While accepting this was her lot in life, Rita adored her beloved children above all else.
You play with the hand you’re dealt, Rita. Her mind echoed Charlie’s sentiments now and Rita felt she was getting no more than she deserved. Like most women round here, she had made her bed and now she must lie in it. Being Catholic, she would never contemplate divorce – the idea was ludicrous in a place like Empire Street, where women married for life but not always for love. For women like her, happiness was a bonus, not an expectation.
‘I don’t understand why they can’t just go back to Freshfield,’ she said again.
‘Those people tried turning my children against me.’ Charlie went back to the suitcase and Rita wondered what excuse he would make next. ‘They hid behind the old woman’s skirts like I was the bogeyman.’
‘You hadn’t been to see them for months,’ Rita explained. ‘They thought they had done something wrong when you attacked the farmer!’
‘He tried to stop me taking them home.’
‘He’d never seen you before.’ Rita knew that Charlie was lucky he had not been threatened with a shotgun – ‘Uncle Seth’, as the children called the farmer, was very protective of Michael and Megan and a very good shot.
‘Michael took his time confirming I was, in fact, his father,’ Charlie straightened himself to his full six foot, ‘which just goes to show they were in need of a firm hand!’
Rita gasped at his delusions of civil paternity … Charlie had no patience with his children or, indeed, anyone else.
‘I can take them to the farm myself,’ Rita said. ‘Joan would be thrilled to have them back. I got a letter from her yesterday. She asked if …’
Charlie’s head was still bent as he raised his eyes. They cut her with a warning glare that told her to be quiet or else; to say no more. It told her that she was making things worse for herself.
‘Go down. You’re wasting precious time with your beloved children,’ he said. ‘You’ve shown where your priorities lie, even when it is obvious your own flesh and blood need you more.’
‘Charlie, there is a war on. People are dying and the hospitals need all the nurses they can get.’
‘Of course.’ His eyes were full of scorn. ‘That is why I am releasing you of the burden of your own children.’
‘They have never been a burden! You must tell me where you are taking them!’ Rita’s voice was rising, becoming shrill with anxiety. She must remain calm. Think straight. He would want her to dissolve into hysterics. That way he was in control. His lips parted into a disparaging grin as he mimicked her words in better times.
‘I love my children more than life itself!’ He threw his head back and gave a laugh that was far from humorous. ‘You should be on the stage at the Metropole, Rita.’
There was a cold gleam in his eyes and Charlie’s words were low when he said, ‘All in good time, Rita. You know, you can be very entertaining when you’re riled.’
Horrified, she watched Charlie stop packing the little suitcase. His eyes were now taking in every inch of her body, pausing on the parts he would claim without consent, given the chance. Rita froze, aware now what he had in mind. He was going to put her in her place. This was the real reason he had agreed to bringing the children back from evacuation. His violent attentions – she could never call it lovemaking – were so painful they reduced her to tears. She prayed for him to stop, unable to cry out for fear the children would hear. It was her duty to preserve her children’s innocence.
Her eyes never left him as he edged towards her. Bitter bile was searing her throat. How far was she from the closed bedroom door? She would never get past him from this distance.
Rita felt the blood run like cold water through her veins. It was broad daylight. Her children were downstairs having breakfast. She could hear them chatting away. He wouldn’t … Not now …
Charlie moved inch … by inch … enjoying her torment.
Please Lord, don’t let him do this to me again …
‘Mrs Kerrigan, have you seen the rest of my Lady Jane’s?’ Nancy Kerrigan, twenty-year-old wife of Corporal Sid Kerrigan, POW, of the Cheshire Regiment, had wound half of her shoulder-length, Titian-coloured hair into little Catherine-wheel twists before securing them with silver clips. If she’s given them to the salvage men, Nancy thought, she’ll get the sharp edge of my tongue!
‘You left them in the parlour,’ Mrs Kerrigan said, bringing a paper bag into the back kitchen, where Nancy was standing on the tips of her toes looking into the oval mirror hanging from the nail above the deep stone sink. Nancy let out an impatient sigh; her mother-in-law was always snooping in her private things. She didn’t know what the old woman expected to find but she was going to be disappointed.
‘What did you want in the parlour?’ Nancy asked, her suspicions aroused when Mrs Kerrigan put the paper bag containing the rest of her clips onto the wet draining board, so that the paper became all soggy. ‘You had no right going into my private sitting room.’ She paid Sid’s mother good rent out of Sid’s army allowance money every week. ‘There’s no privacy in this house.’
Through the looking-glass, she could see the older woman’s glare of disapproval, looking down her pointed nose and flaring her thin nostrils, though she did not answer.
‘Off out again, are we?’ Mrs Kerrigan asked instead, in that pained voice that grated on Nancy’s nerves. Nancy knew if her husband were here the old bag would not speak to her like that. She would make sure she told him next time she wrote. He would soon put his mother straight on a few things, including how to treat his wife and mother of his son.
‘Yes, with my friend Gloria – you know Gloria, don’t you?’ Nancy said innocently, winding a section of hair around her index finger, placing it in a way she had done hundreds of times before against her scalp and pinning it in place with another clip. Nancy was pleased with the way she looked. Eyeing herself in the glass she wondered if she was a bit thinner these last few months. Everyone was going without and there was seemingly nothing that wasn’t either rationed or in short supply. Her Sid preferred her with a few curves, but Nancy quite liked the new sharpness to her cheekbones.
‘Oh, yes, I know Gloria, a good-time girl if ever there was one.’ There was no mistaking the contempt in Mrs Kerrigan’s voice. ‘Half the foreign fleet know Gloria.’
Nancy could feel the hairs on the back of her neck stand to attention. She yearned to tell the po-faced woman what she thought of her pious ways; spending as much time polishing the altar rails with her prayers as she did calling her neighbours fit to burn in hell. How could Sid’s mam be so religious when she was so nasty?
‘Only half of them?’ Nancy could not contain herself. ‘My word, she is slipping!’ She took a sideways glance at the older woman, who banged a cast-iron pan on the stove to show how angry she was. Nancy returned to the mirror, now applying her new bright red lipstick. When she and Gloria had last been to the Adelphi, one of the RAF servicemen had complimented her, telling her that she looked a bit like Rita Hayworth, which she’d always secretly thought herself. Nancy almost smiled at the recollection but the presence of her harping mother-in-law was enough to sour the memory. She’d had enough of her sniping, but she’d been brought up not to cheek her elders, no matter how much she was provoked. Also, she had Sid to think about.
‘It’s not like this is a regular thing.’