Anne Bennett - Walking Back to Happiness

Arthur’s grunts eventually stopped and he lay across Hannah, spent for the moment. So that was it, he thought, the thing talked about, that he’d wondered about, for so long. The sexual act and he’d done it. True, he’d had to hit Hannah, had to knock her down to enable him to do so and that had been regrettable. She’d asked for it in a way, but he’d never ever intended hurting her.

But now at least he’d achieved what seemed to come naturally to most people and he couldn’t see what the fuss had been about. It had given him no great pleasure and he was in no hurry to repeat the process, especially if it entailed hurting Hannah to achieve it.

He eased himself from her and slowly and painfully she got to her feet and made her way to the bathroom. Arthur let her go, for something was tugging at his memory from the books on sex he had read. He switched on the light and surveyed the floor with a slight frown on his face. There was no blood and he suddenly knew he wasn’t the first person to have sex with Hannah.

He was waiting for her when she came back. She avoided looking at him. She’d taken stock in the bathroom, looking at her bruised and swollen face and bottom lip oozing blood. In the past, Arthur had raised bruises on her arms from holding her too tight and across the top of her legs from the pressure of him on top of her. But he’d never before raised his hand to her and she wondered if this was going to be a new tactic he was going to employ and how she should deal with it if it was.

She knew separation was frowned upon by the Catholic Church. Divorce, of course, not to be contemplated at all, but she wouldn’t stay and be used as a punchball by any man. But where would she go and now with Josie’s welfare to consider too? Even Gloria might not welcome them back, because kind though she was, she strongly believed marriage was for life. Hannah had heard her discussing the moral decline of modern society many a time with Amy. She often said that war had brought a host of hasty marriages, often followed by disillusionment and divorce, and the number of fatherless children or those born to married women whose husbands had been away for years, would appear to be legion.

She never discussed these matters with Hannah, of course, that would be considered insensitive, but Hannah was well aware of her views on the subject. So her thoughts were in turmoil when she came back into the bedroom and she wasn’t prepared for the question Arthur threw at her so savagely. ‘Who was it?’

She looked up, perplexed, and he went on. ‘The man you shagged, or were there so many you can’t remember?’

‘What do you mean? What are you saying?’

‘Come, come,’ Arthur said, mocking politeness. ‘I’m no fool and you were no virgin.’

Hannah wondered for a fleeting moment if it was worth telling Arthur about the bittersweet love between her and Mike. She wondered if he’d understand how much she’d loved him and in the stolen moments they had during his short leaves how she’d ached to be kissed, held tightly, caressed and loved, and the one time when they’d both lost control. It hadn’t seemed wrong. They were engaged and due to be married and it had been just one more expression of that love.

But she knew with one glance at Arthur with his nostrils pinched tight in disapproval, his thin lips curled in disdain, and the manic light shining in his cold, brown eyes that he wouldn’t understand how it had been in a million years. She must deny it. At all costs, she must deny it. But it was too late, for her slight hesitation had been noticed and it told Arthur that he’d been right in his assumption and her spluttered denial and even indignation that he should think such a thing didn’t move him a jot.

‘You 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.’