At about three o’clock, they were asked to leave the garden and they walked round the hill again until it was time to catch the bus back to the city. It was the same one, and the same crew, and George and the conductor exchanged friendly greetings and called each other “Chief” again, once when they got on, a second time when George showed the return ticket and finally when they got off. The old inadequately maintained bus found no difficulty going downhill and by six o’clock they were going past the Majestic cinema just before they reached their final stop.
“That’s where all those poor devils from Stepney had to stay -you remember Joyce telling us about them?”
“I suppose we’ve got a lot to be thankful for,” said George.
“Had a good day?” asked Graham. “You don’t mind helping me turn over the allotment to-morrow, do you?”
“Mind your hernia,” said Edna.
George smiled, hitching up the truss he had worn for twelve years now.
“You help where you can,” he said cheerfully.
IV
One day a couple of weeks later, Edna was in need of distraction and met Alex from school at half past three and took him to the cinema with her. Because they arrived in the middle of the programme, they saw the main film first. It was in black and white with Ruritanian princes and occasional outbursts of song, which fitted his criterion that all songs must perforce be sad, even if sung with a smile on the face. There was a newsreel. The Russians were fighting back hard against Hitler’s invaders and were being helped by supplies from Britain sent with great difficulty via a place called Murmansk. A great deal of coverage was given to General Rommel, even though he was on Hitler’s side and was causing much concern to our armies in the North African desert.
The lasting impression on Alex’s consciousness, however, was from the other film. It was a Western in Technicolor; a story of settlers in Red Indian country. One of its takes was of little houses in which the settlers lived being set on fire, followed by a long shot of them burning away to nothing. Edna looked down to see him quietly weeping, but she was enjoying the story so hoped that he would soon get over it as he did for the time being. The destruction was later avenged when certain wigwams were set on fire by the people who had built the little houses in the first place. He did spend some time wondering why it was all right to set Indian wigwams alight whereas burning settlers’ houses gave him such distress. Whatever the answer to that dilemma might have been, the image of the houses on fire stayed in his mind. During the course of the evening the distress returned and the tears began again.
“What’s the matter with you?” asked Edna.
“Them little houses,” he said.
“You’re not still moping about that, are you? That’s the last time I take you to the pictures.”
“I am. And I don’t mind if you don’t if that’s what they are all like.”
“Don’t be so silly. It’s only a story you saw.”
“But stories are about what’s real, aren’t they?”
“Sometimes, I suppose: but not always, and not that one!”
“Why not that one?”
“Oh, I don’t know. But if you are going to go round like a dying duck in a thunderstorm after being given a treat, I haven’t got much time for you!”
“Perhaps you haven’t got much time for me anyway!” was his the final desperate outburst.
Joyce looked up from her book, “I’m sure that’s not what Mum meant, Alex.”
Alex looked at Edna and saw no reason to change his mind. It was decided that it was his bedtime and that he’d better go and wash. He did so - very perfunctorily. The fact that Edna did not check up on him suggested that his suspicions about her were confirmed. She came to tuck him in without saying anything beyond what was necessary to fulfil the task, and then put the light out right away without asking him as she usually did, whether he wanted to look at his books for a while before he went to sleep. The little houses on fire stayed in his mind for a long time and he did not understand how doing what Edna wanted to do had turned into a treat for him.
V
Many of Alex’s formative experiences seemed to have happened on Oxford buses and in relation to the anger he provoked in his mother against him. One of the more significant ones occurred preparatory to one of her last aimless perambulations in the city before she had to accept that her way of life had changed and that there was nothing she could do to change it back.
Christmas had come and gone again and George’s days off were over. A week of Alex’s school holidays was left. Edna insisted on going out on a wet day. As she dressed Alex in his outdoor clothes she muttered that she could not stay in all the time looking at these four walls. Alex glanced round him to see rather more than that: the living room door was open and he could see at least two more walls by the staircase, and there were several others within easy reach of anyone who went through the door. Before he could say anything Edna pulled his scarf about him with such ferocity that he was too winded to speak.
“It really is dreadful out there, Edna. Do you really have to go?” said Joyce.
“Yes. I want to go and collect my shoes from the menders before I wear out my best ones and I want to call on that corset-maker Mrs Wilson told me about the other day.”
“That could all keep until a better day, couldn’t it? Alex will be back at school soon and you could go much easier on your own.”
“Maybe. But we are both about ready for going out now, so we might as well get on. See you later, Joyce.”
“Well, if you must go . . . Remember there’s a nice stew on for dinner at one o’clock!”
By this time Edna and Alex were in the street and making for the bus stop, both within close reach of a different sort of personal stew of their own.
Because of the wet, the bus was full up. The conductor said there was no room upstairs and they had to stand as far as the station where several passengers got off. Edna sat down on the seat next to the window with Alex beside her by the downstairs gangway. When the bus stopped next, more wet people got on and came to stand in the crowded gangway, one of whom being an elderly woman with two large bags. Edna saw her and dragged Alex over to sit on her lap so that she might have his seat. He was apprehensive about this because he remembered another time that he had sat on her lap when she had not wanted him to and when the results had been unpleasant. Once he and the old woman were in position, he was clamped tight by his mother, and said,
“I don’t think old people should be allowed on buses!”
Edna found great difficulty in smacking his face from where she was sitting. After trying to several times, she was reduced to hissing in his ear,
“That was very rude! Now apologise to the lady.”
“No.”
Edna began desperately to shake him up and down. This meant a measure of discomfort for the old lady as well and she turned to Edna and said,
“It really doesn’t matter, dear. It’s no wonder he regrets having to give up his seat on this filthy morning. He’s tall for his age isn’t he?”
“I’ve done my best to teach him some manners,” Edna muttered, now sweating with embarrassment at the way things had gone.
“Don’t you worry at all. I’m getting off at Carfax and then he can have his seat back.”
“We are getting off there too,” said Edna.
“You said we were going to St Giles,” put in Alex.
“Well, I changed my mind,” replied Edna, doing her best to squeeze her son lifeless before he should cause any more disquiet. The conductor called out that it was Carfax next stop, because nobody could see through the vapour on the windows.
“Good-bye, dear,” said the old lady as she got up. “No one ever said bringing up children was easy - and I’ve had six.”
Edna pushed Alex clumsily before her off the bus.
“Now you’ve got your socks wet!” she yelled as he fell off the bus into a puddle. “And you’ve splashed my only pair of lisle stocki
ngs! Good God, what more trouble are you going to cause today?”
At this she took off her glove and started to belabour her son ineffectively with it before dragging him down Cornmarket towards the Cadena once more.
“I’m taking you in here because I need a sit down; not because you deserve to be bought a drink. I’ve a good mind not to let you have one at all. Don’t say a word. You’ve said more than enough this morning already. Just keep your silly little trap shut until I say you can talk again!”
With her coffee in front of her and a small glass of orange before Alex, mother and child sat at a table pretending that they were nothing to do with each other, taking no notice of anyone else who was near them. Alex saw Edna bring out her handkerchief from her handbag and apply it surreptitiously to take away her tears. He had been told to be silent, so no words were possible. He was still angry with a child’s unfocused rage. He did not see his father much any more. His mother was always so miserable. The one special friend he had made at school was not acceptable to her. Once she found out that he was from Bermondsey she had told him not to mix with boys like that. He got on well with Joyce, but that relationship had become strained when he had been poking his hands down the sides of the big armchair in the front room when he had found a little orange-covered book with a sort of star on the front and the letters NESW at intervals around the star and inside the book thousands of small numbers in columns and boxes. He had given this to Graham and he had turned to John and told him off for hiding his logarithm book and claiming to have lost it so as to get out of his homework. John had, naturally, turned against him, and taken all the Meccano magazines back. “You cheap little sneak,” he had said to him. And now, just because some old woman wanted his seat on the bus, Edna was in one of her sulks. So everyone was against him, except his Dad, and he wouldn’t be back until another four days had dragged by.
Edna in due time put the wet handkerchief back in her handbag and stood up.
“Come on,” she said to Alex. “We can’t stay here all day or we’ll miss out on Joyce’s stew.”
She marched him out into the rain with his thick overcoat getting heavier with the moisture it attracted by the time they reached a small street where Edna collected her shoes and then laboured on to the house in Jericho where the lady who fashioned excellent corsets would have been found if Edna had made an appointment and she hadn’t still been at her daughter’s in Witney. She had gone there for a rest, as Edna learned from a talkative neighbour. They walked back to Carfax once more, and waited for the Botley bus. It was half-past twelve now and three hours had done a fair amount to cool both tempers.
Fortunately there were few passengers this time and finding a seat downstairs was simple. The conductor was an amiable soul who made remarks about all his passengers being like drowned rats but that it didn’t matter now there was no absorbent cloth left to upholster the seats. The force of this opinion was soon felt, as all of them slid about when their wet coats reached the shiny seat covers.
In fact, this was the salvation of the horrible morning for Alex. He slid down on to the floor and Edna had to drag him up again which, unaccountably in Alex’s eyes, made her laugh, and then cry again, and then laugh once more. Alex was astonished to find her cuddling him as he sat by her, kissing the top of his cap, wet though it was. Alex could not understand any of this erratic behaviour, but was glad this part of it was happening. Edna laughing was much easier to cope with than Edna angry with him. As she squeezed the life out of him again, but with a different motive, she said to him:
“You are a little pest, but you’re all I’ve got, aren’t you?”
She made to kiss him again, but put lipstick on his coat sleeve instead, which made her rueful again.
“I shall have to do something about your coat, won’t I?” she said, “It’s much too small for you now.”
They got home at five to one, which just gave them time to rub their faces with towels before Graham came over from the dairy and they sat down to eat the warming and relaxing stew which had bubbled on the Kitchener stove for the last three hours to fill all the rooms with a smell such as to make the four of them, Alex included after the idea had been explained to him, pretend they were the Bisto Kids.
That afternoon, Alex repeatedly drew dark figures walking through the rain. Since there were so many of them depicting a woman with her hand raised in anger towards a child, he decided they should make their way to the fire-grate while no one was in the room. He realized that his father could not say that these were not bad. There were in fact well drawn, but their purpose, he realized, had been to draw out pain. The pain had been acute and he had no way to explain that to anyone in words since he had brought it on himself. He decided that he would do what he ought to assist irksome old people, if only out of sense of self-preservation.
Edna was fond of telling people who admired Alex’s drawings that she could not draw a straight line and so she had no comparable consolation available. Her son watched her as she fitfully dozed in an armchair, recognizing that she felt lonely and lost too, and wishing that he could have helped her. At his age he was not able to recognize the resentment that was growing in her. She had long since stopped asking any deity that might listen to her, “Why me?” and defended herself with self-assertiveness whenever she had the chance. Even Joyce and Graham could do no more than watch what was happening to her and share her hope that George would not be late this Friday evening.
VI
When school opened again, Alex was glad to be out of the house for six hours in the day. He realized for himself what his mother meant by looking at the four walls.
In each classroom there was a coal fire, well guarded with black painted railings and topped with a brass bar that it was someone’s early morning task to keep polished and remove all the little finger marks accumulated each day as the children found some pretext to come to the teacher’s desk and linger momentarily in the warmth. By now Alex’s precocity in reading had been matched by what went on the classroom and the writing skills were being obtained in due sequence. Everyone in Miss Hill’s class could print with a controlled hand now and could do adequately in arithmetic (which nobody in those days called mathematics until the tasks had become much more involved). Miss Hill still used the imperative mood often, but she was respected and obeyed more or less willingly by all but one or two.
Alex had been the narrator in the class nativity play before Christmas and this had gained him some standing with the others because he had been the only one to wear his Sunday best instead of masquerading as a shepherd in a dressing gown and a tablecloth or a king in someone’s old curtains and a cardboard crown, thereby looking a bit silly. Isabel, who sat next to him, had not warmed to being an angel in a sequinned frock and cardboard wings. In fact, she felt very cold during rehearsals. Alex, however, in his white shirt and his pullover above his usual corduroy shorts and long socks was as warm as any boy was allowed to be indoors in those years. He seemed to have the most comprehensible speaking part, too. He had to read from what was called a parchment, but was in reality a piece of ordinary paper, which Miss Hill had singed round the edges and hung a large blob of sealing wax from with a bit of ribbon. When he had read from the paper, the parents and other children had listened. The poor lad who was the innkeeper was hard to hear. Isabel, when she announced the improbable and incomprehensible coming event to the poor little girl who played the Virgin Mary and was the butt of vulgar jokes for many days, punctuated the whole performance with coughing, which she could not help since she was sickening for laryngitis. After the show, the seat next to Alex had been empty for the last two days before the holidays.
That had been last term. Miss Hill had looked for something topical for this term too, but kept her powder dry until February when Valentine’s Day gave her the opportunity for some simple handwork, to which she hoped the children would respond. Accordingly on February the second, after a churchy assembly during which Miss Cook had held forth abou
t the Presentation of Christ in the Temple, Miss Hill designed a large heart shape on the blackboard and decorated it with a lace edge, writing the saint’s name in large copperplate above it.
She then told the children that on February the fourteenth people sent Valentine cards to those whom they liked best. She set the class the task of making valentines for the people they themselves liked the most, with the intention of them being given to these favoured persons on the day when it came. There was a good deal of giggling about this, but Miss Hill soon exercised control and the pieces of card were issued: “One each, and there are no others if you spoil yours!” A little more was done to decorate them on each of the next ten school days.
While they were designing their cards and thinking what to write on them, they were allowed to talk quietly. Isabel began to dedicate hers to her brother who was a good bit older than she was and had just gone into the army. Some of the children opted for their mothers. Alex decided that the person he liked best was George and dedicated his to “My Dad”. He listed what he liked about him, and ended wistfully with, “I wish you were with us more often, but I see why you can’t be”. He printed it all without a mistake and managed to space the words so that they all kept within the confines of the heart shape without crossing its edge or the letters needing to be squeezed up. On the afternoon of the thirteenth, Miss Hill gave them each an envelope to fit the card and Alex brought his home to leave on the mantelpiece for George to find.
Fortunately such a card had already come through the post with a London postmark on it for Edna to open next morning, though she was not a little upset by George being singled out for Alex’s affection at her expense, as it seemed. She was convinced in her own mind that she had done all she could to make Alex feel secure in this foreign place. She confided this to Joyce, who tried to reassure her by saying, “He’s only a small boy as yet. See what he does when he’s older.”
A Childs War Page 10