can deny that you’ve slept with another before me till you’re blue in the face,’ Arthur said. ‘But I know what I know. Incidentally, I didn’t mean to strike you tonight. I regret that and I’m sorry. It will not happen again, for although you are my wife and will be given full respect in public where we will appear as a devoted couple, the sexual side of our marriage is over. I will never touch you again. I don’t sleep with whores.’
What sexual side? Hannah was tempted to ask, but didn’t for she was just relieved that there’d be no more of it. The only deep disappointment she had was that in the travesty of a marriage she was in, there would be no child. Maybe that was the punishment she had to bear, she thought, and she thanked God for Josie.
But how could she begin telling any of this to Gloria looking at her in that kind concerned way, especially as she knew Josie would be back any moment. ‘Look at it,’ she said, ‘not two o’clock and almost as black as night. You shouldn’t have come out, not in this.’
‘Tom brought me,’ Gloria said. ‘He was coming to Erdington Village anyway, he had business in the bank, and I wanted to see you were all right.’
‘And now you see I am,’ Hannah said in a tight high voice and Gloria noticed her eyes shining with unshed tears. And because of Josie, who’d come back into the room, Gloria said, ‘Yes, I see you’re fine.’
Later that same evening she said something completely different to Amy. ‘Are you sure he’d hit her?’ Amy asked.
‘Certain and with a fist, I’d say,’ Gloria said. ‘She said she walked into a door. I ask you!’
‘Did she say how it happened, or why?’
‘She couldn’t say much at all with the child in the room.’
‘Oh no, of course not.’
‘I’ll get to the bottom of it, never you fear,’ Gloria said.
A few days later, Gloria got her wish, the snow stopped and the winds, and weeks and weeks of snows on roads and pavements that had blown into drifts began to melt. With a roar like an approaching express train, thawing snow slid from roofs to lie in sodden lumps.
It was just as hard to get around with the pavements reduced to icy sludge and many of the houses that had been just cold became damp as well. There were constant reports in The Despatch and Evening Mail about the flooding in various parts of the city.
You couldn’t wonder at it, Gloria thought, as they watched the streets turn into rivers of water and the lumps of ice or snow mingle with the rushing water. But despite the problems of the thaw, most people were glad the icy grip of that terrible winter, that did its best to paralyse the country, was coming to an end.
By the middle of March, people were on the move again, the guesthouse began to fill up, and Tom Parry went to tell Hannah she could come back to work. ‘How did she look?’ Amy quizzed Tom on his return.
He shrugged. ‘All right, I suppose.’
‘She didn’t have any marks on her?’
‘Marks?’
‘You know, marks, cuts, grazes. As if she’d had a bit of a knocking about?’
‘Oh no. Nothing like that.’
‘Well, did she look happy?’
‘Christ, Amy,’ Tom said, exasperated. ‘I only exchanged a few words with her. We didn’t touch on whether she was happy or sad.’
‘He’s useless,’ Amy complained to Gloria later.
‘No, he’s just a man,’ Gloria said. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll get it all out of Hannah when she comes back to work.’
And she did. But she hadn’t any winkling to do, for Hannah told her; she felt she’d go mad if she didn’t tell someone. She told her everything from the honeymoon to what happened the night in February when Arthur knocked her senseless and was eventually able to copulate. ‘I think power and violence work him up,’ she said. ‘I mean, it was just like he wasn’t turned on by me or anything.’
‘Well then, girl, he needs his head looking at,’ Gloria said grimly.
‘One thing, though, Gloria,’ Hannah said. ‘He knew I wasn’t a virgin.’
‘God Almighty! Didn’t you deny it?’
‘Of course I did, but he didn’t believe me.’
‘I wouldn’t have thought he was that sexually experienced,’ Gloria said thoughtfully.
‘Well he isn’t,’ Hannah said. ‘Couldn’t be could he, even if he wanted to? No, I think he read about it. He had a book on the sexual act, I saw it when I was tidying his room.’
‘So he’s moved out of the bedroom then?’
‘Oh, aye. That next day he did that, bought a new bed and a wardrobe and tallboy, all utility of course. They couldn’t deliver them till the thaw began, so he slept on an old palliasse he found in the loft. Like I told you, he said he doesn’t sleep with whores.’
‘He doesn’t know about the baby you had?’
‘No, and he’ll never need to know either,’ Hannah said. She gave a shudder of apprehension at the thought of Arthur finding out about the illegitimate baby she’d been forced to give away years earlier. But even as she thought back to that painful time she felt a thrill of excitement run through her. She had news for Gloria. It was too early to be sure, but oh God, if it should be true! Anyway, early or not, she couldn’t keep it to herself a minute longer. She turned to face Gloria and said, ‘Oh Gloria, do you know what else? My period is late, only five days, but usually they are as regular as clockwork.’
‘God, if you are, how do you think Arthur will take it?’
‘I don’t know,’ Hannah said, ‘and I don’t care either. I’m so happy I don’t know whether I’m on my head or my heels.’ She grasped Gloria’s hands and said, ‘Don’t you see this is one baby that won’t be taken from me, one baby I can hold in my arms and one I’ll see grow up. I can put up with anything to have that,’ and she spun the older woman around the room. Gloria shared in Hannah’s excitement and happiness. She looked at the light shining in Hannah’s eyes and thanked God that sexual problems or no sexual problems, Arthur was able to perform once and that that was hopefully enough.
Arthur was more than delighted, he was ecstatic. He’d never had much time for children before; he’d accepted he wouldn’t marry, so he never envisaged himself as a family man. But now, to think in that one attempt at proper sex, he had developed a little person, a baby growing in Hannah’s womb, was to his mind almost magical.
That was the only jarring note, that Hannah with her loose morals might have any input into this child, this innocent baby. Well, he’d do his best to see she had as little as possible to do with it when he or she was born.
Reg Banks was delighted to hear that Arthur was going to become a father. It certainly cleared up some of the lingering doubts he had about the man which were obviously unfounded. Now Reg put it to his wife that he take Arthur into a managerial position. After all, Arthur did make it to work almost every day of that awful winter, walking the whole way more than once. Loyalty like that should be rewarded.
Elizabeth thought of Arthur’s beautiful wife that she’d so taken to and agreed. ‘We’ll ask them to dinner and you can tell them then,’ she said. ‘There will have to be a hefty rise, too. Babies need so many things.’
So Arthur and Hannah, who barely spoke at home, went to dinner with the Banks. ‘Can we bring Josie?’ Hannah had asked Arthur when he’d come home with the news. ‘I hate to leave her here by herself.’
‘Of course you can’t bring her. Reg Banks just asked you and me.’
‘Well, they probably don’t know Josie’s here.’
‘She’s