The Married Man
Cynthia Haggard
The word ‘diary’ is etched in faded gold, the black leather cover is cracked at the edges, his name is written in flourishing copperplate:
Robert Prisley Caveley.
Friday, 20th June 1930
“Tomorrow, I become a married man.”
The tissue thin paper rustles as she reads
“Not having been married before, I can’t say how I’m going to find my new station in life, although Miss Florence Emily Richards, and I, have been walking out for some time.”
The chair creaks as she leans back.
“Over the years, I’ve become good at keeping a low profile. I’m the bloke that goes to the pub regular-like, but keeps to himself in a corner over yesterday’s newspapers, and a cigarette or two. I’m the bloke that comes straight home from work every evening, to help my future in-laws with the mending, and the fixing. I can be seen during quiet summer evenings, tending to their roses in the small plot out back. I’m quiet, I’m polite, and if I have few friends, and a certain reticence about talking to strangers, nevertheless, I hope Emmy’s parents are happy their lovely daughter has found such an obliging bloke to be her husband.
“I work as a clerk in the local bank, and make a decent income, enough to keep a wife and family. At least, I’m a cut above the laborers, carpenters, butchers, longshoremen, and chalk-diggers that are typically available to a girl like Emmy, in a place like Thurrock, Essex, where the Thames widens its mouth before drifting towards the sea.
I’m going into this marriage with my eyes open, and I’ve insisted on a couple of things. For example, I told Emmy not to go around giving out our address to people she doesn’t know, especially anyone trying to register voters, and the like. Then I had to put my foot down about having a phone.
“What do you need a phone for, Emmy, dear?” I said one day, in response to her tentative request. “You’ve got your mother and father not a stone’s throw away, not to mention all your brothers and sisters.”
Her large brown eyes looked up into mine. “I thought it would be a convenience.”
Usually those eyes would have the effect of making me give in, but not today.
“It would be an intrusion,” I countered. “It would be more money than we can afford. You know that.”
Emmy, like the good girl she is, dropped the matter, and that was that.
***
She picks up a curled yellowed clipping, a listing for Probate. Running her finger down the crinkling page, she sees:
CAVELEY, Robert Prisley of 38 Derby Road Grays Essex died 17 January 1962. Administration London 6 March to Florence Emily Caveley widow.
Effects £1443 19s. 11d.
“I should give an account of how I met my girl. During the war, I was assigned to the Labour Corps. Most men I worked with did hard labour, building roads, and bridges. Several of them were POWs. But my handwriting got me a job as a clerk managing the general stores, taking me everywhere, even near the battlefields in France, to check up on provisions for the war effort. And that is how I met Emmy.
“I was on my way to check out the cement works in Thurrock, when I stopped by a canteen for a cup of tea, and a sandwich. With my home life non-existent I’d thrown myself into my work, and become good at it, good enough to get promotions, and pay raises. I scarcely saw Beat, as I’d started sleeping downstairs in front of the fire, so as not to disturb her when I rose at dawn, or came in at midnight. Of course, I was hungering for female company, so when the young woman who brought me my tea raised her soft brown eyes to my face, I was hooked. Emmy was then about twenty, and was good-looking in a gentle, guileless way. Somehow, I found myself sitting beside her, pouring out all my troubles. Well, not quite everything. A bloke has to have some secrets, doesn’t he?
“When I think back to the days when my parents were alive, everything seems bathed in a golden glow. I don’t know why that should be because we were very poor, just a notch away from downright poverty. Sidney and I were the two youngest, with me being older by about fifteen months. Growing up, we were tight, sharing the inevitable brotherly spats, but being loyal against outsiders.”
She flicks a photo towards her that shows two boys standing in front of a painted backdrop. The taller one lifts his chin and smiles. The smaller one, her grandfather, exudes a quiet determination from his sickly face. In the corner, capital letters inform her that the photographer had a studio near Tower Bridge. Grandpa Sidney spent the last thirty years of his life looking for his older brother.
“Father was a tanner, and his money didn’t go far. But I suppose the world looks better when you’re young. Father taught himself to read and write when he was an adult, so naturally, he had high hopes for his eldest boy. He made sure I was taught reading early on, how to write an elegant copperplate, how to sign my name with a flourish. Many praised me for my beautiful handwriting, and being bright, I soon won a scholarship to the local Grammar School.
“Dreams and aspirations are all very well, but our family was poor, so when I turned fourteen in 1903, I had to leave school to find a job. My parents hid their disappointment well. Perhaps they were hoping I would be so brilliant that the schoolmasters would be begging to let me stay. However, when I came home from school the day I turned fourteen, with a letter of reference from the headmaster, they didn’t protest. I soon found myself employed in the City as a clerk in a dry goods store.
“Everything was going swimmingly until I met Beat, whose full name was Beatrice Victoria Hough, a fancy name for a chit of a girl who lived in Bermondsey, on the wrong side of the river. But people had aspirations in those days and often gave their kids these ridiculous names.”
She searches the pile of faded clippings.
CAVELEY
Mrs. Beatrice Victoria, née Hough...married Robert Prisley Caveley, on 20 June 1914, at St. Anne’s Bermondsey...
“Emmy listens quietly, her hands in her lap. She is the complete opposite of Beat, having a knack for seeing the good in others. I raise my eyes to Emmy’s soft brown ones, and the words dry on my lips. Somehow, I don’t think Beatrice, or ‘Beat’ as she is commonly known, is a suitable topic of conversation for a girl like Emmy.
“After that first meeting, I rearranged my days so that I could pass through Thurrock on my way elsewhere, to have a cup of tea, and a chat with Emmy. She used to bring me sandwiches and home-made cakes, and it wasn’t long before I realized I was falling in love. But it was 1916, or 1917, the war was still on, there was no end in sight, and I didn’t think it fair to a girl like Emmy, to saddle her with someone who might be wounded, and not able to provide for her.
I didn’t say anything to Beat, which wasn’t hard as we scarcely saw one another, but somehow she found out. One day, when I returned at midnight, I found her waiting up by the fire.
“Where’ve you been?” she carped as soon as I entered the room.
“You know where I’ve been, Beat.” Perhaps now was a good time to get some things off my chest, as I might not have the opportunity for a while. I looked her straight in the eye.
“Look, Beat, you and I, we’ve not been getting along so well, have we? Would you like me to leave?”
“Leave? Why should I want you to do that?”
“We’re not getting on.”
“Oh? And what makes you an expert all of a sudden?”
“You don’t want me to touch you.”
“Of course I don’t. That whole thing is disgusting, and look where it left me, at death’s door.”
“Beat, I’m sorry you lost the child, but we have to let bygones be bygones.”
She folded her arms, and glared. “Robert Prisley Caveley, I declare you are one of the selfishest individuals to ever inhabit this earth. You don’t care about me. You want to move on because you’ve found someone else.”
“Beat—“
“Don’t you dare deny it.” She picked up a rolling pin. “Or I’ll brain you.”
I hadn’t noticed the rolling pin until now. Was she joking? I looked at her sharp visage, harsh lines outlining her nose and mouth.
“Beat, there’s no need to get so het up.”
“I’m telling you, if you say one more word—“
“What are you going to do, Beat?”
She brandished the rolling pin. It would have been as funny as a Punch and Judy show except for the expression on her face. Her blue eyes glittered with a hard, almost demonic quality. There was a flush of pink on each narrow cheek, but it didn’t make her look more attractive, it made her look mad. Without a word, I fled upstairs, fumbling for my haversack, throwing in my belongings.
When I came downstairs, Beat was standing in front of the door, rolling pin in hand, barring the way.
“Beat, let me out.”
“If you think I’m going to let you visit your fancy-piece, you’ve got another think coming.”
“Come on, Beat. Let it go. It’s over.”
“I’ll never let you go. Do you hear me? Never.” Usually when someone tells me ‘never,’ I know they don’t really mean it. But when Beat said it—it’s hard to explain. It’s almost as if her whole body gave meaning to her words. I had the eerie feeling that I was in front of some creature I couldn’t comprehend, like an adder whipping its head forward to bite. My hands shook as I stood there facing her. I didn’t want my voice to shake too, so I waited a moment, telling myself it was ridiculous to be so scared of a woman. After all, I was stronger than her.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Beat,” I said eventually. “Let me out.”
She stood there, glaring, her thin body coiled as tightly as a piece of barbed wire. I relaxed for a minute, then when she released some of that tension, lowering the rolling pin a fraction of an inch, I shoved her hard, knocking her to the floor. Not waiting to see how she was, I left the house, ran down the path, and out into the quiet road as if I had the demons of hell behind me. I slowed, once I realized no one was following me. Shuddering, I sat down on a bench in a bus-stop, and dropped my pack to the ground. My hands were shaking so badly, I could hardly light up a cigarette. I must have sat there for a good half hour until I calmed down. Then I walked south, into the Surrey countryside, and spent the rest of the night sleeping under a hedgerow.
***
The pages that follow are blank. A new entry begins haphazardly, scrawled halfway down the page:
“I’m forty-one years old and getting married for the first time tomorrow, on Saturday June 21, 1930. At least, that’s what I tell my wife-to-be. I wasn’t thinking of marrying Emmy, until Mother Nature took her course, and now my girl’s in the family way. Though Emmy’s a girl no longer, being over thirty, another reason for being a bit surprised at her condition.
At first, things weren’t so bad between Beat and myself. I enjoyed the status that comes with being a married man, the pay raise, the respect from my mates. I was never madly in love with my wife, I didn’t want that in a marriage. When Dora jilted me, I thought my life had come to an end. That’s actually how I came to marry Beat, she was there when I was feeling sore.
Beat and I got a small house right next to Southwark Park in Bermondsey, just a few doors down from my parents, and in those first few months of marriage, Beat enjoyed setting up house. Then she got in the family way. By that time, Britain had declared war on Germany, and everyone was excited by the thought of a good old fight with the Hun, sure that we, the greatest nation on earth, would prevail by Christmas.
But Christmas 1914 wasn’t happy. Beat lost her baby, and was laid up for several weeks. It never occurred to me to reach out to my wife. She was seemingly content, surrounded by her female relations, and I thought I shouldn’t intrude. But if I have to pinpoint when a certain coldness seeped into our relationship, I would say that it dated from that time. Why Beat blamed me for stoically going to work every day, I’ll never know.
When she rose from her sick bed, my pretty wife was replaced by a termagant, who sniped at me from dawn to dusk. She chided me for dressing too noisily in the morning, for splashing water on the floor, for forgetting to clean the sink, for opening the door too loudly, or for messing up one of her precious napkins when eating. She would scold loudly, shrilly even, right there in front of company. People would drink tea, their faces averted, as she dressed me down. Occasionally, Ma Hough would attempt to intercede.
“Beat, dear,” she would say tentatively. “I’m sure Bob didn’t mean to upset you.”
But Beat always ignored her. “Just look at the mess he’s made,” she would screech. “You’d never think I’d spent all day scrubbing that floor. Look at the trail of mud he’s brought in. He never thinks about me, oh no, that’s definitely too much to ask.”
So I’d clump out of the house, and go to the Stanley Arms for supper.
“How’s Beat?” the Publican’s wife would ask as she brought me my food. “Still poorly is she?”
“Yes,” I would answer. “She’s not well. I don’t want to bother her.”
“What a good husband you are,” she would say, before returning to the other customers, while I sat there, wondering why I’d bothered to marry Beat at all.
As 1915 turned into 1916, things didn’t improve. Father passed away, and Mother moved to Deptford, to stay with one of my sisters. When Beat suggested that her parents come and live with us, I agreed. I’d always been fond of Ma Hough, who was a good cook, and Pa Hough was quiet, and unobtrusive. By then, everyone was tightening their belts as the U-boat raids continued on Merchant shipping. My younger brother Sid got caught up in one of those torpedo attacks, when the boat he was on caught fire, and he was trapped there, breathing in the burning creosote. It damaged his lungs, but at least he survived. I hoped that having her parents around would be good for us economically, and restore Beat’s good cheer.
It didn’t work out that way. As time wore on, her parents gradually took Beat’s part against me, and so I began disappearing, often for weeks at a time. In 1916, conscription began, and I was assigned to the Labour Corps.
After the war, I found a job in Thurrock, to be near Emmy. My best course of action for avoiding Beat was to disappear, but Emmy was close to her family in Thurrock, and I couldn’t persuade her to leave without lots of explanation. On the other hand, it would be very convenient if my family thought I’d gone abroad, so that when Beat contacted them, if she did, they would have something to tell her of that nature. Fortunately, 1921 was also the year that my younger brother married. Sid found Doll, a sweet young woman down on her luck, and the following year they had a baby girl, Anita.
The last time I visited Sid in his modest home in Hook, Surrey, was in the summer of 1922. His lungs still bothered him, but now he had Doll to fuss over him, and Anita to give him a future. I placed a silver sixpence in my niece’s chubby hands, and said my goodbyes, hoping that this time when I disappeared, Sid would follow up on the hints I was dropping, about going off to Australia to start a new life away from Beat.
I never intended to commit bigamy, it is an offense punishable by several years in prison. Some will wonder why I didn’t change my name, but that wasn’t possible given the circumstances. I didn’t want to alarm Emmy, or her family. I knew Beat meant it when she said she would never give me up.
I’m not proud of myself. I was a disappointment to my parents, a fool for marrying Beat when I should’ve known better, and a liar to Emmy and her family.
***
Another rummage, and two death notices appear:
CAVELEY
Mrs. Florence Emily, née Richards.
On 31 December 1988 in Thurrock, Essex...
CAVELEY
Mrs. Beatrice Victoria, née Hough.
On 30 June 1980 in Epsom, Surrey...
Grandpa Sidney named his only son after the brother who vanished. He died at Hook, Surrey, in June, 1950, aged 59 years. When Robert Prisley Caveley died in January, 1962, aged 73 years, he was still living in Thurrock, still married to Emmy.
He escaped notice for over forty years.
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