Beyond the blue, p.4
Beyond the Blue, page 4
Imogen looks back up to the busy street and the throngs of strangers, heads in hats. Wallis will surely do something delicious and regrettable now that Imogen has been so careless. Imogen peers, finally finds Wallis’s soft grey hat and moves ahead, closer.
Wallis carries an umbrella with her, and it bumps against her thigh. It’s not raining quite yet, but the sky is full and docile with held moisture. It’s the black umbrella with a long handle, the one Wallis usually takes to church. Small details like this are not lost on Imogen. This means Wallis must be going somewhere important.
Imogen has watched Wallis change since she began following her. She looks lovely; just look at her rosy cheek when she turns to watch a car sailing around the bend. And her mouth, usually so straight and set, now seems to be pressing back a smile. Slight, so that you’d have to be watching to notice. That’s Wallis’s gift, Imogen thinks, that she can be slight and quick, moving in circles unnoticed.
Wallis stops suddenly, and Imogen bumps into an old man. She moves quickly to keep out of Wallis’s sight. In the buzz of Commercial Street, with the McManus Galleries and the red Courier building, Wallis has stopped, as if she means to be noticed. Wallis will not turn around and notice her: Wallis is busy looking for someone else.
Look left, look right; bite, bite. Wallis is a mass of repetition, her foot in its sturdy boot tapping slightly. She bites her lip again.
They wait—together but still separate—for close on fifteen minutes. Wallis with her black umbrella just across the street at the corner, while Imogen waits with her hand on the lamppost, willing herself to be small and invisible. Imogen scans the face of everyone who passes by, assuming she’ll know who Wallis waits for when she sees them.
Rain begins to fall and Wallis has to put her umbrella up. It is heaving with the weight of the rain when her smile starts in earnest. She’s looking ahead, barely aware of the pedestrians around her, when she crosses the street. She’s looking up, as if there could be something there in the sky.
Imogen has been a fool. Wallis was not waiting for someone, but something: a sign. Wallis disappears while Imogen stands wondering in the rain.
Women with small children. Women in dark, dreary frocks. Limping men newly returned from the War. People moving along the street, unaware of the girl behind the red-silled window, her quick eyes on them. Caro stands at the post office counter, looking out to the street before her.
“New suitors, Caro?” Ruth Munro works alongside Caro. Usually her acid tongue makes Caro smile, but not when it is directed at her. Caro is cautious, eyeing her with a sidelong glance.
“Not to speak of.”
“No dances, then?”
“No.”
“Do you girls some good to get out. Before the chance is gone.”
“We’re young still,” Caro says and watches Ruth make a sour face. “Besides, Wallis doesn’t much like going.”
“She needs to go if she ever hopes to find a husband. Mind you, it’s only cowards and rejects we have now.”
Caro thinks Wallis would be grateful for any attention, Wallis with her great compassion, oozing like a boil. She feels a swell of regret as soon as she thinks it.
“She’s not got your face, you know.” Ruth is sorting letters and a warm, yeasty smell comes from her. “Is she after mooning over someone?”
“No.”
“Poor, wretched thing. She’ll be nursing your poor old mum while you are away with a husband and children of your own.” Ruth winks. “Mark my words.”
Caro has believed the same since she was old enough to understand why people cooed over her in the street. Morag thought the acknowledgment sinful, but Caro thinks beauty is something you can count on, something universally recognized. Nothing good ever came for Morag, who used up any beauty she had on James and two small children. On looms and scrubbing floors. Caro thinks her mother let herself be used up early in life, so that it might not hurt so much later; swiftly severing and avoiding the possibility of another life, happiness.
But Caro’s escape will take more than beauty or skill. Nerve, she thinks, and forces herself to stand a little taller. Maybe it’s nerve. Even ladies sometimes need to act like common whores to get what they want.
“It’s about time you decided on a man,” Ruth says with her hands full of other people’s news, the white mess slipping between her fingers.
“I have.” The words come too quickly, unintentionally. Caro looks at the floor.
“Go on, then. Who?” Ruth is greedy for scandal; her face has turned pink and delighted.
Caro says, “It’s bad luck.” She turns her attention to stacking notepaper, envelopes, stamps. She puts aside the few pieces of mail she will take home with her; there is another letter for Wallis from Rosemary Hennessey. Caro can tell by Rosemary’s slanted writing and the small Irish stamp. One day this will all be a memory: the slick grime of ink, the shrill whine of Ruth’s voice, Caro’s wan reflection in the post office’s windows. She smiles and wipes at the smudges of her fingers.
April 5, 1918
Dear Wallis,
I’ve met a lovely man, Joseph Devine. Imagine, a surname like Devine! He is dark and tall, and he knows Paddy, though he promises me it’s not anything to do with the Citizen Army. I think I believe him. Wallis, when will you come to visit …
Each time Wallis opens a letter from Rosemary Hennessey, she feels the past sliding back to her, settling like a lost friend. She misses Rosemary now with the same fervour she had as a child; it seems impossible to Wallis that a dozen years have passed since she last saw Rosemary, last felt the gentle warmth of her hand.
Wallis hoards the letters as if they were sweets. She lets each letter melt into her, reading it slowly before reading it again. Savouring Rosemary’s neat script, the small inclusions to her life. Wallis wishes to be there by her side, across the tumultuous Irish Sea, nestled into the Hennesseys again.
He must feel the same. I can’t have wished this into being.
Wallis puts the letter aside. More than anything, she wants to stand on a boat and see Ireland before her, but she cannot bear the thought of Morag’s hard disdain: Catholics. Leaving us for Catholics. Now, the memory of her father’s bitterness, his spite, his trampling on the slightest suggestion of her happiness.
She closes her eyes and holds all her secrets to herself; the picture of Paddy; Rosemary’s rosary; the money she has tucked away. She watches it grow and is torn between guilt and fear and excitement. She never realized that the emotions could be so closely twined.
But John.
Certainly things have become more complicated with the new arrival of John, but she cannot resist his knowledge of saints and his eyes so like Paddy’s. Wallis thinks that this relationship is her first real selfish act.
Caro feels like a sinner when she enters Clepington Church. She does not feel the strange love for cathedrals and spires that Wallis does. Wallis, whose eyes become like a doe’s when they arrive, so big and so adoring.
Caro follows behind Morag and Wallis, who walk with the certain step of those who have already been saved. Imogen is somewhere ahead of them, floating down the centre aisle. Caro can just see the golden glow of her hair ahead, made brighter and almost transparent by the morning light coming in through the windows. Caro walks through the jagged patterns of red, blue, yellow and green from the stained-glass windows. There’s Malcolm I ahead, looking as gaunt and pious as ever from his high front window. That one Wallis would be mad for, someone saintly and terribly delicate.
Caro looks around the congregation, sees the open, blank faces of the members. Bessie Lyon sits up and to the left in her dark cardigan. She raises her hand to Morag and smiles. One son is dead, and the other remains fighting at the front. Battling through trenches and chlorine making them blind and ill.
Bessie sits next to Mrs. Griffin from across the close. Caro recognizes most of the members from the tenements, or the post office, or the Works. They all seem to have the washed-out look of women left to carry the burden of their families. There are only a handful of old men with watery eyes, or the red noses of drunks, young boys on their mothers’ knees and the few young men who appear to be healthy, but must be afflicted in some way. Even Clepington—the kirk—has taken on the flowery scent of women, mixed with candle wax, heavy cleaning solutions.
Caro sees him at the front of the kirk, can tell it is him by the back of his head, the tidy part in his peppered hair. He is one of the few spared from the War by nothing other than their wealth, their importance. In his place, boys with yellowed teeth, greasy skin and short, sloping frames have been sent across the Channel to serve the King with pride. It’s this power that Caro admires; as if he is immune to the degradation, the simple everyday horrors of war or a common life. Caro imagines touching him, the luxurious rub of his good linen suit beneath her fingers.
Mary Lindsay sits beside her husband, dressed in a tan frock, ever meek and respectable. Her hair is tinged with silver, pulled severely back into a tight, high bun. A coil like a fist, menacing and unkind. His wife. That elusive, scant word. Something ancient.
Morag moves forward into their pew, the pew they have always sat in, four from the front on the left. Imogen sits next to Caro, close enough that her leg presses up against Caro’s thigh. Caro is glad for the bodies between herself and Morag; she does not want her mother’s suspicious eyes on her.
Caro watches Desmond lean over and speak, briefly, to his wife. She watches his lips as they move close to her cheek. She watches him touch the back of his neck where he must be sweating, the spot just below his hairline, where skin touches the lip of his jacket.
Look at me.
Caro thinks her eyes must be burning hot holes into the side of Desmond’s face. If he turns to look at her, if only he sees her shy, tender smile, everything will turn over in her palm and begin: her new life, her sudden absence from the monotony of her days, a new position. Belonging.
Imogen puts her hand on Caro’s arm, her fingers light, cold and precise. The sermon is nearly over. Caro has been concentrating on Desmond through the soliloquy of Reverend McWilliam. She looks up now at the Reverend’s tight, shrivelled mouth and his gentle eyes. Wonders what it would be like to sleep next to him, hear him breathe and sigh and dream of God. Imogen takes Caro’s hand in her own and squeezes it gently. She smiles her strange, half-woman, half-child smile.
The smile of madmen and psychics.
Caro suddenly worries that she’s been obvious, indelicate. One of those common whores who pant after men.
Caro squeezes Imogen’s hand in return. She tries to forget about Desmond and concentrates on the Reverend, pretending to be devout.
Moments Before the War
MORAG CAN’T BELIEVE she was ever young enough to think that her marriage to James would last. Then, just twenty, she had been more concerned with having a flat, children, than realizing the nature of a cruel man.
A boot to the ribs.
After the wedding ceremony, Morag and James went for roast beef and then returned to his small flat. It was a shock to Morag, walking into a flat on Dens Road that was then meant to be hers. There was the closed-up smell of a bachelor’s rooms, and smudged windows when Morag tried to look out to the courtyard.
“There’s nothing there but stones and wash lines,” James said as he came up behind her. She could feel his breath on her neck—the sharp scent of whisky there—as his arms came around her. She almost let herself relax into the gentle gesture when she realized he was unbuttoning her blouse. Small bone button through. And again.
“Come to bed,” he said.
Morag stiffened. “James, it’s barely dark. Let’s go for a walk.”
His hands became more insistent, grabbing at her breast beneath the blouse. “I said, Come to bed.”
She felt him pushing up against her and was suddenly afraid of the small room, the smudged view outside, her new husband’s desperation and the scent of whisky.
“You’re my wife now,” he said.
James, who had probably only marred his twenty-four years of celibacy with a few indiscretions with prostitutes. Morag sagged a little at this thought, and James took it as compliance. She let him pull her to the bedroom, push her into the mattress and fumble with her skirts.
Not even a tender word. Not even a kiss.
Later, Morag stood at the smudged window and rubbed it with newsprint. She rubbed and rubbed as James slept in the bedroom. She rubbed as her body ached, as her mind begged her to leave the flat, to leave James and not turn back. She rubbed and rubbed until the window was spotless and she was exhausted.
Then, miraculously, she slept.
For the first months of their marriage, Morag continued to be surprised at his voracious sexual appetite. All those years of celibacy came steadily bubbling to the surface like boiling water. James wanted to learn every part of her, an explorer charting new territory, until she was raw and sore and swollen like summer fruit. She invented excuses to keep his hands off her breasts, the roundness of her backside, and then she got pregnant.
The nine months she carried Caro were a gentle reprieve; James seemed frightened, unsure of her new body. He insisted on entering her from behind to avoid the taut, shiny skin of her belly. She could count days, sometimes full weeks, between his demands. She was glad, rested, and cooed to the baby.
Caro was difficult. Morag was in labour for eighteen hours before the midwife finally tugged Caro from her. It was messy, Morag left split open like a shucked oyster. She never complained about it, not even when she found it hard to sit, when lying in bed brought tears. A year later, Wallis was easier, less complicated, a small and docile baby.
Morag remembers afternoons when James came into the flat, his back to Morag and the babies at the fire. Winter, and Morag could not keep her body warm, even with her two girls curled tight in the crook of her arm. Winter, and outside was an unending sheet of gunmetal, a steady downpour of rain. Winter, and James had been out spending gas money on pints with his friends.
James moved past Morag, past her and the girls, and into the bedroom. Morag knew, without watching the path of his body, that he would undress and collapse onto the bed in a fitful, drunken sleep. When she moved into the bedroom, after the girls had been fed and curled into small perfect pink bundles, his body lay unfurled across the bed. She moved his arm, pushed at the hard knob of his knee.
My kidneys have known that knee.
If asked, Morag would be unable to recall all the dark, thick bruises that James had left on her body. Purple moulting into yellow. The sick aftershock of them.
Morag stared at the ceiling and folded her hands on her chest. She listened to her heart thump, to her husband’s uneven breath, and she began to pray.
Please help my girls. Let them be healthy and happy. Don’t give them a man like this.
Morag prayed, silently, to a God to whom she had stopped praying when her mother died. She thought she had forgotten how to pray, but found her lips moving.
I will sustain James, his mean hands and stale breath, if you look out for my girls. If you keep them safe.
James had not particularly wanted children; Morag had done it surreptitiously, hoping in the dark afterwards that it had taken. The girls were hers, hers alone. It was up to her to keep them safe, to hold them tight and dear. She would promise away her happiness just for that.
On August 4, 1914, Britain declared war on Germany. A day held still in collective memory: hands dark and smeared from papers. Then, James had not left yet, though when Morag looks back on it now she thinks that he had certainly already begun the process of leaving. His boots suddenly pointed out toward the flat’s door.
Over the weeks before he left for the War, James was unusually happy, elated at the promise of imminent departure. He did not speak to Morag about dreams, but Morag thought he must see the Eiffel Tower when he closed his eyes, the beauty of a lacy building high in a clear sky. James had never seen anything beyond Arbroath. This was the treachery of the War: boys and men expected a grand adventure, travelling through Europe with other boys, and signed up willingly. Morag knew, even then, that they would not return as they left; they would return as hollow, broken young men plagued by nightmares of trenches and the faces of men as they died.
Before James left, Morag even gave in to him and let him make love to her whenever he wanted. He was rough, careless in his digging at her, and she was left sore for days after. It was all, really, that he left her with. Small, complicated acts of violence would be necessary to his survival. This memory made Morag believe James would survive the War.
They went with James to the train depot. Morag watched as he stepped onto the train, as he waved halfheartedly to them. The girls waved and hollered goodbyes, but Morag was quiet. She was silently speaking to God, to a God she could now believe in again.
For a while, Morag got letters, which Wallis read aloud. He made it sound like a holiday while they were still choking on jute. England. France. Belgium. Germany. When the letters slowed, and then stopped altogether, Morag knew what to expect: James wouldn’t be back, one way or another.
Morag had been married to James for sixteen years before he joined the army and disappeared. Then two more years before they got word that he was missing in action at the battle of Neuve-Chapelle and presumed dead. He’d got himself killed. That’s how Morag thinks of it now: his last, desperate act against her. He got himself killed to escape the family he’d never really wanted.
Women in the tenements came to give their condolences; Morag let them in and made countless pots of tea. They did not speak of James for long, but found comfort in the company of one another. Soon, they forgot that they meant to be consoling Morag at all and moved on to gossip, despair, laughter.
