Our Street

by Pemberton, Victor

  Frankie couldn’t bear to see his father in this state, his hair all over his bloated, blood-red, drunken face, his shirt half-hanging out of his trousers. As usual, he had the last remnants of a fag dangling from his lips and a dog-end tucked behind one ear. ‘I’m goin’ up ter bed, Dad. G’night.’ He turned, but his father yelled after him.

  ‘You get back ’ere! I wanna word wiv yer!’

  ‘I’m goin’ ter bed, Dad! I’m tired!’

  Now Reg was really angry, and he staggered out of the parlour doorway, and yelled up at his son. ‘You get down ’ere, yer toffee-nosed little git, or I’ll cuff the bleedin’ daylights outa yer!’

  Frankie hesitated for a moment then, in a fit of rage, stormed back down the stairs, and fearlessly swept past his father into the parlour. What he saw made him feel physically sick. Chairs were tossed on their side and the settee was stained with beer. The floor was littered with newspapers, half-eaten sandwiches, and countless quart bottles of brown ale. And the stench! It was that same terrible smell of stale beer and home-rolled Rizla fags which nauseated Frankie every time he passed a pub at throwing-out time.

  ‘So – yer fink you’re so high-and-bleedin’ mighty, don’t yer!’ Reg had just managed to stagger back into the room, but he had to hold on to the door. ‘’Specially now you’re so well bleedin’ ’eeled.’

  Frankie, his arms crossed defiantly, didn’t like the sound of this. ‘Wot’re yer goin’ on about?’

  ‘I’ll tell yer wot I’m goin’ on about, young clever-arse!’ Reg moved towards Frankie, waggling his finger menacingly at him, his eyes glazed with drink. ‘You an’ your fancy lady pal in the jumble shop. Yer fought I din’t know about ’er, din’t yer?’ And he yelled, ‘Din’t yer!’

  Reg’s raised voice caused Winston to growl in the passage outside.

  ‘I don’t care wot yer know or don’t know!’ Frankie yelled back. ‘Wot I do is none of yer business!’

  ‘It is my bleedin’ business! If you go out and take money off a bleedin’ Kraut, then it’s my business!’ Reg was wavering dangerously on his feet. ‘I’m not ’avin my own son make me a laughin’ stock down the ’ole bleedin’ street!’

  ‘I’m not the one that’s makin’ yer a laughin’ stock!’ Frankie yelled. ‘And since yer’re so concerned about me bein’ yer son, then why don’t yer treat me like a son!’

  ‘’Ow much is she payin’ yer?’

  ‘I told yer, it’s none of yer business!’

  Reg staggered menacingly closer. ‘I’m warnin’ you!’

  ‘It’s none of yer business! I work fer wot I earn, and you got no right to ask me questions!’

  Reg was now brandishing his fist at Frankie. ‘If I go round to that bleedin’ shop, I swear to God I’ll cut that bleedin’ Kraut bitch down ter size!’

  ‘Don’t you call ’er fings like that!’ Frankie was now eyeball to eyeball with his father. ‘Elsa’s a kind and wonderful lady. I work ’ard for ’er, and she pays me for it. Wot’s wrong wiv that?’

  ‘Ha! Kind an’ wonderful my arse!’

  Now Frankie was really rattled, so he yelled back in a high-pitched shriek. ‘At least she does somefin’ for me. Which is more than you’ve ever done!’

  This was too much for Reg. He had always felt vaguely guilty about his inadequacies as a father, about never being able to give his son any pocket money. His clenched fist suddenly launched at Frankie and struck the boy straight in one eye. Frankie tumbled back on to the floor and, as he did so, Winston, with teeth bared, leapt through the open door and grabbed hold of Reg’s ankle. The sounds of shouts and dog snarls were horrifying.

  ‘No, Winnie! Down boy!’ Frankie, holding his wounded, weeping eye, was trying to get up from the floor.

  Reg tried to pull his ankle away from Winston, and in desperation, suddenly kicked out at the dog with his other foot, sending Winston reeling across the other side of the room, squealing in pain.

  Frankie leapt up, yelling hysterically at his father. ‘Yer pig! I hate yer! I hate yer!’ and he pushed Reg hard with both hands, sending him sprawling on to the settee, scattering bottles, glasses, and plates as he fell. ‘I hope yer die!’ Then he grabbed hold of Winston’s collar and dragged him out of the room. ‘Come, Winnie! Come boy!’ he begged. ‘Let’s get out of ’ere!’

  As soon as he and Winston had reached the safety of their bedroom, Frankie locked the door. Within a few moments, his father was outside, banging wildly and yelling, ‘Open this door, yer little sod! Open it!’ Frankie was now sobbing hard and all he could do as he listened to his father’s drunken rantings on the landing outside was to hug Winston as tight as he possibly could.

  It was some minutes before Frankie heard the sound of his father’s footsteps thumping back down the stairs. Then, with a last yell of, ‘Don’t worry, I can wait! I’ll get yer, yer little bleeder!’ the parlour door was slammed, shaking the very foundations of the entire house.

  Frankie, his eye stinging from the savage blow he had just received, got up very quietly and unlocked the door, then lay on his bed, clutching Winston. Eventually, the huge tears rolling down his cheeks sent him off to sleep, but not before thinking to himself that it had been a hell of a way to spend Christmas.

  The following morning was Boxing Day and, when Frankie got up, Helen was still asleep in her own bed. He got a shock when he looked in Helen’s dressing-table mirror, for his eye was hugely swollen and was a deep mauve colour. It was still quite early, so he and Winston crept downstairs very quietly, making sure they didn’t wake Reg, who was more than likely sprawled out on the settee, dead to the world. But when Frankie got down the stairs, he noticed that the parlour door was open and, when he looked inside, there was no sign of his father. There was no one in the kitchen either, but something did catch Frankie’s eye on the table. There was something scrawled almost incomprehensibly on the top of the front page of an old Daily Mirror. It just said: For Frankie. With it was a solitary shilling piece.

  It was the only way Reg Lewis knew how to say sorry.

  Chapter Nine

  Elsa spent the few days of the Christmas holidays preparing for a rather special occasion and when Frankie returned to work in the jumble shop on the day after Boxing Day, she invited him, subject to his parents’ permission, to join her and her friend, Gertrude, for a New Year’s Eve dinner at Hadleigh Villas. Frankie was overjoyed and accepted at once, saying that there would be no problem with his parents because they always went to bed early every New Year’s Eve.

  The following Sunday, as soon as lunch at home was over, Frankie got spruced up in his new long grey flannel trousers, a clean white shirt and school tie, and a woollen pullover which Elsa had given him as a Christmas present. By four o’clock with Winston at his side, Frankie was knocking on Elsa’s door.

  She was in an ebullient mood, complaining about everything from the bad plumbing in the house to the feeble gas pressure on her gas stove. ‘You British can never get anything right!’ she kept telling Frankie, over and over again.

  Frankie was very amused to see Elsa in such a state, but fascinated to see all the weird and wonderful things she was preparing in the kitchen, and in particular the pancakes (which she said were called kartoffel-puffel in German, or something like that). Anyway, they were made out of mashed potato and covered with breadcrumbs, and Frankie couldn’t wait to taste them. During the last frenzied hour before Gertrude was due to arrive, Frankie helped Elsa lay the table in her dining-room. For him this was an absolute revelation. It was just like in the pictures. To have a separate room to have dinner in was smart enough, but to have silver cutlery, crystal glasses, and lace napkins was what Frankie had always imagined only people like the King and Queen had at Buckingham Palace. Despite her panic to get everything finished in time, Elsa was meticulous in the way she showed Frankie how to lay the table. She was determined that this was to be an evening which he would not only enjoy, but one in which he would also learn a great deal.

  At a quarter
to seven, Elsa went upstairs to have her bath and get dressed. She was away for ages and while she was gone, Frankie, worn-out with over-excitement, fell asleep in her armchair in the sitting-room. He was awoken by Winston who was barking and wagging his tail briskly.

  ‘Well? What do you think of old Elsa?’

  Frankie opened his eyes to find Elsa standing in the open doorway, posing with arms outstretched, as though she were the lady on the opening of every Columbia Pictures film. Both Frankie and Winston were staggered by her appearance, for she had changed into the most elegant full-length black velvet evening gown, which set off her carefully arranged gingery-coloured hair to the most stunning effect. She was also wearing two gold bangles on one wrist, a gold wristwatch on the other, diamond drop earrings and, tastefully pinned to the black velvet near her right shoulder was a glittering brooch in the shape of a scorpion.

  ‘Yer look – t’rrific, Elsa!’ was all Frankie could say, ‘just like – like Hedy Lamarr in Boom Town!’

  Elsa threw her head back and roared with laugher and, as she did so, Frankie thought she looked really beautiful. Winston also approved, for he immediately rushed up to her and started sniffing the black velvet. ‘Thank you, Winston!’ said the vivacious Hedy Lamarr of Hadleigh Villas. ‘I’m glad you approve!’ Then, quickly glancing at her watch, she suddenly disappeared out of the room, calling back to Frankie as she went, ‘Follow me, Frankie! We have work to do!’

  Frankie obediently followed Elsa to the door beneath the stairs, then down some narrow steps to the cellar. When Elsa turned on the light, Frankie found that they were in a wine cellar, but the shelves were almost entirely empty but for a few dusty-looking bottles which occupied one small corner.

  ‘Before the war these shelves were full of the finest wine you could buy. Robert always had it sent from France – that is, until the Nazis took it all.’ She found a bottle of wine and gave it to Frankie to take back upstairs.

  Gertrude Rosenberg arrived on the dot of eight o’clock. Unlike Elsa, she was always punctual, which she considered to be polite.

  ‘Zo! Ziz iss the famous Misster Frankie Lewis!’ Having paid off the taxi driver who had brought her from Swiss Cottage, Gertrude was now at the street door which Frankie had opened. As ever, she was a vision of over-dressing, wearing the most flamboyant creation paid for by one of her pre-war boyfriends. Like Elsa, she was in a long evening dress, but it was bright scarlet and she also wore heavy make-up including false eyelashes that were so long they curved up at the ends. ‘Zo, do I com in, or do I stand on der doorstep all night?’

  ‘Oh – sorry, miss.’ Frankie stood back to let Gertrude enter. As she did so, she handed him her small overnight suitcase, as if he were a servant. Frankie took the case, then quickly closed the street door. Winston greeted Gertrude’s arrival with total indifference, for he only sniffed her dress twice before returning to the rug in front of the sitting-room fire.

  ‘Gertrude! Mein lieber Freund!’ Elsa came hurrying out from the kitchen to greet her old friend. Frankie thought they would never stop kissing each other’s cheeks. ‘Come, Frankie! Say hallo to my dear friend, Miss Rosenberg.’

  Frankie transferred the overnight suitcase to his left hand, and offered the other hand to Gertrude. ‘’Allo, miss.’

  Gertrude held her hand out as though she were Queen Mary. When Frankie shook it heartily, she withdrew it quickly and put it into her coat pocket. ‘He’s much smaller zan I imagined.’

  The two women were now both looking at Frankie. ‘Nonsense!’ Elsa said, with a dismissive wave of the hand. ‘English boys always take a little longer to grow tall. It’s the terrible food they eat.’

  As the two women continued to talk about him as though he wasn’t even there, Frankie knew why he had been invited. Elsa was putting him on show to Gertrude, who was clearly irritated that Elsa had found a friend other than herself. It was going to be quite an evening!

  Before dinner, Frankie sat on a pouffe by the sitting-room fireplace, watching Elsa and Gertrude as they sipped sherry and talked about ‘the old days’ and he learned more about Elsa than he had since they first met. He heard how, at the beginning of the war, because of a bureaucratic mix-up, Elsa had been interned in an Alien’s Camp on the Isle of Man, but when Robert, eventually contacted by the hopelessly misinformed Home Office, produced their marriage certificate, she was immediately released.

  Dinner was nothing like the food served up by Frankie’s mother. For starters there were Elsa’s little home-made tartlets filled with fish roe, and that was followed by veal stew with small suet dumplings, the meat provided by Mr Dorner, the butcher in Hornsey Road, whose own family, although he would never dare admit it, had German origins, hot shredded white cabbage cooked in vinegar called sauerkraut (which Frankie hated), and the kartoffel-puffel potato pancakes, which Frankie thought were tasty, but not as good as chips. The ‘afters’ consisted of extra-special apple-cake (the apples cooked in brandy), accompanied by a very curious cold semolina pudding mixed with home-made gooseberry jam. But when Frankie was offered a quarter of a glass of Elsa’s precious sweet white wine, Gertrude was somewhat astonished when he declined. When he was asked his reasons, Frankie explained that his dad would not allow him to drink alcohol until he was eighteen as it was against the law.

  Gertrude scoffed indignantly at this. ‘So typical of ze British. Ven I vos your age, young man, I had already been drinking for at least five or six years.’ Then, turning to Elsa with a shrug of the shoulders, added, ‘No vonder British children are so behind children on ze Continent. Zeir parents vont to keep zem young until zey are too old to know any better!’

  Frankie didn’t quite know what Gertrude meant by this, but he felt he couldn’t take it lying down. So he changed his mind and tasted the wine. He only sipped it but, as he did so, he tried to give the impression that he was enjoying it, which he wasn’t. To him it was sickly, and even as he smelt it, he felt like sneezing. But in a funny way Gertrude was right. It did make him feel grown up.

  As the evening wore on and 1945 loomed closer, the party really got into its stride. They pulled the Christmas crackers that Elsa had brought along from the shop to decorate the dining-table and suddenly they were all helpless with giggly laughter at the silly, different coloured paper hats they were wearing. Then Gertrude, who had consumed three glasses of sherry before dinner and more than half the bottle of Elsa’s white wine during it, yelled out at the top of her voice, ‘Musik! Ich wunsche die Musik!’

  ‘Ah!’ Elsa immediately responded by leaping up from the dining-table and going to the huge oak dresser, where she collected something from one of the lower cupboards. ‘Die Musik!’ With a triumphant flourish she held up a small concertina. To vigorous applause from Gertrude, Elsa launched into a lively German song, swaying to and fro as she pressed the bellows and sang for all she was worth. Gertrude clapped her hands and joined in the song, urging Frankie to do the same. Frankie was absolutely staggered by this instant display of entertainment and, even though he hadn’t the faintest idea what he was singing, he la-di-da’d and clapped in time with tremendous gusto. The next moment he was being dragged up from his seat to follow Elsa and Gertrude in what was presumably a German folk dance. With Elsa singing and playing her concertina, then Gertrude waving her hands and arms and displaying the most awful singing voice, Frankie jigged excitedly behind, singing and laughing, deliriously happy, winding around the dining-table, then out across the hall, and into the dining-room. During all this, Winston cowered behind the settee, convinced that everyone had gone quite mad. Finally, Gertrude flopped down exhausted on to the settee, Elsa into her own armchair, and Frankie on to the pouffe by the fireplace.

  A little later, when Elsa had brought in coffee, Frankie listened to her and Gertrude talking about the war, and how soon it would end. Then they told him fascinating stories about their escape from Germany and Frankie learnt how courageous Gertrude had been when she saved Elsa from a Nazi supporter who had wanted to hand her ov
er to the military police. Frankie also contributed his own story of terror, a vivid account of how, in 1940, he and his friend Alan Downs had been machine-gunned in Annette Road by a stray German Messerschmitt fighter plane, before it crashed into nearby Finsbury Park. Elsa and Gertrude listened, enthralled.

  With barely half-an-hour to midnight, the evening began to look just a little uneasy. It started with Gertrude insisting that she be given a brandy and Elsa duly obliged. The danger sign came when Gertrude started to slur her words.

  ‘Tell me somesing, Frankie.’ Gertrude’s dark, piercing eyes were watching him carefully over the brim of her large brandy glass. ‘Vhy do you come to see Elsa so much?’

  Elsa intervened immediately. ‘Don’t be silly, Gertrude. Why shouldn’t Frankie come to see me?’

  ‘Because he’s a young boy, and you are an old voman! He should be out viz boys and girls his own age.’

  Frankie didn’t like this. Gertrude was reminding him of the way his father behaved when he started to drink and Frankie’s eye was still a dark red after the beating he had taken on Christmas night. It had not been easy to lie to Elsa by saying he got the bad eye in a friendly fight with one of his pals in the Merton Street gang. ‘I like ter work wiv Elsa,’ said Frankie, feeling a little unsure of himself. ‘She’s very good ter me.’

  ‘But vot about your mudder? Isn’t she good to you?’

  Elsa was getting irritated. ‘Gertrude!’

  Gertrude would not be fobbed off, and kept her eyes glued to Frankie. ‘Vot does your mudder think zat you see Elsa so much?’

  Frankie shrugged his shoulders. ‘She don’t mind.’

  ‘She’s not jealous perhaps?’

  Elsa thumped her fist on the arm of her chair. ‘You are being dumm, Gertrude. Dumm!’

  Winston, who had his chin resting on Frankie’s lap, flinched when Frankie patted his head a little too hard. ‘My mum in’t jealous. She don’t care who I see.’