Faith - Lesley Pearse [113]
She heard men out in the street stumbling home drunk from the pub on a Friday or Saturday night, and the violent rows that often broke out when they got in. She would listen to her friends’ complaints that their television had been repossessed because their husband hadn’t met the payments, or that they’d had to pawn something to pay the rent.
Laura felt a smug superiority that Stuart was not like that. He rarely went out without her, and since they’d moved into the flat he’d built bookcases, a proper wardrobe, and more cupboards for the kitchen. On the odd occasion when he did go out for a drink with a friend he always asked first if she minded. And when he did come home drunk, he was never nasty, quite the reverse – he would make love to her for hours and hours.
She was irritated, though, by the influence his parents had over him. They didn’t really approve of them living together when they weren’t married, they were suspicious of Laura’s worldliness, and perhaps afraid she was going to tempt Stuart away from them and the kind of sober, industrious life they wanted for him.
In January of ’73, the work on the school was finished, and it didn’t lead on to another job as Stuart had hoped. Right through that month and half-way through February he couldn’t get another job and they had to apply for dole. It was tough living on less than half the amount of wages he’d been used to, but they managed. It was bitterly cold then, and Laura liked the cosiness of having him home with her and Barney.
She could never forget Barney’s introduction to snow. Stuart had collected his old childhood sledge from his parents’ home, and they bundled Barney up in warm clothes, sat him on the sledge and Stuart pulled him round to Harrington Park.
It brought tears to her eyes to watch Stuart hurtling down the slope with Barney tucked safely between his long legs. Barney yelled with glee; each time they got to the bottom he’d race right back up the hill, looking like a little gnome in his red woolly hat, matching red cheeks and Wellingtons. Laura squeezed on with them too, and yelled as loudly as Barney as the sledge gathered speed and she feared they would never stop.
That day she remembered how it had been a year earlier when she was rushed off to hospital with poisoning. She’d never had blissfully happy moments sharing Barney with Greg, he never played with his son, and he wouldn’t have understood that a day spent sledging was fun.
Stuart got taken on for another job at the end of February but that job only lasted two weeks, and once again they were back on the dole. That time Stuart took it hard, and paced about looking worried. He said if he’d known his five-year apprenticeship was going to lead to no work at the end of it, he’d have joined the Navy or gone to Australia.
‘I didn’t want you to live like this,’ he said despairingly when they had no money to put in the gas meter. ‘I don’t feel like a man when I can’t provide for you.’
She did try to reassure him it was not his fault, that joiners, bricklayers, plumbers and electricians were all having a hard time because of the recession. Every night in the newspaper there was someone voicing an opinion that the government should fire up the economy by building new houses and public buildings.
Laura found a job as a barmaid at the Maybury Casino in April, just after Barney’s third birthday. It was only two nights a week, and to her it was the ideal job, for Stuart could babysit Barney, and the extra money would be good for all of them.