Violets, page 6
Che bella, Maggie!
Violet laughed, shook her head in disbelief.
Maggie dived under a wave. The white of her body flashed like a fish.
Oh Pram Boy, see?
See your Mama there,
lips parted, direct stare.
And though she is flinty and tough, your Mama,
something muscular about her manner,
she longs to be touched.
So let her lie back, recline
as she softly draws the light
Here, the epic skies
the ochre-glow, the bronze,
the burnish and
the rot.
And you? Tut tut.
You are a seed
sown in the deep dark woods
but grown
Oh! grown,
in the sun.
~
The others took their leave as the sun reached its peak. When they had gone, Maggie persuaded Violet to swim in the sea.
Violet stripped down to her petticoat and waded in, up to her waist, up to her chest. Her slip ballooned about her then went heavy and dragged. She slid under, came up sleek and black, her hair slicked back.
After, when they’d had more to eat, lain in the sun; when the salty residue was dry on their skin, they told each other a little about their lives. Before the war, where they grew up. Maggie’s mother had died when she was a child.
My father, too.
There you go, Vi.
Maggie smiled, behind her the turquoise sea.
My dead mother, your dead father. We’re meant to be.
It was late when they climbed back up to the road and Maggie stood waiting to hitch a ride. Violet’s shoulders were red, her lips blistered from the sun.
Maggie, too, looked dishevelled and wild. Like an unruly, hungry child.
~
Some soldiers dropped them at the port. No questions asked, one of them said. Maggie laughed.
Violet’s hips ached, her back was stiff. They’d missed dinner and soon it would be dark. It was Saturday night and the others would be at the Palace, wondering where she was.
Maggie pulled her on through the boatyard where the fishermen had their shacks. Violet was wrecked and hot, pot-bellied. Her clothes felt scratchy and stiff. Her skirt sat high above her waist, tight around her ribs. She couldn’t be bothered to hold herself in.
Maggie pointed the way.
Do you ever stop? Violet sighed.
They found a place selling food from a hole in the wall. Violet stuffed the warm bread in her mouth, tasted oil and salt. Maggie shared hers, bright red with tomato paste spread thinly on top. She watched Violet eat.
What?
Here, I’ll get us something to drink.
They sat on a low wall in a part of the port Violet had never seen. Heavyset women packed up the last of the day’s catch. They scrubbed their benches in circles, swilled out buckets and pails, dirt under their fingernails.
Violet sniffed, wiped her nose on the back of her hand. Then Maggie stood and stretched her arms theatrically in the air. They were pale underneath, her elbows sticking sharply out to the sides. Her hair fell about her face in thick, dark curls.
Come on then, Vi. You can be my girl.
~
The tavern was in a far corner of the port. They ducked through a low door and Maggie pulled Violet on through the crowd. They found a table near the band on seats that were upturned crates. Maggie fanned her face with her hand.
It was mainly civilians, young men in vests. Some sailors, some soldiers. They leaned against pillars watching women or each other. There were thin, teenage girls, dark corners where condensation dripped down walls. A figure in a three-piece suit, slight and smooth-skinned, smoking a cheroot. Violet watched, they stared back. Violet smiled and they held her gaze. She looked away.
Maggie, I’m not sure we should stay.
The air was suffocatingly close, Violet made a gesture that she wanted to go but Maggie clicked her fingers for one of the bar girls to bring them a drink. The one who came over was plump in a day dress with buttons up the front. The top few were undone and you could see her damp flesh, her underarms stained with sweat.
The wine was warm and faintly fizzy on Violet’s tongue. The dance floor was full. Everyone seemed to know what to do. They danced together and then left each other alone, moved their bodies apart then close.
Ciao, Maggie, Violetta!
Nella was pushing towards them through the crowd. She sent three kisses into the air and sat down. Her hair was sculpted immaculately in waves around her face. She had a different kind of drink to everyone else.
Jeremiah was still making his way across. He clasped shoulders, shook hands, nodded to the musicians as he passed.
Hey, Violet! You made it back.
She liked him, he was easy-going, relaxed. He reached over and pulled her up to dance. They moved awkwardly at first. The music was jagged, odd. He spun her away then pulled her back and she could feel him breathing in then hotly out. Then for a while he let her go. Slowly, she moved her arms, her body swayed, she let her eyes close. The GI slumped and his head hung low, his shoulders moving in rhythm, his fingers clicking with the slide of the trombone.
~
They stayed at the club until it was nearly dawn. On the walk home, Violet leaned on Maggie’s arm.
She felt like her body would give in. Soft and limp.
And there was Maggie, who was lithe and quick and thin. Like one of those darting, Neapolitan boys scavenging on the street.
The flash of a coin, the clatter of bins.
Violet wanted to tell her, then. She wanted to lay it all down. All the fleshy weight of her bones but also the wakening sense of her own self. Who she was, what she had done. She didn’t have long. September, the baby would come.
They turned a corner along a promenade. Violet’s feet ached.
There was a woman coming towards them. Her lips were a garish red in the flickering lights.
She slowed down as they passed her but Maggie quickened their pace. The woman looped back to walk their way.
Ciao bella, come stai?
She seemed to know Maggie by name but came up on Violet’s side. She was acrid with sweat and Violet could smell the alcohol on her breath.
Maggie tried to brush her off and she swayed but kept on going, draped her arm around Violet’s neck. Violet could feel her bony fingers around her shoulders and down her back, then Maggie turned and slapped the woman’s hand away.
Something dropped to the ground – Violet’s purse. It flipped open on the cobbles, there was a faint trickle of coins and the woman seemed coiled ready to pounce. All in a moment, Maggie stepped close to the woman’s face. With the clear flash of a blade Violet saw her flick open a small knife.
The woman backed away with a clumsy, gaping laugh.
Va bene, va bene, Maggie, calmati!
Maggie stepped away, the knife was nowhere to be seen. Then she grasped the woman sharply by the arm and whispered something close between clenched teeth, letting go with a shove. The woman sloped off like a wounded dog.
~
Maggie stormed on. She was muttering something, shaking her head. Violet wasn’t sure if she was angry with her or talking to herself. Then she spun round.
You see? This is why I keep myself to myself.
Violet was out of breath.
Mags, I don’t want to know. I don’t care.
Maggie laughed, a harsh, rasping sound.
Well, Vi. I suppose we all have something to hide.
She was wild-eyed, the tendons in her neck stuck out.
They were standing in the middle of the cobbled street.
Well? Do you think no one’s noticed?
Violet felt her face flicker and crack. It felt like plaster falling from a wall, a thin façade shattered on the floor. Maggie turned and stalked away.
Her shoulder blades, her sharp, agile frame.
Violet had lost any sense of where they were. She looked around her. Feral cats in rubbish heaps, or rats. Piles of rubble, wire and brick. Yet she felt like she might curl up in a ball right there and go to sleep.
Maggie came back.
To say something cruel, Violet thought. To say what she knew.
But then she came closer. Closer still. Then her hand was grasping Violet’s jaw, tilting it to the side. Violet nearly stumbled, stepped back against a wall. Maggie’s body met her own, pushed into it as she pushed back and Maggie kissed her on the mouth. Now Violet’s head was back and Maggie was kissing her neck, Violet’s hand in her hair. Then the soft press of their breasts, her round belly and Maggie’s sharp hips.
There.
There, there.
Tonight, Pram Boy,
you are a caged bird
fluttering between.
Cloth-thrown, unseen,
waiting to sing your song.
Heavy in her belly,
a lover in her lap.
Lying there ready,
tap tap tap.
So sing a song of sixpence,
a pocket full of rye.
You are four and twenty blackbirds,
baked in a pie.
21
Violet waited for news from Fred. In the weeks since VE Day only two letters had got through. There was still fighting going on, he said. Still problems with supply, leeches and mosquitoes, ration packs with damp cigarettes.
Violet sat on the train watching the telegraph poles fly past. Elizabeth sat opposite. She was wearing a brand-new hat. Violet watched her. Good posture.
The wedding had been a bit of a rush. Tony had been demobbed within a week, quicker than anyone expected. He promised to send for Elizabeth straight away but it had taken a month. They waited and waited. Everyone was relieved when her papers came.
The train pulled into Southampton and they stepped out onto the platform. Elizabeth waved to a porter for help. Two of them came at once. The departure hall was vast and the tannoy blared. They waited for tourist class to be called. Elizabeth was talking about all the things that Tony said they would have. A Frigidaire, a sewing machine.
Vi? Are you listening?
Elizabeth, with her arched brows, her slightly upturned nose. She had the calm, considered air of having got further than anyone else. Violet nodded, straightened the brooch on her sister’s lapel. The American had bought her that as well.
In the end their goodbyes were oddly rushed. Elizabeth was beckoned forward into another queue. Violet accompanied her, dragging her trunk, but it was taken by a porter and passed through a gate, then Elizabeth was ushered through to a turnstile up ahead.
She turned back against the flow to take Violet’s hand and say goodbye. Briefly, she looked like the little girl she had always been, her expression faintly needy, pleading. Then someone pushed past and Elizabeth tutted loudly, made a haughty remark.
Well then, Violet said.
She looked into her face again, tried to find some recognition of what had passed, everything they had shared until now. But Elizabeth was composed, any moment of weakness had gone.
It took a while to spot her from down on the dock. Violet had found a place to stand with the others bidding farewell. Meanwhile her sister had got herself onto an upper deck of the ship and stood at the front of the crowd, right at the rail.
The liner was bigger but uglier than Violet expected. Not glamorous at all. There were rusty stains and bolted sheets of metal at the hull.
Violet signalled with both arms above her head and Elizabeth saw her and waved. The breeze caught her briefly and she grabbed onto her hat.
The departure was painfully slow. The liner was towed out with its horn blaring, people down below spasmodically cheering, faint whistles from above. Violet was tired, her face ached with smiling. Yet Elizabeth kept waving. In her last glimpse before the slow turn of the ship blotted her out, she didn’t look like somebody leaving. She looked like somebody desperate to come back.
22
A few of the ATS women were kept on. Violet volunteered and Maggie was transferred to another part of HQ. They saw each other at lunch or in the dorm but they hadn’t been out since the night at the port.
There were only a few of them left at dinner each day. Violet ate hungrily and took her empty plate to the kitchens. She could sense the others watch her return. She said nothing, sat down to await the appropriate moment to leave.
You in for rummy tonight, Vi?
Not me, Lily.
She was a tall, skinny girl from Nottingham with flat vowels and a laconic drawl. Violet had never joined them in the games room after dinner. She disliked the spectacle of the girls coyly showing their cards, taking bad advice from corporals, giggling when they lost.
Right. Too tired, I suppose.
The others looked up from their plates. Violet smiled thinly.
That’s right, Lily. Must be the heat.
Violet stood up and excused herself, the others sat with their heads down, not saying a word. One of them looked up, offered a shrug. Violet nodded, then walked away.
There, Pram Boy, stay.
See your Mama
fatter about the face,
swollen-ankled, clomping of gait.
See she walks straight through
so that people move out of her way?
Yes, they see it now.
Stuck-up cow.
Not kneeling enough,
not preening or scraping on bended knee,
not bowing her head, not crossing herself.
Not crossing her legs, they say.
For your Mama, Pram Boy,
she is a rounded pod of seed
set to split like figs underfoot.
And like the figs grow bulbous on the trees
and the sellers sell their wares, or other things
And the men still thrust
and the murderers cut
and the thieves still rob
and the old still die
and the babies
Oh! the babies
they still cry,
So, Pram Boy, she carries on.
Come, come, Pram Boy,
pudding and pie,
Here’s a story for boys who cry,
linger, digging in.
Like a foundling dumped in a hospital bin.
~
It was cooler back in the dormitory but it was too early to go to bed. Violet listened to the swifts looping outside. A fly buzzed at a windowpane.
She went to the washstand and splashed her face. Maggie’s bed stood empty to her right, the mosquito net still tied in a knot.
Where was Maggie? Why didn’t she come?
She walked over to Maggie’s bed. It was made up the same as all the others, but there were no personal effects on display. No trinkets or notes from mother or sweetheart, no pressed flowers or cheap perfume. Only a hairbrush, her red lipstick and a book.
Violet took off the lid of the lipstick and wound it up. Its tip was slanted in a steep curve. Violet had watched her a thousand times: three quick strokes, smudged red lines.
She lay down on Maggie’s bed. It was as if she had been cast adrift. She could no longer fathom how far she had come.
Far, far away from home. Now it was too late. She was too far gone.
Violet closed her eyes. The pillow was cool on her cheek. She sensed the beginnings of a dream, an in-between awareness of going home. Green moss, fetes with stalls of broad beans, radishes and peas.
She turned over and felt the weight of her belly drop, brought her leg up, settled her hip. Somewhere she was aware of the kicks and flips that would come and go each evening around this time.
She must have slept but it wasn’t much later when she stirred. She heard the door gently open and close.
Maggie was there.
Violet felt her sit down on the bed. She stroked her hair, said something so quietly that Violet couldn’t hear. Then, as she half slept, she sensed Maggie loosening the net, pulling the mesh around them on the bed, lying down against Violet’s back. She felt her sweep the hair away from her neck, then Maggie’s warm breath, her lips, then her arm around her waist. Finally, she placed her hand on Violet’s belly, on the firm, round flesh.
~
The next morning Violet made her way straight to her desk. One of the girls went round opening the windows and doors. The noise and smells from outside flooded in.
Violet settled herself in the hard metal chair and opened the first file.
Private Johnson, Robert. Born in Hull. A wife and three sons. Put forward for promotion in ’43 but denied.
She flipped through the rest of the pile.
Private Higgins, James. Bristol, age nineteen.
Corporal Bennett, John. Somerset, six foot two.
The list went on. After a while it seemed pointless, men and boys all rolling into one. Violet stared out of the window to her right and tried to remember what it was like in Pontypridd last June.
Before any of this, she thought.
Before she even knew where Naples was. Before she signed up. When it was just her mother in the shop, the factory, Gwyn on her bike.
Before the autumn. Before the soldier arrived, standing in the kitchen. The way he smiled. The creases around his eyes. Their walks in the wood as the winter drew in.
Violet saw herself there without remembering what it was like. To be cold, to be all in a rush. She looked around the room at the few of them left, the sun bright behind the shades, the heat everywhere at once.
She turned to a new page in her logbook, entered the date at the top.
7th June, 1945.
She must be six months gone. She was round and downy and aglow. She was obscene, ridiculous. Everyone saw her, everyone must know.
Yet still, it felt like a gamble, what she was about to do.
Violet closed the files and lined up her pencil and pen to the side. She raised her hand to be excused and the Staff Sergeant nodded from her desk.
