by Annie Murray
‘Well, you wanted to know!’
‘Yeah, and you told me,’ I snapped, crosser with myself than her because I was mucking up the afternoon. But God she didn’t half go on. I wanted her to be happy – she was my best pal. But I wanted her all to myself as well. She was so restless and impatient. Even now she was tapping her feet against the grey bricks as if she wanted to be off and none of us were good enough for her.
‘I don’t know what you’re always moaning about—’
‘Who says I’m moaning?’ she interrupted my outburst.
‘If I had a family like yours I’d think I was in clover. You should try living with my lot.’
‘Oh don’t you start getting on your ’igh ’orse with me!’ Teresa’s temper had a shorter fuse than a banger on fireworks night. ‘You’re not the one stuck in the shop and minding little kiddies all the time . . .’
‘Nor are you now, ’cause they’re not here, are they?’
‘And your dad doesn’t come down on you like a ton of bricks every time you even open your mouth to talk to a boy . . .’
I was getting ready to say that’s because he never noticed anything much I did but she was getting well warmed up now. ‘Family this, family that. You can’t get away from them ever – and if it’s not them it’s the sodding church.’
‘Well how come Stevie doesn’t mind?’
She made a big, irritated puffing sound through her lips. ‘Because Stevie’s pain in the backside little Stevie. He’s like a policeman round the place and all he ever thinks about are cars and football.’
She relented and looked round at me. ‘All I want’s a bit of excitement. We’ll be pals whatever. Boys don’t make any difference.’
‘I know,’ I said, face all red.
Just then we heard footsteps charging along the entry. The Spinis’ yard was a ‘double knack’ which meant there were two ways in, and there was an entry running along by the brewhouse. When I saw who it was my face blushed to my ears. Walt Eccles, Stevie’s pal. I was scared stiff every time I saw Walt, by the way my knees turned wobbly and my heart went like the clappers and my insides churned with frightened, helpless adoration. An adoration I’d rather have jumped from the spire of St Martin’s than let him know about. After all, Walt was two years older than us, which seemed like centuries, and why should he be interested in a gangly scarecrow like me?
The sun shone on his shock of gold hair and there was the usual cheeky grin on his freckled face as he came panting up to us, looking gorgeous.
‘In a bit of a rush, are we?’ I said, tart as I could manage, while Teresa smiled sweetly at him, as she would at anything in trousers.
Walt gave me his best ingratiating smile which filled me brimming over with panic. ‘Nice to see you too,’ he said. ‘How’re you then?’
‘None the better for seeing you.’
He pulled a face at me. ‘See you’re full of charm as ever. Stevie in?’
‘Somewhere,’ Teresa said, waving into the house.
A moment later the two of them came out, off up to the park to kick a ball around. The blush rose in my face again, and I turned crossly to the wall. Teresa was giving me a really close, squinty look.
‘You’re sweet on ’im, aren’t you?’ Her face was full of devilment.
‘I’m not!’
‘Oh yes you are!’ she bawled in her big husky voice, and jumped about triumphantly clapping her hands. Luckily the yard was quiet. ‘Genie’s sweet on Walt. Genie likes boys after all!’
I went all tight inside. Only half joking I pushed her up against the wall of the brewhouse, gripping her shoulders.
‘One word to Stevie, or anyone,’ I said between my teeth, ‘and you won’t live to see another day. And that’s a promise.’
We were bored with the so-called war already. Every night we sat round the wireless, windows blacked, waiting. Mom hadn’t been to the pictures for three weeks. It was Bore War. Sitzkrieg instead of Blitzkrieg. We wanted something to happen, and not just in the Atlantic. Something we could see.
Gloria kept handing out announcements. Keep off the streets. Carry your gas mask as at all times, etc. In fact recently she’d been a bit of a bore herself.
The proper programmes were back on now at least. Band Waggon now on a Saturday night, Len with his cup and saucer jigging about as they sang, ‘Come and make a trip upon the Band Waggon – skiddeley-boom,’ until Mom’d say, ‘For goodness’ sake give me your Bournvita, Lenny. It’ll be in your lap, else.’
She was still low. Blackout, no pictures, supposedly in charge of the house, the uncertainty of it all getting on her nerves. Said she was scared to be out at night. Her so-called pal Stella had moved across town with her husband and hadn’t troubled herself to come back and visit so she wasn’t around to have a moan to. Mom did crack her face at Tommy Handley sometimes.
One evening she got out of her chair and said, ‘I’ve had enough of this. There aren’t going to be any air raids. Let’s have the last of the light before we all die of asphyxiation, never mind the flaming bombs.’
She threw open the blackout curtains and the waning light lapped across the room. We all took in a deep breath, thought something would happen. Nothing did.
The weeks passed. Poland surrendered. We clung to the music and wondered what was happening. We waited.
October 1939
‘Well, that’s that,’ Mom announced. ‘I’m not stopping in like this. I’ve had more than enough already.’
Mr Churchill had just announced that the war would last three years. How he knew that we didn’t understand, but something about him made you believe it. And that did it for Mom.
‘There’s no knowing when your father’ll be home for good.’ That thought seemed to rouse her out of the depressed stupor into which she’d kept dipping.
Lil had just moved jobs, though she hadn’t escaped the factory. She was learning welding at Parkinson Cowan, in overalls and with a snood over her hair, and kept on about how useful she was being to the war effort and humanity in general despite having three young children. She put on a good show of being irritated by a new set of admirers.
Mom decided that for the first time in fifteen years she’d get herself employed. She fixed herself up with a job on the telephone exchange, second shift of the day.
‘But Mom – you’ll have to come back from town on the bus late at night. You won’t even go out as it is now.’
Apparently this didn’t matter. ‘I’ll just have to manage.’ She was excited all of a sudden, cheeks pink. ‘You’ll have to stop in and keep Len company.’
This was all quite a turn about for the woman who’d refused even to go up to our nan’s of an evening because she was too scared to come back in the blackout.
‘I could be knocked down in the street and robbed,’ she’d kept saying. ‘There’s a lot of it about you know.’
‘So who’s going to cook? And shop and clean?’
‘Genie!’ She laughed, looking back over her shoulder at her reflection in the mirror. ‘You sound like an old woman. We’ll get by. I’ll be home mornings, and you know what to do by now, don’t you? It’s not as if we’ve got your father to feed.’
On the strength of the vast fortune she was about to earn she went out and kitted herself up with a couple of frocks and a pair of shoes with T-bars and a chunk of heel, and started on her new working life. The rest of us, who’d been at it for some time with no red carpet laid out, had to stand aside.
She went off at dinnertime, hair knotted low in her neck, in one of her new dresses and her small black bag over one arm, and came home at about half ten at night off the bus. She was full of it. The work, the people. It was fast, busy. And she was needed suddenly.
‘They even have special gas masks for us with a little microphone at the side so we can carry on working.’ She laughed. ‘After all, in a gas attack the telephones would be essential.’
I could just imagine her putting on a posh telephone voice. She stood more upright now, st
rutted about as if she owned the place, and didn’t sit in chairs and stare at nothing any more. Nor, from the first day, did it seem to cross her mind that there was such a thing as housework to be done.
I decided to have a go at something else myself. I was getting restless with all this change around me, and I needed a job which allowed me to start early and finish early, what with the shopping and cooking to do and often washing thrown in as well. Mom was at home all morning but she was barely ever up until gone eleven. She needed the time to recover, she said.
There was a job going at a firm in Cheapside called Commercial Loose Leaf. I walked through the sandbagged entrance up a gloomy staircase smelling of glue, to a cluttered little office above the shop floor. The gaffer was a middle-aged man with a tired, worried-looking face, thin hair and blue eyes like a little boy’s.
‘D’you know your numbers properly?’ he asked.
‘Oh yes,’ I said airily. ‘I was good at arithmetic at school.’ Once again I showed my certificate and reference from the school.
He just glanced at them, not really interested. ‘Just so long as you can count.’ He gave me a quick look up and down. ‘Table hand. You can start Monday.’
Well, that job nearly did me in. The company produced trade books and ledgers. To start with they put me to collating piles of paper covered with print about technical things I couldn’t make head or tail of. The second week I was put on numbering. So this was the reason I needed to be able to count. The blue-tinged papers were all numbered by hand. You had to concentrate enough doing it so’s you didn’t lose your place and that meant you couldn’t talk to anyone, but it didn’t take up anything like the whole of your mind. The second night I dreamed of nothing but numbers.
We got used to a new routine at home. Suddenly we were a family where everyone had a job. I was working from eight in the morning until half past four. So after work I’d walk home and pick up any shopping on the way. Len came in soon after from Longbridge, so muggins here would cook the meal and wash up (Len wiping) and we’d sit in the rest of the evening until Mom came in. Occasionally Teresa would come down to keep us company.
‘You’re the one person who cheers me up,’ I told her one night. ‘It’s an endless round of drudgery otherwise, and no one notices what I’ve done anyway.’
‘Why don’t you say something to your mom?’ Teresa said, not being one to sit down under anything.
I shrugged. ‘She’ll only play the martyr. She’s got her head so high in the clouds I don’t think she even notices the rest of us exist any more.’
Teresa sat back with her legs stretched out, playing with a lock of her hair. ‘You’ll make someone a lovely wife,’ she teased. ‘With a flock of kids.’
I scowled. ‘I’m not getting married. Not ever. I’m going to work as hard as I can and get rich and buy a cottage in a field next to a river, where there’s no chimneys and no factories and no people, and I’m going to live there on my own for the rest of my life and grow flowers. Well – Len could come too if he wants.’
‘Oh, I want to get married,’ Teresa said. ‘I think it’s sad seeing a woman left on the shelf.’
‘Sure you’re talking about marriage and not just a white dress and a veil?’
‘Oh Genie! You’re such a flaming misery you are!’ She laughed, exasperated.
‘I just think you’re better off on your own. I mean, look at my family. Who’d want to get hitched after seeing them lot?’
‘Lil had a decent husband.’
‘Yes, but what’s the good of a decent husband if he’s just going to throw himself in the canal?’
Teresa found this mighty hilarious for some reason. ‘Genie, you’re awful you are!’ She sat up again. ‘Guess what?’ Then she was off again, giggling so much she set Len off and then I started laughing too, which came as a relief, although in the end none of us knew what the hell we were laughing about.
‘My love life is about to begin,’ she got out in the end.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Not him? The Adam’s apple?’
‘That’s the one,’ Teresa managed to get out between guffaws of laughter. ‘We’re going out for a walk – Sunday. In Highgate Park.’
My eyes widened. ‘Does your mom know?’
Teresa shook her head. ‘I’ll tell them I’m coming to yours.’
‘But that’s lies! How many Hail Marys is that, Teresa?’ It wasn’t like her to tell fibs, even if she was a bit wild.
‘It is not as if we’re going to do anything. Not real mortal sins or anything.’
‘What’s a mortal sin?’
‘Having a babby when you’re not married and killing someone and – you know, bad things. But I just want summat to happen. Some excitement. I get sick of being under Mom and Dad’s noses all the time. Anyway, his name’s Jack and he’s seventeen.’
Determined not to look impressed I said, ‘Well keep me posted. Don’t go giving sweets to any strange men. And Teresa – don’t make me lie for you.’
Why did I do it? I asked myself, cheeks aflame at the memory. Something made me. Something called living in hope. I’d been at Commercial Loose Leaf for a couple of weeks. Already I was half mad with boredom. We needed something for our tea and I had to shop on the way home. Sausages would be easiest for Len and me. Mom had a meal in the works canteen.
I went home via Belgrave Road, along to Harris’s the butchers where Walt worked. It was a detour, but it made perfect sense to go there, didn’t it? Because after, I could pop in and see my nan.
Walt was standing behind the counter in his striped, bloodstained apron, a pencil behind one ear, bright red against the shorn gold of his hair. I could see through the window that most of the stock had gone by this time of day. I walked into the tiled shop, my feet almost silent on the sawdust-covered floor, though the bell on the door gave me away with a loud tinkle. Walt was sharpening a knife and whistling as if he had not a care in the world.
‘Can I help you, madam?’ He half caught sight of me, then looked up properly, his freckly face spreading into a grin. The grin was laced with mischief that at first I was too blind to see. ‘’Allo, Genie! What’re you doing here?’
‘Come for a pound of sausage, what d’you think?’ I said, my cheeks pinking up, to my extreme annoyance. ‘This is a butcher’s if I’m not mistaken.’
I didn’t know exactly why I was like that whenever I saw Walt, but I couldn’t help myself. I lay in bed thinking about him, daydreamed about him for a proportion of my time that I would rather die than admit, but I simply couldn’t let him know I liked him. I wasn’t going to set myself up for being kicked in the teeth. What I was too stupid to realize was that he could see it as clear as day.
‘I was only asking,’ he said, pretending to be hurt. ‘Sausage? There’s a few left.’ As he was weighing them out he said, ‘Seen Teresa?’
‘No I ’aven’t. Not in a week. Don’t get time for anything, do I, what with Mom working, Len working . . .’
Walt flung the sausages into the scale with a flourish, eyes fixed on the needle, which swayed back and forth. ‘Just over,’ he said. ‘Seeing as I know you. How’s the new job then?’
I gave him a sideways look. ‘If you’re looking for a new exciting life, don’t go to Commercial Loose Leaf.’
Walt grinned again. ‘Don’t go on. You’re making me jealous.’
As I handed over the money he closed his fingers over mine and held them. I managed to look into his eyes. ‘You’d be nearer Jamaica Row there, wouldn’t you?’ he said.
It was true. We were a stone’s throw from the meat market where I could easily have chosen to shop if I’d wanted. Feeling his warm hand on mine I blushed like mad and realized that was exactly what Walt had been aiming for.
I yanked my hand away. ‘I’m allowed to shop where I want, aren’t I? I’ve come up here to see my nan. If that’s all right with you.’
I flounced out of the shop. Half way along the road I stopped, cursing. I’d taken off without
the sausages. I stood there for almost a minute trying to decide what to do. I had to go back. I was going to look a right idiot whatever I did. Summoning what dignity I could, I pushed the shop door open. Walt stood there with my bag of sausages held out in one hand, with the kind of teasing smile on his face that made me want to curl up somewhere dark and never come out. I couldn’t look him in the eyes. I grabbed the sausages, said ‘Ta’ in a sarky voice, and took off to the door as fast as I could.
‘Genie.’ His voice was soft suddenly, sweet, with a kind of longing in it.
I turned back, my pulse speeding up, and for one split second my silly little heart told me Walt’d been hiding his feelings. I was special to him . . . As I looked round at him he must have seen it, my need and hope spraying out like sparks across the room.
And he was grinning, a mean, triumphant smile which made me shrink and buckle up inside. ‘You still haven’t got your change.’
I snatched the tuppence from him, dropped the sausages, had to fumble to pick them up and finally slammed out of the shop, cheeks ablaze.
‘Bye bye beautiful,’ he shouted, his mocking laughter following me along the pavement.
‘You bastard, Walt Eccles,’ I fumed, storming along the street. I was in too much of a state even to go and see my nan.
Life was peaceful in its way without Mom around. Len’d roll up his sleeves and get a fire going in the grate after work while I got the tea and we’d listen to Henry Hall or some other show. Then The Nine O’Clock News, after that old ‘Jairmany calling, Jairmany calling’ Lord Haw-Haw. He gave me the creeps at first, just the sound of his voice, but then we all just used to listen for the daft things he came out with. Then there’d be music and I’d do mending or tidying or hand washing – whatever else was needed – until Mom came in like the conquering hero and we’d have a cuppa with bread and butter. Then bed. That was our day, every day.
One night while Len and I sat waiting we heard the front door open and Mom’s voice, high and animated in a way I’d almost never heard it before.
‘Goodnight then – and thanks ever so much!’