Evelyn Swift

An Excerpt

Nottingham, England — 1913

On Sunday evenings, as the nights drew in, Albert used to walk home with me to my lodgings, and we’d stand in the alley and talk and kiss, and the more we did, the more I liked the kissing and the feel of Albert’s arms around me.

“You know, Ellen,” he said one night in January, just after we’d kissed, “why don’t we think of getting married.” My heart leapt. A surge of emotion swept through me, an onrush of love. “Oh, yes,” I whispered. “Yes.”

Albert took me to meet his family. They were all there, waiting for us, when we arrived. His widowed mother, who said she had had bronchitis and wasn’t feeling well; two older brothers and their wives, his sister and younger brother and a couple of children. Coming, as I did, from a small family, they seemed like an army to me. So many. But then I realized these strangers would one day be my family, too, and I wondered how they would like me. How I would like them.

I thought Albert looked like one of his older brothers, who introduced himself as Harold. The other one was pale and lanky, with a long jaw line, and looked as though he’d never had enough to eat. He said his name was Jack, and offered me a chair beside his mother. The wives said little other than they were pleased to meet me; they seemed to be making their own silent judgements. One was called Jessie, and she was in the family way. Jack’s wife, called Marion, was the mother of the two children. Polly, Albert’s sister, barely greeted me, and said something to Jessie behind her hand, after she’d looked me up and down. I felt, somehow, it wasn’t a compliment.

My discomfort grew. They all seemed so watchful, except for Albert’s younger brother, George. He appeared determined to put me at my ease. He called me Ellen right away and joked, “Albert can’t have told you all about the family skeletons tucked in the cupboard, or you’d never have said yes to him.”

The two wives smiled faintly, and I felt a slight warmth that heartened me. I didn’t care much for Polly, though. She seemed to put on a lot of airs, considering I knew she only worked in a bakery shop. She sat primping her hair, saying little to anybody and looking supercilious or bored. I wasn’t sure which. Perhaps we would have little to do with one another, judging by the lack of interest she appeared to have in me.

After a while George announced this was really an auspicious occasion, and he thought we should celebrate it with a toast.

“Get the glasses out,” he told Marion, and when she took them from a cabinet and set them on the table, the mother complained that they were her best ones.

“Well, nothing but the best,” George said cheerfully, “and I’ve got some good stuff to put in them.” He disappeared into the scullery and came out holding a bottle. Harold took it from him and read the label. “Hmm. The real stuff — rough cider,” he said, setting it down in the middle of the table with a flourish.

“Exactly. Still fermenting.”

Polly lost her bored look long enough to ask if that meant it would make us drunk.

“If you have enough,” George assured her. “Now all come to the table, and I’ll pour.”

We brought our chairs to the table and sat waiting, as George, standing behind his mother, leaned over and slipped the restraining wire band away from the top of the bottle.

“Now get your glasses ready,” he ordered, removing the stopper, as the imprisoned liquid sent a head of foam cascading high above the bottle.

“Whoa!” George cried, clapping his thumb over the opening and gesticulating wildly for a glass with the other hand.

Instantly jets of liquid sprayed out in all directions from under his thumb, hitting all of us around the table. I felt a sharp, cold burst hitting the side of my face, and another one catching me below the throat, as the fusillade waged its fury.

Suddenly the fury was spent, and for a moment we all sat there looking at one another. Drops of liquid were dripping from Albert’s mother’s nose onto the table. Jessie had her hand to one eye, her cheeks glistening and wet. Albert was wiping his chin and Jack was holding both hands to his chest over his soaked shirt. Little runnels were coursing into the V neck of Marion’s dress, and Polly . . . I had to stop myself from laughing. The hair that she’d been primping so carefully was plastered to her skull, droplets forming at the end of a few striggles and sliding slowly down her face.

George stood as though transfixed, his thumb still covering the top of the bottle. He looked around the table, then his lips started to twitch and his shoulders to move, and suddenly he burst into laughter which rendered him unable to utter a word about our plight.

I didn’t know what to do. I could feel hysterical laughter rising inside, and I bit my lip, waiting only for a cue to set it off. Then Harold and Albert started laughing and Jessie and Marion looked as though they were about to follow, and just as I decided it was safe to join in, Albert’s mother spoke, and she didn’t sound amused at all.

“Go and fetch some teatowels,” she said sharply, to nobody in particular. “It’s all Harold’s fault. He shook the bottle setting it down on the table like that.” And so Jessie straightened her face and hurried into the scullery.

“Oh dear, oh dear,” was all George could manage, trying to catch his breath. He lifted the bottle and peered into it. “By golly, there’s some left,” he said, still laughing. “Anybody want a drop?”

“You and your damned cider —” It was Polly and I could see that she was livid. She pushed her chair away from the table and stood up, both hands going to her hair. “—can go to hell!” she finished, marching from the room.

Later as we stood at the tram stop Albert asked me, “Well, what did you think?”

My pent-up laughter suddenly broke loose. “Ooh, Polly’s hair,” I said breathlessly, when I could speak, and that set Albert off, and when the tram came we could hardly get on it for laughing.