The Staircase Girls

by Catherine Seymour

  One day as she walked the sweet trolley through his ward, Joyce stopped it for him and asked if he wanted anything. He blinked three times, and she ran through what was available; ‘Sweets?’ she asked. He blinked twice. ‘Mints?’ Two blinks. ‘Box of chocolates?’ Three blinks. Joyce put them on his side table, but he jerked his head at her. She asked, ‘Do you want one now?’ he blinked twice, and jerked his head towards her – and she understood; he wants me to have them! The matron watched from across the ward as the ‘conversation’ was going on and, as Joyce made her way past her, tutted loudly. Joyce didn’t care, and figured that the matron simply didn’t like it ’cos she hadn’t thought of the eye contact business with him.

  Joyce worked at the hospital until 1960 when her mother was taken ill. Leaving the hospital meant she was able to care for Celia as well as earn, taking on Celia’s job for her until she was able to return to work. Joyce also left the TA. As well as her mother’s illness her brother Douglas had returned home.

  He had been in the regular army since 1955 and seen service at Suez, and had been part of General Foot’s bodyguard team in Cyprus, but now Douglas was suffering from shell shock – not that anyone recognized the symptoms as that. He couldn’t sleep, but when he did terrible nightmares would wake him, and he would be screaming and thrashing his arms. Celia had received a black eye one morning when taking Douglas a cup of tea in bed. He would only sit in the corner of the room with sightlines clear to the door and window, and hated leaving the house, and so couldn’t get a job. He was seeing a doctor to help with his problems, though, and they all hoped he’d soon be back to normal.

  More than once over the next couple of years Joyce would think how lucky she was that at least her dad was robust. If she mentioned it to him, he’d laugh and remind her that nothing could get him. He had been in the navy as a young man and was struck by lightning while at sea, working on the radio. He’d not been injured then, even though he smelled burning for a few seconds. (Remarkably, years later his bike was struck by lightning as he rode it over Elizabeth Way bridge in Cambridge, and he was fine, but there were burn marks on his seat.)

  Joyce also considered herself lucky because just before she left the TA she met Ken, a former navy man. The pair became a couple pretty soon after meeting, and they got on well. There was no arguing between them, Ken was attentive and punctual, generous when he could afford to be, and he could jive, too, which pleased Joyce, who loved to dance. When she had the time, she’d spend all Saturday mornings bathing her petticoats in sugared water to make them stiff enough for that night’s jive session at the Embassy.

  Until 1962, Joyce spent her mornings cleaning the house of Celia’s professor, then she’d go home in time to cook dinner for everyone: toad in the hole or chops, mince, a casserole, onion and bacon suet roll in a cloth, anything that would make meat and two veg. On weekends, for afters she’d make treacle pudding or spotted dick, and on a Sunday sometimes it would be Yorkshire pudding with jam. It depended wholly on what she could afford to buy and make. If there’d been beef or bacon over the weekend, Joyce would have dripping and bread for breakfast before work on a Monday (and a tin of Batchelors soup for lunch when she had to).

  When Celia was strong enough to return to work, Joyce and Ken – who had rejoined the navy earlier in the year – were married. She was twenty-six, which was old for the time (all of her old pals had married at least four years previously), and they had to marry because Joyce had become pregnant. Of course it was an accident, and Joyce was grateful for her parents’ reaction on hearing the news. They were perfectly calm about it – Celia might actually have been relieved, Joyce thought, since she had begun to ask pointedly when she and Ken were ever going to tie the knot. Although Joyce was worried what her brother would say – Douglas had recently taken a job at Sainsbury’s in town, had no girlfriend and probably never would, his family thought – he was very good about it, and said, ‘It happens to lots of people, you’re not the first and you won’t be the last.’

  The ceremony was at the registry office, and two weeks later Ken was back at sea.

  AUDREY

  Cambridge 1962–63

  The winter of 1962 was cold, harsh and haunted by a freezing fog that blanketed Cambridge for days at a time. When it cleared, the yellow gloom was first replaced by hard white frost, and then layers of snow. It made Audrey happy to have her job as Maud’s assistant at college, because she could spend Saturday mornings away from the cold in the fellows’ sitting room, where they always got a fire blazing first thing. She sat with her little legs slung over the arm of the large, blood-red Chesterfield armchair next to the warmth, reading a copy of Punch she’d found by the hearth. Not that she could enjoy too much time at leisure.

  ‘You can’t get comfortable,’ Maud reminded her, from the drinks cabinet where she was dusting bottles. ‘You’re going to have to get up in a minute and help me with the fires in the rooms, Audrey. What’s wrong with you today? You haven’t lifted a finger.’

  ‘The girls from school are all going to the minors today,’ Audrey moaned, ‘and Dad said I couldn’t go. He said, “Put a load of teenage boys and girls in a dark room, what do you think they’re going to do? You are not going there to be groped by some randy little upstart.”’

  ‘Well,’ Maud countered, ‘he might have a point.’

  ‘Maud, please, give me some credit. I’m worth more than a grope on the back seat of the pictures. I want to see a film with my girlfriends. I might just go and risk it. Bugger him.’

  Maud ambled over to the Chesterfield and sat, smoothing out her overall with her misshapen hands. She looked at the fourteen-year-old girl and told her, ‘Your dad’s got his spies everywhere, love, namely your brothers. He told me the last time I saw him that he don’t trust anyone around you. You’re growing up into a very pretty young woman and he’s just protecting you. So don’t be daft about going behind his back, he’ll go for you if you do. We’ve been lucky so far lying to him about you working with me ’cos we get here so early, and you stay over mine on a Friday night.’

  ‘Well, I’ll be leaving school next year, when I’m fifteen, you know, so he won’t be able to tell me what to do any more, will he? I could move in with Ron – or you, Maud.’

  The older woman laughed, ‘I doubt that very much. You can’t live with me, it’s alright you sleeping round mine once a week, but let me tell you, I lived with my nan in one room, just about, and it was hell. You’re not living with me, Tiny, bide your time he’ll come round eventually. You’re his little girl.’

  Audrey sighed, resigned to the truth of what Maud had said. ‘I know, but I feel like I’m ready now, ready for work, ready to go out and have some fun. Be a teenager!’

  Maud nodded, even though she had no memories of having a carefree time as a teenager herself.

  Audrey stood and announced, ‘You know, Aunt Maud, I see what Dad means about this job. Why can’t they build their own fires? It’s not like they do a lot, is it? They read books, go to lectures or give lectures and have seminars or whatever you call them. They eat, and eat a lot, don’t they, in their grand halls.’

  Maud laughed. ‘You know that’s not all they do, love. They make discoveries here, do lots of research, and make history. You should remind your dad about that the next time he has a go. You’ve got to look at it like this; if we weren’t keeping them warm and getting their breakfast ready, and that’s the most important meal of the day, they might not be able to make discoveries. So the likes of us are quite important.’

  ‘Really, Aunt Maud, we help make history?’ Audrey looked doubtful.

  ‘Well, how are we going to cure cancer and all them other diseases if we ain’t got our professors looking into it? How are we going to change the world and people’s attitudes? You have more power when you have an education, and don’t you forget it. That’s why I kept them encyclopaedias for you. I’m not saying that the likes of us could do any of this – after all, we’re not from moneyed fam
ilies like them, and you’d be a fish out of water here, but different breeding for different reasons, right?’

  Maud straightened her overall again as she rose from the chair. She held her shoulders back and stood upright. ‘I’m on your dad’s side when it comes to protecting you, but, just like he gets to you he can really get to me, sometimes. He would wind up your mum all the time with his bitterness about the upper classes, but it’s them that pay our wages, ain’t it?’ She pointed her index finger directly at Audrey and shook it as she continued, ‘Wouldn’t have a job would we, if they weren’t here, and we should never forget that.’

  ‘Alright, alright,’ Audrey said, trying to calm Maud down. She remembered only too well the heated conversations she had overheard between her mum and dad that were all about working at the colleges.

  They smiled at each other and Maud showed the gaps where at least seven teeth had disappeared in the last year. ‘Let’s get the coal out of the bunker so we can get off early, shall we?’

  Audrey led the way out to the coalbunker in the yard, putting her overcoat on as she did so. She picked up the shovel, shaking snow from it in the process, while Maud carried the bucket behind her. After a couple of digs in the bunker, Audrey noticed something unfamiliar in the coal, and she bent over to get a closer look at what looked like pieces of coloured paper.

  ‘What are these?’ For an instant she thought that she was seeing things, but as she pulled one of the papers from the heap of coal, she realized that she wasn’t. Audrey was shovelling up five-pound notes. Thin paper ones, lots of them. She called out to Maud, ‘Aunty, there’s money, lots of money in here!’

  Maud stepped closer and saw that there were bundles of notes tumbling out from the coal bunker. Excitedly she half-shouted, ‘Get ’em out! Get ’em out!’

  Together they pulled out all of the piles of money and carried them back inside to the sitting room, where they sat on the floor exhausted and thrilled from the adrenaline.

  After a few minutes, Audrey said, ‘Someone must have stashed them in there, Maud. Do we tell the porter, or what?’ Audrey’s ‘or what’ came out slyly, temptingly, and had enough of a hint of conspiracy about it that Maud’s first instinct – to report their find – was put aside.

  ‘Let me think, girl, let me think!’ she ordered.

  Audrey sat, holding her breath as Maud deliberated for what seemed like an age before saying, ‘We’ve got to put them in my shopping bag and take them back to my house. You alright with that?’

  To which Audrey simply nodded.

  ‘Right,’ continued Maud firmly, ‘if no one claims it, we’ll keep it.’

  On their way home (the cold didn’t seem to bite quite as hard following their discovery), Maud worked out a justification for their keeping the money and not telling the porter. ‘Do you know what?’ she said to Audrey, expecting no answer. ‘If I told the other staff, do you know who would have taken the money? Them porters, that’s who would have had it, and they wouldn’t have told the fellows or the master. You can’t trust any of them.’

  ‘Well, it was in your staircase bunker, Maud,’ Audrey agreed, ‘and I reckon it must have been there a good few years. So by rights it’s yours. It was hidden well in with the coal. So it was meant to be hidden, weren’t it?’

  ‘I’m not going to feel guilty’, Maud went on, sounding almost convinced of that herself. ‘It’ll do you the world of good to get some new hairdressing things on your next trip to London. The rest of it I’m going to put in my Post Office account, and save for a rainy day.’

  Maud had no intention of spending the money, and planned on saving it for something much better, she thought, than a rainy day. They had counted more than £100 from the coal bunker that day in 1962, and although they were all old, pre-war notes, they were still legal. Her savings were growing very nicely ever since she had been surprised to hear after the death of Professor B., from a heart attack, that he had bequeathed her the sum of £250. When she got the news, Maud had been shocked because she thought that he had taken a dislike to her due to her not really talking with him much. She almost felt guilty about gossiping to Audrey about his extra-marital affairs, but, of course, she told herself, she had only told Audrey and not any other bedders. Still, that £250 sat in her account, earning interest, and this extra would be added to it and it’d grow (so the bank manager had told her), without much bother. One day, Maud thought, it’ll come in very handy for someone.

  It would be a year before they’d dare remove the bag from Maud’s wardrobe where it lay buried under a pile of old shoes and coats. Finding the money and saying nothing about it proved difficult for Audrey. An honest girl by nature, she tried hard to justify keeping it without telling anyone, including her dad. She didn’t tell him, though, as much because she was ashamed of taking it and not saying anything immediately, as she knew that if she told Edward, he’d likely tell her to keep it (‘Those rich buggers have got enough money,’ she knew he’d say). He’d also ask for a share of it, and she’d gladly give all of it to her dad, except that he’d only spend it down the pub. That was where almost all of his money had seemed to go since Edith had died.

  A few months later, Audrey wished that Maud had given her at least some of the money when she learned that the Beatles were going to perform in Cambridge, at the Regal cinema. She loved ‘Please, Please Me’ and persuaded Edward to buy the record for her, and she’d almost worn out the grooves (Dad said) ever since. Finding eight shillings and sixpence for the show was going to be difficult unless Audrey took it from her hairdressing fund (which she’d managed to keep secret from Edward by hiding it under her bed in a sewing box). As her friends grew more and more excited by the forthcoming show and began to wave their tickets around at school, Audrey knew she’d have to be there too, and so she took it from under her bed. She told Edward that Maud had treated her to the ticket for the first, early show at 6.15, which he accepted, telling her, ‘Make sure you’re home by nine.’

  As soon as school finished that Tuesday, Audrey went straight to the Regal to stand in line and hope to see the Beatles arrive. They weren’t the main act that night – the Americans were, Chris Montez, who’d had a hit with ‘Let’s Dance’ last year, and Tommy Roe, whose song ‘Sheila’ Audrey liked – but it seemed that the gang of fifty or so girls who waited impatiently alongside the cinema were only there to see the Liverpudlians. Audrey didn’t get to see them before the show started, and it took what seemed like an interminable wait in her seat for the Beatles to play. She restlessly sat through performances by a Shadows-like guitar act called the Terry Young Six, an old rock-and-roll group called the Viscounts (she vaguely remembered their ‘Who Put the Bomp’ song), and a blonde woman who did impressions and sang with Mrs Mills on the telly, until the Beatles finally got to the stage.

  When they did, the theatre became eerily quiet just for as long as it took for John to say ‘Evenin’ folks’ and put the harmonica to his lips, and when the first bars of ‘Love Me Do’ rang out, Audrey, and everyone close to her, began to jump up and down in their seats and shout, scream and sing along. She didn’t know which Beatle she loved best, but Paul kept looking at her she was sure, and from that night on he’d be her favourite.

  They only played six songs – ‘Please, Please Me’ was the best as far as Audrey was concerned – and couldn’t play any more, because men came on and started clearing up the stage, even before Ringo had climbed from behind his drum kit. The DJ Tony Marsh walked out with his dinner jacket and Brylcreemed hair, smiling as if he had a back pain or felt sick, and said something that Audrey simply didn’t hear.

  She was dazed, deaf and felt lighter than air. Must be not having had any tea, she thought as she sat, dumb and unmoving in her slightly wobbly seat. Tommy Roe came and went before Audrey could move, and when Tony Marsh came out again, she got up and left. Walking home she felt as if the world had changed. The smells and lights of Cambridge streets were sharp, almost dazzling. She didn’t feel the cold until sh
e got home and stood in front of the fire in the parlour.

  It was only a concert, but it was also something more, Audrey knew. She hadn’t felt excited or really happy, as if she was ready to do something – anything – since her mum had died, and now she did. She wanted to hang on to whatever it was she was feeling for as long as possible. But how?

  By changing things, she thought, and getting a job that’ll lead to me becoming a hairdresser, like I want to be. Maud will have to do the bedding on her own, but she’ll manage.

  The following Friday evening, Audrey visited Maud, but she didn’t go with her to college for work the next day. She told her that she couldn’t do it any more, and was surprised when Maud agreed with her.

  ‘It’ll help to get me moved to a smaller staircase anyway, I reckon,’ she told a grateful Audrey.

  That Saturday Audrey visited every hairdresser’s shop in Cambridge asking if they needed any one to sweep up, clean, wash hair and learn the business.

  At Raymond’s, on the top floor of the Joshua Taylor department store, on the corner of Sidney Street and Market Street, she met with a positive response. Impressed by the style and size of the salon, Audrey could hardly wait to get started.

  The following week the manageress welcomed Audrey to the job and told her that she might be able to get an apprenticeship with them in a year or so, if she worked hard enough. Audrey didn’t need telling twice, and set about her job with pleasure.

  By the summer of 1963, Audrey felt as if she was fulfilling her dream of becoming a hairdresser. Most of her school friends were training at different jobs or working in large stores around the town. Audrey loved every minute at Raymond’s.