Our Street

by Pemberton, Victor

  Chapter Four

  Gracie Lewis rarely went into her son and daughter’s bedroom. As far as she was concerned, Frankie and Helen were old enough to keep their own room clean and tidy and, if they didn’t, well, they could lump it. But on the Wednesday afternoon following the weekend that Helen had gone off on a trip to the Essex countryside with her friends, Ivy and Joyce, Gracie, hanging up her washing in the back yard, had noticed that the curtains were still drawn at Helen and Frankie’s bedroom window.

  When Gracie entered the room, a fag dangling from her lips as usual, the first thing she noticed was that the place smelt of dog. Despite the fact that time and time again she had told Frankie not to take Winston into his room at night, the mongrel continued to sleep on his master’s bed. Gracie quickly drew back the curtains and opened the window. When she turned to look at the room, it was exactly as she had expected. Neither bed had been made, and clothes were strewn carelessly around the room. She shrugged; neither she nor Reg were exactly house-proud themselves.

  Gracie turned back to the open window, staring down at the Anderson shelter that had completely engulfed the small back yard, once full of daffodils and marigolds. The war had changed Merton Street and the people who lived there. And not for the better. Before, people had kept themselves to themselves, but nowadays everybody stopped in the street and chatted. Not her, though. She still kept to herself. Stubbing her cigarette out on the window ledge, Gracie closed the window again. She glanced at the small wooden cabinet at the side of Frankie’s bed, where she found a copy of his favourite Picturegoer film magazine, and, surprisingly, a book – Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson. It was the first time she had ever seen a book amongst Frankie’s possessions. Then she held back the curtain separating Frankie’s side of the bedroom from Helen’s. She deliberately avoided looking into the mirror of Helen’s tiny dressing-table. Gracie always avoided mirrors. Her own image distressed and irritated her, for she never took any trouble with her appearance, with her straight cut hair which Frankie always thought made her look like a prison inmate. And her eyes were always doleful, always tired-looking though she had a good, clear complexion and, in her young days, had been pretty.

  It was only as she was about to leave the room that Gracie suddenly noticed something sticking out from beneath Helen’s crumpled pillow. She came back into the room and picked it up. It was the photograph of a young soldier . . .

  Downstairs, the street door slammed, a sure sign that Frankie was home from school. Winston was first to greet him, barking excitedly, leaping up so that he very nearly knocked Frankie down. ‘Down Winnie! Down boy!’ Frankie was laughing wildly as he found himself pinned against the passage wall, his face being licked all over. But when they rushed up the stairs together, they found their way barred on the landing by Frankie’s mother.

  ‘’Ow many times!’ Gracie’s voice was shrill and bad tempered. ‘’Ow many times to I have to tell yer not ter take that bleedin’ animal into your room. It smells like a bog in there!’

  Frankie’s happy mood changed immediately. Even the sight of his mother depressed him. ‘It’s none ’er yer business! Winnie’s my dog. I like ’im sleepin’ wiv me. Nobody asked yer ter go pokin’ ’round my room!’

  Gracie’s eyes blazed with anger. The only time she ever seemed to spring to life was when she was quarrelling with Frankie. ‘Now you listen ter me, yer little sod! I’m the one that cleans up in this ’ouse. I’m the one that has ter clear up after your dog does ’is business anywhere ’e bleedin’ chooses!’

  Winston cowered behind Frankie. As usual, he knew he was the cause of all the rumpus.

  ‘You’re always pickin’ on Winston! You’re always blamin’ ’im for everythin’! Frankie pushed his way past his mother and made straight for the tiny lavatory behind her. Winston followed him in. He quickly bolted the door, yelling, ‘Why can’t yer leave ’im alone? It’s not fair!’

  Frankie could clearly see the figure of his mother through the two smoked glass panels on the door. As she pressed her face forward she looked ghostly and menacing. ‘If you don’t get that bleedin’ dog outa there, I swear ter God I’ll ’ave ’im put down!’ Frankie refused to answer, so his mother shouted louder, and banged on the lavatory door. ‘Did you ’ear what I said!’ she screeched.

  ‘Leave him alone, Mum!’ Frankie shouted back angrily. ‘Leave ’im alone!’

  ‘Right! If that’s the way you want it!’ Frankie could hear his mother hurrying down the stairs. ‘Just wait ’til yer farver gets ’ome. ‘’E’ll ’ave yer guts fer garters!’ By the time she had reached the bottom of the stairs, Gracie was in a blind rage. ‘And don’t fink I don’t know about that book in your room!’ Her voice was almost hysterical. ‘If I find yer’ve nicked it, I’ll get the narks ’round ’ere!’

  Frankie pulled a face. It was obvious his mother had been having a good snoop around his room, and he hated her for it. Then he panicked. Suppose she’d taken Treasure Island? Elsa loved her books; what did she call them – her ‘friends’? If anything had happened to that book, he’d never forgive himself. For the next few minutes, he sat on the lavatory seat, waiting for his mother to go back into her kitchen and forget all about him. As always, whenever he needed peace and quiet, Frankie used the lavatory as a sanctuary; many an evening he and Winston had spent time there, sometimes up to an hour. Usually, he just sat there looking at the four drab walls, which, if he stretched out with both his hands, he could reach easily. But, drab though it was, Frankie’s imagination had turned this tiny room in the house into something completely different. Most times, he imagined he was sitting in the front row of the dress circle of his beloved Gaumont Cinema, a once-great, plush building in the Holloway Road, now devastated by the doodle-bug which gutted it just a few months before. If he closed his eyes he could still recall one of his favourite films with Tyrone Power or Alice Faye, or Basil Rathbone in some spooky Sherlock Holmes adventure. There were times when Frankie’s father stopped on the landing outside the lavatory, thinking that his son had gone mad as he listened to the boy wailing like the sound of the Gaumont cinema organ being played by their much-loved resident organist, Edward O’Henry. As for Winston, well he just slept through it all, although his snores were not very conducive to Frankie’s extravagant dreams.

  It was not until he heard the kitchen door slam that he felt it safe to emerge from his sanctuary. Rushing up to his room, he collected Elsa’s Treasure Island and, with Winston tagging close behind, quickly left the house. Although it was getting dark, there was still a slight red glow on the rooftops above Merton Street, for the sun had been shining miraculously from sunrise to sunset, a rare treat for a cold November day. Frankie had discarded his cap, but was still wearing his school blazer and scarf. His grey flannel shorts were no protection against the frosty night, and his legs were rapidly matching the colour of his blazer. Four-year-old Winston, a shaggy black and white cross between a labrador and a back-yard mongrel, had plenty of hair to keep him warm, and seemed impervious to the cold.

  There were plenty of people around in the street, some of them gossiping with their neighbours, others hurrying back from late afternoon shopping in the Seven Sisters Road. Outside number 47 a group of young kids were still playing hopscotch on the pavement, encouraged by old Bert Gorman, who always tried to join in the kids’ street games. As it was almost blackout time, people all along the street were drawing dark blinds or curtains at their front room windows and, as there had been no street gas lamps lit since the start of the war, total darkness would soon descend on the entire neighbourhood. But there was hardly a chimneypot anywhere that wasn’t already hard at work, with palls of thick black smoke billowing up into the cloudless, deep red sky.

  Frankie decided to make his way to Seven Sisters Road the long way round, which took him to the far end of Merton Street, and then into Hertslet Road. After saying goodnight to Bert Gorman, Frankie made his way to the end of the street. On the way he ignored Mrs Robinson at nu
mber 22, who was, as usual, conspicuously arranging her new net curtains so that they draped like the curtains over the screen at the Gaumont cinema. ‘All kippers and curtains,’ thought most of her neighbours. And her husband was no better, for he seemed to encourage it. Winston showed no respect for number 22’s shining white gate, and paused only long enough to raise his back paw and leave his mark. Then Frankie quickened his pace so that he could hurriedly pass number 78, where old Clancy lived – ‘nancy Clancy’ to the kids in the street, who teased him mercilessly every time he set foot outside his front door, to do his shopping, or to venture out for a pink gin at the Eaglet pub.

  By the time Frankie and Winston reached the Seven Sisters Road, most of the blackout blinds were already in place. But the shops were still open, although the window displays could only be seen in whatever natural light was available from the road outside. One or two shopkeepers however – namely Ma Digby in the greengrocers’ shop – were becoming somewhat careless of late. Since June, when the Allied forces had landed in France, people were beginning to sense that the war was coming to an end, despite the fact that Hitler’s doodle-bugs and rockets were still a menace. On more than one occasion Ma Digby had been warned by a Special Constable to ‘keep ’er lights to ’erself!’

  At the junction of Seven Sisters Road and Hornsey Road, Frankie had only to say ‘Wait!’ to Winston for him to sit down obediently and wait with his master for the traffic to clear. Although everyone warned Frankie to keep Winston on a leash when they were out for their walk, he always insisted that Winston would never disobey him.

  Once the traffic lights had changed, Frankie and Winston crossed the road, passed Stagnells the baker shop with its seductive smells of freshly baked bread, and continued their walk along Seven Sisters Road. It was just after five o’clock when they reached Pascall’s bike shop on the corner of Hadleigh Villas. The sky above was now an inky black and the first stars of the evening where beginning to show themselves. This was the moment Winston dreaded, for he knew that once Frankie had reached the bike shop, it could be an endless wait while his master gazed at the one bike on prominent display in the window. Sure enough, this was to be no exception.

  Frankie pressed his hands against the glass. There it was, hanging from a wire right in the centre of the window, the Raleigh Sports, with the dropped handle-bars and three speeds – the bike of Frankie’s dreams. Every time he looked at it, he could hear the theme music of some big Hollywood love film echoing all around him, and Edward O’Henry at the organ of the Gaumont cinema building his dream to a crescendo. To Frankie, this was the bike of all time. He could just imagine himself gliding effotlessly along the road to Southend, way ahead of the Merton Street gang, the sun and wind caressing his face as he pedalled. But there was no hope that he would ever own this one – not at the incredible price of two pounds and ten shillings! Why, it was probably more than his old man earned in a month at the Hornsey Road Baths. But it cost nothing to dream, and, with his nose and face pressed against the window, he dreamed. But the condensation from his hot breath against the cold glass soon destroyed that dream and, much to Winston’s relief, he eventually moved on.

  Turning off Seven Sisters Road, Frankie and Winston made their way down Hadleigh Villas. Although Frankie was carrying Elsa’s book with him, he didn’t stop at number 19 because he had already found out that the shop she ran kept open most evenings until seven o’clock. The two of them made their way to Barclay’s jumble shop on the corner of Hornsey Road. When they got there, the shutters were already down, but the shop was obviously still open for business, for a light could be seen beneath the door.

  ‘Won’t be long, Winnie.’ Winston sat down obediently. His reward was a piece of bread which Frankie had saved from the cheese sandwich his mother had made him for his lunch. Then, retrieving Elsa’s Treasure Island from underneath his pullover, Frankie took a deep, apprehensive breath, and went into the shop.

  As Frankie’s head peered around the door, the bell above shook and tinkled.

  ‘Be with you in just one moment!’ Elsa’s voice called from the other side of the shop where she was attending to a woman who was buying a secondhand dress for her small child.

  Frankie remained by the door, looking around. When people called this a jumble shop they were right. It was fairly spacious and part of it was for cheap, secondhand jewellery – brooches, rings, necklaces, cuff-links, bracelets, ear-rings – everything a woman or man needed for personal decoration. Then there was the bric-à-brac section where everything from a silver-plated picture-frame to a small-sized brass model elephant could be found. There was a mountain of different objects piled on top of each other, covering the shop counter, an old varnished table, and various travelling trunks. Tin-openers, delicate china cups and saucers, moth-eaten teddy bears and dolls of every shape and size, kitchen utensils, pots and pans, a paraffin stove, odd rolls of wallpaper, and even an ancient typewriter. And books! Whichever direction Frankie looked in – there were books, dozens and dozens of them, piled high. There was very little available space for moving around, for old furniture cluttered the place, with kitchen chairs piled on top of each other, and a wash-stand balanced on a chaise-longue looking as though one finger could topple the whole collection. And on one entire side of the shop were rows and rows of secondhand clothes: dresses and suits and raincoats, fake fur stoles and corsets; a vast collection of hats, some with feathers, some with wax fruit; men’s flat, checked caps and sombre-looking bowler hats. It was an incredible sight. If this was a shop where anything was bought or sold as the claim above the shop door said, then Frankie reckoned more was bought by Elsa Barclay than was ever sold.

  Elsa took some time to serve her customer. ‘Charming!’ she kept saying to the little girl who was trying a pretty, though somewhat faded floral-patterned dress. The mother was clearly thrilled to have such attention for her little girl and a few minutes later, Elsa was opening the door for her customers, beaming with delight that she had earnt the princely sum of one shilling and ninepence. After the customers had gone, Elsa turned to Frankie, who was hovering behind a brass elephant. ‘So – Misster Frankie Lewis!’

  Frankie looked sheepish. ‘I’ve brought back yer book.’ He held out Treasure Island.

  ‘Ah!’ Elsa quickly advanced on him and virtually snatched the book from him. ‘But – did you read it?’

  Frankie nodded.

  Every single page?’

  Frankie nodded again, firmly.

  ‘Excellent! Excellent!’ Elsa beamed with delight, and clutched the book to her breast in triumph.

  The shop was much brighter than the parlour at 19 Hadleigh Villas, and Frankie could see that Elsa’s hair was almost unnaturally ginger.

  ‘So, now we must find you another book to read!’ She made her way behind the shop counter. ‘But first you must tell me all about Treasure Island!’

  And for the next half-hour or so, Frankie did exactly that. Elsa sat on her high chair behind the counter and listened enraptured as Frankie recounted the adventures of Jim Hawkins and the bloodthirsty Long John Silver, of the good ship Hispaniola. The more excited Frankie became as he described what he had read, the more quickly Elsa sipped her tea. When he’d finished, Elsa yelled, ‘Bravo!’ and applauded rapturously.

  The noise alarmed Winston, who started barking outside and scraping against the shop door. To Frankie’s amazement, Elsa told him not to leave the poor creature out in the cold, and when Winston was brought into the shop, Frankie was even more amazed to see her making a fuss of the dog, something Frankie’s mother had never done. And when Elsa fed him a small piece of her home-made apple cake, it was clear that this was the start of a beautiful friendship.

  It was almost eight o’clock when Helen Lewis got home from work. Although she quite enjoyed her job in the Dolcis shoe shop in the Holloway Road, it was very frustrating at times. Since the start of the war there had been a shortage of good footwear and, even when there was anything decent to buy, most p
eople didn’t have enough ration coupons. Her hours were from nine to six, but by the time she and her friend Ivy had met up for a cup of Camp coffee in the café next door, she was nearly always late home for her supper.

  Tonight, as Helen put her key into the lock of the front door, she could feel the ‘atmosphere’ inside. Her heart sank. Gracie was a moody and ungiving person, and when she felt fed up, she made everyone else feel likewise. Reg wasn’t much better. He got up in the morning, went to work at the Baths, and came home again. He didn’t seem to have any friends; if he did, Helen never saw any of them. Many, many times she wished her mum and dad would do what other mums and dads did, go out together occasionally – to the pictures, or for a drink in the pub. But her parents’ lives seemed to consist of reading the Daily Mirror and listening to the wireless. It was so different to Helen herself. Helen loved the company of her friends and, unlike her mother, despite the austerity of wartime, really cared how she looked. She always made sure her light brown shoulder-length hair was combed, and whenever she could get her hands on some lipstick was careful never to over use it. But, although they were so different, Helen did love her mother, and did everything she could to understand her. But it wasn’t easy.

  ‘Who is ’e, then?’ Gracie was ironing at one end of the kitchen table when Helen walked in. Reg was in his usual chair by the oven range, reading the Daily Mirror and listening to Forces’ Favourites on the wireless.

  ‘What d’yer mean?’ Helen hadn’t even put down her handbag.

  ‘Don’t give me none ’er that. You know what I mean!’ Resting her iron upright on the kitchen table, Gracie nodded her head towards something on the kitchen table. ‘Who is ’e?’

  Helen looked at the snapshot of Eric and coloured immediately. ‘Oh, Mum,’ she said, quickly picking up the snapshot and putting it into her handbag. ‘I wish you wouldn’t take fings from my room. I’m entitled to a little privacy, yer know.’