‘There’s no Bill Whatsisname here, luv.’ The man coughs a phlegmy cough. ‘Works in Peckham, does ‘e?’
‘Yes … well, I think so – in an upholsterers.’ Perhaps I’ve got it wrong after all, and I’ll never find Bill. I swallow down tears.
‘Well, there’s Peritons up the other end. What’s ‘e look like this ’ere Bill Whatsisname?’
‘He’s …’
‘Smiles a lot, does he? Late thirties?’
Mum’s thirty-seven, so Bill must be round about that age. ‘I think so.’
‘Yus, I thinks we’ve got yer man.’ He shifts the phlegm. ‘Works at Peritons. You need to turn left and go to the end of the ‘igh Street. Can’t miss it. Relation of yours, is ‘e?’
‘My uncle.’
The man shakes my hand and waves me goodbye as if we’re related as well. I wave back. My arm feels light. I might find Bill after all.
I cross the road, retracing my steps, and begin to run. I pass the café where I’ve left Aunt Min. I’m relieved the windows are misty with condensation.
When I get there, Peritons is full of armchairs and sofas in varying states of disrepair: springs exposed, fabric ripped and tattered, stuffing cascading from them like a kapok snowstorm. I peer through the door and immediately see Bill. He is measuring the back of an armchair and he looks more serious than I’ve seen him before.
Fingers of nervousness claw at my stomach. How could I have thought that talking to Bill would be a good idea? He’s nothing to Mum and me, except some old friend of hers, who she doesn’t want to see, anyway. I wait a while, uncertain what to do. Then I hunch my shoulders, lower my head and swivel round to the direction I’ve just come from. What a ridiculous idea it had been. Plain stupid.
‘Paula!’ Bill appears at the shop doorway. The bell above the door jangles and almost drowns out his words. ‘I thought it was you. What on earth are you doing here?’
‘I didn’t … I mean … I wanted to …’
Bill leads me past the shop window and through the doorway. Inside, a boy with greasy hair and blackheads bends over a table, cutting material with long snips.
‘Listen out for any customers, Syd,’ Bill instructs the boy, although he could hardly miss hearing them with a bell as noisy as the one over the door.
Bill guides me to a dingy room at the back, and pulls up an old armchair for me to sit in, while he perches on the arm.
‘Now tell me what’s wrong? Is it your mother?’ His grin has vanished. He looks like Mum does when I tell her the kids at school have been bullying me.
‘She’s …’ Now that I feel free to confide my dreadful secret, I can feel my throat tightening with tears.
‘Is she ill?’
‘She’s very … ’
‘You have to tell me what’s wrong.’
‘She’s dying!’ The words sound hideous when I say them out loud.
‘Dying! What’s wrong with her?’ Bill pushes his hair back from his forehead, then pulls it forward again.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Is she in hospital?’
‘No-no … she … she’s at home.’
‘Does she know she’s dying? Has the doctor told her?’ With his free hand Bill pats his pocket for his cigarettes.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Has he told your father what’s wrong with her?’
‘Dad doesn’t know. He wouldn’t care, even if he did.’
‘How did you find out?’
‘Be … because I … I saw the bl … blood.’
‘What blood?’ Bill lights his cigarette and draws on it deeply.
‘The blood on her cl … lothes.’
‘Blood on her clothes? Did she have an accident?’ Bill places his cigarette on a tin lid and grabs hold of my shoulders. ‘Did your … no-one’s been hurting her, have they?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Look, I think you’d better tell me what this is all about.’ Bill walks across to a stained sink and fills an enamel mug with water. ‘Here, have a drink, it’ll help you.’
I sip from the mug, then place it on the floor, and suck in a shaky breath.
‘When we were on holiday and Mum and I were packing up the tent, I found some … some underwear of Mum’s and it had … it had blood all over it … them.’ I brush my face with the back of my hand. ‘And … when I asked Mum what it was she … she … went … mad and shouted at me and ... and told me to mind my own business. She wouldn’t tell me … She shouted … and swore. All the blood. I know she’s dying. Angela upstairs says when people bleed from their bottoms, they die … always.’
‘My dear girl.’
‘I wanted you to know because you … care … you … I know you care.’
‘I care very much, but your mother’s not dying, she really isn’t.’
‘B-but … ’
‘The blood you saw doesn’t mean she’s ill.’ Again, Bill inhales deeply on his cigarette. ‘It’ll happen to you in a few years.’
‘You mean I’ll have blood coming out of my bottom? But then I’ll die.’
‘No you won’t. It’s a natural thing that happens to women once a month. Without it they wouldn’t be able to have babies.’
‘It’s so you can have babies? All that blood?’
‘Women wear protection. It probably took your mother unawares.’
‘But how do you get babies in the first place?’ I know they grow in a woman’s stomach because I once heard Mum talking to Aunt Min about Mrs Hulmer along Blountmere Street. “If that baby gets any bigger,” Mum had said, “The poor woman’s stomach will explode.”
What I wanted to know is why a baby suddenly decided to grow in Mrs Hulmer’s stomach in the first place. The girls at school talk about it all the time, but they won’t let me join in. Angela knows everything, but I never dare ask her. Not long ago, I brought the subject up with Tony, but he went as red as the new cardigan Mum’s knitted me, and said “You know – they do it”. When I queried they and doing it, he’d repeated it, and said, “You know”. I didn’t want to show him how daft I was, so I just nodded and said, “Of course, I know.”
Bill stubbed out his cigarette and immediately lit another. ‘Men and women make them together.’
‘How do they do that?’ I sense Mum would be angry - more than angry - if she found out I was asking Bill these questions, but I have to know what everyone else already knew.
‘Inside women there are lots and lots of tiny seeds.’
‘Seeds?’
‘Well, yes. And inside men there is sperm and when it meets a woman’s seed, they make a baby. I think that’s the best I can do by way of explanation. I hadn’t expected I’d be saying all this when I left home this morning, or I would have been better prepared.’
‘Is that when they do it?’
‘Perhaps you should ask your mother the rest.’
Knowing Mum, she won’t tell me. Now I’m this far I have to know everything. ‘But what’s “it”? Does a man put his, you know,’ I whisper, “man’s place” (The only time Mum ever said the words was when she spoke about baby boys) into the “woman’s place?”’ I’d thought as much since the time Mum and I had seen one dog on top of another in Kentlyn Avenue. Mum had hurried us round the corner, but not before I’d seen the dog’s “man’s place” protruding and swollen. When I asked Mum what they were doing, Mum said they were playing, but she had made odd coughing noises.
‘That’s the way it is.’ Bill doesn’t look as flustered and embarrassed as I know Mum would have done. It couldn’t have been the way Mum and Dad got me. Not Mum and Dad! I must have happened some other way.
‘It doesn’t sound very nice.’ I wrinkle my nose.
‘You won’t always think that way. It’s a priceless gift when two people love each other.’ Bill speaks wistfully.
‘You loved Mum, didn’t you?’
‘Always.’
‘Well, did you get your surprise?’ Mum asks me when Aunt Min and
I arrive home, and as Aunt Min sinks onto a kitchen chair, kicks off her shoes and begins to massage her bunions. Thankfully, she hadn’t complained about the length of time I’d left her sitting in the café. She‘d been reading an article in The News of the World on The White Slave Trade when I got back, after having popped into a shop to buy the first vase I saw.
I set my parcel on the table. ‘Here it is,’ I say.
‘Well, are you going to open it, or is it still a secret we’re not supposed to know about?’ Mum says in a scornful sort of way. She’s changed into her best pink frock. Her holiday tan and shining hair make her look especially healthy.
‘It isn’t a secret, if you must know, but, then, you think you know everything.’ A snake inside me is ready to slide from my mouth and coil itself around my mother. Why couldn’t she have told me about the blood! It wouldn’t have been difficult. She could have done it as simply as Bill had.
‘We’ll have less of that, young lady!’ Mum speaks sharply, while Aunt Min tutt-tutts at the rudeness of today’s children.
My scowl deepens. Mum had kept something from me she had no need to. She had caused me agony I couldn’t put into words. I grab the parcel from the table and say, ‘Actually, it’s a present for you.’ I place the box in Aunt Min’s lap.
‘But I thought … ’
‘No, it’s for you.’
‘I didn’t realise we were going to get a present for me,’ Aunt Min fumbles with the string around the box. She undoes every knot, and is careful not to damage the paper so that she can use it again.
‘Come on, Min, get a move on. You’ll still be doing it tomorrow morning at this rate,’ Mum says.
At last Aunt Min opens the box. ‘It’s lovely.’ She stares at the pink china vase inside, while fat tears slide down her face. ‘Nobody’s ever given me a surprise present.’ She takes it from the box and places it on our sideboard as if it’s made of gold. Then she smothers me in an onion embrace. ‘You’re a dear, sweet child,’ she says. Her breath tickles my neck, and causes me to shiver.
‘She’s a good girl.’ Mum lays a hand on my back as I stand pressed against Aunt Min’s bosom. I twitch my body free of Mum’s hand. I don’t want her to touch me; not at the moment; not for a long time.
Chapter Seven
Sunday mornings are special. On Sundays, Dad condescends to walk to the newsagent instead of sending Mum to get his News of the World. Mum spends Sunday mornings in the kitchen baking an apple pie, a Victoria sponge and Yorkshire puddings. The smell of our Sunday roast wafts through our flat.
On Sundays I cut out articles from The Girl and stick them in my scrapbook. Sometimes I tinkle tunes on the piano, because now I have piano lessons instead of my dancing ones with Miss Kilip. Mum says that when I’m older, playing the piano will be a lot more practical than ballet dancing.
The bells from St. Mary’s in the High Street ring out, while upstairs in the Addingtons’ flat, the sound of pots and pans combine with gurgling water pipes and muffled voices.
Today, while Dad potters in the lean-to and Mum makes the apple pie, I sit at the table in the front room, drawing. Mrs Colby says I have a flair for art. Mum says that anything that keeps me from under her feet has to be a good thing. She allows me to do my drawing in our front room. The only other times it’s unlocked is for me to do my piano practice and at Christmas.
The front room is my favourite room. The roses on the wallpaper are still fresh, not like the daisies in the kitchen, which are grey with smoke. In the corner is Mum’s glass cabinet which holds her cut glass vase and six wine glasses. When the sun shines on them, they glint rainbows of light. Two chrome figurines of women wearing nineteen-twenties dresses and looking as if they’re about to dance the Charleston, balance either side of the mantelpiece. And, there, wedged between two doily-covered occasional tables is the very best thing about the front room; the piano.
I gaze out at the Sunday peacefulness of Blountmere Street and begin to sketch Fred and Lori’s wedding.
Yesterday I’d persuaded Mum to take me to the Register Office to watch them get married. It hadn’t taken much persuading, really. I reckon Mum was itching to see the wedding, but didn’t want to appear as if she was being nosey. Telling them I was anxious to go was a good excuse.
I must say it was a pretty posh do with them all arriving in a taxi. Miss Lorimore was in this mauvey outfit with a matching hat that made her look like someone from The Royal Family, and Mr Stannard really could have been The Admiral of the Fleet, as Dad calls him when he’s running everyone in the street down while he’s shaving.
But when I saw Angela’s dress and silver shoes and silver headdress, something twisted inside me as if a piece of barbed wire had been inserted. I’ll probably never get to be a bridesmaid and carry a basket of flowers, and I want to be one, I really, really want to be close enough to be part of someone’s wedding. Just the same I smiled and said how lovely she looked and how I liked her shoes. I kept smiling even when she told me Miss Lorimore had actually bought them for her from Pratts, which is one of the poshest shops I know.
The twisting feeling was nothing compared to what I felt when I saw Tony get out of the taxi in his grey wedding suit with long trousers. He had a carnation in his button hole, and his hair was slicked down with Brylcreem.
“You look like a man,” I stammered, moving closer. I wanted to kiss him, but, of course, I couldn’t.
Mum was actually a witness at the wedding. and afterwards, we threw confetti over Mr Stannard and Miss Lorimore. Angela and I poked some down Tony’s shirt front. He wrinkled his nose, but laughed just the same. I wished I could kiss him because I’d let him down lately. I love him like Bill must have loved Mum. But I won’t lose him like Bill did Mum. Tony and I will be together forever. I won’t let him down again.
I look at what I’ve just drawn. When I’ve finished, I’ll give it to Tony to make up for everything and to prove I’m not jealous of Angela being a bridesmaid. Mum says envy’s a deadly sin. She prides herself she isn’t envious of anyone. No daughter of hers is going to demonstrate such a flaw either, she tells me. Anyway, what or who could we be jealous of, she says? It’s others who should be jealous of us. Even if Angela Addingtons’ a bully who didn’t deserve to be a bridesmaid, it doesn’t mean I’m envious. As for the Addingtons and Mr Stannard and Miss Lorimore becoming the family I so want to be part of, I’m not jealous, and that’s that.
I’m sketching the skirt on Angela’s dress when I hear a pounding on the Addingtons’ stairs, followed by the door being slammed so hard, the wooden horse on top of our piano topples over.
I watch as Tony races down the path. He tears across the road without looking and jumps a jagged wall on to the bombsite. Even with our window closed, I can hear him shouting swear words. He disappears into the dugout behind the fireplace where I know he often hides. He told me about it one afternoon when we were on the back step reading our comics and doing our confiding.
I expect he’s had another argument with Angela. Those two never stop quarrelling. I’d love it if I had a brother or a sister. I’d never disagree with them. That’s not quite true. If I had a sister like Angela, I might.
It must be at least twenty minutes, and Tony’ still in his hiding place. I don’t think I’ve missed him. I’ve hardly moved my eyes away from the bombsite. I hate it when Tony’s upset. Sometimes I think when he hurts, I hurt even more.
I never go across to the bombsite with Tony. I don’t want him to be teased by the other kids for being my friend. I sense that today, though, he needs me.
I tip-toe from the room and to the front door. Then I slip the catch and close the door quietly behind me. I don’t want Mum to ask me where I’m going and tell me I need to change my shoes and put something warmer on. Worse, she might offer to come with me. This way, she won’t even know I’ve gone.
I can hear Tony’s sobs before I reach him. I stumble over the rubble to the fireplace and behind it to the hole Tony is crouched in.
He hasn’t heard me coming and for a moment I stand there not knowing whether I should leave him or say something. I do neither, and slip down the hole and sit next to him. He hardly seems to know I’m there. I still don’t say anything, and he can’t, because his sobbing is causing him to gasp for breath. I can’t bear to see him like this, and I slip my arm around his shoulders.
‘What is it?’ I whisper. ‘What’s happened?’
‘They’re going. Leaving us.’ At last he manages to talk, but his whole body is trembling, and I can hardly hear him.
‘Who?’
‘Fred and Lori.’ Tony cuffs his eyes and nose on the sleeve of his jersey. ‘They’re going to live in New Zealand.’ He takes another shuddering breath. ‘To live with his son, his rotten son. Can’t he see we’re his family, not that Ronald.’ Tony’s voice is getting louder. ‘Us! It’s us, they should be staying for. We were all going to be a family together. He’s no better than our Old Man. He’s done the dirty on us like our Old Man did.’
I can’t imagine life without Mr Stannard and especially not having Miss Lorimore as our neighbour. She’s always been there. But worse, much worse, I won’t be able to watch them all become a family so that I can pretend I’m part of it. I won’t be able to substitute Mr Stannard for Dad when he’s shouting and swearing in the mornings. I won’t be able to tag along with them when they go on an outing. I begin to cry. ‘What will we do?’ I murmur.
For the next four weeks Tony and I still sit on the back step reading our comics, but we never mention Fred and Lori going. Tony brings Brian, the hamster Fred bought him, and we stroke him and play little games. And I show Tony my matchboxes full of coloured glass I’ve collected from the bombsite.
‘They’re like jewels,’ he says.
‘If they were, we’d be able to go anywhere in the world we wanted,’ I reply. Now there’s not much time before Fred and Lori leave it looks as if they won’t be able to take Tony and Angela to the seaside.
The Best in Blountmere Street (The Blountmere Street Series Book 2) Page 6