Like Mother, Like Daughter

by Maggie Hope

  The girls had been friends since the first year and now they lived in the same village of South Church. Cath lived in the prefabs on the outskirts but Enid’s dad was a builder and they had a new bungalow with a big garden and a lawn with two trees on either side. Enid’s mother disapproved of Cath’s mother but Enid told her not to take any notice.

  ‘You’re not your mother, are you?’ she would say.

  Now the two girls walked along the road to where the prefabs stood behind two crescents of council houses. Then they paused, feeling the occasion.

  ‘I’ll miss you at school,’ said Enid. ‘Are you sure you won’t be coming back in September? You’ve got a Saturday job, that gives you some money, doesn’t it? You’ve the best brain in the form, you would be bound to do well. It’s a shame, there’s me will have to struggle to do half as well as you could.’ Enid had no perception of what it was like for Cath. She was not allowed into the prefab that had been Cath’s home for four years. Sadie was well aware of Mrs Brown’s opinion of her.

  ‘Stuck-up cow,’ she had said when reminded of the builder’s wife. ‘Thinks she’s something special ’cause she married that man. He was nowt but a profiteer an’ all, making money out of the council after the war. And now you’re not good enough to play with their daughter. The day will come, you mark my words.’

  What the day was, Cath hadn’t an idea. She and Enid remained best friends, though not when their parents were there.

  ‘I can’t, it’s no good,’ said Cath. ‘I’m starting at Shire Hall a week on Monday, aren’t I?’ She had got a position in the treasurer’s Department in the offices of Durham County Council. Mam was pleased as punch about that at any rate. ‘Not but what you’d make more at the clothing factory,’ Mam had said. ‘The lasses are on piecework and can bring home as much as a man. You’re pretty nimble-fingered, an’ all.’

  Cath turned to walk up to the prefabs that made up Laburnum Grove. ‘I’ll see you around,’ she said.

  ‘We could go to the pictures on Saturday night,’ said Enid.

  ‘No, I can’t, I have to look after Annie,’ Cath replied.

  ‘Why do you have to do it all the time?’

  Cath shrugged and walked on. ‘See you,’ she said. They had had this discussion quite a few times before and Cath knew that, if she didn’t look after Annie, Sadie certainly wouldn’t, not on a Saturday night when she liked to go to the dance at the King’s Hall. Cath wasn’t going to leave Annie on her own in the house; she was only nine and she was still scared of the dark.

  She could hear the raised voices as she opened the front gate. Mam had brought a man home again, she thought, her heart sinking. She walked round the side of the house to go in the kitchen way and Annie was leaning on the back wall by the kitchen door, crying soundlessly. Annie cried a lot – she didn’t seem able to control it. It got her a lot of grief because other girls called her crybaby and it maddened Sadie, who would shout at her, ‘Come here and I’ll give you something to cry about, you big babby!’ And she would raise a threatening hand. But Cath knew Annie couldn’t help it.

  ‘Who’s in there?’ Cath asked Annie, but Annie just shook her head, too full to speak. Cath opened the door and went in. The breakfast pots were still on the table in the kitchen and the fridge door was open. Now she’d have to defrost it and clean it out. She’d been so happy when she discovered the prefabs came with a fridge; she’d never ever seen one before, except at the pictures.

  She put her schoolbag down on a chair and went through to the living room. Her father was standing there, towering over her mother who was looking up at him. They were both shouting at each other. On the sofa sat a blonde woman in an elegant ‘new look’ suit that showed off her tiny waist, her face made up like Marlene Dietrich. She had a sort of fixed smile as she looked out of the window, ignoring Alf and Sadie.

  ‘You owe me!’ Sadie was shouting. ‘You wanted our Cath to stay on at school till she was sixteen, didn’t you? Well, you’ll just have to pay.’

  ‘But she leaves today, doesn’t she? She can earn her own money now. My Gerda’s having a bairn, man. It’s her I owe.’

  ‘Annie’s your bairn. She’s still at school.’

  ‘Aye, she’s still at school, I know,’ said Alf heavily, ‘but I’m not made of money, man. I’m only on the dole what with me foot an’ all. I’m telling you, I’ll give you a pound a week and that’s all. So that’s the end of it. Why don’t you get off your arse and get a job yourself? Why don’t you go down one of the factories then?’

  ‘I can’t leave our Annie to come in from school on her own,’ said Sadie.

  Alf laughed. ‘You don’t mind leaving her at night, do you? You never did.’

  ‘I don’t, I—’

  ‘Hallo Dad. Hallo Gerda,’ said Cath.

  ‘How are you, my dear?’ Gerda asked. ‘A new baby brother you will haf, pet.’ She rose gracefully to her feet and kissed Cath on the cheek. Though Gerda had a poor command of English, she had picked up the local intonation and her speech was sprinkled with both Geordie and German words and expressions. She smiled at Cath and nodded her head towards the warring couple and rolled her eyes.

  Alf had come back from Germany a few months after the end of the war in Europe. He had, after all, been part of the force occupying the British sector there. He had met Gerda and brought her home with him, wangling her papers somehow, and they had set up house in the old row in Eden Hope before it was demolished. Sadie had got her divorce on the grounds of his adultery and he had married Gerda. Now they lived in a new council house on the outskirts of Bishop Auckland and he was back down the pit. Cath had seen nothing of them for months.

  ‘I’ll take our Cath to live with us,’ said Alf.

  ‘I’ll not have it!’ Sadie shouted. ‘I’ve had the expense of her all her life and now when she’s going to be earning you want her? Not bloody likely!’

  ‘You were the one who said you still need the maintenance to keep her,’ Alf said reasonably. ‘You’d like to live with us, wouldn’t you, Cath?’

  Cath looked from one to the other. She didn’t know what to say, about the baby brother (how did Gerda know it was a boy?), or about going to live with her father. But there was Annie to think of.

  ‘I cannot, Dad, what about Annie?’

  ‘Ah, man, she’ll be all right, pet.’

  ‘No. I’m staying with Mam,’ said Cath. In fact, she was beginning to feel sorry for her mother who was looking stricken and older than her age. Sadie was not used to being rejected by a man and she had certainly expected Alf to stay with her even after all she had done. And he had come back from Germany with a blonde. How could he? Now he wanted to take Cath away from her. Well, he couldn’t have her.

  ‘Get yourself away, Alf,’ she said. ‘And take your fancy piece with you. We don’t want you.’

  ‘No, but you want my money,’ said Alf, grinning. Oh aye, he had changed all right, she thought bitterly. ‘And Gerda is my wife now, not you.’

  Sadie lifted her chin. ‘Well, I thank God for that then.’ After he and Gerda had gone, she brought the bottle of gin out of the cupboard and poured herself a stiff drink.

  ‘Mam,’ said Cath. ‘You haven’t even had your tea. Don’t start.’

  ‘I need a drink after that,’ snapped Sadie. ‘Don’t you tell me what to do, our Cath.’

  Cath went outside and brought Annie in. ‘Come on, we’ll make pancakes for tea,’ she said to her. ‘Everything is going to be fine, you’ll see.’

  Cath liked working at the County Council offices in Durham. It was a bit of a walk to the marketplace in Bishop Auckland to get the bus so she had to leave home at half past seven and often she didn’t get home until nearly seven o’clock in the evening, but she didn’t mind. There was always a crowd of people rushing down Old Elvet Bridge to Shire Hall and she enjoyed being part of it. She worked in one of the houses in the old street opposite the hall and her window overlooked the racecourse and River Wear. The racecourse was
not used any more for racing but everyone still called it that. In the summer months she could sit on the banks of the Wear and eat her lunchtime sandwiches as she watched the punts on the river and sometimes the university students practising for a boat race, the cox perched precariously at one end and calling instructions through a loud hailer.

  Sometimes Brian came and sat beside her. He didn’t say much, just ate his sandwiches and offered to buy her orange juice from the shop on the corner of Old and New Elvet. Cath always refused. Brian was a trainee in the Surveyor’s Department at Shire Hall.

  One sunny October day, when the leaves still left on the trees on the far bank of the Wear glinted gold and bronze, Brian came and sat beside her on the steps leading down to the water.

  ‘Go away, Brian,’ she said, as she so often did.

  ‘I have as much right as you to sit here,’ said Brian, as he so often replied. In fact, it was getting to be a small ritual.

  ‘I’ll move away then,’ said Cath and did so, standing and walking a short way up the path to where there was a bench. Sometimes he reminded her too much of that day when she was twelve, going on thirteen and one of his gang had jumped on her. She shivered. She could still feel his hands, dirty and grasping, all over her. Oh, it had only been a bit of fun to them, she knew that. Brian had helped her, too; it was none of his fault but still, he had witnessed it and she still couldn’t see him without remembering that.

  Margaret and Joan, two of the girls she worked with, came along and sat beside her and they talked about the boys from Hetton-le-Hole, which was the village on the other side of Durham where they came from. They giggled and told stories of the one who looked like Gregory Peck, only younger.

  ‘He knows it an’ all,’ Joan said. ‘He’s a right bighead, that one.’

  ‘Well, you wouldn’t turn him down if he asked you out,’ said Margaret, and they giggled some more.

  ‘Why don’t you give that lad a break, Cath?’ Joan asked, looking to where Brian was calmly finishing his sandwiches. ‘Anyone can see he’s keen on you and he’s not half bad-looking, is he?’

  Cath glanced sideways towards the steps where Brian was just throwing the last of his bread to the ducks, which came clucking and crowding round.

  ‘He’s all right,’ Cath replied. ‘But I’m not interested in lads.’

  The other girls hooted. ‘What’s the matter, you a lesbian?’ Joan asked, and they both laughed again. It took Cath’s breath away; she barely had any idea of what a lesbian was and they certainly didn’t figure in any conversation she had ever heard.

  ‘Joan!’ she said, scandalised. ‘You want your mouth washed out with soap!’ Which only served to make the other girls double up with laughter yet again. She stood up and took the paper bag from her sandwiches to the litter bin, recently put there next to the steps. The council was running an anti-litter campaign. A church bell rang a quarter to one and she turned to walk up the incline to Old Elvet.

  ‘They’re only having you on,’ said Brian, who had fallen into step with her. ‘Don’t take any notice of them.’

  ‘I know,’ Cath replied. ‘I’m not.’

  Encouraged that she was talking to him, he went on, ‘How about coming to the Odeon with me tomorrow night? It’s a good picture, Whisky Galore.’

  ‘No, I don’t think so, thank you. I have to look after Annie.’

  ‘Little Annie can come with us,’ he said. ‘She’d like it.’

  Cath looked at him. What did he know of Annie or what she would like? ‘Why don’t you leave me alone?’ she snapped as she turned into her building. She didn’t look round so she didn’t see his hurt expression.

  Chapter Ten

  ‘There’s that girl,’ said Mark, as he and Jack emerged from the university library into the pale December sunshine on Palace Green. He paused, leaning heavily on his silver-topped cane. Sometimes the cold winds of north-east England affected his thigh, where the muscle had been half shot away in the very last stages of the war. He gazed openly at the girl hurrying along the path from the cathedral, her dark hair blowing about and tangling with her bright red scarf. She had her head down against the force of the freshening wind, so she wasn’t aware of the men as yet.

  ‘What girl?’ Jack asked, turning to follow Mark’s gaze.

  ‘The miner’s brat, you called her, can you remember, she was trespassing in the woods? That day before we enlisted?’

  ‘I don’t – wait a minute, I do—’ Whatever else he was going to say was lost as Cath cannoned into him, dropping her bag at the impact. It opened and the contents spilled out over the pavement.

  ‘Oh!’ she cried and bent to pick them up, stuffing them in the bag higgledy-piggledy. ‘Sorry, I’m so sorry.’

  Jack bent down and caught a rolling lipstick on its way to the gutter. ‘Why don’t you look where you’re going?’ he asked. At this level all he saw were her shoes. They were a cheap leather and slightly scuffed at the toe and beginning to crack across the instep. But as they rose to their feet and he handed her the lipstick, he saw the girl properly and she was lovely – striking, in fact. She put up a hand and pushed a hairgrip further into the tangle of her hair in an attempt to control it – futilely, it seemed. Her large dark eyes darted from him to Mark and she was blushing, no doubt from embarrassment. Whatever: the rising pink on her white skin enhanced his impression.

  ‘Did you hurt yourself?’ he asked.

  ‘No, of course I didn’t,’ she snapped as her embarrassment turned to anger. She had recognised them all right, and she was ready to give back as good as she got this time.

  ‘I know you,’ said Jack. ‘You’re the – girl from the mining village, aren’t you?’ He had almost said the wrong thing there, he thought, and oh, she was a very attractive girl. ‘You remember my friend, Mark, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes indeed, I remember you both,’ said Cath. ‘You frightened my little sister.’ Her dark eyes were accusing.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ said Mark. ‘We didn’t mean to.’

  ‘Let’s go into the café here so you can catch your breath,’ said Jack. ‘You’d like a coffee, wouldn’t you?’

  Cath had been rushing to catch her bus, but as the cathedral bells rang out the hour she realised she had already missed it. She had missed the earlier one too, which was the reason she had been visiting the cathedral. It was out of the wind and she loved to sit in a back pew and just relax. There were few tourists about at this time of the year, but the great nave echoed with the footsteps of the odd one or two. It was Saturday; a half-day for the workers at Shire Hall, and most of them had already left the city.

  ‘I’ll give you a lift,’ Brian had said. ‘Hop in.’ He had been waiting for her on the street outside the building where she worked and opened the door of his car invitingly. It was a pre-war car, a Standard circa 1931, but he was proud of it. New cars were almost impossible to get even for those who could afford one. Most went to help the export drive, for Britain was in dire straits after the war. The waiting list for the few cars allowed on the home market was long.

  ‘No thank you,’ Cath had replied. ‘I’ll catch the bus.’ She edged away, for she was late already and would have to run to the bus station to have any chance of catching her usual bus.

  ‘Oh come on, Cath,’ said Brian. ‘Why not?’

  ‘No, I won’t, thank you,’ said Cath. ‘I want to go somewhere first.’ She had scooted away before he could persuade her but those few moments were enough to make her miss the bus. So she had gone up the steep, narrow alley that emerged just below Palace Green and into the cathedral. She shouldn’t have been so soft, should have taken the lift, she told herself crossly. Now she was going to miss the next bus too.

  ‘Come on, a cup of coffee won’t hurt you,’ said Mark. ‘Now, what did you say your name was?’ The two of them fell in on either side of her, Mark walking with only a slight limp despite his stick. Cath knew she should have refused, but she didn’t. She was fascinated and yet repelled by th
em. It was as though they were from another planet. The office workers from the County Council and the students and others from the university thronged the streets of New and Old Elvet, yet neither group ever actually took the least bit of notice of the other.

  ‘It’s Cath, isn’t it? And I’m the gamekeeper’s son, Jack, aren’t I?’ Jack grinned at her as he steered her through the door of the café.

  ‘You acted as though you were lord of the manor and Annie and me peasants,’ said Cath, and the two men laughed. Cath felt gauche. What was so funny?

  Jack saw her blush. ‘Don’t take any notice of us,’ he said. ‘I’ll order coffee.’ He lifted his hand and as if by magic a waiter was there and the coffee appeared on the table in an instant. He wasn’t a snob at all, Cath began to realise. In fact, he couldn’t have been nicer to her. He talked to her easily of so many things, occasionally bringing Mark into the conversation. He talked about his time at Oxford after the war, how he had just moved to Durham to do his Master’s because his mother had died, and anyway Mark was teaching at Durham.

  He asked her about herself and her life and what she was doing, and seemed genuinely interested in the Treasurer’s Department and what she did there. That was punching holes in cards and sorting them for the tabulator and it bored her to death. Now she began to look at it in a slightly different light herself as she strove to make it interesting.

  Jack glanced across at Mark and Mark rose to his feet.

  ‘I must go,’ said Mark, ‘Things to do.’ He nodded to Cath, ‘Nice to see you again,’ and left.

  ‘I must go too,’ said Cath, ‘my mother will be worrying where I am.’ Sadie would not be worrying at all, but Annie might.

  ‘Oh, come on,’ said Jack. ‘We’ll have some lunch and then I’ll run you home in no time.’