The House of Women Page 2

  The last house of this type in the long lane was Charlie Conway’s home. It, too, was separated from its neighbour, which was Peggy Hammond’s home. This house, however, had been built in 1913 when Bramble Lane was a real country lane; and it had taken its name from the lane and was called Bramble House. It was a much larger house than the superior dwellings that, apart from the bungalows, completely bordered one side of the lane. It stood in two and a half acres of its own grounds and was overlooked by no-one. Here, cypress trees had been planted along three of its four sides. The front side, facing east, looked directly onto cow and sheep pastures belonging to a farm which was the last bit of open agricultural land within Fellburn itself.

  Naturally the occupants of Bramble House felt superior to the rest of the dwellers in the lane. Over the long years they had kept themselves to themselves. In a way, it was as though a concession had been granted to the forging of the friendship between Lizzie Hammond and May Conway. May, being forty-six, was the older by nine years, yet in spirit she was far younger than Peggy’s mother. As she was apt to say to her husband Frank, ‘Between Gran and Great-Gran and Leonard Hammond, Lizzie has been nulled.’…

  May Conway now looked from her son to young Peggy Hammond, and in her breezy fashion she said, ‘What now, brown cow! What’s up? You hit Peggy?’ and she grinned as she looked at her son, and he, answering, said, ‘Don’t be daft, Ma.’

  ‘Then why have you been crying, Peggy? Come and sit down. Have you had your tea? If not you can sit with us.’

  ‘She hasn’t been home yet, Ma.’

  ‘Oh.’ May turned and looked at the kitchen clock. ‘Your mother’ll be worrying. Where have you been?’

  When Peggy still made no response Charlie said, ‘She’s been sitting in the park, Ma. She’s worried; she wants to talk to you. I’m going up to me room.’

  ‘Don’t you want your tea first?’

  ‘No; that can wait.’

  ‘All right, sir. Very well, sir. I’ll bring it up when you ring.’

  ‘Aw, Ma!’ The boy tossed his head as he laughed; then he glanced at Peggy, saying, ‘She’s daft at times, but not all the time.’

  When the door closed on her son, May Conway pulled a kitchen chair out from under the table and, pointing to it, said quietly, ‘Sit down, Peggy.’

  When the girl was seated, she herself sat down opposite her and, placing her forearms on the table and joining her hands together, she said, ‘Well, what’s it all about?’

  Peggy looked across the table into the kindly face of the woman whom her father considered common; but she couldn’t bring herself to say the words that were terrifying her, yet when her lips moved in and out, and her eyes blinked, and the tears pressed from her lashes, she had no need to use words, and May Conway said, ‘Aw, hinny, no!’

  Peggy gave no answer, she just nodded her head a number of times; and when May Conway’s hands came across the table and gripped hers she burst into a storm of tears. Immediately May was round the table and at her side, holding her and saying, ‘There, now! There, now! Come on. Come on. You’re not the first and you won’t be the last. But my God! What’s he going to say? I mean, your father. I’m not worrying about your mother, or the other two, but him. Who is it? Do we know him?’

  Still Peggy couldn’t speak; all she could manage was a gulp in her throat to save herself from choking.

  ‘Come over here and sit down in the old armchair; it’s easy. Now, sit quiet, stop your crying. Try to relax. That’s a daft thing to say, isn’t it? try to relax. Why do people say such daft things. Look, I’ll make you a cup of tea and perhaps you’ll talk while I’m making it.’

  She switched the electric kettle on. She made the tea; she poured it out; but still Peggy had not uttered one word until finally, the cup in her hand and rattling in the saucer, she whimpered, ‘I’m…I’m frightened, Mrs Conway. I’m frightened.’

  ‘Yes, of course you are, lass, you’re bound to be; but believe me, you’ll get used to the idea. How far have you gone?’

  ‘I’ve…I’ve just missed my third period.’

  ‘What! Three? Oh, my God, girl! You should have come clean before now. And to keep this to yourself all this time. When did it happen?’

  ‘I…I don’t rightly know.’

  ‘You mean you went with him more than once?’

  Peggy’s head drooped again; and now she whimpered, ‘He…he said it would be all right; he had used things.’

  ‘Does he know?’

  ‘No. He…he dropped me.’

  ‘By God! He did an’ all, he did drop you, lass. You mean he’s given you the chuck? Since when?’

  ‘Well, since I…I wouldn’t go to the barn. Well…I mean, I wouldn’t any more.’

  ‘The old barn at the bottom of Hooker’s field? Eeh! God Almighty! That place should be turned into a museum the way it’s helped to swell the population. What’s his name? How old is he?’

  Again it was a mutter: ‘Andy…Andrew Jones. He’s…he’s turned seventeen.’

  ‘Still at school?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well now, drink that tea. I’m going to slip next door to your mother and have a word. But don’t worry, what’s done’s done. And I’ll tell you this: it isn’t the first time a young lass has sat in that chair and told me the same story. But likely you’ve heard it from your gran or your great-gran. Thank God, though, in her case it turned out all right: she’s married and has two bairns now and she’s happy. Amazing that, she’s happy, and him not worth two penn’orth of copper. But it takes all types. Now sit quiet, and drink that tea, as I told you. I’ll be back in a minute.’

  From her kitchen door May walked along by the side of the house before crossing the strip of lawn, along a short path bordered by rowan trees, and towards a narrow wooden gate in the high brick wall that led into the garden of Bramble House. This she opened and made sure she closed before making her way knowingly through a dark strip of woodland. Coming out into the open she had to tread carefully through a bed of azaleas before crossing the lawn to the front of the red-brick, plain-faced house. This she quickly skirted, then crossed a broad courtyard that was bordered on one side by two garages which had at one time been stables and a number of outhouses. She was approaching the kitchen door when it opened and Lizzie Hammond emerged.

  Lizzie was pulling on her coat and although she showed some surprise that May should be calling at this time of night, because she never came over when Leonard would be in, she didn’t question her but said, ‘Peggy hasn’t come home yet. I’ve just realised there’s no choir practice tonight. I don’t know where she’s got to.’

  ‘Lizzie.’ May put a tight hand on her friend’s arm, saying, ‘I know where she’s got to: she’s next door in the kitchen. Look; let’s go back a minute.’

  ‘What’s she doing in your place? Why isn’t…?’

  ‘I’ll tell you everything in a minute. Get inside.’ She almost pushed Lizzie into her own kitchen, only to bite hard on her lip as she saw Lizzie’s mother, Mrs Pollock, sitting at the table peeling apples.

  Victoria Pollock would be the last person to take this news quietly, and she was about to say to Lizzie, ‘Will you come over to our place for a minute; I want your advice on something,’ when the kitchen door opened and the matriarch of the house entered.

  Mrs Emma Funnell was seventy-four. She was born in 1894 and she married Patrick Funnell, a builder, in 1913.

  She was then nineteen and Patrick had given her the house as a wedding present. It had always been her house, she had always been the mistress of it, and being determined to live to a hundred, she still had some way to go.

  She was known never to waste words and this she proved when, looking at May, she said, ‘What’s the matter, May? You look white around the gills.’

  May liked the old girl, as she thought of her, but there were times when she annoyed her; this was 1968 and the old madam acted as if she was still in the last century, with Victoria on the throne. So it
was her manner now that caused May to say, ‘Well, since you’re here, Great-gran, and Gran is too, I may as well tell you.’

  ‘Tell? Tell? Tell us what? Something we don’t already know?’

  ‘There wouldn’t be any point in telling you otherwise, would there? Oh, blast! Come on, Lizzie; I can’t talk here.’

  ‘Look! Wait a minute, woman.’

  Almost pushing Lizzie before her towards the open door, May turned to the old lady, saying, ‘No; you wait a minute, Great-gran. And don’t call me “woman”,’ she said, emphasising her words by nodding; then taking a reluctant Lizzie by the arm she drew her into the yard.

  The air had turned chilly and she had come out without a coat and she shivered. When Lizzie said, ‘What on earth is it? What’s the matter? Is…is it something to do with Peggy?’ May answered, ‘Yes, it’s something to do with Peggy, Lizzie. But I can’t stand here; I’m freezing and you will be an’ all. Come on.’ And now taking her hand, she almost ran her up the yard, across the lawn, through the azalea bed and into the wood strip, where she slowed to a walk, but continued to pay no heed to Lizzie’s questions and protests until they were at her own back door. And there, panting, she turned for a moment and peered at her friend in the light from her kitchen window, and in a low voice she said, ‘This is going to be a testing time, Lizzie. The two witches over there’—she jerked her head in the direction of the house they had just left—‘they’ll do enough squawking, or at least your mother will. But you have to remember it’s your daughter you’re dealing with.’

  ‘May.’ Lizzie was now clutching May’s arms. ‘What are you trying to tell me?’

  ‘Well, I think you should have guessed by now.’

  ‘Guessed what? No, no. Dear God! You mean? Oh no!’

  ‘Be quiet!’

  ‘It mustn’t be. May, what are you saying? He’ll…he’ll go mad. He’ll kill her.’

  ‘He’ll not, not if you stand on your hind legs. And if I know anything, you’ll have Great-gran behind you, just to spite him, if nothing else. Anyway, remember she’s just a bit of a lass; she’s just escaped childhood.’

  ‘Oh, May, shut up! Shut up! Just escaped…’

  May was pushing the door open now, and when Lizzie entered the kitchen she looked across to where her daughter was sitting in the old leather chair, staring fixedly at her.

  ‘Sit down.’ May pushed a chair forward but Lizzie waved it abruptly aside and, looking at Peggy, said, ‘What’s this?’

  ‘Oh, Mam. Mam.’

  The sound was like the whimper of a child, but Lizzie came back harshly, saying, ‘Don’t “Oh Mam. Mam” me. What’s this? Don’t tell me…don’t tell me you’re pregnant. You’re not, are you? You’re not.’

  ‘She is, and must be close on three months.’

  Lizzie now turned on May, crying, ‘How is it that you know all about it and I don’t?’

  ‘For the simple reason that your daughter was frightened to go home and Charlie brought her in here. I’ve just heard about it myself.’

  Lizzie gulped, then took two steps towards her daughter, but seemed to find it impossible to approach her further. And now, from between clenched teeth, she said, ‘Why have you done this, you of all people? How’s he going to take it? What’s he going to say, your father? Who was it?’ Her voice was rising.

  Quite slowly Peggy drew herself up from the chair and, confronting her mother, said to her, ‘It was a young man, Mam…you know. It’s always a young man.’ Then, the unusual boldness quickly evaporating, she went on: ‘I…I thought you’d be shocked, and…and Gran an’ all, but I thought you’d understand.’

  The push that her mother gave her knocked her back into the chair and she cried out as her head hit the wooden headrest, which brought May straight to her defence, crying, ‘That’s enough of that! And look, Lizzie: I thought you would be shocked—that’s only natural—but not enough to lift your hand to her. She’ll have enough of that from your dear, considerate husband.’

  ‘Don’t you interfere in this matter, May.’

  The clock on the mantelpiece struck seven and they all heard each strike before May said with quiet dignity, ‘Very well, Lizzie, I won’t interfere in your business, but when you next want to come running, don’t forget you made this statement. Now, if you’ll take your daughter home and get on with your business I’ll be obliged.’

  ‘Oh, May, May, I’m sorry; but I’m…’

  ‘If you don’t mind, Lizzie’—May went towards the kitchen door and opened it—‘I have my own business to see to: Frank will be in in a moment and he likes his meal in peace.’

  May now watched Lizzie march from the room; then she looked to where Peggy seemed to be having to drag herself up from the chair. And when the young girl came to pass her and muttered, ‘Oh! Mrs Conway,’ May put out her hand and patted the unhappy girl twice on the shoulder, then followed her to the door and closed it.

  She returned to the table, sat down and was about to rest her head in her hand when the kitchen door opened and there entered her husband and son. Her husband, coming to her, bent over her from his long thin length and said, ‘That’s what you get for trying to help.’ And she sniffed as she looked from one to the other and said, ‘One of these days someone’s going to blow on you from the other side of the keyhole.’

  ‘Didn’t need the keyhole, lass; we were standing up straight, both of us, weren’t we?’ He turned to his son, and Charlie, looking at his mother, said, ‘What’ll happen now?’

  But it was his father who answered: ‘What’ll happen now, lad, is that her kind, considerate and thoughtful dad will attempt to murder her because he won’t be able to stand the disgrace.’

  Two

  Although Bramble House had a plain exterior, its inside, by comparison, could be regarded as beautiful. All the rooms had high ceilings with ornamental cornices and matching centrepieces. The hall struck the visitor immediately, being twenty-five feet long and twenty wide, with a broad, shallow-step, half-spiral staircase rising up from the middle of it.

  To the left of the entrance was an iron-framed fireplace, the overmantel in wrought iron reaching halfway to the ceiling, and to the side of it a door led into a twenty-five foot drawing room with two long windows on the left looking out onto the front of the house. At the end of the room a glass door led into a conservatory.

  Also at the end of this side of the hall a passage led to a door and into what was known as the cottage annexe. This had been added at the early stage of the building of the house to accommodate Patrick Funnell’s mother. It consisted of two medium-sized rooms and a kitchen downstairs and two bedrooms and an attic above.

  At the far end of the hall a door gave onto a large kitchen with its accompanying pantries and storerooms. At the right-hand side, opposite the drawing room, was the dining room, and what had once been the breakfast room but was now Mr Leonard Hammond’s study.

  On the first floor a narrow balcony gave way to a quite large landing, termed the upper hall, from which five bedrooms and a bathroom led. And above this there were five attic rooms, which at one time had been used as a nursery and servants’ quarters.

  But there were no sleeping-in servants now at Bramble House, for, as Emma Funnell was apt to say: There were three able-bodied women in the house, so what did they want with servants? Even at seventy-four she still considered herself included in the term ‘able bodied’. And compared with her daughter, Victoria, she was certainly able bodied.

  Leonard Hammond was thirty-seven years old, although no-one would believe it for he looked and acted like a man in his late forties. He was of medium height and broad, with a suggestion of a pot-belly. If he hadn’t been a teetotaller this protuberance could have been put down to drink; in his case, however, it had been created through overeating. And he overate presumably as a defence against the frustration brought on through having to live in this house of women. Moreover, he had a grudge against life because it had cheated him, led him astray. Had it not dangle
d this house before his eyes, pointing out that it was a place he would never be able to acquire through his own initiative, bemoaning as an excuse that, coming from the lower end of the working class, he could see no way of ever attaining such a place as Bramble House and perhaps inheriting a car business like the Funnells, unless it be through marriage? And so, at eighteen and working as a junior car salesman, he set his sights on Lizzie Pollock, who was directly in line, as he saw it, to one day owning the lot. He wasn’t twenty when he gently manipulated the line and caught the fish, and ran off with it. It was very romantic. What could her mother, or indeed her grandmother, do? He was to learn and quickly just what her grandmother could do.

  Long before he was twenty-one his eyes had been opened to the situation inside the house and to the knowledge that Emma Funnell disliked him almost as much as he disliked her. But he still wasn’t beaten. When his daughter was born he felt he had a handle, for what augured well was that the old bitch, as he termed her, took the child over as if she herself were the mother of it.

  But as time went on he had to add to his learning the fact that nothing was changed and that the only hope he was left with was that Emma Funnell would make her demise at an early date. But now, at seventy-four, she continued to disappoint him because she was more alert than her daughter or even her granddaughter. His wife he considered to be spineless.

  And here she was now, at this moment, facing him across his desk, and he greeted her in his usual fashion by saying, ‘What is it now? I have work to do. Mine doesn’t stop at five, you know.’

  Lizzie said nothing, but she continued to stare down into the face that she had come to hate. In spite of the broadness of his body, his face was thin, his chin almost pointed. His hair was sandy and of the texture that couldn’t be brushed flat: it sprang out from the back of his head and sometimes from above his ears, no matter how he plastered it down. She had soon become aware of his reason for marrying her; and in her own way she had gloated, and still did, over the fact that his plan had misfired and that his position today wasn’t that of running the works, as he had expected it to be, for he was still in the showroom and sales department, with the glorified title of manager. The real managers of the business were Fred Cartwright and his assistant, Henry Brooker.