It had been an October night, Betty remembered: damp and drab and sombre as October nights in the north tend to be. Arthur and Betty had been in bed for about an hour when they were woken by a pounding on the back door. Arthur, silent and unruffled as ever, put on his slippers and headed downstairs. Betty stood at the bedroom door, straining to hear over the booming of her heart. She could make out low, hushed voices, tainted with urgency. Moments later, Arthur returned. He looked pale, and angry.
‘It’s just our mam, Betty. Nothing to worry about but she needs me for something. Bolt the door behind me and get yourself back to bed, pet.’ Without another word, he disappeared into the narrowing gloom of the staircase and the back door clattered shut. Betty rushed to the bedroom window and watched two huddled figures hurry down the ginnel in the direction of Twelfth Street. Iris was gesturing wildly with sharp, censorious fingers as she walked. Arthur, Betty noticed, had thrown on his heavy overcoat, but was still wearing his pyjamas and tartan slippers. She’d bought him those slippers in BHS last Christmas. Betty’s heart surged with aching tenderness. From the bedroom window Arthur seemed so vulnerable, so exposed, so tiny. She watched the shadowy figures dissolve into the murky night. Then remembering Arthur’s words, she flew down the stairs and bolted the back door. Her whole body shook with a dread she could not quite interpret.
It wasn’t too long before Arthur returned. That was a comfort. His soft, quick step on the staircase was also a comfort. When he opened the bedroom door though, and she saw his haunted face illuminated by the landing light, she felt anything but reassured. ‘Betty, can you get up and get dressed please. I need your help. We need to go to Twelfth Street.’
‘Now?’ Betty asked. The sickly green hands on the bedside clock glowed. It was ten minutes past midnight.
‘Be as quick as you can. I’ll explain on the way. And put on something warm, it’s nithering out,’ he closed the bedroom door softly. Before he went downstairs she heard him say, ‘Oh God. Oh God,’ and then louder, ‘I’m sorry, Betty.’
They walked together through the dark, empty streets in silence. Betty tried to keep her eyes forward, her head held high, but every now and then she glanced at Arthur. His face was expressionless, bright then dark as they passed under ochre streetlights. Betty waited for the explanation to come. She knew it would. Arthur was not good with words. He would be arranging and rearranging the sentences in his mind, rehearsing them. Shuffling the words around like Scrabble tiles on a rack, trying to make them fit, trying to make them true, trying to make them right. He always did this when he had something important to say. Questions were spiralling and multiplying in Betty’s mind like forming stars, but she kept them to herself. Arthur would not be hurried. She turned the collar of her coat up against the damp, linked her arm through her husband’s and strode resolutely forwards. She tried to ignore the jagged tremor of fear that snaked from his body to hers. She tried to step more boldly, so her footsteps clattered vigorously and brightly on the cobbles. She tried to imbue her body with a confidence and courage she did not possess in the hope that this phony assurance would magically become real. A van passed, its engine grumbling and spluttering as it made its lonely journey through the dank streets. Its headlights illuminated the drizzle that seemed to hang motionless in the air. It was a moonless, starless night, pregnant with silent unease. Twelfth Street was approaching. Just as Betty wondered if Arthur was going to speak at all, he stopped, dead still. He was ready. Betty turned her face to his.
‘Our Rose has been attacked. She came home from the Rialto in a right state. Clothes ripped. . . blood. . . hysterical. She told mam it happened on the way home. A tall, dark man, by the cemetery, she said, just jumped out at her. I’ve been out looking and couldn’t see anything, couldn’t find anyone. When I got back she said it maybe was a soldier. Then maybe he wasn’t. She’s not making much sense. Mam won’t hear of the police. She’s pacing up and down in a right state herself. I don’t know what to do, Betty. I thought maybe you, you’d know. You’re closer to Rose’s age. . . a woman. Maybe she’d talk to you.’
Arthur was floundering, Betty could see, in agony. An agony born of fury and frustration and embarrassment. Her brain could not quite make sense of what he had said. She understood the words, but their meaning was as nebulous as the damp, dank air. It was all too horrific. Too shocking. Too out of the realms of her experience. It was as if a monster from a fairy tale had been made flesh and visited the colliery. These things don’t happen to ordinary people like us, in ordinary places like this, she thought. Years later, Betty would recall that precise moment with Arthur, standing together under the sign for Twelfth Street, was the moment all her childlike beliefs about fairness and happy endings simply fell away. It was a moment of permanent and indelible significance. On a map of her life, that moment would be marked with a black pin to record the moment she learnt that horror was indiscriminate. She knew she needed to take control, for Arthur and for Rose. She grabbed her husband’s hand and scooted him up the street, ‘Come on. We must hurry. Our first priority is to see to Rose. She’ll need a doctor, if nothing else.’
Entering the parlour of 32, Twelfth Street and found Iris Wright sat staring at a fire that was now little more than a few dimly glowing embers. Small, hunched and dressed in her usual outfit of mourning, she looked like a crow huddled on a winter branch. She did not look pleased to see Betty, ‘What is she doing here? I told you, no one must know.’
‘She’s my wife, mam. She can help. Talk to Rose. Find out more. I know you don’t want to tell the police, but this man could still be . . .’
The old woman leapt to her feet with an astonishing agility and pointed a crooked finger at her son, ‘No police. Go!’ She sat down again and turned her back to the visitors. ‘There is nothing for you to do here,’ she spat.
Although Iris seemed as fearsome as a cornered tiger, Betty had noticed that she had been weeping and as she picked up a poker to rake the dimming ashes, her hand trembled. Betty took a tentative step forward.
‘Iris . . . mam,’ Betty hated calling this mean woman ‘mam’, but she knew it would placate her. ‘Why don’t I just pop upstairs and see if there is anything Rose needs? I understand what you said about the police, but she may need medical help. Just let me talk to her. I’ll just be five minutes and if she doesn’t want to see me, well, I’ll come straight back down.’
A few meagre sparks flew from the ashes of the fire, dazzled then disappeared like shooting stars. The old woman leant back into her chair. Her fury seemed to have dissipated as quickly as it had ignited and was replaced with meek surrender and exhaustion. Suddenly she seemed much smaller and older. ‘If you must, Betty,’ she sighed. Iris nodded her head towards the staircase, ‘Off you got then.’ Arthur looked at his wife with wonder. Her gentle composure and common sense had rendered the tiger clawless.
After shakily climbing the stairs, Betty hesitated outside of Rose’s door. Without Arthur to support and Iris to sway, her confidence wavered somewhat. She and Rose had never been friends, after all and the thought at what she might discover on the other side of the door filled her with fear. Her thoughts were twisted and incoherent. She wondered if the dark creature that had brutalised Rose would be crouched in the corners of the room, waiting for his next victim. Betty had never even been in Rose’s bedroom before. When she cleaned the house, it had always been made resolutely clear that she was to stay out of her sister-in-law’s room. ‘Leave my room, Betty dear. I have everything just as I like it and I don’t want things disturbed. I don’t mind cleaning it myself. It will save you a job, after all,’ she cooed, as if she were bestowing a great benevolence. Betty tried to force such uncharitable remembrances of Rose out of her mind. This wasn’t the time for grudges or pettiness. She knocked softly on the door and, without waiting for an answer, stepped inside the room.
She was surprised at what she saw. Far from being the pristine sanctuary of an elegant woman of twenty-seven, the room had the chaotic and capricious feeling of a teenage bedroom. There were yellowing film posters curling on the wall; a gauzy scarf was draped over a bedside lamp bathing the room in a soft, rosy glow. The 1930s dressing table was scattered with trinkets and costume jewellery which flashed splinters of light around the dusky room. Skirts, dresses and silken scarves in deep peacock shades of blue and green were piled high upon chairs and bulged from a wardrobe so laden the doors would not close. The air was heavy with the powdery sweet scent of Soir de Paris. It had become Rose’s favourite perfume after she had read that Vivien Leigh wore it daily. It was a room of decadent disorder: beautiful, yet melancholy too. There was something heartrending about an unmarried woman of Rose’s age living at home like a star struck teenager. It was the room of a girl who wrote in a secret diary decorated with love hearts, who saved her pocket-money for the latest film magazines and Max Factor lipsticks, who spent days in front of the dressing table mirror trying on earrings, scarves and smiles. It was a stage set. A sorceress’s private laboratory. A lonely princess’s secret chamber. It did not seem real at all. It made Betty feel sad.
Betty had been so fascinated by the room she hadn’t noticed Rose at all. At first, she assumed Rose was in bathroom and the bedroom was empty: the room pulsed with stillness, was loud with silence. Betty took a moment to check her appearance in the large elliptical mirror on the wardrobe door. Her hair was frizzed and beaded with damp and her face was ruddy from the autumn night. As she was running her hands through her hair, she noticed in the reflection of the silver mirror the jumbled heap of clothes heaped on the sad single bed appeared to be moving, breathing. She spun round to see Rose lying on her side. She was curled into the wall like a naughty child sent to bed without supper. She did not seem to know that Betty was there. Betty approached tentatively, as if Rose were a wounded animal lying by the roadside. Betty was terrified at what she might see when she got closer, and wondered if, like a wounded animal, Rose would lash out. She knelt by the bed and tenderly touched her sister-in-law on the shoulder. She spoke softly, soothingly, ‘Rose, it’s Betty, dear. How are you? I’m here.’
Rose turned around slowly and looked at Betty. With her make-up smudged and smeared, her eyes looked big and watchful. She resembled some wild, frightened creature of the night. Betty noticed at a glance several things: Rose’s blouse was open and the buttons were missing, her hair was matted and tangled, her tights were shredded and stained. Her exquisite redcurrant suede shoes lay like abandoned by the bed like forgotten Christmas toys. She was as tiny and vulnerable as a child. The glossy, sneering and superior veneer, dissolved. Had she been a child, Betty would have instinctively scooped Rose into her arms, but those instincts were knotted up inside, tangled, unwilling to be set free. Instead she softly stroked her hair. Rose suddenly sat up and caught her reflection in the wardrobe mirror. ‘Is that me?’ she said. She leant forward with horrified fascination. ‘Is that really me?’ She turned towards Betty, waiting for an answer.
‘Rose, I’m here to help. I know something awful has happened tonight. You don’t need to tell me anything about it. Not unless you want to. What can I do for you? What can I get for you?’
Rose stared at Betty with her wild, desolate eyes. She lifted her hands over her face and when she did so, Betty saw the marbling of dark bruises spreading around the top of her frail arms. An image flashed across Betty’s mind of a picture from a childhood story book. She hadn’t thought of it in years. In the story, a tree was haunted by the spirit of a witch. When children passed, the tree’s branches became spindly arms and fingers, reaching out and grabbing passing children. The illustration of the branches becoming terrible hands snaking around a little girl’s arms had been the cause of many of Betty’s nightmares. Rose stood and tottered to the wardrobe mirror; she was transfixed with her own image. With her black eyes, white face and slow, deliberate movements she brought to mind a sad Pierrot clown performing a mime. Betty was at a loss as to what to do, what to say. ‘Shall I run you a nice hot bath, Rose? Would you like that? It might make you more comfortable, help you sleep.’ It seemed like a tiny thing to do in the face of such brutality, an insignificant thing, but it was all Betty could think of. Incredibly, it seemed to work. Rose’s dreadful enchantment with her own reflection was broken. She turned to Betty and almost smiled, ‘Yes, yes I would love a bath. Thank you, Betty.’
‘I’ll go and run it then. Nice and warm? You put on your dressing gown and take those clothes off. I’ll come back to wash them and mend them in the morning, if you like.’
Rose looked at her blouse in confusion, as if noticing for the first time that it was ripped open. ‘Oh, look at this. My brand-new blouse. The buttons have gone. It’s open. I’ve been standing here with my slip showing.’
‘Don’t you worry about that. It will take minutes to fix. It will be as good as new.’ Betty went to leave the room; she could feel tears welling in her eyes. As she closed the door behind her, she heard Rose call in the fragile, chiming voice of a girl, ‘Lots of bubbles please, Betty. Lots.’
After the bath, which seemed to soothe and quieten Rose, they returned to the bedroom. Betty tried to put out of her mind the marks she had seen on Rose’s pale, slight body: the indentations from hands, fingers, the blood on her thighs, the bruises which seemed to take shape in front of her eyes like developing photographs. They sat on the bed together, Rose wrapped in her dressing gown and Betty brushed out her long hair. In the diffused luminosity of the room, her black hair rippled and flashed like soft waves on a moonlit sea. ‘Your hair is so pretty, Rose. I wish I had hair like this.’
Rose was softly humming a tune. Night and Day, Frank Sinatra. It was her favourite. Betty began to sing and Rose joined in, her voice gentle and plaintive.
‘Night and day
You are the one
Only you 'neath the moon
Or under the sun
Whether near to me or far
No matter, darling where you are
I think of you
Night and day’
Betty put down the hairbrush. ‘Right, let’s get you a nice fresh nightie on and you can get into bed and rest. Where are your nightclothes, dear?’
Rose pointed the bottom drawer of her dressing table and went back to humming Night and Day. She’s a child singing to herself to keep the demons away, to keep the darkness out, Betty thought. She opened the dressing table drawer and pulled out several silky, flimsy nighties. ‘Rose, it’s a cold night, have you got anything warmer?’ Rose shrugged and went back to her singing.
‘Just a second dear, I’ll be right back.’ Betty hurried downstairs. In the parlour, she could hear agitated voices. She paused before entering the room, curious to hear what was being said.
‘Forget what she said, it wasn’t a soldier and it wasn’t some stranger on the street,’ Iris’s voice, cold and knowing.
‘But why would she say that, obviously she’s not making this up, you’ve seen the state of her!’ The exasperation and frustration in Arthur’s voice was clear.
Betty coughed loudly, counted to five and entered the room. Her cough had given her husband and mother-in-law time to arranged themselves into a tableau of innocent domesticity: two performers in position for the start of a show. Arthur looked uncertain and rueful. Iris looked furious. Betty did not have time to waste feeling excluded. She briskly issued her instructions to both and hurried back upstairs to Rose, not waiting for an answer.
In the bedroom, Rose was sitting in front of the dressing table mirror. She had opened the top drawer and was sorting through assorted rollers, pins and curling devices. They all looked like medieval instruments of torture to Betty.
‘I always put my curlers in before bed.’
‘Rose Wright, how on earth do you sleep in these things?’ Betty picked up a spikey roller with a metal fixing pin. ‘I bet when all of these are in your hair it must be like sleeping with a hedgehog on your head. I couldn’t do it.’
‘Oh, they are awfully uncomfortable. I’m used to them, I suppose. You know that poem A little bit of powder, a little bit of paint, will make this little lady, look like what she aint.’
‘Sounds like a load of poppycock to me. A way of getting you to spend money you don’t have on things you don’t need. Any why on earth would you want to look like anything but yourself? You are you.’ Betty threw the roller back in their place and firmly closed the drawer. ‘How about tonight, you forget about your curlers and you just have a lovely comfortable night’s sleep? Your mum is making you up a hot water bottle. Arthur has popped back to ours to get something.’
Rose nodded and went back to the bed, a meek and compliant child. ‘No curlers tonight then, Betty. I am feeling sleepy now anyway. That bath was lovely.’ She lay down her side, curling her legs into her body, placed her hands together as if in prayer and rested her lovely head on them like a fairy-tale princess sleeping.
‘Rose, I think you had better see Doctor Brown in the morning. Shall I see if I can arrange for him to call?’ Betty asked, as soothingly as she could.
‘Why on earth would I need Doctor Brown? Honestly, Betty.’
‘Rose, do you want to tell me what happened to you tonight, darling?’
Rose squeezed her eyes shut tighter, ‘I’m awfully tired, Betty.’
‘That’s alright dear. You don’t have to say a word. Do you think the police should be told, Rose?’
Rose’s eyes snapped open, ‘No, no, no!’
‘Alright. Whatever you say. Close your eyes.’
There was a gentle knock on the door. Betty crossed the room and opened it. Arthur was standing there holding a hot water bottle and a carrier bag. ‘Here you are, pet. Is she going to be okay?’ he asked.
Betty nodded, ‘I’ll be down in five minutes and then we can go home.’
Back in the room, she approached the bed, ‘Rose, you put this on and I’ll put this hot water bottle in your bed.’ She handed Rose the carrier bag.
Rose sat up and peered in the bag. She lifted out and held up one of Betty’s warmest winter nighties, high necked, long sleeved, floor length and made of flower-sprigged flannel.
‘What is this? A shroud, Betty? I’m not seventy, you know.’
‘Put it on, Vivien Leigh,’ Betty scolded, smiling. ‘You’ll be snug tonight. I’m going to make you a cup of Horlicks before I go. Your mum is heating up the milk now.’
‘Oh, it is nice and soft,’ Rose sighed, as she slipped the nightie over her head and curled back into bed.
‘Now dear, I’ll be back in the morning and I am going to make your breakfast. How about some lovely porridge with cream and brown sugar? I’ll collect your things to be washed and mended too. Does that sound alright?’
There was no answer. Rose was already asleep.
Downstairs, Betty picked up her coat from the banister and entered the parlour. She looked at the clock on the mantle. It was half past two. Iris was still hunched in her armchair like a bird of prey.
‘Rose is fast asleep. Don’t worry about the Horlicks; I don’t want her disturbed. Arthur and I will come back in the morning. I’ll take care of breakfast, Iris. And I’ll wash and mend Rose’s things. We’ll take things from there and see what tomorrow brings.’ The words flew from Betty’s mouth with an uncustomary conviction. She was not sure she recognised herself. Who this bold, capable young woman was who was taking charge of the situation?
‘Don’t worry, Betty, I know what has to be done tomorrow,’ Iris said hawkishly. ‘Arthur will help.’ The old woman stood up and ushered them out of the room. Betty’s new-found assurance faltered somewhat. She had the distinct feeling she had just been shown the door.
They walked back to Seventh Street in stunned silence. Betty had simply told her husband that Rose had not revealed anything else about the attack and reassured him that physically at least, her injuries were limited to cuts and bruises. She did not mention the blood on Rose’s thighs. It was not the kind of thing to speak of with a man, even her husband. That was women’s business. Besides, she found she did not want to speak at all. She wrapped the silence of the night around her like a blanket. It was a comfort. She was exhausted; her whole body felt leaden, yet she knew she would not sleep.
It was a restless night for both. Betty was up and dressed long before dawn broke. She let Arthur sleep for a while she searched for her sewing box and button tin and packed ingredients for Rose’s breakfast. Despite her lack of rest, she felt purposeful, invigorated. She sensed the fresh possibility of friendship and understanding between herself and Rose. She felt overwhelming compassion and newly discovered love for her sister-in-law. The sands had shifted. This was a new beginning. She wondered guiltily about the appropriateness of these feelings, of her new-found resolution. Was she benefiting somehow from Rose’s misfortune? But Rose would benefit too, Betty told herself. She would be her protector, her advocate, her friend. Rose would not go through this ordeal alone. She packed a wicker basket with cream and brown sugar for Rose’s porridge and called up to Arthur. It was time to go.
When they entered the parlour at Twelfth Street, Betty was disconcerted to see that Iris and Rose were both up and dressed and eating toast at the table as if the events of the previous night had been nothing but a terrible dream. Rose was her usual poised and lovely self, dressed in an emerald green sweater and full black skirt. It was a scene of familial regularity and quiet industry.
Iris stood as soon as Betty and Arthur entered, ‘Sit yourselves down. I’ll put some more toast on. Arthur, you’re not going to work this morning. I’ve told Pat next door to run down to the offices to let them know. There’s a job I need you for.’ She eyed Betty coolly. ‘Betty, for heaven’s sake, take your coat off and sit down. What’s the matter with you this morning?’
Betty pulled a chair closer to Rose. She sat in the unsteady manner of one about to faint. She smiled weakly at her sister-in-law, ‘How are you feeling today, Rose?’ she asked.
‘Why, I’m just fine, Betty. Just fine. Could you pass me the jam please?’ Rose seemed artificially calm. Serene almost. Withdrawn into a world of insulated denial.
‘I’ve brought my sewing kit. I can fix your blouse after breakfast.’
A shadow of distress flitted across Rose’s pale face, soon to be replaced with one of her well-rehearsed smiles, ‘Oh, don’t worry about that, Betty. Mam’s burnt everything on the stove. They were old things anyway. Betty, do you think you could clean the windows today? They are so grimy with that rain yesterday. I don’t know what people will think of us.’
Betty glanced at Arthur. She wanted the reassurance of knowing that he too had recognised the incongruity of the situation, but he was smearing marmalade on his toast and talking to his mother about the weather. A cup of tea magically appeared in front of Betty, followed by a plate with two pieces of toast. She had the sense of being disembodied, disconnected. She was a customer in a busy café who had been seated at another party’s table. All she could do was wordlessly watch as they chatted and went about the business of the morning.
Rose looked across at Betty, cast a beady eye over her outfit and smiled sweetly, ‘That’s an unusual combination, Betty. A royal blue sweater with a green skirt. Quite daring for someone with your colouring, really.’
The world, which just an hour earlier seemed to have altered so utterly, had shifted back onto its axis: normality had been restored.
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