Elizabeth's Bed

Elizabeth Ann Godfrey nee Rabone 1916

Frank was sick and Elizabeth was sick of Frank.

Elizabeth rolled her sleeves and with a clenched fist punched the bread dough a little too fiercely, the soft warm ball collapsed under her hand. She dumped it out onto the floured bench, her plumpness covered by a floral apron and secured within the stout fabric of her dress jiggled with the exertion of kneading, and the lovely yeasty bread smell filled the kitchen.

Tucking stray strands of greying hair behind her ear she sighed and emptied a half shovel of coal into the fire. The coffee pot gurgled on the coal range. In an hour the smell of fresh bread would welcome the big kids home from school, the babies would be awake, this broken little house would rattle with the activities of her family, and Frank would snarl from his bedroom ‘Shuddup, Damn you!’.

Filling her cup with coffee Elizabeth took her apron off; with a groan she eased into the wooden chair beside the stove and gave the fire a nudge with the poker. She savoured this little slice of time each day, a small space to sit and catch her breath and to think about what next, what was the next thing she needed to do, the next most important thing in her giant list of important things. Would there be money for more coal next week, and is there room in the seams of Olive’s dress to let it out just enough to last another couple of months, I s’ppose I’ll have to get the Doctor to Frank, he seems to be no better, the boys all need haircuts, I wonder where I put the scissors. Her thoughts interrupted by Frank’s moaning and complaining from the next room and the voice of her mother was in her ears.

“You’ve made your bed my girl, and you must lie in it”. Elizabeth’s mouth curled into a sneer as she repeated the words “you’ve made your bed, you’ve made your bed”.

In the early years she’d taken her concerns to her mother and was advised to “Be more tolerant”, “Be a better wife”, “Give him a chance”, “Don’t be so harsh with him”, “Don’t be a Harpy”. “You need to give him the opportunity to learn to be a good husband Elizabeth, life was never meant to be easy dear.”

“Yes” she said in frustration rising from her chair “I have made my bed and so help me I am lying in it!”

The kitchen door was flung open by a gaggle of hungry, freckle faced siblings who’d raced each other home from school. All laughing and shouting about who’d touched the gate post first, except for the littlest one who cried because he was always last. “Shush you kids! You’ll upset your Dad” warned Elizabeth, slicing warm bread for them, smeared with the last of the jam made from blackberries they’d gathered last summer.

Frank had been ill in bed for a week, too ill to work, too ill to even get up. “Olive, run to the Doctor will you? Tell him your Dads sick and see if he will come tomorrow please”.

The kitchen door slammed and Olive was gone into the chill of the late afternoon.

In a short while she was back, her face flushed with exertion and the chilly air, she puffed “Doc says he’ll be here tomorrow just after lunch”

Later when the house was quiet and her children were fed and tucked into their beds, and Frank’s snores and moans grumbled from the front of the house, Elizabeth poked at the fire as she sat in her chair by the stove, the wind howled outside and rattled the rusted tin of the roof and the draught teased the ashes of the fire.

By the time she’d darned five socks her head felt heavy, and her eyelids drooped. She closed her eyes and let her thoughts go where they would. Frank’s smiling face a lifetime ago on the day they married in the Holy Trinity Church and the perspiration on her darling father’s nose as he, trussed up in his best suit walked her up the aisle. That first awful night Frank came home drunk and she’d watched in horror as he’d pissed on the curtains. The countless times he’d staggered home so much the worse for drink and collapsed in a stupor in the garden, from where she would rescue him, often covered in dew and brambles and sometimes rain, grazed and bruised and she’d nurse him back to health over the following days. The time early in their marriage when she’d objected to his drinking in the middle of the afternoon and he’d held her by her throat in the corner of the kitchen, her feet barely touching the floor, and he’d hissed his spittle across her face.

“It’s not your job to tell me what to do!”

The only time he had been physically violent with her in the whole of their marriage, she was shocked and afraid for herself, but terrified he may turn his anger toward the children. Elizabeth frowned at the memory Frank’s family colluding to teach him a lesson by bankrupting him.

 “Please don’t do this” she’d begged

“He needs a decent lesson Elizabeth!” her brother-in-law responded. “We’re happy to help with necessities for the children but giving him money has come to an end. We’ll no longer support his habits, he’s a drunkard and he’s bought nothing but shame to this family".

Even her own Mother wouldn’t persuade them to stop, and sent a sobbing Elizabeth home with her two small children and a curt retort about her responsibility as a wife ringing in her ears.

The drinking continued in spite of the bankruptcy, and Frank was in and mostly out of work for the next decade. During these years Elizabeth was embarrassed but accepted the support of his family, who with large families of their own still seemed to have enough to share with Elizabeth and her children.

Elizabeth learned there would be no sympathy or moral support from her mother, or from her sister who had married a solid little man, not handsome but a God fearing teetotaller who provided well and relished his position as head of his large family. Elizabeth had tried to hide her envy at her sister’s good fortune, and that was made harder by her sister’s smugness which had often left Elizabeth feeling more than a little sour.

After the fifth baby Elizabeth had applied to the court for a prohibition order against Frank. It worked for a close to a year. He was sober, and stayed home, and the children sat on his knee and they laughed like they used to. He’d found regular work as a Carter and there was food on the table and the family were happy. She’d really felt they’d turned a corner in those lovely months, her kind, handsome, even tempered Frank was back, and sometimes when the children were asleep he took her in his arms and they’d danced a slow dance in front of the fire, and she was remind of how once she had truly loved him.

Elizabeth dressed for bed and taking her long hair out of its tidy bun began to brush. Her hair was turning grey and she was no longer young, though the tough years and the extra pounds had thus far not been too unkind.

The eyes of Elizabeth in the cracked mirror met hers. “Where’s the comfort in this life Elizabeth?” Averting her eyes she began to braid her hair and Elizabeth from the mirror continued. “You are a good woman Elizabeth Godfrey and you deserve to have a good life, and a sober husband.” Tears welled up in her eyes and Elizabeth overwhelmed by frustration momentarily gave in to the hopelessness of it all. “Pull yourself together” she said “He’s not a bad man, he may not be a good provider but at least he doesn’t beat me”.

The sleeping baby stirred in his crib and she gently lifted him and taking him into her bed she suckled him back to sleep. I just have to learn to be better at compromise she told herself as she snuggled deeper under the blankets and sleep blew its warm breath through her mind.

During the night the youngest of her children had found their way into the warmth of the big saggy bed. Though Elizabeth would have preferred to sleep alone, waking amid the tangle of her sleeping children was easier than waking next to an unpredictable, often grumpy, usually drunk, Frank. The morning began as had so many other winter mornings; condensation had turned to ice on the inside of the windows, and there was life to breath into the sleeping fire and porridge to make.

“C’mon you kids, time to get up” she prodded the children out of their beds and into clothes warmed in front of the fire. In an hour they were fed and dressed and off into the frosty morning to school. Elizabeth was left with the little ones and another day with cranky Frank complaining from his sick bed, groaning and demanding what little time she had and was reluctant to devote to him.

She took him hot soup for his lunch on a small tray. “Doctor will be here soon.”

She adjusted the curtains along the bank of windows in the small sun-room where Frank had taken to sleeping of late. Tiny beads of condensation glittered at the edges of the windows in the bright sunlight as it stretched into the corners of the long narrow room. Nudging his work boots and trousers under the bed with her foot she picked up the coverlet which had slipped to the floor. “Would you like more tea?”

“N’thanks” he grunted. Tucked into a day bed under a floral quilt, and blinking into the sunlight like a little hairy mole he appeared childlike and quite unwell, and reminded of last night’s resolve to compromise she felt a pang of compassion for him.

“Would you like anything?”

“No, I’m alright.”

She opened the door to the Doctor’s firm knock. “Elizabeth, lovely to see you.”

“It’s chilly out there Doctor Harrison, thank you for coming”

“How is our patient doing today?”

“About the same, he’s through here” Elizabeth motioned to the small sliding door off the living room.

When he’d done with Frank, Doctor Harrison washed his hands at the kitchen sink and dried them on the towel Elizabeth handed to him. “Elizabeth my dear, how are you?” he asked quietly. She hardly needed to respond to his question. Harry Harrison had birthed her and all of her children and he knew the inside of her life almost as well as she did.

Taking her work worn hands in his he looked at her earnestly “Elizabeth” he said, “I urge you to no longer cohabit with your husband.” And a long pause before he said quietly “Frank’s illness is a venereal disease”. Elizabeth’s breath caught in her chest. They stood in silence before the Doctor gently patted her shoulder and quietly let himself out of the kitchen door.

“No longer cohabit. No longer cohabit? I can choose that?”

She picked the weevils out of the last of the flour, added yeast and warm water and turned the mixture in the bowl until the dough formed and covered it with a cloth before placing it on the rack above the stove to rise. She wiped her floury hands on her apron and sat staring into the fire.She buried her face in her hands as her life turned over in her mind like a giant blue iceberg rolling slowly in the ocean, a massive unfathomable force, churning deep green water from the bottom of the sea and causing wave after wave of dirty debris to rise in great gurgling mounds. Gradually the turmoil eased and there was calmness, clarity, relief.

She heard the sun room door slide open and Frank stood in the kitchen doorway. She could smell him unwashed for a week, the dirty stench of his wrecked life hung around him like smoke over a sod fire. Without looking at him she poked at the hot coals, and her heart beat faster she challenged him. “Doctor told me what you’ve got”

“And what of it woman!” he barked.

“So it’s true then, there’s been another woman and you’ve gotten a disease?”

There was a long silence before he grudgingly conceded, and nodded a silent yes in response.

Her thoughts were as clear as winter sunshine and she knew exactly the measure of her responsibility. Her fear of upsetting him had slipped away and been replaced by a bright warm courage, and buoyed by the doctor’s advice, the certain knowledge that she could indeed remake her bed. She looked at him, pathetic and unshaven in his torn night shirt, his hair sticking up where his head had spent too many hours on a pillow. His authority and her commitment gushed out of the hole he’d torn in their marriage. The hole she’d been carefully stitching together for years with love and compromise, healthy children, fresh bread and handmade clothes and a fire in the hearth. She stood and looked him full in the face and from a place of clear and perfect peace she said quietly. “You’re nothing but a rotten prick.”

He blinked at her in shock. Stabbing the air in his direction with her stout finger she continued.“I am done with you Frank Godfrey, and make no mistake this is your damn bed to lie in!”

She turned her back on him, her skirts and apron in a rustling twirl stirred the ashes on the hearth into an airy flight that danced away under the dresser. Now there were things to do, bread to make, babies to nurse, and a life to live by her own rules.