by Pip Granger
I had just arrived back and settled down on the grass with my precious honey, when the Vicar coughed and announced that we had come to the first prize, the one awarded to the best overall plot.
‘I feel a few words of explanation may be due here, ladies, gentlemen and children,’ the dear man told us. ‘As you may know, a most heinous act of vandalism took place here recently. Miss Makepeace’s runner beans were quite deliberately destroyed by a person or persons unknown’ – he looked hard towards Ma and Brian, letting us know that he, for one, had his suspicions – ‘before the official judging could take place. However, the Committee is unanimous in the opinion that Miss Makepeace still deserves a prize. We all garden here and see her efforts regularly, and we are agreed that, before the thugs trampled her beans, hers was by far and away the best-kept plot, with the healthiest vegetables. Therefore it is with great pleasure that we award the first prize to Miss Zinnia Makepeace.’
The allotments erupted in clapping, cheering and yells of ‘Speech, speech!’ It seemed the good people of Paradise Gardens didn’t like bean-nobbling cheats either. I looked at the crowd and saw Brian and Ma shove their way to the front.
Ma’s face was purple with rage. She pointed at Zinnia but spoke to the Vicar. ‘You rigged it!’ she screamed, spittle flying in all directions. ‘You rigged it so that miserable Scottish hag could win. Those fags are mine by rights, and you know it.’ It was ridiculous; the woman was apoplectic with fury, yet she could get cigarettes any time she liked. After all, she had supplied the local black market with them for years. It made no sense. Whatever it was that was getting on Ma’s top note, it wasn’t the forty Player’s Navy Cut.
‘We was born and bred round here,’ Ma said bitterly, ‘but that don’t count for nothing when you fucking outsiders come along and take things over. You divvy up all the best houses, the best allotments and the best prizes between you, year in and year fucking out.’
She turned to the sea of listening faces. ‘And you lot ain’t no better. You let them. And if it ain’t the outsiders, then it’s the bleeding Marriotts and Smallbones, thinking they’re better than the rest of us. Look at when our Charlie got trapped into marrying one of them. You’d think they couldn’t sink any lower the way they bleeding carried on …’ Ma took a breath and would have continued but for Gran’s interruption.
‘That’s enough of that, Gladys Hole. There’s kids present and even one or two ladies’ – we all sniggered at that – ‘and we don’t want none of your filthy language, thank you very much. Has it ever occurred to you that we might think we’re a cut above you because we are a cut above?’
Gran appealed to the listening crowd. ‘You don’t hear any of us carrying on, effing and blinding and being bad sports, now do you?’
‘No!’ they all roared as one.
‘No,’ repeated Gran with enormous satisfaction. ‘See? That’s why people treat you different, Gladys Hole. We don’t like you. We don’t like the way you carry on. We don’t like the thieving and the bullying, and we ’specially didn’t like it in the war, when the rest of us was trying to pull together. And you’re still at it now, when we all want to rebuild our lives the best way we can.
‘Only yesterday Terry Rainbird said someone had had the petrol out of his motor. Broke the padlock on his garage to get at it. Of course, that meant he couldn’t collect his stock, which meant no sugar ration for the rest of us. Now, I wonder who had that away? He gets that petrol ration on account of his ticker, but you don’t give a monkey’s about that, do you? You or your useless thieving toe-rag of a son.’ Gran took a breath and the Vicar grabbed the opportunity to butt in.
‘Ladies, ladies, I’m sure the good people here don’t want to listen to this …’ he began, only to be drowned out by the good people yelling, ‘Oh yes we do.’
‘We wouldn’t miss it for the world,’ rang out one voice, I don’t know whose. ‘It’s time someone told her.’
It was then that Zinnia stuck her oar in. ‘Well, I for one would like my tea. So, Mrs Hole, if it’ll keep the peace, you can have the cigarettes. I dinna smoke the things anyway.’
Mum, Gran, Vi and Dad all spluttered in outrage. They had a use for those fags and we all knew some poor sods would be paying top whack for them on the black market by suppertime. Ma would sell most of them, one or two at a time, for maximum profit and smoke the rest. We were all appalled, but Zinnia was unrepentant.
‘Ach, it’s supposed to be fun and there’s no fun if there’s arguments over the prizes. I know I’m a good gardener. I’ve had my fair share of prizes and I know that I won this one fair and square. I don’t need the cigarettes to prove it.’
The Vicar beamed his approval. ‘A fine Christian attitude, Miss Makepeace, I must say.’ His smile dropped as he turned to Ma. ‘Here, Mrs Hole, with the compliments of the gracious winner.’
I thought Ma would snatch his hand off as she grabbed the fags and moved away through the murmuring, hissing and, in places nowhere near Ma, actually booing crowd.
The Vicar clapped his hands together. ‘Right you are. Tea, I think. Let the eating and drinking commence.’
We didn’t need telling twice. As one, we moved towards the trestle tables set up by the boundary wall. We’d all contributed to the feast and I must say we did ourselves proud. Not only was there plenty to eat and drink, but we had Ma Hole’s performance to talk about too. Good food, good company and good gossip on a sunny afternoon in peacetime. What could be better?
I finished my Spam sandwich and looked around me. The food had settled everyone down. It was hard to believe there had been an ugly scene at all. Even Ma and Brian weren’t fighting with anyone, but then it’s difficult to pick a quarrel with people who have turned their backs on you and are pretending you’re not there. Virtually everyone had moved away from the pair and joined the throng at the other end of the allotments, as near as they could get to the tables and the food.
However, being the Holes, it was against their nature for peace to reign indefinitely in their vicinity. As soon as the food was finished, we heard raised voices coming from their direction.
‘I said, get me another cup of tea, you ungrateful little bastard,’ Ma shouted, raising her hand to give her beloved boy’s ear another clip. This time, though, he blocked the move with his forearm and jumped to his feet. By this time, they had the attention of everyone present.
‘Leave me alone, Mum, I mean it,’ said Brian, as clear as anything.
‘And what are you going to do if I don’t?’ Ma sneered. ‘I said, get your arse over there and get me another cup of tea,’ she repeated, only louder.
‘No. I ain’t going in among that lot. They hate us and I ain’t doing it. Get your own sodding tea!’ Brian’s face was red, his fists balled and his arms were rigid by his side. I thought he was going to punch his mother for a moment, but then he thought better of it and turned and ran, barging past Frankie, who was on his way in, having been at the pub suggesting alternative employment to some of Ma Hole’s other ‘boys’. Everyone, including Ma, was watching Brian’s back as he raced down the alley and out of sight. It was only when he was gone that we let out our breath in one giant sigh.
‘What was that all about?’ Frankie asked as he arrived at our little group. Zinnia had her mouth open to tell him when there was an enormous WHOOSH, followed by a rapid rat-a-tat-tat sound. ‘Down!’ shouted Frankie above the noise. ‘Get down! That’s gunfire.’
We all hit the deck and covered our heads with our arms as clods of earth, bits of flowerpot and sundry pieces of garden tools rained down upon us. Young Arthur Whitelock missed being impaled by a flying gardening fork by inches – although it got his marrow fair and square – and I looked up just in time to see a trowel whizzing through the air. The air above us was thick with black smoke and cries of ‘What happened?’, ‘Was it a doodlebug?’ and ‘Is ’Itler at it again?’
Eventually, I heard Frankie say, ‘Sounds like that’s the lot, but stay down till I’ve h
ad a shufty.’ A few moments later he was back. ‘It’s all clear. You can get up now.’
‘What happened?’ asked Mum.
‘Looks like one of the sheds blew up,’ Frankie answered. ‘There’s a bloody great crater over there and it’s still smoking.’
Gingerly, we made our way through the throng towards a puff of smoke that was rising like a genie from the hole in the ground and the ruins of a shed. I took my bearings. ‘It’s Ma Hole’s shed.’ I said. ‘Or at least it was. Where’s Ma?’
‘I think she went up with it,’ a shaky voice answered. It was Mr Whitelock, looking shocked and pale. He had one arm round his Arthur, who was trembling from his narrow squeak, and the other round Mrs Whitelock, who had gathered the rest of their brood around them and was busy counting heads to make sure they were all there.
‘Did you see what happened?’ Frankie asked him.
‘Yes. Well, sort of. After Brian run away, Ma seemed fine, just sat there and lit a fag as if nothing had happened and she didn’t have a care in the world. Then she must’ve decided to go home because she started packing their stuff up. She went into the shed with their deckchairs and that’s when it blew.’
We edged closer to the crater and looked in, but there was nothing much to see besides a blackened hole, bits of shed smouldering in the grass and the remains of garden tools, beanpoles and crops scattered about. Frankie paced about a bit, looking hard at certain items he found in the grass, but he simply nudged them with his foot, making no attempt to touch them. Ronnie appeared beside him, having left his mum in the capable hands of Molly and her mum, and they paced the area between them, urging the rest of us to step back.
‘Watch out, here comes Hilda Handcuffs,’ Ronnie said and Frankie glanced up in time to see George Grubb approaching the scene, still holding a meat paste sandwich in one hand and a cup of tea in the other.
‘Any idea what happened?’ he asked.
‘It looks like Gladys Hole has blown herself up,’ Ronnie answered.
‘She just walked into her shed to put a deckchair away and BOOM!’ Mr Whitelock added.
Frankie beckoned George Grubb over and pointed to something in the grass. ‘Looks like we’ve found the boy’s gun,’ he said. ‘And his box of ammunition went up, judging by the bullets that were flying about after the shed exploded.’
‘Any idea what caused it to blow?’ George Grubb asked.
‘There’s bits of jerry can scattered about all over the place,’ answered Ronnie. ‘At a guess, I’d say petrol.’
‘It could be petrol what done it, Mr Grubb,’ Tony piped up. ‘Brian sometimes puts what he swipes in the shed until he sells it or swaps it.’
‘And Ma did have a fag on,’ added Mr Whitelock. ‘I saw her light up.’
‘And somebody has been nicking petrol lately.’ Terry put in his two penn’orth. ‘They drained my van last night. Couldn’t get to the suppliers because of it.’
‘Hmm,’ said George Grubb, putting two and two together slowly. ‘Doesn’t sound like foul play. A nasty accident, on the face of it. Still, I’d better get the proper authorities to take a look as soon as possible. Keep everyone away from the site, will you? But don’t anyone leave until they’ve been questioned.
‘I’ll nip along to the station and get things in motion,’ concluded George, who had never nipped anywhere in his life.
Everyone was too stunned to argue. We all simply drifted away, back to our picnic spots, and settled down to wait for the men in blue. Soon, the unholy, shocked silence gave way to quiet murmuring as people talked among themselves.
‘Funny,’ Mum said. ‘All those years of war when nothing hit Paradise Gardens and we have to dodge bullets and flying sheds in peacetime. It goes to show you something – I just ain’t sure what.’
All Dad could think of to say, over and over again in an awed voice, was, ‘Fancy Ma Hole copping it.’ It was a shocker all right.
‘It seems like divine retribution, somehow,’ Zinnia observed, ‘when you consider the havoc that woman has wreaked in her time.’
‘I wonder where Brian is,’ Tony said in a shaky voice. ‘I mean, he won’t know about his mum, will he?’
‘It’ll certainly go hard on the boy,’ Reverend Cattermole observed. ‘In a way, you could say he’s responsible for his mother’s, er, demise.’
‘But are we sure the old bat’s dead?’ Gran voiced the question the rest of us were too polite to ask. ‘I mean, are we absolutely certain that she went up with it?’
‘Oh, I think so, Mrs Smallbone,’ Mr Whitelock reassured her. ‘I saw her walk into the shed and then up it went. She certainly didn’t step out again. Even if she had, she wouldn’t have had time to escape the blast.’
50
When I started work in Soho on the Monday morning, I had plenty of news to tell my new employers. The breakfast rush was over and we were taking a breather over our own mid-morning tea and toast. The Featherbys didn’t stint on food for the staff; I’d already had bacon and egg at six.
‘No,’ breathed Maggie as I explained how the police had finally found Ma Hole’s body, with hardly a scratch on it, up a tree.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Blown straight up in the air and landed on top of this conker tree. Hanging over a branch, she was. She still had her hat on and everything.’
Bert laughed. ‘I bet Maltese Joe’ll get some mileage out of that, what with his man being on the spot. It won’t be an act of God by the time he’s finished with the story; it’ll be an act of Joe. That’ll show any other would-be scallywags: they better lay off his manor, or else be blown into another one down kingdom come way.’
I have to say that, although I missed Cook and Beryl, I didn’t miss Mrs Dunmore one little bit. Maggie was a much easier person to work for. She never asked me to do anything she wouldn’t do herself, she was always friendly about it and seemed to really appreciate my efforts. She even showed a pride in my work, and wouldn’t hesitate to tell customers how I’d been slaving away on the oven and that she could see her face in it when I’d finished.
‘She does a better job than I ever did, I can tell you that,’ she’d confide to regulars. ‘Remind me not to take advantage of her, otherwise she’ll be off, and then where would I be?’ she’d chuckle. At the same time as singing my praises, she was, of course, introducing me to the locals in my new neighbourhood. It didn’t take me long to begin to feel at home.
After work I’d concentrate on my lovely new flat. The first thing to do was track down some distemper. It wasn’t hard. I asked Bert, who mentioned it to Frankie, who sent a skinny bloke round with some cans of it two days later. By the end of the week, the trusty treadle on my Singer was rocking away on curtains, a bedspread and some cushions, using fabric supplied by yet more ‘friends’ in the schmutter trade. It seemed that nothing was impossible to come by: sometimes difficult, but never impossible. Bert usually knew a bloke, and if he didn’t, Frankie did, or Maggie did, or someone else knew a bloke who knew a bloke.
Maggie insisted I took a day off for Ma Hole’s funeral.
‘But I didn’t even like her,’ I pointed out.
‘I know, but you must show respect all the same. It’ll be expected,’ she reminded me.
It was true, it would. So I went, not at all sure what I was walking into. What I wasn’t expecting was to be one of only a dozen or so people there. Usually everyone turned out for one of our own. ‘Even the heathens, agnostics and downright atheists,’ as Gran pointed out in a loud whisper, only to be shushed by Mum.
It was sad; there was just a small group of ‘mourners’ huddling in that big, old church, and not one of us actually mourning. There was Reverend Cattermole, of course, and Mrs Cattermole on her organ. Zinnia was there in a severe black hat that did nothing for her, just made her look washed-out. Mum and Dad had made the effort, and Vi and Tony had turned up, too. Doris had decided it was no place for the twins, while Reggie’s asthma had taken a convenient turn for the worse. George Grubb represente
d the Law. There was no sign of Brian. No-one had seen him since he’d fled from the allotments just before his mother had been blown up to meet her Maker.
Once the service was over, we all traipsed out into the sunny churchyard and gathered round the recently dug grave. We spread out a bit, to make it look more populated. ‘I know I shouldn’t speak ill of the dead,’ Gran said quietly, ‘but Gladys Hole’s no great loss, no great loss at all. It’s good riddance to bad rubbish. The woman only got her comeuppance, if you think about it. In fact, you could say that life’s bound to be better round here, with one more Hole in the ground.’ She cackled, pleased with her joke.
Mum shushed her again. ‘Everyone deserves to have someone who’s sorry they’re dead at their own funeral. It seems only right and proper,’ she said, but there was no getting away from it: we all agreed with Gran’s sentiment, but were too polite to say so.
51
I was settling in very nicely and very quickly, so all my worries about that had been for nothing. I’d transformed my flat and taken to my new job as if I was born there. It was wonderful. I had expected to feel lonely, but I wasn’t, thanks to Maggie introducing me to every regular who walked through her doors. Pretty soon I was being hailed on the street by familiar faces, addressed by name in shops and at the market and chatted to by the customers.
‘Nice day for it, ain’t it, Zelda?’ some bloke’d say with a friendly leer. Things stay the same wherever you are.
‘Nice day for what? You cheeky beggar,’ I’d reply. We’d both laugh and a funny kind of friendship would be struck up. It oiled the wheels and helped my face to fit. It also made for an extra carrot or spud in my veg shopping, if I saw the joker at his stall, but nobody ever tried to take advantage. It was understood: I worked in the cafe with the Featherbys and I was a local ‘face’. What’s more, I was a friend of Frankie, which did no harm at all.