by Annie Murray
The door slammed shut. She was in the hall taking her coat off and humming to herself. I went to look and she turned round and smiled at me. Which was all pretty unusual. She was unknotting a woollen scarf from round her neck.
‘Brr, s’getting cold out nights now. Awright?’ she said. ‘Everything OK?’
‘Who was that at the door?’
‘Oh . . .’ She kept her tone casual, hanging the scarf on the hook behind the door. ‘He’s a copper – seen me home a couple of times off the bus after I said I was scared in the blackout. He’s very helpful.’
‘That’s nice.’ I stood watching her, her lit up expression. I’d seen my own face in the mirror not long before, pale, with dark grooves under my eyes from exhaustion like an old woman. I felt wrung out and lonely, and I wanted her to look after me and be my mom.
‘Got the kettle on? Hallo, Lenny love.’ He nodded amiably at her. I went and lit the gas. Mom stood by the hearth, back to the fire. She rubbed her hands, started telling us about the ‘girls’ at work, jokes, things that’d happened. I sank into a chair. ‘Aren’t you making tea?’ she asked eventually.
‘I’m tired out. Can’t you make it?’
Her eyes narrowed. She looked spiteful. ‘You’re tired? Huh. I get in from work in the middle of the night and you tell me you’re the one who’s tired.’
I was near to tears with weariness. After all, who was running this house with no help or thanks from anyone? Sometimes I wish she’d just go, then there’d be just me and Len. Things were all right until she came home. But I wasn’t going to show how miserable I felt in front of her.
She sank down by the fire in a martyred fashion and twiddled bits of her hair round her fingers as I got up to make the tea.
‘Mrs Spini does the house and the shop,’ I said. ‘Always has.’
‘I’ve got quite enough on my plate with your father and Eric away,’ she snapped. ‘Vera Spini.’ She put all her energy into that sneer. ‘Hair out of a bottle.’ The way she said it dyeing your hair might have been crime of the century.
Then she turned plaintive again. ‘It takes getting used to going back to work again and working shifts. I think I deserve all the help I can get.’
November 1939
Strikes me it’s about time someone told Teresa the facts of life, I thought to myself. And who else is going to take the trouble but me?
Teresa was one of those girls who could give men the wrong idea. Too friendly, too vivacious, too downright appealing, but with barely the first idea of what it was all about, for all her talk of mortal sins. Of course most of us girls were innocent as morning dew until we strayed into marriage or trouble, but what with the trollops coming and going I’d long started asking questions, and Lil made it her business to get a few things straight with me when I left school.
‘Your mother’ll never be able to bring herself to do it,’ she said. ‘God knows, she spends enough time with her head stuck in a pile of sand as it is. But you ought to know, Genie. The factory’s no place for an innocent kid like you. Specially with your pretty face.’
We were in Nan’s house. Lil had chased the kids out to play.
‘You’re ’aving me on!’ I said when she explained. ‘Not with his willy!’ My mouth hung open for minutes after.
Lil’s cheeks went rose pink all of a sudden. ‘I know it don’t look much of a thing as a rule, but when they come on to you and get the least bit excited, it . . .’ She gave me a vivid demonstration with her index finger. ‘That’s how they put the babbies inside.’
I sat there goggling at her. Her brown eyes smiled mischievously. I had so many questions I couldn’t think what to ask first. ‘But doesn’t it feel – funny – them doing that?’
‘Feels a bit funny at first of course. But you get used to it. Can be ever so nice . . .’ Her face took on a dreamy look. I got the definite feeling this was something she liked talking about. ‘Best feeling on earth at times, that’s if you love ’im. But Genie . . .’ She leaned forward solemnly and lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘What I’m saying is, you don’t want to do it with any old dog who comes along. Keep yourself nice for someone special. And make sure ’e’s going to marry you before your knickers get below your knees.’
‘Lil!’
‘I’m giving you good advice, Genie, believe me. It’s not nice to be a tart, and anyhow, you don’t know quite where else they’ve been dipping it if they’re that way inclined.’
Things were beginning to make a bit of sense, quite apart from the trollops. Len, for a start. That enigmatic smile that used to come over Big Patsy’s face when Lil sat on his lap. And Lil was right. I couldn’t for the life of me imagine Mom coming out with any of this information. For a second I thought of Walt and blushed to the roots of my hair.
Since, according to Lil, men were only after One Thing, I thought it was time Teresa knew. Which she didn’t, I was sure. Her Mom and Dad treated her as a child and she was still safe in the bosom of home – or so they thought. Course they didn’t know she was walking out late some Sunday afternoons now with Mr Sheet Metal, supports-the-Villa Jack, using me as her alibi. Lil had given me such a vivid account of the male sex drive that I thought Teresa was in immediate danger of losing her virtue in Highgate Park.
I went to the Spinis’ in the middle of Sunday afternoon when I guessed the marathon meal would be over. In any case, with only half of them there the heart had gone out of it. Only Vera and Teresa were in and Vera was sat at the table touching up the roots of her hair from the bottle of peroxide which Mom had been right about.
‘Micky’s pumping water out of air raid shelters,’ Vera said, squinting at the little oblong mirror. Her dark eyebrows looked startling set against the bleached-out hair. ‘That’s all they seem to have to do in the Fire Brigade. S’pose I shouldn’t be complaining though, should I?’
Teresa had on her red dress from Mass and she’d dolled up her hair with a matching red bow. ‘We were just going out, weren’t we?’ she said, looking meaningfully at me.
‘S’pose so.’ I didn’t take too kindly to being treated as a decoy in place of some bloke.
‘What’re you doing here?’ she hissed at me as soon as we were in the street. ‘You know I’m meeting Jack.’
‘All right, all right, I’m not going to forget, am I, the way you keep on?’ Jack this, Jack that. The minute he’d come along he’d become far more important than I was. I didn’t seem to be important to anyone nowadays.
We cut past the closely packed lines of houses and factories along Stanhope Street.
‘Don’t walk so fast.’
‘I’ll be late. I told him half past three.’
‘But I’ve got summat to tell you.’
I suddenly felt like the guardian of Teresa’s virginity, my imagination running riot about what she and Jack were getting up to.
‘Hang on a tick.’ She pulled me into an entry. ‘Hold these for me a minute.’ I found I was holding a handful of pins.
‘What the hell are these for?’
Skilfully Teresa made a thick tuck in the red skirt, pinning it up round her bit by bit and shortening the drop of the church-length dress by a good six inches.
‘You can’t go around like that!’ I laughed at her. ‘You’ll get them sticking in you!’
‘Wanna bet?’ She did her coat up round her with a grin, hiding the clumsy lump of material. ‘There. That’s better. Come on.’ She pulled me along the road again. ‘What you got to tell me?’
Once I’d blurted it out Teresa stood stock still on the pavement and just stared at me, brown eyes popping. I thought for a horrible moment she was going to come out with something like, ‘Oh Genie, how could you think I didn’t know? Jack’s already had his evil way with me and I’m expecting twins . . .’
Instead of which she erupted into her huge laugh, bending backwards, then leaning forward doubled up. I ended up in stitches too just watching her. People were staring.
‘Oh no!’ she cried w
hen she could speak. ‘No, that can’t be right, Genie. Where in hell did you get that from? That’s the most horrible idea I’ve ever come across!’ And she was off again, tittering away. ‘You don’t half come up with some barmy notions, you do.’
‘But it’s true!’ I insisted. ‘How else d’you think . . .?’
She moved closer, aware of ears flapping along the street. ‘A man kisses you a special way and then the Holy Spirit gives you a babby. That’s what really happens. Come on,’ she said, stepping out again. ‘He’ll be waiting. You keep out of sight, eh?’
‘Charming.’ I was stung by jealousy again. ‘Don’t believe me then. I just hope you don’t live to regret it.’
‘All he’s ever tried to do is hold my hand,’ she said smugly, disappearing round the corner. ‘Which is more than anyone does for you.’
‘I’ve got more bloody sense, that’s why!’ I felt like tearing her eyes out, the stupid cow.
Her voice floated round to me, mocking. ‘Ciao, Genie.’
I peeped round the corner. Standing by the gate to the park, waiting for her, was one of the tallest, gangliest blokes I’d ever seen. His hair was curly and a bright carroty red as if his head was on fire. I couldn’t spot the Adam’s apple, but it would’ve been hard to miss the great big daffy grin on his face as Teresa walked up to him. She’d forgotten all about me, that was for sure.
When I couldn’t stand any more of Commercial Loose Leaf I got myself another new job in a little factory in Conybere Street, staining bunk beds which they made for the forces and the shelters. It was a small, dark place, all one room. On one wall there was a poster in big red letters which read: ‘FREEDOM IS IN PERIL. DEFEND IT WITH ALL YOUR MIGHT. YOUR COURAGE, YOUR CHEERFULNESS, YOUR RESOLUTION WILL BRING US VICTORY.’
On one side a few fellers were knocking up the beds, then they came to us to be stained before the webbing was put on. It wasn’t too bad. If it ever got a bit slack I went round and swept up or kept my hand in cleaning windows again.
‘I’ve cleaned that many factory windows,’ I told them, ‘I’m starting to think I ought to set up in business as a window cleaner.’
‘You’re like greased bloody lightning you are,’ one of the lads said to me. He had black curly hair, uneven grey eyes and his name was Jimmy. ‘Don’t you ever let up?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Not if I can help it. Gets boring. I like to be on the go.’
‘I can see that.’ He kept watching me dashing about, throwing me the odd wink.
The other girl working with me, a stodgy blonde called Shirley, said, ‘’E fancies you. See how ’e keeps on looking over here? You’re in there, you know.’
‘In there? What’s that s’posed to mean?’
Shirley looked at me pityingly. ‘Don’t you want a bloke? I’d do anything to ’ave a bloke of my own.’
It was odd the way she said it. She might just as well have said she’d do anything to have a dog, a budgie, a house . . . But I can’t say I wasn’t flattered by his attention. I pulled the belt tight round my overall and kept my hair brushed. I couldn’t help thinking about what Lil had said about men and their willies. But then I’d go and look at a real live man – let alone these boys around me – and I couldn’t quite put the two together. I thought maybe Lil was having me on after all. It really was beyond imagining.
Every week we had a letter from Dad, who was down south, somewhere with a funny name. He said he’d started off being billeted in a barn with rats running round his head of a night, the food was abominable and he seemed to spend most of his life digging – trenches, latrines, holes . . .
He said he missed us and hoped he’d be back for Christmas, though the war showed no more sign of being over than it did of getting going.
Mom seemed a bit shaken by this news. ‘It’s funny, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘Feels as if he’s been away such a long time. I’ve got sort of used to it. As if he was never here.’
Eric wrote every so often and told us not a lot except that he was all right and Mrs Spenser was a very nice lady, and thanked us for the letters we sent him.
‘Can he come home at Christmas, Mom?’ I asked. ‘We can’t just leave him down there – not then.’
‘Oh, I should think so,’ she said vaguely. I had this feeling when I talked to Mom nowadays that most of her mind was out to graze somewhere else.
‘Couldn’t he stay home? Lots of other kids have -come back. There’s nothing happening, is there?’
‘What?’ Her attention snapped back to me. ‘Oh no – I don’t think so, Genie. Not while there’s any danger of bombs. I mean, they keep telling us to leave the children where they are. And in any case, there’s no one at home to look after him, is there?’
I didn’t dare ask why she couldn’t just give up work. Was it that the country needed her or that she was enjoying herself far too much? After all, as she’d kept reminding us one way or another, we’d been getting in her way for the past fifteen years.
One night after work I got so fed up with doing bits of hand washing, and had a bit of extra energy for once, so I stoked a fire with slack under the copper and had a good go at it, pounding it with the dolly. When it came to mangling it I called Len to come in the kitchen and give me a hand. We just fitted into the room and he turned the handle for me.
‘Things all right at work?’ I asked him. ‘You managing still?’
‘Yes,’ he said in his slow, thick voice. ‘I like it. S’nice.’
‘Good.’ I pulled a snake of wet washing from the wooden rollers of the mangle. ‘I’m glad you’re happy, Len.’
He nodded enthusiastically, looking across at me, his eyes always appealing, somehow innocent. ‘You OK, Genie?’
‘Oh . . .’ I sighed. ‘Yes. I’m OK, Len. Ta.’
There were shirts and underclothes, the lot, draped all round the room by the time Mom got in. We heard the front door and felt its opening jar all the other doors in the house.
‘Come on through,’ I heard her say.
Len and I looked at each other. Her voice was so smooth, soapy bubbles of charm floating from it.
I saw the shock in her face as she came into the back, catching sight of her drawers hung out to dry by the fire. But she recovered herself quickly. Over her shoulder I could see his face – dark brown hair, swarthy, handsome and young – quite a bit younger than her actually. The shoulder of a copper’s uniform. He was looking nervous.
‘This is Bob,’ Mom started babbling. ‘He’s just popping in for a bit. He’s been very kind and escorted me home from the bus a few times and his shift’s finished so I thought a cup of tea was the least we could do.’ She gave a tinkly laugh. ‘This is my brother, Len. Shake hands, Len.’
Len said, ‘’Ullo,’ and did as he was told, dwarfing Bob’s hand in his. Bob coughed and nodded at him. Now he’d got himself into the room I could see he wasn’t much taller than Mom, with a stocky, muscular body.
‘Len’s not quite – you know . . .’ Mom was saying. She slid over that one. ‘And this is my daughter, Eugenie. I had her when I was very young of course. Much too young,’ she threw in quickly.
‘Eighteen,’ I added, pretending to be helpful. ‘And I’m fifteen.’ Mom glowered at me. PC Bob nodded again, even more nervously.
‘Genie,’ Mom said between her teeth. She gave a little jerk of her head. ‘The washing – couldn’t you just . . . Until we’ve finished . . .?’
‘I’ve just hung it all out,’ I said stubbornly. ‘I’ve spent the whole evening doing it.’ My hostility wasn’t lost on her. ‘You could go in the front.’
‘It’s icy cold in there.’
‘Never mind,’ PC Bob said quickly. He gave a stupid little laugh. ‘I take people as I find them in my job. And I have got a family of my own, after all.’
‘Bob’s got two kiddies,’ Mom said, seeing him to a chair. She turned up the gaslight, peeling back the shadows. ‘Kettle on, Genie?’
‘No.’
She clenched her teet
h again. ‘D’you think you could put it on?’
We all drank tea while Len and I sat quiet and Mom chattered on about her job, my job and about Eric being away. She didn’t talk about Dad. I watched her. She was like another person from the one we saw every day – alight, talkative, a bit breathless.
I had a good look at PC Bob. He knew I was staring at him but he couldn’t do much about it. It’s not that I dislike people on sight as a general rule, but I couldn’t stand him. I could sense it with them. What was between them. And I didn’t like it.
He didn’t say much. Smiled in the right places when Mom laughed. He had a heavy-set face and dark, mournful eyes which hardly ever looked anywhere but at her. I knew she could feel it, that stare. I’m not sure he was more than half listening to what she was saying, and she was making less and less sense because of the charge his look had set up in the room. His eyes travelled over her as she talked. I think they were a sludgy grey but it was hard to tell in the gaslight. I wanted to get up and shout stop it. Stop staring at her like that. He was following her shape and she talked all the more as if to fight off the magnetic intensity of those eyes.
When he’d drunk up and left, at last, the force of his presence left a hole in the room, like the sudden silence when we switched Gloria off for the night.
Mom was in a dither, cheeks flushed. ‘You didn’t have to be so short, Genie,’ she said. ‘All he came for was a cup of tea.’
‘Just make sure the house is tidy when I come in,’ Mom instructed me at least once a day. ‘Just in case.’
And he was soon back.
I made tea and sat watching them. No one was saying anything much and all you could hear were spoons in the cups and the fire shifting. Mom looked down at the peg rug by the hearth, at her feet, then up at Bob. He was sat forward on the edge of his chair in his dark uniform, sipping the tea, giving Mom soulful looks. When their eyes met she giggled.
God Almighty.
‘What about some music?’ Mom said in the end. ‘No Gloria tonight, Len?’