Pack Up Your Troubles

by Anne Bennett

  ‘It’s an early start in the morning. They don’t want their papers delivered with their elevenses. You must be here by seven.’

  Kevin grinned. Getting up early had never been a problem to him. His grandda’s cows had to be milked at six in the morning and he’d never let him down. ‘I’ll be here,’ he said.

  ‘And you can start immediately?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Where do you live anyway?’ Syd asked.

  ‘Latimer Street.’

  Syd stroked his chin. ‘That’s quite a way. You sure you’ll manage it?’

  ‘Quite sure.’

  ‘Right. I’ll give you a try,’ Syd said, almost grudgingly. ‘This afternoon at four. Don’t be late.’

  ‘And the wage?’

  ‘Three and six a week. Take it or leave it.’

  ‘I’ll take it. Thank you, sir,’ Kevin said, and his smile of relief at getting paid employment nearly split his face in two.

  He went home as fast as he could to tell his mother the good news, but Maeve was worried as to what his father would say.

  ‘Why should he say anything, Mammy?’ Kevin asked. ‘I won’t tell him.’

  ‘He’ll know.’

  ‘How would he?’ Kevin said. ‘My early-morning round will start after he goes to work and I’ll have done my evening round and be back in the house before he’s home in the evenings. Saturday evenings he’ll be sleeping it off as usual and Sundays he never gets up until about ten o’clock so that he can go to Mass at eleven. He’ll not know a thing about it.’

  ‘If he should find out, Kevin, he’ll kill you,’ Maeve said and gave an involuntary shiver. ‘He’ll kill the pair of us.’

  ‘There will be no more talk of killing, Mammy,’ Kevin said, putting an arm around Maeve’s shoulder. ‘He’ll not touch you, nor me either. I’m home now and not a wee boy any more and I’ll see he never hurts you again.’ Maeve saw the determination in her son’s face but she felt no relief, only a further dread, for she knew Brendan as Kevin didn’t.

  Kevin found delivering papers more difficult and tiring than he’d imagined. The houses the paper shops delivered to were the large ones, usually spaced well apart behind high privet hedges and approached by sweeping drives. It took Kevin quite a few days to find his way around with the help of the notebook Syd had given him. It had the roads marked on it and the houses, with details of papers and magazines they had each day.

  Sunday, Kevin soon discovered, was the most difficult day of all. People who’d never normally have a paper might have one or more on Sunday and consequently the round was longer and the bag heavier, and he was glad there was only one Sunday in a week.

  Brendan had assumed Kevin had returned to St Catherine’s school, like Grace, until his birthday. He never asked, nor expressed the slightest interest in what any of the children did. He sensed too that since the lad had come back he’d lost some power over Maeve, over them all, and it enraged him.

  One evening he heard them all laughing as he neared the house, a sound he’d seldom heard in his home. Elsie had heard it too and it cheered her, but it annoyed Brendan and especially that, at his entrance, the hilarity was turned off as if it were a tap. He’d glared round at them all, sitting cosily before the crackling fire, for Maeve had fed the children earlier and cleared away all evidence of the meal before Brendan came home. Bridget and Jamie lowered their eyes to the floor at the look on their father’s face. Grace glanced at her mother nervously, and Maeve got to her feet with a sigh, which irritated Brendan, just as if she’d prefer to be sitting by the fire laughing and carrying on with the weans than seeing to him.

  Only Kevin showed no sign of fear or nervousness for his father and contempt shone in his eyes. By God, Brendan thought, it was more than enough to rile a man, the defiant look the lad had. ‘Get that scowl off your face, boy,’ he commanded. He’d see how defiant he would be when he’d sweated his guts out in a brass foundry. He’d work him till he was ready to drop. Then he’d know who the master was in this house.

  Kevin watched his father, wondering at the malicious smile playing around his mouth, but he said nothing. He could hardly bear to speak to the man. Even to be in his company oppressed him and he heartily wished he could take his mother away from him, but knew that wasn’t in his power yet.

  Kevin soon got a reputation for being a good and conscientious worker. Maeve insisted he keep sixpence of his pay back for pocket money, but he never used it for himself. Instead he bought comics for the children, or sweets if he had points enough. He wished he could buy them all some decent clothes, especially his mother, because even the dress and coat she wore for Mass were threadbare and shabby. One of the first things Kevin was determined to do with his wages once he was working full time, rationing or no rationing, was to see them all dressed decently.

  Mary Ann wasn’t so badly off, because she still had the things Deidre Bradshaw had given to Maeve for Bridget years before. But Kevin and Grace insisted some of their clothes be altered for the others, so Jamie now had a couple of pairs of short trousers his bottom wasn’t sticking out of and Bridget had a plaid skirt and at least one warm dress for the winter.

  But Kevin knew that while warm clothes were important for the children, they weren’t much in the way of presents for little children, and so for Bridget’s sixth birthday in October, he searched every shop in the area with his sixpence, and in the rag market he found a skipping rope, and bought a yo-yo in a shop up a side street selling second-hand stuff. He’d seen children in the street playing with both toys and noted the fact that Bridget had neither. In fact the Hogan children seemed to have no toys at all.

  Maeve was touched by Kevin’s consideration, and glad he had something to give Bridget for the children had so little. After his birthday, she knew life could and probably would change for the worse. Brendan would have Kevin down the foundry where, he’d threatened, he’d volunteer the lad for any overtime going and strip him of his wages before he left the place. So she tried not to rely on his paper round money, but put as much away as she could in the tin box in Elsie’s house. But she’d taken some out of it that week to give Bridget a decent birthday for once in her life.

  She’d planned a little party for the child. It would be her first and as her birthday was on Sunday they decided to have it on that day, but in Elsie’s house, lest any sound of merriment rouse Brendan, who’d be sleeping off the effects of his Sunday lunchtime binge.

  It was the best afternoon Bridget could remember having and she was entranced by Kevin’s gifts to her, because in her short life she could never remember being given anything to play with before. Then she surveyed the table with delight and cried, ‘It’s like V-E Day.’

  Grace and Kevin both remembered their mother’s account of V-E Day. She’d told them of people’s relief and elation, and the street party when shopkeepers broke into their stock to give everyone, and especially the children, a day to remember. A party tea was laid on for them such as they’d not had in six years. Their grandfather had said that they were being premature celebrating before the war with Japan was finally over too. He’d said it was as if the servicemen fighting in the jungle were of no account.

  But just before they left in August, the war against Japan had been won by two atomic bombs and an attack on Tokyo by over a thousand aircraft. The numbers killed shocked the world, but when the skeletal survivors of the Japanese POW camps were liberated and they heard of their suffering and those of their fellow inmates who’d not made it, most people had little sympathy for Japan’s citizens.

  ‘I didn’t have a cake then, though, just for myself with six candles on,’ Bridget cried, her eyes shining. ‘Not at the V-E Day party I never,’ and Grace, moved by the child’s delight in everything, bent down and gave her a hug.

  Syd Moss knew that Kevin’s birthday wasn’t that far off. He would miss him as his paperboy because he was the best he’d ever had and he’d done nothing about finding a replacement. He guessed at the poverty
of his home and knew that money would probably be fairly tight. He had no doubt that once Kevin passed fourteen, he’d waste no time being set on somewhere.

  Syd considered the matter. They’d never hired anyone for the shop. For years he’d worked side by side with Gwen, and then Stanley as he grew. He’d always prided himself on the fact it was a family business and he’d imagined it would stay that way.

  Now it often seemed as if he’d lost his wife as well as his son, for the depression she’d sunk into at the news of Stanley’s death had deepened. She had no interest in anything any more and least of all the shop. But the fact remained Syd wasn’t as young as he had been and he needed help. If Gwen was not able for it, that meant looking outside the family. Why then should he look further than the lad they had already that they could trust? True he was young, but that might be all to the good: he could train him in his ways.

  He got on with him all right and that in itself was unusual, for he had to admit his track record with boys was not good and it wasn’t always the boys’ fault. He’d discussed the matter with Gwen and she’d been against it as he knew she would be, but not enough for her to agree to go down into the shop herself.

  ‘I need a hand down there, Gwen,’ Syd had said. ‘The food will be coming off ration now, bit by bit, and though we won’t have the bother of coupons and points, in another way we’ll have more stock to order and shelve. As it is, I can barely cope with the tobacco and magazine counter and the grocery side too. I can’t have eyes everywhere either.’

  ‘The boy might not want it.’

  ‘He might not,’ Syd agreed, ‘though I doubt he’ll be too choosy. His family seem as poor as the rest.’

  Kevin knew that himself. Soon he’d have to see about a job. It wasn’t enough just to say he wasn’t going to work in the foundry. He had to decide where he was going to work.

  Syd glared at him as he returned that night after his round, but Kevin knew that Syd’s baleful look was not always directed at him, nor was the snap in his voice, nor the frown that furrowed his brow. Outside, dusk had begun to fall, the weather was bitterly cold and Kevin was glad to reach the comparative warmth of the shop. He hung his bag on the hook behind the door leading upstairs and blew on his cold fingers. ‘I’ll be off then, Mr Moss,’ he shouted.

  ‘What? No, no . . . Wait on a minute.’

  Mystified, Kevin hovered while Syd served a customer, wondering what he’d done now. He was totally unprepared for his employer’s proposal.

  ‘Serve in the shop?’ he repeated. ‘Full time, you mean?’

  He couldn’t believe it and at first was delighted. It was a much better job for him than being shut in a factory and he didn’t even mind Syd Moss and his moods. Many people around the roads had told him about Stanley and he thought it understandable that the parents of a lad, only a little older than himself killed like that wouldn’t be the same after it. Small wonder Syd often looked thoughtful and sometimes downright miserable.

  However, Kevin had his own worries and only one thing mattered. ‘How much money are you offering, Mr Moss?’

  Syd hesitated. He deplored the modern method of giving youngsters high wages but he knew if he wasn’t to offer Kevin decent money he would go elsewhere. And yet he had no experience and he might turn out to be bloody useless. He wasn’t going to hand money over for nothing. ‘Well, let’s se how you shape up first,’ he said, playing for time. ‘There are two Saturdays yet before your birthday. You come and give me a hand those days and we’ll go from there. I’ll give you three and six for the day, eight till six. Then we’ll see.’

  ‘I’ll take it and welcome,’ Kevin said.

  Kevin and Grace had been unused to rationing until they came to Birmingham, but Kevin knew he’d have to try to understand both the rationed goods and those on points before he went to work at Moss’s Select Stores. But he found it was a complicated task.

  ‘Everyone over the age of five has a buff-coloured ration book containing coupons for fifty-two weeks,’ Maeve told him. ‘And another green book if you’re expecting, to give you extras. Children under five have green books too and they can have extra milk and orange juice on it and stuff like that. But,’ she added, ‘despite your entitlement on the rations, it depends on whether the stuff is available. For example, we’re supposed to have one egg each a fortnight and we’d think ourselves lucky to see one a month.’

  Kevin found it totally confusing. He discovered, though, as many people do, that trying to learn something cold from a book is much harder than actually doing it. The women knew exactly the amount of food they were allotted, and were only too willing to help him, and on that first Saturday he was kept busy from the moment he hung up his paper-round bag at eight o’clock until about half-past nine.

  ‘There’ll be a bit of a lull now,’ Syd told him. ‘I’ll pop upstairs for a bite to eat. Will you be all right?’

  ‘Aye. Sure I will,’ answered Kevin, trying to ignore the hunger pangs in his own stomach. It had been a long time since he’d struggled into his clothes in the dark that morning before drinking the cup of tea his mother had had ready, together with the bread spread with whatever she had in. He knew he had another couple of slices of the same for his lunch wrapped in the bag the bread came in.

  He wished his mother could have a lie-in in the morning instead of having to get up at the crack of dawn to see to his bloody father. He was worried about her, because he thought she was far too thin to be so heavily pregnant, though her ankles were huge and she slopped about in men’s shoes three sizes larger than she usually took, as they were all she could get on.

  Elsie also knew Maeve wasn’t right, and she urged her to see Dr Fleming, because somehow this pregnancy, above all the others, had managed to do what all the years of neglect and abuse had failed to do and that was suck the very heart from her.

  But Maeve hadn’t the money for doctors, so no way was she going to ask Dr Fleming to call. ‘What the hell could he do for me anyway?’ she demanded. ‘I’m pregnant and that’s that. I haven’t money to throw away to be told what I already know myself and be given a bottle of tonic that does no good at all. Don’t fuss me.’

  Maeve was more bothered about Kevin at that time than she was about herself because she couldn’t understand why he’d been so keen to work in the shop on Saturday. He wouldn’t tell her anything until it was decided, so she had no idea Syd was thinking of offering Kevin a full-time job. He just said the money would be useful, and in truth Maeve couldn’t argue with that. But after he’d gone to work that first Saturday she realised he hadn’t answered her when she’d asked if he’d told the Mosses that he’d have to give up the paper round, and anxiety for her stubborn, slightly headstrong son began to niggle at her.

  FIFTEEN

  They had Jamie’s birthday party next door, as they’d had Bridget’s, and on Sunday too, primarily because Kevin was working on Saturday and Jamie wouldn’t have considered his birthday complete if his brother couldn’t be there.

  Kevin was feeling very happy that day. He’d worked hard the previous day, and at the end of it Syd, never given to praising people and in particular boys, said, ‘You did well, Kevin. You do as well as that next week and you’ll have a job the following Monday. What d’you say?’

  There’d been no discussion of wages and Kevin knew he wouldn’t mention a figure until he saw how he was the next Saturday. He trusted Mr Moss to treat him fairly so he smiled and said, ‘Thank you, sir. I’d be pleased to work for you.’

  He wanted to say a lot more, but Syd seemed satisfied. ‘Hmph,’ he said gruffly. ‘Glad you have manners, at least. Now I think I’ve solved the problem of a present for your young brother’s birthday. How old will he be?’

  ‘Four,’ Kevin said, wondering how Syd knew the problem he was having finding something in the practically bare shops to please a four-year-old. He’d only mentioned the matter that day to a customer, who, knowing who Kevin was, asked to be remembered to his mother, as early in th
e war she had minded her baby for her while she went to work. Kevin had told her it was his young brother’s birthday that day and although they were having a party on Sunday, he hadn’t found anything in the shops to buy for him.

  Kevin hadn’t been aware Syd had even been in the store at the time. The customer sympathised and said it would be a bleak Christmas indeed for all the children that year. ‘You wouldn’t think we’d won the bleeding war, would you?’ she’d said with a grim laugh, and now it seemed Syd had listened to the entire exchange, and as Kevin was getting his coat on he came forward with two miniature cars, one black and one a dull red and both in pristine condition.

  ‘Used to be Stanley’s,’ Syd said, his voice gruffer than ever. ‘No sense in hanging on to them.’

  ‘Oh, thank you, sir,’ Kevin said, genuinely touched.

  Kevin came home with his three and six in his pocket and the certainty of a full-time job at the shop if he worked as hard the following Saturday as he had that day. He also had the two cars to make Jamie’s fourth birthday special and the knowledge that Syd Moss, often querulous and bad-tempered, was underneath it all a very kind man.

  The party was a great success and Jamie was as entranced as Bridget had been the previous month. He was bright-cheeked with excitement and happiness as he tumbled into their house. He’d had a better time than he could ever remember having.

  Maeve heard Brendan’s steps on the stairs and she hoped they hadn’t woken him, for then he’d be furious. She grabbed the presents from Jamie’s arms and threw them under the cushion of the settee and Jamie, knowing why she was doing it, made no protest. He knew, until they knew what humour his father was in, no one would risk incurring his displeasure.

  Maeve realised with a sinking heart, catching sight of her husband framed in the doorway, that he was in a temper over something or other, as he often was. His mouth was turned down and he had an ugly scowl covering his face.