The Staircase Girls

by Catherine Seymour

  ‘Well, you ain’t going to say nothing.’

  Audrey knew she now had to keep the Willis girl’s secret from Jim and her Ron, and she knew fat Marlene’s son because she often saw him with his mum when she went to the Co-op. Audrey felt burdened with all the stories Maud shared with her.

  ‘Maybe you’re right, maybe I shouldn’t have told you,’ Maud said reluctantly. ‘I forget that you’re still a kid really. You see, I think you’re wiser than your years. Probably ’cos you lost your mum so young. I sometimes think that you’ve been here before. An old soul you are, Audrey.’

  The girl continued to scrub, using both hands on the well-worn wooden brush, thinking that she certainly felt older than twelve, or imagined that she did.

  ‘Ron’s neighbour on Gold Street said the same thing to me the last time I was over there with Dad,’ Audrey said without turning her head. ‘Been here before ’cos I did something bad before, perhaps.’ She leaned back on her haunches as Maud turned on the taps, then rose as the suds washed away, and washed her red hands under the cold tap using a large green bar of fairy soap.

  ‘Oh, Auds,’ Maud sighed at her. ‘Maybe you should really be with friends your own age to keep you young, rather than always being with your dad and me. We’re just fuddy-duddies.’

  ‘It’s alright.’ Audrey didn’t want to lose her job, she was desperate to save enough money for a wig stand she had seen on a visit to Selfridges months ago. ‘I’m a good worker, ain’t I?’ Audrey’s voice carried more than a hint of anger, challenge and resentment in it, and Maud looked away, down into the bathtub.

  Audrey remembered why she was here, on a sunny Saturday morning, cleaning bathrooms and fireplaces, when all of her friends were out shopping or watching boys play football. She thought that even if it took a few years she was determined to save for that wig holder. She’d been obsessed with the idea of becoming a hairdresser ever since she could remember, and since she couldn’t practise on anyone, had taken to buying wigs (many from junk shops) that she could style and experiment with whenever she could find the money and the wigs at the right price. A wig stand would allow her to put her motley collection of hairpieces on it and sit it in front of a mirror to work on, just as if she was in a salon. Her dad had promised her another trip to London in the summer, and she told Maud about it now.

  ‘I’ll take you there too, one day, Aunty Maud. We’ll go to the beauty hall where there’s hundreds of perfumes, and you can try them all if you want to. It makes our Boots look like a corner-shop chemist.’

  Maud smiled because Audrey still looked like a little boy, with her short blonde hair and body as straight and skinny as a board. She just wasn’t developing into a young woman at the same rate as her classmates, the older woman knew. Maud couldn’t imagine Audrey experimenting with hairstyles or wearing the wigs she had almost obsessively bought, nor wearing perfume. Audrey, she thought, was far too much of a tomboy for any of that.

  ‘Are you laughing at me?’ Audrey asked.

  ‘Not at all, Tiny!’ Maud replied. ‘I think you just might be starting to grow into a lady – well, in your head at least.’

  ‘Me!’ Audrey laughed. ‘I don’t think I could ever be a lady, but I know I’m going to train to be a hairdresser in a couple of years. You know, get a trade. I want my own business one day. Them ladies that work in Selfridges they all “talk like this”,’ Audrey held her head in the air and pinched her nose. ‘“Would modom like to try this fragrance?”’ She laughed and mimicked spraying perfume on Maud. ‘But Ron says I could never be refined like them, ’cos I sound too much like a foghorn.’

  The contrast between the college bathroom and the marbled halls of the big London shop made Audrey determined that her hand-scouring work would be rewarded with whatever she wanted to buy when she got to the capital city.

  Maud sat quite still on the corner of the bath and looked like she had disappeared into another world. Audrey worried that she may have offended her with her moodiness, and forced herself to be more upbeat. ‘Come on then, Maud,’ she said with as much of a song as she could, ‘enough about Selfridges, and Fat Marlene and Jennifer’s unwanted babies – let’s go and sort out that dead man’s shoes.’

  Maud laughed nervously. ‘Oh Audrey, please, please keep your voice down. I don’t want to wake the other fellows yet, ’specially not today. I don’t fancy seeing them. We’ll get their breakfasts ready first and then we’ll go in his room, I don’t really want to go through his things at all, to be honest . . .’

  By lunchtime, though, Audrey and Maud were satisfied that they had done a good morning’s work, and Audrey was chuffed with the clothes Maud had let her sort in Professor B.’s room. ‘Dad’s going to love this hat and jacket, Maud, you sure it’s alright?’

  ‘’Course it is. The porter won’t notice and I’m sure the prof’s wife won’t have a record of his belongings; after all she didn’t keep a track of his goings on with the Girton girl did she? Poor woman.’

  Audrey took Maud’s hand as they left the college, and smiled at her. Maud smiled back. ‘Come on then,’ she said to the girl, ‘let’s you and me have a treat and get a hot chocolate at Eaden Lilley’s, shall we?’

  ‘Coo, yeah why not,’ Audrey squeezed Maud’s hand and they almost skipped to their bicycles.

  ANN

  Cambridge 1948–62

  Ann always considered that the main reason for a girl to marry was so that she could have children. So she and Fred set about making a family with happy hearts and plenty of enthusiasm. Living at her mother-in-law’s house made Ann feel shy at first, but before long she and Fred could be heard giggling at all hours of the night – as his mother put it when complaining about not being able to sleep one morning at breakfast. ‘Sorry, missus,’ Ann said quietly, her face going a deep shade of red. Fred, who felt no such sense of embarrassment, piped up happily, ‘We’re tryin’ to start a family, Mum!’ Mrs Adams blanched, choked on the sip of tea she’d just taken and left the kitchen, coughing.

  When Ann could say that she was actually pregnant, her mother-in-law was delighted. It changed everything as far as the expectant grandmother was concerned, and Ann went from being ‘Cinderella’ (which is what she used to tell Bet, complaining about having to do all the fireplaces in the house) to being a princess, and being waited on all day and evening. Ann enjoyed the early months of her pregnancy, although her husband didn’t. Fred got himself into a terrible state. She’d never heard of it before, but he – so the doctor told them – suffered a phantom pregnancy; he showed all the same symptoms as his wife, including morning sickness, food cravings and strange stirrings in his stomach, which even bloated a bit as Ann’s bump grew.

  Being pregnant somehow buoyed Ann’s mood through some troubling times for her extended family. Ann was deeply saddened by the news of Johnny’s death, which arrived just after New Year. ‘He didn’t get to spend one Christmas with us,’ she cried to Bet, who broke the news to her well after the fact – and even after his funeral.

  Bet was almost as angry as she was sad about his passing. ‘There’s no plaque, no stone,’ Bet said, adding, ‘there’s nothing to say he was ever here. Barrel went looking for me at work yesterday.’ Only Grace and Jack had attended the brief ceremony at the Fulbourn Hospital where he’d died and been buried. Following Johnny’s funeral Jack became a ‘broken man’, said Bet, who saw him far more often than Ann, who wasn’t able to cycle from Waterbeach into Cambridge any more. ‘He’s barely eating or drinking, an’ he stopped playing his piano and banjo. He hardly talks to anyone, least of all Mum.’ Ann dried her tears, and Bet did the same, and they sat silently for a few minutes, almost as if in tribute to the little brother that they’d never got to know.

  It was Bet who broke the quiet. ‘How’s the pregnant dad, then?’ she half-smiled and sniffed.

  Ann laughed and cried again. ‘He’s having morning sickness, still!’

  With that, both women laughed away their sadness and got on with plann
ing what they’d need for when Ann brought the new baby home.

  Ann gave birth at Mill Road Maternity Hospital in March 1949. As was normal, so Ann was told, she was alone with the midwife for most of the labour. At first Ann tried to make a joke of things, telling the nurse that, ‘Fred really should be in here with me. He’s having the contractions too, you know.’ The nurse at the newly nationalized hospital shook her head dismissively. ‘You know it’s not allowed,’ she told her. ‘He’ll be fine. We’ve seen it before, and as soon as the baby’s born his pain will go away.’

  She was right, of course. After sitting for hours, sweating or pacing up and down the Maternity Ward corridor, Fred felt no pain, only elation when told that he had a daughter. He was so proud that he ran around the ward telling everyone the exact words the nurse had told him – ‘She’s healthy and bonny!’ – all the while grinning like a skull.

  ‘What are we going to call her?’ he asked Ann, as soon as he’d been allowed to see the new mother and daughter. ‘Glenis,’ said Ann firmly. ‘After Glynis Johns but I want it with an “e” in the middle. Glenis Catherine. That’s what we’re going to call her. Catherine after your mum, Kate.’ Fred thought for a moment, before agreeing. ‘Yes, I like that. It’s different.’ He didn’t think to ask if Grace might be upset at her first granddaughter not being named after her, and didn’t need to ask Ann if it might be a good idea, because he knew his wife would not even want to discuss it.

  Ann was a little apprehensive about what Grace’s reaction would be to the naming of Glenis, but was amazed at how absolutely thrilled she was to have become a grandmother. Jack shared the delight, as Ann expected him to. But that her mother was made immensely happy by the arrival of Glenis was almost a physical shock to her, and she couldn’t help wondering if the death of Johnny had anything to do with the wide grin that Grace seemed to have stuck on her face when she met Glenis.

  With the arrival of Ann’s daughter, Jack and Grace threw themselves into becoming model grandparents. ‘I don’t recognize Mum,’ Rene told Ann, two weeks after the birth. ‘She’s so happy, she’s singing all the time and can’t stop talking about your Glenis. And Dad’s laughing and playing the piano, the banjo and the accordion again. He’s even got himself a typewriter and is teaching himself to type. It’s changed them, Nance.’

  While the new grandparents were in such a good mood, Bet thought that it might be time to get their youngest sister home for good. ‘We need to make a plan for Joy,’ she told Ann and Rene when they were all together. Their little sister had remained in various special boarding schools ever since the war, and although they’d had her with them for school holidays, none of them could honestly say that they knew her – only that they loved her, unconditionally, whatever she was like. ‘But Bet,’ Ann interrupted her, ‘Joy isn’t old enough to leave school yet, she’s only eleven. Let’s leave her in Gorleston until she’s fifteen, hey? Mum would only try and get her into a job if she was living back here permanent like, wouldn’t she? God forbid, but she’d take her to Royston and try to get the same housekeeper to take her on as she did to me.’

  Bet opened her mouth to argue, but Rene leapt in before she could say a word. ‘No, Bet, Nance is right. You know how much I loved Johnny and couldn’t persuade Mum to let me look after him, and while I’d love to have Joy live with us, we’d have a hell of a job getting Mum to agree, and the only reason she might is if she thought Joy could earn a bit of money. Plus, I’ll be leaving school in a bit and there’d be no one to spend any time with her, would there?’ Bet had no argument that would work with her sisters and knew that she’d have even less chance of getting Grace to accept Joy living at home as there was no special school for her to attend in the area.

  In the following years, Bet added two daughters to her family, Sheila and Christine (Chrissy). Ann had two more daughters, Dorothy – for Lamour – who arrived almost exactly a year after Glenis, and Shirley – Temple – two years after that. Rene got a job at Pye’s electrical factory on Church Road in Chesterton, on the television set production line. Despite their growing family, Ann and Fred continued to live in Waterbeach with his parents as they worked their way up the council housing list.

  Fred still refused to let Ann go out to work, and his earnings didn’t rise in line with the number of new mouths they had to feed. There would have been another child between Dorothy and Shirley, but in the fifth month of pregnancy Ann contracted chicken pox and measles from Dorothy and miscarried. She would later say that the loss ‘was quite lucky, really.’

  When a year later she discovered that she was to have Shirley, Ann cried, ‘How do I stop getting pregnant, Bet?’ much to her sister’s surprise. Ann had never asked anyone about birth control, had no idea of how a condom worked and thought the rhythm method was a dance step. Once Bet had explained a few facts of life to her, Ann felt almost cheated about having had so many pregnancies. ‘I only wanted two,’ she told her.

  Having three children helped Ann and Fred move up the council housing list, though, and they were finally offered a place of their own in Cambridge in 1952. It wasn’t exactly a house, being an ex-Second World War Nissen hut constructed of corrugated iron over a wooden frame and flat roof, but at least it was in the town, had two bedrooms, a kitchen and sitting room, and a garden that showed signs of once having been a vegetable patch. It was supposed to be a temporary home until they could move into a three-bedroom council house in Cherry Hinton that was being ‘freshened up’ for them.

  Fred and Ann never really argued, at least not for long and never seriously. Fred was a proud dad and an involved one, too. He loved changing nappies, feeding the babies and taking them out for walks, to the playground and along the river when the weather allowed. His mum also loved the kids, and before they moved from Waterbeach the kids must have thought they had two mums. Naturally the parenting was done Kate’s way when they were in her house, but Ann wasn’t unhappy about that. After all, she thought, she’s done it before, and I ’aven’t. So when the young Adams family moved into a new area, Ann was comfortable having three small children, Fred was eager to show them off to new neighbours, and life seemed to be getting better for them.

  They couldn’t afford a car, so Fred bought a tandem bicycle and fitted it with extra child seats in front of both sets of handlebars and a baby seat over the rear mudguard. All five of them could get to Grace’s on it for Sunday dinner when the weather wasn’t too bad. Sometimes they’d cycle over to Queen’s Meadow in the Barnwell area, so close as to be called Cherry Hinton, to look at the houses that the council were working on and wonder which one they’d be getting. There was a big green space in the middle with houses facing onto it, and it was lovely and quiet. Which was more than could be said for the Scotland Road residence of Grace and Jack at that time.

  They both loved being grandparents and welcomed their children’s children as often as they could. But when Joy moved in with them after leaving school, as her daughters predicted, Grace seemed determined to find work for her as soon as she could and get her out of the house. For six months Grace asked everywhere she went about a job for Joy with little luck. Sometimes she dragged her daughter to meet shopkeepers, market stall holders and one time a concierge at a hotel. While everyone was pleasant enough to Joy, as soon as they realized she didn’t have great eyesight, they said that they’d let Grace know if or when something came up. Which it never did.

  Joy tried to adapt to living with her mother, but she was really only happy when she could help with Ann or Bet’s children who’d be dropped off for her to look after. Which was quite handy once Fred gave in and let Ann work part time. Ann became a cleaner at three houses in the town centre. When she went to work she could leave Dorothy and Shirley with Joy while Glenis was at school.

  One evening in 1954 when Bet and Ann were sitting in Ann’s newly decorated kitchen in Queen’s Meadow, Bet was telling her about how badly Joy and Grace were getting on. ‘Mum’s getting angry with her ’cos she can’t find
her a job. It’s not through lack of trying, she keeps dragging her around and Joy is getting right fed up. She’s sure that Mum’s embarrassed by her, you know, ’cos of her eye and that.’

  ‘But that’s why she won’t get a job, isn’t it?’ Ann sympathized. ‘If she ain’t got great eyesight she might make mistakes, poor thing.’

  Bet was desperate for Ann to understand how hard it was for Joy to be back home, and decided to tell her straight. ‘But the problem is, Nance, Mum doesn’t know her. Never bothered to get to know her, did she? We always looked after her when she came home in the holidays. Yesterday when me and Barrel were visiting with the girls, we saw something right bad. Joy had some cigarettes in her bag, Woodbines I think, and Mum saw them. Well, she shouldn’t have been looking in her bag but that’s not the point, the point is Mum saw them and knocked her sideways with a slap.’

  Ann was shocked, she had seen her mum and Bet occasionally have stand-up rows that fell into slaps, but that was because Bet stood up to Grace and challenged her. She began to think hard about why her mum would hit Joy. ‘Mum didn’t want Joy spending her money on cigs,’ Bet went on, ‘but that’s not all, though. Me and Barrel, we think that Joy is scared to eat, you know, ’cos she’s not bringing any money in. You’ve seen how skinny she is. This week Mum sent to get her a job at our laundry, and they tried her out but asked her to use those heavy old irons. She only lasted a day, she was so exhausted. It’s too much for a small girl like her.’

  ‘It’s ignorance,’ Ann said. ‘Mum doesn’t know how to cope with her disability. It scares her. Our Joy, she’s different from us. She’s not as sheltered for a start, she’s had to live away from home, from us, and she felt like an orphan – she told me that, once. Joy might be timid around Mum but I reckon she could hold her own. That’s going to help her in the future. She’s had to cope with living away, I think she’ll be alright.’