by Anne Bennett
‘Then the rent should present no problem to him,’ Flatterly said, handing Meg back half a crown. ‘So next week I will return myself. I will want the full rent and a good bit off the arrears, otherwise I can make life very uncomfortable for all of you.’
Meg scuttled inside as soon as she could, shut the door and leaned against it. She felt really shaken. Flatterly’s animosity had been almost tangible.
‘Phew, sis!’ Terry said.
‘You heard that?’
‘Every word.’
‘We must make Daddy realise that Richard Flatterly will have us out of this house without a qualm if we don’t pay off something next week,’ Meg said.
‘I think so too.’
‘We have to make Daddy see that,’ Meg repeated. ‘But just for now, the problem is making the money I have left stretch, so tomorrow night you and I will go to the Bull Ring just before the stallholders close up and see what they are throwing out that we can use.’
It was what the really poor people did. Meg had seen them a few times: be-shawled women holding keening babies, usually with stick-thin children in tow as well, dressed in little more than rags. She had pitied them. Never had she imagined that she’d be joining them. Terry was looking at her, appalled.
‘Don’t look at me like that, Terry,’ she cried. ‘I like this no better than you, but it’s what we must do to survive.’
‘There’s no other way?’
‘Not that I can see.’
Terry sighed. ‘S’pose we must then.’
So the following evening, Terry and Meg grabbed two shopping bags they hoped to fill with cheap meat and vegetables. Ruth was safely in her cradle in the bedroom, and she was sound asleep, as was Billy. Sally and Jenny, were also drowsy, yet still Meg hesitated to leave them as her father was down at the Swan.
‘We’ll have to go if we’re going,’ Terry said. ‘It’s a fair step.’
‘D’you think they will be all right?’
‘Of course,’ Terry said heartily. ‘What could happen to them?’
Then, as Meg still dithered, he opened the door. ‘Come on, Meg. We’ll go past May’s and ask her to keep a lookout. And Dad’s not a million miles away.’
‘Huh,’ said Meg, stepping onto the street beside him. ‘He might as well be in Outer Mongolia. A fat lot of use he’ll be with a bellyful of beer inside him.’
‘I don’t know so much,’ Terry said. ‘When we told him about Richard Flatterly and what he said, it did shake him up.’
‘Yes,’ Meg said, ‘but how much? Didn’t bother him enough to offer me extra money . .’
‘Mmm, I suppose you’re right,’ Terry said. ‘But you would hardly let him near Ruth.’
‘He wouldn’t go near her anyway, Terry, not by choice,’ Meg said. ‘I really think he would like to pretend that she doesn’t exist.’
Terry knew what Meg said was true but there was no point keeping on about it so after a while he said, ‘I wish we didn’t have to skulk around for leftovers, but it will be nice to see the Bull Ring on a Saturday night,’ Meg smiled. ‘Yeah, it will and we can have a little look around. The stallholders won’t be giving stuff away till they’re near to closing up.’
When they reached the cobbled streets of the bustling market place it was almost as busy as it was in daytime, but they weren’t surprised, for they’d heard lots of stories about the entertainment to be had on Saturday nights in the Bull Ring. It was even better when darkness seeped into the light summer night because then the spluttering gas flares were lit and the Bull Ring was transformed into something resembling fairyland. Terry and Meg walked around looking at the stalls, edging between men dressed up to the nines, even wearing top hats, moving effortlessly on very tall stilts.
Elsewhere a boxing ring had been erected and inside it was a bare-fisted burly boxer, challenging the watching men to a fight. There was a prize of five pounds if any knocked him down, but there were no takers.
‘Too early see, ducks,’ an old woman said to Meg and Terry as they turned away. ‘When the men have enough beer inside them, they’ll think they can climb Everest and beat the champ with one hand tied behind their back.’
‘Have you ever seen it done?’ Terry asked. ‘Has anyone knocked him down?’
The woman gave a cackle of laughter. ‘Well, if they have then I’ve never seen it,’ she said. ‘And I don’t know how that man gets out of the chains either, ’cos I’ve examined them more than once.’
‘What man? What chains?’ Terry asked, and the woman pointed to a corner in front of Hobbies shop. They wandered over to see a man trussed up like a chicken. A table was put over him and a large shimmering gold sheet laid over that by his assistant. There was a lot of movement behind the sheet, a roll of drums, and then before they knew it, the man stood in front of them, unfettered and unharmed.
Even Meg was impressed. Then, as they were making their way to the area behind the Market Hall where a group of ragged-looking women were beginning to gather, Terry suddenly sniffed the air.
‘What’s that smell?’
‘Hot potatoes,’ Meg said. ‘And they taste as delicious as they smell, but I’m afraid we have no money for such things.’
‘I know,’ Terry said resignedly.
Meg suddenly felt very sorry for her young brother, but there was nothing she could do about it. They passed a man prostrate on a bed of nails. Terry’s eyes were standing out on stalks, for not only was the man lying there as if it was the most comfortable bed in all Christendom, but there was a young man standing on top of him. The girls standing around were giving little cries of alarm, but the man, whose brown skin gleamed in the light from the flares, and who was scantily clad with only a white cloth wrapped around his loins, appeared to feel no pain. Indeed, he had a big smile on his face.
‘How does he do that?’ Terry whispered to Meg when they were out of earshot.
‘Search me,’ Meg said. ‘There must be some sort of trick to it, but for the life of me I can’t see what it is. I mean, you could see the nails pressing into the man’s skin.’
‘Not half,’ Terry said.
Some of the stallholders were getting ready to close up and Meg handed Terry one of the bags. ‘It is better if we stand apart from one another,’ she said. ‘We may get more that way.’
When Meg took her place in the small group, though, she looked at the scrawny-looking woman with gaunt-faced children and felt as if she had no place there. Some of the children looked as if they had never had a square meal in the whole of their lives and their mothers seemed resigned to the fact that they were not able to feed their children adequately. Meg knew she needn’t have been there if her father had tipped up enough housekeeping. But then she reminded herself that her father was not the only man in Birmingham who put his love of drink above the welfare of his family. Any of these women could be in a similar boat to herself. Thinking of her siblings, she stepped forward determinedly.
She had expected to feel embarrassed and ashamed, accepting food without paying, but the stall owners didn’t mind that much – if they didn’t give the food away, they would have to throw it away. The butcher and his assistant nearest to Meg tried to be fair and give something to everyone in the jostling crowd surrounding them. Meg was given a sizeable piece of pork and she was also offered some wizened-looking carrots from the stall selling fruit and veg and some peas still in their pods. Terry, standing by another butcher, had come away with a large ham bone with lots of meat still on it, and some slices of liver. He had also dived under barrows to collect anything that might have fallen off in the course of the day and had come up with a few apples, a cabbage and a fair few potatoes.
A group of musicians set up in a corner just before they left; they began playing the sort of jolly, foot-tapping tunes he remembered his mother lilting to him when he had been younger, and for a moment he felt the pang of loss so sharply that he gasped.
‘What’s up?’ Meg asked, but she knew what it was when she saw the
shadow that flashed across his face.
Terry gave himself a mental shake. ‘Nothing,’ he said, and to stop Meg asking any more questions that might cause him to think of a situation he could do nothing to change he said, ‘What do you think of tonight’s haul, then?’
‘I think it’s wonderful,’ Meg said, catching Terry’s mood. ‘We have the makings of a few good meals in these bags. The wolf shall be kept from the door for a wee while yet.’
FOUR
The food had virtually gone by Wednesday so Meg did something else that she had never done before: leaving Ruth with the children she went to Moorcroft’s and asked for tick. Mrs Moorcroft knew the Halletts as a respectable family touched by a terrible tragedy that had made Charlie Hallett turn to the bottle. She assumed, like most other people, that in time he would pull himself together; meanwhile he was in reasonably well-paid work so she was prepared to give Meg some money on account.
Meg, though, found the whole thing mortifying, but there was no other way she could find to feed everyone.
She bought a tin of National Dried Milk for Ruth, a small bag of sugar and another of oatmeal to make porridge, one loaf, sausages, onions and a pound of potatoes. It made Terry’s blood boil to see the bread with a scrape of marg on, which was the meal for him and Meg and the others, while that same evening his father tucked into a plateful of succulent sausages in onion gravy and mashed potatoes.
‘He has to have the best food,’ Meg said later that night when Terry complained after his father had left. ‘He has to keep his strength up to go to work. He provides for us all.’
‘Not very well he doesn’t,’ Terry said mulishly. ‘Not when he spends most of what he earns behind the bar of the Swan.’
‘Hush, Terry.’
‘Why should I hush?’ Terry demanded. ‘And why are you making excuses for him?’
‘I don’t know,’ Meg admitted. ‘I suppose because he is our dad, the only one we have, and I once loved him so much. I suppose I still do, really, and I feel guilty that I can’t fill Mom’s place. I mean, I can look after all you lot and everything, but I can’t fill the hole in Daddy’s life. For all he has us, I think he is incredibly lonely.’
‘So what can we do about it?’
‘Nothing,’ Meg said. ‘Just wait. Only time will help Dad now.’
But Terry wasn’t prepared to wait, and when his father alighted from the tram the following day, Terry was there, glad to see that his uncles Alec and Robert got off just after his father.
‘Why, Terry,’ Charlie said, catching sight of his son, ‘what are you doing here? Anything up?’
‘No,’ Terry said, almost contemptuously. ‘Not “up” exactly. It’s just that knowing you are paid tonight, I wanted you to give me some housekeeping for Meg before you go to the pub and blow a big portion of it.’
Charlie just glared at his son but Robert burst out, ‘Terry, that’s a terrible way to talk to your father.’
Terry tore his eyes from his father’s wrathful scowl and faced his perplexed uncle. Meg might want to make excuses for their father, he thought, but he had no intention of doing the same. ‘Uncle Robert, we owe three weeks’ rent,’ he said. ‘The landlord came round himself and threatened Meg, but she hadn’t any money to pay off the arrears because Dad hadn’t given her any. She had so little money we had to go to the Bull Ring on Saturday night and get the stuff left on the barrows.’
Robert gave a start – only the very poor in the city resorted to that – and he glanced at his brother.
But Terry hadn’t finished. ‘Even then it wasn’t enough to feed us. By yesterday Meg didn’t even have milk for the baby and she had to go to Moorcroft’s and ask for tick. Only Dad had a dinner; the rest of us made do with thin porridge and bread and scrape.’
Robert saw embarrassment and shame flood across Charlie’s face but he still asked him, ‘Is this true?’
Charlie shrugged. ‘I suppose if Terry says so. I didn’t know about them going to the Bull Ring,’
‘Then how did you think we would eat?’ Terry burst out. ‘And you knew the landlord had been demanding the arrears the other day because Meg and I told you.’
‘Dear, dear,’ Robert said, shocked. ‘You know that you haven’t the money to drink every night and provide for your family,’ he told Charlie firmly. ‘Something has to go and it shouldn’t be the children. Now you give young Terry here three pounds ten shillings and that will enable Meg to pay off any tick and still have enough. And now Terry …’ Robert drew his own wage packet from his pocket and withdrew two half-crowns from it, ‘… this is for Meg to help pay off the arrears.’
Charlie might have protested more about the amount he’d been made to hand over, but before the determined eyes of his brothers and the resentful ones of his son, he could hardly do that, especially as his eldest brother had put his hand in his pocket to help them all.
Meg was astounded at what Terry had done and enormously grateful to both him and their uncle Robert. She immediately added seven and six to her uncle’s five shillings and put it away in the box with the rent book. She also set aside the amount of tick she had run up at Moorcroft’s, intending to pay it off first thing in the morning.
The following morning, Meg was able to pay the rent and five shillings of the arrears. Richard marked it all in the book but emphasised he would want the same every week until all the arrears were paid off. Meg decided she would be only too glad to keep her dealings with him to the minimum each week. He had stroked her hand in a rather unpleasant way as he handed back the rent book, and he had a slow way of looking at her that made her feel uncomfortable.
Early the next morning Meg meeting May in the yard told her what Terry had done, and of her uncle’s generosity. May was pleased something had been sorted out and she said, ‘let me give you a bit of advice. Spend as much of the money your father gave you as you can, because towards the end of the week when he is running out of beer money he may take any you have left off you. He will be unable to do that if you have bought food with it.’
Meg saw the sense in that and with the children looking after Ruth she went along to Moorcrofts and paid what she owed. Mindful of her neighbour’s words, Meg came back with brimming baskets of food. ‘I’ve not bought many vegetables and only a bit of meat,’ she told May who popped in to see how she’d got on. ‘Because I think they are cheaper in the Bull Ring’
‘I agree with you,’ May said. ‘Are you leaving little Ruth here? I’ll mind her for you if you like.’
‘Thanks, May, but I mean to take her with me,’ Meg said. ‘She was difficult to settle just now, and a pram ride will probably send her off nicely. Anyway, I can pack all the stuff I buy around Ruth; she barely fills a quarter of that enormous pram.’
‘Aye,’ said May with a grin. ‘She looks lost in it right enough.’
‘You can give an eye to the others if you like,’ Meg said, settling Ruth in the pram. ‘Terry’s in charge, but Billy plays it up sometimes, as you know, and Sally and Jenny can fight. They’ve been warned – not that that will make any difference.’
‘Don’t worry,’ May said, and added with another grin, ‘I will be in with my big stick if I think it necessary. Now you get yourself away.’
Meg smiled as she wrapped Ruth in a lighter shawl, as the day was a warm one. It was a fair step, but it was a pleasant day for a walk, warm but with a breeze, and as Meg set off at a lick along Bristol Street, she reflected on how good it felt to have enough money in her purse to feed them all that week, and pay something off the rent arrears as well, though she did wonder if Terry would be able to get money off their father every week in the same way. Still, she chided herself as she turned into Bromsgrove Street, why worry about things before they happen?
She pushed the pram down the incline through the teeming mass of people and into the Bull Ring itself. Ruth slept peacefully, not disturbed in any way by the bumpy, cobbled streets or the clamour of the people. The flower sellers were lining the railings
that enclosed the statue of Nelson, and the fragrant smell hung in the late summer air as Meg passed the vast array of stalls. Those selling bedding, curtain material, cookery and kitchen utensils, antiques and junk were interspersed with others selling vegetables, fruit, fish, meat and cheese, and the smell of those rose in the air as well.
She had bought quite a few good-value vegetables and was just reaching for a cabbage from one of the vegetable stalls when someone beside her said, ‘Hello. Margaret, isn’t it?’
Meg swung round and her big dark eyes met the merry ones of the girl she had met at Lewis’s in July. Just before Meg was due to leave school that summer, Miss Carmichael had encouraged her to apply for somewhere more upmarket than the factories or domestic service and Meg had managed to get an interview at Lewis’s, a city centre department store. Although she had done well at the interview, events with her mother had prevented her actually taking the job. But here was the girl with the head of dark brown curls who had put her at her ease that day with her wide smile and friendly chatter. Meg remembered thinking that her name perfectly matched her character.
‘Yes,’ Meg grinned back. ‘Joy, isn’t it?’
‘I say,’ Joy said, indicating the slumbering baby in the pram. ‘Not yours, is she?’
‘Not in the way you mean,’ Meg said.
‘It’s just that when I asked about you, Mrs Matherson in the office said you wouldn’t be able to take up your place at Lewis’s due to personal circumstances.’
Meg nodded. ‘Fact is, my mother started in labour the next day, only she haemorrhaged and died, but they were able to save the baby.’
‘Oh God,’ Joy cried. ‘You poor cow.’
‘It was a terrible time,’ Meg said. ‘Still is, I suppose, because I miss my mother so much.’
‘I bet,’ Joy said. ‘I would miss mine loads. And you are landed with the baby?’
Meg shrugged. ‘Wasn’t something I chose but there was no one else. But it isn’t only the baby. I have a brother, Terry, who is two years younger than me, two sisters, Jenny and Sally, and my youngest brother, little Billy, who is going on for five. Oh, and a dad who is like a lost soul and who has taken to the bottle.’