Violets, page 2
Yes. Pushing, they pushed.
Fucked, Pram Boy, fucked.
It was the only thing that made her feel alive. When he pushed inside her, when she knew she was about to come.
And now?
You are sump oil and filings,
industrial waste,
Axel grease
smeared on your Mama’s face.
The factory bell rang. Violet screwed up the piece of paper and stuffed it in her bag.
The chargehand was standing by the door watching them all file in. Violet had to turn sideways to squeeze past. He hocked back some phlegm and spat on the floor, kicked the wooden block from under the door and let it slam.
Violet took her place at the machine, tightened the chuck and lowered the drill bit into place. She thought of the soldier sitting at the sewing machine, his hair carefully parted on one side.
How, then, could this be a surprise?
No, that was the thing. Everything had its price.
The siren went and the power hummed on. Violet put her foot on the pedal and brought the drill down into the plate.
Then she did it again, and again, and again.
5
It had been two weeks, Violet was impatient to be discharged.
Fred had been moved to a barracks in Kent. They didn’t waste their time. A week on exercise and he was shipping out, so he’d come to say goodbye.
She walked him out of the ward. They stood there in the glare of the electric lights. She brushed the shoulders of his tunic, straightened his tie.
Acting Sergeant. He’d already sewn on his stripes.
Violet smiled and patted his chest, rested her head beneath his chin. His hand was in her hair. Then he looked at his watch.
I’ll be off then, love.
He said it as if he was popping to the yard.
They still hadn’t really talked. About what happened, that there had been twins, that they were gone, that there would be no trying again. But Violet had the same dream every night. She would be carrying twins, one in each arm. It made sense. She had carried them. Only terribly, perishingly, in the wrong place.
The thought must have struck him then because Fred said he was sorry again. For going away? For everything else? She had no idea how he felt, he’d been so careful, so reserved.
My sympathies, he might have said.
And Violet thought, can an unborn child be dead?
Yes, Pram Boy, that’s them.
Fallopian dwellers, they were scraped out
Twins caught just divided,
wrongly formed or mis-attached.
And she, perhaps, had something wrong, they said.
So the husband signed the form
and they took everything out instead.
When she got back to the ward, the bed next to Violet’s was suddenly occupied. The woman was lying on her left side, asleep. She had dark hair and pale skin.
Irish, Violet thought. Pretty, but poor.
Her hand on the pillow was dry and cracked, her nails chewed down, knuckles red raw. There was an exhaustion about her that persisted through sleep.
Violet sat on her bed, managed to swing her feet up despite the pain. She was bored. The ward was busy with new admissions but most of them were middle-aged. Violet watched them all trudge up and down, padding about in their dressing gowns.
She thought of her best friend Flo. It’d be lunchtime at the factory by now, they’d all be chatting and joking around. And Fred going off on the boat. Plenty of men from his unit had signed up.
So it was just her stuck here on this bloody ward. ‘Women’s troubles’. Typical.
The woman in the bed next to her tried to turn. Violet heard her cry out with pain. She struggled to sit up, frowned, gave Violet a confused nod.
Violet was right. Her voice was fast and soft with inhalations when she spoke.
Yes, she grew up in Ireland, she said.
Her and all the rest. Though Violet’s mother came from Galway, of course. Married an Englishman, moved up in the world.
Violet offered the woman a sweet from a bag. They rolled them noisily around their mouths, chatted about the ward, what they were in there for.
The woman had eight children, she said, the eldest was twelve.
Oh!
She was talking more easily now, about how they had taken everything out, some problems down below. And she wasn’t sure what would happen with her husband, she said.
Come again? Violet wasn’t sure what she meant.
You know? In the bedroom?
Violet laughed out loud. But the doctor will tell you, it doesn’t mean no more of that! Quite the opposite, in fact.
Later, when the doctor came, Violet asked.
My dear! he said. We may have taken the cot, but the playpen is still there.
The woman looked warily at them both.
Violet smiled. She must remember that, the doctor’s little joke.
6
Violet cycled the mile to the woods with the letter in her hand.
It had been a week since she wrote. No pleasantries, no jokes. She got straight to the point.
Pregnant. Eight weeks late.
She didn’t ask the soldier what he wanted to do. After all, she wrote, this isn’t happening to you.
No. It was her body that was swelling up like a balloon, damp with sweat, wet between her legs.
And here was his reply, postmarked Aberdeen.
She hadn’t opened it yet.
In the woods it was wet and barely light. Possibly there was rain, possibly just mist. Wisps of hair stuck to her cheeks. She climbed the upper path along the stream. The envelope in her hand felt limp.
They’d come here a lot. They would walk up in silence, arms folded, heads down against the cold. Until there, in the woods, it forced them together, the slip and solidity of the mud, the tree roots tripping them up.
Down, down
where they trudged, Pram Boy
Wetly in the afternoons
or crisped the morning frost,
sometimes a little lost
for conversation but no matter,
soon their hands would feel
what they could not say,
warmed between thighs,
sighed upon, cupped and blown.
And my, how you’ve grown!
A boy all sewn of weed and wet,
leaf mould and animal spit;
spores they carried back on their clothes
that they brushed off,
done in a rush
And you?
You were caught on a branch
with twig-snap, bits of rot.
Something lodged.
Anyway.
They could not have known
that you had dropped in, like a stone
Perhaps a faint splash that they heard but ignored,
quick to come.
Plink.
Begun.
Violet leaned against a tree. She was out of breath. She felt the empty flip of her stomach and retched. Then she spat, wiped her mouth and carried on up the pass.
It was usually on Sundays when they walked here, after lunch. In the kitchen while she grabbed her coat, her scarf, took gulps of tea, he would be watching from the doorway.
His slow smile, his creased eyes. His taking care over things that she rushed.
Like when he helped with the washing-up. She would wait while he hung up the cups and stayed each one with his hand, stacked the plates without making a sound. She would mock him and sigh, tap her watch, then he would scold her for remnants of food on a dish, come close by her side, slide it gently back into the sink.
Violet came to a clearing by some rocks, threw the letter down and took off her coat.
And it was there that they would pull at each other’s clothes. Just enough to get in. Then the jutting of his chin, the noises he made as he pushed her hard against a tree. The sting of a graze and the wheeze of her breath knocked out of her chest; his wince of pain as he lifted her up, his fingers digging into her flesh.
Quick as it was, uncomfortable and brisk, they always laughed afterwards, felt lighter on the way back. As if they had won. Pulled one over on everyone.
You say sod? Sod them. Yes?
Damn and blast!
He taught her swear words in Polish then pretended to be shocked.
~
Violet felt cooler now. She sat down, opened the letter and held it in both hands.
There was a page of neat writing and another small packet, sealed. Inside the packet were two white pills. They rattled into the corner, dry as chalk. Violet guessed what they were for.
If she had prayed at all, she’d prayed for this. For something to make it come away, unstick.
She tipped them out. The pills sat brightly in the palm of her hand. She closed her fist, was tempted to roll them like dice, let someone else decide. Fate, chance, God?
He loves me, he loves me not.
Violet read the letter. He was sympathetic, polite. As far as the language would allow.
Sorry for the trouble you find.
It was more than she was likely to get from anyone else. The pills were from a doctor he knew. He was vague about what they would do, how exactly they worked.
Please check if really true.
As if it was a lie. As if he needed proof. Or a bleed, until whatever was in there was gone, out, falling in ragged clumps. Strings of congealed blood.
Violet stared at the page of cursive, his elegant hand. She had watched him write letters in English before. They would be sitting at the kitchen table and he would ask her the words for various things. The words were always gentle, domestic. Words like ‘clock’ and ‘thread’.
Once she asked him if there was someone else, up there in Aberdeenshire. He shook his head.
The way he watched her as she quartered an apple, cut him some bread. All that hanging about in doorways, breathing the same air.
And just like that, with a flick of her wrist, Violet threw the pills into the stream.
They sank to the bottom, bright stars among the weeds.
There, take heart, Pram Boy, you see?
Yolk sac floating, placenta growing in
all smooth with your transparent skin
Greedy, fucked there
on the make;
a stone’s throw, a pill-shake.
And those other mothers’ wombs removed,
while you the perfect pill-boy settle in.
So feel her, Pram Boy, scrambling down
then pedal-press and pushing into town.
Late late late to the factory gate
see she coasts and weaves, riding off the saddle,
arms locked, deep
breaths into her chest,
watched by old women on doorsteps
and some men,
shoulders sharply shrugging them off.
Careful, Pram Boy, feel her push on,
leaning into the corner,
gone!
Because more than anything, Pram Boy, your Mama wants to run.
Or do you think she wants to fall?
Spoke herself, veer across the road,
a clatter of bones,
a hip-crush
Black and yellow hues her skin.
Feel she slows to think if she can do it,
tests the front brake,
recalls the
flip-throw toothbreak
of a dozen girlhood falls,
contemplates her fate, and yours.
No.
Of all the King’s horses
and all the King’s men,
No one would put her together again.
7
A few days after Fred left, Violet was discharged. Her father picked her up. He waited with his coat tucked under his arm, unsure where to look as Violet did the rounds.
They got on the number eight bus through town. The muscles of her stomach throbbed around her scar. She remembered lying curled up in the back of the car, her knees up to her chest.
When they got home her father carried her case upstairs, lit a fire, hung about until Violet offered him a cup of tea.
No thanks, pet. I’ll leave you be.
When he had gone, she walked slowly into each room, touching the backs of chairs, straightening the table-cloth. The houses on their street were all the same – two up, two down. The front room had a fireplace tiled in green. The back was where they ate and where the wireless was. It led into the kitchen, then out into the yard.
Violet checked the pantry, everything lined up on the shelves. Then she walked slowly up the stairs, leaning heavily on the rail.
The landing was dark and she peered down at the rug, felt it with the back of her hand as if it might still be damp. She went into their bedroom at the front. The bed was freshly made up. Then she walked back across the landing and opened the other bedroom door.
She paused, caught by the smell of paint from when they’d decorated a month before. Now she saw it for what it was. A blank space, an empty box.
It was after New Year, when Fred had a few days off. Violet had worn one of his overalls and tied her hair up in a scarf. Hanging the paper, swiping great arcs of paint, they had told each other the names they liked.
And in her mind, she had filled it up, that room. She had imagined it full of life. Now she couldn’t even go in. Her limbs wouldn’t move her from the doorway into the newly painted white. Into the pale, low shafts of light that cut across.
The best light in the house. South-facing, warm and soft.
Where she might have laid them in their cot.
Two peas in a pod.
8
Violet got the eight o’clock train from Pontypridd to Cardiff. The recruiting centre was in a Methodist church hall. It had the air of a village fete. There were trestle tables and posters pinned on concertina boards. Military personnel hung about, some of them crossing to different stalls to chat.
The Army section was at the back. In a corner to the right a woman in uniform stood sternly in front of a sign.
Auxiliary Territorial Service, ATS.
The woman asked if Violet was there to join up.
Yes.
Yes, Ma’am. Good!
She took a form from a cardboard box and Violet gave her full name, age and address.
There would be a medical examination and a trade test. Spelling, arithmetic, basic things like that.
How long will it take, until I’m called up?
The sergeant gave her a look.
In a rush are we, ducky?
Violet felt her cheeks flush.
The woman went through the forms.
They’re shipping out to Italy pretty quick. Naples. I’ll put you down for that.
The hall was filling up, some men were milling about. Violet watched them walk nervously around, the officers looking them up and down. They seemed so young. They must have been waiting this whole time. Since ’39, since they were twelve, thirteen.
Violet was moved on to a waiting room at the side. She flicked through the papers on her lap.
Private Davies, V. E.
Italy.
She knew the fighting there was bad. The only other thing that came to mind was Rome. St Peter’s and the Pope.
After a while the medical orderly came. He led her to a small room with three chairs against the wall, then Violet heard her name called from behind another door.
The doctor looked up briefly from his desk and told her to undress.
Violet went behind the screen, felt her breath quicken and her nipples harden in the cold. She stood in her petticoat and the doctor indicated the scales, checked her measurements, noted them down. Then he moved around her body while Violet stared straight ahead.
Take three deep breaths.
The doctor pressed the stethoscope to her chest, then took her wrist between his fingers, looked at his watch, let it drop.
Finally, after she had read from charts and he had watched her walk in a line with her arms outstretched, he sat down again at his desk.
Violet stood there in the cold.
He asked about a history of this or that, any episodes or fits.
And menstruation? Your monthly periods?
Violet swallowed, felt her throat constrict.
Regular, Sir.
Good.
There was the dull thud of a rubber stamp and the doctor signed the forms, handed her a copy without looking up.
A1. Medically Fit.
That’ll be all, Private. Dismissed.
PART TWO
9
Let me tell you how it was, Pram Boy, for you could not see.
There was a vessel beyond
your vessel
& beyond,
the sea.
The troopship SS Duchess of Richmond would have been somewhat grand in its day. They marched in through what felt like a drawbridge in its side but once you were in, you could see what it would have been like. Before the war. Before it was painted grey. In its transatlantic days.
Violet boarded with a couple of Wrens and two other women from the ATS.
Odds and sods, someone said.
The others were anxious to find their cabins, settle in. Violet went straight to the main deck.
The atrium was like a country house, emptied out. Carpet rolled up, rusty stains on the bulkhead walls. Wooden benches bolted down. On the upper level there were ornate pillars, some mirrors, though most of them were cracked.
Some larger units had started to board. Violet stood to the side as the hordes pushed through. The men moved like sheep butting into one another’s backs, thick-headed, eager to touch. Any one of them she might have recognised from home. From the factory, from the foundry, from the bookies, from the farm. They all looked alike. Pale, darting eyes. Working men, short back and sides.
Violet felt hot, her tie was too tight. She found her way out to look over the dock.
