by Paul O'Grady
‘Yes, yes, you do that.’
Poor Joe, well, he did offer a sympathetic ear for me to offload my woes into.
My mother was in hospital for quite some time. Before returning home she spent a few weeks convalescing at Arrowe Hall, a beautiful mansion in the middle of Arrowe park. When she was finally discharged she stayed with Annie and Chrissie, and living under the same roof as the three of them was akin to sharing lodgings with the three witches from the Scottish play that a superstitious nature inherited from the same three women forbids me to name. My mother’s grief had turned to fury and it felt as though I’d become her whipping boy. Chrissie was as brittle as spun sugar and snappier than a turtle with toothache and it was best to try and keep out of her way, while Aunty Anne sat quietly reading her Sunday Post engulfed in a pervading cloud of doom. Butlin’s it wasn’t but however uncomfortable and tense the atmosphere became at times it was infinitely preferable to going back to Holly Grove and being alone with my ma.
When she finally felt it was time to go home I tried desperately to be the model son, even going so far as to decorate the small front bedroom a somnolent shade of lilac to match a poster I’d bought in a trendy new shop on Borough Road. I discovered as I lashed emulsion haphazardly around the walls that painting and decorating wasn’t my forte – it probably took less time to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel than it did that tiny bedroom – nevertheless my mother was delighted with it, remarking that the shade reminded her of Lent. Inspired by my bout of home improvement, she took a trip to this trendy little shop that I was forever singing the praises of to buy a very modern white cabinet for the middle room on which she arranged a few iridescent orange fruit dishes and plates – all that was left of a Carnival Ware tea set my uncle Hal had brought back from Hong Kong – a plastic statue of Our Lady filled with Lourdes water and her pots of medication (‘me tablets’) in a neat little line.
We were getting on better now. At first I could do no right and we fought constantly until eventually with the passing of time we settled into an uneasy truce, her anger finally abating as gradually she began to search for some form of normality and adapt to life without my father. Now here we were in bed together. The last time I’d done this I was a small boy on New Year’s Eve, listening to the ships on the river sounding their foghorns to welcome in the new year. It was a reassuring yet melancholy sound to my young ears as I drifted off to sleep dreaming of Popeye. Nowadays the river was a lot quieter, the only foghorn to be heard coming from the battleship lying next to me.
She yawned violently. ‘You’ll never guess who I bumped into in Birkenhead Market,’ she said, recovering from the ferocity of the yawn and gently smacking her lips.
‘Who?’
‘Go on, guess.’
‘I can’t be bothered, Mam. Who?’
‘That’s your trouble, you can’t be bothered. Well, I’ll tell you who it was. It was Eileen Henshaw.’
*
Eileen Henshaw and her husband George had run the local grocers-cum-newsagent for as long as I could remember. I must have gone in that shop every day of my life, running messages for my ma and various neighbours. The interior of their shop was as familiar as my own front room and I envied their son, who I imagined had access to an unlimited sweet and comic supply – except for an educational one called Look and Learn which bored me to tears.
Eileen was extremely proud of her son and would sing his praises in the shop, much to my ma’s annoyance. At the age of eight, with the confidence born of a precocious brat, I naturally assumed that every adult I came into contact with would fall instantly in love with me. If I sensed that I didn’t quite have them in the bag then there was a range of tricks up my sleeve to bedazzle and charm … that beautiful smile, that face of a cheeky angel. How could the suckers resist? Eileen could, and did. She was impervious to my charms, probably because each time she looked at me she saw my ma’s perpetually overdue paper bill.
I can instantly recall those excruciating moments spent squirming in front of the refrigerated counter while Eileen enquired in a voice that could be heard down in Cammell Laird’s workshop if my mother had any intention of paying her paper bill in the near future. My mother was not very good when it came to managing money. It slipped through her fingers like water, not that there was an abundance of it in the first place. She could never seem to balance the books and, as she admitted herself, ‘As soon as I’ve got me wages off your dad and in me purse it vanishes like fairy gold.’ Consequently the paper bill at Henshaw’s slowly mounted up until eventually Eileen, quite justifiably, snapped and felt compelled to tell me to pass on a reminder of the outstanding debt to my mother. At the time I’d crawl out of the shop, all eyes upon me, or so I imagined, my face burning with shame, to convey Eileen’s message to my ma. It would have an effect on her similar to lighting the blue touch paper on an atomic bomb.
As a means of revenge my mother, on the occasions when her paper bill was up to date, meaning that she could enter the shop in the knowledge that she was, albeit temporarily, in the black, would slyly make disparaging remarks about George’s succulent home-boiled ham and roast beef. Pointing towards the offending objects and sniffing disdainfully, she would enquire of Eileen, ‘Is that ham fresh?’
The gauntlet thrown down, Eileen would take up the challenge and a gentle battle of eyebrows arched and teeth clenched would commence. There was no love lost between them, particularly after I was sacked from my job as their paper boy. When I broke that news to my ma, she stood at the kitchen stove like Eleanor of Aquitaine with a chip pan, furiously shaking it as she ranted. Eventually there was nothing left of the crinkle-cut chips inside but cremated splinters that took the roof of your mouth off even though you’d softened the blow by slathering them in Daddie’s Sauce and vinegar and then wrapping them inside half a slice of buttered Mother’s Pride.
‘She was sympathetic about your dad, said how sorry she was,’ she said quietly. ‘We had quite a nice chat.’
She lay on her side with her back to me, thinking and looking up at the window.
‘She’s a decent woman, Eileen Henshaw,’ she said after a moment. ‘Grafted hard every day of her life running that shop.’ She sighed long and deep before picking up the thread again. ‘And I don’t bloody blame her for sacking you as her paper lad when I think about it now,’ she added. ‘That could have been a job for life if you’d played your cards right.’
I nearly fell out of the bed. Was I hearing clearly? Could my mother actually be showering Eileen Henshaw, the very same woman who had been her sparring partner since my time began, with such glowing and tender accolades? Even taking her side and agreeing with her? Yes, she could and she was, and, being as contrary as the rich woman’s cat, she did.
‘A job for life? A paper boy?’ I sat up and stared at her, wondering if she could possibly mean what she’d just said and if she did then I was having her certified.
‘You know what I’m getting at. A job you could’ve had until you grew up and got a proper job … whenever that great day is finally going to dawn.’
I lay down, not wishing to reply to this in case it provoked further discussion on the highly contentious matter of the ‘career’, ruminating instead over how my dad’s death seemed to have healed old wounds between her and some of her fellow warhorses. Arriving home from work not long after we’d moved back into Holly Grove, I’d found Rose Long, our next-door-but-one neighbour and who my ma had fought the odd battle with over the years, washing a cup at the kitchen sink.
‘Before you take your coat off,’ she said authoritatively, putting her hand up like a border cop, ‘run up the shop and get your mam a pint of milk, she’s nearly run out, and while you’re there get a bit of something to make a butty with.’
I came back bearing the milk and a quarter of corned beef for the butty to find Rose and my ma, old grievances and rows discreetly put behind them like the cushions on the sofa on which both ladies now sat, enjoying their tea and each oth
er’s reminiscences as they played ‘remember when’.
‘Remember when your tortoise went missing, Rose?’
‘Remember when your Paul went missing?’
‘I got some corned beef,’ I said lamely, in the vain hope of getting a word in, and was acknowledged with a brief nod of both women’s heads.
‘Remember that terrible air raid when the bomb went off and half a ton of soot came down the chimney and covered your Sheila and Brendan in their cots?’ Rose said cheerily.
‘They looked like a pair of Al Jolsons,’ my ma replied, laughing. ‘but remember the mess! Soot everywhere.’
‘Yes, but we soon got it cleared up in the end,’ Rose said, getting up. ‘Where’s that corned beef? I’ll make your mam a little butty.’
‘It’s all right, Rose, I can do that,’ my mother said, pulling herself up off the sofa.
‘No you won’t, Molly, you just stay where you are, you’ve just had a bloody heart attack.’ Talk about the Friendly Ladies Society. I took a sly look at my ma’s face for any signs of annoyance or resentment that Rose had taken charge and was in her kitchen, but there was not a trace. Instead she drank her tea contentedly and continued her conversation with Rose by shouting from the sofa.
‘There’s a bit of piccalilli in the cupboard, Rose. If you fancy it. Help yourself.’
Making my excuses I went upstairs for a quick kip, leaving them to it.
As I was drifting off I heard Rose saying as she left, ‘I’ll get you those few messages in the morning and if you want anything – anything at all – then give me a shout or send him round.’ I could hear lots of ‘thanks’, and ‘take care’ as I dozed off. Curiouser and curiouser … They’d known each other for a lifetime, during which there’d been many a battle fought, accompanied by all the usual intrigues, rows and petty vendettas that can escalate out of all proportion, inflaming the blood dangerously to feudal levels. One wrong word or selfish act, one whiff that you were the subject of doorstep gossip or being suddenly ‘blanked’ in the street or given a look that could be interpreted as a dirty one and tempers would ignite and flare up, sweeping across doorsteps, hedges and backyard fences quicker than a bush fire.
Rose and her husband didn’t get on particularly well with Dot, our next-door neighbour and her husband George. They never spoke except to row. My ma was very friendly with Dot but if Dot saw her speaking to Rose, however briefly, then Dot would blank her for a couple of days for what she considered to be an act of treachery. If Rose ever called to the house then Dot would send my ma into purdah. This would last until something interesting occurred and then you’d hear the familiar knock on the wall which meant ‘quick, come round’. If Mary, who lived on the other side of us, appeared to be getting overly friendly, or ‘thick’ as my ma called it, with Rose and spent more time gossiping at the bottom of Rose’s steps than was considered acceptable, then my ma would view Mary with deep suspicion and consequently blank her. Sometimes nobody spoke at all as everyone was busy blanking each other, as if an order of Carmelites who communicated by slamming doors and banging windows had taken over the Grove.
Reflecting on the past now, I realize just how much of an indelible imprint these uniquely different women left on me and how important a role they played in my impressionable formative years contributing enormously to the sense of security that I felt while growing up. I’ll never forget Rose’s homemade toffee apples when the entire Grove got together on bonfire night or when her dog gave birth to puppies or the caravan holidays in North Wales. I can taste Dot’s roast potatoes now and hear her budgie reciting nursery rhymes and the memory of trips with Mary to the Plaza Cinema on Borough Road to see the latest James Bond ‘fillum’ is as vivid as if it were yesterday. It was in Mary’s kitchen that I first had bread and dripping. Wild horses couldn’t get me to eat dripping today but back then I’d happily wire into a doorstop of white bread smeared with the stuff while I listened to Mary’s husband Frank telling me tales of his childhood as he shaved over the kitchen sink with a cut-throat razor.
Years later, when I eventually discovered the books of E. F. Benson, in particular his monstrous creations Mapp and Lucia, I realized just how much the day-to-day politics of Holly Grove paralleled Tilling, the domain of Benson’s harpies. The ladies of Tilling went about their public business seemingly uninterested in the private affairs of their good friends and neighbours, and the same applied to the good-wives of Holly Grove. It was a different story behind closed doors. You’d find that the ears that feigned deafness on the street were now in all probability pressed against walls, and eyes that looked purposefully ahead, supposedly minding their own business, were now veiled behind a pair of net curtains, surveying their manor and their neighbours’ affairs with the intensity of a hawk. As in most small working-class communities of the time, their lives became interwoven, as they argued, snubbed, laughed and cried with each other down the years. The first time I watched Coronation Street I was hooked as I could instantly relate to the characters. Why, didn’t we have an Elsie and Dennis Tanner and a Hilda and Ena and a Len Fairclough and Annie Walker on our own doorstep? Holly Grove was a daily soap opera in itself, one that ran for years until inevitably the original cast died, moved on or just vanished.
‘You know that the ghost of some poor woman is said to haunt the Grove?’ my mum said, a little inappropriately, I thought, considering I was clinging on to the bedclothes like an electrocuted cat.
‘Who told you that?’
‘It’s true. Ask Rose Long if you don’t believe me. These houses are built on the site of an old quarry, Davies Quarry I think it was called. Anyway, it was around the early 1900s and this poor woman, she lived just at the back in Holt Road. Well, her son went missing and believing that he’d fallen into the quarry she went round there looking for him, frantic the poor soul was, like a woman possessed.
‘And? What happened then?’
‘Well, if you’ll stop interrupting, I’ll tell you,’ she snapped, momentarily dropping the funereal tones she’d adopted to tell her tale.
‘As I was saying, she was demented and ran around the quarry screaming, “Cuthbert, Cuthbert”.’
‘Cuthbert?’
‘Yes, Cuthbert. It was a very popular name in them days, like Cedric and Walter.’
‘Have you been reading The Beano?’
‘Don’t talk daft. Anyway, she fell into the quarry. Broke her neck and died later that night in Birkenhead General. Ever since, folk have claimed to have seen her spirit, staring in the window at them, looking for her little boy,’ she said, finishing this dramatic monologue with a theatrical shudder.
‘Folk? What folk? Who are these people who are supposed to have seen her?’
‘Lots of people. Mary, Dot, Rose Long, Aunty Chrissie. Proper doubting Thomas, aren’t we?’
‘Well, what happened to Cuthbert, then?’
‘Oh, him. He was found alive and well and playing in Mersey Park, the little tinker. I think the woman’s name was Ellen.’
Oh dear, she’d really succeeded in putting the heebie-jeebies up me now. I really wished I had the guts to go back to my own room but that was impossible at the moment as I knew in my heart of hearts that my bedroom – the same familiar room that my mother had decorated years earlier in violent shades of red and mustard to resemble Tara King of The Avengers’ apartment – the room I’d slept in for all of my eighteen years, had for the time being turned into one of the portals of hell and was best left alone.
‘Have you been taking drugs?’
‘No, I haven’t.’
‘Then what has you so terrified? It’s the DTs or Purple Hearts if you ask me.’
‘You don’t normally get delirium tremens from half a pint of cider, which by the way is all I’ve had tonight,’ I told her, trying to muster what was left of my dignity.
‘Oh, don’t you now? You’re very knowledgeable on the subject all of a sudden, aren’t you?’
‘And I certainly haven’t taken the T
ardis back to the sixties to get myself some Purple Hearts either.’
‘Oh, haven’t you now, Mr Smarty Arse?’
‘No.’
‘Then why are you behaving like a bloody great wet nelly then, too scared to sleep in your own bed?’
I had to agree with her, my display of childish terror was irrational behaviour even by my standards, but I didn’t care. I wasn’t moving if I could help it and thought it best to stay here with this she-devil rather than the one that had taken up residence next door.
‘And I’ll tell you something else,’ my ma said, picking up where she’d left off earlier, ‘since the Henshaws sold up and moved on you can’t get a decent bit of boiled ham for love nor money.’
I sat up again, forgetting my fears momentarily to turn and look at her, amazed at her ability to switch from the ghost of Ellen to George Henshaw’s boiled ham.
‘Anyone can boil a ham,’ she went on, ‘but it requires great skill to do it properly and when all’s said and done George Henshaw was a master of his craft. You won’t taste boiled ham like his again in a hurry, more’s the pity.’
I wanted to answer her but stunned confusion had rendered me momentarily speechless. It appeared that my father’s death had softened her attitude towards everyone but me. I asked her what had brought on this change of heart towards George’s ham and if she remembered the sniping matches she’d indulged in over the years with his wife.
‘What are you talking about?’ she asked, her voice rising towards the high dudgeon level. ‘I was a valued customer of theirs for years, we got along fine, thank you very much,’ adding, as if in proof of her loyalty, ‘I was in their Christmas Club, for God’s sake.
‘I could just go for a nice slice of his ham right now, on a nice floury bap from Stubbs with a scrape of mustard and a nice cup of tea.’ Everything was suddenly ‘nice’. The two Valium must have kicked in.
‘Run down and make a cup of tea, will you?’ she pleaded, turning over and heaving herself up on to a pillow. ‘Go on, you’ve woke me up now good and proper, you bloody nuisance.’