The Narrowboat Girl (32 page)

She approached the door of the ward with great timidity, her stomach clenching uneasily. Hospitals frightened her. They had ever since her dad had been taken away to one and never come home. The nurses in their stiff uniforms, their starchy white veils and starchy manner also intimidated her and there were those smells: bodily stenches, disinfectant.

An older nurse, with a cross face and muscly arms and legs, walked briskly up to her. ‘Yes? Who is it you’ve come to see?’

Maryann cleared her throat. ‘A Mr Joel Bartholomew . . . please.’

‘Bartholomew? Chest case. Oh no – I don’t think so.’

‘P-Pardon?’

‘No visitors. Too ill to see anyone. And you’re not a relative, I assume?’

‘I’m . . . no, a friend, but . . .’

‘Relatives only, I’m afraid.’ The woman started to turn away.

‘But they can’t come – any of them!’ Maryann burst into tears in vexation. ‘They all work on the cut and they can’t leave the boat. His dad’s poorly too and his brother’s stuck in Banbury and there ain’t anyone else and I
know
he’d want to see someone.
Please
let me – just for a few minutes. I’ve come all the way from Banbury myself today!’

The woman stood, considering. Maryann was afraid she’d be snooty and spiteful because she knew Joel was off the cut. But she said, reluctantly, ‘Very well. A couple of minutes. But he is very ill. And don’t go cluttering up the ward with
that
. Leave it with me.’ She took Maryann’s case and walked off with it, saying over her shoulder, ‘He’s just down on the right.’

She found him halfway down, a physical jolt of shock going through her when she first saw him and took in that it was him. If it had not been for his blaze of hair against the pillow she would not have recognized him. For the big, burly Joel she had known was now much thinner, his cheekbones pushing out the flesh of his face, and they had shaved off his beard. His frame, as he lay prone under the sheet, was shrunken and weak and his eyes were closed. She could see that each breath he took was a painful struggle to him.

Her instinct was to stand there for a long time staring at him, trying to take in his changed state, but she was afraid the bossy nurse would come back, and she slipped alongside the bed and sat on the chair, trying to shrink down and make herself as invisible as possible. She could feel the man in the bed opposite staring at her.

Close up, she could see a film of perspiration on Joel’s face and hear the rasp of his lungs. His face wore a frown, as if of pain and concentration. Watching him she felt as if the years since she had last seen him were very short, like a dream which takes only moments yet in which you can experience half a lifetime. She felt as if her heart would melt with sorrow and tenderness. She sat torn between fear of disturbing him and the unbearable thought that she might be ordered to leave before he knew she was there. Slowly, trembling, she reached out her hand and laid it over his.

‘Joel?’

For a moment she thought he had not heard, but then his head moved a fraction and she saw him struggle to open his eyes, as if even the effort to prise his lids apart was enormous. He looked round, eyes unfocused for a moment, then slowly rolled his head, sensing someone next to him. She felt his eyes on her.

‘Joel,’ she whispered, leaning towards him, finding there were tears streaming down her face. ‘It’s me – Maryann. I saw Darius and he told me you was here and how poorly you are.’

There was a moment while he took her in, staring at her as if he couldn’t make sense of her presence and she watched his reaction fearfully. He swallowed, frowned slightly. His hand lifted, then laid over hers.

‘You came . . . My little . . . nipper . . .’

This made her all the more emotional. ‘Oh Joel,’ she sobbed. ‘It’s so lovely to see you. I’m so sorry, Joel – I’ve wanted to say to you for ever so long that I’m sorry for running off the way I did when yer’d been so good to me. I was in a state. So many terrible things’d happened and I daint know what I was doing and I know you daint mean anything bad. You were the one person I could always go to and I can’t stand to see yer looking so poorly like this.’ She took his hand and kissed it again and again. She could hear his breathing becoming more agitated and she looked anxiously into his face. There were tears running down into his hair and she wiped them gently away with her fingers, knowing how unmanly it must seem to him to weep. He was trying to speak and she leaned close, barely able to hear his whisper.

‘I did wrong—’ He had to rest between the words to gather enough breath. ‘You was . . . only a young ’un . . .’ He closed his eyes as if condemning himself. ‘My fault.’ The final words cost him a huge effort. ‘You seemed older . . . I felt for you. It weren’t . . . just lust . . . Truly . . .’

‘You were lovely, Joel – you were. I know that now and I’m sorry. Only I
was
young and I was in a mess . . . I’ve grown up a bit since then. I’ve thought about you – when I let myself. And I missed you ever such a lot.’

He gave a nod which seemed to encompass and elaborate everything she’d said, and he clutched her hand.

‘I’ll be here now – till you get better.’

Joel laid his spare hand over his chest, gasping for breath. ‘I knew they’d get . . . me . . . in the end . . .’

She knew he meant his damaged lungs and a chill went through her.

‘Don’t say that, Joel! You’re in your thirties – that’s not old! You just feel it because yer sick at the moment. You can get better – you can! I’m going to come and see yer every day. Please don’t give up – say you won’t give up, you’ll try for me, won’t you!’

Slowly he brought his other hand across and cradled her hand in both of his.

‘Oh Joel—’ She leaned forward and kissed his cheek, barely knowing what she was saying. ‘I love you
so
much.’ She was laughing and crying together, but quietened herself to hear the words he whispered, still clasping her hand.

‘My little . . . love, you . . . came back.’

Thirty-Three

When the tram reached Ladywood, Maryann stepped down a couple of stops early so that she could walk along Monument Road and try to get used to being back. Glancing down Waterworks Road she looked for Perrott’s Folly, the old brick tower which loomed over the houses, and she passed some of the old familiar shops, St John’s Church, the Dispensary, all looking the same as when she left and it gave her a strange feeling. She prepared herself for the fact that while buildings change little in six years, people do, and that she might even walk past one of her own brothers without recognizing him.

Turning down Anderson Street she was filled with a dread so strong it forced her to stop and stand nervously near the corner, trying to find the courage to go on. Again, the place looked much the same. School was out and there were kids playing on the pavement, skimming marbles along the blue bricks as they always had. She might have run along the road with Norman Griffin’s keys in her hand only weeks ago. For a moment she could smell the choking smoke from the fire in her nostrils. She was going to have to see
him
again. However much she knew she was now a grown woman, that she could leave at any time, that he had no power to do anything to her, she could only feel herself as a child in relation to him. A powerless child who he could use for his own cruel, disgusting appetites as he had used her sister and then destroyed her. The old anger in her rose up again until she was trembling with it.

Oh I can’t, she thought. I can’t go back there. I ain’t got the strength. She put her case down and stood facing the wall of a house, composing herself, clenching her teeth, trying to get her shaking under control. I will not, she told herself, let him do this to me. I
won’t
. Furiously she snatched up the case and marched along the road. But she still couldn’t go straight to the house and walk in. She had to know how things stood.

The Martins’ huckster’s shop still looked just the same, the windows plastered in labels: Oxo, Cadbury’s, Woodbines, the same little ‘ting’ of the bell as she pushed the door open. The smells hit her: soap, camphor, rubber, cough candy. For a second she saw Tony in her mind’s eye as she remembered him, standing on tiptoe to peer over the counter.

‘Penn’orth of rocks yer got there, bab?’ Mrs Martin would say.

Maryann imagined Tony’s wide-eyed nod.

Mrs Martin, her hair now white instead of metal grey, came through from the back, wiping her hands on her apron.

‘Can I ’elp yer?’

‘’Er – Mrs Martin, it’s me – Maryann Nelson.’

The woman stared at her, bewildered. ‘Who?’

‘Maryann – Flo Griffin’s daughter. Tony and Billy’s sister.’

Mrs Martin’s mouth sagged open. ‘
No!
’ she exclaimed eventually. ‘Little Maryann? Ooh – I can see now, them blue eyes. Ooh my word!’

‘I’ve been working down south and I’ve come back for a visit, only I just wondered – you know, ’ow things are . . .’ She jerked her head over in the direction of the house.

‘Oh no – you won’t find ’em over there. Daint yer know?’ Her brow furrowed at Maryann’s extraordinary ignorance of her own family. ‘Your mother went to live back over in Sheepcote Lane when ’e left ’er. Couldn’t pay the rent no more, could ’er? In a right state ’er was. But that were a good while back – five year or more. We don’t see ’er round ’ere no more. Daint you know, bab?’

Maryann shook her head, her pulse racing. ‘You mean Mr Griffin ain’t living with them no more?’

‘Ooh no – ’e took off after ’is premises went up. There was a fire, like. Gutted the ’ole damn place. You must remember that, daint yer? They’ve only just got it put back up now and Steven’s the drapers’re setting up. But your mother, Flo – well ’er version of events was ’e was never the same again after it and ’e took off and left ’er. Oh, Flo was in a right state I can tell yer.’

Maryann could tell from the way Mrs Martin was squinting at her with her head a bit to one side that any moment she was going to start interrogating her. She backed away towards the door, almost falling over a pile of galvanized buckets.

‘So you say Mom’s gone to Sheepcote Lane?’

‘Sheepcote. Ar, that’s it, bab.’

Maryann pulled the door open again.
Ting!

‘You’re a right grownup wench now, ain’t yer?’

Maryann smiled. ‘Ta very much, Mrs Martin.’

She passed the old house, peering closely at it. There were pale lilac curtains inside the lower window, and a black dog was lying asleep beside the step. She could sense it had all changed, would look very different inside from how she remembered, yet the thought of walking in through the front door made her flesh creep. Too many memories. Too many ghosts of the tormented little girls she and Sal had been in that house. She held on to the thought of Joel, to the love she had seen in his eyes which made her strong. Knowing she had Joel again she could face anything. Much better to keep walking and see what the present held than to linger here dwelling on the past.

The only way she could think of finding her mom in Sheepcote Lane was to ask, yard by yard, even house by house down the poor end. Poverty would have driven her to a smaller house – what fierce resentment that must’ve bred in her! But maybe, when Norman left her, she had been able to see him as he really was: a conman who had married her for his own vile motives: for the fact that she had two young daughters and would look after him in comfort in exchange for his money. God knows, she thought, he wasn’t
rich
– not really. It was just that Mom was desperate. Maybe at last she’d be able to face the truth.

She did not need to look far. In the second back court she went into she was confronted by the sight of a woman, her back to Maryann. Her legs were thin and stringy, and her hair which had once been thick and blonde was now faded to grey, twisted and pinned up savagely behind her head. She was reaching up to unpeg a sheet from a crowded line of washing which billowed in the damp air. Maryann knew her immediately. She felt a surge of pity. Flo’s bitterness and exhaustion was clear in every movement she made. Even during the war she had been quite a voluptuous woman, but now she was very thin. She kept reaching up to the line, unpegging and yanking sheets, bloomers, an apron down from it, shaking them angrily when the breeze tried to force them the wrong way. Maryann hadn’t the courage to go to her in the yard. She hovered in the entry until Flo had picked up her enormous basket of washing and struggled into the end house.

It was about five o’clock. Her mom’d be cooking soon. Best go over there and get it over with. She was just stepping out across the narrow yard when two boys ran out laughing from another house. They were both about ten years old, one dark, one blond. Seeing the fairer of the two, Maryann stopped. Something about him, the way he moved, his colouring told her immediately that this was Billy. He and the other boy were tearing up and down the yard chasing one another and laughing. They saw her looking and took no notice. Both of them were in shorts cut down from longer trousers and grubby shirts hanging loose at the back. As they came closer, Maryann called, ‘Billy?’

He slowed, peering at her, and came closer. His face was grubby and red from running and she saw he had a trail of freckles across his nose. From the big blue eyes, the way he held his head, she knew that he was her brother.

‘Billy – it’s me, Maryann. I’m your big sister.’ Tears came as she said it. All those years of his life she’d missed. A little, soft thing he’d been when she left, who’d sit on her lap for a love and let her bath him. Now he was a long, skinny lad, almost grown up!

‘Are yer?’ She could see him searching his memory. Surely he’d been old enough when she left for him to remember her? But then she’d changed too. A sad look came over his face for a second, and she thought he was going to say something else. But then he seemed to remember the other boy with him and he wasn’t going to go all soft in front of him. ‘Our mom’s indoors,’ he said with a toss of his head. ‘See yer.’ And the two of them careered off again.

Gripping the handle of her case, Maryann walked along the yard. If it had been a house she’d ever lived in herself, she’d have just walked in but here she felt she must knock. She saw one of the front panes was broken and covered with cardboard, and the green paint on the door was flaking and dirty. She rapped it with her knuckles.