Lemon Sherbet and Dolly Blue

by Knight, Lynn

  Half-day closing was perfect for catching the latest release at the Lyceum or catching up with sleep – Annie and Cora, both. My mum slept through umpteen films cuddled close to Annie and, until an usherette complained, amused herself as a toddler by pounding up and down the aisle while Annie sat engrossed in the main feature.

  LIFT-THE-LATCH (BABY GAME)

  Ring the Bell (gently tug the baby’s forelock)

  Knock at the door (gently knock on the forehead)

  Lift the latch (lift the tip of the nose)

  And walk in (walk fingers to the mouth)

  Take a chair (jiggle the left cheek)

  Sit yourself down (jiggle the right cheek)

  How do you do this morning? (chuck the baby’s chin)

  – Game played by Eva and Annie with Cora

  Letting Cora run wild at the cinema was all very well, but Annie needed help while she was occupied with the cake shop, and made an arrangement with a neighbour whose sixteen-year-old daughter needed work. Cora loved Nancy or, Nanny, as she called her – not to glorify her role, but because the word was easier to pronounce. On fine days, they played together in the old bakehouse yard or Nancy took Cora along Whittington Moor in her pushchair, running errands for Annie and examining the shop windows along the way: Miss Greaves’ dress shop, which was thought to be a cut above; milliner Miss Crookes’, where Betsy and Eva bought their hats (Betsy’s a sober straw, Eva’s an elaborate cloche with a snazzy brim). If Cora and Nancy called at the butcher’s, he broke into song to entertain them. But a verse of ‘Wheezy Anna’ did not encourage Cora to eat the limp rabbits hanging by their feet, nor his pink chops and chitlings. Vans trundled past, including that for Thompson’s Bakery, with Uncle Bernard at the wheel. If he saw Cora, Bernard gave a double toot, and if his wife Ida was dressing a mannequin in one of the windows of Derbyshire’s outfitters across the way, she came to the door to say hello. There was a lot happening in this busy street, but there was one golden rule: ‘Do not step off the pavement.’

  Indoors, Cora and Nancy practised telling the time with a large cardboard clock with yellow hands. When the shortest hand reached one, Annie shut the cake shop for an hour; when the arrow approached five, Willie was due back from the bakery.

  Cora’s face was full of smiles for her daddy and his Box Brownie – Cora in the yard, Cora astride a toy horse; Willie did not need a special occasion to snap his daughter. He sang her ‘Little Pal’ – she is his pal, he tells her, the song was meant for her – and pulled her on to his lap for ‘Sonny Boy’. Her birthdays were celebrated with cakes demonstrating every peak and swirl of piping Willie could produce, and perfected with a kiss of cochineal.

  One of my mum’s earliest memories of her grandma’s shop is of sitting on the doorstep with Ethel’s nephew, Georgie Stokes. They’re both sucking dummies and, from time to time, Georgie slugs cold tea from a medicine bottle equipped with a teat. There is not much to see at this level except shoes, more shoes and hemlines, as customers swerve to avoid them on entering and leaving the shop. Some women stoop to say hello, but mostly she and Georgie are ignored.

  Although this is the doorway through which Cora passes when she visits her grandparents and aunt, the shop itself is more or less a blur at first, a mere corridor through to the back. It is the house and the people inside who matter. Her tall grandma with her big strong hands who washes Cora’s hair and won’t let her venture far until it’s dry, lest she catch her death; her white-haired grandad with a twinkle in his eye, who can nearly always find a marble or a toffee in his pocket and is fond of pulling everyone’s leg. (‘Oh you naughty man,’ says Eva, smiling and rolling her eyes.) Sometimes, Dick seems no more than a big boy himself, a playmate and prankster for Cora, but at other times he gentles the horses in the publican’s field and comforts Cora when she cries at the sound of mussels squealing when they’re boiled in a pan for his tea. And, of course, there is Eva, her fun-loving aunt, who serves in the shop, but is always ready to entertain her niece.

  On sunny Sunday afternoons Eva and Annie crown Cora with daisy chains while Dick checks the wire on the hen houses. The entrance to the wood now has elaborate steps fashioned from living tree roots, a sturdy gate and a hawthorn hedge near the path. Teddy, the current terrier, races round and round, chasing his shadow and his tail, but the hens are used to his daft antics by now and ignore him. Dick shows Cora how to look for eggs in the long grass and which particular spots the hens favour, and at the end of their treasure hunt, laughs instead of being cross when she drops the eggs into his bucket and breaks them.

  Dick has saplings to tend, green shoots to protect from rabbits and a battle to wage against the bindweed that, given half a chance, would choke the hedgerows and the dog roses and honeysuckle climbing through them. While Dick smokes his afternoon pipe, Eva throws sticks for Teddy and Annie stretches out on the grass. At moments likes these, the wood is a quiet, secret place. Station Road is concealed by trees and all factory whistles and colliery hooters are silent. A cerulean sky frames the Crooked Spire in the distance. This family is home and complete; three generations woven together by their willingness to love and trust strangers.

  My mum had not entirely forgotten her earlier life. She burst into tears whenever George Harding delivered milk to her grandma’s shop. He did not even have time to unload his churns from the dray; Cora started crying as soon as she saw him. It was not kindly George who frightened her, but his misshapen hat that seemed to sprout tweed at odd angles. Other men round about wore flat caps, and Willie and his brothers, trilbys; no one else wore a hat like George Harding’s, but the nurses at Tower Cressy had elaborate headdresses fashioned with stiff bows and my mum’s distress was ascribed to her memory of these. Seven months old and suddenly alone; no familiar face or voice nearby, no matter how hard you seek it. Instead, women in peculiar hats that overwhelm their features are peering into your cot.

  In the early 1930s, Billy Thompson, Jim’s eldest son, joined the bakery. Baking was not Billy’s passion, but he gave it a try for a couple of years and it was during this period that Willie realised his mistake. He had misunderstood his brother’s plans for the firm. His hopes for the business, his name on the deeds: the whole thing was the worst possible mix-up. The partnership was intended for young Billy Thompson, Jim’s son, not Billy Thompson, Jim’s brother (Willie was always ‘Billy’ to his brothers and friends). Young Billy who cared little for the bakery and was still a child when Willie started winning bakery medals. But, of course, Jim wanted to share the business with his firstborn son. How had things become so back-to-front? How could he have been so foolish?

  Willie went to work the next day and the days and months after that. For the next two or three years, he continued standing at the bakery table five and a half days a week, although scrubbing its white surface at the end of a long day no longer gave him the satisfaction of a job well done, nor did baking a wide range of bread and fancy cakes. Pummelling, kneading, pushing, turning, flouring. Kneading, pushing, lifting, turning, flouring, shoving with the heel of his hand. Four dozen rock cakes, thirty loaves, half a dozen jam sponges; four cherry Genoas, four seed cakes, one slab fruit cake, four dozen raspberry buns. All hopes of a Morris Cowley receded.

  It must have been hard for my grandma, in the years before she adopted Cora, wanting a child all that time and having to answer the thoughtless questions posed by strangers who assumed all married women had children: ‘I did have a baby. She died.’ Annie was pleased for other women and their good fortune and, if asked, held their new babies with a smile, though tears pricked her eyes the minute she felt the soft weight in her arms. First steps, first words, first day at school – all those non-anniversaries pierced her; she lived with the burden of that grief. So perhaps it is not surprising that when my mum joined the family, she became my grandma’s child: Annie’s child, not Willie’s. Though there were songs and cakes indoors, and photographs in the backyard, outside their home, Cora was entirely Annie’s little girl
.

  Willie was not allowed to do anything for Cora, nor take responsibility for her in any way, although he’d wanted to adopt a child as much as Annie. It was the best decision he ever made, he often said so. Indeed, in later years, it was one of the few things on which he and Annie agreed. But what is harder to unravel is what came first: Annie’s refusal to allow Willie to look after Cora or what she termed, ‘William’s hopeless irresponsibility’.

  On fine evenings, you’d hear Willie singing as he came along the road on his return from the bakehouse. Neighbours remarked on his good voice, which was just as well, given how often they heard it. Pay days were especially cheering: ‘When you’re in the money, you’re a brick, brick, brick…’ Willie liked to stand drinks for his friends; even friends of friends could tap Willie for a beer if he was in the right mood on pay day. ‘Oh, the world is full of honey…’ Sunshine beer was his favourite: a beer and a whisky chaser.

  My grandma always said that Willie’s drinking stemmed from his disappointment over the bakery. That was when his liking a drink became a problem for her. My mum has no memory of ever seeing her father drunk – can only recall him ‘merry’ on one occasion – but Annie’s perspective was different. Part of her anxiety stemmed from childhood: she’d seen what drink could do. Most of it, however, was reducible to paper and base metal: the pounds shillings and pence required to look after a home and a small child.

  One morning, Willie left for work but got no further than the Railway Tavern a few hundred yards down the road, waylaid by a friend or his niggling stomach. ‘Just a quick one, then. Why not?’ It was not the first time Willie had made a detour to the pub. Someone saw him and told Annie. Her sense of frustration and fury was so immense that she asked Nancy to mind the shop and marched up to Wheeldon Mill.

  Even the half-hour walk did not calm her; she was still furious when she arrived. Time and again, Betsy and Eva had been ready with advice and Annie equally ready with her answer. ‘They can all deal with the devil except them that’s got him.’ That usually shut them up, but, on this occasion, Willie’s behaviour was so provoking, all three women decided to intervene.

  Lord knows what possessed them, and how they expected Willie to react when confronted with his motherin-law, his wife and her sister. And these women did not usually venture into pubs; the closest any of them came to stepping over the threshold was Eva fetching the family’s Sunday-lunchtime jug of beer via the side door of the Great Central Hotel. However, Annie needed Betsy’s help and, if trouble presented itself, Eva was not one to run away.

  To think of all the women they’d pitied over the years, watching men stumble from the taproom, having handed their wages across the bar. Now Annie was among their number. It’s not the same, they told themselves, not really. Whatever it was, they were determined to put a stop to it before it happened again.

  They found Willie ensconced in the snug. He was sitting with his friends, the Kiplings, a local garage owner and his wife. She had a fox fur draped about her shoulders and was nursing a glass of sherry, the men had pints of beer. I would love to have seen the looks on the drinkers’ faces when those three righteous women walked in.

  Mrs Kipling was the first to find her voice. And whatever she said must have been pretty strong because Eva, who was lightning fast at retaliation, picked up Mrs Kipling’s sherry and drenched her (and her fox). Mr Kipling sprang to his feet and in the kerfuffle that followed, landed Betsy a black eye – intended for Eva. Then the landlord intervened and ordered Betsy, Annie and Eva from the pub. (He had more sense than to bar good customers.) All three women were shown the door for brawling and, in their embarrassment and hurry to leave, tumbled down the Tavern steps.

  My poor proud grandma and poor Betsy, who had such firm views on good and bad behaviour, and had so often sympathised with women about their husbands. Now she was required to stand behind her counter with her own swollen eye and fend off neighbours’ glances. Some of them regarded Dick with a new note of enquiry, but their curiosity was short-lived. Plenty of women walked into a door at one time or another. My great-grandma’s black eye faded, unlike the difficulties between Annie and Willie.

  My mum has few memories of this period, but she remembers her grandma’s black eye; she also remembers being upstairs with Annie one day while she was cleaning. The sheets were thrown back to air, the windows were wide open, when Willie came into the room holding out a bag of sweets. He offered one to Cora. This was no four-a-penny sweet, but an expensive-looking chocolate, wrapped in foil; there were only three or four in the bag. ‘Where’s mine?’ Annie asked, half teasing, not really believing there was no sweet for her, but that was Willie’s intention. Feeling uncomfortable and uncertain, the chocolate warming in her hand, Cora looked from her mammy to her daddy, then gave her sweet to Annie. Willie huffed and left the room. A few moments later, they heard the back door shut. For the first time, Cora realised her parents did not like one another very much.

  13

  Nobody’s Sweetheart

  THE CORNER SHOP SOON BECAME A PLACE OF ENTERTAINMENT and temptation. Its blurry jars sprang into life, revealing Lemon Sherbet, Everlasting Strips, Swizzels and Torpedoes. Though not allowed to play there when customers were present, Cora could take one or two sweets after hours. ‘She’s pinching,’ Betsy would say in a singsong, playful voice, watching her from the back room.

  Cora’s best friend at the Mill was Georgie Stokes’ sister, Katie, who was older than her but of an age to enjoy ‘looking after’ Cora; my mum called her new doll, Katie, in her honour. Katie took her for walks in the Meadows where they gathered limp bunches of cornflowers, archangels and daisies, though never mother-die (cow parsley) because of the terrible warning in its name.

  Though her grandma ran a real shop, Cora played ‘shop’ with Katie and Enid Spencer and, occasionally, was allowed to stand behind the actual counter and serve her friends with sweets. Betsy showed her how to twist the tops of paper bags to secure them and how to take payment. If a ha’penny usually purchased four caramel chews, my mum’s special reckoning made it five.

  ‘P’

  Parsley PD 1d

  Peggy Legs 2/8

  Panshine 2d, 4 ½d, 8 ½d

  Pencils 1d

  Pen holders 1d

  Pills Parkinson’s 1d, 3d

  Pickling Spice 1d, 3d

  Loose ditto 1/6 1b

  Pest Cards Bndles 1d

  Parazone 1/3

  Peppermint 10 ½d

  Zuff Puffed Wheat & rice 7d

  Perfumes Carters 6d

  Quaker Puffed Wheat & Rice 7 ½d

  POULTRY & CHICK FEEDS

  SPRATTS

  Bis Meals 1/-, 2/-

  Chikko 10 ½d

  1/9 Pulto 8d, ¼

  – Extract from stock list, Betsy’s corner shop, c.1930s

  Rings became another irresistible temptation. Incongruous though it seems, along with scouring pads and borax, cattle powders and bags of flour, my great-grandma’s shop sold rings. Alloyed rings with cheap glass stones, as good as Woolworth’s finest: covetable rubies and sapphires, in Cora’s eyes. ‘Gran-ma …’ she’d ask in that pleading voice all adults recognise, hovering before their velveteen tray.

  I don’t know when it dawned on Eva that no matter how many young men came calling – and there was at least one more, after the first – no one would be good enough for her. Her role had been decided by Dick and Betsy. Eva would be the daughter who stayed at home. They loved her, they fussed her, and she thought the world of them, she often said so, but she was theirs and no one else’s. I’m sure this was part of their wanting a little girl from the Industrial School. Betsy wanted another daughter – she had never thought she would have just the one – but she also had an eye to the future. A young lad would be up and gone the minute he found someone he was sweet on; daughters were more biddable and could be kept at home with the slenderest emotional threads.

  Eva always insisted that years passed before she considered the life
she might have led. At the time, she simply accepted her situation, which was not uncommon. The years between the wars were full of women like her; one in four did not marry. The 1861 census was the first to reveal a so-called ‘surplus’ of women, but in the aftermath of the First World War, with women exceeding men by 1.75 million, the imbalance acquired a new pungency: all those women who could never marry the young men lying dead on Flanders Fields. Add to this calculation the nineteenth-century codes to which their mothers subscribed (for their daughters, if not for themselves) and which demanded filial Duty, Gratitude, Submission, then how could they leave home? The fiction of the period is full of young women desperate to do just that. Novel after novel hinges on their desire to break free.

  Facts and fiction, however resonant, can be held at arm’s length, but Eva was my much-loved great-aunt whom, I suspect, had long since learned to ignore what she could not alter. However, I wonder how often, walking round to Newbridge Lane to visit schoolfriend Carrie and play pat-a-cake with her young son, or lift-the-latch and similar baby games with infant Sunday visitors, Eva was tempted to conjure her own home-sweet-home? She was always a helpmeet of one kind or another: a single woman, daughter, sister, aunt and great-aunt. She was loved by my mum long before she was loved by my brother and me.

  At the top of the house, up the final, twisty flight of stairs, is the attic, no longer a refuge for Annie’s friend Ethel or a weekday lodging for George (nor even a suite for newly-weds, Annie and Willie), but a storeroom once again, with a warm closed-in smell, especially during summertime when the confined sacks of lentils and split peas, and the sand which Betsy dampens and scatters on the floorboards before sweeping, lend a gritty dryness to the atmosphere. The sacks give a satisfying crunch whenever Cora sits on them, but it’s the bicycle and the large framed photograph she and Eva come to see.

  This is the bike on which Annie cycled to school years ago, and propped up in another corner is her schoolgirl portrait, long since relegated upstairs (‘Oh, Mam, please. Take that down and put something else there.’) The bicycle’s chrome handles have dulled with age and it now has a tremulous bell, but the dress guards are still in place and the bike looks just as reliable as it does in the grainy photo of Annie standing with it. Cora is fascinated by this image of her mammy with her school cap and long, flowing hair.