Keep the Home Fires Burning

by Anne Bennett

  Tony hadn’t thought of it. He wasn’t a sneak and it wouldn’t have helped his case any. As it was, he lay on the bed, his stomach yawning in emptiness and his mouth watering at the smells floating up the stairs. He heard the family sitting down to a meal that he would have given his eyeteeth for and bitterly regretted what he had done.

  EIGHT

  Tony was back to collecting the coal that fell off the carts leaving the gas works, and on his own, so there was even less collected, but he didn’t say a word about it. He had been so ashamed at making his mother cry that he would do all in his power to make sure it never happened again.

  That thought was in his mind one dusky evening in early March when Jack suggested climbing up on one of the smallish factories near Aston Cross because he had heard the roof was made of glass and he wanted to look inside.

  ‘Don’t you want to see in?’ he demanded, surprised by Tony’s reticence.

  ‘Yeah,’ Tony said, ‘course I do, but I’ll really catch it if I don’t go home soon.’

  ‘Won’t take you a minute.’

  Tony shook his head firmly. ‘Mom’s warned me against climbing on the factory roofs. Yours has as well.’

  Jack shrugged. ‘So?’

  ‘Our mom wouldn’t like it if I did. She might get upset and that.’

  Even in the dusky half-light Tony could see the derision on Jack’s face. ‘Oh, you mommy’s boy,’ he chortled. ‘“My mom wouldn’t like it, “’ he mimicked as he began to climb the walls. ‘You stay there then, scaredy-cat.’

  Tony felt humiliated and dreadfully hurt by his cousin’s words as he watched him scale the walls.

  ‘Hey,’ Jack shouted from the roof minutes later. ‘It’s great up here and it is glass. Crikey, Tony, you don’t know what you’re missing.’

  Tony jumped from one foot to the other. He so wanted to follow Jack and see the glass roof for himself that he wondered whether he should follow him after all. He’d never know if he would have done because at that moment there was a loud crack, the sound of glass breaking, then a blood-curling scream and then silence.

  ‘Jack!’ Tony cried desperately. ‘Jack! Are you all right?’

  There was no answer, no sound at all, and Tony felt fear for his cousin trail all down his back as he yelled again, ‘Jack! Talk to me! Jack!’

  When there was still nothing, Tony set off to get help, the sobs he hadn’t even been aware of almost stopping his throat. He wanted his mother, but before he reached home, he ran almost full tilt into a policeman.

  ‘Hold it, young man,’ he said, holding Tony by the shoulders. ‘What’s your hurry?’

  Tony was usually wary of policemen, but he was too worried about Jack to care about that now, and the words spilled one over the other as he tried to explain.

  Then events moved fast. The policeman found someone who could force the factory door open and before he had quite done that ambulance bells could be heard. Someone had alerted Tony’s mother and Auntie Polly and Uncle Pat, and they were all there to see the unconscious Jack carried out of the factory.

  In the end he was lucky, for though he had been knocked unconscious he had missed the big machines, from which he might have sustained more serious injuries. He had only mild concussion, a couple of broken ribs and an arm broken in two places, and was considered a lucky boy.

  ‘I’m glad,’ Marion said to Tony later that night, ‘that you were sensible enough not to follow Jack onto that roof.’

  Tony was silent, and Marion asked, ‘You didn’t go, did you?’

  ‘No, course I didn’t,’ Tony said. ‘Jack asked me to, and took the mickey when I said no, but I didn’t care. Anyroad, now I ain’t the one with the sore head and busted arm.’

  Marion was glad that Tony had defied Jack at last. She couldn’t see the attraction that made Tony think Jack quite wonderful. In fact everyone liked Jack, except perhaps the girls who had the misfortune to sit in front of him in the classroom because he was a dab hand at undoing the bows on their dresses and tying them to the chairs. And if they wore their hair in long plaits, like the Whittaker twins, he took great delight in dipping the ends of their plaits into his inkwell.

  Jack was fascinated by the ink that was made up each day with powder and water. It wasn’t much good for writing with, but Jack would soak little bits of blotting paper in it and use a bendy ruler to propel it across the room to slap into some other child’s unsuspecting cheek. He exasperated teachers, who broke rulers over his hand in an attempt to tame his rebellious spirit.

  And that was something else. Jack was punished often and yet he never made a sound, nor did he flinch as the ruler would come down again and again, though the watching children, girls in particular, would wince for him and a shuddering sympathetic ‘Ooh’ would ripple through the class.

  And when it was over, he would return to his chair without waving his hands about in an effort to cool them, nor did he tuck them under his arms for a measure of comfort. That earned him the respect of many of the lads, even the hard lads, and Tony would watch his fearless cousin with envy and wish he could be like him.

  Jack returned to school after a few days with his ribs bound up and his arm in a plaster cast. Tony wondered how he was able to turn every situation to his advantage. He regaled the boys with tales of how he received his injury and the girls ran around him doing things for him. The worst of these girls was his own sister Magda.

  Magda had always loved Jack. As the youngest in his family he had taken more of an interest in Magda and Missie than ever Tony had, amazed that they looked so alike. He was kinder than Tony too, in the main, and he teased them less. Sarah had always said he was a handsome boy and Magda supposed he probably was. She had certainly never seen a person with such dark eyes and hair. His skin was darkish too, except for his red cheeks, and his wide mouth had an upward lift to it as if he was constantly amused about something. He was seldom down about anything for long. Nothing would have pleased Magda more than to be allowed to trail after Jack and Tony, but she knew she would never have been allowed to do that.

  One Saturday about a fortnight or so after Jack’s accident, that longing got the better of her. Missie was in the house and Magda was bored to tears. Knowing Tony was off to meet Jack, she climbed over the wall after him, even though she was expressly forbidden to do that.

  The two boys met at Aston Cross and she followed behind them stealthily as they made their way down Rocky Lane to the Cut. The sky was grey and miserable. It had been raining and there was still dampness in the air. Magda felt her boots slithering over the mud as she splashed her way through the puddles. The boys stopped suddenly on the towpath and she slipped behind a bush so they wouldn’t spot her and send her home. She disturbed the raindrops caught in the leaves, and she felt a thorny twig rip the thick stockings her mother made her and Missie wear in the winter, and she gave a sigh of resignation. As she turned round to examine it, however, a straggly overhanging branch snatched the beret from her head, scattering Kirbigrips with gay abandon.

  However, she had no time to worry about this because Jack was telling Tony something about her parents and she leaned forward to hear better.

  ‘I tell you, our dad would never stand it,’ she heard Jack say. ‘I’ve heard him tell our mom.’

  Tony, she could see, was mystified. ‘What’s wrong with having a bolster in the bed? It’s only to put your head on, ain’t it?’

  ‘Course it ain’t,’ Jack said scornfully. ‘Not where your mom puts it, anyroad. She has it down the middle of the bed, between them like.’

  Tony shrugged, ‘So what?’

  ‘It’s to stop them doing stuff.’

  ‘What sort of stuff?’

  ‘God blimey, Tony, don’t you know nothing?’ Jack exploded. ‘It’s to stop them doing IT. You know? Making babies and that.’

  Tony had no idea where babies came from and nor had the avidly listening Magda. Magda thought babies were a gift from God, like the priest said, and although Tony k
new there was more to it than that, he knew only that it was some secretive thing that happened in the bedroom that he would probably understand better when he was older.

  ‘Do you really not know?’ Jack asked incredulously, and when Tony shook his head he told him in a whisper that was quite loud enough for Magda to hear. Suddenly she ceased to mind about the blood seeping from the scratch on her leg and the hair wild about her face. What Jack was saying drove such concerns from her mind. Her eyes stood out in her head and her mouth dropped open and she wished she could stop herself listening because she was disgusted by the words coming from his mouth. She knew it was true – Jack never told lies ? and she thought fiercely that there would be no need for a bolster in her bed once she was grown up. She would make sure that no man would get within a mile of her, just in case he should have such a crazy notion in his head.

  ‘How d’you know all this?’ Tony cried, leaping away from Jack.

  Jack shrugged. ‘Just do, that’s all. And the bolster keeps them apart, see? Keeps them from touching. Your mom told my mom to do it after Mary Ellen was born. Dad let it slip one night when he was bottled. Mom never liked the idea and Dad said if she had tried that caper he would have thrown the sodding thing out the bleeding window, and her after it.’

  Tony looked around nervously in case anyone was close enough to hear the swear words slipping so effortlessly from his cousin’s lips and in the murky gloom he caught sight of Magda’s eyes peering out from behind the bush. She tried to run but she was hampered by the bush and Tony was able to grab her easily.

  ‘What are you doing spying on people?’

  ‘I wasn’t,’ Magda replied with spirit. ‘I have as much right to be here as you have, and you touch me, Tony Whittaker, and I’ll tell our mom what you have been talking about.’

  Jack laughed. ‘You do that, Magda, and you’ll be in far bigger trouble than we will.’

  Magda knew that was true. They would be excused as the sort of thing boys talked about or some such thing so that they would escape any sort of censure, she guessed, but she would be in trouble for listening and not making her presence known sooner. Anyway, how could she tell her mother things like Jack had been saying, which made her feel a bit sick? She knew she would be in enough trouble as it was for leaving the garden alone and without permission. If her mother thought she had trailed after the boys it wouldn’t help her case at all.

  Jack saw her biting her lip in agitation and he said disdainfully, ‘Go home, little girl, where you belong, and don’t meddle with things you don’t understand.’

  Jack’s scorn seared into Magda’s very soul and made her flush crimson. With a baleful look at both of them she turned and ran.

  While Magda had been trailing after the boys, Polly had been around to see Marion. In and around Aston there were lots of firms making things for the war effort, and with more and more men joining the services, the need for more women in the workforce was growing. Recruits had had to come from further afield, and young women had begun arriving in the city to take up some of the jobs.

  Accommodation had not been found for these female workers and people were now taking them in as lodgers. The back-to-back houses hadn’t usually enough space for the families that lived in them, but as soon as Polly heard about all these girls being drafted into the area she had gone round to tell her sister. As she said, Marion had a fine big house that could put up a few girls with ease.

  Marion had listened to Polly’s enthusiasm but she herself was not at all sure that she wanted lodgers. But when she said this, Polly said, ‘All right then, what’s the alternative if you want you and the kids to survive through the winter?’

  Marion bit her lip because she knew that really there was no alternative. ‘But how do I know that anyone would come?’

  ‘Are you kidding?’ Polly cried. ‘They’ve got to live somewhere. Pat said most employers have lists of places offering accommodation. He feels sorry for the young girls who have never left home before, and these days that seems to mean the majority of them. Pat can take your details into the munitions works, and Jack and Tony can run your address round all the other places.’

  ‘But where would these girls sleep?’ Marion asked.

  ‘Well, I’d put them in your lads’ room and they could bed down in the parlour. They would only need somewhere to put their things.’

  ‘But, Polly, I haven’t got money for extra beds or bedding or anything else – you know that. It takes me all my time to make ends meet, and even they don’t always meet very well because I haven’t been able to pay the rent for two weeks now.’

  ‘Listen to me,’ Polly said. ‘These girls will be getting good money, because all war-related work is well paid, so you can charge a decent amount in rent for staying in a place like this. You’ll be doing them a favour and they’ll be doing you one. But to get started you’ll need to borrow some money from me, and don’t bloody well shake your head before I’ve finished.’

  ‘You know how I feel about—‘

  ‘It’s a loan, I said,’ Polly insisted. ‘And a loan I meant. God Almighty, Marion,’ she added with a ghost of a smile, ‘I’ll even charge you bleeding interest if it makes you feel better.’

  ‘What if I can’t pay it back?’

  ‘Why are you such a bloody pessimist?’ Polly said. ‘Look, we can go down the Bull Ring tonight. We’ll likely get the stuff cheaper there, anyroad, and set this in action straight away.’

  ‘All right,’ Marion said at last. ‘God, I wonder what the kids will say.’

  ‘Where are they?’

  ‘God knows where Tony is,’ Marion said. ‘Richard has got hold of some orange boxes and he’s breaking them up in the yard. Missie is helping him. Magda was supposed to stay in the garden with Missie, but she slipped out when Missie came inside for something.’ Marion frowned heavily. ‘I’ll have something to say to her when she does come in. I’ll not have her running the streets.’

  ‘She’ll come to no harm.’

  ‘That’s not the point,’ Marion said, tight-lipped. ‘I understand that it’s hard for the pair of them with Bill not here to take them out and about, but they have to put up with it. Magda said the other day she was bored. God, I sometimes wish I had the time to be bored.’

  Polly felt sorry for her nieces penned in the garden. No wonder Magda wanted to be out on the streets playing with the other children. Missie probably wanted to go too, but Magda was more rebellious than her sister. But Polly said nothing about it because she didn’t want to start an argument with Marion. Instead she said, ‘And where’s Sarah?’

  ‘Sarah’s in the kitchen having the meal I left for her. She isn’t in from work long,’ Marion said.

  ‘She’s late, isn’t she? It’s going on for three now.’

  ‘She’s often late coming home on Saturdays,’ Marion said. ‘She’s only supposed to work till lunchtime, and that’s all she gets paid for, but as soon as she’s ready to go, that Jenkins woman finds her lots of other jobs to do. She gets right cheesed off and …’

  But whatever else she was going to say was forgotten because just at that moment Magda made her untimely entrance and both women stared at her as if they couldn’t believe their eyes.

  Marion was filled with fury. She leaped to her feet and took Magda by the shoulders. ‘Look at the state of you,’ she cried, shaking her violently. ‘You’re like a child a tinker would be ashamed to own. What in God’s name have you been doing running the streets like some little hoyden?’

  Magda didn’t know what a hoyden was but it didn’t sound a very nice thing to be.

  Still holding her by the shoulders, Marion held her away from her. ‘You have a rip in your skirt and yet another hole in your stockings,’ she said angrily. ‘Clothes don’t grow on trees, you know. You’re covered in mud and your hair is one unholy mess. God, Magda, as if I haven’t enough to worry about. And where the hell is your beret?’

  Magda knew that it was probably still hanging on the over
hanging bush down by the canal. She had forgotten all about it as she listened to Jack telling Tony things so shocking she could scarcely believe her very straight and respectable mother agreeing to any of it. Suddenly the events of that day, the disturbing things she had heard, Jack’s scorn, her mother’s anger and the fact that the scratch on her leg had begun to throb and sting, were all too much for her to bear and she burst into tears.

  ‘Marion, give the kid a break, for God’s sake?’ Polly said. ‘Mine have come home in that state or worse many a time.’

  Marion released her daughter, almost pushing her away, and Sarah, who came in at that moment, looked from her still raging mother to her distressed sister and said, ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Oh, I’ll tell you all later,’ Marion said. ‘Just for now, can you do something with this little tramp?’ She pushed Magda in Sarah’s direction. ‘Keep her out of my sight for now or I’ll not be responsible for my actions.’

  Sarah put out her hand. ‘Come on,’ she said to Magda. ‘I’ll see what I can do about cleaning you up.’

  Magda was glad to get away from her mother. Sarah lifted her up beside the sink, washed her and tended the deep scratch on her leg. ‘You really are in the wars,’ she said. ‘Where did you get that?’

  ‘Don’t tell Mom?’

  ‘What d’you take me for?’

  ‘I went up the Cut and scratched myself on a thorn bush.’

  ‘On your own?’

  Magda nodded slowly. She wasn’t going to mention either of the boys and she knew they wouldn’t say anything either.

  ‘Oh, Magda,’ Sarah said, ‘you do ask for it, you know. That alone would put Mom in a tear, and then to come home in this state. Oh, don’t start crying again,’ she said as she saw tears seeping under Magda’s lashes. ‘I’ll have you as right as rain in no time …’