by Pip Granger
Auntie Maggie and I had a lovely comforting routine for the times when I was a bit under the weather. She started by putting a match to the fire in my bedroom. The fire was always laid for action but only lit when I had to stay in my room for some reason, usually illness. I normally loved that fire but this time I really didn’t think I fancied it. I’d had enough of fires for the time being, even a friendly one. Auntie Maggie tutted a bit, because there was always a fire in a sickroom, sometimes even in August. She understood, though, when I explained that I was a off fires for a bit. We agreed that the weather was warm enough as long as I wore my winter nightie and Auntie Flo’s most recent bedjacket when I sat up to read or eat. The plump eiderdown was to remain on the bed at all times. Once terms were agreed, we were free to get on with the next bit of our ritual.
I had three winter flannelette nighties with little rosebuds, one pink, one blue and my least favourite, the yukky-coloured yellow one. That day it was the pink. The blue was in the wash, and the yellow was neatly folded in the airing cupboard waiting for emergencies. Once on, the nightie reached to my ankles, and the long sleeves and high neck were buttoned up until the only flesh showing was my mush and my hands and feet. Next came the pink knitted bedjacket, a rather boring part of my Christmas present from Auntie Flo and Uncle Sid, who lived in a boarding house by the sea. At least it was boring until I was stuck in bed; then it was snuggly, warm and wonderful. Auntie Flo knitted all my bedjackets over the years and she made a point of using the softest, cosiest wool and pretty ribbons to tie them at the throat. She was all right, was my auntie Flo.
Once Auntie Maggie had me tucked up in bed, she made sure I had plenty of reading matter, paper, pencils and crayons on the bedside table, ready to ward off the dreaded boredom. It helped Auntie Maggie if I was busy and content because she could carry on downstairs in the cafe without worrying too much about me.
When I was settled with my heap of books, comics, notebook and drawing book, the radio was ceremoniously brought in from the living room and plugged in. Then I could keep abreast of Mrs Dale and her Jim. Music While You Work was all right as background noise and, if I was desperate, Listen With Mother, which was actually meant for the little kids but was followed by Woman’s Hour which I just loved. It was full of inspiring stories of women doing amazing things like knocking up a three piece suite from pipecleaners or walking across the Himalayas with a yak.
The schools programmes could be fun. I liked to work up a good gloat that I wasn’t prancing around being a tree or a fairy with my skirt tucked into my knickers. At such moments, I really pitied my school chums in a self-satisfied sort of way. If the programmes were about history or nature, they could be very interesting. I liked to hear about Florence Nightingale, Good Queen Bess, the Romans or the life of the common newt. I would wait with varying degrees of patience for my favourite programme, which came on at five in the afternoon: Children’s Hour with David Davis reading the stories and serials. I just loved his voice. Then on Saturday mornings there was good old Uncle Mac who was an absolute must. Of course, to really appreciate this feast of radio fun, I had to be feeling relatively well. Yaks, newts and pipecleaners were no good at all if I had a raging fever, because they all sort of melted in together and got confusing. In fact, to enjoy being off sick from school I had to be in pretty good nick, because there was so much to do.
Then there was the grub. My personal favourite invalid foods were soft boiled eggs and Marmite soldiers. Mrs Wong’s homemade chicken noodle soup and Mamma Campanini’s special ravioli. Swollen tonsils responded well to Italian chocolate ice cream, I always found, and lemon and honey was bliss for a cold. Homemade egg custard was also a favourite, especially if it had a sprinkle of nutmeg on the top and a vanilla pod added to the boiled milk and fished out before it went into the oven. Auntie Maggie was a dab hand at egg custard. But then, my beloved auntie Maggie was a dab hand at most things.
At last I was settled, with the radio burbling hymns quietly in the background as I waited for something good to come on and Tom, our lace-eared old cat, snoring and purring gently at the end of the bed. I’d eaten every scrap of my boiled egg and soldiers, and at last Auntie Maggie was satisfied that I’d be all right for an hour or so on my own. With a last feel of my brow and a kiss on the top of my curls, she was gone. I was utterly content all morning and after dinner – ravioli from Campanini’s – all through Woman’s Hour. But then, once that was over and there was only boring music to listen to until Mrs Dale came on, I remembered Uncle Bert saying that it was the Widow Ginger with his oily rag and matches who had set fire to Maltese Joe’s clubs, and all peace and contentment drained away, leaving a feeling of dread I could neither shift nor put a name to. Just as I was feeling as if a rat was gnawing at my belly, Paulette came into the room and I hurled myself at her, sobbing and hiccuping with relief.
The good thing about Paulette was that she never told me I was daft to worry. She just listened seriously to my garbled terror and agreed that the Widow Ginger was a frightening man, but she also pointed out that he was not stupid enough to try anything in broad daylight, and that anyway it was Maltese Joe he was really after. She also thought that he wouldn’t do anything else until he had seen how well his first efforts had paid off.
This reasoning made sense to me and I calmed down quite a bit. Then I threw up my dinner, and realized I probably really was ill.
The last thing I remember was Paulette wiping my forehead with a cool wet flannel and changing my nightie for the yukky yellow one, still warm from the airing cupboard. Then it was night time and Auntie Maggie was sitting by my bed with her knitting and the radio tuned quietly to Book at Bedtime. I don’t know why Auntie Maggie was knitting, because she wasn’t very good at it and only made what she called ‘toe covers’. These were scrappy little bits that served only to keep her hands busy in times of crisis. When the crisis was over, the scraps were carefully unravelled and the wool saved for the next time. That poor ball of grey wool must have been knitted up a thousand times before it finally got too thin to use.
I was boiling hot and the glands in my throat were huge and bulged like an overfed hamster. It turned out that, like half of my school, I had mumps.
I had a lot of nightmares during that illness. I’d wake up red hot and sweaty, convinced that the cafe was on fire and that any minute now the flames would creep up the stairs and burst through my bedroom door and eat me alive. That’s when I didn’t think the Widow Ginger was lurking in my wardrobe just waiting for a quiet moment to jump out with a huge pair of tweezers ready to fix me on a slide under a giant microscope. I could see a puzzled cold fish eye gazing down at me through the eyepiece, wondering what manner of bug I was and whether I should be swatted or dropped into the fire so that I fizzled and hissed and burned until I popped. It was awful.
The daylight hours were nowhere as bad because the bogeymen tend to hate the full glare of the sun, and anyway, I had lots of visitors. Luigi often came and read to me. He was good at reading aloud and did all the actions and voices. Madame Zelda said that he should have been an actor, what with his looks and everything. Gina Lollobrigida was a very famous Italian actress at the time and Madame Zelda reckoned that Luigi was a sort of blokey equivalent. I suppose she was right, although Luigi didn’t have the same sort of chest as ‘La Lollo’ – which Paulette said was just as well.
Madame Zelda and Paulette took it in turns to look after me when Auntie Maggie was busy in the cafe. Sometimes, when I was feeling particularly poorly, they looked after the cafe while Auntie Maggie soothed me. Uncle Bert made regular trips up the stairs when he could get away from his kitchen for long enough. He always managed to magic something interesting from my nose or lug’oles. When I was still feeling sick he found cigarette cards for my albums, always just the one I wanted to finish off a set or to start another one. When the queasiness left me, gobstoppers and sherbet dabs mysteriously appeared from here, there and everywhere. Sometimes he would just sit in front of the
cold fireplace, with me wrapped in a blanket on his lap, and tell me stories about when he was a little boy and the scrapes he got into. I loved those times the best. Even better than sherbet dabs, and I was devoted to them. I can still feel my cheek resting cosily against the rough cloth of his waistcoat and smell the combination of Lifebuoy soap, pipe tobacco and fry-up that clung to him almost as closely as I did.
19
Just because I was poorly, it didn’t mean that I missed out on what was going on in my world. Well, I didn’t once the worst of the fever was over; my constant stream of visitors and my terrible nosiness saw to that. If information wasn’t volunteered, then I asked endless and very pointed questions. Auntie Maggie always said that asking questions was rude, but I took no notice and asked away without a trace of shame. I think that secretly she was glad, because she got to find out quite a bit as well.
Take the romance between Betty and Luigi. Being laid up in bed, I hadn’t had the chance to watch what was going on and draw my own conclusions, so I was forced to use more direct means. I grilled everyone who came through that bedroom door. I learned from Paulette that there had been two more dates. Once they’d gone to Luigi’s favourite jazz club and the other time they’d spent a Sunday at Richmond Park. I learned from Madame Zelda that, despite the legendary Campanini powers of persuasion, Betty had stayed upright on her own two feet at all times, except when she was sitting down. At no point had she been flat on her back, with or without her legs in the air. What’s more, Luigi still hadn’t even managed to get into her flat, let alone her knickers. Unfortunately, Auntie Maggie came in and tutted at her pal at that point, so I got no more juicy speculation on that visit. However, I wasn’t above giving Betty and Luigi the third degree either.
I started with the black eye. Knowing how touchy men can be about such things, I decided Betty was the best one to pump for more information on that score. I lulled her into a false sense of security first, asking politely about her health and so on, then I pounced. ‘Why did Maltese Joe black Luigi’s eye, Betty?’ There’s nothing like suddenly going for the direct approach. It catches people unawares.
‘Because he was jealous, love. He’d heard that Luigi and me had been stepping out a bit and he didn’t like it. Still doesn’t. Poor Luigi has to wait outside the club to take me home now. Joe won’t let him in, the silly man.’ You’d expect Betty to look pleased with herself, with two men after her but she didn’t. She just looked a bit worried.
‘Which one do you like the most?’ I thought it was best to clear this matter up from the start.
‘Well, they’re both nice in their way, Rosie, but Joe’s married, so as far as I’m concerned, that’s that. Take my advice, Rosie dear. When you’re a big girl, never trouble with a married man. A man who betrays his wife is a man who will betray anybody. That’s what I’ve come to think, anyway. Course, not everyone would agree with me, especially married blokes with roving eyes, but it’s always served me all right as a general rule of thumb.’
I couldn’t work out what thumbs had to do with it, but I didn’t want to spoil the flow by asking, so I didn’t. For all her many faults, my mum didn’t breed any dumbos, so I knew when I was being sidetracked. Betty hadn’t answered my question, but as Uncle Bert always said, I’m like a ‘bleeding terrier’ when I get my teeth into something and I wasn’t about to let go. ‘Yes, but which one do you like best?’
Betty looked at me for a long time with those bird’s egg eyes of hers, a tiny worried frown creasing her perfect brow. I gazed back, stunned by just how beautiful she was. Even I could see why men would be fighting over her, and for the first time I found myself worrying about poor Luigi’s safety. Everyone knew that Maltese Joe was several scruples short of a conscience and wouldn’t think more than twice about maiming Luigi if he got in his way.
When at last Betty answered, she chose her words carefully. ‘Rosie, I like them both. But I don’t love either one and that’s the honest truth.’ It seemed a relief for her to blurt it out. ‘I know Luigi’s really smitten, and if I could, I’d be smitten back. He’s a really nice boy, kind, gentle, sweet, but …’
I kept my gob shut and we just carried on staring at each other in a sad kind of way. I don’t know what she was thinking, exactly, but I know that I stopped worrying about Luigi getting his bones broken and started worrying about his poor heart being shattered instead. Somehow I just knew that would be a far more serious injury for him to bear. All the cafe women and Sugar Plum were agreed, we had never seen Luigi in such a state about a woman before, it was as if he was mesmerized. I knew that when it dawned on him that he was getting nowhere he would take it hard, very hard indeed.
Betty shuddered and beamed me a gorgeous smile, full of perfect teeth and warmth. ‘I’m working on it, though, Rosie. He’s a good man, one of the very best, and I know he would make a terrific husband and a lovely father, so I’m working on it. I’m not that much of an idiot that I don’t know when I’ve got hold of a good one. Decent blokes are about as common as hen’s teeth, I know that …’ Betty’s voice trailed away to nothing again, and instead of staring at each other, we both got lost in the dancing flames of the fire for a bit.
I decided that she had answered my question. She preferred Luigi, but that wasn’t saying much, judging by how sad it seemed to make us both feel. Then she said, ‘How about a game of beat your neighbour out of doors?’ And the mood was broken.
I told my beloved auntie Maggie all about that conversation later on, when she came to tuck me in and kiss me goodnight. She also looked sad for a moment, but then got all hearty. ‘Well, I keep telling you not to ask people personal questions. It’s like listening at keyholes. You don’t always like what you get to hear. Now, snuggle down like a good girl and, if you play your cards right, I’ll let you listen to Take It From Here.’
I played my cards right. It was only when the programme was over and I was well and truly kissed goodnight, that I realized that Auntie Maggie had failed to assure me that everything was sure to turn out for the best. I fell asleep determined to find out from Luigi how he felt about Betty. I was still plotting how best to approach the subject when I must have fallen asleep.
The next thing I knew was Auntie Maggie was rattling the poker, trying to coax some life back into the fire, opening curtains and singing out, ‘Morning love. Uncle Bert’ll have your breakfast up in a jiffy. P’raps you can get up later if you feel like it. The water’s hot. You can have a nice bath and a hairwash.’
I could never understand how Auntie Maggie could get the words, ‘nice’, ‘bath’ and ‘hairwash’ into the same sentence. Hairwashing always meant stinging eyes, a cold, wet neck and much tugging and yanking on my curls. I hated it, especially in cold weather. But the thought of wet curls reminded me of Luigi with his surprising spikes when his hair was wet, and my plan to ply him with cunning questions about Betty.
I knew the direct approach was less likely to work with him, on account of him being a bloke and therefore incapable of talking about his finer feelings. It would take what Uncle Bert called guile, and as I gronfed my scrambled eggs on toast, I laid my plans. Complicated they were, and as it happened, totally unnecessary, because life was about to overtake me in all sorts of ways. When I thought of it again, it was perfectly obvious how Luigi felt, so there was no need to ask.
20
It was my first trip downstairs in what felt like months, but was not much more than a week. I was sitting at the corner table with Madame Zelda and Luigi and munching my breakfast, when one of Luigi’s brothers-in-law walked in.
He saw Luigi immediately and hurried over to our table. ‘Luigi, we’ve clocked him. Last night, coming out of Ruby’s place.’ The urgency in his voice made everyone pay attention, even though only Luigi seemed to know what he was talking about.
Madame Zelda soon put that right. ‘You two may know who you’re muttering about, but the rest of us are looking for enlightenment, so cough it up, Luigi.’
Before
opening his mouth, Luigi took a careful look around the cafe, to see who was earwigging, then he leaned forward and hissed just two words: ‘The Widow.’ Immediately, an army of penguins with frozen feet seemed to be marching down my back. I shivered and I swear my teeth began to rattle.
‘Did you follow him? Did you find his gaff?’ Now Luigi’s voice was sharp.
‘Yes, we followed him, but no, we didn’t find his place. He lost us when he grabbed the only cab in bleeding Streatham. We didn’t even hear where he told it to go. Sod gave us a little wave as he drove past. We did find out one thing, though. We went back to Ruby’s and one of the lads there said he was a regular. In at least once a week. A fiver bought us the whole story. They’re scared shitless of him but he pays well for what they call “special services”, which seem to be more than a little light bum-slapping. I’ll leave it for you to work out. Makes me feel uncle just thinking about all that sort of stuff. I mean, I don’t mind giving a geezer a bit of a slap if he’s earned it, like, but to do it for the jollies, well, as I said, makes me wanna heave. If you ask me, there’s not much wrong with your old woman, your basic missionary and a nice Woodbine after. Still, it does mean that he’ll have to go back there or somewhere similar, and, let’s face it, there ain’t too many houses that cater for the pervs. And being foreign, he most likely doesn’t know about the others, so Ruby’s it’ll be, I reckon.’
I could not for the life of me work out what they were talking about, except that the Widow had been spotted. Neither Madame Zelda nor Luigi would explain, either, and then Auntie Maggie came over to the table and decided I was getting over-excited, and maybe a little lie down was in order. In desperation I asked her what ‘special services’ meant, but when she heard why I wanted to know she went all vague on me.
‘It could mean anything, lovey. They say special services in church for people who are very poorly or something. In a caff, special services would mean something like silver service, I expect, like what Paulette does at the Corner House: a little black dress, a white pinny and a cap and messing about with all that silverware. You know, serving a cake with a pair of silver tongs or two silver forks. It’s having all the right knives and forks and spoons for everything and serving the soup from a tureen and having proper soup spoons and fish knives.’