by Mia Dolan
It was close enough to two o’clock to be back at work. Marcie marched off. Rita was her best friend. She should not have made the remarks that she did.
‘Are we still friends?’ Rita called after her.
Marcie didn’t answer. Sod Rita. She was never going to speak to her again.
Chapter Seven
‘Weee!’
Baby Annie squealed with delight each time Marcie sent the pushchair wheels racing along the pavement.
It was Saturday morning and a whole week since Johnnie had dropped her off at the bus stop.
Her stepmother had the day off from Woolworths and had gone out the night before leaving Marcie to babysit. Ten o’clock and she was still in bed. It had been down to Marcie to feed, wash and dress the toddler. The boys could manage without their mother and their grandmother ensured they were fed a hearty breakfast. Rosa was biased towards boys – they got the bacon and eggs while Marcie and the baby only got toast. Marcie considered this unfair seeing as she was the one out at work, not the boys. She wouldn’t dare challenge her grandmother. Rosa Brooks didn’t see things the same way as she did. She’d been brought up to regard men as the breadwinners even if they were not. Nothing could change her now.
Marcie pulled up outside the shop and engaged the brake with her foot.
‘Won’t be long, poppet,’ she said and stroked Annie’s cheek.
She collided with Rita just outside the shop door. Rita was carrying a brown carrier bag full of food. On seeing Marcie she flushed bright red.
‘Hello. Um … just in case you see my mum or dad, I stayed at your place last night – and tonight,’ she added quickly.
Marcie glanced behind her. She hadn’t noticed the shiny motorcycle waiting at the kerb, but she did now. Pete was sitting on it sideways, blowing smoke rings.
There wasn’t much chance of Alan Taylor calling at Endeavour Terrace to check on his daughter. Rita could do no wrong in his eyes. She wished she had the same freedom but it wasn’t likely given the old-fashioned views of Rosa Brooks.
Bearing in mind their argument, Marcie was tempted to be awkward. The comment about her mother still stung. But Rita was her best friend.
‘Sorry about what I said,’ said Rita as though reading her mind.
Marcie wasn’t sure of her sincerity. ‘OK. So how was last night?’
Rita’s eyes sparkled. ‘We did it three times last night and twice more since breakfast.’
Marcie was about to say it was a wonder Rita could walk or Pete could ride a motorcycle, but didn’t. Instead she counselled Rita to be careful.
Rita grinned in response. ‘He’s got some johnnies. I went with him into the chemists. He was too scared to ask for them by himself. But I did though.’
Marcie shook her head in disbelief. ‘You’ve got some front, Rita Taylor.’
Rita giggled. ‘See you in work on Monday then.’
Gone was the angry Rita she had argued with. She was gushing and looking pleased with herself.
She watched Rita mount the motorcycle, her skirt riding high. She cuddled the carrier bag between her breasts and Pete’s back, and waved as the bike moved off.
It’s none of your business, Marcie said to herself as she went into the shop, bought the bread and came out again. ‘Here,’ she said to baby Annie. ‘Hold on to that loaf of bread until we get home.’
Podgy hands reached out for the bread.
Marcie began to push. Annie gurgled and dribbled over the crusty corner of the bread. Marcie thought about stopping her, but held out against it. The poor kid was hungry. Her mother should look after her better. Her thoughts went back to Rita.
‘It’s none of your business,’ she said again, though out loud this time. If Rita got into trouble she only had herself to blame. She found herself wondering if Babs had ever been like Rita when she was younger. How could Rita face her father if she did find herself with a bun in the oven? Johnnies, French letters or whatever they were called, were known to split. Everybody knew that.
‘Silly cow! Silly, silly cow!’
‘You shouldn’t do that, you know.’ The voice that took her by surprise was slow and jerky.
Marcie knew who it was. ‘Alright then, Garth?’ She said it without looking round. Garth was over twenty-one but had the mind of a ten-year-old. He looked what he was – ungainly, awkward and scruffy.
She felt sorry for him, but he was hardly good company. Besides, she preferred to be alone with her thoughts.
Being offhand might put him off following her. Garth Davies. He lived with his mother in rooms above the shop. His mother being a bit of a gadabout, he was usually there by himself. Lonely and scruffy, he latched on to people like a stray dog pining for attention.
‘You shouldn’t be doing that,’ he said again. His voice was slurred as though his tongue was too big for his mouth. And he dribbled. Annie dribbling she could cope with. A grown man dribbling was something else. It made her feel a bit queasy.
Marcie rolled her eyes in exasperation. She wasn’t going to get away with it. Might as well stop long enough to put him off. She brought the pushchair to a standstill.
‘What’s that I shouldn’t be doing?’ she asked, eyeing the scruffy young man as though she might clip him around the ear.
Well used to admonishments, Garth turned sheepish.
‘You was talking to yerself,’ he said in that same slow tone. ‘Shouldn’t do that, you shouldn’t. Ma don’t like it. My Ma says people think you’re mad if you talk to yerself.’
Marcie was irritated. ‘Do I look mad, Garth? Do I look scruffy and speak in a stupid slow voice and follow people around?’
Her voice petered out. A strange glazed look came to Garth’s eyes. It was as though he had heard all this before and was now retreating to some secret place deep inside. The fingers of one hand intertwined with the other in nervous anticipation. People treated Garth cruelly just because he had the mind of a child.
In Marcie’s opinion Garth was a person to be pitied and that was how she felt, plus some guilt on behalf of herself. The tall gangly lad had watery blue eyes and a nose that seemed continuously to be running. He was supposedly the product of a wartime liaison with a Polish aviator, who had taken off when he’d found out about Edith Davies’s pregnancy. On top of that misfortune, poor Edith had gone through a difficult birth – or at least so ran the tale.
‘Well, I wouldn’t want to be thought mad, Garth. I’ll bear that in mind in future.’
When Garth smiled his teeth flashed like a row of lopsided tombstones. He began giggling inanely and only stopped when he wiped his nose on his sleeve. Once the snot was wiped away, he recommenced giggling.
Marcie began heading for home. Just as she’d feared, he began to follow her.
‘Where are you going?’ he asked, his head held to one side, almost as though he were trying to rub his ear against his shoulder.
‘Are you following me, Garth?’
Again he asked her where she was going.
‘Home.’
‘To your mother and your father?’
She shook her head. ‘To my grandmother. You know her, don’t you? Her name’s Auntie Rosa. She comes to your mother for a cup of tea now and again.’
His giggling stopped abruptly. ‘Auntie Rosa and the man.’
‘Auntie Rosa.’ She presumed the man was either a figment of his imagination or his mother’s latest man friend. Edith Davies took in lodgers now and again – difficult seeing as she only had one bedroom and a box room. Garth slept in the box room. His mother took up one half of the double bed in the other.
Garth rambled on, so Marcie didn’t pay too much attention as he went on to describe the man and what he had done or said.
‘My mother’s got a red dress, one like your mother’s.’
‘I don’t think so, Garth,’ she muttered, her mouth set in a straight line. Why had he mentioned her mother? He couldn’t possibly remember her and certainly not a red dress.
‘I s
aw her in it.’
‘No, Garth! You did not!’
She instantly regretted being snappish, but Garth had unnerved her. For the second time in a few days someone had mentioned her mother. For ages there’d been no mention and now there’d been two. Coincidence or something more? Coincidence, she decided. What else could it be?
People avoided Garth. He was one of life’s cast-offs, rejected from the moment he was born. His mother paid too much attention to her lodgers and not enough to her son. Poor Garth. There were moth holes in his pullover and the cuffs of his shirtsleeves flapped around his hands. His trousers were grey and shapeless and there was a line of grease around his shirt collar. He ponged a bit. Poor Garth had been named after a strong man in a comic strip, but didn’t – in fact, couldn’t – live up to his namesake.
Jabbering and giggling, he followed her all the way home and looked surprised when she came to a stop outside number ten.
He stared at the front door. ‘You going in there?’
‘Yes. This is where I live.’
She had been unfastening the straps holding Annie in the pushchair.
On looking up, she saw him stare at the house then wave. She looked to see who he was waving to. The window panes upstairs reflected the sky. Light to the downstairs windows was blanked out by the privet hedge. They reflected nothing; in fact they looked as though they weren’t glass at all – more like black bitumen squares.
She turned her attention back to Garth. A trickle of saliva oozed from the corner of his mouth. Her pity was like a lump in her throat.
‘Would you like to see the chickens, Garth?’
She didn’t really want to see the chickens herself. They were stupid creatures fit only to be eaten.
Garth’s slack jaw firmed up. He clapped and gasped like an excited child. ‘See the chickens! Cluck, cluck, cluck, cluck, cluck!’
‘Come on then.’
He followed her as she manoeuvred the pushchair up the garden path. She ordered him to stay there while she got the pushchair through the door.
Once inside she got Annie out of the pram.
‘Keep hold of the bread, Annie,’ she said.
Annie obeyed, her gummy mouth returning to suck at the corner of the loaf.
She heard raised voices. Gran was giving Marcie’s stepmother a piece of her mind. Cupping her ear against the door, she tried to hear what was being said. There was something about Babs being underhand, something about her being devious behind her mother-in-law’s back. Babs sounded as though she might be on the verge of tears. This I have to see, Marcie decided. She grabbed the door knob and pushed the door open.
‘Here we are,’ she said.
Her grandmother was sitting at the kitchen table. Silver-framed photographs, a duster and a can of silver polish were spread out in front of her. The family photographs usually sat on the high mantelpiece above the stove. Marcie’s grandfather dressed in his naval uniform smiled out from one. Another was of both grandparents on their wedding day; another still of Marcie’s father as a toddler. Regular as clockwork, Saturday morning was when her grandmother took them all down and polished the frames.
At the sight of her mother, Annie began to howl. Her little arms reached out for her grandmother.
Marcie smirked. ‘Annie loves her granny. Isn’t that sweet?’
She couldn’t help throwing a look of triumph at Babs who scowled back, picked up a duster and began polishing a photo frame.
Annie was cooing and chuckling in her grandmother’s arms.
Marcie placed the bread on the table plus the change from half a crown.
‘It’s chewed,’ said Babs on glimpsing the corner of the crusty loaf. ‘What did you let her do that for?’
‘She was hungry,’ said Marcie. ‘You need to feed her more often and not go out to the pub so much.’
Babs began to ease her wide backside out of her chair. ‘Less of your cheek …’
‘Barbara! Make your child some porridge!’
Rosa Brooks fixed her with a hard stare.
Marcie smirked. She loved hearing Babs being told what to do, but her grandmother’s eyes were everywhere. Her smirk was noticed.
‘And you, young lady. We will have some respect in this house.’
Marcie turned to leave.
‘Where do you think you’re off to?’
Small she might be, but Rosa Brooks could fill a room with her voice.
‘I’m taking Daft Garth to see the chickens.’
She’d presumed her act of compassion would save her from a telling off. She was wrong.
‘Do not call him that. Garth is a human being and one of God’s creatures, as are we all.’ She made the sign of the cross on her thin chest, her voice softer now. ‘Go on. Show the poor boy the chickens.’
Babs did as her mother-in-law directed, fed her child and made her a bottle. Soon the little brat was asleep and Babs was free to sit down with a magazine and have a smoke. However, it was difficult to concentrate. Her mother-in-law’s boot button eyes were boring into her.
‘You would leave and live in a council house rather than stay here with your family?’ Rosa’s voice was cold. Her daughter-in-law had done the unthinkable. She’d applied for and been given a council house. And all done without her – Rosa Brooks – knowing.
Babs stiffened but didn’t take her eyes from the words on the page. ‘I want my own place.’
‘Antonio will not allow that,’ Rosa exclaimed. She had great faith in her son. He put his family first above everything and cared about his mother’s welfare. That’s what she told herself and that is what she believed. Unfortunately he had not been lucky as far as matrimony was concerned. If Barbara was intending to take the whole family with her, Rosa would be left alone. Rosa did not want that; besides, she saw trouble looming. Babs was not the best of mothers. Things would fall apart. She was sure it would.
‘Antonio will want what I want,’ said Babs, blowing a cloud of smoke from pouting pink lips.
‘I will write to him,’ said Rosa.
‘Yeah! You do that.’
‘I will.’
Rosa threw down the tea towel and made her way to the living room and the dark oak bureau sitting in the corner. That’s where she did her letter writing.
Babs allowed herself a small smile of triumph. This time she had won the battle with the old witch. Soon she and Tony would have a new beginning – and a new house.
Throwing the magazine back onto the yellow-topped table she took a big puff on her fag and threw her arms in the air. That old bat – Rosa could write all the letters she liked. Tony was on his way home, though neither his mother nor his family knew that.
The old girl had supposedly received a message from the other side – pie in the sky as far as Babs was concerned. She, however, knew beyond doubt that Tony was coming home.
Reaching into her bra cup she withdrew the letter he’d sent her. Actually the letter was addressed to his mother, but Babs had got to the post first, recognised what it was and who it was from, and decided to keep it for herself. She was fed up of being bossed around, fed up of that cheeky little cow Marcie and her stuck-up ways. Not letting them know he was coming home was her way at getting back at them all. She would be there at the station to greet him.
Chapter Eight
Humbled by her grandmother’s reprimand, but relieved to be out of the house, Marcie rejoined Garth. He was standing where she’d left him, staring up at the front bedroom windows, with a stupid smile on his face.
‘This way.’
She got as far as the front gate before realising that he might not have heard her. When she looked he was still smiling stupidly up at the bedroom windows.
‘Garth!’ she called out.
It was as though the gangly, misshapen young man was a wooden puppet and someone had suddenly pulled a string. His head jerked round before his body. Another string and his body followed his head.
She led him along the front of the rank of hou
ses, turning at the end into the lane that ran along the back of the terrace. He made clucking sounds all the way and flapped his arms in a childish interpretation of a chicken.
It irritated her. She looked over her shoulder, mouth open ready to tell him to shut up. One look at his face and she clamped her mouth shut. He reminded her of Annie – happy and trusting, lost in a world of his own.
Tall nettles grew in big clumps the whole length of the stony lane. Too narrow to take a car, the back entrance was mainly used for coal deliveries, the coalmen carrying sack after sack along the lane and up the garden paths to the coal house.
Beady-eyed chickens strutted up and down their run, watching them approach. The back garden was empty, Archie and Arnold out playing along the beach with their friends.
Mr Ellis from two doors down was taking a rest from digging his nuclear fallout shelter. He mopped his brow and waved.
‘I’m going down a lot deeper than I planned,’ he called. ‘Got to be ready for the enemy now old Churchill is gone. I reckon I’ll be more ready for them than anyone else on Sheppey.’
‘That’s good,’ she called back, and wondered if he were right to be so diligent. Yes, she was aware that Sir Winston Churchill had died earlier that year but he’d been an old man who’d done well in the war. She also wondered if he was digging it big enough to take everyone in Endeavour Terrace seeing as no one else was bothering. Or would he lock them all out if the Russians did come?
Marcie used the tree stump at the side of the chicken hutch to get up on the roof. Garth declined her offer to join her there. He was absorbed in the chickens, clucking in response to their clucks and dipping and darting his head in the same manner. Being a chicken quite suited him. His hair was the colour of dark corn and formed what resembled a cock’s comb on the top of his head.
Poor thing. No dad and not much of a mother to speak of. Was it just getting pregnant and not being married that had made Edith Davies the way she was?
It occurred to her that if Rita didn’t watch herself she could end up the same way as Garth’s mother – what a chill thought that was. Though Alan Taylor did have the money to put things right.