Unspoken: A story of secrets, love and revenge T. Belshaw (good books to read for beginners txt) 📖

‘It’s been lovely meeting you at last, Edna. Give me a call sometime and we can have a chat about the baby. I’ll bring it up to see you regularly… Or you can drop in on us… I’d better go now; my friend Amy will be home from work and I need to ask her something.’

Edna saw me out to the gate. As I opened it, she tapped me on the shoulder.

‘Women never get anything but misery from men in drink.’

I walked the short distance to Amy’s house, wondering why she had given me that particular piece of advice. I knew what drink could do to men. I only had to look at my father. Then there was Frank, I had only seen him drunk twice and both times I ended up in trouble. Was it a warning about men in general, or just her son?

Amy was as excited as I was about my new telephone system and demanded to be the first to call me on it. I insisted on giving her the tuppence the call would cost at the kiosk, and hurried back to the farm.

I had just walked into the front room, when the telephone rang. As I rushed forward to pick up the receiver, my father leapt out of his seat with amazing agility for a man in his condition. He ran through to the kitchen shouting, FIRE!

It took Miriam a full ten minutes to convince him that the house wasn’t ablaze and there wasn’t a fire engine waiting outside to put it out.

Meanwhile I picked up the receiver.

‘Hello,’ I said, in my poshest voice, trying desperately to remember the greeting suggested in the telephone directory. ‘This is Spinton 134. Alice speaking.’

‘I already know who you are,’ shouted Amy.

I laughed. ‘Don’t shout, my ears are ringing.’

We spent the next few minutes discussing the merits of the new telephone, then I heard a series of quick beeps before Amy’s voice came through again.

‘The tuppence ran out, I had to put some more money in.’

‘Don’t spend any more,’ I said. ‘I’ll come up for a chat in a bit.’

So, a few minutes later I walked back up to Amy’s and we spent an hour reliving our telephone chat, playing records and chatting about my weekend away.

I showed Amy my wedding ring and told her most of what happened in Sheerness. I left out the bit about Frank’s drunken attack. She would have hit him with something hard and heavy, had she known. She wasn’t all that pleased when I told her the truth about still being single, but she accepted it and said she’d keep my secret until the day she died.

‘At least he wanted to do the right thing by you, so he can’t be all bad,’ she said.

She was more than a little interested in hearing about my meeting with Edna. ‘So, she wasn’t the wicked witch you thought she might be?’

‘She was a bit prickly to start with, but she was lovely after that. She wants to make a Christening shawl.’

‘Christening! You in a church?’ Amy was stunned, I’d only ever been inside one once, apart from the compulsory school visits. That was for my mother’s funeral. Amy had to continually nudge me to keep me awake. Apparently, our vicar loves a long drawn-out send off.

When I got back home, Frank was at the kitchen table and Miriam was preparing to dish up the rabbit stew she’d made that afternoon. My stomach churned at the thought of it, so I excused myself and went to watch the telephone for half an hour.

After dinner, the three of us sat around the radio to see if we could work out who had done it this week. I articulated my thoughts while we waited to hear the detective’s reply. Miriam didn’t agree, nor did Frank. In the end, Miriam was proved right. It had been the maid. Frank complained that the scriptwriters must all be women, and Agatha Christie readers. I offered to let him borrow one of my books again, but as usual, he refused.

At nine o’clock, I bid them goodnight, and went up to bed. I had only just slipped between the sheets when there was a tap on the door.

‘Yes?’

‘It’s me,’ said Frank. ‘I… err… wondered if I should bring my stuff up. Miriam wasn’t sure.’

I thought about it for just a few moments. There didn’t seem much point putting it off. I’d met his mother after all. I decided that it was time to play the married woman.

‘Come in, Frank,’ I said.

He stepped inside clutching his bag in front of him like a shield.

‘Where would you like me to…’

I pulled back the covers on the empty side of the bed.

‘In you get, but hurry up, I’m bloody freezing.’

He stripped to his long underpants and slipped in beside me. I asked him to turn over, so that his back was facing me, then I put my arm around his waist, snuggled my bump up against him and my knees into the back of his. I don’t know why, but somehow, it felt right.

Chapter 49

April 1938

On Tuesday morning I sat in the front room with the new telephone directory on my lap and a cup of tea on the table at my elbow.

My father was in his chair as usual, snoring quietly. I couldn’t see him lasting much longer. His clothes, that were once stretched across broad shoulders, now hung over his bones as if he was trying to hide in them. His hair and beard were long and unkempt. Miriam had tried to get a comb through it on numerous occasions but had given up when he began to wriggle about holding his hands to his head. The scarecrow in the top acre looked more human.

Most pages of the directory contained advertisements for local and, on occasion, national businesses. Some were in small, bold print running across the last two lines