The Past and Other Lies

by Maggie Joel

  ‘If it goes on too long there’ll be food shortages,’ warned Aunt Nora. ‘There were queues outside the butcher’s this morning. We’ve already begun rationing, haven’t we, Janie dear?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know about all this strike business,’ announced Mum, heaving herself to her feet, ‘but I’ve got the washing to start and your dad’ll still be home for his dinner at twelve.’

  ‘Shall we go and watch the strike?’ said Janie, holding Herbert out for Aunt Nora to take.

  ‘Watch it? What’s to see?’ said Jemima. ‘People hanging about waiting for the end of the world? I’d rather be stuck at home with Baby.’

  And that was exactly where she was for the rest of the day, though it was true that she spent a large portion of it watching the street from her bedroom window. Not that there was much to see. By afternoon High Street was deserted and Jemima began to wish she’d made some arrangement to see Bertha. Even tea at Oakton Way with the odious Mrs Lake and the shrivelled-up Aunt Daisy was preferable to being cooped up all day in the flat.

  By four o’clock things suddenly became more lively as the first workers began to drift back home again. By five, the street was teeming with a steadily increasing stream of pedestrians and a growing procession of vehicles. The noise and congestion grew alarmingly and onlookers stopped to watch, cheering loudly whenever a particularly colourful or overladen vehicle came into view.

  At that point Jemima, unable to remain alone in the flat a moment longer, went next door and persuaded Mrs Avery to take Baby for five minutes then hurried down the stairs to join the throng. She almost ran straight into Bertha and Janie, who popped out of the side passage and were about to knock on the downstairs door.

  ‘Jem! Come on! Come and watch the procession!’ said Janie. ‘Everyone’s out watching!’

  ‘I know, I know. I can see it from my window,’ Jemima replied, but she allowed herself to be led out to the street and they took up a position in front of the butcher’s.

  For an hour the noisy, colourful procession continued. At one point a scuffle broke out in front of the old fire station when a delivery van that had driven all the way up from the country tried to unload its goods and was met by a group of angry strikers. A carload of special constables came roaring up Gunnersbury Lane and screeched to a halt outside the shop, the constables diving into the scuffle to break it up. Dad wasn’t among them.

  ‘See? Armbands,’ said Jemima, pointing.

  ‘What a shame!’ said Janie, standing on tiptoe to see over the heads of two very large women with big hats. ‘I like a man in a uniform.’

  You’d like just about any man at this moment, thought Jemima.

  ‘Look! A bus!’ cried Bertha, and Jemima rolled her eyes because it had come to this, the three of them standing in High Street, excited because a bus was coming along. And yet here she was craning her neck as much as anyone to see another double-decker General come careering round the corner, a Union Jack fluttering on its bonnet, swerving erratically and nearly running into the back of the fruit delivery van. It braked, almost stalled, then set off again, and through the cab window Jemima could see a very young-looking chap pulling desperately at the gearstick. Beside him, the window was smashed and paint was daubed on the side of the bus obscuring the Gen of General. One or two game passengers sat outside braving catcalls from the onlookers, and on the back platform balanced a youthful conductor in a gaily striped blazer, holding grimly onto the rear handrail and clutching his ticket machine.

  Behind the bus ran a group of strikers in shirt sleeves and braces, keeping up a stream of abuse. They attempted to jump up onto the platform but with a neat swerve, whether deliberate or accidental Jemima couldn’t tell, the bus evaded them and plunged down Gunnersbury Lane. Which route the bus was following was a mystery and perhaps that wasn’t the point.

  ‘Demo tonight! Demo this evening at Horn Lane Cinema!’ cried a man in an armband who was working his way through the crowd handing out badly printed fliers, one of which he gave to Jemima. ‘Demonstration in support of the strike, tonight at six thirty sharp! Horn Lane Cinema!’ he said, moving off.

  ‘How daft! Do they think we have nothing better to do?’ said Jemima, dropping the flier on the ground.

  ‘Oh, do let’s go!’ pleaded Bertha.

  ‘I wish we had armbands,’ sighed Janie.

  But her disappointment was quickly forgotten as the distant strains of a brass band could be heard further down the street. Around them the crowd strained to see. The sounds of the band grew louder and someone called out, ‘It’s the Band of the Royal Marines!’ and someone else shouted ‘It’s the Metropolitan Police Band!’ but as the band finally came into view a large banner identified the Acton Labour Party, led by the band of the National Union of Railwaymen, which wasn’t quite as good but everyone cheered anyway. The marchers strode proudly past, many of the men wearing their War medals, and there were women, too, among their ranks and Bertha waved excitedly as though she knew them all personally.

  ‘Careful, don’t want Mr Lake to see you cheering the enemy,’ remarked Jemima above the noise. Bertha pulled her hand down and bit her lip.

  Afterwards everyone made their way to All Saints parish hall where an impromptu concert had been organised. The headline artists—a Miss Valda Langhorne, pianist, and a Mr Tommy Scarlet, comic and entertainer—failed to turn up because of the strike, so the vicar and Miss Morgan from the Women’s Institute had to improvise. Lots of people got up to do turns and sing songs and it was all very hilarious and at last Jemima could stand it no more and got up to leave.

  Outside it was dusk and a small crowd had gathered in front of the parish noticeboard to read badly printed and hastily pasted-up copies of something called The British Citizen and something else equally makeshift called The British Worker and it didn’t take much brain power to decide which side had produced which newspaper. She couldn’t imagine why anyone was bothering to read either of them, when all that one paper was going to report was the glory of the noble workers and all the other paper was going to say was beware the Red Scourge.

  ‘Mrs Booth—Jemima!’

  It was Matthew coming out of the darkness, wearing an armband.

  Jemima stopped politely, raised her head and greeted him cordially.

  ‘Good evening, Matthew. Bertha said you were driving the buses,’ she said airily, making it clear such things did not impress her.

  ‘Indeed I have been—I enrolled after the evening sorting and have been out on the number 17C to Putney and back!’ He made it sound as if Putney were somewhere off in the African Veldt.

  ‘Does the 17C go to Putney?’ inquired Jemima suspiciously.

  Matthew looked a little abashed. ‘No, I don’t believe so—not normally—but these are testing times. And my conductor was supposed to be navigating but he was a young chap from Taunton. Up here studying engineering. We ran the gauntlet, you know,’ he added, and Jemima was surprised to note a glimmer of excitement in his normally dull postal clerk’s eyes. ‘Quite a set-to we had at Hammersmith. Hooligans chucking bricks and so forth.’

  ‘You went to Putney...via Hammersmith?’

  In the light from the streetlamp she saw him flush. ‘Testing times, Mrs Booth—Jemima.’

  She wished he’d stop calling her ‘Mrs Booth—Jemima’. It was quite irritating.

  ‘Well, clearly it’s all very exciting,’ she observed, stifling a yawn. ‘However, I’ve got Baby to feed and Ronnie will no doubt be home and wanting his tea.’

  Would Ronnie be home for his tea? She wasn’t entirely sure.

  ‘Oh,’ said Matthew, ‘I oughtn’t let you go home alone, not with gangs roaming the streets,’ and he hesitated as though seeking someone from whom he could ask permission to accompany her.

  ‘Don’t bother, I hardly think a gang is going to roam into me. Anyway, Bertha’s in there...’ She indicated with her thumb the church behind her just as a raucous burst of laughter erupted from the direction of the hall.r />
  ‘Ah yes, I gathered this was where everyone was headed.’

  Matthew hesitated, seemingly torn between an archaic sense of gentlemanly duty and a fear of what his wife might think of him going off without her. Jemima stood coolly by and watched his discomfort with interest.

  ‘It is rather dark,’ she said, looking around and giving a little shiver.

  And that seemed to clinch it.

  ‘I’ll go and find Bertha and let her know I shall return once I’ve seen you safely home,’ and he scuttled off towards the hall.

  Enjoying the idea that Ronnie might have come home and found her not there, and even more the idea that she might return home late with her brother-in-law in tow, Jemima waited impatiently for Matthew’s return. He did so after some minutes, apologising and, she could see, a little awkward.

  ‘They’re having an interval,’ he said breathlessly. ‘Looks set to go on for a while yet so I said I would escort you home then get back for the second half.’

  ‘If you like,’ she replied, making it clear these domestic arrangements were all very dull. She held out her arm and he took it quickly, as though embarrassed not to have offered her his arm first, and they set off towards High Street.

  Despite the threat of roaming gangs, the streets were all but deserted now and their footsteps echoed in unison as they walked along the pavement. Her brother-in-law was, Jemima noted, much taller and broader than Ronnie, his voice deeper, his face clean-shaven and not in need of the drooping moustache that Ronnie sported.

  ‘You are very brave, volunteering on the buses, Matthew,’ she observed suddenly, surprising them both. She felt him stand up taller, his head go back.

  ‘Oh well. I should hope we all know our duty in difficult times.’

  ‘Bertha supports the strikers, you know.’ She felt him stiffen.

  ‘Ah now, there I think you are mistaken. She understands the importance of maintaining discipline and order.’

  ‘Did she come and see you off when you enrolled and set off on your first shift?’ Jemima inquired, knowing full well that Bertha had been waving to the Acton Labour Club marchers at about that time.

  ‘It’s hardly a woman’s place,’ he answered stiffly.

  ‘I would have come and waved you off,’ said Jemima softly.

  There was a silence.

  ‘Do you think they will take on women bus conductors?’ she mused. ‘And drivers? After all, women drove buses and ambulances in the War.’

  ‘I don’t think it will come to that.’

  ‘I’d volunteer if they did. Perhaps they would put me on your bus? Wouldn’t that be funny? I could navigate you to Putney and I wouldn’t be scared of any stone-throwing gangs either.’

  ‘I’m sure it won’t come to that,’ repeated Matthew doggedly.

  ‘Would you like to have me on your bus?’

  It was easy, it was so, so easy in the dark, walking side by side, hand on arm, feet marching in unison, staring straight ahead, not a soul around. No one to hear you, no one to see your expression. Just words uttered in the darkness. Words you would never dare to utter in daylight, with other people around.

  ‘I—Of course I would not doubt your capabilities—or your courage!—but I would be concerned for your safety...’

  ‘Would you? How sweet.’ She moved a little closer to him, for protection.

  They had turned into High Street and Jemima glanced up at the flat. It was dark, no lights on. Ronnie not back then? Maybe he’d been arrested. Maybe Dad had arrested him.

  ‘Looks like no one’s home. You will come up, won’t you, to see me safely in?’

  ‘Yes, of course. Mr Booth...?’

  ‘Oh, he’s off playing strikers somewhere.’

  ‘But the baby?’

  ‘Oh, Baby’s alright. Mrs Avery next door’s minding.’ At least she hoped Baby was alright, realising she had left Baby with Mrs Avery for five minutes five hours ago.

  They reached the butcher’s and Jemima led the way down the dingy side passage to her porch, then up the unlit stairs to the landing, where she unlocked the door and let them in.

  Matthew remained determinedly silent as he stood politely to one side to allow her to pass and she realised he had never been to the flat before. She experienced a moment of shame at this, her home, a poky flat above a foul-smelling butcher’s shop. Ronnie’s work clothes lay in piles, Baby’s nappies hung all over the place and yesterday’s tea and today’s breakfast things were still piled up in the kitchen sink. But what did it matter? At least she wasn’t still living with Mum and Dad.

  ‘Come on,’ she said, leading the way into the small lounge. She brushed Ronnie’s papers and journals off the armchair and pushed Baby’s clothes out of the way with her foot. Matthew stood in the centre of the room looking too big, his hands hanging awkwardly at his side.

  ‘Ronnie’s out. Those union demonstrations go on all night sometimes. Often it’s just Baby and me here on our own.’

  ‘Really?’ said Matthew, clearing his throat. ‘That’s not, well... Can’t be very pleasant for you.’

  ‘Oh, it’s not. Not at all. It’s not what a woman expects from a marriage.’ Jemima sighed.

  ‘No, I’m sure. It can’t be.’ He frowned.

  ‘Still, I expect I’ll be alright here on my own. It seems mostly quiet now.’

  ‘Yes, yes it does. Erm...’ He hesitated. ‘Perhaps I ought to stay until Mr Booth returns?’

  ‘But sometimes he doesn’t return until morning.’ And then before he could reply, ‘Why don’t you sit down? Take your coat off. We have some brandy in the cupboard—that’ll warm us,’ and she went to the cupboard and poured a nip each into two short glasses, one of which she held out to Matthew.

  ‘I suppose I ought to return soon, they’ll be—Bertha will be waiting,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ said Jemima, and she watched as he took the glass and drank from it.

  It was day two of the strike and Things, Bertha had announced importantly, Were Escalating. The newspapers pinned up on the church noticeboard reported that yesterday two million workers had gone on strike, a figure that was set to double over the next few days. Only a handful of tube trains were running, less than a tenth of the buses and a dozen or so trams. Congestion on the main roads had doubled. People were rising at five to ride bicycles or go on foot to work. Delivery vans and carts ran the gauntlet of the strikers to bring food supplies in from the country, and fights were breaking out as workers attempted to secure a seat in any vehicles that might get them to the office.

  Bertha and Janie turned up at the flat a little after eight. Janie was pushing the dribbling Herbert in his perambulator, and was full of excitement because a vanload of cabbages had been spilled all over High Street and a horse had slipped on them and broken its leg and had had to be destroyed.

  Jemima listened impatiently. Ronnie, it was clear, had not gone in to work yesterday, though he had said nothing when he had come home some time after midnight, flushed and excited but uncommunicative. And what would happen if he lost his job?

  She dismissed the thought irritably. There were, after all, more pressing things to think about. She reached for her hat, glancing at Bertha, but her sister was impassively dabbing a handkerchief at Herbert’s chin as though babies’ dribble was all that mattered. Then, ‘When did Ronnie get back last night?’ Bertha asked, cool as you please. ‘Is he involved in the strike?’ As though it was any of her business what her sister’s husband got up to!

  ‘Oh, he was back quite early,’ Jemima replied tartly, pulling on her coat and doing up the buttons despite it being a warm spring day outside. ‘Though the Lord only knows what he’d been up to. I couldn’t be bothered asking.’ That, at least, had been the truth.

  ‘Oh,’ was all Bertha said, but she continued to stand there and stare.

  ‘Well? Are we going out, or are we going to stand about here all day and miss all the fun?’ Jemima replied briskly. Quite apart from changing the subje
ct she was anxious to get the loathsome Herbert and his incessant dribble out of her home.

  ‘Up we go little man!’ Janie announced, swinging the baby ceilingward so that an arc of dribble sprayed across the floor. ‘Who’s a funny little man, then?’ she added and Jemima handed her own baby to Bertha and silently held the front door open.

  Outside the street had calmed after the morning rush but there was still plenty to see so they strolled along High Street with linked arms, pushing the two perambulators between them.

  They came across Dad almost at once.

  ‘Look! There he is! Over there!’

  Bertha pointed and on the far side of the road over by the railway bridge they could see Dad, proudly sporting his scarlet armband, standing amid a group of other special constables. She and Janie stood and waved and Jemima took the opportunity to park Baby’s perambulator and flop down on a low wall.

  ‘What’s he guarding then?’ said Janie, waving enthusiastically.

  ‘The Lord only knows.’

  ‘Perhaps they’ve had a tip-off!’

  ‘About what? A horse?’

  ‘No! A police tip-off. Extremists. You know! Planning on blowing up the bridge.’

  But they could see a large tea urn beneath the archway bubbling away on a smoky brazier and it seemed more likely the special constables were there for their morning cuppa.

  ‘Oh,’ said Janie, disappointed. ‘Where shall we go now then?’

  ‘We could go to the bus garage?’ suggested Bertha. ‘Matthew drove the early shift so they ought to be getting back to the garage soon. We could watch them come in.’

  It was on the tip of Jemima’s tongue to point out that if the number 17C had followed a similar route to yesterday it could be some considerable time before it arrived back at the garage. But instead she said, ‘Yes alright,’ in a bored voice and off they set.

  They had got as far as the Red Lion when the number 184 London Bridge bus, barbed wire fastened to both flanks, came careering out of the garage surrounded by a loud and angry mob of strikers. As the bus turned into High Street it swerved, mounting the pavement ahead of them.