by Mary Portas
Mr Froome sighs contentedly as I stare at his hands. Everything about him is big: from his hands to his laugh to his moustache. He looks a bit like Sean Connery with no hair, and is always slightly tanned because he goes to Spain on holiday.
Mr Froome runs the Wavyline Grocer on Leavesden Road, and my mother walks there once a week to give him her order because she doesn’t drive. Then Mr Froome delivers everything in his green Morris Minor van: ham sliced off the bone and Cheddar cheese wrapped in greaseproof paper, tins of Nestlé condensed milk and Rose’s lime marmalade, bags of flour, eggs and caster sugar. At Christmas his boxes are dotted with small cardboard drums of crystallized figs, Turkish Delight dusted with icing sugar and boxes of Newberry Fruits.
Bill Green’s fruit and veg shop is just down the road from Mr Froome’s and I feel sorry for him because he’s the one that has to keep us in potatoes. Luckily, though, he has a Ford Transit van to deliver them and it’s good that he does because my mother would serve potatoes with apple crumble if she could.
‘Eat up your mash,’ Mum says to Joe, as he picks at his plate. ‘It’ll fill you up.
‘Have another potato, Joe?’ she suggests hopefully, as she stands over him brandishing the saucepan.
But while the rest of us hardly draw breath to eat, Joe is far less interested in food.
‘You’re as thin as a string bean!’ Mum says, as she piles sausages onto his plate. Joe stares mournfully at them. ‘You’ve got to keep your strength up.’
Mum’s desire to fatten up the thin ones in our family is never satisfied. She makes Joe special meals that he doesn’t eat, constantly spreads an extra thick layer of jam on a piece of bread for me and mixes Dad an egg with milk and vitamins each morning. The glass sits on the kitchen table as we come downstairs for breakfast and Dad drinks it before lighting a fag.
Mr Froome looks at me now as he takes a bite of his cake. ‘So did you like the steak, then, Mary?’ he asks.
There was a fire at a local butcher’s factory last week and they gave whatever meat wasn’t burned to whoever wanted it. Our neighbour Eileen, who wears mini-skirts and has backcombed hair, brought a bag of steak around to our house, her Boxer dog Pearl sniffing the air as she trailed behind.
‘Make the most of this, Mary,’ Mum had said, as she cooked the steak while I sat at the kitchen table doing my homework. ‘It’s a lovely piece of meat.’
She was right. We usually eat mince, chops or liver and the steak was like nothing I’d tasted before.
‘I wish that place could burn down every week,’ I say to Mr Froome.
I also wish that we could try Fray Bentos steak and kidney pie but Mum gasps in horror whenever I mention it.
‘What would you be wanting a pie in a tin for?’ she cries. ‘Next thing you’ll be asking for mash in a packet.’
The one exception to the homemade rule is the odd cream cake from Garner’s bakery. Mum goes there to buy three loaves every day without fail and it’s just around the corner on St Albans Road. Garner’s is run by a woman called Mrs Tanner, who has the biggest buck teeth I’ve ever seen, and for some reason I always want one of their cakes, even though they taste wet and thin compared to Mum’s.
Along the road from Garner’s are the butchers – Gibson’s, which is best for sausages, and Matthew’s, where Mum buys joints for Sunday roasts – and Mac Fisheries that she visits every Friday. My favourite shop, though, is Timothy White’s because it smells of a mixture of rubber and metal and is filled with everything from mops and sponges to screws and clothes pegs. I love the smell of the place and the shelves piled high with neat rows of things I never knew people needed until I saw them in White’s. Then I realized it was the place where everything that makes life easy is sold.
There is one shop like no other, though, a shop so special that my mother puts on her best cream jacket to visit it: Clements & Co. Clements isn’t one of the local places near our home in North Watford. It’s a department store in the centre of Watford proper, the Saturday shopping Mecca that I hardly ever get to visit, except on the odd afternoon with Dad when we stick to the joke shop, record shop and Austin Reed.
But Mum goes to Clements when she needs to buy something special, and every now and again I have been good enough to earn an invitation to go along with her. Clements is another world. Push open the enormous wooden front doors and breathe in air heavy with the smell of cosmetics and the clean scent of new stationery. The carpet is made of red wool so thick it muffles footsteps. Women in frilly blouses puff perfume as people walk past and a look of even momentary indecision is met by the arrival of the floor-walker, who wears a carnation in his buttonhole and directs you to the right department.
Ahead, a huge staircase leads to the upper floors, where you can find things like toys, menswear and lighting. But all I ever want to do is stay on the ground floor and stare at the glass cabinets filled with brightly coloured cosmetics, silk scarves and soft leather purses, displays of watches, fountain pens, jewellery and ornaments. But whenever I go to Clements with Mum, whatever we’re there to buy, there’s always one display that we have to see.
‘It’s like springtime in a smell,’ Mum says, as she picks up a green-and-white box containing Bronnley’s lily-of-the-valley soap, which is nestled alongside Camay, Pears and Roger & Gallet.
Most of the time she puts it back on the shelf. But once in a while she reaches into her purse, checks that she’s got enough change and buys herself a precious box.
Quality Street
Christmas started for our family in October when my mother began to store food in preparation on the dresser in the living room. Whatever went on, it was almost as sacred as Father Bussey’s holy wafer – unlike the rest of the year when a war of attrition was fought in skirmish attacks on the biscuit tin.
When we arrived home ravenous after school each day, Mum would offer us all a couple of biscuits and tell us that tea wouldn’t be long. But it was never enough for my brothers and they emptied the tin as fast as she filled it with custard creams, Garibaldis and Rich Teas. So, in an effort to stop us eating her out of house and home, my mother adopted a strategy of hiding the biscuit tin in a variety of increasingly imaginative places. But whether she hid it at the back of the airing cupboard or in the coal bunker, my brothers always found the biscuit tin. Once she even hid it in her knicker drawer but they found it there too.
No one dared touch the Christmas food, though. For twelve long weeks, we’d impatiently watch as Twiglets, cheese straws and Huntley & Palmers cheese balls were put on the dresser, alongside jars of Haywards silverskin pickled onions, tins of Fox’s biscuits and Quality Street. Even bottles of Babycham and a small one of Advocaat went onto the shelves in the run-up to the big day because Christmas was the only time of the year when my parents drank.
In between all the shopping, my mother would bake as if her life depended on it. We never knew if the smell of Christmas cake or pudding would fill the house first. Jars of dried fruits lined up in the kitchen as Mum beat eggs, flour and sugar to make the cake, or combined cinnamon, sugar, suet and breadcrumbs to make the puddings that she gave to a succession of friends. Mince pies and sausage rolls were on a constant production line as we counted down to the big day.
‘Go on now, Bill!’ Mum would say to Mr Green, when she had made him a cup of tea. ‘Have another mince pie, why don’t you?’
After all the waiting, the official countdown got under way on 1 December when the first door in the Advent calendar was opened. As the eldest, it was always Michael’s job but instead of breathlessly anticipating what picture we’d find, we always knew what it would be because Mum recycled the same Advent calendar each year. Opening the doors on the fourth, ninth, fourteenth, nineteenth and twenty-fourth, I would find a candle, a donkey, a sheep and the star of Bethlehem. But even though the Advent calendar was hung up each year by the fireplace in the living room, a little more faded than the Christmas before, the doors standing slightly more open instead of tightly shu
t, we dutifully gasped with delight as we opened them.
Such was my mother’s thriftiness. Stork margarine wrappers were kept to grease cake tins, ketchup bottles left upended on the kitchen windowsill to eke out the dregs, and Green Shield stamps collected with an attention that verged on obsession. When Patch ate my wooden recorder, Mum sandpapered it down and filled in the bite marks with glue. When Sandra was defaced, she scrubbed at the word ‘Fart’ with a Brillo pad until only the faintest hint of biro remained. I hadn’t liked the doll that much to begin with, though, so I could never look at her in the same way again. When Aunty Cathy told Mum that she boiled down old bits of soap to make new bars, my mother started doing the same.
‘Look after the pennies and the pounds look after themselves,’ she’d say, as she peered into the pot where old bits of soap slowly melted into each other.
Christmas presents came from second-hand shops, the same deer and angels were put up on the tree each year and paper chains were made at the kitchen table. But although I sometimes longed for a birthday or Christmas present to be new, to smell the mix of plastic and paint when I opened a box, which told me that no one else had ever touched the toy I’d been given, I mostly didn’t care. Because as the smell of baking filled the house, my mother made Christmas the most magical time of the year.
Kerrygold butter 1
Mum is chatting to Ula Cooper on the doorstep, Tish is upstairs, the boys are all watching TV. Now is my chance. I walk into the kitchen and over to the worktop where the Pyrex butter dish stands.
This is the best time of day to sneak a scoop of butter. Mum usually puts a new block in the dish ready for tea just before we get home from school and it will be at the perfect point between not too cold from the fridge and not too warm from exposure to the heat of the kitchen. My love of butter is like no other passion in my life.
Bending my index finger into a hook, I lift the lid off the butter dish. Delight pulses through me at the thought of the perfect block of sunshine yellow. But this time my mother has pre-empted my attack. The word ‘No’ has been neatly carved into the Kerrygold. With a sigh, I put the lid back on the dish.
Caramac
There are moments of perfect happiness and this is one. Earlier my mother snapped open the gold clasp on her brown leather purse and handed me a threepenny bit.
‘Why don’t you get something from the sweet shop?’ she said, as she bent down to kiss me. ‘And eat up whatever you get on the way back, won’t you? Otherwise your brothers and sister will all be wanting a coin.’
I knew exactly what I wanted as I snuck unnoticed out of the house for the ten-minute walk to Mr Tite’s shop on St Albans Road: a Caramac. Even going into the sweet shop and seeing all the jars lined up on the shelves didn’t distract me.
Now I carefully unwrap the Caramac as I walk back home past Aggie and May’s house – no need for boxes on their feet because it’s a beautiful spring day – and Jack and Rhoda Evans’s too. Even though Mr Evans can’t walk very well, he still hobbles up to our house every Sunday afternoon to throw the bone from their Sunday roast over the garden wall for Patch. I pass Big Henry’s house – he works in Budgens – and then that of the new Pakistani family who have moved into the street. Mum has been talking a lot to the lady about something called curry powder.
Mr and Mrs Dix are sitting in the window of their front room. Mum loves the fact that they get changed every evening before eating their tea but I love their Scottie dog more. Doug across the road is cleaning his Austin Healey as usual and smiles at me as the Chassel kids run in and out of their house. There are seven of them – even more than us – and Cyril and Lucian are altar boys with Joe and Michael.
Ula Cooper is on the doorstep calling for Carina. Her older brother Tommy is friends with Joe and they nearly got into trouble with the local policeman recently when he stopped to talk to them and asked their names.
‘Joe Newton.’
‘Righto.’
‘Tommy Cooper.’
‘Pull the other one.’
‘All right, then, I’m Benny Hill,’ replied Tommy, and nearly got arrested.
Dad, Joe and Michael are still laughing about it.
I am eight years old as I walk up the street I’ve known all my life, bite into the Caramac and feel perfect happiness fill me when the taste of condensed milk spreads over my tongue.
Kodak cine camera
‘Ready, everyone?’
‘Ready as we ever will be.’
‘They’ll have landed at this rate.’
‘Get off me, Joe!’
‘Quiet! I’m starting now! Quiet, please!’
‘Jooooooooe!’
‘Pipe down, Mary, or you won’t watch the film.’
‘But—’
‘I said be QUIET.’
‘Here we go!’
Uncle Tom flicks off the lights and the screen at the front of the living room is illuminated bright white. Smoke from Dad’s fag curls thickly into the beam of light coming out of the cine camera. Two tiny black fingers appear on the screen bent into the shape of rabbit’s ears and jig across it.
‘Joe!’ Mum admonishes. ‘Stop it now.’
We stifle our giggles as Tom huffs and puffs over the cine camera. Then the screen goes dark and we wait.
And wait.
‘Tom!’ Aunty Cathy shrieks. ‘Tom! The film’s stuck.’
‘I know, dear.’
‘Shall I get us another pot of tea?’ Aunty Cathy is never able to sit still for more than a minute.
Mum bends down to us the moment she leaves the room. ‘Will you behave yourselves?’ she hisses. ‘To think that you can’t even sit still at the Newnhams’ house!’
I don’t know how she thinks we’re even able to move. Fifteen of us – seven Newtons, Uncle Tom, Aunty Cathy, their children Bernard, Michael, Steven and Caroline plus their budgie and their lodger Colin – are crammed into the living room. We’re here to watch a cine film of the boys’ trip to Cape Canaveral and I’m in awe that they got as far as America because we’ve never even crossed the Channel.
Everyone is talking about the moon at the moment. It is July 1969 and three days ago, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins set off in Apollo 11 and they’re expected to land at any moment. It’s on the radio, all over the television, and every night when I go to bed I wonder if the moon really is made of cheese or whether Joe’s just trying to trick me.
I concentrate on sitting even more still. We have to be on our best behaviour at the Newnhams’ because Aunty Cathy is the boss of the Brownies while Uncle Tom is in charge at church. He’s the one who trains all the altar boys and carries the cross at every service. Whereas our home is constantly noisy – records, Radio 4 and all of us – the Newnhams’ is quiet and filled with books about science, geography and history. The dining-table in the front room is used only for jigsaws, and the silence is so thick as Aunty Cathy and Uncle Tom search for pieces that only the ticking of the mantel clock disturbs it.
Aunty Cathy bustles back into the living room.
‘Another cup of tea, Theresa?’ she says. ‘And how about you, Sam?’
Uncle Tom stares at the camera, like it’s a wild horse about to break free. ‘This bloody thing!’ he mutters.
‘Language, Tom!’
‘Nearly there.’
‘Right. Bernard! Turn off the lights for your father.’
The room goes dark and the film flickers into life. Bernard, Michael and Steven appear on the screen, grinning out at us, with sunshine on their faces.
‘It’s the Kennedy Space Station!’
‘Would you look at them!’
‘Did you see Buzz?’
‘Sssh. Sssh.’
The Newnham boys wave, and with a rush of excitement I wonder when we are going to see Apollo 11. Then suddenly a flame-coloured spot appears in the middle of the picture.
‘Tom! Tom! Stop it now! The film’s burning. Turn it off! Now, Tom! Now!’
With a sigh, I
wonder just how long I will be expected to stay still.
Bryant & May’s matches 1
The huge wooden door creaks as Michael, Tish, Joe and I walk into the church. It’s dark and cool, silent except for the odd tap of footsteps as someone walks in or out. Several elderly ladies are sitting in pews with their heads bent as we file into one after crossing ourselves with holy water.
It’s Saturday afternoon and Mum has sent us off to confession. While other kids play football or watch telly, we have to go to St Helen’s. The church seems forbidding without the Sunday congregation in it. The only other people here are elderly Irish women who kneel and beat their chests as we wonder what terrible sins they’ve committed to make them repent so uncomfortably for so long.
We haven’t been to confession for six weeks and dread fills me as I twist the corner of my shorts in my fingers.
‘Are you going to tell the priest what you did?’ Tish asked me, as we walked to St Helen’s. I scowled at her without saying a word.
Tish never has to worry because she never does anything wrong. I, on the other hand, feel constantly sick when I open the door of the confession box and hear it scraping on the wood as I pull it shut behind me. No matter how hard I try, I just keep doing things wrong.
Either Father Bussey or Father John will be sitting on the other side of the screen but it doesn’t matter to me which one it is. Both will talk to me in a low, stern voice about what I have done before telling me to say my Hail Marys. But how am I going to explain what happened this week?
I was always at the centre of the storm as a child. If there was a bad idea that seemed good, then I was the one to have it; if there was an argument, I was in the middle, whether I’d started the row or just joined in halfway through.
‘You’d argue that a black crow was white!’ my mother used to tell me, when she stepped in to calm us all down.