Everybody's Somebody

by Beryl Kingston

  It took a long time to enlist. By the time Bertie came striding out of the recruiting office, it had grown quite dark. The band had long since marched away, the gas lights were being lit and the air was chill and smelt of soot and smoke.

  ‘Come on,’ he said, taking charge in his usual way. ‘Pie and mash tonight. We’ve got somethink to celebrate.’

  So, they stopped off at the Cross for five portions and a large bottle of ginger beer. Then they took the short cut to Ritzy Street through Windmill Row, across the main road to Courtenay Street — where some lovely, new, yellow-brick houses were being built for the Duchy and there were gas lights to mark the way — left by the pub and north for home, Rose trotting to keep up with her brother’s lengthy stride.

  Unlike the roads in the Duchy estate, Ritzy Street was short, narrow, and poorly lit. It had once led down to the Thames, to a landing-stage between the Doulton pottery works and the Gunhouse stairs, but now it was cut off from the riverside by the railway embankment and the wide sweep of the London and South Western railway line which filled the area with the chuff and clutter of engines, day and night, and dropped sulphur stains and black smuts on to doorsteps and curtains and any washing the inhabitants were foolhardy enough to hang out. The houses were built in long, soot-blackened terraces and each house contained a basement kitchen and nine living rooms, three on each floor. It wasn’t the most comfortable place in which to live, but it had provided a home for the Bonifaces at a time when they stood in danger of the workhouse, and for that Rose was fond of it and felt at ease and happy there. When they first moved in to Number Twenty-Six, they’d occupied the second-floor back, which was the worst room in the house; now they had graduated to the two front rooms on the first floor and she and Netta and Mabel had a bedroom of their own, divided from Collum and Bertie by a wall instead of a curtain.

  Netta was leaning out of their bedroom window with her hands on the sill, watching out for them. The light from the gas lamp outside the front door edged her sharp features with gold and made the long straggle of her hair gleam like dark water as it hung over the sill on either side of her gilded hands. But her voice was far from romantic.

  ‘Where’ve you been?’ she wanted to know. ‘I been waiting hours. I’m famished!’

  ‘Set the table,’ Bertie called up to her. ‘We got pie and mash. Where’s the others?’

  ‘Playing out,’ Netta said in a tone that implied he was foolish even to ask. ‘Where d’you think?’ And she left the window to prepare the table.

  Bertie put two fingers in his mouth and gave a long shrill whistle —once, twice, three times. It was his usual signal to call the kids home and sure enough, after a second, there was a scramble at the blocked-off end of the alley and one of Mabel’s boots appeared at the top of the wall followed by a black-stockinged leg and a flash of white pinafore. Then the rest of her body appeared, and she sat on top of the wall, swinging her legs, ready to jump down. She was ten years old, but, because she was simple-minded, she looked younger, short, stout and moon-faced, her clothes patched and grubby and her hair in perpetual tangles. But she was a cheerful creature and full of affection. ‘’Lo, our Bertie,’ she called.

  ‘Look at the state of you,’ Rose scolded as her sister ran towards them. ‘You been playing up the embankment again ain’tcher. Where’s your ribbon?’

  Mabel thought for a long time and then produced the answer, speaking slowly but with triumph as she always did when she’d managed to get something right. ‘In me pocket.’

  ‘Don’t tell her off,’ Bertie said mildly as the three of them climbed the stairs. ‘Not tonight.’

  ‘Why not tonight?’ Mabel wanted to know, stomping up the stairs behind them. ‘Why not tonight, our Rose?’

  ‘Tell you when Col gets home,’ Rose promised. ‘Get your hands washed, there’s a good girl. It’s pie and mash and you like that don’t you. Look sharp and then you’ll get the beauty of it while it’s hot.’

  The gas was lit, the fire made up and Rose dished out the supper while the others took it in turns to wash in the basin in the bedroom, splashing out just enough clean water from the ewer to cover the backs of their hands and emptying the dirty water away in the pail afterwards. And five minutes after his brother’s whistle, as Netta was folding the towel and hanging it back on the rail, Collum came charging up the stairs, just as they all knew he would. He was nearly fourteen and although he was small for his age and as skinny as the rest of the family, he considered himself far too grown up to come at a call. Five minutes was enough to mark the distance between obedience and independence and to set him apart from his younger sisters.

  The meal began at once because they were all much too hungry to wait. For quite a while they ate without speaking, their five tousled heads bent low over their five enamel plates. Then, when they’d taken the edge off their hunger, Rose told them the thrilling news.

  ‘Passed me A, they did,’ Bertie said with justifiable pride. ‘Think a’ that. A. Fit for military service in the front line, the surgeon said.’

  ‘Well a’ course,’ Rose approved, mopping her plate with a chunk of bread. ‘What d’you expect, the size of you?’

  ‘Military service in the front line,’ Netta echoed, food temporarily forgotten, she was so awed by the importance of it. ‘It don’t half sound grand, our Bertie.’

  ‘D’you have to wear a uniform?’ Mabel asked.

  ‘’Course.’

  ‘Won’t he look a swell, our Rose.’

  ‘I wish I could go for a soldier,’ Netta said, gazing earnestly at her brother across the rim of her beaker. Her pale face was peaked with yearning, the tangle of uncombed hair that framed it making it look thin and huge eyed.

  ‘Well you couldn’t, could you,’ Col said disparagingly. Sometimes Netta said the silliest things.

  Netta tossed her head at him, swinging her hair. ‘I don’t see why not,’ she said, defiantly. ‘I could fire a gun as well as anyone and ride a horse — if someone ’ud learn me — and carry the flag.’ She waved her spoon like an imaginary flag, her dark eyes ardent. ‘I’d make a jolly good soldier. I could cut my hair off, couldn’t I, and wear trousers and boots and everything. Who’d know?’

  ‘I would,’ Col said flatly. ‘Anyway, you can’t because you’re a girl.’ The world of war and soldiery was entirely masculine. There was no place in it for women. It was a matter of pride and patriotism, strength, nobleness, valour, comradeship, courage under fire — all the things women couldn’t understand. And all happening now, in his lifetime, that was the wonder of it. ‘D’you think it’ll go on long enough for me to join up an’ all?’ he asked Bertie.

  ‘Shouldn’t think so,’ Bertie said. ‘We got them on the run, the sergeant said. Be over by Christmas, he reckons.’ Then, pitying Col’s disappointed expression, ‘Still, you never know, do you.’

  The plates and beakers were empty, so Rose and Mabel began to clear the table. Then Netta lifted the kettle from its hob on the fire and poured hot water into the washing-up bowl on the living room washstand so as to clean the dishes, while Col and Bertie pushed the table into its usual position under the window and set the chairs in a neat circle round the fender. There was a routine to everything they did and a place for everything too, for their rooms were small and cramped and contained too many people and too much furniture to allow for any untidiness. In this one, beside the washstand and the table and chairs, there was also Bertie’s single bed, which had Col’s truckle bed tucked underneath it and did duty as a settee during the day, and a dresser which held all their most prized possessions, jugs and dishes, cloths and crockery, a row of well-read books and Rose’s precious Singer sewing machine.

  That machine had been the family’s most expensive purchase. But they all agreed it had been well worth the money for Rose’s skill at making over old clothes and running up petticoats and pinafores from old sheets and pillow cases had saved them the price of it many times over.

  Now she settled beside
the table, spread out the three blouses she’d just bought and began to ponder while Mabel reverently laid the pin cushion, the tailor’s chalk and the tape measure beside the blouses and threaded up two needles with white tacking-cotton.

  In the pause between the end of the meal and the resumption of conversation, it was quiet and peaceful in their little room: Netta dried the dishes and Mabel put them away, working slowly but taking great pains to have everything in its right place; Bertie and Col took the boot box from the dresser and set to work to patch Mabel’s boots; Rose cut away the worn cloth from all three blouses and began to unpick the side seams. This was the time of day she enjoyed most, the time when they were all back together again after work and school, at ease and happy in one another’s company. The room was full of familiar domestic sounds — the occasional tap-tap-tap of Bertie’s hammer, the clink of dishes, the shuffle of shifting coals, the purr and pop of the gas light, the steady clonking of mum’s old painted clock on the mantelpiece. There were so many things in the room to remind them of their mother. The dresser had been hers and so had most of the treasures that crowded its shelves; she had made the rag rug on the hearth, the patchwork cushions on Bertie’s bed and the embroidered sampler hanging in pride of place on the wall beside the fireplace.

  It was a very ordinary sampler, worked in cross-stitch on a piece of rough canvas and signed and dated — ‘Emily Jones her work aged 11 years June 1887’. It depicted a rose-spotted house with four windows, a central door and a thatched roof. There was blue smoke rising boskily above it from a decidedly crooked chimney. Three square rabbits sat on their haunches on either side of it and beneath, in bold capital letters, was their mother’s motto, the precept they all tried to follow — ‘live with dignity’. And isn’t that just what our Bertie’s done today, Rose thought, looking at it. If she can see him now, she’ll be so proud of him.

  The last plate was dried and put in its place on the dresser, the wiping-up cloth was hung on its string to dry, the last nail was knocked into Mabel’s boot, the mending-box tidied and put away. Bertie balanced his feet on the fender and hooked his packet of Woodbines from his inside pocket, ready for his evening smoke. He looked across at Col who was sitting on the other side of the hearth watching him with admiration, and, on a sudden impulse, held out the little battered packet towards his brother. ‘Time for a fag?’ he said.

  It was carried off with such splendid nonchalance that no outsider watching them would have realised what an important moment it was. But Rose and Netta knew and drew in their breath in surprise and pleasure ready to enjoy what would happen next.

  ‘Ta,’ Col said, with equal aplomb. ‘I don’t mind if I do.’ He’d been smoking out on the street with his friends for nearly a year now but never in the house. As he drew in the first bitter breath, he narrowed his eyes and smiled at Bertie with open affection — the two men of the house sharing a gasper for the first time. This was a day, and no mistake.

  ‘You’ll have to mend all the boots on your own when I’m gone,’ Bertie warned.

  ‘I don’t mind,’ Col said. ‘I’m getting to be a dab hand with that old leather, ain’t I gels?’

  ‘Cack hand, more like,’ Netta teased.

  ‘Come over here and let me try this pattern on you,’ Rose said.

  Netta stood to attention while Rose chose a brown paper pattern from her pattern box and fitted it against her sister’s chest, folding the paper into neat tucks and pinning it together until she was satisfied with it.

  ‘I’ll take the sleeves up,’ she decided. ‘We can lose a good four inches an’ that’ll make a nice new armhole. Then if I cut out four new side panels from the ecru and new cuffs, bit a’ lace round the collar, you’ll look a treat.’

  ‘What about mine?’ Mabel wanted to know, breathing heavily at her sister’s elbow. ‘What about mine, our Rose?’

  ‘Yours’ll have a new yoke and a nice front panel. I shall cut out all this bit where the stains are, see. An’ I shall put this pinky lace round the neck and the cuffs. I might even have enough left over for a hair-ribbon. How’s that?’

  ‘You’re ever so clever, our Rose,’ Mabel said, watching with admiration as Rose pinned the pattern to the back panel of the ecru blouse.

  It was true, and they all knew it so well that Rose didn’t need to respond. It was part of the background knowledge to their lives that they all took for granted — like the fact that they worked well as a family and were fond of each other, that their lives would get easier in two months’ time when Col was fourteen and out at work, that Bertie was always dependable and Netta sometimes tricky and that Mabel would always be simple-minded and that they would always have to look after her. It was on a par with all the other accepted truths that they didn’t have to think about either, that husbands worked and wives kept house, that, except for Mabel, they would all marry and settle down in their turn and be happy like their mother and father before them, that London was the greatest city in the world, that the sun never set on the British Empire, that they were bound to win this war.

  Col tossed his fag-end into the fire. ‘Well, that’s it,’ he said, smoothing his hair with both hands. ‘Time I was off or old man Porky’ll get the ’ump.’ He worked every Saturday evening at one of the fruit and vegetable stalls in the market at Lambeth Walk and his employer was a stickler for punctuality.

  ‘We’ll be up presently,’ Rose said. This family usually followed him to market at about ten o’clock of a Saturday evening because that was when the remaining meat was sold off cheap — and the stale bread and buns and the ‘specks’ from the fruit and veg stalls. Sometimes they could get enough to keep them going till the middle of the week — especially if Netta was in one of her saucy moods.

  ‘My brother the soldier,’ Col said, standing in the doorway. ‘I can’t wait to tell Porky. When d’you reckon you’ll have to go?’

  ‘Not for ages yet, I don’t expect,’ Bertie said. ‘There was hundreds joining.’

  But he was wrong. The British war machine was geared for speed and his call-up papers arrived a mere seven weeks later — two weeks before Col was due to leave school and start work in the vinegar factory.

  He came home from his last day at work, emptied his pay packet on the table and sorted the coins into five neat piles.

  ‘Now there’s two weeks’ rent to tide you over,’ he explained to Rose, putting the first pile into its jar on the mantelpiece. ‘And there’s the coal and the boot club, and that’s the housekeeping. You’ll be all right till I get me pay.’

  ‘What about you?’ Rose said, touched by his care for them. ‘You’ll need a bit a’ money.’

  There was still fivepence left on the table. ‘That’ll do me,’ he said cheerfully, putting it in his pocket. ‘Now you will be all right wontcher. I done all the boots and the lavvy’s all scrubbed. This’ll keep you going won’t it?’

  ‘Who’s going?’ Mabel said, screwing up her face. All this talk of money bewildered her. ‘Who’s going?’

  ‘You know who’s going,’ Netta said proudly. ‘Our Bertie’s going. For a soldier.’