She teasingly tweaked his nose. ‘Of course I don’t feel tied down by marrying you, you idiot. But you’re so busy with the bakery now that your dad has largely retired, I don’t see quite so much of you as I used to. I understand you have to work hard, so that we can get on and provide a good future for our child. I don’t want you thinking I’m dissatisfied, but I need something other than babies to think about. I need to express myself in other ways, outside of the home. A woman has rights too, you know. I want to have a voice.’
‘I thought you already had one?’ Chris said, tight-lipped. ‘You certainly have plenty to say, and I’ve never denied you any rights.’
All this talk of freedom troubled him deeply. Amy’s entire behaviour was a huge worry. She’d changed so much; in her attitude, in the fact that she’d started work so soon after Danny had been born, even in the way she dressed. He’d tried to dismiss the letter as mischief-making, yet he was becoming increasingly alarmed that there might be something in it after all. The prospect of his lovely Amy having an affair with another man made him feel sick to his stomach. He couldn’t bear it, he really couldn’t
Amy was laughing at him again, as if he were some sort of joke. ‘I mean that I want a voice in our future, in what kind of a world we provide for our son. In world affairs. I care about democracy, don’t you? I refuse to be dictated to by governments who think they have all the answers.’
‘Why does everything always come round to politics with you? Where are you getting all of this stuff from?’
He knew his tone was cold and sharp, as it so often was these days, but he felt so confused, and deeply unhappy. He’d followed her once or twice, to see where she went, but hadn’t yet seen her with any strange man, hadn’t seen her go anywhere of interest at all. But then he was often stuck in the house baby-sitting when she was out gallivanting of an evening, and he couldn’t follow her then, could he? His mother would play pop if she caught him wheeling the baby out in the damp night air, even if it was summer.
But Chris didn’t care to be dubbed as a fuddy-duddy, or old-fashioned simply because he disapproved of her dressing like a beatnik, even though she still looked lovely. He wanted his own sweet Amy back. He wanted to hold her and kiss her and not be forever embroiled in difficult discussions about consumerism and democracy.
And they still hadn’t got going yet on their Sunday love-making sessions, as they’d planned. Somehow, he didn’t have the heart to start, not since he’d received that letter.
‘Did you know that Chris has been checking up on you?’
Patsy and Amy were sitting in the ice cream parlour enjoying a banana split. Scoops of strawberry, vanilla and chocolate ice cream smothered in chopped pineapple, whipped cream and maraschino cherries, liberally decorated with crushed nuts, coconut and strawberry syrup. Really quite delicious.
Amy looked up in surprise. ‘When? Why?’
Patsy grinned. ‘Perhaps he thinks you’re having an affair with Jimmy Ramsay.’
Amy almost choked on a pineapple chunk. ‘Don’t be daft, with the fat butcher? Never!’
‘Oh, then you don’t dismiss the idea of an affair quite out of hand then?’
She laughed. ‘You know I’m a one-man-girl, but go one, tell me what it was Chris really wanted.’
Patsy licked cream from her spoon then slid another piece of banana into her mouth, making little satisfied humming noises. After a lengthy moment to savour the delicious flavour she admitted that she’d no idea. ‘He asked if you’d been round to ours on some evening or other, a Thursday, I think it was. I said no, he’d got it wrong, that it was a Friday afternoon when we usually got together for a bit of a crack.’
Amy’s face paled. ‘Oh, dear.’
Patsy stopped eating to give her friend a quizzical look. ‘What is it? Is there a problem?’
‘There might be. I did say I was with you one Thursday evening so Chris wouldn’t find out where I really was.’
Patsy’s eyebrows rose, meeting the fringe of her silver fair hair. ‘Don’t tell me you really are having it away with Jimmy Ramsay?’
‘Stop it, this isn’t a joke, this is deadly serious. The truth is I’ve joined the CND, and I can’t pluck up the courage to tell Chris because I know he won’t approve. Worse, he’ll make me give it up and I really have no intention of doing so.’
Now it was Patsy’s turn to say, ‘Oh, dear.’
‘I know, it’s all got a bit out of hand. The longer I leave it, the harder it is to tell him.’
‘It’s not a good idea to keep secrets, particularly from a husband. Tell him the truth, Amy. And tell him soon.’
‘I will,’ Amy agreed, staring into her ice cream. ‘I will, I promise.’ But both girls knew there was little conviction in her tone.
Mavis remained a thorn in Amy’s side. She objected strongly to her daughter-in-law’s intention of going back to work, accusing her of neglecting her child even though she intended to take Danny with her. ‘I want no grandson of mine growing up as a ‘latch-key kid’.’
He’s only a few months old. How could I give him a key?’
‘Exactly,’ Mavis said, as if she’d proved her point. ‘Haven’t I been shamed enough by Chris’s father?’ This was always the way she referred to her husband nowadays, ever since he’d set up home in his allotment shed.
‘How is Thomas?’ Amy asked, although she knew perfectly well since she visited him most days, taking him a plate of dinner, or collecting his dirty washing.
‘I really wouldn’t know,’ Mavis sniffed, and then spotting a row of her husband’s socks hanging on the clothes rack, added frostily. ‘I hope he isn’t taking advantage of you.’
Amy smiled and shook her head. ‘Not at all.’ Not half so much as you used to, she might have added, but managed to hold that acid comment in check. ‘I do at least have running hot water, which he doesn’t.’
‘I’ve never refused to do his washing for him,’ Mavis snapped, voice rising in high dudgeon. ‘Nor did I suggest he live in that nasty little shed.’
‘Hopefully he’ll come home before winter sets in,’ Amy said. ‘Maybe you could suggest that he does. We don’t want him catching pneumonia, do we?’
The expression on Mavis’s face darkened, but no such promise was forthcoming. Switching the line of her argument, she returned instead to the inadequacies of Amy’s housekeeping, running her finger along the edge of the mahogany dresser.
‘It could do with a good wax polish, dear. I used to do it every week, remember? And this is a respectable street,’ Mavis reminded her daughter-in-law, offering her sour smile. ‘I couldn’t help noticing that you haven’t donkey-stoned your doorstep, or the window-sills either. And don’t forget to polish the letter-box. Standards must be maintained.’
‘I’ve a new baby,’ Amy patiently reminded her, elbow deep in soap-suds as she scrubbed nappies, baby vests and her husband’s work overalls. They still hadn’t got round to buying a washing machine, she’d been up half the night with Danny again, Chris was still in a sulk over something or other and she really wasn’t in the mood for her mother-in-law this morning. ‘I haven’t time for such niceties.’
‘Which exactly proves my point. You should never have removed my son into a slum like this. With your background, is it any wonder that you are quite incapable of looking after things properly?’
Right, Amy thought, that’s it. I’ve had enough.
‘Where are we going?’ Chris grumbled, curiosity overcoming his black mood for a moment as a day or two later Amy dragged him along Champion Street and on to a bus heading for the city centre.
‘You’ll find out soon enough when we get there,’ giving him a sly wink which once would have made him chuckle. He’d always loved Amy’s teasing sense of humour, now he felt infuriated by it, as if she had no right to be happy.
Amy wasn’t interested in her husband’s sulks today, only in bettering her own lot in life. Thomas was showing no inclination to return either to work or to his wife. His semi-retirement seemed to have turned into full-time, and he did little more than dig his plot and play cards with his friends. He also obstinately refused to say how he would cope when the nights started drawing in and the days grew colder. And if all of this meant that Chris was overworked, overtired and worried, well so was she.
She took Chris to the Electricity Showrooms where a young woman was holding a demonstration of a new washing machine. Chris was instantly alarmed and whispered furiously in his wife’s ear.
‘We don’t need a washing machine. We can’t afford one.’
‘We
do
need one, and we’ll
have
to afford one,’ Amy insisted. ‘I can’t go on like this, washing everything by hand, not and hold down a job as well.’
‘You don’t have to work,’ Chris protested. ‘That was
your
idea.’
‘It’s a necessity,’ Amy patiently pointed out, ‘if we are ever to get out of this house your mother calls a slum.’
‘Take no notice of her, she over-dramatises everything. Come on, we’re going home.’
He took hold of her arm, about to march her out of the shop when the young woman clapped her hands to welcome them to the demonstration, announcing she was about to show them something truly wonderful.
‘Now, gentlemen, which would you prefer to come home to, an exhausted wife and a house full of wet sheets and nappies, or a beautiful wife content with her lot, dinner on the table and the laundry already dried, folded and put to air?’
Chris paused to think about this for a moment and Amy took advantage of his hesitation to gently push him nearer to the front.
She could see how the demonstrator flirted unashamedly with the husbands, appealing to their desire for comfort and no hassle in their lives. And as she fluttered her eyelashes at the men, and told them how economical a Hoovermatic was to run, she managed to give sideways smiles and little winks to the women, to prove that she was really on their side.
She talked of ‘superlative water washing action that gives the cleanest, quickest and most thorough wash’, of a full family wash taking only half an hour; of automatic timers and controls for all types of fabric. She pandered to the men’s love of technical details while assuring the women the machine would be easy to operate and the stainless steel tub wouldn’t rust or chip.
It all worked splendidly and at the conclusion, when the startlingly white shirt had been put through the spin dryer and hung up on a hanger to air, Chris was easily persuaded to sign a hire purchase agreement on the promise that one of these marvellous machines would be delivered to their door the very next day.
‘Can we just take a peep at these new electric cookers while we’re here?’ Amy suggested, thinking it was worth a try as she seemed to be on a winning run.
But that was one step too far for Chris who instantly hustled her out of the shop before she spent any more money he didn’t have. Still, it was a start, Amy thought with secret joy. No more scrubbing messy nappies by hand. Utter bliss!
Let her mother-in-law find fault with that.
Chapter Thirty-Six
September came in balmy and mild, the trees by the River Irwell rich with scarlet berries and the smell of bonfires. Each morning Betty Hemley’s stall was bright with chrysanthemums, the market bustling with huge lorries bringing potatoes from Norfolk, apples from Kent, oranges and lemons from the continent. Small vans carrying local produce edged their way between the stalls to deposit crates of cabbages and leeks, peas and carrots from the farms of Cheshire and Lancashire, or fish from Grimsby and Whitby.
Gina had loved to watch all of this activity from her bedroom window. She missed looking out upon the familiar stalls with their iridescent display of mackerel, cod and salmon, the cries of the fishmongers calling out their wares as they gutted and sliced. She missed the sound of canvas flapping in the rain, of people laughing and shouting, the cheerful banter that was a focal part of any market.
Even when she’d been ill and confined to her room, she’d never felt quite so isolated as she did now.
She was struggling to learn the rules and to toe the line. She’d put her name down for any number of education courses and workshops from basketwork to Egyptian history, from cookery to embroidery. Anything to fill each long day, to help maintain her sanity. Perhaps then prison wouldn’t be quite so bad, she thought. Losing her liberty was bad enough without losing her mind too.
Unfortunately things didn’t quite work out as she’d hoped. More often than not the class would be cancelled. She would be called upon to do kitchen duties, work in the laundry, or to sew the coarse prison dresses, or simply be left with yet more empty hours to fill.
She soon learned that while much was offered in theory to rehabilitate and educate the prisoners, little took place in practice. Wisely, she made not one word of complaint. She’d learned that too.
Discovering that the prison housed a library, Gina tried to fill her time with reading. She borrowed countless books, gobbling them up quickly at first, as she would at home, eager to finish one story and move on to the next. Experience, however, taught her to slow down, as there were times when the library would be locked, possibly for days on end, for no apparent reason, or perhaps because something had happened to displease the staff and it was considered necessary to inflict punishment by closing it. Once again she would be left staring into space for hours on end, with nothing to read and too afraid to risk borrowing a book from another inmate.