sUnwanted Truthst

by Unwanted Truths (epub)

  The coach station bustled with activity. Children bored with waiting chased each other around their parents, while smartly dressed older couples stood patiently by their cases.

  Jenny hesitated at the bottom of the coach steps as her aunt hurried towards her.

  ‘Don’t I get a kiss then?’ smiled Doris, and then, after looking her up and down, ‘You’ll be company for Alan. Did your dad give you any money for me?’

  Jenny handed over the crumpled brown envelope she had been clutching since Charlie had put her into the care of the coach driver. She stood on tiptoe and brushed her aunt’s rouged cheek.

  Doris stuffed the envelope in her coat pocket and grabbed Jenny’s hand.

  ‘My case,’ muttered Jenny.

  ‘Well, run back and get it then. Be quick, it’s quite a way for the bus; then we’ve got to change at Elephant and Castle.’

  Jenny’s case bumped against her legs as she was pulled along the pavement.

  ‘Come on,’ said Doris.

  *

  Jenny was relieved that her mother was in hospital, as she could stop worrying about leaving her on her own when she left for school. Her eyes would moisten whenever she thought about that day in January, and she had to blink to stop her tears. She had begged her parents to let her stay with Mrs Walters, a widow, who lived in the flat below. She could visit her mother, and be company for her father in the evenings; but was told that six weeks was far too long to stay with a neighbour. She was to stay with Aunt Doris.

  Jenny eyed her cousin shyly across the kitchen table. Doris’s husband Jim hovered over her as she nibbled a fish paste sandwich. He was a slight man, who worked at the local gas works. Doris told her family that she only married him because he kept pestering her and she felt sorry for him. ‘Poor Jim, he has to do what he’s told,’ was the usual comment by Alice, at the mention of his name.

  Alan, also an only child, was eighteen months older than Jenny. He was wearing a red check, open-necked shirt and dark brown corduroy shorts which ended just above his scabbed knees. His straight dark hair was struck through on the right-hand side with a white parting. He spoke first. ‘Are you coming to school with me on Monday?’

  ‘I’ll have to ask Aunt Doris,’ said Jenny. She hadn’t thought about school. She was more worried that she might have to drink all the milk that was in her glass. It had a sickly sweet taste.

  ‘Well, you can’t ask her now. She’s getting ready.’

  ‘Ready for what?’

  ‘It’s Saturday night, Mum always goes out on Tuesday and Saturday nights.’

  ‘Goes out? Goes out where?’ asked Jenny, forgetting her shyness. She had never known her parents to go out in the evening together, never mind separately.

  ‘She goes dancing, of course.’

  *

  Jenny sat cross-legged on the floor beside Alan, mesmerised by the flickering television in the wooden cabinet. The door opened. She looked over her shoulder and stared at her aunt who occupied the doorway. She thought she looked like a film star. Her dark wavy hair was styled close to her head, and her lips glistened with scarlet lipstick.

  ‘Desmond and I are off now, so make sure you behave yourselves,’ she said, smoothing black satin gloves along her lower arm. ‘It’s Saturday, so you can put yourselves to bed. I’ve made up the camp bed in Alan’s room for you, Jenny. Don’t forget to brush your teeth – that means you too, Alan.’ She turned sharply on high heels; her black taffeta skirt swishing draughtily behind her. Her perfume lingered for the rest of the evening, as if to compensate for her absence.

  *

  A door slammed. Jenny woke in a panic. Where was she? She bit her lower lip. She needed the toilet. Suppose she wet the bed? She felt the struts of the wooden camp bed digging into her ribs through the blanket and sheet. Raised voices travelled along the landing. Turning over she could just make out the humped outline of Alan as he lay in the bed alongside her own. He was fast asleep and breathing noisily. She stared into the blackness and wished she was at home. There were witches dancing on the curtain rail, their evil faces mocking her. She turned over and lay on her stomach, her need for the toilet disappeared. More raised voices; she recognised her aunt’s.

  ‘The dance didn’t end ‘til one-thirty, I certainly wasn’t going to leave before then. Anyway, you know I’m with Desmond. Get back to sleep, for God’s sake. What’s the matter with you?’

  Then her uncle’s voice, louder than usual; ‘I’ve told you before Dori, it’s not right you coming home this late. It’s two o’clock in the morning, I don’t like it.’

  ‘Don’t like what? You don’t like me enjoying myself. What am I supposed to do, stay in with you every night?’

  ‘You enjoyed yourself before, and look what happened then.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake; trust you to bring that up.’

  Their voices trailed as Jenny fell asleep.

  *

  Jenny was halfway through eating a slice of toast when her aunt appeared wearing a cream silk dressing gown, covered with pink roses. Jenny waited for her to say something, but she ignored both herself and Alan. She perched on a high stool by the cupboard and pulled out a cigarette from a packet in her pocket, tapping it on the Formica surface. She put it between her lips, flicked a lighter and drew deeply. Jenny noticed that she still had powder and lipstick on from the night before.

  ‘Has Desmond been down yet?’ she asked, as Alan and Jenny piled their breakfast plates in the sink.

  ‘Yes,’ they both answered.

  Desmond was one of three West African students who lodged at the house. He had been eating his breakfast when Jenny and Alan had come down. Jenny hadn’t been able to stop staring at him. She had never seen a black man before, only pictures in the The Peoples of the World section of her encyclopaedia. She was fascinated by his hair. She wanted to touch it, and wondered how he washed and combed it.

  Aunt Doris sighed, and looked out of the kitchen window at her husband who was digging a patch of earth at the end of the garden. She drew deeper on her cigarette. Alan bent down to pull up one of his socks, which lay like a concertina around his ankle. Doris stubbed her cigarette in an ashtray. ‘Leave the washing up, I’ll do it. Go and play in the garden – both of you.’

  *

  The sound of Frankie Laine bellowing “I Believe” from the radiogram drew Alan and Jenny downstairs.

  The sofa and armchairs had been moved back against the wall. Desmond was leaning on the mantelpiece, his left foot tapping to the rhythm. Another student was twirling Doris around the lounge. Jim leant back in an armchair, his eyes tightly shut and a pained expression on his face. An open newspaper lay across his lap, and a pair of glasses hung from a cord around his neck.

  ‘Jenny, don’t stand in the doorway. Come in and let me show you how to dance.’ Desmond’s deep voice invited her in.

  ‘Just follow me round, little one; put your hands on my shoulder and stand on my shoes, I’ll soon have you dancing like your aunt.’ He gripped Jenny under her armpits. She was enthralled. She stood on tiptoe on his shoes, her head against his chest and followed his movements, thinking that nothing like this ever happened at home.

  ‘Why are your teeth so white Desmond?’ she ventured.

  ‘I’ve brought this special twig all the way from Nigeria. It keeps them clean and bright. I’ll show it to you later.’

  ‘I know the capital of Nigeria.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘Yes, it’s Lagos. Did you live there?’

  ‘Fancy you knowing that now. No, my village is hundreds of miles to the north. But I studied there before coming to England.’ The record slowed on the turntable. ‘Shall we have another dance, little lady?’

  Jenny beamed up at him and nodded.

  *

  Doris poked her head around the bedroom door at eight o’ clock. ‘Goodnight you two,’ and with a flick on the light switch she disappeared. Five minutes later, Alan whispered across to Jenny.

  ‘Come in
to my bed. I’ve got a torch; we can read my comic.’

  Jenny slipped out of the camp bed and squeezed in beside him. They read a page and then giggled as they tried to turn it with tangled arms. Alan lifted the blankets and shone the light under the bedclothes.

  ‘Look,’ he said nodding downwards and opening his pyjama bottoms, ‘you can touch it if you like.’

  Jenny stared down and shook her head vigorously.

  ‘It’s your turn now.’

  ‘There’s nothing there,’ she said.

  ‘There must be, come on show me.’

  ‘No, I don’t want to.’

  ‘You’ve got to. I’ve shown you mine.’

  She wriggled out of her pyjamas trousers. The beam illuminated a circle of white skin at the top of her legs. Alan peered hard and long.

  ‘I told you, there’s nothing there,’ Jenny said, pulling up her pyjamas. ‘I’m going back to my bed now.’ She felt she had been tricked into revealing herself and it smarted, but she couldn’t have said no. He had done it first – so it was only fair. But she wouldn’t fall for it again.

  *

  ‘Open wide.’ Doris thrust a large teaspoonful of malt into Jenny’s mouth. ‘I won’t be here when you get home. But Alan’s got a key, and Uncle Jim will do some tea for you.’ Screwing the lid back on the large black jar she returned it to the cupboard. Moving in front of a round mirror by the side of the sink, she started to remove a line of rollers from her hair. Jenny wondered how much longer it would be before the line of ash, that drooped from the cigarette in the corner of her mouth, would fall to the floor.

  ‘Don’t stare at me like that Jenny. You’re always doing that. It gives me the creeps. Off you go, or you’ll be late for school. Alan will look after you.’

  Jenny wore a pair of black wellington boots and a belted gabardine raincoat. On her head was a hand-knitted bonnet, with a pom-pom dangling from the back. Alan was dressed exactly the same, except he had a grey balaclava wrapped around his head and neck.

  ‘You’d better keep up,’ he said, pausing momentarily from kicking a tin can along the pavement.

  They walked past terraces of identical houses. Each one with a postage stamp sized front garden edged by a wall. In some of the windows were taped cardboard signs covered with uneven black writing:

  NO DOGS

  NO CHILDREN

  NO IRISH

  NO BLACKS

  ‘Is she your girlfriend?’ shouted a boy with metal-rimmed glasses as he ran alongside them.

  ‘No, stupid, she’s my cousin.’

  The boy tugged at Jenny’s pom-pom, pulling her hat back from her head.

  ‘Al’s got a girlfriend, Al’s got a girlfriend,’ taunted the boy, now joined by another.

  Alan ran headlong into the first boy sending his glasses flying. The second boy hurled himself at Alan and all three fell to the pavement, their fists pummelling each other, until Jenny couldn’t make out which arms and legs belonged to which boy. Satisfied that justice had been done Alan stood up, dusted himself down and grabbed Jenny’s hand.

  ‘Come on, we’ll be late,’ they started running.

  ‘Nigger lover, nigger lover; bugger off to Notting Hill, there’s plenty more there,’ shouted the first boy picking up his glasses from the gutter.

  The red-brick school surrounded by high railings stood like a prison at the top of Plum Lane. Instead of the brightly-coloured tables and chairs that Jenny was used to, there were battered wooden desks, their lids scarred with the names of past occupants. In the top right-hand corner was a hole that held a cracked china inkwell filled with deep blue ink. They write with pens here, thought Jenny, worried that she wouldn’t know how to use one. The pupils were more boisterous than she was used to. Rough, her mother would have said. She hoped that she wouldn’t be ignored at break time. Alan wouldn’t want to play with her.

  *

  The first postcard from her mother, showing an aerial view of Brighton’s two piers, arrived fifteen days into her stay:

  Dear Jenny,

  I’ve had my operation now, which went well. I’m still feeling tired and sleeping plenty but gradually getting stronger. Be a good girl for your aunt and uncle. Dad has visited me every day after work and sends his love. Love Mummy x

  P.S. Dad has put some postal orders in the post for Aunt Doris.

  The second postcard arrived two weeks later, and had a Tunbridge Wells postmark. On the other side was a black and white photograph of a large country house. It showed nurses in starched uniforms with head coverings that, Jenny thought, made them look like nuns. They were standing on a veranda, alongside a line of bed-ridden patients:

  Dear Jenny,

  I’m feeling a lot better now, and have been sent to this lovely place for two weeks for a complete rest before I go home. Don’t forget to thank Aunt Doris for looking after you, and tell her that Dad has put some more postal orders in the post. See you soon. Love Mummy x

  Jenny thought that her aunt hadn’t done very much looking after to be thanked for. That had been left to her uncle, and whichever student happened to be around. She might just as well have stayed with Mrs Walters. But then, she wouldn’t have met Desmond, or experienced Sunday afternoons, when she would perch on top of Desmond’s shoes, stretch her arms around his neck, and with his arm around her waist, they would glide around the lounge to the sounds of Perry Como and Frankie Laine. She wished those afternoons could last forever.

  4

  May 1953

  ‘I haven’t got all day you know,’ said the shopkeeper as Jenny’s eyes darted around the penny box. Her fingers closed around the pink flying saucer.

  ‘Anything else?’ he said, peering over his round spectacles.

  ‘Twenty Weights, please,’ Jenny looked up at him and added, ‘for my dad.’ But he was already slapping the packet down on the counter.

  ‘That will be two shillings and seven pence.’

  The small parade of shops stood in the centre of the estate, halfway between the school and Jenny’s home. It was late May, and the Whitsun school holiday. Jenny dawdled down the hill sucking the sherbet from its outer casing. The semi-detached houses that lined both sides of the road were occupied by families; a father, a mother, and two or three children. One prolific couple, with ten children, were allocated two semi-detached houses with a connecting door. The flats lay on the perimeter of the estate. First-floor flats were for families with one child. The ground-floor flats for older couples, or widows. Jenny stood and watched as a girl turned a skipping rope tied to the lamppost. It was Pamela Edwards, who was in her class. Another girl, who Jenny recognised as being in the year below, was breathlessly counting her jumps. With each leap her dress billowed like a tiny parachute, her thin legs hanging like cords.

  ‘Hello,’ said Jenny.

  ‘Do you want a go?’ asked Pamela.

  Jenny shook her head and continued to suck her sherbet.

  ‘Eighty-one, that’s my highest so far,’ the younger girl gasped; the rope slack between her legs.

  Pamela turned to Jenny, the handle clattering onto the pavement. ‘I’ve got to go in now. Do you want to help me bathe my baby brother?’ She was the second eldest of a family of six. Her sister Patricia was in the year below, and her brother Philip the year below that. There was also an older brother of around twelve called Peter. All the children’s names began with the letter P and Jenny imagined that they would continue multiplying until they ran out of names.

  Jenny followed Pamela as she walked up the garden path dragging her left leg behind her. She wore a heavy high laced leather boot. Attached to the boot was a pair of metal callipers that reached to her knee. She had told everyone that she had polio when she was younger, and had spent a year in a long box like a coffin, that breathed for her.

  Screams bombarded Jenny’s ears. The younger children were laughing and chasing each other around the kitchen table. The toddler was naked from the waist down. They ignored the screams from the large black p
ram beside the boiler. Pamela nimbly avoided a full potty and the coloured play bricks that lay scattered across the floor. She went over to the pram. Jenny followed and peered inside. ‘Does he always cry so loudly?’

  ‘Only when he’s hungry; and that’s quite often.’

  Paul, the latest addition to the family, lay red-faced and kicking, clad only in an off-white nappy and vest. Pamela scooped him up and thrust him into Jenny’s arms, before disappearing through the side door and returning with a galvanised tin bath. Placing the bath on the Formica table she began filling it with jugs of hot and cold water. Jenny thought that although they were the same age, Pamela appeared years older; a housewife in miniature. She lay the baby on a threadbare towel, deftly undid the buttons on his vest and unpinned his nappy. Jenny’s nose wrinkled. Once cleaned, Paul was lowered into the water. He immediately stopped crying. Huge blue eyes focused on Jenny as Pamela rubbed him with a bar of soap.

  ‘You can wash the soap off now if you like?’

  ‘Like this?’ Jenny scooped up the water in her hands and splashed him.

  ‘Yes, that’s fine.’ Another towel appeared as if by magic, and Paul was wrapped and dried in seconds. Pamela’s sister appeared clutching a curved glass bottle of milk. She grabbed Paul and sitting down in a threadbare armchair began to feed her brother. Jenny watched as his tiny hands grabbed the bottle and he began to slurp noisily on the teat. She compared Pamela’s busy family life to her own quiet existence.

  ‘I do this every day to help Mum,’ Pamela said, as if reading Jenny’s thoughts. ‘Mum’s giving Pearl her tea in the other room.’ Pearl was the toddler.