One Day at a Time

by Susan Lewis

  ‘I expect so,’ I say.

  ‘You’ll have to tell him it wasn’t your fault,’ Sadie advises. ‘We’ll all back you up.’

  ‘Definitely,’ everyone agrees.

  ‘Does anyone know who the record actually belongs to?’ Peg asks.

  One by one they all shake their heads.

  ‘I think it just got left behind by one of last year’s sixth form,’ Cheryl says. ‘It’s so scratched, they probably didn’t want it any more.’

  We’re at the tea stall now, so I order a cup for Gran, pop a couple of biscuits on the saucer and start back to the car. I haven’t got very far when I realise Seaweed and Dad are already there. I wish I could disappear, but I’ll have to face it some time, so on I go.

  Dad’s face is pale and grim as I come up to him.

  ‘Here we are, Gran,’ I say, passing her tea.

  ‘Oh thanks, my old love, just what I need.’

  ‘Where did you get the record?’ Dad asks deeply.

  ‘It’s not mine,’ I tell him.

  Seaweed gives a horrible frown. ‘That’s not what you said last night,’ she reminds me. ‘You told me your cousin gave it to you.’

  ‘I know, but it’s not true. I was only trying to stop everyone getting into trouble.’

  Seaweed looks at Dad. ‘We don’t encourage lies at the school,’ she informs him. ‘As I’ve already explained, Susan will remain here on Sunday to serve her detention. Now, if you’ll excuse me …’ She looks at Gran, gives a withery sort of smile and takes off.

  ‘Stuck-up old bitch,’ Gran mutters under her breath.

  ‘Susan, Susan, Susan,’ Dad sighs in his biggest disappointed way. ‘What on earth is going on? This isn’t what I expect of you.’

  ‘It’s not my fault,’ I cry. ‘I was just trying to make everyone like me, so I took the blame, and it worked because I got a nice letter from Johnny. It would probably have been horrible otherwise, because I know no one likes me really, not even you.’

  ‘I’m not arguing about that again, I’m simply going to hope that you’ve learned your lesson. By taking the blame you’ve let the guilty person go free, and now you won’t be able to come home on Sunday, which is a great pity, because Auntie Doreen’s invited us over for tea and Robert’s going to be there. He specially wanted to see you, but now he won’t be able to.’

  My eyes are swimming in tears. I feel so unhappy and lonely that I don’t know what to do. I wonder what Robert’s going to think when he finds out I’m in detention. Probably that I’m a stupid, snotty little schoolgirl with plaits and freckles and long white socks, and I’m not. I’m growing up really fast now. I wear stockings and eyebrow pencil and I’m starting to speak posh. I want him to see what I’m like, because I know he’ll write to me then, and if I can get a photo of him everyone will see how good-looking he is and be really jealous and wish they knew him too.

  ‘Well, if you’ve learned anything from this,’ Gran says, ‘it’s that you have to look out for number one in this life. You do that, and you’ll go far.’

  I look at Dad who doesn’t seem particularly convinced by that, but he doesn’t argue with it either. ‘I’m very disappointed in you,’ he tells me. ‘I don’t know how you got hold of that record …’

  ‘I told you, it’s not mine!’ I shout.

  ‘Then I hope that’s the truth, because you’re far too young to be listening to that sort of muck, and if it’s the kind of thing you’ve been spending your pocket money on, I’ll be putting a stop to it.’

  ‘No! It’s not fair. I have to have some money or I’ll starve, and I won’t have any records, or stamps, or writing paper …’

  He holds up his hand. ‘Here’s half a crown from Auntie Nance and Uncle Stan,’ he says, handing it over. ‘You’ll write and thank them, and then you’ll send a letter to Auntie Doreen explaining why you can’t come for tea.’

  Chapter Seven

  Eddie

  WHAT WITH CHRISTMAS coming and winter settling in, time’s flying by and I still haven’t repaired the paraffin stove to help warm up the house. Generally I put it at the bottom of the stairs to take the chill off for when Gary goes up to bed, but to my shame he’s having to go up in the cold for now.

  Poor mite, he comes home from school with his legs all chapped from the wind, and his lips turning blue, but at least we’ve got him some new shoes at last. I managed to put in some extra overtime to help get us past the worst of the rough patch, but I’m sensing some more tricky times ahead down the factory.

  I don’t think the bosses are very happy with me, because I got the inspectors in to run a check on all the grinding dust. I swear, they’d have let us suffocate to death before they’d done anything about it, so someone had to take some action. Our Nance and Doreen keep warning me not to upset the management. ‘Remember how they sacked you from the BAC,’ Doreen said. ‘You got above yourself then, getting involved in the unions and what have you. They always find a way to push you out when you start rocking the boat.’

  I didn’t argue with her, because I’m afraid she’s right, but if we all stood back and did nothing, letting management run roughshod over our rights, we’d end up back in the flaming nineteenth century, tipping our hats to the rich, and sending our children down the mines.

  Gary and I had fish fingers, peas and chips for tea tonight. As usual Gary wolfed his down, making big fat sandwiches covered in Daddies Sauce and chasing the peas round his plate till every last one was gone. Then he finished up mine, the little rascal. I don’t know where he gets his appetite. Still, it’s good for him to have a bit of fish, even if it does have to be coated in breadcrumbs before he’ll eat it.

  I’m getting more and more worried about the way they’re teaching him at school. They’ve got this experiment going on that’s supposed to help the kids learn to read and write faster, but for the life of me I can’t see how it’s going to work. This is what it says on the front of his exercise book: Mie Wurk Bwk. And inside he’s written: Jack has gon tw the zw. Mis Ritchie will bee our teecher for tw-dae. And his comment from the teacher: Gwd boi.

  It’s supposed to be some sort of phonetic teaching, but how the heck are they ever going to learn to spell, is what I want to know. I can just hear what Eddress would have to say about it. She wouldn’t be doing with it at all, I know that, and I’m damned if I can see any sense in it, so I’m going up there to investigate. There must be other parents who are as worried as I am. I suppose not everyone puts as much store by learning proper English as I do, but I don’t want my boy growing up to look like a dunce, when he’s very far from it.

  We had a nice story tonight. I read him some Brer Rabbit, then we had a look through his football cards. He’s got a good collection now that includes Bobby Moore and Geoff Hurst, his heroes, so we’re going to stick them in a scrapbook at the weekend. He’s been picked for the under-elevens down at Made for Ever this week, so he’s feeling chuffed to bits with himself tonight. I’m still trying to work out how to get him from the match, back home to bath and change, and up to the church in time to see Susan. It would be easier if we still had a car, but our old Consul gave up the ghost in the middle of Kingswood a couple of weeks ago, and got carted off to the scrapyard. They gave me ten quid for her, and said they were being generous. I’m back to riding my bike to work now, and we go everywhere else on foot or by bus.

  Albert Pitman’s due tonight. He comes every other Thursday to bring the Soviet Weekly and have a chat about the world and politics. I look forward to our couple of hours together, dealing with the issues of the day and how this country’s going to the dogs. We usually go in the front room to drink our tea, but it’s much too cold in there tonight, so I’ve stoked up the fire in the dining room, and the kettle’s already on a low light, close to the boil to make a nice fresh pot when he gets here. We’ll have a lot to talk about tonight, what with that old busybody de Gaulle vetoing Britain’s entry into the EEC the week before last. Not that I’m pro-Europe myself, but
the way that Frenchie carries on, anyone would think he’d won the flipping war, when everyone knows he probably wouldn’t have a country to run now if it weren’t for us.

  Ceausescu’s become president of Romania, so it’s going to be interesting to see what happens there. There’s a lot of good that goes on behind that Iron Curtain that no one ever gets to hear about over here. I often think back to the time Eddress and I went to Poland, the year before our Susan was born, when we were able to devote more time to our socialist beliefs. Ed used to call me a commie sometimes and I have to admit the ideology is one I could subscribe to in theory, and maybe even in practice if I was free to. Freedom, now there’s a subject to warm up the frozen cockles of the brain on a winter’s night with spirited debate. I think I can hear Ed groaning with despair and heading off to Coronation Street.

  Our trip to Poland was the first and only time either of us ever went abroad, and the welcome we received, the hospitality and offers to show us round, were overwhelming. I can’t imagine the English being as friendly as that with foreigners, or the Welsh, it has to be said. We might have a socialist government in power, but that doesn’t mean we’re not on our way to becoming a capitalist state, because it’s happening all around us. And if we don’t put a stop to it, mark my words, the rich’ll get richer, the poor’ll get poorer and in years to come we’re going to find ourselves embroiled in so much greed and corruption that we’ll probably end up in as bloody a revolution as the Russians went through in 1917, or the French back in 1792.

  There’s still a few minutes before Albert’s due to arrive – he’s always regular as clockwork – so I think I’ll finish off the letter I started to our Susan in Fishponds library today. I’ll have to make sure to post it tomorrow, or she might not get it before she comes home for Christmas. I received a list as long as her arm a few days ago, of all the presents she wants: a Mary Quant top, a psychedelic dress, Twiggy’s magazine, Her Mod, Mod Teen World (this is American, she wrote, so you might not be able to get it, but please try). She wants some scent called Fidji, a long pencil with a tassel on the end, a polka-dot pencil case, a page-a-day diary that locks, a white Bible, a dressing-table set with flowers on the back, some Avon Topaz talcum powder, and plenty of record and book tokens. I don’t know where she thinks we’re going to get the money for all this, but at least I’ve been able to give her aunts and her grandmother some idea of what she wants.

  I write:

  I was very pleased to hear about your Commended for History. Well done. I know English can be a little difficult at times, and when to use ‘I’ and ‘me’ isn’t very straightforward, but here’s something that might make it easier for you. All you have to do is take the other person away in your head, like this: 1) Dad and I go up Gran’s, would become I go up Gran’s if you take Dad away, which is correct (you wouldn’t say me go up Gran’s, so it can’t be Dad and me – or me and Dad). 2) Can Gary come up Gran’s with Dad and I? would be wrong, because that would be like saying can Gary come up Gran’s with I? So you should say Can Gary come up Gran’s with Dad and me? I hope that helps. It’s a little trick I learned when I was at school, which seems a very long time ago now.

  Ah, there’s Albert knocking on the door. He’ll have ridden his bike, as usual, and it’s perishing out there, so I’m quick to go and let him in.

  ‘Hello,’ he says, stomping his feet on the front doormat and stooping to snap off his bicycle clips. ‘It’s turning arctic out there. They say there’s going to be snow next week.’

  I take his coat and drape it over the bottom of the stairs, then usher him along the passage into the kitchen, where the gas oven’s on with the door open to make it nice and warm. ‘What are you doing for Christmas?’ I ask, turning up the heat under the kettle.

  ‘Oh, the same as always,’ he answers, ‘going over my sister’s for dinner, then up to Frank and Vi’s for tea. How about you?’

  ‘The same as last year. Our Doreen’s for dinner, then Flo’s for tea.’

  ‘Ah yes, Flo,’ he says, perching on the edge of a stool where the Flatley used to be. It’s upstairs on the landing now, with a long cable running into my bedroom so we can plug it in to dry the clothes. Eddress would never have allowed that, but it was taking up too much space in the kitchen, half blocking the doors into the passage and dining room, and it was the only other place I could find to put it. ‘How’s she getting on with her little kiddies?’ he asks.

  ‘As best as can be expected,’ I tell him.

  We go on chatting as the tea brews, and I wonder, the way I do sometimes when I’m with him, how he manages without a woman. He’s never been married, so I don’t suppose he can miss what he never had, but all the same he’s a normal red-blooded bloke, so he must have his needs. I don’t ever think about my own, it’s best not to when no one will ever be able to take Eddress’s place.

  We’re facing our second Christmas without her, and remembering what it was like last year is making me dread this one. She always knew exactly how to make everything sparkle for the kids, what presents to get, how to wrap them up, what time they should go to bed the night before. I remember how we used to listen for them in the morning, shuffling about between one another’s rooms, opening their stockings … Look what I’ve got! A yo-yo. Cor, look at this! Pretend nail varnish and a doll’s brush and comb. I’ve got an orange. Me too. And some nuts. Oh look, Gary, chocolate pennies!

  They brought everything in to me last Christmas morning. Nance and Doreen had done their stockings, so they didn’t go short of anything. We sat there in bed, the three of us, looking through everything they had, and when it was over we didn’t know what to do with ourselves. We just sat there, staring at it all, listening to the clock ticking and not saying a word.

  It was our Susan, bless her, who thought of getting breakfast.

  ‘I’ll make you something to eat,’ I heard her telling Gary as she took him downstairs, ‘and then we’ll bring some upstairs for Dad, all right? What do you think he’d like?’

  ‘Um, cornflakes and porridge and four pieces of toast with jam on.’

  ‘He can’t eat all that.’

  ‘Why not? I can.’

  He can, as well.

  I made myself get up then, because I didn’t want her trying to make a cup of tea. She was too young to be messing about with boiling water, and knowing her she’d probably have a go at lighting the fire too. I wasn’t wrong, because by the time I got downstairs the kettle was on, and she was about to light the gas on the back burner. The way it was hissing out, if she’d put a match to it, it would have probably blown her to kingdom come, so lucky I was there in time to grab the matches and start everything over again, showing her what to do in case she ever tried it another time. I could see she was upset, because she wanted to take charge and prove she was capable of looking after us all, but she was only ten, and I should have known better than to lie around in bed feeling sorry for myself when my kids were trying to make something of their Christmas.

  I shall have to make sure that doesn’t happen again this year, because it’s not fair on them, and if Eddress is looking down on us all she’ll be mad as heck and thoroughly ashamed of me.

  Susan

  Everyone’s in a fantastic mood, because it’s the end of term and we can’t wait to go home tomorrow. We’d give anything not to have to come back again after Christmas, mainly because it’s so freezing here that there’s ice on the insides of the windows, and half the time we can’t get any hot water in the morning because it’s frozen up inside the tap.

  I think it’s cruel making people sleep in a great big dormitory with only one measly pipe going round the skirting board to keep it warm. Half the time we pretend we’re ill so we can go down to the nursery where Cluttie’s always got the gas fire on. Because I’m the youngest, I always have to go to the end of the queue in the house maids to fill my hot-water bottle, so by the time I get to the tap the hot water’s all gone cold.

  Being the youngest doesn’t ge
t any easier, and now everyone’s forgotten how I saved them from a detention, I’m back to being a nobody again. The only time I enjoy myself is when I go home on an exeat. I see all my proper friends then, and we play skipping and Simon Says, and The Big Ship Sails through the Alley Alley Oh. They tell me about their school and I can’t help feeling jealous of all the freedom they have, like being able to come home every night, watch telly when they want to, go up Kingswood with their mums, or down Made for Ever to the youth club. Plus, no one ever blows them up, and they don’t have to do dangerous things because of tradition.

  The last time I was at home (after the exeat I had to miss, which I spent scooping up leaves from the hockey field and lying on my bed doing nothing) I told my friends that I hadn’t been able to come the time before because I had gone to spend the day with my boyfriend who lives over by my school. They immediately wanted to know his name, so I said it was Steve, which is what Paula Gates’s boyfriend is called.

  She’s got a photograph of him next to her bed. He’s really dishy with quite long curly hair, a moustache and these tiny little glasses like John Lennon wears. She sees him at weekends when she’s allowed out of bounds, and he writes to her all the time. Sadie’s got a boyfriend too, and so has Cheryl. They’re always getting letters, or writing to them. Even Peg’s got one, so it’s only me and Laura who don’t have anyone, but I don’t think Laura’s as bothered as I am. I’d love to have one more than anything else in the world. I’m sure it would make me miss Mummy a bit less, because it’d show I’m growing up and getting on with things.

  I wish she was going to be there at Christmas. I had a dream about her last night. We were over the bluebell field, running and twirling through the long grass like aeroplanes. Gary was there too, zooming around with his arms stuck out behind him and rolling over on his back. Mummy kept running and running. She never seemed to stop and then I realised she was getting further and further away. I kept calling out to her to wait, but she couldn’t hear me. Gary started to cry so I held his hand and shouted again for Mummy to wait, but I couldn’t make my voice loud enough. Then someone else was with her, a man and some children, and they walked out of the other side of the field. When Mummy turned round I couldn’t see her face, and it frightened me so much that I woke up.