge with their round heads, chapped red faces and hair fine and colourless as dandelion clocks.

The oldest child, a girl, held the second, a boy, by the hand. A third slept in the pram, packed around with bundles and clothes. Pots hung from the pram handle and at the foot of the pram, most prominent, was a Bible.

‘Welcome,' I said. She looked round the hall. Her eyes were sharp and narrowed.

‘Where is he?' she asked. ‘My husband, Mr Petit, where is he?'

‘I'm sorry,' I said.

‘Sit down, do,' Mary said indicating a chair.

‘Sorry?'

‘Mr Petit passed away.'

The baby woke up and looked at me with startled eyes.

‘We're so sorry,' Mary said. ‘Do sit down, would you like a drink of water, you or the children?'

Mrs Petit ignored her. ‘He's passed on?' She brought her knuckles to her mouth. ‘The
bastard,'
she said.

Mary flinched. She knelt down to the level of the children. ‘I'm Mary,' she said to the little girl, ‘What's your name?'

‘I'm Jean and he's Arfur,' said the girl, ‘and him in the pram he's Colin.'

‘Beg your pardon,' said Ivy, ‘excuse my language … but what am I supposed to do? He never was no good for nothing. Now he's gone and died!' She said this as if it was the most outrageous of a string of outrageous acts. ‘What am
I
supposed to do?'

‘We have a room for you,' Mary said, ‘all prepared. You can stay with us till we fix up something more permanent.'

‘Where's our daddy?' Jean asked.

‘He's with Jesus,' Mary said. ‘In the sunshine.'

Mrs Petit looked sardonic. ‘I could do with getting these to bed,' she said.

‘It's sunny
here,'
Jean said.

‘In the permanent sunshine. Heaven.'

‘What's pernananent?'

‘For ever and ever.'

‘If he's gone then,' Mrs Petit said, ‘where's his things?'

‘What things?' I asked.

‘His gold watch, his chain, his good boots with the money in the soles.'

‘When your husband arrived here he had none of those things,' Mary said. ‘He had nothing but what he stood up in.'

Mrs Petit's face flushed. ‘We haven't come all this bloody way for nothing,' she said. ‘I want his things, that were promised me. “Ivy,” he always said, “whatever becomes of me, you must be sure to have my things.” Three little bastards to feed, and another one coming. Every one of them his, though he might argue but what they wasn't. But they're his spit, don't you think, his bleeding spit.'

I looked at the white-haired, red-faced children, tried unsuccessfully to recognise a likeness.

‘Come,' Mary said. ‘Let's get you back and put the children to bed. Then we can discuss other matters.' She took the handle of the pram and we set off. I held two sticky little hands in my own. We walked slowly along, the tired children dragging their feet, accompanied by the clanking of pots and pans against the pram's frame.

‘I see you have a Bible among your possessions,' Mary said. ‘Do you read it?'

‘Oh yes,' Mrs Petit seemed to collect herself. ‘Every night, don't I Jean?' The girl nodded blankly. ‘Only how I'm going to manage on thin air … and this little one never to lay eyes on its father at all …' She patted her stomach and started to cry.

‘Come now,' I said, ‘It will be all right, you'll see.'

Ivy Petit settled in, but she was not grateful. Do you want gratitude? I asked myself and the answer was no. I was not really being generous, only trying to make amends. Maybe I was trying to show Mary how good I was, because I missed her love. It was as if a cloud had dragged across the sun and blotted up its warmth. So whenever Ivy was rude, or took advantage, I tried not to mind, I tried to meet her nastiness with kindness as if each mean word had antiseptic qualities that might cleanse and heal me. Which they did not.

The woman seemed to fill the house, her and the children. After she had rested for a day or two, I asked if she'd like to help keep house to pay for her keep. I was only concerned for her self-respect. I thought her coldness was pride. To accept charity is hard. It is hard for the taker not to hate the giver. But when I suggested it she was affronted.

‘I've come all this bleeding way,' she said, ‘to find my poor old man gone, not cold in his grave. To find his valuables what was promised me gone missing …' and she gave me, as she said this, a most accusing look. ‘And now I have to work … in my condition …' Her voice took on a whining quality, her eyes filled with tears. ‘Me, a poor, grieving widow with all these mouths to feed.'

I tried to like her and forgive her. But the truth is, I failed. The truth is, I thought her a miserable, deceitful, leech. The only time she showed any sign of grief over her husband was when work was mentioned. The truth was … no, my suspicion was that she had never set eyes on Mr Petit but that she had somehow heard of the man's death and decided to claim him. Even if I am wrong, even if the children were his children, I don't believe there ever was a watch and chain. There never was any money. He was a habitual drunkard and no man who has drunk himself into such a state of wretchedness still has valuables to his name. If he hasn't sold or pawned them for drink they will have been stolen. If there is honour among thieves there is none among drunkards, no honour, no dignity, no pity. But I don't believe so-called Ivy Petit knew him anyway, she called him Jim – though in our records his name was George. When I asked little Jean about her daddy she knew nothing. ‘Where is he?' was all she would say. And Ivy's stories varied, she tripped herself up. One day her husband had been a grocer swindled out of his shop; another day he'd gambled it away. One day he was a good man and she managed to squeeze out a tear in his memory, another day he beat and forced himself on her. Some of it may have been true. But I believed nothing. There was no sincerity in her greedy, darting eyes. And never a thank you after all we did for her, hardly even a smile.

I know that these are not Christian thoughts, not charitable nor forgiving. Whatever else was false, the truth was that she was poor and homeless and had three children to support and another on the way. Her lies and cunning were her means of survival, the tools of her trade. If she survived by weaving, then balancing upon, a tissue of lies who was I to despise her for it? At least she knew what she was doing and why.

There was something else too. Ivy had a narrow, slanting way of looking at me, accompanied by a mocking smile as if she saw right through my uniform and godliness. As if she knew me for a sham. And this I could not stand.

‘I'd push off,' Ivy said. ‘I'd go now if you give me what's rightfully mine.' Mary and I exchanged glances. I picked up the poker and stirred the glowing coals. Although it was August, it was a chilly evening and we had lit a fire. Ivy sat in the chair my mother used to sit in, but whereas my mother had been so still you could almost forget her, Ivy fidgeted and fretted so that no one could rest.

‘He had nothing,' Mary said, as she had said, patiently, over and over again. ‘He arrived here in filthy corduroys. No linen even, no stockings. His boots were worn through, lined with newspaper, only fit to throw away.'

‘And why should I believe you?'

‘Because it's the truth. We have no interest in stealing.' Even Mary's voice had developed an edge of irritation when she spoke to Ivy. ‘And anyway, where do you think you'd go?'

Mary looked exhausted, she'd just put the children to bed, while Ivy had sat staring into the flames. Apart from the odd snap or slap, Ivy had practically ignored her children since she'd arrived and Mary had taken them over. I could see in the way she spoke to them, played with them, scolded them kindly, a sort of rehearsal going on for the day when she had her own. When Harold was there, he watched her with a look of such enchantment on his face that I had to leave the room.

Ivy was hunched over the mound of her stomach, twisting a strand of her hair nervously round a finger so tightly that the tip of it had gone a dark, fat red. I knew very little about pregnancy but I thought she couldn't possibly get much bigger. Mary had arranged with a midwife that she should be confined at home, and all talk of moving her to somewhere more permanent had ceased until after the baby was born.

‘What are you gawping at?' Ivy asked me suddenly.

‘I was only thinking about the baby.'

‘Cup of tea?' Mary asked.

‘Not for me,' I said. ‘I think I'll go up.'

‘If Jim had been alive,' Ivy said plaintively, ‘it would of been his birthday today.'

‘Oh, my dear.' Mary went over to Ivy to embrace her, but Ivy flinched away.

‘Don't give me your bleeding pity nor God's
love,'
she almost spat. ‘Just give me what's rightfully mine and I'll go.' Mary stepped back.

I went upstairs. Her ingratitude made me seethe. I had given her the best room, fed her, put up with her children for weeks – and for what? To be abused, to be made uncomfortable in my own home. I knelt on the gravel by my bed and prayed to God to help me forgive her.

In the night, I was woken by Mary's fist on my door, her voice: ‘Trixie, Trixie my dear, are you awake?'

Ivy was in labour. She had woken Mary a few minutes before. Mary was already dressed to go out in her bonnet and cape.

‘I'll go and fetch the midwife,' she said. ‘There's no rush, it'll be hours yet – but best be on the safe side.' Her voice bubbled with excitement. ‘You keep her company while I'm gone.'

She touched my hand and smiled. It was the first real tenderness she'd shown me since the Harold episode and I thought I was forgiven.